Episode 48: From Pain to Power: Lauren Courtney on Healing, Chakras & Spiritual Awakening

A deep yet relatable conversation with healer and author Lauren Courtney on transforming pain into power through chakra healing and spiritual awakening. 

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Hello world, and welcome to Choices, Books and Gifts, where you always have choices.

I am the owner of Choices Books and Gifts in New York City, a store dedicated to health, wellness, and the recovery community for over 30 years. I'm the host of our podcast. You always have Choices, where we dive deep into stories of transformation, healing, and personal growth.

Now I'm very excited. I met this lady in my store the other day when she brought in a book, and her name is Lauren Courtney. I'm going to just tell you a little bit about her. So, you know what? Where who you're dealing with today. All right. Lauren, Courtney is a holy fire, world peace, Karuna, Reiki master, sound healer an d spiritual mentor who helps people transform pain into power through the energy, work and self-discovery. A New York native turned Miami mystic, Lauren blends ancient mortalities like Reiki, breathwork and chakra healing with an approachable, real-world style that makes deep transformation accessible to anyone. In Glow Up Your Chakras, Lauren shares the wisdom that guided her own journey from burnout and heartbreak to alignment and inner light. Her teaching is grounded and heart centered and free of pretense, inviting readers to balance their energy, trust their intuition, and glow from the inside.

Welcome, my dear. Thank you so much for having me.

Absolutely. So I just want to give everybody a brief look at Lauren's wonderful book. There it is. I would suggest going out and getting it. I'm sure Lauren will tell us what platforms we can get that on. Yes, you could get it on Amazon. And there are a few copies over it. Choices as well. If you're in New York City, you could pick it up there. 

Yup, Excellent, excellent. So if it's okay with you, I'm going to pop right into our questions that I'm so excited to hear from. Let's do it. All right. All right. Number one, what inspired you to write glow up your chakras?

So Global Chakras started out as a chakra healing cookbook initially about seven years ago. I used to be a chef and health coach with clients recovering from addiction in New York City. And when I went through my awakening, it took me on the journey to becoming a healer. And at that time, it started as a cookbook like, oh, I can relate chakras and food and it really made sense. And then it really transitioned about four years ago was the start of the transition for the book. My grandmother passed away, and I realized that I had a lot of grief that I hadn't yet dealt with from the start of my awakening and losing my first love, who passed away. And that's how my gifts opened. And we'll get more into that as we go on. But essentially, when my grandmother passed, it was a moment for me to slow down and start doing deeper healing for myself. And what transpired was really writing my story. And the book became memoir meets Chakra Healing Guide. And of course, still includes recipes for eating for your chakras and the overall intention in creating the book in the way that I was guided to was to let other people know. Your stories don't have to they don't have to shape the rest of your life. We are so much more than our stories, and we have the ability to release the shame from our past to step into the future that we truly want to create. And I wanted to energetically put that, as you know, energetic codes into a book as I free myself, I create that vibration for other people to do the same.

Excellent, excellent. Thank you for that explanation. Can you share how your personal healing journey began?

Yeah. So, as I mentioned, I was a chef working in recovery, but before that I was living in New York City doing the whole corporate hustle and bustle and living, you know what I thought was a very glamorous life in Manhattan. And I had this inner knowing after going through a third surgery, I had reconstructive surgery at 24 years old, and I started getting this inner knowing, or my intuition was telling me, you're here to help people heal. And I didn't know what that meant. And essentially it guided me out of corporate America and not a whole story in itself. I broke my foot, took a leave of absence. And on that leave of absence, I actually decided to enroll in school to be a holistic health coach. From there, I never stepped back into corporate work. I got a part time job as a nanny and one of my best friends at the time. She was in recovery and she was meeting her boyfriend at a park and they said, come meet up with us. And her boyfriend said to me, we have friends in the recovery space that open these sober living homes and they need a chef. I think you should meet with them. And that was a really interesting idea because prior to that, the only thing I knew how to cook was reservations. I was really good at making a reservation, not so much meals, and I decided to interview and I met with them, and from there I took a chance on them, and they took a chance on me. And I disagree with them from one location to being a chef at three locations. And that then transferred me to another recovery home at the time, where I got to work with people struggling with food addiction. Prior to that, it was drug and alcohol specific and I was really inclined to work with food addiction, having my own journey with body dysmorphia and binge eating and exercise bulimia and a lot of those things.

