Mahara Wayman [00:00:00]:
Welcome to the art of badassery Today, I am so pleased to introduce Anne Bishop Almita, a woman who epitomizes resilience and personal transformation. She was raised in Lexington, Kentucky, and embarked on a winding path towards selfdiscovery. After earning a Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science from the College of Worcester, she entered the corporate world where external success masked her inner misery. Anne's life took an unexpected turn when she married her college sweetheart and started a family. However, after 15 years of marriage and the challenge of raising five children, her subsequent divorce led her to a profound reckoning. Birmingham, Alabama, became her new home, an unexpected source of solace. Despite living near her ex husband and his new wife as they share custody of their children, anne grappled with self doubt for decades, relying on external validation and others happiness to define her own. But her journey of self discovery revealed a powerful truth a badass is someone unapologetically, comfortable in their skin, unaffected by others opinions. Today, as the founder and CEO of Revolutionary Wellness, anne channels her experiences into empowering others to find their inner strength and live authentically. Join me as we explore Anne's story delving into resilience, self belief and the art of embracing your inner badass. Prepare to be inspired, peeps. As we uncover valuable lessons and unlock our true potential. Anne, welcome. It is so nice to see you, and welcome to the program.
Anne [00:01:38]:
Thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here.
Mahara Wayman [00:01:42]:
Wonderful. So I said a lot about you and I'm not going to talk anymore, except for I would love to know if you can share with us a defining moment from your past. It may have been one that's already mentioned, but tell us about that moment when you went, wait a second, something's got to change.
Anne [00:02:08]:
I've had a lot of those moments. Start with one I think we all have. After my divorce, I was in a very dark place. I was in a dark place in my head and I was in another relationship with somebody who was what I like to say he was a dark soul. And I was very depressed and I was suicidal. And it had gotten to a point where my depression was kind of taking over my day to day. And my brother passed away right before Christmas. And I remember thinking, my mom can't bury two kids in the same month. And that was kind of that defining moment of, I've got to find a way out. I've got to find a way to get to a place where I want to live the life that I'm creating. And that was one big light bulb moment of wanting to get to the other side and kind of not settling for those thoughts that were just kind of the chatter in my head that it seemed to take over. And I would say the other defining moment was when I realized it's possible to change, that you don't have to stay with those thoughts in your head. I wasn't born that way. I always used to say I was born apologizing for taking up space, or I was born without a sense of direction, or I was born without this part of my brain. None of that's true. None of that is true. We are all born whole. We really are. It's just life happens along the way and makes us feel fractal or mosaic. But that's the beauty of it all when it comes back together. So those two moments were massive for me, so powerful.
Mahara Wayman [00:03:52]:
Let's go back to when you realized in the first instance that I just want to say that my heart was just breaking for you. When you realized that your mama couldn't bury two kids in one month, those that were around you at that time, were you able to share with them what you were thinking, or did they see a change in you right away?
Anne [00:04:16]:
No, I reached out for help medically, like in the Western medical world, with a psychiatrist about six months prior to that. And I thought once I finally took that step to take medication, I kind of thought it would help overnight. And the thing is, it's a lot of trial and error, and this is nothing against my psychiatrist at the time, but at one point, when I was crying to him, and I was like, you have to help me. I need help. I need something. You have to help me. He told me I sounded like every other housewife in America and what was really the problem. And I understand, looking back, I'm not sliding him. I get it. I was just saying, Please help. I wasn't giving him tangible things to go off of or to go with. But it was that moment I prayed my whole life for somebody to save me. And it was in that moment I realized I had to figure out how to save myself. And that's something that is very scary when you don't know how, when you really just you don't know how. And so I started doing some more research. I saw one of my mentors on I Love the Way the universe works. I saw one of my mentors on a morning show in a doctor's office. I never watched Good Morning America. I was working full time, 60 hours a week at this point, and she was talking about the subconscious mind and that it's possible to change. And her father had attempted suicide, and so that was kind of how she started her life work, to figure out how to change that chatter and how to change those thoughts. And I didn't want my kids to be in her shoes, just planting that seed that it is possible to change. And then I did a couple of things. I didn't have anybody that I could lean on in the relationship. I was in at the time. I was very isolated. It was an abusive relationship. And so he had isolated me from a lot of family and from friends. So it was really just me. And my kids were too young for me to lean. That's not what I wanted to do for them. But I did two things. I