Counselling / Psychotherapy / Spiritual Guidance
“Everything becomes a little different as soon as it is spoken out loud”
– Herman Hesse
For some, it can be extremely healing to have a space in which to feel heard, validated and met by another human being, a space where insights can come into being, a conscious space to reflect. I offer this space.
For some this will be sufficient, for others, bringing in creative ways of exploring may be helpful too, such as sand tray, shamanic drumming, chair work, drawing…. or we can co-create our own approach. Lifespan Integration Therapy has its on page as it is the most structured form of therapy I offer and can be a stand alone therapy or integrated as you wish.
I aim to create positive change with you and therefore do not advocate long term work. Therapy is a playground for out there and not an end in itself. My 25 years of practice enables me to empower you, the client, to own and walk your path with my supportive reflective and guiding presence for a while.
I like to work collegially, trusting that together we will learn what is best. I have skills, but am not the expert. Your amazing system, given the right conditions knows exactly what to do and at what pace, I simply listen and encourage this inherent tendency to self actualise and as Maslow realised towards the end of his life, the missing addition to his ‘hierarchy of needs’ model, is to self transcend – this is my passion.
If choosing me as your spiritual guide, I always start with learning the art of ‘edge walking’. By this I mean to be able to drop into expanded consciousness and to be able to differentiate this from the world of form. From here we learn to have a foot in each camp as it were. If we get lost in the world of form, suffering and identification increases, if we only try to be in the expanded consciousness, spiritual bypassing seems to occur. Edge walking is my life’s practice and I constantly fall off this tightrope, but I know how to get back on.
And the beautiful paradox is that all the while, there are, in reality, not two places: Buddhism says this in the heart sutra, ‘“Form is no other than emptiness, Emptiness no other than form. Form is only emptiness, Emptiness only form”.
My Specialisms
Addiction
Sexual and gender diversity - LGBTQ+
PTSD and Complex Trauma
Attachment issues
Personal development
Spiritual evolution
Get In Touch
I offer a free 20 – 30 minute meeting in which we can discuss which approach is best for you.
£100 for 60 minute sessions.
What My Clients Say
The work I did with Vajralila over 3 years felt like a journey of exploration we took together. She was kind, compassionate, creative, intuitive and insightful.
She has a gift for holding terrible pain, grief and all the messy confusion that inevitably arises in a prolonged time in therapy. She never rushed my processing of things, and was so very gentle in her taking care of me. However she was absolutely in charge of our time together, and if we got to a stuck place she knew what to do. We did some beautiful creative exercises which would free the stuck place and open the next door along the way.
One highlight of our sessions for me was the lifespan integration work we did together. It’s difficult to describe the profound nature of this therapy. It was a way of accessing the inaccessible places and healing via not talking directly about the past as such. Through guided visualisation and entering into moments from the past in a very relaxed state, memories and insights surfaced. I know that deep changes happened for me as a result of this work and I completely trusted Vajralila to navigate our way through this extraordinary therapy.
Vajralila is solid and capable and a very very safe pair of hands. Thank you!
I believe I was extremely fortunate to have worked with Vajralila for several years. Having had a major breakdown in communication with my birth family she helped me to understand and address the issues that were affecting my happiness and to find ways to rebuild these relationships. She was always most approachable and totally professional in her work. Vajralila worked with me on the issues that mattered to me and used regular reviews to ensure that our sessions were working for me.
Vajralila helped me to listen to myself in a non-judgmental way and understand my thoughts and feelings in a new light. I have learned through our work together to dig deeper for my own solutions, to trust in myself and to be kinder to myself when I don’t think I have the answers. This learning is largely due to the trust, understanding and compassion that Vajralila demonstrated towards me. I am grateful to Vajralila for the conditions she provided for me to learn and grow. I feel confident that I will continue to apply and develop what I have discovered about myself from our work together.
I experienced Vajralila as authentic, reliable and strong enough to be there for me no matter how tough things were for me. I had previously experienced shame and strong self criticism which I found limiting and deeply uncomfortable. Turning towards this with kindly interest greatly reduced my experience of shame in relationships and social situations.
As a trainee counsellor myself, I have great respect for Vajralila’s way of working and would happily recommend her to anyone.
I found Vajralila the most caring, understanding and supportive Counsellor I could have wished for. During each session, she tapped into my differing emotions and worked with me to help understand myself. I felt safe in her hands and she listened to everything I had to say in a calm, comforting manner and gently worked with me to find a way of dealing with my problems.
Her professional knowledge, wisdom and insight seemed limitless and I felt she always found just the right tool (mental or physical) that would help in any certain situation.
Though I am no longer having counselling sessions I am still using the tools she gave me to deal with any challenges that arise and find I can work through them to achieve an assuring outcome.
