Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley is a thought leader in outside the box and natural approaches to women's health and hormones, focusing on what she has termed Selfless Syndrome. After suffering her own health challenges that resulted from focusing on everyone and everything but herself, her work turned towards helping other driven women navigate the world of fatigue, thyroid issues, anxiety and depression, difficulty losing weight, gut health and more without the use of medications. She is the founder of Emergent Women Coaching & Health Consulting and is building a business that serves both her clients and her health, while helping other women do the same. She is the host of the podcast Emerge-The Health Podcast for Busy High Performing Women, the creator of the Emergent Women Method and Chrysalis Health Consulting Program, and a PhD candidate in Integrative Medicine through Quantum University. Her mission: to help women break through the constraints imposed by misinformation, society and a lack of self-worth and step into the awesome power of who they really are.
Dr. Alexandra Swenson-Ridley, The Health & Hormone Expert for Busy, Driven Women
Introduce yourself! Please tell us about you and your life, so we can get to know you better.
I wear many hats.
I’m a wife, mom & stepmom to five boys–four human, one furry–coach, doctor, retired chiropractor and have been an entrepreneur and CEO since I was 27.
I’m also a woman who has had a lot of life experience in a short amount of time. In the past decade I’ve been through a lot of the hard things I’ve found other powerful women leaders also go through, and don’t always talk about: a rocky first marriage to an emotionally abusive alcoholic, building a nearly 7-figure business as a single mom, realizing shortly after purchasing a $500,000 building that that business was NOT my dream, losing my health to stress (thyroid issues, weight gain, wrist injuries), bankruptcy, getting remarried and blending families, having to face the ugly side of being out of integrity with myself in business and my health and ultimately finding the courage to keep showing up and fighting for the life I knew deep down was possible.
Who I am is someone who helps hold the space for other women to address the hard things that have plagued them their whole lives and transform their business, health and lives into one where having “enough” time, energy and freedom is not only possible, it’s easy.
On less of a deep note, I live in Alaska, love to hike, run and ski, read excessively and love to travel and explore new places with my boys. I’m also obsessed with all things related to personal growth and transformation—especially when it comes to business, being a woman in a man’s world, balancing women's hormones without drugs, and creating powerful feminine leadership in the world where women are free to be fully self-expressed.
A lifelong learner, I’m nearly finished with a PhD and Doctorate in Integrative Medicine that is based in Quantum Physics.
What is your business name and how do you help your clients?
After pivoting away from the chiropractic world and my first business, I launched Emergent Women Coaching & Health Consulting in 2020.
My wheelhouse is helping women leaders find balance and health in both their bodies and business. So many women I’ve worked with, myself included, get stuck in the limiting belief that in order to be successful in business or their career they have to sacrifice something else—a family, an empowering relationship, their health etc. They tend to ignore themselves–something I call Selfless Syndrome–putting everything else first and finding themselves further and further down a road where they feel stuck and lack the energy and perspective to make a change.
The women I work with make a lot of progress with both their health and passion and purpose in life and business. They lose weight, heal their gut, have less symptoms with perimenopause and menopause, have significantly more energy, and create new habits that actually last. In business and leadership they learn how to implement boundaries, lead more powerfully and effectively, make aligned career or business pivots, create far more time in their day, build healthy relationships professionally and personally, and find the courage to make the changes that have been holding them back in growth and what their true purpose and passion is.
I don’t focus my work so much on the what or how, but rather the who. Who do you need to be to have the life and balance you want to create—in business, in a healthy body, in relationships and in life. It is absolutely possible to have it all, but it takes getting outside the box, challenging beliefs and societal constructs in your approach to both business and health, and being willing to create something new with complete confidence in yourself. What I do is provide the space and framework to do that in a way that is not overwhelming and is 100% sustainable.
- What would you like to achieve for yourself and your business in the future?
My big dream, and the thing I am most passionate about, is seeing a world of powerful women leaders living fulfilled and fully balanced lives. The idea behind Emergent Women is to literally provide the space for women to Emerge into who God created them to be.
There is a quote by Marianne Williamson that has given me goosebumps every time I’ve read it.
