SWIHA Blog

When Micah Lunassential speaks, she immediately commands your attention. Warm, kind, smart, and engaging, she brings experience, understanding, and enlightenment to people with her successful YouTube channel Ms.Micah. With a focus on love and relationships this channel embraces the discussion of uncomfortable topics that so often hold us back, like fear, forgiveness, addiction, and trauma.

Micah grew up knowing trauma, having PTSD as a child from a serious accident and later getting complex PTSD from abuse as an adult. These experiences dramatically affected her view on love and on herself. After years of feeling hopeless and being trapped in a victim mentality, Micah went to a Holistic Gathering at SWIHA in October of 2012 where she had a Toe Reading that would change her life.

“I was being mentored by the then Director of the Psychology department at Ottawa University for a class I was taking entitled Trauma Psychology,” Micah shared. “The Toe Reading reminded me of what I was avoiding because I was trapped in a victim mentality. True healing was learning to feel safe in the body after trauma or domestic violence.”

Having studied  Cranial Sacral Therapy years before, Micah knew that she needed to keep a prior promise to herself and begin studying it anew. Recognizing that “the mind-body connection is the key to everything,” Micah then enrolled in the Mind-Body Transformational Psychology program at SWIHA to begin her new journey of healing and empowerment.

At SWIHA, Micah found an educational space that allowed her to learn how to help others and recognize and experience the powerful healing and development that comes from uniting the mind, body, and spirit in every aspect of her own life. “I knew that the key to my healing and growth was in my body and giving myself permission to become comfortable with my emotions instead of trying to suppress or control them,” said Micah. “At SWIHA you learn that YOU are worth the effort, and you realize that you can offer that feeling to others once they decide they want to heal and develop themselves.” By embracing this knowledge in her own life, the quality of her life and her relationships all changed for the better.

When thinking back to her time at SWIHA, one memory sticks with Micah the most. She was waiting for further instructions on an activity in a Life Coaching class, trying to find out what step was next, when instructor Richard Seaman said to her, "Sit in the uncomfortableness, Micah." The timing, along with the direct, professional, and compassionate tone of the instructor, resonated deeply with her. To this day, Micah says, “I find myself chanting that to myself when I begin to feel anxious. I can tune everything out, breathe, and let go of the need to control or predict what will happen next. Everything has gotten easier with this philosophy, and I learn more than words can express from being with that uncomfortableness each and every time.”

Micah is currently building her business, Lunassential, and works primarily as a mentor and guide for women who are recovering from trauma from breakups, domestic manipulation, abuse, and violence. She blogs frequently and is working on her first book, in collaboration with a photographer colleague, documenting the process of creating “The Self.” Many of her clients come from people viewing the powerful videos on her YouTube page.

Lunassential was created as a referral network for women to take more control of their own healing with Micah as a Guide along the process. Micah says, “My goal is to be for other women what I once needed— a guide on my journey of taking my life back, getting reacquainted with who you are, and then taking what you have learned into the world to help others.” The skills she has learned through years of personal experience, professional experience in the medical field, and formal education in Psychology, Life Coaching, Bodywork, and trauma has given her the ability to mirror what a person most needs to see in themselves, educate them on therapies and modalities that may be most beneficial for them, and either offer them sessions in those modalities herself or refer them to practitioners and professionals that she knows and trusts.

At SWIHA, Micah became familiar with a wide variety of healing modalities and earned certifications in Cranial Unwinding, Life Coaching and Master Toe Reading. “The most valuable thing I can offer someone is guidance… helping them navigate the overwhelming process of putting the pieces of their health, wellness, and life back together.”

“Whatever we believe to be true about ourselves… we’re right,” states Micah. “‘Trauma’ is a scary word. It has its place. However, I prefer to refer to traumas as ‘experiences’ and ‘opportunities.’” Micah believes that remaining attached to the drama of our experiences sometimes offers us a false sense of value and belonging, founded in pain from the past. These experiences shape us, and every single day we can make the choice as to how that defines our lives. The question then is, “Do we want to be defined by pain as victims, or by the divinity of healing… overcoming and transmuting the monsters from the past to the angels of our present? We have the power to change our lives in the most compassionate and gentle way if we just allow it and remain disciplined.”

Micah offers the following advice, “Breathe and allow. Notice when you resist and be open to discovering where the resistance comes from. Let go of what you believe to be true and accept that there can be so much more.”