Balanced Life Movement

10/12/2025

10/12/2025

A Weekend of Remembering What Matters

This weekend I am spending nearly all my time outside — biking along quiet roads, kayaking on still water, hiking until my legs ache, and napping beneath a tree with the wind moving softly through the leaves.

No screens. No schedule. Just being. A tiny hamlet in the Adirondacks calling me outside to explore.

Something happens when we step away from our phones and back into the rhythms of the natural world. Our senses start to open again — the light looks different, colors feel more alive, and the mind finally stops trying to fix or analyze.

Out here, I could feel my nervous system exhale. The simplicity of movement, sunlight, and fresh air is medicine. It reminds me how healing can be found in what’s already here — in the body, in the breeze, in the sound of water touching shore.

If you’ve been overwhelmed or disconnected lately: Leave your phone behind for a few hours (or all day), go outside, and let yourself be moved by the beauty that’s always waiting.

Your body will remember how to breathe again.

—
🌞 At Balanced Life Movement, we help people reconnect to this sense of presence through somatic and creative arts therapy — because nature and the body are our first healers.

09/23/2025

Fall invites change — but with change often comes stress. 🍁 Our bodies can feel the shift in daylight, schedules, and energy. If you’ve been feeling tense, scattered, or heavy lately, you’re not alone.

Here are a few ways to regulate and ground yourself this season:

✨ Shake it out: Stand, soften your knees, and gently shake your arms, legs, and shoulders for 1–2 minutes. This signals safety to your nervous system and discharges stored tension.
✨ Breath + sound: Place your hands on your ribs and take three slow, wide breaths. Exhale with a gentle hum or sigh to release stuck energy.
✨ Create with what’s around you: Collect leaves, acorns, or fall colors and make a mini “nature altar” in your space — a visual reminder to slow down and honor the season.
✨ Dance or sway: Put on a song that matches your mood and let your body move freely, even for a minute. Movement helps process emotions when words aren’t enough.

🍂 If stress feels like it’s living in your body this fall, therapy can help you find your rhythm again.
At Balanced Life Movement, we offer Somatic and Creative Arts Therapy to help you move through change with support.

📩 DM us or click the link in bio to schedule a session — let’s help your nervous system settle into this season.

09/10/2025

Today is World Su***de Prevention Day 💛

Su***de is never just about wanting life to end — it’s often about wanting the pain to stop. At Balanced Life Movement, we know how overwhelming trauma, depression, and despair can feel. You don’t have to carry it alone.

🌿 Our message today:

Your story matters.

Your pain is real.

Healing is possible.

We care about you.

Therapy can be a place to untangle the weight, find safety, and learn tools that bring relief. Together, we can move toward hope, connection, and new ways of being with what feels unbearable.

If you or someone you love is struggling, please reach out. Support is available:
📞 Call or text 988 for the Su***de & Crisis Lifeline (24/7)
📞 In an emergency, dial 911
✨️To explore therapy with us ~
Call (516) 847-4289 or send us a DM

You are not alone. 💛

***dePreventionDay ***dePrevention

08/15/2025

✨ A Sacred Journey Awaits ✨

For the past three years, I’ve been guiding individuals through Ketamine-Assisted Psychotherapy (KAP)—both in intimate retreats and one-on-one sessions—witnessing the profound ways this medicine can open the heart, quiet the mind, and reconnect us to ourselves. I have personally been transformed by this medicine to heal the trauma I experienced from loss a few years ago. KAP helped me take the next action step in moving forward and letting go. I felt the safety and love I needed. The messages and visuals I received were profound, taking me back to a time in childhood that I had yet to contend with. The medicine, in a safe container of therapy, can be transformative, and offers something unique for those who engage with it.

🌿KAP combines the use of low-dose ketamine with therapeutic support to reduce symptoms of depression, anxiety, PTSD, and other mental health concerns. In a safe, professionally guided setting, it can facilitate access to deeper emotional processing, new perspectives, and lasting change.

💃💃🏼So when my dear colleague, Joy Ruben-Welts, asked me to co-create this retreat with her, I said YES without hesitation. We work alongside Journey Clinical medical team for the clinical health assessment and prescription portion of care. Then we craft the embodied safety, creative mindset, and setting of the experience with you.

