Healing is what I'm really about, and this website - I hope - certainly reflects that. But I think that an important part of healing is faith in a greater good, the certain knowledge that if we only listen, there's a voice calling out to us with the answer we so desperately desire. To these ends I've recorded below a few inspirational stories - all of which are TRUE.

I recently presented some of these of BBC Radio WM and you can hear samples of these by clicking the buttons below.

Part 1 1.8MB	Part 2 1.3MB	Part 3 700KB	Part4 2.7MB	Part 5 800KB

Download full programme (8MB mp3 format, zipped, FREE)

Some of the names and places may have been changed to protect the privacy of the indivuals concerned, but the fact remains that life is often stranger than fiction and that life does try to nudge us in the right direction if we allow it.

One day I hope to collate these stories and others in a book entitled "Coincidence is God's way of remaining Anonymous" and I hope, as you read on, you'll soon discover why.

Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous

When asked to write an introduction to what follows, I couldn’t find the words. Whatever I wrote was too clumsy a description of what I hope these pages offer.

Instead I decided to relate this particular story, as it encompasses where my journey began and, I trust, goes some way to explaining why I have so eagerly collected the other tales that follow.

It may not be the best of the stories contained in these pages; it may not be the most interesting or poignant, but it reflects my first steps toward trying to understand life’s incredible coincidences.

Stuart’s Story Part 1 - My First Steps

In the year 1992, three years after my diagnosis of non Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, I had finished my treatments and had begun practicing Pranayama Yoga. My interest in the use of complimentary medicine was growing enthusiastically.

At that time I had heard about another form of yoga called Dru Yoga and so I attended a weekend workshop to see what it was all about.

The venue was in Bilston, a suburb of Wolverhampton, and participants were to meet in a place named Maristowe House.

I entered the reception room and found it full of people. With my head down, I made my way to far corner and sat upon a bench, hoping to blend into the background and hide away. Unfortunately as I rocked nervously, the bench seemed to take on a personality of its own, trying to throw me off, which didn’t help my quest to go unnoticed.

I smiled pretending everything was okay as more and more people filled the room. Then I noticed, with paranoid anxiety, that they all seemed to know each other, hugging and chatting like long lost relatives.

Feeling more than a little uneasy, I was surprised as one particular lady separated herself from the throng, walked over and sat next to me. With a brief but genuine smile, her first words were, “I’ll balance you up.”

Seeing through my discomfort and blushes, she introduced herself warmly as Wendy.

“So,” she said, “have you practiced Dru Yoga before?”

“No,” I confessed. “I’ve just come to have a look really”

We chatted a little and Wendy quickly made me feel more at ease. She told me that one day she would like to go on and teach yoga, that this was one of her goals in life.

A little while later the workshop began and we were all put into various groups. By chance Wendy was put into the same dormitory as me and the friend she’d actually arrived with was put in another dormitory.

From then she seemed to stay close to me, or maybe I stayed close to her, but whatever the case we chatted away happily and I began to feel easier by the minute.

All the time there was something about her. Part of me was drawn to her. I felt instinctively comfortable in her presence and enjoyed her company, but there was something else, something I still cannot articulate, except to say that it was right to be there with her.

The weekend was one of the most inspiring and moving weekends I had ever had. Up until that point in my life, I’d never realized that people could be so loving and kind to each other.

There was a speaker, a yoga teacher who took the weekend course named Many Patel, who to this day I believe is wholly made up of love. Everything about him, his words, his gestures, everything!

Something touched me that weekend, through the words that were given; something moved me towards a journey of spiritual awareness which was to come to fruition seven years later at a conference in Wales.

At the end of the weekend Many Patel asked the people in the room if there was anyone attending for the first time that may like to make themselves known. One by one the few of us that were new stood up and said a few words on who we were and why we’d come along .

When my turn came, I could hear the tone of my voice rise and fall as I introduced myself awkwardly. I told the group that 12 months previously I had a form of cancer, and that I was looking for another way in my life. I’m not sure exactly what I meant by that statement, but that’s the way it came out. And with that I sat back down.

Many looked at me and told me and told me, “No one here would let you down.”

How true those words turned out to be.

At the end of the seminar Wendy rushed over to me, lovingly hugged me and said, “I told my friend that I was drawn to you, that I didn’t know why, but there was something.” She went on to say that she finally understood what it was. She also had cancer, which was still with her, and this was our connection.

