Aligning Soul, Body & Space with Amy Babish - EP 033

In this episode, I chat with Amy Babish, a somatic coach and house therapist, about her transformative approach to healing and growth. Amy shares how her training in art therapy, talk therapy, and somatic work helps clients address trauma stored in the body and move beyond mindset shifts. Her work empowers high achievers to overcome internal blocks and align with their true potential, while also incorporating a deep commitment to social impact and working with marginalized communities.

Amy introduces the concept of house therapy, blending Feng Shui and wisdom traditions to create supportive, harmonious spaces. Amy introduces the concept of house therapy, which blends Feng Shui and wisdom traditions to create harmonious spaces that support growth and well-being. We also touch on the role of intuition and ancestral connections in both personal and professional development.

This inspiring conversation offers valuable insights for anyone seeking to integrate purpose, alignment, and impact into their entrepreneurial journey. Tune in now! 🎧

 

Key Takeaways

• Somatic coaching goes beyond mindset work and helps clients address patterns and trauma stored in the body.
• High achievers often struggle with feeling unsatisfied, even when they are successful in their careers.
• Dismantling white supremacy is an important aspect of social impact work.
• Amy's social impact business model involves recirculating funds from clients with more financial privilege to support peace-building communities and individual clients.
• There is a need for more examples and resources on alternative business models that prioritize equity and access. 
• Finding your niche in the online business world can be challenging but rewarding.
• The shift from traditional small business ownership to online entrepreneurship has opened up new possibilities and ways of doing business.
• House therapy combines Feng Shui and other wisdom traditions to create a harmonious and supportive living environment.
• Intuition and ancestral connections can play a significant role in personal and professional growth.

 

Episode Chapters

00:00 - Introduction to Amy Babish

02:02 - Amy's Training and Expertise

08:29 - Challenges Faced by High Achievers

17:21 - Dismantling White Supremacy in Social Impact Work

21:01 - Amy's Journey into Peace-Building Work

25:52 - Transformations and Lessons Learned

29:40 - Amy's Social Impact Business Model

32:48 - The Need for Alternative Business Models

35:26 - The Shift to Online Entrepreneurship

44:54 - Creating a Harmonious Living Environment

51:57 - The Power of Intuition and Ancestral Connections

 

Connect with Amy Babish here:

https://www.amybabish.com/
https://www.instagram.com/Amy.babish
https://amybabish.substack.com/

Check out Amy's NEW Podcast: The Soulful Visionary with Amy Babish

Help Fund the Somatic Women's Leadership Community: GoFundMe Link

 

If you’re ready to have a deeper conversation about how to maximize impact, profit and pleasure in your business and life, you can schedule a time to connect with me right here >>> 

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Episode Transcript

 

Rachel (00:02.259)

Hello and welcome to Pleasure and Profits. I'm your host, Rachel Anzalone. And today I have a really incredible guest that I'm so excited to introduce you to. And this is one of the most interesting bios I think I've ever read. So we may spend the next hour just talking about her bio. 

Welcome Amy Babish. And there are a bunch of letters here I'm gonna ask Amy to explain once I'm done here, MA, LPC A -T -R -B -C. Amy is a somatic coach and a house therapist, which we're gonna talk about, with over 20 years of expertise as a mentor, facilitator, licensed psychotherapist, credentialed art therapist, NLP mindset practitioner, and intuitive.

She guides global leaders, Fortune 20 executives and innovators who know there must be more to dissolve intergenerational patterns, integrate soul level assignments, build a nervous system capacity and connect you to the practical magic of your home and land with humility, I love this, pee-your-pants laughter, and je ne sais quoi. Her social impact business values integrity, joy, aliveness and dismantling white supremacy.

Amy offers private coaching, intensives, and curated retreats. She lives outside Washington, DC oh and I may say this wrong. I should have asked you this. Dogue? Is that correct? Doeg land she stewards with her Japanese teen, alpha of alpha partners, and goldendoodle. Welcome to the podcast, Amy.

 

Amy (01:51.118)

I'm so, so, so excited to be here. And I just feel so much joy as you DJ my bio in.

 

Rachel (02:01.875)

Yeah, there's a lot of fun and interesting things on there. So first, let's just start with these letters. Tell us about these letters and what your training and your experiences. I know this is something you and I've talked about a lot is like the education that you accumulate by the time you're in your 40s and how much goes into that and what that means like to have built that background.

 

Amy (02:27.874)

Yes. So MA is masters. My masters is in art therapy. Art therapy is licensed in some places and not licensed up in other places. But our credential is ATR, which is Registered Art Therapist, and BC is Board Certified. Then I have LPC is Licensed Professional Counselor. So that's basically talk therapy credential. So those are my letters. Yes.

 

Rachel (02:53.437)

Fantastic. Okay. And you have so much other training experience. Where do we start? Let's talk about somatic coaching and what led you into that and how you use that, how you work with your clients with that, what it means in your life and in your business.

