About Sarah
The start of my professional journey
When everything changed
Discovering Therapeutic Coaching
Professional transformation
Where am I today?
Why I created Rise Into Wellness
Hi, I’m Sarah. Thank you for taking the time to visit my website. I hope this page gives you a little insight into me, my background and what led me to create Rise Into Wellness.
My clinical journey began when I graduated from the University of Birmingham in 2010 with a first-class honours degree in Physiotherapy. I worked in a variety of settings and specialties before taking an NHS Musculoskeletal Clinical Specialist role. Within this role I developed a specialist interest in working with people experiencing chronic pain. At the time, I had no idea how valuable that clinical experience would become when I faced my own health challenges.
My personal health journey began in 2019. The year started amazingly well. I had been learning to row and had just started racing. I was also playing county-level netball, and my team had just won the County league. I had a very active social life and was excelling at work. Between January and May I travelled to Argentina for a month, to La Plagne for a snowboarding holiday and to Croatia for my 30th birthday. I thought I was living my best life. Then everything started to go downhill. I watched myself getting more and more unwell until eventually I struggled to walk short distances or leave my flat and I had to go on long-term sick leave. It was a long process to even get a diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), let alone to get treatment. After completing the NHS treatment offered in my area for CFS, I was left feeling extremely low. The focus seemed to be on managing the condition rather than recovering from it. I knew I couldn’t spend the rest of my life living in this way, so I started to explore other options.
I explored a variety of holistic treatments. The one I found most life changing was Therapeutic Coaching (TC). It challenged everything about how I saw myself and the world, everything that I believed to be true. It helped me explore the patterns and beliefs that had contributed to my experience of burnout and understand how they were affecting me. I learnt about the role that my nervous system and stress responses were playing in my experience. I now say that developing CFS is by far the worst thing that has happened to me, but that everything I have learnt and achieved through TC is by far the best. What I loved about TC was that it helped me understand what was happening in the present, while also exploring what in the past had contributed to those unhelpful beliefs and patterns forming. It then taught me some amazing tools and techniques to help me change these patterns and beliefs, so I could move towards the life I wanted. It taught me techniques that helped me regulate my nervous system and recognise my own warning signs of slipping back into a heightened stress response. I loved that TC was a process that empowered me to do this for myself. I left feeling like I had the tools and resources to apply this to any other challenges that arise in my life.
When I went back to work I had a long phased return to part-time hours. I was loving being back at work and supporting people with their own struggles. But something had changed. I knew there were other strategies out there that my patients would benefit from. This is what inspired me to complete the TC training myself. I remember thinking, if I could do for even one person what my amazing coach Naomi had done for me, what an amazing gift that would be.
In my pain specialist role I spent a lot of time discussing what I call the four pillars of health and how important they are to our overall health and wellbeing. They are physical health / activity, sleep, nutrition and mental health / emotional wellbeing. My own experience taught me just how important it is not only to understand these pillars, but to actually put them into practice. I believe working on all four has played an important role in how I manage my health today. TC also helped me make the behavioural changes I had previously found difficult.
I also explored lots of alternative treatments and soon realised I wanted to train myself in some form of energy practice. This is where the universe stepped in and I randomly met two separate Reiki Masters on two separate benches, Jo and Elsje. I started to attend Elsje’s Reiki share and instantly connected with Reiki. I began to experience some of the benefits of Reiki for myself, such as feeling calmer and sleeping better. I went on to complete level 1, 2 and 3 with Elsje. I personally found Reiki to be a wonderful complement to TC. When I completed the Reiki training and started to use Reiki on myself, it helped me to identify imbalances, patterns or beliefs that needed work which I could then work on with my TC tools. It also then helped me clear the blocked energy or unhelpful patterns once I had addressed them with TC. It’s important for me to say that everyone’s experience of Reiki is different, and this is simply my experience. I still regularly use both TC and Reiki on myself and love that I can share these gifts with clients.
One question I still find difficult to answer is: have I fully recovered? I certainly never got my old life back, but I actually wouldn’t want to as I wouldn’t want to go back to my old patterns that led me to burn out. I still work hard to look after my health by looking after the four pillars I mentioned. I can be variable at times and do still sometimes have to say no to things I might like to do. But on the whole, when I am taking care of myself, I now live an amazing life full of wonderful people and doing things I love. Going from struggling with CFS to where I am today has been the hardest thing I have ever done, but it has been so worth the hard work.
So now you know more about my story, I’m sure you can see where my vision for Rise Into Wellness comes from and why I want to help people live healthier and happier and more fulfilling lives. I want to share some of what has helped me with people who are feeling overwhelmed, disconnected from themselves or unsure how to move forward — whether they are navigating a period of change, struggling with confidence or self-belief, or simply feeling that something needs to be different. Ultimately, what I hope to offer my clients is not a promise of a perfect life, but the understanding, support and tools to create a life that feels right for them.
Whether you are on your own journey of self-discovery or simply looking for a moment of rest, recovery or rejuvenation, I would be delighted to support you.