Meet Edy. She is a highly sensitive person who really struggled with the stigma she felt for using cannabis, even though it made her life more bearable. She's helping other people like her understand plant medicine so they can start feeling better too.
Cannabis Coaching Institute Graduate Profiles
This is our next installment in a series of videos and blogs that I'm creating, where I'm profiling some of the students who have graduated (or are close to it) from the Cannabis Coaching Institute. It's exciting to see where our students are working, what types of programs they're creating, how they're able to help their clients. And I hope that this series of interviewing these grads gives you a better handle on what we do at the Cannabis Coaching Institute (CCI). As always, if you have any questions, please post them down below. And if you're ready to join, click that happy button below and use code: revealcannabis for $500 off your tuition.
***Below you'll find a transcription of the video I made with Edy. It's been slightly edited for better readability.***
- Why don't you start out by telling us your name, and where in the world you are.
- Hi, my name is Edy, and I am in Port Orchard, Washington, which is just a ferry ride across from Seattle.
- Can you tell me a little bit about your journey to CCI? How did you find CCI? What was going on in your life? Were you called to it? Were you scared? Can you talk to me about that?
- I've been wanting to find something to do in the cannabis industry for quite some time, and I've been kind of leaning towards coaching in general. Then, I was looking for a vegan gummy recipe, and I stumbled across Corrine's blog, Wake + Bake, and I instantly fell in love with the blog, and was like, "Where has this been hiding on the internet this whole time?" And so looking through that, I stumbled across something about CCI, and this was in February of 2021, so the enrollment was closed, but I signed up for the waiting list because I was like, "This sounds exactly like what I'm looking for." And so when they opened enrollment for May, it was probably the easiest impulse buy of my life, because it felt right. I knew that helping people with cannabis was something that I wanted to do with my life, and from what I had seen from other students or graduates, and their blogs and their podcasts, and it felt very in line with what I wanted to do. I was completely inspired by those that had come before me and wanted to see where I could take it myself.
- And what's your story? Why are you passionate about helping people with cannabis?
- I had a really mentally, spiritually, emotionally rough couple of decades, my teens and twenties. Cannabis was the thing that pulled me out of it, and allowed me to heal, allowed me to see the world and myself differently, to cultivate some self-love, embrace my sensitivities, and learn to view my life differently. It really also helped to alleviate a lot of the symptoms that I was getting from my overwhelmed nervous system, and it helped me feel human again. And I had been on way too many medications. I had a bad experience in the mental health world, and luckily I found a lot of success with using cannabis, and it has helped me so much that it's something that I wanted to share with other people. I know that there's a lot of people who have a similar story, and I felt connected to the stories that I had heard others share of similar situations. It helped me see how I wasn't alone and deepened my relationship to my own story with cannabis.
- We make you dive into your story in CCI, and it does solidify why it's so important for you to do this work. Tell me what's been the most professionally or personally impactful part of taking the course.
- I would say definitely the community is huge. I've always struggled with feeling like an outsider and coming into this community of beautiful humans who also share similar passions and similar experiences, it's mind-blowing. I felt suddenly at ease with my story and with my journey, because it truly underlines the fact that we're not alone in this. Especially as a highly sensitive person, I felt overjoyed to know how many others in the community also identified as highly sensitive people. That was something that I always felt kind of ashamed about with my cannabis use, because a lot of society, in general, can make you feel ashamed of it, with the war on drugs. Even within the highly sensitive community, I'd seen it referenced quite a few times, about how substance abuse with cannabis was something that was extra harmful for people like us, and that was not my experience, and so, I had some shame around that. Coming into the community, and seeing how many other highly sensitive people there were in the community allowed me to drop that shame, and to realize that I wasn't doing anything wrong or bad, I was legitimately supporting myself with this plant medicine. That was completely huge for me, and it gave me the boost that I needed to know that the direction that I wanted to take my coaching was for sensitive people.
- Tell me about your business. What's its name? Who do you serve?
- My business is called High and Sensitive, and I work with highly sensitive people. I mean, I wouldn't turn anyone down, but I feel like I have the most to offer other sensitive folks as a sensitive person myself. I feel like I understand that experience pretty well. I'm super passionate about working with highly sensitive people and helping them lead fulfilling lives. I know that being sensitive can come with a huge array of physical symptoms, and some spiritual and emotional turmoil, and I feel like there's so much opportunity for highly sensitive people to learn to love themselves, and learn to embrace their sensitivities, and lead the lives that they want to lead, and actually be able to let themselves out. I think it's easy to close up in this world as a sensitive person, and I think cannabis can facilitate that opening up of the self.
- That's beautiful. One of my best friends would classify herself as a highly sensitive person, and I know that she's delved deep into that world, and I don't know much about it, so I'm fascinated to learn that this is your passion. This is one of the things that I love about CCI, is that we all get the same information, and then channel it right to what needs to be addressed in your community.
