Biography — Tom Woodfin

BIOGRAPHY

WHY I BECAME A COACH

Moving to Asia

My coaching really began from a nagging sense that I wasn’t ok.

I studied film, media and photography before setting off around the world. Turning 20, my high school friend and I wanted to create better lives for ourselves than the ones we’d been presented in our small North Yorkshire village. We ended up in the Philippines as independent traders, studying markets, commodities, global economics and price trends in a home office we set up for ourselves.

From here we launched ourselves into other businesses. We had a small bar, ran ESL tours to neighbouring islands, volunteered with a foundation for street kids, and tried many different things before my curiosity took me to a downtown kickboxing gym in Cebu City, where I would begin my venture into mixed martial arts.

I knew from growing up insecure that I was not being who I knew I was inside. I carried a lot of shame and was prone to depressive episodes and debilitating bouts of social anxiety. I tried to force my way through with achievements, work, relationships and alcohol. None of it really worked for long.

Mixed Martial Arts

I had visions of myself in martial arts, in the ring, being victorious. I thought this would get my needs for respect, significance, attention and even to be feared met, which in turn would help me feel safe and loved. It also helped me channel my anger and aggression into a functional discipline. It worked somewhat: it focused my mind and body, caused me to stop drinking, and gave me skills—but inside I still felt like a scared and numb little boy.

At the peak of my career I discovered EFT tapping. Before a big fight, a friend helped me quell my nerves. I stepped into the ring feeling calm and won in emphatic style, but in the middle of celebrating a quiet intuitive voice said: “this is the top”. Very quickly, everything I had worked for began to fade.

I was still winning but feeling emptier each time. I moved away from the Philippines to Thailand, kept training and went deeper into personal-development work: EFT, NLP, meditation, affirmation and coaching. We tried anything and everything, which eventually led me to breathwork.

WHY I WORK WITH SOUND & BREATH

Breathwork

The first breathwork experience I had was transcendent. It was a deep tissue bodywork massage coupled with an hour and a half of kundalini breathwork. After the session I felt like I left my body and became everything, and all was indescribable love. It sounds weird to talk about, but it was so intense and so real as an experience that I was left with many questions about everything I was doing with my life. Things began to unravel.

I returned to the UK, fought a few more times and lost more than I won, while developing a fascination with meditation and mixing music to meditate to. Then an invitation took me back to the Philippines to help build mud houses in an eco village. The quiet intuitive voice said something like “that way”. And I listened.

Sound

The first time I understood how powerful sound could be was in my own bedroom as a teenager. I remember actively disliking high school, and sound gave me an escape to another realm—one where I could feel powerful and at ease with myself.

At the eco village I was introduced to the innerdance, a modality where people would lie down and move through waves of different emotions while sound and touch guided the process. I was sceptical at first, but strange dreams and familiar shapes and colours began to appear.

I learned to use sound and touch to guide people through journeys that seemed to light up their brains and senses. The sessions felt like a reorganisation of things internally: processing emotions and offering insight in a deep and meaningful way—a little like conscious dreaming.