Episode Conversation
Our guest is Stephanie Keenan Re. Stephanie is a holistic healer and essential oil educator. Stephanie empowers her clients to improve their health and wellness with natural solutions. Her interest in holistic healing began in her childhood when she taught herself reflexology to help her family. Since then, she has dedicated herself to learning about alternative therapies which she now incorporates in her practice. She is passionate about sharing her knowledge to help others feel confident and embrace their natural beauty. Welcome to the show, Stephanie. A pleasure having you here.
Thank you so much for having me. It’s great.
I love having people in the healthcare space and wellness. I talk to people on the show to give jewels and advice about their experience. Stephanie, tell us about your beginnings. What brought you into this holistic life?
Early Introduction To Holistic Healing
I started at a rather young age. I was in about sixth grade when my mom and I got into a car accident. A couple months later, my mom’s shoulder froze. She eventually went to see a chiropractor and they brought me too and turned out I had some slipped discs in my neck and lower back. Seeing my mom whose shoulder was frozen, she had slipped discs and all these things going on and couldn’t even reach up to move clothes as a retail person. Seeing her heel with Chiropractic and PT was completely amazing to me, especially where we had gone to the hospital after the accident. They’re like, “You’re fine.”
I said to myself, “How would the pain for me manifested?” When we went to the chiropractor, I didn’t have pain but you could see on the X-rays, I had slipped discs. I was fascinated by it and luckily my chiropractor was an amazing man. He could see that I was very in tune with my body and interested in what he was doing. Basically, in sixth grade I was like, “I’m going to run off to chiropractic school.” I wanted to go like then but I can’t do that.
Somehow, I don’t even know how I got my hands on this but someone got me a reflexology book and I learned about reflexology. I sat there reading it and I would practice on my family’s feet, especially my dad’s because he would get kidney stones. I started like helping him pass kidney stones faster and easier with less pain and they went faster. He was like, “This is amazing.” There was that reward of like I’m helping somebody feel better and it’s from massaging his feet. That’s so cool.
I just kept learning things and studying different modalities. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it. I ran off to regular college thinking I was going to be a chiropractor and organic chemistry had something to say about that. It’s been a journey and for the longest time, I called myself the Renaissance woman because I felt like I was learning all these things and I knew a lot of things but I didn’t know how to put them together.
In my late twenties, I became an esthetician and I did that as the economy tanked, so again, journey. A couple of years before COVID, I started educating on essential oils and I had been using them for many years by the time I aligned with doTERRA. It was funny. I was very judgy. I was like, “Those are just expensive oils,” then I learned about how the quality is so different and the science behind them and everything. I was like, “Okay.”
I did some research on what I was using because I was like, “I’ve got therapeutic grade oils. I know what I’m doing.” Once I decided to align with them, I was blown away by their background, their science, and how they keep it as pure as possible and how different the rest of the industry can be. I started educating on oils. That was how I came back to skincare. I had always kept my hand in it with my family and friends but as I got comfortable, I started talking about using the oils for our wellness but also for our skin.
My friends were like, “You need to get back into an aesthetics room.” I said, “Going back to commission-based work when you have a family and stuff? I don’t know about that.” When COVID hit, I got furloughed from my desk job and literally three weeks later, this salon that I had done a vendor fair at and I had said to them nonchalantly months early, “If you ever need an aesthetician, I have no idea how I’ll do it but let me know.” They were hiring back after having closed down those first few months.
It was like fate and I took the leap and got back into an aesthetics room. Finally, all the things that I was doing came together. Also, right before COVID hit, I was going to teach a class where I was going to do a facial and teach people how to make their own products and everything. I ended up taking that online because of COVID. That eventually became my coaching practice where I coach people. The focus is skin health but it’s that whole inside out piece of holistic care of you’ve got to take care of the stress, your gut and all the other things that play a role in what eventually comes out on our skin. It was a journey but many years later, it all came together.
It's so important you mentioned that especially the holistic healer that it was a journey and you did have to do your homework to find out the best quality type of oils and what makes sense. Even doing your homework to find out what’s in what we put on our face and our skin. How can you help the person who’s now starting to get into essential oils? Can you pinpoint what are the best brands or the best type of things to look for?
