You're running on autopilot. Wake up, take off like a shot, push through the pressure, and call it discipline.

Mary Kate Santulli did that for years, until a lightning-bolt moment behind the wheel of her car forced her to stop and ask who she actually was underneath all the roles she was playing.

Nikisha King talks with Mary Kate, a clinical aromatherapist and Reiki master teacher based in Fanwood, New Jersey, about what it actually means to stay grounded while you build a business.

Mary Kate owns Little Flower Essential Oil Blends and The Curious Heart Apothecary & Spiritual Center, a holistic wellness space in Fanwood with a retail location in Cranford, serving the greater North and Central Jersey area.

She and Nikisha get into what Reiki is at its most basic level, how a dysregulated nervous system shows up in the decisions entrepreneurs make under pressure, and why pushing through isn't the same as being regulated.

This conversation is for you as a female entrepreneur who's tired of white-knuckling your way through growth and wants real answers on how to stay present, make clearer decisions, and build without burning out.

If you're looking for Reiki, energy work, or a spiritual community, this episode is also your introduction to where to find it.

Connect with Mary Kate:

A gift from Mary Kate: Energy Protection Meditation

LinkedIn: Mary Kate Santulli

Instagram: @thecuriousheartshop

Connect with Nikisha King:

Connect with Nikisha King

Want to keep building with me after this episode? Here's where to find me and where to get into the room.

• Instagram: @nikisha.king
• On Linkedin.com
• Website: nikishaking.com
• Let's create your marketing plan at the Fully Booked Workshop

Welcome with your host and business guru, Nikisha King.

This podcast is the ultimate destination for women creative entrepreneurs who want to break free from burnout.

If you are overwhelmed by client demands and feel like you're doing this all alone, you, my friend, are in the right place.

Now let's dive in for steps to take back your time and see simplify your workflow.

All right, Nikisha, take it away.

Hello, everyone.

Welcome to the iconic CEO podcast.

My name is Nikisha.

I'm your host today and we have a special guest, Mary Kate Santulli.

She's a clinical aromatherapist, a Raiki master teacher, and the owner and formulator behind Little Flower essential oil blends and the Curious Heart apothecary and spiritual Center.

Mary Kate helps people reconnect to who they really are through essential oils, crystals and energy work.

She believed helping others find their purpose is her purpose.

And today she's here to talk about staying grounded while you build.

Welcome, Mary Kate.

How are you?

Thank you, Nikisha.

I'm so excited to be here.

I'm very well, thanks.

Oh my goodness, I'm excited to have you here.

You and I met recently at a coffee and Connections, which is always provided by Arbor Counseling Center.

And at the end of the, I guess connection in the presentation, I got to meet you and you and I got to speak about Reiki and I love meeting people who have a special gift.

And when we were speaking, there were so many things that we were talking about.

And your woman owned business, of course, my human being.

So I figured I'll have you here because Reiki is something I knew in my teens, or I should say my early 20s.

I worked for a family practitioner and she used to have Reiki master, like evenings.

And I would go, but I never really got into it.

And when you were speaking about it and energy in my chakras, now I'm in my 40s, I have a better understanding.

Because no one tells you this in your 20s just in case.

Exactly.

So I thought I would have you here because a lot of women, business owned companies or entrepreneurs themselves, we do a lot, we take a lot of risks.

That requires our nervous systems to respond.

And some of us have certain systems and certain ways of being.

And I wonder what will the Reiki or other modalities do for us?

A lot of our listeners are used to pushing through.

That's how we work as entrepreneurs.

We're used to white knuckling it and kind of growing through our growth.

But I wanted to know, how do Reiki and energy work change that or how can it change that?

Like, what does staying grounded actually feel like day to day for someone who practice Reiki as a business owner?

So thank you, Nikisha.

Reiki is pretty much instrumental into not only who I am as an entrepreneur, but who I am as a person.

The two are integrated and inextricably, ever forever more intertwined.

So what that means Reiki and energy really grounds me into my person, into my body.

So we kind of, especially as entrepreneurs and as mothers often too, we're like, we wake up in the morning, we're taking off like a shot, right?

We're not thinking, we're not.

We're not in the moment, we're not present.

It's like, what do I have to do?

Where do we have to be?

So Reiki, meditation crystals, all of these modalities that I kind of intertwined together bring you back into the body.

So it's about being in your body and being very present in your body so that your body can tell you a story.

Let me ask you, what is Reiki?

Yeah, let's start at the very beginning.

