Somatic Integration & Embodied Recovery – Co-Regulating Touch Bodywork for Trauma – Embodied Safety, Expanded Nervous System Capacity & Renegotiating Defensive Protective Responses Held in Your Body – Access Core Embodiment – Say Yes to What is Unfolding Deep Inside of You.
“In every human being there is a special heaven, whole and unbroken.” ~ Paracelsus
There’s a place deep inside of you that wants your attention. This is an invitation into the depths of your being. An experience of yourself and your body as it is. Whole and unbroken.
We will go slowly and take time – allowing for embodied presence.
Feel what your body is holding and allow it to flow through you.
Soften self-protective strategies.
Notice your aliveness and flowing energy.
Connect to your inner world and sense the safety that is here for you now.
What draws you towards working somatically in the body in this way?
What is happening in your life now that needs tending to?
How does it feel when we slow down and attend to what is painful or difficult?
How can I learn to know myself more fully?
These parts of us wait for us to rescue them so that they can receive warmth and love and acknowledge the needs that got missed.
As we allow the body to share its story, we support the thwarted survival energy that was bound up in that memory to flow through the body in completion.
As we metabolize experiences and emotions that have been stuck in the body in fight, flight or freeze survival responses, we allow more of the light to enter into our body once again.
We unlock the innate wisdom, life force essence and embodied aliveness that has been frozen beneath the trauma imprint. We become more present in our body.
We learn to turn towards ourselves, rather than turn away, growing our inner compassionate witness, the part of us that can hold the younger parts of us with wholehearted presence.
I feel so grateful to accompany so many courageous people opening towards healing.
There is an innate movement towards our embodied wholeness that is inherent within every human heart and body.
Our bodies are always seeking the completion of trauma imprints of what happened to us and times when there wasn’t enough safety to hold us and embrace all of our emotions in that moment.
Listen to the ways your body and heart are sharing their story to you through the language of sensations, images or memories that arise.
What were the prominent sensations, emotions, images/colours and thoughts that you noticed on the inside of you?
If there was one thing that you could do right now for yourself and your body what would it be?
Some of us are feeling weighed down, numb or struggling with feelings of overwhelm, right now. We may be experiencing more difficult feelings and experiencing more feelings of anxiousness and hypervigiliance. During our time together, we will meet what is being held in your nervous system, by way of metabolizing sensation in the body, recognizing micro-moments of nervous system dysregulation and exploring ways to create resources in the body and move into more feelings of safety, connection and nervous system regulation.
The essence of Co-Regulating Touch Bodywork for Trauma is to more deeply feel yourself, and from there to feel into how you move in the world. This bodywork awakens your natural structure and your capacity for allowing support and possibility in your life. This work is a catalyst for connecting deeply and tenderly with ourselves and our communities, touching us with music, movement, and presence.
When working with Co-Regulating Touch SomaFlow Bodywork for Trauma, we reset complex physiological systems and harmonize the flow of energy in the body. We can restore what was missing in the early years – giving you greater awareness of your body’s sensations and the ability to know yourself from the inside out.
Co-Regulating Touch SomaFlow Bodywork for Emotional, Relational & Early Developmental Trauma is often the most effective therapy I can offer clients suffering from trauma symptoms and one where clients experience the most powerful shifts.
When working together, I use an intuitive approach with meticulously researched, backed-by-science methods ensuring each session is highly individualized and optimized for each person. I use a combination of touch methods including Somatic Experiencing, Kathy Kain’s Touch Skills for Trauma, Somatic Resilience & Regulation & Transforming the Experience-Based Brain by Stephen Terrell and NeuroAffective Touch by Aline LaPierre.
I work somatically doing bodywork with clients to support the integration and recovery of early developmental (hidden) trauma, relational trauma, physical injuries, pain and fear of pain – along with these elements (and more) of the healing process to:
- Understanding the somatics of our survival/threat response in response to pain and healing
- Self-protective responses in response to pain
- Perception of threat and non-threat in the body
- Understanding the role of interoception in perception of threat and safety
- Understanding and sensing your survival response and how this may be impeding your recovery
- Neuroception: building a felt sense of safety in the body
- Repair attachment trauma and how it is held in the body
To begin, we go slowly. Attuning to your experience – what is happening in your body and what cannot be seen on the surface – with an understanding that there are parts of us that may be hidden due to hidden trauma – and that need a slow, nurturing pace to feel safe.
For true and deep 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.
For those who would like to focus on a body-focused, somatic approach, we can do this by sitting in chairs across from each other or where you are lying 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 – 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, muscles, organs and joints in the body. There may also be some movement involved. Sessions are done fully clothed.
This body-based method helps you heal physical, emotional and psychological shock states, early developmental trauma states, chronic stress and long-held trauma. It works directly with the autonomic nervous system to discharge stress and trauma and balance and restore equilibrium.Prior to your first session, you will need to fill in some paperwork and bring it with you to your first session to give me a sense of what is happening for you right now in your body, mind and heart.
