Women In Wellness: Stephanie Lytle of High Vibe Collective On The Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help Support People’s Journey Towards Better Wellbeing
An Interview With Candice Georgiadis
Drink more water! I hate to sound cliche, and, this is literally the most important thing I believe that we can be doing for our wellbeing. And not only ‘more’ but better. Where is your water being sourced from? Is it filtered? Does it have minerals and electrolytes in it? Does it have chlorine or fluoride in it? Living in the desert, we are big on hydration. I recently had a blood relative come to visit me, and I had to tell her five different times to stop trying to drink from the kitchen faucet. “No one who lives in Sedona and cares about their health drinks straight tap water” I told her. And yet, each time she found it easier to go there first vs the higher quality drinking water that is a 5 ft walk from the faucet. We need to re-program our thought processes to understand and know that this matters, and shift it how we can for us each individually.
As a part of my series about women in wellness, I had the pleasure of interviewing Stephanie Lytle.
Stephanie is a heart felt role model and leader within her Sedona Community, who relocated to the mecca for alternative healers in 2018. After her success in multiple businesses in the past 11 years, she launched a spiritual healing retreat center with her partner, Aaron Douglas, to authentically support the local healing community. High Vibe Collective connects those coming to Sedona looking for transformative experiences with healers of high integrity. Stephanie enjoys deep authentic connection and communication, sunshine warming her body from the inside out, and connecting with the spirit of her son moving through her daily life.
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Our readers would love to “get to know you” better. Can you share your “backstory” with us?
Absolutely! My backstory, where to begin!? I found myself being catapulted into the healing world seeking out better wellbeing for myself in about 2009 when I found myself being involuntarily hospitalized due to a manic ‘break’. I received a piece of information that my mind wasn’t properly equipped for, and my 23 year old body, mind, and soul just opened up and checked out. I realize now that I was truly in need of proper guidance from elders, who had mastered overcoming anxiety in our world. At that point in my life, I simply was not surrounded by people who could support and teach me in those ways. So, I spent the next 6 years of my life learning my edges and my inner workings with a trusted therapist through regular meetings. I was able to really move through the stories that I held that were actually making me into who I was at the time. I used this new found confidence and inner knowing to more deeply discover my purpose and navigate my emotions, leaving my job and creating my first entrepreneurial venture; the first of many. I have since been able to use my knowledge gained from that ‘unbecoming’ and show up powerfully for other young women who are simply moving through unfamiliar territories of their inner workings. This launched me into my coaching business, and eventually into the transformational healing retreat business.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career? What were the main lessons or takeaways from that story?
The most interesting thing that I can recall, and it sometimes still happens today, is my first time that I had a client invest in my services and not follow through with things for themselves, essentially not getting what they paid for on their own volition. I remember, in my dog training business in my first few years of entrepreneurism really feeling like my success was my clients success. I often did not hold my own boundaries and over-gave consistently. I wanted them to have the best results, but what I didn’t realize then was that I couldn’t want that for them more than they wanted that for them. They say ‘you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink.’ I’ve learned to take a step back in any role as facilitating the transformation that each and every one of us are choosing for ourselves, and simply allow everyone to be where they are at in the experience.
It has been said that our mistakes can be our greatest teachers. Can you share a story about a mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
The most interesting mistake that I chose since starting my entrepreneurial journey was probably the first decision that I ever made in launching my own business. Against loved ones recommendations (which I am really good at, as the black sheep of the family) I chose to launch my first business in Dog Training, in Raleigh NC with a business partner. That became the most interesting story for me essentially choosing to have one more person to manage instead of one other person to help manage the load. I knew that I could have launched that business myself, but was simply afraid to. Afraid of what? I wish I knew. I wish I could go back and give that version of me the confidence to save myself the next 3 years of extra workload in not having a business partner that matched my tenacity and forward movement. I know now that I truly wanted to launch that business, and then have a consultant, or employee, and would choose things differently in hindsight. All in all, I learned a whole lot. I learned my edges, and how to use my voice as a female entrepreneur more than I ever would have if I had started that business alone.
Let’s jump to our main focus. When it comes to health and wellness, how is the work you are doing helping to make a bigger impact in the world?
