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At My Altar with Dr. Trenda Lee is a podcast that explores the ways everyday people practice their spirituality. Join Trenda and her guests for honest conversations about their pathways to the divine and discover what that might look like for you. Someone else’s story might be your next spiritual practice.
Do you want to feel more connected to the divine, however you define that? Maybe your old practices don't fit anymore, or maybe you've always felt spiritual but never built a practice around it. I'm Trenda Lee, and I'm talking with everyday people about their spiritual practices. I invite you to join me as we explore pathways to the divine at My Altar.
Welcome back to At My Altar. I'm Trenda Lee, and I have a little cold, so my voice may sound a tad funny in this first segment of the episode, but I am so ready to share this story with you, so let's just get to it My grandmother, Neva, had a sister named Thelma. Picture the closest sisters you've ever met, and then ratchet it up a notch.
These sisters were best friends. They shared deep secrets and laughed so hard together, you couldn't help but crack up too, even if you had no idea what they were laughing about. They were both headstrong and physically kind of frail. These ladies were always scraping up their arms or legs and looking like bruised peaches.
Both Neva and Thelma had two kids. Grandmother Neva had my mom and her sister, and Thelma had Paula and her brother. So my mom and Paula were cousins. My mom and her sister lived with Thelma's family, AKA Paula, when they were young kids because of a tragic and horrific event that ultimately became a family secret.
It bonded my mom and her cousin Paula for life. So while they were technically cousins, they became like sisters, and ultimately, when my brother and I came into the picture, we bonded with her as an aunt, and over time, we affectionately came to call her Crazy Aunt Paula. And goddamn, was she crazy. She was a Renaissance woman, ahead of her time, the smartest person I've ever known.
She died five years ago, and she is my closest ancestor. So let's go back to the tragic event that became my family's secret. My grandmother, Neva, shared this painful story with me when I was in my early 20s. She told me that from the time she got married to my grandfather and soon had two daughters of her own, she would pray on her knees every day for my grandfather to stop roaming outside of their marriage and to stop drinking.
The answer to her prayers was extraordinarily complicated. One late rainy night in the middle of the 1940s, my grandfather was in a tragic car accident. He was with his mistress when the accident happened, and she actually died in the accident, and it left him a paraplegic, requiring months and months of care and rehab.
Again, it was the 1940s. Much of his care fell directly on my grandmother, Neva. My grandmother needed help with her two young daughters, as she had to care for them while also traveling back and forth to the Mayo Clinic with her recovering husband. And her broken heart. So she packed up her kids and drove all the way down from northern Minnesota to Iowa and lived with her sister Thelma's family on their farm in Archer.
Now, Archer was a town of about 100. It had a post office, a couple of grain elevators, a broken-down saloon/cafe, a general store with a butcher shop in the back, and of course, a couple of churches. I'm not even sure there was a stop sign in that town. This became my mom's second home. I heard so many tales about that farm growing up.
There were some pretty strong women there during that time, my grandmother Neva and her sister Thelma for sure, my mom and her sister, and of course, crazy Aunt Paula. Paula was raised on that farm, but moved away to go to college. Several years later, her mom Thelma and her dad Linford died, and the farmhouse sat abandoned for over a decade.
Vandals had gone through it more than once, so think shotgun holes in the walls, appliances stripped out, copper wiring gone. The pipes had mostly rusted shut or burst from years of hard Iowa winters. It was a wreck. Then, in her 30s, as a single mother, crazy Aunt Paula got the idea that she would move back into the farmhouse and bring it back to life.
My family went down to Archer many weekends during that time to help her renovate. Before we arrived the first time, she had literally crawled under the house where there was this three-foot gap, dirt floor crawl space area, and redid all of the plumbing and much of the electrical herself so that we'd have running water and light to work from.
Can you even believe that? Meanwhile, she was farming 80 acres of land using zero pesticides. This was the early 1980s, before organic was even a thing. She did it because she believed it was the right thing to do. She fixed up the old barns and the wash house and coaxed the oldest tractors I've ever seen back into service.
Once the farm was up and running, she added some milking cows, and at one point had a few pigs. And if that wasn't enough, she also purchased the abandoned Archer Café, one of the few buildings left standing on the one-block Main Street of Archer, and she brought it back to life. People came from surrounding towns just to get a taste of her famous lasagna and desserts.
