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Meet Jen
Embodied healing with Jen
I am a counselling psychotherapist and breathwork counsellor in Port Melbourne, supporting people who are ready to explore a deeper understanding of themselves and their healing.
My approach combines psychotherapy with conscious connected Breathwork to help bring awareness to the emotions, sensations and experiences that may still be affecting you. While we can understand our experiences through talking and reflection, healing can also involve reconnecting with what is happening within our body.
I have been working with people for over eight years as a counsellor and psychotherapist, supporting many health professionals who are continuing their own healing journey from childhood trauma, burnout, grief and experiences that continue to affect their personal lives and their work.
Before becoming a therapist, I spent more than 40 years working in healthcare as a nurse. I understand the realities of caring for others, the pressures within healthcare systems and the impact that this work can have over time. I also understand the experience of continuing to give to others while carrying your own pain.
As a healthcare professional myself I know why I chose to work as a healer and carer
I know my own wounds took me towards being with suffering in others. After reaching burnout while working in community palliative care, a job I loved so much, I needed to stop for a while and learn why I felt over burdened. Why my own grief and childhood wounds stopped me caring for myself.
My work is also informed by my own lived experience of childhood trauma and neglect. I know personally how deeply early experiences can affect the way we see ourselves, relate to others and move through the world. My own journey through complex trauma, grief, and an ongoing desire to really face myself, has led me through many modalities of healing. Beginning with a deep spiritual search into what my purpose in life is and working with therapists who helped me understand myself, my mind and my history better.
Trying to understand myself, change my habits and relationship patterns via my intellect and talk therapy only led me so far.
It wasn’t until I worked with Breathwork that I truly faced my patterns, my emotions and my trauma.
My own experience with Breathwork
My own experience with Breathwork over more than 15 years has shown me the value of including the body in healing.
Working with body based Breathwork healed my complex trauma, grief, long held anger and shame. The pain of shame which I held for most of my adult life shifted when my Breathwork therapist held a space of acceptance, non-judgment, love and safety. I felt this change in myself.
I believe our suffering deserves to be understood with compassion and curiosity. We are not just our thoughts or our stories. Our emotions, our body and our experiences are all connected, and healing requires us to pay attention to the whole person.
I do not believe healing requires you to force yourself into painful memories or revisit experiences before you are ready. My approach is based on listening, acceptance and working at a pace that respects your experience.
As a therapist, I bring my professional knowledge, my experience in healthcare and my understanding of trauma to create a space where you can feel heard and accepted. A place where you do not need to explain away your pain or minimise what you have been through.
If you have spent years caring for others and are now ready to turn some of that care towards yourself, I offer a therapeutic approach that includes both the mind and the body.
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Mission
To help as many people as possible to understand their complex trauma, their attachment wounds and work honestly with their emotions. To help those who work with others, such as health professionals to understand what brought them to health care and what can sustain them into the future of this career.
To bring awareness to the world that this healing process will change the world one person at a time.
Vision
To bring body based Breathwork to more people and support more people to heal their complex trauma.
Qualifications
Graduate Diploma of Counselling and Psychotherapy 2022-23, Cairnmillar Institute. Melbourne.
Breathwork and Body Centred Counselling 2018-2019 Hobart.
Diploma of Holistic Health Care 2012, New Zealand.
Registered Nurse 1985-2024, including 30 years as a Palliative care nurse.
Professional memberships
Australian Breathwork Association
Psychotherapy and Counselling Association of Australia