May 27, 2020
“Until we receive with an open heart, we are never really giving with an open heart.” ~ Brene Brown
I want to welcome you just as you are – into an ongoing, experiential journey into the alive and changing territory of the body. I can help you feel safe in your body and transform stored trauma being held there – along with introducing you to a direct moment-to-moment experience of your body, so it feels safe to heal, safe to live, safe to be you and safe to be a woman.
Are you ready to receive?
You are not broken. You don’t need to be fixed.
Let’s cultivate feeling safe inside of your body. Safety is the treatment.
Let’s understand what you’ve been experiencing – explore your journey up to now – and make sense of it together.
You can begin by turning towards your difficult emotions, body sensations, symptoms, syndromes, chronic pain, stress and illness.
It’s ok to ask, to need, to feel, to be vulnerable.
A powerful insight happens when we realize how much our conditioned patterns keep us away from ease and joy. Many of these patterns have plagued us for years. We hear about freedom as a possibility, but we just don’t know how to find our way there. And meanwhile, the patterns keep getting played out in our minds, our emotions, our relationships, and our bodies.
Every day we wake, we have a choice to make. Will we be the product of our fears or choose to be present in this moment. This ongoing activity and aim of awakening in each and every moment is what it means to actually be awake, connected to your energy and feeling alive.
We heal much more quickly when we welcome in a sense of safety to our system. Our nervous system can relax and we can step down from high alert.
One of the strongest foundations of a sense of safety is a feeling that we are connected to another or to others and that you belong. It can rewire our whole being, allowing us to let go, loosen up, open and receive the love that’s always there, waiting for us.
When we heal from what’s kept us locked up, caged in, exhausted and overwhelmed, we can return to a state of simplicity – and internal strength, resilience, possibility and joy. That’s the alchemy we perform when we heal.
Chronic stress and trauma affect our health and how good we feel in relationships. We can begin to lose sight and perspective – and our past stories and adaptive mechanisms take the front seat. With support we can transform and rewire this nervous system pattern.
Would you be willing to slow down, be with what you are feeling so that you can process and express what is being held in your nervous system?
The chronic stress or anxiety stemming from our earliest life and childhood – keeps us from living the fullness of who we are in the present moment. Our ability to be present with ourselves, with our partners, and with our children is compromised by the effects of this trauma on our bodies, brains and nervous systems. It impacts how we experience and process feelings of safety and threat, it impacts how well, if at all, we come “down” from stressful events, or what events trigger us in the first place.
Living in this state we are constantly trying to control and manage the people and events of our lives, in order to feel better. We’re pushed and pulled by the forces of the world around us, afraid to say no, afraid to disappoint people, and often afraid to say what we need, and that we need help. Many, many women struggle with thyroid conditions and other chronic illnesses, which relates to a connection to our voice, our ability to speak our truth and own it.
No matter how much you understand what trauma is, unless you process stored trauma held in the body, you will may not be free of the symptoms and syndromes that you are experiencing.
When you’ve experienced early developmental trauma, your nervous system begins to dysregulate because of how our bodies respond to the stress of the situation. You did not feel safe. Your primary caregiver was not able to attune to you in the ways that you needed and you emotional needs did not get met. Your body went into survival mode. This is the fight/flight/freeze response. You might recognize yourself as having one or the other or all when you get triggered.
The state of your body and the way you live in it is revealed by the way you move in the world. Women long to connect with their bodies and to access, express and learn about what is deeply in them.
Most of our work in the world is shaped by the demands of the outer world, rather than the inner rhythm of our bodies – now is the time to connect deeply with what is hidden, held and deep embodied within you, and with support, translate the messages that your body is holding.
There are patterns in your body which are supportive and there are chronic defensive holding tension patterns held in your body which inhibit and restrict your emotional and physical health in your life.
Mapping patterns in your body – you can begin to feel what you are holding – and when feeling safe, you can soften and release what is being deeply held in your muscles, bones, organs, pelvic floor and fascia – refining your ability to notice subtle sensations in the body.
