Somatic Therapy
Overview of Emotional Release Bodywork
Emotional Release Bodywork is a holistic, hands-on therapy designed to activate the body’s natural healing intelligence. Sessions combine NLP, inner child and parts work theory, breath and energy work, and eastern massage. This modality is about relaxing the mind and orienting our attention inwards to open up a channel of communication with the body.
Many people spend much of their life lived in their head and attempt to resolve chronic challenges or repeated patterns of behaviour by cognitively “working them out”. If resolve is not found, it is likely that the patterning or trauma is stored at a cellular, nervous system level and needs to be released via the body.
Although titled “emotional release” bodywork, sessions work with the mental, emotional, spiritual, energetic and physical body. Every session is unique and the body offers the next layer of healing that is ready to be witnessed and integrated. Emotional release bodywork views the person in their wholeness and supports a repatterning process within the body to promote healing and vitality.
Emotional Release Bodywork
Reconnect with the wisdom of your body in a safe and loving way through compassionate and present touch. Feel supported to surrender outdated emotional and mental patterns to live congruently from your heart with greater vitality, presence and purpose.
These sessions use breathwork, guided sounding, and sustained bodywork to specific areas of the body to open doorways into the body landscape. Accessing this connection allows the body to take over and reveal stored emotions, trapped trauma and unconscious beliefs for integration.
The expression and experience of these different dimensions of our being looks different from person to person. For example, releasing energetic stagnancy may involve neurogentic tremors or shaking; a spiritual insight can be in the form of a visceral embodiment of oneness, soul understanding or felt sense of a heart opening; a psychological or mental shift may be bringing awareness to a part of yourself that you exiled or disowned; and the emotional dimension can be an experience of feeling and expressing any human emotion such as crying, sobbing, rage, annoyance, terror, joy or laughter.
Releasing and integrating the body, mind and spirit simultaneously allows for a reconnection with the underlying emotions, sensations and thoughts to be metabolised and integrated back into our system with a greater sense of wholeness. By welcoming these aspects to be felt and heard, we reveal the personal needs, truths and wisdom underlying these emotions and an opportunity to give ourselves the experience of what we haven’t received in the past in order to heal. This is a potent and dynamic re-patterning process at a cellular and identity level, allowing us to move forward in life making the most aligned and healthy choices available to us.
Who is this for?
Those wanting to create change in their lives, to access unexplored aspects of their being, to practice deep trust and surrender, and to come into alignment with your truth, presence and joy.
What is involved?
Sessions open with gaining an understanding of your intentions for the session, any specific challenges you are moving through and questions or areas of curiosity. The bodywork component is offered on a massage table where you are draped like that of a traditional massage and commences with gentle, flowing massage and guided meditation to relax the mind and body and begin to orient awareness within the inner landscape.
A range of bodywork techniques are used, such as non-invasive trigger point holds, muscle releases, joint rotations and energetic activations, in combination with guidance to track sensations, and utilise your breath, sounding and movement to explore what the body is ready to bring to the surface for the conscious mind to see. All of you is welcome to show up and together we meet each moment curiously and warmly to connect with whatever is authentically alive within you.
Sessions close with holistic massage to receive nourishing touch and bring the system into balance and stillness. Following the table work is time to ground and discuss any reflections, questions or insights.
What are the benefits?
Benefits may include:
Unwinding tension and holding patterns in the body
Improved functioning of the vagus nerve and restoring balance to the nervous system
Enhanced immune, respiratory, circulatory, lymphatic & digestive function
Emotional release and regulation
Greater inner spaciousness and enhanced vitality and energy
Deeper body awareness, i.e., being more in touch and connected to your own body
Expanded self awareness, fresh inspiration & deeper inner alignment
“There’s a lot of neuroscience now raising the question, ‘Is all the intelligence in the human body in the brain?’, and they’re finding out that, no, it’s not like that. The body has intelligence itself, and we’re much more of an organic creature in that way”
Joel Kinnaman
Emotional First Aid
Reconnect with the wisdom of your body in a safe and loving way through compassionate and present touch. Feel supported to surrender outdated emotional and mental patterns to live congruently from your heart with greater vitality, presence and purpose.
These sessions use breathwork, guided sounding, and sustained bodywork to specific areas of the body to open doorways into the body landscape. Accessing this connection allows the body to take over and reveal stored emotions, trapped trauma and unconscious beliefs for integration.
