Hey there!
I'm Taunē.
Like many others who learn explicitly or implicitly that mind and body are separate in order to stay safe, I survived by having a head separate from a big, aching heart: long on analytical insight and people pleasing, short on felt-experience of here-and-now, full presence.
Reclaiming my body, imagination, and the parts of me I'd learned to hide (like my sensitivity, healthy aggression, and predisposition for whimsy) became the way in - and - through to the transformation that comes from integrating all parts of disconnected self into cohesive, secure, connected Self.
I'm a licensed psychotherapist, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, and PhD researcher at the University of Essex. My research asks how the senses and the imaginal can help repair attachment, and how attachment theory evolves when it's embodied and interdependent: including each other and the living world.
Research breathes alongside my clinical work so that inquiry stays tied to what people can actually feel and live. I write and host Coming to Our Senses, a blog and podcast about embodiment, the imaginal, and intimacy with ourselves and the living world.
This head-to-heart integration practice is one I'm devoted to living as a fellow traveler and guide of.
The Head and the Heart
I came to this work through my own history: neurodivergence, codependency, and loving people who were abusive or addicted. I believed I was tough enough not to repeat the patterns I grew up around, and found myself repeating them anyway.
Like many of us who learn that mind and body must be separate to stay safe, I survived by living in my head, apart from a big, sensitive, heart. I was long on analytical insight, stoicism, and people-pleasing, and short on felt, here-and-now presence.
I championed justice for everyone but myself, and devoured dharma talks, philosophy, and radical thinkers. I had the cognitive tools without the embodied experience - constricted from inner liberated aliveness.
If that sounds familiar, you're in good company.
The Shift
I got tired of feeling wired and tired, of relationships with people who lacked emotional capacity, and of patterns I didn't want to repeat. There had to be something deeper than insight.
The body, the imagination, and play became my doorways.
I began befriending (and still am) the parts of me I'd learned to hide: the ones that people-pleased, raged, and numbed, alongside my sensitivity, healthy aggression, and predisposition for whimsy.
Slowly, those disconnected parts gathered into a cohesive, secure, connected [Self →].
I've come to believe that much of our human suffering is disconnection: from our senses, from the creativity that connects us to something larger, from each other, and from our purposeful, soul-led lives.
Roots, Rot, and Bloom
Awe, beauty, and the natural world have been some of my strongest sources of aliveness. The rot feeds the root.
Those people-pleasing, raging, numbing parts were never wasted; they became soil.
When we stop letting our history, or the one we inherited, control the future, it becomes generative, and the resilience and creativity underneath can shine through.
