About Elaine Lennon
A life spent learning how to navigate.
About Elaine
I’ve never been particularly good at putting life into neat boxes.
I’m Elaine Lennon.
And if there is one thing I’ve learned about life, it is that the route rarely turns out exactly as we planned it.
I’ve always been curious about what sits underneath things.
What is really happening here?
What does this mean?
What can I influence?
What do I need to let go of?
What am I carrying?
And, perhaps most importantly:
What is the next right step from where I actually am?
That way of thinking has followed me through almost every chapter of my life.
It has taken me through business, motherhood, music, creativity, yoga, recovery, psychology, coaching, caring, uncertainty, reinvention and some experiences I certainly didn't put on the original map.
Looking back, I can see that they weren't a collection of unrelated chapters.
They were teaching me how to navigate.
A life rarely follows a straight line
Before The Life Compass™ had a name, I was simply living the questions that would eventually shape it.
I spent years working in HR and business, building businesses, raising a family and navigating the everyday responsibilities that come with life.
I also became a songwriter, performer and recording artist.
Then life changed direction.
Following a serious road traffic accident, I found myself dealing with pain, reduced mobility and the loss of abilities I had previously taken for granted. At one point, I was using a wheelchair.
Recovery wasn't simply about getting physically stronger.
It changed the way I thought about the relationship between body and mind, between what we know intellectually and what we actually experience, and between the life we think we are supposed to be living and the life we are actually living.
Yoga became an important part of that journey.
But even that route didn't remain straightforward.
During my own yoga journey, I detached a ligament in my thumb and needed intensive physiotherapy and occupational therapy to regain strength, power and function in my hand.
For a musician, losing the ability to use your hand properly has a particular kind of impact.
I couldn't go near a piano keyboard.
Another boulder had appeared in the stream.
And once again, I had a choice.
I could sit at the edge of the stream and wait for the water to become easier.
Or I could find another way forward.
So I became curious.
If music couldn't be my medium for now, what other mediums were there?
That question opened up a whole new area of exploration for me.
I became increasingly interested in the body, the nervous system, psychology, coaching, healing, resilience, behaviour and the process of reinventing ourselves when life doesn't go according to plan.
I wasn't abandoning one path for another.
I was discovering that there might be more than one way to travel.
I've always been a synthesiser
I'm probably best described as someone who is always looking for the thread that connects things.
I notice patterns.
I ask a lot of questions.
I like understanding what sits beneath the obvious answer.
I can move between music, movement, psychology, business, creativity and everyday human experience quite naturally because, to me, they aren't as separate as they might first appear.
I'm interested in the spaces between things:
between body and mind,
between thinking and feeling,
between knowledge and lived experience,
between responsibility and control,
between holding on and letting go,
between who we have been and who we are becoming.
I'm also interested in what happens when something no longer fits.
A role.
A relationship.
An expectation.
A definition of success.
A version of ourselves.
Sometimes we don't need fixing.
Sometimes we need to understand what has changed.
And sometimes we need permission to choose a different route.
I'm curious about those moments.
Not because I have all the answers, but because I've spent a large part of my own life learning how to ask better questions.
Music taught me something important about people
Music has been one of the most powerful mediums through which I've connected with people.
I'm an award-winning singer-songwriter and performer, and I've written and recorded music, toured, performed live and created my own independent record label, Little Sailor Records, to release my debut album.
There is something about music that can reach places ordinary conversation sometimes can't.
People have come up to me after performances and said:
“You just told my life story.”
That sentence has stayed with me.
Because they weren't really talking about me.
They were talking about recognition.
About hearing something that gave shape to an experience they hadn't quite found words for themselves.
Music taught me that sometimes people don't need someone to tell them what to do.
Sometimes they need someone to help them see, hear or understand something that was already there.
That idea has stayed at the heart of my work.
