Hawthorn Practice

28/07/2026

03/07/2026

New possibilities often begin with a single thought.

Can you imagine how it will feel as you begin choosing the things that take you closer to where you want to be?

Sometimes we can't change our circumstances straight away. What we can change is the way we relate to them, and that can open up possibilities we hadn't noticed before.

Hypnotherapy isn't about changing the past or pretending difficult things never happened. It's about helping you notice old patterns, beliefs and ways of responding, and discovering that there may be another path available.

You don't have to understand exactly how your imagination works in order to use it. As you begin to imagine new possibilities, your mind can start exploring them in its own way.

And if you're beginning to wonder what might be possible for you, perhaps this is the right time to find out?

03/07/2026

I took this photograph of Sea Bindweed on the Anglesey coast last July.

At the time, I just thought it was beautiful. I didn't know it would return to me almost a year later in a shamanic journey.

I often find myself on shorelines in journeys when I'm navigating tension or uncertainty. The meeting place of land and sea is a powerful threshold - somewhere that reminds us we can remain grounded while allowing emotions to move.

In this journey, Sea Bindweed wrapped gently around me. Not tightly, and not in a way that made me feel trapped - it held me.

As I faced the waves, there was a sense that I didn't have to fight what was moving through me. The bindweed wasn't there to stop me. It was there to keep me rooted, so I could surrender to the rhythm of the sea without being swept away. That felt deeply significant.

One of the things I value about therapeutic shamanism is that journeys aren't about being given instructions or advice about what to do. Instead, they invite us into relationship - with ourselves, with nature, and with the wisdom that can emerge from those encounters.

For me, Sea Bindweed became a reminder that being held doesn't have to mean being confined. Sometimes we need just enough support to face life's waves, trusting that we can stay rooted while allowing them to pass through.

I still think the photograph is beautiful and now, when I look at it, I can also remember what medicine Sea Bindweed brought me.

25/06/2026

Highly recommended this course if you have an interest in Shamanism.

I started studying Therapeutic Shamanism after completing my accredited Shamanic Healing Practitioner Diploma and I'm still a student with the Three Ravens College four and a half years later!

The college offers the most comprehensive, thorough and grounded programme of courses covering all aspects of shamanism and animism.

Based on solid anthropological evidence, rooted in animism, the oldest way of experiencing the world, informed by effective core shamanic practices, and blended with a current understanding of the mind and psychotherapy, Therapeutic Shamanism is a unique approach that is both ancient and modern and works for today's world.

22/05/2026

A small glimpse into the rhythm at the heart of The Still Beat.

Over the years I’ve come to deeply value practices that help me slow down, reconnect with myself, and return to the body in the present moment beneath all the noise and busyness of everyday life.

For me, rhythm has become a really important art of that.

The steady beat of the drum has a way of gathering attention, entraining brainwaves into meditative and intuitive states, and creating space inside ourselves to breathe, notice, reflect, and simply be for a while.

The Still Beat is a new, small, calm and grounded circle I’ll be offering through Hawthorn Practice - combining rhythm (with drums and rattles), meditation, embodied awareness, connection and quiet reflection in a gentle and supportive setting.

If something in this resonates with you, you’d be very welcome to join me.

And if you're wondering if this is for you, why not come and experience it, and find out. It's open to all.

The first gathering is on Friday 5 June at 7.30pm here in Horbury and I'm offering an introductory price of £15 for this first 1.5hr session. Lovely tea, biscuits and drum hire all included.

16/05/2026

IEMT Case Studies - looking for volunteers

I’m looking for a small number of volunteers willing to take part in IEMT case study sessions before the end of June.

IEMT (Integral Eye Movement Technique) is a structured change technique that works with unwanted emotional patterns, old memories, identity imprints, and recurring emotional responses. It can be particularly helpful for things such as:

• lingering emotional reactions connected to past experiences
• recurring feelings that seem difficult to shift
• unhelpful patterns and triggers
• carrying old “baggage” that no longer feels useful
• feeling stuck in familiar emotional loops

This is not a talking therapy or emotional support counselling approach, and it is not the right modality for people currently in crisis, experiencing overwhelming emotional distress, or needing ongoing emotional support.

The case studies involve 2 x 2-hour completely free of charge sessions - to be completed before the end of June

If you feel ready for change work and have something you’d genuinely like to shift, IEMT may be a good fit.

Feel free to get in touch if you’d like to know more.

10/05/2026

When was the last time you gave yourself permission to put everything down for a while?

To stop striving, managing, carrying so much, and working so hard to keep everything together?

To sit comfortably, breathe deeply, settle into steady rhythm, and simply allow yourself to be exactly as you are, for a little while?

