Scotland to Asia to Portugal, Gillian Harrison Finds her Life’s Work & the Community she Envisioned [Ep 32]

Gillian Harrison is Scottish, now living in Portugal. She moved here in 2018 from Hong Kong, where she and her husband and children had lived for 6 years, and on a boat! Gill has a background in marketing, but when her mother died from cancer in the early 2000s, her interest in energy work and healing lead her to make significant personal and professional changes, culminating with a synchronous event that resulted in her buying and then running a New Age crystal shop in the north of England. Ten years later, when she and her family moved to Asia, she discovered the vibrational healing power of  ‘gongs.’ Studying with a master gong player in Hong Kong, she eventually invested in six of her own. At her community studio, Enso Space, on the coast outside of Lisbon, she plays the gongs in sessions with private clients, and with groups, for relaxation, energy balancing and healing.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Louise: Welcome to Women Who WaIk. I'm Louise Ross, writer and author of Women Who Walk the book, the inspiration for this podcast. And just as I did for the book here, I'll be interviewing and unpacking the journeys of impressive, intrepid women who've made multiple international moves for work, for adventure, for love, for freedom - reminding us that women can do extraordinary things. You can find a transcript, with pictures, to each episode, and my books on my website, LouiseRoss.com.

[00:00:47] Louise: Hello listeners. Welcome to Episode 32 of Women Who Walk.

[00:00:53] Louise: This episode is the second in a series of interviews that I'm doing with women who've moved to Portugal and who are self-employed in the healing arts as holistic, alternative, or non-medical practitioners.

[00:01:09] Louise: Several of the interviewees' reflections on setting up practices and building a client base in Portugal, one of the topics covered in this episode, may well be of interest to listeners in the healing arts who are thinking of moving to Portugal with the hope of practicing.

[00:01:28] Louise: And so now to today's guest, Gillian Harrison. Gill is from Scotland and you're going to hear that quite clearly in her Glaswegian accent. Incidentally, the paternal heritage of my last guest, Anglo-Brazilian Alexandra Clark, is also Scottish. Beyond that their personal stories diverge significantly.

[00:01:53] Louise: Although that said, just as for many people in the healing arts, both women experienced a significant life event that precipitated their pursuit of the healing modality they now practice. For Alexandra, it was a health crisis. And for Gill, it was the death of her mother to cancer.

[00:02:16] Louise: Interestingly, both women made country moves, Alexandra to the US, and Gill to Hong Kong, that ultimately, and synchronistically, led them to teachers and training in the alternative therapies they now specialize in.

[00:02:33] Louise: In this episode, Gill makes the comment, something along the lines of, 'There are no accidents in life, everything happens for a reason.' And you certainly have that sense, listening to her story of growing up outside Glasgow, launching with a degree in marketing and business, working in London with big brand companies, before a radical course correction after her mum dies, which finds her studying energy work and owning a New Age crystal shop in the north of England, and then moving to Hong Kong where she discovered gongs and the power of sound healing.

[00:03:15] Louise: And before we transition to my interview with Gill, I'll just clarify that gongs are percussion instruments, originating in East Asia and Southeast Asia. They're large or small rimmed metal discs that produce a loud, sonorous tone when struck with a padded mallet.

[00:03:48] Louise: Welcome Gill, to Women Who Walk.

[00:03:50] Gillian: Hi Louise. Thank you so much for welcoming me.

[00:03:52] Louise: And you are in Vietnam right now, and you are there for the summer, aren't you?

[00:03:58] Gillian: Yes I'm here for a month. We have a house here. It's my happy place. I love Vietnam. Any listeners, if you're ever thinking about coming to Asia, it's a fantastic country. I'm very fortunate because where the house is, it's very quiet. I look out on trees. I have a little pool, it's a complete oasis, but then if I go out of the driveway and turn right or left, then you're in the cacophony of motorbikes and, uh, market stalls and everything Vietnam that you can imagine. So it is lovely to be able to have both, to retreat into my little area of calm, but also partake in what is a fabulous country with amazing food and the friendliest people in the world.

[00:04:36] Louise: Oh, wonderful. But, but you were born in Glasgow in Scotland, and you grew up outside of Glasgow. Can you tell us a bit about your home town and what it was like there in the '60s?

[00:04:47] Gillian: I was born in 1967 and I grew up in a town called East Kilbride, which is eight miles Southeast of Glasgow. East Kilbride at the time when it was first created, was Scotland's first new town. After the second world war Scotland created five new towns to take a lot of the overspill from the tenements in Glasgow that had been destroyed in the bombing and East Kilbride was the first one in May, 1947 to be created. And at the time it really was state of the art. It was mainly council housing, with front and back gardens, inside toilets, green parkland. It's well known now for having 60 roundabouts. It was planned to take cars which, back in the late '40s, early '50s was unusual, but also to allow pedestrian traffic and, and, uh, and buses.

