Episode 16 : Sarah

In this episode, we’re joined by Sarah Outen MBE — adventurer, author and now psychotherapist — whose story is as extraordinary as it is deeply human.

At just 23, Sarah became the first woman and youngest person to row solo across the Indian Ocean. She then went on to complete her London to London expedition — travelling over 40,000km under her own human power by rowing oceans, cycling continents and kayaking coastlines. 

Today, her life looks very different. She now works as a psychotherapist — often alongside her herd of donkeys — helping people reconnect with themselves in a way that’s quiet, grounded and surprisingly powerful.

In this conversation, we explore both sides of Sarah’s story.

The extraordinary expeditions… and what followed.

The storm after the storm — when pushing through was no longer sustainable. Illness, burnout, emotional struggle… and the realisation that surviving isn’t the same as living well.

Sarah speaks with remarkable honesty about what she’s learned — from the cost of “just keep going”, to the importance of rest, emotional awareness and finding safe connections with others.

Because as Sarah shows us, adventure doesn’t stop — it evolves.

What once meant crossing oceans now means understanding herself, helping others, and working out what kind of life she truly wants to live.

Sarah’s NVNG Top 3:

•  All of it can be true at once 
•  Be here now 
•  Kindness — to yourself, others and the world 

It’s a powerful reminder that  sometimes joy and struggle sit side by side… and sometimes the bravest thing we can do is turn towards ourselves.

Find out more about Sarah's work at Seen and Herd Therapy

We are back with a new series of Nothing Ventured Nothing Gained. Please follow us on Instagram for lots of fun, adventures and behind the scenes antics.

NVNG is hosted by Rebecca Rees and Caroline Bridge. Rebecca is an ICF PCC Executive Coach and Co-Founder of Peak 15 Coaching, passionate about how our brains work and helping people unlock possibility. Caroline won BBC’s Race Across the World 2025 with her son Thomas — a series watched by over six million and shortlisted at the National Television Awards.

🎯 Our Mission: To help people pause, see beyond what holds them back, and discover new possibilities for greater happiness and wellbeing.

📩 Contact Us : We’d love to hear your questions, ideas, or stories of stepping outside your comfort zone: WhatsApp: https://wa.me/447375220027

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👉 Please follow, share, and be part of the NVNG adventure — it all starts with daring to try.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Welcome back to Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained. Today's guest is Sarah Uton, MVE, adventurer, author, and now psychotherapist. Her story stretches the limits of what most of us imagine is possible. Sarah was 23 when she became the first woman and youngest person ever to row solo across the Indian Ocean from Australia to Mauritius. She was at sea for 124 days. A few years later, she launched an even more ambitious expedition called London to London via the world under her own human power. Rowing oceans, cycling continents, and kayaking coastlines. A journey of over 40,000 kilometres, arriving back at Tower Bridge in London in 2015. Her experiences are captured in the remarkable documentary Home, which Rebecca and I both watched recently and found completely absorbing. I even had to watch it again whilst running on the treadmill. It was absolutely fascinating. But this conversation is about far more than extreme adventure. It becomes a thought-provoking exploration of what venturing really means. As Sarah reflects on those two extraordinary expeditions, she explains that they are not the only ways of venturing. Yes, today her adventures look very different. Sarah talked openly about how her perspective on life has changed through illness, emotional challenges, and deep self-reflection. And how that led her to train as a psychotherapist. Her adventures now are often quieter, but no less profound, helping people understand themselves and continuing her own personal exploration of health and well-being and what is most important in life. It's a conversation that reminds us that sometimes the biggest adventures aren't the external achievements people celebrate. They're the ones where we start to work out what kind of life we really want to live. We have decided to split this episode into three parts. This is the beginning, the first part of our conversation. Sarah takes us back to the early days of her adventures, from rowing solo across the Indian Ocean to setting out on that expedition that would become London to London via the world. Along the way, she shares one of our favourite moments from the journey. While cycling across China, a young man called Gal asked if he could join her. Sarah's first instinct was to think of all the reasons why that probably wasn't a good idea. And then she thought, why not? So I was on a dog walk yesterday and listened and watched your film, stopped in my tracks, and had to continue walking further so that I could watch it. And then I re-watched it this morning. It is so amazing, so good. I just can't tell you. I was just blown away.

SPEAKER_00 3:04

Ah, wow. So you've had Sarah TV like a lot the last 24 hours, then.

SPEAKER_01 3:10

But it's been brilliant and it helps so many other people. It must resonate on some level with absolutely everybody.

