Rebecca’s Contact Details
rebeccamaryporteous@gmail.com
We experience everything, including what’s going on in our minds, through our bodies. These experiences can leave their traces in the form of physical and mental patterns or behaviours that, while useful at the time, may not always help us in the long-term.
With Yoga, the Trager® Approach, Somatic Experiencing and Integrative psychotherapy as the keystones of my work, I help my clients develop conversations with their embodied selves that give them more choice about how they might engage with and respond to the world around them.
I work with acute and chronic pain and discomfort, both physical and psychological, including that which arises with anxiety, depression, PTSD and developmental trauma and during pregnancy. I usually start with what is going on in a person’s nervous system as a way of understanding suffering, whether it is experienced mentally or physically.
Yoga, Trager® Approach, Somatic Experiencing and Integrative Therapy
I have learned the therapeutic use of Yoga, the Trager Approach, Somatic Experiencing and Psychotherapy in that order, and for many years they were distinct in my mind when I was working. My style has become increasingly integrated over the years, and I would now be hard pressed to identify a clear differentiation between them in any given session. What is common to every session however, whatever the focus, is that together we bring our attention to the feelings, sensations and images that arise in you. Slowly and safely, states of overwhelm or freeze release, allowing the innate inclination of every living system towards restoration and resilience to make itself felt. Old patterns of holding and reactivity, with their associated discomforts and behaviours, can then let go, leaving room for a newfound curiosity, aliveness and receptivity to the world.
Another aspect common to every session is the joyous recognition that in every living system there is more that is functional than dysfunctional. We are working with how we’ve survived rather than how we are broken.
Areas I work with:
- Stress and associated symptoms
- Anxiety and panic attacks
- Chronic pain
- Phobias and other avoidance behaviours and patterns
- PTSD, Complex PTSD and Developmental Trauma, including sexual trauma
- Syndromes including fibromyalgia, migraines and IBS
My Journey
I had been teaching an individualised, Scaravelli-inspired style of Yoga for ten years, was training to be a Trager practitioner, and raising my family in Downtown Cairo when the Arab Spring of 2011 rose up on my doorstep.
By 2012 I was suffering from physical symptoms which I addressed through a combination of trauma-informed body-based work and psychotherapy. As the revolution ebbed and flowed around me and my young family, I set about learning how to use my new-found understanding of trauma and the body to help others, initially through my skills as a Yoga teacher and Trager practitioner, then adding Somatic Experiencing to my tool-box.
In Egypt I worked with individuals of all ages, in groups and one-to-one, long-term, short-term and in weekend workshops and conferences. From 2015 -2019 I also taught weekly trauma-informed Yoga and movement awareness classes to adolescents at the Banati Foundation, a residence for street children, while running a private practice. In 2019 I returned to London, my home-town, set up a private practice. I am doing a part-time MA in Counselling and Psychotherapy at the University of East London, accredited by the BACP. I also volunteer at the charity WISH, offering free, trauma-informed counselling to the women of Tower Hamlets, many of whom are looking for support after experiences in the criminal justice and mental healthcare systems.
I work in English, Egyptian Arabic and have a comfortable working knowledge of French.
“Am I suffering from trauma?”
It took the excitement, fear and drama of the Egyptian uprising of 2011-13 for me to recognise that the coping strategies my body and mind had developed for managing stress were not always working in my best interests. It was at least a year before I learned to recognise the physical symptoms I was suffering from as ‘trauma’.
In many ways the label was irrelevant, except that it helped me find the therapy that worked for me, and to develop a more effectively therapeutic way of working with my clients and students. But we don’t have to have gone through ‘trauma’, to benefit from developing a more articulate and coherent relationship with our bodies; how they hold and process our experiences and how we might have more choice about that.
My Training
- Yoga teacher training with Mary Stewart, London 1999-2001
- Registered Senior Yoga Teacher with Independent Yoga Association, until it closed in 2022
- Licenced Trager® Practitioner, Registered with Trager® UK and Trager® Egypt
- Principles of Yoga Anatomy with Leslie Kaminoff, USA, 2013-14
- Trauma-Sensitive Yoga Training with Bessel van der Kolk, David Emerson and Jen Turner, USA, 2014
- Yoga Therapy and Mindfulness for PTSD with Heather Mason, London, 2015
- One Year Foundation Certificate in Psychotherapy, Counselling and Coaching from the New School of Psychotherapy and Coaching, London, 2017
- SE Practitioner 2020, training assistant 2020, session provider for trainees 2023
- PG dip/MA in Integrative Counselling and Psychotherapy at UEL 2022-2025
- BACP student member since 2022
Before pursuing my fascination with the stories our bodies tell, I worked in the London publishing industry as a literary editor and project manager.
Contact:
Please email me
rebeccamaryporteous@gmail.com
Rates:
£70 for 50 mins
I offer a limited number of concession rate sessions, please contact me to discuss
Sessions:
In person sessions at Barnsbury Therapy Space:
Tuesday mornings and Friday afternoons
Directions to Barnsbury Therapy Space