This work is grounded in the principles of Polyvagal Theory, Somatic Experiencing, attachment repair and integrates other body-based approaches to transforming trauma. It offers a way to understand and work with the body and nervous system that is both scientifically informed and deeply compassionate.

It’s not about “doing breathwork”, shaking or adding a calming practice to your routine. And it's not about being calm all the time. While somatic practices can be helpful, it’s not only about what we do, but how we understand and relate to our experiences. This work involves understanding, befriending and tending to our nervous systems, so that we can slowly start to shift the underlying patterns our bodies learned through early attachment dynamics, chronic stress, personal, intergenerational and systemic trauma and adverse events and environments.

Nervous system patterns, established from in utero through early childhood, set the foundation for how we respond to stress, connection, and challenge throughout life. These experiences of too much, too fast, too soon, without the supportive presence of another, or of what should have happened but didn't, result in changes in our brains and bodies that originally helped us to survive, but in the long run get in the way of our aliveness.

Therefore nervous system work involves creating the conditions for neuroplasticity—the brain and body's ability to rewire through repeated, safe, attuned experiences.

Whilst this can certainly lead to a sense of more calm and peacefulness, we also work on building capacity to be and stay with all of our experiences and navigate life with more ground and ease. We restore nervous system flexibility so that we can respond as the present moment requires it rather than being stuck in old patterns. We establish new pathways of regulation over time and open the door to change and new possibilities.

We build safety from the inside out—through awareness, compassion, and often with the support of another regulated nervous system rather than through cognitive analysis, will power and externally imposed expectations.

It's not a quick fix. But it goes right to the foundation of our experience of ourselves, others and the world and the benefits of working in this way are often immediately tangible. Through a process of resourcing, re-establishing safety, re-patterning, releasing and reconnecting, we can come out of survival mode and access vitality, presence and agency. Slowing down, listening and following the pace of your specific nervous system means that integration of incremental changes (rather than re-traumatization through too much, too fast, too soon) becomes possible. True healing happens not just through a one off experience or through isolated practices we engage in individually, but through sustained, embodied experiences in the presence of a safe other/safe others, reshaping how our system perceives and responds to the world.

It includes: