ABOUT EMILY
My background in Psychology & Performing Arts lead me to work within community and education environments using art as a means for cohesion and inclusion.
A particular series of projects I undertook in a therapeutic prison environment gave me the opportunity to collaborate with residents on long term performance and poetry projects. These projects clearly showed the value of connection to creative expression, embodied experience and to community in times of challenge and difficulty.
This time lead me towards my studies in Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture at the College of Integrated Chinese Medicine in Reading. I am a registered British Acupuncture Council practitioner, insured and licensed with 14 years clinical experience.
Yoga, Meditation and Breath work greatly inform my work. In 2006 and 2011 I spent stretches of time studying yoga and philosophy in India with Acharye Hema, Dr. M.A. Jayashree, K. Pattabhi Jois and his grandson Sharath Rangaswamy. Yoga introduced me to the practice and benefits of Pranayama 'the practice of controlling and working with the breath' to meditation and to working with the voice.
In 2011 I spent time running a multi bed Acupuncture clinic in India working with a group of children, young people and women affected by drug and human trafficking. It was here that I witnessed the gentleness of Craniosacral work for children and those affected by trauma. I trained at the College of Craniosacral Therapy, graduating in 2013.
Following the birth of my son in 2016 an integration took place in my somatic work and the body of postpartum education I offer for therapists and parents began to take shape. Parenthood can be a time that opens us up to instinctive knowing in a new way. The post-partum time can be radical because it invites us explicitly to slow down, to listen in and dance with life in a different rhythm. It is a time centered around bonding. Bonding with a newborn but also re-negotiating and forming bonds with community. It holds an opportunity as a time where we begin forming the world we want our children to grow up within.
I undertook my Birth Story Listening training with Pam England and Danit Tsur Almog and offer Birth Story Listening sessions for those keen to work through material that feels unresolved following a birth experience, pregnancy loss or termination. The Birth Story Listening I offer is trauma informed and centered around the embodied experience.
I undertook my postnatal sankofa training with Abuela Doulas - with Mars Lord and Lorna Philip. The word sankofa is a word in the Twi language of Ghana which means to return, to retrieve and to take - one translation of this word is ‘“it is not taboo to fetch what is at risk of being left behind.”. Abuela Doulas ‘emphasise the need to be culturally safe and to move beyond mere competence to true, unbiased support.’
As a therapist, I too need regulation, support and supervision in my work. I engage with this in many ways but namely with nervous system coach Alicia Fajardo who supports me with ongoing Holistic Biomechanics understanding, with my craniosacral supervisor and with an Integrative Body Centered Psychotherapist.