Counselling with Vajralila has definitely improved my life and the way I look at things – in a very positive way – and I am forever grateful to her.
When a friend suggested counselling I was initially skeptical. I had always considered myself to be a happy person who had good friends and I thought of counselling as an admission of weakness. A bereavement, however, had left me feeling uncertain about my life and its meaning. I decided to take my friend’s advice to seek out a counsellor and I contacted Vajralila. I started counselling whilst I was still feeling sad and I grew to value my sessions greatly; Vajralila offered a safe space where I could explore my emotions and feelings and where I never felt judged. Through her warmth and her intelligent observations I gained greater self awareness and insights and this process has been transformative. Since Vajralila careful guidance I am more resilient and most importantly more content. I feel immensely grateful to Vajralila for all her wisdom and I would highly recommend her as a counsellor.
I am blessed to have found Vajralila to support me through counselling, to turn towards some difficult feelings, unpack some past traumas and let go of some addictive behaviors. Her compassionate, wise and skillful approach inspired trust and gave me permission to address some difficult issues, and to heal and grow. The impact on my life has been immense – I have a more loving and healthy relationship with myself, and a renewed joy in life. Thank you, thank you .. a thousand times over.
It was not an easy decision to start counselling after suffering a trauma, depression and suicidal thoughts.
Vajralila instantly made me feel comfortable and relaxed, she listened with care and understanding.
I was skeptical about the treatment vajralila suggested for the trauma but was astounded by the almost instant affect it had on me.
The skills and techniques she taught me have proved invaluable in my healing, allowing me to deal with day to day life in a healthy state of mind.
I cannot recommend her more highly.
She helped me realise there is light at the end of the tunnel and I cannot thank her enough that.
The trauma work I have done with Vajralila has been thoroughly ground-breaking for me in terms of helping release tendencies to disproportionately panic and become overly emotional over relatively insignificant incidents or unexpected changes in plans. I have had a lot of therapeutic work but with the more lasting elements and affects of trauma I was still having very unstable reactions to difficult situations and so I approached Vajralila to help me treat the underlying traumatic responses other methods seemed more resilient to.
I found her work gentle but direct. She has been incredibly key, with the trauma treatment she has developed out of her practice, in directly altering these responses I was having. I am enjoying a far greater level of stability and confidence as a result. I highly recommend her as a practitioner working with those of us who are still profoundly affected by past wounds that we might gain the freedom we so clearly deserve
When looking for a counsellor to accompany me during the two years of my therapy training it felt important to find someone who would understand my world as a practicing Buddhist. Vajralila provided that; but so much more than that. Our weekly time together became a landing pad in my week, somewhere I felt safe to explore and loosen some long-held beliefs about myself. She was with me every step, happy to go at my pace and in my direction. I hope I am able as a therapist to bring the same quality of support and experience as Vajralila has given me.
Looking for a therapist was no easy task, trawling the internet wondering who it would be that made me feel safe, who would it be that I could trust enough to share the parts of me I wasn’t sure i’d even shared with myself? When I found Vajralila I was instantly drawn to her level of experience, her spiritual approach and LGBTQI affirmative working style. Once I’d met Vajralila I knew instantly that this would be the space in which I felt safe, my search for a therapist was over. Vajralila helped me to develop ways of coping and staying safe when difficult topics arose, she was empathic and I always felt heard and understood, she helped heal wounds that had been open a long time and accepted me as I was, in response I began accepting myself, an act in itself that still feels life changing. I couldn’t have asked for a more genuine, human therapist.
When our youngest child came out to us as Transgender, we thought we were dealing with the situation well, we accepted what was happening even though we did not understand everything that was happening, nor what was going to happen, as a couple we believed we were doing ok, but that really was not true.
We took some time to find a counsellor, who we thought would be able to help with Transgender issues, and luckily for us we found Lila.
From our first session, the environment felt comfortable, Lila was very easy to talk to and more importantly listened, so well in fact, that she quickly made us realise, that our child’s Transgender journey, was also our journey, she also challenged us to think about ourselves, without Lila’s help and guidance, this journey would have been so much harder, the transition we have made as a couple has really changed us for the better, we had lost our way in the way we communicated with each other, and seeing Lila has changed that.
We now feel closer, more comfortable with our own and each others faults and failings, we now both talk and listen to each other properly, and because of how we have changed our daughters transition has become, a part of our life, and a very, very enjoyable part of our life and not the only thing in our life.
We feel very privileged to have had Lila as our counsellor, she has helped us far beyond our expectations, and we cannot thank her enough.
If we were starting our journey again or if anything else happens in our life with this journey that needs the help of a professional counsellor, we would not look any further than Lila, we really could not recommend her enough to anyone who is in need of help.