SPEAKER_00 3:18

Yeah, we've had a lot of really sort of positive and meaningful feedback about how it resonated with people. And that was always one of the goals as well, was to turn a story that on the one hand can feel a bit unrelatable, I think, because it's such a big undertaking and quite abstract in ways. And then actually the themes are totally applicable to anything, you know, to storms and sunshine wherever you are in life.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

It's a you're the only person in the world to have done that. And sometimes somebody might just ask why. I know you said for the adventure. But as you say, everything you went through and experienced and the storms and the pressure and the joy when you were sometimes I have to say, I thought you experienced joy and slight suffering. That's an interesting thought. Joy and suffering. The reason I say that is I watched you come out in the morning when your hands were hurting and red, not necessarily red raw, but they they appeared red raw. And yet you then released the birds and the joy on your face of something. And I thought that is because you had suffered something and you were able to release the birds, and suddenly smile spread over your face, and you were able to carry on for the day.

SPEAKER_00 4:41

If we look at the whole, then there's often joy sat alongside suffering. And I think being able to find and notice and be grateful for things that give you joy or just to bring in gratitude and appreciation enables you to get through the difficult stuff. I think that's a practice that's come with me since my Indian Ocean days of finding the good things about the day. And I still every day I write it down, my good things, and sometimes it can be a whole massive list. And they they can be really small things, but they're so important. And you kept that up since the Indian Ocean. Yeah, as a practice in terms of naming the things, recognizing them today. But when my marriage ended three years ago, I made a habit of writing it down. I needed to see it in front of me and turn it into something tangible. And I've kept it up since then. And actually I've just started it might sound funny, but I've just got a little dog, little gilly. And last night I found myself doing her good things about the day as well. Um saying them out loud to her, you know, this has been good about your day, these things have been here in your day. There's something, I suppose, anchoring about it. And it's like it weaves the thread of gratitude and appreciation through days that can sometimes be really tough.

SPEAKER_01 6:06

Yes. Absolutely. And to be in touch with your feelings and recognize them. And when you look back, perhaps you realise they can change and what you've come through.

SPEAKER_00 6:17

And it doesn't have to last. Yeah, there's something huge about that, isn't there? The the recognition that whatever feeling we might have in response to something isn't necessarily going to be the last, the final picture on that.

SPEAKER_01 6:30

Feelings evolve. Do you go back and look over past pages?

SPEAKER_00 6:35

In doing some house sorting recently, for example, I've come across various old journals and notebooks and things, letters. And that's been a really lovely thing on the whole to reflect and relive some of those moments.

SPEAKER_01 6:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:52

And actually, I I watched my film for the first time again last year, the first time in perhaps five years or something. And it brought back so much, and there was such a lot of gratitude, pride, respect for myself. What's the word? Um, sort of astonishment in some ways. There was a lot of grace, actually, as well, as in I was able to give myself more grace for perhaps certain things that I'd given myself a hard time for previously.

SPEAKER_01 7:27

Could you maybe just give a summary of what you've achieved? So just from the Indian Ocean and how you got there, and then London to London.

SPEAKER_00 7:36

It's funny that my first response as you said that, Rebecca, was I survived. I think that's the biggest achievement of all is I survived. Which I think any of us have done, right? We've survived 100% of the days in our life thus far. So what we're talking about here is some yeah, some journeys, some expeditions. So in 2009, when I was 23, I set out to row solo across the Indian Ocean from Australia to Mauritius in a six-meter long boat called Dippers Serendipity. And that took four months and one failed attempt. And that journey inspired a bigger journey, a sort of an extension of that. Just an example of how my 24-year-old brain was thinking at the time of a journey that would take me across continents and other oceans. So a couple of years later, in 2011, I set out to row and cycle and kayak a loop of the northern hemisphere. That took four and a half years, which was twice as long as we'd imagined. Yes. And there's a line that I've often sort of used to describe it of it was all the richer for turning out not exactly as it had been planned. So those are my two biggest. I was gonna say they're my two biggest physical journeys. I'm actually not entirely sure that's the truth, but I suppose they're the pin-ups. Yes. They're the ones people like to hear about. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

Of course. And you broke Guinness World Records while you were doing it.

SPEAKER_00 9:17

I think I set some. I'm not sure I broke any, but I set some. Yeah. I'm I always feel a bit vague about that, Caroline, because they're really not that important to me. There's a few things like first woman to row across the Indian Ocean solo and maybe just the first Yeah, I I don't even remember all the details. For me, it was more about what came from the journeys in terms of meaning and experience and learnings and meeting people. That's the bit that yeah, fills me up.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

You talk about the naivety of a 25-year-old. And that struck a chord with me because you said it so beautifully and charmingly. And I wonder what you meant by that. What was the catalyst to make you undertake this incredible journey?

