In healing work, there’s often a strong focus on uprooting the pain of the past—and not enough attention on what’s working well in one’s life or on orienting towards joy. Insights and breakthroughs are meaningful, but to sustain real change, those shifts need to be embodied. This means learning to tolerate aliveness and also to move with the biologically wired dance of expansion and contraction, connection and disconnection. For the purpose of this blog, I define aliveness

You may have already done profound healing work, yet still feel challenged in relationships or uncertain about your direction in life. By working at the level of the soul, you can release what you unconsciously carry from your ancestors and open to their blessings and the flow of love. In doing so, you can reclaim a sense of belonging and step more fully into the gift of your life. This is beyond forgiveness. I had a huge shift of perspective about love and life from my eig

Twelve years ago, I was at a retreat in Florida. A fellow participant who's a therapist and I missed a 6:00 a.m. dolphin excursion and felt the ache of missing out when others shared how great it was. I heard her say something like, “I'm scooping up my little one to soothe her.” I stood there perplexed, with no idea where my inner child was. When Your Inner Child Freezes Rounding my favorite part of the lake trail behind my house, I had a spark of insight: our inner child ca

You might wish for intimate connections, self-love, inner strength and goodness that life offers… yet it can feel foreign. The roots can reach all the way back to the womb or early infancy—before conscious memory—yet still held deeply in the body’s viscera, felt instinctively, and leaving a lasting impact. What I’m sharing is through the lens of my trainings and my experiences with clients—it doesn’t mean everyone is impacted in the same way. What's hopeful is that much repa

Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” ~Rumi There’s a deep and constant human impulse to change ourselves to be loved. To a child, love and acceptance are as important as food. So we abandon parts of ourselves to stay connected to our caregivers. Dr. Laurence Heller—founder of the NeuroAffective Relational Model (NARM) for healing attachment, relational, and developmental trauma—expla

Some live with a constant undercurrent of anxiety, numbness, or disconnection from their bodies. Although they may appear to function well, life stressors can intensify these undercurrents, causing significant suffering. Often linked to attachment and developmental trauma, or shock traumas like physical or sexual abuse, an overlooked yet profound influence may stem from pre- and perinatal experiences—our time in the womb and first year of life. Much of what I’m sharing here

Deep survival impulses may play a key role. When I learned about Global High Intensity Activation (GHIA) from Somatic Experiencing (SE)...

Anger is a part of life. We all experience it, but we may only see it as destructive or hurtful. Allowing ourselves to feel authentic anger can play a vital role in moving our lives forward. I've learned a lot about anger from my teacher, Dr. Laurence Heller, founder of the Neuro-Affective Relational Model™ for Healing Developmental Trauma (NARM). In his book "Healing Developmental Trauma," co-authored with Aline LaPierre, PsyD, they discuss somatic mindfulness—supporting th

I didn’t know I was not in my body–dissociated, disconnected from myself, living in my head and in spiritual realms or that early traumas...