Dr. Tonia has been practicing as a Naturopathic Doctor since 2007. With contemporary neurological reprogramming techniques, she helps women overcome burnout, stress, anxiety, and fatigue. Essentially she helps them calm their minds, sleep deeply, and find joy and energy in their lives again. Guiding clients through a "Breakthrough" process, they recode their unconscious minds for change, self-care, and success, priming them to create new, healthy, sustainable habits. Dr. Tonia has been featured on CTV, the Costco Connection, The Elephant Journal, Conscious Nutrition, The Autoimmune Simplified Podcast, and the New Generation Entrepreneur Podcast. Ultimately she helps everyday people create exceptional lives for themselves and their communities. To learn more about her brain-based coaching breakthroughs, head on over to her website.
Dr. Tonia Winchester, Brain-Based Transformation Coach
Hi Tonia! Why don’t you start by telling us a little bit about yourself, both professionally and personally?
My name is Tonia Winchester, and if we’re being official it’s Dr. Tonia Winchester. Professionally I wear 3 main hats.
First, I’m a naturopathic physician and have been in practice for 15 years, helping people get healthy, happy, and doing what they love because I believe that healthy, happy people do what they love to contribute to a more healthy and peaceful world.
Second, I run a multi-disciplinary, holistic health clinic on Vancouver Island, Canada, where an incredible team of wellness practitioners and I take care of the people in our community with various natural treatment modalities.
Lastly and most actively, I’m a brain-based transformation coach, helping people to break through anxiety, stress, and burnout so that they can create exceptional lives for themselves, their families, and communities.
Personally, I live in a rural neighbourhood in the middle of a temperate rainforest with my husband, vocal dog Achilles, and shy cat Maurice. When I’m not helping people transform their lives with my coaching programs or content creation, I’m dancing (mostly salsa and bachata, but also kizomba and zouk), doing art, getting lost - and found - in the woods, or being silly and spontaneous with friends and loved ones.
I value growth, creativity, wellness, connection, impact, and prosperity.
With absolute conviction, I can say the body and mind know how to heal, can heal, want to heal. Sometimes we have to adjust the circumstances for that to happen.
I believe that everyone has everything they need within them to live a life that lights them up and makes a difference for the people and world around them. Enjoy this article on Brainz on that very topic.
I’m excited about changing the wiring of people’s minds so they can take care of themselves in a sustainable and meaningful way. By filling up our own cups we can really make a difference for others in a way that doesn’t burn us out or cause resentment.
I am committed to pioneering a new model of health and well-being. One that starts with the internal circuitry of the mind and expands systematically out into one's physical, emotional, mental, and social well-being.
Ultimately I’m here to create a ripple effect that leaves the world a better place than when we came into it for generations to come.
What led you to add brain-based coaching to your tool kit?
Frankly, several years ago I was unsatisfied with my naturopathic practice. Optimistic about the change people can make in their health and lives, I would send patients away with an awesome treatment plan only to have them return and say, “Eating my broccoli is hard,” often with their arms crossed and a pouty face.
“Really? Is eating broccoli hard?” I kept questioning this to myself as people would inevitably come back and tell me aaaaaaall the reasons they had for not following the program and consequently not getting the results they wanted.
(By the way, “eating the broccoli,” is, of course, a metaphor for whatever it is that they need to be doing to take care of themselves. That could include things like getting to bed at a decent hour, setting boundaries, releasing toxic relationships, quitting smoking, moving their bodies more regularly, or eating nourishing, nutritious meals.)
To continue the broccoli example, when properly cooked, it’s actually one of the easiest foods to eat. So how could people be telling me it was hard? Something wasn’t adding up.
Patients not getting better was so frustrating and I became obsessed with figuring out how to get people to easily change their lifestyle habits.
What I realized is that it’s actually the decision to take care of oneself that is hard, but not the act itself.
When I realized this I knew I was onto something.
My resourceful and solution-driven brain started me on a seeking path and after a few false starts, I landed on a brain-based transformative process called a breakthrough. It’s a swift and effective way to make the decision to take care of oneself easy and doable.
What I know now is that the decision to take care of ourselves only seems hard because of the neurological programs in the unconscious mind. These are faulty belief structures that were built and locked in when we were very young. These programs were created after negative emotional experiences and traumas that we didn’t have the proper brain development to handle or resolve at the time.
Maybe someone had an ill sibling when they were growing up, and all the parents’ time and attention was directed to making sure the sibling was okay. The person might have internalized the story that they didn’t deserve to be taken care of or to be well. Now as an adult that unconscious decision limits their ability to care for themself. Maybe they always put other people’s needs first.
Or maybe someone had a parent who was very unkind and/or abusive. Perhaps that person learned (erroneously of course) that they were not worthy of love. Now they might abuse their own bodies with substances or other bad habits even though they know those things aren’t actually helping them to experience joy and well-being in their lives. They don’t have a solid foundation of self-love to make better choices.
The problem in these examples is that these “reasons” from the past are driving our habits, choices and behaviors completely unconsciously. We’re not aware of them; they are happening on autopilot.
Over the years in naturopathic practice, I’ve seen so often that people don’t, won’t or can’t take care of themselves. Not because it’s hard like I mentioned already, but because the decision to do so is hard based on their past experiences from which they created a faulty internal narrative.
The good news is that the unconscious mind can change quickly and easily with the right tools and guidance in place. The brain-based programming tools that I offer reliably re-code the neurological pathways in the unconscious mind so that self-worth, -love, -acceptance, and -care became the new reality.
What is it that you do with and for your clients?
