Don't Step on the Bluebells

Andréa Ararê - Healing with Somatic Experiencing (#029)

• Amanda Parker • Season 1 • Episode 29

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Join us for a transformative conversation with the remarkable Andréa Ararê, who brings her unique expertise in shamanic healing and somatic experiencing to the forefront. Andréa reveals how partnering with our bodies through a deep understanding of physiological responses can lead to profound personal growth and healing. Her insights into earth medicine and the wisdom of observing nature's cycles offer a fresh perspective on maintaining balance and health, even in bustling urban environments.

Discover the powerful role of somatic experiencing in addressing trauma and anxiety as we navigate the interplay between spiritual practices and the brain's survival mechanisms. We explore the evolving landscape of spirituality, discussing the balance of feminine and masculine energies in modern healing practices. Andréa and I highlight how practices such as shamanic rituals, yoga, and nature connection serve as vital languages for communicating with the spirit, and how allowing divine guidance to emerge naturally can lead to unexpected moments of wisdom.

Throughout the episode, we emphasize the importance of understanding and normalizing our body's responses to stress and trauma. Personal anecdotes and examples illustrate the intelligence of the nervous system in ensuring survival and how spiritual guidance can help navigate life's challenges. We invite you to explore diverse healing modalities, encouraging openness to new approaches that can significantly impact well-being. Embrace the opportunity to transform your healing journey—and don't forget to support the podcast by subscribing and leaving a five-star rating.

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Andréa Ararê: [00:00:00] So much of this work as the work of knowing yourself, of having a relationship with yourself. Because if I know that a response, as you said, a physiological response in my body in that moment is a smart response, is a normal response to an event that I have observed and I have perceived in a certain way, then I'm not Andréa ArarêAndréa ArarêAndréa Ararê judging myself.

Then I'm not condemning my body as you have a betrayed me. I actually, I build a partnership with my body.

Amanda Parker: Welcome to Don't Step on the Bluebells, the podcast where personal healing and transformation takes center stage. I'm your host, Amanda Parker, and I'm a fellow seeker on the journey of personal Join me as I delve into the stories of gifted healers, guides, and everyday people who have experienced remarkable [00:01:00] transformations.

Listen in as they share their practical wisdom to enrich your everyday life. And don't forget to hit subscribe and never miss a new episode. Welcome to today's episode of Don't Step on the Bluebells. I'm here with the incredible Andrea Arrare. I am so excited to be sitting in this space with you, Andrea, to talk about all things somatic experiencing and also knowing that we're going to weave in some of that shamanic magic and practice that you bring into the world.

Thank you for being here with me today. 

Andréa Ararê: My pleasure. It's really a great opportunity to be able to talk about how I integrate shamanic healing with somatic experiencing. 

Amanda Parker: Yes, it is. So we had the great pleasure of meeting each other through a series of, like, workshops and community gatherings here in London that are organized through a shamanic foundation that we are both a part [00:02:00] of.

And I remember just, I think we must have met about a, I don't know now, a year, a year and a half ago for the first time. And I just remember loving being in that space with you, that like, loving, nurturing, really grounded energy that you bring along with you wherever you go. 

Andréa Ararê: I do have a lot of earth in my map.

Amanda Parker: Okay, that explains it. I think, I think I'm floating in water quite often. Water mixed with fire, you know, it's a very exciting time over here. 

Andréa Ararê: And I, I would say this is what has been helping me a lot in the last. 10 plus years to host women's gatherings is, I do have a sense of bringing the whole room just down, connecting with the earth and allowing earth medicine to heal us.

Amanda Parker: That's even just a beautiful [00:03:00] place to start. What is earth medicine? What does that actually mean? 

Andréa Ararê: Traditional cultures around the world, the main guidance is that nature has wisdom, nature has a lot to teach us, and we use the connection with nature to help us move through life, make decisions, and be better people.

And earth medicine, for me, is this ability to know, for example, when I look outside of the window right now, that I know that the, the trees are going through their transition. So my body is going through a transition right now, as raw foods are not as well. interesting in this moment, cooked warm stews, feel more nourishing, so using the [00:04:00] ability to trust that Earth is that great provider and it's also a mother that guides us through life.

Amanda Parker: That's very nicely put. A lot of people who would be listening would have an understanding that there's elements in the universe, you know, we've got these different elements and they may or may not impact us differently. But I think a lot of people are quite out of touch with what that really means and what that looks like in their life.

So I'm happy that you bring this in because it's definitely, yeah, we can each be called to different elements, different things that really speak to us at different phases in our life of what we need in that moment. 

