I've always had an inquisitive mind. I love exploring.
9 Years ago, whilst living the high-intensity lifestyle that goes with a London media career, I became ill with auto-immune and neurological disease. The chronic nature of this, longlasting physical disability and lack of satisfactory medical prognosis, motivated a quest for a broader understanding of what constitutes well-being. As my vision and movement was limited, my thirst for adventure became focussed on adventuring within.
The human body is so amazingly complicated; we see that even from a purely anatomical perspective; if we add the physiology, the lifestyle, the emotional, mental and spiritual aspects of the person it becomes immense. The history of physical, mental and emotional experiences and the context of the individual, the systems of people and place in which that person with their particularities has evolved, add further depth to the complexity of individual health.
In my quest for my wellbeing, I explored many different approaches. The approaches that resonated most deeply with me were those that I found empowering, those that gave greater understanding of this process in my body and this time in my life, and those that provided practical tools which I could utilise to work with myself. With a longterm health project, if I was lying awake in extreme pain at night I did not want to have to wait for an appointment with a therapist to find some relief. I became deeply passionate about Jin Shin Jyutsu for its capacity to empower the individual through understanding and simple easily applicable technique. I was also deeply excited about Systemic/Family Constellation work for the levels of insight it offered as to the connections between personal, even bodily, experience and group dynamics, even historic group dynamics.
Now based in Cape Town, I enjoy enabling people to support their own well-being, and witnessing their journeys.
From when I first became aware of the serious implications of my ill health, I refused to believe that illness could be only a disability. Rather I felt strongly that it had the potential to be a very empowering experience if, rather than just fighting it, I could open to it and explore it. My subsequent studies, experience with myself over the past years, and experiences with clients have confirmed that our bodies are mostly on our side.We get ill for many different reasons. Where there is a major illness the journey is always deeply personal and unique.
Sometimes we get ill when parts of ourselves are pulling in different directions. When there is internal conflict our bodies will sooner or later draw our attention to it. The ancient Greek word for healing was "holos", meaning to be whole or to make whole. In ancient traditions the role of the healer/shaman was to seek and gather together again the scattered bits of the self. This is the task of each one of us in healing, in growing, in being fulling present and alive. In illness, our bodies call our attention back to ourselves, to our understanding of all of who we are and to how we nourish and support all that we are.
The journey of knowing all of who we are and nourishing and supporting and finding expression for that is lifelong. There is nothing wrong if we don't have that sorted by the age of 30, 50, or 70! Different stages in our life have different focuses, even different seasons have different priorities. However, as most of us live only a tiny percentage of our potential, if we wish to really know what we are made of we need to pay attention to what truly nourishes and supports us and from this to allow ourselves to be in constant vital transformation, as is every entity that is truly ALIVE, not to stagnate in comfort in ever shrinking comfort zones. In this way we can joyfully and playfully expand into the full magnificence of our own being.
