Be At Your Best
with INNER LEARNING FIRST
Training, Coaching & Therapy to
Inspire Personal & Organisational Growth
Lucy Holbrook
Your Trainer, Body Mind Coach & Therapist
Benefits
How I can help you
You At Your Best
This starts with understanding yourself - doing your inner learning first. The foundation for this is self-awareness, which leads to:
Organisations At Their Best
This happens when your staff better understand themselves and each other – they do their inner learning together. This leads to:
“In my experience being at our best starts with understanding ourself… we have to do our inner learning first.”
I am an experienced trainer, Body Mind coach and therapist and I facilitate embodied personal change that will support
- you to be at your best and feel comfortable in your own skin
- your organisation to be at its best through staff being at their best individually and collectively.
My experience has taught me that being at our best starts with understanding ourselves – by doing our inner learning first. My approach is rooted in the fact that our biology and psychology are intertwined – our body and mind are not separate entities. Furthermore, feeling safe physically, emotionally & physiologically actually underpins our ability to function.
My approach therefore, focusses on understanding the link between our feelings and thoughts – how they interconnect and impact each other - and the effect they have on our behaviour choices which shape our experiences and relationships. Self-awareness is key to this process.
Most of us are typically driven by our unconscious habits of feeling, thinking and behaviour. This means we can end up like a passenger looking out the car window watching our life go by.
I can help you uncover and understand these habitual patterns of feeling, thinking and behaviour as well as develop the internal resources you already have but may not recognise. In doing this work you give yourself the opportunity to get back into the driving seat of your life and live the life you really want.
I work in a relational & collaborative manner through facilitation rather than prescription. Drawing on relevant research and good practice I use a wide range of both body and mind knowledge and tools to help you explore those aspects of your experience and habits which are not working for you in some way, whether this is in your personal life or at work.
I have an enhanced DBS Certificate on the Update Service.
I spent the first 10 years of my working life working in the private sector for a stockbroker and merger broker in the City of London and finally a training company delivering a wide range of business skills courses throughout the UK. While this gave me a good business grounding, I came to realise I wanted an opportunity to use more of my skills in an environment that supported people directly.
This resulted in my move north to Merseyside and into the voluntary sector where I spent the next 10 years running a small independent charity supporting women with complex needs in an area with high levels of deprivation. As anyone familiar with the Third Sector knows, it requires resourcefulness, flexibility and resilience by the bucket load, so working at the Women’s Centre in Birkenhead was both rewarding and challenging. I certainly got to use more of my skills and developed lots more besides.
It was also during my time at the Women’s Centre that I got more interested in personal development in relation to myself as well as the women we were supporting. I was able to combine this growing interest with delivering workshops and courses to the Centre’s volunteers and service users. By the time I left the Centre it was a natural progression for me to become a freelance trainer. This allowed me to follow my curiosity and fascination about the connection between our mind and body and deepen my knowledge looking for answers to questions such as:
- What is it that really makes change sustainable?
- How can I be more effective at setting goals and achieving them?
- How do I “marry up” what really goes on inside me and how I am “out in the world” without splitting-off parts of myself?
My four-year Deep Body Work and Postural Integration therapy training introduced me to the world of working with the body. This training gave me an invaluable understanding of the interconnection between our body and mind and a different toolkit that I use to enhance my training programmes as well as in my coaching and therapy work.
The explosion of research into the brain over my working life has transformed our understanding of how the human brain works and what happens when it doesn’t. This knowledge is also reshaping our understanding and practice in many other fields, from psychology and biology to economics and education; and of course organisational development, leadership, team working and individual employee effectiveness.
I love delving into this growing body of knowledge and finding ways to use it to help me be at my best more of the time and sharing what I learn to help you be at your best more of the time.
I have worked in both the private and voluntary sectors and for the last 12 years as an independent trainer and Body Mind coach and therapist. During this period I have also delivered my training programmes within the education and public social care sectors. Here are some of the clients I’ve had the pleasure of working with, supporting their staff or service-users to be at their best.
I am committed to my own professional and personal development and attend relevant workshops and training regularly.
• Intensive Trauma Treatment Course with Bessel van der Kolk (19 hours online CPD) 2019
• Trauma Informed Care in the Counselling Professions Workshop 2019
• Mental Health First Aid (2 days) 2019
• ACE Recovery Toolkit Train the Trainer Training 2018
• Connect 5 Train the Trainer Training 2018
• Rhythmic Movement Training Level 1 & 11 2016
• Certificate in Personal Coaching 2016
• Moaiku: Attachment & Arousal Regulation in the Healing of Trauma 2014
• Moaiku: Hidden Choices – Focussing on the Teenage Phase 2014
• Moaiku: Attachment and Trauma 2013
• Philosophy for Children (P4C) Level 1 Certificate 2013
• Moaiku: The Hidden Challenges in Coping with Stress 2012
• The Mind & Body of Safer Trauma Therapy with Babette Rothschild 2012
• Attendance at 4 days of EABP 13th International Congress 2012
• Massage in Schools Instructor 2011
• Bodywork Group Dynamics 2009
• Preparing to Teach in the Lifelong Learning Sector (PTLLS) 2009
• Bodies and Boundaries 2008
• Deep Bodywork Diploma with Entelia Institute for Creative Bodywork 2009 (4 year training)
• Accredited Postural Integrator with ICRI & ICPIT 2009 (4 year training) - learn more
• Accredited Protective Behaviours Trainer 2006 (2 year training)
• Intermediate Certificate in Counselling Skills 1996
• Certificate in Training & Development (IPD) 1996 (1 year training)
• BA Honors Law Degree – University of Kent at Canterbury 1982
- Associate Member of Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development
- Massage in Schools Association
- Independent Practitioners Network
- Protective Behaviours Training Partnership
- Protective Behaviours Association
References available on request.
Testimonials
What my clients say
“Lucy's Understanding Anger workshop was carefully planned and exectued. She skillfully engaged the learners so they were willing to contribute and share - this was an impressive demonstration of trust between the learners and Lucy."
Fiona Bell
"Lucy's input has been invaluable in helping Citizens 4 Change to reframe its work with schools from a potentially negative focus on violence and harms to a far more generative approach that brings to life the fact that everyone has the right to feel safe. Her insight, skills and extensive knowledge has been critical to helping us to design a programme that will catalyse a child led movement for safe and inclusive Tanzanian schools. It has been a huge privilege to learn with her."
Dr Kate McAlpine
“I’ve been lucky enough to be able to call upon Lucy as a Connect 5 Community Trainer for over a year. She is prompt, organised and deeply familiar with the material. Feedback from her groups is always very positive. Lucy uses her strong educator skills to engage, facilitate and coach - the three core skills needed for Connect 5 - fluidly and confidently every time."
Marianne Demmer
“I first met Lucy over 10 years ago when attending her Protective Behaviours Training. This training challenged my personal and professional thinking and led me to question my working practices; ultimately it expanded my understanding of working with and supporting vulnerable young people and adults, beyond any other training I had attended. Protective Behaviours is simple and effective. It not only provides a framework to use with clients, but something that I use on a daily basis personally ensuring my own safety and well-being and helping me respond more effectively to work situations and dynamics especially those which do not feel comfortable.
I would have absolutely no hesitation in recommending Protective Behaviours for ANY member of staff or organisation, looking to be more proactive in personal awareness and safeguarding.”
Claire Owens
“I have worked with Lucy on multiple occasions over the last decade across a wide range of settings: an inner-city Academy; a Studio school and an international sixth form college. Lucy's work thoughtfully unpacks and develops the skill set we need to address some of our most immediate priorities: student safeguarding; student wellbeing and staff wellbeing. Feedback from staff is consistently positive; they rarely get to reflect and learn how to do so well. Lucy helps them connect with themselves and their work more deeply. Lucy's workshops are carefully planned and research grounded and students feel they gain new insights through Protective Behaviours methodology that they did not have previously.”
Shaun McInerney
"I discovered my ability to understand my character and it has helped me to be less anxious in many of life's situations. Thank you Lucy."
Serena Crawford
"I recently attended the understanding anger and tools for well-being course that Lucy ran at Wirral MIND. The course was relaxed, informative and engaging. The course content helped me to gain both a better understanding of the mechanics of anger and improved my vocabulary in expressing the associated feelings. I'm certain this will help with expressing myself to others, as well as raising my self-awareness.
The group felt at ease instantly with Lucy’s informed, considered and engaging delivery of the subject, which allowed us to share experiences and maximise our learning together."
Steve
"Lucy's Being At Your Best workshop was extremenly well-received by our inestigators of sexual exploitation and abuse. Participants' described it as "exciting motivating, insightful, refreshing, engaging and valuable" and the demand was such we ran it three times. Lucy tailored the workshop to the particular audience and their work and she did an excellent job of making the virtual Zoom format both participatory and relaxing. I was lucky enough to have the opporutnity to participate in one of the workshops and not only did I enjoy the session, I learned strategies and calming techniques I sitll use."
Meriwether Beatty
“Very belated huge thanks for your wonderful support. I am in a completely different head space and am mulling over how happy and content with life I am these days. I can't thank you enough for your kindness and practical help during a really dark time in my life. You were pivotal in helping me navigate my way out of that and I learnt so much about myself. I still use a lot of your techniques and am pretty balanced mental health wise these days.”
Helen P
"Not only does Lucy have the practical knowledge to help you, but she supports this with a thorough understanding of the science behind the practice. Highly recommended."
Matt Janes
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