Meet The Serious Wellbeing Team

Wellbeing at work is rarely one thing.

It’s sleep. It’s stress. It’s the relationship someone has with their phone, or with themselves. It’s what they eat, how they lead, and whether they feel able to cope with the pace of the job – not just today, but sustainably.

Serious Laughter was founded in 2017 on the belief that laughter is one of the most accessible, evidence-based wellbeing tools available to boost morale and release stress, improving positive workplace culture. Over the years, the conversations after sessions kept pointing to something bigger. People were struggling in ways that a single intervention couldn’t fully reach. Organisations were looking for something more joined-up.

So the Serious Wellbeing Team was built – a group of specialist practitioners, each exceptional at their speciality, each with their own story of struggling and finding a way through. Together, the team covers laughter and play, sleep science, stress and nervous system regulation, digital wellbeing, nutrition, NLP, executive coaching, and HR leadership development.

Every person on this team has their own story. Most of them came to their specialism through their own experience of struggling and finding a way through. That’s not a coincidence. It’s what makes them so effective with the people they work with.

Read on to meet them.

Sunny Turner

Founder, Serious Laughter | FHT-Accredited Laughter Yoga Teacher | Museum of Happiness Facilitator | Comedy on Prescription Certified Facilitator

Sunny Turner didn’t find Laughter Yoga by accident – she found it because she needed it.

She was living with depression when she attended her first session. There was no cautious warming up to it, no polite scepticism gradually worn down. She walked in and something clicked immediately. The relief wasn’t just physical – it was the realisation that she’d found something that worked in a way other things hadn’t. She changed direction completely. Changed her name. And built Serious Laughter from the ground up, driven by one straightforward idea: that laughter is something everyone deserves access to, regardless of how they’re feeling when they walk through the door.

That last part matters more than it might seem. Laughter Yoga doesn’t ask you to be in a good mood. It doesn’t require jokes, comedy, or any particular state of mind. It uses simulated laughter exercises – the body going through the motions of laughter – which trigger the same physiological response as the spontaneous kind. The nervous system doesn’t distinguish between the two. The benefits arrive either way.

Since 2017, Sunny has delivered sessions to more than 13,000 participants and trained over 50 Laughter Yoga Leaders. She works with corporate teams, NHS organisations, community groups, schools, and charities – and has appeared on ITV Granada Reports and at Fearne Cotton’s Happy Place Festival. The range reflects something she feels strongly about: that wellbeing support should reach people wherever they are, not just those with access to a corporate wellness budget.

The people who come to her sessions are often stressed, burnt out, or sceptical. Sometimes all three at once. What they tend to find is that within a few minutes, something loosens. Focus sharpens. Energy picks up. Teams who arrived barely making eye contact leave noticeably warmer. Better sleep is one of the most commonly reported outcomes – and for people carrying a lot, that alone changes everything.

Sunny is the heart of the Serious Wellbeing Team – and the reason all of us are here. Her belief that wellbeing can be accessible, evidence-based, and genuinely enjoyable is what holds this team together.

One more thing worth knowing: Sunny has loved puppetry since she was tiny and now has 31 hand puppets, all of whom have names. When her dad turned 90, she introduced him to lip syncing to music with the puppets. He loves it.

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Beth Penfold

HR Specialist and Executive Coach

Beth Penfold has had several careers. Teaching. HR management. Politics. Each one demanding, each one requiring her to show up fully – and none of them particularly forgiving when she didn’t.

By the time burnout arrived, it brought company. Early life trauma she’d carried quietly for years suddenly wasn’t quiet anymore. Beth did what many high-functioning people do – she sought help, worked through it, and kept going. Therapy helped. But it was NLP that moved something she hadn’t been able to shift any other way, freeing her from anxiety in a way that felt, in her words, complete.

What she found on the other side wasn’t just relief. It was something steadier – an unshakeable confidence and self-belief that changed the way she moved through her work, her relationships, and her sense of what was possible. She built a business. She built a life she actually wanted to be in.

That experience is exactly why she’s so effective with the people she works with now.

Beth brings over 30 years of HR strategy and training experience from demanding environments – Enron, Oxford University, and The Labour Party, among them. She works with business owners, VPs, and CEOs in the UK and US who are stuck, overwhelmed, or quietly aware that they’re not leading from their best self. The pattern she sees most often is self-sabotage: second-guessing, overworking, shrinking, or pushing so hard that the success they’re building starts to cost more than it gives back.

After working with Beth, clients describe feeling more settled in themselves. Less reactive. More able to make decisions without the background noise of self-doubt. They still work hard – but they stop working against themselves.

Beth loves cars – old estates in particular. She also once beat Daniel Craig at chess, which she mentions with exactly the right amount of casualness.
Read Beth’s article why loving yourself is your career strategy

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Dr Jill McGarry

Clinical Psychologist and Sleep Specialist

Most of us know sleep matters. We just don’t always know what to do when it stops working.

Dr Jill McGarry spent years in the NHS doing what many healthcare professionals do – pushing through on too little sleep, treating it as a badge of commitment rather than a warning sign. It took a minor car accident and a subsequent heart condition to make her stop and pay attention. If she didn’t protect her sleep, her body had made clear it would do it for her.

That turning point became the foundation of her practice. Jill now works with individuals and organisations to make sleep science genuinely useful – not overwhelming or clinical, but translated into practical changes people can actually stick to.

The people who come to her are often high-performing professionals in their 30s to 50s. They’re exhausted and wired at the same time. They’re not performing as well as they expect of themselves, and they miss feeling like the person they used to be at the end of a good night’s sleep. They’re not looking for a lecture on sleep hygiene – they want something that actually helps.

