We support you through every stage of your health and life journey
We work alongside conventional care pathways, as part of your ‘team’, supporting the whole human, not just your physical needs.
Our integrated coaching and therapeutic approach incorporates evidence-based approaches with a holistic and person centred focus, tailored to your needs to aid your healing and focus, during and beyond challenging situations.
Cancer and chronic illness
Our founder Fiona is a specialist in coaching people with cancer and chronic illness, helping them to develop a greater understanding and awareness of themselves that go hand in hand with tools, techniques and new strategies that support them in their situation.
As a direct result of this experience, coaching aligns with the diagnostic, treatment, living with and beyond, patient pathway.
This then informs the journey you go on with us, encompassing you as a human, not ‘just’ the patient, partner or carer.
Her experience in this field is vast, including:
- Lived experiences relating to herself and loved ones
- Coaching staff at the Royal Marsden specialist cancer hospital
- Being Operational Head of an NIHR Biomedical Research Centre and Head of Programme Delivery for Clinical Services
- Volunteering as a Professional Coach at The Royal Surrey County Hospital, in The Fountain Centre
- Being part of Health Education England (HEE) funded PhD study with Portsmouth University
- Supporting Working With Cancer, a Social Enterprise, as an Associate Coach
- Being awarded the NLP in Healthcare award for her services to cancer patients
- Collaborating with colleagues to write a book, Empowerment in Health and Wellness
Diagnosis of any chronic, acute or life limiting conditions can be overwhelming to comprehend and navigate. At Kora we support you in managing the uncertainty, helping to improve your lived experience and make realistic and practical plans to control what you can and release and manage what you can’t.
You may be experiencing a huge range of emotions, from fear to disbelief and anger. We use accepted clinical tools, plus holistic therapeutic approaches, tailored to you to help you manage this challenging time.
We can also support you with planning more difficult conversations, helping you to advocate for yourself and communicating your needs and wants effectively.
One of the first questions we’re often asked by people facing surgery is ‘Am I Making the Right Decision’. Even if you feel you have no choice other than to have an operation, you may be worrying and this can often become an anxious spiral.
Many of us who have been advised to have surgery may experience fears prior to it and need support with their wellbeing, and related future identity.
We can’t tell you ‘yes’ you’re making the right choice, as we honour you as the expert in your life. We can help you decide that the path you’re on is the right one, supporting your emotional wellness associated with your decision making.
It’s about enabling you to welcome your surgery with confidence, setting an intention for the best possible outcome, if that is what you choose. It’s also supporting you if you choose not to go ahead, as well as related grief and the potential impacts of your choices.
Our clients experiences have shown us that this process supports recovery and success rates in many patients.
You might be facing treatments and related side effects including:
- Chemotherapy
- Radiotherapy
- Drug regimes
- Hair loss
- Hot flushes
- Loss of mobility and freedom
- Anxiety/distress/depression
- Feeling like a ‘sick’ person
- Nausea
- Fatigue/chronic fatigue
- Social isolation
We can help you to explore your feelings about treatments and how it is impacting your life, optimising your choices and self direction through Coaching, NLP, Mindfulness, Hypnotherapy and Nature support.
Our approach is well respected, we are approached by Consultants and Health Professionals asking us to deliver coaching to develop resilience and emotional wellbeing before the client has surgery with the intention of facilitating recovery post surgery.
This is really helpful especially if you are experiencing a wealth of feelings and emotions that you perhaps don’t wish to share with your partner, family or children for fear of distressing them.
We act as a safe space where you can be honest about your thoughts and feelings, supporting you to understand and decide what is best for you, as well as forming strategies for managing those around you. This is your time to share and download , knowing that we are present and supporting you throughout.
Everyone’s experience and situation is different, and therefore Kora’s approach is personal to you, meeting you where you are now.
A single session may meet your needs, or you may require longer. This is a process of nourishing yourself to optimal health and wellbeing, considering your needs in the now, and informing your new reality, rather than feeling you have to rush yourself ‘back’ to your ‘before’ life.
We support you, gently moving you forwards with a holistic approach for healing, whilst managing any emotional aspects you may be experiencing such as feelings of fear in relation to recurrence, guilt, vulnerability, lack of confidence, feeling misunderstood, frustrated, angry or sad.
Mental health and wellness
Mental health and its relationship with our physical and spiritual being, is a hugely important part of the overall wellness picture. The mind/body connection is one of the key influences on our overall health.
You may be experiencing isolated mental health concerns, or challenges as a result of change or illness.
If others can’t see symptoms, or you simply don’t know how to deal with what’s going on for you, it’s tempting to hide or ignore it and ‘just keep going’, or you may start to isolate yourself from those around you.
Eventually though, pain or ill health in our bodies forces us to pay attention to our internal suffering, no matter how unpleasant or inconvenient.
Our goal is to support people to be mentally well before it turns into a serious physical ailment.
To this end, our work also aims to help you manage conditions and disorders like:
- Stress and anxiety
- Phobias
- Low mood
- Insomnia
- Panic attacks
Using a combined approach, which you can explore in our what we do page we can work with you to manage and improve your mental, as well as physical and spiritual health.
Grief and loss
Grief can affect us all in so many ways throughout our life. Not just when we lose someone we love, but also when life changes in ways we don’t want or expect.
Kora can work with you, helping you to navigate through these experiences of loss and significant life events, enabling you to gently grow around your grief, supporting your pathway to acceptance that life will be or is different and that’s ok in whatever way is right for you.
