Understanding trauma and how to help heal it has been quite a journey. My work in this field began 20 years ago with my clients who wanted to heal their earliest traumas. I didn't even know that babies in utero could experience trauma let alone have it appear as a constant throughout life.  Since this journey began, our therapeutic world has exploded with ways to work with trauma and memory, recognizing that the body remembers our earliest beginnings, and traumatic events can stamp our ancestral line so hard it will cross over into the next generations. Its has been such an amazing time to witness our therapeutic and medical world accept that babies do indeed have memory of their time in utero, during birth and the first year of life, and that children can have Adverse Early Experiences, and that families can thrive if they have support, guidance and healing from the start.

The work at Belvedere Integrated Healing Arts integrates trauma resolution approaches that include touch and verbal skills. Open inquiry and quiet presence allow the client to slowly become aware of places where they need to heal. Somatic Experiencing work also helps clients heal from overwhelming events, and the integrated bodywork that is offering is intelligent, thoughtful touch for chronic pain, and for your whole being to rest and be attended to. 

​Working with the Overwhelmed Nervous System
I often hear people say, “I am just overwhelmed.”  For most of us, overwhelm is about stress and is a normal part of life.  However, chronic stress can lead to a variety of uncomfortable signs and symptoms.  Sometimes stress is from a traumatic event.  There are a variety of ways you can recover your health and your life from unhealthy patterns related to life’s stresses. 
 
The Body’s Natural Response
People respond to stress in different ways depending on character type and a dominant pattern in the body.  For some people, the first response is “fight-or-flight,” or a sympathetic nervous system response when the body gears up for danger.  Blood flows to the arms and legs in preparation for action, digestion slows or stops, adrenaline and other stress hormones like cortisol pump through the body.  Your heart rate increases, breathing becomes more rapid. These natural physiological responses provide a quick burst of energy for survival, heighten memory, and lower sensitivity to pain.  This “stress response” can help you remain alert, perform well, stay focused, and give you extra strength to perform a task.  If this is your method of responding to stress, it can be described as responding with your foot on the gas pedal.  Out of balance, this can mean you are in overdrive, often agitated, angry, and easily irritated when things don’t go right.

Other people respond to stress by withdrawing.  For these people, energy can drain from their system or they can procrastinate, leading to delay and fear.  This passive response is when the parasympathetic part of the nervous system is dominant.  In the parasympathetic response, the blood flows toward the organs, relaxation takes place, people normally rest, and digestive enzymes are released.  Some people just sleep.  It can be a normal part of the nervous system function. In fact, activation of a healthy nervous system rolls up and down between sympathetic and parasympathetic functions (see figure). As a stress response, however, it can feel like an extreme dive in energy.  For some people, this function is so common it feels normal and can be described as living with your foot on the brake.  You just shut down.

A third response, called “freeze,” is a combination of the first two approaches and can be very difficult for the nervous system.  You feel shut down and “frozen,” unable to complete the task at hand, but inside you feel agitated, your thoughts are reeling, and you feel like you can’t do anything.  In this response, the foot is on the brake and the gas at the same time.

Causes of Stress
Stress is something that puts too much pressure or demand on you and your nervous system, and that is different for everyone.  Not all stresses are negative; some are positive like a new job, getting married, changing careers, moving to a new home.  The Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Inventory ranks the top ten most stressful events as:

1. Death of a spouse
2. Divorce
3. Marriage separation
4. Jail Term
5. Death of a close relative
6. Injury or illness
7. Marriage
8. Fired from job
9. Marriage reconciliation
10. Retirement

A list of daily stress developed by participants in a recent seminar about stress and the nervous system included:

1. Traffic
2. Finances
3. Work
4. Family Life
5. Illness

The instructor was quick to point out that these stressors are extremely new to the human nervous system.  Our bodies are designed more for hunting and gathering than commuting traffic or hectic schedules.  Depending on the person, stress can be involved in change of life pace (slowing down or speeding up), amount of activities (like when kids have too many afterschool or summer events, for both children and parents), lack of support, lack of connections with people or places. 
There are also internal stressors.  These can include:

• Negative self-talk
• Perfectionism or too high standards
• Obsessive thoughts, especially negative thoughts, excessive worry
• Negative outlook on life
• Financial issues
• Need for control

What Do Stress Responses Look Like?
For most of us, patterned responses to stress are normal parts of a healthy nervous system.  Once the stress has abated, we will go back to homeostasis or balance.  Markers of a balanced nervous system are when activation is low, with these hallmarks:

• Open curiosity and ability to pause before action or response
• Feeling present or “embodied”
• Able to connect emotionally and physically
• Relaxed yet alert, able to pay attention
• Appropriately reactive instead overly reactive
• Feelings of competence and mastery
• Recognition of resources and choices
• Able to reach out for support
• Sleep, appetite, and breathing cycles are normal
• The physical body is not in pain

 
If the stress is chronic and therefore the response is on all the time, the different styles can look like this:
Symptoms of Sympathetic Response (Fight or Flight)

• Anxiety, panic, hyperactivity
• Exaggerated startle response
• Inability to relax
• Restlessness
• Hypervigilance
• Digestive problems
• Emotional flooding
• Chronic pain
• Sleeplessness
• Hostility, irritability and rage

 
Symptoms of Parasympathetic Response (Shut Down, Dissociate)

• Depression
• Flat affect
• Lethargy
• Deadness
• Exhaustion and chronic fatigue
• Disorientation
• Disconnection and dissociation
• Complex syndromes
• Chronic pain
• Low blood pressure
• Poor digestion

(Source: Human Enrichment Foundation)
 
For the Freeze Response, it can be a combination of these two.
 
When Trauma Enters the Picture
 
I substitute “overwhelm” for the word “trauma” in my work with people.  It helps them understand better what is actually happening to their nervous system.  Trauma can be defined as any overwhelming event that causes physical or emotional wounding.  It can be a one-time event or it can be a prolonged experience.  The healthy nervous system response to life where we have times of alertness and times of relaxation is called regulation.  When trauma enters the picture, the nervous system becomes dysregulated, meaning the person cannot return to their normal homeostasis.  The rolling fluctuations will get bigger and bigger without resources and the person will remain with symptoms unabated and stuck “on.” 
The nervous system does not distinguish between physical and emotional trauma.  Nothing sends nervous function into overdrive better than pain.  Sometimes an overwhelming event can happen early in life and so people grow up with one pattern stuck on, so overwhelm becomes normalized.  Adults will then begin to exhibit health problems as the body cannot tolerate the pattern’s effects.  Examples of early life trauma include:

• Difficult prenatal period
• Difficult birth for mom and/or baby
• Loss during pregnancy
• Major life stress during pregnancy or postpartum
• Early delivery and NICU experiences
• Neonatal or postnatal surgeries
• Separation from mother after birth
• Domestic violence or war experience as a child
• Cultural, physical, emotional violence
• Neglect
• Profound shame
• Too fast pace with too much sensation so the body cannot process

Examples of trauma at any age:

• Physical injury that causes pain
• Emotional wounding, especially long term abuse
• Extreme shame
• Violent crime, victim and witness
• Extended period of extreme uncontrollable pain
• Domestic violence, war and other hostile situations
• Loss of parent as a child, loss of child as a parent
• Loss of any kind without acknowledgement or resolution

A baby’s nervous system is completely functional at birth.  Early experiences are recorded in the body and in the emotional parts of the brain especially the amygdala.  If trauma occurs before cognitive function develops around 20 months and not resolved, early patterns remain unconscious and part of the nervous system’s innate function.  The end result is that early patterns can begin and then play out unattended to for a long time.  For a baby, often just being with a mother can regulate the nervous system.  This is called bonding and attachment.  But if the mother is activated, too, then the pattern can get bigger.
 
