The Healing Heroes: Holistic Wellness for Women

Holiday Re-Release: Life Changing Lessons & Favorite Hero Moments

• chandler stroud

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If you haven't had a chance to tune into all our Heroes yet, you'll hear from each of them in this end of year roundup - a compilation of Chandler's favorite moments from her interviews with the Healing Heroes throughout 2024.  We hope you'll join us!

In this episode, we’re sharing a look back at some insightful moments from 2024 with Healing Heroes. Together, we explored the power of healing, growth, and reconnection, uncovering holistic approaches that can help us thrive in every aspect of life. So, as we revisit these moments, let them serve as a source of encouragement and a reminder that the path to healing is not only possible but profoundly rewarding.

If you hear a clip that piques your interest, simply click the title to listen to the full episode!


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Chandler Stroud

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Mixing and editing provided by Next Day Podcast.

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey guys, it's Chandler and welcome to The Healing Heroes. I promise you. I'm Chandler Stroud, an executive wife and busy mom of two who after years of living with anxiety health struggles and an unshakeable feeling like I should be happier, made a profound discovery that changed everything. Join me on a journey where unexpected paths lead to healing and more happiness. On this show, we will explore unconventional ways to unlock more joy in your own life. Own with the help of my very own healers and trusted advisors, the Healing Heroes. Hey everyone. I am so excited for today's episode because we are sharing a look back on some of my favorite moments from 2024 with my healing heroes. In the nearly six months since this show is released, we've garnered thousands of listeners just like you. We've learned so much about the power and joy of healing from within and hopefully inspired women everywhere to reconnect with themselves in new ways using the holistic approaches we talk about on the show.
(01:21)
I'm so immensely grateful to all of you, not only for your support, but for joining us each week and for embarking on journeys of your own. I speak for all the heroes when I say that you truly are our reason for doing this work, and we can't wait to continue alongside you in 2025 and beyond. This episode represents a compilation of some of my favorite moments with each of my heroes. So if you hear a clip and you're curious to listen to the full episode, just check out the show notes to see a list of episode titles represented here today. Thanks for listening, everyone and wishing you all a very happy and healthy new year. This podcast is meant to help women come home to themselves, to connect with themselves on a deeper level than they've probably ever connected with themselves before and show how fun it can be to do this work in new and exciting ways. This show is not about telling you what to do, it's about reminding you who you are. You are enough, you are amazing, and if nobody has told you this lately, you are doing a great job. Whether that's at work, whether that's in mothering your children, whether that's being a supportive spouse or a good friend in your community, good to yourself, you are doing a good job and you've proven to everyone around you that they can count on you. So now I'd offer that maybe it's time to take care of yourself.
(03:09)
Ra, adu. Speaker 2 (03:11):

It can also help you understand yourself. I always say that human beings are our own biggest blind spots, so we can't see ourselves the way others see us. And astrology and knowing your birth chart can give you a little distance to observe yourself and understand your motivations. Make yourself right instead of trying to fix yourself. Like, okay, I contain multitudes. I contain a lot of complexities and contradictions. That's what it is to be human. I don't have to fit myself in a box and try to be perfect and define myself in one phrase or word. It gives you permission to be complex and messy, which is what humans are. When you have that, that is a different context for life and this kind of perfectionistic, pretend culture that we live in. So people who are finding it and connecting with it are using that in every part of their life imaginable.
(04:10)
Happier relationships, more satisfaction at work, parenting, everything. You're perfectly designed the way you are. It doesn't mean that you're doing it perfectly. It doesn't mean that you can't improve behavior choices, productivity, efficiency, but you can do it in a way that affirms who you already are, not with the lens of fixing or changing yourself. There's nothing to change and astrology, it's a tool, not a rule, and it's a tool for helping you see where those opportunities are. Just a little calibrating, calibrate to your I am to your personality and truth, and you can find happiness, success, and fulfillment. It's a daily, it's daily practice, Speaker 1 (05:12):

Bonnie Heim. Speaker 3 (05:14):

