Teya Skae, M.A.
Nutritional Strategist & Emotional Freedom Coach
After decades of researching ‘health’ as a science combined with overcoming a gripping eating disorder, physical pain and bone-crushing chronic fatigue it made sense to put all this knowledge and experience into a cohesive system that I can use to help others. A system of biochemical balancing and behavioral change transformation.
What Major life event shaped your coaching expertise?
What other life experiences shaped you to be a coach?
I had to adapt to a new culture and because we were only allowed to take $US 475 with us out of Russia for the whole family, adapt to our new financial status – poverty. We left USSR not because we were starving but because my father risked his life to provide for us, and that was illegal back then. To earn more than what the government set as a standard wage by doing ‘black business’, you risked being found out and sent to gaol.
The communist disciplinarian school system produces outstanding scientists, writers, rebels and artists. Growing up with government-regulated, boring TV programs (without any advertisements) also helped. Maybe that is why we all played chess in our youth! This discipline helped me later in life when I had to make life changing decisions and navigate many crises.
What kind of a coach are you?
There are 2 basic types of coaches:
1. Cheerleaders, who cheer you on and are your number-one fan
2. Coaches, who get results and/or facilitate big transformations.
Ideally, you want a combination of both – and it is a rare combination. I chose to be more of leader/coach, as I love witnessing the results and transformation in all my coaching clients.
“The task of the leader is to get people from where they are to where they have not been before.” – Henry Kissinger
Is it only ‘bad’ experiences that make a good coach?
Absolutely not! All experiences can shape a good coach just as all experiences make us better people.
In Russia, I was a happy playful fat kid, a tad on the clumsy side, with robust health, energy and enthusiasm to have fun. I loved playing in the snow and swimming long distance over summers in the Black Sea.
When we came to Australia, I put on a lot more weight – thanks to all the TV commercials, as I had to have yogo in all flavours! While watching Australian summer cricket that went for days, I was nibbling on Arnott’s biscuits, one of the sponsors of cricket matches.
School was tough; I was bullied for being a big fat Russian wog and I buried myself in more TV and food, as seen on commercials. The boys did not want to dance with me during our final year 6 and I wore jumpers in Aussie summers (30 – 40 Celsius) to cover up and hide in the girls’ toilets to avoid being called a Fatso.
But that was not enough to get me to lose weight. It was my dad’s loving words that finally registered that something had to change! I was almost 13 when dad, in private, took hold of a chunk of fat on my flanks and said softly: “No one is going to love you if you don’t lose this weight”. Dad was the only member of my family who I listened to; he was my hero. So, overnight, I put myself on a diet. My whole brain was switched on to make that happen. That wonderful Ruskie discipline came in handy, for a while. I suppressed any hunger; from now on it was irrelevant. I became a dieting expert and tried every single diet that was ever published in Women’s Weekly magazine for the next 20 years.
Yes, I lost weight – and some of those morons who called me fatso were now ogling me on my way home from high school. Ah, sweet revenge!
I needed to be THIN to be liked
I did not realise my determination to be thin was killing me until I started fainting after sport and my parents were now forcing me to eat instead of hiding sweets (my favourite food group) from me. This anorexic phase developed into something even worse for the next twelve years of my struggle to be thin – Bulimia.
You see my problem was not bulimia; it was a limiting belief that I picked up from my dad: No one is going to love me if I am fat. Seemed reasonable. That belief took much longer to heal than the bulimia itself. In fact, bulimia was a symptom of disconnection from Self also known as dissociation and FEAR of rejection and being judged. Why? Because I judged myself harsher than anyone else. It was a strategy to protect myself from other people’s criticisms: If I am harder on myself, then I won’t be devastated if someone else is also hard on me with their own judgements.
The lost 12 years as a bulimic and chain smoker
During those 12 years, which went by in a blur, I lived a double life – which gave me a window into the human psyche.
