Teaching
I am now forever curious on how we can creatively reorganise our health through feeling and connecting to our bodies.
My Self-Education Journey
During my time as a Physical Education Teacher I suffered from chronic pain. This is now eliminated through self-education, lifestyle change and the support of many. I quit teaching in schools so I could help others with their pain. I am now forever curious on how we can creatively reorganise our health through feeling and connecting to our bodies. Continuously exploring what it is to be human and fully occupy a body in the modern world.
I find myself wanting to go deeper and deeper when I realise what I don’t know about my inner landscapes and how I relate to others and my environments. Until my mid-twenties I now realise that I walked around like a talking head. Playing team sports, pushing it hard in the gym, working hard, not feeling my body but using it like a machine. I suffered greatly as a consequence of this disconnection from my body.
Studying Sport Science, Exercise Physiology and teaching physical education provided a sound platform of knowledge after I left school. Though I continued to suffer. My experience of pain and a yearning to change led me to yoga and other body-based practices, teaching me to ‘slow down, rest and feel’. Finding and studying cranial work brought me home to my body for the first time. The contemplative practice of deep presence, witnessing another and being witnessed informed me to perceive the world, my body and my relationships through a different lens. Cranial work still never ceases to amaze me and how it supports physical, psychological and emotional wellbeing.
My Cranial practice, a trauma-aware bodywork that is informed by embryology, modern neuroscience and pain research lays the foundations of my clinical practice. In clinic I educate and support the down regulation of overwhelmed nervous systems derived from stress, pain and trauma. I use relational touch and deep embodied presence to guide and ground awareness to the body. In this deep relational space, something always happens
TRE and Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP) Training
The curious mind wondered again. I first explored TRE with Steve Haines whilst I was studying in 2013. I completed the certification process in 2015. A set of simple exercises that stretch and stress the muscles of the body to release held tension patterns from our body’s physiology. How simple but yet profound!
Studying TRE deepened my understanding of trauma models and the physiology of stress and how we disconnect from our bodies. An adaptive survival response to stress, pain and trauma. Integrating TRE into my clinical practice allows people to practice body awareness and develop the skills to promote self-regulation alongside other professional therapeutic relationships.
I continue to teach individuals, groups in N. Ireland and Dublin, also mentoring trainee TRE Provider’s with www.trecollege.com.
The common thread throughout my clinic work and teaching is supporting people to ‘feel safe’ in themselves and the world. This vision is underpinned by Dr. Stephen Porges research that culminated in the Polyvagal Theory or ‘the science of feeling safe’. This key research, delivered simply, helps people to better understand their challenges and how their autonomic nervous system adapts to a complex, uncertain world.
I trained in the Safe and Sound Protocol (SSP) in 2020, a non-invasive listening application of Polyvagal Theory helping people to regulate their nervous system more consistently and independently.