[00:05:38] Gillian: It was built around an original dairy village and there were settlements there from the bronze age, actually. So there's always been people living there, but now it's, um, Scotland's sixth largest town. As a child growing up, it was a lovely environment for me. I'm the youngest of three, but my siblings are nine and eight years older than me. But in our street because it was young families coming in, it was largely couples with young children, so I was surrounded by children of the same age, even though my siblings were older. It was a, a very free and secure environment to grow up in where everybody knew their neighbors.

[00:06:15] Louise: That sounds sort of ideal.

[00:06:17] Gillian: Yeah.

[00:06:18] Louise: You mentioned that you have two older siblings and your dad passed away though when you're a teenager and it was just you and your mum, because your siblings had already launched. What were your teen years like? I mean, was there a specific message or values that, uh, your mum passed on to you as the youngest child?

[00:06:38] Gillian: Yeah, absolutely. I think every mother-daughter relationship has lots of strengths and lots of challenges as well. So my mother was born in 1925, uh, and actually she had the claim-to-fame of being evacuated during the war at the age of 14, but also then signing up at the age of 17. And she went out to Palestine with the ATS (women's branch of British Army) so she was in the army. That's quite unusual to have that experience of both sides of the war.

[00:07:04] Gillian: She had always wanted to go back to the army, she loved being abroad, but her mother put pressure on her to stay back in Glasgow. So this is a background towards my, my upbringing. She was 42 when she had me and my father was 56, 14 years older - quite a big generational gap. My father used to go and collect his old-age pension on his family allowance on the same day, which was lovely. For listeners, my mum's the same age as our Queen. If she was still alive, she'd be 96. I think when you have that big generational gap as well, it's always a challenge.

[00:07:36] Gillian: My father passed when I was 14. My siblings um, married and moved to college. So for nine years it was my mother and I at home from the age of 14, till I left to go to London at 23. I think in my mum's mind, she'd always thought that I was born to look after her in a certain way, because I came later in life. My sister is still in my home town. She never left, and my mum was very active within her life and certainly my sister's children.

[00:08:02] Gillian: But I think there was an expectation from her point of view that, that I would stay close as she was getting older. Also her values in life were, family, a happy marriage, and family, and kindness. For her aspirationally, marriage and family were number one, not career and education per se.

[00:08:23] Gillian: But this was the '80s. We had Maggie Thatcher as UK Prime Minister. We had Joan Collins and Dynasty, and we had Madonna - that's my context. It was very challenging sometimes, to, to push for my ambitions, which were to be educated to leave.

[00:08:44] Louise: Yeah. Yeah. So in fact, despite your, your mum's values or ideas for you, in the late '80s you graduate with an honors degree in marketing and business admin. Did you pursue that line of study with a particular goal in mind?

[00:08:58] Gillian: Yeah, and it's not that she wasn't for education. All of us went to university. She just wanted me to stay close to home and to have what she had, which was a happy marriage and a family life. Obviously when you have a good university education, then it opens doors geographically.

[00:09:13] Gillian: In those days it wasn't as easy to travel as it is now and communication wasn't as easy. You had one landline phone, and it was expensive to travel. So, she knew that she'd miss me if I left. And of course I did the day after I graduated, I went to London.

[00:09:26] Louise: What were you doing in London?

[00:09:27] Gillian: I went to, to follow my career in marketing. I joined Clairol, as a brand assistant. I then moved on to, Revlon and worked on Max Factor makeup and Le Jardin Perfume. So great fun. Early 20s, launching eyeshadows and lipsticks. But I was always restless. So I moved from London up to Newcastle because by that point in time, Revlon had been bought by Proctor and Gamble, so I moved with P and G to Newcastle and then was headhunted by Nestle in April 11th, 1994. I went to Nestle to, to work in the world of chocolate marketing in York, in the north of England.

[00:10:04] Louise: That sounds delicious!

[00:10:04] Gillian: Did that for 10 years. And loved that York is a lovely medieval town in the north of England. All of our advertising agencies were in London so I went to London twice a week. I could still keep my connection with the city as well as living in the north. And it was great fun. Really, really creative and challenging job with big budgets, brands everybody knows, made lots of friends who are still my friends to this day, from those times.

[00:10:30] Louise: Then in the early 2000s, your mum has cancer and you decide to return home to help look after her. And so did that period in your life cause a change in the direction of your career, because it's not long after her passing that you do your Reiki training. Isn't that right?

