[00:00:00] Liz: And I just continued on that journey. I was hungry, very, very hungry for healing. And I didn't know the wording at the time, but that's what that was. But I know that it was again, my soul guiding me. And there was a part of me that was just hungry for growth and transformation and healing.

[00:00:15] Aneta: We often hear people wishing us a long, happy, and healthy life, but what if the length isn't what matters most? What if instead, it's the breath depth and purpose of each day that matters most? Welcome to the Live the Width of Your Life podcast. My name is Aneta Ardelian Kuzma and join me weekly as I interview guests who made changes in their own lives to live more fully with intention. Gratitude and joy. Be prepared to be inspired by their stories of how they shifted their mindset, took courageous action, and designed the life that they always wanted to live.

Are you ready to make 2024 the best year ever? If you want 2024 to be the year that you live fully, boldly, and more passionately, then I'd love for you to be part of my 12-week group coaching program called Live The With. I have taken the best benefits from my one-on-one coaching programs and added them to a group program.

It is going to be a 12-week program in which we have daily meditation, and weekly breath work, and twice a month we are going to have very specific content in a group coaching format. If you are ready to finally manifest the life of your dreams, to become a magnet for the blessings that you are seeking to reduce stress and burnout and create optimal health, to learn to stop listening to the limiting beliefs doubts, and fears that are holding you back and finally create The habits and routines that allow you to take daily aligned, inspired action towards the life of your dreams.

Then I'd love for you to apply for this program. You can get all the details at anetakuzma.Com backslash live the with. There is an opportunity for you to apply to be a part of the program. We'll schedule a quick call with me. And if this sounds like you are an energetic match, I'd love for you to be a part of this program.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out and I look forward to hearing from you.

Welcome back to the Live The Width Of Your Life podcast. My guest today is Liz Burkholder, and she's a holistic nurse practitioner, hypnotherapist, breathwork facilitator, trauma expert, and energy healer. She's currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Mind-Body Medicine from Saybrook University.

Liz began her own healing journey at the age of 17 after a divine intervention changed the trajectory of her life. She found herself locked up in a juvenile detention training school as a lost, trauma-ridden, self-loathing, depressed, and anxious high school dropout with no sense of self-worth. The incident saved her life and it was the beginning of a spiritual awakening and self-healing journey that continues today.

Liz has spent her life healing herself and becoming a healer for others. Her passion is helping other healers to heal their deepest wounds and to live their highest expression and heart-centered purpose. Her motto is, that anything can be healed.

I loved our conversation. We talked so much about her healing journey. We talked about what she wanted to change within her job and why she made the shift from traditional medicine to this more holistic approach. And all throughout her story and her experiences, we talked about the nudges and the little whispers that the universe kept sending to her that kept guiding her and pointing her on her path. It was such a beautiful story and I think you're really going to enjoy it. Take a listen.

[00:03:46] Aneta: Liz, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm so excited to have you on the podcast with me.

[00:03:52] Liz: Yes. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited.

[00:03:56] Aneta: I just love talking to people that I know, but don't know really well. And so I just find that in all of these conversations, there's always something different that I learn about people.

And so for those that don't know you, I would love for you to talk a little bit about just your life's journey that has brought you to where you are today. And whatever those moments are, the things that you think are most relevant, that's sort of shaped who you are right now.

[00:04:25] Liz: Okay. Thank you. So first I'll kind of tell a little bit about where I am at this moment, and then I'll kind of tell how I got here. So I'm a holistic nurse practitioner and actually, I consider myself now a mind-body nurse practitioner because I do mind-body work, and mind-body medicine now at this point of my journey. And what that means is I do a lot of somatic healing work, a lot of emotional release work, a lot of inner child work, trauma work, and I use a lot of different modalities.

Two of which the biggest are hypnotherapy and breathwork. So I've actually created a modality called go within hypno breathwork, and that is what I use. It's a culmination of all of the training learning and personal and professional growth that I've done over actually my lifetime.

