I am now home, with a head overflowing and a heart open from attending what can only be described as a deeply immersive, expansive, confronting, compassionate, and profoundly moving day rganise Mind Medicine Australia—Bessel van der Kolk Live in Sydney: The Body Keeps the Score Full Day Workshop.
There are some days that live in your memory, and then there are days that live in your body—days that don’t simply pass through your awareness, but move through your nervous system, softening, stirring, opening, revealing; days that stay with you not because of how much you learned, but because of how deeply you felt. This was one of those days. A full day that didn’t just live in the mind…but moved through the body.
A day that felt like;
a remembering…
a soft unraveling…
a recalibration of what it means to feel safe within oneself.
As I sit here now, home again—heart open and body listening—I find myself reflecting not only on the teachings shared, but on the atmosphere in the room…
The quiet hum of shared humanity.
The visible tenderness.
The courage.
The intelligence.
The ache.
The hope.
There was something almost palpable in the space.
Practitioners. Therapists. Healers. Space-holders.
Humans navigating their own inner landscapes.
All gathered in one space… not just to learn about trauma—but to feel into it, and perhaps even more importantly… to feel into what healing actually requires.
The day began with a beautiful sense of presence and connection, including a special VIP opening experience—an intimate gathering before the full workshop commenced. There was space for grounding, reflection, and shared arrival, alongside a photo opportunity and a moment to connect and acknowledge the significance of the work we were about to step into.
Within that early unfolding, there was also an opportunity to share Untamed Self-Love with Bessel van der Kolk—a deeply meaningful exchange that felt both humbling and anchoring, like placing intention into the very field of the day ahead.
Sitting in a room with him—a man whose work has lived on the shelves in my library of life, in my sessions, in my clinical lens, and in my heart for over a decade—truly felt like a full-circle exhale.
Not just professionally.
Not just intellectually.
But deeply, viscerally human.
There are moments in life that land not just in the mind… but in the body.
Moments that ripple through your nervous system, soften something ancient, and remind you that you are part of something bigger.
This was one of those moments.
There was a quiet, powerful thread woven throughout the day… a knowing that healing is not a solo journey, but a shared remembering.
A theme echoed not just in words, but in presence: we are walking each other home.
That phrase did not land as a sweet sentiment or passing idea.
It landed as a felt sense.
A body truth.
A remembering of something ancient and communal.
We are not meant to heal alone…we are meant to walk each other home.
In his best-selling work, The Body Keeps the Score—a book that holds a sacred, dog-eared, underlined, deeply felt place in my library of life—Bessel van der Kolk speaks to something that, once understood, cannot be unseen: Trauma literally reshapes the brain and body.
Not metaphorically.
Not symbolically.
But biologically, neurologically, and somatically.
This truth has long resonated with me, but hearing it spoken live—in a room full of people whose bodies already knew some version of this reality—allowed it to land even more deeply.
Trauma is not simply a story of what happened in the past.
What begins outside of us shapes the filters and perceptions through which we experience our lives now.
It does not stay “way back then.”
It lives on.
It echoes through the nervous system.
It replays inside the theatre of the body.
It colours the way we meet the world—the way we interpret sensation, relate, protect, shut down, brace, disconnect, and survive.
One of the most powerful realisations throughout the day was that trauma is not held in words. It is held in sensations.
In the tightening chest.
In the hollow belly.
In the clenched jaw.
In the breath that never quite reaches full depth.
In the body that remains vigilant long after the danger has passed.
Overwhelming experiences continue to live on through heartbreak, gut-wrenching sensations, hypervigilance, emotional shutdown, numbness, and dissociation—leaving survivors feeling frazzled, on edge, ashamed, overwhelmed, disconnected… unsafe inside their own skin.
That sentence alone… lands deeply.
What does it mean to not feel safe within the very body you live in?
To not trust your own sensations?
To feel your internal world as unpredictable—too loud, too much, or not enough?
To exist inside a body that does not yet feel like home?
Overwhelming experiences are often lived out through the body in ways that remain invisible to others—yet profoundly real to the person carrying them.
Not because someone is choosing to stay in the past, but because altered biological systems keep bringing the past into the present. When the past continues to flood the now, it becomes incredibly difficult to feel grounded enough to imagine a different future.
As I sat in the majesty of the Town Hall, I couldn’t help but see this through the lens of my work—as a human, a Vision Therapist, and an Intuitive Wellness Guide—where science meets subtle awareness and intuitive guidance gently informs the healing process. Because trauma doesn’t just live in the emotional body—it also shows up in the visual system.
In the way someone avoids eye contact.
Struggles to track or focus.
Feels overwhelmed by visual input.
Cannot sustain attention.
Or disconnects from their environment.
Beyond what is clinically observable, there is often an intuitive knowing, a felt sense of where the system is holding, protecting, or compensating that softly guides the pace and direction of support. Because vision is not just about sight.
It is about how we interpret and engage with the world, and when the nervous system is dysregulated, vision follows.
Focus becomes fragmented.
Coordination becomes effortful.
Presence becomes difficult.
This is why trauma-informed care is not optional—it is essential.
As a Vision Therapist, an Intuitive Guide, and a woman who has lived inside her own waves of experience, this work does not simply resonate with me, it lives.
The body holds. The body remembers.
The body communicates in sensations, not sentences.
And yet, so much of our world has taught us to override it. To think over feel.
To analyse over attune.
To explain before experiencing.
To push on, rather than pause and listen.
But here, in this space, the body was invited gently, patiently and powerfully back into the conversation. I was reminded that healing is relational.
It lives in connection—
in eye contact,
in shared presence,
in the silent language of breath,
in co-regulation,
in resonance,
in being witnessed without needing to perform.
Each person in that room…
each story…
each softening…
each regulated breath…became part of a collective homecoming.
Walking each other home…
through memory…
through sensation…
through the body that remembers…
Throughout the day, I found myself continually filtering the teachings through the lens of my own work, because trauma does not just live in the emotional body, it also shows up in the visual system.
In the way someone avoids eye contact.
In the way the eyes struggle to track or sustain focus.
In the way visual input becomes overwhelming.
In the way attention fragments.
In the way the body disconnects from its environment.
In the way presence becomes difficult when the nervous system is bracing for threat.
This matters deeply, because vision is about more than just sight.
It is relational.
It is neurological.
It is sensory.
It is embodied.
When the nervous system is dysregulated, vision often follows.
Focus becomes fragmented.
Coordination becomes effortful.
Visual processing becomes overloaded.
Presence becomes harder to access.
This is why trauma-informed care is not optional—it is essential.
The day unfolded not just as an exchange of ideas—it was a symphony of sensation, emotion, and presence. Not merely intellectual…but sensory, creative, and alive.
Tania de Jong AM, co-founder and Executive Director of Mind Medicine Australia, stepped forward and the space shifted immediately. Her opening address was beautiful in her spoken voice, before her operatic voice filled the room. Her expansive, angelic, heart-opening voice filled the space with a warmth that seemed to vibrate through the air itself. Listening to her was like breathing in sunlight. Her voice was more than sound; it was an invitation to return to ourselves.
Benny Holloway, sound alchemist, musician and facilitator based in Byron Bay, then brought his music into the room—grounding, emotional, and profoundly immersive.
I have felt connected to his sound for some time now, but being held within it through another live experience of his musicality was something else entirely. It felt like being cradled by a wave of energy—a living presence moving through the body. Sound became a language beyond words.
A remembering.
A resonance.
An energy I am ready to feel again.
There was something deeply powerful about the way sound was welcomed into the space—not as background, but as medicine. Voice not as performance, but as vibration. Expression not as polished, but as a portal.
Healing does not always come through speaking.
Sometimes it comes through:
🤍 movement
🤍 sound
🤍 sensation
Here, the body becomes the instrument, the voice becomes the river, and the senses become the map. You don’t just witness it—you feel it, you move with it, breathe with it… and slowly, you remember how to be whole.
A central theme woven throughout the day was that healing is the restoration of visceral safety.
Not cognitive understanding alone.
Not insight alone.
Not simply knowing why we are the way we are but felt safety.
Safety in the body.
Safety in the breath.
Safety in the nervous system.
Safety in sensation.
Safety in being here, now, within oneself.
Recovery from trauma involves learning how to feel safe again—reconnecting with physical sensations and reclaiming a loving, respectful relationship with oneself.
Not just with parts of the self, but with the whole organism.
Awareness of physical sensations forms the very foundation of human consciousness and without that awareness, we lose connection to ourselves.
The toll trauma takes is immeasurable.
It impacts our ability to focus.
Our capacity to engage.
Our ability to regulate emotions.
Our sense of identity.
Our relationships with others.
Our capacity to trust.
Our sense of possibility.
Our aliveness.
As practitioners, this work is deeply complex because trauma is not singular. Trauma can be acute, chronic, developmental, relational, ancestral, collective…
In the current world, many of us are carrying not only our own personal pain, but the accumulated weight of a collectively traumatised society. A world that often feels fast, uncertain, fragmented, overstimulating, and relentlessly demanding—a world that does not always make space for slowness, for grief, for integration, for repair.
And yet…the body still calls us back.
Again and again.
Back to sensation.
Back to breath.
Back to presence.
Back to what is true now.
One of the most profound understandings shared was that because of altered biological systems, traumatised individuals continue to react in myriad ways—constantly bringing the past into the present.
Which means they are often not fully here.
Not fully grounded.
Not fully safe.
Not fully available to the moment in front of them.
When we are not fully present, it becomes much harder to create a future that feels stable, safe, and expansive.
Instead, we can remain caught in cycles of:
fear…
numbing…
hyperarousal…
shutdown…
disconnection…
An important shifts in understanding shared throughout the day was this: Most experiences are processed unconsciously, within the subcortical brain.
Which means that talking about trauma, understanding it, and analysing it—while valuable—often has limited impact on healing on their own.
Healing must be bottom-up.
It must involve the body.
It must include experiences that gently contradict helplessness, rage, collapse, and disconnection.
This is where transformation begins.
When the body experiences something new…
something safe…
something organising…
something regulating…it begins to rewrite its internal narrative.
The workshop explored the neurobiology of self-regulation and the importance of:
befriending the body…
connecting to the voice…
working with the nervous system…
creating new embodied experiences…
integrating feeling, action, and sensation…
Because these are essential for integrating traumatic memories—alongside emotional responses, action patterns, and physical sensations. Bessel van der Kolk also spoke to how the brain is shaped by experience, how our sense of self is formed through relationships, and how healing is not linear—but relational, embodied, and deeply multi-layered.
Another part of the day that stayed with me deeply was the reverence given to something so often overlooked in adult life: imagination.
Not dismissed. Not minimised.
Not treated as childish or irrelevant but honoured—as medicine, as pathway, as possibility, as an essential part of healing, because when trauma narrows the world, imagination gently widens it again.
As Bessel van der Kolk shared, imagination is central to recovery. It allows us to see beyond what has been.
To feel into what could be.
To envision new internal landscapes where safety, connection, freedom, creativity, and aliveness can exist.
“Open up imagination to new possibilities and new realities.”
Those words did not just land in the mind—they opened something in the body.
Imagine… a body that feels safe again…
Imagine… a future not shaped by the past…
Imagine… new possibilities… new realities…
Imagination is not escapism. It is reclamation.
A return to the innate creativity that lives within every nervous system as a bridge between where we are and where we are becoming.
The workshop explored the neurobiology of self-regulation and integration through the body and nervous system, and the importance of befriending the body, connecting to the voice, and working with the nervous system, because these are essential pathways for integrating traumatic memories—including feelings, action patterns, and physical sensations. Bessel van der Kolk also spoke to how the brain is shaped by experience, how our sense of self is formed through relationships, and how healing is not linear, but relational, embodied, and deeply layered.
One of the things I most appreciated was the diversity of approaches shared.
Healing is not linear.
It is not neat.
It is not one-size-fits-all.
It is a weaving of body, relationship, breath, sound, movement, sensation, story, nervous system repair, and new lived experiences.
Modalities explored included EMDR, yoga, meditation, bodywork, music and theatre, Neurofeedback and Psychedelic-Assisted Therapies (PAT).
Each offering a pathway back to:
🤍 Presence
🤍 Regulation
🤍 Connection
🤍 Aliveness
The day also honoured the power of non-verbal healing because healing does not always come through words.