I have since come to realise that not only do certain cancer patients have this pull, this connection to each other, but we all do. There is a connection between us all especially if you have had a similar experience in your own life. We are drawn to others of similar mind, of that I’m sure.

I wrote to Wendy just once after the seminar and she wrote back, but I never wrote again only to say I remembered her on and off as we all do with certain people for the rest of our lives.

So from there my journey continued. I practiced Pranayama Yoga which was my saving grace and eventually I was asked by my own yoga teacher to train to become a teacher, which I did over the next three and half years. Alongside that I gained a diploma in holistic therapies.

My goal was always to come full circle and help others in the same way I was helped -through the simplicity of touch and the right word at the right time - which I’ve always said is the most powerful form of medicine (and I have the comparison of radiotherapy to compare with).

I do my own little routine of yoga daily, and sometimes during relaxation or at other times of peace, I would ask God, “Please God, hear my prayer.” And I have on occasions heard the answer, “Be still and know that I am with you.”

I had always heard about people getting great messages, really profound statements, but to me I did not see my answer as anything more than something I’d read, something that stayed with me, something that came back to me from time to time when I was relaxed enough to listen, a simple thought – nothing much.

When I went to the Dru Yoga weekend some years before, where I’d met Wendy, I noticed that there was a conference every year in Snowdonia in Wales, and at the time I promised myself that one day, when I was ready, I would go.

Seven years after that workshop, I woke up one morning and decided to. By this time I was teaching Pranayama Yoga and had not been back to Dru Yoga at all, and yet here I was with a strong pull to go to the conference.

I had been teaching Pranayama Yoga for 2 years by this stage and in all honesty I felt I’d lost something personal to me within my own practice of yoga. I felt I was going through the postures and teaching the philosophy but no longer feeling it in the same way. That year more than most I felt far away God.

One of the things I have always believed since my illness is that there is part of us that knows the future, a part of ourselves that prepares us for what’s to come. I now know that this intuitive part of me played its part in my journey to the conference that year.

The train journey down to Snowdonia was one full of thoughts such as, “What the hell am I going for? I don’t even practice this form of yoga. Why am I going alone?” etc.

I arrived and checked in, got my keys and lay down on the bed, resting from the journey. I closed my eyes and asked myself once more, “Why am I herer?”

Later on that night I walked up to a large hall they called the Haven, where books, tapes, information about courses etc, were available. I needed to change a workshop that I had mistakenly been put me down for (unfortunately, or so it seemed at the time, no one was there who could change this workshop for me).

The Haven was also a place where people could meet and socialise, and so I got a drink of tea and sat down on some steps overlooking the hall.

“Can I join you?” asked an elderly man, a helper with the conference named Derik. Happy for the company I gestured for him to sit down. Soon we were chatting.

I confessed to Derik my feelings, that whilst this was my first time at the conference, I didn’t really know what I was doing here, that I taught Pranayama Yoga, or at least went through the motions, that I had no real conviction in the words I used and that I no longer felt God in the same way.

Derek listened to me quietly and then asked, “Do you meditate at all, Stuart?”

I told him I did and told him the words that I had sometime heard when praying, “Be still and know I am with you.” I explained that I wondered whether these were just words I’d read somewhere and that, despite hearing them, felt that I had lost my way.

We talked some more and then Derik said he had to leave. He gave me his card and said to ring him any time I was feeling that I needed to talk. I could sense he was a genuine sort, and we parted with a handshake.

Back in my room, I felt dispondent, questioning whether I should leave early by train. Full of doubts about my life, my head spun and my spirits plummeted. Eventually, my mind full of confusion and desperation, I decided to pray.

“Dear God, I’m so fed up, can you hear me, please God in heaven. If you hear me, send me an angel. Please God, send me an angel. Give me a sign that you hear my prayer, give me a sign that you’re there. Send me an angel.”

It was a prayer said from the pit of my stomach. It might not have been very wordy, but it contained all my thoughts, confusion, desperation and emotion. And it was enough, for quickly afterwards I fell asleep.

I went down to breakfast the next morning, train timetable in my back pocket, sat down at a table and introduced myself to the lady next to me.

“What’s your name I asked?” I enquired.

