Waldo therapist turns to Mindfulness and Energy Healing Practices for clients
Fit & Fab: Olufemi Sharp
WALDO THERAPIST TURNS TO MINDFULNESS AND ENERGY HEALING PRACTICES FOR CLIENTS
“If we can elevate our emotions, we can begin to create a phenomenal, amazing life.”
By Ben McCarthy
Just a few years ago, Olufemi Sharp was reduced to delivering mental health therapy to clients strictly by telehealth visits. The pandemic had changed medicine and how counseling could be delivered, and Sharp struggled to reach her clients effectively.
“The COVID experience put me through a lot of the same emotions as my clients,” Sharp says. “Connection is everything for us as humans, and when that was taken away, I had to figure out a way to regulate my own emotions–the same I was asking of my clients.”
Sharp, a licensed therapist and counselor for over 30 years, is back to shaking hands and giving hugs to clients at her office, The Power Path, at 8301 State Line Road. Now with the pandemic behind and people more comfortable in group settings, she wants to offer something new. Beginning June 25 she’ll be starting small group workshops for the first time.
“I want to reach a different group of people I don’t usually work with to introduce concepts of healing,” Sharp says. “These workshops are a new concept for me, too, one that I hope is as much educational as it is interactive for everyone who comes.”
Participants will sign a confidentiality agreement before joining a free, three-hour session that Sharp hopes to offer every six to eight weeks. She’ll be encouraging participants to be “tuned up, tapped in and turned on.” It’s a motto she uses in her practice of mindfulness therapy to help people recharge their brain and body.
“The healing work I do with The Power Path allows people to regulate their emotions and energy,” Sharp says. “If we can elevate our emotions, we can begin to create a phenomenal, amazing life.”
Olufemi Sharp
During her busy schedule this summer, when she’s not seeing clients six days a week (or spending time with her 2-year-old grandchild), she’ll try to continue to travel and further her mindfulness training that began over 20 years ago.
“I started traveling in 2000, studying indigenous cultures and understanding how to apply ‘mindfulness’ to traditional cognitive therapy,” Sharp says. “I try to infuse it throughout my practice here.”
A longtime south KC resident, she’s been all over the world, from Thailand and China to Italy and Africa, including Ghana. These travels started largely in response to a devastating chapter in her life: losing her daughter in 2000.
Sharp knew she had to find a way to heal herself first in order to help others overcome trauma, grief and related issues preventing them from becoming the best version of themselves. During her second big trip, to Ghana, she began to learn the energy healing practices that she now couples with her mindfulness-based therapy back home.
Last month she traveled back to California for a seminar with Dr. Bessel van der Kolk, a famous trauma expert and author of “The Body Keeps the Score,” a book that argues the body stores various kinds of traumas in the brain, mind, muscles and cells. It’s our responsibility to find ways to “shed it.”
Sharp echoes Dr. van der Kolk’s views about stored emotions. “The issues are in the tissues,” she says.
“The work I do as an energy healer is to help people find ways of shedding those emotions in order to restore and align their body, mind and spirit.”
Her energy healing and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy aims to reduce stress and anxiety, manage pain, alleviate depression, and help people embrace the freedom to respond to situations by choice. Her clients include singles, couples who have been married for decades, and LGBTQIA teenagers struggling with loneliness.
“Giving people coping skills or tools is so important,” Sharp says. “The treatment helps them leave feeling empowered that they have all of these things in their ‘box’ to begin inner healing and dreaming.”
“Most people don’t dream anymore. We have to open them back up to that again. That’s the magic in life.”
Name: Olufemi Sharp
Age: 62
Occupation: Licensed therapist, mindfulness coach, sage energy healer
Education: Bachelor’s in Psychology at Park University, Master’s in Counseling from Webster University, plus training in West Africa, Thailand, Ghana, China, and Italy
Motto: “Tuned up, tapped in, turned on.”
Fitness Start: I started this focus about 30 years ago on one of my first trips to Africa. The African drumming, dancing, and rituals that connected me to the spirit really opened my mind and showed how energy, emotion, and trauma can get stored in the body.
Fitness Advice: Fitness is more than just your physical fitness; it’s about whole-body healing and being in alignment with your true self. You’ve got to move, and you’ve got to breathe to get your body right and let go of pent-up trauma.
Top Tips: Start your day early with positive affirming words followed by a few minutes of meditation, then spend a few minutes doing some physical movement. Commit to doing all three every morning, five days a week, and you’ll find it transformative.
Nutrition: Hydration is key — I drink about 70 oz. of water a day, even though it’s hard sometimes. Seek out fresh fruits, fresh vegetables, fresh herbs, fresh everything.
Motivation: You can’t wait for motivation. I tell people to take that out of their vocabulary. You can’t wait for something outside of yourself to motivate you. You have to tap into your inner knowing, don’t overthink it, and be committed to baby steps. It’s like that old Nike commercial: Just do it.
Social Media:
Instagram: @olufemisharp
Website: olufemis-counseling.com
Best Physical Tip: You’ve got to move every day. It can be African dancing, hip-hop, Tai Chi, yoga, hopping on the treadmill, or taking gratitude walks. I’ve incorporated an Eastern technique called EFT, or tapping, that’s helped me with sinus pressure and sciatica. It’s all about mixing it up so you don’t get bored.
Best Mental Tip: Learn to work with the patterns of your mind. We process over 70,000 thoughts a day, and you have to write them down and look for the thought streams and familiar feelings blocking you from doing what you want and need to do for yourself.
Best Spiritual Tip: Mindfulness and meditation are essential. You need to embody an attitude of gratitude no matter what is going on. Resolve in yourself that you’re going to tower over your circumstances, and you’ll find that things slide off you like Teflon when they used to stick to you like Velcro.