‘BODY WORK IS SOUL WORK’
—M.Woodman
TEMPLE
A foundational guide to understand your nervous system and come back into relationship with your body
Your body is the Temple.
Not in an ethereal, abstract way—but in a very real sense. It holds your history, your instincts, your intelligence. And when you start to listen to it, things get clearer, and a lot more alive.
Your body is not something to optimize, dominate, or diminish. It is something to be in dialogue with and relationship to. We understand and prioritize the health of so many of our relationships, except this essential and primary one: the relationship we have with our own body.
TEMPLE is a self-paced, 4-lesson course that opens up those channels of communication and teaches you the basics of your nervous system in a grounded, accessible way. You'll learn to understand what your body is actually saying and what to do with that information in real-life, moment-to-moment ways.
Because the more connected you become to this embodied wisdom, the less life feels like a slog, a constant game of catch-up, or something you have to endlessly push through and manage. You get to feel good—not because your circumstances are perfect, but because being in a connected, loving relationship with your body can be deeply enriching and genuinely luscious.
This is a love story.
“I feel first and foremost grateful. I treat my body now with so much grace and respect for what it has endured and for supporting me through life, and how it is now communicating with me and I can understand what our joint needs are. My mind and body just feel more aligned. I use to be so angry at myself and constantly supress my body's signals out of a lack of understanding. But now I am just grateful my body and I are more aligned and I even look at myself more kindly. I prefer my body today more than ever before and so I am that much more motivated to continue to remain present.”
— Marilyn R.
If you're vibing with any of this, I made TEMPLE for you…
You spend a lot of time in your head and want to feel more connected to your body.
You're tired of overanalyzing and trying to intellectualize your way out of things—or into things, only to end up stuck in the same place and patterns. You know a deeper relationship with your body would help, but you don't know where to start. Start here.You're tired of spending hundreds of dollars chasing the next modality that promises to fix everything.
The truth is there is no perfect cure. Understanding the basics of your nervous system gives you a steady foundation from which to make better decisions, recognize what is actually helping, and stop wasting time and money on things that aren't.You don't buy into the idea that nervous system regulation means being calm all the time.
Because it doesn’t. You know there is value in anger, outrage, defiance, grief, and disgust. You want practical tools for working with these emotions skillfully so they can propel effective action rather than overwhelm and immobilize you.And pretty simply, you want to like yourself, trust yourself, and feel at home in your body and proud of the way you live your life.
You want a relationship with yourself that feels connected, honest, and deeply human. Because the world needs a lot more of that.
“This will be the greatest caring for self you can and will do. If you can allow yourself to listen to your body you can learn to love all parts of yourself.”
— Morgan G.
Hi, I’m Tiffany!
I'm a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, yoga and meditation teacher. I've spent two decades in the world of embodiment as both a student and teacher, including more than 10 years studying Buddhist Psychology with my mentor, Dr. Miles Neale.
The teachings that have shaped me most all say the same thing: awareness matters. Yoga taught me how to slow down my attention. Meditation taught me how to place it. Somatic work taught me how to build a relationship with what I found there.
For years, even as a yoga teacher, I knew how to do all the "right" things. I could do all the fancy poses, regulate my breath, and experience moments of calm. But there was still this gap between noticing my experience and actualizing the shifts I was wanting to see in my life. Somatic Experiencing helped me move from just observing my body to really listening to it, trusting it, and allowing it to be an important compass.
Most of us spend years living from the neck up, trying to think our way through experiences that are happening in the whole body. The gift of somatic work is that it interrupts those automatic patterns and invites us into a different conversation—one that includes the body and gives us access to information the mind alone simply can't provide. In all my years of study and teaching, I've learned that what is most transformative is learning how to be in relationship with your body through attunement, curiosity, and care. And I love supporting people on that path.
I am the daughter of spiritual seekers, teachers, and musicians. The mystical and the creative have always been alive in me, but it was bringing the body into the conversation that gave those philosophies a grounded place to live. The spirit needs the material. The mind needs the body. And the world needs your particular flavor of embodied magic.
What’s Inside TEMPLE?
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In this lesson, we explore the basics of the nervous system and how it responds to stress, safety, and everything in between. In the same way that an animal uses it’s senses to track and locate, you will learn to engage your senses to find, orient to, and land within yourself. It sounds rather simple, but being where your feet are takes some practice! When you slow down and pay attention, you begin to recognize when you’re feeling energized/activated, settled/calm, or less ‘here’ and maybe more shut down or disconnected. These aren’t problems, they’re states. As you continue to sharpen your tracking skills, you are more aware of how your nervous system moves—it’s kinda like weather or waves, it’s never really just in one place. Rather than trying to fix anything, the invitation here is to get curious about your experience and to start to learn the signals your body is sending. The more familiar you become with your nervous system, the easier it is to understand what you need and respond with greater choice and self-trust.
