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The Curious Collective - Kate Chisholm

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Brendale, QLD
The Curious Collective - Kate Chisholm

Helping you understand what your body is trying to tell you—and what to do about it "The body whispers before it screams." That tension in your shoulders.

After 24 years in the Australian Army, including deployment to Southern Iraq, I know what it's like when your body won't let you switch off—even when you're safe. The busy brain that won't quiet. The difficulty fully feeling or being present. These aren't problems to fix—they're messages your body has been sending you. In my work, I translate those messages....

Through the COMPASS Intentional Living Program, I help veterans, first responders (service-connected individuals):
✓ Understand what their body has been trying to communicate through tension, tightness, pain, and hypervigilance
✓ Release the protective patterns that served them in high-stress environments but now limit their current life
✓ Reconnect with the ability to feel deeply, be present, and build authentic relationships
✓ Transform operational adaptations into purposeful choices that serve their current life

My approach combines:
- Military precision with trauma-informed nervous system science
- Practical, evidence-based tools (no fluff, no woo-woo)
- Respect for your service experience without pathologising your responses
- Safe, structured support for sustainable change

Your body adapted brilliantly to keep you effective under pressure. Now let's help it adapt to the life you're actually living. The COMPASS Intentional Living Program guides you through four directions:
North: Understanding your body's intelligence and protective patterns
South: Practical regulation tools tailored to your unique responses
East: Integrating body awareness into daily life
West: Creating purposeful impact from a regulated state

🎙️ Host of The Curious Collective podcast
John Maxwell Leadership Coach | Prince of Wales Award recipient

Ready to understand what your body has been trying to tell you?

29/12/2025

15+ years ago, I couldn't move my body freely without alcohol.

I needed a few drinks to dance. To let go of the rigid control I kept locked around myself like body armour.

I was stuck. Guarded. My body had become a fortress I lived inside, not a home I inhabited.

What I didn't understand then... my body had learned to hold that rigidity for legitimate reasons.

Years of military service where hyperawareness kept me effective. Where letting my guard down wasn't practical. Where processing emotions in real-time could compromise what needed to happen.

My nervous system had adapted brilliantly to those demands.

The problem? That same adaptation - still running full-tilt in civilian life - had become constrictive rather than protective.

The shift happened when I stopped trying to "fix" myself and started getting curious about what my body was actually trying to communicate.

I learned nervous system regulation. Somatic practices. How to work WITH my body's intelligence instead of constantly overriding it.

And slowly... things changed.

Now I move freely. Not because I forced myself to relax or "powered through."

Because I learned to recognise what my nervous system was signalling. To distinguish between past threat patterns and present reality. To give my body what it actually needed rather than what I thought it should need.

Here's what surprised me most....

My body wasn't trying to sabotage me with all that tension and hypervigilance. It was trying to protect me - using the only strategies it knew.

Once I understood that? Everything shifted.

If 15 years-ago Kate could see me now - dancing freely in my kitchen, moving without needing chemical courage, feeling genuinely safe in my own skin - she wouldn't have believed it was possible.

But it is.

The nervous system that learned to protect you so effectively can absolutely learn new patterns when given the right conditions.

I'm curious...

What would be different for you if your body felt like an ally instead of something you're constantly trying to manage or override?

What might open up if the tension you carry could finally soften?

27/12/2025

2025 ~ A Year of Deep Connection & Transformation

As I sit here wrapping up 2025, my heart is absolutely full. This has been a year of deep, meaningful connection with the service-connected community, witnessing profound transformation happen in real time.

Through my COMPASS framework, I watched:
🧭 NORTH - Body Wisdom
Tension held for decades finally making sense. Hypervigilance recognised as advanced awareness that adapted brilliantly. Stored grief finding safe passage through breathwork.
🧭 SOUTH - Regulation
Nervous systems learning the difference between alertness and safety. The "can't switch off" pattern discovering it actually CAN. Breath becoming the bridge between activation and rest.
🧭 EAST - Integration
Daily life becoming the practice ground. Physical sensations transforming from warning signals to valuable information. Body-based tools replacing "push through" strategies.
🧭 WEST - Connection
Protective patterns evolving into purposeful choices. Regulated presence creating safety for others. Service-oriented hearts learning to serve themselves with the same dedication.

