So, how did I arrive as a guide, coach, teacher, healer?

~

It began with feelings of dissociation, anxiety, and depression.

For decades, I felt stuck in uncertainty, fear, and hypervigilance. Frozen, I stayed in my academic work and life situation. I was afraid of making 'wrong' changes. For so many years, I didn't know what I could do to feel authentic or aligned or how to figure it out. The debilitating experience of living inauthentically and without inner alignment felt like a mix of pain, creeping depression, and anxiety. I was in freeze state for about 15 years with pointed moments of fighting, flighting, and fawning, all the survival modes. I experienced immobilizing self-doubt, low self-confidence, and low self-worth. Eventually, my body literally reached a pain and fever pitch I could no longer ignore.

My depressed and fearful internal state was confusing because, by other accounts, I was successful in both work and life. Nearly all around me saw a calm, happy, talented, committed, and persevering hard-worker. A part of me believed others' perspectives, so I thought I 'should' feel content and satisfied.  I asked, "Why can't I just be happy?" I felt embarrassed and ashamed for not being able to think my way through my problems, heal myself, and find solutions. I was smart, or so I thought! "Why can't I fix myself?" I tried multiple therapists with little improvement. "Why doesn't therapy work for me?" 

Analyzing problems at the surface wasn't helping partly because I didn't feel safe explaining the depth of my pain or the darkness of my thoughts, at least not back then and not with friends or therapists. Not only did I not see a way forward, but I was incredibly hard on myself about it. I stayed in my academic work and life situation because I was accustomed to following others' advice and plans for me and reaching to meet their expectations. My life made sense on all the accounts except the one that mattered most... the deepest level of me.

It felt like I was moving further away from my soul and purpose. I wanted to feel ease and peace and confidence in the face of any circumstance. Yet I increasingly experienced bodily aches, pains, sleep issues, and illness. I see now that the feeling of being stuck and my physical body were trying to tell me that I was out of alignment and I needed to make a change, or several. 

For most of my teens, 20s, and 30s, I thought I 'SHOULD' always be happy and content. I didn't know how to manage difficult emotions like sadness and grief and anger. When faced with them, I often shut down and turned against myself with horrible thoughts. Other times, I unconsciously, angrily snapped at the people I loved. I felt ashamed and confused for hurting myself and my loved ones. My habitual reaction to the confusion of emotion, shame, and remorse was to turn inward and injure myself through self-criticism and self-ridicule, as well as relying on alcohol, cannabis, and media, my preferred flavors of escape. 

I also used to use the word 'should' a lot, despite hearing in my early 20s that 'it's no good to should on yourself.' I agreed with that idea and yet it was so ingrained as a habit, I continued to 'should on myself' for nearly two decades. I see now I was coping and surviving the best I could and I truly believe we're all always doing the best we can. I'm a recovering 'shoulder' and shoulding thoughts happen less and less now and when they do I more quickly recognize them, regulate my nervous system, and re-center.

During many years, I concealed increasing angst and depression. I didn't talk about my issues to many people. Not only did I feel terrible but I isolated myself, causing me to feel even more immobilized. I often couldn't feel or hear my inner voice because I was detached and dissociated from my body. If I did feel nudges, I often ignored them or tried to fix surface-layer symptoms, including stomachaches, headaches, and sleeping too much or too little. "What was wrong with me?" I questioned. I see now that, through no one's fault, I was naïve and unpracticed in trusting my gut and listening within. 

I was exhausted from chugging away in life without enough rest, stillness, clarity, or deep fulfillment. I was tired of ignoring the inner calls and aches. I was ready to release myself from superficial patterns. I was mentally and emotionally tired of it all and my body was literally sick... for many months. I had a mysterious fever in addition to persistent and growing back aches. The fever wasn't explained by medical tests at multiple doctors. I felt DONE with the accumulation of symptoms and the aggravation of feeling stuck and frozen. 

My kids were also a major inspiration to make a change. I felt uncomfortable and inauthentic when I encouraged my kids to do and be what they wanted when I wasn't doing or being what I wanted. I wanted to learn how to trust myself and my body, listen to my body's requests, and speak my truth.

Several years ago, I tried some new and life-changing practices. 

I developed a daily yoga/meditation practice with the help of Yoga Farm and Lynn Fraser. I studied yoga in several yoga teacher training programs. It took this regularity of practice and these deep dives to shift my 25-yr relationship with yoga from exercise and stretching to soulful connection with everything the universe. 

I hired a stillness/meditation/redemptive love/inquiry coach I think because I had a subconscious knowing that answers were buried deep within me. After meeting her, I was immediately drawn to working with Evangeline. Working at the mind's surface and looking or asking for direction and help outside of myself hadn't worked. Through 1-on-1 coaching for over two years, I peeled back layers upon layers of self-protection that no longer served me. 

In working with my coach, Evangeline, developing a meditation practice, and continuing to deepen my yoga practice:

• I learned how to access peace, stillness, and quiet. 

