Alma Brock is an Integrative Somatic Therapist who supports people to reconnect mind, body, and self. Holding the notion that it is possible for every person to live a fulfilling life, Alma uses Spinal Energetics, embodiment practices, and person-centred somatic therapy to help people find their way back home to themselves and live a life they love.
Alma Brock, Integrative Somatic Therapist
Introduce yourself! Please tell us about you and your life, so we can get to know you better.
Hello, I’m Alma. I’m a human like you, walking on this earth and experiencing this interesting journey that we call life.
I don’t talk about it much, but I’m originally from Germany, which is where I grew up. I’ve always had a deep sense of exploration within me, whether that’s going to new places, learning about different cultures, or being curious about people’s stories; so when I was 20 years old, I came to Australia where I lived ever since.
I’m an Integrative Somatic Therapist, who supports people to reconnect mind, body, and self. I believe that at our core we all are love and that the experiences we’ve had in life, including the protective mechanisms that emerged as a result, have led to us forgetting our true essence.
I reckon every person can live a fulfilling life, which is the purpose of my work. I use a modality called Spinal Energetics as well as embodiment practices, and person-centred somatic therapy to help people find their way back home to themselves and live a life they love.
For years I experienced life as a struggle. Since I can remember I’ve felt emotions quite deeply; however it’d feel intolerable to be with them because I didn’t know how. As a result, I developed an eating disorder and body image challenges, I experienced suicidal thoughts at times, I had many interpersonal relationships with poor boundaries, and overall I had no sense of self.
This is something that I see a lot in my work; people don’t get taught how to regulate their emotions and tend to their nervous system. What ends up happening is people find adaptive strategies to get through life, which only work in the short term, leaving them feeling in despair in the long term.
These days, I love myself and my life. It touches my heart to say this because I never thought it’d be possible. Being able to experience this deep love and a sense of peace every day (knowing how I used to feel) has confirmed to me that lasting change is possible which is what my work is about.
Outside of my work, I love:
Music (I’ve kind of sung all my life, but these days it’s mostly in my car or the kitchen)
Animals (my favourite ones are dolphins and my dream is to surf next to them one day)
Nature (I feel my soul is at home when I’m near the ocean)
Movement (surfing, strength training, running, yoga, bush walking, really anything), and
Cake (my mum used to bake a lot together with us when growing up so it makes me feel at home)
I value deep connections and presence when it comes to relationships, and I feel very blessed to have amazing friends in my life. I’m also a very early morning person, so there’s a running joke amongst my friends regarding what time I go to bed.
Can you provide an overview of your business and the services or products you offer through your website?
In a nutshell, my business is about supporting people to live a life that they love.
What I have found is that while talking about what’s troubling you has its place, it’s vital to take a somatic approach (meaning to include your body in therapy) for lasting change to occur. The reason for that is that you store your experiences in your body, your nervous system, and your energetic field, which is beyond your cognition.
Consider this, you’re only conscious of about 5% of your experiences, while 95% lie below your level of awareness and are stored in your body (Gustafson, 2017). If you only use talking therapy, you’ll miss 95% of your experiences and very little long-term change can be achieved.
A somatic approach to growth and healing asks you to connect to the innate wisdom your body holds. It requires you to build a trusting relationship with yourself.
Your body memories don’t have a narrative attached to them, but instead, they show up in body sensation, muscle tension or perhaps an image that emerges (amongst other things). The initial process of growth and healing is about learning to understand how your body is communicating to you that something is out of balance.
This is often where my work with clients starts. Together we start the process of creating safety within your nervous system and establishing a trusting relationship with your body. From that place, we can go deeper into the healing of past wounds and the release of memories, patterns, energy, etc that no longer serve you.
The way I work with clients currently is through my main offerings:
Somatic person-centred therapy
During somatic person-centred therapy, you and I use talking therapy and somatic practices to support your nervous system to regulate, as well as find strategies and resources that help you deal with the struggles in your life.
