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 (2026)

27/05/2026

For Angela - with love

Growth rarely arrives dressed in celebration. More often, it comes quietly, like the first thaw beneath frozen ground, unseen at first and easy to mistake for nothing at all.

Sometimes growth looks like stopping before you run yourself into the ground, or finally allowing yourself to rest in a world that worships exhaustion as though burnout were something noble.

Sometimes it means disappointing other people because you can no longer keep setting yourself on fire just to keep everyone else warm.

There are seasons when growth is found in the trembling act of asking for help, in loosening your grip on the performance of coping, or in admitting that the armour you built to survive has become too heavy to carry any further.

And sometimes… growth is simply surviving a winter that seemed determined to strip every leaf from the branches.

On those days, growth does not feel inspiring. It looks ordinary and fragile: answering the message you wanted to ignore, getting out of bed with a tired heart, making the appointment, taking the walk, feeding yourself properly, or trying again when disappointment has left its sediment in every corner of your being.

Not all growth arrives like blossom. Some of it happens underground, where no one claps for the roots stretching deeper.

Some transformations are as slow as weathering stone, quiet as tides reshaping a shoreline grain by grain while the world mistakes stillness for stagnation.

Yet becoming softer after life has hardened you, remaining open after betrayal, choosing honesty over performance, and setting boundaries where you once abandoned yourself are no small things. They are the quiet architecture of a life slowly rebuilding itself from the inside out.

There are seasons when growth looks far less like blooming and far more like carrying a small ember through the dark, protecting it carefully with both hands while trusting that, one day, it will become warmth again.

I see you.

Art ~ Sarooshay Iqbal

22/05/2026

Poets are not made from sorrow alone.

We are shaped by the whole untidy miracle of living.
By love that arrived like summer rain,
and love that left like winter.

By births and endings, kitchen-table laughter, empty chairs, closed doors,
and the strange ache of becoming.

I write because I have lived.
Because joy has split me open as much as grief ever did.

I have known the kind of happiness
that makes the ordinary holy…
sunlight on a wooden floor,
a hand reaching for mine in the dark,
children laughing somewhere beyond an open window.

And I have known loss too.
The kind that settles quietly into the bones and changes the weather of a person forever.

A poet carries all of it.

We gather moments the way beaches gather shells - the broken, the beautiful, the sharp-edged remnants of love and longing and hold them to the light so others might recognise themselves there.

Sometimes I write from tenderness.
Sometimes from heartbreak.
Sometimes simply from wonder
at how fragile and fierce a human life can be.

But always, I write to understand.
To make meaning from the passing of things.

To say:

I was here.
I loved.
I lost.
I survived.
I noticed.

And perhaps somewhere, someone reading my words will feel less alone
inside the great trembling privilege
of being alive.

I see you.

27/04/2026

I wrote this when my father was in hospital. I’m sure it will resonate with many if you.

He talked about small things.

Not in a small way - but as though they were everything.

A sunrise, he said, might be the last one.
Not dramatically. Not for effect.
Just a quiet knowing, laid gently on the table between them.

A last cup of coffee.
Held a little longer.
Sipped a little slower.
As if warmth could be stored somewhere deeper than the hands.

A last set of tablets.
Routine, ordinary, forgettable to most.
But even that had weight now - a marker in time, a quiet punctuation.

A last biscuit.
Half-smiled over.
Crumbs on a plate that suddenly mattered.

And the young nurse nodded,
pen hovering, her mind flicking through tasks, timings, checklists.

But that wasn’t really what he was saying.

Not at all.

He was saying
“Look up.”

Not at me.
Not at the chart.
At the sky that keeps changing, whether you notice it or not.

He was saying
“Listen.”

Because the birds don’t sing louder at the end.
We just finally hear them.

He was saying
“Smell the cut grass.”
The ordinary scent of an ordinary day
that you don’t yet realise is extraordinary.

He was saying
“Don’t wait.”

Don’t wait for a reason to notice your life.

Because one day,
these tiny, forgettable, passing moments will gather themselves up
and reveal what they always were…

the whole thing.m!

Care, they call it.

