Our Founders
James Thomson
James is a healing practitioner and contemplative teacher whose work has grown out of two decades of private, one-on-one practice.
His work began in clinical structural integration and neuromuscular therapy, working with individuals seeking relief from physical pain and dysfunction. For many, this was the door they entered through. What began as work with the body often opened into something far beyond it.
Alongside this work, his life was being shaped by a deepening contemplative practice rooted in the Christian mystical tradition. Over time, sessions came to include a more direct form of healing - what some might call energy work - through entering a meditative stillness, where Presence acts.
Direct spiritual counsel arose naturally within this context. While shaped by Christian contemplative roots, his work speaks across traditions, drawing on whatever language serves the moment and the person before him.
Through years of working with people from all walks of life, it became clear that what was being sought was not relief from symptoms, but a direct encounter with Ultimate Reality.
Living Presence is not a system, method, or technique, but a simple way of pointing to the ground of reality, and to a life lived in conscious relationship with it.
After many years of working in private practice, James is now beginning to share this more openly through recorded teaching series, intimate gatherings, both in person and online - spaces of shared silence, sincere inquiry, and dialogue.
Those who meet with him often find a space where they can finally rest, and begin to encounter what has always been here.
As he would often say to those first arriving,
“Come in with an open mind and an open heart, and let’s see what happens.”
Kayla Winsatt
Kayla is an artist, herbalist, and contemplative whose work has grown out of years of exploration in herbalism, plant-based healing, and direct experience in nature.
Her path included the preparation of herbal medicines and one-on-one work with individuals, grounded in both clinical herbal training and what could be described as plant spirit healing. Through this, she developed a sensitivity to the living intelligence of the natural world, and to the ways transformative healing can arise through direct relationship.
Her work came to rely less on applied knowledge, and more on an attentive listening in which the plants themselves could inform what was needed.
Alongside this, her contemplative life unfolded through time spent in silence in nature, and through the meditative practice of tea ceremony.
Over time, her work has become more focused on expressing what is most true through creative forms - film, writing, and the shaping of spaces where this deeper reality can be encountered.
Together with James, she helps give form to Living Presence through contemplative media, gatherings, and shared teaching.
Her work is guided by an intuition and a devotion to what is real.
