Brenda 00:00:00 Welcome to your yes filled life. I'm Brenda Winkle, an intuitive leadership coach and somatic guide for high performers, high achievers who want more freedom, ease, joy and energy. You are a visionary, leader driven, intuitive and ready for more more flow in your work, more presence and joy in your life and relationships. More trust in yourself and the decisions you make every day. Here we explore the intersection of intuition, leadership, and energetic sovereignty, blending practical strategy with energetic alignment so you can create success that feels deeply fulfilling at work, at home, in your relationships, and in your own well-being, you'll hear inspiring stories, practical strategies, and high level conversations designed to help you integrate the woo into your daily life. Because when your energy is aligned, everything flows ready to elevate how you lead and live. Start by downloading my free Energy Audit at. Audit and discover what's fueling or depleting you. Let's do this. Your yes filled life starts now. You're already successful and you've built something powerful.
Brenda 00:01:19 But here's the truth that most ambitious people won't say out loud. Something still feels heavy. You're making all the decisions. Carrying the vision. Holding it all together for everyone. And somehow it still feels like too much. And that's where I come in. I'm Brenda Winkle, intuitive coach, psychic, medium and somatic guide for ambitious and intuitive women like you who want more ease, more clarity, and more space to actually enjoy the life you've built. In our private coaching sessions. We'll reconnect you to your intuition. Expand your energetic capacity and create a leadership rhythm that supports you without draining you. You won't have to do more. You'll get to be more you. You'll make confident decisions without second guessing or overthinking. You'll set boundaries that hold without the guilt, and you'll lead from a place that feels grounded, powerful, and aligned. This isn't about fixing anything because you're not broken and you don't need to be fixed. It's about amplifying the parts of you that already know what to do. If you're craving more freedom, more clarity, and a deeper sense of self-trust, private coaching might be your next right move.
Brenda 00:02:42 Go to Brenda Winkle to learn more. Let's co-create a life and a business that feel as good as they look. Because you deserve to feel held to Hello and welcome to your yes filled life. I'm your host, Brenda Winkle. Today on the podcast, we're going to be talking about three things you should know as an empath. And you're going to have tools that you can put immediately into action or shifts in the way that you think. As soon as you're done listening to this episode. But first, it's story time. It was May 29th, 1993, and I was getting ready for my wedding. Now, as an empath, I've always been sensitive to how other people feel because I don't just know how someone else is feeling. I feel it in my body as though it's my own. In fact, it's sometimes used to be very confusing. What was my emotion and what was somebody else's emotion? So that day I put on my wedding dress in the nursery of the church basement, surrounded by children's books and blocks, Legos and dollhouses.
Brenda 00:03:57 My sister and my mom were with me, and my maid of honor was there too. And it was kind of strange being in a room built for children with child sized chairs and tables and toys, dressing in what was a pretty glamorous wedding gown. And the disconnect? well, the disconnect was sort of setting the stage. As I walked out of that nursery, I walked into the big gathering room in the middle of the church basement, and it had cold tile floors, you know, the square tiles that looked like linoleum but were very hard. And I could feel and hear the kitten heels of my white satin shoes. Click on the tile as I walked, and I walked to the very back of the room, which was at the bottom of the stairs where my dad was waiting for me. My sister and my mom gave me a hug and and my maid of honor or my bridesmaid gave me a hug and they all went up the stairs and were getting ready to be escorted down the aisle. And my dad and I walked up the stairs after them.
Brenda 00:05:08 And once we got to the top of the stairs, my dad reached out his arm. He sort of tipped his elbow towards me so that I could link my hand inside his arm, and then he squeezed my hand with his other hand. And I still remember the way his hand and his suit felt, so I could feel his hand on the back of my hand, and I could feel the soft fabric of his suit coat on the palm of my hand. And it was just such a surreal moment. And as I approached the doors at the back of the sanctuary in the church, I. I could feel that this wasn't right. I could feel it wasn't the thing that was right for me or aligned for me, but all those people were there, and at the time they were sitting with their backs to me, they were looking up at the front of the church. And as I looked at the back of the heads and I realized how many people were there. I mean, by my standards, it was a large wedding, but it had like 100 people, and so many of them had come from far away.
Brenda 00:06:18 And I kept thinking how disappointed they might be if I didn't walk down the aisle, if they didn't get to see the wedding that they had come for. So I did what any self abandoning, people pleasing empath would do, and I walked down that aisle and entered into a marriage that ultimately would end in a painful divorce 14 years later. And at the time, I didn't know I was an empath. I didn't even know what an empath was. I didn't know that I was confused because I had been mistaking other people's emotions for my own. I didn't know that empathic abilities could be managed without losing your empathy. Which, you know, that's a major fear for most empaths. They know that they're different. We know it, right? And we know that our empathy makes us really special. It's our superpower to have such deep empathy and compassion. And so, you know, even for me, when years and years later, I started to understand that I could manage my empathy, my first fear was, but wait, I don't want to lose that.
