How to Stop Absorbing Everyone Else’s Emotions and Start Healing, with Reiki Practitioner Marie Khale
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Why do you feel completely drained after being around other people?
In this episode of The Inner Script, Stephanie Baubie, NP sits down with Reiki practitioner Marie Khale, owner of Zaanti Reiki in Chicago, to unpack what's really happening when you leave a conversation feeling exhausted, foggy, or emotionally heavy. Marie was Stephanie's own Reiki practitioner during her years in Chicago, and this conversation goes deep into what Reiki actually is, how energy healing supports the nervous system, and why empaths and highly sensitive people so often feel overwhelmed in ordinary environments.
Marie explains how she discovered she was an empath while working in advertising, coming home drained after being surrounded by other people's energy all day, and how learning Reiki in 2001 changed the way she moved through the world. Together, she and Stephanie explore the traits that tend to show up in empaths and highly sensitive people, why misalignment and emotional overload can turn into real physical symptoms like brain fog, headaches, and fatigue, and how the nervous system responds when it's stuck in fight-or-flight for too long.
This episode also gets practical. Marie shares the tools she recommends to clients for protecting their energy day to day, from essential oils and grounding mats to time in nature and simple visualization techniques, along with what a Reiki session and somatic sound therapy actually feel like in the body. The conversation closes with a look at intuition, why so many people talk themselves out of trusting it, and how to start listening to it again.
If you've ever wondered whether you're absorbing other people's emotions, or you're curious about Reiki, energy healing, or what it means to be highly sensitive, this episode blends science, intuition, and practical tools to help you feel more grounded, protected, and like yourself again.
This episode is for you if…
You feel drained after being around people and often struggle to tell where your emotions end and someone else's begin.
You know you're highly sensitive or empathic but don't have real tools to manage it day to day.
You're curious about Reiki, energy healing, or intuition and want practical ways to protect your energy.
Episode Timestamps
00:00 Introduction
00:17 Meet Marie Khale and Reiki
01:37 How Reiki Affects the Body
05:07 What Is an Empath?
11:00 Protecting Your Energy Around People
16:55 What Reiki Feels Like After
20:12 Reiki and Nervous System Regulation
33:37 Emotional Stress and Physical Symptoms
34:41 Somatic Sound Therapy and Healing
58:26 Learning to Trust Your Intuition
Resources & Mentions
Essential oil sprays
Palo Santo
Epsom salt baths
Grounding mats
Himalayan singing bowls
BioMat
Curious about a supplement Steph has mentioned in the episode?
If you’re looking for products Steph personally recommends in practice, you can browse her dispensary here: Stephanie’s Fullscript dispensary
Please consult your healthcare provider before starting any new supplement. Food, lifestyle, and nervous system support always come first.
The Empath's Energy Audit: A Reflection Guide
Feeling like you're carrying everyone else's emotions? This free companion resource walks you through a guided reflection on what's actually yours to carry, your personal energy drains and protectors, and a simple before-and-after ritual to help you stay in your own energy. Download it here: Patreon companion resource
You can also join Steph’s free Patreon community here:
The Inner Script Patreon
Meet Marie Khale
Marie Khale is the owner of Zaanti Reiki in Chicago, IL, a practice she co-owns with her business partner and wife, Delphina. Before finding her calling, Marie built a career in advertising and marketing. Her seekers' journey began in her thirties, when she discovered Reiki through her yoga teacher and mentor, Heidi Ash. The day she learned Reiki in 2001, Marie felt the veil grow thinner, along with a deep sense of inner calm and freedom. An empath herself, Marie now loves sharing Reiki with others, offering private sessions, Reiki classes, mentoring, and guidance for those looking to start their own healing-centered business. Website: https://zaanti.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zaantireiki/
Zaanti Reiki Website & Marie’s Instagram
Meet Your Host
Stephanie Baubie, NP is an integrative nurse practitioner and the host of The Inner Script Podcast, where she explores the deeper stories behind health, healing, identity, and transformation. Through a blend of functional medicine, nervous system awareness, emotional insight, and honest conversation, Stephanie helps women better understand their bodies while questioning the narratives they’ve inherited about wellness, worth, and what it means to truly feel well.
On The Inner Script, Stephanie sits down with physicians, founders, thought leaders, and experts in women’s health, while also sharing solo reflections on the transitions and inner shifts that shape our lives.
Follow Steph on Instagram.
FAQs
What does it mean to be an empath or a highly sensitive person (HSP)?
In this episode of The Inner Script, Reiki practitioner Marie Khale explains that an empath, or highly sensitive person, is someone who is highly attuned to other people's emotions and energy, often sensing how someone feels before a word is even spoken. Marie shares that research on HSPs points to traits like above-average intelligence, a heightened perception of other people's emotional states, and a stronger sense of intuition or "sentinel intelligence." Stephanie and Marie discuss how this sensitivity is frequently mistaken for anxiety or overthinking, when it's really a heightened ability to pick up on the emotional environment around you.
Why do empaths feel so drained after being around other people?
Marie Khale explains that empaths and highly sensitive people are constantly processing not just their own emotions, but the emotions of everyone around them, almost like carrying an invisible backpack that fills up throughout the day. Without tools to clear that energy, Marie says this can lead to fatigue, irritability, brain fog, and a sense of emotional overload by the end of the day. Stephanie relates this directly to her work as a nurse practitioner, describing how back-to-back patient visits left her feeling emotionally overflowing until she learned to protect her energy between interactions.
How can I protect my energy as an empath or highly sensitive person?
Throughout the episode, Marie Khale shares several practical tools she recommends to clients, including essential oil sprays, Palo Santo, grounding mats, Epsom salt baths, and simply spending more time in nature. She also describes a visualization technique of imagining a bucket or shield between herself and another person to keep their emotions from settling into her own body. Marie emphasizes that these tools work best when layered throughout the day, not just used once emotional overload has already set in.
What is Reiki and how does it work?
Marie Khale describes Reiki as a Japanese energy-healing practice that began in the early 1800s, where the word "reiki" loosely translates to universal life force energy. She explains that Reiki is a channeling practice, meaning the practitioner isn't using their own energy but instead channeling energy through their hands to help shift the client's body out of fight-or-flight and into a more regulated, relaxed state. Marie notes that Reiki has been studied extensively, with research showing it can lower blood pressure and pulse, reduce the need for pain medication after surgery, and support recovery in hospital settings, including oncology units.
Can emotional stress actually cause physical symptoms?
Yes. In this episode, Stephanie Baubie shares her own experience of developing headaches, brain fog, memory issues, and dizziness while in a misaligned relationship, symptoms that disappeared once she left the situation. Marie Khale agrees, explaining that unprocessed emotional energy and nervous system dysregulation can show up in the body as very real physical symptoms, and that Reiki often helps clients who "feel off" but aren't technically sick by clearing that stored emotional energy.
Is Reiki safe, and can it ever be too much for someone?
Marie Khale explains that Reiki is generally considered a very safe, gentle modality, which is part of why it's used in hospital settings, including with cancer patients and people recovering from surgery. For clients who are especially sensitive or recovering from a recent injury, she adjusts by holding her hands slightly above the body instead of directly on it, allowing them to still receive the energy without physical touch. She shares that most people, including highly sensitive clients, tolerate Reiki well when the session is adapted to their needs.
How do I learn to trust my intuition again?
Marie Khale believes many people are socialized out of trusting their intuition and need practice giving themselves credit when their instincts turn out to be right. She encourages listeners to pay attention to their strongest sense, whether that's a gut feeling, an inner voice, or a physical sensation, and to act on it in small ways, like following an instinct to compliment a stranger. Marie and Stephanie agree that learning to trust that inner voice again takes intentional practice, but it's a skill that strengthens the more it's used.
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Everything shared here is for educational purposes and personal reflection only. Not medical advice. Always work with your own healthcare provider for individual care.
Stephanie Baubie: Hello everyone and welcome back to the Inter Script Podcast. I am joined here today. Very, very, very special guest. So thrilled for her to come on. Marie Kale, she is actually my old Reiki practitioner when I was living in Chicago, so this is such an amazing opportunity for a conversation. She has been instrumental in my healing. And she owns her studio with her partner Dina, who we're gonna talk about Dina as well.