Wow, what a profound thing, to be able to impact the world in the way of health and wellness right now! The work that I am doing is helping to guide those looking for true and deep healing and transformative work into the hands of the healers and practitioners who are divinely guided to make a profound impact on their forward movement in their own health and wellness. There is a lot happening in the world right now, and we all seem to be looking for answers. Most of us don’t realize that we have those answers inside of us, or if we do have that knowing we are unable to see perhaps how to unlock that inner knowing. Our spiritual healing retreat center in Sedona works with the healers of high integrity, that are showing up day in and day out in their own lives, in the community, and in their relationships not only with a modality that they are incredible in, but in living this healing deep within their lives. We work to not only support the healing connections of those who are looking to come to Sedona to receive healing, but we support our local community by compensating our practitioners and healers with fair wages comparable to their private practice rates so that we can truly be seeing the shift in the world that feels like this heaven on earth life we’re desiring to experience. Our transformational healing retreat experience is not a run of the mill spa experience. This is for the people who have this inner knowing of something bigger, something deeper within their purpose, and they are looking to unlock that pathway to open themselves up to a greater awareness and existence.
Can you share your top five “lifestyle tweaks” that you believe will help support people’s journey towards better wellbeing? Please give an example or story for each.
My top 5 lifestyle tweaks are going to sound so easy and so simple, but boy oh boy will they change your life if you dare! 1) Drink more water! I hate to sound cliche, and, this is literally the most important thing I believe that we can be doing for our wellbeing. And not only ‘more’ but better. Where is your water being sourced from? Is it filtered? Does it have minerals and electrolytes in it? Does it have chlorine or fluoride in it? Living in the desert, we are big on hydration. I recently had a blood relative come to visit me, and I had to tell her five different times to stop trying to drink from the kitchen faucet. “No one who lives in Sedona and cares about their health drinks straight tap water” I told her. And yet, each time she found it easier to go there first vs the higher quality drinking water that is a 5 ft walk from the faucet. We need to re-program our thought processes to understand and know that this matters, and shift it how we can for us each individually. 2) Allow direct sunlight to touch your body, any time of year. Someone asked me once how I have so much vibrant energy, insinuating that I must be on some kind of stimulant. I laughed and shared with them that a little bit of sunshine is all that I need. We forget how animalistic we really are in these human bodies. We can easily glance over at the house cat, whose found some sun beaming in through the window and think how cute they are, all nice and warm. There is this intrinsic nature that our bodies have to seek out sunlight. Even if it’s just for 3 minutes in the middle of the day, or first thing in the morning, allow your face to find the sunshine and bask in it. 3) Move your body. Movement found it’s way into my ‘medicine cabinet’ back in 2020 when I found myself with so much stored pain in my body. All I wanted to do was thrash and scream. I found ecstatic dance and the ever-growing community of dance here in Sedona, which I am eternally grateful for. I was not one to just go and dance, especially without alcohol, at that time. Yet, I found myself with the ecstatic dance community in Sedona dancing in the sun on the red rocks moving my body in ways that I might have found silly before. My body was moving through its pain, literally allowing the pain body to not be held within me, but to move through me. So, find movement in whatever way feels good for you. For me, it is putting on some etheric tunes and letting the music take my body down whatever pathway is in front of it. 4) Become aware of your breath. So often throughout the day we are holding. Holding stress, tension, holding potential outcomes, you name it. Often times within that we find that without awareness we are almost always holding our breath too. When was the last time you took a deep, nice long inhale? What about taking a nice deep inhale and holding it, and then exhaling all the air that’s within your lungs. Allowing our breath to work for us and keep the energies moving within us throughout the day can shift and change so much of our mental clarity. This shift in my life has opened up so much expansion possibilities in all areas of my life; romance, friendship, finances, and so much more. 5) Cut down on the alcohol. It’s so often in our society that ‘gathering’ has taken the meaning of ‘social drinking’. I’m grateful to be in such a conscious community here in Sedona. Often times when we gather we’re communing with highly sourced cacao (like a hot chocolate drink) or a good ole kombucha, instead of booze. Nothing wrong with a nice glass of something here and there, but I just learned throughout my years what my body actually feels like when it feels good. Once you have the knowing and clarity of what it feels like when your body truly feels good, then it becomes easy to see what outside influences are impacting it to ‘not’ feel good. I personally don’t feel good with alcohol in my system. It’s a depressant technically, and for myself I try to do as much as possible to stay away from feelings of depression, while moving through my emotions in healthy ways.
If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of wellness to the most amount of people, what would that be?
I would start a movement to give people permission to move through all of their feelings, inner workings, blindspots, and traumas while 100% allowing for their learning curve in a safe container. All this while being held and guided through their own individual processes. I would help people to see that there is nothing wrong with them. They would discover that they have the power to heal any discretionary thing held internally if they would only allow themselves to go to the depths of that place. I would help people to feel supported in their decisions, any decision, towards their health and wellbeing, as we are all in different stages of the process and any forward step is progress in the right direction. This is our mission. This is what I feel my role here is.
What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why?
