To Accompany Is to Believe (Invitation to Armida's Garden)

I often visit the garden. It's a conceptual garden, not a physical one. But not less real to me. I can see it with the vision that belongs not to the eyes but to the soul. I can feel it as a garden that blooms and fades with the turning of the inner sun. One day the path runs between box hedges well trimmed, the next among palm trees shaking their green laughter in the wind. It changes with my pulse, as all real gardens do; the stones remember, and I move along the pathway, always returning, though never to the same place.

It is not a place I invented, but one I visit. I can also imagine another person there, walking beside me. Someone who listens. Someone who offers guidance when needed. The thought of that presence gives me the comfort of being accompanied, but also the comfort of accompanying.

That image became a seed, and from it, concept of having the garden as a living part of House of Armida.

The House has always felt like a structure, with its foundations, its rooms, its inner logic. It is made of all the directions my life has taken, all the learning that has become embodied. The House holds the frameworks, the courses, the workshops, the rituals, the paths of calm, love, and magic. But the Garden is something else. It is not a programme or a plan. It is a space for two people to walk, in intimacy and presence. It is where personal accompaniment happens.

I have used the phrase “personal accompaniment in the spirit of ancient mentors.” You can see it on the House plan. The word "coaching" would be too directive for what I am doing, and "counselling" is not exactly the scope. Accompaniment describes what truly happens, a movement together, step by step, where I offer my experience, intuition, and craft to help someone see more clearly and live with more agency.

For more than twenty years I have mentored, taught, and supported others in finding their way. I have studied, but my approach is not formulaic. I accompany through attention. My work holds the listening of therapy and the pragmatism of teaching, yet its essence lies in relationship, a more humanist approach, the living exchange between two minds meeting in honesty. I come as a companion who has walked long enough to know some paths, and who still delights in discovery.

In the Garden, questions are important, but they are many more resources. What grows there are insights, actions, gestures, and sometimes small revolutions in the way you move through life. My role is not only to listen, but to offer tools that may serve you, tools of empowerment and direction, soulful and practical at once. I want to see them working for you, adapted to your way of being. When something feels too distant or too heavy, we adjust it together.

Sometimes we might work with imagination, creating inner landscapes, playing with possible futures, even giving voice to parts of yourself that have long been silenced. Sometimes we might work with the body, with breath, movement, stillness, or sound. There may be walking, there may be silence, there may be laughter. The form changes depending on what is needed. What remains constant is the quality of presence.

The sessions themselves can happen in different ways. Many people meet me online, from their own homes, finding that reflection flows easily through the screen when attention is sincere. Others prefer to meet in person. When we meet locally, it may be walking together if the weather allows, or it may be indoors, in Aldershot, where we can sit and work in stillness.

Accompaniment is not psychotherapy. It is not analysis of the past (unless it comes in and we find it apropriate), is not the construction of a self-improvement plan. It is an act of cultivation, tending to the living ground of your present, so that direction can emerge from within it. The emphasis is on movement and awareness.

Each encounter is creative. I bring with me a vast garden of tools collected from many disciplines, from psychology, art, pedagogy, energy work, and philosophy. But tools alone are not enough. The heart of this work is attention. When two people meet in real attention, something begins to grow that belongs to neither of them and yet nourishes both. That growth is what I care for.

When and if a client feels paralysed by the idea of any excersise, we don’t push against that wall, we find a gentler way in, something that makes wanting safe again. The aim is not to force growth, but to create the right conditions for it.

The Garden is a space of collaboration. I bring structure, experience, and tools. You bring curiosity, courage, and the raw material of your life. Together we shape the process. I learn as much as I teach. Many of the practices I now use were born in those shared spaces, from the real needs of real people. Creativity is at the centre of it all, not artistic creativity alone, but the creativity of being alive, responsive, and willing to evolve.

There is also joy in this work. Even when we explore difficult terrain, we do so with lightness, with humour when possible, with the understanding that growth is does not need to come with having a bad time. The garden welcomes everything, sorrow, doubt, play, tenderness. It holds the paradoxes of being human without needing to resolve them too quickly.

To accompany someone is to believe in their capacity to become more themselves. It is to trust that clarity, love, and purpose are already present, even if covered by fear or confusion. My task is to help you uncover them, to create conditions where you can see what has been waiting all along.

When people step into the Garden, they often say they feel a sense of relief. You do not have to prove your worth, achieve serenity, or pretend you are ready. You simply begin where you are. From that point, we walk.

The world today moves at a speed that leaves little room for reflection. Many people come to me not because they have a serious deep problem, but because they are tired of functioning on the surface. They long for depth, not drama, but depth. They sense that thery could be living in a different, more coherent way.

I believe in the intelligence of every person I work with. I believe that wisdom grows when is shared and colaborative, and that guidance, when offered with respect, can be both gentle and firm. Many ancient mentors understood that: they walked with their students not like they are an authority, but as living examples of curiosity and integrity. That is the spirit I hold.

Perhaps this is what I have always sought: a space where learning and love are not separated. A space where being guided feels like being met. Where knowledge grows alongside kindness, and where both can take root in daily life.

Whether we are sitting, walking, speaking, or simply listening together, the work remains the same: to return you to your own aliveness.

If you recognise yourself in these words, you are already near the gate.