August 19, 2025 • 62 mins
In this episode, Katherine Romero, a PhD candidate in clinical psychology, discusses her unique approach to mental health that integrates traditional therapy with holistic practices such as Reiki and somatic breathwork. The conversation explores Catherine's journey from a career in digital marketing to pursuing a PhD in psychology, her experiences with energy healing, and her vision for a more inclusive and effective mental health practice. Catherine emphasizes the importance of combining Western and Eastern healing modalities to create a comprehensive approach to mental health that addresses the whole person.
https://www.healingmyshitproject.com/past-life-trauma/
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Episode Transcript
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(00:13):
Alright, hello health heads.
Welcome and thank you for checking in to this dose of the healthcare uprising.
I'm your producer in the back, Jeremy Carr, here with your host in the front row, HeatherPierce.
So what's on our agenda for today, Heather?
This is a fun one.
Um, this is maybe, maybe one of Jeremy's favorites.
I don't know, but, uh, we are meeting with today, Catherine Romero.
(00:37):
She is a PhD candidate in clinical psychology.
She is a somatic breathwork and Reiki practitioner as well.
And the reason we've got Catherine coming on today to talk with us is because she is goingabout uh
getting this PhD in clinical psychology and how she intends to treat her patients in adifferent way.
(01:02):
mental health and kind of mainstream mental health doesn't work for everybody.
And she really has the, this kind of holistic approach, the somatic breath work, the Reikiuh to combine that with the clinical side of psychology to support her patients
differently.
And so she's just, she's taking a new approach.
(01:22):
And so this is really,
This is the epitome of what we try to talk about here on The Uprising.
This is a new and innovative way to deliver mental health therapy and support.
Yeah, you talked me into it.
It's one of my favorites already just from that.
So without further ado, let's hear our conversation with Catherine Romero, the Reiki inbreathing special.
(01:56):
Hi and welcome to the healthcare uprising podcast.
Today we've got Katherine Romero.
She is a PhD candidate in clinical psychology, a somatic breath work and Reikipractitioner.
Thank you so much for joining us today, Katherine.
Welcome to the show.
Thanks, Heather.
Thanks, Jeremy.
I'm so excited.
I'm so excited for this discussion.
I think it's going to be really juicy.
(02:16):
This one's gonna be fun.
juicy.
I like that.
We're our breathwork arc right now, so this is a fun one,
We are in full disclosure, Catherine and I know each other.
We serve on a board for a local group here in Flagstaff called the She-Wolf Project.
We howl.
(02:36):
It sounds like a conservancy or something.
No.
In serving uh sisterhood,
Conserving sisterhood.
Yeah, I like that.
Yeah.
Yeah, we just actually finalized our mission yesterday.
So I'll have to make sure that we link out to the she will socials and maybe at the in theshow notes for this one to give us a little exposure.
(02:57):
But yeah, so so Catherine and I know each other.
So em another friend of the show, because you're a friend of mine.
Maybe some howling exercises at the end.
we could totally howl.
Yeah, Jeremy's into this.
He's like, let's, let's do that.
So with that most creative opening of a show ever, Catherine, let's start with your story.
(03:22):
So you're a PhD candidate in clinical psychology.
You did not come to this in the most traditional sense.
You've got an interesting background.
A lot of other things like tell us the story.
How did you get here?
Yeah, you're so right about that.
I did not come about this in any traditional way and going forward will not be in anytraditional way either.
(03:43):
um So I've had a whole 20 plus year career in business in digital marketing specifically,and I always thought I would be a therapist.
em And when I was doing my undergrad, I did an internship and I don't know, I feel like insome level the internship broke me.
in terms of, it was at a community mental health center and it just really revealed to mehow broken the system is and how harmful it can be for so many people.
(04:13):
So I ran the complete other direction for 20 plus years into business.
And then somewhere along the pandemic with that forced kind of slow down, the like quiet,the isolation, uh the calling to get back into therapy got really, really loud.
And it was also really inconvenient because I have a mortgage, I'm in my forties, I havekids.
(04:38):
Going back to grad school is, I run a digital marketing agency.
I had all these reasons for not doing it.
And once I let go of all those reasons and did it, yeah, the rest is history.
Went in full blast.
Wow.
So what is your undergrad in then?
It is psychology.
And so you got your undergrad, then you got into marketing.
(05:00):
Yeah, I stayed at my university an extra year.
So I did the five year degree undergrad because I was too far in to change my major, butalso like not ready to go out in the real world if I wasn't going to be a therapist, which
is what I thought I was going to be since like age of 13.
Yeah.
So I stayed around, some business classes, fell in love with digital marketing and yeah,followed that path for quite a long time.
(05:23):
So, and then you came back around.
like life kind of coming a bit full circle for you with like a huge detour and then comingback into this clinical therapy kind of therapist kind of profession.
then you went and got your masters, I assume.
Yeah, so it was like a bachelor's to PhD program, or it is still in it.
(05:45):
So you get a master's along the way.
It's a non-conferring degree, which means you can't get licensed with it or anything likethat.
um But it's a step on the way to the PhD.
Okay.
And when did you, when did you start that?
Was that right?
Was that when around COVID when, when you went into that program?
Yeah.
Yeah, it was in COVID.
(06:05):
was 2022 when I started the program.
It was Thanksgiving morning, 2021, when I was like, OK, let me just see what this gradschool thing could look like.
I don't even know if there's a program out there for me.
I even know what the costs are these days.
If anything, it wouldn't be till next fall when they admit students.
And so I'm doing Google searches on Thanksgiving morning.
I come across the program that I'm in.
(06:28):
hits.
this like deep level of resonance with me.
was like one of those light bulb moments and like goosebumps and the full, the full justdeep resonance.
I was like, well, let me submit the contact form.
I was interviewing with the department chair a couple days before Christmas.
A couple days after Christmas, I got the thumbs up that I was in and that I was startingclasses in January.
(06:50):
So it just moved so quickly once I decided and kind of committed.
Wow.
That's sick.
cool.
That's the universe.
That's how know you're on the right track.
Yeah.
And I think if it had happened in any different way, I would have talked myself out of it.
And right.
I all these reasons.
I was building an agency.
We were successful.
All these reasons not to do it.
(07:10):
So, okay, so you get into the program and so funny on the show, it's like pre COVID post,it's just in our lives.
Like, was it before COVID?
my God, COVID like screwed me up.
I don't even know what year it is anymore.
Four times, yeah.
The olden days, yeah.
The PC and AC, right?
BC and AC is now before COVID now.
(07:33):
After COVID.
Yeah.
So it's kind of funny because so many, so many people that come on the uprising aresitting in this chair behind this microphone because of COVID.
I would not have started podcasting if it wasn't for COVID.
I was a tour guide.
I'd still be a tour guide.
It's the good there's good things, right?
And so you went down this path.
(07:53):
Your life kind of comes back full circle back to this kind of space that you wereinterested in originally.
But my my question, though, too, is that were you doing the somatic breath work and or theReiki at this time as well?
Or did that kind of come in around the same time?
Like, what was what was that?
(08:13):
I Reiki came, the Reiki was in fall 2021.
And so it was around the same time where I was like, well, maybe this grad school thingcould be for me.
Let me just see what it looks like.
Right.
So they were around the same time.
And then the breath work training and certification came in 2023, I think is what it was.
So it came after I started the degree.
(08:35):
And fun fact, we just did an interview with Ryan and Shelby from Unearth Your Soul.
Love them.
And Ryan and you were in the same program together?
Yeah, we went through somatic breathwork training through the same group.
We weren't in the same like cohort, but we went through the same group.
And so we both have that somatic background.
(08:56):
As you know, he's gone and done other things and created his own breathwork modality.
Yeah, but we both have roots in the somatic side of it.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, super exciting.
I love that we have you and we have our conversation with them.
So there's a little bit of crossover there.
So.
um So, OK, with that, so we got the foundation, you got clinical psychology going on,you're doing Reiki, you're doing somatic breath work.
(09:26):
So we're going to like tackle this one by one, think, or maybe not.
Conversation is going to zigzag everywhere.
Jeremy's going to throw some surprises in.
So I think you said you started with Reiki earlier.
That was kind of your first kind of foray into the space outside of your desire to be inthe clinical psychology.
(09:49):
So how did that come to be?
And can you talk about what Reiki is too?
I mean, I think a lot of people don't understand it.
What is its purpose?
Reiki is one modality of energy healing.
basically you can tap into somebody's energy field.
uh And it sounds super woo woo.
(10:09):
I hate that term, but it sounds super woo woo to tap into somebody's energy field, right?
But there's actually some science behind it.
More modern science is coming up and.
uh
kind of catching up with what ancient wisdom has known forever, right?
But now energy fields are like a measurable empirical thing.
So that pleases Western science, but it's a Japanese modality that I think started takingmomentum in the U.S.
(10:33):
in like the 50s, somewhere around the 1950s.
think it's- That's far back.
Yeah, it's been around in Japan for, I don't know how long, but Westerners are slower toadopt so many things.
So yeah, the real 1950s, and it's kind of spread from there.
Don't quote me on that.
I don't know that exactly.
uh But so it's a healing modality where you tap into somebody's energy field.
(10:55):
We have like seven layers to our energy fields and they emanate out from us, right?
So we have like auras, it's a commonly known one, right?
And we can have weaknesses or vulnerabilities in any one of these energy fields or energylayers.
And they can be different depending...
where on the body that energy field is experiencing that weakness or that vulnerability.
(11:18):
So people get uh attuned to Reiki, to the flow of the energy healing.
So uh I'm attuned at level two, which means I can perform it.
I just can't teach other people how to do Reiki, right?
That's a whole different level.
So level two, I can do Reiki sessions on other people.
I can also do it on myself.
(11:38):
And cool fun fact, a little bit of a side note is Reiki isn't only for people.
can do it on pets, can do it on plants.
can do it on plants.
Everything's got an energy field.
Everything has an energy field.
You can even do it on like buildings and houses and things like that.
So it's pretty cool.
And you don't have to be like face to face with the person.
(11:59):
You can do it over remote healing or virtual healing.
anyway, I've always been interested in more like the healing arts, the more alternativeways to heal.
uh And so I didn't set out directly to be a Reiki master.
It was the person that I
Sorry, no, to be a Reiki healer.
not a Reiki master.
(12:19):
There's a big difference.
Not yet.
Not yet, right.
But the person I did my training with, Kat Fowler, she's amazing.
um It was one of her requirements to become an Akashic Records reading reader, which is awhole, Akashic Records is a whole separate thing.
We can go down that rabbit hole if we want to.
Okay.
um
That's whole other discussion.
(12:41):
a whole fascinating discussion.
could talk to you guys all day about the Akashic Records.
Anyway, so yeah, so I never set out to be a Reiki healer, but it was a useful and is auseful set of tools that I have picked up along the way.
So I'm somewhat familiar with the concept of Reiki.
My mom did it before she retired.
(13:02):
um But I've never heard of it being done on objects like that.
The pet and the plants thing didn't surprise me because they're living things.
But when you do Reiki on a house, what is it you're actually trying?
What am I trying to say?
Like aligning the energies of a house.
What is that going to, is it just going to make it like,
(13:24):
feel better inside kind of thing?
I mean, could it actually help it stand stronger longer and things like that?
what's actually what's the actual like application in action in that?
Yeah, so a couple things come to mind to answer that question.
One, houses are usually built with, well, always built with raw materials, right?
(13:48):
And at some level there's wood in those.
And at one time, the wood was a living thing.
So that has some kind of an energy field that way, right?
So you're kind of rebalancing or recalibrating kind of the energy of the construction ofthe house.
The other thing is that uh if you're buying a house that's been around for any length oftime, people have already lived in there.
And so it's almost like an energy clearing.
(14:09):
Like saging.
Yeah, kind of.
Yeah.
So you're kind of getting out the old stuff, kind of going room to room, seeing what feelsoff and kind of moving that through so that, um you know, the owners don't experience
strange things or paranormal things or.
Yeah, I've staged pretty much every single house I've moved into.
(14:30):
So yeah.
yeah.
Then the whole like East, West, North, South, like.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We do weird stuff here up on this mountain.
We do awesome stuff on this mountain.
We do awesome stuff on this.
My friends back East think I'm weird.