 

Amy (03:18.796)

Yeah, so I was for about a decade a trauma and attachment psychotherapist, an art therapist, inside of DC and working with kids that were sexually abused and then also children and teenagers who were being sex trafficked as well as drug trafficked. And during that time, even though art therapy is really powerful with, you don't have to say it because speaking trauma, can break a lot of family ties and can be very taboo, but making art about it is a lot more accessible. Even with that, there still was like this gap and I didn't even have words for it around how do I support these kids who have been through so much to digest or alchemize, that's not them. And I didn't know, but I had a very intuitive sense that this was something in the body. 

So during that time, I stumbled upon somatic work. So this was probably at this point like 10 years or 15 years ago. when I come to, know, we do our work, we come by it honestly. I have a very complex background and I have complex PTSD. And even with years of Jungian analysis and doing a lot of my own art therapy, I still had parts of my trauma body that were not getting resolution and I was just like, okay, maybe this is just how I'm gonna live. 

And so I stumbled upon it for myself first and it changed my life. And so my mentor taught me things that I had no idea about from even post-graduate training programs that I had been in. And this was before somatic experiencing or sensory motor psychotherapy was really big. Those things are really accessible now in terms of training programs. And so through my own transformational journey, I started to get more training and started implementing it with clients. And so what that means is when you're doing any kind of mindset work, cognitive behavioral therapy, DBT, dialectical behavior therapy, executive coaching, anything where you're talking about what the challenges are, what the kind of continued pattern is, it's like a catch-22. So you know yourself, you know the problem. You know how you'd like it to change, but you keep going back to the same cycle. And so that,

 

Rachel (05:51.163)

Yeah, I think that's something people are so familiar with. Like that's an experience we've all had. Like I want to change and yet I keep doing this thing again and again.

 

Amy (05:56.875)

We all have.

 

Amy (06:01.014)

And even though mindset work, I'm also an LP practitioner, mindset work is really helpful. But when your nervous system or your organs or your blood or your bones or your DNA from epigenetics and intergenerational trauma carry these patterns, there's no amount of mindset work. There's no amount of thinking, thought leadership, podcast reading that's going to shift what's in your body. And so somatic work, the way that I work, I teach people how to come into their body.

So most people that I see are really high achieving, they're in their head, they're thinking a lot, their brain has gotten them a lot of good things in this life. And that means part of your body, part of your essence is out. So you're out here in the thoughts, you're out here in the solutions, you're out here in the problems. So teaching people how to bring their true self, their soul, their essence back into their body is what I do. And then when you're in the body, you have, some people relate to things with emotion. Some people relate to things with the story. Some people relate to things with physical pain. And so I teach them how to meet whatever they think that thing is. Like I call it the way in. So it might be a relationship. It might be TMJ. It might be problems with menstruation or fertility. It might be, I always get this kind of power thing. I'm like at work. So the way in it's just coming into the body. 

And so with somatic work, I'm teaching people how to notice in an honest way, not in a gaslighting way, like this is the dynamic you're facing and it's usually not the first rodeo, cause it's the Catch-22. So this is how, this is the through line, but it really, the genesis for it is something that can be resolved within your body. And, you know, it's not like a magical wand where we work on it. And then it's gone forever. Like we're here as humans on a big soul path. And so kind of in the spiral pathway, each time you come to that dynamic, it won't be as intense. You're going to see it coming. You're not going to be blindsided by it. And you can choose in a very, very different way with noticing and being present versus reacting and not in a way that your mind isn't in charge. You're really listening from within versus coming out and observing it and then coming back.

 

Rachel (08:29.695)

That's really a beautiful description. And I'm thinking about, you said like the spiral pathway and sort of, you know, my own experience, first there's like the awareness of like, I've been here before, right? And then, and I did it again. And then at some point there's an awareness of like, okay, I've been here before, but I caught it earlier this time. Right?

And then there's sort of an unlayering to getting to the place where like, I did the thing again, but instead of running away from it, now I'm gonna have a conversation about, know, like whatever it is that unlayering that helps us get there. Yeah, in my own personal experience, rarely is it like, I just learned a thing and now it's better or it's done.

And we've talked about, like this concept of embodiment is that it's in the cells of your body. It's not just in your mind. It's not just in like a logical understanding, but it is who you are. It's in your being.

 

Amy (09:36.718)

Totally, totally.

 

Rachel (09:38.213)

Yeah. And so one of the things you mentioned is often the people who come see you are high performers or, you know, executives. And so I'm really curious if you have noticed. I always wonder if a high performers know they're high performers.

 

Amy (10:00.428)

It depends on the industry, would say. I think when people are more in, you know, I'm based in DC, so for a long time, I got a lot of people who are in the kind of DC world, which you might consider like diplomats or World Bank or attorneys or, you know, government workers, like high up in the government. And then corporations. I think where you and where you work kind of helps you create this perspective of your identity. So those people oftentimes would know that they're a higher performer or a higher achiever, but they don't like to be self-identified that way, but they know that about themselves.

 

Rachel (10:40.955)

Hmm. Like they're getting the promotions, like they have these sort of external validations that say you're a high performer, but it's not part of their identity necessarily.

 

Amy (10:50.412)

Yes. And then with the other community that I've been a part of since COVID times, the peace building and justice building communities, they're just as high performing, if not more high performing than the people I would see kind of in the big cities in America. But they definitely, that's not a label that they would identify with. 

