August 4, 2025 • 28 mins
Dr. 1Drea Pennington Wasio, *formerly known as Andrea Pennington*, is an American integrative physician, founder of Soul Sense Alchemy and the holistic health company and media platform, In8Vitality, which integrates modern neuroscience with aesthetics, music, and conscious media.
She is a Certified Psychedelic Assisted Therapy Facilitator and psilocybin retreat leader, and creator of The Cornerstone Process for Conscious Evolution and The Attunement Meditation.
With over two decades of medical practice specialized in trauma recovery, addiction medicine, Traditional Chinese Medicine and acupuncture, Dr. 1Drea has provided medical services, workshops and retreats to help thousands of people build resilience, reclaim vitality after burnout, recover from Adverse Childhood Experiences and nurture real self love in order to thrive in all areas of life.
She has written or contributed to 18 books, and is the bestselling author of The Top 10 Traits of Highly Resilient People, as well as The Real Self Love Handbook, among others.
She is also an international speaker with over 4 million views of her TED talks, hosts the Conscious Evolution Podcast, and has a vast career in global media and documentary filmmaking.
In This EpisodeThe Trauma Therapist PodcastJoin my email list and receive podcast updates and other news: https://bit.ly/3LuAG2iListen to all Trauma Therapist Podcast episodes here: https://bit.ly/3VRNy8z
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-trauma-therapist--5739761/support.
She is a Certified Psychedelic Assisted Therapy Facilitator and psilocybin retreat leader, and creator of The Cornerstone Process for Conscious Evolution and The Attunement Meditation.
With over two decades of medical practice specialized in trauma recovery, addiction medicine, Traditional Chinese Medicine and acupuncture, Dr. 1Drea has provided medical services, workshops and retreats to help thousands of people build resilience, reclaim vitality after burnout, recover from Adverse Childhood Experiences and nurture real self love in order to thrive in all areas of life.
She has written or contributed to 18 books, and is the bestselling author of The Top 10 Traits of Highly Resilient People, as well as The Real Self Love Handbook, among others.
She is also an international speaker with over 4 million views of her TED talks, hosts the Conscious Evolution Podcast, and has a vast career in global media and documentary filmmaking.
In This EpisodeThe Trauma Therapist PodcastJoin my email list and receive podcast updates and other news: https://bit.ly/3LuAG2iListen to all Trauma Therapist Podcast episodes here: https://bit.ly/3VRNy8z
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-trauma-therapist--5739761/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the Trauma Thepist podcast. My name is Ga Macpherson.
I interview incredible people who dedicated their lives to helping
those who've been impacted by trauma. Here we go for
five or three, two and one, our folks, welcome back
to the podcast. Very excited to have with my guests today,
Doctor Andrea Pennington WASCIO. Doctor Andrea, welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Thank you for having me guy. It's good to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Awesome so. Doctor Andrea, formerly known as Andrea Pennington, is
an American intricated physician, founder of Soul Sense Alchemy and
the holistic health company and media platform Innate Vitality, which
integrates modern neuroscience with aesthetics, music, and conscious media. She's
a certified psychedelic assistant, therapy facilitator and psilocybin retreat leader,
(00:47):
and the creator of the Cornerstone Process for Conscious Evolution
and the Atumbent Meditation. With over two decades the medical
practice specialized in trauma recovery, addiction medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture,
Doctor Andrea has provided medical services, workshops, and retreats to
help thousands of people build resilience reclaim vitality after Burnout,
(01:09):
Recover from advers childhood Experiences, and Nurture Real Self Love.
She's written or contributed to eighteen books and as the
best selling author of the Top ten Traits of Highly
Resilient People, as well as a Real Self Love Handbook,
among others.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Doctor Andrea, Welcome, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
So look, I before we started going here, I said
to you, you know, I encountered you for the first
time through the Academy of Therapy Wisdom's Wisdom Circle and
where you provided a workshop on based on your book
about Resilience and the Top Man, and I was blown away,
(01:53):
not just by how the what you provided and how
researched well researched it obviously was, but the way you
present I mean, this is not your first rodeo. You
were like, no, credible, and I'm just really inspired by that.
(02:14):
So anyway, I just want to say that a way
as a way of kind of introduction on my part,
and I'm really honored to have you here.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Oh, thank you so much. I mean that means a
lot to me and I'm sure we'll get into the
background of my world, but as a performer, thank you.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Okay, So that's a good segue here. So how look,
you have a really interesting background. I'm always intrigued by
people who are into Western medicine and then venture out.
How did all this start for you?
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Well, I think the first venturing out happened when I
was in my third year of medical school. I was
in a traditional med school in the United States, the
Washington University School of Medicine. But my mom, who was
also a physician, she was working in a mental health
hospital as the medical director, which meant that she oversaw
the psych ward that had alcoholics and people in going
(03:19):
through detox. And as part of her continuing education, she
took a course on acupuncture for drug and alcohol detox.
So that's to give you the background. So I was
talking to her and she was explaining how she was
helping people get off of crack cocaine. This was in
the nineties when crack in America was a big thing
(03:40):
in Atlanta, and she was saying that with putting in
these five little needles in the ear and letting people relax,
they were detoxing as outpatients. So you've seen the movies.
You've seen people, you know, coming out of withdrawal. It's
not pretty. And I had just done a psych rotation
(04:02):
at the hospital and I was like, Mom, that is
that's cruel. You can't do that as an outpatient, like
they need you know, ivy support. No, no, no, and
she said no, this protocol, which comes from China works.
So I happened to be visiting her over the Christmas break.
I wasn't addicted to anything, but I said, I want
(04:23):
to try this acupuncture thing. So she sat me down,
put in the needles, dimmed the light, played some soft music,
and within moments, whoosh, I felt this rush of energy.
I had tears streaming down my face. And have you
ever had acupuncture? I have, so you know that there's
no injection, there's nothing in the needle. They just placed
(04:46):
the needle. So I was like, what is happening? What
is this? So I went back to my medical school
and convinced Ardine to let me go to the Bronx
New York, to the Lincoln Hospital where I got to
study with doctor Michael Smith, who was the pioneer in
bringing this protocol to the US. And I put in
over one hundred treatments and watched people, men and women
(05:09):
detox before my very eyes. That was the first you know,
mind opening experience, and it was the first time that
I really learned about inducing altered states of consciousness without
drugs or alcohol. Because this particular protocol, people will tell
you it feels like you've taken something like a valume
(05:31):
or a nice red wine. These are the ways that
people describe it. I now understand that what I experienced
was what some people would call a Kundalini rising or
awakening when I had that first experience, so that really
opened my eyes. That was in my third year of
medical school, and by the time I graduated, I knew
that I was going to be integrating East and West
(05:53):
into my world. So I got additional training in acupuncture
for primary care physicians, and voila. I've just kept going
ever since.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
So, Okay, your mother was a physician, so obviously that
was there. As some somes a model talk about your
own desire to become a physician and what that meant
for you.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Well, it's not a very uncommon story, you know, the
wounded healer. I endured quite a bit of wounding in childhood,
from abuse to all sorts of adverse childhood experiences. So
I think the idea of being able to help people
in the way that my mom was doing that really
(06:43):
impacted me as a child. I studied biology and chemistry
at undergrad but all the while I was a performer.
You know, I really consider myself a performing artist because
since childhood that was really my lifeline. Of the toxic
environment in our dysfunctional family came from my father, who
(07:05):
at that time was very much a task master, very
much a do what I say, fall in line, follow
the instructions, or you're going to get a whoopin. And I,
being the youngest and being very impressionable, I took that
warning to a tea and so you know, that's kind
of why I'm saying, like you reflecting back how I
(07:27):
presented and how it seemed so well researched, that's a
trauma response, you know, for me and my childhood. I
learned by watching my brother and sister and how my
dad punished them if they didn't do well in school.
That created this perfectionist part that led me to always
over checking, double checking my facts, creating presentations that were
(07:51):
just way too in depth. It eventually led to burnout
because when you're a compulsive, you know, approvals seeker, there
is no end like there is no perfect Now I
can rest. So that's what has always kind of had
me going toward I want to learn, but the spiritual
side of me is like, yeah, but I also want
(08:13):
to just be me, and who I really am is
an artist. So that's that's a little bit of that.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Thank you for sharing that, and I think it's it's
so interesting, but it's also inspiring that you were able
to in a sense, keep that part of you, keep
that performer, that soul part of you in a sense,
because we all hear stories of people getting into medicine
for all the wrong reasons, and but you also were
(08:40):
open to Eastern philosophies and Eastern medicines in a way
that a lot of people are in.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Yeah, I'm really grateful for that to have had that
early on, because it did open my mind to understanding
that there are other cultures that have a totally different
approach to healing and to wellness. It's also why the
name of one of my companies is Innate Vitality. What
I learned in studying Chinese medicine is that the human
(09:10):
organism we have encoded in our DNA and innate vitality code,
it is a code that tells the body to bring
you back to baseline. In the West, we would call
that homeostasis. Right, the body knows how to return to
a baseline. If you eat too much salt, the kidneys
know what to do, so you change your regulation of
(09:31):
water and pee out what you need to pee out. Right,
So the body knows how to heal even without all
of the medicines that allopathic medicine would push on us.
And so when I started really exploring, when I set
up my own wellness center, I was exposed to a
lot of different modalities from craniosacral to the list goes on.
(09:54):
And then someone told me that I should check out
this shaman who is doing a retreat in Sedona. And
at the time, I was not woo woo at all.
It was just like okay, and it was they were
talking about these rights of passage and an initiation and
trans dance, and I said, Okay, I'm going to go
check this out. And boy was my mind blown wide open.
(10:19):
As you can imagine what happened. Well, you know this,
I was just thirty something, so I was only a
few years into my professional career. And what was interesting
is the shaman really explained on this sort of wheel
of life, how we as humans go through these various
phases and stages of stepping into the next version of ourselves.
(10:41):
So if you look at the rights of passage for
a young girl who begins her period, or a young man,
or when we even become parents, like that, there's a
certain right of passage, but many cultures actually have ceremonies
and rituals around them. And one of the things he
pointed out on this wheel is like is like saying that,
you know, the first part of our lives because we're
(11:03):
not in these shamanic or indigenous communities, We're busy building
an ego, trying to show the world that were good enough,
you know, And then you get to a point of
awakening where you're like, is this really what I want
to be doing with my life? Is this really who
I am? And that really struck a chord for me
because I had been doing all the TV and books
(11:24):
and all the accomplishment that never felt satisfying, and I
realized maybe I am on this initiatory path as well,
maybe I'm going to discover something. And when the Shamans
started talking about how he facilitates ayahuasca retreats in the
jungles of Hawaii. I was super intrigued until he got
(11:45):
to the point of saying that in his retreats you
had to dig your own hole in the jungle to
pup or poop in, and that the ceremonies happened at night,
and I'm like hallucinogenic in the jungle at night, and
I might puke. Like no, So I didn't answer the
(12:06):
call right then and there. But a few years later
I had an opportunity to sit with ayahuasca, which was
yet another initiation into this the sacred path.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Wow, no, come on, it's I mean, this is so
inspiring to hear you moving into yourself, your soul. You know,
I think a lot of us want to do that
and are striving to do that. When you were in
(12:40):
medical school, you had the experience with the acupuncture and
so forth. Talk about the time where you said to
yourself or the evolution when you said to yourself, when
I get out, I want to do this. What was
this for you?
