Sally-Shakti Willow is a Book Coach & Visionary Writing Guide and is the founder of Writing & Thriving. Currently based in the South West of England, Sally-Shakti has been supporting Soul-Centred Entrepreneurs to write their Visionary Books without Procrastination, Perfectionism or Burnout since 2019.
To find out more, please go to www.writingthriving.com
Here we sit down with Sally-Shakti, to know a bit more about her journey as a book coach.
Q. What inspired you to become an entrepreneur?
Sally-Shakti: Burnt out from spending over 10 years teaching English in secondary school classrooms, I went back to university in 2014 to take an MA in Creative and Critical Writing, not knowing where it would lead me.
From there, I got offered a funded place to complete my PhD with the opportunity to teach and research at the University. After 5 years of study as a full-time professional writer, I wanted to break out of the system (again!) and do it my own way. Lockdown found me still holding the trauma of writing within the institution, so I began to write and create my way back to well-being – while coaching and teaching others how they could do it too.
Q. How did you get started?
Sally: I’d been running my business informally for a couple of years when I received some Divinely-guided intervention during the first lockdown in early 2020. I’d had my eyes on a particular business coach and had signed up for her newsletters and followed her for a while. She’d been coaching my friend as a yoga teacher, so I could see the impact she was having. I decided that if I ever had a business coach, it would be her. Then she sent an email out offering free online business coaching for new spiritual entrepreneurs throughout April 2020. I signed up and jumped in, and have been on my business journey ever since.
The idea for Writing & Thriving emerged out of my own combined passions – writing and yoga/meditation practice. I’d been in academia for several years and I was feeling that writing in that context was over-intellectualized, hyper-rationalized, and almost entirely disconnected from an embodied experience of how it felt to be alive – let alone any deeper esoteric enquiry around the inner mystery at the heart of life.
Through my own writing practices, I was exploring embodied somatic enquiry and the sensation of meditation through writing and reading processes.
I’d also had to learn how to write a sustained, long-form project (my thesis) and published several books of poetry as well as articles and papers as part of my research.
But I came away from the experience feeling like I hadn’t been able to say what I truly needed to say.
I felt traumatised by the experience and began to develop new writing practices to support me to find my voice – through my body and my embodied spirituality.
In time, these practices developed into the Writing & Thriving Method for Visionary Writers, which I’ve not only shared with other coaches, healers and soul-centred entrepreneurs but also with other researchers writing their PhD thesis, too!
Q. What was your biggest startup challenge? What steps did you take to overcome it? What did you learn?
Sally-Shakti: My biggest startup challenge has been being the first entrepreneur in my family, coming from a working-class background without the precedents or privileges that many startup entrepreneurs have.
I had no idea how to run a business, and – five years in – I am still learning. I see myself as a little bit neurodiverse, and always on the edge of the communities and structures and systems around me. Going it alone has been challenging under these circumstances.
Early exposure to “manifestation” culture in spiritual business coaching – which is often blind to the many privileges enjoyed by those who can so easily “manifest” – has also provided me with challenges to dive deeper into my own identity, position, power, privilege, and the internal narratives that have driven me and shaped my decisions. There’s a lot of cultural undoing required in this practice.
Learning to step up, speak up, and value myself and my offerings has been an ongoing work in progress in this context.
I’m fortunate that now there are a wealth of people to learn from in this regard, who are committed to driving higher standards of ethical business practices as a result.
Q. What is the most memorable thing you’ve done since you started your business?
Sally-Shakti: Supporting my client – Nicola Smalley – to write her book on Ancestral Healing, and seeing her bring it to publication on Samhain (Halloween) last year. We worked around the Wheel of the Year to draft and craft the book as the seasonal cycles waxed and waned.
Nicola would go out onto the moors in her little red van to write – and post about her writing adventures on Facebook. Before she started, Nicola had been nervous about “getting it right”, and was still haunted by hidden beliefs about her worthiness to say what she wanted to say.
Together we worked through a lot of the conditioning about writing that Nicola had encountered at school, as well as doing a deeper dive into the ancestral beliefs that she also needed to shift in order to write her story.
Each time we met for coaching, Nicola would share her writing, her process, her fears and her challenges with me – and I would offer her encouragement and guide her through practices to support her with her writing.
I often find that writers end up doing a deep dive into their own healing and transformation while writing their book – it’s part of the profound process that gives them the insights they are here to share. The writing becomes the practice that takes them on their own heroine’s journey – just as they are writing about it to share with their readers.
That’s why writing and holistic well-being go hand-in-hand for me. I’m here for my clients to support them with the healing they need to birth their book into the world.
Nicola finished her book, and created a beautiful and memorable launch event at a local monastery – walking the labyrinth that had started her off on her whole book-writing journey!
Q. What is one book you recommend, and why?
Sally-Shakti: Only one…?!
I’d recommend Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. It’s still one of the best ways into a regular writing practice that there is, and forms the foundation for a lot of what I teach.
Q. In terms of legacy, what is the mark you’d like to leave on the world?
Sally-Shakti: My intention for myself is first and foremost as a Visionary Writer. To write and travel and see the world, while sharing my words as medicine for these changing times.
In terms of my business, I’m holding the idea for a Visionary Writing School – a bit like I imagine Sappho guiding her acolytes in writing and ritual on the Greek Island of Lesbos – where writers can come to release writer’s block, let go of perfectionism, realign from burnout, and get their words out into the world.
My hope is to share the Writing & Thriving practices with as many Visionary Writers as possible so that collectively we can change the world with our words.
Q. In one sentence, what’s the best advice you’d give to someone just starting out on their entrepreneurial journey?
Sally-Shakti: Know yourself; be where you are; and recognise that it’s the inner work that transforms your outer world.
To keep up to date with Sally and her journey, connect with her on Facebook, and Instagram.