Welcome to
The Mind Department

About Me

Aly Harwood

I am the founder of The Mind Department, and my work is rooted in a simple belief: mindfulness should support real people, in real lives. So if you are spinning multiple plates and have no idea how you can fit mindfulness into your already overflowing schedule, don’t panic!

Before this work, I spent over 15 years in demanding professional environments, where pressure, responsibility and the unspoken expectation to “just get on with it” were part of everyday life. I know first-hand what it is like to function well on the outside while feeling stretched, reactive or quietly exhausted on the inside.

Mindfulness sounded like a nice thing to do but I didn’t have time for it for years until I really did reach breaking point. Then I looked into it properly and found that it offered me a different way of approaching everything from stressful to joyful moments. I became responsive rather than reactive. That experience led me to formally train in mindfulness and begin working with others who want practical tools for navigating modern life.

Today, I work with:

• Women who feel fraught and have no idea how to break the cycle
• People attending classes who want mindfulness to feel approachable and relevant
• Organisations looking for wellbeing support that reflects how work actually happens

I offer mindfulness in a way that is calm, realistic and human. If this is going to work for you, it needs to fit into your life. There is no need to be a certain “type” of person to work with me and no expectation that mindfulness will fix everything.

Outside of my work, I am a parent to two young children, share life with more dogs than is strictly sensible and spend as much time as possible by the sea or in the woods. These everyday realities — noise, mess, responsibility and beauty — are part of why this work matters to me. Mindfulness is not about escaping life; it is about meeting it more steadily, as it is.

If you’ve got this far, take a deep breath in and sigh it out. It will be OK.