Andréa Ararê: Yeah. And as a shamanic practitioner is really essential for me to keep a sense of health and balance through the connection with nature.

So shamanic practitioners tend to have [00:05:00] even even the urban ones, the ones that live in London. I, I do, I'm very lucky I have a garden, and I have big parks close by. So, it's the, the observance of nature, the singing of the birds in the spring, the coolness of the earth in the winter, it's the changing of leaves in autumn, it keeps guiding us back into our What, what, what is my body going through?

What kind of transitions nature is guiding all of us? And I have a joke that I, I say quite often in my moon ceremonies, that if you're not observing what is happening and influencing you, it doesn't mean that is not doing it. It means it's, it's like not celebrating your birthday and thinking that you're not going to get older just because you don't celebrate your birthday.

But you are, and so the same thing with the [00:06:00] cycles of the moon, with the transitions of the seasons, we are being impacted by this all the time. If we take an opportunity to observe it, we can use that to continue evolving ourselves and growing. And that's why shamans are calling, are called the wise ones, because they are, they're constantly trying to improve themselves.

Amanda Parker: I'd love to hear from you. What is something that you're very excited about right now in this moment? 

Andréa Ararê: I am very excited about my practice. So I have a shamanic healing practice for more than 10 years. I started back in New York City when I lived there and I moved, transitioned that to London. Kind of started all over again since I didn't know people or had a community here at that time, six years ago.

And my practice has been evolving as [00:07:00] hopefully, so am I. And my practice carries this aspect of the traditional healing techniques, which, you know, we call shamanic healing, but they have this earth tribal ways of finding healing and balance for ourselves with what I call neuroscience. What, what somatic experience in the training, somatic experience has given me, which is a deep understanding of the nervous system and how that collaborates.

So, The challenge I was having with my practice, even though the majority of people who have a session with me will have a positive experience, they will share that they, they notice changes after the session. What I was noticing is that A percentage of the people couldn't keep the positive changes, and they [00:08:00] would go back to the same patterns or negative symptoms afterwards.

I put a lot of effort to try to understand what would be the gap, and Spirit guided me towards that. an integration with shaman, with somatic healing, which I have full training in somatic experiencing is a three year program, and I have other tools that are trauma resolution techniques, but my understanding of the nervous system helped me to put in perspective that when I isolate Even that, those wonderful tools and techniques that I have learned from traditional healing, from, from Native healing, I'm, I'm losing a very important component, which is the tribe, the community, the, the, the way that everyone who receives healing is supported when they belong to a community.

[00:09:00] When I invite my client to come to my practice, to my studio, which I have a lovely room in Chelsea, it feels warm and cozy, and they will benefit from that moment, from that, the, the length of the session, but the moment to the cross the door, it's lacking, a community that welcome a new version of themselves back.

They are, they're lacking the community, the family members that are coming with them, which quite often will happen, that the family members will come for the healing. They are part of the healing because they are They understand that the illness doesn't happen in just one person, but it happens in the community and the, in the family, they are lacking that closer contact with the healer.

That's sometimes a healing session, a healing experience will take multiple days, will take [00:10:00] several hours, and I'm westernizing it and, and fitting into what we can uh, afford us time and investment into a few hours. But actually, quite often the, the client will travel, will stay with the shaman, will leave with the shaman for a few days, will eat, will have a fire ceremonies, will, will sing together.

And all of that was lacking in what I isolated from the tools that I have learned that I'm so grateful, but I was trying to package that in one hour. What I offer nowadays is, is a much more comprehensive way of regulating a nervous system that would have received a type of regulation if it was in close connection with a family member that understands what the healing is, if it's, um, spending the night in a fire [00:11:00] ceremony, singing, and connecting with nature, and we're, we're doing somebody who travels from their cement house into a car and sits in my studio and then goes back home and most of the time I won't share with anyone that has done a shamanic healing because it sounds a weird thing.

I have been incorporating those two modalities more and more. The results have been phenomenal and that makes me so in alignment with my purpose here in life. 

Amanda Parker: It's so beautiful to hear a bit of that context of how you're working and how your, I mean, your practice has been evolving, but also just what you're seeing is really important in that healing space.

We're going to dive in a minute into that. What is somatic experiencing? Cause I'm like super curious to go into the details, but I think it's also really fascinating just to think about this element that we're not operating alone, none [00:12:00] of us is an isolated unit. We're all a part of the systems that surround us.

