The Gifts of Trauma

For those of us who have never quite fit in the environments where we found ourselves, the search for home can extend beyond geography. Stephanie Sheng knows this intimately. Born in the US to a father from China and mother from Hong Kong, she belonged fully to neither culture. At age 10, when her father was diagnosed with stage four cancer, big questions arrived and never really left. 
A Compassionate Inquiry® Practitioner, Somatic Therapist, Yoga Guide and Psychedelic Integration Specialist, Stephanie has spent years supporting others in finding their way back 'home' to themselves.
Drawing on her own path which was shaped by displacement, loss, grief, and a decades-long inquiry into what it means to truly belong, in this thoughtful conversation, she reflects on:
- How growing up between cultures, and her father's last 10 years, seeded her life's work
- The moment in a Colombian Maloka that transformed her understanding of 'home'
- Why homecoming is less a destination than a practice of returning to what we already are
- How it can look and feel when we're  longing for home, but don't know it
If you have ever felt like a stranger in your own life, this episode shares gently profound wisdom. It often turns out that the way back home is not as far as it seems.
About Stephanie Sheng, Compassionate Inquiry Practitioner, Psychedelic Preparation & Integration Coach, Nondual Tantra Yoga and Somatic Movement Facilitator 
Stephanie's work explores the intersections of somatics, Internal Family Systems (IFS)-informed and trauma-informed therapeutic support, expanded states of consciousness, spirituality, and the wisdom and practices of indigenous and earth-based cultures. Currently based between Germany and Mexico, of Chinese and Cantonese ancestry, she was born in the US and primarily raised there, while also spending several years in Hong Kong. 
When she was 10, Stephanie's father was diagnosed with Stage IV cancer. He navigated this for ten years before passing away. Accompanying her father through his process of embracing death opened her to a spiritual path and nudged her to begin learning, at an early age, how pain can be transformed into wisdom and healing. These formative experiences also laid the foundation for her lifelong exploration of home, belonging, death, life, and beyond. Through these explorations, she came to understand home as something far deeper than just a physical place.
Inspired by her own path of homecoming, Stephanie's work offered through The Way Back Home, is devoted to accompanying others on their journey back home—home to what it means to be fully alive as a human on this earth; home to our fully felt, expressed, soulful, and authentic selves; and home to the essential depth of who and what we are beneath it all. 
Promotional Messages: 
Compassionate Inquiry Professional Training
If you've been listening to our podcast and are curious about the Compassionate Inquiry® approach developed by Doctor Gabor Maté and Sat Dharam Kaur, consider joining the Professional Training Program. It's open to all healing professionals, including naturopaths, physicians, body workers, coaches, and therapists. In addition to learning how to use compassion to support your clients in their most vulnerable moments with greater empathy and authenticity, you'll also deepen your own internal process. If you're interested, tap this link.
Spotlight Episodes
Your journey with Compassionate Inquiry® matters. Your work in the world matters. If you have a story to share about bringing Compassionate Inquiry® into the world, we'd like to amplify your voice. Spotlight episodes are full length Gifts of Trauma podcast interviews offered exclusively to CI community members. You'll not only share your story with 55,000 healing professionals across all platforms, you'll receive a pre-interview strategy session plus three promotional video clips. We're offering only 10 Spotlight episodes per year and production realities require a financial contribution. Follow the links to access full details and express your interest. Spotlight Episodes | Sponsorships
Resources:
Website:
Stephanie's Professional Website 
Stephanie's Compassionate Inquiry Profile
Books:
Women Who Run With the Wolves (Chapter 9: Homing) 
Braiding Sweetgrass
To Bless the Space Between Us
The Wayfinders
I Am That
The Teachings of Ramana Maharshi 
Podcasts:
On Being Episode with John O'Donohue
On Being Episode with David Whyte
For The Wild
Poems:
By David Wagoner (audio reading)
Lost 
By John O'Donohue
Belonging
For Presence
By David Whyte
Everything Is Waiting for You
The House of Belonging
Sweet Darkness
By Mary Oliver
Wild Geese
Why I Wake Early
By Rumi