And I've been trained in subtle energy, healing, somatic work all those hypnotherapy, breath work, yoga, teacher training, all those things. So now I no longer work in the conventional space as a nurse practitioner and I work in mind, and body medicine. And how I got here is through my own healing journey.

This is how we mostly end up in these places and spaces because of our own journey. So I personally had a lot of childhood trauma myself including things like a father abandonment. I specifically remember very vividly my father leaving when I was five years old and me holding on, clinging to him saying, please don't go.

Knowing in my little five-year-old mind that I would never see him again. This created a huge abandonment wound within me, a huge unworthiness wound, an unlovability wound. So there was that. Then my stepfather came into the picture not too long after, and there was sexual abuse. He was an alcoholic just a lot of turmoil and chaos.

My mom was very depressed and had a lot of unhealed trauma herself. So kind of disconnected a lot emotionally. We lived in dire poverty and Mississippi. I grew up in very poor, deep South Mississippi, or at least my experience was that, and I grew up in trailer parks, projects, and places like that.

There was just a lot, there was a lot that I experienced at a very early age, and in my teenage years, all of this kind of just erupted into this, not-so-wonderful space. Let's say I had severe anxiety. I had depression, PTSD, a deep sense of unworthiness, emptiness abandonment, fear of intimacy, fear of commitment, and just a lot of issues.

 I ended up running away from home as a teenager. Many times I ended up getting involved in drugs and alcohol and I actually dropped out of high school when I was 17 and actually got arrested and sent to a juvenile detention training center at age 17. And this is what I call my first awakening, like a first spiritual awakening, honestly, is what it was.

And in this training school, it was a three-month experience, 12 weeks. And I was a runner. I ran away from everything. I ran away from home. I ran away from my feelings and emotions and from people and experiences and myself is what I was actually running from. And so in this training school, there was nowhere to run, except within myself.

And so this is kind of where the go within was birthed. Although I didn't know that at the time. And I'm realizing now that it was beginning to be birthed way back then. So I started going within myself and looking deeper and seeing what is to heal or to shift or to grow, or how can I move forward from here.

Because I was in a very bad place of hopelessness of really, I really didn't want to live. I don't want to live at all. Very miserable, actually, and very disconnected from self from any kind of joy or anything like that. Actually, I found a book in that training school and it was called, You Can't afford the luxury of a negative thought by Peter McWilliams, and I'll have it right here on my desk.

And it cracked me open actually. It was a cracking open and I had these epiphanies like these aha moments after aha moment reading this book as a 17-year-old and really I just say it was a divine intervention and Started realizing things like how my thoughts affected my emotions and my behaviors and my actions and how I can start changing and shifting my thoughts, which I started paying attention to that.

And they were things like, I'm unworthy. I'm not enough. I'm less than I'll ever be anything. And I started noticing, these are my thoughts and then I would have bad feelings after the thoughts and realize that, wow, these are so connected. Now looking back, knowing what I know, it's like, I started doing almost cognitive behavioral therapy with myself very early in life, not even knowing that that's what I was doing.

 And then I found Dr. Wayne Dyer. I always say he's one of my first spiritual teachers. So I read his books and just really began this journey that set me on this trajectory of self-healing. And I always say I kind of walked in on one trajectory and like the universe picked me up and said, okay, you're going this way.

And it was this really of a trajectory. The shift in my life sent me on a self-healing journey. And after getting out, I just really got my hands, like read everything I could get my hands on because that's all the resources I had at the time. We were poor. We didn't have many recently. And just, I didn't have counseling therapy available. Any of that.

The only thing I had were these books and it's kind of crazy to say that these books changed my life, but they did so, and I realize now that actually, it was transmission. And that I was receiving a frequency of energy of healing for myself that I was allowed in. And there's so much now I realized that I didn't know.

I just knew I started to feel better when I would read these things and read these words and start shifting my thoughts and doing all these things. I started also reading this book by Dr. John Bradshaw, he's one of the first people who used inner child healing.

