Embodied therapy: accessing the wisdom within
Our bodies faithfully record each life experience, shaping our life with both joy and challenge. While some memories offer wisdom and ease enabling us to navigate life, others give rise to unresolved stress, impacting body and mind.
This unresolved stress leads us to disconnect from ourselves and our bodies and brings about painful emotions, anxiety, restlessness, depression and a dysregulated nervous system.
Reconnecting with the body, the breath, sensations and feelings can help us to slow down and become more present for ourselves. So that we can start to feel what wants to heal.
An embodied approach
The body is our source of both peace and aliveness. Coming home to your body is connecting deeply with life.
Embodied therapy offers a holistic approach to mental and emotional well-being. Working with both body and mind helps to integrate parts of yourself that have gotten disconnected.
Although the story is important, I invite you to go beyond the story and access the deeper layers of information that can help you to find your inner compass.
Through compassionate and paced exploration, you can allow your true feelings and needs to emerge, guiding you towards greater understanding, acceptance, and ultimately, wholeness.
Integrating the body in therapy helps:
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To restore trust and a deeper connection with yourself
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To process and metabolise blocked and repressed emotions while tapping in to the body’s innate capacity to heal
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To complete incomplete stress responses, leading to greater balance and clarity
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To reclaim the relationship to yourself and the world around you
What does a session typically look like?
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Grounding as a way to connect with your present moment experience. It involves sensing the body, noticing your breath, feeling your feet on the earth.
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Resourcing is building on internal strength by using imagery, compassion exercises and whatever you consider to be resources in your life.
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Tuning in to what is present and alive with compassionate mindfulness.
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Establishing a focus for the session.
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Enhancing body awareness, becoming aware and curious about the body and learning to sustain awareness, also with challenging feelings. This helps the body to process and let emotions move through.
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Processing addresses uncompleted and repressed experiences. Processing can look like movement, bilateral stimulation or inner parts work.
Therapy modalities that I work with
Somatic EMDR
Somatic EMDR combines traditional EMDR with a somatic approach, enhancing trauma processing and emotional relief. Using bilateral stimulation like eye movements, tapping and bodily movements, it calms reactions to past memories, present triggers, or future worries. This unified approach invites you to listen to the story as told by the body, promoting healing within an evidence based framework.
Mindfulness - Compassion
Mindfulness is about bringing awareness to your experiences as they are, compassion is about doing it in an open hearted way. You can become aware of your bodily sensations, feelings, emotions and thoughts. You can learn to observe them with more understanding and without judgement. Developing and deepening these skills help you to find greater clarity
and direction.
Inner child and Parts work
Inner child work and parts work are aimed at connecting with the wounded parts of us that were developed through our lives, often during childhood. Parts can be stuck in time and still play a driving role in our life. In connecting with inner parts, you can address unmet needs and unresolved emotions. This process helps to integrate and heal different parts and can give rise to a sense of unity and harmony.