A Conversation With: Kim Ramsey-Winkler

Welcome to this installment of The Wellness Universe’s ‘A Conversation With …’ interview series! We will feature interviews from some of our amazing WU World Changers so you can learn about who they are as a person, their profession, mission, and their why!’

Welcome to A Conversation with Kim Ramsey-Winkler –

Certified Chios® Master Teacher

The Wellness Universe directory is a resource and community filled with Change-Makers; we call WU World-Changers (Wellness Universe World-Changers). Today we want to introduce you to Kim Ramsey-Winkler.

Kim\’s mission is to offer support and guidance to those whose inner light and creative power have been obscured by abuse and trauma through energy healing, channeling, and coaching.

1. Hello Kim, will you please tell us about yourself?

Hi! I’m excited to have this interview with The Wellness Universe. My name is Kim Ramsey-Winkler, but in my work, I use the name River Lightbearer, which is a name I was gifted with several years ago. I grew up in Maine but now live in Massachusetts with my husband, who doesn’t understand most of the things I do but is happy that I’m happy doing them. I’m the mother of two amazing adults, grandmother to two adorable little boys, and servant to two occasionally obnoxious but mostly cuddly cats. I’ve been fascinated by energy and magic all my life, and those interests, along with writing fiction, helped me survive through years of bullying and emotional abuse. One important thing about me, about which I’m happy to answer questions if anyone is curious, is that I am agender; I don’t identify as male or female, just as me.

2. Kim, what is it that inspires you?

Seeing people who have felt trapped by their circumstances realize they can create their own life, and take the steps to do it. I’ve been the one who felt trapped, and I feel so empowered and excited when I remember my own creative power, and when I see other people recognize and embrace their power.

3. Will you please tell us what you call yourself and explain what it is that you do?

I’m a Certified Chios® Master Teacher and a channel. Chios is an energy healing modality that works on the chakras and energy field to restore balance and remove blocks, and basically create a sense of wellness and health for the recipient. I was trained in it in 2006 and received my Master Teacher certification that year. I’ve found it to be an amazing catalyst for healing for myself as someone with a history of experiencing abuse and trauma; it’s also just a very relaxing and restorative practice, and clients have told me they love how relaxed and clear they feel after sessions.

Channeling is a process by which a human connects with a being of higher energetic vibration, such as an angel or a being of light, to receive guidance and insight. Some people channel just for themselves; I choose to offer channeling to others. I work with a being of light called Shiva, and do channeling sessions either by relay, where Shiva tells me his answers to the client’s questions and I pass them along, or trance, where I enter a trance state to allow Shiva to speak directly. Either way, Shiva and I prefer doing these sessions as a conversation rather than a monologue; we’re both strong believers in free will, so we want the client to participate in the discussion instead of just listening.

4. How exactly does that help someone?

Experiencing trauma and abuse messes with your self-perception. You have trouble seeing or remembering who *you* are underneath what you’ve experienced, and sometimes the words you’ve heard or the things that were done to you become such a part of you that you forget they came from someone else in the first place. This can affect how you view yourself, especially whether you have and claim your inner power to create a life you want to live.

Your physical and mental/emotional health are intertwined, and both are also intertwined with your energetic health. When you’ve experienced any type of illness or injury, it’s stored in your energy system, and what’s stored in your energy can impact how you feel physically and mentally. If your energy is out of balance or blocked, it affects your life as a whole, so treating, repairing, or removing those blocks and imbalances can improve your overall well-being. My clients have told me they feel much calmer and have more clarity about their lives after sessions, which helps them make decisions about how to move forward with creating the lives they want to live.

Channeling is a conversation where you have the chance to gain insight and get advice, but you’re speaking to a being who doesn’t judge or base what they tell you on their own biases. I’ve had clients who have said they felt more heard and supported by Shiva during a channeling session than at any other time in their lives, and he’s given them a new way to look at themselves and the role they play in creating their own life that has been valuable to them as they continue to heal from their pasts and create a more positive present and future.

5. Why are you so passionate about helping survivors of abuse and trauma create their best lives?

I’ve been there. I experienced emotional and verbal abuse in my home and from my caregivers beginning at a very early age. I was also severely bullied in school and even as an adult. I learned that I was powerless and worthless. I lost touch with the things I believed in as a child, like magic and energy, and became someone who just existed rather than truly living. It was miserable, and through it all, I believed I didn’t deserve anything better.

After years in an abusive marriage, I met someone who offered me a Chios® healing session, and the difference was immediate and profound. I was clear on what had happened to me in my life—and on the fact that it was not my fault. I didn’t cause people to abuse or bully me. That was *their* choice. And I had a choice about how to live my life going forward, and the power to live the way I wanted. My mentor also taught me that the “invisible friends” I’d had since childhood, who had always been with me even through the worst times, were actually my guides, and taught me how to channel Shiva, who has been one of my guides for several lifetimes.

Not that that made things instantly better! Healing and recovery is a journey, and sometimes it’s a long, winding one. My mentor severed our connection after a couple of years, and sometimes it’s been difficult to find support; at other times, life has interfered with my inner work (I only have so much emotional bandwidth), and I’ve had to step back or have unintentionally fallen back from the things I’ve learned. I’ve definitely had times of backward regression, but every time things seem to be going backward, I regroup and end up making more progress than before.

But until I connected with my mentor, I only knew that I didn’t like how people treated me. I didn’t know that it wasn’t okay. I didn’t know that it didn’t have to define me. And I didn’t know that it wasn’t my fault. There are so many people who have lived through similar experiences—or worse—to mine, and I want them to know they aren’t alone, they are deserving of better, and they have the power to create that “better” for themselves. I want them to have the support, guidance, and compassion I didn’t have, and I want them to know that this is *their* healing journey, and they are the only ones who get to decide how it’s “supposed to” work. If it takes time, that’s okay. If they have times of regression, that’s okay. Because they do deserve to heal, and they will get there.

6. Did any specific life experience prompt you to follow this path?

As I said above, I experienced emotional and verbal abuse from a young age both at home and from people who were supposed to care for me while my parents worked. I was also severely bullied by classmates from preschool on up and have even experienced bullying as an adult by other adults. The effect that abuse and bullying have on people is far too often underestimated, especially when the experiences are ongoing and there’s nowhere safe to get away from them.

As for energy healing and channeling specifically, as a child, I knew those were things that existed. I figured out when I was four or five that if I put my hand on a cut on my arm, the cut stopped hurting. I talked to trees, plants, stones, the wind… Magic and energy were everywhere in my life. And then there were my “invisible friends,” who spoke to me, protected me, and guided me when I felt like I had no one else. As I grew up, I set aside some of what I knew, because people told me I was crazy or because I was afraid to talk about it, but I never really forgot. When my mentor introduced me to Chios® and channeling, it wasn’t like I was learning something new; it was like coming home to a place I knew well but hadn’t been in a long time.

7. How long have you been doing this?

I’ve been practicing and teaching Chios® Energy Healing and practicing channeling since 2006, though I have done energy work (without always knowing it) and have worked consciously with my guides since early childhood.

Thank you so much for sharing today, Kim!

If you’d like to connect with Kim, please visit: https://www.thewellnessuniverse.com/world-changers/kimwinkler/

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