Category: Uncategorized

Dear Ones, 

We are all aware of the impact of developmental trauma on our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being, and how it can affect the quality of life. I strongly believe in the healing potential within each individual. Let’s explore the importance of a regulated nervous system and how it can significantly enhance life. 

The human nervous system, with its intricate complexity, serves a crucial role in regulating various bodily functions. It acts as a communication network, transmitting signals between the brain and the body to control functions such as heartbeat, thoughts, and emotions. Maintaining a well-regulated nervous system is essential for optimal physical and mental health. Let’s delve into the remarkable benefits of a balanced nervous system and how it can elevate overall well-being and resilience.

Stress Reduction: 

• A well-regulated nervous system plays a crucial role in helping our bodies effectively manage stressors in life. It enables a smooth transition between heightened alertness (fight or flight) and a calm, relaxed state (rest and digest), aiding in coping with life’s stressors and reducing the impact of chronic stress. 

Physical Well-Being: 

• Cardiovascular:  Nervous system regulation enhances the ability to cope with stress, leading to lower blood pressure and reduced risks of stroke and vascular dementia. 
• Digestion: A balanced nervous system supports digestion by ensuring proper blood flow and energy utilization, benefiting food sensitivities, regular elimination, hunger cues, and food enjoyment. 
• Immune System: Nervous system regulation boosts the body’s immune response and healing efficiency. 

Better Relationships: 

• A regulated nervous system enhances our ability to connect deeply with others, fostering empathy and emotional attunement for improved communication and harmonious relationships. 

Enhanced Mental Clarity & Creativity: 

• A balanced nervous system aids mental clarity and focus, enabling better concentration, problem-solving, and decision-making. A balanced nervous system allows the body to utilize more energy in the creative process, whatever that entails. Mindfulness practices and time spent in nature can also help regulate the nervous system, enhancing mental acuity. 

Better Sleep: 

• A balanced nervous system promotes high-quality sleep by facilitating the transition from wakefulness to relaxation, essential for physical and mental health. 

Self-Regulation: 

• Self-regulation is a vital skill supported by a well-regulated nervous system, empowering individuals to manage emotional and physiological responses, enhancing self-awareness and self-mastery for daily life and personal goals. 

Longevity and Overall Well-Being: 

• A well-regulated nervous system is linked to longevity and overall well-being by reducing stress effects, promoting health, and contributing to a vibrant and fulfilling life. It unlocks a higher quality of life by improving stress management, emotional resilience, relationships, and physical and mental well-being. 

In conclusion, a regulated nervous system goes beyond personal well-being, offering a path to a more fulfilling life. By reducing stress, enhancing resilience, improving relationships, and boosting health, a well-regulated nervous system paves the way for vitality, connection, and joy. Through practices like Transforming Touch®, mindfulness, yoga, and somatic therapies, individuals can embrace these benefits, leading to holistic well-being and resilience. 

Sources:  “Nurturing Resilience:  Helping Clients Move Forward from Developmental Trauma, An Integrative Somatic Approach, Kathy Kain, PhD, and Stephen J. Terrell, PsyD.  “Waking the Tiger”, Peter A. Levine, PhD,,  Mia Bolte TTPS

Dear Ones,

I have reflecting on this as I have just become a Grammy for the first time, and sharing my daughter’s pregnancy, delivery and early days at home with her new son.  I was heartened by the encouragement of skin to skin contact from the nurses, with a message of “bringing moms and babies back together”.   A much-needed change for the future of our society, a coming back to recognizing how necessary nurturing babies is, and the vital importance of motherhood (fatherhood).

Human babies are very vulnerable and totally dependent on mom’s or dad’s constant tending to their cries, diaper changes, feeding, and love.  These early days and months of being in close contact with our caregivers sets the foundation for life, our experience of the world as being either safe or dangerous, and creating healthy attachment bonds.

I know from my family history, my own mother’s unexpected pregnancy, at the age of 19, in the early 1960’s, and how that affected her nervous system.  There was shock, judgment, and rejection she experienced from her family, and the subsequent stress of needing to get married quickly to legitimize the pregnancy.   So right from my conception I was exposed to her shame, fear, uncertainty, and her lack of maturity as well.   As I look back on my life and my early struggles with anxiety, it is no wonder that I felt unsafe, as my mom did not have the nervous system capacity to regulate herself, let alone me.   As I have studied this work and experienced my own healing from it, I appreciate the preciousness of motherhood and the early days of being born on this beautiful planet.

I will invite all the pregnant women, and new mothers, to ponder this for themselves and their precious little ones. To be a safe haven for your babe shapes their future, and how they interpret the world as being safe or dangerous.  This will affect their ability to thrive, to be confident that no matter how far they reach, you would be there to catch them. There are no boundaries to how much you hold, pick up and sleep with your little ones, as you are building their early life experiences.


