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"The heart has its reasons, which reason knows nothing of."

~ Blaise Pascal

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What is Somatic Attunement™?

Somatic Attunement is an embodied experience of restoring the innate self-healing abilities of your mind-body by naturally regulating nervous system function and enhancing the strength and tone of the endocannabinoid system (our body's primary homeodynamic regulatory system). It is a dynamic combination of somatic exercises, trauma-informed yoga therapy, and functional movement.

Ultimately, Somatic Attunement is un-therapy: it is an experience of re-learning that there is nothing wrong with you and thus nothing that needs to be fixed. Rather, it is a process of learning how to safely and sustainably metabolize and alchemize the stuck/repressed energies that manifest as so many symptoms and conditions, including but not limited to: depression, anxiety, insomnia, chronic pain, irritability, workaholism, addictive/compulsive behaviors, and so-called "psycho-somatic" disorders.

For much more detail about Somatic Attunement and the current paradigm shift in the life-mind sciences, explore below and the other pages of this site!

"Trauma:" Not What You Think It Is

How Science has Transformed our Understanding of Life, Health, and the "Mind-Body Duality"

For hundreds of years, science and medicine have mistakenly studied and treated "the body" separate from "the mind." This has resulted in the mind-body duality, which divides "mental" from "physical" health. In my approach to health and wellness, there is no such division. It is only in "trauma" that we experience any such duality. Thus, the dis-ease of trauma (which is a functional and communicative disruption of our multidimensional cognitive abilities, inclusive of "physical" and "mental" processes) is a dysfunctional state of being characterized precisely by the experience of "mind" and "body" being separate. Health, therefore, is just the reverse: the re-uniting of all aspects of our being such that we think-feel-move-perceive-communicate as an integrated system.

Revolutionary research conducted throughout the 20th century and into the 21st has coalesced into a radically new (yet also ancient) paradigm of understanding human life, health, disease, and healing. Everything "psychological" is always necessarily "physical" -- there simply is no such "mind-body/mental-physical" duality (this view actually stems from the erroneous theoretical ruminations of some white guy philosopher-scientist 2,500 years ago....long before Descartes; it's darn well time we move beyond the frameworks rooted in such a fundamentally mistaken view of reality and life). We now know that health is a condition of holistic physio-cognitive integration: we feel, move and think as emergent wholes rather than mere collections of "parts." Disease (which I like to style "dis-ease:" literally a lack of ease), results from the interruption of this functional coherence, and nothing in human experience is more disruptive of and damaging to our holistic integrity than trauma (meaning a "wound, hurt or defeat").

Trauma results from any experience that gets us stuck in a condition of neurophysiological fragmentation/disconnection. Said differently, trauma is the blocking and restriction of the continual, dynamic, rhythmic flows of energy (i.e. metabolism) that characterize living systems as living. Machines and computers do not metabolize, only living systems do: thus, the modern view of the body as a machine (linear system of levers-pulleys) and the mind as a computer (inputs and outputs of information) is fundamentally wrong. As the brilliant paradigm-shifting neurophysiologist and biologist Humberto Maturana says, "The popular metaphor of calling the brain an 'information-processing device' is not only ambiguous but patently wrong." (The Tree of Knowledge, p. 169)

Trauma can result from an intense, acute event or simply the daily distress of living in this chaotic and often unsafe social world we all endure. Everyone, at some point in life, is "traumatized" -- i.e., their natural, fluid, dynamic life-functioning is disrupted and sustained in such a disrupted state. To resolve this and return to your real self does not require proprietary treatments, expensive/dangerous drugs, or anything of the sort. Rather, resolving trauma is a matter of simply being supported in re-connecting with the innate self-healing capacities we all contain within us.

Research across hundreds of scientific and medical-clinical disciplines has confirmed that we are quite literally self-healing. This is no mere new-age slogan or woo-woo nonsense. Science has recently revealed the biggest secret (literally -- this has been kept hidden from public knowledge and mainstream medical education) in medical science to date: our primary homeostatic regulator, harm-reduction/health-engendering system is the endocannabinoid system. The prefix "endo" means "internal" or "from within." This means that -- yes! -- our bodies naturally produce their own cannabinoids, which are very similar to the cannabinoids from the cannabis-sativa plant. Your body is totally full of endogenously-produced versions of THC and CBD: they have been named anandamide and 2-AG. The endocannabinoid system literally regulates, modulates, or otherwise influences every other system and function in your body.