Brenda 00:07:23 And the other thing I didn't know that day in 1993 was that if I chose not to disappoint other people, I was ultimately choosing to disappoint myself. And I don't even think if you would have said that to me in 1993, I wouldn't have even understood what you meant. That just wasn't in my frame of reference. I mean, choosing myself. What? Who would do that? So once I learned energetics and I healed my nervous system from decades of trauma, and then I figured out, oh, this is what a boundary feels like. This is when a boundary is necessary. Then three things happened. I stopped apologizing for feeling my feelings, even if my feelings made other people uncomfortable. I learned that putting yourself first means that you'll show up more fully in all of your aspects of your life relationships, career, home because you have more to give. And I also learned that choosing myself was not selfish. And that was a big moment. So when I look back to 1993 and I think, gosh, how did I get here? Where I'm sitting recording this podcast episode for you today from there.
Brenda 00:08:46 And I think about there, there were really four important things that happened. One of them was I started to listen to my intuition. I had shut it down for decades, literally decades. Because if I would have followed or trusted my intuition, I would have had to change something because I knew in my heart something was very, very wrong. And so if that resonates to you at all, just know that you're not alone. It is a common coping mechanism, especially in abusive or chaotic or tumultuous relationships. We just kind of shut down and we pretend that each incident is isolated. We don't connect them as a whole. And so if that's ever happened to you, there's nothing wrong with you. I promise, and also invitation to bring that that intuition back online. So number one was I started to listen to my intuition and it wasn't like fully listening. It was just sort of, you know, those glimmers, those little nudges. And then number two, the thing that really transported me from that woman in 1993 to the woman sitting here today is I learned Reiki.
Brenda 00:10:05 I started with Reiki one certification, which is Reiki for self. And that started, I think, in 2014. And then I learned Reiki two, which is Reiki, to share with others. And that's when you can begin to share Reiki with with clients. And then in 2015, I became a Reiki master and my life dramatically changed once I learned Reiki because it helped me understand spirituality. It helped me understand my empathic gifts. It helped me understand my intuitive gifts. It gave me language and it also gave me community, shared community around all of the gifts. And that really was like the supercharged moment. That was like one of the biggest changes in my life was learning Reiki. And then a year after I became a Reiki master, I also began to study and get certified in the theta healing meditation technique. And that was the second thing that was a major, major game changer for me because I had so many beliefs that didn't serve me from being in a marriage where I was put down, where I was talked out of feeling, when I was feeling, where I was told that my intuition was not right, that when I started to study theta Healing, it unlocked all of this awareness.
Brenda 00:11:29 And it helped me get really in touch with my intuition. And that was when I also began to give psychic readings clear back in 2016. And it was very much under the table, like you had to know me personally to get a psychic reading, or you had to be on my email list. It wasn't something I talked openly about. And then I became I became a certified card reader around that time, too. And that's another another one of those kind of under the radar kinds of things that maybe you didn't know about me. But when I think back. So I started to trust my intuition. Then I got certified in Reiki. Then I studied theta healing meditation technique. And my life really, really changed. And over the course of those years when I was just practicing and offering Reiki and theta healing, I completely changed my life and it was absolutely wonderful. And then it changed again when I became certified in trauma informed breathwork in 2022. Because the healing process that happens when you practice breathwork is like up leveling in a massive way.
Brenda 00:12:42 And so those three things together, the Reiki, the theta healing and the breathwork were massive, like life changing parts in my life. Now as I'm working with clients, I am in awe of their bravery, their courage, the way that they continue to show up for themselves, the way that they're doing the work. And I'm also noticing that there are some really simple things that they could be adding to their daily practice that would help catapult them further to the next level in an easier way. And those things are using daily Reiki, daily meditations, and daily breathwork. And so that's a big part of the reason I created this new self-healing certification, because I know the changes that will happen from daily use of these three modalities and the way that I use them and the way that I teach them, is I braid them together in a way that is very potent, very powerful, and also recognizes you have a life with things to do, and you don't have like 3 or 4 hours to sit in any kind of self-healing session.
Brenda 00:14:01 Right? I know you've got life to live. And so I have created this with great intention because I created it for myself first, I knew I needed this as part of my daily ritual, as part of my daily life. And let me tell you, it really has made an incredible difference. You know, I think of each of these things when I added them to my life the Reiki, the theta healing and the breathwork. It's like it wasn't a new chapter in my book. It was a new book. It's that profound and you know it. It probably is true that I had done so much healing work that by the time I got to breathwork, I was really, really ready for the transformation that breathwork offered me. But I will have to say that breathwork was the absolute game changer. And again, it could be all the work I did before that, but breathwork like blew the doors off of the trauma that I'd still been holding on to that I didn't realize I was holding on to.