So Reiki is a very gentle and holistic form of energy healing.

So we all have consciousness.

It's what animates our bodies.

And our consciousness comes down through our crown chakra and into our body.

And we can get into a whole separate story about chakras down the road, but it comes down into through our crown chakra and enters into our body, anchoring ideally into our body.

So Reiki is channeling that universal life force energy through the crown chakra comes through my crown, my third eye, my throat, my heart chakra, and out the minor chakras in my palms.

And then I take that energy and I work with it in your subtle energy system, or my own subtle energy system, to bring it back into a state of homeostasis, into a state of regulation.

So what I'm offering is a high vibrational energy that is not generated by me.

I'm just a plug.

I'm just the conduit that plugs into that energy source.

And then I offer it to you to bring your energy back into that homeostasis energetic state so that you can be realigned.

And we're bringing our nervous system back into regulation.

We often walk around with a really dysregulated nervous system, and Reiki is one tool that can help you to regulate your nervous system.

Now let me ask, no one is born with this understanding, so there's something that happened for you that either brought you into the world of Reiki.

And you're a Reiki master now.

Why did you want to become that?

What did it do for you in your journey?

And why is it something you want to do for others?

So, like you mentioned earlier, we're not born with this information, and we kind of go through life on autopilot.

So I was on life.

I was going through life on autopilot for most of my life and doing pretty well at it.

Going through the motions, getting married, having kids, having career, not having a career, staying home.

And then there was a point where I became the cream in the Oreo cookie between my kids, my parents, life, and I suddenly had lost Mary Kate didn't know who Mary Kate was.

I knew that I was somebody's mom.

I was a wonderful mom to three wonderful kids.

I was a daughter, I was a wife, I was a PTA person.

I was all of these things.

But who was Mary Kate?

Mary Kate went on like a journey because I really.

What ended up happening was I had what would be called maybe a spiritual awakening now.

I felt like I was having a nervous breakdown.

I didn't know what was wrong with me.

I was always a really strong person.

I could take on a lot.

But there was a point that I hit in my life where I didn't understand anything that was going on in my life.

And I was really profoundly unhappy.

And I had absolutely no reason to be unhappy.

I had a nice home, a wonderful, loving husband.

Still do.

Thank God.

He put up with me through all of it.

Three fabulous kids, my parents were still alive.

I had it all.

Like, on paper, you'd go, what's wrong with her?

She's miserable.

Why is she so miserable?

And I didn't know why.

And one day when I was driving on 78 at about 78 miles an hour, I was contemplating all the reasons why I was miserable and justified righteous indignation for being miserable.

All the things that were wrong in my life.

And it was like I felt like a lightning bolt hit my head and I suddenly my nervous system.

I didn't know it at the time.

I didn't know what happened to.

But it felt like a lightning bolt went through my body and I felt like I had no control.

I had no control of the car.

I had no control of myself.

So I knew something happened to me that day.

I didn't know what.

And so I ended up going to the doctor.

And the doctor was like, well, you know, he knew my family situation.

He's like, you know, you're caught.

You're caught in the Crosshairs.

You're.

You're under a lot of pressure right now.

Aging parents, young children.

Let's put you on some, you know, some medicine to help regulate everything.

Well, it wasn't regulating anything.

It was making it worse.

And I was getting to the point where I couldn't drive at all.

Three little kids not driving in the suburbs does not work.

Every time I would get in the car, I would start to panic.

I went to a family barbecue, and one of my mother's dear friends happened to be a Reiki master.

I didn't know it.

And she said, I want you to do two things.

I want you to read a book, and then I want you to call me.

And then when you're done reading the book, I want you to do Reiki on me.

I want to do Reiki on you.

And I didn't know what Reiki was at the time either.

And I didn't know what book she wanted me to read.

Nobody knew what was going on with me.

My parents didn't know.

The only person who knew was my husband and my best.

Best friend.

They were the only two people that knew that I was having an internal meltdown.

And so I read the book.

The book was called Lightworker by Savannah Arianta.

I think it's out of print now, but you might still be able to find it on Amazon.

But it was a book about being a lightworker and what happens to you when you're an unaware lightworker.

And I was suddenly highlighting writing in the margins.

I'm like, tape flagging pages.

And I call my mom's best friend, Miyoko, who happens to be Japanese.

And I said, why did you have me read this book?

And she said, because you're an unaware lightworker, and I need to do Reiki on you.

And I said, okay.

And she came to my house, and she started to do Reiki on me, and she never even touched me.

