Embodied Gestalt Psychotherapy Online, in Brighton & Hove, and St. Leonards-on-Sea

In My Unique Approach I Combine

A Compassionate View of Human Existence

All our experiences can be held with warmth and in non-judgemental awareness. No aspect of us is intrinsically ‘bad’. Through developing different perspectives, we can develop a less judgemental and more spacious understanding of ourselves.

Imagine climbing up a mountain, and stopping every now and then to rest and admire the views. Depending on where you stand, the sky, clouds, the Sun, trees, houses, rocks, maybe people walking on a path, will all look differently.

Working Relationally

One of the things that I like the most about Gestalt is that clients can have new experiences during a therapy session. These experiences emerge from a co-created process between the client and therapist. New ways of relating can be found through experimenting in the present moment.

Facilitating Somatic Awareness

We live our lives through experiencing ourselves in our body and have a unique relationship with it. Noticing and acknowledging our bodies can bring a range of feelings and attitudes. All of them are welcome in my sessions.

Being aware of how we relate to our bodies, and bodily sensations can be helpful in finding out more about ourselves and our needs.

I am trained in Developmental Somatic Psychotherapy which is an experiential approach helping us notice how our relating to others is encoded in how we express ourselves through our bodies, including impulses, sensations, gestures, and movements. This idea is underpinned by observational studies of the development of relational movements between infants and their caregivers as well as therapeutic work done with infant-parent dyads.

Attuned Presence, Listening and Authenticity

We all have our ups and downs in life, and may need support of a professional who can listen and hear you. I will meet you where you are in your life situation, without judgement, or trying to fix or change you. While working with you I will offer my attuned authentic presence and responses.

Collaborative Spirit, Creativity and Psychotherapeutic Expertise

Depending on your goals and hopes regarding therapy (which we discuss together at the beginning and review as therapy proceeds), I creatively use different aspects of my psychotherapeutic expertise and intuition.

Therapy is a collaborative dialogue between us, supporting you to explore, and get in touch with what is important to you.


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More On Developmental Somatic Psychotherapy

As part of my Gestalt work with clients, I weave into my work an approach called Developmental Somatic Psychotherapy (DSP). DSP is a theory developed by Ruella Frank at the Centre for Somatic Studies in the USA.


DSP informs us how we are in the world from a perspective of early developmental movement patterns. These movement patterns can be seen to unfold as early as in infancy in interactions with our caregivers, or even earlier than that, in our mother’s womb in interactions with the microcosm of the womb.


In DSP, we assume that as we move into the world, we meet the world and the world meets us, and so there is an inherent relationality and reciprocity in these movement patterns.


As adults, through attuning to our bodies’ wisdom, we can learn to be curious about these patterns and notice how they shape our being in the world and in relationships. Discoveries about our bodies’ wisdom can be made during psychotherapy sessions.

Developmental Somatic Psychotherapy is helpful because it can inform us how we:

  • feel safe in the world
  • feel ourselves with an other
  • can or cannot be with an other
  • reach out to the world for our needs to be met
  • receive support from an other or give into supportive environment
  • get hold of and keep what we want as long as we want
  • let go of things


Please enquire if you would like to work with me using the Developmental Somatic Psychotherapy approach.

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Parts Work

Often in my work with clients I include parts work. My inspiration here is broad and includes Janina Fisher’s model of ‘healing the fragmented selves of trauma survivors’, which itself includes elements of Pat Ogden’s Sensorimotor Psychotherapy.


A goal of therapy with parts of self is to support clients to develop curiosity about parts, who they are, how they behave, and how they feel in our body or outside of it, what they need and the story they tell us. I support clients to develop an accepting relationship with parts of self so parts can feel safe and valued by self. Parts are valuable aspect of self which, when embraced, help us feel whole. Working with parts can be valuable at any stage of personal growth and development.


'Befriending [parts] means that we "radically accept" that we share our bodies and lives with these "room-mates" and that

living well with ourselves requires living amicably and collaboratively with our parts. The more we welcome rather than reject

them, the safer our internal worlds.'


(Janina Fisher: Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors)

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Photos by Kim Manley Ort