There are moments in our lives that have such a tremendous impact on us that we start questioning what we are really here for. For energy healer, wellbeing catalyst and Healthful Direction founder, Alison Held Anderson, that moment was 9/11, which she literally witnessed from an office window at her first job. It was a life-changing experience that started her on a zigzag trajectory that eventually led her to health and spirituality. Apart from sharing her wonderful zigzag story in this conversation with Tesa Baum, they also trade their insights on intuition, spiritual truth, ancestral connection, human connection and spiritual healing. This conversation is an eye-opener for a lot of us as we go through an unprecedented crisis that is, at the same time, an unprecedented opportunity for us to pivot inwards and reconnect to our intuitive, spiritual selves.
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The Zigzag Path To Spiritual Truth And Healthful Direction With Alison Held Anderson
In this episode, I’m going to be speaking with Alison Held Anderson. Her highly intuitive and collaborative style helps melt away limiting roadblocks around the areas of food allergies, health concerns, life challenges, phobias and more. She uses high-speed mindset change processes to uncover underlying core messages from the body to restore well-being. Alison has a Master of Science in Clinical Nutrition, is a Certified Health Coach, and is professionally trained and self-taught in many energy healing modalities. She is passionate about helping her clients live the best version of themselves in mind, body, and soul. I’m excited for you to hear her success story.
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Alison, how are you?
I am good, Tess. Thanks for having me.
Thank you for being here. I am excited to hear your zig-zag story and any little gems that are coming up with this particular story and anything else you want to share.
I could go all the way back to when I was born and tell my story because I’ve had many zig-zags in my life. I want to share a few of my zig-zags which have brought me into an inner knowing that I didn’t realize when I was going through the zig-zag experiences. That’s always the case afterward of what’s going on. It started way back when I was working in New York City in my mid-twenties after college. It was my first job and I was downtown. I was on Broadway and Astor Place. I had to show up to the office early one morning because I was applying to other jobs and I had to print my resume, which used an essential printer. I had to do it while nobody else was there. I went to the office early that morning and there were two other people in the office working away. I was printing up my resume and all of a sudden someone says, “Oh my gosh.” We ran to the window and out the window, we see the 9/11 incident taking place.
You saw it out of the window.
We didn’t know what was happening. It was hard to access news channels, all were stunned with what was going on. I was letting some of my colleagues know over instant messenger, “Don’t come into the office.” The mode of communication, our cell phones weren’t working. That day was intense. I didn’t make it home until maybe 9:00 that night. We were going to a safety haven. A bunch of friends got together and went to a neighboring apartment and hung out together, which was nice to have that community to go instead of being by myself. Honestly, going home was scary to be by myself. That event led me down a series of roads. Not until later did I realize what a tremendous impact it had on me. A year or two earlier, I had been on a business trip to Colorado and I told one of my colleagues, “I’m going to wind up here someday. I know it.” It wasn’t 9/11 consciously that took me there, but it felt like the right time.
[bctt tweet=”There is so much noise of information in the world, but the biggest aha moments come from the silence of intuition.” via=”no”]
It was a pivotal moment for you to re-evaluate. It was like, “This brought this opportunity to me.”
I planned everything and I wound up out West. I was a ski instructor, so I left the corporate life and I decided that my passion was where I wanted to spend my time. I was out in nature 80% of the time that I was in Colorado. The nature I realized later was my full into more access to the spiritual realm, to the living forms that are not inside of an office all day. That connection was missing from my life. I missed it years prior to pounding on the pavement in New York City. I moved out there and had an amazing time, but I was there for a year. I thought I was going to be there for much longer. The zig-zag again happened where I found myself back East. I moved back to where my family was. I missed my family. I didn’t know anybody in Colorado when I moved out except for one colleague. I loved Colorado, don’t get me wrong, but it’s time.
It wasn’t your home.
I need to be back with the people that knew me.
I can relate to this because we moved to Chicago for exactly a year as well, but it was that feeling of, “This was an experience.” Thank God, you have that experience because you were able to explore.
When I came back, I had no idea what I was going to do with my life. It’s not like I had this plan to become a ski instructor. It was aimlessly, although I knew I had the ground roots of my family, I didn’t have much else back East. That was interesting. It was a lot of navigation and I got drawn into a nutrition program because nutrition had been something on my mind for quite some time. I kept getting called to, “You’ve got to learn the science. You’ve got to get this Master’s in Clinical Nutrition.” It was a little bit of, “Follow the money,” like where am I going? In this career, I want to be successful. In order to do that, my mindset and honestly, probably my parents’ mindset was to follow the science so that you have a good foundation, which was a great thing.
