Collective of Practitioners for Wellbeing
As a hypnotherapist focused on helping women “wake up to their awesomeness”, Lucy Ellis understands the power of working together to achieve a goal.
Two years ago she decided to harness that power in her own practice space by establishing the Newcastle Health Collective; a co-working environment made up of health professionals passionate about helping their clients realise the potential of their best health.
“I had been working from the premises since 2014 and was sharing the space with two other hypnotherapists, but when they decided to leave and start their own health centre I decided to see what magic I could create for myself,” she said.
“I had spent so much of my life working in isolation, and so the vision was to be able to create a space for practitioners to come and work alongside other practitioners, to build relationships, learn and to grow from each other, collaborate, and to build a community of health practitioners that could then serve the public of Newcastle.
“There are so many benefits to having a collective of practitioners under the one roof; we have a group of experts that can support the whole client, mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually. “Regardless of what our area of practice is, we can work together for the wellbeing of our client.” Newcastle Health Collective currently includes 14 practitioners specialising in a range of different modalities, from psychology to hypnotherapy, counselling to massage and nutrition and naturopathy to Reiki.
Lucy said working from the same space presented an opportunity to educate patients about other complementary therapies, which they may not have otherwise heard of, or considered as an option that may be able to help their individual situations.
“We have just run a workshop for parents with anxious children, and all the participants were just like, ‘Wow. I only ever thought GP or psychology (for treating anxiety), I didn’t know what else was out there and you’ve just opened my eyes to all of the amazing possibilities that I can support my child with and do for them’.
“That's why I started a podcast as well, to kind of educate the public of Newcastle to know what is out there for them, especially around mental health. The approach that people know is to go to a psychologist or a psychiatrist, but (they could also) could come and have a kinesiology session or a hypnotherapy session or a counselling session, and that can really support them greatly.
“The benefit of visiting a complementary health service is the genuine empathic care that you get from the practitioner and deeper insights into the problem. We generally look at the root cause of symptoms, and have a more intense focus on empowering the individual to do the work themselves with this fresh perspective.”
Empowering individuals is certainly part of Lucy’s focus as a hypnotherapist, with specialist programs for women designed to tap into their underlying self-confidence.
“Generally people will know hypnotherapy as something to help them stop smoking or for weight loss even. But in working solely with women… I found that underneath everything, no matter whether they wanted to give up smoking or to lose weight or just to feel calmer or better or de-stressed, it was a matter of self-worth and confidence,” said Lucy
Since establishing the Newcastle Health Collective interest from other practitioners keen to become involved has grown enormously, to the point where they have outgrown their rooms in Hamilton and are preparing to move into a bigger space next month.
“We are moving to bigger and better premises in October,” Lucy said. “We are bursting at the seams where we are now, so the new centre will provide us space to expand and provide more to the public of Newcastle, especially with our newly launched service; Employee Wellbeing Program.”
Keep an eye on their website www.newcastlehealthcollective.com to find out more about their new premises.