She has her own gifts and talents and has. Absolutely amazing. But their practice is called VTE Reiki. And I actually met Marie. I kind of wanna explain how I met you. I signed up for your and Dina's like intuition class. I wanna explain about that too. But that's kind of how I found them. And it was such a cool class.
And then I met Marie and I had always wanted to try Reiki and everybody else in the group had like pretty much gone to you and they're like, you have to go. She's a magician. So I went and yeah, I was addicted from the start. So I wanna start this off by, can you kind of explain what Reiki is and what actually happens in the body during a reiki session?
Marie Khale: I would love to thank you and thank you for having me, Stephanie. It's super a big honor. I've been so excited for today. So Reiki began in Japan in the early 18 hundreds, and so being a Japanese practice, the word reiki is Japanese, and it loosely translates to. Universal life force energy. So the K in reiki means G.
So I like to tell new clients who've never had reiki that this is a channeling practice and therefore I don't use my own energy during the session. And that's awesome. 'cause I'm super empathic. So I found this modality through my yoga teacher. She taught me and I was working in advertising and I was taking on a lot of energy.
I worked downtown in the loop 10 years at this one big firm. And I love people, but I would come home really drained, you know? And I didn't know I was an empathic person. But with reiki, this channeling practice allows someone who learns reiki to bring good energy through them. Whatever you consider, however you define the good energy, is it the universe, oligo, however you view it, you bring good energy through you to help the other person and you get healed in the process.
So when I began doing this in 2001, I saw it for me, I would do it with my wife, Delphina. My dog, loved it. And he had an occasional limp and it was like, he was like a puppy, a 10-year-old minister. I, you know, get a little reiki and he was running around and that actually hooked me. Also, like you said, I felt so much relief and freedom.
So immediately from the first time I had reiki it's like, you know, when you talk about magic, I wish I had learned this at a much younger age, but, you know, divine timing and all. Maybe I wouldn't have been open to it at an earlier age, but I, I really am obsessed since I got exposed to it. Yeah, so then the healer gives reiki gently over the person's body.
In Illinois, we can do directly on, in some states they do above. I let clients decide. But I'm drawn to the heat on the body, and once you get trained in Reiki, you experience an attunement, which opens you up to channel energy more. I do believe we're all conduits for energy. You know, hugs feel great. We all need, right?
Babies need to be held, but when you learn reiki, it amplifies that. And my hands that are always cold as a child now get really hot when I give people reiki since the training. So it's so simple too, right? In the explanation of it, I'm simply holding my hands over the places where I sense heat and the heat dissipates.
It's been studied extensively in the library of medicine. There's almost 4,000 studies on reiki, so it's amazing for how many people that are like you and I, the empaths that haven't yet experienced reiki and how far it's come in the medical practice. That surprises me
Stephanie Baubie: Yeah, and I mean, back when I was living in Chicago, I would send a lot of my patients your way.
Marie Khale: you have and I love that. Thank you. They were so sweet.
Stephanie Baubie: So sweet and like I just, I think ever since I went to that intuition class with you and Daina, it really activated a different part of myself when treating patients. I always knew I was very intuitive, but I felt like I was so much better able to like pick up on somebody who was highly empathic like myself.
It really activated something. And I think we've talked about this a lot in our sessions where, you know, you tend to bring in a lot of empaths. So can you explain a little bit about, I imagine most of anyone who's listening to this is already like empathic or highly sensitive person, but can you explain a little bit about what that means to be an empath or a highly sensitive person?
Marie Khale: Yes, thank you for asking. I didn't know that I was an empath in my twenties in advertising, and it really would've helped me understand how much energy I could feel in any given setting. For me, an empathic person is somebody who can sense how other people are feeling emotionally, and it may not be all the time for people, but certainly when someone's having a big emotion and you're in proximity to them, you know, like I think about a post office, people tend to get agitated waiting at a post office, and I can feel the person behind me if they really don't wanna be in line.
You know? I really sense that. And then I started realizing once I knew I was an empath, I can do things to negotiate with energy. You know, like I worked downtown for so long. If I'm about to sit down in a meeting, I'd look at people's eyes and if they looked happy, that's who I sit next to. Because if the meeting wasn't about me helping them process whatever they're going through, why sit next to someone having a really bad day and then have no energy an hour later, you know?
So I kind of tried to be a bit more strategic in the day, and then if I could afterwards I could talk to them and say, Hey, you know, I've got this essential oil sprayer. You know, I was like the office witch in a good way, right? And like, what can I do to help you? You know, people would come to me like, I just got put in this new office.
I got a promotion. I need to clear the office. The last few people got fired. I'm like, let's do this. I think that out of necessity or survival, working in corporate for most of my career and advertising and marketing roles, I love people and I love being around people. I did not thrive in the cement jungle of downtown Chicago.
The trains, the inside buildings, no windows open. It was like the opposite of energy flow. It was the opposite of eventually, you know, so when I did get exposed to Reiki, it was so liberating that I think that that empathic piece of us. Has this invisible backpack and we're, you know, collecting energy all the time and unknowingly really like little, a conversation, a text, a zoom call.
We walk away. The way I say it to clients is if you sat with a friend and they went through heartbreak, wouldn't you say you kind of walk away feeling like you just got dumb and my clients all say yes. So getting back to what you said, I'm so impressed you remember that I saw this psychologist that came up with the term HSP, which I think is very similar to empathic, if not the same.
She said in 96, studied us, you know, and said that we're only 20% of society. I cannot explain this, but reiki is a beacon for these people. 'cause half my clients are men and all of them identify as empathic. They may not all know the word, most of them do now. When I tell them what it means to me, they're like, that's totally me.
So then I'll share one study with them where, and this wasn't her study, she did a lot of studies, but this one I read, they had three shared qualities above average intelligence. Yay, social anxiety, which kind of helps redefine an empath. We're not highly anxious people. It's more accurate to say we perceive other people's anxiety more easily.
Stephanie Baubie: And we need more downtime too. Like we just need more downtime. So I think that's just, I just wanna say that.
Marie Khale: A hundred percent and we need things that are high vibration things from nature to help us clear. And the third thing was we have sentinel intelligence. We have the ability to sense when there's clear and present danger. I cannot say how many clients have responded to that one and went, I can tell you just the other day when no one was believing me and there was truly a threat happening.
And those are spidey senses that, you know, I came in the world kind of me. It made feel different for that. Like, you know, there were kids, people would say, yeah, you're too sensitive and I just don't think you can change the way you are. But now I see it as my superpower.
Stephanie Baubie: I love that. That's such a good answer. I totally resonate with that. I feel like, you know, when I was a child, I just, I think I was obviously very, very sensitive. I could cry. I liked the drop of a hat. It was also really hard for me to learn. At that time. I was like a slow learner growing up, but I think it was because I was taking on so much other like external stimuli that I couldn't process things well.
So I think just under. Standing. My wiring has changed everything dramatically. So you say 20% of the population are empaths?
Marie Khale: Well, according to the woman that came up with HSP, we're approximately 20% only, and Reiki is a beacon for the 20%.
Stephanie Baubie: That's funny because in my practice the universe does weird things, but a lot of my patients, and I have like a patient panel right now, close to a thousand people. I would say most of them are empathic or highly like a highly sensitive person. So you kind of attract what you put out a lot of the times.
Marie Khale: And Stephanie, I suspect there's an overlap between people that seek out integrative and functional and empathic. 'cause when you were describing yourself as a child, how many children might be diagnosed with a DH, D, if you or I were sitting next to the class bully, we would be distracted. And that might be interpreted as a chemical thing instead of what we are, which is a heightened ability to perceive other people's emotional state.
So I do think that that lens you have is so beneficial being that clients are more like a child who can't have red dye in their candy. I would bet money is an empathic child. I think our ability to sense other people's emotions also comes with our ability to perceive things that don't belong in our environment.
We like have a heightened sensitivity.
Stephanie Baubie: So, and that's one of the things I would talk to you about. 'cause I felt like I would have to come get reiki all of the time because I'm working in a healthcare environment where a lot of it is, you know, most of it is back to back seeing patients. I don't have decompression time and some people thrive on that.
I do not. And I really had to learn to deal with that. So you did give me some tools with how to like protect my energy in that type of environment. What are some simple things you would recommend for highly empathic or highly sensitive people to do to protect their energy when they're being kind of an emotional container for everyone?
