We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kristin Butterfield a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Kristin, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with 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.

I started my healing career over 26 years ago working inside the western medical paradigm as a Physical Therapist. Time and experience showed me how limited and uni-dimensional this approach was. It worked, but only a little and only for some people. More and more I began to realize that addressing the Whole Person, mind-body-soul, was the missing piece necessary to achieve profound and lasting healing for my clients. This kind of thinking wasn’t the norm at the time and didn’t fit into the western clinical model I’d been trained to work within. Yet I couldn’t ignore my dawning realizations, I had to evolve my understanding and my practice. So despite risking professional and societal judgement for going against the grain and stepping outside the box, I risked it. As I followed my souls wisdom and listened to my intuitive guidance I began to study different forms of healing : Energyhealing, yoga, breathwork, meditation, mantra, spirituality, trauma informed therapy, the nervous system, Craniosacral Therapy, kinesiological muscle testing, Somatoemotional release and more. Each bit of knowledge, skill attained, and realization unfolded has propelled me deeper into a practice of offering healing for the WHOLE person. I’m now able to help my clients heal in so much more profound ways than I ever could have if I hadn’t decided to take the risk, listen to my intuition, and make the pivot.

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?

I’m still trying to figure out how to explain what I do, LOL! I’m an intuitive healer, a teacher, a wisdom coach, a somatic engineer, a block remover, a Soul awakener, a Divine translator, a pieces of self integrator, and a whole being harmonizer. I use tools from my background in physical therapy, craniosacral therapy, energy healing, yoga, meditation and more. I work intuitively and connect with Divine guidance to find and release the “issues in the tissues”, the way mental-emotional-spiritual congestion gets stuck in the physical architecture of the body, and blocks our natural state of harmony and flow. People come to me for physical complaints like chronic pain or injury, mental-emotional struggles, spiritual and life path issues, relationship & career blocks etc.
I truly believe that everyone can heal. When we’re in balance, we are self healing geniuses. The problem is, sometimes and often, our experience of life gets in the way. As human beings, we feel and think a lot of things. As we engage with life and all of its complex situations and relationships. we experience different mental- emotional- nervous system reactions. If we are unable to fully process these in present time, they get stuffed deep down in our unconscious where they slyly begin to shape our reality and affect the way we see ourselves, others, the world, and what’s possible for us. For example: a child goes to kindergarten for the first time and is so excited to be in this new environment that he ignores his need to go to the restroom and eventually has an accident. The teacher scolds him, and he feels humiliated, confused and like he’s a bad person. When he gets home later that day his parents are stressed and overwhelmed with work and life. They’re unintentionally unavailable to help the child process his emotions. So instead of moving through him, his emotions, and the beliefs that spring up around them, get stuck – in his back or gut, or chest, or anywhere else in his body. Now this child carries within him a wound of unworthiness/not good enough/I’m bad. As an adult he doesn’t even remember this incident, yet the theme of unworthiness plays out repeatedly in his personal and professional life. He can’t hold the job, maintain the relationship or meet his goals because deep down inside he believes he’s not good enough for any of it. On top of that, his back hurts, or he has gut issues, or chest pain, or … you get the picture. In the work that I do with my clients, we find the physical anchors for these energetic wounds and release all of them. Then things begin to change for the better, because like they say, “ when you get the insides right, the outside‘s fall into place.”

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

A big lesson I had to unlearn is that things are not always as straightforward and one-dimensional as they appear. As human beings we all carry untold stories within us that are just waiting to be heard. We are a lot more complex than a mere diagnosis, and life is usually much more complicated than a quick fix will address. For example: if someone comes to me with a diagnosis of a frozen shoulder, I’m still going to look at them multidimensionally. While they may in truth have a frozen shoulder, there may also be many contributing factors not included in that physical diagnosis. And if we don’t address all the contributing factors, that person is not going to get better. Maybe they’re highly stressed and feel like they’re carrying the weight of the world on their shoulder. Maybe they have an unconscious childhood belief that their value comes from being the one who can fix and do it all, and so they square up to life and try to muscle their way through it all. Maybe their nervous system is stuck in a hyper regulated fight/flight state where muscle tone and tension remains high constantly. I could go on and on here, but hopefully you see from this example how things aren’t always as they first appear. Dig deeper. Look broadly. Use discernment and bring all the pieces together when looking at a person or a project or a problem or a goal. This is how you make big lasting change.

Training and knowledge matter of course, but beyond that what do you think matters most in terms of succeeding in your field?

For me, the relationships I build with my clients are the most important thing to the success of my practice. Nothing speaks to the nature of my work like direct testimonials from my clients. Word of mouth business is the main way I’ve grown my practice.

Contact Info:

• Website: Kristinbutterfieldhealing.com
• Instagram: Kristinbutterfieldhealing

Image Credits
lily butterfield