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Want to know the secret to health, happiness, and success?

The secret is...there is no secret. The pop-psy and self-help industries thrive on selling the lie that there is some hidden secret, technique, practice, or method that will magically cure, relieve, or fix whatever imperfection they've highlighted as a blight on your otherwise perfect, serene existence. There are quite literally thousands of books, blogs, websites, and pharmaceutical drugs promising salvation from a dizzying array of symptoms, conditions, disorders, and experiences that plague contemporary humans. And yet, people in industrialized societies are more ill than ever. A statistical majority of Americans suffer from at least one chronic illness and regularly take at least one pharmaceutical drug. Globally, hundreds of millions of people in the developed world plod through life with just a fraction of the energy and abilities they're inherently capable of. As just one example, the World Health Organization reported a few years ago that depression and anxiety are now the globally leading causes of health disturbance, outstripping cancer, heart disease, and diabetes.

So, what the heck is going on??

There's no simple, easy answer to this question, but there are good answers. One of the primary factors here, I believe, is that most healthcare, therapeutic, and medical practice treats symptoms but neglects the causes of those symptoms. This brings temporary, superficial relief, and in this hyperactive, rapid cultural environment, many people are too busy to notice the consistent pattern that attends this approach to wellness. Namely, the pattern of...

person feels bad/ill --> person goes to professional expert and describes what's wrong --> professional expert diagnoses a condition or disorder according to an abstract set of formulaic criteria --> professional expert prescribes drug or other remedy promising to relieve client/patient of unpleasant symptom(s) --> client/patient trusts professional expert because they see them as the authority and thus assume they know best --> client/patient follows directions of the expert and temporarily might feel better (or, at least, experiences a placebo effect from simply believing that the pill they took is magically healing them) --> client/patient returns to living as they have before, thinking they are healed/cured/treated --> symptoms manifest again --> client/patient goes back to professional expert and asks for more treatment/drugs/surgeries, etc.

Sound familiar? Most everyone has experienced some pattern or cycle like this, or at least knows someone who has. It's an all-too-familiar story in contemporary culture. So, what gives?

The Radicalness of Somatic Attunement

Somatic Attunement is a truly radical approach to health, wellbeing, and the optimization of our embodied, adaptive intelligence, in the literal and etymological sense of radical meaning "root" or "origination" (Latin radix). Somatic Attunement cuts through all the trendy jargon, the magical formulae, and the supposedly "revolutionary" programs clogging the shelves and web pages of bookstores and blogs worldwide. The approach that I call "Somatic Attunement" relies not on some new, proprietary technique, program, or practice -- rather, we work to engage your innate healing abilities and the profound intelligence embedded in your embodied mind.

In modern culture, most people have been prevented from experiencing and cultivating these innate abilities and intelligence. When we are blocked or forbidden from tapping into the inherent powers of the human animal, we suffer. Most everyone these days is forced to live a highly artificial, hyperactive, unnatural life, and such conformity to the contemporary regimes of a socioeconomic order dominated by industrial-mechanistic-technological culture inevitably harms us by compromising our ability to maintain health and wellness when faced with distressing conditions. In other words, a large portion of the symptoms and conditions that people spend billions of dollars trying to relieve with drugs, special treatments, and proprietary therapies are actually symptoms of a dis-eased cultural ecology, and not reflective of an individual/personal flaw, disorder, or defect.

Somatic Attunement engages your experience through this bio-psycho-spiritual-social lens: we are all irreducibly unique, yet simultaneously and thoroughly embedded within social ecologies that significantly impact our individual uniqueness, for good or for ill. It is within this tensional interface that we experience both the best and worst of life, and it is this dynamic space that contains the potential for the most profound, lasting change and expression of our autonomous agency -- or its violent repression.

