Somatic Sessions
The essence of my work is centered on the question, how do we cultivate a fluid, adaptable, embodied, engaged and resilient approach to our lives and our contemporary times. We are living in increasingly destabilizing, and disorienting times. My hope with my work is to support you in developing a resourceful connection to your inner healing capacity, to support your capacity for connection and relationship, and to trust in your own system to became increasing able to meet, metabolize, integrate and release life as it moves through you. I offer somatic sessions through telehealth, in person, and as an integrative component when working with clients through bodywork, aquatic therapy and psychedelic facilitation/integration.
Somatic Experiencing
Somatic Experiencing® (SE), is a form of trauma therapy developed by Peter Levine that emphasizes guiding a client’s attention to their interoceptive, kinesthetic, and proprioceptive experience. Many of us are quite adept at intellectualizing, analyzing, or living within our cognitive narrative of ourselves and the world. SE provides a unique somatic approach to attune to the bodily layers of experience, which often provide more direct, accurate and updated information about what is happening in our nervous system. We understand that that trauma, is not necessarily about what happens to you, but what happens inside of you. As such, this work is as much about practicing attending to, listening and moving from our somatic inner world.
Using SE, we establish a gentle and safe ground from which we can examine how the body carries excess chronic or traumatic stress. We utilize kinesthetic and interoceptive attention and invite movements oriented towards completing thwarted physiological, self-protective, and defensive responses.
SE understand trauma as an ongoing pattern in the nervous system. So when we consider trauma responses such as fight, flight, freeze, or faun, we look for how those responses show up in subtle or small ways in our present moment experience, and utilize the present moment experience as a way into re-negotiating our nervous system responses.
SE work can be more directive than classical psychotherapy. Within SE sessions we incorporate tools such as grounding, resourcing, titration, pendulation and finding coherence through touch and movement.
How to meet our needs for Connection and for authenticity.
Using compassionate inquiry allows me to get to the root of clients’ addictions while simultaneously validating their needs and desires. Using this techniques allows my clients to learn how to speak to themselves in a less condemning, judgmental manner. Society does not do addicts many favors and most stories surrounding addiction are not about hope, nor are they inspirational. They are depicting the worst side of addiction which does not create a safe environment for addicts to reach out for help. I personally would not feel safe coming forward and asking for help if all I were seeing in media were negative stigmas attached to my behavior! Seeing these negative and biased opinions helps generate a negative self-talk and self-hatred in people struggling with substance abuse disorders. By showing compassion and genuine understanding, we can “flip the script” that clients are telling themselves and begin to generate more understanding toward people who struggle with this.
Compassionate Inquiry
Compassionate Inquiry (CI) is a psychotherapeutic approach developed by Dr. Gabor Mate, in his words,
““The purpose of the Compassionate Inquiry is to drill down to the core stories people tell themselves – to get them to see what story they are telling themselves unconsciously; what those beliefs are, where they came from; and guide them to the possibility of letting go of those stories, or letting go of the hold those stories have on them …
That’s what Compassionate Inquiry is.”
~ Dr. Gabor Maté
Compassionate Inquiry reveals what lies beneath the surface of what we present to the world. Using CI, the therapist supports the unveiling of hidden assumptions, implicit memories, unconscious beliefs and body states that offer us some insight into what our distress is both trying to reveal and conceal. Through CI, we work to recognize the unconscious dynamics that our life and how to liberate ourselves from them.
It is a strategy that is particularly helpful in understanding the drive behind our addictive behaviors, maladaptive behaviors, and rigid understanding of ourselves. We work to understand “How does that behavior benefit you?”, inquiring gently into how our addictions and distress patterns may serve a purpose, that we may not entirely be aware of. I believe that every behavior we engage in makes sense, given our histories. CI encourages us to ask, as Dr. Gabor Maté says, “Not why the addiction, but why the trauma.” We acknowledge the our protective strategies and defense mechanisms served a very supportive role at some time in our life, and we similarly acknowledge that that may not serve the same role as they did when they came online.
My work stems from a bio-psycho-social-ecological model. I believe we are intimately intersections between our physiological bodies, our psychological histories, our ancestral legacies, our social environments and experiences of oppression/belonging, and our relationship to our ecological niches. I believe we heal not in isolation, but in relationship, in community and in service/action.
Qualifications
Integrative Psychology, Cognitive Science, Psychological Anthropology (BA, Hampshire College)
Peer Chaplaincy Services (Hampshire College)
Peer Support Specialist (w/Felton Institute, Alameda Country, CA)
Crisis Counseling
(Crisis Support Services of Alameda County)Orthopedic Manual Therapy Certification
(CMT, McKinnon Institute)Somatic, Healing, Social Justice
(w/Generative Somatics)Somatic Experiencing Practioner Training
(SEP, 3 years professional training)Compassionate Inquiry Training
(250 hour Graduate level training with Dr. Gabor Mate)Ketamine Assisted Integrative Therapy
(w/Sage Integrative Health)Ethical Psychedelic Care
(w/Synthesis Institute)
Let’s work together.
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