But so often it becomes movement without meaning.
Tasks completed.
Boxes ticked.
Bodies managed.
Time filled.

Rota over relationship.
Procedure over presence.

And somewhere in all of that,
the person -the actual, breathing, remembering, feeling person -
can disappear.

End of life becomes clinical.
Frailty becomes a problem to solve.

But he wasn’t a problem.

He was a man watching the edges of his world soften,
trying - gently, patiently -to show someone else where the real life still lived.

Not in the medication round.
Not in the paperwork.

But in the pause.

In the noticing.

In the way a biscuit can still taste like something.
In the way morning light still lands,
even now,
even here.

Dignity isn’t just in clean sheets or correctly given tablets.

It’s in being seen.

In being met.

In someone standing still long enough
to understand that the “routine”
isn’t routine at all.

It’s the last chance -sometimes -to feel human.

And maybe the quiet truth underneath it all is this:

We don’t need the end of life
to be reminded how to live.

But sometimes,
it’s the only place
we finally learn to look.

I see you.

Photo ~ My dad Peter on his 85th Birthday

25/04/2026

There is no “should” in grief.

It does not bend to timetables or tidy itself into stages you can tick off like a list. It spills, seeps, startles.
It arrives uninvited in the middle of an ordinary moment - while buttering toast, folding laundry, watching something forgettable on television and then suddenly the air changes.

People will offer you their versions of how it ought to be.
You should be feeling better by now.
You should get out more.
You should keep busy.
You should let go.

But grief is not a thing to be managed into submission. It is something that moves through you in its own language, at its own pace.

Sometimes it is loud and crashing, a storm that demands to be felt - yet sometimes, it is quiet, a low ache that hums beneath everything, like a note you can’t quite place but cannot ignore.

There is no right way to mourn.
There is only your way.

Your way might be tears that come easily, or tears that refuse to come at all.
It might be talking endlessly about what was lost, or holding it so close it feels almost secret.
It might be laughter that surprises you, followed by guilt that lingers.
It might be stillness.
It might be movement or it might be both, in the same hour.

Grief does not ask for your performance.
It asks only for your honesty.

And perhaps, gently, it asks for your permission. Permission to take the time it takes, to unfold in the way it must, to soften its edges not because you forced it to, but because, one day, almost without noticing, you find you can carry it differently.

Not smaller.
Not gone.
Just… woven into you in a way that no longer steals your breath.

I see you.

Art ~ David Jones
Still sorrow

20/04/2026

You cannot rescue anyone, not even your own child - no matter how much your heart insists that you should.

You can sit beside them.
You can listen without flinching.
You can bring your steadiness into the storm they’re standing in - your calm, your clarity, your hard-won peace. You can speak gently of what you’ve learned, of the paths you’ve walked, of the ways you’ve made sense of things when your own world felt fractured.

But you cannot reach inside them and rearrange their suffering.

You cannot carry what is theirs to carry.
You cannot walk the ground their feet must touch.
You cannot hand them truths that only become real through lived experience.

Even your wisest words may land too early, or too late, or not at all.
Even your deepest understanding may be something they simply cannot hold yet.

And that is not failure.
That is the nature of being human.

Each person must come to their own seeing.
Their own timing.
Their own quiet, internal shift that no one else can manufacture for them.

Your role is not to fix, or solve, or save.

It is to just be there. Steady, real, and unafraid of what is unfolding, without trying to control it.

To trust that, just as you have found your way through what once felt impossible, they too are finding theirs… even if it doesn’t look like it yet.

It’s hard.
It’s sad.
It’s a fact of life.

I see you.

Art ~ by Peter
Where I cannot follow

19/04/2026

Some days it feels like I’m not just miles away from my son in distance…

…but orbiting in silence.

As though I’ve been placed on a distant moon, watching him from a sky I cannot cross. Close enough to know he’s there… but too far to sit beside him, to reach for his hand.

Too far, even, to hear his voice.

I haven’t been able to speak to him. He’s too unwell.

And there is something uniquely painful in that when your child is still here, still in the world… and yet, for now is unreachable.

On the page of Liberation Therapies today, I’m sitting with that quiet, suspended space.

