We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Alexzandra ‘Ally’ Strickland a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Alexzandra ‘Ally’, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.
Life is the sum of our decisions. Each equation will look and feel different. We have the choice of what equation we will work and work again. Changing your life means choosing a new equation. And, starting the journey of entrepreneurship is all new math.
I finally got to that point in my corporate career where I hit my own ceiling. I had done all I wanted to do. I climbed that ladder as high as I could convince myself to go. Eventually talking with a therapist confirmed what I had known for months. What my friends had been not-so-subtly getting at with their advice during my rants about work.
That job, as sweet as it was, wasn’t actually for me. It was never meant to be my long-term career. During the last year of my time there, I was at a crossroads. I could keep working the old equation – knowingly depleting myself from the stress of pretending to want the job. Working to convince others, and some days myself, that I wasn’t an impostor. By then, I knew I had earned my stripes in that space. But I also knew it would never really feel like home.
My other option – choose the new equation. For over a decade, I nurtured my curiosity around and confronted my personal challenges with stress, anxiety, and the mind-body connection. From my high school AP Psych class and degree in Psychology all the way to the 4 certifications in alternative wellness, including yoga, breathe work, and somatic mindfulness, I hold today. As much as I’d like to throw a surprise twist in this story… you guessed it. I chose the new equation. I chose authentic flow and this very moment is a testament of it.
The new equation – the risk – looks like me starting a new career based in my true interests. This practice is a testament to my life’s work and an everyday reminder of how I’ve always wanted to change my community, and dare I say the world. I want to help people cope better and feel empowered in the face of stress. I want to change the conversation around stress and anxiety to adjust its power and prevalence in our cultural lens.
This transition forces me to re-evaluate my motivation and values. I’ve exchanged perceived financial security and a fear of lack for personal freedom and deep connection to my work. The inner challenge has become staying calm in what feels like unavoidable uncertainty and doubling down on pouring into myself rather than the system of perceived acceptable achievement. It’s switching my mindset from employee and student to mastermind and heart-centered business owner.
As I take another leap of faith centered in the fulfillment of my passion and purpose, I can only trust that the universe is holding me the whole way down. I wish I had a big story of triumph for you, but it’s still so early in my business endeavor. What I can say is – I believe I have the knowledge and services people need to make their lives even 10% better. I know that I can help people just like you cope better. It’s my season to fly.
Alexzandra ‘Ally’, 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?
To put it plainly, my professional journey has been atypical. I graduated high school with the plan to pursue a PhD in Psychology. That was the ‘logical’ plan. Although I understood the logic, by the end of my undergraduate experience, my internal guidance system was telling me that path wouldn’t be fulfilling for me. Externally, the inner turmoil showed up as panic attacks amid application season.
After becoming more aware of my mindset and motivators, I made the decision to jump out and pivot to pursue a degree in African American Studies concentrating in Community Empowerment to uncover the cultural factors related to stress and trauma within communities. Looking back at that time holistically, my background of knowledge paired with a 7 year fight to overcome chronic pain and a certification in hatha yoga led me to somatic stress-management and professional coaching. Since my undergraduate experience, I knew I wanted to use alternative forms of wellness to help those around me cope with stress and trauma. I didn’t have a shiny title for it just yet, but I had a mission. My own holistic self-awareness helped me stay aligned to this mission.
As a personal development coach, my ultimate goal is to help individuals access their inherent strengths and talents, overcome challenges, and achieve personal and professional success. I founded Embodied Ally to create space and practice for you to get out of your head, into your body, and on top of your best life.
I empower individuals to develop a growth-oriented mindset by transforming limiting beliefs and self-sabotaging behaviors. By focusing on the mind-body connection, we are addressing physical tension, stored emotions, and trauma within the body. Somatic stress management helps individuals achieve emotional balance and vitality through techniques like movement, mindfulness, and breathwork. I offer somatic yoga & breathwork sessions, stress-management education, 1 on 1 coaching, and luxury wellness retreats.
In fact, I’m hosting a women’s arts and wellness retreat, Reignite Your Joy, this winter. A perfect example of an immersive self-care experience. Collectively, this approach considers holistic wellness – encompassing physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual dimensions – and provides personalized strategies for enhancing stress reduction, self-care, and overall performance.
Embodied Ally was created for individuals who are seeking to enhance their overall well-being, manage stress, and unlock their full potential. My ideal clients are high achievers with moderate to high anxiety who are searching for natural ways to regain their power in the face of stress, overcome limiting behaviors, and create balance in their lives. I’m speaking to the manager who is struggling to keep up with the pressures of work and home but tells himself there’s no room for his wellness as he moves closer to burnout. I’m speaking to the mom who finds herself checking out at the office because the anxiety around her relationship with her husband is fogging her brain. I’m speaking to the creative director that can’t seem to find flow in their art and fears their losing a sense of their self or their motivation.
