My story
On turtle time
I am grateful that my journey as a mother and as a mindful mover brings me continuous learning and connection in community. I have witnessed profound benefits for myself and others with the gentle, engaged and lively approaches of somatic therapy. I became a therapist out of my desire to make this holistic work available to mothers and little ones. Becoming a mother opened my heart. I watched my newborn daughter curl in and out, passionately replaying her birth, and sweated through our challenges of breastfeeding. I wondered at the capacities of infants and mothers to fulfill themselves in responsive, natural activity. My first teaching and curriculum was conceived along with my son. I taught my prenatal class while pregnant and began offering somatic bodywork to childbearing women, as I felt how much somatic awareness, movement and release had helped me in these stages of mothering.
Join in joyful exertion
I once again jumped out of the nest to offer a developmental playgroup for mothers and babies; MamaBebe was born. In the playgroup I witnessed the joyous exertion of the babies in mastery learning with women tending and befriending together. I began to wonder about how development movement form a child’s emerging mind. With these questions about how natural development unfolds, came more questions about how to support children with delay using the power of movement. Working with infants and with young children as a therapist knit together many strands of my training and experience.
My practice has evolved in a spiralic manner. I have cycled through many aspects of child development and childbearing for women, revisiting issues, training and deepening in practice in each visitation. The core of my practice is offering support to babies, young children and mothers. Each birth I attend informs my understanding of all the other children and mothers that come to me. Each child with learning challenge whom I help sheds light on the essential activities of development. Each mother I meet teaches me how her steadfast devotion upholds and grounds her child. I am grateful to offer these somatic body-mind practices that awaken awareness and connection. In these exchanges we are givers and receivers in life loving life.
Gratitude for my lineages
I am grateful to the lineages that have formed me and has wakened so much inner resource for birthing and mothering both my children and my practice. I have developed movement and mindfulness practices drawn from Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen and her teachers, from Hakomi psychotherapy principles, and from many sources of yoga, qi gong, vocal, dance, improvisation and movement release. Training in the vast and freshly alive traditions of Vippasana, Tibetan and Zen dharma recall my inquisitive mind to serve the heart. European psychologists who recognize that early movement is intrinsic to shaping the mind have given me multiple perspectives on reflex integration. Committed caregivers, doulas, midwives and teachers have created a flourishing community of support for health, healing and birth here. In gratitude for my mother and father, sibs and all our ancestors who carried forward devotion to each other, children and kinship with the whole human family.
My practice incorporates all I have learned from nature, dancing, swimming, biking, walking and mothering my beloved adult children, Erin and Lee, and being the wife of my ever patient husband and master percussionist, Bruce Wintervold. I have been blessed with many generous and insightful teachers. I am a Registered Somatic Movement Therapist through ISMETA.
Movement and the Emerging Mind
Body-mind integration from the beginning
