I Feel You, A Fortify Wellness Production
Bettina Mahoney the Founder/CEO of @atfortifywellness is a rape survivor who started her brand after struggling to not only find a therapist, but multiple mediums to heal through her trauma. Fortify Wellness is a 360 holistic platform offering therapy, coaching, fitness, and meditation on one subscription platform. We dive deep with our trailblazing guests about overcoming adversity.
I Feel You, A Fortify Wellness Production
Embracing Self-Care and Transformation: A Healing Journey with Energy Practitioner Vanessa Shippy
What if healing isn’t about arriving at a specific point but rather about embracing an ongoing journey? We’ve got Vanessa Shippy, an inspiring energy work practitioner, sharing her personal path from battling mold poisoning and autoimmune disorders to discovering the deep body-mind connection. Through her transformative experiences, Vanessa offers compelling insights into why healing is powered by pure, unconditional love and how prioritizing self-care is crucial to being able to serve others effectively. Tune in as we challenge the misconceptions surrounding self-care and highlight the challenging yet rewarding process of inner work and setting boundaries.
About Vanessa:
Vanessa is a Certified Emotion Code Practitioner, Certified Body Code Practitioner, Certified Belief Code Practitioner, Integrated Quantum Therapy Practitioner, and Certified Intuitive Rebirth Practitioner. She is also trained in Energetic Muscle Testing, Western Astrology, Trauma-Informed Care, and Neurofeedback, continuously expanding her knowledge across these modalities. Believing that learning and healing are lifelong journeys, Vanessa has found that pure, unconditional love is at the heart of her work, guiding her to restore love, consciousness, and freedom to the planet and its people.
Her personal experience with chronic health issues sparked her journey into holistic wellness, transforming her from being bed-ridden to feeling her best. This journey fuels her desire to help others achieve mind, body, and spirit balance. For Vanessa, a great practitioner prioritizes personal well-being, helps clients find immediate relief, and prevents future health concerns by addressing root causes.
Through Dawning Hope, Vanessa aims to remind others that even after the darkest night, the sun always rises, bringing new hope with each dawn.
Fortify Wellness is so honored to welcome Vanessa Shippy to the Fortify Wellness platform as a practitioner.
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**This information is not to be misconstrued as medical or psychological advice. Please contact your medical team if you have questions or concerns pertaining to your medical or psychological well-being. All of the linked products are independently selected, and curated by the fab Fortify team. If you love and buy something we link to, we may earn a commission.**
Hey Fortifiers, thank you so much for listening to I Feel you a Fortify Wellness production. We are into season six, where we sit down with trailblazing women in their industry to chat about overcoming adversity, moments of fortitude and, of course, anxiety. This information is not to be misconstrued as medical or psychological advice. Please contact your medical team if you have concerns pertaining to your overall wellbeing. I'm your host. Bettina Mahoney, the founder and CEO of Fortify Wellness.
Speaker 1:I am so excited to welcome Vanessa, who is a certified emotion code practitioner, body code practitioner, belief code practitioner, integrated quantum therapy practitioner and intuitive rebirth practitioner. She is training in energetic muscle testing, western astrology, trauma-informed care and neurofeedback, continuously expanding her knowledge. Vanessa believes we are always learning and healing. There is no destination always learning and healing. There is no destination, only the journey. Through her own experiences, she began hearing love will save us during difficult moments. Pure, unconditional love is at the core of her work and she aims to restore love, consciousness and freedom to the planet. So excited to welcome Vanessa. Hello, vanessa, thank you for joining me, thank you for having me. Of course, you are very impressive with the energy work that you do and I just experienced that firsthand, which is really special to me. But when you take away all your titles and I'm including the work you do maybe sister, daughter, etc. Who are you be? Sister, daughter, et cetera? Who are you?
Speaker 2:I love that question. Um, if you take away the titles of wife, mother, all of that, I would say I'm a soul who strives to help others on their path to embodying their highest expression. Um, as species, we've evolved so far out of alignment with, like, the beauty that we came here to experience. But I'm honored to be someone whose desire is to help kind of bring that alignment and balance back so that we can come home to our wholeness.
Speaker 1:Wow, I love that wholeness Now, how I like to kind of jump around a little bit. But how do you, you know, with women I feel like we put, like we fill up other people's cups before our own and you know we have to put our oxygen mask on for some time to be able to serve others. I'm curious for you, like how do you serve your highest self and manifest to your highest self? Like, how do you serve your highest self and manifest to your highest self.
