There is something pulling you inward.
Private, one-to-one spiritual mentoring for those seeking deeper self-understanding, support for a meditation practice, or guidance in integrating significant inner experience into everyday life - including dedicated mentoring for those engaged in Tibetan Buddhist practice.
You do not need to be religious. You do not need to have a spiritual framework or even the word 'spiritual' in your vocabulary. What you need is a sense - perhaps difficult to articulate - that your inner life matters, and that something in it is asking for attention.
That pull might come as a longing for meaning that ordinary life isn't satisfying. It might arise through a meditation practice that has brought unexpected experiences you don't know how to hold. It might be the sense that something important happened - through illness, loss, grief or a moment of unexpected clarity - and that you haven't found the right space to explore it.
Spiritual mentoring is that space.
Not to tell you what to believe. Not to offer a system to follow. But to sit with you in genuine inquiry - seriously, carefully, with real experience - and support you in developing a clearer, more grounded relationship with your own inner life.
What spiritual mentoring is — and isn't
The word 'spiritual' puts some people off. It can sound vague, otherworldly or associated with beliefs they don't hold.
The work I offer is not about religion, belief systems, or any particular tradition - though it is deeply informed by 25 years of serious Tibetan Buddhist practice, one of the most psychologically sophisticated frameworks for understanding the mind that exists anywhere in the world.
What it is about is the territory of direct inner experience - what happens when you sit still with yourself, what arises in awareness, how insight relates to how you actually live, what it means to move through difficulty with genuine equanimity rather than suppression or avoidance.
This is not therapy, though it shares some of therapy's qualities - presence, attention, care for the whole person. And it is not a course in meditation technique, though meditation is often part of it.
It is a sustained, private relationship with someone who takes the inner life as seriously as you do - and who has spent decades learning how to work with it.
Who seeks this kind of support
People come to spiritual mentoring from very different places. What they tend to share is a readiness to engage with their inner life at a level that goes beyond the surface.
Some are navigating significant spiritual experiences - openings, visions, states of consciousness that arose through meditation, plant medicine, grief or illness - and need support in integrating and understanding them without having them minimised or pathologised.
Some have a meditation practice that has hit a wall - or that has brought up material they don't know how to work with - and are looking for guidance from someone with both depth of practice and the psycho-somatic training to hold what arises.
Some are at a point of genuine transition - a life change, a loss, a period of deep questioning - and find that what they are navigating has dimensions that ordinary therapy doesn't quite touch.
And some simply feel a sense that there is something more - not in a vague or wishful way, but as a real pull toward depth and meaning - and want to explore that with someone who can meet it with care and understanding.
In each case, what is offered is the same: a grounded, attentive, experienced presence - and a genuine willingness to go wherever the work needs to go.
Tibetan Buddhist practice — dedicated mentoring for practitioners
For those already engaged in Tibetan Buddhist practice, I also offer dedicated one-to-one mentoring specifically within the tradition.
My own practice is rooted in Vajrayana - the tantric path - which works directly with experience as it arises: thoughts, emotions, difficulty, insight, the body itself. Nothing is excluded. Everything that appears in awareness becomes, in this tradition, material for the path.
This is not an introduction to Tibetan Buddhism. It is mentoring - a sustained, private relationship that supports you in working with your actual practice, your actual experience, and the real challenges that arise on the path. The gap between what you understand on the cushion and your daily life.
Practitioners typically come with one or more of the following:
A practice that has deepened to the point where questions arise that require experienced guidance
Significant experiences that don't fit existing frameworks and need careful support to integrate
Difficulty carrying insight from formal practice into daily life
Isolation on the path — practising without a community or teacher
Psychological material arising through practice that needs both Dharma understanding and psychological awareness to hold
The Dharma is not something you add to your life. It is something that, slowly, becomes the ground your life is lived from.
The lineage behind the work
My understanding of how meditation practice can be genuinely transformative - not as a technique applied to life, but as a living thread woven through every part of it - has been shaped profoundly by my work with my main teacher, Rob Preece.
Since 2018, Rob has been both my teacher within the Tibetan Buddhist tradition and my personal mentor. That dual relationship - formal practice lineage and direct mentoring guidance - has shaped not just what I know, but how I work, how I sit with people, and how I understand the relationship between inner practice and everyday life.
Rob is one of the most respected voices in the integration of Tibetan Buddhist practice and Western psychology. A practitioner within the Tibetan tradition since 1973, he spent the early 1980s in retreat in the Himalayas under the guidance of eminent Tibetan lamas, and has worked as a psychotherapist and spiritual mentor since 1987. He is the author of three deeply influential books —The Wisdom of Imperfection, The Psychology of Buddhist Tantraand Feeling Wisdom - each of which explores how the insights of contemplative practice can be brought into genuine, grounded contact with the psychological realities of everyday Western life.
What his teaching has given me is an understanding of practice that goes far beyond technique. It is an understanding of how the body holds experience, how psychological patterns weave through spiritual life, and how real transformation happens not through striving toward some idealised state, but through a sustained, honest and compassionate relationship with what is actually present.
That approach - embodied, psychologically aware, and refusing to separate the spiritual from the deeply human - is the foundation of everything I offer.
How we work
Sessions are private, one-to-one and conducted online. Each session is entirely responsive to what is arising for you.
The work is shaped by your experience, your questions, your practice and the particular territory you are navigating. It might involve meditation guidance, exploration of specific experiences or states, working with the emotional and psychological dimensions of inner life, or simply the sustained practice of sitting with honest inquiry in a held and supportive space.
I draw on 25 years of Tibetan Buddhist practice, transpersonal psychology coaching, trauma-informed awareness practices and a deep engagement with the contemplative traditions - not as a set of techniques to apply, but as a living understanding that informs how I am present with you.
