Integrate Healing - Counseling & Reiki

I view all symptoms, whether physical or emotional, as feedback about the nature of the whole person. A person is the sum total of his/her life experiences, each of which is registered in the personality and emotionally stored in the body, affecting how one experiences the world. Past emotional/physical traumas are remembered in the body’s tissues, causing ongoing physiological and/or psychological issues to the unaware individual. Chronic muscle tensions can be a signal when feelings have been suppressed due to having a threatening quality.

The way we acquire deviations from our ideal form is to accept limitations into our life. Much of this can come from early childhood because that is the phase of life where we are the most open and inquisitive. A limitation may be a parent yelling "BE QUIET!!" enough times that the child learns to not speak. Another limitation may be a limp that continues long after the physical injury has healed, maybe with phantom pains. These limitations are behavior patterns, eating patterns, physical limitations, imagined physical limitations, psychological, mental, or emotional ways of being, living, expressing or loving that is not in alignment with our personal highest expression

Therapies which consist only of dialogue between client and therapist, have their major impact on the awareness half of the issue. Through skillful verbal interventions, heightened awareness can occur within the client. The client can come to know better what they want, what they feel, how they inhibit their expressions, and why they inhibit in terms of both current, and more importantly, historical reasons with clearer understanding or insight.

The Talking Path: Talking—Memories (thinking)—Feelings.

When used skillfully the verbal level of intervention may expose the memory of the events, which led to the client’s avoidance, or self-interruption of process. At times, the memory leads to the experience of the feeling, which accompanied the event. It is, of course, the re-experiencing of the feeling, which is necessary for psychological growth to take place. Sometimes the talking will lead to feelings and then memories, but more frequently the verbal channel runs through memory (thinking) on its route to the feelings.

The Body Path: Bodywork—Feeling—Memory.

However, the talking sometimes gets mired in the thinking about talking about memories. One rationale for bodywork in psychotherapy is that the body intervention more predictably gives access to the feelings. Through the body, this access is more direct. It provides a more direct path to the affects, which are connected with the past, the unfinished business. Bodywork tends to evoke feelings in their full power. Feelings accessed strictly verbally can appear in diminished form and often are brought to their full intensity usually with great difficulty, of course with some exceptions.
Bodywork counseling gently encourages an individual to connect with feelings surrounding trauma, confusion, and pain that are held within their body. As one comes into contact with these feelings, they do so from a non-rational/intellectual place but from a more emotional/intuitive place. This facilitates the releases of the emotions and also seems to bring additional insight and clarity to the situation/issue at hand.
Contacting a deeper sense of wisdom and guidance within is both possible and helpful to growth. Different modalities of bodywork aim at assisting people in accessing their inner wisdom for greater emotional and psychological integration. When the body is used as a gateway into the psyche, it seems that issues are more rapidly resolved and physical symptoms, such as chronic pain, are also alleviated in the process without having to ‘psychoanalyze’ an issue for a prolonged time.

Counseling and Reiki for Adults, Youth, and Couples