SPEAKER_00 10:07

Okay, so you're referring to a line in the film, the documentary called Home, that we made about the London to London fire of the world journey, that that sort of big northern hemisphere loop. In the opening sequence, as I'm describing how I'm about to set out on this big journey. And I summed up with the naivety of a 25-year-old. Because there was something that I do look back on as naive in the way in which, having just rowed across the Indian Ocean and done a chunk of the map, I suppose, and it had been a three-year process to get to that point of breaking things down, much like a jigsaw puzzle it felt like of finding which bit would fit so that I could even get to the start, that I'd shown myself how I could do something really big that perhaps seemed impossible out of my experience, but by breaking it down, finding people to help, chipping at it little bit by little bit, I could do it. And so there was something for me in applying that logic to the world and going, well, I've done one ocean. So I mean, this is just like two oceans and some bits in between. Let's just apply the same model. So there's there's something I think very clever in that naivety as well, because you're you're simplifying something, and also I think the naivety bit comes in in that I somehow thought that that would just follow through. Whereas, of course, there was so much challenge that I guess both could have been foreseen and also stuff that just did not even contemplate. And I reflect back now on that innocence in some way, and the way in which I simplified it and went, yeah, this is what I'm gonna do, and I'm gonna find a way. And there's something really inspiring to me in that, and something that I sometimes have to remind myself of and call in now because I find that I'm perhaps more liable to overthink things now. I know the different things that can go wrong in certain situations. I've seen the consequences to my own health and well-being and financial situation when things go wrong. So there is something very refreshing about that element of my younger self that I've heard some people relate to and and say that they had versions of the same, and other people sort of say, gosh, I I would never have done that at that age. I wouldn't have had the the courage. And I think for me there was a bit the blend of courage and naivety, perhaps.

SPEAKER_01 12:46

Incredible. What I remember, you talked about the people you met and Gao. It'd be lovely to hear more about that. So how did you meet him? What happened?

SPEAKER_00 12:58

Gao is one of my favourite stories from that journey, and I think actually a story that lots of people can relate to in different ways. So I'd been on the road for I don't know, three or four months at the point at which I met Gao. So by that point, I'd kayaked from London to France over a couple of days, got on my bike Hercules, started cycling eastwards across Europe and into Asia. And I was in the western provinces of China when I met Gao, who was a few years younger than me. I think he was 20 or 21 at the time, young Chinese guy, and he was really interested in my bike. We met at a petrol station when I was choosing breakfast or something. And he was full of interest, curiosity, wanting to do his own journey one day, he said. But he said, I don't know how I'd do it, I'd have to train, I'm not strong enough. Basically, had all the reasons why he couldn't do it in his head. And I said, It's just riding a bike, like there's so many different types of bikes, there's so many different ways to have an adventure. You don't have to go around the world, you could go 20 minutes down the road, and that's an adventure. And so I sort of encouraged him and shared these things and said, I'd love to hear about it one day. Here's my email address. And we went our different ways, and half an hour or so down the road, there was a car honking its horn at me, and he leaps across the central reservation to ask if he can come with me, which took me by surprise. And I remember that to start with, I was thinking of all the reasons why he couldn't and shouldn't. You know, what if his bike breaks, what if he dies in the Gobi Desert, all these things. And then I thought, well, lots of people have helped me on my way, and I've learned alongside others. So wouldn't it be a good thing if he comes and you know what is the worst that's gonna happen? Probably that we, I don't know, part ways after a few days, but hopefully he he would have had a sort of an empowering experience. So I essentially said, Yep, sure thing, you can come along, let's meet in two days' time. He said he needed to go and buy a bike because he didn't even have a bike. I mean, that's extraordinarily brave. And so two days later, he he rocked up, he'd shaved his hair, he was top-to-toe in red lycra, he got together all the bits that he thought he needed, according to my list that I'd sent him off with. Including a flag, a Chinese flag. He was very proud of that, I see. That's it, including this massive flag. Because on the back of my bike, I had little postcard-sized flags of the country that I was travelling through, a British flag and a little expedition logo. And his brothers, or his cousin rather, had seen that and said to him, You need a Chinese flag, but it's got to be bigger than Sarah's. So he turns up with a sort of beach tower-sized flag that billowed across the back of his bike. And so we cycled together for five weeks across a couple of thousand kilometres that included the Gobi Desert. Like it wasn't that we were just cycling, you know, on flat, easy roads, but we did some hardcore cycling. And I remember his first night, he got a puncture and he didn't know how to fix it. So we sort of went straight in with some bike maintenance. And I'm thinking, gosh, what have I taken on here? He had his bike helmet on back to front. We'd stop because it was we we got up to like 50 degrees in the middle of the day. So on on the way to that, it was a case of drinking lots, eating lots, pacing ourselves. And meanwhile, he's doing his jumping jacks, his lunges, he's basically trying to impress me. And I had to say to him, Look, I am so impressed that you are here. You can just chill out and let's just take it easy. And it was so special to watch him settle into that ride over the next few days and weeks and grow in confidence, be able to manage himself. You know, a few weeks in he sort of didn't need me anymore because he could fix his bike, he was helping other people fix theirs, he was beating me up all the hills. Yeah, it was a really special thing to see that growth happen right there. The power of him asking for help, of me saying, Yep, sure, come along. And that just day by day we figured things out because lots of things do break when you're on a big journey and you're in quite tough conditions. So it was a really, really beautiful experience to share together. And I was gonna say there's something really lovely for me in that part of the journey being accompanied, because there was such a lot of the journey where I was travelling solo, even though on land I was often meeting people, that was great. But actually, here was someone that I got to build a relationship with for five weeks, because most of the time, you know, it might be a couple of days, and then I'm saying goodbye and I'm carrying on. So it was a yeah, a really special part of the whole journey. And I think one that makes the journey more relatable somehow as well, because actually lots of us, I mean, myself included, can relate to that idea of I'd like to do something, but actually my head is full of the what ifs, you know, what if I can't, what if I go wrong. And I think his Gauss story is an example of the power of saying, Yeah, okay, I'm gonna have a go and I'll figure it out and I can ask for help. And actually, yeah, we all have that.

