Clinical Mastery with Suzanne Scurlock: Finding Your True Clinical Calling

What does it mean to find your true clinical calling? Is this the key to clinical mastery?

In this deeply insightful and heart-opening conversation, Lynn Schulte sits down with Suzanne Scurlock, founder of Healing from the Core®, CST-D, author and educator, to explore these questions and what it truly means to evolve as a pelvic health therapist – not just in skill, but in presence, clarity, and purpose.

With over four decades of experience, Suzanne shares a perspective that many clinicians feel, but have yet to name. Mastery isn’t about doing more. It’s about refining who you are in the treatment room.

This conversation gently challenges the belief that more certifications or techniques will lead to fulfillment. Instead, Suzanne reveals the subtle but powerful shifts that create sustainable, meaningful careers.

✨ Key Takeaways for Practitioners

• The surprising trait that separates skilled clinicians from truly masterful ones
• Why “feeling off” in a session is actually your greatest clinical cue
• How knowing who not to treat elevates your results and prevents burnout
• The grounding practice that transforms how you show up in every session
• What to do when your own triggers disrupt connection

Perhaps most powerful is Suzanne’s invitation to trust that when you align with your gifts, the right clients will find you – and the ones who aren’t meant for you won’t.

What you’ll hear may challenge how you’ve been taught to practice and open the door to results that finally feel aligned and sustainable. 

This episode isn’t just about becoming a better therapist. It’s about stepping fully into your calling to become the practitioner you are meant to be.

Don’t miss Suzanne Scurlock’s session in the 2026 Birth Healing Summit taking place live online May 2 - 3, 2026 and as a recorded offering with the VIP Access Pass.

Have a comment or question about today’s episode? Message Lynn on Instagram or Facebook, or Email Lynn.

If you enjoyed today’s podcast and are interested in more topics to support your clinical practice and treating your clients, find us on your favorite podcast app and subscribe so you don’t miss an episode.

To learn more visit: InstituteforBirthHealing.com

About Today’s Speaker

Suzanne Scurlock, CST-D, Author, Educator, Founder of  Healing from the Core®

Suzanne Scurlock is one of the world’s leading authorities on conscious awareness and its transformational impact on the healing process. She is one of the original instructors personally mentored by the late Dr. John E. Upledger. She also collaborated with the late Emilie Conrad for almost two decades. Together they integrated Emilie’s Continuum Movement with Suzanne’s Full Body Presence® to teach other practitioners how to accelerate and deepen the healing process.

Check out her website at https://healingfromthecore.com/ for more information about her courses, including a class to help teach people embodiment. 

Visit Institute for Birth Healing to learn more about how to care for the pregnant and postpartum body: CLICK HERE

Transcript

@0:28 - Healing from the Core®

I'm ready. Hello, everybody, and welcome to this podcast episode.

@0:33 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Today, I'm excited to welcome back to the podcast, Suzanne Scurlock. She's been on several times, and Suzanne is a craniosacral therapist.

She is the founder of Healing from the Core, and she is an amazing human being, and I'm so grateful that she is also going to be a part of the Birth Healing Summit this year.

@0:51 - Healing from the Core®

So welcome to the podcast, Suzanne. Thanks for being here. Thank you. I'm happy to be here, actually.

@0:56 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Yes. All right. Well, I am very curious because I am... We with all the speakers, doing a little podcast series on clinical mastery.

And so what does clinical mastery mean for you?

@1:12 - Healing from the Core®

Okay, so it's interesting because I was counting up my years in craniosacral practice and in teaching. So in practice has been 43 years, teaching has been 40 years.

So I have just a few years under my belt of noticing, you know, of really noticing what takes the therapists that I'm teaching, for instance, in craniosacral classes and Healing from the Core classes, what differentiates someone who has learned a lot of skills and has a wide array of expertise in different areas with someone who truly has mastered what they do and who they are.

Uh-huh.

@1:58 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

And...-huh.

@1:59 - Healing from the Core®

And... ... ... One of the things that I've seen that is most important is that when we've mastered something, there's a level of ease in our body so that our presence shows up naturally, naturally, without really having to work hard at it.