Brenda 00:15:05 It helped me release stuck emotions, and most importantly, it helped me get out of my own way and change the beliefs and the self-talk that was really, really holding me back. And I had done a lot of that work inside Theta Healing, which is the meditation technique. And oh, by the way, I want to say I'm not teaching you theta healing meditation technique. That's not what I'm teaching you. What I am teaching you is a way that you can braid meditation with Reiki and breathwork. And that's why I'm calling it a self healing certification instead of like a healing meditation technique, because that is actually a copyrighted modality. That's right. You could get certified in the theta healing meditation technique if you wanted to, but that's not what I'm teaching. So when I think about the thing that I want for you, I want you to be able to move the needle on your own life. I want you to be able to find the places where you have beliefs that aren't serving you, and patterns that are keeping you stuck.
Brenda 00:16:08 And that happens on the daily. And what I mean by that is we can move a lot of energy in a session, in a coaching session and a breathwork session, we can move tremendous amounts of energy and that can even happen in a somatic coaching session. And if you were to add self-healing practices to the work that you're already doing, it's like adding gasoline to the fire Because it's in the daily consistency. That real transformation becomes apparent. So yes, you can get massive transformations if all you want to do is come into coaching or breathwork sessions and have me hold space for you. Seriously, you could get massive, massive results. In fact, people do they. They get life changing results. I talked about my client, Katie in last week's session. My client, Ali Nowicki. She is so successful and it is so exciting to watch her continue to grow and evolve, and to watch her business change and grow and evolve with her and her, her way of thinking. And she's emotionally regulated in all new ways.
Brenda 00:17:23 So all that's to say, there's still profound transformation that comes from the one on one work that I offer. And if you had a way to be able to do little minute pieces of that work on your own every day. Would you want to? And I can tell you that I do. I do it every day where I do some combination of breathwork, Reiki and meditation. And so when I think about what I really wanted to offer you for this self-healing certification, I wanted it to be something that was bite sized in the sense that I wanted you to be able to get massive results in a short amount of time. And so that's why I structured it to come over six weeks. Now, it's not six literal weeks because we're going to take off the week around the 4th of July. So it's actually going to take place closer to ten weeks, but there'll be six weeks of active work. There'll be two weeks dedicated for Reiki, two weeks dedicated for breathwork, and two weeks dedicated for meditation for busy minds.
Brenda 00:18:26 And then we're going to put it all together. And you'll end this with three certifications, one certification and a SWE Reiki. That's a type of Reiki one certification in breathwork for self and one certification for meditation. and that's meditation for busy minds. So here are signs that this might be a good fit for you. If you still find yourself holding breath in high stakes meetings, you smile and you stay composed, but you feel that tightness in your chest the moment you get ready to meet. Or maybe you ignore your gut and you override it with signals. Just telling yourself, I just got to get through this. Maybe you're waking up at 3 a.m. replaying conversations, and that might be replaying words of a client or words of a friend wondering if you over explained. And then you find yourself in a doom scroll on your phone because you just need to discharge some of that pent up emotion. Or maybe you're absorbing energy from clients, coworkers, and family, and you walk away from conversations that don't seem outwardly emotional, but you feel like you just ran a marathon.
Brenda 00:19:39 You're not quite able to explain the exhaustion that you feel. So this is different. It's not about perfecting a morning routine or becoming a guru. It's not about outsourcing your healing to anyone else. This is about regulating your nervous system, restoring your energy, and reclaiming your power. So let's talk about three things that you can do right now, today, whether or not you decide to pursue the self-healing certification. Okay. So number one is get better sleep. And here's a really cool way you can improve your sleep. I mean, obviously there's all the research around sleep hygiene. And I would say yes to all of that. Things like winding down before bed, lowering the lights, finding a routine. But here's something that you can do even if you're not Reiki attuned. That will make a big difference. Because even if you're not Reiki attuned. And let me explain what that means. That means that we open up the chakras in your palms of your hand, so that the Reiki can more easily flow through your hands.
