Welcome to Viva La Vagus ™
A little neuroscience. A little sequins.
The cheeky play on words may make you smile, but the science is real.
The vagus nerve plays an important role in regulating the nervous system and influences how we experience safety, connection, emotion, and resilience. When we live in chronic stress or carry the effects of trauma, our nervous system often prioritizes survival over joy, creativity, play, intimacy, and rest.
Viva La Vagus ™ celebrates the idea that healing is more than calming the nervous system. It's about helping it rediscover the capacity for connection, vitality, creativity, pleasure, and fully participating in life.
Through trauma-informed psychotherapy, somatic approaches, mindfulness, polyvagal and narrative work, I help women move beyond surviving and reconnect with the parts of themselves that have been waiting to come home.
nervous systems deserve celebration, not just regulatioN
Let's give your nervous system a cabaret
At Manna Mental Health, Viva La Vagus ™ is my philosophy of healing for women seeking aliveness. It combines evidence-based neuroscience with somatic psychotherapy, mindfulness, narrative therapy, and compassionate exploration of life's transitions to help women reconnect with themselves.
Whether you're recovering from trauma, navigating grief, moving through midlife, healing from religious or relationship wounds, feeling overwhelmed or simply feeling disconnected from the woman you once were, therapy can become a place to restore not only stability, but vitality.
Pleasure isn't frivolous.
Creativity isn't extra.
Play isn't childish.
Because healing isn't only about surviving.
It's about feeling alive again.
