Your Chakras Called; They Want Their Luggage Back: with Cheryl Stelte

What if the fastest way forward is first to sit still? Our conversation with spiritual coach and master healer Cheryl Stelte begins with a startling beachside vision and unfolds into a practical blueprint for transforming stuck energy into real momentum. Cheryl shares how low, steady breathing below the navel can surface subconscious material, why building safety in the root chakra is the keystone for lasting change, and how to pair inner work with accessible movement rituals to feel stronger, clearer, and more at home in your body.

We dig into the mechanics of breath-led meditation, the science of trauma storage as sensations and emotions, and the way neuroplasticity accelerates once emotional charge is released. Cheryl explains her energy work framework—reading chakra flow without theatrics, transforming what’s already yours instead of importing “healing energy,” and returning it cleared so the nervous system can stabilize. The Five Tibetan Rites take center stage as a compact, organ-massaging sequence you can build from three to twenty-one reps, supporting sleep, lymph flow, flexibility, and everyday vitality. Power walking emerges as an underrated movement meditation that rebuilt stamina and bone density while reinforcing identity shifts that stick.

You’ll hear vivid case stories: throat and shoulder pain easing when old truths are finally voiced, hip tension releasing as a lifelong burden gets set down, and a client rediscovering excitement after decades of depression. Cheryl’s books—especially her throat chakra guide and From Blocked to Powerful—offer a workbook-style path to becoming your own energy worker with meditations and practices that meet you where you are. The throughline is clear: safety first, inner truth always, and small, consistent rituals that turn healing from a concept into a lifestyle.
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Until the next time - stay gritty you badass! 

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Setup

Venessa 0:17

In today's episode of Squats and Seances, I am sitting down with Cheryl Stelt, a spiritual coach, master healer, and best-selling author of three books. She is the CEO and founder of the Star of Divine Light Institute and the Azarias Energy Healing Certification Program. As an energy healing and empowerment expert, Cheryl helps mature women who know they are meant for more but feel blocked, gain the clarity they long for, and step into their true, authentically powerful selves, enabling them to live their lives with high-level purpose. With over 30 years of experience and extensive training in numerous healing modalities, spiritual leadership, coaching, retreat guiding, shamanism, yoga, and meditation, Cheryl finds nothing more rewarding than helping women safely break through their subconscious blocks when nothing else has worked as profoundly. Welcome, Cheryl. Oh, thank you, Vanessa. It really is an honor to be here with you. Wonderful. I am very excited and grateful for our conversation today.

Defining Grit And Sensory Metaphors

Venessa 1:36

Before we begin, the question I ask every first-time guest on the podcast is what does gritty mean to you?

SPEAKER_01 1:47

Oh, it's like rubbing like sandpaper. It's and it actually has, you know, a sound to it.

Venessa 1:57

It's it means so many things to different people. I love this question because it means what is gritty, right? It can be a positive thing. It could be something abrasive.

SPEAKER_01 2:09

It can be, and it also makes me think of the first time I tried Hulva, the Middle Eastern sort of dessert bar. And I was in a grocery store in a gourmet grocery store, and here's this stuff, and it was beige, and it's called Hulva, H-A-L-B-A, and it's got ground sesame seeds in it. I thought, what is that? And I ate it and it's gritty. It is. I've had it. It's sandpaper-y. There's something about it, but I liked it because it's sweet and creamy at the same time. And today it's one of the staple items I keep in my fridge. I make my own pump, what I call pumpkin seed halva. So I put pumpkin seeds and sesame seeds and I use honey instead of sugar. And I really don't like to be without it. So it's a bit of a healthy addiction because I get so many nutrients from it. And it's that slight bit of grittiness that I don't know, it just does something for me.

Venessa 3:12

But when you first say gritty, it's like, yeah, you think sandpaper or I think sometimes gravel in an abrasion, something that's, oh, it just doesn't feel good. But as you just described, it can also mean something pleasurable or an acquired taste and texture. Thank you. I really appreciate your answer. I'm compiling an anthropology, if you will, of everybody's answers to that question. And I just love the variants. So I always have to open with that one, regardless of where the conversation goes from there. That's awesome. So I would really love to get into the story of you, your background, your experience. This second season on Squats and Seances is all about lifestyle. And so I have curated a list of guests to have on that have different specializations and different focus points.

The Beach Vision And A Call To Meditate

Venessa 4:12

And with you, I really want to talk about your healing journey and probably start if you're comfortable sharing with how and when that began for you, that then led over the course of 30 years to where you are now. So let's open with what was the pivotal moment that started your healing journey back in the beginning.

SPEAKER_01 4:33

Okay, just a little background. I was recently divorced in my early 30s, and spiritual was not a word back then, which is 32 years ago. Meditation was really that was so out there in my world. Even yoga was just starting to catch on.

