“Co-regulation can restore what may have been missing during early childhood development.”
— Kathy Kain
Somatic Experiencing
Somatic Experiencing is a potent psychophysiological method for resolving trauma symptoms and relieving chronic stress. Developed by Dr. Peter Levine, this approach builds resilience in the body's protective responses, gently freeing up energy in the process.
SE™ tools allow me to facilitate shifts with stress-related symptoms and nervous system dysregulation expressed physically as anxiety, depression, pain, immobility, and dissociation. My focus is resolving trauma so that you can be yourself. SE helps in resolving shock trauma (such as from impact, or an event), as well as disconnect of trauma that’s developed over time, or in early childhood.
For Students in the 3 year Somatic
Experiencing(R) professional training
Fulfill your SEP requirements with sessions and consults for credit, as you work toward completing SEI’s 3-year professional SE training. I am an approved provider for individual sessions and case consultations, at all 3 levels (Beginning, Intermediate, Advanced). I especially enjoy mentoring body- and movement-based practitioners.
How is trauma showing up for you?
My work can help if…
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You’re feeling overwhelmed by pain, anxiety, ruminating thoughts, or life’s daily challenges. Your body may be not feeling much at all, not sure what to trust. Fatigue, disrupted sleep, anxiety, depression may be shaping your world. You may find yourself unintentionally snapping at people, fawning, or withdrawing.
Co-regulation with another can help stabilize your nervous system’s automatic responses.
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You’re troubled by flashbacks, dissociation, or intrusive symptoms related to something that your body needed to protect you against: a past event (even from childhood), a current situation, or an ongoing circumstance such as being “othered.”
You don’t have to re-live the experience, or even remember what happened. As we explore together in present time, your body learns new nervous system connections. -
You’re struggling with an autonomic syndrome that keeps cycling back, and you’ve tried everything. Fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, migraines, POTS, Tourette’s-like spasms, restless legs, IBS.
By listening to body patterns and gently introducing small changes, over time we can observe the patterns reducing in frequency, intensity, duration.
Further Reflections on My Approach
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Connection
Trauma affects all of us, but it doesn’t have to last forever. Finding connection, and ways to integrate connection into our lives, is key to helping our systems move beyond overwhelm. Creating and sustaining healthy systemic biological connections supports embodiment — experiencing life with the whole of our selves. This interlinking of our internal, biological systems is fertile ground on which social connection can thrive.
My work facilitates organismic integration. We’re connecting differentiated elements into a whole, using physical and social contact to encourage movement toward relationship.
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Relationship
Many of the inputs in our daily lives — not just the therapy environment — offer potentially integrative experience to enhance health. Listening to music, taking a walk with a friend, swimming in refreshing waters — with intention, and a sense of safety, even routine life activities can anchor our internal connections that enhance health.
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Listening
Every relationship requires receptivity. Humans have to feel safe enough in the moment to reach out and to receive. So when we want to foster relationship for health, we listen for how much is too-much-or-too-little, and then we continue monitoring and adjusting. For the physical body, our listening to enhance health includes our relationship with gravity, with the environment and with others, between the body's structural support and its organs, or among metabolic components.
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Movement
When we're listening to the body, we ask,"How much is just enough?" through engaging movement. Where there is movement is life; stuck-ness (or too much movement!) can indicate disconnect. If that disconnect brings dysfunction, that's often where attention will focus. Or it's, "Please go away, leave me alone," a way for the body to conserve energy; a placeholder for rest in the approach/avoid continuum.
When something isn't moving in the body we can move it on purpose, make contact and wait for subtle movements to emerge, make static contact and hold it still, sneak in from the side, or give it space -- no contact. Each approach has its uses. In any case, listening comes first.
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Application to Practice
With your consent, I work hands-on (for physical repair or supportive touch). I educate through conversation, movement and touch, to enhance the body's proprioception and the mind's body-awareness. I provide somatic therapy. My role as embodied therapist is not magic-hands fixer, but compassionate facilitator, resonant witness, exploring healing potential together with my client.
Is health a serious concern?
See your primary care provider.
I’m not a doctor, and I don’t diagnose or prescribe. For issues beyond my scope, I refer to mental health professionals and physicians. I enjoy working as a team (with your permission) with your health care providers.