There is a Candle In Your Heart 
Meditation:
With Tara Brach, Realizing Our True Nature with Tara Brach 
Trainings, Retreats & Programs: 
Authentic Flow with Satu Tuomela 
Acer Integration
Compassionate Inquiry
Hridaya Silent Meditation Retreats and Yoga Modules
Quotes:
"Home is where we can come back to being fully ourselves, remembering, recognizing the fullness of who and what we are." - Stephanie Sheng
"Safety is such a big aspect of why we turn away from ourselves, cut off parts of ourselves, don't allow our full expression, or don't allow ourselves to choose authenticity."  - Stephanie Sheng
"Things are good, life is good, but it feels like I'm not in connection with something that's just under the surface, that's wanting to be explored, to be seen, to be touched upon."  - Stephanie Sheng
"We're here to be in connection, to bring out the fullness of life."  - Stephanie Sheng
"Your deepest longing has already been fulfilled. And you were the last to know. Everything you have ever longed for is already present here and now. Which is the last place you'd ever look. The miracle to end all miracles is happening. And it is this moment, exactly as it is… You've only been seeking yourself." - Jeff Foster
Social Media:
IG: @theway.backhome
Telegram group community
Substack

Hosted by Rosemary Davies-Janes. Produced by J'aime Rothbard.
What is the body actually holding, and how does it release it? While every Wounded Healer episode has touched on this inquiry, this final conversation brings it firmly into focus. Solea Anani, who opened this series with myth, prayer and an invocation to the wound's own intelligence, returns to close the circle. She's joined by Dr Aimie Apigian, a double board certified physician whose Biology of Trauma framework maps what happens at the cellular level when the body stores survival.
Coming from two very different perspectives, they hold aligned understandings on:
- What blocks our bodies from their innate ability to recover fully from injuries or illness
- How to unravel the legacies of epigenetics and its spiritual counterpart, the karmic bundle
- Why the nervous system 'braces', and why healing cannot begin until the brace is released
- What home feels like in the body, and why arriving there, in yourself, is what healing actually is
- What Chiron says about the moment the wound has finished its teaching
Solea opens and closes this conversation ceremonially, holding the container she created in Episode 1. Her closing, an invocation for everyone who is creating new antidotes in a world being birthed anew, brings the series to a quietly luminous end.
About Dr Aimie Aipigian, MD, MS, MPH
A double board-certified physician in Preventive and Addiction Medicine, with advanced training in biochemistry, public health, and functional medicine, Dr. Aimie is known for making trauma healing both precise and deeply human—bridging functional medicine, attachment science, and trauma therapy to show how the body stores survival patterns and what it specifically needs to heal.
Through her Biology of Trauma® framework, she integrates somatic work, parts work, and targeted biology to identify where the system is blocked and restore its capacity for healing through a structured, measurable sequence.
The founder of Trauma Healing AcceleratedTM Dr. Aimie trains individuals and practitioners worldwide to move beyond insight into real, lasting change. She also hosts the Biology of Trauma® Podcast [linked below] and authored the multiple-aware winning book, The Biology of Trauma (foreword by Gabor Maté), a national bestseller featured on the USA TODAY Best-Selling Book list.
 
About Solea Anani, Spiritual Mentor 
Solea Anani is the founder and guide of ANAM, a living sanctuary devoted to supporting the emerging human in deep relationship with the intelligence of the Soul. Her work is rooted in the interwoven lineages of Animism, Depth Psychology, and Mysticism, offering a path that bridges the inner and outer worlds through embodied awareness and relational attunement.
Born of Taíno, West African, Chinese, and Spanish ancestry, Solea's work is informed by a reverence for ancestral wisdom and the living world. She walks as a practitioner of Animism, perceiving life as a field of relationship with both human and other-than-human beings—earth, elements, ancestors, and unseen realms.
Through ANAM, Solea offers mentorship, somatic attunement practices, ancestral reverence work, and evolutionary astrology as pathways into deeper coherence, relational intelligence, and embodied wholeness. She accompanies individuals and groups in the sacred process of becoming—where soul, body, and cosmos meet in living co-creation.