So he had a couple of books and I started dabbling and inner child healing through his books and workbooks. And now I realized, wow, that was such a foreshadowing for my work because that's literally what I do now is really help people heal that inner child. And it's one of the most transformational types of work that there is.

 Anyway, so I started doing all of that and it's just been this long journey, honestly, this lifelong journey, an amazing journey of healing and uncovering and deconstructing and deep programming and just finding my true authentic self and finding my purpose in the world. And I went on to become a nurse and then a nurse practitioner.

So I was a family nurse practitioner, and then I got board certified as a psych and mental health nurse practitioner and then in 2016, I had what I call my second awakening.

So I was working as a nurse practitioner and I was working with a lot of mental and emotional health patients and working from a place of conventional medicine where we just prescribe medications and, you have anxiety. Here's some for that. And this is not a knock, there's a place for everything. And I'm not saying that's good or bad, or it just is how the conventional world is. That's kind of a first-line therapy. And I started realizing that there's more underneath.

I want to help people on a deeper level because they had all this trauma and they would talk about all their trauma they've experienced and I thought I want to really help them on a deeper level than just prescribing medicine, even though that can help it can be a temporary band-aid. I want to get to the core and really help people and so I was like, okay, what do? And then Universe sent me to this heart-centered hypnotherapy training.

It came into my awareness and it was like, I just kept feeling the pull to do this. And I went in and this was another experience where I went in on one trajectory and the universe picked me up and said, okay, now you're going on this path. This is where you're headed. So it was a whole shift in my career, a whole new trajectory.

And I walked in there at one person and walked out and. Healed some of the deepest layers of trauma that I had ever experienced in my life. Like layers of healing that I didn't even know were possible. And it was just this deep diving into self through using hypnotherapy, but also diving into like the inner child parts and the repressed, all of those repressed emotions and energy that had been stored in my body and my nervous system that I wasn't aware of all this anger and rage and fear and feelings of unsafety and shame and just an eruption of things that just moved up and out of me.

So I started doing that work with my patients and they started having breakthroughs. They started healing deep depression, suicidality, agoraphobia, they started coming off their meds and I thought, I don't know what this is, but I need to know more. I need to do more of this.

[00:13:06] Aneta: Liz, thank you for sharing and for being so vulnerable about your experience. It's so interesting when we share stories about ourselves as we go through because you clearly have done the work and you've processed it, but I do want to maybe just ask a little bit of questions here.

What struck me when I was listening to your story is that you talked about the situations that you grew up in and some of the really dire situations that were actual physical, and emotional pain. And yet when you were in the juvenile detention center and you went through that training, what do you think pulled you to find that book?

Because you've talked about there and in other instances of your life, where there was a download, there was a nudge, there was an instinct, something that you recognized that you should go, huh, I should pay attention to this. Like, what do you think it was? And did you even have words for it at the time?

[00:14:10] Liz: This brings up some emotion here because at the time I didn't know that this is what it was, but I know now that it was absolutely my soul calling me to that. It's a soul calling. It's a soul purpose. And it was absolutely my soul guiding me. And I know that for sure. Now, where I did not know that at the time.

[00:14:32] Aneta: I love that and I love that you recognize that because I was going to ask you, what was your relationship like with spirit, with religion, with any of those things at that time before you actually, as you said, had to stop running, like you were in an environment where you could no longer run, but you had to go within and to search and to listen, maybe in a way that you hadn't before.

[00:14:59] Liz: Yes, I actually grew up in a Christian family. So grew up in the South and actually my mom kind of dabbled in different denominations of Christianity. I mean, there were times when we went to a Pentecostal church and sometimes a nondenominational church and I think even some Southern Baptist churches, and she kind of just dabbled in those areas.

We ended up at mostly nondenominational churches, but I will say I had already had a deep connection with spirit from a very early age. I remember being in these tent revivals we would be in Mississippi as an eight-year-old and could just feel the presence of something greater than me, which is what I would call God, spirit, and universe.