A profound and beautiful role, as there is such potential to make a difference in the life of a child, and therefore the future of the planet. Relish your role as a mother/caregiver, as it is the most precious one you will play.

This has led me to expand my offerings to include pregnant women and babies in my practice.  To support mother’s to be and their new infants to find nervous system regulation, resilience and adaptability in the shared experience of being a family.  I love the work that I do, and I hope that you will share this new offering to anyone who might be interested and/or need the support.

With warm appreciation,

Caroldean Jude

Somatic Trauma Therapist

Somatic Experiencing Practitioner

Transforming Touch Practitioner

Internal Family Systems Therapist

Dear Ones,

Allowing is the internal practice of accepting things as they are/were as a gift to ourselves.  To choose to end the struggle of self rejection, self shaming or numbing of self, to the past.  It takes energy to bury wounds in the basement of our soma labeled “trauma”, which ends up in costing our health and feelings of well being. Allowing is the practice of gentle acceptance of what has happened, how it has affected us, and beginning the process of healing. 

In experiencing early attachment wounds, oftentimes the idea of having a choice is not even in the realm of possibility.  Not having the lived experience of emotional/physical choice, often creates the foundation of being in “survival self” in our nervous systems.  In trying to seek safety as a small humans, we create behaviors, altering our essence and hiding our souls. This results in the foundation of early experiences of the world as one of less threat or more threat, and no sense of safety.


As we get older the suppression of true self, living in survival self leaves us distrusting of ourselves/others and feeling disconnected.  There is that subtle allure of “if I adapt to my surroundings, I will not be rejected, I will be safe”, but what if we gave ourselves the freedom of not needing to suppress, alter or change who we are.  These early nervous system adaptations and behaviors, get in the way of living to our true potential and finding our joy and authenticity.


I invite you to allow for the possibility of choice, and not grasp onto the surrender energy of “I have always been this way, I can’t change”. Allowing the gentle acceptance of past experiences, to free up your right to choose to be more. To begin healing, by shedding the survival self, and choosing life not tainted by past trauma. Reach for it, it has been there lovingly waiting for you. 

With warm appreciation,

Caroldean Jude

Somatic Trauma Therapist

Somatic Experiencing Practitioner

Transforming Touch Practitioner

Internal Family Systems Therapist

Dear Ones,

In my past life, I would have either poo-pooed resting or told myself I was resting, but relentlessly planning and/or trying to figure out what things about my life I needed to fix. This pattern is a mix of social conditioning and my upbringing. “No rest for the “wicked”, “Buck up and soldier on”, “Bite the bullet.” Just to name a few and I know you have all heard one or all of these.

I have asked myself the question “why is being busy, a way of living that we are encouraged to practice ?“ and “where did this start?”  Why indeed are we all caught up in looking busy, being busy and if you are not busy you are judged as being not driven enough, aimless and probably lazy.  I belief that we were not put on this planet to achieve more, life has to have balance and that means achieving is not more important than resting.  To be “more” in life requires both.

Resting is necessary for emotional and physical health – period. The body needs downtime to rejuvenate energy stores, make the necessary repairs and to bolster the immune system. We Humans are not machines and need to acknowledge the essentialness of self care to a well rounded healthy life.

I invite you to nurture yourself with the gift of rest. Not planning, not scrolling on the phone, just practicing holding space for all of you with gentle compassion. You are worth it. And yes, I now regularly practice the “Art of Rest” and savor it.

Resting Practices:

Walking in nature.  Meditation. Yoga.  Letting your senses drink in your surroundings.  Breathe slowly.  Read.  Allow thoughts to float away.  Do nothing and love it (what a concept!).  Check in on your internal organs and send them love.  

Cultivating compassion for you while you are resting. 

Happy Resting!

With warm appreciation,

Caroldean Jude,

Somatic Trauma Therapist

Somatic Experiencing Practitioner

Transforming Touch Practitioner

Internal Family Systems Therapist

Dear ones,

I have just completed my certification in Transforming the Experienced-Based Brain® (TEB) modality to become a Transforming Touch® Practitioner, and I am excited to share this gentle healing experience on a bigger scale.

What is Transforming the Experienced-Based Brain?

TEB is a Regulation Based Modality.  The modality is based on the theory that when we experience ruptures during our development years, the continue to disrupt our lives at any age.  This disruption can be seen as behavioral challenges, psychological challenges, spiritual challenges, and physical challenges.   As a Transforming Touch® Practitioner it is my passion to create a safe place for you to experience healing through a lens of safety, presence, and regulation.  I know that your body already knows how to heal itself if it is allowed more safety and less survival energy.