"Little Bird Little Sailor, Time to see of what you are made"
Before there was a Life Compass, there was a Little Sailor
There is a part of my story that has been quietly travelling alongside me for much longer than The Life Compass™ has had a name.
It began with music.
When I was preparing to release my debut album, I didn't want to wait for someone else to create the route for me.
So I created my own record label — Little Sailor Records — and released the music myself.
The name wasn't chosen because I had already worked out a wellbeing philosophy.
It came from something much more instinctive.
A little sailor.
An anchor.
A little bird.
The sea beneath us and the sky above us.
Many of the songs on that first album were influenced by nautical imagery, journeys, motivation and reflections on life — the routes we take, the storms we encounter, the things that hold us steady and the possibilities that open up when we allow ourselves to look beyond the horizon.
At the time, I didn't have a framework for any of this.
I simply knew that the imagery meant something to me.
Looking back now, I can see that the seeds of The Life Compass™ were already present.
The sailor needs an anchor.
Something steady.
Something to return to.
Something that helps us find our bearings when the water becomes unsettled.
But the bird needs the sky.
Space.
Freedom.
Perspective.
The possibility of going somewhere we haven't been before.
For me, the Little Bird and the Little Sailor have never represented two opposing ideas.
They represent a balance.
We can be grounded without being confined.
We can be anchored without being stuck.
We can know where we come from without allowing it to determine where we go.
And perhaps most importantly, we don't have to follow every route that has been laid out for us.
There are the expectations of family.
The roles we inherit.
The boxes society gives us.
The definitions of success we absorb.
The “shoulds”, the “musts” and the invisible rules about who we are supposed to become.
But there is also something quieter.
An inner voice.
An inner strength.
An inner compass.
The part of us that knows when something is right — or no longer right — even when we cannot yet explain why.
That is what Little Bird Little Sailor has come to represent for me.
One life. One journey. Ours to choose how we travel through it.
Not without responsibility.
Not without uncertainty.
Not without storms.
But with the possibility of choosing our response, finding our bearings, changing direction when we need to, and discovering that we may have more freedom than we once believed.
The Little Sailor reminds me to stay grounded.
The Little Bird reminds me to look up.
Together, they hold a philosophy that now sits at the heart of my work:
grounding before growth.
safety before courage.
awareness before action.
connection before change.
And perhaps that is why this little symbol has stayed with me for so long.
It was never just a logo.
It was a visual reminder of a way of living that I was already beginning to discover.
I just didn't have the words for it yet.
From experience to understanding
One of the things that matters deeply to me is that I don't create wellbeing work simply by looking at a list of popular topics and deciding what people might need.
The work I create comes from somewhere much more personal.
Every module within my work is rooted either in something I have had to live through myself, or something I have observed in the people around me.
I notice something.
I become curious about it.
I explore it.
I learn about it.
I test it against lived experience.
I look for the patterns.
And then I ask:
Could this help someone else understand their own experience a little differently?
That is how much of my work has developed.
Not from having all the answers, but from paying attention.
And then The Life Compass™ began to take shape
The Life Compass™ didn't arrive as a business idea.
It grew gradually from years of living, questioning, observing, learning, creating, teaching and trying to understand what actually helps people navigate change.
The underlying questions began much earlier around 2003, but the formal development and refinement of The Life Compass™ began in 2020.
At its heart is a simple idea:
You are not a problem to be solved.
You are a human being learning how to navigate.
Life will bring changing conditions.
There will be calm water and rough water.
There will be currents we didn't anticipate.
There will be things we can influence and things we cannot control.
There will be times when we need to hold steady.
Times when we need to change direction.
Times when we need to lighten the load.
And times when we simply need to stop long enough to work out where we actually are.
The Life Compass™ is my way of bringing together the things I have learned through lived experience, professional practice, creativity, movement, psychology-informed learning and years of observing how people navigate change.
It isn't about giving people a map for their life.
It is about helping people develop their own ability to navigate.
