Women In Wellness: Sarah Southwell Of GroWise Be Well On the Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help Support People’s Journey Towards Better Wellbeing
I can’t force someone to stand in their power. We have been brainwashed to think we don’t have individual power and that someone else knows best, such as big business or the government or western medicine. I now know that people awaken to this truth when they are ready to embrace it and I have learned to love everyone’s individual journey to it. I, myself, am still on this journey to stand fully in my power.
As a part of my series about the women in wellness, I had the pleasure of interviewing Sarah Southwell.
Sarah Southwell is Luminary, CEO, and Founder of GroWise Be Well. Sarah is an energy healer, Reiki master, multidimensional warrior, and teacher of experiential transformation and healing. Alchemist of intuition, energy, and ancient forces, she is excited to share her life’s journey and expertise to support you as you connect to your power.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Our readers would love to “get to know you” better. Can you share your “backstory” with us?
My backstory is full of years of challenges and learning opportunities. The shortened up version of my story starts with healing myself from panic disorder after kicking an addiction to speed, and then helping my son heal from sensory processing disorder. I searched for a way to heal without drugs and discovered the holistic and metaphysical tools that I represent through GroWise Be Well today.
The expanded version: It feels as if it started long ago, now. Once upon a time I was living a life disconnected from my body with a dislike for other humans. I was addicted to speed, in any form, from triple lattes to diet pills. I was successful at keeping this addiction from my husband because we spent a lot of time apart during the day. But, we were getting ready to move to the woods of Montana, and live quite close in a cabin on the river. I decided it was time to quit all speed, because, of course, I had lied to myself about being an addict. So, I threw them all away as soon as we moved. Very soon after that, I began horrible withdrawal symptoms, which I didn’t associate with the absence of the speed, because I wasn’t an addict. I felt my mind and body had betrayed me. My body was severely depleted from years of deprivation from nutrition so it shut down for a period which threw my mind out of its normal state of overconfidence and I began to doubt everything. So, I descend into a state of panic. I had every test offered by western medical physicians run on me to find out what was causing this affliction and all they came up with was to offer me anti-anxiety drugs and send me home. I had just come off of one pill, and didn’t want to become addicted to another, so I began my unending quest for ways to heal myself. I tried every holistic treatment I could get my hands on and soon began to emerge from the panic to anxiety. I discovered Oriental Medicine, which I believe truly helped me heal and thrive. Slowly, over two years, I returned to me, but not just me, a much improved version of me. Through the search for modalities that would help me heal physically and mentally, I found a healing I hadn’t been looking for, a spiritual healing. I emerged from my quest with a love for others.
Several years later, my son was diagnosed on the autism spectrum, with sensory processing disorder. I began another quest to help him heal and feel great in this world. I discovered how food could help or hurt and eventually the possibility of a malfunctioning methylation gene which drove me to buy a farm and milk goats, but that is a much longer story. I tried a lot of things I had previously learned with my healing process but he was too young for many of them. I asked my doctor of oriental medicine if he could help my son but he said autism is a western medical diagnoses and he needed the oriental healing translation and then he could help him. So, I searched the land for a translation of autism into an oriental perspective, which I found in North Carolina. We went to visit the doctor who had successfully translated and treated autism and came home with a treatment plan that my doctor used to heal my son. I’m cutting out some details, because this would be a book, not an article. It was not as simple and short as it sounds here. There is no magic pill and healing doesn’t come without extreme discipline, desire, and ultimately, the belief, the knowing, that health, joy and abundance is here now.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? What were the main lessons or takeaways from that story?
I was suffering from postpartum depression after my first son was born and my very good friend decided to take me away for a weekend and show me a movie she thought would help. She showed me the movie The Secret by Rhonda Byrne and it changed my life. I had been an atheist most of my life, all the suffering in the world made me believe that any God that allowed such atrocities had to be the devil. I didn’t want to watch the movie but my friend insisted and I trust her so I watched. It blew my mind. I came home from that weekend a changed woman. I had hope in my heart and a knowing that we create our own reality. To this day, I will catch myself moaning about something that isn’t going right in my life and I stop myself and ask, “What do I want my life to be like? How do I want this to go?”, to get me back on track with creating what I want. The twist on this story is that I came to discover that my friend that showed me the movie didn’t believe in it. Over the years, if I heard her complaining about something in her life, I would remind her of The Secret and she would say she didn’t believe. I now know that we can all have an abundance of joy and health and wealth in our lives if we believe we can.
Can you share a story about the biggest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
The biggest mistake I made when I was first started was to think everyone who seemed out of balance and unhealthy, to me, wanted help. And, that I had the answers because I had been through something challenging as well. The old saying “You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.”, has been something I have to remind myself of to this day. I want everyone to live a life full of joy and health and I know they can but they have to believe too. I don’t heal others, they heal themselves. I only assist them with more universal energy. I used to believe I had all the answers and that if only that person would take my advice then they would feel great. But the truth in the statement about leading the horse, is that the horse has to want the water, it has to seek it out.
Let’s jump to our main focus. When it comes to health and wellness, how is the work you are doing helping to make a bigger impact in the world?
GroWise Be Well empowers people to believe in their power to heal themselves. We don’t profess to know everything or tell you how you should heal. We believe you already know what is best for you, you just need to be encouraged to believe in yourself. We offer the opportunity to learn about 13 different holistic and metaphysical modalities that run the spectrum from essential oils to magic. I have learned that one tool in my toolbox is not enough, I pick up tools all the time through trying a new modality or reading a new book. My toolbox is like Mary Poppins’ magical carpet bag and I can add as many tools as I want. I hope to never stop adding tools, I don’t know when one tool I thought I wouldn’t use may help me or someone else. GroWise Be Well ferociously supports you to gather as many tools as you want, as long as you use the most important tool of all, your belief in your own power. The world seems like it is finally waking up to the idea that everything we want already exists, we just have to use the power of our mind to bring it into our lives.