SPEAKER_01 18:41

And now the story shifts. Sarah talks openly about what happened after the expeditions and the toll they took on her health, the breakdown she experienced, and the moment she realized she couldn't keep pushing through life in that same way. It's a deeply honest conversation about illness recovery and the process of learning to listen to your body in a completely different way. Instead of saying, what if, what if it goes wrong, have you now started being more positive and saying, What if it goes right? Or this could go right, I'll make it happen.

SPEAKER_00 19:16

I suppose it depends on what it is and what the stakes are in some ways. And yeah, sort of thinking through options and ways in which I can navigate certain things, but certainly that's an ongoing process, I think, of returning to trust and nurturing trust in whatever the outcome that I can manage and will be okay and find my way through. I think there's been an evolution for me in that sense, in terms of. So I think you referenced it, Caroline, perhaps something about kind of feeling all your feelings. I think the stage that I was at in my life when those big journeys happened, those big expeditions, that actually I wasn't feeling all my feelings. There were still certain feelings that were pushed aside and stuff from my past that I hadn't properly met. And that my attitude at the time is I will find a way through at all costs. Whereas now I've seen the link between emotions and physical health. And you know, I I will not shy away from feeding things. I will and I have and I do feel and that there's now kind of a limit to what I'm prepared to put my being through, not just my body, but my whole being. It's definitely not at all costs now because I've paid the price for that. I got really sick during my expedition. I mean, you've just watched the film, you might have noticed, or maybe it you don't notice it so much, but after the Pacific, the second time, I was so poorly, my immune system just crashed and I had pneumonia. And I look at it now and I think, well, I should have had a massive load of rest, proper rest, but I didn't know how to rest at that point. I only learned how to rest in my 30s after I'd got really, really sick. And I pushed on through, and the doctors gave me steroids for asthma that had appeared and to try and calm my immune system. And I remember bouncing between steroids and antibiotics for a couple of years. And actually, I look at the film, that second half of the journey, and I see how ill I was, and that I pushed on regardless, sort of because I could in some ways, but I look at it now and I would not, I just would not. Like I have learned how to rest and have become very protective over my health because I've come to understand the ways in which I can be well and that we need to rest, and we can't just be at 90 miles. Miles an hour all the time.

SPEAKER_01 22:01

Yeah. What was it that unlocked you becoming more in tune with your emotions, do you think?

SPEAKER_00 22:09

I suppose because I had to. I mean, a few breakdowns and foraying into therapy and just starting to meet myself in different ways. That was a part of it, and coming to see the link between well, but it's kind of all one and the same, really, you know, emotional expression and physical health.

SPEAKER_01 22:30

What was it that helped you to get into tune with your emotions after that?

SPEAKER_00 22:36

So a mixture of things, I suppose, and it's happened in stages and it's taken time and patience. But I had a breakdown coming, you know, back from the expedition. It happened about six months afterwards, I suppose, right about the time I was handing in my book manuscript and getting married. Again, I look at it now and I think, why did you load everything all into one part of the year?