knew I was going to have to figure it out. I was going to have to find a way to save myself, but I didn't know how. But I knew anytime I was in that kind of dark rabbit hole in that really dark place, I was so grateful the next morning that nothing happened that I got through to the next morning. And it was that kind of gratitude. So it was like, okay. So I did what is called in the healing space a pattern interrupt. I had no idea that's what I was doing at the time. I had no idea this was like a thing. When I found out, I was like, oh, that's a thing. Like, I did a thing. But the plans that I had to take my own life, it was going to be in a garage. And I stopped parking in my garage. I started putting a whole bunch of stuff in my garage. It was not possible to park in my garage because that was where the weak moments happened. That was where the like, can I do this? Can I do this? And the answer was always no. But I didn't want to even have that as an option. I wanted to be able to think about it more. And I'm still working on cleaning out my garage, but not for those reasons. A little bit too easy to keep all the stuff in there. But it was that, and it was holding on. Because when you're in that space, you genuinely don't believe that you're helping other people by living. It's such a clouded mind. And it's hard for me now, looking back. And I have other friends who've who've come to me before, and they're like, I can't say this to so and so. I can't say it to so and so. It's shocking when somebody feels this way. So you do. You keep it in and you hide it. But you have to find that one thing, the one thing that you can do that nobody else can. And for me, at that time, I was so convinced that my kids were better off without me. It is a sickness. It is an illness. You're convinced of things that aren't true. But that's really what I believed, that I was more of a burden for them. But I knew nobody could take care of my dog better than I could. And it was that. And I know that it sounds so as a mom, as a mom of five who loves her children more than anything, I feel almost like a betrayal in even saying that. But I genuinely didn't believe I was doing a good job with them. But I knew with my dog, she's like my little lifeline and she's my kindred spirit. And that it's. Finding that one thing that can get you through to the next morning, because everything in life is temporary. Everything. No matter how permanent it feels, no matter how many mistakes you've made, it's all temporary. But ending your life is such a final thing that you can't ever take back. And so it's putting in kind of the stop gaps to make sure that nothing ever comes to fruition from those thoughts that you can get through to the next morning.
Mahara Wayman [00:09:09]:
When you were sharing your story. And thank you for telling us, for sharing that with us. A couple of things popped up for me, which was when you shared that you would do a physical act, like you'd put stuff in the garage or you'd park out side of the garage. All I could think was, yes, that she's making a declaration to the universe, whether you realize it or not, or it was a purposeful thing. I really believe that when we put a line in the sand, when we declare our worth in any type of action, the universe listens and people listen. And you're parking outside of the garage is a beautiful example of that. I'm declaring my worth, that I actually want to be here, and all of those little things. And the other thing I thought of was how special animals are for us. I am a fur mama. I have two dogs and a cat, and we've always had dogs. And I truly think that dogs are angels in disguise. There are angels here. So I'm really pleased that you had your little yes.
Anne [00:10:19]:
And in time, things did shift to where once I started doing the work, where there were people that I could lean on, it just didn't feel like it in that moment. And I have to say, my ex husband was one of the ones who I called, and he's one of the ones who helped me the most. Once we got back to a place where we were communicating again, he was the one who I called, and I'm like, I can't do this. And he's like, you got to do this. You can do this. So it was a beautiful thing after being with somebody so long and then going through a divorce to be able to come back around just as the parents of these five amazing people and be able to call on each other and be able to talk about things openly and be able to it was a totally different level of our friendship that I'm so incredibly grateful for, because he absolutely because he knows me. We were together a long time, so he knows me well. So being able to call on him and really it got to a point where all these people started. Once I started to kind of open myself up and share a little bit more. People started rising to the occasion. And so before when I said I didn't really have anyone, I felt like I didn't have anyone, but there were a lot more people than I realized.
Mahara Wayman [00:11:33]:
That's a really important distinction. And what I'm hearing, which I think is really beautiful, is as you went on this path of self discovery, as you began to question and perhaps forgive yourself for buying into these misunderstandings or to just question other people around you, your relationship started to change. Because it seems like when you were the old version of you, the marriage fell apart, communication fell apart, and all of these drama happened. As you became more closer to yourself, closer to your wholeness, to the happy, beautiful, centered person that you are today, some of that animosity may have just dissipated or just gone away. You guys found a way to actually be the friends that you were when you began your relationship.
