Vagal Toning for Therapy(ists): Laughter, Play and Improvisation for Vagal Toning Workshop with Andrea Davies

Professor Andrea Davies is a certified Embodiment Coach/Counsellor, Voice First Aid specialist, is a meditation leader, has a black belt in karate, has practiced yoga for over a decade, leads community sounding, trained at LoVentri Somatic Voice™ (level1) and has a long career as a research-academic and lecturer at various UK universities including Edinburgh, Exeter, Lancaster, Leicester and DeMontford.

In 2015 she pioneered EnAct, an embodied presence and leadership practice with Curve theatre (Leicester). She has worked with Roffey Park Institute well known for their critical role in health and wellbeing from post WW1, and has also worked with TUC, ACAS, Department of Education, and Working Transitions as both collaborator and consultant. Her areas of focus are within life transitions and trauma, family and intergenerational dynamics, compassion ethics, embodiment and performativity. She is also co-author of the 2017 gov.uk report on menopause transition and has worked extensively as a counsellor, collaborator, educator and activist in this arena to tackle taboo, and foster cultural change.

Her PhD and early career was in cognitive psychology, but after much adventures she rests at the intersection with neurobiology, body and social psychology, and psychoanalysis. She has published widely in international journals, and recently was prize winner for intellectual contribution with her on-going work on how to apply and use Kristeva’s psychoanalysis contribution The Power of Horrors.