Manse Core Group
Built from experience.
Developed through practice.
Manse Core Group is home to The Manse Method® and Emotion Pathway®, two connected approaches that grew from years of working directly with people and decades of experience in people, care and organisational environments.
Why Carl and Kim, together
Two lenses on the same problem.
Training an organisation's staff in something as sensitive as emotional trauma takes more than clinical skill. It takes an understanding of how organisations actually work: the pressures, the culture, the reasons people don't ask for help even when support already exists.
Carl brings the clinical depth: three decades working directly with people affected by trauma, PTSD and grief, in some of the most demanding environments there are.
Kim brings the organisational reality: two decades in senior HR and People & Culture roles, understanding both the genuine intent behind workplace wellbeing and the gap between that intent and what actually reaches someone who's struggling.
Neither on its own is enough to build something an organisation can trust with its people. Together, they're why The Manse Method® and Emotion Pathway® exist — and why what follows is both of their stories, not just one.
Three decades of working directly with people.
I have spent over three decades helping people move beyond emotional pain and create meaningful change in their lives. For me, this work has never simply been a profession. It is deeply personal.
My career has included working as a counsellor with Kent's largest learning disability service, and as Head of Therapeutic Care for a private children's residential service supporting children with emotional difficulties.
That work has taken me around the world, working directly with individuals and groups affected by trauma, PTSD and grief across a wide range of backgrounds and cultures, from conflict-affected environments to corporate organisations. That breadth has given me a genuinely practical understanding of how emotional trauma can show up in someone's life, wherever that life is being lived. My work with veterans and PTSD led me to write my book,When the War Doesn't End (opens on Lulu in a new tab).
Over the years, I trained as a humanistic counsellor and hypnotherapist with the British Association of Therapeutic Hypnotists, incorporating the World Federation of Hypnotherapy, founded in 1951 as the first properly constituted body for professional hypnotists in the UK. I've also trained in a range of specialist approaches exploring how the brain processes difficult experiences, including Visual Coding Displacement Therapy, Integral Eye Movement Therapy, Multichannel Eye Movement Integration and the Havening Technique.
I'm also trained in the Human Givens approach to trauma, including the Rewind Technique, an effective, evidence-based treatment for trauma and PTSD that doesn't require someone to talk through or relive what happened in detail.
That determination to find practical ways of changing the emotional impact of difficult experiences led Kim and me to develop The Manse Method®, and later Emotion Pathway®, taking those skills beyond one-to-one work and into everyday life.
My belief remains simple: our past experiences can shape how we feel and respond, but they do not have to continue carrying the same emotional weight.
From HR leadership to nutritional therapy.
For more than 20 years, I worked in senior HR and organisational-transformation roles across several major organisations, including HSBC and Freshfields, spanning complex change, inclusion, leadership and people-strategy programmes in fast-paced, high-pressure environments. That breadth gave me a first-hand understanding of the pressures people can carry at work, often while appearing completely fine to everyone around them.
In 2014, I followed a long-held interest in health and wellbeing and trained as a yoga instructor. That decision began a completely different chapter of my life, eventually leading me to qualify as a Registered Nutritional Therapist, completing my diploma at the College of Naturopathic Medicine and a BSc (Hons) through the Institute for Optimum Nutrition.
My particular interest has become the relationship between our emotional experiences, the brain and our physical health. That interest, alongside my organisational background, became central to the work Carl and I developed together.
My background in HR has become particularly valuable in this work. I understand both sides: the genuine desire organisations have to support their people, and the reality that many people will never put their hand up, disclose what's happening, or ask for help.
The Manse Retreat
Then the two worlds came together.
The Manse Retreat came first. For more than four years, Carl and Kim worked directly with people affected by emotional trauma, PTSD, grief and difficult life experiences.
Their work included people from different walks of life, including veterans and emergency-services personnel.
The Retreat brought together Carl's decades of direct, person-facing experience and Kim's understanding of people, wellbeing and organisational environments.
A personal note
Then life changed profoundly
for both of them.
James was Carl's son and Kim's stepson. In February 2024, James died at the age of 28.
By then, Carl and Kim had already spent years working directly with people affected by trauma, PTSD, grief and difficult life experiences at The Manse Retreat.
James's death brought profound loss into both of their lives.
In the years that followed
Purpose from pain.
In the period that followed, both Carl and Kim needed to find purpose from pain.
Their professional experience, their years of work at The Manse Retreat, and what they had learned through working directly with people all became part of what came next.
Together, they began to develop what would become The Manse Method®.
Carl and Kim
co-created The Manse Method®.
The Manse Method® is a psycho-sensory, content-free method designed to help change or reduce the emotional response attached to past experiences, without requiring people to talk through or relive what happened.
Their first practitioner training took place in May 2025.
The experience remains.
The response can change.
From practice to a bigger question
The question became bigger.
The work at The Manse Retreat and the development of The Manse Method® had demonstrated the importance of giving people something practical they could use when a past experience continued to affect them.
But practitioner-led work raised another question: how could practical skills be put into people's own hands, before they necessarily reached the point of needing professional support?
Kim's organisational background added another dimension. Organisations already invest in awareness, wellbeing, conversation, support and signposting. Those things remain important.
Emotion Pathway®
From practitioner approach
to self-applied framework.
Practical, trauma-informed organisational training that gives people a structured framework they can use when an experience continues to trigger an emotional response. It's connected to The Manse Method®, but distinct from it.
Explore Emotion Pathway® →Manse Core Group
The work evolved.
So did the organisation.
Manse Core Group represents the next stage of work that began at The Manse Retreat. It brings together The Manse Method® and Emotion Pathway® under one organisation.
When something from the past is still affecting someone now, what can they actually do about it? That question has run through the work from the beginning, and still does.
Where the work is today
- Over 30 trained practitioners of The Manse Method® worldwide, and growing
- UK Learning Provider registration
- CPD certification and recognition, where applicable
- Signatory to the Armed Forces Covenant
- Emotion Pathway® is currently being piloted in a school
- The Manse Method® has been used with veterans and emergency-services personnel
- Advanced DBS checked and fully insured
Start with a conversation.
If you'd like to explore Emotion Pathway® for your organisation, we'd be happy to talk about where it could fit.
Start a chat (opens the booking calendar in a new tab)Or make an enquiry.