I spoke to Joanne Rolfe on May 15, 2023. We spoke about her business and where she has lived around the world and how health became a passion of hers.
Bio
Joanne Rolfe is a Women’s Health Coach, Holistic Nutrition Consultant, and Psycho-Spiritual Therapist. She specializes in working with women who struggle with fatigue, chronic pain, weight gain, hormone imbalance, and digestive issues, who feel a sense of frustration and helplessness with the medical system, and who are committed to naturally regaining their health. Joanne is a designer and facilitator of
personal development courses, seminars, and workshops, and a course facilitator with the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition.
I spoke to Joanne Rolfe on May 15, 2023. We spoke about her business and where she has lived around the world and how health became a passion of hers.
Bio
Joanne Rolfe is a Women’s Health Coach, Holistic Nutrition Consultant, and Psycho-Spiritual Therapist. She specializes in working with women who struggle with fatigue, chronic pain, weight gain, hormone imbalance, and digestive issues, who feel a sense of frustration and helplessness with the medical system, and who are committed to naturally regaining their health. Joanne is a designer and facilitator of
personal development courses, seminars, and workshops, and a course facilitator with the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition.
Welcome to Sears Beers, knowers and Doers, a podcast about intuition. Do you know what that is? Intuition to me is that inner sense for knowing that something is true. And yet I have no proof. But there's so many definitions and there's so many ways it can come. I'm looking to bring together and share with you some amazing guests who have some amazing life stories and also some insights into how intuition can come, and I'm looking to gather those crows in the trees. I hope you're one of them. I hope that this podcast inspires you to be more connected to your intuition, and I hope that by doing that, we make the world a better place. Thanks for coming on this journey with me.
Speaker 2:Before we get started today, I would love to share some tools with you to help with stress and feeling overwhelmed, especially for the energetically sensitive person. Feel free to go to my store on my website@www.healingvitality.ca. Thanks so much for coming on this journey with me.
Speaker 3:So I'm super excited today to be connecting with one of my people locally who I reconnected with at , uh, meet and greet probably in the last two months, and our paths have kind of crossed over the years. And so now we're, I'm super excited to bring you to the podcast and let people to learn a little bit more about you, Joanne. So thank you so much Joanne Wolf for sharing or coming today and giving us a little bit more insight into what you're up to and how intuition falls into your life.
Speaker 4:Thank you for having me. I'm super excited to be here.
Speaker 3:So would you mind sharing with the world a little bit more about yourself?
Speaker 4:So my background is as a registered tele nutritionist, I studied through the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition. I actually have been teaching with the Canadian School of Natural Nutrition on and off for the last 14 years. That's hard to believe. Started teaching the Aging Well Course the year I turned 50 and I just turned 64 this week. So it's super weird to even be saying that I'm that age <laugh>, but my passion is really, I mean, has been in helping women to, you know, to age and feel good. And I feel like I kind of tick the boxes for, you know, how I feel healthy and energized. And so I just feel like I, I love sharing that with other people. I'm also a psychospiritual therapist as well. So I studied in Toronto at the , um, transformational Art. It used to be the center and that was a college. So they actually now , um, have certified programs that they offer. And so I studied two years with them and at the time when I studied with them, it was really just to kind of deal with my own family stuff and kind of, you know, figure out myself. And what I find now is kind of like, that was the path. I was on more of the psychospiritual therapy and I used to , um, design and facilitate a lot of workshops and codependency and healing shame and a lot of different courses that I offered. And, but now what I find is that I actually take those two modalities and I blend them together with what I'm working with women as a women's health coach right now. And that's kind of where I'm at right now. So I absolutely love it and I love the fact that when I'm working with women, it's, I always say it's never just about the nutrition, it's never about supplements. It always goes way, way deeper. So that, yeah, that's really, I think, been my unique services that I offer clients is the fact that I'm able to work with them in the body manner spirit approach.
