Davina Mackenzie Somatic Practitioner

Had our first live group call in The Root of You today and I am so lit up. ✨️

I've been wanting to bring this program into fruition since 2019. In fact I found some old videos I made back then when I first tried to get things rolling.

It would not have been what it is now if I would have made it then...it is so much richer and fuller than I actually could have imagined it would be. And I'm so proud of what I have created.

I'm creating and birthing so many things right now and it feels alive, vibrant, juicy, and fluid. My private practice is full to the brim. My belly is full and lush, my heart is full and content.

We don't often revel and celebrate our accomplishments. It's so important. We absolutely cannot expand our capacity to hold more joy and contentment if we do not pause and allow these things to be felt - deeply felt.

It is only in the savoring that we create the capacity in our nervous system for more of it. ✨️

Not only did The Root of You sell out, but there was a glitch and my system accepted 2 extra people! And then people were messaging me to ask if they could still get in.

If you missed it this round you can get on the waitlist for Spring 2025. (LINK IN BIO)

I will be running it again once I am back from doing my own postpartum pelvic floor healing.♥️🤰

It is said that we store our emotions in our hips. I don't completely agree with that- something about the way that is said feels disempowering and can lead to us to feel broken or like we are a walking container of trauma.

We are not broken.

What IS true is that we hold the tension of our emotions as constriction in our body until our body feels safe and stabilized enough not to NEED to hold tension there. When we have chronic stress, anxiety or dis-ease within the body, this part of our body is one of the first places to clench and constrict.

We can stretch all day long but if we don't work with the tension patterns and stability in the body to create a nervous system shift along with it, we are just going to go back into the same patterns of tension and pain.

Pelvic floor problems are not just solved by learning how to do a Kegel or doing a bunch of stretches.

The Pelvic Floor is such a key component to our stability, nervous system and mental health. It is the base of our core canister that supports the structure of our spine and is constantly responding to every movie we make. Learning to map to and feel that part move with our lives is so essential to healing both physical and emotional symptoms.

If you would like to learn how to tend to your body in ways that can make big shifts in your day-to-day well being, there in ONE SPOT LEFT in The Root of You and registration ends TOMORROW!

Yesterday David found a bunny head in our backyard. Just a head, eyes wide open. We were really confused as to how it got there until we saw that other parts of him were strewn about and realized a hawk or a crow must have dropped him mid flight. I buried him behind our yard, surrounding him with rock roses and thanking his being for being.

We are so afraid of death sometimes. I know I am often terrified of it, more so than I would like to be. It can remind us of all we have to lose, the fear of the unknown, the desire for things to remain unchanged and the vulnerable reality that life can indeed change in an instant.

It reminds me that we are not deserving of an easy life. We don't "deserve" comfort. We can get caught in the trap of thinking that we do or that things should be easier than they are or that we are somehow doing it wrong or being punished if something is hard. That is not how it works in the wild. No one life is more sacred than the other and one life given is another's life preserved. Life is a precious gift that requires work, tending, patience, and will undoubtedly bring grief, struggle and discomfort.

May we embrace the discomfort not as a path to ease but a path to living fully.

✨️We only have 4 spots left in The Root of You!✨️

Through the end of Monday, April 22nd I am offering a BFF special for The Root of You!

Buy One Get One 50% off!!

You and a friend can join for a reduced price of $250 each rather than the full tuition of $333.

If you have been considering joining us, now is the time to grab your spot.✨️

This weekend I had the pleasure of teaching a workshop on all things Pelvic Floor and it was so much fun! 

One of the things that continues to astound me (other than how much we are not taught about our body) is that when we come together to learn it conjures an experience that I cannot create alone.

I can teach someone a LOT in a one-on-one setting and they will absolutely learn life-changing information about their body and how to connect to it on a level that they have likely never experienced before.

But when we come together in a group and share our experiences, desires, and feelings, it opens up an entirely different realm of healing. 

This weekend I watched as conversations unfolded in this group about their pleasure (or lack thereof), frustrations in bed or with their body and health, relationship struggles, and lack of knowledge around how things work in their body.

These topics can bring so much shame and mystery when we feel alone in them but when we start to work on things together, suddenly the shame dissolves, the fear turns to curiosity and the hesitance turns to excitement. 

My vision for this program is that we find connection and healing in our own body, and also in our shared explorations.

Will you join us?

✨️🔻 Buy One Get One 50% off!! 🔻✨️

Now through the end of Monday, April 22nd I am offering a BFF special for The Root of You!

You and a friend can join for a reduced price of $250 each rather than the full tuition of $333.

