The Body Knows!

There's a version of therapy that asks you to sit in a chair, put your feelings into words, and leave fifty minutes later somehow lighter. For some people, that works beautifully, and talking can be a genuinely valuable part of therapy. It just isn't the only way in.

Heart in Mind grew from an understanding that therapy doesn't have to look the same for everyone, particularly when someone's sensory, emotional or neurodivergent experience doesn't always fit comfortably within traditional models of therapy.

Jolene Ironside built her practice around a deceptively simple observation: that the mind and the body are not separate departments, and that understanding yourself often means understanding your sensory experience, your nervous system, the energy spent each day on masking, and the particular exhaustion of moving through a world that wasn't designed with you in mind. Her work holds all of that in the same space, available in person and online across the UK.

The practice brings together integrative counselling using the arts, trauma therapy, somatic and nervous system work, sensory processing, breathwork, mindfulness, therapeutic movement and the Safe and Sound Protocol. For children and young people, there's specialist autism and ADHD-informed support and neuroaffirming counselling. For adults, ADHD coaching, burnout support and breathwork. Parents and families navigating a neurodivergent child's world can also find support here, not just the child themselves.

What makes the work genuinely unusual is its refusal to treat any of these strands as separate disciplines. Jolene doesn't slot people into a model. She reads the person in front of her and draws on whatever combination of approaches might actually help.

'I don't expect the person to fit my way of working. My job is to find a way of working that fits them.'

That philosophy runs all the way through. Sessions might involve talking, movement, creativity or sensory work, with attention to what helps that person's nervous system feel supported enough to engage.

Jolene is a BACP Registered Integrative Counsellor with more than twenty years in holistic practice and over a decade of therapeutic experience. Her background includes training with the Institute for Arts in Therapy and Education, qualifications in Child Accelerated Trauma Therapy and Trauma Informed Schools practice, training in interoception, and her Level 7 Autism Practitioner qualification. The breadth is the point: she works integratively, drawing on different approaches rather than expecting any one model to meet everyone.

The clients she serves range from primary-school-age children struggling to stay regulated in the classroom, to teenagers wrestling with identity and masking, to adults who've spent decades wondering why the world feels so effortful. No formal diagnosis is required to access support. Curiosity about yourself is enough.

For families trying to understand a child through a neurodivergent lens rather than a behavioural one, or for any adult who suspects there's more happening beneath the surface than anyone has yet thought to ask about, Heart in Mind offers something genuinely worth seeking out.