Love Through It

Melissa Haywood is an inspiration. She started Lianna's Mind Body Elevate group this spring with hope to help her eating habits but found so much more. A healthy love for herself and understanding the why's behind her actions. She's now actually living the life she's been dreaming of.

Melissa is a Case Specialist/Consultant for the Department of Child Services. She has one child, an 18-year-old son, who has recently made her an empty-nester. As her son became an adult, Melissa found herself needing to find life outside of motherhood. After her son graduated high school, she moved to a major city and is finding the life she put on hold while raising a child. Melissa enjoys group fitness, reading for self-improvement, and new motorcycle adventures.

Enjoy this extra special episode of Lianna chatting with her dad, Dr. Paul "Howie" Nielsen. They reminisce about their family adventures with agitated hippos and curious gorillas, how Lianna was a headstrong child who loved to melt crayons, and how Howie's curiosity in maps and people led to such an enriching life.

Howie was raised in Chicago by loving, but overprotective parents — children of Scandinavian immigrants fresh from rural Minnesota. This forged his parenting philosophy of giving Lianna as much leeway as possible.

His mother chose the universities he applied to and picked the cheapest option. Howie stumbled his way through biology, chemistry, and public health before getting his doctor of dental surgery. He used his degree to travel the world, doing volunteer work in six different countries.

His wife Karen became pregnant with Lianna while they were working in a Philippine orphanage, forcing a lifestyle reassessment. The next 22 years were dedicated to a private practice in Maine where they raised their daughter.

Howie’s passion in life is natural history, especially birds. Once Lianna was fledged, Howie and Karen worked in wildlife conservation in Southeast Asia for 11 years where he contributed to the discovery of the Cambodian tailorbird.

He is now retired, pursuing birds locally in Maine and around the world, and tending to his flower garden with Karen.

Lianna chats with friend, client, theatrical talent, Laurie Schaefer Fenton about everything from their dog meet cute, how right and wrong Laurie was about the Mind Body Elevate program, discovering Human Design, and her old neighbor drilling into her kitchen.

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Laurie has spent most if her life working in the theatre, as an actor, producer, and the last 10 years as a fabric painter, costume distresser, and general bedazzler. She has been through Lianna’s Mind Body Elevate program three times and has seen remarkable changes utilizing many of her suggested dietary, mindset, and wellness techniques.

It’s time for a catch-up! Lianna and Claire discuss all the weird things they’ve been up to lately. The conversation goes from Wayne’s World and Carol Burnett to sex parties and body positivity to appreciating the ebbs and flows of different relationships to the fine art of intimacy and dissociating during sex.

Lianna is joined by former client and fellow coach (of spiritual inner child healing), Despina Sokratous. They discuss how they were drawn to work together, they still need to use their tools, healing works better with others, it's important to recognize and accept feelings, and play is necessary more than ever.

Despina's Instagram

Despina's TikTok

Despina's website

Despina's personal About Me:

My name is Despina Sokratous and I wanted to take this time to officially introduce you to our mission and purpose for this platform.

First, here's a background story. About 10 years ago, after going through a broken relationship and falling into severe depression, panic attacks and anxiety, I was introduce to meditation and shadow work as a form of healing. Being desperate for change allowed me to open myself to the practice of meditation, shadow work and other holistic sources of healing. It was life transforming. About 4 years ago, I desperately wanted to find my purpose and how I can use it to help other people through my story and experiences. So many changes had happened in the past 4 years for me. Loosing friends, relationships, a business, moving to a different country. And that allowed me to really listen to my intuition and find my true purpose. And that’s how Crystals Within was created.

In the process, I was also able to heal myself from PCOS with meditation and Chinese herb medicine.

All of that led me to understand the power we all have within and how unlimited we are as human beings and most of the times, all we need is just that little piece of awareness to make that shift in our life.

My purpose is to guide you to remember who you truly are as a spiritual soul and authentically you so you can step into the magical being you already are and make a difference in your world and the world around you.

Lyssa Mandel (writer, comedian, somatic therapist-in-training) joins Lianna to chat about the incomparable Julia Louis-Dreyfus, the intellectualizing of talk therapy, her inability to manufacture the juice anymore, and the journey to discovering somatic therapy.

