We recently connected with Lulu Liao and have shared our conversation below.
Lulu, appreciate you joining us today. Can you share a story about the kindest thing someone has done for you and why it mattered so much or was so meaningful to you?
Kindness has the power to create a ripple effect, inspiring positive change and fostering a sense of connection among people. I often find the kindest acts are the ones that are unexpected, perhaps from strangers or unasked for. Here are two that come to me immediately:
1) A young man (maybe in his late teens or early 20s) offered to help carry my 50lb dog food to my car one evening as I walked out of the grocery store. I admit I felt skeptical at first, having the thought that he might want something. But he was so nice, dropped it in my car, and said “Have a nice night ma’am”! :)
2) I was going through a time of terrible grief and had gone off to a retreat for healing. Unfortunately on the way back from the retreat I also picked up Covid and was in the hospital for a few days. These people (whom I just met and spent a week with) sent me food, checked in on me, started a go-fund for me, and nurtured me back to health. I felt so blessed, grateful, and surprised that these people were strangers just a few weeks ago. Now they are lifelong friends.
Lulu, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
Hi Everyone!! Thank you so much for reading this small blurb about my practice! I work as a holistic somatic trauma therapist. What that means is that it’s not “traditional talk therapy,” where we talk about issues and analyze things. Yes, changing belief systems is CRUCIAL to our healing, but I start off with emphasis on the body and nervous system. We call this a “bottom-up” approach to healing. Trauma, from a nervous system lens, is anything that is too much too soon. It dysregulates our nervous system and for lasting change, we must include an embodied approach. Some of these methods include Somatic Experiencing, Breathwork techniques, Psychodrama/Role-Play, Mindfulness Exercises, Therapeutic Yoga, Reiki, and Vibrational Sound Healing.
I am probably most proud of the fact that I have the ability to explain big concepts in a digestible way for people and make the healing journey fun. It probably is what sets me apart from others too! We can get very serious in our healing journey – and it is serious business – but playfulness, humor, the ability to laugh at our human experience makes the journey so much more enjoyable.
I want everyone to know that it is NEVER too late to feel better about yourself and your life and it will not take years and years of therapy to repattern your framework for navigating & understanding life. I also want to point out that learning nervous system regulation, and how to moderate stress is CRUCIAL for healing. In my PhD research right now, we clearly see the many detrimental impacts of stress on physiology in today’s modern society. Your nervous system patterns affect everything in your life (how you perceive the world, your relationships, how you view yourself, what you think, etc). Stress IS the leading cause of doctor’s visits and highly correlated with mental health and disease diagnoses. Let’s learn some techniques to change this!
Do you think you’d choose a different profession or specialty if you were starting now?
Reflecting on my journey as a holistic therapist, if granted the chance to rewind the clock, I would undoubtedly choose this path once more. The decision to become a holistic therapist has not only been a professional pursuit but a transformative voyage that has allowed me to grow in my own journey, and also touch the lives of so many others in profound ways.
I actually started my doctorate when I first graduated college, but at the time I was going through so many of my own personal issues and been in therapy for many years without much progress. I thought to myself, “How can I pursue a profession that wasn’t working for me”? I spent years in various other jobs as a Network/Telecom Engineer, Biomedical Researcher, and in the Pharmacy while I did most of my own healing. Through these many years, I also healed my own pains of grief and loss, trauma/abuse, addiction, and multicultural issues.
I am not saying that a therapist needs to go through the experiences that their clients go through in order to help – but I can tell you that I have a damn good idea of the spectrum of emotions that exist in this human experience. More importantly, I can hold space for all of it so someone can be seen, heard, witnessed, and supported through their experience. They say that you can only meet someone as far as you have met yourself and I can guarantee that client’s feel my ability for deep presence when they are with me.
That is my blessed journey and what I get to do today as a result of my past wounds. I honestly believe it IS our sacred task in life to transform your suffering into something that can be used to help others. Today, I am full of radical acceptance for myself; I embrace all of my humanness, I live a blessed life of joy and abundance, I’m strongly connected to my authentic self, I get the privilege of walking with others on their path.
Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?
I would say most of my client’s are word-of-mouth referrals from other clients and/or other colleagues. Networking has been very helpful to get to know other colleagues, and for them to know about the services I offer. I attend various trainings, continuing education workshops, say yes to speaking engagements, and participate in various events in the community. I love collaborating with other therapists because sometimes it can have synergistic outcomes. Some therapists will send client’s to me to do holistic and somatic work, while they continue more of the talk therapy.
I also try to keep my online presence active through my social media and/or listing on various websites.
Most of all, what helps is to be authentic and engaging wherever I go. We are a nation that is overly stressed and dysregulated and many people are looking for help with this.
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