Episode 1 - What's this All About?

In this episode I discuss intentions, what holistic healing is, and a little about me and why I am here talking about all of this. 

Transcript

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I'm Kristen Russell, and this is The Wholly Empowered Podcast, where we dive into all things holistic healing and open our minds, hearts, and paradigms to new ideas so we can live our most empowered, healthy, joyful lives. So this is episode one of Wholly Empowered I am your host, Kristen Russell, and I'm really excited to be here. I have been wanting to do this for a very long time, probably at least five years. And it finally, the timing is feeling right and it just feels like I have a green light to go. So I'm just gonna, we're just doing this. I'm a massage therapist. I've been doing that for about nine years. And I also, I lead meditations here and there. I have a meditation teaching certification and do, do a little bit of that, incorporate that in as needed into my work and also do some other modalities. So we'll talk more about that. But I, in this episode, I just want to talk about my intention with this podcast, why I'm here, what I'm doing, what I'm hoping to achieve. to provide. So yeah, I'd say I'm a, I'm a holistic healing enthusiast. So that's, That's, it's something I'm passionate about, so I'm excited to share with you things that have worked for me in my healing journey and provide a space where other people can come on and share either their expertise or things that have worked for them. So that's kind of, so my intention with this podcast is to. Create a space where we can learn, learn and heal and learn new things. I there's so much out there and there's so many options and there's so many reasons to feel empowered about your health and wellness. And I really just, I've like really want to share that with people. So I have gotten so many answers that seem really like not what you would expect that have worked, that have been the right thing for me. And I'm, I'm my lens in this podcast. I'm Christian. I'm religious. I pray to God. I've gotten a lot of answers from my source. I feel like that that have just been really unorthodox or really different or what just, you know, just not your mainstream. And it's, it's been such a game changer, such a life changer for me, if that's a phrase and I just want to empower people to look outside the box and trust their intuition and trust their, their source, trust their God, or, you know, whoever their higher power is and just be able to look at things with, from a different point of view. So I'm hoping that it's a space where people can come and learn and we'll have lots of different people on lots of different subjects that are maybe things you haven't heard of or thought of. And It might be kind of out of your comfort zone or something, but I'm excited to just have fun and play in this space. So I'm hoping we can all come in with open minds and drop our, our paradigms or ideologies or whatever, you know, and just allow space for new ideas. And so I'm, I'm hoping you can take what resonates and leave what doesn't and just be really open minded. So. I'm planning on having people who are either experts or have personal experience with different healing modalities. I'll share a little bit about my experiences and what's worked for me. There may be a few podcasts where it's just me talking, but overall, I kind of want to have just interesting people on who have cool experiences or cool expertise that is just really helpful. This is a passion project for me. I just, I want to provide value for people and just share, have a space of like really safe sharing. So that's, that's my intention with this. And if that sounds good, keep listening, keep joining. But I want to share a little bit about, well, first of all, I want disclaimer, like I'm, I don't really consider myself an expert. I'm just kind of an enthusiast and I'm just sharing what I am passionate about. The things you hear on here, it's not medical advice. It's just ideas. And it's just, you know, if it works for you, wonderful. If it doesn't, that's great. So just putting that out there. But yeah, I want to talk a little bit about my story, like why, why I'm doing this and why, you know, why I'm passionate about holistic healing and what holistic healing is. So. When we talk about just holistic healing, we're, we're coming from this frame of thinking where it's like the, the body, soul, spirit, mind are all interconnected, and they're all affecting each other, and we're whole beings, like, it's kind of taking into account our Divinity and our physical and our, you know, mental, emotional sides and bring them all together. So we may, we're going to be talking about anything from, you know, nutrition to cognitive therapy and spiritual healing to massage and, you know, just all kinds of things. And we might be looking at how one affects the other in one episode, or we might just be focused on one thing, but we're kind of coming from this, idea that like, it's, it really is all connected. It's all in intrinsically just they're all affecting each other. And I really believe that's how our bodies work and how our, you know, minds and all that makes us, us works in synchronicity and all works together. So you have to address each thing. If you really want. complete healing. So, and I'm, I'm also hoping that we can learn to trust our intuition and just get to know ourselves better and know our bodies better and our existence better. So that's where we're, that's where we're at. But yeah, so that's holistic. That's kind of the holistic, Approach to things. And so that's kind of our, our frame of reference for this whole podcast. But so who am I, what, what am I doing here? So yeah, as I said, I've been a massage therapist for about nine years. And I've really enjoyed that career. It's been a great fit for me. And has allowed me to grow in a lot of ways in, especially in this. Like, the