Our sessions will be

  • Personalized

    Our initial session will be dedicated to assessing the current state of your nervous system, any historical and relational challenges that might be relevant, and creating a personalized healing plan to support your specific needs.

  • Focused

    Everyone has a distinctive history when it comes to nervous system activation. I’ll work closely with you to help cultivate a deeper awareness of your triggers and heal and integrate any unresolved trauma at the root of them.

  • Attuned

    This work is designed to meet you exactly where you are. Each person is unique in both their needs and capacity. The innate wisdom of your nervous system will serve as our guide to safely move towards healing and regulation.

How you’ll feel

more connected to your body, AWARE OF YOUR EMOTIONS + confident in navigating challenging moments + RELATIONSHIPS

WHAT are Somatic Resilience and Regulation® + TRANSFORMING TOUCH® ?

Somatic Resilience and Regulation® and Transforming Touch® are attachment-focused, neurophysiological methods of hands-on healing for regulating the nervous system, as well as the other physical, intellectual, emotional, and spiritual components of self.

They are especially helpful for those who experience Developmental Trauma (trauma that occurs early in life) from adverse childhood experiences, a difficult birth, pre-natal trauma while still in the womb, or intergenerational, ancestral trauma passed down our familial lines.

Developmental Trauma is often non-verbal as it happens very early in life before we had the vocabulary to put our experience into words - it is felt, and stored in a non-cognitive part of the nervous system, so we cannot always make sense of it, and do not always have a story to go with it. Working directly with the body is often necessary for supporting the healing on the nervous system level, where our earliest survival adaptations began.

These modalities are based on the idea that when there are ruptures during early development, they can continue to disrupt a person's life into adulthood. SRR + TEB incorporate presence, regulation, and relationship to repair these ruptures, and support the importance of presence and relationship in the healing process, creating the opportunity to reorganize and re-pattern the early experiences that are held in somatic memory.

A synthesis of Allan Schore, John Bowlby + Mary Ainsworth’s work on human attachment combined with Stephen Porges' work on Polyvagal Theory, Stephen Terrell + Kathy Kain’s work with threat response and autonomic regulation, dashes of Somatic Experiencing, and Dick Schwartz’s parts work (IFS - Internal Family Systems) creates a deeply supportive container for redesigning those earlier developmental platforms.

John Bowlby's work showed us the importance of the Secure Base while growing and healing. This relationship supports the transition from insecure attachment to earned secure attachment. This transition opens the way for the client to show increased vulnerability, which increases the potential for healing and healthier, more deeply connected relationships.

SRR + TEB reflect the understanding of Developmental Trauma and rely on studies such as the Adverse Childhood Experience Study. This study shows the importance of intervention in someone's life who was exposed to Developmental Trauma. Intervention can prevent a lifetime of disease and support an increased sense of well-being.

Somatic Resilience and Regulation® and Transforming Touch® are effective ways of facilitating regulation within the nervous systems using physical touch. The protocols and enhancements are designed to work with or without physical touch, and some clients, especially those whose nervous systems have adapted to feel safest with some distance, find the benefits of the work to be very powerful, even when doing distance work online.

I’m currently offering online sessions internationally, in-person sessions in Barcelona and Somatic Immersions in a variety of locations.

Not sure if this work is right for you or just want to know more before diving in? Book a complimentary 30-minute consultation:

WHAT is THE DYNAMIC ATTACHMENT REPATTERNING EXPERIENCE?

Do you ever wonder why you interact with others the way you do?

If you’ve ever struggled in a relationship or suffered from anxiety, depression or other emotional difficulties, attachment theory can help us get to the source of these challenges and understand what’s going on.

Attachment was first described by British psychologist John Bowlby as a “lasting psychological connectedness between human beings.”

Bowlby believed that the earliest bonds formed by children with their primary caregivers is the original blueprint for how we perceive, connect with and relate to others and the world around us.

In attachment theory, we understand that our earliest childhood patterns can carry over into adulthood —which can shape our expectations and interactions for all our relationships, including family, friendships, work or romance.

Relational trauma and emotional wounding can amplify our sense of fear, anger, isolation and helplessness, which sometimes makes it hard to seek help.

The good news is that when we become aware of how these feelings, emotions and patterns first developed, we can also learn how to begin healing and ask for what we need. Attachment styles aren’t rigid or set in stone. Because we’re biologically wired to connect, we’re also biologically wired to heal. You see, no matter what insecure attachment adaptation you might have developed, secure attachment is always possible.

