Meet Joy Walker

SPRE Practitioner in Seattle

Learn More About Working Together

I’m Joy Walker!

I am a somatic practitioner, writer, and creative maker/photographer, living and working in Seattle, Washington with over 25 years experience in somatic and trauma therapy, health care, counseling, grief work, bodywork, and shamanic and energy work. I have a disability that informs and deepens my practice while also limiting it. Creating this deck allows me to sustainably share to a wider audience my belief in the life-changing possibilities of regulation, self-awareness, being more in your body, and greater self-kindness!

I believe so strongly in the benefits of SPRE, that I became a Practitioner myself, and I now work with clients who suffer from their own stress-related diseases and who struggle to connect their bodies with their minds – cognition with sensation. I undertook further training in other somatic modalities with the goal of expanding my understanding of the bodymind connection, and what I could offer clients.

As a SPRe Practitioner, I get to use all of the aspects of my Self and experience - even the difficult, painful, or awkward - to help my clients make connections in their bodies and their lives. I love my job!

    • SPRE Training. Center for Somatic Personal Resonance 2016 - 2018, 600 hours structurally-informed bodywork, anatomy, counseling principles.

    • 35 - hour Polyvagal Certificate Course: Safety, Connection and the Human Experience, Polyvagal Institute.

    • 25 - hour Somatic Internal Family Systems Course with Fran Booth, Embody Lab.

    • Advanced Somatic Mentorship, November 2024 - April 2024, Embody Lab.

    • Internal Family Systems Trauma Treatment Intensive, with Frank Anderson, April 2024 - August 2024, PESI

To say I understand the benefit of somatic work from the inside out is an understatement; I was a SPRE client myself for more than twenty years! It has given me a life I never imagined I’d have.

I’ve shared my body with Rheumatoid Arthritis, an autoimmune condition, for over half my life.

After years of indifferent success with Western medicine and medication, and suffering from chronic pain, tension, joint dysfunction, terrible fatigue, and flare ups, I was still managing to live my life, but it wasn’t easy, and I wanted more.

In my 30’s, I entered into a somatic therapeutic process with the Founder of SPRE Bodywork, Jill Ableson.

Together, Jill and I determined that the RA, although a real disease, was also a descriptor of aspects of my home of origin, manifested through my body. The spark that truly ignited it was years of the unrelentingly stressful, isolation, neglect, fear, confusion, and rage endemic to my family of origin.

At twenty-one, my body finally said a big, fat NO, and the rage-induced inflammation began, affecting muscles, joints, bones and every other tissue in my body.

My medical condition may be a stress-related disease caused by unbearable and long-term strain on my nervous system.

The little I know of my family’s generational history tells me I may also have a fair amount of familial trauma that may have affected what and how my genes function.

Why Work with Me?

  • I've Been There

    I understand intimately what it’s like to have your body do something you don’t understand, to have your life put on hold again and again because of challenging symptoms, to feel daily fatigue, and to be angry and despairing at the pain and discomfort.

  • I Love a Challenge

    I enjoy working with anyone who wants to explore the purpose of their body’s tension, especially those who are navigating challenging life experiences, injuries, or pain.

  • I Share What I'm Learning

    Writing allows me to process the events and experiences in my life (many of which have been difficult and/or traumatic.) It also allows me to describe my chronic illness and how SPRe has changed and opened up my body and my life.

Approaching the RA as a real disease, but also finding the true connection between it and what happened to me, was empowering, and allowed me to gain more of myself as well as a greater ease in my body and out in the world.

I truly believe that the attunement between myself and my Practitioner was the key to my success. My childhood was an isolated one, with inconsistent attention and caregiving. Cutting edge neurobiological science tells us that reduced or no attachment and stress in the parenting environment during infancy leads to a range of emotional and physical issues, such as ADHD, anxiety, and addiction. In a sense, the attunement of SPRe - what Carl Rogers called ‘unconditional positive regard’ - allowed me to be re-parented, and reconnect many of the severed neurological and emotional connections I would have formed in childhood.

Being able to attune with my clients and see similar helpful effects is truly the best part of my job!