Brought to you by Dave Hompes

Our Mission

Our mission at the Higher Minded Health Academy is to provide world-class, cutting edge practitioner training in nutrition and functional medicine, delivered in an accelerated, efficient and cost-effective manner to ensure you not only feel confident as a clinician but also achieve a return on your investment as quickly as possible.

HMH Orientation

Picture this in your mind: you are standing in the centre of a circle, surrounded by a wall full of doors around its circumference. Each door represents a nutrition or functional medicine training school – the ones you may have seen as you’ve surveyed your options for training in the industry.

Each door has an entry fee – you need to pay to get in! And, once you’re in, you might not be able to leave for quite a while because the training courses can be quite long. When you eventually do leave, you may not be able to afford time or entry fees for any of the other doors due to the commitments you made by going through the first door.

One door – the green one – leads to a series of practitioner training courses that combine and synthesise the most important and useful aspects of all the others, while adding crucial wisdom omitted by them. It provides a broader, deeper, more rounded training experience and opens up new opportunities for healing and for carving out niches within the industry from which both patients and practitioners can prosper.

The founders of this academy believe in delivering an integrated, synthesised curriculum in a more streamlined manner, while charging affordable fees and providing unrivalled ongoing support to maximise your opportunities and success as a practitioner.

The Higher Minded Health Academy is that green door.

Welcome to the Higher Minded Health Academy

I’m Dave Hompes, founder and creator of the HMH Academy where we teach, coach, and mentor people just like you to become successful practitioners in nutritional therapy, functional medicine, and mind-body techniques.

I’ve spent the last 25 years in exercise, nutrition, and functional medicine field, weaving together a broad and deep array of different approaches and delivering more than 15,000 hours of consulting and teaching services to clients and students. Here’s what I’ve been up to during that time:

During the first decade, I focused mainly on nutrition, personal training, corrective exercise, and lifestyle coaching.
15 years ago, I moved out of the gym and, having resolved health issues of my own with the help of functional medicine, built a practice combining nutrition and lifestyle coaching with functional medicine.
10 years ago, some of my clients resolved their complex symptoms through mind-body techniques. This intrigued me, so I began studying psychosomatic medicine, psychoneuroimmunology, and the biopsychosocial health model.
This journey took me down various roads, including neuroscience, psychology, human behaviour, sociology, and even economics, politics and philosophy.
I realised that health simply can’t be understood unless you view it through these different lenses and connect the deeper underlying patterns which bind them all together.
The idea for Higher Minded Health popped up from my unconscious mind in Dec 2018 and I’ve spent the last 5 years synthesising my research, clinical experience, and insights into a coherent system that anyone can learn, understand and use.

At each stage of my journey – from exercise and movement to nutrition to functional medicine to psychology and mind-body – I realised that every course I attended, and every technique I learned, had profound benefits but also significant limitations.

Another way of describing my journey would be that each time I thought I had things figured out, the rug was pulled from under me, and I had to overhaul what I thought I knew. This was a humbling and painstaking process, taking more than 20 years and a significant amount of personal expenditure on training and education in places as far afield as the US and South Africa.

[For details of my training, feel free to download my resume/CV]

It became apparent that no single method or school offered all the answers I needed, irrespective of their prestige, high fees, or how long their courses took, so I decided to create my own:

I found that some of my clients achieved great results through nutrition and lifestyle modification.
Others needed functional medicine lab tests and supplement protocols to stimulate healing.
Others still experienced astonishing healing using various mind-body techniques.
Some people did well with chiropractic medicine, osteopathy, Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine, and others.
And some genuinely needed help from the western medical system in the form of pharmaceuticals or surgery.

HMH is my attempt to teach you everything I’ve learned over 25 years in a streamlined way so as to fast-track your educational journey. We take the very best that the nutrition and functional medicine industry has to offer and package it up into a concise and cogent model which cuts out unnecessary fluff and baggage, while streamlining your learning experience.

However, we keep our feet on the ground at all times and acknowledge the limitations of even the very best nutrition and functional medicine approaches. They all have downsides, most of which are ignored by other schools with their psychological blind spots. We’re not criticising other schools, merely highlighting areas that can be improved.

As such, we emphasise the importance of understanding the roles psychology and human behaviour have on health. Indeed, to master nutrition and functional medicine, we suggest transcending them and acknowledging the vast Pandora’s Box of psychological, social and environmental factors which push and pull people in and out of wellness and illness.

