Lauren Courtney

[00:00:00] You are listening to Women’s Dream Enlightenment. Dream decoding deep discussions and stories of spiritual awakening to inspire your personal enlightened journey. I’m your host, Megan Mary, international bestselling metaphysical author. And founder of Inner Realms Publishing. Let’s bring in the light.

Megan Mary – MeganMary: Welcome today. My guest is Lauren Courtney. She is a master energy healer. Holy fire, world peace, Karuna Reiki master and teacher. Sound healer and author of Glow Up Your Chakras from Medicated to Meditated. a decade of burnout and overachievement in the culinary and wellness worlds, Lauren turned inward to heal the [00:01:00] unprocessed emotions and nervous system patterns that fueled her hustle. Today she helps high performers, creatives, and seekers become their own greatest healer. Blending holy fire, Reiki, somatic and breathwork practices. Kundalini Yoga and Intuitive Energetic rewiring. work guides people to break lifelong loops around success, worthiness and self-trust so they can live with more alignment, ease, and magnetic abundance. Welcome, Lauren.

Lauren Courtney: Thank you for having me. It’s always so interesting to to hear the bio back.

Megan Mary – MeganMary: Huh. Yeah, and there’s a lot about that. I like, I love the subtitles of your book. And the ending of the alignment, ease, and abundance is much an alignment with what I talk about with a authenticity, alignment, and abundance. So

Lauren Courtney: Amazing. Yeah.

Megan Mary – MeganMary: [00:02:00] synchronicities going on there. Okay.

Lauren Courtney: Beautiful.

Megan Mary – MeganMary: my first question is going to be, what does enlightenment mean to you?

Lauren Courtney: Oh, I love that question. Enlightenment for me. I guess the best way I could describe it is when I went through my spiritual awakening a few years ago and woke up to my mediumship, I had this inner knowing that this is my last time on earth and what does that mean? And I’ve kind of lived having that knowing.

You know, what does that mean for this life if I am meant to not come back again? And for me, it really is about living in my purpose, living in my truth, and knowing that heaven on earth exists. It’s not that I have to ascend and leave this dimension to access that level of enlightenment, but I can bring that enlightenment to myself and to others at this time, right now.[00:03:00]

Megan Mary – MeganMary: Very true. Spoken very well. Yes, it’s, something that we are here to achieve

Lauren Courtney: Yeah,

Megan Mary – MeganMary: it’s really part of the reason that I started this podcast.

Lauren Courtney: I love that.

Megan Mary – MeganMary: share the enlightened experiences that other women have had, and they’re all very different. So now I’m going to give you an opportunity to share your story of spiritual awakening and how you came to do the work that you’re doing out in the world now.

Lauren Courtney: Yeah, so I believe a spiritual awakening, n now looking back on my awakening is so multilayered and it’s like there’s, you know. Little speed bumps along the way almost, and then you hit that huge bump and you’re like, oh, I can’t go backwards anymore. So a few of the little speed bumps that brought me in that [00:04:00] direction, I was working in corporate America, had this inner knowing that I was here to help people heal.

Didn’t know what that meant. I was working. In a talent agency. At the time, I thought, oh my God, I have the coolest life. I work with athletes, I work with celebrities, but I needed to actually have surgery. I had three jaw surgeries starting when I was 17 years old again at about 20 years old. And at 24 I had to have my jaw broken and rubber bandage shut for eight weeks.

And this is all due to chronic pain, which I talk about more in my book. So I won’t go all into it or we’ll be here all day. But essentially that was kind of the start of my awakening. I went through that surgery and realized I’m not actually happy at work because I was out of the office and connected unknowingly to my energy and not the energy of everyone else.

And as an empath, I was just [00:05:00] absorbing without understanding. So. That was kind of step one. Step two, I got a new job. Thought this is the answer, nine to five, nothing at the time in New York City, I don’t think anything really is nine to five, but that was the leap and that’s when I started hearing this inner knowing you’re here to help people heal.

I ended up, God intervened. I broke my foot. It was the foot out of the door to corporate America. I never went back to a corporate job. I’d already started a blog about food. And that blog ultimately took me to my first position outside of corporate America, which was working as a private chef for clients recovering from food, drug, and alcohol addiction.

So that was. Unknowingly the start of me healing myself. And then from there, my best friend and first love passed away. It will be nine and a half years. And the day he crossed over, he started communicating with me. I didn’t realize I had [00:06:00] been preparing for that moment and there were speed bumps, other ones in between that.

