Frequently Asked Questions

I offer sessions at a therapy centre in Dee Why, Sydney on Mondays and Wednesdays, and in Crows Nest on Tuesdays.

I also offer Telehealth sessions on other days.

Most people come to therapy because they want something to change. But lasting transformation starts with understanding how things are right now.

From a young age, our nervous systems adapt to help us navigate the world, creating automatic patterns of feeling and reacting. Whilst they once served us, they can become limiting over time, keeping us stuck in ways that no longer align with who we are or what we need. I am here to help you gently uncover and understand these ingrained patterns.

I blend talk therapy with mindful, somatic psychotherapy to help you make become more emotionally aware, make sense of your experiences, gain deep insights into who you are and why you are the way you are, and find greater ease in life.

Of course! It takes time to build trust with a new therapist, so I offer a free 15-min connection call to help you decide if I’m a good fit.

Send me an email if you'd like to book an appointment.

I would love to meet you and forward to connecting with you!

Hakomi is a gentle, somatic (body-based) style of psychotherapy that helps people deeply understand and change long-standing patterns. It uses mindfulness and awareness of bodily sensations to work with issues like anxiety, relationship difficulties, low self-esteem, and childhood or attachment-related trauma.

Rather than just talking about problems, Hakomi helps you notice what happens inside you in the present moment. This can reveal unconscious beliefs and habits that were shaped early in life and are still influencing how you feel, relate, and respond today.

Hakomi was developed by Ron Kurtz, and is informed by modern psychology, neuroscience, and body-centred approaches to therapy. It recognises that the body holds emotional memory, and that lasting change often happens through felt experience, not analysis alone.

Hakomi is collaborative, non-invasive, and paced to your nervous system. It’s often described as a mix of mindfulness, somatic therapy, and depth psychology, making it well-suited for people who want deeper change, not just coping strategies.

Somatic Therapy is an umbrella term for a variety of body-centered therapeutic modalities that focus on the connection between the mind and the body, including Hakomi, Somatic Experiencing (SE), Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Gestalt and EMDR.

These therapies share the core belief that trauma and stress are stored not only in the brain but also in the body, and they use "bottom-up" approaches to process and release these stored sensations and emotions. 

Somatic Therapy takes a “bottom-up” approach.

So, unlike traditional “top-down” talk therapy, which encourages us to change our thoughts to affect our feelings… somatic therapies start with body sensations to unlock emotional memories.

Somatic Therapy also observes what the body is doing: we study the wisdom in the tension, the breathing patterns, the posture, the gut feelings, the shrinking back, the pushing forward… These auto-pilot reactions reveal deep beliefs that talking alone can’t shift.

Many behaviours which you might think are set-in-stone personality traits, or “just how I am”, are quite possibly adaptive nervous system strategies that served you well in the past, but perhaps not anymore.

The good news is… they are not set in stone and our bodies have an innate healing wisdom.

As we slow down and pay attention to our bodies and feelings, we open ourselves up to insights about the unconscious drivers that may be at the core of our biggest challenges, deepst beliefs, hardest feelings, and auto-pilot reactions.

Hakomi Mindful Somatic Psychotherapy offers several key benefits:

• You gain a deeper understanding of your emotional and physical responses, enabling more conscious choices and recognition of triggers before they escalate.

• By processing unresolved emotional and physical tension, Hakomi helps develop healthier coping mechanisms, leading to improved emotional regulation and resilience.

• The therapy provides a safe and gentle approach to processing trauma, allowing you to release stored trauma and tension, and develop greater emotional resilience.

• You develop a deeper understanding of the connection between you thoughts, emotions, and physical sensations, fostering holistic healing.

• As you become more aware of their patterns and responses, you can develop healthier ways of relating to others, leading to more fulfilling relationships.

Overall, Hakomi facilitates deep emotional healing and transformation by integrating mindfulness and somatic awareness into the therapeutic process.

Unlike other types of therapy that utilise mindfulness as part of the process, Hakomi leads with a mindfulness-based approach. This means that nearly the entire therapy process can be conducted in mindfulness.

The Hakomi Method is one of the earliest efforts to integrate mindfulness into therapy, beginning in the 1960's.

It is a fascinating approach that includes body awareness, investigation of core beliefs, compassionate presence of the therapist, embracing the unconscious, and collaborative investigation.

A Hakomi session is guided by what you want to explore or change, such as recurring patterns, emotional reactions, stress, relationships or feeling disconnected from yourself.

Rather than analysing your story, the focus is on noticing what’s happening in your body or present moment experience right now.

By paying attention to the breath, tension, emotions, impulses or habits that show up as we talk, we get real-time clues about patterns we may not be consciously aware of.

The therapy may gently guide attention to these experiences and invite simple, optional experiments as a way of opening ourselves up to change.

This could be noticing a sensation, staying with an emotion, trying a different response, or sensing what happens when you set a boundary or receive support.

Nothing is forced and you stay in control. It is very gentle and slow-paced.

The goal isn’t to relive traumatic memories. It’s to help your nervous system experience something new and more supportive. When the body learns a different way to respond, insight and emotional change tend to follow naturally.

Where relevant, I draw on my Somatic Sexology expertise to help you to understand your desire, shutdown, boundaries, relational dynamics, as well as the ways in which early experiences shape your intimacy and access to pleasure.

Somatic Sexology is a body-based, client-centred approach to understanding sexuality, intimacy and pleasure by working with the nervous system, consent skills and real-time bodily awareness. It focuses on what’s happening in the body rather than trying to think your way through sexual concerns.

It teaches what most of us were never taught: how to understand our own anatomy, how to listen to our body’s signals, and how to communicate boundaries and desires clearly.

Key parts of this work include:

1. Education about the body
People learn accurate information about pelvic anatomy, genital mapping, the nervous system, sexual response, pain, numbness and how past injuries or scar tissue can affect sensation.

2. Nervous system awareness and regulation
Clients learn how anxiety, shutdown, shame and fear show up physically — and how to regulate these states so pleasure and connection become easier.

3. Consent, boundaries and communication
Somatic sexology teaches people how to express what they want, what they don’t want, and how to navigate difficult conversations with clarity and confidence.

4. Experiential, body-based learning
Instead of only talking, clients learn through practical, mindful exercises that help them tune into sensation, breath, emotion and arousal patterns with more ease.

5. Trauma-informed support
The approach recognises how past experiences shape present-day sexual responses. The work is slow, respectful and guided by the client’s pace.

6. Support for individuals and couples
Practitioners offer simple, enjoyable practices to help people understand their bodies, improve communication and deepen connection in their relationships.

Have you ever walked into a room and smelt a scent that brought a memory back that you had completely forgotten about?

As Peter Levine says: “The body remembers what the mind forgets.”

In other words, our bodies hold onto parts of our stories that our minds cannot always access.

Hakomi is a mindfulness-based somatic psychotherapy that facilitates deep trauma processing through a dedicated commitment to non-violence and compassionate curiosity.

By prioritising a state of loving presence and grounded safety, this approach creates a slow, grounded, safe space for you to explore your present-moment experience slowly and mindfully.

Rather than using force or direct access, Hakomi uses a gentle, slow-paced approach that trusts in the body’s organicity, or its innate wisdom to self-organise and heal, allowing long-held patterns to transform naturally into new, nourishing ways of being.

Can Somatic/ Hakomi Therapy really work online?

Yes! It works really well actually!

I often work via Telehealth over Zoom.

Through video sessions, I guide my clients to notice their present moment experience, physical sensations etc offering a safe, accessible, (and often more comfortable) alternative to in-person sessions.