The work is not about becoming someone else
I don't believe that wellbeing is about creating a perfect version of ourselves.
I don't think we need another list of things we are supposedly doing wrong.
And I don't believe that every difficult experience needs to be turned into a lesson immediately.
Sometimes life is simply difficult.
Sometimes we need support.
Sometimes we need rest.
Sometimes we need to grieve.
Sometimes we need to change direction.
And sometimes we need to recognise that something we've been carrying was never ours to carry in the first place.
My work is about creating space to notice what is happening, understand it more clearly, respond more consciously, reflect on what we are learning and then return to noticing again.
NOTICE → UNDERSTAND → RESPOND → REFLECT → NOTICE
Because navigation isn't a one-time decision.
It is an ongoing relationship with where we are, what is around us and how we choose to move from here.
There is still music in all of this
I haven't left music behind.
If anything, I understand it differently now.
Music, movement, storytelling and wellbeing all give us different ways of exploring the human experience.
Sometimes the words come first.
Sometimes the movement comes first.
Sometimes it is a song.
Sometimes it is a conversation.
Sometimes it is silence.
Sometimes it is simply having enough space to hear your own thoughts again.
That is why creativity remains such an important part of what I do.
I don't see creativity and wellbeing as separate worlds.
Both can help us notice.
Both can help us express what we cannot always explain.
Both can change perspective.
And both can give us another way forward when the obvious route isn't available.
A little full-circle moment
Life has a funny way of reminding us that the journey isn't as linear as we sometimes think.
Recently, I took my son to hospital to have a broken scaphoid plastered.
While we were there, I noticed the occupational therapist treating the patient beside us.
She recognised me.
She was the same occupational therapist who had treated my hand years earlier, helping me regain strength and function after my thumb ligament injury had temporarily taken the piano away from me.
And then I remembered that she had booked to come and see one of my live performances.
That performance had ultimately been cancelled following the death of my 96-year-old dad, however there we were again.
Different circumstances.
Different chapter.
Same person.
It struck me as one of those small, unexpected circles that life sometimes draws for us.
The hand that once stopped me playing piano.
The therapist who helped me regain its function.
The music I eventually returned to.
The performance that was cancelled.
The loss that followed.
And years later, finding ourselves in the same hospital environment for an entirely different reason.
I don't take it as proof that everything happens for a reason.
I think it simply reminded me of something I have learned repeatedly:
The route is rarely as straight as we imagine it will be.
Sometimes a door closes.
Sometimes a boulder appears in the stream.
Sometimes we have to find another way forward.
Sometimes the thing we thought had stopped us turns out to have opened up a completely different part of the journey.
And sometimes, years later, a thread from an earlier chapter quietly finds its way back to us.
Perhaps that is why I don't see life as something we can simply plan perfectly.
I see it as something we learn to navigate.
So, who is Elaine?
I'm a woman who has lived quite a few different lives without feeling that I have ever really left the previous ones behind.
I'm a songwriter.
A performer.
A businesswoman.
A yoga teacher.
A coach.
A storyteller.
A mother, wife, daughter, sister.
A learner.
A creator.
And, perhaps above all, I'm someone who remains deeply curious about people and the lives they are trying to navigate.
I'm ambitious, although probably not in the way people might expect.
I want to build something that is useful, honest, substantial and genuinely mine.
I care about good work.
I care about integrity.
I care about making sense of things.
And if something doesn't make sense to me, I struggle to pretend that it does.
That can be a strength.
It can also mean my brain occasionally turns a simple question into a twelve-part investigation.
I'm learning to recognise that too...
Because seeing every possible route doesn't mean I have to take every one.
Sometimes the work is simply choosing the next one.
My professional background
My work sits at the intersection of lived experience and professional learning.
My background includes HR and business, creative practice, songwriting and performance, yoga teaching, coaching and the development of wellbeing education.
I have undertaken professional training across these areas and continue to learn, research and develop my practice.
