What are the opening hours?

Tuesday 10am - 5pm Wednesday 10am - 3pm Thursday 10am - 7pm Saturday 9am - 3pm

https://liberationtherapiesandcoaching.co.uk/

Liberation Therapies & Coaching, The Coach House, Brand Lane, Ludlow (2025)

29/11/2025

I’ve had a couple of clients ask me how they explain that Santa isn’t real to their 8year + children.

Here’s a little story that might help.
Oh, by the way, Stephanie is my daughter and this is more or less how I explained it to her.

“Stephanie and the Real Santa Magic”

Once upon a time, in a snug little house at the edge of a quiet town, there lived a child named Stephanie.

Stephanie adored Christmas - the sparkle of fairy lights glowing in the windows, the smell of baking drifting through the rooms, the cosy jumpers, the stories by the fire.

But most of all, Stephanie loved Santa.
Not just because he brought gifts, but because the idea of him made the world feel safe and full of wonder.

One evening, winter wrapped the house in a peaceful hush. Snow fell softly outside, settling like a white blanket over everything.

Stephanie climbed into bed, her favourite doll Bonnie tucked under one arm. Her Mum sat beside her, smoothing out the cover.

Stephanie hesitated, then asked in a voice as small as a snowflake:

“Is Santa really real?”

Mum paused.
Not in fear - but with care.
She smiled softly and brushed a curl from Stephanie’s forehead.

“My love,” she said, “I have something very special to tell you.
It’s a secret - but a kind and gentle one.”

Stephanie’s eyes widened slightly, but she felt safe here with her Mum.

“You know how Santa is always shown giving presents, spreading joy, and making people feel warm and cared for? Well…” Mum’s eyes sparkled. “That part is completely real. But it’s not done by just one man in a red coat. It’s something much bigger.”

Stephanie blinked. “Bigger than Santa?”

“Much bigger,” said Mum.

“When you were little, imagining Santa flying across the night sky made everything feel magical and I kept that magic safe for you. But now that you’re older, something wonderful happens - you get invited to learn the true magic.”

Stephanie held her breath.
“What magic?”

“The magic of kindness,” Mum whispered. “The magic of compassion, of caring for people, of helping others, not just at Christmas, but every day. That is the real Santa.”

Mum continued:

“Santa isn’t one person. Santa is a feeling. Santa is the way people look after each other. When someone gives a gift to show love… that’s Santa. When someone helps a neighbour, or comforts a friend, or chooses kindness when they could have ignored someone - that’s Santa too.”

Stephanie felt something warm unfolding in her chest.

“So… you put out the presents?” she asked softly.

“I did,” said Mum gently. “Because giving is one of the ways I show my love for you. But the magic wasn’t the presents themselves - it was the love behind them.”

Stephanie looked thoughtful. “So what happens now?”

“Now,” said Mum, “you get to join in. You get to help spread kindness. You get to notice when someone needs help, or when someone feels left out, or when a small act of care can make someone’s day brighter. That’s the real Santa magic - and you’re ready to be part of it.”

Stephanie felt proud.
Not sad, not disappointed but proud.
As if a door had opened into a world where she had a bigger role to play.

“So I get to be Santa now?”

Mum hugged her close, the kind of hug that felt like home.
“You always had the heart for it,” she said. “You just didn’t know yet.”

“Remember when you invited the new girl at school to join in your game? You were being Santa.”

“When you helped carry my shopping in from the car. You were being Santa.”

And as Stephanie drifted into sleep, the snow fell more softly, the stars seemed to twinkle more brightly, and the world was quiet and peaceful and felt full of real magic.

The kind made not of fairy tales, but of kindness shared freely by people who care.

Art ~ Jocelyn Miller
Santa’s Watching

24/11/2025

Our hearts sit slightly to the left, tucked beneath bone and muscle like a secret we carry from birth.

It means the right side of our chest is a little emptier, a little quieter - a space waiting for something, or perhaps someone.

And then we hug.

In that moment, their heart finds its home in the hollow we didn’t even realise was shaped for it.

Their heartbeat settles against our right side, the place where ours is not.

Two pulses, two rhythms, two lives briefly synchronising.

A soft reminder that even though we move through the world as individuals, we are wired for connection.

When we hug, we don’t just wrap arms around a body - we exchange warmth, safety, and a wordless “I’m here.”

The body relaxes before the mind even understands what’s happening.
Breath slows.
Shoulders drop.
Something unclenches deep inside.
We let ourselves be held, and in doing so, we hold the other.

The right side of us, the side without a heart, becomes filled.
Completed.
For those few seconds, the world hushes and two hearts beat side by side, trusting each other with their rhythm.

A hug is the simplest gesture, yet it’s also the most profound.
No grand declarations, no polished speech - just presence pressed against presence.

