Therapy of Now

01/03/2026

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I think it’s helping

25/02/2026

Authentic Self-care,
Authentic Self-love…

15/02/2026

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09/02/2026

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Regulation, Resistance, and the Body That Knows

A somatic reflection on nervous systems, power, and choice

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As a woman who guides others toward nervous system regulation, and as a somatic practitioner working in the now of lived experience, I want to name something that is often missing from the conversation.

There are real and powerful blockages on the path to regulation that cannot simply be bypassed.

In somatic work, we understand that the nervous system does not respond to ideas it responds to environment, relationship, and safety.

As collective truths surface about abuse of power, exploitation, and long-standing inequities, it becomes clearer that individual dysregulation does not exist in isolation. Long time we know about the family dynamics, Howe I’d like to add societal dynamics as;
Patriarchy, sexism, predatory relational dynamics, and systemic oppression are not abstract theories; they are conditions the body has had to orient to in order to survive.

You cannot breathe your way out of patriarchy.
You cannot cold-plunge your way out of structural inequality.
You cannot meditate, journal, or yoga your way out of systems that were designed to keep certain bodies vigilant, compliant, or unsafe.

This does not mean that nervous system regulation tools are not valuable. They are. I use them. I teach them. I believe deeply in the body’s capacity to settle, to ground, and to return to itself. In Therapy of Now, regulation is not about forcing calm,
it is about restoring choice, agency, and connection in the present moment.

But when regulation tools are offered as the solution to chronic activation, without naming what the body is responding to they can quietly become another form of gaslighting. The focus shifts inward in a way that suggests the problem lives inside the individual nervous system rather than in the relational and social fields it is intertwined in.

The unspoken message becomes:
If you’re still anxious, you’re not trying hard enough.
If you’re still activated, you haven’t found the right technique.
If you’re still struggling, the failure must be yours.

From a somatic perspective, this framing is fundamentally flawed.

What if your nervous system isn’t broken?
What if it’s accurate?

What if chronic activation is a coherent, intelligent response to living in a world where many women’s bodies have never been fully safe, where rights can be negotiated or revoked, where value is tied to appearance, compliance, or usefulness, and where violence, objectification, and emotional extraction are normalized?

The body does not need ideology to learn this. It learns through repetition. Through proximity. Through what is allowed and what is ignored.

From a very young age, girls learn to monitor themselves. To hold their breath. To read the room. To adapt to the gaze before they even understand what it means. Long before adulthood, the nervous system organizes around vigilance as a form of protection.

This reality shows up clearly in the therapy room. We rarely work with abusers. We work with those who were harmed by them. We work with the bodies carrying hypervigilance, collapse, shame, self-doubt, and chronic tension in the micro scale of family dynamics to the makro scale of the entire societal structure!

Somatic therapy is often asked to help people regulate the aftermath of harm, while the behaviors, power structures, and relational dynamics that caused the harm remain largely unexamined.

Without naming this imbalance, therapy risks treating survival responses as symptoms
and placing the responsibility for regulation and repair on those who were already hurt.

In Therapy of Now, regulation is not about overriding sensation or silencing activation. It is about listening to what the body is doing now, understanding why it learned to do so, and restoring the capacity to respond rather than endure. Regulation without context teaches people to tolerate what their bodies are clearly signaling as unsustainable.

This is the limitation of nervous system work that excludes social and relational reality. It can pathologize accurate perception. It can encourage calm where discernment is needed. It can train people to regulate themselves into compliance.

So perhaps regulation is not always the goal.

Sometimes the goal is awareness.
Sometimes it is contact with truth.
Sometimes it is allowing the body to testify.

A racing heart, shaking limbs, or an inability to settle may not be a problem to fix,
it may be a signal asking to be witnessed: This is not safe. This is not right.

In somatic work, we understand that the body holds memory not as story, but as sensation. A body that refuses to fully calm is not necessarily dysregulated it may be maintaining integrity. It may be refusing to collapse into denial.

I am not saying don’t regulate.
I am saying regulate with presence and discernment.