🎨Together, we weave ritual, expressive arts, and dance/movement therapy into every step—creating a sacred and grounded container where your inner wisdom can speak and your body can lead the way home.

✨️This is more than a retreat.
It’s a sacred, embodied journey—rooted in both science and soul.

Read more about the science and efficacy of KAP on our website:
https://balancedlifemovement.com/psychedelic-assisted-psychotherapy

📩 Curious to learn more or join us?
Fill out our Interest Form here:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1emKKUREytl74xkH0zjFWDGybjPjO_b2U4oXulOroMlQ/edit?usp=drivesdk

07/03/2025

✨Feeling overwhelmed all the time? You’re not alone—especially if you’re neurodivergent.

For people with ADHD, Bipolar Disorder, Autism, or other neurodivergent experiences, overwhelm can feel like a tidal wave—too many thoughts, sensations, emotions, and expectations flooding your system all at once.

In our newest blog, we break down:
🔹 What neurodivergent overwhelm really looks like
🔹 How it impacts daily functioning
🔹 Why it’s often misunderstood
🔹 Somatic + expressive arts therapy tools to regulate your nervous system

Understanding your brain~body connection is the first step to finding relief—and you deserve support that actually gets it.

🧠 Read the full blog at the link in our bio or: https://balancedlifemovement.com/bodymindblog/2025/6/16/understanding-overwhelm-in-neurodivergent-brains
💬 Drop a 💛 if this resonates with you or someone you love.
📥 Save this to revisit when your nervous system needs a little extra care.

06/16/2025

An important read. Its important we encourage ourselves and our loved ones to discuss the longterm effects of psychiatric medications.

"Some Psych Meds Tied to Higher Future Risk of ALS - — Study sheds light on relationships between psychiatric symptoms and motor neuron disease"

"In this case-control study including nearly 9000 individuals, prescribed use of anxiolytics, hypnotics and sedatives, or antidepressants was associated with a 34%, 21%, and 26% higher future risk of ALS. Prediagnostic use of such medications was also associated with poor prognosis after ALS diagnosis." (from the actual study https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2834877)

This association was downplayed by Anthony Hannan, PhD, of the University of Melbourne Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health in Australia ...

"What is more likely is that the findings reflect associations between psychiatric symptoms and risk of motor neuron disease (independent of medication)," Hannan continued. "This is consistent with previous studies, including those involving genetics, which link motor neuron disease to frontotemporal dementia, a neurodegenerative disease where psychiatric symptoms are often prominent." (from this article https://www.medpagetoday.com/neurology/generalneurology/115948)

There may be some merit to this but I suspect there is much more to this, given what we know about psych meds and damage to mitochondria and the impacts of benzos on dementia.

Hopefully it's a read flag for exercising more caution when prescribing psych/sleep meds and leads to further research.

20 years ago, ALS was rare and now and surprisingly, I know 3 people who have had family members pass away from ALS. I'm hearing more and more about people being affected by this dreadful disease.

06/07/2025

🌊You’ve done the talk therapy. So why do you still feel stuck?

You’re not alone.
Many people understand their trauma, their patterns, even their coping skills — but still feel anxious, overwhelmed, or disconnected.

That’s because trauma doesn’t just live in your mind.
It lives in your nervous system — in your breath, your posture, your startle reflex, your gut. And your body may still be telling a story of danger… even when you know you’re safe.

Somatic Therapy helps you work with the body — not against it.
It uses movement, breath, touch, voice, and internal awareness to gently unwind old survival responses and build safety from the inside out.

In our newest blog, we explore:
🔹 What Somatic Therapy really is
🔹 How it regulates the nervous system
🔹 What a session looks like (no yoga mat required)
🔹 Why it’s effective for trauma, anxiety, and chronic pain
🔹 Who it’s especially helpful for

This isn’t about “just feeling your feelings.”
It’s about helping your body feel safe enough to let go — and reconnecting to the wholeness that’s always been there.

What if your body holds the key to healing your mind?

📖 Tap the Mind-Body Blog in our bio to read the full article.
{Or visit our website at balancedlifemovement.com}

realty

05/31/2025

A weekend hiking amongst the waterfalls was a reset i didnt realize i needed. The rhythm of walking, the flow of water, muscles burning!, deeply breathing...

