The sweet intersection

Understanding thoughts were not facts was the gateway.

I'd completed cognitive behavioural therapy sessions back in 2011 for postnatal anxiety and a depression that left me teetering on the very margins of my life. It was good to be in a space with someone objective to explore the murky waters of my thought patterns and grasp the fundamentals of challenging the validity of their heavy, critical content.

I'm not going to lie, the homework felt a lot for an addled mind. It seemed to ramp up the hypervigilance of 'checking in' on my mental space, but there was value to questioning the deeply negative bias.

The truth is, it only really skimmed the surface.

I could almost sense frustration from my therapist that I was 'getting it' (jumping through the theoretical hoops) but it hadn't massively altered the relationship with myself.

It left me wanting more depth. Perhaps it was the pull of the first thread to prompt an ongoing unravelling?

What inadvertently began was a search. I devoured books on Eastern philosophies and ways of being. On a camping holiday in France in around 2017 I listened to a podcast by Nicola Bird which didn't make much sense to my logical mind, but something much deeper seemed to remember a place below the surface. I took on my own coach and spent years exploring modalities which spoke to the deeper connectivity of mind, body and soul and an aliveness I'd known intimately since childhood.

I found myself training to be a coach, which was unexpected in one way,

yet so inevitable in another.

An experience of Long Covid in 2020 was a startling confrontation as it showed me how much I had overlooked the body in my preoccupation with thought. It was life's way of urging me to reconnect with myself in a more somatic way and realise that my body holds the narratives in its fabric - the nervous system storing imprints of emotional overwhelm, still waiting to be met and drenched in compassion.

An intuitive game of hide and seek had been showing me that deep coaching began with a cognitive gateway and pulled me into a far more profound relationship with instinct and being attentive to the quiet voice deep in the chambers of my heart. This expansiveness also held the grittiness of humanity.

After more than seven years of coaching I am oriented towards the sweet intersection where the deep mysteries and depths of the soul meet the messy daily reality of being a human.

It seems to me that only when we truly inhabit our bodies and gently and curiously move towards the patterns of conditioning that play out within us, can we be fully alive to this moment.

------

I work alongside people going through transitional phases of life - meeting repetitive patterns, facing emotional adversity, loss or phases of change. Drop me a message for more information on how 1-1 integrative wellbeing coaching can support you.