In this interview, Anat Peri outlines a five‑stage somatic healing process that she argues is often skipped or rushed in contemporary therapeutic work. The stages are: (1) Awareness – deep, embodied noticing of sensations and emotions; (2) Acceptance – allowing what is without trying to fix or judge, supported by tools like Yale’s Mood Meter to expand emotional vocabulary; (3) Root Exploration – tracing the origin of feelings to early family scripts and generational trauma, distinguishing between one’s own energy and inherited beliefs; (4) Re‑parenting & Re‑wiring – consciously rewriting those scripts somatically, creating new neural pathways; (5) Integration – a sustained 18‑month period where insights are stabilized and translated into daily life. Peri emphasizes embodied practices such as “riding the emotional wave” and a Harvard‑cited 90‑second emotion‑processing timer, arguing that full bodily expression (voice, facial, posture) gives the nervous system data to metabolize emotions. She critiques the current healing landscape for over‑reliance on single‑tool approaches (breathwork, psychedelics, NLP) and calls for a balanced integration of mind‑body work. Mike Zeller adds perspectives on MDMA vs. psilocybin and asks about emerging opportunities, to which Peri notes the need for combined somatic‑cognitive models and better recognition of client stage‑placement. The conversation blends theory, practical techniques, and clinical observations, offering a roadmap for practitioners seeking a comprehensive, paced healing journey.
Chapters
You have a boy, it's like, oh, why are you crying? But the girl, it's okay to cry. Like, what do you have?
It's gonna be a total mess. And if the guy has to be totally disconnected.
Exactly. So different things like that, we've lost touch with it. Or, you know, we looked at what mom and dad modeled and we copied them.
I'm curious, so when you think of what makes your process different? Like, when you think of the Peter Levine stuff or the somatic work that you see out there, or other methodologies, like, why does your pathway get better results than average? I'm curious. And like, also, how do you even know you're healed of XYZ challenge? Like, when do you— do you believe people are like, get totally free of like depression or trauma, or they're always professionally healing something.
I do believe, yeah. And I believe that there's 5 stages to healing and that it can't be rushed. And it's not— it depends on what area of your life that you're working on. I had a client that came out of a 28-year marriage, right? Like, and, and having me one session— exactly, exactly. And so knowing to go as fast as or slow as and, uh, but, but I do believe, and I have seen it hundreds of times, of people fully overcoming something. And I think what's missing a lot of times that I see is that people aren't recognizing that there's 5 stages to it and that they're skipping stages. Um, you know, you're like, what are these stages? Probably stage 1 is, is awareness, right? And this is what usually brings people in But there's so much depth in awareness in and of itself, and it's so important to go into that depth first. Stage 2 is acceptance. Nothing to change, nothing to fix. And this is the stage that is the hardest for people to do on their own, and sometimes the one that takes the longest for people to graduate from when they do. This is where they need the most guidance, because acceptance is, well, there's nothing to change, nothing to fix. They're just to be with what is. And this is where I was bringing up before, like, we have forgotten how to be with what is, how to be exactly what it is that we are being and feeling in that moment. So sensations are the language of the nervous system. That is how we open the door and say, okay, I'm being neutral here. I'm not saying this is a threat. I'm not saying this is fine and pretending it's fine. I'm admitting here's a sensation from feeling, but now accepting what emotion is there and getting specific with the emotions that are there. I think people's vocabulary of their emotions have really shrunk down. I use something called the mood meter. Okay, it's from Yale University, and it, uh, I think you'll be able to find it. If not, I'll definitely share it with you. Um, I have people look at that and identify all the different type of moods, the emotions. It gives more language to their emotion. And then once you land on like, well, I thought I felt sad, but it's actually disheartened, there's this different— your vocabulary would probably say sad. And when people are able to look at this and get more accurate and say, oh, it's actually I feel disheartened. And then what is it to feel disheartened instead of to just think about it, to actually feel? And this is a huge part of my practice, is having my clients realize that every emotion is, is like a wave in the ocean of your emotions. And I don't know if you've ever surfed, but a couple times—
I'm not very good. I, I flubbed that up.
