Meet your speaker
Coal miner's daughter turned revolutionary healer, Jo champions a modern embodied matriarchy that creates power with and within, not power over.
Her work is grounded in a radical understanding: shame is the foot soldier of the patriarchy, and healing cannot happen within systems that perpetuate oppression.
Formally trained by Dr. Peter Levine, Dr Aline LaPierre, Sue Bell OBE and Dr. Abi Blakeslee, Jo serves as Board Member and Senior Trainer for the Focalizing Institute, training coaches, therapists, and embodiment workers globally.
Her practice integrates nervous system health, trauma healing (specialising in childhood development, collective and systemic trauma), somatic movement, soul inquiry, shame and shadow work. This is the formula she has used to support hundreds of big-hearted overthinkers to reclaim embodied freedom.
Committed to decolonising healing practices and influenced by Resmaa Menakem,
Jennifer Mullan, and Renee Linklater, Jo's work honours the body's innate wisdom while challenging conventional wellness narratives.
She embraces "Witch" as a reclamation of reverence for elder women's wisdom and working with nature. With this she also stands with anyone considered an outsider, queer or drawn to unconventional paths.
Living by the sea in Kent, Jo continues her own healing journey through regular somatic therapy and supervision, living by the principle that you can only take your clients as deep as you are willing to go.
MASTER SOMATIC PRACTITIONER, EDUCATOR, MENTOR, ELDER IN TRAINING, ARTIST, WITCH
Speaker topics:
🌿 Shame is the foot soldier of the patriarchy
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How shame operates in organisational culture
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Breaking cycles of power-over dynamics
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Creating psychologically safe environments
🌿 Modern embodied matriarchy in leadership
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Moving from power-over to power-with
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Matriarchal values in organisational structures
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Inclusive leadership that honours all voices
🌿 Decolonizing wellness
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Challenging patriarchal wellness narratives
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Trauma-informed organisational practices
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Supporting nervous system coherence vs. control
🌿 The world would be different if women weren't taught to fit in
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Addressing the fawn response in professional settings
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Supporting authentic expression
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Breaking cycles of people-pleasing
🌿 Crones and elders: our most overlooked resources
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Valuing embodied wisdom over fast-food knowledge
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Creating space for elder voices in organizations
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Intergenerational collaboration
Featured podcasts
United Freedom Collective Podcast
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In episode 3 of the United Freedom Collective Podcast we speak with somatic therapist and sound healer Joanna Miller. Jo works with big-hearted over thinkers to reclaim intimacy, creativity & embodied freedom via trauma, shadow, shame work, embodied healing, somatic therapy, somatic movement, sound, and voice work. She also trains other somatic therapists. Jo approaches her work with deep understanding, passion and commitment, something which became even more apparent as we settled in to our conversation. For anyone interested in sound healing, somatic therapy, the relationship between frequencies and well-being, this podcast is for you.
Send A Sound Radio Show - Margate Radio
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Send a Sound Project was a creative collaboration with Arts Education Exchange. Arts Education Exchange is a charity based in Margate that provides creative education, training, and employment for young people. The Send a Sound project was a collaboration between the students, tutors and local artists in lockdown which later produced an album. Here you can hear Jo and other local artists talk about their experience and creative process in a dedicated show on Margate Radio.
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Have a listen to a conversation about redefining the Boss Babe / Girl Boss archetype. We speak about peeling back to a more embodied connection to authentic power. We do go into the terrain of Girl Boss but we also discuss a lot about embodied presence, Britten asked me to share a little of my personal history and she shared a bit about my chart (I am so going back for more of her work), and there was a lot of love.
It's All Me: Creating Islands of Safety Within Yourself & Your Children
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Life is one big initiation. Join Gervase and her Focalizing teacher, Jo Miller, as they discuss what it would look like to have ‘enough’ in the face of trauma, the ways in which we’ve been lied to as women, and how we can resource somatics and focalizing to create a fuller, more robust sense of self in ourselves and our children.