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Laura Stendel shares how intuition shows up through the body, why trauma can make it harder to trust, and how reconnecting with your body is key to hearing it clearly again.

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Trust in your intuition is often built or broken long before you realize it.

In this conversation, Laura Stendel, a massage therapist and energy practitioner, shares how years of working with the body revealed a pattern. People do not lose their intuition. They lose their trust in it. Often through trauma, conditioning, or being taught to look outside themselves for answers.

We explore how intuition shows up physically, why it can feel unreliable after certain experiences, and what it looks like to reconnect with it in a way that feels grounded instead of overwhelming.

If you have ever second guessed your instincts, felt disconnected from your inner voice, or wondered how to rebuild that relationship, this conversation offers a different way in.

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Memory and Experience Shape What It Means to Be Human

Brandi Fleck: Here's a quick trigger warning: as Laura shares one particular client story that she does have permission to share, the topic of kidnapping and negative entities does come up for a few minutes around the 15 to 20 minute mark or so, so listener discretion is advised.

Laura, a question I ask everyone who comes on the show is: what does being human mean to you?

Laura Stendel: Okay, so that was the first question I saw in your email, and I was like, oh, she didn't want to know what my cat's name was. This is a little bit more than I thought.

I saw it and I was like, that is such a deep question. That is the one question that I've been thinking about, what does it mean to be human?

Honestly, as a species, as a human being, as a soul, I think what it would mean to me ultimately is we're able to distinguish experiences and memories. I think human beings have this innate sense of taking those experiences and creating memories like they're real places still, not just living in the past, and they shape who we are moving forward.

I think it's definitely what sets us apart from any other animal, and memory is a lot of what I'm sure we're going to talk about today. What comes out for people in sessions with me creates experiences that the body holds onto that we have, I think, as a gift that a lot of other species don't have going on for them.

A lot of other species are able to just experience things and move on and learn how to survive just based off basic instincts, where we take experiences and memories and it shapes us for the rest of our lives.

Brandi Fleck: I love that answer, and it's actually really unique. I've been asking people this question for a long time, and not many people approach it in that way.

Laura Stendel: Yeah.

Brandi Fleck: You're welcome. I just took a few notes here because I actually don't have any questions about memory, but we'll go there. I think we'll go there. Let's go there.

Everybody, today we are welcoming to the show Laura Stendel. Thank you so much for being here. I am really looking forward to this conversation because what we're going to talk about today is one of my most favorite topics.

Laura Stendel: Mine too. Thanks for having me.

Brandi Fleck: Awesome. Before we dive in, can you just tell our listeners a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Laura Stendel: Sure. My name is Laura. I am a licensed massage therapist. I'm a mom. I have been in Tennessee since 2017, and I actually was born and raised on the West Coast, so it's definitely a different life we experience out here, but one that I wanted badly.

I graduated college in 2003 with the intention that I was going to go on to be an attorney, and I was convinced ever since I was a little girl that that was my trajectory. Then I graduated and, en route to law school, completely changed my mind and had a change of head and heart. I ended up in massage therapy school, of all things, and it is a decision that I have never regretted.

I really feel like the universe put me on a path of what was going to be best for me mentally and physically. I like a good challenge, so I think I probably would have been an okay attorney, but I think what I do now is much more rewarding, and it has taken me places I never thought that I would dream of being.

I started my career in, of all places, Las Vegas, thinking, "I'll just be here for a couple of years. This could be fun in my early 20s," and I stayed for a really long time, about 12 years. I owned a business there. It was a lot of fun. It was very challenging. Vegas is a hard place to grow up, that's for sure.

Brandi Fleck: I bet. It'll either make you or break you, right?

Laura Stendel: Right. I stayed, and I got out on my own terms and when I was ready for greener pastures. Literally, I packed up and we came here to Franklin, Tennessee, and I haven't regretted that either. I'm really happy here.

I kind of rekindled my love with massage after COVID. I felt like it was the right timing to get back into massage, and I thought, "Maybe I'll dabble in it a little and meet some new people and work part-time," and within six months, I had a full-time business going, and I knew it was something, it was a train I couldn't stop.

Brandi Fleck: I just got chills.

Laura Stendel: I love it, It fills my cup. I own my own practice. I have now since 2022. I worked for someone else for a little bit just to get my feet wet again and then just realized, "Hey, I have to work for myself again. That's where I'm the happiest."

Here I am meeting people like you who are not just clients, but they turn into my friends. As everyone knows who knows me as a massage therapist for 19 years and counting, I treat all my clients like they're my family. I have lived so far away from my family for so long that they really do get that special place in my heart and in my life.

It's great. I'm very lucky. I'm very, very lucky I do something I really actually love so much. Not a lot of people could say that.

Woman celebrating one year of her intuitive work business with a young girl, surrounded by balloons.

Brandi Fleck: It's true. I love that. You do treat your clients really well, by the way, guys. It's true.