I don’t regret it at all, but in graduate school, it was when I was doing my pre-requisites, I wrote a paper on whole food nutrition and whole food supplements. I was very much for the idea that sometimes our body does not recognize supplements that aren’t coming from nature. I had a whole argument saying, “Let’s take some supplements that are made from foods that our body can simulate and understand what is coming in because there are many synthetics supplements on the market.” I wrote this paper and my professor said, “No.”
He completely opposed what you were saying and you knew it was true.
I felt accurately enlarged for my own body. I built something, a digestive issue that I’ve had in my early twenties. I was shut down from my own innate knowing and also my own experience. I rewrote the paper or changed course. I went on that zig-zag and I got so in-depth with my science studies. It is a great experience. It has built this wonderful foundation, but when I moved into my world of counseling people and working with people, I got so holed into, “This is your diet, but how are things at home?”
It is so much more. What are you resisting in your life? Are you opposed to this particular food or something blocked in your life? It may not be the issue at hand. It’s always the bigger picture.
My clients have taught me so much as well as my own journey with health. I am always trying to figure out what’s going on. Do we go to a doctor for the answers or do we go to ourselves? Sometimes it’s a combination of both. Now, where I am is at a place of full-on spirituality, into the ancestors, and even into past lives that people may have had and they believed in that. I tune into source creation and knowing that we all were born from this creator and all of these innate intuitive abilities that have been shut down over time, like that professor. Unintentionally, no blame to him. He was a fantastic professor.
He was following his studies and protocol, but you were not aligned with that structure.
I was pulled into it for many lessons. From that, I had insane test-taking anxiety and that had been something I had been struggling with since a child. From the work that I do in energy work and work that you do, the pattern repeat themselves until we figure out what’s going on at the core level. There was no supplement. There was no food. There was no scientific thing that I could do for my test-taking because it was anxiety-driven. It came up from old childhood fear and it wasn’t until I worked with an energy practitioner or someone that used energy psychology type tools that I completely shifted my test-taking. I can understand science a lot better, but it was the spirituality that drove me to be able to understand the science.
It’s all the perspective. You’ve always said this. I feel the same way. It’s how you look at everything. Maybe the science was not in the forefront of everything. As long as there is such value in it and you’re not disregarding and never did, but having the aspect of it, it helped the entire picture. I’ve been reading Women Who Run with the Wolves again. There is so much of what you’re saying about going into the wild and exploring that part of you. We need that, especially going into what we’ve experienced this half of the year 2020. Who knows what the rest of this year will look like?
[bctt tweet=”We are safe with our breath because when we breathe, we are connected to our ancestors.” via=”no”]
It’s the intuitive pets that I get most of the time. They come in the office with clients. When I’m out in nature, sometimes my biggest moments of truth, my a-ha, my connection to an ancestor or to something that I need to dig deeper into because the silence or there are many answers. Unfortunately, we live in this world where things are thrown so much information from the media, from even our friends, from “experts” in the field. I was digging deep into everything that was going on. I wanted to understand everything and I still do. I still have curiosity as to what’s going on outside of myself. What it all comes down to is going back inside and saying, “What’s important to me? What do I do?”
It’s that deep listening, deep knowing. I feel like there are these moments where we’re like, “This is what we have to do. We’ll deal with the consequences.” Sometimes it’s a leap of faith. You have to take that leap regardless of what will happen, but your heart is saying it. I do believe in getting out of your head more and more. That’s why being in nature and being out and stop listening to the repeat of the media or any close person in your life that you value their opinion. We do need to go within.
9/11 is interesting because a big portion of my story started there. With 9/11, many people experienced trauma from that event. If you were at home in a safe place across the country turning on the news was traumatic enough. Like now, when we turn on the news, every moment of that bombardment of things that feel scary, fear-based versus love-based, there’s so much to that. I had to work over the years to go back to that event and neutralizing that event. It did happen, but when something like that happens again or things that feel familiar like that happen, I don’t get retriggered.
When we begin to reflect on different times in life, I lived in New York, I was on the phone with a client. I was in the food business at the time. I remember it was at 9:00, 9:30 in the morning. I was speaking to a chef on the phone. He was Downtown in Wall Street. He was explaining to me what was going on. I was watching it on the news. It was crazy. I was going to meet my mom Midtown. I was on the bus and then the people started coming off the buses and going back. Wherever we were going to Downtown, everyone had to go back. Luckily, I was in the Upper East Side and I stayed home. Where were you staying at a safe haven at that point? Where you Midtown?
A coworker of mine had a sister. We were in that same area where I was working, which was her place. Maybe we walked 5 blocks, 10 blocks at the most. Now that I remember it, it was in the Flatiron Union Square. As we know, these New York City apartments are super tiny and we’ve had maybe eight people in this little apartment for only two people. There was such a comfort and we did have the news on because we felt this need to know what was going on in the world. At that time, I did not have any tools that I have now, any comforting tools and some action.
