Attunement Session
What are Attunement Sessions?
Attunement Sessions can offer an experience of a non-invasive, gentle and body-centred approach to healing and wellness. Through healthy human connection and safe, neutral touch, an individual can begin to reconnect with their own body, emotions and inner voice. Being supported and witnessed in emotional vulnerability can allow for the processing of old wounds, insights to create positive change in your life, and access to the flow of aliveness, creativity and peace innate in every being.
Attunement Sessions are founded on some of the most ancient biological principles relevant to human physical and emotional health. Evolution has wired us to be physically connected with other people on a regular basis to maintain a healthy body, to destress and to repair. Sessions provide both the opportunity for safe, neutral, non-sexual touch, along with creating the conditions for the nervous system to recalibrate so that the client walks away with a heightened sense of self and a stronger drive to seek more healthy physical connection with other people.
Many people need another person to assist them to regulate, process and manage their most difficult emotions. This is called external regulation and a simple way to achieve external regulation is through touch. Attunement Sessions work directly on the autonomic nervous system and the parts of our mind we call the "unconscious". The unconscious mind is 95% of how we think and feel, so this modality can help reduce fear, trauma, stress, low mood and anxiety in our life.
Learn more about the origins of Attunement Sessions here.
Who is this for?
Sessions can support those who:
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Experience chronic stress or a difficulty relaxing
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Feel separate from others or lack a sense of belonging
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Experienced a difficult birth or early infancy
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Are disconnected from their body and emotions
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Feel touched deprived
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Experience difficulties with connection and/or intimacy in work, family, friendship or romantic relationships
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Feel empty, not good enough, abandoned or rejected
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Experience emotional imbalances such as depression, social anxiety or rage
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Feel unsafe in their body or in the world
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Hold fear and/or shame around receiving and being seen and supported
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Feel stuck in their healing journey
What is involved?
Each session is tailored to the individual needs of the client and is always responsive to what is organically arising in the body from moment to moment. Sessions open with an invitation to share your intentions, needs and any boundaries, along with a grounding practice to orient and settle into the space.
A brief eye gazing experience follows as an opportunity for increasing rapport between the practitioner and client and allowing the client an experience of being seen. For the holding portion of the session, the client is invited to recline beside the body of the practitioner with their head rested on the chest so they can hear the practitioner’s heartbeat. Hearing another's heartbeat can mimic the comforting rhythm experienced in the womb, and this sound often induces a synchronisation of nervous systems, which allows the client’s nervous system to access deep states of relaxation and their body can enter into a natural and automatic "reset" function.
The client is encouraged to go inwards during the holding, as this offers the silence, stillness and spaciousness to let go of the outside world and come back into deeper connection with yourself, while being held and witnessed. All emotion, expressions and sharing what you are experiencing are welcome.
Other gentle processes may be offered such as affirmation, rhythmical rocking of the body, song and sound healing. For those experiencing significant touch and relational trauma, sessions can be adapted to the individual and built upon multiple sessions, such as no touch or graduated touch.
The session closes with integrating any reflections the client wishes to share and application of insights to create more connection in their day-to-day lives. Clients are guided through re-grounding exercises and aftercare information.
Who is this NOT for?
These sessions are not suited to those who want:
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A 'cuddle therapy' style where there is general chit chat, trying out different cuddling positions or changing the general structure detailed above
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To form a friendship with me or have me act as a surrogate partner
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To cuddle or hold me (instead of being held by me).
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To receive sexual touch or encourage subtle sexual dynamics
What are the benefits?
Improvements may be seen in:
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Relational intimacy, including with romantic partners, friends, colleagues and new people
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Greater safety being in the body
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Sense of belonging
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Memory and focus
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Self worth and confidence
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Deeper connection with self
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Motivation and creativity
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Immunity and stress reduction
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Digestion
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Healthier sexual function
“Safety is not the absence of threat... it is the presence of connection”