In some cases our family, in some cases our workplace, we're all operating amongst others. And I find it fascinating what you're bringing out that so many of us take it upon ourselves to do the healing that is supposed to span out through the whole family line and everyone else. And, Yes, we can, and it's a collective experience as well.

If I do a lot of healing on myself, of course, it's going to impact my mother or father or sister or husband or all the people who touch my life intimately. So it's, it's beautiful to hear that that. There's an honoring of that process and the work that you do as well. I 

Andréa Ararê: cannot take credit Spirit Guide Mia, and I'm, there's one thing I do really well.

I listen. When a spirit talks to Mia, I know that [00:13:00] there, there's, there's a path ahead that is way beyond my imagination. 

Amanda Parker: If you would be able to share what I notice, this happens in my own life, and it happens with a lot of the clients that I work with, people who really want to hear that voice of spirit.

And they might have nudges of it on their own, and they might know certain ways or little things, maybe in a meditation or maybe writing, but I'm noticing it clearer and clearer that people are hungry for being able to hear that voice clearer. What would you say, how could someone tap into that more in a way to even touch on a hint of what you're describing there?

Andréa Ararê: For me, spiritual practices are a language that connects with the divine. I happen to have a language, I use a language, that it's called shamanic practices. Because [00:14:00] for me, it has I have never separated divinity from nature, has always been an intrinsic belief for me, that I have lived. But for other people it might be something different, it might be their yoga practice, it might be their organized religion.

The most important is to notice how you feel when you are in that. So even in shamanic practices, whenever people ask me how they can learn to be shamanic practitioners, I say, go out and experience them and discover which one is your, your path. Because there are multiple shamanic practices in the world.

And each one of them has. different qualities that may speak to me or not. I have chosen mine, and that one, it's, it feels good, it [00:15:00] feels right, it feels not an effort. But had I tried to fit in, in a different practice, and I have done this myself, I start searching for spiritual practices when I was 14 years old, because I knew I needed to have a connection with the divine, and the language of, um, Catholic religion, where I was born into, in Brazil, did not express that.

I couldn't hear God. I couldn't hear the divine through that entity, those, those dogmas. So I went out to experience those, and for some people, walking in nature, and, and, uh, and observing the singing of birds or the shape of the sky, the clouds, it might be enough. When you find that, you find your language or one of the languages [00:16:00] that allow you to connect with the divine.

That point is more important. a feminine way of allowing the communication to come to you, instead of, okay, I'm ready, and I must hear what is in now. Quite often, I will have this whole ceremony, and it's meaningful, and I feel great about it, but there's no insight. It's just, I'm present. There's a great feeling inside of me.

Well, it so happens that the guidance comes when I'm sleeping, when I'm taking a shower, when I'm standing outside with my feet on the floor. The guidance doesn't have to come when I said that I'm ready for the guidance to come. So I would say, if you were to ask me, I'm going to hold all their package.

That is my, my favorite thing in, in, in life is this what [00:17:00] I call is the new version of healers. We are balanced, feminine, masculine. We have deep control of that energy that we put out and we target when we have a sense of our path and we have a sense of who we are. An ability to soften and receive and be oriented in the direction that is right for us.

Amanda Parker: That is beautiful. And I can laugh about every time that I tried to squeeze a certain routine or ritual and, you know, say, okay, this is the time to connect, um, and when it didn't work and how frustrating that was. And then all all the moments of time, like where divine wisdom has come in, you know, standing on the edge of a forest or overlooking the ocean and then going, Oh wow, well that was easy.

Really tapping into those moments [00:18:00] that are where it's simple, where it's easy, where it doesn't have to be contrived or planned or packaged in a certain way. 

Andréa Ararê: Yeah. And this is. a big job for us to do nowadays because we're breaking down what we know of right of what is good in terms of spirituality as we are no longer just accepting and embracing a organized religion and we're finding our way of connecting with spirituality through practices that are meaningful to us.

That's the feminine way. 

Amanda Parker: What you've shared just about, you know, pieces of that shamanic journey and how you really have brought that practice to life, but kept evolving it, kept listening and recognizing the areas where maybe there was something else that could complement. And so you've told us that you brought in this [00:19:00] Somatic experiencing tool to complement what you saw was missing from, I mean, missing or could be bolstered, I would say, from the practices that you were already doing to support people.

So maybe you can tell us a bit what somatic experiencing is. It's 

Andréa Ararê: a new modality, and I say new because it hasn't, it hasn't, it didn't become mainstream until, I don't know, 10, 20 years maximum ago. So the idea of, uh, Resolving traumatic experiences, overwhelming emotional states have always been believed that is true through traditional talking therapy.

