Today we’d like to introduce you to Susana Victoria Perez
Hi Susana Victoria, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
All my life, I have felt a deep connection with something greater than myself. As a child, I would find myself hovering over my body as I slept at night, sitting on the ceiling of my bedroom in Barranquilla, Colombia. I often wondered if other people also experienced these nocturnal occurrences. At the time, I remember being so authentic; I loved to dance, choreograph dances, and put on performances with the other children in my building complex. I was secure, confident, playful, and creative.
Then everything started to shift around my early teenage years due to a series of events that completely changed me. For over two decades after that, I lived a life on auto-pilot, completely dissociated and in a perpetual trauma response. It wasn’t until a deep, dark night of the soul that I began to heal and transmute layer after layer of trauma and conditioning that had been piling up for decades.
One of the catalysts for this healing was somatic therapy, which involves descending into the body and facing emotions directly—feeling them rather than just talking about them. My business, embodyment, is evidence that this work creates real shifts. It has allowed me to build the capacity to show up regulated when I help others in their own transformations.
I am trained in Somatic Experiencing® by Dr. Peter Levine and I have extensive experience leading and facilitating groups, having served as the Director of Communication for Dr. Joe Dispenza for over three years. I take pride in blending all of my training and experience with the ancient wisdom, spirituality, and medicine of my Colombian and Venezuelan ancestry, which I grew up with being born and raised in South America.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Resilience is built through overcoming adversity, and confidence arises when you take action to resolve a challenge. Establishing and running embodyment has been an initiation, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. As anyone in an entrepreneurial role knows, being a business owner can feel like jumping off a cliff, not knowing whether your parachute will open before you hit the ground. It takes a lot of trust in yourself to believe that even if you fail, everything is temporary and, with the right consciousness, every challenge is a lesson waiting to reveal light.
For me, the biggest challenge has been maintaining the unwavering belief that this work is essential and that it will become not just a luxury but a necessity in everyone’s lives at some point. When I first started pitching the offerings of embodyment, some people looked at me as if I were speaking a foreign language. Most of the people who come to a practice for the first time leave saying a version of the following phrase: “I’ve never experienced anything like this, and I just don’t know how to explain it to someone who has never done it.”
Because it is a new modality, there are very few points of reference to ‘convince’ people to come and practice. It’s not like I can say, “Come to this class I am teaching, which will teach you a version of yoga or breathwork.” Instead, I explain very little and leave the rest to the person’s curiosity, enticing the seeker within them by saying: “Come get out of your head and into your body.”
It’s also been challenging to do it all with a very small team, especially at the beginning when I was wearing every single hat: the teacher, the marketer, the admin person, the PR person, the creative, the organizer, the music curator, and the producer. I am very lucky to have an incredible support system in my friends and family, who have been instrumental in helping me throughout this whole process.
As you know, we’re big fans of embodyment. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
embodyment is my business, but most importantly, embodyment is a community. It is a group of people who come together both in person and virtually with the understanding that we are emotional beings who desire three things: a connection to ourselves/our bodies, a connection to something greater than us (God, universe, source, etc.), and a connection to each other (tribe, community, family, etc.).
We specialize in creating spaces that feel safe enough for our bodies to come out of survival mode and into regulation. We achieve this by teaching people nervous system regulation techniques, somatic and embodiment practices, movement, and sometimes incorporating coaching. Embodyment is the umbrella under which you will find different offerings that carry out this mission. Our most popular offering is our group in-person events; we are always exploring different themes and different paths to achieve wholeness and connection therefore every event feels unique and different. These events vary in structure; some are one-day immersions, while others are weekly meetups that run for four to six weeks. We also offer powerful one-on-one sessions, though availability for this is limited. All of these offerings are also available virtually and in Spanish.
What sets us apart from others in the health and wellness space is that we help people safely feel all the repressed emotions and sensations they might have been bottling up for years. We do this in a way that is not overwhelming to the nervous system; you won’t see us banging pillows or screaming out our rage. At the same time, we do not bypass negative feelings in pursuit of bliss; we don’t ignore or suppress ‘negative’ emotions for the sake of feeling ‘enlightened’.
We are constantly updating our offerings and services for people to reconnect to their bodies. The best way to stay up to date is by checking our Instagram account @the_embodyment for updates. If social media is not your thing, please email us at [email protected] to be added to our mailing list, which gives you first dibs on signing up for upcoming events and courses.
Do you have recommendations for books, apps, blogs, etc?
Yes! The book ‘Waking the Tiger’ by Dr. Peter Levine, creator of Somatic Experiencing, is a great resource that I continue to return to again and again when I need a reminder or refresher about the resiliency of the human being and our nervous system. I highly recommend it to anyone wanting to understand our trauma responses. ‘The Power of Kabbalah’ is also constantly on my nightstand; its lessons are universal, evergreen, and always so helpful in any chapter of my life.
I regularly listen to the Lex Fridman podcast when I want to get inspired and creative. He has such tact as a host and always engages in the most thought-provoking conversations. I also listen to the Human Design podcast with Jenna Zoe. I think she blends energetics, astrology, and Human Design (which I’m still learning about) so well.
This might sound super general, but Spotify is a huge resource for me, as music and playlists are a vital part of my personal practice and of embodyment. I have playlists that can amplify, transmute, or soothe an emotion or state of being, and I always share the playlists we use for our group practices, which I enjoy curating so much! My inner child comes alive with this.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.theembodyment.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_embodyment/
Image Credits
Paisley Zerr