And I think, unfortunately, with some of the NGO world, it's exhaustive labor. So it's almost expected for them to really be performative and go beyond their limits, which is really unfortunate. So it's very it's really harmful to be like, yes, I'm high performing. Like you have exhausted my resources like I've gave and gave and gave and I'm building all this. I'm rebuilding communities, I'm building bridges. And I think in both groups, especially because I mostly see women in America or globally, women are taken advantage of in so many ways, even the high performing government or corporate America employees, like women are expected to work harder, women are expected to perform more. 

And so high performing and high achieving, I can really see now from a deeper place why most people that I work with would never want to be identified that way, even though when you Google things about high achieving people, that's a label that's oftentimes put on there.

 

Rachel (12:22.449)

Yeah, so you were describing the sort of nonprofit sector, the NGOs, and this culture of really sort of like draining the resources of like, we need to get as much as possible as we can from the people that we have. It occurred to me that I have that observation around the personal development industry and that it's really a culture of like when you're doing work that feels very purpose driven, like you feel like you have a mission and that it's your goal to improve people's lives, to make the world a better place. Like when that is what's motivating you, it's really easy to do it yourself to go, I'm just gonna push and push and push and push and push because I have to accomplish this mission, right?

And then a really good charismatic leader will get everybody else to do it too, right? Because that's the mission. That's the goal. But it is, as you said, you're exhausting the resources. It's not a sustainable way of being and operating. And I think often it could be tied up in a lot of worthiness questions. Of not holding those boundaries, feeling the need to like prove that I've done everything that I can possibly do, whether it's for the NGO or it's for yourself and your own business. Does that align with kind of what you've seen? Because you're kind of in both worlds. You're in this sort of NGO space and the nonprofit and that really purpose-driven space, but you're also a therapist and a coach. And I don't know whether or not you like the word coach. That's a different conversation.

You can share your opinion if you want to. But it is a category that is useful sometimes, but you're in sort of both of those spaces. Do you see those parallels?

 

Amy (14:26.85)

I definitely do. I think that, you know, for many of the many of the different clients that I see, it's not a conscious sense of worthiness. So it is definitely something that's, you know, for I see many women of color, and it's definitely like a systemic and cultural experience of racism and oppression. And so it's it's just like a different soup that people are swimming in. So we might say consciously, people are over giving, it's about worthiness. And for many people that I see, because over here on the non-peace building community, I mean, these people are still pro peace, but that's not their work in the world. The more corporate or government based clients, many of them come from a lot of complex trauma too. 

And so both communities come from these backgrounds of having to survive for very different reasons, but when it's a survival mechanism or how you protect yourself from really complicated relationships, the consciousness around worthiness or co-dependence or over giving, just isn't, it's like, I didn't see the stop sign. I didn't know that was there. Like it's just, can't, it's not in their periphery. 

And so for majority of my client base, it's really starting to understand that like, I come in from the place like, you know, there must be more. So this kind of person usually says like, I'm, I'm killing at work, or I've done like, I've been in 17 countries in three weeks, like, I'm, I'm delivering, but I am taking care of myself, I'm eating well, I'm doing my whatever kind of exercise they enjoy. And I'm getting my eight hours of sleep.

Why don't I feel satisfied? Why don't I feel, it's not so much like why don't I feel enough? They know that they're enough. They know that they're getting it, but there's something deeper for many of those kinds of clients.

 

Rachel (16:34.215)

That's really interesting because it's very different conversation than people who are giving and giving and giving and not in self care, right? That feels familiar to me, that sort of looking around and seeing like, you know, being surrounded by people who are performing at a really, really high level and do invest in their self care and a really, at a really high level as well. And, and also don't feel satisfied. And so figuring out like, what's that piece that's missing, right? What's the, what's the underlying layer of that?

I'm very curious about what drove you or what prompted you to get into this world of peace work and dismantling white supremacy and how that became part of your mission and your work.

 

Amy (17:33.806)

So I, like I said, I worked in child and adolescent art therapy in the beginning of my career. So this was back in 2002. And I had the privilege of working at like a very small special ed school in DC. And it was for some of the most challenging kids in the city. And it was 25 kids, five years old to 21 years old. And it was all black students and mostly black staff. And so, I was really introduced to my own racism at that point by my mentor there. And so I started to really understand what it means to have unconscious racism. We used to call it different things in different times. But as I grew my business, as I got out of public mental health and I started the psychotherapy practice, it was really important to me that when I started to bring groups of people together, if it was around retreats or

I was a consultant for Brene Brown, so bringing people together around Brene Brown's work for weekend intensives, like no matter how I was bringing people together, I wanted to start to bring in the value of what it means to dismantle white supremacy. And this was incredibly, incredibly out there when I first started doing this back in like 2014, because it wasn't, we weren’t the epidemic where people were paying more attention, white body people were paying more attention, that we are now. But because of that, my private practice then started to bring in a lot of people who really were much more justice focused and really understanding how to use their privilege in a different way. 

And so one of the community members during the pandemic asked me,she's a black woman who is very prominent in the justice movement in America. And I had known her for number of years and she said, hey, I have this friend who's in South Africa and she's an accolade of Desmond Tutu. And she does amazing work, but she's terrified of dying during COVID. And can you please see her for free?

