Keya Murthy on Healing, Transformation, and Navigating Life’s Waves

Keya Murthy taught physics, then spent years as a software engineer, before a stretch of profound personal hardship redirected her toward the study of the mind. She’s since spent 18 years as a healer and clinical hypnotherapist, and frames her own difficult chapters as transformations instead of only losses.

Her conversation with Richard Lowe is a reflective one, two people who each came through hard times and found their way to connection and purpose on the other side, talking about healing, boundaries, and learning to listen to the body.

Keya Murthy, M.S., C.Ht., is a healer, clinical hypnotherapist, and spiritual life coach who has worked with around 10,000 clients over 18 years, after earlier careers in teaching and software engineering.

Born in India and a mother of three, she returned to school to study the human mind following a period of deep personal crisis and now runs her signature Braveheart Coaching program.

DISCUSS YOUR BOOK

Full transcript of the conversation follows.

Richard Lowe: You started teaching physics and mathematics for seven years. What made you stop?

Keya Murthy: The short and sweet answer is life. I believe life is a journey. You’re not supposed to stay stuck. Jim Rohn said if you don’t like it, move. You’re not a tree. I was studying my master’s in computer science while teaching full time. After I graduated, I moved to another city and focused on being a software developer, analyst, project manager, architect, engineer, whatever they needed.

Richard: I know about the journey of life. Mine has been very twisty and turny. I wish I’d learned to move when you’re not happy much sooner. I stayed in many places because I felt like I couldn’t move elsewhere. A lot of gaslighting, people telling me I couldn’t make it, that I wasn’t as good as I thought. Finally I realized they were the ones who weren’t as good as they thought. Now I’ve got my own company.

Keya: I worked for banks, accounting firms, pharmaceutical companies. My last positions were at ST Microelectronics in the semiconductor industry and then a dot-com company called Springboard Solutions.

The Dark Night of the Soul

Richard: Then you went through four years of very dark nights of the soul. Can you describe that?

Keya: Self-worth issues, self-esteem issues. My early to mid-30s. The towers came down, we had the terrorist attack. Too much was going on. I had three little children. My youngest was a year old when I lost my job. I had three kids at home and was sending out applications. Every time the phone would ring, I didn’t want to answer because I didn’t want to go back to that world. I’d rather be with my children. Feeling that guilt of being a mother not there for my kids. I went through a divorce, bankruptcy, a car accident where my car literally rolled into a ditch and people had to pull me out upside down. Life brought all these gifts to me, but in the moment it looked like a horror show. I felt like I could die, but I couldn’t because I’d children. It’s like the caterpillar has to die for the butterfly to be born. I was going through multiple deaths, and each one made me expand a bit more, get stronger, more confident, more knowing who I am. In healing myself I was getting better at helping others heal. It was a two-way thing. I truly became a vessel of the universe.

Richard: I believe very similarly. Part of my responsibility in life is first to take care of myself, then my immediate surroundings, and those circles widen. If you can’t take care of yourself, who can you take care of? After my wife passed away, that was a defining moment. I have a tattoo based on it, the Phoenix. Rebirth from ashes. I looked at her after she’d passed and thought, she spent more than half her life sick because she refused to stop smoking. Asthma, COPD. And I want to live. I don’t want to be in grief. So I picked up a camera. I was working at Trader Joe’s as the Director of Computer Operations. Weeknights and weekends I’d go out and photograph things. Started with national parks. I was terribly introverted. Then worked my way to renaissance fairs, wrestling matches, belly dance shows. Photographed over 1,200 belly dance shows, 300 renaissance fairs all over the country, flying everywhere. Broke that introverted shell. Now I do two podcasts a day, go out and meet people. I don’t care who I talk to. It sounds like you went through a similar path of discovery. Tragedy caused you to rethink your life and you came out of it better, like the caterpillar out of the cocoon.

Keya: Transformation. Yes.

Richard: I love butterflies. Those behind me are all from Africa and South America, put in plastic, organically from butterfly farms.

