Fibromyalgia Expressive Arts
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all About FEAT

How it Works:

FEAT is an ongoing support group for woman-identifying people living with fibromyalgia. We meet one Saturday per month. A typical meeting includes time for shared experience and wisdom, expressive arts work, guided mindfulness practice, and simple healing movement. We have been meeting since October 2016, and welcome new members at any time. If you would like to attend a meeting, please contact Julie to receive meeting information. During COVID-19, we are meeting via Zoom. Once conditions permit, we will meet in a hybrid Zoom/in-person format, with some participants online and others choosing to gather at the Center for Integrative Health in Hanover, NH.

Facilitator:​

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In 1995, shortly after finishing my undergraduate art degree, I began my studies of Vipassana meditation at Wat Khao Tham, a small nunnery on an island in the south of Thailand. I loved the experience so much that I decided to explore full-time meditation / monastic life for myself, living at Plum Village, Vietnamese Zen Master Thich Nhat Hahn's monastery in the south of France, before joining the Thai-tradition English Forest Sangha from 1996-1999.  Over the past 25 years, my meditation practice has extended into Zen, and most recently, into the embodied Tibetan-tradition practices taught by Lama Willa Miller, Lama John Makransky, Reggie Ray, and others.  I now teach meditation regularly, through my home community of the Old Dragons' Club, for Atlanta's Red Clay Sangha, and in other places.

I wanted to see what it might be like to bring mindfulness into one-on-one encounters in an inpatient health care setting, so in 2012-13, I trained as a chaplain intern at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC) in Lebanon, NH, focusing on Palliative Care and Oncology Chaplaincy.  For many years, I consulted with the Department of Rheumatology at DHMC, facilitating discussion and mindfulness practice at bimonthly Shared Medical Appointments for woman-identifying people people diagnosed with fibromyalgia.  I see individual clients as a psychotherapist drawing on mindfulness-based, Somatic Experiencing trauma resilience, and Expressive Arts modalities at the Center for Integrative Health in Hanover, NH.

You can find out more about my work as a therapist and how to contact me to schedule an appointment, here.
Moving, making art, facilitating embodied healing, writing, telling & witnessing stories, and nurturing creative communities - all of these are at the center of my life, and at the center of FEAT.  I hope you will find respite, inspiration, and real listening here.  
FEAT is dedicated to everyone living with fibromyalgia.  I salute your honesty, courage, and humanity.
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  • Home
  • About
  • Monthly Support Group
  • Resources
  • Meditation/Mindfulness
  • Contact
  • Press