Somatic Mentoring for Writers

Somatic mentoring
for writers

Increase flow, open blocks, & create with vitality—

in writing & life.

Welcome. My name is Bridgett.

I am a writer, contemplative naturalist, & somatic guide.

I help writers create from a place of ease & embodiment,

deepening creativity from the inside-out.

Combining my background in contemplative somatics, decades of writing practice, and a lifetime of cultivated intimacy with the natural world, I teach writers how to access their innate embodied wisdom as they live and create.

Drawing from this living source, writers learn to inhabit their voice, trust their process, untangle creative blocks on a deep level, and follow intuition with greater clarity and joy.

Somatic mentoring combines

embodied inquiry, mindful exploration, & earth connection to help writers:

Refine the inner & outer sensing at the heart of creative work
Unstick creative blocks by engaging new kinds of awareness
Find & follow "golden threads" in embodied experience
Create with more ease, vitality, joy, & aliveness
Unpack unconscious habits & patterns in creative life

Cultivate a more fluid & trusting relationship with the living sources of creativity in body & world

What this work is

and how it supports your creative life

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What makes somatic mentoring unique?

Embodied

Working with the body

changes everything.

(Read more)

Integrative

Connecting writing & life creates flourishing in both.

(Read more)

Invitational

Approaching ourselves gently transforms us.

(Read more)

How sessions unfold

Each session is unique, guided by your desired direction and our mutual intuition.

Within this, there are some key foundations:

We begin by creating a felt sense of safety in which your body, mind, spirit, and the threads of your life experience feel safe, spacious, and welcome.

We find and follow a thread – some spark of interest, intuition, stuckness, or aliveness that's asking for our kind and creative attention. This might be a thread in your writing or creative process, a thread in the body's experience as we explore your writing, or a thread in your broader life that somehow feels connected to all of this.

We move gently, respecting the pace and timing of your unique nervous system, and keep following a thread until that tangible moment when something deeper in you opens. In that space, new insights arise, blocks break loose, new ways of seeing-feeling-being open up, and we find ourselves closer to our words, our lives, and our physical presence here on this earth.

We continue this process throughout the session, finding and following threads in your experience, attending to where they open with kindness, presence, and curiosity.

Elements of somatic mentoring

Sessions are playful, creative, and nourishing. Ingredients of our time together might include:

Embodied inquiry & processing

Connect with the intelligence of your living body using awareness, movement, breath, & somatic practices as we explore your writing life. Understand your nervous system in a felt-sense way and learn to intuitively incorporate this into your writing process. Track sensations with playful curiosity and discover the openings to which they lead. Learn to cultivate sustainable creative practice by attuning to your body's messages. Explore ease, pleasure, and flow in your embodied experience of creativity. Welcome your body's comfort and needs into the process of creating.

Mindful presence

Bring present-moment awareness to curiosities, challenges, habits, & desires in your creative process. Cultivate presence with what is in a way that nourishes your writing and nurtures a more compassionate inner environment from which to create. Learn to identify unhelpful beliefs around writing in a kind, non-judgmental way. Play with the possibility that blocks are actually portals to deeper aliveness. Mindfully explore unconscious patterns influencing your creative life. Cultivate a clear seeing that helps you gently disentangle habitual thoughts from what's real & what's possible.

Earth awareness

Explore embodied dialogue & connection with the living world. Use intentional awareness of the elements, other creatures (animal, plant, mineral, etc.), and the thread that connects all beings to ground and vitalize your creativity. Learn to invite elements from dreams, experiences in the natural world, and synchronicities as collaborators in the creative process. Consciously evoke the elements (earth, air, fire, water) in your writing process. Explore abundance, reverence, reciprocity, and gratitude as guiding principles in the natural world and in your process. Invite the world's inherent creativity to infuse your writing.

Attentive dialogue

Discuss facets of your writing life in a present, compassionate way. Incorporate immersive reading and writing to deepen your experience. Welcome individual words to resonate in your senses; play with sound, voice, the way words actually feel as they leave or arrive in your body. Explore how writing can feed a rich spiritual practice in your life. Discuss how creative "cross-pollination" in other practices might enrich your process. Learn to see life itself as creative expression.

Using these approaches, we'll explore your writing from the inside out.

And it's writing from the inside-out that changes things.

Creative practice that comes from a place of integration — body and mind, spirit and world, self and other — has a way of enlivening us on a deep level.

Engaging in creative practice with our whole selves, we gently transform and

deepen our presence in ways that ripple out far beyond our writing.

This kind of creative presence is much-needed medicine —

for ourselves and our world.

Examples of your writing life we might explore

discovering the heart of a project or piece
learning to trust your intuitive leads
unpacking & befriending creative blocks
gaining greater trust in your voice & process

choosing whether or not (or how) to share your work
working with distractions and overwhelm
navigating challenging material in grounded ways
claiming the creative processes that most enliven you

dissolving limiting beliefs around what it means to be a writer
writing with (not against) big life transitions
cultivating a compassionate creative witness
exploring not-writing as writing

Somatic mentoring helps writers of all kinds.

It is an inclusive, cross-genre practice — just as potent for poets as playwrights, memoirists as journalers, folks with books to their names as those with ideas scrawled on the backs of envelopes.

Whatever your writing interests and aspirations, whether you want to share your work or write only for yourself, wherever you are on your journey as a creative being — you are welcome here.

