About Somatic Coaching
Somatic practice is a non-linear process of returning to an embodied way of being. Attuned to, welcoming & honouring all that is here: our felt sense, energetic awareness, physical sensations, emotions, thoughts, ancestral wisdom, and everything else that's present... so that we can respond choicefully from our whole knowing.
As a somatic coach and healing arts practitioner, I have the honour of keeping you company in this emergent process of aliveness, spirals, unfurls & magic, and celebrating how it enriches and enlivens your offerings towards social justice, collective healing and transfomation.
My somatic practice philosophy
- Each of us is a bodymind, a whole self that weaves together different sources of knowing. Our bodymind includes our sensations, thinking, emotions, energetic awareness, felt sense, intuition, ancestral wisdom, and more that we do not have language for. By bringing our curiosity to our holistic bodymind, we can connect to more signals and insight than if we were just focused on our mind alone.
- We are energetically connected as a collective body in ways I do not pretend to understand.
- You are the expert in yourself. I bring my skills to be alongside you as you're with what is present in the moment. Together, we move at the pace of your embodied maybe, no, or yes.
- Everything offered is an invitation, not an expectation.
- There are different ways to process and different ways of knowing. We each have different capacities and life experiences. All are equally valuable and precious.
- Healing is not a linear process, nor an end point. We can trust that everything is unfolding within its right time, and does not need to be judged, pushed or strived for.
- When care is at the centre, and nuance is honoured, we can bring loving attention and compassion to the ways that our bodyminds have adapted for our survival.
- Through practice in safe-enough conditions, we can explore new or forgotten ways of relating to ourselves, our environment & to others.
- Embodiment practice and somatic awareness, while seemingly individual, has a powerful ripple effect when we practice it in the world, and I consider it vital to the work of transforming social conditions.
Who my work centers
I center the alchemy of queer, Black, BIPOC, global majority, and diasporic experiences. I center those of us who are most impacted by systems of oppression, and whose experiences flow outside of the mainstream, holding space for the unique ways we each move in the world, whether in your heritage, your queerness, your neurodivergence, your gender expansiveness, your trauma history, your marginalised experiences... because that's my lived experience, too.
As someone who is physically disabled, I seek to offer invitations that feel accessible to all bodyminds.
I don't make assumptions and will always seek to validate and celebrate your lived experience, and to be a lifelong learner.
Partnership at the heart
Whether we're meeting for a single focused session, in regular one-to-one partnership, in a multi-session container, or gathering together in a group, loving presence is the foundation. I bring the wholeness of my lived experiences, learnings, heritage & embodied wisdom to our time together.
Coaching is a co-created partnership, rooted in the belief that each of us is already resourceful, creative and whole. It's a process of bringing loving presence by listening, sensing and feeling without judgement ~ within and between each other and ourselves. Reflecting, asking curious questions, and holding space to unearth, remember, and connect.
Coaching is not advice-giving or therapy. Though it can support individual and collective healing, coaching is not the same as therapy, and would not be suitable for you if you're looking to access therapeutic services or counselling.
It's rooted in what is present and emerging in the moment, with a forward focus towards integrating these new learnings for your future.
What's different about somatic coaching?
Somatic / embodiment coaching focuses on being with our whole bodymind's noticings, rather than just our mind's. Being with what is here now, allowing ourselves to feel it, and acting from there. Our bodies have so much to tell us, through physical sensations, images, sensory experiences, thoughts, emotions...
With courage and practice, we can learn to notice all that is here, and let that move us into aligned action.
The approach I offer is rooted in politicised somatics and oriented towards visions of collective healing, so that what we practice together can be taken out into your relationships... so that you can embody your values, feel in integrity, and co-create positive collective transformation of the conditions we're alive within.
I am trained as a somatic (body-oriented) coach, having initially trained as a transformational life coach. I bring skills in both conceptual self-awareness (processing logically through our thoughts, and making meaning with words) and embodied self-awareness (using our senses to feel from within our bodies and connect to felt sense signals, and allow insight and shifts to emerge) to my practice.