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Initially this was having a wellness center where we could
bring in psychology, medicine, beauty, esthetics, and Chinese medicine. And
within a year or two of finishing my residency at Georgetown,
I opened up a wellness center with my mom and
(13:19):
we started a program for binge eating disorder that involved
these same ear protocol I was telling you about. And
we had acupuncture, we had Chinese medicine and herbs, we
had traditional psychology, medicine, the whole shebang. We even had
a fitness center in our wellness center and a holistic spa,
(13:40):
and that was the vision I had and was able
to realize that. At the same time, I got recruited
by Discovery Channel to serve as their medical director for
the new health channel that they launched, so that brought
the performer part of me back out. So there I
was a doctor playing a doctor on TV, which in
(14:02):
the beginning was fun, but there came a moment, as
you can imagine, where it just wasn't fulfilling. And it's
like you say, so many of us are hungry for
or yearning for this sense of authenticity, and for me
it really became painful because in my wellness center, I
(14:24):
was seeing people transform in this very holistic paradigm and
I wanted to bring elements of that to the documentaries
and the news that I was doing with Discovery and
they were like, WHOA, that's like a little fringe. Maybe
you need to be out in California. And I'm like, no,
this is like real science.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
You know.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
I had attended the NIH Consensus Conference in Bethesda, Maryland
on acupuncture. I'm like, no, this is not just weirdo stuff.
And that set up this tension between this professional career
that I had in the media and my professional career
as a holistic wellness SPA owner. And it got to
the point where I found myself like putting on a
(15:05):
mask to go to the studio and do the TV
stuff and then changing into something else, and that for
me started to feel just wrong, and I started to
feel anxiety and depression. And I call it a dark
Knight of the ego. I know a lot of people
say dark Knight of the soul, but as I looked
(15:27):
at the original poem by San Juan de la Cruz,
he never called it the dark Knight of the Soul.
He called it dark Knight noce escura. And as I
was reading through this poem, it's the ego that goes
through this grasping and grappling with who am I? What
is this world? All about, and that's what I was feeling.
(15:47):
I was really feeling like I can't go on like this.
And so in two thousand and five, when I was
on a vacation, I had a blissful experience of performing
in a nightclub in Saint Tropez here in the south
of France, and then returned to my hotel and the
(16:08):
next morning I kind of woke up like, wow, what
was that. Like I was in the flow. I was
feeling true love for myself, and even though this crowd
didn't know me, I felt like they loved and accepted me.
And it was the first taste of this authentic love
self love and receiving love. And it was a moment
(16:29):
of despair because I called out to God and I said,
I can't, I can't go back to that life. I
don't want it. And I wasn't suicidal. I wouldn't take
my own life, but I did not want my life anymore.
And so I called out to God and said, take it,
take it all, my life, my business, like I don't
know what I'm doing with it. And as I flung
myself onto the bed, just shaking and crying, all of
(16:52):
a sudden, I felt my body melt into the bed,
and then there was this blinding light and I'm thinking,
how how does the sun get any brighter? It's you know,
And then I realized it wasn't outside, it was sort
of in my head consciousness, and I felt myself being
pulled into this light, and I literally thought that God
(17:13):
has finally answered my prayer and was going to deliver
me from this life of misery. But instead I got
pulled through this tunnel and when I got to the
other side, I saw a complete life review in a
split second, and I could see with like this knowingness,
exactly why I was depressed. It was completely clear to
(17:36):
me at that point, and that was the moment where
I really said, Okay, something else is going on here.
And I had this experience of being shown a vision
of my future, one that looked really blissful, and that
was yet another initiation onto this path of truly living
(17:57):
authentically and I haven't stopped.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
So what did you do? What would change or changes
did you need to make to facilitate that?
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Well, the first thing that I saw when I saw
that that review of my life, I sensed the presence
of a guide beside me in this out of body
vision and I was like, oh, you mean I could
have chosen differently, which sounds dumb, but in my little
mind it was like I didn't know I could have
chosen differently, and just that knowingness, I said, Okay, well,
(18:33):
if I can choose differently, I'll go back. And that's
when I saw this vision of me walking hand in
hand with a child on the French riviera. At the time,
I was thirty four and single, so I'm like, I
don't know how that's going to happen, but okay. And
there were some other things about what I would be
doing professionally, like singing and this weird sort of healing
with my hands thing, and when I said yes to
(18:57):
that vision, I was instantly brought back to my body
and I sat up. The depression that I had was
completely gone, and I called up my COEO at the
time and said, this is what just happened, and it
looks like I'm going to be singing, so there's going
to be some changes. And it took some time for
(19:17):
me to like uncouple from this big media career that
I had, but I did it, and within a few
months I was pregnant and the following year I was
ready to shift the way I was working so that
I could move here to the south of France where
I live now.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Before we started, you said you are working on a
new book. Is this what this book is about?
