Hi, we’re Rachel & Lucy
Two teachers, two mums, the co-founders of The Whole Health Project, and the published authors of Somatic Practices for Trauma. Between us, we’ve spent years teaching yoga, breathwork and meditation around the world, and over the last few years we’ve built a thriving online training school, teaching thousands of students everywhere, in breathwork, meditation, yin and somatics, to bring this work into their own lives and practices. We built The Whole Health Project to make trauma-aware training accessible: not just for coaches and yoga teachers, but for therapists, counsellors, medical professionals, school teachers, and anyone who holds space for other people.
Our story
The Whole Health Project began, as a lot of good things do, with a plan falling apart.
When our sell-out retreats in Bali were forced to close during the pandemic, we found ourselves on a tropical island with no business and no income, but with years of experience teaching breathwork, meditation and yin yoga around the world. So we poured all of it into our first online teacher training, a breath coach training. It was a hit. Our students asked for more. And The Whole Health Project was born.
And everything we’ve built since has come from listening to the people who come to us wanting to train. Most had researched for months and kept finding the same thing: courses that were either uninspiring and commercial, or so clinical they felt shut out, and usually long and expensive. What they wanted was something accessible: grounded, real teachers who don’t put themselves on a pedestal; science-backed, but easy to actually understand and use; trauma-aware, without a five-figure price tag or years of study. So that’s what we set out to make.
Bridging the gap
For a long time, if you wanted support, the options were fairly narrow: talk it through, or head to a yoga class. Both have their place, but there’s so much more.
The kind of work we teach, breathwork, meditation, movement, somatics, all of it works with the body and the nervous system, not just the mind. It’s some of the most powerful, lasting change there is. Our mission is to bring it further into the mainstream, and to put it in the hands of the people already doing this work: coaches and teachers, therapists and counsellors, medical professionals, school teachers, anyone who holds space for other people. So that more of us have the choice, and the tools, to work this way.
Meet Rachel
Rachel Fearnley is a somatic practitioner. She came to this work the long way round, through years of yoga, breathwork and meditation, and talk-based therapies, driven by a deep curiosity about people: why we do what we do, why we feel what we feel.
All of that exploration made her more and more aware of her own patterns, her shadows, the way she was wired. But at some point, the awareness became almost counterproductive: she could see it all, and had no idea what to do with it. So much teaching stops right there, at the point of awareness, okay, now what?
Somatics was her answer to “now what.” It gave her a way to actually move through the patterns, not just notice them. She went on to study with a number of extraordinary teachers, build a thriving online somatic practice seeing clients one-to-one, and create her own courses and workshops, before bringing it all to The Whole Health Project, taught in a way that’s accessible and grounded.
Outside of work, you’ll usually find her in the ocean. She’s lived in Bali for more than fifteen years, where she surfs, raises her daughter, and shares her home with a happy houseful of animals.
Meet Lucy
Lucy Foster-Perkins began her career as a professional dancer, deeply attuned to the body’s language, and to its limits. After adrenal fatigue forced a reckoning in 2014, she turned to gentler, more introspective practices: Yin Yoga, breathwork and meditation (studying with her teacher Rupert Spira), alongside Hatha, Ayurveda and 5 Element Theory from Traditional Chinese Medicine.
Her approach blends the precision of a dancer with the compassion of someone who has walked the path of recovery herself. She lives in London with her family.
Our facilitators & collaborators
For some of our trainings, we bring in specialists we trust and love to work with:
Lic. Begońa García, Clinical Psychologist
Begoña leads the trauma theory in our Trauma Aware Facilitation Training. A clinical psychologist from Costa Rica, she blends psychotherapy with her work as a breath coach and mindfulness leader (Adentro Mindfulness), and is passionate about breaking down the stigma of trauma so there’s more support and empathy, for individuals and whole communities.
See the Trauma Aware Facilitation Training →
Juel McNelly
Juel facilitates our Ethical Space Holding training, hosted through The Whole Health Project.
