Beyond Massage: Amy Hatlan on Reiki, Crystals and Clearings

Provider Spotlight: Amy Hatlan (she/her), Energy Worker

By Iví English (they/them)

 

Amy Hatlan is the newest provider to join Sol Solace Studio, and has studied and practiced Reiki, Emotion, and Body Code for about 13 years. She has facilitated therapeutic techniques for her clients since 2016 as an independent business owner based out of Arizona and Hawai’i. Read on to learn more about Amy and her intuitive skill set.

 

As a child, Amy’s father worked as a mining engineer and her mother was a researching micropaleontologist composing her master’s publication; along for the ride, Amy was thus afforded the opportunity of global travel to explore terrestrial treasures both hidden and seen. Her footprint has marked the sands of Australian Opal mines and has treaded the beaches of Baja California Sur. Crystals remain an important element in her work as supportive spirits for her clients — whether it be a piece of Rose Quartz or Obsidian Apache Tears placed over your heart (as they did mine), or lying above a crystal mat composed of various quartz crystals and other gems. 

 

Identifying and choosing to address trauma is often the turning point that leads one to seek solace, as it was for Amy. Upon the birth of her second child, Amy was caught in the whirlwind of her child’s congenital disability. The next two years were then spent taking her child in and out of the white walls and sterile air of hospitals. Suddenly, things took a sharp turn to the unexpected. A medical injury caused a dramatic developmental shift for her child — loss of speech and behavioral changes — that deeply concerned Amy and created a rift in the belief that Western medicine would be her only option to support her child. Then, coupled with a particularly harrowing (and inaccurate) prediction by a neurologist that her child would lead a life without being married, attending college, or having an independent life triggered the shift to seek a new kind of support for her child. 


With determination, Amy and her secondborn underwent an exploration of various traditional therapeutic modalities. Finally, her child showed receptiveness to Reiki. As luck would have it, Amy had completed her Reiki Attunement prior to the birth of her second child. With the guidance of her mentor, she was taught how to personalize care to her young child. She also approached her child’s rehabilitation combined with her training in Emotion and Body Code with much success, and was able to bring comfort and stability to her child’s wellbeing. From Amy, I learned that Emotion and Body Code are a method of clearing out stuck emotions and identifying where they are in the body, as was developed by Dr. Bradley Nelson.


Because of her child’s dramatic shift in behavior and cognition, Amy’s ability to do powerful work was noticed by family and friends alike, who began requesting her work and word quickly spread. Many folks attest that Amy has a great intuitive skill of making them feel exceptionally safe, and from my experience, Amy is readily adaptable to your unique needs, comforts, and preferences. Amy combines her intuitive gifts with her ancestral connection and teachings from her Celtic lineage to adapt her sessions accordingly. As part of the tradition she follows, she was recently initiated with St. Brigid — a deity who assumes her position as both a Goddess and Saint and is venerated with fire — Amy represents her connection well as she also takes on various shapes and intensities so that all of her clients may feel her warmth and comfort.


 When I asked Amy how she connects with her clients, she responded, “Connection is knowing a person.” To get to know you, she may ask questions to help bring forth your full self, welcome you into a space that she imbues with an air of home, and help ground the two of you in your session by touching or hovering over areas of your body to ask permission to work on you. In our session, she placed her hands on my feet, which were tucked into a blanket, and asked, “Did you have a headache this morning?”. In fact, I’d had one and had almost forgotten about it, too. “I bet it was a gnarly one,” she said fittingly.


For those of you wondering, “Okay, Amy doesn’t do massage, so what does she do?, I’ll share some more about my session with her. When Amy taps into someone’s energy, she can typically sense their present guides and depending on the session, where their pain points might be, and a sense of their trauma history. Often, this happens prior to the session itself, and helps Amy to prepare herself and bring the tools necessary for that person. For my session, I was feeling the need to release and process emotions out of my body and Amy facilitated a phenomenal clearing to do just that. A clearing, as Amy defines it, is a removal of energy that doesn’t serve that individual’s highest good and brings them closer to the vibration of their soul purpose. Our daily experiences can tip our emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual scales to extremes gradually — or drastically — depending on the situation. A clearing, however, can aid us to bring our whole system back into a balanced state and opens us up to receive new experiences, perspectives, and opportunities to react differently to new and recurring issues. During a clearing, you have the opportunity to meet yourself from a different perspective by revisiting yourself and others in moments of your life experiences in order to release wounds and have conversations that perhaps weren’t resolved or didn't happen. Amy facilitates you to help fill these moments with soothing techniques in an effort to create a new outcome. This therapeutic modality helps to promote settling in the body by relieving stress and promoting emotional release.


