How would you describe your approach as compared to other kinds of coaching or therapies?
This approach brings together what I’ve observed are some best practices from the fields of coaching and therapy. With any and all methods I’ve studied and practice there are underlying principles and understandings that guide how I work with clients. I enter into each session and each relationship with the utmost respect for their system’s inner wisdom, compassion for the legacies that have thwarted or supported their efforts and awe at the life that sustains us all. I ask to humbly enter their world knowing that what we discover together is greater than what we can do on our own. I am moved by their sincere longing to know themselves better and the brave willingness to trust me and this process. I am floored by the small and big transformations that are possible.
With this foundation we co-create a safe playground to explore with curiosity. We practice staying present, walking into a moment and stretching it out to receive what it offers. I have many tools in my toolbox or rather toys in my Mary Poppins bag to draw from. I fluidly borrow techniques from therapeutic models grounded in neurobiology, functional anatomy and kinesiology, attachment and polyvagal theories, somatic disciplines. movement arts and more. Methods like Sensorimotor Psychotherapy have trained me how to listen more fully and track how the client’s system is organizing and protecting itself. I’ve learned protocols and use structures to contain our time but am not strictly attached to an agenda so that the client’s system can teach us both what it needs at this moment to return to homeostasis and evolve with more awareness.
Do I need to agree with the theories behind somatic therapies, for it to work on me? How can I trust it is safe for me?
You only need to be open to the wisdom inside of you. You don’t need to believe in any theories or what I’m proposing, because the resources you need are all already within you. We mine for them together in a collaborate discovery process. I can help you practice to mindfully observe, learn from, and listen to your own body, with curiosity and without judgment. Hopefully you can learn to trust that process of discovery as you see the results from nurturing that emerging relationship.
Somewhere along the way we forget, get far away from who we are, develop strategies grown in hostile environments that get neurologically wired, and that programming can overcome our will. But I have witnessed people slowing down, choosing to get off that runaway train and writing a new story for themselves.
What does somatic mean, and what is a helpful way to think about it?
Soma simply means of the body. The way I use the term somatic therapies are methods that include the body, mind, and emotions in healing. Acknowledging that we are energy and matter, our systems learn, operate, break down and heal on multiple simultaneous levels; physical, emotional, mental, and energetic. If we want to reclaim healthy homeostasis, we must regulate the nervous system, find the dysfunctional patterns that have wired our nervous system in suboptimal ways, albeit in an attempt to keep us safe when we were in compromised or traumatic states. Gradually we can replace those patterns, practicing new ones, to rewire neural pathways and support healthier behaviors.
So what are some tools or methods you might use in any given session and how would you integrate them into the flow of a session? I draw from, modify, and integrate many somatic disciplines into a holistic methodology. First, we do a check-in and I track for what’s happening in the body and overall system as you describe what’s up for you and what you want to focus on.
Regulating the nervous system is key to all the work. I’m guided by what we’ve learned about our neurobiology, what your system is telling us, what our capacity is at the moment, what our common sense and inner wisdom reveals…In all therapeutic sessions, we cultivate a focused calm state where what is usually not accessible, not conscious, and not able to be tolerated is now all available for safe observation and transformation. Some call this state ‘Witnessing Mindfulness’ ** You are able to, simultaneously, experience, observe and report body-sensations, emotions, thoughts…that might come up, and we will let your body’s response guide the process moment to moment.
This helps us safely access areas of emotional and/or physical pain that would otherwise trigger fear or be too much to tolerate, such as when there’s trauma held in the system. It’s like time traveling and your body is the portal.
I have many tools for work on and off the table from years of developing this work; movement and mind/body therapies including Structural Yoga Therapy, dance, imagery, Pilates, Feldenkrais..and I usually begin with internal focusing and/or guided relaxation/breathwork to cultivate a state where the nervous system can be more balanced and receptive and apply a lens of somatic psychotherapy no matter what other tools I’m using. Though I don’t do much clinical orthopedic massage therapy anymore I still occasionally employ some manual therapies like myofascial release, trigger point therapy, MET, neuromuscular re-education… if we choose to do bodywork that day.
