Problems Are Portals

Episode 32 of Wellness Me Up — Wellness Me Up Diary Entry
with Quantum Healer, Reiki Master & Transformational Coach Erika Ristovski
Written and hosted by Amanda Reece, founder of Wellness Me Up.

Erika Ristovski showed up to this conversation with a scratchy voice courtesy of a whale activation out on the ocean. I showed up with mine courtesy of too many roller coasters with my nieces. Neither of us cared. What followed was a goodie bag of quantum gold — energy fields, conscious creation, and why problems are always portals.

🎧 Listen to the episode here:
▶️ Watch on YouTube
🎵 Listen on Spotify
🌍 Listen on Your Favourite App

Who Is Erika Ristovski?

Erika Ristovski is a quantum healer, Reiki master, and transformational breakthrough certified coach who has been able to read energy fields since she was a little kid. She is also a former exhibiting artist and art teacher of ten years, currently based in Spain, writing a book called Your Soul Knows, and doing some of the most quietly extraordinary healing work I have come across on this podcast.

She came to this conversation with a scratchy voice because she had been on a boat with her family when thirty whales circled them for ten minutes — and she is pretty sure they activated something in her. She tried to record it. Every recording was of her clothes and her legs. She got the message.

And she showed up anyway. Because that is just who she is.

We Are Energy. And If We Don't Address It It Affects Us as a Whole.

This is how Erika sums up her entire approach to wellness and it is worth sitting with.

She works with the energy field — which she describes as a library. A storage space. A cloud of information that contains everything you are. Every soul experience. Every past experience. Your lineage, your childhood, your relationships, your traumas, your fears. All of it is in there.

And when something is not working in your life — a relationship, your health, your sense of purpose, your ability to move forward — the root cause is almost always in the field. Not just in the symptom you can see. Not just in the behavior you keep repeating. In the invisible. In the place most people never think to look.

That library image stayed with me for a long time after this conversation. All the chapters of me. All the versions of me. Sitting on a shelf. And every session pulling one of those books into focus and asking — what do we need to read today? What's here that we haven't looked at yet?

The Disconnection Nobody Names

Erika made a point early in this conversation that explains so much about why people feel stuck even when they are doing all the things.

Depression does not live in the physical body. It lives in the emotional body. And the emotional body is not tangible — it is invisible — so how do you actually treat it?

You go back to the energy field. You find the parts that need attention. You support the person to reconnect.

Because underneath most of what people come to her with — regardless of whether it is a relationship problem or a career problem or a health problem or just a vague and persistent feeling that something is off — is disconnection. A separation between the body and the soul. The soul is there saying hello. I am here. Can you hear me? And the human is just trying to get through the day.

When you start reconnecting those two things — when you start treating yourself as a whole cohesive piece instead of a collection of separate symptoms — everything shifts.

Problems Are Portals

This is the line from this conversation that I keep coming back to.

Erika talks about problems as portals of transformation. And when you start to see them that way — when you stop asking why is this happening to me and start asking what version of me needs to emerge for this to not be a problem anymore — the whole relationship with your experience changes.

She works with the triad of victim, victimizer, and rescuer. And she sees it again and again — people coming to her convinced that life is happening to them. That they are doing it to me. That everything would be fine if other people just changed.

And gently, directly, with zero BS energy, Erika says... okay. Let's back it up. What is this situation mirroring back to you? What pattern are you repeating? What part of this did you allow or create or contribute to?

That is not victim blaming. That is empowerment. That is the difference between being at the mercy of your life and being a conscious creator of it.

I shared a lot of my own stuff in this conversation. The diseased state I grew up in. The addictive behaviors in my family. The enabling. The way I was showing up in it too — not just them. My last Christmas with that family before I walked away. The estrangement that followed. And how none of it could have happened if I hadn't started owning my part in it.

It is uncomfortable to look at. It is also the only thing that actually changes anything.

The Mirror Is Going to Break

This was the image that came to me as Erika was talking and I love it.

When you start doing this work — when you start taking ownership and shifting your energy and showing up differently — the mirror that has been reflecting your old patterns back at you starts to crack. It cannot give you the same reflection anymore. Because you are not the same person.

Remember those magic eye images from when you were a kid? The ones that looked like a big mess until you focused on them just right and suddenly an image appeared out of nowhere? Once you saw it you could not unsee it.

That is what this work does. One day you see it. And then it is there forever. And the only direction is forward.

Come Out of the Spiritual Closet

Erika spent years hiding her gifts. Growing up in a Catholic environment, being called possessed, having abilities nobody around her had language for.

And she hid. She built a beautiful career as an artist and art teacher. She was in magazines. She was exhibiting. It looked amazing from the outside.

And one day she could not live another day not being herself.

She came out of the spiritual closet. And everything changed. Not overnight — but directionally, irreversibly, beautifully.

She said something about this that I want every person sitting on their gifts to hear. Nobody asked me if that's what I wanted to pursue. Everybody called me crazy. But I decided I couldn't live another day not being myself.

That is the sentence. That is the whole thing.

Stop Origami-ing Yourself

This is Erika's word for what most of us do in environments that don't feel safe.

We fold ourselves. We contort. We make ourselves smaller and more palatable and easier to manage. We become an origami version of who we actually are — intricate and compressed and nothing like our natural shape.

And then someone like Erika comes along and says — you can be weird. You can be loud. You can be anything. Just be yourself.

And something in people cracks open. The restriction lifts. The hiding stops. And they start experiencing themselves in a completely new way.

The WTF Wheel Question: If Healing Had a Sound What Would It Be?

The wheel went somewhere unexpectedly beautiful this week.

Erika said a hum. Slow and steady. Paused. Spacious. Grounded. The kind of sound that does not anticipate what is coming next — it just holds what is here right now. She said it reflects where she is in her healing — stable, present, not waiting for something bad to happen. Just here.

I went outside in my brain. I am surrounded by trees where I am staying and there is this bug — a specific one — that makes this zzz sound in summer. And I remember hearing that sound when I was in a very different place. A sedentary life. A diseased state. And I remember kind of liking it then. But what I love is hearing that sound now when I am out walking. Same sound. Different version of me. Same world. Completely different experience.

That is what healing does. It does not change the world around you. It changes what you experience in it.

What Wellness Me Up Means to Erika

Everything. All-encompassing. How you treat yourself. How you treat others. How you listen to your body. How you talk to yourself internally. The allowing — to rest, to play, to find time for all of it.

She said wellness is not sustainable without wellness. Which sounds obvious until you really sit with it. Our circuits burn out when we are just operating from programs. Just doing. Just producing. Just being robotic and miserable.

Wellness is taking care of the vessel. All of it. Not just the parts you can see.

She also said something that made me smile. She learned to nap in Spain. Was feeling guilt about it. Witnessed the guilt. Let it move through instead of repressing it. And then kept napping.

That is the work. Even for the people who do the work. Even Erika is still learning things about herself. And she thinks that is beautiful.

So do I.

Want to work with Erika?
Erika Ristovski is a quantum healer, Reiki master, and transformational breakthrough certified coach who works with energy fields, quantum processes, and the invisible stuff that is running your life whether you know it or not. Free consultation available. Free events, activations, and a healing summit coming up. Multiple ways to work with her at every level.

👉 erikaristovski.com
📱 Find her everywhere — search Erika with a K, Ristovski

If this one made your brain light up... go back and listen again. And subscribe to Wellness Me Up wherever you listen.

🎧 Listen to the episode here:
▶️ Watch on YouTube
🎵 Listen on Spotify
🌍 Listen on Your Favourite App