Our History

There are many factors which together resulted in the evolution of what we now call The Sunflower Programme and thus the establishment of The Sunflower Trust.

As a child at the age of 14, Mark Mathews was asked to leave the school he was attending as he was being a bit of rebel. This rebelliousness was due to his anger and frustration at falling behind with his schoolwork. His Quaker aunt was involved in the local community and arranged for him to be seen by a psychologist, who diagnosed him as being "word blind" but not stupid - there was no such diagnosis as Dyslexia in those days!

Mark's aunt enabled him to attend a private school after many other schools had refused him a place. He was put in the remedial class but after working hard, was moved into the A stream of the year below. Mark became Head Boy and obtained his A Levels, enabling him to go to university where he attained a 2:1 in Ecology, Wildlife Management and Tropical Development.

Obtaining a scholarship, Mark undertook a study in Kenya for the Range Department to investigate the effects of a group ranching scheme for the Masai in the Cagiodo District. He travelled the world and came to admire people who improved their standard of living in ways that were in their own control and that did not destroy their culture or the land in which they lived. Influenced by Schumacher's "Small is Beautiful", Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring", Buckminster Fuller, Laurence Vanderpost, and Ecologist Magazine edited by Goldsmith and others, Mark wrote a paper and sent it to people of influence. A newspaper picked up on it, and as a result, Mark was contacted by a small charity, The Society for Environmental Improvement.

Mark volunteered to help set up The Centre for Alternative Technology in Machunlleth in Mid Wales, where he later became the manager. However, he soon realised that he did not have the skills or experience to manage such a centre. He resigned and decided to train as an Osteopath, qualifying in 1984, becoming a member of the Society of Osteopaths.

Mark went on to set up the London Natural Health Clinic with Graham Wilson of ‘Mind Body Spirit' fame. The objective of the clinic was to get osteopaths, herbalists, homeopaths, nutritionists, acupuncturists and psychotherapists to work together as a team to give the patients the right mix of what they needed all under one roof. As far as Mark was concerned, they were all useful tools in the natural medicine tool kit but none of them was a panacea. Mark was too far ahead of his time for his professional peers - different professions working together just did not work.

Mark continued to study and was one of the first people to study Applied Kinesiology, Clinical Kinesiology and Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP). He is privileged to have studied with some of the top people in the field of Applied Kinesiology, NLP and Nutritional Science around the world. Mark has also been fortunate over the years to make friends and acquaintances with people who have shared his passion and interest in advancing knowledge of how to help people in the most efficient and safest way.

For many years, Mark and like-minded professionals met up regularly to share knowledge, experience and skills with each other. Sometimes, if they had challenging patients, they would see them together and pool their thinking and skills. Between them, they tried to cover as many courses as possible to learn more about various subjects that interested them and could be used for the benefit of their patients. They then shared the information!

As Mark has a right-brain dominant dyslexic way of thinking and has no memory for names, numbers or spellings, he thinks in terms of pictures and how things fit into the big picture. He has put the Sunflower Programme together like a plant. The programme is depicted as having roots, a trunk, branches and leaves, all of which denote a hierarchy of needs. There is no point in treating the branches if you do not first get the roots and the trunk in place. It is stupid to fuss about the leaves if the branches are not intact - like a pyramid, there is little point in addressing the top if you do not first get some good foundations in place to support it.

Mark uses a number of ecological principles and disciplines that he has always been consistent in adhering to. These principles are the absolute basis of the Sunflower Programme.

• All life comes from nature.
• We are an inseparable part of it.
• We are completely dependant on it and if we are to have a sustainable future on this planet, we have to learn to live with it rather than to destroy it.
• The only thing that heals are the innate underlying processes of nature. All ecosystems are supported by the flow of energy from the sun via the plants, the minerals from the soil and the water from the climate.
• We all have the propensity (within reason) to be balanced, integrated and well.
• When we are balanced, we tend to feel better, perform better, live longer and have more fruitful and fulfilling lives.
• The job of a healer is to help provide the right environment to allow the natural tendency of nature to express itself more fully to obtain optimum states of health.

