About – Shaun Hotchkiss

Shaun Hotchkiss

My Journey

In 1988 I founded my environmental health consultancy business dealing in pest control, pollution and hazardous waste. Over the next 16 years I built it from scratch into a multi million pound national business. As often happens with rapid growth, it ran into difficulties and it sadly went into liquidation. I was left feeling defeated, ashamed and confused by this failure and needed to understand what had gone wrong with my life. Something was missing, I was restless in my soul and I started searching for answers.

Over the next couple of years I travelled extensively ending up in India. Here I attended a number of retreats, studied Buddhism and set up a Holistic Retreat centre. This was a small venture which had a mix of things that I loved. Good food, physical activity, beaches, yoga, learning and meeting plenty of interesting people all in a beautiful tropical setting. I realised I had achieved a personal transformation on the environmental level which influenced a change in some of my beliefs and values. However I still felt something was missing. Having experienced this transformation it helped me to focus on what to do next and pursue this transition into a new direction and I started looking for a new pathway.

Initially, I returned to the UK for a 3 month period to gain some skills however this move actually developed into the new path that I am still travelling today. On my return I attended university and studied Integrative Psychology at the highly respected Sherwood Institute of Psychotherapy. This was were I met Rosemary, the first important person on my journey who was my tutor, supervisor and mentor. She is still my mentor to this day. Also at the time of my return, as so often happens in life when you have a new goal and motivation to create a new beginning, I met the second important person in my life, Caitlin Walker, the founder of Training Attention. I fell in love and married her and twenty years on with have three beautiful children, two dogs and numerous chickens. Caitlin opened up her world of NLP, Clean and Systemic Modelling to me and I felt most welcomed.

I had the opportunity to train and work with some of the creators in the fields of Clean Language, Clean Space, Emergent Knowledge, Symbolic and Systemic Modelling. These included David Grove, Penny Tompkins, James Lawley along with Caitlin. On instantly meeting David, in 2001, we became friends and this quickly developed into a professional relationship. Firstly, I became an apprentice to his work while also holding space for him to develop and flourish for the rest of his life. I am also lucky to have James Lawley as a mentor on this side of my work life

With my study in Integrated Psychotherapy as well as working with Caitlin, David, Penny and James I have gained a unique integration of all of these fields. From this perspective I provide consultancy, coaching, therapy and I am also a registered UKCP supervisor. As I have learned from those who have gone before me I want to provide supervision to other professionals in these fields so they too can benefit. This combination of disciplines is powerful and not common in the coaching or therapeutic worlds. Since setting up my business I have worked with numerous individuals, couples and groups working with transformative change enabling them to become more of and understand themselves so they can reach their desired outcomes and become healthier and happier.

I also realise that I had an excellent grounding in care and support as both my parents were highly trained Mental Health nurses along with Social Work. They established their own business which I grew up immersed in. My father was involved in providing expertise and guidance to the mental health provision of the day. Growing up in this environment gave me an excellent grounding.

A theme through my entire work life is my ability to hold space by providing a place that is safe and secure. This is demonstrated by my environmental health business were I created habitable environments were people had to live and work. This has carried on in my current practice as I work with people facing crisis’s due to a broad spectrum of human experiences. I am able to work at both ends of the spectrum from those suffering suicidal tendencies to those who are having a spiritual crisis and everything else between. My skill set enables me to be fully present physically, energetically, emotionally and intellectually which enables me to hold vast safe, developmental space environmentally, emotionally, psychologically and spiritually. I can calmly develop and maintain trust, safety and focus which invites self-awareness, self-care and self-regulation for the participants either individually or as a group. The participants can reflect and understand themselves when treated with this type of kindness, care, compassion and respect

During my apprenticeship with David Grove I learnt all about Clean Space and Emergent Knowledge and am the only practitioner in the UK to have the Whirly Gig developed by him which can facilitate clients more effectively. This apparatus gives a unique aspect to clean space and emergent knowledge work as it enables the clients to access space in 360 degrees. This enables them to easily access physical and spatial wisdom encoded in their system.

We run “The Practice” – a beautiful retreat centre that is also our family home. There I see one-to-one clients for coaching and supervision. I supervise counsellors and coaches and therapists from other disciplines. I run events, and host Clean Learning trainings and events and of course the wonderful Northern Taste of Clean. Plus I am busy with family life. I love Caitlin and her values and I’m proud to support her as her husband and work colleague. I trust and admire what she’s trying to do in world. The work that David Grove created is profound and effective. Clean Space in particular suits my style. I am dyslexic and have a natural affinity with doing things spatially. It fits me better than more formal analytical therapy.

Qualification