Maybe There Is Nothing Wrong With You. Maybe You Don't Need To Be Fixed. Maybe You Just Need To Feel Seen, Heard and Met.
Why I am Passionate About Supporting You
Like many women I learned early that belonging sometimes meant leaving parts of myself behind.
I became highly capable, independent, and constantly in motion; teaching yoga, pursuing dance and exploring therapeutic movement, travelling the world searching for deeper understanding through many different healing traditions.
Beneath it all I was unknowingly living through strategies that had once helped me stay connected and safe: striving, controlling, over-giving, and overriding my body's needs.
As I entered midlife those strategies stopped working.
A series of stressful life events, relationships ending and losses brought my nervous system to its limit. I experienced burnout, anxiety, grief, chronic pain, and deep fatigue.
My body was asking me to stop, not because it had failed me but because it could no longer carry the cost of abandoning myself.
Healing did not come from trying harder, it came from slowing down enough to listen.
When I dove deeper into Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy and Somatic Therapy my body gradually remembered what safety felt like through my therapists' compassionate presence, gentle touch, and nervous system attunement. A beautiful teacher in California showed me a way of connecting and building deep relationship with the living earth, and more than human world. I relied on these nature practices heavily for comfort and support as I found my way back to health and belonging to something larger. These relationships taught me that finding our way back to health and greater alignment with ourselves isn't something we achieve alone, it emerges as we remember our place and interdependence with everything.
Some of the most important, secure-attachment relationships in my life have been with nature and animals; cats, horses, forests, oceans, stones warmed by the sun and the quiet intelligence of the living Earth. These relationships are often safer than humans for some of us and can help us to repair and build trust with our human relations.
Healing continued to unfold through reconnecting with the parts of myself that had gone quiet in order to belong. My needs and intense emotions like anger, grief, fear; my intuition, authentic voice and opinions, boundaries and no's, sensitivity and vulnerability to name some. That experience became the foundation of my work. Helping others recover and relate to these suppressed, abandoned parts.
I came to understand that belonging is not something we earn by becoming more acceptable, more capable, or more convenient for others. True belonging is the experience of being fully connected to ourselves while remaining in relationship with others and the world around us.
Today I weave together the principles of Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy, Relational Somatic Therapy, Counselling, embodied movement and relationship with the natural world through an approach I call Eco-Relational Somatics to help re-awaken the authentic self and to reconnect with our true nature.
I believe many symptoms are not signs that something is wrong with you.
They are intelligent adaptations and ways your nervous system has learned to protect you. When these strategies no longer serve us and they show up in the body as symptoms, they can become invitations to return to ourselves and the work of remembering our belonging.
My hope is that our work together helps you remember:
You do not have to abandon yourself in order to belong.
What I Believe About Healing:
I believe the body carries an innate wisdom and intelligence as part of the natural world.
Just as nature continually moves toward balance, adaptation, and renewal, our bodies are always working toward health and wholeness.
Healing or greater wholeness and coherence begins when we stop fighting ourselves and learn to listen with-in with curiosity, compassion, and presence.
As safety deepens we can develop a different relationship with our emotions, sensations, memories, and protective patterns.
The goal is not to get rid of parts of ourselves.
It is to create enough space for all parts of ourselves to be met, understood, and integrated.
How I Work
My work brings together a holistic approach to support healing through relationship -with yourself, with another, and with the living world. My lens is Polyvagal Nervous System and Somatic & Attachment theory informed. Sessions can be entirely conversational and somatic calling on nature resources or teachers if that lands for you, or may include gentle hands-on craniosacral therapy. Or sessions immersed in nature one to one or in a small group. Together we follow your body's pace and inner wisdom. We create the conditions for your nervous system to feel supported enough for integration, expanded capacity, and change to unfold naturally. Over time many people experience greater ease in their bodies, more emotional clarity, increased self-trust, and a deeper sense of connection with themselves and the world around them.
Training & Background
My work is rooted in over two decades of study and practice in the healing and expressive arts, yoga and blending the worlds of somatic therapy, movement, touch, and nature-based sensory awareness.
I am a Certified Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy Practitioner (Body Intelligence Institute, 2018) and Transforming Touch Practitioner (Stephen Tyrell, 2020), specializing in chronic stress and early developmental trauma. I also completed a Relational Somatic Counselling and Therapy program with (Mariah Moser 2023–2024) and I am currently working on completing a Counselling Diploma program at (Orca Institute 2024).
My background includes advanced studies with Susan Harper (Continuum-Montage) in Somatic Movement, Animism, Shamanic Practice and Trauma Resolution. Completion of Mia Kalef’s Healing Pre-Birth and Birth at Any Age training (2021). I’m also a Certified Open Floor Conscious Dance Facilitator through the California Inst, 500hour + Yoga Instructor, and hold a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Contemporary Dance and Psychology from Simon Fraser University. Earlier studies in Homeopathic Medicine continue to inform my holistic approach.
Over the past 15+ years, I’ve facilitated yoga, therapeutic dance, and somatic classes and workshops across British Columbia including at Hollyhock Leadership Centre, The Chopra Addiction and Wellness Center, in Vancouver, Squamish and the Comox Valley.
