Ella’s Bio
Ella Cotterell is a Somatic Trauma Educator and Feminine Embodiment Coach with a First Class Honors Degree in Psychology. Ella's work is centred on embodied justice and liberation for women and femmes. Her early career was spent in research and counselling, implementing trauma-informed models of care into drug and alcohol rehabilitation facilities and supporting injured people back to their ‘return to life. With the help of thought leaders in decolonisation spaces, Ella realised the early academic models she had learned were helping people adapt to systems of oppression. Since this time, Ella has dedicated her young professional career to understanding the profound impact of the Autonomic Nervous System, trauma, and oppressive political systems on the way women interact with their bodies. Ella runs a monthly membership, Kin, teaching women how to safely reconnect and return to their innate body intelligence by drawing on the field of somatic psychology. She also works to provide high level business support for female founders devoted to embodied wisdom, social justice, pleasure activism, and women's liberation, and is the host of the Reworlding Podcast where she interviews thought leaders and activists. Beyond her professional work, Ella is also a writer who explores her human experience as a queer and neurodivergent woman living in a world not built for her.
Continuing education: I am always advancing my studies and refining my work. Additional certifications and courses previously attained or currently moving through include the Somatic Institute for Women, the School of Embodied Pleasure, and the Embody Lab.
On a personal note…
Originally what drew me to embodiment work was a chance to rebuild trust in the body I felt had betrayed me. I spent decades of my life grappling with sexual abuse, disordered eating patterns, intense and often frightening emotions and mood swings, unprocessed traumatic memories, and feeling slighted by my female form.
Eventually, I followed the intuitive call and jumped into a field of work I'd never heard of before; embodiment. As I became intimate with embodiment work, the practices, and the way of living it encouraged in me I knew that something had shifted in me and the way I related to my body. Somatic work has been deeply reparative for me and it was the missing piece I had been longing to find since I left behind the field of clinical psychology for something more holistic.
I began to dissect the systemic and societal influences that surround us as women and processed them through my body to land in something richer and more satisfying. Part of my healing lay in the awareness that I was not to blame for my brokenness, but that I could play an active role in how I put myself back together.
The field of somatics and embodiment saved my life. I grew up as an undiagnosed autistic woman until I was 26. For me, this meant I suffered severe trauma at the hands of a system that tried to force me into taking shapes my body was not able to bend to. Like most of us, I wasn’t taught how to regulate my emotions or to understand my unique nervous system. I was often thrown into suicidal episodes that would last months or years at a time and had a dependency on self-harm as a way to soothe.
Learning about my body, how to hold my emotions, how to sit in my skin, and how to cope in a very challenging and chaotic world was one very big piece of the puzzle. Equally, learning how to nurture my sensitivity, connect to the unseen, deepen my trust in my instinctual and intuitive self, and learn the language of the unconscious, was the next big piece. I believe in science & spirituality as equally necessary parts of a healthy, happy existence.
Soon after, I realised I had intentionally disconnected from my femininity thanks to internalising the values of the Patriarchy. I thought being soft, sensual, spiritual, and cyclical was what made me wrong. In reality, it was not me nor other women that were wrong, but the system we grew up in.
And so I began to ask, who are we if we peel back the layers of social conditioning, sexism and misogyny, cultural expectations, and trauma? And, how can we draw on the body’s wisdom in order to find out?