I won’t get all into those, but essentially that was the biggest moment for me. And there was no going back because. I knew so deeply in my heart that he was communicating with me and I, at the time I was 32, he would’ve been, 36, and I just couldn’t, I couldn’t accept that. Life just ended there in the same way I could when my grandparents had passed who were older.

It was just something I was ready. Mm-hmm.

Megan Mary – MeganMary: Hmm. Wow. Yeah, that’s, that’s a very powerful story. And I love the synchronicities about how you, got an injury, it wasn’t really like a conscious decision, but then it became one and that your working as a chef [00:07:00] really was giving back to the people who had been through what you had been through. And so that’s very interesting to me. And I personally. Love that of nature with healing because I’m a big proponent of, let the food be thy medicine. And myself have certified in plant-based nutrition. And so I have a, a strong appreciation for the spiritual nature of food actually.

Lauren Courtney: Yeah. It’s a part of the book. Initially glow up your chakras was going to be a cookbook. That’s the direction I thought it was going. It was a chakra healing cookbook.

Megan Mary – MeganMary: I like that.

Lauren Courtney: And the deeper I went into my journey, it turned into memoir meets chakra healing, and section three is recipes. And I talk about how to eat for your intuition and the ways to really feed your energy centers because.

I went [00:08:00] to school to be a holistic health coach and I studied hundreds of dietary theories, and the thing is there’s gonna be a different diet all the time. I was talking to someone earlier who was saying she got really into the protein thing, because as you get older, you need more protein.

But her body was actually saying, no, I don’t want this. Why are you putting so much of this in me? And she had to come back to her intuition and knowing, Hey, my body will tell me exactly what I need. Everything else is a lot of noise that I’m consuming and I’m having trouble digesting that noise.

Megan Mary – MeganMary: Mm-hmm. Yeah. It’s very difficult nowadays to find that right way of eating. So many people struggle with that and I think it’s really interesting when, when we start talking about the intuition and listening to the body, that obviously we [00:09:00] feel that we have to eat several times a day, but many times we’re just operating on autopilot. Or we are going by convenience or other things like that. And it takes a lot of conscious effort to set up that your standards are actually nourishing and. What your body needs. If you’re on that autopilot, that’s fine, but if you haven’t set that up to begin with, then you could totally be on the wrong course and just this cyclical loop.

Lauren Courtney: Absolutely. Even like today, for example, I knew I was doing a lot of channeling today, so when I woke up I was like, I want bone broth. And then I wanna make myself a big blue lotus and rose petal tea. So I’m connected to my crown and my heart while I’m channeling. And I’ll, I’ll eat dinner later and I’ll make sure to nourish myself.

But it’s like I wasn’t. Intermittent fasting, ’cause then [00:10:00] I’m labeling it something that’s not true. I was simply nourishing my crown chakra and nourishing my throat chakra, which are lighter foods that allow me right to be in more of that enlightenment as opposed to the embodiment. And it’s knowing when do I be enlightened?

When do I be embodied? And you know, always we wanna be embodied, but have that ability to access the higher chakras.

Megan Mary – MeganMary: Mm-hmm. And I’ve heard theories too that the more we step into this awakened state, the less our body actually needs

Lauren Courtney: That’s how I feel all the time.

Megan Mary – MeganMary: Yeah, in terms of that. So I like that it was gonna be originally a cookbook. I really like this and I didn’t get to that part obviously. So that’s a nice surprise. Talk about, for the listeners who might say, what are they talking about?

Chakras, what is that? Let’s start there.

Lauren Courtney: [00:11:00] yeah, so chakras are our energy centers. I almost like to see them as light switches or a wheel that’s spinning or a light switch with a dimmer up and down. But essentially we have many more than seven chakras. But I’ll touch on the main seven, beginning with the root, which is located at the base of our spine, just about safety, security.

It’s where our ancestral stuff is held. It’s where our money wounds are held, and that’s really because ages zero through seven is when the root chakra is really formed. So. Where our, when our subconscious is being formed, that’s all stored in the root chakra. And then moving up, we have the sacral chakra below the belly button, which is all about creativity, sensuality, sexuality, birthing ideas, birthing projects, and we move up to the solar plexus, our power center, which I always see as this like yellow care bear, just like shining sunshine out into the world.[00:12:00]

But with that, when we’re not feeling that sunshine energy, there might be cords, connections, energy that pulls on our own power. And we can see this coming back to food with someone that might have dis-ease any gut health issues. Often it’s. Stems from something like giving your power away in situations.