Marie Khale: It's such a good question. It's probably the number one thing I get asked by clients or like, what methods do you have for clearing energy? And as people work from home, like if you think about some of the people that you might work with in a corporate setting that you would not have in your home necessarily, but they are now because you're working out of your home.
So that energy is present. It's so different. You know, who we spend time with in those settings from what we would choose on nights and weekends when we're being social. So I, one of the things that really, the main hallmark of it all to me is if it's nature centered, you know, and if you look at kids gravitate to crystals, it's just we are naturally drawn to nature, but we can't be in nature.
Right. A lot of our lifestyle involves us being indoors. Even in the beautiful place that you live, you know, it's just the way our rolls are structured. So some of the things that work a diffuser essential oil, when they look at the forest bathing that happens in Japan, the source of it is the oil in the tree.
So we have palis Santo oil. I'd love to have Japanese tree oil. Palis Santo has been studied and it helps reduce anxiety and depression, and so I kind of think of it as forest bathing. Dina does it consistently every day in the office, but it's a little bit of palis Santo oil and water, and it's just misting all day long.
Another thing is essential oil sprays. We will travel with those. We'll take them on the plane in a car, and then you can make your combination. Like Delfin has come up with a few that she used in her sessions in between or during, she didn't care anymore. Right? Like we're at this point we're like, oh, if this helps me.
Yeah. Because when we're processing heavy things that we feel the emotions that come with it. So also things from nature like Epson salt baths. Some of my clients mix salt and water and pour it on their head. It really is like, I would think about people who took up too much landscape in my brain, like the mean girl at work.
When I worked downtown, it would kind of be there a lot because I was in this building that the windows don't open. There's no nature. But then if you go to somewhere like in a forest or botanic. Immediately it came down to like this tiny narrative in my mind. And to me that has to do with the fact that I changed my environment and now I'm in this high vibration.
So bringing things to you from nature, like burning Palo, Santo, burning Sage, we do that here every day. We have copal, we have na Champa. People come in with deliveries and they're like, what's going on here? They're so used to coming in the energy that's like very chaotic. And then, 'cause we're on a main road in, in a downtown, you know, north side, still very busy road on Chicago.
And yet you can manage your energy anywhere, the energy of the room and your own energy, which is probably why I am obsessed with Reiki. The woman is a Deb Dana, the social worker that wrote a book on trauma, talks about glimmers. Opposite of triggers, and I believe that Ricky is so many glimmers. It's a glow.
You know, like in a given hour how many times I feel joy. And that cellular memory is just like that backpack that's invisible, filled with emotions from all these journeys we've had starts to get cleared.
Stephanie Baubie: Yeah, and I can speak on the essential oil spray because you gave me one and I keep it in my office with me still to this day. I hate to say it if I know I'm about to get a patient of mine that needs a little bit of extra TLC, that means I need a little bit of extra TLC to be there. So I. Spray it on the back of my neck before I grab them, and then I spray it on me after.
Or if it's like a really negative interaction, I just, I spray it like, and it helps. I mean, I don't know. It helps.
Marie Khale: I mean, you can have the most beautiful person going through a really bad time. And I mean, it's just hard times. You gotta bust out the tools you use to clear energy. And then they might learn from that too. Like, why when I walk in your office do I suddenly feel calm? You're changing that environment for yourself and for your patients.
I know I gift you to that bottle 'cause you are a warrior. You really are front lines, you know, like people are so scared to face medical stuff, so it's beautiful that you're there holding space for them. Yeah, it's amazing you're doing.
Stephanie Baubie: But I will say, you know, I'm transitioning jobs right now and it took me to really realize like I'm not wired to be seeing people back to back. So I'm going to be working at practice where I just see a lot less patience and I kind of had to take the L, but I don't really think it's an L. I think it's a win.
I stopped fighting that and I think that's really important when it comes to, if you are highly empathic or a highly sensitive person, you really have to honor the way you're wired.
Marie Khale: You know, we're all different. We're all wired differently. We found there was like this magic formula of X amount of clients when we cut back. I think coming from corporate it was like, go, go, go fill every minute of your day. But with, when you're working with energy as I do, Delena does and, and you do as well, there is a point where you're not being of service if you can't like be clear and feel grounded.
Right? Yeah. So, yeah, I think that that isn't something that we're used to hearing people talk about in corporate settings, you know, or more structured settings like that. But I do think now probably more, 'cause I hear, is it corporate Natalie who does jokes about corporate and that she'll do this, like, get grounded.
People are using that language and I do think that we need it. You know, grounding mats is another way, like they're very affordable. Plug it into your outlet and suddenly you are getting the current of the planet and the inflammation is like, yeah, I feel like you love what you do and you wanna continue to, so you're weaving in the time to restore.
So when you meet the next person, your next patient. You're presenting the best version of yourself, and that's what Reiki does for me. It brings me back to the vibration that I wanna be operating at, because I can see one upsetting social media post and be go down energetically and be just like kind of stuck in an energy of fear or sadness, and I need something that elevates me.
And Reiki for me has been the biggest go-to. But all the other things we talked about too, just layering it.
Stephanie Baubie: So I haven't seen you in a minute. And I've tried other Reiki people and I'm just, I don't know, it's just not, it matters the practitioner. I'm not doing it right now because you set the bar Marie. It's been hard to replace that. But basically what I noticed the most was after a session, I would feel like I was hungover, like my head was so heavy.
And then the next day when things start to integrate a little bit, or even over the next few weeks, I really felt like I had a rubber shield like around me and things would just kind of bounce off.
Marie Khale: It's like your superpowers have been engaged.
Stephanie Baubie: it just, I don't know, like I wouldn't take things personally as much. It's like I had this boundary come up where I wasn't absorbing so much of that with my patients.
Marie Khale: Like if we spent a lot of time in nature and I, I feel like because I'm in an urban setting, I probably get more clients than I would if I lived in a really rural area and people spent a lot of time outside. But it is huge for people like you and I because we feel so deeply we pick up on people's stories and I love hearing people's stories, but I don't think we were meant to carry around that energy for the rest of the day.
And without us being somehow integrating with nature or elements of nature. There's a great book called Earthing I'm obsessed with, and Clinton is like the og. He's the one that came out with the, the grounding mats, but he put it together. He lived in Montana near an Indian reservation, and his close friend, that culture revered the planet and they saw it as a healing tool.
Our ancestors knew this, but I don't believe we grow up with that knowledge, you know? And so we kind of very unintuitive insulated ourselves from nature, you know, and we're inside a lot. And so kind of like looking for ways like you're doing in between sessions. And if I have a really intense session because someone's going through something big, then yes.
Like you, it's like I feel like we energetically have to shower tools throughout the day because I don't think we're meant to carry the energy, you know, we hold space. But then to present my best version, I do have to work with my energy and help get elevated because empath. We meet the energy of the person that's sharing with us, and if they're going through a really dark time, I'm there with them and then I need to go up.
Stephanie Baubie: I know I always say it's like my greatest gift, but also like my worst.
Marie Khale: It's both. It's two sides of a sword. Absolutely.
Stephanie Baubie: And another thing that I try to do is I try to visualize like a bucket that's in between me and the patient, and I'm imagining that to go into the bucket, so it doesn't come into me and I hate to say I have to do these things or else like I am completely dysregulated. I just wanna say that because like I do not have it all figured out.
Marie Khale: You're speaking to the 20% right now. You're like, I used to do a white bubble. I had this supervisor that just didn't seem to have a lot of good days in the year and like, I'm sending you white bubble. So one day it popped, but it worked pretty well for a while.
Stephanie Baubie: So I listen, like I'm just saying, I do not have it all figured out, but that's what I mean when I say I need a lot of TLC for myself in order to like show up. So when we're doing a reiki session, so is this, would you say this is regulating the nervous system, is it releasing stored emotions, tension, trauma?
Like what would you say? Like, or is it like kind of all of the above?
Marie Khale: I'm always honest with when I do classes that I still don't know exactly what Reiki does. I think it, maybe in the future, we'll more understand more, but I do think energy healing has been studied extensively for getting us out of fight or flight. And I believe it puts us in the theta state, which in intuition is revered 'cause that's where you get many more intuitive.
