On this episode of MediaRebel Unplugged. when it's first as a whisper, it's beautiful. If you don't, then you're get knuckles on your door. If you don't open the door, it's gonna be a hammer. He's gonna just like put your door down. I came to America as an immigrant, so I kind of got sold on that story of American Dream. That when you work hard, this is the key. This is the main ingredient. And I love that because it's very doable, but they do need to take that step into doing it. Yes. and go into the communities of women who already walk in this path. Don't be doing this in silence, Welcome back to Media Rebel Unplugged. I'm Janice. Today we're talking about trading hustle for healing and what it looks like when high achievers stop forcing, start listening and rebuild success. Joining me today is Elena Dongea, founder and CEO of Elena Visionary, Inc. Elena went from a career in finance on Wall Street to becoming a feminine energetics coach and mentor. She helps high achieving women reconnect to their intuition and regain confidence so they can thrive in leadership, love and life. which I absolutely love to hear because we need more of you, Elena, and more of your energy. I am so happy you're here today. Thank you so much for having me over. I'm excited for our conversation. So tell us about this background because it is unique. mean, 20 years on Wall Street. What led you to go from that world into the work that you're doing today? Yeah, I spent almost 20 years working in investment banking or Wall Street. I have a degree in finance and being marketing. I was climbing that corporate ladder, what I call my first mountain. The mountain that really promises you to have the success in life. And I did have a lot of success, but I did not feel fulfillment within myself. And I figured that success and feeling. fulfillment and satisfied with who you are, what you do, how you spend your day is very different thing. And I came to America as an immigrant. So I kind of got sold on that story of American dream. That when you work hard, this is the key. This is the main ingredient of how you can be successful in life is that with your work hard, you can achieve anything you want. And to a certain degree, I agree that when we work hard, when we achieve, we're super like, you know, go through the hustle and doing the things. We can, you know, achieve certain things, but at the end of the day is how happy you are with what you achieve and how happy you are with yourself. And are you really in alignment or what you meant to do in this life? So I was asking these big questions pretty much throughout my life. But as I said, like, because I came to America when I was 17 years old, I went to college and started to do the things and I wanted to work on Wall Street. But I've always had this nagging feeling that. Something is missing in my life and something major missing in my life. And I knew that I've had things on paper, achievement on Wall Street, as well as I'm married and have two kids. So when you talk about women being realized, I check the boxes on all the things, right? But still something major was missing within me. And I started to seek, I started to look at my spiritual awakening. Happened right on Wall Street. had Deepak Chopra, you're probably familiar with this teacher. He's a New York Times bestselling author. He came to a corporate job to speak about enlightened leadership. What does it mean to be a leader that is a visionary, a leader that people follow, people want to be around them? And as I was taking notes from everything that he was sharing, I felt this activation through my body. Like I felt like I'm meant to be. an enlightened leader, like I'm meant to inspire people. meant to have something beyond what I had on Wall Street. And even though I had a team to manage global team, had money to, like I've had a career, but it didn't feel like I'm an enlightened leader at all. So that day, something shifted within me because Deepak also, not that he only had the presentation with us, he also had an activation, like a meditation, like a guided practice at the end of the talk. And imagine me sitting in the audience of like 250, five achievers, Wall Street, mostly men. And here in the middle of that audience, in the middle of that presentation, I'm having this awakening. Like I'm having this almost out of body experience that when I love that presentation, I knew something has shifted within me. And I think what also happened, and people can have spiritual awakening through different ways. And usually it happens with people when they have some sort of like a rock bottom moment, like a cuddle. of sorts, right? Now, working with lot of women, it happens through a lot of relationships when we're having some sort of a traumatic relationship at the worst of betrayal of sort. It could happen through a health crisis, right? When you, something happens within, know, physically within your body. It happens a lot when people go through an identity shift when they change careers, right? It can happen in so many different ways. It also can happen when you are in the presence of a teacher. of a spiritual teacher or coach or a mentor who's embodied in the truth. Who's really speaking from experience and wisdom. And I think that was the moment for me that he played that role, that Deepak Chopra played that role. And after him actually had a lot of spiritual teachers enter into my life, coaches, healers, to whom I started to re-remember who I am. Because this journey is really not about learning anything new. is about for women to remember something that is very, very ancient within us, which is this divine feminine energy, which is that part of us that we forget. That