Moving energy in your body may mean that you need to grieve a known or unknown past, pre or per-natal or intergenerational wound or expand the way you express yourself in the world. Reclaim the potential of your body, discover your inner mother and cultivate your true feminine nature.
We can tune in to the energetic patterns and qualities being held in your body. As a result of past early developmental or complex trauma, emotional stress, energy blocks and physical injuries.
Becoming aware of your body and beginning to tune in the subtle and deeply held energy in each and every inch of your body, gives you a new sense of attunement about your overall well-being as a more embodied sense of self.
During the process of body-focused embodied awareness, you may notice some areas of the body that are numb or feel disconnected. This type of noticing could be the result of early developmental or intergenerational family trauma, with the particular reasons for this, being completely unknown or hidden to you at this moment.
What is unresolved or traumatic for us – is held in the body and is waiting for resolution and expression. Unresolved internal or external relational conflicts can cause ongoing numbness or tension holding patterns in the body, that may not even be felt or known within you at this time.
Our overwhelm, chronic stress, numbness or freeze is a sign of the disconnection and disembodiment we’ve developed and inherited from personal, familial and even generational imprints.
How to Begin – Coming Out of a Chronic Freeze or Numb Response:
1) Establish safety externally – if our environment isn’t safe our brain stem and nervous system feels as though we’re still in danger, and we can’t be ourselves. We need to be in a safe place to feel and express ourselves when we feel shutdown.
2) Cultivate a felt sense of safety internally – finding somewhere in your body that is a little less painful or shutdown – which is an opening in our physiology – the way to process what feels badly is to focus on what does feel good inside of you now.
3) Feel what is hidden underneath the freeze and shutdown response – the fear, terror, emotion, anxiety and pain. There has been a lot of emotion and feeling suppressed and held inside of you. When our parents were not emotionally attuned to us, we begin to feel as though we are wrong or bad or broken – and we are not any of those things. We can hold feelings in our throat, chest, stomach and other places in the body. As we learn to process these suppressed feelings, we will gradually begin to feel better.
Understanding How Trauma Affects Our Body, Mind & Heart
Trauma is the word we use to describe experiences that we have not been able to metabolize – experiences that were “too much, too soon, or too fast” for us to process. This means any event that challenged the resources we have available to meet the threat we felt.
Developmental and relational trauma are far more pervasive in our society than we may realize; and it can be the product of the way individuals, families and communities have learned to live in their bodies and relate to one another through them. As children, we may not have experienced both the safety and security of attachment to our caregivers. We may not have felt free to be and to express the full spectrum of our humanness is an experience that can live on in our bodies and minds throughout our lives, if we never become conscious of this or do the work to heal it.
Trauma takes a toll on us, and the body holds this.
The science of our nervous system declares that we can rewire our experience of trauma, increase our capacity to be with difficult emotions, become more fully embodied and present, and resolve the trauma of early life. We cultivate awareness through practices that bring us into dialogue again with a more direct – experience of ourselves. The life that is fully present, connected to the internal and external world through the senses, and the only state in which we can finally begin the work of disentangling our voice from the voices of those who’ve shaped how we think about ourselves in past and present.
Reconnecting with our senses, our sensory experience of the world, our impulses, our felt sense, our truth, our voice, our perception, and from that place we can fully inhabit this world, making the noise we need to make when we need to make it, and feeling just as much a part of it as anyone or anything else. This is real empowerment.
You will enter unchartered territory. Becoming courageous in each moment – willing to feel all the uncomfortable feelings, and to hold seemingly contradictory truths at once about your experience. This work is freedom itself, and it is what empowers us to break the cycles of the past, and to influence future generations, to carve out a new legacy for ourselves and for our children.
Trauma shows up in our relationships – and it doesn’t go away if we ignore it. It will leak out in ways that affect your life such as:
– Anger/rage episodes
– Anxiety, panic, depression
– Addictions including being busy all of the time
– Chronic over thinking
– cPTSD/PTSD
– Unable to be present- always thinking about the past or the future
– Dysfunctional, unfulfilling relationships
– Perfectionism
– Chronic feelings of shame
– Exhaustion from always needing to perform and achieve
– I’m not good enough feelings
This work is not a mind-focused thing. It’s a body-focused thing.
