Somatics - IFS - Psychodynamics -

Somatics - IFS - Psychodynamics -

Helping you harmonize head with heart

Experienced in Supporting

  • Folks questioning or identified as Autistic, ADHD, NeuroSpicy, NeuroQueer

    Whether you need help with accepting this part of you or having a competent practitioner integrate this into your existing therapeutic work, I got you.

  • Breakups, Relationship Distress or Dating - platonic, romantic or sexual relationships

    I help folks recover from romantic and friendship losses, narcisstic abuse, and insecure attachments. I especially enjoy supporting folks through dating, marriage and ENM.

  • Anxiety, Low Self Worth, CPTSD, and unresolved traumas

    Anxiety and low self worth are often expressions of unresolved trauma. I help folks stabilize their emotions, connect their MindBody and transform deeply held negative beliefs.

  • Folks Questioning their gender or sexuality, or identified as LGBTQIA+

    I help folks transition, explore and define gender and sexuality for themselves, heal internalized transphobia, biphobia, and homophobia, and provide care with microaggressions.

  • Life Transitions, Grief, Loss, Chronic Illness and Dying

    Change and grief are constants of life and some of the hardest emotional experiences. Whether you’ve lost a person, a place, a pet, a job, are living with illness or are a caretaker, I got you.

  • Eating disorders, body shame, disordered exercise and eating, and ongoing recovery

    I help folks at all stages of recovery from diagnosable disorders to folks who don’t meet criteria but know their relationship to their body, food and “attractiveness” needs investigating.

Integrative Somatic Psychotherapy is about tending to the Whole Person - Mind, Body and Spirit.

It means fusing concepts and tools experientially to support the unique needs of the individual.

Psychology

  • Believes the unconscious and subconscious influence behaviors, patterns and long led beliefs impeding authentic expression and causing unresolved pain.

    I often focuses on the past and how it influences present, such as your childhood. It arose out of psychanalytic theory, but takes modern perspectives including Object Relations and Attachment theory into its framework.

    It is about making the meaning that is most meaningful to you in order to integrate repressed parts of Self.

  • Believes our earliest experiences with our primary caregivers shape how we relate to ourselves and the people around us as adults.

    It was birthed out of an experiment where babies reactions to their primary caregiver leaving the room were studied, and resulted in the discovery of secure vs. insecure attachments that cause distress, disarray and shame in adult relationships.

    The approach uses both the therapeutic relationship itself as a laboratory for healing ones attachment wounds (not getting needs met as a child) as well as exploring present relationship dynamics and how they are influenced by ones attachment system.

    Earned secure attachment is possible for everyone, an ultimately is about becoming secure in ones-Self.

  • Emphasizes looking at the whole individual and stresses concepts such as free will, self-efficacy, and self-actualization. Rather than concentrating on dysfunction or pathology, humanistic psychology strives to help people fulfill their potential and maximize their well-being.

    It believes:

    Humans cannot be viewed as the sum of their parts or reduced to functions/parts.

    Humans exist in a unique human context and cosmic ecology.

    Human beings are conscious and are aware of their awareness.

    Humans have a responsibility because of their ability to choose.

    It’s ultimate guiding principle is that humans are inherently good. This helps us to heal shame and self punishing behaviors, as well as doing harm unto others.

  • Cognitive Behavioral Thearpy (CBT) is focused on symptoms and behaviors, and understanding ones patterns in relation to their thoughts. CBT-E is an outgrowth of CBT that is used often for eating disorders and is more directive than CBT, which is an already teaching/coaching type approach.

    Homework and worksheets are often given, but not always. Specific concepts such as Cognitive Distortions help folks learn that not every thought we have holds water. And ultimately, we are not our thoughts and have choice in how we react and respond to the thoughts we have.

    The goal is to strengthen ones muscle for responding to “distorted” thoughts and over time develop internalizing positive self-statements and behaviors.

  • Dialectical Behavior Therapy grew out of CBT. It’s main difference are around compassion and validation of the client in the process of changing thoughts and behaviors.

