The Latest from our Blog

Five Unexpected Ways to Overcome Pain

Five Unexpected Ways to Overcome Pain

Did you know that Usain Bolt (the fastest man in the world) has massive scoliosis - a major curvature of the spine? Even though his body is far from symmetrical, he is able to compete at the highest level we've ever seen in a sprinter. The shape of his spine does not...

3 Ways to Engage Your Body to Transcend Trauma

3 Ways to Engage Your Body to Transcend Trauma

I think it’s very useful to define trauma as “anything that overwhelms our ability to cope”, as well as to view trauma as a continuum.  The overwhelm that leads to trauma patterns in the body may be from a specific experience such as a car accident, sexual abuse,...

8 Books for Your Holiday Wishlist

8 Books for Your Holiday Wishlist

If you’re looking for recommendations for books to read or request over the winter break, I’ve compiled a list of eight of my recent favourites, my go-to recommendations, as well as my own books. ONE: Look Again  By Elizabeth A Trembley I can’t recommend ‘Look Again’...

How to Make Your Brain Feel Safer?

How to Make Your Brain Feel Safer?

There is a lot of pain around: In a huge study (Breivik et al 2006) across 15 European countries, 19% of people reported living with moderate to severe pain for more than 6 months. That’s 1 in 5 people in persistent pain states, the majority for many years. Holy moly....

Why Touch is Essential For Humans

Why Touch is Essential For Humans

Touch can be an incredible way to soothe, create safety, and help us to feel whole and healthy. Numerous studies have revealed that touch is essential for us humans to thrive and in this blog I’m going to share the details of these studies and what they can teach us...

What I’ve Learned From Teaching TRE to 2000 People

What I’ve Learned From Teaching TRE to 2000 People

Over the past 13 years, I’ve had the privilege of teaching TRE (Trauma and Tension Releasing Exercises) to over 2000 people. Here are some of the insights I’ve gained about the power of this simple trauma healing practice: People expect change to be painful or...

10 Things to Remember When Working to Heal Trauma

10 Things to Remember When Working to Heal Trauma

It’s now well understood that going slow is actually the quickest way to heal trauma. That’s why all modern trauma healing focuses on teaching how to regulate intense feelings.  The truth is that feeling is a difficult business, and if it is hard to feel, it is hard...

Zen and the Art of Craniosacral Therapy

Zen and the Art of Craniosacral Therapy

My journey to becoming a bodyworker started with the study of Zen and Shiatsu. Zen opened up a whole new worldview for me and immersed me in a rich tapestry of philosophies and new ways of approaching the world, birthing a fascination with the idea of ‘non-doing’....

My Four Favourite Books About Flow States

My Four Favourite Books About Flow States

A few years ago, I offered a series of workshops with a dancer called Marina Collard. It was very inspiring for me to bring awareness to simple gestures for hours at a time. Every time Marina moved, she looked like water being poured - always carving an elegant...

Five Ways That Shaking Can Help to Heal Trauma

Five Ways That Shaking Can Help to Heal Trauma

Shaking can release long-held tension patterns and promote new feelings of connection and ease. It is a novel stimulus to the central nervous system. New stimuli, approached with safety and curiosity, can support learning and growth. TRE®, Tension and Trauma Releasing...

Become an Expert in Touch: Train with Body College

Become an Expert in Touch: Train with Body College

Last month we held a seminar on our ‘Art of Touch’ Biodynamic Craniosacral 2-year professional training and the feedback has been excellent.  The course is suitable for you if you’re a health professional considering adding a new modality to your work or an individual...

Childhood Trauma, ACES and TRE

Childhood Trauma, ACES and TRE

The body is central to understanding what trauma is and how we should deal with it. In this blog I discuss how to work with the body to help to resolve the effects of early, childhood trauma. This is taken from a recent podcast interview I did called Living With...

Four Keys for Using Touch to Heal Trauma

Four Keys for Using Touch to Heal Trauma

Whether you’re personally working to release and heal trauma within you, or you’re a practitioner helping your clients to work through trauma, touch is an incredibly powerful and simple tool.  I recently had a fascinating conversation with my long-time colleague Jane...

The Power and Limits of Touch

The Power and Limits of Touch

Touch in manual therapy does not work in the way most people think it does. Evidence increasingly shows there are clear limits to our ability to diagnose and treat structural issues by focusing on local tissue dynamics. We can however negotiate ‘affective touch’ to...

To Heal Trauma We Do Not Need to Remember

To Heal Trauma We Do Not Need to Remember

When trying to recover from overwhelming experiences it can be helpful to understand how memory works, particularly how memories are related to feelings in the body. Memory is a complex perception. In this blog I’ll explore how memory works and why it can get confused...

Can we ease anxiety through embodiment?

Can we ease anxiety through embodiment?

Anxiety is most commonly framed as a psychological problem, and helping people with anxiety has traditionally been seen as the territory of mental health professionals.  However, through over 20 years of clinical experience as a bodyworker I’ve discovered how safely...

Can we change the way we perceive pain?

Can we change the way we perceive pain?

Pain is strange in that it is non-linear and quickly becomes amplified over and above what is happening in the tissues.  A leading definition emerging from the latest research is that pain emerges when your brain decides something is unsafe.  At the core of the...

Is trauma physiological, or psychological?

Is trauma physiological, or psychological?

When it comes to healing trauma, psychology isn’t unimportant, however, when we work with a body-up approach, we can reset the overactive triggers in our threat detection systems. When the body is calm and we’ve quieted its protective reflexes, we can make more space...

The Hidden Mystery of Trauma

The Hidden Mystery of Trauma

When I started to learn about trauma and I realised that the most important decision a human being is making is “am I safe?”, it became a key focus of my work. Especially when I discovered that all pain, anxiety and depression is rooted in feelings of not being safe....

You’re an organic garden, not a broken machine

You’re an organic garden, not a broken machine

When it comes to working with pain, I believe the core of our clinical work is finding creative ways to help people find agency, strength and choice.  In my early work, I used to believe there was a stretch or a manipulation for every health challenge. Over time I...

Four Ways to Embody Safety for Yourself and Your Clients

Four Ways to Embody Safety for Yourself and Your Clients

I’m a passionate advocate for embodiment. Human beings function best when they’re connected, present, not dissociated and able to be coherent with what’s happening inside them and what’s happening around them. This is an ongoing negotiation. In my clinical practice,...

Blissful Movements Podcast

Blissful Movements Podcast

I was recently interviewed for the Blissful Movements Podcast. We explored: How embodiment is a lifelong journey.  When we dissociate, where do we go to? The physiology of empathy. How our sense of self is defined by many streams of information as bio-psycho-social...

Why is ‘shaking it off’ so good for us?

Why is ‘shaking it off’ so good for us?

The psychologist, Dr David Bercelli has long worked in the Middle East and North Africa in war-torn communities. He was in a bomb bunker in Lebanon when he began to conceive the practice of TRE (Trauma and Tension Releasing Exercises). As the bombing continued, he...

Relational Touch

Did you know there are two types of touch? It is useful to understand the difference between quick touch and slow touch. Quick touch goes along big, thick A fibre nerves. These nerves are like motorways. Slow touch is different, it goes along slow, thin C fibre...

We Touch Whole People, Not Parts of People

We Touch Whole People, Not Parts of People

When it comes to working with people’s pain and trauma, it turns out that feeling safe and exploring someone’s stories; their hopes, dreams and fears is key to healing.  I trained as a chiropractor where we often only treat part of the body. One of the central ideas...