The Work Behind the Framework - My signature program, COMPASS was created 18 months ago. I sat on it. Refined it. Questioned it. Let it brew until it was truly ready. 2025 was the year it finally birthed into the world.

This year, I...
✓ Delivered COMPASS with 1:1 clients, witnessing the framework's power in real-time
✓ Formed a BETA group to trial the full program
✓ Watched the four directions come alive in people's bodies, not just on paper
✓ Refined the delivery through actual implementation, not theory

The structure is ready for full launch when I return from Colombia in 2026.

Walking the Path First - I can't teach what I haven't walked myself. This year, I deepened my own work:
✓ Completed the Resilience Shield mentorship program
✓ Went deeper into body-based modalities and somatic learning
✓ Practiced what I preach—doing my own regulation work, facing my own patterns, crossing my own bridges

Every tool I teach, I use. Every direction in COMPASS, I've navigated personally. You can't hold space for others' transformation if you're not committed to your own.

What Matters Most - The feedback that resonates deepest, "I finally understand. I got REAL practical and relatable tools."

This is the work. Not abstract concepts. Not generic wellness advice. But body-based understanding that makes sense to nervous systems trained for operational environments.

Deep Gratitude > To every single person who showed up for themselves this year:
Your willingness to explore. Your vulnerability. Your curiosity. Your courage to look at protective patterns and say "I'm ready to understand you."

You didn't just change your own life—you created ripples. Your regulated presence gives permission for others to be human.
Your body knows the way.

With deep gratitude and regulated presence,
Kate Chisholm
Founder, Curious Collective AU

📧 kate@curiouscollective.au
🧭 Your body knows the way

22/12/2025

The Busiest Time of Year 🎄 For Avoiding Ourselves

Christmas week. Peak season for keeping busy, staying useful, making sure everyone else is sorted.

For many in the service-connected community, this looks like volunteering, organising events, checking on mates, running support groups. All genuinely valuable work.

But here's the uncomfortable question worth sitting with...

• Are you serving from overflow — or avoiding your own discomfort?

There's an ancient teaching about trying to remove a speck from someone else's eye while ignoring the plank in your own. It's not about perfection before service. It's about self-awareness.

Because here's what happens when we help from an unhealed place:

• We burn out and call it sacrifice
• We override our body's signals and call it resilience
• We take on others' emotions and call it empathy
• We stay perpetually busy and call it purpose

Your nervous system knows the difference between ~
- Service that replenishes you
- Service that depletes you while feeling like identity

The body doesn't lie about this.

Notice what happens in your system when you slow down. Does anxiety rise? Does restlessness kick in? Does a voice tell you you're being selfish?

That's information. Not about your worth ~ more about patterns that might need examining.

The service-connected community excels at operational tempo. At mission focus. At putting others first. These are capacities that saved lives.

But the same mechanism that made you excellent under threat can become the thing that keeps you from your own healing.

Some reflection questions for this week:
• What am I avoiding by staying busy?
• What discomfort am I outrunning with activity?
• What would happen if I turned the same care toward myself that I extend to others?
• What does my body actually need right now — not what my training tells me I should be capable of handling?

This isn't about stopping service. It's about examining the nervous system state we're serving from.

Because the most sustainable service — the kind that doesn't leave you empty — comes from people who've done their inner work first.....

You can't pour from a depleted well. And pretending the well is full doesn't make it so!!!

Your body has been trying to tell you something. Perhaps this week, instead of filling every moment with doing, there's space to actually listen ♡

The helping can wait. Your healing cannot.

What's one signal your body has been sending that you've been too busy to notice? I'm curious.......

19/12/2025

Your nervous system doesn't just respond to your own experiences - it mirrors the people around you.

This is empathic resonance.

For first responders, it means you're not just witnessing trauma on calls - your body is absorbing the distress of those you're helping. That accumulation doesn't disappear when you clock off.

