Sophie Boord

Sophie Boord is a gestalt psychotherapist, Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner (SEP), and clinical supervisor based in Melbourne and the Mornington Peninsula. She has been a therapist for 13 years and has worked in the community and health sectors for over 30 years, beginning in the mid-1990s at Vivaids and the Kirketon Road Centre, undertaking health promotion with injecting drug users and street-based sex workers. She subsequently moved into arts development for people with disabilities and a range of therapeutic endeavours before establishing her private practice as a psychotherapist and clinical supervisor.

Sophie's work is fundamentally holistic, relational, and body-focused, with a special interest in trauma encompassing acute, chronic, and complex presentations including developmental, relational, and structural trauma. She incorporates somatic touch work into her practice and is passionate about its value for trauma survivors. She offers a creative, embodied, and highly attuned style of therapy that supports change through somatic processing and nervous system regulation within a safe therapeutic relationship, grounded in cultural humility, respect for lived experience, and collaboration.

Sophie is a Senior Teaching Assistant with the Somatic Experiencing® trauma training program, where she teaches psychologists, social workers, psychotherapists, and other health practitioners nationally. She is also an Intermediate level session provider for SE students. She has presented at the Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia Conference: Working with Trauma (February 2019), the International Domestic Violence and Health Conference (November 2018), and facilitated process groups at the Gestalt Australia New Zealand Conference in 2017. She has also developed therapeutic arts and video projects, including film projects made with women who have experienced family violence and a project with Holocaust survivor Phillip Maisel, OAM.

Sophie works in private practice at Abbotsford Convent in Melbourne on Fridays, in Mornington on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, and is available for online appointments Monday through Thursday. She holds a Bachelor of Communications with Honours in Fine Arts and is a PACFA Registered Clinical Member (Reg. Clinical 24384).