Hey, everyone. Welcome to Your SuperPowered Mind. I’m your host Kristin Maxwell, and in this show we explore the process of transformation and give you tools and strategies that you can use to transform your own life.
Today, we are going to be talking to Kathleen Woodington about finding inspiration and hope after depression. Kathleen Woodington is an empowerment and lifestyle coach who shows successful business women who struggle with depression, trauma, or chronic illness how to feel hope, experience more energy, and step into their power. As a yoga and meditation teacher and a life coach and former occupational therapist, Kathleen uses multiple healing modalities, tools, and techniques to heal and empower others to grow into their greatness.
Kathleen, welcome to Your SuperPowered Mind.
It’s so good to be here with you, Kristin.
I am very excited to share you with everybody. My first question is always, what super power did you discover as the result of mastering your mind?
The superpower that I discovered was surrender. What it allowed me to do is to really basically dropped to my knees and realize that I can actually not figure out what is happening, what is going on, and just to really, yeah, just to really say I actually have no clue. I was kind of at the wit’s end, and it was in that place that I was able to really, yeah, just kind of let go of the reins and let life take me.
Wow. So, when you say that, because I know that feeling of I have no clue what to do to get out of this, this space that I’ve created and I see other people swirling with that, what happened when you let go of the reins? What did that look like? How do you let go?
Well, it was with much, how do I say, it was with a huge struggle and a huge battle, and really the battle was just really raging with inside of me every day. There’s just so much anger and so much fear. Again, that was all turned against me. It was, just got to a point where I just basically drove myself into the ground, so much so that I had to have my thyroid gland removed and it was autoimmune disease and that was like full-blown auto-inflammation throughout my entire body.
I lost my mind, but I found my soul.
Then, basically, I just lost everything. I lost my mental health, my physical health, I lost my career and relationships and my finances. Yeah, so everything basically came to a screaming halt. It was at that point that I just, I just didn’t know what else to do. I just really realized that what I do and what I have done is no longer serving me. Basically, I just really opened up and I just said, I’m willing, I am willing to learn a better way. That’s really what started to happen for me is just to be open.
From there, I started to connect with people and resources and different healers and just really, because everything that I knew as of me, in terms of my mind, I say that I lost my mind, but I found my soul. That really has been my journey is the conditioned mind that I had and all the lack and the limitation and just really realizing that all of those programs, they were no longer serving me. It was just that awakening and coming into awareness that, so I have lost my cognition and everything else, and now I actually have to get to a point where I actually get to choose what do I want to create.
That’s kind of what it looked like for me. In the midst of all of that, because that didn’t happen overnight, there was not just one dark night of the soul, not one week or month or year, it was over a long time that I spent so much time consumed in the abyss of, I’ll call it hell, so much so that I really see myself as a tour guide for hell. It’s taught me a lot to be in that part of my mind and to be able to really know that terrain and know that it was from the deepest, darkest places of my being that I was actually able to, yeah … basically being able to actually transmute all of that to be with those feelings. Then to do the deepest, most profound healing of my whole life.
That is really the gift in all of this is that, and I also consider myself a midwife for the soul, is that I really straddle the dark and the light and I see the gift in the duality of this existence, and that, really for me, what really looks like a balanced life is really balancing that dark and that light, the physical and the nonphysical aspects of us so that we can really step into our power and really live an empowered life.
Wow. Yeah, you’re saying so much there and I’m trying to figure out a way to go into this that makes sense because I know that people get to this point where they’re feeling so in the dark part of their mind and not knowing what to do. How did you start to realize again that there was still light out there, like when you were in that dark, what, how did light start beginning to show itself to you? Or what realizations or what beliefs started to change?
Yeah, I think the belief for me was actually realizing that I actually had a choice in terms of how I thought. I thought it was just like, this is the way it is. I actually had no clue, and it wasn’t until I was seeing a counselor when, probably like 18 years ago, and she said, “Yeah, the purpose of why we’re here is from joy.” I almost fell off my chair, and I’m like, “You’ve got to be kidding,” like I had no clue. I actually didn’t realize that. That was not the place that I … that was not the foundation from what I live from. It was when I kind of have that in the back of my mind, and I think it was just kind of … kept bubbling up to the surface, like I can actually have fun here and it’s okay to enjoy yourself.
I would say that the greatest gift that you can give yourself is the gift of your love, of your time, and of your attention.
When I really stepped, started to step into opportunities, really connecting with nature and really connecting with things that really lit me up and just allowing that emotion to come forth that it really started to yeah, to give me a way out of that darkness. It would happen like little, little glimpses of it, and then all of a sudden it would be dark again. But that just kept emerging. There was something inside of me, and I’m going to call it my soul, that is very, very tenacious and very committed. The more I let go, the more that emergence came forth, that that part of me that is pure love, that we all are at the center of our being, we call the bliss body, started to get more air time, and it was in starting meditation. I would say that the greatest gift that you can give yourself is the gift of your love, of your time, and of your attention.
Then, after that, the next thing that you can give yourself, like the most powerful gift that you can give yourself, is the gift of meditation. It took, I don’t know, maybe 18 or 20 years before I actually committed to doing meditation practice. I was doing it when it was convenient, I was never committed to it. It was only in the actual committing that I actually could start to calm down my mind and actually feel. It was interesting because I remember I would talk to myself at the beginning of meditation, and I would say … one day I just said, “Say to yourself you’re safe.” I did that, and then all of a sudden it’s just like, oh my God, I actually feel safe.
Most of my life I was living out of my body. Then from trauma, I just really never felt like it was safe to actually be on this earth plane.
Right.
When I started to say that, and I noticed my body immediately responded, I’m like, what’s going on here, you know? Then to find out that your mind listens, two things are programming your mind all the time, it’s what you say to yourself and the images that you create. Then I realized, well maybe if I start saying other things, maybe my body’s going to respond and I’m going to be more connected, and let’s see what happens there. It was that open-mindedness and that being curious. Then from there, led to getting modalities that really supported that mind body connection.
Yeah. Kathleen, I’m going to cut you off there because we do have to go to a break, but I cannot wait to come back and really start to go deeper into what those steps are because you’ve laid out a bunch there about how to find inspiration and hope again after depression. But before we go, can you let people know where they can find you and find your work?
Yeah. I have a website and my website is accessyou.ca. My contact information is on the website.
Great, good. We have been talking to Kathleen Woodington. We’re going to take a brief break and we will be right back.
To listen to the entire show click on the player above or go to the SuperPower Up! podcast on iTunes.
Podcast: Play in new window