I'm like, hey, know, just living the West life.
uh
my friends back east thought I was weird before I moved here.
(14:53):
I just found the right place.
We're all in good company.
So, okay.
But like Reiki for, and I've had Reiki done on me actually not too long ago.
Shelby, fact, oh did Reiki during uh the liquid breathwork session that I did with her andRyan not that long ago.
So um can you kind of talk about what Reiki kind of feels like for somebody or like whatthe in-person maybe just because that's probably more common?
(15:19):
Yeah.
What it feels like for the person receiving Reiki.
Yeah, like what kind of happens?
em Yeah.
So in a very traditional sense, it doesn't have to go this way, but in a very traditionalsense, they kind of lay on like what looks like a massage table.
Um, and then the healer kind of comes and doesn't really put hands on the person unlessthe person is consented to that and there's a need, but there's usually not a need, but
(15:40):
the healer, um, kind of opens the container, so to speak.
We ask for the flow of Reiki to come through and then the person receiving Reiki usuallydoesn't feel much.
They're kind of just laying there and in the moment they might not feel anything.
Usually what's reported afterwards is like, Oh, I feel lighter or more energetic or thatnagging pain that I can't get rid of is gone all of sudden.
(16:02):
And sometimes in the session, you can feel things too.
You'll feel like heat or you'll feel tingling or you might feel emotions come up and youmight want to laugh for no reason or cry for no, no reason.
I'm putting that in air quotes, right?
So those are some of the experiences that the person receiving might feel, but more oftenthan not, you don't notice it until after.
(16:25):
After you kind of go back into the real world and things just feel a little different.
And had you had you received Reiki therapy prior to having the interest in that and that'skind of what got you interested in it and your kind of general interest in the healing
arts.
Yeah, I don't know what got me interested in the healing arts.
Honestly, I think I've just always been fascinated.
(16:47):
kind of approach it a little bit like a scientist.
Like, let me, let me try this thing.
It sounds cool.
It sounds interesting.
Sometimes it sounds like bullshit from being honest, but let me try it and just see whathappens.
Right.
Um, and so Reiki was one of those things that were the very first time I tried it.
Uh, I was like, no, I just paid a whole lot of money and I don't feel any different.
the first time I tried it, I was in Sedona with, course.
(17:11):
Of course.
And the Reiki healer afterwards, you do a little bit of like a uh kind of post-gameanalysis type thing, right?
Something very light and gentle.
The Reiki healer afterwards looked so drained and she looked pale and she looked worn out.
And I didn't feel any different.
(17:32):
And she was like, just mind blown that I didn't feel any different because she said thatmy adrenals were really taxed.
And that's like, was kind of reflecting that back to me and how she showed up at the endof the session, just completely wiped out.
Anyway, so was a little funny story.
And I was like, I don't feel any different.
This didn't work.
Just paid a whole lot of money.
(17:52):
But I did it two or three more times.
And with that.
Tough being the healer sometimes.
Yeah, yeah, she yeah, I feel bad.
Told her I'm Sorry for training you.
oh Yeah, but two more three two or three more times after that I did try it and felt nicechanges.
(18:14):
It's an interesting overlap that the clinical psychology and the energy work, know, justkind of philosophically speaking, those two industries kind of clash a little bit, I would
think.
Is it hard to overlap those things?
Do you bring them into each other on some level?
And like, do you find people accepting of your other side in those two sides?
(18:39):
Yeah, it's a...
Hmm, that's a good question.
oh
Because clinical psychology is so textbook and academic oriented.
Does it accept the real nature of Reiki?
Does it see that as a real thing or does it just see it as the woo?
(19:02):
The woo woo.
Yeah, it depends.
There's like multiple answers to that.
Like, obviously on an individual level, think both both coexist beautifully together,right?
Not just Reiki, but clinical psychology and ancient, any kind of ancient healing modality.
They exist beautifully together.
And I think they need each other.
When we look at it from like the science community, they don't play well together.
(19:26):
In general, that's a very general statement.
I'm doing a lot of generalization there, right?
But if you were to go to like,
a CBT, a cognitive behavioral therapist, who's very, if you align with that theoreticalorientation, you're typically very evidence-based.
It's all about the empirical science.
(19:46):
It's all about what is published in the Western journals.
And that is the gold standard, right?
If you go to one of those types of folks and you say, hey, I have this modality over herethat can do a lot of great, really great work to somebody's energy field, no.
you're going to get stoned and they're not buying it.
Those two don't exist well.
(20:06):
And so that's, that's to be said of, of most modalities within therapy.
And I want to say to you know, Catherine, part of the reason we're having this chat withyou is because you are going to do things different, right?
Like you see an opportunity to approach supporting people with mental health needing thesupport of a clinical psychologist in a different way.
(20:29):
So I want I'm building up to that.
The why are we here?
Reiki.
So we've learned a little bit about Reiki, right?
And so that's
potentially maybe something you might infuse into your practice.
I'm assuming you might.
So we'll have to, we'll, we'll dig into that a little bit more.
Yeah.
I mean, to do a psychoanalysis session or whatever it might be, and then follow it upwith, with a little energy work at the end.
(20:55):
sounds wonderful to me.
Like that could help you process the emotions that you just brought up in your therapysession.
Exactly.
I just had this dream, this exact dream, what you just said, Jeremy.
I had this dream last night of...
It's not our entire goal in therapy to have somebody have like this big catharticemotional release.
That's not the entire goal, but it's nice when it happens, right?
(21:18):
And it's helpful to the work that we're doing.
But so many times people have a big cathartic release and then they're just completelywiped out and then we just send them on their way.
Right.
When we talk about coming back to like Reiki and the energy fields, the seven layers ofenergy fields, we just left somebody with a big gaping vulnerability that over time we
hope we can help them heal in traditional uh psychology modalities.
(21:42):
But if somebody's having this big release or they're processing anger or uh whateveremotion that they're processing, like in the act of processing it.
if an energy healer was also present in the room or if the therapist was also an energyhealer and pulling out the funky energy out of somebody's energy field, it's like a one
(22:04):
plus one equals three.
Like the level of healing and the level of ah wholeness maybe that we send them back intothe world with is night and day difference from what happens now in mainstream therapy.
Yeah, it could be exponential rather than just adding it up.
actually like, know, it's an order of magnitude more healing.
Yeah.
If when you start putting stuff together, right?
(22:26):
Because we've treated it so separately before, Like it's just here's the clinical stuff,right?
Like here's the therapy, the whatever, know, sit in the chair, pharmaceuticals, whateverit is that you need.
And then, oh, and then here's all this woo woo stuff over here, right?
Yeah, and the two shall never cross paths.
Never the twain shall meet.
(22:48):
So
is like built on the Western medical model, which treats like, we go to a specialist ifwe're having problems with our ears that we can't solve with our GP, right?
We go to a specialist for all kinds of separate things.
There's not just one person who can see your entire system and the root cause and heal itat that level.
(23:10):
And so therapy is much the same way.
Yeah, like treating it in these kind of siloed ways, it doesn't have to be that way.
doesn't have to be that way.
Yeah, and I also want to say that it doesn't, it's not bad because it is that way, right?
It's helpful for so many people.
So many people.
And I think it can leave a lot to be desired for also so many people.
(23:34):
Right.
It's not for everybody.
Um, so there's Reiki, but then I want to talk about somatic breath work a little bit.
So, um, you're a somatic breath work practitioner.
Um, and similar, similar to Reiki, this was, this was a, a program or whatever you gothrough in order to obtain that status and accreditation or how, whatever the terminology
(24:01):
is.
And so can you talk a little bit about, um,
what somatic breath work is and what you do to deliver somatic breath work as apractitioner.
And then, you know, kind of in the same vein as this whole Reiki thing, how somatic breathwork and clinical psychology can exist together.
Because I think this is a good kind of buildup to get to the point of you're going intoclinical psychology with a very different approach because you do believe these both sides
(24:27):
of these worlds can be working together and how you care for your patients and futurepatients.
Yeah, so.
that's such a big question.
And I also want to keep my answer so concise because yet another modality I could talk allday about.
But in any given moment of any given day, we're all doing breathwork, right?
(24:49):
Just by virtue of breathing, we're doing breathwork.
Now, most of us typically breathe pretty shallow and in our chests, right?
And that can be actually really activating for our nervous systems.
So if you ever see somebody who's
kind of starting to freak out about something or they're on the verge of a panic attack,the breaths are up here in the chest.
They're short, they're shallow, and they're rapid, right?
(25:12):
Now we can leverage that to help bring up emotion and move emotion out of our body.
Somatic breath work is all built on this basic premise that our soma, our body, has amemory in and of its own, separate from what our mind has.
Separate from what our nerve or maybe in tandem with what our nervous system has, but ourbody actually carries the memory of all of the stresses and the traumas and the
(25:39):
unprocessed emotions that we've ever carried through our lifetime.
So somatic breathwork leverages the breath to move that out of our body, get it out of oursystem.
And then there's a whole period after a breathwork session that's called integration,where we come and bring it back, bring ourselves, our body, our emotions, our nervous
system kind of back into.
(26:01):
a new homeostasis, a more balanced homeostasis.
So what a breathwork session looks like, somatic breathwork session looks like is umthey're usually about 90 minutes.
The first kind of half of the session is spent really activating the nervous system withthose like more shallow, rapid breaths.
It's so uncomfortable.
(26:21):
Every bone in your body and everything in your mind wants to tell you to stop.
And it's that moment when you can just push through that.
that, whew, shit opens up, right?
So I've been in, uh obviously I've been in lots of breathwork sessions, both facilitatingand as a receiver.
(26:41):
And we call them expressions when emotions and things are coming out, right?
So people express in lots of different ways.
Sometimes it's a laughter.
People start laughing for no reason.
It gets real fascinating when you're doing it a group of people, because there might besomeone over here in this corner of the room laughing their heads off.
There might be somebody else in the corner of the other corner of the room, banging theirfists and processing so much anger.
(27:04):
You might have someone on a mat behind you, crying and processing grief.
You might have someone on the mat next to you, just uncontrollably shaking and you don'tknow what that emotion is, but they're just letting it out of their system, right?
So you have all these expressions.
That's the whole point of somatic breath work is to express it, get it out of your system.
And then the other half of the session is spent.
(27:26):
And I'm much more the breath changes.
You go much more deeper into your into your belly.
You slow it down.
You kind of bring back the parasympathetic nervous system response.
And then the cues are much more like integration, like reminding yourself of yourdivinity, your wholeness, that everything you you need to heal is already within you.
(27:47):
Just like really beautiful, really powerful messages to kind of bring back what you justreleased, not bring it back into your system, but bring back the memory.
of who you really are.
I get goosebumps when I talk about it because it's so powerful.
Yes, I haven't done somatic breathwork.
I've only did liquid breathwork, which is Ryan's very unique modality, which I told him hehad to get trademarked like immediately.
(28:13):
um So I know it's not exactly the same.
So more of like kind of a middle ground where somatic is more outward, right?
Like the yelling, the shake, all that.
Yeah.
Not always what somebody wants to be doing, right?
Like that might not feel comfortable for someone.
But oh
I can tell you from going through liquid breath work.
(28:36):
So it's still that breathing, um the meditative state that you get into.
And I thought I would have the exact opposite experience because I was like, my God, Ihave to like focus so hard on breathing.
um You know that like I won't be able to like chill out, right?
Like I felt like and I had and it was quite the opposite.
(28:57):
So is that similar like with somatic too, because
It does sound therapeutic, right?
It's almost like these rage sessions, right?
Yeah.
A lot recently on this show.
I feel like we keep talking about needing to do rage circles, but.
Rage is so present in the collective right now, understandably so.
(29:19):
is.
Yeah.
I also have done Ryan and Shelby's Liquid Breathwork session, and I think the differenceis, I think both modalities are so beautiful.
Ryan's and Shelby's and Liquid Breathwork feels more gentle.
Mm-hmm.
So I think it does allow for more of that meditative state.
(29:39):
That said, in Somatic Breathwork, I wouldn't call it a meditative state, but I have goneinto altered state of consciousness.
I've actually gone into a past life and felt a connection with somebody in this currentlife.
And like so much was revealed to me in this past life, uh like snippet.
was like I watching it on a movie screen where I just got to watch like one little clip ofit.
