Tami Boehle-Satterfield is a licensed psychotherapist, certified hypnotherapist, and energy practitioner in trauma resolution. Her practice, Attention to Living is based in Colorado and offers virtual sessions for psychotherapy, coaching and hypnosis for anxiety, addictions, performance and pain. In this feature, Tami shares her journey in guiding others and insights to self-healing and self-care.
Please share your background and what drew you to guide others?
I was drawn to help others because others helped me. I like to call such individuals, Benevolent Intermediaries. These are the people who show up to save us. Sometimes they are with us for a great length of time and sometimes only a brief encounter. Without that support, I would have simply been absorbed into my ancestral trauma. Particularly as it was playing out in my childhood. I would have become part of the familial wound.
What services do you provide?
I provide trauma therapy as a neurolinguistic hypnotherapist. Using neurolinguistic programming and cutting-edge brain science, I can help my client fine tune past life experiences for a better outcome. This means less fear which translates to reduced anxiety. I utilize somatic release, parts integration, and energy medicine as my top three modalities. Though I am trained in many techniques, and sometimes utilize other methods if that’s in my client’s best interest. All my processes are dynamic, organic, and creative. This means that while we do talk for greater clarification and to set the mental mind at rest, the bulk of the work is happening in real time and as it unfolds. Not by prescription of cause and effect: do this and that will happen. But instead, by creating the cause that will initiate the desired effect.
How does energy medicine complement psychotherapy?
Energy medicine takes us to the right side of the brain where all creativity and healing happen. Such can’t happen on the left hemisphere alone because the left is interested in efficiency—the fastest way to get things done. When we have trauma, we tend to reside more vigilantly on the left side where we scan for danger. Not only is this efficient from our brain’s perspective, but it is by design to keep us safe. However, if we remain in that state too long our ability to self-regulate from anxiety to peace of mind is disrupted. Because energy medicine takes us into the body where the disruption is stored, we circumvent the cognitive brain where we think about the disruption. Moving to the right hemisphere by way of energy medicine provides relief from anxiety. It is only in that more relaxed state that we can figure out what we want and how to make that happen. Healing with energy medicine is faster and more gentle than traditional talk therapy.
Following on from the pandemic and the additional stressors attached do you feel there has been a strong rise in anxiety amongst people?
Absolutely. Additionally, due to epigenetics the last two generations are arriving on planet Earth more anxious than those before them. The stressors of the pandemic have added to that burden. I believe it is more imperative than ever before for us to focus on healing before the trajectory of compromised mental health is a run-away train. It makes me sad because it doesn’t have to be this way. We do know how to help people heal. Unfortunately, too many people are not aware of this and/or don’t have access to these brilliant treatment techniques.
What are your thoughts on turning to self-healing in a holistic sense to manage these challenges as opposed to turning to medication?
Medication has it place when a person’s central nervous system is on such high alert that they cannot attend to the work that I have described above. Though to be honest, this is extremely rare. I have worked with many individuals who are highly reactive to the work in the first session, and I have had very good success in lowering that reactivity. Often by session three, these clients can relax enough to successfully complete the work and practice new skills that inspire them with the competence needed to create the life they want to live. I know this may sound too good to be true, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is possible. We can live the life we want. Mick Jagger was wrong; we can get what we want! And just in case you are worried that if everyone did what they want the world would run amuck, it turns out that most people want to live wholesome, meaning healthy, lives. If those people were afforded this opportunity the world would be a healthier place, supporting a healthier lifestyle. With such in place, the course of humankind could make the necessary correction for health that sustains evolution.
There is one caveat. This work that I’ve described is not appropriate for socio or psychopaths. I evaluate all clients to determine that they do not hold socio/psycho pathological thoughts and/or behavior and that they are deemed to have the appropriate health for this work. My early field work, working with socio and psychopaths, affords me a solid understanding of such a population.
Self-care is such an important aspect for us, do you have any routines to share to accomplish this?
Breathwork is the second fastest way to initiate the parasympathetic nervous system, which is a fancy way to say relaxation. I am a big fan of breathwork. It is foundational to the work I do. That said, because breathwork is the portal into meaningful self-care which automatically leads to care/consideration for others, it requires two things to truly provide individual and collective benefit: 1. Self-awareness; and 2. A sense of purpose. We can live in a world where people miss the point that absolutely everything is interconnected. Self-care, compassion, spirituality, and the like are not authentic if they become transactional. Each of these qualities is not a box checked. Nor is life purpose box checked. When we live as if these things are accomplishments in and of themselves, or worse that they signal to our identity, we miss their true benefit—which is to help us re-connect to each other, the planet, and the great mystery of life.
