Why a Somatic Psychotherapist Is Writing About Nervous System Healing

One Conscious Breath: Issue 01

The letter I’ve been afraid to write

I’ve spent over twenty years sitting with people in their most tender and terrifying moments. And even longer meditating, soul searching and courageously facing my own triggers and traumas. And as I gently turned toward the fear of facing all that I am, I’ve learned some powerful insights along the way. I’m writing this newsletter because I believe the world is quietly desperate for authenticity and presence. I know I am. And with such an overload of how-to’s, courses and the barrage of non-stop information, my approach is to slow everything way down, offering insight and wisdom I’ve learned along the way. Not because I am any braver than I used to be. But because I’ve learned that fear is often a signal orienting us toward our deepest truths. Ive learned to turn toward fear, to face it, illuminate it, so that it no longer stops me, but guides me, toward what my heart longs to do.

Eye-level view of a serene therapy room with comfortable seating and calming decor

It has taken me a long time to get to this place. To not only write, but to publish. I have been writing for a long time. In my journals. Privately. Though, I’ve been talking much longer, in one form or another. In therapy offices, trainings and workshops from Brooklyn to Berkeley, with people who trusted me with their most undefended parts. And I have insight to share.

That is not the problem.

The problem has been the part of me that still wondered whether I was allowed to take up this much space. Whether the things I’ve learned through my own life experience are worth offering to strangers. Whether what I know, in my heart, about the journey back to oneself is something that belongs in a newsletter or better saved for the privacy of therapy, quietly, behind closed doors.

I recognize this hesitation. I have sat with it within myself, and with others, thousands of times. It’s the armor doing its job, an outdated story running a familiar pattern: make yourself smaller, make yourself safer, don’t take up too much space.

So, I’m setting out to do the very thing I ask every client I work with to do. Pause. Notice the hesitation. Turn toward the fear. Where does this hesitation live in my body? Is it necessary and helpful in this present moment to be guarded? To feel constriction in my chest? The answer is no. It almost always is. I feel my chest open and my shoulders drop as I take one conscious breath. And then another. The constriction hasn’t fully released.

And the story of danger still whispers. Yet, I begin to write anyway.

Here is what this newsletter is. And what it is not.

It is not a clinical resource, though I am a clinician. It is not a self-help program, though I hope it helps. It is not a performance of expertise or a demonstration of credentials or a carefully curated personal brand.

It is a love letter. Written weekly, from my heart, first and foremost. And although my heart leads the way, it is influenced with my decades of clinical experience and knowledge. And perhaps, most importantly, from a lifetime of my own alchemy, turning my own pain into my purpose and power. This is not a prescription, nor an instruction of what to do, that will be a personal discovery of your own. But this is an offering, perhaps, as the kind of company you might want along your way. The kind that says: I, too, know the familiarity of this territory. Here is what I noticed and what helped. And always reminding that the body knows what the mind keeps trying to override.

I’m writing it because I am finishing a book that contains everything I know thus far about the journey back to my own heart. And I realized, somewhere in the writing of it, the people who may most resonate with it are in their ordinary lives, burning quietly, doing everything right yet still feeling like something essential is missing. They may be awake at 3am wondering why, with all they have accomplished, they still feel so disconnected from themselves, others and the world.

Maybe this is you. Maybe it isn’t. Either way, you’re welcome here.

What you will find here every week is one letter. Sometimes a teaching from over twenty years of clinical experience, translated out of clinical language and into the kind of thing that lands in your heart and your body, not just your mind. Sometimes a story from my own life, or the lives of the people I’ve been privileged to sit with (always anonymized, always with care). Perhaps one small practice, a reminder to slow down, to take one conscious breath before you close the email and begin your day.

And always honesty. The particular honesty of someone who has done the work herself, who is still doing it, who knows from the inside that healing is not a destination you arrive at and then you’re done. It is a practice. A returning. Again and again, with grace and compassion, to the heart that is always there.

One conscious breath at a time.

That is what this newsletter is. A returning.

I am glad you are here for it.

With love and one conscious breath,

Jody

P.S. — If you’re new here: I’m Jody Allen, a somatic psychotherapist in San Francisco and Berkeley. These letters are where neuroscience meets the heart, the foundation of a book in progress. If someone forwarded this to you and it resonated, you can subscribe at jodyallenlcsw.substack.com. It’s free. It always will be.