(30:00):
So much was revealed to me that I never could have accessed with my rational mind.
I never could have accessed sitting there with a therapist.
I would have sat there forever with a therapist trying to process or trying to figure outthis one piece of the puzzle.
And I did it in a breath work session.
So that's not everybody's experience, but the way you activate the breath definitelyallows for the potential for an altered state of consciousness, just like a psychedelic or
(30:26):
yeah, anything else.
Yeah, because I mean, meditative states literally change your brain chemistry and yourfunctioning physiology and stuff in like real measurable ways.
So yeah, that makes sense that you could induce sort of a psychedelic experience in yourmind without having to take any exterior substances.
(30:46):
We do have that capacity, you know.
That's wild.
So Reiki, somatic breath work, clinical psychology.
Catherine, your goal is to be a PhD in clinical psychology, supporting people, yourpatients in a different way, because mental health in a mainstream approach doesn't work
(31:09):
for everybody, right?
is that kind of, would you say that's kind of your, your, your why is that you want to doit differently?
And is it by incorporating these things?
Can you talk about
Like, what is your idea?
Like, what's your vision for how you're going to show up?
Yeah.
What you just said resonates like in my bones.
(31:29):
It almost resonates in my DNA so much that again, I think mainstream therapy is so helpfulfor so many folks and for so many others.
It does leave a lot to be desired.
And in my own personal lived experience, I was one of those, right?
Multiple times I've gone to therapy for things that I felt have been relatively minor,maybe a little bit of anxiety, a little bit of depression, a little bit of just like a big
(31:51):
adjustment, a big change in life.
And I wasn't sure how to navigate that myself.
But every time I've gone to kind of a mainstream therapist, I'm using air quotes here.
There's lots of different modalities of therapy, but CBT tends to be one of the morepopular ones.
Insurance loves CBT.
And for that reason, it's pretty popular.
uh But I remember my very first therapy experience, I had just left a job that had becomemy whole identity.
(32:18):
And I willingly left this job to go start a new venture.
But with that, I lost.
my identity, lost my social circle, lost like everything that validation, right?
Like all these really big, really important things that I didn't know were wrapped up inthis job.
And the therapist said, okay, um we've got to figure this out in six sessions or maybe itwas eight sessions because that's all insurance would pay for.
(32:43):
If I had spent a longer time with this therapist, we would have been able to, think, peellayers back of this onion that was so...
had roots that went so much deeper than just this job change.
And instead, we just talked about some stuff for six or eight sessions, didn't really feelthat resonance with the therapist and left no better off, right?
(33:05):
And just a really bad taste in my mouth about what therapy was.
Fast forward, oh, I don't know, five, six, seven years.
And I all of a sudden was starting to experience like a little more anxiety than I everhad before.
depression where I never really had that in my family history or in my own history.
(33:26):
And I decided to treat it alternatively because that's just what resonates with me.
And instead of going to a therapist, I instead went to a naturopath.
And through a series of tests over a number of years, we found out that the root cause wasin um a mold toxicity.
It affects the nervous system, which affects the neurotransmitters, and it also affects mystress response system, my HPA access.
(33:50):
And there's a whole downstream effect.
turned on some autoimmune conditions for me that just magnified everything else.
Turned on a bunch of food sensitivity.
Like all this stuff just was happening.
It felt like a waterfall.
Like just things were coming at me like crazy.
But if I sat with a therapist, I never would have like ultimately healed the root cause,which was an over-activated nervous system, over-activated limbic system specifically.
(34:13):
But I have to get into those details.
Because of the all of these like,
It feels like I like a scavenger hunt or something where I'm just like picking up cluesalong the way that when the pandemic hit and the forced slowdown hit, I remember a
specific weekend.
was sitting with my partner contemplating life because if I was being honest with myself,running a digital marketing agency wasn't like lighting my heart on fire anymore.
(34:36):
And I felt really stuck because it was great money and I had cool clients and on paper,everything looked amazing.
Clients that were on Shark Tank and you know, just like so many like
outward um symbols that I was on the right track.
And the specific weekend, I was venting to my partner about how messed up the system is.
(34:58):
And like, just was a whole snowball that got rolling downhill.
And like three hours later, I had literally sketched out on paper what therapy should looklike.
If we're going to treat the whole person and get to the root cause, we've got to treat thewhole person.
And here's what it should look like.
Right.
So I have that vision, actually have it pinned up on my wall.
Um, and that's what I'm, that was the whole point of getting on this journey is to do itdifferently.
(35:24):
And even as I say that, feel a lot of like, am I really going to do this?
Because the science go like this, they butt heads, right?
That's part of what I think I'm here to fix.
The problem with the Western approach is everything is so specialized that you go to atherapist and they have a very specific way of giving you therapy that is only going to
(35:54):
deal with certain problems from certain angle.
know, is unique, you know, just working on your brain doesn't fix your emotions and, youknow, the soulful stuff and the body stuff.
If you can build that approach and have the training and all the different modalities thatyou can fix someone as a whole, the holistic approach to therapy needs to involve the body
(36:21):
and the mind and the soul in my opinion.
uh A lot of clinical psychology is just the mind.
They don't want to deal with the rest of that.
They won't even admit that it's connected.
ah I'm rolling my eyes for those who are just listening to this.
This is so much more in my wheelhouse than the normal episode.
I just realized I actually know what I'm talking about in this one.
(36:43):
You do.
least a little bit.
I don't usually have that feeling on this podcast.
I'm usually kind of lost.
But yeah, I mean, I think it's great.
Just the combination of these worlds, I think is a much needed overlap that has beengrossly overlooked in the past.
Yeah.
I guess is what I'm getting at.
(37:04):
So all the power to you really in my book.
Yeah.
I thought I was going to ask a question, but I was really just ranting.
You're just ranting.
That's okay.
It's good though.
It makes sense.
Do you think from the program that you're in, and this is all through NAU, right?
No, it's not through NAU.
no.
Yeah, it's through Saybrook University.
(37:24):
ah They're based out of California, but it's a really beautiful program for multiplereasons.
One, um really accommodates really nicely the people who are coming back to school withfamilies, with whole careers, with the kids at home.
So it's really accommodating for that.
And also, uh we talk a little bit about theoretical orientations, cognitive behavioraltherapy being one of those.
(37:48):
it's a humanistically oriented program, which really values the lived experience ofsomebody over their thoughts, their behaviors, their, um, emotions.
Uh, I think it values emotions probably pretty equally too.
Right.
So it's a, it's a, it's a massive departure from, um, CBT and it just resonates with me somuch.
(38:10):
And so in that humanistic orientation, there is a lot of encouragement and latitude forexploring.
this framework, this modality of therapy that I'm venturing out to create.
So I've studied everything from like, well, breathwork or holotropic breathwork, which iscreated by Stan Grof, who's a mover and a shaker and kind of the grandfather of
(38:33):
transpersonal psychology, which is where like Western meets kind of Eastern or sciencemeets woo.
He's really pioneered that.
So that kind of thing is encouraged.
I just studied uh
consciousness last summer, went deep, deep, deep into the role that like our ancestrallineage has in the stuff that we face currently in our lifetime.
(38:56):
And like how our unhealed ancestors kind of speak through our mental healthmanifestations.
It's real fascinating.
But if I were to go to like a traditional program, all that stuff would like, I'd have todo all that stuff uh under the table, so to speak.
I couldn't do it out in the daylight.
right now.
that like a DNA memory kind of thing you're talking about or what?
(39:18):
Yeah, it's that epigenetic kind of memory, right?
There's been some fascinating studies by a researcher.
um What is her last name?
Rachel Yehuda, looking at the descendants of Holocaust survivors and looking at the stressresponse systems, different gene expressions, all this fascinating stuff.
(39:41):
And essentially, we can inherit our ancestors' trauma, epigenetically speaking.
But I also looked at it from what the Eastern and Indigenous perspectives had to say,because I think that's just as important, if not more, than Western perspectives.
um And there's a lot in the area of like, a karma, think, is a probably easy way tounderstand it.
(40:05):
We can inherit our ancestors' karma, and it's our duty in this lifetime to heal that, orelse it will be perpetuated, and we won't be able to kind of fulfill our full potential.
um
Yeah, and on and on and on, but that's the gist of it.
Yeah.
So this goes back to the framework that I'm creating, right?
Where like traditional science is, um, our traditional therapy is only dealing with themind.
(40:27):
Like we just talked about, but I think we have these multiple memory systems in ourexistence.
think our mind is one of them.
Sometimes it's not a great record keeper and sometimes it really is.
I think our DNA and our physiology is another system of memory.
When I say system of memory, like
It remembers the stressful things and the trauma and the things that might seem soinsignificant when we were five years old.
(40:51):
But to our five year old selves, it was a big deal.
And so we might not even bring it up in therapy because it just seems so insignificant.
Right.
But our body remembers our physiology remembers our fascia are more of kind of like ourmuscle memory.
Our energy field, I think, has a memory in and of itself.
And then kind of this more like past life and ancestral uh memory.
(41:14):
And I think that whatever we come into a therapist's office could have its roots in anyone of those or all of those.
As opposed to the perspective that traditional therapy has, this is just, well, let's talkabout your childhood and what happened and what you can remember.
And being very general in that statement, too, there's lots of nuance there, but yeah,it's definitely a totally different way.
(41:36):
I was literally going to ask you, like, do you feel like what you're doing is normal, likeacceptable?
it normal?
Not normal, meaning like, is it outside kind of the regular course of study?
But you've shared the school.
You clearly chose it because it supports very much this kind of approach.
(41:59):
So it seems right.
So that.
Was that kind of part of your decision too is because what you're doing is different.
It may not be mainstream and it even sounds like you're developing even maybe somethingreally unique and new.
Don't know anybody.
Whatever you're doing.
(42:20):
When we talk about theoretical orientations, I don't know anybody that holds school likeresearcher or clinician.
When I talk about anybody, like, don't know any of those things that hold this as atheoretical orientation.
In other words, an approach to therapy.
There's people that call themselves integrative and they might match.
They might marry CBT with something like somatic experiencing or internal family systems,or some of these more kind of popular right now uh modalities.
(42:47):
And I guess that's integrative.
But I want to bring the functional medicine doctor in with a therapist, in with theacupuncturist, in with the energy healer, maybe even the astrologist, because there's a
lot in our astrology charts.
And that's a science that has been around for like 3,000 years, if not longer.
That Western science doesn't accept because Western science didn't create it, but isthere.
(43:08):
And that doesn't negate the value of it.
And also bring in maybe breathwork practitioners, right?
All these modalities.
Into this umbrella that's now called therapy.
And so somebody comes into this office, so to speak, they're wrapped around with all ofthese healers looking at their depression, let's say from the 360 degree view and say,
(43:31):
Catherine, that depression or that apathy or that overwhelm you've been experiencing.
Well, your vitamin D levels are low and your inflammation markers are off the chart.
And yeah, you did go through some shit in childhood.
Let's talk about that too.
And let's also fortify your energy field and let's look at what your soul's purpose isthrough astrology or through a caustic record or just something like that.
(43:52):
And let's see how that all fits together.
So now you're tackling this from multiple different angles, hopefully in the same timethat traditional therapy takes now, which sometimes can be three, four or five, 10 years
or longer even.
Um, but in a way that's in my book, maybe more efficient or more effective or it sticks.
(44:14):
I think that's one thing I hear about therapy is it sticks for a little while, but thenthe person kind of comes back around and experiences the same symptoms.
Not always, but that is one of the criticisms.
Wow, that's I mean, can I
you start your practice, please let me know.
That's the one I want to go to.
(44:41):
that will flock to that.
Really do feel it.
And I asked Ryan and Shelby this on, you know, our episode with them.
And I want to ask you the same question.
And I think again, you you're kind of, you know, you become who you're around, you know,who your friends are.
And so, of course, I've always I've been always open minded to this, all these things,right.
(45:03):
em For a long time.
And so then I end up hanging out with people and talking to people who are also into allof these things.
But does it feel like more and more people that aren't in that bubble of being open tosomatic breath work and Reiki and yoga and all the things that we are, you we've been
(45:23):
we've been doing, you know, is kind of normal.
A sound therapy, right?
Like the stuff that kind of freaks people out because it's not Western medicine.
