While this isn’t my first blogpost ever, it will be my first here, on my revamped site–this is in celebration of my new beginnings! I have moved back east to spread Integrated Movement Therapy. Hurray! A long planned journey complete. Or just begun…
While most of my training on psychotherapy, yoga and integrated healing took place on the west coast, and while there were many periods when I thought I would never leave, I kept feeling the pull to bring what I had gathered back to the east, the way the moon exerts it’s gravity in repeated cycles.
Seattle is a home away from home. I love the Pacific Northwest. But it’s also a place that offers a plethora of choices for anyone seeking alternative therapies, and therefore, I kept sensing, not the place that needs my work the very most. The east coast (this term itself rather trite, as the coast is a vast stretch of cultures and states) is not at all devoid of integrated modalities, but it is certainly known as the faster, more structured, more traditional coast, and it houses far fewer educational institutions focusing on alternative therapies. The culture out west, with the pioneer spirit transmitted through the generations, and perhaps into the land itself, simply offers more role models and examples of all walks of people who have had great success with less mainstream therapies for this or that malady or situation.
I realize as I write that I myself may not have even considered a home birth (one of the most deeply satisfying and special events of my life), had I not lived in the northwest, the home-birthing capital of the country, where I frequently ran into and heard about women who had home-birthed. At the dog park, at the café, in circles of friends–it came up all the time, often with no more or less excitement or shock than discussions with others about which hospital one chose for their birth. It simply made it all less scary and more normal; at least more worth researching and looking into. Which is the first step in our processes of breaking down the fear-laden and invalid stories we hold…
Alas, I hope to add to the east-coast culture (or at least my little part of it: the DC/Baltimore region) this kind of normality about Yoga Therapy, particularly the type I practice, Integrated Movement Therapy, or IMT. I feel as though I’m joining the troops where the troops are needed currently, and where times are ripe for the kind of learnings I hope to share.
So check out the site, please make suggestions and share, and pass it on, whether you’re east, west, in between or beyond! Many thanks.