Energy-Based Approaches

Our Aliveness is Energy.

This is what orchestrates the dance of electrical impulses, chemicals, and water in our bodies.
It’s what animates us and keeps us from being a bag of fluid, flesh, and bone on the floor.
Our energy is dampened by pain, illness, and physically or emotionally overwhelming experiences.
It’s compromised by physical neglect, by yourself or others.
Restoring this flow and maintaining it with self-care increases our life force.
I believe it is the key to radiant health.

EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques)

This is a simple, powerful way to shift dysfunctional energy patterns in your system by tapping on acupuncture points while holding specific thoughts in your mind.

EFT was founded by Gary Craig , a former engineer, who describes EFT’s basic premise like this:

“the cause of all negative emotion is a disruption in the body’s energy system”.

I’m the first one to admit that EFT sounds weird and looks silly when you’re doing it, but I’ve used it to help facilitate quick, gentle, big shifts for lots people with both physical and emotional upsets. It can be a simple way to unveil and release the emotional drivers behind aches and pains.

After identifying what you want to address and giving it a number on a scale of 0-10, we’ll do rounds of the EFT sequence, pausing to sense into the issue we’re treating and re-rate it between each round. It’s not unusual for persistent, confounding problems to disappear or be significantly minimized. During our first session, I will teach you to do basic EFT for yourself, and send you home with detailed instructions so you can treat yourself at home whenever you like.

I was introduced to EFT through a workshop with Gary Peterson, M.D. in 2002, and quickly began using it with my patients at Plum Spring Clinic for Integrative Medicine, many of who were suffering with chronic pain and complex illnesses.

When I first learned EFT, no kind of certification existed. I’m currently in the process of becoming certified in EFT by ACEP (The Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology).

Gentle Bio-Energetics

This body of healing work is both a theoretical framework and a collection of treatments intended to restore the flow of life energy through the body. The treatments have the potential to gently melt chronic physical tension, or “armoring,” and reconnect the flow of energy after it is interrupted by injury or illness.

Gentle Bio-Energetics is the life’s work of Dr. Eva Reich. She was inspired by the Bioenergetic work of her father, Wilhelm Reich (the grandfather of body-centered psychotherapy), particularly his gentle work with babies and children.

The basic theory of Gentle Bio-Energetics is that our life energy has a natural pulsation that expands and contracts depending on what you are experiencing.  Our energy opens up with joy, pleasure, and anger and closes down with sadness, fear, and pain. The natural, healthy flow of energy includes the full spectrum of emotion and sensation, and full capacity to expand and contract, or say yes or no, in intelligent response to your current situation.

The treatments involve gentle touch intended to help reconnect the natural flow of energy by melting the armoring in your body. This armor maintains disconnection by storing old emotional tension and pain, reducing mobility, and increasing stagnation and illness.

In 2003 I attended a workshop with Richard Overly at the Gentle Bio-Energetics Institute in Asheville, NC. I have not studied the entire body of work, but I find the theory very helpful and the treatments I have been using so far (Butterfly Touch, Gentle Bio-Energetics Balance, and Brazilian Toe Massage) to be incredibly kind, respectful and effective.

Reiki

Reiki is a name for the universal life force- chi (also called ch’i, qi, ki, or prana). Reiki practitioners are “initiated” into having the capacity to channel this energy through the palms of the hands into people’s bodies to potentially help heal illness, increase wellness and create a relaxed state of equilibrium.

I sometimes treat clients with a full session of just Reiki, which many people experience as more deeply relaxing than a good massage, and I invite the energy into my hands to give me extra juice when using touch in my bodywork and Hakomi sessions.

I was initiated by Moksha Kolman as a Level One practitioner in 2004, and initiated into Level Two by Ann Ehringhaus in February 2013.