Anne [00:12:25]:
Yes, absolutely. And the biggest catalyst for me was the subconscious mind, but it was also the energy work. I didn't know anything about energy work. I didn't know anything about the universe. I didn't know anything. I had no idea. And when I started learning these things so when I made that declaration of the universe, I had no idea anybody was listening to little old me, didn't know the power that I had. It really was recognizing in your subconscious mind that it's possible to change that. That's where the repeated patterns come in. But then also for me, grounding and doing things that are meditative practices, at first it wasn't something where I could sit and meditate and connect to source. That was actually only in the last six months. But there were certain natural healing modalities that I was able to do that felt so right. And I didn't know how I knew them, but when somebody told me them, it was such a natural inclination and such a beautiful thing that to me, the biggest thing missing for people in the mental health space and people who are suffering is that component, the energy piece.
Mahara Wayman [00:13:39]:
And I love what you're saying, but I suspect that there are some people listening that would like a little bit more clarity on what you mean when you say energy. Like, what exactly are you talking about? The sun?
Anne [00:13:51]:
All of the above. The sun, the moon and everything within you, but yes, absolutely. So, you know, when you walk into a room and you walk in and you're like, OOH, I don't want to go in there, that feels kind of funky. And you can just almost feel the tension in the room. That's energy. That's an example of energy. That's an example of how you can feel it when you go outside and you feel the sun on your face, or you feel the sun kind of come into your, like, coat over your whole body that's energy. Also, if you think about somebody and all of a sudden they call you on the phone, that's another example of energy also. So there are little things that are peppered in that we know that we see on a day to day basis but we think are coincidences or we think are just I don't know, they feel almost serendipitous and they are because all things are energy.
Mahara Wayman [00:14:46]:
So everything is made up of energy. People. That's sort of the basic idea behind what you're sharing with us. And we are very intuitive, whether we realize it or not. And we can often respond and feel in our gut the cadence of energy around us.
Anne [00:15:04]:
Okay, I like that word, the cadence of energy. And I'd had people at various points in my life I can remember a college professor was like because I had undiagnosed ADHD and was very nervous in tests and things. And she told me, she was like, you've got to learn to meditate or do something. She was like, You've got to relax. And this was way back in the mid 90s. So that was something that I pictured people sitting Indian style with their thumb on their middle finger and just doing the ohm. And I was like, my chatter brain is not going to sit still that long. What is this business? This is crazy. But I realized a lot of the things that I was doing on a day to day basis still had the same benefits. They were meditative. They were meditative practices. So in my workouts, I love to dance and it's one of those things. I've never been professionally trained, but I love to dance and I do it every day and I teach people how to dance and all of those wonderful, amazing things. And that is a meditative practice. When you go in the garden, my mom is an avid rose gardener. She has beautiful gardens. And that's a meditative practice because what it does to me, meditation is something ultimately yes, your goal is to connect to your God, your source, the universe, however you view it, there is no right or wrong. And sometimes I call it our monkey minds. And I love monkeys, so it's nothing against monkeys, but our monkey minds make it so that we can't really sit and receive that connection and reach out for that connection. So there are other ways that you can do things to receive the same benefit as meditation. Like the gardening and like the dancing and the working out and being outside and being around animals as we were talking about our dogs before. All of those things have meditative benefits, I guess you could call them, because it helps the chatter in your mind kind of pause for a minute. So anything that you do where you feel like you don't have to think about it and it brings you joy, those are meditative practices, but very similar.
Mahara Wayman [00:17:10]:
To becoming mindful, I think, yes, of course. My business is called Mindfulness with Mahara, so I'm really big on sharing with my clients. Again, to your comment, being mindful isn't necessarily about being a yogi sitting on top of a mountain, but if you can be fully present in whatever you're doing, in other words, you're not worrying about the future, you're not freaking out about the past, you're not fretting about what if, what if, what if? You are totally present, I e gardening, I e dancing, all of those things, then it is a form of meditation for sure, because in my world, I'm present, and when I'm present, I feel connected to the source. So I love that explanation. So I want to make sure I'm understanding the journey. Even back in college, you recognized that you were struggling with some anxiety, albeit undiagnosed, at that time. ADHD and did you at that point take your professor up and look at traditional meditative practices, or did you just recognize that you were and had been doing some meditative things all along?
