Zjamal has worked internationally for over 30 years in professional, academic and community settings, as a group facilitator, somatic educator, creative process lecturer and community arts leader. In her faculty positions in Amsterdam and the USA and on teaching tours throughout several continents, she presented her integration of personal development and holistic psychosomatic education.
Zjamal is in private practice as a Gestalt Psychotherapist and has been working with individuals, couples, and families for the last twenty years. As a counselling clinician her work is client centred, relational, and creatively constructive.
She is a Clinical Member of the Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia, and of Gestalt Australia & New Zealand, and is regularly invited to facilitate professional level counsellor training. She is currently on the faculty of Gestalt Therapy Brisbane, a post-graduate training offering a Masters in Gestalt Therapy.
For the last twelve years she has provided Clinical Supervision for practitioners in the field and those in social work and counselling organisations as well as assessing final year graduate’s clinical work.
She has held Senior Therapist positions for two private A.O.D rehabilitation residential facilities and facilitated an innovative community outreach day rehabilitation program. In 2014, she undertook a consultancy role in regional Queensland, developing an intensive support service for PTSD treatment, workplace critical incident responses, post-suicide family bereavement and community emergency programs. Her Masters research was on Somatic Intelligence, contemporary neurobiology influences, and embodiment in applied practice.
She is also certified in Level 1 of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy training in the treatment of trauma. She has aided communities through the arts for those living with mental health issues, disabilities, and for specific target groups including indigenous populations, sex workers and adolescents.
She is passionate about the intimate theatre of the one-on-one setting, the creative potency of the group setting, and the movement of growth and change in all life. She lives in a small eco-village called Koala Beach, on the eastern reaches of the Mt Wollumbin volcanic caldera.
“The strands of my work life as a psychotherapist, facilitator, teacher, supervisor and artist are intrinsically interwoven with each other. In all the settings and modalities in which I engage, and with the many populations with whom I interact, I draw upon my experience in creative process, personal development, education, healing through relating, and the sacredness of the earth. All my work is held by the matrix of those in-depth explorations and their synergy is found in anything I do. When I practice psychotherapy, it is influenced by phenomenology, somatics, theatre research and the art of improvisation. When I teach improvisation, it is informed by ecology, therapeutic process, and my embodied earth spiritual practice. When I make performances, they are sourced in the investigations and themes that emerged from my teaching and personal process and my fascination with nature, including human nature”.
“Zjamal skillfully, ethically and with enormous integrity leads me to moments of self realization that stay with me, reminding me to honour all of who I am.”
“Zjamal’s support and encouragement have shifted my energy and I work on my issues in a more creative way these days. Learning how to create my own rituals has made a big impact on my life.”
“Zjamal’s insight has gently led me to a place of empowerment and clarity. I have gained deep self knowing from our sessions.”
“Through Zjamal’s companionship – her generosity of spirit, compassion, poetic insight and wisdom – my journey became safe, simple and clear. Her guidance revealed the light in my dark night of the soul. I now have the courage to live me. To my own wonderment I discovered a strength in myself that had seemed unreachable.”
“Zjamal’s sessions have enabled me to find a strength, clarity, creativity and expression that I’d previously only dreamed of.”
“ Having therapy with Zjamal is like keyhole heart surgery. I don’t even feel her going right in there but suddenly I finding myself mending the deepest pain I carry in my heart.”
“I had therapy with Zjamal during one of the darkest times in my life. Not only did she support me through it with finesse and care, she integrated other unresolved childhood trauma. I consider her exceptionally skilled, highly knowledgeable, and phenomenally perceptive.”
“Zjamal was able to see a depth of emotion in me, a middle-aged man, through compassionately offering encouragement in a non-judgemental environment. Collaboratively, Zjamal was able to assist me make meaning of a very sad life event. Trustworthy, sensitive and highly intelligent, Zjamal is an outstanding professional”.
“Zjamal’s skill in holding a group with gentleness, knowledge, depth, and sensitivity increased my connection with myself and others. Zjamal modelled a way of being that showed me I could experience joy and creativity within deep emotional process.”