In short, Somatic Attunement asks not "what's wrong with you," but questions "What wrongs have been done to you?" We will work to understand whatever undesirable symptoms you're experiencing (whether physical pains; emotional turmoil; creativity blocks; communicative/relationship issues; career stagnation or dissatisfaction; or general distress/anxiety and depression) as products of social-relational-ecological experiences that functioned to block your natural ability to continually grow, learn, heal, and create. Then, we will leverage the very same natural processes that were engaged to protect you when you experienced those things, as a means of alchemizing them from harms to healings.

Everyone, at some point in life, is "traumatized." But trauma is not simply bad things happening to us; more specifically, trauma is what results when a protective-defense response is unnaturally prevented from completing itself and returning us to a state of safe, calm relaxation after a threatening, dangerous, or distressing experience.

As everyone is unique, Somatic Attunement is not a single, formulaic practice or technique -- as is commonly offered by most expert specialists these days. Rather, we work together to customize an experience suited to your situation and your needs. Ultimately, Somatic Attunement is an approach that supports you in naturally self-healing and growing by engaging your innate ability to regulate. This approach draws from a wide range of practices and techniques spanning thousands of years of human healthcare, spirituality, and medical practice.

What's so special about Somatic Attunement?

This approach to health, wellbeing, and intelligence is unique because it synthesizes ancient wisdom with the very best of modern science and medicine. My expertise integrates all the key elements of a major paradigm shift currently occurring in science. These include:

• Anatomy: biotensegrity (which replaces the obsolete view of human movement as a matter of linear, mechanical, lever-and-pulley actions)
• Mental health-cognitive science: embodied cognition (which replaces the artificial separation of mind and body, doctrinized into the false "mental-physical" duality
• Self-healing neurophysiology: endocannabinology (the endocannabinoid system -- which is present in all animals, humans included -- is our primary homeostatic regulator and harm-reduction system; yet 95% of doctors know essentially nothing about it, because it has not been taught in medical schools)
• Trauma-informed therapies (creator of the Polyvagal Theory of emotional regulation and nervous system function, Stephen Porges, PhD, reminds us that "humans are a traumatized species." Everyone is "traumatized" in life, yet relatively few medical professionals and therapists properly understand the dynamic complexity of the neurophysiology of trauma and how to safely and effectively resolve it)

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Somatic Attunement™: The Practice

Somatic Attunement™ is a simple, natural approach to resolving trauma, cultivating emergent creativity, and deepening into the body-heart-spirit-based intelligence that makes us uniquely human animals. It is a practice of establishing an "inner dialogue" within your multidimensional embodied mind such that you can develop a solid, literally grounded basis from which to create consistent congruence between your inner and outer worlds and move through life in a way that sustainably supports your optimal functioning, growth, and health, personally and interpersonally.

I cannot list the steps or formula for Somatic Attunement™, because the practice must be tailored to each person's uniqueness. For a general idea, though, imagine a creative combination of body scan meditations; Eugene Gendlin's "focusing" method; yin yoga; mindful movement; and somatic therapies. Through the customized application of a variety of modalities and exercises to suit your unique, individual needs, Somatic Attunement™ supports you in re-connecting with, deepening, and sustainably developing a holistic mind-body intelligence that resolves root dysregulations that manifest in all the various symptoms that prompt people to seek therapy, coaching/guidance, and/or medical treatment. In this way, the practice is not merely symptom management, but true healing in the sense of resolving the underlying core issues (root causes) that prevent you from re-establishing the emergent, holistic functioning that is definitional of health and wellbeing.

Somatic Attunement™ makes use of theories, modalities, and exercises from the many frameworks that are the focus of my doctoral research and ongoing clinical training and practice, including:

• embodied cognition
• trauma-informed yoga therapy
• trauma-sensitive mindfulness
• biotensegrity
• functional fascial fitness
• somatic therapies
• music/rhythm therapy
• mindfulness/contemplative practices

Through an authentic dialogue that we establish in our sessions or workshops together, we co-create a customized approach to your healing and expansion of holistic intelligence by drawing from these and other modalities as practically relevant to your unique, contingent situations and challenges.