We want to fit in. And what I realized was that it was okay not to fit in. It was okay to go out on a limb and find something that actually made me happy. I was so used to pleasing everyone else and doing everything for everyone else as well, that I really wasn't taking care of myself. So when I talk about redefining who we are and what we want out of life, what I learned, which is kind of interesting because change can be hard as I always like to say, is that you are able to redefine your taste in food, your taste in music, your taste in who you hang out with. And even the movies and TV shows and programs we watch in books that we read, you're not stuck. You can change at any age and at any time. And I think that was one of the things where I had always been maybe why I was stuck because I was resistant to change.
(06:06)
I didn't think that I would like this healthy lifestyle. I didn't think I would thrive with the clean food. I didn't think that the movement each day would be the passion in my life and missing a day of working out or walking out or moving my body really, really affected me emotionally and mentally as well. So it's just you're redefining every aspect of your life so that you can move forward in the most adventurous, positive, and balanced way. And as I always like to say now and for your future, I think until we are present and actively choosing to explore who we are from the inside out, that's when we really take control and charge of our lives. And personally, you're looking for the next best job. You're looking for the next best workout. You're looking for the next best guy or partner or friendship.
(07:03)
When you take it back to what makes you happiest, you focus on what's meaningful to you instead of what you think is meaningful to other people. We're not just chasing or keeping up with the Joneses. We're not just looking for the next best thing. For myself personally, when I really discovered that this journey was about so much more than just the weight loss for me, it was the way I woke up in the morning. It was the way I moved through my days. It was the way I treated other people. It was the way I handled situations that perhaps were out of my control. When I always wanted to control the chaos, I realized that by just taking things one step at a time, reexamining how I feel about anything and redefining it for myself is what helped me move forward in every single aspect of my life. Speaker 1 (07:59):

Nicole, Kim, Speaker 4 (08:00):

The sound healing is there to bring you into a deeper state of relaxation. So you would typically be lying down or maybe sitting in a meditation with the eyes closed and there's no effort on your part outside of just being open to receive. So closing the eyes and the breath and just listening to the music and the sounds and allowing them to just flow through you organically. And the way that I like to describe sound healing and the analogy that I use often is if you can imagine waves or a rippling effect in a lake during a thunderstorm, it's essentially what happens to our bodies. And a sound bath were made up of over 60% water. And so the sound frequencies ripple through our body and they create this balance. And so people are hearing a sound coming from one side and sort of flowing through the other side, and they're feeling sensation in the body that they never even acknowledged or knew of before.
(08:58)
And they're doing this naturally inorganically. And it's an achievable experience for anyone who is open to the practice. And every experience will be unique depending on where you are in your journey and your healing journey will determine how you experience that session or sound bath or experience. And it will change depending on the group that you're in, whether it's in a specific space, the space will determine it and the people within it will determine your experience. So being open, maybe you didn't have the best experience the first time, and it's just like taking a yoga class. You get out there and you try a different one and you find a person that works for you, a healer that works for you, or a space that works for you, and being open to having a different experience and not attaching to it, knowing that's perfect. And where you are in your journey in this moment, Speaker 1 (09:59):

Jacques dip. Speaker 5 (10:01):

We not only digest the food, we have to digest our life. All of our thoughts and feelings are a process of digestion. All of the experiences that we're going through emotionally will generally almost always be instantaneously expressed in our digestive systems. And if we continue that way, they will manifest themselves in something that sooner or later is going to get a name. In our culture, we call that a diagnosis. So we give our authority away to the acid reflux medication or the doctor that prescribed it or whatever, and go about our lives or to the holistic healer that told us to change, whether it's acupuncture or yoga or whatever. And really what we need to understand is that what's happening is our body is doing the healing and the way that we're experiencing our lives is changing. And it's not just because I got an acupuncture treat, which made me relaxed, but it's because I'm experiencing my life in a new way and that I really actually don't need the acupuncture and I don't need this, that, and the other thing, but I can do them to help me and to remind me how to stay on track so that when I can't get to acupuncture, when I can't get to yoga, when I don't have my medication, I know that I'll be able to manage through these symptoms.
(11:35)
That's really super important. So each person has to know for themselves, we both know you and I, Chandler, when I drink too much, it flares up my issues. When I eat, when I'm super stressed, I always wind up eating the whole bag of chips, so I need to work on it. So really it's about personal responsibility on how we, one, take the food in two, know what our personal triggers are, and then three, be courageous enough and get support to manage some of the habits that don't serve us and try to replace them with habits that do. Nobody can do that for us but ourselves. We can get support, but ultimately, that's another big word, but we have to take care of ourselves and that's main objective. And digestive issues, Speaker 1 (12:41):

Jen, bomb gold, Speaker 6 (12:43):

