Compassion says:
how I am in this moment
is worthy of welcome.

- Francis Weller

 

Hello, thanks for being here. At present, I am focussed on some other exciting projects, and I am not taking on new clients.

If you’d like to be notified when this changes, please get in touch here and I’ll keep you posted. And if you have worked with me before - even if it has been a while - this doesn’t affect you, and you’re welcome to book in.

If you’re curious about Art Therapy, perhaps you’d like to come along to the Online Therapeutic Art Group, which happens every other Thursday. Find out more about that and book your spot here.

Warmly, Ellen

Working with me is…

  • Curious

    I have a lot of training and a lot of tools - but when it comes to your body and your journey, YOU are the expert. It’s not my job to tell you what to do - it’s my job to get curious with you as we learn together what works best for your unique nervous system and uncover your unique path to healing and growth.

  • Creative

    When we’re seeking healing, change and growth, we’re creating a new experience of life! Even if you don’t want to explore traditional art therapy as part of your path, the process we’re engaging in together is a creative one. We’re looking at the story of your life so far, and actively deciding what kind of chapter you’d like to write next.

  • Gentle

    We work at a pace that feels good to your unique nervous system. Pushing too hard, trying to do too much, too soon doesn’t tend to work. So we listen to the worries and needs of your body and mind, and find a way forward that feels spacious and manageable (note - manageable doesn’t necessarily mean comfortable! Change is an uncomfortable place to hang out much of the time. But we want it to feel like a manageable level of discomfort).

  • Kind

    It’s normal to feel at times (or all the time) like disowning various parts of ourselves and our experience of life. On this journey though, ALL of you is welcome. The sad parts, the angry parts, the parts that just want to get on with it, the parts who wonder what the point is. A strange kind of magic starts to happen when all of us feels welcome - we tend to feel more easeful, more open, and the healing and growth we’re seeking tends to happen with more grace and ease.

There isn't a way things should be.
There's just what happens, and what we do.

― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

Working with me is a bit like one of those choose your own adventure books - there are so many different things we can explore together to support you to feel good, tend to your trauma and write a story with your life that feels truly meaningful and authentic to you.

Because everyone is different and everyone’s journey is unique, there is no one size fits all approach. My job is to be curious and to find the path that works best for you.

I bring elements of all my training and experience into my work with clients - and the rest flows from there. There’s lots of room for flexibility and what we do is based on what you bring to each session and what might feel fun and supportive to explore.

Scroll down for some of what’s on offer - it’s also important to note that everything I suggest is optional, and if I invite you into something you’re not interested in or don’t want to do today but might want to do tomorrow - you get to say no.

Everything we do together is invitational, always.

Read on for some more info to feed your curiosity!

Art Therapy

Art therapy is a way of using the creative process (a fancy way of saying ‘making stuff’) to support greater self-understanding and wellbeing. It’s a great way to gain new and often unexpected insight, experience the power of imagination as a healing tool, explore emotions in new ways, cope with stress, support self esteem and develop new coping skills… and it’s pretty fun.

And (this is important) you don’t need to see yourself as creative, or know how to draw to gain a lot of benefit from it! You have full permission (and encouragement) to make images that aren’t ‘pretty’ - often our internal struggles are not pretty! And that is so okay and welcome.

The point of art therapy isn’t to create a masterpiece that will hang in the National Gallery, it’s to express externally some of what you’re feeling inside, so it’s visible in front of you and you can interact with it in new ways.

Read More

Somatic Experiencing

Somatic Experiencing is a gentle way of working with the body and nervous system to support healing from trauma and stress disorders, creating more resilience and capacity for navigating your way through life.

Our bodies are very wise - they know how to overcome trauma and stress when we give them the conditions they need to heal. Through tuning into your ‘felt sense’  - the awareness of sensations in your body - we begin to learn the language of your unique nervous system, so we can meet the conditions needed for healing and offer support your system to re-negotiate and resolve the effects of trauma and stress.

This is slow and gentle work, moving at a pace that feels manageable for your unique nervous system. Somatic Experiencing helps to bring back a sense of aliveness, wholeness and relaxation.

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Life Coaching

Sometimes we’re thrown into the middle of change with no say, and sometimes we’re aware that something needs to be different and so we actively choose the path.

It can feel like our identity and our old life doesn’t quite fit any longer, we’re not really sure who we are or what we want or how to get there. It’s often a messy and emotional time - it can feel confusing, uncomfortable, unsettling, irritating, maybe like we’re hanging out in a fog.

The way I offer life coaching provides support for times of change - it’s a non-linear process of acknowledging how things were, spending time with how things are now - looking for treasure in the foggy annoying unknown place, and starting to dream up and step into what’s next.

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Eco Psychotherapy (Nature therapy)

For a lot of us, being outside in nature makes us feel better. And if we don’t feel better, we’ll often feel something, and then we feel better. You might already know that being in nature helps you feel:

  • More peaceful, less stressed out with less unhelpful mental chatter.

  • A more positive perspective on life and a sense things will be okay.

  • More of a sense of connection and belonging with something outside of yourself.

So how do we ‘do’ eco psychotherapy? It’s a bit like asking the question: how do we do art?

My answer to both those questions is: with curiosity, an open mind, and a willingness to engage with the world around you.

Read More

It's no use going back to yesterday,
because I was a different person then.

- Alice in Wonderland

Testimonials

 

It can be challenging to find a coach who can hold me with love and safety in a way that I feel comfortable enough to focus on my own transformation.