Anne [00:18:21]:
No, at that point, I kind of laughed and said that I couldn't possibly do that, to be totally honest. I love Dr Byrne ever at Worcester. She's retired now, but it planted that seed. It did plant the seed. She had suggested yoga also, and once I graduated college, that is where I started taking and teaching yoga and Pilates. So this was amazing. At the end of my yoga class, I would take people on a bit of a meditative journey, and I didn't really know what I was doing. It was intuitive. I just would kind of guide them through something, and I never did it for myself, I could do it for them. And when I started learning more about energy, work, and learning from one of my mentors, becoming a healer, they walked me through that same meditation. And I thought, well, son of a gun, I've been doing this for 25 I've been leading people through this for 25 years, and I had no idea what I was doing, but that's exactly what I was doing. I was filling them up with the light of the sun all the way through their bot. This whole meditative practice that I had no idea that that's what I was doing, because I would tell myself I'm not good with labels. That was something that we start to tell ourselves things, right? And I would say, because I never understood societal rules growing up. I was like, well, why can't this person talk to this person? And it didn't make sense to me because I really see every individual as their beautiful, whole self. I didn't understand the rule. So I would tell myself I wasn't good with labels, or I would tell myself I wasn't good with these things. And this was all like the chatter in your head of what you're telling yourself. And so I would tell myself that I couldn't meditate. But I'd been doing it for 25 years. I'd been helping other people do it. I'd been walking them through a grounding meditation for 25 years, but I had no idea that that's what I was doing. And so that's kind of an example of how the answers really are within us. But we just have to trust ourselves enough to understand that what we're saying is valid and that what we're saying is right for us.
Mahara Wayman [00:20:32]:
What are you saying to yourself today?
Anne [00:20:35]:
Oh, my gosh, I love my life today.
Mahara Wayman [00:20:38]:
That's beautiful. That's beautiful. So talk to us a bit about what you do today for a living.
Anne [00:20:45]:
So today I help other people in so many ways. Their mind, body, spirit, all things. I am a fitness instructor. I'm actually developing my own app because I want people to just move their couches out of the way and dance in their living room like nobody's watching. That's my goal because I do believe when you go into workouts and things with a heavier intention with, I have to do this because I have to lose this weight, it takes on a different spin. If you go in, like, I'm going to go dance in my living room for 30 minutes and I'm going to sweat and I'm going to feel great. It has a totally different spin and a different outcome as well. So that's one of the side things that I'm working on. And I'll have mat based flows in there as well. I've been teaching Pilates and Matte based things for, like I said, the better part of 25 years. And that's all very those workouts, I realized they're channeled. I don't play in any of them. Before I go in, I just pay attention to how my body wants to move and how other people in the room want to move. I always tell them to give me feedback because if they don't, we're going to keep going. So it's a very intuitive space. So that's a side project. And then I am a coach now and I work with the subconscious mind and healing for others to find. When you go back to that root, this is a perfect example here. When you go back to the root of something, it's kind of like digging up the root of a tree. I feel like so often in therapy, we pull off different pieces of fruit and another branch just grows back in its place. So when you go back to the inception point and you shed a different light on it, when you have a different perspective, it shifts things. And so that shift is what makes the whole tree dissipate or it makes it look a different way so you can understand things in a different perspective. And that's how you create new neural pathways in the mind. So in doing this work, I'm kind of going off on a tangent, so I apologize. We'll come back around to the other piece of what I do. But in doing this work, I realized where my belief that suicide or ending my life would bring me relief. And it came from, this is so crazy. So when I was about twelve years old, I can remember my parents had gone out and for the night, like for my dad's work or whatever, because they had to be very social. And I was one of those kids that was always so sensitive. Like everybody always told me I was so sensitive because when other people hurt, I felt like I hurt too. And people would say, oh, you're just making it out, all those different things. So I would bottle it up. So I felt like a little, I was kind of like, I felt like any little thing was like dropping a mento in a sprite bottle. I was going to implode. And so I would get to that point. And so I learned at such a young age how to get it out. And I would watch a tear jerker movie. And that was kind of my release, like that. I would let myself cry and be upset if I was watching a movie because I was crying because of the movie. Well, the movie I always chose was this movie, Stealing Home, and it's a movie with Mark Harmon and Jody Foster, and it's told mostly in flashbacks. And Jody Foster is a babysitter who ends her life and she leaves her ashes for the little boy, who is now an adult boy, played by Mark Harmon, to figure out where to spread her ashes. And he spreads them in the ocean. Like he goes through all the different flashbacks of memories and trying to figure out where she would feel most at peace. And he ends up spreading them in the ocean so that she can fly as high as she ever wanted to be. And so for me, that release, that was my comfort. That was how I found comfort when watching that movie. Because it would let called it the Floodgates. And it was just like a night where I would just cry and I could get it out of my system and I'd be good for a couple of weeks and then I'd start to feel it build up again. But that was the inception point for me was in that movie and in the relief I found in that movie. So I wasn't born that way. I wasn't born thinking there was some relief in that. And once I realized that was the inception point, I don't want to say that that was the exact moment where I was like, okay, it's no longer an option. Because that was probably a year after it was no longer an option. But finding that inception point gave me such a sense of peace to understand why I felt the way that I felt and that it wasn't something I wasn't born with. A defect of thinking that this was an option, there was a reason why there was an emotional attachment to the outcome.
