Meet Laura
Meet Laura
Founder of The Hummingbird Life | Ambassador of Joy | Space Holder | Cacao Ceremonialist | Retreat Facilitator
How I can support you
You may find your way here because you are burnt out, disconnected, grieving, changing, awakening, or simply longing for something deeper than the life you have been performing.
You may be craving community, but not the surface kind. You may be seeking spirituality, but in a way that feels grounded, embodied, and real. You may want to feel joy again — not forced positivity, but the kind of joy that rises from belonging to your own body, your own rhythm, your own truth.
I hold spaces where all of you is welcome: the light and the shadow, the messy and the magical, the tender and the powerful.
But you need to be willing and ready to do your inner work - I am not a pill, I am not here to heal you.
I am here to help you remember that you have the medicine within you alredy
Through my work, I support people to:
Honour and respect indigenous cultures and lineages no matter what our background is
Reconnect with the wisdom of the body
Find emotional clarity and nervous-system steadiness
Build a personal relationship with mindfulness, movement, nature, and ritual
Explore cacao as a sacred plant ally with reverence and respect
Remember joy as a practice, not a performance
Feel less alone on the spiritual or healing path
Develop confidence as facilitators, space holders, and leaders
Honour the sacred in everyday lifeReclaim creativity, intuition, feminine wisdom, and inner power
Laura Yates
Founder of The Hummingbird Life and Secret Sunrise Singapore, Mindfulness Practitioner, Facilitator Trainer and Earth Witch
My way of working
My spaces are sacred, but not performative.
Spiritual, but grounded. Joyful, but never bypassing. I believe deep transformation can happen in a moment of stillness, a belly laugh, a shared tear, a hand on the heart, or a dance under the open sky.
I draw on decades of experience in neuroscience, mindfulness, yoga, somatic movement, cacao ceremony, shamanic and earth-based practices, Andean, Celtic and African cosmology, Reiki, conscious dance, trauma-informed group facilitation, retreat leadership, corporate wellbeing, and my own lived experience of healing.
Movement is one of my oldest medicines. Free dance, yoga, music, and embodied practice have carried me through some of the hardest and most beautiful chapters of my life. Again and again, my body has shown me the way back when my mind could not.
Nature is another great teacher in my life. Trees, rivers, mountains, animals, plants, seasons, and sacred landscapes remind me that we are not separate from life. We are life. When we return to nature, we return to ourselves.
And community is where the remembering deepens. In circle, we discover that we are not as alone as we thought. In shared ritual, we see ourselves reflected in one another. In safe spaces, we begin to trust the quiet wisdom that was always there.
Hello,
I’m Laura Yates,
founder of The Hummingbird Life :
a sanctuary for people who are ready to come home to themselves.
My work is rooted in desire: to help people empower themselves to reconnect with their inner joy spark, find belonging within, and remember their magic in the wider web of life — through deeper connection to Self, Nature, and Aligned Community.
I believe joy is not something we chase. It is something we uncover. Sometimes gently. Sometimes wildly. Sometimes through tears, movement, silence, cacao, laughter, ritual, or a moment under the trees when the body finally exhales and whispers, “I remember.”
For many years, I lived in the world of Banking and Finance as a Chartered Accountant. Alongside that corporate life, I was always teaching, moving, meditating, dancing, and seeking. Eventually, the two worlds began to speak to each other: the grounded, practical world of resilience, leadership, and the nervous system; and the sacred, embodied world of ritual, nature, ceremony, and deep inner knowing.
Today, I bring those worlds together through The Hummingbird Life.
I create spaces for people and organisations to slow down, soften the noise, and reconnect to what is real. My offerings include cacao ceremonies, women’s circles, conscious dance, mindfulness, corporate wellbeing, facilitator training, retreats, pilgrimage, private healing sessions, and earth-honouring rituals.
Whether I am holding a circle in a park in Singapore, guiding a retreat in a sacred landscape, supporting your journey through cacao ceremony, or mentoring new space holders, the essence is always the same: helping people feel safe enough to feel, brave enough to be honest, and supported enough to remember their own medicine.
My mission
My mission is to create spaces of remembrance — spaces where people can pause, breathe, feel, move, listen, and reconnect with the parts of themselves that may have been hidden, tamed, silenced, or forgotten.
I am here for the seekers, the feelers, the leaders, the facilitators, the wild-hearted ones, the tender-hearted ones, the burnt-out ones, the joyful ones, the ones standing at a threshold.
I am here for those who know there is more — more truth, more softness, more courage, more magic, more connection, more life.
The Hummingbird Life is my offering to that remembering.
A place to come home to your body.
A place to root into the earth.
A place to be held in community.
A place to rediscover joy.
A place to remember that the medicine you are searching for already lives within you.
