By Vivian Collings

A new Haliburton County resident is eager to dive into the wellness of the community with a new workshop series.

Kim Huard, certified professional Neuro-Linguistic Programming coach, has brought Take the Leap to the Wellness Hub in Haliburton, a series of group coaching sessions to help attendees overcome barriers of fear in their personal and professional lives to successfully navigate goals.

“Everyone has various aspirations and dreams, and yet sometimes we can be stopped by doubts,” Huard said. “What’s important to me about these four workshops is connecting with the community, and to offer coaching in a group setting so it’s more accessible than one on one. It’s also quite fun when people in the group have open similarities that we can discuss.”

Huard was introduced to Wellness Hub owners Sarah Comer and Shay Hutchings during the Women in Business conference hosted by the Haliburton Highlands Chamber in June.

The NLP coach is originally from Montreal and recently moved to Algonquin Highlands six months ago. 

“I studied communication and marketing and worked in a PR agency. I was very privileged to live in many markets in North America and in South Korea. I then worked for Quebec’s equivalent to Destination Ontario,” she said.

But Huard couldn’t ignore her desire to connect with others on a deeper level.

“I’ve always been into people development. When I meet people, I really like to know their story, where they’re at in their life, their next projects, and so on, so right before the pandemic, I decided to go to India and do my yoga training class. It was important for me to understand yoga’s philosophy on the mind and body,” Huard said.

In March, she took the Neuro-Linguistic Programming coaching program in Montreal.

“Neuro is our thoughts, so how we analyze any information we receive, and then linguistic is how our thoughts influence our language. So the way we communicate is basically the way we think, it’s a representation of our thoughts,” Huard said.

After years in high-stress jobs, she became certified to be able to carry out her dream of wanting to help others fulfill theirs.

“I just felt like coaching was the perfect bridge between what I was really into and also the skills I had already developed over the years in my professional life,” Huard said. “I kept thinking there were a lot of people that could have used this kind of coaching in my previous jobs. When you’re stressed, you have a lot of deadlines, you’re really in your head and struggle processings everything, just having someone else as a thinking partner helps so much.”

The first of a series of four workshops at the Wellness Hub was called “Start with a clear outcome” and happened in August.

“It’s important when you’re setting a goal to know exactly what you want,” Huard said.

The second workshop takes place this Thursday, Sept. 14 at 7 p.m. at the Hub.

“This one is about freeing our minds from doubt. We have this group of people and everyone shares their own story, and we’ll delve into what can hold us back, and then we work on how to get past doubt,” she said.

Huard will incorporate exercises to manage stress within the workshop.

The third workshop will be on Oct. 12 and will focus on boosting confidence.

The final workshop will take place on Nov. 9.

“This final one will be about embracing change and taking the leap,” she said. “The series is a natural progression of clarifying goals, to understanding doubts, to allowing confidence to be more present.”

Each workshop is 90 minutes long and $40 per workshop. To register, email info@kimhuard.com.