EMDR & Somatic Experiencing intensives for women
When understanding isn't enough to change how it feels, the work can go deeper.
A private, five-day EMDR and somatic trauma therapy intensive for thoughtful, high-functioning women who have done real work and want to give what remains the time and attention it deserves. Held in person in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Clients travel to Lancaster from across the country and around the world.
You may recognize yourself here
Thoughtful, capable, and carrying something that hasn't fully shifted.
Many of the women who find their way here are the ones others lean on, often in caregiving, helping, or leadership roles. Most aren't in crisis. They've read the books, done meaningful prior work, and built real insight. And in quieter moments, they may notice things like:
- Reading the room before you've even sat down, and feeling a delayed text or a pause in conversation land somewhere in your body
- Saying yes before checking in with yourself, smoothing things over to keep others calm, and not quite knowing what you'd ask for if someone offered
- Second-guessing your own instincts, especially about people, as if you can't fully trust your read anymore
- Wanting closeness and pulling away from it at the same time
- Feeling braced, numb, or far away in your own body, or tired in a way rest doesn't seem to touch
- A quiet, persistent sense that something that happened was somehow your fault
- Something older that prior therapy keeps circling but hasn't quite reached
You don't need to recognize yourself in every line. If even one or two feel familiar, that may be a meaningful place to begin.
What you might be carrying
Much of this work begins in childhood, with needs that went unmet and harm that was never yours to carry.
Vanessa's work centers on developmental and attachment wounds: growing up without consistent safety, attunement, or care, and the ways that shapes how you relate to others and to yourself as an adult. For many women, that history also includes sexual abuse or assault, in childhood, in adulthood, or both.
If part of you still believes it was your fault
Many survivors carry a quiet conviction that a choice they made, somewhere along the way, led to what happened. That belief can make it hard to trust yourself afterward: your judgment, your instincts, your sense of who is safe.
Freezing, going limp, going along, or trying to keep someone calm are automatic survival responses, sometimes called freeze, submit, and fawn. None of them is a choice, and none of them is consent. What happened was not your fault. This work moves at the pace your nervous system sets, and you never need to tell the story in detail or share more than feels right.
This work also often includes
- Betrayal trauma, including family and institutional betrayal
- Shame, and the urge to hide that often comes with it
- Preverbal trauma, held in the body without a story attached
- Moral injury, including after sexual abuse
- Vicarious trauma, common among helpers and healers
- Racial, collective, and ancestral trauma, the weight of what didn't begin with you
- Medical trauma
- Complicated grief and loss, including grief for what never was
You don't need to name what you're carrying to begin. Explore what you might be carrying
How it unfolds
Four phases, much like the moon's own cycle.
Each intensive follows a gentle rhythm, from a first quiet conversation to the weeks after you return home. You set the pace, and you're always free to slow down, pause, or step away.
A first conversation
New moon
A complimentary 45-minute call by phone. We explore your history, what you're hoping for, and whether this format feels like a fit. There's no obligation to continue.
Preparing
Waxing crescent
If it feels right to you, a deposit reserves your dates, and a guidebook offers ways to prepare. The intensive is shaped around you before you arrive.
The intensive
Full moon
Five days in person, Monday through Friday, 9am to 4pm. Unhurried and embodied, with time to follow something all the way through at a pace your system can welcome.
Integration
Waning moon
We close the week with care and plan together for the weeks after, whether that includes your current therapist, gentle routines at home, or simply time to settle.
An intensive is a meaningful investment of time, energy, and resources, and it's self-pay. Full details are on the Investment page.
What's held for you
A week built around one person: you.
Weekly therapy fits healing into your life. An intensive steps outside of it, like a retreat with skilled care at its center. Every part of the week, from the first conversation to the last afternoon, is prepared with your history, your pace, and your nervous system in mind.
A careful beginning
A complimentary 45-minute consultation, where we explore together whether this is the right fit and the right time.
Preparation before you arrive
A guidebook to help you settle in, and an intensive shaped around your history before day one.
