— Do you feel at odds with your own body?

— Does your physical, emotional or mental health prevent you from doing the things you love to do?

— Do you suffer from chronic recurring pain of a known or unknown origin?

— Do you consider yourself a highly sensitive person?

— Do you startle easily?

— Do you struggle with keeping intact boundaries?

— Do you feel chronically anxious or suffer from panic attacks?

— Have you forgotten what “normal” feels like in your body?

— Have you felt yourself tending to fall into intellectualization when in talk therapy?

— Have you had the experience of not feeling seen or listened to by medical providers?

— Have you received massage, Rolfing, or physical therapy that in the moment felt okay but later made you feel substantially worse?

— Have you felt apprehensive about receiving manual therapy from practitioners such as chiropractors, massage therapists, or physical therapists because it felt unsafe to you, but you could not name why?

If you answered yes to any of these questions and your curiosity is piqued, please reach out. We can set up a consultation call or zoom session so I can answer any further questions you may have, and we can get a sense of whether or not we are a good fit.

On a fundamental level, working with me may help you experience an enhanced sense of integrated wholeness within the experience of your body, and your relationship to yourself, others, and your environment.

This may show up as:

— Greater capacity for experiencing pleasure

— Greater support in your posture

— Increased freedom from pain

— More clarity in knowing what is true for yourself as you meet each moment

— Increased ability to adapt to and recover from stress

— Increased strength, agility, and ease in standing and movement

— Improved concentration and mental acuity

— More restful sleep

— Healthier immune system functioning

— Decreased depression and anxiety

— More skill in identifying your emotions and feelings

— Greater comfort meeting relational conflict with yourself and others

— Most importantly, the Somatic Integration and Manual Therapy I practice assists you in becoming more fully embodied.

What does it mean to be embodied?

Because embodiment is ultimately a subjective experience, here is how I would define it for myself: Embodiment moves beyond a simple internal and external awareness of our bodies. Embodiment is feeling at home inside your own body and integrated in your environment.

l experience embodiment as a deep internal contact with my core, and a full experience of my aliveness, in which I’m able to inhabit myself throughout my whole body and feel myself living within my feet, legs, pelvis, heart, head, hands, and so on. I feel rooted into the ground, and enjoy a sense of support from my feet and pelvis. I’m aware of my breath and how it acts on my system. I have a felt sense of my substantialness; I feel a unified wholeness throughout my body, while also being conscious of the relationships inside me so there is no separation between my body and myself. One could think of it as whole-body, whole-being integration. Experiencing oneself in this way can open us into the experience of oneness with the environment around us. Being embodied helps me stay in touch with the physicality of my emotions, which in turn lends itself to a greater capacity for authentic interpersonal connection. I’m able to feel what’s true for me at any given moment.

Fascia is the connective tissue that envelops, supports, and suspends our body in gravity. Fascia takes many different forms, and has the ability to be highly pliable and elastic or quite fibrous and rigid, depending where it’s found in the body and what its function is. The fascial system or connective tissue matrix, as it is often called, could be considered its own bodywide system, much like the digestive or circulatory system. Fascia is an integral component of all our other organ systems. It is an aqueous membranous tissue made up of collagen, elastin, and other molecules. It’s found as the packaging of our muscles, organs, ligaments, neurovasculature, and tendon sheaths. When working at its best, it is able to glide and fold in on itself and promotes smooth, efficient movement throughout the entire body.

In my clinical experience, I have observed that people tend to hold the history of their experiences within the fascial matrix of their bodies. All the myriad fascial tissues of the body may be recruited to support or shape us in particular ways depending on our sense of ease, safety, or power. How somebody holds or shapes themselves is often indicative of their most habitual forms of emotional tone or ways of being and moving in the world. In this way our bodies are a living record, holding memories, emotions, and feelings that may have never been fully expressed or dispersed.

I invite you to come to your sessions with curiosity, an openness to learn from and be surprised by your own body.

This is a time for you to cultivate compassion for yourself as you delve into the rich process of somatic inquiry and integration.

Throughout the process of Somatic Integration, many different sensations, emotions and thoughts may arise. It may be worthwhile to keep a journal of these things as they come up as a way to track changes throughout the process.

You may feel a heightened sensitivity or vulnerability in the hours and days following your session, and experience a sense of greater receptivity to the world. This is normal, you can honor yourself and this process by not filling your day with too many activities, or doing anything stressful directly before or after your session. As you integrate the work, you will establish a new sense of balance and equilibrium.

Going for a walk directly after your session—preferably before you jump back into your car and have to sit in traffic—may help the work settle and integrate.

Other activities that may be helpful are gentle exercise, yoga, stretching, or solo dancing. Let your attention rest on the spaciousness of the in-between, rather than the end position or pose. Attune yourself to the subtlety of the sensations throughout the movement and allow yourself to make micro-adjustments, letting comfort and ease be your guide.

When the organs, nerves, and arteries are functioning optimally they move and glide upon one another in aqueous membranous sacs and sheaths. Sometimes, due to injury, trauma, or habitual holding patterns, they may become adhered together preventing their normal range of motion.

Visceral manipulation is the practice of harmonizing and liberating the internal organs of the body to move, glide, and function at the most optimal capacity that is available for the organism. Neurovascular release uses these same principles to seek better function of the nervous system and arteries.

In the same way that fascia and muscles can develop “knots” and “tightness” (adhesions and contractures), organs, nerves, and arteries can develop adhesions and contractures as well. Actually, often when we experience a “tight muscle”, it is the muscle bracing itself to protect a more vulnerable structure underneath like a nerve, artery, or organ. So, directing one’s hands-on care towards these underlying structures has much more meaningful results than just massaging people’s muscles. Once we have released the contracted or stuck-together tissues of the offending oregon or artery, the symptoms of “tightness” present in the muscles often resolve without direct work on the muscles themselves.

Manual therapy is a catch-all term used for different forms of hands-on touch therapy, such as Osteopathy, Visceral Manipulation, Physiotherapy, Massage Therapy, Physical Therapy Structural Integration, and many other modalities too numerous to list.