Amanda Foo-Ryland has spent almost 20 years helping more than 4000 people rewire their brains.
She believes wholeheartedly this is her purpose, and has used the same neural-coding tactics she teaches others to repeatedly overcome trauma, stress and challenges in her own life.
First there was her kidney cancer diagnosis at 45, then one year later, Keith, her husband of 19 years, unexpectedly died from stomach cancer. Months later, Amanda fell in love with their friend Sarah.
With late husband Keith in Portugal in 2009.
She still laughs recalling her mother Yvonne telling her, “You’re not gay, you’re grieving. It’s a phase.”
It turned out to be true love and Amanda and Sarah married in 2016, however tragically without Sarah’s mum Doreen, who died in a shark attack just one month before the wedding.
With wife Sarah, whose mum died in a shark attack.
Then at 52, Amanda realised her dream of becoming a parent – despite the vocal opposition of some saying she was too old – but nearly lost Sarah when she started haemorrhaging after labour.
“There have been some curve- balls, more than most could handle, but I’ve had this tool box to get me through,” says Amanda, 55, who recently released her latest book Knowing You.
“Most people have limiting beliefs of varying degrees,” says Amanda, explaining a simplified concept of neural coding. “If I get to the bottom of the core-limiting belief and install something empowering in its place, they will have incredible transformation.
“I take the reader through mind hacks like, ‘How do you quickly detect thought processes that are going to rail road or sabotage you and change those to become empowered?”
Speaking to the Weekly from her home in Queenstown, Amanda, who splits her time between Aotearoa and Portugal, alternates between talking about the number-one Amazon bestseller and candidly sharing deeply personal stories from
her own life.
“If someone tapped me on the shoulder as I came out of kidney surgery and said, ‘A year tomorrow your husband is going to die,’ I would have said, ‘No way’,” insists Amanda. “Keith dying was absolutely my lowest point. I was bloody angry with the universe. I allowed myself to wallow in self-pity, to be angry, to drink too much pinot noir. But I knew if stayed there, I was powerless.”
“My cup has always been half full,” says Amanda.
The turning point came while on a run when Amanda, who has a doctorate in clinical therapy and heads global neural coding business Your Life Live It, imagined her future as a blank canvas she could paint any way she wanted.
“I thought, ‘I want to be a mum and raise children, and I want to have a loving partner to travel the rest of my full life with.’ Then I fell in love with a woman, who’s 14 years younger than me and became a mum of twins at 52!”
That woman is former England cricketer and now business partner and wife Sarah Foo-Ryland.
They first met when Sarah, now 42, came to watch Amanda speak at an event. Intrigued, she booked a session with Amanda and was so impressed by the changes, she trained to join the business.
But it was actually Amanda’s late-husband Keith, Sarah befriended most. Before he passed away, Keith made Sarah promise she would support Amanda when he was gone.
So Sarah didn’t hesitate when Amanda asked for help to sort through Keith’s belongings.
Their relationship grew rapidly from there as the pair fell madly in love – a union they believe Keith would approve of.
On June 5, 2016, Amanda and Sarah were on the last day of their latest adventure – cycling 1600 kilometres from the French Alps to York – when they woke to a flood of frantic phone calls.
Sarah’s mum Doreen, who had just turned 60, had been killed by a great white shark while diving in Perth.
One month later, in a beautiful ceremony with lots of laughter and tears to honour Doreen, Amanda and Sarah were married.
In 2019 came the birth of their twins Jasper and Noah, now four, and a near-death experience for Sarah when she lost 3.5 litres of blood an hour after labour.
“I just wanted to start running,” admits Amanda. “I told the nurse, ‘I have to go for a run.’ The boys were in NICU and she said to me, ‘No, I’m going to get your babies and I think you should hold them.’ She took a photo of me holding the boys and I thought, ‘This is not my picture. I do not go home with these boys on my own. Sarah has got to make it’.”
With twins Noah and Jasper.
Luckily, Sarah survived, and they now spend their life raising their sons and travelling the world, teaching others the neural-coding skills they’ve relied on to weather the storms.
Amanda also gives credit to her mum Yvonne, 80, and dad David, who passed away eight weeks before the twins were born.
“My parents had a knack of really supporting me,” she enthuses. “They gave me a great foundation of good values and believing in myself, so my cup has always been half full.”
