Do you struggle with the fear of being seen? Do you feel like you have to shove yourself into these predefined societal boxes in order to be seen as successful? Or maybe even to feel loved for who you are? Do you find yourself dimming your light because someone has told you – you are ‘too much’? Have you ever considered that the people that make you feel that way just aren’t your people? Until I began to take radical responsibility for who I came here to be I was suffocating from trying to be anyone else but myself. Maybe you can relate?
Alyson Haines, Spiritual Life Coach & Reiki Practitioner
Tell us about yourself – Where does your story begin?
My story begins in 2020 as so many stories do it seems. I had been working in the entertainment industry for nearly 15 years when the pandemic hit and the entire industry shut down seemingly overnight. I found myself furloughed for an unknown amount of time, during which I came to the realization that I didn’t truly know who I was without my job title. In fact, I found myself relying strictly on external qualifiers like project coordinator, Aunt, Runner to define my identity. At that moment I knew I would have to do something different if I wanted my life to change.
That moment would become the catalyst for two pivots that would change the trajectory of my life in a good way. During the height of 2020, I launched my podcast the “But, What if You DID?®” Podcast. It gave me a platform to begin to share my experiences and life lessons in real-time. In some ways it started as a personal journal but it has evolved into so much more than that. Through the podcast creation process, I began to find myself more and more drawn to exploring what it would look like to someday become a full-time entrepreneur. I wasn’t sure what that would look like yet, but I knew it was where I was destined to end up.
8 months after my furlough began, I returned to work having spent months digging into the depths of ‘who I really was’. I went through a certification process to become a life coach which began my journey into entrepreneurship and accepted my first position outside of the entertainment industry working in tech. For years I had convinced myself that it would be impossible to start over in my 30s but what I uncovered was a powerful new reality where I was free to become whoever I wanted to be.
A few months later, I attended my first in person retreat. It was in Denver, Colorado. I struggled with altitude sickness most of my time there but the experience taught me about the importance of our breath which led me to explore breathwork as a new modality I could bring to my coaching clients. To me, there are two things that really set breathwork apart – It’s free and accessible to everyone and it always grounds you in the present moment because for your breath there is no time but the present. I became certified as a breathwork facilitator in 2023.
After that I found myself drawn to learning more and more about somatic modalities. I was finding breathwork and EFT tapping to be completely transformative when it came to regulating my nervous system and also reprogramming my subconscious mind. At this time, I had been reading a lot of research on energetic wellness and energy healing and it felt like I had unlocked some secret world.
I began working with my first Reiki Practitioner who would eventually become my Spiritual Coach & Mentor. Through this coaching container, I worked to nurture and restore each of my energy centers known as Chakras. The experience of learning to work with my energy was so transformative that I knew I needed to be able to share this modality with my own clients and I became certified as a Reiki Practitioner earlier this year.
My path has been filled with twists and turns but to be able to combine the power of intuitive soul-led coaching with breathwork and reiki has helped so many of my clients uplevel and find deep levels of personal transformation in their own lives.
I am here to teach people to come home to their truest essence of self and to take radical responsibility for becoming the person they are meant to become. As a Life Coach, Spiritual Mentor & Reiki Practitioner my mission is to walk alongside you on your deconditioning journey as you find clarity in and begin to fully embody your own truth. It’s through true embodiment that we all have the power to create the changes in the world we so deeply desire.
On a more personal level, I recently moved across the country, got married, and am now settling into a new season of life! I believe the world is full of synchronicities and if you are reading this, I have no doubt our paths were meant to cross and I cannot wait to uncover what we are meant to learn from one another.
What role does personalization play in your approach and how do you cater to individualized needs?
That is such a great question! One thing you should know about me is I strongly dislike feeling like I’m being shoved into any kind of box or automatically assigned any kind of label without knowing that the person really sees me for me. And so being able to provide an individualized approach is what my foundation is built upon. Regardless of if I’m working one-to-one with someone or even in a group setting, I believe in co-creating the experience –so that the experience is just that – a true experience!