She looked at me, smiled and said, “Angel.” I nearly choked on my Weetabix.

“Is that your real name?” I asked, surprised.

“Yes, Angel,” she said. “It’s my Christian name. I’m from Holland.”

We talked some more and soon I felt I needed to tell her about my prayer the night before, concluding what an incredible coincidence it was that her name was Angel.

She laughed happily and said, “That’s Gods way of remaining anonymous.”

After breakfast, again I lay on my bed and closed my eyes.

“You must have some great sense of humour,” I called out, “if that’s what it is. Well God, here I am, I am willing to forgive, I am willing to learn to love, I give you my life from this moment on, I give you this weekend. If you exist, have it, its yours. I no longer care,” and I meant it.

Later on in the day, whilst I was waiting in the queue for lunch, I turned my head to meet the eyes of the lady immediately behind me. She smiled and said, “Hi Stuart. It’s me, Wendy.”

My mind flashed to the Dru Yoga workshop seven years previous.

“ Jeeeeeze what’s going on here,” I thought. “There must be close onto a 1000 people at this conference. This is impossible. This can’t happen.” I was gobsmacked

I reached out and held Wendy closely, feeling our connection instantly rekindled. I can’t really express exactly what I felt at that moment. Pleasure, excitement, amazement, disbelief, profound relief, complete happiness, reassurance. These feelings are a part of it, yes, but I don’t think I could ever list exactly what raced through my mind in that split second when I saw Wendy behind me. But of one thing I was certain, the way in which events had unfolded that morning, they were too great to be a coincidence.

We spent all weekend talking, Wendy had a terminal cancer, it had been that way for the last seven years, and still she was there more beautiful than ever. She had reached her goal and was teaching Dru Yoga.

Amazingly she had never been to the conference before either but had had a strange yearning to come.

Even more amazingly she had been wrongly booked on a particular workshop and hadn’t been able to cancel it – the very same workshop I had been incorrectly booked to attend.

Later on, when I thought more about it, the importance of this really hit home. Not only was it yet another incredible coincidence, if by some mishap we hadn’t met in the queue, we’d still have met in the workshop.

After the course had ended and I lay once more in my own bed, I reflected on the strange events of those couple of days. I tried to quieten my mind but couldn’t. Those incredible coincidences: those happy events. And as I lay in elated reflection, I heard those words again:

“Be still and know that I am with you.”

Was it God? Or was it my own mind, a simple memory, an eager thought.

Whatever the answer, I lay still - and I knew that God was with me.

I never saw Wendy again after that conference, but she gave me a book as a leaving present when we parted. In it she wrote, “Keep looking for angels.”

I have continued to look. I know that they come in all shapes and disguises, even woven in the mixture of pain and loss that takes place in our lives. So please look for yours. I know they will be there. Know, with absolute certainty that you are heard in your moments of despair.

The purpose of this book is to show that there are no such things as coincidences; That Coincidence is God’s way of remaining anonymous.

Sonia’s Story - Into the Light

I met Sonia at an open day, a day where people could come in and have taster treatments of the therapies I provide, and during this session she began to tell me her story. These are her words:

I was married to a man for 10 years or more. It was a marriage of convenience, as he was from India and it was arranged by my parents. Very early on their were signs that it was not going to be good but I pushed it these thoughts aside as we often do when we do not want to see the truth. Anyway, I felt I had no option.

The truth is he married me so he could get into this country, his mother stayed with us as well and between the two them they slowly began to chip away my self confidence my self esteem. One by one they would cut me off from my friends, and family until, one day, I found myself alone, confused belittled, anxious and very depressed.

If I went to the shops I was accused of having an affair. Everything I did was wrong.

Then came the odd slap which got gradually worse, but the real pain came from the emotional torture which was killing me inside.

Of course, all this happened over a period over years by which time I had two children. I tried to leave several times, but he would always find me and drag me back, until I eventually felt I had nowhere to run.

At my lowest point, I was so desperate that I tried to commit suicide. I cut myself and then took an overdose of antidepressant drugs. I really wanted to die.

The next thing I remember is looking down at my body from above in a hospital and nurses were rushing around all panic like.

You may have heard people say when they die go towards a light, well I went to the light. I really did, but they wouldn’t let me in. I really wanted to go, but they said, “No, it’s not your time. When it’s your time, we’ll come and collect you. You have responsibilities.”

