EP31 – The Path of the Healing Process

Matthew J. Brownstein hosts Dr. Ann Marie Balkanski in this special episode of Illuminated Mind. Dr. Ann Marie Balknaski is an experienced executive director with a demonstrated history of working in the hospital & health care industry. Currently focused on educating, serving and helping others discover their own inner limitations and ability to make positive change.

Welcome, everyone to the illuminated mind podcast with me Matthew brown steam. I’m here with my guest, Dr. Ann Marie Wolanski, a graduate of our school, and somebody who I’m really excited to introduce you to. So welcome Anne Marie. Thanks for being here with me. Hey,
Matthew, thank you for having me.
Thank you. So Anne Marie operates under the rapid realization theme. She has her Bachelor’s in biology with a minor in Psychology from Nova Southeastern University. She’s a doctor, her doctor of medicine from Sparta and Health Science University. She’s a graduate of our school, the Institute of interpersonal hypnotherapy, a member of the International Association of interpersonal hypnotherapist, and also recently I see a Heart Math certified practitioner. A lot of our graduates have been through Heart Math and really love that type of work. So why don’t you introduce yourself to us? Tell us what you’re all about? Yeah,
thank you so much. Yeah, basically, my credentials are that but really, in the end, I’m definitely a human, and, you know, hugely aligned with the practice of, you know, looking at someone as the whole of who they are, and helping them overcome. Hypnotherapy has been been one of the, you know, really the answer that I look for throughout all of medicine, and how to really get to those root root roots of what is blocking someone from just being their true authentic, you know, essence of who they are. And so that’s been my drive for my practice.
Yeah. So talk to me more about that. Because, you know, my background is in Chinese medicine. And I wanted to know, what is the ultimate way to help relieve human suffering, you know, if they’re, there’s lots of methods and professions. But it all for me came back to the mind. What point in your studies did you say, All right, we need to get to the mental level here.
Yeah, I would say actually took a while. And, you know, from a very young age, I really did have this image of, you know, becoming a doctor becoming a healer. And it all started quite young, as early as 11 years old, I was actually in foster care. And I moved around a lot and saw a lot of trauma, obviously, you know, my situation was not as so intense as some of the people that I saw. And I just always felt gravitated to really, you know, create kind of the space to, you know, help people not feel like they’re alone. And I have limiting beliefs, though, against me, because I dropped out of high school, I basically became emancipated at 16. And I got my GED. And then, of course, I started to realize like the power of my reality, power, just being believing in myself, and saw that with hard work, I got pretty good grades, and I then went through my whole, okay, let’s do med school, or let’s try nursing at first. And then I just fell in love with understanding the body just, you know, understanding, you know, pathologies and really what makes people you know, what, what is kind of the root, I always had that question like, What is causing people to hurt and heal or hurt and have pain. And so, you know, I went through the traditional route. And right after med school, I became an Executive leader for a large at the point that I started was a startup, a startup company, we had only 10 beds, inpatient residential treatment facility, psychiatry, and substance abuse. And I grew quite rapidly with the company. You know, I oversaw 15 facilities, by the time I left on the clinical side and really got a deep dive into the business of medicine. You know, I worked alongside a lot of clinicians, doctors, therapists, created protocols, policies and procedures for like, how we help our clients and patients. And honestly, I got to a point of really just seeing this like cycle of, of people coming back, our recidivism rate being very high, and just people really struggling with the same things and on a slew of medications, and just becoming very frustrated myself by the medical model, and wondering, like, why are people really not healing? Like, why is why are people still stuck? And, and very focused on this disease and prescription model, which for me, just something felt off about it? So that kind of started me on my spiral of like, okay, what’s going on here and what like, why why why do I feel stuck myself? And so I became very disenchanted and then I went on my own spiral of just feeling really unwell. You know, going through my own personal like depression and anxiety and just, like really feeling like Okay, I did what everybody told me to do society wise. I went through all this med school and, you know, became at the highest that I could in my career and that that realm of business and medicine, and then seeking out what most people will Do at my point alternative approaches on Okay, well, if I’m being failed by the medical model because of not, you know, feeling better with medications or even traditional therapy, what else is there? And then I just started kind of diving into alternative help and then found hypnotherapy. And then of course, I got it done on myself. And that just blew my mind of wow, like, all the things that I didn’t realize I didn’t clear heal my beliefs of, you know, feeling like I’m not worthy, not capable, feeling bad. And just all those things that were deep ingrained from even my childhood that I thought I healed and got over, but just did not. And after that, I just wanted to learn more, I was just like, obsessed. Yeah, I remember, I remember meeting you, and you were even like, you got the bug. And I was just learning about everything about Hypno. And that’s when I found the school and did the training without any intention to open my practice, but it was just the obvious direction for me.
