ndividual therapy

Why therapy?

People come to therapy for different reasons:

• it can be a natural step in a process of learning more about yourself
• to improve your quality of life, your vitality
• when you find that you have difficulty in recognising and/or dealing with your own emotions
• when you feel out of touch with your real feelings, desires and essence.
• when you feel frustrated and limited by emotional or creative blocks
• when you have difficulty in forming or maintaining fulfilling, balanced relationships
• when you suffer anxiety, burn-out or just a feeling that you've lost your way
• when you experience repeated patterns of conflict at work or in relationships.
• or perhaps you just need an additional support at a time of stress or change, when the support of family and friends is not enough.

When you want to go a little deeper than coaching or counselling, and you can function in your everyday life with support from one to one-and-a-half hours therapy in a weekly or fortnightly rhythm, then therapy could be an option for you.

What happens?

There is an initial intake meeting to explore your therapy objectives and to decide if we would like to work together. If we both decide to go further it is usual to agree to work for 5 or 6 sessions with each other and to evaluate the experience together before going further. The duration of the therapy process, and the exact methods of working, depend on the problem or question that you bring to therapy and your own objectives.

Body psychotherapy can include a very wide range of techniques, from subtle body-awareness exercises to expressive and active movements, from visualisation and meditation to working with a breathing roll. Whichever technique is used, the focus is on increasing your awareness of the sensations and feelings that arise. The emphasis is not on cathartic outbursts of feeling, but a slower, quieter process of sensing, containing and transforming feelings. Time is given to exploring any memories or insights that come up, and to making the connections with your family history and background.

In therapy you start to feel more and more your patterns of defense, on a bodily level and on a mental level. Analysis of your family history helps to understand how and why these patterns of defense were created, their value in your past, and where they are triggered in your present-day life. As therapy progresses old and ineffective patterns of defense, of blocking connection, pleasure and spontaneity are worked through, and you find new ways of expresssing yourself and of relating to others.

In the end the goal of therapy is more than the absence of symptoms: it is greater aliveness and energy, being able to respond to your life with joy, inspiration and love, feeling more at ease with yourself and in flow with your current needs.