How do I know if this work is right for me? 

This work is for anyone! It’s for those that want a body-based alternative to traditional talk therapy to help with trauma, stress, anxiety, depression, and limiting beliefs. But it’s also for those flourishing that want to expand more fully into what’s good without losing themselves in the process. Embodied healing supports you in building capacity for both ease and intensity – for holding joy as deeply as pain. It can be especially helpful for those that struggle to verbalize their experiences and trauma, those that feel their emotions and stress are showing up as physical symptoms, and those that are navigating complex health.

What happens in a typical session?

Each session begins where you are. Sessions start with a brief check in and conversation around what you hope to gain from our time together. From there we typically move into a brief guided practice of attuning to the body more deeply with a somatic practice. As attention begins to shift inwards, I help you honor the natural ebb and flow of what arises within an intentional and safe framework–strengthening the mind-body connection and helping you gently shift one’s orientation and grounding in a self-guided manner. 

You don’t need to fix anything, or arrive in a particular way. By noticing sensations, movement, and breath, you can begin to uncover the guidance your nervous system and body already offer. The work is about curiosity, awareness, and gentle experimentation–learning to trust what your body is showing you. 

Sessions often close with brief conversation of how the practice was for you and allow time to process and integrate what came up for you. A free 20min follow up is offered to new clients and by special request, if needed or wanted. 

Your body remembers and carries your history, resilience, and capacity for joy. Together we create a space to sense, explore, and respond to those signals – not to impose solutions, but to notice what naturally arises. Healing emerges from listening, slowing down and reconnecting with your own inner intelligence.

How long are sessions, and how often should I come?

Sessions are usually 60 minutes. But, in some cases they are shortened to meet the complex needs of clients. Titration can also be used for those navigating notable trauma that are new to embodied practices to help to avoid overwhelm. Many clients start with weekly or biweekly sessions. Some eventually shift towards monthly sessions. While others might be looking for a more solo offering. The frequency of sessions can always be adjusted to meet your needs and goals.

Do I need to have experience with body-based, somatic, or Focalizing practices to start working with you?

Not at all. Sessions are tailored to your comfort level and meet you wherever you are. We’ll move at a pace that feels accessible and right for you. Whether you are completely new to somatic exploration, or have already been practicing awareness and embodiment work, sessions guide you to notice, listen and respond and offer

Do I need to have experience with body-based, somatic, or Focalizing practices to start working with you?

Not at all. Sessions are tailored to your comfort level and meet you wherever you are. We’ll move at a pace that feels accessible and right for you. Whether you are completely new to somatic exploration, or have already been practicing awareness and embodiment work, sessions guide you to notice, listen and respond and offer.

What is resourcing and intention setting?

Resourcing involves connecting with internal and external resources to strengthen your emotional resilience and nervous system regulation. This can include practices like visualizing a safe place, recalling a happy memory, engaging with nature or breath, invoking a beloved person, or touching a support animal to build a foundation of positive states that can be accessed when confronting distressing feelings or memories. It helps you stay within your "window of tolerance" during difficult experiences. 

Intention setting is the act of attuning to what you hope to gain from a session to help make it more purposeful. It involves a curious exploration of seeking more clarity, releasing something unhelpful, or deepening into something you are consciously working to bring into being. Intention setting helps to act as a starting point that a free form session then grows out of. 

Can I come to session not fully knowing what I want to get out of it and what my intention is?

Absolutely! When it’s unclear what you hope to gain from a session, the body always knows the way– even when you aren’t aware of its inner wisdom coming into a session.  It’s just a matter of dropping into the body more fully and following the breadcrumb trail to see what naturally arises. The beauty of this practice is its free form nature that creates space to extend trust to an inner truth that greets you when a safe container is held for the journey to take shape.

What is liberatory wellness and intersectional care?

Liberatory wellness is healing practices and spaces that acknowledge the harm caused by systemic oppression and trauma. Liberatory wellness centers people often left on the margin of mainstream healing narratives. It emphasises collective care, is culturally sensitive, trauma-informed and rooted in anti-oppression principles based on social truth and lived experiences. Liberatory wellness recognizes that trauma and wellbeing are heavily shaped by the world we live in.

Intersectionality recognizes that our bodies and health hold the impacts of multiple systems of oppression and shape how trauma and healing show up. Intersectional liberatory spaces are free from gaslighting, victim blaming, toxic positivity, and religious trauma and your whole self is welcome to come exactly as you are. 

