Vanessa’s experience includes over a decade of private practice and sub-contracting as a counsellor with Glenda Needs (Inside arts, Ikon), Dr Ivan Atkinson (psychologist), Anne Atkinson, and Visible Recovery rehabilitation programme.

As a tertiary educator, Vanessa has taught in teams at Tabor Adelaide and Flinders University. Vanessa began Heartgardener: growing skills for resilience through somatic workshops for professionals working with people affected by trauma. Vanessa co- facilitates trauma informed Body Mapping CPD workshops seasonally. What is Body Mapping | Movement Therapy (intertwinebodymind.com). Vanessa’s counselling style is sensitively person centered, trauma informed, integrating understandings from Narrative Therapy, Internal Family Systems, Companion Life, Self- compassion, Rewiring the brain, ACT, Creative and Somatic therapies that ‘draw on the wisdom of the body’ (Levine, 2008).

Vanessa’s experience of ‘staying with the body sensations’ in mindful and relational awareness proves empowering and immediately integrative for many clients. Vanessa has developed body awareness skills as Rothschild (2006) suggests that lower nervous system arousal during, as well as after sessions, for reducing transference and vicarious trauma.