Somatic Sessions

The essence of my work is centered on the question, how do we cultivate a fluid, adaptable, embodied and engaged approaches to our lives and our contemporary times. We are living in increasingly destabilizing, and disorienting times. My hope in offering this work is to support you to develop a resourceful connection to your inner healing capacity, to cultivate nervous system resilience, to deepen authenticity in connection and relationship, and to grow trust in your body’s ability to meet, metabolize, integrate and release life as it moves through you. I offer somatic sessions virtually, 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.

We are invited into noticing how we negotiate and pursue our needs for authenticity, and connection.

We utilize somatic exercises to cultivate a connection to our bodies, our selves, and what emerges in the moment.

Inquiry asks us to stay curious, to be humbled by what we don’t understand intellectually, and open to what has been waiting to be felt.

Compassion asks us, what if we were able to offer unconditional attention to parts of ourselves that have yet to receive love and care?

Compassionate Inquiry

Compassionate Inquiry (CI) is a psychotherapeutic approach developed by Dr. Gabor Mate, in his words,

“Being cut off from our own natural self-compassion is one of the greatest impairments we can suffer. When we disconnect from our capacity to feel our own pain, we also lose our ability to heal, to feel dignity, and to love ourselves. Compassionate Inquiry encourages us to reconnect with that part of ourselves and understand that what may seem maladaptive today was once a necessary adaptation to survive our past experiences.”

~ Dr. Gabor Maté

Compassionate Inquiry reveals what lies beneath the surface of what we present to the world. Using CI, can support 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 and liberate the unconscious dynamics that run our life.

It is a strategy that is particularly helpful in understanding the drive behind habits, shamed behaviors, maladaptive behaviors, and rigid understanding of ourselves. We work to understand “How does that behavior benefit you?”, inquiring gently into how our triggers, addictions and distress patterns may serve a purpose for a part of ourselves that we may not entirely be aware of. I believe that every behavior we engage in makes sense, given our histories.
We acknowledge that 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 approach.
I believe we are intimate 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)

  • Integral Psychedelic Therapy (TA)
    (w/Sage Integrative Health)

Let’s work together.

Interested in beginning a somatic journey together?
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