welcome 2026

Happy new year dear clients!

The fervent march of time has been most palpable in the past year. Where did 2025 go? As always I will work toward more spaciousness and slowness in the new year, a years-long practice, which fruits successes and failed attempts.

(L to R: construction Stephanie in the new addition, Florida sunset, Puget Sound sea star, early summer garden and the sauna shed, Tom and I hiking in Bellingham, my parents and I on the Oregon Coast, a performance at Word Virus Books, December sunset over the Willamette on my favorite walk.)

This year I will try to keep a few appointments available every week to get folks in ASAP, when those pesky pains start talking a little more loudly. Likely these appointments won't be visible on my online schedule -though it never hurts to check as there have been some last minute appointments become available- if you reach out I should be able to get you in.

https://deepgroundmassagebodywork.fullslate.com

It is a new year, and I need up-to-date information for my records. If you haven't already, please take a moment to fill out the intake form before your next appointment. I appreciate you taking the time to help with this administrative task.

2026 marks my 16th year in practice as a bodyworker. As an old friend said the other day, your practice can drive! I am grateful for this work, my continued inspiration from my mentors and colleagues, and of course, you!

I also want to mention that my friend, Becky Miller, and I are starting up a monthly endometriosis meet-up for folks experiencing this debilitating pelvic pain. If you are or know someone who might benefit from a hour-and-a-half guided somatic practice and resource sharing session, send them my way! Our first meeting with be Saturday, January 24th at 3pm in SE Portland.

I look forward to seeing you sometime this year!

2024 begins

It is a restorative practice to reflect on the past year, especially at the transition into a new one, as it can feel so futile. 2023 brought so much change: A new tattoo! A new space for my practice in Foster-Powell! A big surgery, and recovery! A haircut; lobbing off 15 years of long hair! Travel around the Salish Sea!

2023 was also a year full of various creative endeavours: performing with Extradition for a festival and our quarterly showings, performing with Linda Austin in 3 miles of possible and improvising with a large-scale installation at Building 5, and designing/building a beautiful tool shed for my backyard.

I imagine 2024 will be more of the same; performing, building, and continuing our work together at my studio. At the end of this month I will begin a new course, Neural Manipulation, with the Barral Institute. I am especially excited for this work, as it integrates the nervous system and how our bodies hold and/or process trauma, with manual therapies to address whiplash injuries and chronic neck and spine discomfort. 

winter greetings

2022 really made me    s  l  o  w     d  o  w  n   and it has been nice to continue with slowness into this new year. Even with my insistence on taking it slowly, last year went in a blur, thankfully with some sweet moments to savor; spending time with dear friends and their new child in Hawai'i; returning to a favorite childhood place (Wallowa Lake); exploring the prairie near Mount Adams; getting to see my brother and sister-in-law again after three years; and miles and miles of walks in Oregon, Hawai'i, Washington, England and Paris!

This year I look forward to a return to performing more -which begins this weekend as I am an ensemble member of Extradition's Corner festival celebrating experimental, new music composer Philip Corner- and continuing my studies in Alexander technique, Gyrotonic and Barral's visceral and neural manipulation.

I have quietly opened my schedule to new clients. For insurance, I am only in-network with Regence BlueCross BlueShield (and all of their subsidiaries) and am not currently accepting any new out-of-network insurance clients.

I'm in the clinic Sundays, Monday afternoons, and Thursday late afternoons. My online schedule is up-to-date and showing openings up to 6 weeks from now: https://deepgroundmassagebodywork.fullslate.com

Welcoming a new year

 Reflecting on a year that seemed to move at superspeed, I recall sweet moments with close friends, a trip to see the Painted Hills, a humid summer week in NYC, an Oregon coast long-weekend, a few house projects, miles and miles of walks, and meeting many delightful new clients. Though the year has been peppered with heartbreak, I am thankful for all of your kindness and encouragement.

It seems challenging to be thinking, again, of a new variant and how much more adaptable we will need to become, but I am hopeful -and grateful for vaccines, boosters, and more accessible testing.

As we look to the coming weeks of this highly transmissible Covid-19 variant (omicron), I would like to remind you to please be discerning and reschedule your appointment if you have any -however mild- of the following concerns (I will be doing the same):

• You or one of your household members have had symptoms of fever, cold or flu in the past 14 days (eg. tiredness, runny nose, congestion, sore throat, cough, high temperature, shortness of breath, aches, pains, vomiting, nausea, diarrhea, or loss of smell or taste.)
  
• You have been near someone who has potentially had, or tested positive for COVID-19 through a family or work contact in the past 14 days. 

new year, new moon, new offerings

It's not hard to come back to work after time away when the rewards of this work are experiencing the progress that it allows for my clients, and me. At the end of a very full week I treated myself to a workshop this past weekend called "Integrated Embodiment". This workshop allowed me to begin to integrate more fully my own somatic work through my Contemporary Alexander practice, and my deep myofascial massage.

I will start to offer one-hour sessions of somatic alignment. This work is done clothed on the table, and includes body awareness, breath and movement cues, repetitive passive range-of-motion and intrinsic muscle engagement (small structural muscles, ligaments and tendons) to help reset joint/bone alignment, proprioception (how we orient ourselves in space) and our nervous systems -which are very busy in our current world. This work is subtle, small, yet profound. It is patient work, requiring a lot of listening to your own body, and may not be for everyone.

One Hour Somatic Alignment with Stephanie Lavon Trotter, LMT $70

I additionally am planning to offer a handful of Structured Rest + Vocal Sound Bath workshops throughout 2020. This so perfectly brings together my two passions and practices:  self-care through deep listening to our bodies, and the voice. These workshops will be 75-minutes, limited to 3-6 people and offered in SE Portland. I will facilitate body awareness through a walking and resting meditation, hands-on work to help support each body to find structured rest (through an abundance of props), and a 20-minutes acoustic vocal sound bath. More details forthcoming.

I am excited to offer more 'integrated embodiment' into my massage work. I believe somatic work helps us to heal our patterns that inhibit us from more fully living in our bodies.