- Founders
- Programme Leaders
- Kitchen Staff
- Office Staff
Ray Butler
Ray was born in South-East London and started his own building company aged just 18. From humble beginnings, the business has flourished and transitioned into a joint venture property company, covering all aspects of building, property management and corporate services for the past 35 years.
In the 1990s, alongside wife Marie and in addition to his property businesses, Ray ran two successful restaurants in the capital and an alternative health clinic in West London. The clinic offered an integrated and holistic approach to health, helping individuals from all walks of life to overcome issues relating to health, nutrition, emotional and physical well-being.
After a period of significant and profound inner transformation and with the birth of their son in 2000, Ray decided to take his family out of the city and pursue a different life journey. With Penninghame, Ray and Marie knew they had found the ideal place to set up home, bring up a child and fulfil their dream of running residential programs to help people get the most out of life. With this vision in mind, Penninghame Foundation has been formed.
Ray has two main passions in his life and that is his property company interest and the vision of the Penninghame Foundation and team, to continuously evolve the Penninghame Process.
Marie Butler
Marie is a Swedish national who has spent the last 29 years working in and around the restaurant and catering trade. From the tender age of 17, she ran successful restaurants in Italy, London and Sweden and also worked as a freelance luxury travel consultant, working to discover and research exclusive holiday destinations.
Marie’s passion lies with food, nutrition and the body. In the 1990s, further to her restaurant businesses, this long-held interest was pursued in the integrated health clinic in West London that she created and ran with her husband Ray. Their aim was to provide an opportunity for clients to experience a holistic approach to health. This was based on a combination of alternative and complementary healing methods – ultimately enabling clients to learn to care for their physical, emotional and spiritual well-being.
This vision has been carried on and fortified with the creation of Penninghame House Foundation. Since moving to Scotland, Marie combines bringing up a son with developing a strong vision of Penninghame House Foundation as a place that drives and supports the transformation of individual. Marie’s own deep inner transformation, after the series of life changing experiences over the last 15 years, has made her unstoppable in committing her time and resources to this noble goal.
Programme Leader on Penninghame Process (Primal) Group Leader on Truth & Consequences
Ray Butler
Ray Butler is a very successful entrepreneur and a businessman, keen yachtsman (he has sailed the Atlantic twice!) and a compassionate Course Leader in several of Penninghame Foundations courses.
Ray Butler’s personal inner journey and deep transformation has made him passionate about the emotional health and wellbeing of other people. He has been trained by some of the world leading pioneers in personal development, (including Bengt Stern – Meet Yourself Process, Cliff Barry – Shadow Work, Aneesha Dillon – Body Work, Rahasya & Nura), and is continuing to do so whenever the opportunity arises. Ray has been also trained at the Oneness University in India.
Being a member of business community himself and deeply aware of the challenges in today’s business world Ray’s interest lies in helping business people to apply integral approach to life while integrating intuition and inner guidance into everyday decision making.
Ray’s friendly, unassuming and down to earth manner, combined with a solid trustworthiness, compassion and integrity creates a powerful presence for assisting personal healing and inner transformation.
Founder of Health Programmes, Group Leader on Penninghame Process (Primal) and Truth & Consequences
Marie Butler
Following her successes in the restaurant and natural food consultancy business, Marie Butler, co-founder of Penninghame Foundation, has a wealth of wisdom about the health benefits of nutrition and food. Marie has long been educating others on how to use food to strengthen the body, prevent sickness and disease and on the reverse, support the body in its healing efforts if someone is suffering from illness.
‘Food as Medicine’ is a principle that Marie has strongly advocated for the past twenty years. Marie discovered the power of food as medicine as a young woman, when she healed herself from a persisting skin complaint, supported her mother in fighting terminal disease, and continued successfully resolving health problems in her environment purely through changes in people’s diet.
Moreover, keen to help fight the rapidly growing health crisis, Marie is writing a cookbook, manifesting healthy food as glamorous, tasty and exciting and dispelling the longstanding perceptions of it being boring and complicated.
Like her husband Ray, Marie Butler has also been trained by charismatic Swede, Dr Bengt Stern and other world known leaders in the field of personal development. Being trained at the Oneness University in India.
Marie Butler brings a dynamic, life affirming presence to all those she meets.
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Programme Leader of The Penninghame Process
Rosie Manton
Rosie has always been a creative spirit. Throughout her rich and varied life, she has had three guiding themes; Art, Music and Dance, with curiosity about people and how they function making a fourth! Rosie has always been passionate for the right of individuals to be and to freely express themselves.
