My Approach for You & Your Care: Trauma-Informed, Heart-Centered Healing
In my practice, healing is about integration, finding our way back home to ourselves, while effectively addressing physical symptoms and ailments. I use a combination of craniosacral therapy and East Asian therapeutic modalities to help you, your body, mind, and spirit rediscover wellness, resilience, agency, empowerment and wholeness in the wake of suffering and complex trauma. My primary strength lies in the ability to see and connect with you through a holistic mind-body-spirit approach, meeting you where you are, how you are, why you are, in the present moment- with precision, grace and compassion.
Lineage and training:
Menghe-Ding Shen-Hammer lineage: Trained and mentored by Drs. Brandt Stickley (DAOM), Melinda Iglesias Wheeler (DSOM), and Stephen Higgins (MSOM). This robust system of healing is a synthesis of a centuries old lineage of healing from the Menghe region in China, and the work of its most recent lineage holders: Drs. John H.F Shen and Leon Hammer, MD.
Craniosacral therapy: Trained by Michael McMahon, L.Ac, LMT through Moving Mountain Institute
Trauma-informed practice: Kate Busby, L.Ac, SEP, Trauma-Informed Acupuncture Primer (2023)
East Asian Meridian therapies: Trained in Japanese Kuma-style techniques from Dr. Iwashina “Bear” Anryu Sensei, Shudo-style meridian therapy, Toyohari via Dr. Robert “Bob” Quinn, DAOM, L.Ac and Daniel Silver, MCTCM, L.Ac.
If you would like to read more in-depth about my approach, please proceed by scrolling down to the page below.
Trauma Informed, Consensual Care
A key principle of my work is to honor the exceptionally tender needs of our nervous systems and histories, to facilitate safety, dignity and agency through continuous, responsive consent. Trauma and trauma responses are the ways that our bodies and nervous systems communicate their needs and boundaries. Alleviating suffering can only be possible if we honor, respect and orient to where you and your body are in your lived experience. As such, I am dedicated to moving in consonance with messages and boundaries that you and your body communicate, in action, word, and intention. I will work with you to create a dynamic and relationship that cultivates healing through safety, empowerment, and consent.
Heart-Centered Care
In East Asian medicine, the “heart” isn’t just the flesh organ that pumps blood around in the body. It is the organ system that embodies how we respond to the world on all levels, reflecting the crucial integration of the nervous system and cardiovascular system. Modern medicine describes this ecosystem through concepts such as Heart Rate Variability and vagal tone. Thus, “heart -centered” care leads us back to understanding trauma and its effect on us, our bodies. We experience trauma when someone or something overwhelms our “heart” resilience, our boundaries, and ability to intrinsically be ourselves. In many ways, trauma can leave us feeling less than, never quite whole again, and even estranged from ourselves. By connecting with you through this kind of heart-centered approach, we can foster resilience and healing in the face of trauma, through creating deep resources and helping you reconnect with your wholeness. In my experience, sustainable and enduring relief is most effectively achieved through this approach. I am committed to providing you this kind of care.
Healing
Ultimately, our symptoms are messages, ways our bodies communicate our needs in the face of trauma and disruption. Diseases are physical manifestations of vulnerability, suffering, and struggles to experience our wholeness viscerally. What you seek is a way out of suffering. At heart, the only way out is through- and I am here to help you find that way for you, at your own pace and time. What is your body telling us it needs? Let’s find out.