"If you can sense it and feel it, you can change it"
Thomas Hanna
Welcome to Embodied Explorations, your guide to holistic wellbeing. By blending somatic movement, embodied therapy, and humanistic psychotherapy, I invite you to foster a deeper connection between your mind and body.
Begin Your Journey, Find Your Path to Wellbeing
Somatic Movement Therapy
Somatic Movement Therapy (SMT) involves bringing awareness to the process of living inside the human body in its wholeness with a felt sense. Thus, bringing balance in your body-mind relationship.
In SMT we will focuses on how your movement, body awareness, and physical sensations relate to your emotional and psychological wellbeing. Instead of working only through talking, it helps you notice and change patterns held in your body. Thus, SMT combines mind–body awareness, gentle movement, and nervous system regulation.
By slowly exploring movement and sensations that arise from the inside of your body, you can:
- Release stress, trauma and emotions held in the body
- Release chronic tension and pain
- Improve posture and mobility
- Regulate the nervous system
- Process emotions connected to bodily sensations
- Reduce anxiety and depression
- Develop awareness of the relationship between your body and mind
- Develop your self awareness
Somatic Yoga
The word Yoga comes from the Sanskrit root ‘yuj’, meaning ‘to yoke’ or ‘unite’. One way of thinking of yoga is as the practice of ‘uniting’ mind and body through the medium of the breath and movement to help bring a greater sense of awareness, curiosity, and clarity to each moment. This internal approach is a practice that can support and awaken the body in ways that bring a sense of balance, integration and ease to the many layers of the body, inside and out.
As a teacher I feel passionate about making movement relevant to everyday life and to help you access simple tools that you can use to find a sense of ease and freedom in your body. Increasingly, I integrate the practice of hanna Somatics within my Yoga teaching as they complement each other so well.
Hanna Somatics
Thomas Hanna discovered that by being engaged in attentive dialogue with the body-mind connection you can respond to sensations and consciously alter movement patterns and habits to become pain free and move more easily by resetting the nervous system. Hanna Somatics at its most basic is a way of teaching your muscles to relax and stay that way.
This is achieved using 'pandiculation': a full body yawn as opposed to stretching. You may instinctively pandiculate as you wake up in the morning; where you gently contract into the tightness, then slowly release out of it. Pandiculation enables you to reset your brain to muscle connection, just like updating the software on your computer.
The exercises are a safe and accessible way of working with injuries, tension, postural problems and pain. They are practised on the floor, very slowly and consciously to calm the nervous system and help to cultivate moment to moment awareness of your sensory experience. In this way, you gain insight into the root causes of your tension and pain, which can be both physical and emotional/ psychological in nature.
Humanistic Psychotherapy
Sometimes adverse life experiences can leave us struggling and needing some extra support to get through difficult times. No matter what you are struggling with at any moment, it is important to know that you are not alone, no matter what challenges you are facing. I truly believe that we all have the potential to grow and heal and that counselling and psychotherapy works to facilitate this process.
Counselling and psychotherapy can often seem like a frightening and daunting experience. It doesn't need to be, in therapy you will never have to talk about anything you do not want to and will always be in control of the process and the pace to pursue your own growth in your own unique way. Just talking to someone about your issues, feelings and thoughts can make a profound difference and enable you to find your way.
“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change”
Carl R. Rogers
Walk And Talk
Walk and Talk therapy offers an opportunity to combine the therapeutic work of counselling with the great outdoors, where we explore issues and problems in the natural environment. Walking alongside each other, literally and metaphorically can feel like being on a more of an equal footing. This can enable you to open more and engage with difficult feelings, making your sessions more productive.
Working together we co-create a space for you to slowly explore your inner landscape to release chronic pain and tension.
Supervision
Supervision is a co-creative relationship where both you (the supervisee) and me (the supervisor) meet with the intention of enhancing your personal and professional development in relation to your client work. For example, exploring what is going on for you while staying open to phenomena arising in the present moment. If we really are free to allow experience to flow, free from the fear of judgement, then not only do we allow rich possibilities for insight and creativity, but we also create the best possible chances for our way of being to be beneficial to our clients through awareness of our being. My aim is to co-create with you a place in which you feel deeply safe and free to explore what you are experiencing in relation to your client work.
Supervision with people who work outside the field of counselling and psychotherapy…
My supervision practice is not restricted to counsellors and psychotherapists. If you think you would benefit from a space to support you in relation to your work with people, I would be delighted to hear from you.
Experience Lasting Transformation
After working with me, clients often report a profound release from emotional and physical pain.
You'll gain a new-found awareness of your own boundaries and acquire powerful tools to navigate life better.
My aim for you is to move through the world grounded and balanced, with a deep bank of self-compassion within.
Self-care and self-love become paramount in your mind.
"Just because no-one else can heal or do your inner work for you, it doesn't mean you should do it alone"
Lisa Olivera
"Embodied Explorations has profoundly changed my life. The gentle guidance from Su helped me connect with my body in a way I never thought possible, bringing deep peace and regulation to my nervous system"
Hanna, SW Scotland