Lydia Hill

I was born into a doomsday cult — not a phase I chose, a belief system I was handed before I could question it. Everything was already decided: what was true, what was dangerous, who counted as family if I ever left. I grew up inside a story that had already been written, with no room in it for me to ask whether it was actually true.

When I turned 17, I chose my own path. I won’t pretend that was simple — leaving a closed belief system doesn’t just cost you the beliefs, it costs you the people who held them with you. But it also taught me something I’ve never unlearned: I know exactly what it costs to be told what’s true and not allowed to ask. That question — is this actually true, or just what I’ve been told — has run underneath everything I’ve done since.

Tax law came next, then more than a decade in the corporate world. Somewhere in there I started practicing yoga too — not as an escape from the corporate grind, but alongside it, the same instinct for structure and discipline just pointed somewhere else. Eventually I left the corporate track altogether and owned a trading business of my own — reading people and risk for a living, watching what someone’s body did versus what their mouth said, long before I ever read a nervous system. It was good training for the wrong reason: it taught me to notice the gap between what people present and what’s actually happening in them.

Somewhere in there, the work found me instead. Somatic therapy, EMDR, brainspotting, IFS — not because I collected certifications, but because each one gave me a more precise way to work with that same gap: what’s said versus what’s true, what’s presented versus what’s actually held in the body.

Everything I do now still carries that same instinct. I won’t hand you a belief system and ask you not to question it — I’ve had that done to me, and I know exactly what it costs. What I will do is help you look at what’s actually there, in your body, in your history, in the room — and trust that you can handle what you find.