photo credit: Elise Hurcombe
Hello, you are most warmly welcomed here.
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I struggle to write about myself, so here is my humble attempt.
My name is mel and I'm a neurodivergent sensitive (or HSP for short). My sensitivities have helped me understand my need for connection and sanctuary. They continue to ask more of me as I build a faithful relationship of trust in the information my body provides me with. I'm practising championing the values and insights of my body and her needs.
I've spent most of my adult life as a movement practitioner, artist and researcher exploring what moves us (inspired by the German choreographer, Pina Bauschs', work) rather than finding delight in how we move. My work challenged and played with ways to question the conventions and expectations of public spaces to bring the body and her awareness back into the room by crafting delicate, magical moments, and unexpected pauses of stillness to touch others.
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I adore words. Language is the altar that illuminates the inherent value of the body and her stories. They shape a place made by the imagination, for the delight of the imagination. This is where the imagination truly belongs to herself, to this fertile ground.
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I have worked across the creative industries as a creative producer and interdisciplinary lecturer in arts and business, celebrating the power of our imaginations to serve and build sweeter connections and community alliances to celebrate the beauty in our differences. ​
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"real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes."
Marcel Proust
I discovered the Thinking Environment during my coaching training. I was hunting for a practice that offered more depth, space and connection. I was gasping for more stillness and aching to reconnect with my agency and the insights of my body, imagination and intuition. This elliptical system delivered the promise of no interruption in an urgent and restless world and honoured the expertise of the experiencer with rigour and grace.
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These enquiries motivate me to cultivate sweet sanctuary spaces for all who feel unhomed and unheard, to weave in more tenderness for what has been forgotten or unloved, and to re-home belonging. ​​​
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This work has been crafted by my exquisite need and I hope it will honour yours too. ​​
I look forward to walking alongside you.
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with love,
mel
The ecology of practices that inform and ground my ethical approach are:
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Making Sanctuary : Creating spaces for the soul, spaces that acknowledge and foster deep tenderness for the very real and overwhelming feelings we are currently experiencing - our sorrows and our collective grief for the earth. This sacred space is informed and shaped by the grief practises and shadow work of Francis Weller and Catherine Liggett alongside the wisdom of Thomas Hübl, Tara Brach, Bayo Akomolafe and Tricia Hersey.
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The Body : As a movement practitioner with over twenty-five years of experience investigating the intelligence of the body; Authentic Movement, Body Weather, improvisation and writing (especially elevating the female voice, Écriture féminine, the felt intelligence). My work has moved through many environments, and spaces of enquiry to challenge behavioural norms, offering gentle shifts in perception that privilege curiosity, wonder and hospitable kindness. ​​
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The World Body : inherent somatic information and knowledge that co-creates the ecology of our mind-body, and how our bodies are grounded in and intimately connected with our earth-heart-body.
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Imagination Thinking: I've worked with young people and adults across universities, schools, and workshops to weave muscular creativity and ethical imagination play that is spirited and focused, grounded and supple, divergent and generative, and to build trust in our different intelligences.
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Time to Think : grounded in the grace and courage of Nancy Kline's approach to liberate the inner, quieter voice, this practice gracefully co-creates a quality of thinking in partnership that enables innovative thinking processes to emerge from an informed, embodied place of courageous connection with oneself, unhindered and influenced.
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Connection and Feeling With : Joanna Macy's extraordinary work, The Work that Reconnects, has imbued such value and commitment to connection and bold, hearty sharing. This body of work has influenced and informed how I engage with our difficult feelings in our global environmental crisis to develop robust resilience, deep care and agencies of alliances in our shared grief. ​​
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Seeing, Sensing and Presencing : Engaging with Otto Scharmer's Leading from the Emerging Future practice, a community committed practice-based enquiry that moves from the Ego-System to Eco-System Economies. This work fosters the foundational capacity of deep listening and is anchored to practices that integrate and are informed by the head, heart and hand to respond to the need and the context. ​​
my training includes...
Thinking Environment Coaching training
Thinking Partnership training
Through the Door training (Climate Psychology Alliance)
Climate Coaching training (AoEC)
U-Lab (Theory U): Leading from the Emerging Future (MIT, USA)
The Work that Reconnects
ILM Coaching
A Masters of Arts
and memberships...
the Time to Think faculty (The Thinking Environment)
the Climate Psychology Alliance (CPA)
the Climate Coaching Alliance (CCA)
and the Work That Reconnects network.