SEP · SOMATIC EXPERIENCING PRACTITIONER
Sarah Sherwood
Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner · SEP, Certified Life Coach
About Sarah
Sarah Sherwood is a Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner (SEP) and a certified life coach. She completed the 216-hour Somatic Experiencing professional training through the Somatic Experiencing Trauma Institute, the training body founded by Peter A. Levine, PhD, and has held the SEP designation since 2014. She earned her life coach certification through the Institute for Life Coach Training in 2011, and has worked for more than ten years as a licensed massage therapist.
Her path into this work began with her own experience. A chronic pain condition that started while she was in college reshaped her plans and led her to coaching and somatic work, where she helps people move through fear and overwhelm toward lives that feel more like their own.
What Somatic Experiencing is
Somatic Experiencing is a body-oriented approach to stress and trauma. Overwhelm does not only live in thoughts; it shows up as a tight chest, a shutdown, a startle that arrives before any thought does. Somatic work helps a person notice those sensations and let the nervous system settle, at a pace that stays manageable.
Her work at Iron Ridge
Beginning in November 2026, Sarah leads Somatic Experiencing sessions within the program: twice a month with the men in the intensive outpatient program, and once a month with partners in the Partner & Family Program. Her sessions sit alongside the clinical work led by Clinical Director Ian Birdwell, LPC, CSAT.
Somatic Experiencing is not psychotherapy, and Sarah does not diagnose or provide therapy. Clinical treatment in the program is provided by Iron Ridge’s licensed clinical team.
Talk with the clinical team
A consultation is confidential and is a clinical conversation, not a sales call. Calls answered live by our team, Mon–Fri 8am–9pm CT.
You can send this and think about it for a week before we speak.