I'm not afraid of what lives in your shadows

Hi. I’m Sara Taylor, PhD

Neuroscientist. Former psychology professor. Generational and existential coach.

The people who find me have done significant inner work and are still hitting a wall. They’re not in crisis. But they’re not fully living either.

Why I’m Here (and Not Still in Academia)

I got into neuroscience because mental illness runs in my family. I wanted to understand why certain patterns keep repeating and how to stop passing them on. What I found was mostly symptom management, drug side effects, and hypotheses. Not the answers I was looking for.

Then my son was born. And five months later my dad died, the day before I was supposed to go back to work. He died too soon. Partly from mental illness, partly from the consequences of not taking care of himself, partly from the prolonged use of not so benign medication that treated it.

I held it together, the way most of us do. But I couldn’t go back to a lab that had nothing useful to say about any of it.

So I went looking. I found somatic work, generational healing, and family systems constellations. What they gave me was hope for impossible problems. A sureness about who I am and what I am capable of. And the ability to be okay when everything around me is not.

That’s what I bring to this work.

The Shadowlands Are My Specialty.

The hidden things. The shame and guilt you’ve never said out loud. The worst fears you circle but never look at directly. The family stories nobody talks about.

That’s the territory. And it’s exactly where I work.

It’s the place most traditional therapy and healing methods don’t reach. The emotions that feel unsurvivable. The patterns that keep running no matter what you do with them. The loyalties you didn’t know you had. The weight you’ve been carrying so long you think it’s just who you are.

Paradoxically, the harder you try to make it go away the more stuck you stay.

The way through is to say yes to it. To go into the shadows on purpose. Not to stay there, but to find what’s been buried, give it its rightful place, and come back out. When the past can finally be the past, the present opens up.

It’s uncomfortable. It takes a while. And, it’s a reorganization more than a fix. But what you feel you’ve been missing is in there. 

You’ve already been living with the alternative and it isn’t working. The fastest way out is through.

It does help to have someone who has been in the shadowlands themselves and knows it’s survivable. Who knows how to say yes to what’s there rather than helping you spend your life keeping the lid on it.

That’s what I’m here for. Someone who won’t flinch.

    We Might Be A Good Fit If…

    • You have a logical or analytical mind but you’ve hit the wall that logic can’t solve.
    • You’ve done some body based or somatic work and know what it feels like to sit with discomfort without immediately trying to fix it.
    • You’re post therapy and ready to move beyond symptom management into something deeper.
    • You can see that your parents were human and that what they did had consequences for you, but you don’t blame them for everything.
    • You’re done with how things have been working and you’re ready to look at what you’ve been avoiding. Even if that’s uncomfortable.
    • You aren’t afraid of being triggered and tend to like intensity.
    • “I’m afraid I’ll die disappointed with how I lived” is a sentence that stops you cold.

    Client FeedBack

     

    “When you learn a language it’s easy to get from A to B, from beginning to intermediate, but it’s really hard to get to advanced. Sara is the perfect guide for intermediate to advanced.“

    – University Professor

      “I found freedom to exist in a way that feels true to who I am.”

      – Director of Operations

      “There is no longer a persistent feeling of heaviness. The weight has lifted, and I am noticing and engaging in things that delight me.

      – Writer

      WAYS TO GO DEEPER

      Free Office Hours

      Got a question? Come pick my brain. 20 minutes on Zoom, free, no agenda except yours.

      Reserve your Spot

      Core Pattern Intensive

       For when you’re tired of looping. Two sessions to work directly with the energetic core of your most persistent pattern. Beyond talk and insight. Actual renegotiation.

      Book Here

      Through the Shadowlands

      The full program. Six months working through generational patterns, ancestral entanglements, and inherited emotions.

      Learn More

      Trainings and Tidbits

      Relevant Trainings

      To complement 15 years of teaching and research in the neuroscience of stress and mental health, I’ve trained extensively in generational trauma resolution, somatic healing, and systemic approaches to transformation.

      Systemic & Generational Work

      • Family Systems Constellations Foundations Training (Andrea Bosbach Largent; founder Bert Hellinger): Understanding and shifting generational trauma patterns with systemic phenomenology.
      • GenoChart™ Multi-Generational Trauma Release Certification (Andrea Bosbach Largent): Certified in mapping and releasing multigenerational trauma using psychogenealogy.
      • Compassionate Spirit Release & Curse Unraveling (Andrea Bosbach Largent & Gayle Revels): Advanced energetic techniques for generational healing.

      Somatic & Trauma Healing

      • Integral Somatic Psychology, Module 1 + Developmental Trauma: Prenatal and Perinatal Stages (Raja Selvam): Somatic approaches to trauma integration through emotional embodiment, esp. of existential emotions.
      • Complex Trauma Training Levels 1 & 2 (Janina Fisher): Working with trauma using nervous system and parts-based approaches.
      • Treating Complex Trauma with Internal Family Systems (Frank Anderson): Using IFS for healing complex trauma by working with parts and the core Self.
      • Dropping into Pre- and Perinatal Implicit Memory with Ease (Ray Castellino): Working with unconscious memories and nervous system imprints related to prenatal and birth experiences.
      • Alchemical Alignment (Tele Dardin, Modules 1-3; founder Brigit Viksnins): A somatic approach to trauma resolution and embodiment, particularly effective for resolving freeze responses. Rooted in craniosacral therapy and somatic experiencing.
      • Activate Your Inner Jaguar & Mobilize Freeze (Kimberly Ann Johnson): Focus on developing a healthy fight response and understanding nervous system regulation in women’s health.
      • Somatic Self-Compassion (Kristy Arbon): Techniques for building emotional resilience and self-compassion through body-based awareness.

      Coaching

      • Wayfinder Life Coach Training (Martha Beck): Foundations of life coaching, the change cycle, and personal transformation.
      • Existential Therapy, Psychotherapy & Counselling (Adam Godwin): Persepctives on growth, mental health, and crises related to existential givens. 

      Irrelevant (but fun) tidbits

      • I’m named after Bob Dylan’s ex-wife and the song he wrote for her: Sara. I’m basically named after a heartbreaking divorce.
      • I met Bob Dylan’s son, Jakob Dylan, of the Wallflowers at a gas station when I was 16. I got his autograph and told him I was named after his mother, at which point he asked the awkward question of whether my parents knew her. Ummm. No just really big fans. LOL. He still put me on his personal guest list to get into his sold out concert for free that night.
      • In high school, one of my best friends and I performed choreographed dances to ABBA songs at parties. That was the beginning and end of my performing career.
      • My favorite job other than my current one was shoveling manure on a horse farm.
      • I once accidentally ate a “special” brownie in graduate school and spent the rest of night using my knowledge of psychopharmacology to talk myself down from going to the ER.
      • I once tried to lead a “chocolate” mindfulness meditation in my behavioral endocrinology class to introduce our mindfulness-based stress reduction project. I was self-conscious and started laughing SO hard that I ended up snorting like a pig. Never again.  lol.
      • I used to be quite good at microsurgeries involving insertion of tiny catheters into the jugular vein of rats in order deliver IV drugs (pressing levers and all that). We used methamphetamine and “bath salts” in that lab.
      • I published a review article on the neurocircuitry of addiction and one of the figures is an MRI photo of my own brain. Though now that we have way more than “PowerPoint” to create images at our fingertips, the graphics are a tad embarrassing.
      • I am the worst text typer. Between my typos and autocorrect you have to basically learn a new language to communicate with me.