Speaker 2 (19:41):
In a sense, Yes, okay, it is.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Do we have a name? Do you have a name
for it? Can we talk about that or what? Yes?
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Actually, I'm getting this trademarked. I've been advised by lawyers.
It's called The Dark Knight of the Ego and the
Dawn of the Soul. So already on my website, I've
done a full analysis of San Juan de la Cruz's
poem and why I make of Yes, yes, of course,
(20:10):
of course I have. But I really wanted to have
some meat behind this, and so what I see is
that we go through these five stages in this dark
night to dawn progression, and that's what I want to
share in this book. I'm first creating a guidebook that
will lead people through these stages, because it's scary, whether
(20:31):
it's you realizing your career doesn't fit, your relationship doesn't fit,
maybe you're even coming to terms with your sexuality. You know,
I've worked with so many people who go through various
life transitions, and it feels like this utter darkness where
they're isolated, they're alone, they're confused, and they just want
some support to get through it. After you've been through
(20:52):
it a few times, I'm a pattern recognition geek. I
recognize that the same patterns that some of my patients
went through when they were recovering from substance abuse. That
was what I needed to go through. This dismantling of
the false self, this uncovering of who am I really?
If I hadn't been so coerced and programmed, who would
(21:16):
I have been? And then that remaking of a sense
of self. But just like in the poem Noceoscura, when
San Juan is talking about the dawn, it's because the
ego is finally given up and it's the soul that emerges.
And it's like what you were talking about, Like, when
that authentic self comes forward, that's when we start to
(21:36):
see that little glimmer of light and then we can
move upward and start rebuilding our life. For some of
us quite extensively and substantially. And so yeah, this is
something that I'm really passionate about. It's the subject of
my next TED talk. And I really just want to
support people with another way to look at the dark
(21:57):
times in our lives.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
What is this book out?
Speaker 2 (22:01):
The Guidebook will be out in the fall of twenty
twenty four, So it's a concise guidebook to lead you
through the five stages using my cornerstone process, which is
outlined in my book, The Real Self Love Handbook. And
then in twenty twenty five, I'm publishing an anthology which
will include my story and other people's stories going through
these five stages of the dark Knight to Dawn.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
So I know we don't have a lot of time
to talk about all of it, But getting back to
this book, here is it for people who are just
feel like I'm not doing it, I'm not living authentically
and how do I get there?
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Yeah, that's part of it. It could be the people
that just know that the old you doesn't fit, but
you're not quite ready to step into the new you.
It's that liminal space that's kind of sticky and confusing
for some people, they'll find this book really helpful in
getting out of or out or recovering from loss. You know,
(23:04):
I am I'm now crossing over the threshold into being
an empty nester, my eighteen year old daughter is now
out doing her thing, and so it's it's left this space,
and while it's not dark for me, it does cause
this questioning, okay, of who am I and what will
I be next? And so it's for people who are
going through a transition where you know you're leaving something
(23:27):
behind and whether you're doing that willingly or it's been
ripped from you and you're stepping into Yeah, we've all
been there, like isn't it true? Like, so I really
wanted to be able to show people that the darkness
doesn't last forever. There will be a dawn. It's it's
it's the law, the dawn comes.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
What I'm just I just have to ask you this question,
what does it require from us? Because I'm going back
to your the self resilient the top ten markers, and
self awareness is the first one. And it feels like, well,
if you're not even aware, you.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Know, well that is the first step of the cornerstone process.
It's awareness. So, just like you heard in our talk
about the top ten traits of highly resilient people, we
have a bunch of exercises and reflection prompts to increase
that self awareness. What we're doing is literally teasing apart
(24:31):
what is the false self or the ego? How have
you been programmed versus what is your spiritual DNA or
your soul print. What you will have to give up
is that sense of control. And that's why it's the
dark Knight for the ego. The ego wants to cling
and know what's next. Who am I? Wait? This is
(24:52):
who I am in going through this transition. You're going
to be able to learn the art of surrender, of
letting go of the illusion of control, maybe even saying
goodbye to a part of you, or even relationships that
no longer fit because who you're becoming is so different.
So it's that willingness to do this self reflective work,
(25:15):
the willingness to surrender, and the courage to step forward.
But we support you all along the way.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
It sounds amazing. It also feels like it's been interested
to hear your response, a reflection in a way of
our culture and how so many of us are like,
the hell is going on? Not just out there, but
a lot of us are feeling something's not working? Is
(25:44):
this it?
Speaker 2 (25:47):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Hell? Yes?
Speaker 2 (25:49):
And you know what I saw this during the pandemic.
You know, I was online leading guided meditations, helping people
like grapple with the stress and the unknown. It was
the year that we published the first edition of the
Top ten Traits of Highly Resilient People. So we published
that in January of twenty twenty, and it instantly became
(26:11):
a bestseller because people were like, what do we do.
But one of the things that I learned during the
pandemic and have seen it now four years out, is
there is this awakening people like it or not. Pain
is a good catalyst for transformation and spiritual awakening, and
the pandemic gave people time to really look at themselves.
(26:35):
A lot of people admitted like, wow, I didn't realize
I was in burnout until I had the moment to
pause and reflect. And so what I see now is
that the political unrest, the wars, the genocide, the politics,
the global warming, like all of it, it feels like
humanity is going through a dark night of the ego,
(26:58):
a collective dark knight of the ego, where these power
structures that were built through ego are starting to crumble.
And then at the same time people are waking up
and saying, wait, what's going on? Out there isn't right.