Research has also shown that in countless conditions plaguing contemporary humans (anxiety/depression, fibromyalgia, IBS, insomnia, compulsive/addictive behaviors, Parkinson's, dementia, arthritis, chronic pain, mood swings, indigestion, skin problems, etc.), there is a marked endocannabinoid deficiency. This means that your body's natural self-regulating and self-healing abilities are impaired. In this state, health is impossible. And, trauma is one of the leading causes of this endocannabinoid deficiency. My practice of Somatic Attunement serves to naturally boost your levels of endocannabinoids while simultaneously regulating the nervous system such that both systems are restored to their proper levels. When both the nervous system and endocannabinoid system are restored to sufficient strength, you will naturally heal and countless otherwise "treatment resistant" conditions and symptoms will spontaneously resolve themselves.

Sound too good to be true? Well, the endocannabinoid system is 600 million years in development...it knows what it's doing! It is quite literally one of the most extensively-evolved elements of our being. (Also, all animals on Earth have an endocannabinoid system. It is absolutely essential and vital for life.)

Somatic Attunement™ is a somatically-based therapeutic wellness experience that serves to naturally, safely, adaptively, and sustainably integrate the many complex dimensions of your physio-cognitive functioning. Such an experience supports a diverse range of benefits including, but not limited to: trauma resolution; creativity enhancement; spiritual growth; support for grief and life transitions; and holistic heart-based intelligence.

Creatively weaving elements from somatic therapies, trauma-informed yoga therapy, and myofascial integration exercises, we will co-create a customized healing experience that reconnects you with the inalienable strength, embodied intelligence, and emergent healing capacities inherent in your body-mind. It's not exactly therapy, not exactly yoga, and not exactly mindfulness. It's an experience that will support you in attuning to your unique somatic harmonies, generating an emergent, holistic health and heart-based intelligence.

Why "Somatic Attunement"?

The currently developing paradigm shift in the life-mind sciences has revolutionized our scientific-clinical understanding and treatment of "trauma." From this new, yet also ancient, perspective, trauma (meaning "wounding") is fundamentally a communicative disruption. Communication within ourselves and between us and the world is muddled or blocked, and this leads to dysfunction along a wide range of activities including: conceptual language (like this sentence), body language (how we instinctually move and feel around others), metabolism, digestion, immune function, physical movement, intellectual and creative pursuits, emotional regulation, perception, situational awareness and interpretation, mental focus, sleep, exercise, reproductive function, hormone function, etc.

Trauma is essentially a matter of getting stuck in a condition of physio-cognitive dis-ease (e.g., the lack of ease-calm characteristic of anxiety) created by various parts of our cognitive systems working against one another and thereby creating energetic dissonance. To heal, therefore, is to convert this conflictual relational state to a complementary relational integration ("communication" → Latin communicationem: "to make common; join; unite"). It is to restore the functional wholeness of our mind-body-spirit-heart-soul. It is to "tune" our physio-cognitive systems from dissonance (dis-ease) to harmony (health).

I am currently conducting research into "interoceptive disorders," which are dis-eases resulting from the disruption of our holistic, body-wide communication system: the fascia. Our fascia (soft, connective tissues) is our primary sensory and communicative system, as it synthesizes, integrates, and helps metabolize the energies and signals from literally all other systems and physiological-cognitive functions. Characteristic of such physio-cognitive disruption is what's called "interoceptive noise" -- this basically refers to the dysregulated, unstable flows of energy through our system that we experience as anxiety, depression, pain, fear, weakness, low energy and other experiences such as "mental fog/brain fog," inability to focus, irritability, etc.

Thus, Somatic Attunement is an experience of working with the soma -- the intelligent, conscious body -- to "tune" the system from dissonance to harmony. By learning how to listen beyond the "noise" of a dysregulated system, we can reconnect with and leverage our built-in abilities to metabolize stuck, toxic energy from our systems and restore a condition of holistic, integrated functioning: the very definition of health.

"Health," after all, stems from the Old English hælþ, meaning "wholeness; being whole, sound or well."

For a more detailed description of Somatic Attunement™, click below: