[Music]
[Applause]
December 9th of 2007 started like any
normal Sunday my sisters my three
sisters my parents and I headed down to
church and carro Springs Colorado from
our home in Denver we sat in church and
listened to the worship service we
listened to the guest speaker and after
church we had our weekly argument about
where we would go to eat as we were
leaving church we got into our minivan
the unthinkable happened
so I heard a loud pop to my right my
turn
thinking that a balloon had popped and
chaos erupted as my dad screaming us to
get down because someone was shooting at
us in the next two minutes my twin
sister lay dead on the seat in front of
me my sister Rachel who had been
standing outside the car turned blue on
the asphalt
my dad had jumped out to help her and
was non critically wounded a few feet
away about ten hours later in the
hospital my sister Rachel also passed
away from too much blood
my dad survived after a lengthy surgery
and my mom my younger sister Grace and
myself were forever changed these are my
sisters right here somewhere in the
chaos of gunfire I had had the stunning
thought I’m going to need counseling
after this I truly credit that strange
thought too for where I am today
that thought had come to me from
something that I had experienced about
four years earlier as a teenager I was
14 at the time and I had asked a friend
of mine for her notes to her intro to
psychology class my interest in
psychology prompted my interest in
counseling and it also led around
– I was kind of the counsellor for my
friends I had a an online social group
of friends where we would talk about how
we felt unseen by those around us
especially our parents and we all
struggled with different things
depression anxiety self-harm eating
disorders and I tried to do for them
what my parents had not been able to
that point to do for me to see them and
to truly be with them but at that point
I was a wounded healer in the sense that
the emphasis was on wounded I was
listening in order to try and get some
kind of healing for myself and yet that
was what brought me back to that thought
at the moment that my sisters were being
murdered I’m going to need counselling
after this now the first round of
counselling that I went through did not
correct the dynamic of trying to soothe
my own pain through helping others the
first round of counselling was honestly
just stabilizing after such a
traumatizing event it wasn’t until the
second round of counseling that I went
through two years later that I began to
truly understand what it meant in some
ways to be to heal myself first
so two years later I had found myself in
a dying marriage I had married my high
school sweetheart only to discover that
he had a rampant addiction to
pornography at that moment I was in the
deepest depression I had been in my life
my sisters had been murdered and as a
good Christian girl I could only think
that God was punishing me and that it
was at that moment that I stepped out
and asked for help rather than trying to
rescue other people I finally reached
out and started rescuing myself through
Kat that round of counselling I became
empowered and I realized that I could
make my own decisions
I had agency and I had choice it was
something I had never that had never
occurred to me growing up and at the age
of 22 was a new thought and as I
discovered that I had choice and I had
agency I made the choice to step away
from my marriage and my divorce was the
catalyst for the greatest healing I have
yet experienced it was through my
divorce that I realized my own
empowerment that I could be my own
person I chose to walk away from
Christianity I found my own spirituality
I began meditating and again doing yoga
I also started a round of EMDR therapy
so EMDR is eye movement desensitizing it
bilaterally stimulates the side each
side of your brain and replaces harmful
beliefs with skillful ones when I had
gone into EMDR to be a frank I had not
dealt with the trauma of my sister’s
death I had been distracted by my
marriage to a pornography addict and had
not addressed it so I had an array of
trauma symptoms hyperarousal style
response flashbacks the normal sort of
PTSD and EMDR is a specific therapy that
is usually used for trauma survivors so
I did a year and a half of EMDR and when
I came out almost all of my triggers
were gone so at that moment I was a
believer in healing and I thought to
myself how can I start bringing what
I’ve just experienced to other people so
I enrolled in or I accepted an offer to
graduate school and I was all set and
ready to go when I had a moment of
crisis I was 25 at the time and I had
wanted to be a counselor since I was 15
I had gone just gone through an enormous
life change and it was a completely
different person than I had been was
this still really what I wanted to do
and furthermore had I healed enough to
become a therapist so I turned down my
acceptance to graduate school and at
that point felt really lost in
bewildered having lost my kind of
purpose in life when a friend emailed me
that fall she said I think you should do
this yoga teacher training
this is really weird for me but when I
read that email I knew immediately I
have to do this and so I did and when I
entered that yoga teacher training I
thought that I had done a deep level of
healing but this took me to the next
level you see it wasn’t any normal yoga
teacher training that I did this yoga
teacher training my teacher Jessica
Patterson taught me that in order to be
a yoga teacher we have to be present for
what’s in the room people bring a lot
into yoga classes and it turns out also
that Yoga is not just asana with the
physical practice it’s about learning to
be present so in doing this yoga teacher
training she asked us to become first
present to ourselves which meant
becoming president to all the things
that kept us from being present and
taught me that this is the necessary
vehicle for healing when we become
present to ourselves and to everything
that keeps us from that presence we are
then able to be present with others and
it was this that spurred me back towards
graduate school I had a practice where I
finally through yoga began to be present
both to my own pain and to the pain of
those around me and I think that is
absolutely the core of what it means to
be a wounded healer so often you see
wounded I mean most healers are wounded
truly and so often you see them trying
to soothe their own pain through healing
others and when we do that we run the
risk of forcing other people into our
own pain narrative rather than
empowering them to heal themselves so
the the process of healing is actually
about showing up really for real showing
up being present to yourself and
allowing that presence to invite others
to show up so I want to invite you all
to show up tonight with me to do that
I’d like you to bring your feet flat to
the floor and maybe set all your hands
in your lap in a comfortable position
either close your eyes or bring them
softly to the floor in front of you
and just start to notice the floor
underneath your feet and maybe the seat
underneath you and notice your breath
and then just take a moment to think of
a person place or being with whom you
feel absolutely safe or unconditionally
load I often use my cat so whatever
works and just notice how that feels in
your body you might notice some warmth
in your chest
you might notice it’s a sense of
expansion in your stomach
maybe your shoulders drop a little bit
and just know that at any point in time
where there tonight or in your outside
lives when you’re not feeling present
you can come back to this moment and as
you’re ready just open your eyes
so tonight here’s my invitation to you
as healers as I think we truly all are
the invitation is to show up to be
present first for your own pain and then
for the pain of others we need you thank
you
[Applause]
[Applause]
December 9th of 2007 started like any
normal Sunday my sisters my three
sisters my parents and I headed down to
church and carro Springs Colorado from
our home in Denver we sat in church and
listened to the worship service we
listened to the guest speaker and after
church we had our weekly argument about
where we would go to eat as we were
leaving church we got into our minivan
the unthinkable happened
so I heard a loud pop to my right my
turn
thinking that a balloon had popped and
chaos erupted as my dad screaming us to
get down because someone was shooting at
us in the next two minutes my twin
sister lay dead on the seat in front of
me my sister Rachel who had been
standing outside the car turned blue on
the asphalt
my dad had jumped out to help her and
was non critically wounded a few feet
away about ten hours later in the
hospital my sister Rachel also passed
away from too much blood
my dad survived after a lengthy surgery
and my mom my younger sister Grace and
myself were forever changed these are my
sisters right here somewhere in the
chaos of gunfire I had had the stunning
thought I’m going to need counseling
after this I truly credit that strange
thought too for where I am today
that thought had come to me from
something that I had experienced about
four years earlier as a teenager I was
14 at the time and I had asked a friend
of mine for her notes to her intro to
psychology class my interest in
psychology prompted my interest in
counseling and it also led around
– I was kind of the counsellor for my
friends I had a an online social group
of friends where we would talk about how
we felt unseen by those around us
especially our parents and we all
struggled with different things
depression anxiety self-harm eating
disorders and I tried to do for them
what my parents had not been able to
that point to do for me to see them and
to truly be with them but at that point
I was a wounded healer in the sense that
the emphasis was on wounded I was
listening in order to try and get some
kind of healing for myself and yet that
was what brought me back to that thought
at the moment that my sisters were being
murdered I’m going to need counselling
after this now the first round of
counselling that I went through did not
correct the dynamic of trying to soothe
my own pain through helping others the
first round of counselling was honestly
just stabilizing after such a
traumatizing event it wasn’t until the
second round of counseling that I went
through two years later that I began to
truly understand what it meant in some
ways to be to heal myself first
so two years later I had found myself in
a dying marriage I had married my high
school sweetheart only to discover that
he had a rampant addiction to
pornography at that moment I was in the
deepest depression I had been in my life
my sisters had been murdered and as a
good Christian girl I could only think
that God was punishing me and that it
was at that moment that I stepped out
and asked for help rather than trying to
rescue other people I finally reached
out and started rescuing myself through
Kat that round of counselling I became
empowered and I realized that I could
make my own decisions
I had agency and I had choice it was
something I had never that had never
occurred to me growing up and at the age
of 22 was a new thought and as I
discovered that I had choice and I had
agency I made the choice to step away
from my marriage and my divorce was the
catalyst for the greatest healing I have
yet experienced it was through my
divorce that I realized my own
empowerment that I could be my own
person I chose to walk away from
Christianity I found my own spirituality
I began meditating and again doing yoga
I also started a round of EMDR therapy
so EMDR is eye movement desensitizing it
bilaterally stimulates the side each
side of your brain and replaces harmful
beliefs with skillful ones when I had
gone into EMDR to be a frank I had not
dealt with the trauma of my sister’s
death I had been distracted by my
marriage to a pornography addict and had
not addressed it so I had an array of
trauma symptoms hyperarousal style
response flashbacks the normal sort of
PTSD and EMDR is a specific therapy that
is usually used for trauma survivors so
I did a year and a half of EMDR and when
I came out almost all of my triggers
were gone so at that moment I was a
believer in healing and I thought to
myself how can I start bringing what
I’ve just experienced to other people so
I enrolled in or I accepted an offer to
graduate school and I was all set and
ready to go when I had a moment of
crisis I was 25 at the time and I had
wanted to be a counselor since I was 15
I had gone just gone through an enormous
life change and it was a completely
different person than I had been was
this still really what I wanted to do
and furthermore had I healed enough to
become a therapist so I turned down my
acceptance to graduate school and at
that point felt really lost in
bewildered having lost my kind of
purpose in life when a friend emailed me
that fall she said I think you should do
this yoga teacher training
this is really weird for me but when I
read that email I knew immediately I
have to do this and so I did and when I
entered that yoga teacher training I
thought that I had done a deep level of
healing but this took me to the next
level you see it wasn’t any normal yoga
teacher training that I did this yoga
teacher training my teacher Jessica
Patterson taught me that in order to be
a yoga teacher we have to be present for
what’s in the room people bring a lot
into yoga classes and it turns out also
that Yoga is not just asana with the
physical practice it’s about learning to
be present so in doing this yoga teacher
training she asked us to become first
present to ourselves which meant
becoming president to all the things
that kept us from being present and
taught me that this is the necessary
vehicle for healing when we become
present to ourselves and to everything
that keeps us from that presence we are
then able to be present with others and
it was this that spurred me back towards
graduate school I had a practice where I
finally through yoga began to be present
both to my own pain and to the pain of
those around me and I think that is
absolutely the core of what it means to
be a wounded healer so often you see
wounded I mean most healers are wounded
truly and so often you see them trying
to soothe their own pain through healing
others and when we do that we run the
risk of forcing other people into our
own pain narrative rather than
empowering them to heal themselves so
the the process of healing is actually
about showing up really for real showing
up being present to yourself and
allowing that presence to invite others
to show up so I want to invite you all
to show up tonight with me to do that
I’d like you to bring your feet flat to
the floor and maybe set all your hands
in your lap in a comfortable position
either close your eyes or bring them
softly to the floor in front of you
and just start to notice the floor
underneath your feet and maybe the seat
underneath you and notice your breath
and then just take a moment to think of
a person place or being with whom you
feel absolutely safe or unconditionally
load I often use my cat so whatever
works and just notice how that feels in
your body you might notice some warmth
in your chest
you might notice it’s a sense of
expansion in your stomach
maybe your shoulders drop a little bit
and just know that at any point in time
where there tonight or in your outside
lives when you’re not feeling present
you can come back to this moment and as
you’re ready just open your eyes
so tonight here’s my invitation to you
as healers as I think we truly all are
the invitation is to show up to be
present first for your own pain and then
for the pain of others we need you thank
you
[Applause]
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