SWIHA Blog

It has been said that, “All that wander are not lost,” and that certainly applies to Alexandria Cordero, a graduate of SWIHA’s 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training program.

Alexandria had begun to feel stifled in Chicago and was seeking a fresh start, so she packed up her life and moved to Arizona with the intention of attending veterinarian school. Yet, after arriving and truly thinking over the prospects of paying over $200,000 for that schooling, she decided to take a year off and explore the new state which she had chosen to call home. Thinking of that time, she jokes, “My yoga practice was taking off with all of the free hot yoga on my patio every morning!”

After being encouraged to do so by a friend, Alexandria found herself attending an open house at SWIHA. “I knew that this was where I was supposed to be,” she says. “I decided to start with the 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training fast-track to see how I liked teaching yoga... I LOVED IT!” In the program, she went through deep personal transformation and found connections to yoga and the community of SWIHA unlike any she had ever experienced before.

The words of the teacher who led the morning yoga practice at the Wanderlust Mindfulness Marathon in Denver, Colorado still ring in my awareness:“What do you need to put down that was not yours to pick up in the first place?

Chelsey Korus is quickly becoming one of yoga's foremost teachers and philosophers. She's been featured in PopSugar, Prevention Magazine, Yoga Journal, Women's Fitness, Mantra Magazine, Fitness Magazine, Shape, and is one of the top teachers on Yogaglo, an online venue for the top yoga teachers in the world to offer video-based asana and philosophy classes.

It’s no surprise that the California-based yoga teacher has been traveling the country as part of the Wanderlust staff. She's been teaching yoga since the age of 15 and has been a lifelong student of various yoga practices, including Anusara, Power Vinyasa, Ashtanga, Acro, as well as martial arts, free form dance, and ballet. The surprise was the way she cued and invited deep inquiry in the middle of the mile-high park setting.

There is a certain strength both required and gained from picking yourself up off the ground and starting anew. Some people are fortunate enough to never have to lose it all; their path has different challenges to face and overcome. Others find themselves facing a life-changing event, requiring them to choose how best to move forward. Rima Desai, a graduate of SWIHA’s Transformational Life Coaching program, has had a lifetime of such changes, spanning the globe, which have shaped and reshaped who she is and given her new and unique talents every step of the way.

After twenty-five years of helping people to discover their gifts through life coaching and other holistic practices, I’ve heard an awful lot of stories about how some friends and families of our graduates weren’t exactly thrilled hearing them announce they were becoming a Healing Arts Practitioner of any kind. And yet, most who have made the “leap of faith” say they wouldn’t go back for anything!

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.”

As my husband and I journeyed to Breckenridge, Colorado, for an early birthday getaway, the annual upcoming in-service training that I am scheduled to give for the Licensed Massage Therapists (LMTs) that work in the SWIHA Healing Arts Clinic was very much on my mind. In fact, so much so, little nagging  ‘yeah but’ thoughts were floating around in my mind...thoughts like: “Do I really have anything to offer our LMTs after all these years,” “Am I getting too old to teach our amazing practicing therapists anything new,” and “Who do I think I am to be the one serving as the presenter?”

Author and Life Coach Loree Bischoff was always intrigued by what makes people tick, why they think the way that they do, and what motivates them. In 2007, she and her sister noticed that many of the mothers they knew were struggling on some level to find balance in their lives. Recognizing a need for moms to have access to new tools and strategies for achieving a more balanced and fulfilling life, they developed a special event called “Motherhood Redefined”— a weekend seminar for mothers consisting of speakers, interactive workshops, and fun for everyone in attendance. What she didn’t expect was that her event to help others find balance on their path would lead her to the beginning of finding a new path for herself.

“Motherhood Redefined” was extremely well-received, and Loree knew then and there that what she really wanted was to begin her own private coaching practice. “I was not familiar with life coaching as a profession at that time. One of the speakers we hired happened to be a life coach and suggested I check out SWIHA,” she says. “I had begun studying spirituality in the early eighties (thanks to my mother)… being an important aspect of my life, it was a priority for me to find a life coach training program where spirituality wouldn’t be excluded.” To her delight, that was exactly what she found when, in the spring of 2008, she enrolled in SWIHA's life coaching training program. Loree feels that, “There couldn’t have been a more perfect fit.”

Do you know your neighbors or those you work with very well? Do you know what their big dreams are (or were) and the things that prevent them from achieving them?

If you can say "yes" to truly knowing your neighbors or workmates, you are among the minority. According to a General Social Survey, more than a third of the population in the US says they don't know their neighbors at all, and over half admit that they rarely or never interact with their neighbors.

Sadly, I was part of that statistic. I've lived across the street for over 15 years from a woman I have barely spoken to or interacted with, other than an occasional wave as I was driving away to work or coming back home at the end of the day. No big deal, right? Wrong!

As we return from the Fourth of July holiday, words like “freedom” and “independence” clearly ring true as privileges we enjoy as Americans. However, these two words also have greater significance— they describe what it is to be an independent entrepreneur.

The brave souls who create businesses are called entrepreneurs, and according to Entrepreneur Magazine, they have the "capacity and willingness to develop, organize and manage a business venture, along with its risks, in order to make a profit".  In my opinion, there are four important words that need to be added to the definition, and they are, “who are brave enough.”

As a longtime entrepreneur and life coaching expert, I choose to define entrepreneurs as  “passionate people who are brave enough to trust themselves to develop, organize and manage a business venture in order to make a profit by serving others as a part of their life purpose!”  

Ester Mina Silinsky believes that G-d has granted her 120 years to complete her life’s work. At 61 years old, she is happily married, has raised nine children, and intends to use the rest of her remaining years to help others manage their own health using holistic methods and ancient wisdom obtained through SWIHA Holistic Wellness Practitioner program— now known as the Mind-Body Wellness Practitioner program. Since only two of her children still live at home, Ester is at a stage of her life where she can focus on enjoying her family and on her career as the owner of Holyland Holistics.