About Me

Women’s health is regularly sidelined, so we end up with taboos and shame around our bodies. How can it be that 50% of UK women don’t know the difference between their vagina and their vulva? I want to be part of a new agenda for women’s health that helps women feel better about their bodies.

Movement and exercise

Therapeutic massage to improve moment and connection

Learning to find peace with our bodies, and love them

Fighting the patriarchy at every opportunity

My Superhero Backstory

• I became a feminist at university in Stirling in the early nineties, although I really should have started earlier when I was sexually harassed in my first job.
• I started regularly exercising in 1997 when I was a proper grown-up, not because I liked it but because I have a family risk of heart disease.
• I have two teenagers and when they were babies I gave up my work as a parliamentary lobbyist to do full-time mumming. That was when working out saved my sanity and I built an extensive collection of fitness DVDs.
• In my early postnatal years, I struggled with the sleeplessness, the early starts, and the soft plays, and their fighting made me want to lock myself in the toilet and eat cake. Now that I have teenagers, I struggle with the lack of hugs.
• When I left school I was planning to study dentistry. In the end, I got a first in Politics. I started working in fitness when my weans went to school.
• The first time I massaged a pregnant woman I felt like the clouds parted and the angels sang, and I found my flow state.
• I’ve kept a diary since 1986 and I still have all of them. I write for therapy and pleasure and my favourite author is Neil Gaiman.
• Between 2010 and 2015 I ran 14 full marathons before Achilles Tendinopathy took me down.
• Once I deadlifted 100kg. It was a goal I’d been working towards for over a year, and in the end, I achieved it with the help of my anger at the 2019 General Election result.

This is how I’ve built up the strength, power and endurance to live the life I want to. For me, that looks like moving daily, being present for my family, and doing more of the things that bring me joy. I want to use that experience to help you do the same.

“Elspeth’s Pregnancy Power Up classes are brilliant – a great workout and feeling confident that I’m in really safe hands.”

Katriona Harding