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Francesca Lo Verso Counselling and Psychotherapy

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Francesca Lo Verso Counselling and Psychotherapy

Hi, Francesca here! I offer a somatic-oriented, nature-led counselling practice.

I host "We are here, too - on mental health abroad" podcast, and I offer training and classes on outdoor therapy and somatics.

26/09/2025

What does it really mean to let go? How does that feel into the body?

Join me in this body-led, nature-inspired movement class on the first Monday of October.

All info in bio, and also, ask any questions below 👇

25/09/2025

When I was younger, my parents used to have a narrow but long strip of vegetable garden bordering farmland (corn field, to be exact). I remember quite vividly those summer days where my parents would harvest buckets and buckets of tomatoes, giving them away as nature kept giving. Or the basil plant my mum was quite proud of that gifted us so much basil for pesto and other dishes.

We also had fruit trees and my favourite was the cherry tree, just in front of our house, that would turn into a beautiful fire red every other summer (with the exception of one summer where a thunderstorm destroyed it all).

At the time, I never understood why my parents would spend their time looking after that, why my mum would then go the extra mile to create a herb sanctuary on her balcony in the new place where they are now living.

Oh, if it took me such a long time to appreciate that!

Fast forward a good 20 odd years, I do really understand what harvest season really is for me now: contentment with knowing I’m part of something larger. I wonder if my parents at the time felt that, too.

Sure, I had to contend with a particularly dry growing season, slugs, cats, a steep learning curve on how to grow, unsuccessfully planting chard and carrots and squash, confusing lettuce for w**d twice.

In the end, this allotment felt like practicing justice: returning to interdependence, listening deeply to what is needed, refusing the logic of extraction at all cost and really sharing, participating in a slow reweaving of connection of the body to the land and the land to justice.

What is your harvesting story?

24/09/2025

As meteorological autumn has finally arrived with its cold winds, a wee throw back to a time early this year where cold meant something else. The text space here is too small to explain, and words are never enough, but that week in Glen Affric meant the world to me.

I’ve been working in mental health for quite a long time now, longer than I can remember. It hasn’t always been as a counsellor, and it sadly happened at times where I did not have the skills to support someone else in their distress, nor to debrief about the things I was seeing and hearing (before I trained to be a therapist).

What got me through every single time though was the people around me (which I am forever grateful for and I’m sure you do know who you are by reading this), but I also started blending community with distress to the point that all I was doing and thinking was mental health related, my persona was just that.

Glen Affric was the reminder that life happens despite of that, that communities are born from working together towards a shared goal, that sometimes spending time supported by a tree looking at a loch is more restorative than a therapy session, that on those cold spring days there was so much warmth among a group of strangers that I could have hoped for.

Looking back, my time in Glen Affric has reminded me to zone out from my little bubble from time to time and see what else is beautiful and what else is working and what else is purposeful.

I wonder if you could do this, too, especially now when there world is going some dark places and remember there’s hope out there.

Let’s not lose it.

19/09/2025

A collection of pictures from my first season as a grower.Looking back, I’m reminded of the importance of staying open to the world, to others, to change.

The comfort of our familiar circles has its place, but it’s not where growth happens.That comfort isn’t growth itself, but it’s what allows us to welcome more otherness in.To stretch beyond what we know, we need a stable ground to begin from.

There are resources to be shared, resouces you don’t even know were there. Find your comfort, nurture it, and when you are ready, step outside of it. The world is there for you, too 🌿

17/09/2025

Having a somatic practice doesn’t have to be anything fancy. In fact, it’s no fancy at all. It’s just you turning your attention inward and curiously see what’s happening. No faff, no protocols, no regulation.

Focusing on your body during mondane activity is a good non-threatening entry level to start a somatic practice.

What do you think?

15/09/2025

Let’s focus on our entire body, let’s love and appreciate all of it, not just one system ❤️

11/09/2025

What discrimination does to the body is significant in the way it can seriously affect our health. My body matters, your body matters, oppressed bodies matter. If you don’t have it in you to fight discrimination, at least learn how not to exacerbate it. 🙏 Our bodies will be thankful

10/09/2025

This is how I practice therapy, and it is genuinely the type of conversations I have with my friends (and beyond, really).

