Hi everyone, I’m Denise and I felt I wanted to share with you some of the holistic knowledge that I have accumulated over my life so far and hopefully empower you and inspire you to wellness, self-care and ultimately self-love. So, I guess this will be a kind of wellness blog!

I would love to share with you my knowledge about food, wellness, essential oils, crystals, healing therapies, self-care, soul-nourishing walks, great cafes and restaurants serving healthy, nourishing food, top tips, healthy recipes or just something that will help your life be a better place, things that nourish your whole, holistic self - your body, your mind and your soul.

But before that, let me introduce myself…

An introduction to me!

Right from a small girl, I remember collecting the eggs from my Nan’s chickens, blackberrying around the Norfolk countryside where we lived, cockling on Heacham beach, picking samphire in Thornham, seeing my dad bring home pheasant, rabbit and partridge and watching all those delicious delights bubbling on the stove and browning in the oven.

Later, my parents bought a pub and restaurant in Ringstead, which my father called The Gin Trap Inn, it was renowned for its great food, my mum was the chef, with often a waiting list for months to get a table, so again, seeing great food all around was really starting to become part of my fabric!

Once school finished, I went to work on a hotel barge in France, which offered holidays with French gastronomic food and great wines from the region. We would buy vegetables, lettuce, herbs and homemade goats’ cheese from lock keepers on the canal, and I would cycle along the towpath to the patisserie to get the bread, croissants and fresh oranges for juice every morning.

The understanding of fresh, whole food was now well and truly engrained!

I went on to become a head chef in hotels and restaurants around the UK, then went back to France and opened my own restaurant, cooking everything from oysters to ribs of beef over the embers of the vine wood fire which burnt in the massive chimney in the kitchen.

Latterly working with schools to transform their food from drab to fab, re-training staff and resourcing great quality food, offering healthier options for children.

After 35 years of learning everything about food, herbs, growing and cooking I decided to do a complete 180! And at 51 years old, spent a couple of years qualifying as a psychotherapist, life coach, holistic nutritionist, relaxation, meditation and massage therapist, reiki master, reflexologist, started working for myself, and The Therapy Shed was born!

My client list soon filled up. But I quickly realised that most people coming to me for massage, counselling, reflexology or whatever, all had other issues. Health issues. They were coming to me because they knew they were not feeling100% and knew instinctively they needed something to make them feel better but not really what or why.

After about 6 months I figured out what was going on - there was usually something in their diet or lifestyle that was causing their illness or disease. Their doctors were giving them pills for their symptoms, apparently not one doctor had asked about their diet, their sleep, their water intake, their stress levels or their exercise and I kept hearing this, over and over again.

Car crash!

That was six years ago. Now, add in the restrictions of the pandemic and doctors’ surgery’s not really seeing anyone face to face, people’s health and their care is so much worse. Much worse.

In fact, when I thought about the stories my clients were telling me collectively, and the evidence I was seeing in my capacity as a health coach, massage therapist and counsellor, from a physical and a mental point of view, I realised I am watching what I can only describe as a car crash on ice!

I can see everyone about to slowly, but inevitably collide, collide with all sorts of health and mental issues and there doesn’t seem to be anything anyone is doing to help them. Their doctors are just prescribing pills to treat the symptoms and giving them more illness from the side effects, not tackling the root causes. What’s worse, is I know how to help them, but no one is listening!

I walk past the pharmacy twice a day on my way to and from work, full up with people and always a queue.

Obviously, I help my own clients who ask, where I can with top tips, I give them those nuggets of knowledge and inspiration, I email them information I have stored away and message them to make sure they are OK. I even developed nutritional programs to help everyone with anything.

But no one came.

I redesigned and rescheduled these programs, which took me 5 years of research and compiling I might add!

Still, no one came.

Am I banging my head up against a brick wall?

Then, I have a confession to make…

I nearly gave up.

Gave up caring, gave up helping, gave up messaging, gave up researching for my programs.

Gave up going the extra mile.

Let me explain.