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In this lesson, we explore the two main branches of the nervous system—Sympathetic + Parasympathetic—and how they shape the way we think, feel, speak, dream, and respond to life. We also look at the different channels the body communicates through: sensation, emotion, imagery, impulses, posture, + movement, as well as inner knowing + meaning. Everyone has certain channels that are really strong and accessible and others that aren’t as utilized. The more fluency you have between these pathways the more robust your inner experience and outer expression is. This is where you go from being able to listen to the body to being in meaningful conversation with the body. And so much juicy stuff becomes possible as a result of this dialogue!
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In this lesson, we explore how the nervous system moves between states of safety, stress, and overwhelm, and name common responses like fight, flight, freeze, collapse, and connection. We are always cycling through these all day long, in this session we learn how they show up in everyday life and how to notice them in the body through shifts in things like breath, tension, energy, voice and focus. It’s very common these days to say things like ‘I’m stuck in fight/flight’ which are technically opposing responses. So here, we’re offering a more nuanced approach because in order to heal from some of these states, we have to know that we’re in them first. The guided practices this week allow you to shift between areas of activation, tension, or discomfort and areas that feel more settled, available, grounded, or spacious. You are then able to notice, experientially how even small shifts in attention can soften intensity or overwhelm and bring more clarity to what’s happening inside as well as more agency with how you engage within these states.
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In this final lesson, we bring everything together and explore how real change unfolds over time, including touching on the relationship between karma and trauma through the lens of Buddhist Psychology. We look at how patterns don’t shift all at once, but through small, repeated moments of awareness. We discuss how a brief pause—the gap of mindfulness it’s sometimes called—between a trigger and a reaction can begin to change the direction of our lives. As you become more familiar with your nervous system, you’re less likely to get pulled into habituated reactions, and more able to recognize what’s happening inside of you, regulate the intensity and urgency that triggers often elicit, and ultimately choose how you want to respond with more intention and care. That is the practice: notice what’s happening, stay connected to your body, and work with small shifts in real time as your life starts to unfold in new ways and with greater flavor!
You don’t need to know the outcome to just begin. But I’ll let you in on how good it can be… That constant tension in your chest will recede; it takes a muscle to listen to and care for yourself and it will get stronger; all you will practice accepting and integrating your dimensions and selves; the weights of past pains will continue to be reconciled and relieved; your capacity to connect with others will expand (it will even surprise you how desirable and easy it becomes); and, over time, you will feel content more consistently and have more patience when living feels harder.”
— Brittni Z.
Catch patterns before they take over the plot
so that you’re actively growing in the direction that you want to be rather than running old programs on autopilot. Intentions are important, visualization can be really helpful, but you’re not going to manifest something new until you know what triggers you and how to meet that moment in a way that actually sets down a different pattern and eventually a different outcome. In the course, you’ll start to recognizing those nervous system responses earlier, creating more space to choose how you want to respond instead of reacting or constantly doing damage control.
Stop treating your body like a problem to solve or silence
and start relating to it as an ally, a source of wisdom, and a friend. Many of the things we judge ourselves for are actually incredibly intelligent responses and adaptations that were necessary and life preserving at the time we developed them. When you understand why your system responds the way it does, shame begins to loosen its grip and not only are you kinder to yourself as a result, it also opens you up to connect more deeply with others.
Feel more at home in yourself and build a foundation you can return to for years
because the goal isn't to master your nervous system in four weeks. It's to learn a language you'll continue speaking for the rest of your life.
By the end of this course, you will…
Have a more grounded + trusting relationship with your body
not because every sensation feels good, but because you'll understand what your body is communicating, how to listen without fear or judgment, and how to work with your nervous system where it’s at so that you have more agency in how you’re meeting life.Spend less time stuck in your head, spinning your wheels + spiraling
and more time with your head above water and your energy reserves available for the things you actually want to use it for!
Know how to support yourself when life gets hard
trying to organize your life so your nervous system never gets dysregulated is not a reliable method for well being, especially with life being extra lifey these days. Rather than relying on willpower, avoidance, or white-knuckling, you'll have practical tools to help you navigate stress, uncertainty, conflict, and big emotions with a greater steadiness. This includes big emotions like JOY, feeling expanded and capable, and excited about life.
