There are some collaborations that begin with a business idea.
Ours began with a shared question:
What becomes possible when we stop separating the mind from the body, therapy from movement, and individual healing from the communities and systems we live within?
We’re Emily Young, LCSW-C and Chelsea Haverly, LCSW-C.
We are both therapists. We are both deeply interested in the body. We both believe that trauma, grief, stress, and life experiences shape the way we move through the world. And we both believe healing becomes more possible when people are given enough safety, choice, curiosity, and connection to listen to what their bodies are communicating.
Our paths into this work are different, but they keep meeting at the same place: Embodied Connection.
Meet Emily
Emily Young (LCSW-C) is a somatic therapist, trauma-informed personal trainer, and founder of Blue Current Therapy and The Embodied Trainer. Guided by the belief that true healing happens through the body, she offers a grounded alternative to traditional spaces that rush, fix, or push past physical limits. In her therapy practice, Emily specializes in traumatic loss, end-of-life care, and complex grief using Somatic Therapy, Internal Family Systems (IFS), and Complicated Grief Therapy. In her personal training work, she brings that same choice-driven, consent-focused care to strength training—helping clients move at the speed of their nervous system, unlearn toxic fitness culture, and build agency, safety, and self-trust in their own skin.
Her work asks questions like:
- How do we tune into the body to make room for grief when words aren’t enough?
- What shifts when we learn to listen to our bodies and center agency, choice, and self-compassion in movement over output and aesthetics?
- How can strength training become a safe container to express, release, and carry complex trauma and grief?
- What does it look like to move at the speed of our own nervous system instead of society’s timelines?
To learn more about working together in therapy or movement, explore Blue Current Therapy for somatic grief support or visit The Embodied Trainer for trauma-informed personal training and professional consultation.
Meet Chelsea
Chelsea Haverly, LCSW-C is a somatic therapist, intuitive bodyworker, author, educator, and co-creator of Trauma-Informed Personal Training.
Chelsea’s work lives at the intersection of trauma therapy, embodiment, bodywork, parts work, nervous system awareness, movement, nature, and community care. At Anchored Hope Therapy, she works with adults navigating complex trauma and intergenerational patterns and integrates somatic practices, intuitive parts work, Brainspotting, ecotherapy, and other trauma-informed approaches. She also collaborates with other community providers when additional forms of embodied care can support a person’s healing.
A central question in Chelsea’s work is not simply What happened to you?
It is also:
What happened in your body? What has your body learned? What does it need now? And what might become possible when we listen differently?
Her recent writing on trauma-informed bodywork explores the idea that bodywork is not about treating trauma itself. Instead, it is about creating experiences of safety, choice, awareness, and connection that allow the nervous system to experience something different.
You can read more about Chelsea’s approach in her recent writing on What Makes Bodywork Trauma-Informed? and Embodied Healing: The Body as the Key to Healing and Building Resilience.
So, what is Embodied Connections?
Embodied Connections is really the meeting place for our individual work and everything we build together. It isn’t a brand-new therapeutic modality or a rigid program—it’s simply a shared way of thinking about how people actually heal.
As humans, we are whole beings living inside relationships, families, cultures, and environments. Our bodies carry our stories, and our nervous systems are constantly responding to the world around us. Movement can bring up everything from deep grief and protective patterns to unexpected joy and agency. Touch, when offered with genuine consent, can feel like a profound anchor. And so often, what happens between us matters just as much as what’s going on inside us.
Community is central to how we both work. At Anchored Hope Therapy, where we provide clinical therapeutic care, we’ve always known that real healing doesn’t happen in a vacuum; it happens in relationship. To support that, the practice intentionally weaves together both top-down and bottom-up care, blending somatic approaches, IFS, Brainspotting, EMDR, and other trauma-focused therapies.
Our collaboration naturally grew out of that same heart. The truth is, healing rarely looks just one way. Sometimes you need therapy. Sometimes you need to move, receive bodywork, or sit with grief support. And so often, you just need a community of people who get what you’re trying to build, or collaborators who are ready to get messy in the process with you. Sometimes, it’s a little bit of all of it.
From a shared question to a shared creation
One of the most tangible expressions of our collaboration is Trauma-Informed Personal Training.
Early on, we noticed a major gap between the worlds of mental health and movement. On one side, personal trainers were increasingly working with clients carrying trauma histories, chronic stress, dissociation, body image struggles, and dysregulated nervous systems. On the other side, therapists were recognizing just how essential movement and embodied experiences are for real healing. The trouble was, these two worlds didn’t have a shared language.
