In the right setting, our difficulties and apparent limitations become fertile ground for exploration, growth, healing, and authentic expression. Body-Centered Healing is a dynamic, experiential process for navigating the challenge of change by recovering and integrating your creative potential. Every session will engage your mind and body, taking you on a healing journey into the heart of who you are. (You can also read about how I integrate Body-Centered Healing practices into the creative process in my award-winning book Wild Ideas: Creativity from the Inside Out.
3. What methods do you use?
The journey from what was to what will be requires methods that are tailored to your unique learning style and readiness for exploration. Gradual deepening permits the discovery of whatever is hidden that wishes to be recognized and integrated. All you have to bring is your curious, inquiring mind. I will support your journey of discovery with a variety of tools that engage your mind and senses including: conscious inquiry, guided visualization, inner dialogue, movement, breath-work, sounding, journaling, and, yes, even doodling.
4. Will I be able to apply and actually use what happens during each session?
Absolutely! On an on-going basis, I will help you interpret and integrate your experiences so that you can take what you are learning and apply it directly to your life.
5. Do I need any special skills or education to benefit from Body-Centered Healing?
No prior experience or special talent is required! You will feel supported wherever you are in your life journey. You only need to be committed to your own healing and growth.
6. I’ve tried psychotherapy and life coaching. How does Body-Centered Healing differ?
Body-Centered Healing engages your body as well as your mind and emotions in the learning process. As one of my clients remarked: “After my sessions, I feel actual physical changes inside my body that I would describe as epiphanies.” Knowledge that is merely understood intellectually can fade over time because it doesn’t penetrate to the level of habitual thought and behavior. But knowledge that is felt and understood simultaneously will penetrate to the deepest level of being. The impact of such felt-understanding tends to change lives in a concrete, lasting way.
7. I don’t have a creative bone in my body. Can Body-Centered Healing help me?
Yes! I know what it means to feel like an outsider, watching other people creating and living their dreams. How do they do it? And why can’t I? Working together, we will slowly penetrate the surface layers of habit and defense. Your creative confidence will naturally unfold from the inside out because you will live the process of creativity during our Body-Centered Healing sessions.
8. Is Body-Centered Healing the same thing as bodywork?
No. Body-Centered Healing works in tandem with bodywork sessions. In a bodywork session you are not directly involved in the healing process. The practitioner is doing most of the work. Body-Centered Healing is an active process that stimulates your participation in the healing process. Using a variety of intuitive and creative methods, you will engage your own mystery. You will learn to decipher the language of your symptoms, integrating feeling and sensation with your conscious, thinking mind. Making a direct connection to the body’s innate intelligence empowers feelings of self-control, while restoring a sense of personal intimacy and comfort within the boundaries of your own skin.
9. Can Body-Centered Healing help me cope with chronic pain, injuries, or illness?
Definitely! Pain can be emotional or physical or both. Pain is a problem. But making war on your body or numbing-out may not be a sustainable solution to the problem of pain. Surprisingly, the key to feeling better doesn’t always mean fighting to eradicate all traces of pain. Healing is about consciously engaging pain in a way that restores balance. Body-Centered Healing can help you change your interaction with pain. The power of awareness, acceptance, and deep listening allows pain to gradually shift of its own accord. It is human to resist what hurts or threatens us, but consider this: When it comes to pain, what threatens us may also love us.
10. Do you work with recovering addicts?
Body-Centered Healing is recommended for addicts who have found stability in terms of managing their primary addiction(s) successfully. In the early stages of recovery, all of an addict’s energy needs to be spent on achieving sobriety and stability. Body-Centered Healing is designed specifically for advanced recovery work—which becomes essential for maintaining long-term sobriety and wellness. Initial recovery efforts necessarily focus on breaking a primary addiction or unwanted behavior. However, once that release from a destructive behavior pattern has been achieved, there still remains those deeply ingrained habits and patterns and, especially, the feelings and attachments to old systems that must be dealt with if recovery is to continue. Recovering addicts who skip this important work are more vulnerable to relapse—even after years of sobriety—if they are triggered by stressful life events. My in-depth approach directly addresses the underlying wounds and body-memories that drive the cycle of addiction.
11. How can Body-Centered Healing help couples repair relationship ambivalence and restore genuine intimacy?
Couples become estranged for a variety of reasons. Body-Centered Healing is an invaluable support for couples seeking to discover a deeper bond or find their way back to each other after periods of distance. Within the freedom and privacy of individual sessions, each partner gradually learns to relax internal barriers while exploring a fuller range of personal truth. As partners reach new levels of intimacy and honesty within themselves, they naturally have more to offer each other. When couples return for joint sessions, their interactions are richer and more meaningful. One couple described it this way: “During our Body-Centered Healing sessions, it felt like we were meeting each other all over again, only in a more honest way. It wasn’t always easy, but we ended up feeling more loved, seen, and connected.”
12. Why is a healing guide helpful?
As much as we crave change and growth, we also fear those vulnerable, out-of-control feelings that wash over us when we venture into the unknown. Overcoming this natural reluctance is easier with the support of a strong, compassionate guide—someone who understands the pitfalls and can offer expertise. The highly focused nature of Body-Centered Healing will support you in confronting emotional barriers and challenges, gently moving you toward acceptance, learning, and creative renewal. Practically speaking, the Body-Centered Healing process is an efficient method for freeing bound energy, while giving you the skills you need for attracting and navigating new possibilities.
13. How do I know if Body-Centered Healing is right for me?
Body-Centered Healing can be transformative for a variety of physical, emotional, spiritual, or creative challenges—whether you are hurting or struggling with some aspect of yourself, your health, or your life experience. Are you confused, blocked, stagnant, sad, anxious or depressed? Would you like to reinvent yourself professionally, creatively, or in your relationships? Are issues that had been previously laid to rest resurfacing? Do you struggle to begin or complete a cherished project? If you have explored personal coaching or other healing modalities and found that they just didn’t go far enough, my focused, in-depth approach may be a good fit for you.
14. Do I need to do anything to prepare for my first session?
Someone once said: “Defining the problem correctly is 90% of finding a solution.” Come prepared to share your story. And I will come prepared to listen deeply to what you are saying—and especially to what you are not saying. Even if you have told your story many times before, there is something that is not being said—or being seen—in the retelling of a familiar experience. Finding that missing piece is what is really interesting. Together, we will discover an opening. Then you can decide whether or not you wish to continue to explore it. Bring a notebook or journal and a pen.
15. How do I get started?
Just give me a call at 707-540-5948 to receive a 20-minute complimentary phone consultation. You can also check out my blog for helpful articles on a variety of topics. My award-winning book, Wild Ideas: Creativity from the Inside Out, is available on Amazon. It’s a uniquely personal resource that takes you inside the creative process—from Feeling Inspired to Stepping Out with a completed project. And it’s packed full of wisdom and surprising insights that will draw you deeper into your own creative journey.