We use from the three parts of the brain, we have a rational part of the brain, which is the most modern human beings have. We have a emotional part of the brain, which we share with all mammals. [00:20:00] We all have a sense of, uh, well being through connection and through feeling love. And we have a very old part of the brain that actually has, all of them have been viewed in this specific order in, from the oldest to the newest as an evolutionary process.

And this oldest form part of the brain is that we share with all animals, and it's actually called the reptilian part of the brain, because reptiles have that. It's the part of the brain that tells us, we need you to survive, we need you to stay alive. So, it's the one where they impose for a fight, flight, or freeze.

We will start and it becomes activated before the other two parts of the brain. So the cognitive of part of the brain can rationalize a situation. If you see a threat coming your way, [00:21:00] your brain in milliseconds will make a decision on how to respond to that. Is that threat? Is that threat? potentially something I can't fight?

I have to run away as the best survival, uh, technique, approach right now? Or is this something that it's imminent and I have no escape? Best If I don't feel the pain, if I don't feel the shock of everything that is going to happen when that predator reaches me. So that, that experience is exactly the same experience that a gazelle will have when a lion's chasing them.

And you and I will have, if we find that ticket, the parking ticket slip on our window shield on. It is a response that will say I have been in an unsafe [00:22:00] situation and I need you to react to that. So, the person who developed somatic experiencing, Peter Levine, he's a PhD psychotherapist and he had a degree in biology at the time that he was interested in studying animals.

What he observed is that animals not in captivity, we are not including captivity animals, but animals in nature do not express any signs of PTSD. The curiosity is if we share so much similar physiology, our nervous systems are quite similar, developed in similar ways, except with This thing that we think is amazing about humans, that we have a neural cortex, that we have an analytical brain, except for that, our responses to threat, to unsafety, are the same as all animals.

[00:23:00] So, The technique involves understanding the nervous system deeply, understanding the cycles and the potential responses an organism would have, and allowing the organism in a safe space to recreate enough situation where the organism have now a chance to respond differently. So it's considerate. an approach from bottom top.

So we don't use analysis and rationalize and, and retell the story, but we observe how the body starts to respond. We befriend those responses. We slow them down. We allow them to have, um, a full expression. And if needed, which is, My favorite thing about somatic experiencing, we do not interfere, but we allow that system to be fully coherent and have a sense of [00:24:00] agency in a, in a previous moment where it couldn't have.

And that can release trauma, can release stuck survival response actions that couldn't be taking at that time from five years, 10 years, 30 years before. case that I haven't worked with the longest thread was about 20 years. And somebody, the client that was experiencing that had a full image and bodily sensation of what was happening.

Happening 20 years before. And the response from that is, as the, that system will integrate, so as my client will later sleep, which is a very important part of our work, because it's during the sleep that we move short term memory to long term memory, that client will have a full ability [00:25:00] to, allow the memory that had a shortcut, that shortcut that had a stuck energy that said all the emotional components that hadn't been processed before can now be, had been released and that memory can go into long term memory.

And it becomes what I call, this is more from my Native traditions, it becomes the warrior journey. It becomes the warrior story. You no longer suffer. from that story, but actually what you can connect with is, I have survived. Here's how the story went, and I'm right here. I have scars. I can't tell you the story.

I have survived. Potentially. Depending on the belief of the client in the story, I actually will bring a component of creating a rite of passage for my clients to be, to celebrate that, to honor. And [00:26:00] this is what a traditional tribe would be doing. If you have survived, let's, let's tell that story. Let's reenact that story.

So, one of the components that really called me to somatic experiencing, besides the Spirit guiding me and saying, this is the route, but was the fact that, yeah, and I listened, was the fact that the Peter Levine himself, he has experienced with shamanic traditions, and he knew that there are, uh, one component called, uh, A soul loss, that when you have an experience that is beyond your capacity to process, well in psychotherapy you may call that dissociation, there is a rupture.

There is a, something that loss ability to be integrated. So if you use your whole body, if you use a guiding hand that is there, knowing what you're going through. [00:27:00] And the two of you can move through that. There's no PTSD afterwards. 

Amanda Parker: That is fascinating. I think I was reading Um, because I've been watching a lot, there's a hurricane in Florida and, um, many years ago I was living in New Orleans and when Katrina came and so I've been following the news very closely to watch what's happening with the hurricane and there was a snippet that I saw and I'm not going to quote where it was from because I honestly don't remember but it really made me think that The difference between how some people experience the trauma of, let's say, an event like a hurricane or a natural disaster, the way that they actually experience that further in their life has everything to do with how secure or loved or safe they felt in their childhood or in their younger years.

