Nondual Psychology
with Amy Ward
Being yourSelf.
An intelligent engagement as this radiance of experiencing.
​Grounded. Compassionate. Informed. Alive.
"Psychologist Carl Jung said all desires have a sacred origin, no matter how odd they seem. Frustration and ignorance may cause them to twist into distorted caricatures, but it’s possible to locate the beautiful source from which they arose….in describing an addictive patient, Jung said: ‘ His craving for alcohol was the equivalent on a low level of the spiritual thirst for wholeness, or as expressed in medieval language: the union with God…with this in mind, ruminate about this question: What are the glorious prototypes behind the longings that confuse you or drain you?”
ROB BREZSNY
Hi, I'm Amy -
Nondual Psychologist, Therapist, and Mentor
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Meeting in experiential inquiry together is my offering, invitation, and encouragement to be engaging in and living this life in a constantly new and extraordinary yet simultaneously ordinary and obvious way, fully inclusive of all human experiencing.
Our experiencing of suffering of course does not define us, but it does, when approached through intelligent engagement and reparenting as this presence of experiencing, reveal our way into exactly what is needed and longed for. That is, the truth that is the nature of experience and all arising phenomena as yourself.
The result? Aware, open, engaged, flowing, and not to mention a sense of connection, belonging, inspiration, and meaning beyond measure - all inside your own experience of being alive as the empty-fullness of home.
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Facilitating your unfolding - revealing the heart of life...
A Psychology that never leaves the ground.
I practice in Nondual Therapy, Transpersonal, and Cognitive Psychology - facilitating self/experiential inquiry in the context of spiritual awakening, existential suffering, trauma, addiction, and conscious relating. I facilitate the natural energetic unfolding of being/consciousness through the frame of Reparenting as Presence, integrating a range of evidence based therapeutic modalities such as Mindfulness Focused Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, and Compassion Focussed Therapy, to support gentle anchoring in compassionate attunement. I am passionate about aligning radical empiricism in the cessation of seeking and associated suffering (Reparenting as Presence, and Compassionate Attunement) with Evidence Based Practice principles in a ‘non-pathologising’ applied Psychology that honors depth, and illuminates the truth of the nondual nature of experience and its power in effective mental health care.
As well as my one to one therapy and mentorship practice I am co-developer and teacher of the Reclaiming Wholeness Training for Practitioners.
I love music. I love dancing. I love witnessing life in the natural world. I love here. I love us. I love.
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I can't find a dividing line between 'you' and 'me' - this is what I know love to be.
In today’s fast-paced world, many of us are yearning for depth and meaning as an actual lived experience of peace, clarity, and embodied well-being - this that is revealed as we establish in the truth of non-separateness. The self as the nondual nature of experience. It is my experience and understanding that this yearning for depth is at the root of our experience of psychological, emotional, and spiritual suffering. It is not a mistake. It is deeply intelligent and should be inquired into with the wholeness of heart.
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This yearning for depth and peace appears as our understanding that true healing involves more than just symptom relief, and we can feel endlessly frustrated and dissatisfied by the constant offerings of this as the solution to our struggle. Because symptom management and self-improvement is what is so consistently offered as the solution, this knowing and insight that it is not the solution can manifest as self-doubt. This is because we know that there is more to our experience of suffering than this. We are feeling the call of deep insight but we can't pin it down or express it - its beyond our usual way of expressing, and everyone is telling us that the solution is 'out there' in how we improve ourselves, change our life situation, or save the world.
Despite the incredible effectiveness of psychological and therapeutic healing modalities, they largely work with the strategies of defending, protecting, and reinforcing the core sense of separateness - the very functioning that we need to reveal as false in order to feel the truth of unobstructed well-being that is the self as presence. We may experience momentary relief - whilst the core angst and fear that drives our experience remains untouched, silently screaming beneath the surface. We feel hopelessness, frustration, loneliness, fear, and eventual exhaustion and existential crisis. Where giving up was everything that we were avoiding, its now the best that we can do. This is intelligent and incredibly good news - and, it feels absolutely horrendous. What is giving up is the manager, the thinker, the fixer, the gatekeeper. The suffering loop of the separate self. If any of this feels resonant, or stirs something within you - whether it be further fear, excitement, or a still, quiet peace - I wholeheartedly encourage you to explore yourself. To feel yourself. Your experience holds within it the deepest wisdom of the cosmos. You are igniting the energetic master seed that reveals your birthright. Life's only purpose is to know itself and be itself. One life. Getting on board with this IS well-being.