we forget just by being human. And we forget if we are going a path of being high achieving, because we're constantly in a stress and we're constantly in the hustle of doing things, which doesn't even allow us five minutes in a day to sit with ourselves in stillness, in silence. and reconnect with our hearts, reconnect to our own wounds, reconnect to ourselves. So when we're so busy in life, we don't even have space to listen to that whisper. And I think for me, being in that presentation and that meeting with Deepak Chopra allowed me to have that five minutes of stillness when I connected to myself, when I had that meditation experience, when something activated within me. And I went on this journey to just find out who I am, really. It was never, at that point, was never about like quitting Wall Street, becoming a coach, becoming an energy healer. Like I think for every one of us who's on this path, it starts with self healing and self discovery first and foremost, knowing who you are. And then at some point then having enough healing, activation, embodiment, then you want to share it with others. You really want to share it with others, especially with other women. Because you want other women to feel like what I'm feeling right now and more women to feel this freedom. Freedom, not just financial freedom from corporate. It's an emotional freedom. It's still having that inner critic inside your head who's constantly pushing you and telling you that you're not enough. That something is still off, that you have to achieve something else. So that's my journey of how I got from Wall Street to where am today. such a beautiful story and quite the story to have. And you brought up some great points. I think in our American culture, especially, we get stuck in the hustle and we move very quickly. Everything here is fast. Everything is instant gratification. And like you said, we don't really take that time to sit and reflect and do that deeper inner work in ourselves. So when you look back now, before you had that awakening, do you now see those signs that maybe you ignored yourself? Yeah, for sure. Because working on Wall Street, it was a very demanding environment. I didn't just work nine to five. Like I worked almost 12 hours a day. And I also had two children at home, young children. And I started to have what happens with women when they burn out. And this is like becoming a popular term. And I feel like burnout can also happen not just when you work hard, burnout happens when you're not in alignment with who you meant to be and what you meant to do. Right? And a lot of us... don't hear that voice of intuition to even know, like, what should I be in alignment with? You know what I mean? So I think for me, I started to experience physical symptoms. And I think that's what happens a lot with women. Any chronic diseases, like I think American medical system is amazing when there is anything that happens when you need like acute help, when you go through, I don't know, an accident, a heart attack, a stroke. The medicine is amazing to do something that can heal us. You your brain collect, they can help you. When it comes to chronic diseases, when it comes to something that takes a long time to, you know, get the symptoms and also to heal, there is no five day formula. There is no cream that you can put on yourself that can really heal your throat cause. So I started to have symptoms in my body, atica pain, gaining weight, eczema. You know, being very stressed, like stress can do so many things to our bodies, right? And hormonal disbalances, I could start to really feel in my body, like I am aging too soon. There's something happening with my body that I'm like, I'm not happy with how I feel with me, you know? And no amount of diets or gym can cure that. It's really to cure the stress, it's a different, different things you have to do for that. So that's what I think was like my whispers were how much more I can push, you know, how much more I can ignore and just continue doing. You know, I think that was my, like the number one thing that was happening to me that I was not feeling good inside my body. there are those telltale physical pains and symptoms that we had and medically we're wonderfully here with that. But we don't really address the spiritual side of things. You know, what is it that's actually impacting underneath the surface? Instead, here's this new pill that you can take that's going to fix it right away. And instead of pushing you where you need to be spiritually, like the band-aid fix, the nub-true pill. Yeah, the true stakes really happens with us healing our emotions because every, believe that there's a lot of disease that are registered by, you know, health administration. I believe there's only one, which is your disconnection from your higher self, from your soul, from your spiritual self and everything else is just a ripple effect and consequence of that. So when you are disconnected from you and when you have a lot of emotions that are stuck that you haven't process through your life, starting from your childhood, right? Because any traumatic experience that you didn't process created some sort of like a murky kind of energy within your field, energetically, but then it goes inside your body physically. So every single organ is actually responsible for different emotions that's within process. For example, liver holds anger. So for women that are not processing anger and the rage, which they should, they should have a practice where they hit the pill every morning if they need to, right? Or do something that they process anger. If you don't process anger, it gets stuck into your liver. And what happens when we have a liver