So with Reiki, you do not need to put your hands on a person at all.

You can do hands off.

And she was hands off.

And she was there for about five minutes, and she stopped the whole session.

She goes, mary Kate, set up.

And I was like, good, it's over.

We're done.

I'm fixed.

It's like, no, no, not at all.

She said, you are riddled with anxiety.

What's going on?

And I started crying.

I'm like, I'm a hot mess.

I'm having a nervous breakdown.

She's like, no, no.

You are an unaware lightworker.

And you have to get on the path.

You are being called to get on the path.

So from there we continued the session.

And then a spiritual awakening began after that, which is another whole hippie dippy story about my third eye opening up and my crown opening up and seeing sacred geometry while I was sleeping.

And I just knew there was something to all this Reiki stuff.

I didn't know what it was.

I didn't know anything about Reiki, but I knew there's something to this.

So I decided that I needed to learn Reiki because that was going to be my path out of this.

And it was.

It was truly my path out of what would I.

What would have been imploding my life.

And I did eventually stop taking all medicine because it wasn't working.

And I said to my doctor, if it's not working, I'm not taking it.

And so we eventually got to that point where I stopped taking it because it wasn't really.

It was covering a symptom.

It wasn't getting to the root of the problem.

The root of the problem was, is I was not on my spiritual path.

I wasn't on my soul's path.

In fact, I was on such.

I was so far afield from it that, and forgive the term I like to say, the universe had to slap me back onto the path because I really was so far afield.

And I just thought this is stuff that, this is information that people need to know.

Chakras, subtle energy.

I didn't know anything about this.

What do you mean?

I have a root chakra.

My soul is anchored into my body.

I know.

Nobody told me this.

I learned about my, my, my regulatory system, my bones, my, my blood.

You know, all that stuff.

You don't learn about a subtle energy system.

So I thought as I grew and learned about this, I wanted to tell other people because I felt like this is a problem that not only I'm having.

I think I'm representative of a lot of people.

So that's how the business sort of inadvertently started.

So interesting.

Because we are creatures who only see things, and what we see is what we believe.

However, we know there's many religions that believe in God that some never seen, but some do have physical forms of what they worship and chakras and things of that nature.

No one really teaches you because they consider it woo.

But at the end of the day, there's something about us.

If you're taking meds, please take your meds.

Your physician is always going to manage you.

But some people like you knew that when you took it, it didn't help.

There was something else.

And when you started your inner anxiousness, people don't realize there's so many things that we're worried about.

Like you said, my life was good.

I didn't have anything to worry about.

But you had a lot of stories you might have been telling yourself about your kids, about your aging parents.

And it does kind of sometimes turn on a switch that can't be turned off.

And sometimes, like she said, you were out of whack and you needed to be realigned again.

And I think we as people who sometimes not all of us, but some of us who believe in only the physical, what we can touch, we lose sight of.

There's something else.

We're spiritual beings.

I am.

I'm human.

Second, I know for me, I'm a spiritual being.

First, no one knows that.

They only can feel it.

They can feel it when I walk in a room.

They can feel my energy.

They can feel my light.

They can.

They can sense it.

But what they're sensing is not my human form.

I know that.

They don't know that.

This is why I thought Reiki was something I wanted to kind of discover with you.

But also as a business owner, I want to also learn.

You being a business owner, you working with people who are business owners, how do you use Reiki and maybe your other modalities to help them regulate through instead of shutting down, instead of becoming anxious, instead of overreacting?

What is your take on that for those individuals who have come to you because now you're the master of it.

That's such a scary term.

When you hear master, it's like, oh, I'm expected to know so much.

No, you know what?

You know?

I do.

And so I consider myself a journeyman.

I know.

And I'm a curious person, hence the curious heart.

So I'm always learning, and I'm always thirsting for more information.

That's the Gemini in me that wants to understand and learn, and I'm happy to share my knowledge with people as I learn it.

So when other business entrepreneurs come to me and they feel like they're dysregulated, it's because their energy is out of balance.

And it could be that it's their solar plexus chakra, which is our personal power center, we feel disempowered in some way.

So we really need to as to be successful in entrepreneurship.

I mean, in life in general, but especially in entrepreneurship, because we can't pass the buck to anybody.

Else, you know, as you said, when we have that W2, we can always point the finger to, you know, that over there or over there.

But when you're the owner, the buck stops here.

So we have to be aligned energetically and balanced so that we can leverage all aspects of our subtle energy.