And I could feel that. Very early and have this deep connection, this feeling, felt a sense of connection. So I had a deep sense of faith already, just almost intuitively ingrained, but also through my upbringing. And that's been a whole journey almost like a deconstruction of I would say religion.

And it's funny because when I went into hypnotherapy back in 2016, I remember my mom even saying something like, I don't know, that's outside of like, that's maybe, witchcraft or something that's not of her belief system or what the way I grew up.

And so there was some contention there at first that I had to work through and resistance to move through. And that's why it was such an expansion for me because it was a realization that spirit is bigger than just a religion for me. And there was just a lot of expansion in that, but I already had a deep faith.

[00:16:32] Aneta: That's good. It's helpful for me to understand too, that you already could recognize interesting, this is something coming within that a voice you could trust. And then, I love that you talked about being able to go beyond the confines of maybe your upbringing or the religion that you were exposed to at a young age.

And so tell me a little bit more about once you started exploring, from these books, finding Dr. Wayne Dyer, like how did you start to slowly seek and grow and learn and expand your knowledge even more? Like did you find sources coming to you easily now that you were open?

[00:17:13] Liz: Now looking back, they probably were coming pretty easily, but at the time it felt like when we're going through a difficult time, it just feels very heavy and hard.

 And those were very difficult times. Like disconnecting from friends. There was a knowing that I had to disconnect from all of the friends that I was hanging out with. And actually, be with me for a while and that was a very grieving process. Like there was grief there.

Of releasing old friends and releasing old ties and actually being just with myself. And there were times I would cry and say, I have no friends, I'm all alone. And I remember my mom would say, it's better to have no friends than the wrong friends. I mean, and not that they were wrong, they're all part of my journey and my story.

It's just that, for where I was going, they were no longer in alignment, let's just say. And, there were times of loneliness and grief and I was reading these books and just having these new awarenesses and just really working on the inner dialogue and the inner voices that would tell me I'm not worthy and I'm not enough and started shifting that and started seeing and feeling real shifts, real change, real transformation.

And I just continued on that journey. I was hungry, very, very hungry for healing. And I didn't know the wording at the time, but that's what that was. But I know that it was again, my soul guiding me. And there was a part of me that was just hungry for growth and transformation and healing.

And so I just sought out things and the more I dove into those things the more I dove into myself and feeling the things and connecting to my inner child parts as much as I could back then. I felt better. And I started just seeing real change and real growth and real movement forward. And so it's just been this journey since then.

[00:18:54] Aneta: It takes such a level of maturity at 17 to recognize that you needed to make some energetic changes in terms of your relationships and maybe where you were spending your time in order to go towards the future or the person that you wanted to become in such a short amount of time, like, I just want to make sure and just say, applaud you to say, wow, it's 17 and such a short amount of time.

Not only did you do the change, while you were in a very kind of protected environment, like you weren't in the outside world, but then coming out of it, you're making those changes. So where did you find the strength to identify? Like, if I move forward, I know that I'm going to have to make some of these changes.

[00:19:38] Liz: Where did I find the strength? I'm just going to say, it's again, a strength that came within me that I wasn't even quite aware of at the time. And it was just this sole drive forward or this pull forward. And it was very scary. I went and got a job working in retail, which I had a deep fear of people.

I had severe social anxiety and somehow I moved into that and got this job working in sales at a department store looking back, I don't even know how I did that because I was so afraid of talking to people and being around people. But I just thought, this would be a good job to have.

I got this job in this department store and actually realized that I like talking to people that it was fun to talk to people and that I actually liked that. And so I began to cultivate that and hone that and stop running from that. And it's just been this growth journey since. And I don't even know how it was just this inner strength that I wasn't even aware of, honestly, at the time.

