“Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds’ wings.” ~ Rumi
One day you finally know what you have to do, and you began.
We have all felt it at times… the constriction in the gut, the tightness in the heart, and the ache in the throat. That feeling of being a stranger in a strange land. That haunting sense that you don’t belong anywhere.
Many people are seeking a feeling that they may have never had – a sense of true belonging as felt in the body. What do you remember feeling when you were a small child? Did you feel wanted, loved, connected – that you truly belong?
Many of us don’t remember much of our childhood. Our patterns from childhood follow us in to adulthood. We long for a sense of true belonging, a stable home and community – and it often feels just out of our reach.
I’ve learned that a steady home, a long marriage, a close-knit community—none of these guarantee the felt sense of belonging. I’ve met people who’ve been married for decades yet feel utterly alone. Others who’ve lived in the same place their whole lives yet remain strangers to themselves.
Belonging isn’t promised by location, relationship, or circumstance. It’s a practice of connecting to yourself – a felt sense of connection, as felt through the body. A form of intimacy that begins with ourselves.
Sometimes, we can feel on the edge of our lives – not quite included, not quite excluded. When a familiar sense of self-exclusion rises in you – when you feel as if belonging was happening “out there” and you weren’t invited. We are locked in a survival strategy. Notice those old neural pathways from childhood are still alive and well.
It takes a conscious shift to include yourself in your life. To widen your gaze, soften your belly, and open your heart. To remember that belonging is not about being welcomed into someone else’s circle, but about becoming the safe welcome within your own body. To stand at the threshold of your being and let yourself in.
Belonging begins with self-inclusion. Let’s build a secure relationship with ourselves. When we welcome ourselves exactly as we are—messy, tender, strong, in-process—we can slowly stop waiting for permission to join life. We can stop lingering in the doorway and realize we are the doorway.
So the next time you feel on the outside, invite yourself in. Feel your feet on the ground. Notice your body sensations. Let your breath deepen. Open to the beauty, the ache, the ordinariness of this moment. Notice how things can shift—when you recognize you are safe now – and you’ve been home all along. Not because of where you are or who you are with, but because you’ve returned to the one place you can never lose. Your body, your self.
And then notice… how your external environment shifts, reflects and responds to what you are feeling within.
When early developmental trauma overwhelms us, and the hurt gets compartmentalized, the body doesn’t complete its’ stress cycles, and we can get stuck in survival mode.
When emotions remain unfelt – the body holds the survival energy – and beliefs about ourselves begin to form, based on the unresolved pain that we are holding. When something in adulthood gets triggered, our trauma vortex may get activated. This is where the energy of our unresolved trauma lives. It’s the space that holds our emotions, sensations and beliefs about our often unknown or hidden experiences that happened in our early childhood.
We may feel overwhelmed and confused when we are triggered, and we can’t seem to shake these feelings. To protect us, the body activates its’ defensive survival responses, such as freeze, frustration or anger. The mind may activate rumination cycle, where we have a looping thought pattern that can’t be resolved through thinking alone.
Our younger part(s) can live within these cycles of overwhelm and each part needs subtle, delicate, compassionate attunement and attention to our bodies and minds, so we can begin to feel safe enough to build nervous system capacity to complete deeply held stress responses and resolve held trauma.
The good news is that our bodies know how to complete resolve deeply held trauma. When we have support to slow down enough, our bodies give us clues about how to process trapped energy. These clues can be expressed through sensations, emotions, movement patterns, breathing patterns and other forms of expression, all pointing toward completing the trauma and stress cycle.
The nervous system is designed to complete these cycles when it has enough capacity to do so.
When we slow down, we begin to process these frozen parts of ourselves that could not be processed in the past, and find the resolution they always needed. This is how we move through thinking and rumination and into deeper somatic healing.
Trauma healing isn’t about forcing or fixing, it’s about listening and learning to trust our body’s wisdom. When we find ourselves stuck in loops of rumination and obsessive thinking, this is the tip of the iceberg, not the full story.
If rumination persists, it’s an invitation to slow down and bring our attention to the body. Instead of trying to solve the loop with more thinking, we want to start exploring what’s happening in our nervous system.
