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Founder@ Interview
Interview with Karen Lucia
Credits@Karen Lucia
“Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Help with things you are not good at or help with your own mindset and peace of mind. .” – Karen Lucia
Today we feature Karen Lucia, the founder at Karen Lucia. We hear their story in their own words, their successes, their challenges and their insights.
Let’s start by getting to know you. Can you please tell us a little bit about you and what you do?
I am an ex-professional dancer, a social scientist and work as a Health & Movement Coach and EFT Practitioner. I mainly work with women and guide them through changes in their lifestyle that will help them improve their physical and mental health.
One of the tools I use to do this are my Dance & Movement workshops. In these workshops, dance and movement are used in a therapeutic manner to facilitate (re)connection to self or others, expression, creativity, and it will mobilise energy that is stuck to allow the participants to be more productive and better equipped to find solutions for challenges in their daily lives.
A great introduction and start to this interview. Can you please tell us, how did you start, from what age, and what made you decide to change direction and start?
My passion for movement and fascination with the never-ending possibilities and power of the human body, lead me to work as a strength and conditioning trainer after my dancing career, and I studied clinical nutrition to be able to help people achieve a healthier body and one that they feel good in.
After a few years, I realised that the individuals who actually maintained their lifestyle changes after the initial 3 months were the ones that also changed the way they looked at their body and health, and take what they learned to become confident in the possibility of success – whatever that meant to them.
My own journey has always been one of putting experiences and what they teach me in a big imaginary backpack, and I can relate to the struggles that come with that down the, sometimes long, road. That’s why I decided to study different techniques (like EFT, NLP and performance coaching) that can help performance, confidence, behavioural change and mindset, and clear the negative emotions that hold a person back or just simply sabotage one’s progress.
In the end, I looked for a way to bring all of my training and experiences together, and after working with a good friend from Belgium who is a dancer and a coach as well, I started the Dance & Movement workshop concept in London. And what a new journey it has been! It is extremely satisfying to see how people open up through dance and leave these sessions energised and refreshed!
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Thank you for that insight. So can you tell us…What does your business do and where is your company based?
Based in London, but I travel abroad to teach and coach as well.
What’s the story behind your success? What led to your aha moment? how did you get to where you are now?
Different experiences lead me to my aha moment. I’ve always mainly followed my passion and my gut in terms of what I wanted to do professionally. As a dancer, your financial stream is not always steady.
There will be very good months, but not so great ones as well. Teaching and coaching had always been something that comes naturally to me, and I had been teaching dance and exercise classes since I was 19 as well. So I decided to explore that more and strength & condition coaching and clinical nutrition, to be able to work with clients.
When I moved to London from Brussels, I was 31 (old for a dancer!) and made the move to full-time coaching and teaching. And because I had always had an interest in the psychology behind behaviour, lifestyle changes, and society in general (I’m a BA in social science), I trained and got different coaching qualifications as well.
For while I thought I wanted to step away from the movement and I focussed more on therapy and coaching work with clients. But this never completely felt right for me. I enjoyed the work but something was missing. I blew my own mind when I finally figured out that I should use dancing, movement, and physical expression to get to what people often feel is missing in their life, which can be healing from the past, reconnection to themselves – and for women, their feminine energy -, removing blockages (creative, productive, communicative, connective), finding solutions for issues and feeling allowed to let go without judgement.
Because of my years of experience in working with clients, I was able to start bringing this kind of work to people right away. However, I wanted to bring the concept to more groups of people. Word of mouth is always the best marketing, but getting people or companies that don’t know what you do to take a chance on what you have to offer is a whole other challenge.
You have to put yourself out there, and keep trying and showing the value of the concept. And that requires a complete belief in and passion for what you do. And it’s very useful to work with experts on areas that you might not have time for or are not great at, like PR.
Thank you for sharing that. What’s been your life’s biggest lesson so far?
I ran into some big failures only a few years after coming out of the school system, and back then there was no real focus on mental health, mindset and self-development. So I let these failures completely wipe me out and I lost all my confidence in my own abilities.
It took me years to build that confidence back up and initially I did it through sheer willpower and restlessness. I knew what I wanted to do but because I wasn’t sure how to do it, I was always doubting myself. So there was a lot of procrastination involved.
But having a great support network, and a never-ending urge to learn, guided me to dig deeper into mental health and mindfulness. I learned how to heal from the things that happened and take those lessons to find that confident, joyous spirit inside of me again.
I am so happy that there are more and better resources now for young people in terms of mental health, and that it has become such an open topic. I see teenagers working through things in ways that I only became aware of in my late twenties, and find that so impressive and encouraging!
By knowing how to work my perceived weaknesses to my advantage. I have ADHD and understanding how my brain functions has given me more peace in navigating around concentration struggles and the urge to always do 10 things at the same time (because it is all so interesting!). And know how to put all the “motivational quotes” in perspective (“no pain no gain”, “you are not tired, you are just lazy”,…) and realise that taking breaks on time will be so beneficial in the long run.
If you were to go back in time, what piece of advice would you give to your younger self?
I would ask my younger self to be more aware of what was really going on inside my body and mind and honour that to change what isn’t working or move on from what failed.
I started out being fearless coming out of university and knew I would be an entrepreneur and do my own thing. But as I moved on and failures came across my path, I too often let them bring me down, to the point where I became scared to start over or change direction.
I had to really work hard on myself to change that mindset, and only through learning how to do this for others, I realised how to help myself. The key for me was awareness.
We’re nearly halfway through our interview so it’s a great time to ask how does your business run. What three tools make your business run better?
An important tool for me is my website, through which people can book my services and stay up to date with the email marketing of what is coming up.
What do you know now that you wished you had known before?
By knowing how to work my perceived weaknesses to my advantage. I have ADHD and understanding how my brain functions have given me more peace in navigating around concentration struggles and the urge to always do 10 things at the same time (because it is all so interesting!).
And know how to put all the “motivational quotes” in perspective (“no pain no gain”, “you are not tired, you are just lazy”,…) and realise that taking breaks on time will be so beneficial in the long run.
What has been your greatest or proudest achievement or moment?
When I realised that after having been so down about past failures, I had managed to create a business in a completely new city, without help, and it was going well!
What future life goals do you want to achieve and why?
I would like to be able to organise more projects that help young girls and women thrive to become the new leaders that society and their communities need.
To finish our inspire questions…”We believe that sharing inspiring words can inspire others.” If there was one positive thing you would say to someone to inspire and empower them what would it be and why?
Don’t be afraid to ask for help. Help with things you are not good at or help with your own mindset and peace of mind.
“Thank you it has been great learning more about your founder story and Karen Lucia”
To learn more about Karen Lucia Visit karenlucia.com/
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