We were lucky to catch up with Crystale Boisvert recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Crystale thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Looking back on your career, have you ever worked with a great leader or boss? We’d love to hear about the experience and what you think made them such a great leader.

I Asked him once, how he got be such good manager and he said to me; ” There’s a difference between a boss and a leader; the boss bosses people around and the leader asks for support and help. I show you how much you are appreciated and needed when I request your help. I am just as much as part of the team as you are therefore I show up with humbleness, respect and kindness. You are more likely to want to help me when I am kind. I feel good and you feel good.

Crystale, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I basically had my whole life planned out at 18 years old lol and geeked out hard with my grades to receive honors and a scholarship, I thought I was going to become an English and history school teacher and it was a perfect job for a woman who wanted many children (so I thought:) and I would have the summers off, to be at home with my future children, I planned for 4 lol

Life has a way of showing us that it’s okay to have a plan yet it is really Life moving us along too, as 3 days after my prom my boy friend of 5 years passed away. I felt very lost and confused. I tried to attend my first year of University classes as my parents thought it would be helpful for the grief (it wasn’t) yet I had lost all motivation and to be honest I was just lost, period. I didn’t know who I was without being in a relationship with Him, I had wrapped my future around our relationship and when he died, I didn’t know who I was really .. I felt abandoned, confused and more importantly, it landed me in a feeling of existential crisis.

Someone gave me a yoga DVD to try at home, as I had never practiced before and I fell in love with how I felt after each time. I had been a dancer my whole life and practiced martial arts for many years, so perhaps I would enjoy teaching Yoga.

I knew I always wanted my “work” to involve others as I particularly desired to be in service. I also felt drawn to the spiritual component of the practice since I was navigating some big stuff inside and felt alone, This was the best decision I could have ever made as it moved me along a 20 year journey of learning, sharing and teaching Well-being and Embodiment in all the ways I feel most passionate about.

My career has morphed and transformed over the years. It was deeply renewed when I left Canada four years ago and moved to Central America. I am so grateful that I get to work one-on-one with Private clients and couples at The Portal of Costa Rica. It is such a blessing to support our clients in re-connecting with themselves, their faith and their partner in such a deep way. I get to watch people come back to Life and experience more ease, joy and peace. I love how I can share the somatic feminine practices that is so healing and reviving for our clients and I also get to share the masculine framework of human design, which brings some much alignment, satisfaction a deep healing in communication.

I am always so amazed at how Life has shifted so much when I was 18 years old and even though it was tragic, painful and a bundle of grief, I wouldn’t change it for the world. In a way, maybe this was always the path I was destined to walk and my mind relaxed enough to let it happen.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I became a certified yoga teacher in 2008 and although I desired to teach, it did take a couple years to feel confident enough to teach an actual class. I decided to work as a sales coordinator and manager at a very prestige Gym as I thought I could do both, work a 9-5 and teach yoga after my shift.

Again, Life happens, and I ended up working 60-70 hours a week and not only did I not have time to teach, I also didn’t have time to even eat my lunch. lol This wasn’t healthy for me and I lasted almost year working very hard yet feeling so uninspired,

Until the day of my birthday, where I was working, again, and I had a moment where I felt so many big emotions come up for me that I locked myself in one of our yoga studios and cried. It felt like a mid-life crisis in my twenties as I was so overwhelmed with disappointment in my life and career. I knew I needed to quit, as also at the time I had fallen into the work lifestyle hell loop of drinking wine after work to cope with all the stress, and I didn’t want that life anymore.

I went home that night and told my partner that I needed to leave my job, so I can focus on my career. He supported my choice, to start my own business and begin deeper education with the reiki Grandmaster Academy in Montreal.

Once again discomfort and discontent truly were gifts to the evolution of my invocation.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

One of the reasons why I wanted to study the field of well-being is because although my life has been beautiful and deeply rich, it has also been riddled with heart break, trauma, and mostly unprocessed. In the last 20 years, I have been my own guinea pig and let me tell you, I could probably write a book on “what not to do on your spiritual path” as I tried it all.

Let me share a little more about the little Crystale.

I am a child of a mother who experienced severe postpartum when I was born. She had an unfortunate allergic reaction to medication the doctors gave her, which pushed my mama into psychosis state, where she tried to take both of our lives. Fortunately, we were found and she was hospitalized for over a year.

I believe why this happened was from her own unprocessed traumas and recent heartbreak that she experienced after leaving my birth father, whom I never met until I was 9 years old.

I was blessed in many ways, as my grandparents took care of me while my mom healed, so that I didn’t end up in the system, however my grandmother was tough, after having 11 children of her own, and believed in the cry out method.

Now I didn’t know much of this, until I had my own son, ten years ago. You see, my mom had been bi-polar ever since I can remember, as she was in and out of hospitals, navigating ups and downs that led to a whole lot of chaos and drama.

She always said to me that everyone wanted her to have an abortion and yet she would tell them all no, I need her, she’s going to save my life,

Odd eh? lol Now imagine what happened to my baby body, who experienced herself and mother trying to take their lives? Can you imagine how mixed up I was?

She was right in a way, as many years later when I was on my healing journey, she went through another episode, and didn’t want treatment or help from the medical system.

I asked her:” Mom, how about you try it my way for a while, and you study what I’m working with, and see if it helps?”

So we traveled together to Montreal every second weekend, and we both became 7th degree Reiki Masters. She practiced yoga and meditation with me, as well as sound healing and prayer. The travels also helped us have deep talks, heal with many tears.

One year later, I took my mother to visit her family doctor, who had known her since she was a girl. After examining and probing, he said: “Hmm you don’t need medication, you’re not bipolar anymore.”

We sobbed together and she whispered in ears: ” I told you, you would save my life”.,.

So that was good lol and I truly feel like it was because she allowed herself to heal the trauma that was held so deep inside her being.

Now let’s fast forward a few years later, when I became a mother, and I truly believed in having a lot of skin on skin contact with our son. He slept in the same bed as us, sometimes on our bodies like we were his bed. These were such special moments that I feel so grateful to have,

Six months into being a parent, I noticed anxiety started to creep in and I felt very confused. Any time my son moved in bed while we were asleep, I would wake up in a panic and feel upmost terror for his life. I prayed about it as it brought me so much pain to not be able to sleep beside him.

One morning, as I was waking from a dream, I had a visceral memory of being in the crib, crying for a long time, and no one coming. When I woke up I realized, oh there’s more here about my birth story. I called my grandmother to ask some questions, and she shared with me about what happened to my mother and I, and about her absence..

I invited both my mother and grand mother to visit us, and here’s what happened. My son began to cry and my grandmother stopped me from picking him up and said “let him cry it out. I did that with you, if you were changed, fed, burped then what else do you need? Let him cry it out, the world is hard and he needs to learn.”

Ya…

So, it dawned on me, that maybe many women go through post partum, because they are experiencing and remembering their own unprocessed inner baby memories and traumas. Maybe.

Now These are just a few stories of my life, and yet I have many books.. I have spent years somatically healing my nervous system and creating deeper levels of ease, joy and peace in my body.

I once thought that all the darkness, pain and suffering was for nothing, a mistake, possibly from God, and yet now I understand that I was being prepared.

I am not saying that God wants us to suffer and all that has happened was orchestrated by God alone, non.

What I am saying, is we live on a beautiful planet and yet we are part of a very fallen world. I was born into that broken world, and at some points of my life, it definitely broke me yet I know now I needed to master the underworld, the darkness, and brokenness myself, so as I lead, and teach others, they see in my eyes that I get it. I’ve been where they have been, it hurts, and yet there is a way, there is more, more and more Love available.

I get to be a reference point for others that not only is it possible to break out of the chains of a fallen world and self, but that God desires for us to revive and thrive.

I Know this as I have heard God’s whispers as I fall asleep: ” Crystale, You are a living miracle, my miracle. Look at how much suffering has been and you still choose to love, choose me, over and over again, don’t you see?”

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.theportalcr.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/daughters_of.god/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/crystale.boisvert/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/?trk=guest_homepage-basic_google-one-tap-submit

Image Credits

@spontaneously.being

@constanzeflamme