SWIHA Blog

I have been a yoga teacher for eight years. I have had some exhilarating times and some heart-breaking trials. Like anything in life, my yoga practice and my teaching has had highs and lows. In the beginning, every time I taught a class, I was on cloud nine. I left the class feeling as good if not better than the students I taught. I felt exhilarated, uplifted, accomplished, and joyful. I had found my groove, my path, my calling.

I always thought that once you had found what you love to do, hardships never came again and life would be easy and uncomplicated. This is true to a degree, but doing what you love isn’t separate from life and so can’t be completely free from the challenges that naturally arise. For the first 5 years of my teaching career, I taught 1-2 classes a week as a weekend passion. Then an opportunity presented itself to open my own studio and I couldn’t resist. I went from teaching 1-2 classes a week to teaching almost 80 classes a month. In what seemed like an overnight shift, yoga became everything. Not in the way I had envisioned – the 3 hours of uninterrupted meditation each morning, strictly Ayurvedic diet, traveling to India, doing what I love kind of immersion. It ended up being grueling 14 hour days away from home, constant computer time, cleaning clogged toilets, going 2 weeks without taking a yoga class kind of immersion. It was hard, it was fun, it was gut-wrenching, and it was new.

Two years into teaching 15-20 classes every week, things had become a little less exhilarating. The joy of teaching, while still there, had become a little harder to feel. Like most things that we do repetitiously, my teaching shifted to autopilot. While this can be somewhat of a necessity to reserve our physical energy and mental fuel in stressful times and preserve our sanity when we are all too quickly depleting it – it is not the ideal place to teach from.

Growing up in a small town located just outside of North Little Rock, Arkansas, Susan White joined the Air Force at age of 17 and spent the next 12 ½ years traveling the world, connecting with different cultures, exploring new places, and becoming aware that there is more to life that meets the eye – and that, in the end, it’s all about ‘energy’.

After the birth of her daughter, Susan began to experience a deep calling for something different—almost as if there was an ‘energy’ leading her to search for more. She followed that ‘energy’ or ‘calling’ and decided to start a new journey outside of military life. Almost as if to counter balance the male-dominated-structured life she had lived for over a decade, Susan’s new path led her to do intuitive readings and eventually, using tarot cards.

Along her path, as Susan felt a deep desire to expand her knowledge and skills when she stumbled upon the SWIHA website. The phrase SWIHA often uses to describe itself – ‘the school with great energy’ – called to Susan right away. “I was captivated by the great energy I felt by just reading the website, and the more I read, the more drawn and excited I was,” shared Susan excitedly.

• You are highly sensitive to the emotions of other people.
• You have the ability to feel the energies of people, places and objects.
• You experience feelings of anxiousness associated with social situations.
• You experience general feelings of anxiousness.
• You experience general feelings of sadness.
• Being around negative people is overwhelming or unbearable for you.
• You experience exhaustion, or feel mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually depleted after being around certain people.
• You frequently experience heightened senses or feelings of sensory overload.
• Your emotions and thoughts are easily influenced by music, tv and/or movies.
• You feel things that you just can’t explain and which you can’t pinpoint the source of where it comes from.

The number one skill to becoming an Empath Master is: to first know yourself. This might sound like an obvious answer to an obvious problem, after all how can you know the difference between what feelings come from “out there” and what feelings come from yourself, if you don’t first know yourself?

Zoey Greco was wrapping up her studies towards a Bachelor’s degree in sunny, Southern California back in 2012 when she began to feel a bit lost about how she was going to move forward in her life. “I knew I wanted to be a healer, yet I had NO idea how to enter into such a metaphysical field. I pondered how could I tell my family who had poured thousands of dollars into my education that I wanted to be an intuitive channel and energy healer?” All of her friends were applying and receiving acceptance letters to graduate programs or Fulbright scholarships and Zoey was wondering how she could possibly make her dreams a reality. Other careers have more clear paths to success—formal internships, graduate programs, the rat race. Zoey knew that those paths were not for her.

Do you think you are good enough?

Do you think you are lovable?

Do you feel you are good enough?

Do you feel you are lovable?

Four simple and easy to answer questions, right? That’s what I thought when I was first introduced to them during my Subconscious Intervention class at the Southwest institute of Healing Arts, taught by Master Hypnotherapist Linda Bennett.

My instant ego thoughts were, “That’s it? That’s what we’re going to spend the whole morning working on?” and then my body was like “Hey cocky lady, watch this magic trick and learn something about yourself! And, while we’re at it, have a giant piece of humble pie and pay attention because it’s about to get real all up in your subconscious.”

Before I get into all of that, let me tell you a little bit about myself first.

Of course, like everyone, I have my imperfections and insecurities. Shocking, I know! For the most part though, I consider myself to be a very outgoing and confident woman. I’ve owned multiple business, I have a background in modeling, I’m intelligent and quick witted, and have a large network of really incredible awe-inspiring friends. So, in the matter of do I think I am lovable and good enough? Well, duh! Yeah, of course I do. That’s a no brainer. I’m a Leo, and in true Leo fashion, I “humbly” have the ego and pride that goes right along with the royal sign. Of course, I am good enough, have you met me!? I’m awesome! Just ask me!

