Psychotherapy and Facilitation that Reconnects

Supporting embodied healing, wholing and creative expression through somatic psychotherapy, depth oriented processes, dreamwork and exploration with the more-than-human world.

Jake Phillips

PACFA certified psychotherapist, facilitator and inner wilderness guide

I am here to support you to find embodied connection with your deepest Self and the world around you through trauma-informed somatic psychotherapy, and tailored practices that nurture your unfolding growth, where ever you are on your journey. Based on Wodi Wodi country, South Eastern Australia and serving worldwide.

  • Qualifications

    Master of Counselling and Psychotherapy (Holistic Practice)
    Metavision Institute
    2023-2024

    Master of Nursing Science
    University of Melbourne
    2014-2015

    Professional Training

    Sensorimotor Psychotherapy for Developmental & Relational Injury 
    Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute
    2025- 2026 (Ongoing)

    Sensorimotor Psychotherapy for the Treatment of Trauma
    Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute
    2025

    Wild Reverence: Foundations in Somatic Ecopsychotherapy
    Metavision Institute
    2024-2025

    Advanced Coaching Program - Level 1
    Aletheia Coaching
    2024-2025

  • I have been working in the mental health and addiction space since 2019, initially as a mental health nurse and more recently as a counsellor and psychotherapist. During this time I have had the privilege of supporting a diverse range of people through challenging times. My experience as a mental health nurse showed me that trauma and relational injury underlie many of the challenging symptoms that people experience, but often remains unrecognised and untreated by the mainstream mental health system. This set me on a search for a more holistic, empathic and non-pathologising approach to supporting healing and wellbeing.

    Since completing a Master of Counselling and Psychotherapy in 2024, I have been engaged in ongoing professional training focussed on supporting the resolution of disrupted attachment, traumatic events, systemic disadvantage and the many challenges that result from these experiences. I have been fortunate to offer individual and group therapy to a wide range of folks including First Nations people in community in Far North Queensland.

    My personal experience of the healing power of nature prompted me to seek training in therapeutic approaches that integrate the human being into their natural home amongst the more-than human world. In 2026 I began a private practice that brings together somatically oriented approaches to supporting nervous system regulation and the resolution of painful patterns of disconnection with the healing power of deep relationship with nature. In a world that is becoming increasingly disconnected and domesticated, cultivating a connection with the body and the world around us can be a powerful pathway to healing and growth. Everything that I offer in my practice has been a part of my own process of healing and wholing and I offer it with the hope that it may support you as well.

  • I am a descendant of European settler Australians, born on Yuibera country in Central Queensland and raised on and by the land and sea of the Yuin people on the Far South Coast of New South Wales. I now live and work on Wodi Wodi country. I acknowledge with gratitude the First People of the lands on which I live, work and travel, and recognise their unbroken connection to land, sea and sky. I pay my respect to elders, past present and emerging.

    As a white male I occupy a position of power and privilege in many contexts and it is important to me personally and professionally to navigate relationships with respect for the ways that social location and identity shape experience, perspective and choice. This is an ongoing and incomplete process and I am committed to continuing to examine and bring awareness to any implicit bias and blindspots that I carry.

Let’s walk together…

My approach is guided by a fundamental respect for the innate intelligence of each human being. Just like a weather worn tree growing from a rocky crack, we are shaped by our experiences and environment. There is remarkable wisdom in the adaptations we make to navigate life's challenges, even when they become painful and limiting. As we recognise and honour the way these adaptations have served us, and bring awareness to their origins, they begin to soften their grip on the present, and make room for more choice, authenticity and connection. Just as context can shape us in limiting ways, the right environment can nurture growth. A tiny seed grows into a mighty forest giant when it is held and nourished in a relational web of soil, rain, sun and fellow creatures. So it is with us. Our work together is to co-create environments that nurture your innate impulse towards healing and wholeness.

Walker, there is no road, the road is made by walking

- Antonio Machado

A conversation between the ancient and new

We work at the meeting place between the best contemporary neuroscience and timeless practices of healing and reconnection. The science of predictive processing and memory reconsolidation provides a wholistic, evidence-based scaffolding for effective and lasting change, and guides all that we do. Nature provides the archetypal patterns of transformation, and pan-cultural practices of embodied listening, movement, imagination, dreaming, ritual and deep reverence for Mystery offer a path to re-membering our true nature, innate wisdom, resourcefulness and place in the web of life.

Sensorimotor Psychotherapy

A holistic body-oriented form of talk therapy that integrates mindful awareness of physical sensations and movement with emotional and cognitive processing. Developed to support the healing of habitual patterns of disconnection and nervous system dysregulation stemming from adverse childhood experiences, traumatic events and intergenerational inheritance.

The Nature-based Map of the Human psyche

Grounded in the patterns of nature, the Nature-based Map of the Human Psyche describes everything that can go right with a human being and supports us to cultivate and access the fullness of our multifaceted, wild Self, as well as build secure relationships with our fragmented inner parts.

A creative and fluid approach to exploring the meaningful patterns within dreams, relationships, and everyday experiences, to uncover their deeper significance and support expansion into new and unfamiliar ways of being.

Process-oriented Psychology

The nature-based practices and invitations I offer are designed to meet you exactly where you are. Ranging from gentle practices of nature immersion that support a sense of presence and peace, to deep conversations with the more-than-human-world that catalyse new perspectives and expanded experiences of your self and your place in the web of life. Whatever you are looking for, nature has something to offer you.

Ecosomatic Explorations

So, how does it work in practice? 

I offer a hybrid of online somatic psychotherapy and personalised nature-based invitations for you to explore independently in your local environment.

Online sessions provide a space to slow down and turn inwards. Instead of focussing just on the thinking mind, we listen to the language of the body to support the rewiring of deeply held patterns and limiting beliefs at their root. The sensations, emotions, images, movement impulses, memories and beliefs held in the body have a remarkable intelligence and guide our work.

At the end of each session I offer a nature-based invitation for you to explore in your local environment in your own time. Each invitation is designed to support you to deepen, integrate and enact whatever emerges in our time together. Experiences and encounters in nature may then provide a doorway for further exploration in our next session, or we may simply begin with whatever is alive for you in the moment.

In this way our work pulses with an ancient rhythm. You venture out into the world for an encounter with nature and then return to share and deepen your experience.

I thought the earth remembered me,
she took me back so tenderly,
arranging her dark skirts, her pockets
full of lichens and seeds.
I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,
nothing between me and the white fire of the stars
but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths
among the branches of the perfect trees.
All night I heard the small kingdoms
breathing around me, the insects,
and the birds who do their work in the darkness.
All night I rose and fell, as if in water,
grappling with a luminous doom. By morning
I had vanished at least a dozen times
into something better.

- Mary Oliver