10/09/2026
Getting to know Dr Sands… 👧🏻
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This is me, probably seven or eight years old, sometime in the late 1970s, in my school uniform.
And looking at this photograph made me think about something that has been a thread through my life for as long as I can remember.
I’ve always been a helper.
At home, I helped Mum with the housework.
I was the encourager. The champion. The one who would try to find a way through when things were difficult.
I was very always tuned in to how other people were feeling. (I had to be - maybe more on that later).
At school, I volunteered. I helped. I tried to be a kind friend.
And looking back, I can see that helping people has always mattered to me.
But perhaps what I didn't have then was the language for something I was already doing: noticing people.
Noticing how they were feeling.
Noticing when things were difficult.
Noticing when someone needed encouragement or support.
Fast forward (just) a few decades and the work I do now is, in many ways, still about helping.
Through mindfulness and compassion training, I help people understand themselves better, develop their own self-awareness and learn practical ways to support themselves through life's ups and downs.
My aim isn't to make people into some perfected version of themselves.
It's to help them become the next best version of themselves with greater awareness, choice, compassion and understanding.
The tools have certainly changed since the late 1970s! Alongside haircuts 😄
But that thread of helping, encouraging, listening and supporting?
Maybe it was always there....
And perhaps that's something worth noticing about ourselves.
Sometimes, when we look back, we discover that parts of who we are now were there all along. ❤️
Dr Sands
Mindfulness. Wellbeing. Neuroscience. Performance.