Even if that's not my tribe, you guys can't keep
doing this. It's a collective awakening, and I believe it's
preceding the dawn of our collective soul. At least that's
(27:22):
that's what I'm hoping for, and that's what I have
to hold on to, because if you look at the
media and what they feed us, you can very quickly
lose hope, and I don't want us to do that.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
Awesome, doctor Andrea, What's look? First of all, when your
book comes out, you're welcome to come on here and
talk about love to have you back. But in the meantime,
what's the best way for people to get in touch
with you and learn more about your work?
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Visit me online Onerea dot com. That's the number one
dr ea dot com. And at one Drea dot com
you'll find out all the little things that I'm doing
and get some free meditations and good stuff.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
All right, we'll have that linked up here at the
show notes page at the Trauma Theavers podcast dot com. Awesome, damn,
thank you. Well.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
I'm so so grateful, so grateful for this opportunity to
really dive into this because it is my passion, and
I appreciate the space that you provided.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
Awesome, all right, take care Bright for now.
Welcome to the Trauma Thepist podcast. My name is Ga Macpherson.
I interview incredible people who dedicated their lives to helping
those who've been impacted by trauma. Here we go for
five or three, two and one, our folks, welcome back
to the podcast. Very excited to have with my guests today,
Doctor Andrea Pennington WASCIO. Doctor Andrea, welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Thank you for having me guy. It's good to be here.
Speaker 1 (00:25):
Awesome so. Doctor Andrea, formerly known as Andrea Pennington, is
an American intricated physician, founder of Soul Sense Alchemy and
the holistic health company and media platform Innate Vitality, which
integrates modern neuroscience with aesthetics, music, and conscious media. She's
a certified psychedelic assistant, therapy facilitator and psilocybin retreat leader,
(00:47):
and the creator of the Cornerstone Process for Conscious Evolution
and the Atumbent Meditation. With over two decades the medical
practice specialized in trauma recovery, addiction medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture,
Doctor Andrea has provided medical services, workshops, and retreats to
help thousands of people build resilience reclaim vitality after Burnout,
(01:09):
Recover from advers childhood Experiences, and Nurture Real Self Love.
She's written or contributed to eighteen books and as the
best selling author of the Top ten Traits of Highly
Resilient People, as well as a Real Self Love Handbook,
among others.
Speaker 2 (01:23):
Doctor Andrea, Welcome, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
So look, I before we started going here, I said
to you, you know, I encountered you for the first
time through the Academy of Therapy Wisdom's Wisdom Circle and
where you provided a workshop on based on your book
about Resilience and the Top Man, and I was blown away,
(01:53):
not just by how the what you provided and how
researched well researched it obviously was, but the way you
present I mean, this is not your first rodeo. You
were like, no, credible, and I'm just really inspired by that.
(02:14):
So anyway, I just want to say that a way
as a way of kind of introduction on my part,
and I'm really honored to have you here.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Oh, thank you so much. I mean that means a
lot to me and I'm sure we'll get into the
background of my world, but as a performer, thank you.
Speaker 1 (02:33):
Okay, So that's a good segue here. So how look,
you have a really interesting background. I'm always intrigued by
people who are into Western medicine and then venture out.
How did all this start for you?
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Well, I think the first venturing out happened when I
was in my third year of medical school. I was
in a traditional med school in the United States, the
Washington University School of Medicine. But my mom, who was
also a physician, she was working in a mental health
hospital as the medical director, which meant that she oversaw
the psych ward that had alcoholics and people in going
(03:19):
through detox. And as part of her continuing education, she
took a course on acupuncture for drug and alcohol detox.
So that's to give you the background. So I was
talking to her and she was explaining how she was
helping people get off of crack cocaine. This was in
the nineties when crack in America was a big thing
(03:40):
in Atlanta, and she was saying that with putting in
these five little needles in the ear and letting people relax,
they were detoxing as outpatients. So you've seen the movies.
You've seen people, you know, coming out of withdrawal. It's
not pretty. And I had just done a psych rotation
(04:02):
at the hospital and I was like, Mom, that is
that's cruel. You can't do that as an outpatient, like
they need you know, ivy support. No, no, no, and
she said no, this protocol, which comes from China works.
So I happened to be visiting her over the Christmas break.
I wasn't addicted to anything, but I said, I want
(04:23):
to try this acupuncture thing. So she sat me down,
put in the needles, dimmed the light, played some soft music,
and within moments, whoosh, I felt this rush of energy.
I had tears streaming down my face. And have you
ever had acupuncture? I have, so you know that there's
no injection, there's nothing in the needle. They just placed
(04:46):
the needle. So I was like, what is happening? What
is this? So I went back to my medical school
and convinced Ardine to let me go to the Bronx
New York, to the Lincoln Hospital where I got to
study with doctor Michael Smith, who was the pioneer in
bringing this protocol to the US. And I put in
over one hundred treatments and watched people, men and women
(05:09):
detox before my very eyes. That was the first you know,
mind opening experience, and it was the first time that
I really learned about inducing altered states of consciousness without
drugs or alcohol. Because this particular protocol, people will tell
you it feels like you've taken something like a valume
(05:31):
or a nice red wine. These are the ways that
people describe it. I now understand that what I experienced
was what some people would call a Kundalini rising or
awakening when I had that first experience, so that really
opened my eyes. That was in my third year of
medical school, and by the time I graduated, I knew
that I was going to be integrating East and West
(05:53):
into my world. So I got additional training in acupuncture
for primary care physicians, and voila. I've just kept going
ever since.
