SWIHA Blog

Stefanie Booker Atchison came to SWIHA during a difficult chapter of her life: “The economic downturn of the housing/mortgage crisis hurt me like it did a lot of others. It robbed me of my job, my comfortable salary and my home. It took my savings and my self-esteem, too. By the time I made my way to Arizona, I was halfway through my unemployment benefits and working an entry-level position at a local law firm. While I was grateful for the work, I was in an office job that didn't speak to who I was.”

“I never felt more at home on a campus, calm, or more intrinsically motivated to learn than at SWIHA,” says Kay Vallely, owner of Revive Coaching, “The lessons I learned are all applicable, meaningful and useful.”

Kay explains that her love of learning ultimately guided her to serve as a Life Coach. She was studying communications and developing her crisis intervention skills while working with family support services.

Before becoming a Life Coach, Samantha McManaway-Hanks was struggling to find who she was. “I ended up in the hospital with an infection and my whole life turned upside down,” she shares, “I was once super healthy and then one day, I was extremely sick. I then started to have to find ways to deal with stress, health, and everything else. That’s what lead me to SWIHA.”

“I'm almost 65 years old and I feel more at peace with my life than ever,” says Terri Martin, a graduate of the Wesern Herbalism program at Southwest Institute of Healing Arts.

Many years ago, Terri attended an Aromatherapy class on campus and later reconnected with SWIHA via social media. She tells us, “I attended an open house for the herbalism class and was instantly struck by how perfect it was. I signed up and have never regretted it!”

When Melissa Moreno enrolled in the Mindfulness and Guided Imagery Facilitator program at Southwest Institute of Healing Arts, she was in a very difficult period of her life.

“I was in an unhappy living situation, with no life purpose, and I desired to be a self-sufficient single mom,” she tells us, “I had quit my corporate job of six years and moved to Mexico to live in harsh living conditions with my kids. I was running from an abusive relationship. I felt sick, anxious, and tired of the demands of my corporate job, and I was soul searching.”

It was that trying time that led her to discover visualization techniques and meditation, as well as seek out a Life Coach.

Janelle Timmons has held many positions her life: a successful massage therapist for fifteen years, a counselor and case-manager working with drug addicts and severely mentally ill persons, and healing bodies as a massage therapist.

“I had a lot of knowledge, yet it wasn't being integrated in the correct way,” she says, “I was missing some valuable tools that I wasn't aware that I was missing. One of the things I know, from working in the personal growth and mental health field, is that it is so important to acknowledge that there are always things that we do not know.”

January is Life Coaching Month, and we want to tell your story!

What are you up to as a coach? What changes have you made? How have you  been personally impacted by your Life Coaching classes? We want to know!

We are looking for Life Coaches who are doing amazing things in the world to be featured in a series of daily blogs in January. If you’re interested in being featured, all you have to do is fill out this questionnaire and we’ll write the blog about it!

“I now know my worth and my life's purpose,” declares Marquita Almodova-Keeme, a Massage Therapy and Life Coaching graduate.

Marquita was seeking a new career in a peaceful environment and, to her, massage seemed like the most logical choice. She was being called to serve others, and her first day of Cranial Unwinding with Lisa Kearn was a defining moment on her journey: “That’s when I started to embrace the spiritual teachings of SWIHA,” she tells us.

“SWIHA changed my life,” says Caitlin Goehring, a Mind-Body Wellness Practitioner graduate, “I don’t know where I’d be without these courses - it catapulted my spiritual growth and journey and brought me more in alignment than ever before.”

Caitlin was pulled to study holistic nutrition after witnessing illness in her family since a young age, “I’ve always believed in the healing power of food and wanted to support others in this. I had no idea the amount of spiritual downloads that I was in! I can best support my clients through nutrition, intuitive eating, and other spiritual practices such as astrology, tarot, and flower essences.”

Before her time at SWIHA, Kimberly Balzan found her life at a standstill. She was going through the motions but not moving forward, fearful of life and what change may bring.

“I felt like I had no direction,” she describes, “I just happened to be at a friends Melissa Corter who was leading this meditation called Yoga Nidra. I honestly had never heard of it and didn't know what we were going to do. Well, when it was over I sat up and thought ‘That was the coolest thing I have ever experienced’. When I got in my car, I said to myself out loud: ‘I am going to learn this and teach it!’ I knew at that moment something incredible had happened.”