I am not a therapist, and The Life Compass™ is not intended to replace medical, psychological or therapeutic care.
What I offer is different.
It is a space for reflection, understanding, movement, conversation and practical exploration — helping people develop greater awareness of themselves and the way they are navigating their lives.
Where all of this has led
The Life Compass™ is not something I created because I had life figured out.
Quite the opposite.
It grew because I kept discovering that life doesn't stay still long enough for any of us to have it completely figured out.
We change.
Our circumstances change.
Our responsibilities change.
Our bodies change.
Our relationships change.
Our priorities change.
Sometimes the destination changes.
Sometimes we realise we never really wanted the destination in the first place.
And sometimes we simply need to stop, look around and ask:
Where am I now?
What matters to me now?
What am I carrying?
What can I influence?
What needs to change?
And what is the next right step?
That is the territory I am interested in.
Not telling you where your life should go.
Not giving you a perfect map.
But helping you find your bearings.
Because ultimately:
You are not a problem to be solved.
Like me, you are a human being learning how to navigate.
Calm the water | Find your rhythm | Navigate life more consciously
Welcome to The Life Compass™.
Professional Background, Training & Recognition
Elaine’s work is informed by a combination of academic education, professional experience, practitioner training, creative practice and lived experience.
Her career has spanned business and HR, university lecturing, songwriting and performance, yoga, coaching and wellbeing education. This multidisciplinary background now informs the development and delivery of The Life Compass™ Framework and its associated programmes.
Academic & Professional Background
Elaine holds a BA (Hons) in European Business & Spanish (Marketing) and has a professional background in HR Management, business and university lecturing.
Alongside her professional career, she has developed an extensive creative practice as an award-winning Scottish singer-songwriter, performer and recording artist.
Her creative career has included live performance, songwriting, recording, touring, collaboration, radio and festival appearances, independent music production and the creation of her own record label, Little Sailor Records.
She has performed across the UK and internationally, including at Nashville’s Bluebird Cafe, UK festivals and Celtic Connections, and has worked and performed alongside respected UK and US songwriters and artists.
Her original live touring production, The Homebird Sessions™, toured throughout Scotland and received a UK Americana Music Association (AMA) Hero Award nomination.
Practitioner Training & Qualifications
Elaine is fully trained and insured, with practitioner qualifications and continuing professional development including:
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BA (Hons) European Business & Spanish (Marketing)
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200-hour Yoga Teacher Training — Hatha, Yin & Nidra
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Yoga Life Coach Certification — CPD
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Professional Life Coaching Certification — CPD
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Mindfulness & Meditation Life Coaching Certification — CPD
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Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) & Emotional Intelligence (EI) — CPD
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Professional Songwriting Certification — Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI)
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Continuing Professional Development in Yin Yoga
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Level 3 Yoga Teacher Training — currently in progress
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Master Spiritual Coach accreditation — currently in progress
Elaine also has experience in university lecturing and education, alongside her professional background in HR and business.
Her qualifications provide the professional foundations for her practice, while her wider body of work has developed through the integration of professional learning, lived experience, creative practice, teaching, observation and reflective development.
Awards & External Recognition
Elaine’s creative work has received recognition from established organisations within the music and songwriting industries.
🏆 2019 — Celtic Connections Danny Kyle Open Stage Winner
In 2019, Elaine performed live to an audience for the first time at the Celtic Connections Danny Kyle Open Stage, subsequently winning the Danny Kyle Open Stage Award.
This marked the beginning of a significant period of development in her professional music career.
🏆 2020 — Celtic Music Radio Album of the Year
Elaine released her debut album at Celtic Connections 2020, following support from Creative Scotland.
The album was subsequently recognised with Celtic Music Radio’s Album of the Year Award.
🥈 Nashville Songwriters Association International — “One to Watch”
Elaine was recognised by the Nashville Songwriters Association International (NSAI) as a “One to Watch”, recognising her songwriting and potential within the international songwriting community.