SPEAKER_01 23:03

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 23:03

But some of those things we only know once we know, don't we? And I started therapy at that point and I suppose started to meet those edges. And again, just bit by bit over time, coming to trust that I could feel, that it's safe enough to feel, that I needed to feel, that I could see the link between how having suppressed lots of emotions for for many years had resulted in me being unwell, or at least contributed to it. So essentially, bit by bit in my 30s, I came to understand some of these patterns, the links, could see how I'd pushed a lot of things down. I mean, that expedition happened in some ways because of those qualities of just pushing on. But you know, I had to pay for it later. So I've got an autoimmune condition, I've got Hashimoto's, it affects my thyroid gland, which is your metabolism, which feeds into everything really. And through the medical model, a sort of an NHS lens of looking at things, nothing is ever going to get better. But then I came across functional medicine, which says, let's go back to the root cause, let's understand what is out of balance, get it back into balance, and actually you can be well again. And I think through a very dear friend of mine, Chris Hallinger, who was founder of the breast cancer awareness charity Copper Feel, she was diagnosed with incurable breast cancer, age 23. And she sadly died nearly two years ago now, after 15 years of living with cancer. But through Chrissy's example, I saw how you can be well even when you're really unwell.

SPEAKER_01 24:55

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 24:55

And actually I've got myself now to a place of really good health, better health than I was in during the expedition. The doctors who've told me, well, it's never going to get better, have have almost said, Well, there's no evidence for diet and lifestyle making a difference. I'm sort of going, well, I am the evidence here, surely. Yes. Um so that's become my compass point, I suppose, and of of how I live my life, or what guides the decisions that I make about choices and so on, is how to be well in that context. I think one of the things that I know is that if I'm feeling all my emotions, if I am allowing, if I am meeting, if I'm not turning away from anything, then actually my body can be in a state of wellness.

SPEAKER_01 25:42

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 25:43

And when things are out of balance, that's when I can wonder, okay, what's surfacing at the moment that needs some attention? And then that can bring things back into balance.

unknown 25:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:53

So it sounds like you had to go down a detective route yourself to work out what was happening and then come up with the solutions yourself versus the medical profession who were not looking at that. That's fascinating, isn't it, for other people who may be going through similar things.

SPEAKER_00 26:10

It's been such a journey and really frustrating at times. The important thing for me, whenever I've wanted to do something that I haven't known how to do is okay, I need to find people who've done something like this before. And so when you start looking, of course, there's plenty of stories of people healing conditions that they've been told are unhealable, reversing autoimmune conditions, or bringing them right into remission. And seeking practitioners who also work in that frame, that's been so potent for me. And they've kind of become the guides that I refer everyone on to as well.

SPEAKER_01 26:48

You said having survived one storm, you went home, and the storm at home was more dangerous than the one at sea. But what I wanted to ask you about that is actually, you also said, I don't deserve to be here. Do you still feel like that?

SPEAKER_00 27:03

And if so, how do you combat that? So just to bring some context to that quote, then so a quote from the film where I'm really struggling. That part of the journey is after I've been rescued from the North Pacific in my little boat. I've Do you want to tell us about with Gulliver? So the second major part of the expedition was the Pacific Ocean. So the goal was to row in my boat Gulliver from Japan for a few months, a few thousand miles across the Pacific to Canada. About 700 miles out to sea, I was hit by a tropical storm, which damaged my boat such that I couldn't carry on safely. And so I was picked up by the Japan Coast Guard and brought back to shore. My boat Gulliver was lost at sea, essentially. We had to leave him out there. And so your quote of I survived one storm, came back home, and was hit by another is from the film. So it's describing how when I came back home to the UK at that point, I sort of fell apart. The trauma and sort of traumatic energy of that experience that I'd gone through essentially by myself, even though I had a team of people at home who I was in contact with, was still in me. And what I didn't understand at that time was that that energy needed release processing. It needed to be met. The way that I understood things to be, and I suppose the way that I lived my life up to that point was very much, well, just get up and carry on, focus on the next thing. And it's at that point, actually, I met Rebecca. Rebecca had been in touch, very kindly wanted to nominate me for an award. The position I was in in my head at that time, in that kind of turbulence and inner turmoil, was that my self-esteem felt pretty crushed and I was so low. I was in such distress that I couldn't cope with life at that point, is what I felt. And I think a part of that, again, going back to the idea of being with feelings and being able to meet them and navigate them, it came from that. Because again, my paradigm that I'd grown up with was you sort of get on with stuff by yourself, the difficult stuff. It's fine to ask for help with projects and challenges and things, but when things are difficult, it goes inwards, which of course is destructive and not healthy. And so that was the state I was in at that time. And getting through it and moving through was down to things like the support of my dogs and the simplicity of knowing that I had to get up and go and be with them and walk with them, and that there was no expectations, there was no judgment. There was some therapy, there was support from my team, like Rebecca and folks being able to meet me where I was, I think there was something very powerful about that little shift or the little shifts that started to happen in me being able to say how difficult I was finding things. And I remember other people, and Rebecca, you were probably one of them, telling me, like sharing with me some of your struggles. Because in my head then there was this sort of, oh, it's okay to not be okay, essentially, you know, that classic line. And so, in terms of your question, Caroline, is that still how I feel? No. In this moment, no. And also since then, yes, I have been back in versions of that place. And the way I've come to sort of understand and accept that now is okay, that's a part of my beingness, is that I do struggle in that way at times, but that now I'm not scared of that experience. I'm not ashamed of it. I'm not I have safe people that I can talk to about it when I struggle in that way, so that I'm confident I can be safe.