I never really gave up on curing bulimia and saw a top psychiatrist for a number of years. I hated the visits and constantly wondered when I was going to have a breakthrough.
Definitely not with psychiatric help! My problem was not mental – it was EMOTIONAL. I learned years later that suppressed emotions and traumas lead to ‘mental’ conditions and addictive behaviours, such as anxiety/depression, overeating, smoking, drinking, overtraining, and perfectionist tendencies of needing to be in control. All of these stem from unresolved pain, stress, fear & trauma. The addiction serves to numb that pain, as a distraction – but only temporarily.
When I finally overcame the bulimia, I did it on my own – by studying nutrition and how nutrition affects our mind and our brain chemistry. WOW! That literally blew my mind. This continues to be helpful in my coaching today. I help people quit smoking in 1 – 3 sessions by working with their brain chemistry first before getting to their emotional triggers which cause them to want or need to smoke.
How DID You Overcome Bulimia?
At the height of my bulimia at age 26, I won runner-up Miss Australia.
I followed the nutritional guidelines in The Carbohydrates Addict Diet by the Heller’s. It saved me and I overcame bulimia within 30 days – with belief in myself and understanding that addictions were not ME; they were my symptoms. No one treated me like a human being with emotional stress; they treated me like a sick person with a mental label or disease.
After seven years of bulimia I started weight training to build up some muscle and, after couple of years of training, I was competing in figure and fitness competitions.
I met many personal trainers and bodybuilders – men and women who also had some form of eating disorder; I was in good company. We suffered guilt for eating that chocolate cake too close to a comp and we obsessed about fats and carbs. I now chuckle about those days; for me, it was about courage. If I can get up on a stage and prance around in a bikini for judges to scrutinise every single centimetre of my flesh, I can do anything. Fear is to be conquered. My fear of being judged was a motive and motivation to do crazy things. Some were fun.
Conquering my fear of heights: Just jump out of a plane and I did!
Conquering my fear of public speaking: start running courses and teaching – and I did!
Conquering my fear of failure (and, oh boy, did I fail!): True failure is “We fail when we fail to act on what we know is right.”
Did all your problems magically dissolve after overcoming Bulimia?
NO! They actually got worse. A year after I conquered bulimia, I was offered a place at University to study full time. Halfway through that year, I became very ill. This led me to a number of specialists, as I had multiple symptoms simultaneously.
The most obvious problem was my memory; I could not remember much of what I learned, which was a worry. Hair falling out in chunks, feeling cold, tired, anaemic, hiatal hernia and putting on weight, despite eating very little. I saw three different specialists; a haematologist said I had a rare blood disorder; a gastroenterologist wanted to do something with my oesophagus to stop the constant acid reflux; and a bowel specialist was happy to take out a bit of my bowel to help with constipation. I did so many crazy tests and nothing was helping.
I saw a very expensive integrative doctor, who injected me with synthetic B vitamins and ascorbic acid, which left me feeling good for about four hours. He also prescribed Prozac and I slept for three weeks, day and night. He said something was wrong with my pituitary but could not help further.
What was the last straw?
After the last visit to a haematologist, who took a sample of bone marrow from my lower spine, that pain woke me up from delusion and I realised I had to take matters into my own hands. I dedicated all my time and energy to finding solutions for me. Fortunately, I enjoyed learning and was already spending hours in the library doing research.
I promised myself than when I got through all this, I WILL DO A BETTER JOB helping people like me.
This has been my motto ever since. At first, it was fuelled by anger at the medical profession, for being not only useless but offering ‘solutions’ that could have left me a biological cripple. Secondly, becoming a coach utilised all my life’s experience and inspired me to look deeper into why we humans do what we do.
What saved me?
Among useless blood tests that only showed anaemia and falling blood count, I did a HAIR TISSUE MINERAL Analysis. That test SAVED me. It showed I had ‘off the charts’ mercury in my system, from amalgam fillings. (You don’t get away from 12 years of bulimia unscathed).
