CCALFA was founded by Nic Anderson in April 2022 after a year of planning, but the idea spans decades.

After finishing her work as the Founder, Director and Custodian of Canberra Yoga Space (CYS) in November 2018, Nic knew that her arrival on the Sunshine Coast was calling to her creativity as an artist. She also knew that her next phase of work would involve creating a single art hub using different mediums. The intention of the work was about encouraging creativity as art therapy to restore and encourage ‘self-connection’.

CYS was a soul calling for Nic. The work, vision and mission were anchored in and revolved around restoring this idea of self-connection in the individual. It was a dedicated space for different avenues of self-connection, including yoga, meditation, bodywork, various yoga styles, and specialised focus classes.

The centre, which now has a new custodian, was a vibrant hub with 22 teachers/ bodyworkers and many external and interstate guest teachers. All did synergistic work towards the goal of self connection. In a world where culture and systems are geared towards heavy self-disconnection, this work was hugely beneficial for holistic and mental health in Canberra.

Mentoring/Coaching

In her work at CYS, Nic specialised in working with tweens and teenagers (9-14 years), who she met through her Beginners Yoga Course (2014). All the young people she worked with had three things in common: they came from affluent families, were high academic achievers from elite schools, and had been diagnosed with severe anxiety, depression, and eating disorders.

Their parents were desperately trying to avoid medication and find natural ways to fix them.

Because of this, Nic became more dedicated to working closely with the teenagers as a mentor and guide. She also worked with their parents, guardians and family members to help them grow a deeper understanding of what was going on at the core and address it. Despite being high performers across school life, including sports, they were all, without exception, sad kids. This was something Nic understood as it mirrored her history growing up as a child, teenager and young adult. It was proficiency without purpose and lacked connection. These kids were delivering what they thought their parents/family and society wanted of them to gain acceptance, love and belonging but at the expense of their authenticity. Because of this, they had lost their joy.

Nic grew up in and survived a home with domestic violence but was a high academic and extracurricular achiever throughout her schooling, up to post-graduate level. This led to her creating a seemingly successful life in Sydney, earning a six-figure income in a high-profile legal career with the material lifestyle (house, flashy car) to match.

This appearance of success and wealth was jarring for Nic against her internal reality. She wasn’t healthy or mentally happy. In 2005, feeling lost on this treadmill, she decided to restart her life. This meant giving up her identity and the life she had built to that point. What followed were years of deep and intensive self-inquiry, discovering unconscious and subconscious patterns she had used as coping mechanisms to deal with external pressures.

Realising the absence of any language in self-care and discovering how we are as a society and culture raised constant self-disconnection. This realisation led Nic to start ventures around the idea of self-connection. She had businesses in mindfulness and yoga, including CYS, which provided avenues for people to learn and explore self-awareness and self-connection and nurture themselves; spaces that gave a person permission to just be themselves and be nurtured by coming together in community. She also created shared living spaces that supported people to live in a more connected way.

This led to her providing guidance and coaching to a wide range of people, including businesspeople looking for this sense of alignment and release from the treadmill and people in successful careers feeling lost and looking for direction. It also included mentoring the young adults/teenagers and working with their families, which created happier, more nurturing environments where things started to work better.

Art, Sculpture, Motherhood, Education

This dedicated work, spanning two decades, involved self-mastery and supporting others alongside Nic’s own journey in healing and integration. This restored and expanded her work as an artist, sculptor and creative.

As a result, her coaching and mentoring extended into using art as an access point for people, allowing more avenues for clients to express themselves and re-connect with themselves and their emotions.

Nic’s healing also allowed her to choose to become a mother. This role expanded the significance of being present and self-connection even further, making her look through the eyes of her children to view the systems and institutions in place in today’s culture and society. She also begun revisiting her childhood and what systems and norms existed.

With COVID-19 and the advent of mandates and homeschooling, many of these existing systems and structures faced harsh review and have been found wanting. For her own selfish reasons as a mother of two (7 and 9 years), Nic wants to be able to offer the best avenue for self-connection and optimising their potential.

In her mind, this involves a dynamic learning environment that feasibly provides as many creative outlets as there are child, teen or adult interests. It requires a rich, welcoming community with one solid purpose and core values, one where young learners enjoy being taught by several adults and senior mentors who take the responsibility of raising and delivering good, accountable human beings to heart.

The Inspiration Behind CCALFA

In 2000, while drowning in studying legal case studies in law school, Nic signed up for a social studies elective run by a third-generation American-Indian tribal leader descendant.

This was an eye-opening experience that translated many concepts that had resonated with her consciousness since she was about five. The facilitator spoke of an evolved tribal society that existed. In this society, a child woke up and self-directed who and what they wanted to do.

There were at least twelve aunts and twelve uncles for this child to choose a variety of skills to learn and master. These included hunting, pitching a tent, making clay bowls, hand-sewing clothing, making food and looking after animals.

The learning wasn’t compromised by young parents who needed to hunt and go away as they were naturally called to explore and see more of the world. The child was raised by the elders of their tribe, who had done their hunting and travelling. The elders now had a different role: to pass on their skills and wisdom to the children.

This society did not have our modern-day problems on (1) mental health; (2) contraception; (3) funding for quality schooling; (4) funding people for nursing homes; or (5) mental health in the young and the elderly.

CCALFA seeks to capture as much of this organic, community-based model as practically possible within the structure of separation (each family lives in their own house and travels separately to others) that today’s culture and society are grounded in.

This is why CCALFA is located on acreage in a fairly central Sunshine Coast (Australia) location. It offers space for the local community to give this type of learning a go. It also makes it feasible for families to come together so their children can get to know each other and explore different creative outlets in one place.

But CCALFA is not restricted to this land and location by any means. We collaborate with local businesses and artisans and support local creative businesses to come to us, or we send learners to them for further or more advanced study.