Somatic Bodywork
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This work brings unique restorative practices together with to support personal empowerment, honoring intuition, conscious embodiment, and whole-person presence. This gentle approach tends to resonate well with those who are actively doing self-inquiry work, personal transformation work, those who are familiar with process-oriented support, and those who have the ability to do some level of active inner listening (interoceptive skills).
Those who tend to get the most from this work have a curious nature and a desire to explore their inner landscape of experiences and perceptions. Sessions are part intelligence-based and part intuition-based to offer you the benefits of my experience plus the holding of space for other forms of wisdom to emerge. |
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This style of bodywork can be helpful during times of stress or transition, when you want support accessing your own inner wisdom, before and after surgery, when doing personal healing work after physical or emotional trauma, and whenever you want a sense of being supported and witnessed.
Heart-Centered Care & Co-Regulation
- Building physical, emotional, and energetic understanding & resilience
- Supporting those who are highly sensitive or empathic
- Accessing your sense of inner knowing
- Supporting post-trauma growth
- Enriching your sense of vitality and purpose
- Deep restoration and stress reduction
- Support with life transitions including end-of-life
- Contemplative care in support of alleviating suffering
If you desire holistic support in your process of personal growth, transformation, creating a sense of deep inner connection, and increasing self-awareness, I look forward to collaborating with you.
Elements of this work
This approach embraces the concepts of slow medicine, relaxation, receptivity, and the gentler, "yin" aspects of healing work. In a society that pushes a go-go-go mentality which can lead to over-stimulation, overwhelm, and stifling of our inner wisdom, I encourage you to soften, become quiet, slow down, and access the inner knowing that you already hold within you. I collaborate with you as the expert of your own life and honor your lived experience. We work together to bring a sense of safety, support, and peace to areas in the body that are holding sensations such as tension, bracing, armoring, fatigue, collapse, and overwhelm while also exploring areas that hold messages related to comfort, joy, creativity, ease, and trust. We listen for the subtle messages from the body and integrate them into consciousness awareness.
I offer the holding of time and space for you to practice presence in order to access your own inner knowing. I offer witnessing and undivided attention. My practice is intentionally present moment focused and is non-clinical. That means I don't chase symptoms or seek to fix anything. What I do is remind you that you hold great wisdom within you and support you in finding your own way as you do your personal work. Together, through this process, we work together to inspire a sense of wholeness, ease, connection, integration, and transformation through bodywork, movement, attention, and intention.
I have a special interest in integrating somatic practices (body-focused work) with biofield therapies (energy medicine). Somatics has been beautifully described as the study of the self from the perspective of one's lived experience, encompassing the dimensions of body, psyche, and spirit. Through practices focused on interoception, proprioception, and sensation-based awareness, somatics-based modalities help bring unknown parts of yourself and your experiences into the known realm. It is a process of tapping into a fuller range of human experience. Somatics embraces inner sensation, curiosity, pleasure, inner beauty, wholeness, and wonder. It is the art of inner listening to our wise selves with curious awareness.
I support those who have a desire to learn, explore, and lean further into the human experience. My approach honors your beliefs, practices, traditions, preferences, and experiences. I offer support and witnessing as your path unfolds. The work I do is eclectic and integrative. If this slow, quiet, sensitive style of practice resonates with you, I would be happy to support you on your personal journey.
I offer the holding of time and space for you to practice presence in order to access your own inner knowing. I offer witnessing and undivided attention. My practice is intentionally present moment focused and is non-clinical. That means I don't chase symptoms or seek to fix anything. What I do is remind you that you hold great wisdom within you and support you in finding your own way as you do your personal work. Together, through this process, we work together to inspire a sense of wholeness, ease, connection, integration, and transformation through bodywork, movement, attention, and intention.
I have a special interest in integrating somatic practices (body-focused work) with biofield therapies (energy medicine). Somatics has been beautifully described as the study of the self from the perspective of one's lived experience, encompassing the dimensions of body, psyche, and spirit. Through practices focused on interoception, proprioception, and sensation-based awareness, somatics-based modalities help bring unknown parts of yourself and your experiences into the known realm. It is a process of tapping into a fuller range of human experience. Somatics embraces inner sensation, curiosity, pleasure, inner beauty, wholeness, and wonder. It is the art of inner listening to our wise selves with curious awareness.
I support those who have a desire to learn, explore, and lean further into the human experience. My approach honors your beliefs, practices, traditions, preferences, and experiences. I offer support and witnessing as your path unfolds. The work I do is eclectic and integrative. If this slow, quiet, sensitive style of practice resonates with you, I would be happy to support you on your personal journey.