Undivided attention
During your intensive hours, Vanessa's attention is yours alone, with no other appointments to compete with the work.
Many ways in, in one place
EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, Deep Brain Reorienting, IFS, sand, and sound, woven together as your system needs them.
A quiet, private setting
Five unhurried days in person, Monday through Friday, 9am to 4pm, in a calm office space in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
A thoughtful close
Time on the final day to gather what's shifted and plan for the weeks after, at a pace that feels sustainable.
What brings people here
Perhaps there's something you keep circling, and you're curious about getting a little closer to it.
You may have done real work on yourself already. You may understand a great deal about where your patterns come from, what activates them, and what they cost you. That understanding is genuine, and it matters.
What you might be curious about is what becomes possible with dedicated time and space, held carefully and built around you. No agenda to rush toward. No clock to track. Just room to arrive, to settle into what's present, and to follow what emerges at the pace your nervous system sets.
There is no particular destination promised here. There is space, curiosity, and skilled attention from a therapist who has prepared carefully for your arrival and who holds the structure so you don't have to. Sometimes that's what allows something to finally land.
Time, held differently
Some things are hard to explore fully in 50 minutes once a week.
Developmental and attachment patterns form over years, and they live in the body and nervous system as much as in understanding. An intensive offers more time, more continuity, and more room to follow something all the way through.
Five days adds up to roughly 30 hours of therapy, about what 9 months or more of weekly sessions provides once holidays and missed weeks are counted. There's no rush in it, only room. Research suggests intensive trauma therapy can be as effective as the same treatment delivered weekly, with fewer people stopping partway through. In one randomized trial, people who received trauma therapy intensively improved as much as those who received the same therapy weekly, and they improved faster. Dr. Ricky Greenwald of the Trauma Institute & Child Trauma Institute has helped build much of the evidence behind this format.
Every person's pace is different, and no one can promise a specific outcome. Whether an intensive fits what you're carrying is something we can explore together.
Trauma-focused intensive
The 5-day intensive
Five days, Monday through Friday, 9am to 4pm. For those who have done meaningful work and would like more space and continuity than weekly sessions can offer. Each intensive begins with a complimentary 45-minute call, and a guidebook supports your preparation once your dates are reserved.
$7,500, self-pay. HSA and FSA cards accepted, with superbills for possible out-of-network reimbursement. Full pricing
Resourcing and regulation
Nourish Your Nervous System
A single 3-hour session for regulation, self-awareness, and skill-building, without trauma reprocessing. For deep reprocessing work, the 5-day intensive is the right fit. Whether Nourish suits where you are is something we explore together on your call.
Vanessa Simmons, LPC, SEP
Body-centered, trauma-informed, and unhurried.
Vanessa specializes in developmental and attachment trauma in high-functioning women. She integrates EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, IFS, Deep Brain Reorienting, and nervous system regulation to support a depth of exploration that the weekly format often doesn't allow.
She is an EMDRIA Certified Therapist, Approved Consultant, and Approved Trainer, and she is especially drawn to women in caregiving, leadership, and helping professions who sense that something specific hasn't fully shifted yet.
While much of her work is with women, she welcomes clients of every gender, sexual orientation, and relationship structure. Every part of who you are is welcome here.
Therapeutic approaches
EMDR and Somatic Experiencing at the heart of the work.
Each intensive draws on two of the most respected approaches in trauma therapy, one that helps the brain reprocess and one that helps the body release, woven together with gentler methods as your nervous system needs them. You're always invited to say what does and doesn't feel right.
EMDR therapy
Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing is one of the most researched trauma therapies available, recognized by the World Health Organization, the American Psychological Association, and the VA/DoD. It helps the brain process memories that never fully integrated, so they can be remembered without the same charge.
Vanessa practices EMDR and, as an EMDRIA Approved Trainer, teaches it to other therapists too. Clinicians can also explore EMDR consultation.