Then you walk through your front door, and your family's nervous systems begin syncing with your activation. They pick up on what you haven't processed yet, feeling anxious without knowing why.

Here's what makes the difference ~ understanding your capacity.

You can hold space for others' darkness WITHOUT taking it home. You can feel empathy WITHOUT absorbing their burden. But only when you've learned to recognise the difference between what's yours and what's theirs.

This isn't about becoming callous - it's about doing your best work while protecting your system and your family.

The first responders who sustain their careers? They've learned this distinction.

They know that helping someone doesn't require carrying their weight after the call ends.

Your body already knows the difference.

Time to listen to what it's telling you.

18/12/2025

Every day, first responders across Australia wake up, put on uniforms, kiss their families goodbye, and prepare to run toward danger if called.

They don't know what they'll face. They go anyway.
They maintain this readiness while:

• Managing their own trauma responses from previous incidents
• Supporting colleagues dealing with operational stress
• Navigating public criticism and institutional pressures
• Trying to maintain healthy relationships despite the nervous system impacts of their work
• Processing the moral complexity of use-of-force decisions
• Carrying the weight of lives saved and lives lost

This is not ordinary work. This requires extraordinary nervous system capacity....

This past Sunday in Bondi, Australia 🇦🇺 we witnessed what that capacity looks like when tested to its absolute limits. Officers ran toward assault rifles with handguns. They placed themselves between threat and innocents. They stopped terrorists intent on mass murder.

They didn't fail us. They saved us.

If you've criticised the police response at Bondi, I ask you to consider > Would you have run toward that danger?

If the answer is no—and for most of us, it is—then perhaps we owe these officers not criticism, but profound gratitude ♡

》 To the officers who responded at Bondi and to first responders everywhere:

Your nervous systems carry intelligence most humans will never understand. Your capacity to function under threat transcends what many can comprehend. Your willingness to override survival instincts for strangers is the highest form of service.....

We see you. We honour what you've sacrificed. We're grateful you exist.

Because when chaos demands heroes, you don't hesitate. Thank you 🙌

13/12/2025

I really love what I do....

I love showing people the power of their breath. That they already have everything they need to regulate, to settle, to come home to themselves.

This morning at Lake Samsonvale with Buddy Up Australia (amazing SEQ co-ord Mark Amiet) our community came together... learnt simple practices, and experienced what happens when we actually stop.

After a walk through the bush we settled lakeside and breathed together ♡

Conscious connected breath. Nervous system education. Grounding practices.

And people actually felt it. The settling. The softening The remembering that they don't always have to be on.

Teaching this work in nature feels like coming home. Not in clinical rooms. Not disconnected from earth and water and sky. But grounded. Embodied. As it should be.

Several people said afterward how valuable it was to have simple, practical tools they could actually use.

These aren't complex theories.... Just your breath is always with you. The ground is always beneath your feet. Your body knows.

In a world that constantly demands we keep moving - stopping becomes rebellious ~ 🧘‍♀️🧘‍♂️🫶 be a rebel...

Be present.

Breathing deeply is your BEST medicine.

Thank you to the humans who showed up. Thank you Buddy Up Australia for holding these spaces. Thank you Australian Government Department of Veterans' Affairs for supporting this work.

And thank you to that lake, those trees, and the morning for holding us all 🧭

Kate Chisholm

08/12/2025

Anchor & Awaken Retreat feedback has been flowing in > it has been incredibly humbling..... What landed the deepest?

✨ Breathwork that helped people breathe properly for the first time in years
✨ Sunrise rituals, silent walks and ocean moments that reset entire systems
✨ Connection — real, grounded community with like-minded people
✨ A safe and supportive space held by facilitators with lived experience
✨ Practical tools everyone can take home and use immediately

And what we’re taking forward?

More movement weaved through the program.
More intentional opening connection time.
More integration space between sessions to let the nervous system settle.

We’re grateful for every person who trusted us with their weekend.
And we’re already shaping the next experience using everything we learned.

The body knows the way home. !! Sometimes it just needs the right environment to remember.

