In our work together, you can expect a greater focus on:

• Present-moment awareness, as opposed to traditional talk therapy formats that spend a lot of time gathering your life history and/or analyzing the impact of your past experiences. It’s not that our past hasn’t shaped us into who we are, but life only happens in this moment and this moment is the only place where change can occur. For example, we may explore:

  • What comes up for you right now as you reflect on that particular memory or “re-live” (so-to-speak) that past experience?

  • What are you doing on a moment-to-moment basis, consciously or unconsciously, that is keeping the past alive within you now?

• Experimentation. This is a crucial aspect of “going beyond the mind,” because we cannot get anywhere in life by just thinking about it; we have to live it! Once something new enters your experience, only then is it real for you. This is the aim of “experimenting” during therapy, and it might include one, many, or none of these:

  • Noticing and describing physical sensations

  • Role-playing as your mom/dad/partner/friend/past self/future self/loveable self/unloveable self/dog/cat/plant/shoe/ingrown toenail and having a dialogue between two or more of these “characters” (In Gestalt therapy, this is most commonly referred to as the “empty chair technique”)

  • Exaggerating a particular movement, like your foot tapping or hands fidgeting

  • Re-telling/acting out a past experience or dream as if it’s happening right now

• Somatic (body-based) activities. The body and mind are interconnected, and thus we can leverage our physicality to help bring balance to the entire system. It might look like:

  • Taking a few rounds of deep breaths

  • Shaking the hands or waving the arms to move stagnant (depressed) energy

  • Moving into a particular posture (i.e. “legs up the wall”) to calm nervous (anxious) energy

  • Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) aka “tapping”