Hello and Welcome!
I’m a Voice Dialogue teacher and facilitator based in South-East Queensland, Australia, originally from Sydney.
I’ve been working with Voice Dialogue for around 35 years, having trained directly with Drs Hal and Sidra Stone, both in the USA and here in Australia.
My academic background is in Philosophy and Education, and I’ve worked as an editor in both legal and natural health publishing. I was Editor of WellBeing magazine back when yoga was still considered alternative. I’ve trained in Reiki I and II, and I’ve had a consistent yoga and meditation practice since my early 20s.
I’m a mother of three (now grown-up), and the techniques I write about have been invaluable throughout my parenting journey — and continue to be.
I’ve always been fascinated by how human beings work — how we make the choices we do, relate, grow (or not), and heal. While I’ve learned a great deal from formal study, my greatest teachers have been my relationships: with my children, my partner, and, perhaps most of all, with myself.
If you’re in or have been in a long-term relationship, you’ll know it comes with many challenges. My own experience inspired me to write The Perfect Relationship, a practical guide to the essential factors that help make a relationship work and evolve.
After the birth of my first child, new relationship challenges arose as my husband and I learned how to be a family, and that’s when I began the Baby Dialogue blog. Some of those early posts now appear in the Parenting section of this website.
I soon thought I had things more or less figured out, and then along came my second child, who was born with a serious medical issue. Navigating that journey (and the medical system) felt like a chapter from another life had been inserted into mine. It forced me to draw on reserves I didn’t know I had, and to access selves I hadn’t yet met. It may sound like a cliché, but it truly changed me. It also humbled me. I saw how easy it is, when life is flowing smoothly, to believe you have the answers.
Then after my third child was born, I wrote Enlightenment Through Motherhood — a book that poured out of me and remains my personal favourite. (By the way, all my books are fairly short, something you might appreciate in a busy life!) I’m currently working on a longer book, inspired by my grandmother’s secret WWII love letters, a project quite different from my usual work. If you’re curious, subscribe to my newsletter and I’ll let you know when it’s ready.
Although my relationships have taught me the most, Voice Dialogue has been the most transformative teaching I’ve encountered. It's given me the tools to truly learn from my relationships and life experiences, in ways I never could have without it.
Whether you dip into a blog post or dive deep into this work, whether you read a book or try Voice Dialogue with a partner or facilitator, I hope you’ll find this approach to consciousness as empowering and transformative as I have.
If you’re enjoying my website, you can support this work by purchasing one of my books or the Voice Dialogue Video and Audio Series — or by making a donation via the button below.
And don’t forget to sign up for my newsletter — I share practical tips for using Voice Dialogue in daily life, and I’ll keep you posted on new blog posts and offerings.
Warmly,
Astra
Comments
Hi Astra. Do you still do sessions for clients?
Hi Margie – I haven’t been doing sessions for a while but am thinking of starting up again soon. I’m currently looking for a good space to practice from. If you’re interested I can let you know the details when I start.
Kind regards, Astra
Hi Astra, love your site, sharing your posts with my single mom friend today. If free PDF routine was supposed to be instant and send an automatic email, didn’t work for me today. I’ll try patience 🙂
Here in the USA, voice dialogue has almost died out; and yet, IFS is going great guns. Both are needed of course, top Best Practices for self-connection the lack of which is our current biggest plague.
Your book output looks like mine in many ways. I’m not surprised if you “peaked out” and now pursue other interests which for you, take you deeper. I did this too. I was led into holistic health and how odl sickness care really is a shell of its former self; yet, the new workable holistic model is still being born. In large part this is happening off the internet in for-pay pay-walled communies where no restrictions exist on what you can and cannot talk about. Two of us are woring on a new one of these hopefull for later in 2025.
Let me know if you wish to chat by email or Google Chat.
Hi Bruce – I’m so glad you’re enjoying the site, and thank you for sharing my posts!
You should have received an email asking you to confirm that it was indeed you who entered your details into the form. That email includes a “Yes, it’s me” type of button — once you click it, the book will be sent to you. If you don’t see it, please check your spam or junk folder, just in case it landed there.
Yes, spreading the word about Voice Dialogue has been a challenge, especially when it comes to getting it included in things like therapist training programs. Most of us practitioners are independent — there’s no large institution or organisation behind us. Part of the reason is that the aware ego process, which is central to Voice Dialogue, isn’t something that can be certified.
I’ve thought about this a lot and agree with Hal and Sidra’s stance on it. Some of the deepest and most skilled Voice Dialogue teachers aren’t therapists and might not follow a traditional certification path — and that path wouldn’t necessarily reflect someone’s skill or the evolution of their aware ego process over time.
Unfortunately, because many people are identified with selves that equate qualifications with quality, a certification system could actually be limiting — not only for facilitators and teachers who aren’t certified but also for those seeking help from them.
So for now, we’re relying on word of mouth and helping people educate themselves about what to look for in a facilitator or teacher. And of course, people come to consciousness work for very different reasons — someone healing trauma may need a different kind of support than someone exploring creativity, acting, or their relationships.