Today we’d like to introduce you to Tanya Walker.
Hi Tanya, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
For years, I was the woman who looked like she had it together, but inside, I was deeply insecure. I was a people pleaser and I questioned myself, worried about what everyone else thought, had become very good at walking on eggshells to keep the peace and I had lost touch with my own voice, and in many ways, with who I was.
I never could have imagined that the path to knowing myself would begin with my body breaking down and my life falling apart.
20+ years ago, a fall at an aestheticians office changed my life when the table broke below my shoulder blades and I went crashing down backward. What followed was a three-and-a-half-year period where I spent much of my time in bed, unable to live the life I had been living. It was devastating, but it also became one of the greatest catalysts of my life that opened a door I never would have known existed.
When your body takes away your ability to keep going, you have no choice but to slow down and pay attention.
As I began slowly rebuilding my health, I started working with my osteopath and physical therapist who to this day I feel saved me. That experience opened my eyes to the incredible relationship between the body, movement, pain, and our overall well-being. I eventually became involved in co-creating a Pilates studio with her, which deepened my understanding of the mind-body connection and gave me another piece of the healing puzzle.
This is when I began to realize that physical healing was only part of the story.
I became a certified Pilates instructor where I taught classes for pain and rehabilitation, hand’s on somatic practitioner and started exploring the connection between the nervous system, emotions, stress, trauma, and the patterns we carry in our bodies. As I continued doing my own work, something much bigger was happening and it was that I was unknowingly becoming empowered and confident – something I had never experienced.
The more I understood myself, the less willing I became to abandon myself for others. I started recognizing my patterns, my triggers, questioning the beliefs I had carried for years, creating boundaries, and learning to trust my own inner voice and identify my North Star.
That inner transformation eventually led me to make one of the hardest and most life-altering decisions of my life: leaving my 25 year marriage and everything I knew as comfort. Alone, I moved to Costa Rica and started over.
I built a life there, created a business, offered private retreats, and even built a property on my own. I moved from a 3000 square foot home to a 500 square foot house and lived a minimal life in all ways. It was both challenging and incredibly empowering. I was proving to myself that I was capable of creating a life following my own intuition rather than listening to societal norms and give my power to those who did not nor could not understand where I’d been and where I was going.
That journey also led me deeper into holistic and functional health as I was introduced to an organization that was helping people reverse ALS and before I knew it I was working globally with people who had ALS and speaking with medical professionals as we all brought our ideas and expertise to the table for a common goal of healing. I became fascinated by the bigger picture of wellness – the connection between what is happening in the body, what we are exposed to, how we eat, how we live, how we process emotions, what our nervous system is carrying, and what we have never fully healed.
Today, that is at the heart of my work.
I work with women (and sometimes men) who may or may not have symptoms, look fine on the outside but know something inside isn’t. Women who are overwhelmed, disconnected, exhausted from constantly holding everything together, or simply know they are meant for something more.
I help them understand that their symptoms, their patterns, their emotions, and their relationships are not separate pieces of their lives. There is a deeper story underneath them and that everything combined within the mind, body and heart are contributing factors to our symptoms and over all well being.
I know that because I lived it, and through the process, the invaluable information I’ve been honoured enough to learn, I was able to take a diagnosis of Graves Disease (hyper-thyroid disease) from an extremely poor state of health and restore my thyroid to optimal full function holistically.
I went from being a woman who didn’t know how to trust herself, made herself smaller in many situations, people-pleased, walked on eggshells, and stayed disconnected from many of her emotional needs to becoming a woman who feels more confident to trust herself, speak her truth, choose differently, and create life from a heart centred and more conscious place.
I didn’t find myself all at once, I found myself one courageous decision at a time.
Today, my mission is to help other women do the same – to share information, tools, how to use the power of awareness as the foundation for change, and empowerment to come back to themselves, heal what has been keeping them stuck, and create a life that feels aligned from the inside out.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It has definitely not been a smooth road but I can tell you it has been an eye opening and empowering road by choice that had it’s share of heartache. My personal journey has brought about deep reflection where I felt forced to look at parts of myself I had buried such as; shame, guilt, fear of failure, selfishness and comparing myself to other women because I never quite felt good enough inside. I experienced developmental trauma at home growing up which I’ve learned is very common to marrying an incredibly loving man who had his own unresolved trauma, having two beautiful daughters and cultivating a beautiful life together only to have it come crashing down as my husband slowly turned to alcohol which in the end, became his ultimate choice.
