About 5th Place

Leading the way in Therapeutic Coaching and Emotional Fitness.

Born in South Africa. Built on science, informed by lived experience.

5th Place began in South Africa — a country shaped by deep trauma, profound resilience, and the urgent need for inclusive emotional healing. What started as a response to real-world disconnection has grown into a globally relevant practice rooted in presence, embodiment, and collective care.

This is not an imported model. It was made from the ground up — with heart, with science, and with the belief that how we feel shapes how we live.

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5th place UK

5th Place UK is part of an international movement transforming how we understand and support emotional wellbeing.

Rooted in over a decade of work developed in South Africa and adapted for the UK, we offer a fresh, relational approach to mental health—one that centres emotions, builds psychological skills, and strengthens human connection.

We work with individuals, schools, local authorities, family hubs, and workplaces to make emotional wellbeing practical, inclusive, and scalable.

Our structured approach blends therapeutic coaching, training, and evidence-based tools that help people work with emotion—not just manage behaviour or symptoms. It’s built on the simple truth that change begins not just in the mind, but in the body, in relationships, and in community.

Our Vision

We imagine a world where people understand emotions as a vital part of life—not something to suppress or manage alone, but something to navigate with skill, support, and confidence.

A world where:

  • Children learn the psychological skills to express and manage their emotions,

  • Families and schools become places of emotional safety and connection,

  • Workplaces nurture real human flourishing,

  • And helping professionals are equipped with embodied tools—not just theories—to lead meaningful change in themselves and others.

We call this capacity emotional fitness: the ability to feel, regulate, and relate in ways that support wellbeing and resilience.

Our vision is to make this a reality—by making emotional learning and tools accessible at scale.

Mission

To transform emotional wellbeing by enabling the how—
the how of feeling, relating, growing, and healing.

At 5th Place UK, we help people build the psychological skills—what we call emotional fitness—to engage more meaningfully with themselves, with others, and with the world around them.

Our mission is to make emotional learning accessible, ethical, and effective at scale. Through embodied, relational, and evidence-informed training and coaching, we equip individuals and professionals with tools for deep, lasting change—in their own lives and in the systems they’re part of.

We’re setting a new standard for emotional development: one rooted in humanity, backed by science, and designed to grow resilient people and connected communities.

We often get asked why 5th Place? Why not 1st or 2nd or 3rd?

There is a story behind the choice of the name. So why the name 5th Place? It is short. Here it is.

First, second, third and fourth place:

Ray Oldenburg, author of The Great Good Place defines the first place as home, the second place as work and the third place as the place where community gathers for recreation, such as coffee shops, parks and sports facilities.

The fourth place we have defined as online spaces like Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Tik Tok, Zoom, Teams, Google Meet and so on.

Most people agree it is challenging to show up in these different places with a coherent sense of identity.

What then is the fifth place?

5th Place is the space of relatedness, community, possibility, well-being and equality of all people who are committed to feeling themselves, wherever they are.

5th Place asks us to build a better world through the realm of feeling - feeling who we are and how we are in an honest and authentic way. It is anywhere and everywhere that asks us to feel more, heal, learn, grow and engage.

Meet The Team

Training

Therapeutic Coaching

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The soul always knows what to do to heal itself. The challenge is to silence the mind.

—Caroline Myss