And that if you felt really secure and attached and had a safe place to land when you were younger [00:28:00] then you might experience a traumatic event such as a hurricane or losing your home but you'll move through it. Whereas if you had a lot of insecurity or instability that has something, you know, an experience like that could really create a trauma that would be very difficult to go through later.

Andréa Ararê: I can understand what that statement is coming from. Um, I'm going to. I'm going to share here what I know through, I'm going to share what I have learned through scientific, through, through research. So through data that we have collected of those catastrophes, the people who have an ability to respond anyway.

Even if it's not effective enough, they hold the less trauma than people who paralyze in the moment. Now I can see an association that the people who have a more organized system because they have experienced a [00:29:00] healthy, safe childhood, they would be able to respond to that better. I just never heard through, you know, any of the papers that I have read that direct connection, but there are plenty of connections that have been done that if anyone is capable of having a response to take action, which is actually a mobilizing energy that is very helpful when we are doing healing isolated, but if that person is capable of responding at that time, they will have none or less PTSD.

That's a fact. 

Amanda Parker: Okay, I do not want to spread fake news, so listen to Andrea on this one, she has the research there. From the somatic experiencing, maybe, actually, let me ask this, can you make it a bit more tangible? What does that actually mean? So if someone were to come in to have [00:30:00] an experience with you, what's actually happening in the room?

Andréa Ararê: Probably the number one question, 

Amanda Parker: yeah. What are we going to do together? What are we doing? 

Andréa Ararê: We do not focus on a story. So I mostly have two different types of clients who will come to me. The ones that they are experiencing very unpleasant and negative side effects of something or symptoms that they cannot connect with.

And the ones that come. knowing that they have experienced something. Independent of that, all that we are working with is nervous system regulation. And I will not follow a timeline story in any case. What I want is somebody to have the capacity to break down A lot of the experiences that one would have in, let's say, it's a quite [00:31:00] repetitive, unpleasant anxiety on a daily basis, or it's a post car accident.

I have actually a magazine piece that was published in work that I'd done with a client, and she was stuck in a mass shooting in Las Vegas. And she came to me several years later, but she still had so many PTSD side effects. So she, she was jumpy, she couldn't sleep well. And so we take that bunch of symptoms and we say, okay, this is a sign of a nervous system that has been dysregulated.

Let's see what we can learn about your nervous system. My favorite thing about somatic experiencing, we don't put anybody in a box. I'm not trying to diagnose. I'm not trying to, um, identify a, um, [00:32:00] main, um, type of personality. We're just, we're just being present with what that nervous system is bringing in the moment.

And because I have the knowledge of the nervous system, I'm gonna try to track and follow what, what different stages the person could be responding to something. So, how do we start? All my sessions start with grounding in order for The person to have a sense of safety in the body, acknowledging any signs of safety in the room.

So that nervous system is capable of starting, starting to reset and not carry that high activation of constant threat. And. We live in London. If you walk outside of the street, noises and car honking and ambulances and [00:33:00] airplanes flying above our head, all of this is with small increments, activating your threat response and making your body to feel that you should have been some kind of high alert.

If there are any major events that have happened in your life, either they are. From childhood, so the way you have been raised, um, specific life events, an accident or something that happened just in a specific moment, or even as an adult, you chose a partner that is unsafe, that is threatening. It means that your nervous system has had to adapt.

It's what we would call an optimized capacity, that it has all this range to respond to a car coming your way, and you just jump back into the sidewalk, [00:34:00] and you don't get run over, and so you don't have to be worried about this anymore, to the moment that it There's so much workload from your office and your boss is asking you one more.

There's that kind of paralysis, like, I don't even know where to start from. So throughout the day, we have all the variation of responses we have. If your nervous system is not regulated and is not optimized, let's say your capacity is this much. So the moment that there is one more thing requiring your response.

You just got a ticket, a parking ticket. You go up here. You just, you just really, um, we have names for this. We, you just went into a trauma vortex where that, that original rupture that was caused in your system now gets to be activated in a spiral [00:35:00] without having a knowledge of how to work through that.

So I give very simple physical clues that in a room there's safety. There's safety in the tone of voice, there's safety in the connection, there's safety in the, I don't know, the decor around us, there's safety in the physical body, in the way that the chair is holding. And after there is a enough connection with that I go into a lot of psychoeducation because most of us don't know how the nervous system works.

