I use arts, nature and somatic therapy to support people struggling with the challenges of living with chronic disease, so they can live a joyful and balanced life.
Who I am:
When I was in my final year of graduate school, life was full and exciting and I was ready to start my career as an Expressive Arts Therapist. Unfortunately, before I could finish school everything came crashing down. Seemingly out of nowhere I became sick with an auto immune disease. It felt like my body was falling apart. I couldn’t function normally and I was terrified! I decided to move home to take time to heal. But with this decision came loneliness, grief and depression. Not only was I giving up my new career and community, but my body that had always been fairly healthy was in physical pain and I felt alone and out of control.
This disease has been my teacher and initiator; one that I did not ask for and am continuously learning to appreciate. However, what I have learned has changed my life in so many ways that I am grateful for. It taught me to slow down and deeply listen to my body’s wisdom and intuition. It forced me to come back fully to my body and truly love and care for myself. I learned to prioritize my values and come into more balance with myself and the world around me. It brought me back to my spiritual practice of meditation and connecting to mother earth. I use art making as a way to process my story and my pain and realize healing is an ongoing process.
Living with disease has taken me deeper into my healing process than I could have originally imagined. Now I help others find the peace, strength, balance, joy, freedom, and connection that is possible while we inhabit these bodies on Earth!
A balanced Life
We are living in a society where we are seeing an increase in work pressure and chronic stress side by side with a means to distract ourselves from what we are actually feeling. We have created wonderful technology that makes it easier for us to connect all over the world while at the same time giving us a device to keep us constantly distracted and losing connection with ourselves. This technology gives us the freedom to work from wherever we want whenever we want. Unfortunately, that also means we can work all the time. Ongoing or chronic stress has been shown to have anywhere from mild to serious affects on our physical and mental well being.
At the same time there are also studies being done to show the benefits of mindfulness and time in nature on decreasing the effects of stress and symptoms of stress induced diseases. By slowing down and bringing our awareness to the present moment we often notice all the uncomfortable feelings we’ve been avoiding. Yet as we make space for these feelings they move and pass and we come back to equanimity and connection within ourselves. These feelings that are held in often cause tightening of our muscles and holding patterns that can create physical pain. Again as we bring awareness to that pain and give it space it can relax. As we continue to make space for our emotional and physical feelings we can come into more acceptance of every moment. And with deeper guidance we can look at and transform deeply held beliefs that create patterns of behavior that keep us in cycles of suffering.
Services
Taking steps to your own healing takes courage, and opens a world of possibilities. Let's Connect!
I use the arts, nature and somatic therapy to support people struggling with the challenges of living with chronic disease so they can live with more ease and balance.
I primarily work with adults. I offer Expressive Arts, Eco-therapy/nature based, and Hakomi/somatic sessions. Sessions can include one or a combination of these modalities. We will decide together what works best for you.
Individual Sessions:
50 minutes -- $225
75 minutes -- $337
100 minutes -- $450
I offer some sliding scale appointments and can provide a superbill which you can submit to your insurance company for reimbursement.