I’m the founder of all things Twisted Tummy –Juanita Hufnagel. I help clients learn how to break through blocks, ease the effects of trauma and stresses, improve health, vitality and creativity, via alternate thinking, doing and being.
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HI AND NICE TO MEET YOU!
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I am a writer, teacher, international lecturer and speaker, Stress & Trauma-Informed Health & Wellness Specialist, and self-taught (sorry mom) cook, who helps clients to awaken to the vastness of their inner healing and potential by working at all levels (physical, mental, emotional, and energetic). I help clients learn how to break through blocks, ease the effects of and improve through blocks, easing the effects of traumas and stress, and improving health, vitality and creativity via alternative thinking, doing and being.
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ABOUT JUANITA
WHY TWISTED TUMMY
We need a toolkit to help ease the suffering, cringing, cramping sucker-punched symptoms of life’s traumatic and stressful experiences and its joyous (and less than) lessons. Also, this toolkit needs to help to not only digest all parts of life, but to extract as many nutrients from it as possible.
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As individuals and as a collective, we need an integrated approach so that the stress and trauma we hold in our bodies, minds and soul from our lives, generational (inherited) trauma, and toxicity in all forms, can be digested, their lessons integrated, and their non-serving bits released.
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This site ties the threads of many interests into a quirky tapestry of tight knots and loose stiches with many warps.
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...and I see storytelling and creativity as vastly important in healing trauma.
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Many aspects and approaches used in the creative world of visual arts, theatre and dance, are great tools for assistance with and great lenses through which to view and work with trauma.
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One way I have been merging the elements of these disciplines with my integrative practices and treatments is in the form of narrative and writing specifically for children and young adults who need an approachable way to access and process difficult life experiences. Stories allow the reader to consciously re-frame dissociative experiences and create new personal narratives. This helps to authentically implement the meaning and medicine of previous traumatic events, and re-connect fragmented parts of the self.
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I AM A STORYTELLER
It’s not about just Surviving, it’s about Thriving!!
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There is also a sacredness to the act of creativity, especially in the telling of and listening to stories.
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Juanita is a multi-disciplinary creative, lecturer, teacher and writer interested in the convergence of art and multi-modal therapeutic approaches that promote healing.
My integrative approach works within ceremonial contexts of sacred and held spaces and I have seen first-hand the importance and benefits of ceremony’s set and setting, celebration, sharing of personal story and the role of the witness in giving voice and closure in incomplete cycles of wounding.
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Inspired by the work of empathy pioneer and researcher Karla McLaren M.Ed, I similarly connect the parallel experiences of incomplete trauma cycles to traditional rites of passage and initiation. But unlike a guided and celebrated rite of passage within a supportive community, I instead believe trauma to be a kind of initiation in the wrong place, at the wrong time, with the wrong person, and without guidance. Through this lens, trauma can be seen as a shattering ceremony entrenched in shame which forms an incomplete wounding. I believe that being able to create personal work, to share and talk about our trauma, to be vulnerable in this way in a safe environment, are not only liberating, but are some of the most impactful ways to remove the roadblocks of stigma and shame that stop us from advancing on our healing path.
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To find out more about my upcoming book launches and where to buy them for your children (or for your inner child), click here.
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I have a history as a mixed media artist focusing on the use and effect of language, archetypes, narrative and storytelling as a channel for self-discovery and the processing and integrating of emotional wounds. My earlier print work forms part of the National Gallery of Canada Library Archives, and I am a Canada Council for the Arts grant recipient for literature. I have been previously commissioned by the Universidad de Costa Rica’s Department of Movement and Dance to develop programs focused on: ceremony and collective witnessing, and the relationship between adrenal stress and creative expression.