I’m biased. I’m going to say doTERRA is the best but it is one of the best. It’s one of the purest out there. There was a study where this third-party lab tested like ten different brands. They tested like lavender and tea tree or something and one other oil of each brand. Over the ten brands, only three passed for being completely pure and doTERRA was one of them. The other two brands, I’ve honestly never heard of.
The Importance Of Purity & Third-Party Testing In Essential Oils
The thing is, where it’s not a regulated industry, oils can say that they’re 100% pure and be up to like 80%. They can be completely synthetic. About 80% of the oils on the marketplace are synthetic, which means that their lab created. They’re not natural at all and their chemicals which can technically make you sick. They’re doing the reverse of what you think they’re supposed to be doing.
About 80% of the oils on the market are synthetic, meaning they’re lab-created. They’re not natural at all and contain chemicals that can actually make you sick—doing the opposite of what you expect them to do.
Knowing that, it’s not regulated like some of our foods and other products are. Even like olive oil, it’s like I have some trouble figuring out which ones are the best and the purest.
Exactly, because now there’s that. With doTERRA, they have a third-party lab test their oils before they even purchased them from the growers or distillers. They put on the bottom of bottle, will be a number and you can go to a specific website and see those third-party results. If they say that they test but they don’t publish the results. That’s the biggest thing. It doesn’t have to be doTERRA but make sure it’s third-party tested, it’s pure and you can see the results, whether you can understand them or not. It’s a different story because it’s written in science lingo.
It's so helpful. As a holistic esthetician, how do you blend natural solutions with skincare to help your clients embrace their natural beauty?
Blending Natural Solutions With Skincare For Inner & Outer Beauty
One of the biggest things is helping with the mindset of accepting that you’re beautiful. I think everyone is beautiful in their own and they just need to embrace that. There’s such a cultural thing to look at ourselves and knock ourselves down and say, “This is wrong with me. This is wrong with me and it needs to be fixed or whatever.” You might have some acne or irritation in your skin or whatever. That is a flaw that we can fix but they start at that internal element. Also, when it comes to the holistic end of it, aging gracefully, we want to look at the inside out.
We want to make sure we’re taking best care of ourselves. We’re getting the right vitamins that we need in nutrients for our skin, our bones, our muscles, and everything. We want to make sure we’re managing stress. If you think about the things that make us age faster. There are those people that there are 45 and they look 25, then there’s the people that are 45 that look 60. There’s a lot of lifestyle things that play a role. If you’re a smoker or you drink heavily, those play a role but so does stress. Stress is one of the biggest ones. If you’re not sleeping well, your body has no time to repair itself and get better.
It’s going to come out on your skin eventually and you’re going to age faster with all of that. The chemicals in our environment plays a huge role. Naturally slowly going through all the different elements of our life and trying to approach it from the most natural way and holistic way of caring for ourselves. I find it empowers people to have that knowledge and know like, “What am I using on my skin? What am I using in my body? What are the ingredients that I’m taking in? How does that affect me?” You can make conscious decisions.
In our household, we’ve gone pretty darn natural over the past 12 years to 15 years but my husband still loves Dawn Dish soap and his Pantene Pro-V. I’m not going to tell him he can’t use those shampoo. In my mindset, I say, “It’s his. He can use it.” As far as the Dawn Dish soaps is concerned, I’m like, we technically used two different dish soaps but the Dawn is for when there’s a hard mess. We have brought our toxicity level of what we’re using down so much that I can’t complain. I say, “We’re doing 1,000 times better than what we were many years ago.” You have to pick and choose your battles and be realistic about it. You can’t go headstrong and change everything instantly. You’ll probably fall off that bandwagon. It’s a process.
Little by little to help make it a part of your lifestyle because that’s what it is. I love the way you talk about self and the form of teaching us to help take care of ourselves and with our mantra or with our whole life. That’s it. A little bit of acne here and there. If we don’t love ourselves and start taking care ourselves. It’s difficult to walk through this world and take care of others.
Implementing "Mini Rituals" For Sustainable Self-Care
As women, we tend to be the caregivers. The ones who over extend ourselves all the time. If we don’t take a little bit of time for ourselves, we’re going to have that empty cup and it’s not going to work eventually. For me, especially focusing on people that are around our age group. I have been talking about coming up with mini rituals like little short things you can do to shift your energy, your health, and take care of your skin or your internal stress levels.
