Growing up

My early life held questions about identity, belonging, trauma and power long before I knew the language for any of it. I learned early how my body can hold tension, and how silence can shape families across generations.

These experiences eventually led me into academic research and later into somatic practice, though I didn’t realise it at the time.

As someone with a lived experience of neurodivergence, trauma, chronic illness and being racialised as white, I’ve spent many years exploring how experiences of ableism, racism, and trauma shape us both intellectually, physically and emotionally. My PhD at the University of Barcelona and research in sociology deepened my understanding of how these patterns form and are maintained, while more than eighteen years of yoga and somatic training showed me how they live in the body.

The academic thread

I worked in higher education for many years, supporting institutions as they grappled with culture change, racism, equity, and whiteness. I led on the University of Cambridge’s first successful Race Equality Charter submission and worked on race equity across chemical science as Race and Ethnicity Unit Lead at the Royal Society of Chemistry.

This work taught me that deep transformation, besides strategy and resources, requires honesty, regulation, spaciousness, and embodiment. Move Rooted grew from the realisation that social justice work cannot be separated from the body and that embodiment cannot be separated from justice.

The somatic thread

I’ve practised yoga for over eighteen years. What began as just an exercise slowly became a path to understanding myself.

Through training in trauma-informed yoga, Body Mind Coaching rooted in choice and agency, and somatic therapeutic approaches (I’m currently studying towards a Diploma in Integrative Bodywork & Movement Therapy - IBMT), I began to see how my own body held survival patterns. I know from my experience that healing is only possible when we are open to notice not just what the mind is thinking, wanting, doing - but also sensations, emotions, body patterns and responses.

The mediation thread

I am also a qualified mediator, with a practice grounded in deep listening rather than quick fixing, working within a relational and transformational approach that centres spaciousness, slowing down, and helping people really see and understand one another.

This work complements my somatic and anti-oppression practice: all of it is about helping people stay present with difficulty and rebuild the possibility of connection.

What working with me feels like

Whether I’m supporting someone through Body Mind Coaching or yoga, or facilitating a group workshop, the focus is the same:

• creating spaces where bodies feel safe enough to stay present

• supporting people to notice their own patterns with compassion

• inviting curiosity

• slowing down to let insight arrive through both the mind and the body

• choosing gentleness and care over urgency

• making room for discomfort, nuance, and unexpected shifts

People often describe sessions with me as grounding, spacious, steadying, and quietly transformative.

If you’d like to connect

If you’re curious, if something here resonates, or if you’re seeking a gentler, more embodied way to approach healing, justice, conflict, or change — I’d love to hear from you. You’re warmly invited to get in touch, whether to work together, collaborate, or simply explore what might be possible.