From Panic to Peace: Hypnotherapy Healing, Energy & the Art of Surrender

What if anxiety isn’t a flaw to fix, but energy asking to move?

We’ve all felt it, that tightness in the chest, the racing thoughts, the sudden wave of fear that seems to come out of nowhere. Anxiety can feel like it takes over your whole life, dictating every thought, every choice, every breath.

But what if anxiety isn’t something to fear… what if it’s actually energy trying to move through you?

That’s exactly what my guest, hypnotherapist and intuitive guide Sari Cowsert, discovered through her own hypnotherapy healing journey, and her story is one of radical transformation, from chronic panic to peace, from control to surrender.

This is the kind of conversation that changes you. So today, I’m sharing Sari’s story, her wisdom, and the deeply spiritual truth that healing begins the moment you decide you’re done with your own patterns and ready to remember who you truly are.

Photo image collage of anxiety and panic sprinkled with elements typing to hypnotherapy, peace and healing.

From 12 Panic Attacks a Day to Peace

Before becoming the radiant, grounded soul she is today, Sari lived in a body ruled by fear.

She shares that for years, she was stuck in chronic anxiety, having up to 12 panic attacks a day. Her nervous system was fried. Her mind and body were constantly on high alert, searching for the next thing to control in order to feel safe.

“My life looked like a constant need for control. It was my way or the highway,” she says. “I couldn’t go anywhere alone. I needed my husband, my mom, or my sister close by, just in case something happened.”

Her husband, an ER nurse, would remind her she was physically fine. But to Sari, the panic felt real, all-consuming, and beyond her control.

Like many of us who are highly sensitive or empathic, she was unknowingly absorbing everyone else’s emotions, their fear, sadness, and stress, and confusing it for her own.

Growing up as a redheaded Jewish girl in small-town Texas with an alcoholic father, Sari learned early on how to shrink her light to stay safe. Add in childhood trauma and a deeply empathic nature, and her nervous system never really had a chance to rest.

“I think I came into this world as a really big light,” she reflects, “and the world tried to take that away from me.”

When the Body Keeps the Score

Like so many of us, Sari tried to manage the chaos from the outside, through control, perfectionism, and self-criticism.

As a dancer, she sought validation through performance. She pushed her body to the limit, chasing the next compliment or gold star. But underneath that drive was a deep fear of not being enough.

Eventually, her body began to break down. Panic turned to physical illness: hypothyroidism, PCOS, and extreme fatigue.

“I just kept getting diagnosis after diagnosis,” she says. “At some point I realized, this can’t be normal. There has to be more to life than this.”

That question: There has to be more than what I’m experiencing right now… became her turning point.

It’s the moment when healing begins.

The Moment Everything Changed

After years of looking for answers outside of herself, from doctors, therapists, and even other healers, Sari realized the person she’d been waiting for was her own higher self.

“The person who’s coming to save you is the version of yourself who’s sick of your situation,” she explains. “No one else can do that part for you.”

Her first step was addressing the physical layer. She learned to eat in a way that supported her blood sugar and hormones. That alone reduced her panic attacks by 30%.

Then came the deeper healing, the part no medication could touch.

She started reading Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself by Dr. Joe Dispenza, and everything began to click.

For the first time, she understood that her panic wasn’t random. Her brain and body had literally memorized fear. It wasn’t “coming out of nowhere,” it was a subconscious program her nervous system had been running for years.

“I realized I had installed the hardware of anxiety,” she says. “My body knew how to have a panic attack without my mind even needing to think about it.”

That awareness changed everything.

Within six weeks of practicing meditation, journaling, and new thought patterns, Sari began to feel like an entirely new person.

Reprogramming the Subconscious Mind

As she healed, Sari felt a clear pull to help others do the same.

She became a certified hypnotherapist and began combining subconscious reprogramming, somatic release, and spiritual connection to guide clients through profound inner transformation.

