Azure’s Somatic therapy services
NeuroAffective Touch (NAT) and Somatic Experiencing™ (SE) Somatic Therapy is an interactive blend of talk and safe touch therapy that focuses on Nervous System regulation and personal healing.
Azure’s practice incorporates SE and NAT safe touch to generate a deep sense of safety and attunement to help heal your nervous system to better navigate life, goals, and relationships from a sense of wholeness and wellbeing.
Additionally, the practice of Somatic Therapy will help you develop Somatic Literacy™.
Somatic intelligence refers to the capacity to perceive, interpret, and respond to bodily signals in a way that supports self-regulation, healing, and well-being. It's about understanding and utilizing the information your body provides through physical sensations and integrating that knowledge into your decision-making and overall experience of the world. This internal connection and understanding builds the relationship with yourself that is primary to all other relationships and goals in life.
As you learn to trust your body, heart, sensations, and mind, questions such as “Why do I always…?” and “How can I make this discomfort go away?”, and/or chronic pain patterns become things of the past.
Finally experience your whole Self in a coherent and unified way through Somatic Therapy.
Somatic Bodywork is NOT MASSAGE
Azure does not provide massage.
Azure’s primary focus of NeuroAffective Touch is deeply informed by more than two decades of study and practice in Somatic Experiencing, a previous career in Child Development, Birth Doula work, and 15 years as a therapeutic masseuse. She retired from Massage Therapy work when the physical demands on her body and joints were too great, and to follow her true passion of working with Nervous System Healing.
She is guided by her years of Nervous System and anatomical learning and attunement to pick up on your spoken and unspoken cues about where and why your heart, mind, and body are holding an unhelpful pattern, and together you work to help your Nervous System resolve those patterns which no longer serve you.
Unlike massage, SE Bodywork Sessions are clothed, and the work involves your active participation in your personal process.
Free of judgements and shame, NAT Somatic Therapy is deeply rooted in the principles of creating Safety to set the conditions necessary for healing.
Due to the whole body, mind, and heart connection of this work, once the underlying patterns resolve, the effects are often long lasting, even permanent.
Massage can support this process and Azure highly recommends finding a good masseuse.
WHAT CAN SOMATIC Therapy DO FOR YOU?
NeuroAffective Touch (NAT) and Somatic Experiencing (SE) help you become Somatically Literate™ and lead to whole Self Nervous System Healing.
By developing and balancing your Somatic, Cognitive, and Emotional Intelligences by learning about your Autonomic Nervous System, this work helps you develop a healthy relationship with yourself and heal from trauma.
It starts at home. To truly be at home within ourselves, means we can also be at Home with others. This work helps you to relate to yourself first, and then to others authentically.
Being Somatically Literate means that you will accurately understand what the signals in your body actually mean.
You will be able to work with your body, rather than against it.
This understanding lends itself to finally being able to enjoy a fuller life with increased resilience and a new capacity to fully be present.
Somatic Experiencing helps restore your body’s natural self-protecting and self-regulating mechanisms. It guides you through stuck Fight or Flight, and Fawn/Appease Responses to be able to unwind chronic patterns of tension, pain, anxiety, shame, and fears through your newfound confidence in your body’s inherent Somatic Intelligence.
NeuroAffective Touch (NAT) is a practice of Self Compassion and deep internal inquiry both verbally and non-verbally. This process builds a Healing connection between Mind and Body. NAT is a process of connecting to that layer of the Self that is deeper than the Nervous System by itself. It is deeply nurturing and reparative of things we often don’t have words for.
WHO IS RIGHT FOR Somatic therapy?
Somatic Therapy is appropriate for anyone looking to enhance their relationships with Self and others, and enhanced embodiment in all their endeavors.
If you are experiencing overwhelm, social anxiety, imposter syndrome, relationship struggles, chronic pain, chronic sadness, anxiety, fear, and/or panic attacks, numbness (physical and/or emotional), anywhere on the spectrum from mild to life inhibiting, Somatic Therapy can help guide you to a better quality of life.
