From Hustling Through Life to Trusting Your Inner Knowing: A Different Way to Grow with Renee Bowen
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From Hustling Through Life to Trusting Your Inner Knowing: A Different Way to Grow with Renee Bowen
Farya: I realized, well, I can stay where I am and just keep charging very little for this and kill myself to just give and giving and giving away my art and not get any energetic exchange back. Or I can get real uncomfortable and look at why I want to throw up when I ask people for money.
Narrator: Welcome to From Trauma to CEO: The Psychology of Transformational Success with Farya Barlas. This is a space for cycle breakers, leaders, and visionaries who are ready to rewrite old patterns and rise into their fullest potential. Each episode explores the emotional, psychological, and identity-level shifts that turn lived experience into lasting, meaningful success. And now here's your host, Farya Barlas.
Farya: Hello and welcome to From Trauma to CEO.
Today's conversation is one that I've actually genuinely been looking forward to because it lives in a space that I care very deeply about, and it's a space between healing meet expansion, and where the inner work begins to shape how an individual leads her life, her business, and their creativity.
And most importantly, I'm joined by a very, very dear friend of mine that I have a lot of love for, so I'm joined by Renee Bowen, who is a trauma-informed coach, photographer, and the podcast host who has helped visionary women heal at the root and embody their next evolution in life, and also in their business, and in everything that they do. So she blends her degree in psychology and certificate in NLP, hypnosis, and Reiki—so everything, everything amazing.
She also integrates neuroscience, energetic, and subconscious reprogramming to create deep and lasting transformation. And with a photographer's eyes and a healer's heart, she guides every creative woman to dissolve all pattern, regulate their nervous system, and reconnect with their authentic self. As a host of Tried and True with a Dash of Woo—which, by the way, I love that name—Renee brings her signature mix of practicality and magic to conversations about mindset, manifestation, conscious entrepreneurship. So everything that's just very close to my heart.
Her work invites women to expand beyond surface-level strategy and into full energetic embodiment where business, creativity, and personal evolution becomes one aligned expression.
So, thank you so much for being here, Renee. And I want to, well, welcome you officially first, but also just tell you how excited I am that we are speaking—just generally that I'm speaking with you, because I love just talking to you, but also that people are going to be hearing about your magic also.
Renee: Thank you so much, I am thrilled to be on your podcast. I love it.
Farya: Great. So as we started, we started talking about embodiment. I mean, that is a word that I know that it gets used widely and it's not always a true representation of the work that is being carried out. So in your work, I know that embodiment plays a very big part in everything that you do. And usually when embodiment happens, especially when we are entering the next evolution or next stage of growth, there is a shift that takes place. So I wanted to hear from you about your experience with working with women who are going to go through this embodiment and then that shift that takes place, and just tell us a little bit about what that shift is about and what it is that you see as a result of individuals embodying their next level.
Renee: Yeah. Well, I think that part of it for me with the embodiment aspect, I think it goes back to—in another life, I was a massage therapist, like years and years ago, after I got my bachelor's in psychology, I fully intended to go and get that master's, and then life took various turns, as it does. So I found myself in Los Angeles and I was drawn to bodywork, and I went to a very woo-woo, like New Age-y massage therapy school back in the '90s. And it was there that I started to really get that whole aspect, right? Because I love psychology, I've loved it since I was a teenager—the inner workings of what makes us tick and what makes us do the things that we do. And then it was in massage therapy school that I started realizing, "Oh, we live in our bodies." This is all connected here, and how we can actually integrate that.
So it was one of the things that I wanted to even explore back then, before somatic therapy was ever really a thing. I was starting to experiment with some of that just in my own energy work, because I'm also certified in Reiki and all of this other kind of stuff. So fast forward now, basically what that means for me is that it's about coming back home to ourselves, because most of us—you know, high-achieving women especially, myself included—live up here, right? Like, we're living in our head. And what that saying is, "If you're in your head, you're dead," right? Because it's the spinning and the spinning and the spinning, and it's like, okay, let's integrate it and get it back down into the body, because that is where we live, and that is where a lot of this trauma or programming or whatever will show up—sometimes in illness, sometimes not, but it can show up in various ways.
So that word embodiment for me really means acknowledging and getting to the root of what's really going on under the surface in your unconscious mind so that you can then integrate it, get it into the nervous system, and regulate at the nervous system level so that you can get what you want out of life.
Farya: Well, I mean, it's obviously a no-brainer as to why me and you would become friends and that had everything to do with—because I know some coaches, and I work with some, you're one of a very few that is trauma-informed and actually works specifically, not just with the mindset, but works on all different levels.
