“Time and space are needed to heal. True healing and deeper growth takes time. Trust the divine process.” ~ Baba Yaga
Grief has arrived and I’m feeling it in my body. My beloved dog Dylan has passed, and I’m feeling a heaviness in everything that wasn’t there before. Losing a beloved is so hard. We are glad that he is no longer suffering, and I still wish that he could be with me. This is the depth of love. I am practicing acceptance of what is.
Somatic healing has made me a much more emotional person than I once was, and I am allowing waves of emotion to come and go, while remembering the sense of peace that Dylan brought me. He gave me a sense of unconditional love that I’ve never known before he came along – and it’s hard.
Many of us experience the world from a closed, fearful heart. We can begin to feel more love and support from others than we ever thought possible – this is the power of somatic healing.
We begin by slowly feeling some of the pain of the past that we are holding in our bodies – we feel it, instead of talking about it – and we make more space for support and space to come in. This helps reduce overwhelm, and change the pattern our bodies are holding between support and care and its’ connection to pain. We want to create moments of ease – we deserve to treat ourselves with kindness.
Healing of any lasting depth takes commitment, patience and trust.
You’re not going to miss out on what is meant for you.
Take the pressure off yourself, someone else, a situation or relationship.
Slow the process down. Trust the process. Take your time.
Turn towards yourself, and notice what you feel.
Allow yourself to get in touch with your body.
Soften into any tension that you are holding, and allow yourself to breathe.
What sensations do you notice?
Stay with the sensations you notice and allow the energy to flow from this place.
Notice if you feel as though you belong to yourself and will not be pressured into becoming who others want you to be. Healing our boundaries happens when we begin shifting from the systemic belief that you belong to others when really you belong to yourself.
Early developmental (hidden) trauma disconnects us from what is true for us at the deepest level, and we are sometimes not able to know what we want and/or whether we feel worthy enough to have it.
As women, we may have forgotten our deepest wisdom due to thousands of years of patriarchal oppression, but this wisdom has never forgotten us. It lives in our body, it lives in the deep knowing of our soul. It is the very fabric of which everything in existence has been made.
There are jewels to be found in our innermost depths, if we are willing to slow down, feel and get in touch with these parts of ourselves. We can bring our deepest treasure back up into the living waking reality of our everyday lives.
This is somatic healing.
When we as women, come back into connection with ourselves and learn to trust the holy wisdom within us, we influence our own lives and the formation of a new culture that embraces cyclical wisdom and honours the female body as the source of all life. We are all midwives of great change.
Recently, one of my clients told me that one of the biggest gifts she gave herself this year, was the gift of support. This is somatic healing.
Not being able to ask for and receive support is one thing that keeps us stuck in cycles of suffering. Be it emotional suffering, relational suffering, suffering with chronic ill health or chronic pain, or financial suffering.
For many of my clients, not being able to ask for support has symbolized their developmental and complex trauma. Many of us didn’t have an emotionally consistent caregiver as a child, and had to do so much by themselves, that the deep feeling of it’s all on me has carried over into adulthood leaving you feeling burned out.
What we know to be true is that everyone needs support at times and it takes courage to reach out to ask for it.
I am grateful to be walking this path with you. Sometimes, we’ve tried everything under the sun to support ourselves to heal, yet it still feels as though something hasn’t fully clicked yet. There’s a longing for more.
Or parts of ourselves that still feel overwhelmed, reactive, and/or stressed. Or maybe we have a sense of parts of ourselves that are aching to be embodied and expressed, yet we are not quite sure how to fully get there.
You have tended to so much, you are deeply self-aware, likely highly sensitive, and still get thrown off centre at times. You know that there’s more for you around the corner. And that’s where I come in. When we tend to trauma and allow your nervous system to be supported with great care and loving presence, a deep unfolding can happen.
As a 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