Somatics studies the body-mind-soul interface, the relationship between our physical matter and our energy, the interaction of our body structures with our thoughts and actions, and conscious embodiment of mind and spirit.
Techniques from CranioSacral Therapy, NeuroAffective Touch®, energy medicine practices, and other modalities are highly emphasized in this work due to their abilities to deeply support the multiple aspects of our systems.
Techniques from CranioSacral Therapy, NeuroAffective Touch®, energy medicine practices, and other modalities are highly emphasized in this work due to their abilities to deeply support the multiple aspects of our systems.
What is somatic relational bodywork?
Sessions use a gentle touch to focus on listening to the unspoken language of the body through its tissue responses, rhythms, micro-movements, pulsations, and patterns of ease and resistance. This work uses collaborative processes that include working together to explore patterns of tension, bracing, fatigue, comfort, and other felt sensations in the body through guided somatic awareness, bodywork, quiet listening, and conversation. Through this gentle, hands-on work, the practitioner "listens" for and responds to the messages from your body that come through the acupuncture meridians, cerebrospinal fluid, pulses, connective tissue, bones, organs, nervous system, biofield, and other elements, working to support a deeper sense of being at home in your own body.
During sessions, we communicate about what areas of your system are in need of support and attention as we work together to follow the messages from the body itself. Techniques from many eclectic modalities are part of this process as we attend to the physical body, the emotional body, and the energy field. While this style of somatic bodywork addresses the physical patterns in the body, it also works with the body's energy system. Integrative energy medicine practices help to support flow where things are stuck, encourage ease where things are difficult, and encourage stability and organization where things feel collapsed or chaotic. These methods are informed through an interdisciplinary approach that includes concepts from East Asian Medicine and acupuncture theory, shamanic energy medicine, physiology and neuroscience, interpersonal neurobiology, polyvagal theory, somatic psychology, transpersonal psychology, and other eclectic energy medicine traditions, .
This kind of relational bodywork is about building and strengthening your relationship within your own body-mind-soul system and giving you access to the free flow of your own life force energy. It offers support for moving stuck energy and for nervous system regulation through relational connection and co-regulation with the practitioner. Communication between practitioner and client reinforces a sense of safety in the nervous system and offers guidance towards your own sense of inner knowing. It honors the body itself as a wise aspect of your complete wholeness with its own way of knowing as it communicates about shifts in the biofield in real-time. We practice hearing the somatic language of the body through sensation awareness, imagery, and dialogue as we explore the energetic and imaginal realms.
Techniques are designed to bring a sense of support, compassion, and curiosity to the experiences of the body-mind-soul so that we may fully listen and lean into the ways your system may be asking for care and support. This work is energetic in nature while also directly attending to responses of tissues, structures, and systems of the physical body that may be reflecting our energetic and emotional imprints, holding tension, fear, shame, anger, and other blockages or patterns of disorganization that keep us from fully accessing our life force energy. We give space to notice, honor, and integrate your experiences.
This slow-paced style of bodywork is a holistic, collaborative partnership that helps us deepen into who we are at our core while giving awareness to somatic and transcendent experiences. It is an opportunity to have a trusted companion on your path with you as you explore how experiences show up in your energy field and in your body as we experience personal growth, healing work, hope, love, forgiveness, compassion, grief, pain, deep questions, fears, and all the things that life's journey asks us to hold.
These gentle techniques work with the natural pacing of the nervous system and can be greatly supportive for working with:
During sessions, we communicate about what areas of your system are in need of support and attention as we work together to follow the messages from the body itself. Techniques from many eclectic modalities are part of this process as we attend to the physical body, the emotional body, and the energy field. While this style of somatic bodywork addresses the physical patterns in the body, it also works with the body's energy system. Integrative energy medicine practices help to support flow where things are stuck, encourage ease where things are difficult, and encourage stability and organization where things feel collapsed or chaotic. These methods are informed through an interdisciplinary approach that includes concepts from East Asian Medicine and acupuncture theory, shamanic energy medicine, physiology and neuroscience, interpersonal neurobiology, polyvagal theory, somatic psychology, transpersonal psychology, and other eclectic energy medicine traditions, .