Trained as a Psychosynthesis Psychotherapist she has over twenty years experience of individual client and group work and is currently running workshops and training therapists in Penninghame, London, Stockholm and Gothenburg.
Rosie has creatively combined her experience of the body and the mind offering a blend of the healing arts, dance, music and art with psychotherapy. Rosie trained with Gabrielle Roth and is now teaching 5 Rhythms dance – reconnecting dance and spirit. She is also a fully qualified leader of Holotropic Breathwork workshops, certified by the founder Dr Stanislav Grof. Rosie is ever expanding her remit of expertise, with advanced bodywork training with Aneesha Dillon in Pulsation, a blend of Reichian Bodywork and Chakra work.
For pleasure, Rosie paints and plays Sousaphone in a local jazz band in Southern Spain, where she lives with husband Malise.
Penninghame Assistant – Dave Lee
Dave Lee
Dave had a troubled start in life and he experienced a childhood in and out of care. When he was 15 he went to prison for the first time and this continued to be a regular occurrence throughout his teenage years. This culminated in being sent to a bail hostel at the age of 19 and it was then that he began to take positive steps to turn his life around. Building a career and improving his life became his new priority. That said, he still battled with an alcohol problem throughout his life.
In 2006, Dave reached rock bottom. He was unhappy, depressed and drinking heavily. Though he had a successful career in construction, the strain of work began to take its toll, leaving him feeling emotionally, physically and spiritually broken. It was then that he made a conscious decision to turn his life around and he spent the next five years of his life on a journey of self-discovery.
Dave worked his way through many books and courses to rid himself of the negative emotions and he began to feel more at peace. However, as a result of working as a builder for most of his adult life, Dave had witnessed first-hand the negative impact stress can have on both himself and his co-workers. He decided that he wanted to help others change their lives and wrote his own stress management guide.
Dave is now helping others further with his involvement in the Penninghame process. After having a very successful experience with it himself, he understands the benefits of this programme and is a very knowledgeable addition to the Penninghame team.
Spiritual Life Coach – Gordon Jessiman
Gordon Jessiman
Gordon is complementary, holistic therapist and is also a qualified Reiki 1 & 2 Practitioner, Magnified energy healer, Reconnection Practitioner 1 & 2, Spiral Dynamics and Oneness Blessing Giver.
His work combines many modalities, including Spiritual Life Coaching, Reiki, and Reconnection, to help people find their innermost freedom and peace.
He believes his purpose as a spiritual life coach is to enable people to find the blockages within and release the unexpressed past experiences, find self-forgiveness and let go to allow freedom into all that you do in life.
After having been drawn to alternative and complimentary therapies over the past few years, Gordon established the Namaste Foundation with his wife Maria who is also a trained therapist. The Namaste Foundation is a holistic therapy centre based in a small, family run hotel in the heart of Wimbledon that offers a wide variety of alternative therapies to help people heal and discover their inner selves.
Gordon and Maria Jessiman’s connection with Penninghame began when they had concerns about their son’s behaviour. He often had outbursts of anger and frustration which held him back in his education and caused a strain on the family. They were desperate to find a solution and tried various methods to help, but to no avail. They felt unable to find a reason to explain his behaviour.
During his son’s first year at secondary school Gordon was recommended the Penninghame Process and attended the course in 2008. The course enabled Gordon to find and understand more of who he is and it gave him the ability to take responsibility for his own actions and feelings without, projecting them onto another person.
However, their sons’ behaviour, though improved, was still a strain. They and his school agreed that the Penninghame Process could be beneficial and he attended the course in November 2012.
Since their son attended, Gordon and his wife have noticed an amazing transformation in him, both in and out of school, and he exceeded his academic expectations.
After undertaking his own spiritual journey and experiencing a dramatic change in his family, Gordon decided his wanted to extend this gift of awareness to others. One of the ways he achieves this is through his wonderful work with the Penninghame Process.
Holistic Therapist – Maria Ann Jessiman
Maria Ann Jessiman
Maria is an ITEC trained Holistic therapist with practitioner insurance and membership of ‘The Federation of Holistic Therapies’ which offers on-going training and guidance for all practitioners.
