Choosing an Authentic Life: Yoga, Reiki, Travel and Spiritual Awakening With Katie Sterbens
There is something quietly courageous about Katie. Her courage is not loud or dramatic. It lives in her willingness to listen—to her body, her intuition, and the inner voice telling her there was more to life than the one she was expected to live.
Katie’s journey began in New York, where she studied fashion merchandising and entered the corporate world. From the outside, it looked like the path she had chosen. Yet the reality felt empty: sitting behind a desk, completing work that offered little creativity, movement or meaningful human connection. She was not simply dissatisfied with a job; she was beginning to recognise that the life she had imagined for herself no longer reflected who she was becoming.
Yoga opened the first door. What began as physical movement gradually became a way of listening inward. Through yoga, meditation, breathwork, therapy and Reiki, Katie discovered that the body could reveal what words had not yet expressed. Her spiritual life didn't arrive in one sudden moment of certainty. It grew through curiosity—one experience leading to another, one revelation opening the way to the next.
That curiosity eventually carried her beyond everything familiar. She trained as a yoga teacher in Peru, deepened her practice in India, became a Reiki Master, explored the Akashic Records and followed opportunities through Hawaii, Bali and New Zealand. Each place offered more than travel. It became part of her unfolding—a chance to discover how she wanted to live and who she was, no longer confined by expectations.
New Zealand held a particularly meaningful place in Katie’s journey. Coming from the intensity and work-driven culture of New York, she found a different rhythm of life: one where nature, wellbeing, dance, spirituality and community could exist naturally alongside everyday living. It showed her that life didn't need to revolve around work, productivity, or waiting for the weekend. There were other ways to live.
Choosing that life, however, came with a cost. Katie’s family did not always understand her commitment to yoga, spirituality and travel. To them, her decisions could appear impractical or even irresponsible. She faced criticism from people whose support mattered to her and learned that loving others did not require her to surrender her own path.
This may be the deepest essence of Katie: she is learning to trust herself without needing everyone else to agree.
Her journey has not been effortless. It has included burnout, illness, loneliness, uncertainty, failed plans, tears and difficult choices. Yet she does not treat failure as proof that she chose wrongly. She sees it as part of fully participating in life. Even when an experience was imperfect, she was there. She tried, learned, met people and discovered something about herself that remaining safely within the expected life could never have taught her.
Katie’s work with yoga, Reiki and the Akashic Records reflects this same intention. She does not speak of guidance as something that replaces a person’s inner knowing. For her, it leads people back to what their soul may already recognise but has not yet been able to name. Her gift is creating a grounded space where people can become quiet enough to hear themselves.
I experienced this quality in Katie long before our podcast conversation. During one of the most difficult transitions of my life, her yoga classes became part of the small space in which I felt safe. She began classes with words that seemed to reach something within me that I could not yet explain. Her presence brought people back into the room and back into themselves. By the end of her classes, I often felt grounded—not simply because of the movements, but because of the energy and care she brought to them.
Katie may not have known what I was carrying then. That is precisely what makes her presence meaningful. She did not need to know my entire story to offer a space where I could breathe, feel, and begin returning to myself.
Beneath all the spiritual practices, travel and adventure, Katie’s story is ultimately about self-acceptance. It is about accepting that her life may not look traditional, that not everyone may understand her beliefs, and that her path does not need to follow a straight line to be meaningful.
She is still becoming. She does not pretend to know exactly where she will live, teach or go next. But she has learned that uncertainty does not mean she is lost. Sometimes the path becomes visible only after we begin walking.
If Katie could speak to her younger self, she would not ask her to rewrite the journey. She would tell her to keep going—to keep trying, keep failing, relax more and have fun along the way.
That message captures Katie beautifully. She once read about distant worlds and imagined a different life. Now she is living those adventures, allowing each chapter to open the next. Her life reminds us that authenticity is not found by waiting until every doubt disappears. It is found when the voice within becomes too clear to ignore—and we finally permit ourselves to follow it.
Full Podcast: Choosing an Authentic Life: Yoga, Reiki, Travel and Spiritual Awakening With Katie Sterbens