Promotional Messages:
Compassionate Inquiry® Professional Training
If you've been listening to our podcast and are curious about the Compassionate Inquiry approach developed by Doctor Gabor Maté and Sat Dharam Kaur, consider joining the Professional Training Program. It's open to all healing professionals, including naturopaths, physicians, body workers, coaches, and therapists. In addition to learning how to use compassion to support your clients in their most vulnerable moments with greater empathy and authenticity, you'll also deepen your own internal process. If you're interested, tap this link to learn more  
Spotlight Episodes
Your journey with Compassionate Inquiry® matters. Your work in the world matters. If you have a story to share about bringing Compassionate Inquiry into the world, we'd like to amplify your voice. Spotlight episodes are full length Gifts of Trauma podcast interviews offered exclusively to CI community members. You'll not only share your story with 55,000 healing professionals across all platforms, you'll receive a pre-interview strategy session plus three promotional video clips. We're offering only 10 Spotlight episodes per year and production realities require a financial contribution. Follow the links to access full details and express your interest. Spotlight Episodes   |   Sponsorships
Resources:
Websites:
Solea's ANAM Website 
Dr Aimie's Biology of Trauma Website
Related Links:
Ancestral Reverence
Somatic Attunement
Evolutionary Astrology
Solea's Free Somatic Attunement Meditation Classes
Solea's Core Resonance Mentorship Introduction
What is Collective Healing? (Podcast) 
Biology of Trauma Professional Training
The Essential Trauma Release Sequence Guide
The Attachment Trauma Roadmap
Biology of Trauma Podcast
The Biology of Trauma Book
Dr Aimie's YouTube Channel
Quotes:
"It really is an illusion to separate anything, mind from body or emotions from physiology. It is so interconnected that more repair can be made much faster than in any form of siloed approach." 
- Dr Aimie Apigian
"The immune system is in an environment and its response is very normal for the environment it is in."  - Dr Aimie Apigian
"Bracing will block the feelings that we need to feel to be able to move through them and heal." 
- Dr Aimie Apigian
"The healing process actually is arriving in ourselves, in a way that we feel safe and at home." 
- Dr Aimie Apigian
"For me, home is rhythm and being in contact with that rhythm, the unique, essential cadence we were born into… Every human has their own movement and jazz and rhythm…" - Solea Anani
"We're not just dropped into this chaotic existence. We are born with the tools and the skills to unravel it." - Solea Anani
"Healing doesn't fully complete. It has radiuses of information and wisdom that it's continuously bringing into our life form." - Solea Anani
"To proudly carry our wounds and to be with our grief and to be with the places in life that are messy is allowing ourselves to be fully human."  - Solea Anani
Social Media:
Dr Aimie's Facebook
Dr Aimie's Instagram
Dr Aimie's LinkedIn
Solea's Instagram
Solea's LinkedIn

Hosted by Rosemary Davies-Janes.  Produced by J'aime Rothbard.
This fourth episode of the Wounded Healer Series welcomes three educators whose wounds shaped not just how, but why, they teach. Mays, a Palestinian-Iraqi neuroscientist and educator, lost her home and homeland. She has carried that wound into every classroom ever since. Allison, a teacher and naturopathic doctor worked through her shadows and learned, in her graduate classrooms, what it means to teach from a place of security. Rachèl Hughes, a trauma-informed educator, came to teaching through personal tragedy and found that the most meaningful lessons she offers her students have nothing to do with their curriculums.
Together our three guests discuss:
- The nature of the teacher's wound
- Why the classroom, at its best, is a sanctuary, and what the costs is when it isn't
- What the brain does differently when a student feels seen, through the neuroscience lens
- Why resiliency is a double-edged sword
- The difference between delivering content and being present to who is in the room
What does it mean to teach from a wounded place? And what becomes possible when a teacher stops delivering content and starts presencing themselves? Join us, if these questions resonate with you.
About Allison Creech M.ED, ND
As a licensed naturopathic doctor with 20 years of experience, Allison's work focuses on empowering people to establish healthy mind-body patterns that support whole-being wellness. She is a professor at the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine and a Certified Compassionate Inquiry® Practitioner with advanced training in somatic, relational, and psychedelic therapies.
Allison is also a member of the Compassionate Inquiry educational team supporting the work of Gabor Maté, MD. She facilitates the year-long Compassionate Inquiry professional program and provides mentorship for practitioners looking to deepen their practice. 
 
About Rachèl Hughes, BA Psyc, B.Ed, OCT, CT.
Rachèl works with students at secondary and post-secondary levels, drawn to the places where trauma, identity, belonging and human development intersect and open opportunities for genuine learning and healing. 
A Certified Compassionate Inquiry (CI) Practitioner, CI Circle Leader, Mindfulness Facilitator and Counselling Therapist (practising under the ACTA framework)  Rachèl offers private sessions and mentorship to individuals seeking meaningful support. She also contributes to curriculum development and educator support initiatives aimed at bringing trauma-informed practices into schools and learning communities, both in person and online.
Over the years Rachèl has come to believe that our tender places, when we stop hiding them, can become our most generous gifts—to the students we teach, the people we mentor, and the wider circles we are privileged to hold. The conviction that sits at the heart of her work: Feeling truly seen is not a luxury in learning or healing, but the very ground from which both become possible. 
About Mays Imad, PhD, Associate Professor and Neuroscience Program Director, Connecticut College
An educator who deeply believes in and is committed to education as a path for healing, liberation, and transformation, Mays is interested in understanding the social determinants of student well-being and success. She conducts research on biofeedback, stress and burnout, and trauma-informed care. 
With fervor, she advocates for institutions to tend to intergenerational trauma and to prioritize repair, healing, and intergenerational well-being. 
An Associate Professor in the biology department and the Neuroscience Program Director at Connecticut College, Mays serves as the Association of American Colleges & University Senior STEM Fellow, as a scholar in residence at the Red House at Georgetown University and a research fellow with the Centre for the Study of the Afterlife of Violence and the Reparative Quest at Stellenbosch University. 
 
Promotional Messages:
3rd Biennial CI Conference—Vancouver 2026
If you've completed, or are currently enrolled in Compassionate Inquiry® training, you're invited to attend the third international CI Conference in Vancouver, Canada from October 30 to November 1. Dr Gabor Maté is returning as our keynote speaker and master class presenter. Enjoy engaging workshops and inspiring demonstrations with Sat Dharam Kaur, CI Facilitators and Practitioners. Whether you join us in person for three days of shared inquiry with CI cohort partners, and colleagues from around the world, or attend virtually to focus on the teachings, tap this link to learn more and secure your place. And yes—there will be dancing. 
Spotlight Episodes
Your journey with Compassionate Inquiry® matters. Your work in the world matters. If you have a story to share about bringing Compassionate Inquiry into the world, we'd like to amplify your voice. Spotlight episodes are full length Gifts of Trauma podcast interviews offered exclusively to CI community members. You'll not only share your story with 55,000 healing professionals across all platforms, you'll receive a pre-interview strategy session plus three promotional video clips. We're offering only 10 Spotlight episodes per year and production realities require a financial contribution. Follow the links to access full details and express your interest. Spotlight Episodes   |   Sponsorships
Websites:
Allison's Professional Site
Rachèl's Professional Site      
Mays' Professional Site
Mays' Personal Site
Related Links:
Compassionate Inquiry
Dr Bea Bleile's Interview 
Bell Hooks
Mays on Witnessing & Wonder; Moral Wounds in Higher Education
Mays on Higher Education
Mays on Teaching & Learning
Mays on Trauma & Repair
Quotes:
"You are not a drop in the ocean. You are the entire ocean, in a drop." - Rumi
"I can track my movement through different layers of shadow to a place that feels like security in myself and much more permission to be authentic." - Allison Creech
"Resiliency means there's a chronic presence of adversity. Thriving is a different kind of energy."
- Allison Creech
"Teaching is a relational field, not just a knowledge delivery system." - Rachèl Hughes
"'Having a teacher who cared about my feelings, and knowing tears did not diminish your view of me, made me feel comfortable.' When I have doubts, that sentence is all that matters. That's why we do it."
- Rachèl Hughes
"I am an agent of the system and I fully believe in its power to liberate us, them and the world."