Like, do feel like it's growing in popularity or not even popularity?
Let's say acceptance.
Do you think that's
Changing.
I mean, we talk about ketamine therapy and we did a pretty deep series on ketamine.
(45:46):
Like that's kind of a newer concept, right?
Psychedelic.
So the use of psilocybin, like we haven't jumped into that stuff.
It just seems like it's everywhere.
And I'm like, is it in my everywhere or is it in everybody's everywhere?
Yeah, I do ask myself the same question.
Am I just in an echo chamber?
Because that's what my algorithms show me.
And that's right.
My friends.
That's who my friends are.
And that's what I talk to my my colleagues in my program with.
(46:10):
And so so answering your question with the acknowledgement that I could just be in an echochamber.
But also, when I come out of that and kind of take a higher perspective, I do think thesemore alternative ways of healing are becoming more accepted.
And also, I think part of that.
is that the type of science that us Westerners love, the empirically published in amedical journal, like validated by kind of the big schools and the big names, right?
(46:37):
That type of science, which there's a whole other tangent about how oppressive that canbe, but let me not go there.
That type of science is now starting to come around to psychedelic assisted therapy andthat, oh, psychedelics implant what we've called plant medicines and what Shimano cultures
have called plant medicines forever.
(46:58):
They're like, yes, let's now call it psychedelic assisted therapy and let's publish theefficacy of it.
And now it's valid.
Now it's legit.
Now it's accepted.
Meanwhile, this shit's been happening for centuries.
You're this is not new.
You're just finally getting on the
Alright.
Lab coats to tell us this was good and OK to do.
(47:20):
If we give it a clinical name, it's
As long as we can take credit for it.
Like, let's just call it what it is, right?
I mean, I've done, I've been starting to explore some of the plant based medicine.
I'm a little apprehensive about it.
did my first cacao ceremony not that long ago.
So that's kind of in that plant base.
(47:41):
That was interesting.
But yeah, I have some friends that are getting really into that stuff and, friends who,who need it for PTSD, for healing from stroke, you know, like real legitimate.
clinically diagnosed.
chronic headaches can be healed with psilocybin.
(48:02):
Break the cycle of headaches with it.
It'll be interesting to see what Big Pharma does with this because how can, they don'twant to make money from this.
So either they suppress it and quiet it down and it's just not a thing or they somehowleverage it.
does it become like uh recreational marijuana where it's not so much that the big farm hastheir hands in it, but you have people who are making it a business.
(48:27):
Like now we have dispensaries, right?
Yeah.
Does it become something like that?
I don't know.
The real thing is can they synthesize it?
Because like cocaine's illegal, but Ritalin is synthesized cocaine and meth is illegal,but Adderall is basically just synthesized math.
Yeah.
It's all about synthesize it and make it without the nasty side effects, but it's the samething.
(48:48):
So if they can figure out how to synthesize psilocybin, they will give us the syntheticstuff instead of the natural stuff, which won't work quite as well, but yeah.
But then they can actually like copyright it and make money off it.
That's how.
So much remains to be seen as far as how the big systems might leverage this and servetheir selfish needs.
(49:12):
I also think that a lot remains to be seen in terms of, I don't know, I'm hopeful that thepsychedelic assisted therapy and the path, the trail that it's blazing opens up so much
more acceptance for other alternative therapies also.
Because they're all kind of same, they all wear that same label of alternative therapiesthat science, Western science hasn't yet empirically validated.
(49:37):
But that's the fact.
That's the thing is it hasn't yet empirically validated it.
So I'm hopeful that it is blazing the trail for much more to come.
more really helpful stuff to come.
Yeah, this is a really, I think we have like, we've closed the loop on this.
You are, you're kind of like the next step, right?
(49:58):
Like what you're developing this approach to supporting patients through in a clinicalpsychologist role, along with these kind of other alternative healing methods and you're
building.
So you're building something, right?
And we think maybe it's becoming more acceptable.
(50:23):
And maybe by the time that you are, you are Dr.
Romero and you have your practice in 2026 or however, I think, right?
Like two years until your program.
Yeah, it's going to be maybe 2027 and 2028.
well 2027 that it will become so normal and you'll like Everyone will be like, oh thisthis is just what we do now Yeah
(50:46):
I hope so.
I think it's, I mean, you guys just validated that, but there's going to be this deepresonance with the people that this is for.
And I'm not, I don't pretend to be, I don't pretend to think that I can change the systemfrom the inside out to go fight insurance and lobby at the political level and policy and
all that.
That's I don't know.
(51:09):
Like I can't change it from the inside out.
But if I put my business hat on and look at it like a business,
If I get the consumers to come on board, the systems will change in response to that.
Supply and demand, right?
Let me create so much demand that the supply will have to be there.
They we want this right?
Yeah.
Lead from the front and pull everyone along with you in the end.
Yeah.
Yeah, we're screaming it from the mountaintops.
(51:31):
This is how we want to be treated, right?
Like this is, this is, give the people what they want.
If you can talk, if you can get a, like a, a psychology uh therapy session and thenimmediately get some energy work done and do some breathing before you leave.
Like, why don't we do that already?
(51:53):
To me, that just makes sense.
Yeah.
Yeah, right.
Makes intuitive sense.
Yeah, I love what you're doing there.
It's going to be for the people that this resonates for.
I think so many people are just looking for solutions and they hit such a point ofdesperation because whatever they've tried hasn't worked, but they're willing to try
anything.
Right.
And I think through that, em this could be a powerful way to bring some healing.
(52:18):
I love it.
Well, um I think this is a really great note to end on.
I want to ask you, I mean, I know you don't actually have a business that we cantechnically send anyone to, but you do provide Reiki and somatic breath work.
Is that something that you promote for getting clients that you'd like to share by allmeans?
(52:39):
Yeah, I am creating my personal brand in this space and it's called the healing my shitproject.
Healing my shit project.com.
I love that.
Does that URL, like, it exist?
can I go?
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm updating the website right now.
You'll see some kind of lorem.
(53:00):
Heather goes right to your website when you tell it to her.
It's kind of one of the things she does.
So we can send people to this.
Healing My Ship Project.
Yep, I'll have it updated by then.
That's a good project.
That's the thing ever.
All right, cool.
Well, we'll we'll share that.
(53:20):
And then in the meantime, just continue through your program.
Good luck.
Share all the good things.
I get to see Catherine on regular basis and maybe I'll get some reiki from you.
There you go.
Let's do it.
(53:40):
And there you go, our conversation with Catherine Romero.
Very cool stuff.
was definitely one of my favorites so far.
I, I actually felt like I knew what I was talking about, which is a rarity for me on thispodcast, but let's get to the main points first.
What's our main takeaways there, Heather?
(54:01):
Honestly, think the biggest thing is that um we can have it both ways, right?
We can have it both ways.
We can have the clinical, the real clinical stuff, that Western medicine, and then we canhave the Eastern medicine.
We can have the somatic breath work and the Reiki and the yoga and you know, all thethings that um aren't necessarily um supported by or, you know, from like a clinical
(54:27):
perspective.
um What Catherine,
is basically looking to do is to support her patients in a way that you can have both ofthose things.
And they should both be there.
It's not for everybody.
Should.
But we should all have.
Exactly.
The options should all exist together.
(54:47):
Like you and I were like, sign me up.
Like the idea of going and sitting in just like a therapist's office to me.
I mean, I've certainly done it over the years.
Um, it was helpful, but I really like the other parts.
want that.
uh Like if you walked in and you did 10 minutes of meditation and then you talked for halfan hour and then you did 15 minutes of breath and energy work.
(55:13):
That to me sounds like a much more healing, you know, efficient, useful process.
I want that option, right?
Like personally, and maybe a friend of mine doesn't.
You know, we gotta, and we gotta stop.
Integration is huge, man.
We gotta start bringing things together.
Eastern medicine and Western medicine, we need a global medicine.
(55:36):
We need to bring the best parts of all of it together and make one good thing that we canjust all have and utilize for what it's worth.
But we gotta stop, well, Western medicine won't deal with the East and Eastern medicinewon't deal with the West.
You know, they're both doing good stuff.
They need each other.
I mean, I've benefited from both in very separate environments.
(56:01):
And it just to me, the evidence is there.
Right.
Like we keep hearing these stories.
I mean, I will go back even to the Shelby and Ryan um episode where they talked about oneof their, uh you know, one of the folks that come to their breathwork classes went off
their meds.
Right.
Like now it may not entirely be because of breathwork, but it certainly is a factor.
(56:23):
And for some people, the combination might be you need the meds and the meditation.
Right.
Exactly.
Either one of them by themselves isn't going to do it for you.
Some people are going to need both, which is, that's the real reason you got to integratethis stuff in my mind.
And I love the fact that even like the echo chamber that she talked about.
(56:46):
Yeah, sometimes I think I'm in an echo chamber, but it does seem from her perspective andjust a lot of other people that we've been meeting with and just my own, I think people
are generally becoming more acceptable and open to alternative therapy, you know?
And that's good.
That's a big, shift in how we treat people.
(57:09):
And it comes from necessity.
start trying to fix their problems and they try to go the traditional Western way.
It doesn't really work for a lot of people.
People does, but a lot of people, it's not really going to get them where they want to be.
And that's when they start going, okay, what else is there?
What else can I try?
And you see things that, you know, you're, you know, a few years back, the person mightnever even have considered it as a possibility, but now they've reached a point where it's
(57:37):
like, I'll try anything that might work.
Yeah, and you don't know what you don't know until you try it, right?
It's like back to our first bonus episode in between episodes four and five with Lee, theketamine patient.
She heard about ketamine therapy and she was like, I don't do drugs.
But she got to a point where it was like, I need something that works.
(58:00):
And she started hearing that it worked.
So she was like, all right, I'll try it.
And it was what she needed.
You gotta keep your mind open to the possibilities and not.
Just because someone has misused it in the past doesn't mean it's not going to be a usefulthing if properly utilized.
Or if it feels too woo woo, right?
(58:21):
Or weird or I don't know, funky.
Yeah, try it.
Try it anyway.
Just try it.
Trust me.
I've tried a lot of it.
It's great.
Go get go get some reiki, go do some breath work, go.
Pasteurizing milk was weird at one point.
Yeah, exactly.
Go to all the things, sit in somebody's chair, talk to them, take a pill if you need totake a pill, but try the other things too.
(58:48):
So yeah, I'm excited for what she's building.
I'm really looking forward to it.
I wish it all the best.
I'm hoping there's an office in Flagstaff.
can go experience that whole thing.
I've never been to a therapist.
I go to concerts instead.
But if there was a place that really did it that way, it might pique my curiosity enoughto go do a couple of sessions just to see what it feels like.
(59:09):
think so too.
I think you'd get a lot of people interested.
People will flock to it.
it is.
Well, cool.
If you like that and want to hear when we come back around to this topic, we're going tobe doing some really cool stuff with that.
There may be a roundtable in the future with stuff too.
So make sure you hit the happy fun buttons, the likes and subscribes and whatnot so thatyou make sure you don't miss a beat.
(59:32):
The auto download is the best way to keep track of us.
That way you always have our episodes in your queue when you go to find us.
We are on all the major listening platforms.
have video on YouTube if you want to see what we actually look like.
I have been cultivating this beard for quite some time.
It's worth a look at some point, I think.
Where am I going, Heather?
(59:52):
Why don't you talk?
I'm going to let you talk now.
It's time for a break.
So you could find us online at healthcare uprising.com.
also we're out on all the socials, just about Instagram, LinkedIn, uh Facebook and bluesky, uh, posting out there all the time.
(01:00:13):
Anytime our episodes drop, we share our guests posts and stories so you can keep up onsome cool happenings in the healthcare space.
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So if you've had a good or a bad experience in the healthcare journey, we'd love to hearyour story.
(01:00:36):
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We'd love to have you on so you can contact us at healthcareuprising at gmail.com.
on YouTube too, if you didn't mention that.
don't remember if you said that, Jeremy.
don't remember what I said.
I'm pretty sure I said the YouTube.
I didn't say Patreon though.
(01:00:56):
Patreon.com slash healthcare uprising if you want to throw a little monetary support tothe uprising.
all the things.
yeah, you can find us just about anywhere at this point.
