‘ How do we acknowledge that each of us has a place; that both our body and the earth are home?
Andrea Olsen
If you have arrived here, chances are you are curious about embodiment, culture and connection.
Perhaps you have become aware that your history is stored in your body and you are looking for a safe way to connect with and integrate it.
You may be looking for ways to give voice to the longings and nigglings which reside within you, containing the nuggets of wisdom that may help you to move forward and remember your place within life’s great unfolding story.
Your body may seem quite foreign to you, like you live somewhere outside of it, and you may be looking to develop tools to inhabit yourself more fully.
You may be a psychotherapist, or have experienced lots of psychotherapy / mind-based approaches to healing. Perhaps you find yourself yearning to come back to the stuff of your body and explore how this may help to support further integration.
You may be a mother, looking for support in navigating the huge transition that becoming a mother entails, looking for space to be seen in this.
Or maybe you have some space in your life you would like to dedicate to meaningful enquiry, through somatic practice.
Whatever reason you have found yourself here, you are welcome as you are…
‘Hayley has an incredible skill to hold space and take care of the boundaries as a facilitator whilst she includes and embodies herself as a part of the group. She always made sure that we were comfortable, and that we don’t have to do anything that doesn’t feel right (boundaries were honoured). I learned ways to check in with my partner and those I worked with about their boundaries and what they felt comfortable with, and I also felt welcome and safe to express my boundaries.‘
Nina Nousianinan
Individuals
Collaborative Somatic Therapy
A process-oriented approach which draws upon diverse fields integrating somatic, psychological and ecological theory and practice to support the emergence and welcoming of your wholeness in authentic relationship with all life.
Mother Space
One-to-one Collaborative Somatic Therapy sessions for Mothers to support you in your journey of matresence and motherhood.
A space for you to grieve, remember and embrace all parts of yourself.
Authentic Movement
One:One sessions in Authentic Movement.
A space to be witnessed in your process
as it emerges through the moment,
to integrate your experience
and cultivate clear seeing.
NatureBody
Collaborative Somatic Therapy sessions in nature.
Moving the wisdom of the body within the wisdom of the land.
Moving in Community
ReSource
Supportive sessions for Women
Regularly: Alternate Tuesdays 10 – 11.45am, near Totnes.
These sessions are for you to Rest, Replenish & (Re)Connect with the joy of being in your own body.
Rest, Move, Sing.
Workshops in Embodied Rest,
Somatic Movement
and Singing Seasonal Songs together.
Something is coming here…
Watch this space.
Rituals of Embodied Remembrance await.
Hi, I am Hayley.
Woman, mother, dreamer and lover of wild landscapes. Explorer of culture, embodiment and belonging through the artistry of the moving body.
I work as a trauma informed, ISMETA registered, somatic movement therapist and educator (RSMT, RSME), yoga therapist and educator, and singer.
For the past two decades I have been facilitating movement and collaborative somatic explorations within diverse communities.
For much of my life I have been tending the living landscapes of body, earth and the liminal, through movement, voice, therapy and ritual.
In what has come to be known as ‘the West’, we live in a dominant culture that values immediacy, being busy and ‘power over’ the natural world. To slow down, rest and attune to the natural intelligence and cyclical rhythms of your own animal body has become a radical and necessary task.
Giving space to these, often, marginalised parts within yourself can weave a web of remembrance and interconnection. When you come to inhabit and work with your own body, your shape shifts, as do the shapes you make within the environment you inhabit. How you relate with the animate world around you changes. You can begin to reimagine culture away from a ‘power over’ paradigm to an ‘empowered with’ one. You can begin to remember yourself as part of nature, part of the great web of life.
Body as Support: In response to this cultural paradigm, I am motivated to share simple and effective tools that allow you to inhabit your own body with a greater sense of presence and in relationship with the world around you. I see connecting with the body’s innate faculties of support as the groundwork that allows this work to unfold safely.
Body as Guide: Somatic practice evokes awareness of, and offers expression to, body systems that can often sit below the threshold of everyday awareness. Contacting these systems and remaining attentive to body as living process can inform and guide you as you navigate your unique path.
Body as Nature: I work to validate the living wisdom of the body and its place as part of the animate Earth.
Embodying your relational interconnection with others, the space you inhabit and the Earth forms an important part of this work. As does decentralising the place of humans within the context of the natural world. We may ask how is it to listen to the whisperings of the moss, or the river? And to notice how they move, shape and inform us.
We are not apart from nature. We are nature. At its heart, this work is dedicated to the remembrance of this through the body.
All life is movement: a continual interchange, exchange between one thing and another – a wind in a tree, waves against a lakeside, my feet against the ground, your words in my mind. If I awaken to the touch of the world on my skin and sense the movement, the conversations, within my body the quality of a ‘dance’ returns, however unmoving my world seems to have become.
Miranda Tufnell
‘Hayley creates a nurturing space and holds it with skill and care as she facilitates and helps participants to tap into the intuitive knowing and movement in their bodies.‘
Elle Franklin
Accessibility:
My one-to-one therapeutic and Authentic Movement practice is currently based from MoveForward studio in central Totnes. The studio is opposite St. Mary’s church and there is a flight of stairs upon entering the building. Due to my current capacity and availability of studio spaces in Totnes, this is where I base my practice for now.
I would like to acknowledge that this venue may not be accessible for everyone and my intention is, as space opens up more in my own life with regards to mothering, to seek out alternate, more accessible venues to include in my practice. Please bear with me and thank you for your patience.
