Announcing SomaField's 9th Core Principle: Integrity

When I named and developed SomaField last year, the first 8 Core Principles came to me quickly. I simply sat down and tried to lay out all the elements to the way I’ve been working for the past 2 decades.

But there was something missing. It was already silently woven throughout the other principles, but not yet named directly as its own thing, which is necessary because I’m using this concept in a very specific way.

Announcing the 9th Core Principle of SomaField: Integrity

Here’s how I’m defining it:

Integrity is the practitioner’s commitment to coherence, humility, and responsibility in how they hold power, knowledge, money, influence, and care—across sessions, teaching, marketing, and business practices. It requires an ongoing willingness to examine incentives, positional power, and personal belief, and to prioritize client welfare over certainty, identity, or personal gain. Within SomaField, Integrity also names and guards against the Integrity Grift: the use of ethical, spiritual, or therapeutic language to create authority, loyalty, or profit without the accountability, accuracy, competence, and relational responsibility that true Integrity demands. This principle supports practitioners in noticing dynamics such as indoctrination, misinformation, cultic patterns, spiritual bypass, appropriation, and morality pushing, and invites them to remain open to feedback and repair—practicing in ways that are non-extractive, transparent, and genuinely client-centered in every context where their work touches others.

I believe our industries (therapy and coaching) are in need of an evolution and this Core Principle is aimed directly at that target.

I’m sure you’ve heard people gripe about the therapy or coaching they’ve tried in the past. They feel either too challenged or not challenged enough. They feel like it’s only mildly helpful. They feel like the practitioner doesn’t get them at all or doesn’t have the skill to take them where they want to go. Or they feel misattuned to or like the practitioner isn’t open to feedback about their process together. These things can make for a relationship and process that just feel…off. Or worse, maybe even harmful.

And on a collective level, we hear over and over again about spiritual teachers abusing their power; and the wellness industry is responsible for mass, dangerous misinformation. The industry as a whole is guilty of perpetuating oppressions like fatphobia/diet culture, ableism, white supremacy, classism, and more. (“Wellness to white supremacy pipeline” is worth a google and I’ll write more about this soon).

Indigenous traditions are appropriated and become trendy and every time you turn around there’s a new cult. In pop culture, new age spirituality has become merged with mental health. Indoctrination, radicalization, and conspiracy theories are rampant in the field. Influencers show us that what gets attention online isn’t always what’s best for clients.

It can be hard to find a skillful and integrous pathway through all this noise when what we want is to help people. I’ve seen many practitioners step away from their craft, not wanting to be a part of all this mess. Potential clients have become disillusioned and struggle to trust that they can get the support they want because of past negative experiences. And clients are harmed.

Now more than ever, I feel that our efforts to apply SomaField to our practice and with our clients is necessary. I invite us to create a practice not centered in our own spiritual beliefs, our own ideas of what’s right, or our own adherence to a modality or system, but instead to continue building skills to truly see and attend to each client as an individual.

I hope you’ll set the intention to learn more about these principles just as I’m setting the intention to have a longer-form mentorship opportunity available soon for those who are interested.

Please forward this to anyone that comes to mind if you think they’d enjoy it. :)