The Embodied Professional
Working with Uncertainty — within yourself, as a clinician, and within the systems around you.
A Training by Heather Gargis, MA, LPC, SEP — Hosted by Empowered Spaces
A CE Training for Clinicians.
For counselors, social workers, therapists, coaches, educators, and anyone in the helping professions.
August 1, 2026 | 9:00AM - Noon
UNCERTAINTY (noun) relational experience
Uncertainty is the nervous system experience of not knowing what will happen next - in our bodies, our relationships, and the larger systems we depend on. Some uncertainty is internal, and some is shaped by real social and systemic conditions that impact our safety and stability.
When the experience of uncertainty feels overwhelming, we naturally reach for certainty in beliefs, identities, roles, or structures that promise safety. Sometimes those attempts at safety can disconnect us from ourselves, each other, or contribute to harm - especially when certainty is built through control or dominance.
It’s not about eliminating uncertainty or pretending it isn’t real. It’s about building the nervous system capacity to engage with uncertainty more consciously - to notice when our internal alarm matches the moment we’re in, and to respond in ways that support connection, responsibility, and interdependence rather than fear-driven rigidity.
Most of us have never been taught how to actually be with uncertainty.
Workshop Overview:
The Embodied Professional is a three-hour experiential workshop for helping professionals who are tired of pushing through — overriding their body's natural rhythms in order to keep showing up, stay available, and project certainty even when they're unsure.
This workshop explores how our nervous systems reach for certainty in moments of stress and how that very impulse can lead to exhaustion, disconnection, and burnout.
Through guided movement, reflection, somatic contemplation, and nervous system education, participants will learn to recognize their own regulation patterns, build the capacity to meet uncertainty with curiosity rather than control, and nourish the inner reserves that make sustainable work possible.
This work is explored through both an individual and systemic lens because the uncertainty we carry as clinicians is never just personal. This isn't about doing more — it's about doing differently.
Course Overview:
By the end of this 3-hour workshop, participants will be able to:
1. Identify common somatic signs of chronic stress, over-giving, and professional burnout through a nervous system lens.
2. Explain how supporting their own nervous system regulation before and during sessions increases capacity for attunement, presence, and effective client engagement.
3. Demonstrate at least two embodied practices (e.g., anchoring, orienting, or gentle movement) that cultivate parasympathetic restoration and enhance professional self-awareness.
4. Describe how aligning work habits with the body's natural rhythms and the principle of 'doing differently' can reduce compassion fatigue and support sustainable professional practice.
5. Reflect on personal patterns of uncertainty tolerance and develop micro-practices to process and regulate emotional and energetic overwhelm.
6. Integrate somatic awareness into professional identity to sustain empathy, clarity, and presence in client and workplace relationships.
3 NBCC-approved CE credits | 3 hours
$150 per participant
Equity Scholarship
At Empowered Spaces, we believe that financial barriers shouldn't determine who gets to access opportunities for healing and learning. There are two Pay What You Can Scholarship Spots available for this training, with priority given to Black, Indigenous, and other People of Color, as well as others who have faced systemic or financial barriers to participating in yoga and healing modalities. This is part of our ongoing commitment to equity, collective care, and justice. If this might be you, please reach out to Heather at heathergargislpc@gmail.com
The Embodied Professional has been approved by NBCC for NBCC credit. Heather Gargis, LLC is solely responsible for all aspects of the program. NBCC Approval No. SP-5316.
Heather Gargis, MA, LPC, SEP is a Licensed Professional Counselor in Missouri (License No. 2020009677) with over seven years of clinical experience in trauma and somatic therapy. She is also a historian — and it is that rare combination of disciplines that shapes her framework. Both fields ask the same question from different angles: what happens to people inside the systems that shape them?
Her Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP) certification — having completed all levels of the Somatic Experiencing International training program — grounds the somatic and nervous system foundation of this work. She serves as both a teaching assistant across all SE training levels and an instructor for SE Basics trainings. Additional specialized training includes NeuroAffective Touch, EMDR, IFS, and Safe and Sound Protocol.
Since 2019, Heather has served as a guest lecturer on somatic and trauma topics at graduate counseling programs in the St. Louis area, including Covenant Seminary and UMSL, and has presented at the Missouri Spring Institute hosted by the Missouri Department of Mental Health.
Meet Heather Gargis
Somatic Trauma Therapist - Historian - Uncertainty Researcher
We value community care and showing up for one another.
Currently: Masks are optional. Please stay home and choose to attend online if you have symptoms, test positive, or were exposed to someone with COVID-19. We use a HEPA air purifier in the studio.
If anyone would like to participate and would only feel comfortable if attending if everyone is masked please email Kelly kkcaul@yahoo.com so that we can put our masking protocol in place.
Health and Safety Precautions
The Empowered Spaces studio is located on the ground floor. There is a 12-car parking lot adjacent to the studio & additional free parking on neighborhood streets. Restroom is gender neutral, wheelchair-accessible and ramp-accessible in the main building. Please reach out to Kelly kkcaul@yahoo.com if there is anything more we can do to make our offerings more accessible. Empowered Spaces is committed to accessibility, and strives to be accessible and inclusive of all abilities and all individuals.