My primary focus is to help you know yourself better, to know your behaviors and your beliefs, so that you can take steps toward creating new possibilities and a more satisfying life.  We do this by engaging in a process of tuning into actions, gestures and sensations, what I refer to as your Somatic Dialogues. These dialogues are the basis of your sense of identity or self-narrative, and the frame of your experience.  Recognizing and engaging the actions that generate these internal dialogues offers an opportunity for you to introduce variations.  With practice these variations become new behaviors, offering more choice and the possibility of greater satisfaction.

For example, it may be challenging for you to set boundaries with others, experienced as feeling anxious, weak in your arms or legs (literally unable to “hold your ground”), a buzzing in your chest when saying “no”.  These bodily sensations may have an accompanying belief that you can’t or shouldn’t tell someone “no”.  Learning to manage the anxiety, to support a feeling of strength in your arms and legs, as well as a narrative of permission to hold your ground can lead you to say “no” in situations where previously you did not imagine it was possible.  This may also lead to a greater sense of value and enjoyment when saying “yes”.

Another focus may be expanding your range of emotions, as in developing a range of intensities of anger. Rather than feeling limited to only one expression, such as rage, you can develop the varied experiences and expressions of irritation, agitation, frustration, protest, etc, which may feel less overwhelming and more effective for you, and for others.

Simply put, the practice is to engage the physical shapes (the dynamic bodily process) you make in situations, to support you in discovering how you make these shapes and the beliefs that accompany them, and engage how you can influence these shapes and beliefs to form more satisfying variations.  The overall aim is to develop practical steps in engaging the dialogues of self, and grow the ability to generate new behaviors.