You can’t just understand it, you need to feel it.
Regulating your nervous system to feel safe is the ONLY way.
New patterns for the body are established while working with the body over time. To change a core body pattern there needs to be awareness, attunement to sensation, noticing breath and energy flow and repetition to reinforce a slowly emerging new pattern.
By complementing the body’s natural healing processes, Integrative Somatic Nervous System Therapeutic Healing Work, done in-person and online, is a process for healing a wide range of medical symptoms associated with emotional and physical pain and dysfunction, including:
-Chronic Pain
-Migraine Headaches
-Motor-Coordination Impairments
-Concussions and Traumatic Brain Injuries
-Chronic Emotional Concerns such as: Anxiety, Depression and Panic
-Chronic Stress and Tension
-Fibromyalgia and other Connective-Tissue Disorders
-Digestive Concerns and Disorders such as IBS
-Neurovascular or Immune Disorders
-Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
-Post-Surgical Dysfunction
-Chronic Fatigue and Sleeplessness
-Relationship Struggles
-Eating Disorders
Every day you endure stresses and strains and your body absorbs them. Unfortunately, these changes often cause body tissues to tighten and distort our system. These distortions can then cause tension to form around the brain and spinal cord resulting in restrictions. This can create a barrier to the healthy performance of the autonomic nervous system, and potentially every other system it interacts with.
What Happens in a Whole Body Health Somatic Practice session?
During a one-on-one session, you can choose to be either sitting on the couch in front of me, lying on the couch in front of me with pillows supporting you or on Zoom call, from your own home, we join together and listen to what is happening in your autonomic nervous system, your thoughts, as well as other systems in your body, including: your fluid body, connective tissue, breath, bones and skin.
When in-person touch sessions are safe to offer, you have this option to choose from too.
We take time to notice moment to moment – what your body and mind are telling us. Then we make adjustments to enhance emotional and physical somatic wellness. The autonomic nervous system communicates in sensation, emotion, images, and thoughts, as well as through subtle movements and gestures. It is through the vehicle of your nervous system that we find the tools we need to create balance and healing. This is a process of noticing threat and ease in your nervous system – along with witnessing and pausing for sensing what is happening in the here and now.
Whole Body Health Somatic Practice generates a body–wide experience of easing out of rigidity, tension or defensive body holding patterns (excess sympathetic or dorsal tone) and into the flowing ease of the ventral parasympathetic nervous system.
We are setting the conditions for flow to happen again in your nervous system. We have to encourage it with placing our attention into the present moment. There is a rhythm to the timing of the session, so I may ask you to pause and notice what is happening in the here and now, even when you are telling a story. This doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear what you have to say – I am listening to the language of your nervous system, and sometimes that means we need to pause to return to the present.
Sometimes we have old attempts at self-protection stuck in our physiology – and we may feel chronically shut down, stuck or frozen – if this is you, there is also a way to increase the capacity for the energetic “doing” part of the system. The practice of mindful awareness is at the heart of embodied healing, so as we re-encounter feelings and a sense of aliveness, we return to the vital presence that is at the core of being human.
This is deeply attuned work that is highly specialized for you. I want to help you learn about the messages held in your body and how your nervous system responds to stress and trauma. I will also help your body and mind feel safe at the level of the nervous system.
This is not the time to ignore yourself.
When we feel supported, we can renegotiate the survival energy that has been running through your nervous system for months or years of our lives.
I’m here with you.
You deserve love and safety, just because you are you.
This work is body-based.
Somatic. You learn it by embodying it, living it.
So it changes us at the deepest level.
The way you recognize and tend to your own needs.
The way you pay attention to the signals of your body.
The way you rest, move, the way you breathe, the way you live, work and love.
This is a deeply rooted approach to understanding attachment, how trauma imprints the body and trauma resolution and recovery through the body, and discovering your inner mother. Within a safe container, engage in a grounded, safe approach to healing trauma patterns.
Slow down – develop a fuller awareness of sensation, movement, and a more ease-full way of being. You will learn how to stay with your feelings slowly – instead of “checking out” when things feel difficult or scary.
