Meet Isabel Umali

We recently connected with Isabel Umali and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Isabel, so excited to have you with us today and we are really interested in hearing your thoughts about how folks can develop their empathy? In our experience, most folks want to be empathic towards others, but in a world where we are often only surrounded by people who are very similar to us, it can sometimes be a challenge to develop empathy for others who might not be as similar to us. Any thoughts or advice?

We are all born as inherently relational beings. We need each other for support, attachment and nourishment. And in relationship, we all come up against friction having to do with expectations or differences. Growing up biracial and in a multi-cultural family system, I inherently understand the empathy that is necessary for people with different cultures, expectations, behaviors, and practices to come together in love. I grew up with several languages being spoken around- and to- me that I did not understand. As a small child, I learned to read bodies, tone, facial expression, and gesture instead of words. We are born embodied, expressive, and emotive, and a career in dance began harnessing these gifts. Being a professional dancer requires mastery of non-verbal communication. Dance companies are groups of wildly different personalities whose bodies have to work together, trust one another (often with your whole physical body- think any lift or trust fall), and sync with one another. There are politics, conflicts, hierarchies, bonding, and sharing. Developing empathy, which at times includes a release of egoic drive, was crucial for my success in the industry.

Even with lived experience as a dancer, becoming an embodied therapist through biodynamic craniosacral therapy (BCST) and massage therapy developed my awareness of my own inner landscape on a sensorial level. Empathy, defined by Cambridge Dictionary as, “the ability to share someone else’s feelings or experiences…” requires that the empathizer has the capacity of feeling, the imagination and the extension of self to be able to sense the other’s experience in their own somatic body. Learning to do so consciously, with more nuance, and the ability to differentiate my experience from another’s while experiencing both simultaneously has given me stronger relationships, greater peace, and is ultimately what I teach clients to do in session.

I believe that, as inherently relational beings, when we engage sensorially with our inner and outer worlds we strengthen empathy, thereby strengthening a sense of non-personal, universal love. This can shape how we treat ourselves, act interpersonally, how we vote, and how we act as a being on this earth. My mission has been to develop embodied empathy in community though dance, embodied therapy, gardening, or dinner parties.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

I am interested in the place where the psyche meets the nervous system. As a lifelong dancer, I have been studying and developing my physical skill, my creativity, and imagination. Along the way I have gotten injuries and noticed the correlation of injury recovery with my emotional and psychological state. When I got a series of concussions, I clearly recognized the connection between my sense of embodied safety and my post-concussion recovery, and I started receiving BCST. Unlike post-concussion physical therapy and neurology (also very important!), BCST addressed my holistic needs and gave my body the space to deeply rest and feel safe. When the nervous system rests in parasympathetic activation (safety, rest/digest), our bodies heal themselves as we have evolved over millions of years to do. A nervous system that is fluid- that can move from rest and recovery to activation and back- is a resilient system.
When a client comes in with chronic pain, illness, anxiety, depression, or any other condition, we actually start with noticing what is working and what lets the client know they are okay. By finding the sensations of ‘okay-ness’ in the body, we send signals to the brain that we don’t need a cascade of stress response chemicals and activations. Already, we are setting in motion the process of nervous-system regulation. From there, we continue to map out our internal landscape; what are the sensations that let us know we are comfortable, stressed, shut down, in pain, happy, etc. How do we move in and out of different states? By understanding sensation, the language of the nervous system, we can demystify our conditions and start to make choices in our lives that support our health and wellness.

I get really excited about this work. Just this week I saw a client who I have been watching make their way through the ups and downs of managing chronic illness, medical trauma, and the milieu of experiences that come along with it. This session, they were ready to meet the original trauma in the body, not just the intellect. We could touch upon the embodied memory of fright, freeze, pain, and isolation without overwhelm. And what the body brought forward was a sense of empowerment. Embodied empowerment clarifies the ping-ponging in the mind; it gives us access to the tools to self-regulate, emotionally process, and the ability to make choices in our lives that support our wellness. We are able to depart from old patterns in the nervous system and forge new ones (i.e. changing the embodied response to a stressful situation), thereby changing our neurophysiology. The goal is for my clients to not need me anymore.

