Cole Cottin, Somatics Practitioner

www.ColeCottin.com..has been updated to reflect my current offerings and availability!
I hope you'll check it out :-)

First email newsletter in 2024! Sent this morning.
Not subscribed yet? Here's a link to check it out!

https://mailchi.mp/435cd4ed7b9d/lets-connect

✨️🌺✨️

Excited to be offering my services full time now, through OmTree Shala at Sunflower Outdoor & Bike Shop ❣️
🌻✨️🧘‍♀️🌱🌳

I am a Somatics Practitioner committed to accompanying clients on the journey of embodied transformation.

~*~

Through a process of authentic connection and reflection, I support clients to:

- Access deep resources within the body

- Unwind limiting patterns and

- Shapeshift towards reaching their highest intentions and goals in life.

~*~

My practice weaves together thousands of hours of training in the fields of Holistic Structural Integration, CranioSacral Therapy, SomatoEmotional Release, Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapy, and MindBody Coaching.

Sessions may include any combination of:

- Touch* -- to bring awareness and facilitate change [*touch is ALWAYS optional*]

- Breathwork -- to create space and move energy

- Movement -- to unwind and integrate what is shifting

- Mind-body Dialogue -- to deepen the client's experience

Session goals are guided by clients' stated intentions, as well as my anchoring intention to work with the whole person: physical, mental, emotional, spiritual, and energetic.

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My somatic offerings center mindful engagement with the body through the incredible ecological matrix of connective tissue that is our container in this life: "fascia," an organ of both form and consciousness. This singular, multi-layered fabric begins with the skin and literally touches everything within us. It holds tremendous potential to facilitate embodied change.

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I strive to embody a high degree of integrity, carrying a culture of deep inclusivity, safety, consent, acceptance, and presence. I am are enlivened by work with folks of all different shapes, orientations, and backgrounds - including but not limited to the various life stages of pregnancy, postpartum, infancy, childhood, adulthood, aging, and end of life. Homevisits may be possible in the Lawrence-area for postpartum families and those with mobility limitations.

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Located in downtown Lawrence, Kansas.

To schedule a session, visit www.ColeCottin.com.

"We shapeshift to know, to learn, to communicate, to awaken dormant faculties… to have a new pair of eyes through which to see and feel the world. Shapeshifting is necessary in a world of sympathetic resonance; a world which we navigate through our bodies. Shapeshifting is how we return to knowing, to unity with nature in our bodies. It is felt in our bodies…
"We evolve through shapeshifting, evolution itself is a shapeshifter. We naturally shapeshift because our bodies have gone through and still go through a primal process of shapeshifting.
"Deep in the oceanic protean waters of the womb, we shift shape... You were once a tiny swollen sphere, a yolk like moon of potentiality, before layer by layer you articulated around a central axis and began your journey as a primordial aquatic being with a tail. Our fingers and toes, when they arrive in the womb, are webbed like river creatures. We grow the same throat structures as fish. What becomes the lateral line in fish becomes ears in us. Some of us sprout a soft downy fur, lanugo, like our seal and elephant cousins. We hold millions of years of animal bodies within us. Hold a multiplicity of lifeforms within us simultaneously. This body, made of spiraling layers of mammal, reptile, bird and fish tissues...
"The enactment of shapeshifting is an evolutionary necessity...
We evolve through shapeshifting."

Words from

Photo of a shape I once inhabited, by Jenny Askew, 2005

I am SO excited to be joining this program!!
Will be integrating this work into my practice Fall 2023!
They are still enrolling, in case you know anyone interested.
:-)

So many layers, multitudes we contain. Characters of all kinds, within and beyond imagination. Forms talking shape within us, hardening or softening depending on what song each sings. Harmonic or discordant. All in the body. Resonating. So many unseen...I love to pierce the veil @ Embody Sanctuary

Uncomfortable truth...
At Embody Sanctuary , we are not here to "fix you." We are here to listen and empower. To hold whatever truths you may have to bring, in a space of non-judgmental and unconditional acceptance. To trust the unfolding of your inner process, and uplift the wisdom from within. All in connection with the genius of your body and its ability to unwind and release into a deeper state of balance and peace.

I invite you to click "Contact Us" if you are hearing the voice of truth inside you affirm:
"I am ready for my first session."