- Dr Mays Imad
"Sometimes it's been a stranger's nod that realigns me, helps me remember where I come from. These are glorious glimmers." - Dr Mays Imad

Social Media: 
Allison's LinkedIn
Allison's Instagram
Allison's Facebook
Rachèl's LinkedIn
Rachèl's Facebook
Mays' LinkedIn
Mays' X

Hosted by Rosemary Davies-Janes. Produced by J'aime Rothbard.
The therapist's wound is rarely just one thing. Our guests today shared that for them, it's been a mix of childhood, educational, religious, ancestral, racial, colonial, cultural and systemic wounds, seeded through a lifetime. What turned these wounded humans into wounded healers is how they related to their wounds.
This third episode of the Wounded Healer Series is profoundly relational. Born in Guyana, Rennet Wong arrived in Canada at 17, carrying Russian, Japanese, Chinese, West African, Irish, Portuguese and Aboriginal ancestry into a country that didn't know how to see her. Born in Tanzania and raised as a natural healer, Efu Nyaki carried her ancestral traditions into institutions that had little room for them. Undeterred, she travelled to Brazil, founded a holistic healing centre, and today travels the world to share her gifts of healing. 
Their discussion of shared humanity in the therapeutic relationship explores:
- Why the wound alone doesn't make a healer, and their relationship to it does
- What it means to sit in front of someone, and simultaneously, their 4,000 ancestors
- The difference between being resilient and being allowed to rest
- How colonial and racial wounds live in the body
- Humility, humanity and the healing power of presence
This episode closes with a poem written by Rennet for this conversation.Her words precisely capture what it actually means to tend a wound—our own, or another's.
About Rennet Wong-Gates, 
MSW, RSW, RP, SEP
A Trauma Therapist, Registered Clinical Social Worker, Registered Psychotherapist, Somatic Experiencing® Practitioner, and Organizational Consultant, she has spent over 20 years supporting individuals, families, groups, and frontline organizations through complex trauma, relational wounds, grief, burnout, emotional eating, binge eating, and nervous-system dysregulation.
Rennet's clinical work integrates EMDR, Somatic Experiencing®, Brainspotting, Trauma-Informed Stabilization Treatment, IFS-informed parts work, Compassionate Inquiry®, Polyvagal-informed practice, mindfulness, and anti-oppressive approaches. She helps clients understand the protective wisdom beneath symptoms, reduce shame, reconnect with the body, build greater safety, choice, dignity, and self-trust.

In addition to her clinical practice, Rennet provides trauma-informed consultation, supervision, and resilience training for organizations supporting survivors, frontline workers, and communities impacted by systemic stress and trauma.
About Euphrasia (Efu) Nyaki, MEd, Therapist & Professor of Trauma Healing 
Born in Tanzania, and raised as a natural healer, Efu is a Somatic Experiencing® faculty member and a Professor of Family Constellation System Therapy. 
For the past 3 decades, she has been living in Brazil, facilitating trauma healing therapy and training, both in-person and online. 
In 1998, she co-founded AFYA, a Holistic Healing Center in northeast Brazil that provides holistic healing methodologies to people from the local community and international individuals who come seeking support. 
Efu also travels to India, Egypt, South Korea, China, Bolivia, Peru, Spain, Uruguay, Tanzania, Philippines, Hong Kong, USA, Poland, Kenya and Sweden to facilitate trainings, workshops, summits, webinars, podcasts, conferences, individual therapy sessions and case consults. 
In 2023 Efu authored, Healing Trauma through Family Constellations and Somatic
Experiencing. The foreword was written by Dr Peter Levine.
Promotional Messages:
Compassionate Inquiry® Professional Training
If you've been listening to our podcast and are curious about the Compassionate Inquiry approach developed by Doctor Gabor Maté and Sat Dharam Kaur, consider joining the Professional Training Program. It's open to all healing professionals, including naturopaths, physicians, body workers, coaches, and therapists. In addition to learning how to use compassion to support your clients in their most vulnerable moments with greater empathy and authenticity, you'll also deepen your own internal process. If you're interested, tap this link.
