It's not about the practice.

It's about how you are relating to what you are practicing.

I have used many "self-care" practices as a crutch for when my nervous system is dysregulated...trying to urgently transform the way that I feel in those moments when I feel terrible.

Essentially, I weaponized the very tools that were supposed to help me because they were used impulsively to avoid feeling uncomfortable.

There is so much information in the world of mind/body healing from chronic pain about safety reappraisal, which is essentially exposing yourself to the uncomfortable sensations while simultaneously being resourced enough in safety to relate with your symptoms in a different way from your patterned, automatic reactions of fear, despair, anger or avoidance to your pain.

And in my experience, I have not been able to experience that safety without first really grasping that I am a human who deserves basic respect and dignity. That I too am a human who deserves to have her needs met just as much as anyone else.

Loving presence has become an embodied anchor for my own healing and growth process. When I find myself feeling disconnected and wrapped up in rumination, judgement, or fear...I gently call on loving presence by bringing my attention to my heart, and I feel the underlying softness that's already there.

Deepening is part of the fluid method of Hakomi when you are in a session, and you are able to land on some kind of significant insight that wasn't available to you before with the assistance of a practitioner who can support you in this process of skillfully traversing the mind/body connection.
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The word Hakomi is believed to be a transmission from the Hopi people, and it means this:

"Where do you stand in relation to these many realms?"

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The body knows when we are safe enough, and when the conditions are just right for something to rise from the unconscious to the conscious, or for deeply repressed emotions that are ready to be felt, expressed, and witnessed, to do so in a container of safety.

Hakomi-informed Somatic Therapy or Coaching is a modality in which the organic unfolding of your present moment experience is supported within the context of the therapeutic relationship, with your body’s wisdom as the compass.

Transformation occurs when our center of gravity shifts from unconsciously protecting the wound to consciously trusting new possibilities.

Learning how to attune to yourself can be a lifelong learning for those of us whose missing experience was co-regulation and attunement from a loving other early in life.

Infants completely rely on their caregivers to regulate their nervous system, so much so that a baby who is left alone untouched will literally die.

Being attuned to, and feeling welcomed and safe in this world is a very basic primal need, and our evolved nervous systems will figure out complex ways to cope with this unmet need.

If you were born sensitive, your need for attunement was greater than an average baby.

If you are inherently sensitive, and you were coupled with even slightly misattuned caregivers or an unwelcoming environment, your sensitivity likely exponentially increased, and as an adult you may walk around in this world with an increased sense of vulnerability compared to the average person.

Core beliefs are deeply held, unconscious beliefs that exist as a felt sense in the body, rather than a conscious, rational belief held in the mind.

For example, you may have the conscious belief that you deserve to be respected just as much as any other human being.

You may know this in your mind, but your body may hold the implicit memory of being bullied, neglected, or abused as child. So the unconscious core belief that exists as a felt sense may be something like "I am unworthy".

And as much as you may say your affirmations or try to change your core wounding from changing your thoughts, your body keeps the score.

An infant has no degree of conscious awareness that the outside world is differentiated from their internal world.

To an infant, their inner sensations are one continuous experience to their external environment, with no consciousness dividing the two.

The experience that occurs in infanthood is “If something is wrong outside of me, then something is wrong inside of me.” Of course, the reverse is also true, and this experience is not a conscious thought, it is a very basic felt sense.

Often this process of awakening to the core wounds of the sensitive strategy is one of immense confusion and overwhelm. However, once realized, I truly believe that highly sensitive people are some of the most insightful, soulful, creative people on the planet.

If you are a sensitive person, you may have at least one or more of these core beliefs:

· There is something wrong with me

· The world is unwelcoming and dangerous

· I am not safe

· I am not normal

· I do not belong anywhere. I am not welcome.