Uh, oh, and did I mention she had her master's degree and taught psychiatric nursing at the university level? That's crazy Aunt Paula. During the renovation of the farmhouse, the dining room had dozens of layers of wallpaper that had to be removed. So many layers, the corners of the room were rounded. I remember my mother and Paula reminiscing about how much their moms loved to do wallpaper, and as each layer came down, every strip of wallpaper was releasing some wild story from their childhoods.
But the story that Paula told that stayed with me forever was this: She and her brother each had small bedrooms upstairs, and her parents' bedroom was at the bottom of the stairs. Every night, Paula would fall asleep to the sound of her parents reading to each other. That was their bedtime ritual. I always thought that was such a tender detail of the most beautiful love story I could imagine.
As I got older and returned for visits to the farmhouse, Paula would always put me up in her childhood bedroom at the top of the stairs, and I swear I could hear Thelma and Linford reading to each other as I drifted off to sleep. I happen to have someone in my life right now that I read aloud with, and it is so tender and beautiful.
My guest today reminds me of Thelma and Linford. She shares daily readings with her beloved as part of her spiritual practice, and she has a lot of other practices to share with us, too. I cannot wait for you to meet my guest today, Dr. Gina Odermann. Here's her interview.
My guest today is Dr. Gina, a holistic chiropractor, mother, stepmom, and the voice behind the School of Higher Consciousness podcast. And I have the great pleasure to call her my friend. Mm. Hi, Gina. Hi. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be talking to you. I've been thinking about this for months.
This is a great day for me. So you know my daughters. They're the ones that introduced me to you. I can remember how they would come home after having a session with you and share about how transformative their work with you was. Mm. I finally made an appointment to see you, and I remember you spent time talking to me, finding out what was happening with me.
You had a lot of interest, obviously, in my daughters and what was happening with their lives. And then you gently moved into the physical work of chiropractic. And as soon as that started to happen, the tears started flowing, and I'd never experienced that in that type of session before. And you were so gentle and open with those tears flowing that we then started talking about spirituality, and at the end of that session, you also had me draw a tarot card, and it was, of course, so fitting.
It was such a powerful experience for me. It was almost hard to make a second session with you- Yeah ... because I knew it was going to be so much deeper than just healing my physical body. Is that an experience that you have with everyone? It's really interesting to hear it from the other side. I don't always get that sort of feedback unless they take the time to reach out.
So thank you for sharing that. I do, with a handful of people, have that similar experience And I don't know what's going to come up with that person or in that session, so I have to remain wildly open. Mm-hmm. If I didn't have the physical touch point of doing body work, I think that would be harder for me.
But there's something that happens in a lot of those visits, and I have noticed it happens more and more the more advanced I get in my connection to myself. Mm. So. And it's a gift. You are a gift. Thank you. Let's talk about how you get to know yourself. Is there a time in your life that you have felt really spiritual, or maybe the first time you have felt spiritual?
I've heard other people talk about, "Oh, I had this moment where it was like a zing," and for me, it wasn't. It was pretty much my whole life. I always felt there was a connection, but I didn't know that was different. I didn't know that not everybody oriented in that way. I had gone to a parochial school growing up, and I attribute having maybe some more opportunities to talk about the other side, but I don't think that the practices within that experience gave me the tools to specifically connect to myself and to that part of me.
So I do remember having moments throughout my younger years where I would connect, and then there was times where it was very superficial, and I'd be like, "Please send me a bike." Like, "Please, God, send me a bike." Right. But in those moments of usually trial and tribulation, there was a relationship I was developing with something bigger than me, and I had to learn what it felt like to open and to trust and to surrender, and that is a continual practice for me.
So I don't remember a time necessarily, but I do know that I've had a lot of feelings running through me in talking with other people. That hasn't always been their experience at the intensity that I have. I grew up outside of a church or any organized religion. My father was an atheist, and both my parents intentionally rejected organized religion.
Mm-hmm. But they didn't know what to replace it with. Mm-hmm. So I had these same s- kind of feelings as you all my life. I... The zing, the connectedness, but also the desire to know, what is it? How do I talk about it? Mm. How do I practice it? The only way I knew was through my friends who went to church, and- Mm-hmm
they talked about prayer and other things, and that's how I started to think about, oh, that's what I do with this kind of deep desire to connect with something greater than myself, or the deepest part of myself. So that sounds similar, but outside of that parochial school- Mm ... opportunity that gave you some way to talk about it or experience and- Yeah.
