12/23/2022
When Holidays are Hard: Increasing Nervous System Regulation through the Winter Season
This time of year can be tricky. With shorter, darker days here in the Northern hemisphere, our mammalian bodies can trend toward hibernation and rest. But with the social, familial, and work demands of the season, rest can be hard to find.
When thinking about how to offer kindness and regulation to our nervous systems, there are two things to consider . . .
When Holidays are Hard: Increasing Nervous System Regulation through the Winter Season
Our mammalian bodies trend toward hibernation, but rest can be hard to find...
12/22/2022
Lifting Hands International
Help us support Lifting Hands International
Lifting Hands International
We provide humanitarian aid to refugees at home and abroad. No politics. Simply humanitarian.
12/19/2022
This is your last chance to join the Embodiment Experiential with Dan Halpern.
Spending intentional time regulating our minds + bodies (especially in a group, with the support of a skilled facilitator) affects not only ourselves but also every person + situation we come into contact with.
We hope you join us, and that you leave feeling more connected, alive + centered ✨
12/15/2022
I love this reminder to pause and reflect on the upcoming winter solstice (and other yearly markers) from Celtic School of Embodiment
12/07/2022
Thanks for the reminder, Irene Lyon 👁🌎🧠
12/07/2022
There is some kiss we want
with our whole lives,
the touch of Spirit on the body.
Seawater begs the pearl to break its shell.
And the lily, how passionately it needs some wild Darling!
At night, I open the window
and ask the moon to come
and press its face against mine.
Breathe into me.
Close the language-door
and open the love-window.
The moon won't use the door,
only the window.
- Rumi, translated by Coleman Barks
12/01/2022
Somatic Spiritual Counseling | Body-Based Therapy + Coaching | Online + Boulder, CO
New Clinician Position Available @ Somatic Spiritual Counseling
Somatic Spiritual Counseling is a collective of body- and mindfulness-based therapists + coaches.
We are looking for the newest member of our team -- we would love to have someone registered, licensed, or pre-licensed in Colorado, who shares our vision.
Bonus points if you see people in person + extra bonus points if you have training or experience with couples.
We provide platforms, marketing, community support, and more, and offer a competitive pay rate with supervision reimbursement and office rent reimbursement for an independent contractor position.
If you are interested, please email [email protected]eling.com for more information.
We look forward to meeting you! ✨
Somatic Spiritual Counseling | Body-Based Therapy + Coaching | Online + Boulder, CO
A Collective of Body- and Mindfulness-Based Coaches + Counselors | find more freedom, presence + intimacy through the wisdom of the body | Online + Boulder, CO
11/30/2022
What works to heal your soul? Let us know in the comments!
Join the Embodiment Experiential with Dan Halpern here:
bit.ly/3AUsfZ6
11/29/2022
Embodiment Experientials | Somatic Spiritual Counseling
Embodiment Experiential Workshop
Regulate, Resource + Heal in Your Body
with Dan Halpern
December 19, 2022 | 6-7:30pm MST
$10-$50
In this guided group workshop, you will drop down from your mind into your body, feel more present in the here-and-now + connect with a likeminded group of people.
This contemplative practice is a nervous system reset + refresh, leaving you more resourced to move forward in a grounded, supported way.
Spending intentional time regulating our minds + bodies (especially in a group, with the support of a skilled facilitator) affects not only ourselves, but also every person + situation we come into contact with.
We hope you join us, and that you leave feeling more connected, alive + centered ✨
Embodiment Experientials | Somatic Spiritual Counseling
90 Minutes to Regulate, Resource + Heal In Your Body & Community
11/24/2022
Thanksgiving is a reminder to take time for self. Be present and grateful for any blessings you have, including a body and a nervous system!
