This is the transcript to the episode.
Welcome to the Stop the Mind Screw Podcast. I'm your host, Kathie Owen Certified Fitness Trainer and Life Coach since 2002. Transforming lives, magic fashion using stop the mind screw process. And this episode today, we're going to talk about where I got my start. I don't talk about myself a whole lot, but if you're going to be working with me, are you're going to be listening to this podcast for me to refer to something.
So you know, where it came from, or you understand my story. So that's what we're going to talk about. that, where, and when did I get my start in fitness? Well, if a really a monist I'm going to take you back to my days in college. When I was taking weightlifting as one of my peak. I had to take two PE classes.
So my first one actually, uh, out of the blue, I don't know why I did this. I wanted to take a dance class and I took modern dance for somebody who was in their twenties and never stepped foot in a dance studio. I did do gymnastics as a child put, I cannot dance for anything. And don't forget that because there's going to be more to that in a moment.
So my weightlifting class, I'll never forget. I took it at the, it was probably, uh, I graduated college in 1988, so it had to be somewhere in the mid-eighties when I took this course and we were in the gym. And one thing I really remembered was, um, the tricep pull down with the little triangle and I. I don't know at that moment, I fell in love with fitness and the gym and the sounds in the gym and everything.
I remember distinctly exactly where I was standing, what I learned. And that moment was just a every day little thing. And it, it transformed my life because eventually later I became a personal trainer. My degree in college was in psychology. And that is one of my passions is psychology and understanding people and their minds and how it works.
And I mean, I'm obsessed with mindset. I'm nerding out over it. I've, I'm a voracious reader and, um, or I listen to books now, but I I've read hundreds of. Thousands of, I wouldn't even call them self-help books. I would call them personal development books more than anything else. And I got my love for that.
Thank goodness. I got my degree in psychology because it saved my life actually. And my dad who has a PhD in math and I'm horrible at math. He always asked me, why are you getting a degree in psychology? Now my dad is like Albert Einstein smart, because he's like brilliant. He's one of those people who, um, for me to bond with him, I had to, I was watching sports with him.
That's how I bonded with my dad. And fishing those two things I became really good at because that's how I bonded with my dad. So my dad's asking me, why am I getting my degree in psychology? And you got to understand where he's coming from. He's a brilliant man who taught PhD mathematics to get a PhD in math.
You have to prove a theory that nobody else has ever proven. And he graded that stuff. So, of course, he asked me that, why are you getting your degree in psychology? What are you going to do with that? Because really with a degree in psychology, you need to go to get your master's your PhD to really do something that has to do with psychology.
But my life became psychology because right out of college, I met Kenny, we married in 92. He came from a very dysfunctional family that was abusive. And of course, you know, I was naive and young and I didn't understand, but the guy it's, uh, suffers from a narcissistic personality disorder and I'm not judging him, but I lived with the man and I've dealt with him for 30 years now.
So Kenny and I divorced in 2000 when we divorced.
I began years. I'm talking 14 years of a custody battle. We've been divorced for 21 years now. And to this day he doesn't talk to me. He doesn't co-parent with me. He acts like I do not exist. He really does. I mean, I don't, but that's fine. I've learned how to deal with that. So I spent years in theory. With a wonderful therapist who saved my life.
She saved my life with positivity. Um, I got a diagnosis of complex post-traumatic stress disorder, which is, I mean, we all suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder in some form or fashion complex coasts post-traumatic stress disorder comes from years of. Anxiety abuse, fear. Um, uh, just you name it. And, and I do have a diagnosis of that, but I am a survivor.
I don't, I still have triggers. They never go away. But my response to those triggers. Change. So in having said that, so imagine I don't have holidays with my boys because their dad controls that even to this day, but I have learned to overcome those triggers and they don't affect me like they used to. So that is where stop the mind screw came to, it came to be.
Born out of all of the things that I have learned through this time, because go back to my degree in psychology. I use it every single day. I even use it in fitness as well, but it saved me and positivity saved me. That's another thing. So let's talk about my start and fitness. My divorce was in 2000 and just slightly before my divorce, um, Kenny Lee, he let me join the YMCA.
And when I joined over there, I started in water aerobics and I loved it because the one thing I really liked about being able to go to the gym is they had childcare. My whole life up until Kyle and Cody were four and two was. That's it, he can't, he never took care of them. He never, um, took him anywhere on his own because they couldn't tell him what was wrong.
That's what his logic was. And he never changed a diaper. He never gave him a bottle. He never helped me with anything. Did he love him? Absolutely. He, he, he loves them very much and he's actually a really good dad. He's just dysfunctional in his ways of how he reacts to me as the mother, but that's not here nor there.
So I started at the Y because at the Y I could. I could be in peace and I could actually have adult time and my kids were taken care of. I could take a shower without a toddler knocking at the door, which never happened at the home. So I started in water aerobics because you do not sweat. That's what's so weird is, is that's why I liked water aerobics because you do not sweat because if you know me, I love to sweat now, but I took water aerobics and I fell in love with the older adult population.
Cause that's usually what's in there because it's low impact. It's actually no impact in the world. So I took water aerobics. I got divorced in 2000. And then, um, about six months, no, three months after my divorce, they said, Hey, Kathie, you you're in class a lot. You kind of understand this stuff. You want to come teach it.
And I'm like, Okay, who is really scared. I, because I'm at a point in my life where I was really insecure, I was really vulnerable. Just you picture somebody with an open wound walking around all the time. And that was me because the abuse had just taken its toll on me. The divorce took its toll on me and, um, Yeah, I began teaching water aerobics.
And so to become an aerobic instructor, trainer, you for the YMCA, you have to take fitness instructor training. And in this training you have to go and, you know, do. Learn how to teach all types of classes, which I got great experience and great knowledge, but picture this here's Kathy who can't dance for nothing.
And I'm in there with all these aerobic instructor train. And, and they been teaching for years and, you know, there's all these mirrors on the wall because that's an aerobic class and, you know, you're watching your form. You watch your class. Well, grapevine, right? Kathy goes left, overstep over step apart.
turn around. I mean, cause we were taking, I'll never forget. We were taking a step class and I don't know, I don't know how I got through it, but I did. And you know, one of the reasons I liked water robots, cause I was in the pool and nobody could see when I messed up. So how am I going to teach them? I found a way.
And my point in telling you this is you have to get out of your comfort zone to find. What you like. And I got out of my comfort zone. That was very uncomfortable for me to be in that training. And that's not the only time I did it. You have to renew your certifications every so often. So you have to go back.
But I, you know, I'd finagle my way around that somehow, but I still would go and, and, you know, I'd laugh at myself and everybody else would laugh with me, but it was very young. And I started teaching on deck. That's how you'd teach water aerobics. So because people can't see what you're doing in the water.
So you have to stand on deck and teach it. And I'm sweating everywhere profusely, but I fell in love with. And so two years later I decided, well, I mean, working on it for a year, I got certified as a fitness trainer through ISS and I loved it. I loved the transformation of the clients. I loved working with everybody.
You know, I, I just fell in love with all of it. In 2004, I got certified as a specialist to work with older adults and. I started teaching silver sneakers shortly thereafter because silver sneakers probably became into existence in 2005, I think. But in 2004 is when I got certified and I love teaching silver sneakers.
It is one of my favorite things to teach because those people just did. They need their fitness and what I would teach them. Because of what I had learned is just so beneficial and I knew what it was. You know, what, one of the things I brag about as being a certified fitness to work with older adults is I know what not to do at age 20, age 30.
So you don't feel the effects of that at. 50 60 70. So that was the benefits I'm talking about. For example, I was working out with my son, my 23 year old son the other day, and he was. On the stairs. And you know, when we get done, I told him, I said, you know, that was a great workout, but you sure were pounding away when he was going fast on the, on the StairMaster.
And you know, that's fine. He was working hard, but I said, I said, and you know what? You probably won't feel the effects of that right now, but you need to try to have quiet feet. Because that's no impact on your knees, on your joints. Otherwise you're going to have impact on your joints. So fast forward to 2007, I started as the first female fitness trainer at LA fitness in sugar lamp.
And the reason I mentioned the location and everything is because today I work out in that. And I have a lot of memories in there when I trained. And today I'll work out with my son at LA fitness and it's just like, whoa, go back to how I told you. I fell in love with the sounds of the gym, the way the gym feels, the atmosphere of the gym, how the mindset that goes on in the gym.
And it became my, my world. It actually helped me through. Post-traumatic stress. It was my safety, it was my, my zone, which is what I teach and stop the mind. Screw you, find your zone. That's where you get. That's what you would try to achieve. So you find your zone, but you start all over again in the stop, the mines group process, which we'll talk about in another episode, but yeah, that's what happens and it saved.
My therapy saved me. My psychology saved me and my fitness saved me. So what do I do today? I practice all those things and I teach and I teach and I teach because I'm so passionate about it. I'm so blessed that I got saved. 'cause as survivor of complex post-traumatic stress disorder, the triggers never go away.