I have been faced with the fear of judgement, the great fear of uncertainty, the fear of failure, the fear of my husband, myself and my children never recovering from our situation and the pain from knowing that no matter how hard you try to save someone that you have to save yourself first – this possibly being the most difficult.
Moving to Costa Rica presented its own challenges by way of language, culture, completely starting over all alone and the uncertainty of what my future held but through it all I had arrived at a place where I knew how to place faith in trusting the process.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
I am a holistic coach, somatic practitioner for emotional release and chronic pain as well as posture/movement educator, and emotional wellness guide who works primarily with women who have spent years taking care of everyone else, living in survival mode and know they need to make changes within themselves and their lives. Their goals might be to rid anxiety, adopt healthy habits or regulate the nervous system and lesson physical pain.
My work sits at the intersection of mind, body, emotions, movement, nervous system regulation and holistic wellness. I help women develop deeper awareness of what is happening within them, around them and understand how they think, feel, move and live -with all these influencing how we experience life and the decisions we make.
My background in posture/rehabilitative Pilates and movement is an important part of my approach. Through the years of experience working alongside an incredibly gifted osteopath and physical therapist, co-creating a Pilates studio and later becoming a somatic practitioner, I developed a deep appreciation for how much the body communicates through signals.
Posture, movement patterns, tension, breathing and the way we inhabit our bodies can tell us a great deal about what we are carrying.
I’ve been told what sets my work apart is the integration of the different pieces. I don’t believe emotional and mental wellness can be separated from the body or that physical wellness can be separated from our emotional experiences that have affected the way we use our mind.
My own journey is also deeply woven into my brand because I understand what it means to lose self-connection, to live in unhealthy patterns that don’t serve you well, and create anxiety as well as physical symptoms that force your body to slow down and make difficult decisions that completely change the direction of your life.
I work primarily online and offer private coaching, some somatic and movement based work and offer casual online meetings of women coming together who are interested in learning more about healing and growth.
My offerings provide women with space to step away from the demands of life, reconnect with their soul, gain clarity and learn practical tools they can take home with them to use at the ready.
What I am most proud of about my brand is that it has evolved organically from my own journey. It isn’t about perfection, fancy videos and posts. It is about heart, truth, sharing, empowering and helping other women who resonate with parts or all of my story.
I want, not only women, but everyone to know they don’t have to wait until their body or nervous system completely breaks down, relationships fall apart or they reach a point of exhaustion to begin healing and/or growth. There is power in learning to recognize the signals at an earlier time and putting in some time and effort.
At the heart of what I do, my mission is to help women come home to themselves or learn what that means if they’ve never been there, through greater awareness of their minds, body and heart because when you change the relationship with yourself, you begin to change everything else.
Who else deserves credit in your story?
For me to give proper credit to those who have supported me, my list would be endless because that would include every client, friend and family member who stayed with me and person I’ve had a conversation with along the way who taught me something valuable.
I would have to say first and foremost my late ex-husband who lovingly supported me during the time of my injury, throughout our marriage and my journey of growth. My two daughters Paitra and Elliot who have been a source of unwavering love and support through their words and actions on a daily basis where they keep me rooted in who I am. They have both showed me what courage and grace look like, giving me a path to follow. My incredible husband Jeff, who patiently holds space for me, always sees the bigger picture, gives me strength and loves me for everything I am with a consistent ‘showing up’ in the most heart centered way. Nadia Lapointe – a fiercely beautiful woman who is an osteopath and physical therapist from my home town who saw something in me from the beginning that I couldn’t see in myself to give me a chance and take me on as her physical therapist assistant and co-creator of a Pilates studio. She undoubtedly was instrumental in my healing and encouraged me to continue growing.
A chance meeting in an airport with the founders of healing als gave me incredible opportunity to work with ALS clients around the globe – many of who were quadriplegics where we communicated using eye gaze apparatus and through them, I’ve had opportunity to speak at medical conferences and cultivate relationships with functional medical doctors/practitioners such as the incredible Dr. Lee Cowden and the beautiful and gifted Coco Newton to name a few.
Each experience and person taught me something I could never have imagined, offered me support and shared information that better allowed me to serve not only myself but my beautiful clients.
Pricing:
- 1:1 coaching $175.00
- Couples coaching $250.00
- Bioresonance/biofeedback inner voice emotional report $40.00
- Posture assessment, movement for daily functional living session $145.00
Contact Info:
- Website: https://tanyawalkerwellness.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tanyawalkerwellness/
- Facebook: https://facebook.com/tanyawalkerwellness
