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 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 commitment 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 have been a registered British Acupuncture Council practitioner, insured and licensed since 2010.
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 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. My meditation practice has had to shape-shift in response to parenthood but continues to be an anchor to my clinical work.
In 2011 I spent time running a multi bed Acupuncture clinic in India working with children, young people and women affected by drug and human trafficking. It was here that I witnessed the gentleness of Craniosacral work. Soon after, I undertook my Craniosacral Therapy studies 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. I see parenthood to be a time that opens us up to instinctive knowing in a new way. The post-partum time is radical in its explicit invitation 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. The Fourth Trimester Education I offer is rooted in the understanding that as parents, we are weaving the community we live in and the community our children (collectively) land in.
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.’
In more recent years, I am seeing clients who have needed more specialized pelvic care work and skills. I feel the deficit that is present in the mainstream care offered to women and people needing care for pelvic and gynae pathology. I want to be part of a change. Over the past years, I have trained with the Barral Institute - specifically Kirstie Cousins to offer Visceral Manipulation work so that the touch work I offer is more specific and more attentive to the underlying anatomical and physiological landscape. In 2023 I studied with Tami Lynn Kent and trained as a Holistic Pelvic Care practitioner so that my work can include internal pelvic work. In 2023 I undertook an apprenticeship with Kimberly Ann Johnson with whom I continue to study with and assist in in-person teaching events in the UK. Apprenticeships are seldom part of bodywork education in the UK and this was a rich and attuned learning experience that has graced my in person work with much more humanness.
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 a wonderful Craniosacral Therapy supervisor and with an Integrative Body Centered Psychotherapist who has supported me in my work since the beginning.