Body Alchemy
What are you curious about?
Body Alchemy is a one-to-one somatic session for exploring something you'd like to experience, practise or understand differently. Rather than only talking about it, we get curious about what happens when you bring the body into the conversation - through tools like sensation awareness, breath, movement, touch, imagination, expression, and experimentation.
2 hours · $160
Book Body Alchemy →
The philosophy
Sometimes understanding something isn't the same as knowing it. You can understand boundaries and still find it difficult to say no; Know you're allowed to want things and struggle to name what you want; Believe you deserve pleasure and find receiving surprisingly uncomfortable; Know you need to slow down, while your whole system insists on doing the opposite. We humans are wonderfully complicated like that. Body Alchemy creates a space to explore some of these things experientially. The four pillars of Alchemy give us different ways into the work.
PRESENCE
Perhaps you want to slow down, feel more grounded or become better at noticing what your body is telling you. We might explore breath, sensation, grounding, mindful touch, movement or stillness. Learning to notice what's here, without immediately needing to change it.
PLEASURE
Perhaps you're curious about pleasure, sensation, desire or your capacity to receive. We might explore sensory awareness, different qualities of touch, noticing preference, asking for more or less, or expanding your vocabulary for what feels good. Pleasure doesn't need to be enormous.
Sometimes it begins with simply noticing ‘I like that’.
POWER
Perhaps you want to explore agency, boundaries, expression or your relationship with yes and no.
We might practise asking for what you want. Saying no. Changing your mind. Taking up space. Making sound. Noticing anger. Following an impulse. Making a choice and discovering what happens next. Power here isn't about becoming harder or louder. Sometimes power is very quiet. I know what I want. I know what I don't want. And I trust myself enough to listen.
PLAY
Perhaps you'd like to spend less time getting things right and more time discovering what happens. We might use movement, music, sound, mirroring, imagination, sensory experiments or something completely unexpected. There doesn't always need to be a lesson. Sometimes curiosity is enough, silliness is medicine, and doing something for absolutely no sensible reason at all is a very good use of an afternoon.
Your experience
We begin with conversation. What's bringing you here? What are you curious about? What would you like to practise, experience or understand differently?
Together we'll find an intention for our time. I'll suggest practices that might support that intention, and we'll decide together what feels interesting. Then we explore, notice, adjust. Perhaps something unexpected becomes interesting and we follow that instead. We integrate. Towards the end, we'll slow down again. We'll notice what you experienced, what you learned and what, if anything, you want to take back into everyday life. There doesn't need to be a breakthrough. Experience itself can be enough.
You are the expert on you
I bring training, experience, ideas and a very well-stocked toolbox. You bring the most important thing: you. I won't diagnose you, tell you what your body means or decide what you need. My role is to listen well, offer what I know and create a thoughtful space where we can experiment together. In Body Alchemy, that isn't interrupting the work.
A word about touch
Body Alchemy may include touch, but it doesn't have to. If touch feels relevant to what you're exploring, we'll talk about it first and what it might offer, where touch might happen and what feels comfortable for you. Any touch is agreed together and remains optional throughout. You can change your mind at any point.
Body Alchemy is an educational and experiential somatic offering. It isn't psychotherapy, medical treatment, or a replacement for mental health care.
A small practice in Wellington
Alchemy is my small Saturday practice in Wellington, Aotearoa New Zealand.
My work draws from more than two decades of learning across therapeutic massage, somatic practice, embodiment, movement, coaching and sexuality education. My work has been influenced by approaches including the Wheel of Consent, Somatic Sexology, and embodied movement practices.
But Body Alchemy isn't about applying a modality to you. It's about choosing from what I know in service of what you want to explore - warmly, practically, curiously, and occasionally with a sense of humour.
Book your session →
Contact form