I am Nicola Lambert and I run a successful holistic private practice based in Mosman, on Sydney’s lower north shore, concentrating on using a range of psychotherapy, transpersonal and transformational coaching techniques to co-create life changing outcomes with my clients.

Here, I work with those who are facing some of the major challenges of our time -  anxiety making ‘soul loss’  and its accompanying addictions; social, cultural, and environmental injustice and harm; meaninglessness and depression; life reassessment and transformation; career transitions, redundancy, financial loss; workplace challenges and relationship breakdown and break up.

I have spent the last fifteen years in the psychotherapy, transformational coaching and coach training fields. Since 2002, I have worked as the co-designer of, and a Senior Lecturer in, the two year Transformational Life Coaching Diploma at Nature Care College, Sydney and am the Coaching Co-Department Head.

Recently, I was awarded the 2011 ICF NSW Coach of the Year award which was an incredible honour, and allowed me to feel both rewarded and received by an industry I have felt proud to be part of in terms of my own work, and the work I undertake at Nature Care College(undergraduate courses) and the Institute of Transformational Coaching (Post grad courses and development)

Psychotherapy aims to improve an individual’s well being through improving living relationships, the transpersonal addresses the whole of life and moves beyond the rational, and the success I find with my work is best discussed by my clients -  so here are some words my clients have used  to describe my work -  ”soulful, empathetic, gentle, energising, and highly intuitive”.  With these orientations, I support my clients as they choose to walk through personal thresholds, time and time again.   These breakthroughs transform their challenges into emergence, awakenings and personal empowerment, leading to (almost without exception) visionary lives committed to reconnecting to “the sacred”, and a path of holistic health, soul wealth, and meaningful abundance.

I am a constant learner and love the  to challenge myself in my own personal growth and continually seeking to improving my knowledge, capabilites as a therapist and coach,  and ‘depth-of-process’ skills. In turn, as a lecturer and coach trainer, I am passionate about creating enthralling and soulful interpersonal learning and workshop spaces. I aim to generate artistry and magical mastery in all my students professional work, and lives. Currently, I am undertaking a Master of Arts in Social Ecology, focusing on deepening my co-creative power and presence in the transpersonal realms (spiritual), deep ecology (of interconnectivity) and transformational finesse in the coaching process.

I live on the northside of Sydney with my 15 year old son and love the proximity to the harbour and beaches.  I love to escape to the bush as often as I can –  camping and living close to nature.

This site is only new in its formation and will be brought more “to the moment” over the next week or so,

In the mean time, should you wish to contact me, please do so at -

MOB 0433 128 645 or  nicolalambert@bigpond.com

I work with clients locally in Sydney, on the phone Interstate, and also Internationally via SKYPE.

Finally, I would like to draw to your attention a series of workshops, specifically for women I am commencing in May, 2010.  This will be  a theory and skills based program of 4 x 4 hour WOMEN @ WORK Series, one seminar per month.

I believe that my own strength is to commence with programs specific to women’s needs.  These will fall into the areas of  of Effective Communication, Conflict Resolution, Balancing Life and Work, Holding Femininity & the Goddess Within.

These will be held at central locations across Sydney  (initially)  and will be a really good mix of theory and practical applications for a range of skills, tools, understandings and actions that, women, specifically, can employ to enhance and prosper their life and career in an often challenging world.

This WOMEN@WORK Series can also be run as part of a business’s on-going corporate development program.  It’s just a matter of arranging schedules and booking in.  In these situations, it can be adapted to include men:

Love and Light

Nicola Lambert B. Ed, Grad Dip Teaching. Grad. Dip. Psychotherapy Counseling Cert., Dip Transformational Life Coaching.., Cert IV Bus. Coaching., Cert IV Workplace Training and Assessment.

Nicola Lambert offers holistic and transpersonal psychotherapy, coaching and counseling. She works with clients who wish to work through their issues in a soulful, caring and highly transformative environment.
Her clients present with a range of challenges including soul loss and its accompanying addictions; meaninglessness and depression, work/life balance problems, relationship conflicts,  life reassessment and transformation, career transitions, redundancy, financial loss, workplace challenges and relationship breakdown and start ups.

Some words Nicola’s clients have used to describe her work are soulful, empathetic, gentle, energising, incisive, highly intuitive and life changing. With these orientations she supports her clients as they choose to walk through personal thresholds, time and time again that transform their challenges into emergence, awakenings and personal empowerment, leading to (almost without exception) visionary lives committed to reconnecting with the sacred beauty of their soul in all its colours and a path of holistic health, soul wealth, and meaningful abundance.

(See times and details: Pages/Transformational Groups)

Hi everyone,

As a part of my commitment to transforming lives, I am now running group coaching and therapy workshop-spaces for clients, or their friends and acquaintances, who wish to work at a group level while creating significant changes in their lives.