Like when you're daydreaming or meditating or doodling, which I was a big doodler growing up in getting us out of fight or flight. What they found in studies, like one, they did over 800 people got reiki before surgery, only 15 minutes. Like if they had asked me, I'd be like half hour minimum, 15 minutes, blood pressure, pulse and heart rate dropped.
And this is in a nurse's journal and they did the same again after, and they needed less pain meds than the people who didn't get reiki. Dr. David Hamilton wrote a book called Why Woo Woo Work. I love the title and it's all studies. I would absolutely recommend it. It's all recent studies. One is knee replacement segment in the hospital in Bryn Maw, Pennsylvania.
So much less pain for the people who got Reiki the day of the procedure. And every day after they train 10 nurses. So that I know because of the studies, what they don't study, like they will look at pain, they'll look at emotions like anxiety and depression. They don't look at joy. Reiki is a joy. I mean, I feel so much joy during giving people reiki.
I see people get up and feel joy. I had a woman come to me, a young woman, I would say early thirties, and she was dealing with like chronic pain and that's horrible, right? And she would come to me and say, every time I see you, I feel hopeful. Then I didn't see her for a few years and then she had like, um, I think it was a knee replacement.
And she came in and I go, what happened with your back And the pain? You were, it's gone. The reiki took it away. I mean, you could have knocked me over with a pin, I really couldn't believe. But I think our body is incredible. But when we're in fight or flight, and, you know, I'm a former corporate girl, like I've lived in that, let's go one more Mountain Dew and I can get through this project at three in the morning.
So we work nights and weekends and we're all like, woo. You know, and we all knew our stress thing. Like I would kind of like have a Twitch thing. One of my coworkers got like hives. Like we all knew what it looked when we were in extreme stress, but that's what fight or flight is, right? It's like the, the bear is chasing you all the time and it's very hard to get out of when you get, you get into it, you know, whether it's trauma or in unhealthy work settings where there's not a lot of balance.
And reiki, I saw a young man in his twenties with an accelerated heart. I didn't know this until after the session. He slept really hard for an hour and told me he's never slept more than two to four hours a night his whole life. And I remember being over his heart and it was like an invisible rabbit was there.
He was out like out the reiki took him. So whether it's because of trauma or a medical reason, there's something so incredible about our ability to channel energy for another person or ourselves. You can give yourself reiki or another, and I think that should be in kindergarten. Let's start a empath school, you and I, and we're gonna make sure Reikis in there and breath work and all things.
Stephanie Baubie: Seriously, we need to do that. It's like, so. So, have you ever done reiki and somebody who wasn't part of the 20% highly empathic or just outta curiosity?
Marie Khale: Yeah, you know, in my first year I got started full-time in 2001 and I have to give Delphia credit. Delphia. My wife is a full-time intuitive medium@spiritguiding.com, and she left the corporate scene and opened up shop, you know, hung a shingle as she puts it. And I thought it was so brave, you know, because it's like one thing to do it on the side, it's another to be like, I'm gonna hold this space for people.
And she's very good at it. And so I followed her. I was like really motivated by her and also my parents. We're in their golden years and dealing with some pretty big medical end of life stuff, and I thought, I'm not gonna survive this if I don't lean into my reiki. So I took a leap. I started nights and weekends at a shop up on the north side.
Yeah, I think it was like just getting here as a career was just a necessity for me because I got to a place where everything aligned. I had been in for-profit advertising, for example, a long time. Then I was in the nonprofit side at a couple universities and I was at the Alzheimer's Association because my mom had Alzheimer's.
And so when things got more complicated for her and my father was dealing with prostate cancer, I really was like, I need more flexibility. I'm working in the loop. I'm living on the north. I can't get to them. So it was a leap of faith that I was motivated through Dina's example of her joy, she has so happy, you know, stepping into this role.
So, you know, it feels like a calling when you're doing something and, and it feels right. So nice and weakens. I would go and I would, it was like someone put my batteries back in. I'd be like giving a total stranger reiki. And you know, the doubt part was there. But the other part's like, look at you're never alone when you do reiki.
I like to work with guides, you know, and that's not specific to reiki, but the idea that my parents who are now in spirit are with me when I give reiki, gives me confidence it, you know, so it was just a beautiful experience and that's what led me to have the courage to kinda, how can I do this full time?
Stephanie Baubie: No, that's amazing. And how are you using your intuition on top of, you know, doing reiki, using your guides? You know somebody comes in,
Marie Khale: Oh, that was your question. Have you met someone that's not an empath?
Stephanie Baubie: right? That's right.
Marie Khale: So the first year I got a couple of different, it was two different times where, and there were gentlemen that came in and said, I don't know what I'm doing here. I don't really believe in this. And it was so awkward for me because like there were no signs on the window.
Like you had to find my website and make an appointment. And then I realized that it's, it's about manifesting, like I need to be telling my guides to, maybe that's why we talked about guides. So I started walking around with a bowl of pal Santo every day before client sessions and saying, thank you for my amazing clients that are open to the healing energy and any messages.
And it changed everything. Then I had clients like you consistently where, I mean, there's no one like you, but you know, like someone who's open and empathic and, but the intuitive part came over time. I realized that in the beginning I was the barrier to my intuition. I'm coming from this really heavy, dense environment of the loop.
And I'm working in cultures where there is a lot of self-criticism. I think at times people are more self-critical. So I had to liberate myself from that and I didn't really know how to think my way out of it. And I have the classic, as they say in Yoga Monkey Mind, where I'm always like, and I don't think that'll change for me.
But what Reiki does is it kind of brings it to a place where my thoughts are all consistently in a higher vi, you know, like in a positive, with the opportunity to give others reiki, I would get clarity. I can't tell you how many times I'd be in a session and then text Athena afterwards about something we were like on, we were not certain what direction to go.
And she'd be like, that's it. Oh my God. Like a video platform we came out with, I had realized what software we were already using that would allow my coding friend to build the platform. And as soon as I texted she's like, this is it. You know? So those moments, it's like. We have access to all of it. Just like Einstein talks about intuition quite a bit.
Imagine his intellect with his intuition, but it's those sparks you get where you're like, oh, this is definitely from a higher place, because I feel joy as I receive that. And it feeds that part of you that when you're doing what you love, I believe it's what you're, you're meant to do what you came here to do,
Stephanie Baubie: It's joy. Authenticity.
Marie Khale: and you're good at it too, or you enjoy doing it enough to get good at it.
Stephanie Baubie: I honestly think that's like the missing piece in a lot of people's situations where we're trying to force a career that isn't working or a relationship or a friendship, whatever it is, it's going to take so much energy out of you. And then once you find that between that inner alignment, you're gonna tap into something that you didn't even know was possible.
What I've seen in, you know, my practice, and I'm sure you have too, is we really make things so much more complicated at times than we need, than they need to be. It's no one's fault. It's just we weren't taught how to do any of this. We weren't taught to listen to intuition or even know what it is. So I think a lot of us are just kind of relearning this.
Marie Khale: I agree wholeheartedly. Stephanie, such an old soul. You have, there's an organization upstate New York called HeartMath Institute, and I think the first time I heard of them, it was in a movie that came out like 20 years ago by the director of, uh, ACE Ventura. He did kind of a surprise, like all his typical movies.
This was more like a documentary called I Am and it was after he had like a life-threatening life experience and he had money, he had fame, he had a house in Beverly Hills, but he was unhappy and he put out two questions, what's wrong with the world and what can we do to fix it to spiritualists, mathematicians and scientists, and they all said the same.
We're all connected. We are all connected. But when they showed how we are in all those different ways, it was really enlightening to me. But we are connected, but we live in a culture that kind of wants us to think that if we isolate, you know, like whoever has the most toys, wins kind of logic, doesn't really connect us to other people.
So from that perspective, I feel like as a healer, that's where the joy comes. 'cause I want to feel connected to people and I think it's a part of human nature. And I used to try to get there through drinking and other things, but the kind of experience I have during reiki and after reiki is so real and I just never like to get paid for it is like the unicorns are real, you know?
Like I'm just so grateful.
Stephanie Baubie: Have you ever had an experience where somebody, you know, maybe Reiki might be too much for someone? Would there be any reason for somebody to watch out for that?
Marie Khale: You know, it is really a very safe modality in that regard. And that's why when you look at hospitals that have incorporated reiki, one of the areas that's very commonly found reiki is the cancer area. Now these are people that are already vulnerable because the procedures, you know, the mopro is usually kind of tearing the body down to kill the cancer, right?
