I may be able to help if:
- you feel that if you 'went there' you wouldn't be able to get the lid back on the can of worms
- the thought of really feeling stuff scares the pants off you
- you are repeating patterns that aren't bringing you happiness
- you feel stuck in some way
- you have some old trauma that's hanging around and impeding the quality of your life
- you are feeling anxious or depressed
- you need strategies for feeling grounded and connected
- you just need to offload about something that's going on for you
In brief:
If we decide to work together we'll first lay the groundwork for all future sessions - by finding a way for you to feel safe enough to proceed. It's important not to underestimate how important that is, especially for those of us who've lived through significant trauma, we firstly need to feel safe enough to explore difficult feelings. I can teach you very simple techniques to find your own feelings of safety which can positively impact your whole life, and that's before we've even looked at any issues you may be experiencing. Once you feel safe, we'll use mindfulness techniques and gentle enquiry to unpick the places that feel stuck and allow you to go to those places that feel difficult. Together we'll gently start to question any beliefs you may have that are keeping you from moving forward with your life, and allow any feelings that need to be expressed room to breathe. It's amazing how much more energy we can start to experience when we begin to let go of the things that have been holding us back. Feel free to email me and we can have a no obligation chat at no cost.
I'm a certified KI facilitator (a trauma-informed approach which gently takes us into the body to unearth places of unease and stuckness), certified Zen meditation teacher, self compassion teacher, certified forest therapist, outdoor adventure therapist (in training) and human being.
The last is my greatest qualification in offering one to ones. I have some significant life experiences: some good and some really not so good, that mean I've been able to hold a safe space, listen with great care, and help you find more ease, for over 15 years. You can contact me here if you'd like to enquire and have a free chat.
Cost:
Sessions can be online or in person and are on a sliding scale between £35 and £55 an hour depending on what you can afford and whether we have to pay for venue hire.
A bit more:
My name's Kim and I've been teaching meditation at Serenity Retreat since it opened its doors in 2010. I then went on to do formal meditation teacher training with Zen Master Daizan of Zenways in 2011/2012 and haven't looked back. Meditation practice has taught me so much about myself and how I move in the world, and even more importantly, ways to move in the world that are less self-destructive and more beneficial. My life is less roller-coaster and more carousel - it even has moments of the teacup!
After a couple of years of teaching Zen Meditation to beginners, I trained with Daizan to become a teacher of the training method itself, a process I really enjoyed. Some years later I completed Self Compassion training with the leading lights of that world: Kristen Neff and Chris Germer - it was an intense and illuminating experience. I had always assumed that self compassion was all soft and fluffy (which it can be) but it also requires grit, courage and firm determination and intention, which I hadn't expected so much - don't know why! It continues to be an incredibly useful tool in my own life, and one that has seen me through the death of both of my parents, general life upheavals and a difficult relationship break-up.
I trained with Scott Kiloby in 2021 in advanced trauma-informed somatic (body) mindfulness and became an accredited Kiloby Inquiries Facilitator in early 2022. This work is amazing at getting to the places in the body that we're storing old beliefs, and bringing them out for us to take a look at. Talking can get us so far, but the body holds on to all sorts of stuff so building a relationship with the feeling parts of ourselves is essential. I spent many years feeling frozen and numb and not really feeling anything, so I've certainly walked the walk.
I'm a certified Forest Therapist and am currently training as a Certified Outdoor Adventure Therapist. I love getting outside and into the elements to bring another dimension to the healing process. My clients seem to love it, too!
How did I get into all of this?
The same way most of us do, I'm thinking - through my own trauma and my own unhelpful repeating patterns of behaviour that took me into the depths of addiction (alcohol primarily). I got sober over 20 years ago and from that point started to unpick the patterns that had taken me to that place. All of the above training has helped me to see, in the most profound of ways, that there is no need for an inner battle and that life doesn't need to be taken personally or so seriously (20 years ago I couldn't have dreamt of writing those words). Does that mean I remember that every day? No, of course not, but with practice life is taking on more and more of the flavour of the teacup ride at the fair - a much less dramatic experience than the roller-coaster OR the carousel.
As children we developed strategies for getting by in the safest way possible.
- If our caregivers were busy and told us to be quiet in angry or impatient tones we may have developed the strategy to be as quiet as possible to be seen as 'good'. We may have learned to equate angry or impatient tones with danger - a threat to our feeling of peace and security and so we spend our lives trying to avoid conflict.
