People ask me, why do NARM therapy? Everyone has their own reasons. From my perspective, one great reason is to get support in being present for life.

As a professional dancer, I always thought I had a deeper relationship with my internal experience than most.

The dancing I was doing was avant-garde, often incorporating different forms of meditation, touch, and speaking, and required me to improvise in the moment — to notice patterns, to work with my thoughts, my emotions, and direct my attention to my physical experience and environment. When I began training to become a body-oriented psychotherapist, I assumed my experiences as a dancer had prepared me well for therapeutic work.

I never imagined what I would experience when, in the context of a NARM (Neuro-Affective Relational Model) training, the trainer asked us to simply shift our attention from the external world to our internal world, and to take a moment to notice what it is like to be sitting here right now.

I closed my eyes and the clock started ticking. Perhaps one minute went by…

…And I remember it was as if I opened a door, stepped through the threshold, and suddenly found myself in a storm, completely drenched in rain. There was thunder and lightning around me, the thick smell of rain on a hot sidewalk, my clothes were sticking to my skin. I was shocked. I had thought I was going for an easy walk in the park, tuning into my internal world, and instead I found myself standing in the middle of a thunderstorm.

I remember deciding to open my eyes again, looking around, and feeling relieved.

Tuning into my in-the-moment experience, just for a moment, of being a body, a subject, a person with emotions and thoughts, having an experience, being in my current situation — it felt like stepping into chaos.

I realised that I had not often given myself the option to “tune in”, in that way. Had not really known that it existed as an option. Reflecting on it afterward, I realised that, although scary, there was something vivid and alive about what I had experienced. There was fear, but there was also excitement in connecting with myself. I could only handle small bits at a time, I needed to move slowly, but I had the desire to feel.

Part of my journey in learning NARM — the Neuro-Affective Relational Model — which is the basis of my work with clients, has been to reconnect with my own subjectivity, with “what’s it like” in any given moment, slowly, gently, and in a way that I can handle. More and more there is a feeling of home inside myself. That I am dwelling in my body, here and now. And this sense of dwelling roots me, gives me strength and integrity within myself to show up more fully for life, with myself and others.

When I talk about dwelling I don’t mean that I’m connected with myself all the time. Dwelling can also mean, “I notice I’m not very present right now even though I would like to be. Huh. Interesting. I’m curious what that’s about...”

So why do NARM therapy? To get support in being with and in your internal landscape, whatever it is, if you so choose. The important thing I learned in my own process is that these internal landscapes are in constant transformation. Especially given the right support, there is calm to be found in the storm; there is a lake in the desert.

NARM is a model that supports building more capacity for being with internal experiences. We build capacity to be present and to feel how it is, and to hear the messages our internal experiences communicate to us. All this supports our ability to transform our inner landscapes and to discover new and wonderful places inside ourselves we never dreamed of.

And this is what I would like to bring to others with this work.