Yeah, so it’s amazing to hear about going through all of that training, you know, it’s not easy to become a medical doctor, you have a background in biology and psychology, and yet, you still didn’t find healing for yourself, or for others. What’s the big difference? I mean, obvious, the mental level, you talked about, like your own struggles with your own feelings, your own self worth with your limiting beliefs, and I’m sure that’s part of the story, the difference, but what’s the big difference between like a diagnostic medication model? And going just directly to the mind? I’m just curious more of your thoughts around that?
Yeah, of course, um, you know, doctors don’t know, we don’t, you know, if they and I have this conversation all the time with my friends or other people and, like, there’s just no clue because we know only what we know, in regards to school and education. And, you know, the the educational system is very focused on the pathology and on the disease. And the one thing that really drove me quite nuts, was that idiopathic. And for those that don’t know, the audience, what idiopathic really means is, I used to joke and say, it’s the idiots answer. So I’m like, come on, there has to be something deeper in the to this. And, you know, idiopathic just means we don’t know, like, we don’t know the cause. And it really lumps in all of the, you know, IBS, a lot of neurological fibromyalgia, a lot of those medical issues that, you know, what we what doctors will do is usually prescribe because that’s all they know, to do. And I saw the common theme, though, you know, stress is very much tied to all of them. And I’m just like, like, how are we not like, realizing that there’s this energetic emotional component tied to these diseases? And so, you know, for me, I just was very, you know, it was not really a question that we were trained to even talk to even, you know, even nutrition was something that wasn’t even brought up, and that there was a dissociation of understanding, like, even how what you put in your body is what, you know, it is a component as well. And so I just felt that, you know, the, there are, like, a lot heavy, you know, pharmaceutical, and just, you know, you know, I felt like it was just very, we just weren’t introduced to it. And I think that’s the, that’s kind of the issue with, with most doctors just not knowing and heavily on disease and pharma, pharmaceutical, and it has its place, you know, I do acknowledge that it does have its place and necessary, but, you know, the, I feel that we just got very lost in separating things. You know, separating even even the the way that we look at anatomy, and not really seeing the bigger picture of this process, which is very interconnected. And hypnotherapy helped me kind of really integrate that into seeing like, the whole person, like connect the energy essence, if that makes sense.
That’s to me for sure. I would imagine some listeners like Well, yeah, but it seems like you’re in more than intelligent enough if you go into medical school and they had a holistic model. And they acknowledge there’s a spiritual side, there’s the mental emotional side, there’s the energetic side, there’s nutrition, you would have absorbed it you would have loved it’s not like you’re close minded to it. It just sounds like there was no training or attention given to the 90 plus percent the rest of us beyond just our body, right the spirit mind emotions, energy, relationships, what we eat, right? You hear things like you say, Oh, it’s just stressed doctors like lots stress induced, but then you still go back to like you said, All they know is prescribed, diagnose and prescribe rather than Well, what’s this whole thing about stress all about? So what did you find going through hypnotherapy school was really the root cause of illness. Or maybe not just hypnotherapy school. But if you had to say, Now, I, what is the real root cause of why the majority of us are suffering?
What’s that all about? Well, number one, I have to say, most people are asleep. And, you know, I know for me, I was just very unaware of, of even just feeling and after going through seeing a hypnotherapist, myself, and just really, you know, connecting back to that felt sense of what my body was even feeling. I was like, Oh, my God, like, I can’t believe I’ve been feeling like this all the time, because it’s just truly became my baseline. And, you know, we have to understand that also, like, doctors and other people, and I just had this conversation the other day, like with another physician, that was just like, you know, we’re you just live in this almost automation of just doing because you think that’s what you need to do, but you’re just blocking. And so the blockage for sure is like, what is preventing people from not healing from not connecting, it’s just, you know, from the most simplest form of understanding is just not listening. You know, it’s, it’s can being conditioned to, to not listen to, oh, Hippocrates, the greatest, I mean, the father of medicine, right? Hippocrates, healing comes from within. And but if we don’t know how to listen within if we don’t know that the true healer of disease is within us. And we don’t really connect with that, then how can we truly heal? And we’ve created these blocks and resistances all through our bodies that, that that is just preventing us from really allowing the power within us to do what it knows how to do very naturally. Yeah.
