In the newest edition of MysticMag interviews, Sophia Koulakis of Nurture Your Roots shares her inspiring path into the wellness industry, overcoming health struggles, and how she combines her expertise as a Clinical Aromatherapist with a holistic approach to empower her clients’ mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being.
What can you tell me about your professional beginnings?
My professional entrance into the wellness industry started when I received my certification as a Certified Clinical Aromatherapist from the School of Aromatic Studies in 2017 after ten years of health struggles. I hid behind my anger. Being told at 14 that I’d never be able to have children hit deep, especially because my dream was to be a mother. Who would have thought that trusting my doctors and the medications to heal my endometriosis and PCOS would be a living nightmare?
Year after year, I’d listen and follow protocol, never skipping a dose or check-up. But year after year, I felt more distant from myself. Physically, I suffered from excruciating migraines and gained more weight. Emotionally, I became angrier. Mentally, I lacked motivation and held onto all conflict with a vengeance. After 10 years of following these treatments, becoming more isolated and out of control, and being bullied, it finally sank in that the medications I was on created a domino of side effects that trickled from my physical body into my emotional and mental body.
It quickly became apparent that Western medicine wasn’t about healing the whole person. It was about masking the symptoms just enough to get by. This discovery occurred when I ruptured a cyst, and the doctors told me I needed to remove my ovaries. All these years, I thought I was taking medications to heal my body so that one day I could have children – not make things worse.
It was at that moment I knew I had to do things differently. I stopped going to my doctor’s, stopped taking my medication, and started praying. Praying for strength to get me through the next phase of my journey: researching how to heal my body physically. The following two years were years of cleansing. After 11 years of emotional turmoil, countless medications, and numerous doctor visits, I became pregnant and naturally delivered a beautiful, healthy baby boy!
However, it wasn’t until 2014, when my Grandmother passed away shortly after my son was born, that I made it my mission to learn more about alternative medicine and teach others how to live a holistic lifestyle. You see when we cleaned her home, I discovered her medication tin was filled with 18 prescription medications. I researched and found that 16 medications were prescribed due to the side effects of the prior medications.
At that moment, I promised myself I would never allow anyone to go through what we went through with doctors and medications.
What is the mental aspect of your health program?
At Nurture Your Roots, we spend a lot of time on the mental body because we are a Holistic Health Program. We focus on the whole person, including the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual body. Our mental body is centered around our thinking brain. The mental body represents our attitudes, judgments, bias, and prejudices. It incorporates all the intellectual and analytical thoughts that we have.
In my work, my clients start to understand the importance of working on mental health (even though they are sometimes resistant). They learn that to achieve TRUE mental freedom, they need to dig deep within themselves to acknowledge that their past and the stories they tell themselves lead to their self-made barriers – limiting beliefs that hold them back from living a fulfilling life.
So once my clients acknowledge this, we work to peel back the layers, and together, I support them in releasing their limiting beliefs so they can finally let go of what is no longer serving them.
How about its spiritual side? How can it improve people’s spiritual well-being?
Our spiritual body is about our unity to life and our soul. It’s about our connection to the earth, God, the universe, our higher power, the divine. It’s not about religion but our relationship to the life around us – including ourselves. So after my clients work on the emotional and mental aspects of themselves, they start to shift their inner world, becoming more aligned and in tune with their bodies.
On the inside, they no longer operate from past traumas, fears, lack, or limitations. They are more confident in their choices, feeling into their body and what their body is showing them, to make the best health decision for themselves. They connect more deeply with themselves and reach deeper awareness concerning their health and well-being. This consistent choice-action is the path that leads to health empowerment and ultimately gives my clients access to higher-level intuition, which fosters a better understanding of self.
Can you share some success stories?
Sure! After one session with me, Megan W. from Wenatchee, WA, said, “I gotta say. This process I entered into after our first session was deep and intense. I had to purge some things that were necessary for me to begin to heal. As I write this… I know that what we did impacted me moving forward and gave me insight into things that were incredible to see. It IS healing. I can feel that I’m changing. It’s a type of confidence I’ve never experienced!!”
After completing Phase 1 (12-week Program), T.C from Austin, TX, said:
“Before I started working with Sophia, I was experiencing terrible migraines coupled with existing anxiety and depression resulting in panic attacks on an increasing basis. I have been taking over-the-counter medications for my migraines with no success. Since my teenage years, I have been on and off various antidepressants and anxiety medications with limited success. I had doctors offering to prescribe stronger medications for both, but it didn’t feel right to me to treat the symptoms without addressing the possible source of the problem.
The migraines were severely impacting my ability to work and my hectic day-to-day life. I’d get a migraine, often lasting for 24 hours, confining me to bed. I would also experience light sensitivity and bouts of nausea, and from that stress, I’d start throwing up. I believed what I had been experiencing was another byproduct of overwhelm. I was stuck. I had learned to cope with the mental strain of depression and anxiety. However, the physical discomfort of the migraines was fairly new to me. Then, Sophia entered my life!
Working with Sophia has helped me reclaim my voice and choice! Since then, I have been feeling lighter. Lighter. The invisible weights I’ve been lugging around have been lifted off my shoulders, and as a result, I haven’t had a migraine in the last two months! Also, Sophia has helped me recognize the signs of an oncoming migraine so I can stop it before it starts. Our sessions together have also started loosening the constriction in my chest. Because of this, I feel like I can think more clearly and therefore make better choices in my life. I believe my work with Sophia has been the catalyst for this change.
Sophia has been a true Godsend in my life. She is kind and compassionate. If you’re ready to open yourself up to a non-conventional way of thinking and healing, an experience where you don’t necessarily know all the answers or feel the need to understand everything, work with Sophia. I think anyone who is stuck or has experienced trauma, knowingly and unknowingly, should work with her.”
How do you implement your skills and knowledge as a Clinical Aromatherapist into your work?
The Nurture Your Roots Program is a 2-phase program. Phase 1 is Clearing the Path. This phase involves clearing the path, which means identifying and removing blockages and obstacles that prevent you from reaching your true potential. This phase focuses on uncovering the root cause of your emotional issues, including beliefs, memories, and experiences that have shaped your current patterns of thinking and behavior, and fully releasing the emotions or imbalances causing them.
Phase 2 is called The Deep Work. My base health philosophy is that symptoms of dis-ease are our body’s way of communicating that something in the body is out of balance.
Therefore, one aspect of phase 2 is to bring balance to the physical body using alternative medicine modalities, such as Naturopathy, Aromatherapy, and more, that encourage your body’s innate self-healing ability. As a Clinical Aromatherapist, if my client needs an Aromatherapy product, I would formulate what they need, specifically for their body and current needs, which supports the body to come into balance.
To learn more about Sophia and her work, you can visit her website at www.nurtureyourroots.com
