FAQ

Coaching provides support to help you attain your desires. “Somatic” means body-based. In this work, we work with the body to achieve your goals. It is very effective for navigating resistance and fear. Unlike talk therapy or executive coaching, expect movement, sound, self-touch, and a lot of feeling for physical sensations you’ve never noticed before.

Somatic coaching can quickly move things if you’ve ever felt like a prisoner in your mind or stuck in cognitive therapy. It’s like finding a secret backdoor into your consciousness.

Weekly 75-minute sessions scheduled on weekdays between 8 am and 3 pm Eastern are the norm. Occasionally, a different schedule makes more sense for a client’s particular situation. We can work this out in your inquiry call, so please do bring it up if you need modifications to this standard plan.

You schedule calls on a booking interface, so it’s ok if you can’t always meet at the same day and time every week.

Introductory one-on-one coaching session costs $3,600 for three months of work (12 sessions plus support). Intro couples coaching is $7,200 for six months of work (18 partner sessions plus additional one on one support).  Payment plans are available (monthly payments of $1250).  Most clients reach their goals within this time frame.  Coaching is designed to be finite: deeply impactful within the scope of the coaching package, leaving you with the tools to maintain your improved quality of life independently once your package is complete.  If you desire continued support, I will not cut you off before you feel ready.  Subscriptions are available for 4 meetings a month ($1200/mo) or 2 meetings a month ($600/mo) to meet your needs after completing an intro package.  Occasionally clients ask to build a smaller scope of work together to be able to access these tools on a budget.  Feel free to ask about this in inquiry call.  You can also join the mailing list to be kept up to date as group and course offerings develop. 

Dollar per minute of my time, I probably don’t. However, I do hear you. Participating in coaching IS a significant investment and a big commitment. In coaching, you’re not buying a certain number of sessions; you’re buying transformation.

The first thing we do is get clear on our goals for this work. Maybe you come to coaching because you feel wracked with grief and want to feel peace again. Maybe you come with your partner because it’s been a long since you were intimate, and you’re ready to build a flourishing sex life together from zero but don’t know where to start. Maybe you come because your whole life feels blah, and you want to begin to live your purpose.

What is that peace, that shared pleasure, that purpose worth to you? THESE represent the investment and are why 100% of my clients give the feedback that their coaching work was worth the money.

I customize homework for YOU and your specific situation. I have some clients who are overwhelmed by the thought of homework and others who crave a lot of structure and practice.

Most weeks, you will receive a recording of a meditation or physical practice (stretching, breathwork, or self-massage) to complement our session. Some clients do the exercise every single day to reinforce the work. Others might not do it at all but can file it away for the future when coaching is complete, but they wish to keep using what they learned.

Everyone will get passive homework, such as “Notice when you feel anger this week and track the physical sensations in your body.” You may also get lifestyle homework, like establishing a bedtime routine, or you receive an assignment about something that feels too scary to do without accountability, like having a tough conversation or sending an email you’ve been putting off.

Yes! Your contract grants at least 30 minutes a week of my text-back or email-back time. Do use it!  One of the great things about having a coach is that I am here for you between sessions if you need the extra support or just want to share a celebration. 

The most significant difference is this: therapy focuses on diagnosing and curing mental health problems. So if you need PTSD diagnosis and support, find a psychologist. There are many kinds of therapy, but in general, therapy tends to look back at the past to explain the present situation. Coaching is much more future-oriented. Yes, we sometimes meet your past in coaching, but the driving force is where you want to be three months or a year from now.

I have had several therapists over the years. Most were kind human beings who listened to me talk for 50 minutes a week, week after week, with no end in sight. Sometimes, it felt good to be witnessed, but it didn’t ever feel like I was getting anywhere or changing anything. And I didn’t yet have the skills to express my dissatisfaction with the work. If my therapists ever recognized my fawn response, they never said anything about it.

Things got even worse when grief came onto the scene. My therapist couldn’t even mirror me correctly anymore. I felt misunderstood and dependent. I finally realized that my grief was healthy and evolving, but my trauma was stuck. Continually fixating on it for 50 minutes a week was making it worse. I found a trauma specialist who practices CBT (Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy). There was a lot of structure and an end date from the outset, so it didn’t just continue indefinitely.

CBT uses end dates, goals, and homework like coaching. A lot of coaching is very cognitive-behavioral in its execution, which is one reason it can look like therapy from the outside. What I practice is different again. It is SOMATIC coaching, which is much more body-based. I spend a lot of time helping you feel your feelings in your body and training you to relate to your emotional inner landscape in new and different ways. It is always in service of your goals (which we work out together in early sessions). I’m less of a witness (though I listen deeply and pay close attention to you) and more of a guide from here to where you want to be.

