Living Body Present – Heart Medicine for Cultivating Inner Health – Unwinding Defensive Accommodations Held in the Body – Moving into Deep Whole Body Coherence – Soften What Your Body is Holding – Embrace the Feminine Wild – Encounter Breath, Movement, Stillness & Sound – Allow Space for Deep Connection.

June 14, 2023

“Trauma compromises our ability to engage with others by replacing patterns of connection with patterns of protection.” ~ Dr. Stephen Porges

Healing trauma isn’t about fixing or figuring out. It’s not about pushing for change. Old school trauma healing pushes us past our edges when we’re already overwhelmed and carrying too much. We can’t talk trauma away.

Our bodies carry the history of our lives. They carry the map for how we got here and they also have the wisdom for how to remember our wholeness. Healing in mind/body/spirit/soul is where it’s at and begins by remembering again and again that we don’t need to be fixed and that we can bring softness to our experience every day.

By working with your nervous system and welcoming all parts of who you are, we can support your body to process through the parts of your history that still send you into reactivity and keep you stuck and come into a place of peace and expansiveness.

When we become regulated and steady, we can meet life wholeheartedly without all the noise. Trauma healing is about coming into new relationship with ourselves, all we’ve been through, where we’re headed and everything around us. We’re able to respond instead of react.

I help those who want to slow down, connect back to themselves, heal and recover from the effects of early developmental trauma with Relational, Somatic & Energetic Bodywork and Therapies.

Let’s create a safe, resourced container for you to touch in on challenges you are holding, integrate them and become more of who you are. As a Relational Somatic Therapist, Co-Regulating Touch Bodywork for Trauma Practitioner and Somatic Practitioner, I weave together wisdom from Somatic Experiencing, Relational Family Trauma Imprint Healing, Attachment Theory, Somatic Resilience & Regulation, Transforming the Experience Based Brain, Energy Medicine, Somatic Movement, Pre & Peri Natal Somatic Therapy, Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy and Inner Child Healing, among many other modalities.

What if new aspects of yourself were already inside of you waiting to be discovered?

My job is not to tell you what to do, but to provide you with space for a whole person approach, along with a framework and conditions that invite you to soften, unwind and learn from yourself. Then, we both get to be surprised and delighted by our discoveries.

What if you didn’t have to fix anything?

Just allow.
Let’s go slowly and welcome in moments of safety.

 
What feels stuck?
What wants to move?

Let’s find a pace that works for you.

And by the way, what feels like it’s emerging through you now?
 
Each week, I speak to a several loving souls who are coming to my work for the first time. These calls often begin in the same way(s) – I just don’t feel the way I want to and I’ve been feeling this way a long time. I think my body or my lack of connection with it, has something to do with it. I feel more irritable and angry in my relationships or at work, and I don’t know what to do.
 
Can you tell me what you do?
 
I don’t know what it is, but I am drawn to exploring it more with you. I feel anxious a lot or I have a lot of grief or anger or sadness and I can’t seem to shake it, and/or I have a chronic illness or chronic pain that I haven’t been able to receive healing for. 
 
Sound familiar?
 
Maybe you resonate with some of these words and of course, you have your own body story and life experiences. I welcome you to more fully explore the nourishing depth, love and care that happens during our work together.

This is a unique and process of bringing together a Body of Work that you will experience and be changed by, if you are willing to step forward towards a new experience for your whole being. You will move out of chronic stuckness and freeze, get an opportunity to feel your anger and express it and practice running away if you feel like fleeing. You don’t need to be fixed, you will be lovingly accepted as you are right now and know that the old ways of healing trauma – fixing ourselves never helped us and only made us feel worse.

 
I will meet you where you and your body are right now, so you can be more present to yourself and your life, and I will not go at a pace that does not resonate for you. You can’t fail at this.
 
Together, we will move through a Sacred Embodiment & Body First Signature process:
 
1) Go deep in to the body – receive and allow for the release deeply held survival energy with transforming touch or intentional touch bodywork for trauma and somatic healing processes for lasting nervous system regulation.
 