    It teaches many self soothing skills for emotional dysregulation through mindfulness techniques, as well as works to balance out all or nothing thinking and mood swings.

    It is often used for folks experiencing self-harm, suicidality, eating disorders and Borderline Personality Disorder.

    It helps folks access their “Wise Mind” instead of only reacting from thought or emotion.

  • Aims to separate the individual from the problem, allowing the individual to externalize their issues rather than internalize them. It relies on the individual's own skills and sense of purpose to guide them through difficult times.

    Over time, it helps the individual write a new story about themselves which in turns provides empowerment and greater choice in making different decisions in life.

    It is a powerful, and often creative ally in combating shame and negative self beliefs. As well as finding healing from traumatic experiences in life.

  • Is an integrative approach combining systems thinking with the view that the mind is made up of relatively discrete subpersonalities, each with its own unique viewpoint and qualities.

    Meaning, we all have different “parts” and they are often at odds with one another or conspiring together to keep us defended, on alert or in denial of other authentic parts.

    The goal is to unblend these parts, give them voice, and develop authentic relationships to each of them so YOU are the driver of the car, not your various parts with narrow views, emotions and behaviors.

    Ultimately, IFS helps someone become more fully themself, reduce shame and feel more choice.

  • Takes a holistic approach to therapy with an emphasis on spirituality. This type of therapy aims to address the client's mental, physical, social, emotional, creative, and intellectual needs in order to facilitate healing and growth.

    It integrates spiritual traditions and rituals into modern psychology. It emphasizes positive influences and role models rather than concentrating on negative experiences. The holistic treatment is based on the idea that humans are more than just their mind and body, but are also composed of intangible, or transcendent, factors that make up the whole person.

    It focuses on a broader conception of how a person achieves meaning, purpose, and happiness.

    It integrates various somatic and creative modalities for tending the spirit and expressing emotion as well. It places great emphasis on honesty and self awareness.

  • Focuses on the anxiety and pain that occurs when a client confronts the conflict inherent in life: that suffering is universal.

    It focuses on concepts that are universally applicable to human existence including death, freedom, responsibility, and the meaning of life.

    The goal is to make more willful decisions about how to live, drawing on creativity and love, instead of letting outside events determine one's behavior.

    It stresses all people have the capacity for self-awareness. Each person has a unique identity that can be known only through relationships with others. People must continually re-create themselves because life’s meaning constantly changes. Anxiety is part of the human condition.

  • If you tend to suppress your emotions to the point that it harms your health, emotion-focused therapy may help.

    It approaches healing from the belief that emotions are strongly linked to identity. Emotions guide us in defining preferences and making decisions on a daily basis.

    EFT assumes that lack of emotional awareness is harmful. Avoiding your emotions can lead to negative outcomes in your life. Over time, ignoring or avoiding your emotional response may alter your ability to process emotions later on.

    You’ll gain awareness of your emotions and receive help in understanding them. As well as learn coping strategies for facing and managing your emotions.

    EFFT (emotions focused family therapy) is often used for parents or family members with someone experiencing an eating disorder to help them better support that person through recovery. It is very coaching/teaching like, and helps parents and caregivers learn how to regulate their own emotions so they can attune more compassionately, effectively and with appropriate boundaries with their children and loved ones.

Healing tools tailored to You

Somatics

  • A body oriented therapy aimed at treating trauma and stress-related disorders, such as PTSD. The primary goal of SE is to modify the trauma-related stress response through bottom-up processing (sensations, then emotions, then thoughts).

    It can be hands on or hands off and gives great focus to resourcing - helping a client learn to regulate the nervous system, notice and build safety in the body and enjoy life, rather than being driven only by hypervigilance and lack of trust in the body.

    Ultimately, it seeks to seeks to repair and complete the natural cycle our bodies possess to release trauma responses. It is about healing at the roots, healing faux windows of tolerance (operating constantly in hyperactivation: anxiety/anger or hypoactivation: numbness and depression), and getting an embodied ability to exist in a wider window of tolerance, which includes being able to tolerate positive and negative sensations more widely.

  • Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment was developed to provide a trauma-informed approach to the challenges of treating self-destructive behavior.

    Based on theoretical principles drawn from the neuroscience research on trauma and structural dissociation theory, TIST offers a treatment approach that integrates mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, ego state techniques, and Internal Family Systems.

    It has been used successfully to address the challenges of treating individuals with diagnoses of complex PTSD, borderline personality, bipolar disorder, addictive and eating disorders, and dissociative disorders.

    Because it contextualizes self-destructive behavior as trauma-related, patients feel less pathologized, increasing their motivation to overcome self-destructive impulses as a step toward overcoming trauma.

    It uses the language of “parts” but in relation to the nervous system (fight, flight, freeze, submit, attach, going on with regular life) and helps integrate the parts, develop greater self regulatory abilities and decrease shame.

  • The term “polarity” is a broad reference to the concept of positive and negative energy in the body. It is about restoring balance in the whole system through the four pillars of bodywork, counseling, nutrition and exercise.

    It helps bring more interoceptive awareness (ability to feel on the inside) and explores embodiments of polarities - opposites, in order to find a more regulated and balanced state.

  • Rosen Method is based on the pioneering innovation of Marion Rosen. During 70 years as a physical therapist and bodyworker, she developed a unique approach that enhances self-awareness.

    The listening touch of a Rosen Method bodywork practitioner leads to deep relaxation, heightened understanding, and greater self-knowledge.

    Various parts of the body are associated with emotional experiences, such as the shoulders as the “responsibility muscles” so meaning making through listening to the tension (and hopefully release) of the subtle body is foundational to the practice.

    Though typically a hands on approach, it can be adapted to self touch through virtual telehealth, as well as the movements taught by Marion Rosen that create a sense of relaxation in the body.

    Ultimately, it helps someone begin to listen deeply to the messages of the body.

  • A meditative movement approach that helps someone learn how to let their body move them instead of the mind controlling-instructing the body.

    It focuses on the transformative cathartic power of being witnessed in movement and witnessing others move.

    It helps to release unconscious and sub conscious build up in the MindBody by closing the eyes and waiting for the impulse to move. It is NOT about dancing or aesthetics. It’s about feeling and moving from there, as well as developing an internal witness to your own movement.

    Learning how to notice sensations, emotions, images, memories, thoughts and the sequence in which it all arose.

    Journaling and verbal processing afterwards is also part of the process when desired.

  • Is an umbrella of approaches involving dance, music and movement to help one become expressed, emotionally aware, and to work through narratives of self.

    It can involves prompts, freestyle, or guided movement to help a person become more embodied - comfortable in their body, as well as as channel for expressing the unconscious and subconsciouos.

    It can also be a tool for developing and expanding relational capacities when space and touch are involved.

  • Cultural somatics is an open-source framework for collective change innovated by Tada Hozumi based on the foundational principle: cultures are bodies made of bodies, and because of this, individual change and collective change are embodied energetic processes that necessarily have a fractal relationship with each other.

    Micro pain, such as early childhood trauma, and macro pain, such as misogyny, are all understood to be interrelated energetic issues. Because of this, bringing about fundamental change require us to work on many levels at once. The healing of a childhood wound may require the healing of a million years old ancestral trauma.

    Somatic Abolitionism is part of Cultural Somatics and led by Resmaa Menaken and the Cultural Somatics Institute. It is an embodied way of living that builds resilience and discernment, upends white-body supremacy, and trains our bodies, individually and collectively, to rediscover their natural alignment.

  • Breema is a teaching of the heart, an expression of the unifying principle of Existence. Its purpose is to create harmony and balance between your mind, feelings, and body, and in your relationship to yourself, to others, and to all life.

    Self-Breema exercises are gentle subtle self touch movements and sequences that help bring awareness to the body, foster self compassion and attunement and regulate the nervous system into a peaceful awakened state.

    It’s Nine Principles of Harmony include making the body comfortable, nothing extra is needed to be yourself beyond existing, firmness and gentleness are never separate, the most natural way of moving and living is with full participation, mutual support: you are able to give because you have received, non-judgemental attitudes, focusing on a single moment with a single activity, no hurrying or pausing just present movement, and no force in each and every moment.

