NAIO™ Self Care & Touch Classes

NAIO™ is rooted in my own lived experience. In my late teens, it was an awareness practice I returned to before and after my surfing sessions—ways of centering, grounding, cultivating presence, and recovering through the body. I often fondly thought of it as internal surfing. Many years later, throughout my late 20s and 30s, something deeper began to arise spontaneously within me, opening into experiences that felt full of fluidity and light.

As I continued to deepen this practice, my perspective on bodywork began to shift. Despite my training in structural, manipulative, and energetic tissue modalities, I never felt fully at ease with them. I moved from “doing”—pushing, adjusting, and pressing—into a radically different approach: sitting in presence, listening with awareness and touch, and following the subtle movements the other person’s body was already guiding. This shift came from the need to adjust my practice to what was arising within myself, from a sense of responsibility, and from a wish to refine how I worked. What had once been effortful became a dialogue of attention, attunement, and trust in the immanent intelligence within the body.

My understanding from surfing and movement also informed this shift: true refinement brings more flow, less effort, and fewer impositions on the body. I took a bold step to start practicing in this way, and the transformation happened quickly. After a few years, people asked me to begin teaching, but I was hesitant. I felt I needed more time to deepen my understanding, to continue self-practice, and I struggled to find faithful language for my experience. I also worried about being placed into narrow categories or silos of belief.

During those years, I spent more and more time immersed in the movement practice itself, while also working with clients. One question kept returning: 

How could I share this so that others could engage and experience it for themselves—just as I was?

That question, and the desire for safety and gentleness, shaped the next phase of my journey. As did wanting to find out if there were like in kind approaches. So I sought out other practices to see if they engaged in similar ways. I explored Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy, Continuum, and several somatic approaches, many of which weave in trauma-informed perspectives. These resonated deeply with what I was sensing in myself and in clients—an orientation toward subtle movement, inner listening, and the body’s intelligence when met with presence. The body as a fluid system; its inner flows life-giving, restorative, and connected to a larger rhythm of being and luminosity—rather than reduced to technique.

For many years, I also had ongoing discussions with colleagues in integrative medicine and wellness fields about whether it might be possible to teach a self-care or restorative practice—something that could come close to how a practitioner works with someone. They too were interested in creating options to support people directly, offering accessible ways to restore balance, health, and well-being.

Over time, weaving these explorations with my own practice and client work, a distinct way to convey the process began to emerge. What had started as something personal was becoming more defined, with principles, orientations, and themes I could share with others. This unfolding grew into what I now call NAIO™—a process rooted in embodied awareness, fluidity, and relational attunement. For many years, I remained cautious about teaching it more widely. Instead, I developed my teaching skills within craniosacral teams, retreats, and movement classes. Yet the original question never left me:

 How could I make this accessible—not only in practitioner settings, but in ways people could explore for themselves?

Everyone begins from a different place, with their own ways of sensing, feeling and relating. That awareness eventually led me to create NAIO™ Self Care & Touch Classes. These classes don’t replace the profound intersubjective space of practitioner work, but they do provide something essential: a way to care for oneself, to find grounding, to cultivate awareness, and to build inner resources for balance and renewal. They are open to everyone—accessible, simple, and practical. At the same time, they also serve as a foundation for those considering the NAIO Practitioner Training or the Aqua NAIO Practitioner Training. Before anyone can work safely and skillfully with others, it is vital to first develop grounding, self-reflection, and sustainable self-care. The NAIO™ Self Care & Touch Classes offer just that: an accessible entryway into NAIO™—whether for everyday well-being or as the first step toward practitioner development.

Written by Prue Jeffries, MSME/T, Founder of NAIO