Maria initially qualified as a Montessori Teacher, working passionately with the values of Montessori from an early age with both children and adults. Following this, she went on to become a complimentary therapist training as a Reiki practitioner 1&2, reconnection healing 1&2, holistic massage with stress management, Manual Lymphatic Drainage.
After attending Freedom In Living in India earlier this year, Maria has furthered her development and is now trained as a OWA meditator and holds meditation meetings at the hotel. In addition, she trained as a Family Lab practitioner in July, embracing and applying the values of the family therapist and author, Jesper Juul in all areas of life. These values are also held with all the Penninghame team.
Maria has a passion for personal development for herself and others. Along with her daughter, Maria opened Lu-Ma café within a family run hotel earlier this year. With a long term vision of people caring for their own health holistically, the intention is that Lu-ma café (healthy, organic seasonal food) and the Namaste Foundation (complimentary therapies and personal development courses), will compliment each other in assisting people on their journeys.
Maria was introduced to Penninghame after her husband undertook the course. After Gordon return home from his Penninghame Process, she noticed a difference in his whole outlook and decided that she too would attend the course six months later. They both experienced a personal shift in their perception of the world, which in turn has helped strengthen their 33 year relationship, their family bonds and extended relationships.
Maria believes that allowing ourselves the space and time to become connected ‘mind body and soul’ is the greatest gift we could give ourselves, and that our bodies are precious ‘holdings’ to carry our spirit so we should give all the nourishment life has to offer.
Maria is a gift to the participants of the Penninghame Process and will increase their self-development through her extensive therapeutic knowledge.
Penninghame Assistant – Lis Cashin
Lis Cashin
Lis has been on her own personal development journey since coming to terms with being involved in a tragic accident aged 13 for which she felt responsible for the death of a friend. This guilt led her on a path of self destructive behaviours over many years. One day she realised that she had a choice and that she could choose to let go of the guilt, to accept that what happened was a complete accident and to overcome the addictive behaviours she had created through her guilt. This led her on an holistic journey to finding peace of mind and she is now passionate about supporting others to do the same.
She is a qualified and experienced Life Coach, NLP Practitioner, Trainer and Familylab coach. She believes that everyone has the right to live a happy and fulfilled life and is passionate about supporting others to overcome challenges and be happy.
In her “day job” Lis is also well respected within the field of youth development. She has extensive experience delivering residential youth projects with a focus on achieving key outcomes. Lis passionately believes in youth empowerment and supporting young people to realise their full potential.
Passionate about her own personal development she has explored various alternative modalities such as Reiki, Theta healing, Bioenergetic healing, shamanic healing – to name but a few!
Penninghame Assistant – Nick Farrar
Nick Farrar
Nick has more than 40 years of experience in social work, management, and project management. He is experienced in many different areas including carers support, palliative care, mental health, disabilities, families, transcultural work, and work on quality standards.
Nick has an M.B.A. and a Doctorate in Education, specialising in skills development which relates to ‘tacit knowledge’.
He is currently a trustee for his local RELATE organisation and for a local disability organisation.
In his spare time, Nick enjoys the great outdoors and is a qualified Dry Stone Waller. He is currently a partner in rebuilding a mile-long 14th century boundary wall in North Yorkshire.
Nick initially attended the Penninghame Process because of dietary issues. He was approached to continue to support these courses as an assistant due to his wealth of experience in the field.
Leadership Coach – Nick Bradley
Nick Bradley
Nick is a very successful businessman, rugby enthusiast and deep personal work facilitator who has a passion to lead and support both individuals and businesses to realise their potential. Nick has worked in financial services and management consulting based in the City of London for more than 25 years and has travelled to support companies throughout Europe and the US. His skills have been geared to both leading and supporting individuals and teams through times of crisis and then to travel that hard path to create growth and success both personally and professionally.
Rugby Union is Nick’s other passion which he has played for over 35 years and spent many seasons playing in the National Leagues before moving to veterans rugby. However Nick needed a greater challenge and so he co-created a County team to compete at a higher level and successfully led that team until his eventual retirement from active participation in the sport. However Nick now uses many of the lessons learnt on the rugby pitch to help corporate and sports people and businesses to achieve their goals.
Nick’s inner journey has led to a major transformation as he quickly dived deeply into better health and emotional wellbeing by training in the teachings of Jasper Juul – Family Lab; the Mankind Project; Thich Nhat Hanh – Mindful Meditation; Neuro Linguistic Programming; Geshe Kelsang Gyatso – Kadampa Buddhism and Bill Tara – Kushi Institute of Macrobiotics. Nick has become a mindful leader perfectly blending an executive background with compassion, listening and gentleness as he inspires and supports others in identifying the best course of action to grow out of any challenge.
Penninghame Assistant – Gill Stanyard
Gill Stanyard
Gill has always been a seeker. From the age of eighteen when she went from living in a hostel for homeless young people to raising money for a place on a Raleigh International expedition in Namibia, she has always tried to live a life of no limitations. She has studied many subjects, initially studying Social Work at Plymouth University. A turning point came for her when she was hit by a car on the way back from working a nightshift at a psychiatric hospital in Glasgow.
She left her life as it was and began anew in Dumfries and Galloway, at a therapeutic community for people recovering from mental health problems. She lived and worked there for two years, where she began her journey into the spiritual layer of life. This is where she learnt about the teachings of the Buddha, meditation, yoga assertive and authentic communication – a survival skill in communal life.
Gill is fascinated by expression and empowerment. She believes in everyone finding a way to be heard and have a voice. Gill likes to be independent and creative, runs her own model called Blue Skies Venture – offering people a brighter life through group walking/talking followed by a stimulating and feel-good session of shared reading aloud of literature and poetry which reflects the human condition.
She is passionate about the human experience, especially our relationship with spirit and ourselves. Currently she studies Shamanism and is also a trainee Psychotherapist. She has also just completed an International Certificate in Leadership with the Institute of Leadership and Management. She puts this to good use as a Non- Exec Director for the NHS.
Gill is sensitive, responsive, has a wicked sense of humour, she is a woman you would want by your side to encourage, inspire, make you laugh and comfort you. She loves her big beardy partner, Tom, her two snuggly dogs and one of her favourite authors is Chekov. ‘Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass’.
Penninghame Assistant – Nichola Ure
Nichola Ure
About 10 years ago, Nichola decided to change her life. After working long hours for a number of years in London and developing a number of health problems she realised something had to change. She soon embarked on her personal development journey.
Nichola’s first experience at The Penninghame Process was in November 2013 when she attended the Step 1 course and has never looked back. Since then Nichola has used her loving personality to help assist on the Process and has recently attended Step 2 as a participant. Nichola believes that The Penninghame Process is the best gift she ever gave herself and a truly life changing experience.
She is an avid walker, a lover of being in nature and is very connected to the world on a spiritual level. She regularly meditates and embraces alternative therapies such as reiki, kinesiology and reflexology. Nichola loves to dance and have fun.
Nichola is a caring and loving person and does everything in her power to help other people.
She is a communications and values expert and works with many companies on how they communicate internally and externally. One of her key talents is nurturing her staff members and she prides herself on the innovative work her company does in this area.
She is heavily involved with the charity The Wilderness Foundation and organises and participates in many events to raise money for charity.
Nichola loves being part of The Penninghame family, seeing huge transformation take place, being part of such a special process and living her life in awareness and gratitude.
Penninghame Assistant – Liz Slingsby
Liz Slingsby
Liz has been a member of the Penninghame team since 2014 after participating on Step 1 herself.
It was a niggling feeling that there must be more to life than the ‘normality with undertones of anguish, underachievement and a lack of love and happiness’, that brought Liz to spiritual development and working on her own personal inner transformation work in 2014.
Having been recommended to the process by a friend who had also participated in the course, Liz decided it was finally time to invest some care into herself. She set about trying to achieve real change and start living the life she wanted, and she hasn’t looked back.
Having emerged from the process feeling energised and ready to begin living life with a fresh new outlook, free of many old inner limitations, Liz couldn’t help but want to join the team to help facilitate the process and support others through their own inner transformation.
In the space of less than a year, Liz is now the Director of her own company ‘Raw Nibbles’, testament to the real changes she set out to achieve in her life. Through her company she is dedicated to expanding health and wellbeing through pure organic tasty treats and promoting self care and freedom from sugar addiction.
Liz is now also trained in reiki level 1 and 2 healing and is continually expanding her experience of other spiritual and wellbeing practices such as meditation, mindfulness, journey work, and pulsation breathing work in order to continue her own development.
Penninghame Assistant – James Harris
James Harris
James is a keen sportsman and huge animal lover, volunteering at a local RSPCA re- homing centre.
Having always had difficulties in feeling and expressing his emotions, accompanied by a sense that life was passing him by and he was missing something, James decided to investigate why.
