Mary was born in Gloucester, UK in 1948.  She lives in the Cotswolds and whilst she runs workshops in the UK and abroad by invitation, she concentrates most of her time nowadays on writing and her shamanic work.    Her two books, The Enneagram for the Spirit (pub by Gaia in 2005), and The Chakra Workout (pub by Gaia in 2006) evolved from her main areas of expertise:

YOGA   Mary has been practicing yoga regularly for over 30 years.  She qualified to teach with the British Wheel of Yoga in 1979.  She runs yoga workshops, combining them with her knowledge of the Enneagram, the meridians, and the chakras.  She specializes in creating unique tailor made yoga routines for clients, suited to their physical needs, emotional state and personality, in private one-to-one sessions.

ACUPUNCTURE   Qualifying as a Five Element acupuncturist in 1984, Mary ran a successful practice treating patients holistically for the root causes of their illness.  She trained with the charismatic Professor J.R. Worsley in Leamington Spa, and at Guangzhou College of Traditional Medicine, in Guangdong, China.  Though no longer practicing acupuncture her books and workshops are informed by her knowledge of the meridians and their psychological functions.

ENNEAGRAM   The Enneagram is a system of personality typing, which identifies nine main types, dating back many hundreds of years to the Sufi mystics.   In 1986 Mary met Helen Palmer in Berkeley California, one of the chief protagonists of the Enneagram worldwide.  She studied in Palo Alto California with Helen Palmer and Dr David Daniels of Stanford University, qualifying to teach the enneagram in 1994.

WriteSpace   For many years Mary ran creative writing workshops in her Gloucestershire home, uniquely combining writing with yoga and meditation, helping both experienced and new writers to free their creativity.  She no longer runs regular workshops in her home, but will facilitate them elsewhere by special request. 

ASTROLOGY   For the last few years Mary has been studying Astrology with Aquarius Severn in Cheltenham, and does readings on request.

PSYCHIC CONSULTATIONS   Mary applies her psychic intuitions to all fields of her work.

Author

Mary is the author of two books, The Enneagram for the Spirit – How to make peace with your personality and understand others (pub by Gaia 2005) and The Chakra Workout (pub Gaia 2006).  Click Home and ‘Books’ for more information.  If you are interested in the story published in the Guardian last year you can read it by clicking << here >>.

Mary’s inspiration, in her own words…

As a little girl, growing up in Gloucestershire with four older brothers, who made natural pairs of two, I spent a lot of time in a world of my own.  For some little girls it’s ponies, for me it was ballet…much of which was in my head dreaming I was centre stage at Covent Garden (‘Mary Horsley, WILL you WAKE UP!’)  I talked to my imaginary sister-in-law, pet toad Trethias, Timmy the tortoise, and the hens. 

At night when I lay down to sleep I would often have what I called ‘my Alice feeling’, when I would become aware of the world slowly turning in space.  After a while it would feel as if my body twisted in one direction my head in the other, and I would spiral out of my body, grow very tall and kind-of extrude up to the ceiling. I didn’t expect to be taken any more seriously about these events than about my imaginary sister-in-law, or my claims of flying around the lawn, so I kept them secret, even though I found it rather frightening, and often wondered ‘what if I can’t get back down again?’  Ironically, I now realize that my father, an unusual man - general practitioner, vegetarian, anti-vivisectionist and mystic – would probably have been able to tell me all about out-of-body experiences.

My parents were members of the Order of the Cross.  As an average obnoxious teenager, I rebelled against their strict religious code and anything that smacked of spirituality, accepting only the vegetarianism, and have not consciously eaten meat to this day.

The journey into the field of personal development started in the late 1960s when I worked with small children who were homeless in the East End of London.  I married soon after; we had a son and a daughter and moved to South Wales.  One wet night, I went as usual to my sanity-restoring yoga class in Swansea (I was an exhausted young mum) and something remarkable happened.   The teacher had brought in a claret red peony for us to meditate on.  Not long into the exercise I was startled to see that the flower was pulsing out an unmistakable green light for about 2.5 cm (1 in) all around its petals.  This glimpse into another dimension changed the course of my life.

A few months later, lying on my stomach on the floor reading in front of the fire, in a type of cobra position, I noticed a shining silver crescent, like cut glass, superimposed on the page.  I rubbed my eyes.  It didn’t go away.  I looked around the room; the crescent was everywhere I looked.  I took out my contact lenses.  It was still there, bigger and brighter if anything.  I didn’t know what was happening - I even called the doctor.  Hours later it faded away.  It was not until I was doing my yoga teacher training a few years later, when I heard Swami Venkatisananda describe the symbol for Svadisthana chakra, that I realized what I had seen.  Significantly, I understood that certain yoga postures could spontaneously trigger the opening of a chakra.  This event initiated a life-long interest in the chakras, studying any relevant books I could lay my hands on.

