Living Well: Soul Intelligence Method with Kristine Genovese

Transcript

Ernestine: 0:00

welcome to Bon Vivant Chic Life Well Lived the podcast. For anyone who wants to cut through today's noise and listen for a few minutes to meaningful conversations on the human experience and the power of connectedness, I'm your host Ernestine Morgan, an advocate for kindness with a passion for showcasing human interest stories that matter. Today I am happy to be sitting with Kristine Genovese. Kristine is the founder of Soul Intelligence Method. She has 25 years of experience in corporate growth and turnarounds. During her time in the corporate world, she excelled at identifying and transforming underlying patterns to improve business outcomes. Kristine, thanks for sitting down with me today.

Kristina : 0:40

Oh, I'm delighted.

Ernestine: 0:41

Can you share where you grew up and what life was like?

Kristina : 0:44

I'm originally from New York City. I had the opportunity to grow up, between New York, Connecticut and the Poco Mountains of Pennsylvania. My dad, was a corporate accountant so we moved around a little bit as a kid. The Northeast Corridor for a while i, really learned about, working hard and, diligence from both of my parents. My mom worked a couple of jobs, at one time just to, keep things going. What I really liked was being outside. I remember the freedom of riding your bike and, playing in the woods on big rocks and, playing with kids in the neighborhood. Being able to be outside and explore. We didn't have cell phones. You came home right when it got dark. It's totally different now. Now I feel like we're all tethered, so I think that's probably one thing that I keep as something I need to reconnect is to be out in nature. I think it's being out, that stillness, I feel that connection to the divine or connection to that energy even just the sound of the ocean brings your body back into a natural rhythm, and it gets your nervous system to calm down. Really think that's one of my favorite things that probably started out as a kid.

Ernestine: 1:44

How did you end up in Florida?

Kristina : 1:46

That was, a corporate move. I was in higher education for a long time. That's where I did a lot of the corporate turnaround work. That was the field I was in. I had the opportunity to move, with a company that was acquiring additional, colleges at the time, one of which happened to be in Tampa. They needed someone to, run that institution. At the time I was focused more in, what we call admissions, which is otherwise known as sales on a college campus. I came down to work with the admissions team, in Tampa at a college.

Ernestine: 2:13

What are some of your fondest memories growing up?

Kristina : 2:16

Growing up was a little bit hard. When I think about the good times, I think about, the time that I was in Connecticut jumping through sprinklers, playing in, sandboxes and creating, I allowed my imagination to run wild, being outside and, what would it be like if, I had, my own house forts in the woods and things like that. Those are some of my fonder memories. My parents both worked. And so if we were gonna go visiting anyone it was to go visit, family. Swimming was a big thing for me. I loved, being in the water. I think that's something that I always held onto. I need to be by moving water. That's really good for me. To have that still in my life, I remember. Taking care of my brother. And always being in service. I learned how to cook, I'm a big cook to this day, very much in the Italian tradition. I don't think I can make anything that's not, fattening, at this moment. It's all got sauces but, it's really good food. I have one younger brother. He lives in the south Jersey area. He has four children and he is, in operations for, a tech company, that, is actually medical services. My mom. Ran a hospital laboratory. My dad, wound up becoming a paramedic later in life and running an emergency medical facility. I was the only one that didn't fall into the medical bent until, about four years ago I took a path of, working, in, functional medicine and natural healthcare.

Ernestine: 3:35

Who had the. Biggest influence on you when you were young.

Kristina : 3:38

My mom, she's my editor even today, I told her, mom, I just wrote another article I need you to edit for me. She's one of my best friends. My mom really embodied, unconditional love as a mom. That's something so precious, I think she was one of my biggest influences. My dad was more of a struggle for me. He helped shape me on what not to do. What I admired about him at one point is that he had this, Renaissance man turning point. He struggled with alcohol. And so part of the reason we moved around, I thought it was that he was just getting promoted and we're going to these, new places. It was, they were moving the problem around because back in the day. They didn't realize people could get treatment for it. They just moved you further and further away. To hopefully that you had less impact. But I didn't even know that until I was a grownup, I think it was just him, masking what was really going on underneath, and my mom also showed me the power of unconditional love.'cause she felt her job on this earth was to teach him how to love. I saw how much, she loved him and he loved her. I think, they both influenced me in very different ways.

