Amy Stenger-Sullivan is a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor-Supervisor, author, speaker, trainer, and clinician whose career has been shaped by a single, profound question: What does the nervous system need to heal? With over three decades of experience working alongside individuals, families, and fellow clinicians, Amy brings warmth, humor, and deep clinical wisdom to everything she creates.
Amy's relationship with the Polyvagal Theory began in the early 2000’s long before it became a household name in the mental health world. At the time, she was the owner of an infant massage training business, using Polyvagal Theory to explain the neuroscience behind attachment to parents and professionals. The theory didn't just reshape her work — it reshaped her. Compelled by its implications for trauma, healing, and human connection, Amy returned to graduate school and earned her Master’s in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from the Union Institute and University, ultimately building a counseling practice entirely rooted in nervous system science.
In 2018, Amy developed the Rooted Pathways© framework, a mapping system that expands on Porges' original three autonomic states — social engagement, mobilization, and immobilization — by organizing them into six expressions that capture how each state is lived in both safety and danger. This nuanced, embodied approach gives clinicians and clients alike a clear, compassionate roadmap for understanding nervous system responses and moving toward genuine resilience.
Amy is the founder and owner of Rooted Compassion Counseling and Consulting in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she leads a team of skilled therapists who provide counseling through a polyvagal-informed lens. She is also the founder of the Root to Rewire Trauma Training Institute, through which she offers advanced training for mental health professionals seeking nervous system-informed, somatic, and experiential approaches to clinical practice. In 2021, her expertise was recognized when she joined Deb Dana's team as a Senior Trainer — a role that reflects both her deep immersion in Porges' original research and her gift for making complex science accessible and actionable.
As a clinician, Amy specializes in trauma, drawing on EMDR, somatic practices, expressive arts, and her Rooted Pathways© framework to guide clients from post-traumatic stress toward post-traumatic growth. She is also a SoulCollage® Facilitator and a Writing Circle Facilitator with Women Writing for a Change, weaving creative expression into the healing process in ways that are playful, powerful, and deeply effective.
As a trainer and speaker, Amy is known for being exactly what the mental health field needs more of: someone who can hold the rigor of neuroscience and the humanity of lived experience in the same room. Audiences consistently describe her as warm, inviting, and refreshingly funny — a presenter who makes even the most complex polyvagal concepts feel immediately usable in Monday morning's session. Her training audiences have ranged from high school students to hospital systems, from social service agencies to private practice clinicians seeking to move their work to the cutting edge.
Amy's writing carries the same qualities as her presence: clinically precise, deeply compassionate, and grounded in the kind of embodied wisdom that only comes from years of sitting with people in their most vulnerable moments. Whether you are a seasoned clinician or someone just beginning to explore the nervous system's role in healing, she invites you into this work with openness, curiosity, and care.
Amy lives and practices in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she continues to lead, teach, write, and grow — rooted, always, in the belief that healing happens in relationship.
Read more
Read less
