Welcome! Get to know Kezra & Ian, the founders & faces behind Conversations Worth Having!

Ian and Kezra open up about their personal lives, discuss their unique journey's to self-empowerment, what has inspired them along the way, and tell us about how CWH got started.

Q1. Where did you grow up?

Kezra - I was born in Dorset and grew up in the beautiful, wild countryside of Herefordshire.

However I have always felt more at home on the road, and so I make a point to travel often when the world isn’t in lockdown, in order to nurture my somewhat nomadic spirit.

I lived in Australia for a while where I discovered my love for Naturopathy. On my return to the U.K. I set up home in London for a number of years and then, in October 2020, moved to my new home in Italy, one of my “soul homes”. My favourite place to visit and where I consider to be my other soul home, is New York.

 Ian – I was born in Durban, South Africa, and grew up in the lush, “whites only” suburbs of Durban North. I was a child of the Apartheid era, during which the infamous “Group Areas Act” separated the races of our country into designated geographies and, needless to say, “Europeans” got the best bits.

Blissfully unaware of these things, my childhood was spent in the sub-tropical greenery of large gardens with swimming pools and frequent trips to the miles of beaches just 10 minutes away . I grew up in water – in the summer holidays, I was often in the pool or the ocean for six to eight hours a day.

At 13 I started boarding school about 45 minutes north of my parents’ home in the Valley of a Thousand Hills between Durban and the provincial capital, Pietermaritzburg.  Most of our family holidays were spent on a beautiful guest farm on the Lesotho border of what was then called the Orange Free State. Our furthest trip was a caravan tour of Rhodesia in 1976. I didn’t get on a large aeroplane until I was nearly 18.

Q2. Why did you decide to study your chosen profession?

Kezra – I studied Naturopathy and Nutrition at The College of Naturopathic Medicine (CNM) in London and later went on to study Functional Medicine with the Institute of Functional Medicine (IFM).

 What drew me to Nutrition was a series of events that led to the diagnosis of both M.E. and Endometriosis.

I struggled for years with these conditions, unable to stay in work, lead a social life or complete college. I was offered either limited or extreme interventions as treatment, none of which worked or appealed to me.

Because my quality of life was so poor, I had given up on the idea of living a life that was filled with possibilities or not ruled by my disease.

Due to my own pain and struggles with health, I developed a passion for Nutrition after experiencing radical changes to my health, despite my incurable diagnosis, when I made significant dietary and lifestyle changes. I felt so inspired by the transformation I witnessed in my health; feeling pain free for the first time in years and regaining control of my life. It made me want shout it from the rooftops and tell others that they could do the same.  Why were we all needlessly suffering when the power of simple lifestyle changes and nutrition could heal us! So my driving thought became, If I can do this then imagine how many people I could help like me who are struggling in silence, believing that this is the only way? What’s to stop me from facilitating change and improving other people’s lives for the better?

My most challenging moments due to poor health have inspired me to help guide others on their own journey to vibrant health. Changing my diet and transforming my health, not only created a new awareness of my body, mind and spirit, but I awoke to expanding my newfound compassion into all aspects of my life.

 A good Nutritionist will aim to educate people about their body and health and give them tools that enable them to make sustainable changes for living an optimum life. It is about handing back the responsibility to the individual and empowering them to create their own story. A key part of my practice is helping clients to manage stress and create a way of life that truly serves and nourishes them on all levels.

Sadly, we hear stories all the time about how people who suffer with chronic health problems are failed by the conventional model of care. I have nothing against the current medical model but I believe it is outdated for the influx of new diseases that we are coping with. I am grateful for the amazing services available and the NHS, but our current health offering is really an acute care model, a somewhat reductionist model, and we need to find a way to implement a new, integrative care model that better serves those with chronic health problems and lifestyle related diseases - conditions that are completely preventable and reversible through diet and lifestyle.

 We need packages and programmes in place that can address this. We need to focus on prevention rather than cure so we have less of a burden on healthcare to begin with – the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted this for all of us so tragically. We need to implement an integrative, scientific model that truly gets to the root of disease, using a multi-pronged approach. That’s why I am so passionate about Functional Medicine, because it is the exact solution and new healthcare model that we so desperately need. I have had so many patients come to me who have been severely neglected by the conventional system and have suffered purely as a result of malpractice, misinformation and a lack of available resources at the hands of an outdated system, using outdated research and practices that no longer serve us. It saddens me so deeply that currently good healthcare is only available to the people who have the economic stability with which to pay privately and seek other options such as naturopathy and functional medicine clinicians. I am blessed that with my own knowledge I have been able to turn my life around, but I am acutely aware that this is not available to those who are desperately in need. 