Speaker 2:I, I practice. I practice the inner work and the energy work that I do literally daily, constantly. I make sure, and to practice my work, I have to really take care of my own body and my own self. Like you said, I had to put that oxygen mask on myself before I can really help others, and helping others is really important to me. So my own health is very important to me.
Speaker 1:I make sure that I'm, you know, eating well, eating clean, nourishing my physical body, as well as incorporating the energy work and calming my nervous system, and making sure that I'm always, you know, when I, when I practice a session or or lead a class or something, I always want to be kind of grounded and in my, in my fullest expression, you could say I agree, you have to be able to do the work in order to project that out into the universe with your clients, and I kind of felt the same way, in the sense that, you know, I survived a rape and after I went through that experience, I felt it in my body and I struggled with depression and anxiety and I didn't understand why I felt that way. I thought I was the only one, and I think I wish more people understood what you go through post-trauma, post a really challenging, traumatic event, because I feel like not a lot of people can do that and I've done it very well, explaining that post-traumatic stress disorder and what you go through. And so I felt very isolated and alone. I didn't know where to go to get the help, and so that's where Fortify came in.
Speaker 1:For me was that I wanted to offer people a 360 approach that felt practical to live sustainable lives. But in order to do that, I had to really look in the mirror. And you know, all over Instagram, all over Facebook, we're seeing self-care, self-care, self-care, and self-care isn't necessarily going to the spa or like going to the mall. Self-care is painful. The real self-care, the sustainable self-care, where you really have to do that inner work and heal that inner child and look from within in order to live a great life. You're not always going to. At least, I've learned this. You're not going to get the healing from other people. You get the healing from yourself and learning how to set boundaries, learning how to listen to your body. So I'm curious for you was there an adversity in your life that pivoted you into this chapter that you're in today?
Speaker 2:Yes, very much so. Pain has actually been one of my greatest teachers. My body communicates with me very effectively and I've experienced mold poisoning, hemiplegic migraines over 10 years, chronic fatigue syndrome, irritable bowel syndrome, hashimoto's, leaky gut, dysautonomia, pots, mast cell sick to the gaffney. It just felt like you name it, I had it, and that was really hard for me to understand because I I was never I was never really educated on connecting with the body and you know, when you're in so much pain, it doesn't necessarily come naturally, it's very, it has to be very conscious. And I learned about, you know, autoimmune and I felt like my body was attacking me, because that's kind of the whole scenario around autoimmune that's often portrayed is the body attacking itself. But little did I know. Years of various traumatic experiences had been stored in my cellular memory and my body was just trying to help me begin to process it.
Speaker 1:Do you mind diving into that? Did your body kind of react in a way that you know, pivoted you to have to make a change or make a new discovery?
Speaker 2:Yes, so the and the array of symptoms that came along with each of these, I mean all of it kind of came all at once, you could say, and it literally it did feel like my body was screaming. I just didn't know how to answer that call in the moment but, like physical pain, tends to highlight and even amplify our emotional pain, and I avoided emotions that I had labeled as uncomfortable in my life.
Speaker 2:I avoided them for so long, but experiencing that physical pain and those physical symptoms without being able to run from it, it really like brought up a lot of suppressed emotional energy as well, and I could no longer distract from it or run from it.
Speaker 1:Wow, wow. Thank you for your vulnerability. I can relate to that where I was running away from the feeling that I had when I was assaulted and then I remember my body just giving up on me, kind of like I couldn't get out of bed in the morning, like I used to wake up at 5 am, work with a private trainer, get to ballet by 8 am. I was dancing like 40 hours a week and that was a good portion of my life. And I go from that to just, you know, practically needing to push myself out of bed, just to sit up out of bed in the morning.
Speaker 1:And so when you go from that transition, I totally relate to you. You're like what is going on? What is my body telling me? And my body was telling me you have to deal with this, we can't protect you in this fight or flight mode anymore. And that was completely eye, eyeopening to me and it was the beginning, the very beginning, of the journey towards healing. But I relate to that of like being afraid of those emotions and having to deal with them, and sometimes they still can be scary, but I think it can be very empowering to get in touch with those emotions. Still can be scary, but I think it can be very empowering to get in touch with those emotions. Can you dive briefly into the work that you do, the coding work that you do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so most of my work is in the energy work realm.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm not a quantum physicist.
Speaker 2:Everything is made of energy and quantum physics has been proving this for over a century, and so, like a computer, the subconscious mind records every belief, thought, word, action that's happened throughout our lifetimes, and it holds important information regarding our healing or blocks, or really anything that might be impacting our physical vitality or lack thereof, thing that might be impacting our physical vitality or lack thereof.