Below, I've included a more lengthy discussion of the current paradigm shift occurring in the life-mind sciences, which provides the basis for my practice of Somatic Attunement™ and general approach to healing and trauma resolution. As mentioned above, one of the key insights of this new paradigm is the unavoidable fact that all trauma is primarily ecological-relational in nature, manifesting in and through individuals in unique ways, but never not being a primarily and ultimately relational-social-institutional phenomenon. Given this, I believe it is the task not only of professional, credentialed experts such as therapists, doctors, and body workers, but the entire human population, to become trauma-informed and to conduct your work in such a way that it contributes to the creation of communities and cultures of healing. The global pandemic of trauma (seen primarily in the increasing, and literally pandemic-level, rates of depression and anxiety) requires collective action and changes to sustainably redress. The work we do together can be a launching point, a catalyst, and a substantive example of this sort of emergent change and healing. 

The Revolution in Life-Mind Science: From Mechanical Body and Computational Mind to Emergent, Embodied Cognition

Beginning over 100 years ago, the life-mind sciences -- inclusive of psychology, cognitive science, biology, evolutionary theory, neuroscience, phenomenology, mindfulness, trauma studies, and ecology, among many other fields of study -- entered what Thomas Kuhn calls a "revolutionary" period of science. Through this process, many of the foundational beliefs and seemingly common-sense assumptions of modern science have been jettisoned in the light of new and better evidence. A truly radically new paradigm is emerging.

Animating this paradigm shift are fundamental changes in how the human being (or human doing, as I like to say) is conceptualized, studied, and engaged in clinical practice. The old paradigm of biomechanics to explain human movement has been replaced by the new paradigm of biotensegrity, and the computational theory of mind-cognition has been replaced by the paradigm of deep life-mind continuity.

Among countless other changes in perspective and practice, this sea change in the life-mind sciences has major implications for clinical and creative pursuits. Here are just a few:

• Human cognition, mind, and creativity

• there is no such thing as the "mind-body duality" -- everything is mind, and the body is the mind
• linear, conceptual, analytic thinking is just a small part of cognition -- qualitative feeling constitutes the vast majority of human cognition
• creativity emerges primarily from the somatic mind, not the brain
• the brain is not our primary organ of "knowing" -- the heart-core-fascial system is

• Human movement and kinetics
• Newtonian mechanics (linear lever-pulley system) does not explain human movement
• we are immeasurably complex, dynamic biotensegrity systems
• the qualitative feeling of movement is the basis of all human cognitive function

• Trauma
• all trauma is relational and ecological
• everyone experiences trauma to some degree, at some point in life
• everyone naturally embodies everything they need to resolve trauma
• trauma resolution does not require elaborate treatments, drugs, revisiting traumatic memories, or even discussing specifically what traumatized you
• depression, anxiety, OCD, etc. are not mental illnesses, they are the symptomatic outgrowths of unresolved trauma

• Spirituality
• While trauma indelibly disrupts our innate desire to experience the world spiritually, the healing of trauma can deepen our ability to connect spiritually: you don't need to become a monk, priest, ascetic, guru, or mystic to live a robust spiritual life;
• spiritual connection is available to everyone, everywhere, at all times, and does not require (nor should it, in my belief!) any sort of intermediary between us and the Divine

• Holistic Health
• "mental" and "physical" health are the same thing: it is only in dis-ease that the healthy, holistic cognition of our being is disrupted such that we name "mental" and "physical" functions of cognition separately
• trauma and chronic distress profoundly disrupts the proper, holistic functioning of our neurophysiology, which is essential for health and wellbeing
• resolving trauma is not merely "mental," but centrally involves significant adaptations in the neurophysiological systems necessary for optimal health, immune function, and movement
• nature, real food, and the innate wisdom and self-healing abilities of your somatic mind are the most effective medicines for most dis-eases suffered by millions of people today -- not drugs, surgeries, or expensive, risky, probabilistic treatments

