At 23, my life quietly fell apart
Within a short period, I lost two things my identity was built on: the belief that I was successful, and my ability to push my body through intensity. I was placed on a performance review at my then job in the civil service – where I thought I was thriving – and soon after fractured my spine in a class aptly named Insanity Training.
At the time, I lost my centre of gravity and entered a period of deep disorientation. Looking back now, I can see something like grace at work – though it came in one of its more painful guises.
A new direction began
What followed surprised me at every step.
A promotional email led to a year living in Brazil studying social change. I fell in love for the first time. I became a therapist – something I had once sworn I’d never do.
I learned honesty. Having grown up in a household where harmony often seemed to be valued above truth, this was a difficult one. Learning to speak what was real felt like walking barefoot over hot coals. Painful, destabilising, and strangely exhilarating.
Meditation entered my life around the same time, and retreats became part of its rhythm. Alongside this my body – long ignored and overworked – began to speak loudly. Years of unprocessed experience came roaring into awareness, and I began to learn the language of sensation – tension, sharpness, dullness, pleasure, lightness, heaviness. And beneath them all, a subtle vibration.
I learnt that every orientation and story of my mind lived as a sensation in my body, and if I focused my awareness upon the sensation, both it and the story often dissolved. Freedom became a workable part of my reality – at times liberating and joyful, at times deeply destabilising, at times lost and forgotten.
Finding Circling
A few years ago, I stepped into a Circling workshop in London and felt an immediate resonance.
The subtle, often unnamed nuances of connection – things I’d sensed my whole life but rarely heard articulated – were given language, care, and importance. Circling offered me a way to stay present with what was actually happening when I was with others. It felt like coming home to something I’d been aware of for years.
What has struck me most has been the realisation that closeness and separation can co-exist. I can be connected to someone intimately while not losing my sense of self. This has been and remains a process of discovery and learning, and there continue to be experiences where I collapse. Yet the reality that such an experience is possible remains a powerful orientation for me.
Where I lead from
For me, at the centre of this practice is deep inner and outer attunement. I think of it as a path toward discovering how we can return to ‘right relationship’ with reality across the full spectrum of our experience – without collapsing into control, rigid identities, merging, or withdrawal. And yet, paradoxically, all of these states are also included. Nothing is left out.
I sometimes think of a circle as a group of musicians. The work is not to play the right note, but the truest note available in this moment – to lead from the only place one can ever truly lead from.
Another way of saying this is that we orient to ourselves and to one another from our unique place – the only place that is actually ours. And when we speak and relate from there, it creates a kind of resonance. Words can have real power. Transformation can happen unbidden.
It seems there are countless ways to leave the place that is ours, and only one way to lead from it. And that way is not an act of will. It appears at the meeting point between effort and surrender. Too much effort, and I am forcing. Too much surrender, and I collapse. Somewhere – and I feel I remain a novice here – these two energies meet. And from there, we can meet reality as it is, and ourselves as we are.
When I lead, I seek to meet the group from where I am, and to hold compassion and patience for the many ways I continue to avoid. I hope that in practicing this, I can support others to do the same for themselves.
My work
I’ve been leading Circling and communication workshops for several years, both independently and within organisations. I’ve facilitated workshops, weekends, and retreats for the Peer Circling Community in London.
For around 5 years, I also trained support workers in the use of Circling to navigate emotionally complex and high-pressure conversations with vulnerable individuals in the UK. It was here that I started to see the real impact of this practice. I remember one support working telling me that for the first time in her career, she no longer froze when someone told her they were experiencing suicidal ideation. She felt relaxed and able to be with them.
My background in frontline work has shaped how I hold this practice, as both a path of self-discovery and a way of being of service. I take seriously the responsibility of offering this work not just in familiar communities, but also in spaces that might otherwise never encounter it.