SPEAKER_01 31:22

In part three, Sarah reflects on how those experiences change the direction of her life. And what we found so inspiring was that not only has Sarah worked out what's really important to her in life, and she's following that dream in terms of a herd of donkeys and the way she's living, a new dog, but also the fact that she's converting what she's learnt into helping so many other people.

SPEAKER_00 31:47

Somebody mentioned it earlier, the idea of feelings will change, things will pass. And even when I've experienced in the depths of that despair, it feels like nothing can change and nothing can be okay. I've seen now enough times that it has been okay. I can find a way through it, and that there's something very important about finding that part of you wants to keep you okay. Like there's a positive intention behind that. And my work as a psychotherapist now means that actually I sit alongside people in those similar places often. And so it's territory that I've learned to navigate with more compassion and trust and acceptance, acceptance that that is the space that we find ourselves in sometimes.

SPEAKER_01 32:41

Sarah, thank you for being so honest. It's very moving, and I think it'll help a lot of people. And you also touched on the psychotherapy. Could you please tell us more about that?

SPEAKER_00 32:53

So when I came back from the big London to London expedition, Ellen MacArthur, brilliant professional yachtswoman and businesswoman, sort of sustainability advocate, had just given up weight to the brilliance that I behold in her. She advised me to go slowly and take my time in choosing what came next. And that's a big thing for me, because we've talked about this recently, Rebecca. I often jump in head first without fully thinking through the consequences. It is a part of my personality that I both love and struggle with at times. And anyway, this bit of advice I took seriously. And so I was really keen to just really think through what I wanted to devote the next part of my life to. So the therapist that I was working with said, I think you need something a little bit different here. She said, Go and see my colleague who works with horses. And I said, Oh, but I'm scared of horses. I can't go and work with horses. But I really trusted my current therapist at that time. So I said, Okay, I will. And I went and worked with this practitioner, and I found that I could trust the herd of horses and one donkey in a way that I couldn't trust humans. And so coming out of that period, I knew that I wanted donkeys in my life and I wanted to train as a therapist. And so that is how it came to be. It's been quite a meandering path, you know, when you're open to the learning and finding a way through that really cool stuff can happen. And so I'm in my final kind of accrediting year this year. I'm I'm loving the work that I do. Part of it is is alongside my herd of four donkeys. I've got this really interesting mix, it sort of really suits my personality of working with different ages of clients in different spaces. Sometimes I'm out in a muddy field, sat by a campfire with beautiful trees watching over us, and yeah, a herd of four donkeys. And at other times I'm sat online or in a room with somebody. And when people ask about what's next, have you got another big adventure planned, Sarah? Sometimes I find people like almost disappointed when I say I'm a psychotherapist, but for me, that is the adventure because I get to sit alongside or be alongside a human as they explore themselves and explore their experiences, and that is such a privilege. And I feel a version of the same awe and respect that I do when I'm out in the middle of the Atlantic eyeballing a sperm whale. And some of the same principles apply in terms of I don't know where we're going necessarily, don't know what's going to happen next. There's the learning to just be with the experience of whatever's there, and meeting all of that with curiosity, which for me that's what adventure is. It's meeting myself and the world and others with curiosity and allowing an unfolding of an experience.

SPEAKER_01 36:05

Incredible. So you have your own adventure now, but you're actually converting what you have to helping other people with a confidence and approach that is really life-changing based on what you've done. It's just interesting to contrast the adventure side of it, which was physical adventure, going out on the ocean, cycling, and everything else you're doing, and now the peace with which you talk around discovering what you really want to do and being so engaged in that is very inspiring. Thank you. There's just something about life is full of adventures, and adventures don't have to be the adventures that we typically equate with adventure. If you can help other people live their adventures, then that's equally important.