  • Mindfulness is the basic human ability to be fully present, aware of where we are and what we’re doing, and not overly reactive or overwhelmed by what’s going on around us.

    Mindfulness is a quality that every human being already possesses, it’s not something you have to conjure up, you just have to learn how to access it.

    While mindfulness is innate, it can be cultivated through proven techniques. It is not about clearing your mind and having no thoughts.

    It often involves the breath, posture and even gesture, and is often a guided practice in the therapy room.

  • There are many approaches and languages to energy healing. Reiki is one of them and is a Japanese energy healing approach that uses the energy of universal love through the palms of the hands into, onto and around the body to clear stuck emotions, balance over active or underactive energies and ultimately promote a balanced peaceful internal state. However, it can also be used to attend to physical pain.

    It works on the physical, emotional, psychological and spiritual levels and can be done IRL or virtually.

    Many energy healing modalities and traditions share these benefits and goals with Reiki. Ultimately energy healing is about healing the nervous system through presence, touch, movement and breath often with the support of the practitioner in person or virtually.

    Though energy may seem invisible or made up, you can think of it as the vibration and tone emitted by our nervous system - our fight, flight freeze, etc. system that exists throughout our body and brain.

  • Yoga is a Hindu spiritual and ascetic discipline, a part of which, including breath control, simple meditation, and the adoption of specific bodily postures, is widely practiced for health and relaxation - the Asanas.

    However there are eight limbs to yoga including the Yamas which have their own specific sub practices such as Satya - truthfulness.

    Yoga is used in session to help release tension and emotion in the body, build interoceptive awareness, and develop a stronger connection to the Self and the spirit within.

Creativity

  • A book and body of work by Julia Cameron about helping blocked creatives recover from deeper wounds. It is a framework full of practices and exercises that help someone become more courageous in their expression and in acknowledging their dreams and desires. It can also be a way to help someone develop their own form of spirituality and freeing up their symbolic channel to express their inner world of emotions and imaginations in a healthy way.

  • Painting in session are a non verbal non cognitive way to access the unconscious and sub conscious in order to bring to light aspects of Self and experience that are needing support and integration. It is also a helpful embodiment practice for folks recovering from perfectionism and a more accessible way to be in the body without having so much focus on sensations which can be overwhelming for some. It can be a great muscle to cultivate for when having emotional or ptsd flashbacks outside of sessions or during non-verbal episodes.

  • Poetry is a great channel for intense emotions and thoughts or experiences we are ashamed to speak outloud. It flexes our narrative and imaginal muscles essential for developing a healthy sense of self, as well as gives voice to exiled or over managed parts of ourselves that need to be expressed in a healthy way. Lastly, it builds our vocabulary for naming sensations and emotions - our felt sense in an expansive self defined way.

  • The physical act of writing is in and of itself regulating due to the left to right or right to left bilateral nature of it. This stimulates both sides of the brain which has been proven to increase communication or new neural networks that increase cognitive functioning and emotional regulation.

    Journaling is also effective for setting to know our parts better, diving deeper in the past to make the unconscious conscious and developing a new narrative for one self

    It is a great in between embodiment practice between mind and heart.

  • Music is used a form of expression and self regulation in and outside of session, and song writing, similar to poetry, is a great channel for repressed emotions and experiences, and parts of ourselves that need to be expressed in a healthy way. It can be an impactful tool for developing self confidence and effectiveness in communicating firmly and vulnerably. It can be a great channel for managing emotional and PTSD flashbacks.

  • A tactile practice that soothes the nervous system and flexes the creative imaginative muscle. It helps one to become embodied and present without putting too much focus on the sensations of the body.

  • A powerful tool for regualating stuck energy, building social connections and communities, as well as expressing oneself authentically.