This kind of relational bodywork is about building and strengthening your relationship within your own body-mind-soul system and giving you access to the free flow of your own life force energy. It offers support for moving stuck energy and for nervous system regulation through relational connection and co-regulation with the practitioner. Communication between practitioner and client reinforces a sense of safety in the nervous system and offers guidance towards your own sense of inner knowing. It honors the body itself as a wise aspect of your complete wholeness with its own way of knowing as it communicates about shifts in the biofield in real-time. We practice hearing the somatic language of the body through sensation awareness, imagery, and dialogue as we explore the energetic and imaginal realms.
Techniques are designed to bring a sense of support, compassion, and curiosity to the experiences of the body-mind-soul so that we may fully listen and lean into the ways your system may be asking for care and support. This work is energetic in nature while also directly attending to responses of tissues, structures, and systems of the physical body that may be reflecting our energetic and emotional imprints, holding tension, fear, shame, anger, and other blockages or patterns of disorganization that keep us from fully accessing our life force energy. We give space to notice, honor, and integrate your experiences.
This slow-paced style of bodywork is a holistic, collaborative partnership that helps us deepen into who we are at our core while giving awareness to somatic and transcendent experiences. It is an opportunity to have a trusted companion on your path with you as you explore how experiences show up in your energy field and in your body as we experience personal growth, healing work, hope, love, forgiveness, compassion, grief, pain, deep questions, fears, and all the things that life's journey asks us to hold.
These gentle techniques work with the natural pacing of the nervous system and can be greatly supportive for working with:
- Personal development and self-inquiry explorations
- Post-trauma growth
- Support for relational wounding and developmental trauma
- Holistic healing from accidents, injuries, falls, concussions, and physical traumas
- Sensory processing challenges and the neurodivergent experience
- Chronic musculoskeletal tension and pain syndromes
- Support for burnout and emotional stress
- Tension, fears, feelings of hypervigilance
- Lack of motivation or sense of stuck-ness
What is a session like?
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Sessions are always gentle, integrative, and collaborative. They allow you to rest, unwind tension holding patterns, gain personal insights, and encourage your own intuition and self-healing capacity to emerge. Sessions generally consist of a combination of bodywork, guided somatic (body awareness) practices, dialogue about your present moment experiences, and quiet integration time.
Note: The somatic practices I offer work in present moment timing. Conversations are focused on sensations, experiences, and what is arising in real time versus talking about old patterns, past experiences, processing traumas, etc. (This is not "therapy"). It is important that you make time and space to process after each session to get the most benefit from this work. Some ways of processing may include journaling, creating art, working with a spiritual mentor or therapist, or any other way you feel tapped into inner wisdom and ongoing support. During bodywork, you will be relaxing, fully-clothed, on a soft, heated table. As we work, I listen to your your words and to the messages from your body as we collaborate, intuit, and weave in supportive modalities that will bring you one-of-a-kind, highly personalized care. It is important to wear stretchy, comfortable, non-restrictive clothing that allows you to breathe and move freely, similar to what you might wear for yoga. It is important to avoid thick seams (such as those in jeans), belts, and restrictive clothing. We always tailor each session to what is showing up for you on the day of your appointment. I bring decades of experience with multiple modalities to your session. Biofield therapy is an umbrella term for modalities that focus on working with the body's energy system. Somatic therapies help us integrate and bring forth the subtle changes in the energy system, the nervous system, and the body into awareness and fuller conscious embodiment. This work is intentionally slow and gentle, in order to allow for unwinding holding patterns, supporting the nervous system, and integrating the shifts experienced with the work. When our systems have experienced chronic stress, dysregulation, and long-term sympathetic activation, it can take time for the body to remember how to orient towards safety and increase capacity for processing life's experiences, including learning how to hold a sense of joy and aliveness. Because this is present moment, process-focused work, there is no set amount of sessions that are recommended. That is up to you to decide as you do your own processing and navigate your own sense of capacity, personal growth, integration, and healing with others on your support team. |
How does a session feel? Everybody will have a different experience and every session is different, but here are some common experiences.
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The intention of this work is to create an experience of support through therapeutic touch and deep listening. While effects such as deep relaxation, pain reduction, etc are often experienced, those things are indirect results and are not the primary intention of this work. Through cultivating a sense of safety and co-regulation, this kind of process-focused work is meant to support body-mind connection as well as connection with messages from the unexpressed inner self.
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I most frequently work with:
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Through our work together, we seek to:
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Artema Somatics LLC
800 Wilson Avenue, Suite 51
Menomonie, WI 54751
800 Wilson Avenue, Suite 51
Menomonie, WI 54751
