“The idea of the Self, could not exist for one single moment if there were not a body to create and maintain that distinctness.” C.G. Jung
Somatic Depth Psychotherapy is a method for accessing your inner life by including the body in conversations of the soul. The sessions are structured around bringing awareness to patterns you want to explore and perhaps shift, while also including the body, breath, movement, and somatic interventions to facilitate insight, release, self-compassion, and healing.
To work through deeper emotional issues, being present in your body is essential. Old trauma is stored in your nervous system and shows up in body tension, sleep issues, negative thought loops, and emotional exhaustion. While talking is helpful for insight, it’s not enough to shift these patterns.
My approach is process-oriented and tailored to your unique situation, background, culture, and needs. Somatic interventions include bringing attention to your breath, natural movement, grounding, use of space or lack of, body metaphors, dreams, and the body unconscious. Sessions may also include journaling, expressive arts, mindful meditation, and nature.
Our sessions flow naturally between conversation and embodied self-exploration. By participating in an embodied process, shifting old patterns is an action, not an idea. You get a direct experience of what it might feel like to approach a situation from a different perspective and either change it or accept what is.
Approach
First and foremost, I work as a trauma informed, harm reduction therapist. Utilizing a Somatic Integrative approach provides the opportunity for me to customize our work to your unique needs. My specialty is working with people in the second half of life who feel stuck and struggle with relationship issues, work stress, anxiety, trauma, depression, grief and soul loss. During my forty year career I have developed a myriad of somatic skills and I am highly qualified to support you in your process.
Depth
Time and again, I have witnessed the power and healing that comes from bringing unconscious aspects of the psyche into consciousness. Over the last thirty years, I’ve studied, taught, and practiced depth psychology, integrating the body, the creative unconscious, dreams, and the symbolic life into our work. A depth approach allows you to contact wholeness by embracing all aspects of yourself with courage and compassion.
Somatic Experiencing ®
As a Certified Somatic Experiencing practitioner since 2012, I have observed the power of SE to resolve trauma symptoms and relieve chronic stress symptoms including negative thought loops and experiences of agitation and shut-down. Pioneered by Dr. Peter Levine, somatic experiencing is a naturalistic form of healing trauma that helps release physiological activation from the body. This process reduces symptoms of stress in the nervous system and helps stabilize your body and mind. This approach is effective for single incident trauma as well as developmental (complex) trauma that is a result of attachment ruptures.
Dance-Movement Therapy
As a Board-Certified Dance-Movement Therapist, I am humbled by the power of movement to heal and shift long standing patterns of insufficiency held in the body-mind psyche. Principles of dance-movement therapy inform our work together. You will have an opportunity to listen kindly to what your body wants and needs to feel more alive, strong, flexible, safe, and open. Finding movements that are supportive, learning to take space, be still, while also allowing yourself to broaden your range of movement results in greater self-confidence and ease.
Neuraffective Somatic Touch
Touch is our first form of communication. I integrate neuroaffective touch with your consent to support your healing process through non-verbal, implicit somatic channels, increasing your emotional self-regulation and capacity.
Insight Meditation (Vipassana)
I’ve been a student, daily practitioner, and facilitator of Insight Meditation for over forty years, and I am still in awe. I’ve studied and sat with some of the best teachers, Thich Nhat Hanh, Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, and others whose wisdom has changed my life. Vipassana or Insight Meditation is the process of bringing concentrated and relaxed attention to the movement of your breath going in and out of your body. By doing so, your mind is brought to rest, you learn how to work skillfully with distractions and discover you can stay focused with ease. Mindfulness, and finding safety by dwelling in the present moment is core to our work together.
