With a broad variety of mindfulness-based modalities as resources, my approach with clients is quite individualized. The primary guiding foundation is The Hakomi Method. Hakomi is a somatic, mindfulness-based, experiential psychotherapy approach, referred to, by some, as assisted self-study.

 

In this spirit, I see my role as a guide and supporting presence to help you navigate the issues you’d like to address, the patterns you’d like to change, and the new possibilities you’d like to cultivate.

 

We do this guided by a set of principles that includes mindfulness, mind-body integration, and non-violence (Principles of The Hakomi Method).

Regardless of whether we are following Hakomi protocols, or exploring other modalities, these principles underlie and guide my interactions with you. 

 

• They are the foundations of the safe and supportive environment in which we work.

• They support us to start right where you are, and to collaborate, to learn together, and to cultivate the resources needed to best support you; whether you have previous experience with mindfulness practices, or are new to the concepts.

• They guide us to cultivate attitudes of curiosity and non-judgment. These foundational attitudes allow for the deep listening, insight, and acceptance that lead to the healing and transformation you seek.

 

Working somatically, we’re paying close attention to the ‘soma,’ the living system that we are, with our moment to moment, internally-sensed, experience as it unfolds. The soma has a deep organic knowing and self-organizing nature. This always leans us toward our innate wholeness, wisdom, impulses for growth and healing, equilibrium and restoration, joy and aliveness.

 

Through the course of our lives, this natural state gets compromised, especially when there’s been extreme stress or trauma. Barriers manifest in the form of beliefs, thoughts, perceptions, feelings, body tensions or constrictions, and automatic behavior patterns. How most of these barriers operate is outside our conscious awareness. They have been so ‘practiced’ for so long, that they have long since been relegated to the background of our daily experience. We are, likewise, most often unaware of the impacts they are imposing until they become problematic enough to alert us.

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As a somatic psychotherapy practitioner and movement facilitator, I am trained to help you turn toward and learn about how these core beliefs, feelings, and habits are organized and keep you stuck in the patterns that feel harmful or unsatisfying. I help you reconnect to your body, and listen to the messages it is providing you.  I help you access resources already existing in you, and develop new ones, to help transform this core material in ways that bring more choice, freedom, capacity for effectiveness and satisfaction to your life.

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When we work together, we may utilize a variety or blend of modalities. We’ll use a dynamic process of mindful attention to determine the direction to follow. Navigating your interests and following the information and impulses you encounter in the moment, is what brings this experiential work alive.

 

We may often be sitting in comfortable chairs, as is familiar with most psychotherapy. Sometimes we may find ourselves sitting on the floor, or expanding into movement that helps us explore, learn, or integrate new feelings and experience into the body and nervous system.

 

Attention to body-based integration is important, and contributes to a profound and powerful path to resolution and transformation of even long-held limitations.