Author: Kim Cochrane

Sometimes, this is a good thing.

Sometimes though, we want something different is our lives. Any kind of change can bring about nervous system dysregulation – and this makes sense when we understand our bodies’ reaction to perceived fear(s) and our threat response.

Our habits and repetitive patterns are our survival strategies, the often hidden ways that we try to keep ourselves safe. If we want to make changes, we are going to have to come face-to-face with these deeply ingrained patterns, that act as self-protective responses.

I’m excited that the days are getting lighter and longer, and that more warmth is coming. What I’ve noticed lately is the number of women who truly want to know why they do the things they do – and want to know themselves more deeply, so they can make the decisions to have the lives and relationships that they really want.

I invite you into a signature process of Somatic Alchemy – an ongoing healing process relating to the body – a transformative process of softening, tenderness and re-creation.

Together, we will focus on the emotional and spiritual aspects of mental and physical health and healing – tend and befriend your younger part, allow space for self-compassion and care for our deepest heart, become intimate with our nervous system responses and triggers, heal the energy of our mother and father wound, allow space for the feminine, use movement and sound, and transform early developmental and intergenerational trauma imprints – moving towards trauma resolution and the release of stored survival energy.

Somatics is a field within bodywork and movement studies which emphasizes internal physical perception and experience.

The work of Somatic Alchemy involves individual, one-on-one healing work, as well as a community drop-in healing sessions – once a month, on a Monday evening.

Join us for the next group healing session on Monday, April 8th at 6:15pm to 7:15pm. $57.00 CAD per person.

We need each other.

How do you know yourself? How do you heal?

We react quickly rather than slowing down so we can be aware and thoughtful. We’re lost and disconnected rather than present and alive.

​​​Our habits take over before we realize it.

And what is the effect? Repetitive arguments, addictive behaviors, endless anxious thinking, and an underlying sense that something important is missing.

In childhood, if we learned that it was not safe to respond to situations with our natural impulses, survival energy gets stored in our physiology, in our bodies. Over time, more and more survival energy gets stored within us. Somatic Healing can begin to access these early developmental states and begin a healing process for your emotions and symptoms.

Early developmental trauma, that happens in childhood, is stored in the body, the physiology. When we get the chance to gently and safely complete these original responses, that have been unsafe to feel earlier in our lives. we begin to create a story to explain to ourselves how we feel – I’m not lovable, I’m not enough, I’m broken, I always mess up.

This effects our health and wellbeing – with unexplained physical and emotional symptoms. To get angry, to run, to collapse, to freeze – to feel all the things we couldn’t feel, because it didn’t feel safe, earlier in our lives. Our bodies begin to learn that they don’t have to work so hard to protect us now – that we are safe and can allow space for our bodies to express and to be exactly as they are in each moment. We may see doctors and try all the cognitive tools to shift our chronic symptoms and emotions, and then realize that nothing really changes.

We can learn to stay close to what we really want.
 
Go inside and contemplate what you really want, then stay very close to it. And as much as possible, make choices that reflect this deep desire.

Someone I know often feels angry and frustrated, and she’s aware that it is negatively effecting her relationships. She has lots of opinions about how things are supposed to be and gets angry when others’ actions don’t conform to her beliefs.

What she really wants is friendship, peace, and intimacy, but it doesn’t seem that way if you saw how she reacts. So there’s a disconnection—a gap between what she wants and how she expresses herself with her loved ones.
 
I asked her what would change if she stayed close to what she really wants, and she said that she would:

• Ask for space when she felt herself getting more and more angry;
• Take deep conscious breaths when she’s triggered as well as several times throughout the day;
• Start doing more movement and more things she enjoys;
• Practice presence when she takes her daily walks in nature.

She was surprised when she noticed how far away she was from her deepest desire.
 
Now it’s your turn to stop and reflect: what do you really want? What would change if you stayed close to this desire?

Living your life according to what you really want is not selfish—it’s actually the opposite.
 
When you’re in harmony with your truth, you’re open to life. You’re less interested in the mental noise playing in your mind, so you’re present with people and situations.

You’re not doubtful and confused because you always have a touchstone—what you really want.
 
This conscious way of being makes you more available to joy, ease, and heartful connection. Live here—in the simplicity of what you really want—and the effects ripple out everywhere.

What supports you to feel alive?

How can you begin to connect more deeply with yourself and therefore others?

Today, we have many habits or defensive accommodations – that keep us out of feeling. Many people didn’t get the opportunity to feel or sense their bodies and experience themselves in a healthy way – life circumstances interrupted that – so it can feel scary and very difficult to do.