Sometimes, psycho-social factors can prevent nutrition and functional medicine programmes from being effective, and sometimes they will yield better results than nutrition and functional medicine do. We cannot understand health and disease by extracting them from their psychological and social contexts. It is vital not to underestimate their influence.

Higher Minded Health Curriculum Outline

Who Are the Courses For?

The nutrition and functional medicine courses (levels I and II) are designed for anyone who:

Individuals who wish to pursue a career as a nutrition & lifestyle, or functional medicine practitioner/coach (no previous background or qualifications needed)
Current practitioners/clinicians who would like a slightly different perspective, revise or modify their outlook and skills, or add to their repertoire of tools.
All allied health professionals who would like to integrate nutrition and functional medicine into their practices – medical doctors, osteopaths, physios, chiropractors, exercise coaches, PTs, yoga/Pilates professionals, etc.
Some people did well with chiropractic medicine, osteopathy, Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine, and others.
Psychotherapists, psychiatrists, and other mental health professionals who would love to learn how food, nutrients, infections, toxins, etc., influence the mind.
Members of the public who would love to learn about health-related topics in detail and apply the methods in their own lives, i.e., for personal use only (NB: certification is not provided in these cases).

The mind-body and biopsychosocial medicine courses (levels III, IV, and V) are designed for:

HMH students who have completed levels I and II and wish to take their studies further into the mind-body and psychology field.
Current nutrition and functional medicine practitioners who would like to add a broader and deeper understanding of the mind-body interaction and biopsychosocial model to their repertoire of knowledge and skills.
All allied health professionals.
Some people did well with chiropractic medicine, osteopathy, Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine, and others.
Members of the public who would love to learn about mind-body topics in detail and apply the methods in their own lives, i.e., for personal use only.

How to Take the Courses

Each level stands on its own but builds on the previous one. Ideally, to gain the greatest benefit from the Academy, we recommend taking the courses in sequence. However, you can take any course at any time if that’s your preference.

Courses are also offered in bundles with special pricing and bonuses.

Levels I and II – Nutrition & Lifestyle and Functional Medicine, respectively, are offered in a bundle with special pricing.
Levels III, IV, V are also offered as a bundle for people who are already qualified in nutrition and functional medicine.
All five courses can be purchased at the same time with particularly helpful savings and bonuses.

The mind-body and biopsychosocial medicine courses (levels III, IV, and V) are designed for:

HMH students who have completed levels I and II and wish to take their studies further into the mind-body and psychology field.
Current nutrition and functional medicine practitioners who would like to add a broader and deeper understanding of the mind-body interaction and biopsychosocial model to their repertoire of knowledge and skills.
All allied health professionals.
Some people did well with chiropractic medicine, osteopathy, Chinese and Ayurvedic medicine, and others.
Members of the public who would love to learn about mind-body topics in detail and apply the methods in their own lives, i.e., for personal use only.

Level I – Nutrition and Lifestyle:

Learn how to design and deliver effective nutrition and lifestyle coaching programmes for your clients and patients.
Include everything I have come to understand about nutrition, delivered in a concise way, cutting out all the fluff and baggage that you do not need to succeed as a nutrition coach.
Learn how to conduct a world-class client intake and monitor progress.
Understand deep nutritional principles and avoid being confused by all the seemingly disparate and conflicting views in the nutrition world.
Critically analyse vegan and plant-based diets, looking at the benefits and drawbacks of ketogenic and carnivore diets, paleo principles, FODMAPs, the GAPS diet, and more.
Learn about macronutrients – proteins, fats, carbohydrates, and micronutrients – vitamins, minerals, co-factors.
Understand key food components – lectins (including gluten), oxalates, salicylates, polyphenols, and nightshades – and how they can impact health.
Learn the key differences between food intolerance, sensitivity, and allergy (including psychological causes), how they are caused, and how to deal with them using food elimination and rotation diets.
Focus on the basics of blood sugar regulation, optimising nutrition for energy and performance.
Learn how nutrition affects sleep and how to improve sleep through nutrition intervention.
Realise why nutrition and lifestyle adjustment alone may not help some people.
Understand the psychology of food and eating, including the ways the body can associate food with unpleasant emotional experiences, giving rise to food reactions.
Learn how to use apps that help clients understand, manage, and optimise their calorie and nutrient intake.
Learn how to communicate with client about possible problem-foods such as alcohol, caffeine, sugar, and artificial sweeteners.
Understand simple principles for helping clients optimise weight loss and body composition.
Explore the basics of human behaviour and how to guide your clients effectively through a nutrition programme.
Examine the different types of clients you will attract into your practice and how to identify potentially tricky cases and personalities.
Improve client communication and manage expectations.
Appreciate business structures, coaching processes, and the finance and marketing aspects of nutrition coaching.
Know your limits and acknowledge when to refer out when a programme isn’t working.
Learn where to get more….

