Healing Through Words and Somatic Therapy – Exclusive Interview With Lucy Mary Ball

Lucy Mary Ball is a poet and somatic psychotherapist (MSc MBACP) specialising in embodied trauma healing. Her work is deeply rooted in personal transformation, informed by her own journey from emotional pain to profound spiritual awakening. For over twenty years, Lucy felt lost and disconnected until an inner reckoning in her twenties sparked a relentless quest for healing and self-understanding.

Originally from Scotland, Lucy moved to London to work in the fashion industry. While the contrasts of her new environment initially heightened her emotional turmoil, they also ignited a powerful desire to understand the roots of her suffering. Drawn to spiritual teachings and practices, Lucy gradually uncovered a deep inner joy that far surpassed the darkness she had known.

Today, Lucy runs a private psychotherapy practice, Lucy Mary Psychotherapy, based in London Bridge (N1) and Greenwich (SE10), and works with clients both locally and internationally via Zoom. Her approach blends somatic, relational, internal family systems (IFS), and transpersonal modalities. She walks alongside others on their healing journeys, helping them access the parts of themselves buried beneath trauma, fear, and emotional wounding.

In January 2025, Lucy released her debut poetry collection Summer in October, a soul-stirring compilation of 136 pieces written over three years. The title reflects the essence of her healing philosophy: that when everything you are not falls away, your true self begins to shine. Through her poetry and therapeutic work, Lucy offers a compassionate hand to those navigating their own darkness, reminding them that they are not their pain, but the joy and light they long to return to.

Lucy Mary Ball, Poet and Somatic Psychotherapist

To start, can you tell us a bit about your background and how you came to do the work that you do?

Looking back, I’ve always been pretty existential. When I was growing up, I was always wondering what the point of everything was. Why are we here? Why are we doing all these repetitive things day after day? Everything seemed like it lacked purpose, and I felt completely disconnected from the world around me, but at the time, I just thought that’s how life was. I went to university and then came to London to work in the fashion industry, and I found the contrasts of being away from the world I grew up in gave me an insatiable drive to figure out why I was in pain. I tried a few external things, including travelling around Peru, and realised pretty quickly that you take yourself with you wherever you go and into whatever you do. I had this craving to be alone with myself and found myself drawn to teachers such as Ram Dass, Alan Watts, and Eckhart Tolle, to name a few, which prompted the beginning of my journey inwards. Over time, I started having waves of resonance, a feeling of coming home that felt so much vaster than the darkness of my previous reality. I experienced first-hand that we’re not our pain or its narratives, that there is purpose within it, and most importantly, that there is a way out. I just had to share that with others, which is what led me to psychotherapy training.

You first trained as a relational psychotherapist at the University of Greenwich but went on to specialise in somatic work, can you tell us how you came to work in this way?

I found training relationally and working with transference laid a perfect foundation for what I do now, but I needed to go deeper. I was running into a common theme of clients who had done a lot of therapy before and had a strong understanding of where their patterns were coming from, but were struggling to release the emotion driving them, so were still in a lot of pain and therefore compelled to keep repeating the past. I’d had some methods of helping myself with this, but I didn’t feel confident guiding another through it, so I went to study with the Institute of Embodied Psychotherapy. It turned out I had no idea what I was in for! I’d had gut issues for over a decade, which I hadn’t addressed, and it turned out to be where a lot of my emotional trauma was stored. Untangling this for myself gave me a whole new understanding of the relationship between the mind, emotion, the nervous system, and the physical body, and I was able to anchor back into myself more deeply than before, which was pretty life-changing both personally and in my practice with clients.

You also bring IFS parts work and the transpersonal approach into your work; how does this all fit together and look like in practice?

I use IFS parts work to help clients to break down and understand the psyche, to understand the roles it plays in keeping them safe from a dysregulated nervous system. These roles develop throughout our life to help us to deal with unprocessed emotions and the world around us, and although they are effective at fulfilling their purpose, we become identified with them and it splits us apart inside. All these parts tell us opposing things so we feel completely lost. Once we start to untangle it all, we can explore what these parts mean and where they came from, and we can start to discern which represent our true nature and which feel like the past infiltrating the present. We reintegrate split off parts that don’t feel aligned to who we are by processing the emotions they are protecting us from and rewiring the nervous system back into regulation through somatic practices and utilizing the safety of the therapeutic relationship. Sometimes this process is called “transcending the personal”, that is to say we move beyond who we were taught we needed to be to survive to embody our intuitive sense of self.

