History
During the 1980s I completed five years’ training in Somatic Psychotherapy; my principal teachers were Jeff Barlow and Robyn Speyer, who studied at the Gerda Boyesen Institute of Biodynamic Psychology in London. Previously I worked as an accountant, then qualified and worked as a social worker, in the fields of foster care, research and community health.
In 1989, I began private practice as a somatic psychotherapist. Since that time, I have completed additional training in a wide range of modalities, including self psychology, emotion-focused therapy, mindfulness-based interventions, couple therapy, psychoanalytic psychotherapy, and cognitive behaviour therapy.
In 2013, I completed a Master of Counselling at La Trobe University. In 2018 I did a distance course in contemporary relational psychotherapy with the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity (IPSS), New York. In 2021 I began a three-year training in Embodied Imagination, with the International Society for Embodied Imagination. In 2022 I studied Basic and Advanced EMDR with Therapist Training, Australia.
It was through my own personal search for healing and answers that I came to train in psychotherapy. I have completed over twenty years of personal psychotherapy in various modalities, and more than 900 hours of professional supervision of my work with clients.
I have practiced various body-based modalities over the years, including yoga, pilates, meditation and dance. In 2013 and 2014, I studied Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), and attended retreats in Kum Nye Tibetan Yoga at the Nyingma Institute, USA. In 2015 I qualified as a teacher of Mindfulness at Work: Transforming Stress into Well-Being with The Center for Skillful Means, USA.
I am interested in aliveness and embodiment as dimensions of psychological health. My theoretical influences include somatic psychotherapy, self psychology, trauma theory, attachment theory, intersubjectivity theory and neuroscience.
In 2015, I contributed a chapter on The ethics of touch in contemporary psychotherapy to a book edited by Noble, C. and Day, E., Psychotherapy and Counselling: Reflections on Practice (Australia: Oxford University Press). (See Papers menu for a copy).
From 2014 to 2020, I taught classes in holistic and experiential counselling at the Phoenix Institute, the Australian College of Applied Psychology (ACAP) and the Cairnmillar Institute (CMI). Prior to that, from 2005 to 2011, I taught Psychotherapeutic Touch and the integration of verbal, relational and body-oriented skills with the Australian College of Contemporary Somatic Psychotherapy (ACCSP), in Sydney and Melbourne.
From 1997 to 2000, I was a group therapist in the University of Melbourne Centre for Palliative Care Metastatic Breast Cancer Research Project. In that role I co-led supportive-expressive therapy groups for patients with metastatic breast cancer.
