The Interconnected life
A therapeutic approach to health and wellbeing encompassing elements of embodied awareness alongside thinking , feeling and movement.
You and your body in relationship are the primary focus in this transformative and collaborative approach.
The Process
All sessions are by negotiation agreed usually in the initial consultation. Generally every fourth session involves a review and re negotiation depending on the work.
A typical session usually involves talking and exploring in the early stages with both sides sharing their experience of being with each other. Trust is built upon and the sessions can become deeper and more transformational with attention being paid to how the body experiences the changes as they emerge. Thinking feeling and movement are likely to play a part in the process of healing.
The process is holistic which means that attention is paid to what happens moment by moment in the whole session with awareness being developed about how the sensations felt in the body relate to overall health and wellbeing and also embodied history. Experiments and exercises can be suggested as ways of re-framing or re setting the body’s learned Somatic behaviour patterns.
Career and life’s work
Early days
Roderick’s life’s purpose was borne out of survival from a very interesting childhood which had elements of trauma and psychological abuse alongside much travel and exposure to different cultures. He realised that abusive behaviour was learned and the abusive person did not necessarily have much awareness of the damage they were doing to people around them. Awareness and forgiveness became two of the keywords he incorporated into his life purpose mind set.
Learning and career
Inevitably, Roderick sought help for his own trauma and once learned about the mechanism and techniques and approaches which transformed and healed him, he decided to follow the path of healer. He spent time before taking qualifications working with disadvantaged groups such as Traumatic Brain Injury and those born with Genetic conditions which usually accompanied an under resourced background. Roderick feels that there was an understanding that the human beings he was working with were not so far away from being in a similar position to himself. The only difference being that he was lucky to find people who appeared in his life to help him. He wanted to be that person to the people he was working for.
Once Roderick realised that his life was clearly one of healing he embarked on the Diploma in Gestalt Psychotherapy in York. He found this a wonderful foundation to build on but he felt that his path involved more exploration of the kind of healing he had received from several sources who called themselves embodied and relational healers. This attention to the body and the energy surrounding the body, which connected to others and the surrounding area, was not readily available in Gestalt at the time. Roderick had to travel to New York and the Center for Somatic studies to further his knowledge and experience of body, movement and resonance. He qualified in 2013 and considers that the combination of Gestalt as framework and Somatic movement patterns fitted his philosophical ideals.
Roderick also trained in Solution Focused Hypnotherapy as it appealed as a useful tool and some of his clients had asked for it as an approach.
Roderick has incorporated various approaches into his work that he has discovered during his continued professional development and finds it useful to stay up to date as much as possible without losing the essence of what he brings to the table in terms of healing.
Roderick co-founded the Complex Trauma Institute – an online resource relating to trauma with the express purpose of providing information and training for those who wished to focus their therapeutic journey on trauma informed and trauma focused work.
Refined Therapeutic Services
Zoom would be communication through video and audio engagement with potential for experimentation and game or role playing alongside discussion and dialogue. The core element in a session is Gestalt dialogue with flexibility built in through discussion and negotiation.
Face to face is a more nuanced dialogue which includes non verbal cues and feedback and experimentation around body and movement based themes. Gestalt dialogue remains the framework but themes are built around cooperative and collaborative agreement.
Book a Service
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Publications
Surviving Complex PTSD: Flowers of experience from traumatic roots
Complex Trauma is a new phenomenon but enduring traumatic experience is as old as human history. This book tells the story of a family who endured abuse and control for many years. The tale is mainly told through the lens of the author but includes narrative from his very much younger brother.
The book poses the question of how well people adapt, survive and rebuild their lives when suffering chronic abuse and complex trauma and provides an amazing insight into how we as humans cope with the damage done to our mental, physical and spiritual health when living day by day with abuse.
This book would make essential reading for anyone working with trauma who is interested in the “nuts and bolts” of the abuse sufferer’s storyline. Living through a trauma existence results in adaptation and dissonance between the sufferer and the potentiality of the person within, desperate to be understood and live a normal life. Equally, it is a secret life since no-one around them is aware what’s happening.
Roderick Aungier brings his “wounded healer” narrative to his own life’s experience of trauma and survival. He uses his own experience of gradual awareness that he has issues, to being in therapy and reflecting in therapeutic workshops just how maladapted he was. He reflects on how he adapted and then eventually managed the transformation into the person he always felt he had the potential to be.
Anyone reading this book should be able to get some insight into the changes and challenges that living with trauma brings and learn that it is possible to evolve and move on with the right awareness, tools and understanding.
Publications
The little manual of embodied awareness
Rod’s third book – The little manual of embodied awareness – is much by more of a general self help, health and wellbeing book. Rod shares his understanding of how anyone’s body and psyche is shaped by early experience simply by living and surviving. Your inherited internal and biological
systems react and adjust to anything that threatens your wellbeing and, as a very simple premise, ensures your survival. The only potential problem is that the adjustment and adaptation your body
carries out when faced with challenges is that there isn’t always an obvious reset button to push when the crisis is over. Rod explains how to embrace your survival mechanisms and make the best of who you are at any time in your life. His book is aimed at everyone and not specifically at therapists.
Qualifications
Roderick is a registered member of BACP and a former member of UKAHPP.
The UKAHPP principles are slightly more aligned with Roderick’s actual principles but business sense tells you that you only need one accrediting body.