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”
Learning to let our light shine, and to be who God created us to be is one of the most challenging and rewarding journey’s there is, and I believe ultimately the purpose to our time on Earth. It is also one that I don’t believe we will ever complete, but will be constantly evolving as we grow into who we really are. It’s also a journey that takes courage, belief, outside perspective, a safe space and rewiring our brain from unconscious habits and behaviors. My goal is to create the space and community for like minded women leaders to go on this journey together and embrace living fully expressed in their true potential.
What is your work inspired by?
The work I do today is a culmination of years of training, learning and certifications. My journey in self discovery and transformation began about halfway through my time in chiropractic school. I found myself in leadership roles that challenged me to find my authentic self in school clubs, helping to organize and lead leadership retreats for other students, writing for our school paper and going through personal development programs through Landmark Education where I ultimately became an Introduction Leader for the organization.
Landmark Education, which is based on the teachings of Werner Erhard, was my initial introduction to the concept of who we are being in the world being the essential key to transformation. A concept that can also be hard to embrace and see without digging into what we don’t know and what we don’t even know we don’t know.
Since that time, my approach has been heavily influenced by principles of quantum physics, neuroscience and neuroplasticity through my Ph.D. program at Quantum University. Particularly the work of Dr. Joe Dispenza has upleveled the approach I take with clients to fast track transformation by going to work on the subconscious and engaging in processes to rewire our unconscious programming.
Finally, much of my work has been influenced by my fascination with Carl Jung’s concept of archetypes, and specifically how they show up in female leadership and societal constructs as women have stepped more and more into what was once considered a man’s world of business and leadership.
If you could change one thing about your industry, what would it be and why?
In both the worlds of business and healthcare, the focus is often on the tactical–the “how to build a funnel” or “how to get new clients”, or the “follow this diet”. There is far less attention and focus on the things that hold us back–which for smart, capable women have absolutely nothing to do with our ability to learn some new tech, a new approach, or follow a diet or workout routine perfectly.
The things that hold us back are the often hidden beliefs, fears and behaviors that we often don’t even realize are running the show, but which will keep us stuck repeating the same patterns over and over, all while hoping for a different result.
To truly find success, we have to shift the emphasis from the how and the what and be willing to go to work on the who. In most coaching programs, both business and health related, we have to be willing to shift out of this approach and focus first on who we are being. My own experience and frustration with both the worlds of business and health have led to me pivoting my approach and creating a hybrid in both areas. Chances are if you’re struggling in one area, you are or will experience similar struggles in the other until you really get down to the root of who you are being and powerfully transform the things that hold you back.
Tell us about a pivotal moment in your life that brought you to where you are today.
My pivotal moment came in the summer of 2018.
I’d just bought and finished remodeling a 6,000-square-foot office building to accommodate what felt like an ever growing staff and services in my 7-figure chiropractic wellness center. There was a moment when I walked up the stairs into my newly remodeled, beautiful new office space, and found myself staring around the room thinking “this is not the dream”.
I was beyond stressed. My wrist was torn in six places from my career as a chiropractor. I was losing my voice by the end of every day, my hair was falling out, I was putting on weight, I was too exhausted to feed my son at the end of the day and I had missed out on a significant part of his childhood by always working. He was often with me, but I was always focused on work. On top of that, I couldn’t seem to escape the constant fires, staff drama, insurance woes and other problems that came with running a busy brick and mortar practice.
In that moment I felt trapped, and also recognized that something was going to have to change or it was literally going to drastically shorten my life and dampen my contribution to the world.
In that moment, I decided to start doing the hard work I now help other women go through. I had to get honest with myself about what I really wanted out of my life and business, and stop worrying about what other people thought. I had hard conversations. I made hard decisions. I learned more. I cried. I laughed. I cried some more. I didn’t always do it gracefully, but today I can say I’ve built the life I wanted–with balance in my business, my family life and my health. A life where I have freedom, can travel, can homeschool my kid, am capable of setting boundaries around work and play, and have a business I love and enjoy fully.
As I went on my own journey, I recognized myself in so many other women I knew. So I put together a framework to do the work in, and have been building a community of like minded women with different stories, but similar journey’s, who are now doing the hard work and seeing their health, their business and their lives transform for the better as a result.
This is my goal for every woman on the planet who feels compelled to lead and wants to have the balance of business/career, family, kids, love, freedom and all the things NOW, not someday down the road. Even if you can’t see the path forward at the moment, it is absolutely possible!
