So much has changed and it's crazy to think before that I had been away best part of 20 years.... be it in London or further afield --- in Asia, Australia, America...
But after all that time I chose to come back. At the end of a long summer... At the end of long years of training and learning breathwork and other healing modalities... After many years of travelling with breathwork around the worlds festival scene, and to so many cities and communities.... I was tired and had enough. My trip had finally come to an end.
And just like that I moved back to my parents apartment in my home town, Newark-on-Trent. Close to my ageing beloved grandma, and literally streets away from where I had grown up. I was home.
I had never ever thought I would end up here -- having lived in some of the most beautiful places on earth, but nothing felt quite like home.
Not that Newark did. Newark felt like hell quite honestly when I left it. But after years of healing my relationship to myself and to my family and my culture the strangest thing happened. I fell in love with it.
I fell in love with the changing seasons, the cold weather, the UK banter, the absolute eccentricity of the place, and with Newarks wild energy.
This town had flavours of traveller culture, a lot of history and was a bit of a melting pot -- as far as midlands towns go. It was in the heart of the old Sherwood Forest and lay along the River Trent, with everything at walking distance.
I started to see the wild spark in the eyes of Newarkers that I came from... We were wild and free at heart somehow in this really crazy small town.
I had no energy for travel. Not for work. Not no more. Not even to London. So I decided to take root here and see what happens.
At the start I had small ceremonies in a community centre in town and in the woods -- dragging friends along, blowing their minds with what was possible and healing them very deeply. The word spread but it was a battle. People weren't really very "spiritual" they said and I was told it wouldn't work here.
They had just opened a big yoga space which was very much exercise focused yet inside the most beautiful old building on the river that used to be a mill and then a museum during my childhood. I started doing ceremonies there but breathwork was still misunderstood and often very small groups it was hardly worth doing.
Then Covid hit and I didnt know what to think -- thank god I was here. Thank god I was near my Grandma.
I began doing ceremonies online... I had been working with clients online a while so this was nothing new, was quite interesting to see how healing modalities once against online work suddenly could come online. I had always known it could work, if I can do distance reiki, I can do distance breathwork. Time and space is an illusion in this energetic world, and I was used to guiding with only my voice from the many festivals I had worked at.
I had private clients and bi-weekly breath ceremonies for as long as Covid lasted, through all the chaos and confusion... we would meet online and breathe.
This gave me new clients from around he world that reached out having heard of me.
This time helped me get a handle on my website booking system and using zoom, all which was just so foreign to me beforehand. Everything was perfect really - as I don't know how I would have survived just doing ceremonies in Newark, and the world really connected in a new way through online methods.
3 years on and things look completely different. Covid reduced to cold status and a really exciting year where I have connected with local cities and communities, and reentered the festival scene in the UK.
I had found Purusha retreats a gorgeous healing centre in Lincolnshire where a family have turned their farm into a wellbeing retreat venue.
And most recently Hot Yoga Nottingham - where an Indian family have created a very traditional yoga community with big vision and even bigger passion.
Suddenly so many are filling my ceremonies and booking onto courses.
And even big corporations are starting to open their doors to healing days, bringing the most unlikely of people to my door for private sessions.
It's incredible to see the world changing, people opening up and starting to heal.
For themselves, their communities and their relations.
And I was told Newark wasn't ready........