Because we need our crown chakra to bring in divine wisdom and those ideas and knowledge.

We need to be able to visualize it, visualize where we're going and where we're leading our business.

We need to bring others in through our voice.

We need to lead with our heart so other people want to join us and have a balanced solar plexus chakra so we still learn those boundaries.

We need our sacral chakra to bring that creativity into the three dimensional world.

And then we need our root chakra to anchor everything into this 3D reality that we are living in.

So we need everything in balance.

So when an entrepreneur or a person comes to me and they feel anxious, they feel dysregulated, we're first going to pinpoint where is the root of their dysregulation, because it could be one or more of our chakras that's out of balance.

So let's bring it back into balance and we'll do that through energy work.

We can do that through Reiki, we can do it through crystals, we can do it through essential oils, we can do it through sound healing.

We have any meditation, intention, prayer.

We've got so many tools in our toolbox that can help us.

And my whole thing is, I don't want to do it for you.

I'm happy to be the way shower.

But I want you to learn how to work with your own energy because that is your God given right.

You're a personal sovereign being of the light and you should know, everybody should know how to work with their own energy.

And most of us have been raised, we didn't know anything about energy.

We don't.

What are you even talking about?

Energy, Right?

So energy and religion can.

So spirituality and religion can go very nicely hand in hand.

Reiki pairs, as I say it goes.

It's like vanilla ice cream.

It goes with everything.

It will pair with anything.

It's all about intention and the harnessing and channeling of energy.

That's what Reiki is basically at its, at its most basic form.

It was so interesting because when you said that we all have energy, I thought about the young boy who's very energetic or even the young girl, and their energy shows up in school, at home, and they're considered adhd, they're considered something else.

And I wonder if you had this capability and understanding how would you respond to them differently?

So that is such a fantastic question.

I love that question so much because I have three children who've gone through the schools, two boys that were high energy at one time.

Why?

Because the universe up there knew this planet needed a lot of help and sending in more children that were egocenter, solar plexus centered about me, me, myself.

And I was not what this planet needed.

It needed more heart centered kids.

So that was wonderful.

So these kids are highly intuitive, very bright.

They're not grounded though their lower chakras, their root chakra, their sacral chakra, their solar plexus chakra.

If you look at them energetically, they're all like, and then all of these chakras or upper chakras are like, oh, they're just so wide open.

They're ready to like receive.

But then you put them in a school system that's so antiquated from another time.

And now we're going to stick that, that square peg into that round hole and we're going to, we're going to jam it in there.

So when parents come to me with these children that have these symptoms, it's because the school doesn't understand them.

They don't understand how to work with them.

But their parents on an intuitive level say, I know there's something else going on here.

What can we do?

And the answer is these kids need to learn how to ground.

They need to learn how to anchor their soul into their body.

Because right now it's hovering a little bit outside of their body.

And this is happening a lot to people that are having spiritual awakenings.

They walk around disassociation, people like, I don't know, I feel like I'm living in a dream.

I don't feel like I'm in control of my life.

I feel like I'm watching myself.

That those are all key symptoms of you're not fully anchored into your body.

That's what we're talking about, being embodied, fully present in our body.

So that's the difference when schools start learning, and I think they are, we are starting to see it when these schools and these teachers start teaching these kids about meditation at an earlier age on how to Ground and root ourselves into our body.

You're going to see less and less of that diagnosis.

And it's more normalized, if you will.

Right.

But that was such a fantastic question because I'm really passionate about that subject.

That's so good.

I love that.

And it's true.

That's what came up for me.

And that's.

I was like, this is.

People don't realize it.

It goes so much more than just we.

We.

We have tools.

Sometimes we just overlook it.

And not everyone, but, you know, we look.

Overlook it because we feel like it's not normal.

It's not the normal thing to do.

Right.

Medicine.

Right.

Right.

Normal thing to do.

And I think that's shifting.

And I'm happy to hear that because I don't think medicine is going to be the answer to the symptom.

It's the manager to the symptom.

It manages, doesn't fix or repair now.

Right.

Think about a business owner who has beautiful responsibilities and creating a company, having a team, making decisions for growth.

And when they do, there's a lot of risk that they take a lot of pressure.

I want to know before someone makes a big decision, have a hard conversation or a launch, what is something they can practice to ground them in making that decision.

Because I've had moments when I had to decide something and I felt pressure.

I felt like it might.

I feel like my solar plexus, where everything nice from my solar plex down, everything is in all disarray.