And if you've been around as long as I have, and you haven't burned out yet, most of the time, you have a grounding, you have a presence, you have a way to be therapeutically present that has a wide bandwidth.

So that you don't just, you're not just able to work with a certain small group of people, you actually can meet almost anybody that comes into the room.

And when you have clinical mastery, you also know who you don't want to meet, like it's not in your ballpark.

And then because of your mastery level, you can say, let's say you do a session, you do no harm.

mhm. you Perhaps help them improve, and then you have a conversation along the way about who might be a better fit for them, and help them to understand that your skill set, who you are, what you know, all of that is something that can be very helpful in certain populations, but probably not theirs.

So their clinical mastery comes in, keeps you from running down streets that are dead ends for you, with your mastery, whatever it is.

And I think also, the other piece, for me, has been to figure out who are the people that I speak to most deeply.

And in that process, I've been able to winnow out the people that I'm not really a good fit for, and then my gifts and talents shine through in the places where I am.

And that's, that was, it was really sort of interesting. So I do better. learned a great way With people who are a little further along in their trauma healing process, I can hold someone who's just figuring out that something traumatic happened, and I can hold someone who has just had something traumatic happen, like a car accident or something like that, but when long-term trauma has happened, I find that I'm more helpful in helping people who are a little bit further down the road.

They've done some work, they understand the landscape they're in, and I'm often able to really meet them, and they'll say afterwards, gosh, wow, this is perfect, because I feel like you're hearing me, you actually have the palpation level to be able to touch the places in my nervous system that were still jangled and ground and calm them, and so it's a kind of an interesting place to be in my life, which is that I recognize what I know, and I also know what I don't know, and I want to get

I'm my gifts as far as I can in this moment, in what I know, and let everybody else that belongs somewhere else go somewhere else.

@5:10 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Yeah. It takes that authority in ourselves to be able to verbalize that to someone else and to also, Suzanne, be okay knowing that we're not here to serve everyone.

I think that's the mastery, right? Like there are certain people out there that we are meant to help and to support along their healing journey, and there's others that we're not.

And that mastery really comes in owning, just like you said, I like this part of the healing trauma journey of people, you know, and I do best with them.

So really understanding your gifts, your talents, and how you best can serve people, and like you said, be able to willow out who you want to serve and work with.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So important.

@6:01 - Healing from the Core®

And it really is because, and it's only, I set an intent, probably 15, 18 years ago, maybe 20 years ago, where I said to spirit, I said, okay, or the universe, or however you do it, but I said, here is the practice that I want.

These are the people that I know how to serve, and I know how to do them well. I know my cranial bones.

I know the membranes. I know that things can get caught. I know the heart. I know the bones. I know the wisdom areas of the body.

And we'll be talking more about those in the birth summit. But I set an intent, and it was very simple.

I said, please bring me the people that need the gifts that I have and are ready for them right now.

And let the people that are not going to be served by what I know and my gifts, let them find someone that is better for them.

And I set that intention. I wrote it down. I put it on the wall in my bathroom. I put

And it was fascinating that across the course of a year, it's probably longer ago than that, now that I think about it, it's probably 25 or 30 years ago, I began to notice that I was no longer getting these people that I would go, oh, why in the world?

And I also began to get boundaries around the people that thought they should be in my practice, but not really.

They were not best served by me and they were taking my energy. When I'm working with someone that's a good fit, I get as much energy as the person I'm working with.

That's the cool part about being grounded and being very present. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

@7:40 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Equal exchange, right? Back and forth, not too much giving of self in those sessions. And that's what's so critical.

And I think, again, another level of mastery that everybody can aspire to if you're not already there. So what would

What you say has helped you along the way in getting to this place?

@8:06 - Healing from the Core®

You know, a simple one is practice. Like the number of different people I've seen and the fact that I teach craniosacral therapy means I see thousands more people than I would see if I was just in my private practice.

Yeah. And because of that, and I really have to give a shout out to the Upledger Institute because they have supported me in giving my gifts, teaching-wise, and given me a huge, wide bandwidth of people that have taught me what I know and what I don't know, but I've also gotten to see what I know that they needed.

So practicing, practicing, putting myself out there. Even when I was worried or anxious, I put myself out there. got prepared and I went in anyway.

The second thing is grounding. Grounding, grounding, grounding. The practice of grounding and filling is huge for presence. Huge. Because, like everything on the earth,

When we're connected to the earth and we have that solidity, everything works better. We're clearer inside. We have a steadiness that we don't have if we're not grounded.

And I'm not mentally grounding, physically grounding myself on a regular basis. And that's been the basis of Healing from the Core.

And I think that is the piece that most people, in its simplicity, the mind goes, ah, that's so sick.

@9:32 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

I don't need that.

@9:33 - Healing from the Core®

Yes, you do. Yes, you do. And you need to practice it regularly. So when you need it, it really comes through.

So grounding and filling, filling our inner energy reservoirs, knowing how to work with all the different areas of your inner being, all what I call the wisdom areas of the body.

That's huge. And we're actually going to talk about that in the Birth Summit. We're going to talk about the wisdom of the bones.

theенazons. And I think that that will be really a fun thing for people to explore, because for many of us, we get tripped up when something happens that triggers us emotionally.

@10:10 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Yes, yes, yes, yes. I have to say that grounding piece for me is critical, especially when a session gets a little, I don't know the right adjective for it.

@10:26 - Healing from the Core®

Wobbly, wobbly.

@10:28 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Yes, I love. Thank you. Thank you for that. And yeah, and yet I don't know what to do or where to go.

You know, like, it's like what, you know, I have a question that I teach. And whenever I'm like, I'm not sure, I just ask the question, I wonder what needs to happen here.

@10:42 - Healing from the Core®

Right, you know, and I just put that out into the universe.

@10:46 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

And then either my client says something, or I'll get an intuitive hit. But before that happens, when the wildliness has happened, my first instinct is to ground.

And like, if I'm sitting on a chair, my butt is. If I'm standing, my feet are anchored into the ground, and that grounding piece is just like, boom.

@11:07 - Healing from the Core®

And then there's something magical that happens after that, isn't there? Yes, absolutely.

@11:13 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Absolutely.

@11:14 - Healing from the Core®

Yeah, so cool, you guys.

@11:16 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Grounding is the key. Okay, so Suzanne, tell us a little bit about what you're going to be sharing in the Birth Healing Summit this year.

@11:24 - Healing from the Core®

So one of the things that I saw as I was teaching across the decades is that really excellent therapists could get tripped up when their own emotional stuff comes into a session.

And in the psychotherapeutic realm, we would call that projection and shadow. It's the parts of ourselves that we're really not aware of.

Somebody comes into our practice that reminds us of our critical mother, or someone comes into the practice that reminds us of our ex-husband, or whatever.

But you don't consciously recognize it. And when that occurs, what happens as a therapist... What is I start to lose energy because I've gotten triggered.

And the person on my table that's asking lots of questions is actually not being critical. They're anxious. They just need to know more details.

But if I interpret it or I project onto them that they're being critical of me, now there's a split in the connection between us, that what I will call the divine split of deep connection that happens with healing, now it's gone.

Now we're in judgment. Now we're struggling. So we're going to be looking at how to bring yourself back to center when you find yourself getting triggered.

And by the way, we all do.

@12:40 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

We all do.

@12:42 - Healing from the Core®

And I find it happens less and less now than it used to, just because I've been in practice for 40 years.

But I will say it still happens. And when I recognize it, there's certain key pieces. What do I do?

And the wisdom of our bones. the world deal with bones. Our inner sanctum is the pivotal place to rest back in when that's going on.

And we're going to do an actual experiential practice with grounding and filling, and then we'll actually do an experiential exercise of working with someone on your summit who is struggling with something when they got triggered.

@13:19 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Ah, so did you hear that, everybody? When you attend the Birth Healing Summit this year, you have an opportunity to work one-on-one with Suzanne.

