The Team

Hi I am Layla Chamberlain, wife, mother of boys and dogs and founder of Layla’s Circle Sisters! 

I started my spiritual journey at a young age, holding fake seances in the toilets in junior school, where I would move the glass to make believe we’d made contact with our dearly departed school janitor! I knew there was more after we had finished on this plain even then, but willed it not to show itself!  

Then I struggled through adolescence with trying to find my identity and suffering from depression I blocked my spiritual side out.  

I lived following the path of quick dopamine fixes, of partying, and putting myself in dangerous situations to test myself on how well I could handle things. I went from job to job, never really fitting in anywhere. I found it difficult to form strong supportive friendships that stood the test of time.  

Motherhood brought me back to beginning to understand myself through suffering with my mental health with another but much more relentless bout of depression, commonly known as post-partum depression or post-natal depression and I found a great deal of answers and resolve through the discovery of Reiki.  

Reiki is a healing energy that is found in abundance all around us. It is an ancient form of healing from Japan, and the modality that is readily recognised around the world now has come down from a man named Dr. Mikao Usui. He meditated in the mountains for days and weeks at a time and found his connection to the ‘Life-Force’, he was given symbols to use to enhance the ‘Rei-Ki’ and one of these symbols can access the Akashic records which then transcends time and space and connects one soul to another. This is how distance healing works. 

I became attuned to Reiki 1, Reiki 2 and then Reiki 3 over the next 10 years as I was drawn to do each level. Each level had it’s own set number of days in which I had to do a self-heal to clear myself as a channel for the ‘Life-Force’ energy to work through me, in order to give Reiki healing to others. 

This work changed me as I healed myself along the way. Showed me how people manipulate others to gain energy from each other and that we don’t need to do this to fill our cups. 

I’ve since learnt that the key to keeping our own cups full in order to nurture those around us, is to give ourselves self-love. Whatever that looks like to you, exercise, good food, walking in forests, meditation, swimming in the sea, lakes or rivers, connecting with friends or family, doing good deeds, or just simply resting in bed for a day!  

I have had several roles in several different industries since becoming a working adult, and I now understand that my ADHD has determined so many of those changes. My neurospicy brain processes everything differently to those I’ve grown up with, worked with and lived with and discovering this through perimenopause has led to a great deal of understanding of myself, and then a great deal of grief for the lack of support my younger self should have had, and then a great deal of acceptance. This journey has taught me how to give myself grace, turn off the guilt and shame that surrounds those characteristics that make living in the modern world difficult. I was just built for forests, rivers, lakes and windy days on mountains, not the 9-5 job, pay my bills and juggle everything else life throws at us! 

I’ve worked in hospitality, sales, screen printing, childcare, adult care and now I’ve undergone a deep intensive training on holding safe, sacred spaces for people to come together and share in circles from Sacred Sister. It’s been a remembering, of what we would have had if we still lived in tribal communities. I have made the deepest friendships on this journey. Friendships that have helped heal my past traumas. I’m able to hold space to my own reactions now. A powerful pause makes all the difference in the outcome of certain situations. I still have so much to learn on this wonderful journey of life and I’m here for all of it! 

My children are virtually all grown with one at university and the other in his last year at school and having secured a work placement for an apprenticeship next summer. It’s time for me to follow what lights me up! Doing this deeper work lights me up. Being the safe landing in a tumultuous and rocky world, to offer some reprieve to the overthinking and aimless spinning that so many of us experience. I used to say ‘Stop the world, I want to get off!’ But now I say ‘Come and find your tribe!’ Together we can raise each other up. Together we can ripple out our natural Divine Feminine nurturing instincts and re-balance the masculine heavy world, with kindness and compassion. 

I love tuning into my higher frequencies by writing meditations and sending distance healing to others and have had incredible feedback from all the recipients. I am most excited about working with a new way to use Reiki as I take people on very spiritual journeys, which I will be facilitating at each of Caer Bryn Retreats that I’m involved with.