We recently connected with Sera Heywood-Rakhimova and have shared our conversation below.
Sera, so great to have you with us and we want to jump right into a really important question. In recent years, it’s become so clear that we’re living through a time where so many folks are lacking self-confidence and self-esteem. So, we’d love to hear about your journey and how you developed your self-confidence and self-esteem.
This feels like the most tender question because these are definitely qualities I’ve been developing my entire life, as an actress but also as a person, and it’s been the greatest catalyst of growth along my creative and spiritual journey.
From what I’ve uncovered, true confidence and self-esteem are deeply intertwined with unshakable self-love and radical self-acceptance, and I feel like I’ve done a complete 180 pivot since childhood!
As someone who was conditioned to believe that love is outside of me, molding myself to fit certain perceptions, shrinking my bigness, dimming my genuine light, outsourcing my power for external validation, and placing other people’s feelings before my own needs… it has been a deeeeep process of de-conditioning, profound healing and a wild journey of un-taming myself from societal, familial, ancestral and industry programs. And as an actress, of course that was exemplified! I spent manyyyy years feeling totally lost, not sleeping, anxious beyond belief, moving through intense health challenges, healing C-PTSD, OCD, navigating a multicultural relationship, totally broke, my acting career going nowhere fast, and feeling completely disempowered in all areas of art and life.
The calibre of necessary healing took me beyond mindset work, talk therapy or medication (I’ve tried it all lol), because this trauma was deeply embedded in my nervous system, limbic brain, somatic tissue and subconscious mind.
Enter: Dream Awake Emotional Freedom Techniques!! Or EFT Tapping :). And my life and career transformed from the root. The amount of healing, catharsis, purging, elevating, shedding and metamorphosis that traditionally could’ve taken decades or lifetimes unfolded within a matter of months and years. I was reborn again and again, reconnected to the Truest Essence of MySelf, my Artist and Limitless Potential to create the kind of life and career that’s in the highest resonance of my soul. And it’s still evolving!
If I can take it one step further… my journey with Kabbalah these last 1.5 years has supported me in breaking further chains of potential victimhood or thinking that this happened ‘to me’… in fact, I now have firm belief that my soul chose these exact situations to move through, uproot, heal and transform !! So I could break through these levels of consciousness, reveal the Light that was there all along and invoke true, authentic, unshakeable confidence and self-esteem from the inside out.
It’s a level of confidence and self-esteem that feels quiet, assured, certain, unwavering, playful, generative, magnetic, magical, effortless and free. In me. And I’m still growing. It almost feels like a secret that I share with the cosmos, haha. It’s just me, the Muse and the Light dancing into my Highest Soul Expression.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I’ll try to keep this short ‘n sweet: I’m an international Performer of Stage & Screen (Canadian-born, LA-based), Russian-trained Actress (mhmm, in Uzbekistan), Certified Dream Awake EFT Tapping Practitioner (250 hrs), Certified weBreathe Breathwork Facilitator, Certified Reiki Practitioner (Levels I & II), Published Writer, Creator of the ensemble-based company ACTOR to ARTIST, & Lifelong Creative Rebel Devoted to Y(our) Highest Expression in Life & Art.
The most exciting project I’m working on right now is my new web series: 🎬ONE DOPE ACTRESS 🔥. It started off as my Hot Artist Summer™ Project that we created in my community… the premise is “live your best life WHILE doing the work that scares you.” These aren’t discordant concepts, but foundational pillars of what I like to call The New Artistic Paradigm™; they feed, support and fertilize the other (ciaooo, suffering artist: now is the era of the THRIVING artist!). And the thing that scared me most was tackling a project and a new creative space from the ground up on my own that I’ve never done before!! It was gnawing away at me from the inside so I simply had to follow this wild idea and roll with it. 10 years of inner prep, 7 months of conscious creation (mostly me overcoming my own perceived limitations, haha): ONE DOPE ACTRESS.
The entire working title is: INNER-STELLAR: The Creative Subconscious Unleashed. 5 Knotty Personalities. Bottomless Creative Angst. ONE DOPE ACTRESS.
You can watch Ep. 1 “The Slate” on my YouTube channel: @actortoartist. More are coming, I promise :). It’s a one-woman-show at the moment!
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Hmmm, I would say, grit, devotion and softness. Grit and devotion are qualities that I’ve always possessed, and of course, deepened in this wild artist life journey. I never give up. Like, never ever. Even when I want to and swear to the cosmos I will, I just cry it out, scream into a pillow, Tap Tap Tap (tap dancing too), pray, and go make some more art. It’s a great cycle, I highly recommend it, lol.
I adore the word ‘devotion’ over discipline (I have an innate sense of discipline, it’s something that’s always come easily to me — it’s doing LESS where my growth edge is), as it holds a kind of mystical, nurturing, proactive, magical element… like it’s a sacred ritual in itself. Devotion is not something I ‘have’ to do, but something my soul is ‘craving’ to do, even if it doesn’t make sense logically, and it comes from an innate source of desire and love.
The softness is something I am sooooo focused on right now. It’s so easy for the world and the acting industry to harden you, jade you, close you up, shut you down, erode your joy, and keep you locked in your analytical mind… but the softness, the surrender, the letting go is the ‘illogical’ part… and it’s also the artist part, the heART, the body, the soul, the essence of all Creation. Softness is something I’m cultivating and instilling inside my mind, body and nervous system every day. Softness is empathy. Softness is compassion. Softness is creativity. Softness is rest. Softness is peace. Softness is succulent. Softness is abundance. Softness is success. Softness is receiving. Softness is certainty. And these are the qualities I want sewn into The New Artistic Paradigm™.
What I’d recommend for folks early on their journey? Go into the parts of yourself you’re most afraid to look at (be proactive!). Find tools or modalities that support you in sustainably expanding your consciousness (EFT, meditation, Kabbalah & breathwork are my fave). Love yourself like you’re the most precious gift in the cosmos (you are). And be relentless in the pursuit of whatever your heART is calling you toward (that inner fire of desire). Cuz why not ?! Also: your growth as an artist + a person = the same (that’s how you co-create your dreamy dreams).
Any advice for folks feeling overwhelmed?
I experience varying levels of overwhelm almost daily. Daily! And I know it’s something I fall into more easily/a weaker part of my vessel. With all I’m balancing in so many different realms, the demands of the acting industry, having my own business, relationship growth, life being life, health, healing, evolving, all these different variables, my default used to be ALL-CONSUMING OVERWHELM!!!
EFT has helped me transform this multidimensionally. What once had my head spinning, heart racing and my nervous system spiraling out in flight or functional freeze, now I can spend some time Tapping and within I handful of minutes I’ve regained clarity, rebalanced my entire system and reconnected to my inner power.
I’m taking this question as inspiration to create a ‘Clear Overwhelm’ Tapping video for my YouTube Channel ;). Hopefully, it can support you, too! 💜
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.actortoartist.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/actortoartist
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@actortoartist
- Other: Substack: https://substack.com/@actortoartist