Stress Warning Signs and Symptoms
Cognitive Symptoms
Emotional Symptoms

• Memory problems
• Inability to concentrate
• Poor judgment
• Seeing only the negative
• Anxious or racing thoughts
• Constant worrying

• Moodiness
• Irritability or short temper
• Agitation, inability to relax
• Feeling overwhelmed
• Sense of loneliness and isolation
• Depression or general unhappiness

Physical Symptoms
Behavioral Symptoms

• Aches and pains
• Diarrhea or constipation
• Nausea, dizziness
• Chest pain, rapid heartbeat
• Loss of sex drive
• Frequent colds

• Eating more or less

• Sleeping too much or too little
• Isolating yourself from others
• Procrastinating or neglecting responsibilities
• Using alcohol, cigarettes or drugs to relax
• Nervous habits (eg nail biting, pacing)

From Understanding Stress: Signs, Symptoms, Causes, and Effects by Melinda Smith and Jeanne Segal (http://www.helpguide.org)
​
Recovery From and Treatment of Overwhelm!
There are many ways to help manage stress and its effects.  The first step is to become aware of the pattern by recognizing the symptoms, and then to choose a pathway so that your life is in your hands and not managed by the pattern.  Learn how to relax and connect with others.  Create a support system so you can let off steam and not feel so alone.  Find outlets and professionals so you can learn important techniques or get treatments.  But there are some stress management techniques you can practice, and best of all, they are inexpensive or free:

• Meditation
• Exercise
• Mind-body exercises such as yoga and mindfulness practices
• Play
• Vacation or break from work and schedule
• Love, and for adults, romantic love in particular
• Time in nature

 
Each one of these activities or techniques has excellent research or evidence that it improves stress coping mechanisms in the body.  Other important approaches include:

• Acknowledging your resources and using them.  This is an important exercise when working on recovery from trauma, too.  The first step is to identify things, places, people, activities in your life that help you feel better, stronger, calmer, more connected, stable, more able. 
• Professional bodywork such a massage, craniosacral therapy and other forms of touch therapy from a licensed professional.  Massage is a simple but profound way to engage the nervous system, especially for patterns where the sympathetic charge is stuck on.  However, touch is not for everyone.
• Professional psychotherapy and trauma resolution techniques.  Besides the many kinds of talk therapy and social work available, there are specific techniques for relieving trauma such as Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR).  Contact a qualified mental health counselor for more information.
• Creative expression such as art and dance. 
• Medicinal approaches that include prescription medicine, homeopathy, or herbal medicine help relieve symptoms and/or support the body so it can heal itself.

 
There are many ways to help address the symptoms of stress, but the first step is awareness.  The good news is that addressing your pattern will help build resilience and health, and many of the tools you need to do this are already available to you.

I recently listened to an inspiring high school valedictorian speech given by a young Hispanic woman. She began her speech by saying this will be no ordinary graduation speech.  She went on to say the speech will be about expectations and realities, and in it, she talked about how unexpectedly, she ended up at this high school.  She also mentioned how, unexpectedly, she became successful even though she was a girl, Mexican, undocumented and poor.  I was so moved by her courage and her creativity.  While she started out explaining she was going talk about expectations and realities, what she really talked about was the unexpected, and how these realities impacted her life.  I thought I would make my own list.
 
I was a bodyworker with a very successful practice in the walk in basement of an adorable house next to a river in Bethesda, MD.  I had just had my first baby and I felt amazingly happy. Unexpectedly, my life took a turn I did not expect.  Here is the list.
 
Unexpected Reality #1:  Babies have experiences in utero and during birth, and they can be overwhelming and shocking.  And these experiences can last a lifetime.
 