As a TT Practitioner, I see you as whole and complete from the moment you enter my Healing Space/Office.  I do not rely on pathology to label my clients.  I lean into the ideal that your body is capable of creating new neural pathways in your brain that allow for less stress/anxiety and more ability to learn, relate, and heal.

I will be meeting with group members individually by telephone for a 30-minute discussion/goal setting prior to group start, that is included in the six-session fee of $210.  I will be available in between for individual sessions as well as a quick check in. 

It is my hope in this offering, that I will be able to share the possibility of greater regulation, presence, and vitality for life for all group members. Healing is possible and you deserve to claim back your life from past experiences/trauma that may be keeping you stuck.

Spaces are limited and I hope to see you there!  For more information please contact me at 250-215-0080 or caroldean@somatictherapykelowna.ca

With warm appreciation,

Caroldean Jude,

Somatic Trauma Therapist

Transforming Touch® Practitioner

Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner

Internal Family Systems Therapist

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Dear Ones,

Of the many faces and roles that you were and play in your life – who is the real you? Different versions in life like the work you, you that is a friend, the mom and/or the partner you, all sometimes are needed, and who are you really? Your wants, needs, likes, and dislikes, favourite things and places, traumas, desires, greatest joys, values in life, are important parts of you and not all of you.

When I was going through my divorce, my therapist at the time asked me; “what do you want?”, what are your needs, “who are you at your core?”, and I had no answers. I had been living life from a place where I came last, after the children, after the husband, and what I wanted or needed was not in realm of important.  It took some time to shed the layers and roles that I expected of myself as a mother and a wife, to uncover the person underneath. Then there came the awareness of the trauma of my childhood, that I had deeply stored away in the tissues of my body, waiting for me to have the courage to heal.  Needless to say, it has been an amazing journey of self, a coming home, acceptance, and gratitude for it all, because it has led me to my life’s work as a somatic trauma therapist.

Developmental trauma has many versions that are all painful, and as small people to survive.  you alter and suppress your essence, your joy, your wants, needs, your very authenticity.  These survival versions of you oftentimes are carried on through into adulthood and are assumed to be you, without question.  Some of these versions (that are not you) are burdens that have been taken up by you and are not yours to carry. 

Some of the physical/mental health costs are anxiety disorders, OCD, depression, digestion disorders, chronic fatigue, chronic physical pain, addictions, and sometimes autoimmune disorders.  All of the above can be manifestations and the cost of an overburdened nervous system,

I invite you to gently turn towards the parts of you that you have rejected, put on fresh loving lenses, and practice curiosity and compassion for your wounded bits.  When you can start to make space for younger versions of you, there is often a shift, an evolving understanding, deepening self-awareness, culminating to a place to where healing can grow.

Gift yourself the love, acceptance you did not receive as a child, and start to nurture and cultivate your resilience.  Come back home to you and live life authentically from a place of self-agency, as the world needs your authenticity, your open heart, and your resilience.  It is time to be more.

With warm appreciation,

Caroldean Jude,

Somatic Experiencing Practitioner

Somatic Trauma Therapist

Internal Family Systems Therapist

Dear Friends,

I saw Gabor Mate a few days ago and he was giving a talk on his book “the Myth of Normal”, discussing how the society that we live in, is contributing to the underlying trauma in the underlying lack of importance of providing children with the nurturing that is needed to support healthy upbringing.  

Parenting , undoubtedly the most important job there is, as it the raising of humans of our future society and humanity as a whole.  When caregivers themselves have had mis-attuned parents, the essential foundation of receiving, giving love, creating safety and stability are not there.  When I say safety, I am not referring the safety of home and finances, I am referring to the felt knowledge that children need to feel loved and nurtured for who they are, not what they they achieve, how cute they are, not feeling like failures for not meeting parental expectations for them to be different.  If your caregivers did not receive this stability in their own upbringing, they may lack the skills and/or the awareness that they can chose to raise their children differently.

If you did not receive this foundation of unconditional love, nurturing and support, you might find that you are an overachiever, people pleaser, feel that you give up your power in relationships, feeling that there is no other option.  These are a few signs that you may be living with the effects of developmental trauma.  This is not a life sentence, and you do have options to chose to show up for you, to chose to be curious and to re-parent and care for your younger wounded parts that are stuck in the past.  

Through somatic awareness, supporting nervous system regulation, and practicing self-compassion for your wounded little parts, healing can begin.  Choose you, choose to heal and empower yourself to live in your authentic self, freeing your parts and your essence to be more.  The time is now.

With warm appreciation,

Caroldean Jude,

Somatic Experiencing Practitioner

Somatic Trauma Therapist

Internal Family Systems Therapist