S12e5: Tamsyn Strydom – A Profound Willingness to Change

“Welcome your enemy, welcome the darkness. Let everybody come and sit with you at the table.
Welcome with open arms, with love, with light. …That is when everything dissolves, and you are free.”
– Tamsyn Strydom

Before discovering the Hoffman Process, Tamsyn Strydom shares that her life had “quietly begun to shut down.” She felt overwhelmed, facing unexplained health challenges and struggling to get out of bed after relocating to a new country.

Coming to the Process with a Hoffman scholarship and a quiet, desperate urgency to heal, Tamsyn felt hope. She knew that doing the Process would mark a profound turning point in her life.

At the Process, Tamsyn gave it her all. She met all parts of herself, the light and the dark. She faced everything with a willingness to change. Tamsyn left feeling incredible. Yet it only took a week back home for her to fall back into the darker patterns that had brought her to Hoffman in the first place.

Once home, Tamsyn had shared with others how good she felt. Now, she felt shame that the patterns had returned. Rather than saying anything to anyone, she began to isolate. This is when she found a profound willingness within. With nowhere to run to, nowhere else to go, she had to surrender again as she’d done at the Process. Now, she had to do it on her own. It was time to sit with the darkness, time to come to know and love herself deeply.

Listen in to hear how Tamsyn made her way through this challenge and into her new life. She credits the Hoffman Process as a pivotal catalyst that helped her reclaim her capacity, deepen her self-trust, and step fully into this next chapter of her life.

Content Warning: This episode references disordered eating.

Listen on Apple Podcasts

More about Tamsyn Strydom:

Tamsyn is the founder of Radiant Growth and Khanyisa Institute, and the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Lo Sono Integrative Health. All three are dedicated to functional medicine, well-being, longevity science, and leadership evolution. Through her work in clinical and integrative health environments, she has supported thousands of patients. She brings a rare blend of medical insight and performance-driven leadership. Drawing on her background in integrative health and experience within clinical environments, her work bridges the realities of business demands, health, and human performance. She partners with physicians and clinical teams, serving as the bridge between patients and providers to integrate the often-missing “healing from within” dimension alongside medical care.

A keynote speaker and leadership performance expert, Tamsyn Strydom helps high-performing founders and leaders elevate business results, performance, and health. Most leaders try to think their way through burnout, culture issues, and performance gaps. But real change starts on the inside. Tamsyn works with those who appear successful on the outside but feel disconnected, reactive, or stretched thin behind the scenes. She equips them to rebuild self-trust, emotional resilience, and clarity so they can lead more effectively and create real impact without burning out. Personally trained and certified within Dr. Joe Dispenza’s authorized practitioner network, this is one of several dimensions that inform her approach.

Originally from South Africa, Tamsyn is building a life in the U.S. that feels like a story worth telling. A story of new countries, getting intentionally lost in new cities, and deep talks at 1 AM about purpose, passion, and why we’re really here.

Learn more at TamsynStrydom.com. Follow Tamsyn on Facebook and Instagram.

As mentioned in this episode:

Willingness: 
Willingness is a concept and a corresponding skill that supports healing. When we are willing, we choose to be and engage with what we are experiencing. We don’t have to like it. We don’t have to believe that what is here is okay or even good. It’s the choice we make to be right here, right now, with everything just as it is, even if it means feeling pain or discomfort. Our instinct might be to pull away, yet we can develop the skill of willingness.

Self-compassion:
“I define self-compassion as the ability (and practice) of holding myself amidst failure, disappointment, and suffering of any kind, and in the face of these life contractions, to still be able to offer myself love and kindness. …It is the practice of loving ourselves out of shame and into wholeness – the place where we can connect to and embody our own capacity for radical self-love.” Jasin Deegan (Read the full quote here.)