ABOUT MARY
I am an Environmental Therapist, author and workshop leader, who creates a dynamic relationship between people and place.
Drawing upon Anthropology, Feng Shui, Somatic Arts Psychotherapy, and Reiki healing, I weave together cognitive, intuitive and pragmatic approaches to transformational self-growth. My deeply compassionate philosophy of home is rooted in over 30 years of professional experience and reflective practice.
Through consultations, workshops, writing and speaking, I help clients shape their environments in such a way as to bring greater clarity, well-being, creativity, and meaningful connection. My method integrates somatic awareness with deeper psychological and symbolic insight to fashion a holistic life.
In 2010, I developed the Intuitive Vision Board – a creative, intuitive process that taps into your active imagination, which is the gateway to inspiration that will empower you to achieve your personal and professional goals. Creating your own Intuitive Vision Board reveals your individual journey, while an intuitive reading and environmental appraisal with me can help you create a living space that not only correlates with your aspirations but also brings them to life.
Believing that a benevolent universe always works in our favour, I have faith that our intuitive ability will lead us to where we need to go next, if we allow it. My purpose is to encourage us to stay attuned and true to our purpose, when outer circumstances attempt to derail us.
Besides disappearing into a good novel, I like to immerse myself in ageless ancestral wisdom and contemplative practices. I have a profound reverence for the divine feminine, a love of the natural world, and a lifelong affinity with the sea that laps at the shores of my home, which I share with her husband in Devon, UK.
I am the author of Awaken Your Intuitive Vision: Unlocking Possibilities You Never Knew Existed and the founder of the publishing imprint, Soul Alive. Hearth – The Place You Return To And The Life You Make There is my second book.
My search for diamonds
I like nothing better than to encourage people to reimagine their lives from a different perspective by evoking the intuition as their accomplice. When we break with over-thinking using the Intuitive Vision Board, we uncover more of the life we are destined for and reveal the bright diamonds we already are.
To prepare the living environment to harvest diamonds I practice Environmental Therapy, aligning the home with our intentions to live a happy and fulfilled life.
However diamonds don’t come easy – and take time to form. So when life drags interminably slow and trouble and strife block the exit, you might recall Henry Kissinger’s words: A diamond is a hunk of coal that did well under pressure.
Culture
My diamond hunt began by studying Anthropology at Durham University – considered a rare and fantastical thing to do back then but popular now.
As anthropologists, we were taught to look for the evidence in people’s behaviour. We learnt it’s not what people say or think that shapes a person, a society or culture, it’s what they do that matters.
Corporate
From Anthropology I fell into marketing. I cut my teeth in a field that has been superseded by online shopping: mail order book clubs.
Four years later I volunteered for redundancy and, from the floor of my lounge, launched a direct marketing consultancy. By a remarkable stroke of luck combined with a well-intentioned focus, the company became a multi-million pound business within 8 years, mostly with FTSE 100 clients.
Still with my anthropological filter uppermost, the unspoken agendas driving organisations attracted me the most. The not-so-obvious was still where the diamonds could be found.
Mystery
Our marketing consultancy employed 15 people. We had beautiful offices that worked well under my guidance, although I had yet to train in Environmental Therapy. Our clients enjoyed visiting Bracknell, considered rural at the time, for a respite from London.
Staff behaviour mystified me. We had good, profiled talent who we paid well. We invested in training. Yet I felt the organisation enjoyed only the tip of the iceberg in terms of what people were capable of and, try as I may, I couldn’t find a way to liberate them from their assigned roles.
When I sold my share of the consultancy to start a family, this conundrum went with me. Eight years later I stumbled upon the answer while doing a Master’s degree in Somatic Arts Psychotherapy. It is this solution I now offer through my transformational practice.
Living Mindfully
With the marketing consultancy behind me, I was invited to attend a talk on Feng Shui. I’d never heard of the subject before yet I sat there thinking, I have an instinct for this already. Didn’t everyone move furniture around if they felt uncomfortable or wanted a change, even in hotel rooms? Apparently not.
People leave their ‘imprint’ on the space they occupy. From this imprint I ‘read’ the culture of the people, the home or organisation. When this culture is at odds with their vision, Environmental Therapy brings both back into alignment.
Since I’d discovered sensitivity to energy was one of my diamonds, I became a Reiki Master too.
Dancing queen
Not long after my sea-change to Feng Shui, I found myself juggling parenting, homemaking and Feng Shui visits as a single Mum. To complicate matters further I bought a puppy.
To stay calm I started dancing again, which I’d begun age 4 as a ballerina and tap-dancer. I did a PGCE in Dance and began teaching creative dance to children and organic movement to adults.
My interest in the therapeutic value of dance-movement evolved into a Master’s Degree in Somatic Art Psychotherapy at the University of Chichester.
Invention
Towards the end of my studies I developed the Intuitive Vision Board – the creative tool I’d been looking for to unlock hidden potential in people and organisations to reveal more of their diamonds.
My method was put to the test big time when I found myself blindsided by life. Destitute, I turned to the Intuitive Vision Board to show me the way. The board I created was the catalyst that rescued me from despair, which I describe in my book Awaken Your Intuitive Vision. I followed the pathway it presented and I have never looked back.
Mentors
I have a daily practice of ‘tuning in’ intuitively. My home and work space is always Environmentally-friendly. I make a new Intuitive Vision Board every year. Fortunate was I to have had wonderful teachers – notably Denise Linn (USA), Helen Poynor (UK), Miranda Tuffnell (UK), Claude Coldy (Italy), and Anna Halprin (USA).
Dr Jill Hayes who was such an inspiration as my University tutor, once said: What I respect about you the most Mary, is your capacity to stay true to your creative calling no matter the outer circumstances of your life.
This has evolved int my raison d’être – helping others stay true to their calling. To remind them that, when they find their real diamonds, they are forever.