In addition, commencing May, 2010 I am starting a WOMEN@WORK Series of theoretical and practical workshops designed to support women in the workplace in areas of communications, conflict resolution, leadership and transformation as well as work/life balance.  If you are interested, just get in contact with me.

My story

My own story might mirror many others. After suffering in virtual silence with an eating disorder for over 15 years, when I finally discovered the power of groups, my transformation was incredibly rapid. In my teens, twenties and thirties, I was overpowered by low self esteem and “family of origin” issues, and thinking the whole time that I could tackle it on my own, I know that my life was saved when I finally broke this denial. After entering into a healing and learning community, through group participation, I was led step by step, process by process, through everything I needed to heal and recover in order to live the passionate, healthy and evolving life I do today. I wish to offer this support to you, or anyone you love, or know, who is suffering in anyway.

My resources

I have spent the second half of my life gathering tools and formal qualifications to support my vision of helping those on such a path. I have been training coaches and counsellors in group work at Nature Care College, St Leonards (Sydney), for the past 8 years.

What I am offering

I am offering a variety of weekly “psychotherapy and transformational coaching groups”. I have information on this site regarding the groups. If you are interested please read further details in the “pages” section under the heading of “Transformational Psychotherapy Groups”.

Friends and family are often best placed to forward this website to anyone you know who is hurting. Or perhaps you might talk personally to, anyone who may benefit from the work I am offering.

Psychotherapy groups are close to my heart. Many of you may know me as a therapist or a coach, however from my own struggles, this work, group work, is my true calling.

Thank you for your support in this,

Warmest regards,

Nicola Lambert.

nicolalambert@bigpond.com

0433 128 645

Over the last 10 years, through my private psychotherapy and coaching work, and as senior lecturer and co-creator of the Nature Care College “Life Coaching” course, I have developed an extraordinary range of materials, learnings and skills that I feel need to be offered more broadly.  Over the last year, I have offered these to post graduate coaches, supporting their development in the specific industry of coaching.

I am now taking this work into the corporate arena, recognising and appreciating that with all the pressures that have mounted across business during, and since, the GFC, people are working harder and longer , and decision making and communications are seriously under threat.

While I am not ignoring males, I believe that my own strength is to commence with programs specific to women’s needs.  These will fall into the areas of  of Effective Communication, Conflict Resolution, Balancing Life and Work, Holding Femininity & the Goddess Within.

I have created a theory and skills based program of 4 x 4 hour WOMEN @ WORK Series, one seminar per month.

These will be held at central locations across Sydney  (initially)  and will be a really good mix of theory and practical applications for a range of skills, tools, understandings and actions that, women, specifically, can employ to enhance and prosper their life and career in an often challenging world.

This WOMEN@WORK Series can also be run as part of a business’s on-going corporate development program.  It’s just a matter of arranging schedules and booking in.  In these situations, it can be adapted to include men:)

I will be posting more specific information on this site and at www.womenatworkseries.com.au in the next couple of weeks.

If you would like, you can contact me, Nicola Lambert on 0433 128 645 (nicolalambert@bigpond.com) or Craig Duckmanton on 0412 130 221 (craigd@corporatesustainability.com.au)

NOTE: We will be taking this WOMEN@WORK series interstate later in the year, and so if you are interstate and would like to make an inquiry, please make contact with either Nicola or Craig

I empower your growth and transformation

• My clients are adults and teenagers.  I work with individuals and couples.  Many have had prior personal growth experience; some are new to therapy.
• I provide an atmosphere of safety, free from judgment; a place to be deeply heard as we explore you troubles or concerns.  When appropriate, I can be active, asking questions, and helping you to clarify what you are thinking and what you want.  I encourage expressions of emotion.
• I mostly do in-depth psychotherapy, but also do short-term therapy on specific issues.
• I believe that each person knows what is right for him or her. I will try to help you find that place of wisdom in your self. 
• I believe we all have the capacity for greatness.  I help people to see their limiting expectations and to develop their full capabilities.   Growth is giving up our current status and becoming the hero or heroine of our own sacred life passage.  Such a transformation gives renewed power and energy.

A Metaphor for Psychotherapy

Since men and women first began gathering around campfires, they have been telling stories of heroes and heroines, beasts and ogres, quests and the conquering of fear. These stories have been sustenance as important to us as food and water. They have encouraged us, helped us to weave a community, shaped values, and given meaning to our struggles. Joseph Campbell says, “[myths] serve as a powerful picture language for the communication of traditional wisdom.” Though the modalities have changed, narratives containing the wisdom for living are every bit as important today, as they were to the cave dwellers.

Fifty years ago Campbell wrote The Hero with a Thousand Faces, in which he explored the universal themes and symbols in myths that were born from wildly different cultures, told in different languages, and set in different times and places. All these stories are far more similar than they are different. Carl Jung introduced the idea of the collective unconscious, the universal pool of symbols and ideas, thoughts and meanings that are shared amongst different peoples, even when they have had no known contact. Myths and stories from all cultures draw from the collective unconscious, and therefore tell similar stories. What emerges is the collective human wisdom, told in story form. Campbell delineates the stages and common elements found on the hero’s journey. I find this is a wonderful metaphor for the transformative journey of psychotherapy. First let me summarize what Campbell says about the mythological hero’s journey.

