A few years into private practice as an Athletic Therapist I was recognizing how inseparable the body and mind are when it comes to navigating injury recovery.
I already knew this, of course, having been through my fair share of injuries and chronic complexities already. The most pivotal and effective therapies in my personal journey had always been a combination of hands on support and mindful, mental health work.
It was becoming frustrating - the technical skills I’d been handed didn’t quite match up with the level of care I knew I’d received, nor did they integrate the level of care I knew my clients would need to make longer term progress, in the cases that were seeking that.
In hindsight, it must have been a strange and infuriating set of awarenesses to work within - I can see how I was sensing so much subtle information from my clients, consciously in what they were telling me/showing me, but also the under the surface information about the impact of trauma, overwhelm, stress and innumerable lived experiences still alive in their tissues. I knew how to assess posture, function and build effective, practical plans to return someone to a physical state of capacity - and was good at it.. for many clients this was enough.. but for a portion, there was often still a sense of a puzzle piece or two left unturned. I knew how to read the language of the body and provide therapeutic touch, and how to guide a client through movement into a different level of awareness and presence to target the physical reasons why their pain so loud, but I hadn’t thus far found the language for the subtle unfolding that happened when tissue released, when capacity was regained or when someone returned to their bodies in a new way.
I remember as a student being warned, so to speak, of what clients brought to the table. Mental health was a passing statement in our training - something to be aware of and to find ways to refer out when necessary. Older therapists would share stories of clients crying on their table, but not really provide much insight on what to do with that when it occurred. There was never a language for what it meant to play a role of presence for someone experiencing their inner worlds, let alone to different depths.
Whether it was because I was sensitive, open or created a safe enough place for it - from day one, I was hearing client’s stories far beyond the normal scope of a physical therapist. Perhaps this is true for most close proximity professionals, or perhaps it’s true for me because I actually made an attempt at receiving that information.
Additionally, I spent the first number of years working in rural places - where often I was the main resource or the easiest resource for all things stressful to be shared, be-it physical, mental, spiritual or all of the above.
I share all this to provide you with some reasoning as to why as a younger practitioner I was already searching for languages, methods and mentorship from those who were doing more than just modality application. My world was already blending the mental with the physical, and beginning to sense the energetic and subtle - by necessity more than anything. I was bombarded, daily, with such a huge variety of things in the cases I was seeing, the technical skills I’d learned soon became a shaky foundation.
Between this and some personal intrigue is where I met yoga, breathwork, somatic, the lens of trauma-informed work and energetics.. which of course was a transformation point for how I worked professionally. It’s already been seven years since I stepped into that world, with somatic or body-based experiencing being the focus of my blended practice.
What I was sensing back then, before I had the language, of course only expanded having found some new languages. And, as of late, I find myself once again dipping my toes into new languages and ways of practice. In this season of my life I have become obsessed with the philosophies of dreaming, quantum physics (big salt sprinkle here in terms of depth of understanding) and the somatic infusion of dreaming as part of an embodied experience of life.
If you’ve been in session lately and noticed me asking about and working more with the content found in dreams.. this is why! I’m utterly fascinated by the idea of dreaming worlds as another layer of somatic processing, and of experiencing the self. Just keeping up my title as the most abstract AT you could ever know, I guess - though of course this line of thinking isn’t as strange within the landscape of breath, somatic facilitation or altered state based processing. Part of this obsession was likely brought on by my work with plants and herbalism training, as dreaming has sometimes the introduction to a plant’s way of relating with me. Perhaps this is because in dreams our linear constructs of what is possible inevitably don’t exist. It becomes suddenly more logical to have a conversation with Rosemary, or get to know the personality of Yarrow.
Along this rabbit hole exploration, I stumbled on some intriguing tendrils about ancient dream incubation, temple healing dedicated to use of information in dreams - or even dreaming itself - as a method of healing. So far - this checks out with the language I’ve been experiencing when it comes to healing and therapeutic relationship.. in the sense that often healing is so much less about what we do and so much more about how we are in relationship (to ourselves, each other, our worlds). Healing is something that happens as we encounter life with presence, and subtle work, touch, breath, awareness and altered states like those found in breathwork, meditation or dreaming amplify our sensitivity to that relationship.
On an even weirder notes, some of the plants and personalities I’ve encountered in dreamscapes have brought me insight, healing and transformation of a nature that I don’t think could exist on the waking, conscious level of reality.. but in order to access these relationships, it took coming into deeper connection with the embodied, waking parts of myself in turn.
When we think of dreaming I think it’s natural to assume this means the sometimes negative connotation of disconnect from reality. Imagination has gotten hugely discredited in the past couple generations as something of fanciful delusion, and therefore of no value. And yet, it’s in the imaginal where we often find the parts of ourselves that get lost or dismantled. An alternative view of injury and illness is that these states bring us (by force) back into the self, into presence and task us with rebuilding our realities in a way that “normal” can’t bind down. Dreaming in imaginal work and imaginal work isn’t always just made up (interpreted as false) information.
So - what happens when we intentionally bring ourselves into relationship with our inner landscapes, and open ourselves up to a dreaming or imaginal world from there?
This is the question that is guiding much of my facilitation lately, and will be a key theme for my upcoming August day retreat: Waking to the Dream.
I’m curating an afternoon surrounded by nature on the grounds of St Norbert Arts Centre, my sanctuary of a professional home, in late August - a time when nature is on the cusp of it’s next season and bursting with the fruits of the season.
Through somatic practice, creative reflection and a facilitated breathwork journey we will explore the imaginal realms, bridging the waking world with the subtle worlds all around and within us. I’ll also be leading a tea blending session, calling in seasonal plant allies that have special proclivities to the dreaming and creative landscapes. Those in attendance will have opportunities to get to know and build their own team of allies within their tea blends to support their seasonal needs, desires and dreaming selves.
Subscribers to this stack receive a special invitation rate as shown in the poster - until August. I only have two spots left open, as the group is being kept intimate with intention.
I would LOVE to see you there - if the concepts, inklings, nudges and imaginations in this note have moved you in any way. And if this season doesn’t fit - know that this work is always weaving it’s way into my session to session offerings and I’m always open to exploring the weird and wild with you there, too.
Hope July has treated you all well, and wishing you the same for August!
Kat