​

 

I experienced a relentless desire from my childhood years to empower myself, others, and to solve the problems we face in life.  My upbringing on a farm has given me a down to earth and realistic approach to these goals, and I sought to broaden this perspective with a training in science, business experience, an independent study of psychology, spirituality, and many other fields.  I therefore describe myself as a polymath, I believe everyone, and everything is of value, and as a result have an obsession with studying and experiencing life as broadly as possible.  This has lead me to travel widely, live with different cultures, experience a full range of natural environments, and seek many extremes of human experience.  One of the many extremes I have sought is that of spiritual experience; at the age of 17 I had a profound experience of enlightenment that fundamentally changed my view of life; I am a mystic who has had intense visions, spiritual experiences, and tantric sexual experience, over extended periods of time.
               My life long quest to understand human behaviour, all of life, and how to resolve the difficulties I and so many people face, has lead me into professional work in life coaching, and running sex and relationship workshops, along with running my businesses, and carrying out research.  I have a degree in Physics from Oxford University, which I use to bring logic and a rigorous scientific approach to all my work, along with intuitive and creative approaches, and I work closely with my partner Rosie Morrell.

​

The central purpose of my entire life is to change consciousness and empower all people; at the heart of this is my belief that Everyone is God.

​

Qualifications & Experience:

​

I do not have any formal qualifications in therapy or life coaching; I help people from the basis of my own independent research and training in psychology, the therapeutic methods I have developed, my journey of resolving my own challenges, and the broad life experiences I have had.  My therapeutic methods have similarities to many of the current techniques of therapy such as Psychotherapy, CBT, and Internal Family Systems, indeed I believe all of these approaches are required along with other methods in order to make progress.  It is difficult to put a figure on it, but I estimate that I have done a minimum of 30,000 hours of personal research and training to develop my understanding of human psychology and how to help people.  I also work closely with my partner and have the benefit of her knowledge, in that she is a therapist, with a degree in psychology, and qualifications in various therapies.

​

My experience is that there is great merit in academic study of psychology and training in therapy, (and all other subjects) however this alone cannot give a full understanding of life and humanity.  Life is complex and vast in it's possibilities, and it is only with personal experience, and the overcoming of ones inner and outer challenges, can we fully understand how we function, how life functions, and how to resolve issues.  

          Without experience that is relevant to a client's difficulties, a life coach or therapist cannot fully understand what the client is struggling with and how to resolve it.  I believe therefore that a therapist can only understand and help a client resolve their issues, to the same degree that the therapist has understood and resolved their own issues, or put another way a therapist can only see as deep into the client, as they can see into themselves.  Given this, I regard life experience, of having and overcoming challenges, as our greatest teacher, and the primary and most important qualification required for life coaching.  

         One area of challenge we often face is failure, and I regard this in the same way as I regard all other challenge, as highly valuable, for in general although succeeding may be the end goal, you usually learn far more from failing and then trying again.  I therefore offer my life experience, the challenges, the 'failures', and the successes, I have had, as the main body of my qualification for life coaching, and list key areas of my experience below.  In this way clients can assess if they feel that I am qualified to help them with their difficulties, and also I wish to demonstrate to them that I am as human and vulnerable as they are, my life coaching is therefore carried out on the basis that I am always equal with my client. 

​

Academic qualifications and training:

​

M.A. Physics, Oxford University.

Reiki 3 Attuned

​

Mental and emotional challenges:

 

I have struggled with severe depression, anxiety and fear from my mid teens to around the age of 40.  For these 25 years I experienced almost continuous emotional and mental pain, that ranged from a background feeling of unease to experiences that were of an extremity where I would go into shock, and have to lie in bed in a state of near paralysis.  Loneliness and isolation was also a recurrent theme, and through a combination of all these difficulties and specific circumstances, I experienced a brief period of overwhelming suicidal thoughts.  Around the age of 40 I made fundamental changes in myself and my life that resulted in major improvements in my mental and emotional health, and although these challenges are still present in my life, my relationship with them is greatly improved and very different now.  I also experience intense noise anxiety under specific circumstances. 

​

I have mild dyslexia, and some autistic traits such as hypersensitivity to my environment, obsessive compulsive disorders, and difficulty in certain social situations.  I struggle with lack of confidence and a feeling of being deeply challenged by life at times.  I have a compulsive desire for broad knowledge and experience, that can become obsessive and difficult, in that I struggle to achieve everything I wish to complete, and cause considerable anxiety for myself in the process.  At times I struggle with over seriousness, difficulty relaxing, and physical expressions of love.  All of this experience gives me a deep empathy with my clients, and their inner challenges.

​

Sexual disfunction and abuse:

​

I have a complex ongoing journey with sex and relationship.  I experienced extreme sexual desire for adult women from the age of 3 onwards, forming sex addiction.  In spite of this desire, it has been rare that I have been able to enjoy sex in my adult life, and sex therefore is a source of difficulty for me.  I regard this as a ongoing opportunity to learn from my own experience, and therefore a central part of my life is the understanding of my own sexuality and of human sexuality in general.  I believe understanding this area is of paramount importance for humanity, as it is not fully understood, but yet is fundamental in understanding the underlying forces driving human psychology and all of our behaviour.  

​

At my first school around the ages of 6 until 9, I experienced verbal and physical abuse from my Head mistress, and the deputy Head mistress.  Around the age of 11 to 12, I experienced grooming and mild sexual abuse by a male teacher, at the boarding school I attended.

​

These experiences have given me insights into how we develop emotionally and sexually, the vulnerability of children and adults, and how sexual dysfunction can arise in adults. 

​

Employed work:

​

After my degree, I taught maths and physics at GCSE and A-level for 2 years in a tutorial college in Oxford.

​

Business experience:

​

After teaching I have owned and run three different types of business:

​

I started as a sole trader making fitted and freestanding furniture.  The first few years of this provided a very valuable experience of poverty and living on a very small income, in that I was earning (and living on), in the region of £1.90 an hour or £5000 per year.  This business grew to a maximum size of 7 employees, producing a very broad range of bespoke projects for private and business customers, and CNC component manufacture for many other manufacturers.

​

The furniture business completed many successful projects, and won some of the highest awards in the industry, but I always struggled with profitability and other issues that I never fully mastered, hence leading to my decision to enter into my second business; commercial property development.  I obtained planning permission to redevelop a redundant family farm into a business park.  In order to save costs and ultimately be able to fund the project myself, I undertook all the professional roles, and therefore personally carried out the roles of planning consultant, architect, project management, and site management.  This project was very unusual as the design I created was fully ecological, in that the redundant farm was demolished very carefully, fully recycled on site, and the new building used ecological materials being constructed mostly from timber, rather than the standard steel/block/brick construction of commercial buildings.  Carrying out the professional roles gave me a great insight into the interface of business with the government departments of planning and build control, and how the complete chain of processes works, from initial concept and planning, through to design and build regulations, to construction and completion.  This project would be valued at approximately £2.5 million if put out to tender, whereas my approach of carrying out the professional tasks myself, the cost effective design of the building, and the methodology with which I ran the construction project, meant that I was able to minimise costs to well under £1 million (all amounts in todays money).

​

The successful completion of the business park lead into my third business, that of being a commercial landlord.  I found this business to be surprisingly different to my previous two businesses, and although I never expected it to be straightforward, it proved to be more complex and a far steeper learning curve than I anticipated.  In particular this was the first time that I had the responsibility of running a large site, but not being in direct control of everything that happens on that site, as I was with my former businesses.  These dynamics were very different to before, as now I was part of a collective of businesses, who although were independent of each other and had different interests, they also had interrelationships, and a common premises.  I found this to be a very valuable experience, one that felt more akin to the role a government plays, rather than the role of a business owner.

​

One notable experience took place 3 years after completing the business park; a major fire caused significant damage to the main building.  The entire insurance claim, valued at approximately £1/2 million, was rejected by my insurer, and I had a 6 year legal battle with them that ultimately failed to yield any pay-out (I later received a quarter of the claim from the electricians insurance, on account of his causing the fire through a faulty electrical connection).  This experience gave me deep insights into the world of liability, risk, contract law, how the legal process works in general, the psychology of responsibility and blame, and how liability is both mitigated, and also increased, by insurance companies.  It was an intense lesson in key aspects of how our world currently works, and how it does not work.

​

My experience of being raised and working on a farm, running businesses, and studying human psychology has been extremely enriching for me in many ways.  It has in a sense allowed me to gain an understanding of the entire human journey, from the birth and sustaining of life from our physical environment, through the economic, business,  infrastructure, and government systems that governs much of our modern life, along with the human psychology that is driving all our decisions in all these systems.

​

Family life:

 

There have been two events in my family life that have proved extremely transformative amongst many others.  The first of which is the experience of falling in love, marrying, raising young children, divorcing, and being a part time single parent.  My marriage to my ex-wife was extremely difficult and traumatic for myself (and my ex-wife), and this ultimately resulted in divorce.  After divorcing at the age of 39 I started to understand how the unresolved fears and beliefs I had, led me into the difficulties of my marriage, and how this profoundly impacted my children.  This impact, along with fundamental differences in beliefs, later resulted, with great sadness on all parts, in a total splitting of my family into two separate parts. I no longer have contact with my ex-wife, or my son who lives exclusively with her, and my daughter no longer has contact with her mother and lives exclusively with me.

​

The experience of my separating from parts of my family also occurred in another way for similar reasons.  I came to the point that I felt the differences of beliefs (in particular how to resolve issues between us), that I had with my father, mother, and siblings, where so great, that it was no longer beneficial for any of us for me to have contact with them.  As a result of this, out of my entire family, the only member I now have contact with is my daughter.

 

Coming to terms with these experiences has driven me very deep into myself, and I have had to answer difficult questions of myself, such as how and why I have created this for myself.  I have come to clear answers to these questions, and am in a more grounded and peaceful place than I have ever been.  One of the many things I have understood is how our fears can drive us very deeply into dysfunctional relationships, that then create ongoing and further issues in our life, such as dysfunctional parenting.  I understand from first hand experience how basic life experiences that so many of us have, such as love, relationship, marriage, parenting children, and divorce, can become so difficult, that we become lost in them.

 

Criminal experience:

 

Around the time of my divorce, I briefly took in some newly made friends, a couple, that were being evicted from their rented property next door to my house.  It was at a time that I was very vulnerable on account of struggling with the implications of divorce, debt, business pressures, and profound changes within myself, and the opportunity to have some supportive friends around me, and to be of help to them seemed like a good thing.  My so called new friends turned out to be extremely skilled manipulators and con artists, and they set about exploiting and increasing my vulnerabilities, firstly through befriending me and advising me that the husband was terminally ill, then ultimately with theft, intimidation and suggestions of violence.  I also had been unwittingly drawn into business with them, and was unable to process the complexities of the situation I was in.  My vulnerabilities became completely overwhelming, and at the suggestion of my friends, I was very nearly drawn into committing criminal activity with them (insurance fraud).  Ultimately although I did not carryout this activity, they succeeded in extorting and stealing in the region of £50,000 worth of money and property from me.

​

At the time I became broken by this experience, on the back of my divorce and other pressures; it lead to a short period of uncontrollable suicidal thoughts.  However, I was able to process it thereafter, with very profound effects on my understanding of humanity.  I saw from my own experience how well meaning people (such as myself), who have unresolved fears and issues within them, become vulnerable.  This vulnerability can cause us to lead ourselves into experiences and situations that escalate and completely overwhelm us; being overwhelmed can lead to a loss of reality, and a state of ongoing panic or desperation; when this happens, we become ungrounded, loose the ability to reason and make sensible decisions, and ultimately can be broken down to the point of crime.  I understood the great vulnerability that is within all of us, and how easily we can be overwhelmed by it.  I felt like I had looked through a window into some of the darkest aspects of human behaviour, and it became much clearer to me how humans can be lead to commit crimes of all natures.  This has given me a far greater sense of understanding and empathy with all people, and in particular those that apparently make poor decisions, are not coping, or go on to commit crime.  Given my experience I am not inclined to judge people so much as I would have, and do not feel different to them.  This has proved very beneficial when working with clients, as I feel I am with them when they speak of their difficulties, dysfunctions, and on occasion their experiences of being drawn into crime. 

 

Spiritual and tantric experience:

 

At the age of 17, after experimenting with meditation, I had what you could describe as the archetypal experience of enlightenment; for an instant I knew and felt categorically that we all know everything in the universe and that everything is one.  The experience was absolute, there was no doubt in any part of it, from this moment on something fundamental changed within me, I had glimpsed the infinite knowledge and power that is in all of us.

 

Since this time I have had many further and varied spiritual experiences, some have been brief whereas others have been over a period of weeks or months.  The intensity of these experiences has ranged from mild to the point that I have had visions that are so intense that I have entered into near epileptic fit type experiences in which I have had seizures.  

 

Similarly I have had a broad range of sexual and tantric experiences with lovers.  These have ranged in intensity from mild, to very intense, and on one occasion I received a tantric initiation that involved a serious possibility of imminent death.

 

Spiritually I have worked with a number of people over the years, attended various workshops, and currently work extensively with my partner Rosie who channels a broad range of spiritual guides for me.
 

Travel, foreign culture and adventure:

​

I have lived within three different cultural backgrounds, British, Greek, and Indian.  This is on account of my living in Britain, my mother being Greek, and my ex-wife being Sikh.  An intimate understanding of these three cultures has been very revealing of how our cultural up brining affects our psychology, society, and the issues and strengths a particular culture creates for itself.

​

I have sought any opportunity to live and work with locals of varied cultural backgrounds, and for brief periods have lived with people all over the world, such as with locals in the Amazon Jungle, Mexico city, Tibetan monks in northern India, Palestinians in the West Bank of Israel, and the monastic community of Mount Athos in Greece.

​

I have always sought adventure and a degree of risk, as a consequence I have put myself into positions of varying danger, in jungle, desert, air, mountain, sea, and human environments.  I have been in many survival situations, which although not of a very extreme or extended nature, have taught me how to take care of myself in more challenging environments, and how easily things can go disastrously wrong, if we are lacking in basic knowledge, correct equipment, and good planning.  Survival experience has proved extremely valuable; it has taught me how it is not just in wilderness environments, but also in normal daily life, that if we do not take care of ourselves in the correct way, things can go wrong very quickly.

 

Hobbies, interests and study:

 

I am what I describe as an obsessive and extreme polymath, I have a relentless desire and compulsion to understand and experience everything.  Some of my hobbies, interests, and areas of study include maths, physics, psychology, law, history, music theory, meteorology, history, horology, politics, economics, and geography, alongside practical pursuits such as gardening and growing your own food, manual work, farming, all trades and crafts, manufacturing, property development, business, furniture making, walking, hunting, sailing, squash, playing musical instruments, art, remote control gliders, and many other things.  All of these hobbies help me understand the different passions that drive humanity.

​

Conclusion:

​

As stated before, I passionately believe that a full and broad range of personal first hand experience is the most essential qualification of any life coach; I have always sought to explore new things, and at all stages, have found the varied experiences I have had to be highly valuable and enriching.

​

​