Notice what your regulation practices are supporting. Are they helping you reclaim choice, boundaries, and aliveness in the present moment? Or are they helping you remain in relationships, roles, or systems that continue to extract from you?

There is a difference between settling the nervous system to become more available to life and settling it to remain tolerable to conditions that are harmful.

One is healing.
The other is a sophisticated form of dissociation.

Your body knows things. It knows what feels safe and what doesn’t. It knows what is sustainable and what is slowly eroding you. In the present moment the only moment the nervous system actually lives in - it often knows when you are in the wrong relationship, the wrong job, the wrong room.

So the question is not: How do I make my body stop reacting?
The question is: What is my body communicating right now that I haven’t yet allowed myself to hear?

Sometimes the most radical act is not calming down. Sometimes it is staying present with what is arising, letting the body speak without rushing to fix it.

And while you cannot breathe your way out of patriarchy, toxic relational patterns, or systemic oppression, you can listen to the body that has been registering their impact all along and allow that information to guide change.

These days, many women no longer have to enter romantic relationships for social, economic, or political survival. Increasing independence has created more choice. And more and more women are choosing single life
not necessarily because they desire it, but because they are tired of compensating for missing basics: accountability, boundaries, consistency, emotional availability, and maturity.

That, too, is somatic information.
And the body has been telling this story for a long time.

Therapy of Now (TON) is an invitation to meet the body where it actually lives: in the present moment, in relationship, and in reality. It is not about calming the nervous system at all costs, but about listening to it with honesty, respect, and context - the body is not something to be corrected,
it is a source of intelligence, truth, and direction. Regulation here serves clarity, choice, and integrity, not compliance. We do not ask the body to adapt endlessly to what harms it. We ask what it knows and what it needs now.

09/02/2026

This performance is one of the clearest visual metaphors for how women are taught to endure, not express.

She stands still, notation because she's weak, but because she's been conditioned to believe stillness keeps her safe.

Notice how the men move her,
reposition her, touch her, direct
her... while she remains silent.

Thats not submission, that's survival. Because for so many women, being 'easy, quiet, agreeable' wasn't a choice, it was a nervous system strategy.

A way to avoid conflict, a way to avoid
abandonment, a way to stay
connected, even at the cost of Self.

This is what happens when the world teaches girls to be grateful,
polite, and pleasant, instead of powerful.

When you're raised to fawn,
freeze, and self-sacrifice, silence becomes a habit. Stillness becomes a shield. And slowly... you lose your voice trying to preserve the peace.

But the real tragedy is that
this performance mirrors real relationships... partners who stop listening, woman who stop speaking, dynamics where control
disguises itself as care, until you can't tell the difference.

And here's the unsexy truth...
When you're taught to endure, you start believing discomfort is
normal. You start believing minimising yourself is love. You start believing your emotions are too much, instead of messages asking you to move.

Healing is the moment you realise endurance is not intimacy.
Compliance is not connection.
And silence is not safety, it's self-abandonment dressed up as peace.

Girls... this is the work...
Finding the places where you've been standing still Finding the parts of you that disappeared to keep others comfortable. And remembering that your voice, your edges, and your boundaries are not 'too much, they are the beginning of real love.

Something beautiful is coming
so soon, a space where we unlearn endurance, reclaim expression, and step back into relationships where you donn’t have to disappear to be loved.

I cannot wait to share it with you.


https://www.instagram.com/reel/DRVc0xPCPLf/?igsh=MW45YjJmZnd5dTRmbA==

23/07/2025

Words are powerful- there’s a reason why we refer to the process of constructing a word as “spelling”. When we speak we are literally casting spells. We move thought forms from the quantum field of unlimited potential (the un-manifest), into the material world (the manifest) with our voices- with vibration. This piece isn’t really about the words themselves- it’s more about our relationship to 3 words - “I don’t know” and the way how to eradicate anxiety.
Healing does not demand that we know everything. Rather, it requires that we don’t. Healing invites us to weave agency and intentional, informed by what we know, with surrender to the mysterious current of life that we can’t fully control or understand. The former looks up to science while the latter bows down to faith- and it’s the merging of the two that make healing such an empowering, beautiful and transformational process for so many.
While it may seem counterintuitive, a practitioner that claims not to know may be the only one you can really trust. And that trust is the doorway to the most transformational healing of your life. “I don’t know what’s going on but we’re going to figure it out together” This is how you build therapeutic relationship - you commit to navigate unknown together.

