Asklepios Healthwww.asklepioshealth.org/ASKLEPIOS IS a hero and god of medicine in ancient Greek religion and mythology. Asklepios (also spelled Asclepius) is the son of Apollo and the mortal princess Coronis. He shared the epithet Paean ("the Healer") with his father, Apollo. He was associated with the Egyptian god Imhotep, who like Asklepios, was deified over time. The rod of Asklepios, a snake-entwined staff, remains a symbol of medicine today.
WE BELIEVE that each individual is their own most qualified healer. We empower individuals to choose health and happiness for themselves, which mushrooms into their relationships, communities, and ultimately humanity as a whole.
WE ARE a team of spiritual individuals who share a core belief in the existence of a higher power. We come from a diverse set of backgrounds and have a rich variety of life experience.
WE OFFER a Virtual Holistic Mental Health Hub
This includes:
A one on one messaging, voice and video chat line with operators who have wide ranging lived experience in all matters of spirit.
Client Services such as spiritual coaching, energy healing, creative expression and dream interpretation.
Unique content that presents existing and new perspectives related to holistic mental health.
A community of like-minded individuals in our Spirit of Asklepios Facebook group. A safe place to share our collective struggles and triumphs related to our journeys of self-healing.
Hope that more and more people will feel empowered to make healthy choices for themselves and lead happier and more fulfilling lives.
How Asklepios Came To Bewww.asklepioshealth.org/blog/s6b8pi80518mz66p8sgfwnzwttwd2fAsklepios is one of the Greek gods of medicine. In his hand he holds a staff wrapped with a snake. It's believed that the symbol originates from the story of the Nehushtan from the Old Testament where fiery serpents were attacking the Israelites in the desert. Moses constructed a staff of a snake after which the serpents stopped attacking the people. It also is believed to have originated from the practice of using a stick to remove a tapeworm from under the skin. The individual would slowly wind the worm onto the stick over time. In addition to that, the symbol of a staff with serpents wrapped around it also represents an active Kundalini.
Asklepios was founded by Daniel Steinberger and Cristina Mohr in March 2020.
Daniel was raised as an Orthodox Jew and is originally from Los Angeles and has two beautiful kids. He studied electrical engineering and worked in the corporate world for 10+ years.
He had his first encounter with spirituality in the summer of 2005 although he was unaware of what was happening at the time. The people around him didn’t know how to help him so they took him to see psychiatrists who prescribed medications and who considered the matter to be closed. Disoriented, bewildered and in denial, he spent the next two years dipping in and out of wide mood swings and altered states of consciousness before he got married and he slipped into married life with a medication regime. He followed the religion but felt no spirituality or connection with his higher power. It wasn’t until 2013 that his focus on spirituality re-emerged when his marriage came to an end and he found himself starting a new life on his own with 50/50 custody of his kids.
In 2015 he felt a call to do something more with his life and in his search he found Shades of Awakening which is where he met Cristina. He eventually decided to leave the San Francisco Bay Area to return to Los Angeles. He founded a now defunct non-profit called Live in the Present which was primarily a blog discussing matters related to spirituality and began the process of creating a character line of Barbie-esque dolls with the central figure that was anatomically accurate for various female forms. Eventually, under financial and social pressure, he went back to engineering and continued on that path until 2018 when he began to hear the call once again.
While still working as an engineer he began developing an idea which he called Blues Busters that would be an app to connect people with peers who would simply listen to them empathetically. He shelved the idea after some effort. Shortly thereafter he created Calm Palm in an attempt to fuse his engineering skills with his spiritual endeavors. Calm Palm is an electronic device that has the appearance of a beautifully polished palm stone but can quickly heat up and cool down on both sides simultaneously. The desired effect of the device was to help people get out of their heads and back in their bodies when they were feeling stressed/anxious. The more practical application for the stone was to use it, and other forms of it, as a replacement for ice and hot packs as physical pain relief throughout various parts of the body. He put the project aside as well due to a dwindling lack of interest in the technical side of the endeavor and a daunting uphill battle with respect to raising funds to make the product commercially viable.
In Nov 2019 he began supporting Mike Bloomberg for president when he entered the Democratic race for the presidential nomination and wound up quitting his engineering job to work for the campaign. When the campaign ended in March and the pandemic began he reached out to the Facebook group, Shades of Awakening, wondering if they knew of any spiritual hotlines because his friend was going through a spiritual crisis. He reconnected with Cristina and together they founded Asklepios.
Cristina was raised in a Christian household, though not a strict one. She was faithful to Christ on her own. She lost her faith when her mother passed away. She began believing in more scientific terms, like in the Law of Attraction, after seeing The Secret. In her 30s, she began a significant effort to improve herself. For weeks, she had been doing strenuous HIIT (high intensity interval training) workouts. At that time she was reading the book The Harbinger until the wee hours of the morning. On April 30th, 2013, she woke up with the most amazing energy, and said to her husband, “Honey? I think I’m coming to a new level of awareness!”
