The 2017 letter that was addressed to the Townsend home of Lauren & Jeremy Fonvielle was from the commander in his Navy Reserves unit, and with it came information from Fleet & Family Readiness about how a family can best prepare when a loved one is deployed.

The letter stated that Jeremy, a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy, a Lieutenant Commander and the married father of two small children, was being sent to Bahrain in the Persian Gulf for the next 13 months. 

Throughout the course of their marriage, Lauren Fonvielle had adjusted to Jeremy’s previous deployments, but this was different. There were children involved now, but suddenly and without warning, she was thrust into the role of a single parent, juggling the responsibilities of raising a young son and a daughter, maintaining her home and sustaining her career as a copywriter and freelance marketer.

Combined with his deployment and a months-long stint recuperating from an ACL injury, Jeremy would be away from his family for 22 months.

“I started having panic attacks,” Lauren said. “I remember one time I woke up and I was in a panic that seemed to come out of nowhere. I wanted to go into my five-year-old daughter’s room and wake her up so that I wouldn’t be alone, and a moment later, she was at my door and climbed into my bed, and we held hands. Just holding her hand, and matching her breathing with mine, I was able to fall back asleep.”

To Lauren, the twin practices of yoga and meditation had been infrequent – less a practice and more of an occasional dabble – but as she sought to distance herself from the stress of her husband’s deployment, she began to visit Serenity Yoga in Middletown. Going to the mat gave her time to heal and process her thoughts to the rhythmic movement of her body. She was also surrounded by colleagues who were exploring their inner selves through various energy healing modalities like Reiki, sound healing and Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). 

‘Tapping’

Commonly referred to as “tapping,” EFT is a technique that utilizes the body’s energy meridian points -- the top of the head, eyebrows, side of the eyes, under the eyes, under the nose, the chin crease, the collar bone, as well as under the arms -- by tapping on them lightly with the fingertips, while simultaneously acknowledging the emotions experienced in the moment. Through practice, it increases positive energy flow, and reduces the stress hormone known as cortisol, leading to a feeling of calmness.

At the end of one yoga session, Lauren spotted a flyer on the studio wall announcing yoga teacher training sessions, and in 2018, Lauren was certified in yoga instruction, Reiki and EFT, and soon began introducing these forms of energy work to her work clients -- self-driven, entrepreneurial women who owned small businesses – who often shared their vulnerability and fears with Lauren. When they shared their stories, the stories sounded very similar to hers.

“Like many people, when there are intense emotions, we don’t enjoy feeling those emotions,” she said. “We don’t want to feel sad; we don’t want to be scared, and so we distract ourselves - sometimes that means focusing on our kids, or throwing ourselves into our work, or even throwing ourselves onto the couch and eating potato chips -- anything to not feel the feelings. “Over time, however, all that ‘stuffing’ is going to get to a point where it is going to have to come out because there is no more room to store it. Because my EFT practice was becoming such a powerful experience for me, I wanted to shout about it from the rooftops, and share it with other women who were experiencing the same forms of anxiety.”

In 2019, Lauren’s work shifted from helping entrepreneurs with their marketing efforts to helping them reduce anxiety, overcome limiting beliefs, and create breakthroughs both professionally and personally. Freelancing came to an end, which was followed by the official launch of Mindshift with Lauren.

‘This is where the inner work needs to begin’

Too often, we are paralyzed not by outer forces beyond our control, but by the pounding and unrelenting volume of our inner voice. We are unable to make decisions, and when we are forced to make these decisions, we question whether they will be good enough. While we are fully aware that our anxiety is dominating our life, we choose to internalize it in a holding place that slowly corrodes our confidence and leads to chronic pain, self-made negative prophecies and outcomes, fear of judgment and many, many sleepless nights.

In short, we begin to enter another portal, entirely of our own invention.  

“We all have experiences in our lives, and these experiences have emotions attached to them, and when we don’t have the tools to be able to process these emotions, it leads to stuffing them down and suppressing them,” Lauren said. “This is where the inner work needs to begin.” 

As an Integrative Energy Practitioner specializing in EFT, Lauren offers both private and group coaching sessions and classes – offered both virtually and in person -- that encourage women to get to the root of their physical and emotional pain and begin to heal from the inside out. Through the modalities of tapping, Reiki, sound healing and meditation, she and her clients work together to acknowledge – and slowly begin to release – the fear and trauma in order to find their way back to feeling safe and at ease in their bodies. 

“All negative emotions are felt through a disruption of the body’s energy, and physical pain and disease are intricately connected to negative emotions,” Lauren wrote on her website. “Health problems create feedback – physical symptoms cause emotional distress, and unresolved emotional problems manifest themselves through physical symptoms, so the body’s health must be approached as a whole.” 

“The body, like everything in the universe, is composed of energy. Restore balance to the body’s energy, and you will mend the negative emotions and physical symptoms that stem from the energy disruption. Tapping restores the body’s energy balance, and negative emotions are conquered.”

Success stories

Since launching her business, Lauren has witnessed many success stories of women who have transformed their lives by listening, learning from and reacting to the voice within them. 

“There was one client who came to me who was dealing with a lot of anxiety and stress and feeling overwhelmed,” she said. “She was unhappy at her job as an accountant and felt unheard at work. Working together, we began to peel back those layers of her life experiences and get to the root of why she felt she couldn’t speak up and share her concerns. Much of her fear went back to her childhood, and the need to stay small, quiet, and invisible in order to remain safe. 

“When we were able to shine a light on that, it created some big shifts for her. Ultimately, she ended up leaving her job, wrote a book and went into doing energy work herself.”

​Currently, Lauren is in training to become an EFT Trainer, and later this year her role will expand to include training others to become EFT practitioners, while at the same time conducting more public appearances and workshops.

​“I love helping people,” she said. “I love getting to see them transform. I love the ‘ah-ha’ moments, and there are times as a practitioner that I feel or see the dots connecting a little before my clients do, and when they make that connection it is an amazing feeling and experience to witness. 

“I don’t refer to myself as a ‘healer,’ but rather a guide on their healing journey, because it has been the women I have worked with who are doing the real work. They are their own healers.”

To learn more about Lauren Fonvielle and Mindshift with Lauren, www.MindshiftwithLauren.com.

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