Ernestine: 4:37

what was your very first job and, how did it shape you?

Kristina : 4:40

When I was 13, I rode my bike to this local, store, where I actually made deli sandwiches, stock shelves and things like that. I loved it'cause I was 13 and I was making money, I saved all my money so I could buy my first car. I did the waitressing job. Where I was serving other people and was a bartender through college and I was a lifeguard'cause I loved being by the pool. I had a lot of really good jobs. But I think, there's an expression that I learned, that I kept in my management days, which was, just because you know how to make a great sandwich doesn't mean you know how to run the deli. There's individual contributors. As well as those who can, manage others motivate others and get people to move in the right direction. I think it's just different skill sets. That's probably the lesson I learned.

Ernestine: 5:22

We hear a lot about the importance of aligning our body, mind, and spirit, and you've developed the soul intelligence method. That reflects the body, mind, and spirit. What were some of the pivotal moments that led you to develop this? You wrote a book what motivated you to put this out in the world because you do share a lot of your own personal, testimony.

Kristina : 5:44

March 12th, 2020. It was a pivotal day in my life. It's burned in my brain. It was a Thursday on that day, I was on my last corporate turnaround and it was a very stressful day. We had been preparing the board deck. We had a board meeting on Monday. We were on year one of a three year turnaround. And, we just started to make the turn. I'd just gotten a performance bonus. Things are going well, I'm psyched. And my husband at the time was undergoing a biopsy for cancer and so I was at the doctor's appointment with him when I got the call from the head of HR letting me know my services were no longer needed. Talk about the shock of your life. You're in your early fifties, it's the height of COVID, and all of a sudden you're outta work. No one's hiring because the entire world is crazy shut down. Trying to figure out how do we do this thing? How do we work from home? And I had always worked from home and traveled, so that wasn't as. Daunting to me at the time, but my panic went in, I went through all the, normal emotions because you think about, oh my gosh, I'm the one with the healthcare plan. I'm the breadwinner in the family. What are we gonna do? I was shocked, and I sent a text, to my boss, the COO, and I said, I just got fired. He said, me too. I was like, what? Essentially what happened is we had prepared the board deck that showed, had we been able to hire the staff, we needed to convert the marketing leads in the first quarter. If we'd been able to hire who we needed by the end of the year, we would've not only met. The Q1 number, we would've exceeded it, but the CEO at the time said, no, I want you to hold the line on expenses. You can't hire anybody. We're not gonna train through the holidays. We'll just start the new year off. And he fired both of us. Took our board deck. Went on a hiring spree. Karma always has a way of coming back. There was a board investigation. He was removed from position. He hired a buddy to take his position and still sat on the board. So it wound itself into the ground. Unfortunately, the company doesn't exist today. For me, I truly believe that was the divine's hand in plucking me out of corporate America because I was always I'm gonna fix it, I was all about fixing companies, whether it was people or process or technology. What do we need to hit the business outcomes, i'm a problem solver by nature. And I was given, fortunately, a nice exit package. So I had a little runway, about nine months to birth something. After I got over the initial shock, and went through all the emotions, I spent a lot of time in prayer and meditation and really going within, piece of great advice from someone who said, why don't you truly do something? That you wanna do at this point in your life rather than something you feel you have to do. And so what is that? I had learned how to use a book of charts and a pendulum. And actually I was in the closet about my spiritual life or my gifts. And so I actually had a book of charts and a pendulum where I would use in, the hotel room when I was on turnarounds what is the underlying energy? What is this team not like? What is the commonality that's holding everybody back? I would actually do sort of, a precursor to what, soul Intelligence is today, to try and help energetically shift things before I really knew what it was. And what I was able to do, I had this one really powerful meditation. I had tears streaming down my face, and I just knew I had to, instead of operate in what Brandon Bouchard calls your zone of excellence, where everybody sees you in that role and you're really good at it and they pay you really well and you're identified by that role. Your zone of excellence, you stay in that for a long time. It was time for me to elevate to my zone of genius. And really what that is for me is the soul intelligence method. It's helping people heal physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and energetically. Through those meditations and journaling, the system basically came to me I knew what kind of charts we needed. I knew, what different elements people needed to shift outta their life because. I understand quantum physics and I try and make that really easy for people to understand. We all know basic principles of science and energy, everybody and everything is energy.

