About Sara
Sara is affirmed as a Way of Council Carrier/Facilitator and is an experienced group worker and trainer. She is a member of the European Council Network (ECN) and has completed a four year mentoring and apprenticeship as a Council Facilitator working in the UK with ECN trainer Pippa Bondy. Sara is a qualified therapeutic counsellor (Accredited and registered BACP/NCPS) and Voice Dialogue practitioner (trained with international facilitators Trilby Fairfax and Peter Dellensen) and staffed on their trainings for more than 10 years. Sara also trained in Wildernness Rites of Passage ceremonies with the School of Lost Borders in the US and has a background in broadcast journalism and third sector community projects. She currently teaches on a counselling training course at The Heartwood Centre in South Devon. She finds the practice of sitting in Council to be deeply restorative and empowering.
She brings a rich and varied experience of life and work including careers in BBC journalism and the voluntary sector as well as a first degree in history. As well as her private practice she works as a freelance trainer and workshop leader and teaches on a counselling training course.
Personal Approach
I describe myself as a relational, integrating therapist. The relational part means that I place emphasis on building a relationship with my client that enables them to feel free to say things they may not have been able to before and to experiment with different ways of being in a safe and supportive atmosphere. It means we can be real with each other and drop ways of relating that are inauthentic. The integrating part means that I work with elements from different therapeutic traditions using the relationship as a frame of reference. I am drawn by the healing power of nature and am learning to see myself as part of the natural world and not separate from it. I bring current ecological and environmental issues into my work: sometimes grief and anxiety are not private issues but are a response to the state of our world. We can meet and work indoors or in the beautiful East Devon countryside where we can explore nature as a mirror for your life.
I believe that deep within us there is an innate wholeness and well-being that we all have the capacity to discover. For me one of the ways to experience that wholeness is through the relationship between therapist and client. More and more I am sensing that the wholeness of the individual contributes to the wholeness of the collective. I am fascinated by the work of Joanna Macy exploring our personal grief at the pain of the world and offering practices to reconnect with the natural world of which we are a part. I have a hunch that the wonder of the counselling relationship is to be found again in relationship with nature. I am also intrigued by the idea that our current planetary crises are an opportunity for the conscious awakening of our species.
