Meet Emily Knife | Somatic Nurse, Yogi & Professor

We had the good fortune of connecting with Emily Knife and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Emily, we’d love for you to start things off by telling us something about your industry that we and others not in the industry might be unaware of?
Somatic Nursing is the first field of nursing that focuses on neuroscience and somatic based sciences and tools to enhance the human healing process. It is also the only nursing certification that focuses on the nurse not the patient first.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
When I was younger I loved learning about the body and what it is capable of. As I went through life I was interetsed in learning everything I could about the body and how it works. Though my own mental health battles with BPD and EDS caused me to be missed much of the time in tradional care. Not being officially diagnosied till my early 30’s. Tradional therapy wasn’t helping and I noticed that these were labels I had to live with. During my time in the Air Force I really invested in learning to become more body intelligent… I became certified in massage, various styles of yoga, somatic movements, meditation, mind mapping, body awareness, informed trauma, sound healing and nursing. Even though I had all this wonderful knowledge I still wanted more, so I went back and received my masters in Nursing education.

What really solidified my path of Somatic Nursing was spending eight-ish years attending nursing school, and then turning around to serve nursing students as a professor. Through out my time in school and academia, I noticed the disconnect of mind and body not only as a nurse, but as a patient of 30 years.

In between attending school, I also worked as a nurse in Hospice, Mental Health, Intergrative Pediatrics, Home Health and Case Manager . Working. in each of these experiences showed me that there was a large part of nursing that maintained that business side.

It was hard for me to ignore the moral dielimas such as medical errors due to lack of equpiment, using the same syringe to draw up medication and administer, using patients to increase revenue by keeping them on cenus beyond their discharge dates, forcng medication on patients without getting to the root cause, dismissing patients that clearly need mental health support. These are just a few of the truths that I use to fuel my passion for teaching a root cause approach. I realized that treating the whole person was not being taught in nursing schools, which was baffling to me. I started bringing together my certifications, knowledge, experience and passion to form Somatic Nursing Field. I currently interweaves this knowledge when I teach somatic movement such as yoga and pilates, bringing it to student nurses and nurses with Rebel Nurse Co. membership.

Somatic Nursing applies neuroscience, quantum physics and somatics to provide skills for humans to heal. Somatic Nurses are the first responders of nervous system dysregulation. They also “nurse the nurse” Somatic nurses assist nurses in working through their own trauma and experiences to help decrease burnout and triggers. This is “Modern Nursing” empowering humans to heal themselves through use of nervous system regualtion and energetics. I look foward to Somatic Nurses healing the human race.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
My favorite spots in ATL …first we would start with dessert at Tiny Lou’s with the cinnamon crepe cake with house-made apple butter, mascarpone, and a brown butter crumble–yum! Then hike the Bamboo Forest, this quick couple mile hike can transport you to another place!
I highly suggest it.
Head to the beltline to view all the awesome art.
Eat at Soto Soto the mushroom ristoto is delious!

Then end the evening off with attending one of Fever’s awesome Candel Light String Quartettes, maybe another desert at The Betty!

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
Shout out to Rachel for making this happen!

Website: www.rebelnurseco.com

Instagram: somaticnurseemily