Sometimes it comes through movement.
Sometimes through sound.
Sometimes through sensation.
Sometimes through being witnessed while inhabiting your body in a new way.
Together with Licia Sky—somatic educator, writer, artist, bodyworker, and wife of Bessel van der Kolk—there was a powerful emphasis on embodiment. One line, in particular, felt like a mirror gently held up to all of us as practitioners: We cannot guide others into attuned self-awareness if we cannot access it ourselves.
What a reminder. What a call inward.
As practitioners, our body becomes a living instrument—a barometer that tracks safety, dysregulation, connection, attunement, activation, collapse, expansion, and repair. This is deeply aligned with Vision Therapy and Intuitive Guidance.
Because we are always tracking:
eye movements…
body posture…
breath patterns…
orientation…
engagement with the environment…
nervous system responses…
the subtle dance between overwhelm and organisation…
And also the more subtle, intuitive layers—the felt sense of safety or contraction…
energetic shifts within the space…
where the system is holding, protecting, or compensating…
the pace at which the body is ready to open or needs to pause…
moments of readiness versus resistance…
the quiet signals of overwhelm before they fully surface…
the innate wisdom of the body guiding timing, rhythm, and repair…
Intuitive guidance is not separate from the body—it is the body listening, responding, and informing. A conversation that is constantly unfolding beneath words.
There was a simple, yet profoundly moving moment during the day that I know will stay with me.
A body scan facilitated by Licia Sky.
An invitation inward.
Attention gently shifting from mind…
into muscle…
into breath…
into body…
into presence.
The edges softened. The thinking quietened and then… the humming began.
Soft at first.
Almost tentative.
A room of people slowly entering sound.
Then gradually, something shifted.
Voices layered. Tones deepened.
Vibration expanded. The room transformed.
What began as individual sound became collective resonance that was not just heard, but felt.
A frequency moving through the chest.
Through the ribs.
Through the bones.
Through the air.
Through the space between us.
It was as though each voice became a thread—weaving us into something shared.
A living, breathing nervous system.
A reminder that regulation does not only happen within us.
It happens between us.
Hum… feel it in the chest…
Hum… let it ripple through the body…
Hum… we are one resonance… one rhythm… one remembering…
As someone who works daily with the visual system, the nervous system, the somatosensory system, and the intricate interplay between body and brain, this moment was more than beautiful.
It was profoundly regulating.
A real-time experience of co-regulation.
Of safety.
Of shared presence.
Of resonance.
Of what it feels like to be held without needing to explain why.
As practitioners, our body becomes a living instrument—a barometer that tracks safety, dysregulation, connection, and attunement.
As I sit here now, reflecting, I feel a deeper appreciation for the body. Not as something to control.
Not as something to override.
Not as something to push through, silence, fix, or outsmart.
But as something to listen to. To honour. To soften toward. To trust.
Because while the body keeps the score…it also holds the blueprint for healing.
What stayed with me most was not just the science, the teachings, or even the practices.
It was the feeling.
A room full of humans…
breathing…
humming…
softening…
imagining…
remembering…
Remembering something ancient and true: We are not alone in this. We were never meant to be.
Walking each other home…
one breath…
one body…
one shared heartbeat at a time.
Healing is not about becoming someone new.
It is about returning to who you were before the world asked you to disconnect from yourself.
It is about gently reclaiming the parts of you that learned to brace, shut down, stay small, stay vigilant, go numb, or disappear in order to survive.
It is about learning, little by little, breath by breath, sensation by sensation, that safety can be felt again.
That presence can be restored.
That the body can become home again.
The body remembers… but it also knows the way home.
I have just realised I am yet to share a full book review of The Body Keeps the Score, which will come later this week.
A sharing that will include the lines, questions, and passages that have deeply impacted me—this is a book that continues to offer something new with each read. It supports not only my own understanding, but also the many clients and patients I have the honour of working with in both intuitive guidance and vision therapy.
This work does not live on the page alone.
It lives in the body.
In the breath.
In moments of awareness.
In the gentle shifts that ripple outward into everyday life.
Perhaps that is the most hopeful, beautiful truth of all.
With love,
Hannah 🤍