Pain Reprocessing Therapy is an evidence-based, mind/body approach to recovering from chronic pain. It is a process of retraining the brain to respond to signals from the body properly, breaking the chronic pain cycle.

Learn to trust your body instead of experiencing it as a source of suffering.  

What would it be like to experience pain but to not react to it? 

What if instead you could learn how to inhabit your body with curiosity, and listen to the inherent wisdom of your body, even when it’s hurting? 

One of the keys to healing is learning how to change your relationship to pain, and to understand that ultimately the brain is sending pain signals in an attempt to keep you safe. 

Your experience of symptoms is your brain trying to protect you. 

You will be supported in establishing a sense of safety in your body instead of sensing it as a threat.

This shift is essential for reducing pain.

You will be supported to gain insight into your internal landscape, with your body’s wisdom as our compass.  This work can gently unravel unconscious patterns that may be keeping your nervous system stuck in a pain cycle. 

Often what’s underneath the physical experience of chronic pain are repressed emotions that activate the autonomic nervous system, and you will be gently invited to explore this territory in our sessions.

The autonomic nervous system affects the muscles, circulatory system, heart, gastrointestinal tract, and genitourinary tract and therefore can produce a wide variety of symptoms.

This approach is beneficial for a multitude of chronic symptoms including but not limited to musculoskeletal pain, tingling, numbness, burning sensations, dizziness, tinnitus, anxiety, abdominal pain, bloating, heartburn, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, constipation, urinary pain/itching/burning, urinary frequency, palpitations, rapid heart rate, migraine headaches, fatigue, and depression.

When the brain is in a state of constant high alert, acute stressors can trigger emotions that our brain and nervous system perceive as too threatening for you to feel. This process often turns on the pain signals, and the fear evoked from the pain feeds into a reinforcing loop of pain and fear. All of this happens beneath our conscious awareness, and becomes more automatic over time.

* Click the "learn" tab and scroll down to read more about the neuroscience of chronic pain.

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I see the complexity in three tiers when it comes to creating the ripe conditions to developing a chronic pain condition.

1. Stress in adulthood such as stressful/traumatic events or ongoing stress such as a high-stress job or raising a family that can sensitize the brain and nervous system.

2. Stressful events in childhood, adolescence, and/or young adulthood that led to a trauma response that the body held onto with a previous reference point of safety before the traumatic or stressful event(s).

3. Preverbal and attachment trauma in which the brain and nervous system learned how to orient/function/exist in a trauma state without a previous reference point of safety.

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The first tier is likely the easiest to heal. Getting injured while in a stressful relationship, job, or other situation could be enough to put the brain on high alert and use the neural pathway of pain as an outlet for the unprocessed stress.

Tier two requires deeper digging. You will likely have to go beyond simply cultivating a sense of safety around the experience of your symptoms alone, and start digging into some repressed emotional territory that is leaving the nervous system in a state of high alert.

Tier three is the most challenging because it requires you to start to see the water you are swimming in. Healing developmental trauma is not for the faint of heart. And while in many cases you don't have to necessarily heal your trauma to get out pain, when it comes to preverbal and attachment trauma, your survival mechanisms are often the only way you know how to function.

Unlearning these survival patterns can be incredibly challenging and confusing because there was no "before" experience of safety prior to the trauma.

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This is why I combine Pain Reprocessing Therapy and Hakomi Somatic Therapy together into a trauma-informed coaching session.

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Pain Reprocessing Therapy is excellent for desensitizing your brain to your pain symptoms and retraining your brain to perceive the sensations as safe.

Hakomi Somatic Therapy is excellent for entering the deeper waters of your emotional territory, unconscious barriers to nourishment, and deeply embedded survival patterns.

Hakomi is excellent when you don't know the what, why, or how of your suffering. You just know you are riddled with anxiety, depression, or dysfunctional habits. Slowly, session by session, we can start to build a map to see and understand how your unconscious has organized itself to function in the world without getting certain essential developmental needs met, keeping the brain in a state of hypervigilance.

With a trauma-informed approach, we will use the innate somatic intelligence of the body to support resourcing for the nervous system when symptoms of hyperarousal or hypoarousal connected to a trauma response arise.

What to expect during a session…

Sessions take place on Zoom.

A blend of Pain Reprocessing Therapy and Hakomi-Informed Somatic Coaching will support you to process deeper layers of your mind/body connection, including your emotions, to understand how your brain is perpetuating chronic pain with a trauma-informed approach. 