To which her husband responded, “Okay! Great!” He kissed her on the cheek and went to work. Cristina’s physical senses became much more focused and sensitive. She could smell the eggs her son was making so intensely. Thoughts were becoming SO clear. She understood the metaphorical language very well. Social issues were very important to her. She suddenly felt an overwhelming connection to the universe; she was the universe, and the universe was her. Heat was radiating from her body. She could feel the energy of the people around her and her intuition was heightened. She felt telepathic. She was also overwhelmed with Love. Upon speaking in so much metaphorical language, her loved ones got concerned and her husband sought help. He meant well, and they didn’t know better at the time, so he took her to the ER. The nurse assumed the experience she was going through was wholly rooted in psychology and did not bother to check whether her symptoms could have originated from a physical ailment. She was sedated and shoved in a bed until an opening at inpatient was available. No bloodwork. No MRI. She was in that hospital bed, practically catatonic for three days before she came into awareness again. After seeing the patient chart on the wall that said “keep her safe," (she didn't feel safe there) she said, "Oh, I dreamt this months ago." The nurse rolled her eyes. Cristina had been having deja vu dreams since 2008. Upon seeing Cristina in the ER, the psychiatrist immediately diagnosed her with bipolar disorder, and Cristina lost herself in shame for two years.
On the two year anniversary, her husband asked her to help him understand more with respect to what happened two years prior. She was so excited to tell her story. Upon hearing her story her husband said, “Hmm. I wonder if, in the future, they’ll find out that bipolar disorder is the mind’s way of coming into a new stage of enlightenment?” This resonated with Cristina on a deep, deep level. She googled, “bipolar enlightenment,” and the very next morning found many new ways of rethinking the concept of bipolar disorder being the explanation for her experiences. This gave her a new sense of hope, but also caused another crisis, only this time, seeing how the practitioners reacted to her in the ER gave her the Calling to become a Healer in the mental health field. As she was, once again, sedated and put in a bed, she was distracted from calming down by all the ER noises; the machines, the nurses, the other patients. As she laid there, she saw another patient with psychological issues, and watched how the nurses were treating him. Once again, assuming it was psychological in nature, they did not do physical tests on the patient. For hours, Cristina laid there, not being able to sleep again, not because of a racing mind as she was actually pretty calm at that point, but by the overwhelming sounds of the ER. She was concerned by the lack of care by the nurses, and by the fear she could smell on them when caring for mental health patients, like her. At one point, Cristina panicked, jumped off the bed, pulled out her IV and ran towards the bathroom. The nurse let her in to "go," cleaned the blood off of her wrist, put the IV back in, and put her back in the bed. The nurse was cold and insensitive and didn't so much as look in her direction. (Those in crisis need a sensitive connection, a community.) She realized that an ER needs a 24/7 mental health liaison that advocates for the patients' needs. That realization made her become aware that the system needed changing.
For a while after, Cristina was on the mend. She even started taking a local art therapy class. She loved the counselor and the art teacher very much, but the psychotropic drugs she was on, numbed her imagination. It was at this time that Cristina was becoming sensitive to collective energies and the emotional fields of some of her colleagues in the art therapy class were becoming too overwhelming to handle. So, she decided to work on herself for a while.
For several seasons, she was experiencing chronic psychosis although she wasn't having depressive or manic phases, just occasional episodes.
It was during this time that she took a class to get certified as a Peer Support Specialist, on her road to work in the field.
She finally decided to discover if there was a physical reason for the chronic psychosis. She sought a primary care physician and got to work. The physician sent her for labs and imaging. They both came back with results. She has hypothyroidism and a small, benign tumor in the pituitary gland of her brain. She began to wonder why the ER hadn't sent her for labs and imaging in the first place. She then had to wait to see specialists because family issues came up and then the coronavirus outbreak hit. When quarantine got put into place, Cristina heard her intuition say that many are going to go into mental crisis because of this lockdown. That's when Cristina felt the need to take action.
At that time Daniel had posted in Shades of Awakening looking for a spiritually based service that offered 1:1 chat to help his friend and Cristina, as well as others, responded to the post with information regarding generic peer support services. Upon realizing that such a spiritually focused peer support did not exist the two of them founded Asklepios with the mission to provide those in need with a ‘warm line’ staffed by individuals with lived experience in matters related to bipolar disorder as seen from a spiritual lens. The spiritually focused peer support staff serves to listen to those who are experiencing mental, emotional, and/or spiritual distress in an accepting and empathetic manner free of judgement. Cristina was looking forward to giving help to others that she did not get via the psychiatric system. One of her goals is to avert unnecessary mental health crises for others.
Now that you’ve gotten an idea of how Asklepios began and what it is we do, how can we help you? We’re here to talk you through whatever it is you’re going through, whether it be mental, emotional, and/or spiritual. Asklepios is here to listen as you express whatever you need to release. We utilize messaging, voice and video chat to support you during tough times. When you’re ready, tap or click the green chat button on the bottom right and we’ll set up a session for you with one of our listeners as soon as possible!
Authored by Cristina Mohr and Daniel Steinberger