Aesthesis, “to take in,” or “to breathe in,” is a Greek word that refers to perception from all of the senses in the body. It is the exchange of soul essence between two forms of life and the capacity to perceive meaning from the world through feeling. It suggests a receptivity to sensory experience as well as the impression upon the body of what is perceived. Aesthesis is the direct source of communication with the spirit that is present with all things.

The word somatic arises from the Greek root soma which means the “living body in its wholeness.” It recognizes the vast interplay of the mind, body, emotions, and spirit. Feelings can affect thoughts as thoughts can affect feelings, thus the ways in which behaviors, habits, and life experiences come into being through this dynamically interconnected system.

Somatic psychotherapy is grounded in this understanding of the integration of body/mind/and spirit and includes the connection between thinking, sensing, and feeling in the healing process.

The myth of Indra’s Net provides a metaphor of this vast interdependent organization present in the human experience. In this infinitely strung net in the heavens there is a jewel at every node. Thus, each jewel is a reflection in the cosmic matrix and a change in one reflects in all the others.

Aesthesis Healing Arts is rooted from a holistic (integrative) perspective and offers trauma-informed somatic psychotherapy and intuitive/spiritual coaching to serve the physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual dimensions of wellbeing.

“Medicine and sickness heal each other. The whole world is medicine. What am I?”
- Zen teaching-9th Century Master Yunmen Wenyan