Um, so that is your dose of healthcare uprising for this week.
And with that, keep looking for the good in the world because sometimes it's where youleast expect it.
(01:02:13):
This has been a Shut Up
Alright, hello health heads.
Welcome and thank you for checking in to this dose of the healthcare uprising.
I'm your producer in the back, Jeremy Carr, here with your host in the front row, HeatherPierce.
So what's on our agenda for today, Heather?
This is a fun one.
Um, this is maybe, maybe one of Jeremy's favorites.
I don't know, but, uh, we are meeting with today, Catherine Romero.
(00:37):
She is a PhD candidate in clinical psychology.
She is a somatic breathwork and Reiki practitioner as well.
And the reason we've got Catherine coming on today to talk with us is because she is goingabout uh
getting this PhD in clinical psychology and how she intends to treat her patients in adifferent way.
(01:02):
mental health and kind of mainstream mental health doesn't work for everybody.
And she really has the, this kind of holistic approach, the somatic breath work, the Reikiuh to combine that with the clinical side of psychology to support her patients
differently.
And so she's just, she's taking a new approach.
(01:22):
And so this is really,
This is the epitome of what we try to talk about here on The Uprising.
This is a new and innovative way to deliver mental health therapy and support.
Yeah, you talked me into it.
It's one of my favorites already just from that.
So without further ado, let's hear our conversation with Catherine Romero, the Reiki inbreathing special.
(01:56):
Hi and welcome to the healthcare uprising podcast.
Today we've got Katherine Romero.
She is a PhD candidate in clinical psychology, a somatic breath work and Reikipractitioner.
Thank you so much for joining us today, Katherine.
Welcome to the show.
Thanks, Heather.
Thanks, Jeremy.
I'm so excited.
I'm so excited for this discussion.
I think it's going to be really juicy.
(02:16):
This one's gonna be fun.
juicy.
I like that.
We're our breathwork arc right now, so this is a fun one,
We are in full disclosure, Catherine and I know each other.
We serve on a board for a local group here in Flagstaff called the She-Wolf Project.
We howl.
(02:36):
It sounds like a conservancy or something.
No.
In serving uh sisterhood,
Conserving sisterhood.
Yeah, I like that.
Yeah.
Yeah, we just actually finalized our mission yesterday.
So I'll have to make sure that we link out to the she will socials and maybe at the in theshow notes for this one to give us a little exposure.
(02:57):
But yeah, so so Catherine and I know each other.
So em another friend of the show, because you're a friend of mine.
Maybe some howling exercises at the end.
we could totally howl.
Yeah, Jeremy's into this.
He's like, let's, let's do that.
So with that most creative opening of a show ever, Catherine, let's start with your story.
(03:22):
So you're a PhD candidate in clinical psychology.
You did not come to this in the most traditional sense.
You've got an interesting background.
A lot of other things like tell us the story.
How did you get here?
Yeah, you're so right about that.
I did not come about this in any traditional way and going forward will not be in anytraditional way either.
(03:43):
um So I've had a whole 20 plus year career in business in digital marketing specifically,and I always thought I would be a therapist.
em And when I was doing my undergrad, I did an internship and I don't know, I feel like insome level the internship broke me.
in terms of, it was at a community mental health center and it just really revealed to mehow broken the system is and how harmful it can be for so many people.
(04:13):
So I ran the complete other direction for 20 plus years into business.
And then somewhere along the pandemic with that forced kind of slow down, the like quiet,the isolation, uh the calling to get back into therapy got really, really loud.
And it was also really inconvenient because I have a mortgage, I'm in my forties, I havekids.
(04:38):
Going back to grad school is, I run a digital marketing agency.
I had all these reasons for not doing it.
And once I let go of all those reasons and did it, yeah, the rest is history.
Went in full blast.
Wow.
So what is your undergrad in then?
It is psychology.
And so you got your undergrad, then you got into marketing.
(05:00):
Yeah, I stayed at my university an extra year.
So I did the five year degree undergrad because I was too far in to change my major, butalso like not ready to go out in the real world if I wasn't going to be a therapist, which
is what I thought I was going to be since like age of 13.
Yeah.
So I stayed around, some business classes, fell in love with digital marketing and yeah,followed that path for quite a long time.
(05:23):
So, and then you came back around.
like life kind of coming a bit full circle for you with like a huge detour and then comingback into this clinical therapy kind of therapist kind of profession.
then you went and got your masters, I assume.
Yeah, so it was like a bachelor's to PhD program, or it is still in it.
(05:45):
So you get a master's along the way.
It's a non-conferring degree, which means you can't get licensed with it or anything likethat.
um But it's a step on the way to the PhD.
Okay.
And when did you, when did you start that?
Was that right?
Was that when around COVID when, when you went into that program?
Yeah.
Yeah, it was in COVID.
(06:05):
was 2022 when I started the program.
It was Thanksgiving morning, 2021, when I was like, OK, let me just see what this gradschool thing could look like.
I don't even know if there's a program out there for me.
I even know what the costs are these days.
If anything, it wouldn't be till next fall when they admit students.
And so I'm doing Google searches on Thanksgiving morning.
I come across the program that I'm in.
(06:28):
hits.
this like deep level of resonance with me.
was like one of those light bulb moments and like goosebumps and the full, the full justdeep resonance.
I was like, well, let me submit the contact form.
I was interviewing with the department chair a couple days before Christmas.
A couple days after Christmas, I got the thumbs up that I was in and that I was startingclasses in January.
(06:50):
So it just moved so quickly once I decided and kind of committed.
Wow.
That's sick.
cool.
That's the universe.
That's how know you're on the right track.
Yeah.
And I think if it had happened in any different way, I would have talked myself out of it.
And right.
I all these reasons.
I was building an agency.
We were successful.
All these reasons not to do it.
(07:10):
So, okay, so you get into the program and so funny on the show, it's like pre COVID post,it's just in our lives.
Like, was it before COVID?
my God, COVID like screwed me up.
I don't even know what year it is anymore.
Four times, yeah.
The olden days, yeah.
The PC and AC, right?
BC and AC is now before COVID now.
(07:33):
After COVID.
Yeah.
So it's kind of funny because so many, so many people that come on the uprising aresitting in this chair behind this microphone because of COVID.
I would not have started podcasting if it wasn't for COVID.
I was a tour guide.
I'd still be a tour guide.
It's the good there's good things, right?
And so you went down this path.
(07:53):
Your life kind of comes back full circle back to this kind of space that you wereinterested in originally.
But my my question, though, too, is that were you doing the somatic breath work and or theReiki at this time as well?
Or did that kind of come in around the same time?
Like, what was what was that?
(08:13):
I Reiki came, the Reiki was in fall 2021.
And so it was around the same time where I was like, well, maybe this grad school thingcould be for me.
Let me just see what it looks like.
Right.
So they were around the same time.
And then the breath work training and certification came in 2023, I think is what it was.
So it came after I started the degree.
(08:35):
And fun fact, we just did an interview with Ryan and Shelby from Unearth Your Soul.
Love them.
And Ryan and you were in the same program together?
Yeah, we went through somatic breathwork training through the same group.
We weren't in the same like cohort, but we went through the same group.
And so we both have that somatic background.
(08:56):
As you know, he's gone and done other things and created his own breathwork modality.
Yeah, but we both have roots in the somatic side of it.
Yeah, for sure.
Yeah, super exciting.
I love that we have you and we have our conversation with them.
So there's a little bit of crossover there.
So.
um So, OK, with that, so we got the foundation, you got clinical psychology going on,you're doing Reiki, you're doing somatic breath work.
(09:26):
So we're going to like tackle this one by one, think, or maybe not.
Conversation is going to zigzag everywhere.
Jeremy's going to throw some surprises in.
So I think you said you started with Reiki earlier.
That was kind of your first kind of foray into the space outside of your desire to be inthe clinical psychology.
(09:49):
So how did that come to be?
And can you talk about what Reiki is too?
I mean, I think a lot of people don't understand it.
What is its purpose?
Reiki is one modality of energy healing.
basically you can tap into somebody's energy field.
uh And it sounds super woo woo.
(10:09):
I hate that term, but it sounds super woo woo to tap into somebody's energy field, right?
But there's actually some science behind it.
More modern science is coming up and.
uh
kind of catching up with what ancient wisdom has known forever, right?
But now energy fields are like a measurable empirical thing.
So that pleases Western science, but it's a Japanese modality that I think started takingmomentum in the U.S.
(10:33):
in like the 50s, somewhere around the 1950s.
think it's- That's far back.
Yeah, it's been around in Japan for, I don't know how long, but Westerners are slower toadopt so many things.
So yeah, the real 1950s, and it's kind of spread from there.
Don't quote me on that.
I don't know that exactly.
uh But so it's a healing modality where you tap into somebody's energy field.
(10:55):
We have like seven layers to our energy fields and they emanate out from us, right?
So we have like auras, it's a commonly known one, right?
And we can have weaknesses or vulnerabilities in any one of these energy fields or energylayers.
And they can be different depending...
where on the body that energy field is experiencing that weakness or that vulnerability.
(11:18):
So people get uh attuned to Reiki, to the flow of the energy healing.
So uh I'm attuned at level two, which means I can perform it.
I just can't teach other people how to do Reiki, right?
That's a whole different level.
So level two, I can do Reiki sessions on other people.
I can also do it on myself.
(11:38):
And cool fun fact, a little bit of a side note is Reiki isn't only for people.
can do it on pets, can do it on plants.
can do it on plants.
Everything's got an energy field.
Everything has an energy field.
You can even do it on like buildings and houses and things like that.
So it's pretty cool.
And you don't have to be like face to face with the person.
(11:59):
You can do it over remote healing or virtual healing.
anyway, I've always been interested in more like the healing arts, the more alternativeways to heal.
uh And so I didn't set out directly to be a Reiki master.
It was the person that I
Sorry, no, to be a Reiki healer.
not a Reiki master.
(12:19):
There's a big difference.
Not yet.
Not yet, right.
But the person I did my training with, Kat Fowler, she's amazing.
um It was one of her requirements to become an Akashic Records reading reader, which is awhole, Akashic Records is a whole separate thing.
We can go down that rabbit hole if we want to.
Okay.
um
That's whole other discussion.
(12:41):
a whole fascinating discussion.
could talk to you guys all day about the Akashic Records.
Anyway, so yeah, so I never set out to be a Reiki healer, but it was a useful and is auseful set of tools that I have picked up along the way.
So I'm somewhat familiar with the concept of Reiki.
My mom did it before she retired.
(13:02):
um But I've never heard of it being done on objects like that.
The pet and the plants thing didn't surprise me because they're living things.
But when you do Reiki on a house, what is it you're actually trying?
What am I trying to say?
Like aligning the energies of a house.
What is that going to, is it just going to make it like,
(13:24):
feel better inside kind of thing?
I mean, could it actually help it stand stronger longer and things like that?
what's actually what's the actual like application in action in that?
Yeah, so a couple things come to mind to answer that question.
One, houses are usually built with, well, always built with raw materials, right?
(13:48):
And at some level there's wood in those.
And at one time, the wood was a living thing.
So that has some kind of an energy field that way, right?
So you're kind of rebalancing or recalibrating kind of the energy of the construction ofthe house.
The other thing is that uh if you're buying a house that's been around for any length oftime, people have already lived in there.
And so it's almost like an energy clearing.
(14:09):
Like saging.
Yeah, kind of.
Yeah.
So you're kind of getting out the old stuff, kind of going room to room, seeing what feelsoff and kind of moving that through so that, um you know, the owners don't experience
strange things or paranormal things or.
Yeah, I've staged pretty much every single house I've moved into.
(14:30):
So yeah.
yeah.
Then the whole like East, West, North, South, like.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We do weird stuff here up on this mountain.
We do awesome stuff on this mountain.
We do awesome stuff on this.
My friends back East think I'm weird.
I'm like, hey, know, just living the West life.
uh
my friends back east thought I was weird before I moved here.
(14:53):
I just found the right place.
We're all in good company.
So, okay.
But like Reiki for, and I've had Reiki done on me actually not too long ago.
Shelby, fact, oh did Reiki during uh the liquid breathwork session that I did with her andRyan not that long ago.
