Meet Michelle Rousseau
Somatic Therapist, Holistic Health Coach, Personal Trainer & Yoga Teacher
For years, I watched women push harder — chasing the next diet, the next affirmation, the next “fix” — only to feel more disconnected from their bodies. I know that pain because I’ve lived it too: the exhaustion, the pressure to be perfect, the quiet fear that maybe lasting transformation isn’t possible. It led me to some low place where I wasn’t sure if I could trust my body or if I should even keep trying.
Fortunately I had some mentors and guides that led me down the path of self healing that included somatic psychology, mindfulness, yoga, ancestral medicines, and health and fitness coaching. As I learned all of these new modalities, I began to apply them to myself (my greatest experiment). It took some years to build habits and consistency as well as the meaningful changes in my nervous system that would support this consistency. After about 10 years of exploring different paths that the wellness space can lead, I began to formulate my own process based on what worked for me. I finally began to feel good and strong in my body and confident in my life.
That’s why I created **Embodied Empowerment** — a holistic, somatic approach where healing isn’t about punishment or perfection, but about presence. By weaving together somatic therapy, strength training, and personalized nutrition, I help women rebuild trust with their bodies, regulate their nervous systems, and rediscover their vitality from the inside out.
When your body becomes a place of strength and safety, everything changes: energy returns, confidence expands, and life feels grounded and joyful again.
This is transformation that lasts — not because you force it, but because you finally feel at home in yourself.
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My Credentials:
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I completed my masters degree in 2017 in the Depth Psychology & Somatic Studies program at Pacifica Graduate Institute in California. I’m a certified somatic therapist with Somastery Therapeutics.​
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I hold a 200 hour, and 500 hour yoga teacher certification through Yoga Alliance. I trained in 2014 in Goa, India in the Ashtanga tradition and in 2016 in the therapeutic /Viniyoga in California. I teach in a way that challenges students to find their strength while also accessing the innate healing powers of the body.
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I am a certified personal trainer through the American Council on Exercise, as well as a certified women's fitness and nutrition coach through Girls Gone Strong Academy.
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I am a firm believer that the soul lives in the body and that we can connect to and experience joy through tending to this relationship. I encourage my clients to cultivate a relationship with themselves through mindfulness and embodiment. I believe life should be lighthearted but should also continually be a facilitator of self-reflection and personal growth.​​​
Somatic Therapy
What is Somatic Therapy?
The somatic therapy I practice, Somastery Therapeutics, is a modality that uses different forms of awareness that helps to teach the nervous system how to regulate in order to safely guide the client to places in the body where there is stuck survival energy/ stored trauma to help digest and release it.
Survival energy gets stuck in the body when something prevents the nervous system from completing its survival-based response to an event or situation. The outcome is typically known as post-traumatic stress which impacts the brain, the mind, and the body. Typically, this kind of stuck energy is responsible for the different, and very often limiting, beliefs and feelings we have about ourselves, and for the ways in which we then interact and react with the world.
In these sessions we will work to identify your desired outcome, how you want to feel/be, and then begin to find where there is resistance to that desire. We will use this somatic therapy modality in order to resolve whatever energy is stuck that is causing that resistance so you can create new beliefs and behaviors that align with who and how you desire to be in the world and in your relationships.