Healing painful patterns is an inside job.

The western world is chock full of the idea that humans shouldn’t suffer or be in pain. Pain and suffering are indicators that something isn't working right. We should be listening, but to what? Their story? Their body?
My job is to pay attention to the innate and all pervading wisdom of your system. There is a blueprint of this intelligence in every living thing. Your system includes your physical, emotional, mental and other places in you and which has the answer to how a symptom came to be. Symptoms don't happen overnight, but the Intelligence within you knows how to undo them. My approach is designed to be seamless, such that the solution I help you find comes from the inside of you and not from me.

If any part of your system is not on board with another person’s solution, whether it be a medication, chiropractic adjustment, surgery or simply advice, some part of your system will likely reject it and may over time mal-adapt to it. This can cause more symptoms. The solution has to come from the inside of your body and psyche. This is true for any level of healing, physical or otherwise. It’s my job as a practitioner to help your system find a solution.

Suffering is subjective. I worked with an 18 year old girl, I’ll call her Cynthia, who for 2 years was in a terrible relationship with an older guy in his early 20’s. They fought like crazy. They were violent, abusive towards each other and outright primal. Sometimes they even enjoyed each others’ company. Her parents who raised her in a nurturing, family-oriented and sheltered environment were appalled and terrified at what their bright, intelligent and precious daughter was experiencing.

During her tumultuous relationship, Cynthia quit doing the things she loved: being on the basketball team, planning her future, doing art and studying to become a musician. She distanced herself from her family and became more unstable than ever. She was suffering.

I didn't give her advice. I could have said, "Leave the relationship, and you won't be suffering." She wouldn’t leave him. I knew it, and she knew it. I wanted her to have at least one person in her world who both didn’t believe the crap she was telling herself while simultaneously didn’t try to talk her out of it.
Do you see that?
I didn’t agree or disagree. That’s rapport. It’s meeting a person where they are. Mind you, I wasn’t tacit in my response. I mirrored her until she felt understood, until she became self-aware enough, and when she finally did, she could recognize a better solution and claim it as the right next step. When a person is truly met with acceptance, they and their body, stop justifying and re-creating the existence of the destructive pattern. The body, emotions and mind MUST be brought into awareness before true change can happen.

Once her system felt like a big enough mirror had been held up from enough angles, none of which included me leading her or imposing a process upon her body or psyche, I then began the second stage: I posed big questions: Why was she in the relationship? Where did she hope it would be going? What was she learning about herself, about him? What were the consequences of staying, of leaving? What were the benefits of staying, of leaving? These questions were not my agenda. They simply promoted her most precious resource: self-awareness. Self-Awareness is the starting ground, even for the body, to change. With the explorations of her own answers, she grew from the inside out. When it came time to end the relationship, the decision came from the inside of her. She simply stated, “I’m done. I got what I needed."

I don’t know whether or not you should suffer, although I deeply care about your healing. I don’t know your timeframe or what’s right for the development of your system, but it does. Your system knows all of this.

I start with this foundation: I always keep your best interest, your natural state that is inherently yours, in the forefront of my mind. Your system knows how to heal, but it needs help remembering. My job is to help it remember. This living, dynamic and yet functional context from which I continually ask your system will lead you towards wellness. The intelligence of the Larger System of Life, equally coming from you and me reveals to us both the answer, on some level. The next step is not always cut and dry, although sometimes it is. Sometimes the answer is vague. Sometimes it comes in seemingly unrelated pieces. Sometimes it’s a metaphor, a clue we have to read in between the lines in order to comprehend its value and application. However, when the system is asked what to do from a place that presupposes it already has the answer, your system will recognize the next step as its own and will voluntarily initiate its own healing. Sometimes this happens a tiny bit, sometimes as a breakthrough, a healing all at once. Your system knows, by some force of intelligence, that the solution it's following came from the intelligence of life within it, but it needed help remembering. It's my job to listen to this intelligence and ask it what to do so it can heal and return to its original wellness.