You are not your sport.

Coaching and counselling for women who gave everything to their sport… and are still figuring out who they are without it. Whether you're chasing your potential, sidelined by injury, or carrying the weight of "what could have been," there is a way through that doesn't require you to keep performing for your worth.

Does this sound like you?

Unfortunately….

What life looks like after

You were the one with potential. The one coaches believed in. The one who was meant to make it.

Maybe injury stopped you. Maybe burnout did. Maybe it was self-sabotage. The pattern you can see now but just couldn't break then. Or maybe you got close, but close wasn't enough, and "close" has haunted you ever since.

Now you're older. You've tried to move on maybe picked up triathlon, trail running, a new goal, gone all in on career or family. But there's a quiet ache underneath that won't fully leave. You scroll past athletes still competing and feel a flicker of something you'd rather not name. You catch yourself thinking what if, then feel guilty for thinking it.

You're fit, capable, and driven. On paper, you're doing fine. But there's a version of you that never got to find out how far she could go, and part of you is still grieving her.

If you're still competing: you want to reach your potential, but you're done sacrificing joy, health, and your sense of self to get there. You want to compete because you choose to, not because you need to prove you're worthy of existing.

If you're injured: you want to heal — fully — and return to your sport without the fear, without the old patterns, and without losing yourself to it again.

Distraction doesn't heal. A new goal doesn't heal. Going harder doesn't heal, in fact it usually breaks you again.

What heals is doing the actual inner work: facing the grief of what didn't happen, releasing the identity you built around being an athlete, and rebuilding a relationship with yourself that isn't conditional on results.

That's the work I do. It's not mindset fluff and it's definitely not another goal to chase. It's the opposite, it’s finally putting the goal down long enough to find out who you are without it.

I use a combination of methods - coaching, counselling, meditation, and neuroscience-informed techniques that get to the heart of the issue quickly. We don't spend six months circling. We go straight to what's actually driving the pattern, and we shift it.

Calm. Freedom. Wholeness. The feeling of enough.

You're still competitive, but you're choosing it, not needing it for your worth. You're fit, strong, pain-free, and driven, but the drive no longer owns you. You can watch other athletes succeed and feel genuinely unbothered. You can train hard and rest hard. You can want to win without your entire identity riding on the outcome.

You've grieved the version of you that didn't get to "make it", and discovered that the woman on the other side of that grief is someone you actually like being.

That's the point of this work. Not to make you a better athlete but to make you a whole person. who may or may not still compete, and either way is at peace.

I’m not just a random coach, I’ve gone through the roller coaster of sport, just like you are now.

I'm Mardi Watts, a certified meditation teacher, coach, and counsellor . I'm currently completing a Masters in Neuroscience, which grounds everything I do in how the brain actually changes, not just how we hope it will.

I spent nine years as a remedial massage therapist, personal trainer, and clinical Pilates instructor, working with bodies (including my own) through injury, chronic pain, and the relentless demands of elite sport. I've lived the elite sport world. And I know all about the high highs and the low lows.

I found meditation on my own path to heal. I was living in a constant state of burnout, injury, and pain. I felt like I was failing in my sport. I knew I had potential, everyone kept telling me so, but it always seemed just out of reach. And the harder I worked, the worse it got. Classic pattern.

Meditation and coaching didn't just change how I felt. They changed the trajectory of my life. I felt called to get trained, change careers, and do this work.

I've been through success and failure. I spent years feeling like a failure, chasing a new goal to outrun the last one, only to repeat the cycle again and again and again… until I did the inner work. I grieved what could have been. I found peace and fulfilment that don't depend on a result.

And that's what I want for you.

Ways to work with me

From a one off, packages or long term programs, there’s an option for you.

Learn To Meditate

A self-paced introduction to meditation - the practice that started my own healing. For athletes who want a practical, no-nonsense way to build mental fitness and calm, without the spiritual bypassing. A self paced workshop

$29

Learn To Meditate

A self-paced introduction to meditation - the practice that started my own healing. For athletes who want a practical, no-nonsense way to build mental fitness and calm, without the spiritual bypassing. A self paced workshop

$29

  • "I came to Mardi thinking I just needed to get back to training. Six weeks in I realised I'd spent fifteen years using sport to avoid feeling anything. I'm back competing now, but honestly that's not the thing that changed. The thing that changed is I can actually rest. I don't even know how to explain how big that is."

    Sarah, runner

  • "I didn't think I was 'allowed' to grieve not making it. Like, who am I to be sad about that? Plenty of people have it worse. But Mardi just got it. She'd been there. She didn't make it weird or heavy. She just helped me actually feel it and move through it instead of pretending I was fine. I haven't compared myself to my old teammates in months. That used to be a daily thing."

    Bec, 41, former athlete

  • "I was sceptical, honestly. I'd done therapy before and it was fine but it never went anywhere. Mardi's different, she doesn't let you hide. In a good way. She'd call something out and I'd be like... yeah, okay, that's actually the thing. The REBUILD program got me back on the track but more importantly I'm not terrified of getting injured again. I just play now."

    Mikaela, rugby player

  • "I thought meditation would be too woo-woo for me. I'm a numbers person, I like evidence. But Mardi's approach is just... practical. And the neuroscience stuff actually made it click for me. I do ten minutes a day now and my anxiety is genuinely lower. My partner noticed before I did."

    Jess