Soma & Psyche
Body-Centered/Somatic Work
A Departure from Traditional Approaches
It is difficult, if not impossible, to try and talk yourself out of something you did not talk yourself into. For many, insight is the assumed key that will produce the answers. Trying to solve the problem of you can be an ever receding destination that is more mirage than possible place. The practice I offer helps those who rely too much on their rational mind while neglecting the grounding clarity and felt guidance of embodied awareness. I facilitate reconnection (or integration) with a core sense of self: Moving from "thinking about" to being present with what "is." My practice is often a landing place for those who have tried conventional talk therapy and found something missing. For those who have come to realize that ever increasing intellectual understanding or a more refined diagnosis does not improve their experience of living, they have found this body-centered approach helpful. There are four areas that tend to arise in my work . They overlap and reinforce each other, and can give some indication of what someone could expect or how this practice might help.
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Belonging to yourself, so you can belong to someone else
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Struggles with self-love, shame, self-critique, or identifying oneself as a diagnosis can be an enduring barrier to belonging to yourself, which is often necessary before we can belong to anyone else. The core question: How do I develop a deeper relationship with myself.
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Discovering Authentic Direction
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Challenges finding meaning in work, in relationship with yourself or others, feelings of lost in transition, uncertainty about vocation or purpose. The Core Question: What is mine to do?
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Integrating Experience
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Psychedelic preparation and integration , ketamine support, spiritual experiences, significant life events, major insights. The Core Question: How do I live with what I have learned?
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Embodied Awareness
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Overthinking, nervous system awareness, polyvagal understanding, felt experience. The core question: How do I move from thinking about myself to experiencing myself.
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“ MR DUFFY LIVED A SHORT DISTANCE FROM HIS BODY.”
While James Joyce wrote this a while ago, it applies to many of us today. Joyce understood the difference between thinking about our body and being in our body. When most people focus on their body, it is often for a couple of reasons: to keep it healthy or to recover from illness or injury. However, this physical envelope that contains us is the only way we experience the world. As children, our first language was sensations; we did not have the words for the internal dialogue that so commonly defines who we think we are as adults. Before we had language, we made sense of our experience in a wholly somatic way. Most people have at one time or another “lost” themselves in an activity or sensory experience. Those that meditate might be acquainted with fleeting moments of being fully present. There can not only be a great relief in escaping our never-ceasing thinking self, but also great insights to be gained by accessing our felt experience. Our bodies are not just the Space Suit that holds us in the universe but a personal and current record of how we uniquely organize the world. I speak from personal experience when I say it is difficult to rediscover and trust in the body as a source of wisdom, a way of knowing. However, nothing else has the capacity for foundational grounding like the body and allowing us to belong to ourselves.
