Couples Coaching

What is it?

My somatic approach to coaching couples and partners offers a dynamic, body-based process for change that can help a partnership transform in a lasting way.

I bring together a diverse, powerful set of tools — including from therapy, coaching, meditation, aikido, nonviolent communication, and bodywork — in a way that gets results that each discipline couldn’t alone.

What happens in a session?

At the beginning of our engagement, we focus on defining the change you want to make in your partnership. Then each time we meet for coaching we find a focus for that session based on what obstacle or new skill you need to work on next.

Sessions often include body-based practices that both increase awareness of how each person operates and help you build new ways of relating. As we get to know your individual and shared patterns, responses to stress, and understand the impacts and limitations of your environment, we gain insight around what you need to address next.

In between sessions you will develop a daily & weekly practice routine to strengthen your new relational “muscles” and fulfill any important action steps.

Couples coaching sessions are typically 60-75 minutes. Most sessions happen with all partners present, but when relevant there can also be individual sessions.

Is it right for me?

I support partners who are up to big things — raising kids, taking care of communities, managing land, building visionary projects, making a life-changing decision together.

They might be in unknown territory because they want to operate differently than what they learned or witnessed growing up. They may already have some tools from therapy or self-development, but they’re still getting stuck, not making the progress they want.

I love helping people change patterns around gender norms, power, privilege, and conflicts that keep coming back. I love working with romantic couples but this work is also great for platonic or work partners. I’ve seen it be effective at addressing communication problems, trust issues, aligning visions, and avoiding burnout.

This work is beneficial for partners who are really in the s**t, but can also be transformational for relationships that are going well. That can be just the right moment to go deeper.

Why is it effective?

Somatic couples coaching holds that we can’t change through talking alone, despite what traditional couples therapy says.

Relationships are wildly complex, and illuminate all our limitations and sore spots, no matter how much individual work we’ve done. And when we get stuck or triggered, our reactions are not governed primarily by our thinking. Our bodies take over and we act in ways that aren’t aligned with what we want.

To transform a partnership in a lasting way, somatics uses practices that address all of the dimensions of its complex relational system. That means we work simultaneously with each person’s thoughts, beliefs, emotions, physical bodies, default behaviors, and reactions to stress. And we go beyond that to explore histories, desires, cultural influences, and physical surroundings that are at play.

Through coaching you will learn to take new actions that you couldn’t before. You’ll also develop new systems and practices for working with the strengths and limitations of your unique partnership. Through body-based practices, partners learn to embody the relationship they envision for themselves.

“The conflicts you have with your mate are about each of you becoming the person you most want to be. That’s the opportunity of the relationship. Each of you needs to work through the pain and grow up.”
— Resmaa Menakem

  • I am committed to increasing access to coaching and healing by offering this work at an affordable rate, and as much as possible I do not turn away clients for lack of funds.

    I work on a sliding scale where my suggested contribution is $160/session.

    For clients who are not able to pay that full amount, I ask them to pay the most they can.

    I trust that people with financial resources and other forms of privilege will contribute at the highest amount, knowing that doing so helps make my support accessible to people with lower incomes and from marginalized identities.

    If you have any concern about money, let’s talk about it and I’m confident we will find a mutually satisfying arrangement.

    I accept cash, checks, and electronic transfers via Venmo, PayPal, and Wise.

  • Sessions take place at my studio or on Zoom.

    My studio is located about 20 minutes north of downtown Durham and 15 minutes east of downtown Hillsborough, NC.

    Upon request, I see clients at their homes with a travel fee.

  • No. Couples coaching does not currently fit the requirements for insurance plans. For this reason I offer a generous sliding scale to those with financial limitations.

  • I see clients during normal business hours Monday-Friday, and by special request in the evenings and on weekends.

  • If you’re interested in working with me or would like to learn more, contact me here or schedule a short introductory consultation. This is an opportunity to ask questions, get to know each other a bit, and decide if you’d like me to support you.

    I provide clients with a private scheduling link to easily book sessions.

  • There is no minimum commitment to try couples coaching and I encourage clients to begin with 1-2 sessions to make sure it feels like a good fit.

    Some partnerships experience profound shifts from a single session, but I strongly recommend committing to 10 sessions if you are trying to make big changes.

    Typically this means starting with 3-4 months, meeting weekly or biweekly. This time allows you to find your footing in new practices and start to see the transformational fruits of our labor.

  • Every relationship is different and I don’t work with a set formula or linear progression.

    When relevant I draw on my own experience as a spouse and parent that has called me into my own healing and growth over many years. My relational toolkit has grown through building a life with two children, a dozen animals, moving to new homes, sharing finances, work collaboration, and tending to shared land. I draw on my professional successes (and equally my failures!) as a leader in high-intensity hospitality management and inside a worker-owned cooperative consultancy.

    Some of the training and methodologies that have influenced my partners approach are somatics, nonviolent communication, weaving togetherness, trauma-informed collaboration, pleasure activism, emergent strategy, hospicing modernity, sociocracy, aikido, linguistics, gestalt therapy, internal family systems, and coyote healing.