The first thing I said when I finished the, the first module of my training in somatic experiencing was how come I didn't learn that in school? How is it possible that I spend years learning history of places that don't exist anymore? That's, potentially impact me very little in my life, but I don't know how my own nervous system [00:36:00] functions.

So psychoeducation is very important to help people understand what they're dealing with. And what, why is that response? a actually very normal response. And quite often when I tell my client how smart your nervous system is, how helpful was for you to actually go into freeze and not feel the pain of being harassed, of being physically and emotionally attacked one more time by the family member, that they then come back to the body and say, you didn't betray me.

You have been with me this whole time. So we start a very deep relationship between this, this one isolated part that we believe we are, this neocortex, with the whole nervous system that spreads throughout the body. We learn how to do [00:37:00] something that is so basic and I had never heard before, interception.

Interception is the sensations inside of the body. So if you and me are right, are right now sitting in front of each other, um, which is slightly different than a computer, but we, we know each other, so it's easier to get the connection. There's something about the smell. There's something about the vibration of the voice.

There is something about the, the ease that I feel in my body. And with that, I actually not only pay attention. on you, on what is coming out of your, your, your mouth. But I, I actually have a connection with my body in this specific moment. I chose warm socks to be sitting here talking to you so I can feel the warmth and the fluffiness of the socks on my feet.

I can feel the, the [00:38:00] pillow that I chose to put behind my back that is supporting my back from behind and feels comfortable and feels, it feels good. quite firm in there. I feel how the chair is supporting me here. And being capable of noticing those, those sensations in my body is a very useful tool. And I wish I knew that when I was younger, when I experienced anxiety.

Because I thought that the anxiety was me and right now I can, I can place things in different places, in different positions and I can have different relationships with them. 

Amanda Parker: It sounded like you were describing many instances in my own life where I wouldn't have had any of the words to say that I was dysregulated or that I was.

experiencing anxiety versus being anxious [00:39:00] and these moments where, you know, triggers come up that you don't even understand in the moment. So you have a physiological reaction to something that seems innocuous without realizing how many layers or maybe past moments of history that it's actually tying into.

So it actually sounds like. Life saving work because you start to really understand who you are and how you operate and it feels really like I just want to focus on that point for a minute because I feel like especially in the coaching world when people are coming in. There's often this question of like, what's wrong with me?

You know, people really feel so detached from I don't understand why I act like this. I know I need ABC. Why am I doing this? It's like there's such a detached way of living from as you described here in your [00:40:00] head to every like to 97 percent of who we are even as just a physical being. 

Andréa Ararê: I like calling so much of this work as the work of knowing yourself, of having a relationship with yourself.

Because if I know that a responsive, as you said, the physiological response in my body in that moment is a smart response, is a normal response to an event that I have, observed and I have perceived in a certain way, then I'm not judging myself. Then I'm not condemning my body as you have betrayed me. I actually, I build a partnership with my body.

Amanda Parker: So what would you say is possible for people? Um, I mean, you did share the story about the woman who was, oh, in the shooting at the, in Las Vegas. What's possible maybe on [00:41:00] a smaller scale, if there's a story you could share, obviously maintaining confidentiality, but of something that might be more commonplace for someone who's listening, something they maybe could relate to that you've seen and what you've been able to support, what kind of healing has happened Through this process.

And I can ask that in a clearer way, if I need to. I, I'm trying to 

Andréa Ararê: think because the stories are so unique. I, I actually feel comfortable sharing my own experience because I, I do a lot, I receive a lot of somatic experience. I received it before my training, during my training, and I still receive it nowadays.

I find it. important as I hold the space for so many people. I have a very busy practice to know that I have space for myself to take care of myself. So the most helpful common observation that I have made [00:42:00] about myself and my clients is this, um, abandonment. of the body as a whole and not knowing, not being able to identify our typical responses and with that escalating into judgment and of what we're doing.

So normalizing physiological responses, naming the way your body keeps yourself safe for me is. an extremely and very repetitive event throughout sessions, in my sessions or in my client's sessions. When we name things, um, which I find extremely important for us to, uh, work through the layers of shame because the worse we feel about ourselves, the less we talk about it, the more it sits in the dark and like a mushroom, it [00:43:00] grows in the dark.

Yeah. the moment we express that and we say, yeah, that's my response. And guess what? It's a smarter response if my perception, let's say as a child, is that my mother is threatening. When my mother is talking to me, uh, Is, I receive that as, um, an aggression, as, uh, um, an attack. If that's my perception, then it makes completely sense that my body has a full physiological response to that.

What a smart body. 

