From the Basque Country to Taree: why I became a health coach

I was born in the Basque Country, in northern Spain, a region known for its rugged coastline, strong culture and even stronger sense of identity. In 2005, I packed my life into a suitcase and moved to Australia. I wanted to learn English and have an adventure. That was really the whole plan.

Twenty years later, I'm a Principal Consultant at Adobe, working in digital marketing across the Asia-Pacific region. And alongside that, I'm a holistic health coach, building something completely different through Argia Holistic Coaching.

This is the story of how I got here, and why I couldn't ignore it any longer.

BUILDING A LIFE FROM SCRATCH

Moving countries with no local network and limited English teaches you resilience fast. I worked hard, I learned quickly, and over the years I built a genuinely successful career, eventually landing at Adobe, where I've now spent close to a decade in roles of increasing responsibility.

By most external measures, things were going well. Good job, good income, a life in a country I'd grown to call home.

THE NIGHT THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING

My son was born, and I remember holding him in my arms, walking up and down the hospital hallway in the middle of the night, trying to get him to fall asleep. Just the two of us.

Something shifts in you in a moment like that. I looked at him and I knew I wanted to be the best version of myself for him. Not the version that looks good on paper. The real one. Present, healthy, strong enough to actually be there for him, for the long run.

That night is where this whole journey really started.

WHAT WAS HAPPENING UNDERNEATH

Up until that point, I'd been carrying things I treated as background noise. Chronic back pain I managed instead of understood. Energy that never quite recovered, no matter how much sleep I got. A mind that struggled to switch off, even on weekends.

I'd told myself this was just the cost of building a career and a life in a new country. A phase. Something that would ease once things settled down.

But holding my son that night, I realised I couldn't keep waiting for things to settle down. He needed me now, not eventually.

THE SHIFT

So I started studying holistic health. Not as a career change, and not because it was trendy. Because I needed to understand what was actually happening in my own body, for his sake as much as mine.

What I discovered through the CHEK Institute, through Integrated Movement Science, through years of study into the real mechanics of human health, changed how I understood everything.

I learned that the body operates as a complete system, that you cannot separate sleep from stress, movement from breathing, nutrition from your nervous system state. I learned that real health means addressing the whole picture, not chasing symptoms one at a time.

More recently, my learning has expanded beyond the physical, into breathwork, meditation and healing practices through the Ishtar Channel School, exploring dimensions of wellbeing that go beyond the body alone.

WHY I'M SHARING THIS NOW

For years this was a quiet, parallel pursuit, something I did alongside my corporate career, mostly for myself and my family. I held back from talking about it publicly, partly out of uncertainty about how it would sit alongside my professional identity.

I've come to realise that holding it back doesn't serve anyone. Not the people who could benefit from what I've learned, and not me either.

I run Argia Holistic Coaching from Taree, on the Mid-North Coast of NSW, working with people locally and online. I'm not leaving my corporate career. I'm building something alongside it that matters just as much, and it all started with a small human who needed his dad to properly show up.

If you're a parent, or a professional, or just someone who's been quietly deferring your own health, telling yourself you'll deal with it once things calm down, I understand that completely. I lived it.

Things don't calm down on their own. But your body can.