Today we interview Wendy Hummell, a seasoned law enforcement officer in Wichita, Kansas who after 25 years is now providing wellness resources to law enforcement officers to help them thrive in their work. We talk about surviving in a masculine profession, perfectionism, and the toll the career in law enforcement took on her wellbeing.  Wendy shares the trauma she experienced when having premature babies and how finding yoga helped her tap into the effect trauma was having on her nervous system.  Wendy shares how she has found purpose and is now focused on influencing the system through her ground-breaking holistic wellness work with law enforcement and her Guns and Yoga podcast.

Today we discuss:

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• Wendy’s early years in the Bronx with her family and how her parents were “self-proclaimed hippies”.  How being raised in a free-spirited and chaotic environment., with a lot of criminal activity, caused her to have a strong sense of right and wrong.
  
• Her strong sense of justice, the influence of shows like Charlie’s Angels and Wonder Woman, and how she knew early on she was going to have a career in law enforcement.
  
• The reality of working in the male dominated profession of law enforcement and how it was necessary to suppress her feminine to succeed.
  
• Her healing journey of rediscovering her divine feminine and her love of the Goddess Saraswati, the goddess of wisdom and voice.
  
• The reality that women don’t always support one another because everyone is just trying to survive inside the system.  How healing herself has helped her daughters and the people around her.
  
• How she had a painful and difficult retirement but chose to re-enter the system and is now supporting law enforcement officers by providing mindfulness tools and holistic wellness programs.
  

Bio:

Wendy Hummell, is a seasoned law enforcement officer with over 25 years of experience.  She started her career in 1996 as an immigration and naturalization specialized and ended her career after 21 years of service with the Wichita police Department where she spent the majority of her career working persons crimes investigations.  She also worked homicide, gang, and sex crime cases.  Wendy is currently the health and wellness manager for the Sedgwick County Sherriff’s office, she is passionate and committed to helping her fellow first responders learn the various tools of peer support, mindfulness, resiliency, therapy, fitness and more. It is her belief that all law enforcement and first responder agencies should provide resources to their employees so they can not only survive a career in law enforcement but thrive well into retirement.   Wendy’s work has been recognized by the Wichita metro crime Commission; she was given the officer of the year award in 2018.  She and her husband, who is also a law enforcement officer launched the guns and yoga podcast in 2021 as a platform to provide support  and provide resources to law enforcement officers and their families.   

Wendy’s work:

Building a Wellness Program from the Ground Up Online Course

https://www.justiceclearinghouse.com/building-a-wellness-program-from-the-ground-up-online-course/

 Guns and Yoga Podcast: https://gunsandyoga.podbean.com/

 Email: wendy@bluelineyoga.com

 Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/wendy-hummell-b48653186

 https://30x30initiative.org/

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