Pamela Domzalski, Internationally Certified Yoga Therapist and Holistic Health Life-Balance Coach, is a mentor for living your fullest, “full lotus” life in health, happiness, peace and prosperity. She is Founder of a global business, Thriving Lotus LLC. Thriving Lotus provides depth and breadth of expertise in alternative therapies and life coaching in order to address the root causes of imbalances with the holistic, customized approach each unique client needs.
Pamela Domzalski, CIAYT Holistic Therapist Life Coach
What are you most passionate about? Do you have a niche?
I’m passionate about assisting people with their health and healing journey, so that they can transform their lives with spiritual and personal growth and live their lives to the fullest in health, happiness, peace and prosperity. This looks different depending on the unique individual, their life experiences, and where they are in their healing journey. Since people are colorful, my approach is also colorful and custom. I believe we all have a unique flow that suits our well-being, so I encourage clients to listen to that and we move at their pace. Since I am trained in many different areas of health and wellness, it would be a disservice to my clientele if I only offered a single niche service when most people want help with more than one thing. Everything health-related is highly complex and integrated throughout our whole being: physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, energetically, spiritually, and so on. My signature offerings are whole-being well-being programs.
My own life experiences contain various traumas and grievances, including becoming a young widow, and my personal healing journey led me to specialize in trauma and grief support and therapies that uplift those in the most vulnerable, seemingly hopeless of places. Trauma and inner peace, and grief and joy, can and should co-exist, just as there is hope to become aware of and lean into when feeling hopeless. My healing journey led me to these realizations, into greater personal spiritual relationship, and empowered my innate ability to manifest healing, transformation, and more abundant living. Recognizing my whole being and honoring it with nurturing care has been essential. It brings me much joy to share with clients the effective practices I learned along the way.
The “seed” root-cause of a health concern can be something simple, but the way it manifests is integrated and complex, can contain multiple interrelated root causes, and thus is easily missed by those treating symptoms or diagnoses without looking at the bigger picture of the person and their lives. Treating a physical or mental body part or symptom in isolation will not produce the sustainable health and full living that I know is the ultimate goal of every person out there. When a client of mine meets a goal, they feel empowered to move forward towards addressing another, and another. Sometimes, they come to me feeling stuck and unmotivated yet they are always willing, and that combo of willingness and commitment is crucial. Life is a journey after all, as is our healing and health. My clients prefer not to have to shop around for and move from one coach or therapist to another, for each symptom, having to answer the same intake questions and tell their stories repeatedly, like is custom with Western healthcare providers and Western coaches. That siloed approach often never gets to the “seed” and root causes to heal someone sustainably. It can be demotivating for a person to have to go shopping for a new provider to cover each “niche” need.
While some major health concerns need licensed healthcare, I believe Western medicine has disempowered the individual by making claims that all symptoms need to be treated that way. I prefer to empower clients to make those decisions for themselves and encourage them to explore their whole-being selves with me to discover seed and root causes and their options for addressing them. As a CIAYT (yoga therapist), I am proficient in many holistic therapies, rooted in a more integrated Eastern way, yet encompassing a plethora of both ancient and modern practices from a variety of cultures that are science-backed and shown to provide healing to our integrated bodies. I chose to get my clinical certification in this incredible, comprehensive therapy along with my coaching certifications to offer healing practices to my clients in addition to coaching and support. As part of the International Association of Yoga Therapists, I continue my education by studying the newest developments in holistic therapy such as somatic release (emotional and myofascial) techniques and polyvagal parasympathetic nervous system activation and repair. I am a passionate learner so I can be an effective practitioner.
Please tell us about yourself and what led you to be who you are today.
As a child, I knew I was more than just a person with a body. I’ve had a passionate, heart-centered spiritual side for as far back as I can remember. I almost drowned to death as a toddler, and before being revived with CPR, I remember experiencing something out of this world that has inspired and motivated me throughout my life. Having this deeply spiritual experience in water has given me a love for water and also for our spiritual, energy, and emotional “bodies” that are fluid in nature. I have always loved people, empathized with, and wanted to help others I encountered throughout my life who were experiencing hardship, trauma and grief.
As a young adult, I encountered some very dark nights for my soul, yet I always found a light on inside my heart that led me through the abuse, divorce, disease and the heart-breaking grief of losing my young husband. We can never lose our soul even though trauma can cause feelings of soul loss. After I emerged like a lotus from these sorts of life experiences myself, I took notice of what worked on my own healing journey and chose to go deeper into study and practice to be of better service to others. I acquired a diverse background in spiritual practices, psychology, yoga and yoga therapies, grief and trauma-informed somatics, and transformational coaching methods. There have been so many synchronicities along my life path, that I do not believe in coincidence or in anything being purely dark. There is always a light in the dark. After my childhood near-death experience, I used to love to submerge myself in my bath water and hum melodies under the water. It was so soothing to my mind and body. During my studies, I came to realize the therapeutic benefits of water, humming and vibrational sound for healing our nervous systems. I was intuitively doing that as a child for myself!
