Therapy & Consultation
Gentle, Safe, and Transformative
I am passionate about helping adolescents, adults, and families work through their issues, both emotionally and physically. I am a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, certified as a Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner (SEP) and a NeuroAffective Touch® Practitioner. My healing approach is an integration of psychodynamic psychotherapy, Somatic Experiencing and NeuroAffective Touch.
With the latest science of nervous system regulation and developmental trauma, my gentle, safe and very attuned connection helps guide you towards your organic truths that ultimately help transform your body and mind relationship. You will release old stored physical and emotional wounds, be able to provide a corrective response and resolution to your trauma, including early infancy trauma, and learn how to ground, settle, track sensation and self regulate.
This empowering process will restore a sense of self trust and presence, increase a sense of meaningful connection to self and others, and increase a sense of expansion, freedom, and joy in both your body and mind.
Consultation for Parents
In addition to my clinical work I offer parents consultation sessions in my office, by video conference or teletherapy, or in your home. These sessions can be particularly helpful when experiencing a big transition such as divorce, entering adolescence or early adulthood, moving homes, and significant loss (a family member or pet).
I also treat individuals with learning and school related issues including social anxiety. I teach parents, families, caretakers and educators self regulating and settling skills such as grounding, resourcing, orienting, and tracking so as to help integrate the body mind connection in order to best cope with challenges in life.
What is Somatic Experiencing?
Somatic Experiencing (SE) is a body-oriented approach to the healing of trauma and other stress disorders. It was developed by Dr. Peter A. Levine. Over the last 45 years, Somatic Experiencing has been successfully used in clinical application by tens of thousands of therapists all over the world.
The SE approach releases traumatic shock, which is key to transforming PTSD and the wounds of emotional and early developmental trauma. Somatic Experiencing presents us with a doorway towards healing your trauma so that you may find safety, wholeness, a sense of freedom and loving relationships.
What is trauma?
Trauma can be the result of acute stress from a perceived life-threat, or the end product of cumulative stress. Both can seriously impair our ability to function with resilience and ease. Trauma can be caused by accidents, sexual abuse, physical assault, invasive medical procedures, emotional abuse, neglect, loss, birth trauma, war, natural disasters, or ongoing fear and conflict.
How Somatic Experiencing works
In the early seventies Dr. Levine studied the animal nervous system. He discovered that while animals are constantly under threat of death, they show no symptoms of trauma. How could this be?
All animals, and human beings, have three survival responses to a perceived life threat: fight, flight, and freeze. Dr. Levine discovered that trauma has to do with the third survival response, which is freeze or immobility. When the first two, fight and flight, no longer work to resolve a threatening situation, our bodies freeze and immobilize. This is literally like “playing dead.” Think of what the possum does. This makes us less of a target.
However, a massive amount of energy develops to prepare our body for fight and flight. If we instead move into immobility, this massive amount of energy to prepare us for fight or flight needs to get discharged from the body. The body does that through shaking and trembling. This physical reaction is time-sensitive. It needs to run its course to complete.
Often for us human beings the natural phase of shaking and trembling doesn’t complete. We are ashamed of the shaking, we try to override it, we get picked up by our mother and become distracted, etc.
If the immobility phase doesn’t complete this enormous charge stays trapped in our body. From our body’s perspective, we are still under threat. The trapped energy stays stuck. It is a threat alarm that can cause severe dysregulation and dissociation. This is how trauma forms.
Somatic Experiencing works to release this stored energy, and thereby addressing the root cause of trauma symptoms.
There is no need to relive the trauma
The traumatic event is not what caused the trauma. It is the overwhelmed response to the perceived life threat that is causing the trauma. During Somatic Experiencing sessions we are not focused on retelling or reliving the event. Our aim is to help you access the body memory of the event, not the story. We don’t discuss the event if you don’t want to.
Take your time
Somatic Experiencing uses a method of slowly releasing energy. We work at a pace and level that you can handle. It is a rhythmic process that helps you develop resiliency, and a greater capacity to stay in the present moment, where you belong.
Somatic Experiencing training
Somatic Experiencing has been taught since the early 80s to more than 20,000 mental health practitioners in North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia.
Peter A. Levine, PhD
Dr. Peter A. Levine holds a doctorate in psychology and received his PhD in medical biophysics from the University of California in Berkeley. As the developer of the Somatic Experiencing approach he has worked in the field of stress and trauma for over 40 years.
In March of 2020 Dr. Levine received a Lifetime Achievement Award from Psychotherapy Networker, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the United States Association for Body Psychotherapy (USABP) in 2010. That same year he also received the honorary Reis Davis Chair in Child Psychiatry for his innovative contribution to therapy for children and adolescents.
