Sonia Connolly, LMT, Reiki Master – helping people heal from trauma since 1999.
For bodywork credentials and memberships, please see the Bodywork page.
My goal is to help people heal from trauma and abuse so they can create the lives they want from a place of centered awareness rather than unconsciously perpetuating hurtful patterns on themselves and others. I want to see a ripple effect of peace and joy spread through the world.
As a young adult, I completed a graduate degree in Computer Science and then started working as a software engineer for a startup. Academically and professionally I did well, but my relationships were chaotic, emotionally abusive, and full of strife. I felt mired in panic and despair, desperate to figure out what I “should” be doing.
When I started to remember the abuse I’d endured as a child, I tried traditional psychotherapy to get help, but soon turned to bodywork instead, inspired by Louise Wisechild’s The Obsidian Mirror. Through receiving gentle, respectful, skilled touch, I learned how to connect with my body, my breath, and my own truth. I learned to sit with the feelings and memories rather than running away, and to ask quiet questions rather than shout fierce judgments at myself. Gradually I reclaimed a sense of peace and inner guidance, and the panic and despair receded.
I told that first bodywork practitioner several times that I wanted to do what she does, someday. It took a few more years to get there, but in 1999 I combined my studies in Massage Therapy, Reiki, CranioSacral Therapy, and trauma work to open my own practice helping others heal from trauma. My own process continues to evolve, and it brings me joy to help others regain a sense of wholeness and peace as well.
My life improved wonderfully when I started noticing and focusing on what brings me joy: offering bodywork, bicycling for transportation, Balkan folk dancing and singing, farmers markets, communication, ceramics, gardening, learning, and petting the cats.
It is my experience that presence and acceptance bring healing. The present moment, with all its feelings, thoughts, and events, is the only leverage point for change. I practice presence and meditation in my daily life, and I bring that same presence and attention to my clients.
I share my responses to the books I read at my blog Curious, Healing.
If you would like to learn more, please email sonia@TraumaHealed.com or call 503-334-6434.
“It’s the action, not the fruit of the action, that’s important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there’ll be any fruit. But that doesn’t mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.” – Mohandas Gandhi