I think that when you are in a parochial school or you have a pretty strict religious background, I think it can be a lot more tricky for you to separate the practices that religion is trying to teach you from your connection to something outside of you. And I'm just grateful that I had a mom who I watched her kinda pick and choose her path, and it made sense to me.
It's not that she was rolling her eyes at every practice that was happening in the church or in the school, but there was a little bit of that. And so I learned that you don't have to follow everything to a T to still have a connection and create that connection. She had a divorce before her kids were born, and I think her being rejected from the church, she still had to make peace with what that meant, as she still wanted it in her life.
So I think that foundation of my mom's connection being personal to her gave me the permission to make it personal for myself. And I don't think everyone who is raised in that sort of a private school setting or whatever religion you are has that luxury. Thank you, Mom. Yes. Thank you, Mom. So fast-forward to today.
Mm-hmm. Tell me a little bit about what that means for you today, and how you decided to incorporate some of your spirituality in your work. All right. I realize it's not a choice for me When I went to chiropractic school, I remember thinking, "Oh, okay. We just gotta adjust the spine and this is what makes everyone better."
And that's a very simple way of saying it, but- Don't tell any other chiropractors- ... that that is how you just- No ... condensed your entire profession, but that's okay. That's all right. Mm-hmm. There was no way that felt complete for me. I knew that it was an opportunity to bring in healing in a larger scale.
The other area that just kept pulling me was this mental, emotional, spiritual side to health. When you have a really direct line to your spiritual world or your mental, emotional world, then the physical and the chemical sides of your body also are enhanced. There's this reciprocal relationship, and so when you are in alignment and you are connected to your truth and what feels right for you, then your physical body just doesn't hurt as much.
Everything shifts when you're in alignment. I slowly started to organically bring in elements that felt right within my visits, and over time I created more structure of what that looked like for myself. And I realized the more I do that, the more I actually get messages in my body around the person that I'm working with, and I will feel densities in my body when I'm touching certain parts of their body, and that is not from me.
That is something outside of me that I'm feeling and I work with. And so now I've learned what that means in the visits, but it took time. And then I also have started to use the emotion code. It's a technique that is designed to identify subconscious emotions that are stuck in the body and subconscious beliefs that are running someone's neurological program.
And it's subconscious, so they don't know this is happening, and we can identify what this person has kinda stuck in them and help release it so that they can move this obstacle out of their way and see things clearer. So that's all part of the spiritual work that I'm doing in my clinic and in my practice, but it would not have happened if I didn't have those practices working within me, and me go through trials and tribulations and understand how to manipulate my own energy.
So there's a lot of things I've done. I, I also kinda go with the seasons, like what I feel I need in that season of life. I very much am interested to know- What are your practices? How do you take care of your own spiritual wellbeing? Mm-hmm. And what does that look like? Actually, just recently, starting of the new year, my husband and I are doing something together.
We thought it would be a good time for us to have a connection point to start the day. And at 6:30, our alarm goes off, we go downstairs into my office, and we put on a 15-minute Abraham-Hicks session. There's a woman, Esther Hicks, she was married to Jerry. I think his last name must've been Hicks too, but he has since passed, but they had this gift of channeling the messages of Abraham, like from the Bible Abraham.
Okay. And I'm not drawn to those words. If somebody told me that, I'd be like, "Interested," but I'm not like, "Tell me more." But then when I explored what these teachings are, it is more of like laws of the universe, like they're truths that are there regardless. What she does is she meditates and people will ask questions about their regular life, and she will respond as Abraham would see the situation.
And I find the teachings of Abraham to be incredibly spot on for what feels true for me. To simplify, it is everything is emotional. Every thought you have can be a choice, but every thought creates an emotion, and that emotion is what dictates your vibration. And then she talks about this emotional scale, and where you are on, in the emotional scale.
Let's say you're in the feeling of jealousy, and you just are running jealousy through your body. She talks about choosing the next thought that's gonna give you relief from this jealousy, and that might be anger So then anger actually can feel better than jealousy, and you're just closing the gap in your experience of feeling.
Then hopefully over time, if you practice this long enough, get to a state where now you're practicing a higher vibrational emotion as your norm. So to go from jealousy to joy, that's a huge gap to close, but you can choose thoughts, and if you practice this and you're conscious of it, you're now experiencing the world different.
