Writings & Musings
Rested. Rooted. Radiant.
Insight and inspiration on living unhurried lives, overcoming feminine burnout, reclaiming our radiance and self-sovereignty and embracing our brilliance.
From Hacking to Tending - Meeting our Body with Presence, Attunement and Care
As a somatic practitioner and educator supporting women, I choose not to use the word hacking when I talk about women's wellbeing.
Because I believe the language we use shapes the relationship we cultivate with our bodies.
For women, that relationship is especially important.
Many of us have spent decades carrying the belief that our bodies are somehow wrong.
The wrong shape, weight, colour, age...
The language we use can unintentionally reinforce the idea that our bodies are still problems to fix, rather than intelligent living systems with which we can foster a compassionate relationship.
We all respond differently to different language.
I personally prefer using the word tending.
Because the lens through which we see the body shapes how we meet it.
And how we meet it shapes the relationship we cultivate with it.
The Tender Grief Beneath Women’s Anger
Last week, I was in a facilitated space with other women, exploring the theme of anger.
It’s a subject that can feel highly charged and deeply uncomfortable, particularly for women.
The conversation was deep, and the shares were nuanced and reflective.
What really transpired was the grief, the sadness, the lack of being seen that often sits tenderly beneath the emotion of anger.
For women especially, anger often surfaces from the grief of not being seen, not having a voice, living in systems that we don't feel we fully belong to.
Understanding the Mind–Body Connection and How to Shift Old Patterns by Working Somatically
So many of the patterns we live with, like the endless late-night thinking loops, the automatic “yes” when we mean “no,” the crushing feeling of self-doubt, are often considered to be mindset problems.
But if you have ever tried to think your way out of them, you will know that reframing our thoughts can offer relief, but doesn’t address what might lie beneath and causes these thoughts to arise.
That’s because these patterns don’t begin in the mind.
They begin in the body.
Before these patterns became habits, they started as survival strategies. Unconscious, protective responses to moments when something in our world felt too overwhelming for our system to cope with: too much, too fast, too soon - or conversely, not enough.
The Missing Piece in Transformation: Why Awareness Alone Doesn’t Always Create Change
Maybe, like me, you have an insatiable curiosity for understanding why you are the way you are. You read all the books and articles you can put your hands on, listen to the podcasts, watch the videos … to more deeply know yourself.
And what an incredible and profound journey this can be! Truly life changing.
We gain so much awareness around our ways of being, behaviours, thoughts, beliefs, and the long-held patterns that we might want to shift.
We journal, reflect, share it with others where it feels right to do so.
We reframe our thoughts, clean up our mindset.
And yet, the patterns remain.
We know. And yet change isn’t happening.
3 Ways Somatic Coaching Is Different From Traditional Coaching Approaches
Somatic approaches are increasingly talked about, yet they can feel obscure or hard to distinguish from more traditional or cognitive ways of coaching.
In this blog post, we look at how somatic coaching might differ from more traditional approaches, and explore 3 ways in which somatic coaching can help facilitate deep transformation.
Finding Anchors in Times of Transition and Uncertainty
We all navigate moments where it feels like our life is becoming ‘undone’.
Whether that’s relationships ending, burnout, grief, uncertainty, collective unease, or natural seasonal changes in a woman’s life such as transitions into motherhood or the menopause.
In those times, it can feel like the stability we have known is pulled from under our feet.
Like a plant that has been uprooted, we become untethered, hanging in the liminal space between what has been and what is yet to come.
Slow Change is Sustainable Change - Why Somatic Approaches Work Differently
The world we live in is obsessed with quick fixes.
Productivity hacks and fast transformations are all the rage, and we are led to believe that real change happens in big moments: dramatic breakthroughs, radical shifts, quantum leaps.
But our body isn’t wired for these overnight changes.
Real, embodied transformation doesn’t happen in big bursts.
It happens in layers, over time, at a pace that our body and nervous system can hold.
This is why somatic approaches work differently. They are the antidote to our fast culture.
They show us that deep and sustainable change doesn’t mean pushing harder and faster, but moving at the pace of safety and integration, to allow the changes to gently ‘take root’ in our body.
From Fixing to Witnessing: A Somatic Approach to Embracing Our Whole Self With Compassion
When was the last time you experienced stress, anxiety, sadness or another tender or uncomfortable emotion?
Did you notice an instinctual urge to make it go away or fix it?
For many of us, fixing, numbing or suppressing our emotions has become a well practised way of coping in difficult moments.
We might pick up our phone and scroll through our social media feed, get busy with our to-do list, or eat food that feels particularly comforting - without truly noticing.
These strategies often serve us well for a while.
They may have enabled us to cope with emotions that felt too overwhelming to open ourselves up to, without the fear of drowning in them.
But they are not sustainable.
They often leave the underlying emotions unresolved.
Embodied Presence: Reconnecting with Our Body’s Natural Intelligence to Transform Our Life
Do you ever feel like you’re ticking all the boxes, meeting expectations, and doing all the “right” things—yet underneath it all, there’s a quiet sense that you’re not fully in your life?
Embodied presence is a doorway to a more empowered and meaningful life.
It’s an invitation to tune in to our body’s natural intelligence (our somatic intelligence), to reclaim a sense of agency, freedom and sovereignty.
In this post, we’ll explore what embodied presence and interoception are, how we become disconnected from ourselves, why it is so vital for us to reconnect to our body’s natural wisdom to reclaim agency and to embrace a more empowered way of being and living.
The Power of Somatic Coaching: 6 Ways A Body-Based Approach Facilitates Deep Transformation
Are you finding yourself longing for more than just coping with the demands and pressures of life and wondering how to feel more deeply present and alive?
Are you feeling overwhelmed by the state of the world, and looking to feel more anchored within yourself amidst the chaos?
Have you reached a point where you are tired of constantly feeling exhausted? Maybe you’re craving a way to feel more sovereign over your life, and to make choices that reflect what YOU need, desire and value most?
Perhaps you would like to envision new possibilities and horizons, and explore a life that reflects your deeper yearnings?
If any of this resonates, somatic coaching could offer a path forward.
The Fear of Being Seen: How to Embrace Our Brilliance, and Take Up Space In A Way That Feels Safe
Within my personal experience, and through the coaching explorations I have had with many women, one of the most insidious and common fears I see is this: the fear of being seen and of taking up the space we yearn for.
It’s a subtle, persistent voice inside of us that says, “It’s safer to remain unnoticed, to not take up too much space.” urging us to shrink and to stay small, to protect ourselves from judgment or criticism.
For many of us, it quietly lingers in the background of our lives (sometimes unnoticed), yet it powerfully shapes the way we show up in every area of our life.
Perhaps it’s something you too, are familiar with? If so, you are most certainly not alone.
Embodied Feminine Leadership: your way of being is a way of leading
As women, we are often conflicted about leadership.
We might want to step up to lead and take a stance for what we believe in, but the current style of leadership that is role modelled to us isn’t always one we are willing to embrace. It often demands that we abandon parts of who we are, in order to fit in and belong. This way of leading omits a huge portion of who we are as women, and undervalues the unique qualities that we are naturally gifted with and embody.
The Missing Piece For Women To Feel More Rested, Radiant, and to Embrace Their Fullest Potential
Living ‘in our head’ and feeling disconnected from ourselves
We live in a society that leads us - particularly as women - to be orienting upwards and outwardly.
We spend a lot of time ‘in our heads’ caught up in thinking, planning, strategising, organising, analysing,....
These are really valuable skills, but we have practised them to such an extent that we tend to experience life through our thinking. We think about life, which takes us away from fully living it.