We will be together to build capacity within your nervous system for feeling into your body for the first time and creating a new relationship with yourself. This takes some time.

I love supporting and guiding people in a deep, contemplative way through their inner waters and awareness to their origins – a remembering and expanding into awareness nature and the earth.

This is an invitation to go deeper into the expanded landscape within our bodies and cells. Somatic healing offers us a process that involves touch, softness, simple vocal sound streams, breath, subtle gentle movements and awareness to access our fluid consciousness. Supporting nervous system healing and creating the space and context to move in new ways and to feel more present and alive in our bodies. We explore the inner realms of our bodies where we learn from our own cells and rhythms within.

New life begins to emerge in what may have become held, withered and alienated within your body. As we become attuned to our fluid body and how this watery mystery guides us into the experience of direct connection with all life, we notice an amplifying and refining of communication networks within ourselves and with others.

We will explore connecting with the deep joy and mystery of life.

Emotions are messengers, not facts. We are not our emotions.

When emotions drive our behaviour, we can go into self-protection mode.

When we learn how to witness our emotions, we see ourselves as separate from them. We become the witness experiencing emotions.

Then, we have choice and can act in alignment with our values.

Somatic healing invites in those who have become prisoners to a life lived in survival mode. It offers a reprieve so you can better understand the wisdom and inner workings of your nervous system.

Once your body begins to feel better, you’ll quickly accept that there is, in fact, nothing wrong with you. The way you feel, think, and behave, although perhaps seemingly self-destructive, has merely been an armoring of self-protection—a necessary response to a traumatic environment or experience.

Instead of self-criticism or defeat, you’ll begin to see that depression or anger or fear are natural, instinctual responses to an overwhelmed nervous system, merely trying to protect you. You are not broken and you do not need to be fixed. You just need to get back in the driver’s seat of your life and body. Let somatic healing free you from a settled life of survival.

What to Expect During a Whole Body Health Somatic Practice –
Co-Regulating Touch Bodywork for Trauma Session

For true emotional and physical healing, we can’t leave our body and how it feels and responds, out of the process. Each person needs something very specific in their healing journey, which is why it is so important to have a customized approach with sessions that are specifically tailored for you – a combination of emotionally-focused psychotherapy and body-focused Transforming Touch, Co-Regulating Touch Bodywork for Trauma.

Your body doesn’t have energy – it is energy. When we allow traumatic stress that is contained in our nervous system to begin to move through our system – flow begins to happen in our body and we feel more energetic, grounded, healthy and alive.

We explore our fluid bodies through the language of sensation, co-regulating touch,and  subtle movement. We have the opportunity of allowing time to slow down, to notice, let go and shed that which needs to shed, and to come through anew and refreshed.

For those who would like to focus on a body-focused, somatic approach, we begin by talking about your background, symptoms and history. We do this online and or in-person by sitting in chairs across from each other or you lie on your back on a table. When you are sitting in a chair, we can do some talk therapy, and you may also be asked if you are open to closing your eyes and noticing your feelings, emotions and body sensations that are happening for you in each moment.

For those who would like to do Co-Regulating Touch Bodywork for Trauma Session – sessions consist of lying on a table with eyes closed – and I offer touch on several areas of the body: the head, stress organs, the belly, and joints in the body.

Therapeutic Co-Regulating Touch Bodywork for Trauma is a gentle, backed-by-science method that enables qualified practitioners to work safely and ethically with the emotions stored in the tissues and organs of the body. It works to unlock and release emotional pain buried in the body, sometimes since before we born, in-utero, our early childhood and all way up to present day adult experience.

Using touch, we reset complex physiological systems and help harmonize energy flow in a person’s body. Often, we restore what was missing in the early years. Touch can give a client greater awareness of their body’s sensations and the ability to get to know themselves better from the inside out.

Bringing a compassionate presence to the body is another essential part of healing. It helps address the neural numbing, muscular bracing, and autonomic disorganization that are physiological by-products of grief, shame, anger, and fear.

Therapeutic touch works to heal the nervous system by providing an avenue for the body to process deep-rooted trauma and facilitate self-actualization. Through gentle, attuned touch, we can help to rebuild an underdeveloped nervous system that has been negatively impacted by early trauma.

Sessions are done fully clothed. Each session is one-hour, unless we are doing an extended session – and is unique depending on what you are experiencing on that day and would like to focus on during a session – we want to tune in and understand what’s really going on in your body – beyond pathology and diagnoses – to allow your body to move into a flow state, rather than to remain stuck in a stress response state – during the session and in the hours and days afterwards.