We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Manisha Tare. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Manisha below.

Hi Manisha, thanks for joining us today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?

What immediately comes to mind when I reflect on this question is my cross country move in the fall of 2018 to small town in southern Oregon where I didn’t know a soul. I had lived in NYC and then DC for nearly a decade each, so this was the exact opposite of anything I had experienced.

At the time, I would not have identified as being burnt out, but looking back, it was obvious. I felt energetically depleted and honestly struggling to find my way. I had always been curious about living on the west coast and had visited Seattle the year before to see if it would be my next city.

What I realized on that visit was that I didn’t need an another city, but I needed to be in a place where I could reconnect to myself and I was opening myself up to any signs along the way that could point me in the ‘right’ direction. The name of this town came up a few times in the year following. I can not attribute a single iota of logic to this pull towards moving there, but there was something in me that was drawn to the mountains. What I knew was that I needed a break from the life I was living to be able to hear my own thoughts and figure out my next steps.

I decided to take a long weekend to visit to see if I liked it. I realized I had a Facebook friend from a course I took years prior who lived there, so I reached out for some recommendations and to reconnect. Visiting the area confirmed I needed to be there and a couple of months later, I packed up and left DC after nine years with my first one-way ticket in hand.

My friends and family, I am sure, were stunned and some understandably concerned, but they all helped me on my way. Looking back, I am so grateful because I imagine something in them also knew this is what I needed to do even though on the outside, it made no sense.

I settled in and made some incredible friends who I have stayed in touch with. I took my in person healing practice online and started seeing clients virtually (years before covid) and continued some freelance work I had been doing through some previous connections.

In many ways, there was an ease to settling in, making friends, and finding community. It was the exact community I needed at that time in my life and I recognized that I was also there for my own personal restoration and healing. This is exactly what I received.

A little over a year in, I was realizing that my time there was coming to a close. While I loved the community and the friends I had made, I thought I would feel more rooted, and this was not happening. This was quite difficult to acknowledge, because when I moved out there, I had all these thoughts and ideas about what settling in a new place would look and feel like. I came to the conclusion that I was there to do some personal inner work that I could not have done in my day to day busy life in a city.

I decided it was time to make my way back to the east coast. I packed up my life once again, said my good-byes and flew back February of 2020 and we were in an unexpected lockdown about a month later. I was incredibly grateful to be back on the east coast close to family again. Looking back, I know I was guided by an outside force to return back during that window of time, and I was so happy that I was in a place to be able to listen to and follow that guidance.

I continue to stay in touch with friends that I made there and have had the opportunity to visit. It was a deeply transformative experience for me and was the exact medicine I needed. It will always hold a special place in my heart.

I feel so fortunate to have been able to explore in this way and while there were challenges, looking back, I can see how fully supported my journey was.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Sure, I’d love to share more about my work. I currently work privately with clients who identify as high-achieving, highly sensitive people who are struggling in their relationships. If the term highly sensitive is new to your readers, how it has presented in my clients is that they are highly attuned to their surroundings, can pick up on a lot of stimuli in the environment from lights, sounds, or crowds, tend to absorb the feelings of others around them, need extra down time and feel emotionally overwhelmed if they don’t find time to decompress and learn how to process their emotions.

When we start working together, they are typically feeling reactive and have difficultly expressing their feelings in their relationships. Often, as children, they did not have the space to fully express themselves and being highly sensitive, they internalized this and it shows up as people pleasing, over giving and having a difficult time setting boundaries in their adult relationships.

I use a somatic approach to help them work through anxiety, unresolved early childhood issues, and patterns of people-pleasing so they can set healthier boundaries and experience happier, more fulfilling personal and professional relationships.

Using a somatic approach helps them to regulate their nervous system and safely experience a range of emotions and be able to comfortably express themselves. Through our work, they are able to process their difficult early experiences and move forward in their current relationships with less baggage, more ease and the ability to be fully themselves.

It’s been a long and winding road as to how I have come to do this work. I’ll start off by saying that I am a highly sensitive person so I know how it feels to experience the world and relationships as someone who feels deeply. I didn’t always know what the term for it was, but once I read more about it, it was so permission giving.