A session will consist of bringing attention to your present internal experience, and directly feeling and reprocessing how you are relating to your symptoms in session with support and guidance.

We will also look at daily patterns, habits, and routines that may be contributing to your pain cycle, and find small, attainable changes you can make to break the cycle that may be keeping you stuck.

We may also engage in some somatic movement exploration practices that are intended to help you find a wider range of possibility in how you move your body, opening your perception.

Our time together will not guarantee that you will be pain free, but my intention is that you will gain more clarity as to what is keeping you stuck, and have some tangible tools to work with outside of our sessions so that you can continue to make progress on your own.

With this approach you will get…

• A blend of Pain Reprocessing Therapy and Hakomi-informed Somatic Coaching.

• Somatic exploration practices that cultivate fluid movement and body perception.

• Clients who engage in at least three sessions will receive a resource list full of books, podcasts, and videos for you to have extra support outside of our time together.

• Clients who engage in at least three sessions will receive a six week free trial for the Curable app which is an interactive resource for you that includes pain science education, journal prompts, guided meditation, and brain training exercises specific to chronic pain.

• Ongoing resources tailored to your specific needs.

It is highly recommended that you carve out at least 30 minutes every day for an intentional practice for this to be effective in symptom reduction. Please consider whether or not you can commit to active participation in your process of healing outside of our sessions prior to investing in a package of sessions.

What exactly will happen in a session? Let’s get more specific…

Our first session will be a thorough intake of your pain history, and a collaborative assessment of what you are needing support with the most now. You may need to be assessed by a medical doctor before we work together to ensure that your pain experience is appropriate and safe for this kind of mind/body intervention, and does not need medical attention beyond the scope of what I have to offer.

You will be provided some basic pain science education to help you understand how chronic, neuroplastic pain persists.

During our sessions, you will be encouraged to enter into a state of present moment awareness to see what’s showing up in your body in the moment, including sensations and emotions. Your body’s wisdom will be our compass while we utilize the tools of Pain Reprocessing Therapy.

We will go back and forth between what is arising automatically and organically in the body in the present moment, and what that information means. That being said, no two sessions will be the same, and there is no set “formula” for doing this work.

The ultimate intention is to support you in feeling a sense of safety in your body, as opposed to experiencing it as a threat. We will collaboratively look at your relationship to your symptoms, and see where you can be supported to shift some behavioral patterns that may be contributing to the pain cycle. You will be supported with figuring out small, attainable changes you can make to begin to interrupt these patterns.

We will utilize a combination of leaning into the unfolding present moment of your internal terrain, and some dialogue around how to integrate what we are learning about your body, emotional patterns, and needs. You will be supported with integrating what we learn in our sessions with specific tools that will be helpful for you in your daily life outside of our sessions.

Schedule a 45 minute low-cost consultation here.

Schedule a single session or package of sessions here.

With somatic awareness and evidence based tools, you can retrain your brain and reduce your symptoms with persistent practice. 

It will require engagement of conscious awareness of your body, emotions, and nervous system, as well as your capacity to re-approach the way you are relating with your pain symptoms.  

This is for people who are experiencing chronic pain (more than three months) who are interested in a somatic approach to working with chronic pain. 

If you are willing to attempt to put in the self inquiry needed to re-pattern your relationship with pain, this is for you.  

If you are willing to look at and work with the ways that your emotions and nervous system play a role in your pain experience, this is for you. 

Even if you have a diagnosed structural issue or autoimmune dysfunction that confirms that your pain is not 100% neuroplastic, these tools can still support you with working with fear around these diagnoses which can potentially reduce any unnecessary additional chronic pain.

This is not for people who want an easy, quick fix. This approach requires substantial courage and willingness to process some deep psychological patterns that are often not easy to access and change overnight.

I am here to support the facilitation of your own internal knowing, helping you to find your own path to inhabiting your body more fully. 

This will require your full participation.  I will hand you some tools, and it’s up to you to use them. 

This is NOT a program that supports you in crisis.

Please seek support from a licensed mental health professional or call a crisis hotline if you experience suicidal ideation.

Chronic pain does not have to be life-sentence.  I truly believe it’s possible for you to experience less pain and inhabit your body with more ease, and live a happy, fulfilling life.  I personally have struggled with chronic pain and fatigue for over a decade, and these tools have reduced my experience of pain to an immense degree.  I am committed to supporting other people on this challenging path. 

You deserve support, and I am glad you are here.