Our Practitioners
Our team consists of gut hypnotherapists, psychologists and dietitians with expertise in a wide range of gut-related and general disorders.
Madeleine Lawrence
Co-Founder, Counsellor, Nutritionist & Lead Gut-Directed Hypnotherapist
Madeleine co-founded The Gut-Brain Clinic with a vision for truly integrated gut health care.
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She brings a passion for physical and mental health and enjoys empowering her clients to make positive, long lasting changes in their lives.
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Madeleine is an experienced counsellor and has worked with clients across the lifespan from early childhood through later years. As a certified gut-directed hypnotherapist, she brings extensive training in the latest IBS-specific protocols and therapeutic hypnosis techniques.
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Outside the clinic, Madeleine enjoys spending time outdoors with her husband and their two young children and Golden Retriever.
Tahlia Baumann
Health Psychologist
Tahlia holds a view of health and wellbeing that encompasses all aspects of a person’s life. These philosophies led her to the field of health psychology – an approach to health that centres the interplay between our biology, psychology, and the relationships around us.
Tahlia strongly believes in the power of psychological interventions to not just build resilience to difficulties, but to create the biological environments to lead healthier lives. She is passionate about supporting people to recover from, or adjust to, changes in health and life circumstances. She has a special interest in the management of chronic health conditions, and will also provide support to manage related difficulties, such as anxiety and depression, or emotional reactions like anger and grief. She has special understanding of the interconnections between mind and body, and is experienced in working with psychobiological processes that can increase the severity of certain symptoms or keep them going, such as pain, fatigue, endocrine/metabolic issues, sleep, and stress.
With her background in rehabilitation, public health, and outpatient hospital care, Tahlia has developed a strong sense of how personal experiences sit within the wider context of our life roles, families/relationships, and bigger systems we are a part of. This perspective shows up in her practice, where she regularly collaborates in multidisciplinary teams and recognises the importance of advocacy & communication to ensure the support you draw on is helping you to be the leader of your health and live life in a way that is meaningful to you.
Tahlia's practice is warm, open, and incorporates evidence-based approaches to support your wellbeing. Just like fingerprints, no two brains are the same, and Tahlia integrates a variety of approaches into her treatment depending on what outcomes are most important to you. She strives to work with people in a way that feels calm and doable, and brings a genuine and compassionate presence to therapy. Health is a continuum, from crisis and stabilising to thriving and sustaining, and Tahlia is dedicated to meeting you at wherever stage you are to help you recalibrate towards the person you want to be and the life you want to live with courage, curiosity, and clarity.
Please be in touch if you would like to discuss how Tahlia may be able to support you.
Louise Samways
Clinical and Health Psychologist
Louise is a bestselling author and experienced Clinical and Health Psychologist with a deeply holistic approach to mental and physical health. Her perspective has been shaped by living and working with Aboriginal Elders in the Central Desert, as well as study tours to Sweden and the UK exploring environmental and food/chemical factors in health and wellbeing.
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Having worked across very remote, rural, regional, and urban communities, Louise has developed a strong awareness of the social determinants of health and how they must be considered when forming effective, practical treatment plans tailored to each patient's unique circumstances.
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She focuses on trauma, chronic health conditions, anxiety, and depression, and recognises that distress is often as much about ongoing external factors — work, family, environment — as it is about personal psychology.
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Louise draws on an eclectic range of evidence-based modalities, including Mind-Body therapy, Gut-Brain research, and Cross-Lateral Stimulation, to provide patients with both immediate relief and a lasting toolkit of strategies for navigating future challenges.
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Louise is available via Telehealth only.