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From Research to Practice
A Living Archive of Embodied Research and Reflection
At SomaPsych, we believe education is not static. It’s alive, evolving, and shaped by dialogue between practice and research.
This page is a space for exploration: where academic inquiry meets lived experience, where nervous system science meets social justice, and where we ask, how do we create systems of care that honour our shared humanity?
Here you’ll find Amanda’s thesis, the foundational research that underpins SomaPsych’s approach, alongside articles and essays that continue to expand these ideas into our collective work.
Amanda’s Thesis
“If I Don’t Do It, Who Will?” A Qualitative Exploration of Women’s Everyday Experiences
of Rest
Rest is fundamental to our wellbeing, yet in today’s world, it has become a radical act. Amanda’s thesis explores how systems of patriarchy, capitalism, and colonisation shape women’s experiences of rest, time, and exhaustion.
Through feminist and relational inquiry, she weaves together the stories of women in Aotearoa to uncover how societal expectations continue to frame women as limitless caregivers, responsible for holding everything together while rarely given the space to exhale.This research invites us to reimagine rest as more than an individual act of self-care, but as an embodied, collective resistance to the systems that keep us overextended.
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