She Left the Therapy System, Made Six Figures in Year One, and Works 20 Hours a Week

Hello, my friends. Welcome back to the Thriving Therapreneur Podcast. I am so excited. I have a new friend, fairly new friend Chelsea with us today, and I'm gonna let Chelsea tell you all about herself because she wears many different hats and is multifaceted. But taking you back to how Chelsea and I got connected, because we were just talking about this off recording, and this is how it can happen, y'all. I mean. She slid into the comments on my Forbes article and was like, wow, this is my story. I relate to this too. I would love to have you on my podcast. And then I slid into her DMs. I'm like, send me the link. We've never really had an exchange before that, just, you know, following each other. Immediately hit it off on her podcast, had such a beautiful conversation. Then I came in and even taught her students about business. We're now referral partners and she's sent some clients to me so I can help them with business. We've even done some business coaching now together. And then now here you are on the show as well. So let this be your permission slip to just start a conversation and form an organic relationship with no agenda and just see what comes of it. Because the alignment, the synchronicities, the beauty that can come from just starting a shoot the shit conversation. Is incredible. So Chelsea, welcome to the show. Uh, tell us, who are you? Who do you help? What is up your sleeve?

Oh yes, I am so with you on just slide into the DMs, you know, you never know what's gonna happen. My name is Chelsea Horton. I'm a board-certified dance and movement therapist and somatic practitioner and educator, and I help therapists who are in the system make the transition into embodiment coaching specifically and actually learn a robust, comprehensive, magical embodiment coaching framework so that they can lead insanely powerful results for their clients in their particular niche and area of expertise. I will talk about embodiment and somatics until my last breath. To me, it, it changed my life personally, and it changes my clients' lives over and over and over and over again. And so I'm excited to be on the podcast to preach the gospel of somatics.

Yeah, I want to stop and pause there and go back to your story because it changed your life, which then led you to teach this essentially. And 90% of us are our own ideal client, and we have to walk ourselves through something and then naturally feel called and guided to walk other people through it. So what was this transition like for you? Like, how did you get into this work? And how did it change your life?