Can you share your top five “lifestyle tweaks” that you believe will help support people’s journey towards better wellbeing? Please give an example or story for each.
- Believe — in yourself, your intuition, your connection with source, your power. Watch The Secret, read The Secret book and dig into the people interviewed and you will find it is all true. You have the power to change your life, you always have. When you need something to come into your life to help you or your situation, it will show up. When you believe, you are on the wavelength of manifesting and the universe only hears that frequency. Tape mantras and positive statements all over your house and in your car to help yourself remember you’ve got this.
- Unplug. Remove electronics from your bedroom for a restorative night’s sleep. Have only 1 tv in your house and use it only for entertainment, not news. Read paper books, not books on a device. I understand this may upset those that want to reduce our consumption of paper to save trees but I believe that we can plant more trees and the evil presented by electronic devices is far more detrimental to the human race. Don’t get sucked into social media, use it to learn things and improve your mood. Limit video game time and computer time. The more organic we can be, which means connecting with the earth and all of its glory, the better we will be.
- Eat organic. The chemicals in conventionally grown food cause disease. The nutrition content of conventionally grown food is so slight that they have to “fortify” foods, which means they add vitamins and minerals back into the foods because they weren’t present when the ingredients were growing. Eating organic also makes a statement to the food providers and our government that we don’t want franken-food or food drenched with chemicals because these practices are killing all wildlife, as well as humans. Organic food has the highest nutritional content to help your body and mind be vibrantly healthy.
- Love. Love yourself by listening to your body and mind and giving it what it needs to provide an awesome day for you, such as food, rest, laughter or simply a walk in the park. Love others by listening to them. Accept their similarities and differences, their human story, their journey they are on. Don’t make it about you, don’t try and fix them, don’t ask them to stop talking because you didn’t really want to know. Don’t judge, just listen and radiate love for them. We are all connected through universal energy, so loving others will bring that love back to you. I love the idea of passing it on, you show love for someone and they show love to another person and so on. That’s the best wave there is.
- Visutate. I created this word, visutate, as a combination of meditate and visualize. I do a visualization every morning and it makes my day amazing. Visualizing how you want your day to go is extremely powerful because you are literally showing the universe how you want things to be and you are radiating at a very high frequency when you are experiencing what you want, which is the frequency of manifestation. Meditating is calming your mind so that things become clear. I like to think of meditation as a snow globe; normally my mind is a shaken snow globe, lots of thoughts flying around. Meditation allows me to let the shaken globe of my brain settle so that I can see things clearly. I combine visualization and meditation into one sitting session where I am having a conversation with my body, running my energy and settling my mind all in a 15 minute session.
If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of wellness to the most amount of people, what would that be?
The empowerment movement. I would love to see every human flying their proverbial freak flag. We would all be so creatively powerful if we started living outside of the paradigms that have been created for us. There is so much more than what we have been presented as reality. Just imagine where humanity could go if we all believed in our unique creative power.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why?
1.I can’t force someone to stand in their power. We have been brainwashed to think we don’t have individual power and that someone else knows best, such as big business or the government or western medicine. I now know that people awaken to this truth when they are ready to embrace it and I have learned to love everyone’s individual journey to it. I, myself, am still on this journey to stand fully in my power.
2. Love is the answer. I used to think that if I showed love to all, especially those that want to take my power from me, that I would be weak and a doormat for them to walk on. Now, I know that the Beatles really did get it right when they sang “All You Need is Love”. Love is by far the most powerful frequency you can stand in. Love will conquer all. I love myself when I defend my boundaries with love, I love others when they are not comfortable with me standing in my power, I love differences of opinion because I get a chance to learn and so on and so on.
3. Ignorance is bliss. Ok, someone did tell me this before I started, but I didn’t understand. As Nero found out in the Matrix, wanting to know the truth of the world is not blissful until you can stand in your power. I’ve been known to say “If only I didn’t know….” I wouldn’t unlearn anything and it was my path to follow, but I can definitely understand others not being excited about stepping into a place of knowing. Being different then the pack and choosing a life of intention can be lonely, as well. I get judged as anti-social or no-fun because I won’t partake in things I know will lower my frequency. It can also be painful to see those you love continue to suffer because they don’t believe in their power.
4. You create your reality. I would have jumped right in with gusto, ok, maybe a little bit of doubt, but with excitement. Deepak Chopra just released a new book “MetaHuman” where he states clearly that our imagination, our creativity creates our reality, really. When we daydream we are creating. I wish I would have known this before I started because I would have allowed myself to get lost in daydreams a lot more often.
5. The shadow is my friend and ally. I always fought my anxiety and other “demons”, wanting them only to go away. Now I know that they are actually my friends and they help me live my best life. When they rise up and become a strong voice I know I need to listen.
Sustainability, veganism, mental health and environmental changes are big topics at the moment. Which one of these causes is dearest to you, and why?
Definitely mental health. The sooner we allow ourselves and those we love to be human and express their true worries and hopes then the sooner we will be a vibrantly creative energetic human presence on this planet.
What is the best way our readers can follow you online?
The best way to follow me is to subscribe to the newsletter at www.gwbw.com and subscribe to my podcast, GroWise Be Well, on any podcast streaming service.
Thank you for these fantastic insights!
Women In Wellness: Sarah Southwell Of GroWise Be Well On the Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
