I am an Ecopsychologist with trainings in art therapy and Jungian analysis. Alongside private practice, I write, lecture and facilitate workshops on Ecopsychology in a wide range of settings; I also teach a Masters Ecopsychology module with Dave Key. See www.mjrust.net.
My therapy training began in art therapy in 1979. During the 1980s I worked in a men’s prison, as well as with women with eating problems at the Women’s Therapy Centre, London. Insights from this work fed into my growing interest in our collective consuming of the earth, and the relationship between mind and body, soul and the land.
After several trips to Ladakh (on the Tibetan plateau) where I spent time with Helena Norberg-Hodge of ISEC, I realised the seriousness of our global crisis. It was here that Helena had witnessed the immediate impact of western culture on an intact traditional society.
I then discovered Ecopsychology, an emerging field weaving together the ecological, psychological, political and spiritual. I joined a group of like-minded therapists, and together we explored Ecopsychological thinking, facilitation, and supervision. John Seed and Joanna Macy were two of my mentors in this journey.
I live with my partner and his two young adults in North London beside Queenswood, part of the forest which originally covered Britain. Highgate Hill is a terminal moraine left by a glacier of the last ice age. I have an ongoing love affair with the Women’s Pond on Hampstead Heath. This is part of a series of wild ponds fed by a spring just half an hour from central London.