I am Julie MacAdam. Trauma practitioner, somatic therapist, educator, and dreamer who doesn’t just believe these tools work but knows they do on a personal level. They have, and continue to, transform my life.
I know that some things are beyond words and change is nourished when we partner with forces larger than ourselves; that is why I work with dreams, art, and the body.
I love helping others learn how to relate to the language of the body and their dreams, and to stay present for a vast array of sensations; it is my passion.
I honor what is already highly intelligent in you, supporting you to nourish your resilience, expand your capacity and (re)connect with yourself, others, and the world.
We can do this.
Leading Ethics
- Perspective shifting both either/or to both/and, so you can embrace more of your life with increased capacity.
- Befriending the body, sensations, feelings and the world outside, so you feel capable of staying present with what is happening from moment to moment.
- Navigating life issues in creative and embodied ways, so you can trust the resources within yourself and experience shifts.
- Working in real time, so we don’t just talk about it but feel through it.
- Taking a process-oriented approach, so you can let go of seeking certain results.
- Honoring complexity and nuance, so you can cultivate a relationship with the mess, the grit, the paradox.
- Attending to more than the thinking mind alone, so that you can learn other ways of knowing and being with yourself.
- Working slowly, with thorough attentiveness, so you don’t have to have a dramatic change to recognize newness.
- Embracing the power of a transdisciplinary approach where more than one therapeutic modality is used, so that you are equipped with a full toolbox.
- You, over time, seeing and feeling the changes that you desire, so that you feel empowered to keep going.
Training
- 200hr YTT
- Yoga 1, 2 & 3
- Pranayam (breathing exercises) Studies
- 3-month Yoga Development Course (YDC)
- Hidden Language Hatha Yoga Certification
- Hatha Yoga Certification
- Kundalini Certification
- SEP, Three-year Professional Training Program
- RSMT/E, Two-year Movement-based Expressive Arts Therapy Training Program
- Masters in Embodiment Studies
- Masters Thesis – Creative Dreamwork: A Body-based Creative Arts approach to Dreams for Healing Trauma
- Three-month Herbal Apprenticeship
- One-year Herbal Apprenticeship
- Nine-month Herbal Apprenticeship
Vermont Center of Integrative Herbalism
- Three-year Clinical Training Program
Yasodhara Ashram
- Dream Certification Program
Vermont
- On-going 1-1 Studies
Conscious influences:
- My dreams, my students’ dreams, the on-going dialogue I have with dreams as animate forces, and the unflinching love and support that comes from dreams.
- My on-going journey of learning how to regulate myself and live in a more embodied way and knowing change is possible.
- The people I work with and all that they have taught me about perseverance, vulnerability, grit, transformation, and the power of the arts.
- Somatic Experiencing and its’ tools, techniques, and principles.
- The Tamalpa Life/Art Process and teachings of Anna and Daria Halprin – creativity being a process inherent to every being and the importance of creating art that matters, whether it looks “good” or doesn’t.
- Arnold Mindell, the dreaming body and a process-oriented framework.
- The yogic lineage of Gurudev Sivananda and the teachings of Swami Radha, founder of Yasodhara Ashram.
- Dr. Gabor Mate and his teachings on authenticity and belonging and the myth of normal.
- Susan Raffo and the lens of healing justice.
- Bayo Akomolafe and his work and inquiry.
- Dance as movement through various teachers and forms.
- Dr. Stan Tatkin and his teachings on attachment theory, neuroscience, and arousal regulation.
- Plants, the natural living world, and my teachers of herbal medicine.
- Intuition and trusting it.
Change is possible - that isn't false hope.
I came to this work honestly, from a place of seeking to feel more comfortable in my own body. What I feared most – the sensations that at times overwhelmed me – became a compass guiding me towards transformation.
For nearly two decades, I have explored body-based modalities that foster personal and collective transformation. This began with yoga and dance while I was in high school. After my freshman year of college in 2010, I did my first 200hr yoga teacher training at Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health. Around that time, I also participated in my first 10-day Vipasanna meditation retreat in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts.
In 2013, after college, I moved to the West Coast and completed a 3-month herbal apprenticeship at Herb Pharm in Southern Oregon. Missing the familiar turn of the seasons, I returned to the East to continue my herbal studies, completing a nine-month apprenticeship with William Siff at Goldthread, followed by a year-long apprenticeship with Brittany Wood Nickerson of Thyme Herbal.
In 2015, I moved to Montpelier, Vermont, to study at Vermont Center of Integrative Herbalism (VCIH), where I completed the 3-year clinical program in 2018. For as much as I loved plants, pharmacology and pathophysiology were not my favorite areas of study. I was a “down-home” herbalist, working with my hands in the soil.
In 2019, I ventured to Yasodhara Ashram in British Columbia to participate in a 3-month yoga intensive called the Yoga Development Course (YDC). Midway through, the pandemic hit. I remained at the ashram to complete the program, a second teacher training, as well as trainings in Hidden Language Hatha Yoga and Kundalini & Dreams.
I returned to Vermont at the end of 2020 and in 2021 began studying at Tamalpa Institute, a movement-based expressive arts therapy program created by Anna and Daria Halprin. Simultaneously, I began the three-year trauma resolution program at Somatic Experiencing International. During this time of study, I worked at the University of Vermont, teaching hatha yoga, meditation, and classes on dreams to nearly 200 students a semester, all while finishing my Master’s in Embodiment Studies from Goddard College. During these years of study, I was switching my awareness between the nervous system, dreams, and expressive arts therapy. My master’s thesis naturally culminated as an exploration at the intersection of dreamwork and expressive arts therapy to support trauma resolution and facilitate deeper embodiment. I call this intersection “Dream Systems” and it is my particular niche within dreamwork: using dream images to bring forward states within the nervous system and body experience and then working those states through the tools of Somatic Experiencing.
To this day, I spend time listening to what plants have to teach, dream and appreciate the forces larger than myself, engage with the creative muse and process, and continue to teach and learn each semester to students at UVM.
When I’m not teaching and learning, you can find me enjoying a warm cup of tea or a cool refreshing drink, walking outside among the seasons, grooving on the dance floor, singing, or hanging out with my dear friends and partner.