Arwen Bennett

I am an experienced psychotherapist with a background in education and mentoring. With over twenty-five years experience of working with individuals and groups, I have worked in schools and colleges, with bereavement and sexual health charities, in women’s leadership training, and in private practice.

I offer a space to reconnect through the practice of attentive listening, and through the process of working things through, be that with talking, or with movement in the environment, or through the process of making by hand.

MA in Psychotherapy & Counselling (Existential) from Regents' University, London

PGCE from The Institute of Education, London

A BSc in Psychology, from The University of Bristol

Apprentice Wilderness Rites of Passage Guide.

I am a registered member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy and a member of the Society for Existential Analysis.

I offer both short-term counselling and open-ended psychotherapy to adults and older adolescents (16+).

My practice is rooted in existential phenomenology, with a focus on embodied relating. My approach takes in the experiences of everyday life and treats them with seriousness and compassion, emphasising non-judgemental curiosity about our ways of being. The work is collaborative and focused on the autonomy and freedom of the client. Sessions last for fifty minutes and take place either indoors in my studio or outdoors in woodland or on Dartmoor. We may work with talking and embodied experiencing, with movement, or with creative activities such as drawing or making by hand from materials found or from my studio. I also offer online and telephone sessions depending on availability and your personal circumstances.

In my work as a psychotherapist, as well as in my own life, I have witnessed the paradoxical way in which fostering the capacity to accept ourselves exactly as we are allows us to develop insight where we might be stuck or suffering. Within the sacred therapeutic relationship my creative approach supports the process of gently investigating the conditions of our lives, so we might find our way home to lives of meaning and integrity.