Somatic Counseling supports clients in connecting with their present moment experience to support wellbeing. It recognizes how our life experience gets stored in our tissues, and provides practical tools for allowing stuck patterns to transform. This approach includes working with core emotions which can shift repetitive cycles. This age old full-person approach is booming in popularity as neuroscience verify's its efficacy. Sessions can include working with the breath, sensation, movement, interoception and the nervous system.

This approach is informed by: Hakomi, Somatic Experiencing, Polyvagal theory, Body-Mind Centering, Focusing, AEDP, neuroscience, trauma informed counseling, mindfulness approaches, and social justice counseling. I hold great appreciation for indigenous modalities that practiced this approach long before western psychology incorporated it.

My approach to somatic counseling also includes skills and exercises that are common in traditional talk therapy. Sessions include exploring thoughts, feelings, beliefs and behaviors, and engages with the clients level of embodiment to the degree that works for them.

EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) is a therapeutic approach designed to help individuals process difficult experiences. By using bilateral stimulation, this evidence-based practice facilitates the brain and body’s natural healing processes, reducing the impact of distressing memories and therefore increasing vitality and wellbeing. For more information you can visit: https://maibergerinstitute.com/emdr-training-resources/

Through an integrative lens, I offer diverse approaches to meet clients unique needs. This might include learning tools to care for your nervous system, exploring the gifts and pains of relationships (personal, familial, cultural, systemic, generational), being known in your story and the truth of who you are, resting into more self-compassion, shifting stuck patterns (thoughts, feelings, sensations, behaviors, relationships), identifying what is personal and what is collective, and working with grief and celebration.

We are by nature relational beings. A relational-lens recognizes that our connections with others significantly impacts our overall wellbeing.

I support clients in identifying and developing skills for supportive relationships. This often requires the recognition of pains and gifts of past and present relationships (personal, familial, cultural, systemic). Through an attachment theory lens I work with clients to shift painful patterns and establish ways of being in life giving connection. I use The Safe Harbor Method when working with relationships. Clients of diverse relationship configurations  welcome.

My approach considers one’s relationship to the greater body’s we belong to, like Earth. I created a model to support clients in connecting to the seasons as a way to increase the opportunity for wellbeing and resiliency.

To learn more you can read my article:

Belonging to Earth: Body Psychotherapy, the Seasonal Attunement Model, and Reclaiming Our Wild