Level II – Functional Medicine:

Learn how to implement functional lab testing, pattern analysis, and targeted supplement protocols to enhance the lives of your clients and patients.
Critical evaluation of many varied case studies.
This is a ‘no BS’ course, which gets straight to the point and doesn’t dither and dally with excessive and useless ‘padding’.
Grasp the interconnections between functional neurology, gastroenterology, immunology, endocrinology, and detoxification.
Learn how to functionally assess each body system using functional lab tests.
Understand how to register with lab companies and order the most important and informative tests.
Learn to interpret the most important and widely used lab tests, including the following:
Functional blood chemistry analysis
Stool and digestive function testing
Organic acids
Nutreval and other metabolic tests
DUTCH hormone analysis
Cyrex immunology tests
Heavy metal and other toxin tests (mycotoxins, glyphosate, and other manmade chemicals)
- Functional blood chemistry analysis
- Stool and digestive function testing
- Organic acids
- Nutreval and other metabolic tests
- DUTCH hormone analysis
- Cyrex immunology tests
- Heavy metal and other toxin tests (mycotoxins, glyphosate, and other manmade chemicals)
- And more…
Connect and synthesise the information from different lab tests into a coherent clinical picture which can be explained to clients in simple terms.
Understand how to communicate how various lab results connect with patient history and symptoms.
Learn how to remedy the patient’s ‘exposome’ to remove harmful influences and reduce their stress load.
Learn how to design and implement safe practical programmes and supplement protocols based on the lab results and clinical picture.
Learn the process of adjusting protocols should things not to go plan.
Understand key patterns and important testing and clinical approaches to different conditions: IBS, IBD, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, high cholesterol, metabolic and cardiovascular conditions, etc.
Improve client communication and sales methods to facilitate client uptake with lab tests.
Know you limits and understand when to refer out when a programme isn’t working – it is not that difficult to interpret lab tests and recommend supplements. Challenge comes when your protocols do not work, and this is where my practitioners falter.
You will learn how to remain calm and focused, helping your clients/patients these difficult situations.
Learn where to get more….

Level III – Health Psychology, Human Behaviour, and the Mind-Body Connection:

“Know Yourself”: master your understanding of psychology, human nature, and the mind-body relationship.
Learn what makes you and other people tick, and how humans can gain greater control over thoughts, emotions and behaviours.
Enhance your client/patient relationships and learn how to minimise and resolve conflict, much faster (including in your personal life).
Understand how values, meaning, and purpose influence health.
Learn the important roles that gratitude and ingratitude play in health and disease (you will be surprised at the benefits of ingratitude).
Understand the neuroscience of perception and how the majority of psychology and mind-body interactions can be linked back to it.
Discover how unrealistic expectations, lopsided judgments, and emotional charges wreak havoc on health.
Understand how the human mind develops through life, how it works, and what drives human behaviour.
Explore the different psychology schools along with their benefits and drawbacks.
Absorb summaries of the great human nature models from some of the greatest minds who ever lived.
Learn how the mind and body interact, top-down and bottom-up, to influence and affect each other.
Understand the basic principles of psychoneuroimmunology (PNI) and psychosomatic illness.
Transcend the current stress and childhood trauma paradigms, which are not adequate for explaining mind-body interactions, and which can be misleading
Learn how to spot clues in your clients which may indicate a need for a mind-body based approach to healing
Understand how to quickly reduce your own stress levels and achieve calm equanimity at all times.
Learn how to deliver mind-body techniques to improve your life, even if you prefer to refer out to psychology practitioners.
Develop a more diverse set of skills and tools to set you apart from the competition and open -up a plethora of career opportunities
As always, strive to improve and move toward mastery in your client communication skills.
Know your limits and when to refer out.
Learn where to get more….