I started massaging people in 1994, and spent years massaging as many people as I could, and taking every class that came my way.  I studied craniosacral therapy and trauma resolution in 1998-1999.  After years of holding and touching people, I saw how we come into form through the study of embryology.  I learned about the impact of the birth process on the body, and how that could last a lifetime in people.  I saw the impact of birth in everyone I saw.  At first, it was just looking at the cranium, and asymmetries of the face.  Then I got a deeper taste of what babies go through.
 
In 1999, a woman walked into my private that would change my life forever.  When she filled out my intake form, she came to the question about her birth experience.  As craniosacral therapists, we ask about birth patterns because we often feel them with our hands when we work on the head in particular, but birth affects the whole body.  She told me that her difficult birth was probably the reason for her lifelong depression, and she wanted to heal this by the bodywork I was offering.  Not knowing much about birth memories, I agreed to try.  Our sessions were intense.  She processed a difficult breech delivery where she encountered her near death, and her mother’s, and her heroic action as a baby that saved both their lives.  While I was holding her in the craniosacral therapy, I began to have panic attacks.  This is how I found out that my difficult breech birth was similar to hers.  Somehow, as she processed her shock and fear that was embedded in her body from her earliest experiences, my own early unhealed birth process was evoked.  This experience set me on a path to discover more about the baby’s experience, how these experiences could last a lifetime and how to heal them.
 
My journey took me to many places and teachers.  At that time, we worked on adults to understand what happened when they were a baby.  In prenatal and perinatal healing, we learn about patterns that start preconception.  Were we a wanted baby?  Was conception easy? Were our parents ready to have a baby? Did our mothers have support or were they highly stressed? Was our father present? Did our mother feel alone? What was the family like then? What was our culture like, what was happening in the world? Did we need many interventions at birth? Were we separated from our mothers after birth? Did we breastfeed? So many questions. So many patterns of ways we can come into the world as babies. 
 
But this was with adults.  I kept asking, when will I learn to help babies?  The years passed.  I took training after training.  Finally, I started working with babies.  Until about 5 years ago, only osteopaths worked with babies.  Eventually more craniosacral therapists started to learn.  As teachers who knew about babies began to emerge, I took their classes.  I also taught my own classes and worked with babies, and their families.  I worked with midwives and nurses who taught me about birth.  I learned to be a birth doula.  Finally, now, I know how to work on babies to help them feel better in their bodies, and to help them breastfeed.  Now I have an amazing skill base to help families heal from difficult births so that babies can grow optimally.  They will not be the woman who walks into a healing arts practice with lifelong depression that started at birth.
 
But all this work has led me to Unexpected Reality #2.
 
Unexpected Reality #2:  The mother’s experience can be the baby’s experience. 
 
If a mother feels stress, pain, terror, fear, self-hatred, exhaustion, grief and horror, the baby feels it too.  In fact, sometimes the baby feels he or she is responsible, or even that he or she IS that experience.  And sometimes, the mother’s lifelong experiences from before she got pregnant affect the baby.  Even further back, sometimes the grandmother’s experiences affect the baby, because the mother was a baby once herself inside the grandmother.  Experiences from two previous generations can influence our life.
 
After many years of learning how to help the baby, I now realize that I need to help the mother.  In fact, sometimes if I treat the mother, the baby gets better.  I started really caring for mothers.  Part of my healing arts practice is called MotherCare.  I realized if we cared for mothers better, our human race, culture, and society would be better, more peaceful, calmer, more loving. 
 
Then I realized that I needed to help women before they get pregnant. Even deeper, I realized I needed to help girls feel better in their bodies, and to feel more empowered to trust their bodies and themselves.   
 
There is a lot of work to do.
 
Unexpected Reality #3:  We are more compassionate, forgiving and loving than I even imagined, and it starts in when we are babies.
 
