common questions
Sessions are done seated or lying, fully clothed. We begin by first supporting your body to find and re-find safety and stability, which we call regulation. As we build regulation together, learning the unique language of your nervous system, we slowly begin to work small pieces of ‘activation’ or tricky past moments, ensuring that you are always able to come back into safety and stability with each ‘activation’. This is a key component to ensuring you are not re-traumatised, and that we don’t overwork the system.
Rather than focussing only on the story, processing traumas is done through sensations, images, movements, behaviours, emotions, and meaning, allowing your body to respond to the perceived danger in a way it wasn’t able to at the time.
This allows the ‘driving’ force behind your symptoms to be resolved, and many people experience a sense of peace, a connection with their vitality, and a sense of being more themselves.
Our sessions may involve Somatic Touch through clothing, which further supports your body to find regulation and healing. While many find this to be part of ‘the missing piece’ in their trauma resolution, it is optional.
Most sessions are 80 minutes long, allowing us to finish with deep regulation. Short 50 minute sessions are also available.
Initial appointments are 80 minutes.
Rebates are not available at this time.
That is up to you, but we can certainly discuss this with consideration to your individual needs. Clients see me weekly, fortnightly, monthly, bi-monthly or as needed.
I do offer online appointments, using Zoom. Please use the booking link below.
Please use this link to book your appointments.
You will be emailed a Consent Form and Intake form prior to your appointment. Please complete these and bring them with you for in person appointments, or email them to me at [email protected] for online appointments.
My books are closed for 2024. If you need an appointment before Christmas please email me using the contact form.
In 2025 I will be reopening on 6th January at 3/3 Dickson Place, Dickson.
If you are new to my practice, please use the contact form to request an appointment as these are not available in the system right now to ensure current clients can continue their sessions.
Initial sessions (80 mins) are $270.
Ongoing sessions are $200.
Payment is required prior to the appointment.
If you are experiencing financial hardship, please reach out. Sliding scale is available.
While traditional therapies rely heavily on narrative and story, and focus on making changes from a cognitive perspective (‘top down’ therapy) somatic psychotherapy recognises that our story, or thinking patterns, often follow the ‘state’ that our body is in – if we have unresolved fight or flight physiology in the body, it is likely to drive anxious thoughts, for example.
Somatic therapy uses the physical experience you have in the here and now to identify where patterns within the body have become ‘stuck’ in stress, overwhelm and trauma cycles. This enables us to find the source of the difficulty and resolve it, allowing the body to release the pain rather than repeating a story and becoming overwhelmed with painful memories.
Drawing on central components of psychoeducation, developing bodily awareness, resourcing to connect with innate strength and resilience, titrating difficult sensations and learning to move between autonomic states of arousal and regulation, somatic therapy techniques are easily incorporated into other approaches for effective resolution of traumatic memories.
I work with a broad range of areas and have a special interest in trauma related to the female body, including but not limited to grief, loss, pregnancy, birth, fear of giving birth, hyperemesis gravidarum, postpartum, menstruation, menarche (first menstruation), menopause, preparing for and recovering from surgery, ongoing stress, relational difficulties, attachment difficulties, and parenting.
I can also work with natural disasters, falls, accidents, addictions, and preparing for stressful events.
There is no set number of sessions required to achieve these goals because every individual comes with their own set of circumstances, histories and personalities. However, working somatically can often produce faster results as we resolve the ‘driving force’ behind the problem.
Yes. You will be emailed a Consent Form and Intake Form prior to your appointment. You need to complete them and bring them with you for in person appointments, or email them to me at [email protected] for online appointments.
If you forget (it happens!), you will need to complete the forms during our session which will take up valuable time together.
Absolutely. What we discuss in our sessions is confidential and I will keep our interactions private unless I have explicit consent and written permission, with the following exceptions:
- you are an immediate or imminent danger to yourself or another person, including your partner
- you tell me that a child or elder is at risk of abuse or neglect
- you tell me of a person who has abused or neglected children who is still actively around or caring for children
- a judge in a court of law orders me to release this information or I am issued subpoena
- I discuss your case anonymously in a confidential supervision session to ensure I am offering best practice
If you need to cancel the session, I require 48 hours notice to allow time to reschedule another client who could benefit from this available time. If you cancel with less than 48 business hours notice, you will need to pay the session in full.