A resetting.

A remembering.

A quiet miracle disguised as an everyday act.

And when we let go, something of that alignment stays with us.
A gentleness.
A steadiness.
A whisper that we are never entirely alone.

In that shared heartbeat, we become whole.

I see you.

Tell me - who will you hug today?

Art ~ Dalit Shahar
Variation on hugs in blue

17/11/2025

Today I learned a gentle little word: “glimmer.”

It’s the soft opposite of a trigger -
not something that startles the nervous system, but something that soothes it.

A glimmer is a tiny spark of joy, a moment where your breath settles, your shoulders drop, and you feel - even briefly- anchored, grateful, alive.

What’s magical is this:
once you train your mind to look for glimmers, they begin to appear everywhere.

Small, almost secret at first, then multiplying like shy wildflowers
that realise the sun is finally warm enough to trust again.

My glimmers today…

A slow coffee out in a café with my husband - the kind of unhurried moment where the world feels gentle
and time loosens its grip.

Talking to my cousin, reconnecting after sixty years.
Sixty years!
And yet the conversation slipped easily into place, like a long-lost piece clicking back into the puzzle of my life.
A soft, unexpected miracle.

Watching my cats play in the winter sunshine, bathed in gold,
completely absorbed in the simple joy of light and movement.
Their ease always reminds me that contentment can be found in very small things.

Seeing the birds feasting at the seed feeder in the tree - tiny flurries of feathers, their trust in this little offering of food something tender to witness.

And finally…
a wonderful sunset that spilled across the sky, as if the day itself wanted to bow out with one last brushstroke of brilliance.

So many glimmers in a single day.

And somehow, noticing them makes the whole world feel a little softer around the edges.

Tell me - what were your ‘glimmers’ today?

Photo ~ the sunset from my garden in Northumberland U.K.

03/11/2025

For Shona

Loneliness is not the absence of people - it’s the absence of understanding. You can be surrounded by company and still feel unseen, unheard, untouched.

It isn’t empty rooms that ache; it’s the weight of unsaid things pressing quietly against your chest.

The stories you’ve swallowed.

The truths you’ve softened.

The parts of you that never quite make it into words.

Healing begins when you dare to give voice to what has long been silenced … when you let your truth find air, even if your voice trembles.

It’s the slow, tender work of allowing yourself to be known. Known, not as the version you’ve learned to perform, but as the person you have always been beneath it all.

Connection starts there: in the courage to speak what matters, and to trust that someone will meet you in that sacred space between words.

And in time, you realise loneliness was never a life sentence - it was only a signal.

A call to come home to yourself, to reach out from truth rather than fear, and to let the world see the quiet miracle of your honest becoming.

I see you.

Art ~ Warren Caplan
‘Work in Progress’

28/10/2025

When the body begins to whisper, then plead for clean air, for space,for the kind of silence that has weight and texture…
that’s when you know it’s time to listen.

You don’t make the decision all at once.
It arrives quietly in the ache that never quite goes away.

In the fog that coffee can’t lift.
In the heaviness that sits somewhere between your throat, lungs and heart.

Something deep inside begins to say, enough.

So you pack up the fragments of your old life.
The noise, the hurry, the endless doing that left no room for being.

And you drive north.

Past the places that stopped feeling like yours.
Past the lights that never dim.
Past the hum of other people’s urgency.

Until the land itself begins to breathe again.

Northumberland rises up to meet you.
A vast hush of hills, moor and stone, wind and wildness.

The sky opens.
The air feels like medicine.
The silence has a pulse.

Here, everything moves slower.
The sheep graze without hurry.
The rivers curve and meander like they’ve always known there’s time enough for everything.

And slowly, without you noticing,
you begin to match that rhythm.

Your breath deepens.

Your shoulders drop.

The noise inside your head grows quieter.

You start to hear what silence actually sounds like.
The wind, the distant cry of an owl, the heartbeat of a world that never needed your performance, only your presence.

Mornings arrive wrapped in mist and woodsmoke and the bleating of sheep.

Evenings stretch out, soft and golden,
until the first stars blink awake in the dark, deep sky.

And you realise.
You realise all the striving, all the chasing, was only ever leading you back here.

To this stillness.
To this simplicity.
To this moment of being fully, deeply alive.

They say we have two lives,
and the second begins when we realise we only have one.

But perhaps it truly begins the moment we stop running.
Turn our faces to the wind, and let the quiet find us.

I see you.

Photo ~ view from my garden.
Northumberland.

24/10/2025

Some battles don’t show.

No bruises, no bandages - just the weight of something unseen pressing on the spirit.

The world keeps spinning, people keep talking, and all the while, someone you pass in the street might be holding themselves together with nothing more than habit and hope.

