Ana Guarisma shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.
Good morning Ana, it’s such a great way to kick off the day – I think our readers will love hearing your stories, experiences and about how you think about life and work. Let’s jump right in? What is a normal day like for you right now?
My mornings always begin before sunrise. I wake up at 5 a.m. to meditate in the stillness of the early hours, which grounds me before the day begins. From there, I shift into mom mode — making my daughter’s lunch, walking her to the bus stop with our dogs, and soaking in those small rituals of love that start the day with connection.
Once I return home, I move into my own practices: yoga, movement, sometimes a workout, and a gentle fast until my body is ready to receive food. I see this part of my morning as a devotion to myself — tending to my nervous system, my body, and my energy.
After that, I step into my role as a guide and mentor. I spend my workdays holding space for clients, leading them through nervous system regulation, plant medicine integrations, and intuitive coaching. Every day is a blend of structure and flow — balancing motherhood, embodiment, and the work I love, while also making space for my own creativity and growth.
Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
My name is Ana Guarisma, and I guide me and women into deeper embodiment, resilience, and self-discovery through breath work, yoga, meditation, nervous system regulation, plant medicine integration and intuitive coaching. My work is rooted in the belief that when we learn to regulate our energy and reconnect with our bodies, we unlock the freedom to live with clarity, confidence, and radiance.
I created www.risewithana.com as both a sanctuary where seekers can experience practices that reset the nervous system, soften the weight of stress, and awaken their inner power. What makes this work unique is the way it blends science with spirituality, structure with flow, and discipline with plant medicine.
My own journey as a mother, a guide, and someone who has walked through overwhelm and found her way back to wholeness has shown me that healing and growth don’t have to feel heavy. They can feel intimate, empowering, even joyful. That’s what I aim to bring into every course, plant medicine journey, class, and retreat: not just practices, but transformations that ripple out into every part of life.
Thanks for sharing that. Would love to go back in time and hear about how your past might have impacted who you are today. Who were you before the world told you who you had to be?
Before the world told me who I had to be, I was an intuitive child, deeply sensitive, able to feel and see what others couldn’t. From a very young age, I sensed truths beneath the surface, even when they were inconvenient or uncomfortable for those around me.
But I grew up in an environment that was aggressive, chaotic, and overall toxic. Because I spoke up and reflected the truth of what I felt, I was labeled the ‘problem child.’ I was silenced, shamed, and often punished — physically, emotionally, and mentally. That took a deep toll on me, but it never extinguished my inner knowing.
It was my intuition that anchored me. Even as a child, I couldn’t accept the idea that I was ‘too much’ or ‘not enough.’ My soul refused to believe that I was the problem when, deep down, I knew I was simply voicing my truth. So instead of collapsing into those messages, I turned inward. I became quiet, observant, and immersed myself in psychology and self-help books. I sought to understand the patterns of human behavior and the deeper purpose behind my own struggles.
That early independence, the ability to rise above the chaos around me, became the foundation of who I am today. It’s also why my work is called Rise With Ana: because I know firsthand what it means to rise from pain, to transmute wounds into wisdom, and to reclaim your voice and power.
When did you stop hiding your pain and start using it as power?
The moment I stopped hiding my pain was the moment everything changed. I realized that the experiences I had survived weren’t meant to bury me, they were meant to shape me into someone who could hold space for others. That’s when I began to turn my pain into purpose.
Becoming a yoga teacher was the doorway. It gave me my voice back. It helped me see that there were people who needed exactly what I had to share, not despite my struggles, but because of them. That realization made every hardship feel less like a wound and more like a seed of wisdom.
From there, I devoted myself to the practices that anchored me: yoga, breathwork, meditation, movement. They became my way of staying present in the lifelong process of growth. Because I don’t see it as ‘healing’ anymore, I see it as expansion. Growth always comes with growing pains, but it’s also what makes us more resilient, more radiant, and more alive.
Looking back, I understand now that every upheaval was building a kind of inner library, a reservoir of experiences that I could later draw from to guide others. And today, through my work at www.risewithana.com, I share that wisdom with seekers who are ready to step into their own power, resilience, and radiance.
Sure, so let’s go deeper into your values and how you think. What important truth do very few people agree with you on?
One important truth I hold, that not everyone agrees with is that spirituality and religion are not the same thing.
Religion, to me, is cultural mythology. It can create community, but it often comes with outdated structures, dogma, and, historically, a lot of misogyny. It tends to tell people what to believe, while spirituality asks us to feel and to connect.
Spirituality, on the other hand, is something we all share, because at our core, we are all spirit. For me, being spiritual isn’t about labels or trends; it’s about nourishing the connection between mind, body, and soul, and bringing them into integrity with each other. True spirituality is when your thoughts, your actions, your lifestyle, and your energy are aligned, when you embody what you believe, not just say it.
I think a lot of our suffering, and even our hypocrisy, comes from living out of alignment. For example, we might say we love animals, but not realize that our choices don’t always reflect that love. Integrity is about closing those gaps, healing the fractures between what we say, what we know, and how we actually live.
That’s why, through my work at www.risewithana.com, I focus on embodiment. Not just talking about values, but living them. It’s in the way we breathe, the way we move, the way we regulate our nervous systems, and the way we choose to show up every single day. To me, that’s what real spirituality is, integration, alignment, and deep connection.
Okay, we’ve made it essentially to the end. One last question before you go. Are you doing what you were born to do—or what you were told to do?
I am absolutely doing what I was born to do — not what I was told to do.
From a very young age, I knew I couldn’t fully trust the environment I was raised in. My mother abandoned me, and I grew up with an abusive father who was inconsistent, unloving, and often destructive with his words and actions. That kind of childhood could have broken me, but instead it pushed me inward, into solitude, into books, into listening to my own intuition.
I felt, even as a child, that the people around me weren’t grounded in their own souls the way I longed to be. And so I leaned on the only compass I had: my inner knowing. I read, I studied, I learned about psychology and spirituality, and over time I realized that my passion wasn’t just in learning, it was in teaching, in helping others grow through the wisdom I had to gather for myself.
No one around me would have ever told me to become a healer, an intuitive guide, or a yoga teacher, this is not a common or praised career choice. Those paths weren’t modeled for me, I had to discover them on my own. But once I did, I knew it was my purpose. Today, through my work and offerings at www.risewithana.com, I help others rise the way I had to rise, from pain into power, from confusion into clarity, and from disconnection back into wholeness.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.risewithana.com
- Instagram: @anaguarisma
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@anaguarisma
Image Credits
of course, they’re my photos, I own the rights.
