The Soft Spot

18/12/2022

Just sending out a beautiful summer solstice blessing to all my clients, those who waited patiently for me to re-emerge this year 🌿

I am grateful for the ways you show up for yourselves by walking in the door, I am grateful for the stories you share, the ways you surrender, the ways you listen for the little clues in your body leading you back to yourselves. 🌿

I feel lucky to be here watching, making my gentle container and feeling through with you all your experiences, your sweetnesses, your grief, your longing, your tension, your unfolding. 🌿

I love listening, with you, for the ways your body will survive, and the ways it will unravel. The ways only it knows. The ways only it remembers. You make me feel grateful to be alive. 🌿

Time to rest now, back on the 15th January. I'd love to see you. 🖤

22/11/2022

We are more than what we do. 🖤

This week I was asked to put together my 'artist bio' for a project I'm involved in, and I felt a great wave of shame overcome me as I realised that all the 'significant' things I had done, all my awards, all my fabulous well-known creations were clustered around 2015, 2016, 2017, and very little since... nothing this decade, at all!

I was flooded by punishing ideas - I'm not enough, I can't make art anymore, I'm washed up, I'm no longer relevant - embarrassed for myself... until I remembered...

It was 2017 that I was brought to a standstill by my fear of never being enough. I looked outwardly successful, opportunities were plentiful, and I was in highly regarded company - but inwardly I was crippled by self-doubt, paralysed by the idea that if I stopped making art, if the audience stopped clapping, I was nothing.

I remembered that this apparent 'gap' in my creative CV has actually been the most significant period of growth, settling and grounded-ness for me.

This pause allowed me to find Craniosacral, to slowly part from my patterns of high-functioning anxiety, with my body jammed in 'go-mode' as though I was running from a tiger, all the time. My body has had a good, long practice in the last few years at taking up a different shape, where I can sit still, listen, hear my needs and relate better to other humans around me.

If I make art again, I want it to be from a place of knowing I am already enough. I want to live in ways which help that belief find deep deep root in my body.

I'm proud of that big long gap in my CV because it tells me I'm really listening to what I need, tending to my trauma, and healing. For this, no-one will clap, or give out an award - but we are so much more than what other people think of us.

If this is you, running all the time, scared to slow down because you won't recognise or like yourself, terrified to let others down - I see you. It's okay to change shape, you are more than what you do - and if you need me, I'm here to help you find a way through. 🌿

📸 by

08/11/2022

Received this beautiful feedback from a fellow healer - long time inspiration of mine - who arrived on the tēpu for the first time last Sunday. 🛌

What I love most is when Laura talks about how "everything is a gentle invitation" - this lesson has taken me a LONG time to learn, the art of offering over coercion, and it is fundamental to why I think Craniosacral therapy is so powerful. 🖤

It is very rare that we are touched without agenda, that we are offered space without the desires/intentions/expectations of the other person flooding our responses. Think about moments we have been touched by our parents, our lovers, our friends, our doctors, our physio, our personal trainer, our children - especially when health practitioners are relating to our bodies, they have an agenda - that there is a 'problem' to 'fix.' 💊💊💊

Part of what makes Craniosacral beautiful is, exactly as Laura puts it, everything is an invitation. 👐🏽 You don't need to be or do anything - you are enough, exactly as you walk in the door. You are not a problem to be fixed, you are already whole and capable of living a wonderful life. 🌿

Craniosacral touch is a non-judgemental, neutral experience of touch, that listens first, and moves at the rate of the body - and because of that, on the table our bodies can start to experience real safety, sometimes for the first time in our lives. 💆🏻

And that safety is the key. When we know we are allowed to be here, exactly as we are, we aren't worried about pleasing anybody else, or 'getting it right,' or meeting someone else's needs, or 'being a good client' - our body can unplug from our trauma and attachment stories, turn our alarm systems off, and start to heal. 🙏🏾

That's part of why it can feel so freeing and possible on the Cranio table. And why I think everyone can benefit from some time being really listened to. 🍃

I have a few appointments left on Sunday and I'd love to see you there. 🖤

#

03/11/2022

We don’t always know the reason we are overwhelmed. 🖤

People often think that ‘trauma’ means a car crash, or a severed limb - I certainly grew up thinking that it wasn’t a term I was ever allowed to use. I have had a good life, with a lot of advantage, including being loved, able-bodied, white, educated, middle-class and feeling seen and celebrated by those around me. I didn’t think the word ‘trauma’ was allowed to apply to me. 🤷🏽

But in our bodies, trauma means anything that overwhelms our our ability to cope. Read. that. again.

