“When we welcome what’s right in front of us, there is space for allowing and embracing. In that space, we find freedom.”
Shelby Leigh (she/her)
my story
I felt like a wild horse, broken. Fragmented, searching, seeking, and nothing landing. Separate from all the beauty that surrounded me and unable to take up any nourishment from connection, nature, food, spirit, or the mountains that called me every day. Separate from the light I could feel inside me but I couldn’t find.
Like so many of us, I have a history that got the best of me for decades. Despite feeling like I’d tried everything (and I do mean everything) to find freedom, I still felt like I was on the outside of my life looking in. I wanted in - to be part of it all in a way that I could really be there for it.
Longing to feel better from chronic health issues, anxiety & depression, I eventually learned I was carrying the impacts of complex & developmental trauma. I sought everything I possibly could to find healing and I am grateful every day for what I found. A truth that set me free:
EVERY SINGLE PART OF YOU IS WELCOME, EXACTLY AS YOU ARE RIGHT NOW.
As a highly sensitive, empathetic, introverted, and neurodiverse CIS female, I was socialized to believe I didn’t fit and that if I wanted to survive I needed to get quiet, small, be nice, and stay hidden. Others didn’t like power so I kept a lid on it until the lid could no longer stay.
I am elated to know and embody a true fierceness that holds these sensitivities as wildly meaningful gifts that are some of the most important parts of who I am. There is a foundation of clarity, attunement, compassion, and warmth from where I sit and through growing my capacity with the immense skill and care of healers, therapists, trauma-informed physicians, and so many others.
I know in every cell of my being and deep in my bones that no matter how hopeless, helpless, apathetic, or terrified we might feel - healing is available. And, not just the kind that helps us get by, the kind that lights us on fire and gives us meaning to live and love full out, no matter what.
Creating strong and regulated relationships with our clients, businesses and purpose build a foundation that is necessary to thrive from. When we show up with who we are and a solid sense of inner and outer support - we become unstoppable. We find our line, stay our course, and honor what needs to be cared for in each of us. We do our work with fierce love and dedication.
my philosophy
Nothing and no one is a problem.
Trauma care starts with understanding this. We welcome and celebrate one another's humanity knowing that behind every coping mechanism or defense is intelligence that kept us alive and helped us survive a broken world. There is a very good reason for every emotion, reaction, impulse, and need.
When we understand and embody the awareness of trauma and understand the nuanced intricacies and complexities of trauma, we can begin to move ourselves and others towards more ease, freedom, and genuine connection inside and out. Trauma’s impacts come with sophisticated responses that are creative and intelligent and it’s how we survived.
When we understand the depth and beauty of those fault lines which can be hard to grasp at first notice, we can care for them and call forth the energy, power, and creativity that serves our healing and a life of flourishing.
Together we can create a worldwide network of next-level, confident care providers who embrace the tenderness and vulnerability that comes with this wild human experience. I am here to help you learn how to meet whatever you face with compassion and skill so you can share your gifts fully with those you serve while being nourished yourself.
guided support
LET ME HELP YOU FIND YOUR GROUND
Bend, Oregon on the land belonging to the Wasco, Northern Paiute, and Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs is where I live.
I am joined by Luna, my sweet border collie lab mix whose SOUL purpose is to adventure in nature, wrestle, extrovert, love, rest, and repeat.
When away from my work, you’ll find me driving down a dirt road, taking in gorgeous views, road-tripping, wandering in the woods, rafting a river, midnight canoe stargazing, flying somewhere tropical, typing half-written memoirs, taking long naps, chasing sunsets and asking myself frequently “what is the MOST loving thing I can do in this moment?”.
my home
CREDENTIALS + CERTIFICATIONS
MA Somatic Psychotherapy - California Institute of Integral Studies
Licensed Professional Counselor in the state of Oregon (#C6810)
Transforming Touch® Practitioner (Transforming the Experienced-Based Brain) - Stephen J Terrell, Psyd, Phd
Somatic Resilience and Regulation Certification - Kathy L Kain, PhD and Stephen J Terrell, PsyD, SEP
Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Certification
Mindfulness Facilitation Certification - UCLA Mindful Awareness Research Center
Trauma Care Training - Trauma Informed Oregon
NLP Coaching Certification - Bev Martin
Vita Coaching Certification
Yoga Teaching Certification
bio
Shelby Leigh is a highly sought-after trauma therapist, twice-certified coach, consultant, and Licensed Professional Counselor. She works with professional healers & wellness providers, practitioners, coaches, and therapists to regulate their nervous systems and grow their skill, understanding, and capacity so they can hold safer spaces for their clients, patients, and people because how we’re held determines how we heal.
Shelby’s methodology is a seamless weave of nervous system regulation and co-regulation support, somatic practices, attachment theory, and trauma-informed mindfulness that provides her clients with the ability to sustainably grow their practices by nurturing their relationships with themselves and the people they support.
With nearly 20 years of experience practicing meditation in the Insight, Vipassana, and Vajrayana Buddhist traditions, Shelby leans into this depth of foundation as she guides clients. She’s had the honor and privilege of facilitating secular and Buddhist mindfulness, meditation, and trauma-informed embodied relational healing practices with companies and organizations around the world and the dedicated teens and adults that show up for these experiences.
Over the years, Shelby has supported thousands of students and clients in navigating sexuality & relationship issues, spirituality, complex and developmental trauma, eating disorders, and chronic illness/chronic pain.
In recent years, she’s been fascinated by the ways we cannot separate personal from professional and has been supporting coaches, therapists and other wellness providers in the growing and sustaining of their businesses - tending to the courageous vulnerability that arises as we put our work into the world. It touches everything - worth, visibility, self-trust and anything that might get in the way of truly thriving and offering our most genuine gifts.
Shelby is trained in both conventional and body-oriented approaches to psychotherapy, trauma informed care, and coaching, which address the crucial role of the body and process of the psyche when it comes to trauma. When we include the body in our healing and growth - we can carry ourselves out into the world feeling integrated, steady, open and clear in our purpose and unique path.