How I Work
The same thread, through different spaces.
Play
When words are not enough, people find another language.
A child buries a tiger in the sand tray and looks at me. A clown partner offers me an invisible cup of tea in a hospital corridor and I have to decide whether to drink it. A student in an Alexander lesson notices their shoulders lift the moment they think about an email they need to send.
In each case, something is being communicated that literal language cannot quite hold. Play — whether it happens with figures, with the body, or in improvisation — is not an escape from reality. Indeed, a child might communicate through repetitive play, stories, movement, silence, drawing or changes in behaviour. Each is a way of approaching reality sideways, when coming at it directly is too much, or too soon, or not yet possible.
I have learned to trust the play more than I trust my own urge to interpret it quickly.
Relationship
What happens between us is the work.
In a therapy room, the relationship is the medium. In supervision, we are building a container strong enough to hold uncertainty and failure. On a hospital ward, the clown duo is a model of relational improvisation under pressure — offering and receiving, noticing when the offer lands and when it does not.
I am not interested in being the expert who stands outside the room. I am interested in what we make together, and what we can bear to notice.
The quality of the connection matters more than the technique. The technique is there to serve the connection, not the other way around.
Attention
Noticing is a practice. Noticing myself, while I am with you.
Alexander work taught me that attention is not a fixed stare. It is a kind of elastic awareness — allowing myself to be aware of my own breathing, my own tightening, my own rushing, while I stay in contact with the person in front of me.
In a therapy room, this means noticing when I am leaning forward too eagerly, or pulling back too far. In a supervision conversation, it means noticing the moment I want to rescue the supervisee from their own difficulty. On stage, it means noticing the audience's breath.
The body tells the truth before the mind has caught up. I try to listen to that.
Humour & improvisation
There is courage in not knowing what comes next.
Hospital clowning is improvisation under real conditions — tired parents, frightened children, medical staff with no time. The clown does not bring a script. The clown brings a readiness to respond to what is actually there, including the difficulty.
That same readiness lives in a therapy room when a child does the unexpected thing with the puppet. It lives in a supervision session when someone says something that shifts the whole conversation. It lives in a classroom when a planned exercise falls apart and something more alive takes its place.
Humour is not the opposite of seriousness. It is a way of staying in the room when the room is hard to be in.
Symbol & story
Figures, metaphors and the stories we live inside.
A child lines up soldiers and then buries them. A clown pair invents a mythology about a teapot that has feelings. In supervision, someone describes their client as "a boat with no anchor" and we both pause because the metaphor has shown us something the case notes did not.
Symbolic communication is how we talk about things that are too complex, too early, too dangerous or too tender for direct speech. I work with it in sand trays, in stories, in movement, in dreams, in the images that emerge spontaneously in conversation.
The symbol is not a code to be cracked. It is a living thing that changes as we stay with it.
Trust & listening
People need to feel safe enough before they can risk anything new.
Whether I am working with a child who has never had a session before, a performer who is frightened of an audience, or a therapist bringing their most stuck case to supervision — the same thing is needed. A reliable rhythm. Clear boundaries. A sense that the room can hold what comes, including the difficult parts.
I do not rush trust. I try to earn it, session by session, by being consistent, by remembering, by not pretending to know more than I do, and by staying when things are uncomfortable rather than fixing them too quickly.
Listening is not waiting for my turn to speak. It is a kind of active receptivity.
Creativity in difficulty
The most constrained rooms sometimes yield the most surprising moves.
I have played the guitar in hospital rooms where there was barely space to stand. I have done therapy sessions with children who could not stay in the room for more than ten minutes. I have taught in studios where the heating had failed and everyone was wearing coats.
Difficulty is not an interruption to the work. It is the material. The question is always: what is possible here, with these people, in these conditions, right now?
I am not looking for perfect conditions. I am looking for what is alive in the actual conditions.
I do not have a single theory that explains all of this. What I have is a sensibility — grown slowly, across many rooms — that recognises something familiar whether I am holding a sand tray figure, a clown nose, a guitar or simply sitting with someone in difficulty. Play, relationship, attention, humour, symbol, trust, improvisation. These are not ideas. They are ways of being that I try to keep alive, one hour at a time.