So like many therapists, I grew up in a not so functional home. I grew up in a very high control religious environment. And, you know, there's family dynamic stuff. And I just wanted to figure out like, how do How do I be healthy? Like, how do I have good relationships? Like, how do I be healthy? And so I got really interested in psychology and got my master's from a Bible college at the time, got my master's in counseling, was still very, very involved in this pretty high-control religious group, was engaged to the person that quote unquote God had for me. He broke up with me 3 months before our wedding. I was devastated. My world came crumbling down. Suddenly I'm like, it's like one thread was pulled and so much of the shame that I had been raised with and the fear, like I had to really start looking at that stuff. And then I met my now husband who was not a Christian. And that was no, no, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. But I couldn't help but feel attracted to him. He was the most emotionally available man I had ever met. He was so interested in me. And my anxiety went through the roof. Like, this is wrong. I shouldn't be doing this. What if I'm picking the wrong person? What if I'm settling? And little did I know at the time I was experiencing something called relationship anxiety. And I just thought I was with the wrong person. This was my intuition, or at the time, the Holy Spirit telling me that I was doing something So bad and wrong. But I kept— and, you know, I tried breaking up with him multiple times because the anxiety was so intense. And during this time after undergrad, I was, you know, looking into grad school, but I couldn't see myself being a traditional talk therapist. I was also a theater kid and a dancer, and I even considered, like, do I go more the theater performance route? And I discovered dance and movement therapy, which is like a blend of somatic therapy and creative arts therapy. So I move out of my hometown, I go to Chicago for grad school. I think, okay, this relationship's over. This is my ticket out. But we keep talking and the anxiety is getting worse and worse and worse. But as I'm going through my graduate program, it's very experiential. I'm actually learning for the first time in my life How to actually get out of my head, how to actually differentiate what is my thoughts and what are my feelings. I'm learning what do I do with these feelings. I'm learning how to move with them. I'm learning to access parts of myself that even as a dancer my whole life, I had never actually accessed. I'm realizing how much shame and fear and trauma my body is carrying. And just through that process of applying this to work to myself in order to learn how to facilitate it, the natural byproduct of that was my anxiety started quieting down so much so that by the end of my 2 years in grad school, I had an engagement ring on my finger and I was going to be moving across the country to live with my now husband. We've been together for 12 years. And so I was like, what is— whoa, this literally changed the way that I think, the way that I feel, the way that I show up in relationships. And then after graduation, I do the thing that you're supposed to do, and I get a job in the system. And, you know, I'm working with— you open the DSM and you point to something. I'm working with everything there. I'm working in, you know, at a psych hospital, inpatient and outpatient. And I'm seeing— and I'm a dance and movement therapist. I'm like the unicorn there, the only like body-based therapist in the whole treatment team. Everyone thinks I'm just the fun therapist. But I'm like, we are doing deep transformative work with people. Patient after patient is telling me, your group is the most impactful group, your group is the most impactful group. And I'm like, something is happening here. And I'm seeing that it's not just me that this work is impacting. It's like every person who touches it. And, you know, I loved doing the work. I love bringing somatics to people and watching, literally watching their Physiology change before my eyes. But like many therapists, I was feeling overworked, underpaid, feeling like I actually couldn't do the work I wanted to do because of the limitations of the system. Again, I am like a unicorn in this space here. Everyone's doing worksheets and treatment plans, and I'm like having people do movement and like connect with each other in ways they never have before. And like, Express their emotions in ways where they're sobbing. Like, I'm doing weird things in this setting that I felt like I just didn't belong to, in a setting that didn't actually value true trauma resolution, nervous system healing, somatics. It was just like, I'm the afterthought, or, or this kind of work is the afterthought. It's the, it's the fun extra thing rather than the central thing. And so, you know, I'm Realizing, oh, not to mention, I realized I couldn't get licensed in the state of California.

Yep.

I got my degree in Illinois, moved to California. I had done all this research. It's like, oh, you'll just have to take a couple extra classes and then you can get licensed in California. I shit you not. When I moved to California, they had just changed the law saying if you didn't have this one diagnostic class in your program. You couldn't take it outside of your program, and therefore you could not get licensed.

Common.

Here I am finding out why. Huh?

It's common. That happens. Yeah.

I that was another moment where I realized like this system is like the red. It's unnecessarily stupid, and insurance. I'm like, what is this? I got into this field to help people transform, and the system is putting. Roadblock after roadblock for patients, for therapists. And so I start just like thinking and dreaming, like, how else can I do this work? Because I'm 2 years in and I'm like, there's no way I'm making an entire career in this system. There's no way. No freaking way. And then suddenly I see one other dance— literally one other dance therapist start an online coaching business. And I was like, I hired her as a mentor. That, and that was like the first, you know, high-ticket mentor. Like, you know, I, first time I was not making a lot of money. Me and my husband did not have a lot of money. We were living in LA County, but I was like, oh my God, something's here. And then, you know, as I'm learning like about niching and things like that, I'm like, I wonder if other people experience the same kind of relationship anxiety that I did. I felt so much shame for having that. So I was like, do other people experience? And I started talking about my story online and the response was overwhelming. And then my first full year in business, we did 6 figures and I worked 20 hours a week. And I was like, holy shit. Like, I get to help people in a profound way. I get to be creative, and I, I get to actually work in a way that's in alignment with my values and a way that actually helps people transform in a lasting way. And so here I am 7 years later.