2) Heal a deep disconnection and divide within the body that keeps us from what’s true and wonderful about ourselves.
 
3) Cultivate deeply felt self-compassion that acts as a healing balm when we are feeling difficult emotions.
 
4) Heal your family trauma imprint – heal mother and father wounding and intergenerational trauma.
 
5) Connect with your younger part and begin to cultivate a deep connection and relationship with that part of you in your every day life. Uncovering critical, judgemental and sometimes mean internal talk and creating space for understanding, warmth, deep care and gentleness.
 
6) Restore feelings of safety and ease in your body and your experience of life – live in clarity and find relationships and work that you love.
 
7) Move through a safe and sound listening protocol that resets your vagus nerve, and the social engagement aspect of your nervous system.
 
8) Integrate reflexes, recalibrate your fear response and your self-protective, defensive accommodations.
 
9) Process emotions that your body has been holding within you, your whole life – so you can feel free, awake and alive – every day of your life.
 
10) Connect with something deeper in you – your soul – accessing your purpose, joy and relational insights to make your body, mind and heart feel more vibrant and energized.
 
During our work together, you will move towards more opportunities for nervous system regulation, have an opportunity to create safe attachment, recover primary reflexes, increase your window of tolerance and allow your body to release the stored bio-physiology of developmental trauma and traumatic life experiences.
 
I focus on supporting people to build their inner resources and self-awareness – so they can connect with their full aliveness – with ease.

What supports us 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.

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 behavior, we do things we regret or 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.

Ready to begin your somatic journey?

With co-regulating somatic bodywork, we can finally heal and turn our hearts towards life in a new way. When we can welcome all parts of ourselves, a steadiness and soothing arrives that embraces all that we carry and all that we meet in our lives in the day-to-day. This advanced trauma specialization meets people with developmental and complex trauma in ways many of us had only dreamed of.

 
I am deeply honored to offer this attachment-based support that:

  • gives us back our health
  • brings us into new relationship with the pains and pleasures we carry
  • helps us take up nourishment in body, mind and soul
  • re-connects us to our purpose, goals and desires
  • offers us choice and helps us advocate for what we want and need
  • reminds us of our worthiness and belonging
  • brings us home to ourselves and our bodies
  • helps us be more genuine and stand more fully in who we are
  • repairs our heavy hearts and helps them soften
  • shows us the strength of our boundaries and helps us feel powerful enough to use them
  • helps us breathe and move and sleep more easily
  • gives us the more that we’ve been wanting in ways that we never knew were possible
What are sessions like?

This advanced nervous system regulation modality called Transforming Experienced Brain and is a precise method that involves several protocols where we work directly with different systems in the body that are connected to the brain and central nervous system’s responses.

This connecting, gentle and present work can include:

  • you talking or being silent depending on what feels most alive for you in session
  • sharing about past, present or future and slowing down a lot together to meet what’s here in a resourced way
  • being welcome to bring all parts of yourself
  • hands-on or intentional support (can be done on a table in my office or intentionally on Zoom)
  • being guided for most or all of each session through the body-based and co-regulation protocol and sinking into support
  • trauma informed mindfulness and breathing practices
  • feeling a lot better – possibly beyond anything you’ve been able to imagine
When we haven’t received emotional regulation in our family of origin, we are living in survival mode.

Being with stressful emotions, emotional reactivity, and emotional shutdown – here’s how to end the loop or cycle:
 
1) Practice self-witnessing – start to observe yourself – notice when you feel highly  reactive, shut down and how you deal with conflict. This is the awareness stage.
 
2) Practice the pause – the pause gets you out of reactive autopilot – notice the sensations in your body – is your heart racing? Feel these things. Practice being with these sensations and feelings.
 
3) Notice your impulse(s) – you have automatic impulses when stressed – eating, anger, impulsive decisions
 
4) Self-soothe – allow your energy to flow through you – take a walk, heating pad on your back, shake or move your body to release energy. Soothing allows your nervous system to regulate.
 
