MY WORK

Imaginal Psychology places the care of the soul at the center of it’s orientation. The soul expresses itself in images. Care of the soul requires an awareness of these images/organizing myths that influence our perception and relationship to life. Imaginal psychology acknowledges that the human capacities of the soul reside in all of us – wisdom that can be evoked and cultivated through experiential, transformative practices.

Our thoughts, beliefs, experiences, memories and physical traumas are held in the physical body in the form of energy. This stored or stuck energy can manifest as various physical symptoms, emotional pain and/or, disconnection and exhaustion.

I work with the chakras: energy centers in the body that integrate, process and hold emotional memory and energetic information. Connecting to the subtle energy through active imagination, sensations and guided visualization can yield practical information and greater awareness that results in a greater degree of health, balance and relationship with the body and intuition. I teach people how to ground, feel safe and protected in their aura, how to recognize their own energy, how to connect to the chakras, how to release old, unwanted energy/beliefs, and how to run healing and transformative energies.

Each of us has a stream of creativity, a capacity to adapt and guide ourselves through life. This intuitive function knows what we need, how to heal, and what wants to happen next. This capacity can be strengthened and accessed, resulting in a more assured sense of your self, your path and your own inherent wisdom.

CranioSacral therapy is a central nervous system therapy that works to free restrictions in the communication system of your body. If your brain and the wiring of your nervous system can fully and freely communicate with your whole body, then your body has the capacity to heal itself. When these pathways of communication are restricted, the brain loses its connection to our physical/emotional injuries and the capacity for self-healing is diminished. CranioSacral therapy brings your brain and your self-healing capacities back into relationship with these injuries and initiates your bodies’ own intelligent healing responses.

The cranial sacral system is made up of the cranial membranes (meninges) which surround the central nervous system (the brain and spinal cord), the bones of the cranium and sacrum which attach to these membranes, the fascia (connective tissue) which radiates out from the membranes to all parts of the body (enveloping every nerve and nerve pathway), and the cerebro-spinal fluid, which is produced within the central nervous system, and transmitted via the neurological pathways throughout the body. Each organ, muscle or tissue is linked to a precise area of the cranial sacral system through its nerve pathway and associated fascial connections. This connection provides the pathway for a two-way process of interaction. Restrictions, blockages or dysfunctions of any kind anywhere in the body are reflected as disturbances of rhythm and symmetry in the cranial sacral system, or as abnormal pulls and tensions within the body tissues.

Treatment consists of the practitioner placing his or her hands very gently on the body, identifying the areas of restriction or tension, and following the subtle internal pulls and twists manifested by the cranial sacral system until points of resistance are encountered and released, thereby enabling the tissues to return to proper healthy function.

All symptoms in the body are ways of communicating information, wisdom, and healing. Scientific research shows that the body often retains the emotional imprint of our experiences, traumas and beliefs and this emotionally stressed area of the body can lose its ability to adapt and become symptomatic. Somato Emotional Release is a process that allows the body to communicate the information carried in the symptom. I use hands-on healing, guided visualization and imagery work to bring you into dialogue with the emotion/memory held in the body.

If you have a symptom that is chronic or not responding to conventional approaches and/or you would like to come into relationship with the transformational wisdom that your body holds, than this would be powerful work for you to experience. In a culture that encourages numbing and checking out, our bodies, and the chronic pain of our bodies, will insist that we wake up and listen. Our emotions will do the same. Our restlessness, our uncontrollable anger, our depression and our lack of hope are communications from our soul. Our suffering asserts itself because it is speaking from a place inside us that needs our attention.

The newborns cranial vault goes through tremendous pressure coming through the birth canal. During the birth process, the baby’s head is compressed as it twists through the narrow birth canal. To allow passage, the cranium of a newborn baby is not a solid, bony structure but a soft membranous balloon, designed to adapt to the rigorous pressures of the birth process. However, intense compression of this delicate structure over many hours pushes the bones of the cranium up against each other and distorts the shape of the head. This is normal, and unavoidable, but if any of the cranial bones remain at all distorted, or if they fail to release completely, the distortions may prevent the proper formation of the skull, and thereby affect development of the brain or impinge on associated structures such as nerves and blood vessels. If the labor has been long and hard, with the baby stuck in the birth canal with its head engaged, and/or forceps or manual pulling is used, the distortions are likely to be more firmly imprinted and less able to resolve on its own. Even when the birth process has been relatively straightforward, restrictions or compressions may persist and these may in-turn inhibit full and proper growth and development.

Because their skulls and soft tissue are still in formation it is wonderful to release any restrictions early on in development to heal any present symptoms such as: colic, hyperirritability, sleep disturbances, ear infections, poor suckling, vomiting, developmental delay, and torticolis AND to prevent any future symptoms due to restrictions in the cranial sacral system such as: autism, ADD, speech disorders, learning disabilities, cerebral palsy, dyslexia, behavioral problems and scoliosis.

Babies react to CST very quickly due to the softness of their cranium and the fact that the restrictions, if they exist, have not existed very long. Additionally, in my healings with both mothers and babies, I find that this therapy, in addition to the physical healing, offers a space for the trauma of birth and any unresolved emotions from the birthing process, to make their way out of the body.