From everything up.

I feel like it's all good.

So I'm like, right.

What is something they can do to get grounded?

So getting grounded really quickly, you know, especially if you have to make a decision on the fly.

As a business owner, that does happen from time to time.

It's a matter of taking a few moments away from all noise, all commotion, find a quiet space and just going within for five minutes through breath, concentrating on your breath and just mindfully pulling that breath in through your nose, holding on to it mindfully and seeing where the tension, where it's coming up against tension in your body, asking it to release and then.

Asking the tension, asking the block to release the block to your inner wisdom.

Because we always really know it's our ego that likes to throw a monkey wrench into the plans.

So now we're going to ask our ego to step aside for a few minutes.

Our ego wants to protect us.

If you watch the TV show the Goldbergs, I like to call my ego Beverly Goldberg.

She was a Jewish overprotective mom who loved her kids to the point of smothering.

And so I'll call my ego Beverly.

I'm like, listen, Beverly, you need to.

You need to take five, go sit on the couch.

Because I need to go within.

And when we do that, and then we can ask our guides or a higher self or any being, anybody that you feel comfortable connecting to that's in an upper realm, ask them.

This is what I feel I should do.

This is where I feel aligned with.

Send me a sign that this is the correct thing to do.

And you can.

It's.

It's good.

It's a good idea to give them a specific, you know, I would like to see.

And it could be something silly like, I want to see a can of Coca Cola in the next 20 minutes.

This is going to help me.

Or the next two days, whatever it is, you ask them for a sign, something that will help you to reinforce your own intuition.

Because we always.

We always second guess our own intuitive abilities.

You know, our left brain, it goes through that left brain fact checker, and then we shut it down.

But we really do know the right thing to do.

We just need to breathe into it for a few minutes and then exhale.

And then you can even visualize anchoring yourself into the earth, letting you know, just dropping some roots down from the bottoms of your feet through your tailbone, or just sitting really firmly into your chair and just saying, I feel my entire body in this chair.

I can feel the backs of my legs, I can feel my bum.

I can feel my lower back.

I can feel everything.

Because when we get into that state, we leave our body and we're just.

We're just in a story now.

And we're like, it's true.

And that's not helpful.

It's true.

It's not helpful.

So we just need to come back into our body.

Yes.

The beginning, I felt like I wanted to more ground myself.

I remember when I started, I used the MindValley app.

I had bought into one of the programs and it was teaching me how to.

And it was funny because when I learned and I would close my eyes, I would always doze off because I feel like that's the first step.

The first step is dozing off.

And then now I have the capability where I do a 3, 2, 1, countdown, and I quiet my body, my mind, and I can go right into that alpha stage where I can hear everything.

I'm awake, but I'm not awake.

And it's a calming.

I like.

I like to like.

It's like my hideaway.

And as much as I love it, I don't practice it all the time, but you reminded me these are the moments where we do that, where we just find that space.

And I love it because sometimes the world is noisy, social media is noisy.

There's a lot of noise sometimes when I turn on myself, like just so much noise.

And we never used to have as much.

It's no longer regulated now.

Since you work with different modalities, you do crystals, essential oils, energy work.

I want to know how are these tools used differently.

Let me know, like, what does crystals do?

Because everyone talks about crystals.

I have some in front of me.

I still don't know.

Yes.

And yours look like a heart.

I still hematite.

Yeah.

And it.

Was it shaped like a heart on purpose?

Yeah.

Well, I just like hearts, but yeah, is so hematite is a very grounding stone.

So this is a great crystal for anybody that is not feeling grounded into their body.

Those kids that are walking around with that feeling of, you know, disassociation.

The adhd, we often recommend that they get a hematite crystal because it's a really anchoring.

It's a heavy.

It's very heavy.

So we use Chris.

I mean, crystals are, you know, they're so transportable.

You can hide them and put them anywhere.

Put them in your pocket.

You know, you have a little one you just.

You could be in a meeting with and like, this is a great one for your solar plexus chakra.

Let's just say that I'm feeling like I really need to feel more confident in my.

I'm having a big business meeting and have to talk to a bunch of people.

You could sit at that meeting table and just rub this crystal and nobody's going to call you out.

They're going to be like, what are you doing?

You know, Whereas if I probably pulled out my inhaler.

This is my essential oil inhaler.

If I did.

If I went like, hold on a minute, I am feeling more empowered now.

You might not be able to get away with that.

But you want to do the inhaler before the meeting.