Venessa 4:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:00

And it all began. I was on the beach one day with a friend of mine who wanted to practice kinesiology on me. She was just learning how to do it and she was clearing energy, and we're waiting for the tide to go out to go and pick oysters, which was a real lifestyle of mine, living on Vancouver Island. And I'm laying there, and suddenly this huge ball of white light is hovering above me. And it was so bright, and it just was filled with the most love I had ever felt in my life. And I realized it was my deceased brother spirit who had taken his life. Oh my god, not all that long before that. And I was, I just started crying with the love. The tears are just rolled, and she's going on and doing this finger testing, and oh, it's this person. And then she said, It's your brother. Oh my gosh, he's here. And I said, I know. And the long and the short of it was she channeled him, and his message to me was to start meditating. So he had taken his life, and just a few months before that, I was diagnosed with severe depression. So it was through that exploration, and I ended up developing a healing modality that the teachers I went to said, you cannot, you don't do it that way. I my body kept wanting to go with a really long, full breath once I got into it. And they said, kept saying, no, you just breathe normally, focus on the breath as it enters and leaves your nostrils. And so eventually I didn't listen to them. And then I allowed myself to breathe fully. And I had learned that as a child, growing up in Alberta, Canada, where the winters are just so darn cold. And I learned it would stop me from shivering if I started to breathe really, because I'd be shivering to the bone often as a kid, walking to my friends' bonus school. And so my body just naturally wanted to do that. And I didn't know that I was starting to access my subconscious. So all this early childhood stuff just started coming up and all these repressed emotions. Oh my goodness, the backlog, and started, and I started to process that those things and started to heal myself.

Venessa 7:22

Interesting. So if we can what I want to pause for a minute because what you said, there's a couple key points. I am also finishing up a meditation teacher training right now, and I am also a yoga instructor. So a lot of what you're saying resonates with

Breath, Subconscious Access, And Early Healing

Venessa 7:40

me. And if I were to think back 30 years ago, what the standards were when they were teaching these practices when you were first getting into it. Was there a specific type of meditation that you were experimenting with? And what about your breath in that space where your mentors telling you wasn't okay?

SPEAKER_01 8:02

Yes. So initially I made a number of phone calls, and I didn't, they would say, Why do you want to learn to meditate? So I can continue to speak with my deceased brother spirit. And they would all say, Oh no, we don't have that kind of information. So after a few calls, I thought, okay, I'm not gonna say that anymore. And I just said, I'm just curious. I just want to learn. And but actually, I came across a class in a building that I was in the next day. And so I just trusted that. I'm like, oh, okay, here it is right in front of me, a sign on a door with a little tag I could rip off with the phone numbers. Cell phones weren't around. Yep. So I don't, it could have been an earlier version of mindfulness, but the foundation for this style of meditation was to focus on the breath as it entered and left the nostrils. We did a number of relaxation exercises, but that was primarily it. I moved on from there into books, lighting a candle and focusing on the candle with slightly opened eyes. And eventually I went to a few of these meditation centers and explored a variety of ways, but I I preferred keeping my eyes closed. And but the I could keep my focus here at the nose, but my body would just start breathing with a longer, fuller.

Venessa 9:34

Was it like a diaphragmatic breath, like down deeper in your belly?

SPEAKER_01 9:37

Deeper.

Venessa 9:38

Deeper.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

That's such a question. Because yes, in yoga, we learn the diaphragmatic breath, but that's a little bit higher up. So if you place all your awareness down below the navel, and at the time I was not paying attention to this, I was just, but with what I teach now and what I practice and what I've learned the science around is breathing below the navel. So you can try it right now. Put your hand or abdomen and breathe down there. You really drop down low. You really drop down low. And then the focus is not on a candle or anything in front of you. You to me, you always want to keep your focus inside. You're always it's internal. So if you go to your root chakra and focus on the tip of the tailbone, and that keeps you inward, and the breath is down there, and it, and so science has now proven that as soon as you start to breathe like that, the brain function shifts from the back of the brain, the brainstem, to the frontal lobal brain, which brings up the subconscious. And so it's and trauma is it's proven now that trauma is encoded in the subconscious in the right side of the brain through physical sensations and emotions, not through linear memories. So when this started to come up, I was classic in that I would have tiny little fragmented memories. Everything was fragmented. So it's but I started the pain within me, the pain within me would just start to come out. And so I would I would cry or I would I started to have release or physical senses. And uh and it went on from there, it went on from there. And the first number of years I was more focused on healing than the empowerment piece. Empowerment piece would come, but I never thought of it that way. And once I started focusing on really making these shifts, that's when things started to ramp up, so to speak, my growth curve really excelled. But what I'm so excited about being on your show when I discovered you, Vanessa, and I thought, oh yeah, this is something that has really played a role. Because at that time in my, if I can jump into that part of the story, at that time in my life, I grew up as a very thin child. Skinny skinny got teased, but no matter, and I've always been a big eater because I'm one of the lucky ones that the 20% of the female population that doesn't have to worry about weight. But at that time in my life, I remember I tried exercise. I joined a gym when I was 18, and it seemed

