Julie Stevens—a somatic spiritual healer and coach and founder of the Urban Retreat Center in Oakland—helps people heal PTSD and trauma by regulating the nervous system through somatic practices, shamanic/Andean-informed ritual, and carefully facilitated plant-medicine work. Interviewed by hosts Coach Sapphire Star and Coach Kyle McCloud, Julie traces her journey from an “intense,” overextended life in the early 2000s through a breaking point marked by a severe panic attack and family losses (her mother’s Alzheimer’s and passing, selling her business just before the pandemic, then her father’s death). That period catalyzed deep healing: long-term work with shamanic healers, craniosacral and hands-on therapies, coaching, and practices received through plant medicine.

Core themes:

• Mind–Body–Spirit unity: Somatics is the bridge—healing must include the body and the nervous system (vagus-nerve calming, “shaking off” survival stress like animals do) rather than talk alone.

• Dark and light as necessary contrast: Growth happens “in the roots,” the unseen/“dark” places; culture often conditions fear of darkness, yet it’s where integration occurs.

• Ancestral work with joy: Honor lineage (not only pain). Julie cites learning from a spiritually gifted grandmother and calls for reclaiming ancestral joy alongside trauma healing.

• Science meets spirituality: Energy precedes matter; psychedelics can enhance neuroplasticity, aligning subjective spiritual insight with brain-change mechanisms.

• Daily practice: “Spiritual” = returning to Stillness repeatedly; look within, cultivate willingness, and let timing be “divine.”

Resources & offerings mentioned:

• Books she’s reading/recommends include My Grandmother’s Hands and a work by Rev. Deborah Johnson (described as channeled teachings).

• A 12-week program for women, Homecoming: Zoom-based teachings on nervous-system healing plus an in-person plant-medicine retreat.

• • Contact: UrbanRetreatCenterOakland.com; Instagram: @TheRealJulieStevens.

  
  

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