' "Half-way through our session, the tightness and pain was already gone! I just had to call you for another healing session/massage right away -- your hands and intuition worked their magic yet again, for a different issue. I feel freer and lighter than I have in  many months.”  - MB

Somatic Therapies

Imagine a therapeutic experience designed to help you specifically. What if you were able to access your body’s intelligence and release outdated beliefs, inner pain, constricted breathing, tension, anxiety, transpersonal experience, and even the blues? Imagine bodywork that touches more than the body - that eases achy sore muscles of course - and also so much more, by enhancing fluidity, integration, and serenity too. This is the kind of massage therapy that can make a significant difference to your health and happiness, in many ways.

Whether it is a brisk 'rub-down' for an athlete or a tender soothing touch for a child who has scraped a knee, or someone with hurt feelings - touch is understood universally for it power to ease suffering, rejuvenate, and heal; a conscious integrative touch is all that much more so.

No longer a mystery to the modern world, there is no doubt there is indeed a connection between body, breath, and feeling. And that there is a a powerful link between memory, thoughts, and mood. The fluctuations and sensations between contraction and expansion can be felt emotionally and physically, internally and externally, in numerous ways throughout one's lifetime.

The body will react to basic mechanical problems such as over doing it or not doing enough, and will oftentimes result in somatic symptoms. We may come to bodywork for relief on the occasions when we simply feel sore as a direct result of strains and injuries from repetitive motions, over training for specific goals, or from accidents.  But there may be more complex reasons we feel achy, out of alignment, or ill. The feeling that something is not right in one's own body may be the result of wounds to the body and soul due to trauma from abuse, assault, childbirth (giving birth and being born) as well as from imprints carried within the psyche from ancestors and transpersonal memories.

Somatic therapies such as therapeutic massage, Thai massage/assisted stretch, Reichian breathwork, deep tissue, pressure point, compression, gua sha (dermal scraping to move stagnant chi) plus use of essential oils in aroma therapy free the body to enjoy better range of movement and circulation and also enhance communication, insight, and healing between parts of the self. Somatic therapy is an natural adjunct to the transformational power of the psycho-spiritual counseling work that we can do in sessions.

A massage can assist healing in numerous ways, it can open meridian channels, ease physical and emotional constriction, center and lift moods. Bodywork experiences can also be quite invigorating, energizing, increasing circulation, ease specific blocks and adhesions, and are an exceptional adjunct before and after sporting events. A somatic session can be wonderfully spiritually uplifting too. Certain forms of touch and energy work are profoundly calming to the heart and soul. For many people somatic therapy can augment interior reflection and create a meditative opening and expansive healing experience that is also transpersonal and numinous.

______________

Experience and Skills

My intuitive gifts, including those for healing touch, began at a young age. By the time I was 17  I became more aware of my instinct to touch people in places they experienced as wounded or or in need of soothing - knee, shoulder, heart, or head for example.

I would find my hand had seemed to reached out on its own accord to touch a person, unaware that I had even done so - it seemed I reached out especially to those I sensed were in discomfort. My touch was met with a positive response with people reporting feeling much better. These experiences were specifically brought to my attention by a woman I knew when I was 17, she pointed out to me that I touched her in areas of pain (shoulder/knee) and that after I removed my hand she felt better. As I became more and more aware of my healing instinct I began to study to methods to enhance its development.

Today my healing work combines my intuitive abilities, years of  counseling and bodymind education, plus hands-on experience of working with a range of modalities and with people from all walks of life.

My formal somatic training in Canada began in 1983 with reflexology certification, various energy therapies followed, Reiki, Therapeutic Touch, Shiatsu. Practice of yoga and dance.

Training in many methods over the years in in Toronto (my home town) and the U.S., contributed to my knowledge. I studied 450 hours of deep tissue massage, bodymind integration, Reichian breathwork, and Gestalt process.

I became certified in European aromatherapy, Thai Massage, DanceKinetics, (Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health), and qigong certification with Grandmaster Fu. 

I became a  certified Yoga instructor through the White Lotus Institute of Santa Barbara in 1994.

I completed a massage certification with the Santa Barbara Body Therapy Institute when I relocated to central California in 2006 and am licenced by the city and county.

My psycho-spiritual background includes a five-year apprenticeship with Cherokee and intertribal Native teachings.

I was certified in clinical hypnosis in 1994, after three years of study.

My healing work blends somatic methods: yoga, movement awareness, energetic grounding/opening, women’s self-defense, and therapeutic massage, with a number of integration methods.

I am a certified yoga instructor through the White Lotus Institute.

A certified instructor of women’s self-defense. I have worked with groups, individuals, mothers/daughters, teens and younger Girl Scouts. 

My have training and certification as a California-state sexual assault, rape crisis counselor.

I have assisted with the self-defense training at the Marin County Rape Crisis Center. In addition, I taught stress relief, yoga, and healing ritual for the women residents of a substance abuse treatment clinic in Marin County.

I have taught yoga, stretch, and movement for the Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness graduate students at the California Institute of Integral Studies, in San Francisco, for the Hindu Cultural Center in Toronto, at Yoga Works in Orange County, and the Omega Center in New York.  I taught yoga through the city of Laguna Beach Parks and Recreation for six years. Private lessons improved the golf game for the professionals I worked with. I led stress relief/yoga class for corporate employees.

I have also been an instructor for large international multi-lingual groups, including at the International Transpersonal Conference in Brazil. Through the past many years I have met with professional dancers, tri-athletes, scientists, doctors, nurses, clergy, and people from all walks of life, abilities, ages, religions, politics, and perspectives.