WHAT IS THIS?
Together, we open a heart space and time in which to play, to feel, to grieve, to find our strength, to connect to all which is there to help us. My focus is on helping you find joy, in this weird world, in the most sustainable way for you; sometimes this means we need to know how to welcome grief in the ways it needs, and find joy even there.
How would you like to create a life of health and wholeness? Do you want the medicine of laughter, a space of play, creation, and lightness? Perhaps you are aware that to get there, you may need to bring attention to parts of you that haven’t received the love they need. Maybe you are aware of blockages you want to release, desires you wish to manifest, potential waiting to be fulfilled. Perhaps you just need to relax, or some gentle holding and witnessing, and possibly you aren’t even exactly sure yet…
Ultimately, only you can heal yourself. My role is to support, guide, and reflect your strength to do this back to you.
Little adventures
Even a short time in relaxing trance state can take you out of the normal continuous daily stress, to a place of peace, wonder, and harmony. I work with voice, poetry, story, and playful hypnotherapy, to guide you on an adventure to wherever you want or need to go. You can be very specific (“I want to lie on my back on a boat gently bobbing on the tropical ocean swell, looking at the stars, with the satisfied feeling of having stood up to and seen off dangerous pirates…”), you can come with a particular issue or concern, or you can come just for the tender relaxation of a voice gently helping you, to fantastical feelings within.
Longer adventures and ongoing treatment
We are alive! We can’t help but manifest the creativity of the life force of the universe. We can use that creativity to work with whatever is present, to find ways to grow and transform. Joy and grief walk hand in hand. Even the energies of confusion can be harnessed to help us.
Starting with compassion, sensitivity to safety, and close attention to your needs in the moment, I draw on many ways and paths of healing, intuitively and according to your needs and wishes. Some methods are more conventional, some quite absurd, symbolic, and imaginative. Each journey with each client is unique, and proceeds in large part step by step, walking together for a while on your road to peace and joy.
I encourage you to treat this (and everything in life) as much as possible as a creative collaboration: what can we make from this situation? How can you heal, grow, and transmute what is holding you back? What games are you ready to stop playing in your life, and what games would you like to start playing?
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Hypnotherapy can be very similar to story-telling. I guide you into specific trance states where you can access your own inner healing resources, and connect beyond the limits of your normal conscious self. This can be used for almost any intention, and there are many ways in and many tools at our disposal.
Our inner worlds are dreamlike, poetic, metaphorical, mythological, illogical, spiritual places. They appreciate respectful visits. Through careful navigation and observation of the ways we have structured reality, and the way the soul communicates, we can change our lives from a very deep level. Hypnosis can be extremely focussed, used to work on specific behaviours, and it can be extremely expansive and mysterious.
You are always in control of your experience.
With very close attention to the patterns of communication, with and beyond words, and especially understanding the power of metaphor, myth, and archetype, we can create magic. We have been brought into a very literal, logical, mechanical world, flat and supposedly without meaning. Yet our inner life is poetic, wild, creative, and free. We are the creators of our own meaning, in how we relate to all things. To be free to choose our own meaning is to be truly free.
I work with Poetry and poetic language, focussed with intention to heal, using images your subconscious, your soul, your body, and your heart may understand while your normal consciousness may not, to open trance state doorways to hidden depths. This can be performed in ceremony, and is how I work with Spells.
When we act in this symbolic, metaphoric manner, with intention or not, we are creating Magic and physically bringing the world of the soul, and our deep dreams and desires, into the external world our bodies move in. We help heal the wounds of separation and become closer to whole. I prescribe Psychomagic acts for you to perform.
Ceremony and ritual are ways to focus our attention. They create a special time, out of time, in which we can call in support from far beyond our normal boundaries, in which it is safe for the heart to open to its desires. It can be elaborate and formal, or simple, subtle, and flexible. I can work with you to create the ceremony you need, drawing on the wisdom of tradition yet free from any dogma, and harnessing the power of symbolic action to transcend the normal limits of this world, and trust in spirit.
Often we open a ceremony of spontaneous creation, a sort of game which to a large extent, we make up as we go along, using words, objects, movement, drawing, and other artistic techniques, finding your inner intuitive wizard to make the magic you need. This can be a very powerful and liberating experience.
Sometimes, all you need is to talk, and to be heard and seen. We will always discuss your requirements at the start of every session, and when appropriate, this will lead to a gentle, compassionate space of Counselling.
