Three weeks ago, something happened - my back started screaming across the whole lower end, not quite crippling, but very difficult to make any movement. And then after a couple of weeks, it dropped into something more intense. The pain became more excruciating - muscles seizing and spasming, and freezing to deal with some pain, some injury that I didn’t understand and still don’t understand. And now stories living in me, wanting to be spoken, wanting to be written, even wanting to make a video and scream and curse out loud to the world, which is what I’m bringing you here.
Friends, please don’t give me advice about my back and what to do about it. This is me as I am today.
Transgenerational stories, trauma, lives in our bodies. AND, so does our medicine - through our ancestors, through the hell their medicine was alchemized in.
I have rarely seen a person work on trauma when we could not go back at least 3 generations to discover deeper roots. Bringing out, coming out with, the medicine that resides there IS the healing.
Abandon the path of trying to cure yourself of yourself. The hell you’ve been through, the suffering that’s kept you awake all those night years – make soul out of it, turn it into your shield with a medicine sign for all to see.
Every relationship has its dance. Sometimes it’s the dance of two people supporting each other - each creating the container for another. Sometimes it’s the dance of opposites - I’ll be more feminine. I’ll be more masculine. Sometimes it’s the dance of healing - we’re both supportive of the other person reaching their wholeness. And sometimes it’s the dance of a third – let’s make a child, let’s build a business. Let’s make a better world. We’re here to do something else.
Join Lisa and I for a three day couples retreat in Amsterdam June 12-14. You’ll learn about the dance of your relationship- how to become closer, especially through the conflicts and the diversity between two people. Lisa has a PhD specializing in intimacy, and as many of you know, I’ve been practicing work with individuals and couples for almost 40 years. interested? Just type the word couples and I’ll dm you.
GIVEAWAY CLOSED 🚨 Doing a giveaway for two books i love by David Bedrick 🖤
David’s work is deeply rooted in what he calls “unshaming” — moving away from pathologizing people and instead understanding symptoms, emotions, trauma responses, and behaviors through a more compassionate, trauma-informed lens. His work focuses a lot on witnessing, relational repair, embodiment, and dismantling shame without turning ourselves into projects to fix.
We’re giving away:
✨ The Unshaming Way
✨ The Unshaming Way Workbook
The workbook just came out and includes reflection prompts + exercises based on the principles from the original book.
To enter follow the instructions in the slides above!
Winner will be chosen after 5pm on Thursday, May 14th
#somatichealing #somatictherapy #unshamingway
Most helpers give advice. They warn. They protect. In essence, they pathologize. But that counsel never helps the person get in full embodied contact with the deep intelligence that lives inside of them - an intelligence that almost always appears counter intuitive. An intelligence that lives more in the shadows. Pathologizing relies on shame’s influence.
Come join me in Amsterdam in June for a live 2 day training - The Unshaming Way. Interested? Simply comment "yes.”
Ps -read the full essay on Substack. Link in bio.
She kept glancing at the door. Her words said "I have to stay." Her body was already leaving.
That gap — between what we say and what our body knows — is where trauma lives. And it's where healing either happens or retraumatization.
Can you tell when your client's yes is actually a no? Can you see it in the body before they can say it in words?
Trauma ethics isn't a rulebook. It's a teachable skill. I'll be teaching it this June in London. Just type "YES" and I'll dm you.
Trauma healers are not being taught this because almost no one is teaching it.
I've been studying this for 40 years.
Watching recordings. Refining. Making mistakes. Learning what it actually takes to stay attuned to a client's somatic truth when they can't put it into words.
This is the work I'll be bringing to London and Amsterdam this June — a precise, client-centered practice of reading the body as a form of trauma ethics.
If you're a therapist, coach, or healer who is passionate about developing a true level of mastery, I'd love to work with you there. Want to know more? Comment “YES”
I had the notion that some kind of clear eyed focus would be part of my path – that it would operate as an ally, illuminating my way.
But it turns out that the acute sensitivity I need to deal with my pain bears witness to even more, while also gathering in the mercy I’ve been looking for.
If you've ever wondered why intelligent, well-meaning people grip their worldview like a lifeline — or why healing work can become its own kind of dogma — this is for you.
Are you a practitioner — coach, therapist, healer working with trauma? Join me LIVE in London, June, for a 3-day training. Comment 'interested' for more.
Conflict skills are critical to navigating relationships, and most of us either don’t have them honed enough—or don’t have them at all.
But we’re not trying to teach you conflict skills for all the normal reasons.
We’re not teaching conflict skills for the sake of problem-solving. We’re teaching them for the purpose of cultivating deeper intimacy. Period. Full stop.
Most approaches to conflict focus on solving the problem, finding safety through suppression, or just getting through it. We’re saying: what if working through conflict could actually make you closer? What if that’s the whole point?
That’s the conversation waiting for you in Haarlem this June.
🔗 Details in bio.
#CouplesRetreat #ConflictToConnection #HaarlemNetherlands #Intimacy #ConsciousRelationship
What if real intimacy isn’t about understanding your partner — but recognizing yourself in them?
Empathy gets us far. But there’s something deeper underneath: the moments when taking your partner’s side isn’t just compassion — it’s truth.
Because I am also you. Not as a strategy. Not as a tagline. As something we share that we sometimes split apart.
This is the kind of conversation we’re bringing to our couples retreat in Haarlem this June — for partners who are ready to go past I get you and into something more.
🔗 Details in bio.
#CouplesRetreat #Intimacy #RelationshipGoals #CouplesTherapy #haarlemnetherlands
This has been a real lesson lately because I had hand surgery a few weeks ago and my hand has been in pain as it recovers. I’ve also had some dental difficulty - sensitivity to temperature and swelling for about a month. And then my lower back - I could hardly sit.
All this at once and then moving back-and-forth, finding ways to be more comfortable, to relieve the pain. While also trying to understand the fierceness of my body acting in so many places - setting off an alarm, not just for dealing with the pain but for things about my life that want to change.
That movement between relaxing relieving, and letting the body speak about our pains and griefs - especially the life that wants to come next.