05/11/2024

How to Heal the Third Eye Chakra and tend to third eye trauma, Iterating the Separate Self.

If you read The Healing Path of the Third Eye, Integrating the Separate Self, you already know that the chakra that heals the separation wound, never works alone, so while I will offer plenty of guidance on the healing path of the third eye chakra below, it is a bit more nuanced than the previous ones.

In order to heal a wound, we must first become aware of it.

The truth is that we all have this wound of separation. It accompanies the cutting of the umbilical cord, weaning and the process of individualization, and it’s not necessarily bad. In fact, for many of us, it fuels our devotion to the spiritual path.

From the wound of the third eye, the seeker is born- as is, the journey to becoming whole.

Because the third eye chakra is overseeing the entirety of our subtle anatomy, third eye wounding and healing can play a role in the healing paths of all the other chakras. I don’t say this to confuse you but to empower you, because if you’re working on the healing path of the root, sacral, solar plexus, heart or throat chakras and you feel stuck or plateaued, engaging with the third eye may be the very thing restore your momentum. When I say “engaging the third eye” I mean giving it some attention by practicing the tools I shared in The Healing Path of the Third Eye or the ones at the end of this article.

But remember that I’m a clinician so I use the same skillset to identify the primary wound at the wheel, as I do to diagnose medical conditions.

With that said, when the third eye wound is present, my clients don’t complain of feeling separate. They complain of fertility challenges and hormone imbalances that often result in diagnoses like PCOS, PMDD, perimenopause & more. They come into my office with the results of genetic testing and family histories they’re desperate to escape from. They suffer from headaches, debilitating indecision and their histories are layered with stories of dissociation and third eye trauma. Often these clients are on the autism spectrum, and/or their parents or partners have accompanied them to the visit and they are the ones doing all the talking because the client doesn’t think anything is wrong.
In my experience, the third eye wound has a unique polarity to it. Either it results in extreme sensitivity (especially following third eye trauma), or those inflicted are too numb to perceive the existence of a problem.

In the years that I’ve been in practice, what I call third eye trauma has definitely become more prevalent. This is what happens when we enter the third eye prematurely. It can feel like a panic attack, extreme sensitivity, anxiety, dissociation or psychosis. It’s a separation from the body. Given the popularity of Kundalini activations, psychedelics, breath work and other consciousness altering experiences in recent years, I’m not surprised that third eye trauma is on the rise. Below I will offer some tips for tending to this.
Keep in mind that the third eye matures in the 6th cycle of life. Chronologically that means that we are not ready to access this perspective until we are 35-42 year old. These days 35-42 doesn’t sound very old, but the third eye represents the wisdom of the elder- the maturity that comes with having lived a lot of life.

The reason the third eye is associated with clairvoyance is because it can see patterns in everything- and when you know the patterns you can predict what’s coming next. But it takes time to be able to recognize and identify all the patterns. This is why the perspective of the third eye requires experience, maturity and preparation.

