Somatic Practice®
Transforming the Experience Based Brain®
Why Touch Work?
The missing piece in traditional therapy is nervous system regulation,
a crucial step for effective trauma healing.
One of the most effective ways to regulate our whole body system is through online touch work. I've trained extensively in Somatic Resilience and Regulation® and Transforming the Experience-Based Brain®, working closely with experts Dr. Kathy Kain and Dr. Stephen J. Terrell. These touchwork methods are essential alongside Somatic Experiencing, enabling deeper healing of complex trauma rooted in early childhood.
If you carry the weight of early trauma or haven’t found relief with other somatic approaches, touchwork can be profoundly effective. It directly addresses your body’s tension and protective armouring without involving your mind, communicating safety and trust to the nervous system.
Early trauma—occurring from in-utero to around age five—often impacts multiple body systems (muscular, digestive, nervous, endocrine, immune) and can manifest in severe, hard-to-treat symptoms. This type of trauma is pre-verbal, making it difficult to address with traditional therapy alone. It often stems from emotional, mental, medical or neglect-based experiences. When early trauma is unaddressed, it embeds deeply in the body, leading to long-term physical and psychological issues, including addiction, anxiety, intimacy challenges, pain, sleep disturbances, and productivity problems.
With developmental trauma, completion of a specific threat response is not readily available, simply because the trauma occurred at a time when we would have had little capacity to activate self-protection. Even at age 3 we have an extremely limited ability to flight or flee — our primary survival mechanism is our caregiver. Completion around developmental trauma is access to a felt sense of safety, connection and bonding.
Dr. Kathy Kain (Somatic Practice®) and Dr. Stephen Terrell (Transforming The Experience Based Brain®)Authors of Nurturing Resilience: Helping Clients Move Forward From Developmental
Common Issues
I Treat
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According to the National Child Traumatic Stress Disorder, Pediatric medical traumatic stress refers to reactions that children and their families may have to pain, injury, and serious illness; or to "invasive" medical procedures (such as surgery) or treatments (such as burn care) that are sometimes frightening. Reactions can affect the mind as well as the body. For example, children and their families may become anxious, irritable, or on edge. They may have unwanted thoughts or nightmares about the illness, injury, or the hospital. Some people may avoid going to the doctor or the hospital, or lose interest in being with friends and family and in things they used to enjoy. As a result, they may not do well at school, work, or home. How children and families cope with these changes is related to the person's own thoughts and feelings about the illness, injury, or the hospital; reactions can vary, even within the same family.
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Most common are attachment issues developed in childhood due to unavailable caregivers, neglect or abuse. Dr. Ed Tronick is most well known for his work in Infant Mental Health. This youtube video shows one of his most famous experiments The Still Face Experiement
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According to The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI), Post-traumatic stress disorder is a type of anxiety disorder. It can occur after you've seen or experienced a traumatic event that involved the threat of injury or death.
Causes, incidence, and risk factors
PTSD can occur at any age. It can follow a natural disaster such as a flood or fire, or events such as:Assault
Domestic abuse
Prison stay
Rape
Terrorism
War
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What are Primitive Reflexes?
Primitive reflexes are automatic movements that provide essential responses through the birth process and after birth. When the birth and the early months go right, these primitive reflexes integrate into the system and are replaced with more adult reflexes to assist in maneuvering the world safely. The brainstem directs the primitive reflexes and require no cortical intervention or thought to show up and later integrate. These primitive reflexes are vital for survival in the new frontier called life. As the higher and more sophisticated centers of the brain come online and develop, these early reflexes that don't integrate or show signs of retention become ruptures in the natural development of the child and can carry over into adulthood.Fear Paralysis Reflex: The first to emerge and integrates in the first trimester, if this reflex is left active all situations are seen through the perspective of fear. Some signs of retention include: motion sickness, learning disorders, difficulty breathing, underlying anxiety or negativity, extreme fear of failure, phobias, aggressive or controlling behaviour, feeling stuck in life and constant overwhelm
Moro Reflex: This reflex acts as the baby’s “fight or flight” response to the world. This important reflex usually integrates into the adult startle response by four months. Some signs of retention are emotional immaturity, lack of impulse control, hypersensitivity or hypo-sensitivity, sensory overload, and social immaturity.
Rooting Reflex: Stroking a baby’s cheek will cause the child to turn and open the mouth. This is the automatic response to turn towards food. This helps with breastfeeding. Usually disappears by four months. Some signs of retention are thumb sucking, picking eater, speech and articulation problems, and dribbling when eating/drinking.
Palmer Reflex: This is the automatic flexing of the fingers to grab an object if the palm is stimulated. This reflex should integrate by six months. Some signs of retention are messy handwriting, poor manual dexterity, and difficulty with fine motor skills.
Asymmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex (ATNR): This is intricate for the baby through the birth canal and to develop cross pattern movements. The ATNR is seen when you lay a baby on its back and turn their head. The arm and leg on the side the child is looking at should extend while the opposite side bends. This response should end by six months. Without integration shows up as poor handwriting, trouble crossing vertical midline, poor hand-eye coordination, and poor visual tracking for reading and writing.