Keya: I’m an introvert too. I know what it means coming out of your own shell. People say they don’t believe I’m an introvert. When I’ve been on stage or in a classroom and asked people what they think I am, every introvert says I’m an introvert and every extrovert says I’m an extrovert. I believe I’m a mirror. You see yourself in me. I come from India. India was barely 20 years old when I was born. My parents were born into a slave nation. The way they grew up was very different. They raised us to give us more than they had, and we raised our kids to have more. It’s a generational progression. We have to look at not how much you get but how much you can put into it. Give without thinking and things will come back to you.

What It Means to Be a Healer

Richard: You’ve been working as a healer, hypnotherapist, and spiritual life coach with 10,000 clients. What does that mean?

Keya: You get to be part of everyone’s secret. If this was the olden days, we had a confession box. People come and tell me their stuff. One of the challenges I find people face, irrespective of gender, nationality, ethnicity, economic background, whatever: people want to be seen, heard, supported, understood, and not judged. Those who come to me come in their moment of extreme vulnerability. When they start sharing whatever pain they’re going through, transformation starts happening. I have clients who go through traditional therapy and still come to me. They say, “What you can do, my therapist doesn’t do. I go there, talk about myself, and make another appointment. But what you do, they don’t do.” One person told me, “I know my mother loves me, but I feel more loved in your presence.” It’s hard to explain without experiencing it. I’m a clinical hypnotherapist for 18 years. I keep going to schools and studying because every year I add to my toolkit. I don’t want to be that guy with a hammer where everything looks like a nail. I never know what this person needs. So I keep learning.

Trust, Toxic People, and Letting Go

Richard: I’ve had to relearn trust several times. After my wife passed away, after betrayal at work. Trust is hard because when you trust somebody you open yourself up. If you’re not with people who have your best intentions at heart, you’re not going to come out well. People say don’t judge, but you have to judge. Somebody asks you for money, you judge right then. And if you’ve got a narcissist in your life, you’re going to judge whether they’re going to hurt you. I’ve had to kick out several narcissists and improved my life every time. The more I got rid of, the better off I was. There’s no contract signed at birth that says you need to be connected with anyone. Even relatives can be the most toxic of all. Sometimes you just need to say we’re done. I had to do that with my parents. My dad, I got sick every time he came into my space. Even a phone call. Throwing-up sick. For weeks. Finally I realized it doesn’t matter whether he’s a good person or not. He makes me sick physically, mentally, emotionally. Done. Had to cut all ties. My sister had to do the same thing, so it wasn’t just me.

Keya: It’s a very deep topic when someone that close to you affects you that way. Your body won’t lie. Your body is an amazing healing machine. We live in this body and we have to learn to listen to it. Sometimes people say, “I don’t know what’s wrong.” I tell them close their eyes and see where their body is talking. And they find it. Because there’s a story the body is telling.

Richard: I ran away from home when I was 12 years old. Got a few blocks away and realized I was leaving my sister alone with my dad. He wasn’t a nice person. So at 12, I went back to keep my dad away from my sister as best as a 12-year-old can do. Remained there until I was about 19. She was growing up by then and could handle it. But that was a choice. I knew it was toxic. I ran away. But I couldn’t leave her.

Keya: This is what happens when people come and sit in front of me. They say, “I wasn’t even thinking about that, I don’t know where that came from, and I have to share this with you.” This is exactly how healing starts.

Richard: I’ve been through the therapy. I can talk about it now. I had a good therapist who helped me through it. It was rough because things in childhood were so bad I’d created this angelic childhood in my mind. Beautiful, perfect, nothing wrong. Then the veil started coming down. First it seemed bad. But then you process it. Men don’t cry, I was taught. My dad: “You want to cry? I’ll give you something to cry about.” I didn’t cry at my wife’s funeral. I couldn’t. I cried two weeks later when my cat passed away because that was just too much. Wife and cat in the same month.

Keya: But you can laugh about it now. You can smile about it. The wounds heal, the scars remain. And then the scars heal too.