more holistic sphere. So, I, I grew up in a family that was really conservative, Christian my mom was really into alternative healing and so I kinda grew up with this, just very, like, it's very normal for me, all of this stuff, all this, like, alternative healing. modalities and ideas and ways of thinking. We used to go to a chiropractor when I was young who did like, he did NET, which is neuro emotional technique and it's a pretty widely accepted, you know form of healing and it's basically like an emotional release Looking at what you're holding on to in your body and helping you release that and giving you the right supplements and diet and just different things to help you move forward. And so we, we would go to him often when I was younger and that was, that was something that I was just very used to. And my mom, so When she, when I was probably 12, she was diagnosed with cancer. And she did all the, all the holistic, you know, alternative modalities. And she, she never did chemo. Like a little bit of radiation But she just did a lot of different, a lot of different things. And She was very into, like, Law of Attraction and, you know, all of that. Just mindset. She had the best attitude of anybody I've ever met. And I think that played a huge role in her, how she handled that health issue. So she had, she had that for about 14 years and, did all the different things. At one point she went to Mexico and did some treatments there. It's just some more just treatments that weren't available in the U. S. And that, the other treatments she did were, they were helpful, but I, you have to really hit it hard when it comes to cancer, in my opinion. And so I think it helped her live, her quality of life was really good for a long time. And I, I would forget she was even sick, you know. But when she went to Mexico, she was not doing well and she was only there for a short amount of time and she just turned around completely like she's doing so much better. So I think some treatments were more effective than others, but overall, like that was really, I feel like she, she did what worked for her, which you have to do when you have any kind of anything with your body, you have to do what works for you. But I felt like that was really effective for her. And so I just saw, I saw the effects of that and I'd love to, we'll, we'll dive into that in another episode. I kind of want to just give you an overview, but I just, I saw how much that helped her. And so that really informed how I look at health, So anyway, she She passed away in 2015, which is when I started doing massage later that year. But anyway, she just, she just lived a long time with that and did, did really well, honestly. So I, I got to witness, you know, how her mindset helped her and how these different treatments were more or less effective. So it really just, it, it, kind of forms how you view health and wellness when you go through something like that with someone so close to you. And then when I was younger for my own personal, experience with holistic healing. So we moved, we moved to California when I was 13, 14. And that was a really tough move for me. I, you know, when you move somewhere and the people are just kind of established and they don't really need you. So then you just, it's really hard to make friends. And it was rough. And I was going to public school at this new school and it was really difficult. And, We had gone back to visit our old chiropractor and he did some, some work on me and we, we were leaving out of town right as we were finishing that session. And when you do a session like that, you have to, there needs to be a feeling of completeness. There needs to be like, okay, we finished whatever we opened up. We finished processing. And I didn't finish processing. And I didn't know at the time. I didn't really realize what was going on. I just, you know, I felt weird. And and this isn't I feel like this might give that a bad rep, but but it's just, it's just the facts, like it's just part of, as an adult now, I would know, oh we need to go, I don't, I don't feel quite right, like we need to finish, like we left something undone, but at the time I just didn't know, I didn't know, and so it kind of triggered this anxiety in me, where I, for, gosh, it was like my sophomore year of high school. And I just started feeling really anxious and I think there are other factors involved, but this was kind of the catalyst or the trigger that just set everything off, but I really struggled with anxiety. Like, if I had gone to a psychiatrist, they probably would have diagnosed me with an anxiety disorder, probably like probably agoraphobia or something, because I just, when I would go to school, I felt like I was struggling to just stay. In the present or just stay in my body. Like it felt like a very out of body experience and it was so, I was in fight or flight like a hundred percent of the time, basically like every day, it was just a struggle to stay calm and not have a panic attack kind of, and not feel like I was going to pass out or something like it was just really, really difficult. And We ended up, I didn't really know how to communicate this to my mom because she had always, she'd never really struggled with her mental health. And she was wonderful, but she didn't really have a frame of reference. And it was, I mean, it was, you know, 2004 or something. Like, it just wasn't as, people didn't talk about things as openly as they do right now. And I didn't know what was happening and I was afraid if I talked about it, it would make it worse. So I just didn't really Get a ton of help. I would tell her what was kind of going on But it was hard to explain and it was hard for her to understand. And so anyway, we just did our best but we found another chiropractor in California where we had moved who did the same treatments And so I worked with her and she really helped to get me back to homeostasis Especially as I was like a senior I did a