Balancing Motherhood & Building A Career That Feels Good with Erin Bowman

 I’m joined by Erin Bowman, a somatic therapist who specializes in sensory-motor approaches to healing. We dive deep into what happens when healing goes beyond talk therapy—how trauma shows up in the body, and how practical practices like inner child work and boundary setting can rewiring your nervous system.

We also get real about the realities of showing up online as a therapist and Erin’s latest offering: Healing on a Deadline — somatic therapy intensives designed for people who need more than a 50-minute session.

This episode covers:
🧠 Sensory-motor healing: how the body stores trauma and how to release it
🫀 Understanding body-based safety and the nervous system’s role in healing
🧒 Inner child work and boundary-setting as ongoing practices
🏡 Balancing motherhood with an online presence and blending multiple identities
🎯 Practical somatic exercises you can try between sessions
💬 What it looks like to show up authentically as a therapist online (without burning out)

This conversation is for anyone curious about somatic approaches, caregivers balancing multiple roles, and anyone who’s felt stuck in a loop of past traumas but wants real movement forward.

Transcript

Jazz: 0:02

Hello everybody, welcome back to All Our Parts. Welcome to All Our Parts if you're new here. I am so excited for my guest today. She is another DMV local therapist known as Erin Bowman Therapy on Instagram. I have the one and only Erin. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Erin: 0:21

Hello, thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

Jazz: 0:28

It has been a while. We've been trying to plan this like for a little bit and life just happens. Life moves. It keeps lifing. It is

Erin: 0:38

just

Jazz: 0:38

lifing out there. And I feel like that is just the therapist's life. Being a person who is a therapist, calendar shift, life transitions happen. So we're navigating our own stuff on top of our client's stuff. And it all just is, sometimes it's hard to come up for air, but when we get to come up for air, we get to have really fun conversations like the one we're going to have today

Erin: 1:01

yes yeah and i'm always so excited to meet other folks that are practicing in the area it just makes it extra special

Jazz: 1:09

i struck i really struggle to find people in the area and so i i'm all i always love connecting with people who are local

Erin: 1:16

yeah yeah you're are you down in dc yeah we'll have to get you up to baltimore sometime we've got

Jazz: 1:22

a lot of great people a lot of people up there yeah

Erin: 1:25

so tell everyone a little bit about you. Yeah. So I am a somatic therapist practicing in Maryland. I see folks in person and virtually. I am something because I always encourage clients to feel free to ask therapists about who they are also, right? Because what matters is a fit. So I'll go ahead and share some things about me too. I am a new mom, had a baby in February. I also who have some mom brains so some of my thoughts are a little bit like new mom politics are super important to me in therapy in the therapy room especially right gosh if there's a therapist not talking about politics in 2025 I don't know what they are doing in this field I love doing somatic work with clients and

Jazz: 2:22

that's a little bit about me yeah what is somatic I have therapist listeners but I also just general public. So how would you describe somatic therapy?

Erin: 2:33

So somatic basically is just anything to do with the body.

Jazz: 2:37

So

Erin: 2:37

there's a lot that could mean, which is a great follow-up question. The specific type of somatic therapy that I practice is called sensory motor. So that means that I was trained for, it was, I've lost track of time now, but it was almost two years, I think, of like intensive trainings. This is like after grad school. I think nowadays, a trained in somatic therapy. And so always feel free to ask your therapist, like, how did you come to this? What's your background in somatic therapy? But the idea with sensory motor is that it really looks at the way that our body relates to the world around us and relates to relationships over time. So it's a way of doing trauma healing, right? Like the kind of like old stuffy definition of trauma has to do with specific events Events only qualify as traumatic events, right? A somatic approach to trauma is saying, if it lands in your body as trauma, it's trauma. And so it landing in your body as trauma could mean that you're having nightmares. It could mean that you're struggling with your relationships. It could mean that you are in fight or flight, right? All different ways that something could land in your body as trauma. So somatic therapy, one, can help. address trauma. And even in that, there is like, I gave you a pretty general definition, but there's even more that we could like whittle down through it. One of the things I really appreciate about sensory motor is that it looks back at all the way to childhood relationships and relational wounding. So sometimes people will say, I didn't have a traumatic childhood. I wasn't abused, but like, why am I still repeating these patterns in my relationships all the time? We're all impacted by the world around us. Even if you don't think that it should be impacting you in the way that it is if it is does that make sense and so with somatic therapy we use the body in the therapy room and for different people that can look different ways on the most basic level it's thinking about like how is this landing in your body let's make space for what's happening in your body and then there's different interventions depending on what the body is presenting so sometimes that's working with parts right working with child parts sometimes our body will light up in ways that are reminiscent of our child parts. And Sometimes it's doing boundary work. It's a lot of inner things. It's not a lot of outward movement, but it's still getting into the body. I think it's for anyone that maybe tried cognitive behavioral therapy and was like, cool, I learned something, but I'm still stuck. Try somatotherapy. That's what I would

