My story

Early 2024, I started facilitating a men's group which I had been attending for years.

It is a heart-sharing men’s group where we meet to share from the heart, to be heard, to listen to each other, and to provide non-directive support (i.e. non-judgemental support where requested, & avoiding advice giving). The group has supported transformations in my own life over the years, and I felt keen to support others, and to explore coaching options to support my facilitation skills.

For decades, I have worked with and/or qualified in a variety of personal development techniques, including yoga (I am a certified Kundalini yoga instructor), psychic and mediumistic studies, spiritual healing, shamanic practices including plant medicines, breathwork (especially Wim Hof breathwork with associated cold water exposure), bodywork, coaching, counselling, and family constellations therapy.

I would say I’ve had multiple spiritual awakenings, including ones that have turned my world upside-down.

I’ve also explored different ways of living, including living in community, and travelling.

All of the above was usually in conjunction with professional studies and work that included an Oxford degree, Masters from two London Universities, climate change and renewable energy policy work, running my own landscape photography business, and then in my mid-30s re-training as a Chartered Accountant and over ten years, working up to be Managing Director of a company trading globally in metals and metal concentrates.

This is in addition to life-long passions in social and environmental causes, including voluntary work with a number of charities over the years, including as a Mentor and Charity Trustee.

As a result of quite intense work experiences, especially within accountancy and Managing Director responsibilities, I developed a whole host of strategies to support my work pursuits and to stay fit enough to keep working, despite the toll it was taking on my body and my life.

Mindfulness

Looking back, I see how experiences like boarding school shaped me toward a success- and performance-driven life. It affected both my identity and the skills I developed — like emotional disconnection and hyper-focus. I had engrained mind-sets of:

• Wanting to be picked to feel worthy, almost regardless of what I was being picked for!

• Feeling better about myself and my self-worth because I had achieved xxx professionally, almost regardless of what personal toll that came at e.g. impact on my physical health, on my mental health, on my relationships with others.

I recall when I studied self-esteem as part of my coaching training, it was defined as,
"the disposition to experience oneself as competent to cope with life's challenges and being worthy of happiness."
I.e. it’s not about whether one is able to cope with life’s challenges … it’s about if you feel competent to cope with life’s challenges.

So although I was on a practical level coping well with life, securing jobs that I wanted etc, internally my experience was often more of anxiety and stress than of feelings of competence, confidence, relaxation, enjoyment, joy, peace, love, gratitude. Whilst I had all of these experiences at time, my work like, which would often spread into other areas of my life, would often be more akin to the anxiety / stress experience.

Developing an awareness of these inner state of beings has been transformational for myself, and I feel passionate to help others really notice their own state of inner being (whatever that is), from where one can then build toward inner transformation. This quality of present-moment, non-judgmental awareness is often referred to as mindfulness.

I recall once hearing about the difference between Surviving and Thriving, and not really understanding what this means. I now believe that doing really well at work does not necessarily mean you are thriving. Thriving, to me, is much more to do with one’s internal state of being - for me around if I am feeling anxious, how well am I sleeping, do I feel relaxed, does my body feel relaxed, do I feel happy, am I having fun in life.

I’ve done a lot of ‘work’ on the work / career topic, to really transform it away from appearing successful, to focussing on work that is good for me, for my wellbeing, around exploring things that really resonate with me and my core values.

Living with Autoimmune Hypothyroidism

In the section above, I refer to the impact that a work-focus had on my physical health.

In particular, a few years after starting to train and work as an accountant (audit), I developed autoimmune hypothyroidism — an underactive thyroid condition caused by the immune system, known as Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. I continue to explore the best way to maintain optimal health living with this condition. My toolkit includes keto diet (see also Dr. Sarah Myhill), prescribed medication, cold water exposure.

There are many potential causes of this condition, and whilst it isn’t always possible to know for sure, the trigger for mine was around work-related stress (hypothalamus, adrenaline, thyroid connections), and suppressed self-expression (I wasn’t living in alignment with, or expressing, my core values through the work I was doing).

Underlying this however was gut health issues going back to my early 20s, for which Dr Myhill’s advice around leaky gut syndrome, the upper fermenting gut, and the keto diet, is exemplary. This has helped transform my gut health, physical health, energy levels, and overall passion and joy for life.

Why I chose Coaching

Coming back to early 2024, whilst still engaged in full time work, I felt ready to explore qualifying within the wellbeing sector, to equip myself further to support others. Based on my experiences of different personal development practices, I was keen to accredit with a well-recognised and respected organisation, including a strong Code of Ethics and CPD (Continuing Professional Development) requirements.

I’ve had a number of dubious experiences of working with smaller / one-person personal development organisations, which comes with certain risks around standards, and I wanted to ensure that my services met high standards of quality, reliability and professionalism.

I selected coaching since I have experienced it a number of times over the years and it has supported me in gaining new perspectives and moving forward positively in life, in a safe and transformational manner.