Mahara Wayman [00:25:19]:
And you as a little girl, that's what made sense in the moment. Yes. I think even with my clients, clarity is everything. And to your point, when you can get to the root and sometimes it's as simple as I'll ask a client, they'll share something with me that's happened in this moment, and that's causing distress. And I'll say, have you ever felt like that before? And they'll go, yeah. And I'll go, well, let's think back when and it's really amazing when we give ourselves permission, our inner wisdom, as you said earlier, we know our inner wisdom comes up, and there's always and I've experienced it myself, there's always a beginning, there's always an incident. And when you can look at it through the eyes of a grown up woman, as you are today, through the eyes of total love, like, if we were to take away the judgment from that experience, what actually happened, I refer to it in my work as being like Colombo. Just the facts. Like, take away the story and just look at the facts. Oh, well, the facts are I was yelling like a banshee and my mother got upset. That's the fact. The story I told myself was I wasn't a good child because I got yelled at. I'm just pulling that out of the air.
Anne [00:26:46]:
No, I love that, though. That's such a good yes, exactly. Yes.
Mahara Wayman [00:26:49]:
As humans, as spiritual beings, having a human existence, we are in judgment constantly unless we are aware of it, and we can step back and we can go, Wait a second, what's that? So I love that you recognize that and that you found that piece. What else do you do? Because you said there were two things. You got off on a tangent. You said, I'm going to come we.
Anne [00:27:14]:
Always come back around. Yes. I'm an energy healer, and by saying it's funny, one of my mentors, I overheard her saying that I was one of the most powerful healers she's come in contact with, and in that moment, it was like, wow. She's like, you knew that. You were supposed to be listening. You should know this. So again, the permission and what we tell ourselves, but energy healings, for me, I use sacred geometry, so it's a little different than reiki. A lot of people are familiar with Reiki, and using sacred geometry allows me to do the healings remotely, in essence, so I can do them from anywhere in the world. I've done healings for people all over the world and some of my clients. I had one gentleman who had had PTSD nightmares from his time in the service for the past 15 years, and he's been nightmare free for almost two since he had a healing with me, and that was just one healing. I've had people come in with physical ailments. I've had somebody. Come in with a broken bone and trust me, y'all, I understand. For me to say I healed a broken bone sounds absolutely wackadoo. I get it. Like, I promise, I understand how crazy that may sound until you've seen it for yourself, but it's amazing. Our bodies are designed to heal themselves. We just have so much programming and so many things that get put into place where we start to doubt ourselves and we don't give ourselves permission. I love that, giving yourself permission to be that powerful, but every single one of us is that powerful.
Mahara Wayman [00:28:58]:
Because you're right. When you said that, I had a little jolt inside going, oh my gosh. But for me, because I live in this world as well, I'm very familiar with energy healing. What I'm hearing is you facilitated your client to harness their energy and make a shift in their body. Is it your energy that's making a difference or is it their own energy that they're harnessing?
Anne [00:29:23]:
It's actually divine energy that I harness and channel for them, for their body to heal using sacred geometry. So it's some of my energy, but it's mostly divine energy. When I say divine, it can be whatever you believe. People ask me questions and I'm like, there is no right or wrong. That's the hard part that I have with conventional religion is that it seems people are just battling each other over which one's right. And at the end of the day, everybody's right because it's what you believe.
Mahara Wayman [00:29:57]:
So here's a question for you. And I didn't know we were going to be talking about this, but I'm sure people are asking this themselves. Is their belief necessary.
Anne [00:30:14]:
For energy work or for life in general, just for.
Mahara Wayman [00:30:18]:
The work that you do?
Anne [00:30:21]:
No, it will work no matter what. It will work no matter what. And it's amazing because I've seen both. I've seen people who full on believe and I've seen people who are like, there's no way this is going to help me. And I've had them come back and say, oh my goodness, my life is completely changed.