So wave comes to surf, to make it back to shore, you gotta ride the wave, right? And so same thing, as these waves of emotions come up, we have to learn again how to ride them. And so visual and practice that I want to give the listeners and yourself here is imagine you're on stage and it's a one-man, one-woman show, right? You're the only one and you can't speak, but you have to— the audience has to get that you are being whatever it is, right? I am this heart. That comes off. You would have to actually embody it. You would have to fully express it, meaning you would use your body, you would use your facial expressions, you would emote sound. And if you watch a child— you have a 3-year-old, right?
Yeah, yeah, 3-year-old. She's 3.
She's 3. Okay, when she gets upset, then you say, Dad, I'm upset. Or is it like a full body expression.
Uh, she's a full body expressive girl. Like, she's all in.
Most— I mean, that's what we've lost touch with.
Yeah, yeah.
How do you have to come back to that inner child knowing what it is to fully express an emotion? So what happens?
Yeah, so to clarify, it's almost like we What I'm interpreting from you is almost like, all right, we entered into the world in a full-body expression if we were healthy, and then we learned to disconnect parts of ourselves, compartmentalize, tap that away. That's not appropriate, that's not safe, that's boom, boom, boom. Got to manage yourself, manage your emotions.
Exactly. Yeah. Or right, if you have a boy, it's like, oh, why are you crying? But the girl, it's okay to cry. I'm like, what are you having?
Can be a total mess, and the guy has to be totally disconnected.
Exactly. So different things like that, we've lost touch with it. Or, you know, we looked at what mom and dad modeled and we copied them. So when we do this, Harvard did a study that you can move through an emotion in 90 seconds. Whoa, 90 seconds. That's wild. I don't move through my— you know, most people hearing that for the first time would be like, uh, no. And that's because they're not feeling the emotion. They're not riding the actual wave. They're resisting it. They're wanting to fix it. They're judging it. They're analyzing it. So when you embody it, right, get on stage and express it, be disheartened, right? What's the body language of that? What's the facial? What's the sound? Or whatever your client is feeling. And you set a timer for 90 seconds, they move through it. It's data. What it is is when you're being it with your fullness of yourself, you're actually giving data to your nervous system of like, oh, this is what this energy, AKA emotion, feels like. Oh, okay. And, and so your nervous system goes to metabolize it, digest it, and discharge it.
Yeah.
So I've seen this with my clients time and time again of like, I'll set the timer, we'll ride the wave, and I cheerlead them to really go all into it. And it could feel very strange. I'm like, yeah, pretend you're— it doesn't matter. This is what it means to be fully expressed. Press. And then what happens is they either make it to shore, or I like to call it the, you know, shore of possibility, right? Where they feel like something has shifted, and— or it brings up the next wave. Because a lot of times there's layers. There's, I'm disheartened, and underneath that there's grief, and then there's resentment, and there's whatever. So it's like, ride all the waves and actually somatically feel it.
Yeah, that's, that's one of the things I see a lot in my work too, is like, man, I gotta get them to feel, I gotta get them to connect. And that's why I found like MDMA is so powerful, because it's an associative versus, you know, psilocybin and ayahuasca are dissociative. They're great for different reasons and they're both beautiful for healing, but I want them to feel through that, do the inner child work, reconcile the inner parts work, so like they can— it feels complete and that's resolved energetically. I'm curious, like, when you think about— I have a few more questions. One on like, when you think about what's happening in the healing space right now, what gets you juiced? Like, where do you see kind of leading edge of innovation, the leading edge of opportunity, the leading edge of of growth where more people should be like, oh, we need to go deeper in this that's not discussed enough, whether it's polyvagal, you know, different wearing devices, technologies, or psychedelics, or new forms of more expansive teachings in somatic. I don't know. I'm genuinely curious where you see the biggest opportunity because you've been in the space longer than I have.
