We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Aida Lembo. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Aida below.
Alright, Aida thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. We’d love to hear stories from your time in school/training/etc.
I experienced my first reiki session over ten years ago. I experienced it a few times since then, but it wasn’t until January of 2022 when I visited with a dear friend, whom I had not seen since prior to quarantine, when I received a treatment that changed my life forever. Reiki is spiritual life force energy that each of us already have inside of us. As a practitioner, you are not giving or taking any energy, you are helping move it through the body, allowing it to release any blockages keeping you from being in harmony with your true self. Sometimes we are unable to fully express ourselves from a place of truth. This may be because our throat chakra (which is responsible for communication and self-expression) is blocked. Reiki helps to bring you into alignment so you can feel more balanced, grounded, and connected. Regardless in whether you believe in it or not, it is a very calm, relaxing, peaceful, hands-on treatment that can last anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours.
After the session with my friend, I remember feeling invigorated in a way I never had before. I felt present, grounded, and new. When she told me that anyone who learns reiki can perform self-reiki treatments, I signed up for classes to get certified immediately. If I could make myself feel this good without having to rely on others, then why wouldn’t I learn to do it? I just wanted to be able to balance and ground myself. I didn’t know that I was eventually going to start treating others, but then I gradually started giving treatments to friends. Hearing and seeing how much better they felt after each session made me want to continue practicing and become a Master. I got certified in all levels of reiki within nine months.
In April of 2022, I went to Sedona for a Soul Adventure where I was paired up with several practitioners based on where I was in my spiritual journey. I did a breathwork session where I felt as if I had left my body. I’d done this type of breathwork only a handful of times before, but never had this sort of response to it. I definitely went to another dimension. It’s too hard to describe unless you’ve experienced something similar to the sensation before, but it was a deep journey that lifted my consciousness to an even higher state.
This breathwork is a three-part conscious connected breathing technique which helps release trauma from the body by breathing through the sympathetic nervous system (fight or flight). It’s circular breathing so there is no break in between breaths and it is done with the mouth open. You may cry, scream, or feel certain waves of energy move rapidly throughout your body. Although it is a workout, it is completely safe and helps to process places in your life where you feel energetically stuck as well as detoxify the body and improve digestion.
After my session in Sedona, I continued to do breathwork a few times a month and realized how much it was helping me release the trauma in my body. I noticed that I wasn’t getting triggered the way I used to. I had more patience and compassion for myself. This is when I knew I had to get certified so I could help others release from their bodies what is no longer serving them. If you are able to release anger from your body, then you won’t get as triggered when someone else is angry at you. You learn that you cannot control what they are feeling, you can only control what you are feeling and this creates a better response.
I had been practicing yoga for over 20 years. Since I decided to take time away from my production life to finally do some inner work and heal my childhood wounds, I figured I could take this opportunity to deepen my knowledge of a practice that has helped me grow emotionally, physically, mentally and spiritually. It took six months to get my 200-hour certification and another ten months to complete 300 more hours. It was through all of this training that I fell in love with the art of teaching yoga. Through lectures and practices, I was able to learn so many different ways to adjust and modify poses according to your personal ability. I learned ways to teach yoga that I had never even heard of – Chair Yoga, Adaptive Yoga, Trauma-Informed Yoga to name a few. Because you have to submit a certain number of one-hour classes in order to complete your practicum, I offered free zoom classes and private lessons for friends and family. Watching them learn new ways to move or adjust their body was exhilarating. Knowing I was the one teaching them how made me feel so special. If I could help alleviate someone’s fear of not being flexible, strong or stable enough for this practice, then I knew I had to continue to teach more people ways in which yoga truly is for everybody.
