A radio programme was how it all began many years ago. I was listening to a feature on Help for Heroes sharing the stories of injured service personnel returning from the Gulf War, when I was struck by the harsh reality that these men and women were being left without any long-term emotional support, which felt an unreasonable prospect in a humane society. It was then that I discovered within me the flicker of a fire to help people in some way. That quickly burnt a hole, through which a sense of a life purpose began to be visible. As I had a young family at the time, it remained contained for quite a while, but even then I tried to find ways of satisfying that purpose. I took an Open University course in understanding childhood behaviours, followed by a degree in Child Psychology which, perhaps ironically, had to be curtailed as I needed to care for my mother after she had a mini stroke.
Such events made me conclude that the time was not right for me and I wasn't sure that the academic approach was answering the call within me in any case. So, reasoning that it was possible to help people wherever you are and as it fitted both with my desires and the practical demands I faced, I began work in a primary school, listening to children read and soon progressing to volunteer librarian. Many happy years were spent here, essentially learning about myself, and about how people grow, develop and take on the descriptions they receive in these early years. Alongside this, I undertook a variety of courses on working with people, in a therapeutic sense, and it was on one of these that I first learnt about somatic work. Woosh! It was as if a huge blast of oxygen had been directed at the burning embers of my initial fire and suddenly I was ablaze. This was the missing piece of the holistic puzzle and I set about trying to find out what I could about this approach, deciding in the end to qualify as a somatic coach.
Fast forward a year, and after a brilliant, experiential training programme run by The Somatic School in London, I now have a diploma in body-oriented coaching and level 2 ICF accreditation and have set up The Somatic Perspective Coaching Space, so that I can offer this fantastic opportunity for fresh insights to others, trusting that they too might discover, amongst other things, how they want to express themselves in this world and what they may want to say with this next stage of their lives.