All sessions are informed by but some sessions are more focused on Sensorimotor Psychotherapy‘, a somatic psychotherapeutic methodology by Pat Ogden. This bottom-up approach respects your body’s inner wisdom, is informed by the latest advances in neuroscience and trauma therapy, anchors the session in present moment awareness and skillfully regulates the nervous system. We might learn more about your survival strategies, which have served to keep you functioning in the face of trauma but have become obstacles in your desire to make better choices for a more fulfilling life.
For times when the distressing experiences seem to be a response coming from a part of you that feels threatened; where your nervous system switches to survival mode and you’re too flooded to act as your wisest adult self, Janina Fisher’s TIST model is a cutting edge trauma informed approach that respectfully, elegantly, safely helps identify and welcome these adaptive strategies our brain uses to keep us safe but inevitably get in our way. Gradually we work to integrate your internal family of parts into an integrated better functioning whole.
As needed, some sessions are devoted to life skills and holistic health coaching focused on improving diet or sleep or developing healthier habits and lifestyle modifications. Often there is a need for increasing somatic awareness or some postural retraining, reconstructing movement patterns as in walking or to develop or refine a therapeutic or rehab exercise routine.
We expand or create support systems to help you succeed. I refer, build upon, consult with and/or collaborate with other health professionals as needed, so you have a team in your corner and resources within reach. What matters to me is that you are supported in the way that works for you, whether that’s me or someone else.
Can you describe a typical session?
Though the methods are effective for many situations, there really isn’t a typical session. Each person’s needs and situation are a unique constellation of factors, even if they’ve received a similar diagnosis to someone else. Plus, what they need today may differ from what they needed last week and the way they respond to what we do will not be identical.
As the client, it’s your show and you’re in charge of where we go but we decide together what we are going to focus on that day. If it’s not apparent we might start with an internal exploration to ask the body what needs addressing right now, what part of you is most in need. Keeping in mind your long term goals but depending on your current emotional experience, acute symptoms and chronic pain patterns, what themes, limiting beliefs or behavioral patterns we’ve been working on, we pick a doorway and enter your fascinating inner world.
Have you worked with people with multiple complex chronic pain, illness, and trauma? What kinds of conditions have you seen improved?
Yes. It’s that intersection where I have found that this combination of therapies gives some hope of reclaiming one’s life from the thieves of not just the illness but our perception and judgement of ourselves and our limitations. My clients are usually highly functional but might feel tethered by a history of childhood trauma with unstable caregivers and compromised by anxiety disorders and invisible illnesses like fibromyalgia or chronic fatigue.
Some clients I’ve worked with have suffered at once from multiple injuries and neck pain with eating disorders and chronic PTSD or post-concussion syndrome with migraines and childhood sexual abuse or difficulty regulating emotions like anger and sadness, digestive disorders with repetitive strain injuries or multiple chemical sensitivities and boundary issues, with sciatica/low back pain.
How long will it take before I feel some relief or know it’s working for me? People usually notice a shift in the first few sessions and relief can come even after the first therapeutic session, but this is not a quick fix. It takes consistent effort to change sometimes longstanding patterns. This is a commitment you make to yourself and the more you put into it the more you’ll get out.
What are some goals for your work with clients?
I always ask clients what their goals are, so that is the foundation as we begin to assess your needs and develop a plan. The first phase might be pain relief if that’s an immediate concern. If sleep is disturbed, that would be a priority because healing can’t happen without your glial cells (the night janitors in your brain) having that time to put things back in order. Increasing somatic awareness and connection with the body, understanding the need for and incorporating self care practices, reducing anxiety and interpersonal problems, having more agency to make the choices you really want to make, being able to access more calm in the system to begin feeling the peace that is already inside you…
In our work, we’ll discover your resources to better navigate the triggers that happen in daily life, especially with family, to better manage chronic pain, illness, and anxiety, to thrive and not just survive.