I love that when you realized you wanted to do something different, you just embraced it. At least that's what it sounded like. It was almost like a choice of, "I'm just going to have to maybe reinvent myself and go back to school and start all over again."

Laura Stendel: It's like one day I just knew that being an attorney was probably very profitable, what I went to school for. I had a lot of knowledge in political science and in women's studies, and I thought that it was the trajectory.

Then to just know, that intuition telling you that's not where you're supposed to be forever, and it very well likely could, the stress could kill you. I just went against everything that I had gone to school for and did something completely different.

How Intuition Shows Up in Bodywork and Massage Therapy

Brandi Fleck: Okay, so you work with the body, but it's really interesting because I'm going to be asking you a lot of questions about intuition, and I think it's really unique how you incorporate that into the work you do with the body.

Can you tell us how you use your intuition when working with clients?

Laura Stendel: Yeah. It's interesting because it grew with me. It grew up with me. I've had, I don't even know what you'd call it. Some people in mainstream call it gifts. I was just taught it's just a part of who I am and where I actually come from, like a lineage of this.

I didn't really know how to facilitate it properly. I think a lot of us are born with intuition. I think all of us are born with intuition, and all of us are born with gifts. It's just, do we hone in on that? Are we taught to embrace it? Are we taught to fear it? Are we taught nothing about it, and so we're just constantly second guessing ourselves?

That gut instinct or those little moments of clairvoyance where you're like, "Wow, déjà vu," or, "Wow, I knew that was going to happen." I've always had that all my life, but I couldn't control it necessarily.

Then fast forward into growing with my massage practice, I thought that energy work was definitely going to be the next natural progression after doing bodywork. I really thought energy work was going to be what blows this whole intuition, clairvoyance thing wide open.

I started with Reiki. A lot of people know what Reiki is. It's a form of energy work. I was attuned to level one, and nothing. I felt nothing. I was like, "Got to keep going." I was attuned to level two, and I was like, "Wow, this is just not my thing."

But I just knew there was more to it, and I just thought, second guessing yourself, right? Maybe I am reading into more than what's really there.

Then I started doing different forms of energy work just as continuing education. Being a therapist, just like most licensed professions, you have to keep up with continuing education. The more I added it into my bag of tools, learning chakra balancing, learning essential oil and aromatherapy, learning acupressure. I just started feeling like, "Okay, if I don't force it, if I just learn more, all these little nuggets that I'm learning might come together as something."

Ultimately, I was right. There again, there's that intuition going, "You think you're going to be in control. You thought it was going to be Reiki. You thought it was going to be just bodywork, but no, it's something more than that."

Fast forward to now, I've been doing this for 19 years, I feel like I've been able to finally, within the last 10 years, really hone in on what that is, how I can facilitate that in my bodywork, how I can show other people how to do it.

It's just becoming a beautiful experience, and something that I never was afraid of, but I always wanted to control. It turns out that's not how the universe works. So yeah, I'm just really stepping into this more. And more, the older I get and the more I learn.

Real Client Stories of Intuition and Emotional Healing

Brandi Fleck: Okay, it's incredible. Can you give us an example of how it comes out in the bodywork? Do you have a memory with a client where it's like, "Oh, this is where I should go do this type of massage," or something like that?

Laura Stendel: Sure. I have a lot, but there are a few things that just stand out.

I remember the first time I'd ever used acupressure as a form of healing and therapy for a client that had cancer. I was like, "Well, this seems gentle enough and something that might just help them relax," and I honestly didn't think that I was very good at it and just wanted more or less practice because I had just started really diving into this whole idea of acupressure, which is very similar to acupuncture, minus needles. Safe for massage therapists who are educated on it to practice.

I'm in the session with this woman, and as I'm literally holding acupressure points on her face and around her neck, I look down and I could cry, I saw my mother. I mean, clear as day, I was looking right at my mom, and I'm thinking, "Why am I thinking about my mom?" Then the second guessing comes in. Was I just talking to my mom on the way over here? Were we talking about moms before she laid down on my table?

Then I started getting a little bit more of a clearer picture, and again trying to think, how does that correlate with my day? Was I just thinking about all these things?

I took the chance when it was over, and she sat up and said, "Wow, I just feel so much more relaxed, and thank you. I've never experienced anything like that." I was like, "Can I ask you something?" I just kind of went for it, and I said, "By chance, in our session, were you concentrating on your mother?"

Waterworks. I'm getting nervous thinking I've crossed a line and I had no right—second guessing constantly. She's like, "I was. I am literally in the most painful experience of my life dealing with cancer, and all I wish all the time is that I just had my mom."

And she's like, "I was thinking about my mom. Isn't that funny you mentioned that?" I was like, "Yes, that's very funny that I mentioned that."

I felt like bells were going off, and I thought, "Okay, I'm listening. I'm listening to myself. I'm listening to my thoughts. Let's just stop trying to second guess."

