Personal Experiences

I’ve been learning and expanding with the aid of Integrated Awareness for fifteen years. As a teenager I talked circles around talk therapists, uninterested in a conventional approach to anything, much less to depression, anxiety, and my myriad strategies of resistance to living.  

My first experience with IA felt insistently true and instantly trustworthy. I don’t remember what I went in to accomplish, and I don’t remember what my teacher looked like, even though I’ve worked with her every year since.  I do remember a new found...

-Max - Brooklyn, NY
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I went to see an IA Teacher, at the suggestion of a counselor - who said, I think now it is time for you to work with your body.  I think you will find the most healing by doing that and that you should try out this work called Integrated Awareness.  That’s about all I remember.  I was searching for answers to some things that I couldn’t quite formulate the questions for.  I had interest in energy work, but needed a sense of tangibility.  I was struggling with life and my place in it, and how to find a sense of balance that I longed for, seemed to know...

-Lesley - New Hampshire
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Integrated Awareness has been for me a very personal journey from chaos to calm, from separation to belonging, a vehicle of self-inquiry and discovery, a touchstone for sanity and safety. Guided through a process of experiential learning, IA works from the inside out. I was asked to show up for the process, state what I wanted and to remain open for what is possible. 

With a professional background in mental health and having spent years studying and exploring many modalities in the healing arts and sciences, IA offers...
-Susan - Alaska
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During a 2-month stay at Esalen in 2010, I had a couple of sessions with a man named Jules, who seemed to know more about my journey than I did.  My curiosity aroused, I asked him about his training: he mentioned a name - Lansing Barrett Gresham - that I googled when I returned home.  

A few months later as I was in my first IA class, Lansing came to me at the break to ask how I was doing.  I replied, “I know all of the words you’re using, but it’s as if you’re speaking a completely foreign language.”  He smiled and said “you’...
-Eric - Alameda, CA
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I was introduced to Integrated Awareness by my mother-in-law, who I was getting to know at the time. I had lost my own mother to sickness, gotten married, and had given birth to my first child within the same year. I had no idea what my experience was going to be other than the hearsay of how wonderful Integrated Awareness is at helping people with all aspects of their life and body.

Before I started IA, I identified myself as lost and alone. I had been very depressed most of my life. After a few sessions, Inoticed that my motorcycle accident injuries...

-Katherine - Oceanside, CA
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Chloe

My experience at Integrated Awareness was absolutely incredible and life changing.  I had a lot of discomfort in my body coming in there, and the work done with Jane and Lansing helped reduce a lot of my physical and emotional discomforts and opened up opportunities to live in a whole new way.  

Now when something in my life happens, I can immediately feel where I hold certain muscle groups and tense up.  This newfound awareness has enabled me to release that tension and come back to who I really am, releasing the anxiety and allowing my body to be at ease.  

I also...

-Chloe - Northern California
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My first introduction to IA was from an article I read in one of the massage magazines back in the early 2000’s. It was written by Dale Alexander. I was intriguingly lead to sign up for one of the public workshops. I bought both of IA’s books and read them. Then took another workshop in 2009. As of 2014, I have engaged in a massage practice for 20 years. For the last few years I have been asking Source, my Higher Self or the Universe for the “next step” to deepen my work....

-Marsha Copeland - Sonoma, CA
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To start with, I do not understand Integrated Awareness.  My daughter has studied it for twenty years.  So after I had suffered distressing breathing problems for a year (beyond my usual COPD) I finally accepted her gentle suggestion that I see Lansing for a session.  My daughter had worked on me various times so I knew it was “hands on” work.

Specialist pulmonary doctors did not know what was causing this strange problem and I had little confidence that hands-on could help damaged lungs. I  believed and understood how perhaps this work might help...

-Olive - Santa Rosa, California
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Rosemary

When I was a young student nurse in 1950 and again when  getting my degree in 1980 I had been educated to know the function  and problems associated with the interior organs of the physical body.  I learned the typical Medical Model for the disease process, trauma repair and the different approaches for healing via surgery and/or medication.

Later I was introduced to Therapeutic Touch for nurses to use in their patient care.  It was an application of one’s energy through the hands to create a soothing, relaxing caring touch to facilitate relaxation and healing.
...
-Rosemary - Brewster, New York
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About 15 years ago, my doctor recommended a wonderfully gifted IA teacher to me. Through a series of table sessions and occasional workshops, my perspective of the world around me and my place in it has changed profoundly. The notion that there is more choice available to me is both thrilling with possibility and daunting with responsibility. I can recall the moment when I finally felt the weight of choosing to view myself as scarred shift toward the possibility that I was quite complete.

I’m attracted by the notion that while I don’t need fixing,...
-Carolyn - South Marin, CA
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