Co-Creating the Relational Conditions for Safety
~offered by horizon~

Cynthea Jones offers my favorite definition of ritual, “a multisensorial prayer that allows us to lay new patterns in our soul.” In the language of neuroscience this is known as neural plasticity, allowing us to forge new neuropathways in our brains, making new meanings and associations that support nervous system flexibility and resilience. In the language of witchcraft this is known as changing all the worlds between the worlds.

Personalized Trauma Healing Intensives are for folx seeking a more expansive ritual container to do a larger, specific piece of healing. Intensives allow for more space and time together (see ‘whole time’ below) so we can stay with and move through trauma in the moments we have access to it. This offers us intentional spaciousness to metabolize and integrate healing and meaning making at the pace of the body, laying new patterns in our soul and forging new neuropathways of resilience.

As I learned in my early magical studies, we set a container of sacred space around us to protect the work, to amplify intention, and to move between the worlds. Healing Intensives are powerful both in their intention and in their allowance for building enough trust and safety to be able to touch, be with and transform the trauma relivings we are burdened with. Because your body knows the exact right way to heal, within this gift of whole time (what happens between the worlds changes all the worlds) we are offered the spaciousness of intention setting, intimacy building and the deep relational attunement that creates the conditions for safety, which in turn creates the conditions for your healing.

There is a wild power available to us in setting such an intention.

As a queer person, I will never be someone who believes there is only one way to heal. (This would be far too limiting for something I know to be absolutely expansive). But, if I were to choose the most effective ingredients for my potion, I would be drawing from connection, body intelligence, whole time, ancestral medicines, our deep capacity for love, our birthright access to nervous system regulation and intersectional justice. If I were to translate this into modern day trauma healing modalities (which I am), I would be drawing from IFS & EMDR. And, when I draw from the brilliance of queerness, I am standing in a lineage of queer witches, healers and teachers, offering the folk medicines of QTIFS* & quEerMDR**.

This is how I think about and hold these healing lineages to whom I belong:

~IFS & QTIFS~
My practice is deeply informed by the wisdom of (Queer and Trans) Internal Family Systems which teaches us to compassionately understand our thoughts, emotions, behaviors and feelings as a response to systemic wounding and protection rather than the result of pathology. In this way, we work within your inner world by honoring and collaborating with your body’s protective system (parts) rather than fighting or overriding them. IFS is a beautifully queer healing lineage that invites the practices of deep witnessing, trust-building, nurturing and self-attunement (the relational practices of safety and love) to help us feel whole and free.

~EMDR & quEerMDR~
I practice EMDR/quEerMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) because I know it to be an exquisitely beautiful trauma healing modality that consistently helps my clients to sustainably metabolize past traumas and griefs instead of reliving them.  I blend EMDR with IFS because I understand healing through the lens of parts, because bringing a parts lens to EMDR increases safety and effectiveness, and because both of these lineages—particularly when used together—offer us access to powerful healing.

IFS-Informed EMDR creates a map for us to follow—traumatic learnings we can target, desensitize, unburden and heal. In this work, we draw from the deep regulation of moving both sides of our bodies to help anchor us in the present, which in turn helps us to touch (and bring healing) to the parts of us that are burdened with trauma. This is particularly useful in intensive work, where the gift of time allows us to stay with the parts of us most in need of healing. Some people call this evidence based, I call it folk medicine—healing pathways that belong to you, are uncovered within the container of our relationship, that tap into your deep embodied knowingness of how to heal. IFS-Informed EMDR works by catalyzing your body’s innate wisdom and deep capacity for healing and transformation. This is both magic and science.

Your Personalized Trauma Healing Intensive Includes: 
~ A pre-intensive therapy intake (90 minutes) for us to relationally feel into working together, to co-assess for goodness of fit with this intensive setting, to create a map that will guide your healing, and to set a powerful intention of healing that will be reinforced through the intensive.

~ Individualized facilitation of your healing intensive (3 hour, half-day treatment blocks) building trust with your parts, practicing inner consent, and following and attuning to impulse and intuition with the attuned co-regulation needed for inner healing and transformation.

~ A post-intensive therapy session (90 minutes) to reinforce and bolster your adaptation to positive changes from treatment, amplifying the meaning-making and systemic integration that signals effective transformation.

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Cost:
Half-Day Intensive (6 clinical hours): $2100
Two-Day Intensives (9 clinical hours): $3150

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*QTIFS, Queer and Trans Internal Family Systems, is a beautiful, liberatory body of work, co-created and co-held by IFS therapists Sand Chang & Nic Wildes. You can learn more about their offerings here.

**quEerMDR is the way I have come to understand queer healing as it flows through the artistry of EMDR, using the fluidity, authenticity and vastness of queerness to invite healing and transformation. You can learn more about this offering through therapy, consultation and continuing education opportunities with me.

“I am trans as in movement, nonbinary as in free.” -unknown

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