Why Breakthroughs Alone Do Not Create Lasting Change – An Interview with Vanessa Viola
- 1 day ago
- 6 min read
Vanessa Viola is a healer, coach, and founder of The Spiritual Gym and Liberated Soul Activation, trained in Andean shamanic tradition, Reiki, breathwork, and NLP. Her work sits at the intersection of energy healing and lived psychology, not surface-level self-help, but a deeper process of clearing what's stored in the body, not just the mind, so real, lasting change becomes possible.
In this interview, Vanessa breaks down why understanding a pattern intellectually is never enough to actually change it, what the wellness industry consistently gets wrong about breakthrough experiences, and what it really takes to build self-trust that holds, even after the high of a retreat or a single session fades.
Vanessa Viola, Founder of Co5mosis & Creator of Liberated Soul Activation
What led you to focus your healing work on people who seem capable on the outside but feel depleted or disconnected within?
Because I was once in their shoes. For years, I ran on autopilot, giving my power away to my boyfriend, my acting teacher, the entertainment industry itself. I was trying so hard to be liked, to be seen, to prove I was lovable and good enough, and I was destroying myself in the process. An old blueprint ran in the background the entire time, driving every pattern I kept repeating without realizing it.
What's wild is that reaching out for help during the darkest point of my life is exactly what led me here. It led me to my actual purpose. The moment I realized how little control I actually had, how much of my life had been an illusion of control, how off-center I'd been living, and felt what it was like on the other side of that, I knew I wanted nothing more than for other people to experience that same liberation.
Why can someone understand a pattern intellectually and still struggle to change it in everyday life?
Because the pattern isn't stored in the mind, it's trapped in the body. The body becomes addicted to these patterns no matter how painful they are to the conscious self, because they're familiar, and familiar reads as safe. Most of this conditioning happens between ages 0 and 7, some of it even earlier, in the womb, where we experience what our mother experiences.
There's real science now supporting what many ancient traditions already knew intuitively. Research on intergenerational epigenetics, studies on the children of Holocaust survivors, of famine survivors, of war refugees, shows that a parent's trauma can actually change how genes express themselves in their children. That's not memory in the poetic sense. It's biology. Trauma leaves a real, measurable mark that gets passed down.
There's also a teaching, most associated with Indigenous traditions like the Haudenosaunee, about considering seven generations, the ones before us and the ones after. I hold that as a spiritual principle, separate from the science, but the two point toward the same truth from different directions, we are carrying more than just our own story. So it's never enough to just talk about a problem. Real change has to happen on a deep, subconscious, embodied level, because that's exactly where the programming actually lives.
How do you work with the subtle energy body alongside what a client can consciously express in a session?
I can sense where energy is trapped in the body. I get visions. I hear messages. I feel things in my own body that point me toward what's actually happening in theirs. From there, I work to clear that energy using a range of healing modalities I've trained in over the years.
We do go into someone's trauma, but only far enough to understand how it's shaping their life right now, never to psychoanalyze. That's not what I'm here to do. I'm here to help clear the energy so there's room in the body and mind for someone to actually hear their own heart and soul again. When that happens, something shifts, people start making choices they didn't even know were available to them.
What do you think high performers often misunderstand about burnout and chronic stress?
They think it's a lack of time. There are so many places to point the finger instead: the employee who's slacking off, the idiot driver who cut them off, the kid who won't stop nagging. What they're missing is that underneath all of it sits a story that's been running for a long time, a story about who they are, and what everything happening around them means about them.
That story is what's actually driving the chronic stress and burnout. It just wears a disguise: the husband consumed by work who doesn't "see" her anymore, the endless to-do list, the feeling that she's the only one holding it all together. The external circumstances aren't the real cause. They're just the current costume the old pattern is wearing.
Where do you see the wellness industry placing too much emphasis on breakthrough experiences instead of integration?
The videos of people crying, screaming, hugging, dancing. The plant medicine journey that was "life-changing." Almost nobody talks about what happens after. Walking back into an environment that hasn't changed at all, while you have, how genuinely hard that is.
People have this incredible experience somewhere far from their real life, floating on a pink cloud, and then they go home, and that cloud starts to dissolve, and they slip right back into the old patterns. Nobody tells them this is a lifestyle, not a vacation. It's like going to the gym, you don't go once and expect the body you want to just appear. You have to keep showing up if you want to actually stay fit, feel good, and be healthy. The same is true for your inner world.
What are the first signs that someone is functioning well externally but becoming disconnected from themselves?
They don't feel like themselves anymore, and they're not even sure who that person actually is. There's a nagging discontent underneath everything, even when life looks fine on paper. They're exhausted in a way rest doesn't touch. Their body carries tension they've stopped noticing because it's always there now.
The joy is gone. Pleasure feels far away, almost inaccessible. Underneath all of it, there's a small, quiet voice, one they keep talking over, whispering that there has to be more to life than this. That voice is usually the first honest thing they've heard from themselves in a long time.
What helps a meaningful shift become a lasting practice rather than another temporary breakthrough?
It's boring, but it's true: small, simple, daily rituals of showing up for yourself. Doing what you said you would do, for you. I want to be clear: this isn't selfish, even though I know that's a story a lot of people carry. What they don't realize is that by consistently not showing up for themselves, they quietly build resentment toward their own life, and toward the people in it.
Real change comes from daily, repeatable choices that build self-trust, one small proof at a time. Not a single dramatic moment, but a string of ordinary ones, each one a little more aligned with the liberated version of who you actually are underneath everything you've been carrying.
How has your training in Andean shamanic traditions changed the way you understand healing and your responsibility as a practitioner?
It's deepened my relationship to the unseen realms, to the allies who are here to help us. It's deepened my care and love for Mother Earth, and for the people and animals who share this life with us. It's a real responsibility, and I'm still learning and growing into it every day.
This training has strengthened my connection, and it constantly humbles me. I understand myself as a vessel, a channel for powerful energy to move through, on its way to helping heal someone else. This work is serious. I don't take a single part of it lightly.
What would you most like someone who feels exhausted from constantly holding everything together to understand about real change?
That it's messy. It's not perfect, and it can be genuinely uncomfortable, but holding everything together is so much harder than finally letting go. You don't have to carry everyone else's stuff. You don't need to burden yourself with what was never actually yours to hold.
You can hand people back what belongs to them, and trust them enough to figure it out on their own. Holding it all together isn't just hard on you, it's a disservice to everyone around you too. We're all here on our own journey toward growth and self-realization. Not to control each other. Not to control the outcome. That control was always an illusion anyway.
Read more from Vanessa Viola
