When I trained as a Coach nearly 9 years ago, little did I know the massive impact it would have on my life.  Slowly but surely I started to recognise that I was the only one standing in my own way of growing, of finding what I was capable of, of finding what made me tick and of finding me and my truth.  I realised I’d been drifting through life, doing what I’d always done and being who I’d learnt to be.

And slowly but surely I started to question whether that was actually the real me.

After I qualified, I gave up the day job and set up as a self-employed Coach in 2015.  I was incredibly grateful to those in my life who enabled that to happen and the incredible network of Coaches I had around me to support me through the “what have I done’s”.  And I was truly blessed to work with some amazing clients in the first couple of years of coaching.

In 2017 I chose to re-train with Learning to Listen and True Northe Limited in Transformational Coaching with Equine Facilitated Coaching, to learn more about how I could work with the whole self – the mental, emotional, physical and energetic “bodies” – as I realised I was working too hard with the mind, in my own development but also with clients.  And I felt like my body seemed to want to have a voice.

This was a year long programme of deep personal development and healing, with the support of a herd of four-legged intuitive beings, who helped me uncover stories, beliefs or narratives which were stopping me being the happiest and healthiest version of me.

A year (and lots of crying) later I extended this training to incorporate the Inner Child process, having understood more about how unprocessed trauma and emotional wounding will continue to drive our behaviour if we don’t heal the original imprints which created the wounding and behaviour patterns and ultimately our perception of ourselves and where we ‘fit’ in the world.

All of that training – I do love to learn 😊 – took me on a very personal, therapeutic journey which I’m incredibly grateful for as it’s enabled me to shed layers of “stuff” which were stopping me being the true, authentic me.  But also, and just as importantly, it enabled me to be a clean and safe “container” for my clients.  When you haven’t unearthed your own “shadow” and learned to recognise when and where your “inner child(ren)” are likely to pop up, they are likely to pop up in client sessions which will cause you to bring some of you and your agenda into sessions, rather than being fully present for the client and their own agenda.  The client, after all, has all the answers to any challenges they might have.

That journey, of course, isn’t linear! It’s ongoing and I’m happy to say I will never stop shedding layers which are no longer serving me and leaning in to emotions to allow them to flow through me; emotion is energy-in-motion and is supposed to be felt and released.  Emotion gives us important messages about who we are; what’s important to us, where a boundary might have been crossed or what makes our heart sing but it’s not supposed to be suppressed and held in.  The purpose of life, as I see it, is to let go; to let go of anything that’s stopping us being the happiest and healthiest version of ourselves.

In 2020 I was given a big, life sign-post.  A cancer diagnosis stopped me in my tracks – even with loads of self-awareness I hadn’t realised I was still off course.

A huge amount of fear sent me into old coping strategies of avoidance and distraction, rather than leaning into that fear, sitting with it, feeling the waves of terror buried within me and allowing it flow so I could hear the messages from my intuition and my heart.

Six months of chemo and steroids, created a version of me so detached from who I am, I strayed even further from my authentic self and into a disempowered, victim-like state.

And then everything changed.  In late 2021 my best friend returned from Australia having lived there for 25 years.  We had a holiday together at the beginning of 2022 and I saw a glimmer of the real me.  The real me who believed the body heals itself if we create the conditions for it to do so.  The real me who absolutely loves to dance and laugh and connect from the heart.  The real me who loves to sit and watch the sunset and talk about life, the universe and more and the real me who needed to fully love everything she is, rather than creating distractions to avoid the parts of herself she still felt weren’t worthy of love, connection and belonging.

And so began my journey of taking back my power.  Of letting go of the “constructs” which were keeping me small and disempowered.  Of letting go of the fear that I had an “incurable” dis-ease and trusting that what I knew to be true, and what I believed, was what was going to manifest in my cells and in my life and I didn’t need someone else’s construct of “reality” to control my destiny.

And no, it wasn’t easy.

The process of tuning into my heart, my soul and my intuition was hit and miss.  The world…our society…our conditioning…teaches us to tune out from it.  It teaches us we need to think a certain way and we need to feel a certain way and it slowly but surely moves us away from our authentic, intuitive selves and our own inner wisdom.  And we stop listening and trusting our own inner knowing.

So guess what, I decided to do more training.  This time it was more Transformational Coaching with Body Wisdom.

As human beings, we are approximately 93% unconscious; we run on unconscious patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviour, many of which will have been learned as ways of “surviving” in the world.  Ways of feeling worthy of love, connection and belonging, fundamental emotional needs which we all have.

And the physical body is a map of the unconscious mind.  When we haven’t been able to fully feel and release emotion for whatever reason in our lives, it gets stuck and stops our energy flowing.  It stops us accessing our unlimited potential and stops us being in flow.  A bit like pouring grease and left-over food down your kitchen sink, the pipe starts to get blocked and eventually the pipe gets clogged up and water stops flowing freely.

So as a Transformational Coach, I create that safe and “clean-container” to support and challenge the client to uncover patterns, stories, beliefs, trauma which are still stuck in the emotional, mental, physical or energetic body and stopping them being in flow.

The client is the expert on themselves and their life and I don’t have any of their answers, they do.  Even if they are hidden away in that 93% unconscious mind.  I facilitate the process of raising awareness of what is stopping them from being the happiest and healthiest version of themselves so they can then take responsibility for making different choices.

I support and challenge them to do something different once they’ve raised awareness of patterns still playing out in their lives, and the impact of them, and I sit (although we don’t always sit 😊) alongside them while they consciously take responsibility for doing something different; consciously and consistently doing something different to create new ways of thinking, feeling and behaviour and creating new habits and beliefs.

So why do I love this so much?  Because it empowers the client to reconnect with their true self.  It empowers the client to own their “stuff” without any shame or judgement and it allows them to let go of what is not serving them; of what is stopping them being the happiest, healthiest version of themselves.

I love it because it’s creating a space for the client to be fully seen and fully heard; verbally and non-verbally.  It’s a space for them to show up and be seen in all their human messiness, without any shame or fear of judgement.

And I love it because it’s a space to take off the masks, to shed the personas and behaviours they’ve learnt they have to adopt just to feel worthy of love, connection and belonging.

And I love it because what a sacred space it is to show up in all your messiness, trusting and knowing that you will NOT be rejected, you will NOT be abandoned and you will NOT be judged.

And I love it because I’ve been on the other side; I’ve been the client time and time again.  I love it because coaching has enabled me to find me.  The real me underneath all the coping strategies and distractions and the real me who wants to create that same space for others to show up and be seen in all their authentic, wonderful, realness.

Get in touch if you feel like you’ve disconnected from your heart and soul; the pure essence of who you are.

With love Sarah xx