Because if you don't know anything about South Africa, like financial racism is more prominent there than many places in the world and she can't afford to pay you anything. And so that's how it started. I started working with her individually. I'm allowed to share about this because I share about it with a lot of different places. So I started working with her and she had asthma. She was in her 50s when we started working together. She had asthma her whole life and part of what I help people with is not just emotional or relational problems but chronic physical problems. So within four months of working together she never had asthma again.

And so she said, so many people that I work with could benefit from seeing you, but they could never afford you. And so I sat with them and I said, “Hey, how about I do like a weekend zoom for like four hours?” And then I came back. I'm like, that's not right. And so then I said, how about two days of that? How about a week of that? And I'm like, that's not right. And so then I offered to do my first pro bono retreat. And so she said, you know, I have so many people I want to invite. And she works for an NGO and she was able to get the NGO to sponsor it. So I did it for free, but we had to cover, you know, lodging and board. And so we had 34 women together in 2022. So that's how I started to meet the bigger community and mostly South Africans, but also women from the Middle East region, from Pakistan, from many different places who are doing, you know, frontline work in high conflict areas, anything from policymakers to economist to therapists to theologians, all different kinds of people in those roles.

Incredible, incredible, like beyond anything I could have ever even put on a vision board. Like I didn't know that I wanted that. I didn't know that that was something that my call to service was about, but my call to service is about a ripple effect. know that. And then just how many communities they have and how the ripple effect goes with them is just beyond words.

 

Rachel (22:08.061)

That's really a beautiful story. I'm curious how the experience has been for you. Like what has it transformed in your life?

 

Amy (22:18.958)

So I feel that I have, when I went to South Africa, even though I had been on my own anti-racist journey for a long time before, this was 2022, so over almost 20 years, I went there, part of my experience was to understand racism. Racism in South Africa is very different than it is in America. In America, it's significant, but in South Africa, we have no comprehension of it as Americans.

And so that was really potent for me to understand privilege in a whole different way and the impact of oppression and racism and apartheid. And those women really educated me like Amy, it's not just about colonialism, it's about empire and really understand they're like, even when I say it, my body, most of us have, empire has been everywhere in this world. So it's not as binary. 

 

Rachel (23:11.483)

Yeah, it's not a word we use often here.

 

Amy (23:16.824)

We don't use that here and it's not binary as just colonialism. And they also educated me that outside of America, people don't use the word BIPOC. They're like, Amy, what the hell is that? So I'm like, our unique acronyms. And so they use the words global majority and global minority. And so that's also very clarifying. I am a global minority member. White people are the minority. And so it's like, that really helps me when I'm sitting in those circles and facilitating that work to really understand. Like, even though here we are up here in our confusion in America, in a global majority country, it feels very different to really own that I'm actually like, this is where I really am. So that has been powerful. 

And then I also facilitated a retreat in Lebanon through this community last year. And I had to end up fleeing for my life because I was accused of being a CIA agent and a Mossad agent because they said, someone like you, someone with your skill set can't possibly be a coach or therapist. And when I was in Lebanon, I just really understood what women's liberation work was around, what I was doing, what I was facilitating with that group around women being embodied, clear, boundaried, having financial agency, being able to be really sovereign in their choices. That is taboo there. 

And so that changed my life in terms of really understanding. Even though it happens here, women's equality, of course, with this election that's happening is still an issue, but we have no comprehension of what it means to live without rights compared to other places in the world. And that experience really taught me around not putting myself last. Like some of the things that unfolded there, I just gave a lot of trust to the NGO that was sponsoring it. And I understood the NGO world better because of it and just how complicated things are around peace building.

So, so many lessons learned from this side of my social impact business.

 

Rachel (25:52.487)

Yeah, absolutely. And it sounds like over this time period, you've gotten deeper and deeper in those learnings. And I imagine that you probably have a pretty clear sense that there are many, many more layers to unpeel. Yeah.

 

Amy (26:10.326)

It's like, lifetime. So I just started going to in person networking events within the past couple months, and even going to like medical doctors and psychotherapist, or I went to an alumni event for my undergrad. And people, the first thing people ask is like, how's that social impact model working for you, Amy? Because it's just so foreign model. 

People just can't wrap their heads around what I'm doing. And I've started to say, like, I believe in the next five to 10 years, anybody that's an expert who has a small business will move to this model because of equity, because of access. And we didn't actually name how I do my social impact. So it's people with more financial privilege pay me more money. And then I recirculate that money to the peace building community and also to individual clients in my one-to-one work.

 

Rachel (27:09.701)

Yeah, think that's interesting. People are curious about it. And I think that part of what the evolution is that's happening right now in the world of entrepreneurship and with this of this rising of the feminine energy and this awareness of the inequity that has been in place for so long, structurally and culturally, is that we're all trying to figure out how to do it differently. And there's no example, right? It's like, there, actually, I'm gonna correct myself. There are examples, there are not examples that we've ever looked at before in this context, right? 