Movement As Medicine: Walking And Yoga

SPEAKER_01 12:30

like I was getting even slimmer than I was, and I stopped. So here I was now 32 years old, 33. And I went to see this chiropractor, and he said, You are in such bad shape. You you are physically you're in such bad shape. He said, You more than 15 minutes without huffing and puffing, just on a flat surface. That's how out of shape I was. And what happened, I think the combination of the meditation work that I was doing gave me the motivation until I was power walking, and I remembered to go to the store to walk to the store was 25 minutes. And so that became a goal that I just started doing every second day, and then it became every day. And now here I am. I am one power walker, I am 64 years old. I love the my bone density is a hundred percent. I had it tested a year or so ago, and it just I can't live without my power walks. It really moved me, and it also inspired me to start doing yoga because I was stiff. I have this stiffness at such a young age. And so I remember doing downward dog anywhere and just started to do all that. And I think it it just kept me going. And I ended up, I ended up with a pinched nerve in my neck, which is what moved me into the yoga portion of it. And I'm 64, I have no pain. Zero, yeah, and I really don't work that hard at it.

Venessa 14:24

Isn't it so powerful when we connect the dots between the physical body, the spiritual body, and the mental body? And think of those as the base rock that goes down, and then from there we build our pillars, our foundational pillars of what we want to see show up in our life. But it took so long for me as well to understand in my 40s before I was like, oh, these things are not separate, and I can't compartmentalize them that way. I can be very physically active, but have no spiritual practice, and my psychology suffers, right? So they're all so interconnected. I love that you shared that. My internet cut out a little bit, right? As you were telling your power walking story, is power walking that is your movement meditation right now, if you will.

SPEAKER_01 15:13

Yes, it is. And I also do the five Tibetan rights every day because it's just uh sort of a quick and dirty talk a blog full of good things for the body. And so I really love to do that. And of course, I hike, I kayak.

Venessa 15:29

Um you walk our listeners through, sorry to interrupt you who might not know. What are the five Tibetan rights?

SPEAKER_01 15:35

Oh, the five Tibetan rights, R-I-T-E-S. It's an exercise that you do, you start slowly and it detoxes your body. And I notice if I kind of fall off the wagon for the five Tibetan rights, I don't sleep as well. There is a link. And what they do, it's five slow exercises that you do. And you can actually do them very fast. You can do them however you want to do them. And they're anti-aging, they help you stay younger. They have a lot of claims. You can get a book on the five Tibetan rights. There's a really thick book out there, which I've never read because I'm one of these people. I prefer just having the experience. I have the experience. I'm like, okay, this is so good for me. I'll learn more about it later. So I've studied the five Tibetan rights minimally, but they massage all your organs. So it really keeps all your organs functioning. And so exercise or the physical health is not just about building muscle. It's not just about strength,

Five Tibetan Rites Explained

SPEAKER_01 16:40

training, or even flexibility. It's everything and the organs play such an important role in our physical. If we have one organ that's not functioning well, the whole system will go out of whack. And so we know that, especially in this day and age with environmental toxins, our food situation, that sort of thing. And I'm not 100% sure, but I'm I think they're based in yoga. They feel very yoga-like. And you start with spinning, is the first one. So it's the spinning, and then you lay on your back and you do leg raises at the same time as you raise your head. And then the next one is you're on your knees and you do these backward bends, do these bents, and then the next one is like bridge pose, but it's a moving bridge pose. So you put your hands on the floor beside your rear end, feet straight out, and you lift your body up and then drop it down, and you lift it up down. And then the last one is downward dog and movement. You go in and out of downward dog, stretching at the beginning and the end. So you really push it. And there's also ways you can do it where you do a little stretch in between each one, ending with child pose, but you start with three of each because they detox your system. And if you start with too many too fast, you will get a herximer response. Okay. You will get feeling like flu-like symptoms, all of that. And so you start with three of each of them, and then you move to five. Okay. Week, you can go up another two until you get to 21. And then it's proven now that you don't need to do more than 21. You're done at 21. And then it's rare, but I think some people might do them twice a day. And it doesn't matter what time it does matter what time a day. For me, it doesn't really matter. If you want to get like a little boost in the morning that you have more energy to do them first thing. And I just, I don't want to do them first thing. So I don't I did that for a number of years. And I moved away from them. And to me, it's if I just get them in, and so I do other things is with my morning ritual, and I prefer to take, I take a walk after every day in the summer. I do it after breakfast. So that's standard. And then my walk, usually after dinner. So two walks a day. And then just for a quick break, because I'm at my computer, then I want to jump in and do, I'll just pick a time. I need a break, and I'll do the five Tibetan rights. Okay, done.

Venessa 19:23

That's fantastic. I the wording is familiar, but I had never like actually understood what they were. It almost sounds like lymphatic drainage combined with full body functional movement. I'm gonna have to, I'm going to do some research and see what I can find and share a link in the show notes for listeners. Thank you. Thank you very much. Anytime I have a guest that drops some knowledge like that, I've never heard of that. Can you please explain? When you said 21, is it 21 repetitions of each of the five movements?

SPEAKER_01 20:00

Yes. So you start with the spinning, you'll do end up doing 21 of those. And so it's strength building at the same time. We are going up and down in bridge pose. You can't, but it takes a little energy. But I love the feelings of the stretch in the pose and the movement. So I feel strong when I do them. But yeah, you do, and I think it's to me, you just get so much bang for your buck. Yeah. It's such a short period of time, and the it had just holds so much value for me.