When we do this, we connect with younger parts of us, frozen in time, seeking our attention. They loop through the mind, asking us to notice, to feel, to resolve.As we learn to slow down and listen to our body, we can support these frozen parts in completing the cycles they couldn’t finish before.
Are there ways you notice how your body responds or communicates that is not in words?
In somatic healing sessions, as we explore emotions, sensations, thoughts and beliefs, and we very often ask “what do you notice in your body?” For many people it takes time to develop this awareness of and in our living experience of the felt-sense and how it interconnects with thoughts, emotions and beliefs etc.
In somatic healing sessions we further inquire into the sensations we notice in the body. A few examples: “What sensations do you notice? “Where do you notice sensations?” or “What does this sensation need right now?”
The body may not respond in words. If we expect a response in words, we might miss what’s being communicated. Sometimes we can inadvertently fall into interpreting or projecting from the cognitive mind before we explore the sensations directly.
The body – and sometimes the heart – can often communicate without words. Instead of listening for words, we might notice, listen to, the felt sensations, movement, colours or images. It might be very subtle or fleeting. Sometimes there is no response, so the silence might mean it’s not ready yet to be fully expressed, or that we’re not ready yet to hear.
When we ask the body what it needs, we can listen in an open way. We can expand our perception and let the mind be a witness that listens and closely observes without expecting words or cognitive understanding. It can take time and practice for the mind to relax it’s urge to understand, interpret or go into strategy mode, and instead to stay present and just witness.
We can also ask “what is your relationship to the sensation”?, “Do I have an attitude towards it”?. This can help us uncover hidden attitudes of resisting, wanting it to go away, a belief that there is something wrong with it.
Becoming aware of our relationship and attitude towards the body and our sensations is also part of the exploration. We might discover more layers this way. We might notice a hidden agenda to get rid of uncomfortable sensations/emotions/thoughts. We can allow somatic healing to do that for us. This realization can be met with gentle acceptance and understanding – it’s a natural desire to end suffering, to want to heal and grow.
With practice we can expand and start to orient in that gentle acceptance, allowing and experiencing things as they are. And that is when the natural process of metabolizing and transformation activates – as if on it’s own – without us manipulating or willing it to happen. To taste and see that happening is a joy, even a relief and an ease. A feeling of trust grows, trust and relaxing into a knowing that the innate healing unfolds on it’s own when given the context of allowing, curiosity, presence and acceptance.
Our relationship with our sensations, our emotions and felt-sense can become an adventure, when we shift from an urgency to fix, get rid of change – to one of exploring with gentle or eager curiosity. Acceptance and allowing is a door opening.
I’ve poured my heart into therapies that truly heal – now let’s embark on this transformative journey together.
I support clients working through a wide range of concerns, including:
- Embodying emotions and resolving painful cycles of self-judgment, blame, and shame
- Early attachment wounds and early developmental trauma that impact adult relationships (move towards secure attachment)
- Depression, anxiety, anger, and ADHD
- cPTSD and complex trauma (psychological and neurological effects)
- Sexual abuse recovery and boundary repair
- Autoimmune conditions, chronic pain and chronic fatigue
- Life transitions, decision-making, and changes in life path
- Pre & perinatal trauma, shock trauma, and early developmental trauma
I provide clients with body-based techniques they can use to support their own healing between sessions. I want to support each person to access their inner resilience, develop self-regulation skills, and build sustainable practices for psychological and physical well-being.
Many of us learned to leave our bodies and retreat into our minds when things felt too much, too fast, or not safe.
What is the “source” of chronic stress, muscle tension, defensiveness, angry emotions and isolation? The brain and nervous system connection effects the whole body. The brain tells us when to breathe in and out and how much oxygen we need at any given moment. The brain tells our organs how and when to function.
And the brain monitors our muscle tension — when to contract and when to let go. We can apply pressure to or stretch the muscles and they’ll release, but within a short time frame, they go right back to their habitual “patterns” of contraction.
The brain is always working for your benefit.
These unconscious habitual patterns of “holding” or contraction in your body – were put into place by your brain when your brain perceived that there was some instability in you as a whole — perhaps you experienced a period of extreme stress, perhaps there was some injury somewhere else in your body, maybe while healing, part of you was immobilized to mend, perhaps you practiced some repetitive movement or posture so often that certain muscles became the stabilizers while others didn’t carry their weight.
