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3/12/2026 Four POint Centering Practice: A somatic tool for nervous system regulation and embodied practiceRead Now written by Nathalie Edmond, PsyD, RYT-500 The Four-Point Centering Practice: A Somatic Tool for Nervous System Regulation and Embodied Presence In therapy, coaching, and personal growth work, we often focus on changing thoughts, beliefs, or behaviors. But anyone who has experienced anxiety, overwhelm, or trauma knows that insight alone rarely shifts the body’s stress response. Our nervous systems shape how we experience the world. Somatic practices—like the Four-Point Centering Practice developed through traditions such as the Strozzi Institute and embodied transformation work—offer a powerful way to regulate the nervous system, cultivate presence, and reconnect with the body. For therapists, coaches, and clients alike, this practice offers a simple way to move from reactivity to grounded regulation in just a few minutes. Regulation in this context doesn't mean controlling. It means coming back to presence, coming back to a capacity that allows you to move through the world a little more empowered. Why Somatic Practices Matter for Trauma and Nervous System Regulation From a trauma-informed perspective, stress and trauma are not just psychological experiences—they are physiological patterns held in the body. According to polyvagal theory, developed by Stephen Porges, our autonomic nervous system constantly scans for cues of safety or danger. This process, called neuroception, determines whether we move into:
When we are dysregulated, our bodies often reflect it:
One powerful entry point into this process is the Four-Point Centering Practice. What Is the Four-Point Centering Practice? Four-Point Centering is a foundational somatic practice used in embodied leadership, trauma-informed coaching, and somatic therapy. It organizes the body across four dimensions:
For many people, this practice creates a subtle but powerful shift in the nervous system—from defensive reactivity to grounded awareness. Practice with Dr. Nathalie Edmond LooWhat Is the Four-Point Centering Practice?Four-Point Centering is a foundational somatic practice used in embodied leadership, trauma-informed coaching, and somatic therapy. It organizes the body across four dimensions:
For many people, this practice creates a subtle but powerful shift in the nervous system—from defensive reactivity to grounded awareness. 1. Length: Reclaiming Dignity and Orientation Length refers to the vertical alignment of the body. Imagine your spine gently lengthening upward while your feet feel connected to the ground. This is not about rigid posture. Instead, it’s about allowing gravity to support the body so that the head, shoulders, and hips stack naturally. From a trauma-informed perspective, reclaiming length can help the body move out of collapse patterns often associated with dorsal vagal shutdown. Many people report feeling:
2. Width: Restoring Balance and Connection Width invites awareness across the horizontal plane of the body. You might gently notice:
Expanding into width can help restore a sense of spaciousness and relational awareness, which supports the ventral vagal state associated with social engagement and connection. For therapists and coaches, practicing width can also support relational presence when working with clients. 3. Depth: Feeling the Support of the Back Body Depth brings awareness to the front and back of the body. Many people live primarily in the front of the body—leaning forward into effort, urgency, or vigilance. When we include the back body in our awareness, something important happens. We begin to feel supported. Noticing the back of the body may include sensing:
In nervous system terms, depth can help counteract the hyper-vigilance of sympathetic activation. 4. Center: Returning to the Body’s Organizing Core The final point of centering is the center of gravity in the lower belly. In many somatic traditions and martial arts, this area is known as the hara or dantian—the physical and energetic center of the body. Bringing attention to this center helps organize movement, breath, and awareness. For the nervous system, this often supports:
A Trauma-Informed Way to Practice Four-Point Centering One of the key principles of trauma-informed practice is choice and pacing. You can explore this practice gently and stop at any time if something feels uncomfortable. Step 1: Length Stand or sit comfortably. Allow your spine to gently lengthen. Step 2: Width Notice the space across your shoulders and the contact of your feet with the ground. Step 3: Depth Bring awareness to the back of your body. Feel the support behind you. Step 4: Center Place your attention on your lower belly. Allow your breath to deepen naturally. Take a few slow breaths. When Therapists and Coaches Might Use This Practice Four-Point Centering can be integrated into many settings, including: In therapy sessions
