GROUP THERAPY

Group Therapy

Grief and Growth Therapeutic Group

Thursday's 7pm til 9pm

6 weeks from

17th October 2024

At The Retreat New Forest, Lyndhurst Road, Christchurch, BH23 7EF

Women's Therapy Group

Tuesday's 7pm til 9pm

8 weeks from

11th February 2025

At The Retreat New Forest, Lyndhurst Road, Christchurch, BH23 7EF

Grief and Growth Therapeutic Group

Introductory Session 17th October 7-9pm for £30

to include short gong bath with no further obligation

6 weeks from 17th October 2024 to 21st November

Thursday's 7-9pm

At The Retreat New Forest, Lyndhurst Road, Christchurch, BH23 7EF.

Welcome to the Grief and Growth group; a supportive community for those navigating the journey of loss and bereavement.

This group will provide a safe and nurturing environment for those of you who have experienced significant loss and are feeling stuck in the grieving process. Our aim is to help you to live more peacefully with your grief and to help you to integrate it more easily into your everyday life.

In grief, our focus can often be on all that’s missing outside of ourselves. In this group, we’ll be supporting you to come back to yourself, your experiences and your needs and wants. A key way of doing this is through paying attention to our body processes and integrating these with the mind. This knowledge can help you shape a life where carrying the weight of your grief is possible, whilst still giving yourself permission to live a life that’s joyful.

An important part of our time together will include being outdoors and exploring nature as a resource for healing and growth. Nature shows us the process of life, death and regeneration cyclically and we will consider what lessons we can take.

We know that talking about pain and loss in a society where grief is shaped and squeezed is really difficult. Everyone wants you to be ok and for you ‘moving on’ feels impossible. We are creating this therapeutic space to enable you to bring all of you, including your messy parts.

We will be working together as a group to see what issues will come forward, with guidance from Lucy Furniss, a gestalt psychotherapist and wild therapist and Leah Morgan, a trauma informed yoga teacher and grief coach.

You will gain:

A supportive community and connection with others who understand the pain of loss and share similar experiences.
Participation in guided processes that will help to draw out what the group needs around emotional, physical and spiritual dimensions of grief.
Space to explore complex emotions related to grief.
Restorative space, time and support of nature
Engagement in expressive therapeutic activities to help you process your experience including embodied practices of movement, meditation and breathwork, use of oracle and therapeutic cards and art making in nature.

Benefits of Joining

Find comfort and understanding in a community setting
Share experiences and gain support from others
Have space to talk about your pain freely
Understand your embodied experiences to know more of yourself and your needs
Develop healthy coping mechanisms
Gain new perspective on living with loss
Foster a sense of hope and resilience
Professional support for emotional healing and personal growth

Investment

Sessions are £50 per week for 2 hours, with 2 week's deposit due on booking.
Early bird rate of £45 per week offered until Thursday 10th October, with 2 week's deposit on booking.
Price at £45 per week if total of £270 is paid up front on booking.
Weekly cost is still payable if you miss a session.
We may be able to offer bursary places if we have high bookings and if you would like to apply, please feel free to contact us.

Meet your Facilitators

Lucy Furniss:

With a rich background in Gestalt Psychotherapy and Wild Therapy, Lucy has been actively working with individuals and groups in and around Bournemouth and the New Forest since 2016. She is valued by her clients for her calm presence and therapeutic guidance.

Lucy is passionate about helping you to find your inner wild and live a spontaneous and creative life and is dedicated to supporting you on an enriching journey of self-discovery. Her unique approach involves exploring and nurturing your connection to the outdoors, with a belief that the natural world has much to teach us and a transformative potential.

Lucy is aware how grief can cause us to shrink in life and particularly when it’s not possible for the natural process of grief to be followed without interference or interruption, and life and expectations of others often gets in the way. She is honoured to offer this space as a place for you to be and say what you need to say and to find a new path alongside grief for yourself.