Level IV – The Social Determinants of Health:

Master your understanding of the Biopsychosocial Model of Health and Disease, originally proposed by George Engel in 1977.
Receive a broad introduction to social psychology and sociology.
Grok that there is much more to health than we typically know realise.
Understand how the human mind, human nature, and our societies have developed through time, and what drives human behaviour.
Learn how and why clients may overcome symptoms when they understand social psychology and the social roots of their illnesses.
Learn how social conditioning and social programming strongly impact people’s attitudes towards health.
Understand the many ways our education system influences health, for better or worse (mostly worse – you might be shocked at what you learn)
Learn about group and social psychology, and why people continue to trust authority even when it is letting them down.
Explore the benefits and drawbacks of different social and economic systems and how they impact health.
Understand how our unchallenged assumptions about human nature result in health inequality.
Debate the benefits and drawbacks of a socialised healthcare system such as the NHS.
Learn why methods that you may currently believe improve society, including positive psychology, meditation and mindfulness – may actually be making things worse.
Develop a more diverse set of knowledge and skills to set you apart from the competition and open-up a plethora of career opportunities
As always, strive to improve and move toward mastery in your client communication skills.
Learn where to get more….

Level V – Body-Mind-Spirit: Philosophical, Mystical and Spiritual Aspects of Health:

A deep exploration into what life is, what it means to be alive (the meaning of life), and how to maximise human potential.
Study religions comparatively and draw out their deep and powerful similarities rather than focusing on their differences.
Learn why our scientific model may be inadequate to explain a vast array of health-related phenomena.
Explore the roots and origins of our philosophical assumptions and belief systems.
Understand how our deepest philosophical beliefs about who we are, what we can achieve, and where we are going, profoundly influence our beliefs about health and medicine.
Explore three different ontologies (how reality works, and ways of being in that reality) – physicalism (the current dominant ontology), panpsychism, and rational idealism.
Understand why our ontological model matters, and what it means for our beliefs about the causes of, and cures for, disease.
Debate the paradox of undoubted benefits and many the drawbacks of religion.
Explore the vast research literature on the effects of religion on health.
Look at the exoteric (main teachings) and esoteric (secret teachings) streams and undercurrents within religion.
Explore the psychology of religious fundamentalism and atheism.
Understand the healing power of mystical experiences, and perhaps even experience one for yourself.
Discuss and debate the use of psychedelic substances as healing tools, but also their potential drawbacks, which can be significant and dangerous.
Connect and learn how to harness the principles of light, physics, and the Sun with health.
Understand the role of stories and myths/mythology in health.
Learn how mystical healing traditions reaching back into antiquity can help you improve health in the modern world even when technology lets you down.
Learn where to get more….

Knitting the Five Levels Together

As mentioned above, nutrition and functional medicine dovetail with each other in obvious ways. Psychology, sociology, and spirituality may seem out of place, and perhaps even chaotic in their seeming unrelatedness. but we assure you that all five levels are held together by strong common threads.

These deep underlying ‘patterns that bind’ – which we may also call ‘underlying laws’, ‘organising or orienting principles’ – are hugely significant. Once we understood them, our lives were changed for the better, with more gratitude, compassion, empathy, and a significant reduction in our stress levels. Moreover, comprehending this richer and deeper reality inspired us to step out into the world, act with more confidence and purpose, and be of greater service in the world.

Here is a simple way of organising what we mean by all this.

Our deeper HMH theme is ‘life optimisation’. We want to develop a general understanding of how body, mind, life, society, the world, and the universe operate. Once we understand, we can perceive, and act in more efficient, effective, and inspiring ways to both optimise our own lives and those of our loved ones, while maximising our contribution back to society and the world.

To develop this theme, our subject is an exploration of the deep underlying patterns, laws, regularities, and organising principles which connect the micro-scale of atoms, molecules, biochemicals, cells, tissues, organs, and body systems with the meso-scale of individual human beings, and then the macro-scale of families, societies, humanity at large, earth, and the cosmos. In other words, what patterns, regularities, laws, principles apply at all levels?

Our topics then focus on how these regularities and patterns - these organising principles and laws – can be applied to nutrition, functional medicine, psychology, and human behaviour to improve people’s lives.

We realise the above curriculum is ambitious, but we are certain you will gain an enormous amount of benefit from exploring these themes and topics with us.

Higher Minded Health champions a revolutionary approach to health and wellness through individualised nutrition, functional medicine, and cutting-edge practitioner education. Join us on this journey towards a comprehensive and higher-minded approach to health.

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The Higher Minded Health Academy

“Beyond Your Average Nutrition & Functional Medicine Training Programme”[How much would you love to learn about and understand yourself?”]