About Me

🧠 Our Mind-Body Connection

While being a systemic therapist, my approach to therapy is holistic in nature. This means I incorporate both somatic and polyvagal therapy and therapeutic techniques along with traditional talk therapy in an effort to deepen the therapy process overall. This is also known as utilizing a “bottom-up approach”, which means there’s a greater emphasis I place on the process of how we experience and move through things as opposed to solely or primarily focusing on the content and details of it.

In therapy, sometimes you can feel stuck, and this is a common experience when focusing on a top-down approach in contrast to a bottom-up one. When you get stuck in the content, sometimes what helps to unlock a deeper level is to pay mindful attention to your body.

With a bottom-up approach, attention is placed on the nervous system, bodily sensations, physical cues, and of course, the breath. Bottom-up approaches include exercises and practices which aid you in gaining greater insight and awareness of your heart-rate, any tension in your body, as well as how you can develop a regulated nervous system. When we experience emotion, our bodies are an active part of that process even when we don’t realize it. It’s why we’re able to identify what our emotions feel like.

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There’s a steady feedback loop between our minds and our bodies which is why our thoughts and emotions are impacted by our physical state and vice versa. (J.T. Lee)

While talk therapy is highly effective, attuning to your body and your nervous system supports a deeper degree of healing, especially in the context of various forms of trauma. By utilizing a somatic approach, you’re also able to discover the benefit in slowing your pace and leaning into slowness and stillness. As human beings our experiences rest in our minds as well as our bodies, and increasing our somatic awareness enables us to increase our self-awareness as well as our emotional awareness.

At times when you don’t have the language, attuning to your body can give greater insight and revelation to you about what you either are experiencing or have experienced in the past. Your body and nervous system hold onto your experiences whether you focus on it or not, and that can show up in ways you may not even recognize at times. By incorporating somatic work and tending to your nervous system, you’re more equipped to exercise healthy emotional management, manage stress more effectively, and discover practical ways of developing and deepening healthy and sustainable relationships with yourself and those in your life.

As a Caribbean woman, I know learning how to attune more to the body can feel new and unfamiliar as a Caribbean individual. Developing this skill takes time. As you become more familiar with how your body feels, how your nervous system responds to varying things in your life, and how you can tend to all of it well, it strengthens your ability to be present and move through both light and distressing moments with a greater measure of kindness, grace, and compassion. It also helps you to both understand more about safety and take steps to restoring and maintaining it through nervous system regulation. As you foster connection with your body, which supports a regulated nervous system, this doesn’t mean you’ll feel calm all the time, but it instead means you develop the skills necessary to effectively move in and out of regulation and your survival states.

Having a cognitive understanding as well as implementing how to intentionally attune to yourself somatically enables you to navigate through your life from a more grounded and centered place, as opposed to moving through from a perpetual place of urgency, rushing, and disconnection. A continuous approach of rushing through your life increases the likelihood of you experiencing more anxiety, and eventually, this can lead to emotional exhaustion and burnout. Additionally, a disconnected relationship with yourself and your body leads to disconnection in your relationships as well.

Tending to yourself well contributes to your overall wellness, and learning how to pay mindful attention to your body and listen to the cues it sends you supports a kind and well-rounded relationship with yourself and by extension, with those in your life. Our minds and our bodies are interconnected, and it’s important that we tend to both. 🍃