Because when your grown child is lost in the storm of their own mind, and you cannot even connect in the simplest way, it can feel like shouting across a void that doesn’t carry sound.

You remember who they are beneath it all.
The life they expected.
The plans, the ease, the ordinary hopes.

And you see how those have, for now, been eclipsed.

Their fears feel vast.
Their world, for them, is overwhelming.

And you… you would steady it, soften it, take it all away if love alone were enough.

But love, in moments like this, has to become something else.

It cannot fix.
It cannot reach in.
It cannot force a path through.

It can only remain.

So I come back to this image again abd again…

I am not the storm.
I am not the distance.

I am the lighthouse.

Even if he cannot see the light right now… even if the fog is too thick… the light is still there.

Steady. Waiting. Unmoved.

So this is the quiet pep talk I’m giving myself tonight - and maybe it’s for you too, if you’re loving someone who feels out of reach:

Finish the day and be done with it.

You have done what you could, from where you are, with what you have.
Yes, there have been moments of helplessness, of “I wish I could just…”

Let them rest.

You are carrying enough.

Tomorrow will come… softly, without demanding perfection.
Begin it gently.
Without dragging today’s sorrow behind you.

You are not absent.
You are not failing.

You are loving, in one of the hardest ways there is - without touch, without words, without certainty.

And still… you remain.

A mother.
A constant.
A quiet light that does not go out - even from the moon.

I see you.

Art ~ Geraldo Braga
Out of orbit

12/04/2026

There comes a moment - not marked by a birthday or a number,
but by a quiet shift in the air.

You realise you are no longer at the beginning of the story.
You are further along the road… and the road is narrowing.

Not in a frightening way but in a clarifying one.

Like a river that has stopped wandering and finally chosen its direction.

And with that clarity, some illusions begin to fall away.

You see that your children were never meant to carry you.

They are travellers too.
Living their own lives, pulled by their own currents.

And in the spaces between visits and calls… you may meet something unexpected:

Not abandonment — but a feeling of emptiness.

Because love, as deep as it is, does not always protect you from loneliness.

And it’s not just children.

Husbands, wives, lovers…
they are not here to live their lives through you.

Just as you were never meant to disappear into theirs.

Yet how easily we try.

We merge, we mould, we make quiet bargains — believing closeness means becoming one life.

But real love does not consume.
It stands beside.

Two whole lives… walking together, not absorbing one another.

Your body changes too.

It is no longer something that simply works in the background.
It becomes a conversation.

Energy is noticed.
Movement matters.
Rest becomes essential.

And you realise that your health was never just part of your life —
It was the ground beneath it.

So something shifts.

You stop waiting — for systems, for people, for someday.

And you begin, quietly, to rebuild how you stand in your life.

You understand that relying on yourself
is not selfish… it is stabilising.

You begin to take care of what matters.

Your body becomes a partner, not something to push.
Your peace becomes something you protect.

Not every argument needs you.
Not every person deserves access to you.

And slowly, but surely, life becomes calmer.

You stop outsourcing your joy.

You find it in small, steady places - a quiet cup of tea, a walk, a moment of stillness.

And in doing so… loneliness loosens its grip.

You also see the temptation to shrink.
To let age become limitation.

But strength still has a presence.
And you choose to stay engaged with life — in whatever way you can.

The past will always glow.

But living there steals from what is still here.

And even now… life is offering moments worth noticing.

And perhaps the deepest truth is this: No one is coming to rescue you.

But that isn’t the end of the story.

Because you are still here.
Still capable.
Still able to stand up for yourself and your life.

And that… well… that is where your real freedom begins.

I see you.

26/03/2026

For all of you who are ‘of a certain age’.

We get called “the elderly,” as if that explains us.
It doesn’t, it’s not even close.

Because what that word misses is this: we are the last people who remember a world that has completely disappeared.

I was born in 1958.
Which means I remember.

Not in headlines - but in texture.

You might see the grey hair, the slower steps. Time does that. But if you listen-really listen… you’ll hear something else.
Not fading.
Not fragility.

It’s Memory that is Lived.

We didn’t just grow older.
We crossed worlds.

Childhood was simple, and it was enough.