We may be a good fit if

you're a writer who...

senses a connection between embodied language & greater aliveness
longs for a deeper relationship with the living world
senses that infusing language with life is more a way of being than a technique
are curious about writing as a spiritual practice & process of inner growth
sees levity & depth as powerful co-conspirators
senses that embodied writing that is "awake to its own connections"* can be a transformative force in troubled times (*gratitude to Jane Hirshfield in Nine Gates for this beautiful phrasing)

People who resonate with my approach are often...

highly sensitive, old souls of any age, at a potent threshold, longing for a richer existence more in tune with their heart, contemplatives, folks who struggle with the daily grind & yearn to carve authentic patterns of life in tune with their inner rhythms, those who've always felt a bit different, lovers of wildness, and those who appreciate a little joyfulness, zest, & humor with their depth.

Session details

**I offer a free 20-minute video call to see if we're a good fit.

Please reach out to schedule!**

Sessions are 45 minutes in length.

I find this the perfect amount of time to explore a topic deeply

while allowing plenty of space for body & mind to integrate.

All sessions are currently held over video call.

Session fee is $130.

See below for sliding scale options if needed.

I am happy to offer a sliding scale

for folks unable to afford my full session fee.

$130

Full session fee

$100

Mid-range fee

$85

Financial need fee

Please choose the rate that is both generous and approachable for you.

For those able to afford my full rate, please pay at this level.

This work is my livelihood, and paying the complete fee allows me to offer this life-nourishing support to those who could not otherwise afford it.

If the lowest session fee is still not accessible but you feel drawn to this work, please reach out! I am sometimes able to provide a limited number of sessions at more significantly reduced rates to kindred souls looking for support on their creative journeys.

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A Note on Our Work Together

While this work can be potent and transformative,

it's important to know that this is not therapy or a therapeutic space.

Folks who require significant emotional support or processing, who feel unable to remain regulated while working with the body, or who otherwise require therapeutic accompaniment will be best supported in another environment. My deepest intent is that you feel supported and safe as we work, and that happens best when we're a good fit. Please reach out if you have any questions about whether this space can meet you where you are on your journey.

About Bridgett

I am a writer, contemplative naturalist, and somatic guide. I spent many years as a registered nurse and reveled in the wild wonder of avian field biology for several more before feeling the call to somatic work. My somatic practice originally focused on helping highly sensitive people befriend their sensitivity before making the switch to my current focus.

My primary somatic training is in the Hakomi method of mindful somatic inquiry. I have also trained in numerous other somatic, mindfulness, and contemplative modalities (officially and unofficially, in classrooms and in my own daily practice), and draw from these organically throughout my work with clients. I am continually engaged in deepening my understanding of body, mind, and heart through both didactic and experiential learning. Through my personal experience of these practices' life-changing effects, I have come to deeply believe in the body's incredible ability to heal, enliven, and integrate our whole selves when we give it even a little room to do so.

The natural world has always been my greatest refuge, teacher, and companion, and I am continually astonished by the multitudinous forms of aliveness with whom I share this breathing planet. No matter what's going on, if I can find a tree to be held by, a patch of meadow to burrow in, a slice of ocean to marvel beside, a bird to watch in wonder, I emerge with a calm borne of total belonging.

The Shenandoah Valley of Virginia has been my home for almost two decades, with several lengthy forays into desert places across the world (and very likely more on the way). I am a deep lover of travel, time, space, leisure, meaningful conversation, contemplation, good boundaries, reverence, laughter, food, silliness, sacredness, wildness, and beauty. I bring a grounded presence to woo-woo topics, love nerdy science and full-bodied wonder with equal vigor, and get giddily excited about cool nature facts (did you know whip-poor-wills time their egg-laying with the moon's cycles?!?). I was almost certainly a monk in another life and still spend a whole lot of time in monkish pursuits in this one.

Curious why I started somatic mentoring for writers?

Click below to hear how discovering "golden threads" in

body, words, & world inspired this offering.

"Bridgett's understanding of and trust in Hakomi shines through with every session, and this creates a very safe container for exploration and inquiry."

-N.V.

Training & Education

Hakomi Institute Comprehensive 2-year Training
Hakomi Cascadia Core 1-year Training
Innate Somatic Intelligence Trauma Therapy Approach, Levels 1-2
NeuroAffective Touch, Levels 1-3
Polyvagal Toning 6-month training with Dr. Arielle Schwartz
Embodied Experiential Dreamwork 1-year training
Bachelors of Science in Nursing

Other Influences & Areas of Study

nervous system health & polyvagal theory
Feldenkrais
Body-Mind Centering
therapeutic mindful movement (yoga, qigong, etc.)
handcrafts (spinning, weaving, pottery, etc.)
mindfulness-based self-compassion
evolutionary & interpersonal neurobiology
Focusing
Taoist thought
Buddhist psychology
insight meditation
dreamwork, story, & myth
experiential ecopsychology
contemplative studies (Eastern & Western)

Books I Love

Refuge and When Women Were Birds by Terry Tempest Williams
The Land of Little Rain by Mary Austin
The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd
The Names of Things by Susan Brind Morrow
Anam Cara by John O'Donohue
Dream Work and Upstream by Mary Oliver
Nine Gates by Jane Hirshfield
A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit
The Anthropology of Turquoise by Ellen Meloy
The Odyssey — Robert Fitzgerald translation

Why I Write

Words from a Few Favorite Writers

Let’s remake the world with words.
Not frivolously, nor
To hide from what we fear,
But with a purpose.

Let’s,
As Wordsworth said, remove
“The dust of custom” so things
Shine again, each object arrayed
In its robe of original light.

And then we’ll see the world
As if for the first time,
As once we gazed at the beloved
Who was gazing at us.

-Gregory Orr, "Let's remake the world..."

The earth is so richly endowed that the least we can do in return is to pay attention.

-Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

It was what I was born for -

to look, to listen,

to lose myself

inside this soft world -

to instruct myself

over and over

in joy,

and acclamation.

-Mary Oliver, "Mindful"

Enliven your writing & your life.

I'd love to hear from you.

Reach Out

Somatic mentoring
for writers