Why This Practice Is So Powerful? In somatic work, we often say: We don’t just think our way into change—we practice our way into change. Our nervous systems learn through repetition. Every time we practice grounding, breathing, and centering, we are strengthening neural pathways associated with safety, regulation, and presence. Over time, these practices can reshape our baseline responses to stress. Final Reflection: Coming Home to the Body The Four-Point Centering Practice reminds us that regulation is not something we force—it is something we support through awareness, structure, and breath. For therapists, coaches, and clients alike, this practice offers a simple pathway back to the body. And when we return to the body, we often rediscover something essential: our capacity for presence, resilience, and connection. Join Dr. Nathalie Edmond in her online community Antiracism Revolution or schedule a consultation or training today. Looking for therapy or counseling in New Jersey check out Mindful and Multicultural Counseling  Embodying Bravery: Finding Strength in Truth and Connection In this talk we delve into a powerful idea inspired by contemporary thinkers exploring the Enneagram, justice, and the courage required to navigate challenging times. Drawing from authors who specialize in enneagram like Deborah Egerton (Know Justice, Know Peace) and Chichi Agorom (The Enneagram for Black Liberation: Return to who you are beneath the armor you carry), this message encourages us to look deeply at our own internal landscapes, understand the nature of fear and protection, and redefine what it means to be brave. Understanding Fear and Armor The sermon emphasizes that fear is not a weakness or moral failing, but a biological response to threat, a mechanism that tightens muscles and narrows attention. Authoritarian systems strategically cultivate fear, leading to overwhelm, exhaustion, and disengagement in ordinary people. In response, we develop "armor" – patterns of behavior and protection that form when danger becomes chronic. The Enneagram is introduced as a tool to understand these protective tendencies, which may appear as personality traits but are fundamentally learned ways of being in the world. We are invited to examine our own armor: what it helped us survive, and crucially, what it has cost us. Take the enneagram quiz here to learn which one of the nine energy points fits for you though we have all of them in us. The Path to Justice and Peace A central insight is that peace is not the absence of conflict, but the presence of justice. And justice, it is stated, always begins with truth. The sermon challenges the notion of "false peace," which is often merely avoidance or compliance, and contrasts it with genuine peace that is felt and embodied. We are reminded that silence in the face of harm is not peace, and isolation is a tool of oppression, not a virtue. The message asserts that justice interrupts survival stories that tell us we must earn our worth, stay quiet, or carry burdens alone, offering instead the truth that worth is not transactional, silence can be harmful, and community is vital. Redefining Bravery in Challenging Times Bravery is explored not as the absence of fear, or constant confrontation, but as something more nuanced and sustainable. Historical examples from Nazi Germany, Apartheid South Africa, and the US Civil Rights Movement illustrate that bravery often appears in small, relational acts rooted in conscience, community sustenance, or showing up despite terror. The sermon highlights that bravery under oppressive systems frequently means "staying human"—exercising discernment, fostering connection, using rest as a strategy, and telling truth in ways that keep people alive. It is about risking vulnerability, holding unpopular opinions for justice, and choosing presence and connection over isolation. Embodiment and Self-Discovery The discourse emphasizes the importance of embodying peace and connecting with our "essential self" beneath the armor. Through guided reflection and an embodied practice, listeners are encouraged to notice where fear lives in their bodies, to identify sources of steadiness, and to allow breath to move between fear and support. This practice helps us understand that courage means staying present with fear and still choosing connection. The sermon touches on personal narratives of divorce, aging, and family, illustrating how understanding our armor, our ancestors, and community support can guide us toward a life lived from values rather than fear, shame, or scarcity. Check out the full talk below. Learn more about upcoming trainings with Dr. Nathalie Edmond here. Key Takeaways:
Upcoming trainings grounded in antiracism, embodiment and liberation here.  "2025 Books that left an impression" written by Nathalie Edmond, PsyD. Books were a resource for me in 2025. I read 119 books! I hope to never read over 100 books in a year again. it lost some joy and curiosity at some point. It became a chore. I had to give myself permission to not finish books. To slow down. I tend to do things with intensity and needed to remind myself to be gentle and let go of the hustle and grind. Storygraph created this cool pic. 89% of my books were nonfiction. I will highlight some of my favorites. I forgot that I read some of these especially the ones from the beginning of 2025.
