About Rachèl Hughes
Rooted in Education, Grounded in Healing
Most people don’t arrive at this kind of work because life fell apart. They arrive because something quieter happened, a slow drift from themselves they can’t quite explain, a pattern they keep repeating despite knowing better, a tiredness that rest doesn’t fix. That is not a character flaw. It is almost always the trace of something learned long ago, when the nervous system was young and the stakes felt very high.
Background, Experience, and Approach
Rachèl is a Certified Compassionate Inquiry practitioner, counselling therapist, and educator with over two decades of experience working alongside adults, students, and educators navigating stress, trauma, burnout, and the long reach of early life experience. Compassionate Inquiry, developed by Dr. Gabor Maté and Sat Dharam Kaur, sits at the heart of everything she does. It is a somatic and trauma-informed approach that invites people to get genuinely curious about the beliefs and patterns formed early in life, not to relive the past, but to understand it in a way that finally allows something to shift.
Holding Space for Those Who Carry So Much
For anyone who has spent years caring for others, whether children, students, clients, or families, while quietly setting their own needs aside, this work offers something that can feel almost unfamiliar: a space that belongs entirely to you. Rachèl has walked alongside individuals through grief, transition, burnout, supported educator teams through trauma-informed professional learning, and worked with international organizations and community groups serving women and children. She has done her own work in this too, and she brings all of it into the room with steadiness, honesty, and genuine care.
A Place to Return to What Matters
This work does not ask you to become someone new. It asks you to get honest about who you already are and to discover that who you already are is enough to build from. You don’t have to show up polished or prepared. You only need to show up as you are. Rachèl offers individual Compassionate Inquiry sessions, trauma-informed coaching, mindfulness and resilience workshops, sound healing, and retreats for adults and educators, in-person and online.