Somatic Awareness & Coaching
Learning to listen to your body's signals, rhythms, and needs — and to trust your organic process.
Your body is communicating all the time — through sensation, impulse, holding, and ease. Somatic awareness is the practice of learning its language.
I coach you to slow down and listen: to notice what's actually happening in your system in real time, to meet what's there without overriding it, and to develop the kind of self-trust that lets your body lead.
How awareness work is woven into sessions
Somatic awareness isn't a separate technique bolted onto therapy — it's the thread running through everything I offer.
In touch-based sessions (Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy and NeuroAffective Touch®), awareness helps your mind partner with what your body is processing as it happens.
In coaching, we work directly with your nervous system's patterns: recognising your states, understanding what they're telling you, and building capacity to stay present with what unfolds.
The goal isn't to fix yourself. It's to come home to a body you can trust.
What this draws on
My approach integrates:
Open-ended inquiry — anchored in ten years of study of the Diamond Approach, a psycho-spiritual path of realisation. Inquiry explores what is alive in the present moment: concepts, body sensations, emotions, and a palpable aliveness.
The Realisation Process — Judith Blackstone's method of psychological and relational healing through inhabiting the internal space of the body. I'm a fully qualified Realisation Process Teacher.
Compassionate Inquiry — Gabor Maté's psychotherapeutic approach revealing what lies beneath the appearance we present to the world. I completed the year-long CI programme.
Body-led practice — the body has a different intelligence and works at a slower pace. When the mind learns to let the body lead, remarkable things happen.
Coaching — in development
Alongside this awareness work, I'm completing a year long certification as a somatic coach. As that develops, I'll offer dedicated coaching sessions — deepening your relationship with your nervous system, whether in person in Wellington or online.
Where to begin
The best way to experience this work is in a session — the awareness unfolds in real time, in your body, not on a page.
Using somatic inquiry with therapeutic touch
The magic of using somatic inquiry and therapeutic touch together is that it supports an integrated healing process. The body holds the unconscious. Working directly with the body and mind at the same time helps to make the unconscious, conscious in a safe and transformative manner.
A body lead process
My approach is truly a body-led process. The body has a different intelligence and language to the mind and works at a slower pace. Really great things happen when the mind learns to let the body lead, join in and partner with the body.
Being with what is
Being supported to be deeply present to what is happening in real-time, naturally leads to releasing held emotions, letting go of beliefs that no longer serve you, and transforms your body’s adaptive strategies.
Coming into real time
The body only lives in real-time - overwhelm responses activate the mind into the past. Learning to be in real-time, is learning to be with what is happening in your body. Somatic Inquiry helps the mind partner with the body and orientate to what’s here now.
My approach to Somatic Inquiry
Transformation is a letting deep letting go
Somatic inquiry is an active process
Exploring what is alive in the moment is at the heart of somatic inquiry. The body can only communicate in the present moment. It’s your mind that can live in the past or the future.
Developing a partnership with your body and mind, where each is seen as an equal and valid aspect of self, is radical. It means learning to deeply listen, slowing down the mind to connect & learn the body’s wisdom.
A trained therapeutic touch can strengthen the mind body partnership because it gives direct feedback about what is happening that is not yet conscious. It’s like shining a light on the inside and listening to what’s being revealed and moving.
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What’s the body showing and holding? Discovering what pattern is present, connecting any thoughts, emotions to feelings that are weaved into the body.
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When patterns are truly met, they let go - their job has been completed. This can be emotional, physically uncomfortable, and it can also be a celebration.
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Being seen and your story heard is part of the transformation.