And this is the lived experience of so many clinicians that I speak to who Are already coaching. They're a natural coach at heart. Nobody really teaches us the difference between therapy and coaching. We're licensed therapists, we go to grad school, we have all those certifications, every letter of the alphabet, and then we're in a treatment center or a group practice, or we have our own private practice, or whatever the case is. Therefore, we're doing therapy. But it seems like a lot of the group work and the work that you were doing with The clientele that you were seeing wasn't necessarily always therapy anyways. Like, you were functioning as a coach, but like you said, you were limiting yourself by the lives you could impact, the money that you could make, the creative process that you, you didn't want to diagnose, nor were they meeting criteria for diagnosis. Maybe sometimes, not always, but The point is you didn't fit in the textbook therapist box. The system wasn't working for you. Yeah, forget about insurance, the whole nine yards, right? So you started your business doing the relationship and anxiety coaching. When did you then make the pivot or feel the call to then help the therapist make this transition from break out of the system? If you're feeling the way that I did and feeling boxed in and fed up and wanting to throw the towel in, but yet loving the work that you do, it's like this yin and yang of like, well, part of me loves this work and I want to keep doing this, but like, you know, screw the system. There has to be a better way. When did you shift into helping therapists make this transition?

At the end of 2023, it was the craziest experience. You know, people say they have like downloads and it's like, I kind of get that, but this felt like something like literally dropped into my system to actually train other people in the way that we coach. Because, you know, we had been working with thousands of clients at this point. And something we kept hearing over and over is, I've been in talk therapy for 10 years. I've worked with other coaches. I've worked with other somatic practitioners, and no one has helped me in the way that you have. And we just kept hearing that over and over. And so I'm listening, and I'm listening for, what are we doing in sessions? What is happening where we're watching the biggest transformations? What is it that we're doing? And I did in my master's, I did qualitative research. So like, I have my qualitative research brain on, like, what are some of the common recurring themes that we're doing? Am I even doing dance therapy anymore? Am I even taking the things, the textbook dance therapy things that I learned? And I'm like, no, like, while dance therapy will always be my roots, We had actually created a really unique methodology and process that was not Chasey in theory. And if you know Marion Chase and all the amazing dance therapy grandmothers, if you will. So we're like, what are we doing here? And I remember when I had this moment of like, whoa, what if we could teach other therapists, coaches, practitioners to do this work that we're doing. And I sat down and I remember being like, oh, this is going to take me so long to develop this methodology. And it was just like my mentor at the time was like, what are you doing? What are you doing with people? And I just started talking about it. And it was literally these perfect curriculum pillars that all build on each other, just pouring out of me in 1 hour. And so, Then the next step was, I want to get this accredited. And so looking into different accrediting bodies, and we submitted— I remember it was the day before Thanksgiving, we submitted the very last thing to the Complementary Therapists Accreditation Association for accreditation. You know, we had to submit syllabi, lesson plans. And, you know, this is where your clinical training and your grad school experience really comes in handy when you're like developing Stuff like this. And then in 2024, we ran our first cohort. We're right now in the middle of our third, and we're enrolling for our fourth.

Amazing. And therapists are loving it. I mean, I came in to teach to your students, and they were absolutely incredible, right? Like, they just feel like, this is what I was meant to be doing. They're in alignment with their work. Everything that you just discussed when you went from traditional therapists to Embodiment coach, somatic coach, dance coach. We need to go here for a second. Like, how would you describe what you're doing in session? Like, what are some of these pillars? And what would you say to the therapist who wants to take their practice to the next level, their skills to the next level? They're shopping around and They're like, oh, should I take this somatic certification? Should I take this embodiment certification? Or should I come to Chelsea and take her certification? What's the difference?