[00:20:33] Aneta: It's so amazing. And so you talked about starting off going from not being in high school, right? Did you take a break from high school and then come back to it? And then you decided to become a nurse practitioner and now you're working on your doctorate too, right?

[00:20:49] Liz: Yes. Yes. So after getting out of training school. I studied for my GED, so I didn't want to go back to school. I went ahead and took my GED and the GED applied to community college and started taking night classes. So I started working during the day and then started taking night classes at a local community college. And at first, I was going into computer programming because again, I didn't want to work with people.

I wanted to work with computers so I didn't have to talk to people. So I ended up actually getting an associate's degree in computer programming. Along that journey, I realized, I do like sales talking to people, and being in public. So ended up not technically using that in the professional world, but it's really helping me a lot just in general, having that degree and just the learning and growth that happened during that. I feel like no education is a waste and no growth in learning is a waste ever.

And then I decided, I'm ready, I want to go to nursing school. Actually, I was 27. So my twenties were kind of rocky and crazy too. So it wasn't just this smooth journey. There was a lot of craziness happening. I was still unraveling and breaking through a lot of my old patterns and was in a very dysfunctional relationship for several years.

 And that actually brought a lot of stuff up to light that I needed to move through, like fear of commitment, fear of intimacy, fear and not trusting men, especially not trusting people in general. So I was moving through a lot of that in my twenties and it was kind of crazy. And fun and crazy. And so I was still growing and learning through that.

And then when I was 27, I decided I wanted to go into nursing school and become a nurse. And so I did a two-year program to become a registered nurse there at the community college, which is amazing, it was an amazing nursing program, and realized this is where I'm supposed to be like, this is for me.

[00:22:31] Aneta: What made you feel that when you said, this is where I'm supposed to be? What made you recognize that was something that you thought was where you're supposed to be at the moment?

[00:22:40] Liz: So there was this feeling of I knew I had a lot of compassion. I started realizing I have a lot of compassion for people. And there was this desire inside to help people. And for a long time, I didn't know what that was or what it looked like. I just knew I wanted to help people. And I thought, is it psychology? Don't want to be a psychologist. Don't want to be a therapist or a nurse. And then I don't know, somehow I got the awareness that I really want to apply to nursing school and try that.

And so I got in and it was this feeling of, yes, this is where I can help people and have compassion and really help people in a way that is really amazing. Like nursing, there is a double-sided. It's hard, but it's also a very fulfilling role. So I became a nurse and then I knew I wanted to go on and become a nurse practitioner.

I mean, in my two-year program, I said, I'm going to be a nurse practitioner too. And people were like, well, just get through this first. Don't jump too far ahead. I was like, but I already know.

[00:23:38] Aneta: How long did you do that? How long were you working as a nurse practitioner before you expanded more into this mind-body medicine?

[00:23:46] Liz: Okay. So I graduated from nursing school in 2006 and then I did that for about four years. And then in 2010, I applied to become a family nurse practitioner and graduated from that in 2013. So I did that for three years and then was a family nurse practitioner for about three years before I realized my role is actually in the mental and emotional health field in some way.

So somehow I just follow, okay, well, let me go work in an outpatient. I worked in an outpatient clinic working with emotional health, and mental, and emotional health. But then I realized this was not the way I wanted to do it because it was so pressured and so fast and running patients through in 15 minutes.

And it was this in and out. They're in and out in 15 minutes. And in that time you have to assess everything, make a diagnosis, do an exam prescribe a treatment prescribe medications, and send them out the door. And it was like, this is not a way I want to practice medicine. It was very unhealthy, very unsustaining, very unsafe.

I started having anxiety and I was like, well, this is not the way that I want to work under this kind of pressure. So I thought I'd do it myself. And I started my own practice in 2016. And ended up spending a lot more time with my patients and actually getting into the meat of what's going on underneath, what's happening in your life, what's happening socially, and emotionally in your relationships.