We invite you to join our upcoming online workshop: Embodiment Experiential with Dan Halpern, on Dec 19. Spending time inhabiting + regulating mind and body is one of the greatest gifts you can give to yourself and loved ones this Thanksgiving. ✨
https://www.somaticspiritualcounseling.com/embodiment-experientials-dan-halpern
11/23/2022
Take time to nourish yourself with a little self-care. Aromatherapy, furry friends, music, hobbies, daily journal - all help you regain balance and focus on what's important in life 🐾 🎤 🎼 What would you add to the list?
11/21/2022
In honor of Small Business Saturday, use code SMALLBIZ50 to receive 50% off all meditations at somaticspiritualcounseling.com/shop.
The code is valid until December 4, 2022.
We've recorded some guided meditations to help you connect deeply with yourself, heal old wounds, and find new resources. 🤍
11/17/2022
shop sessions + guided meditations | Somatic Spiritual
This week, in honor of Small Business Saturday, use code SMALLBIZ50 to receive 50% off the price of all meditations at somaticspiritualcounseling.com/shop
We have recorded some guided meditations for connecting deeply with yourself, releasing old wounds, and connecting to new resources ✨
shop sessions + guided meditations | Somatic Spiritual
Energy Healing, Shamanic Journey, Find Your Inner Ally, and more
11/10/2022
Part 2 | Relationship Advice for Building Secure Attachment (Thanks, Stan Tatkin)
Who doesn't love to be protected? Can you remember a time when someone stuck up for you in public or pulled you back from mindlessly crossing a busy street? Anytime someone protects you, there is something tender and precious about it, right? One reason for that is because it speaks to our inner child and all the ways we may not have been protected in the past.
One of my somatic therapy mentors uses a technique that's helped me grasp this in a poignant way. Those of you who have done good therapy are aware that as we work with certain issues or feeling-states, we may find ourselves shrinking our posture, lowering our voice, or otherwise experiencing a much younger state of mind.
When this happens with her clients, my mentor emphasizes the need for implanting a felt-sense of protection. She says, “Every traumatic event that occurred during childhood comes with the additional trauma of not being protected.” Nothing that happens to a four-year-old is their fault. Every child has the right to expect a reasonable amount of protection from harmful elements, and you have the right to expect the same in your romantic relationship.
No other relational space is as intimate, vulnerable, and potentially dangerous as childhood, but our adult romantic relationships are a close contender. And everyone willing to brave romantic — to be so vulnerable — deserves protection, love, and attunement . . .
Part 2 | Relationship Advice for Building Secure Attachment (Thanks, Stan Tatkin)
Who does not love to be protected? Can you remember a time when someone stuck up for you in public?
10/21/2022
"Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surrender to events with hope."
Alain de Botton
10/19/2022
What's the difference between shame & guilt?
from National Institute for The Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine
10/17/2022
The Art of Letting Go: Autumn and the Metal Element - Mindi K. Counts
Love this view of grief, spirituality & seasonal living from Mindi K. Counts, MA, LAc. at Inner Ocean Center for Healing
The Art of Letting Go: Autumn and the Metal Element - Mindi K. Counts
With late summer coming to a close, the cooling temperatures, and dying of the foliage, we know that Winter is just around the corner. If the Metal elememt is out of balance, this can be a difficult transition through Autumn - sometimes leading to loneliness and depression.
10/16/2022
When you find yourself lost in a maze, take a step in the direction of your heart and trust it will take you home. 🤍
10/14/2022
Protecting the safety and security of our relationship can be a tremendous effort. But the beauty of such a commitment is the positive feedback loop that is created.
Head here https://www.somaticspiritualcounseling.com/post/relationship-advice-secure-attachment-stan-tatkin 💛
10/13/2022
I doubt there’s a fact that has made it into more poems than the fact that humans are made of stars. Pretty cool. But even cooler than that, I think, is the fact that we are, like the universe, made mostly of space. We are 99.9 percent nothing. Each atom that makes us is almost entirely space, spare the nucleus dancing like a single touchable planet in the vast expanse of the night sky.
