Emotional Health + Trauma

Emotional Health: moving through life’s phases

Often when we’re moving into a new phase we need help reconnecting to our bodies, our boundaries, and our purpose. As women we’re constantly growing and shedding emotionally and physically. Being cyclical requires an ability to move through the events of our lives with creativity and grace. Both acupuncture and pelvic reintegration work can help you move through and process your emotional healing in times of difficulty, as the sacral/pelvic area is the central zone of creativity, transformation and birth. Not only is your womb space responsible for the birth of the next generation, but also the birth of a new you.

Whether you’re transitioning through a postpartum experience, menopause, miscarriage, healing from chronic illness, or moving through a chapter of personal growth, reconnecting to your womb space with combined somatic awareness and acupuncture wellness is a centering and humbling experience.

trauma: finding safety in the body

Trauma occurs in many different forms. It can be small and stealthy, like poor attachment styles and developmental traumas that take place during childhood, or a series of physical and emotional boundary crossings throughout our lives. It can also be big and all-consuming, like physical, sexual and emotional abuse. The issue is not necessarily whether the trauma is “big” or “small” in the grand scheme of our lives, but more about how exactly our minds and bodies learn to cope. Any type of traumatic event can get lodged in our bodies. It can show up in our posture, our pain patterns, our disease patterns, and changes how we interface with the world.

My training in varying modalities of pelvic work is trauma informed. What this means is that, while I have the training to assist you in grounding and embodied processing, I am not a licensed trauma therapist. What this also means, however, is that the goal of somatic sexological bodywork is to gently guide the body back into safety. While many forms of trauma therapy (such as somatic experiencing and EMDR) approach the body with the intent of opening a trauma response and restructuring the way we view a traumatic event, Sexological Bodywork does not pursue the opening of a trauma response in the body. While I may give you the option of exploring any anxiety that may arise, my approach is to pursue the feeling of safety, and to allow the body to recognize the felt sense of safety, both with and without touch. This may look like boundary exercises or embodied touch work.

In my sessions I may utilize up to four different styles of acupuncture to address trauma in the body. Our animalistic nervous systems are meant to help us react to traumatic events and carry us through them. Due to the complex human tendencies of the mind, we often don’t complete that cycle in the body. Using a system of somatic exercises and acupuncture points, we may assist the body in completing the memory of a traumatic event to develop safety. Nurturing the nervous system back to normality is key in these treatments, which may or may not be staggered with sessions of somatic bodywork. For cases in which acupuncture needles or certain types of touch are not yet welcome to the body, I utilize special acupressure tools and light touch with embodiment coaching.

*Please Note: While I do accept clients with trauma, I may suggest or require that one sees a trauma therapist concurrently during a series of sessions, depending on the nature of a person’s current presentation.