I am now offering in-person sessions for those who would prefer to work in-person. I am also offering online sessions for those who feel more comfortable doing so.
With sensitive and individual attention, I can support you to find a greater sense of well-being through these powerfully effective teachings.
I see you.
I know you want to feel better.
Listen to your heart whispers and the longings it holds.
Holding you in my heart
Get in touch – and let’s talk about your experience now and how I can support you – and I will answer any questions you may have about working together.
with love from my heart, Kim xoxoxo
[email protected] / www.s3p.d51.myftpupload.com
Whole Body Health Somatic Practice – Well-Being from the Inside Out.
Psychosomatic Body-Focused Practitioner – 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. Get in touch to learn more about working with me – [email protected]
What to Expect During a Session
For true emotional and physical healing, I know that 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 Co-Regulating Touch work 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.
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 – 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.
3-Month Online Offering – Cultivate Your Somatic Aliveness & Deep Rest – access deeply held emotional, physical and relational concerns and focus deeply on you during this program. Starting with a one-hour introductory session, then a 1.5 hour family systems trauma session – A total of 6 one-hour sessions, on Zoom, one 1.5 hour family trauma healing session, and homework to help access internal transformation from anxiety, depression, panic, trauma, stress, eating disorders, relational struggles, chronic illness or health concerns – get in touch to learn more – [email protected]
Other Offerings – Family Systems Imprint – 90-minute Session – an in-person or virtual online Zoom session – an opportunity to get to the roots of intergenerational trauma patterns & begin a path towards relational & relationship healing.
Discover Your Inner Mother – Healing the Mother Wound – uncover your family dynamics and trauma history – this is an opportunity to strengthen your internal relationship with your mother, father and extended family – in ways that contribute to healing – get in touch to schedule an online or in-person session – [email protected] / www.s3p.d51.myftpupload.com
Sessions for Individuals & Couples – an invitation for you – to feel present in your body, to unwind patterns of anxiety, depression, anger, hopelessness, chronic stress & pain, trauma, regulate your nervous system, to cultivate trust in your moment-to-moment experience, your naturally wise heart, and your capacity to connect to yourself, those you love and the love that surrounds us.
Somatic Body Learning & Practice and Somatic Experiencing Co-Regulating Touch Bodywork sessions are available for you now. Waking you up to Somatic Resilience & Regulation – the innate wisdom of your body, healing inherited trauma patterns, feeling yourself below the level of thought, and accessing your full beingness in flowing, fluid motion. Get in touch to learn more about Co-Regulating Touch Bodywork for Trauma Resolution, Somatic Experiencing (SE), Connect with Your Ancestors with Family Systems Imprint Sessions & Individual Body-Focused Therapy Sessions – The Whoe Body Health Somatic Practice – Anxiety, Stress & Trauma Restorative Clinic – in-person, online or a mix of one or more of these sessions – and to set up a time to work together: [email protected]
Whole Body Health Somatic Practice – The Anxiety, Stress & Trauma Restorative Clinic:
Creating Well-Being Through Nervous System Regulation. Heal Relational Trauma – Break the Cycle of Inherited Family Trauma.
Nurturing Connection, Restoration & Building Resilience.Easing the Body ~ Calming the Mind ~ Opening the Heart.Somatic Experiencing ~ Somatic Practices ~ Co-Regulating Touch Bodywork for Trauma Resolution ~ Movement Practices ~ Whole Body Systems Approach for Healing Inflammation.Somatic work can be done effectively online, as well as in person – online sessions are available for those who travel regularly, have a busy schedule, live far away from the office, or prefer to work from your own home – [email protected]
Working together enables everyone who is willing to do the work an opportunity to decrease feelings of anxiety, pain, depression, chronic stress, pain or illness – as well decrease the chatter in the mind, and ground your mind and body with the depth of the intelligence found in the body. Experience lasting somatic transformation and feelings of calm, peace and wholeness – within your own body and within your relationships.
Working deeply at the roots in the body – within the nervous system and stress organs – to cultivate and sustain embodied health and well-being for everyone who chooses to take part.
“You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.” ~ F. Scott Fitzgerald
