Latest / Remember Why You Are Here / How do I find rhythm in a life that keeps changing? (a Q&A podcast)

Transcript

How do I find rhythm in a life that keeps changing? (a Q&A podcast) · Remember Why You Are Here

0:02
As you start moving into more and more of who you are, ask yourself,
0:07
what helps my body soften instead of brace?
0:11
This is part of your healing and this is part of your unfolding.
0:24
Hello and welcome back to Remember Why You Are Here,
0:27
a podcast for seekers and sensitives where you can relax, receive,
0:31
reconnect yourself and remember the most important thing of all,
0:35
why you're here. I'm Asia Suler, author, teacher,
0:40
earth intuitive. And in this episode today,
0:43
we're going to drop into your questions,
0:45
questions that you all have sent me over the last handful of months.
0:50
You all come up with the best questions.
0:52
So I'm really excited to dive into some of these topics in this episode today,
0:57
including supporting people through end of life transitions,
1:01
what to do when you don't receive any images when you're meditating,
1:05
how to overcome some of the feelings of silliness and
1:10
resistance or worry about coming off as too woo,
1:13
and so much more. So with that, let's dive into our first question.
1:19
So this question is from Shana and Shana left me a voice message to say this.
1:25
I'm wondering how sensitives can relate to
1:30
routines or rituals and consistency.
1:35
As a sensitive and creative
1:38
in this world,
1:40
that's something that I've struggled with my whole life and I would love to hear
1:44
you speak on that.
1:46
So if you are a sensitive and a creative,
1:48
you likely have a lot of energy inside of yourself that needs to
1:53
go towards creating something that needs to go towards fulfilling
1:58
that soul impulse inside of you.
2:00
And exactly as Shana mentioned in this question,
2:03
it's really helpful to have rhythms and routines and
2:08
consistency in what you're doing in order to bring these visions to life.
2:12
And it's almost like if we don't have those things,
2:15
then that energy that wants to go into creation can kind of just start to
2:20
twirl around and get tangled inside of ourselves and it can then feel like we're
2:25
overwhelmed or we're carrying too much.
2:27
And some of that is because this creative energy needs to go out in the world.
2:31
So let's talk about it.
2:32
First thing I'm going to say is that if you want to have
2:37
rhythms and routines that help you create what you're feeling
2:42
called to create in this world,
2:44
it is most helpful to reverse engineer the life
2:49
you desire. So often,
2:52
we have a dream or a vision of what we want our life to look like,
2:55
including what we want our creative life to look like.
2:58
And we often think we need to take these steps in order to get there,
3:01
and that's true,
3:03
but what ends up happening is that we end up being confused about which step to
3:08
take, what that routine looks like.
3:10
And the way we do that is not by finding random puzzle pieces and putting them
3:15
together;
3:16
it's by looking at the overall picture of the puzzle that you're completing and
3:20
then deciding, okay, which pieces do I start with first?
3:24
So I always tell people,
3:25
especially when I'm coaching people in my course Business as a Spiritual
3:28
Journey,
3:29
to come up with the overall picture first of what do you want your days to
3:34
feel like? What do you want your life to look like? What... in your ideal world,
3:39
what would your creative practice look like? How much time would you have?
3:42
What do you want to create? And then once you have that bigger picture,
3:46
then you reverse engineer your days and you ask yourself, okay,
3:50
if that's where I want to go, if this is the bigger picture,
3:53
what do these small tangible steps look like now? Where do I begin?
3:58
And with sensitive people in particular,
3:59
I often find the place that you need to begin is not by adding something
4:04
into your life, but by removing something. As sensitives,
4:09
we tend to take on more than we are actually built
4:14
to handle.
4:15
It's this strange paradox where we both have a ton of capacity and so we say yes
4:20
to things and we take on responsibilities.
4:22
But then the reality is that our bodies don't thrive with that
4:27
kind of overwhelm and that kind of overextension of ourselves.
4:31
And so if we want a really rich, solid,
4:34
creative practice in our life, we're going to have to let go of something.
4:39
And sometimes, oftentimes,
4:42
this means letting go of something where you're actually self-abandoning,
4:45
something where you have said yes to it, you've over-committed,
4:50
and you're actually abandoning your creative self or your creative practice in
4:53
order to do that.
4:54
And so go through your days and look at
4:59
what you've committed to, look at what you've said yes to,
5:01
and then ask yourself,
5:04
"Does this help me feel more expanded or more contracted?" And that is a
5:09
sure sign that if something feels like it's kind of contracting you,
5:16
that might be something for you to review and possibly something for you to let
5:19
go of.
5:20
I find with sensitive people that the problem isn't getting in touch with our
5:25
own selves actually.