I felt like a one-woman warrior trying to fight a huge battle and losing big time. I was trying to help everyone understand that their health issues could mostly be turned around without the pills and medications, if they would just ‘wake up’ and understand what is really in their processed food, why they are so stressed, why they need to walk more, reset their mindset and understand what is slowly killing them, or at least making them very ill, both mentally and physically.

Am I banging my head up against a brick wall?

No one understands what is happening, no one is making the connection, they just want to take pills and eat junk food.

I started to question my purpose, as I truly believe that passing on the invaluable ‘stuff’ I know is my purpose.

“Why do I bother”? I asked myself, “No one is ‘getting it’”, even my own family thought I was nuts!

But then last winter, after some tearful, dark and lonely, winter nights, but nevertheless, standing strong against my own feelings of giving up, I was determined I was not going to let all that research and hard work go to waste. I knew I needed to recalibrate and recharge my batteries, reset my own mindset.

January and February had typically been slow at work so I couldn’t really afford it but stuck it on the credit card and did it anyway! I booked 10 days at the end of February with my bestie in Mallorca – where she lives.

Epiphany

Wow! Not only did I fill my tanks up, but they are now overflowing. In fact, I have had an epiphany or even several!

Soaking up the big blue skies and clear, turquoise Mediterranean Sea, the energy from the snow-capped mountains, the wildflowers and almond blossom, wild asparagus and wild tortoises, yes tortoises! And the girl chat on our long dog walks down to the cala at the end of Jen’s street (that’s my bestie), was the most body, mind and soul nourishing thing I have ever done.

The change of scenery, Jen, walking, the dog, eating great food, friends, sunshine, and being in all that nature gave me the nourishment I needed to keep on.

I did a lot of meat free cooking while I was there, not that I’m vegetarian, or practise any labelled way of eating, I just don’t want to eat the chemicals added to fresh meat, let alone the processed, so actually I think I might start avoiding meat a bit more, which would of only added to my total nourishment experience. I’ll share some of those wonderful recipes in my next blog.

Cauliflower, chick pea and spinach curry with cucumber raita and flatbreads

On top of all that, the wonderful connection I have with Jen, her family and Mallorca, but Jen gave me a subscription to the TV channel Gaia.

Well! On getting back home that channel was on night and day! Netflix now seemed like a frivolous waste of my time. Why would I watch that when I could be soaking up real information in the expert interviews, watching people change their lives in front of my eyes by either juicing, discovering meditation, yoga, consciousness, general wellness and the benefits of organic foods. I couldn’t get enough.

My most important take away is that I now realise I am not a one-woman warrior trying to save the world from themselves, I am not the only one who has joined all the dots and is ‘getting it’, and has ‘woke up’ there are lots and lots of me! I no longer feel like I’m banging my head up against the wall, I have renewed my determination to help as many people as I can.

And the other is we must take time out of our daily lives now and again, especially when we are feeling low, to nourish ourselves, whether that’s spending time with friends or family, a little time away on our own even, so we can re-focus, get new perspective and listen to ourselves for what we need to nourish our soul.

So, I re-focused and I have re re-designed my nutrition programs! I have written a quick and easy but fabulous recipe book to accompany it. I have made them all accessible online and created online sessions via my health coaching page on my website, which is called Nourish, so I can reach as many people as possible.

Warriors

As I finish this blog I got to thinking; “How wonderful would it be if we could all use this space interactively, with me as a kind of holistic facilitator! To uplift each other by sharing positive experiences, recipes, beautiful photographs of wonderful places you have been or seen, books we’ve just read, strategies for anything that makes life better, tips and life hacks you might have to enrich our lives on a holistic level. Why don’t we all join forces and be warriors together?

Those ten, precious days have given me the stuff I needed to keep on keeping on, so, lets make this blog somewhere where we can all go to help each other to keep on keeping on.

I’m excited!

See you soon, Denise x

Email your own photos, nuggets of knowledge and inspiration to me at help@thetherapyshed.com

See my nutrition programs here