The kind of healing I’m interested in takes it beyond the edges of our own bodies, into our relationships with beings, land, systems, ancestors, descendants, time, cosmos and and and.
What you can bring to a session or a gathering
Everything is welcome. All topics. All sensations. All emotions.
The beauty of embodiment practice is that there is space for anything that's here for you in the moment. Everything you share will be held with care and confidentiality.
How a session or gathering feels
The spaces I hold are all about presence, being with, experimentation, creativity & invitation.
Each session or gathering will be unique, arising from whatever is alive for you within our space during that time. Together, we trust that, when we seek to stay in partnership and presence in the moment, what wants to emerge will emerge.
My approach is non-directive. We will always move at the pace of your embodied yes or no or maybe, with spaciousness to sense into that. There's no expectation that just because we tried a certain somatic practice in a previous session, it would also be welcome in this session. If we are in a group gathering, I will take care to honour the unique lived experiences of everyone there, sense into the energy of the group, make clear invitations, and offer different ways to participate.
Through professional learning and lived experience of trauma, I understand the importance of respecting and celebrating our body's edges and limits. My approach is centred around invitations for you to check in with your capacity and make choices based on what you sense you need. We move slowly in partnership together, paying attention to the signals your bodymind is giving you - slowing down, changing route, pausing, stopping and checking in as needed.
One-to-one sessions follow a general structure:
Opening
- We begin in conversation, to establish what's here for you and the focus of our time together.
Flow
- In somatic companionship, we "dance" between conceptual self awareness (processing logically through our thoughts, and making meaning with words) and embodied self awareness (using our senses to feel from within our bodies, connect to felt sense signals, and allow insight and shifts to emerge).
- Much of the time, we will talk or be in silence, as in any conversation. Throughout a session, I may reflect your words back to you, pull out certain phrases, and ask curious questions. Some sessions may be spent completely in this way, and may stay within conceptual self awareness.
- When it is welcome, you may want to explore sensations within your body. Any invitations from me for you to explore through embodied self awareness will be exactly that: invitations or offerings of practice or processes that you can choose to say yes or no to within each session.
- Examples of somatic processes that I may offer to guide you through include: Resourcing, felt sensing, somatic boundary explorations, PIE sensory awareness (Proprioception, Interoception, Exteroception), breath awareness, self-guided touch, intuitive movement, Constellations, verbal experiments, dance, visualisation, Centering.
- We may explore how to flow these practices into your relationships, to support your wider vision for collective healing.
- We may also welcome in other creative or spiritual practices such as art, writing, tarot, music, or anything else that feels supportive to your process.
Integration & Close
- We spend time at the end of each session integrating and making sense of what has emerged, and partner together to ensure that you leave feeling resourced.
Coaching, Therapy and other Complementary Approaches
Coaching and therapy offer something different for your life. Many of my clients coach with me and also work with a psychotherapist or with bodyworkers and therapists from different modalities.
In my own life, I find that therapy supports me to dive deep into the past to understand how experience and trauma affect my present behaviours. I also receive regular coaching with a generative somatics practitioner, which supports me to attune to what is here now, and what is wanting to emerge. I also spend time with other somatic approaches that are complementary to coaching, such as dance, grief rituals, acupuncture, intuitive energy, and Clinical Somatic Movement.
If you are working with a therapist or have somatic, spiritual, creative or therapeutic practices that are part of your life, I will partner with you to seek that our sessions are complementary to those approaches and that the different practices are mutually enhancing.
Co-creating a space of trust
Transparency and openness are really important to me - I want your experience of working with me to be really positive and based on trust and clarity. I follow the International Coaching Federation's (ICF) ethical and professional guidelines for coaching.
Confidentiality and ethics are an important part of my role. You can read more about this here:
https://everydaywrites.com/pages/confidentiality-ethics