Studio A Body Therapy

In case you aren't subscribed to our emails, here's a link to read the one I sent out just now, and to subscribe if you like. It's packed with lots of exciting studio news!

https://open.substack.com/pub/studioa/p/new-faces-a-fond-farewell-and-a-big?r=1h4hod&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

From Chuck DeGroat, a well-respected trauma therapist and professor that I admire and follow:

"Maybe you saw the viral headline “The Body Does Not Keep The Score,” an article largely repeating what we already know, dramatically launched into the headlines with a false binary, sadly utilizing the very things trauma makes us prone to — reactivity, polarization, all or nothing thinking. A title and headline seeking clicks.

Of course, there is no one better (in my opinion) to break it all down than trauma therapist and adjunct prof in the Western clinical counseling program Ryan Kuja."

Here is the link to Ryan's article in Substack:

The Strawman Keeps the Score The latest viral journal article and the case against a trauma theory no one actually holds

⏳ Last call, friends — registration closes soon!

If you've been on the fence about the YES/NO & Letting Go Workshop this Saturday, now is the time to decide. 🙂

This is a full-day somatic workshop where we slow down and get curious about how your body holds your yes, your no, your boundaries, and your sense of personal power. It's not just a concept — it's something you can feel, explore, and actually practice in a safe and gentle space.

You'll be guided by me (Allie Whitney, LMT, SEP) and Michael Trexler, Ph.D., LMHC of Peace of Mind Counseling & Wellness — and together we bring over 20 years of clinical and somatic experience to this work.

📅 Saturday, June 6 | 9:30am–4:30pm
📍 Studio A Body Therapy, Brownsburg
💛 $139 | Sliding scale available
👉 Register at studioAbody.com/yes-no

Whether you're working on decision-making, boundaries, self-ownership, or just want to understand yourself more deeply — this day is for you. Hope to see you there. 💛

There’s a skill most of us were never really taught — and it’s one of the most foundational things you can develop: knowing and feeling your YES and your NO.

Not just thinking through a decision, but actually sensing it in your body. The contraction. The expansion. The tightening in your chest that says no even when your mouth says yes. The quiet sense of aliveness that signals something is right for you, even when it’s hard to explain why.

How you make choices, how much space you allow yourself to take up, how you set — or struggle to set — boundaries, how you relate to your own sense of personal power... all of this is held in the body. And so the path to getting clearer on any of it runs through the body.

That’s what our upcoming YES/NO & Letting Go Workshop is about.

YES/NO & Letting Go | Saturday, June 6 | 9:30am–4:30pm

Dr. Michael Trexler from Peace of Mind Counseling & Wellness and Allie Whitney, LMT, SEP will guide you through a full day of exploration — working with your body’s signals around autonomy, choice, and boundaries in a playful, safe, and deeply supportive environment. We’ll also make room for the emotions that naturally come up when we start reclaiming our YES and our NO: the grief, the anger, the relief.

This is for you if you:

👉 Find yourself saying yes when you mean no (or vice versa)

👉 Want clearer access to your own inner knowing

👉 Are working on boundary-setting and want to understand it at a body level

👉 Want to feel more at home in your sense of self and personal power

👉 Are curious about consent and self-ownership on a deeper level

Informed by Polyvagal Theory, trauma science, attachment research, somatics, and emotional intelligence — this is serious work held in a very gentle container.

Cost: $139 (Sliding scale available — just reach out.)

Read more and sign up here:

YES/NO Workshop | Studio A Body Therapy Join us for a somatic exploration of autonomy, choice, and boundaries.

Armor vs Boundaries

Most people do not realize that there is a relationship between armoring and drawing boundaries in life. I'd love to explain it, as this is a huge dynamic that we work with in the studio all the time, and one of the topics we address in our 'YES/NO & Letting Go' workshop.

Many people experience chronic muscle tension, be it in their neck and shoulders, low back, hips, feet, or somewhere else. It is often described by sufferers as feeling like they have armor on, because it's so relentlessly rigid and causes immobility (just as real metal armor would). What is supposed to be soft, flexible, pliable myofascial tissue has instead become tense, tight, tough, and restricted.

As a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner and myofascial release bodyworker with additional training in complex/relational trauma and the emotional body, when I see this pattern of chronic tension in people, I get very curious about their relationships and specifically their boundaries in life. When I invite them to get curious about boundaries, they usually have no idea what I'm talking about or why I'm talking about it. It works best via live demonstration, but I'll try here to let words do the job...