5:27
The problem is that you've picked up so much energy that it's blocking you from
5:31
hearing that voice within or that creative impulse within or that
5:36
organizing principle that is going to help you figure out the steps that you
5:40
need to meet your goal. So even having a daily practice at the end of the day,
5:45
or before you sit down in whatever your creative pursuit is,
5:48
where you cleanse away all the other energies that are not yours from the day,
5:52
where you envision yourself like a crystal and you give yourself a bath and let
5:56
it all go,
5:58
where you call the lights of yourself back to you and all the places that you
6:01
left them. This is huge for sensitives.
6:03
We often don't realize that the reason why we're experiencing blockages or
6:08
static is because we are tracking too many people and taking care of too many
6:13
things. And when it comes to ritual in particular,
6:17
I think ritual is an incredible tool for
6:21
stepping into your creative channel,
6:23
for living gracefully and fluidly in one's life.
6:28
So ritual itself can actually be part of a transition piece.
6:33
And this is something that I find is up in particular for sensitive people is
6:37
that we often struggle with transitions.
6:40
Transitions are innately sensorially overwhelming.
6:44
You're going from one state of being to another.
6:46
So if you are someone who finds yourself, for example,
6:49
you're excited to sit down and you work on this piece of writing,
6:54
but you get to that place and then you immediately go on your phone and you
6:57
start scrolling and you're like, "Why am I doing this?
7:01
I actually am looking forward to this next thing that I'm doing,
7:04
or I had been looking forward to it and now I'm feeling anxiety and I'm just
7:07
sort of doing something mindless on my phone." The reason why you're doing that
7:11
is because the transition itself is uncomfortable.
7:13
The transition itself is a bit overwhelming for your body.
7:17
So rituals can really help with that transition time and that
7:21
transition piece. So rituals could be as simple as lighting a candle,
7:25
burning some incense, moving your body for two minutes to a song,
7:30
taking a deep breath with your hand on your heart,
7:33
whatever signals to you and your body that this
7:37
transition is underway and gives you some time to just be present with the fact
7:42
that it might be a little unsettling for your body to move from one thing to
7:46
another. And as sensitive people,
7:48
we go very deeply into whatever the situation is
7:53
that we are within.
7:55
So if you're going from say parenting to sitting
7:59
down to work on your book, that's a big transition.
8:04
You are just in a whole other world directly attuning to your child or
8:09
children, keeping a million things in your brain,
8:12
tracking all the details of what needs to be cleaned in the house and the
8:16
appointments that need to be made.
8:17
And so give yourself some grace in that transition time because it might take a
8:22
moment, but if you're aware of that and you ritualize it,
8:25
it can be incredibly helpful.
8:27
And I often find when I feel overloaded
8:33
and I have an inability to drop into my creative practice,
8:36
then often what's needed is ritual.
8:39
And so you will find the rituals that work well for you.
8:44
In my teachings,
8:45
I talk about rituals such as channeling work,
8:50
shamanic journeying, sit spots outside, plant communication.
8:55
So if any of those feel sparkly or interesting to you,
8:59
I teach about most of those in most of the classes that I offer,
9:03
but you will know what's the right ritual transition piece for you.
9:08
Maybe it's going to be bringing flowers in from outside or meditating,
9:13
whatever it is.
9:15
Ritual often is the answer if you continually reach blocks in
9:20
creating a schedule or a routine for yourself.
9:23
And remembering here that it's not about rigidity, it's about relationship.
9:27
So it's not about picking a schedule and sticking to it no matter what.
9:31
It's about healing your relationship to time,
9:33
your relationship to your creative impulse,
9:37
your relationship to your body and its sensitivity in these steps.
9:40
And I often find it's really easiest in terms of building routine,
9:45
consistency, et cetera, to take small steps at a time,
9:48
to not give yourself this huge overhaul at once,
9:51
but to give yourself these small steps so that you can build that relationship
9:55
with your own creative practice. And then lastly,
10:01
within all of this,
10:02
we're building this skill of resiliency because the reality is that nothing is
10:07
ever constant. Things are always changing.
10:10
So whatever routine you have now might not be the routine you have a year from
10:14
now. Whatever routine you have now,
10:16
it might get completely dashed next week when something totally unexpected comes
10:21
up. And so building this tool of resiliency,
10:27
of having the built-in rituals and gentleness and patience with oneself that
10:32
help us bounce back instead of feeling completely flattened when something
10:36
goes off kilter-because that's going to happen. And one thing that really,
10:40
really helps with this is if you prioritize your
10:45
creative pursuit, the thing you're most excited about,
10:48
as the first thing in your day every day.
10:52
Often what happens is things go haywire as the day goes
10:55
on.
