I began my professional journey in British Columbia studying the movement of the body with an undergraduate degree in Kinesiology.  From there I deepened my application of body movement becoming a massage therapist/body worker and have worked in the field for the last 9 years, studying an array of modalities to promote balance and ease within a client’s body. After having the opportunity to work with thousands of bodies, I felt the desire to meet my clients in a more holistic and integrated manner. Realizing physical and mental ease depend and influence each other directly, I continued my graduate studies at Naropa University studying counseling, mindfulness, and transpersonal psychology. It was through this education and my private bodywork practice I could not ignore the prolific nature of trauma in our society.

As an avid body enthusiast, I was delighted to learn current research indubitably supports the effective approach of somatic based therapies when approaching trauma healing. I narrowed my focus in the healing arts by deepening my concentration in trauma. Somatic Experiencing, a 3-year intensive trauma and nervous system training, has enabled me to effectively work with clients therapeutically using a somatic approach to promote wholeness and regulation.

My somatic approach is firmly rooted in the deep value of building a relationship with our bodies. In order to process trauma, we need to build the capacity to notice. To notice ourselves and our environment in a different manner than simply cognitive. Just like building a relationship with a new friend, the process of getting to know our whole being is similar. Just as we learn “to be” with another, we learn to be with ourselves. We begin by listening, acknowledging our internal experience, noticing how that affects us, progressively allowing ourselves to be moved and changed and deeply impacted. This is the way of the whole being approach; not easily simplified into one pre-determined particular method, rather my approach is directly oriented to helping clients develop a practice of embodiment (the experience of being a body).  

We must learn to first become compassionately acquainted with ourselves and progressively connect to our inner world more intimately. As we do, our experience begins to change naturally. We orient to the innate brilliance of our whole system (body, mind, spirit) and recognize the natural impulses/resources through image, sensation, behavior, emotion, and memory through which our body is always reaching toward completion and wholeness.

Beyond my professional journey, I am an avid traveler and adventure seeker. Coming home to my nervous system has allowed me to trust my impulses, feel the freedom to pursue my dreams and experience them with a full sense of aliveness. For me, this is one of the greatest rewards of this work.