frame 73 November 2025
The Catching Force
by Cosima Somerset
Cosima Somerset is a London-based business entrepreneur. She founded Concierge London in 2000, recently renamed SomersetWhite, now operating in London, New York and Los Angeles.
In the 1980s, Cosima worked at Andy Warhol's New York magazine Interview under Shelley Wanger, and later in London for the literary agent Gillon Aitken. In the 90s, after the birth of her two children, Lyle and Romy, she worked for documentary maker, Belinda Allen, as a researcher for TV documentary films including Tory Wives and Juries.
She has a passion for horses and dogs, yoga and cold water.
Photo credit: Kathryn Ireland, taken 5 minutes after meeting Father Joe for the first time in July, 2015
‘The Catching Force is more than a biography about a man of faith and his journey from a small town in India to the slums of Calcutta and Mumbai to work with Mother Teresa and then, following her death, to carry on her work among alcoholics, drug addicts, prostitutes and thieves. Above all, it is a story of hope, of a healing dynamic arising out of defeat and humiliation; the catching force of unconditional love that enables Father Joe to heal pain through the gift of yoga and to replace desperation with a new life of freedom and happiness.
Cosima Somerset’s first book is a story of extraordinary depth, power and perception about one man’s love of humanity that guides him through a cruel, unequal and often dangerous world, interweaved with Cosima’s own challenges with debilitating depression.’
Peter Thompson, 2025
Questions by Harriet Vyner
HV: What drew you to writing THE CATCHING FORCE – could you explain the process?
CS: I have wanted to write a book all my life but I had not written anything except a journal for years. In fact, I kept daily journals consistently, since the age of 11, despite running a business called Concierge in London for over 15 years. This was a lifestyle management service, now called Somerset White. Throughout all my work on this, I had become an expert in problem solving for our clients but it had left not much time for adventure.
However, when I went to on holiday to India for the first time in 2014, by chance I met Father Joe Pereira on the last night. It was a life changing event… CLICK HERE TO READ MORE
A few months into my friendship with Father Joe, I realised he did not record his teaching. And although he had done so much in his decades as a Catholic priest and Founder of the Kripa Charitable foundation, no one had recorded his life and teaching for posterity. I knew that I’d met a very unusual person, and felt compelled to ask him if I could write his life story. Lookoing back, it seems like a bold move, coming as it did from a total novice !
HV: It started out as a smaller publication – what made you want to turn it into a larger book?
Following a retreat on a Greek island that a group of us organised in 2016, a couple of us put together a booklet of his workshop, including photographs of his yoga poses. It took a year to complete and I realised how much I had enjoyed the process. I started to put everything I had, diaries, multiple recordings of Father Joe teaching us all around the world. Additionally, I began interviewing him about his life – in fact, every time we met, and afterwards would ask my daughter Romy to transcribe these conversations. I realised that the book would most probably work best as the story of my friendship with Father Joe, rather than a classic biography, as I am not an experienced biographer, and could only write from the perspective of a student/guru dynamic , as that was the relationship we had developed.
HV: Although you describe Father Joe so well in the book – could you add a few sentences here?
CS: He is possibly the only person I have met without ego. He has infinite patience and a discipline that I am in awe of. He never falters in his adherence to his practice .
HV: Do you still practice the Kripa Iyenga Yoga he teaches – even at home? In which case, what is your routine?
CS: I am a very imperfect student. I practice with verve and passion when in his presence, but since the brilliant yoga teacher that I practiced with in London, has recebntly retired, I am not practicing every day as I should… I am hoping to find another teacher in London . Father Joe is a hard act to follow, and I am not good at self motivation, (unlike him.)
HV: Could you elaborate on what you mean by (as therapists call it) a ‘corrective emotional experience’ – a beautiful phrase!
CS: A therapist many years ago used that phrase when feeding back to me what he had heard, when I described a relationship with a new friend. My interpretation of a corrective emotional experience is that it is a new positive emotional encounter with someone, in my case with the paternal figure of Father Joe, which helps to reframe past painful experiences. By reliving an old emotional dynamic in a different way, it is possible that painful feelings from the past can be transmuted into new positive ones , leading to lasting psychological change.
HV: Father Joe suggests that the Yoga pose - Urdhva Dhanurasana – will lead to meeting your shadow. Do you feel that ‘the shadow’ is in everyone?
CS: I couldn’t possibly guess! But I certainly feel a lot of fear when I try to surrender in that pose, and I suppose my fear could be described as my shadow. That’s how I interpret it in anyway ….
HV: You describe Father Joe singing professionally in his younger days – do you think he has a favourite song? You also write about how much Bob Dylan has always meant to you – so what Bob Dylan song would you most like to play to Father Joe?
CS: He loves the song IMPOSSIBLE DREAM by Jack Jones 1966
And GOTTA SERVE SOMEBODY would be a fitting Dylan song to play Father Joe…
