Bodywork
“The skin is no more separated from the brain than the surface of a lake is separate from its depths: the two are different locations in a continuous medium. To touch the surface is to touch the depths.”
Deane Juhan
How can Bodywork help me?
When I work with bodywork, I meet you with a compassionate, witnessing touch. I combine different techniques, but all use a light, gentle and subtle, yet deeply listening touch.
All bodywork is done fully clothed, and can be done either seated or lying down, whichever feels the most supportive to you.
Bodywork can help deepen your connection to your body, and in doing so, can build your awareness of how your body and mind are intrinsically connected. By focusing your attention on different areas of your body, you can start to tune in and listen to the language of your body.
Bodywork can help you to strengthen your proprioceptive sense of where your body is in space. It can also help to develop a stronger interoceptive awareness of your inner workings. And it can help your brain’s neuroceptive ability to distinguish between safety or danger.
NeuroAffective Touch®
Touch is the foundation of our relational experience. Scientific evidence has shown that attuned, caring touch is critically important for normal brain development, as well as for healthy emotional and cognitive maturation.
During a NeuroAffective Touch® session, I use a very gentle supportive touch to engage your body at a deep biological level. At the same time, your mind is invited to collaborate as a partner alongside your body. By paying attention to different layers of your body - your skin, connective tissue, muscle, nervous system, organs - and by following your body’s natural rhythms and lines of force, I help you to become consciously aware of your ‘neuroception’ or inner sensations. This encourages your mind and body to develop a conscious, compassionate relationship.
Bodywork and touch connect with you in a ‘bottom-up’ way eg from the body to the mind. By engaging with the mind at the same time in a ‘top-down’ way (eg from the mind to the body) NeuroAffective Touch® helps you to understand how your thoughts, emotions, and body, function collaboratively as one organism.
By combining a gentle and regulating contact, together with a caring relational presence, NeuroAffective Touch® can be particularly helpful when working with childhood, emotional, and relational trauma.
NeuroAffective Touch® integrates the key elements of somatic psychotherapy, attachment and developmental theory, psychodynamic psychotherapy, and affective and interpersonal neurobiology.
Reiki
I work at an energetic level with Reiki, and can offer this in conjunction with other modalities, or on its own.
Reiki is a very gentle touch therapy, and like all bodywork that I offer, is done fully clothed. A Reiki session naturally induces deep rest. This replenishes your vital energy by helping to naturally support your body towards homeostasis, and in turn towards greater health and vitality. No one part of you works alone, rather you are an integration of interconnected parts. The health of your body, heart, mind and spirit all influence each other. When I connect with you on an energetic level, it becomes easier to sense yourself as a whole, interconnected being, and as a result, a more harmonious sense of self can be felt.
I work in a deeply present, compassionate and intuitive way. Experiencing a Reiki treatment with me allows you to be held in a deeply meditative state, and enables the body to be heard and witnessed at a very profound level. It can be a deeply healing experience.