Amanda Parker: Um, I'm thinking in my own case, uh, so we're in the process of moving homes and signing a new lease and all of this and have found a beautiful place. And it's just so funny because over the last years, I, I can't think of exactly [00:44:00] when it began. I developed this like really big Like adverse reaction to my landlords and it's happened with the last three landlords that I have that every time there's an email, a phone call, my whole system goes into high alarm, so I can justify it in my own way.

Oh, maybe in a past life, I, you know, couldn't navigate my own living situation and I felt under threat, but it's really, so it's just funny because it's easy to talk about it, you know, theoretically. And. Literally for me, when I get an email from my landlord, my whole system responds and it's like, Oh, okay, that's actually like, I feel unstable.

I feel unsafe. There's something happening here. And in the past, it would just be full on threat and go into like attack mode to protect myself. And now I'm like, Oh, okay. Okay, I know this happens. Like, time to breathe. See what I can do to settle my system in that moment. 

Andréa Ararê: Well done. [00:45:00] That's, that's excellent.

And quite often, I'm sure, because I'm a shamanic practitioner, I will include the piece that could be from a previous life. But we never know. It could be a piece from a, um, authority. It could be something from school that an authority figure just didn't take you, didn't treat you right, and it impacts you in the long term.

The most, I've heard the most incredible stories. One of my favorites, it's one of the, um, somatic experience teachers, and this is, this is a story that she tells, so it's, it's okay to share, that she had a client with vertical, and it was very, complex for the client to do traveling and work. And turns out that the story is started when the client had a tonsillectomy and the surgery in the hospital, it was a [00:46:00] very negative experience.

We wouldn't know, we wouldn't make the connection. And I have this in my practice, we sometimes when we discover what was behind that, we don't have to, that the result, the ability to, to resolve that, that friction there, it will happen independent of if we discover, but it's fantastic when we have those aha moments and say, and the client says, I just had a memory.

I had those myself. So you connect to the dots and There we go. The vertical was gone. 

Amanda Parker: What came up as you were saying that was that because it's not always such a direct link, like you couldn't just be like, Oh, I had a bad landlord and now I'm scared of landlords. It actually takes a lot of that either blame or guilt off your shoulders.

It's not something you're carrying from an experience you had or something you [00:47:00] did. It's like, that's the first thought that came up was, Oh, actually it's not about fixing something that's broken there. It could be something that is totally unrelated that you wouldn't possibly be able to know just in your waking everyday life.

Andréa Ararê: That's right. And the nervous system is never broken. The nervous system is really smart and always responds with the best way that believes is an outcome that provides the highest survival rate, even if that's the freeze. And when I work with women who had sexual abuse, and they described to me that they went into a freeze and a dissociation, the level of guilt that we include in with our behavior is tremendous.

I guess I should have done something. I guess I should have reacted. And then we discovered that That was genius! [00:48:00] You survived! And you survived without being, I don't know, sometimes harmed, punched, physically, um, having worse violence done. That was a very smart maneuver. That gives a person that is carrying all those layers of discomfort and trauma with an event a huge relief and opportunity to start healing.

Amanda Parker: So as you have moved through this journey, were there any particular moments of like challenge or difficulty that you face to be able to be in this place now, where you really love your practice and get to love the work that you're doing? So what were some of those maybe roadblocks or challenges that you faced along the way?

Andréa Ararê: I don't think I had because, and again I'm not taking credit, I do listen to Spirit when Spirit guides [00:49:00] me. But what I can remember are all the times that I was trying to go in a direction that I, my head thought was the right one and it didn't. It didn't work that way, and I did feel upset to them. Right now, from my 49th year of living, when I look back, I wouldn't have changed anything.

They were all perfect, and I, uh, I do share quite often that I have a background in engineering. It's, um, I, I trained as an electrical engineer. I work in energy conservation industry for 10 years. Whenever I feel that that wasn't my expression, wasn't my best soul expression, I look back and I think I learned so much about myself at the time that I didn't know my true calling was to [00:50:00] serve.

As a spiritual guide, as a trauma therapist, I learn so much and I use a lot of those finding patterns. It's one of the things I'm a puzzle solver. So I can, I can look for those patterns in my client's nervous system in their lives. And I just, I just highlight those and I say, Huh, did you notice this before?

And I love that I have that capacity. No, I don't think I had roadblocks. I think I had plenty of moments where Spirit was saying, Yeah, I know. Very cute. You think this is the way. Let me show you where you're gonna go next. 

Amanda Parker: Well, that's that can also be hard to listen to that call. So it sounds like you let it guide you, you know?

