“What you can live wholeheartedly”

This blog post has a significant personal and professional update. That being said, I am dropping in to, more and more, how words at any single point in time cannot reflect what I have experienced nor am experiencing. I have pressured myself to create a story that can be easily digestible to other people, and each time I do I am left feeling icky in the incompleteness, in the lack of honoring not only my own complexity, but also that of life itself.

With that being said, here is me sharing, from multiple lenses, in one blog post, for the time being, about this important update:

I came into the iteration of work I’ve been diving into – licensed mental health therapy – from the mission to help people process trauma. Because my passion was trauma-focused, and before getting licensed in mental health, I studied – and continue to practice – yoga therapy as well as massage and bodywork therapy. I shared the former in many settings, including inpatient units in the VA Hospital – and helped to start the yoga program in the psychiatric unit there – at an addiction recovery center, and inpatient treatment for adolescents. My bodywork practice also has focused on re-weaving a person back into their whole being and, thusly, supporting the processing of trauma through the body and nervous system. Most of the symptoms and maladies we diagnose are adaptations and ripple-effects of trauma.

After setting this body-centered foundation, and while continuing to deepen the understanding in these fields, I grew into practice as a mental health therapist. I wanted to alleviate the pain of mental illness through a style and approach that honored one’s whole being and truly alleviated the suffering of trauma via work in the nervous system and body.

My practice has been successful in helping people heal through trauma and move into the profound post-traumatic growth available on the other side of PTSD and Complex-PTSD. I’ve helped illuminate roots of anxiety symptoms, walked with clients as they moved from the darkness of addiction into long-term recovery (which brings tears to my eyes just to write), and witnessed people’s whole bodies soften as one of their inner-children finally looks up and realizes they’re not alone – that they’ve gotten to become a wonderful adult – and they get to be at peace at last.

It has been an honor and meaningful beyond reach-of-words to be with people in the way mental health therapy offers.

Simultaneously, as the years have passed, I have felt a straying-away from the core of the mission: Long-term healing of trauma. This kind of healing is possible through – at the least the incorporation of – therapy through the body and physiology. Trauma is stored in these depths that existed before words, in sensation, in posture and movement, in images.

What later felt a bit like “straying” was necessary – it was imperative for me to more deeply understand the nature and functioning of mind and psyche, relationship, personality, and my own patterns that were held in those matrices (just like for all of us). So, “straying” isn’t the correct word; this foray was essential steps along the path. I, however, thought I had “arrived.” Ha! Have we ever? The real “arrival” is in the acceptance of never arriving.

Thus, I suffered. I became heavy and crispy in burn-out. I wanted to hang on to this image I had held around the possibility of mental health therapy incorporating somatics in a deep, direct, and seamless way. But here is the truth of my experience:

The mental health field is a very cognitive place. (And when I offer CranioSacral Therapy, therapists’ heads are often the heaviest heads I cradle.)

I want there to be no mistake: Therapy is beautiful and profound. How amazing that a lifetime of suffering can be alleviated and transformed through human connection and skillful “conversation”! There are powerful interventions and ways of relating that are available via “talking” – and if you’re a mental health therapist or have engaged in therapy in a transformative way, you know it is SO much more than just “talking.” What can be liberated and processed through the mind is astounding and miraculous.  Nevertheless, my experience is that the realm of mental health therapy is only scratching the surface when it comes to somatics. The mind is still too heavily involved in what is being called “somatics;” deeper healing via soma is not being tapped into.

Further, many people come to therapy to talk. Their desires should not be trampled on – it is their treatment, their choice, and their self-determination must be honored as matters of acting humanely, respectfully, and in fostering healing.

Because I understand the body so intricately – as well as the emotions, psyche, soul, and spirit – it is time for me to continue on my path in this mission to offer support for healing trauma as well as thriving via self-expression and artistry. My practice is shifting to working more directly through the body with not only the practices I have honed in over a decade, but also in continued studies in voice, movement, acting, and Theatre of the Oppressed. Not only is there a practicality to this choice, but also, for me, joy lives here. I want more joy in my own life, personally and professionally. I want more creativity and collaboration, and I miss the theatre!

I will be following this mission – the “shape [that] waits in the seed of [me] to grow and spread its branches against a future sky,” as David Whyte puts it (full poem at the end of this blog post) – to where it is guiding me next: to London, England. I will be relocating to the UK at the end of September, where I will be studying and growing on-and-off for the next 2 years in an MFA program that also will Designate me as a Linklater Voice Teacher. I will continue to be available for somatic sessions, all online, as well as to collaborate with fellow practitioners in client care, workshops, teaching, and consultation. That is my big update :)

What to Remember When Waking

By David Whyte

In that first

hardly noticed

moment

in which you wake,

coming back

to this life

from the other

more secret,

moveable

and frighteningly

honest

world

where everything

began,

there is a small

opening

into the day

that closes

the moment

you begin

your plans

What you can plan

is too small

for you to live.

What you can life

wholeheartedly

will make plans

enough for the vitality

hidden in your sleep.

To become human

is to become visible

while carrying

what is hidden

as a gift to others.

To remember

the other world

in this world

is to live in your

true inheritance.

You are not

a troubled guest

on this earth,

you are not

an accident

amidst other accidents,

you were invited

from another and greater

night than the one

from which

you have just emerged.

Now, looking through

the slanting light

of the morning window

toward the mountain presence

of everything that can be,

what urgency

calls you

to your one love?

What shape

waits in the seed of you

to grow and spread

its branches

against a future sky?

Is it waiting

in the fertile sea?

In the trees

beyond the house?

In the life

you can imagine

for yourself?

In the open

and lovely

white page

on the waiting desk?