🌿 Trauma is anything that overwhelms our ability to cope. 🌿

That means for every single person, it’s different, there’s no magic scale to measure ourselves against. The greater our resources, the greater our ability to cope. But all of us, at some point, will be overwhelmed, no matter what our circumstances. 🖤

And that’s because trauma is not just a single event, like being attacked, or losing someone. Trauma might also be overwhelm that we accumulate, where over a period of time, sustained stress can push us into overload and collapse.

That might look quite ordinary, like your boss on your back,☝🏼your car breaking down, an argument with your family, your cat going missing and boom, your physiology goes down the same route as if we were running away from a sabre tooth tiger. 😬

Why? Because trauma, stress and tension are all interconnected - they all trigger the same physiological response in the body. Alarm systems in old reptilian parts of our brain go off and drive all of our energy into looking for threats.

We feel exhausted, run down, disconnected from our loved ones and emotionally empty, because our body is working so hard to keep us safe - and it’s easy to feel lost, with no obvious reason to pinpoint - it’s just life feels like more of a struggle than it should. 🙏🏾

We are all allowed to feel overwhelmed, and we don’t need to have a reason for it - it is simply our own resources being exceeded, and we all have permission to take the time to heal.

I'd love to help life feel more possible again, to make your body feel safe enough to be here. I'm in session this Sunday. ONE SPACE LEFT. I'm here if you need. 🌑

25/10/2022

We live in a world where agency and action is prized - where 'doing' and 'fixing' is so naturalised that we forget there are other ways to approach our experiences, our bodies, our feelings and our lives.
It can be wonderful to go about life making lists and solving crises - that way of living can feel really satisfying! But there are some things, like trauma, overwhelm, anxiety and depression that we can't just grit our way through. 😔
Because we are so conditioned to take action, often our first impulse is to try and move an uncomfortable feeling - we might numb with substances, or exercise it away, or start trying to control our physical environment - but when we numb our sadness and fear, we also numb our capacity for happiness and joy, because those unprocessed feelings stay with us.
Craniosacral is about listening to the body, and allowing what is there, whether that is big feelings, numbness, absence, shock, - it is all allowed to be here. 🙇🏽 It's so exquisitely simple, and fundamentally radical. Such a magic trick is performed in the body when we give ourselves permission to be exactly as we are, with everything we are carrying - things move all on their own, in their own time, at their own rate. Wild, I know! 🌿
This is how we heal, by giving ourselves permission. And it's hard to do on our own. That's how coming to Craniosacral can help - we work together to build your skill, your awareness, your self-compassion and your patience - so you can soften and heal, and carry less with you, whereever you are going. 🙏🏽
This Sunday I have 4 spaces available, and I'd love to be there with you. Book via www.thesoftspot.co.nz to find yourself space.

18/10/2022

After the juicy hiatus of māmāhood - I'm coming back to you! 🙌🏼

Someone once compared early parenthood to a long winter - a season of retreat in which you curl into a circle around something that requires all your slowest, safest shapes in order to thrive. 🐚

And that's how it's felt - I've been very focussed on one very small, very special client for 18 months, my beautiful child - learning and unlearning myself, hitting my boundaries, and redefining my worth. Luckily, I'm something of a fan of transformation.

While it's been a long, yummy winter creating space for my beautiful little one, I'm emerging into the 2022 spring to soak all of you up again. I've missed you! 🙏🏽

So here I am in my newest shape, but here's what hasn't changed:

🌱 I still believe you have the physiological capacity to live a grounded, joyful life.

🌱 I know that healing from trauma is not only possible, it is your birthright. You deserve to feel safe in your skin.

🌱 I dream of all of your softest parts unfurling and being given permission to exist - your tenderness, your vulnerabilities, your slowness, your tiredness - I imagine a radical future where you can be kind to yourself.

🌱 I think listening to your body is the key. And it's no small thing.

So every Sunday, I will be back in The Soft Spot ready to receive you. I wonder - will you be there too?