Skipping ropes slapping pavement in a steady rhythm.
Holidays meant staying with Nana or your Aunties, not airports, not all-inclusive escapes, just familiar rooms and the comfort of being known.

Playing out till the light changed and someone shouted your name from a doorway.
Marbles, bikes, scuffed knees, and no one tracking your every move.

No screens.
No noise.
No constant interruption.

Just life - happening where you stood.

We learned people face to face. You knew tone, expression, silence. That certain look!

You learned how to be with others without hiding behind anything.

Then the world began to open up.

The music changed first.
The sixties rolled in and suddenly everything had a pulse - energy, rebellion, possibility. You didn’t stream it. You waited for it. Saved for it. Played the records and cassettes over and over until it became part of you.

School made you patient. You wrote things down. Looked things up. Took your time. You couldn’t rush knowledge- it had weight.

And love… love wasn’t instant either.
It unfolded. Slowly. Properly. Conversations that lasted, not messages that disappeared. You got to know someone in real time, not edited fragments.

And then, almost without noticing, we became the generation that straddled two completely different worlds.

We remember letters. Proper ones. Waiting days, sometimes weeks.
Phones that stayed in one place - and sometimes weren’t private.
Television programes that arrived at a certain time, not whenever you fancied.

And now?

Now we carry everything in our hands. Faces, voices, information, memories - instant.

We watched men walk on the moon from our living rooms. Then we watched computers arrive… and then shrink… and then quietly take over everything.

And through all of it - we adapted.

That’s the truth people don’t always see.

We didn’t resist change.
We absorbed it.
We kept up - while holding onto something solid underneath.

We grew up with different fears too. Illnesses that felt closer.
Uncertainty that didn’t come with constant updates or reassurance. You just… got on with it.
And somewhere along the way, that builds a kind of strength that doesn’t need announcing.

And still - some things never left us.

The taste of food that actually tasted of something.
A conversation that wasn’t rushed or half-held.
The quiet understanding of presence - real presence.

We’ve loved. Lost. Carried on.
We’ve watched people come and go, and we hold stories that no one else quite carries in the same way.

We are not relics.

We are the link.

Proof that the world can change beyond recognition… and something essential can still remain intact.

So yes - call us “elderly.”

We’ll smile.

Because we know this:

We remember before.
And there’s power in that.

We are not just ageing.
We are holding a version of the world that no longer exists.

And that makes us rare.
Quietly remarkable.
And impossible to replace.

I see you.

19/03/2026

For Sue… freedom awaits.

Perhaps the quietest tragedy of all is not that freedom is out of reach, but that it stands so close - like an open door we never quite notice, or a key resting patiently in our own pocket, while we continue to circle the same locked room.

Years can slip by this way. Not in dramatic collapse, but in repetition. The same thoughts rehearsed like well-worn lines. The same emotional weather returning with faithful predictability. We become inhabitants of a familiar landscape - one shaped not by possibility, but by pattern.

There is a kind of trance to it.

A soft, persistent spell of unworthiness hums beneath the surface, so constant we stop hearing it. It colours everything and we begin to measure ourselves against invisible scales, always somehow falling short. And so, without quite deciding to, we build a life around that assumption.
We edit our desires.
We shrink our reach.
We learn the contours of our own confinement so well that it begins to feel like home.

But what if…the cage is not locked… it is learned.

Bar by bar, it is constructed from self-judgment, from the tight grip of anxiety, from the restless sense that something is missing or wrong or not enough. Even dissatisfaction becomes familiar, like an old coat we no longer question wearing, no matter how heavy it feels.

And here is the paradox: what imprisons us is not force, but familiarity. Yes, read that again.

Because to step beyond it would mean entering unknown territory. It would mean loosening the identity we have so carefully, unconsciously maintained. It would mean risking the unsettling possibility that we were never as limited as we believed.

Freedom, then, is not a distant destination. It is a quiet invitation. A subtle shift. It is the moment you notice the pattern instead of stepping into it. It is the breath where you pause instead of obey. The gentle, radical act of questioning the voice that says, “this is just who I am.”

And perhaps that is where everything begins to change.