Compassionate Inquiry® Blog Library
Did you know that Compassionate Inquiry offers a free public blog library with over a thousand short posts written by our practitioners and facilitators?  Each is only a 5 or 6 minute read, and topics range from connecting with authenticity to overcoming food addictions to understanding epigenetics, rethinking drug use, CI & Psychedelics, and much, much more. You can also read excerpts from podcast guests' interviews. Tap this link  to access our helpful, enlightening and inspiring blog library.
Resources:
Websites:
Efu's Professional Website
Efu's AFYA Site
Rennet's Professional Website
Related Links:
Compassionate Inquiryy®
Somatic Experiencingy®
Family Constellations
Healing Asthma in Adults (Podcast) 
Somatic Experiencing and Family Constellation Healing (Podcast)
Branches of Wisdom (Podcast)
Rennet's 2024 Interview (Podcast)
Books:
Healing Trauma through Family Constellations and Somatic Experiencing
Quotes:
"My wounds didn't make me a healer… my relationship to my wounds did." - Rennet Wong-Gates
"Oppression is not a gift. The gift is what we reclaim from it." - Rennet Wong-Gates
"I do not come untouched. I come with places in me that have known silence, loss, and the ache of becoming." - Rennet Wong-Gates
"The wound is not the gift; the tending is, the compassion is, the humility is. And perhaps this is healing, not arriving whole, but arriving honest."  - Rennet Wong-Gates
"When I meet the other person, as I sit in front of them, holding the space for them, I'm able to see what they are bringing up. I know they have touched my wound and it helps me to become more compassionate because I know what they are talking about, not just from my cortical brain, but with my whole being and my soul. Then we both come up with the intuitive way of finding healing together. So the word I would like the public to hear is humility." - Efu Nyaki
"I'm not going to fix you. I'm sitting here with you so that you can learn something from me as I learn something from you." - Efu Nyaki
"You heal one, you heal all." - Efu Nyaki
"Humanity, humility, and the healing power of presence." - Rosemary Davies-Janes
Social Media:
Efu's Instagram: @afyaorg 
Efu's Facebook  https://www.facebook.com/efu.nyaki/
Rennet's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rennetwonggates/
Rennet's Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RennetWongGatesPsychotherapy
Rennet's TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@rennetwonggates

Hosted by Kevin Young and Rosemary Davies-Janes. Produced by J'aime Rothbard
What becomes possible when a wounded healer acknowledges their wound? To address this question, we brought together three diverse medical professionals whose practices and traditions span indigenous, osteopathic and allopathic realms. As they move from consulting room to ceremony, from the body's symptoms to the soul's message, from protocol to empathic presence, each reflects on the wounding that brought them into medicine, and the inner work that transformed how they practice it.
Together they explore: 
- What it means to practise medicine as a sacred act
- How the body communicates what the soul cannot say
- What happens when a medical practitioner brings all of themselves to their practice
- How the healer's own wound shapes the care they offer
- What becomes possible when two ways of healing are brought together rather than kept apart
This episode offers moments of deep vulnerability as our guests share their own stories of the personal healing they experienced when they finally turned toward their wounds.
About Karenna'onwe (Dr Karen Hill) 
Assistant Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences, McMaster University
A Mohawk physician from Six Nations of the Grand River Territory, Karen is the mother of two sons and step mother of five daughters. 
She completed medical school in 2003 and Family Medicine Residency in 2005, both at McMaster University. Her passion is to see Traditional Indigenous Knowledge return to the centre of life and healthcare for Indigenous people across Canada. 
In 2015 Karen became the first recipient of the Thomas Dignan award for Indigenous Health conferred by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons, That same year she also received The College of Family Physicians Excellence Award for leading the way in Indigenous collaborative care in primary practice. In 2016, McMaster University honoured her with a Community Impact Award.
In early 2020 Karen partnered with Mohawk filmmaker Paulette Moore to create "The Aunties Dandelion" media and research centre, which is focused on supporting Indigenous embodiment of original instructions embedded in the traditional knowledge. Karen continues to practice consultative medicine at Six Nations and works with her colleague Dr. Amy Montour in the Indigenous Health Service at the Brantford General Hospital. She completed a 4 year apprenticeship in Traditional Indigenous Medicine and continues this learning, along with Mohawk language classes; as lifelong commitments.
