// THE FOUNDERS //
Two practitioners.
Fifty years of work.
One shared conviction.
Connected is co-founded by Elizabeth Banks, a movement and somatic practitioner with over two decades in functional neurology and biomechanics, and Sean Foley, a leadership and emotional intelligence coach with thirty years of experience from the Royal Marines to the boardroom. Both are certified Enneagram practitioners. What they share is a single belief: that most relationship breakdown is not a failure of love, but a failure of self-understanding.
Elizabeth Banks
Co-Founder · Movement & Somatic Practitioner
Sean Foley
Co-Founder · Leadership & EQ Coach
"We are not in the business
of teaching you how to communicate.
We are in the business of helping you
finally understand who you are,
and the person you are trying to reach."
// OUR FOUNDING PRINCIPLE
CO-FOUNDER · MOVEMENT, SOMATIC & ENNEAGRAM PRACTITIONER
Elizabeth Banks
"Most people in pain, physical or emotional, and usually both, spend years being treated, managed, advised. Rarely are they truly met. That difference is the whole of my work."
Elizabeth’s work is about how people change, and why, so often, they don’t. A certified Enneagram practitioner, she has spent years helping individuals and couples understand the motivational patterns beneath their behaviour: what drives a reaction, what a defence is protecting, and how two people can be caught in the same loop for years without ever naming it.
That understanding didn’t start in a coaching room. It started with two decades spent meeting people at their most unguarded, in physical pain, often carrying emotional pain alongside it, and rarely feeling understood by anyone treating them. As the founder of The Movement Bank, a functional movement and rehabilitation studio in the City of London, Elizabeth built her career on a degree in Sport Science and advanced training across functional neurology and biomechanics, including certification in P-DTR and extensive work with Z-Health, the Academy of Movement Neurology, and the Gray Institute. What she learned, above all, is what it actually takes to meet someone where they are, not where you’d like them to be.
It is this grounding that shapes the way she now works with couples. Elizabeth doesn’t just help people understand their pattern intellectually. She knows how to help it actually change, at the level where change has to happen, because insight that never reaches the nervous system rarely survives the drive home.
Her own understanding of connection, what breaks it and what rebuilds it, is not theoretical. It’s lived.
Over twenty years in functional movement, biomechanics and neurology
Degree in Sport Science // St Mary's University, London
GIFT & PCM mentorships, Gray Institute USA (10 months each)
CAFS, 3DMAPS and NG360 certifications (Gray Institute)
Z-Health functional neurology // multi-year study
Applied Movement Neurology (AMN) // trained with Dave Fleming and Luke Sherrell
Advanced-level P-DTR certification (Dr Jose Palomar)
Weck Method & RopeFlow certified // trained with David Weck
Certified Enneagram practitioner (Enneagram Integrative Coaching)
Delivered education for TRX, Nike, AMN and Procedos across multiple countries
Founder of The Movement Bank, London · themovementbank.com
CO-FOUNDER · MOVEMENT, SOMATIC & ENNEAGRAM PRACTITIONER
Sean Foley
"You can lead a thousand men under fire. You can build a company. You can stand in front of a boardroom. None of that prepares you for the harder work, which is holding a conversation with the one person who sees you clearly."
Sean is known to his clients as The EQ Commando. It is an earned name. His career began with fifteen years in the Royal Marines, including combat operations and third-world leadership development expeditions: environments where emotional intelligence is not a soft skill but a survival one. He went on to build EQ2Lead, a leadership training and development practice that he co-founded, working with multi-million dollar corporations and smaller businesses alike across sectors including oil and gas, banking, finance, hospitality, defence and education.
What he brings to the Connected retreat is a rare combination: military-grade discipline, three decades of behavioural and emotional intelligence work, and the particular quality of attention that comes from someone who has spent his life understanding how humans actually operate under pressure. He is a Certified Behavioural Profiler, a Certified Enneagram in Business Trainer, and an NLP Practitioner. He has coached leaders, teams, and executives through the hardest conversations of their professional lives, and has learned, through that work, that the hardest conversations are almost always the ones happening at home.
At Connected, Sean holds the emotional intelligence work, the men's work, and co-facilitates the couples intensives. His particular gift, and one alumni mention often, is the ability to hold a room where men can finally speak without performance, and women can finally be heard without having to translate.
Thirty years of leadership, EQ and behavioural practice
Fifteen years with the Royal Marine Commandos, including combat operations
Leadership Development Expeditions in Africa and Asia
Certified Behavioural Profiler
Certified Enneagram in Business Trainer
Certified NLP Practitioner
Executive coach to leaders in oil & gas, banking, finance, hospitality, defence and education
Co-founder of EQ2Lead leadership training & development · eq2lead.uk
// WHY WE DO THIS //
Because we see it in
our other work every
single week.
In Elizabeth's movement studio and Sean's leadership coaching, we both see the same thing arrive, again and again, in different bodies, different jobs, different relationships. The person in front of us has the career, the house, the children, the life they wanted. And somewhere along the way, the relationship they were building it all for became the thing they are quietly grieving. Connected is the retreat we built because we kept being asked the same question: where do I send them?
i
Body and mind, together
Elizabeth brings two decades of nervous-system and somatic work. Sean brings thirty years of EQ and behavioural practice. Most retreats pick one. The Connected Human integrates both.
ii
The Enneagram as the map
We are both certified Enneagram practitioners. The Enneagram is the single most powerful framework we have found for helping two people finally stop taking each other personally.
iii
We hold men and women equally
Sean holds the inner world of the men in the room. Elizabeth holds the inner world of the women. Neither of you will feel outnumbered or misunderstood.
iv
We mean the word private
Everything spoken at The Connected Human retreat stays there. Our confidentiality charter is absolute, and it is one of the reasons couples can finally tell the truth.
// OUR OTHER PRACTICES //
Elizabeth · The Movement Bank, London
Sean · EQ2Lead Leadership Training & Development
A fire. Two chairs.
The conversation you keep avoiding.
Our evening fireside sessions are where the day's work integrates, quietly, unhurriedly, under a sky you had forgotten existed.
Come and meet us.
Properly.
Every retreat begins with a private thirty-minute discovery call with us, online and usually by video, or by phone if you prefer. No form-filling, no assessments. Just us, listening, finding out if this is the right next step for your relationship.
BOTH PARTNERS APPLY TOGETHER · CONFIDENTIAL REVIEW