‘I don’t ask for the sights in front of me to change, only the depths of my seeing’

Mary Oliver

Therapies

Arts Therapy | Nature-based Therapy | Lifespan Integration

I work outdoors in a natural environment in Derbyshire, UK, which includes an ancient woodland, meadow and open landscapes, providing privacy, options of long views, as well as sheltered spaces and the opportunity to engage with life in the natural world. I also provide online sessions for those who are further afield.

I am an HCPC registered Arts therapist, trained in Lifespan Integration therapy and Nature-based therapy. I offer a safe, supportive and confidential a space, attuning to my client's processes and needs. I believe in therapy that offers people their own agency and being in partnership together with the therapist, navigating new ground that is unique for each individual.

The effects of traumatic experiences can leave a legacy that can develop over time into what we recognise as mental health problems. Difficulties such as depression, anxiety, sleep issues, addictions, relationship stress and many physical issues often find their roots in unattended traumatic events earlier in life. I deliver therapy that places the client’s needs in the centre of the work, building on the healing work at a pace that suits them, and doesn’t re-traumatise.

Sessions are booked on a weekly or fortnightly basis depending on need, and the focus for therapy is determined on a mutually agreed basis. I offer short-term focussed work, and medium to long term depth work.

An environmental arts sculpture

An environmental arts image

Nature-based Therapy outdoors
Being in natural environments offers not only a location, but also a dimension to therapy that can enhance and enrich your experience. I work in a way that invites engagement with your relationship with the living world as an active participant to the therapy process.

Sessions usually include walking (generally at a slow pace), sometimes sitting, and talking together, allowing space for engaging with aspects of the landscape you might feel drawn to. We follow the themes you bring, supporting you in exploring your experience and feelings. I sometimes invite gentle therapeutic and creative exercises to support your process.

Taking ourselves out to nature naturally slows down our pace, allowing us to be more mindful. Our senses are heightened and this can invite us to pay more attention to our connection to ourselves, as well as the living world we exist in. We become more attuned to our embodied experience which helps to turn our attention to our internal - external relationship. This relationship can help to regulate us through calming, or invigorating, our nervous system. This offers a different dimension to integrating difficult feelings and past experiences to having therapy in an indoor setting.

I combine the focus on our nature-relatedness with creative arts therapy and lifespan integration therapy to support your individual needs and to integrate past wounds. I work outdoors in most weathers (except during weather such as high winds and storms), which means we attend to our relationship with the weather as part of the whole experience, the issues that come up, and the needs of you as an individual.

Working together in and with the environment

Arts Therapy
Working with our imagination and engaging with creative processes activates parts of the brain that brings greater connection to our emotional states, memories, and our embodied, sensory experience.

This can be anything from paying attention to the metaphors in our language, to forming sculptures with objects, or creating characters and stories over a number of sessions. The creativity that is brought into a session is always in response to an aspect of the work that the client is wanting to explore. When we explore or express our personal material in this way, our discoveries become significantly more memorable and this supports the speed of our therapeutic process.

Creative rituals also play a part in the Arts Therapies. Ritual offers us a threshold to cross, providing a marker for a before and an after. Whether a ritual is small and momentary or planned and more involved it can feel hugely profound for us as they hold strong personal meaning, and acknowledge a transformation that is marked in an embodied way.

Lifespan Integration
Lifespan integration (known as LI) supports the body-mind through the repetition of a timeline of memories to understand that past trauma is over and encourages embodied presence and integration. Developed by Peggy Pace in 2002, LI fosters the development of a more coherent self.. that is, feeling more whole and solid in ourselves.

Together, the client and therapist collate a list of some of the client’s memories into a timeline of ‘memory cues’: a few words that cue the client to past memories when read out by the therapist. The memories - pleasant as well as unpleasant ones - connect the client to different stages of their life and, with repeatedly hearing their timeline, are brought to the present. With the iterations of each timeline, the client has the opportunity to experience connecting to their lifespan from different perspectives, allowing memories and feelings to safely emerge. The timeline can be delivered in ways that, through adjustments, can maintain a process that feels emotionally accessible to the client.

LI helps to heal past trauma wounds, including all forms of abuse, disruption to early development, relationship issues, one-off traumatic events, and global or shared events (such as the covid pandemic). Although it is a directive way of working, the direction and pace of it is informed by the client’s body mind (i.e. the nervous system, sensations, hormonal responses, thoughts, memories and associations). I offer LI sessions online and an adapted version of LI when working outdoors.