We may have already discovered this through nondual teachings and the direct path. The problem here arises though in the fact that the direct path, whilst the most effective, is itself a bypass of the human experience, and we can get stuck here rather than recognising this as an initial opening. Nonduality, in its purest form, points to the simplicity of being. But when this realisation bypasses our very real human needs, we fall into a new form of dualism - the belief that seeking is wrong, or that we’ve somehow failed because we’re still hurting and suffering. This can leave us feeling isolation, overwhelm, and spiritual confusion. At the same time, psychological modalities that aim to resolve trauma and emotional pain often miss the deeper context of our true nature. We become trapped in self-improvement loops, endlessly managing symptoms and life - seeking pleasure to avoid the core pain of separation instead of addressing this root sense of 'me' and the illusion of lack that drives it.
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There is work to do, and it takes courage, commitment, deep insight, and the mother load of love that is you as this ever-present, untouched nature of being. My aim is for you to feel the energetic embodiment of your infinite nature through the normal, ordinary, and everyday human experience. My offering in meeting this is a therapeutic, relational space where modern psychological knowledge, method, and skill meets nondual wisdom through igniting the healing field of compassion.
In togetherness, we are.
What you can expect in our work together:
Presence. Relationship. Real Change.
...an Intelligent Engagement
Our work together is not about fixing what’s broken. It’s about meeting what’s here - with presence, care, curiosity, and deep listening. My approach is rooted in Compassionate Attunement and Reparenting as Presence, a model of healing that recognises even our most painful patterns as intelligent responses to the unmet need for unwavering presence. I also draw on an integration of attachment theory within a nondual framework, honouring how our relational nervous systems shape the experience of being - even (and especially) on the spiritual path.
As we work together, you can expect to be gently supported to explore your experience of being. This is not to solve yourself. Rather, it is to feel directly into the qualities of being that have always been here, waiting to be recognised.
This work isn't about quick fixes or bypassing discomfort. It's about slowly, gently learning to trust the ground that was never lost. That's where lasting change and peace lives.
A Commitment to Depth
This is not a fast-track approach and in our human experience this can feel challenging. Fast track approaches and 'quick shifts' keep us on the surface of experiencing where we can't fully resource the qualities of self that we need to stabilise in lasting change. I don’t offer surface-level tools or problem solving strategies. Tools can be explored as a means of facilitating revealing the depth of presence as a feature of our work together but will not be offered as 'a solution'. Revealing our patterns relationally - is how lasting transformation takes root.
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...Self-unfoldment & transmutation
Attachment-sensitive Nonduality
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You may be walking a deep nondual path already, maybe even beyond personal identity, and still feel the tender struggle of unmet attachment patterns. That’s not failure. That’s human.
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This work honours both: the formless essence of what you are, and the relational imprint of your lived experience. Sometimes this integration can feel paradoxical or confusing. That’s okay. I will support you in making space for both without bypass or shaming - whilst allowing all feelings like shame to be fully present.
...Presence as the Radiant Parent.
​​​Experiential Inquiry
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​Our work is experiential. That means you’ll be gently guided to feel and meet your experience more directly over time. I hold compassion for resistance - and this process does ask for your willingness to be in relationship with what arises. This is not a training in strategies. This is a return to self through relationship - and it’s our therapeutic relationship, held in compassionate attunement, that reveals the healing field.
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...Radical empiricism
"every energy that shows up in your experience is a lightning bolt from God. It is pure divine shakti, and it is truth, and when you see it and own it as a vector of divine force, its a weapon in your arsenal. You're using it, but you're not doing something with it, you're using it by seeing it...seeing is doing. When you see what things are you've done it. So it's kind of like surfing. When you see these energies and you see the truth of it, you ride that truth and that is integrated to all the other energies, until you see the full field of the energies and you're surfing the whole thing, and then you dissolve as a separate surfer and its just this field of energy surfing itself"
PETER BROWN
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The Seven Principles of Compassionate Attunement
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Compassion is the master medicine, both for offering unwavering support as we meet suffering and struggle, but in revealing the true nature of reality beyond ideas of separation - the ideas that innocently create so much of our suffering and seeking. Compassion isn't just a word to describe how to be a good human - it's a means of pointing to the full field of intelligence that is your experiencing right now, as your very self. Love, wisdom, and compassion are the true nature of reality, and this reality is YOU.
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Here are the characteristic of presence as the healing field of aliveness that will naturally guide our time together. They are not ideals, but living characteristics of undivided being - the presence within you that knows how to meet experience beyond fear or force:
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1. Unceasing Availability
Presence never leaves - even when part of you feel abandoned, unworthy, and unseen. Our work rests in this: you are always within being. Together, we build a safe, attuned space that gently challenges internalised beliefs where the nervous system can remember safety, not as a concept, but as a felt reality. Over time, you may begin to feel the unbroken ground of being that has always been here, steady, non-judging, and present.
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2. Dynamic Wholeness
No part of you is a problem. Even your coping strategies carry intelligence as responses to past conditions. We don’t rush to shift them. We meet them, listen to them, and watch as integration unfolds from within.