Jazz: 5:32

say. What are some of your favorite interventions you like to introduce to clients?

Erin: 5:37

There are two that are my favorite and they're going to sound so wonky because the whole, and this is, The reason it sounds wonky is because we're talking about them, not doing them. Right. And one of the things that I always tell people, people ask, like, how can I do this on my own? And it's really the same reason it's hard to do it on your own is the reason that it's hard to talk about it. Because when you're talking about it or doing it on your own, you're using your thinking brain. You're using like an intellectualizing part of yourself. Which is not the same part of yourself that feels things.

Unknown: 6:11

Right.

Erin: 6:12

So in the beginning of a somatic session, there's a guided mindfulness that kind of, I support you in moving out of your thinking brain so that we can access this deeper level of self. I say all of that to say, even though it sounds weird, trust me, once you've gone through the mindfulness moment, it works. So one of them is about... your inner child. And so that can show up depending on what we're talking about. The inner child work starts with something in the present. Let's say... I'm going to pick something super mundane, right? Like I went to my favorite coffee shop and I had an awkward interaction with a barista and I was just feeling all sorts of uncomfortable, right? Super mundane example. So then we start by, I support you in noticing and deepening into that really uncomfortable feeling that you are noticing in the interaction with the barista. And we go into the sensations and we go into... the texture of the sensation and the images of the sensation and all these different ways of deepening into your body. And then I might ask a question like, okay, as we're noticing that wave that's moving from your stomach to your chest, are there any images or memories that come to mind? And someone might say, I, yeah, all of a sudden, this memory of myself when I was a kid in school just came to me. And if, right, so part of it, I'm outlining this whole example in a way that's taking, right, like I know where it's going, but in a session with clients, I don't know where it's going because I'm responding exactly to what the client's bringing up. So if they present in a different way, right, like I pivot, but it might be like, you know, it almost feels like that little you is, like I hear that little you in your voice right now, or I hear that little you, I see that little you in the way that you're sitting on the couch right now. Do you sense that also? And then if the client says yes, we deepen into sensing that younger part of self. And it is some of the most powerful work I've ever done with clients. It's something that I experienced as a client too. And it's one of those things that you don't even realize that there can be that much of a tangible shift in a moment. until it happens. So once we deepen into that inner child, right? It might be a seven-year-old, a 10-year-old, a 12-year-old, a five-year-old. We see how it feels for them to have that child to have us noticing them. Is it actually uncomfortable? Do they feel really grateful to be noticed? We start just with that simple piece. And then we might explore if there's something that child needs us to know or something that child needs to hear. And then we either listen or we let them know. We respond with what they need to hear. So maybe they need to hear, all children are allowed to have big emotions. All children, deserve to be loved it's these things that sound so simple when we're operating in our thinking brain but when we're moving into our body and we're actually landing with what's being expressed it can be profound I love doing child state work with people that's a long version of that question for you I

Jazz: 10:08

think a lot of people now are getting into the idea of inner child work of play of allowing that younger version of ourselves to have space in our adult world learning how to make mistakes learning how to make a mess and it's not the end of the world learning how to be creative and creativity being a source of productivity if you will and so I love that you do that with your clients