Depression isn’t a mood or a passing sadness. It’s a quiet erosion from the inside out - the slow dimming of light, the loss of colour in things once loved. It can feel like trying to wade through fog, where every step takes effort and even the smallest task feels impossibly heavy. And yet, from the outside, everything can look perfectly fine.

The truth is, some of the brightest souls - the ones who make you laugh, who lift others up, who always seem so strong, are often the ones who’ve walked through the darkest landscapes alone.

They’ve learned how to smile through storms, to hide their trembling hands behind gestures of warmth. Their light isn’t born of ease; it’s forged in struggle.

A smile can be camouflage.
A laugh can be a plea.
A silence can be a scream that never found a voice.

So please tread gently.

The person beside you may be fighting battles you cannot see, remembering losses you know nothing about.

Be the presence that steadies, not the one that demands.

Be the friend who listens without fixing, the stranger who offers warmth without question.

Because sometimes, your quiet compassion, a kind word, an unhurried moment, a simple touch… might be the small mercy that gets someone through the day.

We never truly know the path others are walking.

So when in doubt, choose kindness.

Always, choose compassion.

I see you.

Art ~ J Douglas Dalrymple
Depression

14/10/2025

For my friend Rachel - after our long conversation yesterday.

“We don’t really think about it, do we?
That quiet, unbearable truth waiting in every love story, that one day, one of us will attend the other’s funeral.

One will have to say goodbye.

And when that day comes, the world won’t stop.

There’ll still be washing in the machine,
the smell of their shampoo in the air,
their coat hanging by the door like they might still come home.

The bed will be too big on one side,
and laughter - that beautiful, ordinary sound - will echo in the empty spaces until it fades.

Yet we live as though time owes us forever.

We postpone the hug.

We hold back the “I love you” because we’re cross or tired or proud.

We stay quiet when we should soften,
forgetting that silence can last a lifetime.

We always think there’ll be more time.

But one day there won’t be.

Not for both.

So while you still can - love.

Not half-heartedly, not when it’s convenient, but fully, fiercely, foolishly.

Hold each other like you mean it.

Say what you feel, even if your voice shakes.

Let pride take the night off.

Let ego stay outside with its shoes on the mat.

Because one day, one of you will be left holding the memories.
And the only thing that will ease the ache - the only thing that will make it bearable - is knowing you didn’t waste your chance.

That you loved… right to the bone.

I see you.”

Art ~ Peter Nottrott
Big Gold Heart

13/10/2025

This is for a client who is learning that silence can be its own kind of strength.
Sometimes the wisest thing you can do is stop defending yourself and simply let your peace speak for you.

When someone is committed to misunderstanding you, no amount of explaining will change the story in their mind - but your stillness will. 🧡

“The best decision you can make is to be quiet.

Not the kind of quiet that comes from fear or defeat, but the quiet that grows from finally understanding where your energy no longer belongs.

Life has a way of showing you again and again - that no matter how carefully you explain yourself, some people will only ever hear what fits the story they’ve already written about you.

You can speak the truth a thousand times, pour your heart out until it’s empty, and still watch your words bounce off walls built from their own assumptions.

At some point, you realise that the truth doesn’t need defending - it just needs living.

Because there are people who are not searching for clarity, only confirmation.
There are those who cling to misunderstanding you because it justifies their version of events, their need to be right, their comfort in keeping you small.

And so, you stop trying to fix what was never yours to fix.

You stop rehearsing explanations in your mind, hoping one day they’ll finally see.

You stop handing your peace to people who have already proven they can’t hold it gently.

Silence becomes your boundary. Not as punishment, but as protection.

You realise that you don’t need to keep proving your worth through words, or reshaping yourself to fit into someone else’s limited perception.

Sometimes, silence says everything.
It says, “I’m done trying to make you understand.”
It says, “I know who I am now — and that’s enough.”

And there’s real power in that.

A quiet, grounded kind of strength that doesn’t shout, doesn’t plead, doesn’t need to win the argument.

It simply is.

I see you.”

Art ~ Jaume Munoz
Silence is always an option

12/10/2025

As I trace my family line, I realise I’ve become the last branch on my particular tree.

The memories, the stories, the laughter - they rest here now, in my hands.

It’s been twenty-seven years since Mum left, and six since Dad.
Long enough for the ache to soften,
for the sharp edges of grief to round into something gentler -
but still, their absence hums beneath everything.

Some mornings I wake with their names in my heart, as if no time has passed at all.

Now the last aunt has gone, and the last uncle too.
The voices of that generation have fallen quiet, and the family stories rest now in my hands.

I am the keeper of the memories.

As I trace the lines of our family tree,
each name I find becomes a heartbeat.
They are not just names to me -
they are laughter that once filled kitchens, hands that worked the soil,
hearts that hoped and broke and mended again.

