I’m Riikka Wilson, a Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner and movement educator with more than twenty years of experience working with the body.

My work brings together somatic awareness, nervous-system support, movement, pelvic health and relational practice. I support people in reconnecting with their bodies through experiences of stress, trauma, injury, pain and significant life transitions.

I do not see the body as something to fix or overcome. I see it as a place to begin listening – one part of the whole person, carrying both the ways we have learned to survive and the possibility of experiencing something new.

The experience that changed my work

Before RiiVIVE, I understood the body largely through fitness, anatomy and physical training. I graduated with honours from a fitness and lifestyle management programme, managed a fitness facility and taught more than twenty movement classes each week. Movement was my work, my strength and an important part of how I knew myself.

Then I became a mother.

After the birth of my first child, I remember lying on the floor with my newborn, unable to move without pain, wondering how I could be a movement professional and not know how to help myself move again.

I lived with chronic pain, incontinence and significant abdominal separation. I felt exhausted, ashamed and increasingly separate from the body that had once felt so familiar to me. I tried to train according to everything I had learned, but my body did not respond. My education could explain parts of what had happened physically, but it could not hold the entirety of what I was experiencing.

My restoration began when I was finally met as a whole person – not only as a body with damaged tissue or a problem to correct.

I began again with the simplest experiences: breath, touch, sensation and small movements. While lying on the floor nursing my baby, I would place my hands on my abdomen and pelvis, even when I could barely sense them. Slowly, I began to find my way back into a relationship with my body.

I still remember the day I could feel my own touch again. It was more than a physiological change. I felt me – the person still present beneath the pain, numbness and physical changes.

That experience altered the direction of my work. Movement was no longer only about performance, correction or physical outcomes. It became a way of listening, rebuilding connection and recognising the whole person beyond a diagnosis.

From movement to embodiment

My postpartum experience led me into deeper study of pelvic health, trauma, nervous-system responses and the relationship between our physical bodies and lived experiences.

Over time, this developed into the work I now offer through RiiVIVE: a meeting place between somatic practice and movement education, where physical support is not overlooked and the body is not separated from the emotional, relational and cultural contexts in which we live.

I believe our stories reach beyond tissue – and our care must reach beyond it too.

Today, I meet each person with curiosity and respect for their individual history, needs and pace. My work continues to evolve through ongoing study, professional practice and the people I have the privilege of working alongside.