Ours is a completely comprehensive process and methodology and a way of attuning to people versus a lot of certifications that I've seen out there. It's like you're learning a lot of tools and skills. And A, you're not always getting direct live feedback on your facilitation. Like, one of the program facilitators is not actually watching you facilitate. Sometimes the tools feel disjointed, or you don't know what to use when, or it's still being taught in a very protocol kind of way. It's still kind of giving that like clinical, rigid feel. And then you're still up in your head of like, do I use this tool now? Do I use this tool now? And the way that we teach, A, is no matter what you're doing with someone, you always lead with curiosity. And we ask our students over and over again, what are you genuinely curious about in this moment? Attune to the person. So we teach nonverbal and somatic attunement. That's where we start. Can you attune to someone's nonverbal experience? Understanding how certain cues might cue you into what their nervous system state is. So we start with nervous system awareness, co-regulation, understanding how trauma impacts the nervous system. Then we're leading into, now, how can you actually help someone differentiate between their thoughts and their feelings? Because a lot of somatic things are like, okay, just feel your feelings, feel your feelings. Well, what about the person who has no clue how to do that? What about the person who is so intellectual? What about the person that every time you ask them, where do you feel that in their body? They're like, I don't know. Do you actually have the skillset to help someone know how to be in their body when they've never been in their body before? This is just the beginning. This is just the first 2 months. And then we take it to, okay, someone's starting to learn how to feel sensation in their body, be present with what's happening. Now, how do you bring it into creative expression? How do you help them take what is happening inside and give it an external expression? And this is where movement, music, art, creativity, embodiment, music, where this can come in to help amplify the expression so that it's no longer this feeling that's stuck inside of me. Now, It's got somewhere to go. I can experience it in a different way. Instead of it being this heavy, scary thing inside of me, suddenly it's becoming this movement, this expression, this piece of art in front of me. I can channel this feeling into creativity and expression. And then we go into parts work, inner child work. How do we deepen the process? Well, we do a lot of Training around shame, how to work with shame, how shame manifests somatically, anger, how to work with anger, and then how to actually bring play into some of the deeper, heavier stuff. So that healing isn't always this, like, every time it's so deep. How do you actually bring play and humor and creativity into even the deep moments in a way that's, again, very attuned and you're aware of where your client's at in the process? And so, so much more. So it's a comprehensive—

It's a year-long program. It's a year-long certification. And you say so much more because then you also get into the foundational principles of business, not the whole shebang, right? But most of your clients are in business for themselves, right? They're entrepreneurs or desiring to be. And let me ask you this too. Who are most of your clients? Are they therapists that are first breaking out of the system? Are they already in their practice and they're really like finding who their people are and they want to go a different avenue? Like, kind of walk us through. And I know it's a mixed bag, but who do you see most typically, most often?

It really has been such A mix, right? We do have, like, one of our students from last year, she was in the middle of her clinical grad program when she started taking our certification. And upon graduating, she thought she was going to go the traditional route. Like, that was what she thought she was supposed to do. And through this program realized, why am I going to do all that when I know I'm just going to leave it anyway? So upon graduating from her clinical grad school and our certification program, she Right away, just opened her own embodiment coaching practice. And she's like, I am so glad that I found your program. I'm so glad that I didn't get myself all stressed and burnt out working in a system that I never wanted to work in, in the first place. We have students who have a private clinical practice that wanted to branch beyond that and have embodiment coaching. We have people who worked in just like corporate who experienced their own transformation as just a client of ours and our methodology. They're like, I want to learn how to do this for other people. And now they are working. We have 2 students that got hired by the same relationship coaching company, and they're both somatic coaches for this company. So lots of different people coming in. We even had a medical doctor, our first cohort. But yeah, a lot of therapists who are like, either I don't even want to go the traditional route at all, and I can feel that, or I want to branch beyond it.

Yeah, feeling called to work in a different way and have the backbone to do so, putting a name to it, putting a practice to it. Because like you mentioned or alluded to earlier, And I felt this way definitely after taking some certifications, like when I got certified in hypnosis or even NLP, and they're like, congratulations, like you're certified. I'm like, what, I am? Like, I didn't feel confident of how and when to use the certain tools. And so you're really teaching, but then also moving into the mastery and the integration, which is What is missing so often in typical certification programs, in my opinion.

Yeah, we are not for you if you just want to have the letters after your name and, and spend as little time as possible and spend as little money as possible. Like, we just aren't for you. There are a lot of certifications like that, which they have their place.

