Welcome to Your Healing Journey
Who I Am
Everyone’s healing journey is unique, beautiful and often times messy, especially in the beginning. And often times messier is the life that led to our healing journey.
Andrew Aponick, like so many of us on this path, was raised in an often times chaotic household where addiction and abuse played out in its various forms. Not being a stranger to trauma, Andrew developed an extreme addiction to opioids while abusing most other drugs. For nearly 15 years Andrew was a slave to drug addiction.
Although an expert on human physiology and biobehavioral sciences, having earned a masters degree from Columbia University’s Teacher’s College, as well as a strength and conditioning coach and personal trainer, deep down inside, beneath the seemingly healthy surface, Andrew suffered greatly. Exercise and bodybuilding was one of his many addictions, which led him to a career fitness modeling, acting, and eventually the music business. Working on both sides of the camera in Hollywood is a place where drug abuse and addiction run rampant. A place where, incidentally, many trauma survivors are drawn.
Andrew eventually hit rock bottom and found himself bankrupt and in a prison cell at the age of 33. It is from there that he decided to begin his healing and sobriety journey and to live in service to others as an activist and journalist, eventually running a nonprofit, Solutions Institute. Like most of those who have struggled with addiction, Andrew wasn’t quite ready to surrender, as his new life in service eventually became another addiction which eventually led to a full blown drug and alcohol relapse. And that’s because he was “white-knuckling” his recovery, not yet willing to ask for help and truly surrender to the process of inner work.
It wasn’t until Andrew hit another rock bottom of homelessness and began to not just study trauma and psychospirituality, but finally embody the healing methods he had been studying, that he began to truly heal. Such healing methods have included sitting with plant medicine, shadow work, somatic therapy, internal family systems therapy (IFS), qigong, 12-step meetings, working with a 12-step sponsor, and getting back in touch with nature and with the divine within him
Having overcome addiction in its many forms, homelessness, bankruptcy, jail, prison, childhood trauma, chronic illness and having bared witnessed to trauma while working with and giving aide to survivors of natural disasters and victims of man-made government crises, Andrew decided it was finally time to give back and to teach others how to become their own healers, which is really what the journey is all about.
Having said all that, WHOLEistic Coaching is Andrew Aponick’s approach to health and healing.
As a Trauma Recovery Coach trained in Internal Family Systems therapy (IFS) and somatic therapy, as well as an Applied Physiologist with a 23-year background in health, wellness and exercise physiology, Andrew helps his clients to develop a health, wellness and spiritual discipline that brings out the healer within. It is through our own innate ability to heal that we are able to uncover the blocks within us that prevent us from optimal health, happiness, wholeness and a spiritual connection.
Andrew firmly believes that a WHOLEistic approach of mind, body and spirit is key to becoming our truest, healthiest and most integrated authentic self.
My Services
Book a discovery call with Andrew to see if his WHOLEistic Coaching services are a fit for you.
WHOLEistic Coaching Sessions
1 Session - $125/hr.
5 Sessions - $100/hr.
10 Sessions - $90/hr.
Andrew’s individualized coaching sessions utilize a psychospiritual mind - body - spirit approach. Andrew will help you to develop a health, wellness and spiritual discipline to identify the emotional blocks that prevent you from living your most authentic self. Through shadow work, Internal Family Systems Therapy, psychedelic assisted therapy, somatic approaches, and an understanding of trauma, Andrew will help you to discover the healer within you.
Excavating The Authentic Self Workshop
Excavating the Authentic Self through Shadow Work is a 6-week intensive online workshop that guides students onto the path of aligning with their authentic self through the practice of shadow work. Making the unconscious conscious is the art of discovering both our blocks and our powers that we’ve suppressed over the course of our life.
During this time of upheaval, chaos, uncertainty, and ultimately transition, it is important that we feel supported, understood and witnessed without judgment or shame.
Unfortunately, men have been taught to betray themselves and to abandon their needs and emotions. And that’s not to say that women don’t suffer like this, but our culture has literally conditioned men to feel as though asking for help and support and feeling our emotions make us weak.
The truth, of course, is that men become stronger and evolve more when they learn to do these types of things. I can’t begin to tell you how important it was for my healing and sobriety to finally ask for help and support, and to have people who get me, who I know I could reach out to and/or see regularly in a group setting, whether online or in-person.
These days men are lacking brotherhood, and a healthy masculine ritual initiation process. The closest things we have are often very shadow-driven, and in some cases traumatizing and humiliating, things like the basic training of the military, fraternities, and even some high school sports experiences. None of these experiences truly help men to learn about the deepest aspects of their manhood and the human experience, nor do they foster any sort of emotional intelligence, emotional literacy or emotional regulation, all of which form the ultimate compass that guides all human life.
Without the acknowledgement and understanding of our emotions, as well as the willingness and capacity to feel and experience these emotions, we are missing out on what makes us human. We are missing out on what is really the basis of higher divine guidance. Truth, and the emotions and triggers that come with facing it, are invaluable to our existence. And having a place where we can learn to be our vulnerable raw self is invaluable to our healing.
The ultimate bridge to our soul is through our heart and emotions and the truth that comes with it. As it is said, the body keeps the score--which is where we store our emotions--and Men have been cut off from this for far too long.
Of course, the intellect, the left-brain, and the logic, linearity and analysis of the frontal cortex is a crucial part of our existence. We cannot navigate this 3D reality as humans without it.
The goal in anyone’s healing and evolution, man or woman, isn’t to deny this aspect of us—aka KILL THE EGO—but to bring it back into balance with our right-brained emotional and creative way of being.
Having said all that, I have created WHOLEistic Brotherhood.
It is a place to help men feel supported, understood, to feel comfortable being themselves, and to realize we are not alone, regardless of what we’re struggling with or need help understanding, be it relationships issues, addictions, depression, anxiety, chronic illness, ways of healing, or the chaotic world around us and what is actually going on.
My goal for the group is to also begin to introduce men to the varied process of healing, what it entails, how it works, and to also foster connection beyond the confines of the social media space. I would also love more than anything for men to be able to show up for one another outside of this group and outside of social media and to feel supported. This group will also have a forum for men to connect outside of the calls.
And to be clear, this is also a space to inspire, to celebrate one another, to share our wins, our knowledge, to learn from one another, to connect, and to lead by example as we all come to the table with different experiences. It is also a place to unite through the many ways in which we fail to realize how similar we are. Sometimes we feel all alone not realizing that there are many out there like us.
So Men, if you are interested in connecting with other men who are also on this awakening - healing journey, men who are also trying to make sense of the world and life in general, then it would be an honor to have and support you.
This group, for now, will meet every other Thursday at 5:00 PM PST - 8:00 EST beginning February 19th.
Although donations are accepted and greatly appreciated, this group is free of charge.
Also, anyone who attends is eligible for a 10% discount on single sessions and/or multiple session packages with me.
If you are interested in joining please fill out the submission form below or email me. WHOLEisticCoaching@gmail.com
If you we called to donate, here are the ways you can contribute:
Venmo : @Andrew-Aponick
CashApp: $Aponick427
PayPal: andrewaponick1@gmail.com
If look forward to connecting with you all, my fellow brothers who have decided to embark on this difficult but amazing and beautiful journey!
Contact Me
Want to collaborate? Just share a few details, and we'll be in touch soon. We're excited to connect with you!
WHOLEisticCoaching@gmail.com
