Holistic Coach, Psychotherapist, Organizational consultant, Rebirther/Breathwork trainer, writer and internationally recognized lecturer

By Heidi Trautmann

Curiosity is the key to our world –

“Everything at its time…smile….Recognize old habits, accept them, let them come and let them go with love; thank them that they were with you and that they served their purpose. Bid them farewell like a beloved guest and close the door behind them….in order to be free to open a new door.”

A quote by Nossrat Peseschkian, born in Iran  (M.D. Doctor of Medicine, lived in Germany since 1954, founded Positive Psychotherapy in 1968 and also Wiesbaden Academy of Psychotherapy)

A good formula to start the interview with Viola Edward.  It is a formula Viola has lived by all her life. Keep going, don’t stop. She keeps some of this wise man’s books close to hand because there are many eye openers in them for her clients to read, tools to better understand oneself, to understand the relation between oneself and the world around.

Viola Edward smiled when I met her in the entrance of her house in Çatalköy, a house, she told me, that was bought in 1973 by her husband Michael de Glanville, who was born here and regards Cyprus as his home country: a real hide-away.

A house with surprises, several levels, steps down, here up or around walls to living spaces, open but in different colours, warm colours, bright yellow in the kitchen, orangey red in the studio her colours? I asked. “My husband’s,…. my colours are blue based. I want to repaint the kitchen furniture, all in white…” Blue for air, coolness, white for clear vision? Or even further… for freedom to fly, to think?

Viola leads me through the house and then through the garden to her studio, a simple room, warm with comfortable armchairs. Books along the wall and words within a graphic drawing on a writing board. Is this the place she works with her clients, I ask. It looks very businesslike.

“Yes, here we sit face to face and talk, questions and answers sharing with my clients, I often explain my words by using diagrams on the white board to make them visual, to break them down to a simple drawing, often easier to understand than words….”  Formulas, I say, one cannot apply formulas to people, as we are all individuals.

“Yes, people are unique individuals, but they have to learn and accept that, which is why they come here in the first place. My role is to accompany them to their potential and remind them that they have many resources and qualities that they are already using in a way to overcome their problems….”

She tugs her feet under in a big armchair the material of which reminds me of an Indian pattern; she is totally relaxed, like a cat. Her face is open and beautiful, a beautiful face formed by the freedom of her way of life. Her face is smiling, inviting to trust her: Look, you can read me like a book, nothing hidden. And so I start entering her personal house finding the doors wide open.

“I was three years old when my father died, He gave me my name Viola, he was a musician, you know, his Viola. After his death, my mother took us, my sister Layla and me, from Kirkuk in Irak where I was born, back to her home country, to Lebanon. We lived in Beirut for eight years. My mother is a Lebanese Maronite, my father was Assyrian. Fortunately we left Lebanon in 1972 before the civil war broke out, so my memories of that part of my life are sweet and challenging.”

“In 1972 we immigrated to Caracas in Venezuela, where my mother and her brother and had already been for some years. I was thirteen years old and spoke nothing but Arabic and French….in Beirut I had attended a school run by French nuns. In the new country we started to adapt ourselves, children learn fast. The Latin people are warm hearted, friendly and show their feelings, you know. We touch and hug a lot. I am glad to be a Latin for this reason.”

“Being immigrants affected us all, we had to work very hard to survive, my mother did sewing and cooking and myself, at the age of 13 years, was working too. Further education had to wait until I was 16; only then could I join evening classes to finish my secondary education.”

What kind of work could you find at your age, I asked.

“My first job was at a shoe shop, then I worked for a hair dressing saloon and then I started climbing the ladder from being a receptionist to secretary in an Embassy, I was in public relations and was successful as sales woman and in marketing.  I was very ambitious and I knew I would only get somewhere when I worked hard. When I was 20 years old I became a national coordinator for an optical company and that took me travelling around the country. Then I got into the insurance business which I went on doing for ten years as a marketing manager.”

