Lily Breuning Ellis is a resilience coach and trauma facilitator. She lives a holistic approach to dis-ease and has a deep understanding of how our neural wiring can limit our life experience. Her learning from the many people she has supported over the years, as well as her own life, is that with new information and determination, we are able to rewire our brain to enable powerful living, positive thinking and joyful high performance. Her life journey is dedicated to growing and learning through challenges, combining wisdom and knowledge and sharing this through coaching and facilitation. She works in multiple organisations as a resilience/presence coach and breath-work facilitator.
Lily Breuning Ellis, Resilience Coach, Breathwork Facilitator
Who is Lily Breuning Ellis?
A passionate lover of life and a philosopher at heart, would be the best description of me! From my vantage point no matter how tough situations may be, there will always be those moments that take my breath away. This reliable wink from the future pulls me through the life pain we all go through. I lean into my darkest places, feel the pain of it, and allow it to take me to awareness, learning, and growth. I always look for the meaning, the light at the end of the tunnel. This eternal optimism drives my family mad at times!
I love people and am intensely curious about our journey through this life. I am fascinated by the process of incubation, of newness and birth, how breath gives us life and can carry us to different states of being by simply changing the tempo, how this very breath leaves our body at death, and my intuitive sense that our energy field continues once our body has died. There is a thread through all the above that draws me, and I sense the energy field or pattern that creates our reality. We are the artists creating this pattern each second. My greatest hope remains that by living deliberately we can create differently and with awareness, we can make our energy field an exquisite attractor field. We can choose this at any moment, once we become aware of the fact that we are continually creating our experiences. This is my life focus and what I try to bring forth through my facilitation.
A big part of me is the mother part. I have 3 amazing children, all unique individuals who are unafraid to be their authentic selves rather than fit into societal norms. They are so self-aware and wise, and in many ways, they grow me. They inspire me continually with their courage, depth of insight, and emotional intelligence.
I live near Cape Town, South Africa, and for all the turmoil in this beautiful country, I am African to the core. I live with my husband and lots of gorgeous animals who rule our roost.
What is the name of your business and what is your focus?
My holistic wellness practice is called the Sanctuary of Light. I am a life coach, grief/trauma facilitator, and spiritual guide. I also have a large corporate client base focusing on resilient leadership. Most of the corporate work happens online, while individual trauma work happens in my beautiful consulting room. Often our first step towards healing is finding a safe space.
My focus as a coach and healer is simply on supporting people to live their best and most powerful life. I also encourage thinking about, talking about, and planning for death. I have a passion for breathwork and am a qualified advanced breathwork facilitator. The breath connects us to our best selves, is the bridge between physical and spiritual, and is our most powerful tool to navigate trauma. How we breathe affects our muscular, nervous, respiratory, and cardiovascular systems. The latest science around breath management is overwhelming in terms of how we can use our breath to regulate and ensure better health and mental wellness.
We are learning how our unintegrated trauma is often what holds us back most in life and continues to cause us pain through triggers. A huge focus is therefore on finding the trauma patterns and integrating the lingering pain by building a sense of personal safety and finding ourselves beyond our trauma.
Dealing with trauma and burned-out clients must be emotionally intense. How do you practice self-care and remain energized?
I love nature and swim in the ocean daily. When I am in the ocean, I can’t think of anything else other than the sheer joy of the moment. I also connect with my free child, with play, and laughter, no matter what is happening in my life at that point. I am very into brain health, and I know that this daily practice releases enough endorphins to enable me to cope with whatever the day holds.
I also practice stillness daily through yoga, breathwork, or meditation. I have seen the difference it makes when I have regular practice as opposed to when I neglect these daily rhythms. It’s easy to let one's days take on a tempo of their own, to suck every minute into doing rather than being. The insight gleaned from a lifespan of 60 years is being aware of what really supports and what depletes me. I now prefer to live my days more deliberately.