In the news & podcasts
How Nature Heals | Show Me The City | Full Episode, CNA Insider, February 2022
Burnout recovery and choosing joy, Miss Liz’s Tea Time, 2026
CAREERevolution- Laura Yates, Live LinkedIn Event by Licia Dewing Career Strategist, September 2021
How mental burnout led to becoming a Secret Agent with Laura Yates, A Cup Of Tea Podcast with Mary Barrett, June 2021
Holding Space: Sixcomms podcast 2025
All about Cacao: The Wellness Hood 2025
Why music is the latest wellness and mental health trend, by Rachel Genevieve Chia , The Peak Magazine, MAY 27, 2023
Entrepreneurs we love: Get to know Laura Yates, the founder of Secret Sunrise, by Samantha Yeo, Honeycombers, January 2023
What’s the best way to care for your mental health and well-being? Entrepreneurs tell us their fave self-care routines, Honeycombers, February 2023
Wake Up At These Thrilling Secret Sunrise Sessions In Singapore, Megan Zara Walsh, Secret Singapore, July 2022
I Attended A Silent Dance Session, And I Think I’m A Convert Now, Natalie Tan, Her World, June 2022
Accreditations
Humpiq Nusta Andean medicine Woman: Apprentice and initiation from The Lineage of The Seven Rays (Maestro Puma and Maestra Jemmita)
Munayki Rites initiator (Hearts Lights)
Master Reiki Practitioner (Reiki Association of South Africa)
Crystal healing practitioner (Soul Healing academy)
SITA Certified Mindfulness Coach (Mindful Revolution)
Cacao Ceremonialist (Lisa Lifetrain)
Cacao Ceremonialist (Seleno Health)
Brown Belt Nia Teacher (Nia Technique Somatic Dance)
Secret Sunrise Fully Unleashed Level 3 facilitator (Secret Sunrise Global)
Secret Sunrise Unleash Yourself (Level 1 ) Trainer (Secret Sunrise Global)
Shamanic Breathwork Meditation Facilitator (100 hour Yoga Alliance, Sage Shamanic Yoga - Johnson Chong)
Illuma Health certificate of Recognition: Trauma-informed Group Facilitation
200 Hour Vinyasa Yoga Teacher Trainer (RYS, Living Yoga)
200 Hour Vinyasa Yoga Teacher Trainer (RYS, Tegan B Yoga)
Certificate in The Neuroscience for Business (MIT Sloan School of Management)
Keynote Speaker for Keynote Women Speaks Asia
Diploma in Marketing (Damelin)
Bachelor of Commerce (University of Cape Town)
Post Graduate Diploma in Accounting (University of Cape Town)
Chartered Accountant (South Africa) (SAICA)
IPHM Accredited Training Provider and Practitioner
Honouring my teachers, both in this realm and beyond
I teach from my own lived and embodied experience. Over many years, I have taken time to be in deep, devotional relationship with nature and the cardinal directions, allowing life itself to be my teacher. Through seasons of challenge, change, grief, and growth, the directions have become living companions rather than abstract ideas. Through this ongoing relationship, the “wheel” has become my compass.
I have lived and worked with the directions not as a concept, but as a breathing, relational practice. They have met me in moments of disorientation and clarity, sorrow and joy. I have turned to them repeatedly as an inner compass when my life felt uncertain or tender. Walking with the wheel and the spiral has been profoundly healing for me. Through this relationship, I have learned how to soften into self-acceptance, to meet my own humanity with compassion, and to trust the deeper rhythms of life.
This work has supported me in rebuilding trust in the divine—not as something distant or external, but as an intimate, living presence woven through the land, the body, and the cycles of life. The wisdom of nature has offered me steadiness when I felt lost, belonging when I felt alone, and a deep remembrance of my place within the greater whole. My authority in this work arises not from theory alone, but from years of lived experience—of returning again and again to the directions and allowing them to shape my healing, my trust, and my way of being in the world. My life, lived in relationship with nature, has been my greatest teacher.
When I use the term Medicine Wheel, I do so with great respect and appreciation for cultures across the world that honour the spiral, the circle, the seasons, and the wheel of life.
Lineages and Teachings
I teach from three primary places of lineage and learning:
1. The Peruvian Andes
Through the guidance of my Andean teachers—specifically Maestro Puma, Maestra Jemmita, and Maestro Edgar. These teachings are similar to those shared by the Four Winds Society, pioneered by Dr. Alberto Villoldo.
I also honour other teachers who have supported my path, including Johnson Chong and Lisa Davis.
2. The Celtic traditions of the British Isles
This wisdom arises from my Scottish and English heritage, through lived experience and through teachings received from, Sons of Asgard, Weaving Remembrance, Sam McLaren and Mari Kennedy.
3. Ancestral teachings and relationship with land
With a strong focus on honouring ancestors and the land itself, this wisdom comes through my upbringing, the Zulu women, the land on which I—and many of my ancestors—were born, and my mentor, John Lockley.
Aside from the teachings rooted in the UK, you will notice that my work is largely Southern Hemisphere–based.
With the support of these people, places, and lineages, I have lived and worked with the directions over many years as an inner compass. The wheel and the spiral have been a source of great comfort along my life path—offering wisdom, healing, compassion, self-acceptance, and a deep trust in divine guidance.
Clarification on North American Medicine Wheels
I wish to be very clear and respectful here: I do not profess to have knowledge of the cultures or teachings of North American Indigenous peoples. I have not learned from those lineages, nor have I been given permission to teach them. Therefore, I do not teach any North American teachings in my trainings.
According to Bob Joseph of Indigenous Corporate Training (Canada), the original name for what are now commonly called “medicine wheels” was Sacred Circles. The term Medicine Wheel was coined by non-Native Americans in the 20th century, following attention drawn to the Bighorn Medicine Wheel in Wyoming, the largest of its kind in North America.
When I use the word Medicine, it is not to appropriate any specific tradition, but to honour and illuminate the shared wisdom that echoes across cultures worldwide. This understanding of medicine is in harmony with plants, the land, the seasons, and the greater cosmos. It reflects a way of knowing life itself as medicine—nature as ally, not something separate from us.
This is a deep soul-remembering carried by many cultures: that unity consciousness is medicine, and that this remembrance brings clarity, healing, and wholeness.