[00:10:50] Gillian: There were a combination of lots of things, Louise. So yes, my mom, sadly battled bowel cancer for five years, quite a long time that we were dealing with it. And towards the end of, uh, of her life, I went back to spend some time with her. And at that point, I was early 30s. I was also going through a divorce from my first husband. I think just being in that environment, when you're watching somebody you love pass away, it makes you begin to question all the other decisions and aspects of your life.

[00:11:20] Gillian: It was another year later before I did the Reiki training, but that was the beginning of me beginning to think am I really living the life that I want to be living. I love my job but it was very one dimensional. I was married to my job. It's all I did. I did want a family, and I did want a marriage, all the things my mother wanted for me all those years before.

[00:11:39] Gillian: A year later, I did sign up to do a Reiki course just because it was about energy. And I was very aware of the fact that as my mum was passing, I was rather helpless. There was nothing that I could do to help her with that transition. I wanted to understand how energy works within the body. And it really did change the trajectory of the, the remainder of my life, uh, that course, because it made me begin to question and to look at what, uh, was important to me. And I think during the energy work that we did within the actual courses that we did, but then outside of it as well, it changed the frequency of my energetic field. It opened up my energy field to other opportunities, to other experiences, to attract other things into my life.

[00:12:33] Gillian: I did the Reiki course in 2002 and by 2006, I had got together with my husband. We worked together, but we'd never looked at each other romantically before the Reiki course, uh, had two boys of my own, uh, had my two stepchildren, cuz Andrew had two children when I met him. And so my life changed fundamentally in less than five years.

[00:13:00] Louise: In less than five years, but then it continues to evolve and change dramatically because in 2012, the whole family moves to Hong Kong.

[00:13:09] Gillian: When I first moved to Hong Kong, I, I did a lot of marketing work, but I wanted to get back to, to my Reiki and to, to crystals. I should say in between doing the, the Nestle work and Hong Kong, the shop that I did my training in, my Reiki training, I bought in 2006. So for 10 years, I ran that as a crystal shop in the UK. That was a serendipitous opportunity because I'd gone online to look for a wedding dress. In those days, because it's 20 years ago, there wasn't a lot of online shopping, I was basically looking for addresses and shops to buy a, a dress from, and rather than showing me those shops, it showed me a classified ad saying there was a New Age shop for sale. And it was the shop that I'd done my training in.

[00:13:56] Gillian: From 2006 to 2016 that was my holistic university Mark Two, because every book that I sold, I read; every CD, in those days, it was CDs, I sold, I listened to; every crystal I sold, I learned about it; I did a counseling course to help people, because when you run a holistic shop, a lot of people that come in have challenges, and we were also close to a hospital.

[00:14:24] Gillian: That was the beginning of the next stage in this Reiki transformation journey. I'd gone from being marketing manager, no children, single career girl, to the witch in the village, running this little crystal shop with all my children around me.

[00:14:42] Louise: And Hong Kong, what was your life like there?

[00:14:46] Gillian: So Hong Kong, because Andrew and I have various different businesses, that are still marketing businesses. And we had one called the Brand Seller that was buying all brands, repackaging them and selling them on to other companies and countries and most of the sales were in Asia. We had a business partner in Hong Kong. That's what brought us to Hong Kong. And then adventure, I was 45 Andrew was 48.

[00:15:07] Gillian: We wanted to live abroad. The younger children were young enough to take with us; the older children had already left school, and so it was a good opportunity to, to try a different lifestyle and we loved it. Still to this day, love Hong Kong. We had amazing experiences out there. It's a fantastic country.

[00:15:24] Louise: And the one thing that I know about you that you, you didn't mention there is that you lived on a boat in Hong Kong.

[00:15:31] Gillian: I did. And we still have it. Yes, because housing in Hong Kong is incredibly expensive, and especially as an expat, if you don't have a Hong Kong residency, which we now have, but it's seven years for residency for Hong Kong. So we bought a boat instead. It is lovely. Every evening when you walk down the dock and climb onto your boat, you always feel that you're on permanent holiday, basically, and we're not sailors, but it was just an affordable way to live and an incredibly enjoyable one.

[00:15:59] Louise: Did you do any additional training while you were in Hong Kong?

[00:16:03] Gillian: Yeah. When I moved to Hong Kong, I initially I went back into marketing for a couple of years. But I wanted to go back to my holistic side. So I did another crystal course there. I began to buy and sell crystals. And one day I was invited to sell crystals at a kundalini yoga workshop for the weekend.

