Patti Elledge is a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP) who has specialized in therapeutic application of neuroscience for more than 40 years. She taught all modules of Diane Poole Heller’s groundbreaking work, DARe, which treats adult attachment wounds. She has a broad clinical background in treating developmental and attachment based traumas, offering somatic strategies to access healthy bonding and co-regulatory processes.
Patti worked directly with babies, children and families for more than 25 years prior to her SE training in the late 90s, and weaves strategies from the fields of interpersonal neurobiology, sensory processing, neurodiversity, coherent narratives and embodiment through movement and creativity. Her blending of a variety of somatic and body-mind techniques helps to treat and resolve over-coupled elements of survival energies (fight-flight-freeze responses) that become so seemingly intractable with the essence of loving/bonding and “belonging.” By accessing all parts of our nervous system and moving out of dysregulated or fear based patterns we can move towards a healthy sense of self and co-regulatory functioning. This return to physiological regulation leads us to greater ease in relating to others, higher creativity and eventually to our own true spiritual nature. Changes can be rapid and profound, by freeing the body from braced, stuck and/or collapsed patterns.
Patti has trained extensively with Peter Levine, Raja Selvam, Kathy Kain and Diane Poole Heller in SE, DARe and Trauma Informed Touch workshops and serves as an approved session provider and case consultant for the SE and DARe certificate programs. She holds certification from Kathy Kain’s Touch Work for Trauma Therapists, which emphasizes the importance of safe touch in healing. She has participated in numerous volunteer outreach projects, including Raja Selvam’s ISP training in India, the Trauma Outreach Project in New Orleans 2 months post-Katrina/Rita floods and an educational project she spearheaded with the Belizean Department of Human Development.
She has an active private practice in Asheville, NC where she continues to provide professional consultations and mentorship to therapists worldwide learning somatic healing techniques.
Patti lives on the ancestral territory called Tsalaguwetiyi or Eastern Cherokee Nation, which was brutally seized by the US Government in the mid-1800s.
Interviews with Patti
Hear Michelle Chalfant and Patti on The Adult Chair Podcast and The Wisdom of the Body in Healing:
Hear Carmen Spagnola and Patti on The Numinous Podcast: