WELCOME TO THE WEBSITE

Hello! and Welcome to the “Website” as it were! As I am rather stereotypically English when it comes to drinking tea, and rather rambling when it comes to writing, I warmly invite you to make a nice cup of tea and find somewhere cozy to sit down, to read and see if I can be of service to you.

Whether you are visiting this page because you are just needing a little extra creative support or coaching to navigate an exciting challenge; or feeling alone, lost in addiction or unsure where to turn, I am happy to come alongside you as a companion on your journey, to provide support and a creative and empowering frame to hold yourself and circumstances within and support you to recentre in the innate natural intelligence within you.

Challenges offer us a season when we most need to be deeply present, kind, gentle, creative, curious and warm with ourselves, to surround ourselves with what nurtures our strengths and helps us walk into and through our fears; what ignites our inner spark, creativity and enjoyment of life, soothes and heals pain; and reminds us of our capacity, qualities and true nature. Sometimes external help can be an incredibly useful adjunct to the resources and support you already have in your life. I believe that every need can be responded to when we deeply connect and can be guided and crafted into a more genuine expression of your soul and what you are here to offer. 

As relational beings, we need both solitude and the safety, dynamic creativity and love found in relationships that can help us to flourish and rediscover and affirm our direction in life. It is deeply human to need connection, to feel better and more capable in ourselves with that support; to thrive with acceptance, encouragement and care. We all need creative, kind and safe places and relationships in our life within which we can feel bold enough to let go and feel what we are actually feeling, to be who we actually are..even to fall apart in order to find more of a sense of wholeness and our own completeness. I am honored to be with you on that journey and provide some of that space.

BACKGROUND  

I am a registered psychotherapist (MBACP), with 15 years of experience in the healing arts and therapy. I trained in Clinical and Somatic Psychotherapy in California (Marriage and Family therapist track).

As a consultant, coach and psycho-educator, I am engaged in empowering individuals and organizations by helping them tune into their inherent potential and capacity for wholeness, resilience, connection and health.I work in supporting people in developing sensitivity, presence and compassion to their inner experience and nurturing what makes them glow!

I specialize in helping individuals and organisations to depathologise, understand, and resolve, the impact of individual and systemic trauma in their lives; and befriend and dance with the magic of our capacity for well-being, regulation and connection.  


My approach in coaching and psychology integrates new scientific findings and theory in neuroscience, attachment theory and somatic based trauma resolution and psychology practices. I am passionate about sharing simple, pragmatic neuroscience-based tools and information that change the way we think, feel and relate: enriching and transforming our sense of self, relationships, work and lives. 

Whilst I have specialised in various forms of trauma therapy; and work with evidence-based approaches such as polyvagal informed therapy; trauma informed stabilisation and parts work; and somatic trauma therapy; my approach remains soulful and relational. I also offer Equine facilitated psychotherapy, and have taken additional courses since graduating in Gestalt, Hakomi, Somatic Experiencing, Sensorimotor psychotherapy, Dance movement therapy, BCST, Nutrition for mental health and more. 

My work is informed and oriented towards the natural wisdom , love & life and processes found in nature, creativity and story telling, spirituality and cognitive and embodied processes to support a widening sense of self -that includes not just the conceptualized ‘I’, but breaks down it’s separateness, and re-finds it in being and belonging.

I am registered with BACP and work under their ethical guidelines. I currently have a private practice and work both online and in person, offering one to one therapy, group work, psycho-education and equine facilitated psychotherapy. 

HOW I WORK

I work to support the development of internal and external resources in my client’s lives that can lead to a sense of embodied safety (including healthy internal and external boundaries), connection, warm – open heartedness for themselves and others, connection to the natural world, belongingness and presence. 

A focus of my work is to support people to come into relationship with, and embody, their strengths and innate compassion. This compassion can be brought to the way they also relate to – and care for – wounded or buried aspects of themselves, which helps these burdened and exiled or shadowed parts of self release past wounds that we become identified with.

I work individually and through groups to support clients to reestablish their home in a true sense of self and create an inner and outer environment and lifestyle that is founded in peace and safety. 

I offer:

  • Ecopsychology and Equine Facilitated Therapy
  • Somatic Psychology
  • Coaching
  • Psycho-education
  • Trauma Informed Yoga and Meditation
  • Trauma informed stabilisation and parts integration
  • Safe and Sound Protocol
  • Addiction recovery support
  • Creative Therapeutic Arts and Process Groups

A brief description is provided to each if you scroll down, as well as a more thorough introduction through clicking on the links.

WHAT I OFFER

I see clients on a short- and long-term basis, depending on their needs. I work with the modalities of EFT, Psychotherapy, Somatic Therapy and Trauma informed restorative yoga. I work with complex long standing issues as well short term coaching and psychoeducation. I offer on-line work for international clients. If you scroll down, you can read a brief introduction to different modalities I work with.

I also collaborate with/refer to other health professionals and therapists to support positive lifestyle changes that benefit sleep, nutrition and detoxification and other aspects of the healing journey where appropriate. 

I believe that we heal as a collective. My hope as a practitioner is to support you into more regulated and embodied relationship: with yourself, your loved ones, community and the wider world.

QUALIFICATIONS 

LEAP Equine Facilitated Therapy Practitioner

Biodynamic Cranial Sacral Therapist. The Colorado School of Energy Studies, Boulder, CO.

M.A. Clinical Psychology, MFT. Emphasis:Somatic Psychology.  The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, Los Angeles campus.

Dance Movement Therapy Foundation – Goldsmiths University, London

B.A. Interdisciplinary Studies:Visual, Performing& Traditional Eastern Arts. Naropa University, Boulder, CO.

Hatha Yoga Instructor. Yoga Alliance 200 Hour Certification, Austria. 

PERSONAL ORIENTATION: SITUATING THE SELF WITHIN CONTEXT 

I have been deeply involved in my personal and vocational life in the field of recovery from trauma, self harm, substance and process addictions, codependency and eating disorders. I do not see addiction as something that was individually created, but has come to be as a result of various co-existing factors, including trauma; context; and social structures such as capitalism, social hierarchy and classism, sexism, racism and ecological destruction. It’s creation was not an individual “accomplishment”!!

Addiction is a collective ‘creation’, and often our system’s best and most creative and bearable response to unbearable circumstances (including intense and undischarged dysregulation in our nervous systems). 

Likewise…healing is not an individual journey or achievement, but a process of collective support and re-finding, recovering and aligning to the health that is never lost. Reconnecting to a sense of self that incorporates the WHOLE; to a compassionate heart that can never be broken or altered in its capacity for love; to a sense of lived belonging in a natural world that socialisation/civilization and discrimination had displaced.

It is re-finding relationship, connection, belonging in a way that lends itself to naturally becoming active in healing the socially and environmentally destructive practices and dynamics active in western industrialized society (that also extend to, dominate and oppress other cultures) and to reconnecting to guiding structures of meaning and soulful value to create wellbeing. 

Our issues always arise in relationship and context and therefore are healed within and through altered relationships and contexts. Our own personal problems can actually be the doorway through which we access infinite amounts of potential and possibility to change and improve not only our own lives but the lives of others. . . to contribute in a way that we have been uniquely shaped for through the transformation of our wounds into precious gifts we can share for collective healing… not only healing ourselves but healing the system that our mental and physical health problems arose within.

In this way our own healing transforms and touches so many lives and can serve as preventative care for others and future generations.  

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION TO DIFFERENT MODALTIES I WORK WITH

Trauma informed stabilisation and parts integration:TIST or Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment was developed to provide a trauma-informed approach to the challenges of treating self-destructive behavior. Based on theoretical principles drawn from the neuroscience research on trauma and structural dissociation theory, TIST offers a treatment approach that integrates mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, ego state techniques, and Internal Family Systems. It has been used successfully to address the challenges of treating individuals with diagnoses of complex PTSD, borderline personality, bipolar disorder, addictive and eating disorders, and dissociative disorders. Because it contextualizes self-destructive behavior as trauma-related, patients feel less pathologized, increasing their motivation to overcome self-destructive impulses as a step toward overcoming trauma.

Somatic Psychology: Part of working somatically means understanding that just because we have got through things, does not mean that our nervous system has. Past events live on in our being and nervous system if they have not found a way through which to discharge and resolve. Somatic therapy works through mindfulness of body sensations and the creation of a safe relational space, within which to safely discharge the survival response and support the nervous system to re-find its natural capacity for regulation.

Coaching: involves dialogue between a coach and a client with the aim of helping the client obtain a fulfilling life. This is achieved by helping the client establish what is important to them and by clarifying their values. With the client’s input the coach co-creates value based goals and a plan to achieve them.

Psychoeducation: 1:1 sessions and groups facilitate the sharing of information that supports individuals develop skills to live better and better lives. In these sessions, people learn about their nervous system and how stress and trauma might have impacted their own and others systems, and how to increase safety, regulation and connection. Skills groups also focus on topics such as relational skills, boundaries, understanding and resolving trauma, tools of regulation, non violent communication and more.

Trauma informed therapy: I work from the principle that everything is fundamentally an intelligent, creative and life affirming response to what might have been crazy and overwhelming situation. Therefore my approach depathologizes symptoms of trauma (including addiction and personality disorders) and honours and pays attention to the health and intelligence of the client and all the ways (however seemingly destructive) they might be bravely navigating life and relationships; and the multilayered context within which coping strategies, character traits, etc arose. I work cognitively and somatically; and with psycho-education to support management of, and resolution of trauma symptoms.

Trauma informed yoga and meditation: Practices to unwind, embody, recharge and restore. Yoga and meditation are scientifically demonstrated timeless techniques of healing and health building. So often in life we are rushing to get to a destination and lose the journey. So often when we begin the healing journey we are rushing to get ‘fixed’ and losing the relationship with all the tender parts of us that need us to open our hearts to them and go slowly. The health is never lost, we are often just moving too fast to feel it. We seek to fix so we can forget ourselves, rather than find and bless ourselves as we are. Meditation and yoga can help us slow down, come home to ourselves, but also anchor us in our bodies and in practices, principles and outlooks that support our emotional, physical and spiritual wellbeing.

Equine facilitated therapy: Equine-assisted psychotherapy can be an evidence-based complementary treatment to traditional therapy. Animals can aid in healing emotional and behavioral conditions. They can provide a source of comfort, consistency, and mutual nurturance, giving support to both the mind and the body.

We exist always in relation — to other humans, to our family and friends, to different communities, social structures, ideologies, the environment and of course in relation to ourselves. If we have been shaped by our relationships then therapeutic relationships can also assist us in re-shaping our lives, and sometimes when trusting humans is out of reach, the contact and deeply healing relationality experienced with an animal in equine therapy can be very transformative.

Ecopsychology: Healing and wholeness is an oxymoron if it does not extend and develop our concept of self – to incorporate the other -whether that is our environment or two legged and multi legged, winged and finned interspecies global community! Ecopsychology works with broadening both healing modalities and the sense of self to include the natural world that we belong to. Groups and one to one work often take place outdoors.

Individual and group work is informed by somatic practices (including nervous system and trauma resolution work). Emphasis is placed on deepening into the true (and often forgotten self) – a felt experience of Health, Love, Joy and Interconnection-  and in realigning to one’s natural strength, resources, felt sense of presence, connection and heart’s compassion. 

SSP protocol: SSP is a comprehensive approach to healing. This unique listening therapy is a journey that brings together the client, therapist and the SSP to create a safe space for brain and body integration and healing to achieve impactful, long-lasting results.

Polyvagal informed therapy : Polyvagal informed therapy is based on Polyvagal theory, originated by Dr. Stephen Porges, which provides a physiological and psychological understanding of how and why people move through a continual cycle of mobilization, disconnection, and social engagement. Based on this theory our Autonomic Nervous System (ANS) is the foundation upon which our lived experience sits. We come into the world wired to connect. Connection and feeling safe is our birth right. “With our first breath, we embark on a quest to feel safe in our bodies, in our environments, and in our relationships with others. The autonomic nervous system is our personal surveillance system, always on guard, asking the question “Is this safe?” Its goal is to protect us by sensing safety and risk, listening moment by moment to what is happening in and around our bodies and in the connections we have to others”. Polyvagal Informed Therapy helps people understand, track and support their nervous system both solo and with others. It can be highly beneficial for a wide range of individuals. It is particularly well-suited for those who struggle with stress, anxiety, trauma, emotional regulation, and interpersonal challenges. People dealing with a history of trauma or those seeking to understand and manage their physiological responses to stress can find significant relief through this therapy. It is also valuable for individuals who wish to enhance their emotional resilience, improve their relationships, and deepen their mind-body awareness. Ultimately, anyone looking to better understand and regulate their autonomic nervous system for the sake of emotional well-being and overall mental health can benefit from Polyvagal Informed Therapy.

Creative arts and therapy groups: Groups include creative writing, dance movement therapy and other forms of therapeutic regulation, self awareness, creativity, expression and connection.