Speaker 3:So there's been a theme to the podcast lately it seems, without even knowing it. And that's the beauty of this podcast is we do know it on some level there's been a theme in the supporting people with their staff , I guess is the general overall theme. Um, and that comes in many different forms and I'm hoping that listeners are, are gathering the nudges that I'm getting that are flowing through to you out there in terms of supporting yourself with your stuff . Because it's almost like we're going through this calendar or a cookie press or something as a collective that is making us steal or look or see that we all have stuff in this human form. So I love that you have intuitively by the sense of things landed in this place of supporting women with their health. Cuz more of the boomers have gone through it, but it's in general, people of, I'll say the younger generation, so in their forties and younger are wanting to stay young and people in their fifties and sixties are wanting to stay young. And I don't know if that's been generated from television or from social media or where it's been generated cuz I always wanted to grow old gracefully. I'm, I'm not afraid of my gray hair. I, I just always intended to grow old gracefully and, and touch wood, I've been blessed <laugh> with that. Mm-hmm . <affirmative> actualizing. But I think there is a real movement that is counter the aging process. And everything I've witnessed about you through social media and through our contacts has been that you also are somebody who's looking to age gracefully and embrace the aging process. You're not looking to push against it. Is that true?
Speaker 4:Exactly. And you know, really what it's about is there's the chronological aging and then there's the biological aging, right. So I mean, we can't change, like I say , I can't change, I'm 64. I mean, I was away with my daughter this week and we were laughing cuz she was, I just said to her, I said, it feels so surreal to even say that I'm 64. And she said, I know. She says, I think of you as being kind of like in your forties. Like when I think of my mom , I think of my mom as in her forties and I , and it was like, wow. You know what I mean? I took that as a compliment. It's not that I'm wearing, you know, skimpy little clothes and dressing like a teenager or anything like that. It's just that having that youthfulness, right? So mm-hmm. <affirmative> , you know, and the , the biological aging is like, how is your body actually aging? So, and you know, I think that we grew up with that mindset. It's kind of like that you kind of get to 65 years old and then maybe you start taking like aging more seriously or something. Whereas nowadays, you know, prevention is better than cure. And that's really been my motto is prevention is better than cure. So why wait till you get to the point where, you know, things are falling apart and you're in disease and mm-hmm . <affirmative> , you're losing mobility and you know you're suffering with pain and fatigue. Why not just prevent those things? And another thing that I really, really focus on a lot with my clients is like another one of kind of my mottoes is that , you know, when you start getting into, if you get into that disease mode that, you know, losing mobility and pain , I mean , let's face it or world gets smaller, right? You know, so if you can't get out and go on that walk, if you can't, you know, suddenly you might have the money now to be able to go to Europe and spend time, you know, going and visiting all the beautiful castles and everything there. But if you don't have the ability to be able to walk around and do those things, or sometimes they'll see where one partner maybe has stayed in good shape and the other partner hasn't. So now you're in a relationship and you can enjoy each other's company like you used to because you can't get out and do the things that you want to do . So that's why I really, really focus with my clients is that, I mean, I work with, some of my clients I'm working with now are actually in their twenties, early thirties, but then I work with people that are in their late sixties and seventies mm-hmm . <affirmative> . So it's, yeah, it's just really, it's staying in good shape as much as possible and , uh, keeping our health as opposed to getting that back kind of thing. So that's definitely the focus and that's why my passion is really in youthful aging because again, we can't, you know, I can't change how old I am. I don't wanna be age 64 <laugh> because years are going by too fast. I mean, that's more of it than anything. I mean, it's just a number, but it's kind of scary how fast the time goes by. And , um, yeah, I just wanna be around. I only have a 19 year old daughter, so I wanna be around for her.
