Going Places - Tea With Claire: Awareness Heightened With Musical Treats and Plenty of Eats - A Fabulous Combination!

Gentility without formality is a great mix! On arrival at St James on Venice participants in the morning’s activities are greeted by Sunet Pringle and a glass of fruit juice. There’s a buzz of chatter as friends greet each other or introductions are made and when we troop into the room for the talk, it’s a relief to see that the venue is intimate and the chairs are comfy.

Claire Newton, psychologist, speaker, trainer, coach and hat lover is relaxed and meticulously well prepared; her talk, YOU-Q: Finding Your Inner Winner is designed to support people to make positive changes in their thinking processes and therefore their life styles in a totally non-threatening way. A fluent and confident speaker, Claire is a good role model for what she believes in and clearly embraces the philosophy she shares.

While most of the subject matter Claire offers is reasonably well known to people who are interested in self development, the package is uniquely hers as she uses examples from her own life history and stories from her experience as a practising psychologist to illustrate the points she makes.  So we are asked to examine our lives and our attitudes and encouraged to live life to our full potential.

To this end, Claire takes us through some basic steps to awaken our awareness. Unlike other life training-sessions that I have attended Claire engages with the participants but does not go through the tedious time-consuming process of finding out who we are or what we want to get out of the morning. She simply follows a well-balanced process and allows us to work at our own level. The hour flows quickly and easily and after answering a few questions with astute succinctness we are led out to tables laid for tea.

Cake stands display a variety of delicious and beautifully presented cakes, scones, brownies and muffins and there are platters of sandwiches (with the crusts removed) as well. Discreet and efficient waiters attend to tea and coffee requests and we settle down to tuck in. It’s delightful to have little tongs and white or brown sugar lumps, spotless china and polished silver on snowy linen cloths and real linen napkins.

Peter Enslin gets going with a selection of classic jazzy tunes; it’s perfect background music for the animated chatter. But the listener will appreciate the stylish riffs and runs, the syncopated rhythms and the personalised arrangements of popular tunes. It’s a satisfied group of people who take their leave and many make plans to see each other at the next session. I’ll certainly be there!

Thursday 18 October - Conflict to Co-operation

Thursday 1 November - Body Language for Confidence

To book, please phone Sunet Pringle at the St James on 031 312 9488. Tickets are R150 pp all inclusive.

Going Places - Click here to find the article in Going Places online

Article written by Gisele Turner