When I find them, I say their names aloud.

I tell them they are not forgotten.

That someone, generations on, still remembers.

And yet, I am the last…

My children will not have children of their own, and so the line will close here - not in sorrow, but in completion.

A circle quietly drawn.

Perhaps that’s why I feel the pull so strongly now, to gather every thread before it slips away, to make sure each name is spoken, each life honoured,
each story given back to time.

Grief has become something else.
Not the wound it once was, but a root.
It grounds me in all that came before.

It reminds me that though the branches may end, the tree still stands.

Deep in memory, alive in love.

So I keep speaking their names into the quiet…
… one by one.

Because remembrance is a kind of continuation too.

And even if the line ends with me,
the love does not.

For those who speak the names of those who came before…
I see you.

Art ~ Renold Laurent
Ancestors

08/10/2025

For Jeff… you rock!

It takes real courage to let go.

Not the loud kind that charges ahead,
but the quiet kind that breathes deeply,
unclenches its fists, and whispers “enough.”

That first moment of release can feel brutal.
You might shake.
You might ache.
Every part of you might want to grab hold again to fix what’s broken, to rewind time just one more turn.

But the truth is, the tighter you grip,
the more life slips through your fingers.

Letting go doesn’t mean it didn’t matter.

Of course it did.

It shaped you, stretched you, maybe even broke you open in ways you never expected.

But when something has finished teaching you, it’s time to stop rereading the same page.

The past can be a comfortable kind of cage - familiar, predictable, safe in its sadness.
But when you stay there too long,
you start to forget who you are beyond it.

You start to live small.

When you turn your gaze back to now…
this breath…
this heartbeat…
this exact precious moment - something begins to shift.

The weight loosens.
The air moves differently.
You can breathe again.

Add a little forgiveness -not to excuse,
but to release.

Add a touch of trust - not blind faith,
but quiet knowing that life is still unfolding for you.

That’s when healing begins to take root.

No, it’s not easy.
Change rarely is.

It asks you to walk through the fog
with no guarantee of what’s waiting on the other side.

But beyond the ache and the unravelling
lies something freer - the life that’s been calling your name for a while now.

So if the story you’re living feels too heavy,
too tight,
too full of yesterday…

remember this:
you are not trapped in the old chapter.
You are the author.

Pick up the pen.
Begin again.

The next page is already waiting for you.

Art ~ Emilio Balvanera

03/10/2025

For dear Marnie.

There comes a point in healing when we whisper their names one last time.
Not to erase them, not to deny the love or the ache, but to release what was never ours to carry.

They had their own storms, their own weights and for too long you may have walked with their shadows on your back.

But the truth is those shadows are not yours.

Their burdens do not belong in your hands.

So today, you can imagine laying them down.

Offer each one a different gift:
a bow of respect,
a flame of gratitude,
a stone of anger thrown into the river,
a blessing for their journey into rest.

And then you let go.

You give them permission to sleep in the deep earth and you give yourself permission to live in the bright air.

Because their story ended with them.

And your story - your precious, unfolding, living story is still yours to write, with your own voice, your own steps, your own lightness.

I see you.

Art ~ Angelina Deminia
Flame

25/09/2025

The world shouts bad news at us from every corner… headlines, gossip, the endless scroll of worry.

Fear is sticky.

It grabs our attention, lowers our vibration, and whispers that danger is everywhere. When we dwell on it, we unconsciously begin to search for more of it… and like a magnet, we attract what we’re tuned into.

But gratitude tunes us differently.

It softens the noise, turns down the volume on fear, and opens us to the small, tender details that remind us life is still good. Gratitude lifts us up, and in that lighter state, we notice more to be thankful for.

It doesn’t have to be grand. In fact, the simpler, the better.

Each night, before you close your eyes, write down three things you’re grateful for.

Don’t think too hard.

Let them arrive like little gifts.

Today, do far, mine are:
- The joy of spending time with my animals, their presence grounding me.
- My lovely husband surprising me with a takeout coffee, still warm in my hands as I write this.
-The feel of damp grass beneath my bare feet, soft and alive as I hung out the clean fresh laundry on the line to dry in the sunshine.

Fear shrinks the world.

Gratitude expands it.

Tell me - which one do you want to carry into tomorrow?

Art ~ Yenny Yohan
Gratitude

Liberation Therapies & Coaching

29/11/2025

24/11/2025

17/11/2025

03/11/2025

28/10/2025

24/10/2025

14/10/2025

13/10/2025

12/10/2025

08/10/2025

03/10/2025

25/09/2025

Address

Opening Hours

Website

Alerts

Contact The Practice

Shortcuts

Share

Category

Tuesday	10am - 5pm
Wednesday	10am - 3pm
Thursday	10am - 7pm
Saturday	9am - 3pm