When I invest in working with a coach, one of the first questions I ask is how they accommodate individualistic needs. And the coaches that I have experienced my biggest personal transformations under were coaches that were always willing to co-create with me and so I strive to be the coach and mentor that sees the unique needs of my clients and is truly able to meet them where they are at. For some clients breathwork has a more potent effect on their transformation, for others It’s Reiki, some love incorporating tapping, while others find somatic movement to be the key to transmuting trapped energy. No two individuals are the same and that’s just part of the magic of being human!
Can you share any success stories or testimonials from clients that have experienced true transformation through your work together?
So many client stories come to mind but I’ll share a couple that I also felt I experienced a profound impact from working with them. One of my very first life coaching clients first connected with me when she had hit a point where she felt stuck / trapped in her current reality but had this deep knowing that she was meant for more. She just didn’t know what ‘more’ looked like. She had never worked with a coach before and wasn’t even sure a coach was what she needed but she knew she needed support. We clicked immediately during our discovery call. If you have never worked with a coach one-to-one before I cannot stress the importance of a discovery call enough. Working with a coach is an intimate experience and you should know that you feel completely comfortable with this person before investing your time, money and energy.
We decided to work together for 6 months and over the course of our coaching container – I watched her leave her job in nursing to pursue helping nurses in a new way, she began traveling the country as a digital nomad with her husband and pups, her confidence skyrocketed, she began to truly understand and believe in her worth and the value she was bringing to the industry, she began to truly value the work she was doing and through doing her own transformation work she was finding herself able to better facilitate transformation for her own clients. I could go on and on but her transformation came from her willingness to trust the process her ability to really invest her time and energy into her own transformation and her ability to slow down and listen to her own inner wisdom.
Another client transformation that really made a profound impact on me, was one of my first clients that allowed me the space to do a practice session when I first became attuned to Reiki as I was beginning to integrate that modality into what have now become my somatic healing sessions. This was my first international reiki session and I felt like I was still finding myself and my own style. After the session I received this beautiful testimonial that just summed up beautifully into words why this work means so much to me.
With her permission I’m going to share that testimonial with all of you:
“Dear Alyson, wow this session blew me away and exceeded all my expectations! It was so beautiful and powerful – grounding and empowering. Feeling so grateful and full of energy after the session. Afterwards, I went to the forest and my pain lessened already. Feeling better and lighter now and resting. Thank you so much for taking the time and for your wonderful energy. So glad you chose yourself, this path and that you share your magic!”
Anytime I need to revisit my ‘Why’ – I re-read this and always feel re-energized and so grateful that these are the types of experiences I get to support people in.
If you could change one thing in your industry, what would it be and why?
If I could change one thing in my industry it would be regulating the industry. When I joined the coaching industry, I had no idea that there was nothing that said you must have a certification to call yourself a coach. The coaching industry is not regulated. There are many ethical coaches out there who are devoted students and go through the lengthy certification processes and are consistently investing in working with their own coaches in order to be able to provide and facilitate transformative spaces for their clients. There are also many individuals out there who do not. Same goes for Breathwork and Reiki. I could not bring these modalities to my clients safely without the months and months of extensive training and anytime I invest in working with someone I want to know that they understand the importance of that as well.
Tell us about a pivotal moment that highlights how you got to where you are today?
I’m going to share a recent story. I started my journey as an entrepreneur four years ago but it was always more of a side hobby and not really a business. I knew stepping into entrepreneurship full-time would eventually be the end goal, but it wasn’t a reality until not too long ago. Earlier this year I found myself up against some just really unkind behavior in my corporate job. I’m not going to share the full situation here, but what I realized was that this was the thing that was meant to push me to take the leap.
I’ve spent years saying, “I’ll make the leap when ‘x’ happens,” and here’s the thing, ‘X’ never really happens because, as humans, we like to continually move the goalposts for ourselves. So, when this happened, I realized it was time to take radical responsibility for who I came here to be. I’m a coach and a healer and I’m meant to help people to learn to take that same radical responsibility in their own lives. Had that not happened, I don’t know where I would be but that situation helped me to find the courage to take the leap. And if you’re reading this and you find yourself in a similar situation, I hope maybe my story will inspire you to take radical action in your own life. We only get so many days here – and tomorrow is promised to no one. As one of my mentors recently said – “Ready is a decision, not a choice.” I decided I was ready, what will you decide?
To read more about my story check out my Substack!
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