We are music, not machines

For hundreds of years, science and medicine have been dominated by a very powerful -- yet very mistaken -- idea: that the natural world, and life itself, can be understood as a complex machine built of individual physical parts, much like a car or the digital device you're using to read this. Based on this idea, human cognition has been likened to a computer; the mind is the "software" and the body the "hardware" of the system. Anatomy has been defined mechanically; the body is a system of levers (bones) and pulleys (muscles) that functions like a crane. And, on the broadest levels of science, reality itself has been cast as a structure built up from "basic particulars" (quarks, atoms, molecules, cells, etc.), much like a child's Lego city.

In this age of amnesic myopia, most people have no clue that for most of human history, it was not machines but music that provided the basis for understanding and living harmoniously within this universe. The machine paradigm is an historical anomaly, a mere blip on the radar scanning human inquiry through the ages. Today, the sciences are returning to what humans have always known; to what only select cultures contingently forgot when the industrial-mechanical age swept over their hearts and captured their minds. We are returning to what all indigenous and traditional cultures knew from the beginning, and still know...anywhere it hasn't been lost in the fog of analytic amnesia: life....is music.

Health is for Life, not Machines

Machines cannot be healthy, nor can they be sick, because they are not alive. Health and illness are unique features only of living systems. "Health," from the Old English hælþ, means "wholeness; being whole, sound, or well." Notice there is nothing in this definition along the lines of "all the parts are working properly." Living systems are fundamentally different from mechanical systems in their basic ontology ("ontology" is the study of being, of "what is," of how things are constituted, of the nature of reality). Living systems are emergent wholes that cannot, in principle, be reductively explained by breaking them down into component parts or functions. A machine, conversely, can be so explained. We can understand the proper or defective functioning of a car, for instance, by looking at the individual parts and seeing that they are either working or not working properly. When a part is broken, it can be repaired or replaced; then, the car works properly again.

Living systems are not like this. The "wholeness" of health refers to a state of being in which a living system as a living system manifests a dynamic, functional integration and expression of activity that cannot be explained by reference to individual "parts" of that system. Lack of health, therefore -- illness or disease -- results when this holistic, functional integration is somehow compromised.

We are music more than machines. We express as art more than the embodiment of a technical analysis. To be alive is to explore, to inquire, to change, to move spontaneously and feel fully. And yet, for generations now, science, medicine and therapeutics have been dominated by a mechanistic, reductionistic, industrial paradigm that views the body as a system of levers and pulleys (it's not), the mind as a computer (it's not), and even the entire natural world as a vast machine whose inner workings can be isolated, categorized, and analyzed to predict and control the behavior of the whole.

This mechano-industrial approach to life has developed in tandem with a pathologizing medical system that seeks to find, name, and then fix by miracle pill or "revolutionary" treatment anything that can be said to be wrong with a person. "Feeling depressed? Take a pill! Feeling anxious? Take a pill! Feeling stiff? Take a pill and get surgery! Have headaches? Take this pill!" This is an excellent strategy from an economic-business standpoint, which has proved to line the pockets of pharmaceutical executives and doctors complicit with this paradigm, but this is a terrible approach for helping living systems truly heal.

Following G.K. Chesterton, who, in his book What's Wrong with the World answered with the observation that "what's wrong with the world is that we're not asking what's right," we may ask and answer the same with medicine. What's wrong with medicine is that we're not asking what's right: we're obsessed with and myopically fixated on what's wrong. As Dr. Gary Fettke explains in his lecture The Failure of Medical Education,

"Medical education is far and away focused on investigating and treating sickness rather than keeping us healthy. It's reactive rather than preventative. We spend infinitely more time and money treating the sick rather than being rewarded for keeping people healthy."

