Back in the early 1990s, my father’s cousin Lavinia introduced me to the extraordinary 12th century abbess Hildegard of Bingen, and for that I am forever grateful. Little did I know then that she would become such a key influence in my life and work.
At first, I came to know Hildegard through her breathtakingly beautiful music, then I started to explore her writing on herbal medicine and food, and this led me to take a deep dive into her art, her visions and her ‘vices and virtues’ form of psychotherapy.
Hildegard has the power to enable us to see parts of ourselves in her adn through her. I saw her connection to nature and how it was the bedrock of her spiritual expression and her medicine, and this touched something deep in me. I saw how her childhood experiences of visions would ultimately manifest and find their full expression later in post-menopausal life, and I feel this is the same for me too.
When I stayed at her abbey at Eibingen in Germany, it was not in the beautiful church that I found her, but rather in the fields and woods around the abbey. She and I met amid the mugwort and plantain, and the swaying fields of grain.
I love working with Hildegard's wisdom. She is a woman for our times. She has infused my coaching practice with her lyrical and practical ways of finding resilience, re-setting self-talk and developing daily practices to support health and wellbeing. And as a woman she has been a profound source of inspiration and a role model from across the ages.
