Firefly Somatics

22/02/2026

The IT band doesn’t contract or “tighten”

It’s a dense fascial structure that transfers load and helps stabilise the hip and knee. When it feels tight, it’s usually a reflection of sustained demand in the surrounding muscles, altered load sharing, compensation occurring, and the nervous system increasing protective tone through proprioceptive input.

IT band discomfort is rarely about a single strip of tissue; it’s about how the whole neuromyofascial system is sensing and distributing force.

You don’t force protection away, you retrain it.

www.fireflysomatics.com

21/02/2026

Client Spotlight: Ally Whelan 💫

Ally is in month 11 of her 12-month guided psychosomatic healing journey. Throughout her journey, she has focused on nervous system healing and somatic processing, grounded in the principles of neuroplasticity. She has engaged beautifully and consistently with the programme, demonstrating deep commitment to her healing.

Her work with us has included:
👉🏼 Monthly 1:1 in-person sessions
👉🏼 Monthly group calls
👉🏼 Weekly engagement on Telegram, where we explored psychosomatic coaching in real time, navigating triggers, moments of somatic integration, and more
👉🏼 Immersive ceremonies
👉🏼 Participation in Firefly modules and resources to support her healing

Ally has addressed a wide range of past traumas and psychosomatic challenges, which resulted in:
❌ Food intolerances: gluten, eggs, cows milk, yeast, almonds, mushrooms, and sensitivities to most vegetables and some fruits, resulting in a very restricted diet
❌ Stomach bloating and swelling
❌ Digestive issues: constipation and diarrhoea
❌ Severe acid reflux and heartburn
❌ Extreme menstrual pelvic pain radiating to the lower back and legs, exacerbated by the Mirena coil
❌ Fibromyalgia with chronic daily pain levels of 7/10, with flare-ups affecting sciatica, back, shoulders, neck, and hands
❌ Chronic fatigue
❌ Headaches and migraines
❌ Rapid weight gain: 10 kg in 2 weeks, with difficulty losing weight
❌ Food phobias and restrictive eating since childhood
❌ Body dysmorphia
❌ Eczema and rosacea
❌ Confidence issues and negative core beliefs
❌ Physical trauma: knocked down by a motorbike and did not initially seek treatment despite extreme pain, resulting in tissue damage, damage to her shoulder rotation, and severe nerve pain referral
❌ Autoimmune susceptibility: frequent colds, flu, and other illnesses
❌ Sinus issues
❌ Cycles of anxiety and low mood
❌ Extreme people-pleasing and lack of boundaries
❌ Cyclical sleep difficulties: prolonged time to fall asleep and frequent night waking

11 months into her psychosomatic healing, fully immersed in The Firefly Method®, Ally has experienced profound somatic, physiological and nervous system changes:
✅ Food sensitivities and intolerances have eased considerably, allowing gradual reintroduction of previously restricted foods
✅ Improved relationship with food and her body
✅ Significant reduction in acid reflux
✅ Decreased bloating and swelling
✅ Bowel movements improved markedly
✅ Chronic fatigue greatly reduced; she no longer plans her life around tiredness and enjoys significantly increased energy
✅ Chronic pain has diminished substantially and no longer impacts daily life
✅ Sustainable weight loss: 10 kg (22 lbs) shed gradually
✅ Inflammation reduced significantly
✅ Complete cessation of migraines
✅ Developed awareness of triggers for skin flare-ups and acquired tools to manage them
✅ Immune system functioning efficiently and rarely falls ill
✅ Sleep quality greatly improved

In Ally’s words, “I am more comfortable in who I am and slowly stepping into my power. I am excited to see more progress.”

Her journey has been extraordinary, and the woman she has become over the past 11 months is profoundly different from the person we met at the beginning.

www.fireflysomatics.com

19/02/2026

19/02/2026

Limerence, from a psychosomatic and nervous system perspective, is not love. It is a dysregulated attachment response dressed up as intimacy.

When we speak about limerence, we are talking about what happens when our early attachment wounds meet an activated autonomic nervous system. If, in our formative years, love felt inconsistent, unpredictable, emotionally unavailable, or conditional, our body wires itself around that pattern. The nervous system learns that longing equals connection, uncertainty equals chemistry, and inconsistency equals desire.

Later in life, when we meet someone who mirrors that early imprint, the body does not feel calm. It feels activated.

That activation is biochemical. Adrenaline rises. Cortisol spikes. Dopamine surges in anticipation. Oxytocin bonds us after even small moments of connection. Then withdrawal happens. Silence. Distance. Ambiguity. The nervous system drops. Anxiety increases. Rumination begins. The body swings between sympathetic arousal and collapse. High. Low. High. Low.

And because the body is so activated, the mind fills in the gaps with various narratives and projections.

We do not see the person for who they actually are. We project onto them. We idealise them. We attach our unmet childhood needs to them. We unconsciously believe they will finally regulate what was never regulated for us. That is what’s known as, limerence.

It is not about the other person’s qualities. It is about what they represent and what they trigger within our nervous system.

From a psychosomatic awareness lens, limerence lives in the body. It shows up as tightness in the chest, butterflies in the stomach, obsessive thoughts, difficulty sleeping, hypervigilance around messages, analysing tone and mood shifts, filling in gaps when there’s distance or ambiguity. The body is not in safety. It is in pursuit. And pursuit is a trauma response as it feels a threat to survival.

When we have not been securely attached in childhood, our system equates intensity with intimacy. A calm, emotionally available person can feel boring because the nervous system does not get the familiar spike.

Healing limerence is not about suppressing feelings. It is about regulating the nervous system and integrating the early attachment wound. It is about asking: Is this love, or is this my body chasing resolution?

When we build nervous system capacity, when we increase vagal tone, when we can stay embodied in uncertainty without spiralling, the projection drops. The idolisation softens. We begin to see the person as a whole human, not as a saviour or solution.

True connection feels attuned, steady and safe. It does not hijack the body. Limerence hijacks.

And from a psychosomatic healing perspective, the work is not to “win” the person. The work is to regulate the system so that intensity is no longer mistaken for “intimacy”.

www.fireflysomatics.com

18/02/2026

“Somatic and Nervous System Healing has helped my body heal in ways I wasn't expecting... I lost a lot of hair after having Covid a few years ago and it's now starting to grow back. I've also lived with psoriasis ALL my life and it's cleared up. This inner work is not easy but it's worth it to have a healthier body and nervous system”.

Catrina is currently enrolled on a 12 month guided psychosomatic healing journey with me, and she is now in month 6 of that process.

She came into this work healing from a range of past traumas alongside complex physiological and health challenges, including Lyme disease. Over the past 6 months, her system has responded beautifully to consistent nervous system regulation, psychosomatic awareness, and deeply attuned somatic processing.

As her autonomic nervous system has moved out of chronic survival states and into greater safety and coherence, we have seen measurable shifts in her body. Through the principles of Neuroplasticity, her brain and body have been forming new pathways rooted in regulation rather than stress chemistry. This has allowed her immune function, endocrine balance, and inflammatory responses to recalibrate.

She is now experiencing visible hair growth and a significant reduction in psoriasis. These changes are not random. They are physiological expressions of increased internal safety, improved vagal tone, and reduced systemic inflammation.

When the nervous system no longer perceives threat, the body reallocates energy from defence into repair. Catrina’s healing is a powerful example of how psychosomatic work, when applied consistently and with precision, can create tangible structural and biological change.

www.fireflysomatics.com

18/02/2026

التمييز السريري بين أنماط ألم العصب الوركي
ليس كل ألمٍ يمتد إلى الساق يُصنَّف تلقائيًا كـ Sciatica. الخلط بين هذه الحالات قد يوجّه العلاج في مسار غير مناسب ويؤخر التعافي. الصورة توضّح ثلاث آليات مختلفة — وكل آلية تتطلب فهمًا وتأهيلًا مختلفًا:

1️⃣ Sciatica — عرق النسا الحقيقي
يحدث بسبب ضغط أو تهيّج مباشر للعصب الوركي غالبًا نتيجة بروز أو انزلاق غضروفي قطني. الألم يبدأ من أسفل الظهر، يمر عبر الإلية، ويتبع المسار الخلفي للساق. قد يترافق مع تنميل، وخز، أو ضعف عصبي — وهي علامات تشير إلى مشاركة عصبية واضحة.

2️⃣ Lumbalgia — ألم قطني مع إشعاع
المصدر هنا ميكانيكي قطني (عضلات، مفاصل، أقراص) دون ضغط عصبي حقيقي. الألم يتمركز في أسفل الظهر وقد يمتد للإلية كإحالة ألم، لكنه لا يتبع مسار العصب الوركي بدقة. غالبًا يكون مرتبطًا بالإجهاد أو الخلل الحركي.

3️⃣ Piriformis Syndrome — متلازمة العضلة الكمثرية
ينتج الألم عن انضغاط العصب الوركي بواسطة العضلة الكمثرية في منطقة الإلية. يبدأ الألم موضعيًا في المؤخرة وقد يمتد للساق، ويزداد مع الجلوس الطويل. كثيرًا ما تُشخَّص خطأً كحالة غضروفية.

📌 الخلاصة العلاجية
تحديد منشأ الألم هو حجر الأساس لإعادة التأهيل.
الضغط العصبي ≠ خلل عضلي ≠ تهيّج موضعي.
كل حالة تتطلب بروتوكولًا علاجيًا مختلفًا لضمان استعادة الحركة وتقليل الألم بكفاءة.

إذا كان الألم يمتد إلى ساقك — التقييم السريري الدقيق هو الخطوة الأولى نحو علاج فعّال، وليس الافتراض.

18/02/2026

Triggers are not overreactions. They are intelligent survival responses shaped by attachment, encoded in the body and activated through the nervous system. They reveal where our fight, flight or shutdown patterns are still running and where our system is protecting something unresolved.

Triggers are teachers. They help us pinpoint the beliefs we hold about ourselves and the world around us, exposing the attachment imprints formed in our formative years and the places where attunement once felt compromised. They open portals into our inner landscape, illuminating what is already held within us.

Nothing outside of us creates the wound. It activates what is stored. When we understand this, we move from blame to responsibility, from reaction to regulation, and into the deeper work of embodied healing.

www.fireflysomatics.com

16/02/2026