Working with Anna Bovo

BaseLine

A 12-week programme for people whose nervous system hasn’t had a chance to catch up.

For healthcare professionals, and anyone carrying more than the mind alone can put down.

Anna Bovo

Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner
PhD in Nursing Studies
Registered Nurse, Honorary Teaching Fellow, University of Edinburgh
10+ years across hospital wards and trauma research

You finish work and your body doesn’t know it.

The shift ends. You leave the building. But your shoulders stay up, your mind keeps running, and the tiredness you feel isn’t the kind that sleep fixes.

Or you’ve already done the work. Therapy. Mindfulness. You understand what’s going on. But the tension in your chest is exactly where it was six months ago — and so are the patterns in your relationships that you keep meaning to change. As if the body keeps replaying the same script, regardless of what the mind has understood or decided to change.

This isn’t a failure of insight.

It’s that the nervous system doesn’t respond to understanding. It responds to something slower, and more direct.

Why neuro-somatic work
and why this kind specifically

Stress, when it’s prolonged and intense, doesn’t stay in the mind. It settles in the body — in the way you hold your breath before a difficult conversation, in the tension that arrives before the situation even does, in the emotional distance that shows up at home after a hard day at work.

It isn’t only a hospital thing: anyone who has lived under pressure for too long, or through a period of intense change, can carry the same patterns in the body.

The autonomic nervous system holds all of it. And it doesn’t take instruction from the rational brain.

That’s where Somatic Experiencing® comes in. Developed by Dr Peter Levine, SE® works directly with the body’s stress responses — gently, without reliving or re-traumatising — supporting the nervous system in completing what it never had the space to finish.

I bring something to this work that most SE® practitioners don’t have: ten years inside the clinical environments where this kind of stress is made. I know what a night shift does to a body. I know what it feels like to walk out of a resus room and straight into the rest of your day. I’ve researched it, published on it, and I’ve been through it myself.

BaseLine is a structured, clinically informed, body-based process.

Why “BaseLine”

In physiology, a baseline is a reference point: where a system rests when nothing is asking anything of it.

BaseLine is a way of finding yours.

From here…

“I finish my shift but my body doesn’t switch off.”

“I feel on alert all the time, even when I’m resting.”

“I’ve done years of therapy but the tension is still there. The same patterns keep coming back.”

“I can’t recover like I used to.”

“I feel like I’m running on autopilot, without really being there.”

To here…

A body that knows how to return to calm after intense events. Deeper sleep, faster recovery between one shift and the next.

Less reactivity in relationships: more capacity to stay present in moments of tension, without shutting down or responding on autopilot.

Relational patterns that begin to change: not by decision, but because the nervous system has found new points of support.

Concrete tools to use even in a five-minute break.

The concrete, measurable sense of finally feeling better in your own body.

What the 12 weeks look like

Understand

What the autonomic nervous system does, and why. Activation, rest, the window of tolerance. In plain language, with the science underneath.

Feel

Learning to recognise, in your own body, what activation is like. What rest is like. What a regulated nervous system feels like, and the space between. Sensation first. Interpretation later.

Widen

With practice, range tends to widen: more room to move between activation and rest, and more ease in finding the way back.

75 minutes

Initial neuro-somatic session

We begin before the first session — with a 75-minute conversation. Not an assessment in the clinical sense. A careful look at where your nervous system is right now: where the activation lives, what’s already working, and what the work needs to focus on. This shapes everything that follows.

Hour-long

The twelve sessions

The twelve sessions themselves are individual, hour-long, and conducted online. Each one is different, because the nervous system doesn’t follow a curriculum. We move at the pace your system can actually use — which is usually slower than you’d expect, and more effective than anything faster would be.

2–5 minutes

Between sessions

Between sessions, you’ll have access to a set of short practices — two to five minutes — built for the reality of shift work and high-pressure days. Not meditation retreats. Things that work in a hospital car park, or on a break that might get cut short.

Integration session

BaseLine closes with an integration session. We go back to the 75-minute conversation we began with and look at the whole arc: where your nervous system was, what you’ve noticed along the way, what has shifted and what hasn’t. Change rarely arrives in a straight line, so we look at its shape, not only where it ended. Together we choose the practices that earn a place in your days, and map what comes next: how to keep noticing on your own, what to watch for, and when it might be useful to come back. You leave with your own baseline: a clear sense of what steady feels like for you, and the range around it.

What people experience over time

A body that can return to calm after something intense — rather than staying activated for hours or days afterwards.

Sleep that actually restores.

Less reactivity in the moments that used to tip you over. More space between the trigger and the response.

