Felicia Harlow, the founder of Innergistics Life Development, LLC, and the visionary behind the Calm Heart Sanctuary™ is on a mission to inspire heart-centered living. With a background at Fortune 100 company Merck & Co, Inc., Felicia’s journey shifted when she embraced the holistic message of Warm Spirit, earning her the Living to Your Potential Award in 2004.
In 2005, Felicia leaped into entrepreneurship, founding Innergistics Life Development LLC to bring heart-centered inspiration and practical skills to women in business. The Calm Heart Sanctuary™, born in 2007 after her Spiritual Life Coaching certification, embodies her commitment to physical relaxation, mental clarity, and emotional regulation.
Felicia’s extensive certifications, including a Master of Heart Studies in 2012 and a Gene Keys Guide in 2021, showcase her dedication to personal and spiritual growth. As a heart ecologist with 31 years of heart education, Felicia professionally has provided heart energy education, coaching, and healing, transforming lives for the past 15 years.
In her coaching career, Felicia has guided diverse clients—from stay-at-home moms to high-level executives—back to their hearts, building resilience in the face of challenges. Through coaching, small group facilitation, and heart meditation, Felicia’s peaceful spirit and authenticity inspire self-awareness, self-care, and transformation in her clients.
Find out more about this amazing woman in this MysticMag interview.
When relying solely upon the mind to lead us, trust is lost, and the mind becomes uncertain. How do you assist clients in managing their mental narratives, and what strategies or exercises do you employ to help them invite the heart into their decision-making processes?
I assist clients in managing their mental narratives by explaining to them that our minds are powerful creators of narratives, and they are incredible gifts inside of our human experience. Also, we each have a powerful relationship occurring between mind and heart. The mind is the surface of the heart, and our emotions often lie deep within the recesses of our hearts until they become triggered. Once triggered, thoughts and emotions can become like a tennis match on a court – back and forth, each attempting to win the match. One strategy is to create a relationship in which our thoughts and emotions connect and align. One exercise is to practice a specific breathing technique I assign the client that will help them to embrace their emotional state so that the internal communication dynamic between their specific emotion and thought aligns inside of the body.
Without access to the depth of the heart, individuals cannot truly know themselves. How do you guide clients in identifying, partnering with, and trusting their emotions as internal guidance for better emotional regulation and self-awareness?
There are several spiritual practices I have intuitive access to guide the client. It truly depends on the client’s unique circumstances. The process is to first identify what is not working for the client. For example, there may be an emotion of sadness arising when the client has a memory bubble up to the surface of her mind. She may not understand the root of her sadness since it developed years ago and may have become buried in the depths of her heart. So, we first work to make it okay to have her experience of sadness as part of her human experience. I find that clients believe that allowing emotions that feel low, dull, or unfulfilling is not a viable option because they have been influenced to believe that “happy” is where they “should” emotionally remain inside of their daily experiences. All humans have been given a broad range of emotions and it is okay to experience them. The strategy is to learn how to interpret their messages and respond with compassion and care. One person’s description of sadness may be another person’s description of feeling unloved. Once we create a safe space to identify and partner with their specific emotional experiences, the client relaxes, lets the guard down around her heart, and begins to trust her emotions as inner guidance. Their emotions do not feel threatening or unsafe to them. The client becomes more self-aware and together we develop strategies unique to the client’s emotional regulation.
Repression, denial, shame, rejection, guilt, and separation are hefty prices to pay in relationships. In your coaching practice, how do you support clients in building inner resilience and fostering loving relationships? Can you share an example of a client who experienced positive transformations in their relationships through your guidance?
I remind clients that everything begins within themselves and that they are responsible and accountable for their experiences. Also, there are hidden opportunities inside of bad circumstances and those opportunities often require quiet, reflective, introspective time and patience to uncover. Life is not a race. It is a journey of self-discovery and personal and spiritual growth. Relationships help us open our hearts to learn, grow, and love unconditionally. And the first relationship to begin with is the one with ourselves. Love thyself says it all. As we love ourselves deeper, we naturally love others. One client I worked with for 8 months had a challenging time accepting her “flaws” which she described as feeling a deep sense of shame about who she was as an adult with deep internal wounds resulting from her childhood experiences. We co-created strategies uniquely for her acceptance of her shame so that she began to embrace her life story wholeheartedly. We worked on the belief that each of her experiences would help her to learn, grow, and love herself more. As her love for herself expanded, her relationship with her children became more intimate.
When making decisions, the heart is often an underutilized aspect. How do you encourage clients to integrate their hearts into decision-making processes, and what benefits have you observed when individuals embrace a more heart-centered approach to decision-making?
I often remind clients that if thoughts are the first thing that comes to the forefront, to pivot and use their thoughts to focus on their breathing cycles. And while focusing on breathing, place one hand over their heart. Feel its beat. Allow it to speak to them through its rhythm. If they are in a safe space to do so, close their eyes to bring their experience inside of the body. Sit with themselves and build an internal relationship with the heart. Over time, with practice, their heart will lead their decisions. Some benefits of embracing a heart-centered approach to decision-making include fulfilling relationships, calm demeanor, patience with themselves and others, far-sightedness, reverence for humanity, keen intuition, and experiencing a vibrant body, among others.
Understanding oneself is crucial for personal growth. How do you facilitate self-exploration that goes beyond cognitive understanding, allowing clients to tap into the depth of their hearts for a more profound sense of self?
With clients, I create experiences. We explore the five senses (sound, touch, smell, taste, sight) in spiritual practices that speak to their heart. Heart rhythm breathing practices are also one of the foundational aspects of my practice. We tune into breath while focusing on heartbeats, aligning the two of them for intuitive understanding and discernment. Embodied experiences assist the mind in believing it has a partner and does not have to take complete control. The heart always knows the way that is best for the client’s experience and once the mind understands this, there is a profound sense of self that becomes integrated.
Building trust in one’s emotions is essential. How do you help clients identify and trust their emotions as a reliable internal guidance system, and how does this contribute to their overall well-being and personal development?
We work together to assist the client in identifying the emotions they are experiencing, understanding which emotions relate to their needs not being addressed, and which emotions help them feel as though their needs are being addressed. We use breathing practices, affirmative statements, sound, and body movement to move emotional energy while elevating consciousness. Clients share that they feel like a weight has been lifted off their shoulders, they feel inner peace, they experience mental clarity, they make healthier choices, and they feel good about their self-worth, esteem, and value.
Inner resilience is a key aspect of well-being. How do you assist clients in building inner resilience, and how does this contribute to their ability to cultivate and maintain loving relationships in their lives?
Yes, indeed, building inner resilience is a key aspect of well-being, especially in the transformative times of our current society. I assist clients in relaxing, bringing their awareness inward, examining thoughts, feeling emotions, moving their bodies, exploring all of themselves so that they have an experience of wholeness, and integrating their human experience with their divine nature. With a safe, nurturing, gentle, uplifting, compassionate, and empowering client-coach relationship, together we co-create nurturing, sustainable, loving relationships.