📸

16/04/2021

In the last 10 months, I have been growing not only my little business, but something else too - and I wanted to take some time to talk about pregnancy/hapūtanga from a cranial perspective.
As well as the excitement people feel around hapūtanga, I’ve noticed another strong narrative emerge, where people talk about the way the body ‘decays’ from bearing a child. People often tell a story of their body ‘ruined’ by pregnancy, or they might joke about the baby as a parasite - sucking the life force from their body.
Let me be clear - I’m not here to dismiss the different ways people cope with the big changes of hapūtanga, and it is TOTALLY valid to experience it as a time of loss! But my story has been different, and I wanted to share that with you.
During my hapūtanga, I’ve noticed this intrinsic sense of being grounded. When I’ve sat to meditate, I’ve noticed I have a deep stillness available that I haven’t felt before. In the course of this pregnancy, my partner was diagnosed with Breast Cancer, and we’ve been through surgery and chemotherapy. Still, I’ve felt resourced - like my baby was offering me access to deeper layers of health, calm, and capacity.
From a cranial perspective, this makes sense - because my body is busy making a human, it also is being given access to it’s own memory of one of the safest times in it’s life - being in utero. In this time, our system is at it’s most fluid, our tissues are new and juicy and this state is what craniosacral therapists call your ‘blueprint’ of health, and it’s just yours. This is the juicy, safe, primary state of wellbeing we were born into, and it’s what any process of healing is always oriented around. Your blueprint is your birthright.
I’ve always loved how exquisite that idea is - that health and resource is abundant for all of us, that it lies under everything in your system, and just needs to be revealed in the process of healing. What I’ve discovered in my hapūtanga is that bearing a child can be a part of peeling back those layers - revealing to me all the wonderful things I already had available, just below the surface.
Always here to hold you, through pregnancy and beyond 🖤

07/04/2021

My beautiful business cards have finally arrived!!! Feeling very profesh and capable thanks to the iconic design work of Todd Beeby ✨✨✨
Don't you want one of these handsome cards adorning your wallet? And don't even get me started on the paper stock 🤤
***rhealth

31/03/2021

31/03/2021

Wow are we feeling proud of this new baby launching into the world wide web!! ✨✨✨ It’s a labour of love, I can tell you. 🖤But this is honestly SO exciting to finally have a place for The Soft Spot to land online and reach more beautiful humans like yourselves.
Check it out, celebrate with me, have a read and please tell me what you think: ✨www.thesoftspot.co.nz✨
A massive mihi atu to for all their gorgeous brand design 👌🏼 and support getting us here, and all the gorgeous photography done by talented Soft Spot friend 📸
***rhealth

30/03/2021

Something exciting is coming tomorrow ✨✨✨ it's been a long time in the pipeline, and I'm so pumped to share it with you all!
See photo for a lil clue... and stay tuned for the big reveal tomorrow morning!
***rhealth

29/03/2021

We live in an echo chamber where we are told that being hard is better. Be rigid, be persistent, work hard, play hard, do well. We are promised that success can be ours, if only we are ‘hard’ enough to endure challenges and overcome them.
I have no problem with goals amd intentions, but the trouble is, these ideas celebrate burnout, overwhelm and high anxiety lifestyles.
Secondly, living 'hard' means you never learn the value in a completely different way to be. What does it mean to live ‘softly’? For me, softness didn’t come easily. Being ‘soft’ meant being ‘weak’ - but as I’ve aged, I’ve come to see just how valuable softness really is, in our bodies, and in our way of thinking.
I’ll give you an example - I used to be terrified of conversations at parties. I was scared I’d be ‘stuck’ talking to someone, that I wouldn’t know what to say, that I didn’t have the attention span to really listen, so I never did it. I’d just start a dance floor instead. If I did end up in conversation, I’d dominate with a funny story, because at least I knew the outcome of that. Entertaining people was easier than leaving space, because listening felt too vulnerable and uncertain. It never occurred to me to just allow silence, to sit back and let the conversation unfold - it never occurred to me that beautiful exchanges could come from simply allowing softness. Now when I feel that 'stuckness', I soften in my body, and it helps me be present with other people. I'm starting to realise that's a form of real magic.
Embracing softness to me means yielding in the body and being fluid and flexible in the way we think. The more I yield in my body, the more present I can be - with my clients, with my life, with my food, with the world. The more fluidity I bring to my thoughts, the more I can think creatively, remain open to collaboration with friends and colleagues. Ultimately, it is my softness that creates connection, because it stops me being ‘out there’ with my lofty ideas of what ‘should’ happen and instead brings me closer to myself, to all the juicy possibilities unfolding right in front of me.
Your softness is a superpower. How will use it today?