I didn’t want to listen. I just wanted to stay. It felt so warm and comforting. I asked them what possible responsibilities I could have.

They told me I had a responsibility to my children. They said I needed to go back and look after them, and only when my time had come would someone collect me to return to that wonderful place.

With that I opened my eyes and was back in my body in hospital.

I held on to those words and as simple as it sounds it got me through the next few months of recovery. After that I left my husband and came to Birmingham.

On the day that I left, the strangest thing happened on the train. I sat at a table opposite a really nice man and we chatted away so easily and comfortably. It was as if I’d known him all my life. I think if he hadn’t have been there, I would have worried and fretted through the whole journey, but just through talking with him, everything felt okay for those few hours. We shared a coffee and that was that. I was never going to see him again - or so I thought.

Six months later I was putting my life back together. I had a job, a home, self-respect, and things were settling down nicely. But I felt a little lonely and thought I needed companionship, you know, just company.

It was just a thought until one particular day I started looking through the paper and I saw a lonely hearts ad. Normally I’d ignore these, but something seemed to pull me strongly answer one particular ad. I’d never done anything like that before, but I knew I just had to.

When the time came, I spoke to the man on the phone. He sounded nice and I decided to meet him in a very public place in the day for a coffee.

When I met the man I was opened mouthed. it turned out to be man I met on the train months earlier, the man I felt I had known all my life. We picked up where we left off.

We are still together 8 years later. He is everything my ex wasn’t; gentle, kind, easy going and a fantastic father.

And while I look forward to going towards the light again one day, right now I’m happy to be here. Life’s great!

Stuart’s Story Part 2 - Lead me to the man who need’s you the most

After the conference in Snowdonia, I’d like to say that life was great. It was for a while, yes, but life has its ups and downs and a few years later my marriage was in trouble and I was feeling really fed up with this area of my life.

On one particular day I was really down in the dumps. I felt alone and again I found myself reaching out to something that would offer me comfort and soothe me. I just wanted to be heard.

I prayed, “God in heaven help me, let me know that your with me once more, please God hear my prayer.” It was another one from the depths of my soul, not wordy, but full of despair and feeling. I was really in trouble emotionally and I needed help.

I lay on the bed thinking negatively what’s the point, no one hears us, and other such thoughts for what seemed hours, not really caring if life swallowed me up.

Eventually I decided I needed to get out. I’d done my soul searching and crying, but nothing was helping. So I put on my coat and went out towards the bus stop to go to a friends house.

I was two minutes at the stop when around the corner came towards me a beast of a man, my initial thought was Jeeeeze what a bruiser. He was massive. Looking straight at me, he walked forward as if with a sense of purpose. I looked around, hoping I wasn’t alone, but there was just me and this huge guy getting closer by the second.

Convinced I was about to meet the fists of a psychopath, I felt frozen to the spot. I looked at him, and his eyes blazed into mine. Then he stopped, mere inches away, towering over me and said,

“Do ya belive in God?”

I was shocked. Whatever I’d been expecting, it wasn’t that.

“Er, well, yes, I think…” I stammered nervously.

“Let me tell you something,” he said as he began to soften. “I’ve been in almost every prison in the country since I was a lad until one day I had what I can only describe as a revelation. I was in jail, and I’d had enough of life and I prayed my heart out and saying just that - and then it seemed the whole place just lit up. Something happened, dunno what, but something in me changed and since that day I have never been in trouble, and that’s the truth.

“I became a Christian when I got out jail and have been straight ever since then almost 30 years ago.

“The thing is,” he said, “tonight before I came out I said a prayer and asked God to send me to the man who needs you the most and I have been walking around for a couple of hours or so and looked at a lot of people. Then when I come around that corner and you stood out like a sore thumb, so I’m gonna give you this.” He handed me a little green slip on Christianity.

“You know I may never see you again, but you’re to have it and read it. My numbers on the back. Ring me when you need to.”

With that he walked off.

I just stood there, dumbfounded, utterly amazed. I was convinced I just had the answer to my prayer, but it seemed God wanted to drive the point truly home. I turned the slip over and the name on it was Derik, the very same man I had met and spoke with on the steps at the conference.

I met Derik only once after that and his life was an amazing one, from armed bank robbery to now working ushering the trolleys at Sainsburys, but a happier man you’ll never meet.