[00:16:22] Louise: Can I ask you, Gill, who are you selling them to? Were you selling them to the Hong Kongese or were you selling them to internationals in Hong Kong?

[00:16:30] Gillian: To both. Hong Kong has a, a really good blend, because the UK ruled for so long. There's a massive expat community, albeit slightly less so now, but when I was there and a lot of the locals speak fluent English and also the, the Asians are very into crystals and energy. Feng Shui comes from there. Reiki is Japanese. There's a lot of, um, of belief in the power of energy and the power of crystals. So I was selling to both. And my main supplier in Hong Kong is a Chinese guy.

[00:17:03] Gillian: I used to sell all over the town, and so I was relatively well known for being the crystal girl and I was approached to come and sell at this kundalini yoga workshop for the weekend. And when I walked in, everybody's in white and the lady who, who ran the event, Martha, she's a Canadian girl, she has the largest gong collection in Asia. And that was my first introduction to, to gongs and gong healing and sound healing. That weekend, I heard the gongs, I experienced the gongs and I began to participate going to the events and then began to train in, in how to use gongs as sound healing.

[00:17:43] Louise: Now you and I met when you did a presentation to a group of expat women here in Portugal on the healing power of crystals. And at that time you were also doing private gong sessions combined with Reiki, and I had several sessions with you and, um, we ended up talking about your idea of creating a holistic community of practitioners, um, in the healing arts. Before we get there, can you tell listeners what gongs are, how you use them? There's gonna be a lot of people listening who have absolutely no idea what you do with them, how they work. So give us a little background.

[00:18:21] Gillian: A lot of people may well have heard of Tibetan bowls because that's often people's first introduction to sound. And gongs are just the same concept as that, just made bigger. They are a mixture of different metals and we play them with mallets or with rubber bows on sticks called flumys, F L U M Y. And it is the vibrations when I strike the gong that have an impact on your physical body, your emotional thoughts, your mental body, ultimately to bring all of your energetic field into a state of balance.

[00:18:59] Gillian: Sound healing has been present through millennia in all different cultures, races, in different way, shape or form. Everything from chanting, using your own voice, singing, chanting, to drumming, shamanic drumming. As I mentioned, Tibetan bowls and crystal bowls and gongs are just another translation of that.

[00:19:23] Gillian: I got my first gong when I was 50 for my 50th birthday. I now have six and they are profound catalysts for healing. My master, Martha, had a kidney stone dissolved by one. That's why she got interested in them. And for me it was sleep. I was a chronic insomniac and I realized that the nights that I had received healing through the gong, I could sleep better.

[00:19:51] Gillian: And when I was in Hong Kong, we also did overnight, we call them Puja, where you have continuous sound for, for 10 hours with the gong. And with that, we used to combine with Maggie's cancer charity, terminally ill cancer patients. And I watched them as they arrived, and often with the pain that they were in, and when they left, they would often say it was their one night of respite where they felt free from pain. That's really what the gongs do is they take you into a semi-conscious state or vibration, Theta healing, where it allows you to relax, at a deeper level than normal, and allow the body to begin to heal itself.

[00:20:33] Louise: I can attest to that because the, the sessions I've had with you both private and, and I have done, uh, group sessions and online sessions, um, it's an extraordinary experience because you can feel the vibration, it moves through you. And as it does that, you do go into this deep state of relaxation. Now you said it's a Theta state of relaxation. And you're sort of in this semi-conscious state, somewhat aware of your surroundings, and then when you come out of it, you really are in this deep state of relaxation. So it's as though the vibrational sound from the gongs, moves through you and presumably vibrates through the fluid in your body and creates a state of equilibrium. I mean, does that sound accurate?

[00:21:26] Gillian: It's exactly that. It is exactly that. It brings balance to your body. So anything that is out of balance, anything that is dis-ease of any way, shape or form, it helps to rebalance. And I find gongs particularly good for emotional and mental health. Many, many studies that are being done or have been done on, on the effectiveness of sound healing on ADHD, on addiction, on anything where you, you can be really caught up in your head and behaviors on the back of that. And so it's very, very good to just help the nervous system calm down. Continuous use obviously improves it more and more. And so my, my role in this world is to help facilitate this, but also to, to encourage people to do it themselves as well.

[00:22:15] Gillian: My aspiration is everybody has a sound healing mechanism of their own in their own home, just as we might have Paracetamol or Ibuprofen or whatever, and take their challenges and their problems to the gong or crystal bowl and just play because it is a very, very good tool for bringing balance into your life.