Yes. So I love your answer. The first thing you said was people who aren’t awake, like my, one of my books, called the sutras on healing and enlightenment. And I started learning early on, all right, there are blocks to the awareness of love’s presence that are blocks to who we are, there are energy blocks that are affecting our health. So it would make sense then that enlightenment, waking up to who we are self realization would be a huge part of the journey and learning how to clear those blocks, which are not just like clogging your arteries when talking much deeper blocks. So your branding is under rapid realization, how does that relate to the idea that people are asleep? But the solution is to help to wake them up? Yeah,
yeah, the rapid realization came through because I was just like, I mean, for me, you know, when I explained how, within a six month period, I went through this huge transformation, and then the the school, the training with the school, just like, hyper propelled in every way. And there was no other explanation for what’s going on, and just this rapid realization of like, just who you are just like, and, and so, you know, I’ve, I’ve been working under that of like, just helping people rapidly realize, like, you know, what’s getting in the way, waking up to that? Because that was really my journey of going through the training and going through my own personal healing process.
No, so you attributed to the school, which is awesome. So rapid realisation waking up to who you really are. Could you tell us about case history working with hypnotherapy client who comes to mind without breaking confidentiality, but generally Yeah, what’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you really saw hypnotherapy in action?
Oh, so many you know, it was really really powerful when I had someone that came to me not even four I’m gonna let that sorry that I hurt some sneaker in the background was when someone came to me for not even their their medical issue. They came to me for emotional is really bad anxiety just dealing with social situations. And we were doing the work of course and going into you know, that altered trance and you know, I did breath work with them and just many things and when they started to really connect, which they didn’t even tell me about, all about like the details of this physical pain within their body and IBS, which I you know, they didn’t come to me for that. So they felt like not divulging it, but they started releasing some of those things and started changing even their bowel movements and just like, you know, really connecting that emotional stagnation within their body that they were learning how to let go that actually caused them to physically feel better, you know, with their with this with this other thing which they cannot even comprehend that, oh, medical illness and you know, Emotions again, that’s one of the difficulties that most people kind of connect. All they thought about is like anxiety. Oh, it’s in my mind. Oh, this IBS does not has nothing to do with my mind. And so that was probably one of the ones that jumped out right now. But there’s been so many, you know, cases, since I graduated now or three years ago that I’ve worked with.
Yeah, I’m sure. So you notice that IBS, of course, has an irritable bowel like, of course, it has a mental emotional component. But if you go to a doctor, usually we’re only looking at the physical level. With this client, you weren’t even working to address those symptoms of IBS. But working on other levels, it’s impossible not to have the body benefit, like and of course, in miracles, it says Peace is health. So if you are restoring clients mental, emotional state to health, shouldn’t their body naturally follow without even having to address the symptoms?
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It’s happened over and over again. You know, that, and I mean, the school very much well trained me for preparing for those things. So, you know, because I did all the training all the way up to even transpersonal. And that I found so, so yummy to work with, when you know, you work with those, those things that will blow your mind?
Well, yeah, let’s go into that, then this is we’re talking about the physical, mental, emotional, where do you come from a spiritual point of view? And how has your spirituality whatever that may be? How is that related to hypnotherapy? Or to the training?
Oh, I mean, it’s, it’s accelerated in every way possible. You know, before I went into the training, I was already pretty big on meditating. And was an avid meditator, which I started back in 22,008, when the economy crashed, like, I was going through a lot of anxiety and just needed something to relieve myself. And that was, you know, huge and helping me. But as I started doing hypnotherapy training, I mean, it was just like, intensified in every way, and started to really connect on these deeper in these deeper ways that, you know, just really connected me with that, that understanding that we are so beyond this physical form. And so I’ve definitely integrated that within my practice. And, you know, when I’m working with someone that’s open to that I’m definitely, you know, all in and in every way that I can. Yeah.
Yeah, for sure. So you were meditating, especially 2008. When you realized, man, I was really stressed, I should meditate. But then hypnotherapy trading, especially to our school, you know, help you to go even deeper in? Yeah, to bring that into client sessions. A lot of our transpersonal work we trained in past life regression. Yeah. Yeah. Talk to us. Like, what is that? Like? Have you done any of that for yourself? Or your clients? believe in past lives?
