Profile
Paul Shelvey began his working life within the Criminal Justice System and spent some years working with young offenders and then children with emotional and behavioural difficulties. With a long term interest in Eastern approaches to health and spirituality, in the early nineties, Paul trained in the body-based approach of Polarity Therapy with the International School of Polarity Therapy.
To further develop his counselling skills he then undertook a training in the transpersonal or psycho-spiritual model of Psychosynthesis Counselling and Therapy with the Psychosynthesis and Education Trust. Finding himself working in, and for a short time managing, a drug and alcohol addiction day centre, he looked for models that were effective in that field and trained in William Glasser’s cognitive behavioural model of Reality Therapy. He is currently a member of the executive of the Reality Therapy Institute UK and is involved in delivering trainings as an Advanced Practicum Facilitator.
With a personal practice of Buddhist meditation Paul was also interested in therapies that were derived from Buddhist Psychology. He studied ‘Constructive Living’, a synthesis of the Japanese psychotherapies of Morita and Naikan, in the US, with Dr David Reynolds who is the West’s leading expert in these therapies. He attended Senkobo temple in Japan to complete his Naikan studies. In the West, the Constructivist tradition of therapies, that began with George Kelly in the 1950’s, had many resonances with Buddhist thought and Paul then studied Personal Construct Psychology with Fay Francella’s Centre for Personal Construct Psychology.
He is currently involved with Mindfulness Studies at the University of Wales and is integrating Jon Kabbat-Zinns Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Programme and Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy into his work.
Paul works for the NHS part-time as a counsellor in primary care and has a private practice as a counsellor, counselling supervisor, trainer and Polarity Therapist.
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