Ellen has a core of stillness, a beautiful way of being during our coaching sessions that allowed me to fully drop into my body – creating a space for me to unlock some deeply held life experiences. Her gentle probing, her wicked humour and her loving presence combining to keep me focused and safe within our sessions.

Reflecting back on how I have evolved has surprised me – we had such fun in our sessions… yet deep shifts happened.

Kym L

 
 

Being coached by Ellen has been deeply supportive of my healing journey. 

Prior to working together, I was in a very painful space, struggling with intense self-loathing and experiencing a dark night of the soul. The opportunity to work with her felt like a lifeline.

I have a plethora of practices in my own tool kit, and yet trying to work through the state I was in, alone, was an impossible task. I needed the compassionate space-holding and gentle guidance of another, and Ellen provided that in abundance. 

She held a container, each week, of deep witnessing and acceptance, through which I`ve been able to develop greater levels of self-acceptance and trust within myself; A more stabilized state of Self, with which to move forward in my life and create the life of thriving that I desire. Ellen`s method of coaching provided the context within which I was able to experience and be present with all parts of myself, with a sense of safety and at my own pace. 

I am very grateful to her, for her skillful and loving support and guidance.

Rebecca (Self-employed, single mother of two), UK

 
 

Ellen has a soft and calming nature and takes you on a beautiful journey of self discovery and for me, that has helped on my continuous path of self love.

I felt completely comfortable and safe in her presence, when I was vulnerable with many strong mixed emotions that surfaced.

I am very grateful for her time and patience, trust and honesty from our sessions together.

Juliet M, Primary school teacher

 
 

I started to work with Ellen at the beginning of the year. I was moving through a massive spiritual uplevel. My health fell pretty quickly, got misdiagnosed with an illness which layered trauma into my healing crisis. At one point suffering with anxiety and panic attacks.

Ellen supported my nervous system to come back to alignment and balance. She created a safe place for me to call back my spirit, without any judgment.

For ever grateful x

Jaye M

Here are some blogs you might like to check out for more info…

…and of course questions are very welcome! Contact me here and I’ll get you some answers.

Featured
Reflections from the road.
Reflections from the road.

I'm road tripping at the moment - en route from the far north to as far south as I can go without jumping the straight to Tasmania. And as always, travel is one of my biggest teachers.

Here are a few reflections from the road; things I've been musing on while driving for hours and hours and more hours.

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Balance
Balance

If I were a tightrope walker (I am not a tightrope walker), I would say that balance requires awareness and presence.

At least, at first.

If you've learned to walk a tightrope (or ride a bike), you'll know that eventually the micro-movements required to keep you upright become automatic and unthinking. I'm not sure if life balance is the same - perhaps it is for some, though I haven't found it to be so, or perhaps there are too many variables for it to be a fair comparison.

Read More →
You are not a machine.
You are not a machine.

Humans aren't machines.

Artists aren't art factories.

Parents aren't child rearing robots.

But often we bow to the pressure of a society that seems to think we should be.

Do more, be more, get better, fit more in, set some goals, achieve them, set some more… now do the thought experiment - can you hit your ten year goals in six months? Do you feel as tired reading this as I do writing it? We're not ingenious contraptions meant for perpetual expansion.

Read More →
How you do one thing…
How you do one thing…

It's going to come as zero surprise to you when I tell you that having a regular creative practice can help you live better.

Aside from the mental health benefits that come with focussed creative time, it’s related to the idea that how you do one thing is how you do everything - you tend to have ways of thinking and feeling and moving through the world that are similar, no matter the circumstances you find yourself in.

And so if you regularly play with a blank page (or in your kitchen or your garden or sewing room - however you like to create) and watch what you do and how you do it, the parts that feel fun and the parts that challenge you (and how you deal with those challenges), you might start to see connections with how you live life in the world outside your blank page or art journal or kitchen or garden or wherever you like to create.

Want an example? Read on...

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Feel the fear… and make it a cup of tea?
Feel the fear… and make it a cup of tea?

Given how popular the phrase 'do it anyway' is, I imagine that works for a lot of people, but for me - even thinking about that just makes me kind of tired. Life is busy and fast, and getting faster all the time. Being an adult sometimes feels like an endurance marathon where someone keeps moving the finish line further and further away. Do we really need to push more, and to do things scared?

I wonder if the answer might be no, at least, not all the time. Or maybe no, not that scared.

Read More →
The Room of No Consequences
The Room of No Consequences

Why is it so hard sometimes to take the moral high ground and be endlessly empathetic and non-judgemental?

When someone irritates you, as you are probably well aware - often there's a part of you that wants to fight them or tell them what you really think, or turn around and walk away and never come back. And it's necessary to override those impulses because there aren't many situations where you can slap someone or scream at them or walk out and never return with zero consequences.

So what do you do?

Read More →
No straight lines. You are not a brick.
No straight lines. You are not a brick.

Have you ever noticed how other than the horizon, if you're looking out to sea or across a plain, nature doesn't really do straight lines?

If you lie in the grass under a tree and look up at the canopy it's a chaotic jumble of erratic angles and curves. Stones aren't made like bricks, they're tumbled and wind scoured and sun baked and no two are the same. Trees aren't made like walls, they are drawn out of the ground by the sun, bent by the wind, made green by the rain or water tapped by deep roots. They grow in response to their environment.

So do we - we grow in response to our environment.

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What are you defending?
What are you defending?

Getting defensive sometimes gets a bad rap.

"Why are you being so defensive?"

Personally, I think it's kind of nice.

If you think about it - when you're being defensive, you're usually defending something that matters to you in some way. Something you care about. Something you want to protect. If it didn't matter, there'd be no point in defending it.

Read More →