I want to understand—because although, I'm just trying to think if we've ever had this conversation before or not, so I'm actually curious as well, myself, as well—what led you to understand that trauma or embodied—that trauma-informed coaching, or the way that you help people being trauma-informed, is a necessity, and it's something that is absolutely important for any shift to take place? I know that that's not how a lot of coaches work, or the traditional coaching industry is not necessarily trauma-informed or they don't really talk about that as much. So I wonder like where that came from for you. And I know that you've gone through your own process, so I'm curious to hear how trauma-informed coaching became a central part of what you do.
Renee: Yeah. Well, so most of my one-on-one clients will come to me because they want help with both, right? And that's what the name of my podcast is all about, Tried and True with a Dash of Woo, because we need both. We need strategy and we need all the woo—or whatever you want to call it. It's neuroscience at the end of the day. But it's about the integration of those, but also, I mean like marketing is like my love language. I can talk about marketing all day every day, it's like one of my favorite things. Also I have a very spicy creative brain, most of my clients do, most of us have some sort of undiagnosed ADHD. And that's another layer to all of this stuff on top of the trauma work and everything like that.
And so, like I said, most of these women are not coming to me just for this transformational unconscious reprogramming, right? They're coming because they don't know who they are anymore, they want to figure out how to make this business work, they want to figure out how to regulate themselves enough to get their to-do list done because they go off on a side quest every time they open their computer. Like, there's all these other little different pieces that will show up, but really at the heart of it is that, okay, we need to dig into what's really going on there.
So that's that trauma piece. It's like—I'm not a therapist, so it's not like therapy work per se, but a lot of my clients will say that this kind of felt like therapy. I'm like, I know, because we have to get to that nugget so we can look at it with neutrality, without judgment. We're not beating ourselves up about it, but we're going to look at it and just understand what's going on so that we can then create safety in the nervous system. Because this baseline feels like it's safe now, that's the loop you're running. So if this is the life you want, this is the business you want, we have to just like transfer that safety over here. We do that with hypnosis, with all kind of different regulation techniques—there's a lot of different ways, everybody's different, what works for one person may not work exactly for another.
But I do believe that the one-on-one work is really beneficial, and that's why I still love doing it, because even just on a 1-hour Zoom, we can get to a lot of stuff. And they have me on Voxer, so a lot of this is about this accountability as well, and staying, and my containers are a minimum of 3 months, I really prefer 6—depends on the person—but that's where I feel like that actual transformation can happen because I just want to meet them where they are. It's not a one-size-fits-all, it really isn't.
Farya: No, and you're doing the—you're doing the real work behind also coaching and strategizing and everything else. And I keep saying, but that is one of the main reasons as to why, at first conversation, we were speaking the same language. You've been a business owner for many, many years, and you've done a lot, you went through different stages, and you managed to build a successful business, a successful marriage, and you have a beautiful family life. We get tired every now and then, but generally you manage to create something that is going to be more sustainable for you moving forward. And of course, the work has to continue as we go along, because every layer of expansion requires another layer of untangling ourselves from the old, obviously, programming, and then not only have you done that for yourself, you managed to bring it into your work, and that's what makes your work, in my opinion, and how I see it, so much very, very, very valuable, but also long-lasting. Because it's not something that is just focusing on the surface issues or strategies, or even mindset hacks. You understand the complexity of who we are as human beings, and you've done an amazing job in your own life, but also in impacting lives of so many people and in their growth, in their expansion.
And when I talk about the integration of these two worlds, I always have you in mind because you are a true representation of how coaching and the inner work and the trauma work should all come hand in hand, because if somebody is to receive any kind of help in their expansion, in their success, it's never going to be sustainable if some form of inner work is not applied. And that is my experience over the 23 years that I've been working with people, this constantly comes up. So I just want to kind of share with you—you know that already, but share with you—how much I appreciate your work and how much I appreciate the impact that you are having on people and all the seeds that you're planting.
Renee: Oh, thank you. That means a lot coming from you. Really, really, truly. It does.
Farya: For people that are listening and want to know in what capacity—because I know you said you prefer one-to-one, but you know, what are some of the work that you do, and what are some of the things that you can help them untangle and work through, especially when it's to do with like more creative businesses and creative people that want to maybe step into business or entrepreneurship, or they want to scale and expand what they've already created? What can you help them with?