If I don't have my boundaries where I want them in my life, one result may be that people get to walk all over me. Maybe I'm the one who always says "yes" and agrees to everything, even if I don't want to. Well, put simply, what's a body to do with being forced to engage in something it doesn't actually want to engage in? (Even if we're just talking about joining a knitting club or a letting a friend come over that drains us emotionally. It's not always about trauma. It IS about patterns of betraying what I really want.) What is the body supposed to do with that? When it feels betrayed by the psyche/will that agreed to do something we actually don't want to do?

The body has very few ways of communicating, but one of the main ways it DOES have is via sensation... hello tension and pain. Chronic tension and pain is the body's way of sending the message that "not all is well", that something needs to change, that it doesn't feel safe. It is it's way of putting out the alarm signal.🚨 Hence the armoring. 'Cause nothing gets our attention like pain, am I right? Armoring does that quite efficiently.

And armoring is totally appropriate, if you think about it. If I don't have a boundary, and so people can get closer than I want them to, or can get away with things with me that I don't want them to, then the body braces for impact, like in a car crash.💥 The bracing/armoring body is seeking to protect itself from the full force of the impact; it's seeking to minimize the damage.

So yes, if you don't have a great handle on boundaries in life, if you don't fully understand the what/when/how of setting boundaries, it is not surprising at all to me that the body will exhibit a lot of tension. It's trying to make up for the other part of the mind-body system/Self that isn't doing its job by drawing a boundary and saying "no" in the first place.

This is why it's said that "the body keeps the score", or that "the body bears the burden" of our life experiences. Obviously there are things that happen to us that are not of our choosing and have nothing to do with our lack of a boundary. Those require their own set of interventions to renegotiate and resolve the trauma. But then there are also those things that happen to us that didn't have to, that are either fully or partially due to our inability to set a boundary. It is those that I'm addressing here in this post.

I get it. I understand why we don't set boundaries. Why that feels scary. I know this because I myself am a recovering people-pleaser, borne out of my own trauma that led to patterns of appeasing and fawning to keep the "approval ratings high" as I like to say, from those around me. I also understand first-hand the grief one has to face, which can feel all-consuming and even annihilation-inducing, when thinking of the people that would walk away if I set the boundary where I actually want it, where my body wants it.

"Where should the boundary be?" is a common question. Answer: the boundary is the place where my body can finally feel safe, as would be evidenced by reduced muscle tension, easier breathing, relief of pain, greater ease, etc. When the body feels safe and doesn't have to armor anymore, the effects are clearly felt, and not just in our muscles; many aspects of life get lighter and easier.

Does it take time to find that "just-right" spot so that those things happen? Yep, sure does! Is it worth it? Well, I'll let you answer that one. At what point is it worth it to you, my dear one with chronic tight muscles that won't let go, to do something different, even if it's scary and new? I ask that with all the love in my heart, as I understand personally the core dilemma that is at play and the very real temptation to just continue the awful-but-familiar pattern of putting oneself last and continuing to get walked all over, so as to not rock the boat.🛶 I see you and I hear you, friends!

Only you can decide for yourself when you're ready to take the leap to try something new. And when you are, here we will be at Studio A, doing our best to faithfully serve those in our community who are at that junction point, ready for something to change in how they move through life and navigate these tricky things. I promise we'll do our best to make it a little less tricky and to bring clarity, relief, compassion, the possibility for change, and most importantly hope. ❤️

Photo by 2H Media on Unsplash

"Trauma teaches you to close your heart and armor up. Healing teaches you to open your heart and boundary up."

☝️One of my all-time favorite quotes right there.☝️ In your healing journey from trauma or whatever has gone wrong, have you done the work to learn (or re-learn) how to "boundary up"? If not, I would gently offer that your healing is stunted and/or not yet complete.

Most types of trauma involve a boundary breach in one way or another, whether that's a boundary breach of your physical space (e.g. car accident, injury involving an object or a person that made unwanted contact with you), your emotional space (e.g. someone mishandling your emotions or intimate sharing, betrayal), or your psychological space (e.g. a person inserting themselves too freely in your thought processes and decisions, manipulation, etc).

Healing from those things must involve, at the right time, a re-setting of boundaries, a renegotiation of where you want the lines to exist moving forward, so that you have clarity on where you end and everything/everyone else begins. This involves tuning into one's sense of interoception and proprioception, as well as emotions, as that is how the peripheral body provides feedback to the nervous system and brain about where you exist (and don't exist) in space, how close or far others get to be in relationship to you, and how you're interacting with the world around you and what needs to change.