But how can you teach an old dog new tricks?
Maybe sometimes we need to let go of the old tricks. Being open to the fact that the ways you’ve done some things your whole life, the way you see yourself and the world may not be serving you now, even though there’s good reason for those old tricks, that were trying to keep you safe. Your body is telling you that, in sensation not words, to get your attention. The function of pain is to tell you something is wrong and it’s a great motivator. In acute pain like after an injury, it’s simpler first aid, rest, repair. In chronic pain (physical and emotional), it may involve changing unconscious habits, including assumptions, addictions, posture, movement, counterproductive beliefs, discovering why you get triggered and respond in certain ways, why you can’t give yourself what you need to be whole. So much of learning is unlearning.
What are some ways you see a connection between bodywork and emotional work? Between the structure and experience?
I’m continuously fascinated by the connections and working at the intersections. In the interview “Connecting the Dots” I explore this question further, but one example is with interoception, defined as ‘the sense of the internal state of the body… Misrepresentations of internal states, or a disconnect between the body’s signals and the brain’s interpretation and prediction of those signals, have been suggested to underlie conditions such as anxiety disorders, PTSD, eating disorders, depression, OCD, ADHD, etc. ‘ This explanation is a modified excerpt from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interoception
Working with connective tissue in bodywork and somatic therapies is a potential avenue to cultivate body awareness because there are even more receptors in connective tissue for interoception than for proprioception. Some have posited that piezoelectricity can partially explain the mechanisms by which myofascial release and trigger point pressure work impact the system. https://www.explainthatstuff.com/piezoelectricity.html
We, like all life, are the union and relationship between energy and matter. There’s so much more to say about this exciting, inexhaustible topic.
Would a “well adjusted” person NOT have trauma stored in their body?
It’s more like the effects of trauma are held in our nervous systems, limiting beliefs, posture, habits, and unresolved emotions, and expressed in behavior patterns. I think of trauma differently than I used to because we all have our share of imperfection, emotional wounding and damage. I’m finally accepting of that in myself. If we’re born of human parents, and live in this world of noise and imperfection, it’s likely we’ve been impacted by trauma even if they’re minor. Our systems can handle and overcome adversity but many of us have suffered from complex sustained trauma, neglect, and abuse especially emotionally painful relationships with childhood caregivers. Not having our needs met in our early years, not having someone there to hold us through it, negatively impacts neurological wiring and resetting from that requires a trustworthy environment to change patterns and create new neural pathways and habits.
What does mindful (an overused term) mean to you?
I actually don’t like that word so much and believe something was lost in translation. Being full of mind, to me, implies stuck in thinking. I’d rather be heartful. I do sometimes though use the word mindful in my work, since it’s code these days for present moment awareness, especially in somatic psychotherapy. I just define my terms.
The British Buddhist scholar T. W. Rhys Davids coined the term at the beginning of the 20th century, attempting to translate sati, a word in the Pali language of ancient India, in which many original Buddhist texts were written. It roughly means awareness or remembrance. John Kabat-Zinn later picked it up as he developed his Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program and it has stuck ever since in the jargon of our modern contemplative practices.
For me, I read ‘sati’ as remembering what we really are and maintaining an awareness of that inner reality. In my experience, this goes beyond what mindfulness practices embody.
** Ron Kurz , (founder of Hakomi and mentor to Pat Ogden, founder of SP) explains the type and function of mindfulness in the Hakomi and SP method like this: “You can’t take the engine apart while it’s running”….“Witnessing mindfulness is very important when working with traumatic memory because the act of witnessing keeps the frontal lobes firing so that amygdala driven fear responses don’t overwhelm the client. As long as the client can stay mindful of her experience and reporting her experience, she will not go out of the window of tolerance “
Lenore Bryck,TIST certified, SP Level II Graduate, LMT, RYT, CSYT, RMT, NCBTMB CE Provider