About This Video

In this short personal video, Dr. Abi Blakeslee — Ph.D., LMFT, CMT, SEP, and SE™ Faculty — shares a few of her own go-to embodiment practices for navigating daily stress. Filmed during the COVID-19 pandemic while homeschooling three children and supporting a husband working in emergency medicine, this video is as real and grounded as it gets.

These aren't clinical techniques reserved for the therapy room. They're moment-to-moment somatic tools you can use anywhere — seated at your desk, mid-conversation, or in the middle of a hard day.

What Dr. Abi Shares in This Video

Dr. Abi walks you through three simple embodiment practices drawn from her Somatic Experiencing training:

Finding Your Center Line

Learn how to drop into the spine, feel the body's natural vertical axis, and use that sense of groundedness to widen activation rather than stay stuck in constriction.

Lengthening Through the Crown

A subtle but powerful practice of sensing upward through the top of the head to create more space, expand capacity, and soften through the brain stem — without leaving your body.

Softening Your Gaze

Explore how the quality of your visual attention — moving outward or drawing inward — can shift your perceptual state and invite a more fluid, regulated breath.

Broadening Into the Back Body

Bringing awareness to the rhomboids, shoulder blades, and the broadness of the back creates a larger somatic container — particularly helpful when stress or anxiety tends to gather in the chest or core.

Who This Is For

This video is for anyone carrying the weight of daily stress — whether you're a Somatic Experiencing student or practitioner, a therapist, a caregiver, or simply someone looking for grounded, body-based tools to come back to yourself.

About the Presenter

Dr. Abi Blakeslee, Ph.D., LMFT, SEP, CMT is a world-renowned trauma recovery expert, Senior Faculty at Somatic Experiencing International, and the founder of Implicit Psychotherapy. Her work bridges neuroscience, depth psychology, and somatic practice to help healers and individuals move from survival into aliveness.