I have a lot of experience working with psychedelic plant medicines, in a variety of traditions, and am extremely indebted to them for my healing. I am available for advice, guidance, and the holding of space and ceremony. I call this Psychedelic Mentoring.
In particular, I often work with the medicine of Hapé, a non-psychedelic tobacco-based snuff from the Amazon. This is a very beautiful teacher and support, if used with guidance and respect.
Walking has also been a hugely powerful medicine for me. Our relationship with the earth mirrors our relationship with ourselves, and is broken in the same ways. Taking our problems and desires to the land can connect us very deeply. Moreover, we walk with the intention of giving as much as receiving, knowing that when we walk our healing into the world, the collective heals too.
We anchor this in our bodies and in relationship to the living world, and to place. Everything we have comes from the land, and everything belongs to it. Renewing that connection and relationship is one of the biggest things we can do for ourselves, and for the planet.
I will guide you through the whole process, preparing, opening the sacred space and time for us to walk through, guiding us through the landscape, letting you concentrate on your intentions and prayers. Walks are at least 3 hours long. The longest has been 8 days. They can take place almost anywhere – from wild moors to the heart of the city, they all have significance, medicine, and need for healing themselves.
I work with all genders, and in particular am passionate about Men’s Work – coming together to heal as brothers. The wounding this society gives to women is immense, yet in many ways more visible now. Women know they’ve been treated terribly; most men are programmed to deny that anything is wrong. The wounding men receive can often be more hidden, subtle, insidious, far less visible, but no less deep for any of that. We receive strong conditioning to behave unhealthily, as separate, isolated individuals competing for resources. We often have little connection with each other on an emotional or soul level; the very idea of what it means to be a man is incredibly confused. This can make it very difficult to heal, to express who we really are, to know that we can be safe to have feelings. Women (and other addictions…) can’t heal your wounds for you any more, little boy – it’s time to learn to grow up…
Deep immersion in a weekly men’s circle, feeling the power in sharing vulnerability together, has been immensely supportive for me and enabled me to heal so much more than in isolation. I bring the awareness of all this to all my sessions, with all genders, but in particular men, and am working towards making these resources more available. Specific men’s retreats will be held later this year.
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My practise is rooted in our bodies and the earth: although we are capable of imagining infinite reality, it isn’t really real until our body feels it is. Through embodying our dreams and desires, we weave them back into this shared reality, into health for the whole, in all areas of our lives and for the earth.
I consider myself a shaman in the way I connect to and work with the aliveness of all things, and the way they balance. All life is blessed, because to be alive is its own miracle. Let’s learn to start enjoying it!
Healing lies in balance; for full balance one must be connected in some way beyond our conditioned, limited self, to the greater whole. We relate to the planet, the sky, the water, the rocks, soil, plants, animals, sun, moon, and stars, and the inner, spiritual dimensions, in ancient ways which have been part of being human for as long as we have, which have kept us alive and together, and formed who we are.
These tracks of relating are sensuous, emotional, psychological, and often invisible, and are sometimes referred to as energies. They play huge parts in shaping our lives, yet our modern conditioning tries to deny them. Reawakening to this essential part of the human experience is to reclaim much lost power.
I have been touched very deeply by contact with indigenous cultures, and have received much healing from their wisdom. I am extremely grateful there are still some surviving, who are willing to share their cultural technologies for being good, healthy humans in strong, healthy community, and to help us on the path to rediscovering our own indigeneity, our own sense of place and belonging, of sharing power and abundance. This consciousness is always present in my life and work. I would particularly like to thank the Yawanawá, from the Amazon, for their guidance, and acknowledge the influence of many other peoples.
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William Blake said, “Imagination is not a state: it is the human existence itself;” and “To the eyes of the man of imagination, nature is imagination itself.”
How often have you heard (or used) the word ‘just,’ before the word ‘imagination’ or ‘a dream’? It’s easy to dismiss. Yet they are such key parts of our mental, emotional, and physical state, affecting our entire lives. We are ultimately all one, connected to everything, not separate. Yet between duality and unity there is rarely a clear border.
Deep or expansive mystical experiences can be very beautiful; the real trick is to bridge the fantastical back into our everyday, to stitch our dreams back into reality. There may be some hard work involved in this. The parts of us which have fled need gentle coaxing, and won’t return until they feel it is safe; sometimes this means them seeing you have learnt to face the challenges as a warrior. This is the way to peaceful self-regulation. Your body can be a safe place; even your most wounded parts can return, bringing with them the gifts and powers you need in life.
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