Spinal Energetics
Spinal Energetics is a modality that draws on Eastern and Western knowledge to support your entire being to return to balance. Your body inherently knows how to release, heal, and grow. During a Spinal Energetics session, we work together to support the release of tension and trauma that may be stored in your body. The process of releasing survival patterns, pain, and trauma supports you to re-remember and reconnect to who you truly are.
What clients tend to notice after receiving Spinal Energetics for some time is that they make different decisions, they relate to themselves and others in a more kind and compassionate way, and they express themselves authentically in the world. They fall in love with who they are and the life they’ve created.
Some clients choose to engage with me through one of these modalities, others choose to access both. Ultimately, my encouragement is always to choose what feels right for you at this moment in time.
What inspired you to start this business, and what are the core values and goals that drive your company?
My desire to start this business came from a place of “banging my head against a brick wall”. I was working for an Alcohol and Other Drug service at the time and became more and more aware of the limitations in the system’s approach to helping people. I saw that what was offered was a surface-level solution/quick “fix” instead of a holistic approach to health and well-being.
I noticed that people would return to the service again and again, not because they didn’t commit to their journey but because the system that was supposed to help them, contributed to their pain/trauma.
I remember very clearly suggesting offering TCTSY (Trauma Centre Trauma-Sensitive Yoga) to clients of the service and being explicitly told I wasn’t allowed to do that. It honestly baffled me. It didn’t make sense to me particularly because this approach to yoga had been thoroughly researched and found highly effective for supporting people who’ve experienced complex trauma (van der Kolk, et al. 2014).
Eventually, I quit that job and I started my own business. I’ve always had a vision of opening a centre for trauma healing and while I’m not there (yet) my business focuses on supporting people to release pain/trauma so they can live their lives fully.
The profound meaning that lies in supporting people to release their pain/trauma and create a life that they love, is something that continues to inspire me. I truly believe that we can change the world through healing our trauma, which is one of the reasons I’m so passionate about my journey and the work I do.
I call the approach to my work: The Loving Pathway, which rests on 6 principles:
Love
Innate Wisdom
Safety
Embodiment
Presence
Wholeness
These 6 principles have been vital in my journey of healing and creating a loving relationship with myself and life in general and they continue to inform how I show up in life and with my clients.
How do you differentiate your products or services from competitors in your industry?
I walk the walk not just talk the talk. Everything I offer, I’ve experienced myself. I’m a big advocate for practitioners engaging in their process of growth and healing.
My journey began about 10+ years ago when I did my counselling degree at university. I was struggling with an eating disorder at the time, and I remember very clearly thinking, if I can’t seek support from a therapist for my challenges, how can I expect anyone to come to me for support? So I went and I’ve engaged in therapy ever since. Has it been easy? Absolutely not, but not seeking support and continuing to manage my pain in the ways I did, ultimately causing me more pain, would have been so much harder.
What I’ve observed working in this industry is that there can be a tendency for people to acquire lots of intellectual knowledge (which has its place), however, unfortunately, there’s less emphasis being placed on embodying the modalities practitioners use with their clients. The level of depth and safety I can create and hold as a practitioner who has embodied the modalities and has worked on my challenges is different to someone who only relies on their cognitive knowledge.
In that way, I believe I’m different and people can sense it. Healing cannot take place in the same conditions in which the original wound(s) occurred. In other words, for you to release your pain and heal the trauma you’ve experienced, you’ll need to feel safe (physically, mentally emotionally, and spiritually).
We humans are co-regulating beings, meaning that our nervous systems constantly communicate with each other. If my nervous system is regulated, it allows your nervous system to co-regulate with mine towards feeling connected and safe. If I’m in my survival response, your nervous system will pick up on that and will send you into your protective state, where no healing can take place (Porges, 2022).
That’s why it’s essential for me as a practitioner to engage in my process of growth. It allows me to show up for you as a regulated and safe nervous system, which will foster a sense of authenticity and relatability, ultimately creating a feeling of safety and trust.