Oh, yeah. Yeah, they’ve been really fun, to be able to see that, you know, I guess the way that I approaches approach it, because, again, the school has trained me very well. And being open to whatever comes off, I’m just like, okay, you know, like, really want to focus just on this emotional beliefs and let that kind of be our calling card to bring us to, you know, what it needs to bring us to and not limit, you know, to know that, hey, okay, I’ve been trained enough to be able to guide you, and things come up that I’m just like, oh, cool, no, past lives. Experiences that, you know, even for myself, I’ve done that, you know, I, you know, you always encouraged us, like, Hey, do your own do for yourself. And, you know, I’ve definitely explored, you know, my own past lives and life between lives and have done that for my clients as well. And, yeah, you just experience things that cannot really fully be explained. And even my clients will be like, Whoa, like, I had no expectation to go there. I know, that was real. Because, you know, just the feeling of just being there and things coming to you that you just, you know, you know, someone else that may not have experienced it may say, Oh, it was just your imagination. But, you know, the people that are leaving my office, having these experiences are definitely like believers and feeling it and experiencing it so much from that emotional place that so beautifully connects with their present lives. And that’s one of the really awesome parts of it is like, Okay, how does this you know, when I don’t know, I’m like, learning to sit back and be like, Okay, well, I you know, where’s this going and not having the expectation, but just allowing that really, that really, that magic come through of really giving me the answers and helping them heal because things switch and you’re just like, okay, cool. I know.
Right? And I would imagine for you, I know for me, it doesn’t really even matter where those stories come from. It’s just once they come out And they get resolved, then whether we believe in past lives or not, the modality proves incredibly beneficial. Because we work the model, the subconscious doesn’t know facts from fiction. So if you’re having a very vivid story in a hyper amplified state of hypnosis, with really strong emotion that tends to parallel your present life, but then you resolve the content of that story. So in a past life, if we put that in quotes, in a past life, if you believe you’re worthless, but we resolve that thinking, and now you realize, oh, I am worthwhile and valuable and important, then does it really matter where that information comes from? So have you got to where you’re like, do I need to know if this is true or not? Or is it just a super helpful modality? Yeah, yeah. I
mean, I, it’s a super helpful modality, of course, and, you know, again, the the belief and when you when you come to, really, I guess, wake up to the reality that you even see and also work with multiple people, you know, I, I really had a lot of joy working with various people in the same family or you know, relationships and just really questioning and understanding like, what is it that we really see what is reality? And what is that that we’re even creating up here? That may not be all that’s true, because we create illusions of our self that is definitely not true. And you know, and hearing the story in order to kind of integrate that into understanding really your truths and capital T is you taught us you know, the truth so really who you are. Yeah, no, from that spiritual model.
Nice. I love that. You keep bringing it back to that. So that realization Just who are you really? A? Yeah, I don’t know if I could say better. It just seems like a lot of your answer. Just go back to YOU NEED TO KNOW YOU Are you need to know who you are. You’re not awaken to who you truly are. So yeah, that’s beautiful. You did HeartMath training. I wonder how you found that why did you find that valuable? What did you pull from it? How does it relate perhaps to the work in hypnotherapy? With the heart mind subconscious conscious? Yeah. What are your thoughts about Heart Math and hypnotherapy?
Yeah, I love I love the research behind it. And being able to just bring a an additional tangible source to kind of create that bridge for people I think, has been helpful. Especially for like, you know, some of the performers that I’ve worked with are athletes and being able to really have that feedback, because they have technology that I’ve been using in my office, and I’ve been kind of playing around with, even with trauma work. So it’s been like an added resource just to have for people that really need that kind of tangible evidence to say, like, hey, you know, your body is quite powerful. And you have various, almost in a sense minds, you know, when we think about mine, a lot of people will even think about just that voice that they hear that they may not even be aware that is up there. Because, you know, they haven’t really been questioned, like, what is this? And, you know, it’s a Heart Math just has been like another little resource that has helped kind of help people bridge kind of that understanding of that coherence or connection or clearing, you know, any blocks, you know, that we may not be, you know, we’re not listening, we’re not listening, you know that the heart is quite powerful. It’s that gut feeling, right? It’s the intuition. It’s the heart. It’s all, you know, deeply connected. And it’s not just that voice or that mind that, you know, if we’re up there, then we’re not here, and then we’re just disconnected. And then the energy is not efficient. And
yeah, oh, that their work has been amazing with the heart, brain and mind body connection and the research behind it and the techniques they’re developing. And, yeah, it gives a lot more credibility to what we’re doing. Because I know for I’ve been in this now for 2530 years, depending on when you start measuring when that started for me, and I just realized it 25 years ago, oh my god hypnotherapy it’s the answer. Because you heal the mind, it’s going to heal the body. That’s where the oil miracles come from. So yeah, but I personally didn’t need the proof that it worked. It just made so much sense. Just heal the mind, and you heal everything. I just had a client actually today. He was urinating every night, like 910 times a night. And we did one session on that, and Today reported he woke up twice to go to the bathroom. And this is a much older person that would be expected anyway. And he said, I don’t know how that happened. I’m just so glad it did. You know, do you really need the research? If you just know that stuff really works? So yeah, it sounds like that with your background in medicine, some research is going to be important, but at the same time, if we’re getting votes, then you know.
