I offer a trauma-informed-body-oriented approach to psychotherapy to help you gain access to your own potential for healing. The body contains the sum total of our life experience, most of which we cannot access with our conscious brains. Working with the body in psychotherapy combines traditional talk therapy with innovations in body awareness and mind-body integration to facilitate deeper access to your whole self.
I utilize Somatic Experiencing (SE) methods, which are designed to restore the natural capacity of your nervous system to move between states of stress and calm without getting “stuck.” SE is a resiliency-based approach, that invites you to connect with inner resources and sources of vitality that are already alive within you as a basis for renegotiating trauma. The goal of this work is to create more possibilities – for feeling alive, and experiencing choice and a sense of safety within your own being. You can read more about specific SE methods that I use in sessions here.
I work with the body through talk, offering gentle and skillful guidance of how to bring awareness to the places it’s needed for healing. This is not body-work in the usual sense; touch is only used occasionally. A session with me looks very similar to a typical talk therapy session with some important differences. While we discuss what is arising for you, I pay attention to the ways your body is “speaking” through posture, gestures, etc., and in turn I bring your awareness to these bodily communications. This work is consciously paced to what you and your nervous system can tolerate, helping you find ease in moving through stressful and uncomfortable states.