Ernestine: 9:20

What is bioenergetics?

Kristina : 9:22

In the 1950s, Dr. Alexander Lowen, documented what bioenergetics is, and it's essentially the correlation between your physical wellbeing and your mental and emotional wellbeing. If you don't feel well physically, typically mentally and emotionally, something else is going on, energy is supposed to move through us. But when energy pools. And gets stuck in the body. It tends to cause dis-ease or dysfunction that's when you go to see the doctor'cause something's not functioning right. It's our body's way of getting our attention. It's also our subconscious mind allowing something to come up that really needs to be healed. Because everybody and everything is energy. If we can all rewind the clock to about third grade, we learned we're all protons, neutrons, electrons, vibrating in this electromagnetic field. But I think we forget that.'cause we're physical, we're corporal. But the only way people can hear us right now is through energy frequency vibration. The only way you can see somebody via Zoom is that energy transfer, we get so much streaming information from the sky through 5G. People don't see it's energy and frequency and vibration. And I think because we see things in the physical, it's vibrating very densely, and then we forget. We're energetic beings. We have energy bodies. We pick up things from other people. Sometimes we're processing things for other people that aren't even our own. Bioenergetics and getting a bioenergetic adjustment from me is like going to the chiropractor. You get a biomechanical adjustment. You're moving the spine so that you can be in full alignment, and so that you're not pinching nerves or you're not having uncomfortable feelings in your body. And what I do is I get to the subconscious mind where we store. Most of those traumas from our life or most of those, incidents or impactful moments. The first time I realized I was empathic, it wasn't until I was in probably my late thirties, early forties, and. I said to my mom,, I remember being as a kid, I don't feel good around my dad. I don't feel like myself. And then as a grownup, I was picking up on all of his emotions, like his, self-loathing or, self hatred or disgust, that he wasn't where he wanted to be in his life. And I would feel that, and then I wouldn't feel like myself. As a grownup, oh I don't have to take that on. I can process, I can transmute that. Once energy is created, it can't be destroyed. It can be transmuted into something else. Alchemized, in essence. Otherwise it stays either within you or around you, and you have to shift it healthy ways to shift it, we can, go outside and go for a walk. Go for a run, we can dance, we can change and shift our energy, on a very light level. When you wanna go deeper, it's really about. Moving those things up and out of the body, bringing it to the conscious mind so they can be released.

Ernestine: 11:53

The foundation of Soul intelligence is comprised of four pillars. Can you talk us through each one starting with conscious awareness, then energetic clearing, spiritual integration, and then soul expansion.

Kristina : 12:08

Conscious awareness. That's just, starting to become aware of who you are, where you are, what point you are in your life. I describe the levels of consciousness as four levels. Life is happening to me where you're in the victim, villain, hero story mode versus the next level, which is like, life is happening for me, where you start to go, oh, this is why this happened. This is what I learned. This is how I'm. Growing to life is happening through me, where I think that's the space that I'm in when I'm doing the work. The Soul Intelligence work with another person where you really feel that divine connection running through your body and you're co-creating with higher power. And shifting. And then there's life is happening as me, where you just get lost and maybe in the water you'll feel like you're become part of the water and you just really feel that extension of energy. That's my quickie version. But you can't stay in that wonderful, floaty place, buddha on the mountain. The second you go out into traffic, somebody cuts you off, and you fall back down again. You can't stay in this exalted state, we're human. That's the beauty of it.

Ernestine: 13:05

In your book, you share your own journey. Highlighting your relationship with your ex-husband. You share how hard it was to try and change him. And you learned a really hard lesson that you can change how you. Approach a situation or you could only change yourself, you can't change other people.

