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Kendra Bratherton (she/her), OTA/L, PBP, CBIS 

Owner of Merkaba Center for Healing, LLC

PROFESSIONAL


Kendra has a B.A. in Psychology and an Associate's Degree in Occupational Therapy.

She also holds certifications as a brain injury specialist, a Tensegrity Medicine Practitioner, a Bowenwork Practitioner, a Reiki Master, Medicine for the Earth Practitioner, and an Ordained Minister.


She is a Family Care Bowen Instructor and a Tensegrity Medicine Instructor.

In her Occupational therapy career from 1996-2017, she worked as a therapist: in acute care hospital settings, home care, and outpatient clinics. She specialized in upper extremity rehab from 2011-2016.

Kendra served as an Occupational Therapy instructor from 2013-2020 at Linn-Benton Community College for the Occupational Therapy Assistant Program.

In 2012 she founded the PNW Head Injury support group in Astoria, Oregon. Providing the community with a support group led to her serving on the Board of the Brain Injury Alliance of Oregon (BIAOR) from 2013-2021. Over the years of serving on the BIAOR board, she held positions as secretary and president. Through her commitment to the BIAOR she also worked and facilitated at the Annual Pacific Northwest Brain Injury Conference in Portland, Oregon. She was an annual speaker at the conference for many of those years.

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Philosophy


Kendra believes we are already whole and capable of healing from within. She has recovered and learned from countless experiences throughout her life, including childhood trauma, multiple fractures, traumatic brain injuries, spinal cord trauma, PTSD, and multiple experiences with death and loss. Through her years of self-discovery, Kendra found pathways to heal from within, bringing forth her personal and professional knowledge to her life's work. She is passionate about helping others discover their resilience and self-healing skills. She believes that each individual has ALL the answers and that we are limitless in our potential.


PERSONAL

Kendra loves connecting with people, the earth, and animals. She loves teaching, traveling, and inspirational speaking.

Since she was 13 years old she has dreamt of writing a book that will inspire others to trust in the process of life around control & surrender, and how to reach deep within for the courage to go beyond barriers, and into new frontiers.  During her medical leave, she is finding enough spaciousness to finally embark on the writing journey.


She has three grown daughters, two dogs, and one cat; she cherishes moments with her loved ones and has a 'thing' for vintage trailers. You can find her keeping busy with 'Millie,' the 1955 Beemer, or ' Mabel,' the 1959 Fireball, when she is not with her family, friends, clients, or teaching.

Her people are from Finland, the British Isles, the Netherlands, Canada, Norway, and Scotland. – via Michigan, Ohio, New York, and Pennsylvania.

Kendra grew up on Potawatomi land in West Michigan and resides on Clatsop land in Astoria, Oregon.

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SISU

Sisu begins when perseverance ends

A mindset that enables individuals to reach beyond their present limitations, take action against all odds, and transform barriers into frontiers



Tensegrity Medicine as my overall approach


How this approach differs from traditional methods?

  • No longer relies on outdated biomechanics model for assessment, instead looking at 3-dimensional balance.
  • Is not trying to find symmetry but explores the unique expression of the client.
  • No longer depending upon the approach that the therapist is the 'fixer', however, facilitates the client's own self-healing mechanisms to guide the session. The system knows how to heal itself, given the optimal causes and conditions.
  • Is not operating from a disease model, but a wholeness paradigm.
  • Is not about treating the 'site of pain' but the system as a whole.
  • The sense of safety creates the opportunity for change to occur.
  • The inner 'ecosystem' is reflected in the physical form. Our perceptions, beliefs, and states are driving our behaviors and our physical tension patterns and morphogenic expression.
  • Minimal therapeutic input has a maximal clinical output. Targeted accurate interventions will allow the system to shift on its own.
  • A systematic superficial to deep treatment approach is most effective. If compensations are taken away before there is safety and resourcing, the change will never be integrated.
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