SWIHA Blog

By Dee McCaffrey

If you’ve been chewing on the thought of improving your food choices and starting your journey toward a healthy lifestyle, there is no better time to begin than now. March is National Nutrition Month, an annual campaign organized by the American Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics aimed at educating and empowering Americans into healthier lifestyles. The theme for this year’s nutrition month is “Bite into a Healthy Lifestyle” which encourages everyone to make informed food choices, keep portion sizes in check and engage in fitness routines that are meaningful and enjoyable.

The word “bite” means to take a small piece of a bigger portion, chew it well, savor the flavor and then swallow before taking the next bite. This year’s theme can be interpreted to mean that healthy living is not about making grand changes all at once. Rather, it is a steady continual process that allows for gradual improvement in many areas of your life. The focus is on taking one “bite” at a time into new territory—savoring a small change and allowing it to become a new habit before taking the next “bite.” The small changes you make each day or week will add up to big changes over time.

Graduates from Southwest Institute of Healing Arts (SWIHA) do BIG things in the world. They have launched successful holistic wellness businesses, created non-profits to help those in need, and even hold events to raise awareness within their community.

One such graduate and event is Nicole Duran. Nicole began her healing journey as a SWIHA student in late 2000, mostly studying Reiki. Once she completed her studies at SWIHA, she was able to bring her Reiki healing energy to community events and share it with children and youth.

Currently, Nicole is involved with an upcoming event called Neotribal the Gathering. Neotribal has been in collaboration for only about three months, and this will be the first major event for the group. The event will be held March 20th to March 22nd at Estrella Mountain Regional Park in Goodyear, Arizona.

Nicole has worked in the field of behavioral health for 12 years, specifically working with teens and youth. This work instilled a passion within her for working with and helping people of all ages who could benefit from advocacy. "I believe in spreading awareness through action and love to bring people together with the healing arts to honor our culture and roots," Nicole shared. "This event is about service and healing."

Kiera Stroup always wanted to move to Arizona. A native New Yorker, Kiera earned her Bachelor’s degree from Manhattan College and then began a corporate I.T. career that lasted 27 years and took her to Connecticut, California, and finally Memphis, Tennessee. It was at the University of Memphis where she earned her MBA. However, Kiera still longed to live in the Grand Canyon State. In 2013, Kiera’s corporate I.T. career came to an unexpected end when the company she worked for eliminated her position. Instead of feeling sorry for herself, Kiera took it as a sign and headed for the Valley of the Sun to fearlessly pursue her dream.

Since Kiera had a longtime interest in skincare, she felt that a career change to the field of natural beauty would be a good fit for her. She found Southwest Institute of Healing Arts (SWIHA) and called to inquire about aesthetics programs. Based on Kiera’s other interest in massage, her Admission Coach suggested SWIHA’s 1000-hour Massage program, which would allow her to become dually licensed in massage and aesthetics. This specific program is unique, in that, students have the opportunity to complete part of their program at Southwest Institute of Natural Aesthetics (SWINA), SWIHA’s branch campus where the natural aesthetics programs and courses are held, located two miles south of the main campus in Tempe, Arizona.

While Jorinda Nardone currently holds the title of Spa Director of the 40,000 square foot Green Valley Ranch Spa in Las Vegas, the road to this level of success was paved with hard work, long hours and dedication. A 2001 graduate of Southwest Institute of Healing Arts’ (SWIHA) Massage Program, Jorinda came to SWIHA for what she thought was a career change, however, during her program she began to notice a transformation within herself, and heal old wounds in the process. Taking a look at herself and her healing process led Jorinda on a completely different path than the one she originally intended to take.

Once graduated, and armed with an array of knowledge and her massage license, Jorinda went to work launching her business. She opened her first business, Lemongrass Massage Therapy, and quickly started to see clients. Jorinda jumped at the chance to open her own business, because not only was it the perfect way to use her education in a loving and profitable way, it was also a great opportunity for her own personal growth.

By Melanie Albert, Guest Blogger

March is National Nutrition Month, a month dedicated to nutrition and education. National Nutrition Month was created by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, focusing on the importance of making informed food choices and healthy eating habits. So the perfect way to kick off this month is with some fun, healthy snacks!

This is a great time to add three delicious healthy snacks, primarily inspired by a vegan and raw food way of eating, to your life. Have fun this week trying superfoods including raw cocoa and goji berries, and make your own almond butter.

By Guest Blogger Laura Barnes

Life Coaching is a dynamic process of purposeful empowerment that sparks transformational change.

Life Coaching develops trust through the journey inward.