Not with a grand escape, but with the smallest turning of awareness - like a window unlatched in a long-closed room, letting in air that was always there, simply waiting.

So go and breathe the air. Expand your lungs dear friend. The key to the world is in your pocket.

I see you.

Art ~ Tatjana Awshew
A difficult choice

18/03/2026

This is from a dear friend of mine and it’s a must read for ALL women - whatever their age. Stay Safe! Please share. X

“I've noted some really reprehensible treatment of women by the Pick Up Community, as they manipulate hormones like cortisol, serotonin, dopamine and oxytocin to create romantic interest, and above all, sexual attraction. If people want to hook-up at an event, that's their own business. But some of my friends and students have been targeted by these slimeballs, and I want to arm women against them. That's why I put this document together: I hope it is useful for somebody.

Pickup Manipulation Red Flags Handout

Protecting Yourself From Pickup Manipulation

This guide helps you recognize common psychological tactics used by the pickup community. These tactics are designed to influence emotions quickly and create artificial attraction.

Key idea:
Healthy attraction grows slowly through comfort, respect, and consistency. Manipulation creates confusion, pressure, and emotional turbulence.

The 7 Red Flags of Pickup Manipulation

1. Confidence Underminer: A compliment wrapped in an insult. Examples: You are pretty confident for someone like you. You would be really attractive if you dressed better.
Purpose: Lower your confidence so you seek his approval.
What to do: Do not engage with the insult. You do not need to prove yourself to anyone

Emotional Rollercoaster: Strong interest followed by sudden withdrawal.
Examples: Warm and flirty, then cold or dismissive.Interested one minute, distant the next.
Purpose: Create emotional uncertainty so you chase validation. What to do: Value consistency. If it feels unstable, step back

Instant Intimacy: Pushing closeness very quickly.
Examples: I feel like I have known you forever!
Sharing deep personal stories right away. Intense eye contact
to force connection.
Purpose: Trigger bonding feelings before trust exists.
What to do: Slow things down. Real intimacy takes time

Early Physical Escalation:
Touch increases quickly early on. Examples: Touching your arm or shoulder. Guiding you by the back. Long hugs or hand holding right away.
Purpose: Normalize touch and lower resistance.
What to do" Set boundaries immediately if it feels off. Step back or say no

Manufactured Jealousy: Showing that other women want him. Examples: Flirting with others in front of you. Talking about how many women are interested in him. Showing off attention from others.
Purpose: Create competition so you value him more.
What to do: Do not compete. Genuine interest does not require a performance

Fantasy Future. Talking about a shared future very early. Examples: We should travel together. You would love my place at the lake. You and I would be dangerous together!
Purpose: Create emotional bonding through imagination.
What to do: Treat early future talk as entertainment, not reality

Isolation From Your Support System: Trying to separate you from friends early.
Examples: Let us go somewhere quieter... Come outside with me for a minute... Let us leave your friends and go somewhere else...
Purpose: Reduce your support and increase influence.
What to do: Stay with your group unless you choose otherwise.

Simple Rule: If someone creates confusion, pressure, or emotional turbulence quickly, slow the interaction down. Healthy connections feel calm, respectful, and clear.

Three Questions That Break Manipulation

These questions shift control back to you and expose unclear or manipulative behavior.

"What exactly do you mean by that?"
Use when you receive a backhanded compliment or unclear comment. It forces clarity and removes the hidden jab

"Why would you say that to someone you just met?"
This brings the behavior into the open and makes manipulation uncomfortable to continue

"Are you trying to impress me or get to know me?" This resets the interaction and puts responsibility for honesty back on him

Final Reminder: Manipulation depends on speed and confusion. Confidence comes from slowing things down, asking clear questions, and trusting your instincts. You are never obligated to continue an interaction that feels uncomfortable. Respectful people respect boundaries.”

Liberation Therapies & Coaching

27/05/2026

22/05/2026

27/04/2026

25/04/2026

20/04/2026

19/04/2026

12/04/2026

26/03/2026

19/03/2026

18/03/2026

Address

Opening Hours

Website

Alerts

Contact The Practice

Shortcuts

Share

Category

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