Like we have lived with capitalism the way that it is, with having learned that this is how the world operates. And in fact, it's really only the way our culture operates, and it's only the way capitalism operates. And as a business owner, trying to research and find examples of people doing it different ways can be kind of tricky because the people who are doing it differently maybe aren't the ones who are the biggest and shiniest and most obvious. People aren't necessarily teaching it, although I think it's starting to happen now. It was part of my motivation for my work is that having worked in the world of online business and entrepreneurship for 15 years and the majority of that time was in a culture where it was like hustle, hustle, hustle, know, work till you crash, you burn your team out, you just get a new team, you know, this really unhealthy way of like just driving for like top line revenue and growth at all costs and feeling deep in my bones that that's not sustainable.

It's not enjoyable. It's not the way I want to live and trying to figure out other ways to do it and looking for examples of other people doing it different ways. People who are showing up with a level of authenticity and integrity and caring and just a different approach.

And so how is that model working out for you?

 

Amy (29:40.13)

So I'm in year four of it and we talked a little bit before we started recording and it's just starting to turn the corner. I'm gonna jump the gun, we're not fully there yet, but I am not, I would not call myself like an online presence. Like I don't have a social media platform that what's generating my business. It's really word of mouth. And when I had my psychotherapy business, my fees were inverted as we'd say in an entrepreneurship way, like my one-to-one fee was really low compared to my retreat fee. And so now it's, I write at that, but it was a big jump for my previously like waitlist really huge community.

 

Rachel (30:23.601)

And that's because in the world of psychotherapy, like there's a rate that is typical. There's like an industry standard, right? Of like what you charge for that time.

 

Amy (30:31.214)

There's an industry standard and I was probably in like the 60 % house. So I could have gone higher, but when I kind of came to the crossroads of like, I was in the pandemic, I saw really how much financial privilege people in my community had and how much equity like was such an issue across the board globally. I was like, need to do, I got a lot of consultation, professionally, clinically, business-wise, and it was a really hard transition. I wish I could have done it differently, but this is where I'm at with it.

I think many people believe that they're anti-racist, but when it comes to their money, that's where their racism shows up. And so that's not a reflection of any one person in my community. That's something that I've learned from now I'm fundraising for our self-funded retreat with this peace-building community. It's been really helpful for me to understand those ties, that people have a lot of fear when it comes to money, and that is 100 % tied to racism and oppression and classism and capitalism which are all interconnected. 

So at this point, I'm able to have enough people in my community who really understand what I'm doing and who generously share my work, who are so like, it just astounds me that people really get it and they share to aligned potential referrals. And so the referral network is how I run my business. Because it's hard for people to understand my skillset that I can really create the impact that I do with outcomes. And then it's doubly hard when they're like, and you have a social impact business. That's a lot for someone to wrap their head around. So the kind of client who's a match for me, they're very clear on their values. They're also anti-racist. They also want to dispense with white supremacy. They're like, I've been looking for, I want to have my own social impact business. Or I want to have my own nonprofit that I can get back in. So that kind of person is seeking this kind of work. And I came to the realization that it's really hard for them to know what to Google on Instagram or like on Google, like looking for a social impact expert for once when I plateaued in therapy, like that's, there's no SEO for this.

 

Rachel (33:00.411)

Right. Which I think is the case often when you're a when you're doing something that nobody else has done or isn't that common, right? When you're sort of paving the way for a new way of doing things or a new way of operating. And then also when you've reached the point in your career and in your path where you've accumulated so many skills that there is no other person who has the same suite of skills that you have. 

And so it becomes very, very, very niche. Yeah, nobody's Googling that. Yeah.

 

Amy (33:37.142)

Nobody’s googling it. You know, it's not mindset work. It's like, sometimes things just take a lot of time to rearrange energetically, spiritually, like, I had a very successful business as a psychotherapist, I had a group psychotherapy practice. And I, like, did a like, you know, like, and the movie is like a turn on a hairpin turn, like this was like a huge pivot. And so I have a lot of lessons learned and it's still evolving.

 

Rachel (34:09.747)

Yeah, I think, and you and I have talked about this before, I think that prior to, so sort of 2008 maybe was when I, or 2009 was when I was first introduced to the world of online business, online entrepreneurship. And there were a few people at that time that were suddenly marketing in a really big way and drawing in women that probably were between the ages of 25 and 35 primarily or 25 to 40. Prior to that, my understanding of entrepreneurship and business, and this may be the case that this is just, it might not be unique to me, it may be that this is what it was then prior to the internet expansion was a brick and mortar business and it wasn't entrepreneurship that I understood, it was small business ownership. And my experience of small business ownership was owner operators, you know, who maybe were making a nice living, but they were doing stuff that other people were doing. They owned a shop, they, provided a service, whatever it was. 

And so I think you and I sort correct me if I'm wrong, of came into this world and learning about this world of entrepreneurship in a time when the online business was the thing that we were learning and the way to do it and the way to have a bigger impact and the way to have a different experience. And what I've come to after all of these years, I think 15 years, is that that's awesome for some people. And that it's not the right path for everyone. That for some of us, it is the desired relationship, the desired type of business is one that is referral based, that is a little more nuanced, that what you teach can't be distilled down to 180 characters for a tweet, or turned into, you know, 300 words to go on an Instagram post or whatever it is, that it's just more complex and it's more nuanced and it requires a different level of engagement and experience to find out and feel out if it's the right thing. And that's an entirely different way of doing business than I think so many of us tried to do for a long time.

