Extended therapeutic work
Focused Work
For therapists and trainees who've had a taste of somatic work — and know there's more underneath.
You've probably had at least one moment in a session — yours or someone else's — where something shifted in the body before the mind caught up. Where the work stopped being about the story and started being about what the story lives in. That moment tends to change what you want from therapy. It makes the talking feel incomplete.
This format is for people who are already in that territory. Who understand, at least intellectually, that the nervous system holds what the narrative doesn't. Who may have done some somatic or body-based work and found themselves wanting to go further — or who carry, from their own clinical work, a kind of accumulated weight that the usual methods don't quite touch.
The premise is simple: some things don't shift in 50 minutes. Not because the therapy is wrong, but because the system needs more time than that to stop bracing, to let the process become something other than managed.
What weekly sessions can't always do
Weekly therapy has a rhythm: open, orient, close. Repeat. That rhythm is useful. It contains. It builds relationship over time. But it also means that anything requiring the body to actually settle — rather than visit and then re-brace — tends to stay just out of reach.
You may know this from your own clinical practice. How some clients touch something real and then have to pack it away again because there are 10 minutes left. How the most important moment sometimes happens right before the door.
Extended time doesn't just give you more of the same. It changes what the nervous system thinks is possible. When there is no pressure to arrive anywhere quickly, something else comes online.
Structure
- 2 × 120-minute sessions, each with a short break
- 2 × 30-minute integration sessions — one after each extended session — to let what emerged settle before it gets overlaid
This is likely for you if
- You're a therapist or trainee carrying material from your caseload that doesn't fully discharge — vicarious activation, over-attunement, the sense that your system absorbs more than it should
- You've been curious about somatic work, had a first experience of it, and felt something open that you'd like to follow further
- You understand your patterns analytically and notice that the understanding hasn't changed the felt experience of them
- Something in your body responds to particular clients or relational dynamics in ways that are disproportionate and don't resolve with reflection alone
- You've been in therapy for a long time, done the work diligently, and there is still a layer that hasn't moved
- You function well, hold a lot, and have a growing suspicion that the holding itself is the thing that needs attending to
- You want to work with someone who can stay with uncertainty, stay close to the body, and not rush toward resolution
Particularly relevant for
- Trainee therapists beginning to feel the weight of holding — and wanting to understand from the inside what they're asking clients to do
- Therapists in relational or trauma-adjacent work who are good at their jobs and paying a quiet price for it
- Those at the edge of somatic work, not yet committed to a full training, but curious enough to want a real encounter with it
Optional elements
Expressive arts can be woven in — not as a softening, but as a different kind of precision. Image, symbol, and mark-making sometimes locate things that language circles around without landing.
- Within-session: drawing, image-making, symbolic work
- Between sessions: expressive work as part of integration
These aren't offered as add-ons. They're there if they're useful.
How I work
The ground is attunement, relational sensitivity, and careful pacing — with a somatic and Gestalt-informed lens that means we stay close to what the body is doing, not just what the mind makes of it.
I also bring my own experience of navigating neurodivergence and queer identity — which has given me a particular familiarity with the cost of adaptation. The parts of a person that get reorganised to fit. The effort that lives below the surface of someone who presents as fine.
I'm not interested in performing neutrality. I work from contact.
This probably isn't right if
- You're currently in acute crisis or without adequate containment outside of sessions
- Sustained body-based attention tends to destabilise rather than settle you
- You're looking for a structured protocol — EMDR, SE within a formal frame — rather than a relational somatic process
Four sessions across a contained period: two extended, two integration. The price reflects the preparation, depth, and continuity this format requires — and the fact that I work with a small number of intensives at any one time.
If you're uncertain whether this is the right thing, the consultation is the place to find out. No pressure to decide before we've spoken.