About Me
A little background...
About Cheryl
I believe many people are not stuck because they are broken, lazy, failing, or doing life wrong.
Often, they are stuck because their thinking has become too high.
The mind is trying to solve, control, predict, protect, prepare, or prevent. The body responds to that thinking. And over time, a person can begin to feel disconnected from their own peace, clarity, trust, and inner guidance.
That is the deeper pattern I have come to understand through my own life and through this work.
The doorway may be procrastination, pets, or physical pain.
Different doorways. Same core pattern.
My purpose is to support people to change their relationship with what is happening — not by forcing, fixing, judging, or pushing harder, but by learning how to lower the thinking, create more peace within, and respond from a more settled place.
I’m Cheryl Hughes, a Certified Trust Technique Practitioner and mindfulness coach on Vancouver Island.
Through Transformation Through Trust, I support people with using the present moment to reconnect with peace of mind, self-trust, compassion, and aligned action.
How I came to this work
My path to this work did not come from one single moment. It came through recognizing a pattern that had been present in my own life for a long time.
From a young age, I had a strong sense of what felt right for me. But like many people, I was also taught to follow directions, do what was expected, and take action in ways that did not always resonate with my inner guidance.
Over time, that can create second-guessing.
You begin to question what you know.
You lose trust in your own guidance.
You start taking action from anxiety instead of alignment.
Or you stop taking action altogether.
That is how procrastination began to look different to me.
It was not simply avoidance or lack of discipline. It was a message.
It showed me where I was trying to push myself from pressure instead of listening for what felt aligned, authentic, and true.
My work with animals deepened this understanding even more. After many years in dog training, animal behaviour, and relationship-based support, I began to see how much our animals respond to the feeling being shared.
When a person lowers their own thinking and creates more peace within themselves, animals often begin to respond differently — sometimes before we have even worked with the animal directly.
Later, I also began to look back at the physical issues and sickness I experienced as a child and young adult through a different lens. I could see how the connection between thinking, feeling, behaviour, the body, and spirit had been part of my own journey too.
I do not diagnose, treat, or claim to heal physical pain. My work is not medical.
But I do support people in changing their relationship with what is happening — including the fear, bracing, frustration, overthinking, or loss of trust that can build around the body.
Looking back, I can see that these experiences did not just happen to me.
They also led me here.
Background and experience
My work brings together over 20 years of experience supporting people and animals through dog training, animal behaviour, mindfulness, and relationship-based work.
I am a Certified Trust Technique Practitioner, and my approach is grounded in presence, compassion, emotional awareness, and the understanding that lasting change begins when thinking starts to settle.
My background gives me a practical understanding of behaviour, but this work has also shown me that behaviour is rarely the whole story.
Whether I am supporting someone with procrastination, their relationship with an animal, or the thinking and emotional pressure that can build around physical pain, I am always working with the deeper relationship between thinking, feeling, the body, and the next response.
How I work
This work is gentle, but it is not surface-level.
I support you in noticing the pattern underneath what is happening, lowering the thinking around it, and creating more peace within yourself.
From there, you can begin to respond differently — with more clarity, compassion, self-trust, and aligned action.
You do not have to force the next step.
You learn how to become settled enough to hear it.
When you are ready, you can explore the Services page or begin with the free guide.