I love the blend of my neuro-linguistic programming certifications and experience as a naturopathic doctor. It’s a really dynamic interface where I can help people meaningfully and sustainably overcome the deep unconscious blocks that are in the way of them taking care of themselves.
When we change how the brain is wired by clearing the past of negative emotions, trauma, limiting beliefs and decisions, it changes people’s habits. They show up for themselves authentically and consistently.
This has a beautiful ripple effect into their relationships with their partners, kids, families. It changes the impact they can make with their mission or life purpose.
This all happens through gentle, fast, and effective techniques that don't involve talk therapy or medications.
As a certified NLP coach, practitioner, and TimeLine Therapy practitioner ®, I guide my clients - people who are stuck in negative states such as stress, anxiety, depression, and burnout - through a breakthrough process where in we communicate directly to the unconscious mind in a way that easily and effortlessly reprograms it and changes how people see and experience the world.
I mentioned the process is quick - which I love. You want to feel better now, don’t you?
My clients finish the main bulk of the transformation sessions in 3-4 weeks. This doesn’t take years of talk therapy or counselling. Can you imagine overcoming what’s keeping you stuck and miserable, and creating the life of your dreams in just 4 weeks?
There are so many incredible benefits that come out of a breakthrough. There is a thorough list to read here.
Ultimately what people get on the other side of a breakthrough is the ability to choose their response in any given situation. By releasing traumas, negative past experiences, and emotions, they no longer access automatic triggered emotional responses. This dramatically improves relationships including how they parent. This legacy and ripple effect get me so jazzed up.
People get clarity on what they want and who they want to be, which in my mind is highly undervalued currency. If you don’t know what you want, how can you possibly get there? They become lucid with their life purpose and their driving values. They get the capacity to commit fully to their goals and to follow through on their desires. People smile more.
That’s actually one of my favourite testimonials. A client emailed me, “By the way, my husband said to me in the shower this morning, ‘What is up? You are smiling.’ I made a comment about that and he said that I never smile in the morning, and I had no idea why I was smiling, but woot woot!”
Life becomes lighter, safer, easier, more fun.
Because the nervous system calms waaaaaay down, anxiety fades, sleep deepens, and daytime joy and energy massively increase.
Personally, my body is releasing weight for the first time in 6 years after gaining 35 pounds when I turned 35. At the time of this interview, she has released 22 so far! The insane thing about this is that my breakthrough was in the area of career, not health. And still because of the new narrative that I created during my breakthrough, I was finally able to stick to an awesome nutrition and fitness routine that is definitely working.
And I’m so in love with this process that I’ve personally done TWO breakthroughs this year. Onwards and upwards, I say!
Who should hire you and work with you?
I work with everyday people who are stuck and want to break through the pattern they are in. They typically come to me with burnout, anxiety, stress, fatigue and/or all the other challenges that can come with this cycle. They are often unfulfilled and unhappy in several areas of their life - from their relationships, parenting, and career.
There is a certain type of person who responds the best to the work I do, and I call those people the Doers. Read more about the other ways people approach change in this Brainz article.
The Doers are people who might know “what to do” but for the reasons, I mentioned earlier can’t make changes they know they need to make. The Doers take responsibility for their well-being and seek out help.
They believe it is possible to change and also have at least a small inkling that the mind and body know how to and want to heal.
They are courageous and curious and committed to what they want. Even if they don’t know how to get there on their own just yet, they are willing to take the guided steps to get there. Because at the end of the day, there is no way around this: change takes to change.
What is your big goal? Where do you see yourself 10 years from now?
Haha, once a personal transformation lover, always a personal transformation lover.
10 years from now, I see myself still transforming lives and wellness - including my own. I see my life being a bit simpler, maybe stepping back slightly from naturopathic practice and focusing solely on what I see to be the first step to wellness, rewriting the internal stories so that we can create the habits, health and lives of our dreams.
It’s fun to be pioneering this new unprecedented way of healing the mind and the body and I’m excited to see how that will unfold.
I might even create a certification program to teach people how to do what I do, blending brain-based reprogramming and natural wellness.
What are your top three tips for readers when it comes to the transformation you offer?
I’m in the transformation business, helping my clients create deep and powerful change for themselves and their families. When it comes to change there are three non-negotiables. The three requisites of change (which you can read about in more detail here) are:
Clear the past. This is the work we do together in the breakthrough. Using a mildly hypnotic state and very specific neurological language we change how your unconscious mind remembers and codes your past so that traumas, negative past emotional experiences, and limiting decisions no longer impact your current day-to-day. This can be tricky to do on your own because your critical faculty can block you from accessing your unconscious mind in a way that allows it to change easily and effortlessly.
Take massive action. Change requires change. You have to DO things differently if you want things to be different. Step one makes doing things differently WAY more doable.
Focus on what you want. People are really good about focusing on what they don’t want. But what folks don’t realize is that the unconscious mind can’t process negatives so by thinking about what you want to move away from you actually stay stuck where you are with what you don’t want. You have to shift your thinking to focus on what you want. Step one makes this way more doable too.
Where can people find you?
My website is the best place for sure. That’s Toniawinchester.com.
If you’d like to get a mini-course that will help you learn why nothing is working to break through your anxiety and burnout you can go to toniawinchester.com/vitality and sign up there.
If readers are interested in a breakthrough then I suggest they read about it here and can book a discovery call here. That’s a great option because we can determine if a breakthrough is the best next step for where you're at and what you’re wanting.
It’s been great chatting with you. Thank you so much.
Thanks so much for having me, it was fun!
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