Somatic Experiencing books
Maggie Kline’s most recent book Brain Changing Strategies to Trauma/ Proofing our Schools. A Hearth-Centered Movement for Wiring Well-beeing
Dr. Peter Levine is the author of the bestseller Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma. It was published in 24 languages and sold over 250,000 copies. His other published works include:
Healing Trauma: a Pioneering Program in Restoring the Wisdom of Our Bodies
In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness
Sexual Healing: Transforming the Sacred Wound
co-author of Trauma through a Child’s Eyes: Awakening the Ordinary Miracle of Healing, with Maggie Kline
co-author of Trauma-Proofing Your Kids: A Parent’s Guide for Instilling Confidence, Joy and Resilience, with Maggie Kline
co-author of Freedom from Pain: Discover Your Body’s Power to Overcome Physical Pain, with Dr. Maggie Phillips
Trauma and Memory: Brain and Body in a Search for the Living Past: A Practical Guide for Understanding and Working with Traumatic Memory
Learn more about Somatic Experiencing and Dr. Peter Levine at traumahealing.org and somaticexperiencing.com
“Thank you for changing my world through your attentiveness and empathy.”
- Client
What is NeuroAffective Touch?
NeuroAffective Touch® is a psychobiological touch approach to help heal the deep wounds of developmental trauma. It integrates the key elements of somatic psychotherapy, attachment and developmental theory, psychodynamic psychotherapy, and affective and interpersonal neurobiology.
Developed by Dr. Aline LaPierre, NeuroAffective Touch transcends the limitations of talk therapy for healing core relational wounds. Dr. LaPierre says: “Our bodies tell the story of our struggles to love and be loved.”
The science
NeuroAffective Touch is informed by recent neurophysiological studies of Dr. Stephen Porges, Distinguished University Scientist at the Kinsey Institute, Indiana University, and Professor of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina.
Why include the body in psychotherapy?
Many issues and disorders cannot be resolved by talk therapy alone. As I have learned in my Somatic Experiencing work, the body, mind and nervous system are fully integrated. More specific, NeuroAffective Touch teaches us that the body is affected when we engage the mind, and the body cannot be touched without engaging the mind.
Statistics from the 1900s show us the importance of touch. Before touch was understood, up to 90% of infants in orphanages died because of lack of touch.
Modern research gives us evidence that babies need to be held, nuzzled, and hugged in order to develop normally. Tiffany Field, PhD, Director of the Touch Research Institute at the University of Miami School of Medicine, has dedicated her career to studying the effects of touch therapy. Her work shows that loving, caring touch is critical in the infant’s development.
Touch, neglect, and abuse
Yet, not all of us grew up experiencing loving, caring touch. Many of us experienced some form of neglect or abuse. We now know that some form of abuse of touch is at the root of many disorders. And it is a known fact that abusive parents were themselves touched in traumatizing ways.
Dr. LaPierre’s work shows that gentle, supportive, and nurturing touch can lead to profound healing of these very deep wounds.
What is developmental trauma?
Dr. LaPierre describes developmental trauma as “the result of ongoing hurtful parenting that is beyond a child’s control.”
Developmental trauma disrupts the natural developmental process of infants and children. Instead of focusing in an open-hearted way on curiosity and play, the impact of chronic abuse, neglect and overwhelming stress orients the child to developing their survival skills.
When fear becomes a primary force in their lives, they lose trust and become hyperalert to cues of emotional and relational danger. They always prepare for the worst. Their nervous system goes in survival mode.
As adults they struggle with issues such as shame, self-hatred, depression, anxiety, lack of confidence, anger, rage, violence and failed relationships. Often they develop signs of trauma or PTSD.
Does NeuroAffective Touch help resolve developmental trauma?
NeuroAffective Touch can repair developmental trauma by introducing gentle, supportive, and nurturing touch to counter the very early abusive disruptions. Sessions help restore trust and support and repair the gaps in early development. Clients start developing a newly found sense of “I am loved.”
Dr. Aline LaPierre
Dr. Aline LaPierre is the developer of NeuroAffective Touch and director of The NeuroAffective Touch Institute. She is past faculty in the somatic doctoral program at Santa Barbara Graduate Institute, a clinician, author, artist, consultant, speaker, and teacher. She is currently Vice-President of the United Sates Association of Body Psychotherapy (USABP) and Deputy Editor of the International Body Psychotherapy Journal.
In the field of somatics, she has studied Somatic Experiencing (SE), Postural Integration, Cranio-Sacral Therapy, Reichian Therapies, Bodynamics Analysis, Continuum, BodyMind Centering, and EMDR. She was a member of the Allan Schore Affective Neuroscience study group for several years and maintains a private practice.
Healing Developmental Trauma
Dr. Aline LaPierre is the co-author of the bestseller Healing Developmental Trauma: How Trauma Affects Self-Regulation, Self-Image, and the Capacity for Relationship, a groundbreaking book in developmental psychology, now available in ten languages.
Learn more at neuroaffectivetouch.com
“You have opened my eyes so deeply and widely towards understanding myself.”
-Client