Summer Estes

Summer Estes is a psychotherapist, group facilitator, and founder of Embodied Intelligence, a body of work devoted to tending the thresholds of the human experience—grief, transformation, and opening to presence. With nearly 20 years of guiding groups, retreats, and healing spaces, she creates transformative containers where people can bring what they carry and be met with presence, reverence, and warmth.

A lifelong student of consciousness and the soul’s unfolding, Summer integrates perennial wisdom teachings with somatic inquiry, breathwork, and contemplative practice. Her work is rooted in the recognition that the body and the earth hold an innate intelligence—an ever-present field of support—waiting to be remembered.

Summer is a licensed psychotherapist, breath facilitator, and Enneagram teacher. She continues her own inner work through the Diamond Approach of A.H. Almaas, where the practice of inquiry remains a central spiritual path. She was a student with the Servant Leadership School and has served as a facilitator with Second Breath since 2016.  She is deeply influenced by the grief-tending vision of Francis Weller, whose teachings on the “Five Gates of Grief” inspire her seasonal grief rituals and retreats with co-facilitator Samantha DiRosa with Rituals for Grief. She views becoming apprentices to our grief as essential to reclaiming our authentic hearts and cultivating more life-honoring ways of being.

Her ongoing studies and inspirations include the wisdom of Dr. Gabor Maté, Dr. Tara Brach, Russ Hudson, Richard Rohr, Maya Luna, Malidoma Somé, Phillip Shepherd, Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault, Linda Thai, and mystics across traditions.

Summer lives in her native North Carolina with her husband Kevin, their three children—Abby, Levi, and August—and a beloved menagerie of animals. Whether guiding a grief ritual, facilitating embodied inquiry, or simply walking beneath the trees, she remains devoted to the mystery of love made visible through presence.