 And started having a deeper connection with my patients, which is what I knew I wanted to do. And that alone can be so healing and helpful that therapeutic relationship and having someone and let's hear you and listen. So that was deeply healing for them, but that's when I went into, I want more, like I want to help them on an even deeper level.

And so at the end of 2016, I went into hypnotherapy. And fell down into this whole rabbit hole of complementary alternative medicine, energy medicine, my body work all those things. And never, never really looked back. It was like, okay, so this is where I'm headed.

[00:25:40] Aneta: So Liz, what made you want to go deeper into opening up your own practice and then doing more of the mind-body medicine with your patients?

[00:25:50] Liz: So what made me want to open my own practice is the fact that I felt a big misalignment with the way it was done in the conventional world where again It's running patients in and out in and out and there wasn't this connection.

And it was just so fast and it was just so pressing. It felt really unsafe. It felt not therapeutic. So that's what drove me to start my own practice.

[00:26:15] Aneta: I love that once again, you sort of recognize that even though you're a nurse practitioner, you have this degree, you're working with patients, you are helping you still identify that there was an opportunity to go deeper. So yeah, amazing.

[00:26:31] Liz: Yes. So then I started my practice and actually started spending more time with them and creating that connection, that therapeutic connection to really allow them to be heard and be seen.

And they would say things like you're the first nurse practitioner who asked me about my life or who's really listened to me or who didn't just throw a prescription across the desk for me. And so that was very meaningful and I thought, so there's a piece here about connection that needs to happen in this therapeutic relationship and really just kind of dove deeper into that.

And then that's when I realized I want to go even deeper with my patients and my clients and really help them heal this pain, this deep pain that's underneath the surface that they don't know how to get to. And that I didn't know how to get to either as a clinician at that point. That's how I ended up in the hypnotherapy training, which ended up doing a two-year internship and our deep dive into trauma healing, emotional healing, hypnotherapy, breath work, psychodrama, meditation, and energy healing.

It was this two-year journey internship of learning all these tools and techniques and continuing that training through other spaces and teachers. Now I'm to the place where anyone can come in with anything and I will never get stuck. I always know that I can take them in and take them deep inside themselves and they're going to have a clearing, a healing, or a releasing, because I know I have now the skills and tools and techniques and also my own healing that I've done to hold that grounded place.

I had to heal myself first so that I could hold this grounded space for all of that. But. Yeah. It's been a journey.

[00:28:09] Aneta: I wanted to ask you about the hypnotherapy and inner child work because some of the listeners may not be as familiar with this space. So can you just maybe elaborate a little bit about what hypnotherapy looks like if someone were interested in the session and what should they expect from some of the inner child healing?

[00:28:29] Liz: Great questions. And I'll try to kind of condense this as much as I can. so hypnotherapy, let's talk about that first. So I kind of use hypnotherapy and hypnosis interchangeably. So hypnosis is guiding you into a state of focused attention within yourself, basically. That's the gist of it. And there is a lot to that, but a hypnotic state, let's just say is a natural state that humans move in and out of.

So when we're engrossed in a book or engrossed in a movie, or when we're driving down the street and we kind of miss our turn because our mind is deeply engrossed somewhere else, that is really a state of trans or a state of hypnosis. We could say like a hypnotic state. What we're doing is using this natural state.

As a way to hone in and heal something by using it in a therapeutic sense. So it starts out as almost like a guided meditation, like meditation and hypnosis sometimes kind of overlap in the sense that you're in a deep, relaxed place. It starts out almost like a guided meditation, walking you through this relaxing experience.

There is guided imagery, there is visualization, and there is breathing. I tie in a lot of breathwork to get people anchored into the present, into their bodies. To connect the mind and body. And honestly, that itself is kind of, could be a general hypnosis session. I take it so much deeper because we go into the deepest layers of the subconscious.

What happens when we get into that deep relaxation and that trance state or meditative state, hypnotic state, we're actually shifting into different brain waves. So we're moving down into theta brainwaves, which is before sleep. Sleep is Delta. And so when we get into that deeply relaxed place, focus, narrowed attention within we're in theta state, theta brainwaves.

