Leah Hanson spent over 23 years building one of the most technically rigorous careers in Australian hairdressing.

What she did not know, until she walked away from it entirely, was why it was slowly breaking her.

Her career began in some of Australia's most respected salons and creative spaces. At Oscar Oscar she became their youngest Senior Stylist. At é Salon she spent the next decade under the mentorship of former Australian Hairdresser of the Year Emiliano Vitale, honing the precision cutting techniques that would define her work. During this time she was selected for the Australian F.A.M.E Team, travelling to London to educate on stage at Salon International and shooting the cover of the Australian Hairdressing Journal alongside four-time British Hairdresser of the Year Akin Konizi.

She was then sent to SACO Academy in London for specialised training under Richard Ashforth, now the current International Creative Director for Vidal Sassoon. Training that, at the time, no other hairstylist in Australia had received.

Returning to Australia, Leah moved into cutting education and eventually opened her own Sydney studio, That Good Hair Place, which grew to a nine-staff traditional salon. By every external measure, she had built exactly what the industry said success looked like.

But something was missing. And eventually, everything caught up with her.

In 2019, at the point of personal breakdown, Leah sold the salon and walked away from hairdressing entirely. The overwhelm, the relentless comparison, the imposter syndrome that had followed her through two decades of genuine achievement. None of it had been addressed by any education, any business course, or any advice the industry had to offer. She left because she had to.

What followed changed everything.

Over the next several years Leah immersed herself in breathwork and somatic practice, studying the nervous system and what it actually means for a body to feel safe. She led retreats and taught breathwork across Australia. And when she eventually returned to the chair, she could not unsee what she now understood about what had been happening in every single appointment of her career.

She also returned to the work itself differently. Inspired by razor-led cutting educators including Jayne Edo, she moved away from the structured techniques she had spent years teaching and began building a new approach. One rooted in natural movement, texture, and form. Precision through a completely different lens.

In 2025 Leah opened inhala haus, a private one-to-one holistic hair studio on the Central Coast of NSW.

Without an existing client base, the studio generated over $100,000 in its first seven months of operation.

Working with clients in this new way, Leah began to see what had always been there. The principles of interoception, breathwork, somatics, and Polyvagal theory were not separate from hairdressing. They were the hidden architecture beneath every appointment. Clients were naturally opening up to their hairstylists. And hairstylists, with no training and no tools, were absorbing all of it. Every day. Across entire careers.

The concept of somatic hairdressing was born from that realisation. And with it, the understanding that the education to address it did not exist anywhere in the industry.

Leah created the CSHP because she needed it and it was not there. It still does not exist anywhere else.

This is it.