Kristina : 13:23

Doing the work I'm doing in the world, in essence it's coaching people. It's helping people shift the energy and using the method as a way to help them achieve their best life. I was in, this relationship with someone who refused to work on themselves, and stayed in victimhood, and I wound up finding myself in this, codependent relationship where I'm overdoing overgiving, trying to hold everything up because they refused to. At the same time, I realized how much that was hurting myself until I physically broke down. They always say heal or heal thyself, you have to go through it before you can help anybody else get through it. This is part of my experience and why it was so impactful. I had this, what's called a glaucoma cyclic crisis where, my eye, it was like looking through a dirty shower door. It was very scary. I'm like, I'm losing my vision. What's going on? Well, I didn't wanna see my life the way it was. My lower back went out. It felt like the whole world was coming out from underneath me. I could barely walk at one point because I didn't wanna take another step forward. So my body was screaming at me. My soul intelligence was screaming, you've gotta do something differently. You can't heal in the same toxic environment. You have to remove yourself from the situation to heal completely. When you're bombarded by that kind of energy, it's really hard to continue to push through it. Not everybody wants to live their best life. Not everybody wants to, be in full alignment and experience the highs and lows and the joys they forget that they're in control of that and can make that choice every day. One of the things I have come to learn, is self care isn't selfish. It's sacred. And you really, have to love one another as you love yourself. People only can love to that capacity. So if you really don't know who you are, love who you are, wanna change, wanna be in full alignment, living your best life, experiencing those things from the inside out, it makes it really difficult to be with a person that's completely opposite. And I think that was the Divine's way of giving me that contrast. To say, look, you can't save everyone. An individual isn't a company, you can transform a business, you can transform things, but it may mean you don't do it with the same people

Ernestine: 15:25

managing a team, and I'm sure you've seen the difficulties businesses have with, work ethic and what the expectations are.

Kristina : 15:33

I grew up at a time, when, women, were working and they had to take care of the home and the kids and everything, and we had to be everything, and do everything all at once. Besides growing up with an alcoholic parent, I had to overachieve to get attention, I had to overdo my whole life. This was truly breaking a very old pattern of me recognizing inside that I felt for some reason, that I wasn't good enough. That I had to overdo and overextend. Once I healed that, once I got back into my body and just went, wow, look how this has been reflecting in my life. I finally came back into balance.

Ernestine: 16:06

There's a beautiful photograph of you on the cover of your book, and, you are sitting at a table with a chart. Mm-hmm. And a. Chain with a piece of crystal or, a pendulum. Yep. Mm-hmm. And you're holding it, and I assume it moves back and forth with the chart can you explain that? Each chapter has a diagram.

Kristina : 16:27

Mm-hmm.

Ernestine: 16:27

So can you walk us through

Kristina : 16:29

Sure. The chapter breaks are sacred symbols, that we find everywhere, and ellipse, like the shape of our eye is a sacred symbol, part of sacred geometry. The actual, photo is, a chart in the book that, is, about downloading, power, love, light. Energy to someone. And so that's probably one of my favorite charts. cause once we clear out all the stuff that's no longer serving us, then we can download some even better stuff to help us, feel good, be in alignment and support our body, which is why I am, in the field of functional medicine and, nutrition and nutraceuticals because sometimes our bodies also need. Something to help them heal. Sometimes it's medication, sometimes it's a natural way of healing or changing what we're putting into our body so that it can heal and function. There's different charts. One chart is all about negative energies, emotions, and thoughts. Another chart's about positive energies, emotions, and thoughts. I have a little over 130 different archetypes, which are patterns that sometimes repeat in our lives, like we talked about, victim. Another one might be, savior. There's different, patterns that repeat in people's lives, teacher. So when the teacher is present, like that pattern it could actually be helping you, as opposed to just the shadow side of it. So I think there's a light and dark, and that's part of life here on earth, we're in this, situation of duality. So I've got a lot of different things. I have a work chart, are there blocks to marketing? Is there blocks to sales? Where are the challenges in the business charts that are more about self-limiting beliefs, maybe the, I'm not good enough or I'm invisible. I actually felt like that in my own marriage. I didn't feel like my needs were important. Somebody couldn't get past their own stuff to see that I needed support too, It's all different kinds of things like that to help us shift what we no longer need. I really feel like we're all on this, wonderful ascension path at this point. I think we're being given a really cool opportunity to experience our best lives.

Ernestine: 18:16

Interesting. What are some life lessons you've learned that you wish you knew earlier?

