Hear me roar.
Meet Tara Lynn
Tara Lynn Carlson, (MS CCC-SLP)
Tara Lynn is a heart-centered Holistic Practitioner who uses Integrative Bodywork and Soul Retrievals to help re-wire the nervous system and re-parent any of the body’s dysfunctional safety systems.
Tara has over 75 hours of direct training in MNRI® in addition to her certifications in Applied Kinesiology and Advanced Healing Arts. In these arts, Tara focuses on Heart Math and Compassionate-Mindfulness practices rooted in Shamanism. Tara also uses her neurological understanding of communication via her Master’s degree in Speech Language Pathology to help her patients re-wire their patterns of self-talk. In all of these methodologies, Tara offers guidance to patients of all ages, including pediatric.
In her podcast, “Letters to Yourself”, Tara reads her personal journal entries and shares letters written to past versions of herself as a prime example of how to re-pattern the stories we tell ourselves. It is both a personal exploration and safe-space for her patients or anyone curious about her work. In addition to these works, she is a passionate guide and teacher in meditative practices, a host of women’s circles and a playful facilitator of ecstatic dance.
Tara’s Eclectic Experience
Tara has been working with children for over 15 years, and with adults for over 3 years. Tara became a speech therapist in hopes of giving children who are minimally verbal/non-speaking a voice through alternate means of communication. After learning a unique neuro-modulation therapy technique that helped children go from constantly over-loaded to regulated and ready to learn, she was committed to bringing in more movement and touch into her life and her work. Five courses & several hours of self-study later, she healed her chronic anxiety and severe gut issues using MNRI, nutrition, & the power of our connection to earth and spirit. Within the past 2 years she has found her niche in working with adults experiencing emotional dys-regulation secondary to trauma being held in the body’s fascia.
MNRI: Bridging the Gap
Tara enjoyed working with non-speaking and minimally verbal children who had clear daily challenges that were impacting their ability to mimic or even stay attended long enough to receive the information. Tara worked a little under a year implementing research-based techniques she had been taught in graduate school with little progress in her client’s overall wellbeing. Despite being able to verbalize more words, it came at the cost of high structure activities and a clearly uncomfortable nervous system as noticed by their wiggly bodies and frequent outbursts or aggressive behaviors. Tara soon realized that while compensations, tools, and behavioral modifications were a necessary part of behavior shaping and achieving goals, there had to be an easier way for these kids to learn — somehow without the sensory overload they were so clearly experiencing daily; constantly compensating by using their bodies in different ways (often perceived as inappropriate), such as kicking, biting or toe-walking.
Tara was introduced to an occupational therapist who was learning about a technique that takes behavior out of the situation and focuses on the body’s protective function for that behavior. When Tara learned that children were hitting as a clear way of setting boundaries, and that it was reflexive, these regulatory behaviors started to make more sense. “If these children are relying on reflexive patterns to compensate for their body’s deficits/weaknesses, then of course they are going to have a difficult time learning new information.”
She ended up taking 6 reflex integration courses (totaling over 75 hours) and worked in a clinic full time utilizing exclusively this technique for almost 2 years. Working closely with occupational and physical therapists on a daily basis, she began to understand the body and all the parts they don’t talk about in graduate school for speech-language pathology. She saw children of all ages, as young as 6 months up through 21 years of age, working at the level of the nervous system to help regulate and allow their natural functions to become reflexive (as they are supposed to be) so they can learn.
She helped a 2 year old who had a diet of goldfish, strawberries and bread to be able to eat all types of proteins and vegetables within a few months. She calmed an autistic 16-year old’s nervous system down enough to significantly decrease his head-butting behaviors, loud high-pitched screeching and toe-walking behaviors by more than half, and she [often involuntarily] taught multiple children easy calming techniques and rhythms that are much more functional and communicative than biting or hitting.
So how can this help ME?
During the MNRI courses, it was not uncommon for one of the adult practitioner participants to have sudden and profound moments of processing within their emotional regulatory systems. Tara began seeing a friend also specializing in MNRI for regular body work sessions to treat her own chronic anxiety and attention deficits. Within months, Tara felt her nervous system melt and remain at ease for weeks on end WITHOUT needing to use all of her tools she had acquired over the years. Since this shift, Tara has been integrating her work into the work she does with children and seeing adult clients to practice and deepen her understanding of the nervous system.
This work is unique and often doesn’t do well explaining itself because of the melding of science and spirituality (sometimes referred to as energy kinesiology).
Allow Tara to take your nervous system to a place of safety…and stay there (unless you do happen to come face-to-face with a lion — then your nervous system will know what it’s supposed to do! ;)
Tara’s ideal clients are adults looking to deeper their connection to their protective functions and take it out of its high “on-alert” state…permanently. Additionally, she works with children on the autism spectrum or similar sensory processing disorders, who preferably are in/have been in speech, occupational and or physical therapy already (or who have tried traditional therapy in the past). Tara sees children of all ages with moderate to severe deficits in social communication, attention and focus, language, and/or feeding.
Adventuring often…
In her free time, Tara is a writer, mental health advocate, wife/life partner, loyal friend, traveler, and women’s empowerment leader. She spends most of her time finding enjoyable ways to move her body; including, but never limited to hiking, yoga, burlesque, ecstatic dance, and sliding around on some form of water (whether by paddle board or snowboard). When she’s not out exploring, you can find her at home wrapped up in a weighted blanket drinking oat milk lattes [clean & local coffee only!], cuddling her husband, and journaling or delving into any of her many creative outlets. Tara enjoys salads as much as she does cupcakes, treats her dogs like children, and has a special knack for listening, drawing conclusions and forming ideas about the meaning of life. She is also a sacred space holder grounding the space between ethereal and earth through her essence and presence and is deep into her studies of advanced healing arts exploring and cultivating these connections through ceremony and play.