Heather Darwall-Smith was happy in her career as an advertising art director when, at 29, a yoga retreat changed her life. She explains, “I was going through a very painful period: I was struggling to conceive and had experienced pregnancy loss. The retreat was run by a couple who bought the site in their fifties and spent around 30 years developing it. I found that profoundly inspiring. It showed me that a major change did not have to happen early in life and that it was possible to build a life around values, community and wellbeing.”
During the retreat, however, another guest experienced significant mental health difficulties. It became clear to Darwall-Smith that good intentions and a peaceful setting were not enough: anyone running a retreat also needed the training and judgment to respond safely if somebody became psychologically unwell. That was the moment the idea took shape. She thought, “I will retrain as a psychotherapist and, one day, perhaps build a retreat centre of my own.” The retreat-centre plan eventually fell away, but the decision to become a psychotherapist remained and she began training at 42.
Being an art director was a career that suited many parts of Darwall-Smith’s personality: “I love visual problem-solving, the energy of a creative team and the satisfaction of turning something imagined into something real. At the same time, I could see that the role of an art director was becoming very different from the one I had entered, and I sensed that the future might not offer the same kind of creative life.”
