About Linda
I had to learn how to stop abandoning myself.
Mindfulness teacher, coach and slow fashion designer. I got here the long way round, through illness and through years of not really listening to myself.
Why I do this work
I didn't come to this purely through training. I came to it because I needed it.
At a certain point, I had no choice but to start paying attention to what I had been carrying for a very long time.
The day my classmates were attending their induction, I was having a biopsy. The results told me I had chronic myeloid leukaemia.
I left school at sixteen. Fashion had been a passion since childhood, and years later, in my late thirties, I finally went back to do the degree I'd always wanted.
Starting something I'd waited years for at the same time as a cancer diagnosis is the kind of thing that stops you in your tracks. Looking back, though, something in me had already stopped a long time before that.
A decade earlier, I had lost my first child. My son lived for less than an hour after he was born. He had caught an infection during my long delivery after a 42-week pregnancy, and he didn't survive it.
I don't have words for what that cost, and I won't pretend to. What I can say is that twenty-two months later my daughter was born, my beautiful, healthy daughter, and I threw myself into loving her with everything I had. Which was the right thing to do. And which was also, I think, a way of moving forward without quite stopping to feel what had happened.
I kept going. As you do. As a lot of women do. You fold the grief somewhere deep inside yourself and you get on with the living.
I had grown up in a family that was loving and, in its own way, chaotic. I became very good at reading the room, attending to others, staying steady, not asking for too much. Other people's needs came first. That was just how things were, and it became how I was too.
Family members have had significant health issues over the years, which meant my care and attention were, again, mostly going to someone else. By the time my diagnosis arrived, I hadn't been listening to myself for a long time.
What I didn't understand then was that my body had been keeping hold of all of it.
The diagnosis
A cancer diagnosis, in your late thirties, is a particular kind of full stop.
It wasn't dramatic. It arrived quietly, and I had to stop.
Once I'd stopped, I started to see something I'd been moving too fast to notice. My body had been trying to tell me something for years. My nervous system, shaped by childhood, by grief I hadn't fully processed and by years of putting everyone else first, was not in good shape.
I was lucky. Medically, I responded well to treatment. But the diagnosis was also, in a way I couldn't have seen coming, a beginning.
I hadn't just been running on empty for a while. I'd been doing it, in one form or another, for most of my life.
Five years of deep work
What followed was five years of the most healing work I have ever done, with a woman who changed everything.
She was 79 when we first met, 84 by the time our work together ended. She had spent a lifetime working with the body, the nervous system, and the patterns we lay down early and carry with us. I had never met anyone who knew so much or paid such close attention.
Over five years, we worked through everything. The grief that had been stored rather than processed. The nervous system dysregulation that traced all the way back to childhood. The practised habit of showing up for everyone else while slowly disappearing from myself.
It was intense.
Something shifted, in how I felt and in how I treated myself.
The practices we worked with
- Progressive muscle relaxation and somatic body-based work
- Mindfulness and attention-focused meditation
- Visualisation and guided imagery
- The body's held patterns, one by one, with patience
- Grief work, properly, unhurried
- Nervous system regulation, traced back to its earliest origins
By the end, the joylessness I'd been carrying had lifted, slowly at first and then more fully. The exhaustion changed too. It became something I could do something about, not just put up with.
That work, and the study that came after it, is the foundation of everything I do now.
If any of that's landing, you're probably further along than you think.
Book a free Clarity Call →Training & approach
Academic grounding matters to me, alongside lived experience.
Needing this work myself wasn't enough to offer it to other people. The study, the teacher training and the coaching qualification gave me the language, the evidence and the professional grounding to do this properly for other women.
A note on neurodivergence
I discovered my own ADHD traits later in life, having spent years putting the effects down to character rather than neurology. It shapes how I coach.
I know from the inside what it's like to live with a nervous system that doesn't fit what the world expects. I've also spent six years supporting neurodivergent young people as a therapeutic tutor and mentor. Both have taught me to respect different nervous systems, learning styles and capacities on their own terms.
Many of the women I work with are neurodivergent, or suspect they might be. You don't need a diagnosis for this work to be relevant, and you don't need to force a kind of calm that isn't natural to you. The practices here have more than one door. We find the one that's yours.
Press & collaboration
My work in the world
Selected interviews, features and corporate work. For press enquiries, speaking or workplace wellbeing programmes, get in touch.
NHS Wales · Ongoing
The Sense of Being Alive
Mindfulness facilitator on The Sense of Being Alive, a programme by theatre-maker and mindfulness practitioner Iwan Brioc that combines applied theatre with mindfulness practice to help participants reconnect with present-moment experience. Delivered in NHS Wales since June 2026, as an ongoing programme of work.
Ongoing in NHS Wales since June 2026
Retreat
The Sense of Being Alive retreat
Delivering The Sense of Being Alive as part of an immersive retreat, in collaboration with actor and director Alice Gil-Carey. A rare opportunity to experience this work in a retreat setting. Details and booking information coming soon.
Details coming soon. Register your interest. Places will be limited.
Community & pro bono
Women and Health, Camden
Resident mindfulness coach and course facilitator at Women and Health, a Camden charity with over 35 years of service supporting isolated and vulnerable women. Delivering mindfulness courses and coaching as community and pro bono work.
Ongoing community work
Authority Magazine
Mental Wellness Mastery: Everyday Life Hacks for Optimal Mental Wellness
An in-depth interview on mindfulness, nervous system regulation, the role of creativity in wellbeing, and the practices that have shaped my approach.
Read the interview →Ollie Quinn
Wellbeing with Linda Corcoran
Interviewed as part of Ollie Quinn's wellbeing series, covering mindfulness practice, the five pillars of wellbeing, and making mental health accessible. Delivered to teams across the UK and Canada.
Read the feature →Giffgaff
Workplace Mindfulness Programme
Co-designed and co-delivered a series of mindfulness courses for Giffgaff staff, focusing on stress resilience, attention and nervous system regulation in a busy workplace environment.
Corporate programme, no public link
A note on the work
I want to be honest about what this work is and isn't.
The patterns that most need attention have usually been in place for a long time. They don't shift in a weekend workshop, and I won't pretend otherwise.
What I offer is supported, unhurried work. You can begin with The Reset, which is about steadiness first, or go straight to The Slow Unfold, which is the coaching itself.
If you're dealing with clinical depression, significant trauma, or a health situation that needs medical attention, those things need looking after alongside or before this work, and I'll always say so honestly.
What I am is someone who has done this work herself. I know what it costs to carry too much for too long. And I've gone from exhausted to well myself, with the right support and at my own pace.
This is not
A quick fix. The patterns that need attention have usually been in place for years. They need patient, supported work, not a weekend shift.
This is not
Therapy, or a substitute for medical care. If you're carrying significant trauma or a clinical diagnosis, we'll talk honestly about what support is appropriate alongside or before this work.
This is
Grounded, evidence-based, personal support from someone who has done this work herself, at a pace your nervous system can manage, without asking you to pretend you're further along than you are.
Begin gently
If any of this speaks to something you recognise, I'd love to hear from you.
A free Clarity Call is simply a conversation. No pressure, no agenda. A space to talk about where you are and explore whether this work might be right for you. You don't have to have it figured out to begin.
A warm, confidential 30-minute conversation. No commitment required.