Becoming clean and sober not only allowed Peggy McBryan to reclaim herself, but it has proven to be a powerful tool to help her heal others.
Following eight years of addiction, in 1980 McBryan became clean and sober, which she notes: “required a great deal of healing past traumas.”
But the year of sobriety also became the starting block in her journey to help others heal - which she has turned into a career.
McBryan is an entrepreneur, holistic healer, counselor and teacher from Salmon Arm, helping members of her community heal through her business: Peggy’s Touching Soul Healing Arts.
During her life, McBryan has faced her own traumatic experiences, but has: “been able to find the healing necessary to bring back spirit and power.”
It wasn’t easy, but even in her first year of sobriety she began helping others heal - working with cancer patients and their families.
In 1981, McBryan began studying addiction counseling at college, and spent five years helping others struggling with addiction.
“Through a series of serendipitous events in 1987, I started on an amazing journey of holistic healing, learning to help others,” said McBryan.
Over the years, her journey has included many certification courses enabling her to help others along their journey: massage therapist, Theta healing, Reiki, RESET, past life regression, soul retrieval, channeling, hypnotherapy, counseling, angel healing and angel card reading. In fact, McBryan is one of only 16 certified instructors for RESET in Canada, plus she has approximately 5,000 hours of training and 25-plus years of experience in holistic health and soul retrieval, among others.
But it was through a local program that she was guided to combine her experience with learning more about how to effectively promote and fund her business.
McBryan is one of 14 recent graduates from the Lakes Division Aboriginal Canadian Entrepreneurs (ACE) program. This is where qualifying aboriginals have gained business skills thanks to a partnership between the University of Victoria’s Peter B Gustavson School of Business, the Lakes division bands, and the local ASETS partner.
“It’s highly recommended by friends [and] has an excellent reputation,” said McBryan, who learned website creation, excel bookkeeping, legal issues, insurance concerns and her favourite part, Internet promotion.
Taking what she’s learned, McBryan is focused on creating a consistent income stream, while providing her services and expertise to help as many people as she can improve their life and relationships with themselves and others.
“It is a spiritual illness that causes emotional and physical disease,” she explains, as it can result from traumatic events experienced in one’s life which leave our soul fragmented and scattered. “These and many more experiences are the situations that cause a part of our soul to splinter, they differ from person to person, experience to experience.
“As a result of these experiences, we give away much of our power, and many experience a variety of issues, addiction, disassociation, dysfunction, body pain or disease.”
McBryan founded Peggy’s Touching Soul Healing Arts to help members of her community reintegrate their soul fragments and claim back their power.
“We need to heal our traumas in order to move forward in our life in a truly healthy way.”