how do i know it’s for me?  how much does it cost? will you fix it? well then whats the point? will it get worse? how do you touch?  do you speak a lot? do i have to take my clothes off? what do you mean by dialogue? i’m not a dancer / athlete / mover / artist…can i do this? is it therapy? what do you mean by somatic education? will this interfere with my religion?

how do i know it’s for me? by trying it.

what does it cost? I offer a sliding scale of session and treatment fees depending on circumstances. I would like to receive £45 for a one hour session, and £65 for an hour and a half session.

will you fix it?    no   well then whats the point? i do not promise to fix anything that is ‘wrong’ or to change you. we start with the understanding that you are adequately surviving just as you are, everything in your life has brought you to this moment of being, so its all ok. if you have, or develop, a medical or psychological condition, the support and input of the medical profession is important and i work with your permission with traditional medicine to keep you safe and alive. what I do offer (…notice it’s still not a promise..) is to work with you to see if together we can make it, so that through movement, touch, dialogue, relaxation, awareness and expressing as well as allowing emotions things may shift. the need to fix something is understandable, but its not how the body works. the fact you have something grabbing your attention is already the road to recovery. the point is to understand that if you pay attention, attend to learning what causes something, what makes it worse, what makes it better, what helps somewhat and trust that what you need for your healing, lies within yourself…unless its acute and a medical emergency, then we go to A&E

will it get worse? sometimes; although whatever it is may not actually be getting worse, you just begin to notice more…at other times what you first come with resolves, only to reveal something else…sometimes you find a resource and it never bothers you again.

how do you touch? with your permission, with intention and focus, with awareness. touching is a relationship. there is a dialogue between bodies and i use touch to listen as well as offer information back.

do you speak a lot? i will find words as i touch and move with you; to name what i notice, i will encourage you to find your own language and ways of communicating, it does not always have to be spoken…and yes, i do love words so if its too many you can tell me to be quiet.

do i have to take my clothes off? no, somatic bodywork can happen fully clothed, sometimes you may want to feel skin on skin or the ground under your feet. for treatments you have to expose skin, my towels and blankets will keep you decent and warm.

what do you mean by dialogue? somatic enquiry is in itself a dialogue. one you have with yourself and when working with me, together we find words to express what we notice. words are not always easy, so we can choose to move, or to draw or write. if we do find words they are anchored in kindness. there is always a dialogue within your body. tissues from the components of a cell to the denser structures of bone, flesh, fluids, organs and nerves are in constant dialogue of flux and flow. we use our conscious self to listen, enhance and join in with this dialogue. there is always a dialogue between your moving self, gravity and space. we discover how to notice it, how to play with it, how to be supported by it. there is a dialogue between yourself and the things that are not yourself, how we relate is a dialogue. when paying attention it sometimes can get intense, it is easy to become too serious, so we dialogue with humour, with simply saying what  is, for in this dialogue there are no rights and wrongs.

i’m not a dancer / athlete / mover / artist…can i do this?  everyone has a body, everyone moves, that is enough. to move is a birthright. to engage in somatic enquiry is allowing yourself to expand what you know and do with your body. imagining you have to be graceful, powerful, elegant and creative before you even start only hinders. when we do something regularly we become used to the language, imagery and peculiarities of what we do. we develop these as we go along. you will discover qualities unique to you and the need to form comparisons will fade.

is it therapy? somatic enquiry, whilst using somatic movement therapy, is not the same as psychotherapy. however, working therapeutically with your body, with movement and touch, understands that you engage in a process. process  happens over time and means that the things we are not quite aware of can pop up. this can be information from your personal history, it can be part of your spiritual growing. it can be what the body stores for us, what it invites us to take notice of, what it can inspire us to embrace… together with these pop ups there can be trauma; stored trauma is shock, bad experiences, lost moments that have not yet found expression or integration. to help with this shock we will orient on where in your body in this moment now, you feel ok. we will expand the awareness of yourself in your body, so you have resources to let the trauma through you. this can happen creatively, moving, writing, with drawing talking; with feeling and expressing emotions. once it is through, there can be relief and more dynamic energy for living today. this is not always an easy journey, nor does it always have to be difficult. with patience and kindness we work with what is. sometimes the trauma is so deep, so ancient and so powerful, somatic bodywork alone is not enough to transform it. then i may offer you information about people who have the skills to work with the personal and relational trauma that binds you to the imbalance we together can not shift.

what do you mean by somatic education?  it is a learning that happens by moving, by playing, by engaging all our sense, asking questions, pointing out the obvious and having fun. it is knowledge already in your body. we are educating the doubt, the need to know already, the not-good-enough chatter in our cortex to take a back seat. it is reconnecting you to intuition, learning how to wait so that when you find words they are about your felt truth. it is an education that allows you to be absorbed, to enter a flow of discovery and that honours your uniqueness.

will this interfere with my religion?  no. faith and spiritual beliefs are deeply personal and i respect individual connections to these.