The Story

This site is undergoing a complete "remodel", so please excuse anything that seems off and please keep coming back to see our updates!!

You see, as each of us has had our own varied degrees of transformation and transition from chapter to chapter and lesson to lesson, and more importantly, we have had beautiful "helpers". There have been friends, mentors, healers, and many professionals in many fields from psychology, education, spirituality, quantum healing and metaphysics. It's a lot of ground to cover, but the journey has been beautiful! 

To be fully honest, I'm not sure where it all really began, it could have been in childhood, amongst the years of escapism in my teens, or the beginning of my own awakening to the path of healing work in my early 20's. What I do know is that I've always had a "knowing". I never knew how I knew, but I knew things... I knew that those that were abusive, were abused. I knew that as I was self abusing, that I was somehow protected. I knew that as I began to heal, that all of the trauma, the hurt, and the loss of so much innocence had value.

I'll have to finally write the book to really get into the details, to include a few miracles, but to offer a bit of the early background, I've often joked that I grew up in "above average dysfunction". There were many forms of abuse, neglect and substance abuse. I began drinking and using drugs myself at age 12 and blacked out the very first time I got drunk. I transferred schools 13 times before I finally dropped out at the age of 17. 

I had a deep desire to "break the chain" of family dysfunction and abuse and at age 18, I made one of the best decisions of my life and joined a program offered by the U.S. Department of Labor called Job Corps. It's a program for youth ages 16-24 to learn a vocation and get any primary education completed. Most are sent by the courts, but I volunteered as they paid for the entire program, to include a plane ticket to another state, which at the time, seemed to be the only solution to me.

I didn't quite get it perfect, but I did well with the educational offering and truly engaged in the opportunity to make the best of this geographic escape. I got my GED, my full High School Diploma and gained many skills that could be used in an office administrative position. I graduated the program with top level honors 18 months later and went back home to Colorado. 

When I left, I knew that if I didn't set another geographic escape, I'd fall back into bad habits and old ways, so my next move was to Sacramento, California with a dear friend I'd gone to high school with. It was a generous offer for her and her mother to take me in, but I wasn't quite ready yet to really keep it together. 

In one of my famously reckless adventures, I was hitch hiking. It was a pattern. I'd thumbed my way around for years and it's one (of many) example of the protection I blindly trusted. I had money and bad intentions, but was picked up by the right guy. He had long hair, tattoos, and I was certain he too was up to no good.  However, he wasn't. 

His name was JC (of which I never made any spiritual correlation until many years later). He began to share about his own path. He was two years clean and sober and had many friends that had cleaned up too. They went on camping trips, motorcycle rides, raft trips and lived in a way that sounded like exactly what I needed. And while I'd like to say I followed suit right away, it was a few months and a few bad nights later before I actually used his phone number and took him up on the offer to learn what they were up to that seemed so much better than what I had going. 

It was February 6, 1988 when I spent my first full day with JC and some of his closest friends. We rode motorcycles, ate ice cream, and ended up at a huge warehouse with 300 other clean and sober people that were about to listen to a speaker and then have a dance. This was my first day clean and sober in over 8 years and gratefully, I've never turned back.

I am grateful and very lucky to have fallen in love with a path of recovery so early in my life. It led me to many therapies, healers, psychological professionals and just a beautiful abundance of spiritual people and practices that have saved my life chapter to chapter, lesson to lesson. 

The inspiration of these people and  many levels of inner work and even more levels of awakening have always led me to want to help others, because there have been so many that have helped me. I've volunteered in the world of addiction and alcoholism recovery since 1988. I had (and loved) a very progressive career in the recruiting industry for 16 years, helping not only individuals with career path, but many businesses with staff, culture and procedural structure. Then as I approached the age of 40 in 2007, I went through my biggest awakening in this life so far. I knew it was time to help people in a deeper and more meaningful (to me) way. So, I set upon the path of career change.

I trained in many aspects of hypnotherapy, both in traditional and transpersonal practices. I learned the value of all of the interpersonal work I had done over the last 20 years, but more so, I learned that I had many, many deeper layers of work yet to do! 

Since 2007, I have experienced healing at a soul level that has been deeply and beautifully life changing. Traumas that I thought I had addressed years ago are truly healed. Reactions to difficult situations are now responses. There are very few "triggers" where there used to be too many. And I've met and befriended some of the most amazing people I've ever known that have done the same. 

As a Hypnotherapist, the most common issue clients will wish for support with is weight. And if you know anything about weight, whether it is obesity, eating disorders or body image issues, you know that weight is never just weight. It is always something much deeper than the physical size or number on a scale. Having my own weight and body image issues for many years, I truly wanted to master a deeper understanding of these issues to better support my clients.

Enter Jon Gabriel.

In 2009, a client told me about Jon and I read his book, The Gabriel Method. The story of Jon Gabriel and those that he wrote about is one of healing emotional obesity from the inside out. Jon is quite a remarkable soul and his book and message help thousands and thousands of people all over the world. He lost a total of 210 pounds in 2003 and has kept it off since. In his book, he speaks of trauma, and the need for safety and many other needs that issues with weight provide subconsciously. 

I was fascinated by a story in his book of a woman that struggled with past trauma that she could not heal and that it held her back from becoming healthier. I wrote to Jon to share about the work of Cellular Release Therapy,  aking him if I could work with the woman he wrote about at no cost. I had hoped that if there was healing for her that I would earn other referrals and support this very difficult issue in alignment with the message he shares with greater impact. He replied that he had lost touch with her since the book had been published, but asked if I'd be willing to work with him directly and share more about this therapy that I spoken of so highly.

Of course, I agreed, truly knowing the value of Cellular Release Therapy, and not only did he send many, many referrals, but his message and audience has grown tremendously since then. So much so, that he asked me if there were others that did Cellular Release Therapy. This is where a beautiful circle of friends agreed to embrace this opportunity to help others on a global scale. I reached out to a select group of other  Cellular Release Specialists that I knew well and that I'd trained with, worked with and loved, and Sunrise Holistic Network was born!

We have worked with hundreds of souls in over 40 countries and have stayed close to honoring this beautiful, life changing work. We have supported several messengers of holistic healing along the way, to include our newest partnership with Dr. Jess Peatross, better known as just "Dr. Jess" an amazing doctor with a powerful message of holistic healing. 

Now I could write several pages about the beautiful ladies and healers that are a part of this circle, but they all speak about themselves with clarity, empowerment and light on this page, so you can read about each of them for yourself. I will say that I think the world of each of them. They are all deeply gifted, intuitive and truly capable of helping people change their lives. I could not be more honored to be a part of this circle.

Now the story grows a bit more from here... 

From 2007 through 2019, things have really flowed and felt aligned with our work and hopes to be of service in the world. And having worked alongside many amazing entrepreneurs that have offers in the arena of consciousness and healing over the years, as well as having as much business background through my years in the staffing and recruiting industry, I saw a need.

I hope you will walk with me as we gather, lean and learn together.

With Love, Inspiration, Divine Guidance and Great Faith,

Paula~