Doing healing work can sometimes get heavy and some can be put off by its messiness or discomfort. With Amy, you can go as deep into your wounds as you desire and move into it as you are comfortable. Amy’s priority is the comfort of her clients and bringing relief to the areas of the body that manifest as pain, discomfort, or heaviness. If you are open to it in your session, Amy has mediumship training and you can express your desire for her to intuitively read your energy. She is also versed in Spiritual DNA Activation and she can incorporate either of these additional modalities into your session upon request. If you find yourself hovering over the “Book Now” button, your guides have already pushed you this far – just do it!


If you have any additional questions or want assistance with scheduling a session with Amy, please reach out via text and telephone at (512) 289 - 6113 or email us at info@solsolace studio. 


Limpias: This Is Our Sacred Medicine

Do you remember your first limpia?

Most Latinx/e people on either side of the Río Grande River will remember the feeling of being a young, ill child perhaps weakened from a fever, and the caretaking matriarch in your family running a fridge-chilled egg over your body, slathering your chest and feet with vaporub and covering them with socks while reciting the spell, “Sana, sana, colita de rana, si no sana hoy, sanará mañana.” After lots of water, electrolytes, cartoons and rest, by the next day, it was all just a dream, but the magic you felt was palpable, and your sleep was never deeper. Looking back, they were tending to our bodies, minds, and souls with tender love and care—a matriarch’s very own version of a limpia, or cleanse.

In our sacred medicine, we are taught that traditional medicine practitioners, and those with the titular veneration of Curandera/o/x, are people who are deeply connected to the Spirits of the land and thus are able to connect with those who seek them out for healing facilitation. One of the many skills these practitioners possess include being able to perform a limpia, a ceremony that involves a variety of Spirits and tools that aid in the shedding and resetting of a person’s metaphysical well-being. Limpias can aid in ending streaks of bad luck, changing perceptions of depressive episodes, and other challenging periods and situations. While not an exhaustive list, this can be caused by mal de ojo, or the evil eye, traumatic events, and by dark crafts such as curses. The act of removal via a limpia is often one of the first steps toward recovery and the effects may alter the course of your life. However, practitioners of this work will recommend coupling this work with the advice of medical and therapeutic health professionals.

Limpias aid in the removal and rearrangement of relationships with yourself and those around you in order to serve your highest self, and they first begin with a conversation with your practitioner for more insight. Limpias can vary in their intensity—the most gentle ones will usually come from your own matriarch—but regardless, they can also produce strong emotional and physical reactions as the practitioner sweeps herbs across your body, or as the sweet copal incense wraps around your being. As you are wrapped in herbs, smoke prayers, eggs, and obsidian, you should also be in your own prayers or intentions for wellness and removal. As the ceremony is completed, your body and soul may experience a resettling within, and could cause lightheadedness or a drop in blood pressure/sugar and rest and hydration are encouraged. Your practitioner will likely offer messages or advice for caring for yourself in order to keep facilitating your journey to your desired physical, spiritual and mental well-being.

Reflecting on this sacred tradition, I would be incredibly remiss to not mention that practices such as these were illegal and cause for criminal punishment in the US for 148 years, and practicing this tradition has only been made legal to perform since 1978—9 years after the first people landed on the moon. I am infinitely grateful to those who came before me, who braved unbelievable harshness and trauma, to those who protected the tradition and passed it down, despite concerted efforts to erase it. Because of them, I am here. I am proud to be part of a legacy that seeks to protect, advocate, and care for their community, and with the vibrance of my well-ancestors, Tonantzin, and my guides, I will to continue to grow and move through this world as a traditional medicine practitioner to provide ceremony for my communities as my ancestors once did. Ōmeteōtl.