Venessa 20:32

Oh, absolutely. And I I appreciate as well that you explained that sometimes maybe you did them in the morning for a long time, but now with the season of life that you're in and the other things you have to prioritize, everything we say yes to, we're saying no to something else. And so finding the right moment and not making it a super rigid routine, but rather fluidity throughout your day. Oh, I've been sitting here at my computer for too long. It's time for me to take a break. Guess what? I haven't done yet. Now's a good time. The perks from working at home when we can. Thank you for sharing all of that. That is that is gold. I love those kind of tidbits. That's like you cannot get that. You can research that online, but it really helps to talk to somebody that has real life experience with it. So you had this profound experience on the beach shortly following your brother's death and around the time post-divorce. And this puts you on this path first for healing for yourself, is what I hear, which also tracks many healers that I speak with. And on my own journey of my own healing, it we have to start with ourselves first. It gives context and relevance to everything that we can then provide in service to others later on. So spent this time really for you, it was self actualization. It was getting through those pillars of those different needs. And getting to the point of self-actualization. Which of the many things I listed? You obviously have a wealth of knowledge and healing modalities and shamanism, yoga, meditation. What was the one thing you really gravitated towards in your healing process?

SPEAKER_01 22:18

The number one thing that I still don't go without every day after all these years is meditation, is the style of meditation because the style of meditation that I do is always around energy work. And it's I've learned to become my own energy worker, and that's what I teach others. So the work I do when I work with my clients, I'm helping them heal rapidly and very deeply. It's a very transformative. And it's through that process that they learn how to become their own energy worker. So it becomes a lifestyle of healing and empowerment because to me, we're all here to grow, to develop ourselves, to heal and become empowered, to move beyond our challenges, the obstacles, and there's opportunity

Energy Work Framework And Chakras

SPEAKER_01 23:05

to learn and grow through everything. And so that is primary. The other thing I remember early on reading a book about becoming psychic, there were all these exercises in there. And I had a pretty good taste of maybe I do have some psychic abilities, but when I seemed to go down that road, it wasn't about my own healing and sure, it's empowerment, but it began to be a sort of fun, and I wanted to learn it, but it didn't have the substance that healing and empowerment did. So I studied multiple modalities. And then naturally, of course, people around me that knew me started asking me if I could help them. And that was very rewarding. And so I thought, okay, this I can do. Never thinking I wanted to work with people to help people. I never thought I would full time. Having written three books, if anyone ever told me that, I would say, you are completely off your rocker. And actually, I did have one of my spiritual teachers say, You're a spiritual teacher. And I just, it was the first one of the first times I met her, and we were doing darshan. And I just, I didn't say anything. I just thought, you're nuts. I love that. You just let it in. And and then I had I developed, I started, I went back to school as a single mom and studied interior design. And I started my own spiritual interior design business. It was called stealth design, designing for the soul. And I channeled all my spiritual work through that. So I didn't have to own so much of being a spiritual teacher, but I could do it through that business. And that was so much fun, so rewarding. And then I and then once that shifted, once I left that, then it was I resisted. I really resisted. And then I thought, I'm already leading meditations, I have these groups. And so I slowly stepped into it. But my stuff would come up. This is what happens when we step into our greatness. Our stuff often comes up. That's how it was for me. And I've witnessed that in so many others. And finally, it was when I when I looked at my life and everything I'd done, I thought, oh, maybe I am enough.

Venessa 25:39

Maybe I am the truth underneath all of it. Yeah. For all of us, we are all trying to prove to ourselves and anyone that will listen that we're enough, rather than trusting that from the beginning. And that so resonates with me. I have been on that same path and still I stay, and like you said, it keeps coming up. I think, oh, I figured that one out. And the universe says, just kidding. We're gonna give you another example of how maybe there's a little more work to do there. And that's right, that's the whole point. It's never escaping the work, it's embracing it.

SPEAKER_01 26:16

As hard as it is to embrace it. Oh, it can be so hard. Own it, it can be because their stuff comes anyway.

Venessa 26:23

Yeah. And here when you talk about energy work, another thing that I love to chat about. I know that this means something different to almost every person I talk to. Some people think of energy in terms of qi and meridians running through the body, acupuncture, shiatsu. Other people are very chakra-centered, and it's colors and its auric fields and its alignment. And then other people, it seems to be more of a divinely led component, more something they're absorbing rather than something that's coming up from within them. So for you and your work, what does energy work mean?

SPEAKER_01 27:11

Chakras are something I resonate very deeply with. And I've been doing chakra work for over 30 years. I also have a diploma in ginchin do acupressure, so I really work heavily with the meridians. And I learned from this psychologist when I learned tapping early on, Los. And I went to this weekend workshop to learn EFT and TFT, which is great. It's great. But I like things more heavyweight that are more substantial, I guess. Say it's very good for me. And he said we have thousands of meridians that run through our bodies, and it's true, or not meridians, energy pathways. Let's call them all energy pathways. What I like about the chakras is they're energy centers. So it's a lot of people, I've learned methods where it's not you're not working directly with your own energy. Like some people,

Safety, Root Chakra, And Rewiring

SPEAKER_01 28:10

a lot of people will say, I'm sending healing energy, I'm giving you. So for me, all your energy is perfect exactly as it is. You don't need anything from outside of you. We don't need to pull anything out, but we do need to transform your energy. So I do chakra readings and I do readings, I do psychic readings, I do, I'm still not owning this one, but I'm a medium.

