Sophie Borchers

Sophie Borchers, LMT and Zen Shiatsu Pracitioner

She/her/hers – what are personal pronouns and why do they matter?

Clients I work with: Adults individuals and children ages 8 and up. LGBTQIA-affirming and culturally humble therapist.

Issues I work with: Muscle and joint pain, quality sleep, respiration, energy levels, stress, trauma, digestive disturbances, anxiety, depression, symptoms of PTSD, neuropathy, pregnancy, post-natal wellness, chronic health conditions, mystery pain, autoimmune disorders, sympathetic nervous system resets, and emotionally overwhelming or dysregulated states.

My Approach

Connection is what life is all about. My passion lies in health and wellness and supporting others to connect more deeply to themselves, building awareness of movement, living from an empowered and connected self, and the creation of a more regulated, balanced system.

I fell in love with Chinese Medicine and its view of everything being interconnected – mind, body, spirit, and emotions. As a certified Zen Shiatsu Practitioner and Licensed Massage Therapist, I seek to bridge Western and Eastern medicine and offer a place to understand ourselves without pathologizing. Our bodies are smart and I can serve as a translator for the signals and messages yours offer to you.

I value integrity and collaboration and am endlessly curious about personal development and growth. I believe that health is a complex interconnected web made up of physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual aspects. In a constant state of flux, health is then an ebb and flow of where we are at any given moment. Zen Shiatsu aims to bring them back to a state of relative balance.

Each individual is different and each system has figured out a baseline to live from. As such, the goal is not to bring you “back to normal” but rather to bring you back to what is “normal”, “balanced’, and “reset” for your system. Over time, and with the help of Zen Shiatsu, your baseline may change to offer a greater capacity for safety, calm, and peace.

Grounded in Chinese Medicine, I use a wide lens to view all complaints and find the connections between them. From here, I can develop a treatment strategy tailored specifically to your needs. As we work towards pain relief, increased range of motion, or softer waves of emotional connection we have the opportunity to fine-tune the strategy. My goal is to heal and reconnect what is disconnected so that your body’s innate wisdom can bring about the change it already knows.

Zen Shiatsu

Zen Shiatsu is a Japanese modality that supports the psychological, physical, and emotional aspects of anyone who has experienced pain or disconnection. It is grounded in Chinese Medicine and can be likened to acupuncture without needles. It is performed on a fully clothed receiver and consists of a full-body treatment using fingers, palms, elbows, and knees.

The goal of Zen Shiatsu is to improve circulation, regulate the nervous system, improve musculoskeletal complaints, and range of motion, and provide release. Our body can hold a lot as a means of protection and adaptation but it is not always clear about when it can release these strategies and return to balance, calm, and safety. I frequently support clients by working with their bodies to process and come through the other side of chronic stress, grief, trauma, death, illness, life transitions, pregnancy, depression, and anxiety.

The body has innate wisdom and is wired for resilience. It knows how to heal, adapt, self-correct, and protect, and, sometimes needs support with the ‘how’. The opportunity of this work includes offering the body new and various possibilities in a way that meets the individual where they are at, creating space for release, completion, expansion, or contraction.

With this specialized training, I can help you address both the root cause and symptoms so that you may embody a more supportive, functional, and integrated experience in daily life. This modality is particularly effective when working with chronic conditions such as autoimmune disorders, pain, and emotionally overwhelming states.

While we may not associate our experience with physical symptoms, there is often a physical connection to a traumatic event or prolonged dysregulated state. Any responses in the body are the expression of how it has coped and adapted

Embodied healing modalities such as Zen Shiatsu are helpful in retraining our nervous system to react appropriately to external stimuli. At its core, when there is disconnection, we may find our bodies automatically responding or sending signals that send us into a parasympathetic (fight/flight) or functional freeze states when there is no threat present. These “up” and “down” dysregulated states can feel like a rollercoaster or pendulum wildly swinging from one side to the other. This process can leave us feeling exhausted, defeated, unprepared, vigilant, or worse.

The problem is NOT you and you are not alone. Your system and its symptoms are just an expression, an indication, of how hard your body has worked to protect you based on your lived experiences. It is possible to create change, find more satisfying and calm ways of being, and support a gentler and more secure relationship with the world around you.

I want to acknowledge the strength and courage to turn inward, face yourself, and continue to show up. It can be challenging, confronting, and unfamiliar territory and I want to reassure you that you will come out on the other side.

If you envision yourself as a home, as you raise the ceiling there will come a time where you need to raise the floor as well.  If your growing edges and places where you get stuck are the ‘ceiling’ that you are raising, your standards and baselines are the floor that need to expand in tandem to support the structural integrity of your home. In my experience, both as a receiver and a provider, Zen Shiatsu supports the expansion of the ceiling and the floor, meeting you wherever you are on your healing journey.

In this fast-paced world and culture, many of us have become disconnected not only from ourselves but to nature and others. Bodywork is an invitation to come back into your being and reacquaint yourself with not just your physicality but your essence as well.

To build and establish an unshakeable sense of trust and knowing that your system is always working for you, sending millions of signals every day to support you at your highest and best. You are part of the healing, and this work can become a new way of being. I look forward to being of service to you.

For more information about Zen Shiatsu services, click here

To schedule a Zen Shiatsu appointment with Sophie, click here