Speaker 3:So you started in the holistic worlds not long after me actually, cuz we went to the same school. What was your pre holistic nutritionist world? What what were you up to prior to
Speaker 4:That? Um , well for me it was really about fixing myself to be honest with you because I mean, I was in my , um, I was in my forties . I had my daughter, yeah , 44. And um, you know, even though I was in good shape, I , I , I guess this , you know, I had her, I mean, she was super healthy. I had a great pregnancy and everything like that. Um, and she was planned , so she wasn't a mistake kind of thing. But here I was at 44 and I didn't realize at the time that I was in perimenopause. I mean, I didn't even really think about it. It wasn't until actually years later that I was able to connect the dots, but I just knew that I didn't like the way I felt, I didn't like the way I looked and yeah, okay, I'd had a baby and, you know, there was a whole postpartum or whatever, but I was just, I was really feeling like I just didn't like the way I was aging. And what I did was I just, I went on a path of my own trying to figure it out. I mean, at the time, you know, we're looking 20 years ago in , in the mountain area. I mean, there wasn't really much in the way of, I, in fact, there was one naturopath blossom bidding . I remember her when my daughter was a little, she was the only one, I mean, at that time, even going to take my daughter to her was like a, it was, it was very alternative at the time. And , um, I actually went out and bought myself the Nutritional healing book, that gravy Bible . In fact, I've just bought the newest edition of it actually. It's , so now I own the , the latest edition. And I literally would go through that thing and I'd try to figure out like, okay, yeah, I have these symptoms. Okay, what is that? Oh, oh, okay, I need this. I need this vitamin. Oh, I need to take, start taking this. I mean, you know, I was just really just trying to figure out as I was going along. So that was kind of like one part of my journey. And then when I started to get to around 50 was when I kind of was really like, we now know that perimenopause is about, you know, 10 to 15 years. So there I was in my fifties and I went to, I guess I was about 55 , actually 5 56. And I was in at the kind of the peak of my perimenopause. And , um, and I , again, I was really struggling. I was really struggling with , um, trying to figure out like what was going on and my brain wasn't functioning the way I wanted it to be. And , um, I had been doing hot yoga for a couple of years, like two , five days a week I was doing hot yoga. I noticed that I was starting to lose a lot of my muscle mass and there was just a lot of stuff going on. So anyway, I decided, I, I had already been teaching the Aging Well Program for the school mm-hmm . <affirmative> and , um, because of my background as a psychospiritual therapist and I decided, I put teaching on hold for a year and I actually enrolled in the program. And that was wonderful to be in that program because it really, really helped me to like work on myself and to fix myself. So that was when I really dove in deep into the, you know, the whole kind of holistic healing. And
Speaker 3:Before that, like in, before your forties, what, what was Joanne up to?
Speaker 4:Oh, had studied, as I say, as a psychospiritual therapist. I was actually designing and facilitating workshops here in the Moncton area when I wasn't living. Cause I lived in Costa Rica for three years. I lived in Mexico for two years. So I was doing a lot of traveling. I was actually away teaching kids. So I was teaching kindergarten, grade one, grade two, and grade three in those countries. Oh wow. And then when I was here, I was actually designing courses in co-dependency for the old Y on Heel street . Okay. So I've always had a passion for helping people. Just always been a passion of mine for like, you know, what they say, like we teach what we need to learn. Yes. So whatever . So whatever I was teaching was what I needed to learn more of and as I was learning. And that's , it's the same thing now, Heather. You know, like I'm still on my journey of like wanting to age the best that I can. I just, incor started taking another new supplement that I had been doing some research on for, for aging. And I was like, so I'm still looking at how can I improve my own aging process. And as I'm learning, I'm also sharing that with my clients as well. Yeah.
Speaker 3:It sounds like we're similar in that we're, we are our own test kitchen <laugh>.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah. Yeah . And I mean, you've always had, you've always had the kind of the cutting edge for the whole , um, like understanding amino acids and that, you know, at the time I can remember that you coming into our class actually sharing information on that. And now it's just like, you know, it's something that I talk to my clients about all the time and you know, the importance of making sure we're getting good protein in our diet and you know, and different supplements that I recommend. You know, I love L tyrosine , I call it my legal drug. Yeah. You know, because I mean, it's just like, and gaba , I mean, you know, those two are on hand all the time with me and I recommend them to so many people. Um , but you had like, you shared that knowledge and that was something that then I took and it's like, okay, I need to understand more about amino acids because again, most of us don't understand the importance of , um, having adequate protein in our diet, like complete protein. And that's probably the biggest thing that I see with my clients. Like the women clients that I work with is, most of 'em , I would say probably 90% of them are not getting enough protein in their diet. Yeah. You know? Yeah . It's the biggest thing I see . And , and they're mostly, they're shocked . It's like, well what do you mean? You know, I put a little bit of meat in my sauce, my spaghetti sauce, you know, is not enough. You know,
Speaker 3:I love that you have , have, you seem to have this element of adventure in your world. Yeah. And not everybody just picks up and goes and teaches in other countries <laugh> . Mm . And when before we started the call, you were referring to how you love the freedom of how you work with your clients online. Yeah . Because you like to go home to England. So when did you leave England to come to Canada?