Both are core to how I understand trauma and healing. Oppression impacts our bodies, but so do connection and resistance. Our work honors both – the ways you’ve survived and the ways you’re already powerful. Healing here is not assimilation; it’s reclamation. 

How is embodied healing different from talk therapy?

While talk therapy mainly focuses on thoughts and emotions and working through them by verbalizing things in detail, embodied healing includes the body’s physical response to lived experiences and emotions as essential to healing and self awareness. It also bypasses the risk of activation and nervous system overwhelm that some experience when they relive trauma by talking about it in detail in talk therapy.

What does it mean that your approach is trauma informed?

There are various levels of trauma training that practitioners might have: trauma unaware, trauma aware, trauma informed, and clinically qualified. Clinically qualified practitioners diagnose clients. Trauma informed practitioners are trained to identify trauma, trauma triggers, and respond to how it affects someone while supporting resilience and healthy coping strategies in a client led manner. I have a background in acute crisis work, domestic abuse and sexual assault first repsonse work and am a survivor of narcissistic abuse, which informs my ability to show up for a client. If in crisis, I can help you create a care plan that is a noncarceral client led and compassion driven alternative to a provider-centered approach to crises.

What is intergenerational trauma?

Intergenerational trauma is the transmission of the effects of trauma across generations, affecting the mental, emotional, and physical well-being of descendants. It can be passed down through learned behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs, as well as through potential biological changes to gene activity caused by stress, known as epigenetic effects. Sources can include personal traumas like abuse, or collective traumas such as war, genocide, systemic oppression, and displacement.

Will I have to talk about my trauma or past experiences? 

Not if you don’t want to. Because embodied healing functions differently than talk therapy, it is not required to talk about your trauma. Brief mention of what you are bringing to a session does help shape it, but it is not required because embodied healing focuses on what is happening in your body right now, rather than the detailed retelling of past events. Sometimes I might even redirect heavy mind centered conversation back towards the body to help you stay in an embodied space, versus an overactive head space. 

What if I get overwhelmed during a session?

That’s totally okay. Your body leads. We’ll use grounding, resourcing, titration (working in small doses), and regulation tools to stay within your window of tolerance. You can always pause, slow down, or stop at any time. 

Is dysregulation inherently bad and something that needs fixed?

I do not believe in “fixing” anyone. I believe in creating a safe space for someone to open and tap into their own wisdom and understanding. Dysregulation is not inherently bad. It can be a natural and healthy response to lack of safety, basic needs, and ongoing harm. Sometimes dysregulation is working to validate and understand your body’s response and learn how to work with it in more intimate ways, rather than define it as something to be fixed. Dysregulation can be our body's truth telling when something in our environment is not safe or right. 

How does systemic oppression affect the nervous system?

Oppression keeps many bodies in survival mode — tense, vigilant, or shut down. Liberatory embodied healing work helps your body relearn safety, rest, and joy. It helps regulate the nervous system without denying the realities of systemic stress and ongoing harm, or removing yourself from collective care. 

What makes your approach unique?

My practice is shaped by my lived experience as someone queer and disabled and my understanding of how systemic forces can shape our nervous system and wellbeing. I also bring 20 years of social justice and community organizing experience into this work. My background in activism, disability justice, crisis response work, queer and chronic pain support groups and collective care deeply informs how I hold space. My practice is also informed by my 10 years as a meditation practitioner and background in intergenerational trauma work and somatic movement facilitation. 

I work from a liberatory, anti-oppressive lens that integrates trauma education, intersectional justice work, and somatic regulation. My goal is to support not only healing from harm, but also embodying the fullness of your life– your creativity, joy, and purpose. My practice holds intentional space for complex dualities and nuances that are uniquely shaped by our environment, communities, and varying lived experiences. 

Is your practice similar to coaching?

No, not at all. My practice is client-led and centers the innate wisdom within from a somatic lens, shifting away from authority over care approaches. Liberatory embodied healing honors and trusts that you know your own lived experience best. This doesn’t mean you have to have all the answers and full directional clarity. Rather, sessions make space for your own inner wisdom that the body already holds dear when a safe explorative mind-body space is created for you within an intentional framework. While I may periodically help ground understanding of your experience in a session, you shape how sessions flow and uniquely shape the direction of them.

What does it mean that your practice is “non-carceral?”

A non-carceral practice approaches mental health care without tactics of punishment, control, and forced institutionalization and opposes the criminalization of mental illness. My practice does not collaborate with police or involuntary systems; care here is community-based, client driven, and relational.
We can co-create safety plans that emphasize consent and choice and are led by you. My focus is community care and non-coercive crisis support grounded in dignity and trust. 

