a training with a personal touch
In traditional learning environments we are rarely told anything at all about the person teaching us - they are there to deliver information alone. In a more modern context we might at best know of the teacher if they have some status within a field, or simply be provided with a short bio. Aimee believes it is vital to know some of the human being we are learning from and how they came to be here teaching us. She hopes that this page allows you to get a feel for her, her ethos and the journey that has led her here to you.
"I have been working in the wellness industry and field of mental health for more than15 years, but I am not your average therapeutic professional. Although I am a certfied counsellor, I am not a clinician (by choice) and I haven't taken a conventional training route. At times, in the earlier days of my work I felt in some way "less than" because of this, and frequently debated doing a traditional psychotherapy degree in search of self-validation - but could never bring myself to sign up. Every time I looked at a syllabus it didn't make sense to me - little of the traditional, heavily academic approach felt reflective of the healing work I had come to know, love, and benefit from myself.
My sense of professional inadequacy did begin to change over time in any case. The more people that came to me disappointed and disillusioned with the clinical care that they had received, the more I came to realise that the absence of clinical training was often an asset; unencumbered by outdated ways of pathologising I was able to form a truly integrative and intuitive approach to the work. I have come to understand that skilled holistic practitioners such as myself are vital, that we are serving a necessary evolution and revolution in the field of mental health and healing.
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I came to this work through my own suffering. Anxiety, depression, addictions, eating disorders, crushing co-dependency, and cripplingly low self-esteem were all born of trauma I didn’t know I had suffered. In search of healing, I was forced to be creative, courageous, and curious—because the answers weren’t neatly laid out or easy to find in one forum.
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As change began to take root in me, others started asking for my support. I sat with them. I listened. There seemed to be some kind of natural capacity in me to hold others, but I knew I needed to nurture these abilities with training and guidance.
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My path began with movement and meditation, first through Kundalini Yoga, which taught me the power of working in, with, and through the body. Over time, I explored many forms of movement healing, eventually centering my teaching in psychological somatics and Kum Nye, a Tibetan movement practice strikingly similar to Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing.
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Over the last 20 years, with the help of remarkable teachers, therapists, and mentors, I have slowly untangled myself (and continue to do so), and a vision of what is truly needed for holistic healing began to emerge. I often joke that I “trained backwards”—specialising in somatics and trauma first, then later developing the vital relational and counselling skills that are so necessary to hold therapeutic space with skill and care.
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Along the way, I have studied with pioneers such as Bessel van der Kolk, Gabor Maté, Pat Ogden, Peter Levine, Linda Parnell, Arielle Schwartz, Richard Schwartz, and Eric Gentry of the Arizona Trauma Institute. I immersed myself in the wisdom traditions and somatic arts, and today I am a devoted practitioner of Indo-Tibetan classical tantra. My current mentors include Rob Preece (Psychology of Buddhist Tantra), Dr Miles Neale (Contemplative Psychotherapy & Gradual Awakening), and Geshe Tenzin Zopa (Unmistaken Child).​
Over time, as I integrated trauma science, psychology, meditative study, and somatic practice in to my work, I noticed something remarkable: people who had struggled for years in therapy or spiritual practice began to shift. They became calmer, clearer, lighter—closer to the Self that had buried beneath the invisible traumas of life. I watched them reclaim their dignity, divinity, and personal power.​​​
None of this was due to anything extraordinary in me. What I witnessed was the impact of combining a few simple but potent ingredients. This training is built around those very ingredients—the path that revealed itself through the spaces others entrusted me to hold.
So much is distorted and fragmented through our western lens. We need an approach to healing that is not only holistic, but considered and trauma informed in its methodology. Its not just about having the right idea or the right techniques or theories, its about knowing how to use them, when to use them, when not to, in what order, and why. This revolutionary training model offers exactly that. I have created the training that I sorely wish had existed for me, in the hope that it can serve you and those you might hold.
We need more of us working boldly, bravely, outside the box. We need more of us demonstrating, primarily through ourselves, and secondarily through our work, that radical freedom, no matter what our history, really is possible."
"I have come to understand that most of what we suffer with is trauma - old stress and emotional pain stuck in the system. Trauma can be an acutely distressing one time event such as a rape or mugging, or even seemingly simple things like a minor car crash or routine surgery. Trauma can also be caused by exposure to various forms of emotional stress over a prolonged period of time such as by being raised by a depressed, stressed, anxious or insecure caregiver. Many of us had stressful and emotionally wounding childhood experience because we are growing up in a society that is suffering collectively.
If we are in any way symptomatic - suffering (as I did for most of my life) with low self esteem, anxiety, depression, addictions, attention deficit, co-dependency, low self esteem, chronic pain or fatigue, immunity issues, chronic health problems etc, we are likely suffering with some form of underlying trauma (PTSD, Complex PTSD, or Post Traumatic Stress) - whether or not we understand why. That is not to perpetuate a detrimental ideal of pathological wellness - the idea that we can cure all with enough therapy or "healing" or deny that other sociological and biological factors are not also creating causes and conditions for imbalance in the mind and body, they most definitely are - it is simply to acknowledge that psychological patterns and emotional debris in the body are almost always playing a component part in our suffering and our symptoms.
In the words of Peter Levine '"trauma is a fact of life" and experiences that leave a trauma imprint take many forms, some virtually invisible to the untrained eye. Very often until we resolve and come in to relationship with the underlying trauma (original wound), we will continue to experience dis-ease, imbalance, or struggle in one way or another. There is nothing wrong with us, something happened to us.
It is absolutely possible for us to heal. It is absolutely possible for us to resolve our trauma. It is absolutely possible for us to break out of the loops and spirals created by painful past learning, awaken to our true nature and recover the peace ease and joy that are our human birth right. But - the process must be holistic, the journey must honour the whole human being for us to access the kind of radical freedom that I am referring to. There is no other way. And that is the purpose of this training model - to offer a truly holistic solution. " ​