05/12/2025

Watching Forrest Gump with my 8 and 10 year old daughters has been quite the experience....

Usually I get irritable when they ask questions through a whole movie. But this time? I loved it.

We're watching Forrest tell his story from the beginning - the leg braces, being called "different," the way he processes things literally throughout his whole life. My girls are seeing how other people's opinions tried to define him, but his mother gave him something different. She was his safe place. Everything she said became gospel to him, words he'd quote back to others his whole life.

That kind, innocent heart. Just following life like a box of chocolates, never knowing what you're going to get. Staying present in every moment. Not overthinking. Loving deeply - "I'm not a smart man but I know what love is."

This film opened up conversations I didn't expect to have yet. We talked about the Vietnam War, presidential shootings, the peace era, drug use. We talked about Jenny - about childhood abuse and how it affects the way you cope and process things as you grow older. How trauma shapes people differently.

We felt everything. We laughed, we cried, we got frustrated at the bullies.

This experience with our daughters helped them understand that being different isn't being less. That literal processing, neurodivergence, a unique way of seeing the world - these things don't diminish someone's capacity to love, to be loyal, to show up fully.

And Jenny's story alongside Forrest's? It's the clearest picture of how early experiences shape our nervous systems. Same era, completely different foundations. His mother gave him security. Jenny's childhood gave her survival patterns that followed her into adulthood... when they came back together the foundation is solid for young forest ♡♡♡

What a magnificent film........ your thoughts???

05/12/2025

Navigate Your Internal Compass 👇
Your nervous system is speaking. Are you listening?

The tension in your shoulders. The constant scanning. The difficulty switching off even when safe...these aren't problems - they're signals from protection patterns > here's what changes when you measure instead of guess ... are you curious ??

Recently, I worked with someone whose energetic field revealed:
- Cannot feel joy (-90%)
- Mind still identifying with father's consciousness (87%)
- Emotions no longer being perceived (-81%)
- Will is broken; conflict doesn't materialise (73%)

She'd done years of mental work. Understood her worth. Felt "ready." But her body hadn't caught up.

Within days of receiving calibrated somatic practices for HER specific patterns, everything shifted. The intellectual understanding finally dropped into her tissues. Her nervous system learned what safety actually feels like.

This is precision nervous system work.

I help you see - the exact percentage readings showing:
- Which protection mechanisms are most active
- Where activation is stored
- What your system is guarding against
- How patterns show up in your current life

Then we calibrate practices to those patterns.

Not generic breathwork - specific protocols designed for what YOUR nervous system is actually doing.

For service-connected professionals:
To my community > your nervous system was brilliantly trained for high-stress environments. Those patterns now need conscious direction for contexts that don't require them.

December Availability:
5 spots before Christmas

$97 AUD (moving to $150 in January)

Brisbane face-to-face or online

Veterans | First Responders | Emergency Services | Corrections

Your body adapted brilliantly. Now let's give it precise tools to serve your current life.

Comment below or DM me to book..... also dropping a link with more info below ###

04/12/2025

"Why did THIS break me when I handled so much worse?"

If you've ever asked yourself this question, Ben Pronk's bucket analogy will change how you see stress....

We all have a bucket. Some are larger, some smaller—shaped by genetics, upbringing, and early experiences. Every stressful event, big or small, pours more into that bucket.

You can't see how full someone's bucket is—including your own.

In high-stress professions (military, first responders, emergency services), we're trained to keep going. And we do. We handle the impossible, the traumatic, the unthinkable. On the surface, we look fine.

But if we don't have active practices to DRAIN that bucket—it eventually overflows.

> here's the kicker... It's often NOT the "big" thing that causes the overflow. It's the small, seemingly insignificant stressor that finally tips it over the edge.

🪣 The forgotten appointment
🪣 The minor disagreement
🪣 The routine task that suddenly feels impossible

That's not weakness. That's cumulative stress.

Ben puts it this way, "It can often be a very relatively minuscule stressor that overflows the bucket. It's that literal straw that breaks the camel's back. And people sort of have this massive overreaction or stress reaction brought on by something that in itself may not be huge, but it's that cumulative effect."