Kristina : 18:21

You have to take care of yourself first, before we're really able to help anybody else. Life for me is all about relationships. The relationship with oneself, the relationship to another, and really learning about what is that? Highest expression of love and joy, in your life. Overgiving is not, the way to go. I wish I could have told my younger self that one Hey, you're gonna stress yourself out. Pull back. I think, we hear a lot about setting healthy boundaries. Setting a boundary is one thing, but holding a boundary is really the most important thing. It's about holding those boundaries and what does that really mean and how do you enforce them with somebody else? Like, I understand you're going through something and I'm gonna love you through it. But I might have to do that from a distance. I may not be able to do that up close and personal. It's giving yourself grace. We are so hard on ourselves. I use another chart that I have in the book that's, the scales of consciousness. It's, based on, measuring emotions. There's a book called Power versus Force. That talks about, the lower vibrational, energies and emotions versus the high vibrational energies and emotions. One thing that will pull you out of. Joy quicker than anything else is perfectionism. It actually vibrates lower than fear, down by guilt and shame I really work at the beginning of a session measuring, where somebody is, before we start and then we measure after, so they can see that, oh. Yeah, I have lightened up a little bit. I've moved up the scales, so it may not be up into the, love and peace and joy range, but it might be in the, oh, okay. I'm in stasis, I'm in balance. I'm, a little bit better than I was before I showed up.

Ernestine: 19:51

What lessons about family and relationships would you pass along to the younger generation?

Kristina : 19:56

Have a relationship with yourself first. And I think that's hard for a young person to grasp, but I think what that means is, really learning, all about yourself. Putting your needs first, not in a selfish way, but in a way that you're honoring the truth of who you are. Not compromising, not dimming your light for somebody else. That's been a big one for me. Making sure that you allow yourself the opportunity to, explore who you are and understand yourself before committing to another person. I spent a lot of my life, with other people because I'm always trying to heal them. I think that's been also part of my journey. As opposed to, I need to heal me first. They reflected things probably that needed to heal. The other thing is, our relationships usually are mirrors. The people in our lives, the ones we're closest to mirror for us, what we love and reflect about ourselves or they mirror back to us, what do we still need to heal? What am I not getting from this person? Instead of feeling abandoned by the person, how am I self abandoning? What boundaries did I let them cross? So I think it's recognizing that our relationships are truly mirrors on what our soul needs. Whether it's something good, or something that we need to heal inside.

Ernestine: 21:03

What do you think is a secret to a fulfilling and happy life?

Kristina : 21:07

For me, it has to do with. Being in alignment with your mission, your vision, your values, and being, a part of something that's greater than you. I've got a pretty lofty mission to help make the world healthy, mentally, emotionally, physically, spiritually. I get to do that in various aspects of my life with my method in a mental and emotional way, sometimes physical. Working in the field of functional medicine and, nutrition with nutritional frontiers as their chief growth officer, helping people heal in the physical. And that's really helped me, be the healthiest version I've ever been. I used to, need to be on blood pressure medicine. I don't need that anymore. I've been able to control that naturally, which is really exciting. Physically being in the best physical shape of my life, I play a lot of tennis. I'm pretty avid tennis player, but also, feeding, my mind like watching the toxicity in my life. So what do I listen to? Great things like this podcast. What do I read? Who am I around? What kind of relationships do I have? I've really been good about, clearing out those toxic relationships and staying with people who inspire me and motivate me and, push me to want to be the better version of myself. To constantly evolve. And it's also managing the toxicity. What am I putting into my body? I am a lot more conscious about food now. I can't give up pasta. I do treat myself to that at least once a month. All things Italian to me would shrivel up if I didn't do that. But it's doing things in moderation, right? Giving myself those pleasures, but then also eating healthy most of the time because I know that's what my body needs. Or doing my, protein shake and greens first thing in the morning that I absolutely have to do. To set myself up right. It's really looking at how do you manage your lifestyle, the toxicities, in your life. What do we do to nutritionally support ourselves? What are we putting into the body, and then, exercise and movement. When we think about what causes dis-ease, in general, if most of it is lifestyle related, if we can fix any of those things, the last thing we have to worry about is the genetic component. Which is actually only about 5% of all of that, it's really interesting, how you can think about your body more as this energetic vehicle that's housing this soul, this incredible, divinity within you. And how do you support that, what are the things that you do that light you up? For me, I think it's really about connection and experiences. And creating, enough of those memorable moments that they become great memories.

