SWIHA Blog

At SWIHA, we know that pursuing any of the healing arts involves lots of growth and transformation and that personal healing must take place before a practitioner is able to facilitate the healing of others.

While it would be very convenient to only have to heal or grow just once in our lives, the process is constant and full of twists and turns. From intense classes during your education to emotional sessions when you step fully in to the role of Healer, you’ll always be called to expand and progress.

How exciting! And also: how exhausting!

Serendipitously, April Sanchez found her calling while working in...a call center!

She tells us: “After being promoted to a team manager, I had a team of customer service agents that I conducted daily coaching and motivation with. I began to learn about a gift that I never realized I had. The performance of my team excelled and each of the individuals on my team grew, both professionally and personally.”

April wanted to continue to grow in her career and took positions that she thought she’d enjoy and be challenged by. However, she craved more one-on-one time coaching and motivating others than the positions provided and began to feel unmotivated and purposeless with the work she was doing.

Stefanie has always been drawn down paths that lead to helping others. She considered many counselling and psychology programs, but none of them seemed to fully resonate with her vision of service. Then, in 2016, a thought popped in to Stefanie’s head: “What if I’m meant to be a Life Coach?”

“Like most ideas that just ‘show up’, I ignored it,” she admits, “Call it destiny or the internet tracking bots: SWIHA started showing up in my [social media] feed. So, I surrendered, made the appointment and went in for a tour. I was all in, hook, line, and sinker!“

Mitch Rustad’s journey to becoming a Life Coach was a natural evolution of his passion for personal development and transformation. After a profound experience helping a close friend navigate a severe life crisis, he was inspired to take his interest a step further and pursue an education at Southwest Institute of Healing Arts.

My personal favorite quality of Janet Lee’s, a Holistic Nutrition instructor at SWIHA, is that she can make a heavenly cheesecake--and it’s all nutritious, raw vegan ingredients! A close contender is her ability to deliver her wisdom and knowledge in a relatable, engaging way. Each interaction, you’ll come away with a fascinating food fact or thinking: “Wow! I didn’t know I could do that with my veggie scraps.”

“I’ve always enjoyed hearing about people’s journeys,” she explains, “and I thought [Life Coaching] would be a nice compliment to my interest in nutrition coaching.”

Will Zecco’s favorite question to ask budding entrepreneurs is: What are you willing to do, become or give up to find success?

Kelly St. Claire was enjoying her life as a mother of two with a successful career as a hairstylist when she suddenly felt as though something was missing from her life.

“I love beauty. However, my passion also lay in holistic and energetic healing,” Kelly explains, “I didn’t know the term ‘multi-passionate’ at the time. I just thought I was flighty and that in order to get into my holistic health work I’d have to leave my beauty work. I struggled with it for a long time.”

The urge to expand in to healing eventually led Kelly to take many holistic workshops in order to stretch her knowledge base and get inspired. That’s how she found Southwest Institute of Healing Arts!

If you love the idea of improving lives, educating others and creating meaningful work for yourself, then you’re already in the mindset of a holistic entrepreneur—and you’ve come to the right place!

Southwest Institute of Healing Arts offers a plethora of holistic wellness education, and has helped thousands of individuals take their gifts out into the world in a loving and profitable way.

Today, we’ll explore one of our most in-demand programs: our 200-hour Holistic Nutrition certification, available online and on campus. In fact, the food featured in this blog was created by SWIHA Holistic Nutrition student, Roman Massey and his classmates!

Healers are highly sensitive, which is why they’re so drawn to dedicating their lives to helping others! 

However, if you’ve been spending a lot of energy focused on the healing of others, you may be pushing through warnings from your own system that something is off.

Signs that you may need to pause and do some S.O.U.L C.A.R.E include:

• Your personal to-do list is a mile long
• You haven’t been sleeping or eating well
• Your schedule is not a reflection of your priorities
• You’ve had limited alone time lately
• Your body is inexplicably ill or in pain
• Your physical space is cluttered and disorganized
• Your emotions have begun calling the shots
• You feel like you’re operating on auto-pilot

In case you’ve never read the bio at the end of these blogs: Hi, my name is Taylor! I serve at Southwest Institute of Healing Arts as a marketing specialist or (as I like to title myself) “Creator of Copy, Bringer of Blogs”. You’ve never seen me write in the first person on the SWIHA blog before, so this is a special feature that warrants the change in voice!

As an ongoing entrepreneurial support piece for our students and graduates, SWIHA’s Success Coach, Sharon Rose, hosts bi-weekly webinars talking all things business. Sharon brings her fabulous energy, her honesty, and her personal experience with her own thriving venture, The Soul Stylist.