Hello again. I thought as this is a new blog I’d better give you a bit of background information so that you can get an idea of where I’m coming from, so to speak.

My first introduction to anything remotely connected with personal development came in 1983 when I was living in London. I was going through a bad patch self-esteem wise and couldn’t seem to find a job or see any way out of my financial situation. I got so fed up one day that I decided to sell some of my treasured cassettes to give me some spending money. I had heard of a place called ‘Mysteries’ in Covent Garden that apparently sold lots of lovely things. I found a store in Notting Hill Gate that bought my cassettes and set off to Covent Garden. I don’t think I was prepared for the sheer amount of books, cassettes, gifts etc. that they had in Mysteries. I was overwhelmed! However, I came across a book by Shakti Gawain called ‘Creative Visualisation’ and found it very difficult to put it down. So that’s what I bought. I took it home and read and re-read it, trying to put her very sensible advice into action. I did feel better for doing the exercises. After this, I created my own career reading Tarot cards in Great Yarmouth during the holiday season. I didn’t make a lot but enough to pay my rent and keep going. My first success.

It didn’t last too long though as I had to move back to Hull (where I was born) to help look after Gran, who was not very well. The rest is a long story, which includes moving to Clare in Suffolk, then to Howden in East Yorkshire, and eventually ending up in Beverley where I now live.

During that time, I didn’t do much in the way of personal development but kept on reading ‘Creative Visualisation’ whenever the mood took me. Then in 1999 I had a bad cold one day which kept me from work so I headed to the local library. You know how they say “the book just fell into my hands”? Well, that’s what happened with Louise Hay’s ‘You Can Heal Your Life’. Being off work meant I had a whole week to read and digest the book. It was wonderful! And, can you believe it, an advertisement appeared in that week’s local paper advertising a Louise Hay weekend course. Considering I’d never heard of Louise Hay before, I thought this was too coincidental, so I went along. The course was a revelation. I’d never done anything like that before. What I learned there was that I wasn’t as bad as I thought I was, and that it is our own thoughts and beliefs that create our lives. Shortly afterwards, while playing around on the Internet I found the Louise Hay Teacher Training site and decided to go and train so that I could pass all of this wonderful knowledge on. The man at the bank was very kind and gave me a loan, and I set off for Ireland to do the week-long training course. This was the best week of my life, only topped the next year when I attended the advanced teacher training in San Diego in California.

Since then, I’ve read what seems like hundreds of personal and spiritual development books, run Louise Hay groups and developed my own Positively Me! philosophy as well as branching out into running meditation groups too. My development continues apace. A couple of years ago, I underwent my level one Reiki attunement and have since gone on to take attunements to the Master level. The Reiki has been really helpful, not only to heal physical ailments, but as a personal development tool to give me insights too.

I decided early on that I wanted to create a place where people would be able to come and do workshops and receive Reiki treatments etc. Somewhere they could come and forget their troubles for a while and so the idea for The Rainbow Centre came about. The house I live in is really too small for all my plans and ideas but I’m affirming like mad for the money to come to buy a bigger space to work from.