One thing that I’ve noticed is that consciously or subconsciously people expect change to occur instantly. That’s not how it works. Consider this, when you learn something new it takes 300 repetitions to create muscle memory and it takes 3000 repetitions for embodiment, meaning you can access the skill under stress (Strozzi-Heckler, 2007). Since it took you x number of years to get to the place where you are now, which means you’ve probably engaged in certain patterns thousands of times, it then makes sense that it’ll take some time to not only release old patterns but also create new ones.
Lasting change requires you to commit to yourself every single day. This might look different at different times, however, it asks you to show up consistently. Some of the practices I engage in every day are:
Starting my day with breathwork and meditation
Watching the sunrise at the beach with my cute little dog Ponyo
Moving my body (depending on the day that includes walking, surfing, strength training, and running)
Resting (one of my favourite things to do is have a nap in the middle of the day)
Setting boundaries that honour me
Continuously check in with myself throughout the day to tend to and be with any emotions that might be present
Connecting with my friends
Being present in nature
There are many other practices I engage in that contribute to me being an embodied practitioner. This is one of the most important aspects of my work as it supports the process of healing for the clients who choose to work with me.
Are there any plans, upcoming developments, or special promotions related to your website and business that visitors should be aware of?
My long-term plan is to open a trauma centre. A place for people to come to that approaches well-being holistically. A place for people to feel safe. A place filled with love, connection, and community.
Currently, all my offerings are one-on-one, which can be accessed either in person or online. At the start of 2024, I’ll be adding group offerings, which I feel very excited about.
We humans are hardwired to connect. We want to belong. We want to be seen, heard, held, and accepted. Group sessions create a space for people to experience exactly that. Since we are social beings, healing cannot occur in isolation. Being witnessed in your pain and met with love and acceptance is incredibly healing.
My heart also lies in making my work accessible to people. That’s perhaps one of the biggest challenges I’ve faced having my own business. I want my work to be accessible to anyone interested and I’m also living in a society that requires me to have money to live. The aim is that my group offerings will bridge the financial gap somewhat.
Something else that I’m excited about is that I’m currently undergoing training for Kundalini Activation, which I’ll be completing in mid-2024 and I’m very excited to be offering this modality from then onwards.
Tell us about a pivotal moment in your life that brought you to where you are today.
There are many moments that I could pick, however, I reckon one of the biggest ones in recent times was when I released my attachment wounds through Spinal Energetics.
Previously, I had carried beliefs around not being good enough, and feeling unlovable, as well as fears around being abandoned and rejected. While I’ve worked on these in therapy for years and gained a lot of understanding around them, I could still feel myself getting triggered or engaging in protective behaviours to avoid experiencing pain.
Following one of my Spinal Energetics sessions, these wounds are completely gone. I never thought that was possible. There are many changes that I’ve noticed within myself since then, one of them being that I now know (and I’m not talking about cognitive knowledge but rather a deeply embodied feeling) that I’m whole and complete. This translates into the way I relate to myself and engage with others. Rather than coming from a place of lack or fear, I now relate to myself and the world from a place of abundance and love.
This transformation was the moment when I knew I wanted to learn Spinal Energetics so I could share this with the world, which is what I’m doing now; and the impacts/changes people have reported since receiving Spinal Energetics have been profound.
References:
Gustafson C. Bruce Lipton, PhD: The Jump From Cell Culture to Consciousness. Integr Med (Encinitas). 2017 Dec;16(6):44-50. PMID: 30936816; PMCID: PMC6438088.
Porges SW. Polyvagal Theory: A Science of Safety. Front Integr Neurosci. 2022 May 10;16:871227. doi: 10.3389/fnint.2022.871227. PMID: 35645742; PMCID: PMC9131189
Strozzi-Heckler, R. 2007. The Leadership Dojo. Frog, Ltd.
van der Kolk BA, Stone L, West J, Rhodes A, Emerson D, Suvak M, Spinazzola J. Yoga as an adjunctive treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder: a randomized controlled trial. J Clin Psychiatry. 2014 Jun;75(6):e559-65. doi: 10.4088/JCP.13m08561. PMID: 25004196.
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