I am truly passionate about whole-body health. I even have a nutrition coaching certification. I was a vegetarian on and off my whole life then went completely plant-based at the beginning of 2020. I have recently been studying and practicing various mind and body health techniques for transitioning into menopause looking and feeling my best.
Providing a sustainable pathway for my clients to live their lives to the fullest, something I call “blooming your life into full lotus”, is my mission. I love the symbolism and imagery in the blooming, thriving lotus’ journey. What I consider to be the critical key for unlocking the door to freedom from trauma and heaviness from past experiences is belief. What we believe about ourselves and who we identify as. Have we constructed a false identity for ourselves out of external circumstances? Mindset is really about choice, and choosing to shatter false beliefs, digging deep within our own intuitive and wise knowing, and replacing our belief system with our soul’s truth. It gives me great joy to see clients step into a fuller expression of their soul’s truth. We do this together with great self-compassion and understanding for our deep-rooted beliefs, including those that have not served us well. Some have intended to protect us, had their part in getting us to where we are today, and are an opportunity to learn and grow from.
Can you share with us your top values and how these influence the way you do business and engage with your clients?
I’m a golden girl when it comes to the golden rule. I set out to love and care for others as I desire to be loved and cared for. I desire to be listened to and understood, to be empathized with. So I approach sessions with clients with a giving and open heart to meet these desires in them and any others that surface as I listen, notice and lean in intuitively. Another value of mine is humility, and I seek to learn as my client learns through self-discovery and introspection what works for them, their needs and what feels best in response to those. Rather than assuming that what works for me works for everyone else, I know that everyone is unique, their emotional needs and grief are unique. Clients can expect adaptability, flexibility, support, helpfulness and compassion from me. They can expect that while I have experience with and have studied differing, individual manifestations of trauma and grief and what research says works for many, I only offer options and insights that are ultimately up to you to evaluate as helpful or not helpful for you. I value hearing this feedback that directs our course of therapy as you are the pilot on your self-healing journey. I value passion and am in the business of helping people surface their own, becoming passionate about their own personal and spiritual growth and blooming into their unique soul purpose. I believe the miracle of abundance exists in the flow of our passionate soul purpose. Where hope is the source of light within us, when we turn towards it and draw closer to it within us and clear the way, opening our hearts for more, a passionate fire unfolds there.
Tell us about your business, Thriving Lotus. How did it come to be and what services you provide?
Five years before Thriving Lotus’ inception during my first yoga teacher training, my husband fell ill with a rare, aggressive cancer and died. I finished the training, because I believed it was the right thing to do for myself. It was. I went on to study advanced training in India and continued on to get my CIAYT credential. I did it all for myself at first. At first, I did not feel like I could teach yoga to others, because I was so distraught. Being authentic is important to me, and I was on the other end of the spectrum from inner peace at the time. I believed that I needed inner peace, and more importantly, I believed I would get it, despite feeling that was impossible. In just a few months, I was teaching yoga, as this inner peace miraculously emerged. I believe in miracles, as I see them all around us everywhere. This led me to open my own home yoga studio, workshops and retreat business.
Thriving Lotus was born in 2021 after closing my first local yoga, wellness coaching and retreats business to move across the country from Virginia to California. I decided to take my business online and take clients from all over the world. I rebranded and launched Thriving Lotus. I have always identified with the lotus and its empowering ability to rise above the mud and create itself in blooming beauty. I have not always felt thriving. All of my studies were expensive but helped me feel better equipped to offer value to my clients. So I embarked on my new business venture with the name, Thriving Lotus, because I believed in my value before it manifested into a thriving business. Belief is a huge deal! It stands behind what we create for ourselves, our lives.
Thriving Lotus offerings include 1-1 programs, group events and retreats worldwide, and educational resources i.e. workshops and courses. Thriving Lotus is now a collective community as well, with other great coaches specialized in various areas. We customize the 1-1 and group experiences based on our client’s needs. Every person has unique life experiences and desires, and we enjoy working privately with clients and tailoring our services to be most beneficial for them.
My most popular Thriving Lotus program is the Holistic Health Life Balance Program which combines both of my Signature offerings, Thriving Lotus® Somatic & Inner Yoga Holistic Therapy and Thriving Lotus® Alive to Thrive Life Balance Coaching. Often during our initial discovery call, a client will express interest in a particular specialty offering to meet their most pressing need, such as my Trauma and Grief Support Program, and then decide to upgrade to this all-inclusive Holistic Health Life Balance Program. This amazing program includes the Alive to Thrive Well-Being Assessment and “Blueprint” for a thoroughly holistic, visual understanding of where you see yourself currently and where you are heading on your healing journey. Part of my process is to lead my clients through self-discovery and inner exploration to provide them with clarity and direction, a safe, secure foundation from which to embark on a profound self-healing path.
In addition to our 1-1 Programs, Thriving Lotus will continue offering yoga, wellness, and specialty-focused retreats, online courses, and group workshops. In April 2024, we concluded a transformative, holistic therapy and grief support retreat in Maui, Hawaii. Later this year, Thriving Lotus will be branching out into the continuing education (YACEP) sector and offering teacher trainings. Join our mailing list to get first access to new offerings and special offers on our programs and more!
