Transformative bodywork

Bring the splintered parts of yourself back together.

Free yourself from anxiety and depression. Open up to more pleasure, more connection and more joy.

Awaken your vitality

Do you struggle with any of the following?

Anxiety
Depression
Chronic fatigue
Burnout
Low self-esteem
Impostor syndrome

Modern life places the human organism under great strain.

Shocks and traumas lie unresolved in the body. They hide in muscular tensions and unhelpful patterns of behaviour that block the freely flowing energy needed to experience health and wellbeing.

Imagine how it would feel to know that you could…

Cope with stress

Heal from trauma;
Access deep relaxation;
Realise the future you imagine.

Be at home in your body

Free yourself from pain;
Enjoy abundant energy;
Enjoy better digestion and better sleep.

Be more at ease with yourself and with others

Express yourself freely;
Get your needs met;
Feel comfortable with new situations and new people.

Find love for yourself

Connect more deeply with others;
Be present for yourself and your loved ones;
Experience more pleasure and joy.

A different kind of therapy

Transformative bodywork will change you from the outside in.

You might have tried to attain freedom from anxiety and depression through medical interventions or psychological therapies and found them either unhelpful or limited in efficacy. That’s because those kinds of treatments take for granted that mind and body are separate. My approach is different.

Mind and body are one

Working with and through the bodymind, using touch, breath, voice and movement, you can reprogramme yourself at a fundamental level.

Analysis is not essential

Your bodymind can heal itself without your rational mind having to understand why and without having to dredge up and relive your wounds.

Tension is the key, relaxation the goal

Trauma is locked in your body in the form of muscular tension. Release these blockages and you will be more grounded, more centred, and more open to your feelings without being flooded by them.

get freer faster

Transformative bodywork will…

Bring you to a place of relaxation and stillness where the body’s own healing magic kicks in;
Train your bodymind to more quickly access states of profound relaxation where change and growth occur;
Regulate and harmonise the different modes of your nervous system so that one mode does not predominate;
Free up energy and emotion that has become trapped and stagnant in your body;
Develop your body awareness so you can better feel and read the signals your body is sending;
Provide space in which you can find love for your body and love for your self.

If you’ve tried other forms of therapy and found them too invasive, too intellectualised, too medicalised or too woo-woo then transformative bodywork might be for you.

Frequently Asked Questions

Live free from anxiety and depression while opening up to more presence, more connection and more joy

Transformative bodywork is a form of somatic therapy that takes as its starting point that your body, mind and soul are not seperate but are interrelated at every level. Your vital energy is naturally expansive, present, connective and expressive but somewhere along the line – usually during early childhood – your bodymind learned that it was unsafe to expressive itself in certain ways and developed defences against these kinds of expression.

In psychotherapy you might spend a long time uncovering and analysing the events and emotions that led to the creation of these defences, working through the rational mind to unloosen these psychic blocks. Transformative bodywork takes for granted that these defences are also manifest in the body – as patterns of muscular tension – and that solely by working through the body to dissolve these defences, vitality, self-expression, pleasure and joy can be restored. There is no need to go into extended biography and the revisiting of old wounds.

I use massage, stretching, breathwork, movement and voice, working with the body to release trapped emotional energy and produce lasting shifts throughout the whole of your being.

Sessions take place in a warm, comfortable treatment room. You remain fully clothed throughout. Bodywork takes place on a thick mat placed on the floor.

Anyone who doesn’t feel at ease in their own body. When you’re not at home in your own body you don’t feel up to meeting any of life’s challenges and opportunities.

Pain, anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, apathy, chronic fatigue, digestive problems, low mood and low energy can all limit your freedom to move, to express yourself and enjoy life.

Transformative bodywork uses the power of touch, breath, voice and movement to help bring the splintered parts of yourself back together into an integrated whole, so you can:

cope better with stress;
free yourself from anxiety;
resolve your painful symptoms;
heal your traumas;
find love for your body;
find love for your self;
express your needs more easily;
unlock an abundance of energy;
and live with more vitality.

You are your body.

Your body is your only set of tools for interacting with the physical plane of existence. Whatever you do in this life, whatever action you take, whatever thoughts you think, whatever feelings you feel, whatever you give, whatever you receive, all of it goes through the body.

It is common to categorise issues like pain, anxiety, chronic fatigue, digestive issues, insomnia, low-self esteem as being either physiological (i.e. originating in the body) or psychological (i.e. originating in the mind) or emotional.

A holistic approach sees every issue as having mental, physical and emotional components which come together – there is no root cause, only a lack of balance and harmony between these different aspects of the self.

Which is great news, because it means that no matter the issue, there is always a way to connect with it through working with the body.

