ABOUT ME

 

I had an awareness, though, that this change also needed to happen in the body. Yoga had brought me down into my body and increased my sensate and energetic awareness, and I was feeling a clear distinction between ‘knowing’ something in my mind, and knowing and integrating it in my being. 

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In 2018, I woke up one morning with the words “somatic plantation” in my head. They were loud and clear and landed heavily within me, and I had absolutely no idea what they meant. I Googled it, and all I seemed to find was information on plants. It was later that year that a friend suggested I read Eastern Body Western Mind by Anodea Judith (an amazing book, if you haven’t read it). I went to the US to study with her, and a whole world of energy, somatics/somatic therapy, embodiment and healing opened up to me. It just felt like everything. 

 

I already had a certificate in Counselling and went on to further my training with Anodea, as well as completing a 300hr Chakra Yoga Teacher Training. But beyond all my studies and learning, my deepest training came through my experience with chronic illness after contracting Covid.

 

Even before I got sick, I was aware that I had symptoms of autoimmune disease, and had begun to understand the link between prolonged stress/trauma and autoimmunity. Alongside working with the trauma patterns that were held in my system, I had started to make lifestyle changes to help my body move out of it’s hyper-vigilant state - a fear response rooted in trauma. However, the illness that I moved through initiated me into my body in a way that was unavoidable, and to a depth I could not have previously fathomed. I had to be with myself and all that was previously stuck in my system; to learn to hold myself in states and places within that for so long I’d been able to avoid and override. I could no longer manage or control like I had been able to before. It felt like the virus went into my system, and blew open all that was in there, whether I was ‘ready’ to meet it or not. Embodiment was no longer a choice, but a necessity.

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It was two days after completing my Massage training that I got sick with Covid. During my training with the Jing School of Massage in Brighton, my understanding of how traumas, coping mechanisms, patterns and emotions are held in the body, had really opened and deepened. I saw how these patterns and energies created blocks in our system – areas cut off from life-force energy, and therefore unable to receive the connection and nourishment that is necessary for our health and wellbeing. Blocks that prevent us from being present, from functioning in a harmonious way and being in full relationship with life.

 

As I navigated my illness, I understood more and more that the only way to transform these patterns of trauma and the blockages that had developed as a result, was to go into the body – to meet them, feel them, and allow them to release so that these parts of my system/psyche could come back into connection with the here and now; with the greater whole that they had been severed from. Through cultivating presence I grew my capacity to stay present with the sensations as they arose, letting go of the stories of the mind (that so often perpetuates and keeps these trauma patterns stuck), and allowing the intelligence of my system to do it’s work. 

 

Touch became an intrinsic part of my healing. I discovered that through attuned touch and presence, I could meet these places of pain on and in my body, and begin to shift and release the patterns and emotions held there. I began to tune into the different qualities of touch, what these would communicate to my system and how it would respond. I listened to and followed the sensation and its messages, and little by little, began to bring these lost parts of me home. 

 

Although I was in pain, and restricted in what I was able to do, as I continued to cultivate presence and release these blocks within me, I began to have a new experience of life - one of really being here: connected, held and supported - with a sense of ease, peace and rightness; a sense of belonging to a greater whole. I actually began to experience what it was like to live without my system being on high-alert all the time, and slowly but surely, the pain gradually began to ease.

 

As my energy returned, I began to build my bodywork practice. This provided me with the incredible opportunity to hold space and work with people’s bodies in the way that I was learning was necessary for my own healing and well-being; by cultivating safety, presence, compassion, non-judgement, deep listening and following the body’s cues - rather than imposing my idea of how to work or what the outcome should be. Incredible things started to happen, I could feel the intelligent impulse of the energy system guiding me, responding and reorganising itself as it needed to. The transformation that occurred on the table - and the feedback I received - was all the confirmation I needed: the work worked. 

 

"People say that what we're all seeking is a meaning for life. I don't think that's what we're really seeking. I think that what we're seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive." - Joseph Campbell, The Power of Myth. 

 

This is what I want. This is the purpose of all the work I have done, continue to do, and intend to offer through my current services: to discover, meet, alchemise and release all that is within us that prevents life from truly living through us; that prevents us from being fully present and alive in free, authentic relationship with our deepest selves and all of life.  

 

I am still - and forever will be - in practice with my own system, self and life. I don’t claim to be an expert, other than of my own lived experience and personal discoveries, and am always learning. But, I am passionate about sharing all that I have learnt and cultivated within myself with those I have the opportunity to work with and walk alongside. 

 

I am particularly interested in the simultaneously chaotic and self-organising intelligence that threads through all of life –and, through my current work, in the body’s self-organising principle, which is always striving towards cohesion and wellbeing.

 

In devotion, and to the best of my ability in service to, this incredible life-force that makes up and animates us all,

 

Reve x