Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Elise Lasko. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Elise, appreciate you joining us today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

When I was younger, I felt like life always seemed to flow naturally and was relatively easeful in transitions. After high school, I went to college. Once I graduated college, I moved to Honduras to work for a non-profit. During that time, I met and fell in love with a Guatemalan man and moved to Guatemala a year later to be with him. Even when moving to Guatemala with no real plan other than to be with my partner, I found myself finding jobs easily and embracing a life there. Despite enjoying life, I had a desire to be back in the US closer to my family. After four years of living in Central America, I started making the transition back to the US. After a very casual job search and interview, a job that seemed perfect for me landed in my lap. It turned out to be a wonderful opportunity that then allowed me to do so many things necessary to advance my life forward. Shortly after starting the new job in October 2015, I got married and started the green card process with my husband.

While we waited for the green card, we were apart. I spent that year embracing my new job, traveling for work and navigating a new city. During that time, I start to feel a lot of anxiety about my choices creep in. Eventually my husband was able to move to the US and we started our life together in Denver.

Despite feeling like I had followed the natural flow of my life and made all the “right choices,” nothing felt right. In fact, I felt myself crumbling into darkness and anxiety. Nothing about the life I had chosen seemed to make sense. I tried many modalities to feel better and really took it upon myself to fix everything.

I dove deep into personal development and found myself in a Reiki level 1 certification class. I had never even heard of Reiki before. In the first week of learning to use Reiki on myself, I felt significantly better. My anxiety had reduced and the insomnia I was experiencing started to dissipate. Over the next two years, I got all of my Reiki certifications and started to learn about many other modalities of holistic healing including meditation, acupuncture, crystals, and astrology. I grew quickly out of the life I had worked so hard to create.

Shortly after my 30th birthday, I started planning a trip to Europe with friends. As I researched and spent time with myself, I knew it was time for a break after all of the emotionally draining experiences I had over the past two years. At the end of 2019, I left my job, got divorced after a long separation, and took time to reset in Europe. Looking back on all those decisions, I am amazed by how fearless I was through it all. I had no plan of what I was going to do after my reset but trusted that everything would be ok.

When I returned to the US, I was determined to keep myself in a positive and calm state of mind and really listen to my intuition when deciding my next steps. I had always wanted to have my own business and had a subtle sense even before leaving my previous job that it was going to be my next step. After finding a community of other entrepreneurs in Denver, I decided to go for it and start my own Reiki business with the goal of bringing stress management and relaxation into the workplace. My vision was to teach self-healing through Reiki. I launched myself full force into my business in January of 2020 and felt really excited and confident. I had made connections, setup workshops and meetings, and then all of a sudden everything was cancelled due to the pandemic in March. At first, I remained calm and shifted to offering online. After several weeks of quarantine, I found myself losing sight of my vision while feeling extremely isolated from my community.

It was during that time that I researched many other opportunities and ended up going in a lot of different directions. My constant willingness to take risk and trust that everything would be alright, led me from Denver to San Diego to Hawaii to my hometown in Ohio for a few months and finally back to San Diego to start the Pacific College of Health and Science Doctorate Program of Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture.

Since I officially moved back to San Diego, I have been embracing my community and started teaching Reiki classes focused on self-healing for other students as well as continuing to offer online options for small business owners and working professionals.

Looking back on my journey from being a small-town girl with a huge desire to see the world to being a 33-year-old slightly wiser woman, the common thread I see is that I have always been a risk taker. Some of my life choices have felt amazing and some of them really painful in the process. Yet, through all of the choices, I have always trusted in the process and that everything will work out for the better.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I shared quite a bit of my story in the question about taking risk, but to elaborate further, I got into Reiki because of my own desperate need to heal myself from overwhelming anxiety. It is why my entire business is focused on self-healing, specifically teaching others to use Reiki to heal themselves. I have had numerous clients come to my trainings saying they had never even thought about being able to use Reiki on themselves! It is what makes me unique as a practitioner. I less frequently do private Reiki sessions and mostly focus on teaching so that others can learn how powerful Reiki can be.

When I was going through my darkest moments of anxiety and questioning my decisions, I felt really alone. What I have discovered from working with clients over these last two and a half years is that so many others have been through the same or similar things. Holding space through teaching allows me to bring people together to share their unique experiences and also find commonalities with others.

I am now about halfway through my doctorate program of Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture. I have recently been feeling most called to Women’s Health, particularly acupuncture for fertility, pregnancy and postpartum. I am still in the very early phases of discovering this area and am diving deeper into sharing my learning with others. Since I have started sharing this part of my journey, I have had others reach out to express interest.

My offerings include the following:

In person Reiki certifications (in San Diego) for other students of Chinese medicine as well as practitioners of other healing modalities, such as acupuncturists, massage therapists, etc.

An on online self-paced Reiki certification course to help small business owners use Reiki to calm anxiety and grow their businesses.

Online Reiki distance healing (soon to be focused on Women’s Health)

Beyond being a Reiki practitioner and student, I am also a lover of language, culture, and the world. The foundation of my business, coReiki is “Global self-healing rooted in love.” This phrase continues to bring me back to my initial vision which was to have a home base but to also travel to teach healing work. As of now, I have been able to globally reach people through social media and do intend to travel to share all of the gifts I have been given.

Do you think you’d choose a different profession or specialty if you were starting now?

I absolutely would choose all of my same professions again! I have been noticing all of my worlds and passions come together lately in a really cool way.

I have a BS in International Business and BA in Spanish from the College of Charleston. I spent time working in nonprofit, specifically microfinance in Honduras and bilingual teaching, translation, project management, and social media marketing in Guatemala. It was because of this experience that I became fully fluent in Spanish and was able to get my job as a Training Specialist for the Spanish reading program, Estrellita. During my time at Estrellita, I cultivated my experience in sales, training, and wearing many hats at a small company. This really prepared me for launching into starting my own business. Having studied Spanish and Chinese in college, I have a gift for languages. There is a ton of memorization in learning Chinese medicine. Having a foundation in Chinese language has made learning Chinese herb names much easier for me!

Although when going through different phases of life, some of my previous jobs and paths did not always seem important, but now I really see how everything I chose has helped me along the way and will continue to help me in the future.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

Feck Perfuction by James Victore because I have always been a perfectionist and antagonized way too many hours over simple tasks. This helped to stop making things perfect that will never be perfect and just go for it!

You Can Heal Your Life by Louise Hay helped me in my first transition of moving back to the US. It taught me how powerful words of affirmation are.

The Shakti Leadership by Nilima Bhat and Rajendra Sisodia gave me insight in managing a business from a more feminine perspective

A Return to Love by Marianne Willamson- I am reading this book for the third time. It helped me when I was first learning about spiritual growth, got me through really painful moments, and is now helping me stay true to my mission and path.

Many meditation books by Thich Nhat Hanh, particularly the How to Live Series- I love the simplicity that his writing does for my naturally anxious mind. One of the biggest battles of being an entrepreneur is learning to manage oneself. Thich Nhat Hanh helps me come back when things get too complicated.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://www.coreiki.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/coreiki
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/coreiki
• Other: Email: [email protected]