SPEAKER_00 36:55

I think there's something for me about adventure being the state of mind and attitude, really. And I know that that is my experience of being a therapist. That's not to say that it's the experience of my clients feeling like it's an adventure. But you know, if we break it down to the actual the meaning of the word is just to move towards something, I think. And actually, if we think of how a lot of trauma happens or trauma responses, you know, to people to surviving traumas and difficulties, is we shut off feeling because it's not safe to feel. And so actually, bit by bit, being able to guide people towards experiencing their bodies safely becomes a huge part of the work, a huge resourcing, really. How do you think the donkeys help you and other people heal? Well, animals don't get stuck in their heads. Animals don't make up stories and get tangled up with shoulds and all of the things in the same way that we do. So there's something very grounding, literally, in in being alongside other mammals who meet us just exactly as we are, and they respond non-judgmentally without words. There's power in that. There's something too in the way in which, as herd animals, they take us in as part of the herd. And because they're feeling everything collectively on some level, if somebody comes in with a big energy that they're not managing to regulate themselves, then the donkeys will help dissipate some of that, they'll help regulate. So it might be that the donkeys kind of go and just help a release. So that's a really cool physical cue for somebody as well of ah, I wonder where your breath is at the moment. I wonder how you might release and move that through. There's something around the power of the potential for connection and equally sort of immediate feedback about how the donkeys are experiencing somebody in their energy. And then with that, you get another layer of what stories is the client making up about how the donkey responds. So, for example, if say we're hanging out with the donkeys and one of the donkeys walks away, and I ask the client, you know, what's going on for you, they might say, Oh, the donkey doesn't like me. Well, no, not necessarily. The donkey might just be being a donkey. Well, the donkey's always just being a donkey. I think that's the beauty of it. The donkey might be inviting you to follow him. Well, her. The donkey might have just had enough and actually is saying, That's enough for me right now, I'm moving off. You know, and there's so many different layers of usefulness in that because how many times do we stay in situations where actually we're not happy, we're not comfortable, where we've not listened to how our body is responding. And so that kind of immediate feedback in a setting with um animals who don't judge us, so it's there's the safety in that can be really powerful. And I I work with a lot of folk who've experienced sexual abuse as as youngsters. So if we think of their safety and sense of trust in others has been shattered. And so to be in an environment where there is the safety of, or there's the chance for sort of safe connection, it can be so healing. And there's also I find, particularly as the practitioner, that in that space I'm both held by the donkeys. So it's not just me kind of navigating a session, but there's these four other beings right there with me. And then there's also what nature, the trees above us, the ground below us, and I'll call in all of that too. So there's something very real about working outside and with my herd that I find so full of power and potency and goodness.

SPEAKER_01 40:52

It's interesting, isn't it? Because you think of the traditional therapy as sitting in front of a therapist and eye-to-eye contact. And one of the things in coaching is doing more and more walk and talk, where you're side by side and it's a very different experience. And I guess for people experiencing being outside with a herd of donkeys is something which has a massive impact on their ability to feel safer, as you said, in different situations. Yeah, certainly it um has a lot to offer. I totally get that. I think for me, animals are the best therapy. Just being with my horse, looking after my horse, as you say, there's no judgment. You're just in the fresh air. You can't help but learn to be present with them. And understanding that always makes me feel better afterwards. And how do they respond differently to different people? Do you see a big response from them, depending on the individual who's who's there?

SPEAKER_00 41:50

Certainly uh there might not be a big response, but when you know what to look for, you can see feedback about how people's energy are affecting the donkeys. And that might be different on different days as well, just like us donkeys are going to have different moods and needs on different days, or or be a bit more sore on one day than another, just as the humans in front of them are going to be as well. And I think that again becomes a a useful part of the process. A client might be coming with an expectation of what's going to happen or what they want from the donkey. But actually, it's it's a meeting, it's it's two beings meeting in whatever way feels right for for both beings, which again I think becomes just such an interesting point for life. Because again, how often are we saying yes to something when really we mean love?

SPEAKER_01 42:45

And it's also the stories that we make up in our mind about what's happening. So, your example of the donkey walking away and how easy it is to assume and judge that that's because the donkey doesn't like you. How often does that happen in real life in terms of what the stories your brains tell you?

SPEAKER_00 43:02

Yeah, exactly. That you know, what we think is there in front of us versus actually, well, what is there in front of us, really?

SPEAKER_01 43:09

And what else could be in front of us if we chose to actually go over to the donkey and assume that it wanted you to follow, rather than immediately switching off and saying Yeah, well, and and also really looking at the feedback from the donkey as well.