Speaker 1 (06:03):
So, Okay, your mother was a physician, so obviously that
was there. As some somes a model talk about your
own desire to become a physician and what that meant
for you.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
Well, it's not a very uncommon story, you know, the
wounded healer. I endured quite a bit of wounding in childhood,
from abuse to all sorts of adverse childhood experiences. So
I think the idea of being able to help people
in the way that my mom was doing that really
(06:43):
impacted me as a child. I studied biology and chemistry
at undergrad but all the while I was a performer.
You know, I really consider myself a performing artist because
since childhood that was really my lifeline. Of the toxic
environment in our dysfunctional family came from my father, who
(07:05):
at that time was very much a task master, very
much a do what I say, fall in line, follow
the instructions, or you're going to get a whoopin. And I,
being the youngest and being very impressionable, I took that
warning to a tea and so you know, that's kind
of why I'm saying, like you reflecting back how I
(07:27):
presented and how it seemed so well researched, that's a
trauma response, you know, for me and my childhood. I
learned by watching my brother and sister and how my
dad punished them if they didn't do well in school.
That created this perfectionist part that led me to always
over checking, double checking my facts, creating presentations that were
(07:51):
just way too in depth. It eventually led to burnout
because when you're a compulsive, you know, approvals seeker, there
is no end like there is no perfect Now I
can rest. So that's what has always kind of had
me going toward I want to learn, but the spiritual
side of me is like, yeah, but I also want
(08:13):
to just be me, and who I really am is
an artist. So that's that's a little bit of that.
Speaker 1 (08:19):
Thank you for sharing that, and I think it's it's
so interesting, but it's also inspiring that you were able
to in a sense, keep that part of you, keep
that performer, that soul part of you in a sense,
because we all hear stories of people getting into medicine
for all the wrong reasons, and but you also were
(08:40):
open to Eastern philosophies and Eastern medicines in a way
that a lot of people are in.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Yeah, I'm really grateful for that to have had that
early on, because it did open my mind to understanding
that there are other cultures that have a totally different
approach to healing and to wellness. It's also why the
name of one of my companies is Innate Vitality. What
I learned in studying Chinese medicine is that the human
(09:10):
organism we have encoded in our DNA and innate vitality code,
it is a code that tells the body to bring
you back to baseline. In the West, we would call
that homeostasis. Right, the body knows how to return to
a baseline. If you eat too much salt, the kidneys
know what to do, so you change your regulation of
(09:31):
water and pee out what you need to pee out. Right,
So the body knows how to heal even without all
of the medicines that allopathic medicine would push on us.
And so when I started really exploring, when I set
up my own wellness center, I was exposed to a
lot of different modalities from craniosacral to the list goes on.
(09:54):
And then someone told me that I should check out
this shaman who is doing a retreat in Sedona. And
at the time, I was not woo woo at all.
It was just like okay, and it was they were
talking about these rights of passage and an initiation and
trans dance, and I said, Okay, I'm going to go
check this out. And boy was my mind blown wide open.
(10:19):
As you can imagine what happened. Well, you know this,
I was just thirty something, so I was only a
few years into my professional career. And what was interesting
is the shaman really explained on this sort of wheel
of life, how we as humans go through these various
phases and stages of stepping into the next version of ourselves.
(10:41):
So if you look at the rights of passage for
a young girl who begins her period, or a young man,
or when we even become parents, like that, there's a
certain right of passage, but many cultures actually have ceremonies
and rituals around them. And one of the things he
pointed out on this wheel is like is like saying that,
you know, the first part of our lives because we're
(11:03):
not in these shamanic or indigenous communities, We're busy building
an ego, trying to show the world that were good enough,
you know, And then you get to a point of
awakening where you're like, is this really what I want
to be doing with my life? Is this really who
I am? And that really struck a chord for me
because I had been doing all the TV and books
(11:24):
and all the accomplishment that never felt satisfying, and I
realized maybe I am on this initiatory path as well,
maybe I'm going to discover something. And when the Shamans
started talking about how he facilitates ayahuasca retreats in the
jungles of Hawaii. I was super intrigued until he got
(11:45):
to the point of saying that in his retreats you
had to dig your own hole in the jungle to
pup or poop in, and that the ceremonies happened at night,
and I'm like hallucinogenic in the jungle at night, and
I might puke. Like no, So I didn't answer the
(12:06):
call right then and there. But a few years later
I had an opportunity to sit with ayahuasca, which was
yet another initiation into this the sacred path.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
Wow, no, come on, it's I mean, this is so
inspiring to hear you moving into yourself, your soul. You know,
I think a lot of us want to do that
and are striving to do that. When you were in
(12:40):
medical school, you had the experience with the acupuncture and
so forth. Talk about the time where you said to
yourself or the evolution when you said to yourself, when
I get out, I want to do this. What was
this for you?
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Initially this was having a wellness center where we could
bring in psychology, medicine, beauty, esthetics, and Chinese medicine. And
within a year or two of finishing my residency at Georgetown,
I opened up a wellness center with my mom and
(13:19):
we started a program for binge eating disorder that involved
these same ear protocol I was telling you about. And
we had acupuncture, we had Chinese medicine and herbs, we
had traditional psychology, medicine, the whole shebang. We even had
a fitness center in our wellness center and a holistic spa,
(13:40):
and that was the vision I had and was able
to realize that. At the same time, I got recruited
by Discovery Channel to serve as their medical director for
the new health channel that they launched, so that brought
the performer part of me back out. So there I
was a doctor playing a doctor on TV, which in
(14:02):
the beginning was fun, but there came a moment, as
you can imagine, where it just wasn't fulfilling. And it's
like you say, so many of us are hungry for
or yearning for this sense of authenticity, and for me
it really became painful because in my wellness center, I
(14:24):
was seeing people transform in this very holistic paradigm and
I wanted to bring elements of that to the documentaries
and the news that I was doing with Discovery and
they were like, WHOA, that's like a little fringe. Maybe
you need to be out in California. And I'm like, no,
this is like real science.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
You know.
