Dr Emily Tunks (she/her)
Health Psychologist
MAAPi

Emily aims to support individuals understand their whole selves, body and mind, so that their health, relationships and life purpose may thrive, in spite of physical set-backs and ongoing challenges.

Emily co-majored in Psychology and Psychophysiology at Swinburne University, and after obtaining first class honours, she was awarded a full scholarship to complete a Doctorate of Psychology (Health) at Deakin University. Her doctoral qualitative research investigated Australian specialists' attitudes and practices of end-of-life care and organ donation, which was published in a high impact, international SAGE scientific journal: Journal of Health Psychology (under previous name: E. Macvean). 

Emily is a member of the Australian Association of Psychologists Inc. and is endorsed in Health Psychology (AHPRA). She maintains a commitment to excellence through researching best-practice techniques and her strong understanding of health psychology, clinical psychology, attachment, physiology, somatic (body) psychotherapy, psychodynamic psychotherapy, ecotherapy and psychoneuroimmunology. Both in session and outside, Emily draws on her modern practice of Eastern contemplation traditions and is a graduate of Hakomi Somatic Psychotherapy professional training.

Emily is honoured to be a co-therapist in several local and international clinical research trials for Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy (psilocybin with depression at Swinburne University and MDMA with PTSD at Monash University, collaborating with MAPS). In preparation for this humbling work, Emily continues to train extensively with several leading international PAP and trauma experts, local PAP integration and somatic psychotherapists. She deeply respects the healing potential of “non-ordinary” states of consciousness but most importantly, their safe, ethical, and practical integration.

In addition to private clinical work, Emily has over a decade of multidisciplinary team experience in world-leading pain management and chronic illness hospital units, rehabilitation units, community health settings and university lecturing.

Health Psychology

Emily offers clinical health psychology, which is a field of psychology that focuses on the overlap between biological, psychological, social and emotional aspects of health and disease, and how to better understand and treat this crucial intersection.

While an established offering in many public hospital psychology units, private health psychology services are much harder to find. This prompted Emily to establish embody Being™, now located in two inner Melbourne locations and online. With our improving awareness of neurodivergence, incidents of chronic illness are rising but so is life expectancy. To maximise our quality of life, there has never been a more important time for health psychology in Australia.

Emily discusses the life-changing significance of holistic health care, in an interview for Australian Unity here.

For more about Health Psychology here in Australia, America and England please see:

• Australian Psychological Society

• American Psychological Association

• British Psychological Society

Somatic Psychotherapy

It was the eastern principles (Hakomi: Mind-Body Holism, Organicity, Mindfulness, Unity and Non-violence) that initially drew Emily to find additional ways of supporting people in their therapy: “what I didn’t anticipate is just how deeply these five principles continue to impact me and my practice”.

Through mindful exploration, relationally-based psychodynamic process and contemporary developmental maps, somatic psychotherapy offers the ‘curious of mind’ a multitude of non-pathologising methods to better understand our individual and shared conditioning. Most importantly, it shows therapist and client how to authentically integrate these experiences back into our hearts, bodies and relationships.

Somatic psychotherapy will support us to ‘see’ the things that are always present, but we may not have been previously guided on how or where to notice them. It offers elegantly simple but strikingly powerful methods to meet others, so that the unconscious, its innate wisdom and any protective ‘resistance’ is genuinely welcomed like it’s the most insightful part in the room, because it is.

Therapy then becomes a true method of assisted self-discovery, which makes the ‘work’ of being both a client and therapist enriching, inspiring and sustaining.

Formal Qualifications

• 2023 Advanced Hakomi Somatic Psychotherapy Clinical Supervision Year 3

• 2021/22 Advanced Somatic Intelligence Trauma Training Approach Year 1 and 2

• 2021 MDMA Assisted Psychotherapy - Multidisciplinary Association of Psychedelic Studies (MAPS)

• 2020 Hakomi Somatic Psychotherapy Professional Training Year 2

• 2018-2019 Hakomi Somatic Psychotherapy Workshops and Professional Training Year 1

• 2007-2010 Doctorate of Psychology (Health)

• 2002 Bachelor of Science – Psychophysiology Honours (First Class)

• 1997-2001 Bachelor of Arts – Psychology/Psychophysiology

Associations and Memberships

• Psychology Board of Australia (AHPRA)

  • Endorsed in Health Psychology (AoPE)

• Member of the Australian Association of Psychologists Inc (AAPi)

  • Co-chair of the AAPi Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapy (PAP) Interest Group

Being alongside as you navigate your unique health journey is held with the greatest reverence by Emily. She truly enjoys meeting all “parts” of our inner landscapes using a flexible combination of humanistic, neuro-affirming, attachment and evidenced-based approaches, namely:

• Mindful Somatic Psychotherapy (ie. Hakomi)

• Somatic Processing and Trauma Sensitive Mindfulness

• Interpersonal Therapy

• Eco Psychotherapy

• Compassion Focused Therapy

• Buddhist Psychology

• Transpersonal Therapy

• Parts work (ie. Hakomi and Internal Family Systems)

• Liberal Feminist Psychology

• Motivational Interviewing, Acceptance and Commitment or Cognitive Behavioural Therapy where clinically indicated (stabilisation)

• Graded Exposure Therapy for panic and phobia