Esther Mulders, MA

As a Psychomotor Therapist and a TraumaSensitive Yoga Teacher - with a background in Anthropology and Philosophy - my main focus is on working
with trauma in a global and transcultural context. I am very passionate about mental health worldwide in connection to issues of social justice and combining therapy with feminism, activism and working towards social change. My main focus is currently on experiences of social suffering and violence in relation to women and children’s psycho-social well-being. The body and body awareness, movement and yoga are central to my therapeutic work. My organization, Moving Through Trauma, is strongly socially committed and builds on the belief that everyone has the right to accessible and suitable support services. I am thus very committed to making mental health services more diverse and more inclusive.

Traditional therapy is talk-based, which often results in a focus on the mind and rational thinking. My approach, though it does use words and narratives, shifts the focus of therapy to the body-based dimension of trauma: the physical dimension, the emotional states that are stored in our bodies, and the lived experience. Particularly in the case of trauma, body-oriented therapy can offer support in exploring and discovering the body and processing trauma. Only through becoming aware of the sensations that tell you what your body needs, can you start to take care of and be gentle to your body and the feelings that arise.