Becoming regulated and steady, we can meet life whole-heartedly without all the noise. Healing is about coming into fresh relationship with ourselves, embracing all we’ve been through, where we’re headed and everything around us.
We’re able to respond instead of react.
Old school trauma healing pushes us past our edges when we’re already overwhelmed and carrying too much. We don’t have to go back into the past to heal the present and become activated by details of past stories.
We can’t talk trauma away. While words and stories are important and deeply matter – so does our physiology.
Our bodies carry the history of our lives. They carry the map for how we got here and they also have the wisdom for how to remember our wholeness.
I am deeply honored at the possibility of walking this path with you.
By working with your nervous system and welcoming all parts of who you are through various modalities and ways of connecting (1:1 & group monthly practice), we will support your body to process what it needs to process to come into a place of peace and expansiveness.
We will grow a somatic sense of safety which impacts how we feel, think, believe and connect to ourselves, others and something bigger.
This work is based on Somatic Healing & Attachment Wounding.
Wounding can happen in relationship. Healing can happen in relationship too.
Healing is a collaboration and a partnership in this work. We show up together to support what YOU would love to have happen in each moment and in your life. We meet all that arises with support, awareness, compassion and care. And when you have a hard time finding that in yourself, I’ve got plenty for both of us – there’s space here for you to lean in.
Healing in connection can be vulnerable yet profound. We create a sacred, confidential, supportive and clear space where you get to really lean in, be seen, held and celebrated.
This connecting, gentle and present work can include:
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you talking or being silent depending on what feels most alive for you each session.
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slowing down together to meet what’s present in your life.
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being welcome to bring all parts of yourself.
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being guided consistently for most or all of each session through the body-based and co-regulation protocol.
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trauma informed mindfulness and breathing practices.
Working with “intentional touch” in online sessions and “supportive touch” if we meet in person. Both equally powerful. Early developmental trauma begins in childhood when we are given more to experience than we can tolerate consciously. Our brains and nervous systems aren’t equipped to metabolize particular experiences – even those can appear on the outside, as quite small or insignificant. We become overwhelmed by emotions that feel unbearable to our young selves.
Our vital core feels threatened, and our unbearable emotions are given to another part of our psyche, removed from our conscious awareness. These divisions protect our innocence and save our souls by splitting or dissociating them them from our bodies.
Unwinding these deeply held unconscious emotions, found in our bodies, is what we do together – gently and slowly.
There is an effective, gentler, and less emotionally-taxing way to work with trauma called Somatic Experiencing®, Transforming Touch, Somatic Resilience & Regulation, and Inherited Family Trauma Healing Practice.
Somatic Experiencing® and Somatic Practices, work somatically, or with the body and brain together to gradually allow the activated charge, that has been trapped in the physical body since the event, dissipate or dissolve.
The significance of the body when working with trauma is key to releasing the grip of trauma, even when the physical symptoms of that traumatic event show up months or years later as chronic physical pain and physiological symptoms of stress and anxiety.
The SE® method is slow, gentle, and titrated (which means we work little by little, based on the capacity of the person’s nervous system). We bring the focus of the session into the person’s body, where the thwarted energy of the traumatic experience is stored and present.
Who benefits from Somatic Experiencing® & Somatic Healing Practice?
SE® is designed to be effective for people who have experienced the following types of traumatic events:
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Medical trauma including anesthesia
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Physical injuries, including sports injuries
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Relational injury (and attachment trauma)
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Emotional abuse, including narcissistic abuse
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Physical abuse
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Sexual abuse
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PTSD
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CPTSD (early developmental trauma – hidden trauma from childhood)
- Auto accidents
“Startle” and “Protect” physiological patterns
When someone has experienced a traumatic event, or ongoing relational events as in childhood, a person’s physiology can stay in a “startle” pattern which includes bracing throughout the system or a “protect” pattern which includes contractions throughout the system.
A person might be aware that they, for example, clench their teeth or hands, or hold their breath. Or they might round their shoulders forwards and they may feel constriction in their throat or chest and tightness in their belly. Sometimes they have chronic digestive issues—either constipation or extremely loose bowels. Or they have back, neck or shoulder pain. These muscular habits of hypervigilance show up throughout their entire physiology— but they may just feel it as “normal” for them. But all of this can be part of the same nervous system pattern.
Seemingly normal habits like nail biting or constant foot swinging or tapping is the nervous system’s attempt to self soothe and self regulate. Usually there is deeper physical “holding” on the musculoskeletal level throughout the person’s system.
This method works with people who experience musculoskeletal patterns of anxiety and hypervigilance, or bracing and contracting.
How we work with the body to release trauma
If someone has had an auto accident, they likely hold muscle tension patterns from the experience. In such an experience we often have powerful energy build up. Our nervous system naturally gathers all it’s power and looks for ways to flee or engage in fighting against impact. That powerful energy surge is thwarted and becomes stuck in the joints or muscles. This is a common cause for neck pain or things like frozen shoulder, on top of any physical injury that occurred.
In SE® we begin a slow process to revisit the experience from within the sensations of the physical body — beginning with resourcing each person until it’s clear they have the capacity to touch into the different pieces of the event. We work with nervous system regulation techniques so that they aren’t re-traumatized as we approach significant moments that make up the event.
The nervous system processes at a very…very… slow… pace. We go at a pace that the sensory part of the brain can accommodate, and so that the brain can re-experience small pieces of the event. And this time, re-experiencing it in resourced, manageable way, the body is successful in finally moving that stuck, thwarted energy, either through physical movement or doing something differently and in a more resourced conscious way in the imagination.
Because our brain doesn’t know the difference between what actually happened in the past and our imagination in the present, it can reprocess this information sensorily and muscles can finally relax and let go permanently.
Discharge of energy
Often clients will have the discharge that their body’s didn’t get the chance to have the first time around. Discharge can include crying for no apparent reason, shaking, shivering, trembling, yawning, or deep sighs. This discharge is what animals are able to experience naturally in the wild after a big chase. They move this powerful fight-flight energy through their bodies vs storing it as anxiety. You rarely hear about a stressed out tiger!
