Meet Trailblazer Reeta Balwinder Hernes

Today we’d like to introduce you to Reeta Balwinder Hernes.

So, before we jump into specific questions about the business, why don’t you give us some details about you and your story.
My story was pretty remarkably typical up until about a year and a half ago. I had gone straight from undergrad into an intensive doctorate degree in clinical psychology. It was absolutely grueling but I honestly loved just about everything about it. I had wanted to be a psychologist for all of my adolescent and adult life and knew from a very young age (about 7’ish) that I loved listening to people, helping them figure out solutions to whatever’s going on, and being there for them in emotionally intimate ways. As soon as I finished my postdoctoral training, I started teaching at the community college that I had transferred from in my undergrad years. Once I made it through the remarkably brutal licensing process, I opened my private practice. By the age of 30, I had managed to attain the very career that I had always dreamt of having and I adored it. But about two years in, I had a bit of an epiphany. I realized that I was supposed to just continue doing this for the next 30 to 40 years and get about two weeks of vacation for every year. I was so conflicted; I had worked my butt off to get this life that I had designed very cleverly for myself, but something was hugely missing.

I eventually had to be painfully honest with myself and come to terms with the fact that I was actually really, really unhappy on the most fundamental level. The next logical thing to do was to figure out what would make my spirit the happiest and it didn’t take long for me to realize how desperately I wanted to just wander. Wander across the entire globe! By myself no less. As a child, I was a complete bookworm and had the imagination of what seemed like 100 people all in one, so I would spend hours daydreaming about the places I read about. And every time I went on even a weekend get away as an adult, I was never ready to come back, and what kept me drudging through the mundanity of life was the next get away.

It took me 7 months from the time I decided I wanted to travel without an end date in sight to actually leave America. I spent those 7 months selling and giving away all of my belongings, letting streams of tears turn into as many ponds as they needed to, closing my private practice, wondering if I’m making the biggest mistake of my life, and saying goodbye after goodbye to the people in my tribe and the places that I called home. And off I went, with my big backpack (that I lovingly call Moana).

The first few months were shockingly difficult. There were just so many things to acclimate to all of the time; different languages, different modes of transportation, different currencies, different cultural customs, but the hardest thing to adjust to was the company of only myself, pretty much all the time. There was so much mental clutter that had accumulated over the years that I had to sort through before I could rest easily within my own skin. But once that clutter was sorted just a bit, my heart was able to finally have its voice heard and I was its captivated audience. I went from needing multiple distractions at any given moment to sitting quietly in a cafe in Bali, slurping on my green tea milkshake (sprinkles included), just watching the town ongoings, without anything other than my own grounded presence.

It’s been 11 months now and I’ve traveled to 10 countries. And of course, I have days where I’m anxious, lonely, depressed, stuck in my head, and disconnected from myself. But more days than not, I find myself all over again and that sense of having home within myself, rather than a physical space to represent it, brings me such joy and comfort. And my wanderlust has yet to be quenched, if anything, I have even more momentum than I first started with to see everywhere my spirit desires. Perhaps I’ll feel a bit satiated when I hit country #100!

Has it been a smooth road?
Any time we decide to shift our focus from the world outside of the world within, there’s a lot of uncomfortable squashinesses that initially greets us. Especially as women, we’re socialized all over the world to keep our focus on those around us, which is a beautiful quality, when it’s combined with a deep sense of knowing oneself and being grounded within oneself as the anchor with which we operate from.

My journey wouldn’t have happened at all if I hadn’t been able to figure out what it was that was missing for me; what it was that I was desperately thirsty for. My internal compass had to be recalibrated to me and I had to get very quiet with the outside world in order to hear the whisperings that were happening within me. I realized that when I recognize something that I truly desire for myself, every single cell in my body perks up and it’s like I can feel even my kidneys wiggling around with excitement.

Once you’ve got the desire pinpointed, then comes the necessity for the unwavering courage to go out and get it. Courage for me meant taking my time to figure out my exit strategy, and then being VERY selective with whom I shared (it’s a revelation when you realize that you don’t have to share ANYTHING with anyone if you don’t actually want to; instead, keep those precious bits protected and fed with love and encouragement). I knew that there were going to be a lot of people that were going to try to talk me out of this. I had a fantastic career, an awesome apartment, I was really thriving when it came to meeting those societally expected and encouraged goals. And here I was, ready to turn all of it on its head. And I was surprised to see that I was even slightly judgmental with myself at first in regards to what age I was choosing to do this at. I was 32 years old. I wasn’t some fresh little undergrad ready to backpack around Europe and party with the locals. I was a young woman choosing her own company over anyone else’s, with the intent of losing all sense of direction in the world so I could find my sense of direction right to myself.

It takes a tremendous amount of courage to declare that you know yourself better than anyone else does. And it takes an equally tremendous amount of courage to take the risks necessary to get the life that will truly and deeply make your heart sing. But with that courage comes faith in yourself; faith in your ability to figure it out, to ride those big, and sometimes awfully painful emotions as they come, and faith in knowing that any “mistake” that’s made is actually just the information you needed to find your way even better than before.

We’d love to hear more about NA.
I’m insanely lucky that I am able to work remotely as a psychologist. As I was downsizing my life I had assumed that I was going to entirely close my practice and it took me a few months to prepare to tell all of my clients. But as the time approached, I started wondering if it would be possible to conduct video sessions from afar with a select few clients that I thought would be able to continue to work well with the physical distance. I had done phone and video sessions with clients numerous times over the years, whenever they were traveling for example, so I was familiar with the modalities, including all of the pitfalls that can occur. I really had to consider infrastructure, temperament, the types of issues being dealt with in therapy, and sustainability of therapeutic/professional intimacy from afar before I made the transition to a digital practice.

This is definitely not a traditional path (clearly a pattern with me) and it’s not one that I would readily recommend either because of the numerous factors that influence whether or not a digital practice will be beneficial for certain clients. But having digital sessions has also been very convenient for my clients as well and in some ways, I’ve found that the work has taken on an even deeper flavor because people are able to share while in the privacy, comfort, safety, and familiarity of their homes.

As I’ve been traveling, I’ve been learning about tons of other modalities of healing practices that have all really struck a chord with me (plant medicine, womb healing, past life regressions, just to name a few). I’m making the transition to a well-rounded healer; I want to be able to share medicine with every spirit, not just from the psychological perspective, but from any perspective that’s needed.

We’re interested to hear your thoughts on female leadership – in particular, what do you feel are the biggest barriers or obstacles?
Ironically, I think the biggest barrier to female leadership in our modern conception of gender equality. Recently, I was in a feminine balance yoga class in Bali and my yoga teacher said an astounding thing. She said that we don’t actually have gender equality; what we have is a world full of women masculinizing themselves in order to get a seat at the table with men. Gender equality is when the masculine and the feminine are regarded as being equally as valuable as the other. So, our biggest barrier is a societal barrier that can only be abolished by society changing and combining the masculine and the feminine and seeing how necessary each one is to the entire picture.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.thebackpackingshrink.com
• Email: [email protected]
• Instagram: the_backpacking_shrink

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