First and foremost I wish that someone would have told me what life can look like when you’re truly following your intuition! Had I known what this feeling really was like, from childhood, I can only imagine the difference. To me, it feels that the universe is always trying to hand us exactly what we are asking for. When we are ‘on purpose’ with our mission and being divinely guided, and listening to that guidance then it feels like smooth sailing. I have made so many decisions in my past that were not that. They instead were just man-powering through reality and creating things to be worse in the long run for myself. Secondly I wish someone would have told me that it is possible to honor my divine feminine nature as well as be a successful leader in a female human body. So often we are taught and shown what it looks like to embody our masculinity in order to receive the results that we are striving for. In my continued learning to embody my feminine I see each and every day how easy things get to feel when we are in touch, and allowing, instead of forcing. The third thing that I wish someone would have told me would be to never give up. It can feel so easy to get down on ourselves or feel like a failure if something doesn’t go as planned right off the bat. I remember when I first launched my online business coaching I had set a goal of $5k in my second month of business. That month I made only $500. I had every reason available to me to pull back, retract, and to not believe that I could create at the level that I was striving for. The following month I doubled my goal, claiming that this was the first month that I would make $10k in my coaching business. At the time I had my dog training running full time, so this was a fun and challenging different way for me to show up for myself and others. That month, after all the affirmations and going through all the motions I closed out that month with more sales than I had hoped at $12,000. I believe that is because I chose not to give up. I chose not to allow my learning curve to get in my way of my projected outcome. Always bet on yourself, and make sure to learn the lessons in front of you along the way. The fourth thing I wish someone would have told me before I started was to make deeper connections everywhere you can. I remember first starting my dog training business really feeling the pull to work with animals, and having a difficult time navigating human to human interactions and problem solving. Had I known that starting that business was in fact going to allow me so many learning opportunities to strengthen my communication skills with mankind, I might not have chosen it. This has been my biggest area of growth, and honestly one of my favorite pieces of reality that we get to play with. When we can really allow ourselves to drop into the present moment in every single interaction then we get to make the most out of our day to day reality. The deep connections that we get to allow, when were waiting in line at the grocery store, when were locking eyes with the driver next to us at the stop light, passing a neighbor by on a nightly walk, these are the opportunities that we’re given to strengthen our connection with one another for one another. This is what makes the world go around, and keeps us in our hearts actually wanting to keep going through all the difficulties. The more we allow that within ourselves the greater our potential in every direction. Lastly, I wish someone would have told me to keep my mouth shut! Haha, as a young woman, I knew everything. I often still am the first to speak up about something that may feel is incorrect, however back in my early days I was loud and proud. I’ve learned that it isn’t always volume that speaks to the masses or ‘wins’ the battles. I’ve learned to really listen to the energies that we are all holding, and the edges that are very clearly in front of us. I’ve become accustom to slowing down the conversation and really hearing what others are saying, and where needs are trying to be met. A Buddhist practice that I once studied stated that we should be repeating our sentences ten times in our head before speaking them aloud. This action in and of itself can save us hours of clarification. It’s something for myself that I have, and continue to practice in my growth.
Sustainability, veganism, mental health, and environmental changes are big topics at the moment. Which one of these causes is dearest to you, and why?
Of all the topics at hand in our ever changing world mental health is one that is nearest and dearest to me. I think that we are all called into our own areas of focus, and it feels like if we can get this one right, all the others will fall into line. How could we imagine the best environmental changes from a people who’s mental health is poor and declining with pharmaceutical prescriptions for anti-depression and anxiety through the roof? How could we ‘feel’ we know what’s best for our planet, or even the foods that we are putting into our bodies if we cannot in fact see mental clarity and wellbeing within us first and foremost? I believe that the mental health of our people, all people, really deserves to be looked at. Looking at this fully really gets to include all the ways in which one human body can tend to itself fully and capably if shown properly. We get to go back to our institutions who are teaching us and really ask them to show up differently for our people, for our children. Meditation, breathwork, and mindfulness practices are all things that should be, and get to be taught in schools. Yet most of the people who are leading the schools are feeling unwell or overwhelm in their own mental health and don’t have the knowledge or experience to make a transformative difference. To me, this shows we are in a beautiful place of growth and that the time to change gets to be now, if we choose it to be. This world we are in is asking and begging us to hear its call and make a change. We get to make that change within us so that we can see it ripple into the world we see externally around us. But it starts with me, with I, with you, with all of us. When we can feel well and healthy mentally we can shift our entire world, as the mind is such a powerful thing we are creating with on the daily.
What is the best way for our readers to further follow your work online?
You can follow me online at www.sedonahighvibes.com or over on insta @sedonahighvibes for healing and wellness and @myzestfullife for life and business coaching.
Thank you for these fantastic insights! We wish you continued success and good health.
Women In Wellness: Stephanie Lytle of High Vibe Collective On The Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.