Do the inhaler.

That's an essential oil inhaler.

So it's a cotton wick that is steeped in essential oils.

And so we'll choose oils.

If we were doing something for focus and empowerment, we might choose some ginger, some lemon, some peppermint.

And this would be a great thing to do before you go into the meeting.

When you're sitting in the meeting, you might want to have a small crystal that you're kind of tossing around and you're using to help support your solar plexus chakra, which is your seat of your self confidence and your self empowerment.

Or you might want to use a blue crystal, which is your throat chakra.

I need to tap into my inner wisdom as I'm talking and I need to, you know, really espouse my knowledge and the things I know.

But I'm, I'm, I'm nervous.

You might want to use this.

This is larimar.

Beautiful Larimar.

So, yeah.

So, you know, obviously I wouldn't want to do Reiki during a business meeting.

You know, I could sit here and like, hold on, let me, let me open my throat chakra.

So I would use, I would use crystals probably, you know, more out in public because I think that they're more, you know, people wouldn't question them as much.

But before the meeting, I definitely would be using meditation, Reiki, essential oils to really get myself in a state of homeostasis.

And then during the meeting, I would definitely be holding onto my crystals to support me during that meeting.

That's so good.

Thank you.

That helps tremendously.

Yeah, I love that.

If someone's listening right now and they're pulled towards this work, but they don't know where to start, what is one small practice they can bring into their business this week to start regulating their nervous system and reconnecting to their own guidance?

You mentioned one about breath work and just sitting still, taking it in, letting it out.

Is there something else that, you know, if they're not in a space where they can just take that break, is there anything else they can do?

They can become the third party observer to themselves.

You know, take a moment and become very intentional.

You know, I'm not Mary Kate.

I am Mary Kate.

But there is, as you were mentioning, there's a higher self spirit that's anchored into my meat suit called Mary Kate that's navigating around.

And so I will step outside of that and I will provide myself with my own inner wisdom.

And we know when we're doing this because especially when we become dysregulated, maybe our solar plexus chakra goes excessive, we get triggered by somebody and we start to really go bigger, go home, and our emotion starts to take, you know, starts to take off, and we might start saying things and doing things that there's a little part of us that's going, Mary Kate, don't do that.

Don't say that.

Don't.

Oh.

Oh, she's got.

She said it.

She said it.

All right, all right.

So if.

If we can.

If we can tune into that third party observer, you know, and once you intentionally know what ex.

That.

That part of you exists, you'll find it starts to happen more and more.

You'll be like, oh, there's.

There's my higher self.

Go, Mary Kate, don't do that.

Don't do that.

And you'll find that you.

Even if maybe you.

You do it to a lesser extent.

Okay.

Like, you don't lose your mind completely.

We don't ever want to walk away from a meeting going, I shouldn't have said that.

Or, I shouldn't have done that.

I wish I hadn't behaved that way.

Because then we know that we've let our energy run us, right?

Our energy gets all dysregulated and then it's running us.

And now we're the passenger on this freight train, and it's a runaway freight train.

We want to be the engineer, and we want to be like.

No, like, so that third party engineer can say, mary Kate, time to slow the train down.

You're about to.

You're about to go off the tracks.

So even if we don't have time to breathe, we have time to go.

Okay, let me tune into that.

That third party observer.

Yes.

I've had those moments now, before, they weren't.

I was the one who was in the car, the runaway freight.

And I'm getting trouble for certain things I say.

I'm like, oh, man, I did it.

But I've gotten better now.

I see it.

My brain do a lot of processing.

I'm like, listen.

And then I go, keep it simple.

One word, two, and call it a day.

Learn.

Yes.

We learn.

We do.

Yes.

My husband likes to say, either we win or we learn.

And I did a lot of learning in my younger years.

I'm a Gemini Sagittarius Leo.

So I'm all fire and air.

I can talk and I can be shot out of account.

And so I really have to work at grounding myself.

That is.

That is something that I do have to focus on and do.

So good.

Now we'll love for you to share a little bit more about the Curious Apothecary and Spiritual Center.

I want you to tell our audience what you do as your business, and I would love for you to tell them about the Spiritual center where it's located.

Give us a little bit more about that.

Okay?

Great, thank you.

So the Curious Heart Spiritual center is located at 313 S. Avenue in Fanwood.

And what it is is basically a spiritual.

We work, if you will.

We've got 11 practitioners here that are all their own businesses.

They are all their own solopreneurs.

I am not their boss.

In fact, they pay me to be here.