It was a little bit of stuff like that, practicing, practicing, practicing. Still second guessing. I still do it. I think even the best of the best still second guess. There's a lot of discernment that goes on that makes you think, "Was I just listening to that song? Did I just eat that food? Was I just thinking of that place for vacation?"

Sometimes you just have to go, "I don't care. It feels so real. I've got to talk about it."

I'll fast forward to just last year when I opened my own business. I received a client from my chiropractor, and I really knew nothing about this woman. She was on my schedule. I could see her first and last name, but really that doesn't matter to me until I know exactly why they're in there.

All I got from my chiropractor is that she's just very kind, but she's been through a lot, and take it slow with this one. I was like, "Okay, that tells me we can't just dive right into deep tissue."

She's telling me a little bit about her problems. When I would get to her hips, I'm like, "What's going on? What happened here? It's really heavy. This is not just, 'Oh, I strained it sitting at work.'"

Woman surrounded by greenery inside the Gaylord Opryland Hotel.

She's telling me about a lot of body trauma, a lot of stuff that now is obvious to me that I'm feeling. She had had a really bad accident where she was literally hit with a car on that side. I'm like, "Okay, that's all making a lot of normal scientific sense."

Then I started hearing a name. I heard a name clear as day. I heard the name Billy. Nobody in our day and age goes by the name Billy. How many friends do you have named Billy?

Brandi Fleck: None.

Laura Stendel: Maybe like Will or William or whatever. I'm literally hearing this name, and I'm like, "Why are you here? What is this name?"

Now there's no discerning. I don't know anybody named Billy. Then I feel this presence, this looming presence, and I'm taking a different posture. I'm tucking her into the sheets, turning up the heat, doing all these things that would make me feel safe.

She's telling me a little bit more about some of her trauma. By the way, I did get her permission to talk about this, won't say her name. She starts telling me about when she was kidnapped as a child, and her kidnapper's name was William.

I don't know that until I say, "Who's Billy?" She goes, "I don't know anybody named Billy," and then it clicks that Billy's William, that's a nickname.

She goes, "Oh my God, Laura, the only person who called him Billy was the investigator."

I said, "Well, he's here. I feel him, and I'm going to tuck you in and make you safer. I'm taking posture right now that he's not allowed here, but he's trying. He's trying, my friend, because he is a bad guy, but he doesn't get to win today just because he showed up."

"I'm telling you right now, you are alive, you got away, and we are not letting him in this safe space.” She literally got off the table and was like, "Don't you know? Isn't that bizarre?"

"I don't, but now I do, and I'm going to make sure you're in a safe space. This person doesn't get to take up any more of our time. Yeah, we acknowledge you, but you don't get to be here today."

It just, we felt better. Then she and I instantly had this connection. It's like I knew more than she ever needed to tell me. I just knew. It's like the picture got clearer and clearer, and it's because I took that chance and said, "By the way, who is this person?"

In that, I think just meeting someone off the street, that's a hard connection to get right away. I think there are people who do have those gifts, and I think it's fantastic.

But I think in the exchange of bodywork, in the exchange of sharing experiences or these little glimmers that they're giving me of what happened, I suddenly feel things, hear things that I am trying to discern that ultimately lead me to ask the questions with confidence.

There have been times I have said, "Who is so-and-so?" and they go, "I don't know," and I'm like, "Okay, I'll wait," because it does take a little bit of time to make that connection.

I'm sure, I am so sure, that I'm literally like, "Okay, we'll wait. We'll just think about that. I'll wait."

Brandi Fleck: Yeah. It's amazing, it's amazing. There's such an energy exchange happening in bodywork. As anybody who's had a massage and walked away thinking they feel like they're floating or they're so much better or they feel freer, it's a huge exchange of energy going on in one little confined space.

Laura Stendel: Yeah, it really is.

Brandi Fleck: I think it's really cool that you're able to do that. Let me, it’s a lot to unpack, I know.

Laura Stendel: Yeah.

Why Intuition Feels Hard to Trust After Trauma

Brandi Fleck: I was going to pivot into trauma for a minute then, since we're talking about it. I work with a lot of people who've experienced trauma, and definitely in my own healing journey, I've noticed that when you've been through certain things, like maybe emotional abuse or neglect or something like that, you have a really hard time trusting your intuition.

You don't trust yourself. You don't even know what your intuition is. You're in fight or flight, so it gets really quiet or quieter.

For someone who can't hear it or trust it, what advice would you have?

Laura Stendel: I think it's really important that you find somebody you feel safe with and just not expect a lot, but just expect what I call glimmers. I don't know where I came up with that name. I don't think anybody's ever called it that to me, but we talk so much about triggers with trauma, and I'm like, let's talk about glimmers.

These little parts that go, "Okay, I feel that when I'm around that person," or "The energy changes when that person comes into my space," or "I suddenly feel safe when I cross that threshold."

Just be willing to experience and allow these glimmers to come. You can't force them to come, that's what I've learned. Case in point, I was trying Reiki to suddenly become this really intuitive clairvoyant, and it just never happened for me. It happens for a lot of people with Reiki or other things, but it just wasn't me. I was forcing something that couldn't happen. I think learning and just asking the questions.