- If we were rewarded for 'good behaviour' we may have learned to push away anything that would be deemed 'bad' (anger, insecurity, fear - any number of emotions).
- If our caregivers offered us affection on a transactional basis (I'll love you if…) then we learn to make love conditional.
- If our caregivers were chaotic then love and kindness may be completely untrustworthy emotions to us: we don't know the rules, or when the love and kindness will turn to coldness and hostility.
- If our caregivers weren't available to witness our emotions as children (and it's impossible for a caregiver to be there every time) we may have learned to bury and ignore those emotions as they felt difficult to navigate alone
- If we felt that we couldn't trust our caregivers to be reliable owing to inconsistent care or neglect we become hyper-independent as a defense mechanism to avoid disappointment.
Any number of childhood experiences can lead to us pushing away feelings and emotions that we simply didn't know what to do with. None of this is our fault but the ensuing chaos/disconnect/pain that can arise is our responsibility.
We added to these strategies as we went through life and had our hearts broken, our desires quashed, our dreams ended. Each time we went through some sort of calamity, most of us learned to bury the feelings of loss, betrayal, pain, anger, anxiety, heartbreak, sadness and grief and plaster on a face of 'I'm OK', or worse, attempt to see the positive in the situation and 'get on with it' without acknowledging those very real feelings. We wanted to 'get over it' and we may have felt pressure from external forces too (friends, family, partners, society) and so we buried, buried, buried our true expressions of what it is to live a human life.
We are constantly being told by society, by advertising, by each other that our lives are supposed to be one long stream of joy and bliss and if it's anything less than that then there must be something wrong with us.
This is backwards logic. Life as a human being is meant to be experienced in its full template of colour. We are lured to play only the high notes and so miss out on the depth and complexity of the lower notes. But worse than that, ignoring the lower notes just turns the higher notes into sharps and flats - they can't be fully experienced either because there is always a note of fear and caution that it will all end and what then? So we even become inhibited from enjoying the good stuff.
As we get older we wish for peace, joy, happiness, security, freedom, bliss, forgiveness. We search in meditation, we go on retreats (!), we read countless books, we follow certain teachers. We consume other people’s words and in so doing ignore our own experience.
Here's the thing.
Peace and freedom aren't difficult (I can feel some of you blanching right now!). They're available to all of us right now but it doesn't require the sort of effort we think it does.
Peace and freedom are here, right now. Right under our nose. Those unconscious beliefs and feelings inhibit our ability to see this. We get a sense in our lives that something isn't quite right, but we
push the feelings away because they feel uncomfortable (and we've been sold the story that discomfort is wrong and bad) and we want to fast forward to peace, joy, happiness, security, freedom, bliss and forgiveness without having to live THROUGH the difficult feelings.
We may get glimpses of those states, but until we have seen through those sticky stuck parts of ourselves, long buried, we'll continue to repeat patterns, overreact, be in overwhelm, have anxiety, and find ourselves at arm's length from our (available in every moment) experience of peace and freedom by constantly being caught up in the inner world of chatter, judgement and opinion (the desire to be right or have certainty or be in control, anyone?!). We cling to momentary experiences and try to repeat them, not realising that the effort and trying is what stops us from simply knowing time and time again. We find ourselves desperately trying to control an uncontrollable world and coming a-cropper time and time again and in true addict style we say 'but if I try to control this (person, event, emotion, situation) just one more time maybe this time it'll work'....
It's a mess! Being human is a glorious, chaotic mess - that's for sure, and if we keep resisting that truth we find ourselves snared further and further; caught up in trying to find reason and trying to explain the inexplicable - trying to control the uncontrollable.
The Kiloby Inquiries can help to unravel the parts of ourselves that are stuck, frozen, terrified, anxious. Until we have experienced the feelings that we trapped inside ourselves (and we attempt to do this by using logic, reason and by trying to 'be good' to name a few common strategies, anything other than feeling) then we'll continue to come up against brick walls.
In KI we truly honour resistance, we trust the body's intuition, we have no agenda and we let things unfold in their own space and time. Nothing is forced. Just a gentle (which doesn't mean comfortable) letting go into what needs release and expression and in so doing we create greater ease and flow with life itself. It's not just lots of talking (although some talking will happen), it isn't trying to work things out, it goes underneath all that so that you can live a freer and easier life.
It's powerful stuff. Buckle up and enjoy the ride.
