Meet Jane and Sheila.
Retreat facilitator and Relationship coach
Originally a lawyer for a large Adelaide legal firm, Jane has always been fascinated by love and relationships. After the birth of her third child, she began to pursue her interest in personal development. During this time, Jane felt that her marriage had become quite routine. While still deeply loving her husband, she felt that the excitement in their relationship had peaked and was sliding backwards. After reading many self-help books (and her husband refusing to read them!), Jane felt she needed something more to make lasting changes in her own relationship. To her delight, Jane's husband agreed to attend a relationship workshop in Bali.
The workshop with Diane and Robert Matthews shaped Jane and her husband's future together in a positive and meaningful way. They worked together as equals on this new project, 'Our Relationship', discovering that they were still intensely fascinated with each other.
Encouraged by what she had learnt on the retreat, Jane reduced her work as a lawyer and began studying Transcendental Meditation, Transactional Analysis Counselling and Re-evaluation Counselling. Jane then went on to train as a Reiki Master, certified Tantric Sex Instructor and to gain her post-graduate qualifications in psychology from Adelaide University.
Jane's passion is love, sex and relationships, and her special interest is the exploration of 'romance'.
"I know from my experience and training that the decline of romance is not a necessary stage in a Relationship. Every couple has the potential to significantly improve their experience together. There are so many ways we can make our Relationship better than we need to know how. There are unlimited, learnable Relationship skills we don't acquire at school or at home. In my quest to find out what these skills are for myself, I have developed hundreds of exercises, rituals of connection and activities that continue to further develop my Relationship with my partner of 36 years. By sharing these concepts with others, I learn more deeply about myself, my partner and about our Relationship. They say you teach best what you most need to learn. I'm still learning!"
Retreat facilitator and Relationship coach
Sheila left her beloved Scotland with her family at the age of 14, bound for Australia. She met her husband, Roland, when she was 17, and Adelaide has been her home ever since. A keen observer of human behaviour, Sheila found raising four children a wonderful learning experience. When her youngest child started school, she began acquiring formal qualifications, beginning with high school teaching and then lecturing qualifications at COPE (now known as Relationships Australia), where she became a group educator in 1990.
For the last 20 years, Sheila has been a counsellor in private practice, specialising in couples reconciliation, non-violent communication and mediation. Her clients include individuals, couples, families, siblings, and business colleagues, and issues include managing everyday stress and anxiety, testamentary disputes, sexual difficulties, assertiveness, financial distribution and infidelity.
Sheila also teaches and facilitates groups and workshops using Re-evaluation theory, which is her favourite modality for understanding patterns of behaviour and is based on the premise that all humans are born intelligent, zestful, loving, cooperative and energetic. When a person is not currently feeling this way, it is caused by unresolved conflict. Sheila skilfully facilitates the identification and release of this conflict, allowing the person to return to their natural loving and energetic state.
Participants in Focus on Relationships' weekend retreats are fortunate to have access to Sheila’s expertise. Her deep compassion, non-judgmental listening and use of diverse counselling techniques ensure that each issue is considered thoughtfully. She provides participants with the tools to clearly communicate with each other from an authentic heart space. Each person has the gratifying experience of having their partner see their point of view clearly and compassionately. The flip side of this is that each person can see their partner’s point of view in a refreshing new light.
"Albert Einstein said that no problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. I will work with you to move your perspective to a new higher level of loving and connected consciousness where you can release old and ingrained difficulties with relative ease."