24/03/2021

Our body is always wise in it’s response to life, even when it gets very loud (like chronic pain or panic) 👀 or very quiet (like dissociation or numbing).😐 It’s important to remember that your body is always trying to keep you safe - and at some point these survival patterns will have served you well 🙏🏼
When we work from a bottom-up approach, like in Craniosacral, - where we process through the body rather than the head - our attitude to the body matters. 🖤 Softening our approach is actually vital to the healing process.
So often if we are in pain, we can feel angry at our sore hip or our anxiety responses. But whether emotionally or physically driven, these are trauma responses, and they are there to protect you.🖤 It’s important to acknowledge the wisdom in the ways of being that have kept you alive.
The lovely thing is, we can hold both. We can honour the wisdom of our activated alarm systems, and thank them for protecting us, while we gently work towards re-regulating our body back to safety. When our bodies feel safe, they can access their greatest health, whatever that looks like to you. 👌🏼
Craniosacral offers a judgement-free space for your survival strategies - in fact, I celebrate whatever shape your body has had to take in order to keep you here. Because you are still here. And you do have permission to heal, and change shape, when you're ready.
Always here, Sundays and Mondays, for time on the table.
Impeccable quote from Jess Jackson of and
***rhealth

24/03/2021

It feels so amazing to finally feel at home here.
For over a year, we have been popping up every week on Sunday and Monday at in the Karangahape Road arcade, borrowing this little urban oasis from your favourite Swedish Massage therapist Lucy.
But this week we put down roots, and it feels incredible to be visible here. Check out our beautiful window decal, designed by our K Road local
I love serving the wider Karangahape whanau, this street has been a huge part of my becoming, as a q***r person, as an artist, and as a therapist. It has been a strip which speaks to so much of what I believe in. As a teenager, it was one place in the city I felt like I really belonged. I love it even more now that you have to cross an intersectional Pride flag to get to St Kevins Arcade. I have spent over twenty years on this street working, shopping, dreaming, performing and now serving, and it’s a real delight to be here permanently.
So next time you’re on Karangahape Rd, stop by – admire our window sign and feel the magic. It’s a special place we live. 🖤🖤🖤

18/03/2021

I love hearing the impact that Craniosacral is having on my clients' lives. 🖤🖤 It's a beautiful thing when other people see the value in the work you love to do.
***rhealth

18/03/2021

What does it mean to slow down our perception of time?
I have felt, for much of my life, that time is scarce – that it is always running out. I was always striving to ‘do’ more because then I would make the most of my time, right? That was efficient, productive and ultimately ‘worthy’ under capitalism.
Living in this way actually made me miss out on a lot. Living ‘fast’ devalued rest, sleep, long conversations, stillness, learning things by hand, being unwell, supporting and caring for our loved ones that are small, or old, or sick. We talk a lot these days about ‘being present’ – but it isn’t always easy to figure out what that looks like, or how to get there. We’re all trained to work hard, but not really supported to have the tools to do less, and be more.
I think a lot about Maui slowing the sun – and wonder if that was about productivity or pleasure for him. Did he really want more time to plant kumara? That seems like an anxious narrative, but he was a pretty busy guy. Maybe he wanted too to slow his perception of time, like I do. For me, I’m still learning all the little ways I can feel time as abundant, rather than panicked and scarce.
Going on holiday, leaving the city, reading a book, meditating, getting into the ocean – these are my current tools for how I can make time feel more juicy and present and full. Whenever I get off the craniosacral table as a client, and slowly drive back home, taking in the world through newly heightened senses, I know the session has not taken my time, but rather given it back to me.
As a therapist, I know this is because my body feels safer, and my alarm systems are turning off, so I am settling into my parasympathetic nervous system, where the mountain of emails and dishes and to-do’s fade into the background, and I can start to really enjoy being alive. My sense of the world slows down, and it feels good.
How do you slow down the sun? When do you feel like time is most abundant? Are you ever without a device that tells you what you ‘should’ be doing, based on the time? If slowing down feels out of reach, my table is always open, Sundays and Mondays, to reconnect to life’s slower pace.