And we move up to the heart chakra, which is all about compassion, unconditional love first of course for self, and then of course unconditional love for others. Coming up to the throat chakra, our voice, the ability to speak and feel safe, which I also find is so directly connected to that sacral chakra and feeling safe in your body and in your sensuality and in your truth, and creative energy to be able to speak your voice so often.

You know, when one chakra is imbalanced, it usually takes another one, a little offline with it, and then we come up to the third eye, which is [00:13:00] our intuition, our vision, whether it be inward or outward, and of course, our crown at the top of the head, which is our connection to source, connection to God, connection to whatever that is for you.

I, I simply connect right to God. That’s what feels the best to me.

Megan Mary – MeganMary: Yes. Thank you for that explanation. ’cause I, I know some people you never know who might be listening might not be familiar with that. and speaking of dis-ease, yes, I talk about that a lot, on this podcast. But little bit of a a preview for everybody that, my third book that has come out this month, the Dream Dimensions, talks about disease and chronic illness.

And there’s also something to do with chakras, but I can’t reveal too much, you know? there’s seven riddles. Seven riddles. Yes. So. I really enjoy I’m [00:14:00] actually in the process of studying for my PhD in metaphysical sciences. And one of the concentration areas that I think I may go into is combining the culinary with the spiritual.

So even though I didn’t know that that was gonna be our conversation today, I’m tickled that it is because, that’s definitely something that I think is left out of a lot of people’s spiritual practice.

Lauren Courtney: Absolutely. I was making myself dinner before we got on this call and. Even when I’m just starring, I was starring something in a pot. And for me, I’ll put Reiki into it ’cause I work with the Reiki symbols. Or I’ll put an intention into it or a mantra into it and make sure that I’m swirling it in the clockwise direction to infuse that energy into the food.

And it’s those little things. And I, I talk about that a bit in the book. It’s, it’s those little things. In the book, I compare it to an artist, right? I think people get really overwhelmed with [00:15:00] the idea of cooking. Before I was a chef, I always say the best dish I made was reservations. Like I made the best reservations.

I knew how to do that with ease. And then I started cooking when I was in nutrition school to understand the dietary theories. I wanted to learn them all, and I’m a very visual, hands-on learner. And I realized that I had to break through my own fears of cooking. Like, oh, I, I don’t wanna make a mess. I don’t this and that.

Right? And those were my own childhood things of being told, you know what, why don’t you just set the table? I’ll take care of dinner. So I never felt that I had those skills, so I got to teach them. So in the book, I kind of compare it to. An artist, right? We’ve got an Andy Warhol, we’ve got a Van Gogh.

Their art is so different and so beautiful. So you know, I could give you a recipe and do the same recipe, and while we might have the same ingredients, it might [00:16:00] look totally different. And to me, that’s the beauty of cooking, is you get to express your art. On a plate. So I, I compare the food and going to shop as like paints and your, and then you come home and your plate is your canvas and your pots and your pans and your knives.

Those are your brushes. So, you know, it’s an opportunity to play and create as opposed to, oh my God, I’m so stressed and, and I still have to eat dinner. Like, what a gift that you get to slow down and eat dinner.

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Megan Mary – MeganMary: Mm. Mm-hmm. I love. The metaphor of cooking is painting and , and also you create that masterpiece, you get to share it with others. And it has that infused intention in it too. And there’s something very meditative about cooking especially if you’re spending an afternoon creating food for the week.

I, I do miss doing that. I’ve been so busy with my books. I have not been able to do that, but soup season’s coming up, so very much looking forward to, I.

Lauren Courtney: I find when, when writing. A book book I was very in my crown chakra for, for quite some time. It was those lighter brothy foods or you know, a matcha and the things that were keeping me up here.

Megan Mary – MeganMary: Yeah, so tell me a little bit more about your mediumship and how that. Appeared, and if [00:19:00] you’ve had any experiences in the dream world.

Lauren Courtney: So my mediumship appeared quite literally the day my friend passed away. I found out about his death that morning and that afternoon I was. Standing. It was a July 4th weekend. I was away with girlfriends. They were like, you have to eat, like you need to get out of this house and we need to get you food.

And we were standing in a pizza place and I was waiting for a salad. And the place was crowded. And I was just like, what am I doing here? I should go back home. And all of this sudden I heard, it was like the radio dial changed, and this was only nine and a half years ago. You know, like you just press a button like it wasn’t that long ago.