Venessa 28:39

Oh, would that actually make a lot of sense with your initial experience with your brother? Yeah, that makes perfect sense.

SPEAKER_01 28:45

Yeah. And I just, it's not on my website. I just use it when it's needed, when it's required. So I don't advertise that one. But uh, so when I see the chakras, I don't get into the colors. I don't see all the colors with the mandalas. I see them as energy, which is light. And I see where your blocks are, what's dark, and I can let you know what they're all about. So I see in such detail, and then I get the downloads of what your blocks are about, what you can do to help yourself, and then also where the energy is flowing well, what your superpowers are. They all have light. And some people will say, Wow, I can focus on all the blocks that you saw in me, but I'm there was also a lot of light. There's often good things. And I just recently I'm I don't I work with mostly women, but I started working with this man who's severely depressed, seeing a psychiatrist, a therapist, and that's all great. It really, I think our works complement or complement each other.

Venessa 29:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 29:51

And and when I did his reading, I was blown away with how much light he had from all the work he'd done, but he's not accessing any of it or not very well. And and in his first session, we cleared some of that darkness. We went so deep. And his comments were, wow, it was it just felt so true. It all seemed so real. And I said, It was right, it's all true, it is real, and he had not felt inspired or excited about life since he was five.

Venessa 30:27

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 30:29

And on that day, he felt huge excitement for the first time since then. And he's a mature adult, yeah. So he didn't know he wanted to feel excited. He did know he wanted to feel inspired and passionate, and that's what gave me hope for him. So it's the energy is I this is what I do. I actually get myself into an altered state, and so I'm vibrating at a much higher level than Cheryl Stelt normally does. Much higher level. And that's a whole process when I teach it through energy healing certification program. So I'm in a higher state, and then I bring all their blocked and dark energy into me. I bring it all right in because I'm in a I'm in a much higher street, I'm vibrating high, and what I do is transform it and give it all back to them cleared. So they're not, so it's everything that exists in them, and we do the work, we release the emotions, all those repressed emotions, the physical sensations which has been holding these things in the subconscious and the fragmented memories, but it's the emotions that are the deepest. And then we take advantage of the brain's neuroplasticity once we removed all that, to then find out what is really true and reprogram that into the brain, into the subconscious. So it doesn't really take mindset work per se, because when we program it, we develop new neural pathways, it's just a major game changer.

Venessa 32:15

Yeah, there's a couple questions actually that come up when you're describing

Why Clearing Blocks Accelerates Growth

Venessa 32:20

that. The first one would be how do you get your client into a state of receptivity for this kind of transaction to occur? I imagine that is that I'm gonna adjust my light here, don't mind me. I imagine that has something to do with the meditation. Maybe there's a little bit of almost like hypnosis, or what do you don't have to give away your trade secrets, but I just think of this gentleman that you were describing. He has some neurofeedback loops that have been well established for his whole life. He knows he needs something more than what Western medicine is giving him, or maybe, as Western medicine providers said, you should really consider this holistic approach to what you're dealing with right now. So he's here, he's in your office, or you're working with him remotely, or however you operate. How do you get someone like that into a state of receptivity?

SPEAKER_01 33:14

Yes, and I'm more than happy to give away all my so I am happy to share. And so it does start with the full breath meditation. And I learned the value of it when I was doing acupressure. They call it harab breathing. If anyone heard of that harab breathing, and it's very similar, but you want to count to six or eight seconds in and six or eight seconds out. And what I'd love to offer your audience, and we can put this in the show notes, are some meditations that they can just click a link and go to the meditations and learn how to do this that would for your. So if you keep listening and grab these out of the show notes, so I help. So I always ask people to start doing the meditations to practice the full breath first, and then that's what we use when we and then I have the advantage of being able to see the energy, feel the energy, and that sort of thing, but I don't I rarely ever name the experience. I allow my client to discover what the repressed emotion is, what we're going to. And it also we see what's going on in our lives today, and it all stems back to early childhood and even as early as the womb. And so it is that is the foundational work is with the full breath. And you spoke earlier about recreating a foundation, and so the work is also sometimes the old foundation, the root chakra, sometimes we have a crumbling foundation. Sometimes we have a foundation that was never solid. And it's and what I what I state that is when we have never had a solid foundation, is we've never had a strong sense of safety or stability in life. And it's the number one thing we build up, but it's just like a bad foundation. We need to remove it, we need to remove it and start all over again. And so, my number one meditation that people listen to and go back to is creating safety and stability in the root chakra because it and it's so in alignment with the work that you do, and then we have something to build on. And when we start changing that foundation and start building on the truth of who we really are, we feel it. Life can no longer be the same, and situations in our lives start to change, people around us start to change, everything starts to change.