Where we live now, Brandi, unfortunately, most people who are born and raised in the South were taught this is stuff you fear. This is the antithesis of Christianity and other things, and so they're even afraid to talk to me about it, like I'm going to come at them and be like, "You're going to hell for talking about this."

I'm like, "No, let's talk about whatever you want to talk about and let's see what happens." I can be a safe place to experience this with you, or not, but just maybe be a little open that you could really tune into that for yourself.

Brandi Fleck: I love that you brought that up because it's so taboo. Earlier, when you were experiencing things, you were like, "Oh..." It's like you don't even know if you should say something or not.

How do you respond to that fear? Or no, I want to ask it another way. For someone who thinks intuition or psychic hits, we're using them interchangeably, but pretty much, how do you help them not think it's evil?

Laura Stendel: It just depends on what the person's been through.

For example, I would say even right now, you are probably telling yourself what you've always heard, even though you want to be in this room with me talking about these things. Am I right?

And they're like, "Yeah." It's like that chatter of cultural, societal norms or what they were told growing up is still kind of pulling their shirt this way when they want to go this way.

It's difficult. These are just walls that get broken down slowly. I'm not there to change anybody's mind. I'm not there to say, "Hey, you're going to walk the same path I walk." That's not how it works.

But what I will do is say, "Tell me about maybe a time when you were intuitive and you were right. Did you get set on fire and were you damned to hell?" Were you right and it saved your life? Or were you right and you went against it, and then there's that Captain Hindsight that said, "See? You knew better."

Let's talk about that. That's a real experience that kind of creates who you are moving forward. So next time, maybe just be a little bit softer to that.

I did have a client who said, bless her, that she was afraid that if she even listened too intently to her gut that she was going to open the door for demons. I was like, "Well, then shut the door." We have the power to control not just what we do physically, but mentally.

It's just finding that right mind-heart connection that feels safe. We can practice safe things without worry of ridicule. It might still be there, broadly speaking, especially where we live, Brandi, but it's everyone's journey.

Brandi Fleck: Yeah, slowly but surely. It's so funny that you brought up the demon thing because I think that's really prevalent.

I work to foster my intuition and psychic gifts, or whatever you want to call them, and I'm fairly. I don't know if I'm new at it, but I've been really focusing on it a lot lately. I decided to tell my parents about it the other day, and they're pretty open to this kind of thing, but the first thing that came out was, "Well, if you open up to the good stuff, you also let in the bad stuff. What happens if you come across a demon?"

I'm like, "Well, I'll just set a boundary. I don't know how, visualizations or whatever." But I just really think the demon thing is prevalent, and it's been coming up a lot lately, which is really interesting.

Laura Stendel: Yeah, but also think about where we live. It is so okay in the South to say, "Not today, Satan." Shirts even say, "Not today, Satan."

We're acknowledging a supernatural that is opposite of light and love, and we even joke about it. Ultimately, energy is what's important. Whether you put big energy into things that feel good, that are light and love, or you put big energy into things that don't feel good. You have the power to control that. Nobody else does. Not a pastor, not a mother, not a father.

We have this beautiful thing called will. We are allowed to will whatever we want in whatever way we want. I'm going to use you as an example. Taking this journey for yourself, you could look at everything as being terrifying.

Let me pivot for a second. For example, if you're into tarot, a lot of people are so scared of tarot. I'm like, that's okay. I'm deathly afraid of, you're going to laugh, I’ve got all kinds of phobias that are just so silly.

Fear is a fear. In the tarot deck, if you were to pull, let's say, the death card, people are like, "Oh my God, I knew it. It's awful. This is Satan's work." I'm like, we all die. It's the one thing we will all be certain of. As soon as we were born, we were dying.

But in tarot, death literally means the death of something now and the shift of something being created, a new door opening. Doesn't that happen for us even as children? Moving from elementary school to high school, high school to college, one relationship through divorce, it doesn't have to mean evil.

When someone may get the death card pulled and their first reaction is fear, I do believe that a fear of death is real. It's more or less the fear of the unknown. But in tarot, that just means some door is closing so another door can open.

We cannot have new life without death. We cannot all live forever and have an overpopulated Earth. It's just recycled energy.

When you think of moving forward in your journey, I would encourage you to create the kind of energy that you want, and that's the kind of energy that you'll get back. You just get to choose how you interpret that.

To one person, that might be evil, devil, demons. To another, it might be letting go, shifting blame, taking responsibility, getting mental help, getting self-help—whatever it is—finding love and light in your life, moving through hard things.

Brandi Fleck: I love this perspective. I love it. I don't know if this is going to be a softball or a curveball, but are you getting any intuitive hits right now at all?

Laura Stendel: All day long. All day long.