Together, we co-created the Trauma-Informed Personal Training Certification to help movement professionals understand how trauma shapes physiology, behavior, and a person’s relationship with their body and movement. Instead of treating a trainer’s role as simply pushing clients harder, our approach invites movement professionals to lead with curiosity:
- What helps this person feel safe enough to truly show up?
- Where can we offer real choice and genuine consent in this movement?
- What happens when someone’s capacity changes from one day to the next?
- How do we build strength without overriding the body’s signals?
- How can movement become a practice of agency rather than another place of disconnect?
- How can we use movement to express or contain our inner experience?
These questions became the backbone of our training, and eventually led us to write our book, Trauma-Informed Bodywork: A Professional’s Guide to Somatic Awareness, Movement Techniques, and Nervous System Regulation. It brings together our shared passion for trauma care, nervous system regulation, and relational support, giving professionals a practical road map for bridging movement and healing.
Explore Trauma-Informed Bodywork →
Beyond Professional Training: Seeing the Whole Person
At the heart of everything we build is a simple belief: people deserve care that honors the whole person.
That might look like working with Emily around traumatic grief and finding gentle ways to reconnect with your body after loss. It might mean sitting with Chelsea to explore complex trauma, internal parts, somatic patterns, or the stories your body holds. It could mean learning to move differently after years of feeling disconnected from your physical self, or receiving care from a bodyworker or trainer who understands that your nervous system comes with you into every room.
Above all, it means having a team of practitioners who recognize that healing never happens in a vacuum.
Ways to Work With Us
We bring our work into different spaces so you can find the path that feels most accessible and aligned for you.
Accessible Therapy at Anchored Hope Therapy
We both provide mental health therapy through Anchored Hope Therapy, an Annapolis-based practice offering in-person and telehealth care. Anchored Hope accepts commercial insurance, making somatic and trauma-informed care accessible within insurance networks.
- Emily works with individuals navigating grief, traumatic loss, complex trauma, and end-of-life transitions.
- Chelsea works primarily with adults seeking somatic therapy for complex and intergenerational trauma.
Explore Therapy at Anchored Hope Therapy →
Emily: Somatic Grief & Trauma Support
Emily also offers private-pay, sliding scale, therapy through her practice, Blue Current Therapy, for Maryland clients seeking specialized somatic care for traumatic, sudden, or complicated loss. Her approach blends Somatic Therapy and Internal Family Systems (IFS) into a warm, collaborative space that feels intentionally human rather than clinical or intimidating.
Explore Emily’s Psychology Today Profile →
Chelsea: Embodied Healing & Bodywork
Chelsea provides private-pay embodied healing sessions through Woven Wisdom Somatics for those seeking an expansive way to work with trauma, story, and movement. This work moves beyond traditional talk therapy to center trauma-informed bodywork, embodied awareness, IFS-informed inquiry, consent-based touch, and ritualized spaces for integration.
Explore Chelsea’s Work & Trauma-Informed Bodywork →
Training, Consultation & Professional Community
For personal trainers, bodyworkers, therapists, and movement professionals, our work extends into guided education and mentorship. Through Trauma-Informed Bodywork, we also offer courses, certifications, and professional consultation to help practitioners navigate scope of practice, nervous system regulation, blending therapy and somatics, and practical client care with nuance and relational awareness.
Explore Professional Education & Consultation →
The Work Keeps Growing
Embodied Connections was never about putting two practitioners under a corporate umbrella. It’s a commitment to staying curious, acknowledging power and context, and honoring the person in front of us as the true expert on their own lived experience.
We believe that bodies are not problems to solve, people are not projects to fix, and healing is rarely a straight line. Healing is relational, embodied, and deeply contextual. It can be quiet, messy, joyful, and far more interconnected than we first realize.
This is the work we care about: creating spaces where people feel safe enough to listen inward, building professional communities that respect the weight of carrying human stories, and bridging the gaps between therapy, movement, bodywork, and community.
There are many ways into this work, and you don’t have to choose the same door as anyone else. Sometimes the work begins with therapy. Sometimes with movement. Sometimes with a conversation, a book, or quiet curiosity.
And sometimes, it begins simply by realizing that you don’t have to do this alone.
Keep Exploring
- Anchored Hope Therapy | Therapy & Somatic Mental Health Care
- Blue Current Therapy | Somatic Grief Support with Emily Young
- Woven Wisdom Somatics | Embodied Healing & Bodywork with Chelsea Haverly
- The Embodied Trainer | Trauma-Informed Personal Training & Professional Education
- Trauma-Informed Bodywork | The Book by Chelsea Haverly & Emily Young