Sarah Dodsley Life Coaching and Bodywork

Sarah Dodsley Life Coaching and Bodywork Life Coach with 12+ years experience helping you learn to put yourself first without feeling guilty using therapeutic coaching techniques and bodywork.

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12/08/2026

If Carlsberg did days out…. Today has been incredible. To see my son surf for the first time and surf our last wave of the day together. Dolphins and an eclipse! My heart is full!

I used to dance.Not casually but obsessively. Ballet was everything to me from the moment I started at the age of 3. I t...
04/08/2026

I used to dance.

Not casually but obsessively. Ballet was everything to me from the moment I started at the age of 3. I trained seriously, spent summers at the Royal Academy of Dance and I had the extraordinary experience of dancing at Sadler’s Wells at a junior charity gala when I was around 11 or 12.

For a long time I genuinely wanted it to be my career.

But at sixteen I stopped, just decided one day that was it. There is a story to that, too long and too complicated for a LinkedIn post, but I stopped, and I never went back.

I think about it every now and then.

I love to watch ballet whenever I can. Romeo and Juliet at the Royal Opera House will forever be my favourite and I have seen it more times than I can count and it gets me every single time.

I know every step and note of the music like it’s in my DNA.

Even at 47, I still contemplate going back.
Taking a class. Finding a barre somewhere. Seeing what is still there.

Maybe I will…

🩰

Photo of Alessandra Ferri, who will always be the most exquisite Juliet ever and Wayne Eagling as Romeo.

Apparently I used to really annoy my sister by making her watch this version on VHS over and over. 😂

01/07/2026

Summer evenings — one of the things I love most is the scent of honeysuckle drifting through my house. It never fails to make me smile and feel relaxed.

Finding glimmers like this matters, every single day.

What glimmer have you found today? 🌿

For 4 years, I’ve been learning to surf. 🏄And before you picture someone gracefully riding waves - let me be very clear:...
28/06/2026

For 4 years, I’ve been learning to surf. 🏄

And before you picture someone gracefully riding waves - let me be very clear:

I fall off. A lot.
I swallow more seawater than I’d like to admit.
And I absolutely love every second of it.

It started as a bucket list thing I kept putting off for no good reason.
So I stopped putting it off.

What I didn’t expect was how much it would teach me.

Here’s what the ocean has shown me that I carry into everything else:

You cannot fight the wave.

You can’t muscle through it, think your way around it or manage it into submission.

You have to read it. Feel it. Time it. Then commit.

The feedback is so physical, so immediate, so honest - it bypasses every thought I’ve ever had about navigating difficulty.

It lands somewhere far more useful.
In the body.

Challenging times aren’t so different.

The wave is coming whether you’re ready or not.

The only question is - do you meet it, or let it take you under?

I’ve also learned something else out on that board.

Being a beginner is completely fine.

I have zero ego about where I am in my surfing journey. Every session I learn something new, get a little better, and enjoy it fully, regardless of how many times I fall off.

I wish more of us gave ourselves that same permission.

The simplicity is what I love most.

Just me, a board, the water and the wave.

No performance required.
Just presence.

And it turns out presence is everything. 🌊

So here’s my question for you:

What’s the hobby or experience in your life that teaches you something beyond itself?

Or what would you love to try but keep putting off?

Drop it in the comments. I’d genuinely love to know. 👇

You’ve been the strong one for so long.The one who shows up. Who holds it together. Who gives and gives and never once a...
06/06/2026

You’ve been the strong one for so long.
The one who shows up. Who holds it together. Who gives and gives and never once asks for anything in return.

And now you’re struggling, quietly, behind everything you’re still holding for everyone else and no one seems to notice.

No one is stepping in the way you’ve always stepped in for them.

That silence hurts in a way that’s hard to even name.

If that’s where you are right now, I want you to know that you are not invisible to me.
Together, we shine a light on everything that matters to you. The things that have been buried under years of giving. The dreams, the needs, the parts of you that got set aside.

Alongside you, we work out what you actually want. Not what everyone else needs from you. What you want. So that you feel a sense of choice again. So that you remember you get to have a say in your own life.

You have spent so long making sure no one else felt alone.

You don’t have to feel alone either.
Should we talk? 💛

If you grew up in the 70s, 80s or early 90s, you might remember The Krypton Factor.It was a TV game show where contestan...
02/06/2026

If you grew up in the 70s, 80s or early 90s, you might remember The Krypton Factor.

It was a TV game show where contestants had to be brilliant at absolutely everything.

Intelligence, fitness, observation, agility and mental ability.

It was compelling television but a completely exhausting way to live your life

Yet I see people doing this every single day.
Saying yes to everything and showing up for everyone. Covering every base, meeting every need, making sure nobody is ever disappointed.

Never letting anything drop.

Never letting themselves rest.

Never once asking who decided I had to do all of this?

Here’s what I want you to know.

You were never supposed to do all of it.

The people who find their way back to themselves, the ones who stop running on empty and start living like they actually matter - have learned something quietly radical.

How to put things down.

Not selfishly but consciously and with the quiet confidence that not every need is yours to meet, and not everyone’s comfort is your responsibility.

That’s not letting people down.

That’s finally, gently, letting yourself up.

If this is you - I’d love to talk.

Next week I’m doing something very different from my day job.I’ll be leading a community group as an advocate at a plann...
29/05/2026

Next week I’m doing something very different from my day job.

I’ll be leading a community group as an advocate at a planning inquiry, something I’ve been working towards for three years, ever since I helped set up a local community to oppose development on farmland where I live.

I’ve given evidence before, so that part doesn’t faze me. But over the past few days I found myself getting completely lost in the weeds, pulled into nit-picking detail by the other side, losing sight of the bigger argument I actually needed to make.

I had to stop, step back and take a breath.

Not easy when adrenaline is doing its thing.

But a proper break and a gym session later, my head is clearer. I’ve been able to zoom out again and remember what actually matters and what I’m there to fight for.

It’s a simple lesson, but one I keep having to relearn: when you’re deep in the detail, you can lose the thread of the whole picture. The answer is rarely to push harder. Sometimes it’s just to pause.

So, what do you need to step back from today to see the whole picture again? 👇

Photo of the beautiful old oak tree on the farm. It’s about 300 years old we think. 🌳

You’re so deep in the story - what should happen, what they should do, what you should do, how it has to turn out…that y...
18/05/2026

You’re so deep in the story - what should happen, what they should do, what you should do, how it has to turn out…that you’ve lost sight of what’s actually in front of you.

That’s the moment to drop the rope. Stop the tug of war that you have been fighting.

Not give up. Not walk away. Just… let the struggle fall to the floor for a second.

Because when you stop pulling, something shifts. You get a little distance. A little air.

Sometimes we get so tangled in a situation, the outcome we want, the narrative we’ve built around it, that we stop being able to think clearly about it at all.

We’re just… gripping.

The concept of dropping the rope is an invitation to pause the struggle. Not forever. Just long enough to get some distance, some perspective, and actually see what’s going on rather than what we’ve been telling ourselves is going on.

It’s a small act. But it can change everything.

What might this mean for you?

03/05/2026

Count me in!

This is Maggie. She will be 11 next month (77 in dog years) and she is a real character in our house. -She has always kn...
29/04/2026

This is Maggie. She will be 11 next month (77 in dog years) and she is a real character in our house.

-She has always known her own mind
-Goes after what she wants (usually food)
-Doesn’t take any nonsense
-Always takes an opportunity to sit in the sun and relax.

She always reminds me to be here now, in the moment.

A useful reminder. ❤️

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