We explore all of this and more in the day-long workshop called YES/NO & Letting Go. Taught by Allie Whitney, owner of Studio A and somatic bodyworker, and Dr. Michael Trexler, owner and therapist at Peace of Mind Counseling & Wellness, we'll meet on Saturday, February 28 from 9:30 am - 4:30 pm. This is an incredibly affordable way to explore the topics of boundaries, consent, autonomy, choice, and one's sense of personal power, all in an extremely safe and gentle format.

See here for more details and to sign up:

YES/NO Workshop | Studio A Body Therapy Join us for a somatic exploration of autonomy, choice, and boundaries.

Need to find new ways of de-stressing? Join us for either our Friday night or Saturday morning Release & Refresh class this weekend, and move out of fight/flight/freeze and build resilience to future stress.

Only $24, or $18 if you enter the coupon code HELP-ME-OUT when registering (for those that wish to come but genuinely need financial assistance). Read more and sign up here: https://www.studioabody.com/release-refresh

These somatic classes involve gentle fascial stretching paired with strategic nervous system exercises, and are deeply trauma-informed. Most participants leave in a much more calm, grounded, and thoughtful state than when they came in. Join us and give it a try!

Here are a few testimonials from participants:

"Release and Refresh was very, very good for me... I really enjoyed it and I believe it will help me tremendously to calm and heal." –Dawn W.

"I give it a score of 12/10 - amazing value in presentation, content, experience, and very repeatable. Remarkably accessible regardless of what the person is dealing with. I would bring everyone I know to this no matter what's going on with them and I would be stunned if they didn't find a benefit. I will be bringing as many people as I can." -Emily H.

"I actually have been raving about class since it happened on Friday. I was able to come home and go to sleep unassisted by meds for the first time in four years. And my body feels a LOT better! I plan to be back, and I have another friend who wants to join me!" -Lindsey A.

If you have not yet had a chance to visit our studio for a massage, somatic session, class, or program, but would like to see it first before you come, now you can! Click to see the 360° walk-through tour of the whole space.

Studio A Body Therapy · Google Maps 554 Pit Rd Suite 211, Brownsburg, IN 46112

The early bird discount ends TONIGHT (Feb 4) for our YES/NO & Letting Go workshop happening on Saturday, Feb 28, 9:30am - 4:30pm. This is a unique offering that is a somatic (body-led) exploration of autonomy, choice, and boundaries. It is deeply trauma-informed, gentle, and led by local experts in the fields of psychology and somatics. Sign up at https://www.studioabody.com/yes-no

Many of us don’t realize just how much bolstering we need in this area of exercising autonomy and drawing boundaries. But this is foundational work to being at ease in (and finding joy in) our relationships and in how we move through the world and relate to people… including everyone from the cashier at the grocery store, your medical providers, and your co-workers… to your kids, parents, and your spouse/partner.

It is worth asking:

👉 Do I respond to and relate with people based on what I feel they’re expecting from me? Or do I have a connection that is strong and alive to my inner self (a.k.a. body), that knows clearly what it wants/needs and knows how to honor that as I navigate relationships?

👉 Do I agree to things I actually don’t want to do? Or have I worked through my personal hang-ups that keep me stuck in saying “yes” when I actually want to say “no”?

👉 Do I know how to feel, tend to, and move through the grief that may come if I draw a boundary with someone and they walk away or reject me? Or does facing the grief feel so daunting and anxiety-producing that I never actually draw the needed boundary?

👉 Do I feel that I get taken advantage of a lot? And/or, do I worry that I’m sometimes verging on taking advantage of other people? How to know if that’s what’s really happening?

We explore these themes and so many more, hitting them from both a “top-down” (cognitive) and a “bottom-up” (somatic) perspective, which is what all the experts in the field have acknowledged is the best and most comprehensive way to bring about real, lasting change. This day-long workshop is led by Allie Whitney, owner of Studio A Body Therapy and co-taught with Dr. Michael Trexler of Peace of Mind Counseling & Wellness in Indy.

Everyone who attends gets a 20-page interactive workbook to take home with them.

So if you’re interested in engaging in true self-care by changing patterned responses of how you make decisions and how you relate to others, come learn how to hear your body’s “yeses” and “no’s”, and how to honor those responses with boundaries that are kind, honest, and brave.

