About Me

I am an integrative mindfulness-based counsellor and psychotherapist, registered with UKCP and BACP. In addition to this, I teach on counselling courses, run workshops and provide life coaching, supervision, one-to-one academic support and mentoring. I write articles and reviews in the field of counselling and psychotherapy and in other areas, and I also write poems.

My Journey

Astronomy, psychology, music, ancient history, languages, Nature and animals - my life journey has led me to explore a whole panorama across the arts and sciences, ranging over different cultures. I believe in cultivating an attitude of what Shunryu Suzuki called beginner's mind, an attitude of openness and natural curiosity without preconceived ideas.

At university I studied physics and astronomy, though I went on to work in a different field. I trained to teach English as a Foreign Language and have many years' teaching experience, including teaching in Turkey and South Korea, as well as in adult and higher education in the UK. My interest in the inner space of the mind and psychology has always fed into my education work - one aspect of my teaching that has always been especially important (and praised) is my rapport with students, because of my interest in them as individuals and in their development.

Having gained valuable life experience from my work, travels and exposure to different cultures, I felt ready to pursue the new adventure of training to be a counsellor and psychotherapist. Studying counselling or psychotherapy is as much a process of learning about oneself as learning about the ideas and skills. I especially enjoyed working on my MA dissertation on the topic of one's relationship with time and its role in psychotherapy - time is an area of particular fascination to me, all aspects ranging from the cosmological to the psychological, cultural and philosophical, and I was able to draw on all these interests, along with my own experience of time, and my dissertation includes some of my own poems.

Mindfulness - as a way of being - is central to my life and to my counselling and psychotherapy work. I am inspired by the books and talks of Vietnamese Zen master and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh, and I have discovered other treasures of mindfulness writings too. I also love to bring my creativity to whatever I do, whether in writing poems, running workshops, playing music or in the counselling room.

Just as I am fascinated by the outer space of the Cosmos, so too I am fascinated by the inner space of the mind and I want to support clients through their emotional difficulties and in their psychological growth.