SWIHA Blog

Kaye Bahr spent 15 years teaching in the Arizona public school system. As an elementary school teacher teaching third to sixth grade, Kaye loved the daily interaction with her students and watching them grow and change throughout the school year. However, like most teachers, Kaye found that there was very little time left for her family or for herself. After experiencing some changes in her career, she began to develop depression and digestive disorders.

When she reached the point that she could no longer stand the situation and her suffering health, she went in search of a counselor. In that search, she found a Mind Body Wellness Practitioner. When she made the call to set up an appointment, Kaye heard the words that she so needed to hear that day: “You will feel so much better when you leave my office.” After her first session, she did feel so much better; the fog began to clear and her physical and emotional self found relief. “When I left her office that day, the experience changed my life,” says Kaye. “It took another few years for me to leave teaching, yet I knew in my soul that I had found my life’s work. I wanted to provide that same healing experience for others.” With this in mind, Kaye sought out SWIHA, enrolling in the Mind Body Wellness Practitioner Diploma program with an emphasis in Clinical Hypnotherapy and Life Coaching. She graduated in November 2016— the start of a whole new life on a path that she felt she was destined to take.

Nereyda Varias was a passionate seeker of wellness who wanted to share her gifts with the world and expand her knowledge. Before enrolling in the Integrative Healing Arts Practitioner program, she dreamt of learning the skills, scripture, and wisdom utilized by great sages, mystics, and scholars. She felt that she was meant for greater things and that helping others was her path. Nereyda knew she would be part of something bigger that would help to aid the world. “I knew deep within I was a part of a movement to aid our world and all of its brilliant divine human and non-human beings upon it— to be a catalyst of transcendence and evolution,” she shares.

For anyone older than about 18 to 20 years old, the mere mention of September 11, 2001, evokes visceral memories of the day the twin towers fell in New York City. Today marks the sixteenth anniversary of this heartbreaking event, and when asked to remember where they were on that day, most people have an almost automatic reflex, causing them to hold their breath and flit back to the memories buried within their emotional awareness. What is this universal emotion we are experiencing in recalling tragedy? Vulnerability!

No matter how old you were, the crack in the cosmic egg which occurred that day caused an entire nation to feel vulnerable. Something shifted in all of us, and that shift may still be affecting how we show up in the world today.

Jenna Gully was doing the same thing many high school graduates end up doing: going to college for something she had an interest in without knowing where it would lead her or how she would use the skills she was learning in a practical way. As is often the case without that big “end picture” goal—without the drive of a vision to work towards—college had become more of a vehicle for social interaction than for personal growth. Jenna soon came to realize that she wanted more out of life… that she wanted to do something that supported a healthy and active lifestyle, something that would spark her growth as a person, that could give her direction and the motivation of working towards a career she could be excited about. In 2013, she dropped out of college and started moving in that direction.

Yoga has always been a part of Jenna’s life. Her mother had been sharing the experience of yoga with her since a young age, giving her the gift of a physical practice that was sustaining and ever evolving. After witnessing her mother’s own experience as a student in the Yoga Teacher Training program at Spirit of Yoga, Jenna realized she was being drawn to the program herself, wanting to expand on the physical practice she had enjoyed throughout the years by adding the technical, philosophical, and energetic components and developing her gift of healing touch. In 2014, she enrolled herself in the 200-hour YTT program at SOY.

Shortly after SWIHA was founded, a guest massage instructor came to our modest campus to offer training on a technique known as “positional release therapy.” In this type of therapy, the body is positioned in strategic ways so as to release the muscles and tension stored from past injuries, accidents, and traumas. Within the first few hours of the workshop, one of the students had a reaction to the position in which her body had been placed. She began to cry and then shake; finally, her left hand involuntarily contorted into a claw-like cramp. The guest instructor (who had over 20 years of experience) stood by in confusion, looking as if he had never seen an emotional release before. Immediately stepping up to the table, I offered the student a guided visualization, taking her to a “safe place” and instructing her to concentrate on slowing her breath to calm her mind.

As the guest instructor look on incredulously, he commented, “In all my years, I have never had THAT happen on my table!” Luckily, I had the grace to not say what I was thinking, which was: “And you never will… because you don’t know how to ‘hold space’ for others!” Even if I had shared what I was thinking, this instructor probably wouldn’t have understood what I was talking about.

Sarah Whiton tends to take her interests, passions, and hobbies and turn them into careers. Constantly evolving and developing new skills, she recognizes that her life has been a path that has taken several different directions, each one a step forward into the successful career she has today.