And it was like, I heard the dial change and all of a sudden the song changed from whatever it was to Eminem. Hi, my name is. And I was like, oh my God, this is Jeff. We used [00:20:00] to go to every Eminem concert together, like that was one of our things. And as the song came on, the whole left side of my body was just covered in what I now call angel bumps and.

I just knew he was there. And I, I, like, I knew it wasn’t a question. I also knew that I didn’t wanna tell my girlfriends that were standing next to me, like, Hey, I think Jeff’s here. ’cause I didn’t understand that. I, I had never experienced something like that knowingly before. There were, there were signs but I wasn’t yet ready to open the door until that moment.

So that’s how it started for me and for that next week, the, I would turn this radio on and a song that didn’t even belong on that station, that was one of our songs was coming on the radio. So it started that way. And then I moved out to la I, I found Reiki, initially a Sui Reiki.

I was living in New York and left New York, moved out to LA [00:21:00] and found Holy Fire Reiki, which is what I practice now. And about a week after that reiki training crows were speaking to me on the streets of LA and, crossed over celebrities that had their souls kind of in transitional places were communicating with me.

It, it is called Los Angeles for a reason. There are a lot of Los Angels hanging out in that city, but I didn’t know any of this. You know, I was just going through my awakening, so I would actually sit in my apartment at night and I would leave the space for people to come through and communicate with me, and it was just something I was doing on my own time.

And then it shifted to, I called my mom one night. And asked her to send me a photo of the family tree that I knew I had going back three generations. I had made it when I was in middle school, so my mom sent me the four quadrants and I would [00:22:00] start sitting down at night with my ancestors and asking how I could help them because what I understood is our healing is the healing for seven generations before and the generation still to come.

So I knew. But my own family was really having a hard time, and my friends were having a really hard time with what I was going through and experiencing. They couldn’t quite grasp the awakening I was having. So instead I relied on my ancestors and health space for them so they could help me get stronger in knowing that this was my path.

Megan Mary – MeganMary: Hmm. Yeah, that’s very powerful. Ancestral healing is, is a big topic for me as well, and. When you go through this spiritual awakening, it seems, I haven’t talked to anybody yet who’s kinda like, and everybody I knew was going through it too, and so we just commiserated the whole time. No, it’s, that’s not how it is. You just are by yourself on this road [00:23:00] and it’s usually a dark road and you’re very confused and it’s depressing and it can also be, just extremely uplifting and fascinating and a little scary, but there’s usually not somebody in your immediate circle who you can actually say, and this happened. Then the crows are talking to me because, you know, there’s a lot of social stigma around. Mental health and things and all that, it’s a fine line between having a spiritual experience and having it be accepted and having other people say, well, she’s gone off a rocker and, she needs some help. that’s a line that I think really prevented me in the beginning from out with my story because I was so concerned about that stigma.

Lauren Courtney: Yeah, it’s definitely something I’ve gotten to work through [00:24:00] and a lot of friendships and relationships. Ended,

Megan Mary – MeganMary: Yeah.

Lauren Courtney: I also know those friendships and relationships were keeping me in my comfort zone and safe from who I authentically am and once you understand magic and the universe and this world is, is different than I thought it was for me.

I could not close that door again. I couldn’t ignore it, and if that meant people were leaving my life. As my grandmother would say, I hear her, she’s like, go with god. Go with God. Like go with God. Like thank you so much for being in my life and thank you so much for leaving my life and letting me step more into my purpose.

Because like when I went through the awakening, it was very lonely and I told God, if you get me through this, I will help whoever I am meant to help. As they go through their journey, I will write the book. I will do the things that I am meant to do. So no one has to feel [00:25:00] alone on this journey, and it’s beautiful.

I’ve seen some of my best girlfriends from high school who I’m still close with, two of them the last two years have been going through massive awakenings, and while they didn’t understand what I was going through, now I’m the phone call of like, Hey. Can you help me with what I’m experiencing right now?

And being able to do that and being able to hand them my book and be like, here’s a whole thing of tools for you is such a gift that I’m so glad I was willing to walk through the darkness.

Megan Mary – MeganMary: Hmm, 100%. Yes. And I had a similar thing. It was kind of like, if you can just show me the way out of this, I will do the podcast, I will write the books. I will create the community. I will hold the space other women, and I felt in really called to do that and I couldn’t explain it to. Anybody why, how it [00:26:00] felt. But now that I’m on the other side of it, it’s like, okay, wow, that was something. Yeah, it’s nice to be able to s step into that calling and embrace that, and then of a sudden the world’s shifting around you when you do that.