That means, no matter what happened in early childhood or what your relationship experiences look like, it’s possible to restore secure attachment, radically change the nature of your relationships and strengthen your ability to form deep and lasting connections.

We’re all capable of healing and repair. But we can’t do it alone because we’re not wired to heal in isolation.

Dr. Diane Poole Heller’s signature approach, DARe––Dynamic Attachment Repatterning experience––is a powerful and pragmatic, science-based method that helps change deep-rooted patterns to resolve trauma and open the path to a secure way of relating to themselves and others. 

"Touch, when applied appropriately, safely, and ethically, can be useful to repair attachment ruptures, promoting healthier and more accurate interoception, creating a sense of safety and connectedness, supporting better access to co-regulation and self-regulation, and repairing chronic somatic shame. Touch can help clients to identify and more fully develop appropriate boundaries and to experience a sense of agency when determining how, when, and what type of touch occurs. Touch can, in part, provide what was not received during the early developmental phases, and provide a helpful option for those clients who are open to the use of touch and somatic forms of therapy."

Nurturing Resilience by Kathy L. Kain and Stephen J. Terrell

FAQs

  • Each 50-minute session starts with a check-in to discuss anything specific that is needing attention and support, as well as any new observations or curiosities, then moves into working somatically with the body.

    During an in-person session, your body is supported by a massage table while I move through a series of holds at various points along the nervous system to increase regulation and capacity and support attachment repatterning. We also work with the limbic system and several primitive reflexes or different body systems depending on each person’s unique needs and what is showing up in the nervous system.

    Our initial session might spend more time going over your intake to ensure a deeper understanding of what you are seeking support with and any vital information related to it and to address any questions or concerns you may have, but we will still do some table work.

  • The protocols and enhancements are designed to work with or without physical touch, and some clients, especially those whose nervous systems have adapted to feel safest with a bit of physical distance between themselves and another person (i.e. those who lean towards avoidant adaptive responses), find the benefits of the work to be extremely powerful when doing this work online.

  • Because this work is titrated, and regulation + safety build over time, you'll experience the biggest shifts and benefits with weekly or bi-weekly sessions over a longer period of time, and almost everyone experiences a noticeable shift after just one session.

    It is best to continue until one arrives at a place where they no longer need it, or just need occasional sessions when navigating difficult periods of life, but if you are unsure, committing to a minimum of 1-3 months will help you get a baseline idea of how this work shifts your nervous system over time. Often when we’ve had enough time to experience the benefits firsthand, we realize the value of somatic healing work.

  • Yes! 5 or 10 session packages are available at a discounted rate. Please inquire during your free consult.

  • Yes! For people who already have some nervous system work under their belt and feel ready to go deeper, I offer a Somatic Immersion. You can get more information about that here. The immersion is not intended for people who are new to somatic work or are just beginning to address trauma.

  • • Anxiety

    • Depression

    • Overwhelm

    • Unresolved Trauma

    • PTSD

    • cPTSD (Early Developmental Trauma)

    • Chronic Pain + Illness

    • Difficulty Forming Close Healthy Bonds

    • Recurring Relational Challenges• Attachment Ruptures

    • Shifting Stress + Survival Strategies

    • Soothing Coping Mechanisms such as addiction, substance use, eating issues

    • Support in Navigating Intense Emotions

    • Psychedelic Integration

  • YES! There is a wealth of research that has been done in this area. You can click here for a list of studies on the efficacy of touch in healing practices

  • • Psychological, emotional, verbal, physical, or sexual abuse

    • Neglect, abandonment or basic unmet needs (emotional or otherwise)

    • Parental/Caregiver inconsistency

    • Preoccupied primary caregiver (this can be from their own unresolved trauma, mental illness, substance abuse issues, caregiving a sibling with a severe illness,)

    • Loss of a parent/caregiver due to death or divorce, abandonment or incarceration

    • Adoption, growing up in foster care or unstable, inconsistent environments

    • Witnessing or experiencing domestic violence

    • Maternal stress during pregnancy (relational or otherwise)

    • Accident while mother was pregnant

    • Birth trauma (including premature birth, c-section, induced birth, cord around neck)

    • Serious accidents or life-threatening illness, surgery at a young age

    • Long separation from caregivers (during hospitalization or for other reasons)

Additional questions? Schedule a complimentary
30-minute exploratory call to find out more.