And from that place, we can access so much more than we can from our conscious mind, from our beta brainwaves or even alpha brainwaves so we can access deep memories that have been repressed deep emotions stored in the body that have been repressed deep memories deep awareness, connections patterns beliefs behaviors that we're not aware of in our conscious thinking mind. This is why I believe that we cannot get into these deep layers with talk therapy. It's just we cannot because we're not even in the proper brain waves to get into it.

So when we're in that state, what we call a non-ordinary state or an altered state, different people use different terminology. Well, first of all, let me say, that we don't just access all these difficult, hard, painful things. We also access our resources, our inner wisdom, our inner strength, our inner intuition, and our inner compassionate self.

What I call the capital S self. What some people might call your higher self or your soul. We also access those places from this state of hypnosis. So it's so deeply healing on so many levels. But what we do from that place is we access the child part that brought in this coping mechanism, this survival mechanism, this pattern, this behavior, this belief, whatever is showing up in the present day.

And we find the part that created that. For safety for survival, we just start kind of having a very reconciliatory experience with this child part. We talked to the part, we let the part speak. there are often deep emotions that begin to come up, grief, anger, shame, sadness, resentment, there is so much that begins, we tap into that and we just allow that part to feel, to express, and we start creating safety with our adult self.

So it's like a reparenting. We take our nurturing adult self and we start reparenting the child part who started believing I'm not enough, or I'm not worthy, or I have to be someone else to be loved, or I have to, whatever these, we all have these patterns. And so it's really a deprogramming of all of that and connecting to these little parts that are vulnerable and scared and hiding and terrified, really.

And actually not just from that space, but from the body to feeling into the body where the contraction is, where the fear is, where the grief is, and moving it out of the body through different techniques, through breathing, through emoting, through movement, through sound, through voice. It is just the most transformational work that I found in 30 years of doing inner work. There is just nothing else that compares to it, in my opinion.

[00:33:04] Aneta: And so when you do these sessions with your clients, Liz, I appreciate you explaining that in a way that I think was just really, very tangible for people listening.

How many sessions do, I guess maybe the answer is it depends, but do some people have one session with you and they're like, wow, I feel good? And others need 10 sessions or more. Is there a range just depending on what people uncover?

[00:33:30] Liz: That is such a, it is such a big range and it differs from person to person, but usually I say a good rule of thumb is actually three to five sessions. In three to five sessions, we can clear and heal so much, honestly, decades of stuff. Three to five is such a good number. Because again, I have people that come in and they're like, I have been in talk therapy for 20 years and never experienced the level of healing that I do one session. So three to five is a good number.

Some people come in and they do one and they're like, I'm good. And they come back and say that one session changed my whole life. It changed everything. It changed the trajectory of my life, just like what I experienced. And then some people were like, I want more. I want to dig deeper. I want to do that. A 10-session package or whatever. And, it just depends on where people are and how deep they're willing to go because not everyone's ready for that level of facing their pain and feeling their pain and releasing that.

But I also trust that everyone can make their own judgment and I tell people to trust themselves. Experience it, see what you feel, and if you want more, let me know. And if you're not ready, that's okay. Or if you don't want to do it, it's not for you. That's okay too. I let people be the judge of that for themselves.

[00:34:42] Aneta: Amazing. So tell me what's next because you have shared so much about your quest, I guess, to find more information in order to continue to heal others, which I just think is so beautiful. Is there anything else that you have been exploring lately, or maybe even more programs, or things that you have built or are excited to share maybe with this audience that's available? If they were to work with you.

[00:35:08] Liz: So a couple of things, I'm finishing up a dissertation finishing up my PhD in mind, and body medicine. So that's a big thing right now that I'm working on and pouring a lot of energy into, and that will be complete hopefully in the next few months. So that's a big thing, but also as far as work in the world, I am actually now beginning to do training, somatic healing training. So I am here to train clinicians like doctors, therapists, nurses, and then also other healers like coaches and other healers who feel called to do this deeper work with their clients.

