My Story | Dr Laura Holland, PhD

I’ve learned that health is rarely about doing more.

More often, it’s about seeing more clearly. My work today is rooted in one simple belief;

The body is not broken, it’s responding.

And when we learn how to listen, rather than fight or fix, real change becomes possible.

I didn’t always understand this.

Earlier in my life, I was drawn to certainty. I trained first as an economist, fascinated by systems, patterns, incentives, and behaviour. I wanted to understand why people do what they do, and how outcomes are shaped, often invisibly, over time.

But it didn’t take long to realise that the most complex systems aren’t financial or political, they’re human.

That curiosity led me into nutrition, and later into integrative medicine. I wanted to understand the body not as a machine to optimise, but as a living, responsive system, shaped by thought, emotion, stress, meaning, relationship, environment, and choice.

Over years of clinical practice, study, and lived experience, one thing became unmistakably clear:

Symptoms are not random.
Behaviours are not failures.
And illness is rarely just physical.

How we eat, how we soothe ourselves, how we restrict, control, rebel, or disconnect, especially through food, offers extraordinary insight into our inner world. As I often say:

Forget labels and lifestyle statements, show me how you eat, and I’ll tell you about yourself!

Food, for me, is not just nutrition. It’s language.

Alongside my clinical work, I co-founded Vegemi, a preventative, science-based food education ecosystem designed to support children and families in developing a healthy, relaxed relationship with food from an early age. That work reflects a deep commitment to upstream health, creating environments where wellbeing can emerge naturally, rather than being repaired later.

But my understanding of health has not only come from study or practice. Life has been a teacher too.

I’ve had to tend carefully to my own wellbeing in ways I could never have imagined. I’ve learned about surrender, fear, resilience, nervous system regulation, and love in its most practical form, including caring for my partner through cancer, and witnessing the profound capacity of the human body and spirit to heal when supported with presence, patience, and trust.

These experiences changed how I work.

I don’t offer rigid plans, protocols, or one-size-fits-all solutions. I work with people at the intersection of integrative medicine, nutrition, behaviour, nervous system health, and meaning, helping them understand what their body is communicating, and where misalignment may be quietly driving symptoms, stress, or fatigue.

BeU is not about becoming someone better.

It’s about returning to who you already are, beneath conditioning, pressure, and inherited beliefs about health, success, and worth.

My role is not to fix you. It’s to help you see yourself more clearly, so your system can do what it already knows how to do.

With much love,
Laura xxx