A key part of my practice is helping clients to manage stress and create a way of life that truly serves and nourishes them on all levels.

Ian – It has just struck me as incredibly odd, in retrospect, how I chose my profession. Having not thought about it for 30 years, this may be an object lesson in the efficacy of gut instinct, blind luck or serendipity, but my memory is that I just slipped into it by default.

I’m a lawyer by training. In South Africa in the ‘80’s you needed an LLB to qualify as an attorney or advocate (solicitor or barrister). An LLB was a post-graduate degree, which meant I needed an undergraduate degree first and this usually meant a Bachelor of Arts or Commerce degree. You had to choose early in your final year of high school what you were going to study. I had the privilege of a high end private education due to the generosity of my parents and a good scholarship, so I spent high school as a boarder surrounded by friends from far more affluent backgrounds than mine and many came from families of doctors and what we used to call “businessmen”, like my Dad. We had no careers programme and I don’t recall ever receiving any formal advice, so when my parents asked what I was going to study at university (it was assumed I’d be going to university – by me as well as my family and all my teachers, which is a hell of an assumption now that I think about it!), I was faced with three choices: Doctor, lawyer or accountant – this was 1981. I didn’t want to be a doctor (couldn’t imagine cutting anyone open or giving an injection), I didn’t wanted to be an accountant (never liked maths), so lawyer it was – I enjoyed arguing!

I did a BA majoring in English Literature and Comparative African Government at the University of Natal in Durban (Now he University of Kwazulu-Natal). I rammed my BA with law credits so that I could complete my LLB in two, rather than the usual three, years as I was paying for university myself with a student loan.

I graduated at the end of 1986 and immediately left South Africa for the United States. I was desperate to see more of the world!

So I chose my career by half-assed default and in complete ignorance of the plethora of paths open to me. Living by default was to characterise my experience of the next 30 years, which is why I’m here at CWH!

Q3: What do you love about being a nutritionist?

Kezra - What I love the most about working as a nutritionist is seeing the transformation in people’s lives. People often seek my services when they are at their lowest point; sadly we are often consulted as more of a last hope, “try anything” option, rather than the first port of call for help with disease. However, I can see a shift happening; people are becoming more aware and starting to consider the importance of nutrition as an adjunctive and focused therapy and a vital part of their wellness plan.

To watch people reverse their symptoms and disease progression; learn how to take control and manage their health from an informed and empowered place, is truly inspiring. Often when people come to see me, in that initial consultation, it is the first time that they feel truly seen and heard; that the clinician has the time to really sit with them and empathise with their pain. I am aware that simply holding a space for someone’s story to be heard, is the first and most powerful step to healing. To have someone tell you that there is another way, and that all your suffering is not normal, even though you have been informed that it is! To be told that you aren’t crazy or neurotic, but that you just haven’t been given the right tools with which to heal yet.

Each time I have this conversation with a client, I am transported right back to sitting in that place myself; how it felt like suddenly a light went on in a very dark room and I could breathe again. To be able to illuminate others on their journey and hold up the candle of hope is a true honour and I find it deeply rewarding. To show others that it is not their fault that the conventional system failed them, that it doesn’t make them a failure, that they didn’t know any better; but that now they have a chance to step out of being a victim either due to default or by choice; to claim responsibility and take back their power.

Health, both emotional and physical, is not something that can be given over to another to fix; it is something that must be tended to every day by the choices we make. If you give people the tools to make healthier choices and the power of knowledge as to why, then you place their health and their power back in their hands, where it truly belongs. We all have a choice; do we stay living blind in our stagnant disempowerment or do we wake up and take up the challenge to live from a truly empowered and conscious place.

Q3. What do you love about being a lawyer?

Ian – I love solving problems. That’s the beginning and end of it for me. Lawyers are usually a “distress purchase” for most people – litigation, divorce, sale of property, car accidents… occasionally we’re an ally in win/win situations like the sale of a business, but, almost all the time we are there to solve a problem and that fits with me emotionally and psychically. In addition, being a half-decent lawyer allowed me to work in the sports that I loved, but wasn’t good enough to play at the highest level.