Ernestine: 23:22

What is it, that keeps you motivated and inspired

Kristina : 23:25

First of all, my mom would tell you if she's not busy and there's something wrong, that's just who I am, i'm always doing a lot, but, in terms of balance, there are things that I do this morning, even though I got home, got off a plane really late last night. I always make time for meditation. It happens to be a new moon today, and that's usually about what do you wanna birth, what do you wanna bring in in this next moon cycle? And so I did a meditation about that and pay attention to what's universally going on energetically. I'm not an astrologer or anything like that, but I do pay attention journal quite a bit. Last night on the plane I wrote an article for Best Holistic Life Magazine. Today is a combination of. Doing things that both support moving the soul intelligence, mission forward, as well as what I do for nutritional Frontiers. What keeps me motivated is really that service element like helping other people, when. I have a doctor that I've done a session for, like an md and they have this cathartic experience and then they text me the next day and go, oh my gosh, I can't believe this shifted. That's what inspires me. That's what keeps me going. That's what gives me chills.

Ernestine: 24:26

What's your vision for the future of soul Intelligence?

Kristina : 24:30

I would absolutely love to teach, more people my method. I want it to spread, across the country, and see it in wellness centers, there's a lot of integrative therapies. It's not just traditional allopathic or naturopathic. It's a combination of things that help people heal, sometimes the body needs a kickstart and you need medication to get it going, and then maybe you can naturally move over and change into a natural way of being. I would love to be training, practitioners in this, neuro energetic method, it's helping people heal. I have an online evergreen course to teach other people, I would love to see it become, part of a traditional functional wellness center practice we're using all kinds of things to treat, now they're actually using sound waves to help destroy cancer cells and, red light therapy to get rid of fine lines and wrinkles. Trying to, add this as another. Way to help people heal holistically and completely because, I think 95% of our visits to doctors today are for chronic conditions, things that just won't heal, maybe you fix one thing and then something else goes wrong, or, you keep having this condition recur, you can't seem to shift it out. When you look at that underlying energetic component, what is the emotion? What's the trauma? What got trapped? What won't shift? When you figure that out, or if you can't do it on your own, you can use somebody like me to help you. But when you figure that out and that finally releases, then you can heal it. Completely. It works hand in hand, right? It's not one or the other. It's just another way, to help people live their best life.

Ernestine: 25:53

And I know there's more details on that in your book. So if anyone wanted to, learn more, how would they go about doing that?

Kristina : 25:59

The best place to go is sole intelligence method. Dot com. Everything's on my website, but if you're interested in, learning about the book or getting the book, it's available on Amazon and Audible and, Barnes and Noble and Kindle and all kinds of places. I did record my own book, in a studio in LA which was way fun. So I've had people tell me when they've downloaded the Audible book, it's like they're getting a healing'cause I'm reading it, so it's actually me. I will be having a book tour in New York City, i'm gonna be on a billboard in Times Square. I'm doing several TV interviews while I'm in town there. And, I, excited about that. And, I'm gonna be in the movie called The Pillars of Power that will be coming out at the beginning of the year. How exciting. Lots of cool stuff. Yeah. So my life is very full and I feel very blessed. I was really nervous to come out of the spiritual closet, I was like, oh gosh, are they gonna think I'm this total woowoo nut when you really start to think about how everything. And everyone is energy. I think people are now starting to get that concept. It's just a way of being and understanding when you shift internally, how much you shift your external world.

Ernestine: 27:02

I've been in the philanthropic world for 25 plus years. And philanthropy means different things to different people. What does philanthropy mean to you?

Kristina : 27:12

It's sharing your time, energy. Talents and effort with others being in service to others. For me, working with people, helping people heal, is one of the ways that I feel philanthropic. In terms of giving to others, helping to heal others and make the world a better place. And, I just wanna thank you for your incredible contribution'cause you are one of the greatest philanthropists., I absolutely adore you, everything you've done, for the community and the world

Ernestine: 27:37

Thank you. And thanks for sitting down with me and chatting for a little bit. This has been amazing. You do have some fabulous energy

Kristina : 27:45

thank you again. This has been really wonderful.

Ernestine: 27:47

Thanks for listening to Bon Vivant Chic Life Well Lived. I hope you'll tune in for more meaningful stories on the human experience and share with family and friends. All the episodes are available on Spotify, Buzzsprout, Apple and on my website, bonvivantchic.com Till next time, remember, every day is a gift. Live it kindness matters.