Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Alyssa Daniels. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Alyssa , we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.
There is this saying as old as time “everything happens for a reason” and I used to be guilty of saying that to justify things in life to make myself and those around me feel better. Then I experienced my first real trauma, and another and another and thinking that it “happened for a reason” sparked so much anger and bitterness in me. How could there be a reason for such horrific things happening? I was feeling so defeated talking through this with a therapist one day when she stopped me and said “not everything happens for a reason. Sometimes horrible things happen and there is not a reason for it and there’s nothing you did to ‘manifest’ it. You can, however, find purpose in everything and take back control through finding that purpose.” That is something that stuck with me all these years later and literally imprinted into my nervous system. The horrible things we have to go through sometimes are not our fault, they don’t have a “reason”, but we can find the purpose in them to take back our control and to help others. That is how I found my purpose. I looked back on all of the trauma I had experienced. I reflected on what my experience was working through it, how I got there and how I got to where I am now. In doing my own inner work, I knew that the purpose of me experiencing these painful things was to be able to help others experiencing their own traumas or to help others prevent experiencing the same traumas I experienced. Despite knowing deep down that this was my purpose, fear held me back for quite a few years. I stayed in my hamster wheel corporate job with the steady paycheck and my anxiety kept getting worse. My reality and my inner knowing were not matching up. The universe finally said enough is enough and I got laid off from my corporate job in a best-case type of scenario that lined me up to be able to take a year off, enroll in a 10-month intensive somatic coaching certification program, and to become a trauma aware certified life coach. When we finally acknowledge our purpose, the universe will put us in scenarios that lead us to that path as long as we stay open. When I first got laid off, my ego was devastated. I had a few “poor me” days and felt all the feelings. Then, the inner knowing started to creep up. It was time to step into my purpose and take the risk and really live the life I was supposed to be living all along.
Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?
I am trauma aware certified life coach trained in embodiment work and emotional healing and I help overwhelmed women close the gap from where they are and where they want to be through somatic practices.
Unlike talk therapy or mindset coaching, somatic practices guide clients to sensations in their own bodies where mind-body work can be done. This is where true and lasting transformation occurs.
If you feel like you’ve been doing all the work but you’re feeling stuck or experiencing patterns or blocks still – IT’S NOT YOUR FAULT and NOTHING IS WRONG WITH YOU!
I’ve been on my own healing journey for years. I’ve walked on fire at Tony Robbin’s UPW event, I’ve read all the books, worked with the mindset coaches, done talk therapy – all the things. But was still frustrated and going through cycles of being stuck and repeating life lessons. Relatable I know!
It seems like every day there is a new manifestation or mindset coach popping up on the internet preaching “think positive thoughts” or “be grateful and it will happen for you”. While some of these women are legit and offer some great tools, most of what I was seeing out there was mindset work laced with toxic positivity and quite a bit of shaming others for “not wanting it bad enough” as the reason they were stuck. Which is 1000% not the reason you’re not where you want to be by the way, I promise.
Mindset work is great and necessary as a starting point. But that’s all it is, a starting point. It gets you thinking and self aware and you start to make small changes and see small results. The problem with mindset work is that all the work is done in our mind and brain, not in our entire body and in our emotions. Our bodies hold trauma from past lives, from the day of our birth, and from things we can’t remember from childhood. Patterns and stories that aren’t ours get stored physically in our body as well. We have feelings shoved so far deep into our subconscious that we don’t even know that they’re there, let alone what they are or how to process them. All of this is deep in our subconscious and mindset work doesn’t touch any of it.
This is why no matter how many coaches or therapists you hire, no matter how many books you read or workshops you attend – you’re still feeling stuck or experiencing blocks. It wasn’t until I went through an intensive 10 month coaching certification program that I was able to start healing my own self at this level to then learn to guide others through their own healing journey and do the same.
With somatic practices, it can take multiple sessions to really be able to drop into the body and be able to access our inner knowing. Society has us conditioned to be separate from our bodies and to live in our structured minds/brain. Breaking the “mindset work” conditioning takes time and practice and unlearning/ rewiring of the neuropathways. For this reason, I do not offer single sessions. My clients see the best results when they have several sessions and experience them consistently in a shorter time frame. This allows us to really be able to tap into the energetics of somatic work, leading us towards lasting transformation versus temporary change. You are your own healer, I am just here to guide you safely to explore, discover and claim your power that is already within you. The current packages I offer are a 6 week intro pack and a 3 month deep dive.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
The number one quality that was most impactful in my journey was having an open mind. Somatic healing and somatic practices go against everything our logical and structured mind knows. Learning to feel fully and process emotions and to observe them without judgement or slapping labels on them is really had to wrap your head around after growing up learning that critical thinking and logic are the ways to progress. Being able to have an open mind and trust the process was a huge part in experiencing something so foreign.
Another quality that was really important in terms of impact was vulnerability, especially with my own self. When you’re going through this healing journey and diving into somatic practices, a lot of feelings come up, like a LOT. So being able to sit with that and be fully honest with myself and see my life for what it truly was up until that point and who I was as a person in all the different stages of life I’ve experienced so far – that takes a lot of openness and radical vulnerability. Going hand in hand with that, duality was another area of knowledge that was vital in my journey. Duality was something totally new to me. Prior to discovering somatic healing, I was a very black and white thinker. I would think that because I was feeling sad or having a bad day or “negative” emotions, that I wasn’t happy or couldn’t be successful or get what I wanted but the reality of it is we live in an “and” world. You can have the pain AND the beauty simultaneously. You can experience the hurt and the love at the same time and hold them side by side. And that was one of the most powerful things throughout the whole process that I learned to be able to feel.
My best advice is to not compare yourself and to not put a time frame or expectations on the process. Emotions, feelings, and release happen on their own time. We have to be able to fully surrender to the process and the greater timeline and trust that. Giving up that kind of control or hard timeline goal to see a certain result is tough because society conditions us to achieve things as fast as possible and if we don’t achieve xyz by a certain date then we have failed which is really not how healing works and is a super toxic environment/mindset to have. Fully letting go and immersing yourself in the process will have so much power.
Before we go, any advice you can share with people who are feeling overwhelmed?
When I feel overwhelmed, there are two things I shift my focus to: rest and play. It can be challenging at first and guilt may come up if you’re thinking “wow I have so many things to do I really SHOULD be working or tackling my to-do list” but as soon as you hear that “should” that’s your clue to take a step back. The most beneficial thing we can do for ourselves and our long term productivity is to rest and play on a regular basis. This will look different for everyone. Resting can be sleeping for a whole weekend or it can be taking a few hours to shut your brain off and mindlessly scroll the internet. It can be taking a weekend getaway to a favorite place for a change of scenery or it can be an afternoon nap with your fur baby. Play will also look different depending on the person and need! What are the things you wanted to do as a kid but weren’t able to or weren’t allowed to? Start there! Maybe it’s going sledding down that big hill or visiting that zoo you always drive by. It could also be blasting music and having a dance party in your bedroom or getting creative in the kitchen. What makes you feel like a kid again and creates that kind of joy in your body? That’s what play will feel like! Play and rest are the answer to so many things that we face despite them possibly feeling counterintuitive in the moment!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.yourwellnessbestie.com
- Instagram: @yourwellnessbestie