Like I said, so you get these triggers and suicide is definitely something that jumps into your mind because it's scary. It's a very scary feeling, anxiety off the charts, depression off the charts. And so all of that comes into play, but everything I've learned along the ways saved me. So now fast forward to today, I am 56 years young I'm yet to hit menopause, but I will say this, I work at AKI soft and we were forced to get.
The jab and I, I'm not pro jab. I'm not anti jab. I actually am glad that I had to get it to be honest with you. And nobody's going to change my mind. I did a lot of praying about it and I'm happy. I got it. However, after I got the second job,
Coincidentally, probably my cycle came back and it had been gone for three months and I'm like, okay, cool. It's finally over. And I still didn't have any side effects, but what happened was the day after I got the jab, the second one, I had major side effects, every side effect of menopause you can think of.
I had it. I had hot flashes. I had a cycle that came back full stream. Like obviously I missed three months. So it was like, whoa, it's coming back. And I had depression that I had not felt in years. I had anxiety. I had, um, fatigue. I mean, it it's probably all coincidental, but it was. A terrible feeling could because I had been going all these months and years and I'm like, well, I guess I'm going to be older and still having my cycle.
And I knew it was due to my workouts because of my, my continuing education that I learned on that. And I learned a lot about. Um, hormone balance and things like that. So, so that was one of my things, but I knew that my workouts were benefiting me. Psycho came back and I started on all these different health.
Um, supplements. I started on taking estrogen. I started using the progesterone cream. Um, I also, um, started smoothies in the morning with this protein powder and I have a blog post on that and I'll have links in the show notes as well to, to all these things that I'm talking about. But those things helped me because now.
I'm back to normal. I'm just back to, uh, I'm not saying that menopause is not going to hit me. It's going to hit me, but I don't know how or where or when. And I was so worried when I got that second shot, I was like, oh, here it comes it. I can tell it's not going to be good, but I got through it. I don't know what all that was.
But it's over and done and gone. So AKI soft is where I work now. And I've been there for almost 10 years. I've actually been there nine years. And in 2023, it'll be 10. How I got my started AKI soft is, is kind of funny. So we have the CEO of AKI soft to Cynthia Barrett and her husband is also co-founder of AKI soft and AKI soft is a full line of.
Ophthalmology company. I don't say that word correctly, but you know what I'm saying? It's everything I doctors use. It's also got a lot of dry eye products. We have some skincare products. We are growing by leaps and bounds. Like big time. I, I love the company. I love what it stands for. I love what I've learned through the company and how it's taking care of me over the years.
And I'm blessed beyond measure, but. Um, Cynthia's husband calls me on the phone. They found me through the Y and he said all these things I had at this time that he calls me. I had been a trainer for 10 years and I never had any. Anybody ever talk to me the way he did, but he, but Nat is one of those people who, when he knows what he wants and he's used to hiring people and he, he tells you, this is what I want.
And this is how I got, I mean, now that I know him, I know how he is. And I'm like, okay, I understand why he talked to me that way. But I was like, so he hired me as Cynthia's trainer. And so when I meet Cynthia, Uh, imagine my apprehension. I'm like, oh gosh, I hope she's nice. And so she comes into the gym and she was, she is one of the nicest people you could ever be.
Bestow piss her off, but she's super duper. Nice. And is she, uh, I trained her for about three months, maybe four months. And so when you train somebody and you're working out with them on a two or three times a week, you get to know each other really well, because most people, when they hire me, they want to talk.
They don't want to think about their workouts. They just want me to show them what to do and they want to talk. So that's, Cynthia was no doubt. So we got to know each other very, very well. And I knew that they had a company, I didn't know the magnitude of the company. So it was Christmas time. And she said, Cathy, you want to come tour the business because we're decorated for Christmas.
And I want to show you around. I said, sure, absolutely. I go over there. She gives me a tour in this, this place. Beautiful now it's Christmas time and she decorates like Christmas on steroids, Halloween on steroids. It's just crazy. I do the tour and she shows me this building in the back that has a gym in there.
We're building a gym and the gym was for the employee. And she shows me the equipment. They hadn't had old equipment used people's equipment treadmills. I'm an elliptical, some used curves equipment. And we get through with the tour. Now, mind you on the tour. I noticed how the employees acted like she introduced me as her friend.
And everybody was like, I could tell they loved their job. It was just the energy in the air. I could tell, tell, tell, and it was just so cool. And when her realized the magnitude of it, it was like, whoa, this lady owns this company and nerves is a big deal. And she, we finished the tour. She goes, so would you like a job?