Jane

There was a part of me that was drawn to the hospice, in all honesty I really couldn’t understand it, but I knew that a part of my quest in coming full circle was to go in this direction. It played on my mind for weeks until I finally followed my intuitive feeling and went to meet the volunteer organiser and, as you’ll see from the stories I tell about this place, it was to change my outlook on life in so many ways.

At this point in my life, I had been practicing complementary therapies for 7 years and, in my own mind, I was geared up to cure everyone who came my way; I treated everyone with the same desire with which I had treated myself during my own recovery, believing that anyone could survive anything if they applied the same principles that I had used.
For the people who came my way, I would search passionately to find a way with them; I really wanted them to get well. On reflection, I now see things differently and I understand much more.

The hospice decided to take me on as a therapist working with patients on the wards and with outgoing patients. On my first day I was shown around the wards, room by room, until I came across a familiar name on one of the doors - Jane Degraff. I stopped and said to the ward manager “Can I go in here a sec; you see that’s the name of one of our yoga teacher.” I had phoned this particular lady 5 weeks earlier to ask her if she could cover a class for me, but the phone had just rung out.

I thought, “It couldn’t be Jane, could it?”……… I opened the door looked in, I hardly recognised her, but it was her. I walked over to her, “Jane” ….she looked up……….”Stuart” ………

I was shocked, I held her hand instinctively and sat beside her and we talked. She said, “ Stuart I don’t want your help in recovering, just your help in passing over”.

This line that she spoke hit me like a rock and was to open up another area in my life, because I realised, at that point, that healing wasn’t always about “getting better” but much more than that. The next 2 years that I worked there verified that - and I learnt so much more. Now I want to share with you some of my experiences.

John’s Change of Heart

From time to time I like to go to church, any church, I not bothered what nomination it is. This particular church in Selly Oak happened to be a Christian church, I liked to go because the choir were so full of praise and boy, did they sing out loud! It was truly uplifting. I’d sit myself at the back and tap my foot, or any part of my anatomy that I didn’t feel embarrassed about when in dance mode.

There was usually one particular man at the back, a tough looking individual who bore the battle scars of a hard life etched on his face, yet there was a kindness there.

Unlike me, he was only too happy to join in the celebration of the music.

I never spoke to him, or anyone else for that matter, I just went there occasionally.

One day I was at the hospital for my 6 monthly check up and, as I was waiting for the results of my blood tests, I saw him in the canteen, so I decided to join him.

“ I’ve seen you at the church from time to time,” I said, “how did you get involved with the church.”

“ A long time ago son, when I was younger, I was always in trouble; fighting was my daily life, against anyone, especially the law. One particular night, I went out alone and got into a row with a gang of lads in a pub. It all seemed to settle down, but when I went out they followed me, I cut through an alley to try to get away, but they caught me, beat me to a pulp and I was left to die, and I was dying. I was there for I don’t know how long, it was dark and I was in and out of consciousness, but luckily for me I was found by a copper and taken to hospital. The copper came back several times to see me, and I asked him why he went up that alley at night, why?

He told me that he still couldn’t explain it. He was just on the beat and he had this strange feeling to go in that direction, consciously he didn’t know why, it was just a feeling, and then he saw me in the middle of the alley. He told me that he truthfully believes that it is a miracle that he found me.”

“ It changed me son,” he said, “something in me changed, I just had a change of heart and never got involved in trouble again.”

“I started going to church from that day to this, I believe I was saved by God, well, I can’t explain it, but that the way is was for me. I changed my ways and found some peace along the way.”

Jay’s Story

There are some people you get an instant feel for, and Jay was one of those people I instantly liked, a down to earth lady about 50 years old. She was planning to go on holiday in the next few months and wanted to get fitter and healthier before going.

She’d had a heart attack 5 years prior, after a difficult time including losing her mum and brother, and this had been the catalyst for her downward spiral towards fatigue and generally feeling unwell.

As we began treatment, she told me that when she’d had the heart attack, she’d actually died in the ambulance, and here’s the thing, she said “When I was resuscitated, as soon as I came round, the ambulance man asked if I had seen anything - and I said ‘Yes’ straight away. I told him about my experience, I’d seen what looked like a fog, and beyond that a light - and there were people there, among whom I think were my mum and my brother.

