About Me
For the last thirty years a common thread in my career and my other interests has been my passion for supporting individuals and organisations to realise their strengths and potential.
Examples include
leadership of mental health agencies and partnerships. I specialised in transforming opportunities for vulnerable people by helping them access their hidden talents and skills, follow their passions, and become a resource for their communities, at the same time supporting the communities they live in to shed fears and prejudices to become a resource for people’s recovery.
as an experienced holistic massage practitioner and bodyworker I help people to reconnect with their bodies, releasing clenched emotions and mindsets and inviting integration and healing.
creating space for musicians and performers of all kinds to grow in confidence, creativity and collaborative visionby pioneering open, multi-genre stages and events such as 25 years of the non profit Cardiff Meltdown cooperative.
Along the way my understanding of what helps bring about change in people’s lives has matured, especially after 2001 when I embarked on my own deep journey of personal development, a journey in which I’ve been blessed with exceptional teachers.
I’ve come to learn that people don’t grow through having someone ‘fix’ them or solve their problems for them. I have learnt that they need a safe space they can trust and feel heard. And I’ve witnessed lasting transformations happen when people learn to listen to and appreciate the rich complexity of themselves and from there sense into the future they want, and what they need in order to grow and sustain their goals
I believe that lasting transformation out in the world happens when we value ourselves as individuals and value what we can achieve together. Within ourselves and out in the world we need synthesis not polarity.
In 2018, I completed a Post Graduate Certificate in Psychosynthesis Leadership Coaching, which enabled me to integrate my personal journey and my wealth of previous experience of change work with individuals and organisations into my new role as a Psychosynthesis Coach, working to help individuals spark transformation in themselves and the systems they touch upon.
What I Bring to Coaching
My Leadership experience includes being CEO of two mental health charities, managing pioneering learning difficulties and mental health projects and partnerships, being a trustee for a range of arts and social care agencies, organising music and performance events and founding and helping coordinate an acclaimed non-profit music collective for 25 years (Cardiff Meltdown).
My experience of offering individuals one to one support includes extensive line management experience, Mentori
The following are 3 examples from the paid and unpaid work I’ve undertaken in my life, which I draw on in my life and leadership coaching, and which inspire and inform my approach of SEEDING SYNTHESIS.
Pioneering Synthesis in Social Care
Receiving the Charity Award in London 2006
As CEO of Mind in the Vale of Glamorgan I led a transformation of its ‘drop in’ centres from being cul-de-sacs for people’s lives to a stepping stones on their recovery journey. We widened our focus to embrace people’s abilities and potential not just their problems, and encouraged their local communities to become both a potential resource for their recovery and a beneficiary of their skills and gifts. Without any significant extra funding, this approach transformed the lives of people using our services, and enriched their communities. Its example rippled out through initiatives and partnerships to become a beacon for new practice, with local and national influence. In 2006 we won the UK wide Charity Award – Social Care category.
I realise now that what we were doing was bringing a coaching consciousness into support work and care planning for people recovering from mental health issues.
“The Award was presented to Mind in the Vale of Glamorgan for excellent work harnessing the skills of people recovering from mental health problems through supportive, innovative partnerships that increase vocational outcomes. The Charity Awards judges were looking for examples of excellence from which other organisations can learn. They felt that the difference Mind in the Vale of Glamorgan has made in this area was especially deserving of that recognition.”
CHARITY AWARDS PRESS RELEASE
Co-founding and co-leading 25 years of Synthesis between
Music and Performance – Cardiff Meltdown
Cardiff Meltdown and No Fit State Circus combined 20th Birthday Party in 2006. Pictured: a synthesis of indie band the Victorian English Gentleman’s Club and No Fit State Circus’s Simon D’Ville. Photo Mei Lewis.
I co-founded Cardiff Meltdown – a ground-breaking non-profit music and performance cooperative – in 1986, and then became a key vision holder for it’s wide-ranging activities for a quarter of a century. In that time, through over 1500 gigs, we melted down barriers between genres and generations, cultures and mindsets, and local and global talents, to become “the capital’s most consistent and influential music club over the last two decades” Wales Online 2009. It was a key inspiration and partner for the Cardiff Summer Festival (at the time the biggest free Festival in the UK).
Performers to use the club in their formative days included comedian Rob Brydon, Catatonia (feat. Cerys Matthews), the now internationally renowned No Fit State Circus, Massive Attack collaborator Nicolette and singer/producer Cate le Bon. This theme of creating space for people to grow in and through their creativity, to collaborate with others, and in doing so enrich their communities, has led to my interest in both bringing Creativity into Coaching and in Coaching people from the creative and arts sector.
Cardiff Meltdown collaborators onstage at the 20th Birthday Party 2006. Pic: Mei Lewis.
Inviting the synthesis of Body, Mind and
Emotions – Holistic Massage 1987 to present day.
“Very present, clear and strong but gentle contact. I can feel your depth of experience and understanding of bodies” Claire
I qualified as a Holistic Massage practitioner in 1987 and I have undertaken extensive advanced training since, culminating in my developing over the last five years Massage and Bodywork practices with clients in Bristol, Sheffield and my hometown of Southwell.
My bodywork informs my coaching in many ways. Through it I learnt to create space and hold presence, to read intuitively how our bodies hold emotions and our emotional histories. I ensure that my coaching is from an embodied place – engaging my whole self, body and heart as well as mind – the better to invite the same opening to integration in my coaches.