So um can you kind of talk about what Reiki kind of feels like for somebody or like whatthe in-person maybe just because that's probably more common?
(15:19):
Yeah.
What it feels like for the person receiving Reiki.
Yeah, like what kind of happens?
em Yeah.
So in a very traditional sense, it doesn't have to go this way, but in a very traditionalsense, they kind of lay on like what looks like a massage table.
Um, and then the healer kind of comes and doesn't really put hands on the person unlessthe person is consented to that and there's a need, but there's usually not a need, but
(15:40):
the healer, um, kind of opens the container, so to speak.
We ask for the flow of Reiki to come through and then the person receiving Reiki usuallydoesn't feel much.
They're kind of just laying there and in the moment they might not feel anything.
Usually what's reported afterwards is like, Oh, I feel lighter or more energetic or thatnagging pain that I can't get rid of is gone all of sudden.
(16:02):
And sometimes in the session, you can feel things too.
You'll feel like heat or you'll feel tingling or you might feel emotions come up and youmight want to laugh for no reason or cry for no, no reason.
I'm putting that in air quotes, right?
So those are some of the experiences that the person receiving might feel, but more oftenthan not, you don't notice it until after.
(16:25):
After you kind of go back into the real world and things just feel a little different.
And had you had you received Reiki therapy prior to having the interest in that and that'skind of what got you interested in it and your kind of general interest in the healing
arts.
Yeah, I don't know what got me interested in the healing arts.
Honestly, I think I've just always been fascinated.
(16:47):
kind of approach it a little bit like a scientist.
Like, let me, let me try this thing.
It sounds cool.
It sounds interesting.
Sometimes it sounds like bullshit from being honest, but let me try it and just see whathappens.
Right.
Um, and so Reiki was one of those things that were the very first time I tried it.
Uh, I was like, no, I just paid a whole lot of money and I don't feel any different.
the first time I tried it, I was in Sedona with, course.
(17:11):
Of course.
And the Reiki healer afterwards, you do a little bit of like a uh kind of post-gameanalysis type thing, right?
Something very light and gentle.
The Reiki healer afterwards looked so drained and she looked pale and she looked worn out.
And I didn't feel any different.
(17:32):
And she was like, just mind blown that I didn't feel any different because she said thatmy adrenals were really taxed.
And that's like, was kind of reflecting that back to me and how she showed up at the endof the session, just completely wiped out.
Anyway, so was a little funny story.
And I was like, I don't feel any different.
This didn't work.
Just paid a whole lot of money.
(17:52):
But I did it two or three more times.
And with that.
Tough being the healer sometimes.
Yeah, yeah, she yeah, I feel bad.
Told her I'm Sorry for training you.
oh Yeah, but two more three two or three more times after that I did try it and felt nicechanges.
(18:14):
It's an interesting overlap that the clinical psychology and the energy work, know, justkind of philosophically speaking, those two industries kind of clash a little bit, I would
think.
Is it hard to overlap those things?
Do you bring them into each other on some level?
And like, do you find people accepting of your other side in those two sides?
(18:39):
Yeah, it's a...
Hmm, that's a good question.
oh
Because clinical psychology is so textbook and academic oriented.
Does it accept the real nature of Reiki?
Does it see that as a real thing or does it just see it as the woo?
(19:02):
The woo woo.
Yeah, it depends.
There's like multiple answers to that.
Like, obviously on an individual level, think both both coexist beautifully together,right?
Not just Reiki, but clinical psychology and ancient, any kind of ancient healing modality.
They exist beautifully together.
And I think they need each other.
When we look at it from like the science community, they don't play well together.
(19:26):
In general, that's a very general statement.
I'm doing a lot of generalization there, right?
But if you were to go to like,
a CBT, a cognitive behavioral therapist, who's very, if you align with that theoreticalorientation, you're typically very evidence-based.
It's all about the empirical science.
(19:46):
It's all about what is published in the Western journals.
And that is the gold standard, right?
If you go to one of those types of folks and you say, hey, I have this modality over herethat can do a lot of great, really great work to somebody's energy field, no.
you're going to get stoned and they're not buying it.
Those two don't exist well.
(20:06):
And so that's, that's to be said of, of most modalities within therapy.
And I want to say to you know, Catherine, part of the reason we're having this chat withyou is because you are going to do things different, right?
Like you see an opportunity to approach supporting people with mental health needing thesupport of a clinical psychologist in a different way.
(20:29):
So I want I'm building up to that.
The why are we here?
Reiki.
So we've learned a little bit about Reiki, right?
And so that's
potentially maybe something you might infuse into your practice.
I'm assuming you might.
So we'll have to, we'll, we'll dig into that a little bit more.
Yeah.
I mean, to do a psychoanalysis session or whatever it might be, and then follow it upwith, with a little energy work at the end.
(20:55):
sounds wonderful to me.
Like that could help you process the emotions that you just brought up in your therapysession.
Exactly.
I just had this dream, this exact dream, what you just said, Jeremy.
I had this dream last night of...
It's not our entire goal in therapy to have somebody have like this big catharticemotional release.
That's not the entire goal, but it's nice when it happens, right?
(21:18):
And it's helpful to the work that we're doing.
But so many times people have a big cathartic release and then they're just completelywiped out and then we just send them on their way.
Right.
When we talk about coming back to like Reiki and the energy fields, the seven layers ofenergy fields, we just left somebody with a big gaping vulnerability that over time we
hope we can help them heal in traditional uh psychology modalities.
(21:42):
But if somebody's having this big release or they're processing anger or uh whateveremotion that they're processing, like in the act of processing it.
if an energy healer was also present in the room or if the therapist was also an energyhealer and pulling out the funky energy out of somebody's energy field, it's like a one
(22:04):
plus one equals three.
Like the level of healing and the level of ah wholeness maybe that we send them back intothe world with is night and day difference from what happens now in mainstream therapy.
Yeah, it could be exponential rather than just adding it up.
actually like, know, it's an order of magnitude more healing.
Yeah.
If when you start putting stuff together, right?
(22:26):
Because we've treated it so separately before, Like it's just here's the clinical stuff,right?
Like here's the therapy, the whatever, know, sit in the chair, pharmaceuticals, whateverit is that you need.
And then, oh, and then here's all this woo woo stuff over here, right?
Yeah, and the two shall never cross paths.
Never the twain shall meet.
(22:48):
So
is like built on the Western medical model, which treats like, we go to a specialist ifwe're having problems with our ears that we can't solve with our GP, right?
We go to a specialist for all kinds of separate things.
There's not just one person who can see your entire system and the root cause and heal itat that level.
(23:10):
And so therapy is much the same way.
Yeah, like treating it in these kind of siloed ways, it doesn't have to be that way.
doesn't have to be that way.
Yeah, and I also want to say that it doesn't, it's not bad because it is that way, right?
It's helpful for so many people.
So many people.
And I think it can leave a lot to be desired for also so many people.
(23:34):
Right.
It's not for everybody.
Um, so there's Reiki, but then I want to talk about somatic breath work a little bit.
So, um, you're a somatic breath work practitioner.
Um, and similar, similar to Reiki, this was, this was a, a program or whatever you gothrough in order to obtain that status and accreditation or how, whatever the terminology
(24:01):
is.
And so can you talk a little bit about, um,
what somatic breath work is and what you do to deliver somatic breath work as apractitioner.
And then, you know, kind of in the same vein as this whole Reiki thing, how somatic breathwork and clinical psychology can exist together.
Because I think this is a good kind of buildup to get to the point of you're going intoclinical psychology with a very different approach because you do believe these both sides
(24:27):
of these worlds can be working together and how you care for your patients and futurepatients.
Yeah, so.
that's such a big question.
And I also want to keep my answer so concise because yet another modality I could talk allday about.
But in any given moment of any given day, we're all doing breathwork, right?
(24:49):
Just by virtue of breathing, we're doing breathwork.
Now, most of us typically breathe pretty shallow and in our chests, right?
And that can be actually really activating for our nervous systems.
So if you ever see somebody who's
kind of starting to freak out about something or they're on the verge of a panic attack,the breaths are up here in the chest.
They're short, they're shallow, and they're rapid, right?
(25:12):
Now we can leverage that to help bring up emotion and move emotion out of our body.
Somatic breath work is all built on this basic premise that our soma, our body, has amemory in and of its own, separate from what our mind has.
Separate from what our nerve or maybe in tandem with what our nervous system has, but ourbody actually carries the memory of all of the stresses and the traumas and the
(25:39):
unprocessed emotions that we've ever carried through our lifetime.
So somatic breathwork leverages the breath to move that out of our body, get it out of oursystem.
And then there's a whole period after a breathwork session that's called integration,where we come and bring it back, bring ourselves, our body, our emotions, our nervous
system kind of back into.
(26:01):
a new homeostasis, a more balanced homeostasis.
So what a breathwork session looks like, somatic breathwork session looks like is umthey're usually about 90 minutes.
The first kind of half of the session is spent really activating the nervous system withthose like more shallow, rapid breaths.
It's so uncomfortable.
(26:21):
Every bone in your body and everything in your mind wants to tell you to stop.
And it's that moment when you can just push through that.
that, whew, shit opens up, right?
So I've been in, uh obviously I've been in lots of breathwork sessions, both facilitatingand as a receiver.
(26:41):
And we call them expressions when emotions and things are coming out, right?
So people express in lots of different ways.
Sometimes it's a laughter.
People start laughing for no reason.
It gets real fascinating when you're doing it a group of people, because there might besomeone over here in this corner of the room laughing their heads off.
There might be somebody else in the corner of the other corner of the room, banging theirfists and processing so much anger.
(27:04):
You might have someone on a mat behind you, crying and processing grief.
You might have someone on the mat next to you, just uncontrollably shaking and you don'tknow what that emotion is, but they're just letting it out of their system, right?
So you have all these expressions.
That's the whole point of somatic breath work is to express it, get it out of your system.
And then the other half of the session is spent.
(27:26):
And I'm much more the breath changes.
You go much more deeper into your into your belly.
You slow it down.
You kind of bring back the parasympathetic nervous system response.
And then the cues are much more like integration, like reminding yourself of yourdivinity, your wholeness, that everything you you need to heal is already within you.
(27:47):
Just like really beautiful, really powerful messages to kind of bring back what you justreleased, not bring it back into your system, but bring back the memory.
of who you really are.
I get goosebumps when I talk about it because it's so powerful.
Yes, I haven't done somatic breathwork.
I've only did liquid breathwork, which is Ryan's very unique modality, which I told him hehad to get trademarked like immediately.
(28:13):
um So I know it's not exactly the same.
So more of like kind of a middle ground where somatic is more outward, right?
Like the yelling, the shake, all that.
Yeah.
Not always what somebody wants to be doing, right?
Like that might not feel comfortable for someone.
But oh
I can tell you from going through liquid breath work.
(28:36):
So it's still that breathing, um the meditative state that you get into.
And I thought I would have the exact opposite experience because I was like, my God, Ihave to like focus so hard on breathing.
um You know that like I won't be able to like chill out, right?
Like I felt like and I had and it was quite the opposite.
(28:57):
So is that similar like with somatic too, because
It does sound therapeutic, right?
It's almost like these rage sessions, right?
Yeah.
A lot recently on this show.
I feel like we keep talking about needing to do rage circles, but.
Rage is so present in the collective right now, understandably so.
(29:19):
is.
Yeah.
I also have done Ryan and Shelby's Liquid Breathwork session, and I think the differenceis, I think both modalities are so beautiful.
Ryan's and Shelby's and Liquid Breathwork feels more gentle.
Mm-hmm.
So I think it does allow for more of that meditative state.
(29:39):
That said, in Somatic Breathwork, I wouldn't call it a meditative state, but I have goneinto altered state of consciousness.
I've actually gone into a past life and felt a connection with somebody in this currentlife.
And like so much was revealed to me in this past life, uh like snippet.
was like I watching it on a movie screen where I just got to watch like one little clip ofit.
(30:00):
So much was revealed to me that I never could have accessed with my rational mind.
I never could have accessed sitting there with a therapist.
I would have sat there forever with a therapist trying to process or trying to figure outthis one piece of the puzzle.
And I did it in a breath work session.
So that's not everybody's experience, but the way you activate the breath definitelyallows for the potential for an altered state of consciousness, just like a psychedelic or
(30:26):
yeah, anything else.
