Any therapist or healer worth their salt keeps learning. We acquire new skills and practice them, and find ourselves attracted to different types of work.

No two therapists are alike. We combine all our trainings, learnings and life experience to support you on your journey. I use the following modalities in my work but, in reality, any or all of them may be used in a given session.

Intuitive Emotional Massage

 

Deep relaxation massage. Release the emotional and neurological tension that interrupts the natural balance and healing potential of your body.

The bodywork is based on Swedish massage but the focus is on nervous energy and emotion. It tends to be comforting because we recognise and honour your emotional needs, and respond with nurturing touch. This can be a deeply healing experience, releasing emotional tension from the body.

The process usually includes gentle dialog in the early stages, slow nurturing touch with periods of stillness, and emotional attunement. Toward the end of the session you can expect to be in a state of deep relaxation. I offer words of affirmation, and reflect the insights you have gained during the session. These can usually be received deeply, without resistance or self-doubt.

 

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Embodied Emotional Therapy

Personal insight and healing session. Listen to your innate body wisdom. Understand and heal emotional wounds by acknowledging and making peace with the sensations in your body.

This is the most gritty, the most confronting of the sessions, because you are largely responsible for your own journey. We will likely use a guided meditation to bring you into a deeply relaxed state, and take your awareness into the body. It’s usually done face-up on a massage table, fully clothed, with minimal physical contact.

As sensations arise, the subconscious tends to make connections between the sensation, emotions, and past experiences. As you sit quietly with the sensation, it settles, loses intensity, or moves to another part of the body. The magic of this work is that as it fades, so does the distress of past experiences - they lose their grip on you.

I will be holding a calm presence for you at all times - an anchor, to help you maintain your relaxed state. We have techniques, and you will have the choice, to step into or away from any emotion that is present.

Lomi Lomi for Emotional Integration and Balance

Joyous, sensual, and nurturing massage to integrate breath, mind, spirit, and emotion within your body.

Lomi Lomi comes from the Hawaiian tradition and is the most intimate and sensual of the bodywork sessions offered. The hallmarks of Lomi Lomi are long flowing strokes from shoulder to foot, ever moving, like a dance. I use hands, forearms and elbows to sweep the body - providing a strong sense of the entire physical and emotional body, integrated. We are often working two or three parts of the body at the same time which helps to "confuse" the senses and drop us out of our heads, into a more spiritual embodied experience.

I'll be encouraging you to breathe in ways that help you acknowledge and express emotion as part of the embodied whole. To open up an energetic free-flow within your body, to feel more alive, creative, and integrated.

 

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Trauma-informed Therapy

I'm privileged to have worked with many beautiful souls affected by physical, emotional, and sexual trauma. In these sessions, I support you first to understand the nature of trauma, recognise your triggers, and communicate your needs and emotional state. This sets a framework for the other services offered here. You can understand and release trauma, at your own pace, in a context that feels safe.

Trauma leaves a residue in the body - in the form of learned reflexes, posture, and holding patterns - a body memory, if you will. Working patiently with the body can help identify these patterns and the life experiences behind them, while reducing their emotional intensity.

This field is close to my heart and I want to support anyone living with trauma, within their means. I offer a free 20 minute consult so you can meet me, better understand the approach, and decide if it is right for you.

Interpersonal Therapy

These sessions address difficulties relating to others, especially within intimate relationships: trust, boundaries, clear communication, consent, body image, self-expression, and "being seen". The format is entirely determined by your needs, and may include talking, body awareness, eye gazing, touch, and intimate massage, within my Ethical Practice framework.

This work can help you maintain sovereignty over your body, your personal space, and your spiritual power. With a strong sense of yourself and your boundaries, you can relate more comfortably with others, feel safer, stronger, and clearer in dating situations, and more able to maintain balanced intimate relationships.

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Clinical Hypnotherapy

Hypnotherapy is a great tool for gaining awareness and mastery of the unconscious mind. This work can change the way you feel about situations, people, tasks, and past experiences. If you routinely feel triggered by things and seem unable to respond in the most helpful way... give it a go.

Hypnotherapy is not so mysterious... it's a little like watching a movie. We allow ourselves to be immersed in a new future, we suspend disbelief, we put ourselves in the shoes of the hero, and feel the emotion of this new experience. This makes it real for us. An inspirational movie can leave us more optimistic, more open, more fired-up - and we can do the same in our own lives.

The most important aspect of the session is that you feel at ease, so we talk. I listen wholeheartedly so I can see your life from your perspective. Likely, I'm more optimistic about your ability to overcome your challenges than your are... and some of that will rub off on you.

Once aligned, we will do some guided relaxation and visualisation exercises. It's the power of your imagination that guides this process. We can reply old scenes from your life, free from the negative narrative, or with more favourable outcomes. We can consider future challenges and see ourselves overcoming them. We can even throw ourselves a future curve-ball and see how we react.

We can see our future and how we respond to challenges - and when the time comes, we can make favourable choices because it will all feel very familiar.

I have a specialist program for smoking cessation, and hypnotherapy can be effective for overcoming procrastination, fears and phobias, and changing habits and the way you feel about things. The state of calm induced by hypnotherapy can shift us from fight-or-fight toward rest-and-digest, with favourable outcomes in immune function and general health. Studies have shown it a useful therapy for irritable bowel syndrome, and skin conditions.

Call Hamish now and chat