Somatic therapy // Embodiment coaching

Heal from burnout by reconnecting with your body.

You have been sitting on the missing piece of the puzzle for resolving anxiety, depression, chronic fatigue, frequent illness and brain fog: your body.

Somatic coaching helps you bring back together the splintered parts of yourself so that you can move forward with energy, clarity and joy.

Does it feel like you’ve been stuck in burnout forever?

Do you struggle to summon the energy to complete daily tasks that used to feel easy?

Do you feel trapped in a state of low mood, low expectations and low self-esteem?

Do you feel betrayed by your body’s frequent aches, pains and illnesses?

Do you feel overwhelmed by the needs of those around you and despair at ever being able to meet them?

Do you find yourself caught in bouts of unshakable sadness, anger, irritability or apathy?

Has your once-prized ability to concentrate, and to think things through, deserted you?

Are you simultaneously hopeful and terrified about starting all over again from where you are?

Burnout is hell.

I know, I’ve been there.

One minute you’re speeding along at eighty miles per hour, checking off one thing after another from your to-do list and being the person other people expect you to be in all aspects of life. You’re making progress in your career, your relationships are gathering momentum, your skills and capacities seem to be improving, you’re moving the needle on all those things that you’re pretty sure you think you kind of want, and then – WHAM!

You find yourself at the bottom of a deep ravine without the skills, energy or know-how to climb out again.

Your career is in trouble, your relationships are in trouble, your mental health is in trouble and your dreams are in trouble. And whereas in the past you’d have been up on your feet fighting like crazy for all of them, now you have barely enough motivation to care.

It’s unbelievably frustrating: the person you used to be seems only the breadth of a shadow away, and yet somehow the gap is utterly unclosable.

Your willpower, which you relied upon to get you through anything, is no longer enough.

A new approach is needed.

New parts of you need to be recruited for the journey.

New energies need to be cultivated.

New ways of being.

Your burnout is a sign that there are parts of you have been neglected for too long.

Now is the time to awaken them.

I am here to help you.

Too little energy, too much thought.

You’re in the right place if…

You can’t sleep at night but you want to spend all day in bed
You are sick – with colds, digestive issues, migraines – much more often than you should be
You get mysterious aches and pains – sometimes really quite debilitating ones – that disappear and reappear seemingly at random
You are desperate to throw yourself into the thick of life but can’t seem to muster the energy
You find yourself unable to control your anger, fear or sadness
You get caught in loops of indecision, ruminating over the possibilities endlessly but unable to act
You have a creeping dread that you are not good enough
You use alcohol, drugs or food to numb the anxiety
You feel like you can’t cope with what life is throwing at you
You feel overwhelmed by the demands of family, friends and society
You feel shame about all this and so you spend increasing amounts of time by yourself

You know it shouldn’t have to feel like this.

If only you could…

Find a way to stop being overwhelmed by anxiety, fatigue and depression, so you could be the person you know you’re capable of being. So you could laugh, and dance, and sing, and play, and enter into the stream of life with the whole of yourself.
Find a way to let go of all the fear and stress that’s accumulated over so many years of trying to keep it all together, so you could feel easier and lighter. So you could freely express your love, your passion and your creativity.
Find a way to stay present and connected to yourself and those around you, so that you don’t lose yourself in repetitive, predictable, compulsive overthinking. So you could focus on what’s important and make progress towards the life that you want to build.
Find a way to express your needs and enforce your boundaries, so that you don’t end up taking too much on and then suffering in silence until you implode. So that you could live more authentically and show up more effectively for the people and causes you care about.
Find a way to enter into a compassionate, loving, accepting dialogue with yourself, so that you could heal all that shame and all those feelings of not being enough. So you could breathe more easily, sleep more soundly and feel more comfortable in your own skin.

But something is standing in the way.

You know that you’re ready to heal but you don’t know where to go from here.

Perhaps you’ve tried counselling or psychotherapy before but you found yourself talking round and round the same stories with little progress.

Perhaps you’ve tried physical exercise or yoga but found yourself more drained than energised afterwards.

Perhaps you’ve tried pharmaceuticals but found the side effects too costly.

Perhaps you’ve tried meditation, but found that you couldn’t sit still for long enough.

Your instincts towards these interventions were good ones but you need a path, a framework, that knows how to use these techniques to get to the root causes of your symptoms without triggering your body’s well-developed defences.To be a better friend to yourself.