Lucy finds her greatest joy outdoors, often seen walking

her dog and immersing herself in the restorative

surroundings of the forest, beach and water.

Leah Morgan:

Leah Morgan is a trauma informed yoga teacher with 20 years experience coaching people as they move through difficult life experiences. As a registered social worker, Leah holds a MA Social Work and Bsc Psychology.

Leah prides herself on creating nurturing spaces for people to explore empowering tools and techniques to relieve difficulties rooted in their emotional and mental health.

Leah coaches people as they move through experiences of painful change, loss and trauma. Leah’s main aim is for her clients to feel released from a life they simply survive in so that they can build a life to thrive in.

Leah is passionate about teaching people how to make empowering changes to their mind and physical health with techniques that are simple to use yet yield powerful outcomes.

Leah loves to spend as much time as she can with her young family by the sea or in the forest. After losing her 18 month old daughter to leukemia in 2018,

Leah moved to Dorset so she could immerse herself

in nature. Leah describes being in nature and practicing

yoga as her medicine whilst navigating painful grief

alongside raising young children.

How to Join

To join our Grief and Growth group or to learn more email here. Please note there is a maximum of 10 spaces for adults only and we expect spaces to fill quickly.

We will arrange a 30 minute zoom call to chat with you and to make sure this is the right group for you. Please be prepared to be outside at times in the dark, possibly wet (although hopefully not!) and on rough ground.

Women's Therapy Group

8 weeks from 11th February 2025

Tuesday's 7-9pm

Want to make time for yourself to pause, reflect and connect with others?
Want to find balance in your life?
Want to consider how you integrate the masculine and feminine parts of yourself?
Want to think of how you value and use your feminine power as a woman?
Want to consider what blocks and difficulties hold you back?

You are invited to join me with up to 8 women in a supportive, confidential, safe, and nurturing environment, to explore what's important to you in your life.

Through collaboration and connection, we will co-create what's significant for us, with a view to building a richer future for ourselves, humanity and the natural world.

I am passionate about helping you to find your Inner Wild. Being in touch with this helps us to return to our more natural states so we can live more freely as we want to and to connect more to the healing powers of our natural world.

As an experienced Gestalt Psychotherapist and Wild Therapist, I will provide the therapeutic holding space for us to cover any topics and emotions that are raised as well as supporting reflection on how we relate together as a group of women and what we can learn from this to help with navigating life.

From this group, you will gain:

A supportive community of women and feel less alone
Increased confidence and self esteem
Improved communication skills to create healthier relationships
Inspiration and guidance from other wise women - and yes you are already one of them!
Understanding of your embodied process which can help you make better choices for yourself
More inner peace
A stronger voice to help you step into who you are.

In the spacious and comfortable South Studio at The Retreat New Forest, I am excited to bring together this community of women. As an experiential group, we will uncover and create together what’s important for us whether that's personal, societal or women's issues. We will do this through a variety of creative ways including use of the outdoors, art, cards, objects, body process and movement.

I have had my own valuable and growthful experiences of being in therapeutic groups. I know the fear of judgement, speaking up, making a fool of myself and imagining I am the only one that feels this way. I also know the huge benefit of finding my voice, having the courage to be vulnerable and the significance of the support and compassion from the group. I read recently that it only takes 30 seconds of embarrassment to take a risk and how true.

Please bring any refreshments that you may want.

On Tuesday's 7pm til 9pm.

At The Retreat New Forest, Lyndhurst Road, Christchurch, BH23 7EF.

Starting Tuesday's from 11th February 2025 for 8 weeks until 1st April.

Your investment is £50 per 2 hour session with a deposit of £50 and each session paid a week in advance. If you wish to pay in full, this reduces to £45 per session, at a total of £360 paid up front.

If you wish to include yourself, please message me below to arrange an up to 30 minute Zoom call for us to meet and talk about what you want from this, and your suitability.