I was in a class with advanced craniosacral and polarity instructor Anna Chitty, and prenatal and perinatal therapy pioneer Ray Castellino when I had a deep awakening to what was possible for humanity.  It was completely unexpected.  Anna was leading us in an exercise to increase the function of parasympathetic nervous system.  For me, shock is coupled with deep parasympathetic experiences, in other words, deep rest.  It is a pattern that I have been working on for years.  As you can imagine, if I can’t deeply rest, what happens to my body?  As I go deeply into rest, I tend to stop breathing.  This is a great example of a prenatal and birth imprint.  I feel positive I experienced cord compression in utero.  If I really let go and rested, I impinged my cord.  At least, that is what I have sorted out from exploring this pattern.  So, while we were exploring ways to stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system, I felt myself going into shock.  I told the student who was working with me at the time, and she called Anna over.
 
I’m going to have a heart attack, I told Anna.
Really, she said, what are you noticing?
 
I could see her feet.  I was in a freeze position on the massage table.  I did not dare move.  My breathe was shallow and fast; my heart was beating extremely fast. And it hurt like hell.
 
Anna was so calm.  So, I was calm.  I became curious and began to notice what was happening my body in minute detail.  Anna led me as I reported what I was feeling. 
 
Ah, she said.  You are not having a heart attack.  Your heart tissue is releasing. 
 
I could sense she was right.  My heart tissue, a muscle, was shivering.  It was releasing from a frozen state that was likely the imprint from my prenatal or birth experience.  As it released, my body became flooded with endorphins.  It felt ecstatic and it pulsed.  As this flood of what felt like love moved through my body, I heard a message and it was, “Forgive them, for they know not what they do.”  And, I forgave them, whoever “them” was.  Anna kept asking me what I was noticing, and really, I felt flooded with compassion.  This part of me was more mature than expected.  Where did it come from?  Who was that?  Was that me?  The short answer is yes.  That is the spirit in me that knows more than I know in my tiny fragile human self.  It was awesome, in every sense of that word.
 
If I have that inside me, then everyone does. 
 
Part Two of this Blog is:  Unexpected Realities versus Unrealistic Expectation in Prenatal and Perinatal Experiences.  Tune in next week!

A few months ago, a mom came to see me with a baby who could not breastfeed well.  She had reflux and did not sleep well either.  The mom was depressed and like many times, I was the last stop in a line of many practitioners.  Here is her testimony:

Originally Published May, 2017 here: http://www.agesandstages.net/blog.php?id=79

A young woman recently called me about helping her with her birth experience.  Someone she knew told her about my approach to healing difficult births.  Her story was familiar: the birth did not go as planned; the pain was too much; the staff at the hospital were not attentive; many interventions were used; the baby had to be resuscitated, then would not sleep for months; and the story of this difficult birth kept swirling in her head.  Yes, of course, I would help her I said, and I laid out a plan for her, an integrated approach of somatic skills, touch, awareness, and working with autonomic states in the body to help her, her husband, and their baby. 
There is a rising tide of practitioners trained to help families who experience birth trauma.  A true definition of this kind of trauma is “when the individual (mother, father, or other witness) believes the mother’s or her baby’s life was in danger, or that a serious threat to the mother’s or her baby’s physical or emotional integrity existed” (Simkin, 2016).  In addition, research into the birth experience reveals that one-in-four women exhibit symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (Kendall-Tackett, 2016).  It is no wonder families seek support for babies who cry; as well as have difficulty feeding, sleeping, and other issues.  As a bodyworker who specializes in helping families with birth trauma, the most frequent reasons mothers bring their babies to me are difficulty feeding and sleeping.  Many also report inconsolable crying.
Assessment of the families begins with listening to the birth story.  The quality of presence and listening is an important skill and can settle the mom in particular.  We are trained in nervous system regulation and help families understand the range of sensations and responses to autonomic nervous system states related to overwhelming events.  For example, each person has what we call a functional range, where his or her nervous system will rise and fall in energy and experience based on functional need.  These needs include the energy to go out into the world to work; to get things done; and then to rest, eat, and sleep when needed.  This translates easily into understanding the baby’s experience to eat, sleep, and play.  When events are overwhelming, we can go out of this range into symptoms related to fight, flight, and freeze. These are all normal responses to overwhelming events, boundary breaches, pain, abandonment, and traumatic births. 
Treatment protocols for the family include helping parents sort out their experiences and what they notice inside their own bodies.  Working with sensation and feeling states, a trained practitioner can create enough safety and coherency (or good feelings) in the body so more difficult, dysregulated, or frozen states can be addressed and released.  I also spend a lot of time normalizing difficult experiences from birth.  These can range from really fast births to very long births and near death experiences.  They also include severe pain and overwhelm from hospital interventions.  Overall, I have found three large patterns in birth trauma for mothers: feeling unseen (“I was in so much pain, how could the staff not see?”), feeling betrayed (“Why didn’t anyone tell me?”), and feeling confusion or when two things were happening at once, (“It was right but so wrong, wrong but so right.”).  I have worked with Pitocin, Cesarean section, hemorrhages, shoulder dystocia, near death experiences, as well as placenta retention and manual removal, just to name a few of the difficult births families have experienced.  Treating the whole family is best.  My approaches use touch, bodywork, Somatic Experiencing®, as well as prenatal and perinatal trauma healing (see castellinotraining.com).
Babies communicate very directly about their experiences with crying, autonomic signals such as skin color (flushed to pale on a continuum, including mottled), posture (floppy or rigid), eye gaze or lack of eye contact, movement (none to jerky), and specific ways they hold their bodies (in a c-curve, extension, or compression) from their in utero or birth experiences.  Most often, babies who don’t recover after birth are carrying an imprint from an in utero experience or severe issues from the birth process.  The somatic practitioner’s job is to relieve compression, restore full function of the body if needed, hear the story of the baby through the baby’s way of speaking (cry, gaze, movement, gesture), and teach the parents how to do this at home with their baby. 
I use a large range of skills I have learned over time. These include craniosacral therapy, myofascial approaches, social engagement, recognition of autonomic nervous system states (a key to healing the mother-baby dyad), supported attachment (crawl to breast), postural approaches, timing, intensity, and presence.  I teach about sequencing, or how a baby completes an action or activity, and sleep states. Frequently, I get asked to assess fascial constraints that limit breastfeeding latch and tongue function.  Additionally, the mother may report an amazing birth experience, but it was not that way for the baby.
Most of the time, I relieve compression that is still in the baby’s body and experience related to pregnancy and birth.  As I relieve this compression, the baby may touch back into the overwhelming feelings he or she felt during birth.  Treatment is rhythmic, titrated, and we pendulate back and forth from the present (“You made it!  You are safe now.  That was then, this is now.”) to the experience that caused the physical state (“You were stuck then, but not now. Yes, that was overwhelming, you can go slowly now, you don’t have to speed up. You can do it differently now, but yes, that was scary back then.”)  Many babies look relieved when I understand their story and can help them feel better in their bodies.  Families learn how to help their babies at home by listening for key moments in their babies’ stories.  Sometimes, we make repair or reflect back to the baby how sorry we are for their hurts, and how we didn’t want that to happen for them.
Human development starts before conception, not after birth.  If we bring our conscious awareness to our family patterns, stress levels, and healthy habits, we can conceive, carry, and birth babies optimally.  If we can provide quality care that includes stress management, levels of support for the pregnant woman and her partner, and education about the baby’s experience, we will improve birth outcomes.  As a complementary therapy to traditional medical practices for families, a skilled bodyworker can make a huge difference during this early time, so families get off to the best possible start.  Osteopathy, or a genre of physical medicine, provides this quote: “As the twig is bent, so grows the tree.”  Let’s help our birthing families with their birth experiences, so their trees grow optimally.
Kendall-Tackett, K. (2016). Healing birth trauma: A two-day online conference for birth and behavioral health professionals. Prevention and Treatment of Traumatic Childbirth. Retrieved from: http://pattch.org/trauma-conference/
Simkin, P. (2016). Resource guide: Prevention and treatment of traumatic childbirth. Prevention and Treatment of Traumatic Childbirth.  Retrieved from: http://pattch.org/resource-guide/traumatic-births-and-ptsd-definition-and-statistics/

