Cindy Castelyns is a holistic health coach, therapist, and energetic treatment practitioner.
She specializes in guiding people to live healthy lifestyles. She is convinced that holistic health offers many opportunities, as it is fuel for our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual well-being.
One of the services she offers is advising people on the right nutrition and supplements, preferably based on a blood test that exposes the level of inflammatory markers in the body.
As a therapist, she offers professional help for anxieties, unhealthy relationships, fixed mindsets, trauma, emotional eating & eating disorders, and addictions. An important part of her therapy focuses on the emotional aspect, particularly the inner child in relationship to others.
Perpetual failure in her professional life and limiting beliefs, such as not feeling worthy or good enough, kept Cindy in a vicious circle for a long time. It made her feel anxious about fully being herself and what her mission in life would be. As a teenager, she was a perfectionist and struggled with an eating disorder. Later on, she experienced many toxic situations that made her feel hopeless, vulnerable, and doubting herself.
She only recently discovered that she has a learning disability called NLD. This is a non-verbal learning disability, a disbalance in information processing between the right and left hemispheres of the brain. After this discovery, some of her life difficulties became clear, making her feel more authentic and ready to accept herself.
She is grateful today as she managed to break unhealthy patterns by strengthening her mindset, working with her inner child, and setting clear boundaries for toxic behavior.
Now, she helps her clients with first-hand experience, as she knows that change is possible as long as there’s willpower and belief. She can go all the way when she does something that she is committed to or passionate about. With that energy and belief in what’s possible in life, she wants to inspire and empower other people positively and enthusiastically, as she knows this can make a difference in many people’s lives.
Since 2020, she has been the proud founder of Inventa Health & Lifestyle, located in Kasterlee, Belgium.
Cindy Castelyns, Holistic Health Coach
Where does your thrive or need to be authentic come from?
Since I was little, I had the natural ability to sense people and situations well. As a young child, I learned not to listen to it, to adapt to my environment, to what they thought was good for me, and to be the perfect child. My survival strategy was to live in my head most of the time and to behave as expected, not showing what was going on inside of me and not showing too much emotion, as that felt safer.
I developed a belief system that told me there must be something very wrong with me and that I must hide a part of myself; it felt like I was not allowed to be my authentic self. I wasn’t able to name my feelings and learned to suppress most of my emotions. The only emotion I could express as a teenager was anger. I guess every child finds a way to rebel against their parents. I became very hard for myself and my environment, and I was completely disconnected from myself.
My life has been a struggle to find the courage to be my authentic self, to accept myself to the fullest, and to not need to hide a part of myself anymore.
How was your journey to becoming more of your authentic self? When did you reach your turning point?
When I was 34 years old, I reached a turning point, which was the start of turning my life around. I was a full-time working mom of 2 kids (3,5, and 1) of which the youngest was a crybaby. I was following courses in the evening as a health coach, going to the gym 2 times a week, in a period of renovation work of a new home, trying to do everything perfectly, in a world that wasn’t mine. I was exhausted and felt failing, for which I felt shame and guilt as a mother, as a wife, and as an employee.
At that time, I lost my job in a way that was unfair to me. And as I stayed too long in jobs that weren’t suitable for me, let’s say toxic, I developed Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
This was the moment I realized I needed to do things differently. I knew the old way wasn’t working
anymore, but how should I continue then?
I started a long journey of personal development (mindfulness, therapy, coaching, faster EFT, RTT), of getting to know myself better and what I needed most at that time.
During that journey, I completed many trainings, a.o. as a Life- and Mindset Coach, which gave me many insights into how our brain functions and how our thoughts can influence our feelings and behavior. I learned that when you change and strengthen your mindset, you can change your life, that of your family, and that of others surrounding you if they are receptive to it.
I learned to find inner peace within and become more of my authentic self. It took me a long time to get insights into my pattern, but now I am happy to share my experiences with my clients. I can relate to them and understand their processes.
