ABOUT
Sarah Hutchinson
Passionate About Holistic Healing
As a careful witness, Sarah stays with you as you are, she holds space for the tracking of sensations in your body and notices involuntary movements that may be signs of discharge moving through, encouraging you to stay with your bodily experience.
She will invite you to explore involuntary or spontaneous movements or gestures in a more slow and deliberate way to help release. She also pays attention to any gestures that arise that may be supportive for your own self holding, soothing and resourcing.
She guides you to identify other resources that might be supportive to you. These might be physical places, environments where you feel particularly safe or held secure. They may be things that you enjoy to look at, they may be friends. It might be a piece of music, a pet, anything that you can call on, which brings about that sense of being held, safe, strong, confident, calm, whatever it is that your system needs to balance the activation or discharge that may have moved through your body. These resources could also be forms of creative expression, moving, making, arts, handcrafting, writing can all be activities which help us to find calm focus, centeredness and also aliveness, joy. Equally, using the voice or moving can help the releasing of tensions and emotions in the body, as well as providing forms of resource that bring aliveness and presence.
Testimonial
"Sarah helped me notice where I was holding tension and to release it with present moment awareness and self love. By the end of the session I had a new understanding of how to witness reactions in my body and self soothe. I walked away feeling grounded and calm, knowing I had learned some important tools to manage stress and anxiety. Sarah is a natural healer and communicator and is perfectly suited to somatic healing."
- Lilian
Clients say that Sarah is a calming resource, they feel safe and able to be themselves with her. By being a present witness, she stays with clients and there experience, like a midwife to feelings, tensions or impulses that need to be moved through the body and released. Using Somatic Experiencing techniques she supports deep body listening, allowing the body's wisdom to shine through. She supports a dialogue between the client and their body, tracking sensations and impulses, observing and reflecting what is alive. Release is balanced with resourcing as she helps the client to identify the best ways for them to self soothe, find safety, calm, strength and aliveness in their system. These may come through spontaneous holding gestures, images, memories of or imagined places. Creative mediums, movement, art, vocal sound, writing, rhythm making or hand crafting can all be called on both to support releasing and resourcing. Natural environments and connection with the wild are also often resources and where appropriate and weather permitting it is possible for sessions to be held in nature, particularly woodland as trees have a great holding quality.
Background
Originally Sarah trained in Theatre and worked as a performer, improviser, deviser, then director and producer. She discovered free dance through Five Rhythms and movement has long been an important part of her journey.
She wished to use theatre more therapeutically and through synchronicity came to train with Dr Sue Jennings, Drama Therapist and pioneer of the first MA trainings in Drama Therapy in the UK. Her Neuro Dramatic Play® uniquely brings together mediums from a range of creative therapies: art, play, drama and movement. Based on the roles of these in early child development and how they can be used with older children and adults to address unmet childhood needs, attachment challenges, support risk taking, building resilience and as broad therapeutic tools for self exploration.
Sister Sarah was created initially as a vehicle for performance, workshops and events that supported wellbeing, community building and positive social impact. As Sarah added strings to her bow, becoming a Neuro Dramatic Play® practitioner and then completing training to advanced level in Somatic Experiencing® with SOSI, the therapeutic arm of Sister Sarah has grown.
https://sosinternationale.org/about-se
Therapeutic Approach
Called more to support clients recovering from trauma Sarah researched trainings to build skills in this area. Somatic Experiencing® stood out as a powerful approach and she was inspired by the example of those already practising, Giselle Genillard of SOSI and Peter Levine, creator of the technique. “I knew I wanted to follow in their foot steps so embarked on training for three years, including two advanced modules. Using the techniques with clients it's effectiveness is confirmed to me again and again.”
“I see my role as a guide to bring clients more deeply into connection with themselves and their bodies, so that the body can do what it knows it needs to do in order to become more expanded as a container, more open to allow creativity to flow through and clearer in a sense of knowing, with space for insights and answers to arise.”
Sessions touch on memory or stories as gateways to activation in the body or as resources, for example, memories of safe places. Feeling is prioritised over story telling and Sarah will constantly bring the client back to what is happening in their body.
Professional Training
- Sarah has undergone extensive training in Somatic Experiencing®, Neuro-Dramatic-Play® (NDP) for children, and Reiki. Expertise is backed by certifications from renowned institutions, ensuring the highest quality of care for our clients.
Qualifications
- Neuro-Dramatic Play Diploma with Dr Sue Jennings
- Somatic Experiencing (Advanced) SOSI Internationale
“The lover of nature is he whose inward and outward senses are still truly adjusted to each other; who has retained the spirit of infancy even into the era of manhood. His intercourse with heaven and earth, becomes part of his daily food.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson