High Praise

Catherine

Global Health & Pharma Magazine launches a brand-new awards programme that puts the thriving world of Holistic Health centre stage.

“Wellness is no longer just a trend – it’s a movement! As the global focus on integrative health continues to grow, we’re shining a spotlight on the trailblazers redefining how we care for our minds, bodies, and spirits. From inspiring practitioners and dynamic wellness centres to product innovators, mindfulness leaders, and therapy pioneers, Holistic Health is reshaping the future – and it’s never looked more exciting.

The GHP Holistic Health Awards 2026 are here to celebrate the people and organisations who are breaking boundaries, driving progress, and creating meaningful change.”

and I’m thrilled to have been selected. I do love what i do and i love it when those that find me love it too. Since I first qualified in 1995 i’ve been loving it more each year. I’m thrilled to share the techniques i’ve learnt to here and all the experiences in clinic that expand my awareness of what clients need.

Thank you for such high praise – I am truly thrilled

No fake teeth but a genuine smile

Catherine

These things come to me. That’s why i call this blog ‘Musings of a Masseur’. Sometimes they come to me inbetween things, walking the dog, changing the bedding on the couch in clinic or on waking. Do you get that? Almost like someone knocking on a door, they wake you in the middle of the night, and if not written down they wake you again. Although if you do get to go back to sleep, thinking ‘Wow, that’s a great one, i’m sure to remember, no need to get up and write’, and then in the morning you can’t, it can seep into your day. That sense of wanting, even needing, to remember and the longer you give to the yearning the worse those sensations are.

Yet this wasn’t one of those. Not a nightime musing, more of a day time one I remember that. It came when i saw someone with baring their unnaturally white teeth immediate before seeing someone with the sweetest of smiles. And those words from Charles Eisenstein once more came to mind – ‘the calculus of worth’ – what do we hold dear and how do we weight the judgement of it.

Whether you have all your own teeth or not, I’m sure it’s the generosity of your smile that warms hearts more.

Nurture your inner resolve to grow against the forces that are keeping you stuck

Catherine

With purpose i’ve been refining a way of being present for those who seek me out.

Since 2006 when i qualified in coaching i’ve been using the framework of the GROW model and it’s starting to not feel as nurturing as it once did.

Goal – Reality – Options – Will – all have their place

Does Gain – Resources – Opportunities – Why – Timing – How will you know? feel more nourishing, less hustle culture, more affirming?

Finding a flow means find your own way, in a supported encouraging and engaging environment.

What I Do

Catherine

The therapist can be an instrument of sense perception

Living a spiritual aware life means bringing spirit into matter, because it matters how spiritual you are, to sustain the balance

Seeding thoughts to feel the best way forward and to share with a wider community – globally local to nurture authentic collaboration 

We grow in our dis comfort zones

Light. Speech. Touch

Flow Form Massage

Touch as an art form

Artisan practitioner

Spiritual networks need places, physical places like a HIVE to return to, a house to re nourish

Nurture places to be called home

Physical embodiment of a spiritual practice a “how to” place to home the life forces to best feel a way of being 

Art helps to by-pass the intellect straight to the heart to reconnect with inner pathways

Art practice enlivens the will

A guide to welcoming each new season exploring the relationship between the human heart and the turning year

Harmony of mind and body through active and passive motion

Temple Sleep – patient with help of physician or priest to experience the correction in the spirit reawakening carried the healing impulses into the body

The sickness was purified physically then laid to sleep

Prime task of the art of healing

The value of touch as a communicative power of the human hand. Kindness. Intuition. With a touch of a hand how we don’t need words to express deep connection 

therapeutic touch
mentoring and coaching
mindful montage
creative textiles
bringing 30 years of practice together
meditation and healing
listening in to respond to touch
reflexology
and how we stay focused
Meditation and Healing
they may even be a bit sweary
read that again

How it takes time

Catherine
letter from consultant CEA blood test is normal

So it’s August 2025. It has been however many days since 26th Feburary 2023 and i still can’t imagine how i’ve come through. The recent letter from the Consultant stating that all is well. Recent blood test is showing ‘normal’. Grateful to all those who are looking out for me in this inbetween time, feeling like i have a target on my back and ringing in my ears of all those people who said it will come back.

How did I come through this? Why did i survive? Can i use this time to take scared and now scarred into making it sacred.

Recently, at Deershed Festival, an absolute riot of lovliness for a weekend, meeting up with friends, having annual chats and hugs, treating guests for the weekend, i managed to work 13 clinic hours. I’ve received some amazing feedback and relished seeing clients leave my tent more upright, smiling faces and brimming with joy.

How is that possible after everything i’ve been through? We will never know, never be able to pinpoint that which made the difference. Many may try, they’ll have their theories, they’ll produce supporting evidence with conviction. Those that embrace me as i am now, those that hold me in their thoughts, hold my gaze with eyes to see the wonder of the world, envelope me in their arms to feel our hearts beating, these are the folks i want to be around, those that have no words, no explanations, just love and kindness. Because that echoes where i am right now.

Words cannot truly explain the extraordinary journey I have walked through my life, most recently in the valley of potential death. Now embracing a life, not full of expectations to achieve, just each day unfurling, bringing joy and wonderment, finding the sacred in every day, in simple activities and achievements.

Emotional Evolution

Emotional Evolution

Catherine

Summer is for growth. And sometime not rapid extensive accumulating growth. Sometimes it’s the unseen growth that is more valuable and long lasting

options to succeed: plan, nurture, grow

You cannot rapidly evolve out of a crisis.
Time for assimilation. Of realisation of already knowns. The never is ever wasted life experiences

When drama bites, self realisation emerges triumphant, heralding adaptations, welcoming remembered behaviours abound

Travelling with Cancer

Travelling with Cancer

Catherine

The difference between branch line and locomotive train travel. The fear of not knowing

You stand waiting on a platform all alone. You have to travel alone, it’s happening to you, not them. Across from you are well wishers, shouting well meant platitudes, words of wisdom, caring, sharing lived experiences that bear no relation to where you stand yet are heartfelt.

Fear rising, you hope the train approaching isn’t for you. If it is, you at least hope you only travel a few short stops then be able to disembark. These are stories you ve been told. This is the story you imagine

And for a while you do. You recovery, you have time to recoup losses and look to return. Then you find yourself on a different platform, with fewer people standing opposite. Some familiar faces, some new to the crowd, smaller in number, distilled with experience.

But this time you re not so confident. Over the year you’re read about, heard on the news, been told of many who didn’t make it. And this time you can’t bring yourself to think the train fast approaching isn’t a branch line, it’s the intercity locomotive, fast paced and with stops you hadn’t anticipated, little time to consider forward plans. Can you take a break? Make time to catch the next one?

Yet how can you when the voices now holler different tones, diverse and contradictory. And if you choose to stand back from it all, unhearing, it feels too confusing to comprehend

I want to be able to choose. Maybe travel to the next station on foot, after a break to assess, pick up another form of transport, choose the most radical of all, no forward travel for now.

art therapy, colours and figure

Stone or Ripple

Catherine

On reflections. Finding notes written over the years and sharing as a way of further explaining the wonders of being mindful to the how we are being well.

Thoughts come freely when my mind is like a millpond. The profundity all encompassing. I saw a stone and the ripples it created as it sank into the still water of my mind. One suggestion, many outcomes, shorelines of resistance. 

Whether we are aware or not, cause and effect is all around us and to becoming aware as a process is part of a medical model millennia old.

Do I need double blind studies? They help in establishing empirical evidence to classify the results to form categories, from which medical models can be set, protocols agreed and referred to. 

Do I need to create a new model to bring to my wider community in returning to practice? We could call it something like the Holistic Effect Learning Programme, see what I did there with the acronym.

Or do I, as this morning on a walk with Tess, into the woods, allow the sounds and scents of nature ease me back to my mental millpond. Will I take the learning from my reactions to maintain good relationships, neither reactive stone causing chaos or the passive ripple merely getting out of the way. 

And to bring these learnings into each day, to remember the lessons from lockdowns. I didn’t learn a language, perfect fire breathing or now an expert on identifying mushrooms. What I have done is polished off my inner bullshit detector and laughed at when it’s pointing at me.