Learn about EMDR intensivesSomatic Experiencing
Developed by Dr. Peter A. Levine, Somatic Experiencing is a body-based approach to trauma. Rather than revisiting the story in detail, it gently tracks sensation and helps the nervous system complete survival responses that got stuck, including freeze, submit, and fawn.
For many women, somatic therapy is what finally reaches the place where understanding couldn't.
Learn about somatic therapyAlso woven in as your system needs them
Deep Brain Reorienting
Developed by Dr. Frank Corrigan. A gentle approach for early relational and attachment wounds.
Learn about DBRInternal Family Systems
Developed by Dr. Richard Schwartz. Brings curiosity to every part of you, including the protective ones.
Learn about IFSSand therapy
Rooted in the work of Lowenfeld and Kalff. A nonverbal way in for what hasn't found words yet.
Learn about sand therapySound therapy
Crystal bowls, gongs, and voice, used mainly to help your nervous system settle, regulate, and integrate the work.
Learn about sound therapy
Traveling for your intensive
Easy to reach from across the country and abroad.
Lancaster sits in the quiet heart of Pennsylvania, within a few hours of five major airports. Amtrak's Keystone line runs direct to Lancaster from New York and Philadelphia, and many clients choose to make their intensive a restful week away.
All intensive sessions are held in person in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
Approximate drive times to Lancaster
- Harrisburg International (MDT)about 40 min
- Philadelphia International (PHL)about 1.5 hrs
- Baltimore/Washington (BWI)about 1.5 hrs
- Washington Dulles (IAD)about 2.5 hrs
- New York JFKabout 3 hrs
Times vary with traffic. The Visiting Lancaster guide has lodging and travel suggestions.
Questions people often ask
EMDR and somatic therapy intensives, answered simply.
What is an EMDR intensive?
An EMDR intensive is concentrated trauma therapy delivered over several consecutive days instead of one hour a week. At Meadow Grove, an intensive is five days, Monday through Friday, 9am to 4pm, in person in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, combining EMDR with Somatic Experiencing and other body-based approaches.
What is Somatic Experiencing, and is it part of the intensive?
Somatic Experiencing is a body-based trauma therapy developed by Dr. Peter A. Levine. It works with sensation and the nervous system rather than the story alone. Vanessa is a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP), and somatic work is woven through every intensive.
How is an intensive different from weekly therapy?
Weekly therapy fits healing into your life. An intensive steps outside of it. Over five consecutive days, roughly 30 hours of therapy, what opens in the morning can be followed through instead of being set down for a week, and the pace follows your nervous system rather than the clock. Research suggests intensive trauma therapy can be as effective as the same therapy delivered weekly, and people often improve faster.
Do I have to talk about what happened?
No. EMDR and Somatic Experiencing don't require you to describe traumatic experiences in detail. You decide what to share, and the work moves at the pace your nervous system sets.
Who is a trauma therapy intensive a good fit for?
Intensives tend to suit thoughtful, high-functioning adults, especially women, who have done prior work and sense something hasn't fully shifted. They're often a fit for attachment trauma, sexual abuse or assault, betrayal, and shame. Intensives aren't designed for crisis care; the complimentary 45-minute call explores fit.
Can I travel to Lancaster from out of state or abroad?
Yes. Clients travel from across the U.S. and around the world. Lancaster is about 40 minutes from Harrisburg International Airport, about 1.5 hours from Philadelphia and BWI, about 2.5 hours from Dulles, and about 3 hours from JFK, with direct Amtrak service from New York and Philadelphia.
When do intensives start, and how much do they cost?
Intensives always begin on a Monday and run Monday through Friday, 9am to 4pm. The 5-day intensive is $7,500, or $1,500 per day, and every intensive begins with a complimentary 45-minute call to explore fit.
Does insurance cover a trauma therapy intensive?
Intensives at Meadow Grove are self-pay and aren't billed to insurance directly. HSA and FSA cards are accepted, and a superbill is available for possible out-of-network reimbursement. Full pricing is listed on the Investment page.