B O D Y S P O K E N

Collaborative
This approach is unlike some modalities and mainstream health systems where people at the top decide how to fix what is ‘wrong’ with you. Here, the practitioner will listen and collaborate with you to build your way of speaking about your experience, working with all your unique qualities, complexities, wishes.

Gentle but long-term progress
We help you practice and repeat ways to go in and out of dynamic or challenging themes, so your body and mind doesn’t get overwhelmed. This is called ‘titration’.

Self-regulation needs human co-regulation
In this day and age of automated services, it is important to practice how to stay in balance and aware of tracking our physical, emotional and mental awareness and sensations alongside another human support. This is guided by the empathic attunement of the practitioner, whose nervous system is skilled in supporting yours.

Develop a richer experience and way of expressing yourself in your body
As you progress, you will build up a rich landscape of physical, emotional and mental sensations that flow with and expand beyond ‘fight, flight, freeze’. This may take some time, but it will become natural in your body.

As a child I grew up in London around multiple cultures, languages and belief systems, and was exposed to many perspectives of the world.  It taught me to notice the importance of empathy and compassion in a panoply of differing views. Growing up, I often found connection through dancing or playing music, which I started to do professionally – performing and teaching to support people’s creativity and expression.

Working as a musician, dancer and performance-maker, I became fascinated with body awareness and the communicative power of touch, to learn about ourselves and each other.  These things are a basic human need, yet so neglected in our education and society today. We may still engage in physicality and touch, but we may not be encouraged to connect it deeply to our thoughts, feelings or ideas. The body can remain repressed, mystified, inaccessible or unspoken.

With BODYSPOKEN, I want to flip this around. Here, in these sessions, we tap into our bodily intelligence while exploring verbal communication. Working with both can give us clarity, strength and empowerment into our goals, challenges and wishes in life.

We usually start speaking together in conversation. 

The verbal conversation helps to get a shared picture of what is present for you, and together we learn what physical and emotional themes are important for you to connect to.

This leads us onto the hands-on part of the session which continues, much like our verbal conversation but through touch.

We can do this while sitting, standing, moving, or lying down on the massage table.

During the bodywork, we can continue at moments to describe your experience through both touch and verbal instruction to guide you through the session.

The practitioner continually verbally checks in with you as the hands-on touch happens, encouraging movement or release in fascial, skeletal, organ pathways. The bodywork responds to subtle emotional tension and release responses. The touch is relational and it connects to an empathic co-regulatory approach between us.

Often an expansion of breath and free movement happens as an integration process, which is supported if you wish to follow it. Movement can be internal or external, initiated by you, or guided by the practitioner.

At the end of each session there is time for you to rest on your own to let your body and mind process.