How to Do the Work
When it comes to healing the third eye chakra, you always have to think bigger and look beyond the obvious. Just as the anatomical organ of the heart reminds us of the importance of circulation and exchange in the dealings of the heart chakra, the pituitary gland reminds us how the third eye acts as a puppeteer for much of the endocrine system. This has great relevance when we’re seeking the root cause of dis-ease because our experience of dis-ease is usually limited to the our symptoms. The third eye encourages us to see the unseen forces driving those symptoms. It demands that we look beyond hormone levels and functional test results and excavate the cause.
Here is some practical advice for those of you interested in working on the third eye.
Third eye trauma
If you have experienced third eye trauma, the goal is really to get back into the lower chakras and I always recommend starting with the root. When we enter the third eye prematurely, too much information floods in too fast and we can’t contain it. It’s like screwing an industrial strength light bulb into an overhead fixture in your home. If you don’t get that analogy, I’ll tell you what happens …the lightbulb bursts and your kitchen floor is covered in glass.
I’m not a fan of talk therapy to manage third eye trauma because the talking keeps us out of body. I recommend engaging with the 5 senses, mindfully with intention. Fins something you can smell, taste, touch, hear and see. Choose things that are pleasurable and soothe you so you’re intrinsically motivated to come back into your body. It’s common to loose your appetite after experiencing third eye trauma, but it’s really helpful to eat nourishing, tasty foods. Remember the great privilege it is to be in a body and return to the present. Eventually all that information will integrate. You don’t have to know what ii is or what it means. Just trust the the unseen forces have planted seeds and your job now is to simply tend to the soil. You will know what to do when the timing is right.
Intention and visualization
Intention and visualization are the name of the game when working with the third eye so I recommend infusing any and every healing effort with both of these. Remember that the third eye impacts the quantum field through intention so regardless of what you’re dealing with, it’s important to define the direction of healing. For example, if you’re struggling with fertility issues, there will be quite a bit of physical, mental, emotional and spiritual work do do in the sacral chakra (and maybe others too) but the role of the third eye is to remember the big picture and hold the intention of a successful pregnancy or parenthood to make that outcome more likely than the rest. Holding this intention will also prevent you from getting lost and overwhelmed in medical interventions. Once the intention is clear, use visualization to see the intended outcome. The third eye doesn’t need to know all the details to create- nor does it need to know how you’re going to get there. So when you’re visualizing, start by focusing on what you can imagine about the result you want and leave the rest blank. In the example of fertility this could mean closing your eyes and visualizing yourself holding your newborn child. Hold the imagine for long enough that you start to feel an emotional and physical shift. This is when you know that the third eye is starting to have some downstream effects.

Bypass the over-active mind
This may be the most important use of the third eye these days- because we live in a culture that is so stuck in our heads and we’re highly conditioned to believe that we are less capable than we really are. The best and worst thing about the third eye is that nothing has to make sense. This can drive our minds crazy but it can really help us bypass the limitations of the mind. This is why intention and visualization is so powerful at the third eye- because you don’t need to know how you are going to get to the outcome. You don’t even have to believe that the outcome you want is possible. You just have to exercise your imagination. For many of us, the solar plexus is what holds us back because it insists that have to know how we’re going to get from point A to point B. This is really problematic if you have a mystery illness or an incurable disease (according to conventional medicine). You are conditioned by the medical team to believe the outcome you want is impossible. This usually requires some solar plexus work, but the third eye provides a strong tailwind because it can create independently at the quantum level and the results will impact your belief system. In other words, it expedites the solar plexus work and makes it so much easier to do!
Dreamwork
The third eye speaks in symbol. It’s beyond the duality of language and we don’t need to do psychedelics or breath work to speak this language. It’s happening every night in our dreams. The dream state is the optimal training ground for the third eye. The trick is to remember your dreams and start noticing the symbols. If you have trouble remembering your dreams, a dream journal is a really good practice. However, if you can remember your dreams without having to write and you can avoid the use of language to describe your dreams, pick up some colored pencils or markers and just draw, color and create freely. Once you have at least 10 journal entries or drawings you can start looking for symbols and patterns.
The Pituitary Gland Series
This kundalini kriya is a great practice to try. You may never understand the why behind every part of the instructions, but you can practice it and notice how it impacts you physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. I have used this kriya for a wide range of hormonal imbalances and seen great results, especially when you we’re able to commit to doing it 40 consecutive days.
Add a Metaphysical Dimension to Everything
I’m really speaking about the spiritual quadrant of health but this can be applied universally. Seek the metaphysical why! Don’t settle for symptom resolution. Keep excavating the roots. Particularly when you’re struggling, get in the inquiry of what is happening on a deeper level. What does it all mean? After decades of clinical practice I don’t think I’ve ever worked with someone who wasn’t eventually able to turn their biggest health challenges into a vehicle for deep meaning and purpose. When we seek to discover the metaphysical backdrop, it becomes easier to impact our physical reality. If this feels impractical you may experiment with medical divination. This is something I use often in my private practice. We ask a question and consult the Iching. This could be done with tarot an a medical astrology reading that uses the date of onset or diagnosis as the birthdate.
Dr. Erica Matluck