5) Choose – choice is missing when we are in a reactive or shut down state. With practice you’ll be able to choose how you respond. You’ll gain confidence because you are reacting from your values, not a fleeting emotion.
 
How can you bring intentional somatic practice into your life?

  • Sit quietly with your eyes closed for five or more minutes each day.
  • Set your phone alarm to ring hourly as a signal to slow down and take a conscious breath.
  • When you’re challenged, take your time to contemplate, “What is a loving compassionate response you can have towards yourself in this moment?”
  • Notice naturally arising moments of silence, gratitude, heartfelt connection, and peace.

Keep returning home, over and over, and the moments of your life become a living testament to expanding compassion, freedom, grounded wisdom, and peace beyond peace.

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.

Somatic Approaches You’ll Experience:

  • A blend of scientific, research-based perspectives along with eastern-focused philosophies & approaches, such as Buddhist principles and perspectives from Somatic Experiencing (SE), Craniosacral Therapy, Feldenkrais, Breathwork, Clinical Somatics Movement Therapy, Body-Mind Centering
  • Co-Regulating Touch Bodywork for Trauma
  • Transforming Touch (TEB) Practice
  • Somatic Resilience & Regulation
  • Primitive Reflex Integration
  • Inner child healing & compassionate inner re-parenting
  • Shadow integration
  • Intuition growth & development
  • Breathwork for somatic & subconscious rewiring

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.

Our early developmental and attachment wounding is a wound with life itself. To an infant, our attachment with our mother is everything – our very experience of ourselves and of the world was filtered through the body and psyche of our mother.

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.

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.

Ready to take the next steps in your healing?

I warmly welcome you to connect with me.

all my love ~ Kim xoxoxo
[email protected] / www.s3p.d51.myftpupload.com

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.

The POLYVAGAL THEORY – SAFE & SOUND PROTOCOL OFFERING – The Safe & Sound Protocol (SSP) is an auditory listening intervention for adults and children – using headphones – that is intended to accelerate the effectiveness of other modalities by preparing each person’s emotional and physiological state. Dr. Stephen Porges (developer of The Safe & Sound Protocol & of The Polyvagal Theory) explains that we need a calm autonomic/physiological state for health, growth and restoration, and achieving this becomes the foundation of an effective therapy. 

The Safe & Sound Protocol is a way to support a change  in your physiological state; opening the system to further neural change and improvement for other therapies that follow. The process is designed to reduce stress and auditory sensitivity while enhancing social engagement and resilience. The intervention uses prosodic vocal music that has been filtered to train the middle ear muscles to focus in on the frequency envelope of human speech. You’ll find you are better able to feel calm – less chronically stressed and/or anxious.  Clients who have experienced long-held trauma and are healing from PTSD, troubling chronic health concerns, chronic pain and troubling chronic emotional responses, can experience an increased sense of safety in their physiological state. The Safe & Sound Protocol (SSP)+ Co-Regulating Touch Trauma Resolution Bodywork = Somatic Healing

FEMININE EMBODIMENT – get in touch with your feminine energetic dynamics, internal felt sense, your deepest heart, masculine and feminine energies, layers of dissociation, practice pleasure practices that can help you unravel pleasure and sensuality, 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 on the table, in-person and online via Zoom. Let’s explore together – [email protected]

EMBRACE THE FEMININE WILD SOMATIC HEALING COLLECTIVE- Coming in the Fall 2023 and Winter 2024 – NEW Online Group Community Healing Program – Somatic Trauma Resolution Healing Group Process for Women – Feel the Loving Support of Community – Nervous System Healing, Learn About Your Body, Discover the Awesome Power for Trauma Healing within the Feminine Body – Cultivating Conscious Trauma Healing – Come back to your body and feel into the Power of the Feminine. Movement, Breath, Sound, Body Awareness, Body Exploration, Healing. Wait list coming soon.

HEART HEALING INTENSIVE SESSIONS – Heart healing sessions are all about you, your path and healing. These can be monthly sessions or several sessions scheduled over 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.

