Body reading 
“Verdell has pretty much saved my life. I suffered a traumatic event several years ago and have been through all kinds of counseling to deal with my ptsd. Add to that a very stressful job and being a single mom – I felt like I was dying inside the day I went to see her for my free consultation. I remember asking her if I was too broken to fix. I don’t even remember what she said just the warmth and energy that she exudes.
I have seen her regularly for a few months now and I feel so much better. The hopelessness is gone, I don’t find the day to day stress overwhelming, my body has found its energy again and I have even lost 45 pounds. Verdell’s safe and non judgmental presence coupled with her skill and natural talent to reawaken the energy your body holds is nothing short of amazing. She is a truly beautiful soul and finding her on this journey has been a blessing to me in so many ways and I would hate to think of where I would be if I had not found her when I did. I truly recommend her to anyone and everyone struggling with any form of anxiety, ptsd or depression.”
“Verdell has the most wonderful touch, paired with a calm and curious persona and a genuine interest in people. I am an athlete and a guide and have put my body through years of abuse, and as such have lived with pain and injury for a number of those years. I first met Verdell in 2012 to deal with a shoulder injury, a partially torn AC joint, and the need to be up and running in a month for a two-week ski touring expedition. Not only was I able to ski and carry a pack within a month, but I also I walked away with a whole new understanding of my body and the power of my mind and its ability to heal. I have continued to see Verdell over the last two years when passing through Kamloops.
My most recent experience was to deal with numbing pain in my feet and an old hip injury that was almost crippling. As a hiking guide, both of these body parts are crucial to my work and well being. I saw Verdell twice over a two-week period. After the first visit I was able to return my $280 boots that I had bought because I had attributed the foot pain to my old boots. In fact, it was the tightness within my abdomen and hips that were the problem, not the boots or my feet. After the second session, I had movement in my hips that had long been absent. My next hiking trip felt like the start of summer again, with my body moving freely and with ease.”
“Dropping in. I feel the snow under my skis, make one turn, a second turn and think to myself, “wow the snow feels a little different.” That uneasy feeling in your stomach when it doesn’t feel quite right. But at this point I am committed and there is no turning back. In the corner of my eye I can see the rest of the group way below me on the slope. I make one more turn and a split second later the snow starts to move. A small crack in the snow suddenly propagates into a raging river, a fluid mass moving downhill. I find myself moving with the snow down the slope. As the snow moves under my feet it catches me off balance, knocks me over and my skis pop off. I’m swimming down the slope and fighting to stay on the surface, but I find myself being tossed around uncontrollably in the moving snow. I lose my conception of what is up and what is down, a sense of total loss of control as I get tumbled inside this surging cascade. Suddenly it starts to slow down, and before I know it everything comes to a complete stop, and it becomes really dark and quiet. Beneath the snow everything is still. Everything is frozen and the pressure from the snow is intense. It is pushing me from all directions; every limb of my body is getting squeezed. I am unable to wiggle even a finger; a surreal feeling. The only sound I can hear is my own breathing. It’s fast and shallow as I’m gasping for air. My stomach is turning and panic is starting to creep in as I realize what just happened. I’m trapped underneath the snow with no way of getting out.
“You make three turns and everything starts to move. What do you sense?” I’m sitting in a chair with Verdell across from me and I can feel how my body stiffens up. My head is pushed up against the headrest. My legs, arms, hands, feet, back, neck –everything is tensed up. My body is frozen. As we go back and replay the event step by step, my body starts to respond to the emotions rushing through.
I feel a probe strike my left arm and eventually I can feel that the pressure of snow against me is releasing. I can see light shining through the snow and I can hear voices in the distance. As my face is cleared from snow, I take my first breath of air. Very slowly my body starts to relax. I feel like I am sinking deeper and deeper into the chair as the pressure against my face, chest and the rest of my body starts to release. My breathing becomes slower and deeper. “You’re alive…” Verdell keeps repeating, “You’re alive.” It feels comforting to hear her voice.
My introduction to Somatic Experiencing is the most fascinating encounter I’ve had with the healing powers of the body, and how it is connected with your emotions and a traumatic event such as being buried in an avalanche. During my Somatic Experience session, Verdell showed me that my body was still holding onto the event and had a physical memory of being buried. I thought I had worked through and dealt with the incident and I did not realise how it was still affecting me. My body entirely remembered the event and there was still much tension there.
The exhaustion after the session, the feeling of relief and the feeling of peacefulness was liberating. I felt grounded, and very present and aware of my surroundings. The feeling was similar to when you achieve something challenging, where you push yourself physically to your max, with the feeling of complete satisfaction and exhaustion once you complete it. But it’s also a feeling of being able to go back and think about the event and learn from it; to feel at peace with what happened and talk about it without feeling stress or anxiety.