They rent space, they rent rooms and blocks of time.

And we provide them with a curated space that is supportive of their holistic modalities, such as acupuncture, massage, cranial sacral therapy, shamanic healing, sound vibrational healing, Reiki, obviously.

And then we have some new stuff coming in, pelvic floor, floor work, qnrt, which is quantum neuro release technique.

It's a really interesting modality.

So we have a lot of different modalities going on here.

We also do meditation, we do group events, we do raiki sound baths.

We do a family constellation monthly.

We are doing journeys, drum circles, all kinds of hippie dippy things that are really not hippie dippy at all.

But they're.

They're practices like drum circles are really just about getting back into your body and releasing energy, taking an instrument and just kind of banging on it without being like, you know, without judging yourself, you know, like, I'm not good enough.

I'm not this.

You're just going out there and you're feeling it.

So those are.

Those are just a few of the things that go on here.

So we're about supporting the community.

We're about coming together as a collective, supporting each other.

Because a lot of times as woo woo, hippie dippy, holistic solopreneurs are floating out there alone in space, and we feel very disconnected from our community.

Right.

And at the core, what I'm really about is normalizing spirituality, that this is as normal as it gets.

We are spiritual beings.

We're meant to be spiritual.

We're meant to work with energy.

We're meant to be the engineers on our trains and not look outside of us.

And all of the modalities that run across this one around me are all supportive of that in different ways.

So you find the modality that works for you.

Some people love sound healing, and that's the only thing.

They're not interested in Reiki or acupuncture.

They love sound healing.

So find what works for you.

There's so many tools in the toolbox.

And we have something for everybody.

Well, pretty much everybody, I'd say.

Yeah, for sure.

So that's what I do.

So I kind of wear two Hats.

I do my Reiki business, and I have my Reiki that my clients and my own practice.

But then I'm also very supportive of other business owners and helping them to grow in their confidence, to grow in their business acumen, which for solopreneurs, that is probably the thing we're most in need of business acumen.

Understanding business.

We don't understand business.

We don't want to understand business.

I've been forced to understand.

This is.

That's why I love Nikisha, because she already set me straight on a few things on our first meeting.

And I'm like, I know.

We love doing what we are made for, but we have to mix it.

I call the 4D the 4D dimension, because we are on this plane, this physical plane.

This is the experience, and that is the business side of it.

You have your purpose and what you were given, the gift you were given, you get to share it.

But the way it's cultivated and shared in specific countries we live in, the US Is through a form of business because of how our economy works on this plane.

So as much.

And that's why I tell people, business and me have a great relationship, because it's fun.

A lot of people don't like it.

It's not fun to them because they're tied to the outcome.

I go, if you release the outcome and you do what you do really well and we get the word out, you can see a lot of changes for the good.

And that's like.

That's the fun part about it.

When you speak about Reiki, that's how I feel about business.

It's finding your special area.

It's helping you bring it to the top, ground yourself in it and just have fun with it.

Just be at ease with it.

Yeah.

And that's how I love business.

I know that the only reason it has that.

That tinge to it is because we as the human is.

We're stuck to something.

We have to get this thing.

We have to get this thing because this is the thing that's supposed to be our survival, our livelihood.

And I go, yes.

But at the same times, if you disconnect and you serve your purpose on the highest form, you'll see something shift.

So I just help people with that.

But that's the best thing about it, you know?

And business does this.

It bring people like you and me together.

I get to see your beauty.

I get to experience it, because I have my time with you and I'm looking forward to it.

But I think so many of us Are over extended.

We're not regulated.

And there's so many, especially women.

Mary Kate.

Labels galore.

Labels galore.

I'm still looking.

I know a man is a dad.

I know he's a W2 or worker.

And then I'm like, he takes care of his parents.

I would assume he does, but somehow it just sometimes feel a little different.

So, yeah, I don't know if we as females just have all the labels.

I try to get rid of labels as much as I can, and I use them when I need to refer to something that someone can get on the same page as me.

But I think women are just.

We're emotionally created, and that doesn't make us weak, strong.

It doesn't mean anything.

It just means we feel a little bit differently.

We, I believe, is more in tune because we bring humans only creatures.

Only women, right.

Can bring creatures into this world like another human.

And I think when that moment happened, we had to be in tune with ourselves.

When I did my delivery, I was so in tune.

I didn't have drugs, and I loved every moment of it.

And I think that's our purpose and understanding.

You know what I mean?

