Overview

In simple terms, I would say that I work with the mental health side of physical health, and the physical health side of mental health. Somatic Movement Therapy works with this overlap between how we feel in our physical body and our emotional experience too. It places your experince as central, so how you feel and what you notice. It explores how movement and bodywork approaches can support your well-being, health and development.

As with all therapeutic work, the relationship between myself and those I work with is key to the benefit of the therapy. So I give time to develop trust and a sense of safety. This means that the work is often gently paced, reflective and builds over time, rather than a quick fix or treatment. 

I intend to support those I work with to:

  • Listen to their bodies.
  • find what needs to move, or be expressed. 
  • Find what they might need to receive or let go of. 
  • follow the process of what their body holds, at a pace that is right for them.

My work is based on: 

  • Humanistic Counselling (Dip Coun) – skills in building relationship, communication and understanding.
  • Somatic Movement (1000 hour training)
  • Integrative Bodywork & Movement Therapy IBMT (570 hours training)
    • Embodied Anatomy – the stuff of our bodies, what is underneath the surface. 
    • Movement Repatterning – ways to find release and new pathways to move and be in the world, through bodywork and guided movement.
    • Developmental Movement – the process we all go through from the womb to finding our way to walking and beyond. It includes a map of fundamental aspects of human movement that underpin how we find our way in the world. It can open up resources and a greater sense of freedom.
    • Authentic Movement – skills in witnessing another and tracking our experience of what we notice. 
  • Clean Language – ways of asking key questions, to support someone having a closer connection to themselves, to know and explore more of what they are interested in. 
  • being playful and improvising.

Context

I also acknowledge that any therapeutic work is not in isolation. As well as the elements of our personal and life-experience, there is also range of social, political and structural factors that affect us. These include the impact of hierarchies, systems of privilege, injustice and oppression. The work can be about inner change as well as responding to external factors: acknowledging what can be changed or resourced, and what is beyond the individual’s responsibility (so grieving; accepting; resourcing or moving into some sort of social action).

As a practitioner I reflect on my place in the wider system, aiming to be conscious about biases held and avoid assumptions about those I work with in relation to race, gender, sexual-orientation and neuro-diversity.  Somatic practices give us (me included) the opportunity to slow down and get to know how the stuff of our bodies feel. The more we can feel of ourselves, the more we can feel of others. This self awareness and tuning in to others can help us be in relationships that can be understood and healed.