Erin: 10:39

yeah The other somatic intervention that I really love doing is a little bit of boundary work. In the sense that like, if you follow me on Instagram, I talk a lot about boundaries. Oftentimes it's like we talk about scripts for boundaries and that's what I can deliver in the context of Instagram. But when I actually work with people, we can go deeper because setting a boundary is often more than just the words coming out of your mouth. It's your whole body feeling like it's on fire when you're trying to say those words. It's all of that. And so one of the exercises will sound silly, but when you're in that mindfulness state, it really can be profound. So start with the same barista example. I was at the neighborhood coffee shop and I just had this super uncomfortable interaction. I just felt so icky. And we go guided mindfulness. And instead of leaning, right? If there's not like a child, like a memory of childhood coming up, right? Something in the client, what the client's presenting with isn't telling me like, this is a child state session. Another direction we might go is, right? I wonder what it would be like if we got to assign what was coming up to things in the room. So it might be that the barista becomes the box of tissues. And then you get to feel what it feels like. And for people listening, I'm showing dad, I'm like holding a box of tissues and moving it closer and further away from my body. How does it feel when it, when you have it really close? How does it feel when you have it further away? And often clients will be caught by surprise because they're box of tissues, but then when they tune into it, it's, Oh no, actually like, I don't want that anywhere near me. I want to put that over here and I'll say, is that, does that feel hard? No, I actually want to put it on the other side of the room. or no, I want to put it outside the door. And we go and move this box of tissues and notice and check in with how they're feeling in their body so that they can actually, I call it the like emotional jet lag when your brain is somewhere, but your body hasn't caught up yet. It's like, I flew to California, but I am still sleeping in like on the Maryland time zone where like your brain is like, why can't I let this go? Like, this shouldn't matter to me. I Exercises like this help your body get there. So I don't know exactly why someone is setting this strong boundary with the barista at the coffee shop in this imaginary example, but that's one way that kind of, and then, so let's say we put the box of tissues outside the room, right? I feel like a spaciousness. Okay, then we deepen into the spaciousness. What does the spaciousness want you to know? The spaciousness wants me to know that it's okay to be myself. The spaciousness wants me to know that it's okay that I'm tired. Whatever it is that comes up organically from the client. And then we explore that. And then we bring that box of tissues back in. Because the idea is that you're going to still have to keep interacting with this barista at the coffee shop. But you want to feel different as you do it. And as you do that inner work, right? Like we got the tissues out of the room. Did the work properly. so that your body can hold that spaciousness even when you have to go order your coffee next week.

Jazz: 14:19

This episode is supported by Jane, the practice management software built with care. It's everything I need, charting, scheduling, billing, wrapped in one. Honestly, it feels good to use a tool that supports both me and my clients. Try Jane at jane.app with code jazz1mo for a one month grace period. I love that you brought up Instagram because as a person who is a therapist, who is a new mom, what is it like also to be managing an online presence or choosing to show up online?

Erin: 14:55

Honestly, I love it. It took me by surprise. One of the biggest pieces of advice I got when I was planning for my maternity leave was get a virtual assistant. Have that person manage your social media. And I found someone who was wonderful. Honestly, such a lovely human. And I knew even when I was in the hospital that I didn't actually want someone else managing it because it feels like an expression of self. And as I'm going through this massive identity transformation in the rest of my life, I have this one space where I just get to play and be myself. I don't want anyone else in there. So that has been, I think like a really profound thing as I've gone through this shift in my personal life. And it's also interesting navigating like what I share and what I don't share on Instagram now that I'm a mom, because it feels like my child did not decide to be on Instagram. Like I don't share any pictures and I only share mundane anecdotes about, even though they're just a baby, right? That's something that I want them to have autonomy in. They have a functional, like when their brain is able to process the offering. And so even though Instagram is genuinely a fun outlet for me, it's also this thing that I hold carefully when it comes to my baby and the rest of my life.

Jazz: 16:25

Do you disclose much about yourself?

Unknown: 16:29

No.