One thing leads to another…if we allow it.  I moved back to Gloucestershire in 1977, divorced, surviving on a pittance, cleaning people’s houses while the kids were at school.  Out of the blue the opportunity arose to take up the one remaining place on a British Wheel of Yoga teacher training course with Fred Lock.  Two years later I was qualified and teaching regular classes. 

Ironically, during my training I was myself declared homeless with my two small children, when our landlord decided to sell the semi-derelict cottage we were living in. We were re-housed on a ‘troubled’ council estate nearby, where the benefits of running water did not compensate for the charms of the cottage.  One of the things that kept me going during these difficult times was regular acupuncture treatments.  It was a revelation that a treatment for an aching shoulder allowed me to let go of pain on a much deeper emotional level as well.  My luck changed when a small legacy made it possible for me to study Classical Five Element Acupuncture for myself.  The path learning about the subtle energies of the body was firmly established, patients becoming my teachers, as my yoga students had been.  Again something remarkable happened.  One day my patient and I saw a meridian glowing like a pathway of light up her leg  just after I had needled her: I realized that that was how the meridians were originally mapped. 

The next ‘thread’ of my life emerged when my American fiancé introduced me to his friend Helen Palmer in 1984; one of the chief exponents of a system of personality typing called the Enneagram.  Their conversation was perplexing.  It went something like this:  “Yes, well, he’s a Nine, and he’s not at all clear about where it goes next…”  Or: “…he just wants me to stand up and fight; match his Eight.”  Clearly if I was going to be able to keep up I was going to have to learn their language.

I read Helen’s book The Enneagram, the Definitive Guide to the Ancient System for Understanding Yourself and the Others in Your Life with fascination.  It was as if I’d been handed the key to the universe.  Characters from my world leapt out of the pages.  The myth that we are all basically alike was exploded, or rather, re-written.  The nine types are alike.  Put a panel of six or seven type Ones on a platform at the same time and get them to talk about their perspective of the world and you will hear, and see, communality.  This is exactly what Helen would do.  In the manner of the Sufis, who, it is believed, were the first exponents of the Enneagram, she would pass on this knowledge in the oral tradition.  Each Sunday evening, in a large hall in Berkeley she held Enneagram seminars, when she would present the material by interviewing a panel of the same type.  The hall was always packed; it seemed that hundreds of people were interested in this take on personality, and how we may ‘tame’ it for our growth, and gain great insight about what makes us and others tick.  I went on to study with Helen to teach the Enneagram in 1993.  Nowadays the Enneagram is a hugely popular system for personal development in the United States and is gaining popularity in the UK and all over the world.

During the many years I regularly treated acupuncture patients it became clear to me that much of their malaise arose from their personality type.  Many times I would do treatments based on the meridians that would support their type, and found them highly successful.  Then I realized that they could support their health, emotional, physical and spiritual, between treatments by doing yoga postures that would balance the malfunctioning meridian.  I had come full circle, back to yoga…and particularly postures that would balance the meridians and the chakras affecting the person on a very deep level.  It was a short step from here to writing my two books: The Enneagram for the Spirit – How to make peace with your personality and understand others (pub by Gaia in 2005) and The Chakra Workout – Balancing the Chakras with Yoga (pub by Gaia in 2006).

Books

Mary’s two books are published by Gaia. More information about them can be found on the Books Page on this web site. Just click on the link bellow.

The Enneagram for the Spirit

 How to make peace with your personality and understand others

ISBN 1-85675-210-0

This unique Enneagram book about the nine main personality types, not only tells how to identify your type, enabling you to change and grow to fulfil your potential, it also includes information on how personality affects the body.  In turn this can be balanced with yoga, meditations and many practical lifestyle changes.  The book is a synthesis of Mary’s knowledge of the enneagram, yoga and the meridians.

The first practical book on the Enneagram – exploring it via the body as well as the mind

How to understand yourself and the important people in your life

A unique way of working on yourself, using the chakra and meridian systems

The Chakra Workout

Balancing the Chakras with Yoga

ISBN 1-85675-259-3

The Chakra Workout is a highly practical self-help guide to unblocking and rebalancing your chakras – spinning vortices of radiant energy in your body that affect everything you think, say or do.  Through the practice of yoga and meditation, you will learn how to achieve and maintain physical, mental, emotional and spiritual balance.

Explores the seven major and 31 minor chakras and their influence on the aura

Provides yoga postures and meditation techniques that work on your chakras one by one and as a complete system

Explains how to use the breath to achieve maximum benefit from yoga

Signed copies of Mary’s books are available from mary@maryhorsley.co.uk £14.99 plus p&p (Discounts when you buy both books)

or phone 01453 839111