Here you’ll find answers to some of the most common question about our program, coaching, community, and more. Explore a section to learn more.
- About the Wellspring Collaborative
- About the Wellspring Community & Memberships
- About Coaching
- About Courses
- Getting Started
About The Wellspring Collaborative
What’s behind your name, The Wellspring Collaborative?
The concept of a wellspring captures what we are building: a source, a place, and a vital element to support women’s health & wellbeing. We are inspired by wellsprings, which have sustained people around the globe for countless generations. These are places for nourishment, rest, and gatherings. They are where people connect with life, nature, each other, and ourselves.
And the idea of the collaborative recognizes that support for our health and wellbeing is more than a one-woman effort. Good health and wellbeing involves wide-ranging expertise, experiences, support…and collaboration. We are smarter, stronger, and healthier together.
How does the Wellspring Collaborative work?
The Wellspring Collaborative centers around the Wellspring Community, an online platform that provides health & wellness resources, courses, meetings and events, discussions, and coaching. General members of the community can participate at the general levels (access to general discussion groups, public recordings, and free online events). Annual subscription members can also participate in courses, closed groups discussions, meetings and live online events, and access our full resource library.
The Wellspring Collaborative also offers individual and group coaching, separate from the Community features. These may be arranged with our coaches. To learn more, please visit our Coaching page.
Why is this a community/coaching for women?
It’s who we are and who we know best. We love and appreciate people of all backgrounds (they are our family, friends, colleagues, and community members!). Our focus on women comes from a place of deep understanding and direct experiences. While our methods and tools are useful to every group of people, we feel we can provide the best support focusing on women’s health and wellbeing and creating a supportive community of women who can also share their knowledge, experiences, and spirit.
Is everything online or do you offer in-person options?
Most of our programming is currently online, including coaching, workshops, and virtual community meetups. This allows us to serve people from different locations. Occasionally, we offer in-person retreats or pop-up events, which we announce in advance.
What makes The Wellspring Collaborative different?
We’re not just a program—we’re a collaborative. That means you’re not just a client; you’re part of a growing, supportive community of people working together to advance our wellness practices. We focus on trusted, science-informed health and wellness practices; and our tools are flexible, human-centered, and designed for real life. Whether you’re starting or leveling up, you’ll find a space to grow, learn, and feel supported.
About Wellspring Community & Memberships
What is the Wellspring Community? How is it different from The Wellspring Collaborative?
The Wellspring Community is based on an online platform (and real-life people!) that offers a range of resources to support women’s health, wellbeing, and personal growth. Members of our online space enjoy courses, a resource/tools library, meetings & events, and community discussions around health & wellness topics and issues that matter to women.
We also organize live in-person gatherings, announced through the online community.
The Wellspring Collaborative keeps the community running, and provides community and learning resources, coaching, programs, and everything needed to support our support system.
How do I join the Wellspring Community?
You can join the Wellspring Community in a couple of ways:
- Subscribe to an annual membership. This will give you deeper access to courses, our resource library, meetings and live online events, and nonpublic discussion groups.
- Join our free general membership. This will give you access to all open (free) areas of our online community.
Why isn’t the Wellspring Community all open access?
Health & wellness is a broad field with ever-expanding and updated research and practices. To offer the ongoing level of experts, learning, current awareness, meeting, and community requires tremendous time and resources. We have chosen not to pursue an ad-driven model in order to maintain our professional independence and integrity, so that you can trust the experts, resources, and practices we provide.
Also, as a community of women, maintaining trust and safety is important to us. A completely open access community require more compromises on our thresholds and vastly more resources to manage.
We’ve chosen the best model that can help us provide you community, expertise, and resources without sacrificing what we value: your wellbeing and trust.
What’s the difference between access and subscription levels?
In addition to the free general membership (Open Community), there are three annual subscription levels:
Explore & Discover Membership: Access to our Open Community AND…
- Six Foundations Courses
- Foundations Toolkit
- Foundations Course meetings
- Foundations Community
Align & Grow Membership: All Explore & Discover benefits AND…
- Full access to the course library (with new course released monthly)
- Full access to Wellspring tool kits
- Full access to Wellspring Resources Library
- Full access to Wellspring community discussion groups
- Discounts to programs and events
Expand & Evolve Membership: All Align & Grow benefits AND…
- Option to form your own private community with other Wellspring members, including friends and family.
- Special quarterly events (virtual)
- Expanded discounts to programs and events
- Advance notice and priority registration to programs and events
What is the best subscription level for me?
