“Just because you are soft doesn’t mean you are not a force. Honey and wildfire are both the colour gold.” ~ Victoria Erickson
Your body’s ability to heal is far greater than anyone has led you to believe. Somatic Healing and Trauma Resolution is Healing at the Roots – not a quick, one-size-fits all solution. This healing work creates connection and belonging within yourself that you may never have felt before.
Welcome. There’s room and space for all parts of you here.
I hope you’ve been feeling some softness and ease, as we slowly roll through the beginning of 2024. Over the first few days of January, I’ve been feeling settled, rested, rejuvenated and renewed after Christmas and New Year. For the second year in a row, I am taking off a longer amount of time for myself in January, my partner and my puppy; to rest, reflect, move, hike, eat healthy foods, and feel grateful for the space and opportunity to do these things.
During the first week of January, I took part in a fun and restorative activity to reflect, release and prepare for this new year with several rituals, including burning with an actual flame, all that no longer serves you. I am taking part in a quite a few more social events and fun activities, and I am really enjoying it.
My word and intention for the year is Nourishment – emotional, creative, social and physical. I am taking more time for myself – and I have been planning and preparing to spend more time doing creative and fun activities with others. I am feeling light and hopeful for what I am anticipating in the year ahead.
No matter how the year ahead rolls forward, I will be loving and nurturing myself, no matter how I am being. How does that sound for you?
Healing trauma means many things to all of us, and one of the important aspects is to create connection in places in your body, in your being, in your relationships, your health and your life, in ways that you haven’t yet experienced in your life. I want this for you – and it is possible.
The fundamental understanding of how early trauma patterns affect us and ways to work with them on the path of awakening. We’ll start by giving our compassionate attention to how disruption in our early relationships affects us.
Our time together includes somatic bodywork, touch and intentional touch, body sensation exploration, practices for home, and heartfelt conversation. We turn our attention inward to find our way through the mind-made limits and the stories that create personal suffering. And discover practical ways to return home to the ground of being…to freedom and liberation.
Finally, we realize that we can’t go it alone. Our disconnection from our divine nature happened in the context of relationship, so we need to practice together—in a supportive and loving community—to find our way home. Come with your fears, doubts, shame, and questions—and simply to share sacred space together in community with like-minded friends.
Together, we lovingly embrace our humanness as we expand into overflowing appreciation, vibrant joy, and deep connection with all of life.
The somatic nervous system regulation work that I practice in my work every day with clients is founded within the awareness of our relational attachment styles, of co-regulation and of not having to heal alone or work so hard to heal.
Many of us are used to pushing through, to pushing boulders uphill, to going it alone – we inadvertently add an extra load to an already burdened body/mind/heart/nervous system in certain healing modalities.
In my 15+ years as a somatic relational psychotherapist, movement teacher, healing practitioner, bodyworker and trauma specialist, I have been deeply noticing the ways that we can heal that can feel more safe, more kind, more effective and truly sustainable over the long term.
That’s why I do what I do.
Because we all need spaces we can go to that are nourishing, supportive, healing, connecting and where we don’t have to try so hard all the time. Where we can be held and guided in a spacious way. Spaces where we don’t have to re-live past traumas again and again.
Where we’re invited to bring all parts of ourselves. And where we’re practicing something together that will last for a lifetime.
If you’re ready for more presence, more space to be yourself, more ability to take in the nourishment moment-to-moment, and teach your body that what happened in the past isn’t happening now, so you can feel more safe to rest and restore right here and right now. I invite you to get in touch to schedule a free consultation call with me.
Let’s explore how we can work together to support your healing and growth through one-on-one, customized trauma healing and bodywork sessions. This nervous system regulation work is a beautiful way to deepen your healing journey so you can be even more yourself and have even more what you want to have in this life.
When I give my younger part permission to do whatever it takes to feel a little less alone and a little more soothed to be able to turn towards my heart – everything changes. When I allow myself to feel the ground of a bodywork table, and allow energy that I’ve been holding to begin to move and release all the way through my body.
My intention is to keep you company and support you while you bravely turn towards yourself. To be an anchor amidst whatever is happening in this present moment so that you might be able to widen your heart and belly to receive it with a little bit of warmth.
So that together, we may sink into the moment together and just… BE. With whatever is.
As a somatic relational trauma-trained specialist, I have spent many years unwinding my own trauma patterning, so that I can offer a unique blend of somatic and attachment-based healing work that help you find a deeper sense of true connection with yourself and the world around you.
Whether you are struggling in relationships, feelings stuck moving towards your purpose(s), struggling with health challenges, overwhelmed by your own inner critic or perfectionist, stressed by seemingly small things or feeling lost and unable to settle into all that you would love to have happen in your life, I’m here to support you.
In our one-on-one sessions, we welcome all parts of you. In this kind of trauma healing, we embrace all that’s here and come into empowered and grounded relationship with all that you’ve been through and all the places you are headed. In these one-on-one nervous system healing sessions, we dive into Transforming Touch (Intentional Touch, Co-Regulating Touch and Transforming Presence), and various other somatic healing modalities to help you get some space to feel more connected in your mind/body/heart and soul, and to cultivate a deeper sense of peace, clarity, inspiration and aliveness.
Working together is supportive to:
– regulate your nervous system and help you manage stress and anxiety
– embrace trauma patterns that may be holding you back
– develop a greater sense of self-compassion and self-love
– build healthier relationships and stronger connections with others
– tap into your intuition and inner wisdom to make decisions that align with your values and goals
– create a vision for your future that inspires and energizes you and pulls you towards it
– And much more
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.
This work is support for you to feel more ease through deep embodiment, the immense gifts of slowing way down, how to lovingly hold and transform your story and become a master of our nervous system.
As you heal, you begin to feel your core as goodness; to deeply know that you belong, to feel a oneness with life. You can feel an unshakeable love in your heart that becomes a stable background in your life. The greater empathy and compassion you feel for yourself extends to all beings and the earth itself.
I will hold you with kindness, deep respect and space to be with you as you are. This deep presence will shift our felt sense experience of whole body mental and physical health care. My approach is open, spacious and flexible. I look forward to inviting you in to my space.
There is a great longing in each of us to uncover the secrets and mysteries of our individual lives, to relate more deeply and to uncover what is unique and truthful within ourselves and related to others in our lives. I look forward to seeing you in the depths of soul nourishment, vulnerability and courage.
When we begin to unravel the layers of emotions and patterns and re-route neural pathways, we have to connect back to our physical selves. Trauma forces us out of our bodies. This is why the somatic approach works so well.
When we approach the human system in a holistic, regenerative, systemic way, we build a foundation that is solid and has more capacity to experience difficulty. Yes, we will experience stress, pain, and loss like all humans do, and we will bounce back.
Ready to take the next steps in your healing?
I am honoured to walk alongside you on this path toward greater well-being, happiness, and fulfillment.
Who would you be if you felt nourished and loving towards yourself every day? Say ‘yes’ to what feels nourishing, joyful and expansive. Be ever so gentle with your heart.
Working together is a deeply nourishing, supportive and intensive collaboration between us. My intention is to allow you to bring your whole self, to explore all the areas that feel hidden or stuck and to celebrate all the deep pleasure that can come from living in our bodies. I am here to listen to the wisdom of your magical body together.
Together, we will work with body-based approaches, inner child healing, and self compassion to support you in experiencing joyful aliveness.