Erin: 16:29

Yes and no. Similar, honestly, to the way I am with clients. There's nothing that I would share on Instagram that I wouldn't want a client to know about me is one way that I think about it. And so I might disclose more than some other therapists do who aren't on Instagram or do no self-disclosure in session with clients. I think that it's helpful for clients. When we as therapists are humans, there was one when my baby was first going into childcare when I was coming back to work and they weren't taking a bottle and I had to cancel a session last minute, which I honestly never do, but because there was no way that my baby was going to eat without my body and I couldn't do that. And like, it was just a perfect storm of everything. And so that's the sort of thing that I would both share on Instagram and share with that client that I was late canceling. Cause I wouldn't want them to think that I was just like, I don't care about you. It was no, like there's, there was actually something happening. And so I do self disclose on Instagram, but I do think it's valuable when therapists self-disclose, and I think it's important to do it properly. A way that someone... framed it for me that made sense is to talk about your scars, not your wounds. Because if it's a wound, it's maybe still in the place where I haven't processed it, where my body hasn't digested it. And so if it were to come up in a self-disclosure, I'd end up taking up more space than is appropriate. The scars, the things that I can be regulated, that I can contain, but that are part of being a human, that feels comfortable.

Jazz: 18:14

Yeah. Really exploring what... social media as a creative outlet looks like but also what towing the line of storytelling like what that looks like for you it sounds

Erin: 18:29

yeah totally

Jazz: 18:31

do you ever get scared or do you ever new question do you ever feel a desire to share more

Erin: 18:42

I don't know if there's a desire, but there's sometimes confusion. There's sometimes, oh, that's something I could share that, but it's not necessarily a clear sense of desire to share. Take that back. Because I wish that Instagram were a place where I could share like a picture of my baby. Okay. Does that make sense? Like, I wish that felt like a safe container for that because I... do love sharing about my baby, but I don't actually want to because I know that it's not the space for it. Again, thinking about it as what I share on Instagram, I only share things there that I would also share with clients. What if you weren't a therapist? Okay, that's a different... That is a helpful reframe. If I wasn't a therapist, now I feel stuck because I don't think I even realized how much therapist is part of my identity that I can't even conceptualize. I know what it would be like to not be a therapist and navigating what I would share about myself publicly. I

Jazz: 19:51

love when people have an insight on here. Yeah,

Erin: 19:54

it's good. It's good. In some ways, I don't know if I would change it. because I think there's a way that things, that your experience of things can shift when you know it's being shared. Even if like therapist, not a therapist, even if it's not from like a, oh my gosh, are people going, even if it's not worried about how people receive it, it's excited about people receiving it, but just like having other people in the room on your experience changes the way you experience it. And so something feel like, Like I just want them for me. Like over the summer, I went and saw some family and I got to spend time with two of my little nephews. And again, it's not just because, oh, I wouldn't share photos of kids on Instagram. It's no, that time with them, I don't even want to be thinking about my phone. I just want to be in a flow with the people I love. But I am going to keep chewing on this. What would I share if I wasn't a therapist? Because yeah, I

Jazz: 21:04

can't take that out of me. It's amazing how much being a therapist impacts our filter, our perception of things. I talk about this with so many therapists in that none of us necessarily expected social media to be a piece of our marketing. And psychology today was actually useful just three years ago. Now I don't even use it. I don't need it. And when I had it, it was not helpful. So So none of us ever really anticipated we would be building these personal brands for ourselves, being in the center because our job is to put our clients in the center. And now we've shifted into a space where clients want to see a glimpse of you first before they even decide to talk to you. And that requires the therapist to potentially put themselves out of their comfort zone a little little bit show up and market in a way to where to the way that the market is consuming seeking mental health practitioners

Erin: 22:20

yeah my very first post on Instagram was just like a picture and the caption I don't think it was even a picture of me it was maybe like a picture of like nature or something and the caption said I made an Instagram so that if people look for it they can find me and find my website but I'm not actually going to post anything here and now I'm like posting five times a week All the time. Because you're right. It's the best way to actually connect, have people find you.

Jazz: 22:51

Yeah. And then you connect with other clinicians and you build a referral network. I think that's been one of my favorite aspects of it because let's say a client moves, let's say a client needs a different kind of care. I like that I'm not sending them this blanket list of clinicians that I found online, but I'm able to call up somebody and say, Hey, I see you specialize in this. Are you taking new clients? I'd love to send this person your way. And I get to do that warm handoff from anywhere in the world. And that is such a good feeling. And I think really takes client care to the next level.