Every person’s circumstances and history are unique.
But when we work with the brain and nervous system, the interesting thing is we don’t have to definitively understand WHY our bodies contract and hold, or the exact path of what caused what, when. We only need to recognize the patterns that are presenting themselves.
Let’s reinforce new neural pathways.
New healthier neural pathways override the old, unconscious, habitual pathways and when these movements are practiced with attention, and reinforced for a period of time, the old muscle tension is permanently gone.
We will go slowly, deeply and at your own pace – to recognize that healing as an inside job – the unfolding of our intrinsic and natural wholeness.
The Deep Work for Women is an integrated mind/body/spirit approach to healing as wholeness happening, wholeness unfolding. It is a practice that is designed to cultivate wakefulness and present-centered awareness to bring the freedom of choice and new possibilities to the healing journey.
You are invited to experience your own healing as a journey of remembering wholeness and to participate in each other’s healing as a profound gift of Presence.
Let’s begin the somatic healing process together:
Slow down – notice your breath, pay attention to your skin and allow yourself to truly land where you are. Feel this.
Notice where you feel energy moving in your body. Maybe you don’t notice anything, maybe you do. You can’t do this wrong and there is no way to fail.
What emotions are present with the sensations?
This work supports 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.
I have two new openings now for clients who want to work together to build an emotional container of resilience and expand their nervous system capacity to be with all of their emotions.
As a Women’s Somatic Trauma Healing Guide, Nervous System Specialist, Nature Therapy Guide, and Feldenkrais Movement Facilitator – I will support you with body-based approaches, parts work, inner child healing, healing co-dependent patterns, movement, patriarchal awareness, mother wound and father wound healing, shadow work and self compassion to support you in experiencing joyful aliveness, self-compassion, peace and deep care – for your body, mind and heart. Are you ready to meet yourself?Let’s go deeply and flow together.
Whole Body Mental Health & Well-Being from the Inside Out.
Deep healing at the level of the nervous system enables you to explore and expand your inner landscape where self – confidence and inner agency reside. When you heal your nervous system, you can more readily access deeper ways of knowing and being that include intuition, imagination, sensuality, and the subtle body of emotions.
SLOW HEALING SOMATIC TRAUMA INTENSIVE SESSIONS – Heart Healing Somatic Trauma Intensive sessions are all about you, your path and healing. These intensive extended sessions are scheduled during one day or a period of days to support you along your healing path.
My clients love this work, it is nourishing and gentle. It is wonderful for healing early developmental trauma, attachment repair and shifting to a more regulated place where the heart can freely open into abundance.
You may want to schedule these sessions as a focused time for letting go of all that you healing. Heart Healing sessions consist of combining several sessions over a short period of time. They are a great way to get out of your daily routine and be immersed in healing. We may meet for multiple sessions per day over a period of days. Since you will be out of your typical routine, this will give plenty of time for integration of the work and healing.
FEMININE EMBODIMENT & PATRIARCHAL DYNAMICS – get in touch with your feminine energetic dynamics, internal felt sense, your deepest heart, masculine and feminine energies, layers of dissociation, learn about how patriarchal dynamics effect your relationships and your sense of self, heal the survival responses and defensive accommodations that keep us out of connection. Explore somatic blocks to expansion, heal chronic anxiety, illness and pain patterns, and have an open space to explore the deepest parts of yourself in relation to yourself, your work, your life and your relationships with others. This work happens online via Zoom.
BEING HELD – ALLOWING YOUR BODY TO YIELD – DROP-IN CLASSES
Guided, intentional and supportive rest, is a process of renegotiating our relationship to feeling safe in our body,. In our earliest years, the experience of feeling safe enough in our body; to let go, to drop-in, through the developmental movement of Yielding – the bodies way of trusting. We are designed to naturally yield in the arms of a safe caregiver that holds us when we cry or are tired. For many of us, this experience was interrupted or went missing for our little bodies. Now we practice supportive rest not just as a way to soothe our body and nervous system, but to give our body the opportunity to safely yield once again, and to receive an often unmet need. When our body feels safe enough to let go of bracing patterns, soften into support and “drop” in to heaviness, it learns to trust being safely supported and safely at ease. This is essential for healing.