In fact, at 3:23, when I went to silence my phone, and not just with you and I right now, because I'll talk about that in a second, but I received a text from an old chiropractor that I have not heard from in a very long time.

I've worked for chiropractors. I've seen lots of chiropractors. Wouldn't you just know that when I got off of work and went to a restaurant that reminded me of this person, I was thinking about this person from like 1:30 to 2:30.

I sit down at my phone, and lo and behold, there is a text message from that chiropractor at 3:23. I was like, "I almost want to say, I kind of should have known you were going to text today or check in today or ask me about my business today," because out of nowhere I thought about you for an hour.

Stuff like that happens so frequently, Brandi, that it's just kind of my way of life.

It does take a lot of alone time and grounding to kind of shut all that out. I knew on the way to work today that I was going to have a client, and all three clients I know very well, and I knew that one of them was going to have an emotional breakdown today.

I knew it was going to be dark hair. Sure enough, that happened today in session, and I was there for it. I didn't have to say anything. I just knew it's okay to let go. I think you want to let go today.

That is such a beautiful thing. I felt prepared. I knew today was going to be the day that one of my dark-haired clients was going to, you know, it's just these little things that you're discerning. You're like writing a story and you're like, "Okay, I'm waiting for that today."

Laura Stendel: I just get excited, and this is how it is in session too. I start wanting to ask questions, and I start almost writing down initials and things like this. It's really neat to see how the picture gets clear.

It's starting to make sense, everything I was hearing. I'm like, "Oh, there it is. Thank you for explaining to me." Now I feel like I'm driving with a windshield that's clear, where before it was a little mucky, and then it gets a little clear. Next thing you know, I'm driving with a very clean windshield, and I see what you see.

Brandi Fleck: It's really interesting that you brought up letting go of emotions because today I was with a personal trainer working out, and I've been doing that for about eight weeks now.

Laura Stendel: Nice.

Brandi Fleck: Yeah, go Brandi. At the end of the workout, it was just so hard, and I had been having kind of an off morning, and the tears just wanted to come. I don't know if it's the full moon that's coming or what, but they just had to come.

I felt so weird and awkward, but I was like, "I'm sorry, it just has to happen."

Laura Stendel: We apologize. We apologize. Oh my gosh, Brandi took up space with her emotions, right? Like, you gotta apologize.

That's why I always tell people, it's okay. If anything, here is the safest place for you. In some cases, when their session's over, I stay or I keep going, or I go home and I'm journaling about them and then I'm asking them questions later and checking in with them, because what they're going through matters to me.

Just to have the bravery and the vulnerability it takes to show emotion, it is brave. I've been there too. But then I find myself going, "I'm sorry."

No, don't apologize for taking up space. Good for you, Brandi. There's a huge mind-body connection that maybe has had a huge disconnect for you for quite some time, holding you back from stepping into your arena of just how big and powerful you can be.

So when you go and do something like a hard workout that challenges you and then you feel like you've accomplished something, that's you stepping into that arena. But yeah, it's a little emotional.

Brandi Fleck: It is. I find that even if I know I'm feeling an emotion and I do some kind of physical activity or some kind of bodywork, it usually opens something up.

Laura Stendel: Sure. To your point, I literally tell people, "Let's blow those portals wide open," because we are walking entities of energy. This is why we need energy work so much.

When I get people who are skeptics, I have the whole skeptic routine down to a pat. I'm like, "Okay, what are human beings made of? We're made of water and we're made of carbon. Okay, great. What is all that made out of?"

If you keep breaking it down to the most basic thing, we're atoms. Okay, what are atoms? Energy.

How did we get created as atoms? Energy. It doesn't just disappear, it just renews and recycles.

What you've probably been feeling for a long time is your energy channels stuck, blocked. What does that create? That creates a loss of sense of self. It creates skepticism. It creates physical disabilities. It creates emotional handicaps.

It creates us stopping ourselves from going through the process of self-care, of asking for help, of resetting, of creating boundaries. We've got to get those, I say blast those portals wide open, because what else is possible when your energy is functioning properly, when your body feels good and your mind feels good?

That doesn't mean that we don't all go back into a funk or that things don't depress us or that life's situations don't feel heavy sometimes, but we have to be able to know how to work through it.

I hope that by showing people how important self-care is, by showing people that they have a safe place, by teaching people how to do self-care at home, how to practice energy work, basic things like breathing exercises, that you can be more in tune with your body and then ultimately more in tune with how to receive and let energy flow better.

A Beginner Guide to Chakras and Energy Centers

Brandi Fleck: Okay, well speaking of, and when you said, "Let's blow those portals open,” are you referring to chakras?

Laura Stendel: Yes. Chakras, to me, it's so interesting. Not a lot of people understand it. It's not hard to understand, it's more or less harder to accept.

We understand that we're breathing air, but the science of it. To see it, to feel it, you don't think about it. Try to explain oxygen. It's hard. But we breathe, and we can't function without it.