Think about it > If you sprain your ankle, you rest it. You ice it. You don't judge yourself for limping..... but with mental and emotional stress? We expect ourselves to just keep running on it—until we can't anymore.

What drains your bucket?

Sleep. Movement. Connection. Boundaries. Nervous system regulation. Time in nature. Therapy. Breathwork. Whatever YOUR body needs.

The question isn't "Why can't I handle this?"

The question is: "How full is my bucket right now—and what am I doing to manage it?"

You can't always control what pours IN.

But you CAN learn to drain it before it overflows.

🎧 Full conversation with Ben Pronk, DSC & Kate Chisholm now live on YouTuibe & Spotify Resilience Shield: Build Your Shield

01/12/2025

This. Right here. This is what's possible.

Shane captured the heart of our Anchor & Awaken retreat - 25 veterans, first responders, and their families coming together, doing the work, healing together.

Watch until the end. You'll feel it.

Grateful to have partnered with Mate-Ship and Nature ZEN to create this container.

27/11/2025

Memento Mori

"Remember that you are going to die."

We lost another military brother this week (one of the really good ones 😢 taken too young) RIP Scotty McAndrew Xx

Before you scroll past thinking this is morbid - stay with me.

During my recent Resilience Shield Cse, we were gifted this ancient Stoic phrase as a life lesson. And it's been rattling around in my mind ever since, shifting how I approach each day.

Fact 💡 Memento mori isn't depressing. It's liberating.

When you genuinely remember that your time here is finite, something shifts. The trivial stuff loses its grip. The things that actually matter come into sharp focus.

Samuel Johnson (yes, the guy who literally wrote the dictionary) noted, "When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully."

One of the most practical applications of memento mori is categorising your precious minutes as either "alive time" or "dead time."

Alive time = moments spent doing things that have real purpose, that create meaning and value in your life
Dead time = everything else

The goal isn't perfection. It's awareness.

Your nervous system knows the difference between:
- Activities that genuinely fill you up
- Activities you do out of obligation, conditioning, or fear
- Activities that numb you from what actually matters

When you're living in "alive time," your body responds differently. You feel more present. Your breath deepens. Your nervous system settles into a state of engaged presence rather than depleted pushing.

When you're stuck in "dead time," your body tells you through tension, fatigue, disconnection, that sense of "going through the motions."

I'm curious, if you knew you had limited time (which, newsflash, you do), would you spend:

- This many hours scrolling?
- This much energy on relationships that drain you?
- This much time doing work that doesn't align with your values?
- This many moments disconnected from your body, your people, your purpose?

This isn't about creating panic or urgency.
It's about creating clarity and intentionality.

It's asking yourself daily:
- Is this alive time or dead time?
- Am I living according to my values, or someone else's expectations?
- Is my nervous system engaged and present, or just surviving the day?

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Brendale, QLD
4500

Opening Hours

Monday	9am - 4pm
Tuesday	9am - 4pm
Wednesday	9am - 4pm
Thursday	9am - 4pm

Website

https://linktr.ee/curiouscollectiveau, https://www.facebook.com/groups/curiouscollectivecommunity

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Our Story

I am the very proud mother of three gorgeous children. As a Mum I can honestly say I have the best job in the world, extremely rewarding and brightens every day. This page provides an area where like minded people can share their quotes, advice, ideas and motivate each other in the world of essential oils !! Our team can offer education, support, workshops and so much more.

I have been using essential oils my whole life and LOVE them with all my heart, I discovered the wonderful doTERRA 2 years ago and have decided to share my essential oil stories with the world. I have been blessed to have met SO many fantastic people already while building my doTERRA business and on this oils journey.... the community and “tribe” is second to none. You are never left wondering how to use your oils, instead you are supported every step of the way. Feel free to share your new blends, uses for the oils you have or contact myself or one of the team if you want further information around the best options for essential oils use within your life. We have a private support group for those interested in joining our amzing team.

Much love, Katie Chis (and my Sharing with heart team)

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