Katherine Vilnrotter, of The Love Cure, is a mental and emotional wellness practitioner, entrepreneur, and author. After surviving a life-shattering sexual assault while serving in the Peace Corps, Katherine spent the next 11 years healing her brain, body and energy system. When the mental health system in the US was convinced that she would always have PTSD, she wasn’t. Suffering through almost 5 years of full-blown PTSD, searching for answers and learning about what she was experiencing, she finally found the Human Givens approach. After 1 Human Givens rewind session, she could feel something shift in her brain and over the following months, she witnessed her world expand in ways she never thought possible. Now a Human Givens practitioner herself (and fully PTSD free and thriving), Katherine continues to further her healing in new and deeper ways, exploring and discovering new healing tools. Katherine is passionate about sharing the healing tools that helped her heal herself and guide her clients through their own healing journey. Her two main practices are the Human Givens approach and energy harmonizing (a modality she developed using energetic and vibrational tools such as BioGeometry, sound, meditation and brain/body connection). Through Katherine’s continued education and self-healing, she is uniquely equipped to meet clients where they are, and guide them through their own healing.
Katherine VilnrotterWellness, Practitioner, Entrepreneur, And Author
Why did you decide to start your wellness practice, The Love Cure?
I always knew I wanted to help people, so I started my career in architecture, urban design, and construction to help people through the built environment. After graduate school, I started working in the architecture profession and realized very quickly that the probability that I could have a positive impact through this work was very small. I decided to change my career trajectory and joined the Peace Corps. I wanted to explore the ways I could have a positive impact out in the world by using the skills I had already acquired. While I was there, I was gang-raped at machete point. As you can imagine, that changed my life significantly.
When I came home to the US and started sifting through the shards of my shattered perception of myself and the world, I realized I could never go back to the life I had been building. I knew that my life was going to be changed forever, even if I didn’t know how yet. The Love Cure is the result of my 11-year healing journey. Through The Love Cure, I share approaches, techniques, practices, concepts, and ideas that helped me (and continue to help me) on my path to healing myself. The Love Cure is my opportunity to share the healing tools I wish were available for me when I needed them.
Would you consider yourself a healer?
Yes and no. No, I do not consider myself to be a healer of others. Yes, I absolutely consider myself a healer of myself. I am the only one who can heal me. Just like you are the only one who can heal you. I think that is an important point to make, especially since the words ‘healing’ and ‘healer’ are thrown around so much right now. I do not consider myself a healer of others. Ultimately, healing is a choice, and I cannot choose for anyone but myself.
How would you describe your role in your client's healing?
I consider myself a kind of a guide for my clients as they move through their healing journeys. I see my role as sharing tools that could be helpful to them and doing everything that I can to create a safe space, a container, within which my clients can heal themselves. I see myself as doing everything I can to protect and guide my clients and share what I have learned on my journey. Ultimately, the responsibility of healing oneself always lies within them.
As we heal, we can encounter blocks, as I did on my journey. I had full-blown PTSD for almost 5 years before I found the Human Givens approach and experienced the technique they use called ‘the rewind’ – which gave me my brain back after 1 session. The rewind works with the brain's natural information-processing mechanisms instead of trying to do something to it that it wouldn't naturally do. That is a great example of helping people move through a block or barrier. I guide my clients through the rewind process, but they are the ones actually doing it in their minds.
When someone is stuck in a traumatic stress response, they do not have access to many of their internal resources needed to get themselves unstuck because their brain is being hijacked by their emotional brain. As the brain calms down, it can regain access to those internal resources (such as rational thinking, intelligence, morals, personality, long-term memory, etc.). That is what the rewind does, it helps the brain to calm down and reconnect those parts of the brain (neocortex and limbic system) that need to communicate for information to be processed. A calm brain is a connected brain. From neuroscience and Human Givens perspectives, trauma is just unprocessed information that is stuck in the limbic system. From an energetic perspective, trauma can manifest as trapped or stuck energy within the body or energetic system. I discuss these topics at length in my articles Trauma Explored and Triggers Explored.
Tell me more about your wellness offerings.
I currently have two types of wellness sessions that I offer through The Love Cure – two lenses or healing languages that I have available for my clients to relate to their healing through. One is called the Human Givens approach and is based in more widely accepted sciences such as neuroscience and psychology. This is an effective and brief approach to psychotherapy that came out of the UK and Ireland and is not widely available in the US yet. Human Givens will always hold a special place in my heart since it was the key to my understanding and healing from PTSD.
The other I call Energy Harmonizing and is based in energetics. My understanding of energetics comes from a blend of the elegant framework laid out by BioGeometry, as well as my personal experiences. Once I discovered BioGeometry, I had language and tools to describe and measure what I was experiencing in new and scientific ways.
How do you relate to these two approaches that seem so different?