Indeed, the U.S. "health"care system is actually the 3rd leading cause of death in the United States (when including deaths from doctor-recommended prescription drugs and complications from unnecessary surgeries and/or treatments). As Dr. David Bearman asserts: "Medical doctors are experts in disease, not health."

In contrast to this pathologizing perspective, which prioritizes what is seen to be "wrong" with a person, my approach to wellbeing is led by the conviction that we all contain robust capacities to heal, learn, grow, overcome setbacks, and maintain health throughout our lifetimes. I work with "what's right" in each of us, endeavoring to expand the good rather than fixating on -- and trying to "fix" -- the bad.

The Unity of "Mind-Body:"

From Dualism to Holism in Life-Mind Science
and
The Individual Experience of Collective Social-Relational Trauma

Throughout its history, science has undergone a series of major revolutions in its understanding of reality. It was once believed that the Earth was the center of the solar system, galaxy, and universe. Now, we realize this isn't even close to the truth. It was once believed that the Earth was flat; that blood-letting was a good standard medical procedure; that women were inferior to men; and that people with light colored skin were genetically, morally, intellectually, and spiritually superior to people with darker complexions. Now, we realize the absolute absurdity of such previously "common sense" beliefs (notwithstanding the fact that some people still believe such nonsense).

In this very moment of your reading this, another such paradigm shift is currently developing. The life and mind sciences -- inclusive of psychology, cognitive science, biology, evolutionary theory, neuroscience, phenomenology, mindfulness, trauma studies, and ecology, among many other fields of study -- are currently waking up to the realization that many of the seemingly "common sense" beliefs characterizing the classical and modern paradigms of science are, in fact, fundamentally mistaken. Primary among these is the assumption (and it was originally an assumption, not a well-established fact substantiated by high quality evidence) that reality is split between two levels of being, which in the modern period has crystalized into the supposed "mind-body duality."

For hundreds of years, those scientists, clinicians, and other experts who exerted great influence in developing the "common sense" beliefs of the lay public were led to believe that reality and the human experience is essentially divided into two realms, dimensions, or levels: the physical real, and the mental ideal. The physical world is the "real" world, the literal, tangible, tactile world we can touch, taste, see, hear, smell, and feel. This is the world of the "body," which is supposedly animated by "the mind," which corresponds to a mental realm of ideal (or abstract) thought, imagination, language, reasoning, etc. Crucial to this perspective was the assumption that these realms are mutually exclusive: what is "mental" is definitionally non-physical, and what is "physical" is definitionally non-mental. So, this created the question of how a non-physical mind could somehow be connected to, interact with, and direct the movements of a mindless, purely physical body. This is the essence of the "mind-body duality."

Throughout history, thousands of scientists, scholars, and researchers of various types have sought to solve this problem of "mind-body duality," which is sometimes formulated as the "problem of consciousness" (how a non-mental physical substrate, "the body/brain," can give rise to a non-physical mental "mind"). And every single attempt to resolve this problem has failed. But the explanations have failed not because they were bad explanations; many of the folks presenting such solutions are brilliant and deeply knowledgeable. The supposed solutions failed simply because it is a false problem in the first place.

The story of how and why this is a fundamentally mis-formulated problem is long and complex, and comprises part of my doctoral dissertation. What's important here is the practical implication, the "so what?" What does all this mean for you, and humans on the Earth today? Among countless other implications, the realization that the mind-body duality is simply a non-problem, a red herring, a mistaken perspective of reality (and it was an honest -- not a malicious or intentional -- mistake, for whatever that's worth) has transformed our understanding and treatment of many health disturbances, especially what is traditionally called "psychological trauma." Research now emphatically shows that "psychological" trauma is neurophysiological trauma. This is not to say that "psychological" trauma (e.g., PTSD) is exactly the same as a physical "trauma" such as the of breaking a bone. Nonetheless, all so-called "psychological" trauma is physically -- which is to say, bioneurophysiologically -- instantiated.