But I was told in no uncertain terms and in a very authoritative voice ‘No’, and with that I was back here. The ambulance man told me that they ask people straight away, because otherwise they later think it was just a dream. He told me that they had collected many stories, all of the same kind. I can only speak as I find, and that is what happened.”

This particular little story just adds to the collection that I already have, all of which speak in the same terms, and give me food for thought. These are just ordinary people like you and me. In the face of such extraordinary experiences, I find myself more and more convinced that these events are true.

Angela’s Notes

My girlfriend is an audiologist, and she told me many years ago about a particular hearing test that she did for a child aged 5.

He had come just for a hearing check-up and, as she browsed through the hospital notes, she read that at the age of three, he had been swimming with his parents and was almost drowned in an accident. The notes also stated that he told the doctors that when he was at the bottom of the pool his dead granddad came and sat with him and told him he would be alright. His granddad said that someone would come to rescue him, and that he would wait with him till they did.
He was resuscitated and, as you can tell, he made a full recovery. A child would not make something like that up, and it was actually recorded in the hospital notes.

Isn’t it amazing?

Susan

Here’s another story in line with the one above. Susan came to me with a diagnosis of parkinson’s disease. She was a nurse and knew better than most the prognosis of this disease; she was and still is a lady of great depth and compassion and her strength of character was very tangible.

She began to tell me a little about herself and, as we progressed, I waited until I heard the cause of her disease, at least as I understood it. She told me of her trails and tribulations and moved on to her father, who she adored and who adored her. She told me that one day she came over to her parents’ house to hear that her father had been made redundant, so she went outside to see him. She vividly remembered the scene, she saw him sitting by the pond in the garden and he looked devastated. She went over to him and put her arms around him and sat with him.

As the weeks passed, the effects of the way he had been treated at work left their mark, and he never really recovered. Six months later, he was diagnosed with motor neuron disease. She talked openly about how that had affected her, and at what point she felt that there was a void within her. I sensed and believed that this was the catalyst for change within her system.

Later on in our sessions, she talked about her dad’s funeral and how her sister had said that she would like her dad to have a white handkerchief in his pocket. Her sister had said, “Do you remember that dad always had a white hankie in his pocket?” The family agreed and remembered with great affection.

Many years later, her sister had a motorbike accident riding pillion with her boyfriend, who actually lost his leg in the accident.

When she came round, she told the nurse, “I must thank the man who wiped away my tears at the accident with his white hankie.” The nurse told her that no-one had been around at the scene of the accident, and that she had been first at the scene, and that there was no man there to thank.

She said “But I saw him nurse, he wiped away my tears and sat with me”………..

It makes you think doesn’t it?

When One is Truly in Need - (Jo)

The above title is a quote taken from ‘The Lotus and the Rose’ - the textbook of pranayama yoga. Pranayama is a gentle form of yoga, which became my saving grace for so many years. It teaches that when you are truly in need, help will come.
The following little story illustrates this quite clearly.

I went to a spiritualist church many years ago and I still go there from time to time. After this particular service, I got chatting to a lady about healing and the like, and I asked her how she got involved in the spiritualist church; we had a cup of tea and she began her account:

“A long time ago I was married to a handsome man from Turkey. We had been married for about six years and life was good, or so it seemed. We had a holiday three or four times a year, which was great; we would drive over to his home country and stay in a top hotel and drive back the following week.

One particular year, we set off as usual and arrived at the hotel without any problems.

He told me to carry on up to the room and that he would join me shortly, he just had a bit of business to sort out, so I continued and began to unpack. One hour passed and there was no sign of him; this was a bit strange, but I thought that things must be taking time. After three or four hours passed I was worried and rang down to the desk, but no one had seen him and I was very concerned. (There were no mobile phones at that time.)

I sat on the bed trying to distract myself from the fears running around my head - then suddenly the doors burst open and, in a flash, a policeman with a gun grabbed me off the bed and threw me onto the floor by my hair. He screamed at me that I should stay there as the room became flooded with other shouts, as police ran around throwing draws and doors open, completely ransacking the room, which was demolished in seconds. I was picked up by my hair again, pulled out of the open door, literally dragged down through the hotel and thrown into the back of a police van. By now I was crying, shaking and absolutely petrified. I was taken to a police station and, without a word; I was thrown into a jail cell.

