Transforming Trauma: Episode 055

In this episode of Transforming Trauma, Brad Kammer, Senior Faculty and Training Director of the NARM Training Institute, is joined by Lara Eisenberg. Lara is a bilingual licensed professional clinical counselor, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, and women’s spirituality and sexuality therapist. She’s the owner of Body-Mind Wellness, a somatic psychotherapy and coaching practice, specializing in developmental trauma, anxiety, depression, ancestral healing, sexuality, and spirituality. She also incorporates ritual and trauma-informed touch in her work with clients.

Lara shares that her lived experiences informed much of her work including witnessing violence in her community and her home, and also the oppression she has experienced because of her Jewish ethnicity. She shares how the intersection of her ethnicity and gender were both used against her in the form of objectification, and internalized as self-objectification. Lara shares that due to these experiences she began studying psychology.

Lara and Brad explore together their shared view on complex trauma healing which supports individuals to move from experiencing themselves as an object to a subject. Lara explains how objectification of women in American society disconnects a woman from her own pleasure and body. “If the body is seen as an object, then how do you come into the body in times of your menstrual cycle or discomfort or pleasure?” She explains that through somatic work, a woman can be supported to embody and to connect back to herself and her pleasure.

Lara describes the spiritual underpinnings of her work with women which supports them to reclaim their sacredness. Lara shares with Brad that to reclaim the sacredness is to embody, to connect back to their bodies. She explains that with the right support, her clients have been able to reconnect back to stuck energy and start to connect to their needs and desires. Brad states, “It’s so difficult to stay connected to ourselves while in a relationship to others, and the extra challenges for women to stay connected while they are in relationships without having to pull away from their authenticity, boundaries, and needs.”

Lara shared that she is a new mom and has an 18 months-old daughter which also informs much of her work and desire to heal. She shares the lessons around self-esteem she hopes to share with her child, as well as her clients. Recognizing her own intergenerational trauma as a Jewish woman, including current antisemitism she faces, has helped her as a mother, woman and healer. “I am proud to say I am Jewish and there used to be a lot of shame. I think if there’s one part of your identity that you feel ashamed about, or you feel afraid of revealing, then you can’t be a whole fully expressed being.” Lara embodies this natural pride of the sacred feminine and models it for the women she works with in her life.