Many of my clients also have therapists who do work I am not qualified to do, like EMDR or neurofeedback. As someone specializing in baby loss, I tend to work with a traumatized population. While I’m trauma-informed, if you’re suffering acutely (like having a lot of flashbacks that pull you out of time and place), you need more than trauma-informed coaching; you need a trauma-specialized psychologist. We will screen for this at intake. I will always be honest about where coaching can help vs. where therapy would be a better fit.

Yes, and yes! Coaching is The Wild West right now. Any old fruitcake can call herself a coach and start coaching – and do they ever! However, I hold myself to a very high standard of integrity, so I did not call myself a coach until after deep study and training as a coach.

I am certified in the VITA method of coaching (Layla Martin’s Vital and Integrated Tantric Approach). It is a rigorous program. Officially a 600-hour qualification, I studied ~20 hours a week for two years to earn a VITA certificate specializing in life transitions and relationship transformation.  Life transitions specializes me in big life changes like menarche, menopause, marriage, divorce, pregnancy, miscarriage, abortion, birth, death, and grief.  Relationship Transformation allows me to use VITA methodology with couples, which is a uniquely supportive of growth together. 

I am passionate about my work and continue to study and deepen my practice. Right now, I am nearing completion of the Flourish Health Coaching certification, which focuses on pelvic health and nicely complements the sexual, somatic, and emotional tools of VITA. This certification helps me to support physical hardships like pain during sex, pelvic prolapse, endometriosis, and the more physical aspects of perimenopause and menopause. 

I perpetually deepen my study in trauma through books and courses to be as up-to-date as possible as a trauma-informed practitioner.

While I certainly have a vast array of tools to enhance your sexuality, not one of my clients has yet come to me with the goal of sexual marathon training. We work toward YOUR goals.

“Tantra” means “method.” It’s a branch of several major world religions shaped by and for homesteaders – people with spouses and children and jobs – instead of those on the monastic path. This work IS tantric in that it teaches methods rather than philosophy; however, it IS NOT tantric in that I am not, myself, a Tantrika. Similar to the way that Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) came out of Zen meditation practice but is not itself Zen Buddhism, my coaching is deeply informed by and inspired by tantric practices of meditation and philosophy but is not itself tantra.

Regarding tantra and sexuality, classical tantra doesn’t say much about sex. Neo tantra has a lot to say about sex. I study the teachers of both.  Many of these meditations and methods I practice are ancient; some are new.  I do not apply value judgments based on age of practice.  I apply what is powerful in my own body and what I observe to be powerful for my clients in their bodies.  Just as I keep up-to-date on trauma, reading and learning all the time, I also keep in integrity with the tantric nature of this work by learning and practicing all the time — however it is important to distinguish that my religion is not Hindu, Buddhist, or Taoist.  Many of my teachers are Tantrikas or Taoist practitioners, but do not name myself that way. 

One part of classical tantra that comes through very strongly in this work is that we don’t make anything wrong or bad. If you are feeling jealousy, that isn’t an enemy feeling; it’s just as worthy a feeling as joy. To keep everything is tantric. I find that part of this work and the tantric path are incredibly beautiful and essential. In MBSR, we’d call that “equanimity,” but in VITA coaching, we lean more toward love and loving all your parts. Tantra works deeply with your parts, and so will we in our coaching.

My undergraduate degrees are in chemistry and physics from Smith College, and my graduate degree is in chemical engineering from Tufts University. I’m a 100% nerd.

Additionally, I am a certified full-spectrum doula, specializing in supporting abortions of all sorts at all stages.

I was ready to become a biochemical engineer, and my baby died. I was almost eight months pregnant on the day of my master’s graduation. I had to leave the ceremony because I got too hot being pregnant in the black robe in the sun.

We discovered my baby’s brain hadn’t developed properly a few days later. The prognosis was brutal. I flew 2000 miles to Colorado to have an abortion and give her the peace she would never have known. It changed everything.

The grief was enormous. I tutored to make ends meet but devoted most of my time to survival. I joined a support group and soon became a leader in it. I’ve been holding that space as a volunteer since 2012. It’s been a decade, and I’ve found the other side. I became an activist.

I went back to work as a teacher, which I love, but my purpose is here, helping women find themselves, their bodies, and their lives after loss. When the pandemic hit and Zoom-schools were the pits, I left my job at the close of the school year to do grief-holding as my full-time work.

The group is Ending a Wanted Pregnancy on Facebook. You apply through the website: endingawantedpregnancy.com. If you had to have an abortion because of a medical crisis, check it out.

I also offer support at the (currently very quiet, but hopefully growing) support space Through The Fire on facebook. If you’re grieving a baby you lost in ANY way (miscarriage, stillbirth, TFMR, neonatal death) or a baby that-never-was for ANY reason (abortion, hysterectomy, unresolved infertility, widowhood, aging-out of motherhood before you got the chance) you’re welcome.  