You have seen old stories of jails built of stone; dark and damp; places that look like dungeons, well this was just like that and I lay on the floor crying, absolutely in bits.

I was alone for many hours until a police woman came in, gave me some water, uttered something about drugs and my husband and then left. The next day I was taken into another room and questioned; it turned out that my husband had been smuggling drugs in my car and he had blamed me. I was taken back to the cell – I’ve never been so frightened in all my life. A few hours later they let me go, saying that they were keeping my husband.

I was shocked, scared and completed bewildered; these things only happen in films don’t they? I went back to our hotel room, which was still in the ransacked state the police had left it in. I lay on the bed and cried myself to sleep - God knows how long it took. Part of me knew that I had to sort out the problem, but another part wanted to run. I hardly had any money left, so I had to move out of the hotel into a run-down guest house.

I wired my parents who wanted me to come straight home, but the need to find out what had happened was stronger than the impulse to run. Everyday I went to the jail to see my husband - I didn’t want to believe this was happening and in the end I was just going forward on auto pilot.

You remember the old arcade game Space Invaders? Well, there was an arcade on the way back from the prison that I used to go in to play that game. Believe it or not, this was my saving grace, because it was the only way I could distract the thoughts in my head, otherwise I just couldn’t function. I would play hour upon hour, then go back to the guest house and sleep; I lost 3 stones in weight in as many weeks - by which time I was running out of money.

One particular day, when I came back from a visit, I was at my lowest ebb and the only money I had in the world was a few pennies. I started to walk up the hill towards the arcade. I’ll never forget it; it was raining and getting dark and with my head down I put one foot in front of the other. I didn’t even see her, but from the opposite direction came an old lady who bumped into me and, in broken English, muttered something like, ‘Please spare some money for an old lady.’ I stopped, looked at her, pulled out of my pocket the only money I had in the world and gave it to her. She smiled at me gently – and then she was gone! It was quite strange, Stuart, there was a wide space there, but she had bumped into me.

I carried on to the arcade, sat in a chair and just waited and waited, ready to be thrown out - at least it was warm there. Suddenly a man sat next to me; I didn’t have the energy to tell him to go away.

He said, ‘Please meet me tomorrow.’

I looked up at him and told him that there was no way I was going to meet him.

‘Please,’ he said, ‘I have been watching you, I know that you are in trouble, I don’t need to know how or why, I only know that you are and I want to help you.’

He was so insistent. I know it sounds foolish, but I agreed; I thought ‘At least I may get a free meal.’

When I met him, he told me that he was the owner of the arcade; he placed a wad of money in my hand and a key to a little house, saying that he didn’t want anything from me, he just wanted to help and that I could stay there until I sorted myself out.

It may all seem totally unreal, but it’s true! You know, Stuart, I never saw that man again! I stayed there until I got to the bottom of what was going on with my husband. It was true: he had been running drugs and using me. Luckily for me, the police didn’t believe him and he was sentenced. I eventually came back home, we were divorced and that was the end of a chapter of my life and the beginning of another.”

I met Jo once more; we met for a walk in the park and she told she’d been to place a yellow rose on her mother’s grave. We carried on to the spiritualist church.

“Come with me,” she said, “you’ll get a message, people do when they’re with me.”

During the service, the speaker was going around the room; I was petrified thinking he was going to come to me, but he went to Jo and said that her mother was coming through. He started saying some things that were personal to Jo, at which point she began to cry, as much from the comfort it gave as because of the content.

At the end of the message, he said, “Your mother is going now and, by the way, she said thanks for the yellow rose you gave her today.”

At this moment, my hair stood on end and my eyes widened, because that was exactly what Jo had done before we went to the church, how could someone know that?

So, as you can see, the philosophy from the yoga; that when one is truly in need, help comes; had been shown to me. I hope this little story gives you hope that in your own life, help will come at the right time and life will find its balance. I believe it will.

The Return Home (Kim)

I have met some extraordinary people through my journey and one such person was a lady named Kim.

Kim walked into the health centre to bring her daughter, Della, to one of the therapists for treatment. We began talking about a book she had picked up off the counter called ‘The Journey’ by Brandon Bays. I told her I had read it and explained a little of what it was about.

“I have cancer,” she said, without reservation.

