We were lucky to catch up with Ania Chee recently and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Ania thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Was there a moment in your career that meaningfully altered your trajectory? If so, we’d love to hear the backstory.
In my last year of college I had the worst panic attack I ever had to this day. My hands were shaking, stomach in knows, I couldn’t catch my breath, and my heart was pounding so hard that I thought I was going to die so I called my mom and told her to meet me at the hospital and I drove myself to the emergency room. This was when I realized how bad my anxiety and panic disorder had gotten, and it made me really start to take my mental health seriously. Anxiety and depression have gotten the best of me more times than I care to admit but this moment was truly life-changing for me because I knew I couldn’t go on living with this kind of disordered thinking. Later that year I traveled to India to complete my yoga teacher training course and this was just the beginning of a very long journey towards healing for me. This is still the driving force behind my teaching and coaching programs because I know how dark of a place your mind can take you to so my intention since that moment and moving forward has been to help people heal and learn how to work with their minds instead of against them.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Hi everyone! My name is Ania and I am a truly multifaceted individual. I am a yoga and meditation guide, massage therapist, Pilates instructor, and spiritual life coach.
Throughout my childhood I was a top competing rhythmic gymnast, and although it taught me a lot about resilience and perseverance, it also brought the beginning of a battle against anxiety, depression, and body dysmorphia.
Pilates and yoga were always part of my training regimen for gymnastics, they kept me physically fit for years. So when i went off to start college I became a Pilates instructor so that I could work and have a flexible schedule during my time at the University of South Florida. I truly fell in love with the lifestyle of a fitness instructor which is why I continued with it way longer than I originally planned to.
I discovered my love for yoga and meditation when I was about 16, and immediately noticed the mental, physical, and spiritual benefits of these practices, however I did not start consistently practicing yoga until I was in college. Panic attacks took hold of my life during my last two years in college, and I tried just about everything you can think of to help, went through a great deal of inner turmoil, and finally in 2017 had the panic attack that would change my life. In 2017 I found myself in the emergency room of a hospital convincing the doctors that I was having a heart attack and I was dying. The details of the night escape me, but this was the moment that changed the course of my life.
After graduating from USF later that year I travelled to India to complete my 200 hour yoga teacher training and fell in love with the philosophy and culture behind the country where yoga was born. People ask me what drew me to go across the world, and to this day I can’t exactly pin point the answer. Maybe it was intuition, maybe it was divine intervention. Regardless, the purpose and clarity I found during this experience quite literally saved my life.
A spark was ignited in my practice there and from then on I fully dove into leading others through practices that are an intuitive and introspective journey.That was only the beginning of the journey for me, and since then I have fully stepped into spirituality as a means of healing trauma, triggers, and the darker parts of our souls.
Spiritual practices had a huge impact on healing my battle with mental health disorders, and when my own awakening began I knew my life’s purpose was to become a spiritual life coach and intuitive energy healer.
Currently, home base for me is Tampa, FL, but I am a wanderer by nature and have traveled all over the world learning, teaching, and connecting to other people and places that have impacted who I am at the very core of my being. My travels have broadened my horizons and opened my mind, and I incorporate the pieces of knowledge I have picked up from all over the world in my coaching because my passion lies in taking the practices I hold really close to my heart and sharing them with others.
I offer life coaching programs as well as virtual yoga and meditation sessions. I focus on a well rounded and extremely personal approach to healing. My programs are not one-size-fits-all. They are uniquely tailored to each persons habits, mindset, triggers, trauma, and life experience.
I want to be a container and safe space for you to heal, grow, evolve, and move forward. My passion lies in being your support system and showing you the light that exists within you, because we all have it, sometimes it just takes a guide to show you the way.
Come join me – take my hand, let me show you that you are never alone, even in the moment when it feels like you are.
My promise is to make you feel accepted and loved exactly as you are. I will always lead with love, compassion, honesty, and truth – and i will let that guide us through our journey together.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
I definitely had to unlearn the idea of “hustling“. I think society really values people who wake up before dawn and grind for their goals every single day, so rest is sometimes viewed as laziness. For someone who struggles a lot with mental health I think this idea can be very detrimental towards someone’s mindset and their ability to allow themselves to rest without feeling guilty. Some of the times I’ve had the worst anxiety are times when I woke up too early, went to bed too late, and stopped taking care of myself so that I could try to make more money or provide more services to people. I think the quality of my work and my degree of presence both decreased during this time and I had to start learning how to take care of myself without feeling like I was being less productive. I learned that sometimes the most productive thing you can do is stop, rest, and just allow yourself to breathe.
If you could go back, would you choose the same profession, specialty, etc.?
I wouldn’t change what I am doing now for the world, but I can’t necessarily say that I chose this profession. I often tried to choose other things that would be more normalized or accepted by society and by my family- things that would make me more money and are more understandable. I do however believe that this life chose me, and I am one of the extremely lucky people who has truly found their purpose in this lifetime. I wake up every single day and I am excited to work, I constantly feel fulfilled and in love with the work that I get to do. I am grateful every single day that this life chose me and I would never and will never want to change my trajectory, I just want it to grow even more.
Contact Info:
- Website: awakenwithania.com
- Instagram: @awakenwithania
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ania.chee/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ania-chee-5976b1177/