About Stuart

I've always been curious about people — how we live, what shapes us as individuals and social creatures, what we believe, how we make sense of our experiences, and the different ways we find our way through life. For me, music was the way I made sense of my existence and the world around me.

From a young age, I found myself drawn to music — particularly instrumentation, production and sound. So, naturally, I spent much of my working life in the music and entertainment industry as an audio engineer, tour and production manager, studio owner and promoter representative. I've spent years in venues, at festivals, on the road and behind consoles, working alongside artists, crews, technicians, promoters and the many people who keep the industry going.

Alongside music, I developed a deep interest in sociology and anthropology, health, and the ways culture shapes how we understand ourselves and the world around us. I completed an advanced Masters degree with honours in Anthropology at the Australian National University, with a focus on culture, health and medicine. I worked as a researcher within the ANU Medical School, contributed to published research and conducted research across areas including rural and Indigenous health. My own research has explored some of the more complex ways health is understood and represented. My Masters thesis examined the political, economic and social construction of the Ice epidemic in Australia, and later doctoral research began exploring mental health within Australia's touring music industry.

I've spent many years exploring different approaches to health, healing and wellbeing. I'm interested in biomedicine, but I'm equally curious about other modalities used around the world — complementary approaches, different cultural understandings of health, spirituality, sound, meditation, and the many ways people have made sense of healing and wellbeing across cultures and throughout history. I don't believe that one approach has all the answers, or that the same approach will suit every person. It's one of the reasons Phase Align works the way it does.

My training in counselling, coaching, meditation and sound has given me different ways of working with people. Holistic Counselling might be useful. Coaching might be useful. Sound or stillness might be useful. Sometimes a conversation is enough. What matters is the person in front of me and what feels relevant for them at that particular point in their life.

My background and training as an anthropologist continue to influence the way I work. It taught me to be curious about context — culture, family, relationships, work, history, beliefs and the environments we inhabit. There are also social, political, economic and workplace structures at play that can influence how we think and feel, how we understand ourselves and how we shape our lives.

More than anything, I enjoy working with people. I've spent much of my life talking with people from very different backgrounds and circumstances, and I've been fortunate that people often seem to find me easy to talk with. I'm still an observer, a learner and an explorer myself. Phase Align brings together some of what I've learned along the way — professionally, academically and personally. It's a meeting point: where what I bring meets you as you are — with your own experience, knowledge and understanding of your life.