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Introduction

Focusing has enabled me to transform my life from an existence of micromanaging chronic pain to one of finding myself again. The Focusing process gently created showed me how to feel safe living in my body rather than being stuck in dissociation and freeze which had underpinned much of the pain.

What services do I offer?

What I do:
I am a trained Focusing Practitioner who is also trained in teaching Mindfulness.
I work in person and also by zoom, Skype or phone.

Areas of particular interest include:
Safe embodiment
Spirituality/Meditation
Neuro-education in connection with cultivating health and wellbeing

In particular I find my approach can help people with the following challenges in their lives:
Chronic pain and other similar conditions such as ME and fibromyalgia
Grief

My background in Focusing

In 1999 I was injured in a car accident and left with a severe chronic pain injury. For over 10 years my life was about micro-managing the pain, vertigo and fatigue. I then discovered that trauma from earlier life could be held in the body and I realised this was exacerbating the pain I was experiencing.

I tried other body therapies but they were “too much and too fast” for my body – Focusing, however, was entirely different because the process is at my own speed and I am in charge of it. Focusing has enabled me to find and create a caring relationship with myself and it continues to do so.

It has enabled me to learn to live in my body and feel safe, as opposed feeling constantly trapped in hypervigilance, threat and dissociating; this has meant that my body has led the way in healing many of the traumas from my past. Focusing has also led me into a much deeper spiritual journey in which I have been able to find within me a place of deep Presence, an inner sanctuary of compassionate ease and peacefulness.

Prior to my accident in 1999 I was an occupational therapist who specialised in the long-term rehabilitation of people who suffered an acquired brain injury and also injuries like my own. To support this work I did a 4 year training as a Gestalt psychotherapist in the 1990s. I now find that these two previous work areas underpin and support my ongoing interest in the rapidly unfolding field of relational neurobiology to support the Focusing process particularly when being with places of pain, attachment and deep trauma.

I am currently undertaking my training in Whole Body Focusing and I also have an interest and some training in NVC

Qualifications

2014: Focusing Practitioner (inner-relationship Focusing)
2012/13: various qualification in teaching Mindfulness
1998: Gestalt psychotherapy
1976: Occupational therapy

How do I practice?

• In person
• Phone
• Online

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