Somatic Psychotherapy:
Ongoing Relationship Sessions
Are you looking to build a long-term therapy relationship where you are known and seen on a regular basis? If so, I offer Somatic Psychotherapy sessions to support that need for loving, consistent relationship. I see Somatic Psychotherapy sessions as a form of Earthing. We’re doing both root care, tending to the growth and health of the roots of your wholeness and self in the world, as well as soil replenishment. Many times the soil we have been raised in was deficient in vital nutrients and may still be deficient in the lives we now lead. Approaching this understanding with compassion and curiosity can lead us to understand what dimension of fertilizer is needed to be the gardeners of our own health.
I believe that every one of us has “missing experiences”—moments in our lifetimes or self development where we needed something that was unavailable: nourishment, love, unconditional regard, empowerment, belonging, comfort, rescuing, support, challenging, verbal affirmation, safety, freedom. As a Bodymind, somatic therapist, I enter the therapy relationship committed to your wholeness, to the integration of your mind, body, and spirit and to listening and honoring the wisdom and pacing of your body in the healing process. Together, we will work to identify your strengths and your organic self and to support activation of neural networks that may have been left along the wayside or underdeveloped as your energy was going toward your own survival and coping strategies. I believe within yourself, you are already whole and contain all the strengths and capacities you need for healing. In our sessions we will actively REMEMBER your wholeness, who you really are. I also believe that healing relationship provides an anchor through which we can together support the shedding of no-longer-needed survival mechanisms and discover together who you are when fully supported and foster your ability to live from that space of self-love, empowerment, joy, creativity, and freedom. Bodymind therapy allows us to work together to rewire neural networks, creating authentic movements in your whole being toward growth. My approach to therapy is an integration of different modalities and is a collaborative process to create the kind of healing that best supports your goals and vision of yourself as fully thriving.
Work with Shura
Ongoing Session Options
Individual Counseling
I work with individuals to help restore a clear sense of self and safety and to build confidence in being with emotions and sensations in the body that often are at the root of the chronic emotional distresses that are named “depression” and “anxiety”. I have moved away from the Western Medical Model tradition of diagnosing and come to the relationship with simple, present curiosity, trusting that your body has all it needs to heal and is leading us in the direction of its healing if we slow down and listen. I support individuals in accessing core beliefs, narratives, and missing experiences through mindfulness and experiential attachment processing and in releasing traumatic memories from the body, recreating a sense of secure selfhood, and reenlivening possibilities of self in the world and in relationships moving forward. I believe most of us carry relational and developmental trauma that requires release in a supportive and healing relationship. It is my personal mission to support you as your guide in reawakening the capacities of self you already have within you and reclaiming your joy, creativity, and vitality in all spheres of your life.
As an integrative somatic therapist, all of the approaches in my training background are sources I draw upon in individual ongoing sessions. If you would like a specific wellness plan focused on a specific modality, that is something I am happy to customize with you in support of your healing. I love to support creativity and collaboration in the healing relationship!
Couples Counseling
My approach to couples therapy is focused on helping you and your significant other RECONNECT, rebuild intimacy, grow in communication skills, rediscover emotional safety with one another, and release personal and relational traumas and ruptures of trust. My couples therapy is a unique blend of experiential attachment processing, mindfulness-based exploration, and skills building to assist couples in reestablishing the ability to connect to core love beneath the current circumstances and set tangible goals for rebuilding and maintaining intimacy and trust. I support erotic partnership growth through mindfulness-based, trauma-informed processing and practice.
Approaches I integrate into Psychotherapy Sessions
Hakomi Mindful Somatic Psychotherapy
Hakomi is a modality that greatly informs my work and how we will explore your healing journey together. Hakomi utilizes mindfulness as the route into the memories and beliefs storied in your body, helping us study together how you both consciously and unconsciously orient around your present moment and past life experience. Hakomi is beautifully gentle, honoring your body's pace and needs. It allows us to explore, over time, the sources of your current struggles. Exploring the present moment in mindfulness will allow us to locate the original woundings that many of your struggles stem from, giving us the opportunity to, together, collaboratively experiment to create new experiences in those core memories. This experimental process is entwined with how change actually happens on a neurobiological level and creates the possibility for both memory integration and lasting, felt change in your life and in how you approach yourself, connection, relationships, and experience. At the heart of Hakomi is the belief that all behaviors that cause suffering are adaptations formed as a response to a person not having received a necessary experience at a pivotal moment, not matter how small, in the person’s life. The Hakomi Method is a gentle, non-violent, and holistic approach to meeting these unmet needs in present-moment mindful relationship. Together, we will work together to experimentally and experientially supply these “missing experiences”, creating new neural pathways and possibilities of being in the world.
Experiential Attachment Psychotherapy
Experiential Attachment Psychotherapy is a dynamic, present-moment mindfulness process that supports you in understanding the way you orient toward yourself, others, and the world and offers us the opportunity to heal developmental or transitional attachment wounds and trauma in present-moment processing in our relationship. Experiential Attachment Psychotherapy uses present-moment mindfulness focused on the therapeutic relationship to activate the attachment brain system, allowing us direct access to your neural circuitry around connection, safety, and belonging. Within this work, we focus on embodied exploration and anchoring into the safety of the therapeutic relationship to support attachment growth and security. The goals of this process is you feeling a sense of I AM, I WANT, and I CAN rooted securely within yourself and a solid and strong sense of goodness and self-confidence as you move through the world, engage in relationships, and cultivate meaning within the world at large.
Somatic Trauma-Informed Psychotherapy
My application of somatic trauma-informed psychotherapy is a synthesis of multiple somatic modalities, including Hakomi Mindful Somatic Psychotherapy and principles of Somatic Experiencing and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy. As we work collaboratively together to customize treatment to meet your unique goals, I blend in trauma-informed care into every session and phase of our work. Somatic trauma-informed values I hold for each session are: safety, the pacing of your body, establishing clear internal and external resources, honoring embodied resistance, building embodied tolerance for emotional experiences, and supporting nervous system self care rituals. If you come to therapy with a history of relational or circumstantial trauma that is alive in your body in your present life (such as flashbacks, frequent agitation or freeze responses, etc.), we will work together to establish a treatment plan that honors your own story and that focuses on moving through three phases together: Resourcing (establishing internal and external safety), Trauma Processing (completing the nervous system’s threat cycle and releasing stored somatic memory), and Integration (processing the story itself, finding meaning and wholeness beyond the trauma)
Fees for Ongoing Psychotherapy Sessions:
$200 for 60 minute individual sessions
$220 for 90 minute couples sessions
If you are undergoing financial hardship, please inquire about sliding scale. I offer a limited amount of sliding scale spots at $150 for individuals and $185 for couples for a maximum of 20 sessions.