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“When you realise that the distinction between inner and outer is in the mind only, you are no longer afraid. You are aware of being one with all—you are no longer isolated."​
SRI NISARGADATTA MAHARAJ
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3. Effortless Equanimity
You don’t need to perform or manage your experience here. I will neither approve nor disapprove your experience and expression. Emotions, sensations, silence - all are welcome. There is no “right way” to be. We allow space for what arises, without pressure, pathologising, or attempting to solve experience as a problem to be fixed. You don’t have to be "together" to show up. Nothing in you is too much or not enough. Here, your full humanity is welcome Messy and complex, We let it be just as it is, and from here we reveal a deep peace that is not only independent of what is happening in experience, but is a living intelligence that knows how to nourish you for the most stable kind of change.
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"The real trick is to see what any experiential condition is, to find the common denominator that is true in all experiences."
PETER BROWN (The Yoga of Radiant Presence)
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4. Immediate Indefinability
Your experience matters. The way you describe your pain, identity, longing - that’s not something to “see beyond” or dismiss. It’s a compass. Our work honours the intelligence within your unique language, while gently opening space beyond it, into the freedom of being that no label can define. We explore with curiosity, not conclusion.
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"This is a great advantage because it is accessible. The highest, most effective spiritual practice is simply to notice what is happening right here, right now, in your experience: the presence of light, patterning, intelligence, meaningfulness, and unfathomability. Nothing in your experience can be definitively resolved as to what it is or how it is.."
PETER BROWN (The Yoga of Radiant Presence)​
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5. Responsive Radiance
Our work is neither passive nor active. Presence is alive, curious, responsive, and engaged. I will meet you not just with depth of silence, but with real relational attunement - guiding, reflecting, and resonating with your unfolding, always from the ground of presence.
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"When you know beyond all doubting that the same life flows through all that is and you are that life, you will love all naturally and spontaneously. When you realize the depth and fullness of your love of yourself, you know that every living being and the entire universe are included in your affection."
SRI NISARGADATTA MAHARAJ
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6. Alert Awareness
We’ll practice tuning into the subtleties of your experience - bodily, emotional, and energetic - with curiosity and precision. We honour what's really here, including subtle perception. This builds inner trust and deepens your capacity to meet life consciously, rather than from old patterns. With a felt experience of increasing clarity and kindness - in this direct seeing - patterns soften and presence deepens.
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“Don’t ask the mind to confirm what is beyond the mind. Direct experience is the only valid confirmation.”
SRI NISARGADATTA MAHARAJ
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7. Flawless Flow
Sessions are not forced or rigidly-structured. We follow what wants to be seen, trusting the organic intelligence of your system to guide the process. Healing doesn’t have to be effortful - it emerges when presence is trusted. When we recognise the power in following the thread of what wants to be felt - healing doesn’t have to be hard anymore. When we trust life’s unfolding, it moves exactly as it needs to.
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"To see the universe as your own self is to be free. It is not that you are in the world, but the world is in you. All is one, and that one is consciousness.”
SRI NISARGADATTA MAHARAJ
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I holds a BSc (Hons) in Psychology and MSc in Applied Psychology (Healthcare - Children and Young People) and previously practiced for 8 years as a Psychologist with Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (NHS, Scotland) – where my role involved psychological assessment, formulation, and treatment for children and families, and evidence based programme design, implementation, and evaluation. My focus was mainly working with parents and young children in the exploration of attachment, and with adolescents suffering moderate to severe mental health difficulties. I also worked with the Autism diagnostic team and in a clinical teaching role with the University of Edinburgh. In research, I evaluated integrity and fidelity of peer assisted supervision models in evidence based programme evaluation and delivery. I also explored qualitative and quantitative measures of early cognitive precursors to theory of mind development and how this is facilitated through parent engagement in the dynamics of attachment patterns.
I took a break in my psychology career when I left the National Health Service in 2016. This was a movement in following consciousness unfolding and connecting with self nature. I studied Permaculture Design and provided an independent evaluation service for projects in Community Supported Agriculture and Agroecology, using nature's patterns and principles to observe and develop theories of change. I then returned to therapeutic/mentorship work, and practitioner development, in my private practice.
Qualifications/Certificates
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​MSc Applied Psychology (Health Care) for Children and Young People
BSc Psychology (1st Class Hons)
Trauma-Focused CBT
Advanced Autism Practice
Certificate in Non-Dual Therapy (Module 1)
Nondual Therapy - The Trauma that Blinds us (Module 2)
Nondual Therapy - A New Dawn Rising (Module 3)
Certified Breathwork Practitioner and Spiritual Coach
(Sundoor School of Spiritual Therapy and Leadership – Peggy Dylan)
Certificate in Shamanic Practice
(Lendrick Lodge)
Permaculture Design Certificate