Yeah. I see it as— I, I see in the past few years what's come online a lot is a lot of somatic practices, whether it's breathwork facilitators, you know, that are just saying breathwork's all you need, or, uh, you know, or psychedelics. It's like, this is all you need, and everyone's, you know, booking their flight to Peru. Uh, and which is exciting because coming from years where it was just NLP and mindset and that was You know, that's what was hot in the, you know, around like 2005 to 2012. And then so it's beautiful to see somatic come online. Um, I'd like to see more people acknowledging the importance of both together.
Yeah, of the mind in somatics, is that what you mean?
Or the mind and the body working together? You know, I say that like stage 2 of healing is the feeling is the acceptance and accepting, like your nervous system accepting it and being able to feel what's actually there. And then stage 3 is getting to the root of it. This is where we start to bridge the gap between, okay, this is what you felt, but like, where did you learn this? Where did you, like, eliminating beliefs that come up in stage 1 of awareness. The trigger that brought all this up that now you're feeling through the trigger, really somatic part of it. But now stage 3 is the exploration of getting to the root of whose energy is this? Because by the time you were 7 years old, your script was written most predominantly by what you learned from mom and dad, whether you copied or rebelled or needed to create a way to survive. And so that exploration of like, is this even your energy? Is this even your belief? Is this even your emotion? I had so many clients that are like, I'm— I had a client the other day, like, I feel all this guilt. And then we explored it deeper and he's like, he's like, this is my father's guilt. This isn't even mine.
Yeah.
Where that generational trauma has continued. And so that Exploration, I feel, is the bridge from like, okay, you felt it, but now let's look into the subconscious. Where was this first programmed in there? And then what did you need in that moment? And that leads to stage 4, which is reparenting and rewiring. So the opportunity for us to give ourselves to rewrite that script and to rewire that into our subconscious and into ourselves somatically, to have the experience of I made space. I felt through whatever was taking up room that I didn't want to feel, and then I uncovered what it was, and now I get to create something new. And then stage 5, which is the integration, which is where lasting transformation happens. And I don't see enough people do this. I see people that love the healing space so much so that they become lifelong explorers of digging and digging and digging, always thinking that there's more, there's more, there's more, there's more. I need to find more. And I'm like, are you taking action? Like, I told a client recently, I'm like, you're good. You're still sad. This is a client that is grieving, you know, her, her marriage of 28 years. I was like, you have felt through all this. I go, it's time for you to still leave room for at times that grief is going to come up, but you've got to start taking action now. You've got to start integrating all this into your life.
Yeah, I can't agree more. Yeah.
It's an 18-month process on average to integrate something that's big in your life. And then integration Education, stabilization, because it's a journey of all those. And I think that when people really look at, well, what are you doing? What stage are you really hitting upon here? Are you— sometimes you meet a client and they're in stage 4 and they just need stage 5 in that one session. Sometimes if all people are doing is feeling and feeling and feeling and feeling, it's like, okay, time to actually move into the other stages. Of it. And so I see that there's gaps in that in the healing space where people are just focused on a particular tool, um, you know, a particular method, but not necessarily making sure that you're moving through a complete process and knowing how to recognize in a client where they're at in, in, in the stages with whatever area of their life. And making sure to supporting them in completing that. And then sometimes reminding them a lot when they're in integration, like, yeah, how many months are you into integration? Oh, just 4. Yeah, keep going. Yeah, keep going. And that, yes, it could happen quicker with smaller areas of your life, but if you're talking about shifting like a big part of your identity from being a people pleaser, let's say, to being someone that asserts their boundaries and has a voice, Yeah, you're looking at about 18 months. And by the way, that's not something I made up. That comes from my mentor who passed away, who was facilitating deep healing work for 40 years. So this is what he said.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And it's something that I've seen time and time again be true for myself and others.