Indeed, in the new paradigm of deep life-mind continuity, embodied cognition, and emergent mind (there are different names for the theoretical perspective characterizing the new paradigm), literally all aspects of human cognition are tangibly embodied in what I call the "somatic mind." The "somatic mind" just is the "physical body." There is no sense in which anything in human cognitive-mindful-conscious experience is not embodied. Even supposedly "out of body" experiences, if you have such an experience, are still embodied. If such experiences are not embodied, you would not experience them and would not have any memory of them.

This massive shift in theoretical-empirical-clinical science has major implications for the resolution of trauma and so-called "mental illnesses" like depression, anxiety, OCD, ADHD, and other compulsive attachments and behaviors such as workaholism, substance abuse, dysfunctional relationship attachments, and the like. For example, depression and anxiety are simply the symptomatic manifestations of trauma, which is a neurophysiological dis-ease, or dysregulation, that disrupts the holistic functioning of our originally integrated "mind-body" system. Feeling calm, happy, joyful, compassionate, and open to social connection is only possible when we feel safe, and trauma is principally the experience of being stuck in a feeling of not-safe; of being chronically stuck in a defensive-survival-protective response.

Somatic Attunement™ is my way of supporting you in releasing the excess energy stirred up in you during an original triggering event, and subsequently re-teaching your body/somatic mind that it is safe to feel. This is the essence of trauma resolution. The nitty-gritty neurophysiological details underlying this approach could fill multiple book-length volumes, but the practical implication of all this science is simple: the body knows; the body is self-healing; and the body always wants to return us to a healthy, calm state of emotional and physiological stability.

The challenge is, in trauma, it is precisely these natural, emergent, self-healing abilities of the body/somatic mind that are disrupted and/or shut down. This is where the need for expert support comes in. Resolving trauma can be a bit tricky, as it requires re-engaging the previously disrupted defensive-survival response from a past experience of being made to feel unsafe. Note, however, that this does not mean re-visiting "traumatic memories." It is not necessary to stir up explicit memories of the originally-triggering event that led to trauma. Instead, Somatic Attunement™ works with the present-moment, non-conceptual cognition of the embodied mind. I simply support you in re-engaging your innate self-healing capacities by carefully constructing a therapeutic container in which your body's powerful self-regulating abilities can be engaged, allowed, and expanded such that you naturally return yourself to a state of calm, safety/security, and ease.

While all humans on Earth share the same basic neurophysiology, the manner in which we all suffer trauma is unique to each of us. Thus, I cannot provide a formula or 10-step plan for healing. Beginning with our initial consultation, we will develop a customized approach to reconnecting you with your true self, the core self that goes into hiding during a threatening situation and remains in the shadows insofar as we carry unresolved trauma. In this sense, trauma resolution is not "fixing" you; it is not repairing a defect or solving a problem. Trauma resolution is the actualization of a potential, the liberation of a repressed strength. Paradoxically, the very powers of our nervous systems that make trauma such an awful experience are the same powers we will engage to resolve trauma. My clinical role is to provide the knowledge, support, and individualized guidance you need to resolve this paradox and emerge with a renewed sense of strength, vitality, hope, peace, joy, and compassion -- for yourself, for people in your life, and for life as such.

Emergent Holism and Ecological Trauma

From this new yet ancient perspective of the planetary unity of all life, a radically different way to understand health, disease, and trauma emerges. For hundreds of years, science and medical practice has viewed the individual as the primary thing to study, diagnose, and treat. Mind and body were severed in theory and practice, and thus "mental" illness was defined independently of "physical" disease. Today, we realize how naïve and simplistic this framework is. We now realize (though it should be noted that indigenous peoples have always known this, they just never forgot it) that the body is the mind and that absolutely everything is interconnected in an infinitely complex, diverse, dynamic, shifting-growing-emerging planetary evolution.