 

Amy (36:53.166)

Yeah, I mean, even when, you know, before the algorithm changes in Instagram, like when I would get like 200, you know, likes on a post, I wasn't getting business from Instagram, like very, very regularly would be someone be like, Hey, I saw your story or hey, I saw your post, let me reach out. Like, so it was fun when it was fun. And then the algorithm changed. And I was just like, this is not a good use of my time and energy. And it's not like it's not all or nothing. I contribute there sometimes. But I also know that people are more likely to Google some keywords to find me than to find me on Instagram.

 

Rachel (37:32.753)

Yeah. Yeah. And I think, as a marketer, I think that you're doing things like this, giving people the opportunity to get to know you is way more effective than, you know, posting in the noise of Facebook or Instagram or like or wherever it is. Yeah.

Amy (37:43.597)

Yes!

 

 

Amy (37:54.222)

Right. 100%. That was one of my goals this year was to be on more podcasts. I love this. I love having conversations and I love connecting. And I think that that's so important for people to see like your essence, to see my essence and to have an experience. I think that that's that can be so much more, spark so much more curiosity for someone versus putting layering on my perspective, layering on what I think she's saying, layering on like, what does this mean? Like, what does she mean? Like, it just is so confusing, I think for people with social media. And most of my clients are not looking on Instagram for help. They might watch TikTok for laughs, like a little soundbite, but that's not gonna like, that's not, it's not gonna be transformational.

 

Rachel (38:52.275)

Yeah, and I can't even imagine like what we've talked about for probably almost 30 minutes. I cannot imagine you explaining that in a social media post or even like in a single email or  just trying to like wrap that up in a bow and wrap it up in marketing speak that is going to, you know, like have the right hook and draw people, you know, sort of all those things that are really, really, really effective. And they need to be applied in the right places, you know, in the right ways. because I don't want to discount any of that stuff. And certainly I use that stuff, I use it with my own clients. And it's effective. And also there are circumstances where it's more effective for you to just get in a room and talk to people. And to create a business that is unique to you and your experience and your skill set and not trying to fit into some sort of cookie cutter model that has come before. Which will bring us to another thing in your bio that we haven't even talked about yet is house therapy. Talk to me about house therapy.

 

Amy (40:08.206)

So house therapy is founded a lot in Feng Shui, but also from other wisdom traditions. So my mentor for that is Amanda Gibby Peters. She's based in Texas, but she is just, she's like, she would call herself the mother superior of Feng Shui. 

So I have always been really connected to land and like understanding how to honor indigenous wisdom keepers of the land. I know about sacred space and then I was able to buy a house in 2022. And so right before I bought the house, my guides literally led me to Amanda. So I grew up really poor. I went through a divorce. I was living in a lot of apartments and then I had saved up enough money to buy a house.

Just like every relationship has its gifts and lessons, every house has its gifts and lessons. So house therapy is a way to work with the land and your space, even if you're couch surfing, it could be your office space, it could be your garden plot, it could be your storage space. Like house therapy is pretty inclusive around how to get the support from the unseen world.

In Feng Shui, there's an esoteric teaching about kind of like, how are we here? How do we experience this life? So they call it, it's kind of the wisdom of thirds. So the first thirds, my clients came to me for it before, which is like the human luck. So understanding worthiness, understanding beliefs, understanding shame, understanding how to work through trauma, understanding all those things.

My clients, well, I understand it's my choice and my opportunity to work through my stuff. That's not for everybody, but my people got that. And then they also got the second one, which is like cosmic look, know, astrology, human design, ancestors, spirituality, religion, my clients also got that. So the third luck.

 

Rachel (42:25.575)

When you say they got that, you mean they came to you with that or they had an understanding of it or they got it from you?

 

Amy (42:30.542)

They had an understanding, like, even though I might not personally subscribe to astrology, like, I can understand that the cosmic weather is impacting us collectively. Like, they're not like, I'm so self-evolved that I can be above the weather. I can be above what's happening in the planets. Like, they can understand, like, my ancestors have something to do with why I'm here. My sense of the divine feminine has something to do with why I'm here. 

They had enough curiosity, like they're not omitting that that's a factor. So the third third is what my people and me didn't realize, which was earthly based luck. And so earthly based luck is that your home, no matter what kind of house you have, even if you're couch surfing, is the third way that you can have more agency, more support, more potentiality in your life.

And so part of what people don't realize is like when they're doing all the personal work and there's like no other personal work to do and you're like, why is my life not changing? If you're going home to the same environment every day or you're going to the same office every day and nothing is changing, the energy is stagnant. 

And also just like in every relationship, like there's really great things about your person. And then there's some things that are hard fast that are just like, maybe not gonna change. So an analogy of that would be like, there's some physical structures in a home that are challenging. There's no perfect home. You can't like call a Feng Shui consultant and make the perfect home. There's always gonna be a challenge. And so house therapy helps you to mitigate the challenges, maximize the opportunities and really learn to have a relationship with your home like a family member. 