  • A great practice for building ones intuition - allowing oneself to affirm what objects feel meaningful or important to place in a certain area and in a certain configuration. It can be a great harm reduction approach to OCD type behaviors as well as eating disorder behaviors. Seeing objects that represent things we are working on or want to embody or want to let go of are external visual reminders of the work we are doing and help over time to subconsciously change held patterns and beliefs about the Self and the world.

Spirituality

  • When the DSM talks about genetics and mental health disorders, what it’s not mentioning is that is literally what is passed down to us - unprocessed trauma and beliefs that impact our own wellbeing from our ancestors. However, there is also medicine and resilience passed down that can be a great resource.

    Beginning to learn about where you come from - the people, land and practices, can be essential missing pieces for self understanding and breaking of long held patterns. It can also be a great way to develop spirituality that lives outside of organized religion and prevents the appropriation of other peoples spiritual traditions.

    Going down a google search worm hole of ancestral related terms, topics and histories can be a great distraction tool as well.

  • Ritual helps to bring meaningful ceremony and consistency into our lives and acts as a anchor for our nervous systems living in overwhelming societal conditions.

    Magic helps us to orient to resourcing things in our life, exercise our imagination, connect with our inner children and our ancestors, and be a container for emotional distress. It helps us to learn over time that we are in fact magical humans, no more or less special or deserving than anyone else.

  • Astrology is a powerful knowledge system that helps to foster a sense of self acceptance by releasing self shame, frustration or confusion. When we learn about the layers and intricacies of the energies in our charts, we can learn to accept who we are without staying there and feel greater empowerment about how to work with more challenging aspects to our charts.

    It can also be a powerful narrative tool for understanding the self in relationship to the collective and be more in tune with the cycles of life and seasons around us. Sometimes it’s just us, and sometimes it’s us feeling and responding to the greater astrological transits around us.

    Planetary worship is a focused practice for connecting the the meaning of specific planets to help one integrate those characteristics or medicines or lessons into ones being.

  • Receiving someones channeled card reading or learning how to become a channel for your own is a powerful self affirming practice that allows a person to make meaning of what’s happening for them in their language. It is NOT a predictive tool (unless you are Romani which it then can be a predictive tool but is a closed practice).

    The lessons and symbols that appear from the readings help to soothe the nervous system, provide self understanding and even motivation for change.

    I often do readings for clients in sessions for our last sessions or for times where a wider view is needed.

  • Connecting to the physical land you live on as well as the ones your people come from is a powerful spiritual practice that promotes embodiment, respect, presence and awe.

    Paganism is a more structured and european form of what came before christianity and can be a helpful pathway for folks wanting to reclaim land based folk based practices prior to Christian empire.

  • This is also about building culture that lives outside of white supremacy which so much of white washed spirituality and religion can exist within. It is about connecting with others with similar spiritual practices as well as making new traditions rooted in the land, body and magic.

  • An off shoot of The Artists Way, this is a form of spirituality that sees spirit as Creativity itself. So all practices are using creativity for “worship”

  • Similar to Divination, one can learn how to channel ideas, spirits, ancestors, energies, creative spirit, intuition, the land, really anything without losing oneself or becoming unboundried.

    This can help folks who feel chronic loneliness.

  • The moon is a part of our everyday existence and impacts our internal emotional experiences due to how much water we are made up of…like the tides!

    Working with the moons cycles, learning what they mean, doing practices aligned with them, even just being with the moon on a regular physical basis can be a great spiritual practice that promotes intuition, balanced emotionality, and softness. It can help us feel less alone and less afraid to go within.

What is Somatic Psychotherapy?

Soma - the living body in its wholeness

— Ancient Greece

You heard right,

the body does keep the score.

But not only of life’s pain.

It also holds the greatest joy, peace and strength.

Your body is not just a portal to healing.

It’s a call to freedom.

The literal re-membering of Self.

Most psychotherapy only focuses on the Mind - thoughts and beliefs.

Integrative Psychotherapy, like mine, which fuses Somatic Psychology, Internal Family Systems and Psychodyamics, harmonizes your systems and allows for radical change.


The mind is part of the body, and the body is Self.

By working from the bottom-up: sensations, emotions, then thoughts, you gain access to an infinite well of information about your authentic experience, and foster greater compassion for your survival defenses keeping your past as present.