Over many years of meditation, drumming, and embodied contemplative practice, I’ve come to deeply value spaces that allow the whole self to settle and soften. Spaces where the body can breathe again, the mind can quieten, and we can reconnect with ourselves beneath the noise and pace of everyday life.

I’ve found that rhythm can be a powerful part of this. The steady beat and vibrations of the drum, together with breath, stillness, and embodied awareness, have a way of gathering attention and bringing us gently back into the present moment.

This is the spirit behind something new I’ll be offering through Hawthorn Practice.

The Still Beat
A gentle evening of rhythm, meditation, and reflection.

The Still Beat is a small contemplative circle exploring rhythm, embodied awareness, inward listening, and reflective practice in a calm and supportive setting.

These monthly gatherings combine shared drumming, meditation, gentle embodied awareness practices, and space for stillness and reflection. The focus is on creating a warm and welcoming space where people can slow down, reconnect, and simply be for a while.

Many of us long for spaces where nothing is expected of us — where we can arrive exactly as we are and leave feeling calmer, steadier, softer, and more connected to ourselves.

You don’t need any drumming or meditation experience, just come as you are.

A space to pause for a while, with nowhere else to be and nothing else required of you.

Maximum 6 participants
90 minutes • £20 (includes quality tea, nice treats, and shamanic drum hire)
Horbury, Wakefield, West Yorkshire WF4
Fully seated and no experience required

If this sounds like something you’d enjoy, you’d be very welcome. Please message me for dates or to reserve a place.

26/04/2026

I practiced in the Soto Zen tradition for over a decade, and was given a bodhisattva name when I was ordained in 2010.

It’s not something I tend to share. I’m no longer a formal Zen practitioner, and I’m very aware how easily something like that can become an identity, rather than something I can simply return to in my own way.

But those years of meditation practice, and the name I was given, have stayed with me. It’s something I’ve found myself returning to lately, especially as I’ve been stepping into a new name in my work.

I turned to Zen because I wanted to learn to meditate simply, but I also came to love the ceremony of it. The bells, struck at just the right moment. The chanting, voices coming together in rhythm. The incense, the precise movements around the dojo.

That sense of being in a shared field of attention- aware of my own body, everyone else in the room, and a quiet, shared presence that seemed to emerge when we were all paying attention together.

It was very mindful and intentional. And also, if I’m honest, quite easy to get caught up in. The form is so compelling that it can start to feel like the thing itself, rather than an expression of something deeper.

After my son was born in August 2013, I felt myself being drawn somewhere else - to something more earthy, more relational. I was searching for a way of being that felt rooted in the body, in land, and in the aliveness of everything around me.

For a while, that felt like a big shift. But looking back, it doesn’t really feel like I left anything behind at all. If anything, I feel like I understand my Zen practice far more now than I did back then, when there was a lot of trying.

I was often focused on getting my posture right, staying concentrated, working with a wandering mind, enduring the ache in my knees. And meeting, again and again, my own resistance!

Restlessness, discomfort, irritation, tiredness, the urge to get up, to distract myself, to be somewhere else. There isn’t really anywhere to go on the cushion - you have to meet it all. I don’t think I realised at the time how valuable that was.

Now, what I recognise in my Zen practice is something much simpler. At the time, it felt like something that happened on the cushion, in a room, facing the wall. But looking back, I can see it was never really limited to that.

That same quality of attention is still here. It’s there when I stop in the middle of a walk and arrive exactly where I am, when I sit down on the ground and feel part of what’s here rather than separate from it, and when I notice that attention itself is a kind of relationship.

The Zen training is still very much there, especially the simplicity, the willingness to just sit and be, not aiming to achieve anything. And the animistic path has opened that out for me into connection, reciprocity, and being in dialogue with a living world. They are not two different practices in the end, just two ways of meeting the same reality.

The name I was given during my ordination is Myoshin, translated by my teacher as ‘clear heart-mind.’

Bodhisattva names aren’t something you take on as an identity, more a direction you keep returning to, beyond ‘me and mine'. They carry a sense of responsibility too, a reminder to meet life with clarity and compassion, not just for myself, but for everything around me.

These days I don’t experience Myoshin as something to aim for or create. It feels more like something I remember, something that’s already here when I stop trying to be anywhere other than where I am.

This is how I practice that remembering in ordinary life:

• Pausing, even briefly, and noticing what’s actually here, rather than where my mind is trying to go

• Sitting without needing to change anything, letting things be as they are, including myself

• Tuning into my body, not as something separate, but as part of the same living field as everything around me

• Allowing attention to widen, so I’m not just focused inward, but also in relationship with sound, with place, with the more-than-human - whatever is present

The key for me is letting it be simple. There is nothing to achieve, nothing to improve. Just a small returning, again and again, to what’s already here.

For me, that’s what ‘clear heart-mind’ has come to mean. Not something to become - just something to remember, again and again.