Absolutely. Different tools are more appropriate for different stages of grief. If you take on this work in very acute early grief, we will do a lot of nervous system triage. Think of physical practices of movement and breathing that drop you out of a fight-or-flight response. There will be stretching, breathwork, and sounding.

When clients practice this, I ask, “How do you feel?” They tend to say things like “HUNGRY!” Because their hunger is blocked by stress until we turn it down, they suddenly notice their body again, and the body is ready to function healthily.

Most people, however, choose to take on this work about 1-3 years after the loss, when many of the most acute days of grief are behind them, yet the status quo still feels quite fraught and intense.

During this stage of grief work, we dive back into the hard feelings on purpose (fear, sadness, anger), sometimes called shadow work, while simultaneously building access to the light feelings of peace, joy, and humor. Cultivating resilience for the shadow and access to light opens up a vast range to live in so that survival becomes rich, whole living again.

For later grief, when the most intense period has been weathered, clients often want to work on goals of purpose and thriving. It can take some time to build purpose from tragedy, but that is how late-stage grief often appears.

My coaching is part of my greater purpose forged in later-stage grief. I will never promise to get rid of your suffering because, in some ways, grief is forever. But it doesn’t FEEL the same forever, and I can help you move from the acute pain of early grief to the peace and purpose of more mature grief.

Please don’t push your partner into coaching if they’re not into it. When one partner grows and changes, the relationship also grows and changes – so you can do relationship work on your side without any buy-in from your partner.

If you want to take on this work for your marriage, but your spouse isn’t on board, take on the individual work. We can set goals for your side of the relationship that respect your spouse’s autonomy.

One of my favorite sources of feedback comes from the spouses of my clients. They are blown away by the changes they see unfold in a marriage. “Did you meet with Kate today? I can always tell when you’ve met with her.”

If you do this work, your partner will notice your growth and may get interested with time. And if not, you will have built the resilience not to feel crushed by your partner’s “no.”

Book an inquiry call. It’s free. You have nothing to lose. We can talk about the scale of your desire, and I will listen to your worries and answer them specifically. I will help you define your goals in the areas where I can support you. If I feel like the wrong fit, I will refer you to someone better suited to your needs.

My clients generally pick 1-3 goals and work toward them throughout our time together. We hone your goals for clarity and specificity so that you will know whether you reach them. This work promises that if you participate fully in our work, you will either achieve your goals or leave armed with the tools to work toward your goals on your own after we are complete. You will know what to do to get there if the time horizon exceeds our three months.

My introductory 1-on-1 clients have achieved at least two goals in our work together. Some have completed all three and made new goals for the rest of our time. I know how profound this work is because when clients come to renew their work with me, it is with much more significant, bolder goals than they had the first time.

Sure! You want to maintain relationships with friends and family who have babies but who currently evoke massive jealousy whenever you think of them. You want to genuinely love your body, not just loathe and punish it for building a broken baby. You want to feel peace in your life, not just anguish all the time.

Perhaps you want to be able to honor your baby with beauty, purpose, or creativity rather than feel her existence as tragic. You feel stuck in a grief fog and ready to live in full spectrum color again. You want to end a several-year sexual dry spell in your marriage with sex that’s more pleasurable and orgasmic than it ever has been before.

Maybe you want to light up when you see your spouse at the end of a long day, not just feel like your marriage is another obligation. You want to trust that your living children will be OK and not just be at the mercy of intrusive thoughts and anxieties all the time. You want to feel empowered at your workplace and not like everybody’s out to get you all the time after you fell apart during the grief years.

Absolutely. That is one of the essential aspects of coaching training. I have done every practice I share with you at least three times, and I still see a coach myself to keep me fresh and growing.

My first goal was to build healthy verbal communication in my marriage. My husband and I had solid nonverbal communication but would fall apart when we tried to discuss hard things. I worked that goal from my side only and had incredible results. We can now talk about anything and feel like we’re on the same team, even in disagreement.

I also worked on a few residual pieces from my loss and grief. Though my grief matured when I met coaching (eight years), there were still pockets of deep suffering to explore. Coaching helped me break out of my state of victimhood, gave me an incredible sense of self-worth, and taught me excellent communication skills, which serve me in all areas of my life and activism. Life feels more fun, rich, powerful, and creative with these tools than before I had them.

Absolutely. Bessel van der Klok’s The Body Keeps The Score for understanding trauma. For empowerment: Kasia Urbaniak A Woman’s Guide to Power Unbound. For grief, Megan Divine’s It’s OK You’re Not OK (One book quoted me!)  For shadow-work, Carolyn Eliot’s Existential Kink (Don’t read this book if you’re fresh in grief. Wait a few years.) For a book about vaginas: Sherri Winston’s Women’s Anatomy of Arousal and Naomi Wolf’s Vagina.

Call (857) 259-4041 or book an inquiry HERE.