Lauren Courtney: Yeah.

Megan Mary – MeganMary: people showing up support you to need what you have to say and what you are communicating out into the world.

It’s fascinating how it works because you think no way the whole time, but it actually has a beautiful way of circling back.

Lauren Courtney: Yeah. The first year or two that I was a Reiki killer, I was like, everyone needs to know Reiki mom. Dad, you need reiki. And then when I [00:27:00] finally was like, Lauren, this isn’t about them. This is about you. It gave the space that now all these years down the line they wanna experience it. I go and visit, they’re like, oh, are you gonna bring your sound bowls with you?

Oh, you know, like I taught my dad Reiki one and two a year or two ago. ’cause he wants to learn animal reiki and Reiki one and two is a prerequisite. So I’m like, okay, let me know when you’re ready for animal now. And it was so interesting ’cause we talked about chakras and auras in his reiki training.

And I’ll never forget, my dad said to me. Oh yeah, I see auras. I was like, what do you mean you see auras? Because this is a man who, when I told him I was a medium, he said, oh really? I thought you were a large, and so, right. Like that, that kind of joke. So when I, he said, I can see auras. I said, well, can you explain that to me?

And he said, you know, like around grandpa, around Buzz. And I was like, dad, you just named two people who [00:28:00] are dead. What do you mean you see auras around them? And, you know, and then I said to him, so you’re telling me you are a medium? And he is like, no, no, no, I’m, I’m not a medium. I, I just see these auras.

So it also, I got to have the understanding, ’cause my mom said similar things. Hers isn’t auras, but she feels similar to me. They never felt safe to explore their own gifts because they weren’t emotionally supported in their childhood. So it’s like, it was just continued to pass down until I was like, no, no, no.

The cycle breaks here because I understand it. So now I get to hold space for my parents having their own spiritual experiences, whatever they wanna call it or not call it, but their experiences. It’s really beautiful because I don’t need to like claim ownership of it, and I don’t need to say, you need to do it this way, or you need to do it that way.

It’s like just holding that space and [00:29:00] frequency for myself to feel safe. Allow them to start feeling safe to have the experiences and that’s, you know, the ancestors, if you work out here, it’s gonna happen.

Megan Mary – MeganMary: Yes. And it’s a beautiful, beautiful thing when that happens. And it’s true, you, you don’t have to necessarily say, well, you’re this or you’re that. It’s just, creating that environment where you have overcome the blockade, right. And that they see that and then they say, you know what? I actually never told you about this time that, and you’re like, wait a minute.

You mean to tell me that you, you too, but you just never, you know, shared that. And I think it’s a generational calling to overcome thereby heal for all of the past generations that it or [00:30:00] struggled with it, or suffered as a result of it. That I think is happening a lot right now, and I, it’s a very, very important role that we’re being called to do.

Lauren Courtney: I feel, I feel so grateful. I, I genuinely feel so grateful, and the more I can see the shifts within, you know, my family or my best friends from high school, like I, I don’t live in New York anymore. I’m based in Miami. And when I go to New York and see my community shifting. I understand. Like, okay, this is how the ripple effect works.

Like I don’t need to be here. My energy is here, my energy is planted in these certain places, just holding the frequency, I always say, be the lighthouse. Let the ships come to you, because I used to right at the beginning, it’s like, oh my God, I gotta go to this one. This one. No, be the lighthouse. The ships are gonna show up.

Let them come to you when they’re ready and it’s a beautiful thing when you could just be [00:31:00] that light and ripple that vibration out.

Megan Mary – MeganMary: Very well said. Yes. Well, for those that are curious about. Out your Holy Fire, reiki and the other practices that you offer, where can they find you?

Lauren Courtney: You can find me on my website, lauren courtney heals.com. I am also on Instagram and Threads at I am Lauren Courtney.

Megan Mary – MeganMary: Okay,

Lauren Courtney: And then of course I’ve got the book Glow Up Your Chakras from Medicated to Meditated, available on Amazon as well.

Megan Mary – MeganMary: Yes, and you can find Lauren’s book in on bookshop.org, where I have a list of all of the books of of my guests that have been on Women’s Dream enlightenment, including my own. find them on there. yes, I will put the rest of your links in the show notes. Well, thank you for being here today, Lauren, and sharing your story.

I think it’s very important what you’re doing out in the world, and I look forward to keeping in touch. I.

Lauren Courtney: Thank you so much for having [00:32:00] me.

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