Joanna Pylak

I’m Joanna Pylak (daughter of Jadwiga “Hedy” Pylak), and I love travel and excellent vegan food. Born in the US into an immigrant multicultural family, I’ve always been in love with the beautiful cultures that are in our world, and I realized early on that despite our differences, we are all fundamentally the same and are all made up of the same stuff. We all want love and happiness. We all grow when we confront and overcome challenges. We all thrive when we are part of a supportive community. We are all spiritual beings that come from the same source regardless of our worldly religions, backgrounds, and genetic makeup.

So, I started traveling while still in university, doing occasional study abroad courses whenever the budget and help from family allowed.  Before I knew it, it was almost time to graduate university, and the stress of completing my final dissertations for my two majors had me budgeting sleep and pulling all nighters.  Even though I knew that all I had to do was hang in there and do the work, I still needed something or someone else to tell me everything would be ok, that it would all work out in the end. So, it was around this time that I started learning to read tarot cards…tarot was a way of connecting with spirit to keep myself sane. Then when I finally graduated, I found it difficult to get a good job, so during this time, tarot also helped me to stay sane as I held down three (3) part-time jobs to survive. 

As time went on, video recording and video editing became one of my hobbies.  In between jobs or on days off, I would often capture footage recorded on my Hi8 camcorder using my desktop computer, and I would use my software to cut the footage….and I loved every minute.  Since I still hadn’t found my dream job at this point, it was as if the Universe had stepped in to drive me to challenge myself and do something else with my life.  I had been thinking of pursuing a Master’s degree, so perhaps it was finally time, and why not combine my newfound love of filmmaking with one of my BA majors, anthropology? But I didn’t want to drive myself into severe debt by studying in the US, especially since the field I was choosing, visual anthropology, was not such a well known niche in the country. So, I decided to take the much much cheaper and more exciting route…I went to London, UK—land of documentary filmmaking—to do my MA in visual anthropology.

After completing my MA, one of my housemates and I fell in love, and I went to live with him in Lisbon, Portugal.  In 2007, I returned to London as a married woman and found a job in television distribution for a factual film company. Not long afterwards, I got a position at the London offices of a major Hollywood studio, where I stayed until 2014.  While I loved my job and the opportunities I had come across to establish my career, as time went on, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I needed to do something to contribute to the world in some way and I wasn’t doing it with the career I had. Not only that, but I wasn’t even doing what I loved (video editing) in my career. Yet I ignored that feeling…after all, I had finally established a career in the industry I wanted, albeit not in the division and capacity I had dreamed of in my student days. I couldn’t just leave and start from scratch. I had bills to pay, and I loved where I was working and who I was working with. So I went through the usual motions of a person living the life they thought they wanted. It had taken too long to get to where I was to throw it all away.

Then, it’s as if the Universe decided to step in again to force me to make a change. My workplace, which used to feel like my second home, started to become a toxic atmosphere that, over time, took a very serious toll on my physical and emotional health. I started having panic attacks at work, and some days I called out sick because the thought of going in filled me with tears and paralyzing fear. Since my husband was also finishing his PhD around this time, we decided it was time to leave London to go back to Lisbon. So, we bought a van, packed it up and drove ourselves together with our belongings back down to Portugal. Since the studio I was working for frowned upon working remotely in those days (this was pre-pandemic), I wasn’t able to take my job with me, but I had started earning a modest part-time income by occasionally proofreading and copy editing academic papers. Again, it wasn’t what I felt I was supposed to do with my life professionally, but there was no mistaking that I couldn’t stay where I was anymore.

Fast forward a few years and we were living in Geneva, Switzerland, as my husband was working on his fellowship. During this time, I finally quit smoking, which I realized had been standing in the way of my being able to meditate. In fact, smoking was the one crucial thing that had been hindering me in developing a solid connection with spirit through meditation. I had maintained a connection through tarot cards and less than subtle nudges by the Universe, with occasional spirts of intuition and claircognizance. I hadn’t realized it, but I had been a smoker for so long that I thought it was natural to feel anxious. Although I didn’t like it, I thought it was normal to be in a constant state of anxiety all day, everyday, and while I had heard that smoking can cause anxiety, I was addicted and in denial. It had been this constant feeling of anxiety coming from a nameless place within that prevented me from being able to relax enough to meditate, and this subsequently kept me from developing a connection with spirit through meditation. 

Although I had participated in various spiritual and meditation workshops with my mother when I was in my teens and 20s, and I certainly had an interest in spirituality and meditation, I had already been a smoker since the age of 16. All I knew was that I felt as if any spiritual connection I could have was somehow obstructed in those days of my younger self. When I finally let go of cigarettes completely at the age of 36, I quickly realized that my natural state was peace, and as if by magic, meditation became much easier to approach and I started getting clearer information coming through. Although I still experience anxiety from time to time, I can now usually pinpoint the source, and I know that the feeling is temporary and will certainly pass.

Before it was time for my husband and me to return to Lisbon, we both amicably separated. Shortly afterwards, in 2017, I returned to the US to be with my family. I had started to do some video editing work again and decided that it was time to spruce up my skills, so I learned motion graphics and some animation to expand my skillset. In the meantime, my mother finally convinced me that it was time that I start working with her. She had been nudging me to be her apprentice for as long as I could remember, but it hadn’t made sense to me yet up until that point. But now, staying with my family, no longer hindered by a career nor a relationship I thought I wanted, now newly connected to spirit through meditation and open to whatever the Universe had lined up for me, becoming my mother‘s apprentice finally felt right to me.

I started working with my mother officially in 2018. Since that time, I have been helping her take her gift online to reach a wider audience, and I have inadvertently found myself also sharing some of my skills with the wider world. I now do tarot card readings professionally, I write and record guided meditations for Art of Meditation (which was also started by my mother and falls under the umbrella of Inner Wisdom and Energy Enlightenment), I do energy healing work, and I host our live Remote Meditation Group. In my discussions with people, I found that not everyone finds meditation to be doable, either because they suffer from an inability to relax (like I used to), or they shun meditation because they feel very alone when they close their eyes and sit by themselves. So, I started to animate some of our mediations to help people to ease into meditation. My fascination with guided meditation as a way to overcome personal challenges using the power of the mind together with my growing fascination with past-life regression has also led me to study hypnotherapy and Quantum Healing Hypnosis Technique (QHHT). As I write this, I’m in the final stretch of becoming a Certified Hypnotherapist. I also studied Mediumship and Spiritual Development at Arthur Findlay College and I am continuing to work on my mediumship development.

As was the case in my younger days, I still love love love to travel, so whenever pandemic restrictions aren’t standing in the way, it’s fairly common for me to be found in a different country for a few months at a time.  For this reason, I conduct sessions both over the phone and online through various conferencing platforms (i.e. RingCentral, Skype, Zoom, etc.), however whenever I’m back in Connecticut, I also conduct in-person sessions.

You can contact me either by phone at (860) 222-7370 or by email at info@innerwisdomandenergy.com.