Having no idea where to start he sought inspiration from the 100 Greatest Love Poems which didn’t help at all!
After a workshop from former Penninghame leader Kari, James was left wandering what the heck these people were on! However, there was intrigue and a Penninghame seed was sown.
Having taken massive strides in understanding himself and changing his reality of the world and others following The Penninghame Process, James decided he wanted to help others along their journey and gratefully accepted an offer to became an Assistant. James found this inspiring to be able to help and watch others develop, grow, realise and release.
James has sort many alternative methods of personal insight including EFT, hypnotherapy, acupuncture, journey work, breathwork, meditation, mindfulness and spiritual books. After some amazing experiences with Reiki, he has now trained to practitioner Levels 1 and 2.
James has gone from football, boozing and partying every weekend, which he recognised was an escape mechanism and a way to repress emotions, to continually looking into himself and the world around him to be more present and alive. Obviously still enjoying the odd party every now and then!
Macrobiotic Chef – Venu Sanz
Venu Sanz
Born in Madrid, Spain, Venu is a qualified macrobiotic and vegan chef, a nutritional therapist by “The Health Science Academy” and Pilates instructor. Venu has trained chefs to cook in restaurants and private chefs in family homes around Europe and the United States. She regularly cooks in yoga retreats that run cooking classes and courses leaving the guests smiling, inspired and wowed.
Her interest in macrobiotics started when she was 19 and was fighting an emotional eating disorder. She first became curious about “the diet” after reading how helpful it is to lose weight and to bring the physical body back to balance. What she didn’t know at the time was the huge impact this way of life would make not only in the physical body but also in her emotional one. After studying macrobiotics in The Macrobiotic Institute of Spain and The Macrobiotic Institute of Europe, she understood the energy of the food and experienced how the food we eat impact our emotions and our wellbeing. She now applies the macrobiotic principles and philosophy in her daily life and is happy to say that she lives a life where she feels very confident about her body, and where food has become her best friend instead of her worst enemy. After her studies in macrobiotics she trained in SHA Wellness clinic, one of the best medical spas in the world, where she discovered her love for cooking. She then realised that what she wanted was to keep on cooking for people as a profession and that is how she became a chef.
Venu has been cooking at Penninghame since 2013 where she fulfils her passion for feeding people natural and wholesome food. She always cooks with love, awareness and pays great attention to the energy of the food, the seasonal changes and how these conditions can effect each person. This allows her to create the menus with dishes that are personalised, energetically balanced and taste fantastic.
Venu did the Step 1 course in 2014 and she admits it has massively helped her to bring more awareness to her life. Understanding more the cause of the emotional eating disorder she got as a teenager.
In her spare time Venu still does a lot of cooking…she loves it! She enjoys a lot of any activities which involve movement like; swimming, biking, and Pilates although her favourite is dancing. She also does a lot of yoga, and reading about personal self development.
Lynn Taylor
Lynn initially trained in admin, but looking back over her working life she sees the pattern whereby the Universe has engineered her learning and growth through the various working environments she has found herself in. Always up for a physical challenge, Lynn has enjoyed an active life, loves the mountains and hills and remote spaces. She learned to ride a horse age 59 (a childhood dream) now enjoys riding her mountain bike and, on a more sedate note, though finding it much more difficult she is learning to play clarinet and read music!
Going with the flow has always been Lynn’s motto through the various stages of life. This is sometimes easier said than done, especially through some difficult and challenging situations. She has had many years of “in house” training through different employments in counselling and supporting abused and damaged young people and adults, working in residential and community settings. Lynn was the first Scottish person to participate in the Penninghame Process in 2002 (known then as Primal) and went on to take the opportunity of participating in many other courses working with energy, the breath and bodywork. Since coming to Penninghame Lynn has found what she knew on one level she was looking for – a respectful, caring, authentic way of really enabling people to reach and heal the deep hurt and damage they often carry.
Frank Taylor
Frank is our Estate Manager. He has been with us from the beginning and does an expert job of organising the practical projects which abound at Penninghame. Frank also handles the volunteer programme, liasing with them before arrival and showing them the ropes once they arrive. As well as being a knowledgeable resource on all things Penninghame, Frank is also a talented photographer and we are proud to say his work can be seen on the site and throughout all the buildings at Penninghame.
Both Lynn and Frank love nature and hill walking which they often do together and they also lead Nordic Walking on our Health Week Programs.