In conjunction with other positive influences in my life, training as a coach has helped me develop key skills including :

• Listening to and hearing other people

• Understanding the power of simply reflecting back, to check my understanding, and so the other person can re-hear their own thoughts

• Using open-ended questions, which are far more effective at helping someone else explore a topic than closed questions, which are more directive

• Learning again and again that the only person who knows what is best for us is the person themselves - we are each our own puzzle that only we can put together. This is embedded in the client-led coaching style I practice; client-led means it’s not about me, the coach, providing any answers - my role is to support the client to discover their own solutions, their own inner wisdom.

• Stepping out of an over-thinking way of being, into living more in balance between thoughts, emotions, intuition - and helping my clients to do the same.

• Noticing how I am feeling at any moment in time, so that rather than acting out from challenging feelings, I can be aware of those feelings and can better manage my state of being - and help my clients to do likewise.

Embarking on this journey has helped me create a whole new life for myself, both in terms of my own inner experience of each moment, and in the outward worldly reflections of this - work, friendships, relationships, leisure activities, study etc. The coaching I offer is focussed entirely on this: supporting others in their journey, to help people get unstuck, find their flow, and discover whole new ways of experiencing life, and of living life.

I feel grateful for all the past experiences I have had, and am passionate about supporting others who feel any resonance with the coaching I offer, including people experiencing:

• Spiritual awakenings and inner exploration

• Mid-life challenges

• Stress / burnout / anxiety

• Over-thinking, and wanting to live more in tune with emotions and intuition

• Interest in integrating plant medicine experiences

• Chronic health conditions

• Desire to find your passion and mission in life … and to manifest it!

If any of this speaks to you, I’d love to connect. My coaching is a space of deep listening, reflection, exploration, and transformative inquiry — rooted in personal experience and dedicated to your growth.

People that inspire me

INSPIRATIONS

Gabor Mate

For his work on exploring how our thoughts and feelings express themselves through dis-ease

Memorable quote:
"The next time you think your wife is a bitch you should be happy about it", meant by Gabor as a joke, referring to the advantages of expressing anger rather than suppressing it, and how it has been found that people (often women) who suppress anger tend to die younger.

Brene Brown

For her focus on utter honesty in certain emotions, notably shame, as being a doorway to freedom and to experiencing complementary emotions, such as joy.

Memorable quote, from Gifts of Imperfection:
"If we want to live and love with our whole hearts, and if we want to engage with the world from a place of worthiness, we have to talk about the things that get in the way—especially shame, fear, and vulnerability.
What I’m proposing is that we learn how to wade through it [the swamp]. We need to see that standing on the shore and catastrophisizing about what could happen if we talked honestly about our fears is actually more painful than grabbing the hand of a trusted companion and crossing the swamp. And, most important, we need to learn why constantly trying to maintain our footing on the shifting shore as we gaze across to the other side of the swamp—where our worthiness waits for us—is much harder work than trudging across."

Joe Dispenza

For his work on how focussed and emotion-full meditations can help you literally create whatever future you want.

Memorable quote - extracts from C3 of Becoming supernatural:
"The quantum field is an invisible field of energy / information / consciousness that exists beyond space and time ... the only way you can exist in the quantum is as an awareness ... when you pay attention to the energy of the quantum field, your consciousness is connecting to greater levels of frequency and information ... we simply exist as an awareness that is paying attention to a field of infinite possibilities existing within an even greater consciousness and a greater level of energy"
In meditations, Joe invites people to access this field through taking oneself into the infinite black space

Byron Katie

For her brilliant approach to help end suffering, based on four simple questions combined with a sense of presence, which can facilitate a revolution in thoughts and feelings.

Memorable quote: from I need your love, is that true p182 :
" "If my children died, I could go on living." Don't be half-hearted here. Ask yourself to imagine what you think is unimaginable: the life you could lead without your children. Be a traitor to misery and find some advantages to that life. There's nothing macabre about this. The point is to break the grip of a fearful belief. Find three ways in which your life would be better without your children... It doesn't matter if these three ways seem silly, as long as they are genuine. "I could have the first shower in the morning." "

Qualifications and skills

ABOUT ME

Association for Coaching (UK)

ADCT Integrated Diploma in Holistic life, wellness and resilience coaching
2024-present

Mental Health First Aider

St John's Ambulance
2024

Kundalini Yoga Research Institute

International Teacher Training Level One
Instructor in Kundalini Yoga
2019

Qualifications

Coaching Skills

Cognitive behavioural coaching
Solutions focussed coaching
Mindfulness, & Mindful coaching
Journaling
Compassionate Enquiry
The work of Byron Katie
Coaching for self-esteem
Coaching for motivation & change
Exploring stress & the mind-body connection
Mood food and nutrition
Working with visualisation and imagery
Coaching for long term health conditions
Exploring personal triggers and interventions
Trauma informed coaching
Health coaching

Have any questions?

If you have any questions about the coaching services, feel free to contact us.