Mahara Wayman [00:30:42]:
I had something I've never done energy work. But I do remember I did a past life regression when I was in my twenty s. I went into it as the biggest non believer. In fact, I treated it like kind of like a joke, like just a lark, some payment. 30 odd years ago, 35 years ago, I spent $40 for a past life regression. And I was so cerebral at the time, I'm like, I'm going to catch you out. I am going to make sure, I'm going to pay attention. I'm going to make sure that I'm very clear with what I say. I'm not going to give you any hints. And when I left there, I'm like, okay, I believe. Wow. And truthfully, I make light of it. But regardless of whether my memories are my memories, which is what she thinks, she didn't record it either. She said, I don't need to record this because I'm just helping you to remember something. And once you remember, you remember. But I realized that regardless of whether it was a true memory and this was, you know, I recounted some past lives that were most affecting my current life, or I was just a highly imaginative 20 something year old. Both options were amazing because I came up with this in the moment or, wow, okay, so life really does operate this way. That's so interesting. So to me, it was win win once I let go of my determination to prove her wrong.
Anne [00:32:22]:
Yes.
Mahara Wayman [00:32:23]:
So a little side note there people I'm not quite sure how that made its way into this podcast, but it did. Okay, so you are a fitness coach. You help people through experience, energy shifts and joy through movement.
Anne [00:32:42]:
Yes, I still do that.
Mahara Wayman [00:32:43]:
You also are an energy healer, so you're able to channel the divine energy through how did you refer to it geometric?
Anne [00:32:54]:
Through sacred geometry.
Mahara Wayman [00:32:55]:
Sacred geometry to help clients with any manner of challenge, or is it typically something that's pain, like.
Anne [00:33:07]:
Any type of challenge that they may have? And one of the big things that really was a huge game changer for me with energy work that anybody can try who's listening to this, and it plays into the healings also, it's your intention and it plays into my workouts too, your intention. So setting intentions is one of those things. You can think of it as a prayer. To some extent, it is a prayer, and people have been praying for I'm not counting time, but you know what I mean. So when you set an intention going into the healing, I usually set the intention to heal what is ready to be healed for the highest good of all. So our healing journey, it's kind of like an onion layer, and so it's never fully done, which is one of those things you're like, yeah, I just really want to have one session and then be done. And so certain things can be handled in one session, but they're all different layers of the onion. And so setting intentions is something that I do before my healings. I do it before my coaching sessions. I do it when I start my day, even to set intentions for how the day is going to be or how I'm going to sleep. And it's not something that I want someone to hear and say, oh, gosh, it's another thing that I need to do or that I did wrong. Like in the beginning when I started learning about intentions and I would forget to set an intention for the day, and I'm like, oh, great, mess that one up again. I didn't set an intention for today. So this is not for somebody to think, oh, I need to do one more thing and not do it right. So it's just when you feel called to set the intention or to start your day. And it's literally as simple as saying, I'm setting the intention to feel amazing today or to see the magic of the universe today or to feel whole today, whatever the intention, whatever feeling you want to feel. And so with my workouts, that's something that I have people do in the beginning. I have them pause for a second before we start, whether we're on the mat or whether we're dancing, and we set an intention. How do you want to feel when the workout's done? What do you want to feel like? Genuinely ask yourself, because so many of us get stuck in the shoulds and I shouldn't feel this or I should feel that. And the reason why all these things get funky and you start to feel like life is happening to you instead of for you is because of all those emotions that get stuck and all those things that get trapped. And that's where people they call them energetic blocks, and there's a variety of reasons why they come in, but a lot of it has to do with emotions. And I feel like intention is the most beautiful way to go back to those emotions, those raw emotions that you want to feel on a daily basis.
Mahara Wayman [00:35:37]:
I love that, and it ties really closely into something that I feel strongly about, which is the power of language, I think, that don't know how we we only know I feel stress, for example, and I teach my clients to say, let's go a little bit deeper. Is it stress? Is it anger, disappointment? Fear? There's so many other beautiful words in the English language, in all languages. So I think that, to your point, setting an intention is a beautiful way of declaring to the world, to the universe, to the spirits that stand on either side of you, how you want to feel that way. And learning having the language to explain it articulate. It is really beautiful and powerful as well. Okay, yoga, dance, setting intentions, an energy healer. Did I miss anything?
Anne [00:36:32]:
A coach also? Yes, a coach.
Mahara Wayman [00:36:36]:
Can you share with us one of the most beautiful AHA, realizations that you've had as a coach? When you think of where you have been to where you are today oh, my goodness.
Anne [00:36:53]:
And this may make me cry when I wake up. In my days now, if I had known even an inth of how I feel on a daily basis now was possible five years ago, it would have changed so much because I felt so stuck, I felt so deep in my rabbit hole. And just even the idea that it was possible that I didn't have to live like that, that things could be better, or that I could feel like I'm in some it's not even a control thing. It's feeling joy, and it's feeling alive.
