My Approaches - Gina Keegan, Life Coaching and Body Work

For over 25 years I have been helping my clients with the struggles that many of us face, e.g. depression, anxiety, trauma recovery, anger management.  You can read more about these by clicking on the specialty page titles located on the left side bar.  Some of the names that doctors might give you for your particular condition include generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), sexual abuse history, panic attacks, stress overwhelm, relationship issues, anger issues, and childhood trauma.  My 25+ years of clinical experience have taught me that my clients will be helped by any one of a number of approaches, and you can read about these on this page.

1.  Somatic Experiencing, Trauma Healing: I am a graduate of the Somatic Experiencing Institute of Trauma Release, founded by Peter Levine,  author of "In An Unspoken Voice" and "Waking the Tiger."  In Somatic Experiencing [SE] work the body directs us as to what needs attention.

The most efficient way to release trauma is through the body's wisdom. Working with SE, along with other approaches, the path of a personal process opens up. Everyone can access this path. There are times when, of course, you will want to tell your story, and this is good. And, I will always gently bring you back to the body, its sensations, memories, temperatures, textures, images, and emotions. Yes, life becomes much more meaningful when it is acknowledged that there is a healing process going on, if only you can discover and recognize it. Somatic Experiencing is able to transform Trauma, PTSD, Anxiety, Panic Attacks, Depression and  many forms of physical illness, with the right support.

2.  Cognitive Behavioral Coaching: This approach has worked well with anger and anxiety in particular, but other issues as well. Sometimes a situation can just be looked at from different angles and wiser choices can then be made. There are large bodies of knowledge out there from many sources that have wisdom and experience to share. This is usually more of a conceptual way to make change happen.

3.  MMSR / Mindfulness Meditation Stress Reduction: I am a meditation instructor, and have been practicing Mindfulness Meditation for over 30 years. I find this practice to be a foundation for all types of work, both personal, like therapy, and professional, like business. One is able to learn to focus instead of being scattered. Then, of course, all the energy can then go straight to the task at hand, rather than be shared like a tug-of-war with all the different stories going on in one's brain. Being one-pointed allows better decision-making, and less unnecessary mess-ups. So, clarity and confidence, natural qualities of the mind, can arise.  Secondly, experience of non-thought can occur, which is much under-rated, in my opinion.  Beneath the discursive, tedious conceptual mind is a river of tranquility and wisdom.

4.  Anger Management: There are certain very specific times when large accumulations of stress need to be released before further psychological movement can occur. Because of my training in Somatic Experiencing Trauma Release, I am careful to not re-traumatize. This is an adjunct approach in my work, not the main therapy.

5.  Dreams: I have been “interpreting” dreams for 25+ years, mine and other people's. I have studied Jungian analysis personally, with the help of many skillful Jungian analysts, through the years. This has proven to be a huge success in getting down to the underlying causes of people's problems. I use the word “interpret”, but that is not quite right. The client knows when a dream's message feels right. I, as therapist, can only suggest possibilities, or ask questions. I love that dreams do not lie. I love that they use a symbol to express complex emotional situations. Once a symbol has been deeply felt, profound shifts can occur.

6.  Shamanism: There are very old healing ways that use nature and symbol and ritual and journeying into alternate realities to access profound healing. Here there is a different sense of time and space. Soul retrieval, power animal connections, extraction, ritual and many other methods can be used with great success for healing.

7.  Buddhist Psychology: I am a graduate of Naropa University in Boulder, Colorado, where I studied Eastern and Western Psychology. I often use this secular framework of Buddhist Psychology in my work because I found it to be the most scientific of all bodies of psychological knowledge that I have come across. One does not have to be a Buddhist to find wisdom in this ancient tradition. In fact, many other wise traditions have come up with similar approaches. One example is the reality of ego, which has nothing to do with religion, but has to do with cognition, and the consequences of injury and formation of neurosis, a couple of areas I find most fascinating.

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