In 2016 Claire undertook training to become a licensed practitioner of Wayapa Wuurrk, an indigenous wellness and body movement/earth grounding program. Claire has also recently become associated with the Forest Therapy Association of Victoria. Claire hopes in the future to form closer relationships with local Councils offering voluntary outdoor forest rejuvenation and feral animal reduction activities for clients. Claire is a keen bushwalker and advocate of the natural therapeutic advantages of spending quality time in Australia’s beautiful, natural bush settings.
Claire has established a close and valued clinical and personal relationship with staff, management and practitioners from the South Australian Aṉangu Ngangkaṟi Tjutaku Aboriginal Corporation (ANTAC).
Wellselves and several past Wellselves registrars and students have previously hosted and supported visiting hand healing and natural medicine practitioners from ANTAC at our Essendon clinic several times per year, since 2017. Hundreds of people visited the Ngankari travelling healers when they visited and worked alongside us in Melbourne. ANTAC healers now run their own clinic in Henley Beach, Adelaide. We hold deep respect for, appreciate and value the wonderful results they obtain with patients here and when working in South Australian Hospitals.
Claire consulted at Abbotsford Convent's Arts and Historic Precinct’s Wellbeing Wing, from 2018 to 2020. A wide variety of Western, non-Western trained and traditional practitioners were based there, with arts, education, performance, craft and cultural practitioners.
Claire also hosted Australian traditional Japanese “Jyorei” healing visits in Essendon on three occasions after founding Wellselves in 2017 and hopes to follow up with a visit to a local healing and natural earth cultivation centre in Japan in 2021.
Claire has been a practitioner and student of the Tibetan Buddhist Society’s “Path to Enlightment” mind and meditation practices, since 2011. Claire was initiated in practices of White Tara and Medicine Buddha by Rimpoche Zazep Tulku in 2019 and hopes to continue further development from that path, through its wonderful teachers and diverse, traditional practices.
Claire highly values and has long-researched several, significant millenia-old links to former chiefs and clans from old Irish ancient sites and their family connections. Claire visits to learn more of that lineage and strong country connection interests as often as possible. Old Australian ancestral family connections also remain deeply resonant as their further exploration continues.
Claire has learned singing and played stringed instruments since the age of 11 years old and first taking up the guitar. Claire has since learned five stringed instruments Banjo, Bass, Ukulele and Mandolin. Claire was trained in European Opera methods in her childhood and teens by her mother who was an accomplished Light Opera and Choral singer.
Claire enjoys practising chanting in several tones and traditions, plays Irish Bodhrans and is currently exploring their shamanic histories and connections with Siberian and other early Indo-European hypnotic drumming techniques. Claire also enjoys and uses the healing tones of European finished quartz crystal and metal Tibetan sound bowls in supporting mindful relaxation and light, traditional meditative trance states, for supporting mental agitation, relaxation and reduction in anxiety and stress responses.