Finding these many rituals that are easy. It doesn’t have to be an hour of meditation and some journaling and the litany of things people tell you you need to do when you have kids, a job and a house to take care of and maybe even parents to take care of. It’s like, how are you supposed to do all of this? Find the little ways to add it in and know that you’re caring for yourself, even if it’s like little micro doses of caring.
That’s a big one. Many of us are just so busy but giving ourselves the leeway and the understanding that a little bit does count. You don’t have to stand at your morning doing the thing, it is for your self-care, feel whole.
That’s one of those things where I find the essential oils play a role because when you inhale an essential oil, it immediately goes into our limbic system, which controls our emotions, our heart rate, our blood pressure, our hormones, and all sorts of different things. Let’s say you inhale some lavender. You’re going to immediately start to feel that relaxation in your body. Your heart rate slows down. You feel calmer and the stresses goes out the window.
A lot of my moisturizers are just, let’s say olive oil and some essential oils because olive oil is wonderful for this skin and some essential oils. Some of them are so great for skin. Even if it was lavender and some olive oil like rubbing my hands and taking a few minutes to smell it as I’m putting it on my skin and being grateful for these oils, for those couple seconds to care for myself for two seconds and you’re done. It has a huge effect that you feel physically, mentally, and emotionally. It’s amazing.
These oils take just a few seconds to apply, but their physical, mental, and emotional impact is profound. It’s amazing.
I can’t remember who recommended that to me but I’ve been incorporating that. It feels so good. It’s been such a helpful tip.
It’s a game-changer. People are also blown away that I love to give those simple solutions. As an esthetician, people expect me to be selling some line of product. For me, it’s more about coming up with what’s going to work best for you. A lot of times, I’m like, “If you have some essential oils and a couple little things in your house, you can make amazing masks and blends for your skin. You could take care of yourself and your family.” It’s incredible. I’d love to either teach people or if they’re not the do-it-yourself people, I’ll be like, “I can make a blend for you.”
It's easy and cost-effective. Stephanie, can you share a success story where your holistic therapies have made a significant difference and impact in someone’s health or their confidence?
One of my favorite stories is my good friend. She had probably one of the most intense eczema outbreaks I’ve ever seen. It started when her hairdresser changed the line of hair color product that she was using. She did her hair and the eczema started on the back of her scalp then it proceeded to go all over her scalp but then it went on to her neck and her whole face. It was like thick, irritated and angry and just intense.
She came to me and said, “I need your help.” We were doing like at least a monthly facial and then I would give her certain products to deal with it at home. Her goal when she came to me at first was, “I want to be able to leave the house without makeup on. I know what’s going to take a long time, but I feel so embarrassed by this. I also know when I put makeup over it, it doesn’t look good either and it doesn’t help it.” That was her goal. She was so self-conscious at the time, but we worked through it.,
It was a process, but the thing was, she got empowered knowing she was using these tools that was helping her skin. Before it was even 100% better, she was going out with that makeup because she had that confidence of, “I’m working on this. I’m getting it better.” She did have to get her gut health in check. She had to do a lot of different things and stress. She was a stress ball. A combination of some stress activities, dealing with her gut health, getting the facials, and using certain products consistently shifted so much and the confidence difference in her. Once we finally cleared it up, that was the most rewarding to finally heal it.
You or her who traced back that incidence of the start of the eczema from a hair color change from her hairdresser?
She figured it out because it was pretty much right after getting her hair dyed. Her scalp was just super itchy and irritated then it got worse and worse. She asked her hair stylist, “What did you do different?” She said, “I changed my color line.” She was just like, “Oh my gosh.” She went to somebody who used natural products, too. That was like a shock for her but she was like, “It’s insane.”
That is one thing. The more natural you go, the more sensitive your skin becomes, I swear to God, because you become sensitive to all the chemicals that are in everything else. That also played a little role but we did manage to figure it out. Honestly, she stopped dying her hair from that point, too. She also embraced her grays and what’s going on. I’d say she’s a completely different human at this point, which is cool.
The transformation especially with your health. Not even needing that dye anymore and not wanting it because I’m not going to get that caused me eczema, but I don’t.