Within a year, I was certified in Reiki, Breathwork and Yoga (500 RYT). Because these were all modalities that happened to enter my life when I was doing the healing work, I realized that they could also be introduced to others when they are ready to do their healing work. With these certifications, plus my sound healing and ecstatic dance practice, I decided to put a website together as a resource for people who want to heal but don’t know where to start. Most only know of talk therapy as the way to deal with their issues, but there are so many other methods that many have not been introduced to yet. Just like people cope in their own way, they also heal in their own way. You can’t force someone to heal and you cannot rush your healing. You’re ready when you’re ready and only you will know when. Just like an alcoholic will stop drinking when they want to, not when others are pressuring them to do so. I have no idea where all of this healing work will lead me, but I wanted to have these methods available for when people are ready to start their own healing journey. I couldn’t have gotten to where I am in my life now if I hadn’t also experienced immense loss, pain, loneliness, fear, abandonment, failure, sadness, and darkness. Now I know it’s possible to feel something different, to let go, to move on, to
face the wounds and heal them. I can fully live in peace and harmony. I will dedicate my life to helping others find ways to change theirs.
Aida, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I’ve been working as an Assistant Director and Producer for television and film for the past ten years. In February of 2022, the six-month show I had been working on was coming to an end and I was exhausted. Not only from the long production hours, but from life itself. I was tired of being verbally and emotionally abused by the people I worked with. I was tired of pursuing partners who didn’t respect or appreciate me. I was tired of essentially breaking my own heart. I knew I had to change, but I didn’t know how. I had been on a spiritual path (journaling, meditating, practicing yoga), but I hadn’t allowed myself to fully embrace it. I was finally ready to do whatever it took to take my power back and create the life I truly wanted to live. This meant that I needed to give myself the time to actually do the inner work. The thought of finally facing my demons was terrifying, but as John Patrick Shanley said, “All the really exciting things possible during the course of a lifetime require a little more courage than we currently have. A deep breath and a leap.” And so I made the decision to take a few months off of work and dive deep into a healing journey. I had no intention of coming out of it a healer, but once you’ve acknowledged you’ve been living in darkness and learned how to crawl your way out of it, your entire world changes. I was no longer able to go back to being the person I once was, living the life I once lived. I had always known that I wanted to help people, however I wasn’t aware that I needed to help myself first. I had to be the one to change, grow, and evolve in order to be able to show others it’s possible. Once I finally surrendered to Source, the Divine, God (whatever Higher Power means to you), I was able to find my sovereignty and now I can finally be of service to others. If you can muster the courage to take that first step to heal, rewire your childhood wounds, do shadow work, and release trauma from your body, then the healing will come to you. This is how I was introduced to transformational breathwork, sound healing, ecstatic dance, and many other methods. These modalities started entering my life one after the other, when I needed them the most.
Some of the hardest things for me to learn on my journey were how to be alone without feeling lonely, that I cannot change or save anyone and no one is going to come save me, and that surrendering is the only way out. If you can accomplish these three things, then you will feel a sense of freedom that people only dream of. It took everything I had to survive the loneliness, the isolation, the loss of friendships. To let go of old stories, to forgive the person I once was and embrace the person I have now become.
I want people to know that there isn’t just one way to heal, you have to find what works for you. I feel so incredibly light from all of the generational trauma I was able to release. Because of this, I decided to call my company The Light Life. It’s a place for people to find their truest selves, for them to create a better life… a light one.
Some of my proudest moments have been when clients have told me how much their relationships have improved because they were able to be more honest and open with their partners / siblings / friends, how they were able to leave an unfulfilling job and start pursuing a certain passion of theirs, how they were now able to sleep at night, no longer feeling the anxiety that once kept them from shutting down their minds. How they now make a conscious effort to focus on the things they actually desire rather than on the things they do not want.
A special treatment that I offer is an eight-week Sacred Self Love Journey that involves reiki, breathwork, yoga, ecstatic dance, meditation, nature walks, sound healing, and a cacao ceremony. Each week is dedicated to a specific chakra (energy center of the body) and includes journal prompts and exercises such as rebounding, pranayama and more (plant medicine journeys are optional). Each of these healing modalities are also offered individually or in a group setting. There is no end to our evolution and now that I have learned the tools to help get me through any challenge, it is my honor to offer them to others on their healing journey.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
After spending months doing the inner work, reparenting myself, and rewiring the childhood wounds and limiting beliefs, I slowly made my way back into set life, taking on shorter gigs at first and then finally committing to six months on a television show. I wasn’t sure how I was going to handle the intensity of a set now that I had learned how to live such a calm and peaceful life.
