I quit a £144k job to open a country retreat and I’ve never been happier

Tamara Selaman, 44, lives in rural Oxfordshire with her 11-year-old son. She owns Heal Oxford Wellbeing, an alternative and holistic health service run from a beautiful converted barn.

As I gaze out across open fields and beautiful woodland waiting for the next client to arrive at my wellness centre, it’s surreal to think how different my life was just a year ago.

Back then, my career as a corporate business consultant meant travelling over 2,000 miles a week to visit clients everywhere from Devon and Cambridgeshire, to Newcastle and Manchester. If I wasn’t driving all over the country, I’d be on trains and tubes to meet other clients in London.

Although I loved my job and enjoyed many trappings including earnings of up to £144,000 a year, I often missed my son's sports fixtures and meet-ups with his friends and their mums, frequently relying on family members to attend instead.

During school holidays, I’d book him into various clubs so that I could work and although we enjoyed treats such as day trips together and playdates with his friends when I could, I was exhausted and stressed. My laptop was constantly open for me to work during evenings and weekends at home.

Exploring alternative therapies

Alongside my career, which I began doing in-house training for a large software company, for years I’d studied and trained in alternative therapies including anatomy, physiology and massage, on a mission to heal my own body.

A serious car accident in 1999 when I was 19 left me with a partially crushed spine, requiring major surgery to graft bone from my hip and insert it into the spinal column. A titanium plate and screws were used to hold this in place which enabled new bone growth that would then fuse together and enable spinal stability.

In 2004 I expanded my studies to include the likes of breathwork, fitness instruction, Indian head massage, baby massage and functional health nutrition, and began offering treatments to family and friends the same year.

Using my intuition

While giving treatments that necessitated me placing my hand on a client's body, I noticed that recurrent images would pop into my mind, which I eventually realised must hold some sort of intuitive meaning.

For example, there was one particular woman I was treating during my massage training and every time I worked on her body I’d visualise a tree. It sounds completely woo-woo but when I mentioned it to her and asked if there was any significance, she explained that she’d also been in an accident when her car had crashed into a tree.

I seem to have an intuitive ability and I’ve since studied the subject of bioenergetics, which supports the release of blocked energy in the body and addresses emotional issues through physical and psychological means. Quantum healing is another area I've studied, viewing the mind and spirit as powerful tools for healing.

Through word of mouth, my client base grew and eventually I realised I could use my extensive qualifications and knowledge to pursue a more purposeful career, sharing all the things that had benefited my own wellbeing to help others through their health issues.

Finding a new home

By around 2019, I was seriously beginning to think about finding a space to rent as a wellbeing treatment centre, but then covid hit and the timing wasn’t right.

In autumn 2022 I resumed my search and early last year found the beautiful farming estate where I am now a few miles from Oxford in the countryside. I took out a lease on an empty barn there which was initially just one big open space, then invested around £70,000 in renovations and costs, fitting it out with furniture, plants and decorative touches to create a real sanctuary for my clients – and me. It's now a calm, light-filled, four-room wellbeing centre.

When I then moved from my five-bed home, I moved into a rented two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment in a manor house on the same farm estate last July, where the gorgeous views alone are worth the £1,310 monthly rent. This has helped me to invest into my business.

Moving on from my old life

At the start of the project, I was in partnership with a friend of a friend who's a qualified yoga instructor and women’s coach. The idea was that we would run the wellbeing centre together whilst offering our own individual services including yoga, massage, talk therapy, bioenergetics and quantum healing, functional medicine and health tests, fitted in part-time around our respective corporate careers.

Unfortunately, last October she left the business due to ill health, and suddenly it was all down to me to keep the startup going. After much deliberation, I realised I couldn't possibly juggle my career with the wellbeing centre and a young child, so I had to choose between the financial security of my corporate job or taking a risk on a more purposeful but less lucrative career. I chose the latter.

Although in some ways leaving my old life behind was a wrench, especially giving up earnings of between £10,000 and £12,000 a month, for a while I'd been feeling increasingly stressed by high-pressure deadlines and constant travelling. I'd felt the need to make changes so that work felt more meaningful to me personally, which is where running my own wellness clinic to help others came in.

Country life

My mantra has been to take it all day by day because despite my life being infinitely more satisfying and meaningful than when I was in my corporate job, it’s been hard work. For the past 15 months I’ve worked 15 to 18 hours a day, six or seven days a week but it feels life-affirming.

Many of my clients are desperate for answers to their physical and emotional troubles and yet they’re on long waiting lists to see their GP or a specialist so they turn to me. Common questions from them include, "Why do I feel so tired?", "Why am I always so bloated?", "How can I alleviate pain in my back?" To be able to provide healing treatments in an environment where science meets nature is such a gift.

Being in natural surroundings has been proven to reduce cortisol – the stress hormone – in our bodies and clients tell me they feel a real sense of their stresses ebbing away the minute they drive onto the farm estate where, instead of being surrounded by traffic and houses, they’re immersed in the countryside.

I liken my wellbeing centre to a nurturing nest where I feel the same as my clients do – safe and secure with no pressure to please others or be controlled by a corporate environment.

The barn sits on a pretty courtyard with other barns also run as independent businesses, within a peaceful rural setting of over five acres. I can hear the birds singing, the sounds of a peacock who roams the estate, and the comings and goings of one of the farm cats who likes to relax in our garden.

My old house in Abingdon was on a residential street and the most prominent sounds there were from cars and my neighbours to-ing and froi-ng. Now, I relish the peacefulness of my apartment which is close to the barn. Everything here has such a sense of stillness and quiet, something I aspire to in daily life.

A new freedom

The long working hours are all for my own benefit and they're gradually reducing. Crucially, those hours are flexible too, meaning I can now attend school, social and sporting activities in my son's life. Yesterday, when I picked him up from school we went shopping so that he could choose the things he wanted for dinner, and when we got home we went for a lovely walk in the countryside. We’d never have been able to do that when I was working in corporate life.

At weekends, I fit work in around the things that my son and I want to do together such as martial arts club and trips to the cinema. During school holidays, instead of him being in clubs he comes to the barn with me when I’m working and loves to help stock the shelves with the wellbeing products I sell, pricing them up as he goes along, and enjoys being on reception to book clients in when they arrive.

Now that I’m no longer shackled to an employer or endless hours of travelling, if I want to stop for lunch I can, and if I need to get out and walk in the countryside or go for a little dance in the woods then that’s what I do.

My carbon footprint has gone down 95% and despite the chaos of setting up a business I feel infinitely happier with my lovely new life and am incredibly proud of the business platform I've created to support both adults and children in their wellbeing. Living and working in the most glorious natural surroundings is so beneficial for me and makes the rat race, with its long commutes and hours spent in stuffy offices, feel like a lifetime ago.

Visit Healoxfordwellbeing.co.uk

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