Alliance and Process 

Massage- Somatics-Wellness and Trauma Bodywork 

To support you to achieve more coherent presence, confidence, integration and health, this document outline the principles and process for the Massage-Somatic-Wellness, and the Trauma Bodywork session. In these sessions our goal is to transform stress responses and discomfort in your body into neutral responses or supportive responses.  

The goal is to make your journey easy and simple. Sometimes this process is not easy and can provoke you to have a mental, emotional or physical reaction to the process.  Therefore, our  therapeutic alliance becomes more important when we are work with mind-body skills, or stress and trauma issues.  

The purpose of the alliance is to bring these issues to your awareness in advance, so that you have a smooth journey during the session to support your transformation into more health and resilience.

Together we will co-create your sessions.  This document lays a path to help us stay focused on your goals. This is a general outline of the process and principles that will guide our sessions. These are not hard and fast rules – we will adjust according to what you need in the present moment.

The Massage- Somatics-Wellness and Trauma Bodywork sessions can address a wide range of pain conditions, emotional, stress, trauma, and complex trauma conditions.  The techniques utilized include brief resolution tactics as well as more advanced techniques for longer term trauma resolution.

These session primarily address memory and behavior issues in the mind and body (and can add some aspects of massage), where a massage session focuses dominantly on the physical layer of the body (and can in some mind-body skills).

The goal is to defuse the emotional intensity of past events by delinking the event memory from the physical sensation.  The goal is to rewire the signal and switching system of the brain and the body to create a new pattern.  This changes how memories are encoded.  After the session , the goal is for the memory to remain, but the emotional intensity invoked by the memory is reduced.

Depending upon the nature of the situation we are addressing, the tactic may be to override the stress or trauma response, or we may engage the memory and response to facilitate a change.

For Massage- Somatics-Wellness and Trauma Bodywork sessions, a 2.0 hours session is recommended to give time for the various stages of the emotional and physical experiential process. A 1.5 hour session is also okay, we will simply be more brief with some of the sections of the session. 

Your Participation  

1. The central tactics is for you to switch your internal state.
2. Your willingness to engage and participate is the most important factor.
3. These sessions are highly experiential and felt sense.
4. They are a journey that bridges your external world and your inner mental, emotional, physical, energetic and spiritual self.
5. You decide and let me know what flows and is comfortable or what is not.
6. Let go of self-judgement:
   1. My body is bad.I’m doing this wrong.  I feel self-conscious, embarrassed.
7. You are responsible to express when you feel comfortable or not, or at the edge.    Speak up!   
8. If you want the session, or any element in the session, you are responsible to say ‘STOP!”.

Goals

1. Shift internal memory states.
2. Create a change in the brain and body.

My Role is to 

1. Hold a container.
   • For you to cultivate your inner wisdom and authority.
   • For you to decide upon our path
2. To be a mirror for you.
   • Not to be an authority over you.
3. To offer you skills and help you implement them.
4. Help you stay on track, to help you stay focused on your resourcefulness.
5. To help you move your attention to regions of your body where reactive emotions may be storied.
6. To challenge you either gently or firmly to cross the threshold of change.
7. Be your champion and cheer leader.

Question: What other qualities would your find  supportive in our session?.  Please share that with me during the sessions.  For example: What I want and need is …

What is it?

1. An Emotional and physical experience
2. An inner journey.
3. A psycho sensory experience.
4. A signal generation process.
   1. Integrate whole body
   2. Defuse the intensity of distressful emotional past memories, disruptive relationship issues.
5. Time line integration: Past, present, future.
6. Different than a massage,
7. Progression: Standing – seated – massage table 
8. Internal memory, plus presence, plus calming and integrating touch

Internal Awareness

1. The process invites you to;
   1. Clarify your intentions for the session.
   2. Iincrease your internal, felt sense awareness.
   3. To understand where and how the memory is held.
2. Mental, emotional and physical issues are inter-connected.
3. Emotional pain can contribute and increase physical pain, or medical illness, and relationship disruption.
4. Skills are presented to support you to perceive your inner states, feelings and sensations, emotions, beliefs, stress, blind spots, confusion, conflicts, memories, etc.
5. Thisapproach is related to, yet more technically specific than:
   1. Meditation
   2. Body scanning.

The Style of Interaction

1. I will guide you into an internal experience, a progressive relaxation, to help you generate a resourceful state.
2. I will use a variety of gentle physical contact and touch around your body, specifically to regions that either create calm and integration, or that defuse stress in specific regions of the brain and body.

What to Expect

1. This can be an easy journey, or a bumpy process.  Generally, you wil feel more light, energized, orgnized, more calm and composed, and less reactive to the old memory.
2. You may encounter a wide range of mental, emotional and physical experiences:
3. emotions 
   1. Ranging from confusion, discomfort, to happiness and joy.
   2. Defensive responses: fear, anger, or withdrawal or hiding, wanting to yel.
   3. You may cry or laugh.
4. You may recall old memories, both challenging and happy.
   1. Images of people may arise, from the present or past.
   2. You may experience sensations in regions of your body; noticing that a region is painful, or numb; itching skin, constriction in muscles, coughing, stomach gurgles, feel faint.

Edge of Comfort Zone

The goal is to make this a simple process to relive your symptoms and support your resourcefulness.  In some cases, you may experience strong sessions, memories or emotions.  Therefore, in the beginning of your session we will establish our alliance and communication process.

1. Our goal is to find the learning, growing, healing edge. 
2. First, the tactic is to build your resourcefulness within your comfort zone.Then, with your agreement, explore the edge of your comfort zone; as often, that is where transformation occurs.
3. This may involve touching upon challenging emotions and sensations, and awkward blind spots.
4. At times, the issues we will address may challenge both of us.

Our Communication Process: Signals and Speak Up!

1. Frequent asking: what are you experiencing?
2. Ask for what you need.
3. Get my attention:Look at me, speak up, raise a hand,
4. Speak up:
   • I’m feeling anxious, dissociating, grief, sadness, out of control
   • I’m feeling Hot, cold, numb, sick.
   • I need to stop.
5. Some of these principles and skills may be familiar, or offer a different perspective, or be completely new.
6. Please speak up to ask for clarification of many principle, skill or their implementation.

Alignment, Repair Stumbles  

1. There can be moments where our learning process together is bumpy.
2. Sometimes we/I don’t recognize a rupture in our process or alliance until after we have stumbled over it..
3. Therefore, we need an agreement to repair the stumbles and return to our alliance.

What is a Cleansing Response?

A cleansing response is a stress response that occurs due to the therapeutic  process. It is often a normal part of the transformation process.  It is one way that the body learns and expresses itself, saying, for example,  'that was too much', or 'not that way'.

Read more: https://daniellappin.com/dan/07

Implementation is the Name of the Game

This process will explore:

1. How to support you to make changes in your life
2. Your work/rejuvenation cycle during your day and week.
3. How fully you engage your body in your life.
4. We will:
   1. Track progress of skills implementation between sessions
   2. Track progress towards our goals.

This Process will Explore

1. How to support you to make changes in your life
2. Your work/rejuvenation cycle during your day and week.
3. How fully you engage your body in your life.
4. We will:
   1. Track progress of skills implementation between sessions
   2. Track progress towards our goals.

If you have any questions about the Massage- Somatics-Wellness and Trauma Bodywork sessions, please call, text or email.

Regards,

Daniel Lappin BA, CMP

River of Light Massage & Healing Arts

256 Shoreline Hwy

Mill Valley, CA

415-846-8181

DanielLappin.com