It's the same thing with chakras. We have these energy, chakra literally means "wheel," like spinning wheel in Sanskrit, and we have these wheels of energy in our bodies that keep us functioning, that keep our blood pumping, they keep our thoughts flowing, they help us get up in the morning, they help us find rest at night.

They all have to be in alignment with each other, or you have this hiccup in your energy flow, and it can make you feel certain things.

For example, if your energy in your crown chakra, up at the top of your head, is stuck, you might feel a lot of spiritual disconnect. It might be hard for you to tune in with your intuition. You might have a hard time meditating or praying.

If you are someone who prays and believes in a more religious sense, you might feel like you don't have a right to pray and ask for what you need or that you're not worthy of accepting and receiving.

If you have, let's just say, your root chakra, down in your private area, if that is stuck, you might have low libido, constant low back pain, irritable bowel symptoms. You might have trouble feeling connection to people, feeling grounded. You might not feel comfortable in your own space.

It's so interesting to think that where we have these spinning wheels of energy. If they're stuck, it makes sense.

If your third eye chakra right here is stuck, then you have a hard time seeing future goals for yourself. You have a hard time getting to them and attaining them. You have a hard time connecting with your intuition.

You might experience lots of headaches, eye pain, your eyes might constantly be watering, or you have chronic dry eye.

This isn't anything new. Chakra balancing is not some new fad of self-care. These go back thousands of years in different Indian, Hindu, Buddhist traditions of how to have overall health and well-being by balancing these energy cycles or circles in our body.

These spinning wheels of energy are important. I fell in love with it having it done, probably 15 or 16 years ago, and experiencing what it felt like to get off the table and feel more mental clarity, softness in my heart, a little surrender to my emotions.

I was suffering from terrible sciatica, and I felt like for the first time I could get up and my low back wasn't killing me. I was like, "Get out of here. Really? Energy work made me feel this way?"

There again, it's that second guessing, but the more I looked into it, the more I started practicing.

I loved it so much that I actually started teaching people how to do this themselves and little things we can do to get a grip on balancing our energy in day-to-day life.

Brandi Fleck: I love that. I had known that you were teaching some of this stuff to people.

How to Open and Balance Your Chakras

What would you say is the most important information that someone could have about? Like I don't know if you would say opening or closing or balancing, all of those parts of doing the chakra work?

Laura Stendel: Probably what I say when I open my classes, it doesn't matter to me whether you've done this 15 times or this is your first time and you completely don't believe in it. I don't care if you're a skeptic or if you're here but it's still going against some sort of spiritual belief.

I believe that I can teach you something that will help open up your eyes to a different form. A more natural, holistic form of self-care. Whether they were skeptics when we got started, I know, I can almost guarantee, that when we are done, you will feel different.

Just like I could guarantee that if you laid on my massage table asking for a deep tissue massage because your low back is strained, you are going to feel different. How long those results last, not sure. I can't make any promises on that, everybody's different.

But can I also guarantee this is something I can show you how to do so you can help rescue yourself when you feel stuck or be there as your own ally when you feel like no one else is helping you feel better? Yeah, I can definitely do that.

It really doesn't matter the backstory. I just want you to come to the table knowing that I know all the background about this. If you could just trust me and take my hand, I'm going to walk you through this and show you something that's going to help you grow in your own health and wellness journey.

If anything, for an hour, you're going to feel pretty damn good.

Brandi Fleck: Yeah. And whether you can explain it or not, that's okay. Some people get that feeling from going to a meditation class or a sound bowl class or going to church. They may not be able to explain it, but when they leave, they feel like a different person. That is what's important to me.

Just for our listeners who may not know, can you give us a really quick rundown on what the chakras are and maybe what their purpose is?

Laura Stendel: I don't think that's too big of a question.

Kind of going back to it, we touched a little bit about it when I was talking about crown chakra versus root chakra, and those are the two polar opposites. Crown chakra is the top of your head, root chakra is your base.

Essentially, there are seven. We have our root chakra, our sacral chakra. Which is about the sacrum, real low back, solar plexus, so that's your stomach, everything around your core. We have heart, we have throat, we have third eye, so center of the forehead, and then we have our crown chakra.

Chakra is such a beautiful thing. It involves color, it involves auras, it involves feeling things in your body, it involves your breath and breathwork.

It's not just receiving bodywork. You are doing a little bit of work, whether you have someone leading you through it or not. It's gentle, it's kind, it's receiving. I think for a lot of people, women especially, they have a hard time coming to the table just to receive.

I teach how to feel where maybe energy is stuck, and that looks different. You might feel hotter parts of the body than others. You might start to see color.

If I'm hovering over someone and we're working on crown chakra because that feels stuck, and all of a sudden you're seeing color or splashes of white or glimmers of green, that's something we might want to talk about.

If I'm up here and you're just like, "All I see is green," we may need to do a heart chakra–crown chakra connection. We may need to talk about that.

It's just really interesting. I have a different take on it. From everything that I've learned, I've realized that chakras are so cool and so three-dimensional.