So it, it's really helpful. A lot of studies that you'll find too, are done by the hospital, like nausea, it'll eliminate nausea, almost 90 something high percentile. So if a medication has a side effect of making you nauseous, how great is that to have people there giving reiki with rare exception. I have a client that's near and dear to me.
She moved to Florida and she would come in sometimes with such sensitivity from her empathic intuitive that she would say today, I can't take direct touch on my head or my heart. So I would go above instead of on. So she would still be able to receive, but she wouldn't be able to experience actual touch.
And that's true too. If someone's had a recent surgery or injury, I would be inclined to go above and not on because when we are made fully aware of the pain we're in and we can to some degree block our pain. Particularly women I think. Yeah. You know, like a woman's pregnant and they're like, I'm just getting through the day.
I'm nine months. And like that's a lot on the body. Right. There's no exception. Um, I see pregnant women, women are trying to get pregnant doing IVS. I see all different stages of pregnancy. It's used to help reach babies.
Stephanie Baubie: To breach babies.
Marie Khale: Babies that need to turn people in. Late stage cancer. I've seen people do full remission.
I'm thinking of one who had a round of challenges with cancer and his friends pulled their money and they bought sessions for him. And I know him through that and he is a bright, bright light and he's been like free ever since. It's the type of person, you know, that like keeps that positivity too. It helps you because when we feel down and we're all gonna feel down, but if we get stuck in that narrative, it affects our immunity.
And that's why I think Reiki serves people who feel off, but they're not sick. They'll come in and say, I don't feel like myself. It serves a purpose. It clears that emotional energy. Maybe like when you're, my parents were declining. I needed more energetic intervention to help me clear that weight, that chakra, especially solar plex heart was feeling it.
And to a reiki healer, when I get to like heartache, it burns. It's a unique sensation. So our body puts out energy in an immense way when it's emotional, which is no surprise to people like you or I, right? Like heartache to me hurts more than physical pain,
Stephanie Baubie: Thousand percent. I tell my patients, I'm like, the body doesn't know the difference between an emotional and a physical stressor
Marie Khale: and they're often interwoven.
Stephanie Baubie: thousand percent. So like physical symptoms to me. Obviously I'm ruling out all of the things, but I really do think it can come back to the energetic piece where we're not saying what we're trying to, like chakras are blocked.
I think it's, you know, not releasing emotions. We're living in a life that is not for our highest self, and I really think all of that can make us really, really sick. I used to think, you know, Reiki was something somebody would have to be open to, but I think it could help people to really dive deeper into their spirituality.
Marie Khale: could have no sense of what is out of alignment when you come in, depending on how much stress you're under, you may not be able to be reflective and get insight. And so it absolutely helps because it lifts the barriers to your clarity. Brain fog, people come in all the time, help me with brain fog, and sometimes it has to do with like aftermath of COVID, but often it has to do with their in and energy every day.
If you lived with someone or worked with someone who's chronic depression, someone like you and I we're experiencing their symptoms, we are having more of those feelings because we're in proximity to someone who's having really big emotional feelings, you know? So for the empath, Reiki is a modality I think is very powerful in helping get that clarity.
We need to make the choices that we know are best for ourselves.
Stephanie Baubie: No, for sure, and I've shared this in a previous episode, but you know, I'll tell you, when I moved out to San Francisco, it was for a relationship and when we moved in together, I started having all of these really scary symptoms like headaches, brain fog. Memory issues, tingling on my upper back, dizziness.
And then when I left that relationship, guess what? It all went away. I think that that's how profound misalignment is, or emotionally draining situations. Like our body is so smart that it's literally just trying to get your attention. I just think that's so important to say.
Marie Khale: Sometimes like a, a relationship that's coming to an end is the catalyst. For trying things like reiki, we start exploring things to help us figure out how we can get to that next level. You know, and breakups, I, when I see clients for classes, often they're at a fork in the road. Maybe one career they're moving to another or they just moved out of relationship or divorce.
And that makes total sense to me. You know, this idea that I'm ready to plug in the matrix and download some more skills.
Stephanie Baubie: So I wanna talk more about somatic sound therapy.
Marie Khale: Yeah, so a friend of mine did like a really intensive training for a week on the Himay singing bowls. And I got to experience them when she had a, a healing space out in Michigan Avenue when she was living in Chicago. And it was really profound and I was like a little nervous because I'm very sensitive to energy from doing reiki so long.
But it was very subtle and at the point that they were set on my heart and on my solar plex, I was like, this is like amazing. So they get placed on the body. She trained me and I recently added that as a service. So it's like a half hour of Himalayan singing bowls and then a half hour of reiki. And it is, these are therapy bowls that are designed specifically for healing and they can be really impactful.
There's no real exceptions to it, except maybe a pacemaker is the one. And I wouldn't put it directly on somebody who had like a plate put in, like if they had.
Stephanie Baubie: Like metal.
Marie Khale: Yeah, if they had to have a surgery and because it, it creates a vibration, but it's really a powerful healing modality. And that sound can do that.
And I've seen that. It's been really trending too, that people are really interested, you know, like gong baths and sound baths. Like I use a nine hour Tibetan singing bowl recording on YouTube to clear a room and I leave it on all the time, like in the bedroom when I'm not there. Because so much is going on in our country, and you and I, we can feel the narrative of others and when we're sleeping, we need to be restoring.
So I'm like, that's one of the rooms I really focus on as the bedroom. So I know sound is powerful, but this was particularly incredible and I feel like I needed to, I wanted to keep offering more to my clients. I have a BioMAT on the table, a healing mat with 17 layers to it that is proven to get rid of inflammation.
So people are on that and then they're getting reiki and then potentially doing the bowls. And I also do moxa sticks. Have you done moxa sticks?
Stephanie Baubie: I haven't.
Marie Khale: Oh my god, Stephanie, I can't get over it. You, my vet who's integrative is like, Marie, you gotta try this on your dog. And then Delphine and I are like, what is this sorcery?
It's mug warts and it looks like a charcoal stick. And it's odorless and smokeless and I have clients who love it and all I have to do is get in proximity to them and it gets rid of pain like that. Like my mother-in-law's carpal tunnel afterwards, she's like, I can't feel my hands. She's so cute.
Mamacita. She's in spirit now. She couldn't believe she only knew pain. So when it went away, she was like, my hands aren't there anymore. It was, yeah, I'll send you a link on that. It's really beautiful and very, it's like $7 for a pack of five. So I'm just like, all the things that we do personally, I'm sharing with my clients because we're in a unique time.
We're living a unique time. I think our souls maybe chose to be here. We need all the things to help us. My uncle used to say, my dad's brother badly disfigured, but still in the ring. That was kind of my motto in advertising. I always felt like I was just kind of like hanging in there and over capitated, but now my bar is like, like, let's get some self love, some radical self-love.
Let's keep weeding in these things that help us, you know, so that we can operate joy and be present.
Stephanie Baubie: I love how you said 50% of your clients are males, right? You, you said that. That is so incredible. I'm so glad they're finding you.
Marie Khale: I think that there may be a cultural reason why I don't see as many men in class, but private sessions consistently. I have a lot of male clients. They're beautiful human beings. It helped me gain a really higher perspective. My father, my brother, are beautiful people, but when I worked in corporate, I don't remember meeting men, like the men I meet in Reiki really special.
The things that give them joy, the things that motivate them, their sensitivity, and it just shows me that like I suspect there's a genetic component to this. We have someone in our lineage that's like us and it just carries down. And when you present someone like you or I with that language, that kind of normalizes it.
Like how do we get into this? How do we use this? You know, I got an article Delphia sent me about Sensitive boys Make great Leaders, beautiful. And it was like own that empathic, own that intuitive, because you can speak to someone from here and we culturally have learned to revere this, but when you combine the two, yeah, you can be led to some amazing discoveries, personal, but for others, like in your healing modality, right?
Like all the tests have been done, but you can't figure it out and your intuition leads you down a road that you wouldn't have otherwise explored. And there that person gets some freedom from that. And we all have access to that, right? Like when we get clarity, if I give that person the gift of clarity and feel lighter, then they will solve it for themselves.
