As you know stress and trauma are common components of virtually all mental and physical health conditions.     

The services I offer complement treatments by medical and mental health professionals. This approach fills a gap.  It is one step below traditional talk-based, or somatic based psychology, and one step above medical principles. 

It builds on the story of the stress and trauma, then integrates the embodied experience of the stress and trauma.  This is an effective approach for resolving deeply held stress and trauma.  This approach is especially beneficial for adults who experience issues that involve their health, families, relationships or their childhood.   

These services are based in:

- Advanced mind-body principles and skills

- Touch, massage and bodywork skills

- Somatic principles

- Integrated health, complementary and alternative health principles

- Western principles of stress & trauma

- Physiology factors in child development 

See: Integrated Health Modalities.

This approach addresses mind-body mechanisms at deep layers of stress and trauma that influence issues such as:

- Self-concept

- Existence character structure

- Disorganized attachment

- Primary organization and coherence

- Choking on self expression

- Self worth

- Entrenched worry

- Shame, nausea or self-disgust 

- Desire to hide or disappear

- Helplessness and hopelessness

- Survival response

- Collapse

- Resilience and health

- Stress and illness

- And other deep physical issues that effect mind, body and being

Sessions are held with the client seated in a chair, moving in the room and, or, lying on a massage table.

Common Aspects of the Trauma Approach

The common trauma resolution principles and skills include:           

• - External versus internal orientation
• - Grounding and centering
• - Threshold and pendulation method for sympathetic and parasympathetic arousal
• - Somatic awareness
• - Sensory motor memory
• - Emotional factors
• - Incomplete defensive responses
  
• - Vagus nerve regulation
• - Facial muscle stress patterns that effect social engagement
  
• - Facial and vocal expression
• - Language patterns that reflect the physical body
  
• - Heart rate regulation using attention and breath
• - Posture - Muscular and skeletal patterns that reflect stress
• - Embodied Timeline orientation: birthing, childhood, major events, present moment, future.
  
• - Integrated Health principles
  

Uncommon Aspects of the Trauma Approach

These uncommon principles draw upon evidence based science and integrated my independent scholarship. It integrates both a top down and a bottom up approach.  Meaning, the head influences the body and the body influences the head. 

In these sessions, we access layers below:

• - Social engagement expression and physiology
  
• - Language processing
• - Cognitive processing
• - Limbic emotional processing
  
• - Activation of the sympathetic nervous system
• - Activation of the parasympathetic
• - The Hypothalamus-Pituitary-Adrenal axis
• - The hippocampus

Uncommon skills and principles include:

• - 'Spatial Presence' skills (grounding and centering) derived from principles of molecular and systems biology.
  
• - Multiple volitional centers for internal tracking and mapping.  
• - Stress and Relaxation Responses in
  
  • - Thymus and immune system 
    
  • - Skin–melatonin-pineal system
    
  • - Vascular and circulatory system
    
  • - The brain stem
  • - Connective tissue
• - Abdominal and navel constriction patterns
  
• - Vegus nerve and visceral organs effect upon social engagement.
  
• -   Self concept and shame response in the Dorsal Vagal Complex (lower spine) 

My Personal Journey

This integrated approach is  informed by  my personal journey through a long medical trauma. 

Collaboration with Licensed Therapists

These sessions explore body-centered insights that support your sessions with your Licensed therapist.

See:  Collaboration

Referrals

I encourage clients to consult licensed health care professionals that fit their needs: such as, Naturopathy, Functional Medicine, Chiropractic, Acupuncture, Western Medicine, Nurse Practitioners, Marriage and Family Therapists, Psychiatry, Psychotherapy and Counseling, yoga therapy. 

If you have any question about my approach or sessions, please contact me.