So I think, yeah, I think what you shared is so good.

And a lot of you listeners, if you haven't done Reiki yet, please, I will put all of Mary Kay information in the show notes.

Just click the link.

If you're in New Jersey, go visit the Curious Heart Spiritual Center.

It's not one space every.

There's different people there.

Different.

Go ahead.

Yeah, we have different spaces, and we actually have a retail store in Cranford, so if you want to just pop in.

Yeah.

I'm usually a sitting duck on Tuesdays and Fridays in my retail space.

And we are happy.

Everybody that works at the Curious Heart, most of them, I think all of them, other than my daughter, are Reiki masters.

And they are happy to help you with whatever you need and talk hippie dippy all day long.

We love it there.

So feel free to come in.

Yes.

You found your community of hippie dippies.

I'm gonna be honest.

My friend is doing a retreat, and you know how you said the drumming and she does this and.

Oh, my goodness, Mary Kay, I am fighting.

I want to go because I love her.

She's my sister.

She's like my godly sister.

I love her to death, but I'm like, I don't want to do all of that.

For me, it's like I could feel it in my body, the tension, and it's letting Go.

I'm like, let go.

Like, oh my God.

I can't imagine singing, dancing with other people.

Oh, I could do it in a club all day long, commercial music all day long.

But when she brought this up, I felt that my body was like, we don't do that.

And it's like a child.

It's like being a child again.

Child play.

It's like being free, being open.

And I'm like, what is happening?

Because I know what it is.

And I'm like, this one I kind of have to fight.

I think this one I have to go and do it and I will be so uncomfortable.

I'm not me.

I'm a very.

I feel like it's like I'm like a control freak.

So I'm like, no, we don't do that.

I love my business all day, every day.

I'm not that person.

But what would it be if you were willing to be that person just for a moment?

What will happen?

Nobody's looking, Nobody's recording.

Yeah, just be you.

Just be you and just tap into that, that real primal part of you that just needs that release.

It's okay.

Gosh, such a even you saying that.

I'm just like, it's like hoping my time with you will help that.

Mary Kate, thank you so much for sharing your book with us, sharing your knowledge about Reiki, about helping us understand it, because it's not something we widely speak about, especially in business, but it's something that can be an add on for a lot of us.

So thank you for your time and your energy today.

I appreciate you tremendously.

Same here.

Nikisha, I.

It's been such an honor and a pleasure getting to know you and I can't wait to see because I know we're going to be doing more cool stuff together.

We are.

I'm looking forward to the lives that we transform through our work and our purpose.

Yes, yes.

And for all the listeners out there, I want to tell you thank you, thank you for joining us.

Thank you for being a part of us.

I want to let you know, on October 20th in New Jersey, I'm hosting a workshop.

It is called Fully Booked.

For my companies, my women owned businesses.

Two or more years you are in the industry, you are a creative professional, you might be a spiritual professional.

Whatever you do.

We want to create a space where we help you to learn how to network strategically, how to get out there, how to walk in a room and not shrink, but expand, how to know exactly what to say that people get drawn in and how to have fun doing it so fully.

Book is about strategically networking.

I promise you when you're starting up, it's number one thing you need to do because majority of the time people don't plan for paid ads or pay as you go communities.

And I think it's most important thing because if no one knows you exist, how can they buy your services?

So I will leave the information.

It's Tuesday, October 20th from 8:30 to 4:30, Mary Kate will be in the room so you will actually get to experience her.

And we are definitely taking care of lunch for all our attendees.

We only have space for 12 people.

There are only nine more seats left.

So we'd love to invite you guys into the room.

Mary Kate, thank you and I will see you soon.

Thank you.

Nikisha, before you go, I have one more thing for you.

If anything you've heard today sparks something in you, don't let that feeling sit.

That is a signal.

You are building something real.

You are creating impact.

And somewhere between the vision and the day to day, it can start feeling like you are doing it alone.

But you don't have to.

The Iconic CEO community is where women entrepreneurs like you, who are serious about growth come together to build the structure, the systems and the team that their business actually needs.

We're talking about your first hire, your first real process, your first breath of okay, this is finally working.

If you're ready to stop guessing and start scaling, click the link in the show notes.

Let's have a conversation.

I want to hear about what you are building and show you exactly how we can take it further.

Thank you so much for tuning in to Iconic CEO Podcast today.

Please remember to share this episode with the woman in your world who needs to hear it.

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And until next time, keep leading, keep building and dare to become the iconic CEO you were always meant to be.