I remember specifically who those people were that I was with. While I don’t talk to those people, I’ll never forget that. I believe I walked home, which was up on the Upper East Side where I was living later that evening when the coast was clear. We’re going, “Now is a good time.” I remember going home and you could feel that air quality was different. You could feel it. I remember after that, I am meeting people at the bar.
I have the chills when you say this because I feel the parallel with what’s going on because we were isolated. Now, we went through many months of feeling isolated. Whether or not it’s a Zoom call or if you’re socially distancing with people, it makes you appreciate being with each other again and that feeling of comfort with others. I always feel there’s a silver lining with everything, but to bring that experience back to us, we survived and we were living there. It was extremely traumatic. My dreams were intense during that time. We were all shook out. If you could bring yourself back in time, what would you say to your younger self during that time? With any tools that you have and some short exercise, what would you offer?
It’s interesting that you mentioned that because we experienced this amazing workshop in New York City. We studied with one of the premier breathing coaches on the planet now, Dan Brulé. I have to say that if I could say something to my younger self, I would say, “Focus on your breath. Breathe in and out. Know that you’re safe with your breath.” When you breathe, as we learned from Dan, you already knew intuitively we’re connected to the Ascended Masters. We’re connected to our ancestors because they all chuck in the breath that we’re taking in. They are in the room with us. It’s just connection and without connection, I feel like we’re lost. We can be connected even when we’re alone. That is important. I feel, not you and I, the general population has lost their connection to that spiritual truth. Knowing that when you’re alone, you can always connect to others via Zoom.
Luckily, with technology, it’s amazing but spiritually as well. I feel there are these heart to heart connections and time doesn’t matter. When you make a connection with somebody, you can reconnect again. I always feel that I could always pick it up with a person because I do feel when you first meet somebody, there’s a third entity that’s created. A girlfriend of mine said this to me in college, “When two people meet, it’s like a third baby pops up.” It’s like nurturing that, but you don’t always have to physically be with another person at all. That’s my feeling.
That’s my feeling too. Spirituality can be, I don’t want to say scary, but when you’re first exploring your deepest self, the unknown, it’s interesting. When I was in Colorado, I went on a hike and I went by myself, which I don’t have to mention Colorado. It’s a vast wilderness and I got lost and terrified. While I was with nature, you can always count on. I didn’t have a compass with me. I didn’t know how to reach any of the systems. Looking back again with the younger self, “Focus on your breath and relax.” If you are fear-based, which many people are going through now, it only creates more of that. We’re focused on the fear so it draws more and more of that. If we can relax, gather our thoughts together, trust, have faith and count on a higher power to help us through, then we find a way out of this curse.
I also rely on whether I feel expanded or restricted. It is like, is this making me feel that I have to pull myself in for protection or am I allowing my light to go expand? I feel there is a fine balance. Most people during this experience, what we are experiencing now is so much going on in the world. We could go into this cocoon and the cocoon could be an incubator of creativity or it could make you feel more anxious. It could make you feel that you’re cut off. That’s an important thing to note in terms of the fear and spirituality because maybe some people don’t exactly know what spirituality is. I feel like it’s more of this in years past ethereal. A lot of people like tangible things. When you are mentioning your ancestors, I relate to that tremendously.
I have been studying a lot about many different cultures, indigenous cultures and their belief in their connection to their ancestors. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the Ascended Masters or moving so far out of our body, but it’s embodying who we are and then going back. Not to the grandparents, even further back. I play that sometimes and I’m like, “Those are those that I’ve heard about in the lineage. How about 20 or 7 generations back?” If you study a lot of the indigenous cultures, each generation dream for their descendants seven generations forward. If we could believe that our ancestors seven generations behind us dreamt what we’re experiencing, it’s beautiful.
All the prophecies and things. Although I don’t have children of my own, I feel drawn to the protection of our children in making this future bright and beautiful for them. Many people feel their mission is now.
You are, and I feel that from you. I feel that your work is important. I always feel that you’re right on the pulse of what’s happening. You go with your own intuitive guidance, but it’s interesting that I’ve gotten to know you. We all change and everybody has different viewpoints all the time. In my opinion, the way you express things, you always do it in a very clear way. It’s understandable because whether or not you’re going hiking or you’re sharing something that you read, it’s in the moment. Any hidden gem that you would like to share about the moment, especially how the power went out? I know that you offered a great energy upgrade. Anything you want to share about the power outage?
[bctt tweet=”If we can relax, gather our thoughts together, and have faith in a higher power to help us through, we will find a way out.” via=”no”]
Any storm is interesting. We had another storm. It was in 2019 when the storm hit. I had a client in the office with me and there was a tree. She was going through a releasing type of activity and the tree fell down and blocked the driveway. We had to climb over the tree and get her home that night. I thought it was symbolic of her session. The storm came in as she’s releasing. She moved mountains, which we’re all capable of. With this storm, we are in a storm. There are people that are polarized. There is so much going on. The other concept that I love is to focus on being in the eye of the storm instead of being affected by everything else. When you’re in the eye of the storm, you have that inner strength. You have that, knowing that you can get through this because in the other side of the storm is the rainbow or the cleanup. We had this purge that happened. Now, there is a beautiful cleanup that’s happening. People are working together.
