Robert Fordham Coach

Who are you going to find at the other end of the email, Skype or telephone? Who's behind Deeper Coaching? Who is 'Robert Fordham, coach'?

I imagine you might be asking yourself: What's are his interests, background and qualifications? How does he use coaching in his own life? How did he get here? Is there anything distinctive about his approach?

My interest in personal development – and the 'restraining orders' placed on us by our conditioning – goes back a long way. I was brought up in London. I was fifteen at the end of 1968 ... a year when the city seemed to explode with new ideas, ideals and new possibilities.

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
    But to be young was very heaven!

(as Wordsworth wrote, looking back on the French revolution).

It was!

There was music, poetry, politics, spiritual ideas from all points (but particularly eastern mysticism and meditation). The Beatles had beetled off to India and were meditating with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

I was a bit of a weekend hippie ... but some influences stayed with me. I was reading stories about a weird Mexican Indian called don Juan Matus, written by Carlos Castaneda (at the psychedelic end of the spectrum). I was also exposed to a disciplined approach to meditation in classes taught by a Burmese diplomat called U Maung Maung Ji.

These were taught – every other Friday evening – at a place called Gandalf's Garden at World's End on the King's Road, Chelsea. It reeked of joss-sticks and patchouli!

Don Juan's Toltec ideas caught up with me thirty years later in the form of my favourite personal development book, The Four Agreements.

Maung had two great attributes: simplicity and solidity. He was a master, steeped in his country's Buddhist tradition. For me, he dispensed straightforward wisdom and good sense. He was a fabulous antidote to the headier stuff that characterised the time.

I flirted with Buddhism for a lot of years, and have been on a month-long retreat at a Tibetan monastery in Nepal. But, for all that, I didn't really take root in Buddhism, though the practice of meditation remained important to me.

School and University passed pretty uneventfully, though my first school was tough. I was bullied for years there, just soaking it up ... and having my self-confidence battered to smithereens. It was probably that experience that set me on the path of rebuilding myself and led to that early interest in personal development.

Robert Fordham coach started out by developing the knack of listening to friends – remember teenage angst and the dramas? ... oh, the dramas! – and enjoying connecting beyond the mundane. I enjoyed the sense that friendships and relationships were deepening, maturing. I enjoyed searching for the wisdom in those everyday events.

At University, I was a leading member of an expedition to Nepal. I'd grown to love the mountains, climbed in the Alps, and saw an opportunity to spend a big chunk of time with mountain people. The team was to spend 18 months on a conservation project in the newly designated Langtang National Park.

However, I had to pull out when illness – another major influence in my life – intervened. When I asked the specialist about my chances of making the trip, he answered, “It would probably kill you.” At 22, I'd never heard such devastating news. I'm not sure I grieved that particularly well. After all, I'd spent 18 months with my team planning that expedition. It had become my life.

I bore it with the same mask of stoicism that got me through the bullying. A survival mechanism, yes. Maybe not the most skillful way of dealing with a loss – but that was the best I could do at the time.

I started teaching, but a wonderful teacher training course had raised my expectations of what schools could be. I was happy working with my niche: the most unruly, disaffected young people in the school. And I was very happy to join a team that was working hard to support those difficult-to-reach adolescents, I just got more and more disenchanted with the institution of school ... and the process of schooling. I guess I was bound to!

I just had an overriding impression of light bulbs being switched off. I didn't want to be part of that. But I had seen that I had skills to work in a more informal way, building confidence and self-esteem in people who had been damaged by life's ravages. I moved to a social care post.

I had another big deal with illness, was thinking “There must be another way,” when a mate, a very flexible, open-minded GP and Buddhist, asked, “Have you thought of homeopathy?” I knew nothing about it. Odd as I had been considering alternatives for years by then. What Garry knew you could probably have written on the back of a postage stamp – with room to spare!

That started my involvement with homeopathy, first as a patient, then as a student, practitioner and a director of a clinic and a training school. Key experiences here: dealing with the charlatans who ran the first training school I attended. Intent on a fast buck at a time when alternative medicine was growing quickly, they knew little more than we did!

A bunch of us left and set up a collective to bring in teachers we trusted. We started as a ripped-off damaged, disillusioned bunch who barely trusted each other and finished having a fantastic experience of self-directed professional education. The course we developed for ourselves was very successful.

After a few years providing seminars for practitioners, four of us started what was to become The Sheffield School of Homeopathy. Another great team. We all played pretty major roles in our own professional association. I was a member of the education committee, college heads' standing conference and acted as an expert witness in three negligence cases. We achieved the aim of taking homeopathy into mainstream university education when we merged with the London College of Classical Homeopathy.

Subsequent to that, I was appointed as a course design consultant for the homeopathic modules of a Masters level course at QMUC, Edinburgh. This was a course for qualified health professionals: nurses, physios, occupational therapists, etc. I was then offered a post leading that part of the course.

By that time I was also a partner/director of a clinic. We were responsible for two major projects in partnership with the NHS: delivering a weekly clinic to patients of a busy city-centre GP surgery and providing treatment to clients of a local NHS drug and alcohol team. I was responsible for the latter. It grew from small beginnings to a full-time case-load in two years.

Those experiences – the last five paragraphs span 1982 to 2004 – had a major influence on the development of Robert Fordham, coach. I learned a lot during that time: about myself, about illness, about supporting patients, colleagues, students, supervising newly qualified practitioners and about running a business. Most of what we did was at the leading edge. Homeopathy, as an emerging profession, had no set models for how it was going to develop.

As a life and performance coach, it was all relevant experience. Just one example: coaching courses frequently take just a few days. Our personal-professional development classes took up 25% of the curriculum over the four years' duration of the course.

That's a whole lotta personal development! As a result of that depth, I was recruited by a local college to teach counselling and communication skills classes with 100 contact hours. I think my coaching benefits from that range and depth of experience.

The origin of Robert Fordham coach with aspirations to 'Deeper Coaching' lies in fielding questions from thousands of patients over the years. Modern homeopathy has got much more in common with psychological approaches than medicine.

Patients would say: “Hey, this seems to be working!” (the note of surprise is intentional!) “You've obviously got a handle on this. Can you explain to me how you understand my story ... what are you seeing?”

And I'd set about feeding back to them where I saw their inner conflicts and dilemmas and exploring blocks and barriers that they were unaware of. These sap your emotional and physical energy, resulting in bodily stress and burn out.

Further, illness (and the language we use to describe our stresses ... and our lives) frequently has a strong symbolic or metaphorical component. Reading the symbols with clients, allowing them to hear the strongly metaphorical content of parts of their own story often has a very liberating effect. This applies to all the stories we tell ourselves, about who we are and the pain we experience, not just to people with a specific illness.

It's a simple, clean approach. The focus: raising your self-awareness.

Let's just become aware of what's there: in thoughts, words, feelings emotions, dreams, memories and physical sensations. Let's re-experience those parts of you as a package, bringing those different elements together in the coaching session. The heightened awareness you experience is the engine for change.

I've completed postgraduate studies in Coaching for Organizational Excellence at Sunderland University Business School. And the work of don Miguel Ruiz - who has made the Toltec ideas I first came across on 1968 accessible to so many people - has had a huge influence on the "Deeper" end of Deeper Coaching.

Congratulations on reaching the end of this! It kind of grew in the telling. I hope it answers at least some of your questions ... and hopefully conveys a little of who I am.

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I also use it to publicise workshops, seminars, retreats and spiritual journeys run by myself and people I've worked closely with.

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Look forward to hearing from you.

Shine on!