• I learned how to listen to my body and its ancient wisdom through somatic mindfulness and self-inquiry.

• I learned to practice regular nervous system regulation. 

• I finally felt safe to reveal my darkest thoughts to my coach and eventually to friends. 

• I learned how to use my internal quiet and somatic (body) listening as a resource to do the work of healing inner traumas and Traumas. 

• I learned how to heal and release layers of conditioning that were no longer helping me. 

I used my acute awareness and scientist-orientation to study myself, my patterns, my habits, and my lifetime of conditioning. Self-study is a yogic exercise in itself called svadhyaya. Yoga doesn't only involve movement into and through asanas (poses); yoga is about uniting and connecting and weaving back together all parts of ourselves, including any that are stuck, in pain, or dissociated. It's about 'yoking' together the little self and the big SELF, the collective consciousness. 

I changed my life so that I love it. 

I decided to leave my academic positions in research and teaching. I also redirected my personal life in huge ways. I started to experiment with different jobs. I gardened for several seasons and enjoyed my time communing with the plants and soil. It felt so good to have work that led me into meditative zones. My mind happily received and basked in the mental break. I felt relieved and at ease... Until I didn't :) 

Especially while gardening, I was getting calls to help others. At first, I mostly ignored them. I thought I was supposed to use the content of my degrees and academic experience, even if just via gardening. I thought I should use my plant biology, ecology, and statistics knowledge directly. Along the way, I realized the way to knowing inner purpose is not through thinking. It’s through an inner sensing, a deep inner knowing. And the calls to help others heal were part of that knowing. 

And my academic chapter was not for naught! I needed to have all of that experience to arrive here. And knowing how to do research and think analytically and ecologically and persevere through academia is important on a healing journey! A lot of healing is seeing or feeling the breakdown of a wounded whole as the elemental forces and conditions that caused the wounding. Also important is rebuilding the essential pillars to a healed whole. And perseverance is essential no matter what walk of life we choose. 

I found that I wanted more interaction with people and closer connection to healing others' suffering. I wanted to help more than folks' gardens and I wanted to help people directly, not just indirectly through their gardens. Having beautiful surroundings and enjoying backyards and landscapes is very important and brings a lot of well-being benefits. Personally, I am grateful for my own gardens and views of the sky and horizons every single day. And my home flower and vegetable gardens will continue to fulfill the gardener in me. 

I realized my ongoing and persistent calling was to heal myself and then offer healing to help others who are seeking inner transformation. Thus, the birth of my offering, the Regulate Your Nervous System program. I guide people who are feeling frustrated or discouraged through recovery from burnout, management of anxiety, and gaining clarity about purpose so they too can create the impact they want while doing what they love. 

I feel aligned with my soul's calling and clear on my purpose. 

Know that I continue to be a work in progress and to have all the emotions. Yet now, they tend not to dysregulate or sink me or throw me far off center. Mostly I recognize emotions for the passing energies they are and I don't take them so personally. I have learned to welcome and learn from emotions and to enjoy a good cry as much as a good laugh! Wow. My transformation has truly been life-altering. 

I created the life of my dreams and I’ve never been happier. If you’re ready for a change, I know you can do this too.

I invite you to join me. Allow me to help you along your unique centering journey.

I can guide you to release what's no longer serving.

If you want to bring your authentic and centered self into your day-to-day life, I welcome you into my offerings.

If you want to neutralize anxiety, fear, sadness, or grief, I welcome you into the safe and healing container I hold for my clients. 

I welcome all of you. 

If you don't know what to do next, I welcome that too. 

Thank you to my many teachers who have guided me along a beautifully unique and winding path. 

I am grateful to have been led by many, including and not limited to: 

Jeannie O'Neill

Lynn Fraser

Bryan Isacks

Evangeline Sarat 

Tom Compton 

Daniela Hess

Christopher Grant 

Adyashanti

Byron Katie 

Dr. Todd Stein 

Dr. Toni DiTommaso

Dr. Dave Mortensen 

Dr. Erica Smithwick 

Dr. Tom Whitlow

Dr. Chuck Mohler 

The Averills

Averill Farm

The Lows

All of my friends, family, and acquaintances who helped make me who I am 🙏🏼

I live joyfully in Ithaca, a slice of the majestic and inspiring Finger Lakes Region of New York, along with my two incredible kids and a loving kitty. I'm grounded in the surrounding horizons, in fulfillment of my soul's aligned purpose and in joy, ever-centering, and continuing to bloom. 

In addition to regular practices of meditation, yoga, self-Reiki, and self-inquiry, I send blessings to all beings through time and space, including you.

I acknowledge that my demographics, white, cis, able-bodied, 10th-generation American, bisexual woman, situate me to be limited in understanding the experiences of those with other identities. I do my best at dismantling inherent biases and recognize this as an ongoing process.

I look forward to connecting with you and helping you to find, fully embody, and enjoy your unique segments of life in the world and in location, work, and relationship. 

Blessings on you until then. 

With love, 

Kristine 💕

“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.”

-Rumi