My Story
My journey home started early.
At six years old, I found myself on a plane leaving my country of birth as war began to unfold across Yugoslavia. Arriving at Heathrow, I knew - without fully understanding why - that life had shifted forever. I had left one home behind, but didn’t know where the next one would be.
Growing up between cultures, I learned how to adapt quickly. I tried to belong, to perform the role of an ‘English girl’, while quietly feeling I never belonged anywhere at all. I felt English in Macedonia, Macedonian in England, and eventually, like home was always out of reach.
So I did what many people do - I tried to earn my place through achievement. Early life was shaped by ambition, striving and success. From Head Girl to a first-class degree from King’s College London, to a successful career as an arts producer, life looked full on paper.
But beneath the surface, I felt increasingly disconnected. Long hours, high stress, and the pressure to keep performing drew me towards burnout, alongside a quiet but persistent belief that some part of me was deeply disconnected.
Then - life interrupted.
When my best friend Hannah died, grief became a profound wake-up call. I knew I couldn’t continue living in the same way - so I stepped away from my career and began searching for something deeper. That journey led me to meditation, including ten days in silence at a meditation centre. Sitting alone with myself, with nothing to perform or distract me, I heard something I hadn’t heard in a long time: my own inner voice.
With it came a realisation that changed everything. I hadn’t been lost - I had simply been looking for a sense of home and belonging in the wrong places. Wellbeing, I discovered, wasn’t on the other side of an achievement or about becoming someone new. It was about developing a deeper relationship with myself - finding belonging in my own mind, body, emotions and nervous system.
That realisation changed the direction of my life. I immersed myself in meditation, holistic healing, inner work and reconnected with the natural world. I came to understand sensitivity as a source of insight and awareness. I discovered a more compassionate way of relating to myself, one grounded in presence and meaning.
Later, I founded an international wellbeing events company, NOW Live Events, bringing together some of the leading voices in the field, including Ruby Wax and Claudia Hammond, and becoming the official events partner of Psychologies Magazine - an experience that still shapes my understanding of wellbeing to this day.
After years of creating stages for others to speak on, I embarked on a three-year Psychosynthesis counselling diploma (BACP & PDF accredited) and found my own voice as a wellbeing practitioner, facilitator, coach and meditation teacher. Over the last 15 years, I’ve worked with thousands of individuals, groups and organisations in diverse international settings, driven by a passion to support people to reflect, evolve, and feel empowered to make practical and positive change.
Today, this is the work I offer women. I work with high-achieving, sensitive women who are often navigating chronic stress, burnout, anxiety, motherhood, big life transitions, in need of a boost, or that quiet feeling that the life they've built no longer matches how they feel inside. Because so often, what looks like stress or struggle can also be a sign of disconnection - from ourselves, from our bodies and from what we know to be important to us.
Together, we create space to reconnect. Through embodied wellbeing practices, coaching tools, seasonal ritual and honest conversations, we explore what’s been getting in the way and make room for more authenticity, self-trust and a stronger sense of daily wellbeing.
This is the heart of Whole Woman Wellbeing: supporting wellbeing in a way that is grounded, practical and relevant to everyday life.
Much of the work I hold is about helping women make sense of seasons of change: finding meaning in them, feeling safe enough to let old identities fall away so something more real can emerge. My own journey continues to deepen this work, including through perimenopause, which I’ve come to experience as another opportunity to listen more closely to what practical wellbeing means in a new life season.
Alongside my private practice, I’m a Senior Facilitator & Coach at Luminate Wellbeing, where I deliver sessions with global organisations - from charities and universities to clients including the NHS, Earthshot Prize, Pret A Manger, Rolls-Royce and the Australian High Commission. This work continues to expand my understanding of what meaningful wellbeing can look like: not as something separate from life, but woven into how we work, live, lead and relate.
This is the work I care about: helping to create a world where women can feel at home in their own lives - and from that place, become a source of presence, love and joy in the world.
These days, when I’m not facilitating or coaching, you’ll find me in the wilds of Kent with my husband and son, occasionally in cold water when I’m feeling brave, or at a mum rave remembering that movement can be medicine. You can find me talking all things wellbeing @jana.nightingale.