About Ben Court, Registered Osteopath 
BSc (Hons) Osteopathic Medicine 
Ben's journey into osteopathy began with a fascination for human anatomy, personal experience with osteopathy and a genuine desire to help others heal. 
Since qualifying in 2006 and dedicating his life to helping patients "get on with theirs," he has expanded his expertise beyond traditional osteopathy. Inspired by and trained under Dr. Gabor Maté, Ben discovered that understanding what was happening in a patient's life when their symptoms started enabled him to pinpoint elusive issues.
Today, the three complementary approaches he offers (traditional cranial osteopathy, mind-body medicine and somatic psychotherapy) can be delivered individually or in combination, based on a client's specific needs. His integrated approach can be particularly helpful for persistent or complex conditions that have not responded well to conventional treatment alone.
While his approaches are holistically guided, his treatments remain firmly rooted in scientific research and evidence-based practice. Ben's warm nature and quick smile help patients feel comfortable with whatever level of care feels right to them. A devoted family man, Ben's pride in the wonderful humans that his children are reflects the caring, nurturing approach he brings to all of his patient relationships.
About Dr. Gareth Patterson, The Irish GP 
An Irish general practitioner, educator, and health communicator, Gareth is known for his compassionate, patient-centred approach to medicine. Originally from Belfast, his early life was shaped by the social and cultural complexities of a post-conflict society, an environment that fostered both resilience and a deep sensitivity to the unseen layers of human experience. These formative influences continue to inform Gareth's work as a clinician, as he places strong emphasis on understanding not just illness, but the person behind it. He is particularly interested in how psychological and emotional factors intersect with physical wellbeing.
After completing his medical training, Gareth worked across a range of clinical settings in the UK, developing a reputation for thoughtful, holistic care. He currently works as an NHS GP in a busy West London Family Surgery. His practice is grounded in the belief that trauma, environment, and personal narratives play significant roles in health. 
Alongside his clinical work, Gareth has built a substantial presence as a public health educator, using digital platforms to translate complex medical information into accessible, engaging content. His work aims to empower individuals to better understand their health while also humanising the role of the doctor.
Promotional Messages:
3rd CI Conference — Vancouver 2026
If you've completed, or are currently enrolled in Compassionate Inquiry training, you're invited to attend the third international CI Conference in Vancouver, Canada from October 30 to November 1. Dr Gabor Maté is returning as our keynote speaker and master class presenter. Enjoy engaging workshops and inspiring demonstrations with Sat Dharam Kaur, CI Facilitators and Practitioners. Whether you join us in person for three days of shared inquiry with CI cohort partners, and colleagues from around the world, or attend virtually to focus on the teachings, tap this link to learn more, take advantage of early-bird discounts and secure your place. And yes—there will be dancing. 
Spotlight Episodes
Your journey with Compassionate Inquiry® matters. Your work in the world matters. If you have a story to share about bringing Compassionate Inquiry into the world, we'd like to amplify your voice. Spotlight episodes are full length Gifts of Trauma podcast interviews offered exclusively to CI community members. You'll not only share your story with 55,000 healing professionals across all platforms, you'll receive a pre-interview strategy session plus three promotional video clips. We're offering only 10 Spotlight episodes per year and production realities require a financial contribution. Follow the links to access full details and express your interest. Spotlight Episodes   |   Sponsorships
Resources:
Websites:
Dr Karen Hill's Professional Profile
Ben's Professional Website
Ben's Compassionate Inquiry Profile
Related Links: 
Incorporating Traditional Healing into Practice (Podcast)
Two Row Medicine (Podcast)
The Window of Tolerance (Video)
Related Books: 
No Bad Parts: 
Owning Your Own Shadow
When Things Fall Apart
Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers
An Osteopathic Odyssey
Dr Fulford's Touch of Life
Social Media: 
@theirishgp (Gareth on instagram and tiktok) 
Instagram: Bencourt_thefamilyosteopath 
Facebook: The Family Osteopath - Ben Court