You need a system that can get around…

Distraction – your burnout is a signal from your body that something is wrong, but there’s too much noise to work out what that signal is.
Certainty – we’re supposed to know ourselves, aren’t we? It’s hard to admit when you haven’t got a clue what’s going on, to open up to it.
Judgement – you judge your emotions and feelings harshly when you feel that they’re not acceptable.
Holding on – and because you judge them harshly you try to keep them in, keep them hidden.
Tension – your tension stops the emotions from doing their thing, stops the energy from flowing, until they burst out in an uncontrolled way.
Self-loathing – there are parts of you that disappoint you, perhaps even disgust you, and so you disown them.

You wish that there was someone who got this. Someone who had confronted the same problems, the same closed-offness in themeselves, and who had a system for working through these barriers, for opening up to new energies, new connections and new goals.

Someone who could help you become more of the person you know you’re capable of being.

Work with someone who understands burnout from the inside.

I’m a somatic coach. I help people struggling with burnout get in touch with their bodies and their feelings, so that they can free themselves from fear and overwhelm, and live with more presence, more connection and more joy.

My own healing journey began in the midst of a deep crisis. Overwhelmed by the demands of family and work, I collapsed completely. Luckily it was only my career that suffered and I managed to hang on to my family while I struggled with deep depression, anxiety, and ever-present feelings of shame and hopelessness.

My salvation came in the form of a massage.

A simple thing with profound, wordless meaning that connected me with parts of myself that I had ignored for a long, long time. Parts of myself that were crying out for love and attention and which had been asking for it in the only way they knew how. By flooding me with painful feelings.

And without really knowing why, or how…

..the body became my route back to health and wellbeing.

I found that the more I got in touch with the sensations in my own body, the more sense I was able to make of my inner world. Everything became clearer, more vivid – the pain and the joy, the sorrow and the love.

I trained as a massage therapist.

And then as a yoga teacher.

And then as a coach.

And now I use touch, and breath, and voice, and movement, and questioning, and listening, and silence to help people access the following qualities, so they can guide themselves back to health and wholeness.

I help people reconnect with their bodies to return to wellness.

It all begins with these six principles.

Stillness

Your body is sending you signals that something is wrong. It’s time to get quiet so that you can hear it.

Curiosity

What is happening here? Can you open up to the sensations you find in the body? Can you give them space to be felt?

Acceptance

Can you be okay with what you find there? With the feelings, and with what they’re telling you?

Release

How do these feelings want to express themselves? What do they need?

Relaxation

Can you allow their energy to flow through you freely? To do its thing?

Self-love

Can you validate these parts of you? Can you find compassion for them? Can you bring them into your sense of self?

The goal is to integrate mind and body.

When you bring back together all the splintered parts of yourself into a harmonious whole, where each part is valued and cherished, then you will naturally open up to more connection, more love and more joy.

We’ll be a great fit for working together if…

You appreciate that healing your nervous system takes effort and you’re ready to begin working towards a life of greater presence and connection;
You’ve already done some self-exploration through other forms of therapy, spiritual practices, self-help books or coaching, but it feels like a major part of the puzzle has been missing;
You’re into music and dancing (even if you think you’re not very good at it);
You have no problem admitting that you have no idea what’s going on;
You are aware that you are an animal;
You also know that you are more than an animal;
You have an open mind when it comes to other people’s reality tunnels – eastern medicine, ayurveda, astrology and animism are all of interest to you.

We probably won’t click if…

You’re looking for a quick fix, for someone to fix you or for some secret trick or hack that’s going to magically erase your symptoms overnight;
You’re not prepared to go into uncomfortable territory in order to learn more about yourself;
You want to learn how to control your feelings rather than get better at feeling your feelings;
You want to go over and over the same old stories of how people in your life are the cause of your discontent instead of looking for the cause in you;
You can’t keep appointments;
You’re afraid of looking silly;
You’re afraid to try.

Ready to escape from overwhelm and regain your presence, connection and joy?

There are three ways I can help you in your recovery from burnout.

In-person somatic therapy.

I will guide you to reconnect with your body using touch, breath, voice and movement.

Through listening to your body, we will heal your nervous system, develop your awareness of emotional states and uncover the old, unhelpful patterns that led you to burnout, so that you can let them go.

Learn more

Online somatic coaching.

We will use guided self-enquiry, breathwork and somatic movement to investigate the sources of burnout that reside in your body and your mind so that they can be attended to and healed.

We will unlock the energy trapped in these old patterns so that it can be redirected into new life goals.