Experience EMDR and Somatic Expressive Arts with Amelia

Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a trauma-focused psychotherapy that helps individuals process disturbing memories and reduce their emotional impact. It follows an 8-phase protocol, grounded in the Adaptive Information Processing (AIP) model, which suggests unresolved trauma disrupts memory storage, causing emotional and psychological challenges.

EMDR employs a three-pronged approach, targeting past traumatic events, current triggers, and future challenges to foster comprehensive healing. By combining regulation strategies, insights into beliefs about self that relate to experiences, and guided eye movements or other bilateral stimulation techniques, EMDR enables the brain to reprocess memories to have a more adaptive influence in someone's life.

This therapy promotes the brain’s natural healing process, helping clients reframe negative thoughts and experience emotional relief. Evidence-based and widely recognized for treating PTSD, anxiety, and trauma, EMDR supports long-term resilience and overall well-being.

Somatic Dance Movement Therapy (SDMT) is a holistic, body-centred psychotherapeutic practice that integrates dance, movement, and somatic awareness to promote emotional, physical, and psychological well-being, meet diverse psychological needs and foster connection.

SDMT incorporates Laban Movement Analysis (LMA) and Barteneiff Fundamentals Patterns of Total Body Connectivity to explore movement qualities, patterns, and dynamics, helping individuals uncover emotional and relational themes. Breathwork is central to the practice, supporting nervous system regulation, enhancing body awareness, and releasing tension.

Key principles of SDMT include interoception (awareness of internal sensations), proprioception (understanding body position and movement), and neuroception (the nervous system’s unconscious process for detection of safety or threat). Informed by Polyvagal Theory, SDMT helps regulate the nervous system, promoting safety, connection, and resilience in the face of stress or trauma.

Through expressive, authentic movement, embodied practices, and somatic awareness, SDMT encourages self-discovery, emotional processing, and healing. Whether practised individually or in a group, it empowers participants to connect with their bodies, cultivate self-awareness, and foster well-being.

Amelia’s art practice explores connections between humanity and compassion and visually represents the experience and embodiment of emotion through imagery. Her projects examine the depth of human connection, self-awareness, feelings, sensations, and emotional landscapes.  Amelia has an emerging interest in portraiture and self-portraiture. Particularly in terms of how we develop skills in creating representations of human likeness and investigating the dynamic relationship between an artist and a sitter and subsequent themes of identity, perception, embodiment, and the shared vulnerability within these creative exchanges. This includes when an individual is both the artist and the sitter (self-portraiture).

Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW) Accredited Social Worker

Dance Movement Therapy Association of Australasia (DTAA) Provisional Professional Dance Movement Therapist

DTAA

• Graduate Diploma in Somatic and Dance Movement Therapy, Tensegrity Training (QLD)

• Graduate Certificate of Arts, Charles Darwin University: Cultural and creative research specialisation  

• Master of Digital Media, University of Newcastle (NSW): including studies in graphic design, animation, videography, marketing, communications, and project management

• Bachelor of Education – Graduate Entry (Junior Primary/Primary), Flinders University (SA)

• Bachelor of Social Work – Graduate Entry, Flinders University (SA)

• Bachelor of Social Sciences, University of Adelaide (SA)Item description