I was raised in an environment of hard sciences, engineering, and computer programming and without any religion. I grew up with an appreciation and respect for the scientific method and the spirit of exploration and experimentation. My parents encouraged me to be infinitely curious. I truly believe that it was that curiosity that helped me heal myself from the trauma I experienced. Without that curiosity, I might not have deviated from what my therapists said when I returned from the Peace Corps. The message I received (indirectly) was that I had PTSD and I was always going to have it. I was in some way broken or defective since I experienced the trauma and my challenge at this point was to learn how to manage it since it would always be there.
I did not take that as my answer. I kept looking. I was curious. I didn't settle for the 'truth' I was given. I went out on an expedition to find myself, to rebuild myself, one piece at a time. I did everything I could to learn about what I was experiencing. And really, as a fluke, I found the Human Givens approach almost 5 years into the journey of my own healing. Not only did the approach explain everything I was feeling, but it also had an effective treatment for PTSD, the rewind.
I was lucky enough to experience a rewind by Sue Saunders in the first HG workshop offered in the US. I volunteered to be the subject of a rewind demo in front of a lecture hall full of people. From that point, I could feel something shift in my brain. Over the next 3-6 months, slowly and steadily, my world expanded.
To come back to your question – the spirit of what I believe science to be is to have infinite curiosity, to experiment, to try new things, to have an open heart and an open mind. To me, the spirit of science is to be open to seeing things you don’t expect. Ultimately, it was that curiosity that allowed me to be open to discovering and experiencing the non-physical, vibrational world as I now know it. I can now measure this mysterious non-physical world, test it, and repeat it. I experience the effects of working with it in my own life and witness it make a difference in the lives of others.
In your opinion, how do your two practices relate to each other?
I see them as different languages to describe the same things. I believe the language that resonates most with each one of us, the one that we can understand easiest and accept without resistance, is the one that is most likely to help us heal ourselves. This is a concept that I was first introduced to when I wrote my first book, The Love Cure: Connecting Back to You. In this book, I explored the concept of healing languages and how important it is to find the right healing languages for you as you progress on your healing journey. It is important to remember that these may change over time as you grow and learn, as they did for me.
A great example of this is trying to learn something new by taking a class in a language you don’t understand. It is much more difficult to gain information through a language that you don’t speak, so why not take the time to find a language that you can relate to and understand. The teacher could be conveying the most profound concepts of the universe, and we would not have access to them if we didn’t speak the language. In regards to healing, it is just as important to find the right combination of healing languages to understand your process more deeply.
As a practitioner, it is very important to understand that concept. With every client, the most important initial step for me is to understand the client's healing language composition so that I can speak to them in a language that they are open to and can relate to. If someone is not open to energetics or vibration and I use that language, it's not going to resonate with them (pun intended). This can create resistance towards the information and tools I offer and can result in a breakdown of trust, which is detrimental to the therapeutic process.
Some people benefit more when they hear a message through the lens of neuroscience and brain mechanics. For others, a more experiential or social lens of emotional needs and relational dynamics is most effective. For others, it is more helpful to hear the vibrational and energetic language. Others resonate more with spiritual language. These are four healing languages that I toggle between in my practice when appropriate. These languages span the spectrum from very objective to very subjective.
What fascinates me most is that all of these languages can say exactly the same thing, but the words sound so different! The words I use to communicate with clients are so important in maintaining trust. That trust is the foundation of the safe healing space and connection that is critical to the healing process. By discovering the healing languages my clients speak and mirroring those languages back to them, they are more likely to remain open and receive helpful information and tools. This is not only true in therapeutic relationships, but I find this to be true with all effective communication.
Can you describe your perspective on working with the medical industry?
I love all healthy collaborations. As I described earlier, there are four healing languages that I can wield with confidence as it applies to the work that I do. Western medicine, eastern medicine, herbalism, homeopathy, (and any other medicinal practices) are all languages that I do not speak professionally. I speak them minimally as a consumer only. These critical perspectives are not ones that I can offer my clients, so I am always happy to collaborate with those who do.
My perspective is that the more lenses that you can look through, the more information you have about whatever you’re looking at. The more perspectives that you have looking at any problem, dynamic, or situation, the more fully you can understand what’s going on. I believe that more perspectives are always better. I especially love working with chiropractors in conjunction with my energy harmonizing work because there is such clear compatibility there. They can work with the body’s physical alignments and energy flows through physical manipulation in a way that I cannot. But they can! I believe that collaborative healing teams are the future. That is the direction I hope to go. I am always open to working with open-minded practitioners who can offer a perspective that I cannot. Let’s open the door to deeper healing together!
Why is your practice called The Love Cure?
I believe that all healing is connection, and all connection is love. My definition of love is – an authentic connection from one heart to another. In other words, it is a relational energy from your energetic center (in BG terms) when you’re in balance (in HG terms – when your emotional and physical needs are met in balance). From that place of balance within your energetic center, you can connect to another energetic center. That connection is Love. Love is relational, and sometimes that relationship is between you and you. Sometimes it is between you and another person, or group, or system, or family. Any energetic system has a center and that center is Love. When those centers connect, anything is possible. All healing is possible.
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