Yeah, because I mean, meditative states literally change your brain chemistry and yourfunctioning physiology and stuff in like real measurable ways.
So yeah, that makes sense that you could induce sort of a psychedelic experience in yourmind without having to take any exterior substances.
(30:46):
We do have that capacity, you know.
That's wild.
So Reiki, somatic breath work, clinical psychology.
Catherine, your goal is to be a PhD in clinical psychology, supporting people, yourpatients in a different way, because mental health in a mainstream approach doesn't work
(31:09):
for everybody, right?
is that kind of, would you say that's kind of your, your, your why is that you want to doit differently?
And is it by incorporating these things?
Can you talk about
Like, what is your idea?
Like, what's your vision for how you're going to show up?
Yeah.
What you just said resonates like in my bones.
(31:29):
It almost resonates in my DNA so much that again, I think mainstream therapy is so helpfulfor so many folks and for so many others.
It does leave a lot to be desired.
And in my own personal lived experience, I was one of those, right?
Multiple times I've gone to therapy for things that I felt have been relatively minor,maybe a little bit of anxiety, a little bit of depression, a little bit of just like a big
(31:51):
adjustment, a big change in life.
And I wasn't sure how to navigate that myself.
But every time I've gone to kind of a mainstream therapist, I'm using air quotes here.
There's lots of different modalities of therapy, but CBT tends to be one of the morepopular ones.
Insurance loves CBT.
And for that reason, it's pretty popular.
uh But I remember my very first therapy experience, I had just left a job that had becomemy whole identity.
(32:18):
And I willingly left this job to go start a new venture.
But with that, I lost.
my identity, lost my social circle, lost like everything that validation, right?
Like all these really big, really important things that I didn't know were wrapped up inthis job.
And the therapist said, okay, um we've got to figure this out in six sessions or maybe itwas eight sessions because that's all insurance would pay for.
(32:43):
If I had spent a longer time with this therapist, we would have been able to, think, peellayers back of this onion that was so...
had roots that went so much deeper than just this job change.
And instead, we just talked about some stuff for six or eight sessions, didn't really feelthat resonance with the therapist and left no better off, right?
(33:05):
And just a really bad taste in my mouth about what therapy was.
Fast forward, oh, I don't know, five, six, seven years.
And I all of a sudden was starting to experience like a little more anxiety than I everhad before.
depression where I never really had that in my family history or in my own history.
(33:26):
And I decided to treat it alternatively because that's just what resonates with me.
And instead of going to a therapist, I instead went to a naturopath.
And through a series of tests over a number of years, we found out that the root cause wasin um a mold toxicity.
It affects the nervous system, which affects the neurotransmitters, and it also affects mystress response system, my HPA access.
(33:50):
And there's a whole downstream effect.
turned on some autoimmune conditions for me that just magnified everything else.
Turned on a bunch of food sensitivity.
Like all this stuff just was happening.
It felt like a waterfall.
Like just things were coming at me like crazy.
But if I sat with a therapist, I never would have like ultimately healed the root cause,which was an over-activated nervous system, over-activated limbic system specifically.
(34:13):
But I have to get into those details.
Because of the all of these like,
It feels like I like a scavenger hunt or something where I'm just like picking up cluesalong the way that when the pandemic hit and the forced slowdown hit, I remember a
specific weekend.
was sitting with my partner contemplating life because if I was being honest with myself,running a digital marketing agency wasn't like lighting my heart on fire anymore.
(34:36):
And I felt really stuck because it was great money and I had cool clients and on paper,everything looked amazing.
Clients that were on Shark Tank and you know, just like so many like
outward um symbols that I was on the right track.
And the specific weekend, I was venting to my partner about how messed up the system is.
(34:58):
And like, just was a whole snowball that got rolling downhill.
And like three hours later, I had literally sketched out on paper what therapy should looklike.
If we're going to treat the whole person and get to the root cause, we've got to treat thewhole person.
And here's what it should look like.
Right.
So I have that vision, actually have it pinned up on my wall.
Um, and that's what I'm, that was the whole point of getting on this journey is to do itdifferently.
(35:24):
And even as I say that, feel a lot of like, am I really going to do this?
Because the science go like this, they butt heads, right?
That's part of what I think I'm here to fix.
The problem with the Western approach is everything is so specialized that you go to atherapist and they have a very specific way of giving you therapy that is only going to
(35:54):
deal with certain problems from certain angle.
know, is unique, you know, just working on your brain doesn't fix your emotions and, youknow, the soulful stuff and the body stuff.
If you can build that approach and have the training and all the different modalities thatyou can fix someone as a whole, the holistic approach to therapy needs to involve the body
(36:21):
and the mind and the soul in my opinion.
uh A lot of clinical psychology is just the mind.
They don't want to deal with the rest of that.
They won't even admit that it's connected.
ah I'm rolling my eyes for those who are just listening to this.
This is so much more in my wheelhouse than the normal episode.
I just realized I actually know what I'm talking about in this one.
(36:43):
You do.
least a little bit.
I don't usually have that feeling on this podcast.
I'm usually kind of lost.
But yeah, I mean, I think it's great.
Just the combination of these worlds, I think is a much needed overlap that has beengrossly overlooked in the past.
Yeah.
I guess is what I'm getting at.
(37:04):
So all the power to you really in my book.
Yeah.
I thought I was going to ask a question, but I was really just ranting.
You're just ranting.
That's okay.
It's good though.
It makes sense.
Do you think from the program that you're in, and this is all through NAU, right?
No, it's not through NAU.
no.
Yeah, it's through Saybrook University.
(37:24):
ah They're based out of California, but it's a really beautiful program for multiplereasons.
One, um really accommodates really nicely the people who are coming back to school withfamilies, with whole careers, with the kids at home.
So it's really accommodating for that.
And also, uh we talk a little bit about theoretical orientations, cognitive behavioraltherapy being one of those.
(37:48):
it's a humanistically oriented program, which really values the lived experience ofsomebody over their thoughts, their behaviors, their, um, emotions.
Uh, I think it values emotions probably pretty equally too.
Right.
So it's a, it's a, it's a massive departure from, um, CBT and it just resonates with me somuch.
(38:10):
And so in that humanistic orientation, there is a lot of encouragement and latitude forexploring.
this framework, this modality of therapy that I'm venturing out to create.
So I've studied everything from like, well, breathwork or holotropic breathwork, which iscreated by Stan Grof, who's a mover and a shaker and kind of the grandfather of
(38:33):
transpersonal psychology, which is where like Western meets kind of Eastern or sciencemeets woo.
He's really pioneered that.
So that kind of thing is encouraged.
I just studied uh
consciousness last summer, went deep, deep, deep into the role that like our ancestrallineage has in the stuff that we face currently in our lifetime.
(38:56):
And like how our unhealed ancestors kind of speak through our mental healthmanifestations.
It's real fascinating.
But if I were to go to like a traditional program, all that stuff would like, I'd have todo all that stuff uh under the table, so to speak.
I couldn't do it out in the daylight.
right now.
that like a DNA memory kind of thing you're talking about or what?
(39:18):
Yeah, it's that epigenetic kind of memory, right?
There's been some fascinating studies by a researcher.
um What is her last name?
Rachel Yehuda, looking at the descendants of Holocaust survivors and looking at the stressresponse systems, different gene expressions, all this fascinating stuff.
(39:41):
And essentially, we can inherit our ancestors' trauma, epigenetically speaking.
But I also looked at it from what the Eastern and Indigenous perspectives had to say,because I think that's just as important, if not more, than Western perspectives.
um And there's a lot in the area of like, a karma, think, is a probably easy way tounderstand it.
(40:05):
We can inherit our ancestors' karma, and it's our duty in this lifetime to heal that, orelse it will be perpetuated, and we won't be able to kind of fulfill our full potential.
um
Yeah, and on and on and on, but that's the gist of it.
Yeah.
So this goes back to the framework that I'm creating, right?
Where like traditional science is, um, our traditional therapy is only dealing with themind.
(40:27):
Like we just talked about, but I think we have these multiple memory systems in ourexistence.
think our mind is one of them.
Sometimes it's not a great record keeper and sometimes it really is.
I think our DNA and our physiology is another system of memory.
When I say system of memory, like
It remembers the stressful things and the trauma and the things that might seem soinsignificant when we were five years old.
(40:51):
But to our five year old selves, it was a big deal.
And so we might not even bring it up in therapy because it just seems so insignificant.
Right.
But our body remembers our physiology remembers our fascia are more of kind of like ourmuscle memory.
Our energy field, I think, has a memory in and of itself.
And then kind of this more like past life and ancestral uh memory.
(41:14):
And I think that whatever we come into a therapist's office could have its roots in anyone of those or all of those.
As opposed to the perspective that traditional therapy has, this is just, well, let's talkabout your childhood and what happened and what you can remember.
And being very general in that statement, too, there's lots of nuance there, but yeah,it's definitely a totally different way.
(41:36):
I was literally going to ask you, like, do you feel like what you're doing is normal, likeacceptable?
it normal?
Not normal, meaning like, is it outside kind of the regular course of study?
But you've shared the school.
You clearly chose it because it supports very much this kind of approach.
(41:59):
So it seems right.
So that.
Was that kind of part of your decision too is because what you're doing is different.
It may not be mainstream and it even sounds like you're developing even maybe somethingreally unique and new.
Don't know anybody.
Whatever you're doing.
(42:20):
When we talk about theoretical orientations, I don't know anybody that holds school likeresearcher or clinician.
When I talk about anybody, like, don't know any of those things that hold this as atheoretical orientation.
In other words, an approach to therapy.
There's people that call themselves integrative and they might match.
They might marry CBT with something like somatic experiencing or internal family systems,or some of these more kind of popular right now uh modalities.
(42:47):
And I guess that's integrative.
But I want to bring the functional medicine doctor in with a therapist, in with theacupuncturist, in with the energy healer, maybe even the astrologist, because there's a
lot in our astrology charts.
And that's a science that has been around for like 3,000 years, if not longer.
That Western science doesn't accept because Western science didn't create it, but isthere.
(43:08):
And that doesn't negate the value of it.
And also bring in maybe breathwork practitioners, right?
All these modalities.
Into this umbrella that's now called therapy.
And so somebody comes into this office, so to speak, they're wrapped around with all ofthese healers looking at their depression, let's say from the 360 degree view and say,
(43:31):
Catherine, that depression or that apathy or that overwhelm you've been experiencing.
Well, your vitamin D levels are low and your inflammation markers are off the chart.
And yeah, you did go through some shit in childhood.
Let's talk about that too.
And let's also fortify your energy field and let's look at what your soul's purpose isthrough astrology or through a caustic record or just something like that.
(43:52):
And let's see how that all fits together.
So now you're tackling this from multiple different angles, hopefully in the same timethat traditional therapy takes now, which sometimes can be three, four or five, 10 years
or longer even.
Um, but in a way that's in my book, maybe more efficient or more effective or it sticks.
(44:14):
I think that's one thing I hear about therapy is it sticks for a little while, but thenthe person kind of comes back around and experiences the same symptoms.
Not always, but that is one of the criticisms.
Wow, that's I mean, can I
you start your practice, please let me know.
That's the one I want to go to.
(44:41):
that will flock to that.
Really do feel it.
And I asked Ryan and Shelby this on, you know, our episode with them.
And I want to ask you the same question.
And I think again, you you're kind of, you know, you become who you're around, you know,who your friends are.
And so, of course, I've always I've been always open minded to this, all these things,right.
(45:03):
em For a long time.
And so then I end up hanging out with people and talking to people who are also into allof these things.
But does it feel like more and more people that aren't in that bubble of being open tosomatic breath work and Reiki and yoga and all the things that we are, you we've been
(45:23):
we've been doing, you know, is kind of normal.
A sound therapy, right?
Like the stuff that kind of freaks people out because it's not Western medicine.
Like, do feel like it's growing in popularity or not even popularity?
Let's say acceptance.
Do you think that's
Changing.
I mean, we talk about ketamine therapy and we did a pretty deep series on ketamine.
(45:46):
Like that's kind of a newer concept, right?
Psychedelic.
So the use of psilocybin, like we haven't jumped into that stuff.
It just seems like it's everywhere.