10:56
And so if you prioritize the thing that is most important to you first,
11:00
you have fresh energy, you have fresh possibility,
11:03
there's way more likelihood that you're not going to get thrown off track with
11:06
that.
11:07
This can be really challenging for sensitive people because we often feel like I
11:11
need to take care of everyone else first before I can take care of me.
11:15
But the opposite is true.
11:17
You will have such a wider ability to take care of other people if you take care
11:21
of the thing that is most important to your heart first.
11:25
And so I'm not necessarily talking about first thing in the morning. I mean,
11:29
first thing in the morning,
11:30
I'm making my daughter breakfast and getting her off to school.
11:33
I'm certainly not dropping into my creative practice.
11:36
I am not someone who can wake up very early in the morning,
11:39
so that's just not a thing for me. But for me,
11:41
that looks like once I do have my space or my time,
11:45
I sit down, I meditate first thing,
11:49
drop into some channeling work, and then I write. And for me,
11:53
that's my creative practice is writing.
11:55
So I prioritize that thing that is most important to my heart.
11:58
And if you even just give yourself one hour to focus on that thing,
12:03
even if it's just once a week, one hour once a week,
12:05
it's going to open up so much possibility for you.
12:08
So these are all the tools and the things that I keep in mind in terms of
12:12
creating consistency around routines and rituals so that my
12:17
creative spark can flourish.
12:19
I hope that it was helpful for you because the world really needs what
12:24
you're here to create as a sensitive person.
12:26
The world deeply needs what it is that you are passionate about.
12:31
And so making the space that you need in order to
12:37
have that creation come through is part of your service to the world.
12:41
This next great question comes from a listener named Catherine,
12:46
and though it's specific to something Catherine is experiencing,
12:50
I think the overarching question is really going to resonate with a lot of you.
12:55
So let's listen in.
12:57
Hi, Asia. I'm wondering if you've had any experience with aphantasia.
13:01
I have aphantasia and it's essentially where you cannot see images in your
13:04
mind's eye. So if somebody asks me to close my eyes and picture an apple,
13:08
I know what an apple looks like, but I don't see an image of it.
13:12
This has been frustrating for me as I try to connect more to my psychic gifts,
13:15
my intuition, and to visualization for co-creation and manifestation.
13:19
So I would just be curious to hear if you've ever experienced this,
13:23
how you've maybe guided students or clients through it,
13:25
and just any wisdom you have around it. Thanks.
13:29
Okay.
13:30
So first thing I want to say is that it is so normal in meditations to
13:35
not see imagery, whether or not you have aphantasia.
13:39
It is very, very normal to not be receiving things through a visual channel.
13:44
And I want to just affirm you that this is not a
13:49
deficit in imagination if this is you,
13:52
that this is not a lack in your intuition.
13:54
It's just that you receive through different channels,
13:58
and that's actually a really special thing.
14:01
So if you have aphantasia or if you are just not someone
14:06
who has very strong mental imagery,
14:08
I want you to know that you are processing information
14:13
differently than perhaps someone who does have really strong visuals,
14:18
and that is an asset. And what I encourage you to do is to embrace it.
14:24
There is a reason why mystics throughout time
14:28
have gone on journeys to deprive themselves of certain senses,
14:33
whether that's their sense of sight by going into sensory deprivation
14:37
tank, silence, like taking vows of
14:42
prudence or simplicity.
14:44
So there's a reason why mystics forever have done this,
14:48
and it's because it opens up our other channels of information and
14:52
communication. It clarifies that channel.
14:54
And what I have found with people who don't have very strong mental imagery is
14:58
that their other senses are incredibly strong and there's a lot to
15:04
receive there. So asking yourself,
15:08
letting go of trying to have a visual, and instead being like,
15:12
"What do I feel? What do I sense? What do I hear?
15:17
What do I taste?
15:20
Is there a somatic knowing in my body? Is it conceptual?
15:23
Does it seem like I just sort of have an awareness download into my psyche?
15:29
What emotions am I feeling right now?" All of these channels
15:34
are just as important as visual, if not more.
15:39
I think there's a level in which these more somatic,
15:44
conceptual, sensorial... using our other senses,
15:50
intuitive channels,
15:51
can actually give us clearer feedback at times on what it is we're actually
15:56
receiving. Looks can be deceiving.
15:59
And so I think if you are someone who doesn't have visuals,
16:04
this is actually an invitation for you to recognize the other really clear
16:09
channels that you do have in place. So that said, in a lot of meditations,
16:13
people will ask you to see or to visualize something.
16:16
And I want to encourage you to just make this switch in your brain anytime you
16:20
hear that, anytime somebody says, imagine or see,
16:24
what you will hear is, feel or sense.
