My Expertise and Life Experience and is here to help you.
The path to inner contentment, empowerment and successful relationship is one I know very well myself. I started off a long way from being able to live like that though.
I too have stood at the point of needing help from a therapist or teacher and felt the nerves, dread and hesitation of taking the first step.
I had alot of counselling where I learned about the story of what happened to me but I didn't feel any happier or freer because of it. In my head I knew why I was like I was - anxious, numb, cut off and afraid but I was still just that. I felt lost.
I met a therapist who helped me to start to feel. Feel in my body. I got to know that being numb was actually a thing and that underneath I was full of pain that I had stuffed away because I had to. It was the start of true healing and getting to know and be me. All the therapy I have done has been through feeling in the body - through embodiment, somatic therapy, trauma therapy - all ways of getting in touch with the trauma that was held in my body and releasing it bit by bit to get my aliveness back.
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After a while the therapist I was seeing suggested I do the training he had done. First of all it seemed a ridiculous idea but then I came to see that in my work as an osteopath, it was the emotional part of the body I was really interested in working with. I took the training. For three years I kept doing the inner work myself and fine tuning my ability to help someone else do the inner work too.
Since then, my professional learning and my fascination for human life has never ceased and I have continued to follow my fascination for how we tick as humans. In particular, it is in following the feelings - the emotions, sensations, images and so on that come when we pay attention to what is happening in the body as we speak about our experience that is the thread to follow to find our way out of our difficulty and into more freedom.
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All this inner work and training happened in New Zealand where I lived for eighteen years. Living there has brought me an appreciation of a slower pace of life and a spaciousness that comes from living in a place where nature has the upper hand. I carry that sense of space and of nature with me still and it informs my work.
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My own life experience, together with my numerous trainings in areas of psychotherapy and relating that have continued, means that I am able to hold you in a space for your own growth and support, one where you go at the right pace for you and where a feeling of safety is the absolute top priority.
As a practitioner and in my life, I get to choose and live a culture that I create, that I work to maintain and that is aligned with my values. Goodness, relationship, integrity, love and connection are my priorites. This is the space I invite you into as a client.
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Please be in touch about a free session if you feel I might be able to help you, Grace
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See below about my trainings and qualifications.
Grace is one of those rare and precious beings who lives according to her deep inner knowing rather than the external pressures of how one "should" or "ought" to be. For anyone seeking to explore a new relationship to themselves and the world, she offers a luminous beacon of light.
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Grace combines the wisdom and maturity of a life well lived, with the awe and wonder of an innocent child. She imbues sensitivity and exudes sensuality. She embodies the warmth of welcome and open-minded acceptance, with the congruence of clear boundaries and communication. If you spend time with her, you are truly "touched by Grace".
My Trainings and Qualifications.
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Three Year Psychotherapy Training (2010-2013)
NZAIPT
The pain that is holding us back is held within us until it resolved. Much of the holding is there to protect the parts of us that are too delicate or vulnerable to show themselves because they are hurting. When we access painful feelings, we can befriend them and integrate them so we are no longer at war with ourselves and each other.
Becoming a therapist or guide for others asks us to become very sensitive to what they are feeling and to use that awareness to guide them. Healing must be guided in a way that is at the right pace and not overwhelming. Becoming a practitioner also asks us to walk our talk and do the work ourselves. When we embody this and use our awareness of what we sense in others, we can be a model for them and accompany them as a guide on their journey. A new way of living a nourishing and full life on our own terms becomes available.
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Postgraduate Healing Training (2014)
NZAIPT
As we enter further into this work, we can notice more subtle parts of another and bring this to an even more perceptive experience of holding a healing space.
Embodied, Emotional and Relational Intimacy (2018-2019)
Embodied Intimacy
When we slow down and experience the moment, we can really notice what is happening in our inner world, in our bodies. We can enter relational space with ourselves and so with another. We can grow trust and freedom in the body and thus enter into relationship with ourselves and each other in a new way. We get to create a space with another that is really honest and made out of what we truly want, need and desire. As a therapist, we can use this awareness to be with another with sensitivity and care.
Trauma Awareness Training (2020)
Catherine Hale
Healing occurs in a safe environment where past trauma can be included and held in awareness. Getting to know about different states in the nervous system and how they relate to trauma and also to healing means that we can practice more effectively. A trauma informed practitioner recognises that trauma comes from someone having had no choice about what happens to them. Practicing as a therapist who guides in collaboration and consent with a client offers a platform of choice to the client which in itself is part of the healing.
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Resource: Somatic Empowerment Training (2020)
Embodied Intimacy
With simple and profound practices based on neuroscience research, we can learn to feel grounded and safe in our bodies. We can change the biology of our nervous systems to rewire our response to stress. We can be well equipped with resources we can use at any moment.
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Relating Openly: A Journey Into Evolutionary Relating (2021)
Embodied Intimacy
When we open up the space and borders around how and why we relate, we can create a new paradigm of relationship based around neuroscience research, attachment theory and embodiment. Self responsibility and self leadership open the way for a new way of relating in the world.
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Betty Martin's Wheel of Consent 'Like A Pro' (2021)
Betty Martin
Professional training for practitioners to create a strong container of safety so that the real transformation can happen. Making agreement and consent a central pillar of supporting clients. Helping them to become exquisitely aware of their own needs and boundaries according to what their feelings and their body tells them.
When you know what you want and need and know how to communicate that, freedom to be fully you becomes available. This is true in pleasure and intimacy and you find that it goes for all of life too.
Taking Therapy Outdoors (2022)
Hayley Marshall
Therapy outdoors opens up the opportunity for being in a therapeutic setting outside of the typical 'four walls and two chairs' set up. We are free to walk and move or sit and feel the support of nature around us. We may begin to find that being outdoors is a freeing and creative place to find support and the answers we are looking for in life.
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Embodied Relational Therapy (2022 - 2024)
Allison Priestman & Stephen Tame
Grounded in Reichian body work and body psychotherapy, process approaches, psychodynamic therapies and earth centred spirituality, ERT is a holistic (considering all of a person) and integrative (bringing together different approaches) way of supporting another. It acknowledges that we have the relaxed parts of us and the parts that are constricted and stuck where we are holding back. It acknowledges that we live in a body (embodied) and that relationship (relational) is how we 'do' life with other people, including in therapy. How can we work with those aspects of the push and pull of our free and constricted parts and with the fact of living in a body and and that we are relational beings to facilitate more ease and harmony in another?