Azure’s CLIENTELE
Azure works with varied populations which include professionals (attorneys, CPAs, MDs, psychotherapists, teachers, etc.), celebrities, Elders, athletes, yoga instructors, creative artists, children, teenagers and young adults.
All ages benefit greatly from Somatic Therapy, even if the event that triggered the pattern occurred more than 20 years ago. As Dr. Peter Levine, the founder of Somatic Experiencing, states, “Trauma is in our nervous systems, not in the event.”
I have also worked with an Oncology population and am well trained in the benefits and contraindications for people with compromised lymph nodes and immune systems, and who have become fighters and survivors of this life changing experience. Because my work is non-invasive and emotionally supportive with a focus on Nervous System Regulation, SE Safe Touch Bodywork is an appropriate approach for this population.
SE and NAT could be a good match for you if you are experiencing any of the following:
Relationship struggles
Imposter Syndrome
Sudden life changes
Chronic Pain, Anxiety, Depression, or Panic Attacks
Excessive Anger or Frustration
Easily Flooded Emotionally or an Absence of Emotions
Syndromes
Post Traumatic Stress Response and/or Complex Post Traumatic Stress Response
A general need for a life change.
WHAT DOES A SESSION LOOK LIKE?
A session is fully clothed. It is NOT massage.
Sessions all start seated and Talk Based.
All interventions are Collaborative as you are an active participant in your own healing.
Collaboration and Consent between you and your Practitioner, and between your Mind and Body are key components to Somatic Therapy sessions.
Again, You are an Active Participant in Your Own Healing. This is important to remember.
Sessions start with a brief check in and a Somatic inquiry or contemplation to explore and assess the Body-Mind connection. If needed, Azure will invite or guide some movement to metabolize and shift activation before resting into the support of the Somatic Table.
When appropriate, you may feel inspired to sit or lay on the Somatic Table. Azure will provide layers of comfort. She will invite you to join her in Attuning and Attending to your comfort and safety with the addition of pillows, warm or cool weighted pillows, blankets, and support to help you both “Get it right”. This is the foundation of any table session.
Table work sessions generally involve using blankets and pillows to provide comfort, warm pillows, and safe touch.
Somatic Therapy facilitates a sensory awareness and comfort being embodied, and often supports a deep settling into total safety and restorative rest.
Many sessions focus on the Practitioner offering and you learning to receive the conditions necessary to feel total acceptance just as you are, Free of judgment and shame.
This work also focuses on building Somatic Literacy(TM), sometimes referred to as Somatic Intelligence, through various means of “Body Mapping” and somatic inquiries and dialogues.
* While a session may involve contact/touch, it is not always appropriate.
Unlike a massage, you are fully dressed with the focus on restoring resiliency, respecting boundaries, learning about consent, completing thwarted defense responses, and meeting unmet emotional needs.
It is a careful step-by-step process, peaceful and typically non-triggering, which may or may not include much talking.
Commonly, specific points of contact and holding are necessary to help facilitate a Shift towards feeling better.
Disclaimer: I am a Practitioner of Somatic Therapies and I carry a License in the state of California for Massage and Bodywork. I do not carry a Clinical Psychology License and I am unable to accept or bill Insurance.
My Title is “Non-Clinical SEP”. I carry professional insurance with ABMP for Bodywork, Somatic Bodywork, SE, and Doula services.
INTERESTED?
CALL ME AT 818-445-9908 OR USE MY EMAIL FORM TO SEE IF SE IS A GOOD MATCH FOR YOU
Education and Experience
Neuro-Affective Touch (NAT)
BA in Psychology, concentration in Neurophysiology, Human and Child Development
Prenatal massage and preparation, psychological and physical
Pre and post surgery preparation and recovery
Tai Chi
Acupressure
Oncology bodywork
Myofascial reorganization
Anatomy/Physiology
Deep Tissue and Structural Integration along with multiple bodywork and massage disciplines
Contact me to schedule an appointment.