~ Iví

5 Research-backed Benefits of Massage on Mental Health

While we often think of massage as a way to ease sore muscles or promote relaxation (which it absolutely does), research suggests that it can also have significant mental health benefits. In this article, we delve into five research-backed mental health benefits of massage, including how it can alleviate symptoms of anxiety and depression, PTSD, burnout, and more..

  1. Stress Reduction: Research has shown that even just a few minutes of massage can lead to increased relaxation both mentally and physically. Psychologists at the University of Konstanz discovered that individuals who indulged in a mere 10-minute massage experienced heightened levels of psychological and physiological relaxation, compared to those who simply took a rest. The massage also boosted the body's principal engine for relaxation, the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), which plays a key role in protecting our health and restoring balance in our body. If that’s what 10 minutes of massage can do, just imagine the impact of longer sessions! https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-71173-w 

  2. Depression and Anxiety Relief: Massage therapy has been proven to effectively combat depression and anxiety. A literature review of 15 articles published between 2000 and 2020 found that massage therapy significantly decreased depression scores and anxiety symptoms while altering key neurotransmitter levels involved in depression.These findings suggest that massage therapy may be a promising treatment for those struggling with depression and anxiety, supplementing other approaches such as talk therapy and psychiatry.. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1292&context=nursing_dnp_capstone 

  3. Trauma and PTSD Management: Individuals with PTSD often experience disruptive symptoms such as hyperarousal, hypervigilance, guilt, and shame, which can hinder daily life. Scientific research suggests that massage therapy can help reduce these symptoms. A 2012 study reported significant reductions in physical pain, tension, irritability, anxiety, and depression among veterans who underwent massage therapy. Just note that it is recommended to also supplement this with talk therapy if you are struggling with PTSD. https://www.amtamassage.org/publications/massage-therapy-journal/massage-and-ptsd/ 

  4. Insomnia Improvement: Research shows that massage therapy can improve both the quantity and quality of sleep for individuals with insomnia. Massage helps to reduce stress and promote relaxation, making it easier to fall and stay asleep. In one study, regular massage therapy resulted in significant improvements in sleep quality, anxiety, and depression. Another study found that massage therapy stimulates delta waves in the brain, which are associated with deep sleep. These findings imply that massage therapy can be a valuable tool for individuals with insomnia, addressing sleep disturbances' underlying causes and promoting overall health and well-being. https://www.amtamassage.org/about/position-statements/massage-therapy-can-help-improve-sleep/ 

  5. Burnout Prevention: A recent clinical trial involving nurses demonstrated that regular massage therapy significantly reduced stress levels and burnout. After just four weeks of massage therapy, nurses reported a notable decrease in overall occupational stress scores compared to the control group. The study concludes that massage is a vital tool for individuals in high-stress professions to improve work life quality and prevent burnout. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4525352/ 

So now that the link is clear, where do we go next?

If you're looking for a safe and supportive environment to experience the healing effects of massage, consider booking a session with us at Sol Solace Studio. Our trauma-informed therapists are trained to create a calming and nurturing space where you can process and heal through the power of bodywork. Book a session today.

If you found this helpful, here is a full infographic summarizing these benefits in a shareable format.

Not Just a Massage Studio

Sol Solace Studio started as a massage studio, but quickly became much more than this.

Just who are we now, and how did we get here?

Monica Castillo trained as a massage therapist at Lauterstein Conway and eventually became lead therapist at one of Austin’s top massage studios before transitioning into her own practice that would become Sol Solace Studio. 

Throughout her sessions with clients, something started to happen. As she worked on some bodies, intense imagery of memories would come to mind — and there was something unique about them: they weren’t her memories. Somehow through working a person’s muscle tissues and fascia, snippets from that person’s past would surface to Monica, and it was often tied to trauma. By processing these memories, clients began to heal.

Sometimes more than just memories would surface, but actual spirits and passed loved ones would appear, sometimes carrying a message, and sometimes just providing a reassuring presence to bring comfort.

