Today, Mystic Mag had the opportunity to interview Eileen Sendrey, Holistic Healer who kindly agreed to share some information about her career, work, and what she loves most about her profession.
When did you first know that being a healer was your calling and how did it come about?
When I look back into my early life I can already see the natural capacities for empathy, nurturing and wanting to serve. From the time I was a young woman, even strangers tell their stories to me and share their pain. From a young age, my role-models were spiritual leaders and humanitarian activists. Learning Breema, massage, biodynamic craniosacral therapy and yoga starting 30 years ago began to give shape to more intentional practices that started as hobbies and led into my profession. The practice of Breema taught me how to include myself in the care and nurturing I give to others.
Even in my 20’s I had a felt sense of a calling to support children in some way. Once in the healing arts, this led me into prenatal and infant massage, teaching prenatal yoga and connected parenting classes. In 2012 I discovered the field of pre and perinatal somatics, which connected all of my tools, experience and understanding to support individuals, couples and families with infants, children and teens.
What services do you offer?
I am a Pre-and Peri-Natal Somatics Educator and Practitioner, Registered Craniosacral Therapist, a Castellino School Approved Womb Surround Facilitator and Breema Instructor and Practitioner.
In my practice, both in person in Santa Cruz, CA and on Zoom with clients worldwide, I work with adults, individually and in groups and families with babies, children and teens. I help individuals and families understand how early traumatic events impact them in the present and support them in their intentions for health. To support connected families I offer classes for parents and professionals (teachers and in the health field) in person and on-line. The intention of the work is to restore connection to individual health as well as the thriving of the family system.
What are the main benefits of alternative healing/therapy compared to conventional medicine?
A true ‘Holistic Healer’ nurtures each individual’s own inner guidance system and the path to health for each person looks different. There are so many tools in both “natural therapies” as well as in the “modern medical model.” In “alternative healing” we support someone to begin with less invasive methods, like lifestyle changes, nutrition, etc. before the highly invasive medical options; while, at the same time, recognizing that modern medicine, used in an attuned way, has its place in the continuum of health care.
My work is based on the recognition that our body is more than muscles, connective tissue, bones and organs. We exist in many layers of physical anatomy, mind, emotions, subtle energy; even further, in connection to living family, our deceased ancestors, local community and nation; and, finally, in relationship with nature, the planet, as a drop in the ocean of totality of existence, in whichever way each of us connects with essence, spirit or intelligence of life. Each individual has an inner guidance system to their own optimal health; To heal, we must gain to gain deeper understanding of the balance needed between stability/strength, fluidity/flexibility and clarity/understanding to support a direction toward health.
What can a person expect from your sessions?
Whether I am seeing someone in person or on Zoom, I begin with a moment for everyone to settle with some practice to be present, connecting mind and body. Then a check-in to find out how each person is coming into our session and what their intentions are for our work together. Since my modality is a somatic therapeutic work I help them discover how their trauma history shows up as a felt sense of themselves (mentally physically and emotionally) and interrupts healthy impulses in the present. My daughter calls me the “baby whisperer” because I help newborns tell their stories and connect and settle with their parents. I have a play room where I support toddlers, preschoolers and older children to tell their stories through play and heal early non-optimal experiences. I help parents understand how their early challenges impact how they parent today and support transformation of that. The adult work is individually, with couples and in group work called “Womb Surrounds” where, again there is a discovery of intentions for health for each person and the challenges around those intentions that stem from early life and the formation of the self. I help people differentiate from their history and discover and experience new possibilities of how to be in life and connect in relationship with others. I still do some work on the table as a craniosacral therapist, mostly with infants.
What is the most important detail in maintaining a relationship of mutual trust with clients?
When I first meet a client I never hold the expectation that they should trust me. I work with a client base that has experienced emotional and physical abuse, betrayal and many different kinds of trauma. There is a good healthy reason they might not trust me. I let them know that it is my job to earn their trust. I negotiate contact in an attuned way, support choice and self care and make repair promptly if there has been mis-attunement or I missed them in some way
What do you love most about your profession?
I LOVE my work and can’t imagine a day I don’t do it. This work supports connections — both to self and others. When individuals feel connected in this way, they make choices that nurture themselves, others, collective humanity and the earth. With ease and pleasure there are so many ways for me to help individual and collective transformation. Every day this work grows my heart and I feel energized and satisfied at the end of the day.