You speak of the importance of being “client led” and put client autonomy at the forefront of the work, can you talk a bit more about this?

I find modalities can help to give the work a bit of structure and are powerful tools, but my focus is always to meet the other wherever they are and follow their lead. My experience, both personally and professionally, is that we know who we are and what we need, which is why we know when we feel lost and not right in some way. The soul knows how to actualise, so the work is to figure out what is blocking us from realising it. We have an internal guidance, so that is something I aim to draw out for the other, and it becomes the main driver for where the work goes, so each client’s process looks different depending on where they are in their journey. I often say that this isn’t about changing who you are, it’s shedding and grieving all the layers that you never were, so you can realise and embrace this deeper sense of yourself – it’s a coming home, and only the client can know what that means for them.

Congratulations on bringing out your first poetry collection! What prompted you to start writing?

Thank you so much! In my early 20s, I found myself writing about my awakening journey to try to understand what I was experiencing. I didn’t realise it at the time, but in retrospect, I think it helped me to step out of the narratives of the mind and get back into the perspective of my intuitive self, and the poetry was an evolution of that. Eventually, I made a website and started a blog, but I found I was sharing little snippets of my articles on Instagram and hoping no one would read the rest! Over time, I realised that I enjoyed short-form writing and that there are no rules. I love the rhythmic nature of meter and rhyme, and feeling out the flow of which words want to be written. It feels like a channel for my own internal guidance, so I guess you could say it’s my version of therapy!

What inspires your creative process and how does that look in practice?

I get inspired by aspects of life that make me feel strongly in whatever form, those feelings that really get your attention and force you to listen. I love music and its ability to evoke/exacerbate emotion, or sometimes take you beyond it. I love art in all different expressions and taking in the energy of other people’s creations, as I think anything that is born from a conscious state will inevitably take you there yourself. I also love nature, the moon, and the vastness of the sky, visiting new places, connecting with the depths of others – anyone or anything that leads me back to that felt sense of oneness with the world around me.

I always start writing by putting whatever I’m feeling on the page, allowing everything to be what it is to get it out, almost like I’m clearing all the mess in my mind to create a clear channel. Often, then, little messages start coming through, and I just know when it’s time to start putting something together. Sometimes I have ideas in random moments, and I write them down to come back to later. I often get titles that don’t mean anything at the time, and then one day, they just make perfect sense, I love that!

Would you mind telling us a bit more about the book and the process of putting it together?

The book is called Summer in October after one of my favourite poems in the collection, and the meaning behind it is that our soul shines more brightly (summer) when everything we’re not falls away (October/fall time), which is the basic premise behind the book and really my whole drive to do what I do. The painting on the front (illustrated by a talented artist called Anca Bostina) is copied from a photo I took of my window view when I first started writing which also felt like a reflection of the title with the summer flowers inside and the falling leaves outside.  Last summer I went on a trip and came away with a strong urge to put something together. From then it felt like it all sort of unravelled by itself - once I’d chosen which poems I wanted to include, I found that I had an equal number of short and longer form pieces which complemented each other in pairs, so that is how the pages are laid out. I divided the book into two sections, the first representing pieces written from pain, confusion, and hope, and the second from moments of clarity, peace, and love. All the poems were written when I was still in the thick of my awakening journey and putting them into a book felt like closing that chapter. My hope is that it will speak to anyone who finds themselves on a similar path as I know how scary and lonely it can feel.

And lastly, some practical bits where can our readers find you?

To learn more about my psychotherapy work, you can head over to my website lucymary.com. I share new writing and snippets from my book on Instagram @lucymaryball. If you’re interested in purchasing Summer in October, it is available on Amazon.

Thank you so much for having me!

Follow me on Instagram, and visit my website for more info!

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