To some, this all sounds crazy, we know. But it has happened enough times with enough accuracy that we’re far beyond the skeptical point and have fully embraced this realm of healing. Coming from a lineage of Mesoamerican healers, Monica has leaned into this side and further honed her skill with guides and mentors. She has also grown her team to include three trauma-informed practitioners who blend a range of healing modalities that span traditional and modern healing, including Traditional Mesoamerican Medicine, Mediumship, Ancestral Healing, Reiki, Tarot, and more. And yes, we also integrate clinical massage and bodywork modalities, such as Craniosacral, Lymphatic Drainage, Deep Tissue, and more. Visit Our Services page to learn more.

So that puts us somewhere between clinical massage studio, traditional healers, and spiritual coaches. We would sum it up as Traditional Somatic Healing. But in the end these are all just words pointing at something bigger that we strive to be, a safe space to experience another realm of healing that has been missing from the world, and to experience that you’ll just have to come and visit.

Book a session for yourself here.

Conversations with an Embodiment and Integration Guide

Abby Alderete is a bodyworker who offers Embodiment and Integration Guidance at Sol Solace Studio in Austin, Texas. She specializes in Tarot and Divination, Primal Consciousness, Soul Integration, Mediumship, Energy Work, and more. Just what does all of that mean? We had a short conversation with Abby to learn about her multidimensional work and journey as a healer.

Here is that conversation:


What is it that you do? What is an “Embodiment and Integration Guide”? 

Embodiment Integration Guide is kind of a way of disclosing that I am a metaphysician. I work in the different bodies — not just the physical body, but also the mental body, the emotional body, the spiritual body — and I layer them however the client really needs, whether that’s through dimensions or through emotion and spirit and heart and all of that. Then I kind of acquiesce my language to help them see what I’m seeing.


How do the different modalities intertwine? Do clients go to you specifically for tarot for example, or should they expect a blend of bodywork, tarot, and other modalities? 

It depends, they can specify. You can come in specifically thinking ‘I need a tarot session’. A lot of times that feels a lot like confusion in your life looking for answers that aren’t there, or needing to understand why you feel the way you do. Or if someone has shoulder pain and neck pain maybe it’s really about security and voicing boundaries, or ‘wearing the world on my shoulders.’ I can take that into physical work, I can take that into processing where I’m actually writing down maps of all the different things in my head, or I can take that to an emotional space. So there are different ways to get to it, and basically what I do is I attune to the client, and when I attune to the client with this multidimensional perspective I just follow the alarm systems and triggers that are going off.

The basis of an empath in my opinion is someone who walks into a room and can just sense where all the issues are, because they’ve programmed themselves to focus where the risk is, to go in and soothe it so that the risk minimizes. So I have that on steroids, much like Chalchicoatl and Monica – they walk in and it’s just on steroids. And it comes from lifelong experiences of having to survive, but now it’s used as an offering through our work.

How did you get into all of this in the first place? What came first and how did it lead to this blend of modalities you now offer? 

I was having intense dreams and blending pretend potions by the age of 2 or 3 years old. And I had my first real astral dream where I was experiencing a transition from one life to another around two, and then I came in and hovered over my body and saw me and my mom and just sank in. So I remember it vividly. I started reading Tarot when I was like eight or nine. I started learning about them, and I think I’ve learned about them and their meanings several different times because I’d put it down and forget it and then decide to do it again. And then I was even massaging people around that same time, so it started young.

Then by the time I was 11, my mom was doing pilates and eventually turned into a fascial stretch therapist, and I got to witness and go to all of her workshops and trainings. I was just a kid and bystander learning the whole time. Then when I got into pilates at age 18 everybody was telling me I should be a massage therapist. And by 19 I had gotten into massage school. 

Backing up — when I was around 16 I had a mentor come in who was a pendulum dowsing supplement coach. So she would cure all kinds of different ailments in the body with intense supplement regimes, and she was also into cards and all the spiritual work. So she really popped my top on how spirituality and health were so intertwined, and she broke the medical construct around me that I was really stuck in, and it gave me the power to start thinking outside the box.

Around 2015 I met my astrology card creating mentor, and so she works with anything that she can get her hands on, and she’ll break up this information into cards and begin to divine these mechanisms and see how she tracks herself in them. She’s also really into neurological health, polyvagal theory, biochemistry of the brain, the microbiome and gut health … So a lot my training has been in herbs and gut health, just holistic health in general.

