Yoga Therapy & Movement Therapy
Do you suspect that changing how you live in your body just might be a key to changing your whole life?
- Would you like to feel more secure, energetic and confident in your daily activities?
- Are you ready to drop body habits that interfere with your ability to feel relaxed, confident or capable?
A Not So Well Kept Secret About the Body
How you express yourself as a body may not reflect your best intentions, true motives or give an accurate impression of who you are. You may come off as wavering when you feel determined or harsh when you are actually feeling patient. Or chronic levels of tension and strain may just inhibit your confidence and inner authority.
Injuries, traumas, and cultural habits all imprint on our bodies too often limiting our possible range of movement expression, reaction and response. We literally can't be as intelligent, flexible, powerful or true to ourselves as we would like because of the restrictions some of our experiences have placed upon us. And, we are often completely unaware of these difficulties. If we notice them its generally to just feel them as physical pain or limitations.
Explore the Anthropology of Your Body
Because of our culture and technology, we subliminally see our world and our bodies as linear, angles and boxed. The chairs we sit in, the cars we drive and the pavement we walk on all reinforce a way of moving that actually worsens and creates pain, stiffness, strain and emotional / mental inflexibility.
On top of that, our emotions and experiences imprint upon our bodies. By a certain age we broadcast our life circumstances, beliefs and traumas just through the ways we move. Our body expresses our "message" to the world-and also back to ourselves.
Learning to Create a Healthy Partnership with Your Own Body:
Even if your body hasn't felt like a giving or loving partner in the past, together we can build that relationship. I facilitate gentle, affirming, easy-to-learn practices that train you to improve your life through your body, at your own pace. This process can create lasting change and help you overcome pain, anxiety, pressure, or environmental stress. It also has a huge impact on your personal well being, relationship with others and ability to move forward in your life on your own terms.
Transform High Stress and Tiredness into Energy:
The work we do together helps digestion, sleep cycles, ability to achieve calm, and make better decisions. Our "deeper" nervous system -what we call the "parasympathetic "-forms a strong and vital underpinning for the "sympathetic" nervous system: (that's the part that's conditioned for "fight, flight, or freeze" - the part that too easily gets stressed out and causes emotional, mental, and/or physical blockages). Without the truly restorative foundation of the parasympathetic we get wired, jangled and over extended.
Relaxation training, restorative yoga, massage and other techniques are great for developing calm but the real trick is making the calm feeling your default or primary MO. That's where the work I do comes in.
Working with me you can:
- Learn gentle and grounded exercises that transform stress into energy.
- Achieve calm and a life lived with less effort and strain
- Change long held movement habits that cause you physical and emotional pain or restriction
- Relate to the world with a personally body based experience of having enough support and ease
- Successfully manage high stimulation and urgency
- Find options in your movements that carry over into possibilities in your life
- Strengthen your body / brain connections that help you let go of self defeating habits
- Regain function and strength after injury,surgery, illness, debilitation or other painful experiences
- Rest
It's Important to Recognize
We literally can't be as intelligent, flexible, powerful or true to ourselves as we would like because of the restrictions some of our experiences have placed upon us. And, we are often only partially aware of these difficulties. we notice them its generally to just feel them as physical pain or limitations.
But, the level of effort and tension they cause distract from our happiness, authority, responsiveness and clarity. And, since our body is the instrument through which we communicate our humanity, ethics, passion and purpose, it's worthwhile to liberate your body's inherent wisdom, integrity and ease. That is all available for the uncovering.
Private Lessons are held in Northampton and Hadley. Please call to discuss availability and to understand how this work could help you.