If you were to pinpoint Nancy Santana’s philosophy on life you could use her Pinterest description: “I am an empowerment lifestyle spirit junkie -- loving anything mind-body wellness! I love holistic… intuitive…spiritual! I am the founder of the #chooseLOVE movement and The Lotus Wellness Center. Follow me!”

Nancy Santana was going through some major transitions and shifts in her life when a friend first told her about SWIHA. “I had transformed my body . . . yet something was missing and that was the mind-body-spirit connection,” shared Nancy, who recently completed the Mind-Body Transformational Psychology program at Southwest Institute of Healing Arts. Her passion for this program developed from deep within her soul. She recalled how she lit up when first saw the list of Spiritual Studies courses that were part of her program:

It may sound strange, but often people seek or wait for permission before moving forward in their lives. I would be willing to bet that, in one area of life, or another, you’ve been stalled around permission too. As you already know, inner conflicts may occur around all sorts of ideas, experiences, and goals. We could explore how the conflicts arose and why they’re present, but why? That takes forever! It’s so much quicker and easier to just resolve the conflict.

Most internal conflicts are resolved easily. One approach is to give yourself permission to either experience something (i.e. healing) or to otherwise move forward in some way (i.e. change). Throughout my career, I’ve noticed that conflicts tend to cluster around certain issues:

• Wellness/Health
• Money
• Success
• Being present to and focused on the moment of now (rather than the past or future)
• Relationships
• Personal responsibility – obligations – sacrifices – other
• Power/Being powerful/empowered
• Sex/sexual expression
• Letting go
• Being oneself/Self expression

At times, there may be a “need” for permission from oneself. Other times, the “needed” permission is from someone else, like a parent, child, loved one, or from the surrounding community (including your faith community), the world at large, or even from a spiritual source (i.e. God, Source, Universe).

Before she found SWIHA, Sarah Peters a young woman, working a stressful job in a medical office – She was sick, overweight, and lost.

“I was just starting to expand my health knowledge and learning how to self-heal. As I was searching for photography schools online, I 'accidentally' stumbled upon SWIHA,” shared Sarah. After 'stumbling' onto SWIHA’s website, Sarah enrolled into the Mind/Body Transformational Psychology program, specializing in hypnotherapy, Reiki, Life Coaching and yoga. Sarah became fascinated with almost every subject in her program: “I love the psychology of the mind; I love having deep conversations with people and I have always been sensitive to energies – other people’s energy as well as mine! It was so amazing to find a program that connected everything together for me – mind, body, energy and coaching!”

Sarah is currently transitioning into a Sound/Energy Healer and Yoga Teacher position at Knead Me Wellness in North Phoenix – a move she’s very excited about. She’ll begin taking clients there in March 2016, where she’ll share her wide array of gifts, including Reiki, Hypnotherapy, Coaching, Sound Healing and private yoga instruction.

I am a dentist and have been practicing here in the East Valley for the last four years. I love my profession but it is hard on my body, specifically my shoulders and neck. Each year I seem to notice more and more discomfort as I practice and occasionally even when I am away from work. It eventually got to a point where I could actually feel a burning and tingling sensation around my shoulder blades. I would notice this one to two times a day, sometimes while working, but sometimes just driving down the freeway. Knowing I want to practice dentistry for a very long time I have sought out many different professional opinions on how to best manage this issue and to hopefully find some relief. The only real relief I have found has been with massage. I have become a regular to several of the spas in the area receiving 2-3 massages per month, which has been helpful to a point.

It was in the wee hours of the evening that Spirit spoke to Sarah Senst. “I was unable to sleep one night feeling depressed and anxious about my future. A late night TV commercial for the Life Coaching program at SWIHA was shown! The commercial, the program and the school immediately spoke to me!”

What fueled Sarah’s passion and consuming interest in the Life Coaching program, stemmed from her position as the ultimate life coach – parenting! “I've always enjoyed engaging with people and learning their 'stories.’ This strength has allowed me to connect with many different people from many different backgrounds. People really do care that you care – they don’t care as much about what you know. I think people can feel that I care when they are around me. My passion became more focused after my own personal experience of raising three children in a one-adult home; I realized others could also benefit from support, non-judgement and acceptance in their own parenting experiences. I came to understand that society can be very critical of parents and it is not an area we are highly trained in or prepared for, yet it is perhaps one of the most important jobs in existence. I wanted to create a place where people could talk about the fears, resentments, anxieties, hopes, dreams, frustrations and blessings that accompany raising healthy children. Hence my coaching business, No Perfect Parents, was born in 2005.”

Sarah’s passion has evolved and has spread to many different venues for her to help others while using her gifts and graces. “I work as part of a small private group practice seeing individual clients. In addition to that, I am an independent contractor facilitating parenting classes, coaching juvenile offenders, and providing individual coaching for parents, teens and mature women.”