Dear Clients
 
I have received so many sweet protests from you about the end of full body, deep tissue and medical massages that I felt it best I explain to you why I am doing this, and what is next for my practice and my professional life.
 
I am stopping so much massage therapy because I am listening to my body.
 
My body has been telling me to stop doing so many massage sessions for a few years now, and I have decided to listen more deeply and take a break.  I started working as a massage therapist in 1994.  With 23 years of practice, I know my skills are honed.  I love doing massage, so it is hard for me to give up, but I am afraid if I don’t listen to my body, I will get sick.  That is often how these things unfold.  Many of us don’t listen to messages we receive, so they often get louder, in the form of illnesses or what we call a “spiritual 2 x 4.” I am following this leading, and offering a bodywork session that is a combination of that intelligent touch and craniosacral therapy in its place.  The Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy is a deep listening to the body, and then therapeutic presence and exact skill to help the body reorganize, and health to increase.  So you can still come for bodywork, it will just be different.  Here are things I am still offering:
 

• Prenatal and Postpartum Massage Therapy (1 hour and 1.5 hour).  This is part of my MotherCare VA approach, a way of supporting pregnant and postpartum moms, and nourishing the whole family.  My approach is more than just massage, I hope to build this up more and over the coming year.  Postpartum massage is for you for a whole year after you have your baby.
• Integrated Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy:  a combination of intelligent touch (specific massage for the back, neck, head and feet) and Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy.  It is designed to help you feel met, soothed, listened to, and encouraged.  It is moving touch and cranial touch, and often produces a sense of wellbeing and information about your patterns and your life.
• Bodywork for Stability and Resilience: a combination of Somatic Experiencing®, still, moving and cranial touch, and verbal skills to orient you to trauma release, skill building, awareness of your natural instincts, and healing. This is currently my most popular session.
• Somatic Experiencing®:  Trauma release therapy for overwhelming events in our lives.
• Baby Bodywork and Family Sessions:  These are sessions for families with babies have difficulty with a variety of symptoms.  I have learned many approaches to help with overwhelming birth experiences, difficulty breastfeeding, tongue tie, difficulty with sleep and more.  I often can find bodywork solution for your baby, and teach you about the approach so you can offer bodywork to your baby at home. Family sessions include stability work, recovery from difficult births, Somatic Experiencing® and cranial touch.  I do some play with children and teach parents about games to play with children who have had difficult births.

 I also offer trainings and classes in the prenatal and perinatal field, including Womb Surround Process Workshops and online classes for the Association for Prenatal and Perinatal Psychology and Health, a program that has attracted 270 students in 26 different countries.  I would like to return to offering baby massage classes, which I think is so important for postpartum moms and their babies, every Wednesday at 11 am at my studio in Belvedere.  Each series will be 4 weeks, following by a class in tummy time and movement for baby.  Each group will have to be small because I don’t have a lot of room in my studio unless I can find a different location.
 
Over the next two years I will be offering my own training for professionals wanting to learn about prenatal and perinatal trauma, and a wide variety of other experiences locally, nationally and internationally.
 
I also want to write, and have leadings to write blogs, articles and books.
 
So, I want you to know that I am still here.  You can still come and receive bodywork from me.  Thank you for your support and kind words.  Let’s keep working together.  I am taking more time this summer to be with my family and teach in different locations.  Starting in September, I will have more availability Tuesday through Friday.  If you are looking for a massage, I recommend any of these local places and practitioners.
 
Kate