Richard: You have to recognize them first. If you just cover them up and pretend they don’t exist, they build up and you take them out on the next person. I used to journal a lot. That helped. Visiting a therapist helped even more. A Christian therapist who just listened. Let me pour everything out.

Going Through It to Help Others Through It

Keya: People tell me two things: I’m a kind person and I’m a smart person. And my life kept falling apart. Not just once. It falls apart a bit, you fix yourself, and it falls apart again. One day I was sitting and I thought, if I’m smart, how come I did really stupid things? If I’m kind, how come I’m surrounded by unkindness? I swear I heard it loud and clear: “You’re truly kind and smart. People go through the stuff, and you need to know how to help them when they come to you. Because they won’t teach you in a course. In a workshop. In a classroom. No one can teach you these things unless you go through it yourself.” Since that day, 12 years ago, whatever challenge I’m going through, someone shows up, and I help them heal that challenge, and in helping them, my challenge resolves.

Richard: That’s one of the ways it works. Helping somebody else. Sometimes we get zeroed in on our problems and think they’re the worst thing in the world. Then you talk to somebody whose kids are starving. Okay, my problem’s not as bad as I thought. I had an epiphany years ago. Somebody told me, “You’re a very angry person.” She said it helpfully, not as a put-down. I thought about it and decided that anger needed to go. It was my dad in me. That’s when I first saw a therapist. That’s when I started uncovering the childhood past. Within a couple of months, the anger was gone. One helpfully given comment literally changed my life.

Keya: In my model of the world, God was using her to speak to you. These are everyday miracles when we remain open to them.

Energy Vampires and Claiming Your Space

Keya: When we feel drained, it’s because of the toxicity in our life. These energy vampires. No matter how much you fill your cup, if there’s a hole, it’s going to keep flowing out. You have to be mindful. You might love someone very much, but right now it’s time to let them go. You have to have the Braveheart to claim that space back for yourself.

Richard: I call them psychic vampires. Somebody told me that term years ago. You go in feeling happy to talk to them and come out feeling drained, and they feel really happy.

Keya: I started my business in my garage with three little kids at home. My youngest was five. My friends would say, “You need to be careful, all these crazies coming into your house.” I’d say, “They’re guided by spirit. Whoever comes through those doors, spirit is watching me and won’t let any harm come upon me.” And none of my clients ever hurt me. They left with a lot of love.

The Power of Human Connection

Keya: No matter how much we’re into technology, including AI, nothing can compensate for or become better than the human connection. Human connection is the most precious commodity out there. And it’s priceless.

Richard: One of the reasons I do these podcasts is I’ve been feeling snarled in a knot in life. Talking to somebody who’s doing well gives me altitude. I’ve published 60 books and ghost written 48 more, published probably 1,000 articles, been a VP of two companies, ran Trader Joe’s computer department for 20 years. I’m not doing too shabby. Why am I snarled? It helps just having another person on the other end, talking about nothing related to me, to get that perspective.

Keya: Everything in life is to be continued. We can’t say I’ll never meet you again or I’ll meet you again. We’ll never know when our paths will align. And I always believe in leaving a person a little bit happier. Learn more about Keya Murthy at coachkeya.com. Find Richard Lowe at TheWritingKing.com.

Quotable moments

Frequently Asked Questions

What kind of work does Keya Murthy do?

She’s a clinical hypnotherapist and spiritual life coach who has worked with around 10,000 clients over 18 years, helping people heal and move toward the lives they want to lead.

How did she come to this work?

After a career teaching and then years as a software engineer, she went through a period of deep personal crisis, then returned to school to study the human mind and dedicated herself to helping others heal.

What does she mean by holding space?

Letting a person feel seen, heard, supported, and unjudged, especially in moments of extreme vulnerability. She describes that quality of presence as where transformation begins.

Why does she emphasize listening to the body?

She views the body as an honest signal of what the mind is carrying. When people cannot name what’s wrong, she guides them to notice where the body is speaking, because there’s a story it’s telling.