And often — this is the part people don’t expect — something shifting in their closest relationships. Not because they’ve worked on those relationships directly, but because a regulated nervous system relates differently. Less defensive. More present. The patterns that felt locked begin to loosen.

This doesn’t happen all at once, and it isn’t linear.

But it does happen.

This work tends to suit people who:

work in healthcare, emergency services, or any environment of sustained emotional intensity
read about the nervous system and want to feel it, not only understand it
have done a lot of work on themselves (body, mind, craft, relationships) and are curious about the body’s side of it
function well, and would like to know themselves from the inside
have already tried talking therapies and found them useful but incomplete — the mind got somewhere, the body didn’t quite follow
are intellectually curious about what’s happening physiologically, and want to understand rather than just be told what to do
can commit to twelve weeks of consistent work, including what comes up between sessions
are looking for rigour, not reassurance

It’s probably not the right fit if:

you’re currently in acute mental health crisis and need clinical support first — if that’s where you are, I’ll help you find the right person
you’re hoping to work through a single session or two without a longer process
you’re drawn to energy-based or spiritual frameworks — that’s a legitimate path, just not mine

From people who have done this work

“I could see in the group that I was in that people were struggling and stressed and had a lot of tension — and I could feel the emotion in the room, it was tactile. And I think you really, by the end of the few weeks, people were almost kind of levitating a little bit, just feeling lighter in themselves. I definitely did.”
ICU Nurse

“To me this has been really important — for my personal life, my professional life. Somatic experiencing and everything that we tried to do together can be a real gift.”
A&E Nurse

“Through the conversations we had, through the exercises — a lot of big takeaways that I think will influence how I deal with stress of any sort. In life. This has exceeded my expectations.”
ICU Nurse

“I couldn’t feel into my body so much — maybe it was a protective thing. But I knew you would hold the space. And if I was not OK, you would be there to help regulate that afterwards. I felt safe to do it.”
A&E Nurse

“I was just so surprised — when I talk to my colleagues it’s not the same thing as when I’m talking to you. You’re able to dig deep into it. And I would be sad to say goodbye.”
A&E Nurse

Something I want to say before you decide

I know how exhausting it can be — the weight of wanting to give your best to people who need you, and not having anything left to give yourself.

I spent years in intensive care and emergency departments, in Italy and in Scotland. Sometimes the work was extraordinary. Sometimes you just crack on — you do what’s needed, you make fast decisions, you get through the shift. And sometimes there’s simply no space for what’s happening inside you, in response to all of it.

I started this work because I lived that gap in my own body. I came to understand that healthcare systems are very good at training people to care for others. They’re not designed to teach you what to do with what that caring leaves behind.

What I offer isn’t a replacement for that. It’s the thing that was always missing alongside it.

I’m not going to promise that twelve weeks will resolve everything. But I can tell you that most people — by the end of the process — feel genuinely different in their bodies. Not fixed. Different. More at home. More able to be present with the people they love, not just the people they’re responsible for.

If you’re not sure whether this is right for you, the introductory call is where we find out. No pressure, no commitment. Just a conversation.

— Anna

First Meeting Guarantee

If after the initial neuro-somatic session you feel no resonance with the programme or with the way I work, you can stop with no obligation.

Zero risk. Trust is built in our first meeting.

Frequently asked questions

Do I have to be a nurse to do this programme?

No. The programme is designed not only for healthcare workers, but for anyone living under high stress who wants to work on their own nervous system with a serious, physiology-based approach.

Are the sessions online or in person?

Sessions take place online, by video call. This makes them compatible with shifts, travel and any working reality.

What happens if I miss a session because of my shift?

Sessions are planned together, with flexibility. They can be rescheduled with 48 hours’ notice. I understand perfectly how life on the ward works, and we’ll organise ourselves accordingly.

Is it psychotherapy?

No. Somatic work is not psychotherapy and doesn’t replace it. No diagnoses are made, and we don’t work on clinical disorders. It is a non-clinical, body-based support, centred on regulating the nervous system.

I’ve already done psychotherapy. Does it still make sense?

Often yes — in fact, many people who have already done psychological work find in somatic work the complement that was missing. The mind had understood, but the body had stayed behind.

How do I know if it’s right for me?

With the free introductory call. Thirty minutes in which we talk about what you’re going through and whether this programme is the right answer for you at this moment.

The introductory call is free.

It’s also where this actually starts.

Thirty minutes. We talk about where you are, what you’re carrying, and whether this programme makes sense for you right now. If it doesn’t, I’ll tell you that too.

Book your call

No commitment.No sales pitch.

Just an open conversation — starting from where your body actually is.