I want to expand a little here on something I’ve discovered about the law in my nearly 30 years in the profession: As a student and through the early years of practice (and often beyond that) there is an orthodoxy that one is taught and we absorb without much analysis and that is a reverence for the law. The Law, we are constantly told, is a sacred thing. It comes before everything – “no-one is above the law”, “respect the rule of law”… What I’ve come to realise over the years is that, for the most part, the law is just a tool to be put to the service of what the client wants. We use the law, rather than upholding it. I have become far more cynical about the law as a “sacred concept”. It isn’t. Other than those laws that protect us from actual harm, the majority of the law has developed to protect the wealth and property of the rich from the depredations of the poor. Corporate law, in particular, allows people to hide behind a company to avoid responsibility for the actions of that “corporate person” and, the more I think about this, the more I find it immoral. I’m no anarchist, but I think we have lost our way as a society in late stage western capitalism and consumerism, bolstered, in large part, by the body of law we have allowed to develop around the ownership of “stuff” and a radical rebalancing needs to occur. That starts, of course, with us as individuals and this is one of the important questions I would like to have conversations about with you here at CWH. It also leads me very nicely to the next question.

Q4. What was the starting point of your self-empowerment journey?

Kezra - (chuckles) well probably the second I took my first breath, but on a conscious level when I got really honest and comfortable with the inconvenience of being human. When I accepted my deep discontent and started to trust that inner knowing that called me to explore something beyond my current reality and understanding. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when this was; I can think of many moments in my life, like pieces of a jigsaw that all started to fit together and build a beautiful picture.

Healing is not linear and we have to go through many dark nights of the soul before we reach enlightenment – and by enlightenment, I mean an understanding of our true nature, and our innate power to choose our reality – which is actually available to us in any given moment.

To summarise, though, and avoid being a little vague, the key turning points for me have been three critical things.

1. Travel – always, anywhere, my whole life! This is the fast track way to enlightenment for me! 

2. My poor health and reshaping my relationship to my body - this was the first recognition that my calling was rooted in helping others.

3. My breakdown in 2017 – probably the most significant turning point in my life.

After I lost my business due to a series of unfortunate events, I experienced a breakdown that led to a radical change in my life. My business went bankrupt, and I split from my partner of 10 years and then fiancé.

I was brought to my knees, financially, emotionally and spiritually. What felt like death, the end of my life as I knew it, immeasurable loss and grief, became an opportunity to start over; to build a new life from the ashes of the old one. Rebuilding my life from this new place was the greatest gift. I got honest about what wasn’t working, about why, and I made some radical changes. 

I learnt what happens when you don’t trust and follow your intuition and heart, when you drown out your internal compass in order to fit in or fit the image of someone you think you ought to be – someone like someone else other than you!

I learnt that losing yourself to the world and the opinions of those around you, those who long to keep you safe within the confines of the status quo, is too big a price to pay for freedom.  I learnt that without self- expression a part of me died inside. I learnt that my best qualities and greatest gifts were the ones I kept hidden from the world in the fear that they would be laughed at. I learnt that I had a series of beliefs and stories that didn’t serve me; stories that at first had protected me, but now kept me playing small; that didn’t allow me to own what I truly desired. I could go on, but I will save the rest for my memoir!

Ian – I had an ah-ha moment in an Uber in the spring of 2018 when I chanced upon an excerpt from a Brené Brown TED Talk on my Facebook feed. This was the end of the beginning for me. The beginning of the beginning was realising I was deeply unhappy in 2017. Prior to that I had scoffed at what I dismissively called “self-help”, as if that designation alone meant everything in that genre was beneath me. I didn’t need help – I was confident, successful and self-sufficient… except that I wasn’t!

I had a brief health crisis in New York in the autumn of 2017 and, as I contemplated my life in the aftermath, I had to admit to myself what I had begun to suspect; that I was angry, disappointed, misguided and unhappy and that all the external factors that I had previously blamed were all bullshit – It was me! I was the cause of my misery.

That was the start of my journey, but it was utterly rudderless.

I had no idea where to start and I was too proud and fearful to ask for help because, the one time I tried with a colleague in New York, she just stared at me like I had lost my mind and walked away.

So I spend over six months floundering between research, masking behaviours and denial until, still in despair, Brené Brown dropped into my life serendipitously and, as if to just compound the lesson of surrender, she came through the very social media that was part of what was crippling and misleading me!

So the TED talk excerpt led, later that same day, to a conversation with my then colleague and now co-founder and friend, Kezra, where I found my guide, my scout, and here, a little over two years later, self-empowerment is my life’s mission. 

“We are just like you – we sort of have our act together and try every day to be a little better!”

Q5) Where are you are at on this journey?

Kezra – I want to focus on the word journey – because that is exactly what life is and we shouldn’t get hooked into the idea of it leading to a destination. This places our happiness outside of us, on conditional things, and we can easily stay stuck in the falsity that we will be happy when x happens, which is a downward spiral and not an empowering one.

As soon as we place happiness at a future point, we rob ourselves of the present moment – which is where the true key to joy and fulfilment lies!

Yes we can have goals and desires - this is vital to our evolution, but to accept the very nature of life is its transience and ever evolving unfolding and that the only real constant is what lives inside of us, is where true and everlasting peace resides.

Perfection is not the aim. It’s about learning to love ourselves in our perfect imperfection. Knowing that we were born whole, enough and as pure love. That we are not missing from ourselves just sometimes missing the point!

 Because everything we need is already inside of us, it’s about removing the blocks to our innate nature. Honouring that healing happens when we look adversity in the face and ask it what it has to teach us?

It’s about showing up for all our feelings; especially the ones we wish we could numb or avoid. It’s about staying awake when it feels more comfortable to stay asleep, even though we risk never experiencing what it means to be truly alive. It’s about making conscious choices, about messing up and breaking down, but then, through.

 It’s about learning to love yourself unconditionally through the big hot mess of it all! Some days it’s having the strength to say no when it’s easier, yet harmful, to say yes.  Knowing when to shut up and when to speak up! Learning to trust yourself and not be afraid of your unique voice.

 My experience is that we go through cycles of breaking down and rebuilding/transforming ourselves – nature knows best, like the cyclical wild fires that naturally burn everything to the ground in order to get rid of dead, toxic waste and regenerate new life and growth. 

 My life has been a series of awakenings that have offered me the opportunity for radical transformation and to reflect on what true self-empowerment means to me. A series of deaths and rebirths, letting go of old, worn and tired beliefs, habits or relationships that no longer serve me, in order to make way for the newest version of myself. Often just when you think that you can’t surrender any more or go any deeper, when you feel you have reached the finish line of what is possible, you find the game has changed and there is another level. A louder call that asks for your commitment and trust. We are never finished, but we are always whole and perfect in our imperfection.

We are in essence eternal butterflies – from chrysalis to winged beauty, over and over and over until we return to the soil. I like to consider myself an imperfect, yet perfect being, never finished, ever evolving but innately whole and complete and trying to make sure this journey; this one, wild and precious life, is as big, bold and beautiful as it can be.  

Ian – How do you assess where you are when there is no destination?

I consider life to be a piece of music I’m dancing to – it’s not about the climax, the crescendo. Who wants music to end unless it’s crap? So, the journey is the destination, the music is the point; the dancing is real, not the scores at the end when the music stops… is anyone who matters actually keeping score?

I am happier than I was. I am a slightly better person every day, or I try hard to be. I think people who have known me a long time would say I’m a lot nicer to be around. Less angry, less dogmatic, less judgemental, less scathing, more loving. I moan a lot less than I used to. I can access my empathy and compassion so much more easily. I like my life a lot more.

I know I’m far from the finished article, whatever that means, but if someone or something is keeping score and they’re using the right metrics, I have made enormous progress and I yearn every day to make more.

My greatest discovery has been how to love myself, how to forgive myself and how to be present more often than I’m not. I pay attention to people now and I care and I’m so grateful for that new ability to connect from a place of love, rather than self-interest and what’s in it for me. I’m no longer yoked to my past and I no longer spend time in that future fantasy that says “I’ll be happy when…”. I’m happy now.

Q5. How did CWH come about?

Kezra - Well I suppose I should start right at the beginning! I met Ian when he hired me to work for his sports integrity business. This was actually shortly after my breakdown, when I was still feeling very lost and unsure of what to do with my life; I was seeking a new direction. Due to the nature of the work, we spent more time away from our homes than we did in them! Travelling for conferences, events and meetings all over the world. We had a lot of time on trains, planes and in automobiles!

