Robbie Breadon – Psychotherapist, eco-therapist, nature-based groups facilitator, and poet. Robbie lives on a small farm in N. Ireland where he has been director of Common Ground N.I. since its inception in 2015. With the help of many others he has been rewilding the farm and developing facilities for nature based therapies. He has been involved with the Ecopsychology community and Edge of the Wild since 2012. He has been the MC for the fireside sharing at all of our gatherings. He is a dreamer, a dancer, a poet and the father to a daughter who is just graduating form university. He is also a passionate outdoors person havng explored scuba diving, surfing , coasteering, hill walking and conservation work. On his journey he has sought to understand being here through diverse lenses including a PhD in Molecular Microbiology, Traditional Five Element Acupuncture, Humanistic Psychotherapy and Ecopsychology.
Marie-Helene Dalila-Boyle is a transpersonal psychotherapist registered with the UKCP. She trained at the Centre for Counselling and Psychotherapy. She has practiced psychotherapy and many healing arts for over 30 years. She has worked with many clients in co-owned woodlands in Sussex, and has been involved with a family summer camp for over 10 years, where community living is well established. Marie-Helene trained in the Indigenous culture teachings of the Dagara tradition with (the late) Sobonfu Some and the Lakota Sioux tribe of North American with Sal Gencerelle (Helpers Mentoring Society). She holds space for sweat lodges, sacred fires, meditation groups and women’s groups. She is a retreat guide in the Universal Sufism (Hazrat Inayat Khan), and a leader of the Dances of Universal Peace. She has a deep love of nature, dance, songs and ceremonies. She has been traveling with her husband through the UK and Europe for a year. She is a mother of three and a grandmother.
Kelvin Hall has practiced as a psychotherapist for over thirty years, and received the Emeritus award from the Bath Centre for Psychotherapy and Counselling, where he tutors a training module on The Ecological Self. His lifetime pursuit of the art of horsemanship led him to research the phenomena of human relationship to other-than-human life, on which he now writes and presents frequently. He has contributed chapters to “Vital Signs: Psychological Responses to Ecological Crisis” (Karnac) and “Storytelling for a Greener World” (Hawthorn Press), as well as pieces for numerous other publications. The most recent was “Coming Home to Eden: Animal-Assisted Therapy and the Present Moment” for the British Journal for Psychotherapy Integration, and he now offers recitations of the collected contemporary narratives comprising “Tales from the Zone”, describing varieties of encounter between human and other life.
Louise Warner lives in West Yorkshire, in the Pennines close to Huddersfield. She has a private practice where she works with small groups, families, couples and individuals in a studio under a Wesleyan Chapel where she lives. She also works with Red Cross within the field of trauma.
Louise completed her Processwork training in June 2015, though she has practised as a therapist /facilitator since 1998 drawing on a background and training in movement / dance therapy, and embodied work, systemic family therapy, supervision and community development. She is increasingly keen to be and work outside in nature with people and draw on the perspective it brings in a world where we have marginalised the earth & environment at a cost. She is interested in ‘beyond words experiences’ and curious how our felt sense is often a gateway to becoming more ourselves. She refers to herself as a facilitator with a purpose of making ease in the world. and alongside colleagues offers open forums on world issues to bring more awareness through deepen dialogue. Louise is a dancer, dreamer, a feminist, a mother of 3 young adults, a daily yoga practitioner, walker and cyclist of lowlands and highlands, and enjoys cooking and eating with friends & family. She lives in a loose collective where on a small plot of land, bees and hens are kept, fruit and vegetables grown. She loves reading quantum ideas, and can’t recall any of it and sings in the bath.
edge of the wild 2022
our artists in residence & musician
Branwen Lorigan and Ellie Johnson-Bullock – artists in residence
Branwen (left) and Ellie (right) love to collaborate and work together whenever they can.
Branwen Lorigan is an artist who uses creative processes to engage with and create community. Recent projects have involved walking, swimming, weaving, natural dyeing, upholstery, lino printing, artist book making, jam & chutney making. She is currently studying for a Masters in Arts & Place at Dartington Art School. She is a founder and trainer at Orange Collective, a community for training and dialogue between creative and therapeutic practitioners who use the arts as a healing modality. https://www.orangecollective.co.uk/
Ellie Johnson-Bullock is a socially engaged artist, a therapeutic practitioner and a horticulturist. She builds sculptures and immersive installations out of natural and environmentally conscious materials. The artwork is often co-created alongside communities who are invited to connect and collaborate together through creative play, making food and eating together. The creative process acts as an advocate for wellbeing by creating interactions, forming connections to people and place.
Hanna Burchell – musician
I’m a musician, singer-songwriter, performer, teacher and lover of nature. My music encompasses a lot of different styles and genres and is sometimes described as soulful folk. I’m currently training to be a holistic voice therapist. At the gathering I’ll be a offering body-breath-and-voice workshop and will be performing on Saturday evening. https://www.hannaburchell.co.uk/
edge of the wild 2022 – our organising group
Helene Fletcher. I am a semi retired body psychotherapist and discovered ecopsychology 40 years ago reading ecofeminist Susan Griffin’s book: “Woman and Nature”. Edge of the wild has been my community since it started. It is a safe space where I feel I can stay with the process and be authentic.
Lucy Ford. I work in academia teaching world politics with a focus on global political ecology. My interest in the power structures that harm Earth led me to google ‘psychology and ecology’ and I ended up at the 2014 Edge of the Wild gathering where I felt very at home and I’ve been coming most years since. It was at EoW that I had the epiphany to train as a therapist. I’ve since qualified as an integrative counsellor and psychotherapist and am slowly building a practice indoors as well as outside ecotherapyoxford.co.uk
Leonie Guest. I am a Core Process Psychotherapist, Wild Therapist group facilitator and human ecologist. I have a passion for working with the other than human as my co-therapist, guide and wise elder. What does it mean to recognise the feathered, furred and rooted as our kith and kin? How can we grow our earth ears so we can listen and learn? What happens when we recognise the earth doesn’t need fixing it needs loving? These are some of the questions I bring to the Edge of the Wild Community.
Rachel Morrell
Whilst studying Psychology at Bournemouth University I was privileged to study Ecopsychology under Paul Stevens in my final year. This was like a light bulb switching on in my head as I felt the culmination of what I felt spiritually, saw in the natural world and what I knew to be true of the human mind. I am the Supervisor at Lakeside Care Farm for Wiltshire Wildlife Trust. We support children and young people with additional needs, and those who are at risk of being excluded/have been excluded from school, using forest school and animal/horticultural therapy.
Nick Totton. I’m a body psychotherapist, trainer and supervisor in private practice, living in Cornwall for nearly six years now. I’ve been actively involved with ecopsychology since the 1990s, and wrote a book about it, Wild Therapy; as chair of PCSR I was involved in organising the first couple of Edge of the Wild gatherings, and have attended nearly all of them. I feel very committed to basing the work and the event in our own process, and the dream matrix is a great way to do that.