($57.00 per class or $210.00 for all 4 classes)
Tuesday, September 9th at 6:15pm to 7:15pm
Tuesday, October 14th at 6:15pm to 7:15pm
Tuesday, November 11th at 6:15pm to 7:15pm
The SAFE and SOUND LISTENING PROTOCOL / The REST and RESTORE LISTENING PROTOCOL – Both the SSP and RRP are sound healing therapies for increased nervous system regulation and resilience. The SSP starts by inviting the body to really receive the signals of connection and safety. Then, once that connection is made, it invites the body to remain connected to safety even as signals of threat are introduced and increased. The RRP is designed to entrain with the systems in the body such breath and heart rate and to coax those systems to be less fixed, to have more flow. The music bypasses cognition and “speaks” directly to the body and the body systems. Your sleep and waking cycle will improve, as will your digestion and chronic feelings of anxiety. “By fostering coherence and harmony within their neural pathways, RRP is designed to help individuals feel more at ease and to improve mental and physical well-being.”
HEALING FAMILY TRAUMA IMPRINT – 90-minute – in-person or online Zoom session – an opportunity to get to the roots of intergenerational trauma patterns & begin a path towards relational & relationship healing.
HEALING THE BROKEN MOTHER FIELD – Healing the Mother Wound – process unconscious contracts – uncover your hidden family dynamics and trauma history – this is an opportunity to strengthen your internal relationship with your self – as well as your mother, father and extended family – in ways that contribute to receiving more abundance, intimacy, deep care and peace – get in touch to schedule an online session – www.kimcochrane.ca
NERVOUS SYSTEM HEALING for RELATIONSHIPS – (6 Session Package) Awaken in Relationship – Being Present to the Relational Wounding and the Pain We Carry – Ongoing Online Sessions for Couples – Learn to Process Deeply Held Emotion, check-in with each other regularly and learn to communicate from the heart and to connect deeply with one another again or for the first time.
Meet for a series of focused, online sessions to help uncover, understand and practice noticing ongoing nervous system triggers that keep you locked in a negative cycle of conflict / avoidance that is very difficult to resolve. Your early developmental trauma and co-dependent patterns are very much at play in your closest relationships and we can understand and work towards healing:
1) Your individual early developmental trauma patterns – what got missed or neglected and why.
2) Your individual nervous system patterns, responses and reactions – and how you can do your own healing work to soothe and ease your responses and pain.
3) How your family of origin plays a very significant role in your relationships now, how they do, and to work towards a healing program for your relationship, and for each person in the relationship.
4) Be with Relational Wounding & Defensive Accommodations when it shows up in your relationship – and how this effects emotional & physical intimacy.
5) Be with and Face Hot Button issues when they arise and cause conflict.
6) Take 100% responsibility for yourself in your relationship.
Our feelings, bodily sensations and relational patterns are clues to what is being held in the unconscious – so we must be present to them. Conflict can give us the opportunity to awaken out of the conditioning that we are a separate, disconnected self. Get in touch to learn more and work together – www.kimcochrane.ca
- Embrace Personal Responsibility: Understand self-sovereignty as the key to collective healing.
- Discover Your Soul’s Purpose: Explore how to step into the fullest expression of your soul’s purpose for this lifetime.
- Identify Self-Imposed Limitations: Recognize where and how you may be holding yourself back.
- Address Codependency: Identify codependent tendencies and distorted thought processes.
- Unearth Limiting Beliefs: Discover the origin points of limiting beliefs that prevent you from standing in your power.
- Balance Belonging and Authenticity: Balance your innate need for belonging while releasing fear-based ways of relating to others.
- Enhance Community Engagement: Learn to engage in your community and relationships more authentically.
Get in touch to learn more about Embodied Recovery, Nurture Surround & Family Systems Imprint Sessions & Individual Body-Focused Therapy Sessions, and Co-Regulating Touch Bodywork for Trauma, NeuroAffective Touch – The Anxiety, Stress & Trauma Restorative Clinic – virtually online – and to set up a time to work together: www.kimcochrane.ca
“Your support has been life changing for me. The way you work is unique, and it has made a huge change in my life. Thank you so much.”
“I feel alive and have a sense of self for the first time.”
“This work has helped me to accept myself layer by layer, become curious about myself and life, and learn to feel embodied feelings of joy.”
