A chance conversation between two friends and therapists made them realise that together, they have been helping people locally through offering alternative therapies for a combined fifty years – and training many more to go on and share their skills besides.

Tina Pascal and Lesley Parsons both trained in alternative therapies in the nineties, followed similar lines throughout their careers and have ended up together at the Positive Living Centre, in Midsomer Norton.

Both have been working mothers and now grandmothers, putting their children to bed and going back out in the evenings, balancing busy lives. Tina trained in Merthyr Tydfil, and loved learning about what was then an emerging practice, going on to teach complementary therapies at Norton Radstock College (now Bath College’s Somer Valley campus) and later at the City of Bristol College.

Lesley taught diploma courses at Trowbridge, before moving on to Norton Radstock College and through her work, was also offered the chance to train eighty students in Taiwan over a two-year period. With a business partner, Tina founded the Positive Living Centre in 2002, with Lesley joining in 2006, and the pair training up new therapists in and around the area through weekend courses – either as one-offs or over a longer period, since 2010.

Looking back over their careers, Tina said: “Seeing people make positive changes in their lives has been the most rewarding thing and watching therapists evolve in their own practice and careers as a result.

“A part of passing on your knowledge is to give students a stepping stone to then go on their own journey and learn more.”

“I’m particularly proud to say that I have been self-employed for twenty-five years,” says Lesley. “I never thought I would be able to earn a living from something I love – things have changed remarkably since I began, for example, there were no health spas then!

“We often see people coming to us who need help and have tried everything. Alternative therapies are often perceived as for those who feel like there is nothing else left to try, but I have seen it help people come through some really difficult times.”

Between them, Tina and Lesley have spoken at corporate events, offered their services at hospices and have taught around a thousand students.