Speaker 4:I left England when I was 22 years old. I had my older , I have a 45 year old and a 43 year old. So when I came to , I came here at 22 years old, Toronto with two little kids. And yeah, I arrived with my bags and two little kids and that was the beginning of my journey. So I've been in and out of Canada for many years. I mean, people say where you're from, I'm like, well, do you have half an hour? Because I'm a bit of a nomad and I like that about myself. I've recognized that it's not, to me, it's not a negative. Where do I wanna start spending maybe six months of the year? And I'm thinking, is that Ecuador? Is that, you know, Guatemala? Like where is that? Right. I love that part of myself because it's the whole thing of learning from other people and you just don't wanna be one of those people that ever feel like stuck or I'm always challenging myself and experiencing new things and meeting new people and learning as I'm traveling. And I'm not the kind of person that needs to have the security of a home. I'm fortunate that I actually have a home here in Riverview where I stay, but it's not my home. It's actually my ex-husband's and I'm here while he's in Thailand right now. So it's kind of funny. We should , we do that. He's here , I'm here with my, our daughter and he's there and then he comes back and then I'm gonna go take off for a while. And then when I'm in England, I also work with people there as well. So I've been asked to host some different workshops there on menopause. Cuz in England they're way, way, way further ahead than us in the menopause Yes. Awareness world than what we are here.
Speaker 3:Even the food is different in Europe
Speaker 4:And everything's different. I'm like two different people. I'm like, even the clothes I wear are different there. Like my activities are different there . It's , my life is very different there than what it is here. Yeah. I'm very fortunate.
Speaker 3:Very cool. Cool. So where has been your favorite place in all your travels to be?
Speaker 4:I don't know. Well, I mean, I really love Hawaii. I also love Japan. My daughter-in-law is from Japan, so I spent time there. Yeah. I don't know, my sister loves in Holland, so I love spending time with her in Holland. I mean, but then I love England. I mean, yeah. I , I don't know if I could pick , you know what I always say, there's no such place as paradise. And paradise is where you whatever you make it, honestly. Because it doesn't matter where I've lived , where I've been, there's pros and cons for everything in life. Like, I love being here, but you know what it's like here in the winter, I'm not a winter person, you know, but then when I'm in, in England and it's November and December and it's gray and it's dark and it's like, ooh , I'd rather have the cold in the sun, I think, I don't even think I have a favorite place. There's , I don't think there's anywhere that I kind of wanna be all the time. 12 months of the year. I haven't found that place yet. Anyway. I do love going backwards forest between here in England. So right now I feel like I've got a really good balance right now.
Speaker 3:Very cool. So I'm gonna shift gears a little bit and ask you how intuition comes.
