 I am energy and energy is limitless I am energy and energy is limitless My name is Marnie Wasserman. I'm from Leonia, New Jersey. I'm a full-time body and brain instructor and an acupressure energy healer. I teach brain education at the Body and Brain Studio in CGI Holistic Fitness and Spa. In college I felt kind of lost for most of it. I would gravitate towards a major, you know, first it was, you know, Bioman. And then I felt again like this isn't for me. I felt tired, more tired, more tired. I thought I had chosen it for myself. But when I got into the program it was so, I felt so empty. It was that kind of empty feeling, bored and empty even though I had done something that I thought I had wanted but I felt empty. And then I switched to something else, studio art, that made me feel really joyful. But still I like was procrastinating all the time, comparative religion. Yeah, same thing which I absolutely loved and got invigorated about but the same thing, something like still holding me back. And so I would fill those spaces with drinking, honestly. It was drinking a lot. Doing the typical kind of thing, moving out of my parents' house, getting my own apartment, feeling great about that for a while but then feeling, you know, kind of lonely. So then again, I would go out and I would go drinking and I'd meet anybody and, you know, just stay out all the time and then go to work. I got a really high paying job in New York City. I was working in the fashion district and then same thing, just like feeling so unmotivated, so empty and then going out and drinking. So for me it was a lot about substance abuse actually. It was like filling that space with the substance in which I thought alcohol, you know, for instance, which made me feel so warm inside and so courageous and so strong, like how I wanted to feel and then going and finding people who were also in that kind of zone. And then coming back after a night of what seemed like so much fun and gray, but then again, same thing, feeling just empty. For many years I did kind of a dancing, hiding, negotiating act with myself. I really wanted to be bright and joyful and respected and successful and then have a lot of friends because when I was younger I didn't have many friends at all. In fact, at one point in my life I had no friends and then I had maybe one friend. I felt like I needed to have so many people in my life in order for myself to feel secure and then happy. So I surrounded myself with people who also wanted to be happy together but in an unhealthy way. I found myself getting into dangerous situations, going places really late, going places. I wouldn't come home for days and then kind of losing myself in, you know, social activities, going to parties all over the place. At some point I found that I didn't feel fulfilled inside. I felt actually so empty and I'd ask myself the question, what the hell am I doing? Honestly, what am I doing? Why am I here? If this goes on, am I going to feel happy ever? And the answer kept on coming to me, no. So then, you know, I wouldn't wake up or I would put off my alarm 30 minutes or I'd say to myself, you know, it doesn't really matter if I don't go to work. I'll just call it sick and that happened over and over and over and over. Eventually I would get so angry and frustrated with myself. That's not who I am. That's not who I want to be. I want to love myself because I got to find out that I wasn't loving myself. And not even just that, but I was hating myself. And in hating myself that's why I went out so much and tried to look for so many people who would help me, you know, I don't know, feel fulfilled. I didn't know. I didn't know that all the time I had been cunning into myself, cunning into myself with like voices from my history. So those were the signs that really helped me realize that something wasn't right. It was the doing things that I really wanted to do. I felt like I wanted to do, but when I did them, even after I had done them, I felt empty. I found that I carried those voices with me and I was repeating them to me and it was killing me. I don't want to do that anymore. I'd love to love myself. I want to go back to the time and the feeling where I feel like a superhero. And so I decided from that moment, okay, that's what I'm going to pursue. My new goal is finding a way to become whole and happy and powerful and joyful again. My sister, she stepped in and she asked me, how are you doing? And she had been doing, she had been practicing brain education. It was really helping her for four years. And then finally I just, I told her the truth. I feel like I'm dying. I feel like there's no point honestly to anything that I'm doing. I feel like I'm dying. And then she said, why don't you take this workshop? I needed a big time for myself. My sister actually recommended it to me because she started healing herself. It took her about four years to get me to come here. The workshop was called finding your two self workshop. And that was the moment at which everything changed for me. I didn't want to admit that I needed anything kind of help. I felt really hopeless that time in my life. And then finally it gave me a window of opportunity for myself to allow her to let me in. And I came and it changed my life. You have to just do it. It takes so much courage to admit there's something that you need help with. And it takes so much courage to step in the door. But once you get in the door, the environment is like just perfect. It's tailor made with people who came here to heal themselves. They understand there's no judgment. It's warm. People hug you in a wonderful open way. So just do it. The thing that's helped me the most with brain education is the brain operating system principles that Il-Tee Lee created. So what it did for me is that I learned that things happened to me in my life, whether I was getting bullied, whether I was drinking and judging myself, feeling, hating myself, or honestly, my depression especially. What I learned was every single thing was happening for a reason. And if I flipped the perspective to how is it helping me? What is it meant to teach me? How can I use this to create something that I want to create in my life? Then it's so empowering. So for the bullying, for instance, it taught me compassion. It taught me compassion for other people who feel like they have no power, who feel like they have no control. So I felt that way in my life. That's why it happened to me so that I could be compassionate when other people are going through the same thing. The brain operating system principles, that's what helped me the most. Be the master of your life. Everything happens for a reason. If you want something, don't give up. My favorite exercise of brain education that really helped me connect to myself again and then recover from the feelings of trauma that I was dealing with is called It's Okay. So making that physical connection with myself, actually touching my body, putting my hand on my chest or on my belly, something like that, and then telling myself, no matter what I'm feeling, it's okay. If I was in a room with my old self right now, I would tell her, don't be afraid to take a deep look and admit that something is not right. Something is not okay. Do not be afraid to allow yourself to share that with other people around you because they do care. People really care. And the people especially who do brain education, they do it because they care about themselves and they definitely care about you. If it's your family, if it's your friends, if it's a stranger, whoever you feel connected to, if it's yourself in the mirror, tell yourself, it's not okay and that's okay. It's going to be okay.