Renee: Well, yeah, it just depends on where they're at. I'm, like I said, I mostly work with creatives. In general, that's a broad term, but any business owner who feels stuck, really. Anybody who feels, like you said, either can't get to that next level, has some sort of issues with that old programming rearing up when they do even think about wanting to have bigger, better, more. If they feel triggered by things like that, if they feel like they are scattered and they have this really big dream on their heart and it's not going anywhere, and they know that it's going to take some effort so they want to walk through that.
So yeah, I do work one-on-one, but I also have a private podcast called Calibrate. That's where I put a lot of my hypnosis tracks and things like that, it's a great place for people to start.
Farya: I think we had this conversation before. Before I even met you, I had listened to that podcast, and I had listened to some of your meditation and hypnosis. And when I first spoke to you, I was saying, "Oh, hold on. You sound so familiar to me!"
Renee: Yeah! They are great, they are amazing. Thank you. And yeah, I add to it. It's like one of those things where I'll just add to it over time and there's different topics.
I like hypnosis. I love meditation in general, but I like hypnosis because I call it like a gateway drug for people because a lot of people with very active brains have a hard time with meditation. Because they feel like they can't quiet like the inner—the dialogue, right? I've got very active inner voice. And so it does take some practice. But hypnosis is a little different because, like I tell my clients, you don't really have to pay attention, I'm speaking to your unconscious mind. You—it's really just like being relaxed. You don't have to necessarily follow the meditation. Let your mind kind of go off and do what it's going to do. Going into trance is a very natural state for us, it just is.
And so I lay my hypnosis tracks over binaural beats as well, because I love binaural beats and I think that's such a cool brain hack to even just get you regulated in your body. And so you're getting a double whammy with my tracks. And so that's a really good place for people to start and just to even think about opening up to any of this.
But what that looks like as far as like the container of coaching is very specific to what their goal is, right? So some people come to me, they want to build the business from start to finish, so they need that first marketing plan, or they want to raise their prices in particular, or maybe they're stuck on this one thing. Some people come to me and they don't even have the idea, they're just, "This has been my heart for 20 years, I don't know how to even get moving," right? So whatever it is, we start at the beginning, and I always start with people and their purpose work. And I go deep into purpose work because it's not about what you do as a photographer or as a therapist, it's about who you are, right? You've been living your purpose, but we're going to take out our highlighter, we're gonna highlight it, we're gonna create that throughline, because without that connection, without your deep connection to it, all your marketing is going to feel super scattered. You're not going to know exactly what you're doing, who you're talking to, what to even do. So we got to get you really connected, and in that purpose work is the trauma work.
Farya: I love that, of course, you know, and this is the heart of essentially everything that I'm talking about, how entrepreneurship and anything to do with high-achieving women wanting to expand or succeed, yes, there are the strategy part that we need to know. As you know, like, information I always say is so accessible these days that you can almost self-educate to yourself to learn about the ins and outs of a business and a strategy and all of that, but then prevents people is something else.
Is this something that you kept coming face to face with, and what shape or what does it look like? Because a lot of the times, people don't identify it with, "Oh, this is the unconscious programming," or "Oh, this is a trauma." I mean, we've talked about the definition of trauma and how people are at times uncomfortable with it or it's sometimes misrepresented. But how do they—how does this come up? How does this come up in a way that—and how do you pick that up and go, "Okay, this is the kind of work that requires deeper intervention"?
Renee: Yeah. Well, so most of my one-on-one clients will come to me because they want help with both, right? And that's what the name of my podcast is all about, Tried and True with a Dash of Woo, because we need both. We need strategy and we need all the woo—or whatever you want to call it. It's neuroscience at the end of the day. But it's about the integration of those, but also, I mean like marketing is like my love language. I can talk about marketing all day every day, it's like one of my favorite things. Also I have a very spicy creative brain, most of my clients do, most of us have some sort of undiagnosed ADHD. And that's another layer to all of this stuff on top of the trauma work and everything like that.
And so, like I said, most of these women are not coming to me just for this transformational unconscious reprogramming, right? They're coming because they don't know who they are anymore, they want to figure out how to make this business work, they want to figure out how to regulate themselves enough to get their to-do list done because they go off on a side quest every time they open their computer. Like, there's all these other little different pieces that will show up, but really at the heart of it is that, okay, we need to dig into what's really going on there. So that's that trauma piece. It's like—I'm not a therapist, so it's not like therapy work per se, but a lot of my clients will say that this kind of felt like therapy. I'm like, I know, because we have to get to that nugget so we can look at it with neutrality, without judgment. We're not beating ourselves up about it, but we're going to look at it and just understand what's going on so that we can then create safety in the nervous system. Because this baseline feels like it's safe now, that's the loop you're running. So if this is the life you want, this is the business you want, we have to just like transfer that safety over here. We do that with hypnosis, with all kind of different regulation techniques—there's a lot of different ways, everybody's different, what works for one person may not work exactly for another.
