about creative wellness

Creative Wellness honours and acknowledges the challenging and meaningful work of helpers, healers and leaders. Our services and programs support balanced living and well-being among those who help others while at the same time work with organizations to create healthy, engaging work environments where quality care and professional well-being can naturally flow.

creative wellness mission

creative wellness approach

As founder of Creative Wellness, I engage a wide network of collaborative partners and professionals including other coaches, trainers, facilitators, consultants and writers to bring the best services, programs and information to individuals and organizations.

In this way, I meet the unique focus, needs and goals that our clients bring forward. If your needs or project require a solution or expertise better provided elsewhere, I can refer you in the right direction.

Your success and satisfaction are my top priority. I agree to work with individuals and client organizations where I know we can add significant value and achieve results together.

Meet Lynda

• registered social worker
• life and wellness coach
• master trainer & facilitator
• published writer
• professional speaker
• life balance & self-care enthusiast
• mother, wife, entrepreneur

Lynda Monk, MSW, RSW founded Creative Wellness in 2000. I bring clients over ten years of diversified clinical and crisis intervention work as a child welfare, children's mental health and medical social worker, combined with eight years owning my own business as well as a long term associate relationship with Fisher and Associates (www.fisherandassociates.org) offering a wide range of wellness training, organizational health consulting, coaching and speaking services with proven results supporting professionals and organizations to learn, change and grow towards greater wellness and balance.

With a passion for achieving wellness through healthy lifestyles and healthy workplaces, I inspire and inform helping professionals and organizations to create more balance and manage occupational stress in meaningful and effective ways.

I earned my Masters of Social Work (MSW) degree from the University of Northern British Columbia. I also have B.A in Sociology from the University of Western Ontario as well as an Honours Bachelor of Social Work (HBSW) from Lakehead University. I received my professional coaching training through the Coaches Training Institute (CTI), as well as Group Coaching Essentials through Potentials Realized, and Body Centered Coaching through Body Mind Spirit Coaching.

Background Story

I learned early in my social work career that helping others can result in deep satisfaction as well as personal pain if one is not paying attention to their own personal wellness and self-care.

As a social worker, I have seen many helping professionals lose their sense of joy and experience burnout. This results, in part, from putting other peoples' needs consistently before their own needs. This has wide reaching consequences both personally and professionally.

It is common for all of us as helpers to touch the edges of stress and overwhelm sometime during the seasons of our respective careers. Self-care and creating balance in all areas of life helps to keep these edges at a distance and keep wellness, vitality and fulfillment up close in life and work.

I became very interested in how helping others impacts helping professionals themselves. This lead me to developing a burnout prevention model while completing my masters of social work degree and to a path of ongoing learning regarding how to support and coach professional helpers and organizations dealing with the occupational hazards of job stress, burnout, vicarious trauma and compassion fatigue to achieve greater balance and wellness.

Accomplished Curriculum Author

I have authored and co-authored more than twenty training programs and manuals, some of which include:

• Care for the Caregiver: Reflections and Actions
• Creating a Healthy Workplace
• When a Client Dies: Healing and Recovery in the Workplace
• Coping with Change
• When You Walk In the Water You Get Wet: Understanding Vicarious Trauma
• Burnout Prevention for Helping Professionals
• Life Source Writing: Writing from Within for Balance, Well-being and Wisdom

Thousands of professionals have benefited from these training workshops and seminars over the past ten years both through Creative Wellness and through my associate role with Fisher and Associates (www.fisherandassociates.org).

I am also the co-author of Suicide Postvention is Prevention: A Proactive Planning Workbook for Communities Affected by Youth Suicide as well as the author of numerous articles on resiliency and self-care for those in helping professions.

Praise for Lynda's training and presentations

Affiliations

I am a Registered Social Worker through the Board of Registration for Social Workers (BRSW) in British Columbia, Canada. I am a member of both the British Columbia Association of Social Workers (BCASW) and the Canadian Association of Social Workers (CASW). I am also a member of the International Coach Federation (ICF). As a registered social worker and a coach, I adhere to the ethical guidelines of these respective professional bodies.

