Untie The String – Natural Healing Therapies

Who is Christine Ashton?
My story is about resilience, joy and compassion. My strength lies in meeting you where you are now to connect with you intuitively, treat you holistically and teach you experientially, in a spirit of cooperation with your body’s own healing ability and your lived experience. I am a holistic therapist offering Reiki healing, breathwork and spiritual development to help you experience healing from within and support you with your personal growth.

In 2011, I founded my healing practice Untie The String Natural Healing Therapies, named after a beloved poem by Robert Graves, which spoke to me about the important qualities of curiosity, daring and wonder. It is a safe space to heal and grow; to build and maintain physical, mental, emotional and spiritual wellness. It is a space to loosen the knots and untie the string, release the blocks and heal from within.

What Can I offer you?

The dedication of a full-time healer and teacher:
According to my Reiki Master, I was constantly on a quest to learn and master healing techniques. I still am and I love what I do – it’s all I do! I’ve been transforming lives all over the world through healing and teaching for decades, learning all kinds of healing modalities to untie the many knots and tangles that can build up within us as we experience difficulties in life. I developed my teaching skills working for the British Council as a teacher of English. My first teaching job was in 1992 in Japan, but I never came across Reiki there – that happened in Bangladesh in 2009. Before that life-changing discovery, I had worked in Germany, Senegal, Japan, Vietnam, Egypt, Brunei, Kenya, Poland and China and had married and started a family along the way; my son was born in Warsaw and my daughter in Beijing. I travelled all the way to Hanoi to find a husband from Halifax! In the beginning, Reiki was just for me and my family, but it became more of a way of life as I developed a daily practice of self-healing and it became the foundation of my full-time healing and teaching practice, which I founded in 2011 when I was living in the foothills of Mount Sofia in Bulgaria.

The vast experience of a life-long learner:
By living in different countries for 20 years, I faced a lot of change and didn’t have the support of extended family around me, so I learnt techniques for self-care and wellness, such as reiki, t’ai chi, crystal healing, EFT, Satyananda yoga, Iyengar yoga, mindfulness techniques and meditation practices. My last posting in Bulgaria was a treasure trove for crystals, and I gathered a large collection of stones there to support healing. I also added qualifications in Bowen Therapy, Human Design and Heal Your Life™ workshop facilitation. Once back in the UK, I qualified as a caregiver and supported people in the community to improve their wellbeing. More recently I began to recognise a calling for mediumship and gained a certificate in Spiritual and Trance Healing Practice and a Diploma in Spiritual and Holistic Energy Healing. My latest adventure has been to qualify as a Breathwork Facilitator and Teacher.

Community and connection:
I enjoy being part of a community of people who believe in being the change they wish to see and I support all who are committed to positive change from within. I offer support to students and clients though a reiki share and support community and a reiki distant healing group. I set up the spiritually curious society to offer uplifting connections through curious conversations on spiritual development topics, spiritually themed conscious connected breathwork journeys and workshops, as well as other events.

The positivity of a survivor:
We came home to the UK in 2014 and I had just set up my practice in Cambridge when disaster struck. I went through 4 months of tests to finally be diagnosed with colorectal cancer, by which time the cancer had grown into a high risk case. Within 2 days, I was on 5 weeks of daily radiotherapy with two weeks of chemo by pic line to the heart. The pain of the radiation ‘burns’ was indescribable. I would have found this far more frightening and challenging if I had not had Reiki and my training in the philosophy of Louise Hay to support me. Facing my own mortality sent me on a journey of healing and self development and I haven’t looked back since. I achieved complete remission from cancer in 2015. Life is a gift that I really appreciate every day and I will never stop learning about healing.

A partnership of support and empowerment:
My vocation is helping people explore and release whatever is holding them back from the health and happiness which lies within. I believe in recognising our strengths and empowering ourselves energetically. Clients come to me for help with all kinds of things; mental and emotional healing for stress, anxiety, depression, grief and low self-esteem and physical healing for pain. In the past, I supported terminally ill clients and cancer patients going through radiology and chemotherapy, while volunteering as a reiki practitioner, Bowen therapy practitioner and meditation facilitator at the cancer care centre in Cambridge. For the last 20 years, I have had a very personal interest in learning about autistic spectrum disorder, ADHD and dyslexia to better support both loved ones and clients. More recently, I have been researching the clair senses and the qualities of an empath, so I can understand my own experiences and support others on a journey of spiritual awakening. As a Reiki Master/Teacher, I am dedicated to daily practice of Reiki principles, meditations and Reiki self-healing with the main focus on spiritual self-development. The thing I am most passionate about is supporting anyone venturing out on a spiritual development journey who would like to find someone on the same wavelength to support them with mentoring and healing opportunities. Whatever I am doing, I always work from a perspective of celebration of differences and respect for individuality. It’s all about empowering people to find their way forward.