If you have some books for me to check out let me know. You can reach me here. The books I read helped me wrestle with the continuum of zionism to antizionsim. How are you navigating 2025 so far? Where are you drawing strength? Where are you putting your energy? How are you balancing rest and effort? I recently gave a sermon on liberation and my book "Mindful Race Talk: Befriending literacy, fluency and agility" at the Princeton UU church. Here is an excerpt: I am the daughter of two Haitian immigrants. They came to Brooklyn, NY in the 1960s and 1970s. They taught me the importance of family, working hard, keeping your head down and not making a lot of waves unless absolutely necessary. I think liberation for my parents was integration, to achieve the American dream, have financial and government stability, provide for their kids, send money back to Haiti and family members, travel, live in a nice home. They passed that messaging down to me. I became a psychologist 22 years ago. First member of my family to earn a doctoral degree. I am so grateful for all their sacrifices and the strategies they used to survive xenophobia and racism. Safety and assimilation aren’t enough for me anymore. With every year I claim and embody a little more liberation. The Association of Black psychologists was created in 1968 with the purpose of liberating Black minds. These Black psychologists walked out of the annual psychological conference that year and decided to start something that focused on Black mental health and liberation. They wanted to break up with a paradigm that used Eurocentric principles to define health for black people. I feel that liberation is a nonlinear path. Full of paradoxes and contradictions. Progress and retreat. Letting go of comfort and safety for a time. A friend recently asked me do you consider yourself a Malcolm or a Martin? That was a tough question for me. I asked some clarifying questions, me as I am now or a younger version of me? Younger Malcolm x or Malcolm near the end of his life? In the end I couldn’t really choose because I feel like they were each working for Black liberation and the liberation of all beings, just centering Black life, struggles and stories. They had different strategies for accomplishing that. Perhaps one believed the system could be reformed and was an integrationist and another thought it was better for Black people to divest from whiteness and focus on Black nationalism. Both were vilified by mainstream culture while they were alive. there is still a tension in the many minoritized communities with the continuum of integration and abolition. My friend talked about the ways after the 1960s civil rights movements it seems like Black people as a collective took their feet off the gas. Stopped aggressively pushing for change. We seemed to settle for a little bit of integration. I told him how I noticed in recent years I have moved from liberal to progressive. I see how the whole system, both major parties are filled with racism and oppression. It is just that one is more obvious about it. He asked me what keeps you from being one of those extremist. I said I think the difference is my curiosity, my desire for collective liberation, my being able to hear the other perspective. I am rooting for everyone. There is an African proverb on the Association of Black Psychologists website “Until the lion tells his side of the story, the tale of the hunt will always glorify the hunter.” Ruth Wilson Gilmore talks about antiblackness being “vulnerability to premature death”. We can expand that to think about all policies that cause groups of people to be vulnerable to premature death. I invite you to think who is vulnerable to premature death with the current policies being supported.  Balancing compassion and accountability in antiracism conversations requires navigating the tension between understanding where others are in their journey and holding them accountable for the harm they may cause or perpetuate. I have been focusing on these themes from my book "Mindful Race Talk". 1. Understand the Context of Both Compassion and Accountability
Balancing compassion and accountability is an ongoing practice that requires self-awareness, patience, and a willingness to adapt. By integrating these principles, we can create spaces for transformative conversations that foster both personal growth and systemic change. I feel clear that I don't need to be friends with everyone and not everyone needs to like me and yet I wish everyone well and am rooting for our collective liberation. We may not all have the same path to get to liberation. Learn more about Mindful Race Talk book.   