Amanae Sessions
Amanae is a somatic emotional release therapy, using breath, sound, and deep-tissue pressure to clear the body of stuck emotional energy.
What does It do?
Amanae is a tool to investigate and release the stored emotional content of the body. As this energy is released it allows the body to find its own balance and gives you the ability to live in your body more easily and to express more freely.
Why would You do it?
You are the inhabitant of your body. Come in for an Amanae session when you want to move through your emotions quickly or when there are things you want to release, but you don't know how and want help.
“It is my job as an Amanae practitioner to hold space for you and safely guide you into your body to explore and experience your inner emotional landscape.”
Inner Child Work
Sometimes it is hard to get to the underlying emotion or to understand what it is we are feeling, especially when the pain is great. One of the tools we can use to get around this is to consult with your inner child, or inner children, during the session.
While we are working a point on the body, we can see what part of you shows up there. How old are they? What are they doing? What do you feel if you look in their eyes? These inner children represent the parts of you that got stuck, the part that the body is holding, and the part of you that is held back.
These children have wisdom. They can tell us what they need from you to let go and how you can move on.
Here Is a classic example
Let's say you grew up in a family where it was frowned upon to cry. You find yourself in a situation where you would want to cry, but you don't, you hold it in, because "big girls don't cry."
That energy was ready to go out (as tears and sound while crying), but now it can't because you held it in. You stuff it away in a corner of your body and where your body holds it for you until you are ready to deal with it.
If that only happened once, it wouldn't be great, but it wouldn't be the end of the world, but this kind of thing happens time and time again throughout our lives.
Eventually our bodies are filled with things that were too scary to deal with in moment and we start to leave our bodies to avoid dealing with them.
Amanae helps you come back to your body. Coming back as your full current self, rather than an old, stuck aspect of yourself from the past.
What Happens During a Session?
How the Session Starts
We start every session with some time for discussion, to answer any questions you might have and to get perspective on what specific issues are presenting for you.
I use this time as a practitioner to observe you and your energy, to get a feel for where you might be holding and to develop a plan for the work. The questions I am trying to answer are: Face up or face down? What is the area to work on after the heart?
Once I have these two pieces of information, we can begin the work. I will leave the room to wash my hands and give you time to get settled for the session.
What to Wear
Amanae is practiced on the bare skin, which means you will need to remove your clothes. (You can leave your underwear on though.) If you get cold, sheets and extra blankets are available.
Table Work
The heart is the main place that emotions move through to be released. Every Amanae session begins by opening the heart, on either the front or the back of the body.
I will spend some time holding your heart, connecting with your energy and getting a feel for how we will work together. Once a connection has been established, we can begin the work, starting with the heart.
Amanae works through a combination of activations (physical manipulations to encourage a doorway to open) and integrations (holding a point with an open hand) as well as breath-work and sound. This is all to encourage what we call a shift, an event where the emotional energy leaves the body.
The specific points worked after the heart point are determined intuitively based on the specific needs of the person. I always keep an open mind and listen to the unique flow of the session to decide where to go and what areas to work. I am often surprised by where we end up!
After we have completed the work of session I will hold your heart for one last integration or perform some other closing ritual as guided.
I will leave the room to allow you your own processing time as well as to get dressed again. I will wait outside until you invite me back in.
Discussion
At the end, there is time to discuss anything of interest that came up during the session. If there were any observations I made as a practitioner during the session, I will being them up here.
