is a body based practice that allows past trauma, stuck patterns, outmoded beliefs and stories and addictions to be tracked to their root and transformed there. One of the Deep Liberation primary tools is learning how to notice the triggers or patterns that arise for us frequently and then learning how to listen to our bodies to understand the past trauma linked to those triggers and transform it, stopping the past trauma from continuing to affect our current lives.

Deep Liberation is a combination of Inner Relationship Focusing techniques as developed by Ann Weiser Cornell and Eugene Gendlin and Emotional Clearing created by Christina Pratt of the Last Mask Center for Shamanic Healing.

Focusing was developed by Eugene Gendlin through his research of what allowed breakthroughs to happen during psychotherapy. He listened to thousands of recorded sessions and found that the commonality between people who experienced breakthroughs was that they experienced a felt shift in their body as they were speaking. Focusing is a body of techniques that helps one to learn to listen deeply to the body and experience the felt sense, that bodily knowing just beyond words of the issue, trigger or pattern arising in your life and use that as a guide to transform your relationship with the issue itself. Inevitably, when we really see what’s arising as our body is experiencing it, it shifts.

The techniques I learned from Christina Pratt work hand in hand with the focusing techniques, but speed up the process and allow deeper patterns to be uprooted at once. Rather than simply coming into presence with the felt sense and allowing it to shift on its own– we work to track whatever arises to its root whether it be a part of us wounded in childhood, emotional patterns (often appearing as weather, such as a storm in your chest), limiting belief systems or artifacts– such as a balled up fist in your gut or a stone shell around your heart. We then work with archetypal energies to shift and transform what we find so it comes into alignment with our current level of consciousness and maturity and allows radical change to occur.

The system I use is almost identical to that which Christina Pratt originated. With her blessing, I incorporate Focusing because I find it allows the changes that occur to be more deeply grounded in the body. Rather than simply falling prey to the controlling or judgmental voices inside us that are sure they know what’s best for us– Focusing allows us to truly let the body make decisions rather than our ego and allows us to engage with our inner landscape with true compassion and acceptance for everything that arises. I also find that the techniques of Focusing allow me to better guide people who might be completely cut off from their body or their emotions, have trouble visualizing or don’t sense energy, in opening up and having a deeply engaged transformative experience.

If you’re having a phone session or computer session, make sure that you have earbuds with a microphone or a headset so you don’t have to hold onto your phone and can fully be present to your body. Make sure that you are in a place that is relatively quiet where you can be undisturbed for the length of the session.

If you wish, you can prepare beforehand a brief description of what you most want to transform and/or what challenges you have been facing recently, but if you are unclear we can incorporate sensing into this as part of the session.

As I am not a licensed psychotherapist or counselor, Deep Liberation is not a form of therapy. However, I do have multiple clients that have reported they have experienced more visceral and permanent transformations and breakthroughs in their work with me than with years of traditional therapy. This is not to disparage psychotherapy, psychiatry or psychoanalysis. I find that Deep Liberation can work very well in partnership with someone who is in therapy, analysis or seeing a psychiatrist, it simply depends on each person’s individual needs. Often, the more comprehensive a support system a person has, the deeper they can transform. What each person needs in a support system is very unique to that person.

I define trauma as any deeply distressing or disturbing experience from our past that limits our ability to embody the fullness of ourselves in the present. For some trauma is caused by very intense and extreme situations, for others equal trauma can be caused by situations that on the surface seem less extreme. If you feel your life is limited by events that have happened to you in the past, then this work is for you.

I define being triggered as amping up or shutting down in response to something. We react in a way that is out of proportion to what has actually just occurred. Additionally, we often feel much younger than our actual age in these moments. Consciously or unconsciously in these moments, we are projecting our past experiences onto the present moment and thus are unable to see the present moment clearly or react in alignment with our current level of consciousness and maturity.

There are many possible causes of triggers, but a major origin is in our childhood. As children, we sometime have traumatic experiences where we felt like were going to die, so we did something that perhaps went against our instincts in the moment to survive. For a child– many things feel like a threat of death. For example being annihilated, being exiled, being abandoned, being isolated or simply not being loved. In the moment of facing that perceived or actual threat– the child makes a decision to survive and a part of ourself is left making that same decision over and over again when we face similar situations as adults. That decision is no longer in alignment with our current level of consciousness and maturity and when in those situations again, we get triggered.

Deep Liberation helps us to track these triggers to where they first originated in our past and clear them there so the same triggers no longer affect us.