Adie is our Course Consultant at Animas, and for her every conversation is a chance to be fully present with whoever she meets. Her earliest driving force is a question she began asking at around eight years old: what does it mean to be human?
That question deepened when she moved from the Philippines to the UK in 2007. The ontological shock of arriving in an entirely different culture broke down many of the beliefs she’d grown up with, cultural and religious alike. Years later, a health scare and the few years of health anxiety that followed brought her face to face with her own fear of death. That confrontation drew her towards existential thought (Irvin Yalom remains her favourite author) and opened her up to both Eastern and Western ways of understanding the self, from yoga and non-duality to Jung’s shadow work. It also led her to study psychology, with a particular interest in counselling psychology. But after her degree, she first found transformative coaching, though counselling psychology may still be part of her path in the future.
Teaching was Adie’s first passion, and education is still a big part of what she does today. She has been teaching since 2009 and continues to work with children, helping them keep their natural curiosity, a love of learning and a growth mindset they can carry into adulthood as the leaders of the future.
As a coach, she draws on many influences rather than one. She engages in relational practices such as Transformational Connection and Circling, continues to study Objective Personality and the Enneagram, and brings a presence shaped by non-dual teachings, which invite us to rest in the awareness we already are, seeing the self not as a problem to fix but as something to recognise. For her, transformative coaching is far more than a skill; it’s a set of principles she aims to live by, especially the willingness to stay in not-knowing. She sees story as central to this work, helping people make sense of their experience and see it with fresh insight, and alongside her consultant role she conducts Animas’s alumni interviews.
Her mission is to help people understand themselves, because that understanding allows them to evolve. How can you be more you, the whole you and nothing but you? When we are, she believes, the greater whole benefits too.
If you speak with Adie, she hopes you’ll feel welcome to bring all of who you are, and leave with clarity about the course, your next step, and a truer sense of yourself. Helping people take the leap into becoming a coach is something she’ll always be passionate about.