Mahara Wayman [00:37:34]:
Would you also say it's feeling connected.
Anne [00:37:36]:
Oh, yes, absolutely.
Mahara Wayman [00:37:39]:
Say that word. Because what you described and what I've experienced in my own life as a mom, as a sister, as a wife, as a daughter, is when I am feeling at my lowest, I feel alone. When I am feeling my best, I feel connected. And as human beings, spiritual beings, having a human existence, we want that. We come from connection. And I think as human beings, we are constantly searching for it. And I think we're in a time right now where, for lots of different reasons, so many of us are feeling disconnected. I'm the only one. We feel alone, and we feel judged and all of these things, and for lots of reasons, which is why I'm so pleased to do the work that I do. I'm so pleased that you're doing the work that you do, because everybody matters. And one of the things that I talk about quite a bit is the fact that it's good to be badass. The first step to being badass is recognizing that you matter. So I'm wondering, and can you share with us a couple of things that you do to help you feel badass and authentic and happy in your skin so our listeners can kind of go, okay, I can do that too?
Anne [00:38:59]:
Yes. Okay. So one of the this is the most simple thing that just absolutely works every time. I take a salt bath every day. I take a salt bath every day.
Mahara Wayman [00:39:13]:
What's the salt bath?
Anne [00:39:15]:
It's a bath with some Epsom salts. Like, literally go to Target, buy some Dr teals soaking salts, and I take a salt bath every day. A salt bath will give you, essentially, an energetic cleanse.
Mahara Wayman [00:39:27]:
I did not know that.
Anne [00:39:28]:
Yes. And if you don't have time to take a bath or you don't have a bathtub, stick your feet in it, because a lot of what we absorb throughout the day, we take it to bed at night, and then we don't sleep well, and then we carry that through with us to the next day. And so when you do the salt bath, or you soak your feet and just set the intention that you want to release anything that is not for your highest good, and then refuel yourself with love.
Mahara Wayman [00:39:54]:
Should we do the salt bath at night in that case?
Anne [00:39:57]:
I've had many a meltdown in a salt bath when I was at my lower point. I can tell you a very cathartic cry in a salt bath. You feel so much better than just if you do it in your bed. So if you're in a low point and you need an extra comfort or a hug and you don't have one around, you go to the salt bath. But yes, at night is a good protocol. Music is the other one. What are you listening to? How does the music make you feel? Does it make you feel like dancing around your kitchen? Or does it make you feel like you want to go cry and watch Netflix? Start paying attention to the things that are in your day to day life, that may have become habits that feel good because they're familiar and they're comforting, but they may not be serving you so much. So I realized I had some songs that were kind of like trigger songs for me a few years ago, and they would take me right back to that sad place. And although it was wonderful to release the tears, it wasn't the type of sadness that I wanted to linger. And so I realized I had look at kind of what you identify with different things, like how you identify those things. And getting outside, walking barefoot in the grass. I had one person who's like, I'm allergic to grass. And I'm like, all right, well, we're not going to walk barefoot in the grass then. It doesn't mean that it's for everybody, but walking barefoot in your grass just when you're having a moment, if you just need to just take yourself outside and get your feet barefoot in the grass. And the last one. So this was the biggest game changer for me, and I have a lot of clients who do this, and it's kind of more of a proactive thing than a reactive thing. You can use it reactively, but it's a little bit more proactive. And it's called square breathing. So it's essentially breathing in your nose for three counts, five counts. The number of counts doesn't matter so much. Don't focus on that too much, but breathing in through your nose, holding your breath at the top for the same count. So if you breathe in for three, hold at the top for three, exhale out your mouth for three, and then hold for three. So you see how it kind of makes a square, and that essentially resets your nervous system. So you do that just three to five times. Whatever intuitively feels right. And this is a way for me to introduce kind of our own self power to people who really are like they've never heard of energy work. They're not really into coaching. They don't really need to help, but yet they're coming to me for help, but they really don't know what to do. It's that bridge moment, and I had someone do it, and he called me the next day. He's like, I feel like my computer, I just rebooted it after being on for a week, and I feel so much better. He's like, I don't understand. That was so simple. And it sounds so simple, but it really is so powerful. And so what I'll have people do, and I did this in the beginning, was I would set an alarm on my phone. I would set an alarm on my phone, and I would say, Breathe, lovey. And that sorry. That brings me to another thing, how you talk to yourself like what do you call yourself? I used to say all kinds of mean things myself in my head. And I realized for the people that I love, I would call them lovey or I would call them honey or I would call them whatever. And so I realized I wasn't calling myself that. And that shift really changed things. So in my alarms on my phone, I would say, go outside and breathe lovey. Just take a pause. And it wasn't a reminder like, oh, you haven't done this, you haven't done this. You're late for this. But it was a reminder that was for me. And I was, like, coming back in to give myself a hug and just do it. Not because anything was going wrong, but just to feel kind of in that moment and anchor me back in that moment. And I've had clients do this. And one of them, he was so funny. He's like, I was running around Costco, and all of a sudden my phone started going off and I didn't know what was going on. And then I look at my phone and it was like, breathe lovey. Because I set the alarms on the phone for him, and he was like, oh, yeah, none of this is that important. And he just kind of felt himself kind of wash into the, you know, into the floor below him. So it's so there are ways that don't have to cost a lot of money, that don't have to make you feel uncomfortable, that you will feel a difference right from the get go the first time you do it.
