Episode 113 of the Live Authentically podcast is all about Christina Lopes, a former clinician who is now a healer, life coach and spiritual teacher. Her goal in her work is to bridge science and spirituality to help others heal from significant trauma, open their hearts and lead fulfilling lives.

Lopes says the way in which she lives authentically is by checking in with herself every morning. She talks about trauma and how most people who have it are disconnected from their bodies. She believes that in order to live authentically, you have to learn how to connect back to your body and the way it is feeling. 

“Just being able to sit down and close my eyes, and sometimes I’ll even apply pressure to my body–that’s a good way of grounding into your body. Other times, I’ll just sit and ask my body how it’s feeling,” Lopes said.

Disconnection from your body can lead to disconnection from your emotions. Lopes speaks about a time in her life when she was seeing a clinician who could tell by her body language that she was angry. Lopes says that she couldn’t tell for herself that she was angry because she was disconnected from the way her body feels.

Disconnection from your emotions makes it harder to heal your trauma. Lopes says you need to name, identify and sit with the emotions you’re feeling to help yourself heal. She states that most people disconnect from the emotions that feel terrible in the body when they have them as a protection mechanism.

“People unconsciously repress emotions because they don’t think they have the tools or the ability to heal or transmute them or work with them,” Lopes said.

Once her clients have the ability to allow complicated emotions to rise to the surface, Lopes says she teaches her clients how to be alchemists. Lopes calls herself the “heart alchemist.”

“You grab those emotions [like anger] and you say ‘I’m an alchemist. An alchemist never wastes energy. An alchemist transforms,’” Lopes said.

Lopes talks about how many people focus on feeling their feelings and then releasing them. She stresses that this is a waste of energy. Instead, people should be like an alchemist and transform the energy related to the complicated emotion into a new, elevated emotion.Tune in to Episode 113 of the Live Authentically podcast to learn more about Lopes and her work. Or, visit Christina Lopes’s website.