I wasn't yet ready to dive into my own relationship with substances because I was still dealing with pain from having three jaw surgeries, and I was still medicating with cannabis for myself. And, you know, having quite a few drinks at night when I wanted them. So for me, it was like, oh, let's focus on the food stuff.

So from there I went out on my own, created my own meal delivery service, and in that time,  there were a 

 

He passed from an overdose. He had been sober for going on almost ten years. So it was the last call I ever expected. And the day he crossed over, he began.  Tough. Yeah, it was, But I'm really grateful at this point of because the day he crossed over, he started communicating with me, and I didn't know I was a medium at the time, but I knew that it didn't make sense that someone at 35 years old was simply gone. So knowing that I felt his presence, I decided instead of drowning in sorrow and getting lost, that I was going to actually find whatever it was that I was being guided to in that time.

Excellent, excellent. I tell you, you've been through the gamut. You've been through a lot of stuff. So God bless you. That's how you came out the other end of this. So, which chakra challenged you the most to bring into balance?

I would say it really all comes back to the root. And the root chakra is formed from 0 to 7 years old, same time as the subconscious mind is formed, So, you know, I didn't realize much of my life that I was dealing with abandonment issues and feeling like I was walking on eggshells and doing the people pleasing and trying to make myself smaller, not speaking up because I thought that, you know, you don't speak up like little girls. Just sit quietly and be a certain way. And I was very much wearing masks. And it was really interesting because as I mentioned, I had three surgeries. So, my first surgery, I was 17 years old, then 21 and 24 for these jaw surgeries. So, as I got older, the more and more I kept getting quiet. And it was in my healing journey that I realized there's something deeper.

There's something that happened to me at birth that every doctor has overlooked, and I was never going to stop until I found out what the root was of my own disease. Because I was living in dis ease. I was living in fight or flight. I was so dysregulated in my nervous system, even with all the work that I was doing.

And it was last October that I finally found the root, which was basically an invisible thread that I had a tongue tie that, you know, typically when we're born, if we have a tongue tie, a doctor spots it. They snippet if it affects you. Mine went unnoticed. So for my whole life I was dealing with the fact that my tongue didn't actually rest on the roof of my mouth.

I was never connected directly with my vagus nerve to get out of fight or flight, even when I was sleeping at night. So it's like parking a car in your driveway, but never turning the engine off. Was how I was living my life. So now that I've thankfully had that awareness, I've had the procedure. About seven months ago, my engine is finally resting and I'm no longer needing to pacify myself in the ways that I learned how to pacify myself, to actually just function as a human on this earth.

Excellent. Excellent, excellent. Thank you man. As I said, you've had your challenges in life. You really have. From medicated to meditated. What does that phrase mean to you today? Well, you know, from medicate it again, it started with being put on Adderall in ninth grade. The Adderall that. Yeah, the Adderall then led to, being given Wellbutrin to balance out the fact that I was getting depressed from the Adderall because, you know, I had A.D.D., which now I understand is, my brain works differently because I'm very much a spiritual being on the soul, having a human experience. And I see, think and feel differently based on my empathic abilities. So, you know, when the teacher saw me looking out the windows, maybe I was seeing spirits, I don't know, but I was I was put on medication starting in ninth grade and then starting, about my junior year or senior year of high school. That's when I started being put on painkillers, muscle relaxers and anti-inflammatories for my jaw.

So for about ten years of my life, I was medicated, very much medicated. And yes, I used it in the right ways. And then there were also the times that I was snorting my Adderall or breaking up Klonopin or popping two Ambien instead of a half of an Ambien. You know, I definitely pushed the boundaries because I was simply trying to either feel something or numb what I was feeling and experiencing. So that that was really how I led so much of my life and drinking also and smoking weed, all of these things just coming together to create chaos would really like for me medicate it is chaos. And the meditate, it is I’ve found calm. I've found peace, I found meditation, I found connection to myself, to source, to God, to the universe, and to my highest self.

Good feeling. Very cool. Just a little sidebar real quick, if you don't mind saying what was wrong with your jaw that you needed three Operate? I had, what you called TMJ. Essentially, my jaw was slightly misaligned. What I understand now and through the surgeries as well, is my palate. My upper palate never expanded as much as it should have. So the jaw was slightly misaligned and I was simply in chronic pain again because the tongue wasn't reaching the roof of the mouth. So I was constantly had lockjaw and I wasn't able to breathe properly. And my shoulders would constantly be up at my ears whether or not it was cold. It was like I was just so tight and uncomfortable because I was physically very tight.
Cool, cool. I appreciate that because I know I was curious what was going on with your jaw, so I'm sure all the listeners are as well. Yeah. How has writing this book influenced your practice and I guess your life? So writing this book, first and foremost, when I was writing it, I. So even if no one reads this, this is healing me right now.

