The day came when the risk to remain in a tight bud was more painful than the risk to blossom.
— Attributed to Anais Nin
Mary’s Therapy for Individuals and Couples
It is natural and healthy to reach out for help when you need it. Something in you knows that you do not need to be alone when life is tough. Something in you knows just what you need and desire.
Therapy involves safety and risk. The safer you feel, the greater risk you will take to change.
In therapy, we form a partnership that is safe, supportive and empowering. In this space we explore your resources and strengthen any that are needed for what is changing in your life. Realistic expectations are to grow in your capacities, to grow in knowing yourself more, and to grow in feeling confident and comfortable inside your own skin, regardless of circumstance.
Why body psychotherapy?
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant.
We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift.
~ Albert Einstein
In body psychotherapy, we learn to recognize and work with resources that are sensed within the body while staying connected and informed with the rational and sensible whole.
Our bodies are intimate to all our experience. Body psychotherapy, known more accurately as somatic psychotherapy (soma means body), recognizes that our bodies are both where and how we live life.
Our bodies hold the residues of our past and contain vast resource reservoirs to help us live into the best possible future. One example is resonance. You might recognize it as a reliable inner tuning fork, whenever you experience the sense and feel of a resounding yes or no. Amazingly, we can also learn to sense into all the grey ‘maybe’ areas, between the ‘yes’ and the ‘no,’ and find meaning there too.
Thick field of wild flowers. Pexels Photo by Steward Smith
~ To be human is to belong. Belonging is a circle that embraces everything; if we reject it, we damage our nature. ~ John O’Donohue
Space to grow. Under clouds and a blue sky - poppies, buds, and wild foliage.
Pexels skitterphoto.
The somatic approach with couples
Our bodies are essential for clarity and intimacy in relationships. Couples appreciate attention to the body’s role in communication, for its precision and power to helpfully bring more honesty and meaning into view.
Body psychotherapy offers the great gift of growing body awareness in non-verbal communications. With great attention to the quality of space that occurs in sessions, couples have the opportunity to integrate what is experienced on the inside with what takes place between them.
Slow is the new fast. ~Ann Weiser Cornell
Healing and change move at the pace of the body.
They must be lived.
Body psychotherapy is considered experiential. It’s the new fast, because you can read many books and still not really know something.
Only with direct experience do you know that something has changed,
and something new is arriving.
Sunrise or sunset? Change of light blurs and intensifies a warm field of poppies. Photo by David Bartus on Pexels.
Relief is palpable when honesty is more fully lived.
Body psychotherapy is experiential and relational.
It is considered a body-mind therapy because it changes the way we typically think of our brains and bodies. This can change the way we relate inside ourselves, and bring change in other important ways we relate. It can lead to transformation that is deeply felt and experienced. No word can really capture it. Besides all that, it is considered a relational therapy because the change and growth happen within the dynamic of relationship. I offer a safe, relational space within which you may become more fully yourself. In this space you may also grow into being the circle of belonging that embraces your whole life.
All living is relating.
We pay attention to the relational dynamics with as much body awareness as is helpful.