After working with Jill, clients sleep more consistently, think with greater clarity, and lead their teams with more presence. They make fewer mistakes. They stop arriving at work already depleted. The changes tend to ripple outward – into their relationships, their patience, and the way they carry themselves through the day.

Jill is part of the Serious Wellbeing Team because the connection between sleep and everything else – focus, mood, resilience, performance – is one that too many organisations overlook.

Outside of work, Jill is currently renovating an old house and has started measuring every life decision against the cost of a new sash window.

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Jazz McPhail

Nutritional Therapist and Pharmacist | Founder, Nutrition and Lifestyle Pharmacist

Jazz McPhail grew up in an Indian household where natural remedies were unremarkable – just the ordinary way of approaching health. Turmeric, herbs, food as medicine. It wasn’t a philosophy; it was simply what her family did.

That early grounding gave her a foundation, but it was her own experience of bereavement that deepened it into something she couldn’t ignore. The anxiety, the hormonal shifts, the exhaustion – and the realisation of how completely nutrition, lifestyle, and emotional health are tangled up together. It changed the direction of everything.

Jazz is both a qualified Pharmacist and a Nutritional Therapist – a combination that means she understands the conventional medical landscape and knows where nutrition and lifestyle work fit alongside it. She specialises in gut health, hormonal support, and stress-related concerns, working with people who are bloated, fatigued, sleeping poorly, or carrying that quiet frustration that their body is no longer responding the way it used to.

The people who come to her often feel like they’ve already tried the obvious things. They’re not looking to be told to drink more water. They want someone who will actually listen, look at the whole picture, and help them work out what’s going on. After working with Jazz, clients report better energy, steadier moods, improved sleep, and a clarity about what their body needs that they didn’t have before.

Jazz is part of the Serious Wellbeing Team because genuine wellbeing support has to include what we eat, how we move, and how we recover – not just how we manage stress in the moment.

She has also appeared on television, in the Radio Times, and in Cheshire Life – making her possibly the most media-seasoned member of the team.

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Julie Silver

Stress Management and Vitality Coach

Julie Silver has always done things a little differently. And it turns out that’s precisely what makes her so effective.

Nearly 30 years ago, chronic stress brought her to a standstill – low energy, health issues she couldn’t shift through conventional routes, and the growing realisation that something had to change. She set about finding natural ways to restore her health and wellbeing, experimenting with what actually worked, and gradually rebuilding her energy from the ground up.

What she found didn’t just change how she felt. It changed everything about the direction her work would take.

Julie now helps people reduce stress and regulate their nervous system – and she does it in ways that tend to surprise people. Her approach is practical and accessible, and actually enjoyable, which is rarer than it should be in this field. She works with the body as much as the mind, understanding that stress isn’t just a mental experience – it lives in the nervous system, and that’s where the most lasting shifts happen.

The people who find Julie are often tired in a way that a good night’s sleep doesn’t fix. They’re fatigued, unmotivated, possibly dealing with digestive issues, and carrying a general sense that something isn’t quite right. They want to feel better on every level. Julie meets them exactly where they are.

One of her methods is worth mentioning: she uses body shaking – deliberately moving the way animals do instinctively after a stressful event, to physically discharge tension from the nervous system rather than letting it sit there. It looks unconventional. The science behind it is solid, and the results speak for themselves. Julie is part of the Serious Wellbeing Team because stress doesn’t live only in the mind – and because the most effective wellbeing support works with the whole person, body included.

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Sam Flynn

Digital Wellbeing Coach and Trainer | Founder, The Unplugged Club

Sam Flynn knew more about social media than most people. Sixteen years as a social media trainer, a background in Organisational Psychology and HR, a genuine understanding of how digital platforms work and why they’re built the way they are.

And then lockdown happened, and she got completely hooked on her phone anyway.

It’s that honesty that makes her so effective. Sam didn’t come to digital wellbeing from a position of detachment or superiority – she got there the same way most of her clients do, by living it. She studied the science behind phone dependency and digital overload, understood what was happening in her own behaviour, made the changes, and built The Unplugged Club and her coaching practice around what she learned.

Her work focuses on helping organisations and their people build a healthier relationship with technology – not by demonising screens or demanding digital detoxes, but through practical, step-by-step shifts that actually stick. She runs workshops on digital wellbeing and culture for organisations that are serious about their people, covering everything from focus and sleep to mental health and productivity.

The people who come to Sam are often scattered and reactive – spending more time responding to notifications than doing meaningful work, struggling to switch off at home, and dimly aware that something about their relationship with technology isn’t quite working. After working with her, they describe feeling like they’ve got time back. Less pulled around. More intentional. More present at their desks and at home.

Sam is part of the Serious Wellbeing Team because digital health is one of the most pressing and most overlooked workplace wellbeing issues of the moment – and because she brings both the expertise and the lived experience to address it with credibility.

Outside of work, she crochets – partly, she’ll admit, to keep herself off her phone. She plays piano, sings, and plays netball. And she was named after a parrot, which is simply true and requires no further comment.

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Work with the Serious Wellbeing Team

Whether you’re looking for a one-off session or a programme that covers multiple wellbeing pillars, we’d love to talk. Every engagement starts with a conversation about what your people actually need. Find out more about Corporate Wellbeing.

We work with organisations across Manchester, Cheshire, North Wales, and the wider UK – in person and online.

You can also download our services pack to see the full picture of what we offer.
Services pack → (no signup required)

Get in touch today

Sunny Turner | Founder, Serious Laughter | FHT-Accredited Laughter Yoga Teacher | Museum of Happiness Facilitator | Comedy on Prescription Certified Facilitator