We recently had the chance to connect with Dr. Katie Larson and have shared our conversation below.
Good morning Katie, we’re so happy to have you here with us and we’d love to explore your story and how you think about life and legacy and so much more. So let’s start with a question we often ask: What is something outside of work that is bringing you joy lately?
I am rediscovering my love of disco dancing at the moment. When I was a kid, my parents had some disco records (not many, as they fancied Motown a lot more), and I have lovely memories of wearing dress up outfits and boogeying the night away in my living room. Once a month I am finding joy with a local disco club where I dance with girlfriends and showcase all my favorite moves from Saturday Night Fever and beyond! 🙂
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
As someone who helps others understand their “past lives”, it’s no mistake that I am also comfortable reinventing myself again and again in this life! With each new ‘me’, I find a deeper understanding of what it means to be human, and that seems to be what drives me: I am a seeker.
I began my career as a field scientist and science teacher – two fields that seek to answer life’s questions from a material, measurable perspective. I loved these careers because out in the jungle and savannah, I was doing real science experiments with cheetahs, crocodiles, and elephants, and it felt like living in a National Geographic magazine! Then, in the science classroom I was able to reach “at-risk” students who didn’t have many other adult role models, which felt very meaningful to me.
Later, I felt destined to leave the USA and seek a whole new way of living, so my partner and I sold everything and moved overseas to exotic locales like Spain, South Africa, Singapore, Cambodia and Hong Kong. In each city, I focused on creating something new, seeking expertise in areas of my life that interested me, but I hadn’t fully explored. In Spain I created a cooking and catering business; in South Africa, Singapore, and Cambodia I created an educational consulting business; and in Hong Kong, I started GrowthQuests– my current Coaching and Hypnotherapy business. And in all of these countries (and more as I traveled the world!), I studied and completed my Master’s and PhD which focused on the very thing that I was doing the most– personal growth and transformation–so I felt like an expert from my research in books, but much more from my own life!
All of my seeking started to pay off: I could feel that I was actually becoming wise and experienced in so many areas of life. But it wasn’t until I began sharing this experience through coaching, hypnotherapy, and embodiment that I felt the skills I used to grow and transform actually helped others learn how to seek for themselves.
Soon, I began to be known in my industry for creating “Quests” for my clients– which are basically little “inner-journeys” for specific areas of personal growth. The way I do this is by first speaking about where you are wanting to grow, but why it has been challenging up until this point. Here we craft a “Growth-Quest” with a few different, but unique tools: coaching –which uses your conscious mind, hypnotherapy – which uses your unconscious mind (which I also call your soul), and embodiment practices – which uses your body. Everyone needs their own specific mix of these tools, but when they are mixed just right, they are the perfect combination for GROWTH– which is what I believe we are all seeking deep down inside.
Appreciate your sharing that. Let’s talk about your life, growing up and some of topics and learnings around that. Who were you before the world told you who you had to be?
I love this question: I was a child who had past life memories. And on top of that — I knew that I was a soul who was “sent here on a mission”. I always knew that I was merely “visiting” and would return to where I “came from” eventually. I think this belief inspired me to really indulge in all things “human” and enjoy the feeling of being “alive” as often as I could.
I have since validated a lot of these knowings about myself and my soul in hypnotic trances- and I am in fact here on a mission– to help others understand we are merely borrowing bodies on Earth, but are in reality an eternal consciousness that extends far beyond our wildest imaginations.
I like this question because it reminds me not to get too caught up in the weeds of being human (the gameboard and game pieces are so believable!), but to remember the mission of love and support.
Is there something you miss that no one else knows about?
I often have a deep grief about moments in my life that can’t be described easily to others– in fact there is even a word for this: “exulansis”, which means: “The tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it”.
I feel grateful to have lived and visited so many special places on Earth, and met so many remarkable people while doing so. Intimate moments, like quietly sitting with a Maasai woman in Kenya as she taught me to created colorful, beaded necklaces. Or normal, yet fun moments of eating fishball soup with a local family on our floating home on the Kinabatangan river in Borneo. Or epic moments like wandering off by myself during sunset in a sage-scented steppe in Mongolia. Or funny moments, like when I thought I was being chased by a lion in the African bush in middle of the night, but turning around and realizing it was only a housecat. I try to keep these memories locked into my mind, but I fear losing them because I have no one to share them with.
Sure, so let’s go deeper into your values and how you think. Is the public version of you the real you?
I have several “real me”s that I share with people in different capacities. I find that the most “public”, outwardly facing version of me is usually the depiction of me who is brave, ambitious, funny, and captivating. Yet, the private, intimate version of me is usually quite emotional, deep, honest-to-a-fault, and vulnerable. Both are seekers: the public facing version is seeking an adventure. The private me is seeking the meaning of life.
I do think I like to share the private version of me more often than most people, YET I have also been embarrassed, shamed, and hurt when I have done this, so sometimes I continue to keep her hidden to protect myself. I find that the people who know me the best have described me as “the most unique person I have ever met”. And, that I strive for! 🙂
Thank you so much for all of your openness so far. Maybe we can close with a future oriented question. Are you doing what you were born to do—or what you were told to do?
Definitely what I was born to do! (because it is a pretty weird job, to be honest!)
I laugh because when I am at a cocktail party and folks ask me what kind of work a hypnotherapist does and I tell them that one of the things I do is help take you back to past-lives people always ask me, “how the heck did you get into that?!”
But the truth is, I had a past life regression when I was 28 that so profoundly influenced my life, I always wanted to be able to offer the same peak experience to others.
I feel grateful that my life’s trajectory gave me a lot of other jobs in before I did this one, because by comparison, this job is so heartwarming. I absolutely love helping others remember why, as a soul they choose this life, their family, and their careers. I want as many people as possible to remember that they are so much more than they can even imagine!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.growthquests.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drkatiegrowthquests
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@unfoldgrowthquests4484
Image Credits
Photos by “Picdbyliv” Olivia McDowell
