Joanne Sumner is a therapist, coach, and trainer specializing in Yoga, Reiki, Meditation, and Flower Essences. She helps busy women reconnect with their purpose, passion, and peace through practical, uplifting teachings. Known for her serene presence and joyful approach, Joanne creates classes and workshops that inspire personal growth while embracing laughter and simplicity. She also mentors practitioners seeking guidance in their practice and professional development. MysticMag finds out more.
You offer a range of services, including yoga, meditation, Reiki, and flower essences. How do you integrate these diverse practices to create a cohesive wellbeing program for your clients?
The aim of the work is to help people find the intervention that works best for them, so by having different practices I can draw on, I can help them most flexibly. For example, someone might come to me initially for yoga because they are experiencing stress and stiffness in their body. We work with yoga initially, and then if I (or they) think that another practice would be helpful we adjust to include that. It is common for people to attend retreats, or to come for Reiki treatment, to deal with their stress once they’ve settled into yoga practice.
In other parts of the work, different practices are provided together from the beginning – for example, I frequently support both coaching and Reiki clients with flower essences, to help them soften into the changes they want to make and move with more ease and grace into their new way of being.
Sometimes the client knows already what they want to pull on to make a cohesive program, and we create a bespoke three or six month series for them. For example, when working with clients going through menopause, I’ve often combined sleep hygiene coaching, with Reiki for rebalancing, with yin yoga exercises that can be practiced at home, and flower essences to deal with the emotional rollercoaster that the menopause journey can cause.
It all depends on what the client is looking to achieve, and also on their level of readiness at the time. Sometimes a yoga or meditation class is all they can commit to when they begin, but over time they begin to come on retreat regularly, or sign up to do Reiki training with me.
Your website emphasizes foundations of purpose, passion, and peace. Can you share your personal journey and how these principles became central to your teachings?
I had an unconventional start because I was born into a spiritual organisation, associated with an ashram in northern India. So meditation was part of my life from the age of 9, and I don’t remember a time when I didn’t value spirituality and my sense of connection to the wider universe.
That said, I did as most teenagers do, and moved away from what my parents had taught me when I went to university, and it was only when working in a high profile and stressful role in my late 20s that I began again to seek out the peace that meditation and yoga can bring.
I was fortunate that someone was running meditation classes at work – just a very different style! Where I’d grown up with transcendental meditation, she was teaching meditation with fairies, angels, colours, you name it. It was completely magical!
I soon found a local teacher who had a robust training background in a number of traditions, and committed initially to weekly classes, then to both yoga and meditation teacher training, and then to various healing trainings. It was as I began to set up a business working in these areas myself, that my coach asked me what I wanted the business to stand for.
Purpose, passion and peace was it. Purpose was at the very heart of the business offering for me because for me having a clear purpose has always given me such a sense of calm, clear, direction. If you know what you’re for, it becomes far easier to decide what’s right for you and what isn’t. I don’t have a hierarchy of valuable purposes, it’s whatever works for the client. I remember working with a client who was struggling with the variety of her passions, and we came to the conclusion that her purpose was to ‘surprise and delight people with her creativity’. The weight off her shoulders! The stride as she left! 10 years later she’s winning awards for her indie films, and I can’t keep up with the accolades!
Passion comes from the fire in me that I can’t deny and that I think helps us suck the marrow out of life. I so very often am asked how I do as much as I do, and the answer is passion. I want to live this life as well as I can, experiencing as much as possible from the smallest things to the grand adventures. Passion keeps you moving, motivated and in my case, anyway, content.
Peace is the foundation of it all. Peace is the sound of the mantra that starts unbidden when I’m in difficulty. Peace is the space for my likely-ADHD brain to rest when creating art. Peace is the love of self that allows true rest and nurture. Peace is the silence underneath everything. For me, there isn’t anything without access to peace. If I had only one thing to give, it would be peace.
With offerings like online yoga and meditation classes, what challenges and opportunities have you encountered in transitioning these traditionally in-person practices to a virtual environment?
I began offering online classes during the pandemic – as did so many other teachers! What surprised me was how vital that connection was, even online.
Within yoga, there are definitely challenges – I can’t see the detail of people’s movement in the same way, so it becomes closer to a broadcast. I do mini check-ins regularly to make sure that I still have up to date health information, or to see if anyone has new injuries, conditions, or stressors that I need to know about. It’s definitely challenged me to improve my communication skills, as I can’t rely on the water cooler moments at the beginning or end of the class any more.
However, for meditation, it was remarkable how easily the transition could be made. Here the main thing I was aware of was losing the ease for members of the class to bond with each other outside of class, which had been such a wonderful side effect of meeting in person.
You mention a commitment to ‘giving back.’ Could you elaborate on the initiatives or programs you are involved in that contribute to the community or support broader wellbeing causes?
At the moment, my focus is on bringing on the next generation of teachers and healers. I’ve been working in wellbeing for 18 years now, and it feels like time to uplevel and make room. So most of my giving back is focused on helping new Reiki healers and teachers get established confidently (I run an online development program for Reiki Masters, and regular Reiki shares that include development aspects for healers at Reiki 1 and above). I also spend a portion of time each month formally coaching and informally mentoring new retreat facilitators and new yoga teachers.
I also run a separate business specifically focused on helping female entrepreneurs to thrive.
If you would like to find out more about Joanne Sumner, please visit https://joannesumner.com/
