Tell us about your journey? What brought you to where you are now?
As a young person, I was looking for answers to my own and others’ suffering. I wanted to understand how to ease the pain I found myself in and also the pain of others. This started me on my journey of training in mental health and later as a psychotherapist. It also started me on my own journey in personal therapy.
This was over 20 years ago.
In that time, I discovered that once talking had given structure, understanding and a narrative to one’s experience, we are often left with bodies that still struggle. Anxiety, fear, stress and threat states live in our breath, muscle tension and heart rates, impacting our thoughts that follow these cues, as well as our physical well being.
I came to understand that trauma is held to a large extent in the physical body.
This understanding led me to study the neurobiology of trauma and distress, and on a winding path from there to yoga, qigong, mindfulness, somatic movement, feldenkrais, breathwork and reiki.
I found for myself, many of the clients I worked with and students I taught, that understanding human pain, meant understanding that body and mind are not just connected, they are one and the same. The cartesian dualism of western medicine is not a model I felt made sense anymore.
I see us as one whole being. The old adage mind, body and soul, for me is just MindBodySoul. The layered bodies, physical, mental, emotional, energetic – are one whole; and whilst I may have read this many times, it took me a long time to really feel it for myself.
My work and day to day life is very much informed by the ideas I have learnt in psychotherapy and neuroscience, as well as many Eastern teachings on non-duality.
I came to understand that our need to be ‘online’ in the brain/body/nervous system sense, as well as fully connected to ourselves, others and the environment, is what drives true well being.
When our bodies, minds and energetic selves are fully online and connected, we can begin to recover from traumas we may have experienced and live more fully, whatever is happening in our day to day lives.
My training in psychotherapy and trauma informs the work I do now. However, the work I now do is movement, mindfulness and breathwork based as this is where I have found the greatest relief from distress and the greatest peace.
It’s is also informed by many years of meditation practice, training to be a mindfulness teacher, as well my training in reiki.
My personal daily practise is always responsive to how I am doing at this moment in time. It usually includes some form of movement; feldenkrais, yoga and qigong are my go to’s, as well as some breathwork – chosen to match my nervous system and emotional state at the time. I also practice meditation and self reiki.
Finding the motivation and discipline to be with myself in these ways has taken me many years. I don’t want to sound like I just arrived here, or that it’s easy to stay committed, even now, I often have to gently but firmly ‘parent’ the resistant teenage part of me. This is also something that impacts how I work with people. Knowing from my own experience how hard change can be, I try to offer new ideas in ways that make incorporating them into daily life as seamless as possible.
My own journey of recovery, of moving towards finding states of well being and joy, has been long, and is very much, not yet finished. I am grateful to be able to continue learning band sharing that with others in my work.
What has been your biggest inspiration with the work that you do and share?
The privilege of being alongside people in their pain, distress and suffering, of watching people find moments of respite, of insight, of the easing and sharing of the load they carry.
The privilege of seeing so many humans completely wide open, vulnerable, showing me the parts they rarely if every show anyone. I’ve seen people at their worst and their best, at their most genuine. I’ve gotten to know people right deep down at their centres, to see what being human was really like. It awed me and moved me in ways I can’t really describe.
These privileges have been my greatest inspiration.
I have been permitted to see into the depths of human suffering, of joy, of determination and hope. I will always be deeply grateful to all those people who chose to trust me as their therapist.
Their courage inspired me to learn more, to read, to trial new treatments (always on myself first) to study and learn about new ideas, from neurofeedback to the use of sound, movement and breathwork.
My clients inspired me to learn and to grow, for myself and for them.
What sparks joy in your life that truly lights you up? (This could be big or small).
My daughter is the funniest person I know. She sees those parts of people that are usually not spoken about, but that we all know are there. She cuts through the b******t and with laser-sharp quickness shines a light on the humour in our failures, in our fallibility, those moments and parts of us that we might usually hide.
She helps me to laugh at it all!
For me laughter is an absolute necessity to connection and well being, like the improv I love doing, I see laughter with others, being playful and open to being foolish, as a wonderful way to be at real peace, with the whole of who we are.
My daughter, Ruby, is a bright, loud, belly laugh of light in my life!
What are your favourite soul or self-care practices right now that you can share with us?
Shake, yawn, stretch. Do what dogs do. It’s the quickest way to reset the nervous system.
If you’re feeling really stuck, you could do an inhale broken in the middle with a brief hold, then exhale a sigh, do this whilst very slowly looking back and forth across the horizon line.
Eyes and the threat centre in the brain are innately connected. Certain eye movements are great for changing how we feel quickly.
These two activities are super quick ways to change your current state if you’re feeling low, fearful, stressed, hopeless or stuck.
Knowing how to hack the nervous system via movement and breathing can make day to day life a little easier to manage. I use these two tools regularly.
For me connection is everything.
We are social animals. The structure of our nervous system is one that is, at its healthiest when we are interdependent, interconnected and in contact with others.
The modern ideal, that a healthy person is independent and able to function and cope, without community, without real and deep connection and support is a big part of what is making us all so unwell.