STOP TRYING TO FIX ME~~
Love me instead
Please, don't try to fix me. I am not broken. I have not asked for your solutions.
When you try to fix me, you unintentionally activate deep feelings of unworthiness, shame and failure within me. I can't help it. I feel like I have to change to please you, transform myself just to take away your anxiety, mend myself to end your resistance to the way I am. And I know I can't do that, not on your urgent timeline anyway. You put me in an impossible bind. I feel so powerless.
I know your intentions are loving! I know you really want to help. You want to serve. You want to take away people's pain when you see it. You want to uplift, awaken, caretake, educate, inspire. You truly believe that you are a positive, compassionate, unselfish, nice, good, kind, pure, spiritual person.
But I want you to know, honestly, friend, I feel like a steaming pile of s**t when you try to 'love' me in this old way. It doesn't feel loving to me at all. Quite the opposite. It feels like you're trying to relieve your own tension by controlling me. Under the guise of you being 'kind' and 'helpful' and 'spiritual', I feel suffocated, smothered, rejected, shamed, and completely unloved. I feel abandoned in your love! Do you get that? I feel like you don't actually care about ME, even though on the surface it sure looks like you care! But deep down it feels like you are holding an image of how I should be. Your image. Not mine!
It looks like your love, but it feels like your violence. Do you understand?
Yet as soon as you stop trying to 'help' me, you are of the greatest help to me !
I stop trying to change to please you !
I feel safe, respected, seen, honored for what I am.
I can fall back into my own power.
I can trust myself again, the way you are trusting me.
I can relax deeply.
Without your pressure, your demand for me to abandon myself and be different, healed, transformed, enlightened, awakened, mended, 'better', I can better see myself.
I can discover my own inner resources.
I can touch my own powerful presence.
I feel safe enough to allow and express my true feelings, thoughts, desires, hold my own perceptions. I no longer feel smothered, a victim, a little child to your expert adult.
The courageous adult in me rises.
I breathe more deeply.
I feel my feet on the ground.
Loving attention drenches my experience, even the uncomfortable parts.
My senses feel less dull. Healing energies emerge from deep within.
I feel light, free, liberated from your fear.
I feel respected, not shamed.
Seen, not compared to an image.
You help me so much when you stop trying to help me, friend !
I need my own answers, my own truth, not yours. I want a friend, present and real, not an expert or a savior.
And do you see, when you are trying to save me, you are actually abandoning yourself ?
You are running from your own discomfort, your own unlived potential, and focusing on mine ?
I become your ultimate distraction.
I don't want to be that for you anymore.
Let's break this cycle together !
Let's stop trying to fix or save each other.
Let's love each other instead.
Bow to each other.
Bless each other.
Hold each other.
As we are.
As we actually, actually, actually are.~

~Jeff Foster

What are you holding?
What are you restraining?

What has a hold of you?

What levee needs some breaking,
to let your juices through?

I can see
that you are stuck there,
In a place that feels constrained.

It’s grip seems big and mighty,
It’s goal: “You must be tame.”

That which tames you,
Does it tamp you?
Will it tell you what to do?
…Who to be?
…Who to care for?
…How to live your whole life through?

What grips you?
What restrains you?
What prevents you
from being you?

Can we break it?

Can we smash it?

Or could we gently let it through?

Did it come from deep within,
A place you never could allow?..Maybe back in childhood,
A small whimper
That didn’t go over so well.

It’s in your body,
I can feel it…
The parts that aren’t you.

Should we hold them?
Or release them?
At this point,
It’s up to you.

We are adults now,
With stuck places,
Parts that don’t move
like they used to.

They caused trouble,
We contained them,
And now they’re sticking
Our joints
Like glue.

We’re accustomed
To these patterns;
They’re the choices
That saw us through.

Yet,
Those days are over,
We are here now,
Here to sit with all of you.

Embody Sanctuary
An invitation
To settle into place,
To feel the subtle movement
Of a breeze across your face.

Embody Sanctuary
A place within you
That no one
Can ever
Take away.

A space designed just for you,
A place you want to stay.

What does it look like,
This alternative?
This space beyond the pain?
This place I would rather be in,
Than be feeling so damned tame.

It’s a Sanctuary,
Your sweet body,
And it wants you to
Experience it that way.

It’s a Sanctuary,
My sweet body,
Should I challenge myself to
Treat it this way.

Now accepting new clients,
DM to inquire or schedule. 🌹

Your body
is a holy book,
a scripture—

the pages of your flesh
are marked
in exquisite detail
with the finest hand,

inscribed by spirit
with the poetry
of love,
lessons of mercy,
miracles,
angelic hosts,

and the story
of your life
perfectly told,

an illuminated manuscript
of a sacred writing
epic in scope,
majesty
and grace.

Every hair
on your head
and line on your face,
every rushing tide
of wind and wave
moving you
from within
this living testament
bear witness
to the truth
layered
within you—

Study this text
with conviction then,
reflect with care
upon its meaning,
and enjoy
the divine
inspiration.

-Gil Hedley, "Living Testament" from Beyond the Leaving

Embody Sanctuary now accepting new clients,