Many people work with me over extended periods - returning as the work deepens, or as life brings new questions and challenges. For those wanting a more structured container, the three-month private mentorship offers a sustained and intentional engagement with clear support throughout.
I work with clients across the UK, USA and internationally, all online.
A note on lived experience
My understanding of this territory is not only academic or traditional. I have navigated severe physical trauma, chronic pain and the complete dismantling of the life I had built - and found, within that, a depth of practice and understanding I could not have reached any other way.
That experience means I am not easily unsettled by the more difficult dimensions of inner life - by grief, by loss of meaning, by the disorientation that can come with significant spiritual experience, or by the parts of human experience that resist easy resolution.
I bring that steadiness - earned, not performed - to every session.
If this feels relevant
If something in what you have read resonates - even if you are not sure exactly what you are looking for - I invite you to get in touch.
I offer a short initial conversation, free of charge, to explore whether working together feels right for both of us. There is no obligation, and I will always be honest with you about whether I think I can help.
3 Month Private Mentorship
For those ready to go deeper.
Over three months, we work together in regular private sessions - tailored entirely to you, your body, your history and your inner life. This is not a template. There is no programme you follow. There is only the work that needs to happen, at the pace that allows it to be real.
Clients who come to this work are typically navigating a spiritual awakening, emotional struggles or a pull towards something deeper and more meaningful, that needs careful, experienced support.
This mentorship includes regular one-to-one sessions, personalised practices for integration between sessions, and ongoing support as the work unfolds.
Places are limited. If you feel ready, I invite you to apply.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Spiritual mentoring and therapy overlap in some ways and diverge in others. Both involve a sustained, private, one-to-one relationship focused on inner life. Both take your experience seriously. But the orientation is different.
Therapy tends to be focused on healing - working with what has caused difficulty, reducing suffering, restoring wellbeing. Spiritual mentoring holds all of that, but it also holds something further: the question of meaning, of depth, of what it is to live a conscious and examined life.
People come to spiritual mentoring when they feel a sense that there is something more - not vaguely, but as a genuine pull. They may be navigating significant spiritual experiences they don't have a framework for. They may have a meditation practice that needs guidance to deepen. They may be at a point of transition where the questions they are asking cannot be answered by practical means alone.
The mentoring I offer is grounded - it is not about belief systems or dogma, and it does not require any particular religious orientation. It is rooted in 25 years of serious Tibetan Buddhist practice, direct mentoring from my teacher Rob Preece, and a deep engagement with the inner life, offered to people of any background or tradition who are ready to explore seriously.
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No. Many of the people I work with have no particular religious affiliation and are not Buddhists. What they share is a sense that their inner life matters - that there is something worth exploring beneath the surface of daily experience - and a readiness to do that with support.
My own practice is Tibetan Buddhism, and that tradition informs how I understand the mind and how I work with awareness. But I do not teach it as a religion, and I do not ask anyone to adopt beliefs they don't hold.
What I offer is a space for serious, grounded exploration of inner experience - whatever form that takes for you.
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Yes. This is something I work with quite specifically, and it is an area where good support can be genuinely hard to find.
Significant inner experiences - whether they arise through meditation, grief, illness, plant medicine, or simply life itself - can be disorientating, overwhelming or difficult to integrate. They may not fit the frameworks that conventional therapy offers. They may be hard to talk about without feeling dismissed or pathologised.
I approach these experiences with genuine respect. My background in both contemplative practice and trauma-informed therapeutic approaches means I can hold them carefully - neither inflating their significance nor minimising it, but helping you find a grounded and honest relationship with what has arisen.
If you have had experiences of this kind and are looking for support in understanding and integrating them, I would encourage you to get in touch.
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This is one of the most interesting and important questions in contemporary contemplative practice — and it is central to the work I offer.
The Tibetan Buddhist tradition contains one of the most sophisticated maps of the mind that exists anywhere in the world. It has been exploring the nature of consciousness, emotion, perception and mental suffering for over a thousand years — and its insights into how the mind creates suffering, and how that suffering can be transformed, are remarkably consistent with what Western psychology has discovered through very different means.
My teacher Rob Preece has spent decades exploring precisely this intersection — how the insights of Vajrayana practice and Western psychological understanding illuminate and deepen each other. His books, particularly The Wisdom of Imperfection and Feeling Wisdom, are among the most intelligent explorations of this territory available.
In practice, this means that the work I offer does not treat psychological difficulty and spiritual practice as separate domains. Anxiety, trauma, grief, emotional intensity arising through practice — these are not obstacles to the path, nor are they purely psychological problems to be treated separately. They are, in the Vajrayana understanding, expressions of the same energies that, when worked with skilfully, become the fuel for genuine transformation.
This integrated approach — grounded in authentic Tibetan Buddhist understanding and informed by psychological awareness — is what allows the work to address the whole person rather than either the spiritual or the psychological dimension alone.
Client Reviews
“Olivia is a genuine and sharing guide. There’s an honesty and simplicity to her approach. Reality really isn’t what we think it is. Meditation can help us experience the nature of ourselves and the universe. Olivia helped me meditate more effectively.”
- Andrew, Australia
“I gained a lot of insight from working with Olivia. Positive self talk can work as long as we are consistent. Also allowing for there to be hard times and not trying to avoid those feeling but instead letting them pass through. The key is to not wallow in the bad and try and celebrate the good whenever possible. Very helpful and brought great awareness”
- Katy, USA
“A powerful process giving space for deeper connection with the body to allow feelings and emotions to emerge, be welcomed and be acknowledged. In a frenetic paced world, giving pause for embodiment. Thank you”
- Diedre, USA