And this is what I get to integrate. And as I mentioned, it's a lot of a memoir. when we hold our stories, when we continue to repeat our stories and keep them inside of us, I find that that's where we really create dis ease within our bodies, within our brains, within our nervous systems. So, once I release the book, I went through actually like a really big integration the last six months of releasing all of the trauma that I had held for so long and putting it into the book, and then also knowing like, hey, you got to be the judge of yourself. No one else gets to judge you or your stories because how fucking brave of you to actually own your truth and put it out in the world to help other people. Ultimately, beautiful.

Beautiful. I'm glad it did that much for you. And that's a wonderful thing. What do you hope readers feel after finishing glow up your chakras?

What do you what do you want them to have out of it? I want them to feel a little less alone, or maybe a lot less alone. We, you know, prior to my spiritual awakening, I didn't know I was a soul having a human experience. I just thought I was alive and I was living, and I have a job and I get married, and then I ultimately one day I'll die.

And I thought that was it. That is not it. So I hope people, you know, feel less alone, that they find some tools to support them on their souls journey, that they maybe can understand. Something I talk about in one chapter, how when we drink, we're letting spirits in and when our soul can't handle those spirits. For me, that used to lead to blacking out. And I know that that's something that quite a few people have read have been like, wow, I've. I never even looked at it that way, and neither had I. So even if it's something as simple as that, understanding the connection to spirit and more.

Yeah. So excellent, excellent. Let me ask of  this for someone new to chakra healing, what's a safe place to start?

You know, I would say my book is a safe place to start.  Excellent, Beautiful. My parents are great examples. They're in their 70s, they're not familiar with chakras. And when they read my book, I didn't give them previews of it. I gave them the copies right before it came out, and both of them said that they really learned from the book and gained awareness that they wouldn't have otherwise. So I think it's really a gateway book. A lot of books about healing and chakras can be overly dense, and I used to find that kind of fall asleep reading the stuff, and that's why I wanted to make it really relatable.

Excellent. And I love the two. You mentioned that they're in their 70s because, you know, so many of us, not us. I'm like them, but so many young people are into this. I'm glad  you know, it shows that even. the older generation can enjoy this type of healing and life work. What's one daily ritual you never skip, no matter what?

I'm really big on walking every day. Because I usually I would say meditating, right. But right now, my meditations have been walking meditations. And I think for me, getting outside, whether it's cold out, if I'm in New York or if I'm down in Miami and it's warm out, it doesn't matter. I need that connection to source. I need that connection to God. I need to get outside and feel sunlight and breathe in the air. Cool. Yeah. I'd like to go to the gym every day. So, similar to you with the walking. Have your views on Western medicine shifted since beginning this new path?

Oh, God. Yes. And I also understand that I had to go through what I went through to be able to teach what I teach now. So, I give myself and my journey a lot of grace.

I also think there are needs for Western medicine. With that, I think there's a very strong need to have a balance of Eastern and Western medicine. You know, anyone that comes to me not even as a client, like, oh, I my mom the other day, she's like, oh, I have something on my eye. And I'm like, well, that's on the left side of the body. It's the feminine side. It's your receiving side. What are you having trouble seeing right now? Because it was near her eyes. So, I was like, what are you having trouble seeing? It'd be really easy for me to say, you have a stye in your eye and blah, blah, blah. And it's like, yes, that could be the western part of it. But what's the energetic and emotional piece of that as well? Is what I'm most interested in.

Excellent, excellent. That's terrific. What part of your story was the hardest to share publicly? Like in the book, you shared how you've, you know, gone through some horrific things. Was there anything that was harder to talk about that other?

I think the hardest like, specific story I talks about was my ex getting arrested in my home and then going to visit him, the precinct, because I didn't tell anyone at the time that I did that.

So, I never shared it. And then putting it in the book, I really needed a process that first, because I don't I'm not in communication with that person anymore. Unfortunately, I don't know where he is or what happened on his journey. He had made amends to me years ago and then, you know, went back on his journey wherever that led. So, it was hard for me to write about that, because for so long I felt like it wasn't my story to tell, but I had a lot of PTSD from it. So I had to call it. Yeah, yeah. And it always helps when you when you share. I mean, I've learned that through different programs in my own life.