I'm starting a training program actually the end of October. It's a six-month intensive training where you learn all the things, everything I know I'm going to teach like hypnotherapy, breath work, somatic healing, inner child healing, emotional repression work. And it's also doing your own work as the healer, as the clinician, because we can only take people as deep as we fall on ourselves.

So it's really an opportunity for clinicians to do their own work, but also learn how to do it with others at the same time. So that's a big thing that's brewing right now. And it starts at the end of October because I'm moving more into that, into training facilitators of this work. It's so powerful. It's so potent. And I want to get it in the world in a big way.

[00:36:24] Aneta: I love that. And it's so needed. And I'm so glad that you said not just, of course, for the people within the medical field, because you're part of that, but also for coaches and others who are looking to continue to expand and add more tools to their toolbox.

So I'm very interested in learning more. So I can't wait to see all the details there. And then you also talked. I know we talked a little bit about the fact that you do retreats. Also, can you talk a little bit about your retreats and maybe some of the things that you do there? People are looking for a destination experience.

[00:36:55] Liz: Yes. So I do retreats and they're really deep dive, deep healing retreats. I'm doing some of my own, it's healing the healers. So it's geared towards people who are in a position of helping clients on a regular basis, whether that's coaching, nursing, doctor, therapy, whatever.

So a place for healers to come and do their own work and to really just focus on themselves and direct healing, compassion, and love towards themselves for a change because there's a whole dynamic here where healers get caught up in this, everyone else's needs matter. And I take care of everyone else, but not myself.

So really to kind of deconstruct that and heal that. In these retreats. And then I also have a friend who I do retreats with, and that healing circle of fire is the name of that. We do women's retreats, take small groups of about 10 to 12 women, and do the deep intensive work with any woman who wants to come and do the work, not, you don't have to be in the healing fields for that.

So, yeah, and then I have several coming up too. Next year I'm doing a retreat with a friend in Bali. It's a deep transformative healing retreat. It's just opportunities to do the deep work, to go away, to spend time on yourself, and to focus on your own healing.

[00:38:04] Aneta: That's so beautiful. So if people wanted to learn more about you, where can they find you?

[00:38:10] Liz: So currently my business is Burkholder Wellness. So it's my last name, wellness. And I'm on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok as Burkholder Wellness. My website is burkholderwellness.com. I am going through a shift in my business and name and brand and all of that. So it's becoming go within. So there'll be go within institute, go within hypno breath work, but that shift it's in transition. So eventually it'll be go within as of right now it's Burkholder wellness.

[00:38:38] Aneta: Perfect. And Liz, thank you for sharing. And I know that many people are going to be very interested in learning more about you and your services. Before we close today, I ask all of my guests a question tied to the title of the podcast, live the width of your life. What does it mean to you to live the width of your life?

[00:39:00] Liz: Goodness. That's such a great title and such a great question. Living the width of my life would be just, living in growth and expansiveness and just always leaning into that, leaning into expanding and growing and flourishing and moving forward. That would be my definition of that.

[00:39:20] Aneta: That's beautiful. And I can see from everything you've shared in knowing you that is what you embody and that is how you live your life. And we are also grateful for it. Thank you for being such a bright light in this world. Thank you for your constant quest for growth and leveraging all of your own experiences in order to help others. And thank you for your time today.

[00:39:42] Liz: Thank you so much. And that has been a pleasure. It's been an honor. Thank you so much for having me. And I'm so excited about all the work that you're doing in the world too. Thank you.

[00:39:51] Aneta: Thank you. So grateful.

Thank you for listening to today's episode. If today's conversation inspired you to dream again, break out of your comfort zones, or reflect on what it means to you to live more fully, then please follow this podcast because every week you'll hear more stories from people just like you who took imperfect action towards their goals, created more joy and are living.

Back to episode…