I didn’t learn that fact in a high-school science class or on Youtube. I learned it in therapy. Meditating on the space in our bodies calms anxiety and quiets our racing minds. For over a decade I’ve returned to this practice in challenging moments. It always shifts my lens towards feeling, really feeling, what is possible— instead of obsessing about what my mind tries to convince me isn’t.
Andrea Gibson
10/11/2022
Do you want to go deeper into your internal experience? Through the SIBAM tool, we can use different experiential channels to build self-awareness and get out of our heads.
SIBAM comes from Dr. Peter Levine's work with Somatic Experiencing, and stands for: Sensation, Image, Behavior, Affect, and Meaning -- five ways that human beings experience.
Head here https://www.somaticspiritualcounseling.com/guided-video-meditations to listen to our free guided meditations. 🎧
10/03/2022
Love this image from Peter A Levine, PhD
09/28/2022
Somatics + Psychology of Place: How Does Our Environment Affect Us?
How does the place we live impact us? What is home? How do we align with nature or choose where to spend our time?
This video with Dara del Rio explores the theme of how our environment affects and shapes who we are, and how to work with it rather than against it . . .
Somatics + Psychology of Place: How Does Our Environment Affect Us?
How does the place we live impact us? This video with Dara explores the theme of how our environment effects and shapes who we are.
09/27/2022
I am very happy to share that I am a guest on the podcast episode "Spirituality in These Times and Being More Human". 🤍
I was interviewed by the host, Kate Powell, the founder of Wild Sacred Journey.
Follow on IG and share this with the ones you love!
Head here to listen: https://anchor.fm/kate-powell-wsjp 🎧
Emma xx
09/26/2022
New moon 🌑, new episode🎙.
Perfect on this dark moon because we explore dark nights of the soul and the tools we can cultivate to be more human in times of challenge and times of faith.
Have you landed on the floor, wondering what it’s all about and why you’re here and if you’ve made the right choice and where to turn when you’re sick of your own bu****it?
Us, too.
Guest Emma of Somatic Spiritual Counseling is an interfaith chaplain, ordained Buddhist minister, author, and student and skilled practitioner of a diverse variety of healing modalities like: yoga, meditation, energy healing, shamanism, Somatic Experiencing, psychodynamics, and mystical Judaism (to name a few).
Who better to sit with in the question: with access to seemingly endless different paradigms, what does it mean to pursue paths of spirit and tradition in this time and place? And how to we begin to discern what are the right ones for us?
In our winding inquiry, you’ll hear us explore:
* ‘Spiritual Shopping’ vs ‘Depth and Apprenticeship’ - pros, cons, and ways to discern whether it’s helping or hurting us;
* what becomes possible when we allow the things we’re trying to ‘fix’ to become the path - when our own, lived, human experience becomes the sacred text and the temple;
* where our own journeys began and how they’ve evolved;
* a possible framework to help if you’re beginning your journey or are feeling like you’re grasping after your next path;
* the different modes of knowing offered by head, heart, and body… and how they inform us being more human.
Whether you’re newer to your journey of spirit, wisdom, and wholeness or have been here a while, we hope there’s something here for you.
What are you finding about pursuing paths of Spirit in these times?
How has your journey led you to be more human?
Did what you heard today open up any new wisdom or awareness?
We’d love to hear. 💚
🎙 listen where you usually do. Watch on Spotify or YouTube. 🔗 in bio. Share with the ones you love.
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09/23/2022
“Cynics are - beneath it all - only idealists with awkwardly high standards.”
Alain de Botton
09/21/2022
What I know is this—we can’t hate ourselves into better versions of ourselves. Beat yourself up for not being where you want to be, and you’ll find you’re too bruised to keep walking in the direction of light.