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Lyssa's website

Lyssa's email

Lyssa Mandel is an actor, writer, comedian, somatic therapist-in-training, using tarot, astrology, and myth to deepen our understanding of human evolution. She came to live out loud, boldly vulnerable, and to give others a safe space and a gentle push to do so too.

She's appeared in ABC’s The Goldbergs, High Maintenance, the award-winning web series You Only Die Once, exclusive content for Zagat and multiple international commercials.

Lyssa is the host and producer of the critically acclaimed podcast The Bitch Seat, a comedy/therapy talk show about the universal vulnerability of childhood. The Bitch Seat has been featured on This American Life, in Los Angeles Magazine, TimeOutNY, and many others. The show celebrates 5 years at venues on both coasts, including The PIT, Union Hall, (le) poisson rouge, and the Nerdist Showroom at Meltdown Comics (RIP). (For more info, click here!)

LA Weekly has said she wants to be Oprah. She will not refute that.

Comedy-wise, Lyssa likes to overshare the smorgasbord of mental health delights that plague her in the hopes you'll realize you're not the only one. Credits include the Women in Comedy Festival and Stand Up 360 at Broadway Comedy Club. She's performed at The Comedy Store, The Creek and the Cave, New York Comedy Club, Greenwich Village Comedy Club, UCB, and 7 million indie venues, bars, coffee shops and pizza joints in NY and LA.

Lyssa is also an improviser, voracious conversationalist, spiritual seeker, therapy modality junkie, and self-taught jewelry designer, because the plate must always be full. She's a perpetual student of all that good stuff about consciousness and enlightenment and a practitioner of the Williamson Movement Technique. She loves BREAD, tomatoes, bright colors, desert flora and lethal procrastination.

She sounds pretentious, but she is also 5’ tall with a giant shrub of curly hair, so how can you actually take her seriously?

Lianna had a wonderful talk with life coach, speaker, and author, Trish Barillas, about what anxiety looks like in different people and some tools to help manage the symptoms. Trish also shares dating tips and has a mini #TuesdaywithTrish coaching with Lianna.

Trish's instagram

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Trish's website

Trish Barillas has been a creator of positive change for the past 17 years. As a Latina Life Coach, her areas of expertise are anxiety, breakups, and job advancements. She is the author of the first-ever Instabook @afaceofanxiety an autobiography of her journey living with anxiety/panic disorder. Trish is a thought leader in the wellness space, always advocating to break stigmas and empower others.

Lianna is joined by her producer & client, Claire Burns to catch-up on what they're both working through these days. Lianna is living her true Spring Break/Adult Study Abroad self while realizing all that she's been striving for is here. And it's terrifying. Claire is trying to be invisible and larger than life at the same time while searching for her new community. They're both shocked how everyone doesn't want to express their vulnerability on a public stage. They also realize that human emotions aren't that different from plants'.

After years of creating leadership tools and systems, Kathleen Schafer (founder, Human Being Store) found people were seeking a life of meaning in work they love. Lianna discusses with her when we're told to turn away from our Gifts by society, the increase in yearning to do meaningful work, and honoring the being as much as the human in each of us.

Human Being Store's website

Kathleen Schafer is a trailblazer in leadership development, particularly for those who impact the public good. Kathleen has spent more than 30 years guiding people to create change in the world by embracing their leadership and effectively expressing themselves to achieve tangible, real world results. Grounded in the rough and tumble world of politics, seasoned in business, honed in academia and broadened by her own journey to create a balanced life, Kathleen insightfully and poignantly guides clients to recognize their leadership potential and to offer it to the world in a way that benefits everyone.

Kathleen began expressing her passion for the practice of leadership early in her career. Working as a legislative and executive government staffer in her home state of Michigan, she noticed that political officials who had all the ingredients for success would be thwarted in reaching their goals because they weren’t clear about who they were and what they wanted to contribute to their work. To address this gap, Kathleen helped budding leaders find their power by co-founding the Michigan Political Leadership Program (MPLP) at Michigan State University in 1992 to allow emerging leaders understand how to be effective candidates and officeholders. It was the first of many of Kathleen’s leadership innovations that encourage and guide others to “live leadership,” a practice she has dedicated her career to cultivating.

