Soo Woods. Photograph supplied, free to use with credit to Highlands Centre for Healing.
Author profile
Soo Woods, founder of Highlands Centre for Healing
Counsellor, trauma-trained somatic practitioner and Reiki practitioner. Custodian of ‘Eureka Pines’ and matriarch of the herd.
Moss Vale, NSW Southern Highlands, Australia. Writing on horse-assisted healing, somatic practice and nervous system regulation.
Biography
About Soo
Soo Woods is the founder and custodian of Highlands Centre for Healing, a nature-based healing sanctuary on 106 acres at ‘Eureka Pines’, Moss Vale, in the NSW Southern Highlands. She is a registered, qualified counsellor, a trauma-trained somatic practitioner and a Reiki practitioner, and she works alongside her own herd of horses.
For much of her early life, nature and animals were where Soo found safety and connection. Like many people, she later lost that thread and spent years living inside cycles of stress. Over the past decade she has immersed herself in trauma-aware practice, in somatic and energy healing, and in nature-based ways of working. Just as importantly, she has lived the work: listening to her own body, learning to soften out of survival, and letting old patterns release in their own time.
Her role is not to fix anyone. It is to hold a space that feels safe enough for a person's own healing to happen, at its own pace.
Today Soo holds ground-based, client-led sessions in the presence of the herd, offers Reiki With The Herd, and hosts retreats, workshops, grief circles and group programs on the land she stewards. Everything is optional and consent-led, for the people who come and for the horses, who are free to approach or move away. She writes about what she sees in that work: nervous systems stuck in overdrive or in freeze, the quiet intelligence of the body, grief that has nowhere to go, and what changes when a person stands in a paddock with a horse who reads them honestly.
Soo is a member of the International Institute for Complementary Therapists. She is not a medical specialist and does not diagnose, assess or treat. Her work is holistic and complementary, and it sits alongside medical or psychological care rather than in place of it.
Available for comment on horse-assisted and equine-assisted healing, somatic and nature-based practice, nervous system regulation, burnout, grief, and running a retreat and equine wellness business in regional NSW.
Areas of expertise
What Soo speaks and writes about
- Horse-assisted healing, ground-based and equine-assistedSessions held alongside horses rather than on horseback, led by the person and paced by their nervous system.
- Somatic and energy healingBody-led practice for people carrying stress, overwhelm, numbness or long-held tension.
- Nervous system regulation and co-regulationWhy bodies get stuck in overdrive or functional freeze, and how safety and presence help them settle.
- Reiki, including Reiki With The HerdEnergy healing held within the presence of the herd and the surrounding land.
- Trauma-aware counselling and space-holdingWorking with grief, burnout, life transition and disconnection without pathologising anyone.
- Nature-based retreats and group programsDesigning retreats, workshops, grief circles and corporate days on quiet regional land.
- Horse welfare and consent-led herd careKeeping a working herd well, and letting the horses decline a session when they need to.
For journalists
Copy-ready biographies
Short bio, 25 words
Soo Woods is a counsellor, trauma-trained somatic practitioner and Reiki practitioner, and the founder of Highlands Centre for Healing, a horse-assisted healing sanctuary at Moss Vale, NSW.
Longer bio, 60 words
Soo Woods founded Highlands Centre for Healing on 106 acres at Moss Vale in the NSW Southern Highlands. A registered counsellor, trauma-trained somatic practitioner and Reiki practitioner, she holds ground-based sessions alongside her herd of horses, and runs nature-based retreats, workshops and grief circles. She is a member of the International Institute for Complementary Therapists.