that is polluted or intoxicated? Everything, right? The way you gain weight, your skin becomes dull, you start losing hair. Like all of the things is because we have a liver not operating correctly. What happens with us when we have a lot of shame and guilt? Like a lot of women that I work with, I see it. We carry this unworthiness within us, like some sort of a shame around ourselves, right? And whether we store that, we store that in our womb, we store it in our kidneys. So anything related to reproductive system, having PMS pains, like all of that, right, could be related if we didn't process the emotions. And it could go on and on. about a heart when we don't process resentment, when we carry some, you know, some feelings, negative feelings or emotions towards people that hurt us before. Right? So the goal is to really start healing yourself emotionally and processing those emotions. And then your physical body start really reviving. And you actually start like anti-aging. Like what I've noticed, the way I felt myself in the mid thirties versus how I feel in my mid forties, I'm feeling so much better. And I don't feel those midlife symptoms that a lot of women have started feeling in the perimenopause. I felt that in my mid thirties because I think my hormones will go in my immune system was so out of whack, work in this stressful environment. But now knowing and having the tools to process these things really make me feel so good about myself in my body, emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually. Yeah. It's um. It's crazy what stress does to our bodies. Oh, absolutely. Just as like what the number one killer for women. Really? mean, your heart attack and stroke. I'm feeling with the family member right now. We were talking the other day about, she has a long history of issues with rejection, like going all the way back to her childhood and just not feeling like she was loved or accepted and, uh, trying to help her kind of think a little bit deeper. Now she's like looking for outside validation and I'm like, no, you to look inward because so often we are guilty for seeking that outside of us when we need to look inside. Yes. Yes, exactly. And I feel like a lot of women have this wound and fear of abandonment. And yes, it goes to our childhood. It can even goes to our past life if you believe in those things, because I feel like we're caring a lot. And yeah, but it's beautiful that right now there's so much information available and there's so many tools right now available that we now understand. That there's spirituality is science and it's, um, and we'll also carry like epigenetics, right? Like we carry things within our field, within our bodies that we can definitely heal, that we can definitely process. And I agree with you. It takes, it starts with taking responsibility. It starts with making a decision. I create my reality. I create my reality and I get to change myself. And isn't this beautiful? thinking that you have to outsource it all the time and there's somebody else's fault and now you're knowing that it's like you could change it. I think it hits you first. We're like, my God, it's my fault. Like I've created this. But once you process this and understand, okay, if I created this, it means I can create something else. And that's when you, when you start the healing, just, it's, you're going to start feeling amazing about yourself. So when someone first comes to you, what is it that's bringing them to you? What's that realization for them? I attract women at different stages in their lives when they come to work with me. Some women could be like from that corporate world, feeling, snagging feeling that something is off, that there's more to life, that I don't want to feel the way I feel or I want to change my careers or I want to just experience something else in life. Right? Like they have achieved that they climbed that first mountain. They have the things, right? They have the accolades, the careers, the degrees, the chat boxes, like all of that. But the feeling. not fulfilled and the body is like showing to them that something is off. Right. So I checked women in that space. I also checked women that they go through, as I said, something happens in their relationships. Like the rod pulled out of the feet, a divorce, a betrayal, something, right. And that it really hits women's self-worth. It really makes her reevaluate who am I and how did I end up here? And a lot of women, like you mentioned, like they felt the whispers because I feel like every single woman have this gift of intuition within her, that inner knowing within her. often intuition is not always comfortable, right? It's still in us, the whispers, where they're like, okay, let me look at other way. You know what I mean? So at some point they realize I have that, don't, not that I only don't have trust with other people. I don't really even have trust in myself and it does take a radical responsibility and awareness to actually admit that. But once they do, they really like, I want to work on my self worth again. I want to work on my intuition again. I want to know and have this inner coach within me, my inner oracle, guru, how you want to call it? Like this wise woman within me that is somewhere there. I'm helping them activate and reconnect with a part of themselves. Because once women reconnect with their intuition, they unstoppable, right? They know who they are. They read the red flags. They can have the boundaries. They can know discernment. They really become very, very powerful. That's the true feminine empowerment. When women are reconnected to their own truth, the highest, I would want to call it, right? So that's what I help women