Somatic Educator & Artisan, Trauma Practitioner, Rolfer, Yoga Teacher, Author

For over 20 years, I have guided people in exploring the innate intelligence of our bodies. Body Rewilding is the culmination of everything I’ve synthesized throughout my life as a teacher, bodyworker, clinician, mover, student, and innovator. I’ve been a Structural Integration (Rolfing) Practitioner since 2007, a Yoga teacher since 2003, a Voice Dialogue Facilitator since 2015, and a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (SEP) since 2022. I graduated from Brown University in 2003 with a BA in History of Art with a concentration in antiquity. I continue to be inspired by ancient human culture, art, symbolism, and mythology.

For the first 20 years of my life, my kinesthetic focus was in dance. I studied and performed ballet and modern dance, as well as experimental dance theater, hip hop, and West African dance. At 18 years old I immersed myself in Yoga practice and my life changed forever.

I started teaching Yoga at age 20 while studying at Brown (my professors sometimes took my Yoga classes). I was lucky to ignite my serious Yoga journey with Tom Gillette, who emphasized Yoga philosophy, consciousness work, and emotional transformation.

Teaching under the wing of Tom in 2002 sent me on a 20 year journey. I introduced Body Rewilding to the world as the newly synthesized, integrated expression of these 20 years of work as I turned 40 on April 1st 2022.

A lot happened in those 20 years. I studied Ashtanga Yoga and went to Mysore. I traveled around Central America and Asia, often making a living by teaching Yoga at various retreat centers. I found a Yoga home at OM Yoga Center under the guidance of Cyndi Lee, and there I found the fruitful overlap of Yoga and Tibetan Buddhism. I planted my feet on the path of Iyengar Yoga and was blessed to learn from many of the phenomenal teachers at the Iyengar Institute of NY— especially Lara Warren.

At age 24 I found Structural Integration and the work of Dr. Ida Rolf. After completing the Guild for Structural Integration training in 2007, I opened up a bodywork practice in NYC and have been in private practice ever since. I discovered the fertile ground of the Structural Integration-Yoga intersection, and invented and brainstormed within that realm for many years (and still do).

In my late 20s I discovered Continuum movement (the work of Emily Conrad) through Mary Abrams, which was like a homecoming. In my late 20s into early 30s I made several long contemplative trips to India with my partner Eric Fraser, who is a masterful musician on the Indian Classical music path.

Around the time I turned 30 I found Voice Dialogue, the work of Hal and Sidra Stone, through my mentor Bridgit Dengel Gaspard. It blew my mind open to experience the framework of the psychology of selves and explore the inner archetypes and sub-personalities. I became a Voice Dialogue facilitator and brought the work into my clinical practice. When I started to wrap my mind around integrating Voice Dialogue with Structural Integration and Yoga, I knew I was coming into something rich and important.

Soon after finding Voice Dialogue, I found animism, SoulCraft, and the work of Bill Plotkin. I participated in a soul initiation journey and found a new language for understanding human wholeness and rewilding.

Then, in 2015, I was reborn as a mother. Twice—again in 2018. Raising my sons continues to be the most challenging, rewarding, enriching, informing, humbling experience of my life.

When my first son was a baby, my first book was published by The Experiment Publishing in NYC: Stack Your Bones: 100 Simple Lessons for Realigning Your Body and Moving with Ease. I created the drawings for the book while breastfeeding. The book offers a simple, inclusive, and effective curriculum for restoring basic movement health—and making friends with oneself in the process. The content of this book eventually blossomed, expanded, and evolved into Body Rewilding.

Through the last few years, Body Rewilding was gestating. Countless streams of thought and threads of philosophy and practice trajectories were weaving themselves together, re-ordering, deconstructing and re-constructing themselves. Content, ideas, and necessary teachings streamed out of one-on-one sessions and into a methodology.

Through all of these stages of my professional and personal evolution, there’s been a steady constant for 15 years: my private practice. It’s the work with clients—the intimate, focused, connected, spontaneously responsive work—that has informed me, educated me, and left me in awe. I am so grateful to my clients.

In early 2020, I decided to study Somatic Experiencing and enrolled in the 3-year professional training program. This brilliant trauma resolution work based in nervous system physiology was the missing piece in the constellation of my offerings and methodology, and I am grateful to incorporate it.

Sometimes I feel a tension from being in both a healing role and a teaching role. I am continually investigating the essence of each of these roles—how they overlap and how they are at odds. But the truth is, I don’t completely identify as a Healer or a Teacher. I do help people heal. And I do educate. But somehow these titles or archetypes don’t seem to fit perfectly. It came to me recently that I feel much more like an Artisan and a Guide. I am excited to share my craft with you and show you the lands that I’ve explored.

Ruthie Fraser is a Somatic Educator and Kinesthetic Guide — and the founder of Body Rewilding, an original movement method for restoring and savoring natural human movement.

She has practiced Structural Integration (Rolfing) since 2007, has taught Yoga and movement since 2002, has been a Voice Dialogue Facilitator since 2015, and a Somatic Experiencing/ Trauma Practitioner (SEP) since 2022. She blends these four methods to support and guide people in a process of self-discovery, somatic maturation, healing, and wholing. The quest for natural human movement and the empowerment of the authentic self are foundational to Ruthie’s inquiry.

Ruthie created Body Rewilding, a therapeutic and enriching movement curriculum which aims to reveal the body’s underlying integrity and create freedom and resilience. She is the author of Stack Your Bones: 100 Simple Lessons for Realigning Your Body and Moving with Ease, a friendly and powerful instructional manual published in 2017 by The Experiment Publishing.

Ruthie is a graduate of Brown University and a lifelong dancer. She has studied Iyengar Yoga diligently since 2000, and is also influenced by Continuum Movement, Kripalu Yoga, Tibetan Buddhism, Alexander Technique, Feldenkrais, ballet, modern dance, and West African dance.

Ruthie is a mother of two boys, born in 2015 and 2018. Motherhood has been her greatest teacher of embodiment and what it means to be human. She lives with her partner and sons in the Hudson Valley in NY.