From the very start, it was apparent that I had signed up to work in a toxic environment. I tried my best to keep my cool while watching everyone around me lose their minds. As long as I wasn’t getting hit with it directly, I still felt that I could handle working on the show. After a few months, things had gotten progressively worse. People started to quit from all the abuse they had to endure. After having only heard of how some of the members of my team were being treated, I finally witnessed it for myself when some crew members started projecting their frustrations onto me. I understand the stress of working in this industry. If you are not able to take care of yourself, there is no way you are going to be able to take care of others. This means you will not be able to have a civil, calm conversation with someone because you don’t know how to speak to yourself in that way. I only know this because I once operated from a wounded place. I wasn’t always kind to others, especially under pressure, because I didn’t know how to hold compassion for myself. It was impossible for me to understand where someone else was coming from or to even consider their situation because I was hurting too much from mine. Meaning I was constantly beating myself up and letting myself down. I didn’t have the patience or the understanding to hold grace for myself, let alone for anyone else. Now that I do, it’s easy for me to recognize this behavior in others. I learned that how people speak to you is on them, but how you respond is on you. This is what I had been working diligently on – emotional intelligence. When it came down to it, could I actually control my emotions in tense situations? Could I actually stand in my power and not allow others to dictate how I’m supposed to feel? This is the true test of personal development. This is when you find out whether you have changed, grown, and evolved or if you still have work to do on yourself.
When I was suddenly approached by certain crew members in a harsh and cruel way, I finally understood why the show was bad enough for people to walk away from it. My response was not a familiar one because in the past, I would have apologized (even if I was not at fault) or I would have perhaps argued back, or said something sarcastic, or cried, or blamed myself for someone else getting upset with me. However, I learned through my healing that the two most important questions to ask myself at all times are: Do I feel safe and do I feel good? Since I no longer felt either of these, and I am ultimately responsible for my own health and safety, I knew it was time for me to walk away.
I loved the show and the people I worked with; it was good money, it was a long gig, it was conveniently located, it was a way for me to replenish all the funds I had spent the past few months on my healing. But none of these things mattered in the moment. All I knew is that I was no longer safe. Since the higher ups were not able to protect me, I had to protect myself. It was the first time I had walked away from a show like that. It was the first time I took action from a place of strength and self-worth rather than from a place of weakness and fear. I had no idea where I would go next, where my next job would come from, or how I was going to survive the rest of the year, but I felt so proud of myself for finally demanding the respect and appreciation I deserve. If I wasn’t going to give it to myself, no one else was going to give it to me.
That’s the challenge of healing – you will be tested on how far you’ve come, how much you’ve grown by how you handle situations that have presented themselves to you over and over again. The only difference is how you respond to it now as the healed version of you rather than how you responded to it from your wounded self. These situations will keep repeating themselves in different forms (through relationships, jobs, arguments, etc.) until you finally break the pattern and make a brave, bold move to honor and support yourself rather than continue to stay stuck in the same toxic cycle that you’ve been living. It was the ultimate test of growth for me and I had never felt prouder of all of the inner work I had done. Walking away from what I thought was my security in order to maintain my peace of mind was one of the most powerful moves I’ve ever made.
Can you tell us about what’s worked well for you in terms of growing your clientele?
I believe I gave over 70 reiki treatments before actually getting paid for one. Many people have not heard of this healing modality so I offered them a free session (or gifted them a session for their birthday) in exchange for a testimonial. Through these sessions, they would either return and become a regular customer or recommend me to their friends. I have also been offering donation-based yoga classes through zoom. Because it is something I do every day anyway, I don’t mind doing it live if I know that others would like to join me in becoming more flexible and stronger. This has also helped me acquire clients for private sessions. I give sessions privately in-person or remotely through zoom. I charge an additional fee if you’d like for me to travel to you.
People can book sessions through my website and I also have an Instagram page of my company that I post healing inspirations on a few times a week. I keep my sessions affordable because I want people to experience the magic of these modalities. Although, I truly feel that when it comes to healing it really is word of mouth as you must feel safe and comfortable with the practitioner you are working with. We all vibe at different frequencies, it’s okay for you not to mesh with someone. I offer a free 30-minute consultation call to see if we would be a good fit to work together before signing up for any of the treatments that I offer.
Contact Info:
- Website: TheLightLifeTLL.com
- Instagram: @thelightlifetll