About
Who I Am & My Philosophy
I’m a woman with a variety of challenging body experiences that continue to help me learn and grow. The experiences of medical stress as a child, migraines, painful periods, perfectionism, people-pleasing, and anxiety have notably been my ‘body teachers’ as I learn that symptoms are messages, and observing them with the subtle yet powerful lens of sensation and emotion has helped me to reframe how I experience Life in my own body.
As a licensed physical therapist with over 22 years of experience, I have watched the evolution of our understanding of how body-minds function in the most dire of circumstances through working 15 years in the intensive care units of Level 1 Trauma and transplant centers to more gentle surroundings with no less ‘inner direness’ of chronic pain and illness. The collection, accumulation and integration of these experiences continue to teach me so much of the care of body-minds - needs, wants, desires, and how healing actually happens.
I encountered the space-holding practice of spiritual direction several years into my work as an intensive care unit physical therapist. With the many life-or-death situations that I encountered daily, having someone to hold space for my difficulties in this way was often the only thing that helped me to find meaning in difficult times. Having this soul-care companion also helped me to learn to find discernment to make small and big (like job changes and getting married - no biggie!) that would support my growth, love, compassion, and belonging for myself and others.
In all of my clinical work, I have found that one of the greatest bridges between the health of the body and the health of the soul is through the nervous system. And, one of the most aligned ways that I can support people most effectively is through what I call “transformative dialogue”, meaning, conversations that support individuals to uncover links between body sensations and symptoms and their deeper meanings to help people grow and heal their lives. This dialogue is more of a slow and embodied type, also drawing from my skills as a graduate of the Somatic Experiencing (R) curriculum. This type of body-mind dialogue provides the opportunity for the conversation to follow the pace of the body while also being present to the emotionality of the words they speak and receive, as well as the sensations that their body offers to them as ways to understand its wisdom.
It’s a both-and to access wisdom: Both body and soul. Both in me, and in you.
I know you might wish to know my formal training in all these things, see: Click here for a link to my CV.