About Mari

And I said to my body softly, I want to be your friend. It took a long breath and replied, I’ve been waiting my whole life for this.” ~ Nayyira Waheed

Welcome, I’m Mari Winkelman, an experienced body-oriented counsellor, therapist, educator and guide. My aim in all I offer is to help you understand and nurture your relationship with your body and support you to live a fulfilling embodied life just as you are.

I offer a free 20 minute consultation to discuss your options for help to take the next step forward!

If you would love to feel more confident, more trusting in navigating the challenges of life in this world and more intuitively at home in yourself, my embodied approaches to therapy, guidance and group education offer a variety of opportunities to suit different needs and interests. I would love to work with you!

I am dedicated to my work because I recognise that I live in a culture that does not want to acknowledge the inconvenient truths our bodies hold. In such a culture, we need support to connect, understand more deeply and find language for what our bodies hold for us.

 

I also know how much adverse body and health symptoms can impact on our sense of self and quality of life. I became a therapist because I recognised that the symptoms people want to ‘get rid of’ are often the keys to unlock potential that is frustrated, forgotten or suppressed as a result of adverse experiences in life. This was my own experience and when I entered a body-oriented therapy, my symptoms pointed me to a deeper truth and showed me how to to nurture a new relationship with my body’s intelligence. This support and connection to my embodied self has enabled me to feel at home in myself, and be authentic in my relationships, establishing healthy relational boundaries, expressing myself and being able to listen more deeply to others. Not only has my quality of life improved, but I have begun to deeply feel and recognise the impact of interconnections between myself and my local environment and my community. From here I recognise my interconnections with the whole of our living world receive the empowerment in this feeling that I belong.

 

I trained professionally in order to help others to reunify themselves with the vast intelligence in their bodies and to creatively meet challenges in life, again and again. I feel that the world needs more of us to feel at home in our bodies so we can be more attuned to ourselves and feel the interconnected web of life with each other and our Natural environment.

 

Unconscious bias statement: I recognise that in the outside world, we each experience ourselves within a hierarchy of unearned privileges and benefits that will determine our access to opportunities and resources for living well. I am a white, able-bodied, bisexual woman, living in England, in an area and within a society dominated by the white, patriarchal, heterosexual and cisgendered, ablist value systems and privileges. I benefit from being ‘white’, cis-gendered and able-bodied and I sam accountable for undertaking enough self-study to recognise more and more how I hold power with this privilege. I am committed to working on my understanding of allyship for people who are disadvantaged by this system. As a therapist, I acknowledge that when I make assumptions and operate with ‘blind spots’, I will have an impact which I am accountable for in any therapeutic relationship. I seek to actively work with this awareness through supervision and self-enquiry and to make space for relational repair if and when this happens.
I feel the personal is political and however possible, I focus my intention on using my privilege to challenge existing oppressive power structures and support systemic change to our current systems of oppression. 

Accessibility statement: I recognise that my therapy space may not be accessible enough to people who have mobility challenges with stairs and narrow doorways but will endeavor to book an alternative space which is accessible if you can let me know your needs for support. 

Please, if any of the above statements need further clarity or you want to enquire about other needs which I haven’t mentioned, please do ask me as I aim to continue to serve as broadly as I’m able.

 

My qualifications: 

 

  • Postgraduate Diploma in Psychosynthesis Counselling (2007) from the Psychosynthesis and Education Trust in London PET
  • MA in dance and somatic wellbeing (2009) from the University of Central Lancashire UCLAN.
  • Post Graduate Diploma Integrative Body and Movement Therapy (2016) from the Institute for Integrative Bodywork and Movement Therapy IBMT. 
  • Professional Training in Contemporary Trauma Practice (2017) by Relational Change Training led by Miriam Taylor
  • Embodied Social Justice 50 hours online seminar and peer enquiry training programme (2021) by EmbodyLab

 

I receive clinical supervision for all one-to-one work that I do. My work is influenced by my personal experience, relationships and interconnected life as well as the trainings and personal development work as listed below.

 

I am registered and accredited with Association for Humanistic Psychology Practitioners (UKAHPP) and adhere to their ethical code of practice.

 

I am registered with International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association (ISMETA) and adhere to their ethical code of practice.

 

 

 

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