The @neurodiverse.voices.podcast I recorded with Andreia Costa just over a week ago will air in the autumn 🍁 more details to come.
 
I loved speaking with Andreia about the NdC Neurodivergent Wellbeing Approach Course I designed & facilitate, the journey & impact of late #autism diagnosis, menopause & much more!
 
Grateful to have had the opportunity to contribute to this super podcast 🤝
 
#educateevolveembody #bodymind #diversity #depathogise #rehumanise 

Oxford Health BRC Neurodiversity Conference

Friday 19 September at 9:30 am - Saturday 20 September at 4:30 pm

This two-day public event across two locations will bring together researchers, clinicians, local organisations, and the neurodivergent community to collaborate and drive meaningful change.

Conference Themes:

Strengthening partnerships across research, community, and organisations

Advancing mental health research and support for neurodivergent individuals

Promoting inclusivity, innovation, and long-term impact

Day 1: Identifying Gaps and Advancing Mental Health Research (Saïd Business School)

Identifying Gaps and Advancing Mental Health Research

Featuring flash talks, panels, and lived experience speakers across the lifespan.

Day 2: Community Support, Advocacy, and Lived Experience (Department of Psychiatry, Warneford Hospital)

Community Support, Advocacy, and Lived Experience

Includes workshops, mindfulness, and discussions on practical support and research engagement.

The ticket sales webpage is now live on the Autism Champions @autismchampions website

Early Bird Tickets Now on Sale! £35 for a limited time (£50 after sale ends)

Each ticket includes refreshments and lunch.

Please contact event organisers with any queries: [email protected]

Thank you Andreia Costa @neurodiverse.voices.podcast for inviting me, as @ndconnectionuk Development Lead, to be a panel speaker on the Friday - looking forward to it.

#neurodiverdiversity #bodymind #diversity #research #livedexperience #coproduction #changemakers 

'You are the Tree of Life - the pole between earth & cosmos - the axis mundi.'

A line from 'Rooting in with Asherah and Becoming the Tree of Life', my featured submission in the recently published new Girl God Books anthology Asherah: roots of the mother tree, which is available to purchase now @girlgodbooks & online stores.

More about the anthology ....

In these starless and shifting times, the relationship binding woman to tree lies between dream and memory. We have forgotten so much. Retreating within to unearth buried stories, rooted in nourishment, is a divine act.

Contributors to this anthology have shared their vision, creativity and surreal imaginings, all glorious and beautiful, whether written, chanted or drawn.

Asherah's story exposes exploitation, including sexual and environmental. She is calling upon those of us who weep, when trees are cut down, to rekindle our allegiance to Mother Earth.

Behind us is darkness. Ahead, if we take the right path, a new age of possibilities: pristine, joyful, peaceful, restorative.

#educateevolveembody #bodymindspirit
  

The hardest boundaries I've had to learn & set are with myself.

The ongoing internal #bodymind negotiation of not allowing my mind (it's pushy programming, rationalism & logical analysis but also its visionary, philosophical, connection-making brilliance) to dominate & override my highly sensitive, deeply feeling, vulnerable body (& it's instinctive & intuitive knowing).

Who oversees the negotiation? Wise self; essence; spirit; soul ..

#knowthyself #mindbodyspirit

​Part of setting boundaries for me has been getting clear on my values & practising energy discernment, learning what drains & what rejuvenates my bodymind & spirit.

In knowing these I can decide what I am and am not available for.

Examples 👇

Yes ✅ harmonising connections; creativity; hope-filled solution visioning; embodied ways of knowing, expressing & exploring ideas; conscious communities/individuals & interactions; depth; the language of the body & nervous system including feeling, sensation & emotion; meeting spiritual needs; holism; reciprocity, relationality & interdependence; aliveness & open heartedness

No ❌ combativeness; high-arousal, critical & conflict-driven interactions; exclusively analytical, logical & mind-dominant ideation & exploration; positioning mind ways of knowing as supreme; communities/individuals who lack awareness & a willingness to reflect & evolve; superficiality; the language of pathology; fundamentalist scientism; separation; individualism & extractivism; deadness & disembodied rationality

I also ask myself two questions in order to discern my response to a request, or a boundary regarding an action, person, community.

They are 👇

Is it aligned with & manageable for my ''I feel therefore I am' bodymind diversity?

Will it enable me to continue to fully 'feel' my life & to support others, who want to, to do the same?

#ifeelthereforeiam #bodyminddiversity

 

​'Regardless of neurotype, there is a disconnect between mind and body throughout society - we are collectively mind dominant, thought-based and body-phobic'

This SPLIT is a (the?) PROBLEM.

Super proud to have co-authored Chapter 23, Beyond Mind: The Embodied Double Empathy Problem, in this amazing Dr Damian Milton Reader, published by Pavilion Press, with Jill Corbyn, who is the Director of @ndconnectionuk where I am delighted to work as a Development Lead.

"One of the chapter’s most powerful takeaways is the idea that dysregulation is an automatic and adaptive nervous system survival response to a threat in the environment, not dysfunction; it’s an unmet need. When understood through this lens, actions like stimming, shutdowns, or meltdowns are not behaviours to manage but signals of distress to be interpreted with compassion.

