re•form

… is a uniquely transformative method developed and delivered by Aurelie Richards, a trauma-informed counsellor, community builder, educator, body worker, and former Zen monastic.

Designed as a lab for:

—Counselling individuals, couples, families, and organisations in transition (of all kinds);
—Burnout prevention, by going to the root of the personal, organisational, and systemic issues.
—Supporting intentional transformation of systems, especially with regard to DEI and ESG milestones;
—Cultivating conscious, empathetic, and dynamic leadership.

re•lax

Coming back home to the body, regulating the nervous system is something that has to be done over and over again each day.

Tension is what brings us into liveliness. We need appropriate amounts of it in our relationships, our sense of self, and in our bodies. Without appropriate tension, we wouldn’t stand, walk, write, or do any given daily task. 

However, over time we become habitually tense and we lose our capacity to accurately assess what is appropriate tension. It is usually not until our body and mind demand of us that we relax through overwhelm, pain, depression*, anxiety*, burnout, injury, or adverse life events that we finally acquiesce and give ourselves permission to stop, calm, rest, and heal. 

Sometimes it goes against what we think we should be doing but chilling out, letting go is sometimes the most productive thing we can do.

Integrated practices:

• Proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF, after Irene Dowd)
• Tension releasing exercises (TRE),
• Somatic Experiencing (SE)
• Rosenberg exercises
• Emotional freedom technique (tapping).

re•cognize

When beginning the process of healing and transformation, there is some acknowledgment that there is a gap between wanted and unwanted.

Recognition, in this sense, is cognitive re-framing through meditation, guided imagery, body activation, and strategies for pivoting identification with the problem to focus on the desired outcome.

That means getting comfortable with discomfort. This means unlearning conditioned and habitual thinking, so that we can learn to return to the present moment with much more agency and freedom.

Integrated practices:

• Talk counselling (after internal family systems, also known as parts work)
• Cognitive + dialectical behavioural therapy* exercises.

re•member

This is perhaps the most radical of the processes. I don’t take clients in order to talk in circles for months and years. My mission is to create a robust enough sense of self in all of my clients that our time together is short-term and focused.

I work with strategies for resourcing from within, like self-soothing, parts-work, and cultivating a sense of self-efficacy and resilience. I coach toward alignment with yourself — you are the expert of your own experience — and resonance in all your relationships.

I emphasize remembering your authenticity, beauty, and truth, remembering that you are worthy and deserving of health, love, and happiness. We simply have to discover the source of all these, in you, together.

Integrated practices:

• Guided meditation
• Breathing exercises
• When appropriate, manual and energetic bodywork