Five Elements Acupuncture London. Central London Acupuncture Marylebone, North London Acupuncture Islington, Crouch End & Lagos Algarve with International Holistic Expert Richard Brook.
International Wellness Expert Richard Brook

From The Heart

When people work with me it changes their life. Whether it’s a seed for future growth, a drop in a vast ocean of experiences which that person has around them, or the tidal wave of change which clears the path for the person to thrive across the spectrum of body, mind and spirit – something happens!

It took me a long time to be able to recognise who I am, and what I’ve got to offer the world but I’ve seen it enough now over the last 20 years or so of my professional life to appreciate I have a talent, a gift and to be proud to use it. Seeing this in myself enables me to see the potential in others, and to help them find it themselves. Whether it’s through one to one treatments and coaching, a yoga class which blows your mind through it’s powerful simplicity, or words which educate, I listen and answer your call!

Richard

Richard Brook, Practitioner, Teacher and Coach

Professional Biography

Richard is founder of Creative Wellness, and a specialist in 5 Elements Acupuncture, Dru Yoga, Meditation, Holistic Education and the Body-Mind connection. He’s passionate about understanding and creating what you need to have a successful life – measured from the deepest level of your own perception, not through achieving in the eyes of others.

With over 20 years of experience, he is a true Holistic expert. He graduated the renowned College of Traditional Acupuncture and went on to have successful practices in the Midlands, Bristol and latterly London.

Alongside this he developed his Creative Yoga brand into one of London’s most unique and exciting yoga projects, organising and teaching some of the capitals biggest and most unique events. Understanding people’s holistic needs as ever, there’s also a strong emphasis on connection and community, with events having in-built social elements – rare in the yoga world!

He has worked internationally, helping facilitate programmes at Moinhos Velhos Juice detox retreat, directly contributing to it becoming rated amongst the top 10 detox retreats in the world by The Times newspaper. This extensive role set saw him practicing acupuncture, teaching yoga, meditation, mindfulness and delivering holistic education and creative visioning workshops to a closed group, quite a journey!

His wellness blog is one of the best of it’s kind, demonstrating his broad reaching knowledge, experience and passion to share what can be of help to others.

He has helped thousands of clients, been featured across many media channels, organised and taught at many high-profile events, and delivered wellbeing programmes to multinational clients.

Balancing Your Inside and Outside World

His awareness that treating both the ‘internal’ aspects of a persons health – their body, thoughts and feelings – and also appreciating that their ‘external’ life circumstances – occupation, home and relationships – have to be supportive and nourishing to achieve optimum health set him apart as a true holistic leader. He fluidly combines the role of practitioner, teacher and coach.

He specialises in understanding how a great deal of what we experience in our mind and emotions originates from stress within particular organs and ‘body memory’ from experiences we’ve been involved in. His treatments are very effective at balancing these deeper aspects of us that can often contribute to emotional strain, depression, stress and anxiety alongside treating the more common physical conditions.

He also empowers his clients to understand that achieving balance is built into creation and our human instinct.

His personal strengths are widely recognised as:

  • Outstanding Communicator
  • Tremendously Empathetic
  • Passionate
  • Creative
  • Great Sense of Humour 🙂

Richard Brook, wellness expert, acupuncture practitioner, yoga teacher and holistic coach

My Story

I was a very happy child, perhaps a little bit shy but generally had a great upbringing cocooned nicely within my family. However when my parents suddenly decided to separate when I was around 14 (well suddenly from my perspective as I had no idea!) this nice little solid reality I was living in started to crumble.

In hindsight, it’s moments like this, although they are challenging, which actually make us, as they force you to grow and explore life. My entire reality had become contingent on the external events and circumstances around me, and until it was taken away I had no cause to question anything about my reality or start looking for what I needed.

However, it’s all good in theory, but without the stability of my Earth Element (Family unit) I made a right mess of the first few years after my parents separated! My problem was that I didn’t know myself, hardly at all. I didn’t really have a clue about feelings, emotions or what I needed around me to be healthy.

Lost in Thought & Tinkering With My Life

I often got lost in my thoughts and my ‘intelligence’ telling me that everything should be ok or is ok – when everything was far from it. I would go through and make lists in my mind telling myself that I had everything that I needed – got friends, yes, girlfriend yes, college, yes.

But what I was beginning to realise was the huge gap between the idea of how something is and how it actually feels, through the body, which is of course the actual vehicle that we live in. So great, ‘I’ve got a girlfriend’ or ‘I’ve got a great job’ would state my mind!

But in reality there could be so many things wrong with that particular relationship or job, I wouldn’t know where to start. I fell into long depressions, and when you seldom seem to experience anything that feels naturally more uplifting you tend to think that is the norm. Painful.

I started tinkering a lot with the external circumstances of my life. I would change jobs, uni courses and locations frequently, but to no avail as something just didn’t feel right – which of course was mainly internally generated as I was carrying a backlog of stagnant emotion in my body and mind – which would affect my perspective – so no matter what I was changing outside of me it didn’t really help.

Richard Brook at Burning Man Festival 1996

At Burning Man Festival 1996

However, having burnt out my ‘drinking’ phase quite early at College and Uni, I started to look more towards holistic practices after a trip around the U.S switched me on to them – all these people talking about yoga who seemed to carry such a peaceful demeanour was somewhat alluring!

I then threw myself whole heartedly into these practices as I found they were something that made me feel good, creating an inner sense of wellbeing. But now looking back I can also see I had a tendency – at that time – to become over reliant on these practices, thinking I could solve all the ills of my life by seeking solace in meditation, dance or yoga!