It also showed I had hypothyroidism, burnout, significant mineral deficiencies and other heavy metals.
After the removal of 6 amalgam fillings, I went to environmental medicine lab and spent three hours there chelating mercury. I walked out of that lab feeling AMAZING. I had clarity for the first time in years and felt like I could now heal. The poison that was destroying my brain and body has been oozed out of me. Yay!
This was the beginning of my 10,000 + hours study in Complementary and Functional Medicine – and set me on a healing journey that took me to many parts of the world.
But mostly it took me back to my authentic self – a happy robust kid, who just wanted to play – despite being chubby. I knew that I had to work with my whole brain, central nervous system, emotional responses and, mostly, how I perceived stress. My goal was to respond, not to over-react.
What other experiences shaped you to be Results focused?
As a relentless student for a couple of decades, I became my own guinea pig. I was intrigued with different nutritional philosophies, eastern philosophies, meditation, yoga, breath-work; you name it, I did it! It would be easier to list what I haven’t done 🙂 I found myself in a whole new paradigm shift – a New Age personal development milieu – for some ten years. As soon as I outgrew one group or tribe I found another to immerse my energy in until I realised no modality or spirituality was going to work for me! The only thing that would work for me, the missing piece of the puzzle, was Acceptance of what is and the way I am right now, not in the future.
What was the BIGGEST breakthrough?
The next challenge was how to accept myself? I have done so many things; some worked, some haven’t, but I still didn’t feel at ease in my own skin; there was still a constant yearning, searching, for what? Self- Acceptance! Coaching has helped me to gain more self-acceptance piece by piece, session by session. This became obvious to me when I was working in a clinic with people with various symptoms. There was no acceptance of their situation. When they reached complete Self-Acceptance in our session there was an “aha moment” and the transformation took place at that point which would continue on for weeks and months. The most powerful transformations can also be subtle.
I saw the same pattern in others, over and over. It wasn’t the problems themselves; it was non-acceptance of SELF for having those issues in the first place. “Issues” can be a debilitating health condition, a stressful relationship, a difficult child, and parents in aged care, financial betrayal and so on. Sound familiar? I will accept myself when I fix this. I will accept myself when it’s over. I will love and accept myself when I lose the weight because I can’t accept myself with this problem. This is where people get stuck. This is where I was stuck for a good 40 years of my life.
So what is that you do differently?
Firstly, I get to the root cause behind the symptoms FAST – and that is a promise I make and a pledge I keep. Even if people choose not to continue working with me to achieve full recovery, they will at the least know what root causes are underneath their ‘problems’.
What sacrifices did you make to become a coach?
One of my dreams was to study film and to make documentaries. I found myself at the New York Film Academy in Manhattan, making short docos and cutting/splicing 16mm black and white film in the editing suite. That was so cool! I was invited to be director of photography (2nd in charge) on other students’ film sets. This is how dreams are made in New York, as every second person is either making films or wants to be in one. I had to leave to go back home to Sydney and could not accept the gracious offer. Sacrifice!
During my time in New York, which was STRESSFUL in a good way, I was seeing a kinesiologist coach who literally re-patterned me every week. The first visit I walked from 10th West Street to her 92nd East Street apartment. I was too scared to take the metro and no one understood my Aussie English, anyway, to help me with directions. After that session, I caught my first metro and, by the end of six weeks, I knew Manhattan like the back of my hand.
What sacrifices did you make to become a coach?
Transformational sessions work with the right part of the brain to achieve lasting change. Most of my own problems were in my survival brain and emotional brain with outdated conditioned reactions. I was constantly in fight/flight/collapse only I didn’t know it. I thought it was normal to be hypervigilant. After these sessions, not only did I survive in New York but I thrived and had a lot of fun. The biggest reward was I got a standing ovation for my graduating short film and one of the leading gals got her video making career started using my short doco. We don’t succeed in isolation; we need other people to assist our dreams to come true. A good coach can and does become part of that dream.
