What My Body Knew Before I Did

For a long time, I wasn’t connected to my body at all.

In 2012, my grandmother died. It was a really difficult, layered situation—and one that, looking back, left me a bit traumatized. A couple of months later, I was at the beach for Thanksgiving with a group of close friends. I remember feeling good. The weather was perfect, the company was solid, and I was so grateful to be away from everything.

We were sitting around watching a movie, and I was on the floor in front of the couch. One of my friends reached over and started rubbing my shoulders—just a friendly, affectionate kind of thing. She wasn’t a bodyworker; it wasn’t meant to be anything serious. Just that kind of “I love you, we’re here, isn’t this nice?” moment between friends.

And then I burst into tears.

Like, out of nowhere. Not a subtle misty-eyed moment—full-on crying. It came fast, with no warning. I wasn’t thinking about anything sad. I didn’t feel upset. I actually said out loud, “I feel great—I don’t know why I’m crying.” It didn’t make any sense at the time, and it clearly startled everyone, including me.

Of course, she stopped. I stepped outside to get some air, pulled myself together, came back in, and we never talked about it again.

I didn’t understand what happened that day until years later.

In 2016, I started having intense hip pain. It made walking up stairs or hiking pretty miserable, and no one could figure out what was going on. I saw multiple doctors, had scans done—everything came back normal. Nothing was broken, no clear diagnosis.

Eventually, someone suggested I try bodywork. I figured it couldn’t hurt.

That first session changed everything for me.

The practitioner asked about my life—my stress, my relationships—and at one point she asked, “Have you been to therapy?” I thought it was a weird question. I was there for hip pain. But she could clearly see something in my body that I wasn’t seeing yet. Before I left, she recommended a book: The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk.

Reading it was like turning on a light switch.

Everything made sense. The tears at the beach. The pain in my hip. The things I hadn’t processed emotionally were living in my body physically. I had been carrying grief, fear, and probably a lot of old emotional weight I didn’t even realize was still with me. My body had been holding it all—quietly, consistently—until it couldn’t anymore.

That realization was a turning point.

Not long after, I had my first experience with psychedelic medicine. I was working through some deeply personal things and needed support beyond what traditional therapy or self-help could offer. That first journey opened up parts of myself I hadn’t touched in years. I began to feel more like myself—and more aware of where I was out of alignment.

At the same time, I started studying bodywork more seriously. Eventually, I enrolled in school to become a practitioner. But I kept working with plant medicine, because it was clear to me that both were helping me heal in different ways—and sometimes in exactly the same ways, just through different doors.

That’s what fascinated me the most.

I’d go through something big in a medicine session—a memory, an emotion, a pattern—and then later, during bodywork, those same themes would show up in my body. It was undeniable. My physical and emotional experiences were deeply connected. Healing one always affected the other.

I wasn’t forcing anything. These connections were just… there. Natural.

After I graduated, I traveled to the jungle to do two back-to-back ayahuasca dietas. I spent two months working with traditional plants and sitting in silence a lot. That experience shaped me in a major way. I saw firsthand how much trauma and stress are stored in the nervous system, and how that shows up physically—often in ways we don’t realize or understand until much later.

During one of those ceremonies, I felt a clear message:
Move to Los Angeles. Keep going. Bring these pieces together.

So I did. I moved to LA and started assisting in various medicine groups. Everyone knew I was a bodyworker, so I ended up offering a lot of support to participants and facilitators through hands-on somatic techniques. What really struck me was how much more effective the bodywork was when people were in an altered state—compared to when they came in for a full session days later, totally sober.

Then one day, a close friend of mine—someone I trusted deeply—asked if she could take some mushrooms during her bodywork session. I was a fan of the medicine and we already had a strong foundation, so I said yes.

What happened that session surprised both of us.

She connected to a deep understanding of what her body had been holding. I could feel it too, and together we moved through it. It was the first time I had done a full session with someone slightly altered (outside of short, supportive touch during ceremonies), and it changed everything.

That day, Trilome was born.

The more I worked with clients, the more I saw the same patterns I’d experienced in my own healing—people stuck in pain no one could explain, holding emotions they couldn’t name, trying every tool in isolation but never getting to the root.

That’s when I realized: there needed to be a way to bring this all together. A grounded, trauma-informed approach that didn’t separate the body from the heart, or the nervous system from the emotional process. Not theory. Not spiritual bypass. Just real, integrated work.

That’s why I created Trilome.

This blog is where I’ll be sharing that process—how it works, what I’ve learned, and why so many practitioners and clients are finding clarity and relief through this approach. Whether you’re on your own healing journey or holding space for others, I hope you find something here that resonates.