MY STORY

I am blessed and challenged with a highly sensitive nervous system, the exquisite physiology designed in every human to interface between the external world and inner experience. I have wondered if mine was designed on the outside of my body instead of the inside. I often feel like I have a zillion antenna all over my body, making me hyper-aware of the everything around me. Add to that my empathic abilities, intuitive inclinations, and hypervigilant tendencies, life is alot. Sometimes I live in technicolor, other times I'd rather live in a cave.

I experience chronic overstimulation as shards of glass piercing my invisible skin. Ongoing lack of rest causes cringe-worthy crankiness, annoying impatience, and the little things to feel like big things. Overwhelm is a familiar daily experience.

Although I experience more ease and grace in my life now, it wasn’t always that way. I felt uncomfortably numb during most of my teenage years, experienced a variety of familial challenges, and drank the same cultural kool-aid to be inhumanely productive during my academic years. I graduated into the wonderful world of dododo, gogogo, pushpushpush pace in my work life and lamented Sunday evenings as I prepared to enter the rat race, again. Early motherhood was an energetic nightmare, filled with months of sleep torture, needing to talk myself through red and green lights to get home safely, and feeling like I was playing the starring role in "Groundhog Day." The love for my son was, and will forever be, mama bear strong AND I became an unrecognizable version of myself. This phase was an impossible equation; I needed more rest and got less. Little by little, I crawled out of this dark time and put myself back together as I had more time and space.

It's not complicated. As an energetically sensitive soul, when I do not experience sufficient sleep, downtime, and restoration, I do not feel like my Self. 

I have experienced disconnect, despair, and doubt of ever feeling like myself again. I have felt cut off from the neck down and attempted to live from the neck up. I have numbed, self-medicated, been lost, dazed, and confused. I know the dark night of the soul.

(EXHALE, INHALE...) 

I also know what joy, bliss, ecstasy, and divine grace feels like in every cell of my body. I have been plugged into embodied acts of creative self-expression my whole life. I have been dancing like no one is watching since I was born and singing as long as I can remember. Even when I was living in my head, disconnected from my body, and hanging on by a teensy thread, I knew deep down that there was indeed “more to life than this.” My inner spark was kept alive by an unwavering persistence that propelled me to feel fully alive again. I just had to find my way back…

I found my Self again via my body and its wisdom. My embodiment journey began in massage school over 20 years ago. I found it in the yellow pages ;-) I started to learn about what the body is made of and how it works. This knowledge helped me to feel and sense my own body from the inside out. I literally become more grounded in it. Little by little, more and more, I could sense my own existence IN my body and didn’t have to rely solely on hope, faith, or imagination that I could feel better in it. I am naturally designed for a state of ease; so are you.

My passion for the body and healing has also included: MA in Expressive Arts from Lesley University; life coaching training with the Coaches Training Institute; Certificate in Embodiment Coaching through Embodiment Unlimited; SomaSoul Foundations of Somatic Training; Shake Your Soul Instructor; and more recently deepening my understanding of the nervous system with various trauma education, including Dr. Stephen Porges' perspective on polyvagal theory. I have also studied a range of holistic healing, energy medicine, and body-centered modalities.

Along the way of continuing education, I stumbled across the concepts of having a highly sensitive nervous system (HSP, Dr. Elaine Aron) and being an empath (Dr. Judith Orloff). Life made even more sense. I now understood why I can be soothed by sunlight reflecting off morning dew, don't watch certain movies, turned off the news years ago as an act of self-care, and must walk in nature every day. I joke with my husband that I'm a cheap date - I don't need alot of stuff; an al fresco picnic outside in a pretty place is perfect! 

I learned that my often overwhelmed state of being was not just in my head; it was in my body. I had been a massage therapist, movement facilitator, and student of multiple holistic modalities for over 10 years at this point, so I had developed a deep reverence for the body. I bowed down with respect to the natural wiring of my body's physical and energetic design. This awareness empowered me to unhook from the matrix - the disconnected, disembodied, and dehumanizing pace of the world. Looking out into the collective (un)consciousness of the world, I knew I could never "keep up," so I set myself free.

I used to feel like I was living inside a pinball machine, at the mercy of outside forces. Now I understand that how I feel physically, emotionally, and energetically is the Truth of my inner experience. Just is. No apology necessary. As a body geek, I continue to learn about the magnificent design of my sacred vessel, so I can feel more at home in it, and support others to feel more connected, comfortable, and confident in their own skin.

The simple truth is body wisdom guides you home. Life is easier to navigate, connection to Soul is strengthened, and spiritual alignment is more grounded and sustainable.

We are here for ALL of it and your body is here to support the journey with more ease and grace.