Tanis Taylor

I am a gestalt psychotherapist working in Hackney. I offer one-to-one sessions in a warm, un-judgemental atmosphere helping you explore your issues with compassion and curiosity. I believe that by being heard, properly heard, within a supportive dialogue we begin to sharpen our own awareness and agency, restoring vitality and opening us up to living life in fuller contact. Life can be difficult and our coping strategies can quickly become habits or even armour. It can be extremely valuable to share what you are living through with a trained professional with a shared compassion for why this might be? I offer a safe, friendly space where you can begin to build trust and gain clarity on relationships, wounds, fears, anxieties and the unhelpful beliefs that might have been keeping you safe but may now be holding you back. Where things are numb or unclear we might work creatively -  using dreamwork, experiment, questions, movement, art - to find out more. I use a Developmental Somatic Psychotherapy (DSP) lens that means I invite the body, regularly, into the conversation and am always interested in what's happening non-verbally for you, and between us. I have been seeing clients for over a decade and feel priviledged to have worked with a wide range of life experiences from grief, anxiety and esteem, depression, desensitisation, creative blocks and burnout, neurodivergent adjustments to a neurotypical world, parenting, menopause, climate anxiety, death and dying. Rather than lead with labels I  work with processes - processes that are dynamic, relational and therefore plastic and available to change. Context matters - we humans don't exist in a vacuum but in complicated cultural fields that inform how we each reach out or let go - and while we might have only limited power in influencing our wider field, there is always awareness and usually choice in what we do next. This is something you and I can experiment with and grade with a view to practising beyond the therapy room. I offer neutrality and total confidentiality and will work collaboratively, at a pace informed by you. As a writer I bring a familiarity to the creative process and as an ex-dancer I can see how the body can remember, practise fixed routines and hold traumas at a cellular level but also become limber, unlearn and heal. I see clients long-term or short term, face-to-face and over Zoom. In 2020 I began working outdoors and recognise now how being in nature can be an extremely valuable support to the process. I have co-facilitated a monthly climate circle in London for five years and remain constantly astonished at the ability of feelings to move and flow given the simple oxygen of being witnessed. ‘There is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist… The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions it is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.’ Martha Graham, dancer and choreographer