I am inspired to foster connections with others who experience overwhelm and anxiety through evidence-based, body-focused techniques that I know work quickly and for the long-run when we practice them often.

Anxiety. Trauma. Bipolar symptoms.
You don’t have to navigate them alone.

🌿 The Regulate & Rise Circle is an 8-week somatic therapy group designed to support adults living with PTSD, chronic anxiety, or mood disorders. Together, we’ll build nervous system awareness, emotional regulation, and embodied resilience.

✨ Starts June 16
🕕 Mondays | 6:30–8:00 PM (ET)
💻 Virtual | $60/session | Cigna & Superbills for OON Reimbursement
👥 Small group. Real connection.

Led by Jennifer Giuglianotti, LCAT, BC-DMT
Dance/Movement Therapist
Somatic Therapist for Trauma

Sign up now at balancedlifemovement.com with a free consult call

04/30/2025

Feeling stuck, overwhelmed, or exhausted from trying to manage it all on your own?

At Balanced Life Movement, we offer holistic psychotherapy that goes beyond talk—using the body, movement, and creativity to support deep healing from anxiety, trauma, and depression.

If you or someone you love is struggling, we’re here to help.

Share this with a friend who may benefit, or reach out today to schedule a free consultation. Deep healing and vitality are possible with support.

Free consult at: balancedlifemovement.com
Call/text: (516) 847–4289

01/14/2025

Traumatic events in our lives either create more loss, anxiety, depression, and limitations, or they usher us into a deeper calling. I have found grief to call me to share my story and the story of my sister, Heidi, who passed away tragically this summer.
This calling is dredging up many shadow parts within myself that have long lived to be seen in a new light.
This calling asks of me to learn how to tell a nuanced story of truth, acceptance, and alchemy ~ from pain into power.
I do not consider myself a storyteller and find words to stumble me. It is in experience , movement, art, and drama where I enter this path of narrative storytelling.

Upon much research into how to help my clients tell a new story of transformation, I've stumbled upon "The Hero's Journey", a method written about by Joseph Campbell back in the 1940's based in archetype and mythology. How can I use this method in therapy with all of the creative arts to help my clients who are stuck in their old stories of doubt and self-crticism?

In therapy, "the hero's journey" refers to a metaphorical framework based on Joseph Campbell's concept, where a person's therapeutic process is viewed as a narrative journey of self-discovery, facing challenges, overcoming obstacles, and ultimately achieving personal growth and transformation, similar to the archetypal hero in mythology who embarks on a quest to conquer a dragon; essentially, the "dragon" in therapy represents the individual's deepest fears and limiting beliefs. 

I came upon the practice of an actor turned therapist who taught this method for years and then trained others. Tony Khabaz, a renowned teacher and guide, who is based in France, will be guiding me along this journey.
And guess what? He teaches through experiential learning, acting, movement and will only teach me if I employ this method in my own life and with my own shadows.
And here we are. We are beginning.
Bring a blindfold and a box of tissues, he said.

The first step of 12 is the "Call to Adventure".
I will embark on this new therapeutic process and integrate dance, drama, writing, and art. I feel called to create a new story with you and for me.

11/21/2024

Grief lives in the body, in the spaces we create, and in the moments we share. This month, we gather in our *Expressive Arts & Belonging* group to honor loss and longing, weaving movement, creativity, and ritual to transform despair into connection.

Here, I am both teacher and student—offering what I’ve learned and holding space for your stories, your pain, and your hope. Together, we’ll co-create a sanctuary for our authentic selves, moving toward the energy of life in all its forms: peace, presence, and renewal.

Ritual gives shape to what feels unspeakable. In movement and art, we find solace, structure, and the sacred. By creating sacred spaces—whether in nature or within your home—we embody healing. Bring a special object, candle, or photograph to create a personal altar and help define this shared moment of grief, transformation, and belonging.

Let’s meet in this space of lightness and presence. Together, we’ll teach and learn to live from the reality we want to create.

Join us beginning Dec. 2nd – First Mondays, December through March. 🌿 Link in Bio