mindful somatic coaching
bringing mind and body together
a mindful somatic approach
No matter our focus, our work will be grounded in present-moment awareness. Together, we’ll get curious about how you relate to that which you experience by noticing – in the here and now – emergent behaviors, impulses, gestures, thoughts, memories, images, emotions, and sensations. Utilizing trauma-informed, body-oriented mindfulness to access this information in the present, rather than diving into the past or looking off into the future, allows learning to be experiential, invites the separation of identity from experience necessary for growth, and nurtures the development of an internalized secure base.
(a few) principles of practice
I believe your system holds innate wisdom, and you know yourself best. I will listen for your choice and consent and honor your boundaries. The work will meet you where you are, not the other way around.
I welcome all of your parts and believe that you are a human doing your best in a messy world, navigating systems designed to keep you disconnected and disempowered.
I believe you are inherently worthy of joy, pleasure, love, and creative, expansive aliveness. Your healing is a gift to the world.
The potency and possibility of the work we do together relies on the wellbeing of our practitioner-client relationship. Your experience of safety and support within this container that holds our work is paramount.
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individuals
I collaborate with adult individuals around a variety of topics, including, but not limited to:
Breaking free and healing from perfectionism and people-pleasing
Identifying, setting, and enforcing boundaries
Building trust with self and others
Examining anxiety in certain relationship or communication dynamics
Liberating creativity and pursuing joy
Moving through grief and loss
Reclaiming and integrating minimized or abandoned parts of self
Exploring gender identity and sexual orientation / coming out in adulthood
Unpacking relationship to and with power and privilege within external and internalized systems of oppression
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the client-practitioner relationship
“A healing relationship is special. When you are in one, you feel it. There is an incredible delicacy that you do not dare to disturb. There is a connection with yourself that allows you to relax, be curious and wait. There are intuitions that pop up easily and make powerful contributions to the work. There is a basic warmth and friendliness. There’s a basic wakefulness that informs both practitioner and client. There is no question of healer and healed. Both are parts of something greater taking place. Both feel this. Each is healed.”
– Ron Kurtz
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The potency and possibility of the work we do together relies on the wellbeing of our practitioner-client relationship. While we can think of our practitioner-client relationship as a laboratory for relational learning, it’s also a living, breathing relationship that requires attention and care.
By virtue of my role as the practitioner, I am responsible for holding and maintaining the integrity of the container necessary for us to do our work successfully. I will always initiate and facilitate check-ins around our dynamic, and I enthusiastically invite your feedback at absolutely any time. It’s never too late to bring up an interaction that felt really good or one that didn’t feel quite right to you.
It’s also important for us to acknowledge from the outset the inherent power differential in this relationship. First, naming what is rarely spoken but often felt within the practitioner-client relationship allows us to be with it and get curious about it.
Second, the work of self study and becoming necessitates exploration of our relationship with and to power and privilege. Power differentials often evoke felt experiences of power / lack of power that have yet to be unpacked – awareness gives us a leg up.
Third, as an anti-oppressive practitioner, it’s my job to hold and enforce the boundaries that protect your wellbeing in our dynamic while I simultaneously interrogate, interrupt, and diverge from oppressive practices, beliefs, and standards that dehumanize practitioner and client alike, and keep you disconnected from your power. Reimagining what practices of social and emotional care look like is a sacred commitment of mine within this work and one that I hold with great care, discernment, and integrity.
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Curiosities
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In terms of modality and methodology, mindful somatic coaching and mindfulness-oriented psychotherapy can sometimes feel similar, and both can have healing effects. However, the biggest difference – and most important to be aware of – is that coaching does not assess, diagnose, or treat mental health disorders or provide primary crisis care.
More specifically, supporting folx around unpacking “big T” trauma, working through disordered eating and relationships with food or substances, living with addiction, and/or suicidality is beyond the scope of my practice.
If you’re interested in working with me but unsure whether your needs are more aligned with what psychotherapy can offer, I encourage you to set up a call and I can share my assessment. Collaborating ethically is of the utmost importance to me because it is essential to the safety and wellbeing of both practitioner and client. I don’t take clients with needs beyond my scope or skill set, and if a client’s needs change during our work together, I refer them to another practitioner or practice better suited to support their needs.
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We meet either weekly or biweekly depending on your needs, preferences, and the nature of whatever you’re hoping to explore. My suggestion to folx who aren’t sure which cadence to choose is to begin with weekly sessions for a few months and then see how it feels to transition to biweekly meetings.
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We will most likely meet virtually over Zoom. The exception to this is for folx in the Bay Area – on occasion, if it’s supportive to our work, I will offer the opportunity to meet in person outdoors in Golden Gate Park.
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The fee for individuals is $225 for 60 minutes. Longer sessions of 75 to 90 minutes can be accommodated at a pro-rated fee. For individuals who need a lower fee, I offer a limited number of spots on a sliding scale from $105 to $205.
The fee for relationship constellations of 2-3 individuals is $330 for 90 minutes.
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The name “The Eighth House” is a nod to astrology, where the eighth house is associated with the parts of ourselves we hide in the shadows. The eighth house invites us to journey through the underworld of ourselves.
As such, when I closed my eyes and visualized what my eighth house might look like, I ended up in the darkness of a forest floor laden with mushrooms hard at work transforming dead material into nutrients. Mushrooms seem to perfectly represent what it is we come to do in the eighth house when we venture into our own shadows.