The more you feel your feelings...
the easier it gets to understand them.
Hello friends!
Summer is ending and the transition for many (including us) into school routines is in full swing. Now that my kids will be in school full-time starting this week, here are my new hours for 1:1 work, effective immediately.
New Hours
Tuesdays 9:00am - 3:00pm
Wednesdays 11:00am - 3:00pm
Thursdays 1:00pm - 8:00pm
Saturdays 9:00am - 7:00pm (once per month)
Our group offerings and classes will continue to be in the evenings and remain unchanged.
Feel to Heal Program: 2 spots left
Yesterday I wrote this and posted it to my studio’s FB page, and thought I’d share it here too, where it’s free from the algorithmic forces that may or may not have put it in your feed. There are 2 spots left in the Feel to Heal Program that begins in 2 weeks from today. This is our 7th running!
"The more you feel your feelings, the easier it gets to understand them." I love this journal art from @thetypewriterdaily. And I can attest to its truth. I spent the first couple decades of my adult life feeling like peace, safety, love, and joy were elusive... these wonderful-sounding things people talked about but that were not in my own felt experience (besides small glimpses here and there). Like I was on the outside looking in to this experience of life that somehow seemed available to some but not to me, one that included access to positive feelings that weren't guaranteed to end quickly. I felt like a big tangled ball full of all sorts of big emotions that desperately needed sorted out but... how??
Hello somatic therapy, or, for those who aren't familiar with that term, therapy that involves the body. Turns out sorting out and feeling your emotions is not so much a "mental health" process as it is a "body process". Because emotions arise from physiological chain-of-events that involve multiple body systems, not mental or cognitive processes.
Finally, after years of involving my body in the therapeutic journey, I no longer felt that I was on an emotional roller coaster I didn't want to be on, looking longingly over at those who had easy, stable access to joy, peace, etc. I had lasting access to those things myself, because I had walked through and teased apart the big tangled ball of emotions—some buried, some on the surface—that was my life.
So my access to the full spectrum of emotions has been hard-won. (As it has been for many; I'm not claiming to be special in this way.) I have labored to feel the hard stuff, which involved many pieces along the way: setting boundaries, reconnecting with my heart's longings, being honest about where I had compromised on myself, finding and re-finding great therapists, coaches, and mentors to journey with me, learning new emotional and relational skills that felt awkward and clunky but yet also good and right, etc. Nothing about it was linear, quick, or tidy. But I can tell you this with full confidence, because I know it to be true: Had I not involved the body in the process, I never would have made the gains that I did. The body is the storehouse for the subconscious, and boy are we holding a lot of stuff in our subconscious.
For those who wish to start making a different kind of progress on their emotional regulation, or their ability to feel the hard stuff so they have greater access to the easy stuff, or to understand what their body is holding onto that keeps them in constant or repetitious sadness, anger, woundedness, fear, or something else, I kindly suggest you allow the body into the treatment room (or the coaching session, or whatever it is you're doing to heal) and learn how to tune into its cues and signals.
What started out as a personal journey has now become my career. And one of the highlights of my work as a trauma-informed bodyworker and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner is leading the Feel to Heal Program that I developed, and that I offer twice a year. It is an 8-week program for a group of up to 14 people, where I provide teaching and experiences for people to learn how the body is involved in our emotions—their origin, their process, and their resolution—so that you too can get off the roller coaster of life and find mastery over your own life and heart processes. Feel to Heal is neuroscience-based, deeply trauma-informed, holistic, and brings in the best of several different trainings I have undergone over the years regarding the body and how it both births and houses our emotions. It is my passion and my joy to offer to others what I have worked so hard to grasp and master.
I have 2 spots left in this next round of the program, which begins on August 19 and ends on October 7. We will meet on Monday evenings from 6:45 to 8:45 pm (except for Labor Day, where we'll meet on Tuesday of that week). Participants all receive a binder full of presentation notes, relevant exercises/activities, and additional resources available to them, plus a video of that week's class if they have to miss for some reason. All for less than $20 per hour. Read what past participants have shared about their experience of the program, and see for yourself what a difference it can make by joining us, by heading here.
Enjoy this sunshine! And may you settle into whatever new routines await you in this next season.
Warmly,
Allie