Held Space Healing Studio

Do you have a child ages 2-12 who you'd like to have benefit from a FREE 60-min Therapeutic Touch session as part of an upcoming practicum?

I completed my CPMT!

I am now a Certified Pediatric Massage Therapist!

With a 98% on the final test, all that is needed is the confirmation of my CMT - evidenced by DORA, attached here in comments. DORA is part of public record and the most significant evidence of my credentials. I've never thought to post it to this page, but here it is. It will be exciting to have CPMT official by end of week. I'm so excited to start working with kids toward the benefits!

I would like to expand a practicum I'm running next week - so if you want to bring your child to a FREE 60-min session (incl. health intake and Therapeutic Touch - each about 30 min), please contact me at Erica at [email protected]

Inclusivity is SO valued here - please don't hesitate to reach out regardless of your background or any identity features.

One of the things I love about this approach is that it's a great way for the whole family to learn more about touch and massage and the brain and connection and more! A guardian must be present in the room for entire session - up to two guardians is just fine if more family members want to join. Please consult child as to who to bring into the room.

For Free Session toward my practicum, spaces are limited to first three families who respond. Please also note that my level of training as a Level One CPMT may not make me the best match for some health challenges and some levels of neurodivergence in kids - if you're not sure, let's chat or check out other resources like Loveland's Bonnie Eason able to work with infants and higher needs to get little one and you living your best lives!

Yay! Bodywork for kids! Let's go!

3 things to try now to be more embodied:

1. Rub each hand along the fold lines of the palm. Not just for fortune tellers, fold lines experience a lot of movement. Using the thumb of your opposite hand, simply rub in gentle circles.

2. Fold your arms across your body so that each hand is on the opposite arm, probably your triceps. Simply rub lightly with full hand like you're keeping yourself warm. Such actions where touch crosses the midline has surprising benefits - like helping to build white matter between the two sides of your brain.

3. Chant! Sing! Get vibration going in the body. Notice all the places you feel it. Try moving the pitch around and notice where and how the vibration changes. Our Vagus Nerve starts from the brain stem back of throat so gentle sound is typically calming and helps balance the Vestibular sense too.

Just do what feels good to you ~ enjoy.

Vestibular sense: https://courses.lumenlearning.com/waymaker-psychology/chapter/reading-the-vestibular-sense/

Held Space Healing Studio

Pregnancy and Birth Recovery are major moments of change in our bodies and lives. Here are some resources to that end:

'A Friend for You' free pregnancy support and connection to resources in Northern Colorado recommended by a friend I trust who works as a volunteer there, and, in the comments, honest words about birthing that I found healing from Chloe Calderon Chotrani at Body as Earth.

Giving birth doesn't always match our ideals, as Chloe writes, "Birth has a way of humbling us. It brings us into intimacy with death. It asks us to surrender our plans and meet reality as it is. ... The pain of birth was insurmountable, unfathomable — I was ready to die, and die I did. Yet, we came through the other side."

I've also shared part of my own birth story in the comments with a few words concerning the gentle, non-judgemental welcome you can expect for birth recovery bodywork at Held Space.

Pregnancy Resources | A Friend for You Pregnancy Support Our Friend for You Blog hosts a variety of pregnancy resources to help you navigate every part of your pregnancy. See what resources are available.

Held Space Healing website is now live:
https://www.held-space-healing.org/
Come be a part of something unique and special.

Held Space Healing specializes in 90-mintue Sessions in two-hour blocks to allow time for nourishing extras and slowing down toward nervous system renewal and integration.

From our home in Fort Collins, I offer Informed Touch based on insights from 20 years of experience and ~1,700 hours of training that spans culture, era, and modality.

It's all so interconnected, I believe that full body is the most effective way to harmonize localized concerns while also benefiting the health of the entire body.

After pausing Held Space Healing to become a parent, I advanced my education with an additional 85 hours these past few years while also serving the public for a year as a member of the Living Arts Wellness team - but now that our childcare is stable, I'm excited to reopen our peaceful, garden-touched studio.

As a child considered skilled with touch, I started massaging my mom and grandma when I was around ten years old; from them, I was also introduced to professional massage as a young teen. I've been so fortunate to be on this empowering path of expanded ease. Massage is for everyone who seeks it. Kind touch is a birthright. My hope is to help make Informed, Kind Touch a more common occurrence toward self and community care. Honoring consent, embodiment, restoration - there are many benefits.

I've worked with bodies all around the world, and these interactions taught me much about labor, equality, and the right to autonomy. Although I've had the privilege of working with all types of people, my dream is an even more inclusive and better understood field.

Children are underrepresented in massage even though their brains grow with touch and any number of injuries or health concerns might make bodywork a powerful tool. Massage for children requires the presence of a guardian in the room. Depending on age and goals, kid sessions are offered for 30 or 60 min. Pregnancy massage and birth recovery packages are also available for 60 minutes, but 90-min full body is typically the treatment method I invest in because of the realities of interconnection in the body.

For now, engagement requires a referral from an existing client or an invitation from me. Everyone who works with me as a client must agree to take responsibility for their own health and speak up at once for any adjustment sought. Nonviolent and nonsexual touch are firmly upheld. This practice focuses on women and children, which includes LGBTQ+, and it is open to all bodies regardless of religion, race, etc.

My private practice has always thrived on word of mouth, so thank you in advance!

Mondays 10 a.m. - 5 p.m.

Sundays 11 a.m. - 4 p.m.

Fort Collins

As I re-open my private practice, 20 years and roughly 1,700 hours of education around bodywork leaves me chasing the ideals I’ve seen work best:
1. Informed touch to support the body to relax and unwind toward its natural center.
2. Presence of rooted, centered, non-judgemental, and compassionate wholeness.
3. Peaceful spaciousness that invites the parasympathetic system to rejuvenate.
4. Nourishment of slowing down and wholesome, simple foods after session during integration time in nature.

Informed Touch, Presence, Peaceful Spaciousness, and Nourishment – these are values of Held Space Healing.

So, how do we practice such ideals?
First, the agreement is nonsexual and nonviolent interaction.
Second, the agreement is that consent always matters, and you can ask for an adjustment, pause, or end a session at any time. This is a space in which you are the true authority about your own body.

Then, I use craniosacral, lymph, and traditional massage techniques like Swedish, Ayurvedic (in terms of sweeping and treatment of whole body and attention to quality of oil), Stones, and Neuromuscular with the intention of greater harmony and ease.

This is a place of gentleness that focuses on health and encourages that health to expand.

My long-term goals include public education materials.

I welcome an experience of the interconnections within body.

Safe, kind, informed touch based on consent is a birthright.

Touch is for all who seek it.

The revolution is Love.