Speaker 2:I utilize energetic response testing in order to tap into the subtle energies and shifts within and communicate with the subconscious mind, and this work helps to clear and transmute energetic blocks or densities within your energy field in order to facilitate the body's own innate healing ability. So this can really quickly portray physical form at a cellular level and can optimize your body's true healing potential. You could describe it in the sense that these energies within us hold a story, but it is a story of the past, and so I can help to remind the body that we no longer have to bring these stories with us into the future, and instead we can clear them and neutralize them, and this can help to bring us into deeper connection with ourselves, which then leads to deeper connection with others and with the world around us, so that we can lead that more fulfilling life that we desire.
Speaker 1:Wow. Living a fulfilling life that we desire is beautiful, and it's something that I think about a lot. What does that mean? And that means something different for everybody, and I think you and I share that commonality of the body keeping score and the body sharing information with us and how that's so important to listen to your body and I think about times I've struggled in my life where I always use the analogy I'm a very visual person that when you're depressed, you tend to see the world in black and white and then, when you start to heal, you start to see the world in color again and you learn that life is meant to be lived fully, happily. We're not just here to survive.
Speaker 1:And so when you learn that and you feel empowered through that, you start making different decisions about your life and you start making choices that feel good to your body and that feel good to your soul. And once you realize that you're worthy like once you realize that you're worthy enough to make these decisions to feel better about yourself everything changes. And so that's what's so cool about this self-care journey when you really do it, it's exciting because you can see the progress. I'm sure you've seen your own progress and it feels exciting, like I did this work, like I did this homework, you know, and it and it feels so beautiful because you can kind of see your life from both sides and how you've changed and how you've grown. And I'm curious, like what have you noticed through your healing journey? Like have you noticed this growth and like how do you think it helps you show up differently for your clients?
Speaker 2:I absolutely noticed growth. I actually was bedridden for some time and it was shortly after I had had my daughter.
Speaker 2:And so I had two children and I couldn't really get off the couch or out of bed and just experiencing that was, you know, that shifts your perspective, like you said, the world you can see the world as dull but, like, once you do that work, it can shift your perspective to OK, there is hope, and I knew in my heart that there was ways to improve health and that I just had to find them. The growth I mean, I feel like I've experienced growth in every aspect of my life physically, obviously, you know, going from that state to being fully okay now, you know, pain-free. It's incredible, like what doesn't get talked about enough is kind of the mindset and the. That inner world shift is really one of the most impactful, I think, because that drives the physical shift and, and you know, each of them obviously stack upon each other and play various roles. But but just having that different outlook of there is hope and you know, like you said, you can, you can shift this and when you do start to shift, it is the most fulfilling, like you said, homework that you can do, because what more does someone desire more than just being happy and fulfilled in life?
Speaker 2:For me, but the shifts that I've experienced have helped me to work with clients, because I feel like I've learned a lot about various not only diagnoses, you could say, but also the inner workings of that and what can come up when someone is experiencing anxiety or they're experiencing like they can't move their physical body, and so that energy is just almost circulating in the body and in the mind. And I feel like knowing that firsthand and experiencing it at such a deep level, it has helped me be able to kind of bring a really deep understanding when people are having a really hard time. And even with my business, donning Hope, kind of the whole, the whole aspect and my vision for Donning Hope is to help others see that even after the darkest night, the sun always rises and the dawn brings new hope.
Speaker 1:That's beautiful, especially because it is suicide awareness and prevention month, you know, and that there is, there is a life in the tunnel and like life gets better. And it's so sad because when you're young you think, because you don't have the life perspective, you don't know that life can get better. But it can and every day is a chance for a do over and I really do believe that. So, in that way, what are you excited about with Donning Hope coming up, Anything exciting that you're launching or any classes or courses you have coming up?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I'm actually developing a guide to help others kind of become more in touch with their own energy and body. I also offer I'm developing more meditations. I have a free meditation on my website that helps to connect people to the present moment.
Speaker 2:I have all kinds of ideas and plans in the works, but currently those are my biggest these are at the forefront of my work beyond one-to-one sessions is developing this guide so that people can really kind of ground down physically and integrate physically the energetic shifts that can take place during the one-to-one sessions and the meditations that can help facilitate that self-connection.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for joining me today, vanessa, of course. Thank you so much for joining me today, vanessa, of course.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me.