As a result of my amazing boot camp transformation in NY City, I decided to become a Kinesiologist one day so I could help people, and help myself even further.
No Pain No Gain
In 2001–2003 I suffered a back injury that left me crippled with pain; I could not bend down to tie my shoelaces. I spent thousands of dollars on chiropractors, massage, acupuncture and nothing was helping. With very little money in my bank account, I had a desire to study full-time kinesiology at a government-accredited college. It was a hefty AU$16,500 course fee at the time. Fortunately, intentions manifest and the college offered me to work for them and barter the fees. I started the training modules lying on the floor as I could not sit due to the debilitating pain. At some point, I was eligible for free surgery. Once again, another wake-up call to remind me I would have to heal this the non- medical way. Pain is registered in the brain first via neural pathways and receptors before we feel it in the body. The pain is technically happening in the central nervous system (CNS). Even though my spine looked really bad with a bulging disc on MRI, I knew that healing was possible in my CNS. Only I had to work at a different level.
My back pain healed all on its own, after a major life change. Interesting I thought. I became financially independent from my own endeavours and I realised that was the reason I had the back pain in the first place. I was terrified, almost panicking, wondering if I could make money doing what I love. This pattern also created ‘adrenal fatigue’ or burnout.
One of the reasons I enrolled in 2-year full-time holistic kinesiology was because I also wanted to teach this empowering stuff.
“We end up teaching what we need to learn ourselves.”
After graduating, I taught one of my favourite subjects at the college for over three years – “Fears, Phobias and Addictions”. I had lots of experience and knowledge in this field.
It was here that I came across the power of coaching people as opposed to giving them ‘therapy’. I have never liked therapy; it can drag us down into a relentless need to fix and fix and never accept what IS until everything is FIXED. Coaching is different; it starts with the premise that the client, the person, has innate intelligence – I call it emotional intelligence (EI) – which they are not accessing. There are 7 types of intelligence and EI is the one we are all born with and can develop beyond limits.
Transition to Coach from Modalities
I decided to become a Results coach instead of a practitioner of too many modalities / shmodalities. Modalities don’t heal people. What heals is working with the whole person on all levels and reaching Self-Acceptance at the cellular level (4th Step A in I.D.E.A.L ™ Solutions) of what is – and that is what healed most of my issues, along with sophisticated application of biochemistry.
I love crazy sexy science but I know it has limitations. Working just on the physical, with the logical part of the brain, does not get the same results as working with the whole central nervous system – survival and emotional brain and Ego driven personality identity. This is an exciting terrain; this is where life-changing transformation lies, not in modalities.
I.D.E.A.L™ Solutions Coaching is beyond modalities. It utilises biochemical individuality as a foundation to build on and it accesses the part(s) of the brain where our conditioning, our limiting belief systems are creating and perpetuating our experience.
Can you re-pattern the MIND?
Yes. I have only one superpower: I read minds! I also feel what people feel from their unresolved past memories. These emotions if left unresolved, contribute to some serious health issues, relationship stress and other symptoms in the present.
Some people often joke and ask me what is that you do again? I say I do just about anything and everything to get results – but I don’t do cartwheels.
When I work with people, it is always on many levels, simultaneously, because stress happens on many levels at once. To help people, you have to get to the ROOT causes, otherwise, it will be nothing but long frustrating therapy.
I look forward to connecting with you on social media or on skype/zoom.
“Happiness is beyond getting, giving or seeking.
Happiness is your inherent state and everything else is just an experience.” Teya Skae
I’m Teya Skae and I’ve made it my mission to help people like you to gain more energy, stop restrictive deficient dieting, look and feel your Best and live a pain free life, even if you feel like you have tried everything.
The next step is to book a FREE 30-minute assessment with me
You don’t have to live your life on restrictive diets, exhausted, worried and in pain. There is another way. Let’s explore it together!