I like to incorporate essential oils to trigger that sense of smell, memories, feel-good feelings. For example, if I'm working on the sacral chakra, which is associated with the color orange, I might put a dab of wild orange essential oil in their hands and have them smell it.

That affects the olfactory in the brain. That signals different feelings, memories, emotions. For me, anytime I smell orange, it takes me back home to Southern California, my happy place, my dad's backyard among all of our orange trees and our little orange grove.

That might be something that, whether you have a memory with that smell or color or not, maybe triggers a new one. Maybe now, in this moment that you feel so good, this is your safe memory, your safe space.

I'm trying to entice that color orange for you because when we focus on that chakra and focus on the colors and do everything we can to get it spinning, it helps you energetically open that up, be willing to receive, get that energy flowing versus feeling stagnant back pain and just giving into that.

Chakras are just really cool. There's so many things you can do with it. I've done it with giving people different gemstones to hold, maybe associated with that chakra's color.

Gemstones and minerals themselves have their own energy frequencies and purposes. Quartz is really good for meditation and connecting with the divine, and that's also associated with the crown chakra, which is the colors purple and white.

It's just so cool. It all boils back down to energy. Colors, smells, tastes, tactile things that we're holding. It all has a purpose and all has an energy.

How Memories Get Stored in the Body

Brandi Fleck: Yeah. Going back to what you were saying in the beginning about being human and our memories, what is really the power of a memory?

I'm asking this thinking about what you just said about scent and maybe creating a new memory or what's there.

Laura Stendel: I think piggybacking off what I said in the beginning, what makes us different as humans versus other mammals, other species, is the imprint of memories creates us from that moment forward, and we don't let that go.

The old saying is the issues are in the tissues, and we just shove it somewhere and start experiencing trauma in the body. Later down the road, you're like, "I just don't know why I have this chronic hip pain, Brandi."

If we were to really, and I'm not a therapist, but I would always encourage people to look into that. There are fantastic ways of going through trauma safely. EMDR and other things that I highly recommend.

There are ways to do that, but I'll say that's because when something happened, it left an imprint in the body, and it changed you. Unconsciously, subconsciously, consciously. We are forever changed by our memories.

I tell a lot of people who come in and they're going through grief, we cannot die with the dead. We have to keep going. The past is a place of reference, but it's not a place of residence.

There are so many people who just don't let go, and that trauma, that grief, is so ingrained in who they are. I know that it's their journey, but I'm just one of many who are a safe place to walk them through that and be a good listener.

Maybe this is why you're having such terrible neck pain that you haven't been able to explain for 25 years, because truly I believe the issues are in the tissues.

That's not just bad trauma. That's also happy memories and happy times and places that seem like fantasies to us as we get older. The things from our childhood that were these little beautiful glimmers of happy times or milestones that we were so proud of, those leave an impression on us just as much as the trauma does.

Brandi Fleck: Do you have any insight into how it gets into the tissues?

Laura Stendel: I think the brain does so much to try to protect us that a lot of times people will say it's just unexplained physical pain, unexplained sudden autoimmune disorders.

I think that just like we're all kind of walking around knowing we have cancer. We have cancer, it's just some people's cancers keep going and dividing and multiplying. It's the same with trauma embedded into the DNA of who we really are.

For some people, it's all-consuming. For some people, it's hard to find, hard to clarify. For some people, they know it's there, but they ignore it.

I really think it just boils down to the brain. Our powerhouse, our major source of energy other than our heart, that brain-heart connection. It does what it does best: it tries to keep us safe.

If we can't mentally work through it, if we haven't had the right therapy or the right type of therapy to help us through it, the brain puts it somewhere.

We're only walking around using, what do they say, 10% of what our brain is capable of. It's unbelievable.

Then there are people like Oppenheimer, who were able to hone in on things they saw in their sleep and visions of fusion and all these things, and you're like, "That's amazing," because I don't think about those things.

Some people are able to unlock more. I think the brain tries to keep us safe, and in that memory, it locks it away, and unfortunately wherever it's stored, it kind of has an impact on a location in the body. Energy doesn't disappear.

Laura Stendel: I go to open up my mason jar that has my sourdough starter. Yes, I'm one of those people, and I don't let it die. It does get fed. Do I make bread? Not so much.

Every time I go to open my sourdough starter and it's about this thick at the bottom, I open it up and it goes, and all that pressure gets released and it starts to rise.

I don't know why I thought of that, but then I take some out, then I feed it, then I push it back down and I seal it tight. I kind of feel like that's what our brain does with trauma.

We might take a little out and face it head on, but then let's just throw it away and take the rest and shove it back down there, make it feel good for a little bit, put the lid on real tight, and shove it in the back of the refrigerator.

That's kind of what I would say our brains do with trauma. A lot of times, I don't think we're equipped. We weren't taught the tools on how to open that up and face that head on.

Brandi Fleck: I think that's true. Especially silent generation, boomers, Gen X, I'm Gen X, we weren't taught that by any means. That wasn't something discussed in school.

