… Someone with whom you feel safe, secure and connected, someone you trust to guide you through the healing process. Together, we will support and promote the lifelong and profound change that will allow you to form sustainable, healthy relationships and achieve an overall sense of well-being. Building on a foundation of traditional psychotherapy, my integrative approach combines the best practices that Western and Eastern psychology and meditation have to offer.
Talking to friends and family can be helpful, but sometimes it is necessary to call on a discreet, supportive and trained outside party.
Counselling and psychotherapy can be effective tools for overcoming the mental and emotional struggles that arise in life. They can help identify and resolve the root of challenges and obstacles holding you back, and teach you coping mechanisms and techniques along the way.
During our initial meeting, we will clarify what leads you to consider counselling or psychotherapy, as well as your expectations of its outcome. It is also an opportunity for you to ask questions about therapy, my background, clinical work and qualifications, as well as for you and me, to feel if we match each other well. If you feel after the initial consultation that you do not wish to work with me, you are under no obligation to do so, or, if you are undecided, you can arrange a few taster sessions to see further.
If we decide to work together, depending on our availability we’ll set the day and time for your sessions and will discuss their cost and framework.
From thereon, we will meet weekly at an agreed time. Our first few sessions, as we work with what you bring, will also be about getting to know one another and establishing trust, so that you feel safe to bring whatever you need to explore, no matter how challenging or scary it might seem.
On a practical level, I will facilitate a genuine atmosphere of acceptance and safety and, as I begin to understand your deeper needs, we will define your goals, establish strategies, and identify your resources.
During our work together, we will at regular intervals take the time to review to ensure an optimal fit between your expectations and your results, i.e. every 6 sessions (for counselling) or every 12 sessions (for psychotherapy). Your goals and the duration of your weekly individual sessions are based on your own preferences.
In addition to traditional Western techniques, my integrative approach to psychotherapy can include mind-body experience, creative approaches, guided imagery, and the practice of meditation and mindfulness.
The life of a couple is made of transitions and transformations that sometimes obscure our sense of direction; a guide to negotiating these delicate passages can prove very useful.
Perhaps it is the feeling of no longer being in phase, or a loss of interest, else mounting irritation, a painful event, or a betrayal. Should the wake-up call that characterises a crisis necessarily sound the death knell of your relationship? How can a disconnected, frayed couple weave again a strong, authentic, and lasting bond and build anew a positive relationship? Is it possible or even desirable?
Today we speak of crisis when we can no longer avoid our difficulties and our pain, and that to exist we must decide: etymologically ‘crisis’ means ‘making a choice’. Within a couple, the crisis highlights the need for change in the way we function together and that we have a choice; it questions us: “why am I here? Should I stay or should I go (and why)?”
In transpersonal psychotherapy, crises are considered useful because they act as a warning signal, indicating the way to change, grow and evolve. During these transitions, it is important not to forget the suffering that is present and the will necessary to engage in a process of revelation; this is where being guided and supported by a trained professional makes all the difference.
When you choose to engage with couple counselling or psychotherapy, it is important to consult together, as a couple, and see a qualified professional trained to accompany you, listen to you, and facilitate awareness of the way your couple operates.
It is better to do so before reaching conflict, since by then your motivation may unconsciously stem from a desire for someone to arbitrate, witness, or even grant permission to separate.
Couple therapy is effective when you are both searching and questioning important choices, plans for a future without a simple solution, different aspirations, or an underlying disharmony that is growing.
The first step is to uncover the way your couple functions, to reveal its mechanisms and unveil repetitive patterns in your relationship. This allows us to go back to the source of affects and sort out what is yours from what is your relationship. This acknowledgement of your personal baggage will help restore communication; you become able to share and open about the state of your couple and authentically express how you feel in your relationship.
The purpose is not to determine who is at fault, but rather to have clarity on what has deteriorated in the day-to-day, to listen to the other, to accept the feeling and the need of the other, and check the strength of your bond. In this way, opportunities open: the opportunity to recreate, to reweave the bond that unites you and to reinvent your couple; or the opportunity to wash your wounds and bring together more harmoniously this chapter of your life to a close.
The paradox of couple therapy is that success can sometimes end in separation.
That said therapy will surely fail if you do not wish to engage, to open to the other, to yourself, to a lucid and sincere reflection on your relationship. It may be unconscious if your personal wounds are too deep, or it may be knowingly so, if the urge to save what may still be is lacking. There lies the main limitation of couple therapy.
