I didn't know anything about Phil T. Mistlberger or his work. I just knew he was the latest trend my spiritual woo-woo friend had mentioned the week before, and I happened to remember his weird name (the T is for Teertha).

After tracking him down on a relationships podcast, I booked a private session — and at the end, he suggested I join his 16 week shadow work intensive, Conscious Relationship Training (CRT).

The decision was easy: I was skyrocketing in my career at the time and making more money than I'd ever seen, so spending two thousand dollars to punish (and possibly fix!) my boyfriend was a no-brainer. I was smugly confident he was the whole problem, and that I was a saint for putting up with him.

Spoiler alert: I was wrong.

Over those 16 weeks, our explosive romance came to an appropriately messy conclusion, and I was afforded the opportunity to look — and really see — the unconscious patterns that were running my life and my relationships.

So I looked, with my whole self, and I saw.

And what I saw was... g h a s t l y.

Everywhere I turned, there was just more me: every rejected aspect, every desperately fabricated part of my personality, every pattern I'd blamed on the wrongness of every partner I'd ever chosen.

I saw that for every experience I'd ever had, I was the only throughline. The only thing all my difficulties had in common was me.

Like jumping off a cliff

That realization was liberating, but it also left me wind-ravaged, with my stomach in my throat and the whole world hurtling toward me top speed. It was the kind of empowerment that found me weeping in my car a lot, raging to death metal and Dolly Parton — swinging from grief at the wasted years, to marveling at all the untapped potential.

I was finally vividly alive; I felt inspired, enraged, crushingly sad and utterly lovely — all at the same time. The existential floodgates were open, and I was hooked.

Those 16 weeks of CRT turned into hundreds, with countless hours of upper level work and teacher training before I began leading sessions in 2018. Around the same time, I surprised myself by being initiated into Phil's mystery school (Temple of Anubis) and going down an esoteric rabbit hole.

That's where things got strange. The combination of intensive self-discovery, undeniable magic, and relentless synchronicities quickly became too much. I was "losing my mind" — consciously and on purpose — and I didn't have the inner infrastructure to hold what I was encountering.

So I stepped back, and built my capacity to hold more of the fullness of life — and the magic of it too.

That's what I help people do today.

I've since attained the temple's Inner Order and a master's degree in Metaphysical Sciences — which I mention to emphasize that I see the world through a metaphysical lens, and my work reflects that. The spiritual dimension of personal growth isn't decorative for me, it's one of three load-bearing pillars.

The other two are body and mind. Body (read: nervous system) — whose capacity I had to build just to hold my reality — and mind (conscious + unconscious) — whose shadowy recesses I had to expose to see my reality in the first place. These two pillars form the basis of our programs and the Somatic Shadow Work method at Wholehearted Loving.

I live for the moment people realize they aren't limited to the confines of the defended, reactive, fearful version of themselves, and they glimpse something greater: an eternal and omnipresent source of power and support, conspiring for their benefit. That's what I'm here for — to help guide you to that Something Greater, inside and out.

If part of you recognizes this, and wants it — and doesn't mind my bluntly honest delivery — then we're probably going to get along just fine.

Proof of concept:

Ten years later, I am SO GLAD my old boyfriend did what he did, and that I listened when my woo-woo friend was prattling on about her spiritual crap. It was the Universe at play, in service of my highest good, leading me here — to my Work, my teacher, and my people.

I'm eternally grateful I had the wherewithal to get out of my own way long enough to let the magic play out. I hope you'll do the same.

— Steph