Since mind and body are one – the bodymind – then all work on the body is also work on the mind. To put it in western scientific terms (ish), the more of your bodily sensations you can access, the more of the pre- and post-central ramus of your brain lights up and the more your sense of self develops.

Developing body awareness is a critical strand of all self-development work and mastery of the physical body is a necessary preliminary stage in many ancient wisdom traditions. Your ego, though it may kid itself otherwise, resides in your body and can only be strengthened by sense impressions that it receives through the body.

The objective of transformative bodywork is to melt the defences of the ego – defences which were once necessary to protect it from pain and disappointment but which are now locked into the body as tension and which act as barriers to love and joy. When the bodymind discovers that these defences are no longer necessary, it will abandon them quickly in favour of a more present, connected and authentic way of being.

No. While you might seek out bodywork for some of the same reasons as you would seek out psychotherapy, i.e. to help with issues that modern science has classified as being ‘in the mind’, or for personal development and growth, bodywork is not a form of talk therapy.

While we will of course talk about the reasons you’ve sought out transformative bodywork, the challenges you need help with and your goals for therapy, the interventions here are focused on the body.

While we might be looking for a transformation in your relationship with self and others, in bodywork there is no need to consciously understand the psychological dimensions. Changes in the mind and in the heart are accomplished by transforming the body and your relationship to your body.

By opening up the body and allowing the uninhibited flow of life energy, you will free your natural impulses for creativity, self-expression, freedom, humour and joy which will replace older, unhelpful patterns.

Of course, if you really want to deepen your knowledge of self, then it is a very good thing to understand the psychological and psychodynamic aspects of your growth and development. Ideally everyone undergoing transformative bodywork would also undergo psychotherapy and vice versa. I encourage my clients to journal while they are in treatment, especially in the early stages, to assist the process of integration.

But most people who seek out bodywork find that they can access much greater levels of energy and enthusiasm for life through working with the body alone and don’t necessarily need to delve into their psychological history.

TRE® is a method of releasing stress that is stored in the body through exercises which encourage the body to tremor. I use similar techniques in transformative bodywork which I’ve borrowed from the bioenergetics of Alexander Lowen et al. In this school, unlike in TRE®, you are encouraged to feel the feelings that come up through release exercises rather than just release them, so that you learn how to identify them and process them in daily life instead of letting them build up so that they need to be released all the time. You could say that my system encompasses most of TRE but goes further.

Somatic experiencing is more like talk therapy in the sense that you spend most of the time sitting in a chair talking about what you’re experiencing in your body as your therapist helps you to revisit traumatic episodes. In transformative bodywork you’ll never be sitting in a chair (unless you physically can’t get on the floor) and you won’t be asked to revisit your traumatic episodes (though you can if you want to and I will hold the space for you to do so).

You will normally feel some benefit after just one session.

After six sessions there will usually be a significant reduction in symptoms. At this point many people feel like they have sufficient mastery of the basic ideas that they can continue working by themselves.

Other people need help getting to the roots of chronic issues that have been a lifetime in the making, which often takes sustained work during weekly sessions over many months, perhaps even years. There are no short cuts.

I will only take you on as a client if I’m confident that I can help. We’ll decide this together in an initial 20-minute consultation over Zoom.

The next step is to come in for a 30-minute taster session where we’ll decide if we’re a good fit to work together.

After that, I’ll ask you to commit to six sessions (once per week, schedules permitting).

In the first two sessions we’ll establish goals for the therapy and by the sixth session you’ll know whether you’ve made significant progress towards those goals.

The inital 20-minute telephone consultation is free.

The 30-minute taster session is also free and there are no strings attached – I only want to work with clients who are motivated and who want to work with me.

After the taster session, if you wish to proceed in earnest, I will ask you to commit to a minimum of six 50-minute sessions.

These must be paid for in advance at a cost of £600.

After the initial six sessions, if you continue with transformative bodywork, you will be billed monthly at a rate of £100 per 50-minute session.

None.

Transformative bodywork is not something that can be passively received. You must be committed to the work and to the process of change.

You will get homework assignments to complete between sessions – which usually take the form of daily exercises – and you will be expected to do them or to explain why you haven’t.

You will be held with compassion and without judgement in this space but there won’t be anywhere to hide. Your defences will be a focal point of the therapeutic work.

The work will often be uncomfortable. But if you sincerely commit to it, you will surely change, and the rewards will be magnificent and last forever.

Are you ready to start working towards a life free from anxiety and depression? A life of more pleasure, connection and joy?

I work out of comfortable, confidential treatment rooms in Clapton, East London.

Fill out the form to arrange a free, 20-minute consultation call where we’ll explore whether transformative bodywork is right for you.