One of her songs also placed 2nd in the NSAI Global Top 40.
🎵 2025 — Official UK Songwriting Competition Finalist
In 2025, Elaine reached the finals of the Official UK Songwriting Competition with three songs, including both solo and co-written material.
⭐ The Homebird Sessions™ — AMA Hero Award Nomination
Elaine’s original live touring production, The Homebird Sessions™, received a UK Americana Music Association (AMA) Hero Award nomination.
The show toured throughout Scotland and brought together Elaine’s songwriting, storytelling, live performance and collaborations with UK and US artists.
★★★★★ Creative & Industry Recognition
Elaine’s music and creative work have received coverage and recognition across UK media and the wider music industry.
Her work has been featured on BBC Radio and in publications including The Herald, while music industry commentary has described her as one of the most in-demand performers on the Glasgow music scene.
She has performed at UK festivals and venues including Nashville’s Bluebird Cafe, and has opened for artists including Rab Noakes and Eric Paslay, the Grammy-nominated US songwriter and performer known for multiple US #1 songwriting credits.
Elaine has also toured Scotland alongside established UK and US songwriters including Boo Hewerdine, Jesse Terry and Michael Logen.
Her songwriting has been recorded by other artists, including US songwriter Will Kimbrough and Scottish country band Raintown, while she has contributed harmonies and collaborative work to recordings by other UK singer-songwriters.
Her music has also been used to support charitable fundraising, including Uncharted Waters, which raised funds for the paediatric ward at University Hospital Wishaw and featured contributions from artists including Boo Hewerdine, Karine Polwart, Siobhan Miller and Chris While.
Continuing Professional Development
Elaine is committed to ongoing learning, professional development and reflective practice.
Her continuing development includes further study in yoga and coaching, alongside ongoing exploration of areas relevant to her work, including:
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psychology-informed wellbeing practice
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the nervous system
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behaviour and mindset
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mindfulness and meditation
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movement and embodied awareness
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coaching and reflective practice
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creativity and expressive approaches
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resilience, change and personal development
The Life Compass™ Framework is also subject to ongoing development, refinement and evaluation through practice, participant feedback and reflective learning.
Elaine works within the boundaries of her professional training and does not present The Life Compass™ as a substitute for medical, psychological or therapeutic care.
Her work is designed to complement existing support, education and professional services by creating structured opportunities for reflection, self-awareness, practical exploration and more conscious decision-making.
The Life Compass™ Framework
The Life Compass™ is the result of the integration of Elaine’s professional, academic, creative and lived experience.
The underlying work originated in 2003, following a significant life-changing experience, while the formal development and refinement of The Life Compass™ Framework began in 2020.
It brings together Elaine’s experience across different disciplines into a coherent approach to understanding how people navigate change, uncertainty, responsibility, identity and the different seasons of life.
The framework is not based on a single qualification or discipline.
It has developed through years of learning, teaching, observation, creative practice, personal experience and reflective development.
Its central philosophy is simple:
You are not a problem to be solved.
You are a human being learning how to navigate.
Calm the water | Find your rhythm | Navigate life more consciously
A Multidisciplinary Body of Work
What distinguishes Elaine’s work is not any single qualification.
It is the integration of different perspectives into one coherent body of work.
Her academic and professional background provides one foundation.
Her practitioner training provides another.
Her years as a songwriter and performer provide a deep understanding of creativity, communication, storytelling and human connection.
Her experience of navigating significant change provides lived perspective.
And her ongoing development of The Life Compass™ provides the structure through which these strands come together.
Academic grounding. Professional experience. Practitioner training. External recognition. Creative achievement. Lived experience. Continuing development.
Together, these form the foundation of Elaine’s work with individuals, groups, organisations, universities, public-sector bodies, festivals and wider communities.
ELAINE LENNON - AS SEEN, HEARD OR FEATURED ON
