Meet the Student Support team
Jacqueline Swan
Creative Arts Facilitator and HICAT online Assessor
I am assessor Jacqueline (from Australia)…
I am a nature-based rewilder, rites of passage space holder, soul worker, artist, weaver and barefoot wanderer.
I facilitate creative practice in nature spaces, which encourages the inner and outer exploration of wild landscapes. When we allow nature to be our muse, we can tap into our wild sourced intuitive wisdom, igniting our aliveness and ultimately awakening us to our full potential. This is my heart felt passion.
In the last years I have realised the importance of living the life that I desire. To explore the service that I can provide to others in their healing journey. By creating spaciousness, I can live intuitively and true to myself. Through this commitment to authentic living, I evoke a curiousness in others, so they seek a healthier way of living and being in body, mind and soul.
HICAT allows me as an assessor to support students to cultivate the confidence to step into their power to become part of a holistic healing network worldwide. I am the personal ‘cheerleader’ that runs alongside until the finish line. It is brilliant to provide motivation and be an intuitive presence to feel into the intangible. I am here to activate the lens in which the student can see into new spaces.
By being an assessor, I am privy to many others unique and wonderful ideas. I am an honourable witness of each student’s journey. Each unique story provides me with inspiration and keeps my creative mind alive. This fuses my being with new ideas and insights. This aliveness keeps me in the game and is why being an assessor is a way of life that I wouldn’t change. It is elemental in my continuing evolution and personal development as both a human and practitioner.
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Nat Shillor
Creative Arts Facilitator and HICAT and MPHCT online Assessor
Hi I'm Nat. I'm originally from the South of the UK but I recently embarked on a new adventure and moved to Berlin, Germany.
I have always loved painting and drawing, and I have been interested in mental health for a long time, particularly my own.
During the pandemic, I became aware that I just wasn’t happy in the job I was in anymore, and I decided to get back to the things that really resonated with me.
I knew I wanted to do something creative, but I also really like helping people. When I saw an ad for HICAT I knew that this is the perfect mix for me!
Doing the course helped me get in touch with parts of myself that had been buried, and am now able to help other people be happier, healthier and more resilient through creativity.
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​Welcome to our lovely community! It's lovely to meet you, I am looking forward to hearing your story
Dr. Olivia Efthimiou
Creative Arts Facilitator and HICAT online Assessor
Hello beautiful soul! My name is Olivia.
I have always been a sensitive person and felt like an outcast, more of an observer of life looking in from the outside. I was also always creative, in one way or another, more so out of a deep need rather than to hone any particular artistic talent. Sensitivity and creativity, it seems, go hand in hand.
My HICAT journey was a challenging one, sparked by a deep depression and a profound spiritual awakening in mid-life. And with that, abandoned hopes of the person I had always wanted to be. My TRUE self. A self that walks the walk, not just talks a good talk.
As soon as I found HICAT, let alone the terms “holistic” and “integrative” that I had studied all my life, including in my PhD, spoke directly to my heart. For me, that always meant combining head and heart. Spirituality and science. Practicality with high intellect. This is precisely what I found in this program.
I enrolled in HICAT in January 2020. I set out with trepidation and hope.
The first thing we learnt about was ‘Fight or Flight’. I was stunned. Stunned I had never learnt this in school. That no one ever mentioned this to me growing up, or in all my counselling sessions throughout the years. How empowering was this little piece of knowledge, and what a crime it was we are robbed of that power.
The theory was beautiful. And the creative exercises looked simple enough. Deceptively simple – which is the beauty of the arts as therapy.
Many miraculous experiences followed in the coming months as I experimented and expressed myself with different creative modalities like dance, sound, drama and clay work. Modalities I had longed to play with, but never felt confident or ‘cool’ enough to tackle. And through these, I was able to make peace with parts of my past that had been holding me back long before my HICAT journey. I was finding powerful healing in a fresh embodied way that was deeply grounded in the earth. It was like an equally magical but unique form of shamanism. My training as a healer and my own road to healing were unfolding in simple but unimaginable ways.
Towards the end of my journey, I finally revealed myself as a practitioner to the world and to my community. It took me forty years to muster the courage to truly accept the call. The call to be a teacher and educator, a shaman, energy worker and holistic therapist. I am still training. I am still the seedling. But it has grown stronger. And it is ready to face what lies ahead, with greater balance, peace and resolve.
My mission is to now guide and support others, like you, through this magical and life-restoring journey that is HICAT in my role as Assessor.
I am so honoured and excited to connect with you on your sacred journey.
Bev McGarey
Creative Arts Facilitator, HICAT online Assessor and In Person Student Support
Bev's story is coming soon!