Erin: 23:34

Yeah. Yeah. To be able to say, Oh yeah, I know people in California. I know people in Texas. I know people in Colorado. Someone's moving and someone has family somewhere else that needs a therapist because I think unfortunately there are a lot of not great therapists out there and I hate the idea of someone just having to find someone on psychology today where like it is impossible to really get a feel for if their quality or not and yeah so always and it was really sweet too when I was pregnant and sharing on Instagram even just like photos of myself which showed that I was pregnant and the like therapist community of people like she me on at the end. I was like, I have never met these people, but they are all the sweetest.

Jazz: 24:22

Yeah, it's people rooting for you, people wanting to support you in that, especially within this space. That's such a nice feeling. But speaking of quality of care, you have a new offer that you are working on.

Erin: 24:39

Yes, I am so excited about this because the typical therapy is these 50-minute sessions weekly or every other week. And don't get me wrong, I love me some weekly therapy. but sometimes it's not quite right for someone or not right for that season of life. Whether it's like you got a busy summer or busy holiday season, you're juggling a demanding job. Or what you're talking about is just too big for 15 minutes. Like by the time you're warmed up to talk about it, the session's over. I'm now offering Healing on a Deadline, a somatic therapy intensive. And the idea is something that is entirely co-created with the person who signs up for it. So it can be anywhere from three hours to three days. And the basic structure is the same no matter what, right? There's an intake that's all It's all about mapping out what you want out of this intensive, mapping out what it is that you're trying to heal, what it is that's going on with that deadline, so that we can customize that time together and make it everything. that they want it to be. So that might be using a, like a custom made workbook that might be putting together a grounding kit for them to take home afterwards so that they have the like tools to be able to ground and calm their nervous system wherever they are. That might be thinking about specific interventions that they want or setting it up so that there's like a walk in nature during it or getting it like So they're doing acupuncture after the intensive, truly meeting folks where they're at so that they can get the most possible out of it. Cause we've all been there like that big holiday with family that's coming up and you're like, I don't know how I'm gonna get through this. I need three hours to really work it through and just have dedicated time with a therapist where it's Yeah, there's a chart that I saw from someone else that's offering intensives where you look at a standard 50-minute session and how much of the session is like... opening how much of the session is closing and then it's like a bar graph right so the top is the closing the bottom is the opening and then there's 30 40 minutes of like real work in a three-hour session the opening and the closing take the same amount of time but you get All that in the middle, you get more out of it for the amount of time. Yeah, so this intensive is great for folks that have been in therapy or are currently in therapy. If you haven't ever been in therapy before, it might be better to start with a weekly therapy because there's a lot of groundwork to do there. It's for people that have a really clear sense of what it is they want to work on, right? Whether it's a holiday dinner, whether it is burnout where you're like I need to leave my job I need to figure out what's next I have no idea how to get from A to B and move through the emotional jet lag so that my body is ready to move from A to B going through a breakup or dream it feeling like I'm just stagnant I need to dream a little bit but yeah I think it's a totally human thing to feel like I need some more time because I'm on the clock for this.

Jazz: 28:23

Yeah. What inspired you to start offering this?

Erin: 28:26

I think as I came back to work after having my baby, because I'm not able to offer as many sessions a week as I used to offer. And so part of it came from me of realizing I still want to be able to offer things, but it's got to look different to work and hearing from other folks that have started doing similar offerings and how profound it can be and how many people it works for right that like weekly therapy doesn't work for everybody that doesn't mean that they shouldn't get support and so really seeing okay my life has had this transformation and that's an opportunity to dream and get creative about how I can still support people yeah

Jazz: 29:16

I look forward to seeing how that offer evolves. Erin, thank you so much for joining me today. Where can people find you if they're interested in checking your content out or working with you or all of the above?

Erin: 29:30

Yeah. So Erin Bowman Therapy on Instagram or my website is erinbowmantherapy.com.

Jazz: 29:38

And as a closing question to all of my guests this season, the first one was, what is your kind of commitment to yourself for 2025. But someone was like, hey, New Year's has passed. Maybe it doesn't resonate anymore. So my new question is, what is a word that you want to embody by the end of 2025? Oh,

Erin: 30:04

surrender is my word of the year.

Jazz: 30:08

I like it. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Erin: 30:12

Thanks for having me.