My core training was in Reichian psychotherapy – character analysis and bodywork – following which I explored various healing modalities. I taught Holding Therapy, based on Bowlby’s attachment theory and later known as Attachment Therapy, to families with children who were autistic or on the Asperger’s spectrum. I use Bach flower remedies and aromatherapy as adjuncts.< My understanding of the nature of the self – the nature of human nature – comes also from my training in Buddhism, specifically in Satipatthana (Mindfulness practice) and Zen. I re-trained recently in Natural Healing and am a Healer member of the Pilgrim Healers.

My personal practice includes Healing Tao, or Taoist Chi Kung/Qi Gong, which influences and feeds into my therapy and healing work. I am adding Touch for Health kinesiology to my practice. Touch for Health is a non-invasive, simple and safe form of kinesiology that combines modern Western techniques with traditional 5-element Chinese medicine. A great strength of Touch for Health is the number of self-help tools that can be offered to clients to practise on their own and make their own.

I also offer Family Constellations.

All this I place in the fundamental framework, the broader context, of Deep Ecology and Ecopsychology. I have trained with Joanna Macy and am accredited by her as a facilitator of what is now called The Work that Reconnects. Ecotherapy as applied ecopsychology considers human identity as inseparably and intimately part of the natural world.

Healing, i.e. working towards wholeness, therefore includes recognising and re-building this relationship of interdependence, interconnection and inter-penetration, remembering our own true nature as members of this Earth Community.

The corollary is that human psychological distress is (always, inevitably, to a degree) currently bound up the environmental crisis, with ecological destruction and climate change down to human agency.

Ecotherapy has a transpersonal perspective. Loosening the boundaries of the ‘skin-encapsulated ego’, we can, like the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, ‘live … life in ever widening circles’; this is the practice of the greening of the self, of the Ecological Self.

I originally studied Biology with Cultural and Community Studies. From a Youth and Community work background, then working in Forestry management, I have long experience of environmental and outdoor education, latterly as a Forest School programme leader. I also have a Master’s degree in Education by Research. Therapy and Healing both are forms of Transformative Learning, with the aim of enriching life.