heart mind spirit
Welcome
This set of web pages are a shop window for my psychotherapy and supervision private practice based in West London near Richmond, Isleworth, Hounslow and Ealing. They are intended to help you decide whether you would like to work with me. Have a look through the site or contact me with any further questions.
If you would like to read a paper I wrote for BACP here is the information sheet G8 Counselling Asylum Seekers and Refugees
This site is partly self-constructed using those wonderful people at Chameleon but, due to my tinkering, may not behave as expected. Please let me know if there are any glitches in your browser. For example - do you see the glass as half empty or half full ?
Blog
Psychedelic Assisted Psychotherapy
For many years I have been actively exploring the healing potential of altered states. Particularly in working with trauma and pre-verbal wounds I have realised that accessing the 'inner healer' through various forms of 'energy work' such as Holotropic Breathwork can be effective in helping the client's process. All of this is most safely achieved within the context of a container of relational therapy.
More recently I have become involved in the burgeoning renaissance of psychedelic medicines and have been facilitating on medical trials of these substances, most notably psilocybin and DMT. I believe that these substances offer a paradigm shift in the help offered to people with various mental health presentations. During trainings to orient my practice towards psychedelic facilitation and particularly clinical trials, I have learned afresh the importance of preparation and integration for these experiences to be useful. I am also deeply mindful of the wisdom traditions of indigenous communities that have taught us how to use ritual and ceremony with respect to plant medicines.
I do not offer private psychedelic assisted psychotherapy sessions as this type of work is still illegal outside licensed facilities, nor do I encourage people to experiment with substances that have the potential to destabilise outside a clinical setting. However I am able to offer one-to-one integration sessions as needed when slots are available.
The Risks and Rewards of Intimacy
I have been thinking about the generally accepted truth that we all crave intimacy, and that many of us fail to find or maintain it. What is it - this thing that shows up as central in loving relationships, that drives so much of human activity, yet presents so many pitfalls ? And what has any of this to do with therapeutic relationships ?
Depression
Bill Plotkin has just articulated what I have been thinking so instead of a 'depression' blog - here is his musing..
What is therapy anyway ?
I've been thinking about the project of therapy
Parents will fail us. Its practically a given and not something to regret. We will fail our children in some way, if we have them - its part of the job, to grow resilience and autonomy. Show me the offspring of parents that perfectly and immediately meet every developmental need and I will show you a hothouse flower that cannot trust themselves to survive outside of that cushioning.
Brexit - an act of national self-harm.
I don’t usually bring politics to my therapy blog but waking up on Friday June 24th 2016 to such a sense of shock and the subsequent sequence of clients through my consulting room all of whom had been triggered in different ways by this referendum result has given me pause for thought.
Supervision slots are on Wednesdays or Thursdays during the daytime, in Isleworth
Therapy slots are Mondays (daytime and evening) and Fridays (daytimes only) in Ealing. There are occasional one-off slots to explore working with me, or a limited set of three or four when on-going clients are away.
Please get in touch to discuss the type of issues you would like to address.
