Kaspa Thompson

Training, qualifications & experience

I am a registered member of BACP. I am a mindfulness teacher, and a Buddhist priest. As well as my private practice I run a Buddhist Temple in Malvern.

I have been working in private practice as a therapist since the beginning of 2012.

More about me

I’ve been interested in what makes people tick for a long time. When I was young that curiosity came out in my love of stories, and of the theatre: I wrote stories about people, I read stories about people, and I acted as other people. What is it really like to walk in someone else’s shoes?

As a young man I was unhappy in my work. That unhappiness led me to west Wales. I signed up for a degree in Drama at Aberystwyth University. I loved being engaged with people who shared my love of the world; of getting inside other people’s heads; and in expressing ideas, psychologies and cultures, in words and on the stage.

It was at university I first read Carl. R. Rogers On Being A Person. I loved his ideas about therapy, and about creating good conditions for people to grow.

In my drama work I became more just as interested in developing my actors as people, in deepening their vulnerability, and their trust in each other and the world, as much as in creating great theatre.

Although I loved the studying, it didn’t solve my unhappiness. The interest in the mind I developed at that time moved me in the right direction – but the journey was just beginning.

In 2006 I started training to be a psychotherapist with David Brazier, and Caroline Brazier. David would go on to become my Buddhist teacher, as well as my therapy trainer, and not long after I started my therapy training I also started training to be a Buddhist priest. I ordained in 2007, and for a few years my energy went completely into that vocation.

Eventually I picked up the thread of my therapy training, and I started a private practice in January 2012.

That therapy training, combined with my Buddhist practice, and my own therapy, took me many, many, steps along the road I’d started upon when I’d read On Being A Person.

I’m much more fulfilled now than I ever was. The satisfaction I have with my life as it is now, balancing married life, my private practice, and running a Buddhist temple, has largely come through a therapeutic process.

I love working with my clients. It’s a real pleasure to provide a space for them to tell their own stories, to begin to come to terms with their own lives, and to start taking steps towards fulfilment.

My Buddhist name is Kaspalita, which means ‘protected by the light’, but everyone calls me Kaspa.