- It's interesting too because through the science coursework I learned that many ailments that are common to highly sensitive people are actually really, really closely tied with the endocannabinoid system, and the regulation of that. Seeing that there's these physical sensations and physical ailments that people suffer from, that can be helped with cannabis, and it wasn't strictly a mindset thing, that was completely mind-blowing to me, and gave me more fuel.
- It's lovely to hear it in first person. When you were talking earlier about how you had had two decades of your central nervous system being on fire, and we know that cannabis helps the central nervous system calm itself right back down again, but then to hear it right from your own words, gives me shivers. I was talking with Jackie (another CCI grad), and she said a similar thing. She had come to the course because she found healing with cannabis, and wanted to know why. How empowering to learn, "Hey, this is actually working for me for an actual reason, and we know the reason!" That's amazing.
- It's awesome to hear that other people did it "backwards" because I came into it considering myself a recreational user. Even when I made the transition off of psychiatric meds, and was strictly using cannabis to treat my symptoms, I still considered myself a recreational user. But now, after going through the course, I see how I was actually a medicinal user, and I didn't even know. I think that that is so prevalent. I think that's probably a common thing in our society because cannabis is so demonized that people don't even allow themselves to see it that way.
- I'm gonna go on a little tangent here. One of my own personal pet peeves is that people say, "Oh, I'm just a recreational user." Well, are you feeling a little bit happier? Are you sleeping better? Are your aches and pains gone? Can you relax? How is that not medicine? You're doing better than you were before.
- Exactly, why are you using it recreationally? You're probably getting some massive benefit from it that you're not allowing yourself to own.
- Tell me something that you're really proud of in your business. What's been a win for you so far? And you're the May class, right? You haven't even graduated yet, have you?
- Not yet! Well, I've had a lot of wins in several different directions. I think one of my biggest wins was having the knowledge and information to be able to make two different medicines for two completely different people and scenarios. I had a family friend who was suffering from some Parkinson's symptoms, and he reached out and wanted a tincture. I was able to hook him up with something that was gonna be beneficial, and I couldn't have done that before. I felt very ready to do it because of the science classes and all of the information we were given. I was able to look to see what would be the best fit for him. And I mean, that was a wonderful thing. And I also had a friend who recently just competed in an Iron Man race, and I made her a salve, and she loved it. Again, having the ability to research those things, and even with the terpenes, it was great. I know that that's kind of a joke in CCI of going down terpene wormholes.
- Being able to match essential oils, using the same information we learned about terpenes, and to create this super salve for her, it was so cool to do that.
- There are a lot of CCI students who love making custom blends. This is their jam. They understand, like you said, the cannabinoids that are great for Parkinson's, and then you make your own thing, and then you give it to your uncle, and your uncle feels better, and you walk around feeling like a rock star all day. It's lovely.
- Absolutely, I know, I've been handing that salve to everyone I know. I gave it to my father-in-law, I gave it to my partner, all of who work very physical labor jobs, so, they've all been loving it too. It's the gift that keeps on giving.
- Thank you for sharing that. Tell me what you would say to somebody who is considering CCI, but they're not a hundred percent sure yet.
- I would say if you have a desire to help people, and if you have a desire to follow your passion in cannabis, absolutely go down that wormhole into CCI, and you can't not be successful. It opens so much for you in terms of education and experience. There's no way that you won't benefit from it. And it's so wonderful because we learn the same information, as you mentioned earlier, but everybody has a different take on it. It is so amazing to see how we all have the same inputs, but we put it out in the world in so many different ways and flavors, and there are so many amazing, incredible people. The community is hands down something that will get you through. And I feel like the value of education that we are receiving is just huge, it's monumental, and there's no way you can't be successful if you follow along and stay the course. It literally is built in such a way that you can't fail. It is.
- If you do the work, we will make sure that you are successful.
- Exactly, and going through the practicum now with my partner, I honestly don't know how I would've made it through something like this without a partner. Having it set up in that way drives you forward. It literally makes it so that you do it. You show up and you do it, and before you know it, you're doing scary things all the time. So I feel like if the dream is in your heart, you gotta go for it, you gotta give that to yourself.
- That was beautifully put. Thank you so much, Edy, for joining us. Everyone reading, please go follow her, go check her out on Instagram, go move to Washington, and maybe she'll give you some salve because you live close to her, and do all that good stuff. Thank you so much for being here with us. We really appreciate it.
- Thank you.
If this work calls to you, use code: revealcannabis for $500 off your tuition at the link below. And make sure that you sign up for the FREE business-building workshop series. Many of our most successful cannabis coaches have done this work first. It really does set you up, in order to think about this in a business-minded way and it's all free. Don't forget to watch/read some of the other videos/blogs of the previous cannabis coaching grads and see their stories, and see if they resonate with you as well.
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