Andrea Gibson
09/07/2022
For those of us who have endured horrific experiences: it is not our fault that we lost so much of our life. But as the challenging dialectic goes: it is our responsibility to heal the damage from such loss. Thankfully, we do not have to do it alone. Therapists were made for just such a purpose. Head here to read the entire blog: https://www.somaticspiritualcounseling.com/post/trauma-and-the-unlived-life-grieving-what-we-ve-lost 🙏
09/05/2022
“Being entirely honest with oneself is a good exercise.”
Freud
09/05/2022
Some fierce words from Kimberly Ann Johnson:
Dear Ones,
If I had a penny for every time an Instagram expert suggested that the answer to your ______ fill in the blank with health problems, money worries, or relationship woes, is to change your mindset, I would be rich. It makes me absolutely furious.
Why? Because most of the women I know are trying so hard, and have so much on their plates, and are exhausted and then we’re being told that it’s our fault that we’re not doing better because we’re just not trying hard enough.
I wish that mindset was the only thing that had to change for lasting healing.
However, our physiology is louder than our volition.
Trying harder simply does not work when it comes to physiology.
I hope that comes as a relief to you. Because if you are like many of the women I know and work with, you are already trying pretty fricking hard. You may have tried meditation, yoga, Reiki, Pilates, running, keto, Paleo. You’ve tried affirmations and manifestation.
You can’t positive psychology your way out of longstanding adaptive trauma patterning.
No matter how strong the incentives and messaging might be to put on a happy face. To express gratitude. To "be the bigger person." To find the silver linings. That approach just doesn’t work when it comes to establishing a new baseline of vitality, capacity, and self-love.
Telling yourself you’re grateful when you are actually disappointed or heartbroken or angry will lead to distorted expression and will contribute to depression and anxiety. It’s also exhausting and depleting- for you, and everyone around you.
People are not responding to the story you tell them about yourself and your feelings; people are responding to your nervous system.
🙌🏼🙌🏼🙌🏼
09/04/2022
About 75% of the human brain is water. Interestingly, 75% of a living tree is also made up of water.
09/04/2022
A beautiful quote from Aletheia Luna - the author of Awakened Empath: The Ultimate Guide to Emotional, Psychological and Spiritual Healing ✨
09/01/2022
Does Feeling Better Require Feeling Worse First? Here's the #1 Somatic Practice that .del.rio does. ✨
Head here to read the entire blog and see the video: https://www.somaticspiritualcounseling.com/post/somatic-practice 🙏
08/31/2022
10 Pieces of Relationship Advice for Building Secure Attachment (Thanks, Stan Tatkin)
Romantic relationships can be hard. Like, really f’ing hard. And it can be so nice to have help given to us in the form of a succinct list.
Dr. Stan Tatkin, leading couples specialist and developer of the Psychobiological Approach to Couples Therapy (PACT), wrote what he feels are the ten most important rules and outlooks to maintaining a secure relationship and building secure attachment in the individual.
As a husband and couples therapist, I use them regularly and have seen their worth proven in countless real-time situations . . .
10 Pieces of Relationship Advice for Building Secure Attachment (Thanks, Stan Tatkin)
Romantic relationships can be hard. Like, really f’ing hard. And it can be so nice to have help given to us in the form of a succinct list.
08/29/2022
If you are looking to build a more intimate relationship with your body, understand what it is trying to tell you, and digest old experiences, Somatic Therapy is for you. This is often the next step for people who have done talk therapy in the past and know that there is a deeper level of healing available but aren't quite sure how to access it. Head here: https://www.somaticspiritualcounseling.com/somatic-therapy ✨
08/26/2022
When will you begin the long journey into yourself? And what do you want to find there? A partner, a mentor and guide? Or the truth about who you are and why you're here?
08/24/2022
Have you ever gone through something incredibly difficult, and noticed that, on the other side, you were a different person, stronger in certain ways, more sure of yourself, more able to ask for support, softer, or more boundaried?
Head here to read the blog: https://www.somaticspiritualcounseling.com/post/post-traumatic-growth ✨