Lauren Beck is the former editor of Dockwalk and was with the publication from 2006 to 2023. At 13, she left South Africa aboard a 34-foot sailing boat with her family and ended up in St. Maarten for six years. Before college, she worked as crew for a year, and then cut her journalistic teeth at Better Homes and Gardens and Ladies’ Home Journal online. She loves traveling, reading, tennis, and rooting for the Boston Red Sox.
Mental health and self-care have taken on greater significance over the past few years. Samantha Morris, a relief purser aboard M/Y Confidential, responded to that need by creating her own company that combines mental health coaching and her passion for natural solutions. Morris is a certified mental well-being life coach, neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) practitioner, and natural solutions provider, and drew on her background to open Samantha Morris Healer in September 2022.
“It is important for crew to look after their mental wellbeing both on board and off board. Stress, anxiety, fatigue, and burnout can enter our lives through many external factors, but we can choose to become in control of our mental health by implementing natural solutions into our lives,” Morris says. She speaks from personal experience after she resigned from her position in 2021 after 3.5 years aboard due to “burnout, fatigue, stress, anxiety, and fight/flight response.”
“When I returned home, I was fearful of everything, and I couldn’t bear the feelings inside of my body or that my mind was unbearably out of control,” she says. She even considered antidepressants but ultimately decided against them. She was in pain and could hardly sit for 30 minutes, which inspired her to speak to a wellness advocate. She then discovered doTERRA essential oils, which “helped me to combat my negative emotions and heal on a deeper level.”
No stranger to psychotherapy, she also discovered wellness coaching during her healing time ashore. “This changed my life by allowing me to understand myself on a deeper level and to focus on my own resourcefulness,” Morris says. “Learning to become a Life Coach and NLP practitioner has given me various models and techniques to help my clients to overcome challenging moments in life.”
She offers several coaching and NLP options, from a “Cruise into Coaching” 1-to-1 pay as you go for £99, to eight sessions of tailored coaching and NLP sessions for £693. According to Morris, “Coaching allows you to tap into your greatest potential, unlock your resourcefulness, and have the power to explore the answers from within.” As she says, although we are each unique in how we view the world and in our personal experiences, each person can find and accept their true selves by working through their beliefs, values, and behaviors. This, Morris says, “enables you to make great informed decisions about the positive changes and actions you are wishing to make in your life.”
One captain is convinced and writes that they “can’t speak highly enough of how the sessions have helped me over this time. [Morris’s] style was professional, relaxed, informal, and challenging to ensure [that] as a coachee, you take the right steps in maximizing your personal development and business opportunities.”
“I believe that anxiety was my greatest gift as it has aligned me with my true purpose of helping others with their mental wellbeing and acknowledging their own resourcefulness,” Morris says. She took a “career gap” in 2022 to complete her qualifications and to get her business set up and will now be working four months each year as a relief purser and concentrating on her wellness clients for the remaining eight months.
“Launching the company has changed my future career ambitions,” she says. “In the longer term, I would like to host group coaching sessions and masterclasses that will encourage crew to manage their mental wellbeing in a holistic and natural way, leaving a positive impact in the yachting industry.”
Morris has also created a few free ebooks for the maritime world:
Manage Your Emotional Health
Taking Aromatherapy Onboard