Stephanie Baubie: And what I've seen too, I've had a good amount of men come into my practice or they've become my patients, and a lot of them are very empathic. I think a lot of their physical symptoms came from not understanding how they were wired. And I would bring up these conversations. I'm like, I think you're very empathic.
I think you absorb a lot of other people's energies, and I would kind of explain it the way you do. And they would be like, oh my God. Yeah. That makes so much sense.
Marie Khale: I love that. I can't imagine them going home and being like, oh my God, my nurse practitioner just told me I'm empathic, and she is too. Like that's gotta be so liberating.
Stephanie Baubie: I think it's like kind of their first time of like really feeling seen by, you know, I don't know, like maybe anyone.
Marie Khale: Yeah, because we're now at a time, I don't have to convince any of my clients that stress plays a role in their wellness, but back in the day, no one who was practicing medicine talked about stress. It just wasn't considered a real factor. Now it's absolutely a big piece of the puzzle.
Stephanie Baubie: I still have people who are not fully believing it.
Marie Khale: There's some neuroscientists that have come out with studies recently. I'll send you a link to one of them and she did her dissertation on it and then they paid her to study it after they would made an imaginary study where these students at the school she was doing her dissertation at, were told that they were in an interview and immediately ketones, is that the right word?
They would start moving around and the inflammation was immediately recognized, like we don't actually need it to be environmental diet to experience stress. And you and I know that like it. You can just, you know, have somebody, you could be going through a difficult thing or someone in your life and have that narrative going on.
And that alone apparently can generate inflammation. My mother-in-law moved in with us last year from New York after a stroke. Delphine and I were walking around like we were 90 at the end of that week. We were unprepared. We had no idea. We were so worried. And that alone was like, I mean, there was no change in my diet.
I'm like, how are we gonna do this? You know, and have it be a win-win. Yeah. Like stuff just happens and then you're like, why do I feel like I get off the couch and I'm, so, I think that the things you asked about earlier that are helping with energy are the same things that are helping us with stress.
You know, because if it gets us out of that fight or flight, then it's gonna reduce the inflammation and we're gonna be able to navigate. That situation much better with more clarity. And like you said earlier too, how much less personal do things feel when I'm not restored? You say something and I'm like, what did she mean by that?
And it would've probably had nothing to do with me, but like you feel more sensitive in any given moment than you do when you feel restored and then you're like, oh, they're having a bad day. Totally not about me.
Stephanie Baubie: It's like, oh, okay, whatever. But then when I'm dysregulated, I'm like, like, I'm like, that's when I know my emotional container is overflowing. It's like my irritability is sky high. I'm like, get me out of this room, which look at the end of the day, that's a me thing that I need to figure out. So it all flows.
We're all trying to figure it out.
Marie Khale: The next question, what you think about me has nothing to do with me. You know, like at the end of the day. And that for agreements, that one about not taking things personal. I used to have that up in my cube, but when I worked downtown, you know, in advertising, we all had these cubes and I was like, it just, I couldn't not do it.
Back then. I was like, and I think it's 'cause I didn't integrate any tools that would help me mitigate the energy of others. So it was like this, like you said, bucket earlier. That bucket was overflowing. And if you don't spread empty net throughout the day, you quickly get to that place where you cannot be the version of yourself you wanna be.
Stephanie Baubie: A thousand percent. Unfortunately, I think sometimes it takes changing our environment, which I hate to say, like I never wanna tell people to, you know, quit their job in any way. That's, you know, not what I'm saying, but it's, it's really hard to show up somewhere where it just doesn't fit anymore. And that's something I really say a lot.
Marie Khale: Yeah, you can really get between a rock and a hard place, right? Where you're like, oh, I remember thinking I have a mortgage and I really don't like this job and it's sucking the life outta me. And then how do you walk into an interview feeling confident when you're really feeling stuck? Yeah. But that's going back to these tools like reiki it me a lot with, in the most seemingly desperate thing going on that there was hope and there was opportunity there that I just didn't see at the time, you know?
But I just kept myself open to it by letting myself have moments of reprieve. You know, Delphi was going through this now, so she lost two parents in the last four months. She's using all the tools, you know, that we know. And yeah, it's like when you go through really hard times, you kind of have to just keep layering in people and the things that you do that help you mitigate stress, sadness.
And that gets back to that woman who wrote that book on trauma and talks about glimmer. So I love this so much. 'cause to me, I used to call it like a state changer, which doesn't sound nearly as beautiful as a glimmer. And she's like, learn your glimmers. Like fairies are glimmers for me, rainbows. I grew up, my mom's from Ireland and her sisters my godmother.
And she would send me books as a child from Ireland that were hand illustrated for little girls. And there would be stories of fairies. I just kind of made myself a promise. I'd always believe in fairies. I think that was just a bigger thing of believing in the magic is really what I was kind of right.
And so when I see things that have to do with fairies, or if I see a rainbow in Chicago that is so rare compared to Hawaii, that I might stand in traffic to get a picture that. So knowing your tribe, knowing their glimmers, you know, uh, but knowing my own so that I can introduce them in the day that I'm having a heavy day.
It can just be gloomy for three days here and all my clients are coming calling me. I need reiki, right? Like seasonal sadness is enough to bring all the empaths in. Yeah. It's a thing.
Stephanie Baubie: My glimmers are feathers. That's why they're.
Marie Khale: I love that Dina has very similar images behind her in her office. They're beautiful.
Stephanie Baubie: It makes me feel better. So I've always had a thing with feathers. So that's my glimmer. Okay. I wanna talk about a little bit about what Delphina does. 'cause she's an intuitive mentor or guide. I had a reading with her, which I just wanna say she like, when was that? That was like maybe three years ago. But she told me I was going to move out of Chicago to a place with like mountains and I was like, what?
What are you talking about? No, I'm not. And like a year later I ended up moving to San Francisco where? Northern California, the East Bay or so she told, called that. I was like, I'm not going anywhere. Like what are you talking about? So anyways, she's very talented. Explain a little bit more about what she does.
Marie Khale: So Dina is both an intuitive and a medium. So the intuitive piece is she is able to connect to your energy when someone gives her permission. And then bring through messages that are for your highest good. So that is her goal. That's how she works with her guides. Like I would like them to share with me your guides, her guides, what they need to hear to help them elevate, right?
Emotionally, physically, spiritually. The medium piece of it is when somebody comes in and they have lost someone and they would like to hear from that person. And that is unique in that not a lot of people in Chicago that are intuitive hang that particular shingle as well of being a medium because you know, people know when you're talking to their loved one or not.
You know, she's very gifted in in that. And she's in a book by Claire Bidwell Smith called after this chapter two. Claire had a lot of loved ones come through, and she's a talented writer who's a grief counselor who moved from here to La. Dina's been doing that a long time. She's moved into a service in recent years called Synergy Session, and she loves this because.
You were talking earlier about extending your career meant kind of cutting back your hours. I think for her, extending her career meant working with people like you that are interested in personal development, people who are already flying, they have the feathers and they really wanna expand their wigs even bigger, their wings.
So synergy sessions are when you come in with personal, professional, whichever both goals, and she helps you meet them and they're usually four sessions over four months and it's a little uptick in what her normal rate is, but it's like super amazing how much information people get.
Stephanie Baubie: Her reading was, I've been going to like psychics mediums since I was like 16. Yeah.
Marie Khale: a fan of the Woo, just like me.
Stephanie Baubie: I was always into it. I just definitely like knew there was higher power, you know, guides, what have you. But yeah, I just wanna comment on how amazing her reading was. I wanna share this really quickly. So my dad passed away when I was eight, so he obviously came through in the reading and I had gotten into a car accident with my brother and then my older cousin, I was 12 at the time.
My brother was I guess 16, and then my older cousin was maybe like. 19 or 20. But we got into this car accident. It wasn't my cousin's fault, unfortunately. There was a driver under the influence who drove out in front of us and then we ended up hitting the driver. And unfortunately the other car, the person in the car passed away and all of us were totally fine.
I didn't have my seatbelt on. And you know, Delphina totally like channeled this whole situation and she was like, she was like, yeah, that could have been catastrophic. But your dad came in and like saved you. I know because all of us were completely fine after that. I mean, physically, mentally, maybe not.
Oh my God. I got out of the car and my brother immediately like took me away and you're so disoriented. And I saw the car, it was completely totaled. And I'm not going to say anything else, but I was like so disoriented because I was like, wait, what? Like that's the car we hit. It was really, really crazy.