26/10/2024

The Healing Path of the Throat Chakra: Integrating the Censored Self

How your words can heal all of us

The throat chakra is the first of the upper three chakras. Remember that in the upper chakras the separate self is dissolving and we are becoming one with the creator. Because there are 3 steps on this part of the ladder this dissolution of self is a process. At the throat chakra we are closer to a unified experience of self than and individualized one, but the separate self does not completely dissolve until we reach the crown. This is why the throat chakra is such an enjoyable place to work- because we can access ourselves as the creator, but we’re still pretty connected to the material world- so we see tangible results quickly.
Not only does this help us believe in magic and miracles but turns life and health into the best playground!

Discovering ourselves as the creator is one of the most empowering and life altering realizations we can have. It’s a tremendous privilege to have that much impact on others and the world around us. It’s also a heavy responsibility. With that said, becoming aware that we are all, G.O.D (the one that Generates, Organizes, and Destroys) is not always easy to hold. Even those of us who have confidently crossed the bridge of the heart chakra are not necessarily ready for the responsibility that accompanies that much power.

At the level of the throat chakra, we cannot create for individual gains because we are one intimately connected whole.

The teachers out there selling manifestation programs on instagram to seekers of wealth, status and material gains may not like hearing this, but while the throat chakra is the most effective instrument for manifestation, it cannot be powered by the wounds of the lower chakras. It will not create from fear, denial, vanity, perfectionism or insecurity.
The throat chakra is a magic wand that translates thought forms into the material world but it shuts down in the presence of greed.

The throat chakra transforms intention into impact through sound and vibration. Abracadabra! With my word I create. This is the motto of the throat chakra.

And just as the field of the heart extends far beyond the body, the boundaries of self at the level of the throat include anywhere your vibration can be heard or felt.

Understanding this is critical to holistic health because how we speak about our health, not only affects our health directly, but it impacts the practitioners we work with and the environments in which care is provided.

Through the lens of the throat chakra our vibrational impact is real, but it goes both ways- so as your vibration imprints other, they are also imprinting you. We are actually co-creating a shared reality together, so while we the throat chakra invites us to be very intentional about the words we speak, it also requires that we be very intentional about when we speak. Listening is as important to the throat chakra as speaking.

*This is where you turn the volume on your phone off, and protect yourself from the many vibratory imprints coming through that tiny device.

While most conventional healthcare providers may argue that the exam room is no place to discuss the throat chakra, Edgar Cayce said “The medicine of the future will be music and sound” and Albert Einstein stated “future medicine will be the medicine of frequencies”.
If you hear these statements and your imagination immediately goes to futuristic technology, vibrating sound beds and crystal sound bowls, I want to tell you what the future looks like in my exam room- because it’s actually much simpler than that.

I want to remind you that YOU are the greatest and most advanced medical technology on the planet and if the medicine of the future is sound, you do not need to look any farther than your throat chakra. Everything you need is already within you.

At the level of the threat chakra, even the creator can be wounded and the wound pattern associated with the throat is guilt. A wounded throat chakra feels guilty for having a voice with so much impact. It feels guilty for creating a beautiful life, a successful career, fulfilling relationships and vital health. A wounded throat chakra is burdened by the privilege and responsibility of the creator. If you’ve ever been in a situation where you’ve worked hard to create something really wonderful for yourself and you chose not to tell a friend or family member about your success because they’re not thriving and you don’t want to make them feel bad about themself, you know this wound. The guilt of the throat is heavy. It weighs us down so we can’t create with freedom and ease.

The wound of guilt either prevents us from creating the lives of our dreams or it holds us back from sharing it with others. But your guilt doesn’t just hold you back- it’s holds all of us back, because it’s when we share our successes, our triumphs, our magical experiences and positive manifestation results that we inspire all those around us to believe in magic and do the same. The throat chakra wants to create impact with integrity with ease, and to do that, we need to talk about it. We need to use our voices to demystify magic, expect miracles, and turn extraordinary phenomena into ordinary experiences. Through our voices, our vibrational imprint on others can become a viral form of inspiration. We all rise up.

