Profile and Team

Mary Kingsley was born in London in 1954 and is the founder and director of Lazarus. Her initial career included nursing, social work and care of the terminally ill. She went onto train and then practice for 18 years as a psychotherapist. During this period she founded a (UKCP) psychotherapy training organization. She also initiated and ran a psychotherapy department for a team of 6 medical doctors and taught ‘transpersonal psychotherapy’ in various training centers. She is a mother and grandmother. She began leading retreats in silence within the UK before immigrating to India in 2001 where she lived for over five years. She is now based in rural Wales (UK) where she also runs retreats. She gives individual consultations in Wales and for two days each month in North London.

"I closed my practice in Highgate, London and came to India nearly 6 years ago. I was in a state of burn-out yet unable to fully surrender to the fact. Sometimes psychological knowledge clutters our perception to such a degree, it stands in our way of entering the unknown; an inner emptiness where our archaic self-perception effortlessly falls away to allow a genuine rebirth of our true nature to take place. Mystic’s throughout the ages have described this unknowingness as ‘the child’ or ‘the fool’; our innate essence which perceives life in a simple state of wonder without the need to analyze or be in control in a calculating, fear-driven way.

To cut a long story short, I became bankrupt in India very quickly in the struggle to hold onto the person I thought I was. My mother and daughter tried to financially help me secure a home where I could finally collapse into a ‘phoenix’ process. But that, too, was still a mental concept I was holding onto and when it inevitably back–fired, I finally reached a point where I was forced to surrender to a spiritual process which India is.

With the help of a friend, who gave me 9,000 Rupees (all I had in the world) I took the ancient mystic highway and journeyed to a tiny village deep within the inner Himalayas where I’d heard about a remote cave. There, perhaps, I could finally settle into an inner emptiness and simplicity that I’d only tasted but never fully surrendered to. Retreating to a cave is an idea that some people fantasize about. Backed into a corner of self-bewilderment and bankruptcy, it appeared as the only way left to survive; to be true to a process that was seemingly merciless.