a lot to do. And also speaking about feminine energy, feminine energy is the energy of receptivity and magnetism. So a lot of women, and this is what I was 10 years ago, 10 plus years ago, when we spend so much time in our masculine energy, we become electric. So think about like, we all, this is science, we are electromagnetic beings. We'll have electric energy and magnetic energy. Electric energy and energy, masculine energy, of our head, of our brain, of our mind, doing thinking, logic, achieving, performing, all of that. And a feminine energy is an energy of magnetism, receptivity, nurturing, heart, intuition. This is your magnetic field. So a lot of women, they have trouble attracting support, which is the masculine energy, feeling stuck, attracting money. feeling stuck, attracting amazing opportunities and people in their life because they really not in balance between the magnetic and electric energy within them, the masculine and the feminine. So my goal when I speak about feminine energy, not that it has to override the masculine, not that it's more important, it's just we've spent thousands and thousands of years on this planet being not in balance between the two. So the reason why this feminine energy and I have this saying, feminine energy is a new strategy. It has to be a new strategy for every single woman listening to this podcast and everybody who's following you and I, right? Feminine energy, we need this to activate, to balance ourselves out between the masculine and feminine. Women have been punished every time they tapped into it. was like, exactly must be silenced. You can't perform. mean, even if you look way back, like Salem witch trials, they weren't actually performing witchcraft. They were using herbs. were helping women deliver baby, know, the breathing. And it's like crazy how much we have been silenced. And so of course I think. That is why we have such a hard time tapping into it because it goes into those deeper wounds like you were talking about, think even generationally. For sure. It doesn't, and I understand this, it doesn't feel safe for us women. Like I see it. I see a lot of people like listening to my, reading my posts, listening to my podcasts and like people that start working with me, sometimes they tell me I needed to, something needed to happen with me and shift within me to be ready for this work. Because sometimes women don't feel safe going into this work. And very often they don't trust other women who embody that. So if any of you listening to this now and you're thinking like, I, can we trust these women? Can we trust them? It's like this, if we're triggering something within you, it's because to your point, it's tribal, it's generational. It goes so deep into the wounding of who we are that it doesn't feel safe to go into this work. It doesn't feel safe to go into this work. That's why they don't want to do it. That's why they don't want to do it. But once you overcome those fears, and believe me, you need to heal those wounds and you need to heal those fears. yes, to your point, we've been sad because this is such a power and men are afraid of this power. We're not here to overpower men. We're here to bring our energies into balance. That's what's needed on this planet right now. uh would you give to someone that's listening that might recognize themselves like what you're saying there they might be hearing us right now something is resonating with them maybe they feel a little bit fearful of address so what advice would you have for them The advice I would give is to surround yourself with women who embody that that you're afraid of, like us, for example, you and I, right? Go into the communities of women who already walk in this path. Don't be doing this in silence, right? Don't be doing, because part of the healing is actually for us women to heal this quote unquote witch wound, because you brought up the herbs and how we were put, know, do it like having these abilities, right? So we're carrying these witch wound. We're also carrying the sister wound. Because women over generations, we've been again by patriarchy. We will put against each other, right? Against each other. And I know working on Wall Street, were a lot of, I see men, they have all these clubs, they go golfing together, they do things together. And we're women kind of doing everything in silo. When we come in a community together, we are power. If you feel triggered by any woman that is like out there, maybe right now, like already having a platform, already speaking the truth, feel into your heart. What do you feel with this woman? what do you feel? she in like, use the sermon. If you feel like this is the woman who you think is walking her truth, join her communities, go on her retreat, hire her as your coach, as a mentor, because I won't be sitting here if I wouldn't have my mentors who helped me overcome those fears. If I were to do this alone, it would take me decades to do that. Decades. And as I mentioned to you, even with Deepak, when you, when you go into a presence of somebody who's already embodying, it's kind of like codes activated within them. It's kind of like you put one match to next to the next match and like, you know, it lights it up. Same thing. So my advice would be find people. It doesn't have to be us. It could be somebody else, Right. Find mentors, healers, energy healers, especially. are communities where you can grow, when you can heal, when you can come into that realization that it's safe to be with other women and it's safe to do this work. So that would be my advice. And I love that because it's very doable, but they do need to take that step into doing it. Yes. And we are so much stronger together. And I do see exactly what you're talking about. Men have like their clubs, right? They go to their golfing and they have their cigar dens. It's like women, we need to have more clubs for women. 