But when guilt is at the the wheel, our creative potential is limited.

People have never come into my exam room saying they feel guilty for their creative gifts. They complain of thyroid issues because they’re using the thyroid gland to slow them down, to hold themselves back from living vital, creative lives. They’re using the thyroid gland to express guilt physiologically.
They complain of neck pain, acid reflux, feeling silenced or unseen. This is the guilt of the creator- we can’t hold our heads up high and allow the divine instructions to move through the upper chakras into our voice. It gets stuck in the esophagus or the larynx. We can’t sing our part of the beautiful chorus.

My clients complain of feeling resentful, overwhelmed, and exhausted from trying so hard but not getting anywhere.
They complain of feeling misunderstood.

The results don’t match their intention in health and in life. They want one thing and seem to be doing all the right things to get it but they’re getting something else. This is the archetypal pattern of a wounded throat chakra- and it has a profound impact on our physical vitality, our thoughts and beliefs about ourselves and our healing, our emotional wellbeing and our spiritual orientation to reality.

When we heal the throat chakra, rather than feeling guilty for our creative potential, we use our privilege to create for the betterment of all. We stop depriving ourselves of our dreams and living under the illusion that our successes are the direct cause of others' failure. We become aware that the mega-verse contains enough resources for all of us to thrive (maybe not all at the same time, but at the level of the throat chakra our orientation to time must expand).

When we heal the throat chakra our heart’s intention is translated into impact with the greatest precision.

Healing the throat chakra should not make you the loudest person in the room- nor should it make you into someone that everyone listens to all the time. Healing the throat chakra should refine your ability to discern when to speak, when to sing and when to listen, which words to use and which words to eliminate from your vocabulary, when to shout, when to whisper and when to be silent.

A healed throat chakra is the most potent musical instrument and when enough of us have healed the throat, we create a therapeutic symphony that can heal the world.

In the meantime, you can start exploring the creative potential of your throat chakra with your language. To experience the gifts of the throat chakra, we must be very intentional with our language. This is not always as easy as it sounds- especially when it comes to health- because our entire healthcare system is based on problems, diagnoses and treatments.

In other words, from the perspective of the throat chakra, the language with which we talk about our health is actually contributing to illness and disease.

If you want the throat chakra to support your health goals, your language must bring the future you want into the present. Present tense, declarative statements are very effective but sometimes we need a bit more nuance.
For example, If your intention is to feel vital and energized, it’s ideal to make statements like:
I am vital, I am healthy, I feel well, I have unlimited energy, etc.
But if you’re feeling fatigued and you go into a doctor’s appointment and make these statements, they won’t know how to help you. The trick is to workshop your language so that you can communicate truthfully while also using words that create the thing you want. So if you walk into the doctor’s office and declare “I am exhausted and I don’t think I’ll ever feel normal again” your language becomes an obstacle to your goals and the throat chakra uses those words to create a future state in which your are exhausted and don’t think you’ll ever feel normal again. But if you walk into the appointment and say, “I thrive when I feel vital and energetic so I am here today to get your help with that.”
This statement doesn’t get you there as quickly as “I am vital and energized” but it moves you in the direction you want to go while also communicating truthfully, that you need some help.
I recommend workshopping your language and creating a list of statements like this before any healthcare encounter so your words can support the therapeutic outcomes you want.
And at home, remember that every time you speak you are creating something so use your words thoughtfully. The throat chakra works best with language that is declarative, free of doubt, consistent and in the present moment, so practice that!
One of the reasons why mantra is such an important part of so many spiritual traditions is because the sounds we make have a direct impact on our wellbeing. When we chant mantra, the sound waves we create stimulate the sella tursica of the sphenoid bone- the seat of the pituitary gland. The vibration stimulates the pituitary to release stimulating hormones that trigger other endocrine glands of the body to release hormones that impact our physical, mental and emotional state. This is the therapeutic power of your voice! It’s real.
Dr. Erica Matluck