You said that you took up studies to follow a dream you had since childhood, the dream to study psychology?

 “I have always been interested in psychology and philosophy. I think that when you have worked as much as I did, in so many different fields, then you pick up some deep experiences about humans and accumulate some wisdom…. I have always read a lot on the subject since I was 11 years old. When I was a young grown-up and wanted to deepen my knowledge, then I took courses like ‘Transactional Analysis’ at private institutions and also at the university, and, although they would not give me any degree certificate in the academic way, I was able to accumulate knowledge. Also I tried to see things by the laws of nature to understand people’s behaviour, to explore the depth of it and find not only the reason, but the solution, that was my dream. People nowadays have become more and more aware of alternate methods, of movements such as transpersonal psychology and philosophy, positive thinking, of ways to restore self-respect, and the general atmosphere we are living in, is changing.”

I look at Viola, the way she talks with her hands and there is a fire in her eyes as she recollects the events to her development, and I think to myself that we all need to discover our own impetus, develop our own dynamic, which comes automatically when you have started moving. We must not stand still. Everything in nature moves, although we don’t see it. Nature is constantly changing, growing, dying and being reborn. We live on an ever moving plate on this globe with living fire under our feet, subject to changes. The same fire is stored in us and we must use this energy to spread our wings and fly.

“Between 24 and 34 years of age I was firmly settled in the insurance business, I was successful but I smoked too much, drank 20 coffees a day to keep me going. One day I said to myself, enough is enough; my inner voice was moaning loud. So at the age of thirty I undertook - as a patient  - 3 years of psychoanalysis; after these three years I took part  in group therapy in ‘Transactional Analysis’, and trainings in meditation, Then I discovered ‘Breathwork/Rebirthing’ and continued with ‘Transpersonal Psychotherapy’. Those were amazing years of self discovery and heart opening, that one day I felt that I was ready to go my own way.  I had formal training in ‘Breathwork’ by Leonard Orr at his Rebirthing Centre in New Jersey, USA.  It is he who developed this is a practical science in the early 1970’s.”

I try to visualize the younger Viola, the Venezuelan Viola, beautiful, ambitious….did she have friends, or a closer relation?

“Oh yes, I had many friends, artistic and intellectual friends, I admired the arts and the artists and I envied them for their kind of freedom, freedom of mind, however, to develop any long term close relationships…that took me a long time.”

Your mother, did she remarry? “No, she didn’t, but we had a very familiar and social house, an open house the Latin-Lebanese way. We have never felt as strangers in our neighborhood, we grew up in a sort of warm embrace without any pretending.”

At the age of 34 years Viola arrived at an important crossroads in her life to either continue the old way or follow the call of her dream.  “After I came back from New Jersey, I created the ‘Centro Rebirthing de Venezuela’, a holistic Breathwork Therapy Centre. I dedicated myself to giving private, couple and family sessions and later on I began to give trainings on a professional level, in coaching and breathwork. My students came from various background, they wanted to learn and deepen their knowledge of this amazing technique. We shared the knowledge with psychologists, medical doctors, lawyers, engineers, artists, students, nurses or communicators, business men and women or also house wives. Thus I developed my personal experience and carried it forward into the field of holistic relationship between psychotherapy and business management”.

This resulted in the establishment of another company ‘Edward & Associates Business Consultancy’ through which she carried her knowledge of Transpersonal Psychotherapy back into the business world of human resources.

“In 1995, my sister Layla came back from Chicago where she had been studying and working for seven years,  and together we directed the two companies. It was a beautiful partnership. I have to mention one event here which took place in 2002 which represents for me an amazing completion of my work in Venezuela: My sister Layla, my husband Michael and I, hosted 207 people from 30 different countries at the Global International Conference of the International Breathwork Foundation on Margarita Island, off the Caribbean North coast of Venezuela. It was a wonderful rewarding experience.”