I always felt a bit different and at odds with the world around me. I was adopted, and no doubt that impacted my sensitivity and drove me to crave deeper connections and to feel welcome in a world that often seemed aggressive, overly competitive, uncaring and somewhat crazy. Going to boarding school at 8 years old further compounded my sense of abandonment from birth, and I was prone to bouts of social anxiety and depression growing up. While I was generally quite joyful and curious, I often perceived myself to be an outsider in group and family dynamics and I tended to become withdrawn when upset. I soon learned to take on the role of a people-pleaser in order to fit in.
This led to me following the 'cool' kids, getting expelled from school at 17 years old, and I ended up going off the rails a bit with alcohol and drugs. This greatly affected what I ended up studying at university and my subsequent career path. I felt very lost and overwhelmed into my twenties, and even into my thirties I had no real sense of direction. It took me years of trying various jobs - including moving abroad to Spain where I worked as an English Teacher for 7 years - before I finally realised that I needed to do some deep soul searching and inner work before I could move forward with clarity and purpose.
Over the last decade or so, I've been in a profound transformational process, spending time with various meditation teachers and attending loads of retreats and online courses. I've also immersed myself in a variety of practices and therapeutic modalities - Qi Gong, Somatic Movement, Breathwork, 5 Rhythms, Compassionate Inquiry - and have trained formally in Cranio-Sacral Therapy. All of this has helped towards recovering my authentic self by slowly releasing the deep hurts, repressed emotions, limiting beliefs and patterns held in my body/mind.
This adventure is ongoing, but now I know what it is I want to do. I also feel much more at peace, settled and aligned to what I sensed as a child, but was taught to doubt: The mystery and wonder of life, our interconnectedness with all that is, and the love that is always here within and without despite any seeming evidence to the contrary.
Why TouchTones?
The name came to me out of the blue one day towards the end of my Cranio-Sacral Therpay (CST) training. I had been learning more about frequency, resonance and harmonics at the time, and I have always been deeply into music - I play the drums, guitar, piano, and I also love to dance. I had heard several people talk about 'feeling tones' and I loved the way the word 'tone' can be used in relation to the body, as well as in music and colour.
The name TouchTones sounded like the perfect description for how, as a therapist, I tune in and listen carefully to the various qualities (tones) in the client's system, and how, by way of gentle touch and an attuned, calm presence, I facilitate a co-resonant field that then naturally starts to harmonize anything that is out of tune.