Kat is a qualified, practising complementary therapist from Penkridge, Staffordshire. A European Business graduate, she worked for 8 years in accountancy but became more and more interested in holistic and complementary therapies. Her work colleagues paid for her to attend a Reiki course as they said she was never cut out to be an accountant! She also took the VTCT Diploma in Indian Head Massage and a short course in Crystal therapy in 2002 while still working full time.

In 2003, after some changes in family circumstances she resigned from her job and spent 2 years travelling in South America, Australasia and Asia, living in Nepal for 5 months while volunteering at an orphanage in Kathmandu and in a school in a remote hill village.

Returning to the UK, after experiencing many wonderful therapies and seeing their effects she could not see herself back in an office environment so retrained full time in Massage, Aromatherapy and Reflexology. Continuing professional development led to Thermo-Auricular Therapy and EFT. She has been practising the Bowen Technique for the last 2 years which is her therapy of choice, in particular for its effects on pain management.

I am a Complementary Therapist and Beauty Therapist who believes that quality training for therapists inspires quality treatments.

I am passionate about providing quality holistic care in my own treatment suite, and love the treatments I offer. I specialise in Aromatherapy, massage therapies, skincare and make up, as well as being a Reflexologist and offering a range of beauty therapies.

As a tutor, my aim is to carefully guide students through the learning processes, always keeping awareness of a holistic approach. I am an experienced teacher and my standards and expectations are high as I am committed to raising the profile and status of my profession as a therapist.

Selina has had a varied career from manning a Customer Service helpline to working as a Quality Engineer in the Aerospace Industry. 

Instead of drifting from one job to another she decided to work out what she really wanted to do.  

She is now a qualified Life Coach and NLP Practitioner but this didn’t seem enough so she has qualified in Indian Head Massage and is soon to qualify in Reflexology and Hopi Ear Candling.  
 
She once said how much she enjoyed being at Athena and threatened to move in, we took her at her word and so she now joins us as an Anatomy & Physiology tutor.

Marvin spent two years in Fitness Management before setting up his Personal Training Company, M.D. Training in 2002.

In 2004 Marvin moved into the Sports Massage Therapy field and began to specialise in Sports Injuries & Rehabilitation.

Marvin has worked as Head Therapist to Birmingham City FC youth development, as well as semi pro sides Bilston Town FC and AFC Wombourne Utd.

He teaches a variety of topics from Sports Massage, Sports Injuries and Fitness Testing for private training organisations, as well as Walsall and B'ham College. Marvin also works as a Fitness Consultant for PTH, Performance Through Health, an Occupational Health Company in Bromsgrove where his main role is to assess and advise the Fire Fighters of Shropshire Fire and Rescue Service.
 
Marvin re-launched his business as Walsall Injury Clinic in 2008 and now purely focusing on Injury Treatment, Management & Rehabilitation.

Marvin offers the following treatments:

• Sports Massage Therapy
• Injury Treatment
• Remedial Massage
• Exercise Therapy
• Posture assessment & correction

She is qualified to practice EFT and Emotrance, as well as being a qualified and highly experienced hypnotherapist and past life regression therapist. Debra is an NLP Practitioner and a qualified trainer. She previously practiced for many years as a solicitor with a top UK law firm. Debra has been teaching these amazing energy healing systems throughout the United Kingdom, as well as overseas, for a number of years. Unable to read until the age of 11, her early life was therefore dedicated to inner dialogue and communication with non physical beings. She now dedicates her life to sharing her knowledge with like minded people.

Liz is based in Bristol, Gloucester and Birmingham, with a thriving holistic therapy practice. She teaches Crystal Therapy at a variety of locations including Gloucester College of Arts and Technology, and Hawkwood College, and has a Postgraduate Certificate of Education.

Her main interests are Crystal Therapy, Energy Healing and Release, Tarot and Spiritual Development, and she works with the 3 fundamental healing principles of Intention, Permission and Intuition.

Liz takes a common sense approach to healing and holistic therapies, and, having learnt through experience that appropriate boundaries and grounding are essential, these form an important part of her practice.

Leanne is a fully qualified reflexologist and gym instructor. As a mum of two young children she has a very busy lifestyle and has found reflexology has had a positive effect in relaxing and improving her children’s holistic well being.