Learning to deeply care for ourselves – and heal from chronic stress and exhaustion – allows ease and aliveness in to your life. This work helps to restore core regulation – and accesses layers of your experience that are not accessed by traditional therapy – your symptoms are a natural response to a dysregulated nervous system.
You have an important role to play in your own healing.
Heal deeply held trauma and awaken to your body’s wisdom.
Say yes to the life that is awakening inside of you.
Cultivate inner and outer resources to help you thrive in your life.
This work provides you to access a process of allowing deep wisdom of the body to help you navigate how you live, work and heal in the world.
• Understand the dynamics of your own energy patterns.
• Nourish and rejuvenate in healthy, lifegiving ways.
• Remain grounded and present, even when stress arises in your life.
• Create healthy boundaries that enhance your connection to the world.
If the threat gets closer, you will mobilize a flight, fight, or freeze response to escape or defeat the threat.
- When flight gets stuck in your body, you feel ungrounded, restless, anxious, jittery, oversensitive and overstimulated.
- When fight gets stopped up there, you may be triggered and angry at the slightest provocation. This level is overcharged with aggression that needs to discharge.
- When freeze sets in and doesn’t have the safe conditions you need to thaw, energy flow stops in your body. You feel numb and disconnected.
Your orienting response is a biologically ingrained survival mechanism you use all the time to assess your surroundings for danger.
As we take the time to respect this instinct and give it space, you will notice your level of nervous system activation is coming down already. This is called settling.
I invite you to attune to sensations in your body.
Your attention may land on painful, uncomfortable sensations or easier, more pleasant sensations.
The uncomfortable sensations are areas of blockage in your energy and an incomplete stress responses stored in your nervous system at the level of your physical body.
I help you to go into those more difficult places, take some time, get more information in the form of sensation, image, memory, emotion, then come back out into the easier areas of sensation-or energy flow.
We slowly nudge the bound energy to wake up, move and clear out.
When that stress energy animates and begins to discharge:
- emotions may arise
- you may feel more sensations or different sensations
- you may remember memories related to the sensations
- you may experience a shaking sensation or heat in the body
…as your nervous system discharges stored up stress and overwhelm – our hidden trauma is dissolving.
Do you want to feel less anxious and hypervigiliant (feeling revved up all the time)?
Do you want to sleep better, move through difficult emotions such as anger – and create healthy boundaries in your relationships?
And notice how that feels in your body when you anchor to that knowing – allowing yourself to breathe in to the body and heart as you meet the tender parts that arise.
Ask your heart what it needs to feel nurtured and nourished in this moment.
This is the heart of remembering your wholeness.
[email protected] / www.s3p.d51.myftpupload.com
Whole Body 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.Get in touch to learn more about working with me – [email protected] / www.s3p.d51.myftpupload.com
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.
BEFRIEND YOUR BODY – EMBODIED RECOVERY for DISORDERED EATING offers a somato-psycho-social model – expanding beyond the current bio-psycho-social model to include the role of the body as the missing link to effective treatment for disordered eating. The core principles of this approach address the intersection between somatic organization, the subjective experience of self, and our basic human need for attachment/bonding and protective defenses. The science behind the process is supported by the contributions of pioneers such as Peter Levine, Dan Seigel, Stephen Porges, Pat Ogden, Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen and Allan Schore.
THE SAFE & SOUND PROTOCOL (SSP) is a five-hour auditory intervention for adults and children – using headphones – that is intended to accelerate the effectiveness of other modalities by preparing the client’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.
Other Offerings – Nurture Surround Healing Session– 90-minute In-Person session. Allow yourself to slow down and experience deep healing. You are deeply supported on the table with weighted blankets, soft pillows and bean bags on your body – you choose what is most comfortable for you – providing soft, nurturing care – feeling supported and held – with choice. We will take time to attune to your body’s core needs and comfort at a deep level. Your needs are important. I will use a variety of touch skills with you – and invite you to place a hand wherever you would like to on your body – and to pause, slow down and notice what you feel.
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. 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 the 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 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.Somatic Body Learning & Practice and Somatic Experiencing Trauma Co-Regulating Touch Bodywork for Emotional, Relational & Early Developmental Trauma 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 Embodied Recovery for Disordered Eating, The Safe & Sound Protocol (SSP), 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] 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, Attachment, Restoration & Building Resilience.
Easing the Body ~ Calming the Mind ~ Opening the Heart.
Somatic Experiencing ~ Somatic Practices ~
Co-Regulating Touch SomaFlow Bodywork for Emotional, Relational & Early Developmental Trauma ~ Movement Practices.
Whole Body Systems Approach for Healing Chronic Illness & Inflammation.
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.
Somatic Practice – Inhabit your entire back – press your back against a wall or the floor and notice how each part of your back feels as you press it against the surface – your shoulder, your shoulder blade, spine, hips, upper back, middle back, lower back – go slowly and notice each area – soften your breath and slow down to notice. Take your time. There’s no way to do this wrong.
[email protected] / www.s3p.d51.myftpupload.com“Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bow lines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”~ Mark Twain