lot of work with her because I was going to college and I was like, I can't go to college like this. So so we just did, we did a lot of healing work with her and that helped me a ton. I was always really interested in this and what they did. And I always thought, gosh, I'd love to do what these, What these practitioners do just all this emotional healing work. And at the time, that was the only modality I knew of where anyone did that. And that was something you had to have a doctorate to do. So I wasn't quite that motivated, you know, to like pursue a doctorate just to do that. But as time went on. Jumping back to when my mom passed. So at the time there was this girl at church that got assigned to me. I just kind of helped me out. And. She had left me a message when my mom was in the hospital, kind of going through the rollercoaster ups and downs of her passing. And she'd left me a message just saying hello and introducing herself. And if you need anything, and I don't even think she knew what was going on with me, but I ended up calling her when I got home and connecting with her and letting her know what was going on. And she told me and this was when I was 26, So it's, you know, quite a while after college and I was doing much better with my, I feel like I over the years I've basically, I've done a lot of healing work with the anxiety where I'm like, it's not really such an issue. But that's another, you know, there's been a lot of things that I've utilized and so I'm excited to kind of give you more. About just what's worked for me in that area and just learning things about myself and how to manage I have all these tools now, you know where it's not it's just not a big deal if I do get anxious Anyway, so I'm talking to to this girl and she was like, you know, I have a I know a lady who does Kind of emotional release work that might be helpful for you, and she connected me with this woman and I didn't even I didn't even use her services for two years because I was in massage school And I was just getting by you know it's like you're just Doing the bare minimum of everything because you're trying to get through all your do all your things you have to do So but about two years later. I realized that I was You I was like, man, I can't get out of bed in the morning. Like, it's just all the grief from losing my mom and feeling so alone and feeling, you know, like I didn't have a purpose anymore. I helped her a lot and it's really hard when you lose someone like that for so many reasons. But that was, that was a big one for me as well as just losing your mom. But, I finally called her and we did a session and it was really similar to what I did with a chiropractor as far as we're releasing trapped emotions in the body and but it was a very, it was done through a Christian centered lens and it was the most healing thing I've ever experienced because we were, the way we were doing it was very intentional and about calling, calling on Christ and using visualizations and just using the atonement really to help me heal. And that was like the most transformative thing. Uh, And it, it changed me, you know, it was like, and it wasn't the modality, it's the source. It's. For me, it's Christ, you know, for me, it's the savior. Um, And you know, when you, and I'm not, I'm not here to evangelize or preach anything, but I'm just sharing my authentic, you know, experience, what I, what worked for me, as I was saying before, like, that's kind of what I'm here to do and for other people, like I know other people where other things have worked great for them. And so definitely. We're going to talk about all of that, but this is, you know, just my story. So but yeah, when you, when you experience healing like that, you just want to, you do want to share it. And so that's a big motivator for me being here. I just want to share the miracles I've experienced, you know, with my health and so anyway, so I, I was very interested in what this, you know, what she was doing and the, the modality she used and and she, one time I worked with her for quite a, quite a while. I went to her for sessions for quite a while and she, one time she was like, would you ever want to do this? And I was like, And I was like, well, I'm not, I'm not gifted. It feels like this woman's very spiritually gifted, you know? And I was like, well, I can't do that. And she was like, I think you'd be really good at it. I was like, oh, really? So I started looking into it and I started learning how to do it. And she was a mentor for me and and so I, I learned about this healing modality. And it's something that I incorporate here and there. If my. You know, I do it with friends or I do it a little bit with my massage clients if they want that but it's informed how I How I do things just in general and it's been a huge blessing in my life. So anyway So yeah, so that's it's kind of Trying to think if there's anything else that I wanted to share about why I'm here. I'm trying to give you an overview a little bit. I went in depth on some personal things, but overall, like I, I want to, as far as modalities go, I want to dive in deeper on different episodes, but I wanted to give you a overall just view of who I am and what I'm wanting to offer and what I'm wanting to kind of the space I want to create and the vibe, you know? So So yeah, that's kind of where I'm at now, and I feel like I've, it's opened up a whole world of inner work for me, and knowing how to help myself heal. And so anyway, that's, that's me, and I think, yeah, I'm hoping we can help each other, you know, help each other heal. So thank you for listening to episode one. And this is a little bit shorter, but we'll probably, we'll probably go a little longer, maybe closer to an hour. I'm not really sure. I'm trying to just not set too many parameters and let it be what it is. And we'll just see what happens. So. Should be fun. Thank you so much for listening. 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