And so at the time I was kind of struggling financially. Um, I, as a personal trainer, I was. At at, at, at the Y I worked at LA fitness. I had a little studio of my own. I was struggling. So imagine my delight when she offered me a job that had benefits and a paycheck, because when you have your own business, did you really didn't get a paycheck and was just, it was hard.
So I said, absolutely. So I go to work there and I worked there for, oh, I guess it was probably two years. I've written it down somewhere. I don't know. I should have gotten this up for my notes. I didn't know I was going to talk about this, but so she had. Uh, a few years after I started working there, I had gotten the gym improved.
I, I ordered some pre-core equipment and we had a gym quality equipment in there at, by this time. And in came the tax flood, which happened I've can't remember exactly what year, but I live in Rosenberg, sugar land. I live in sugar land, but the businesses and Rosenberg and the gym flooded. Because we were low to the ground and the lowest part of the building, the lowest part of the property and it flooded.
And so we had to get it cleaned out and this and that, and that wasn't the only time it flooded. It flooded two more times. And so by the third time they decided they wanted to lift the building, which they do now in the Houston area. That's like a big deal because they can go under the building and put these little stilts under there.
And it was crazy because there were a little guys digging down in there and going under the building to put these stilts in there and they separate it from the slab and lift it. They lifted it three foot off the ground. When they did that, they compromise the slab and things happen. And the building cracked and they had to get all these different things to fix it.
And it, oh Lord, it was terrible. And so when that happened, we had to, I wasn't in the gym. We, they compromised and put me in a little room where I had some free weights and I had to make it work. And, you know, there were times I was scared. I wasn't going to have a job because what am I going to do? You know, it was funny because that happened.
And then exactly a year later, we get back in the gym and it was in, um, February of 20, 20, we're back in the. And no more than two weeks later, not even, I think it was probably early March actually. They have COVID hit. And so they closed the gym and AKI soft is a healthcare company. So they, they were very cautious about everything.
I mean, they were cleaning doorknobs and doors and dah, dah, dah. So didn't, I shifted to operations and I helped work with them. I, you know, I'm grateful that there were so careful about everything. They monitored our temperatures, and I'm grateful for that because they kept us safe. And so now, I mean, I'm still in the gym.
They over reopened the gym in may. It would, the gym was totally closed for over a year, but now. They limit the people that go in there and they limit time and they keep everything clean. And so it's just, it's just, um, a little. Capacity that were in there. So that's one reason why I offer a lot of my services that I do online to AKI soft people, because they can take the course and do all that.
If you work at AKI soft, you get me for free as a personal trainer. So I might as well offer my services that I do online as well. And that's where I'm at today. I'm at AKI soft, I'm their corporate wellness director, their fitness director. And I, you know, I basically just do a little of everything. I help out in operations.
I help them do run errands and do things. And right now I'm pretty much just doing temperature screenings and just running the front office and helping. Wherever I can, but I still work in the gym too. And I, I still train people in person, a couple of people that I train in person as well as I offer my course online.
So my fitness course is my main meat and potatoes. My fitness is my main passion, but to be honest with you, if you really get down to it, it is mindset and mindset is. Everything. You'll see that me posting that all the time, because it is everything. If you can shift your mindset, you can do anything. You can shift anything that you look at.
You can look at anything different, which leads me into what I'm going to talk about next week, which is reality, trans surfing. And what is that? And where did I learn about it and what that book? It's a book. It's a book by a Russian quantum physicist named Vadim Zealand. It's an awesome book. It covers everything you can think of.
And actually what I plan on doing is just opening the. Reading something from it and telling you what it means to me and what it transformed in me, because that's what I do with that book. Now I just open it up and inevitably there's an answer there to something. Maybe I'm questioning something I'm looking at and it's kind of creepy because it's like really spot on.
But that's what I love about that book. It's really powerful and it's very, very good. But. I will say this there's a lot of drama around that book that we will be talking about as well. And it's weird because I don't, I don't really get it, but he's trademarked the name of the book and, and it there's just some drama that goes on around the book that I don't understand or really want to understand.
I don't really care. Actually, the book is public domain. When you write a book, Anybody can talk about it. It's public domain. You can't Trey, you can't trademark a book and I'm not trying to teach what he's talking about because really, and truly, I probably don't understand it, but I do because I've read it three times and I understand it and I know how it changed my life.
And that is what I want to share. Not, I don't want to teach it. I don't want to. Um, get involved in that trademark crap. I just wanted, I just want to share with others what transformed my life in magic fashion, which is what I always tell. Okay. That's my episode for today. That's a bizarre number one right in there.
And again, my name is Kathie Owen Certified Fitness Trainer and Life Coach since 2002. Transforming lives in magic fascia. See you next time. Peace out. And Namaste.
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