Barker Andy - Unlock You

Andy Barker is a performance coach and trainer with a diverse background in business and the performing arts. Experience ranging from London West End theatre to senior corporate management fired a fascination with personal development and human behaviour, which led him to train in his specialisation of Cognitive Coaching.

Andy runs two companies: Andy Barker Coaching for his business-based coaching work, and Mind Fitness. He and Mind Fitness co-founder Beth Wood work in organisations of all sizes, in the education and performing arts sectors and in the community. With their teams, they run innovative workshops that train people to increase resilience, reduce anxiety and improve wellbeing.

Beth Wood , together with Andy, developed the Mind Fitness programme which draws upon mindfulness and several cognitive techniques to help people to get out of their own way and achieve their potential. Beth devises the various educational programmes delivered by teams of actor-practitioners to improve the mental health and wellbeing of young people across a range of schools.

With a background in theatre, Beth has written numerous plays and first wrote for Pearson with criticism/drama activities for the Longmans Shakespeare series. In recent years, her focus has been on inclusive theatre, using drama as a developmental tool. As well as Mind Fitness, Beth runs Prospero Theatre, which builds arts programmes and projects around social as well as artistic objectives. She loves every bit of what she does!

Mind Fitness Learning A great day for us at Mind Fitness is when we hear from someone who has attended one of our courses who thanks us and says that theyve just got their first job after several months of unemployment. Or a company we work with tells us that after 6 months all their teams are reporting a boost in performance and increased levels of engagement.

Our aim, with this book as with all our training work, is to help people to feel and work better.

Our work takes the Mind Fitness teams to a wide variety of organisations from tiny charities to huge corporates. Sometimes we are starting from scratch, helping an organisation to develop strategy; other times we are a small part of an existing and robust programme to boost performance and support wellbeing. Both are equally exciting.

We also work extensively in the performance sector, with drama schools, theatre companies and individuals. In the education sector we have teams in primary, secondary and special schools in an extensive programme funded by Children in Need. And we tour Unlock You Live, open events for individuals to attend.

We work wherever we can make a difference.

For details of our work with Organisations , in Performance or Education please visit our website www.mindfitness.training