The first seed of CWH was planted when on yet another long haul flight, I pulled out a book and started reading. It was Brene Brown’s - Daring Greatly. Ian, on remembering a ted talk of hers that he had seen, started a conversation which led to a deep dive on all things shame, vulnerability and connection. This conversation soon led to many more on equally philosophical topics and all things self–empowerment. It also enabled us to open up to each other about our personal stories, all in the name of vulnerability and connection!

These conversations had a profound impact on our lives and we forged a friendship deeper than that of just two colleagues who exchanged polite conversation and formality on business trips. I think at that time we met, we were both searching for the missing pieces in our lives and our friendship became something of a life raft to each other, in the lonely open sea. As CWH continues we still constantly have these conversations both off camera and on (although, through the pandemic, they’ve almost all been through a screen!). 

The actual idea to create CWH started off jokingly at first, like hey these conversations are profound we should share them with other people and we both laughed! Then the realisation dawned that maybe we really should share these conversations with others; that they could help people in the same way they had us. I think we both felt drawn to share all that we had learnt during our journey of self-discovery.

We casually discussed the concept and some names for the business. In all honesty at this point it still felt like just a lovely idea to me, but then I found myself feeling more and more drawn to the concept; wanting to explore it further with a deepening curiosity. Before I knew it CWH was no longer just a beautiful idea, it became my reality and my calling. So here we are, so much more than just an idea and I feel incredibly blessed to get to do this every day.

Ian What she said! We were discussing the profound effect our conversations were having on each of us. We came from such different places to that common ground, but, through mutual respect and a gift for articulating thoughts and ideas for discussion without judgement, we found we could both be nourished and challenged out of our orthodoxies at the same time.

I lightened up and found some wriggle room round the rigidity of my opinions. I started to be able to “feel” truth where previously I had to have an empirical basis for everything. I started to recognise that there was a “yin” to my overwhelming “yang” – that there was a place for my heart; that “eros’ was allowed to speak as well as “logos”. From my personal growth, I looked outwards at my peers – middle aged men – and realised how atrophied most of us are; so convinced we’re right and falsely reassured by our worldly success and I yearned to share my discoveries with my friends, but I didn’t know where to start. Equally, I felt they needed the feminine voice that was hard for me to access and would, in any event, have sounded strange and hard to relate to coming from my mouth. They needed to hear Kezra and other women like her.

The next thing I found myself talking CWH into existence with Kezra and, as she says, an off the cuff idea has become reality and I’m incredibly excited about all we’re going to do in and for our new community.

Q6. So what’s next for CWH?

Kezra - At the risk of giving everything away,  but being too excited not too, we have some incredibly awesome things planned, that I can’t wait to share with the world.

I am most excited about engaging with our Tribe members and starting some life affirming and inspiring conversations and to build a community where people can connect with like-minded individuals and inspire and motivate each another.

We are creating a membership platform that will allow people to connect from all over the world and share ideas. We will be offering exclusive monthly content for these members such as practical resources they can use to help facilitate positive change, as well as podcasts, guided meditations, courses, workshops and discounted access to our events.

In the future we are also looking to host supper clubs, live speaking events and workshops across the globe. We will be interviewing some inspirational guests on our podcast and sharing content that will shake things up and lead to deep personal transformation. Watch this space!

Ian - More conversation!

Kezra’s laid out the plans in her answer, so what I’ll let you in on is my vision for what we’re building. I see a community of earnest, but engaging conversationalists exploring ways of making their individual and collective experience of life better. I see Kezra and my role as stimulating conversations. We will put our experience out here for you to consider and, most important, discuss with us and others.

We are not teachers or gurus; we are learners and triers, we are experimenters, catalysts and seekers. We are prodders and pokers. We are just like you – we sort of have our act together and try every day to be a little better. We have a structure for that exploration – the Antidotes – but we are not evangelists for anything other than the power of good conversation and personal responsibility. We know what works for us today and are completely open to what might work tomorrow and, who knows, that might come from you!

So what’s next for CWH is, to a large extent in your hands. Engage with us – we will listen with open minds and hearts because I’m certain we will learn from you as much as you might learn from us.