Venessa 35:55

Our physical well-being starts to change. That is so incredibly true. It's interesting that you mentioned safety. I touched on the Maslow's hierarchy of needs, goes back to some old psychology

Body Pain, Meaning, And Case Stories

Venessa 36:10

principles, but safety is the second one, right? That is huge. And you don't get to necessarily keep progressing until your safety needs are met. Many of us walking around, and I speak for myself as well, don't realize that we're carrying around all of this baggage from way earlier in our lives than we were probably even aware of, where these needs maybe weren't met. It wasn't labeled that way, but you look back and then you think you evaluate or you feel these feelings that came up, right? Or these sensations in your body. And it's, what is this? What can I name this as, or how do I describe it? And then you realize it's linked to maybe it's safety or stability or something else, right? We as we age, we can get better at naming those things. It really helps listeners to have a guide like Cheryl walk you through that process. I think the second question I wanted to ask around the energy work that you specifically do as an energy healer, meaning you're helping an individual heal themselves, right? How do you protect your own energy? You get into this higher vibrational state, you invite all of the darkness out of somebody into you because you're in a higher state. But then what after that? You transmute it, you hand it back. What do you do next?

SPEAKER_01 37:39

Yeah, I give it back to the cleared. And it's the work I do is based, you could say, in unity consciousness or oneness. We really aren't separate. We are not separate. And so I'm making a conscious choice to be in the truth of who and what we all truly are. We're all an aspect of source, the creator, God, whatever you want to, spirit. And separation is such an illusion, and we have decades, we have hundreds, if not thousands, of years that we've lived in fear. Fear is so programmed into us, and fear is such a low vibration, and so every time I help someone else heal, I believe I'm I'm helping myself at the same time because it just acknowledges all every everything they truly are, holding that space, and I can it's I can't believe my confidence level sometimes. It's no, I sit across from someone and I can just say, Oh, I can definitely help you with that. And so much so I offer a money-back guarantee.

Venessa 38:58

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_01 38:59

Yeah, I'm not cheap, and I'm if if you're uncertain, we're gonna do three sessions and you're gonna give me a deposit. And if you don't want to continue to work with me, you get all your money back. I have no problem. I don't care if it's sexual abuse, trauma, torture, the worst. If someone is ready and I can see in them, I can see their energy that they're ready, I'm like, oh no, let's go for it. And I will offer you that because I never, and it's it is the place in my life I am the most confident of like, oh yeah.

Venessa 39:32

It just means that you're doing what you were called to do. Yeah, it was your dharma.

SPEAKER_01 39:37

Yeah, I have so many years of experience, and so it's getting into that state and trusting it's all energy and my capacity to feel my own emotions and even feel others' emotions. Being an empath is a superpower, folks. It really is, and it's because we're not separate, and there's nothing more rewarding than witnessing another, accessing the truth of their being and stepping into that and moving into that and feeling all those uplifting emotions and the vibration, all the energy that starts to come in.

Venessa 40:19

Wow, yeah, what a gift that you have that you're giving to people. That is an act of service, and like many others that I can describe because energy is entropy. Like you said, it never ends, it's moving from one place to another, and that exchange back and forth and helping people step into their authenticity. I think along those lines, the next question I want to ask is why are clearing these blocks so essential for healing that needs to happen?

SPEAKER_01 40:54

Oh, so we can all evolve. It's having been around as long as I have,

Books, Teaching, And Legacy

SPEAKER_01 41:00

the shifts in humanity over the last multiple decades, things are really ramping up. There is so much going on, and we are growing and evolving to new levels. It's such a great time to be alive. And all the derogatory things that are happening in life right now, the wars, politics, everything that's going on globally is all serving us. It is, I believe, everything serves us, and it's allowing ourselves to grow through everything. Anything can be a catalyst for change. And there was quite a while I worked with a psychiatrist. She was a psychiatrist and she had also become a functional medicine doctor.

Venessa 41:45

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 41:46

And she started sending me all her psychiatry clients, and she just she called me the wound healer. And then she discovered later that she probably shouldn't have been doing that under her license. But anyway, she did, and she just said, you get them to a place I could never through psychiatry nor through functional medicine that she was practicing that. And then she would get them back, and then everything that she had been working with them would start to elevate and would start to really get success. And she herself was so funny. She played Ultimate Frisbee, loved to play Ultimate Frisbee, but she wasn't a very good player. She was down, but through working with me, her game improved so much. Interesting. But started to affect her physically. Oh, okay. Because trauma, remember, I said trauma is stored in the right side of the brain through physical sensations and emotions. And so she had areas in her body that were locked up. And her movement, even though she did so much physically ran, she did a lot of things that once we started to release this, the body went back to its own homeostasis. And she ended up being one of the star players on the team.

Venessa 43:09

Wow. What you just shared made me think of another question I want to ask. It's a little off script, but I hope you won't mind. Have you found in your work over decades that there are physiologic areas in the body where you see tension, pain, stiffness, tightness that are almost always correlative to a certain uh psychological component or maybe a spiritual component. For example, if somebody has lower left sided back pain, you're like, that has to do with childhood trauma. Or is it not that linear? Am I trying to connect dots that don't connect? But I would just be curious after working with so many people, if you've ever drawn any lines like that.

