When Your Life Looks Fine on the Outside — But No Longer Feels Right

A particular kind of uncertainty can be hard to explain.

You may have a successful career, but feel uninspired. Perhaps you are questioning a career, a life you once aspired to, overstaying in a relationship, unable to shift unwanted habits or moving through life with a persistent sense that something is missing: a dawning, silent mid-life crisis.

Or you may be facing an event you weren’t prepared for, a loss, a difficult family situation, redundancy, the end of a relationship, a major transition, or a moment when the ground beneath you suddenly feels less certain.

Coaching has evolved beyond its traditional focus on goals and career progression. Increasingly, it draws on psychological, therapeutic, and somatic approaches that recognise we are more than our thinking minds.

While coaching remains practical and solution-focused, newer approaches also explore the relationship between mind and body, incorporating greater awareness of the nervous system and how it responds to stress, anxiety, trauma and change.

Simon Frese is such a coach: The London-based Transformational Coach and Breathwork Practitioner combines one-to-one life coaching with somatic breathwork and meditation, engaging both the thinking mind and the body’s felt experience.

“You don’t always need more information. Sometimes you need space to understand what is really going on — and then the courage to do something about it.”

The Path to Integrative Coaching

Simon’s route into coaching wasn’t conventional.

After living in Australia, he arrived in London in the 1990s and landed a dream job at the BBC. However, he was struggling with paralysing self-doubt and anxiety and was self-medicating to cope.

A friend eventually gave him a life coach’s number. That first conversation became a turning point.

That first session, and the coaching journey that followed, sparked a total transformation in his life, leading him to a place he hadn’t even imagined was possible. It helped him rebuild his confidence, repair broken family ties, and commit to a long-term relationship with his now-husband.

“There was no overnight turnaround, but this one session changed how I perceived myself,” he says.

Coaching also facilitated his transition into a more suitable career. He eventually left TV production, became an agent for photographers, and later joined Select Management, one of the world’s biggest talent agencies.

He enjoyed the nurturing and coaching aspect of his job most. As a result, he decided to retrain as a Life Coach at Animas Centre for Coaching in London, a school specialising in transformative coaching, rather than relying solely on rigid goal-setting.

This approach draws on humanistic and psychological frameworks to coach the whole person, their mindset, relationships, and broader patterns.

Discovering the Felt Sense

Breathwork entered Simon’s life through a very different kind of transition.

After a tragic family event during lockdown, he travelled to Mexico, where a chance meeting with breathwork teacher Steffy Téllez Schnaas introduced him to the practice.

The experience was unexpectedly powerful, helped him process his trauma and stayed with him long after he had returned to London.

Impressed by the results, he later completed a breathwork training to become a certified breathwork teacher.

Rather than seeing breathwork as simply a relaxation technique, he saw what could happen when he brought the practice into a therapeutic context.

We might understand something intellectually and still struggle to shift how we feel, respond, or behave.

Why Logic Isn’t Always the Answer

The idea is simple: we don’t experience life only through our thoughts.

Sometimes, clients struggle to vocalise what they are feeling. Whether you’re too tired to explain or too stressed to think straight, the pressure to “have the right words” can become a barrier in talk-only coaching.

We carry stress, tension, emotion and habitual responses in the body too. Sometimes we can understand something intellectually and still respond to a difficult situation in the same way.

Somatic coaching offers another route: Through conscious breathing and awareness, clients can step away from constant mental processing and pay attention to what is happening in their bodies in the present moment.

For some, this may create a sense of calm or grounding. For others, it can bring greater awareness of emotions, reactions or patterns that have been difficult to access through conversation alone.

Hence, alongside coaching, he now incorporates Somatic Breathwork for clients who are curious about working with the body as well as the mind.

Importantly, Simon does not see breathwork as something every client needs.

“It is not a requirement of the coaching. If it feels useful and only if the client is interested, we can bring it in. If not, we focus on conversation.”

Inside a Somatic Coaching Session

The session begins with a short, five-minute guided breathing exercise to help settle and regulate the nervous system.

Rather than spending precious coaching time easing in, this conscious pause lets clients leave behind whatever happened before the session — the rushed commute, work stress, and any mental noise they don’t need to carry forward.

It also simply feels good: slow, intentional breathing has an immediate physiological effect, shifting the nervous system into a parasympathetic, “rest and relax” state and helping you feel calm and receptive.

It is a therapeutic session using gentle, relaxing techniques rather than any rapid or rigorous hyperventilation used in some Breathwork classes

Life Beyond the Status Quo

The most interesting thing about Simon’s approach is that it does not begin with the assumption that everyone needs a drastic life change.

The question is often simpler.

What would happen if, instead of rushing to fix it or carrying on as though nothing had changed, you became curious about what is happening underneath?

For some clients, it means making small lifestyle amendments or creating new healthy routines. For others, the answer may be changing careers or relationships.

It may mean navigating loss, setting boundaries, breaking an old pattern, making a decision they have been postponing or simply finding enough clarity to take the next step through a difficult period.

The Power of Unconditional Presence

The people Simon works with may be navigating personal upheaval, challenging family circumstances, loss, relationship difficulties or other moments when their usual ways of coping no longer seem enough.

For all the techniques and frameworks, Simon considers the coach-client relationship fundamental.

His priority is creating a non-judgmental space where people feel safe and heard—whether they arrive with a clear decision to make or simply because life has become difficult and they need somewhere to begin.

He still has vivid memories of his first life coaching session and the empathy, curiosity, and genuine interest my coach demonstrated, and he strives to replicate this for his clients.

Outside his private practice, Simon also volunteers as a coach with Paul Smith’s Foundation, supporting young emerging designers, and St Giles Trust, a charity supporting at-risk young people.

Based in London, he works with clients in person and online internationally.

Simon Frese Life Coaching & Breathwork
www.simonfresecoaching.com

Address: 50 Aberdeen Park, London N5 2BL, UK