140. Alternative Spiritual and Wellness Tools for BIPOC with Cynthia Davidson
Many Paths to Healing
What happens when we don’t feel as though we have access to healing? When there is shame or stigma or a lack of knowledge about modalities that are available?
Healing does not come in one flavor. It does not show up in one way, and everything does not work for everyone. Sometimes we have to find other options to support our healing journeys.
Cynthia Davidson, owner of Intuitive Essentials, joins Erica for a conversation about how spirituality and wellness can play a part in healing and tools that BIPOC communities may have access to that may not be as well known.
Listen on your favorite podcast player or keep reading to learn:
How multiple healing modalities can complement each other
The mindset shifts around healing that Black and brown communities need
How Cynthia’s own experience with Human Design made her want to share it, and how it shaped the way she offers it within her community
Supporting Healing and Ease
Cynthia Davidson is the Founder of Intuitive Essentials, a small, Black-woman-owned business providing empowering tools to help you heal your mind, body, and spirit, while living with more flow and ease.
Cynthia is also a Certified Emotion Code Practitioner, Human Design Pathfinder, and Intuitive Guide.
One of the techniques Cynthia specializes in is the decoding and release of trapped emotions to clear vital energetic real estate in support of your health and wellness journey.
You Have Access to Options
On the Pause on the Play® podcast, Erica Courdae says as a Black woman, she was not raised knowing she had access to healing options like therapy, or that it could be a positive thing in someone’s life.
Cynthia agrees that she didn’t have role models or know of resources for healing from the emotional and spiritual aftermath of leaving a prior marriage.
She was able to find physical healing with a personal trainer and by participating in marathons and half-marathons, but it didn’t address the spiritual aspect of healing.
She tried talk therapy and found it didn’t address some of the deeper issues she needed help with. So she began researching other options and found modalities she hadn’t known existed.
She discovered Emotion Code and Human Design and those modalities gave her tools to find her path.
She says, “I think sometimes we kind of shut ourselves down and say, no...I don't need that. I shouldn't need that. I need to be strong. I shouldn't show any weakness. But that's not what this is. This is all about healing ourselves and finding that modality that resonates.”
Erica adds, “Wanting to heal, wanting to be better, and wanting help is actually at least in my opinion, is a sign of strength.”
Making Human Design Practical and Actionable
After “going down the rabbit hole” of Human Design, Cynthia felt called to share the experience with her community. “I didn’t think many people of color knew about it.”
But, she says, while some practitioners of Human Design can make it dry and scientific, she “wanted to find a way where it could be practical, that you could use it in the moment, that it was immediately actionable, whatever I was sharing with you.”
That approach resonated with Erica when she worked with Cynthia. “It didn’t feel like you are this person and this person only.” She says she felt like it gave her useful context for where she was at that point in her journey.
One of the ways Cynthia works to make Human Design practical and actionable for her clients is by focusing on elements like energetic type first, because that can help people in how they structure their day-to-day lives.
And, she says, “I do look at it as an experiment. So if you try one thing and it doesn't work, then there are so many other things within this modality that you can try something else.”
Erica says it also helped her differentiate between how she feels and what she knows about herself, and the ways in which other people feel or think about her.
Cynthia actively reaches out to Black and brown communities to experience Human Design and “what I've seen most is that they're like, it gives them permission to be who they are...And they're like, ah, I never thought about it this way, or, oh, that explains all that generational trauma that I have going on. So it's been very beneficial to help them understand themselves.”
Releasing Without Reliving
When Cynthia discovered the Emotion Code, she says it was a total game-changer.
The Emotion Code is a modality to release trapped emotions.
“We, as people of color especially, don't process our emotions readily and effectively because we're told we're not supposed to feel, we're supposed to stuff things down.”
Not going through the ugly crying, the screaming, the yelling, and the physical and mental ways humans process emotions, leads to those feelings getting trapped in the body.
Working with the Emotion Code releases those trapped emotions, and Cynthia says “people just feel much lighter and brighter.”
Importantly, she also adds, that this isn’t a modality that requires you to relive traumatic events and experiences, as can be the case with talk therapy, or as Erica notes, treatments like EMDR, which can make it especially helpful for people who have struggled with traditional therapy. It can also be an excellent complement to talk therapy for those who are in treatment.
What Can Healing Look and Feel Like for Black and Brown Communities?
Cynthia says one of the most challenging pieces of healing in Black and brown communities is getting past the mindset of “I’m supposed to be strong” to being open trying various options for healing.
She doesn’t believe that any single modality is the one right answer, and that people should be open to trying a combination of things. She recommends setting some goals for your healing and bringing those to your practitioner to help craft a personalized program that may call on a variety of modalities.
Erica jokes that essential oils can be an easy entry point for people who are “woo light,” because there is such a clear connection between scent and mood.
On a more serious note, Erica asks Cynthia about making connections between wellness and spirituality, particularly for people who may have grown up in religious communities where alternative practices were vilified.
Cynthia notes that it is sometimes difficult for people to connect those pieces, and that she often frames spirituality as “a way for you to harness your own power, to help heal your own mind and your own body and your own spirit, and the wellness pieces are the different ways that you can do that.”
Erica likens it to being able to tune into the energy, consciously or not, when you walk into a room or meet someone new. “That in itself is you listening to your own internal compass talking to you and giving you cues...A huge piece here is trying to reconnect to our own inner compass.”
Cynthia urges people to go try different modalities, different practitioners, and to know that you don’t have to do this alone. There are resources out there for you to learn more and segue into it before committing to anything deeper.
Want to keep the dialogue going? Join us:
At Pause on the Play® the Community we are talking about what's essential and digging into this so that we can reconnect to what really matters most.
Learn more and join us at www.pauseontheplay.com/community
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Connect with Cynthia Davidson:
Instagram: @Intuitive_Essentials