Sarah Alford

I am a fully qualified Psychosynthesis counsellor and trainee psychotherapist at the Institute of Psychosynthesis, London. Psychosynthesis counselling is a gentle, psychospiritual modality, meaning that it attends to the human experience by including concerns of soul and spirit alongside those of the mind, the emotions and the physical body. 

Psychosynthesis is primarily a talking therapy and shares commonalities with person-centred, humanistic and integrative styles of counselling. The focus is very much on gentle, empathic and compassionate enquiry, building up a sense of safety and trust within our relationship to facilitate the exploration of your life experience and the feelings and emotions that may arise in response. 

Psychosynthesis has it's roots in psychoanalysis and pays attention to the unconscious, helping you to discover and learn about deeper psychological patterns, mindsets and beliefs that might be playing out in your present life as a result of your childhood experiences. 

Psychosynthesis is not a religion, but recognises and acknowledges a spiritual core, higher self or divinity, allowing you to explore historical wounding as well as more existential enquiries around deeper identity, meaning and purpose. Questions such as "Who am I in the universe?"

Overall, Psychosynthesis is about relationship - coming back into relationship with yourself, with others and with your spiritual nature.

Sessions can include brief reflective or guided meditations and somatic work if that feels comfortable for you.

Sessions are 1 hour, and are weekly due to the nature of the modality.

I offer both short-term (6-12 weeks) and longer-term contracts.

After an initial free phone consultation, my first session is then 90 minutes which provides a time for us to get to know each other, to briefly hear about what has brought you to therapy, and to discuss any needs or requirements that you may have. If you decide that Psychosynthesis is right for you and that you'd like to work with me, we can contract for a further 6 sessions and go from there. I will take some contact details and go through the contract with you, allowing you the time to ask any questions as they arise.

With permission, sessions are recorded for training purposes. If you don't feel comfortable with the recording of sessions or have any questions you need to ask about recordings, please let me know as this is also something we can discuss in the initial session.