Andréa Ararê: I did not think that this was going to be where are you? was a work practice. [00:51:00] I, it was not a plan. I, I have been very guided and I'm even grateful that doors have opened. For example, as I train as a somatic experience practitioner, The UK Association for Somatic Experience Practitioners, which is the organization that regulates that we have the right certifications and we have the right standards, they invited me to give a lecture in how I combine somatic experience with shamanic healing.

So there are plenty of practitioners in the whole industry out there saying, this is valid. We believe in this. Tell us more. What can we learn from this and expand our perception in integrating different modalities? So I collaborate quite often with psychotherapists who are well educated [00:52:00] in alternative practices where they believe that shamanic healing has plenty of tools to help their clients overcome those roadblocks who are Um, educated right now in, in newer modalities of trauma resolution, even though they have not been trained themselves, they would like somebody like me to support their clients with those blocks of events.

So I, I have been receiving a lot of recognition. In my path of that, I, I'm doing something that makes a difference. And my practice has clients that I've been working in the last 10 years that they will call me whenever There is a life event that they need support with. They will send their friends, their family members, so I, I feel that has, I have received a lot of feedback that I'm making a [00:53:00] difference to my community.

Amanda Parker: And for everyone who's listening, who's like, okay, I want to get in Andrea's calendar. You have to book ahead. 

Andréa Ararê: I do have a quite long waiting list. 

Amanda Parker: So how, how can people get in touch, like, if they are listening and they're really like, okay, I'm ready. I want this magic. How do they get in touch with you? 

Andréa Ararê: My website is Andrea Araria, and through there, there are forms that you can fill up and reach out to me.

I answer all of your questions. all of them, always. They just might take a little bit because my waiting list is long, but I will let everybody know that if they, what they're looking for is within my scope of work or not, if they should be looking for a different therapist or practitioner. And I also have a group activities that's quite often is where they can get to know me and my work, um, [00:54:00] right away.

So, I host online moon ceremonies twice a month, every full moon, every new moon. And that's for anyone, just through my website, they can sign up for the event. Um, I hold events in London. I have, uh, trainings, workshops. I have women's circles, which you have experienced before. So I They are beautiful, beautiful.

Bye bye. Moments. Thank you. So I have those group events that are, they, they have more availability and people can get to know me right away. Um, but if they're interested in working with me, they can send a message and they will be placed in my waiting list. 

Amanda Parker: Yeah, I definitely want to. Also say that your Instagram feed is also really beautiful and full of lots of wisdom.

So I will link to Andrea's website and her Instagram and how you can get in touch and [00:55:00] just get a bit more of that wisdom in your day to day life because I certainly look at your posts every day. If anyone's listening and they're just starting out on this journey for themselves. So either a healing journey or maybe, maybe even a curiosity to explore more of the somatic experiencing.

Is there any advice that you would give to them? 

Andréa Ararê: Look for help. We are not meant to do this healing work alone. We have always been connected as communities, as tribes, and I honor the people who come to me because they found me online or in a magazine because they don't know me, but we have always known enough people where healing has a safe space to happen.

We are memos. We have neurons that are connected. that connect with each other, mirroring neurons [00:56:00] that allows my, my system to feel how your system is doing. This is meant that we do healing together. You may have lots of tools and we, you may do complement your healing by yourself, but look for support.

There are There are so many people like me who find fulfilling to guide somebody through their healing journey. 

Amanda Parker: Oh, that's beautiful. That is a wonderful way to bring our conversation to a close. Are there any parting words you want to leave out there in the world, Andrea? 

Andréa Ararê: Yeah, connect with nature, whatever you are.

Nature is wise. 

Amanda Parker: That is really, I'm learning that in my urban lifestyle. How important those trees [00:57:00] are and all the ravens that join every day. So thank you so much for sharing your wisdom, for sharing your stories, for teaching us really, um, the different ways that we can access this healing. I'm so grateful and I know that.

Yeah, I know this episode's really going to touch a lot of people and open their minds to I think something that we don't even know is possible for us at the simplest level. 

Andréa Ararê: Fantastic. It has been really fun and my pleasure and thank you for the opportunity to share different modalities and happens to be right now my approach for healing.

Thank you. 

Amanda Parker: And to everyone who's listening, thanks for tuning in to this episode of don't step on the Bluebells. Thanks for tuning in to today's [00:58:00] episode of Don't Step on the Bluebells. If you enjoyed this conversation, please give the podcast a five star rating wherever you listen. And don't forget to hit subscribe and follow along so you never miss a new episode.


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