But then you typically have to go get— like, I had to go get more certifications and training after my certifications and training. Because I— it wasn't enough,

right? And our students, again, even students who didn't have a therapy background, come in feeling more equipped than someone who had gone through grad school. And we've had students say that, like, I went through grad school and I did not learn a percentage of what I've learned here. I did not. I came out of grad school The student I was talking about earlier, she's like, when I was in my internship, I did not feel confident. I did not feel like I knew how to take clients to deeper places. I did not feel like I was actually helping them. Now I feel, even if I don't know what's going to come into a session, she's like, I know that I'm going to know how to guide them. And that's what we want our students to feel.

Yeah. I want to ask you a loaded question because you've gone from Therapist to coach to business owner, multiple different niches. You've wanted to kind of throw the towel in and like fuck the system and had to find your own way. Like entrepreneur to entrepreneur, for anybody who's listening, who is the therapist who is feeling fed up, capped, somehow frustrated with whatever. Current model they're in, whether they're capped in their private practice, they're not feeling creative in their work, and they're, they're capped in their creativity, or maybe they're still working for someone else and they want to find a better way. Taking the leap is always scary, right? But what piece of advice would you give to the therapist who wants to take the leap into coaching into this next step, whether it's starting their own business or just going like the certification route and figuring out what type of work that they even wanna do or how to do this work, what piece of advice would you give them?

Ooh, yeah. First of all, the fear is gonna be there. It's never not gonna be there. So do not wait until the fear is gone. You're gonna be scared shitless. Because you're leaving a known path, and the nervous system often equates certainty with predictability and predictability with safety. So just know that fear is going to come along for the ride no matter what you decide to do next. If you're leaving the known path, your nervous system is going to be like, so meet yourself in the fear. Let Let the fear move through you. Don't, don't buy into the thoughts that fear produces. And also, sometimes fear sounds like logic. Well, I need to know all the steps first. Maybe I need to have this all figured out first, or maybe I need to— sometimes, how— what about this? And how is this going to happen? Your, your logical brain is going to want to answer every question. So first, expand your capacity to sit with your fear and sit with the unknown and the unanswered questions. And once you can do that, then there's more space to go, what feels like the fullest extension expression of my purpose? How do I really want to help people? And something that I did that one of my mentors, that first mentor who was a dance therapist, had me do was she's like, I want you to actually move your story. Oh, wow. Like, dance, move your story. And through me actually moving my own story and the moments that were the most pivotal in my life and the things that were the most transformative for me, I got clarity on like, whoa. And that's when I really realized the pivotal moments of my relationship journey. And so actually in coming home to myself and my own story, Rather than trying to figure out what I should do, that's where the clarity came from of like, what is the next step? What's the next chapter in the story? How does this story want to unfold? What were the most important parts of my story that I want to bring forward next?

Yeah. So just getting really curious, like you said earlier, starting with— I call it the what-if game. Right? Like, what if it could look like this? What if it unfolds like that? Like, with the fear, get curious. What's on the other side? The fear is always going to be part of the story, but what is on the other side of that fear? Amazing advice. Where do people find you, Chelsea? They're interested in your certification or maybe even some of your relationship anxiety work that is still out there, uh, for clients as well, and maybe that hit home for them. Where's the best place for them to find you?

Yeah, you can go to my website, www.healingembodied.com/connect. On that page, you can book a free and completely obligation-free 30-minute call with me. Otherwise, you can find me all over the socials, on Instagram @healing.embodied, I'm on Facebook, TikTok. A lot of my relationship anxiety content lives on TikTok, whereas more of the certification stuff lives on, on Instagram. But yeah, @healing.embodied on TikTok or Instagram. And say, like, literally send me a DM, say hi. I'm a real person. I love people.

Just like we slid into each other's comments and DMs, you can do that too. Yeah, I'll include all of that in the show notes. Well, thank you, Chelsea, for being a good friend and being on the show. And I can't wait for everybody to go check out your work.

Thanks for having me.