And she completely channeled that. And wild.
Marie Khale: Delfin and I have known each other a long time. This Halloween will be 24 years anniversary for us. She just, it runs on both sides of her family. But it's something that she used to be in sales, intuitive. People go in sales, you know, she'd be talking to somebody like, oh, you like cars? I should talk about cars.
And then when she got into marketing, when I met her, she was doing this nights and weekends, like out of her house actually, just weekends. And it was so magical, like you're describing, like she would just sit across from someone and be like. You know, like this is what I'm getting. And then by Wednesday of her downtown job, she'd be like, did that happen?
I go, it did happen. It did happen. There was this like contrast. And I kind of really feel that way about Reiki. I would come up north, be totally exhausted at the end of a day downtown, and then. Have these amazing elevating experiences. So I think that it gave her the courage to leave this job, you know?
And both of us were in those structured nine to five where you really work all the time, but you know, for so long. And then take the leap. And then she was so happy. I'd see her come outta sessions dancing and I'm like, oh man, I gotta figure this out. Like I am in my penguin duvet up on Metro, you know, going downtown in the winter and she's in the office.
You know, when we joined together to do this business, it was really like the manifestation of years of us, like looking for a way, like we both had this entrepreneur spirit, but we didn't know what it was that we'd be doing. And we both come from like training backgrounds too. Like we both love teaching.
So yeah. I remember the class that you went to, the intuitive class and she sends them, built an Intuitive Spirit Academy. Is this website. That we developed this portal for video classes and she put one there on intuition. She does auto writing. It walks you through how she does all these things. They're like three or five minute videos each or 30 of 'em.
Anyone goes to my website, zante.com, you'll find it on the landing page 'cause we have a discount running from the holiday and get a discount on it. Yeah, that kind of is replaced the in-person class. 'cause the synergy sessions have become very popular and it's just really a great time because the world is moving so fast.
Right. And technology's playing a big role now. And there's a lot of more, in many ways, especially for women, there's more opportunity because we can work remotely. Right. And you can create passive income too. And it's so interesting your story because. A dear friend of us, she sat across from her years ago and said, I'm getting this company with an A in California and you're gonna go there and you're not coming back.
You're gonna stay there. And she did. She went to Apple and has been up, up, up and yeah, for years now. Oh, software company. It wasn't in the wheelhouse at the time, but you just never know. Like, I love the idea that what our guides know about what our future holds is so much bigger than what I can imagine in my mind.
I love that. Right? You and I, like we have our network of people we've met over the years and what happens when all that interacts and it's just, it's exciting time. Like so many more people are interested in reiki, interested in talking about intuition. And when I started my practice in 2011, I would hear women sometimes say, I haven't told my boyfriend, I haven't told my husband, I'm here.
Stephanie Baubie: I get it. I've been there, but now I'm like, this is me. If I repel you, stay away.
Marie Khale: You have earned that, Stephanie, you have, you have done the thing. You've burned the midnight oil, you've done the hard jobs, and you know, I think that's part of it too. We get to a point where we're like, this is what I need to continue. I knew I wouldn't survive in advertising because of the fight or flight part.
I knew that I couldn't punk cortisol for years and not pay. And not pay for it.
Stephanie Baubie: Why do you think so many people are not in touch with their intuition? And even if they are, they overwrite it. I mean, that's something I dealt with so for so long because I thought I was overthinking everything, but it, I really wasn't like my intuition was always right. So why do you think or so dis or hesitant to even listen to it?
Marie Khale: I think there's a few factors. One of them is that we're socialized in a way that we don't. People until recently, I feel like weren't really comfortable. If I said my spidey sense or if I just show an interest in someone, people do enjoy talking about themselves, I'll be like, oh, I feel like you're really creative, and they would be comfortable with that, you know?
So it's kind of the way you frame it is part of it. Taking the chance to even say the thing that comes to you with a total stranger like cab driver. Like, wow. Like I'm just, I feel like you're a great cook. And people, if it's about something that gives them joy, they're more than comfortable to talk about it.
So it means taking risks and it means giving yourself credit when you're right. Like, and really paying attention. So I think that was a lot. I got that out of our intuitive workshops. I would attend them always because we were hosting them, but I myself wasn't giving myself credit. A lot of times for hits I get and make it fun, you know, like if I get something and I say to Delphi, she's like, I was just thinking, I'm like caught it.
Like we have fun with it. Or I'm in the kitchen making her water and she's like, I was just sending that to you telepathically. I'm like, really? I thought I heard you say it out loud. So be careful. Some people can push their energy. I think for people like you and I, there's a lot of joy connected to that because when we hone into it, for me, alcohol and, and caffeine consumption when I worked in advertising was a barrier to my clarity and the narrative inside needed help too.
But the more often I drank, the depressant nature of it interfered with me having a positive nature, and I didn't allow myself. To take credit for the things that I was achieving. And I do think that has something to do with my sensitivity. Things that affect me from the neck up. I can use this much and a normal person, you know, same with my little Westie.
If you see me turning back to check on, he put himself to sleep. But like, um, though, like I don't need a lot to get the same effect as someone else. We've been plant-based for a number of years and I'm not saying that that's like something for everybody. It was a decision delphina made and I went along because, you know, we've done keto, we've done Weight Watchers together.
It's hard for one person to do. A structured type of eating and that and, but then I just kind of fell in love with it in Blue Zones. I'm obsessed with the Blue Zones and this idea that these people are living without a lot of stress and they're living to a hundred and they're just like dying of old age.
I think that's our birthright. And so for me, I'm looking at how I can structure my life in a way where I can mitigate the stress. I can have opportunities to cook for myself because when I eat processed food, I'm more sensitive than someone else to it, and a lot of my clients are as well. So if I keep introducing things that are not really fully like right from source.
I don't even know what the thing is that day that's necessarily making me feel off, but I'll lose energy. You know, it's just, I'll have brain fog, I guess. I'm kind of like, what is, you know, Marie 2.0 look like? Kind of chasing that idea for a while, and it started with reiki, actually. I quit drinking and then I started getting, my yoga teacher taught me Reiki, so I feel like it was this, it opened up space for me because my social life changed.
I got really, really interested in what, what can I do with all this energy I've got, and I guess I love these shows like Star Wars, where the idea that we can use the force, I feel like we're energy, as they say in quantum physics. How do we learn how to give energy and not always be taking on other people's energy?
So Reiki really gave me a level of faith that I wanted to have, but I didn't. It helped me see that the world is truly magical and I saw it as a child, but as an adult I was just really taking on a lot of energy. Uh, living in an urban setting is probably a lot of it, and I wasn't really finding those opportunities in the day too.
So when I got introduced to Reiki, that changed it for me in a great way.
Stephanie Baubie: And one thing I've noticed too, like I would say in the last like year and a half or two years, my tolerance for alcohol has really lowered, and I think it's the more in touch I'm get. It's almost like the more connected I am with myself, the less I can drink.
Marie Khale: After a reiki class, they say that a reiki class is equivalent to multiple reiki sessions. And if you have a lot of that kind of modality, like if you had several acupuncture sessions or cupping or reiki, you may be more emotional for a few days because your body's releasing whatever it needs to to hold you at a higher vibration.
You may crave different things. And so at the end of a class or during the part where I described the attunement, I'll say, if you have caffeine tomorrow the same that you did every day and it feels like you had 10 times as much, that's because you did a reiki class. So yes, a hundred percent things that affect us stimulants, depressants will have a bigger effect when you're actively doing things to keep you.
Water seeks its own level. This young Lian, is that how you say it? Beautiful blonde hair. Blue-eyed said to me, he read he a trucker and he listens to books on tape. Yeah, it was so beautiful. And he read this book, he said, where as you raise your vibration, it's like raising the tide. All the boats come up with you.
And I thought, that's so beautiful. So for us, I mean, I think we desire our spirit, our soul desires to be a place for people to feel safe and feel supported, which means we have.
Stephanie Baubie: Have to be. We have to do it. We're gonna close soon, but I just wanted to ask you one more closing question and then we'll kind of talk about what you and Delphia maybe have coming up and where, you know, people can find you. But last question, what do you wish people trusted more about in terms of their bodies, or maybe it's emotions or just trust?