What are some of the issues we are dealing with currently that hold us back from living optimally?
We live in a world of massive, fast information exchange and intense competitiveness. We are constantly working, and we sacrifice the time it takes to practice self-care to rather stay on top of our work and keep our jobs. It doesn’t help if someone is hugely successful in their business or career, but they are burning out. Likewise, we will never feel fulfilled by our achievements if we carry huge trauma from our past.
We live our best life when we can replenish our energy levels sufficiently daily, we are able to connect with people we care about as well as have a sense of meaning in our days. We need to be able to retain our sense of hope and optimism when things get tough. And we need to get in touch with our most authentic selves, past our wounds.
In order to live optimally we need to invest in our health and wellness and use essential daily rhythms to create resilience rather than deplete energy. These daily rhythms comprise sleep, nourishment, exercise, and the ability to silence our minds. That’s where it starts – it’s the foundation on which we build the rest. The more demand in our days, the more solid the foundation must be.
How did your professional life evolve?
I have always been a seeker of knowledge and am fascinated by a wide range of topics. I initially qualified as a chef and then once my first child was born, I went into interior design. Though I loved both fields they were not fulfilling enough as I had a driving need to work with people in need. I thought about medicine or psychology, but this wasn’t an option for me at that time. I turned to self-study initially and voraciously devoured books on topics ranging from energy medicine and quantum physics to Buddhism, meditation, human anatomy and physiology, psychology, and systems theory. I then started qualifying in various alternate therapies and opened my first practice offering alternate therapeutic interventions. Once I qualified as a consciousness coach, I moved into neuroscience-based coaching and finally went on to achieve my degree in Psychology.
Mindfulness and meditation have always been a cornerstone of both my personal life and my practice, and I gradually realized the powerful transformative potential of breathwork. I started incorporating this into my coaching practice and running masterclasses during covid lockdown around managing anxiety, stress, and overwhelm. So I could say I am a resilience expert – both because of surviving my own life traumas and thriving, as well as what I constantly learn from life in general. A large focus in my corporate work is around building resilient companies and leaders, while my private practice builds resilient individuals and families.
Tell us more about Breathwork?
Breath awareness and breathwork are taking center stage lately as science is proving the power of how changing our breathing transforms our brain/body system. Being intelligent about how I breathe has had the most profound impact on my life. I believe this has transformed my autonomic nervous system and changed me from an overly sensitive and anxious person into a strong and resilient woman. My ever-deepening understanding is of breath a tool that we all have access to, that costs us nothing, and both keeps us alive and offers us a bridge to our highest selves. Breath is therefore both transactional and transformational! In recent years science has started to confirm what human beings have sensed for thousands of years – breath is literally the best medicine available. We just need to correct how we breathe. More about this in my articles to come!
You are also involved in end-of-life work. What draws you into that space as it’s not something anyone can do?
I have been caring for people in end-of-life since 2001 and find this to be a powerful space that is mostly under-resourced due to ignorance, and avoidance. Death is not an easy topic for most people to think about, much less talk about. And yet it’s something that will happen to every one of us. We will most likely witness a dying loved one at some point, and we may be part of a terminal diagnosis and end-of-life process of a family member, or even ourselves. Death is not failure, or something that won’t happen if we don’t face it. I focus on informing people what needs to be in place to ensure we have the right information on hand if we are gravely disabled or ill, as well as ensuring we don’t leave a legal mess in the event of our passing. I support families around how to care for loved ones at end-of-life, trying to ensure a good death as far as possible.
All in all, my practice focuses on supporting people towards living their best life, and by doing this we also build a trajectory toward a good death.
What do you believe is a ‘good’ death?
When we are at peace with what is happening, as pain-free as possible, know that our affairs are in order and have no unfinished business with people we care about. I have also seen how people are affected by the life they feel they have lived. Looking back should be a peaceful process rather than one filled with regret. Live your life in such a way that looking back will bring contentment and gratitude.