Our chapter is a call to action. It encourages mental health practitioners, educators, and support workers to look beyond external appearances, to develop nervous system literacy, and to see co-regulation as a foundational skill for their practice. It also offers practical frameworks and activities to help bridge embodied differences in real-world care environments.

Ultimately, ‘Beyond Mind: The Embodied Double Empathy Problem’ is a vital contribution to the growing body of Neurodivergent-affirming practice. It encourages us to ask: what if the route to empathy and providing care is not more talking, but more listening; to the body, to felt and internal experience, and to the unspoken ways we communicate safety and connection?"

Extract from my Neurodiverse Connection blog Beyond Mind: The Embodied Double Empathy Problem.

Read ‘Chapter 23: Beyond Mind: The Embodied Double Empathy Problem’ by Jill Corbyn and Kay Louise Aldred in Dr Damian Milton’s ‘The Double Empathy Reader: Exploring Theory, Neurodivergent Lived Experience and Implications for Practice’.

Available to order now from Pavilion Publishing

#educateevolveembody #bodyminddiversity #embodiment #spirituality #depathologise #rehumanise #autism #doubleempathyproblem #neurodivergent #neurodiversity #beyondmind 

This was a really fantastic event - and I’m so grateful for the York St John University academics leading this challenge and disruption in academia.

Witches have occupied the academic imagination across disciplines and have in recent years become a rebellious feminist trope. From medieval trials to modern feminist reclamations, from folklore to popular media, witches embody resistance, transformation, and power. Whilst there is lively debate about the meaning and extent of the European and American witch trials and a burgeoning cultural milieu in which the trope of the witch is explored, there is also a growing interest in the practice of witchcraft as an individualised spirituality. 
​
This free interdisciplinary conference explored the figure of the witch in all its historical, literary, sociocultural, political, and spiritual dimensions.

Session 1: Gender & Resistance: The Struggle & Subversion of The Witch.

I was the first speaker in this session of the conference - challenging and disrupting - delivering a presentation entitled, Gender, Power, and Witchcraft: Women's ‘Spelling’ Lived Experience Storytelling.

My presentation …

Explored the motivations behind the four Girl God Books anthologies, which offer diverse perspectives on trauma, initiation, neurodiversity, and pain, reclaiming the feminine through storytelling and creative expression

Highlighted the power of ‘spelling’ - storytelling in reclaiming feminine wisdom, challenging patriarchal structures, and fostering spiritual healing

Centred embodied lived experiences - the writing, poetry, and art from a global network of women – to examine the intersection of witchcraft, Goddess spirituality, gender and power

"The pain stops me in my tracks.

What I have observed is that the onset of pain happens when I am too much ‘in my head’, serving others without reciprocation and/or neglecting my pleasure.

So, from that viewpoint, the pain is an ally, showing me that I am imbalanced, fractured from embodiment.

Our collective spiritual and physical immune system is reacting and saying NO.

Pain is a political and revolutionary statement from the body. A clear message that society, paradigms, culture and systems need to change."

Let's not get distracted or bypass this.
​
I ended my Gender, Power, and Witchcraft: Women's ‘Spelling’ Lived Experience Storytelling presentation at the superb Interdisciplinary Witch Conference @yorkstjohn with my words from the @girlgodbooks Pain Perspectives: Finding Meaning in the Fire anthology I co-edited (& one of four anthologies I spoke about) 

"Understanding neurodiversity as a form of body mind diversity, challenges traditional, narrow ideas of ‘normal’ and invites us to recognise the legitimacy of diverse ways of thinking, sensing, communicating, and existing.

Diversity and cohesion as partners: It’s easy to assume that celebrating differences might pull communities apart and that cohesion might reduce diversity. Cohesion arises not from uniformity, but from embracing differences within a shared framework of values, mutual care, reciprocity, responsibility, and a collective vision and purpose greater than the ‘I’.

Moving forward together: As we continue past the celebrations of Neurodiversity Pride Day and Pride Week, let us continue to hold two truths at once: we are wonderfully unique and individual body minds and we are interdependent.

Pride and cohesion are not in competition, they are essential companions."

Extract from my Neurodiverse Connection blog Celebrating and honouring body mind diversity.

Link below.

#educateevolveembody #bodyminddiversity #embodiment #spirituality #depathologise #rehumanise #bodymind #neurodivergent #diversity #communitycohesion #neurodiversity #neurodiversitypride #pridemonth

"To say that the body is silenced and occupied is to describe how systems of power and control, override or erase a person's natural, intuitive, and embodied ways of being and knowing. Especially when those ways fall outside of what's considered ‘normal’ or ‘acceptable’ by dominant cultural standards.

Moving Toward Liberation-Based Support 

We need to ask: who defines ‘normality’, and which behaviours and bodies are acceptable? Who benefits from a system that rewards uniformity and values conformity?  

If support is to be truly person-centred, it must honour the full humanity of all people, including Neurodivergent people, and their movement, impulses, and embodied ways of being in the world. 

Liberatory alternatives to PBS focus on co-regulation, meeting embodied and sensory needs, trauma-informed care, and deep listening. They validate the diverse ways humans know and express, including embodied ways of knowing and expressing, affirming that everybody has a wise ‘knowing’ body and that the goal of support is not control, but connection, safety, and respect."

Extract from my Neurodiverse Connection blog 'How Positive Behaviour Support silences and occupies the body' which is part of our #AgainstPBSandABA campaign