Welcome! You’ll find a few guided practices here, as an offering to support you with healing.

I am in the process of uploading new practices, so check in every now and again, and feel free to share.

You may also wish to explore my grief tending workshop here (offered free of charge), or schedule a session with me.

In engaging with these practices, you’re invited to create the space and choice to take care of yourself, to determine what is OK for you to practice, and to make decisions that best meet your needs, including the possibility of pausing or ending the practice at any time, and turning towards something else that best supports you.  Deep gratitude to Lama Rod Owens for modeling this invitation.

These practices have been lovingly recorded in my Mexico City home, in the very urban environment of my everyday life, so you may hear some background sounds at times ;) They are offered free of charge to keep them accessible to all. If you wish to offer a donation, you can do so here. Thank you.

This is a practice called centering. And centering is getting present, open, and connected to what we care about.

Purposeful practice is a core aspect of what supports us in change and healing. And inside each of our practices there’s a purpose. What are we trying to embody?

We’re going to center ourselves in four directions or four dimensions: length and dignity; width and belonging; depth and presence; who and what matters to us and purpose.

I learned this practice from Staci Haines, co-founder of Generative Somatics.

Moving into Wholeness is a practice from Michelle Cassandra Johnson’s book Finding Refuge: Heart work for healing collective grief.

Most of us who have struggled with chronic pain and other symptoms, and most of us humans really, often struggle with a loud inner critic that sends us into spirals of shame, guilt, and other difficult emotions.

Lovingkindness is a practice that cultivates our natural capacity for an open and loving heart, radically shifting our relationship with ourselves and sending ripples into our relationships with others.

This is a practice from Sharon Salzberg, deep bow for her teachings.

Somatic tracking is the primary technique used in Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT), an approach to persistent pain that retrains the brain to interpret and respond to signals from the body from a lens of safety, breaking the cycle of chronic pain.

Through this practice, you can shift your relationship to uncomfortable sensations, repattern neural circuits and move toward greater ease. Through consistent engagement in this practice as part of a mindbody approach, you can find freedom from chronic pain.

PRT has five main components: 1) education about the brain origins and reversibility of pain, 2) gathering and reinforcing personalized evidence for the brain origins and reversibility of pain, 3) attending to and appraising pain sensations through a lens of safety, 4) addressing other emotional threats, and 5) gravitating to positive feelings and sensations.

PRT and somatic tracking have been developed by Alan Gordon, LCSW.

Whenever we experience unpleasant or painful experiences, our automatic inclination might be to reject or fight these experiences. In doing so, we create more suffering.

Through mindfulness, we can respond differently, gaining agency and choice and bringing an openness, curiosity and acceptance to our experience in the present moment, thus growing in ease and freedom. A challenging experience or event that was once held to be distressing might be reappraised as a learning opportunity and a source of personal growth.

This practice has been adapted from the Mindfulness Oriented Recovery Enhancement program for addiction, stress and pain developed by Eric L. Garland, PhD, LCSW.

When we are in pain, and especially when the pain has been there for a while, we not only experience the pain in this moment, but also feel the weight of what has happened around the pain in the past and what might happen in the future. 

The story of the past is about how this pain happened: what was or wasn’t done, what mistakes or oversights happened, and so on. 

The story of the future often encompasses anticipation of the immediate future (how you will get ready for the things you need to do and get through today), and worry about the broader future (what might happen if the pain doesn’t get better or go away, or even gets worse). 

When we start dropping the story, the emotions that have been triggered by it - the anger, the frustration, the sadness - start to lessen their grip as we stop retriggering them with every repetition of the story. This is something we need to practice time and time again. 

This practice is from Outsmart Your Pain: Mindfulness and Self-Compassion to Help You Leave Chronic Pain Behind by Christiane Wolf.

Opening up to our experience

As human beings, we inevitably experience difficult situations, sensations, thoughts, emotions, experiences in general. 

At times, the energy and emotion with which we resist a situation or condition in our lives may create as much suffering as the very condition itself.

Resistance to the situation can come in many forms, including clenching, tensing up, fighting it, trying to fix it or make it go away, ignoring it, pushing through, unwillingness to be with it, frustration, denial, or fear. Of course, these forms of resistance are all natural ways to respond to something that is painful or difficult. At the same time, they can lead to greater suffering, including feelings of guilt, shame, or powerlessness, or to patterns of responding and behaving that bring us harm. They can also amplify pain, anxiety, and depression, and fuel the threat physiology cycle. 

When we intentionally choose to make space for our experience, to allow it, to open up to it from a place of agency, intention, and choice, we gain the willingness to relate to what is difficult differently, and the freedom to move forward in a more expansive way. We can be happier and find greater ease, even in the presence of pain and suffering. 

The following reflections are adapted from The Mindful Toolbox by Donald Altman and the practice Soften, soothe and allow is adapted from the work of Kristin Neff and Chris Germer.

If you wish to offer a donation, you can do so here. Thank you.