Hidden Gems: Meet Kristina Renée of Spiritual Counseling & Alternative Therapies

Hi Kristina, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
There has always been a strong drive within me to understand spirituality, Nature, mysticism, and the unknown. At the age of four, I remember singing to the vast spaces of Nature, feeling the awareness of Spirit in all things. Overtime, I became increasingly interested in understanding structures and systems that impact our ability to connect to our inner guidance and truth, to our sovereign sacred connection. Sojourner Truth’s words, “the truth is powerful and it prevails” has been etched into my Soul and lives in the pulse of my being which aligns to the unraveling of my life path.

For over 25 years now, I have been dedicated to the contemplative and consciousness modalities in practice and study. I have had the honor of working in several fields of wellness and transformative healing throughout my life. My more formal trainings began with undergraduate degrees in psychology and women’s studies, which then guided me into nutrition and onto education and certifications in integrative massage therapy and wellness. As I began to deepen my understanding to subtle energy, its resonance in healing astounded me on all levels. I dove into integrative energy medicine through yoga, meditation, and pranayama, studying extensively and becoming a certified SmartFLOW® yoga teacher under the tutelage of Annie Carpenter. Later with my training in Transpersonal Counseling Psychology at the graduate level through Naropa University, a Tibetan Buddhist school in Boulder, Colorado, my path began to symbiotically interweave.

My inquiry to better understand trauma and healing led me to a deeper study on the effects of trauma on the brain and body with leading researchers, psychologist and neuroscientist of the world. I began to study the healing possibilities of plant medicine therapy and trauma, which is where I found the catalytic counseling methods of Depth Hypnosis, Applied Buddhism and Applied Shamanic Counseling with my mentor and teacher, Isa Gucciardi, Ph.D. and the Foundation of the Sacred Stream. This work has been paramount in my personal life, especially as a mother, and in my work with clients.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?

My very rocky path has been a great teacher for me. It has been filled with much loss and grief that began in childhood with my upbringing and the harmful dynamics between my parents that led to their unhealthy divorce. I have learned that grief is a potent, healing, and alchemizing process when we turn towards it as an alley to move through its layers and transform through it.

What became the catalyst for me to embrace the teachings of grief in a more integrated way was becoming a mother during a global pandemic. It was not motherhood alone, though that in itself has its own sheddings, but the compounding losses I had endured before I became a mother blended with the isolation and lack of support of motherhood that took my bumpy road to a shocking earthquake. This period of my life was also a profound healing space for me, where I peered even more into the unseen roots of blocks and difficulties with the connection to my inner wisdom, restructuring deeply embedded patterns and creating a more expansive, inner freedom in my personal life and thus, my path of service in the world. My own healing transformed my own offerings, as often is the case. I am honored to have a seat in this practice and to hold a sacred space for others along the journey.

We are powerful spiritual beings living a human life carrying our own karmic footprints and braids of generational and relational patterns. Healing trauma is the completion of incomplete processes or cycles of energy at all aspects of our being — physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. There are methods and ways to reclaim ourselves. We do not have to stay in our suffering. What a gift it is to know that we can create clarity, and feel empowered and free in ourselves and in our lives.

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
At the heart of my path of service is helping people connect, discover, and reclaim their own personal power, understand and unravel harmful patterns, and access their own innate abilities of healing to live more freely in the world and in their relationships. Whether focusing on the mind/body connection in Yoga, Breathwork, & Meditation and Integrative Massage Therapy sessions or exploring deeper work with Depth Hypnosis or Applied Shamanic Counseling, our work together is informed and driven by compassionate curiosity in a collaborative sacred space to understand and gain clarity.

What sets Depth Hypnosis apart from other therapies or counseling practices is the bridging of the ordinary world and the non-ordinary world, the conscious and the subconscious. Spiritual Counseling in Depth Hypnosis fuses Transpersonal Psychology, Hypnotherapy, Integrated Energy Medicine, Applied Buddhist Philosophy, and Earth-Based Shamanic Wisdom and Tools, bringing the unseen to the seen, offering a deeper understanding of the Self and how to live a more authentic and empowered life. This can be done without talking at great length about the trauma and patterns. Working on the subconscious level, in a deep meditative state where you are fully conscious and aware, and the busy working mind is taking a break, allows us to see from where patterns emerged and unravel them, as well as look at past trauma for rewiring and healing. Processes in Depth Hypnosis may include parts work, age regressions, past life regressions, prenatal regressions, energetic interferences, soul retrieval and power retrievals, and soul part exchanges.

Applied Shamanic Counseling is a counseling method within Depth Hypnosis which brings ancient practices to the modern experience and empowers clients to develop a shamanic skill set. Clients will learn to journey and connect with an internal guide to deepen their self-awareness and self-healing journey. Applied Shamanic Counseling can help people get unstuck and develop a deeper understanding in a visceral way. My role is to help clients to develop areas of inquiry and assist them in integrating their journeys, as well as gain better clarity with dream work. In addition to the Applied Shamanic Counseling method, I also provide the healing services of space clearings to homes, buildings, offices and lands.

All of my offerings weave together in some way as we are working with the subtle energy body, which holds emotions and beliefs that ultimately shape our reality. Working in this space has a nuance. I have learned over years of teaching, counseling, and guiding that a safe, clear, and sacred container is imperative in building a foundation with methods and practices to support our ability to access our own internal support system, create more agency and compassion for ourselves and for the world at large.