100 % and this is what when I first when I left Wall Street my very first thing that I did I was running a retreat in Tulum. I announced that I'm gonna run a retreat for women in 24 hours it got sold out. Kind of like I think my universe and my highest I was like you meant to do this like they because if if I didn't have such a success in the beginning maybe I would doubt it and then go into it it got sold out in 24 hours because women were ready they were right they wanted to do that they wanted to come together. And I knew like, okay, if I don't have the spaces and I live in New York city, it's very hard to find those kinds of communities where you can be feeling safe with other women, don't compete with other women. And I'm like, if I cannot find that space where I can go and be myself, I'm going to create one. I'm going to create one. I'm going to start running this, my retreats and they called Awakened Woman retreats. And I do them like, and I even do workshops in New York. And I do things online as well, but I try start to create communities where women can come in and feel safe having this conversation. And sometimes yes, you sit on Zoom with your camera off, right? You don't want to be seen. You don't feel like you're worthy. You don't feel like you belong. And then little by little, you like, open up and you want to be part of it. Yeah, this journey can be very lonely, especially in the beginning. If anybody's going through the spiritual awakening, like through spiritual awakening, Because something happened. This journey is lonely in the beginning because it's meant to be, uh, you meant to do certain things alone in the beginning to reconnect with your own soul. Right. But then you have to answer the call. You have to answer the call. And when you say, yes, I want to heal. Yes. I want to go into this path. Teacher's going to start coming in. You know, saying when the, when the student is ready, the teacher comes in. Yeah. was all teachers going to come. You're going to listen to the podcast. It'll be like, my God, I resonate with this. You're going to start reading the books. had books like Falling off the Shelf and Barnes and Noble. Information just started to come my way because I said, I'm willing, I'm available and I'm capable. God give it to me. Give it to me. Yeah. Yeah, it's a beautiful story. My story is very similar. Like I went through this very traumatic life event where I almost lost my life. And I came out of that going, okay, I survived that and there was a purpose. There was a reason and I now need to help other women that are going through really hard times. So I've gone through really hard things, be able to find that rubble spirit within themself, that strength and resilience that we all have within us. And I had launched my business and felt so utterly alone that I created the podcast to have this other voices of women like yourself who have gone through things in our life that have awakened us and have brought us to this new journey that we're in. I think that's so very important that we listen to that voice. Like you were talking about our intuition. A lot of times we hear that voice. We'll have a gut instinct and we silence it and we keep silencing it. And at some point it's going to manifest itself, whether it is until like we talked about the physical symptoms that we start to have, the tension that we start to hold. It literally starts to feel like a weight sitting on top of you until you finally say, enough. I'm going to make this step forward, whatever that first step looks like for them. And I couldn't agree more that it's to find other women to align yourself with. One woman. And then that turns into two and then before you know it, hub of women behind you. Exactly and yeah, my advice would also be don't wait for life to serve you its hand a quiver's listening to this because when you just listen the soul comes to you in various stages It first comes as a whisper Sometimes you again listen to a podcast. there is something they talk about you read a book You maybe see 11 11 on the clock like why I keep seeing this these awakening numbers, right? You start having the whispers. If you listen to the whisper and go through it, you can really, you can really cut down the number of years you're going to be suffering in many ways, right? Like when you first listen to that whisper. If you're meant to go through a journey of awakening, healing, rising, then having the purpose like you, right? Like you've had a traumatic experience, but you were able as an alchemist that you are, transform that pain into purpose, transform that darkness into light, transform this pain and trauma into gold. And I feel like for a lot of us women who's looking for the purpose, look for your purpose in your pain. Look for the purpose in your traumas. Look on the purpose of like what you're experiencing. There are clues there. Right. And when you listen to it and start following it when it's first as a whisper, it's beautiful. If you don't, then you're going to get knuckles on your door. If you don't open the door, it's going to be a hammer. m Who is going to just like put your door down? You're meant to go through this. So I would suggest follow your whispers, not the knockdowns. Great advice, Alina. For people who need your help and they're ready, they're ready to take this step and have some new work with them one-on-one and a higher level that you offer, how can they connect with Yeah. So I have, I work with women one-on-one and when I