When we are suffering, grieving, fearful; that ‘little rabbit’ part of us, the social animal in us, is most in need of contact. We need to not fight that, or see it as weakness. We are at our best when we are connected when we can be seen fully when we can be weak and small with one another – Then we can be strong and hopeful together.
Inspire our Breathe Love community, share an affirmation, or favourite quote, poem, song or playlist?
For me connection is everything.
We are social animals. The structure of our nervous system is one that is, at its healthiest when we are interdependent, interconnected and in contact with others.
The modern ideal, that a healthy person is independent and able to function and cope, without community, without real and deep connection and support is a big part of what is making us all so unwell.
When we are suffering, grieving, fearful; that ‘little rabbit’ part of us, the social animal in us, is most in need of contact. We need to not fight that, or see it as weakness. We are at our best when we are connected when we can be seen fully when we can be weak and small with one another – Then we can be strong and hopeful together.
Inspire our Breathe Love community, share an affirmation, or favourite quote, poem, song or playlist?
A beautiful album I often listen to when doing my practice and this quote by Henry Thoreau, “It’s not what you look at that matters, but what you see.”
For me, this sums up what we can accomplish by stepping into some more mindful moments.
Favourite poem by Clare Dubois, founder of the wonderful charity, Tree Sisters.
Accepted the day and night of you,
“The modern ideal, that a healthy person is independent and able to function and cope, without community, without real and deep connection and support is a big part of what is making us all so unwell.”
Share with us something that you are really proud of?
I am really proud to have let go of shame. For me, and I know for many others, letting go of shame can be a really tough thing to do. Shame often gets in if we’ve been treated as less than, the actions of others can leak into our sense of who we are, of our value and right to be in the world, to be well, loved, seen and heard.
I used to live with a great deal of shame, I could attach it to anything, especially the parts of me or my experience that might draw in judgment from some people; like being a single parent, or having experienced poverty, homelessness or domestic violence, or being working class.
These are just a few things. I think if we feel shame, we will always find things in our lives, our body image, our status, that we can criticise, want to hide, wish were different.
I am proud to have been able, with support, to get to a place where I can stand up in front of people, real, flawed and human, and know I am ok. I am more than ok, I’m pretty cool.
I hope this has and will enable others to do the same.
For me, shame is something that lives in the body, in the cells and the fascia, the posture and the breath, not just the neural pathways where beliefs live. Part of letting it go can be finding new ways to move, stand, walk tall and breathe deep and full.
It isn’t an easy journey, and in some ways, it is never completely done, but I’m proud of the changes I’ve made.
What will you never take for granted?
My body. Being someone who lives with chronic health issues, I have had to learn to live in, love and care for a really flawed body. Sometimes I’ve hated it, resented and wished so hard that it were different. Some years ago a yoga teacher of mine read this to me, ‘And I said to my body, I want to be your friend, and my body replied; Oh, I’ve waited so long to hear you say that’.
It made me cry. I had to learn to befriend my body, to learn that it has huge potential and can do great things, even if the things it does might seem small to others. It houses me, it gives me this opportunity, to be in a relationship, to the world, to other people, to experience pain and love. I maybe learnt more from the pain than anything else. I learnt to go slow, to understand responsive self-care, not just imposing someone else’s idea of self-care onto my struggling body. My unwell body has helped to teach me what love really is when you need to love something that doesn’t fit with anyone else’s ideal.
I work every day not to take for granted having a body. Even one that struggles, is one that is a gift.
What is your favourite practice that connects you to your heart ki/energy? (Please share a tip, tool or technique to support our wellbeing?
Breathing with nature. You can do this with a houseplant or a whole forest.
Sitting or standing facing your nature of choice.
Breathe deeply into the Dantian, lower belly. In and out through the nose. See if it’s possible to let the out-breath be a little slower. Begin to see in your mind’s eye that you and the plants are breathing together, like a dance.
Your out-breath is their in-breath and vice versa.
What you release the plant takes in.
What the plant releases you take in.
Your in-breath is their out-breath.
Your out-breath, their in-breath.
Stay in that sway, in that exchange for a few minutes.
Allowing your whole body to dance with the plant(s).
This connection with nature can help to bring us out of the ‘I’, the ‘me’ and into the ‘we’ and ‘us’, the heartfelt interconnectedness of all things.
You and the plant are built for each other and of each other.
You’re one and the same.
See if you can find a moment where this can be felt.
Thank you for breathing love with us, Jessica.
Tune in to Jessica’s offerings:
Jessica is fully qualified in Psychodynamic Psychotherapeutic Counselling, Integrative Psychotherapy, Teaching Mindfulness, Energy Psychotherapy, Nature-based mindfulness and Forest bathing, Master Practitioner in trauma work and Supervision training.
We ask our interview guests to share a charity of their choice for us to learn about, support and donate. Please take time to look them up, share their information and make a donation if you feel called to. Jessica has chosen, Tree Sisters
Click here to our main page to find more Breathe Love interview guests.