We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Christie Szpyrka a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Christie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Was there a defining moment in your professional career? A moment that changed the trajectory of your career?
When my mother passed away in June of 2020 after battling a neurological disorder that left her trapped in her own body, I realized I wanted to be able to help people heal in a way that she was unable to achieve.
I had been practicing as a massage therapist for about 9 years at that time and I had seen time and time again the effects of emotional trauma on a person’s physical health. I was limited in my knowledge but driven by the desire to learn as much as I possibly could.
This kicked off a journey of not only acquiring knowledge around energy healing, but as well as my own healing journey as I was confronted with my own emotional baggage and the need to take accountability for myself and my own healing.
We are all presented with a choice. Even when things are not our fault, we get to choose how to respond, after its over (because sometimes in the moment there is no choice.)
Trauma is not our fault, but healing is our responsibility. Understanding that concept allowed me to release any guilt around not being able to help my mother. It taught me how to approach working with my clients and not make their healing my responsibility.
My responsibility is to hold space for someone once they have chosen the path to healing. I can teach them and offer them options, but ultimately it is up to them what they do with it and to think otherwise would only further disempower 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?
As a Holistic Practitioner and Spirituality Coach I help spiritual people heal chronic anxiety through radical self acceptance.
In my signature healing program, ReCreate Your Reality, I guide my clients through the process of stepping into radical self-acceptance and empowered alignment. This empowers my clients to be able to navigate life’s challenges in order to create a life of ease and joy so that they can heal, grow and thrive.
Through a combination of bodywork, yoga, Reiki, tarot, astrology, coaching, EFT and the Emotion Code, I can help people clear their energetic blockages and learn how to accept the good, the bad, the ugly, and the amazing parts of themselves that are out of coherence.
I started my journey as a massage therapist, and over the course of the past 13 years I have worked on over 1000 bodies and learned many various modalities in the healing arts, whether it was different styles of massage or various forms of energy healing. I am always motivated by the fact that the body can heal itself if given the proper tools, space and knowledge to do so.
I offer a wide variety of services because what works for one person at one time will be different for another person at a different time. Everybody’s healing journey looks different. I specialize in helping people to choose what they need in order to embark on the next step and take their healing journey to the next level.
I am very passionate about helping people to understand something that I am calling the Dharma cycle- that each person has a unique role to fulfill in this life, that every job a person has is a form of service to other people.
Over the years, I have learned how to integrate all of these modalities to lead people on their own healing journeys. I have come to recognize that anxiety is a result of a person living out of alignment with their purpose or Dharma in life.
When we can recognize that we are here to be of service to each other we can also learn to allow others to be of service to us. When we figure out what role(s) we are meant to fulfill, we can help the people in our lives to understand what their role is so that each person may fulfill their Dharma in this life.
Deprogramming ourselves from cultural conditioning is a huge part of this journey. Our reality is made up of many different cycles. A lot of our modern world has distanced society from these natural cycles, making it tough for people to navigate their place in life.
Different things affect different people at different times and by coming into alignment with the natural cycles of our planet we can better navigate the ups and downs of life. There are lessons to be learned from the cycles that we live in and making sense of those cycles and their resulting lessons allows us to deepen our radical self acceptance creating a positive feedback loop so that we can heal ourselves from chronic anxiety.
This creates what I call Empowered Alignment. This creates magic in our lives.
Additionally, I have a podcast called Cosmic Design that I cohost with Laura Scannapieco where we discuss how to use astrology and human design in your healing journey.
I co-host sound healing events with Ani Byrne, called Fluxus Amongus, where we bring healing on a collective level through dance, and community.
What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?
As an entrepreneur, I had to unlearn the habits and mindset of being an employee and how to fully own my role as a leader and business owner. Part of this process was dismantling and reframing some very important mindsets.
Finding clients becomes, who can I serve?
What’s going to make me more money becomes, what will be most productive or effective for my clients?
Making sales becomes, how can I motivate people to take action or to choose themselves?
How can I grow my business becomes, how can I create impact in the world?
How can I grow my following becomes, how can I inspire more people?
Creating services or products becomes, how can I foster more healing in the world?
How can I be a thought leader becomes, how can I create a ripple effect of healing in the world?
How can I create more content becomes, how can I show up authentically?
How can I increase my revenue becomes, what philanthropic missions do I want to pursue?
When we come from a place of service and genuinely want to help people vs chasing the bottom line, results will follow.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
in 2016 I was working at two different places as a massage therapist. One was in Center City, Philadelphia, the other was in a chiropractor’s office just outside of Philadelphia.
My friend offered me the opportunity to see clients out of a yoga studio a few blocks away from the business where I was already working. I told the owner about the opportunity, and she gave me her blessing. My goal was to leave the chiropractor’s office and have two places to work in the same general vicinity. The clientele was different enough that there would be no conflict of interest.
About a week after signing the lease and leaving the chiro’s office, one of the women at the center told the owner I was trying to steal clients for myself. She wanted more hours and more money. The owner took her word over mine and fired me on the spot.
I was beyond hurt, I had been with her for more than two years and was busier than any of the other women there, other than the owner herself. I was hurt that she did not trust me or my integrity, and now I went from two very busy jobs and a large income to having my own space and no clientele.
Within a week I developed tendinitis so bad I couldn’t move my wrist and needed steroids. In the following two weeks my car was totaled and I developed strep throat.
It took about 2 months for my wrist to recover, and I was flat broke. I was still at the yoga studio, but I had been unable to work. I took a job at a pizzeria answering phones to offset my lack of income while I grew my client list in a space where no one even knew who I was.
It took about 6 months to build a full schedule for myself and I could leave the pizzeria. I worked out of there for seven years until the studio changed hands and I changed locations to sharing a space with an acupuncturist.
That was the first time I had ever been fired. While I let myself heal, I promised myself I would never allow myself to be put in such a position again, that I would only ever work for myself from that point forward.
It turned out to be a blessing in many ways as I had the flexibility to create my own schedule, see only the clients I wanted to work with and so I began my journey of learning so many more healing modalities to build out my practice to what it is today.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.reachingbetteralternatives.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reachingbetteralternatives
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/reachingbetteralternatives
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christieszpyrkalmt/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfo8p1SH_Q9Z95UNstac_vQ
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/reaching-better-alternatives-philadelphia
- Other: https://linktr.ee/ReachingBetterAlternatives
https://www.instagram.com/cosmicdesignpodcast/
https://heal.me/rbaholistichealth
https://www.instagram.com/fluxus_amongus/