”So did I once,” I replied, “Let me help you to see this for what it really is.”

She booked in for the following week and thus we began opening up that box of jewels that lies hidden within this disease labelled cancer.

Each pearl of wisdom that she took out revealed something that was of equally great benefit to me as it was to Kim, it is an honour to share such moments of genuine opening up with any human being, let alone one who is struggling through cancer. Yet open up she did. Kim had a presence about her, a richness and an understanding of life that can only be gained through adversity, or so I believe. She was and is a fighter. It hadn’t always been that way, in fact for a long time she had wanted to die – and it seems ironic to me that these feelings of desperation, of not wanting to live, disappeared when she was finally diagnosed with cancer. Strangely enough, I know these feelings all too well from my own experience. A long time before my diagnosis, I was also desperate in my life and I couldn’t find a way out of the horrible situation I was in. I vividly remember praying so desperately, “God please take me, I cannot find a way out.”

Like Kim, it was only when I was diagnosed with cancer that I turned around and was so determined to live. Paradoxically, with both Kim and myself, it was the diagnosis of cancer that actually saved our lives. At this turning point, Kim threw herself into meditation, nutrition, positive thinking and anything that worked for her; she fought for her salvation in so many ways.

At each visit she related stories of real life, stories that could only move me towards a tender place within my own heart, a softer place that I could really listen from, and I both listened and learned from her journey.

I would like to share with you what she told me on one particular day that she came in for treatment, after months of working together.

She said, “Let me take my cap off.” She threw it onto the chair, revealing strands of new hair breaking through; the body can certainly regenerate new life even after five months of intensive chemotherapy. “You’ll never guess what’s happened to me,” she announced, as she climbed onto the treatment couch, “let me get settled first.”

This is what she told me:

“For a while it’s been on my mind that I wanted to move house, make a fresh start – you know. Well, I was sitting at home and I said to my husband, ‘Let’s go up to Kingswinford and have a look at the houses there’. I’ve always wanted to live in the countryside and, as you know, one of my daughters is out there.

“My husband said ‘We don’t have time, Della will be home soon (Della has cystic fibrosis and goes to a special school).’

I said, ‘We have time, come on,’ so off we went and, when we got there, I asked him to look at one estate agent’s office while I looked at another across the road.

There was one cottage that caught my eye and we decided to look at it. It was a little run down, but it had something about it; it was a detached cottage amidst the woods and, just down the hill in front of the residence, there was a beautiful meadow of bluebells. They only wanted £140,000 for it, while the cottages either side had a value of £220,000. I couldn’t believe it!

We put in an offer straight away – and this is where it gets strange…

We needed to sort out the money for the cottage. The chap who normally does our insurance, finances etc. phoned to say his car had broken down and he couldn’t get out to us, so we had to find someone else urgently as we didn’t want to miss the cottage. We found another man to help us and, when he came, he started looking through our insurance forms afresh and then he said, ‘You know that you have critical illness insurance on this don’t you?’

I answered, ‘No, we thought it was just insurance. How often do you check these things out properly; we just paid our money each month like everybody else and we didn’t read the small print, who does?’

‘Well you do have critical illness insurance,’ he said, ‘Let me just check it out.’

When he came back he told us ‘You have just 3 weeks left to make your claim on this, you’re allowed six months from your diagnosis, and you are liable to receive £110,000.’

Stuart, I couldn’t believe this … if the car of the man that we knew so well hadn’t broken down, if I hadn’t gone to look at the house, I wouldn’t have known about any of this.

Here’s the other thing, we put our house on the market and sold it the next day – can you believe this – to a couple who, just by chance, were living in my husband’s aunt’s old house! What are the chances of that happening?

There’s one more thing; when my mom was a little girl, her dad sometimes took her to a wood through a beautiful bluebell field: she didn’t know where it was. We’ve since found out that it was the very same bluebell field that surrounds our cottage, isn’t that amazing?

I rang my mom and told her she was coming home; it is so strange that these twists and turns in life have led me to the house of my dreams, the money towards it, and the connection with my mom in her childhood, doesn’t it have such a feeling that it was all meant to be?”

Kim’s symptoms lessened and she has stayed in remission ever since.

An amazing true story, a sequence of coincidences that, it seems to me, were just meant to be. Lovely isn’t it?

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