Tell me about your work with the inner child in individual and couples therapy.
Before I decided to offer this kind of therapy, I was inspired by a training called Transpersonal Coaching. It’s a one-on-one coaching or therapy form that heals transgenerational pain, which is passed on from generation to generation.
When I followed a training in 2020, a part of me awakened when doing the specific exercises. It made me release a part of the blocked energy of childhood pain and trauma in my body, unexpectedly and more deeply. This was so transformational that I wanted to integrate this work in my sessions.
This year, I am enrolled in advanced training in Reconstructive-based Therapy. This kind of therapy originated in psychotraumatology, Jungian psychology, inner-child psychology, and attachment theory. It touches the deeper layers of pain and trauma in the body. It’s a model for individual, relationship, and team counseling that can be considered a new method for personal development, trauma healing, and integrating shadow parts.
In my sessions, I gently address the pain of blocked emotions of the inner child, which accelerates the healing process. I help my clients unhide what has been repressed and acknowledge what has been rejected or not welcomed in the family of origin. In this way, they can create self-empathy and their emotions can be released more deeply, which heals pain and trauma more efficiently.
You overcame an eating disorder. How does this help you better understand people with eating problems or addictions?
When you struggle with an eating problem, there is often an underlying reason. People initially seek help because they are out of balance and have lost connection with themselves, but they often do not know the real cause. Emotions often put your inner child in a state of freeze/flight/fight because the ‘real’ pain or discomfort seems too big to handle. As a result, we resort to food to numb our emotions.
As a teenager, I suffered seriously from an eating disorder for about 3 years. I know what it means to suppress my emotions of not feeling worthy and good enough by eating, trying to hide it from everyone, not being able to break the pattern, and feeling lonely and misunderstood.
You don’t want to feel the pain of not feeling good enough, so you will suppress it by eating until it becomes a habit and an addiction. It’s a pattern, a vicious circle not easy to break on your own.
Looking at the pain behind it and releasing it makes you stronger and more resilient, so you don’t need food or anything else anymore to suppress those emotions.
I was able to completely overcome my eating problem when I met my husband and started a family. So yes, I definitely can relate to my clients and understand their situations.
What do you exactly mean by a healthy lifestyle?
I am so gratefull that I can advise people on the right nutrition and vitamins to drop the level of inflammatory markers in their blood and to improve their health. Many people are just not aware they are suffering from malnutrition as a result of a monotonous diet lacking in vitamins.
It’s not about eating healthy all the time, but 70% or 80% of the time can make a big difference.
I know that being in balance with your health and life needs commitment and persistence, especially when you need to break with old patterns and family belief systems to get there.
How you eat, see yourself, think, feel, talk, behave, and react in the world all has a certain level of awareness and consciousness.
It’s nice to see when clients start working on themselves consistently, they become more aware, and will notice that things will begin to change in their lives, things like:
the way they think, speak, and feel about themselves and others;
the way they take care of themselves;
the food they eat;
whether they exercise;
the relationships they have;
their ability to set boundaries for toxic behavior.
their level of self-esteem and self-confidence;
the kind of job they have and how much money they value themselves;
the way they express themselves in the world;
All those things can influence the overall health. Changing a lifestyle is not done overnight, but it’s nice to see clients achieving and maintaining goals in their lives at their own pace. A relapse is normal, but with the right commitment, persistence, and help, they can start over, and that’s most important.
What advice would you give to people who are struggling in life?
Putting yourself first is not egoistic; it’s called self-care. When you first take care of yourself, you can better take care of others.
There is an Indian proverb: "Everyone is a house with four rooms: a physical, a mental, an emotional, and a spiritual (connection with yourself). Most of us are inclined to live in one room. But unless we go into every room every day, even if only to air them out, we are not a whole person.
Where can people find you, and how can they work with you?
They can visit my website for more information or call me to ask questions they would have before scheduling a first consultation. I look forward to assisting them on their journey of personal development.
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