My Work

I believe every person carries an Inner Village; a living community of voices, gifts, longings, fears and forgotten possibilities.

My work is about creating spaces where people can meet those different parts of themselves with curiosity, compassion and play, so they can live with greater freedom, authenticity and connection.

Whether through Discover Your Inner Village workshops, deeper group explorations, Voice Dialogue sessions or training, I am interested in creating spaces where people can become more familiar with themselves, including the parts they know well and those they have had less opportunity to meet.

My intention isn’t to help people become someone else, but to support a growing relationship with the many different aspects of who they already are.

My Journey

I didn’t arrive at this work through psychology alone. The roots of what I now call The Inner Village stretch through my whole life.

Nature became my first place of belonging when home often felt chaotic. Forests, open landscapes and time spent with animals offered a kind of presence and safety that words couldn’t. They taught me to slow down, to listen, and to trust something larger than myself.

Later came horses and years of teaching natural horsemanship. Horses respond not to performance but to authenticity, and they became some of my greatest teachers in relationship, leadership and embodied presence.

Travelling, living within different cultures and communities, and even swimming with wild dolphins continued to shape my understanding of what it means to belong—not only to a place, but also to ourselves and to one another.

At the same time, my own life repeatedly invited me into unfamiliar parts of myself. There were periods of feeling deeply lost, alongside moments of profound discovery that gradually revealed the richness of the Inner Village within me.

Working in Psychiatry further deepened these questions. I witnessed both the value and the limitations of clinical approaches to human suffering, and felt increasingly drawn towards ways of working that honoured the whole person rather than simply addressing symptoms.

Some of my greatest teachers, however, have been the people closest to me. The friendships where I have learnt to reveal more and more of myself.

The relationships where honesty is valued over comfort, where we challenge one another with love, and where curiosity becomes a way of being together.

Those friendships continue to teach me that we don’t grow alone.

My Background

Alongside these life experiences, I trained in Occupational Therapy and specialised in Child Psychiatry before continuing into Voice Dialogue, the Eight Shields model, Body-Informed Leadership, and embodied group facilitation.

Over the years, these different strands have gradually woven together. Rather than seeing psychology, creativity, embodiment and nature-based practice as separate disciplines, I experience them as complementary ways of understanding what it means to be human.

Today, The Inner Village is the wider landscape in which these different threads come together: psychology and embodiment, Voice Dialogue and parts work, creativity and play, nature and culture, the village within us and the village around us.

Voice Dialogue remains a distinct practice within my work, with its own individual sessions and training. Fool Expression has grown through the meeting of Voice Dialogue with improvisation, embodied expression and play, and continues to inform the more expressive aspects of The Inner Village.

Like the practice itself, my work continues to evolve. I remain as much a student as a facilitator, continually learning through nature, through relationships, through the people I work with, and through the ever-changing landscape of my own Inner Village.

The Streams That Feed This Work

The Inner Village hasn’t grown from a single tradition.

It has taken shape through years of exploring different ways of understanding ourselves, relating to one another, and participating more fully in life.

Some influences have come through formal training, while others have arrived through books, communities, friendships, teachers, artistic practice and direct experience.

Among the streams that continue to nourish this work are:

•  Occupational Therapy & Child Psychiatry
•  Voice Dialogue & Parts Work
• The 8 Shields model and nature-based mentoring
• Fooling and the inspiration of Franki Anderson
• Deep Play Institute and the work of Aaron Finbloom
• Improvisation and Keith Johnstone
• Internal Family Systems (IFS)
• Focusing
• Circling
• Animistic and nature-based wisdom traditions
• Buddhist teachings and non-duality
• The writings of Stephen Nachmanovitch, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Toko-pa Turner and Tammy Lynn Kent

None of these approaches defines The Inner Village on its own.

Voice Dialogue has provided an important psychological and experiential foundation. Fooling and improvisation have helped open pathways into embodied expression, spontaneity and play. Nature, community and relationships have continually shaped how I understand belonging, presence and the conditions that support exploration.

Together with my own lived experience and the many people I’ve had the privilege to learn with, these streams continue to shape an evolving body of work that remains open, curious and alive.

The people behind the practices

I also want to honour some of the people whose teaching has shaped me directly. My Voice Dialogue learning and practice have been deeply influenced by Trilby Fairfax and Peter Dellensen, alongside the wider lineage of Hal and Sidra Stone, who developed Voice Dialogue and the Psychology of Selves.

Franki Anderson’s Fool’s Work opened another doorway into spontaneity, embodiment and the freedom of not knowing.

These are different traditions, with their own depth and integrity. Part of my ongoing exploration has been discovering how they can inform my practice while respecting what makes each one distinct.

If We Meet

Whether you come to Discover Your Inner Village, join a longer retreat, explore Voice Dialogue individually or take part in training, you are welcome to arrive with curiosity and with the different parts of yourself that are present.

Some may be eager to explore, others more uncertain. There is room to begin where you are.

I hope that through our work together, you have opportunities to discover more of your own Inner Village, its many voices, relationships and resources, and the ways these may shape your experience of being alive.

There are many ways to begin. Whether you’re drawn to a workshop, an individual session or simply have a question, I’d love to hear from you.

Continue Exploring

If you’d like to experience this work for yourself, I’ve created a free guided practice that introduces some of the foundations of the Inner Village

It’s a gentle place to begin exploring your Inner Village, meet some of your inner voices, and discover a little more freedom, curiosity and connection within yourself.