Hi, I’m Jo, a certified life coach and post-traumatic growth guide.

A woman in her late 30s learning to listen to herself better each day. A loud laugher, forever curious about humans and the world we’ve created. I live in the paradox of being human and more than human, seeking new ways to be present to the exquisite joy and intense pain of this life.

It is my belief that all bodies are wise, whole and infinitely capable. Together, we uncover these aspects of self through practicing body-based consent, somatic movement, and radical self-responsibility.

My clients describe me as a sanctuary space. I move quietly, steadily with clients as we explore creating embodied safety in the nervous system through deep attunement and cooperation with your body’s inherent treatment plan.

I am practiced at being in the complicated. I see it as a deep responsibility to be with the complications of life, especially when there are no apparent answers. I help clients build the embodied skills we all need to survive and thrive in our times- a capacity to grapple with the complexity in ourselves and others, to love, to differentiate ourselves from systems and stories that harm.

Both my education and my life experience colour my professional practice. 

I am an orphan, having lost my parents too soon after living in a complicated relationship with both. I know what it is to live through complicated loss and what it means to continue to live life within that loss. 

I am chronically ill. I was diagnosed with diabetes almost 10 years ago. I walk the complicated line of accepting and loving my body while grieving its limitations, daily.

I am an entrepreneur. I have worked in social services delivery, government policy, and everywhere in between to land in the field of somatic support. I know what it is to navigate boundaries in corporate settings, and the intensity of striking out on one’s own.

And the newest part of me: I am a mother. What that means, I’m still figuring out. How it feels? Everything all at once.

It is my absolute privilege to witness my clients come home to themselves and mobilize toward their values and deep-heart desires.

Why somatic work?

Somatic support work is the intentional practice of noticing, exploring, and expressing the internal state of our bodies through movement, voice, and awareness.

At our most instinctual level, our body responds to the world around us by interpreting and responding to our reality as it occurs before us. 

This “neuroception” sizes up and detects threats automatically, then employs whatever trauma response it senses will best serve to protect you. It might hyper-socialize, flight, fight or freeze, for instance.

For bodies that have experienced trauma, these emergency responses can be stored in the body even after the threat of violation has passed. This can interact with our perception of reality (neuroception), and can inform involuntary, unconscious responses in our lives. Often these responses create great suffering.

Somatic support works with the nervous system, where these involuntary, unconscious responses live. Here, stress and stored emergency responses can be discharged in order to restore our neuroceptive capacity. 

Specifically, through attuning to and moving the body in cooperation with these responses, space is created for new life force energy, empowered choice, deeper connection with self and others, and moving out of long-standing patterns that have felt impossible to change.

Somatic work supports increasing our resilience so we can meet the challenges in our homes and our careers with greater capacity.

Sessions will focus on developing body-based attunement and may include personalized meditation, grounding exercises, movement and dialogue. 

This is the legacy of somatic work

Having the strength + capacity to chase down your deepest desires from a centered, grounded place; from relationships that truly SEE YOU, to a career that fills you up + is in alignment with your greatest gifts and values.

Feeling the intensity of love + loss in this world, and allowing it to expand your heart + your courage. 

Loving the body you’re in, the soul you’ve got, and your place in this wild and crazy world, outside of the expectations you’ve grown up with. Uncovering your truest wants, need and desires and having them met.

Finding your wise voice, your beautiful boundaries, and a way of being in the world that is both sovereign in yourself + in true, regenerative community with the world around you.

This is what is possible

Learn more about my individual and group coaching offerings by clicking here.