Do I need to read the book first?

A few women have asked me recently how my programme, Becoming The Relaxed Woman, differs from my book and whether they need to read the book before taking the course.

The short answer is no.

You don't need to read the book first. And if you have read the book, I think you'll still find the course deeply healing.

The longer answer begins a few years ago, in the middle of the night when I was rocking my newborn to sleep (again!). I felt exhausted and lost and lonely.

I love reading. Books have helped me through so many seasons of my life. But in those early months of motherhood, I often didn't have the capacity to read. I couldn't always sit down and focus on a chapter. I couldn't always absorb new information. My nervous system felt stretched thin. Everything felt loud and urgent.

What I needed was companionship. I needed something I could listen to while walking around the block with my baby asleep on my chest, something I could return to while folding laundry or washing dishes or sitting in the dark at 3 a.m. Something that helped me relax and recover and return to myself.

The book and the course both grew from the same longing – to support women find a calmer, kinder way to live. But they take very different paths through this landscape.

The book follows a journey. Beginning with rest and regulation, moving through nurturing your relationships and releasing old beliefs, before opening into manifesting your dreams and joining the relaxed revolution. Each chapter builds upon the last. It is a path you can walk from beginning to end.

The course feels different. I created like a carrier bag filled with things you can reach for when you need them.

Instead of chapters, it revolves around patterns I kept noticing in women’s lives – loops of urgency, busyness, perfectionism, self-criticism, self-sacrifice, control, false guilt and unworthiness.

And alongside each loop is an exit – slowness, spaciousness, enoughness, self-kindness, receiving, surrender, self-permission and worthiness.

The course focuses less on where you are on the journey and more on what is happening right now.

Which loop are you caught in?

What would help you step out of it?

Rather than a journey, the course is like a meadow where you can rest for a little while, a space where you can relax and allow yourself to receive.

Inside the course you'll find audio lessons, guided relaxations, gentle breath and movement flows, reflective questions and opportunities to weave these ideas into everyday life in gentle and healing ways.

Rather than simply understanding the patterns, you begin noticing them in real time – the urgency when you're rushing through the supermarket, the perfectionism when you're rewriting the email for the third time, the guilt when you sit down to rest.

And little by little, you begin practising a different way of living.

So if you haven't read the book, you're welcome here.

And if you have read the book, you're welcome too.

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