SPEAKER_01 43:56

Yeah, it's why I wrote my first book, Heal Your Neck, Use and Let your throw chakra shine. So neck issues, shoulder issues, anything in the fifth chakra and the throat chakra, because the energy rises up and then it's like a bottleneck. And it really is about not just speaking our truth and feeling seen and heard, but it's expressing our soul's purpose at the highest level. I noticed, I just thought I had more throat chakra issues than anybody in my life. And I worked for a period of time for five years in my throat chakra. And I have to tell you, all the work to heal your throat chakra starts in the root chakra. The problem is not if you just do that, it will always come back. I had to go through that to learn it. Interesting. And I've helped so many people who say, Oh, yeah, you can't heal my throat chakra. I've been to so many healers and it just always comes back. And I said, try me. You get a money-back guarantee. And so it does just start in the root chakra. So that's a very big thing. But what I also see a lot of is hip pain, hip stiffness.

Venessa 45:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:02

That's very common. The shoulders, and it's, you know, each of the chakras has so much meaning. I could go on and on, but we could do a whole podcast just on that, a whole episode. Physical pain, but it starts to come up. And then the I had one woman who had a shoulder injury. I just worked with her just this last summer. She had a serious shoulder injury, constantly inflamed, no matter what, so sore. All the time, just so much pain. And, you know, we worked together for 10 weeks and huge improvement. And then we have our birthdays on the same day. Oh. And she texted me a happy birthday. And then I asked her how she was doing. And I said, I really want to know. And she reported in with all these continued improvements in her life because she

First Steps For The Stuck

SPEAKER_01 46:00

still does the medications. And her shoulder was unbelievably better. She said it's not 100%, but I can't remember. I think it was like 80 or 90% healed and no doctors, nothing was helping. And so it's the burden. And for her, it was about carrying the burden of others. So many of us come into our lives. We don't have the great attachment with the mother, the bonding that we needed, or the parents, because they have their wounds. It's not, we can blame all we want, but it's about taking responsibility for connecting with the self. So she her whole life, she said, I just, it's I just want to live my life for me for once. I've never done that. And so we help release all the blocks for always putting other people first, always being always being the strong one, being there for everybody. And she shifted. And then she's no longer carrying the burden of being responsible for everybody's happiness and for every for all these other people, and started living her life for her. She doesn't have the burden anymore, so it doesn't hurt.

Venessa 47:14

Isn't that interesting? It does really bring to mind or make me question how often we feel sensations in our physical body. We look for the solutions there. And sometimes they're not. Often those other components are connected. The physiology is connected to the psychology, is connected to the spirituality. And the answer is somewhere across all of those domains.

SPEAKER_01 47:42

100% true. 100% true. And some of the questions. Sorry, I feel like I'm interrupting you. No, please go ahead. Some of the questions you can ask yourself. Never ask, why am I having this? Because it's too open-ended and broad. You can ask your knee or your hip or your shoulder, what are you trying to tell me? Because the body speaks.

unknown 48:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:07

And you can say, What do I need to know about this? What wants to be known? That's a question I ask. What wants to be known?

Venessa 48:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 48:15

The magic questions, and then we can breathe into it and trust our intuition. Get out of your left brain. Your left brain won't tell you. That's linear. That's too thinking thinking. You're knowing, your inner knowing is in the right brain.

Venessa 48:29

Interesting. Before we wrap things up, I can't believe this time has just flown by talking to you. I love it. Thank you. You have written multiple books, and I absolutely want to chat about that. What is the message across your books that really ties all of your work together? And in light, I would say, specific to the conversation that we're having today. I'm sure they're all amazing reads, but if our listeners were to pick up one, which one would you want them to start with?

SPEAKER_01 48:58

Well, that I think the primary message that I really want people to feel to experience is that we are all powerful beyond what we can imagine. We can't currently imagine. Everyone I work with, when I when we're finished, I always

Core Takeaway And Where To Find Cheryl

SPEAKER_01 49:15

say, Did you ever think you'd become, did you ever imagine this? That you'd become the person you are now? And they always say, No, I couldn't imagine. We can't know until we get there because we have the filter. And I would say, if you're going to purchase any of my three books, I would start with the throat chakra book. Even if you don't feel you have throat chakra issues, you likely will resonate with something, but it's such a great foundational book that really helps you get into the meditations, become your own energy worker. All of my books have a lot of meditations in them. They're more like workbooks. I love it. But that I would say would be the foundational. And if you've been on a spiritual journey for more than 10 years, maybe from block to powerful, really helps you access your authentic, your inner knowing, and your authentic power.

Venessa 50:09

Yeah, on the note on that last one from Block to Powerful, what was your inspiration for writing that particular book?

SPEAKER_01 50:17

My it's really my legacy book. So my first two books are very focused with meditation, but in that book, I bring in so many other practices from various modalities, including shamanism, even Sufism. There's all sorts of things in there that to me are just very it's a much more advanced book, but I thought if I'm gonna leave my mark on the world, it's through that book.