[00:22:35] Louise: You mentioned your initial introduction to your teacher and the cancer patients who during the night sessions were able to get at least a night of respite from the discomfort of the cancer. It takes us back to when you mentioned that you felt quite powerless to help your mum as she was dealing with cancer. It almost feels like there was something destined about this as a result of the, uh, experience you had with your mum as she was struggling that then you have come to this place as a healer using sound.

[00:23:11] Gillian: I think there absolutely is. I mean, I don't believe that they're coincidences in life. I think everything is absolutely for a reason. And we're talking about this whole journey and I began with the conversation of my mom wanting me to have a family, a happy marriage, and to work with something that was to do with kindness and helping other people. And I went a roundabout route to get to that, but that's exactly what I'm doing now and very happy doing so. So listen to your mum, boys and girls. Listen to your mum! No, but it's, it's interesting the journey with this, and I hope that it can continue, cause I'm specifically interested in cancer patients.

[00:23:47] Gillian: Reiki now is used if you're terminally ill in the UK, you can get vouchers to have free Reiki sessions and I hope that there'll be more acceptance within traditional medical field of the impact of sound to the extent that we can go into hospitals and, and to provide a service like this, to help with the emotional trauma that comes with any big illness.

[00:24:10] Louise: Indeed. I hear you. One of the things you've also manifested, which I touched on before we got into a deeper conversation about this is the vision that you had to create a community of holistic healers here in Portugal and, and we both live on the coast just outside of Lisbon. Can you share with listeners how easy or challenging it's been to create that community and have the Portuguese and the internationals be open to the various healing modalities offered by the community of practitioners that you've now gathered around you.

[00:24:50] Gillian: I moved to just outside Lisbon in 2018, four years ago, and the first two years that I was there, I would take my gongs in the car and go up to Lisbon to go and play, which is no mean feat, actually. They're heavy. That was challenging. I enjoyed it and it was a lovely community in Lisbon, but there was no center, it was primarily just different yoga studios.

[00:25:13] Gillian: At the beginning of the pandemic, my aspiration was to create a holistic studio in our local neighborhood. The first challenge was I was doing it in the middle of a pandemic, but it is now gaining a lot of traction. And my intention for the space is to create a proper community for expats and locals.

[00:25:33] Gillian: The name of the studio is Enso Space and Enso is Japanese for circle. But it's also the calligraphy for the, um, for the circle as well. It's all about the space within the circle and that being the creative space for all transition and change to come from. That was the thinking behind the name of it.

[00:25:56] Gillian: The last two years now, I've put together a team of healers and teachers from all different nationalities. We offer a lot of yoga, uh, Tai Chi, um, chi gung in September, reflexology, massage, counseling. And you were asking about the different nationalities: it really is a massive cross section. I have yet to find a country that doesn't have a spiritual aspect to it. I feel there's more in common than there are differentiation. We all want to feel a connection. Most people understand that we have a life force energy. Certainly at the moment, there's a lot of interest in how we use holistic energy and medicine to prevent disease, as opposed to working with the aftermath when something has happened.

[00:26:46] Gillian: The intention for the space is to have a community where people grow and learn together and, and have connections that they can take outside of that space as well, because they have a common interest with other people.

[00:27:00] Louise: When I've been to the studio, I've noticed that there have been Portuguese that have come from Lisbon and then local expats, but from every country, from all over the world that have come together to do yoga or for a gong session or whatever. So it's really quite wonderful what you've been able to create at the studio.

[00:27:20] Gillian: Obviously I teach in English and so the Portuguese that come, we speak in English, but because the space is a rentable space, I had a Russian yoga girl who taught in Russian to 18 Russian girls. So she had her community there. My main yoga teacher is Brazilian, so she teaches in Portuguese and in English, and she does eight classes a week. There's something for everybody really, and something to make everybody feel at home and to feel that they're amongst their tribe. Albeit, we may not all speak the same language all the time.

[00:27:52] Louise: Yeah. So if listeners would like to learn more about you and the studio and your gongs, which you offer both in person and online, as I mentioned, cuz I've done both. Where can they find you online?

[00:28:07] Gillian: So Facebook and Instagram are Enso Space: ensospace. And my email is gillyandthegongs@gmail.com

[00:28:20] Louise: Terrific. I'll link to your Facebook and that email address in the transcript of this episode. And Gill, thank you so much for your time today.

[00:28:30] Gillian: Thank you, Louise.

[00:28:31] Louise: Thank you for listening today. So you don’t miss future episodes, subscribe on your favorite podcast provider or on my YouTube channel Women Who Walk Podcast. Also, feel free to connect with comments on Instagram @LouiseRossWriter or Writer & Podcaster, Louise Ross on Facebook, or find me on LinkedIn. And finally, if you enjoyed this episode, spread the word and tell your friends.