Speaker 2 (14:43):
I had attended the NIH Consensus Conference in Bethesda, Maryland
on acupuncture. I'm like, no, this is not just weirdo stuff.
And that set up this tension between this professional career
that I had in the media and my professional career
as a holistic wellness SPA owner. And it got to
the point where I found myself like putting on a
(15:05):
mask to go to the studio and do the TV
stuff and then changing into something else, and that for
me started to feel just wrong, and I started to
feel anxiety and depression. And I call it a dark
Knight of the ego. I know a lot of people
say dark Knight of the soul, but as I looked
(15:27):
at the original poem by San Juan de la Cruz,
he never called it the dark Knight of the Soul.
He called it dark Knight noce escura. And as I
was reading through this poem, it's the ego that goes
through this grasping and grappling with who am I? What
is this world? All about, and that's what I was feeling.
(15:47):
I was really feeling like I can't go on like this.
And so in two thousand and five, when I was
on a vacation, I had a blissful experience of performing
in a nightclub in Saint Tropez here in the south
of France, and then returned to my hotel and the
(16:08):
next morning I kind of woke up like, wow, what
was that. Like I was in the flow. I was
feeling true love for myself, and even though this crowd
didn't know me, I felt like they loved and accepted me.
And it was the first taste of this authentic love
self love and receiving love. And it was a moment
(16:29):
of despair because I called out to God and I said,
I can't, I can't go back to that life. I
don't want it. And I wasn't suicidal. I wouldn't take
my own life, but I did not want my life anymore.
And so I called out to God and said, take it,
take it all, my life, my business, like I don't
know what I'm doing with it. And as I flung
myself onto the bed, just shaking and crying, all of
(16:52):
a sudden, I felt my body melt into the bed,
and then there was this blinding light and I'm thinking,
how how does the sun get any brighter? It's you know,
And then I realized it wasn't outside, it was sort
of in my head consciousness, and I felt myself being
pulled into this light, and I literally thought that God
(17:13):
has finally answered my prayer and was going to deliver
me from this life of misery. But instead I got
pulled through this tunnel and when I got to the
other side, I saw a complete life review in a
split second, and I could see with like this knowingness,
exactly why I was depressed. It was completely clear to
(17:36):
me at that point, and that was the moment where
I really said, Okay, something else is going on here.
And I had this experience of being shown a vision
of my future, one that looked really blissful, and that
was yet another initiation onto this path of truly living
(17:57):
authentically and I haven't stopped.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
So what did you do? What would change or changes
did you need to make to facilitate that?
Speaker 2 (18:10):
Well, the first thing that I saw when I saw
that that review of my life, I sensed the presence
of a guide beside me in this out of body
vision and I was like, oh, you mean I could
have chosen differently, which sounds dumb, but in my little
mind it was like I didn't know I could have
chosen differently, and just that knowingness, I said, Okay, well,
(18:33):
if I can choose differently, I'll go back. And that's
when I saw this vision of me walking hand in
hand with a child on the French riviera. At the time,
I was thirty four and single, so I'm like, I
don't know how that's going to happen, but okay. And
there were some other things about what I would be
doing professionally, like singing and this weird sort of healing
with my hands thing, and when I said yes to
(18:57):
that vision, I was instantly brought back to my body
and I sat up. The depression that I had was
completely gone, and I called up my COEO at the
time and said, this is what just happened, and it
looks like I'm going to be singing, so there's going
to be some changes. And it took some time for
(19:17):
me to like uncouple from this big media career that
I had, but I did it, and within a few
months I was pregnant and the following year I was
ready to shift the way I was working so that
I could move here to the south of France where
I live now.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Before we started, you said you are working on a
new book. Is this what this book is about?
Speaker 2 (19:41):
In a sense, Yes, okay, it is.
Speaker 1 (19:44):
Do we have a name? Do you have a name
for it? Can we talk about that or what? Yes?
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Actually, I'm getting this trademarked. I've been advised by lawyers.
It's called The Dark Knight of the Ego and the
Dawn of the Soul. So already on my website, I've
done a full analysis of San Juan de la Cruz's
poem and why I make of Yes, yes, of course,
(20:10):
of course I have. But I really wanted to have
some meat behind this, and so what I see is
that we go through these five stages in this dark
night to dawn progression, and that's what I want to
share in this book. I'm first creating a guidebook that
will lead people through these stages, because it's scary, whether
(20:31):
it's you realizing your career doesn't fit, your relationship doesn't fit,
maybe you're even coming to terms with your sexuality. You know,
I've worked with so many people who go through various
life transitions, and it feels like this utter darkness where
they're isolated, they're alone, they're confused, and they just want
some support to get through it. After you've been through
(20:52):
it a few times, I'm a pattern recognition geek. I
recognize that the same patterns that some of my patients
went through when they were recovering from substance abuse. That
was what I needed to go through. This dismantling of
the false self, this uncovering of who am I really?