SPEAKER_00 43:25

A little bit like people will often walk straight up to them, like whether you can see it with dogs, and they'll put their hands straight in the dog's face. Imagine that as a human. You know, we're not respecting the boundaries of the animal, we're not slowing down enough to tune in to what the animal is feeding back as to how comfortable or not it is with that approach. And so that's a part of the work too. And I I find especially with youngsters that I work with, particularly perhaps youngsters who might struggle with regulation and and managing. Their energy and so on at school, you know, and it can become a problem. But they want to connect with the donkey, so they have to learn how to read the donkey and slow things down enough and pace things for the donkey and come in in stages to see is that okay for the donkey? Is that okay for me? Okay, I can go a bit closer. But a big focus of the work is around relational contact, I suppose. Yes. And what that is like, which again just becomes so important in life, you know, boundaries, consent, communication, connection. When are you at your happiest now, Sarah? I suppose when I can be fully present in a space that is feeling good and nourishing in whatever way is needed at that time, you know, that might be different. Well, it often will be different on different days. Is that with my dog, with the herd, with all of them together? Is it moving? Is it in stillness? Is it with others? Is it not? But there's something really important about being present and feeling like I can be fully present, I suppose, in a space and in a way that, yeah, is feeling good for whatever's needed on that day. It would be great to talk to you about your fridge magnets.

SPEAKER_01 45:18

And I don't know why we keep calling them fridge magnets, but it's a way of having three principles or three mantras or three things that guide you. And I guess with everything you've experienced in your life, you've experienced an awful lot. And now you've come to a place where you know what you want, you're very clear on that, you're very grounded, and you know what you need.

SPEAKER_00 45:40

What would you say that they would be? Hmm. I was thinking about this earlier and thinking, how do I only choose three? Because there's various that sort of uh wafting around. Well, no, we'll just see what we'll see what three come out. But a phrase that I find myself saying often is all of it can be true at once. And so that idea that we're not just thinking in black and white terms, we're not just thinking about extremes, but actually a little bit like we're saying earlier, you know, the joy can be right there alongside the suffering. Things can be complex and messy. And I hear it with my clients sometimes or friends, or even in myself. Oh, I should be feeling this. But actually, no, let's welcome it all in. All of it is true and valid. So yeah, all of it can be true at once. Be here now. I've got a tattoo of that on my arm. When did you get that? Uh 2019. Wow. So something about presence with that, in terms of we don't know what the next moment's gonna bring. So whether it's something that's really good or something really difficult, it's it's gonna be moving through. But if we can be fully present, even the most simple of experiences could be so rich and so full. And I love that. And then kindness, kindness to yourself, the world, and others. I think is a guiding principle that's important for me.

SPEAKER_01 47:03

Rebecca also loves to know about what you wanted to do when you were young.

SPEAKER_00 47:06

So what did you want to do when you were a child? Let's see, I wanted to be all sorts of things when I was little. I wanted to be a hairdresser because I thought scissors looked fun, a window cleaner, because one of those squeegies. I thought, how fun does that look? And a ladder. I wanted to be a physiotherapist, a pediatrician, I wanted to be in the army, which I now look at and just cannot get my head round because I don't even like arguments. Or at that time I didn't even like arguments, let alone fighting. So yeah, I I wanted to be all sorts of different things when I was younger.

SPEAKER_01 47:39

So many possibilities.

SPEAKER_00 47:40

Mmm. Yeah. Well and I'm my younger self, my teenage self, would have been quite surprised that I've got donkeys in my life and that I work with horses quite often as well.

SPEAKER_01 47:53

Can I ask you, what advice would you now give your 22-year-old self?

SPEAKER_00 47:59

I don't know if she'd have been ready to hear it, because I strongly believe that we can only hear things when we're ready. Yes. But I really would have encouraged her to learn to rest and to look after her health. And I'd want her to just go easy on herself as well. She was really tough on herself. And yeah. So the kindness to self. Definitely.

SPEAKER_01 48:25

Definitely, definitely. Yes. Yeah. Such a hard one, isn't it? And yeah, it's something I think, well, for me, it's work in progress always. At least it recognizing it really makes a difference. Stopping it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 48:39

I mean, it's huge, isn't it? We think of neural pathways that have been there for maybe lots of our life, or most of our life. It's gonna take time to unravel and weave something new.

SPEAKER_01 48:51

Yeah, the new path. Exactly. Sarah, it's been wonderful. Thank you so much. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 48:58

Thank you for having me. It's been good too. Join you both.

SPEAKER_01 49:04

One of the things that really struck as talking to Sarah is her emotional honesty. It would be very easy to focus only on the amazing achievements, the world records, the Guinness records, rowing oceans, travelling around the world. But Sarah speaks just as openly about the struggles that followed, the storm after the storm, and what she learned from them. And in many ways, that's where the real wisdom lies. Because Sarah shows us adventure doesn't stop, it evolves. What once meant rowing oceans now means exploring health, balance, and what kind of life she really wants to lead.