What an emotional week. Sifting through posts about Indigenous Peoples day vs Columbus day. Digesting and metabolizing the horrific violence and terrorizing that is happening in the Israel-Palestine war creating more intergenerational trauma. I saw this graphic above from the Antiracist Institute that I appreciated as mindful/meditative inquiry. I have been reflecting this week about my tendency to avoid talking about things that could be perceived as antisemitic. Some of that has to do with polarizing exchanges I have had with people during antiracism workshops or consultations, some of that has to do with ignorance, and some of that has to do with the comfort that comes with silence. So I posted inside my membership community because that is my "safe space" and silence is really loud and I remember the silence around Black Lives Matter. Here is my little prayer because my spirituality and my anti-oppression roots for everyone to be liberated and I have capacity to hold compassion for individuals while condemning atrocities and asking people to be accountable. That is really hard to do when in emotion mind and your people are being hunted and targeted. I hope that Jewish people feel validated in their pain and trauma and have the supports they need to see them through this devastating time. I hope that they can feel safe again soon. I wish for an immediate end to all forms of anti-semitism. I hope that Indigenous people are humanized and have an opportunity for their own sovereignty and have their land returned to them and/or reparations paid. I wish this for Palestinian people as well. I hope that Palestinian people feel validated in their pain and trauma and have the supports they need to see them through this devastating time. I hope that they feel safe again soon. I hope that people can separate the acts of a terrorist group like Hamas from the larger Palestinian population. I grieve for all the lives and souls lost. I hope that everyone gets their needs met in a way that doesn't require the oppression or subjugation of other people. May the people of Ukraine and other countries that are experiencing war and oppression that may not be visible in the news be supported. I hope that the words antiracism, antisemitism, racism, dialectics are not weaponized as the weaponization of these words keeps us from having deeper conversations and building bridges towards collective liberation. I hope for accountability and reparations for all forms of violence that have happened currently and in our collective history. I hope that we continue to decolonize. I hope that we all keep trying to learn more, do more, and support each other in activism and healing. As Norma Johnson says "silence is not quiet y'all". May we all embody antiracism and anti-oppression in our daily lives and be honest with ourselves when we are not able or willing to do that. Learn more about upcoming trainings with Dr. Edmond.
Dr. Colleen and I recorded a new podcast episode called "lean into the hard". I wish we had talked about the above but we weren't there in our journey yet at the beginning of the week. Podcast is available wherever you listen to podcasts and on youtube. Updated on 10/23/23 with new episode (13) of the podcast which addresses the topic.
 We are living in a time where there are polarizing views on so many topics. Perhaps you have become skilled in avoiding conversations with people who have very different opinions from you. Perhaps the social media algorithm keeps you from seeing opposing views. Perhaps you find yourself activated into fight, flight, freeze, fawn/submit/collapse when you get triggered. Let's take a mindful moment and see/feel all the different ways we process information. What arises for you when you are in a conflictual conversation.  I was invited to talk about antiracism in an interview. I didn't do any prep for the conversation so had no idea I was meeting with a Black, cis male, heterosexual, Christian, ultra conservative individual. Check out the video. Notice what comes up for you. While it was a challenging interview I appreciate that people who wouldn't normally hear me got to hear a more nuanced conversation about racism, queerness, and antiracism. Many years of regulating my nervous system, meditation, digesting content around antiracism and finding ways to turn towards compassion helped me through this conversation. What helps you turn towards the difficult, disrupt systems of oppression, call people in in a non shaming way? My Antiracism Revolution membership community is about how do we embody both fierceness and love. Fierceness is about feeling, learning history and how racism is embedded in our present day institutions and culture, and not being silent. Love is about how do we heal and move around in the world disrupting racism and the centrality of whiteness. Check out the video below and see what arises for you. Pay attention to the six intelligences (sensations, images, feelings, thoughts, vibrations, and behaviors/action urges/movement). Want to build the capacity to have conversations across difference? Join Antiracism Revolution. Learn more here.
