Jaya Narayan

A conversation with Jaya Narayan

• What led you to choose psychotherapy or counselling as a profession?

  My path to this work was born from my own lived experience of adversity, grief, loss, and marginalization.
  
  I discovered through my own healing journey that traditional talk therapy, while valuable, often wasn't enough to address what I was carrying. The anxiety, the physical tension, the patterns that kept repeating.

• Which philosophical approaches have influenced your professional development?

  Neuroscience-informed, body-centered, strengths-based, and trauma-informed approaches shape my work. I draw from somatic psychology, psychodrama, and creative arts therapy—philosophies that honor embodied knowing, experiential learning, and the body's wisdom.
  
  I maintain ongoing personal therapy, clinical supervision, and contemplative practices to stay attuned and grounded. I believe I cannot guide clients to places I haven't explored myself. This personal work keeps me sensitive to the sacred responsibility of holding space for others' healing.

• Which particular aspects of health or the human journey are you interested in?

  I specialize in working with adults—particularly women—who have experienced cumulative or ongoing trauma that lives in the body and nervous system.
  
  My particular areas of interest and expertise include:
  
  **Complex and Developmental Trauma:** Working with the lasting effects of childhood neglect, abuse, or relational trauma that shaped your nervous system and sense of self during formative years.
  
  **Embodied Trauma Responses:** Helping people whose bodies remember what their minds have tried to forget—chronic pain, IBS, tension, fatigue, and physical symptoms without clear medical explanation.
  
  **Nervous System Dysregulation:** Supporting those experiencing hypervigilance, shutdown, dissociation, or feeling stuck between fight/flight and freeze responses.
  
  **Women's Experiences of Trauma:** I have deep interest in the specific ways trauma affects women—including experiences of sexual trauma, domestic violence, reproductive trauma, and the cumulative effects of gender-based marginalization and oppression.
  
  **Intergenerational and Cultural Trauma:** Working with people from CALD, BIPOC, and migrant backgrounds navigating trauma passed through generations and the impact of racism, displacement, and cultural disconnection.
  
  **The Body-Mind Connection:** I'm fascinated by how trauma fragments our connection to ourselves—and how somatic, creative, and relational approaches can restore that wholeness.
  
  **Healing Through Creativity and Expression:** Exploring how imagination, symbolic work, and creative expression unlock healing that words alone cannot access.

• What methods do you use?

  I use somatic (body-based) practices, creative arts therapy, Psychodrama, and nervous system regulation to help you work with trauma stored in your body—not just your thoughts.

• When do you think the client will start to feel that progress is being made?

  Clients feel resourced in themselves and experience change when they sense that they are able to identify the ways in which inner/ external environment impact their capacity to be present to themselves and in the world.

• How has therapy made a difference in your life?

  Therapy—particularly body-based therapy—reconnected me to myself. It helped me move from understanding my trauma intellectually to actually releasing what my body had been holding for years. I learned to recognize when my nervous system was activated, to resource myself when overwhelmed, and to trust my body's wisdom again.
  
  Beyond symptom relief, therapy helped me reclaim parts of myself I'd disconnected from to survive. It taught me that healing isn't linear, that setbacks aren't failures, and that transformation happens in relationship—not isolation.
  
  This personal experience fundamentally shapes how I work.

• What do you like most about being a therapist?

  The opportunity to be a warm empathic listener and witness.

• What do you think is the most significant problem we face, in the world today?

  We want a quick fix to all our problems and just like small wounds that take their time to heal, life has its own timeline

• Can you share the name of a book, film, song, event or work of art that inspires you?

  "Dibs: In Search of Self" by Virginia Axline. This book beautifully illustrates the power of accepting a child exactly as they are, creating space for their authentic self to emerge. It reminds me that healing happens not through fixing or changing people, but through witnessing, accepting, and trusting their innate capacity for growth.