It’s empowering because I was enjoying the day before the storm. I was feeling like, “It’s coming.” There’s a piece about that calm before the storm. As the storm was happening, I didn’t lose power right away. Before the power went out, I was like, “This is beautiful,” and then a week without power. It is what it is and everything is symbolic. In the future, it will be another perspective. Anything you want to share about your latest group healing, your remote healing? I have to go to and listen to the next one. I have to sign up.
Intuitively, I was called to offer these complimentary group collective healing activations. The idea is always with my work and I know with your work as well, that the healer is inside the participant or the client. It’s not an inside practitioner. As a practitioner, I feel myself and I’m here as a practitioner shining the light. I did my first group. The activation was in June 2020 and that was purely by email. I emailed out the participant findings or the shifts that happened so that they can become aware to them and notice any changes that they felt in their lives or your body from the shifts. The latest one, I was called to even go down a different zig-zag routes and records what the process.
I go through some visualizations, meditations, some energy that was coming in, not from me, but maybe from other dimensions. I know that can be out there, but the themes that were in it, we opened up one of the chakras. We’re used to the chakras on the body, but it’s a chakra that is not a body that needs to be opened. That is to help people with their intuition, which is needed now. The other big theme that came up was enslavement. If we go back to our ancestral line, we all come from enslavement. It might not be slaves in terms of what we think. It may be just in a family. We didn’t feel like we belong or abuse or whatnot. Enslavement to a situation or person.
I’m reading about royalty in the 1500s. They had to be perfect and aligned. That’s also enslavement.
We all feel it in our lives at varying points, especially now. It’s interesting that that energy came in. There was a visualization that I helped take people through and the energy was intense. I could feel it back from a few people who experienced great results. My next activation will be at the end of September. If your readers are interested, they can certainly be added. It’s complimentary. If people feel called, they can add a donation to the offering, but it’s my gifts to the world. I want more people to be awake and aware, to be attuned to themselves and to what’s going on around them.
Thank you. I’m looking forward to speaking with you again. This is such a pleasure. Are there any other offerings that you want to mention or we can always discuss it another time? I know you’ve been busy preparing for a lot of things in the upcoming months.
I am teaching some energy feelers, how to get there in terms of intuition to go deeper. The class is about raising consciousness, but it’s for a specific group of people be lightworkers out there who are doing energy work in their practices. I also worked with people individually. I’ve worked with executives. I’ve worked with busy moms. I’ve worked with kids.
Is there a limit with the age? Do the kids have to be at a certain age to work with you?
It’s helpful that they have some awareness but usually, if it is a younger child, I think our young kids do need the support these days, then the parent. I always recommend that the parent get involved or the parents do the session, which has a nice ripple effect on their family members. Maybe they are eligible to come into being ready for a session. The sessions, most of them are an hour and I do offer a complimentary fifteen-minute consult. If people want to get to know me a little bit better, ask questions and understand what that’s about, they can do that on my website. My website is HealthfulDirection.com.
You are going virtual. That is wonderful.
I am all over Zoom.
I love talking with you. Thank you for your zig-zag story. It is nice to reflect around that time around 9/11 because we did get through it, we’re going to get through this and the breathing is important. I have to take that advice again and practice more because we forget.
It is the remembering of who we truly are. As we let go of layers, we’re remembering our true essence. That’s the spiritual part of this.
That’s exactly where I am. We’re pretty much always aligned, but I’ve been feeling that more. I am looking forward to chatting again. Enjoy the rest of the day. Thanks, Alison.
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About Alison Held Anderson
Alison Held Anderson is a renowned Energy Healer, helping clients throughout the world release stress, restore health, and live their best lives. Using a triad approach of body, mind, and spirit, she helps her clients identify and heal the root cause(s) of their symptoms. Alison’s highly intuitive and collaborative style helps to balance emotions, release trauma, and significantly shift mindset. She has helped clients overcome health challenges, release severe food sensitivities, find purpose and direction in life and so much more. Sacred healing sessions with Alison may be done virtually or in person. To learn more, visit: www.healthfuldirection.com
Alison has a Master of Science in Clinical Nutrition, is a Certified Health Coach, and is professionally trained and self-taught in many energy healing modalities including PSYCH-K, Healing from The Body Level Up, and Emotional Freedom Techniques. After successfully helping thousands of clients over the last fourteen years, she has created her own energy healing method for individualized, quick, powerful, and long-lasting results.
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