Our bodies’ have a natural, instinctive and restorative response to new or overwhelming experience. Trauma stems from the interruption or stagnation of this natural adaptive process. This interruption occurs as a result of the physiological impact of overwhelming experience to the nervous system. The interruption of the bodies’ adaptive response to traumatic experience freezes the individual in the various effects of trauma. One of the key challenges of the trauma response is a simultaneous expression of two biological expressions:1) a super-acceleration of our nervous system, from an enormous increase of energy that arises in response to threat, which coincides with 2) the immobility response – a freezing of the organism. These dual instinctual reactions cause a tremendous amount of chaos, turbulence, and rigidity in the organism that result in traumatic symptoms.

A person is trapped in the trauma state until the body finds a way to release the initial burst of energy of our accelerated nervous system. If it is not released, the trapped energy lodges in our nervous system and can lead to depression, anxiety, and physical illness.  A traumatized individual does not have an irreparably broken nervous system rather they have a nervous system that is frozen or suspended due to the interruption of instinctual energies that arose automatically in response to the traumatizing event. In other words, the way trauma lives in the body can be transformed.

In mythic language initiation occurs in three parts: 1) leaving home, a sometimes chosen, but more often involuntary, departure from the identity/life we have known, 2) the ordeal or liminal phase, where we wander the mythic forest, traverse The Void, encounter our personal shadow, and develop complexity, human capacity and depth and 3) the return, a time of integrating the changes, new awareness, sense of self and gifts of the journey back into life.

The hero/heroine, within each of us, is always somewhere on this map of transformation. Knowing where we are on the mythic path allows us to more consciously nurture the soul and face the tasks of that phase of growth. Encoded in every myth is a universal directive that provides clues, that only you can decipher, about how to dance with life. Our hardships, painful initiations, and confusing stumbles through the dark forest temper the soul and inform the ongoing formation of identity. Each experience activates and nourishes the deep self – that passionate and unrelenting dream that lives inside you, longing for expression and deep belonging. Much like a redwood forest needs a fire to open the seeds of life, our soul experiences our challenges as an opportunity to become more.

Imagination is the organ of perception – it is the felt sense or phenomenological aspect of experience. It is not something that we make up, rather it is a real dimension of our experience that we can tune into, work with and create from. It is the creative stream that artists tap into to inform, inspire and bring meaning to their works of art.  I see life as a work of art that is made more beautiful, sacred and  and an intelligent guide for the artistry of living itself. 

We are all guided by the imagination and belief systems that come from personal experiences, our early environment and culture. We also have challenges from our past that restrict our creative response to life – all of these aspects of our past and present experiences make-up our perceptual reality, our imagination. These imaginal structures, and embodied beliefs, are like colored lenses and dictate the way we perceive everything in life. Our beliefs and felt sense of life creates pathways in our nervous system and constructs the very way your brain communicates with itself and reacts to it’s environment.

With awareness, and mindful study of your body’s felt experience, and the guiding images you carry in your wiring you can begin to ask: do I want to continue living life with this belief/feeling or doing I want this to change in some way? With the onset of neuroscience there is scientific understanding that our wiring is malleable and that we can change become more responsive beings rather than controlled by our reactions.  When you change your felt sense of life and shift your imagination you change your biology!

When we locate a sensation or image within our system and actively surrender to the intelligence of that image or sensation it will show you what it wants to do. Through guided experience you will come into greater connection to your energy body and open up to what I would call the metaphoric or imaginal process, where imagination is active not stagnant. When the imagination begins to move it frees up physical/psychic energy.

We all have the capacity to perceive energy and our own symbolic language that can guide and inform us. I teach my clients how to access their intuitive perception and work with body-based imagery to uncover the metaphors that are influencing/restricting the subtle body’s perception. This body-based imagery illuminates the metaphors that mediate ones experience and influence the communication of the body-brain. Bringing these metaphors into awareness and allowing them to evolve, heal and adapt alters one’s perception on both a somatic and psychological level. If we bring present tense consciousness to these guiding images they seem to direct their own metamorphosis through the magical alchemy of awareness and trust in the intelligent process.

Mindfulness meditation is a practice that yields wonderful benefits. It is a powerful stress management tool, leads to development of our own intuitive skills, offers a means to live with and alter pain in the physical body and develops our capacity to bring our attention into the present moment. I teach meditation to individuals, groups, families and children drawing from a variety of techniques that include:guided visualization, chakra-energy body exploration, Vipasana (breathing meditation), chanting and the use of mantras.

The Enneagram is a framework for understanding our ego’s core organization and particular type. It comes from an ancient Sufi tradition that outlines 9 basic ways humans have organized themselves to survive and manage life. The nine types are:

1) The Perfectionist/Reformer, 2) The Helper, 3) The Achiever, 4) The Romantic/Individualist, 5) The Observer/Investigator, 6) The Loyalist, 7) The Adventurer/Enthusiast, 8) The Boss/Challenger, 9) The Mediator/Peacemaker.

Learning what our unconscious orientation to life is and our habitual survival mechanisms helps us to wake up to the limited beliefs that run our lives. Understanding how life has conditioned us to be, allows us to expand into more choice about who we want to be, and opens us to greater authenticity and self-compassion.