Speaker 4:Intuition comes with a feeling with me. Like , I give an example. I mean, this is so bizarre. When I've actually first started my, my coaching business actually, I had this client that I started working with and she was having the most bizarre symptoms. And we , I was looking at her diet and I'm thinking to myself, like, her diet looks good, other areas of her health were good. And it was the weirdest feeling, but I was just like, I suddenly, I was just told to open up my metabolic code book and I opened it up to this page. And on this page was a description on stomach dumping, which probably most people have never heard of. I had never heard of it. And it was so weird because I, I don't think I would've been able to figure out what was wrong with it . Basically the bottom line is, is that he ate, if she eats things that turned to glucose too quickly in the body, it literally like just passes through her. And she was a vegan at the time and she was using stuff like beet powder and stuff was like tapioca , uh, and it starch in it and like different things that were turning to glucose. Yes . And it was the weirdest thing. And when I suggested to her that we needed to cut that out, she was eating a lot of like these beyond burgers and all of, a lot of the, the vegan kind of processed things that were all turned to glucose like super quickly. So this poor woman literally could barely leave her house. I mean, she was like, you know, like not to sound gross to the podcast, but she was having to be on the toilet maybe 10, 12 times a day. Oh , sweet . Okay . Urgently I found after that, well , I mean now she's just like, I mean her life is completely changing. Nobody was able to figure that out. She was going to doctor , she was going to Natu patch , she was going, but something led me to open up that book. And that's, that's one of the things I find with my business is that working with clients is , I don't wanna call myself a medical medium, but feel like often what will happen is when I'm working with a client, I'll just get this message, ask them the que this question ask and I'll ask them something and it will be like, it'll be like the missing piece of the puzzle. Or they'll go to say something and then they'll hesitate. And then I get that urge to ask them , say , no , finish what you were gonna say. And again, often for me that will be like the missing link. So I use it a lot when I'm working with clients. I use it like, even though I'm on Zoom with clients, I just, it's so interesting how I can be on Zoom with 'em and yet I feel this connection with them and I feel intuitively guided to ask them questions. I'm gonna , I'll tell you a quick story that I had a couple of weeks ago. I was supposed to attend a plant medicine ceremony and I had already attended one of , a couple of months ago and got to the Saturday I was supposed to go. And I woke up that morning and I kept getting a feeling that I wasn't supposed to go. And I kept thinking, well, why I wanted to go to it . And it was like , you know , you're not supposed to go. And the message that I was getting is, you're not supposed to go because that's who's somebody that's gonna be there. So I was like, okay , somebody's gonna be there. That's why I'm not supposed to go. So anyway, I messaged the person and I said, Hey, you know, I'm not gonna go today. I didn't get into any more detail than that with the person, but I just said that I'm, I'm not gonna be at 10 that day. It was on the , the following Friday, I decided usually like nine times outta 10, I have clients. You know, I start usually my clients at 10 o'clock in the morning. And this particular Friday I did not have a client till like later in the day. So I decided that I was gonna go to the Dobson trail and I was gonna go for a hike on the Dobson trail. So I'm hiking and I get to the bridge, which is three kilometers in, and there's this woman sitting there on the , on the bridge and just being polite. I was like, oh, hi, how are you? And she looked good, good. You know, nice weather and kind of continued on. And then she started walking behind me and then I just kind of turned around and I started like having a conversation with her again. I was intuitively guided to have this conversation with her. And she mentioned that she was doing some processing and she had gone to this plant medicine ceremony on this Saturday. And that she was just like, there was a lot of stuff kind of coming up for her and she hadn't been able to go to work that week cuz she was doing a lot of processing. So I asked her who she was at the plant medicine ceremony with. Anyway, it turns out that she was the one that was at the plant medicine ceremony that I was supposed to be at. And she had a really difficult time. They had been her first time, she had recently , she had lost her husband about four years ago on a freak medical thing. Oh . And she was, there was like a lot of heavy, heavy processing and it , it turns out that there was supposed to be nine people there and only four people showed up. And the person who actually like was heading the , this plant medicine ceremony said that it was perfect the way it worked out because she was actually able to give this particular client like, attention that she really, really needed. So that was why I wasn't supposed to go and to , to go to that ceremony and then to run into that person. Like what are the chances of that? Yeah,
Speaker 3:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 4:And now she's gonna like, she's gonna do the 54 kilometer hike with us in , um, July 1st. Oh,
Speaker 3:Cool.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Wi with me, it's often a feeling. I get a feeling about something and it's like, I don't, it's not that I see pictures or anything like that, or I don't necessarily hear voices, but I'll get this feeling that I need to do something or I need to look somewhere, or I need to call a person or I need to go somewhere. And , um, that's what happens with me.
Speaker 3:Thank you for sharing. I find some people will, they'll want to have intuition a different way than they receive it. But if we can see, like you're describing the variety in which your intuition can come, if you, even if it's coming quote unquote in one way, that you will just continue arriving at the candy store called intuition. And if you start recognizing, like you have all the different places it can show up. Oh yeah. It can inspire you to listen to more of your intuition.