I cant close my eyes and pretend that my body is not political, I can’t pretend I don’t have an accent or facial traits that people here judge and speculate upon.

I can’t ignore the bigger systems at play when listening to people’s distress. I can’t pretend that the way you are socially positioned has no impact on the way you manage to look after your mental and physical health (it is undeniable that the privilege of accessing services privately allows people to deal with their problems there and then at times that most likely would suit them, rather than having to wait months if not years on the public and third sector).

I can’t ignore the barriers people face every day because of the body they inhabit, in the same way I can’t ignore that therapy would remove those barriers.

But we can talk about politics in therapy and supervision, we can learn how to resource our bodies to have difficult conversations, to sustain acts of civil disobedience, to learn how to love beyond our learnt tunnel vision.

Therapy is political because our bodies are political, and this statement won’t be less true if you decide to cover your eyes and ears.

09/09/2025

Some reflections following a chat with a friend today over coffee. Let me know what you think.

08/09/2025

Regulating the nervous system is not the beginning and end of it all. And it’s not the only somatic practice out there. It’s not a quick fix.

I appreciate that when overwhelm and distress are so overly and constantly present in our life, we would do whatever to make them stop, right here right now.

But let’s remember that working with the body, working somatically, is not about asking the body to do xyz or to be xyz, it’s not a means to an end. We are not demanding or forcing.

Working somatically means to learn about your body intimately, to befriend it, to listen to it carefully, not only to regulate it out of distress or overwhelm.

Without relationship with your body, it doesn’t matter what somatic tricks you use. Choose to return home to your body first, and all the rest will follow.

10/02/2025

What do we call that deep, instinctive urge to press our full weight into fresh snow, compacting it beneath our steps as the first to walk there?

We don’t have scientific words to describe the beauty of life, just as we don’t have scientific words to fully capture the beauty of our own bodies. To express that feeling, we need more than language. We need ways to tune into our bodies, we need space to do that.

We don’t make much space for beauty. We haven’t for a long time. I certainly didn’t when my brain was consumed with finding a way out of distress. Maybe you haven’t, either, whether it’s the weight of work, difficult relationships, financial or housing instability, isolation. Survival leaves little room for noticing how a content body feels, let alone imprinting that memory so it can carry us through future struggles. Instead, we just struggle without recognising the vital resource our body actually is.

But there are ways to reconnect, to find the words, to bring colours back into your life. A body-oriented and nature-led practice worked for me when I most needed it. The support I offer is then a type of talking therapy (counselling) that welcomes your body into the process (somatics) and acknowledges the way the world (including the climate crisis) is shaping your experience. I also work outdoors, if that speaks more to you.

If you’d like to learn more, the link is in my bio

30/01/2025

Ok. There’s a story here, somewhere, between sharing the experience of witnessing beauty (hello sunrise!) with someone and sleeping outdoors, the sound of the loch lulling us to sleep;

or feeling the chilly air on my face while sitting on the crispy frozen grass while eating both sandwich and porridge;

or witnessing the damage that Storm Éowyn caused to the landscape around us and finding ways forward (nature always does, a resilience we can all learn) and the calm waters of the loch in the morning, steady like a mirror.

Without therapy, I would not have been able to fully be there for (let alone enjoy) a day like this, and without this (nature and friendships), I would not have been able to fight for myself enough to seek out help the times I needed it the most.

Whether it’s through shared experiences with others or moments of solitude in nature, connection keeps us present and engaged with life.

And if connections feel too risky, start small. Be gentle. Like nature after a storm, begin again, slowly. Wash your face, wrap yourself in warmth, notice the steady things, the ground beneath you, your breath, the quiet way you are still here 💚🌱

📸 Kathi aka that friend who’s wild enough to say yes to “let’s sleep outdoors at zero degree and let’s hike icy paths to see the sun rise over the loch”

Address

Glasgow

Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 5pm
Tuesday	9am - 5pm
Wednesday	9am - 1pm

Website

http://www.francescacounselling.com/

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