She just was like, rather than searching out another way. She usually went with a red color. She could have used henna or something and she was like, “No, I’m not going to do it.” It was pretty cool.
What a beautiful story. You’re so passionate at helping others feel confident. What piece of advice would you give to someone struggling with their self-confidence and their parents?
Empowering Confidence Through Self-Discovery & External Support
It’s hard because there’s so many different things that play a role whatever formed that person to have that lack of trust in themselves and confidence in themselves. Sometimes, it’s more that somebody else sees that in them. Sees that they’re beautiful or they have a light and something beautiful to contribute to the world. I find that honestly making that saying to them like, “I see this in you.” That tends to be a very powerful thing.
Self-doubt is complex—shaped by many factors that erode trust and confidence. Sometimes, the most powerful thing you can do is simply say, 'I see your light, and it’s beautiful.'
They may not believe me, but then teaching them how to or ask it or encouraging them to care for themselves and take that time to get to know themselves and see who they truly are versus who they’ve been told they are. That’s the biggest thing. I was blessed to have parents that unwaveringly loved me and I was just born with that like I am who I am. I know I go to a different rhythm of the drum than everyone else and that’s okay. That whole comparison game was not a thing I fell for a long time. It hit me more after I had my child because you’re like, “I can’t lose the baby weight.” That was when it hit me and I was like, “Now, I get it.”
What’s new for you? Do you have any projects that you’re working on or anything that we can look forward to hearing more about Stephanie?
I am doing a lot of speaking in 2025 where I will be talking about the mini rituals, but the other big thing that I work on is, I have a show with Wendy Taddeucci called Smiling Souls and that’s all about helping women who are in the sandwich generation, so caretaking for their kids as well as maybe their parents or thinking about that and worrying about that. Helping them find tools, joy, and resources to make their life easier.
That’s one thing that I love. The other thing that I do is I run a creative network. The creative network is called Natural Beauties Arts and Ideas Creative Network. I couldn’t come up with a longer name. It’s all about letting people tap into their creativity to spark that joy, innovation, and happiness. It tends to roll over into our personal and our professional lives once we tap into that side of our brain. I want people who don’t even consider themselves creative to come and join us. We do a couple different things.
We do these Monday sessions where it’s the 2nd and 4th Monday of the month where we come together for an hour on zoom and everybody brings something to work on creative. If you don’t consider yourself creative, bring a coloring book and some markers or crayons. The rest of us, sometimes it’s watercolors. We’ve had a couple people that do other types of creative things like sewing or whatever. Everybody works on something creative for an hour to tap into that and we chitchat while we’re doing it and it’s fun.
Some days, we’re quiet like the week after the election. Everybody was very quiet and doing their art. Other weeks, we chitter chatter about all sorts of silliness but it’s interesting and fun. You never know what’s going to come out of the conversation. We have a once-a-month creative session that is more of a guided offer. For example, we’re going to be painting welcome signs and next, it’s going to be a pen and ink drawing class like a meditative drawing class. It’s going to be cool.
I called it the Arts and Ideas because I want to have an element that people can tap in and learn about things that are going to help them grow personally and professionally. I have a bunch of trainers who share on different topics. Each month, there’s probably two different trainers that will do a session that’s about their expertise. We have people who are business coaches, that are into computer stuff and marketing. We have self-care people and whatnot. It runs the gamut and there’s all sorts of different ways to be inspired. I love offering that for people so that they can grow and thrive.
That’s amazing. A great community. It’s another self-care things to do what you want to do, be creative and take time for what you like.
Once they went to the first one, they’re like, “I didn’t realize how much this is like a self-care hour of those Monday sessions, where you just get to play. For me, I find that afterwards, I’m just a happier person. When I go back to work, it’s like everything’s firing and things are getting done. When I’m with my family, I’m a better human. It gives me excuse to just be doing my art, so that makes me happy.
It’s such a pleasure to have you, Stephanie, and sharing those wonderful gems about how we can do simple things to take care of ourselves. Please go to her website for essential oil and recommendations. They are very good. I was on there. I’m going down that rabbit hole.
I’m so glad you loved it. Thank you so much for having me. It’s been a pleasure.
You’re welcome. If you’re looking for more episode and with Stephanie Keenan Re, please go to my website MobilityHealthPT.com.