The Journey

The hero’s journey always begins with a “Call to Adventure.” Some event upsets the placid surface of life, and our adventurer is called to resolve a crisis. There is blight upon the land, a father’s illness, the hand of a princess to win. The hero is given a task, which will restore wellbeing to himself, his family or to his whole community. The task always takes the hero beyond the circle of the known, into a strange world controlled by unknown forces, and filled with frightening creatures. Often armed only with the determination to persevere, the hero must do what he has been told is impossible. But when the hero answers the call to adventure and decides to apply all his strength, skill and energy to resolve the crisis, something miraculous happens. Showing the courage to cross over to the unknown, the adventurer gains magnified powers. He is at his best and soon discovers he also is not alone. A universal theme in mythology is the appearance of a being with supernatural power, whose role is to aid and advice the adventurer. Campbell says, “One has only to know and trust, and the ageless guardians will appear. Having responded to his own call, and continuing to follow courageously as the consequences unfold, the hero finds all the forces of the unconscious at his side. Mother Nature herself supports the mighty task.”

As the story continues, the hero undergoes a “road of trials.” The series of tasks demanded of the hero take him to the brink. He must do what he fears is beyond him. In the process he is purified and humbled, his energies are concentrated, his values and understandings realigned. His animal helper continues to teach and encourage him. Our hero learns that traditional techniques will not work on these problems, and he must view them from a much bigger perspective. When he drops old defenses and coping skills, and sees an expanded field of possibilities, he begins to succeed. With each success his wisdom, and consequently his power, is expanded. The road of trials is transformative. Gone is the innocent, naïve adventurer who set out. The road of trials is often referred to as a series of deaths and rebirths. This is initiation.

When the tasks have been completed, the hero returns home. He brings back with him the full bounty that he has gathered. The least of which is the prize he originally sought. His vision has been so expanded, his tenacity so tested, his wisdom so deepened, that his greatest prize is his own matured Self. The hero reenters his community with greater stature, and enriches his family and his community with all that he has learned.

Parallels With Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy is likewise an exploration of the unknown. This unknown is the inner world of our unconscious mind. This journey takes every bit as much courage, as a trip to slay a dragon. The psychotherapeutic journey also begins with a crisis the hero does not know how to resolve. This could be a relationship problem, a depression, or a sense of meaninglessness. The call to adventure is when the hero realizes these unpleasant feelings are not going to go away on their own, and he must explore them in some new way. This is the point at which someone first comes to my office. Together we examine the problem, and discuss how he would like to approach it. Through this process my client, the hero, realizes what developmental task is being asked of him, how he will have to grow to resolve his problem. Some people drop out of therapy at this point, not wanting to undertake this journey.

Those who stay, undergo a road of trials similar to that of the mythological hero. The unknown is his or her own wounds and defenses. It is the lost, forbidden and denied parts of the Self. The ogres and demons found in myths are symbols for the demonized parts of the Self. The protective powers and aids that the mythic hero encounters are likewise symbols for the strong and wise parts of the Self. As our adventurer crosses the threshold into the unknown he too gains magnified powers. He is at his best. I often find that the resolve to undertake this journey and the resulting clarity of purpose causes a shift in my client’s energy. People are drawn to him, and synchronistic meetings frequently occur. Again and again I have found that as people learn to drop defenses and look at the world and their own life from a broader perspective, unexpected people come forward and offer help.

Myself as a Guide

I view myself as a guide. Not in the supernatural sense, but in the sense of one who has ventured out many times on my own journeys and lived to tell the tale. Every person’s wilderness is different, and his or hers alone to explore, but I know a lot about how to take the journey. I believe most people have far more resources than they have tapped, and I encourage clients to find their strengths and think of themselves in a bigger way. I know tricks to calm the detractors who whisper in their ear. I teach people how to hold on to what they know is true about themselves, and not allow other people to define them. I encourage, contain some of their fear, and sometimes give reality checks. To me it is a great privilege and joy to witness another person’s journey.

The psychotherapy explorer also undergoes a metamorphosis and returns to the world profoundly changed. He has not only resolved the “identified problem,” but also learned some truths, dropped no longer needed defenses, and found inner resources. This has caused a rise in self-esteem that allows him to take a position of greater stature in his family and community. This can manifest as better relationships, new friendships with healthier people, career advancement, or a healthier lifestyle.

When I think about the stories the ancients told around campfires so long ago, and realize that they spoke of heroes who wrestled with self-doubt, had to conquer their fears, and found empowerment in that process, I feel a kinship with those long ago peoples. The ancient myths give me a picture of their longings and struggles, and wisdom and encouragement returning adventurers have sought to pass on to their brothers and sisters.