To find the best subscription level for you, consider the type of health & wellness topics, goals, and resources you want: courses, library, meetings & events, levels of community, group programs, etc. To get the most out of your subscription, you will also want to consider your budget and cost savings in a particular tier.
For example, if you’re starting out to learn more about health & wellness generally, Explore & Discover is a good entry point. This gives you access to the core Wellspring Foundations resources, as well as many communities.
If you expect to take more than the Foundations courses, then Align & Grow or Expand & Evolve would make more financial sense, since you get access to the entire course library, resource library, community, etc., with big, bundled savings and discounts on special programs and events.
If you want to take full advantage of community, learning, special meetings, and discount benefits, Expand & Evolve gives you the biggest annual savings for full access to Wellspring’s Community offerings.
Can I give a gift subscription?
A gift subscription is a thoughtful, standout gift for your mother, wife, daughter, sister, and other important women in your life. Visit our membership registration page and follow the registration prompts.
About Coaching
How does coaching work?
Individual coaching provides 1 on 1 support to people who sign on for coaching. This can look like scheduled weekly or bi-weekly sessions, as well as concierge coaching for people who wish for more frequent support. Coaching centers around setting or pursuing specific goals or intentions, including exploring barriers that can get in the way of your success.
Group coaching is held in groups of 5-10 people and is organized around specific group topics or needs (e.g., burnout prevention/management, allergy management, life stages, etc.).
We maintain wait lists for each type. If you don’t see session you want, please contact us. In the meantime, we also provide workshops, courses, and communities on our social media (see footer, below) to support people with specific goals & interests in mind.
For more about coaching in general, please see About Health & Wellness Coaching.
How can I benefit from coaching?
Coaching is a powerful way to achieve your health & wellness goals and to help you lay the groundwork for sustainable practices. It can help you gain insights to what you need, obstacles that prevent you from achieving what you want, and ways that you can achieve positive and lasting practices. It can also help you translate advice from your medical provider into more effective practices in your daily life, provide more balance in your life, and help support your own care giving practices. For more specific benefits, please see our Coaching & Program Benefits page.
What is the difference between coaching and therapy or counseling?
Coaching focuses on present goals, mindset shifts, and practical action steps. It ’is not a substitute for therapy, medical treatment, or mental health care. Coaches often support and complement healthcare practitioners and therapists. Coaching is often used to enhance or expand on health care by:
- Building supportive mindsets, tools, environments, and practices.
- Focusing on practical steps
- Integrating self-care
- Aligning our goals & purpose into everyday life
- Identifying and minimizing barriers that hinder our health and wellness goals
How do I know if coaching is right for me?
Coaching can help us define and focus our goals, create sustainable practices and habits, gain useful tools, and help us break through barriers.
Some scenarios for coaching include:
- You want individualized support for your health and wellness goals.
- Learning how to following through on instructions from your healthcare providers. (ex., how to create practices, routines, and tools to support allergy management, dietary changes, stress reduction).
- Find ways to set unstuck when pursuing your goals or managing your health and wellbeing.
- Understand how to align your goals and practices for your circumstances, lifestyle, and work style.
- Learn how to create the supports you need to achieve and maintain your goal.
- Gain insights to barriers that can undermine your goal setting or progress.
If you’re unsure if coaching if right for you or how to select the right form of coaching, please don’t hesitate to reach out to us.
What qualifications do your coaches have?
Our coaches, guest collaborators, and partners, come from diverse professional backgrounds, including: certified health & wellness coaching, mind-body medicine, behavioral science, nutrition, and lifestyle counseling. They’re also selected for their empathy, insight, and ability to align with people’s individual needs. Read our About Section to know more about our Founders and Lead Health Coaches, Alice and Cynthia.
About Courses
What types of courses do you offer?
We offer a range of courses on a range of practice levels and topics. Whether you’re just starting out on your health & wellness practices or interested in s deeper dive into techniques or subjects, you’ll find a course that will help you gain insight, direction. and enhance your practices.
Among our offerings is The Foundations Series. Based on our own Foundations frameworks, this series is designed to help women understand the dimensions of integrative health and wellbeing, how to assess and apply each dimension to overcome barriers and expand successes, and how to develop a personal strategy that is focused, aligned, and sustainable.
To see our current course offerings, please visit our Workshops & Courses page.
Are your courses online? How do they work?
