Wine Lover to Wellness Coach: Laura Valvasori's Alcohol-Free Journey and Holistic Transformation

Discover how Laura Valvasori transformed her life through alcohol-free living, creating the 'Still Me but Alcohol-Free' program to help others navigate sobriety without stigma. Learn about holistic wellness practices and managing social dynamics while living alcohol-free.
Through evidence-based strategies and personal experience, Laura guides clients toward sustainable lifestyle changes.

In this episode you will hear:

• Laura’s realization about alcohol and health 
• The difficulties of social drinking and triggers 
• The impact of mindset on quitting vs. moderation 
• Statistics on alcohol-related health risks 
• Overview of Laura's program and its structure 
• The role of energy work in her healing journey

Managing Social Life Without Alcohol

Her approach to alcohol-free social situations emphasizes practical strategies and mindset shifts such as:
- Navigating social events confidently
- Communicating boundaries with friends and family
- Exploring premium non-alcoholic alternatives
- Understanding alcohol marketing's influence on social norms

Connect with Laura
https://www.lauravalvasori.com
Laura's Book
Instagram

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Want to be a guest on Chat Off The Mat - Holistic Healing, Feminine Energy and Tools for Vibrant Living? Send Rose Wippich a message on PodMatch, HERE!

Chapters

• 0:00 Embracing an Alcohol-Free Lifestyle
• 13:40 Navigating an Alcohol-Free Lifestyle
• 23:40 The Hidden Health Risks of Alcohol
• 32:29 Healing Through Energy Work and Reiki

Transcript

Rose: 0:00

If you're sober curious, stay tuned because today I chat with Laura Valvasori, a business and well-being mentor, the author of Good to Grow Cultivate your Mindset and Habits to Thrive as an Entrepreneur, a Reiki practitioner and certified emotion code practitioner, and the creator of the Still Me but Alcohol-Free program. Ready to unlock your most vibrant, authentic self, your journey to radiant wellness starts now. Welcome to Chat Off The Mat. I'm your host, rose Whippich, and I'm here to guide you on an extraordinary journey of feminine healing, energy, work and total well-being. Get ready to be inspired by authentic conversations with leading women practitioners, wellness experts and holistic healers who understand your unique journey. Subscribe to Chat Off The Mat wherever you get your podcasts, and let's create magic together.

Rose: 1:01

Like many women, in her early 40s, Laura started feeling like alcohol was no longer agreeing with her body and drinking was starting to feel out of alignment with her otherwise healthy lifestyle. Today, over four years later, she lives happily alcohol-free. She's now passionate about sharing what she learned to guide other women through the journey of shifting to an alcohol-free life. Welcome, laura. Thank you for having me. I have been looking forward to this conversation, so I just want to begin by asking you to just tell us a little bit more about yourself and your journey to how you got here.

Laura: 1:39

Sure. So, as you heard in the intro, I'm multi-passionate in nature, so I've done a number of different things For the past 11 years. I've had a marketing consulting business called Good to Grow Marketing and more recently I've been sort of shifting into owning all of the things that I do, and part of that being guiding women on their alcohol-free journey, based on my own experience, along with a lot of more energy healing work. So my story, I guess, is that around the alcohol piece is that I was starting to experience some symptoms in my kind of around 43. I'm 49 now and maybe this will sound familiar to some of your listeners. I was starting to have heartburn and anxiety and I wasn't sleeping very well and I was starting to question whether it was alcohol. Kind of intuitively, I was feeling like it might have been and I did not want to admit that, because it's not easy to stop drinking was my belief at that time and I wanted to continue to fit in socially and I had a lot of fears around what it would mean if I quit drinking. So I did all of the other things went to see a naturopath, did the supplements, did the yoga, did all the things and it didn't make a shift and it sort of started to build in me more this, knowing that I needed to let go of alcohol.

Laura: 3:10

And in July of 2020 if you'll remember back to that time we were sort of coming out of some lockdowns from COVID. We were in and out of all these lockdowns. I can't even remember the timeline right now. Yeah, but we did a three-week vacation, so we have a boat and we went on a three-week vacation with a few other families and I drank every day. So I at that time I was drinking socially and when we were on vacation it was like every day, let's have, you know, some cocktails in the morning, like some Caesars in the morning or some wine or things like that. And over the time I started to recognize how much it was impacting me and by the end of the three weeks I was done and knew that something had to change. So I decided to take a break and applied a lot of the mindset work that I'd been doing to alcohol and treated it as an experiment and, over time, started to realize the dramatic change I was experiencing. And that was the start of what has now become an alcohol free lifestyle.

Rose: 4:19

Wow, that's great. I love that. Well, you were self-aware that you knew that these symptoms were possibly connected to alcohol, and you're right. And then you started this journey, so you did a lot of this on your own, basically right.

Laura: 4:40

Initially, the first resource I found was a book called this Naked Mind by Annie Grace, which is a book I recommend to everyone as their starting point, and that book came into my awareness as these things happen. The universe delivers us what we need Right in the last few days of that boat trip that I was referring to, and I started reading it at the end of that vacation and recognizing that when I had tried to stop drinking in the past and, to be clear, I was a social drinker, I was a habitual drinker. I was not at a place where I had alcohol addiction. I was recognizing that it just wasn't connecting to my wellness. And I found that book and at that time, none of my friends had stopped drinking. Everyone around me was drinking. So I really did do it alone and know that it was hard to do that in many ways, which is why I've gone on to create this program.

Laura: 5:40

And I learned so much about alcohol that I had no idea about when I started to dive in and felt like there should be billboards everywhere talking about you know the truth about what alcohol is and what it's doing to our bodies, and yeah, so that's what I've kind of, why I have created this course because I don't want people to feel alone in this journey. Because I don't want people to feel alone in this journey and there are resources for people in different stages of their journey with alcohol. And sometimes I believe that people feel like well, I'm not at an addiction place, I'm not looking for resources through something like AA, but I could use some support because I want to feel my best. I just want to feel my best and age my best, and that's really who I'm focusing on helping.

Rose: 6:32

I love that. So Annie Grace's program, the 30 day experiment was one of the things I did during COVID. So for me, I didn't drink more.

Rose: 6:42

I noticed that there was going to be a trend towards drinking more, so I took her third a day experiment and I stopped for three months, thought I could moderate, went back to drinking and then, over a year ago, I came across her again, this Naked Mind, the book and the program. I actually stopped drinking right before I started the program with her, but I I hung on and I plan on doing an episode about this because there are so many resources and so much uh language around drinking now that's different, and and and and. The research is amazing and she offers, uh, offers, a lot of that. Uh, it's really eyeopening.

Rose: 7:21

It's extremely eyeopening and, like you said, there isn't that support. And the thing about the word addiction, she doesn't even use that. She's like it's not. You know. She says we choose to drink. We just we can drink if we want, we just choose not to. Yes, changing that mindset, tell what are some of the triggers that you had. Besides social drinking? You know we all have that what are other triggers? Was it a certain time of day? Was it, you know, maybe when you started cooking dinner or you pour yourself a drink, or was it? Or is it just like, was it just the social aspect of drinking? Because there are different triggers. People.

Laura: 7:58

Yeah, yeah.

Laura: 7:59

So we, we either use alcohol to unwind and celebrate or we use it to cope with uncomfortable feelings, and in my case, I would say that I was mostly using it in the first way.

Laura: 8:11

So at the end of the day, it's signifying the break between the workday and the evening, especially during COVID, because we were all so stuck in our homes that it just felt like it was this mental shift for me, stuck in our homes, that it just felt like it was this mental shift for me. And then in social situations and again I said that we're boaters and boating culture is very connected to alcohol, so for me it was more social there were times that I was using it when I would be like I've had a bad day, I deserve a drink and there's a reward right, yeah's a reward, right, yeah, like a reward, reward to help you come down, and I thought that I needed that glass of wine to bring myself down and recognize that I don't now, but it is. It is these beliefs that we have. It's really less about what is in your glass and more about the habits we create around alcohol, the beliefs that we have around alcohol that stays with us and keeps us tied to drinking.

Rose: 9:11

Yes, so I wrote down habit right before you said that, and it's true, it's breaking those habits. And see, for me, I would start cooking. And then I'm like, oh, ok, it's time, so I would just reach for that cabinet. And it was just, it was, it was part of, like you know, just the routine, right, and you probably didn't even ask yourself if you wanted a glass of wine or a drink.

Laura: 9:35

Whatever your drink of choice was, you, you just habitually go to it and then one glass usually leads to a second glass after an impression, after the wine or the alcohol starts to do its thing and our executive functioning gets impacted. And even if you said I'm just going to have a glass, that often is a top up, and that's where you get into this slippery slope. And there's also you mentioned moderation. Also, you mentioned moderation, and I think that that is a like a trap that we get stuck in sometimes, that we believe that we can moderate and we put these rules in place.

Laura: 10:12

This is something I did. It's like, okay, we're not going to drink during the week and I'm only going to drink on special occasions, and then a Thursday night rolls around and you're like, well, it's almost the weekend, or oh, I had a crappy day, and we start to blur those lines and then we often end up beating ourselves up for that, because we made a commitment to ourselves and then we didn't keep that commitment, and then we feel bad about it and beat ourselves up and we get in this cycle, beat ourselves up and we get in this cycle. So for me, being completely alcohol free, I believe, is easier than trying to moderate, because moderate makes you have to make the decision over and over and create rules and create parameters and use willpower to enforce them If the alcohol is just not an option on the table. It's so much easier.

Rose: 11:03

Absolutely Amen to that. I totally agree with you. The beating the selves up part, I mean, I think I did that mostly in the middle of the night when I had to get up, because I was either having these night sweats or I had to go to the bathroom and I'd be like, why did I drink, why don't? Did I need it? No, no, and and you know then. But then the cycle starts again. So so yes. And moderating, yeah, it was a no for me, because you, when you try to moderate, like you said, you just go back to it. Sometimes you drink more.

Laura: 11:39

It's interesting in the program. So it's a six week program that I take women through and at the end they make a decision about what they're going to do going forward. So it's not about you take this program and 100% you're going to quit drinking at the end. It's about doing an experiment much like the Annie Grace experience, but an experiment and observing all kinds of things throughout this time and then making a decision.

Laura: 12:04

And some women have chosen to stay alcohol-free and continue on, or some have chosen to moderate, and what I've noticed is many of the ones that have chosen to moderate, when I check back in with them, they're like oh, I'm going to go back to alcohol-free because I thought I could moderate, but now I see how much more difficult it is and then they'll they'll flip back. So it's a personal choice and it has to be something you decide for yourself and it has to be something I think that you experiment with it. It's not a one and done. Oftentimes it's starting to become aware of how it's affecting your body, starting to become aware of where you're turning to alcohol, starting to be aware of how you feel when it's out of your life and the differences it makes, and then making some decisions about what your long-term plan is.

Rose: 12:54

And it's also not beating yourself up over it. I know one of the things she says is you know you, otherwise you get into that cycle to. You know the being hard on yourself and being. You need to have some grace and compassion when you're going through, because it's a journey. The first time around maybe you have to repeat it or maybe you have to do some of the exercises over and and and and and know that and also finding the right support system, like people like you who are, who have this support and resources, like you said there, there isn't a lot out there. Um, let's talk about the social aspect. We're going to get to some of the ill effects of alcohol, which there are many but um, but um. When you stopped drinking, what did you have? Any um concern about what others thought of you?

Laura: 13:49

so many concerns.

Laura: 13:52

I would say that was my biggest hesitation and stopping for a long time.

Laura: 13:57

I put so much effort into what thinking about, what people are going to think of me and how it's going to impact my relationships, that I didn't make the decision that I knew was right for me for much longer than I should have. And the two primary areas were my concern about my relationship with my spouse because we drink wine together. We would drink wine together. We'd go on vacations where we'd go to wineries, like it was a part of our relationship in a way that we would connect at the end of a work day. And my other concern was within my social circle of my close girlfriends and how it would impact my ability to be in social settings if I wasn't drinking when that's a large part of a way that the connection was happening. And what I learned is that there's definitely a like an adaptation period that you go through, but people are often more supportive than you think that they are and you can't find out what's going to happen in those situations until you give a chance yourself a chance to find out, right, right that's, that's great.

Rose: 15:13

yeah, I, I too, that was my biggest concern. What are people going to think? But I owned, owned it. And you know, some people then ask are you really going to do this like forever? I'm like right, yeah, yeah.

Laura: 15:25

There was a period where I went through that, where everyone's like, oh, this is Laura's new thing and this is a thing, and then it just kept kind of going on and they're like, oh, this so much better. I'm actually sleeping, my heartburn's gone, my anxiety changed, my anxiety is reduced. So many, there's so many positives that I don't know why I would go back to that.

Rose: 15:50

And yeah.

Laura: 15:52

So over time it became more normalized and now it's just, it's not even a thing. It's just that. And I think a lot of the reason that it's not a thing is because I never want to put my views on someone else. It is a very personal decision to make. I have made this decision for me and I can role model for other people I will share when I am asked. But I don't go into situations talking about all of the ill effects of alcohol and why you should quit drinking. And I also have made a really conscious decision to still show up and have fun in social situations. So I am not feeling like I'm deprived. Yeah, I'm not going in it feeling like I'm deprived, not like I'm going to miss out. I just make adaptations for myself. So I might bring myself a bottle of non-alcoholic wine and I then have a glass in my hand. So I feel like I'm belonging in the social situation. I just have something else in my glass and sometimes people don't know or don't care Exactly.

Rose: 16:56

And you know, I think people think we're going to judge them because they're drinking. Because the first words that people would say after I told them that I stopped drinking was well, I don't drink that much, I just that is a hundred percent the first thing anyone says to me.

Laura: 17:08

they start telling me all about how little they drink. It's a natural reaction because, they're feeling like you're judging them, even if you're not. It's a natural reaction.

Rose: 17:18

I don't know what you would say to them, but you could share. But I would say you know what? This is my journey. You can drink as much as you want because 100%, yeah, yeah, and it's all good, yeah. So same here. I really don't even drink mocktails. I find that sometimes mocktails, first of all they have a lot of sugar, and then I taste them and I'm like, oh, this isn't really tasting that good, so I'll just stick to water, I'm good with that. So you know, I'll just put it in a fancy glass and I'm good, yeah.

Laura: 17:50

I do use non-alcoholic alternatives. So I was a wine drinker and so I found some non-alcoholic wines that I enjoy. They are not ever going to be the same as tasting regular wine, for anyone who's wondering, but your palate adapts over time, much like when you first drank wine. You probably remember, or first tried alcohol. You're like, oh, this is terrible. And then we muscle through and we develop a palate for it. The same happens when you shift away from alcohol. You develop, develop a palate for it. The same happens when you shift away from alcohol. You develop a palate for some different things, and I am conscious of the amount of sugar and chemicals or things that I don't drink a lot of mocktail things. I have a few non-alcoholic wines. I have a gin that I like as an alternative, and other than that I'll do like cold teas or sparkling water and different things, and and a fancy glass often is enough to do the trick to make you feel like you're having something fancy.

Rose: 18:45

You know, I find more and more companies are now Guinness has a non-alcoholic Delicious, yes, right. And more companies actually did try a couple of non-alcoholic mocktail mixers that aren't bad. I think it's just finding the right blend that I need to work with, but more and more companies are geared towards that, because once you stop drinking, or on that path to stop drinking, you really notice all the advertisement everywhere is about drinking.

Laura: 19:17

It is everywhere. Advertisement everywhere is about drinking. It is everywhere. One of the exercises we go through in the first week of the Still Me but Alcohol-Free program is we take a look around you during the week at all the times that alcohol comes up or you see an ad and it is shocking when you start zoning in on it. So everything from advertisements you see when you're out and about on billboards to birthday cards that joke about alcohol, to references to alcohol in TV shows and in song lyrics, it is everywhere and all of that starts to inundate our subconscious mind. And that's a lot of why we drink is the connection to our subconscious beliefs about what alcohol means, because those messages have come in over and over and over in our lifetime, from the time that we were very young to seeing how adults in our lives interacted with alcohol. That starts to shape our beliefs, to all of the advertising, the billions of dollars that is spent trying to subconsciously read these messages and make it become a normalized part of our world.

Rose: 20:30

Yeah, there's also now a sober, curious environment culture in the celebrity world, so they're influencing people to at least try to stop drinking.

Laura: 20:42

I think that more and more people are starting to wake up to the reality of alcohol and when celebrities start doing it, people start taking notice. Even in the last four years since I stopped drinking, I've noticed there's a huge explosion of non-alcoholic drink companies or regular alcohol companies developing non-alcoholic alternatives. There's all kinds of influencers and people talking more openly about letting alcohol go as a part of a wellness focus, which is what I think is so beautiful and where I'm focused. It's not just about having to hit rock bottom to want to stop. It's about recognizing that there's like a misalignment, and for me it was. There was physical symptoms and there was this starting to be like this feeling of misalignment and values as I aged, so feeling like I'm doing these otherwise healthy things, like doing yoga and exercise and being aware of my diet and Reiki and all of these things, and then I'm doing this thing that counteracts all of that.

Laura: 21:50

And from a spiritual perspective, alcohol is a very low vibration substance and when we're continually ingesting it, I believe that it impacts our overall vibration. And when I took alcohol out, I noticed that my meditations changed and I've had a meditation practice for many years and I started noticing my ability to connect deeper and more feelings of energy movement in my body and I believe that opened up more intuition within myself which actually led me to Reiki and becoming certified as a practitioner for Reiki and for emotion code as a result of people in my life that needed it at that time. But I don't know that that would have happened or if I would have had that awareness to be drawn to those things if I hadn't stopped drinking and my intuition hadn't kind of become stronger and I hadn't been more in tune with myself. So I really think there's a strong argument, if you will, if you're on a spiritual path, for thinking about whether or not alcohol is serving you at this point.

Rose: 23:03

Yeah, you become a much more clearer channel.

Laura: 23:06

Yes.

Rose: 23:07

And that was one of the reasons why I stopped, and also the same with the values. I'm doing this work to help other people and I'm drinking and it's not really you know. And I would say to people who are coming in for a session you know, try not to drink alcohol. And then I wouldn't try to drink the night before, but knowing it's still in my system, you know from the, from the previous days or whatever, but yeah, much more clearer channel, just feel more connected. Things are, things just change. We're going to get back to your Reiki and EFT in a second. Sure, let's talk about some of the ill effects of alcohol besides a hangover. There's so many that I think people kind of dismiss, but huge right Liver damage.

Laura: 23:53

It affects every system in your body, from your central nervous system to your heart, to your brain, to your digestion and your gut biome, which is where we process a lot of the hormones that then impact us if we're in our perimenopause perimenopause menopause journey, and it also sets us up for more risks that I had no idea were something that could happen. So the World Health Organization has declared that alcohol is a class one carcinogen, meaning cancer causing, and alcohol has been directly linked to at least nine kinds of cancer, with breast cancer being one of them. So I'm just going to refer to a statistic so I get it straight, because this one blew my mind. So in this recent study found that only 34% of the general population knows that alcohol is even a risk factor for cancer. It is not something that is talked about and it is a very significant impact. So there's a link in breast cancer.

Laura: 25:04

So in 2020, alcohol use was linked to 7,000 new cases of cancer in Canada. So I'm referring to Canadian statistics I'm coming to you from Canada including 24% of breast cancer cases. So a direct link in almost a quarter of the breast cancer cases. And as little as three drinks in a week, which most people are consuming more than three drinks increases your risk by 15% for breast cancer, and every single drink you have beyond that adds another 10%. Yeah, wow, like mind-boggling when we're out raising money for breast awareness campaigns and we're doing all of these things, yet we're not talking about something that is so closely linked to breast cancer. And there are so many things that are not preventable for us, that are beyond our control, with environmental factors and things that are around us. But this is something we can have a direct impact on, that we can make a change that can dramatically reduce our risks of cancer.

Rose: 26:11

And doctors and people in the health field can encourage people, women, anybody, not to drink alcohol because, hey, your risk of breast cancer increase. You know they ask you how many drinks do you have a week? Right, oh, I have three. But they never say, ok, well, maybe you shouldn't have those three. They just ask you. I mean, it's everyone lies and everybody lies anyway. But I had, I had breast cancer and you did. Yeah, I did, and which going to be? It'll be 13 years in January that I had it. And you know I stopped drinking also because my dad died of a cancer that was linked to drinking and smoking. So I stopped also because I don't want to get any more cancer in my life. I'm not on any medication and I want to be that way for the rest of my life. You know that's my intention, if I can. And I know drinking raises inflammation in the body.

Laura: 27:10

Yes, inflammation that affects everything. Everything joint pain.

Rose: 27:15

You know, women are like oh, I feel stiff, I'm getting old. Maybe it's not your age, because you need to look at your lifestyle. And, like you said, the microbiome. It dehydrates your organs and your brain. So many things heart disease, like you mentioned. Yeah, there's a lot of statistics. People want to, they don't want to know it, nobody wants to talk about it.

Laura: 27:35

Nobody wants to know it, and that's you know. You don't want to be it. Nobody wants to talk about it. Nobody wants to know it. Yeah, and that's you know. You don't want to be the debbie downer at the party that's telling people all about the impact that alcohol is having on their body, and it's just. And there's so much vested interest in the amount of money that is created through alcohol sales and related industries that nobody really wants to rock the boat because they understand the bigger impact that it could have. But there's this massive draw on our health care system too because of all of the health related implications from drinking alcohol. So the government brings in revenue from those sales, but there's actually an imbalance and that there's a deficit. In Canada. There's some statistics I share in the program that talk about how it's costing us more as a government and society to deal with all of the alcohol-related outcomes than it is with the generated income. So it's just this really strange yeah, well, we hope that changes.

Rose: 28:48

you know people like yourself making awareness, yeah, and going on podcasts like this and you know, and like you said, just being an example, yeah, and I think that's all you can do is be an example People.

Laura: 29:03

I just think that people need examples in their life of people who have made this transition to know that it's possible. And again, at the time when I quit, no one in my friend group or my family had quit for wellness reasons and I didn't really have anyone to turn to to ask questions. And now I have people come up to me Actually, a lot of people come up to me and will tell me that they have stopped drinking and they haven't really talked about it, or they just want somebody to connect with and who understands where they're coming from. Yeah and yeah it's not easy.

Rose: 29:46

That, yeah, it's not.

Laura: 29:48

It's a journey, it's a journey and being in community and having the right support and the right tools to help you shift your mindset. So we talked earlier about it's. It's not just about making the decision to stop drinking and just it happening. There's a lot of internal work. I believe that has to happen for it to be a long-term lifestyle decision and that comes from understanding yourself, becoming aware of your triggers, becoming aware of your habits, being curious and giving yourself grace through the process. Grace through the process and then slowly, over time, you start to shift your mindset and your beliefs around that you don't actually have to drink to enjoy yourself or there are other ways to deal with the stress in your life without turning to alcohol. And then those beliefs start to shift. The more you have experiences that reinforce those beliefs, which becomes this big circle that the belief gets stronger and then it becomes more natural and it starts to shift your subconscious beliefs and over time, there you are, four years later and it feeling like a natural way of being for you now.

Rose: 30:58

Absolutely. I mean I don't. I never say, oh, I really, it's just a part of who I am. Now it's as if it never existed. For me it's great. And when people ask me about you know, why did you stop drinking? You know, I tell them. But then what I always say, especially women, I said I sleep the best I've ever slept in my life.

Laura: 31:21

I didn't realize that I was sleeping so poorly until I started sleeping better and the indigestion was a huge thing for me. I was popping antacids all the time at the end of an evening and about probably about a week into not drinking, I stopped and I literally have not had a Tums since. That was huge for me. And also, on the vanity side, I was taking selfies of myself periodically throughout the journey and I noticed my skin changed. It was kind of less, had more glow to it, but the real change was in my eyes and the blue of my eyes got so much deeper. It's shocking to me when I look back at the picture. So I think that it was just sort of like muddying everything. And it does have because of the inflammation in your body. Continually it impacts your skin, your hydration levels. All of these things affect your appearance over time as well. Tell us a little bit about your program. So I'll just wrap up on the alcohol-free side and tell you about.

Laura: 32:35

So the program I've created is called Still Me, but alcohol-free, and it's a six-week program that you can do either as a self-guided experience at any time or you can join. Either as a self-guided experience at any time or you can join a group experience, and the next group I'm launching is starting January 20th and it's a six week program and in that six weeks you spend time going through modules and lessons and we start by uncovering the truth about alcohol, and I share a lot of statistics and things to help you understand what alcohol is really doing to your system. We then spend a lot of time in mindset and giving you some tools and making shifts that will help you in the long term. We then look at alternatives for dealing with stress, so I've brought in a number of experts from different modalities things like breath work and tapping and meditation and created these like mini, bite sized experiences that you can use. We talk about ways to stay in this lifestyle in the longer term and give you some supports, and we wrap the program up by talking about the pros and cons of and we wrap the program up by talking about the pros and cons of being alcohol-free, moderating over time. You get to make the decision about how you experience life after that. And in the group experience, there's also a weekly call and a chat group so that you're in community with other people and you can ask questions, you can share experiences, which I think makes it really rich, because every time I bring a group through, there's different experiences that come up and so we learn from each other in real time. So you can find out about that on my website at lauravalvasoricom, and yeah, so that sort of wraps up. Talking about that facet.

Laura: 34:27

My journey to reiki and the emotion code started in um. Well, I had had reiki myself for many years. I've just I've gone to a reiki practitioner at different times in my life and found it really helpful in calming my mind and relaxing me, and I've used it as a tool in my own life. And in December of 2022, my dad was diagnosed with lung cancer. Dad was diagnosed with lung cancer and, as a part of his treatment plan, I was looking for someone locally to do Reiki with him because I thought it might be supportive. And through a series of synchronicities, I realized that oh, wait a minute, maybe I can become certified or that I can become attuned to Reiki and that I could work with him. So I found a Reiki master and I did my levels one and level two and I started practicing on friends and family and little did I know that I thought I was doing it to support my dad, but 2023 became an explosive year of a lot of things happening in my life and I ended up using Reiki with a number of people in my life, including my nephew and a close friend of mine that was going through a severe bout of depression and just all kinds of people and myself to get through this period.

Laura: 36:03

And then my dad had his first chemo treatment and he had some side effects and had a blood clot. And I had a very upsetting conversation with a doctor one day where we had to admit him quickly, and that evening I developed a pain in my quads that I could not get rid of. For weeks I went to physio and massage and acupuncture and was doing all these things and I intuitively felt like it was connected to that conversation because of the day that it started. But I didn't know what to do about it. And, out of the blue, a friend of mine texted me and said someone recommended this book to me. It's called the Emotion Code.

Laura: 36:44

I feel like it was actually meant for you, given what you've been doing with Reiki and all of the other energy work, and I recognized the book right away. I had read it a couple years before and not done anything with it, and so I picked it back up and I started reading and I started doing some of the practices and I released the pain in my quads and I was like what is this Like? How could this be possible? And so I started getting more curious and experimenting with more people and ended up going on to becoming certified as a motion code practitioner so that I can do this work with other people as well. So I've been sort of practicing those modalities more with friends and family and just recently have started doing some in-person Reiki sessions through my yoga studio which is a beautiful experience and doing some emotion code sessions with people outside of friends and family. So that's how the energy work sort of came into my life.

Rose: 37:43

Right, and the Reiki you could do distance as well. And then the emotion code. Is that more of an in-person or can it be done? No, it's actually done over distance.

Laura: 37:52

So the process is that I connect. You can do it in person or I can act as a proxy, meaning I can act on your behalf. So I do the testing on myself. Oh okay, so we would connect over a Zoom call. So I do the testing on myself. Oh okay, so we would connect over a Zoom call. I would, through my intention, connect with your subconscious mind and I start asking a series of questions of your subconscious mind to identify any emotional energy that is trapped in your body, and then we release that energy again through the power of intention. We release that energy again through the power of intention and when we do that, it opens up the energy system for your body's natural healing processes to take place, and whatever needs to be healed from a mind, body, spirit perspective is what happens. So there's similarities between the reiki energy that goes, oh yeah healing in.

Laura: 38:45

I kind of look at it as a beautiful pairing, in that the emotion code can release that trapped energy and then you can bring in that beautiful Reiki energy of healing.

Rose: 38:56

Oh, that's exactly what I was thinking. I'm like, wow, this is like a potent combination. I'm like, well, maybe I should look into it because, yeah, opening up, releasing that those emotions, and Reiki does help as well. But you have that one technique, and when you were healing yourself in your quads, what did you do? You did you identify with a certain emotion that was affecting you, I did.

Laura: 39:21

I can't remember exactly.

Rose: 39:22

Was it fear?

Laura: 39:25

It was, I remember one of them being shock, which made complete sense, because I was shocked at that conversation, because it was my dad's first treatment and I expected, like we were at the beginning of the journey and all of a sudden he had this complication that we were talking about whether he had a DNR, and I was completely shocked that we would be at that place. And that makes sense. Yeah, so there was a few. It made sense. Whatever the emotions were that I found made sense, and when I released them it was almost immediate. So in some cases people notice shifts right away and in other cases it's over a little bit of time. For me it was almost immediate. When I let those feelings, those emotions, released from the body, the pain dissipated.

Rose: 40:10

Yeah, so we talked about traditional Chinese medicine before. So shock is more like the adrenals right, the fight flight and that area of the body which is the lower back. So those are the kidneys and the kidney meridian runs up along the thighs.

Laura: 40:24

Oh really, yeah, I had no idea.

Rose: 40:27

Yes, oh that makes sense. I love making all these connections. Yeah. When you said thigh, I'm like oh, it has to be fear, which makes sense. And when you said shock, I'm like yeah.

Laura: 40:35

It was fear, shock. Yeah, that whole area, all of that.

Rose: 40:40

Oh, that's fascinating See how all this information is so powerful when people understand it. And a pain in the lower back could mean that you're holding on to fear or you know there's an emotion related to a lot of these issues that we have physically in the body Absolutely and that could be released through this energy work that we do. Yeah, I love that. It's amazing. I've never had anyone talk about emotion code on the podcast, yet You're my first.

Rose: 41:08

That's great. Oh good, yeah. And you know, reiki for me has been really powerful too. I used energy work with strong intention, reiki and Qigong to help me release the control that alcohol had on me, and it wasn't an overnight thing. It was a while before I was able to release alcohol through all the work I did, but the practice, the energy practice, helped a lot as well. So keep that in mind. Everyone that's listening yeah.

Laura: 41:40

And I actually bring Reiki into the program a little bit during the weeks. So it's a six-week program. The first two weeks we are learning and then we let go of alcohol at the end of two weeks and we have four weeks together without alcohol, and in the period where you're just stopping drinking I do two sessions of distant Reiki so that it helps with the transition and bringing all of the different kind of modalities together. The last piece I will share is I've also written a book during the time that.

Laura: 42:14

So I've had a marketing consulting business for 11 years Good to Grow Marketing and as we were coming out of COVID I was having a lot of people approach me that were feeling like they didn't want to go back to their corporate jobs. They were really reflecting on their values and what they wanted to do, and I've always felt like I wanted to write a book. I just didn't know what it was about and that felt like it was what was calling me. So I wrote the book called Good to Grow Cultivate your Mindset and Habits to Thrive as an Entrepreneur, and in it I share a lot about the internal shifts that have to happen when you're moving from being an employee to an entrepreneur. It's not about the nuts and bolts of starting a business. It's more about you as a person and some of the things you need to do to set yourself up to be successful. So that's another piece of what I do as a multi-passionate business and well-being mentor. There's also a piece where I do mentorship related to some of the topics in the book as well.

Rose: 43:13

Thanks for sharing all that, and thank you for being here today. This has been a great conversation. I really enjoyed it. I couldn't wait to connect with you and chat about this topic that I am also passionate about, so thank you for being here today, laura, thank you very much.

Laura: 43:24

Thank you for having me.

Rose: 43:27

Thank you for joining me on Chat Off The Mat. If you're ready to transform your energy and step into your fullest potential, I'd love to work with you. As an energy alchemist, I help women release blocked energy and reclaim their vibrant essence. Visit rosewippich. com to explore working together and discover free resources for your journey. Love today's episode, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, leave a rating and share your biggest takeaway with me on instagram at rosewipich. Remember wellness warriors your energy is precious. Nurture it wisely.