I am half English and half from Ibiza. I am an explorer and researcher of dance, movement & embodiment and am currently studying a Research Master’s in Dance at the University of Plymouth with my research focus in Somatics and Butoh. I am a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (body orientated trauma therapist). I am an educator & facilitator of somatics. I am a yogi. I am a single Mum. I draw on years 25 years of practice, teaching and facilitation experience in the fields of Yoga & Buddhist Meditation (Insight and Zen). I have been leading retreats and trainings worldwide since 2001 - I prefer to call them explorations.

My current focus is working with diverse groups integrating Butoh Inspired Somatics, contemplative movement and creative processes with nature in Devon and Ibiza (two of my homes) which Im naming Elemental Body.

Elemental Body generates a somatic field attuned with the ancestral wisdom of the elements where contemplative movement, dance, and arts are integrated to open spaces that are regenerative, soulful, and life affirming and that work to support and transform stress, suffering and trauma at a nervous system level.

In the spirit of Butoh dance and Somatics specific movement techniques, histories, and mummification typical of classical yoga lineages and Western dance forms are avoided and instead principles are suggested. I draw influence from Butoh dance which manages to resist fixity, amalgamating and expressing a pastiche of embodied forms both human and non-human that emanate from multiple sources including a foregrounding of auto biographical movement.

My work has been developing over some years and intends to generate an eco feminist, eco somatic, creative ritual space that can tend both to the multiple personal, social and ecological crises that we face along with generating a counter position, building a community of care for self, other and the world forging impactful regenerative processes of re-connection, re-source and re-solution that forge new pathways that can flow through different territories and into different communities like underground streams of fresh water. In these spaces, the memory of the body and the earth is given space to be heard, witnessed and expressed collectively.

Now favouring group work to 1:1 therapeutic process, the processes I share are clearly underpinned and contained by the principles and techniques of Somatic Experiencing. I see group work as a more effective, sustainable and regenerative way of tending to the wider social ‘body in crisis’ and the collective afflictions of isolation, disconnection, fragmentation, overwhelm and rupture in the modern world.

My work seeks to address and include a much wider field, from an understanding that personal trauma cannot be separated from the wider field of conditions that precipitated the trauma and the society that we live in that expresses a collective trauma or apocalypse that simultaneously expresses a process of degradation, collapse and I believe renewal, a state of death and rebirth…

WHY SOMATICS?

The field of somatics has given me permission to be me, the me that is allowed to change, the me that is fluid, the me that doesn’t need to be defined and that doesn’t fit in.

Somatics has made me feel safe in the understanding of physiology, and the things the body does, that may appear chaotic, but actually have a logical reason.

Somatics has given me permission to feel, embody and move in ways that I didn’t know or imagine, sometimes I am moved. Somatics keeps reminding me of that which keeps me connected, curious and engaged with life.

Somatics has great creative potential, guided and inspired by the inner body, it is possible to attune to a realm that is poetic, imaginal, sensory, emotional, and can find expression through movement, drawing, poetry, art, dance, performance and music. Somatics has allowed me to understand how relationships work, in my body and consequently beyond my body, into nature, with other humans and non-human bodies.

Cultivating this field of inter-relatedness helps me to care, to be empathic, to find ways to be with the tensions, entanglements and reciprocities of these diverse relational bodies.

Somatics is wide enough in its embodied perspective that the often contradictory truths of life both sublimely beautiful and often deeply painful can co-exist.

Somatics has generated a space where I can keep enquiring, to be the student who hasn’t concluded, to keep contemplating the questions without fixating on an answer.

ANCESTRAL SOMATICS

My work has an ancestral element to it. In the tracing of my own ancestry, I have brought much greater awareness and compassion to this aspect of healing as I have understood from a nervous system perspective that within my body (my DNA) I carry both the patterns of trans-generational trauma but also of trans-generational survival. I carry within me the ways in which my family have survived (in my case, this includes the holocaust) and although some of the defensive strategies of maintaining safety may no longer be appropriate, it is precisely these strategies that have ensured our survival. So careful, slow, supported, safe inner work with the nervous system and the introduction of new nervous system choices is work that takes place very gradually over a long period of time and with plenty of support. The tiny windows we open into the ancestral body are opened with the utmost respect knowing that we are working from our own bodies to free all our ancestors that came before us and all of those who will come after us.  

about me & my roots

I have come to understand my roots are vast, interconnected, wandering, and culturally diverse, as were my ancestors who were on the move across continents for 1000’s of years before me. I carry the nomad, the refugee, the immigrant, the Jew and the Gypsy within me and I understand those who like me have struggled to belong, to fit in and to feel safe.

I have found home, refuge and purpose as a single mother. As someone who has been always displaced and disorientated, I have found meaning through nature, movement, art, rhythm, gesture, dance, language and music. The embrace and support of nature has been a source of continuous companionship as I have wandered the world searching for belonging, family, community, relationship and meaning.

Now living somewhere between Devon and Ibiza for I feel an ongoing displacement.. the wail of Flamenco, the shimmering azure waters of the Mediterranean, and the familiar faces of Jewish people still shake me, calling me back to other lands.

In my work I draw on my contradictory and incongruent upbringing. I identify as a queer, neuro-diverse, mixed race woman. I was brought up partly in the hedonism of Ibiza, at the same time I was sent to a British boarding school at age 6 and ended up from age 11 at a predominately male boarding school in North Norfolk (I was the first girl boarder). I have carried a pioneering spirit in me ever since, and I am often the first to jump into a new world and challenge oppressive systems that prevent care for the earth and her people.

Embodying and living in these contradictions has been challenging and also fascinating. I have had to tolerate, survive and adapt to both extreme adversity and extreme pleasure at multiple levels in multiple places. My ancestry, upbringing and life experiences have given me a broad view and better understanding of and resonance with diverse and multicultural people, and those who identify as marginalised.

I hope you find things here that you resonate with, that speak to you. I hope that if it calls you, you will come and explore with me and build earth centred, supportive, embodied, creative, enriching and regenerative community through somatics together.

I wait for you to journey together here …

Brief Past Biography

I Founded, Created and Directed Still Flowing Yoga and Mindfulness Teacher Training for 14 years in Ibiza and Thailand (established in 2008)

I Co Founded and Created El Convento: Eco Ashtanga Yoga and Mindfulness Retreat centre in Spain in the early 2000’s (2003)

I have been Creating, Producing and Teaching on yoga retreats, teacher trainings and intensives worldwide for 23 years (since 2001)