EMBODIED CARING
with Anna Bovo
1:1 Sessions for Health Professionals working in overwhelming environments
I know how stressful, empty, and helpless working in a hospital can feel at times
the weight of wanting to give more,
to ensure you're doing your very best for those in your care.
I am here to help.
During my PhD, I worked alongside colleagues in A&E and ICU, exploring their needs, emotions, and the trauma absorbed in the act of caring. I walked that path with them, listening deeply to what lay beneath the surface, their felt experience, spoken through the body. Together, we redefined what trauma means, and gently began the work of moving through it.
If this resonates with you, I am here to witness your unspoken story, to help you give voice to your inner world.
What is your story?
I can help you to...
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To embark on a personal journey to discover emotions and how they express themselves
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To practice self-regulation – key skill be able to access, embody, be-friend, and stabilize stress reactions; (we regulate either with cognition, or we do not do it, as we train to be in autopilot while working under stress!)
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To practice tracking sensations to access responses in the Autonomic Nervous System (ANS). Sensations are too "difficult"? Then, explore the SE® model of SIBAM (Sensation, Image, Behavior, Affect(=emotion), Meaning).
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To understand the physiology of stress and its effect on the ANS.
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To learn the neurophysiology of each aspect of the threat response: defensive orientation, fight/flight/freeze, deactivation and completion, and exploratory orienting.
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to take things slowly, and little by little, navigating the felt sense.
What to expect
I offer an initial phone or video call of about 20-30 minutes to get to know each other, explore your needs, and give you space to ask any questions you may have. I usually suggest starting with a set of 4 sessions, which allows you to experience the work and begin to see whether this approach feels supportive for you. Embarking for this journey means gently re-connecting with your body, exploring somatic patterns, beliefs and dis-functional responses that may be keeping you from experiencing Life in a perceived sense of safety, thrive, and freedom. Together, we create a space where your nervous system can gradually soften, where emotions can emerge at their own pace, and where your inner landscape can begin to feel more coherent and grounded. I will invite you to meet your embodied self, facilitating the body's defense responses to return to a state of presence and calm. Over time, this can empower you to build confidence in your own skin, allowing your emotions to emerge, and re-shape the meaning of your own presence and aliveness in the world. I will walk alongside with you as a facilitator to this process of deeper personal connection, resilience, and self-discovery.
To nurses:
Sometimes working with intensity is not easy.
Sometimes you simply crack on -
you do your thing -
at the best you can.
Sometimes you save lives.
You're all focused on what's out there, what's needed, fast movements and fast decisions.
Sometimes there's no space for what's inside you.
What is happening, inside you, in response to that chaos.
Here's the space to find out.
To reveal your emotions -
to reveal your stories -
to reveal what's happening to you, in you.
Why? Because it simply matters.
ICU nurse
"Just thank you so much because I think you’re gifted at what you do and you should be proud of yourself. I say I could recognise, I could see in the group that I was in, that people were struggling and stressed and had a lot of tension and I could feel the emotion in the room it was tactile, and I think you really, by the end of the few weeks, people were almost kind of, I guess, levitating a little bit, just feeling lighter in themselves. I definitely did. I could sense it from others too. So I think that was down to you and the kind of guidance you gave us, you know, helping us work in an environment that is so intense and having your recognition of that and the workshops is really helpful because we need this"
A&E nurse
Thank you for all this. Yeah, I guess somatic experiencing and everything that we tried to do together can be a real gift. I'm not sure still how this will unfold, you know, in these environments. But to me has been really important for my personal life, my professional life.
ICU nurse
I really do wanna thank you because I wanted to help you with your research, but there are some really big takeaways here that I think, that I got, that wasn't even necessarily the intentions, but like through the conversations that we had, through the exercises that we had, just a lot of big takeaways that I think will influence how I deal with stress of any sort. In life. Thank you very much. This has exceeded my expectations
A&E nurse
Thank you so much for this journey, it’s been really helpful, and this is the very first time that I discovered something that I would never thought would be there
ICU nurse
"I couldn't feel into my body so much 'cause maybe it was a protective thing. I wasn't ready to, but I feel like, I knew you would hold the space. And if I was not OK, you would be there to help regulate that afterwards. Yeah. So thank you for that. I felt safe to do it"
A&E nurse
I was just so surprised by that, you know, like when I talk to my colleagues is not the same thing as when I'm talking to you. So you sort of like, you are able to dig deep into it which is you know, not everybody would be able to do it. And I would be sad to say goodbye to you for now.
Ready to reconnect with your body’s wisdom?
All of you is welcome in this space
I'd love to hear from you
Anna Bovo (she/her)
Somatic Experiencing Practitioner
Teaching Fellow in Nursing Studies
School of Health in Social Science
University of Edinburgh