Our courses are virtual. We have two types of courses: self-paced and guided. Self-paced courses are available to our Align & Grow community members. Guided courses are available to the public, as well as our Align & Grow community members.
Guided courses are lead by a coach instructor and range from 2 – 4 weeks long. These course are mostly asynchronous (you can go at your own pace), with live online meetings at the end of the week.
All courses are hosted in our community space. After you register, you will receive course access instructions via email prior to the start of your course.
For more details about specific courses, please visit our Workshops & Courses page.
How much time do you courses take? What if something comes up?
Our course lengths vary. For self-paced courses, most courses are 1-1.5 hours long, divided into shorter modules, so you can pace yourself.
Coach-guided courses begin with a video (usually 1 hour long), followed by activities, exercises, online discussions, and reflections Typical time for activities, discussions, and reflections is a hour each week, but you can spend as much time as you like exploring materials or engaging with classmates.
You can follow our daily course schedule or go at your own pace, as your personal schedule allows. Each week ends with an hour-long Friday live virtual meeting to connect, explore, and share more insights.
How long do I have access to course materials?
You can view the course video during the course period. Course guidebooks, slide handouts, and other materials from your digital toolkits are yours to keep.
Wellspring Community Members can access course videos and all course materials for the duration of their membership. Enjoy a review or refresh anytime you like!
Getting Started
There is so much to think about with health & wellness…where do I start?
While health & wellness practices can vary widely, our approach is to
- Meet your individual needs
- Help you set a solid foundation for your practice
- Keep it clear, simple, and achievable.
In keeping on top of new discoveries and developments, we aim for quality information, insights, and guidance from reliable sources. We don’t chase fads or trends – just sound practices and tools that align with our community members.
To help you get started, we also have assessment tools and programs design system that help you choose the program and approach that can work best for you. These are available in Wellspring Circle community platform. If you prefer, you can also review our Programs page or to choose the elements and services that resonate with you or look at our Topics page for some examples of common coaching areas.
How does your program work?
Our programs and services are designed to work for you, wherever you’re starting. You can start simply with a workshop or coaching, sign on for one of our program packages, or you can join our Wellspring Circle community to access an ever-expanding library of courses, tools, and discussion groups that can support you on your path. Here, you can put together a personalized program. For people who wish for additional support, you can supplement our library and discussions with coaching. Our assessment can help you identify your needs and the right approach for you. Our program design system can help you define your path. If you need additional support to design your program, please reach out to us.
How much time does this take?
We understand that learning new health & wellness tools and practices takes time. We also know that smaller steps can be very powerful. With this in mind, you can enroll in one of our workshops (1-2 hours long), resets or retreats (hours long to a weekend), program packages (weeks long) or design your program to go at your pace.
Life is complicated right now and I don’t have time…
If you’re time-pressed, our recommendation is to start small and build your health & wellness practice step-by-step. An hour a day — or even an hour a week – can advance your health and wellness goals in a matter of weeks. Get started with a workshop, weekly coaching, or even just a single reset…and go from there.
A great place to start is our Foundations Courses. They are designed to build understand, skills, and tools to work on your goals and manage your health and wellbeing effectively and efficiently.
Finances are tight, how can I participate?
We understand health & wellness budgets aren’t unlimited, or may be very limited. For those who can’t commit to more extensive programs, we offer free articles and an open community to get you started, as well as low-cost workshops. With these, you’ll learn foundations that will put you on the path to learning about yourself: your individual needs and style, your strengths, what you want to work on, and how to manage potential barriers. You can design your own health & wellness plan. With even a modest commitment, you can get started on your path to better health, feeling better, and optimizing your life, your time, and your energy.
Is this a good fit if I have a chronic condition or disability?
Yes. Our approach is adaptive, inclusive, and centered on your individual goals and experiences. Many of our members live with chronic illness or pain, and our programs are designed to support you wherever you are on your journey. We’ll work with you and your healthcare providers to identify sustainable practices that align with your capacity, energy levels, and health priorities. You’re not expected to “push through”—you’re encouraged to move in ways that are meaningful and supportive to you.
As highlighted in our About Coaching, page, we are board-certified or board-eligible health coaches, not medical providers. We do not diagnose, treat, or prescribe for medical conditions. If you are managing a chronic or complex condition, we strongly recommend you continue working with your healthcare provider. Our work is complementary and focused on behavior change, lifestyle support, and wellness strategies as defined by the National Board for Health & Wellness Coaching (NBHWC).