Mahara Wayman [00:44:27]:
Oh, so good. I love all this juicy goodness. And what I'm hearing, and I hope the listeners are hearing as well, is that when we slow down, take a breath, recognize how amazing we are, and have some gratitude, have lots of gratitude for everything in our life. It does make an energetic shift. We do feel better for it. And to your point, this isn't about spending a lot of money and looking outside for the fix. This is really about slowing down and looking inside. Yes, epson salt is an outside thing and put in your bath, and it really can affect the energy and pull some toxic energy out of you. And if nothing else, it's fun to have a bash like bubble bath. And those are great. But really, everything that you've been sharing, Anne, has been an invitation to go inside, to do what we do naturally. To smile, to love, to laugh, to dance, to connect, share. Those are all really simple, beautiful reminders that we are spiritual beings, having a human existence. And this, too, can pass. Having a thought doesn't make it a fact. It's a thought.
Anne [00:45:53]:
It's the weight we give it. And that was kind of a big thing for me when I realized, because I did go to therapy and I loved my therapist. She was wonderful, but I felt like I was just feeding the problems instead of going more towards solutions because at the level of fact there wasn't a solution that she could give me. It wasn't that. But I think to your point, the answers are within, but we're taught so often that we don't have the answers, that we have to seek them elsewhere. And really, when you dial back in, everything that you need yourself is within you. And that's what, as a coach, my role is just to kind of help you find that and help you navigate and feel that trust within yourself and that belief in yourself.
Mahara Wayman [00:46:39]:
Beautiful. So proud of the work that you're doing and so excited to hear more about it. Thank you so much for joining me today. But before we sign off, what's something that nobody knows about you, or most people don't know about you that they would be surprised to know?
Anne [00:46:59]:
Well, you said that in the intro. Most people don't realize I have a computer science degree. Literally people who've met me now, like, in the last three or four years, and then they find out I have a degree in computers and then I worked in the accounting industry for 25 years, and it literally has stopped people in their tracks, because now I paint and I draw and I take care of my kids and I coach people. Things that I do now are not very geared towards the left brain and that was my world for so long. So that, yes, you can have multiple facets of your brain in use at the same time.
Mahara Wayman [00:47:39]:
I love it. I'm surprised too. I would never have guessed that. So it was a bit of a surprise to me as well. Can you share with the listeners how they can contact you? Of course. Guys in the show notes, you'll have all of the links to connect with her. But Anne, what's the best way for people to reach out and spend some time with you?
Anne [00:47:57]:
You can reach out to me through my website, which is www dot revolutionarywellness gov. Or you can reach out to me on Instagram, which is my full name. Anne Bishop Almehta on Instagram. You can shoot me a message over there. But the biggest thing that I want people to understand is that it doesn't matter where you are, it doesn't matter what you've done, what you haven't done. If you have any inkling in you that wants to feel better in your days, it's possible. It is 100% possible. You're not stuck, you're exactly where you're supposed to be.
Mahara Wayman [00:48:31]:
100% possible. And I want everyone to take away that. Anne is, as you can well imagine and believe she is badass. And it's not computer degree, it's not because she lives in this beautiful home. It's because I think she has recognized her strength and her beauty in who she is, challenges and all. And we all are, we're all children of the universe, we're here for a reason. And we matter. We all matter. So I hope you're having an amazingly badass day. Those of you that are listening, thank you for joining us today as I chatted with my friend Anne and look for the show notes for a way to connect with her. Thanks, everyone. We'll see you next time.
Anne [00:49:15]:
Thank you.