Through a plethora of concepts, practices and experiments, Somatic Psychology, Internal Family Systems and Psychodynamics helps you integrate your inner conflicts, limiting beliefs, and automatic reactions with your internal resources, sense of wonder and existing resilience.

This is the return to Wholeness.

The field of Somatic Psychotherapy is at the forefront of helping people heal at the root of their suffering, instead of only treating symptoms and “behaviors” through over-prescribed coping skills that often leave much to be desired in depth and customization.

It is an umbrella of therapies that ultimately centers the reality of our physiology - that our Minds and Bodies are actually one working system, and that there is deep untapped healing wisdom potential laying latent within the body - not just the mind. It fuses both psychology and somatics together, as well as creativity, spirituality and client centered experientials.

Fusing Somatic Psychotherapy, IFS and CBT are especially helpful for treating

the many expressions of trauma such as, but not limited to anxiety, depression, dissociation, disordered eating, perfectionism, workaholism and people pleasing.

It is here for anyone with the courage to reconnect with the felt senses of the body and the desire to live a fully expressed life.

It is not a quick fix, a one-size-fits-all procedure, or a coach telling you exactly what you should or shouldn’t do.

It is an experimental laboratory where your therapist contains you, guides you, and affirms you as you make embodied contact with your innate inner knowing.

Through the sacred safety of the therapeutic relationship, you will learn to trust yourself, love yourself, and enjoy your body, life and world you inhabit.

Step by Step.

Day by Day.

Breath by Breath.

Are you curious what wisdom lies within?

Do you wish for greater agency?

Have you dreamt of long lasting change?

Your Somatic Psychotherapist

I was introduced to the field of Somatic Psychology when I was deciding where to do my graduate work as a soon-to-be-therapist. I had planned to do the expressive arts program at CIIS, but after I shared with the admissions counselor my reasons for becoming a therapist, they recommended I check out the Somatics program - one of the only in the world.

I had found myself on the Becoming-A-Therapist path after recovering from an eating disorder as a professional dancer. There was no somatics in my treatment program and I had just left my previous dance company that was toxic to build my own focused on moving from the inside out instead of being aesthetic based - The No Mirrors Movement. Learning about Somatic Psychology was the missing link I was looking for in what I intuitively knew - how essential it is for healing, especially disordered eating, to get back into the body. I was hooked and my life forever changed.

Both as the giver of Somatic Psychotherapy and the receiver, I have completely rewired my nervous system. As a chronic over worker, perfectionist, and go-go-go do-do-doer , I was finally able to actually relax. Enjoy my body and my life. Not only tolerate my physical and emotional sensorial experiences, but regulate them on my own terms. True choice. True empowerment. This was a gamechanger for my relationships and sense of Self.

While there’s no such thing as always being regulated, I can’t imagine my life without having found this alternative pathway.

Now I share what I’ve learned in both my personal healing work and clinical provider work with all those souls who are seeking a different way too. There is so much to be gained from the journey.

Click here to learn more about my own.

S.L. McIntyre (they/he)

Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist #138467

Master’s in Clinical Counseling & Somatic Psychology from CIIS

What former clients are saying

  • "Priceless"

    “Understatement of the year: S.L. is good! 5 stars highly recommend. Their warm, calm energy made me feel at ease. Their enthusiasm is contagious. I felt so supported, validated, safe, seen, and empowered.”

  • "So healing"

    “I came in with a lot of complex thoughts and feelings regarding sexuality, creativity privilege, belonging, dating, relationships and more! I felt safe to share things I haven’t with anyone. I feel more clear and confident now.”

  • "Life Changing"

    “Their approach is unique because they LISTEN deeply to what I am needing that day, and tailor their therapeutic work to support where I’m at. They’re system issues informed, empowering and validating. Their work is body-based and life-changing.”

Try out Somatics for Free Today

Download my free Guided Orienting Practice. A foundational practice for healing trauma, reducing stress and coming back to center. I often use this practice in session with clients in helping them arrive to the space.