We were lucky to catch up with Amanda Hitchcock recently and have shared our conversation below.
Amanda, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.
Growing up in the countryside of the PNW, my parents created a sanctuary. A safe and sacred home, nestled within the mossy trees and held by mountain river sounds, where my older brother and I would run, play and adventure. Having an engineer father and an art teacher mom, I was blessed to grow in an environment where science and art were prioritized, practiced and supported. I grew to love seeing patterns of the universe through mathematics like the Fibonacci sequence and enjoyed the emotional expression through art projects. My parents held space for creativity, imagination and learning the rhythms of the moon. This beautiful dance of structure and flow infused within me a passion for creating life rhythms that not only aligned with natural cycles but the brilliance of science and magic of art. Today I give immense gratitude for their guidance and care. I love being a teacher of human movements and healthy lifestyles because it is the prefect blend of nerdy body science and creative lifeways!
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Growing up, Amanda often found herself feeling very perplexed and confused with the blueprint of being a human being. Why must we seek out pain to grow? Why is the hero’s journey the only celebrated way to evolve? Why is being in pain a badge of honor? Are there other ways to grow and evolve? At ten years old I started to develope mysterious hip and spine pain which my loving parents arranged medical care through western doctors who tried their best to help with no success. Practicing radical acceptance and internalizing misogynistic beliefs that it was normal for a woman’s life to be painful, I started my journey walking with chronic pain.
Entering university I knew I wanted to study a field that would allow me to help others feel strong, supple and able to fully receive the gift of living. Learning to create a sense of wholeness and connection within my own being was pivotal to mending the cracks in my physical vessel so I could overflow and pour into the healing experience of others. The years at University gave me the foundation of knowledge in kinesiology, human physiology and cultural studies that motivated me to expand my studies after graduation to every system of body care, lifestyle practices and daily activities that I could find! From Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Yoga, nature based practices, Indigenous lifeways, neuroscience, somatic practices and a plethora of strength training programs, I yearned to find the golden threads of wisdom woven throughout these ancient and modern practices. After a decade of study, daily embodied devotion, relationship tending and professional experience, I can gratefully say this holistic lifestyle teaching tapestry is a true work of art and science. As well, I am also living with no more deep spine and hip pain! Yay! I believe pain can be a great teacher if that is what the great mystery brings to us but it is not the only way to grow and evolve. Trauma does not have to be a prerequisite for your dharma (Sanskrit for your purpose for being) What doesn’t kill us does not make us stronger it reinforces neurological patterns of survival mechanics which exhaust our biological systems and leave us feeling disenchanted and disconnected. From living in a body chronically upregulated and overstimulated to experiencing an internal ecosystem that feels safe, connected and free, I am passionate about preventative practices that teach us to build internal rhythms that allow us to fully feel alive, deeply rest and connect with each moment. We can choose living rhythms that nourish, bring joy and build relationship.
As a humble student of natures guiding rhythms, I know that our lifestyle choices are intricately linked with the vitality of our body and the body of the earth. How can we care for our inner rhythms and make choices that also regenerate the ecosystem for generations to come? How can we honor the expansive evolution of a joyful heart? What can we learn from the heroines journey? How can nourishing choices teach us and help us grow?
Amanda’s professional life is motivated by a joyful heart in service, love of teaching and a deep desire for all beings everywhere to feel wholeness, belonging, strong, and connected to nature. Building trust, inner joy and connection within community are foundational practices for creating a life you love living! It is my life’s passion to help others learn how to build relationship with their body, lifestyle choices, land and community that is kind, regenerative and liberating. I believe there is a beautiful relationship between our small daily choices, our quality of life and the health of our ecosystem. As a holistic lifestyle coach and personal trainer with a degree in Kinisology and human physiology, I offer lifestyle wellness education online, biomechanics of breathwork classes at Yoga studios and workshops to align with seasonal rhythms. I also teach nervous system care practices, somatic yoga, breathing rhythms and lifestyle wellness workshops at retreats.
If you are feeling disconnected, overwhelmed, like a stranger in your own body or like you do not belong on this earth, the choice to integrate holistic lifestyle rhythms into your daily practices will reconnect, restore and ignite a remembrance of who you truly are so you can experience a deep sense of belonging, connection and joy to share within community.
Living within a neurodivergent brain and experiencing the plethora of co morbidities that arise from surviving in a world created for a different neurotype, my personal journey of creating sense of safety within has illuminated how individually tailored a lifestyle program must be to fully see, celebrate and guide a client to their potential. Throughout all my education and experience, it has been through the lens of understanding more deeply how to create environments around and within the person versus forces them into a structure that is not aligned with their innate rhythms. My lifestyle coaching is focused on individuals who experience anxiety, depression, autism, adhd, chronic pain, fibromyalgia, autoimmune conditions and highly sensitive people because these are the precious beings whose road to healing is held best within a holistic lense of care from multiple avenues, woven together to create a fabric of healing lifeways that truly support their heart, mind, body and soul needs.
My deepest desire is for you to experience the magic of your own heart, cultivate unwavering trust and regenerative lifeways. We need you. Through holistic lifestyle practices you can liberate yourself and set others free. When you feel free to embody your truest expression, the soul of the world breathes with you and ignites passion for living, creating community and caring for nature. We are all in this together and together, we are all in.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Often, the story of burnout is depicted as toiling away at a job that dampens your spirit and ignites misery daily. My story of burnout sings a slightly different tune yet the end result of physical, mental and spiritual exhaustion remain the same. After graduating university, I started working at a wonderful health club and absolutely loved it! The 10-16 hours of serving my clients daily filled me with delight, excitement and incredible enthusiasm for the health and fitness profession. I was working alongside dieticians, naturopaths, psychologists, massage therapists, fellow strength coaches and other health professionals to help people achieve their health and fitness goals. It was inspiring and rewarding to be a part of people’s journeys to a higher quality of living. As a highly motivated human being to achieve traditional workplace success by training as many clients as human possible, this was my mission. We had 7 solid years of training wild hours and feeling so grateful to work with so many amazing clients. But as the years went on, even with consistent exercise, recovery practices, nature time, community, family time and all the vegetables, the human slowly began to ask for rest and a slower pace of living. My body could not keep up with my hearts addiction of working long hours with clients. The chronic pain I had always lived with from childhood began to scream and snow balled into extreme fatigue and a conglomerate of psychological diagnosiss and autoimmune conditions. My soul knew it was time for a change. So after squirreling away some savings, we quit our health club job and lived on a regenerative farm in Costa Rica called Punta Mona, for 2 months. This was the space I needed to get clear on how I wanted to show up for myself, the land, clients, community, and family. This is where I met my Herbalism teacher, Sarah Wu who teaches with such profound awareness of interconnectedness, grounded sense of self and devotion to our living earth. Her embodied wisdom inspired my shift into studying deep original medicine of the people, herbs. And so, the true work began upon my return home to learn how to befriend my body, heal self abandonment wounds and reignite my relationship with natural rhythms. Maintaining a few personal training, holistic lifestyle coaching and yoga clients online, I was able to slow down and learn to grow my own food, herbs and soil. Because learning fuels my love of living, I was able to take an 8 month herbalism course through ecoversity to deepen my relationship and capacity to care for other precious beings, plants. It was this shift in living rhythms, remembering ancient joy through folk medicine making with my hands, that my healing began to take root. I am still walking this sacred road of returning to wholeness and tending structures of peace. An invitation to anyone who is feeling the system overwhelm of capitalistic burn out is to place your hands in the soil and literally plants seeds to be witness to the magic and joyful experience of blossoming in supportive environments. Elemental wisdom of the earth rhythms are precious guides to our most fully embodied and vibrant lifeways. Earth my body, water my blood, air my breath and fire my spirit. We can recalibrate, restore and remember our joyful way of living, caring and connecting.
Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?
Scilla Elworthy-Business plan for peace and speech: https://youtu.be/6To7jGqbpiU?si=raBaAAdIrTjp9dQv
Living Resistence by Caitlin B Curtis
Braiding Sweet Grass-by Robin Wall Kimmerer
The Feminine Face of God: The Unfolding of the Sacred in Women
The Way of the Mysterial Woman: upgrading how you live, love and lead by Suzanne Anderson
Women who run with the wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés
Somatic Internal Family Systems Therapy by Susan McConnell
Evolutionary Herbalism by Sarah Popham
The Rainbow diet by Deanna Minich
Crushed Wild Mint by Jess Housty
Every book by Rosemary Gladstar
The one staw revolution by Masanobu Fukuoka
Anatomy Trains: myofacsial meridians by Thomas W Myers
Ayurveda: the science of self healing by Dr. Vasant Lad
The Postural Restoration Institute: brilliant integrative continuing education course for physical therapy, personal training, massage therapy-really any coach/trainer/chiro/yoga/pilates/dentist/pelvic floor specialist etc https://www.posturalrestoration.com/
Ecoversity: https://www.ecoversity.org/
Sarah Wu: https://villagewitch.org/about/
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @earthwitchwellness
- Other: Email:
Image Credits
Kristina Pearl Photography, Westmoon Media, and Davin Lee