Our body, our nervous system, it doesn't know when things are real or imagined. So that can be disruptive in terms of trauma and triggers, but it can also be adaptive and restorative in terms of resourcing. It's an important component of E MDR R to handle going into these deeper experiences. But it's something that I always tell my clients you can do on your own, right? If you have a moment that really feels incredible and special, you can tap that in, you can sit there with it, you can feel that in your body. Or if you are feeling anxious about something, you can remember a time when you felt calm and relaxed and kind of go to that. And I say peaceful place over safe place because the word safe can be triggering for a lot of people.
(13:24)
But when you say peaceful place and you think of, it's very similar to guided imagery or meditation someplace where you can imagine going that you just feel a sense of peace, a sense of wholeness. We really engage all the senses in that. For a lot of people it's the beach, which water is very calming. So if it's the beach, it's imagine your toes in the sand or imagine the sound of the waves or seagulls, a spell of the salt, boardwalk, french fries, whatever it is that conjuress up that full sensory memory in your body and in your mind where you can feel yourself in this place where you're okay, your whole, you're okay, you're at peace. And a lot of times we'll close out an EMDR session with that because we're going back into these very traumatic events and you're re-experiencing them. So bringing it back to the awareness that you can be safe, you can be at peace, and that was within you. This is not like an external thing. You're not actually flying to the beach, but you have these memories in there and you can light them up anytime with your imagination. Speaker 1 (14:36):

Reverend Lizzie McManus Dale, Speaker 7 (14:38):

The story and scripture that has been my guiding light several years ago, 10 years ago now, actually four people in my family were killed in a plane crash. Speaker 1 (14:49):

Oh, Lizzie, I didn't know. I'm so sorry. Speaker 7 (14:52):

Yeah, thank you. Thank you. It's terrible. No one knows why it happened. Something malfunctioned in the engine and it exploded, and it was instant and horrific and guidebook for that, right? There's just no, it's a wild thing to lose a whole branch of your family. I mean aunt, uncle, and two cousins. And what my father said, and everyone in my family kept coming back to is the story of Jesus in John chapter 11, where his friend Lazarus has died and Lazarus had two sisters, Mary and Martha, and we meet Mary and Martha several times in scripture because their house is clearly a place that Jesus found respite. It was a place where he's not surrounded by a crowd, which is actually quite unusual in the gospels. For Jesus to not have this whole clamoring crew around him, he's just like chilling, right? Speaker 1 (15:49):

Good visual. No, Speaker 7 (15:50):

Right. He's chilling. Martha's cooking him dinner, Mary's asking him questions. So he's getting to have some one-on-one time with these two very precious disciples and women leaders in the church, but it's a place he took respite. These are his friends, this is his crew and Lazarus, he knew that Lazarus was sick actually, they sent word to him several times, and his friends who are with him when they get this word is like, shouldn't we go? Can't you do something dude who heals people? Speaker 1 (16:16):

Yeah, exactly. Isn't this part of your JD job Speaker 7 (16:18):

Description? Yes, definitely under general responsibilities. And Jesus doesn't go, he doesn't go, he doesn't go. And then he walks up to the house and Mary and Martha come running out one at a time to speak with him, and they say, my God, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. They're furious. They're grieving. They don't hold back. They don't say, oh God, I know that you did this on purpose. If you had been here, he wouldn't have died. WTF basically. And Jesus does not, even though he has at other places in scripture said, this is going to be for God's glory or things that I think Christians can sometimes reach for as a nice little explanation. That's not what Jesus does in that moment, we have the shortest verse in all of scripture. Jesus weeps, he weeps with his friends, Mary and Martha. I come to that story and I just see Jesus weeping and he doesn't force a theological explanation or spiritual explanation. He doesn't try to tell Mary and Martha, it's all going to work out. He weeps with them. He is present to them deep in solidarity, in their grief, which I think when we have terrible losses in our life, that is what we crave from our human community. And it is what I believe God is most doing with us too, is standing deep in solidarity with us saying, I know this pain too, Speaker 1 (17:39):

Katie. We Speaker 8 (17:40):

All need to feel safe. We all need to feel safe and we want to feel safe. But if you don't feel safe in the world, your body is going to keep that memory. Your body's going to keep that belief that I got to keep myself safe somewhere in there, and it's going to manifest as trying to be perfect in all these different ways or to rehash a conversation to wonder if I came off weird, like you were saying, totally do the same thing or to go, let me go out into the future and try to move all these pieces around and try to manufacture this perfect future so I can control the outcomes so I don't have to stress about it. But as we all know, you can't control outcomes. So trying to control outcomes ends up making you just more stressed because you know it's not possible.
(18:24)
So all the things that we do to try to mitigate our anxiety often end up causing more anxiety, and then we end up in this spiral. And I found myself in that place very much so. I realized that more planning, more perfecting, more managing, more perfect looking posts on Instagram, these things were not going to make the anxiety go away. The anxiety needed to be talked to, needed to be dealt with itself. And something that really helped me was just being able to speak to that piece of myself that was scared because we all have it. If you were a little bit bullied or just nervous in high school all the time that you weren't getting iced out of your friend group, which is almost every woman I know is in high school going through, am I okay? Am I okay? Am I okay? Are people talking bad about me? Fine. It's like the most, or in middle school, that's two times or the worst. Speaker 1 (19:19):

