Sharon Stopforth Counselling Services

Description

I am a Certified Integrative Body Psychotherapy Practitioner with a Masters degree in Social Work.
I have been practicing mind/body counselling for the past 16 years in the areas of anxiety, depression, addictions, self-esteem, trauma and abuse. I believe that talk therapy is not enough to address most issues. I feel that you need to deal with the whole person, integrating mind, body, emotions and spirit to bring about lasting change. Ignoring the body will have very limited success in the treatment of psychological pain. Any event that occurs in our lives impacts our whole being-physical, emotional, cognitive and spiritual. If something happens to our energy early in life, we develop a poor sense of self which becomes buried under defensive blocks. If we have had to block our feelings, we block the healthy flow of energy. Blocks appear as muscular tension in the body. By contacting blocks in the body, relaxing the tensions that produced them, releasing the energy to flow freely, the self can emerge and a sense of well-being can be restored. Dysfunctional patterns cannot be changed by talk alone, it is only by going back home to the site of where the injury happened-the body-where real change can occur. When aliveness in the body is reawakened, one experiences an intensified sense of self-authenticity that can be expressed through relationships with others, leading to higher levels of personal fulfillment and intimacy.