Certifications

I am certified in Level 1 & 2 Critical Incident Stress Debriefing (CISD), Level 1 Reiki, Level 1 & 2 Healing Touch and is a Certified Esalen® Massage Practitioner - this background gives me a strong grounding in mind body approaches to healing, stress management, and wellness.

Lynda's Guiding Philosophy - Live Well, Live Fully

When we have optimal wellness through healthy, balanced living we tend to feel more fulfilled. When we strive for fulfillment we feel more positive and this supports a greater sense of overall well-being - therefore my personal motto is "Live Well, Live Fully" - feel welcome to make it your motto too!

I live on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, Canada, with my husband Peter and our two young sons Jackson and Jesse. My favourite self-care activities include journal writing, hiking in the woods, yoga, inspired conversations with friends, walking meditation, learning new things, eating locally grown organic food, spa time, and weekly massages. I pursue my passions including writing, traveling and being the best mother, wife and inspiring coach, consultant and speaker I can be!

Contact Creative Wellness to learn how I can help you define and achieve your balance and wellness goals - as an individual or an organization!

the rest of the creative wellness team

meet

I spent many years in retail management where I learned that hard work, perseverance and a nose for business got you to the top of any corporation. After several years working as a customs analyst for a large brokerage company, I became pregnant with my son. It was at that point that I chose family over career and realized the value of working in a virtual setting. Thoughts of becoming a business owner flooded my world as I searched for a vocation that served me well as a mother, wife, and budding entrepreneur.

I worked from home as a virtual assistant for a year while also building a profitable Avon business. Then, in 2009 I left it all behind and opened the virtual doors to my own company, Monday Morning VA. My firm partners with other businesses to give business owners back both their time and money by handling their administrative tasks thus freeing the business owner to do what they do best - run their business and generate revenue.

Though born in Southern Ontario, I grew up in a small northern town with my family where the way of life was transcendent and idealistic. Philanthropy is something that I stress in both my personal and professional life. Since the death of my mother in 1988, I've become a supporter/crusader for the Cancer Society. Professionally, 1% of all revenue is donated to the Windsor/Essex County Cancer Center Foundation. I have also work diligently with the local Humane Society in an effort to bring animal rights to the forefront of the media and public.

Outside of work, I fill my days with family, friends, and personal development. {You can often find me reading works of fiction, or business + personal development related books.} To learn more about Dawn and her company, please visit www.MondayMorningVA.com

meet Renée Deakin

On a journey of creative, intuitive awakening for quite some time, I have devoted my life's work to supporting others in finding harmony, balance and healing through simple, holistic, healthy, restorative living.

I feel blessed to have the opportunity to do this in many ways: through intuitive website design, women's workshops, drumming circles, creation of two decks of Spirit Circle cards, and an online forum for the conscious community on Vancouver Island (and surrounding islands). As a writer I am currently authoring two books, and I maintain several newsletters and blogs online.

I am one of the founding members of the Conscious Business Network in Errington, BC. I have a particular interest in encouraging the development of new ways of doing business in our community that honour personal, social, environmental and spiritual wellness in a sustainable way.

I first made a connection with Creative Wellness when Lynda approached me to redesign this website. As a website and graphic designer, my mission is to provide my clients with a personalized, soulful experience and to foster an atmosphere of harmony, intuition and creativity in our work together.

Embarking on this website journey together, Lynda and I discovered a mutual passion for offering support to others - and a nurturing, collaborative team was born! More than just website development, I am honoured to support this project through the development of respectful, inspired relationship as part of the Creative Wellness team.

Over the years, my journey has taken me to live, teach and work across Canada and in the States. I currently work from my home studio in a peaceful, rural area of Vancouver Island.

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