I am a member of Downing Place URC, Cambridge, and also have a close connection with the Free Community Church in Singapore.

My original training in spiritual direction and retreat-giving was at Osterley Retreats, an innovative Ignatian centre in London which closed in 2004. That was followed by being on the full-time retreat-giving team at St Beuno’s 2006-2014. Until the Windermere Centre closed, David Parkin and I gave regular Exploring Spiritual Direction events there for URC people.

I give retreats and quiet days in a range of contexts, and see people for spiritual direction, spiritual direction supervision and pastoral supervision.

One of the things I began to explore at depth while at Osterley was the role of creativity in prayer – including paint and retreats using media such as art, music, film and cooking. Another core part of the Osterley programme which I’ve developed subsequently is group work in retreats. My understanding of this owes a great deal to supervisors with group experience, and explorations in the world of group relations, and psychoanalytically-informed approaches to groups and to how we work with myth and story.