As an accredited Mental Health Social Worker Azriel works with individuals, families, groups and communities, supporting them in the context of their physical, psychological, social and cultural environments. Social workers have a dual focus of improving human wellbeing, and identifying and addressing systemic or structural issues that impact on individual wellbeing or create inequality, injustice or discrimination.
Azriel’s practice is based on the core social work values of social justice, respect for persons, and professional integrity. Social work is multidimensional and psychosocial, supporting a person in their environment, valuing their strengths and lived experience. She has a strong commitment to human rights and social justice and her practice aims to be collaborative, trauma informed, strengths based, anti-oppressive, feminist and culturally sensitive.
Azriel is available for assessments, casework, advocacy, community engagement, group facilitation and individual counselling.
Social work
Counselling
Azriel’s approach to counselling aims to foster a warm, safe and connected space for people to open up and explore their inner world and issues that are troubling them. She uses evidence and creative based therapies to help clients foster change by finding balance and inner peace.
Mindfulness-based therapies, expressive arts therapy like creative writing and art therapy, EMDR and focused psychological strategies as well as trauma sensitive yoga are used to support clients to process and free themselves from past and current trauma.
She offers private counselling for individuals struggling with depression, anxiety, trauma, stress and burn out, grief, substance misuse, sexual abuse and domestic violence, as well as individuals needing help with the existential challenges of daily life.
Azriel has a trauma-informed, strengths based, collaborative and compassionate approach to therapy where the participant is very much a partner in the process.
“Art speaks where words are unable to explain.”
– Pam Holland
Creative expression is a powerful healing pathway and Art Therapy uses the expressive power of art to unlock deeply held memories, patterns and wisdom. It is a gentle yet potent technique that is calming and can be experienced by anyone. No artistic skill or experience is necessary.
Art Therapy helps us connect with our unconscious and our inner realm, where we can discover our feelings. It awakens creativity, connection, insight and self-understanding while also reducing stress and increasing overall wellbeing.
Azriel has a Diploma in Art Therapy and uses expressive arts as a therapeutic tool in her counselling sessions.
“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”
– Thomas Merton
Art therapy
EMDR THERAPY
“In our bodies, in this moment, there live the seed impulses of the change and spiritual growth we seek, and to awaken them we must bring our awareness into the body, into the here and now.”
Pat Ogden
Azriel is an accredited Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) therapist. EMDR is a trauma informed evidence-based psychotherapeutic approach that helps individuals to process distressing memories and traumatic experiences. EMDR has been used to successfully treat PTSD, phobias, Anxiety, Depression, addiction and other trauma related issues. EMDR processes past traumas which heals the impacts of those on your current wellbeing.
In an EMDR session we work together to identify a traumatic memory or neural network of strong memories and a related core negative belief system. Then through the use of bilateral stimulation, usually through side to side eye movements or taps, while focusing on these difficult memories, we allow the brain to reprocess the traumatic information and reduce its emotional charge. EMDR works with past memories, current triggers and possible future stressors and is a comprehensive 8 phase process.
Clients report feeling relief from traumatic memories, and relief from the feeling that the trauma is still happening to them. They also report greater nervous system regulation, lowered distress and increased coping skills, healthier thoughts and beliefs.
trauma SENSITIVE yoga
Trauma is held in the cells of our body and trauma sensitive yoga can release, repattern and support nervous system healing, so we can move through life with more ease, calm and wellbeing, encouraging safe healing at a body level, not just psychological and mental.
Research shows how yoga is supportive for reducing the symptoms of PTSD and trauma, such as dissociation, anxiety and depression, and can support mental health through better sleep, embodiment, and overall wellbeing.
Experience and learn how to reconnect your body, mind and self through gentle trauma sensitive yoga practices suitable for all shapes, sizes and experience.
Azriel uses trauma sensitive yoga as part of her holistic approach to healing, in her individual sessions and group classes.
Creating space and stillness in our inner world is vital for clarity and healing. Too often we lose connection with ourselves and others. Meditation and mindfulness are evidence-based tools for wellbeing and connection. When we pay attention we increase our self-awareness, strengthen our coping strategies and are able to notice our unhealthy patterns and create new and more positive ways of being.
“Mindfulness is a way of befriending ourselves and our experience.”
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Azriel is trained in Sound Healing, Meditation, Yoga Nidra, Mindfulness and Mindful Self-Compassion. She is an experienced meditation and mindfulness teacher and values her own spiritual practice and growth as a cornerstone of her personal wellbeing and inner peace.
She also uses Sound Healing with crystal bowls to support the integration of healing processes and offers sound healing therapy.