work with one-on-one, of course it's a very intimate kind of relationship and it's very deep work that we can do together because not only that I'm a coach, I'm also an energy healer. So I do a lot of work on various levels of who you are, working with your morphogenetic field, but also working with your mindset, with your body. It can make a very complicated spiritual concept, very grounded because I, when I went into the spiritual journey, I was always asking the question like, so what, how does it change my life? Because I'm a mom of two, I'm a wife, I live in New York City. I want tools that can make spirituality practical because none of us are leaving this place and going to sit in Himalayas in the mountains or in the cave somewhere. We have to bring spirituality here and embody this here, right? So when I work one-on-one, I can meet you wherever you are and take you wherever you want to go to, right? Also for women that are not feeling yet that they're ready for one-on-one work or can invest in that yet, I have a community that I opened on school called Awakened Woman Academy, where I share a lot of free resources, master classes, practices, meditations, guided tools, like all of the things. And we also have once a month, a live coaching call when I come in with a community and you can meet other like spirited women, you can ask me questions. You can get guidance and that's free. Right now it's free. Maybe at some point I will turn this into be a monthly membership. paid membership right now. You can join for free and get a feel of who I am, how I work and also my, my like the real work that I do, the meditations, the practices, somatic embodiment things, like all of the, all of the tools that helped me on my journey to go from Wall Street to where I am now in my feminine energy. Yeah. And also on Instagram, I share a lot of things. My, my handle is Elena Visionary. famous on my YouTube. So I'm omnipresent all the platforms just because I want people, we need more women to awaken heal. Where we're going in the next five years, this world's going to be, we're not going to recognize this world in five years. If we think 20 to 25 was a big changes from what happened with that COVID, another five years is going to be as major. There are going to be a lot of things happening and you need to know and be in alignment with who you are and have the tools on how you can process. all the stress and chaos of this world and not have fears of the unknown. Know like in conviction of who you are and feel safe as a woman in this world. Great point, because for those of us who are really tapped in, I don't know about you, but this past year I could feel many things shifting and I can feel this enormous shift has taken place. Like you said, we're not done. It is going to turn itself on its head in the next few years. And time in itself has moved so much quicker than I feel like it ever has. I don't know what it is. I don't know what's happening in the universe, but I can feel it speeding up. Time is definitely speeding up. mean, I Shuman residence, the vibration of the planet has risen up. Like there are a lot of things happening in a ethereal, unseen world that we don't even know that because there's a spiritual war going on. And we just try to figure out how to like live on earth and what to do. But there's a lot of changes that have been happening. I mean, this year, 2025 in the neurology, it's a year of nine, which means the year of endings, completion, closing of karmic cycles. And it's also a year in a Chinese lunar calendar. It's a year of snake. So it was a lot, a year of like a lot of shedding and letting go of those old identities. I have known so many people, like all my clients, myself included. This year I was going through another layer of my healing, awakening, shedding, coming into this new version of who I am. And I think next year we can have this momentum. It's a year of one in numerology. It's a year of horse. Like really feeling this more like a fire energy to like, my God, we need to, we need to change this world. We need to change ourselves because who we used to be. We can't take this version next to where we want to go. I just made a video that'll be going up on my YouTube channel today. It's the new year, new reset. You know, I think it's the people think they have to bring in a new you. Um, I think it's okay to not think in the way of like, I need a new me. It's about just a new reset of you and then you're here. I love this. That's a great one. It's not that it's a new you. You that old version of you that got you to where you are. Take her with you, but transform her and take the don't put her away in the shadows, but like transform her and say, girl, thank you for getting me to where we are now through a survival strategy for lot of us. Right. Where we're going next, we need a different, different skill set, different faculties be activated within us. our intuition, our magnetism, our inner knowing, like all of the other things as a feminine energy woman. And then we're going to go into that next phase in fully, wholly who we are, not fragmented, but in wholly who we are. And this is what makes women very, powerful. Thank you so much, Elena, for being here today and for talking with me and the audience. I am going to make sure that we have all the information for how to connect with you and our description. Thank you so much. It was so great to be here with you. Thank you. Thank you for everyone listening in to MediaRebel Unplugged today. If this episode helped you or made you think differently, please share it with someone who would appreciate it. Hit subscribe so you don't miss what's coming next, and I'll see you next time.