I have seen in my growth and the growth of my clients that when we bring community to our learning experience, not only do we have more FUN, but we learn more because we are having fun together.

My vision for this program is that we find connection and healing in our own body, and also in our shared explorations.

More details about the program in the link!

When you can’t map your brain to move or connect to an essential part of your body to control movement your brain believes it to be a vulnerability. 

Muscles, joints and fascia play a significant role in our emotional states. 

Too much or too little tension in the body can perpetuate stress, anxiety, depression, and perpetuate people pleasing (fawning), shutdown and hypervigilance.

When we begin to bring stability to the body, the nervous system begins to shift toward more safety. When people can find sense of their center- the sense of Self is strengthened. 

I see this with my clients who have suffered from a TBI and have been impacted in their ability to function the way they once could.

I see this in my hyper mobile clients or those with Ehlers Danlos who struggle to find stability. 

I see this with my postpartum population after their body has gone though a million changes and they no longer feel like “themselves”.

I see this in myself as my body changes in pregnancy and I have to find a new way to move and adapt to my changing body on a daily basis. 

I see this in my clients who have been through s*xual trauma or have severe body shame that has made dissociating from parts of their body safer than being in their body. 

What we do to stabilize the body stabilizes every other aspect of our life. 

The Pelvic Floor is such a key component to our stability, nervous system and mental health. It is the base of our core canister that supports the structure of our spine and is constantly responding to every movie we make. Learning to map to and feel thai part move with our lives is so essential to our healing.

As I am creating the content for The Root of You I am so proud of it and what it will bring to the lives of those who choose to embark upon this journey.

This is not just a squeeze, lift, contract type of instruction. This is mapping your brain and heart to a part of your body that has likely been a mystery, uncovering an essential part of you.

I’ve been to so many mediocre practitioners who just prescribe exercises without actually teaching me to connect to my body in a real way.

You do not need just another exercise program that rolls out boring “rehab” exercises. That is not the point and that is not helpful in creating a relationship with your body.

This is a robust offering that will put together pieces in your healing explorations that are about so much more than just working with a body part.

There are a lot of people teaching pelvic floor rehab courses but none of them teach quite like I do.

It’s one thing to teach from the physiological perspective, it’s another to teach that along with a trauma informed, somatic approach that takes into account the history of our body trauma, the sacred nature of working with this part of our body and the relational depth of this kind of healing.

🌸 Your relationship with your body will never be the same.

In our society pleasure is either seen “dirty” pleasures” or we conflate it with just being about s*x. We binge on what we think is pleasure only to feel empty and shameful, still craving and wanting more. (because you can never have enough of what you don’t need.)

When we are lost from our connection to true pleasure, we are cut off from our life force energy. 

When we only conflate s*x with pleasure we miss out on the deep restorative pleasure that is available to us at any given moment. 

When we think we need a class, a person, s*x, a massage to feel pleasure, we outsource our pleasure and are confined to only a certain way it can look or feel. 

The irony is that when we do not practice pleasure outside the bedroom, we definitely will not be feeling as much pleasure as we could in the bedroom.

Everybody is talking about how important embodiment is - yet nobody even knows what their pelvic floor is, what it does, or that our relationship with it can transform our pain, pleasure and trauma.

Embodiment and Somatics are buzz words that have become so muddied that we have lost touch with what either of them really means.

They have become synonymous with quick fixes and body hacks to reduce stress and be more productive when what’s true is that you cannot hack the body. 🚫

❗️You cannot tap your way out of anxiety everyday and truly change the baseline of your nervous system.

❗️Breathwork is not “releasing” your trauma, integrating it is what makes you feel whole again.

❗️You cannot shake your body into “regulation” and expect that you will be any more capable of handling the next big wave of emotion that comes.

When you understand the body and the nervous system, you quickly realize that these fixes are at best ill-informed, and at worst causing us to avoid getting the support we need.

The only way we change the things we are so desperate to change is by learning about how our body works and respecting how it functions so we can work with it, not against it.

Otherwise, we are just spinning ourselves in circles putting out fires, trying to get rid of our feelings and fix ourselves.

The body needs attention and time.

✨️It is relational - embodiment is a way of being with ourselves - ALL parts of oursleves. ✨️

Our relationship with our body will always dictate the way we relate to the world and other people. 🌷

There are no quick fixes or hacks to developing a relationship.

It’s an inside out approach.

Make no mistake, the root of you, your PELVIC FLOOR, this primal place that responds to every movement we make and stress response that we feel has so much to tell you about your body and your relationship to the world.

Come learn with me and watch how all your relationships begin to shift towards congruence and a felt sense of ease. Link in bio.