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Working with clients in chronic physical or emotional pain requirers a bio-psycho-social approach, or as I see it, a physical, emotional, spiritual, and energetic inquiry. Education, skill, and curiosity are the most impactful tools that I use every day.

Pain science and theory is a crucial for any therapist to understand, whatever their medium. When we are looking at chronic pain or chronic anxiety, studies indicate that we are no longer looking at an alarm bell signaling that there is potential tissue damage or a lack of safety. We are, instead, looking at how our central and peripheral nervous systems and the correlated areas in our brain are responding to internal and external input. Interestingly, many of the areas of the brain that process physical and emotional pain are the same, suggesting that emotional and physical pain are intricately linked and not differentiated by the brain. We know this experientially: we have “heartache” or we are not able to “stomach” information. When there is physical pain or tension that isn’t structural, it may be emotional. For physiological reasons, the body holds onto distress with muscle tension. Again, by attuning to the sensations in the body and becoming curious about the associated thoughts, memories, emotions, and behaviors, we can start to map out the pain complex in the brain/body and parse apart these aspects for easier metabolization, leading to regulation. Whether we use orthopedic massage techniques, BCST, active imagination or otherwise, we are essentially understanding these somatic, emotional, and psychological patterns and offering another option.

The nervous system can respond well to caring and therapeutic touch, but targeted orthopedic techniques and massage in response to medical diagnosis is often crucial for a client to feel their needs are met. Sensory feedback that the client receives from targeted touch teaches about different types of sensations, clarifies location (i.e. the line of muscle tissue in the thigh that feels related to their knee pain, rather than ambiguous pain in the whole knee), and this education in and of itself is often a tool for healing. Of course, as the therapist it is helpful for me to know the anatomy under my hands, the techniques most effective to to affect sensory change, and physiological stress response patterns. For example, if a client comes to me with post-concussion syndrome and muscle guarding in their neck, releasing neck and shoulder muscles activated by a sympathetic (fight/flight/freeze) response is a useful aspect of a larger BCST session.

Most important to me and my work is curiosity. No one fits inside of a diagnostic box. Each condition, each symptom, presents differently because each human is unique inside of a unique context. When a client tells me they have anxiety, I am curious how anxiety feels to them, how it presents in their body and mind, when it comes up, and what soothes it. Comedian Trevor Noah talked about being curious with his audience. “Do you find this funny? No? Ok how about this? What if I say it this way?” Asking questions helps us learn more, listen better, and connect with more nuance. It also helps the client depersonalize from their in-the-moment experience. When we ask a question about what we are feeling, we engage a dual awareness of the “i am” feeling alongside a broader perspective of the reaction which activates different regions in the brain and lessens the emotional and physiological intensity of the experience. Curiosity allows us to hear the body and what it needs.

Who is your ideal client or what sort of characteristics would make someone an ideal client for you?

At this point in the interview you might gather that I like to get curious about the conditions or symptoms that clients come to me with. Whether it is a musculo-skeletal pain or a larger amorphous quandary, I enjoy the process of discovering the unique roots and complexities of the condition and the tools that help resolve or ease it. I love when people come to me with their own curiosities and a desire to understand their physical bodies in relationship to their minds, emotions, and contexts; a holistic open-mindedness. That said, when I went into BCST school I was coming from a western medical mindset and very skeptical. But I knew something important was happening, and something was helping my symptoms so I kept learning. I work with a wide array of people, but when a client comes in who has tried western medicine or psychotherapy and there is still some ambiguous underlying symptom or discomfort, I feel ignited. This work feels like it’s waiting for the person who is struggling with a mystery or to find therapy that meets their needs. 

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.isabelumali.com/
• Instagram: @isabel.umali; @embodiedtherapy.isabel
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/isabel.umali.7/
• Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/in/isabel-umali-3012a8207

Image Credits

headshot: Natalie Deryn Johnson
all massage photos Natalie Deryn Johnson
stage photo three dancers: Effy Grey
black dress: Elizabeth Romanski