Michaela Kendall
Michaela Kendall
Trauma informed Psychotherapy & yoga
My experience
Growing up, I was the worrier. The one who sensed the mood in a room before anyone had said a word, who held things quietly so others didn't have to. Nobody told me to do this. It wasn't a choice, and it wasn't anyone's fault. It was simply how the child me made sense of a world that at times felt confusing, shaped by different familial dynamics I was too young to understand but old enough to feel.
I adapted by turning my attention outward: reading others, managing the atmosphere around me, and making myself easy to be around. In many ways, it was a strength. But over time, I became very good at being attuned to everyone around me, and increasingly disconnected from myself. What eventually woke me up was my body. The internalised anxiety and years of disconnection began to show up physically: in fatigue that rest didn't touch, a heaviness I couldn't explain, low mood that sat just beneath the surface, and an irritability that told me something had to change. My body was communicating what my mind had learned to ignore.
That recognition led me to two things that changed everything: psychotherapy, and yoga. Not a class I had to perform in or keep up with. Just a quiet practice at home, on a mat, slowly learning what it felt like to be in my own body again. Through my own therapy I was able to look at these early adaptations with curiosity rather than blame, to understand where they came from, and to find that they no longer had the same hold over how I showed up in relationships or in myself.
Those two threads, the psychological and the embodied, became the foundation of the work I now offer. I don't come to this as someone who has always had it figured out. I come to it as someone who continues to do the work themselves, and who understands from the inside why it matters and why it is worth it.
"I became very good at meeting others needs. Learning to meet my own needs was a different kind of work entirely, and it is the work I now feel privileged to support others in doing."
My Approach
Completing my psychotherapy training gave me a framework for understanding the patterns beneath behaviour, why we do what we do, even when we would rather do something different. But I noticed something in that training and in the therapy room: insight alone often isn't enough.
People could understand their patterns completely and still feel stuck in them. They could know exactly why they were anxious and still feel anxious. The understanding lived in the mind. The feeling lived in the body. And the two weren't always in conversation with each other.
That gap is where my work sits. Psychotherapy to make sense of things. Trauma-informed yoga to give the body a different kind of experience. Not as competing approaches, but as two ways of working towards the same thing: helping you feel more at home in yourself.
An important note
On yoga and mindfulness, done thoughtfully
I feel strongly that yoga and mindfulness should support people, not hinder them. This might seem like an obvious thing to say, but it matters, because for some people, particularly those with trauma histories or dissociative experiences, standard mindfulness and yoga practices can sometimes do the opposite.Bringing attention to the body without the right scaffolding can, for some, increase distress rather than reduce it. I am trained to recognise this, and everything I offer is built with it in mind. The goal is never to push you toward an experience your nervous system isn't ready for. Safety and choice are not just values here. They are the practice itself.
Working with me
What you can expect
To be met where you are
Not where I think you should be, or where you think you should be. Sessions start from where you actually are that day.
No pressure to perform
Whether in therapy or yoga, there is no right way to be here. Silence, uncertainty, and not knowing are all welcome.
Honesty over reassurance
I won't tell you what you want to hear. I'll be honest, warm, and direct, because that's what real support looks like.
A pace that respects your nervous system
We go at a pace your system can follow. Slower is often more, and that's not a limitation. It's the work.