Today we’d like to introduce you to Nancy Phung-Smith.
Hi Nancy, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I was born and raised right here in San Diego, and now I’m raising San Diego kids of my own — which still feels like a full-circle kind of magic to me. But my story really starts generations before mine, with my parents and my siblings, whose shoulders I stand on. The grit and determination that got me here didn’t originate with me. It was handed down.
Like a lot of children of immigrants, therapy felt strange to me growing up — distant, almost not real. It wasn’t something our family talked about or turned to. So it’s not lost on me that I ended up building a career, and now a practice, entirely around it. My path into this field wasn’t a straight line or a five-year plan—it was guided far more by happenstance, curiosity, and connection than by any grand design.
I stumbled onto EMDR while I was still in graduate school, and something just clicked. It taught me not only how to work with trauma–but what trauma meant. That early spark eventually turned into becoming an EMDRIA Certified Therapist and Approved Consultant, and I’ve now submitted my application to become an EMDR Trainer. Along the way, I also trained in IFS (Internal Family Systems) and completed Brainspotting Phase 1 and 2. Each of these modalities deepened my belief that healing is soul work—for my clients, and for me too.
That belief is actually where the name SOULFLO Therapy comes from. Boxing, of all things, is where I first found a real, embodied understanding of flow theory—that state where effort and presence meet, and something clicks into place. I saw the same thing happen in the therapy room, and the name stuck.
I never set out to build a group practice either. But one by one, incredible clinicians found their way to me—each of them just as passionate about EMDR and IFS as I am—and here we are. Watching their clinical growth, and the healing spaces they now hold for their own clients, is one of the great honors of my career. It’s what it looks like to live your why.
These days, my focus has narrowed and deepened at the same time: I specialize in therapy intensives, particularly for moms, late-diagnosed ADHD and neurodivergent adults, and individuals wanting to heal from Complex PTSD. Intensives are extended, deeply focused sessions (rather than the traditional weekly 50-minute model), and I’ve become genuinely passionate about the impact this format has. There’s something profound about carving out real, uninterrupted time and being fully present with someone as they do the hardest, most honest work and healing of their life. It’s an honor every single time.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Not even close — and honestly, I’ve come to be grateful for that. It’s been very, very windy. I’ve had to lose myself, over and over again, in order to find myself. That’s not a metaphor I use lightly; it’s something I return to often, including in the panel talks I give to local high school and college students who are exploring a career in this field. Because I think it’s one of the more honest things I can offer people who are watching my “success” from the outside and assuming it was a straight climb.
Grief has been a deep and constant companion on that road — my own grief, and the grief I sit with in the therapy room every day. Trauma work is grief work. Something I hold close, and often share with clients, is this: “Grief cracks us open, and when the tears come, may we honor them.” From every version of myself I had to let go of in order to grow—the plans that didn’t pan out, the identities that no longer fit—that was its own kind of grief, and I try to honor it rather than rush past it. And then there is the grief that needs no metaphor at all: the loved ones who crossed over way too soon, whose absence has shaped me just as much as their presence once did. I carry both kinds of loss with me into this work.
It also formed an understanding I live by, and share with my clients: “As we name the strength and resilience, may we not forget to acknowledge the hurt and pain it took to get there.” Both are true at once.
Thanks – so what else should our readers know about SOULFLO Therapy?
SOULFLO Therapy is a group practice I founded, and where I now serve as Clinical Director and supervise a growing team of clinicians. We offer individual, couples, and family therapy, with EMDR and IFS as our core modalities. We see clients virtually throughout California, and in-person in San Diego.
We specialize in EMDR and IFS, meaning it’s literally all we do. We are trauma therapists, full stop. From the very first consult call and all the way through a client’s healing journey with us, we’re looking beyond the symptom or the diagnosis on paper. We believe therapy is two-pronged: the first prong is stabilization—building the tools and skills that help someone feel more safe and regulated in their own body and life. The second prong is getting to the root. Emotion is information. Behavior serves a need. We don’t just manage what’s on the surface; together with our clients, we move through that flow toward what’s actually underneath it.
Our team reflects that same depth. Our clinicians speak Vietnamese, Mandarin, Cantonese, and Spanish, and we come from different lived experiences, paths, and careers before this one. That range means clients get to work with someone who doesn’t just understand trauma clinically, but who often understands their specific cultural, generational, or lived context too.
As Clinical Supervisor, I also provide EMDR consultation for therapists working toward their own certification and advancement with the modality. EMDR is more than a protocol — it’s the scaffolding for healing, and my goal is to make sure that scaffolding is built well: comprehensive, high-quality EMDR support, something that wasn’t always accessible to me. That same mission is what led a group of my lovely community advocates, turned mama friends and I to begin forming HealUnity, a nonprofit focused on making EMDR training more accessible and inclusive for students and early-career therapists.
SOULFLO was never built from a business plan — it was built from a shared “why.” Every clinician on my team found their way here because they care as much about EMDR and IFS, and about soul-level healing work, as I do. That shared conviction is the actual brand, more than anything else.
Community is also central to who we are — particularly supporting BIPOC communities and making healing-centered spaces feel accessible and welcoming to folks who haven’t always seen themselves reflected in this field. You’ll often find me out speaking on panels or hosting workshops, because showing up for community isn’t separate from the clinical work — it’s part of the same mission.
Is there something surprising that you feel even people who know you might not know about?
A couple of things, actually.
My family owns Cali Baguette, a bánh mì shop in City Heights — my story begin long before me. My parents are Vietnamese boat people. If you visit the shop, you’ll see a boat sitting out front, a nod to that history. They started with nothing: collecting cans, reselling used goods at the swap meet — thrifting before thrifting was a thing (laugh). Leaving the family business wasn’t an easy decision for me, but it’s another reminder that everything I’ve built stands on ground my parents laid first.
The other thing? I don’t have it all together. I think people assume therapists do — that we’ve somehow graduated from being human. We haven’t. As therapists or as clients, the goal is not to have it all figured out. Or to stop feeling sad when something hurts, or angry when something’s genuinely upsetting. The goal is to feel what we need to, move through and find your way back to yourself, clearer, stronger, lighter, and aligned.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://soulflotherapy.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/soulflo_therapy