She talks about going in and out of alignment, being able to do this, and recognizing it and feeling the juiciness of when you're able to really be in control of getting yourself into alignment, and when you just can't. And sometimes you can't, and that's okay, but it's knowing the difference and being able to, over time, create that control for yourself.
Um- So you and your husband are- Mm-hmm ... every morning- Every morning ... listening to a 15 minutes- One of her teachings. And so we might even put into the YouTube search Abraham-Hicks feeling safe, and then we're gonna hear something that comes up about somebody who's asked a question around, "I'm just not feeling safe in my life."
And then we take that time to stretch in the office, 'cause we have all our tools for that, our foam rollers, et cetera, and then it's a good touchpoint for us to just be in this state, and we can debrief afterwards, and then we start our day. Mm. So 15 minutes to a half hour, that's something that we're doing now.
Some seasons of my life I'll do journaling to tap into my subconscious and then see what's there beyond what I think is there, and then I'll work with that if something comes to my awareness. I'll have cards, whether it's animal spirit cards, angel cards, actually Abraham-Hicks cards I have, and I will spread them out, and I will feel with my left hand, because that's your receiving energy, and I'll feel which card it is for the day, and I'll read it, see what resonates, and use that in my day, and it usually gives me something to work with.
I love the way you're starting your day, and it definitely resonates for me when you say you're starting your day with some kind of- really formal message, but you're also being physical, like stretching. I love that. Are there any other practices that you have? Thinking about somebody who does body work, that- Mm-hmm
you're exchanging a lot of energy between people. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And I would imagine you hold some of that energy after people leave. I'm just- Yeah ... guessing that to be true. Yeah. Before I see each client, I wrote a prayer. I call in any spirit team that this person has on their side, and I invite them into the space.
I always read it before the person comes in, and I'm saying, "Use me as someone who can assist in their highest, best healing." So a lot of the time I don't feel like that work is me in the office, with the exception of the adjustments. But after each patient, I use palo santo. It really helps cleanse me.
Like, I feel, like, an immediate shift. And at night, I will try to set my intention for the next day, like how I want the day to go. So I try to quiet myself and think, even if it's a word, what am I after tomorrow? And a lot of the times it's alignment. Have you ever heard of Letters to Love- No ... by Elizabeth Gilbert?
She has a Substack. It's really great. So when I do get into journaling, she has this prompt that I really love, and the first thing you write at the top of your paper is, "Dear love, what is it that I am to know today?" And then you just start writing. And at first you might think it's feeling like, okay, then all of a sudden you're deeper and you're saying things to yourself that maybe you wish someone would've said to you Or you realize it's your higher self talking to you.
I really enjoy that practice when I am in the season of journaling. Ugh, you are such a gift. Seriously. I am on this journey of understanding my own spiritual wellbeing and how to practice it. That is why I started this podcast. And you just offered so many things. I am feeling really tender right now- Mm-hmm
and open. I absolutely love that with your husband you are starting your days together. I mean, talk about looking back on your life and seeing what that practice will have brought you- Mm-hmm ... is incredible, so thank you for that gift. Amazing. And some of the tips about Abraham-Hicks or Elizabeth Gilbert's journaling, and for you preparing for each patient that you see, they are the focus- Mm-hmm
and that you are the vessel. What a beautiful way to deliver the gifts that you have been given in this world, and that you have also trained for. I'm going to put in the show page some of these things that you have- Okay ... listed. What a gift. You are a gem. Thank you. I care deeply about you. Yeah. Thank you for being at my altar.
Thank you so much for this opportunity. It was wonderful. Take care, my friend. Thank you. Bye-bye.
Gina. Oh, so much on offer for us. What a gift. She gave me so many ideas for practices. I hope she did the same for you. Interestingly, my daughter Savana actually worked for Gina for a short time. Let's get her on the line and see what she has to say about Gina's interview
Hello, my Savana. I am really excited to talk to you about this episode. Right. So you've listened. You know what she's talked about. So I know Gina so well, and I've known her for over a decade. Everything that she talks about is true. I've experienced her openness and how she really just tries to meet people where they're at, and she shifts and adapts based on what someone needs, and how she does a prayer before someone co- like, she does all of that.