And I'm like, is it in my everywhere or is it in everybody's everywhere?
Yeah, I do ask myself the same question.
Am I just in an echo chamber?
Because that's what my algorithms show me.
And that's right.
My friends.
That's who my friends are.
And that's what I talk to my my colleagues in my program with.
(46:10):
And so so answering your question with the acknowledgement that I could just be in an echochamber.
But also, when I come out of that and kind of take a higher perspective, I do think thesemore alternative ways of healing are becoming more accepted.
And also, I think part of that.
is that the type of science that us Westerners love, the empirically published in amedical journal, like validated by kind of the big schools and the big names, right?
(46:37):
That type of science, which there's a whole other tangent about how oppressive that canbe, but let me not go there.
That type of science is now starting to come around to psychedelic assisted therapy andthat, oh, psychedelics implant what we've called plant medicines and what Shimano cultures
have called plant medicines forever.
(46:58):
They're like, yes, let's now call it psychedelic assisted therapy and let's publish theefficacy of it.
And now it's valid.
Now it's legit.
Now it's accepted.
Meanwhile, this shit's been happening for centuries.
You're this is not new.
You're just finally getting on the
Alright.
Lab coats to tell us this was good and OK to do.
(47:20):
If we give it a clinical name, it's
As long as we can take credit for it.
Like, let's just call it what it is, right?
I mean, I've done, I've been starting to explore some of the plant based medicine.
I'm a little apprehensive about it.
did my first cacao ceremony not that long ago.
So that's kind of in that plant base.
(47:41):
That was interesting.
But yeah, I have some friends that are getting really into that stuff and, friends who,who need it for PTSD, for healing from stroke, you know, like real legitimate.
clinically diagnosed.
chronic headaches can be healed with psilocybin.
(48:02):
Break the cycle of headaches with it.
It'll be interesting to see what Big Pharma does with this because how can, they don'twant to make money from this.
So either they suppress it and quiet it down and it's just not a thing or they somehowleverage it.
does it become like uh recreational marijuana where it's not so much that the big farm hastheir hands in it, but you have people who are making it a business.
(48:27):
Like now we have dispensaries, right?
Yeah.
Does it become something like that?
I don't know.
The real thing is can they synthesize it?
Because like cocaine's illegal, but Ritalin is synthesized cocaine and meth is illegal,but Adderall is basically just synthesized math.
Yeah.
It's all about synthesize it and make it without the nasty side effects, but it's the samething.
(48:48):
So if they can figure out how to synthesize psilocybin, they will give us the syntheticstuff instead of the natural stuff, which won't work quite as well, but yeah.
But then they can actually like copyright it and make money off it.
That's how.
So much remains to be seen as far as how the big systems might leverage this and servetheir selfish needs.
(49:12):
I also think that a lot remains to be seen in terms of, I don't know, I'm hopeful that thepsychedelic assisted therapy and the path, the trail that it's blazing opens up so much
more acceptance for other alternative therapies also.
Because they're all kind of same, they all wear that same label of alternative therapiesthat science, Western science hasn't yet empirically validated.
(49:37):
But that's the fact.
That's the thing is it hasn't yet empirically validated it.
So I'm hopeful that it is blazing the trail for much more to come.
more really helpful stuff to come.
Yeah, this is a really, I think we have like, we've closed the loop on this.
You are, you're kind of like the next step, right?
(49:58):
Like what you're developing this approach to supporting patients through in a clinicalpsychologist role, along with these kind of other alternative healing methods and you're
building.
So you're building something, right?
And we think maybe it's becoming more acceptable.
(50:23):
And maybe by the time that you are, you are Dr.
Romero and you have your practice in 2026 or however, I think, right?
Like two years until your program.
Yeah, it's going to be maybe 2027 and 2028.
well 2027 that it will become so normal and you'll like Everyone will be like, oh thisthis is just what we do now Yeah
(50:46):
I hope so.
I think it's, I mean, you guys just validated that, but there's going to be this deepresonance with the people that this is for.
And I'm not, I don't pretend to be, I don't pretend to think that I can change the systemfrom the inside out to go fight insurance and lobby at the political level and policy and
all that.
That's I don't know.
(51:09):
Like I can't change it from the inside out.
But if I put my business hat on and look at it like a business,
If I get the consumers to come on board, the systems will change in response to that.
Supply and demand, right?
Let me create so much demand that the supply will have to be there.
They we want this right?
Yeah.
Lead from the front and pull everyone along with you in the end.
Yeah.
Yeah, we're screaming it from the mountaintops.
(51:31):
This is how we want to be treated, right?
Like this is, this is, give the people what they want.
If you can talk, if you can get a, like a, a psychology uh therapy session and thenimmediately get some energy work done and do some breathing before you leave.
Like, why don't we do that already?
(51:53):
To me, that just makes sense.
Yeah.
Yeah, right.
Makes intuitive sense.
Yeah, I love what you're doing there.
It's going to be for the people that this resonates for.
I think so many people are just looking for solutions and they hit such a point ofdesperation because whatever they've tried hasn't worked, but they're willing to try
anything.
Right.
And I think through that, em this could be a powerful way to bring some healing.
(52:18):
I love it.
Well, um I think this is a really great note to end on.
I want to ask you, I mean, I know you don't actually have a business that we cantechnically send anyone to, but you do provide Reiki and somatic breath work.
Is that something that you promote for getting clients that you'd like to share by allmeans?
(52:39):
Yeah, I am creating my personal brand in this space and it's called the healing my shitproject.
Healing my shit project.com.
I love that.
Does that URL, like, it exist?
can I go?
Yeah.
Yeah, I'm updating the website right now.
You'll see some kind of lorem.
(53:00):
Heather goes right to your website when you tell it to her.
It's kind of one of the things she does.
So we can send people to this.
Healing My Ship Project.
Yep, I'll have it updated by then.
That's a good project.
That's the thing ever.
All right, cool.
Well, we'll we'll share that.
(53:20):
And then in the meantime, just continue through your program.
Good luck.
Share all the good things.
I get to see Catherine on regular basis and maybe I'll get some reiki from you.
There you go.
Let's do it.
(53:40):
And there you go, our conversation with Catherine Romero.
Very cool stuff.
was definitely one of my favorites so far.
I, I actually felt like I knew what I was talking about, which is a rarity for me on thispodcast, but let's get to the main points first.
What's our main takeaways there, Heather?
(54:01):
Honestly, think the biggest thing is that um we can have it both ways, right?
We can have it both ways.
We can have the clinical, the real clinical stuff, that Western medicine, and then we canhave the Eastern medicine.
We can have the somatic breath work and the Reiki and the yoga and you know, all thethings that um aren't necessarily um supported by or, you know, from like a clinical
(54:27):
perspective.
um What Catherine,
is basically looking to do is to support her patients in a way that you can have both ofthose things.
And they should both be there.
It's not for everybody.
Should.
But we should all have.
Exactly.
The options should all exist together.
(54:47):
Like you and I were like, sign me up.
Like the idea of going and sitting in just like a therapist's office to me.
I mean, I've certainly done it over the years.
Um, it was helpful, but I really like the other parts.
want that.
uh Like if you walked in and you did 10 minutes of meditation and then you talked for halfan hour and then you did 15 minutes of breath and energy work.
(55:13):
That to me sounds like a much more healing, you know, efficient, useful process.
I want that option, right?
Like personally, and maybe a friend of mine doesn't.
You know, we gotta, and we gotta stop.
Integration is huge, man.
We gotta start bringing things together.
Eastern medicine and Western medicine, we need a global medicine.
(55:36):
We need to bring the best parts of all of it together and make one good thing that we canjust all have and utilize for what it's worth.
But we gotta stop, well, Western medicine won't deal with the East and Eastern medicinewon't deal with the West.
You know, they're both doing good stuff.
They need each other.
I mean, I've benefited from both in very separate environments.
(56:01):
And it just to me, the evidence is there.
Right.
Like we keep hearing these stories.
I mean, I will go back even to the Shelby and Ryan um episode where they talked about oneof their, uh you know, one of the folks that come to their breathwork classes went off
their meds.
Right.
Like now it may not entirely be because of breathwork, but it certainly is a factor.
(56:23):
And for some people, the combination might be you need the meds and the meditation.
Right.
Exactly.
Either one of them by themselves isn't going to do it for you.
Some people are going to need both, which is, that's the real reason you got to integratethis stuff in my mind.
And I love the fact that even like the echo chamber that she talked about.
(56:46):
Yeah, sometimes I think I'm in an echo chamber, but it does seem from her perspective andjust a lot of other people that we've been meeting with and just my own, I think people
are generally becoming more acceptable and open to alternative therapy, you know?
And that's good.
That's a big, shift in how we treat people.
(57:09):
And it comes from necessity.
start trying to fix their problems and they try to go the traditional Western way.
It doesn't really work for a lot of people.
People does, but a lot of people, it's not really going to get them where they want to be.
And that's when they start going, okay, what else is there?
What else can I try?
And you see things that, you know, you're, you know, a few years back, the person mightnever even have considered it as a possibility, but now they've reached a point where it's
(57:37):
like, I'll try anything that might work.
Yeah, and you don't know what you don't know until you try it, right?
It's like back to our first bonus episode in between episodes four and five with Lee, theketamine patient.
She heard about ketamine therapy and she was like, I don't do drugs.
But she got to a point where it was like, I need something that works.
(58:00):
And she started hearing that it worked.
So she was like, all right, I'll try it.
And it was what she needed.
You gotta keep your mind open to the possibilities and not.
Just because someone has misused it in the past doesn't mean it's not going to be a usefulthing if properly utilized.
Or if it feels too woo woo, right?
(58:21):
Or weird or I don't know, funky.
Yeah, try it.
Try it anyway.
Just try it.
Trust me.
I've tried a lot of it.
It's great.
Go get go get some reiki, go do some breath work, go.
Pasteurizing milk was weird at one point.
Yeah, exactly.
Go to all the things, sit in somebody's chair, talk to them, take a pill if you need totake a pill, but try the other things too.
(58:48):
So yeah, I'm excited for what she's building.
I'm really looking forward to it.
I wish it all the best.
I'm hoping there's an office in Flagstaff.
can go experience that whole thing.
I've never been to a therapist.
I go to concerts instead.
But if there was a place that really did it that way, it might pique my curiosity enoughto go do a couple of sessions just to see what it feels like.
(59:09):
think so too.
I think you'd get a lot of people interested.
People will flock to it.
it is.
Well, cool.
If you like that and want to hear when we come back around to this topic, we're going tobe doing some really cool stuff with that.
There may be a roundtable in the future with stuff too.
So make sure you hit the happy fun buttons, the likes and subscribes and whatnot so thatyou make sure you don't miss a beat.
(59:32):
The auto download is the best way to keep track of us.
That way you always have our episodes in your queue when you go to find us.
We are on all the major listening platforms.
have video on YouTube if you want to see what we actually look like.
I have been cultivating this beard for quite some time.
It's worth a look at some point, I think.
Where am I going, Heather?
(59:52):
Why don't you talk?
I'm going to let you talk now.
It's time for a break.
So you could find us online at healthcare uprising.com.
also we're out on all the socials, just about Instagram, LinkedIn, uh Facebook and bluesky, uh, posting out there all the time.
(01:00:13):
Anytime our episodes drop, we share our guests posts and stories so you can keep up onsome cool happenings in the healthcare space.
Also, we're always looking for folks to bring on the show, whether it's part of for ourhuman stories.
So if you've had a good or a bad experience in the healthcare journey, we'd love to hearyour story.
(01:00:36):
If you're a founder, if you represent a startup or a company growing in the healthcarespace, doing something innovative, reach out to us.
We'd love to have you on so you can contact us at healthcareuprising at gmail.com.
on YouTube too, if you didn't mention that.
don't remember if you said that, Jeremy.
don't remember what I said.
I'm pretty sure I said the YouTube.
I didn't say Patreon though.
(01:00:56):
Patreon.com slash healthcare uprising if you want to throw a little monetary support tothe uprising.
all the things.
yeah, you can find us just about anywhere at this point.
Um, so that is your dose of healthcare uprising for this week.
And with that, keep looking for the good in the world because sometimes it's where youleast expect it.
(01:02:13):
This has been a Shut Up
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On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com