The Heart Healing Sessions are held in my office in Markham. You can schedule between several sessions over a period of days. Since this work is done away from your typical day to day life, integration of the work is deep and truly transformative.

I am sending softness, gentleness and love from my heart to yours. May you slow down and receive the wisdom your body is seeking to share with you breath by breath.

Let’s plan your sessions in advance – if you are interested in scheduling or have questions, please get in touch and we will make a plan for your visit – [email protected] / www.s3p.d51.myftpupload.com

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.

DISCOVER YOUR INNER MOTHER– Healing the Mother Wound – uncover your hidden family dynamics and trauma history – this is an opportunity to strengthen your internal relationship with your inner your self – as well as 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

THE COUPLES SESSIONS- Awaken in Relationship – Being Present to the Relational Wounding and the Pain We Carry – Ongoing Bi-Weekly or Monthly Sessions for Couples (online or in-person) – 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.

1) Be with Relational Wounding when it shows up in your relationship
2) Be with and face Hot Button issues when they arise and cause conflict
3) 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 – [email protected] – www.s3p.d51.myftpupload.com

HEALING CODEPENDENT PATTERNS IN RELATIONSHIPS – healing through the body for codependent patterns in relationships – healing from resentment, blame, shame and addictive patterns – nurturing your inner child – learning your needs in relationships – and finding ease in the body, mind and heart for longstanding conditioned patterns.

SESSIONS FOR INDIVIDUALS & COUPLES – Relational Neurobiological Somatic Healing -an Embodied invitation for you – to slow down and feel the strength of a supportive resource, move beyond blame and notice how our nervous system states inform our interactions with our partner, 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.

Get in touch to learn more about The Safe & Sound Protocol (SSP), 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 – in-person  and/or online – and to set up a time to work together:   [email protected]

Using mind-body skills to stabilize your nervous system – befriending, grounding, slowing down, tracking and resourcing. We will listen to your body’s narrative while utilizing body-mind emotion dialogue. We will explore biological survival strategies and process historical trauma by creating moment-to-moment interpersonal experiences of safe connection. We will utilize non-cognitive senses of relational connection – auditory, visual, movement, and touch – co-creating manageable ways to defuse internal feelings of pressure, anxiety and stress.

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 ~ Movement Practices ~ Whole Body Systems Approach for Healing Inflammation.
Move Energy Through the Body – Movement & Breathwork – discover energetic awareness and simplicity.
Somatic Reclaiming – integrating your body, mind and heart.
Pre and Perinatal Therapies – consciousness begins before birth.
Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy – restore integrity in our living, fluid body.

Somatic Healing work can be done effectively online, as well as in person – online sessions are available for those who would prefer not to come in to the office at this time, for those who 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.

You will learn to feel and by doing so, you will move towards whole body health and well-being that you can feel within you.

Get in touch to learn more about working with me – [email protected] / www.s3p.d51.myftpupload.com

Feedback from a recent client:
I want to thank you for your knowledge and expertise with somatic therapy…its really helping me a lot!

“The key is to be here, fully connected with the moment, paying attention to the ordinary details of life” ~ Pema Chödrön

 

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Testimonial 1

When I came to you I felt confused, disconnected and broken. Now, I'm on my way to feeling whole. Thank you.
Kim Cochrane
2016-10-06T10:59:12-04:00
When I came to you I felt confused, disconnected and broken. Now, I'm on my way to feeling whole. Thank you.

Testimonial 2

I’m so glad I’m giving myself space to explore what’s happening in my life and to understand my feelings.
Kim Cochrane
2016-10-06T10:59:51-04:00
I’m so glad I’m giving myself space to explore what’s happening in my life and to understand my feelings.

Testimonial 3

I've wanted to do this for a while and I'm so glad I did - I trust myself more now, I feel more calm and open - working together has changed the course of my life.

Kim Cochrane
2016-10-06T11:00:16-04:00
I've wanted to do this for a while and I'm so glad I did - I trust myself more now, I feel more calm and open - working together has changed the course of my life.
0
Kim Cochrane