It really didn't become mainstream to take really good care of your mental health until social media started taking off with that. Now it's a thing to take care of your mental health and to unpack this stuff and work through it. Thank God, but it's still a lot to learn.

Laura Stendel: Yeah, and like the sourdough starter, you can only process a little bit at a time. You might not be able to handle a whole jar worth of starter right away.

Brandi Fleck: Exactly.

Laura Stendel: Yeah.

Brandi Fleck: Well, Laura, this has been an amazing conversation, and I just want to check with you and see if there's anything you want to share that I haven't asked about.

Laura Stendel: Gosh, I don't know. I feel like I could talk to you for six more hours. It's been so much fun.

I will just say this—I find myself saying a lot to my friends and to my clients—not everybody wants to talk about this, not everybody wants to try this, it is what it is—but just be more open to what you want to explore and what you want to feel and what you want to discern.

It isn't about how you were raised anymore. Period. We do not belong to our parents. We do not belong to any type of box we were put in.

My daughter does not belong to me. She is her own person. She is coming into her own gifts. What I have learned how to do was not what I watched my grandmother, who had gifts, do.

What my daughter wants to learn is interesting, but not what I have learned in terms of intuition and clairvoyance.

I just think I'm lucky enough that I found an avenue to help me streamline it. Bodywork was what was supposed to be my calling, and it has helped me not just strengthen who I am with purpose and a career, but it really showed me that all those glimmers and all those gifts that I kind of knew were already there. It showed me how to use them constructively, safely, and just empower myself while empowering other people.

So just follow your own journey and shut out everything else that says what you should know about this or what you've been taught or not taught about this, because it's very, very interesting.

I think it's very, very natural, and I think if more people followed their intuition, we'd have a happier world. Truly. Just like I believe if more people did self-care, that would be a much happier world.

Brandi Fleck: Yes. I agree. That's my little show. Awesome. All right, well, where can our listeners find you and your work?

Laura Stendel: Okay, so you can go to my website: intuitivebodyworktn.com. I have sessions that you can choose from. I do bodywork, lots of different styles of bodywork, including stretch and reflexology. I love Eastern modalities. I love incorporating all that.

I usually do a little chakra work in every client session, whether they've asked for it or not, it's just what I do. Especially towards the end, grounding my clients and reaffirming safe space.

People can also book chakra balancing sessions. It's a really unique experience. It could take anywhere from one to three hours—it's hard to say. I don't go in there and say, "We'll have about 45 minutes together and this is what you're getting."

I'm taking notes, we are sharing information, we are laughing, we are crying, we are letting go. I'm sending you home with things. I will teach you how to protect your chakras, how to keep the energy flowing.

I also like to teach that in group settings too. It's a little less personal, but it's nice to see a group of strangers come together and leave feeling like friends because they just experienced something really beautiful together.

There's always a lot of sharing and just creating that safe space. You can always follow me on social media. If people are stuck, they can reach out to me through the website or through my cell phone, which is also available on the website, and we can just chat.

They can tell me, "This is who I am, this is what I need," or "I don't know what I need."

Laura Stendel: I just say, "Let’s just book a session and have you come in, and then my intuition will help me figure out what you need." Usually works out that way.

Brandi Fleck: Yeah, it's really awesome. I just have to throw in there too, one of the first massages that I ever got with you, at the end I saw yellow and green, really.

Talking about chakra colors and stuff like that, I knew in my head, "Oh, that's what this is," but I had no idea why it was happening or anything like that.

That prompted me after I left that massage session to come home and research all about the solar plexus chakra and the heart chakra.

Laura Stendel: Yes.

Brandi Fleck: Yeah, it was really fun.

Laura Stendel: I tell people, there are so many little, easy, natural things you can do. You can even do something as simple as start wearing the color green or put green jewelry on.

I love beaded bracelets—jade, anything like that—green candles, just anything to help you remember and have these little glimmers of, "Oh yeah, I've got to really think about my heart chakra and I've got to protect it."

What's on my heart that maybe I could journal?

It's just so amazing that you saw that. That really makes me feel like the work that I'm doing, it’s not that I need the validation, but it makes me feel good. It's purposeful.

So thank you for sharing that.

Brandi Fleck: Thank you.

Laura Stendel: Yeah, I can't wait to have you back for a massage.

Brandi Fleck: Can't wait to come.

Laura Stendel: I think you're due.

Brandi Fleck: I am, I am. Yeah, well thank you so much. Thank you for this conversation and the work that you're doing in Franklin and in the world. I think it's really important, so thank you.

Laura Stendel: I appreciate you, and just having this platform is so cool. I've never done this before, but I just appreciate that you asked me to be here and that I could just talk openly and that listeners may enjoy what I had to say.

It just fills my heart today. Thank you so much.

Brandi Fleck: Thanks for tuning in. Check out more of our episodes here and at humanamplified.com. Remember to subscribe.