Worst. Speaker 8 (19:20):

And if you just always had in times long ago, if you were isolated from your tribe, that meant you would die. So we have this deep need to feel accepted. So if that's your fear or if my fear was just that I'm not kind of safe in the world, I didn't totally understand that I felt that way until I did some processing around that, but I just didn't really feel safe in my body and I didn't really feel safe in the world. And something that really helped me was being able to talk to that part of myself and to just say, Hey, I'm here with you. It's okay. I know you feel a little scared right now, but this is going to be okay. I got you. I'm always going to be with you. I love you. We can leave anytime we want. If we want to leave early, it's no big deal. Just being able to be kind to that part of myself that really, really helped me. Speaker 9 (20:14):

Zach Carlson, if you experience imposter syndrome, you're with the rest of us. I've been at this work for over a decade and I still meet with that part of myself, but how I meet with that part of myself is what's changed. I don't let it drive the bus. And the reason why I don't let it drive the bus is because I know my chart and I know my own experience, and I also have a lot of reference points where these coaches who I admire, they're like, yeah, dude, I experienced that as well. I needed to acknowledge that. My experience in this space is that it's a natural thing. It's a natural energy that we meet with. And so then how do we meet with that? Human design has a perspective where no one is here to make big decisions with their mind. The mind in human design is there to be the compassionate witness of our lives.
(21:15)
It's the thing that records everything that we do, which is kind of a trippy thought to me. Our eyes, our ears, our eyes, our cameras, our ears are these microphones. Our mouth is a speaker and the brain is there just witnessing it, and it's there to record it unbiasedly. And we obviously all were taught the opposite. Think through things with your mind. Do a pro and cons list. List. Figure out how to avoid catastrophe and how to maximize abundance and prosperity, joy, and all of that is a good goal. But the way that we get to it in human design is literally in the body. Like you said, there's some exceptions to this, but we all have an authority that's in our body and learning how to listen to the gut. There are these centers in human design. They function like a chakra, an energy center, and each one has a special kind of awareness that it attracts and that it processes emotional awareness, physical awareness, adrenalized pressure and stress.
(22:31)
How do we manage pressure? Mental awareness, awareness of self, and taking the decision out of the mind and bringing it to the body is its own work. But I have seen that it only benefits folks. I was thinking about this last night. I have never seen human design make anyone's life worse. Sometimes it might keep us holding steady for a bit, but really making that switch from mind centered decision-making to body centered decision-making. The roadmap is literally in human design how to do that and where we can best do that for us. Our unique system, Speaker 1 (23:24):

Karen Remley, Speaker 10 (23:25):

Across the board, men or women, children of any age, someone could have just made a comment to you about how you look, a body part, your nose, whatever it may be and whatever else you might be going through at the time. It just stings and then you blow it off. But then somehow you're always walking around or looking in the mirror or trying to fix that part, or you are now uncomfortable with yourself. Your self-confidence starts to change. There's many ways that we can become affected by how our body feels. You are worth it. Whatever it is, who you are is enough, and you certainly should be taking care of yourself so that you can go through your life and help take care of the other people that are important to you. I think women are so used to being there for other people, and we really need to learn to honor who we are and to know our value and to make sure that we're all in a good place.
(24:38)
It will help you in ways that you may not even foresee. And that's what happened to me when I first came as a patient into this work as the benefits just webbed out into my life in ways I could have never ever been able to predict. Because when you start to feel good, you have the energy, you just have the confidence, you feel more whole. Your authenticity shines through because you're not walking around with whatever it is that you've initially come to me for. And you don't have to have a specific, like I said, diagnosis. Sometimes you're not given a specific diagnosis. And that's what often times we'll send a person looking for who can help me with this? Because I'm not being given a diagnosis. I'm not being given a certain set of words or direction that I should go in. We all have our own healing journeys and we all find the things that help us from different ways of arriving. But once you've arrived, you are like, wow, okay. I am not stepping away from this. Now, Speaker 1 (25:55):

