Rachel Gwilym

Education

/ɛdjʊˈkeɪʃ(ə)n/

1. the process of receiving or giving systematic instruction, especially at a school or university.

I received systematic instruction at Great Ormond Street Hospital where I qualified as a paediatric nurse. I worked as a staff nurse with children who had cancer and AIDS and this made me wonder why our culture so ineptly accommodates a child's right to a good death. I took this preoccupation to the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, where I studied African and Asian Medical Related Studies and Study of Religions, driven to find out how other cultures perceive health. The interconnections between religion and healing intrigued me so much that I continued my enquiry at Bristol University where I completed a Master's degree in Contemporary Theology. Here I began my love affair with the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahado Church which drew me back to SOAS where I wrote my doctoral thesis on healing in the Ethiopian church under the dear Dr Julia Leslie. Attentive motherhood, perceptive feminism and spiritual enquiry combined with academic brilliance under Julia's tutelage. This prepared me well for the years that followed, mothering my oldest daughter. I've since combined motherhood with a certificate in integrated counselling from the Mary Ward Centre, a diploma to become a Funeral Celebrant at Greenfuse Funerals, certification training in the Grief Recovery Method and Before I Go Solutions to become an end of life planning coach. I have trained with the Yoga Nidra Network in Yoga Nidra for adults and children, participated in embodied yoga principles training, short courses in non-violent communication and the arts for people with dementia and I am one of Gary Craig's students in the Emotional Freedom Technique. I am at the end of a three year apprenticeship with the Scottish Storytelling Centre which has been a journey into the ancient wisdom of our ancestors.

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2. an enlightening experience.

Less systematic, but more enlightening, gruelling and messy has been my path through motherhood. Four daughters, each born at home taught me the power of the female body to perform this vital task, without help or intervention. Motherhood also brought me into contact with Naomi Stadlen, author of What Mothers Do, Especially When it Looks Like Nothing. For three wonderful years, I was nurtured in the art of mothering at her group Mothers Talking held at the Natural Birth Centre in London. Home-making, home-educating, preaching at the local church, setting up The Bean Nighe Circle, Tiree Story Tent, Operation Meditation Tiree and opening the boutique Buttercups and Clover on the Isle of Tiree represent my attendance in the university of life.

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I've had an education altogether unenlightening in broken relationships and through the family courts. Unenlightening? Well, here's the paradox because these traumas turned out to be the doorway into the unified field of the non dual. Dark days brought me to the work of Byron Katie and the Course in Miracles. I'm no mystic, but meditation has become a way of being and my formal education in mysticism and spirituality has spilled over into my day to day life.