Today, planet Earth is significantly traumatized and trying to heal from this trauma. We are part of this, and the global pandemic of trauma (and trauma's symptomatic outgrowths: depression and anxiety) is the functional manifestation of this planetary, ecological dysregulation in which we all collectively exist and struggle. To substantively, thoroughly, and sustainably heal, we must adopt this holistic-collective perspective of health-disease.

All trauma is relational-ecological-social. Everyone on Earth has been, and/or will be, "traumatized" at some point in life. As the world-renowned neurophysiologist and creator of the Polyvagal Theory, Stephen Porges, Ph.D., reminds us: "We have to acknowledge that human beings are a traumatized species." This means that trauma is not merely an occasional experience that can be addressed exclusively by credentialed professional experts in isolated, individual sessions such as the standard form of psychotherapy, body work, or physical therapy. There is a place for this, to be sure. But we must also shift to seeing our collective condition as a traumatized being. The "social organism" of humans as a singular species is deeply, profoundly traumatized. Each of our individual healing-health is ultimately and utterly dependent on our sociocultural-ecological conditions. Thus, for true health and wellbeing, we must learn how to heal not only individually, but relationally-collectively, as well.

The "Bottom-Up" Movement of Collective Healing

This movement toward collective-relational healing will not be led by institutions and individuals who hold hierarchical positions of power and authority. By and large, the institutions, laws and policies, professional associations, and credentialed experts of civilizational-industrial cultures serve to establish, maintain, reinforce, and perpetuate their own authority over the supposedly ignorant, dependent lay public. As just one of countless examples that could be discussed, the American academic system and medical system are (for the most part, with notable exceptions, of course) currently dominated by dogmatic doctrines professing beliefs established largely by a bunch of wide dudes from hundreds (and in some cases, thousands) of years ago. Despite research from these very institutions revealing the need for a radical reconsideration of many of the basic tenets on which are based countless social customs, beliefs, laws, and practices, these institutions and the people who comprise them are largely dragging their feet, reluctant to admit that much of 20th century academic and medical practice has been erroneous.

By their nature, such large-scale institutions and industries are resistant to thorough and substantive change. But as I described above, there inevitably come times in the endless evolution of life on Earth that require massive, rapid, and comprehensive shifts in belief, theory, practice, social-ecological organization, and cognitive function. We currently exist in one of these times. And the changes needed cannot adequately be led by a small minority of the population who hold positions of power and authority that are inextricably linked to institutions, industries, and practices built on obsolete paradigms. It is you and I, your neighbor and coworker, your partner and friends, that must lead the way. Together, through mutual concern, shared support, and collective, cooperative action, we can create the emergent, groundswell movements needed to simultaneously individually-collectively heal and restore a sustainable balance to the integrated, unified living planetary organism of Earth, of which we are bodily parts.

As such, my professional practice seeks to integrate individual and relational-social healing. There is a place for individual work, no doubt. But this is just part of a need for a much larger, socially-extended, culturally-embedded relational healing. In moving toward this, I critically and creatively integrate my research and training in trauma-informed yoga therapy, embodied cognition-ecological psychology, social justice education/decolonial pedagogy, and intergroup/interreligious dialogue to educate and equip people in communal experience to create cultures and communities of healing.

Toward this end, in addition to individual sessions, I offer workshops and trainings for organizations, companies, and groups of any kind. Given that our inclusive, collective condition is permeated by trauma, I believe that everyone must be trauma-informed, not just professional therapists and doctors. We all confront and work with traumatized individuals, communities, institutions, cultures, and ecologies on a daily basis.

If you'd like to schedule a consultation for an individual session or group workshop/training, please reach out! You can contact me through the Contact page.

For further information on this paradigm shift and my research, see the sibling site of this website: The Somatic Symphony (https://www.the-somatic-symphony.earth/). There, I include much more detail about all manner of things related to cognition, health, trauma, ecological psychology, etc.