We're going to choose one of the live participants, and Suzanne is going to do a demo with you, and if you don't mind doing it in front of the whole group.

And those people that are watching this demo, I guarantee you that you are going to feel some aspect of whatever comes up for that person in yourself, okay?

Or you're going to hear Suzanne say something that is going to help support you as well. So while one person gets-

If the incredible talents of Suzanne, helping them with a issue, you will also be able to observe and actually heal yourself while you observe this session.

@14:13 - Healing from the Core®

If you're open to it. If you're open to it.

@14:16 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

You have to be open to it.

@14:17 - Healing from the Core®

Yes. Yes. Yes. And I also want to say I'm kind. I'm gentle. Absolutely.

@14:23 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Yes.

@14:23 - Healing from the Core®

Yes, yes, yes.

@14:24 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

And, you know, and we also I love you teach really setting the intention of like, when we're practicing, when we're learning new stuff, like, okay, let's work with the easiest issue, the smallest issue to come up, right?

@14:42 - Healing from the Core®

Like, let's not work with the biggest boulder in our, you know, our psyche. Let's let's. No, no tsunamis, please.

Exactly. Let's learn on the little things first, and then, and then we can get better, and then we can work with the bigger things, but yes, you guys.

@15:00 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

I am so excited about this year's summit because it's going to be live and interactive and all of the presenters are going to be either leading us through a guided visualization, meditation, or actually doing one-on-one sessions with people.

So the opportunity for healing is going to be profound, and I really is hopefully going to encourage you to show up live and to be with us in this setting where we're really creating a container of healing for all those that are attending this summit.

So, and Suzanne's going to do both lead us in a guided meditation and do a one-on-one session with someone.

So please join us live so that you can be a part of this and actually either get the healing or witness it live while we are doing it.

Now, everything will be recorded, so if you're not able to attend live, you can come back. And and watch it later.

Or you might want to get the VIP package so that you can go back and go, what did Suzanne do during that one aspect of that treatment?

And you can go back and refer back to it later. So I am super excited about this, Suzanne.

@16:16 - Healing from the Core®

Thank you so much for being a part of it. You're going to be, oh, I just can't wait for your session.

It's going to be incredible. Thank you. You know, I will also say, Lynn, in all my years of teaching during the pandemic online, what I was surprised by was I had I had a one student who could never attend live.

And she said, I have to tell you, Suzanne, that I could actually feel in the recording exactly what you were doing, even though I knew that it had happened in the past.

@16:45 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

I could feel as though it was happening right now.

@16:49 - Healing from the Core®

So for those of you that can't attend, get the recording, because you will be able to track what I'm doing.

@16:57 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

Direct transmission happens and

@17:00 - Healing from the Core®

You will be able to feel it if you're open to it and you have the capacity to do that.

Yes. Oh, my gosh.

@17:07 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

It's amazing, isn't it? What COVID helped us to understand and expanding our teaching and our reach. So, yeah. Yeah.

Incredible. Yay. All right. Well, thank you, Suzanne, so much for this. So grateful, you guys. Please join us for the Birth Healing Summit this year.

It's going to be incredible. And it's so important. By signing up for the Birth Healing Summit, you really are saying yes to yourself.

You're saying yes to I want to be better. I want to heal. I want to show up more powerfully for my clients.

I want things to be easier. Right? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So please join us May 2nd and 3rd. And it's going to be the most incredible gathering of souls that are interested in...

Having a wonderful experience of expansion, transformation, and healing. So that's our intention. Suzanne, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you.

@18:10 - Healing from the Core®

Yes, always such a pleasure having you on the podcast.

@18:14 - Lynn Schulte, PT (lynnschultept@gmail.com)

All right, everybody. Thanks for listening in. We hope to see you on the Birth Healing Summit, May 2nd and 3rd.

And Suzanne will be working one-on-one with one person and doing a group meditation-guided visualization with us as well. It's going to be spectacular.

So thanks, everybody. We'll talk to you later, and we'll see you on the next episode. Take care, everybody. Bye-bye.