Looking back, it’s easier to connect the dots and recognize that everything I have studied and trained in has lead me here. As long as I can remember, I have been interested in alternative and holistic healing modalities. As a teenager, I picked up a book on yoga and started practicing poses on my own. In college, I went to a meditation class out of curiosity. It initially felt like a way to connect spiritually though as I became older and continued to practice, what I realized is that it was actually a way of feeling at home within myself. So ultimately, it was both — a way to connect with something bigger than myself and also feel deeply grounded in my body.

I studied occupational therapy in my undergraduate years and went onto work with children birth to five, many with sensory issues as well as other developmental delays. After years of being in direct service and in administrative roles, I studied craniosacral therapy, which is a modality that supports the nervous system. I had already been studying and teaching yoga for several years.

Everything I did had similar themes of calming the nervous system and increasing a sense of internal harmony and balance. I worked with students and clients for nearly a decade through these practices. While people felt better for a while after a yoga class or craniosacral session, I could also see that this did not automatically translate into better relationships.

I was realizing there was a missing piece and recognized the deeper connection between early life experiences, including possible trauma and how that impacted the state of people’s nervous systems and patterns in relationships. From here, I dove into attachment theory, relationship dynamics and did an another training focused on specifically using a somatic approach to heal issues around attachment. So much of the work led to helping clients experience a sense of safety within their bodies in order to let go of past experiences.

As a highly sensitive person who is trained as an occupational therapist and has studied many somatic based modalities and worked for nearly two decades with individuals who have experienced various levels of early trauma, I have a unique perspective and window into my clients experiences. I feel this leads to a sense of trust and safety that helps them to process their past experiences in a way that feels supportive to their sensitive nervous systems.

One of the things I love hearing the most is when clients share they are able to move through a trigger in the moment and feel confident to speak up in their relationships. Ultimately, it’s about them trusting their feelings, being themselves and feeling empowered and valued in their relationships.

Other than training/knowledge, what do you think is most helpful for succeeding in your field?

Without realizing it, I already started to share this in the earlier question. I think training, knowledge and experience are incredibly important; however I truly do my best to practice what I preach. I understand many of the struggles my clients have experienced because I know what it’s like to have a sensitive nervous system.

For me, to succeed in this field, I need to bring my most grounded self to my clients so they feel safe to process their feelings. I engage in regular somatic practices to work through my triggers, frustrations and feelings. Because this is something I have practiced for longer than I can remember, I’m always bringing the clearest perspective I’m capable of at any given moment and I’m available to recognize what I don’t know and change my mind or perspective based on new information, insight, or direct feedback.

Because I’m working so closely with others who are also highly sensitive and may pick up on my feelings, me doing my personal inner work to stay neutral and hold a safe space is a non-negotiable and is what allows me to support my clients.

If you could go back in time, do you think you would have chosen a different profession or specialty?

What’s interesting about this question is that it feels like my specialty chose me. Some days, I wish I could have seen how the puzzle pieces were coming together sooner, but I recognize that timing plays a role in when something clicks. I love the work I do. It gives me so much joy to see clients let go of the weight they have been carrying from the past or realize what they have been settling for and ask for more in a relationship.

I also continue to be amazed by what feels like the ‘magic’ of somatic work. So many of us, including myself, love to analyze and understand things. We’ve been conditioned to believe that once we understand a problem, we can solve it. Through this work, I know there is so much more to healing than cognitive understanding. While awareness is the basis, what I know to be true is that when we slow down and pay attention to the wisdom of our bodies, we receive so much more insight, information, and healing than our thinking minds can allow.

This combination of being able to tap into intuition, body wisdom and seeing how it transforms a client’s sense of self and their relationships is truly fulfilling. I would 100% choose this work again and deeply grateful it found me.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://manishatare.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/manishatare/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/manishatare812/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/manisha-tare-35aa8b236/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@manishatare4006
• Other: The Transform Your Relationship Podcast: https://manishatare.com/podcast/

Image Credits
Lauren Anzevino