To reinvent the way you are in a relationship, to breathe new life into your couple, you always have to be two.
When your couple feels fragile, individual therapy does not automatically bring harmony back to your relationship: If individual exploration is always positive, the party who consults is not necessarily the one who suffers the most within the couple; furthermore, he or she may not necessarily be moved by the desire to repair the couple, and can only speak for himself or herself.
To explore couple dynamics it is important to view your couple as an indivisible entity in its own right and consult together.
That said couple therapy may highlight the need to individually explore your personal experience if your past negatively impacts your relationship. If so, I may suggest a colleague for individual support (I cannot ethically engage both with your couple and separately with one of its parties).
Many couples consult when they are on the brink of separation. You will greatly increase the level of joy in your life now and in the future by seeking professional support before you reach crisis point.
A positive evolution can register in your couple at the 4th or 5th session. Communication is quickly restored and you find a more harmonious mode of being together in less than 10 sessions.
In situations that are more delicate, you will need to allow a little more time for your couple to repair and test its new bond, or to bring to a close positively this time of your life.
Beginners introductory workshop to meditation
5th & 6th April 2025
A two-day workshop, from 10am to 6pm
What is commonly defined as meditation is someone totally immobile, eyes closed or half-closed, who we feel internally awake rather than asleep. From there across centuries and cultures, many techniques were elaborated within different schools: Gnosticism, yoga, Vedanta, Tantra, various schools of Buddhism, Sufism, etc. For ascetics it has taken diverse forms, such as body awareness, breath awareness, dancing, mantra chanting, divinity visualisation, mandala creation, chakra focusing, etc.
Some find peace in disconnecting from life and, adept at focusing their attention within, for them meditation becomes an escape, a drug to help disconnect from the mental.
However, there should be no distinction between “meditation” and “non meditation”. In truth, outside of ecstatic moments, meditation is inner attitude; silence and noise do not stand in opposition, nor do movement and immobility, for this would create duality: if life is one, it is the whole that must be infused by illumination, not just extraordinary moments – to speak, work or meditate are just different modalities of the same attitude, simply, the accent lies more in the centre for meditation, more on the periphery when in the material world.
From this standpoint, all problems share the same root: a state of consciousness.
It follows that controlling external consequences won’t change the root of the problem. Yet as the novice meditator first turns attention inward to discover the self, his initial encounter is one with ordinary mental & emotional consciousness or his astral body (his psyche, emotions, thoughts); this constitutes for most a habitual state of consciousness that takes commitment to de-condition.
Aligned with the Adhyatma Yoga practice of ‘lying’ in its regression modality, Inner Space Techniques © (IST) were designed to address the overwhelming physical or emotional pains surfacing in sustained meditation which had no medical basis and were not resolved through psychological exploration.
The theoretical basis is on first sight simple, a nod to what Freud called abreactions in the beginnings of psychoanalysis. However, here the source itself of emotions & thoughts (from the negation of, to fascination with what is,) is unveiled as an erroneous construction of reality by the astral body, with the stated goal the revealing of truth. Therefore it is important to place this approach within context: it differs from psychotherapeutic and past lives regressions methods in two essential aspects:
An alchemical modality, IST integrates a psychological approach with a metaphysical one to facilitate access to the deepest layers of the astral body for a profound and systematic purification of the emotional layer sourced back to its original affects. Underpinning the whole approach is foremost a space of consciousness, a platform from where to explore consciousness at large. In the case of very early trauma, its depth cannot be overstated: IST allows experiential reconnection to the vastness & wholeness of the pre-conceptual Self, and allows it to presence the space of trauma, interceded by Spirit.
You lie down comfortably with your eyes closed. Sitting by your side, I guide you into a meditative state. Once in your third eye an inner space develops where you feel and perceive things in your own consciousness with increased sensitivity and discernment.For example, you can experience emotions as forms or waves in the depths of your consciousness, relive past events from your childhood or from a previous life with vivid sensory details; you can see with clarity the blockages in your energy body, or have an increased awareness of your presence. Sometimes, emotions are released, facilitating a tangible opening of your being and deep realisations. Sharing this meditative space, I guide you with questions towards a deepening of your experience. IST can include a somatic component with the pressure of one of my fingers on a specific spot on your body (depending on where it is) in order to help you connect emotions with the body. You are at all times aware and in control of the process. If you want to return to your usual state of consciousness, you just have to open your eyes. IST sessions usually last up to an hour and a half.