Trauma-informed psychotherapy
Trauma is not only a memory. It lives in how your body braces, scans and shuts down. Therapy that ignores the body asks half of you to do all the work.
Work with me
Somatic coaching for nervous system regulation, online
When your baseline is alert, everything costs more: sleep, focus, patience, joy. Regulation is a trainable skill, and coaching is the structure for training it.
What nervous system regulation means
Your nervous system decides, before you do, whether this moment is safe. When it errs on the side of danger, you live braced: wired at bedtime, irritable over small things, exhausted by meetings, unable to switch off even on holiday. None of that is a character flaw. It is a system doing an outdated job very well.
Regulation is the capacity to move between states on purpose: to come down from alarm, to come up from shutdown, to return to a baseline where rest is actually restful. Some people have this capacity by luck of history. Everyone else can train it.
Coaching or therapy? The difference, plainly
People use the words interchangeably, and the industry does not help. Here is the difference as I practise it. Therapy is clinical work, mostly with the past that is still alive in your present: trauma, persistent anxiety, old patterns. Coaching is structured work toward the future: skills, practice, accountability. Therapy asks where does this come from. Coaching asks what do we build now.
I am a warranted psychotherapist, and a certified life coach, so I hold both roles and I am careful about the line between them. If coaching uncovers material that needs clinical work, I will say so directly, and we change rooms rather than pretend.
“Above all else, Asha taught me to get out of my head and into my body and really feel things.”
How the coaching works
We start by mapping how your system actually behaves across a normal week: what spikes you, what shuts you down, what your recovery looks like. Then we build a small, personal toolkit, drawn from breathwork, somatic practices and mindfulness, and you train it between sessions. The change happens in the repetitions, not in our calls.
Expect practices measured in minutes, not hours, attached to moments you already live: before the difficult meeting, after the school run, in the hour before sleep. Tools you will not use are not tools, so we keep adjusting until the kit fits your actual life.
This is also the engine room of psychedelic preparation: the steadier your baseline, the more a strong experience can move through you without knocking you over. Some clients come to regulation work for exactly that reason.
Who this is for
- You are functional on the outside and running hot on the inside
- Stress recovery takes you days when it should take hours
- You want practical tools and structure, not open-ended exploration
- You are preparing for a demanding season: a new role, a big change, a planned ceremony
- Therapy feels like more than you need, but doing nothing is no longer working
In their words
I came to Asha at the darkest moment of my life. I was going through the breakup of a relationship of 15 years, the cancellation of a wedding, the loss of a job. I had been in therapy for about six months when I approached her, but I had never done anything like coaching before, so I was hesitant. After a couple of sessions, all hesitations went out the window. Above all else, Asha taught me to get out of my head and into my body and really feel things. For a long time I was getting stuck in my emotions, playing things over and over again in my head, overthinking and analysing. She shifted my mindset, and she did it through a myriad of different tools: meditations, symbolic acts, mantras, reflections. All of those came together and gave me a toolkit to deal with things in a much healthier way. I would not be where I am today without Asha, without her support, without the coaching.
Questions people ask
Is coaching enough if I have a trauma history?
Sometimes, and sometimes not. Regulation tools help almost everyone, but if we keep hitting material that pulls us into the past, that is a sign the clinical room fits better. Because I am also a warranted psychotherapist, we can make that call early, and openly, about what belongs where.
How many sessions does coaching take?
A typical arc is eight to twelve sessions: long enough to build the toolkit, train it in real conditions and adjust it twice. Session packages stay valid for a year from purchase, so travel or a heavy month at work does not cost you anything.
Is this like a breathwork class?
Breathwork is one tool in the kit, but a class gives everyone the same practice. Coaching is the opposite: we find what settles your particular system, test it against your actual week, and drop what does not earn its place. The product is a kit that fits you.
Do I need to believe in anything for this to work?
No. The practices I teach stand on physiology: how breath, attention and movement shift the state of your nervous system. Curiosity helps, and consistency matters more than faith. Skepticism is welcome, as long as it shows up to practise.
Can we combine coaching with meditation training?
Easily, and they reinforce each other. Regulation gives you tools for acute moments; a meditation practice slowly moves your baseline. Many clients pair this with my [MBCT-based meditation work](/work-with-me/meditation-mindfulness), or start with the 12-minute practice on that page.
Related pages
Psychedelic preparation
The most important part of a ceremony happens before you arrive. Preparation is how you give a strong experience the best chance of helping rather than hurting.
Mindfulness-based cognitive behavioural therapy
Not an app, not vibes: a clinical, evidence-based way to train your attention, taught by someone who has practised and taught it for over a decade.
Group work & programs
Some healing happens one to one. Some happens in a room with people who get it, where you do not have to explain yourself first.
For organisations
Practical sessions on stress, burnout and nervous-system regulation, built for teams rather than a clinic room.
Guide: Feeling worse after a ceremony
You did the work, you sat with the medicine, and you came home feeling more raw than healed. This page is for right now, and for what comes next.
