Francie White, PhD, GCFP, SEP
Let me tell you a story ...
Years ago, I was an egghead 🤓, perfectly content to sit around thinking deep thoughts 🤔, ordinary thoughts 😐, stupid thoughts 🙃, any kind of thoughts, as long as I kept thinking, all the time.
But along with all of this thinking came a disconnection ✂️ from my body that eventually caught up with me.
When I was 43 years old, I had arthritis in my lower spine that I managed by swimming 🏊 and deep water exercising.
But, I was only managing 📋.
I woke up in pain 😩 every morning and had to steady myself for at least ten seconds to take my first step.
By the time I was 52 years old, I had developed a debilitating pain in my neck that I could not manage 😱.
Every micro-movement of my head was sheer agony 🤯.
One day I received an email through my grapevine 🍇 about a woman who was giving a Feldenkrais workshop.
I eagerly signed up for the workshop and for private sessions with Dr. Leah Berne, a retired Jungian psychoanalyst 🧐.
In the first ten minutes, she told me that the body holds trauma 💣 and I believed her.
I spent the next seven years figuring out 💡 exactly what she meant by that.
Within a few months my neck was manageable and only returned under extraordinary stress 🧟♀️.
The pain in my neck was an alarm bell 🚨 that I was not listening to.
I didn’t understand the language ⾆ of the body, sensation and movement.
It was a slow process 🐢 to learn to stay present in my body.
I didn’t feel at home there ⛺️.
After a couple of years, I finally understood what Leah meant when she asked me, “Wasn’t that movement delicious 🍩?”
I soon started looking 👀 for Feldenkrais training programs.
By the end of the first segment of training, I could put my pants 👖 on in the morning without sitting down for the first time in fifteen years.
By the end of my first year of training, the arthritis in my back was gone 😂.
I had learned how to move my pelvis 💃in all three dimensions.
I was connecting with more than just my body; I was connecting with that terrified little girl who had her own story to tell 💔.
I completed my training 👩🎓 in 2018 and went on to complete basic and advanced trainings in Somatic Experiencing® and HeartMath®. I work with traumatic experiences as well as chronic pain and health issues.
The body holds trauma.
... and share with you what I learned.
"I think, therefore I am," is the wrongest idea ever put forward.
At the core of our being is not our thinking self but our moving and feeling self. Learning to reconnect with our Self is to let go of thinking and embrace our core.
I call what I do Somatic Integration. We are connecting the body and the mind through the heart.
Training
I have BA in letters, an MA and a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Oklahoma.
I began training in the Feldenkrais Method® in 2015 and graduated in 2018.
I started the Somatic Experiencing® training in 2019 and finished in 2021.
I have also completed advanced trainings for near death experiences and medical trauma with Peter Levine and coupling dynamics, touch skills and somatic narrative trainings with Kathy Kain.
I am currently assisting with SE trainings in Portland.
I am certified in HeartMath® and trauma-sensitive HeartMath® techniques. This includes training in the use of HeartMath® technologies and biofeedback techniques that allow us to monitor the improvement of the coherence in our physiological system.
My greatest strength in my practice is the integrative nature of my training and experience. This is all about connecting with yourself, learning to listen and respond to yourself physically, emotionally, mentally and spiritually.
I have published my story on Amazon.com. Thanks For Choosing Love: The Healing Power of Loving Consciousness, by Elaine Porter (me).
I am currently working on another book and I can't decide between calling it Feel at Home in Your Body or I Rationalize, Therefore I Am. I welcome your input.