Meet Liz Cunningham of The Heart Space

“My life’s work is to share my experience and understanding of Emotional Intelligence(EQ)in a way that supports new ways of seeing, feeling, thinking and doing……a new way of being and responding to life situations so that we can navigate the times we live in with more joy, vitality and fulfilment.”

Speaking from her peaceful studio, The Heart Space, in Clansthal which is located in a marine conservancy just 40 minutes outside Durban, Liz admits that it takes courage to live and love in today’s world and especially in South Africa where emotions tend to run high at times.  

But, unlike the tendency to raise eyebrows at the notion of “being emotional”, her approach is to actually embrace emotion. Emotions influence everything all of the time. They are a naturally occurring source of energy and information about ourselves and others, she explains.

When worked with intentionally, they can fuel amazing change and growth – which is why EQ matters, she continues.

For Liz, EQ has mattered to the point that it has been central to her career since the eighties.

As co-founder of Equip, a leader in developing emotional intelligence within the corporate space, she has run workshops, provided training, mentoring and coaching and witnessed positive change and growth.

Since 2002, she has partnered with human resource and business leaders to dream, design and deliver EQ centric strategies that unlocked human talent and potential. “I work with individuals, teams and leaders, impacting employee energy, resilience and engagement, team cohesiveness, organisational climate and capacity to navigate change.”

But even this came at a price.

“My passion and focus flows from my own experience. I started working in the early 80’s with enthusiasm and big dreams. Twenty years on, with a level of societal and organisational success under my belt, I was feeling stressed and drained of life energy. I was making a good living but I was running on empty,” she admits.

Her response was to embrace what she was teaching and sharing with others.

“Since 2000, my path has been one of learning and choosing to live well at every level of being – physicalenergy and balance, emotional choice and freedom from old patterns, mental curiosity and creativity, spiritualessence and impact, she says.

Although that may sound esoteric to some, in a real life scenario, it translates into choice, action and consequence and comes down to interrogating unconscious sabotaging behaviours, negative emotional energy patterns, limiting beliefs and stories that keep individuals from living their true potential.

Liz sees herself as a Heart Leader and a Soul Mover.

A heart leader shifts perspectives from fearing life to loving life, from survival to choice and growth.

“A change of heart changes everything,” she observes.

A soul mover embodies heart intelligence as a doorway to aligning body, mind and spirit using movement and energy management practices to access intuition and body/mind intelligence.

As any hyper stressed person on the brink of burnout will attest, one’s body reflects one’s mind.

Although Liz still works in the corporate space, she now focuses more on the individual mentoring of people in situations of influence and impact who want to grow their own heart led impact in the world, and holding Group Womanity Retreats at her beachside studio. The latter, she points out, is to inspire woman to trust the language of their heart and body to guide them in living each season of life with more joy, vitality and authenticity.

 “My best kind of work is where I show up as a mentor, a non-judging conscious presence. I meet people where they are at and support them in allowing life to provide their learning so that they can integrate their personal insight and navigate their world as it unfolds,” she explains.

Liz says, “since end of 2107, I have been contributing to the EQ Evolution podcast series on Unpacking EQ and Living EQ.  These are conversations that meet and serve a global community with free downloads of podcast material that ‘talks’ to the subject of Living Emotional Intelligence.”