“At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want. There is only one time when it is essential to awaken. That time is now. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.”

— LAO TZU

Hello there!

Hello… it’s wonderful to meet you… and this is Socks and Lucy.

I’m Lydia: changemaker, businesswoman, integral facilitator, coach, mentor, trainer, healer, mother, homebirther, doula, tea and croissant lover. I live on a mountain by a lake in the wilds of Wicklow in Ireland… and while I absolutely love all those identities, I also feel like I’m none of them.

Sometimes I simply long to see what the next breath feels like… and feel my son’s snuggles and drink copious amounts of tea while listening to the rain outside.

Early exploration

I found my purpose early in my twenties although it took a while to build a business doing what I loved. This path of exploration wove in training as a lawyer, working in business, and training as a minister. It brought me to working with child soldiers in Uganda, prison ministry for murderers and sex offenders in Ireland, HIV counselling in South Africa, leadership training in India. In between international experiences I was to be found either working in a Dublin law firm or crying on a cushion on a spiritual retreat… both of which were equally valuable.

Leading edge projects

Examples of work include corporate wellbeing programmes in companies like Apple and Microsoft, facilitating cultural dialogues in Trinity College Dublin, training entrepreneurs in the Netherlands, community development in Northern Ireland and conflict resolution in the Balkans.

Other exciting cultural shifting projects include an AI mental health initiative in London and directing sell-out conferences on mindfulness and culture change in Irish education.

For me, it all boils down to expanding our awareness and embodiment so we can live in alignment, skill and harmony together on Earth… hopefully for longer than the next 30 years!

My family background

I grew up in an artistic, entrepreneurial family in Dublin with a love of the land, property, and beauty embedded deep in my bones. We were in an ‘East meets West’ spiritual community which gifted me a holistic perspective on life from a very young age. I was chanting Sanskrit daily in school and meditating from 4 years old which has given my system a deep grounding in transcendental practices. And like everything, transcendence has its shadows.

To embody fully on the earth I journeyed deep and dark into the shadows of my family, my community, my coloniser and colonised self, my spirituality, my traumas, my gifts, my beliefs, and the vessel through which they manifest - my body.

I returned to the indigenous ways of my ancestors, to our Celtic and pre-Celtic wisdom. I re-membered the honouring of the lower worlds, the land and the cosmos and was initiated into living in closer harmony with all life through ritual, ceremony and the beauty of the mundane. I am still unlearning the ways of our capitalist, extractive, white-supremacist society and reorienting my source of intelligence from the mind to the body, soul and Earth.

Those who know me longest would probably say that I have a compassionate heart, a multi-dimensional mind and a wild, unapologetic streak.

I’m a committed meditator and mother of a 8 year old boy. Of all the teachers I’ve had he is, by far, the greatest learning experience of them all.

3 Pillars

My work is a weave of three disciplines:
+ indigenous Celtic wisdom + meditation
+ facilitation, communication + adult development
+ business development

PRINCIPLES OF MY WORK

+ WE ARE ONE UNIVERSAL FAMILY WITH CELEBRATORY DISTINCTIONS

+ LEADERSHIP IS SERVICE AND LOVE

+ THE TWIN TRAILS OF BEING HUMAN… THE INSIDE OUT AND THE OUTSIDE IN

+ THE ENDS AND THE MEANS ARE THE SAME… WE MUST BE (ACTUALLY BECOME!) THE CHANGE WE WISH TO SEE IN THE WORLD

+ THE PRESENT IS A WEAVING OF THE ANCIENT AND THE FUTURE

+ AT OUR ESSENCE, EVERYONE IS WHOLE

+ WE DANCE WITH POLARITY

+ NON-HUMAN CENTRIC PERSPECTIVE… WE LISTEN TO THE LAND AND THE INTELLIGENCE OF ALL THINGS

BIO

Trainings, qualifications, and accreditations.

  • Integral Facilitator - Diane Musho-Hamilton and Ten Directions
    Professional Coach membership - International Coaching Federation
    Retreat Director, Senior Coach - The Foundation for Transformational Leadership
    Trainer of coaches, facilitators and mentors - The Foundation for Transformational Leadership
    Trainer - Kingstown College
    Mediator - Mediation Institute of Ireland

  • Mindfulness studies - University of Massachusetts Medical School via Centre for Mindfulness in Ireland
    Mindfulness Teacher - Mindful Schools
    Energy Healer - National Federation for Spiritual Healers
    Celtic Shamanic Practitioner - Slí an Chroí
    Doula - Doula Training International

  • FE1s - Griffith College Dublin + Law Society of Ireland
    Legal Studies, Dip - Dublin Business School
    Humanities, Dip - Irish American University,American College Dublin
    History, BA (graduating 2024) - Irish American University, American College Dublin

  • Former Chairperson - The Change Leadership Foundation, a leadership development charity across 5 countries with 10,000+ alumni
    Former Board memberships:
    The Sarah Bird Foundation - an international trauma healing organisation
    Herstory - a cultural movement that tells the life stories of historical, mythological and contemporary women
    Open FM - Ireland’s first LGBTQ radio station
    Lucca Leadership Ireland - the Irish affiliate of The Change Leadership Foundation
    Co-founder National Grieving Day - an annual series of events honouring grief, loss and transitions in life
    Co-director Mindfulness Practice in Schools - an annual conference that ran five sold-out events for pioneering teachers and culture shifters in Irish education.

Portfolio

Selection of recent consulting work.

  • Co-facilitating year long journeys for women through an evolutionary development programme using the map of the Celtic Wheel, with wisdom teacher Mari Kennedy.

  • Mindfulness and wellbeing programmes delivered in KPMG, IRFU, City Group, GE Capital, Takeda, Metlife, Aviva, SAP, Cluid Housing, Community Credit Union, World Rugby, Teamwork, Segment.

  • Coaching MBA students around leadership and personal development.

  • Directing weekend business training retreat for a female leadership team, developing conscious network marketing and new paradigm entrepreneurship.

  • Delivering facilitation and consciousness capacity building for a leading edge initiative at the intersection of mental health + artificial intelligence.

  • Training computer coders how to meditate, aiming to elevate the quality of experience for end users.

  • Creative Director for annual conference for educators and teachers bringing mindfulness and a mindful culture shift to education in Ireland.

  • Ran a retreat for conscious entrepreneurs on graceful, authentic marketing with Sara White at Right Track Creative. 

  • Co-celebrant at a handfasting marriage ceremony.

  • Had a natural homebirth – the biggest initiation of my life!

Testimonials

Client quotes sharing positive experiences and results.

  • "I attended mentor and coach workshops facilitated by Lydia. She is an excellent coach and facilitator. I would describe her approach as high energy and warm."

  • "Lydia is an engaging, warm, and wonderfully positive person to work with. My experience of collaborating with her is that her integrity, caring, and compassion shine through in her work and her personal life. I would highly recommend Lydia."

  • "I have had the pleasure of working with Lydia over a number of years in a number of capacities – we served as coaches together on programmes, we designed and facilitated together and worked alongside one another on various projects…It was always an absolute delight and pleasure to work with Lydia. She has a professionalism that is just wonderful to be around as she does so with an energy that is infectious and a regard for others that means her work is at the very centre of her focus. Lydia is able to engage and inspire a group in such a special and unique way, and her thirst for learning, openness to others and energy for life mean that having the privilege to be in a room with her is a gift to anyone lucky enough to be alongside her. I would happily and graciously recommend Lydia for any work that involves human beings, old or young!"