Family Therapy can help through improving communication, and strengthening relationships to find strategies to resolve issues. These may be adult relationship problems, children's behaviour or adolescent issues, physical or mental health issues. The family may need help to manage conflict situations or grief and loss.

Therapy may be with the whole family, couples, or with individuals.

 

The family dynamics we grew up in can impact on the way we relate in our current families.  Intergenerational family or personal trauma can impact on relationships and parenting, as can the way we were parented impact on the way we parent our children. but it is possible to change this imprint. We can change the way our family system works to foster more healthy family dynamics and create a better functioning home environment.

 

Step families can have more complicated family dynamics in trying to blend two families with different histories and backgrounds together and children don't always cope with changes in the 'pecking order'.

Sandplay Therapy is a powerful way of healing past trauma, and promoting growth. Through the 'active imagination' it is possible to shift and unblock energy in the inner world of the psyche in a free and protected space.

 

"The client is given the possibility, by means of figures and the arrangement of the sand in the area bounded by the sandbox, to set up a world corresponding to his or her inner state.  In this manner, through free creative play, unconscious processes are made visible in a three-dimensional form and a pictorial world comparable to the dream experience."  (Dora Kalff)

 

Through a series of trays portraying the images in this way, energy can shift to allow the healing process to take place.

 

This work can be done with adults and children.

Research in neuroscience has proven the effectiveness of the practice of Mindfulness in our lives. If we are functioning on 'automatic pilot' in our busy, often stressful, lives then we are disconnected from our sensory awareness.

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By practicing the 'art of noticing' more about our reactions to situations in the form of bodily sensations, such as tightness in the pit of the stomach...or your heart beating faster, we can change our reactions to deal with situations better and become more self aware.  This practice is the core of inner healing.

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Learning techniques to facilitate this practice can promote inner awareness and growth. 

 

I teach this in relation to a person's specific issues during counselling sessions.

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I also run mindfulness workshops from time to time.

I run workshops to discover and explore through art and movement the fountain of creative energy within.

Through mindfulness practice we can increase our sensory awareness of energy flows and blockages in the body.

 

Art is energy expressing itself.

 

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"Our real illiteracy is our inability to create"

- Frederick Hundertwasser

 

"Every child is an artist. The prolem is how to remain an artist once he grows up"

- Pablo Picasso