Meet Stevie Kaye of Building Bridges

Today we’d like to introduce you to.

Thanks for sharing your story with us. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I started Building Bridges to build bridges of opportunity and union between holistic medicine and the athletic community as a way to better assist athletes who suffer from major sports-related injuries and chronic health disorders during and after their playing day careers. I myself played club, high school, and college volleyball and was later diagnosed with PTSD, fibromyalgia, hypertension, hypoglycemia, adrenal fatigue, leaky gut, and struggle with chronic back and neck spasms. I spent 24 years being treated by Western Medicine doctors and believe their care and more so the lack there of their care paired with the prescription pills was the ultimate demise to my gut health. The disfunction of my gut health led to an overall compromise to my total health and wellbeing. Due to this experience, I find it my duty and social responsibility to use my experience to help revolutionize the way athletes are currently being medically treated.

I received a BA in Psychology & Liberal Arts and decided instead of accepting my scholarship to continue on to the Clinical Psychology Masters Program where they focused on diagnosis and prescriptions, I chose to educate myself through direct-hands-on-experience in my own journey of self-healing. I worked with and received holistic healing treatments from local and traveling holistic practitioners that mentored me in my own healing. My success through these holistic treatments and taking my healing into my own hands is the sole inspiration behind creating a platform like building bridges to educate young athletes. I truly believe introducing holistic treatment practices to current sports injury recovery protocols will greatly reduce the amount of pain being played through, create a safer environment, reduce the chances of young adults developing major chronic health disorders, and greatly improve the quality of healing during the recovery process after major sports related injuries. In the end this will teach young athletes how to better care of their health and wellbeing so it isn’t an issue in the end.

Great, 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?
I feel like a trailblazer with Building Bridges and that I am having to pave my own way thus far. The land I chose to pave on is full of boulders and old school traditional coaches who don’t see the need to revolutionize the way athletes are being treated for their loyalty to tradition. Something as simple as advocating for hemp and cannabis has created a negative image for me as a coach. Working in the cannabis and hemp industry while also working with young athletes is by far my biggest challenge. For me personally and scientifically speaking, cannabis and hemp is the answer to a lot of injury recovery protocols and a great option for overall daily care for recovery. To other coaches, cannabis and hemp is seen as bad for “the spirit of the sport”. I have been fired from two club coaching positions and was not asked back to coach high school because my cannabis and hemp use made other coaches and staff feel uncomfortable. I understand that this is a very tough line to cross but there is enough scientific research and evidence to support the integration of cannabis and hemp into sports medicine even for young athletes. If I have to be the first volleyball coach to do it, here I am.

I can say this with confidence because I myself was only 15 when I tore my ACL and both meniscus’. I underwent major reconstructive surgery and was given pain killers to help recover. My body did not respond well to the pain killers and I threw up everything I ate and drank. I was in pain, scared, hungry, nauseous for two weeks straight, and terribly mean to my poor grandma who took wonderful care of me. Two years later I had another surgery to repair my medial meniscus and can see a turning point in my behavior at that time. I became incredibly angry, depressed, overly interested in pain killers, and began to look to alcohol for the first time in my life. I can only imagine what a couple milligrams of THC and a solid 20mg of CBD could have done to help my recovery process physically, mentally, and emotionally. I know it sounds scary to a lot of parents and coaches but from my own personal experience parents, doctors, and coaches should be more scared to give adolescents pain killers than THC and CBD during traumatic sports injuries and surgeries.

Please tell us about Building Bridges with Love.
Building Bridges is a platform and community of holistic practitioners. I myself consider myself to be an energy healer and specialize in sports injury recovery through my own form of Chakra healing and massage therapy. I offer massages that work with the body’s lymphatic and endocrine system to help regulate and circulate the fluids of the muscles and the hormones of the glands. The techniques I use were taught to me by Dr. Ravi Ratan a Chakra healer from India who now receives healing from me when he is in the United States. Chakra’s are energy centers that are responsible for transferring thoughts, emotions, and physical functions of specific endocrine glands and organs. I am most proud of the relationships and experiences I have with holistic and spiritual practitioners like Dr. Ravi. My knowledge about the overall physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual health sets me apart from your typical massage therapist. I do not consider myself a massage therapist but rather an energy healer that utilizes massage therapy.

Do you look back particularly fondly on any memories from childhood?
My favorite childhood memory is from when we lived in a big country ranch house outside of the small town of Platteville, Colorado. We had a basketball court and made the barn an indoor hockey arena. We were always outside playing some kind of sport or game, riding our bikes to the Dalmatian tree, catching toads, jumping from hay bail tower to hay bail tower, running through the neighbor’s cornfield, or swimming in the ditches. I grew up outside playing with three older brothers, two older stepsisters, one older stepbrother, and two baby brothers. Being together with my siblings is my most precious memory and where I get my natural athleticism.