Speaker 4:And I've learned the secret is, is that when I get that calling, you have to do it right away. Like, you can't be like, oh , and gnawing and like, you know what I mean? It's, from what I understand about intuition, it's kind of like, it's one of those things that when you get the call, it's like, do it because waiting even a half an hour or an hour or five minute whatever is like, no, the opportunity is gone type of thing. So I definitely , um, check in with my heart a lot. Like I definitely feel things in my heart area would be where I am mostly guided.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And, and the timing aspect. Somebody recently was describing a story in , um, Elizabeth Gilbert's book, and they were describing how a poet received the poems. I don't know if you've heard this before, but your, your urgency reminds me of this story that I recently heard. I don't even know, like in the last three days. So they were describing how they'd be out in a field and a poem would come up over the Moores kind of thing. And if they didn't write it right away, the poem would move on to the next poet down
Speaker 4:When Yeah. And that's what I understand about intuition is kind of like one of those things that is like the , it's not like this kind of like this open opportunity. It's you've just , you've gotta kind of just, you know, take a chance and go with it. So I, I mean, I've definitely allowed my intuition to guide me a lot. Like I really check in with my heart when I'm making a decision about something or if I get a message about something, then I, I'm very connected with, with my intuition. So I definitely, and I think that's what's allowed me to kind of travel the way I have as well because I , I get kind of good feelings about things or bad feelings. Like, I had rented this apartment here a couple years ago and ugh , as soon as I walked in that apartment, I just got this really, really weird feeling about this place. In fact, I didn't even unpack my stuff and within six weeks I was moving out of it only to find out that the room where I kept getting that feeling on my chest and like, I couldn't even spend time in that room. Like I was supposed to set my bedroom up in there. I thought it was losing my mind. It turns out that the tenant before had committed suicide in there. Aw . And I picked up on it right away. I was just like, oh , there's something in this, this place feels really, really heavy. So I'm very intuitive about people as well. I'm very intuitive about situations and Mm . Yeah. And of course when my head gets in the way, that's when I make a mistake. Right.
Speaker 3:<laugh> , you know, so Yes .
Speaker 4:Yeah. Yeah. When I , when my ego jumps in and then I start following my ego and then I'm like , okay, don't do that <laugh>. Yeah .
Speaker 3:I think that is the course of human evolution probably is mm-hmm . <affirmative> is learning, which is which . So then that's probably some of the motivation of this timing of, of the creation of this podcast. I often look up and go, are we still doing this? And it's like, yeah . It's like, okay , we'll keep doing this. And each time I just am confirmed like, oh yeah, the world needs this lesson. Oh yeah. The world needs to hear this podcast. Oh yeah. <laugh> . So thank you so much for today, Joanne. I truly appreciate your sharing and I'm glad we got into some of the, some of the , uh, stories perhaps that people aren't aware of about you in terms of your history of travel and, and how you've got to your place of, of what you're doing now. So thank you for, for sharing.
Speaker 4:Oh, you are welcome, Heather. It's a pleasure talking to you. I mean, we go way back and yet we've probably never really sat out a we've never sat out a conversation. Yeah, no. We've always just like ran into each other. Yeah . And our , like I say , we have, we moved in the same circle of friends and everything, you know? Yeah . But we haven't really spent time. I've known of the work that you do. In fact, I've even recommended people to go see you. And so, and that's the great thing about our community is that you know what , we're all working together for the greater cause , you know ? We
Speaker 3:Are . Yeah . All right , well, we'll leave them wanting for more. Thank you again.
Speaker 4:Yes. Well, thanks a lot Heather , and have a great day. You
Speaker 3:Too . You too.
Speaker 4:Talk to you later.
Speaker 3:Thank you so much for giving us your time today. We truly appreciate our guests for sharing their stories
Speaker 1:And insights about how intuition has impacted their lives. And I'm so grateful for Peter Trainor for his time in giving me this original music. It's now your turn. It's your turn to listen and act on your own intuition and help make the world a better place. Until next time, keep seeing, being, knowing, and doing. If you like this podcast, please share it. If you want to find others like it, go to www.healingvitality.ca or wherever you would find your podcast. We would love to have you join us on this journey. Come be a crow sitting in the tree. Be part of our community.