Hillary Arrieta is a holistic wellness expert, licensed massage therapist, industry educator, and small business owner. She specializes in barefoot massage and Ayurvedic therapies to help her health-conscious clients reach their wellness goals. Located in Dallas, Texas, Hillary’s customized sessions are infused with Western herbalism, aromatics, mediation, and restorative bodywork to ease her clients towards radiance and joyful living.
Thank you so much for joining us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
Sure, and thank you so much for having me! I feel so incredibly lucky to have found massage therapy and holistic wellness at a time when I was really struggling. I was diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder in my early twenties and it had started to have a major effect on my life. I was drawn to the spa environment because it was so soothing and peaceful which was exactly what I needed to heal myself. I’m honored to now be able to use all of the education in my unique background to help others manage their anxiety, depression, and burnout with natural therapies.
How have your personal challenges informed your career path?
My first hand experience with an anxiety condition led me to create a healing space that feels like a haven for my clients and also a sanctuary for myself.
I try to be very conscious about making sure clients feel safe and trust that my treatments have skill, purpose, and will be therapeutic, but also that they can take an active role in their own treatment plan. This lead me to more education and focus on stress management and helping clients build resilience and discover coping tools through bodywork as well as meditation treatments rather than acute therapies.
Can you share five pieces of advice to other doctors/clinicians/healers to help their patients to thrive?
- Empower them. Give your clients confidence by empowering them to make a treatment plan that they feel good about. Their input is vital.
- Listen more than you talk. In my field and in my opinion, clients know their body best. They need to feel heard and understood to trust that they will get the best care. They need to feel like they’re working with someone who “gets it.”
- Take a holistic look. Sometimes there’s more than one issue that needs attention for someone to live balanced. Look at their habits, emotional, mental, and physical lifestyle to formulate the best treatment plan.
- Ask them what they need to thrive. Bring patients and clients into their own healing process. What do they need in order to feel better in their body?
- Be flexible and make changes when needed. Clients lives and bodies change and so should your treatments. Re-access clients frequently and use seasonal treatments or wellness services to help them thrive all year long.
Social media and reality TV create a venue for people to share their personal stories. Do you think more transparency about your personal story can help or harm your field of work? Can you explain?
Sure, I think a certain level of transparency can help in terms of gaining clients trust. Trust, not only in that you have personal experience with a challenge they are currently facing but also trust in you as a person because you’ve opened up and shared your own struggles and real, human vulnerability. As long as sharing your story is relevant and your focus always stays on the clients well-being, I think it can be a great thing to share your experiences.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant to your life?
Yes, there’s this quote…it’s not a direct quote but it’s a popular one from Henry David Thoreau’s Walden. “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams, live the life you’ve imagined.”
I use to have a sticky note with this quote on my rear view mirror in my car for many years. It pretty much got me through my Twenties. The idea that you can achieve a life you’ve designed (with a lot of hard work, of course) has always been so inspiring to me.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂
I think a movement of fierce self-inquiry could do so much good in this world. Not in a narcissistic way, but in a way that focuses on more intentional living and slowing down sometimes to help discover and reach our own heartfelt goals by connecting to the physical, felt sense of our experiences and questioning how we are feeling and thinking.
How can our readers follow you on social media?
www.instagram.com/gaiabodywork
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!