Jeanmarie Murphy

As part of recovering from years of bookkeeping and accounting, Jean Marie entered the world of mind-body medicine to enhance somatic awareness and consciousness as a Yoga Nidra, Hatha Yoga and meditation teacher and as an Interactive Guided Imagery practitioner.  She worked in hospital and hospice settings with people living with and dying from life altering illness and, provided stress management classes and workshops to staff. In 2000, she combined her business background with her wholistic healing experience and founded a non-profit healing center, Taking Refuge. The center provided weekly classes in Yoga, T’ai Chi, Qigong and Feldenkrais and offered 2 low-cost alternative therapy clinics, utilizing acupuncture and hands-on Feldenkrais, to individuals living with life threatening illness. Jean Marie produced a library of at home resources, including 3 educational films and 2 compact disc sets, which enjoyed national distribution. In 2005, Jean Marie joined her life’s experience and education with a Poet, expanding his mission and vision of the healing capacities of creative writing and traditional medicine, when they worked hand in hand. She developed and managed various poetry and prose programs and writing retreats in a variety of settings. She is a graduate of The Muscular Therapy Institute which, under the direction of Ben Benjamin, PhD in Sports Medicine, developed a curriculum of massage therapy and somatic coaching that included influences from Dr. Wilhelm Reich's groundbreaking observations on the relationship between emotional trauma and physical distress, the principles for establishing and maintaining effective movement habits as described by F. M. Alexander and Orthopedic Medicine assessment techniques developed by the well-known British Physician, James Cyriax, M.D. She is also a graduate of The Academy of Guided Imagery, a post-graduate training provider for health professionals and the nation's only comprehensive, integrated curriculum for teaching Interactive Guided Imagery, a clinical approach which incorporates innovative principles and techniques from conventional and Ericksonian hypnosis, Neurolinguistic Programming, psychosynthesis, and Jungian active imagination, and adds a unique interactive component that enhances the patient’s own ability to participate in their health and healing, transforming the therapeutic relationship into one of supportive collaboration and successful self-actualization. She is a RYT 500 Kripalu yoga teacher, a cardiac certified yoga teacher from the Satchidananda Ashram and in 2011 she completed Richard Miller’s Level 1 Integrative Restoration® training, a profound reinterpretation of the process and practice of traditional Yoga Nidra combined with a deep understanding of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra’s.  Her continued study of the Yoga Sutra's with Richard has deepened her passion for the transformational power of Yoga Nidra, and informs her personalized Yoga Nidra and Yoni Yoga Nidra® Meditations and recordings for her clients. She continues to combine her business acumen with her healing and artistic sensibilities as a Creative Direction - Business Development Consultant, using Yoni Yoga and Yoni Yoga Nidra® as a tool for self discovery and enhancing one’s creative expression for new business owner's, artists, writers, filmmakers, architects and creative directors dealing with an impediment to their natural flow of expression and, for people seeking greater sensual aliveness in their everyday lives.