Meet Emma
Welcome
Hello there.... I'm Emma, living and working in Bristol, in the west of England. My people and I are from here in Bristol and other parts of these Isles as well as Northern Europe and India and other parts of South Asia. I mention this because ancestors are a lively part of my life and like to be acknowledged - we'd not be here without them, after all.
Curiosities
Since my teens I’ve been fascinated by the connections and play between our thoughts, emotions, bodies, faith, and being in and of the elements. I've always been intrigued by how the world works, and troubled by the bits that don't - what I'd now call the various supremacies: human supremacy, white supremacy, all the oppressive systems actively marginalising billions of folk in the world - human and other-than and more-than-human. I’ve also been drawn to understanding love, faith, and their expression in how I live. This exploration was rooted in the earth where I grew up - where I was lucky enough to have been free to roam in rural Somerset, which many of my paternal ancestral lineages called home. I forayed into church going, then moved into teaching myself yoga and meditation from a book and a tape cassette in my early teens (with limited success, admittedly!)
Becoming a therapist
I decided to become a therapist when I was 21, learning counselling skills as part of my teacher training certificate in Leicester. I was in awe of the two trainers and sensed the possibility for change - individual and more far-reaching - growing from presence, deep listening and the therapeutic relationship. A seed was sown... After postgraduate studies in social science and the start of a varied, interesting working life as a university lecturer at the universities in Bristol and in Gloucestershire, an aid worker in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia, a director in my family business, and a facilitator working with other small family businesses living through tricky transitions (succession, bereavement, illness), by my late 20s I felt ready to start training as a therapist. The seed started to grow roots.
I qualified as an Integrative Counsellor in 2004, following a three-year qualifying training and launched my private practice. My initial, qualifying training ran in parallel with being in the heart of training for ordination as a Buddhist and in my father falling ill and dying, both integral life aspects in the initiation of becoming a therapist.
Learning, learning
Since 2004 I’ve worked as a therapist in private practice (read more about my qualifications). Post qualifying, my work has delved deeper still into somatic work and body psychotherapy, ecopsychology and animist theory and practice, both drawing on my Dharma/Buddhist practice of the past 30 years. I qualified as an Embodied-Relational therapist in 2010, a Wild therapist in 2012 and as a Clinical and Creative supervisor later that same year. Because of my own arrival here on earth this time round and how birth patterns show up everywhere, I’ve been long intrigued by pre and peri natal work and birth dynamics, completing two two-year trainings with Matthew Appleton and Jenni Meyers at Conscious Embodiment and a year-long training with Cherionna Menzam Sills.
During and since the Covid-19 pandemic I’ve very much appreciated training with Merete Holm Brantbjerg and Kolbjorn Vardal (co-founders of Relational Trauma Therapy) on several of their courses focused on working therapeutically with hypo response and hypo arousal in our bodies, deepening my understanding and practice of this aspect of trauma-aware work, hand in hand with paying attention to health and further cultivating resourcefulness and embodied resilience.
I have also been deepening into ancestral lineage healing with Daniel Foor, Shannon Willis and the good folks at Ancestral Medicine and Red Earth Healing, integrating a lifelong love of history, ancestral devotion, social science and more than 20 years of amateur genealogy. I am currently an Ancestral Medicine practitioner-in-training (more about that here).
Dharma practice
I've been practising Buddhist meditation and the Dharma (the Buddha's teachings) since 1995 and still feel like a beginner! For 11 years I was ordained as a Buddhist in the Triratna Buddhist community and relished facilitating study and supporting women preparing for ordination. I have subsequently taken the precepts in the Soto Zen tradition. Since 2016 I've been practising under the tutelage of Colorado-based Zen teacher, author and activist David Loy, sharing a love of ecodharma practice. I find dharma practice helpful in leaning into how to respond appropriately to living through the 6th extinction crisis, climate emergency, and the other interrelated crises and oppressions and liberations, whether that's through meditation, relationship and community and taking tangible, practical actions.
Therapy and writing activism
Bringing together my early life interest in social and ecological justice with therapy, from 2010 - 2014 I was steering group member of Psychotherapists and Counsellors for Social Responsibility (PCSR) and editor of its Transformations in house journal. In 2012 I was part of the team which co-funded and co-founded the now annual 'Edge of the Wild' UK annual ecopsychology gathering and have served on the organising group numerous times.
Writing as activism is close to my heart and a key stone of loving, mindfulness practice. I've written three books, and co-edited a fourth. I have also written several book chapters, as well as journal and magazine articles. For many years I was a column writer for US-based Somatic Psychotherapy Today. I occasionally write for One Earth Sangha. I am currently returning to write with and for my ancestors - an epic, exciting, lifelong challenge.
Thanks for reading, wishing you and your people well.