Founder of Arctic Soulcraft

Arctic Soulcraft is developed as an integration of psychology, nature, and lived experience.

Background

Torstein Svergja is a clinical psychologist specialist with broad experience across different areas of mental health services.

He has worked in addiction treatment, child and adolescent psychiatry, and specialized treatment settings for emotional instability and trauma. He was involved in establishing one of the country’s first outpatient clinics for Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), and later worked in hospital settings with severe clinical presentations.

In inpatient care, his work focused on both treatment and organizational development at the intersection of Basal Exposure Therapy (BET), ACT, and learning theory. This led to further work in leadership and organizational development.

He later worked in occupational rehabilitation with a focus on lifestyle and functional energy regulation. During this period, he developed seminars and group based interventions, including programs for individuals engaged in working life and those dealing with binge eating-related challenges.

In recent years, he has worked as a senior clinical advisor at a district psychiatric center, with a primary focus on trauma related conditions and a broad methodological approach, including Somatic Experiencing (SE), in which he is a certified practitioner (SEP).

An emerging insight

The development of Arctic Soulcraft is rooted in a recurring observation from clinical work.

Much of the work in mental health focuses on thoughts, emotions, and behavior. At the same time, growing clinical understanding points toward how regulation is largely shaped through embodied experience and through how experience is organized within the nervous system. 

Processes that aim for change may therefore benefit from involving both insight and reflection, while also allowing the body to serve as a central arena for experience, regulation, and adaptation over time.

This understanding became clearer through lived experience in close contact with nature.

The mountains

Over several winters, he lived in a simple cabin in the high mountains, together with Greenland sled dogs. He now lives in Røros, a historic mountain town in Norway. In contact with the mountain landscape, it became evident how regulation, orientation, and presence are developed and sustained through the interaction between body, environment, and living conditions.

Arctic Soulcraft has grown out of this intersection between clinical work and lived experience, with the aim of supporting the development of life capacity and inner mobility.

The work is grounded in a commitment to raising awareness of the human dependence on nature, and the importance of preserving Arctic ecosystems.