You know, I wanted to share you begin to heal. You know, if you don't do that, you don't heal. What do you think most people misunderstand about chakras? Because it is. It is. But, you know, a lot of people come in my store and ask me, What are they used for? So a lot of the public need to be educated. And I'm glad you wrote this book, but that's what I have found, you know, from my store.

Yeah, I think especially as someone that didn't know what chakras were ten, 11 years ago, it's we all have them. They're energy centers. We are all energetic beings. It's more than this physical body. So I think the biggest thing is understanding, hey, I have different energy, different areas of my bodies represent different things and also these centers were formed throughout our life, like with the root chakra, the base of our spine, holding safety, security, addiction. And then we move up to the sacral chakra, which is all about creativity, giving birth to ideas, giving birth to children, our solar plexus. You know, so often when people are dealing with gut health issues that I've worked with, it comes back to the solar plexus, which is the center of the stomach. And it's not always about food.

It's like, where have you given your power away? What energy are you holding on to and is connected to you? And where are you leaking your energy? And then with the heart chakra it comes back to self-love, compassion for yourself, compassion for other people and so often where many of us are leading with judgment and insecurity, if that's what is at the foundation within our root chakra.

So we we're not loving ourselves fully. And, you know, then it continues up to the throat chakra. Our ability to speak our truth, our third eye, that clarity and vision and the crown, the connection to source. And, you know, it's interesting, I found my own sober journey because I found the 12 step first. I found God first through my spiritual awakening. And it's like I had to work backwards with the steps to come back to the root of who I actually am. And clean that up to be able to then essentially glow up my chakras from the root up.

Yeah, I had the same sort of journey as you did, just out of curiosity, because I, I see sometimes in my store they they'll buy one more than the others. Are all the chakras equally important, or is one stand out more than the other or not?

They're all equally important because they all work together. So essentially, we want them all flowing in, you know, a clockwise direction. With that, some people are going to have more trouble with certain areas, right? If you were told as a kid, don't speak up. You're going to have more trouble with your throat. If you were told something like, you're so stupid, you're going to have more trouble with your vision, you're might have some troubles with your solar plexus, so everyone is really going to come at it differently. And again, you know, you might start in those upper chakras. And then I find it always still comes back to the root.

Excellent, excellent. So, after glow up your chakras. What's next. Anything on the horizon for you?

In terms of like books or...

Yeah. Yeah. Like, you know, your practice, you have a practice in terms of do. Well, that's a good start to do. You want to write another book, do you think or.. I believe that there is another book inside of me that wants to be written about kind of what's happened since glow up your Chakras and learning about how to regulate the nervous system.

Like once you get the chakras, understood, what is next and how do I go deeper into the journey?

So, I do I do think that's kind of an excellent, because I know . Yeah. Because on your card, you know, it talks about, energy healer teacher kundalini yoga. So, you have a diverse portfolio there, which is I'm hoping that I have you on as, as a guest in the future. And we can Talk about some of these other. wonderful things that you've gone through in your life. So, with that said, is there anything specific you would like to leave with your audience? Something they should know to really hold on to or to learn more about besides reading the book? What would you leave them with a thought. 

Well, so I started, a free class every Thursday at 2 p.m. it's on zoom. It's called Reiki Recovery and the reason I started this call is because I simply believe recovery looks different for everyone. All of our journeys are different. All of our paths are different. And for me, I didn't want I didn't feel called to a traditional recovery program. I checked it out of many times. It didn't fully resonate with me. What resonated with me was going deeper on my spiritual journey and healing in the way that I did. So I started these calls on Tuesdays just to simply give a space for people to heal, for people to have that connection, to source and get their energy cleansed. Every week. And it's a way for me to be of service and to give back. So that's a way that people can simply connect with me. Every week. And the calls are back to YouTube. And of course, you know, I work with clients one on one. I have sound healings and all sorts of things.

Should they instead of, oh, not only the book. Is there another way? Like if I was interesting in learning from you, how else can I reach you? And things of that nature? Yeah, you could find me my website is laurenCourtneyheals,.com. I'm on Instagram at I am Lauren Courtney. And my email is always open as well. Lauren Courtney heals.com.

All right. Cool. I want to show the book one more time. So guys take a good look at this. This is a good thing. You show yours too. Let's give them a double hit. And there's the book. Go out. Get it however you can recording, book stores, Amazon. And I have it. Of course. The choice is 220 East 78th Street in New York City. So, And with that, we will wrap up this episode of choices podcast. I hope our time together was inspiring and motivating. Stay in powered and stay well. You can watch this episode and all episodes on our website at choices gifts.com. God bless you and see you next week.