The Think Sensory Summit · Season 2 · Part 3 · November 18, 2026
Decolonising the Therapy Room: Power, Consent, and Whose Knowledge Counts in Neurodivergent Care
Presented by Chenai Mupotsa-Russell
Available November 18, 2026
Included with the All-Access Pass
- Level
- Intermediate
- For
- Therapists
- Length
- 49:10
In this session, neurodivergent developmental educator, therapist, and researcher Chenai Mupotsa-Russell, known online as the Rainbow Muse, joins host Mick Olds to talk about the power built into ordinary therapy routines and what it takes to keep the human at the center of the work. Chenai is the founder of Rainbow Muse Collective and a Community Psychology PhD researcher, and she speaks from clinical practice, research, and her own experience growing up in Zimbabwe and Botswana before coming to Australia. She traces how a first job on the Tiwi Islands, handed a program that was never built for that community, taught her to start from humility rather than a manual, and how intersectionality changed the way she practices. Together they look at the power dynamics built into everyday clinical routines, what happens when a child's advocacy gets treated as behavior to shut down, and how goals can be met without pushing past a child's no. Chenai is candid about paperwork that can quietly remove the human from the room, about the question she asks herself mid-session, who was this for, and about holding her own nervous system so the child does not have to. Therapists will come away with a way of framing goals so connection and consent come first, language for teaching every child about difference rather than only the disabled child about disability, and a set of questions to ask about what they accept as normal and who that serves. Grounded in Chenai's practice, research, and lived experience, this session is a generous, unflinching look at where to start, which is your own life rather than your caseload.
Chenai Mupotsa-Russell
Chenai Mupotsa-Russell is a neurodivergent Developmental Educator, therapist, Community Psychology PhD researcher, and founder of Rainbow Muse Collective, living and working on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country in so-called-Australia. Her work sits at the intersection of neurodiversity-affirming practice, Developmental Education, Community Psychology, disability justice, and embodied creativity. Drawing on clinical practice, lived experience, research, and the arts, Chenai explores how children and adults flourish when we move beyond compliance-based approaches towards environments grounded in dignity, participation, belonging, and authentic connection. Her work challenges deficit-based understandings of neurodivergence while examining how race, migration, gender, disability, culture, and power shape experiences of wellbeing, learning, and therapeutic practice. Chenai presents internationally on topics including neurodiversity-affirming practice, autistic identity, embodied learning, psychological safety, decolonising approaches to therapy and education, and the role of creativity in fostering participation and belonging. Her current PhD research explores embodied, relational, and culturally diverse ways of knowing through the lenses of Developmental Education and Community Psychology, contributing original conceptual frameworks for understanding neurodivergent participation, learning, and belonging. When she isn’t presenting, researching, or working alongside families, you’ll probably find her covered in paint, surrounded by art supplies, or speaking with her five-year-old in different languages, not all of them spoken.
The full transcript is included with the All-Access Pass.
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