with Fernando Kalliope
Healing at Heart Level
"As a survivor of multiple abusive experiences,
I can't recommend Fernando enough for
both his effective practice of Somatic Experiencing work,
and his reliability as a vital, safe source of help;
enabling the transition from surviving to thriving."
Body-Mind Experiencing is a weaving of Embodiment practises within a therapeutic setting. One of being mindfully grounded, centred in our body, connected to our breathing and, in the end, through a restorative process of rewiring of our nervous system, one of regulation of our physiology and healing of our emotions.
Through Embodiment we invite our inner Self to consciously process sensations, feelings, thoughts and movements within those core places of our bodies where we have either a deficiency of or an excess of energy, gently and progressively going in and out of each experience until we feel balanced, empowered, alive and whole. It is these completed and integrated body-mind experiences that enable us to release hurtful memories, tensions or pains; they further allow us to express from our heart what we need or want, and in essence, help us to discover our true Self.
When we re-connect to our true Self, we re-connect to our gut feelings and emotions to express them in a manner that feels validating and authentic. The healing happens through real feeling in our bodies and making our voice heard by expressing what we know to feel is authentic, while at the same time, new neurological pathways are created in order for us to manage our built-in struggles with anxiety, depression, relationships and intimacy. As a result, we grow resilient and increase our window of tolerance to what was once very difficult or impossible to deal with.
Healing at Heart Level is, at a root level, a potential gateway to move us out of being trapped in the sorrows of our past and bring us to the present moment, or when we jump ahead into the expectations of our future. It is a body-mind driven pathway that can break us free from the stuck-in-time body memories of our past traumatic circumstances and support us to bypass our life-long conditionings to, finally, better manage experiences of depression, anxiety or overwhelm, which usually manifest themselves through numbness, pain, distress, chronic symptoms, illness, self-sabotaging behaviour or trauma.
Embodiment
Trauma
“People think of trauma as being these terrible things that happened to you. Those are traumatic but they’re not the trauma. The trauma is what happens inside of you as a result of those things. What happens is the shutdown of the cells, what happens is a disconnection from the body, a shame about the Self. What happens is a loss of connection to oneself and a worldview that makes it very difficult to be in the present moment. So, trauma, ultimately, is disconnection from the Self and the present moment.”
“The imprint of trauma is not in your cognition (…) The problem with trauma is that these smoke detectors systems in your brain are changed: you start feeling things that feel differently, your body feels differently (…) You numb yourself out, not because you want to, because this part of your brain does that to you. This is really where most of all your trauma imprint is, in your reptillian brain (…) The part of brain where you talk and think really cannot control this part of your (reptillian) brain (…) this part of your (primitive) brain has a life of its own.”
Testimonials
About the Heart-centred
Embodiment Therapist
Fernando Kalliope is a regular Yogi practitioner with over twenty years of professional training and cumulative expertise in Embodiment practices, physically assimilated in dance, acting, voice and improvisation art forms.
Fernando, in addition to his core modalities’ training, completed the following relevant courses which have further enhanced his Embodiment journey:
• The Wheel of Consent, “The Art of Receiving and Giving” training programme with Betty Martin (Dawlish, UK, 2015);
• Scar Tissue Remediation & Management with Ellen Heed and Kimberly Ann Johnson (Dawlish, UK, 2016);
• The Art of Tantra Massage Professional Training, 16-day over one-year programme with The Paths of Transformation by John Hawken (Cernivsko, Czechia, 2017);
• Myofascial Energetic Release ‘Lower Back & Neck’ with Nisarga Dobosz (London, UK, 2017);
• Somatic Experiencing Bodywork and Coupling Dynamics with Kathy Kain (Weggis, Switzerland, 2019);
• Getting to the Core of Sexuality Trauma with Ariel Giarretto (Stockholm, Sweden, 2019);
Fernando Kalliope is an insured professional member of the Association of Somatic and Integrative Sexologists (ASIS) since 2016 and follows its ethical codes of practise.
The somatic therapy framework and backbone modality Fernando Kalliope uses in his work is Somatic Experiencing (SE), a neuroscience and body-based approach to healing trauma and other stress disorders. Fernando is a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (Krakow, Poland and Lisbon, Portugal, 2017-2019) and thus a Professional Member of the Somatic Experiencing Association UK.
In addition to the SE core modality, Fernando uses another Body-Mind Integration method, Chakra Therapy, as developed and presented by Anodea Judith in her book, “Eastern Body, Western Mind”. Fernando has trained personally with Anodea Judith in two in-depth courses in London, UK, and Novato, USA, 2016.
Finally, Fernando Kalliope also uses to a great extent the SOMA-Embodiment ‘post-graduation SE modality’, which offers touch and movement tools, relating to the perception or awareness of the position and movement of the body to transform emotional and developmental trauma. SOMA-Embodiment was devised and developed by Sônia Gomes, a senior SE faculty teacher, and Fernando completed the 120-hour certification training programme with Sônia Gomes and Marcelo Muniz (Zurich, Switzerland and Łochów, Poland, 2019-2020).
Embodiment, Intimacy & Empowerment
How does it work?
Embodiment works by increasing the level of Intimacy of the Self while staying connected inside and in Embodied Relationship with the outside world. As you give yourself time and permission to share your internal process with the Other/Therapist, as the level of intimacy increases, so does the capacity for feeling sensations and emotional states through your body: your sense of Self strengthens and your cognitive ability to ask for what you want or desire gets an Empowerment boost. Empowering the body to speak its mind is the ability to feel while listening, thinking and talking in regards to the Self and to the Other. Embodied Talking is thus the ability to speak your truth directly from your own body-mind experiences as you feel each experience moment by moment.
Boundaries & Body-Mind Integration
Boundaries are the physical and/or behavioural development edges we all have, the frontier between what is within our current knowledge, ability and strength and what is immediately outside, the wild and challenging realm of the senses that is unknown to us. These edges form the inner space whereby our embodiment process of mindful contraction and expansion gradually occurs. A mindful and slow Self-discovery exploration ensures it is done within a safe and resourceful container, so as not to unintentionally hurtle through our boundaries, and hence facilitating its flow and Integration into our grounded and connected being. Within this Self-regulating framework, we are are able to safely integrate the body-mind experiences in a way that we reclaim our sense of power and learn to expand or reset our boundaries, building up our resilience and opening up our heartland to emotional healing.