The most exciting part of my work is witnessing clients re-imagining their purpose and possibilities for transformation. I believe what I do is special because this methodology utilizes somatic science and holistic systems as a cheat code to creating calm, awareness, and ultimately a sustainable state of flow. Every practice and tool is accessible and we work together to personalize them to get clients closer to authentic embodiment quickly and easily. Our time together empowers my clients in a way that allows them to be clear-minded, curious, and vulnerable with themselves in collaboration with me. There’s something special about witnessing the immediate impacts.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
The use of somatic healing paired with mindful coaching as tools to regulate stress, connect to the body, and enable clarity isn’t just a concept to me – it’s my lifestyle and passion. It’s what enabled me get out of bed when my whole body ached, to find joy although I was the only 24 year old at the party in every day pain, and inspired me to not give up on myself after years of consistent stress and inner trauma.
Since high school I’ve been intrigued by the conversation between the mind and the body. Even then, I wondered how a 60-minute dance class could soothe the stress and anxiety I’d been carrying around for days from the feelings I was unable to process. At that time, my go-to coping pattern was dissociating from my feelings, running away from the thoughts, and pushing down the unresolved energy inside myself.
I realized in 2021 – after my newest chiropractor realigned the ribs in my chest that were dislocated for almost a decade – that I just spent the last seven years prior living out the exact question that had become my life’s work.
My body was numb from chronic pain, silenced by perplexed physicians, and aching for true peace from the everyday anxiety and traumatic residue that ravaged my nervous system. As I stand here almost 10 years after that accident, I’m proud to report that I found the answers to the questions, “How do I create inner calm and self-awareness by using the accessible mind-body connection?” In time, I realized that the path to free my body included creating a better relationship with my mind, my emotions, and my self-care.
Throughout this journey, I’ve work to uncover and release many fears and feelings of disempowerment that fueled my stress and anxiety. I’m not saying I have the answer to your chronic pain, but I have options to support you on your healing journey. I’ve studied a number of healing modalities and structured a methodology that I share with my clients from this research and my lived experience.
My battle to overcome chronic pain took a level of resilience, mindfulness, and dedication to wellness that truly changed the way I see and experience life.
We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?
For so long, I held onto a narrow, stifling perception of success. To this day, I hold a vivid memory of myself trying to juggle it all during my third year of study at Spelman College. One day, I sat on the bed of my college apartment looking over Psychology PhD programs, contemplating if I would exchange the rest of my young life for the traditional path. The only path where I would truly be respected. The path everyone told me I had to take to be successful, to earn the money, and to be happily autonomous. As I laid there staring at the ceiling, I began to feel all the common symptoms creeping up on me. I was on the verge of a panic attack.
My mind and body were in conflict as I weighed the price of silencing my authenticity in exchange for accolades. My values, my vision, my mind and my body were all misaligned chasing what felt like the only acceptable ideal for success. Back then, I was trapped in my own low vibrational lifestyle. Deaf, blind, and misaligned to what was truly meant for me.
In college, I never would’ve thought I would pursue coaching as a viable career. I was told by classmates and society at large that life coaching was unregulated and unaccredited. I was told that no one took coaches seriously and many were crocks just giving advice. I let that opinion become a limiting belief that kept me running in circles for years. I knew I wanted to help people cope better with their stress and anxiety, but this belief told me there was only one path to get there. Only one path where I could facilitate wellness in peoples’ lives that my peers and community would respect.
Throughout the years, I spoke with multiple people about the desires for my career and more than one suggested life coaching as a perfect match for my skills and goals. Looking back, each of those conversations chipped away at the callus that was my perception of success and respectability. Finally, it was a conversation with my mentor, the past director of Morehouse College’s counseling center, that allowed me to truly loosen my grip on that limiting belief. When he suggested I look into life coaching and described it as a reputable path that brings about change in people’s lives, I could finally see it as an option for myself. I still did my research, explored the industry, and chose a leading, accredited program for training but that was only possible because I unlearned a limiting belief. This current chapter in my life is only possible because I released and reframed my perception from traditional success to authentic success.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.theembodiedally.com
- Instagram: @embodiedally
- Facebook: Embodied Ally
- Linkedin: Alexzandra Strickland
- Youtube: Ally Over Anxiety
- Other: Arts & Wellness Retreat: https://omnoire.com/pages/allystricklandemail: contact@embodiedally.com
Image Credits
Kayla Skeete