Everyday we accumulate stresses and strain that the body either moves through or absorbs. These accumulated tensions begin to tighten the tissues surrounding the source of dysfunction, and begin to affect the rest of the body.

The Human body is self-correcting and self- healing

The human body is an amazingly built machine that naturally wants to heal. Whenever we do anything, our bodies figure out how to do that action, or heal from that trauma, in the most efficient way possible. The problem with this method is that while in the moment, or in the acute healing process, these adaptations are usually in the body’s best interest; when you get 1 year or 20 years after the fact, the body is often still doing the same compensation and it is these compensation patterns that can cause problems.

The most common example is someone throwing their back out after picking up a pencil off the floor; the act was so small, so most people don’t understand why it happened. The reality is that all the things that have happened to you in your life have created tension patterns, layered on top of each other, that can be pushed past the edge with one small tweak.

As a therapist, we are not “fixing” you…. we are just facilitating your own natural healing process

It may seem as though when you come into the office that we are doing things that “fix” the problem you are having. In reality, we are sitting quietly, neutral and grounded, with your body’s inner wisdom and asking, “What can I do for you today?” This Inner Wisdom is a part of us that knows everything about our health. When we ask the body what it needs and are open to hearing whatever the answer may be, it shows the patterns of movement or restriction, and the easiest way to shift that pattern using the least amount of force. Once the Inner Wisdom is brought to consciousness, it can act as a guide for your journey back to health.

Using the least amount of force is important because if we follow what the body needs in the way it wants, restrictions let go much easier and have a more permanent effect. Working with the body in this way allows your physical and emotional body to feel safe to work with the deeper patterns that may be holding in your body, and in this safe space is where deep healing happens. Your body knows what it needs to heal, and it is absurd to think that we know better. Facilitating healing in this way allows for great results in just the way you need them.

We want to discover the root cause of dysfunction

The primary focus of our practice is working with clients who wish to discover and explore the patterns that underlie their symptoms, rather than simply trying to make those symptoms go away. Finding the root cause of what is going on will make all of the symptoms fade away, while working on a symptom will just give temporary relief, and most likely the pattern will return.

Let’s take lower back pain, for example. Traditional massage works on the muscles and fascia, and this can be incredibly effective for a lot of people. But what if the muscles aren’t the main issue? You can keep doing massage and get relief, but the pain keeps returning in some form or another.

Sometimes the source of the back pain is actually in the nerves, in the lymphatic (drainage) system, in an organ (intestine, ovary/uterus), in a blood vessel, something in the pelvis, or something else somewhere else in the body. By asking the body to show where the source of dysfunction is, it can be incredibly effective for long term health.

The source of pain might not be where you think

The pain you are experiencing may be coming from somewhere else.

Most people come in to see us because they are having pain and/or tension somewhere in their body. Most doctors tend to focus right where you feel it and ignore everything else; while that is not always wrong, often times the source of the pain is somewhere else in your body. While of course we will check out where you you feel it, our main goal is to treat your body as a whole. That means starting your session with a full body evaluation and working with what your body shows is most important in that moment. Sometimes something distant needs to be released or worked with before your main issue is addressed. For example, you may come in with neck pain, but your foot needs some releasing before we can start to address your neck; fascia connects everything in your body and that old ankle injury may have started a compensation pattern that made your pelvis unbalanced, which then affects your whole ribcage and spine, resulting in neck pain. This is why it is so important to work with the body as a whole and see where we are guided.

Focusing on the whole body evaluation may reveal that the pain in your hip is actually coming from your foot, or your neck pain may be coming from the pelvis. Fascia surrounds every structure and connects everything together in a complicated web. Patterns of dysfunction are transmitted from one area to another through this web and can manifest in bizarre ways, and only when looking at the body from a holistic perspective can we understand what that pattern is showing us.

Physical pain is not always physical in origin. Often mental and emotional pain can get stuck in our physical tissues, and the only way to clear the physical pain is to address the mental/emotional pattern that drives the physical pattern. Somato-Emotional Release techniques can help you to connect into your tissues and hear what they have to say.

Healing takes time, especially if the original trauma was not recent.

As much as we would like to tell you that your pain can be fixed in one session, that is not always the case. Yes, you should feel relief of some sort after one session, but sometimes to get to the source of the pain pattern, you have to work through many other layers until you get there.

Trauma to the body is not just what we think of as trauma- a huge event of some sort that dramatically changes something about us, physically, emotionally or mentally; I call that Big T Trauma. In reality, our body can experience something as traumatic when we don’t even remember the event, or something we think that is minor can FEEL traumatic to our tissues, which I call little t trauma. But trauma is trauma to the tissues; they don’t understand the difference between Trauma and trauma and often trauma can easily get stuffed down because our conscious mind doesn’t register it the same way but it can effect our nervous system just the same.

Sometimes it is not in your best interest to take the pain away all at once. I know this seems counterintuitive, but it is our belief that your body uses pain as a teacher, and if we just wipe the slate clean, we can miss some of the great lessons and insights that may show you what you need to know to do the deep healing that will get you where you want to go.

Relief of symptoms is likely after the first session. I tend to feel the biggest changes the next morning after I have had a good nights sleep. It usually will take 3-6 sessions to truly feel the effects and to see if this therapy is right for you. Many people like to continue to use this therapy once a month as maintenance, and more frequent sessions are recommended if you are actively working to shift pain patterns.