Venessa 50:46

Oh, I love that. Okay. I've got some reading I'm gonna be doing. Let's see here. So I think I've got maybe two more questions for you, if that's okay. For those who feel stuck or blocked, what, in your professional opinion, is the first step that they should take to move forward?

SPEAKER_01 51:06

The first step is really tune in, tuning into yourself. And how desperately do you want to get unstuck? How desperate are you to move those blocks? Because to me, there needs to be a certain amount of desperation for change. How badly do you want change? And that intention, then you can take that into your meditations and go into the full breath. And remember the meditations I'm gonna leave the link that you're gonna put in the show notes and grab on to that. How serious are you? And the biggest step is sitting down. The biggest step is sitting down and closing your eyes and trying it and having that courage to face what's inside. And things will shift no matter what.

Venessa 51:53

That's so true. Being comfortable in stillness and silence takes practice because we spend a lot of time as this as a species, as a society, running from what's in our minds.

SPEAKER_01 52:07

It's like we're afraid of what we're gonna hear or think, or and yeah, really that that resonates with me, that practice of just sitting there and being willing to close your eyes and see what happens, and being willing to be comfortable with the discomfort because it's not all about just peace and bliss. No, you have to fix

Host Closing And Listener Invitation

SPEAKER_01 52:30

the shadows, right?

Venessa 52:32

You have to do the work, and it's not just the happy train and rainbows and unicorns. The irony is that once you sit with yourself, and I described this to one of my mentors, and I don't know if this will resonate with you. It was almost like I had so many things that I was afraid of being afraid of. I didn't want to feel, and then when I just sat with myself in those spaces, it was almost like I could let the fear just crawl over me, but it doesn't bite and it just moves on when you let it. But when you build up that anxiety, it's like swatting a bee. You make it mad, it's gonna sting you. So let's see here. So, in closing, like I mentioned, this second season is all about lifestyle optimization. You shared an amazing amount of information that's so useful: meditation, introduction to energy work, the concept of having these blockages and why they're important to address. If you were to choose one takeaway from our conversation today, one thing that you would want the listener who might not even realize they're in need of this, but something about this particular episode is going to resonate with them. What would you want to say to that individual?

SPEAKER_01 53:48

I would want to say that the number one thing you can do is access your own inner truth. Period. You know, what is true for you, not the conditioning of the words coming are our forefathers. But no, right.

Venessa 54:04

No, there's a huge amount of that.

SPEAKER_01 54:07

What about our four mothers? Yes. But it really is the key to a happy life, the key to health, wealth, happiness, everything is accessing your own inner truth and being in that, being in your truth, because being in alignment to truth is you start to access the love and light of who you truly are, of your soul and the connection of the all. And it's an inner focus. It's an inner focus, it's not outward, and to be moving through life as a lifestyle as much as possible inwardly and looking outward from the inside. And I'm not a pro at it, but I keep doing it. That's part of why I like my walking, my meditations, and connecting with people like you. I get to be inward and I get to be who I truly am, even using a phrase that I never use like forefathers, but it's it's true from in a small head, it's expressing what is true, what's true. So finding that.

Venessa 55:14

Yeah. Did you hear that, listeners? It's an in, it's an inward journey. And so many wonderfully powerful, knowledgeable spiritual healers. That is the message across all platforms that I keep hearing. Go inside, learn how to sit with yourself, trust yourself first. Oh, thank you, Cheryl. Where can people go to learn more about you, your services, or outreach? Where would you like to direct listeners to go if they want to get in contact?

SPEAKER_01 55:43

Easiest thing right now, if you're serious about helping yourself, click on that link for the meditations that will get you to me and you'll get some emails and we can connect that way. But I am on social media, on Instagram and LinkedIn. And my website is starofdivinelight.com. Starofdivinelight.com.

Venessa 56:02

Oh, fantastic. I'm gonna include the website link as well as the link for the meditations, and we'll definitely be in contact before this episode goes live so that we can network on all the social media platforms because I feel that the more we can share these common threads, the bigger the ripple effect. And like you said, it's just like the work you do with your clients. Like it's just a give, but it's also a receiving. So that's just beautiful. Thank you so much, Cheryl. I hope you have a fabulous day. And thank you for your time and energy today.

SPEAKER_01 56:38

Thank you, Vanessa. Really such a joy to connect with you.

Venessa 56:41

Oh, thank you so much. In closing, I want to offer a reminder that your voice matters. And I would love to connect with you. If you feel called to contribute to this community, please reach out. You can email topic ideas, suggestions for interviews and feedback to vanessa at squats and seances.com. That's Vanessa with an E, the E N E S S A at Squats and Seances, all spelt out one word in its entirety. You can find new episodes of Squats and Seances on all major podcast platforms and the adjacent vlogcast on my YouTube channel. I'll link the YouTube channel in the reference notes for you. Find and follow me on social media at squats and seances. I'm on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok. Until the next time, may you continue to live well, embrace authenticity, question everything, and of course, stay gritty.