‘Hooked on living’

Hooked on Living began as a partnership between two therapists Denise Hook and Amanda Living. Starting in the Gold Coast, QLD with mobile and clinic therapy sessions and later the addition of workshops as well as community yoga classes.

Amanda found other avenues that sang to her heart and left the partnership. She offers therapy sessions and can be contacted from the Zenthai Shiatsu webpage.

The name Hooked on Living stayed as it captures the imagination of living your best life with an attitude of gratitude and a zest for all avenues in life. It resonates with the Just Do It motto that continues to inspire Denise to be always learning, overcome challenges and live life to its fullest.

about Denise

Denise Hook is a qualified and experienced Early Childhood Teacher with over 25 years working directly with children and families. Her focus is on making connections, creative expression, and nature immersion and of course having fun. Foundations for developing a zest for living and learning.

Denise leapt at the opportunity to become a qualified Forest Learning Leader through the FSLI (Forest School Learning Institute) where she created and implemented a Forest Learning Framework within children’s services. Seeing the benefits children and educators experienced in these nature immersion programs led Denise to explore the current availability across Australia. Some States and regions have a range of options including Playgroups, sessional community Bush Kindys and programs for home-schooled children. However, many areas of the Country are missing out. She found limited training opportunities for educators and even less aimed at the service level.

Children everywhere benefit from connecting with nature and Denise believes with effective training and support children across the Country can benefit from nature immersion programs being offered in existing children’s services.

The Nature Immersion Children’s Services training packages are now available to services who want to take the step and begin the process to offer their own nature immersion program.

They are practical, cover a broad range of topics and support both the management and the education teams.

Having an enthusiastic approach to life Denise also explored her own health and wellbeing as a priority in pursuing personal freedom. She has continually adjusted her lifestyle and psychology with a growth mindset resulting in some significant life skills she enjoys sharing with others.

Denise is a trained and qualified Zenthai Shiatsu practitioner having completed the 9 month training program under instruction of Gwyn Williams in 2014 and the Zenthai Flow Teacher training in 2016.

She is also a 200 hour YTT qualified hatha yoga teacher in hatha yoga techniques delivered by Akhanda Yoga Australia in 2015.