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Work with Me

Let me give you an idea of how somatic integration works.

Somatic Integration

I started this healing process when I was turning forty and had never been so depressed in my life. I just couldn't keep friends, partly because of my terrible boundaries and partly because of my emotional disregulation that scared them all off. I hated myself and didn't know why.

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I resolved to change and spent the next ten years doing all the usual healing modalities, self-help books, New Year's resolutions, therapy, a twelve-step program, and workshops. I had better boundaries but I still had emotional disregulation and still felt like crap about myself.

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​Dr. Leah Berne was my fifth therapist and I knew I hit the jackpot. She was a Feldenkrais practitioner and a retired Jungian analyst. She started the process of integrating my body back into my sense of Self. In fact, it was the day that could finally sense my entire spine that I started looking for Feldenkrais training programs. 

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I describe recovering from trauma like walking out of the desert. You find an oasis and think you're saved. â€‹But if you keep walking, you always find yourself back out in the desert again. â€‹And if you keep walking, you always find another oasis. The trick is to keep walking.

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Somatic Integration is the biggest oasis I have found yet. I started the Somatic Experiencing training a few months after I finished the Feldenkrais training and immediately felt the healing process begin anew. After I finished the Somatic Experiencing training, I discovered Kathy Kain in Portland and have done many of her advanced trainings. I also had the privilege of participating in Peter Levine's Eye of the Needle training and worked through my traumatic birth experience. During the pandemic, I discovered HeartMath and completed certifications for Health Care practitioners and for trauma-sensitive care. HeartMath absolutely saved me during the pandemic.

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Over the years, I have processed and integrated so many experiences from growing up in a family of violence, narcissism and personality disorders. At one time, I thought I was just ruined.

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I was not. 

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Healing is possible and it begins with the body, the container for all our greatest resources.

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Somatic Experiencing ®

Trauma is an experience that leaves an indelible impression on the nervous system that the danger has not passed. We tend to associate trauma with the narrative memory of the event. But the body has its own story to tell.

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Often times, that story is from the perspective of a hysterical child or a terrified adult, which can overwhelm us again. In Somatic Experiencing, we learn to find our resources which were not available to us at the time of the trauma. We let the body tell its story in little, bite-sized, digestible pieces.

 

Somatic Experiencing® (SE®) is a psychobiological approach to resolving trauma and chronic stress. It is both theoretical and highly experiential, offering effective skills for restoring nervous system regulation and resolving trauma.

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I will support you in developing a “felt sense” of yourself so you can process and integrate uncomfortable sensations that arise from stress. I help you discover your own resources in body and mind for managing difficulty. And everyone has many more resources than they realize.

 

SE explores the story the body has to tell in a gentle and titrated way so as to not overwhelm the system, and allow the system to process and integrate the old experience with these new resources.

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I am currently assisting in SE trainings and have also had the privilege of participating in many advanced trainings:

  • Eye of the Needle, Near-death and Anesthesia states: Peter Levine

  • Touch Skills Training: Kathy Kain

  • Somatic Narrative: Kathy Kain

  • Coupling Dynamics: Kathy Kain

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I use techniques that involve our thinking and emotional brains, but I also incorporate touch and movement to aid the body in releasing the energy. This is a holistic approach that is simply learning to listen and respond to our whole self. 

 

Renegotiating traumatic experiences will open you up to a whole new world of possibilities that you didn’t know existed. I can promise you that you will start to experience yourself in a more life-affirming way.

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For more information, visit

https://traumahealing.org.

The Feldenkrais Method®

​Movement is empowerment. 

 

​The Feldenkrais Method (FM) of Somatic Education is not different from how a baby learns to walk in the first year of life without instruction. A baby has virtually no conscious motor control at birth. By sensing themself and exploring the world through movement, the baby builds a movement vocabulary that they carry into adulthood.

 

But as the adult tends to specialize, get injured or just sit a lot, this movement vocabulary starts to decrease. And we can’t get it back easily because now we overthink everything.

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I love the Feldenkrais Method as a resource for healing from trauma.

  • It takes us back to the healing brain space of the infant.

  • It retrains the nervous system toward balance and implicit self-regulation.

  • It quiets our judgy, agenda brain that interferes with our ability to connect with

    ourselves.

  • It teaches us how to stay present for ourselves and fosters a “felt sense” of ourselves.

  • The body can hold trauma as tension, chronic pain and medical issues. The FM finds the places that are not moving well and gently coaxes them into moving again.

  • It teaches us how to listen and respond to ourselves in a more life-affirming way.

  • It gets underneath the narrative of the trauma to heal our foundation of Self.

 

FM uses the same techniques that the baby uses. I will teach you how to focus your awareness within yourself and start to explore your world through movement and sensation to rebuild your felt connection with yourself.

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For more information, visit

feldenkrais.com​

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HeartMath®

Recent biomedical research has revealed that the heart is not merely a simple pump but actually a highly complex, self-organized information processing center.

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This evidence-based research is demonstrating that the messages the heart sends to the brain not only affect physiological regulation but also can profoundly influence perception, emotions, behavior, performance and health.

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In practice, I will teach you techniques developed at the HeartMath Institute that focus on the harmonious interaction between the breath and heart rhythms.

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These techniques have been proven to balance and build resiliency in the nervous system for greater endurance and faster recovery from stress, as well as an improved sense of general well-being. But, they are also highly effective as interventions during particularly stressful experiences.

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These easy-to-learn techniques are supported by technology and allow us to clearly see the improvement that directly impacts our fundamental systems, emotional, mental and physical. It was a leap of faith when I started meditating years ago that it was going to help or even how it was going to help. This technology allows us to witness improvement both in the moment and over time.

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For more information, visit https://www.heartmath.org.

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