Brenda 00:20:47 Now, all of us have this universal life force energy flowing through us, and the Reiki attunement just opens it and allows it to flow more freely. So if you were to place the palm of your hand over your heart, this would be the palm of one hand over your heart. Then place the other palm on your forehead, where the palm of your hand is just above your eyebrows, touching that third eye point. If you were to create a hold one end in your heart, one hand on your forehead. It is a beautiful way to stop an active mind and you'll start to rest and you'll be able to fall asleep more easily. So invitation to try that now if you happen to already be Reiki attuned. Do that and it's a sure way to fall asleep really, really, really fast. The second thing I want you to do is to be mindful of your breath. If you were to set a timer for two minutes, or just take ten slow, deep breaths in through the nose and out through the mouth, you are going to be amazed at how much better you feel, how much clearer you are, how much calmer you are, and how much more easily you can focus.
Brenda 00:21:55 It's going to be absolutely mind blowing. So those that's ten slow, deep breaths in through the nose, out through the mouth to improve your focus, clarity and calm. And then we have the sleeping the the handhold. One hand in the heart, one hand on the forehead. And now here's the third thing that I want you to do. If you have trouble calming your mind, like many of us do. What I would invite you to do is to create a mantra. A mantra is simply a repeating phrase. And so in this mantra, I would invite you to say. Breathe in, breathe out, and combine the mantra with those ten slow, deep breaths. So when you breathe in, you're just going to say to yourself, breathe in. When you breathe out, you're going to say to yourself, breathe out. What we're doing here is we're giving your mind something to grab onto. And when we do that, all of a sudden you'll notice that your mind can actually track the breath and you'll let go of the overthinking, the problem analysis, the desire to doomscrolling.
Brenda 00:23:07 Because we're giving your mind like a piece of candy, we're giving it something to do. So please try those three things. Whether or not you decide to join the self-healing certification. So you're going to get better sleep by placing a hand in your heart and a hand on your forehead, You're going to set a timer for two minutes, or count to ten and take ten slow, deep breaths in through the nose, out through the mouth while you add a mantra to it. Breathe in. Breathe out. These are going to be game changing now. I have given you these three things in about three minutes. Imagine what you can do with six weeks and imagine what you can do when you're building this in community and you're making friends and you're having a chance to practice on each other and with each other and learn and grow together. Just imagine what your life could look like at the beginning of September. It could be completely different. You could be calmer. You could be more centered, more focused. And I just, I, I hope that you consider coming to join us so you can learn more about the self-healing certification by going to Brandon Winkle.
Brenda 00:24:24 Com forward slash self-healing. That's all lowercase and all one word. So my client Tierra says I signed up to learn Reiki because I felt the need to know and practice Reiki and to help others heal. She said, I'm reveling in the experience I'm having with Reiki because I've made lifelong friendships. My whole life has changed. My outlook is different on everything. My inner calm is more calm and I can't wait to share this with others. I feel like a different person. I am validated with the things that I've been feeling and thinking and the things I knew I knew. Meeting the like minded people has felt so good. It's been so special to me and my client, Katie said. I've been feeling stuck and I had an intention to be open and listen. The difference in how I feel now. It's mind blowing. I came in feeling uncertain about what was happening in my life and all the changes that were happening, and I needed courage to face those changes. Being in community with the wise women and women who are seeking the same thing feels reassuring.
Brenda 00:25:35 I feel so content, I feel held. I know I can walk into whatever I'm going back into and I'm set. I know I can do it. In my Reiki training, I've gotten so much value, even though I have no plans to bring Reiki into my career. However, I'm very intrigued with using Reiki in my architecture business. I'm really interested to see how this unfolds in architecture and design. I'm so excited to hold Reiki on a personal level for myself, for my friends, for my family. It feels so good that there's not one path for Reiki. This work has allowed me to connect to myself, to love myself, and to feel inspired. And so that's just to say, if you're like, I'm not going to offer Reiki to other people. Great. Don't. You don't have to. You can still enjoy the benefits of having Reiki in your life because it truly is a game changer. And then add that to breathwork where I'm going to teach you different techniques, different breath patterns, different holds.
Brenda 00:26:39 And then I'm going to show you how to combine that with the Reiki and the meditation for an absolutely potent experience. Thank you so much for listening to your yes filled life. I, I'm noticing that as I do this work, that the things that I am healing through are often the things that are coming up for my clients and my friends. It seems like we're talking about similar issues at a similar time, and one of the themes that has been coming up recently is about loneliness. And I talked you a little bit about that last time. And the theme for this week is how can we be more authentically ourselves? And how can we tell our truth in a way that it can be heard by our loved ones in a way that might reduce or minimize the potential for conflict? So that's what we're going to be talking about soon on the podcast. And if you ever have any questions or ideas for the podcast, please reach out and let me know, because I would love to make this as meaningful for you as possible.
Brenda 00:27:49 Thank you so much for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, would you please consider going right now to give the podcast your five star rating and review? It would mean so much and be so helpful. And if you really love this, please share it with a friend. Thanks for being here. Bye for now. Until next time.