A masterful Life Coach helps you to listen and receive information from deep within and to trust and then act on that information.

Life Coaching requires a journey inward. This encourages a sense of rigorously honest confidence and authenticity that is rooted in trusting and believing in you.

For this journey inward, a masterful Life Coach will use a portfolio of artful coaching tools and techniques such as meditation, visualization, mantras, affirmations, the development of mindfulness, music, sounds and frequencies, colors, prayer, breathing techniques, empathy development, storytelling, signs and symbols, body awareness, dreams, archetypes, developing creativity and much more to awaken the mind.

These tools and techniques essentially help to de-clutter, calm and quiet the mind so that you can tune out all the distracting noise and nonsense and tune into your own essential truth that is available and accessible in each and every moment. This inner truth offers the humbling opportunity to guide your life in more purposeful, meaningful and joyous directions.

“We all have the inborn ability to heal, to maintain, and to grow.”

This is the premise of Suzie Emiliozzi’s business, Living Joy LLC. Suzie launched Living Joy shortly after graduating from the online Associates of Mind-Body Transformational Psychology Degree program at Southwest Institute of Healing Arts (SWIHA). Since then, she has helped hundreds of clients change, heal, and discover themselves.

Let’s start at the beginning…

Years ago, Suzie was diagnosed with a terrible case of Rheumatoid Arthritis. Even with medical care, her condition was debilitating. Everyday tasks such as brushing her teeth, walking, or getting in and out of the bathtub were nearly impossible. Eventually Suzie was introduced to a form of energy healing called BodyTalk™. This holistic healing modality addresses the whole person: emotional, physical and environmental. Due to additional emotional and situational issues Suzie was experiencing at the time, BodyTalk™ was successful in her path to healing; she experienced immediate and profound changes within her body.

By Janet Lee, Guest Blogger

February is a month associated with love, so it’s appropriate that February is National Heart Health month. Due to the Valentine’s holiday, February also brings lots of chocolate or sweet, sugary desserts to show others or ourselves how much we are loved. While it’s perfectly fine to enjoy sweets, it’s also beneficial to realize how much sugar we are putting into our bodies. According to the US Department of Agriculture, the average American consumes between 150 and 170 pounds of refined sugar a year.

Interestingly, less than 100 years ago, the average American consumed roughly four pounds of sugar a year. Needless to say, that our consumption of sugar has skyrocketed. The World Health Organization (WHO) and American Heart Association states that women should consume only 20 grams of sugar a day or 5 teaspoons. For men, it is 36 grams or 9 teaspoons a day. Children are at 12 grams or 3 teaspoons a day. 1 soda = 40 grams of sugar or 10 teaspoons.

After 18 years of working in the mortgage industry, Casey Grant was stressed, and sick of feeling stressed. She disliked her job because that’s what it felt like – a job. She didn’t enjoy what she was doing, and wanted to find a way to create a good income doing work she loved. Casey’s lifelong passion for health and nutrition sounded like a way out of the mortgage industry...the question was, how?

Casey began to research schools for nutrition education, and Southwest Institute of Healing Arts (SWIHA) immediately resonated with her. Although she lives in Chandler, Arizona, a town close where the main campus of SWIHA is located, Casey decided to enroll in the SWIHA’s online Holistic Wellness Practitioner program because it was convenient for her busy lifestyle, and allowed her to still be available for her family.

The entrepreneurial attitude and atmosphere of SWIHA is what appealed most to Casey. “SWIHA’s mission is to inspire and support people in opening their own businesses, if that is truly their dream. The college is committed to the success of their graduates,” Casey explains. “All my instructors encouraged me to go after my dreams and goals, and they guided and inspired me from an entrepreneurial point of view.”

By Dee McCaffrey, Guest Blogger

One of my natural health heroes, Dr. Ann Wigmore, said “the food you eat can either be the safest and most powerful forms of medicine or the slowest form of poison.” This wisdom is reflected in my book The Science of Skinny, the premise of which is “whole, natural foods are perfect packages from nature uniquely designed to nourish our body” and that “food additives don’t honor how our body is designed; they are catalysts for poor health and should be avoided.”

As a chemist, formerly obese person, and now a nutrition educator, I teach people that whole foods provide powerful nutrients that work synergistically to provide our body’s 75 trillion cells with the necessary elements for building long term health. Nearly every common plant food, and many animal foods, have been scientifically proven to offer one or more therapeutic benefits—from alleviating everyday aches and pains to providing powerful protection against cancer, heart disease, diabetes, obesity and autoimmune diseases.