Throughout my life I often felt awkward, out of place, on edge, highly self-conscious, and found it difficult fitting in. I was a very sensitive child, and no doubt the fact I was taken from my mother at birth to be given up for adoption had a huge impact on how deeply I felt things.
When I was 8 years old, I was sent to boarding school, which further compounded my sense of being abandoned (the full understanding of how being adopted made this much worse was obviously not grasped at that age). On top of suffering from daily homesickness, I was also subject to episodes of teasing, bullying, and both sexual and physical (including torture) abuse. Needless to say, all of these early life experiences very much shaped the way I saw the world, and how, understandably, I learned to slowly abandon my authentic self in order to please others, avoid conflict, and to play small in order not to risk further ridicule, attack, rejection or failure.
All of this led to me following the 'cool' kids and being expelled from school just before my A levels. For a while I was able to feel good about this as some people found it attractive and I lived in a false bubble of feeling special. But, I felt lost and had no idea what I wanted to do and had no sense of direction or purpose. I went from job to job, even moving to Spain in my 30s where, despite being in a band and having an exciting social life, a rewarding and relatively unstressful job as an English teacher, and living by the sea in a warm climate, it still didn't feel enough. I was confronted with the fact that I was still deeply unhappy, lost, and had no confidence in myself. I was full of resentment, anger, sadness and was dependent on alcohol, nicotine and recreational drugs to give me some way of coping, hiding behind a mask I believed I had no way of escaping from.
In my late 30s I came across a spiritual teacher and then everything started to change. While this was the biggest turning point in my life, it didn't suddenly resolve everything. It did open me up to a new way of being and gave me a taste of my true nature, for which I'm so very grateful. My time with them opened the door to going on to explore myself psychologically and somatically with more awareness.
Over the last decade, I've been in a profound transformational process, which has included re-uniting with my birth mother and slowly uncovering the wounded parts of me and bringing love and healing to them. I owe a lot to having an extremely compassionate, warm, empathic and supportive therapist to help me, and along the way I've also immersed myself in a variety of other healing modalities, most importantly Craniosacral Therapy. This was a game-changer for me as I'd never felt such a deep sense of peace and wholeness following a treatment. I also found it fascinating how it addressed and brought together mind, body and spirit in a way that was tangible and easy to understand below the surface of the intellect and rational thinking. That led to me wanting to train formally in it.
What I've realised now is that my path was perfectly tailored for me to learn and grow from ('Grist for the Mill' as Ram Dass would say), and then use what I've come to understand in order to help and guide others who may have also gone through a lot of deep, messy trauma and emotional pain. I'm slowly learning to not be ashamed of my sensitivity, eccentricities and unique expression, and to look upon them with curiosity and see them as a strength. Because I've gone (and continue to go) so deeply into myself, I'm more able to hold space and facilitate that in others - without judgement, fear, disgust - and with compassion, presence, attunement and understanding. I don't hold to some idea that I'm fully healed or have arrived at some final awakened state, nor that anybody really knows what's best for someone else. I'm still evolving, as is everybody, and if anyone tells you any different, then run a mile! What I do know is that none of us are ever truly broken - we are loved unconditionally as we are, and the journey is really about learning to see how our most difficult experiences help to shape us into more loving, caring, compassionate friends to both ourselves and to others.
Why TouchTones?
The name came to me out of the blue one day towards the end of my Cranio-Sacral Therpay (CST) training. I'd been learning more about frequency, resonance and harmonics at the time, and I've always been really into music - I play the drums, guitar, a little piano, and I also love to dance. I kept hearing the phrase '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.