Spitler-Wood

“I once had a sketch picked for the Edinburgh Festival and I was one of a team of writers creating parody songs about politics and current events for the News Revue, which is London’s longest running revue show. These were performed in the Canal Street Cafe in Little Venice. I still submit parodies from up here, but taking part means staying up late at night and it’s harder doing that now than it was in London when I was working shifts in retail,” says Julie, who now runs Saltburn Hypnotherapy from the Well-BeingCentreinStationStreet.

Julie has local family roots, but she was born in Ohio. Her mum had met her dad in the UK, when he was serving in theAmericanAir Force and they set up their first home in the USA, but when Julie was three, they decided to move the family back to Marske. Julie’s grandparents, DorisandWallyGathercolewerelivinginWiltonBank.

After attending Errington and Bydales schools in Marske, Julie joined a Youth Training Scheme. As she wanted to work in retail, she got a Saturday job in Binns in Middlesbrough, but there were no full-time jobs to apply for locally in the early 1980s. So distant relatives in London encouraged her to join them there where opportunitieswereavailable.

She started working in Boots, in cosmetics and worked her way up to Cosmetic Business Manager in brands such as Dior, Clinique and Clarins in some of London’s leading department stores. “I loved it and after a while sofa-surfing and renting, I saved enough to buy a house,” she remembers. However, the long hours – it could be 9.00pm to 10.00pm before she started to cash up and ever higher targets to reach meant that she turned her attention to workingforherself.

Julie decided to take a hypnotherapy course, which included practice sessions and she qualified after a year’s training.SheheardthatapharmacistinCoventGardenhad aspareroomforrentandusingherexperienceinretail,she put forward a business case to him and he offered her a good deal. She put up a sign outside the pharmacy, developed a website, emailed a possible client list from previouscontactsandtalkedtopeoplerunninglocaloffices toestablishcorporatework.“Ileftmystorejobandopened up my full-time practice in 2011,” she says. “I paced myself by not booking back to back appointments and I foundIreallyenjoyedmynewrole.”

But after a couple of years in Covent Garden, Julie and her husband, decided to rejoin her family in Saltburn and Marske. “Ian is a journalist for the BBC and now works at BBCRadioTees.Heloveslivinghere,”shesays.

She was soon developing her business plan here and is nowworkingfromtheWell-BeingCentreinStationStreet, Saltburn. She acknowledges the help she had from other Saltburn shop owners, who displayed her posters and she putaregularadvertinTalkoftheTownmagazine.Shehas a Facebook page: Saltburn Hypnotherapy and a website: Saltburn Mind Therapies, which has aFAQsectionthat includes lots of information for people who want to learn more.

Julie specialises in hypnotherapy sessions for smoking cessation and grief therapy for people whose pets have died. To discuss how the caller’s needs can best be met, Julieoffersafreeinitial20to30minuteconfidentialphone consultation. She focuses also on helping sports people overcomeemotionalblocks:“Iworkwithyounggymnasts, tumblers and trampolinists using Brain Working Recursive Therapy to deal with anxieties that are stopping them perform.” Under-16s must have a parent present in the same room, in line with the regulations of the Complementary and Natural Health Care Council, the independentUKregulator,withwhomsheisregistered.

Julie enjoys walking in the local area. She’s a member of a Nordic Walking Group that goes out on Tuesday mornings in the Saltburn/Guisborough area. She goes to a Yoga class with Rachel at Studio 21: “It’s relaxing and inclusive,welcomingallagesandsizes,”shesays.

She loves local history and likes to pore over photos of Teesside in the 1940s and 1950s to see how the area has evolved. For Christmas she was given local history books and in summer when he’s out in his garden, she enjoys a chatwithSaltburnhistorianTonyLynn.

As her younger brother lives in San Francisco, her godmother is in Washington and she has friends scattered through the USA, Julie and Ian travel there when they take holidays. “I’m not good in the heat though, so we go in May or October and focus on two or three places,” she says.

Julie says her musical age is the 1980s. She went to concerts featuring the bands Squeeze and the Pet Shop BoysinMiddlesbroughandStockton.Shewasalsofondof the Teesside band Wild Cats of Kilkenny.As she’s always enjoyed writing, she had great fun contributing parodies to the Treason Show in Brighton and to the News Revue in London. “I was very proud when I took my parents along totheshows,”sheremembers.

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