Leanne has previously worked as a care assistant and enjoys working to help people maintain and improve their way of life. From her experience in these fields she understands how the body can benefit from exercise and holistic therapies including reflexology whatever their age or ability.

With her calm, hands on approach to life Leanne strives to helping people improve their lifestyle.

Andrea began her career working with children and young people, supporting families and promoting the care and education of youngsters. For some years Andrea specialised in working with children’s whose developmental progress, social skills or behaviour presented particular challenges. She enjoyed particular success in working with children whose developmental delay lead to problem behaviour in the classroom.

Young people often require support and assistance to fully achieve their potential and respond to the challenges of growing up. Andrea has worked extensively with young people individually and in groups and was particularly successful in assisting them to feel more confident and achieve improved academic results.

Andrea trained as a Counsellor and used those skills in a range of settings, eventually teaching counselling skills to others during her time as a College Lecturer. During the early years of work in Counselling Andrea worked with women experiencing domestic violence and those particularly young women affected by substance abuse.

The work Andrea has been involved in eventually led to her establishing a small consultancy in childcare and development and for many years this ran alongside Andrea’s fulltime work in management, training and education. Her work as a counsellor took a back seat while she expanded her skills and concentrated on a full time career.

As well as her therapy qualifications Andrea holds an honours Degree in Sociology, Social policy and Women’s Studies and JNC registered diploma qualification in Youth work (Post grad).

Andrea’s full time work over the last 15 years included a lecturing post At Dudley College where for a number of years Andrea headed up the Health and Social Care team, teaching Childcare and Education, Sociology, Anatomy and Physiology, Communication skills. Counselling, Social policy and a range of other subjects. In particular Andrea specialised in working with young people who had learning disabilities or challenging behaviour.

Her most recent full time post was as the Chief executive of Walsall Council for Voluntary Service’s; which she completely transformed into a forward thinking and successful charity with the new name of Walsall Voluntary Action. After 6 years at WVA and following considerable personal and organisational success Andrea gave up this role and now focuses her time on her Clinical Hypnotherapy and Coaching practice based in Darlaston in the Black Country.

Andrea began studying hypnosis and NLP in 2002, while still in full time employment and first qualified in 2005. She continues to engage in professional development activities and has studied a number of other subjects directly relevant to her work as a clinical hypnotherapist. These other subjects include; Coaching with NLP, Transactional Analysis, Emotional Freedom Technique and Bilateral Stimulation Therapy and Aromatherapy.

Sharron has always had a desire to become an holistic therapist, but her early career lead her to work with people with learning difficulties and profound learning disabilities.

Sharron has spent the last 10 years working in the drugs and alcohol field. Sharron has also spent nearly the last 10 years becoming a qualified therapist. She has trained in counselling, Reiki, reflexology, Hot stones for the feet, Indian Head Massage, Eastern Facial Massage, Hopi ear Candles, and Diet and nutrition advice. Most of these courses were here at Athena.

Becoming a therapist has changed her life in so many positive ways and she is excited to be giving something back to the place where she gained so much knowledge and encouragement.

I trained as a Counsellor and Community & Youth Worker in the early 1980’s and for many years combined the skills I learnt in these two disciplines in my work with people.

In the1990’s I took up an opportunity to teach on the Counselling Skills courses for North Warwickshire and Hinckley College, and found the opportunity to share my knowledge and experience with adult students to be thoroughly enjoyable and inspiring.

As an employee of the college I took an opportunity to train in Indian Head Massage, and after years of using counselling skills to help people make healthy decisions, the immediacy of the healing touch amazed me and I have been interested in combining the holistic therapies ever since.

I now have qualifications in Reflexology, Anatomy and Physiology and Manual Lymph Drainage of the Neck and Face, and am also updating my teaching qualifications.

In 2004 I decided it was time for me to make a change and enrolled at Cannock college on a Holistic therapy course. I spent the next 4 years at Cannock and achieved a Diploma in Holistic therapies and level 2 and 3 in Beauty therapy. I then spent 5 years at my local leisure centre working self employed, I then decided I would like to start teaching and passed my ptlls and ctlls. I feel I have made the best decision and can’t wait to start teaching for Athena School as my passion definitely is in teaching.