reflect + replenish + renew with creative wellness

about creative wellness

Creative Wellness exists to inspire, nourish and support helping professionals, healers, and human service leaders to cultivate the art of self-care in mind, body, heart and spirit.  

By designing, staying true to, and engaging with your meaningful self-care efforts in the midst of it all you enhance your overall health, well-being, balanced living and deep satisfaction in life and work.  Your self-care also helps you prevent the occupational hazards relevant to the emotional labour of helping and supporting others.

As the founder of Creative Wellness, I respect the complexities and challenges related to self-care for helpers, healers and leaders.  I believe sustainable self-care is both an ethical imperative and a necessary foundation within the lives of those who give so much of themselves to others, as well as to the causes they believe in.

“Lynda’s gift is her energy, her clarity, her generosity, her wisdom, her Presence. Willing to sit and open; to truly hear what is, and to guide you gently back to the loving Presence you are. I feel connected and renewed with a sense of energy and contentment, ready to step forward toward my highest possible Self.”
—Patricia Galaczy, Educator,
Consultant and Founder of
The Art of Dialogure

creative wellness approach

What is Creative Wellness?

Creative Wellness is both a philosophy and an approach to helping you dream, discover, design and do self-care in your own unique, authentic way.  This path supports you to achieve the health, well-being, balance, clarity, vitality, peace of mind and fulfillment you crave and deserve.   

 Creative Wellness as a philosophy – When you approach your self-care and well-being as an artist would a blank canvas, you have the opportunity to expand what is possible - you are invited into the heart, essence and choice of creating wellness in all dimensions – occupationally, physically, emotionally, psychologically, and spiritually.    

 Creative Wellness as an approach – I use an arts based approach to creating change, growth and health.   I am extensively trained in the use of creativity and mindfulness as ways to increase self-care and holistic well-being.  I integrate the expressive, healing and contemplate arts into all of my services, programs and resources.  As such, I might ask you to write, journal, tell a story, paint, make a collage, move your body, listen to music, meditate, walk, get in nature, breathe deeply…we decide together what calls to you, what might best support as well as inspire you to observe, know, grow and care for yourself in mind, body, heart and spirit while also enjoying the journey of nurturing yourself.   

We don’t just talk about self-care together, we do it! Whether within one-to-one coaching, a group coaching program, a retreat or with any of the Creative Wellness products availabe here – you have the opportunity to be in action with caring for yourself in a authentic, self-loving, and meaningful way. 

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.  While there are great rewards inherent to helping others, there can also be costs, or shadow sides of helping that can lead to becoming a ”wounded healer”.

As a social worker, I have seen many helping professionals lose their sense of joy and experience professional burnout.  Early in my career I also experienced high stress and trauma due to the nature of my work as a front-line social worker, while at the same time I was unknowingly neglecting my own self-care needs.  This resulted, in part, from putting other peoples’ needs consistently before my own needs, in part from being too busy all the time (working, going to school, married, volunteering, etc.) to actually tune into my own self-care needs, and lastly because as a young social worker I really did not have an “in the bones” perspective on the self-care imperative as a helper. 

As helping professionals, we all know this formula of giving to others while neglecting the self – has wide reaching negative 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 (or integration) in all areas of life helps to keep these painful 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 both as part of my own experiences described above combined with losing three social work colleagues to suicide in a six year period. 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, satisfaction, resonance and wellness through self-care within life and work.

Meet Lynda Monk, MSW, RSW, CPCC 

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

I 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 ten years private practice including coaching, consulting and training, including within this time my associate relationship with Fisher and Associates 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 holistic self-care, healthy lifestyles and healthy workplaces, I strive to inspire and inform helping professionals, healers, human and social service leaders and their workplaces to manage and prevent occupational stress and trauma in meaningful and effective ways.

Please also know, as the 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 my clients bring forward. If your needs or project require a solution or expertise better provided elsewhere, I can refer you in the right direction or put a team of professionals together to meet your unique needs.

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.

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 (CPCC)the Coaches Training Institute (CTI), as well as Group Coaching Essentials through Potentials Realized, and Body Centered Coaching through Body Mind Spirit Coaching.

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.

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: A Reflective Wellness Practice for Helping Professionals

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.

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.

I have a love for writing as a means for coaching, teaching, learning, expressing and creating.  For more information about my writing experience and pulication credits, please click here. 

Praise for Lynda’s training and presentations

“It is always a joy to collaborate with Lynda Monk on any project. Whether training, curriculum development or a myriad of wellness activities, Lynda is flawless in her facilitation and will custom design a training session that meets your needs in a timely, flexible and sensitive manner. Lynda’s sessions consistently result in glowing feedback and always leave the participants stronger and wiser for having spent the time with her.”

—Kim Dooling
Regional Child Welfare Consultant
Field Education Coordinator

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.

My 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, retreat facilitator and speaker I can be!

Contact Creative Wellness to learn how I can help you define and achieve your self-care, health and wellness goals – as an individual or an organization!

the rest of the creative wellness team

meet Dawn Martinello

Hello everyone! I’m Lynda’s Virtual Assistant. I live in a small town just outside of Windsor, ON, and I’ve been running my own VA company for the past year. I specialize in helping businesses with their online presence by providing services such as affiliate program development, digital product (ebook) launches, Wordpress website design, social media strategies, internet marketing, and plain old administrative assistance. My team provides additional resources like bookkeeping, copywriting, and graphic design. I’m currently developing some new books and products of my own that will help people start and build their social media platform and their own digital books.

At Creative Wellness, I help Lynda maintain her newsletters, update her website, and ship some of her products. I’ve also helped her launch a shiny new Twitter background and Facebook Fan Page. If you haven’t checked them out yet, you really should. You’ll have the opportunity to “meet” me when you register for events or are interested in purchasing one of Lynda’s amazing products. While you may not see me, I’m working hard in the background to make sure that Lynda can provide the best service possible to you!

When I’m not working, 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.}