The more I do antiracism work the more I am drawn to abolitionist thinking and reimagining a world where every life matters, everyone has an opportunity to thrive and there is collective liberation. The prison industrial complex is abolished, cancel culture is gone and we have a path to compassionately hold people accountable for harm/isms while also giving them a path to redemption and reparations. We have the capacity to hold intense feelings, talk about hard things in an embodied way and all heal from racial harm. What do you imagine? At the same time I am aware that racism will never end because it is embedded in every institution. It is in the air that we breathe. That realization can sometimes feel overwhelmed or disheartening and then I remember the words of Mariame Kaba: "Hope is a discipline". You have to work at having hope again and again; find your inspiration. Work to reduce harm and build up communities of resilience. I was watching my favorite movie, Remember the Titans, with my 14 year old son recently. Why do I love this movie? It tells the story of a high school football team that is experiencing forced racial integration in the early 1970s and how by working together and building personal relationships they were able to heal/change their racial conditioning. I love these movies that spark hope about people's ability to change and heal in the context of relationships. The reality is that most of the US is still highly segregated so that many people don't build meaningful relationships with people racially different than them where authentic and messy conversations about race can occur so we move around in the world with lots of prejudice, white body supremacy and antiblackness. So we are watching this movie and one of the high school players was overtly racist and not willing to change his beliefs and his racist beliefs led to physical and emotional harm. I called him a racist and my son turns to me and says why are you calling him a racist rather than saying that he has been conditioned by a racist society (which is what I have taught him). I said because for that time period his overt actions of harm are based on racism. He believes in white superiority and the inferiority of black people. I have found in the last year or two it is not helpful to call most people racist. It seems to shut down conversation, simplify what I am trying to communicate and racism has many different levels given we have all been socialized by racist forces. Most white people I encounter don't meet the traditional criteria for being an overt racist. Until we create a paradigm where there is a path for redemption and repair when you are called out as a racist I don't know how many people are able to face that truth and do better. Cancel culture is part of white supremacy culture. We can do better to hold people accountable and support them in their transformation. My son is often calling out/calling in white peers who use the n word. I had to work with him to have a more nuanced conversation with peers about why white people should never use the n word as he was calling everyone racist. I want him to hold is outrage and keep calling people into these messy conversations about race while not dehumanizing them. How are you cultivating messy conversations about race? How are you exploring your racist conditioning? How does antiblackness still show up in everyday life? What is inspiring hope for you in your daily life to sustain your antiracism work? Check out my webinar on critical race theory. Rather than polarizing people it can provide a path for healing from racial harm.
 Learn more about ways to keep learning in community here. Explore yourself as a racial being with dedicated and aspiring antiracists in Antiracism Revolution membership community.
Dr. Nathalie Edmond's resources and social media: https://linktr.ee/drnatedmond  What if we all bought into the idea that we are biased? Our different identities and the life experiences we have had create our unique signature of bias. When I reflect on the power and privilege wheel above I count that I have 7-8 privileged identities even though I live in a black female body. This lens or filter impacts how people view me and how I view the world. Our brain sometimes likes to create efficiencies where it accumulates information that we can access when we need it. I have begun to think of my brain as a filing cabinet of information about different things. The goal in anti-oppression work is not to get rid of the filing cabinets of information so that we all become color blind and are no longer able to celebrate differences. The filing cabinets of information can help us be more culturally sensitive and we also risk reducing people to stereotypes if we our filing cabinets have limited information in them. What if we expanded what was in our filing cabinets of information. For Black history month this year I was sharing a Black Joy Manifesto video in my workshops. I wanted to celebrate not only stories of Black trauma, pain, oppression and stories of resilience but many different images of various kinds of Black people experiencing joy. Too many of us don’t get exposed to enough images of that. When I think about White people I know that my filing cabinets of information is varied. Books, movies, news, education classes provide me a wide variety of representation so that my filing my cabinet is not stereotypical. Can you say the same about various different BIPOC (Black, Indigenous or People of Color) groups? What’s in your filing cabinet of information about groups that tend to be marginalized? If we don’t expand what is in our filing cabinet we can’t help but walk around with stereotypes which leads to implicit bias which leads to microaggressions. All of this does harm on a daily basis. This is the more subtle form of racism. Sometimes we can expand our filing cabinets of information by developing meaningful relationships with people who are different from us but sometimes that is not possible so we can seek out information that centers their voices and stories. Once we expand our filing cabinets of information about various groups of people we can start doing a power analysis. I appreciate the way that Sonia Renee Taylor (see video below) and Resmaa Menakem talk about white body supremacy. It’s the idea that the white body sits on the top of the hierarchy and the black body sits on the bottom of the hierarchy. We can see the parallels to a caste system where people at the top of the hierarchy have greater institutional power and hence privilege. The closer you are in proximity to white bodies the higher you rise on the ladder though there is likely a ceiling, only so far you can go on the hierarchy if you do not live in a white body. There are other oppressed identities you can hold such as being in a female body or gender nonconforming body that can bring you lower in the hierarchy even if you are in a white body. Other oppressed identities that can intersect with whiteness to bring you lower on the body: queerness, non Christian identity, disability, neurotypical brains, bigger bodies, not being a U.S. citizen or being a native English speaker. When doing anti-oppression work and trying to be an ally, trying to be culturally humble or have more effective conversations with people about topics such as race we have to do a power analysis. Power analysis involves looking at where you fall on the body hierarchy. This graph below of power and privilege shows some identities that tend to be dominant in terms of institutional power and those that tend to be marginalized or oppressed. The identities at the center have the most institutional power and hence are higher on the ladder.
