Today we’d like to introduce you to Cathy Walker.
Hi Cathy, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been drawn to helping people heal. I began my career here in Austin in 2004 as an acupuncturist and massage therapist. What started as a small solo practice eventually grew into a thriving business called Austin Ashiatsu.
I poured everything I had into it—my body, my time, my heart. I was a perfectionist, obsessed with mastery and driven to be the best. For years, I measured my worth by my success. Every five-star review felt like proof that I was enough, and anything less felt like a personal failure. Can you imagine the pressure? That drive built a successful business—but it also came at a cost. I found myself exhausted, disconnected, and quietly unfulfilled, living inside a version of success I wasn’t actually enjoying.
Eventually, the pace caught up with me. I was burning out, but I didn’t yet have language for what was happening. Then, one of my clients invited me to attend an ayahuasca retreat in Mexico. That experience cracked something open. I saw clearly that although I had built a beautiful life on the outside, I wasn’t truly living it. I had been surviving through achievement, not thriving from wholeness.
That realization changed everything. I began studying transformational and somatic coaching—first to heal myself, and then to better serve my clients. I had already begun to notice that much of the pain my clients carried wasn’t only physical; it lived in their bodies as emotion, memory, and story. Massage and acupuncture could soothe the surface, but not reach the root.
Over time, it became clear that I had outgrown the business I had built. My work and my life were asking for something deeper. So I sold my practice and devoted myself fully to this next evolution. That’s how Radiant Woman Coaching was born: out of my own journey of remembering how to live beyond survival, and into true embodied thriving.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
The road has been anything but smooth — yet every challenge has carried a hidden gift. I’ve wrestled with overworking, people-pleasing, and a lifelong drive to prove my worth. For years, I equated being busy with being valuable, and success with being lovable. But eventually, the exhaustion spoke louder than my ambition. Burnout became the mirror that showed me how much of my own joy I had been postponing.
It was a humbling reckoning. I had to learn how to pause, to receive support, and to let life hold me instead of always holding everything together. Letting go of the identity I had worked so hard to build was terrifying — but also liberating. Selling my business meant stepping into the unknown, trusting that something more authentic was waiting on the other side.
That surrender changed everything. It marked my evolution from surviving on achievement to thriving in alignment. It taught me that real success isn’t about doing more — it’s about being more present. And that has made all the difference.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your business?
Many of the women I work with are the strong ones — the ones everyone else calls when they need support. They are capable, empathic, and endlessly giving. By the time they find me, they’re often in collapse, wondering who has the capacity to hold them.
My work meets them there — in the tender space between holding it all together and surrendering in letting go. It’s a blend of therapeutic coaching, somatic embodiment, breathwork, and subconscious reprogramming, all woven together with unconditional presence.
I work intimately with clients one-on-one and also guide small group breathwork and embodiment journeys. Whether we’re unraveling old patterns of over-responsibility or awakening a deeper sense of aliveness, the through line is always the same: helping women come home to themselves and thrive from the inside out.
If you had to, what characteristic of yours would you give the most credit to?
If I had to name the essence of my work, it would be embodiment. I hold space with deep compassion and fierce honesty — seeing both the brilliance and the pain that live side by side in every woman.
My gift is creating a space where women not only remember who they are but fall deeply in love with themselves. In that remembering, something softens. The walls come down. What once felt like brokenness becomes the doorway to wholeness.
After more than two decades in the healing arts, I’ve learned that transformation happens when we feel safe enough to face ourselves — and ultimately become the love we’ve been searching for. That’s the space I create: where thriving isn’t about doing more, but about coming home to the wholeness that was never lost.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.radiantwomanyou.com/
- Instagram: @radiantwoman.you
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cathywalker.coaching
