TRIBUTE | Remembering Dr Melanie Salmon
Some people enter your life for one reason and change everything.
Dr Melanie Salmon was one of those people for me.
Dr Melanie was a medical doctor with a deep care and curiosity about what healing really requires.
After years of working as a General Practitioner and Gestalt Therapist, she developed Quantum Energy Coaching (QEC) — a therapeutic approach rooted in neuroscience and the understanding that real change happens not just in the mind, but in the body, the nervous system, and the deeper layers of who we are.
A few years ago, my wife Cristina and I were living inside a spiritual community that would later prove to be a cult. During that time, Cristina developed anxiety and panic attacks. She began working with Dr Melanie — and her panic attacks settled, almost immediately.
Seeing the change in her — and witnessing what became possible when someone truly skilled and safe held space for another person — inspired me deeply. I reached out to Dr Melanie myself and we began working together one-to-one, too.
What followed was one of the most significant periods of inner work I have ever done.
It was through that work — through Melanie's skillful guidance — that Cristina and I found the clarity and the courage to see what coercive control had made deliberately difficult to see. The process of naming, forgiving, and leaving the cult was genuinely life-changing and life-saving — we got our lives back and built real ones.
Dr Melanie walked with us through it. She modelled what a true teacher and leader is.
She didn't tell us what to think or what to do. She didn’t demand loyalty — she was simply there: caring, kind, supportive, honest, safe. She helped us find the ground beneath our feet, and to find deeper levels of honesty, understanding, and clarity. She understood trauma in the way that only someone who has done their own deep inner work can understand it. She was safe in a way that mattered enormously to two people who had just had their sense of safety — and sense of selves — profoundly shaken.
I trained with her extensively — in fact, we left the cult during our first training with her, and again, her presence and support at that exact moment was priceless. It felt as if she was an answered prayer. She arrived into our lives at the exact moment we needed her.
Over the years I completed her QEC Practitioner Training and her advanced trainings: Trauma and Crisis, Working with Medical Conditions, Intergenerational Trauma and Surrogacy, and earlier this year, completed her Gestalt Certification Training. Along the way I also loved her many Skills Enhancement and Applied Learning Masterclasses.
Every training deepened my understanding of what it actually means to meet someone, to see them, to hear them, and to support them well. She taught me that good one-to-one work is less about techniques — although frameworks are helpful. It's about trust. Safety. Connection. The relationship itself is the context in which real change becomes possible.
Last year, Cristina and I finally met Dr Melanie in person. We had lunch together — a warm, unhurried sunny afternoon in an English pub garden with someone who had played such a significant role in our lives. We were simply grateful to be sitting across the table from her. To give her a hug. To say thank you. None of us knew it would be the only time.
Dr Melanie died suddenly in April 2026. The world of trauma-informed healing has lost one of its most genuine voices. And I have lost someone I will always be grateful for.
Her work continues — in the practitioners she trained, in the clients those practitioners serve, in the ripple effects of healing that she set in motion and that will keep moving long after her. It continues in me. In Cristina. In the clients I sit with each week. And if you’ve met or worked with me since she was in my life, it lives on in you.
Thank you, Dr Melanie.
Podcasts with Dr Melanie Salmon & Sandy
About the Author
Sandy C. Newbigging is a writer, mentor, and teacher of integrative inner change. Across twelve books and over two decades of work, he has become known for helping people move beyond surface-level self-improvement into change that is real, embodied, and sustainable in everyday life. His work is multidimensional, practical and deeply human — supporting people to relate more wisely to their mind, body, and life, so clarity replaces struggle, meaningful change occurs, and their inner world genuinely supports the kind of life they want to live.
