Home

 

You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.

Mary Oliver

For many years I have worked both as a teacher of the Discipline of Authentic Movement and as a somatic psychotherapist. My practice as a therapist has been profoundly informed by my years of study of authentic movement with Janet Adler (as well as by my training in Dance Movement Psychotherapy and Body-Mind Centering®)

There is much interweaving of these two threads of my work (therapist and teacher of the discipline) because the practice of authentic movement will bring to the light -- as does the therapeutic process -- the stories that live in our bodies, including the hurts, the fears, the wounding, thereby offering an opportunity for integration and healing. Both involve deep inner attention and both involve the relationship with a compassionate, accepting ‘other’.


I am now choosing to no longer call myself a therapist, even though work with individuals often feels like therapy. I choose not to hold the responsibility of a therapist in the way that is necessary for certain stages of the therapy process. Instead, I invite people who have a longing to more fully inhabit their bodies and to experience new possibilities of being in relation to self and to other to engage in embodied practice with me. I teach each one the Discipline of Authentic Movement, sometimes using the more formal structure of it, sometimes in other ways. I introduce people to this practice, in which we experience life directly, moment by moment, in movement and stillness, through listening to our bodies.

I love the word ‘accompany’. I prefer to call myself ‘the one who accompanies’ the other, as together we stay close to the felt experience of each one’s living body – through feeling, through movement or stillness and through speaking together about what we meet in ourselves, both of us.

Everyone is welcome. No previous experience is necessary. I have a private practice in my studio just outside Penicuik (close to Edinburgh) -- a tranquil setting surrounded by garden and trees. People of all ages bring their fears, their longings, a desire to know themselves better, a wish to be truly seen. They know that they want to do this work through their experience of the life of their bodies.

.

All content copyright © Fran Lavendel, Photos Adam MacLean and Isabel Nicholson.     
Website by bosami