If I hadn't been so coerced and programmed, who would
(21:16):
I have been? And then that remaking of a sense
of self. But just like in the poem Noceoscura, when
San Juan is talking about the dawn, it's because the
ego is finally given up and it's the soul that emerges.
And it's like what you were talking about, Like, when
that authentic self comes forward, that's when we start to
(21:36):
see that little glimmer of light and then we can
move upward and start rebuilding our life. For some of
us quite extensively and substantially. And so yeah, this is
something that I'm really passionate about. It's the subject of
my next TED talk. And I really just want to
support people with another way to look at the dark
(21:57):
times in our lives.
Speaker 1 (21:59):
What is this book out?
Speaker 2 (22:01):
The Guidebook will be out in the fall of twenty
twenty four, So it's a concise guidebook to lead you
through the five stages using my cornerstone process, which is
outlined in my book, The Real Self Love Handbook. And
then in twenty twenty five, I'm publishing an anthology which
will include my story and other people's stories going through
these five stages of the dark Knight to Dawn.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
So I know we don't have a lot of time
to talk about all of it, But getting back to
this book, here is it for people who are just
feel like I'm not doing it, I'm not living authentically
and how do I get there?
Speaker 2 (22:43):
Yeah, that's part of it. It could be the people
that just know that the old you doesn't fit, but
you're not quite ready to step into the new you.
It's that liminal space that's kind of sticky and confusing
for some people, they'll find this book really helpful in
getting out of or out or recovering from loss. You know,
(23:04):
I am I'm now crossing over the threshold into being
an empty nester, my eighteen year old daughter is now
out doing her thing, and so it's it's left this space,
and while it's not dark for me, it does cause
this questioning, okay, of who am I and what will
I be next? And so it's for people who are
going through a transition where you know you're leaving something
(23:27):
behind and whether you're doing that willingly or it's been
ripped from you and you're stepping into Yeah, we've all
been there, like isn't it true? Like, so I really
wanted to be able to show people that the darkness
doesn't last forever. There will be a dawn. It's it's
it's the law, the dawn comes.
Speaker 1 (23:48):
What I'm just I just have to ask you this question,
what does it require from us? Because I'm going back
to your the self resilient the top ten markers, and
self awareness is the first one. And it feels like, well,
if you're not even aware, you.
Speaker 2 (24:09):
Know, well that is the first step of the cornerstone process.
It's awareness. So, just like you heard in our talk
about the top ten traits of highly resilient people, we
have a bunch of exercises and reflection prompts to increase
that self awareness. What we're doing is literally teasing apart
(24:31):
what is the false self or the ego? How have
you been programmed versus what is your spiritual DNA or
your soul print. What you will have to give up
is that sense of control. And that's why it's the
dark Knight for the ego. The ego wants to cling
and know what's next. Who am I? Wait? This is
(24:52):
who I am in going through this transition. You're going
to be able to learn the art of surrender, of
letting go of the illusion of control, maybe even saying
goodbye to a part of you, or even relationships that
no longer fit because who you're becoming is so different.
So it's that willingness to do this self reflective work,
(25:15):
the willingness to surrender, and the courage to step forward.
But we support you all along the way.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
It sounds amazing. It also feels like it's been interested
to hear your response, a reflection in a way of
our culture and how so many of us are like,
the hell is going on? Not just out there, but
a lot of us are feeling something's not working? Is
(25:44):
this it?
Speaker 2 (25:47):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (25:48):
Hell? Yes?
Speaker 2 (25:49):
And you know what I saw this during the pandemic.
You know, I was online leading guided meditations, helping people
like grapple with the stress and the unknown. It was
the year that we published the first edition of the
Top ten Traits of Highly Resilient People. So we published
that in January of twenty twenty, and it instantly became
(26:11):
a bestseller because people were like, what do we do.
But one of the things that I learned during the
pandemic and have seen it now four years out, is
there is this awakening people like it or not. Pain
is a good catalyst for transformation and spiritual awakening, and
the pandemic gave people time to really look at themselves.
(26:35):
A lot of people admitted like, wow, I didn't realize
I was in burnout until I had the moment to
pause and reflect. And so what I see now is
that the political unrest, the wars, the genocide, the politics,
the global warming, like all of it, it feels like
humanity is going through a dark night of the ego,
(26:58):
a collective dark knight of the ego, where these power
structures that were built through ego are starting to crumble.
And then at the same time people are waking up
and saying, wait, what's going on? Out there isn't right.
Even if that's not my tribe, you guys can't keep
doing this. It's a collective awakening, and I believe it's
preceding the dawn of our collective soul. At least that's
(27:22):
that's what I'm hoping for, and that's what I have
to hold on to, because if you look at the
media and what they feed us, you can very quickly
lose hope, and I don't want us to do that.
Speaker 1 (27:35):
Awesome, doctor Andrea, What's look? First of all, when your
book comes out, you're welcome to come on here and
talk about love to have you back. But in the meantime,
what's the best way for people to get in touch
with you and learn more about your work?
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Visit me online Onerea dot com. That's the number one
dr ea dot com. And at one Drea dot com
you'll find out all the little things that I'm doing
and get some free meditations and good stuff.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
All right, we'll have that linked up here at the
show notes page at the Trauma Theavers podcast dot com. Awesome, damn,
thank you. Well.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
I'm so so grateful, so grateful for this opportunity to
really dive into this because it is my passion, and
I appreciate the space that you provided.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
Awesome, all right, take care Bright for now.
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