Lifeworks of Maine
Coaching, Clinical Inquiry, and Frameworks for Regulation and Restoration
A place to slow down and make sense of regulation
Many people arrive here because something in their system—or in their relationships—no longer feels reliable.
They may live with chronic stress, illness, or long-standing patterns of reactivity. Others feel caught in cycles of overactivation and collapse, or notice that approaches that help others don’t seem to work well for them. Often there is a sense that the problem is not willpower or insight, but something more systemic and harder to name.
This work begins by taking that experience seriously.
Rather than pushing toward a preferred state or applying a fixed protocol, the emphasis here is on careful observation, pacing, and understanding how regulation actually unfolds in real human systems.
Why regulation matters beyond symptom relief
Many of the questions people bring to this work are not only about reducing distress or managing symptoms.
They are questions about:
peace and steadiness
purpose and direction
efficacy in daily life
the ability to feel connected, creative, or at home in oneself
These questions are often treated as psychological, philosophical, or spiritual. But in practice, they are deeply dependent on access to certain physiological and regulatory states.
When systems are chronically activated, depleted, or unstable, it becomes difficult—sometimes impossible—to experience clarity, meaning, or a sense of inner coherence. No amount of insight or intention can substitute for the bodily conditions that make these experiences available.
A central aim of this work is therefore to support access to health states that allow these deeper dimensions of life to emerge naturally.
Not by prescribing beliefs or values, but by protecting and restoring the regulatory capacity that underlies them.
In this sense, the work is practical and embodied—and also, ultimately, soulful.
Working together: an exploratory coaching process
I offer individualized coaching and consultative work for people who sense that their challenges are regulatory, relational, or medically complex, rather than simply psychological or behavioral.
This work is collaborative and exploratory. Instead of following a predetermined sequence, we pay attention to how your system responds over time—physiologically, emotionally, and experientially—and allow those responses to guide next steps.
Coaching often involves:
tracking patterns of activation, settling, and recovery
noticing timing, rhythm, and tolerance rather than forcing change
supporting regulation without overriding individual variability
using tools selectively, as supports rather than solutions
empathic and non-partial reflection about patterns, preferences and individual needs
This approach may be a good fit if you:
feel sensitive to interventions that work well for others
live with chronic or complex health conditions
want a thoughtful, non-formulaic process
are curious about how your own system functions
are willing to engage in an evolving, adaptive inquiry
This work does not promise quick fixes or guaranteed outcomes. What it offers instead is attentive guidance, protection of regulatory capacity, and conditions that support restoration over time.
Learn about working together
Schedule an initial conversation
Working with couples and relationships
I also offer coaching for couples and relational partnerships who want help understanding reactivity, misattunement, and repair from a regulatory and embodied perspective.
Many relationship difficulties are not primarily about communication skills or psychological insight. They arise when two nervous systems interact under stress, fatigue, illness, or long-standing strain—often without sufficient support for recovery.
In couples work, we focus less on who is “right” and more on:
how activation builds between partners
how threat, withdrawal, or escalation show up in the body
how timing, tone, and pacing affect interaction
how repair becomes possible once regulation is supported
Reactivity is treated as normal physiology, not pathology or personal failure.
This work can be helpful for couples who:
feel stuck in repetitive patterns
escalate quickly or shut down under stress
are navigating illness, caregiving, or long-term demand
want a practical, non-blaming way forward
The emphasis is not on fixing the relationship, but on supporting the conditions under which connection and repair can re-emerge.
Learn about couples work
Schedule an initial conversation
The framework behind the work
The work offered here is grounded in an evolving clinical and theoretical framework concerned with how complex human systems regulate, lose coherence, and restore it over time.
A central component of this framework involves Respiratory Profiling Analysis (RPA)—a signal-based analytic approach that examines respiratory patterning alongside other observable markers of regulation. Abdominal fluctuations reveal pulse, respiration, digestive activity and indeed, all of the pulsative rhythms of the body, most of which are yet unknown. Breath is an organizing signal that reflects broader system dynamics.
When tracked carefully, these patterns can offer insight into how autonomic, affective, and motor systems are interacting under different conditions. Over time, this analytic work has come to inform a broader understanding of restorative processes—how systems reorganize when conditions are supportive, and what interferes when they are not. These conceptual layers are closely related and continue to evolve through practice and dialogue.
Entrainment and regulatory support
Entrainment refers to the tendency of biological systems to synchronize with rhythmic input from their environment. In human physiology, this can include responses to sound, movement, light, breath, and relational timing.
In this work, entrainment is understood as a context for observation and support, not as a mechanism to impose change. Structured rhythmic input can reveal how a system organizes, where it is flexible, and where it becomes strained. In some cases, it can gently support coordination and recovery; in others, it simply makes existing patterns more visible.
Experience with a range of sensory- and sound-mediated entrainment approaches has informed this understanding. What matters most is not the stimulus itself, but how the individual system responds over time, including tolerance, timing, and after-effects.
Entrainment is therefore used selectively and cautiously, always interpreted within the broader picture of the person’s regulatory capacity. It is one way—among several—of supporting conditions under which restoration may occur.
How this site functions
This site serves several purposes:
a place to learn about working together
a home for clinical and theoretical reflections
a point of reference for collaborators and colleagues
a record of ongoing inquiry
New material appears intermittently, when something has reached sufficient clarity to be shared.
A living body of work
The ideas and practices represented here continue to evolve through clinical experience, collaboration, and reflection. Revision is part of the process.
This site is not a conclusion.
It is a home base.
Navigating the site
Those seeking coaching may begin with Working Together
Those interested in the ideas behind the work may explore Frameworks and Clinical Reflections