Do you work with disabled and neurodivergent clients?

Yes – absolutely! As a disabled practitioner, I honor many forms of embodiment and communication. Sessions are adaptive. We can pause, stim, move, rest, lay down, include support animals, or sit however feels right. Awareness is built into the work, not added afterwards or considered a modification. Accessibility tools are welcome and encouraged. If there are additional needs to be met, we can discuss together how to best serve you.

Is your practice LGBTQIA+ affirming?

100%  As a queer practitioner, my practice centers queer, trans, and gender-expansive people. You don’t have to translate yourself here. I honor the wisdom of queer embodiment and community care, warmly embrace redefining narrow boundaries, and I understand how identity, trauma and belonging intersect in the body.

Do you offer reduced rates for clients from marginalized communities and sliding scale options?

Yes! This is central to my practice. I provide discounted sessions for BIPOC, queer and trans people, disabled and low-income clients as well as sliding scale options . Accessible care is community care and central to my ethos. We can discuss reduced rates in a free consultation or you can email me.

 Do you have experience working with activists?

Yes. This is a unique focus of my practice. Activists often carry exhaustion, grief, burnout, and pronounced trauma. Embodied healing helps you regulate and resource your body so your justice work can be sustainable, grounded, and joyful. Because activism is central to collective healing and difficult work to sustain, I offer discounts to the activist community.

As someone who worked on the frontlines of direct action work and organized social justice events for more than 20 years, I bring a known lived experience to my support of the activist community. I have held “train the trainer” programs for activists and activist and organizer support groups. My digital download store also has free and affordable tools for activists. 

Do you diagnose clients?

I do not diagnose clients. In a world where diagnoses can heighten risk for many communities, my approach focuses on inner wisdom and the body’s innate ability to process challenges, instead of a diagnosis. If a client is seeking a formal diagnosis, they are referred to a mental health professional that can do so.  

Are you a licensed mental health therapist or Focalizing practitioner?

Embodied healing practitioners are not therapists. But, can be a very supportive accompaniment to mainstream counseling. I am an insured and certified Focalizing Practitioner– a wellness professional trained in Focalizing, a body-based healing method that helps clients access their innate bodily wisdom to process trauma, overcome stress, and achieve personal growth. 

While I am a Focalizing Practitioner, I’ve chosen to refer to myself as a Liberatory Embodied Healing Practitioner because other training and experience like meditation facilitation, somatic movement, crisis response work, crip doula work, and social justice organization heavily influence my practice to uniquely shape it – extending it beyond the perimeters of Focalizing.

Do you take insurance? 

Insurance companies, unfortunately, do not cover somatic healing modalities. The upside of this is that no one is determining how long you can seek care, or assigning a diagnosis to deem you worthy/unworthy of care. Here, you don’t have to be in crisis to seek care. Instead of insurance, I offer numerous discounts and offer sliding scale options that make sessions accessible.  

Is this a replacement for medical or mental health care?

No. Embodied healing complements medical and mental health treatment, but is not a substitute for it. If you’re currently under medical or mental health care, we can work together to ensure an integrated, supportive approach. Some clients really enjoy alternating healing modalities and find it offers a more balanced approach.

Is everything confidential?

Yes. All sessions are private and confidential, in accordance with professional ethical guidelines.

What is your cancellation policy?

Please give 24 hours notice to cancel or reschedule, when possible. Clients and caregivers navigating complex health are exempt from any sort of cancellation fees, to honor the unpredictable nature of these lived experiences. You will not be penalized for your fluctuating health and abilities in this space.

Do you offer package discounts and gift certificates? 

Yes! There are several package discounts offered on my website and scheduling calendar.

Do you work with people outside of the United States?

Yes! Several of my clients live abroad. Clients in different time zones can toggle a tab once in my scheduling calendar to adjust it to your correct time zone. If my availability doesn’t align with your time zone abroad, please reach out by email and we can work to carve out a time together that works for both of us.

How do I begin?

You can start with a conversation or consultation to explore what feels most helpful for you. There’s no expectation to have it all figured out– just bring your curiosity, your body, and your willingness to notice. 

You can schedule a consultation or first session here or email me at goldie@chronicallyconnectedhealing.com . Consultations are free and 20 minutes. During this time we can go over any questions you have, talk about goals, access needs, applicable discounts, and whether this approach feels right for you.