In 1995, after launching the MPLP and building a successful communications firm, Kathleen founded a company whose mission was to support emerging leaders in the political process—particularly women and other underrepresented groups—and became a consultant to local, congressional and statewide campaigns. In 1996, the Dean of the Graduate School of Political Management (GSPM) at George Washington University asked Kathleen to build its political leadership curriculum. The leadership curriculum she developed and taught for 16 years continues to be the cornerstone of leadership education for generations of political professionals being educated in our nation’s capital and around the world through the GSPM’s many international training programs.

By 2007, Kathleen Schafer had developed her proprietary leadership model that serves as the basis of her continually evolving work. Currently, she works with individuals and organizations that are committed to creating meaningful change in the world. She has coached and taught thousands of current and emerging leaders throughout the world, including those at the highest levels of the United Nations, United States Government, international governments and nonprofits, domestic advocacy organization and large and small corporations and entertainment. She continues to be on the forefront of leadership education in emerging democracies as one of the few to teach leadership in the Middle East (Iran, Egypt, and Jordan) since the Arab Spring, building on her extensive speaking in Central and South America and Europe.

Her clients include elected and appointed officials, non-profit and for-profit executives, philanthropic leaders, entrepreneurs, coaches, and media personalities—all interested in expressing the best of their leadership and aligning their organizations to create meaningful and lasting impact.

Kathleen is based in Ojai, California, and has authored two books, Living the Leadership Choice and Choose to Lead.

Josselyne Herman-Saccio (master "unmessablewith" coach, former pop star, talent manager, author) has been a beautiful example of a multi-faceted life and consequently has been an expander for Lianna. They discuss Josselyne's fascinating journey from having a number one hit with her pop group, Boy Krazy, to leading Advanced Programming at Landmark Worldwide, to founding a talent management company (where she & Lianna met), and to coaching The Art of Being Unmessablewith.

Josselyne's current offerings

Josselyne Herman-Saccio is a master coach in the Art Of Being Unmessablewith no matter what life throws at you.

She has spent over 30 years as an entrepreneur, author, coach, leader and designer of transformative programs. Her mission is to empower people to live the life of their dreams NOW, versus someday and develop themselves to be “unmessablewith” in the process.

A former pop singer and songwriter, Josselyne and her group recorded the hit That's What Love Can Do which was the Billboard #1 song in America. She works as a personal manager for actors, writers, directors and recording artists, and has worked as a marketing and branding expert, entertainment producer and casting director. She has produced hundreds of commercials, television shows as well as feature films including Anne B. Real which won dozens of film festival awards and was nominated for an Independent Spirit Award for Best Feature under $500K and for the PRISM award honoring the Art Of Making A Difference.

Josselyne has raised close to $90 million dollars for various non-profits and in 2001 produced the first annual live benefit gala for FAMILIES OF FREEDOM, a scholarship fund to benefit the children affected by 9/11 and was named NEW YORKER OF THE WEEK.

She is also founder of the non-profit organization UNITED GLOBAL SHIFT that is committed to shifting what is possible for humanity by shifting from fear, survival and scarcity to possibility, partnership and peace. She leads programs around the world to cultivate and empower leadership and source sustainable results.

She is the author of several books including Peace Promises: 30 Days to a more peaceful life , THE PROMISE EFFECT: How to create a life that wasn't going to happen anyway with Susan Woldman Elfer and SO YOU WANNA BE A NEW YORK ACTOR: .The New York Actors Guide to The Career of Their Dreams While Paying the Rent

She has appeared in dozens of media outlets including ABC, NBC, CBS, Wall Street Journal, New Yorker Magazine, The New York Times, Fast Money to name a few, as well as having her TEDX Talk: Abracadabra: Living the life of your dreams NOW not someday.

A wife and mother of three and a native New Yorker, Josselyne lives in Manhattan with her husband and children.