Today we’d like to introduce you to Dr. Tanya Berfield.
Hi Dr. Tanya, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
My career has been really diverse, women’s fitness, technology in K-12, higher ed, Title IX coordination and student advocacy. I’ve married for more than 30 years, we raised three boys. From the outside, nothing about my life said “something is wrong here.”
That’s actually where the story starts.
The real entry point was my son. Fourth grade, struggling with ADHD and dyslexia, and the options we were handed were assessments, medication, more testing. We knew we wanted something different. So I started digging and found that nutrition, structure, meditation were tools that would be really helpful. He leaned into it. It worked.
And while that was happening, I was quietly sitting with my own version of the same question. I had everything that was supposed to make me happy. The house, the marriage, the kids, the dogs, the whole picture. I loved my life and my family but I wasn’t fulfilled. So I added more. Yoga, qi gong, breathwork. Then more education, because surely that would be the thing. Associate’s to bachelor’s. Didn’t work. Bachelor’s to master’s. Didn’t work either. So I went all the way to a doctorate degree in Transformative Leadership, mostly because I didn’t feel like enough and thought more credentials would fix that, even though nobody had ever told me I wasn’t enough.
I was running two tracks simultaneously. One traditional education, straight through the doctorate. The other somatic: nutrition, fitness, hypnotherapy, breathwork, qi gong, life coaching, somatic coaching, numerology. All of it.
What I finally realized was that it was never the tools that were going to be the soluition. It was knowing which parts of those tools actually applied to me, and being willing to turn toward myself long enough to use them that way.
That became the framework. And it became the work I now do, often with high-achieving women who have read all the studies, know all the things, and are still somehow stuck. Because knowing has never been the problem. It’s never been the problem.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
No, I wouldn’t say any of it was easy. Life is designed to be challenging for most of us.
Raising three boys is a challenge on its own. Add education on top of that, and that’s something completely different. I completed my bachelor’s the same year my oldest graduated from high school. I got my doctorate the same year my middle son graduated from college. So I was managing a full, busy, growing family at the same time I was navigating my own education, and also quietly trying to figure out what was wrong with me and trying to fix it.
All of it, at the same time.
And the thing I can see now that I couldn’t see then is that I was living exactly the pattern I now help women out of. I was the capable one. I kept everything moving. I added more to my own plate instead of asking what I actually needed. I was so practiced at handling things that I didn’t stop long enough to notice what it was costing me.
The struggle wasn’t just logistical. It was that I was trying to fix myself with more doing, more credentials, more tools, while simultaneously being everything for everyone else. That’s an exhausting combination. And it took a long time to realize that the fixing was never the problem I actually needed to solve.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about Dr. Tanya Berfield?
I work at the intersection of science, soul, and somatics, and I mean that literally. I’m equally comfortable citing research on how the nervous system stores what the mind tries to manage and pulling an oracle card, because that’s not a contradiction, that’s the work.
My framework is Reveal, Release, Rewire, Respond. It’s the lens I see everything my clients are carrying through, not a product. Most women come to me thinking they need to feel less burned out or that they need someone to finally understand why they’re so exhausted all the time. What they actually need is someone who will listen, see them, give them real empathy, and then not let them stay stuck.
What sets me apart is that I don’t treat burnout, anxiety, or boundary issues as just mindset problems. They’re body problems, nervous system problems, identity problems that live in your triggers and your tension and the stories you’ve been telling yourself so long you forgot you made them up. Healing starts with regulation, and regulation comes before everything else. Your clients aren’t disconnected from who they are, they’re disconnected from who they’re becoming, and that distinction changes everything about how we work together.
My work shows up in a few different ways. Emotional ER is a single virtual session for the woman who needs help with what’s happening right now, a specific situation, a specific moment, something she can’t get clear on alone. Pattern Shift is a four-session virtual program for the woman who keeps hitting the same wall and is ready to understand and change what keeps recreating it. The Mini ER is a twenty-minute in-person format available at live events, a fast, accessible entry point into the work. I also offer keynote speaking and workshops for organizations, associations, colleges, and live events, bringing this work into rooms where it tends to land hard. And my book, Radical Resilience, is available wherever we meet.
I’m not interested in trendy or the rebranded version of breathwork that’s become performative wellness. I’m interested in the woman who is done performing and ready to actually feel better. She doesn’t have to use the word somatic, she doesn’t have to know what nervous system regulation means, she just has to walk in and let me work.
Can you share something surprising about yourself?
I used to struggle badly with confidence. Imposter syndrome, not the kind people say casually, the kind where I nearly passed out on stage trying to speak because some part of me genuinely didn’t believe I had any business being up there.
What I know now that I didn’t know then is that it wasn’t a confidence problem. It was a regulation problem. My nervous system was doing exactly what nervous systems do when they don’t feel safe, and nobody had ever taught me how to work with that. So I performed. I pushed through. I added more credentials, more training, more proof that I belonged, because that’s what capable women do when they’re scared. They do more.
The irony is not lost on me that the woman who now helps other women regulate, speak from a grounded place, and stop performing their way through fear had to figure all of that out in herself first. That’s not a footnote in my story. That’s the whole reason I do this work.
The tools I teach, I needed. The patterns I help women out of, I lived. And that’s the thing about this kind of work, you can’t lead someone somewhere you haven’t been willing to go yourself.
Pricing:
- Emotional ER = $250
- Pattern Shift = $1500
- Free Body Scan
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.drtanyab.com
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100086901287299
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanyaberfield/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@DrTanyaB
- Other: https://substack.com/@drtanyaberfield