And the other thing that most people don't know about with Feng Shui is that the home is important, but the land outside of your home, even if you're in a walk-up apartment building, that's like the energy, the opportunities coming into your home. It's like, hey, we're gonna have a party here, come on in. Or like, is your land like not being taken care of or like the pathway to your front door or the path when you come inside of your home, is it like a hot mess? And it's like, I don't know if I wanna stay here.

 

Rachel (44:54.493)

My gosh, I feel like you saw that I didn't weed whack.

Okay, all right, all right.

 

Amy (45:02.382)

So I have really realized that many of my clients, even though they might have like what you call like architectural digest worthy homes or offices, there was a lot of stagnation for a lot of people. And so some people have the misconception that it's all about clutter. If you have clutter, like you can Google that, that's not why you wanna hire me. But clutter is always emotional in case you're someone who's tuning in is like, what is it about clutter? I'll just give you the Cliffs Notes, something about emotional layers that you don't want to let go of. 

But our environment.

 

Rachel (45:39.697)

Yeah. And just let me clarify and is clutter doesn't mean stuff. Clutter means stuff that you're not using that's taking up, right? It's not like maximalism is not clutter. Yeah, okay.

 

Amy (45:56.652)

No, no, it would be like, I have clothes I haven't worn for a long time, even though they're beautiful. Maybe it's like my Sunday clothes. And then it's like, that's impacting your ability to grow into your new identity or your embodied identity or where you're headed. Or you open your like your house might be clutter clutterless, but then you open the drawers and like there's one too many junk drawers or I have all this stuff in my storage unit that I never use or in my garage shed or yeah. Those, yeah.

 

Rachel (46:31.047)

Okay, got it. I just wanted to clarify so people don't feel like we're all supposed to be minimalists and get rid of everything. It’s just, it really, it's about what that stuff is and what your energy around that stuff is, not just having stuff.

 

Amy (46:46.092)

Yes, and like the metaphor, so like many people come to me for relationship work. They're in a relationship where their partner absolutely loves them, but they don't know to let the love in and really have embodied intimacy. They might have great sex, but they don't know how to have like an authentic emotional or sharing like my biggest dreams kind of relationship. Or they are really have like great friendships, great work, but then they don't know how to call in a partner who knows how to commit and who is a good match.

And so for that kind of client, I want to look at like, what are your messages like in the artwork in your home? Because our artwork is reinforcing on an unconscious level what we're headed towards. So any kind of like single lady imagery, like, we got to, let's just do an experiment, take it off the wall for a week. And see how you feel.

 

Rachel (47:41.115)

Yeah, yeah.

 

Amy (47:44.782)

There's a lot of ways that our home is like, it's just taking notes from what we have in our space. So if your home is like your co-pilot here, your family member, and you're not telling it what you really want, it's reinforcing on an unconscious level, maybe I don't really want that.

 

Rachel (48:04.571)

It sounds like the home is sort of a mirror for us.

 

Amy (48:09.006)

Yes. And it also has its own energy. So depending on when your home was built, it's just like an heiress thing. So my home was built in 1968. Her energy is a director energy. So she wants to be read in. I live very close to some. She's like, I'm close to Fort Belvoir. I know the vibe. So I'm close to the intelligence community where I live.

Rachel (48:24.477)

She wants to be read in. Oh my God, I love that. Okay.

 

Amy (48:38.732)

What are your updates? What are you gonna do? When are gonna clean me? Are you having a retreat at the house? Are you gonna be gone? She wants to know. And like with bigger ticket items, like we had a sewer problem this summer, but we have a lot, we had a native plant, no more garden. And so I told her, said, her name's Magic Villa Evie. I said, we cannot do the sewer work this summer because we'll kill the plants. So can you just hold out and not cause any problems or any drama, and I promise you we'll do it when it cools down late September, October, depending on what the actual physical weather is. So, so far, so good. 

And my daughter is very intuitive, and she's like, I talk with her, and she's like, I'm helping because I take really long showers, I'm helping to flush the pipes.

 

Rachel (49:28.787)

Great. That is awesome. I know we've been talking for a while, but I just found something else that I really want to talk about, which is, can we keep going? Okay.

Amy (49:39.118)

Let's, we'll go for it. We can keep going.

 

Rachel (50:57.203)

The last thing I would love to talk about is the intuitive aspect of all of this. And correct me if I'm wrong, but I have a memory. You and I met back in, I think, 2017.

 

Amy (51:27.63)

It might even have been 2016.

 

Rachel (51:27.475)

Is that right? think it might have been 20. No, you're right. It was 2016. You were correct. It was 2016. And I have a memory of, and I knew the work you were doing at that time. I knew you were a psychotherapist, you had a private practice. And I have a memory of you sharing on Facebook shortly after that what I think was sort of a coming out. Is that, is that accurate?

 

Amy (51:52.418)

Coming out as an intuitive, you mean? Yeah, yeah. I'm like, I've come out in many ways.

 

Rachel (51:53.841)

Yeah.

You're like, what way am I coming out? I’m coming out as an intuitive.

 

Amy (52:03.084)

Yes, yes. So I think that, so my nickname in my previous community when I was a psychotherapist was Magic Amy. I reflected back to people like, yes, I am magic, you're allowing yourself to see your own magic when you see my magic.