Try it out for yourself. Create a ladder. If you are white presenting put yourself at the top of the ladder. If you have other identities that tend to be oppressed lower yourself on the ladder. Now imagine you are talking to someone about race and racism, where do they fall on the ladder. The person who has an area of domination related to race works to decenter themselves when talking about race and listen to those lower on the ladder because they likely experience a higher degree of oppression. If both individuals are part of a marginalized racial group the person with the lighter skin tone is higher on the ladder because of proximity to white body supremacy. Some of us have marginalized identities that are not visible unless we disclose them, that puts us higher on the ladder. Some of us have multiple marginalized identities so we are lower on the ladder. If we think about intersectionality of identities, coined by Kimberle Crenshaw, the individuals at the bottom of the ladder are those in black bodies, queer, trans or gender nonconforming, poor, disabled, and fat. We want to center the voices of the most marginalized. If the people at the bottom of the ladder feel like their lives matter, institutionally in terms of policies and access as well as personally, than all lives truly matter and the ladder collapses. Check out this tasks about the tasks of the privileged and the tasks of the subjugated as described by Dr. Kenneth Hardy. Want to learn more about being anti-racist check out resources here. Reach out to Dr. Nathalie Edmond for additional trainings or email her.  What I saw this year (2020) was an awakening in many white people who felt some sadness, anger, guilt and/or shame around racial injustice towards black people. I saw them posting support for black lives matter and calling out friends and family who they felt were not understanding the pain of black people not just year but over the course of generations. I also saw many white people who were good intentioned but didn’t know what to do to help with the movement. They were afraid to center themselves or reach out to their black friends and potentially burden them. I also saw white people who too on the role of white saviors rather than centering the experiences of BIPOC (black, indigenous, and people of color) individuals, platforms and organizations. I also saw a lot of shaming and aggression directed towards Trump supporters without looking at one’s own complicitness in white supremacy and white silence and the ways in which one has benefited from white privilege. I saw very little vulnerability and a lot of intensity. Intensity without intimacy isn’t going to heal the collective. We can’t cast away a new group of people as we have done for so many hundreds of years (i.e. colonialism and capitalism). I have had the privilege to take many a workshop from Dr. Kenneth Hardy, a black psychologist, who talks about racial trauma and how to have healthy racial dialogues. I have run many antiracism workshops for mental health practices, yoga students and teachers in training, small businesses, nonprofits and countless community based programs. The reality is that you can be a good white person who loves black people without challenging the systems of oppression and racist forces. These are some of my takeaways for budding white allies/accomplices.
Notice where you are now. Be kind and compassionate towards yourself while being fierce in uncovering all that you have learned that interferes with you having racial responsibility to dismantle white supremacy and other systems of oppression. Want to dive deeper? Check out the anti-racism resources (therapists) or antiracism resources (non therapists), listen to a podcast. Sign up for anti-racism coaching individually with Dr. Nathalie Edmond, schedule a training for your team or community, or sign up for an upcoming anti-racism series. Here is anti-racism assessment you can complete to check out your growing edges in becoming an ally.
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AuthorNathalie Edmond is a licensed clinical psychologist specializing in the treatment of trauma from a mindfulness based and somatic approach. She is also a yoga teacher and anti-racism educator. She lives with her family in New Jersey. Archives
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