She was really the first person that helped me work through anxiety in the body, and I knew doing body work would be helpful to get myself into my body and not so much in my head. But, like, God damn it, I'm such a top-down person, not a bottom-up. Like, everything is- Yep. So what happened? You go into Gina for the first time.
Yeah. And tell your story. Yeah. Oh my gosh, I was so nervous and also so desperate to be cured of anxiety. I just was like, "Dear God, I cannot live this way." I was really having to grapple with anxiety that I'd been holding pretty much my entire life, probably pre-verbal anxiety. And Sydney, my sister, she was seeing Gina because Sydney had scoliosis growing up, and so she had, uh, been in and out of chiropractic care for many years, found Gina and said, "You have to see her."
And I was like, "Yeah, but I don't really have any spinal issues." Like, for all I know, my central nervous system is functioning fine. And she's like, "Yeah, but I don't think you need it for that reason. I think you need it because you literally need to let go of your rigid ass. You need to, like, break apart that-" Calm down
like, let's literally crack open the anxiety. And I was like, "Okay, fine. Like, I'll go and see her." And Gina was just exceptional. Like, when you think about integrative care, that is Gina. She has a way of really effortlessly combining the physical with the emotional with the spiritual. I remember leaving and I felt like I was levitating, like I was walking on clouds walking back to my car from seeing her, and I was like, "Wow, I just feel so much lighter."
And I also was really scared. I think I had a lot of misconceptions about chiropractic care, which there can be fair misconceptions, but I think I just had to fully surrender to whatever she thought was best. And if you have anxiety, you know how hard it is to surrender, 'cause it means you are accepting that you don't have control.
And I think being safe with Gina allowed me to just trust that she was gonna take care of me, and I wasn't held hostage to my anxious thoughts and could just let someone else take that off of my plate for a little while. So yeah, that's my experience. She's incredible. If you're in the Twin Cities, you really, really, really should see her.
She's just amazing. Agreed. I had that same experience, and I love that you're cracked open. Me too. Woo. It, it took a little too long, but it, better late than never. Watch out, world. Sevie is cracked open and ready to go. I love it. And it's exactly spirituality. You have to surrender- Mm-hmm ... to yourself. Yep. To be vulnerable with yourself, and to be open to the risk that is love, that is light, to not live in just protection mode- Yeah, right
in order to share your gifts, your love, your light to the world as well. For sure. So I'm so glad you saw her. Yeah. More importantly, I'm so glad that that happened for you, and then you recommended her to me. And now we're recommending her to whomever is listening. Yeah. So I love it so much. Yeah, me too.
Here's to Gina, honoring her spirit, her work- Love you, Gina ... um, and her gifts to the world. Love you, Gina. She's a real one, yep. She's the real deal. Okay, you are, too. I love you so much. Love you too, Mom. I'll talk to you later. Okay. Talk to you soon. Bye. Bye.
Thank you for listening to At My Altar with Trenda Lee. A special thanks to my guest, Gina Odermann. She shared so many amazing practices with us. Which one resonated with you? More importantly, which one are you going to try out? As I shared at the top of the episode, I just love that she starts her day with a spiritual practice with her husband.
Yes, yes, yes. And I really was drawn in by the journaling exercise she follows from Elizabeth Gilbert's Letters to Love. "Dear Love, what I need to learn from you today is..." Dot, dot, dot. Isn't that so profound? And for me, it really gets at the heart of connecting with my own divinity. Thank you again, Gina. If you're interested in learning more about Gina, you can visit her website at theschoolofhigherconsciousness.com or listen to her podcast, The School of Higher Consciousness.
You can find this information in the show notes. You can also find all my episodes of At My Altar with Trenda Lee and download my free spiritual guide at my website, atmyaltar.love. At My Altar is hosted by me, Trenda Lee, with producers Cecilia Stanton-Adams, Charlie Mitchell, and me, Trenda Lee. Original music by Charlie Mitchell, and website, photos, and logo design by Irena TePante at TePante Studios.
A special thanks to my beautiful daughter, Savana. At My Altar with Trenda Lee can be found anywhere you listen to podcasts. Please like, follow, and drop a comment so more people can find this podcast. It truly makes a difference. If you've always felt spiritual and want to find more pathways to the divine, join me for another episode of At My Altar with Trenda Lee.
Until then, I'll see you on the love grid