About
Karen Johnson
My path into this work didn't begin with training. It began earlier, in a crowded family where silence was the primary language. Not chosen silence, but the kind that is simply there, inherited and unquestioned. Much was felt. Nothing was named. You learned to listen beneath the words because that was where everything lived.
That early landscape taught me what more than two decades of working with people has confirmed: what shapes us most is often what was never spoken. What we carry isn't always ours. And what feels most fixed is sometimes the thing most ready to move.
Lasting change rarely comes from understanding alone. It comes when awareness includes the nervous system, relational patterns, and what hasn't yet found language, or even form.
Throughout this work I've kept a long contemplative and meditative practice, and a felt connection to the living world, seen and unseen. They're part of how I understand healing.
How I Work
Rather than asking why a reaction exists, we turn toward how it feels to be in it, and what begins to shift when it is simply met.
Sessions begin with what you bring and move into the body: sensation, breath, impulse. We also listen to the energetic field around what is happening, and to what seems to belong to the family line rather than to you alone. We follow what is most alive rather than a fixed structure. Sometimes the work stays close to daily life. Sometimes it opens further, and change arrives rather than being made.
There is no requirement to adopt beliefs or frameworks. Only a willingness to notice what is already here.
The aim is to stay present with yourself while life is happening. Nothing about you needs fixing.
Training & Influences
I've been a Certified Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP) since 2009 and am a member of Somatic Experiencing International. My background also includes Internal Family Systems, the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM), attachment-oriented work, Family Constellations, and long study of ancestral and generational trauma and healing.
If this sounds like what you've been looking for, a free 20-minute conversation is an easy place to begin.
Inner Alchemy
Some people who work with me over time find their questions changing, from "how do I stop this pattern?" toward "who am I beneath it?" Inner Alchemy is a separate mentorship for people drawn to that contemplative inquiry into consciousness and the nature of the self
I also write at Quiet Already Here a contemplative publication, exploring consciousness, embodiment, and the inner life through essays and audio readings.