The environment that supports the living processes in a human being are multiple and interact in an integrated, holistic way. There is no separation between the mind, the body, the chemistry, the thoughts and the emotions of human beings. They are inseparably inter-related and connected by the nervous, glandular and meridian system as well as a variety of electro-magnetic energy fields that are unique to living things. There is no one scientific, mental, emotional, or psychological, biochemical, spiritual, social or physical theory that enables one adequately to think about, explain or work with the intricate relationships of these many factors.

The conscious mind is extremely limited. The most anyone can think about at one time is 7 plus or minus 2 things. Unconsciously, we are processing millions of pieces of information every second. It is all happening behind the scenes to keep all our organs, muscles, millions of specialised cells and billions of sub-cellular systems working together.

Everyone is different. What is commonly known as a symptom is simply the body's way of indicating that something is not right. The natural approach to healing is to find out what the underlying imbalances are and the least one needs to do in the safest way possible to allow the body to get on with the job of correcting the imbalances. This is Applied Ecology. Mark has developed The Sunflower Programme on these principles.

A Sunflower practitioner does not tell their patients what to do. Through muscle-testing assessments, the practitioner asks the body, in hundreds of ways, what is working, what is not and in what way it can be fixed. What makes it a science is that everything a practitioner does is measured. When they find something that does not work, they discover from the patient's responses to the tests what is required to fix that aspect of the problem.
.
A Sunflower practitioner holds each person in reverence and starts from the assumption that as their humble servant, in co-operation with them, the practitioner can help the patient to find their own equilibrium. There is no magic pill, procedure, diet or religious, political or educational system that can provide a solution to the challenge(s) each person faces. The Sunflower Programme has shown that it is often possible to enable people to realise more of their own potential in health, self-esteem academic ability and social performance.

As a child with learning difficulties, Mark knew how difficult, sad, frustrating and confusing it can feel to be saddled with learning problems in a world governed by writing and restrictive rules. Due to the generosity and support of his aunt, mark felt that he had been given a gift to do something with his life and felt that it was his responsibility to hand it on to others. That is how civilisation develops.

Mark and four other people were responsible for setting up the Trust in 1996 to help other children with challenges.

• Liz Thomas, a respected Educational Psychologist, saw some children Mark had treated and was amazed by the improvements that she noticed.
• Daphne Bell, who was the Head of the Centre for Special Educational Needs in Guildford, paid for some of the children under her care to be treated by Mark and invited him to talk to some of her special needs teachers.
• Canon Telfer, who worked at Guildford Cathedral, thought a charity should be set up to make the programme more widely known and to spread the benefit to others.
• Richard Allen, the Trust's Chairman, had the knowledge and skill-set to get the charity registered and active.

Along with thousands of doctors, professors, osteopaths and chiropractors throughout the world, Mark became a member of the International College of Applied Kinesiology (ICAK). The European Chapter of this organisation was set up in the 80s to coordinate training seminars, conferences and study groups. This later divided into various national chapters.

Over the years, Mark had a number of papers published in their journals and other publications. He gave many presentations about his research and work in Germany, Italy, France and to various conferences in the UK. Wishing to know more about his work, some of Mark's colleagues in ICAK persuaded him to teach them aspects of it. Through this experience and with their co-operation, a more formal training programme was developed and Clive Lindley-Jones, a fellow ICAK professional, became a co-trainer for the Sunflower Programme with Mark. About 100 Osteopaths, Chiropractors, medical doctors and consultants within Europe have now undergone the training over the last 12 years. This has been arranged under the auspices of The Sunflower Trust.

The Sunflower Programme has gone from strength to strength with its practitioners having treated hundreds of children and with The Sunflower Trust funding many bursaries.