I’m really fascinated how my body and mind is so connected and I believe I would not have discovered this without Verdell’s help. I now understand how emotional events from the past can appear in your body as physical tension; pressure that needs to be released. Somatic Experiencing can do wonders for deep healing and releasing of trauma, and I highly recommend anyone who has been through a traumatic event to try Somatic Experiencing.”
“In my estimation, Verdell Jessup’s greatest asset is that she is a compassionate person who deeply cares for the people she works with. Verdell trained in the Victoria II training program that I was educational director of, graduating in 2012. From the beginning of the training it was clear that Verdell would do well in the work as a practitioner. Her physical training lent itself to understanding “Biological Fitness”, the necessity for a human to be able to move in any direction without hesitation and the other foundational principles from which the Feldenkrais Method is derived.
She showed herself to be adept in all the movement training and practices offered in the training, learning to listen to the person she worked with so her caring for another could shine through. In time, I believe Verdell will be an extraordinary practitioner of the Feldenkrais Method and of whatever other modalities she chooses to use in her work with people.”
“Verdell is an absolute pleasure to work with. She overflows with compassion and empathy. This, paired with her patience and extensive biologically based training, makes her the ideal balance. She has an innate ability to connect on a human level, and link what is occurring within your system physically and emotionally. The results are not only felt as a physical release of tension or pain, but on an emotional level as well. Getting to the root of our issues is so crucial, and Verdell is capable of taking us there in a safe and effective way. After one private session with her I felt like a completely different person on so many levels.”
“I have enjoyed the sport of whitewater kayaking for 10 years. Yet, the past two summers kayaking had become increasingly challenging due a phase where my roll became unreliable and caused me to experience a number of swims. I developed an irrational mind-set of fearing upcoming rapids, as I was so preoccupied with the worry of being unable to roll up if needed. I found myself frequently overwhelmed with anxiety and fear while on the river and too stressed to enjoy myself.
I sought out Verdell to regain the confidence I once had on the river and to reestablish my love for the sport. During one session, Verdell showed me how to reframe my thoughts, visualize and actually sense how successful manoeuvres feel physically and emotionally while sitting in a chair. I was especially impressed at how quickly she established a comfortable and supportive environment, which allowed her to quickly identify the root issue and aid me through to a more confident and grounded space. Soon after the session I went out kayaking to apply the tools she had equipped me with. I immediately felt my confidence and skills improve rapidly. Another unexpected benefit was how the insight and confidence that I gained from the session for sport was also extremely applicable in my day-to-day life.
Thanks Verdell, I look forward to future sessions, which I know will assist me in realizing my full potential!!”
“I didn’t sleep at all and was in shoulder pain all night and day the day after the session. But when I came home and went to bed the following night I slept for nine hours straight for the first time in years. Today my shoulder and over all well-being are 150% better than they have been for a long time. My initial discomfort has turned to bliss. Not too often do you meet a real human being – you are one.”
“Verdell helped me to rediscover my own happiness and gratitude for my life. She helped me put aside the behaviors, thoughts, and actions that were holding me down, and gain a much better connection to and understanding of what’s happening in my my body (and mind) and how it is expressed physically. I had paralyzing migraines on a weekly basis, and with Verdell’s guidance she helped me become more aware of how stress manifests in my body, how to diffuse that stress so that it didn’t result in a migraine. I can happily report that I went over 6 months between migraines.
When my friends/family ask how I’m doing with my migraines, I explain how amazing Verdell is. I sometimes struggle to articulate exactly what she does, but here goes – she helped me to understand that my nervous system was trying to tell me (screaming at me) that it was overwhelmed, and couldn’t function. She made sense of the tingles running up and down my legs days before a migraine, as warning signals that my nervous system was feeling overwhelmed and needed to be calmed. She taught me how to listen and respond to those signals in a way that diffused the stress and anxiety rather than letting it build. She gave me practical ways to increase my awareness of what’s happening in my body and my nervous system, and trust what it’s telling me. I used to think I was so tough to be able to handle lots of stress and still keep standing, moving forward, without any idea of the burden that stress was putting on my body, my mind, and my whole being. Because of Verdell, I now know that I wasn’t tough but rather stubborn (stupid, deaf, you name it)! I have learned to listen to those tingles, be aware of the tightness in my chest and shoulders, and legs, and most importantly what I can do about it!
From the first session there were immediate improvements. I’ve gone 6 months between migraines that used to be a weekly occurrence, that would leave me literally paralyzed, speechless and cowering in the dark for hours! There were no easy tricks, just gentle coaching to increase my awareness of my own nervous system, what its telling me, and how to give my body what it requires (sleep, exercise, understanding, and self-love). I find myself unbelievable grateful for the tools Verdell has taught me. I’m excited about each session because I know there will be more suggestions, more advice, more opportunities to increase my own awareness, more homework and more support!”