“Most people think hypnosis is about clucking like a chicken,” she laughs. “But real hypnotherapy is about safety, trust, and creating new neural pathways in the subconscious mind.”

In her sessions, the first goal isn’t to “fix” you, it’s to help your body and nervous system remember what safety feels like.

Only from that place can you begin to release stored trauma, old programming, and energy that isn’t yours.

That’s what makes her hypnotherapy work so powerful. You’re not just talking about healing, you’re experiencing it in real time.

The Power of Inner Child Healing

When I worked with Sari personally, I had one of those breakthroughs via Hypnotherapy that takes your breath away.

During our session, a memory surfaced from when I was a little girl. I used to love getting up in church to speak. I loved to shine, to share my light and be seen.

After one of those moments, my dad (who I adore) said something like, “Do you have to do that every month? Not everyone wants to hear from you all the time.”

In that instant, little Andie learned a new belief: It’s not safe to shine.

That single moment, that well-intentioned comment, created a subconscious wound that affected me for decades.

Through Sari’s guidance, I was able to revisit that memory and reframe it through adult eyes. To see my dad’s heart. To reclaim that little girl’s joy and permission to take up space again.

That’s the beauty of hypnotherapy. It allows you to meet your inner child, understand their pain, and rewrite the story, one filled with compassion, play, and truth.

Emotional Hygiene: Clearing What’s Not Yours

As healers, coaches, parents, or even just sensitive humans, we’re constantly interacting with other people’s energy.

Every conversation, every scroll through social media, every client session, we pick up cords, emotions, and energy that don’t belong to us.

Without regular energetic hygiene, we can start to feel heavy, anxious, or exhausted without even realizing why.

Some simple ways to clear your energy daily:

Smoke cleansing with palo santo or sage
Grounding by walking barefoot on grass
Salt baths or showers with intentional release
Journaling or breathwork to discharge emotion
Visualization, imagining light washing over you and releasing what’s not yours

Sari jokes that her teenage daughter rolls her eyes every time she brings out the palo santo, but it works.

Because energy is real. And tending to it is one of the kindest things you can do for yourself.

Reconnecting with the Divine

Sari and I also share a similar healing around faith and spirituality; both of us had to redefine our connection to the divine after years of religious conditioning.

For her, that meant realizing there is an invisible intelligence running the show, the same force that beats your heart and moves your breath.

“If something is running my blood and my breath,” she says, “then something must be supporting me. I just forgot to trust it.”

That awareness became a turning point.

When we remember that we are connected to something greater, whether you call it God, Source, Spirit, or the Universe, we stop gripping so tightly.

We can finally surrender.

And in that surrender, miracles happen.

When Anxiety Is Actually Awakening

Here’s the truth most people don’t realize: sometimes anxiety isn’t a signal that something’s wrong, it’s a sign that something new is trying to emerge.

When we’re shifting into higher levels of awareness or stepping into new versions of ourselves, our ego panics. It feels unsafe in the unknown.

That energetic intensity can look and feel exactly like anxiety.

But when you know what’s really happening, when you recognize it as energy in motion, you can breathe through it instead of fighting it.

You can say, “Oh, this isn’t fear, this is expansion.”

That shift alone can change your entire life.

Astrology, Energy, and Self-Awareness

Of course, as an astrologer and energy coach, I love to look at how the stars and transits influence us.

Yes, sometimes there are cosmic factors at play, a full moon stirring emotions, a Mars aspect bringing up frustration, or a retrograde pushing us to rest.

But astrology isn’t here to control us. It’s here to inform us.

I like to think of it as a cosmic weather report.

If it’s going to rain, you grab an umbrella. You don’t cancel your whole day.

That’s how to work with the stars, with awareness, not fear.

What Hypnotherapy Really Does

At its core, hypnotherapy isn’t about “fixing” you. It’s about helping you remember who you were before the world told you who to be.

It reconnects you to the part of yourself that’s been waiting all along, the part that knows how to heal, how to trust, how to feel safe in your own body.

As Sari says: