MY JOURNEY HOME
At the start of 2023, I left corporate life to accept my calling: to awaken to the truth of who I am and help others do the same.
The road to taking this leap of faith was a long and windy one, marked by roadblocks, wrong turns, and ignored signs, all of which were pivotal in guiding me to where I am today. I began to awaken to this life-long healing journey when my father suddenly and tragically passed away in 2009, when I was a senior in high school. My teenage self was shaken to my core, and this sparked the beginning of a profound personal healing journey. Feeling numb, lost, and without knowing how to navigate the pain of this new reality, I found yoga as my path to healing. Yoga became a space to move through pain and suffering, without having to make sense of it, and it began to reveal a greater purpose in life for me.
I can vividly remember stepping into a yoga studio in Boulder, Colorado, where I attended college, and feeling the serenity the teacher embodied touch my heart. It awakened a realization that life held depths I hadn’t yet experienced. Her calm essence revealed a longing within me—a desire to truly know myself and be at peace with myself beyond what I knew then.
Yoga guided my healing journey for eleven years. I became a yoga teacher in 2015. Despite being lost in unprocessed grief and trauma, I always felt a calling to guide people to deeper love and healing within.
Yet, uncertainty clouded my path, leaving me unsure of how to fulfill this calling. Societal expectations about what defines a “successful professional," the fear of failure, scarcity, and the fear of not being accepted by family and peers, drove me to ignore my heart’s calling.
I chose instead to conform to the falsely held belief that success had to equate to making a lot of money as a corporate professional. This belief pushed aside my love for teaching yoga and the healing arts. I had convinced myself I could not sustain a living as a healing professional or an artist. I forced myself to move to New York City to pursue success in the commercial real estate industry. For years, I chased a dream that didn’t align with my true self, battling to meet the expectations of those around me and the misalignment within me.
Despite this detour, the universe had other plans for me. A life coach entered my life and helped me change direction, recognize my worth, and recognize the power of positive self-talk. She supported me in reigniting my dream of creating a community sanctuary, a healing space that reconnects people with themselves, one another, nature, and a higher consciousness.
Returning to nature became crucial; and despite the recurring uncertainty, doubt, and fear about how I would make my dreams a reality, I took the leap, leaving NYC for Los Angeles in 2019. Knowing I was one step closer, I poured my whole heart into my healing journey. I immersed myself in my own self-study and conscious healing communities and worked with supportive mentors, teachers, and guides. I joined countless life-changing programs: a 6-month self-mastery, biofield tuning, and yoga mentorship; a comprehensive 4-year somatic practitioner, body energetics, consciousness, spiritual, and personal development program; a breathwork sciences coaching program; breathwork healer trainings; shamanic healer trainings; and spiritual psychology courses, among many others.
I began to reconnect with the artist within and realized how suppressed my creativity had become. I began learning to play the harmonium, piano, and harp, studied music theory, took hand-building pottery classes, painted, began writing, poetry, joined kirtan and song circles, ecstatic dancing, and, as always, continued to strengthen my connection with mother nature, among many other creative pursuits. I recognized that my healing and my creative expression were deeply intertwined.
My dedication to my healing propelled me to peel back layers of repressed emotions and unprocessed wounds. I began to really understand the impact of our thoughts and speech on our manifested reality, the importance of embracing all emotions and opening the heart, the liberating nature of forgiveness and gratitude, and how spiritual practices and grounding exercises like breathwork, meditation, mantra chanting, yoga and movement can really transform our lives. I realized the throughline for all of it was in the openings I created to welcome unapologetic self-expression.
Throughout it all, I found that breathwork quickly became a daily practice, guiding me to shed what no longer served me and rediscover the whispers of my intuition. It empowered me to find healing within. It enabled me to cleanse my body, mind, and spirit of all the accumulated "junk and gunk" that can accumulate over time if left unaddressed. It encouraged me to finally take the leap of faith and answer my heart’s call. It invited more space for stillness and tranquility, and in this state of inner peace, I reconnected with the creative wellspring within ~ the universal life force energy. It is this journey that I wish to support others on, just like so many along the way have done for me.
WHAT I LEARNED ALONG THE WAY
I used to play the victim, and play small.
It was easier; programming. And it caused me more pain inside. I am shedding this old identity. I started to recognize how my inner dialogue was plagued with negativity. I was so used to letting a negative mindset run my subconscious that to live from a positive abundant outlook felt backwards, wrong. I start to realize that this is self betrayal. I was done betraying myself. Through breathwork and the other modalities I have worked with on my journey, I learned to quiet the static and hear the kind inner voice of my intuitive heart.
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I needed help, I needed healing.
Something inside me just knew that there weren’t any quick fixes for the resolution I was looking for. I felt empty inside. I felt like my fire was out. I needed help, so I committed to my healing. I embraced my curiosity for the world and turned it inward. I was amazed at the infinity I found within.
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I allowed myself to become curious about the emotions I had been suppressing.
When I allowed myself to become curious about the emotions I had been suppressing, I realized the grief, trauma, rage, and fear I was carrying was also ancestral, generational, and perhaps even echoes from a past life. Within the safety of a supportive container, I was able to tap into this sacred rage using somatic practices to release them from my physical body. This trapped energy was then able to move and transmute and brought about a welcomed openness within me.
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"The cure for the pain is in the pain”
My journey has taught me “the cure for the pain is in the pain,” as said by Rumi. I had to learn to trust that I can feel and know it will not destroy me; on the contrary: it has set me free. I learned that healed and integrated pain is a source of deep wisdom and compassion.
“Breathwork revealed what had long been hidden ~ that I have a natural ability to understand and feel what others go through. It made me feel more connected to others, the earth, and the unseen world. The potency of breathwork in my healing journey became undeniable. It began to open up a whole new world inside of myself and connect me to the very essence of everything. My breath is a profound doorway into my own soul, and into the soul of all creation.”
~ Alexi Kyle