Category: therapy
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One thing you can do to improve your mental health
This is a piece about songlines, and about maps, and about one thing you can do to improve your mental health. A couple of weeks ago I was walking through a valley on the edge of the Forest of Bowland. I crossed over the river Roeburn at the bottom of the valley, and the woodland…
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The magic ingredient of therapy
There are lots of wonderful techniques that we learnt in therapy training: different ways of reflecting what you have said, different ways of asking you questions and teasing out the issues that you bring to therapy, using feelings in the body, or using the natural world as a resource. These are all great. And there…
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Asking for help
Change for the better rarely comes from within. Left to our own devices we tend to go around in circles, thinking the same old thoughts, repeating the same old actions. We may be so stuck in these loops that we just think, “This is who I am.” Thankfully we don’t exist in isolation, otherwise we’d…
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To sit in a place
In preparation for the Wild Therapy training I am taking this year, we have been invited to find an outside place, and to sit in it for ten to fifteen minutes every day. Our temple – my home – sits halfway up the Malvern Hills. Our garden is tiered. On the top tier is our…
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We all have many inner voices
We all have different parts. There’s a part that wants to go to work, and a part that wants to stay in bed. There’s a part that wants that extra donut, and a part that doesn’t, and maybe a part that is already regretting having the first one. We have conversations with ourselves just like…
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Coming out as a Body Psychotherapist
Over the last few weeks, until just recently, I’ve been experiencing some nervousness. Towards the end of last year I started getting ready to advertise as a body psychotherapist. Why the nerves? There aren’t so many body psychotherapists around. Is it a strange thing to do, I wondered? Will people still want to come and…
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Surviving Christmas and the New Year
We are moving through the longest nights. What happens at this time of year? In the run up to the longest night we put up our decorations and lights, go to parties and come together as happy families at Christmas time. Or we see others doing that and our own attempt to hold off the…
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The Importance of Being Yourself
You can hear a lot about selflessness in psychological and spiritual circles “just do what is needed for the other person” or “selflessness means putting your own feelings aside”. There is a danger in all of this that we disappear. Not in the good way that the ‘extinguishing’ of nirvana implies, but that we hide…
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To more creative living
This year I have been noticing when and how I keep myself from the world. I bury my head in a science fiction novel, or binge watch Marvel series on Netflix. I scroll through news headlines or my Facebook feed. It’s a habit that keeps me safe. It keeps me out of the possibility of…
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The Dharma of the sliced thumb
A post shared by Kaspalita (@kaspalita) on Dec 12, 2017 at 12:51am PST It was Thursday evening. I was still recovering from a heavy cold. It had lodged itself in my chest, and although my head was clear and my voice returned I had developed a cough which a friend euphemistically called ‘productive’… I was…