So the physical, emotional, and spiritual all became intertwined for you. 

Because they’re so similar .. they’re all the same for me. They’re not all the same for everybody. But I’ve started to organize them in the same place for myself because they’re so intertwined.

What’s the overall picture? That’s what I’ve been after for a long time. Ultimately with most healing modalities and especially my bodywork and craniosacral like Monica, the idea is we’re reconnecting you to the healing aspect of your homeostasis and your brain. Your body actually can really heal a lot on its own, and heighten your immune system enough to fight off viruses and bacteria and pathogens that we don’t even think about, that we get all the time. If your immune system is high enough, your vibration is high enough, these things can’t survive in that type of electric environment, right? It’s not the right charge. So the idea with bodywork, especially conscious bodywork, is that we need to get you out of the way, so that your system can come in and reset and recover.


What’s the most important thing you want someone to understand before they come see you and what’s the biggest takeaway you want them to have from each section.

It’s hard for me to explain, but I’m going to start here. I was trained on the premise from my mother who described it like this: There’s a victim and there’s a criminal. And in the body especially, the victim screams and the criminal gets away with it. So it’s this kind of idea that our symptoms are messages and they’re alarm systems, but they are not necessarily where the wound or the injury is happening. And even in a 3D bodywork system where we go into your body and your ankle, I could end up in your head shifting your skull bones, or your gut trying to get you to release your stress … so that you’ll release your feet and allow them to move. So that’s the idea and that’s good to know before coming. I’m hunting for the source of the pain from the get-go. 

Also, I don’t tolerate a lot of time dancing around the symptoms … I wanna get to it. 


If you are interested in booking a session with Abby at Sol Solace Studio, check out her available times here. Please note that challenging content may arise throughout the work, and we recommend supplementing it with professional talk therapy.


Why Craniosacral Therapy is so good for Trauma and PTSD

Disclaimer: trauma is a complex topic that deserves much deeper reading than a short blog post, so please consider this an over-simplified tip of the iceberg. For further study we suggest the book The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk.

When something bad happens to us there is a physical reaction to that thing. If you see you’re about to get punched, you might clench your body or tighten your hips as you duck back, and those sensations might linger for a few minutes after the threat is gone, along with the rush of adrenaline — and depending on the context, it could be quite a bit longer than this.

If the threat is severe enough or repeated again and again, those effects could linger in the body for years or even decades. This is what we call trauma. It could be physical or emotional and doesn’t even require recollection of the event. There might be a sense of hyper-vigilance, or you may over-react or under-react in emotional situations, or feel anxious and afraid for no reason.

As trauma expert Bessel van der Kolk described it, the body keeps the score when it comes to trauma.

Treatments often take the form of talk therapy, such as Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), and prolonged exposure therapy.

But when the body keeps the score, the healing journey is incomplete without bodywork.

So where do we go next?

The Craniosacral Path to Healing

Craniosacral therapy is a full body hands-on treatment with feather-like pressure that works on the delicate tissues of our nervous system. It is here where the body’s parasympathetic and sympathetic nervous systems flow with cerebrospinal fluid throughout the entire body.

Nervous tissues

Nervous tissues need massage too

The sympathetic nervous system is where fight-or-flight occurs, while the parasympathetic nervous system is what relaxes the body following a dangerous or stressful time.

The idea behind craniosacral therapy is to restore the balance of cerebrospinal fluid flowing through these systems, which enables healing in the body. A skilled therapist can essentially “read” the body by getting in sync with this flow and gently manipulating imbalances. This is why such light pressure is used in these sessions.

Studies have shown numerous positive effects from craniosacral therapy for those that suffer from PTSD, reducing symptoms such as:

  • Insomnia

  • Panic attacks

  • Hyper-vigilance

  • Intrusive Thoughts

  • Depression and suicide

  • and more ….

Maybe you’ve tried everything, whether it’s talk therapy and maintaining a healthy diet and exercise or attending support groups — all important parts of the work.

But the healing journey needs that extra touch.

If you’d like to try craniosacral therapy, consider booking a session at Solace Studio, where our trauma-informed therapists are trained to find where trauma is stored in the body and bring you relief.. Be sure to select a session offered by Monica, our Craniosacral Therapist.