Yeah, I mean, I think I think that the type of people that I definitely attract to um You know, just having some of those, you know, for me, I, I, I’m a hardcore believer, you know, like, but it’s just finding that language where people can kind of meet in the middle so that I can help carry them into that space of like further understanding. And sometimes that tangible, some of those tangible like things like Heart Math has really, you know, created these reports, and they’re in their biofeedback systems, they’ll call the heart coherence monitoring has, you know, been just another resource to kind of help bridge that language so that people can understand like, there’s something beyond, you know, we feel like, oh, I need to see it to believe it. But there really is so much energy within you around you, you know, all around us that we don’t see. And it’s just a hard concept to grasp on. But yeah, I just think it’s definitely another thing to help people kind of carry them into that space.
Like, if you’re seeing it, you’re believing it like if it’s a cell phone, you can tap. But isn’t that call like, was it? Soup materials, superstition or something? That we become like superstitious to materialism, that if it’s physical, it must be real. But forgetting wait your own thoughts. You can tap your own consciousness, you can’t knock on your own emotions. You can’t show me. But you exist and you have a mind and all that’s there. So I’m curious if somebody was on the fence about hypnotherapy training. Now, they’re hearing you they’re hearing your story and like, thinking about doing hypnotherapy training, what would you recommend somebody like that?
I mean, if you’re just purely wanting to, you know, have any self discovery, like, even if you’re not even opening your practice, I mean, again, I kind of went into it just with a pure curiosity. You know, and just like, follow that internal drive. And that’s really all it is. And if there’s any internal drive, then that’s mean, it means it’s calling you. And so listen to that drive, that is really help heading you in a place that you may not fully understand. But you just gotta learn how to trust like, I’m here today. Because, you know, I again, I had no clue you asked me 510 years, three, or even four years ago, I would have been like, what? No, no, because, you know, I could not even manifest this. But I’m sure happy that I’m being guided to it, you know, just this this way of living, which my company and business and the way that I live and what I do within my office is also aligned with me now.
Yeah, I mean, I know you know, your credit medicine, my background Chinese medicine. It’s like, okay, this is good stuff. Thank God. We have Western Eastern medical doctors, that there’s something more than just needing something more fulfilling, meaningful, and yet, you didn’t even quite know that, but you took the leap. And yeah, beautiful. If somebody wanted to reach out to you for a private session, how would they find you?
Yeah, you can look me up on rapid realisation.com as well as my podcast, which I have. Right now. It’s on a seasonal break, but it’ll be back very shortly and it’s called Rapid realisation podcast. Those are the best resources I think for anybody to reach out otherwise, my all my taglines are an Bao can’t ski on socials. like Instagram or Twitter. It’s and A N N. N Balkin ski, which I’m sure I can give you information on.
Perfect and we’ll put your contact info in the descriptions as well below least this video, though. Awesome. And if there’s some closing words that you would offer anybody who’s listening words of wisdom, your deepest knowledge, the most important thing you would share what would that
be? Yeah, I think it’s reiterating just you know what I said not long ago, which is really just, you know, follow your curiosities, your you know, those feelings if you have any interest, you know, that will guide you and that would be pretty much it.
So wake up to who you truly are at listen to your heart. And, and then learn about the mind because seems to be what most people who’ve been on the journey, catch on to all roads lead back to transforming the mind to transform your life.
Yeah, absolutely. There’s no one way of healing.
Yeah. So thank you so much for being my guest on illuminated mind podcast. I look forward to perhaps continuing collaboration with you or certainly just to hear about all your continued future success. So thank you so much, Anne Marie. Pleasure to have you here.
Thanks, Matthew. Have a great thank you