Spinal Galant: This reflex assists babies with the birth process. This reflex happens when the skin on the side of an infant’s back is stroked. The child should swing towards that side. The spinal galant should inhibit by nine months. Some signs of retention are poor concentration, unilateral or bilateral postural issues, fidgeting, poor short term memory, and bedwetting.
Tonic Labyrinthine Reflex (TLR): The TLR helps with head management and prepares the baby for rolling over, sitting up, crawling, standing and walking. This reflex actually integrates slowly while other core systems mature and should disappear by three and a half years old. Signs of not integrating include motion sickness, poor muscle tone, walking on tiptoes, poor balance, and poor short term memory.
Landau Reflex: Assists with posture development. This reflex activates at 4-5 months and usually integrates by one year. When the child’s head lifts it causes the entire trunk to flex. When retained appears overall poor motor development.
Symmetrical Tonic Neck Reflex (STNR): STNR or the crawling reflex divides the body along the midline to prepare and assist with crawling. You can view this reflex by watching the baby’s head drop towards its chest while the arms bend and the legs extend. Interestingly, the STNR appears briefly after birth and the reappears between six to nine months. It should dissolve by 11 months. If retained, there is a tendency to slump while sitting, inability to sit still and concentrate, poor muscle tone, and poor hand-eye coordination.
I offer a series of co-regulated exercise during the sessions to integrate any unintegrated reflexes.
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In the western world we've forgotten how to grieve. In many cultures where our lineages are from, whole villages gather and mourn together for weeks when someone is lost or passes. Intentional Touch offers a gentle safe haven for the client to be held exactly where they are, for the therapist to carry their grief with them as to lighten the load so the client to can step forward in right timing.
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When long-term marriages or significant partnerships end it's normal to have more stress on an individuals attachment/relational system. Touch work offers a safe haven to process emotions, co-regulate and individuate into the next chapter of the individuals lives.
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Adoptions
Attachment Disorder
Developmental Trauma
Medical Trauma
Post Traumatic Stress
Trauma
Abuse and Abandonment Issues
Grief and Depression
Physical Aggresion/Anger Management
ADD/ADHD
Oppositional Behaviours
Anxiety/Phobias/Panic Attacks
Social Skills
Bed-wetting/Enuresis/Encopresis
Brain Injury
Parent/Child Bonding
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Bullying
Low Self-esteem
Foster and Adopted Children
Pre-Adoption Guidance
Stress Management
Separation Anxiety
Sleep Problems
Attachment Disruption
Psychedelic Integration
Lift your mood and lower anxiety
Calm your nervous system and release stress
Release tension and express unconscious feelings in a safe environment
Strengthen your immune system
Reduce blood pressure
Heal the affects of trauma
Increase spiritual awareness
Build trust in yourself & others
Feel safe taking up space
Touchwork
Supports You to:
The vagus nerve is found only in mammals, and it supports the activities of social engagement.
It’s important to understand that a lack of regulation is likely to affect all layers of the self:
physiological, behavioural, emotional and social.
~ Dr. Kathy Kain (Somatic Practice®) and Dr. Stephen Terrell (Transforming The Experience Based Brain®)Authors of Nurturing Resilience: Helping Clients Move Forward From Developmental
Frequently Asked Questions
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Depending on your needs and therapeutic goals, our sessions might use 'Intentional touch' – or in-person touch to address foundational regulation, pre-verbal states, disrupted physiology or reflex integration. Touch Work allows you to stay somatically present, regulate physiological responses, and minimize the potential for being overwhelmed by strong physiological sensations. Over time touch work makes space to release the traumatic stress physiology that is held in your nervous system.
Touchwork to support your nervous system can be conveniently done at worldwide online, or in my office sitting in a chair or lying comfortably on a work table. You remain fully clothed during the session.
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In the first few sessions you can't effectively do Touch Work on your own. Healing happens in relationship, not alone. Touch Work, especially in the context of Intentional Touch online, is designed to address developmental trauma—those early, scary experiences when we needed someone but were left alone. In child development, co-regulation comes before self-regulation. Through co-regulating touch in therapy, we heal relational attachment wounds and establish the neuro-platforms for self-regulation that may never have developed. A clinician's role is to provide the co-regulation that wasn't available during early childhood, helping build the capacity for both self- and co-regulation.
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Yes, you can do Touch Work online. I've been offering Intentional Touch online since 2016. Most online clients accelerate their somatic healing path. Being in their own environment during the healing process helps you use your resources and avoid dependency on me and encourages personal agency and initiative in your journey toward wholeness.
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Regulation is our ability to manage our emotional state, autonomic nervous system arousal and to calm ourselves during heightened emotion. Particularly when we become fearful, deeply sad, angry or frustrated.
Touch Work address all 3 types of regulation:
1. Auto-regulation (immune system, endocrine system, Digestive System, Sleep-wake cycles, metabolism etc)
2. Self-regulation:
Our ability to self-sooth and make cognitive choices or knee-jerk reactions to regulate our autonomic nerovus system's arousal state.
3. Co-regulation:
Pur ability to grow in productive, healthy and predictable ways towards emotional maturity in the presence of another person. It is how we regulate out live of arousal when the autonomic nervous system is activate particularly int he company of others.
Sessions are 75 minutes and $150 usd ($180 cad)
via Zoom or in-person.