Lee Morgan, Speaker 11 (25:56):

To me, intuition is the same thing as psychic. It's getting information that you can't figure out how you got it. That's why it's so hard to accept, right? I mean, this is where I love to talk about Einstein. Einstein had this quote that I'll read so I don't get it wrong. The intuitive mind is a sacred gift, and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift. So Einstein was basically like, this is where all the good stuff is, and then you use your rational mind to figure out how to do it. And instead, we live in a world I've grown up in a world where the rational mind is the boss and the intuitive mind is kind of kicked out as that doesn't make any sense. Your story of the podcast is so perfect for this discussion because first of all, very rationally driven mind would have felt, which is my understanding of what you did, would have kind of felt and kind of known that it was time for you to transition into something new, but it didn't make any more sense than that.
(26:57)
And then through our reading, you got some information on maybe zoning in on what that something, at least the world in which that something new existed, but you still were like, I don't really know. Now, super rational mind would've just thrown all that out and said, you know what? I have a job. You don't get to do everything you want to do in life. Why reach for the stars? That's silly. Everything's secure. Why go change and stuff? I can't make any sense of this feeling I'm having, so I'm just going to throw it out because what I love about what Einstein said is he acknowledges that both minds are important, but he's saying one should serve the other. Speaker 1 (27:43):

Moylan Ryan. Speaker 12 (27:44):

So the first thing I would say to a person is to become aware of the breadth. Having long exhalations, breathing in long exhalation, so the body begins to relax. Building [00:36:00] resources, the first resources to breathe is the first thing you do when you come in, and the last thing you do before you leave this earth.

So we've become so dysfunction in our breathing patterns. Breathing means presence. Breathing means awareness. Breathing means connection. With yourself, with others, with humanity. Yeah. That's what I would say to a person. And the other thing I would say is to take some time to meditate. You know? [00:36:30] To just to be, just to be.

To find that quiet time to be able to build a resource so you can return to being centered, being grounded, being present, being responsive rather than being reactive. But the person who's stressed and who's absent and dysregulated, they're, they're on a, like a treadmill and they. Have the same thoughts, disturbing thoughts as they had yesterday and what have the day [00:37:00] after.

It's like a rehearsal. This what's called reacting. We're reacting a script that's been written for us by the external world. So the first thing I would say is to realize that you are in a reactionary, react reactionary. And to be able to change that to responding. Responding takes place in the present moment is a choice.

Viktor Frankl said between stimulus and response, there is a space. [00:37:30] In that. Space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and freedom. So between stimulus and response, there is a space. The space is the breadth. If you don't have the space between stimulus. And response. You have stimulus and reaction, no space.

You're reacting the script. You're caught up in the reactionary stimulus and response. The [00:38:00] breathe allows you a choice of response. These are practices that we must, we must embody so that when we are in stressful situations, we have these resources that allow us to respond, to be centered, to be present, to have choice.

And if we don't have those, we're caught in the flow. It's like as if we're constantly being pulled into a riptide of reaction every day. We're drowning in that trying to [00:38:30] survive. And that's not what we deserve. 


Kate Dello, Speaker 13 (29:40):

Technically, the relationship between the breath and the reset breath work method and emotions in particular, it allows the body to process through and bring up and release the stored energy of the emotions that are not processed, which is why you may cry, you may scream, you may laugh, you may get angry. People have all of those reactions. People have one of those that is the somatic body connection of the breath and the emotions that have been stored in the body and not processed. Speaker 1 (30:12):

Super helpful. Speaker 13 (30:13):

Yes. And then when you talk about self worth in particular, you restructure your relationship with your body and you form new neural pathways in your brain to what's going on in your body. It can be different person to person. But when it comes to self-worth in particular, it's almost like you have this new way of viewing, tapping into feeling and understanding the power of your body. Everybody has their own perspective on self-worth and how they value who they are. And so when you strip it down to the very base thing that every single person has access to your breath and the power of your body to wield that breath, you just feel so inherently worthy. And then that definition of worth gets to change because you're not placing a monetary value on it. You're not placing a success driven value on it. You're not placing some sort of outside metric on the one thing that literally unites us all. Like you can't go somewhere and not breathe air that's been breathed by somebody else. You know what I'm saying? But that is the one thing that really truly unites us all is we all are breathing. We all, it's one breath. Speaker 1 (31:41):

Thanks for listening everyone, and until next time, remember, be curious, be courageous, and be kind to yourself. You've got this.