But I do believe that the one-on-one work is really beneficial, and that's why I still love doing it, because even just on a 1-hour Zoom, we can get to a lot of stuff. And they have me on Voxer, so a lot of this is about this accountability as well, and staying, and my containers are a minimum of 3 months, I really prefer 6—depends on the person—but that's where I feel like that actual transformation can happen because I just want to meet them where they are. It's not a one-size-fits-all, it really isn't.
Farya: No, and you're doing the—you're doing the real work behind also coaching and strategizing and everything else. And I keep saying, but that is one of the main reasons as to why, at first conversation, we were speaking the same language. You've been a business owner for many, many years, and you've done a lot, you went through different stages, and you managed to build a successful business, a successful marriage, and you have a beautiful family life. We get tired every now and then, but generally you manage to create something that is going to be more sustainable for you moving forward. And of course, the work has to continue as we go along, because every layer of expansion requires another layer of untangling ourselves from the old, obviously, programming, and then not only have you done that for yourself, you managed to bring it into your work, and that's what makes your work, in my opinion, and how I see it, so much very, very, very valuable, but also long-lasting. Because it's not something that is just focusing on the surface issues or strategies, or even mindset hacks. You understand the complexity of who we are as human beings, and you've done an amazing job in your own life, but also in impacting lives of so many people and in their growth, in their expansion.
And when I talk about the integration of these two worlds, I always have you in mind because you are a true representation of how coaching and the inner work and the trauma work should all come hand in hand, because if somebody is to receive any kind of help in their expansion, in their success, it's never going to be sustainable if some form of inner work is not applied. And that is my experience over the 23 years that I've been working with people, this constantly comes up. So I just want to kind of share with you—you know that already, but share with you—how much I appreciate your work and how much I appreciate the impact that you are having on people and all the seeds that you're planting.
Renee: Oh, thank you. Thank you for the work that you do as well. And thank you for your podcast, because it is truly a gift and I'm honored to be here, so thank you.
Farya: Absolute, absolute. Well, thank you so much for giving us your time and your wisdom and your insight, and I look forward to introducing your work to people and then for people to hear this amazing conversation, but then also follow through with other conversations, amazing conversations that you're having on your podcast. So thank you again for joining us.
Narrator: Thank you for listening to From Trauma to CEO: The Psychology of Transformational Success with Farya Barlas. Check out the show notes for more information on how to continue this work or explore more of Farya's teachings. If this episode resonated, please follow, review, and share it with someone who needs this message. And we'll see you in the next episode.
Episode Summary
In this inspiring episode, host Farya Barlas sits down with trauma-informed coach, photographer, and podcast host Renee Bowen to explore the intersection of somatic healing and creative entrepreneurship. Renee shares her journey from a background in bodywork and psychology to building a successful creative business, explaining how early childhood survival scripts often disguise themselves as professional drive. Together, they unpack how high-achieving women can break free from hyper-intellectualized loops and use subconscious reprogramming to step out of trauma-led hustle and into a state of authentic, choice-driven alignment.
What You’ll Learn
You will understand the true definition of embodiment, tracking how deep psychological blocks and financial programming manifest directly within your nervous system and body long before hitting a business ceiling.
The conversation explores how early life disruptions and oldest-daughter expectations create a subconcious framework for trauma-led drive, transforming business metrics like pricing into major worthiness triggers.
You will learn why traditional surface-level business advice and strategy fail to land if your subconscious mind is actively firing a protective survival loop that halts executive execution.
Renee shares practical insights into using hypnosis and binaural beats as gateway regulatory tools to safely shift an overactive brain from structural survival into expansive creative flow.
You will explore how to transition your business into a model of reparative success, anchoring your marketing and daily operations in foundational purpose work rather than a frantic necessity to constantly secure external safety.
Resources
Free Diagnostic: faryabarlas.com/diagnostic
Method™: faryabarlas.com/services
Book call: faryabarlas.com/book
Guest Podcast: Tried and True with a Dash of Woo
Guest Private Audio Platform: Calibrate Private Podcast Tracking
Guest Mentioned Book: Silver Eyes