Sarah has been working in the Health and Fitness Industry as a Certified Personal Trainer for a several years. The focus of her work is to inspire women to make peace with their body-image, to embrace every unique inch of themselves, to find self-awareness, and ultimately to discover self-love. Describing why she is so passionate about her work, Sarah says, “What I have loved the most about this job all along is the opportunity I have to inspire and encourage others. It’s not only listening to people, it’s holding space for them, being the person they feel they can come to, and being a source of positive energy.”

There is an old adage which states, "If you love something, let it go. If it comes back, it's yours forever. If it doesn't, then it was never meant to be." 

There is no truer definition of surrender than freely letting something go forever with no attachment to it (whatever “it” is) coming back— while still being open to the miracle that it might. Surrender is not giving up; it’s releasing control or attachment to what you want, fully believing there is a higher, greater purpose for whatever happens. This process can be considered a walk in faith!

As strange and trite as it might sound, my recent stay in “Facebook jail” truly taught me valuable life coaching lessons in the art of surrender. As shared in a previous blog, Facebook disabled my personal account with no explanation other than to say that my account had been deemed a security risk and that no further explanation could (or would) be given. Now I realize that it is truly a “first-world problem” to have a Facebook account disabled. You might be thinking, “Come on, KC, there are much more important things to think about, let alone spend precious time praying about!” This is true, and the experience has been humbling and illuminating. In fact, as a result of being in “Facebook jail,” I truly have experienced a walk in faith. The following are the life coaching steps I took and will continue to take in the future:

It has been a long road to get to where Tim Barber is today. By his account, that amounts to somewhere around 2,300 miles and 15 years since the graduate of SWIHA’s 1000-hour Master Massage Practitioner and 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training program first realized that he wanted to become a Licensed Massage Therapist.

Tim spent most of his life in New York. No, not that New York. “Everyone always assumes I mean New York City when I tell them where I am from, which couldn’t be further from the truth,” he laughs. Born and raised in the Central New York region, most of his life was spent surrounded by forests and water— not skyscrapers. Houses were often a half-mile to a mile apart. The town he grew up in was so small that there wasn’t even a four-way stop in it. His graduating class consisted of about 60 people. A trip to the mall would take about 45 minutes of driving to get there. The nightlife in his town consisted of crickets and lightning bugs. No, it definitely was not THAT New York.

Energy is everywhere, from the air you breathe to the life force that surrounds your body. Your energy, or lack thereof, affects every dimension of your life, including your mind, body, and spirit. Energy leakage can take shape in many ways: physical or mental tiredness, loss of motivation, frustration, and/or feeling stuck. These symptoms may be confusing for some, especially if you’re self-aware and cautious with your health. However, even if you have positive energy flowing in, that energy will continue to leak if you are not healed.

Of course, in order to heal yourself, you have to know that you are leaking energy in the first place! In my case, I was in Bali and was drawn to seek out some advice from a spiritual healer. Since this wasn’t my first time receiving guidance from a healer, I sort of knew what to expect during our meeting. However, she brought up a topic I wasn’t quite expecting: my energy. She explained that my energy had been leaking due to my inability to let go of a past relationship. This leakage was negatively affecting my energy levels and my current pursuit of love and happiness. This information came as quite a shock, yet made a lot of sense. My energy had been leaking for years, impacting my whole well-being, and I never once made the mind-body connection.

Ever have those times when everything seems to go wrong? Your computer crashes, you quarrel or argue with people in your life over small and nonsensical things, flights are delayed or cancelled, plans change without warning, and even Facebook seems to be against you? Chances are you are smack dab in the middle of a Mercury retrograde!

Our most recent retrograde started on August 12^th–marking the third time Mercury has gone retrograde in 2017—and isn’t scheduled to end until Labor Day! So what exactly happens when Mercury goes retrograde? SWIHA Great Graduate Danielle Warford explains in one of her compelling blog posts on The Wild Feminine:

“It’s a time where the planet Mercury, for a three week period, appears to be moving backwards in the sky. Star-gazers have been watching this for millennia. The effects of a retrograde are universal, it seems, and if you begin to look at patterns of your life up against a calendar of retrogrades, you may find a pattern along with your frustrations.”

“Side effects” of this particular alignment—or misalignment—of the planets usually include glitches and misunderstandings in our communication and relationships that create a sense of unpredictability. In fact, even our electronic devices can have a tendency to go a bit haywire during this time!