Sharing that and like what I would call like my previous clients were like Tory Burch and Brooks Brothers wearing like button up people. Like it was very brave for those women to come see me. Like I have different hair now, but I'm always going to be like this essence of aliveness and vibrancy. And that was a really vulnerable thing for those women to do to come and trust me. And when they started to do the work, they're like, you're really good at what you do.

But it's not just psychotherapy. So I would say, yeah, it's not just psychotherapy. So I started to feel that it was important to like, really not, to be a hundred percent transparent. And so I was really honest with them first that I'm an intuitive and that I'm a healer. So you said at the beginning of the episode, like coach. So coach is the like culturally digestible word for what I would say is accessible for people around me, but I'm an intuitive. Yes.

 

Rachel (53:16.881)

Yes. Yeah, it's familiar. It's a word people understand.

 

Amy (53:22.456)

But I'm an intuitive and I'm a healer. And so over the years, my brother is a Born Again Christian. And so he doesn't have a relationship with me anymore because of this, because I've been very honest and open about my connection to the mystery and to the unseen world and in a way that is in service of what we might call like the “light.” And it's really confusing and scary. My brother is a material science engineer. So this is very, I'm not what he's familiar with. 

So it only allowed my clients to feel clearer about who I am. But I think for people, even my dad, it overwhelms my dad to know some of these things about me. He would say to me growing up, like, know you're really different and I know you're really special, but then it would be overwhelming for him to learn about some of the choices I was making in my business or in my life. 

So it has been a complex path, but I feel it's important for me to be able to be in my wholeness when I talk about myself, even if it's not like in an oversharing kind of way. It's just a layer of what does intuitive mean? What does it mean to be intuitive? It's been a choice that has had really a lot of meaning, but a lot of important layers of understanding too.

 

Rachel (54:59.901)

Do you feel like whether just through your own experience, your own comfort level and the people around you, coming to you and being referred to you, knowing this more truly who you are and your full authenticity. I'm sure that that has impacted, made it sort of easier. 

But do you also feel culturally and collectively that there has been a shift around just in general of a greater appreciation and understanding of that? Or do you feel that there's still a clear line of like people who either are into it, get it and people who don't.

 

Amy (55:51.006)

There’s such a clear line anymore, but I think that like social media really makes it seem like very accessible to be intuitive and with the people that I that are drawn to me even in the peace-building community like they're not really I wouldn't say so engulfed in social media. So when I did the first retreat in South Africa the women said to me you know Amy if you were black we would call you a witch doctor like what you're teaching us is so taboo.

And really being able to have a really honest conversation about empire and colonialism and religion and like white Christianity said that being in contact with your ancestors is anti-religious and anti-Christian. And just having a lot of really honest conversations to dismantle, like what does it mean to be in contact with all of these wonderful, like brave ancestors who want to hold us and that they prayed for us and that those women are losing out on something that is cherished from their ancestors. So it's not about ancestor worship, something that's would be against their value system, but something about like really understanding that we come from people who've made such great sacrifices for us to be here today. Or that just like the seasons change, like our bodies change as women, like understanding that we can be so connected in so many ways versus pushing, forcing, doing, willing, which is what the alternative is when you're not able to trust yourself and trust that you're being so cherished by so many, so many. 

So it's, in both the, in both communities that I have, it is a heart, it is a big conversation, because I do work with men too, having that conversation with men, like really getting to the crux of what many men bring to me is like it's oftentimes intergenerational and then having conversation with them about their ancestors. Those are things like if you would have told me this five years ago that I was going to be having conversations with a lot of white-bodied men about their lineage and ancestors and their own knowing and like what is honest and true. I would have been like, yeah, maybe that's another lifetime. It's another timeline. But it's very real. It's very real.

 

Rachel (58:18.067)

That's really beautiful. Thank you for sharing that.

Is there anything that you would like to share about what you have coming up? What's what's new in your world? Anything on the forefront or that you see on the horizon and and how people can get in touch with you.

 

Amy (58:36.408)

Well, thank you so much for having me. This has been like incredible. I am fundraising right now for a global leaders retreat for the peace-building community. I have a GoFundMe for it. You can easily Google Amy Babish and GoFundMe and find it that way. 

 

Rachel (58:55.112)

We'll be sure to put the link for that in the show notes too.

 

Amy (59:04.269)

And then I’m starting up my movement classes again. Some will be in person, some will be online. I have the year of more, which is a 12 woman experience where we meet in person four times in one year at my home. And then we meet every month when we're not in person. And I always am having openings for wonderful clients who are a match for this work. So you can find me on my website, amybabish.com, on Instagram, on Substack. And then I have a newsletter that is sometimes very active and sometimes in periods of reorganization.

 

Rachel (59:37.779)

I love that. It's perfect. Thank you so much for being here. I love this conversation. I appreciate it. And I'm excited to see how this new model evolves for you and what the impact is that it brings over the coming years.

 

Amy (59:55.33)

Likewise, likewise. Thank you so much, Rachel.

 

Rachel (59:57.572)

Thanks, Amy. Thank you. And thank you all for being here. Until next time, I'm wishing you even more pleasure and profits. Have an amazing day.