Healer Q&A: Cultivating authentic online presence with Erika Polsinelli
The following interview is a transcript excerpt from The Heallist Podcast episode. Listen to the full audio version below and subscribe to get notified of new episodes.
Today we are joined by Erika Polsinelli, the founder and creator of Evolve by Erika to talk about her inspiring journey as a healer. She stumbled upon Kundalini breath work five years ago while dealing with personal anxiety, paranoia and panic attacks and that changed everything for her. Now, she teaches breathwork, meditation, kundalini on her very own platform and community, hosts her podcasts and retreats and built an incredible following.
In this episode, we discuss the challenges of navigating various energies and the importance of setting boundaries. Erika's approach to integrating bite-sized meditations into a busy lifestyle is both practical and profound, demonstrating that even a few minutes of daily practice can lead to significant spiritual growth. Don't miss Erika’s invitation to connect further through her extensive library of meditation videos and live classes.
How Erika's Journey Started
Erika Polsinelli: I always knew that I wanted to create something and it was all based on empowering other people. And I realized that probably in my early 20s, and a lot of it came from my upbringing and how I wanted to support my family, whether it be emotionally, spiritually, financially, whatever it may be. And around college I realized that people can have their own business, they can use their creativity to create a job for themselves and I can do this and actually support people in a way that's so passionate to me, where I can really help people empower themselves through this practice and change their own life. So the other aspect of this was my life and what I do for work now is one. Everything I share on social media. That is truly me and my authentic life. Meditation is part of my everyday life.
So in our world we've been brainwashed or programmed about how a leader or CEO or whatever should be and how a spiritual person should be, and how spiritual people shouldn't have money and they shouldn't have nice things because they're giving. But can't we recreate that? And how amazing would it be for people who are so conscious and spiritually connected to have a lot of resources, because we can reach more people, we can help more people, we could do amazing things with the resources and the financial abundance that we have when we stay connected to that really intentional and conscious space. So I know we're living through a huge paradigm shift right now and there's a lot of shifts we're making, and what you're bringing up is absolutely one of them. It's a big shift. We're going to start seeing that acceptance of spiritual people, making money in a very in a conscious way, in a way of integrity, from a place of love and expansion, and then hopefully inspiring so many other people to take the leap and seeing you don't have to stay in a job that you feel so disconnected to. You can actually go ahead, use your gifts to make a living for yourself while impacting so many other people.
Navigating Authenticity in Social Media
Yuli Ziv: So earlier you mentioned your social media presence. That is part of who you are. It's so authentic and it's beautifully done, it feels genuine, it's very relatable, you feel very connected to your audience. And was that just kind of natural? Because I know there's people that come to that place and they're naturally fitting the format and the medium. But a majority of people don't have that comfort with social media channels, with putting themselves out there without talking on camera, and some people it takes them years to get to that place when they feel authentic, even though they feel authentic inside, but it doesn't always translate to the medium. So can you talk about your process there? Was it a process to find the right format that was authentic and comfortable to you, or did it just come about naturally?
Erika Polsinelli: When I discovered the practice, I wanted to do anything I could to share it with people because of how it impacted me so greatly. It truly healed me and I was so excited about it, that I found something that is just so transformative. I transformed so much through this. And something my husband would say often is he recognized early on, “you really don't care how you come off to people.“ You just want to share from here. You're never focused on what people will think of you. If you have a message, you're going to share it, and that's part of the recipe of success and what's helped me a lot is just truly sharing from a pure and authentic place, and I never got down on “oh, I don't really look great in this video” or stopping someone else's perspective of me, especially early on. I had naivete on my side when I was starting, because I want to share this. And as I grew a bit more sensitive to energy because that's what a lot of these practices will do, I'm more aware of energy and sharing and how much to share and what to share and all of those things.
The Power You Can Get from Short Meditations
Erika Polsinelli: What I maybe have shifted or tweaked is the amount of time we need to spend doing it, because I had a spiritual awakening by practicing three to five minutes every day. That's how powerful these practices are, and I saw that and I looked around at the modern woman or the modern man and we might not have an hour and a half for a full sadhana or a full kundalini practice, but we could get a lot done in three to five minutes with this practice. So I started teaching bite-sized meditations, to help people really start to build their practice. And what ends up happening is you tap into that energy which you described and as you described it, it gave me such chills. You start to tap into this energy within yourself and you want to go longer. In three to five minutes this feels like home to me that I haven't really been to before and I want to stay here. And then it turns into bliss and euphoria and all those feelings.
So while staying true to the practice, allowing it to be bite-sized or to cut down the kriyas, and keeping the ratio, because kundalini is very time-specific, but you could cut the rest of them in half, just keeping the ratio of the exercises and times. I've done that and I also incorporated brain training that I had to use in order to heal my anxiety. I had to retrain my brain, so I would incorporate thinking thoughts of gratitude, thinking positive thoughts while you're in this really high state. Think about releasing the negative thoughts or the thoughts of fear from you and then bringing in that new thought, recreating, help to guide those new neural pathways in the mind, and the practice supports that and it's actually doing that for you, whether you consciously think of it or not. But I brought in more of the conscious and mindset training into the practice as well, because that helped me a lot, and tapping into gratitude is just such an expansive practice too.
Sharing Authentic Healing to the World with Social Media
Erika Polsinelli: It grew by putting myself out there and really sharing again from this authentic space. I know, I sound like a broken record, but that's what it is, because we all want connection, and we all want to feel that we're connected and hear from one another someone's journey and what worked for them and how it could possibly help us. And there's so much power in sharing and even if it's vulnerable. We have to do what feels aligned to our soul, what we feel comfortable sharing, of course, but if no one shared their experience, we wouldn't be able to grow as a collective. As a human species, we learn from one another, we gain hope and faith in one another and we're educated through other people's process and the trials and tribulations that they had to go through to find what really helped them. So that played a really big role in having people feel safe and wanting to try the practice and allowing me to guide them as a teacher and a guide. And also having in-person events has been so special too. Connecting in person, being able to hug these people - they see me on a screen every morning on their app, but no, I'm a human, and we're here in this journey of life to live, to grow and evolve continuously together, and so many of my community members are just so well versed in all of this that we're talking about today and all the things that your community has tapped into as well, and we learn from one another, and that's the most beautiful thing about it.
Final Thoughts for Listeners
Erika Polsinelli: It's about finding what really lights you up, about what you do and what you share, and just doing it somehow some way. At first you're not charging for it, maybe you are just offering it to build a community and to get feedback and to see how people take to it, but, more importantly, to see how you feel after sharing. And then from there this momentum grows and then you start to find ways that this can support you financially and help you step into this as a career. But it's just taking action in a way that feels so good and aligned to you and doing what lights you up more, because that momentum will build and that will guide you to different experiences and different opportunities. We need more people in this space. It's so easy to go on social media and everyone's doing it, I'm not doing it, and at the time when I started teaching Kundalini, I really didn't know many people doing it, so I didn't really face that in the beginning and that's something a lot of people might face right now. But a really important thing to remember is that there is a teacher for everyone and there's a student every teacher and who's meant to learn with me and on Evolve they're going to find me and if there's another Kundalini teacher, there are students meant for that teacher as well.
It's really not about this competitive space, but I always look at it as this bigger role of being here and, through Kundalini, helping people awaken their higher consciousness at this time on the planet. And we need as many healers and teachers as possible sharing their light, because no one's going to do it in the way you're going to do it, because no one is you and there are students that are meant to learn from you in this lifetime.