Tension Relief, Fatigue and Being Mindful the Body-mind Registers Everything!

My wellness practices became a constant way of trying to disperse tension while also ignoring the call and instincts in me to change what wasn’t working around me. I wasn’t whole, wasn’t embracing all aspects of who I am. I hadn’t yet recognised that my environment and life choices around me were also an extension of who I am.

Somewhere along the line I’d picked up on a toxic train of thought – which can be prevalent in the holistic world – that you should be able to ‘let go’ of everything that bothers you! That these practices are the be all and end all of happiness! But life is never that easy. I had become too passive and was suppressing natural instincts for change and wasn’t allowing myself to have the confidence in those instincts, so I actually still had a lot of tension on the inside. I was indeed, somewhat ‘intense!’

So this combination of emotional suppression along with trying to disperse the tension related to circumstances in my life that I wasn’t happy with – often my work and personal life – ended up creating bouts of fatigue. Any of you who’ve ever experienced genuine fatigue will also know how frightening it is. It’s not like being tired, it doesn’t matter how much you rest, it’s like someone has just switched your energy off.

Eventually by doing more embodied practices like yoga, and 5 Rhythms Dance I started to listen to the clues and realise my body registers what it’s engaging with in one way or another every moment I was alive! It would register the sensation of my legs tightening when I was living somewhere I didn’t like and trying to grip onto the Earth for dear life. It would register the repeated contraction of my belly when I was in fight or flight as my work was super stressful, it would register my shoulders lifting and chest closing when I was around people I didn’t feel harmonious with.

So a this was all a bit of a revelation, as I could see that I’d originally been using holistic practices such as meditation and therapies to some degree as a bit of an escape, an escape from the circumstances around me, and also from my some of my own instincts and feelings.

The thing is though, is that these embodied practices do eventually’wake you up’ anyway as they start to make you more sensitive to what you are ‘actually’ feeling as opposed to ‘thinking’ and make you more whole.

It’s this mindful awareness which helps you to smash through your blocks and misconceptions and distinguishes these practices such as yoga from regular exercise (where your attention may still be on the ‘outside’) or other means of escape we often use in our life which trance us out and take us further away from our truth.

And eventually I realised everything is connected, your environment and choices are an extension of who you are, they all factor into your health and then things started to change!

Finding the Clues About What Works!

So as well as being aware of circumstances that felt debilitating to me, I started to look for the clues in my body-mind about things that actually worked for me. Now, after years of confusion and hearing other peoples influences in your mind, it’s not always easy to sort out what’s going on in the deeper layers of your own intelligence. But sure enough I started to discern that when following particular inner promptings I would move towards things that were good for me. And just as my body would contract in situations that were abrasive, so I began to notice that when I was situations that were harmonious I would begin to actually thrive. My spine would straighten, my chest would open, belly relax, legs loosen and my energy levels, emotions and inner dialogue take on a much more uplifting sense.

In addition I started to realise that my ‘aura’, my charisma, would also be more apparent and influential the more I did things that I loved. (This is because your electromagnetic field around your body expands when you are happy) This is where I really started to serve the ‘whole’. I realised that doing things I Loved wasn’t just good for me, it was good for the people around me too. I could see that living the life that connected to my Heart also positively influenced and inspired others.

It was a bit like staggering around in the dark at first, and you really need to start to listen, really listen. Not listen to other people, but listen to yourself, your deep deep self (I tend to think of that aspect of me as my Soul) which actually is watching and giving directions and inner promptings about what feeds me as an individual. We are all unique, and then life becomes about creating the conditions on the outside that mirror and support who you are inside. There is nothing better than being able to express your inherent passions. Nothing.

Listening To Who I Really Am

My inner practices then became not about escaping from the world, or seeking an antidote to stresses, but instead about listening to who I am and expressing myself in the world. When life becomes driven from your inner passions your entire energy body, charisma massively ascends and you start to become a bit more super human! You no longer navigate through life based on what seems like good ideas, but from your own inner voice (which is actually the Soul – which is also attuned to a much greater level of intelligence than the smaller mind – and which pervades the entire universe. Remember everything is connected)

So finding practices where I could access this inner knowing and being, inner stillness became a must. And there are lots of ways in to this intelligence, I’d particularly find it during the meditation or relaxation at the end of a yoga class, after an acupuncture session when the discordant energies had been dispersed, or after a good dance! It was like inner ‘visions’ would drop in. I found that mindfulness helped me to stay aware, acupuncture, therapies and movement help me to balance internally, and meditation & deep relaxation helped me access my inner ‘Soul’ voice.

Moving Towards, Not Running Away

I started to move towards occupations and relationships that nourished me, finding my passions, instead of debilitating me, and since then, life has been so much better, but always a work in progress!

So the first part of my holistic journey was very much about understanding and managing my inner state, finding practices which made me feel clear internally, and the second part of my journey was exploring and managing the influence of the circumstances around me. And that’s life folks, we constantly undulate between needing to manage these aspects of our lives.

If you aren’t clear and healthy inside, your perception is polluted and it doesn’t really matter what you do, as you see the world through that filter! But even if you are clear inside, if the circumstances around you aren’t nourishing you, you won’t be fulfilled and your instincts will give you this information!

Time to Share

Ultimately I’ve also had to learn to sit in the silence and hear what’s in my Heart – which is essential – as shaping life around my passions (which are energetically in your Heart) is the way to true, exhilarated exceptional wellbeing.

And now one of my passions is sharing my skills and knowledge with you.

Richard Brook, acupuncture practitioner, yoga teacher and holistic coach

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