Brianna O’Brien
Hey Self-seeker, I’m…
Fitness Professional • Cycle Breaker • Spiritual Teacher
The fitness industry claims to create transformations, but do they last?
Not if the body is still left with shame, guilt, and self doubt even after physically changing.
Learn to liberate yourself from the industry of change and become a vessel of it.
Change your body and your relationship with your Self at the same time.
THAT’S WHAT WE DO HERE, we GROW IN ALL DIRECTIONS
“You listen to your body so well.”
I wasn’t always like this.
I had to work for this level of clarity.
The sport gave me a foundational understanding of what my body felt like through movement and a deep appreciation for strength and mobility. It also left me behind.
My ankles needed to be taped, my hips wouldn’t open for jumps, and I could not master the pull up no matter how hard I tried and no one would tell me why. Instead, I was told that I would get certain skills if I just kept trying… Except I didn’t. Eventually I developed severe mental blocks in each of the events, causing me to fall behind the others and leave the sport altogether.
While I left strong and athletic, I also left with an underlying belief that no matter how hard I worked, my best efforts were not good enough.
As I grew into adolescence, I remained incredibly active and involved in sports – softball, cheer, track and field, to name a few. However, when I would hit mental blocks or physical pain that I couldn't just wrap up, I would claim to no longer be interested and move on to the next activity. I was never specifically taught how to care for my body. Just that I needed to keep it moving.
This reinforce patterns of low confidence, self doubt, and unworthiness.
From the age of 3 to my preteen years, I was a gymnast.
I had my first major spiritual awakening thanks to the mentorship of
Dolores Cannon.
During these sessions, I became a living channel for myself and others. I gained access to an entirely new perspective of the human body. I learned the body’s energy systems, trained and developed clairaudience, and learned how to feel the auric fields around me. (This is partly why I love teaching yoga - I can feel everyone moving together.) For years, I learned how to listen to the body down to the blood cells. Living through listening became an inherent part of who I was. I even started to incorporate this listening into my martial arts and high intensity trainings.
When I left for university a few years later, I collapsed under the weight of the underlying beliefs about myself. No matter what I did - exercise, sleep, socialize, go sit in the sunshine - I could not shake the feeling that what I was doing just wasn’t enough. I had unknowingly left these beliefs unaddressed and unrecognized for years, and once I was totally on my own - I became depressed. I lost my appetite, my energy levels, and my strength. The only thing I had the energy to do to keep myself tethered was to meditate and create small rituals for myself.
I was so ashamed of how poorly I was doing that I didn’t ask for help. I blamed myself for not doing enough outwardly, not realizing that I was suffering because I subconsciously believed that I was not worth my own efforts.
My father became a practitioner of the Quantum Hypnosis Healing Technique (QHHT) under the mentorship of Dolores Cannon when I was a teenager. Convinced that this technique would radically change the way that people related to their own lives, he and I studied the workings of QHHT through sessions together.
“College isn’t for everyone” became the sweetest sentence I had heard all year.
Both of my parents told me this in separate phone conversations and it became the beacon with which I could heal. I finally felt like I had permission to stop moving in opposition to who I was. I dropped out of the business program I was in and moved back home to find a job that better suited me. It was at the end of this darkness that I started my work in group fitness. I built back my strength, tapped back into my spirit-body connection, and addressed the underlying issues I could not out-run or out-work. In the process of rewiring myself, I fell in love with coaching others.
Through the next decade, I bounced between studios and modalities - kickboxing, spin, weightlifting, choreo-cardio, yoga, personal training. Each place I went had a uniquely special offer, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing. Too often, clients’ physical transformations were met with personal crisis and were left to navigate them alone. I moved modalities often believing that at least one style would allow me to create a container for deep, impactful transformations.
Instead, what I found was program after program positioning themselves as “lifestyle changes” focused solely on the body.
And it profoundly pissed me off.
So I teach.
Yes, physical practice is important.
Important for longevity, for mental clarity, for quality of life…
But it is only one slice of the transformative process.
We must brave the process of breaking our Selves open and examining our habits, thoughts, and beliefs.
We must actively choose change over and over until we are changed.
It’s time to answer the call within whispering that the life being lived right now is too cramped, too small, and no longer working.
The goddess within you is budding.