MY APPROACH
With warmth, care and curiosity, I help clients reconnect to their centers, inner compasses, and senses of inherent wholeness.
I offer a nourishing space to hold the big everything that is going on in folks' beings and bodies, as well as to tend to wounds that are old, those that are new, and/or those that are currently being opened. As we tend to whatever needs tending, I help facilitate an embodied rediscovery of a sense of ground, ease, and inherent goodness that can be practiced and returned to, even in the face of stress and difficulty.
As a therapist, I try to bring my whole self to my work, because I believe real human connection is vital to healing. That means I bring things you might not expect a therapist to bring to therapy: silliness, swear-words, tech-fumbles, and a quiet familiarity with the struggles of the healing path.
Below are some words that describe my work.
RELATIONAL
I am not a robot! Our time together is centered in real human connection.
SOMATIC
I center the body in therapy and help people access embodied experiences of safety, ground and wholeness.
RESOURCE-BASED
I help folks discover and remember tools for increasing their experiences of well-being.
NONVIOLENT
I strive to collaborate with you to ensure the work we do feels safe, right and is rooted in consent.
LIBERATORY
My goal is to support you in freeing your aliveness and reclaiming deep connection with your truest self.
SOMATIC THERAPY
Somatics is a broad field that recognizes the inseparable connection between our bodies, minds and emotions. The somatic work I do focuses on helping folks experience life in new ways by supporting different physiological responses to stress. When we create more capacity in our nervous systems, we also grow our ability to discover our deepest selves, to choose how we act and relate, and to feel the full breadth and depth of life.
What does that look like in a session? Well, sometimes we just need a caring human to be there to hold our feelings with us. (Yep, that's somatic too!) Typically, sessions center connecting with your felt sense of your body, tending to emotional wounds (and celebrating joys!) found there, and discovering how to consciously shift from stress states into states of greater ease, connection and belonging. Every body is different, so we go on a journey together to learn what feels best to yours. All is gentle, fluid and moves at a pace governed by you alone - not my or anyone else’s ideas of what is right for you - and includes all the silence, laughter, words and tears that make us human.
“...but our biology knows the way, and we can find our way home.”
WHO I WORK WITH
My clients’ common thread is that they are looking to deepen their connection with themselves and their bodies to experience life in a new way. Folks come for that general support, or are seeking help with specific themes like:
- Stress, anxiety, panic, depression, dissociation
- Trauma (complex/developmental, oppression-based, sexual, etc.)
- Difficult experiences during childhood
- Deep attachment work and struggles in relationship(s)
- Queer/LGBTQIA+ issues
- Shame and low self-esteem
- Painful experiences of systemic/societal issues
- Desire for deeper connection to body
- The sense that something just doesn't quite feel right
A NOTE ON HEALING
There is no "right way to be" in therapy and you can never "do it wrong." Your body's innate wisdom will take you everywhere you need to go on your journey, and I will be there to guide and hold your experience with you.
I believe all life is always moving toward healing. The cut on your hand scabs over and grows new skin; the maple tree cut at its base sprouts new shoots. Our hearts also know what to do...
I honor the tremendous pains and traumas - both physical and invisible, both present and past - that are a result of systems that do not center the health, happiness and sovereignty of all the beings of this Earth.
Somatics as a contemporary "field" is comprised of many practices that indigenous peoples the world over have always practiced, which have been used and profited on (in this field and others) without consent. I am on a personal journey learning how to address this in my work and life.
I live and work on territory traditionally stewarded by and stolen from Duwamish, sdukʷalbixʷ (Snoqualmie), Lhaq’temish (Lummi), Nuxwsa’7aq (Nooksack) and Semiahmoo nations. To learn more about Native land and find out whose you're on, click here.