Grab your spot in this one-of-a-kind workshop before the early bird rate disappears tonight at midnight! (Enter YNLG-EB as a coupon code when registering for the workshop to get the discount!) Sign up here: https://www.studioabody.com/yes-no

And if you can't afford the program but genuinely wish to engage with this content and learn, reach out about our Sliding Scale options. We'd never want someone to not come simply because of finances alone.

YES/NO Workshop | Studio A Body Therapy Join us for a somatic exploration of autonomy, choice, and boundaries.

We're printing and putting together the binders for this round of our signature program, Feel to Heal... should we make one for you? We have room for 5-6 more if you're ready to move out of chronic tension patterns, be it physically or emotionally. We start on January 14 and meet on Wednesday evenings, 6:45-8:45pm, for 8 weeks total (see website for a listing of the exact dates).

Whether you experience ongoing emotional tension/pain or physical tension/pain, the underlying mechanism behind BOTH of those is the same. It's the same regions of the brain, same pathways, plus the same nervous system activation for both physical and emotional pain; they are deeply connected and intertwined, even if you don't experience both at the same time.

Emotional tension/pain examples:
🔹Unsure of what to do with your anger?
🔹Don't know how to productively grieve the loss of someone or something in your life?
🔹Feel like you're looping (think: hamster wheel) when it comes to processing hard stuff?
🔹Can't get your system to move past something traumatic that happened a long time ago?

Physical tension/pain examples:
🔹Recurring IBS-like abdominal pain with no known medical cause
🔹Chronic tension in the neck and shoulders
🔹A "bad ankle" many years after an injury to it
🔹Tight hips and low back that never seem to let go

Get freedom from those patterns and step into something new. Learn about your nervous system and how the body processes stress, trauma, and difficult emotional experiences. Learn how to move through and out of patterns of tension, pain, and dysregulation. Come be equipped for a life that includes more capacity, more resilience, more ease, more vitality.

This is our 10th running of the program, over a span of 4 years, and we continue to get the same feedback after every round, that always says something similar to these real client testimonials:

💬"Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I can't say enough about this program! I wish every person in the world could have access to this exact program. The information is life-changing. Allie is an exceptional teacher and speaker, blending pragmatic information with empathy and physical expression flawlessly. I've never felt so equipped in my life."

💬"I have a background in psychology and worked in mental health, and I much admired this class! Allie is very knowledgeable and entertaining. I was fascinated with the myofascial release techniques we were taught."

💬"Wow! This program has opened my eyes to the mind/body experience that I knew nothing about. Allie, you have a gift of teaching. Your knowledge and passion is palpable. Thank you for who you are and what you do. You take a concept and break it into manageable parts. So. Much. Information. And I love it!"

💬"I loved it and wish the classes could keep going. It was so well done -- a wonderful balance of information, visuals, examples, levity, and gentle somatic exercises. It has made me feel like I am not broken... the program has given me tools to move through "triggers" with new insight and skills. I want to recommend this to all my friends."

A tried-and-tested program that has sold out nearly every round it's been offered, for a program fee that comes out to only $20 per hour. 😲 I don't think I need to tell you that that's a small fraction of the cost of individual therapy, be it PT, chiro, or mental health counseling. We're not against those things -- those are valuable and needed services! (We engage in them ourselves!) But at Studio A we believe that EDUCATION and INFORMATION (especially about foundational things like the nervous system and how the body processes stuff) should not be the same cost as individualized therapy. 🤓 Save your money and accelerate your healing in whatever therapies you're currently doing, by learning all about how your nervous system is interplaying with and processing the stuff of life. It will help you make sense of HOW and WHY the therapies you're doing are working (or not) and what's truly happening in the body when you experience chronic or ongoing tension/pain. And it helps you choose the right providers and therapists moving forward, because you'll understand what your body REALLY needs in order to overcome pain and to heal. As these folks from the Fall 2025 cohort have said:

💬"Pairing this class with therapy has been critical and helpful."

💬"This (in conjunction with my current talk therapist) has been the most productive healing I have ever done."

So... should we prepare a binder for you? Want to join us? Read more details, and grab one of the remaining spots here: https://www.studioabody.com/feel-to-heal

Can't make a particular night of the program? No worries, we've got you covered with a video recording of that night's content, that you'll have access to for a week so you can stay caught up. 😉

I hope you'll join us! 🧡 https://www.studioabody.com/feel-to-heal