Finding my Body

After an English degree at Oxford University (1991), I was much in need of reconnecting with my body.  By way of balance, I found my way to a certificate in Holistic Massage at Oxford School of Massage (1993), and an Advanced Diploma in Drama and Movement Therapy at Sesame Institute (1994).

Drama and Movement Therapy

Sesame was life-changing.  Here were wise, spiritually awake, compassionate and emotionally literate elders teaching myth, movement and Jungian theory.  And it was challenging: I wanted to help other people, but I was forced to confront my own unprocessed emotional baggage for the first time. 

In the following years I wove a life between arts admin jobs, running drama therapy sessions in psychiatric wards, a drama club for people with learning disabilities, one-to-one sessions with children with special needs, and dozens of creative community projects thanks to arts funding for organizations (Ithaca, Reach Inclusive Arts, Coral Arts) which sadly don’t exist any more.

Sufism and Shamanism

Having fallen out of my childhood Christian faith, I found my first spiritual teacher, Noor Jacobs, who introduced me to the Divine Feminine, via Sufism.  My first brush with shamanism was in the early 1990s at Spirit Horse Camps.  I met an owl in a journey, who told me to wait.  I waited.

More than 15 years later, I took part in Danu Fox's Earth Singers programme. This was the beginning of a wonderful new way of relating with my voice and the elements - a guardianship through song.  Then in 2011, I took a leap of faith and bought a second hand Mongolian yurt. Later that year, at Sacred Arts Camp, Seersha O'Sullivan stepped through the door of the yurt with her medicine bundle and I recognized a mature spiritual female power. I didn't let her leave without telling me who she was and how I could learn more.

Seersha introduced me to the Great Council of Grandmothers - spiritual beings who have guided me ever since - and told me about Shamanka, a course for women's shamanism in Dorset, where she taught, alongside founder Eliana Harvey. I enrolled the next year, learning practices and healing techniques from ancient traditions, primarily from the Andes. Eliana Harvey, whose many teachers included Alberto Villoldo, was also an initiate of the Wester Sufi Order, so it was a natural fit for me. I graduated with a Practitioner Certificate in Healing and the Shamanic Arts, and began offering one to one sessions from my home in East Oxford in 2014.

Ritual and Ceremony

Early on in my shamanic explorations, I came to understand that creating inclusive ceremony around rites of passage (birth, marriage, death, transformation) was a way of bringing home the riches of shamanic work and earthing it within families and existing communities.  In 1996 I created my own wedding ceremony, and two years later, a 30th birthday ritual.  People began to ask me for advice when making events of their own, and so a new strand of my work began.

I studied with Sue Fox of Welfare State International, and then, by way of on-the-job training for becoming a celebrant, I decided to research a book about new ways people are marking rites of passage, from birth through to funerals.  Caught by the breadth and depth of the work on birth and babies, I realised this was a book in itself.  Ten years, (including one divorce, one remarriage and two babies) later, Birthrites was born. 

Women, Girls and the Goddess

A special interest of mine, alongside the Divine Feminine, has been working with women and girls.  I devised and led Embodying the Goddess, a transformational course for women, integrating what I had learned from many parts of my life.  And, with Emma Hood, I co-led The Wolf Clan, a group for pre-teen girls with creative sessions and camps.

Since 2023 I have been part of a group of women laying the foundations to raise Oxford Community Goddess Temple.  As part of this I have co-facilitated rituals and begun Singing to Source – a movement to rekindle our sacred connection to the source waters of our bio-region through song.