Like what do you wish they trusted more about within themselves?
Marie Khale: Yeah, and I guess because we all kind of work a little differently, my intuition began as cla sentience, so I would sense things before I could, whereas I think Dina always got the inner voice from a young age. So whatever it is that you have, that's like your strongest sense that tells you when your spidey sense is going off, listening to it.
Like a woman in the city, if they get a bad vibe about somebody, they cross the street or they do whatever they, it's literally our lives rely on that now more than ever, listening to that gut instinct and whatever it is, like I reflect on the times that I did it, and I think some of them were like dramatic outcomes that helped me realize I don't wanna go through that again.
I feel like just simply listening to it, and if you keep in your notes in your phone a little note like, oh, that stranger, I told them I got a strong instinct to compliment them on their hat and it turned out to be their father's hat, or something really special to them. When you're called to say or do something that you know might bring someone joy.
Take the risk because people really needing that right now more than ever. So for our own self, but also for others, yeah. That we kind of act on that impulse is it takes us out of ourselves and it's easy to feel isolated when you feel down. I think Wayne Dyer saw it in a study that if you do an act of kindness for a stranger, you get endorphins.
The stranger gets endorphins and someone observing it gets endorphins too, which suggests that we are chemically wired to help one another.
Stephanie Baubie: I love that. I think that is so important for everybody to hear.
Marie Khale: Right. Like we could take an antidepressant or we could do something and we would feel that joy. You know, like that was his analogy. He's like, you're watching the news. The commercial comes on, they're selling the antidepressant. But if you go do something for a stranger, you will feel those endorphins.
And I thought, that's right. There's a lot of things that can make us feel down, and they don't have to necessarily be within our own life. But when we act on that, that little voice inside that says something positive, not the other voice, the one that says the, not the other one.
Stephanie Baubie: Well, I think that's such a beautiful thing to end on, and I hope this resonates with everyone who's listening. And you know, a compliment really goes a big way. Just saying something, you like somebody's outfit or shirt or, I don't know, they look like they're glowing or they have really good energy. I think we all really need that.
And it's validating too, but yeah. So tell us, um, in closing, where can people book with you, you, or Delphia? And then if you guys have any, I know you mentioned like the synergy class or like workshops coming up. Tell us all the things.
Marie Khale: Oh, thank you. Okay, so you can find me@zante.com, which is Z-A-A-N-T i.com. I'm in Chicago. I do distant and in person healing sessions. I also do classes and I do group, and I do one-on-one and one-on-one's. Great because you know, if your kids' activities are always on a Saturday, which is when we do group classes, I'm able to do it around your schedule nights.
Also, as you brought up earlier, I'm doing the somatic healing in addition to reiki. So if people want a session to try the Himalayan singing bowls, it's pretty remarkable. And Delphine and I developed a website platform for videos, and it's called Spirit Academy. My Spirit Academy. And you can get to it from my or her site.
Her site is spirit guiding.com, spirit guiding. But if you go on my site, you'll also find Delphia and you'll find My Spirit Academy. So her regular like one hour session has quite a wait list. It's like three
Stephanie Baubie: That's how good she is. Oaks.
Marie Khale: I mean, she's been doing it a long time and yes, her reputation has grown. So on book a session, it, it describes all the things to know about that.
But they also, there's a link mine in her site to her synergy sessions, and those are where like life coach or mentoring meets intuitive media. And I've just heard the best things back from her clients doing more mo monetarily the following year than they did the prior year. You know, or just getting a lot of insights so that they work more streamlined.
Like we have a long time, dear friend, that I think has been doing this with Delphia for a little while and it's just really helped her zone in to her sweet spot. So there's something positive about reconnecting with someone who can not only know your gifts as you're, you know, you share your goals, but then she can see the people, the players around you that wanna support you.
So, like what I was saying earlier, I trust that my guides know more than I do about what's coming, but Delphine is accessing those guides and they're telling her, so it's like those six degrees of separation are available to her for you to tap into, you know? And there's something really reaffirming when you already know.
These are people that are already highly intuitive, right? They already know what they feel like might be their thing, their joy, their soul's purpose, but for her to say it, and she's a, a writer, so she'll write it and be like, your answer that you just gave me, you notice I had my pen down. This is what I got from your guides.
You know? So I think it's just a really amazing, remarkable, like she, you know, connected me to my parents after they passed and it was indescribable. It was like nonstop information. So in a synergy session, you may hear from your father, for example, weighing in on a career goal or, you know, so that's just part of it because she's not gonna not include them if they're adding to the, you know, and if you're like me, I'm talking to my parents every day all the time.
I'm asking them for guidance. I'm asking for them helping me stay. Hi, vibe. So that's all part of it. If you feel aligned with that kind of idea that we're all connected and there's, there's souls looking out for us and helping us, then you'll love these sessions.
Stephanie Baubie: I highly recommend it. I need to go.
Marie Khale: She has a lot of clients on Zoom and you know, and that's what we were saying at the start.
Like for her, this is, I love doing hands-on and I also do remote and I've been doing that a lot more since COVID. But Zoom is like a very powerful modality.
Stephanie Baubie: And I think with, when I say like spiritual guides, intuitive healer or what have you, they really unlock something in you that I think I need that more than a traditional like talk therapist. Right now I've had amazing talk therapist, but I just kind of need that extra little woowoo spiritual thing to to help.
Marie Khale: It's its own kind of category, isn't it? Because talk therapy is so incredible, right? And I feel like they're the new front lines, right? Like back during COVID, you know, it was the medical team in the hospital and now it's the talk therapist talking to everyone through all the things where we had a narrative where the sky was falling for, you know, what you're saying though, I've heard many people say as well, is that this has like accelerated my path.
You're getting these insights that align with things you know about yourself, and then when you hit on that, it gives you confidence. You know, like if I'm thinking about opening this business and then someone who doesn't know me is like, I'm seeing you doing a healing modality. And having your own office, and I'm like, it just gives you that confidence to go there.
Stephanie Baubie: It's also like talking about karmic connections and all of that where it kind of makes a little bit more sense instead of, you know, we all have like patterns that we do, but I think we, there's karmic relationships and karmic contracts. A lot of us have come into this life.
Marie Khale: I didn't realize when I quit drinking, I had so little insight about my, you know, and I feel like I was this like party girl that like worked really hard and we all did and we were allowed in advertising too, and buy at events and stuff. But I was really pretty not into doing that. You know, like I would go home, but at that stage in my life I didn't have clarity.
And you know, what you're saying is so true that you just kinda, you learn how to refine those abilities and she wants to be that guide and she has so many great. Tips 'cause she's been doing this so long and she's mentored so many people. There is no one that you can imagine could cross over the threshold of our door and see her that she hasn't already encountered.
I mean, their journey, their struggle. Like there's so much that we like. I thought my patterns, for example, were staying too long. I remember having a vet with my little minister Schnauzer years ago, and I would complain to everybody, but I wouldn't just like either try to solve what I didn't like about the situation or move on.
And that was something that I didn't have clarity about until I started removing the things that caused me not to have clarity and leaning into the things that give me more clarity. And then I started going, okay, I see it now.
Stephanie Baubie: Oh my gosh. I could literally talk to you for hours, but
Marie Khale: are so adorable, Stephanie. I'm so grateful for this opportunity. Truly.
Stephanie Baubie: was so fun.
you have an Instagram, right?
Marie Khale: I do, it's ante reiki, so it's my website, post the word reiki, and I have links on it from my site. I'm not as good as posting on, I have more stories than I do posts, but I enjoy it. I enjoy the community. Yeah, it's a fun, creative outlet.
Stephanie Baubie: Alright, well thank you so much for coming on. And guys, if you're even called to like book something or if this resonates, like, just don't hesitate. Just do it. You will be mind blown with how talented Marie and Delphia are. If you have any questions about this episode, you can send me a DM at the inters Script pod on Instagram.
All right everyone, I'll see you next week.
If you wanna connect with like-minded women and dive deeper into these conversations, join my Patreon community. There's a free option and it's where we can talk about each episode together. The link is in the show notes and I can't wait to see you there.
Disclaimer
Everything shared in this episode is for educational purposes and personal reflection only. It is not medical advice. Always work with your own healthcare provider for individual care.
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Podcast production by Jamie Brooke.