The expression and experience of these different dimensions of our being looks different from person to person. For example, releasing energetic stagnancy may involve neurogentic tremors or shaking; a spiritual insight can be in the form of a visceral embodiment of oneness, soul understanding or felt sense of a heart opening; a psychological or mental shift may be bringing awareness to a part of yourself that you exiled or disowned; and the emotional dimension can be an experience of feeling and expressing any human emotion such as crying, sobbing, rage, annoyance, terror, joy or laughter.
Releasing and integrating the body, mind and spirit simultaneously allows for a reconnection with the underlying emotions, sensations and thoughts to be metabolised and integrated back into our system with a greater sense of wholeness. By welcoming these aspects to be felt and heard, we reveal the personal needs, truths and wisdom underlying these emotions and an opportunity to give ourselves the experience of what we haven’t received in the past in order to heal. This is a potent and dynamic re-patterning process at a cellular and identity level, allowing us to move forward in life making the most aligned and healthy choices available to us.
Who is this for?
Those wanting to create change in their lives, to access unexplored aspects of their being, to practice deep trust and surrender, and to come into alignment with your truth, presence and joy.
What is involved?
Sessions open with gaining an understanding of your intentions for the session, any specific challenges you are moving through and questions or areas of curiosity. The bodywork component is offered on a massage table where you are draped like that of a traditional massage and commences with gentle, flowing massage and guided meditation to relax the mind and body and begin to orient awareness within the inner landscape.
A range of bodywork techniques are used, such as non-invasive trigger point holds, muscle releases, joint rotations and energetic activations, in combination with guidance to track sensations, and utilise your breath, sounding and movement to explore what the body is ready to bring to the surface for the conscious mind to see. All of you is welcome to show up and together we meet each moment curiously and warmly to connect with whatever is authentically alive within you.
Sessions close with holistic massage to receive nourishing touch and bring the system into balance and stillness. Following the table work is time to ground and discuss any reflections, questions or insights.
What are the benefits?
Benefits may include:
Unwinding tension and holding patterns in the body
Improved functioning of the vagus nerve and restoring balance to the nervous system
Enhanced immune, respiratory, circulatory, lymphatic & digestive function
Emotional release and regulation
Greater inner spaciousness and enhanced vitality and energy
Deeper body awareness, i.e., being more in touch and connected to your own body
Expanded self awareness, fresh inspiration & deeper inner alignment
What is involved?
Each session is tailored to the individual needs of the client and is always responsive to what is organically arising in the body from moment to moment. Sessions open with evidence-based grounding techniques and body awareness practices, such as orientation exercises, guided meditations and body scans. These are designed to calm the nervous system, become more present with the body and settle into the space. The client is given the opportunity to share background information and intentions for what they seek to gain from the session.
Commonly, a brief eye gazing experience follows as an opportunity for increasing rapport between the practitioner and client and allowing the client an experience of being seen. For the holding portion of the session, the client is invited to recline beside the body of the practitioner with their head rested on the chest so they can hear the practitioner’s heartbeat. Our brain and body are in a constant feedback loop and the physiological state of the body influences how we feel. Different heartbeat rhythms are understood by the brain, and combined with touch, offers the conditions for the client’s nervous system to access deep states of relaxation where their body can enter into a natural and automatic "reset" function.
The client is encouraged to go inwards during the holding, as this offers the stillness and spaciousness to let go of the outside world and come back into deeper connection with unmetabolised feelings and disconnected aspects of themselves, while being gently held, supported and witnessed. All emotion, aspects of self and body movements (e.g., neurogenic tremoring/shaking) are welcome and supported to pass through.
Other gentle processes may be offered such as affirmation, journal prompts and sound healing. Sessions can also involve inner child integration processes, body/sensation tracking or exercises that increase the connection with one's own feelings, boundaries and needs. These exercises strengthen the relationship to one's inner core, and, in turn, establish greater self trust and comfortability with the practitioner and humans more broadly. For those experiencing significant touch and relational trauma, sessions can be adapted to the individual and built upon multiple sessions, such as no touch or graduated touch.
The session closes with integrating any reflections the client wishes to share and application of insights to create more connection in their day-to-day lives. Clients are guided through re-grounding exercises and aftercare information.