01/05/2026
Just a few spots left for the year-long embodied healing program I am offering starting this Wednesday. DEADLINE TO SIGN UP IS TUESDAY 1/6 BY 7PM. Call/text me at 360.460.1491 to sign up or sign up online at https://ivyphillipsbodyworkandhealing.com/classes
I am using DIFFERENTATION as a model to explore DEEP CONTACT WITH SELF as a human living in community.
3 STEPS OF DIFFERENTATION
Adapted from Ellyn Bader, Peter Pearson, and Martha Kauppi
1. KNOW YOURSELF: The ability to look inside yourself and identify what you feel, think, believe, and prefer separate from what anyone else might think, prefer, or want from you. This aspect is foundational. Without the first aspect of differentiation, the second simply isn’t possible. You can’t share your beliefs, feelings, and preferences with someone else if you don’t know what you think in the first place. Do you know who you are?
2. EXPRESS YOURSELF: The ability to hold steady while you communicate your unique thoughts, feelings, perceptions, and desires to another person regardless of what you imagine their response might be. The goal is to communicate about one’s own perspective as clearly, deeply, and fully as possible, regardless of the reaction from the listener. Can you hold steady while you share your truth?
3. BE CURIOUS: The ability to hold steady and access genuine curiosity and empathy when someone tells you something about their thoughts, beliefs, and perception, even if it is hard for you to hear or you don’t agree. It requires cultivating curiosity but also the ability to hold two perspectives simultaneously, which is just about as hard as it sounds. Can you hold steady and engage actively when someone else shares their truth with you?
HOLDING STEADY: THE FOUNDATION OF DIFFERENTATION
Holding steady is feeling grounded and balanced despite what is happening outside of you. Having a strong sense of internal safety and self-reliance provides the basis for being able to listen and respond with balance in difficult conversations and situations. Holding steady is feeling at home inside of yourself. This is where we build a network of tools for self-regulation.
When we are not able to differentiate with ease, dysregulation (extreme distress) can occur. Dysregulation can look like anger, attacks directed towards self or others, internal collapse, shutting down, disassociating, or stonewalling.
It is a challenging project, to differentiate even though perceived stress. It requires going against the brain’s automatic defensive system. During periods of stress, the self-protective part of your brain wants to fight, flee, fawn, or freeze; these reactions are helpful in a life-threatening situation but unhelpful when you’re just trying to have a tough conversation with the people around you.
Through the course of this program, hopefully we can grow our ‘window of tolerance’, to adapt our nervous systems so we can think, get curious, and respond congruently.
Through this program hopefully you will better understand who you are from the inside out, and feel safe and excited to express your unique individuality in community.
We will start with a deep curiosity about the communication from our physical bodies, and build from there.
What if the world is a better place with your own embodied perspective? What do you want to share with the world? What do you want to receive in this life?
What moves you? Be YOU in CommunityA YEAR LONG PROGRAM OF EMBODIED HEALINGAre you ready to connect, explore, and understand yourself more deeply? Who are you at your core? What skills do you need to express yourself more fully? How do you engage with the world? Learn tools to cultivate awareness ...