16:28
So if someone says,
16:30
"Imagine you're in a meadow." You can just have this ability to flip it in your
16:34
brain just right away,
16:35
have it there and go "feel that you're in a meadow." And notice
16:40
how that shifts for you.
16:41
Notice how much more information can come in when you're not trying to reach
16:46
for a channel in which that's not the way in which the
16:51
information wants to reach you.
16:54
So what I have found is that people with aphantasia or difficulty
16:59
receiving mental images,
17:01
that they often are actually really good at synthesizing complex
17:06
information intuitively.
17:08
We can get very stuck on visuals sometimes.
17:11
We can get really attached to them. Like I said before,
17:16
looks can be deceiving.
17:17
We can sometimes mistake vivid imaginations for an
17:22
answer to some of our questions.
17:25
And so what I find is that when we're not overly relying on the visuals,
17:31
that it actually increases our ability to have this complex
17:35
multi-layered integration of the information we're receiving because visual is
17:39
literally only one of our five senses, and that's just the five senses.
17:43
We're not even talking about extra sensory abilities. So
17:47
think about people who go into sensory deprivation
17:52
experiences specifically to open up the portal of our awareness.
17:57
If you are someone who's not receiving mental images,
18:00
you already have that in place.Actually,
18:02
the portal of your awareness is really wide. Lean into that.
18:06
Lean into what is there because you have this ability to synthesize complex
18:11
information in the absence of images that creates a greater picture.
18:16
And I really just want to encourage you to know that your intuition speaks
18:21
to you in the way your innate channels work.
18:25
All of us have channels of intuition in which we are receiving information in
18:28
which we are having the guidance that we need to live our life.
18:33
And the way in which it comes in will be completely unique to you.
18:36
And this is important because it's actually helping you understand yourself.
18:39
It's helping you understand how you work in this body,
18:43
the vessel that you're in,
18:44
and how to receive information in a way that works for you in your life
18:49
path. So instead of fighting or resisting any of these things,
18:54
to lean into, soften in, and to expand out to see what is there,
19:00
because I guarantee there is actually so much there that you are
19:05
receiving and you are experiencing.
19:07
And the thing that you think limits you is actually the very thing that is
19:11
opening you up to even greater possibility. Okay.
19:16
That was such a great question.
19:17
I know it's going to resonate with so many people.
19:19
And now I want to move on to a question that I think is also going to resonate
19:22
with a lot of us. So this question is from another one of our listeners,
19:28
and it's one that I think we're all carrying at our heart no matter what our
19:32
upbringing is. So let's listen to the question now.
19:36
I connect so strongly with plants and I connect so strongly, especially,
19:40
with trees. Now I am almost 74. I was brought up a certain way.
19:46
There's always a line I'm afraid to cross.
19:49
And my family thinks I've lost my mind, but I don't care anymore.
19:53
I'm so ready to do this. I'm not quite sure what steps to take,
19:56
but I want to go all the way. I mean,
19:59
I do commune with plants in my own little way, I guess, especially my trees,
20:03
but I really want to delve into this.
20:06
So I was just wondering if you could help me.
20:09
So this is sort of like the task of our lifetime,
20:13
is to be willing to
20:17
overcome the parameters that we were given, the conditioning that we were given,
20:22
to embrace our true selves. And for many of us,
20:25
that looks like embracing the woo. Now,
20:29
before we even get started with all this,
20:31
I need to talk about what this word "woo" actually means,
20:35
because I certainly grew up hearing this word woo,
20:38
hearing it thrown around as something that was negative,
20:40
something you definitely did not want to be.
20:43
I grew up in the Northeast of the United States where
20:48
intellectualism, rationalism, was very, very prized.
20:51
So the last thing I ever wanted to be perceived as growing up was woo.
20:55
And then when I got older,
20:57
I started having these breakthrough experiences into the spiritual
21:02
world, into non-ordinary reality, speaking with plants,
21:06
connecting with my spirit guides and my own wideer self.
21:11
I looked into the etymology of this word woo because it was something I still
21:14
struggled with. I don't want to be seen as woo.
21:18
And when I looked into it,
21:20
it totally just melted this part of me that resisted it because here's the
21:25
interesting part:
21:25
This word woo comes from ancient China and
21:30
this word woo in ancient China meant female
21:35
shaman, healer and herbalist. So
21:41
really this word woo is a name for a class of women who were
21:46
incredibly powerful and held power through their ability to be in connection
21:51
with the non-physical world, with the spirit world,
21:54
to be in connection with the healing power of the plants and with their own
21:58
intuition.
21:59
And so this sacred term for this sacred
22:04
class of people was taken by the West and
22:08
twisted into something that was ungrounded,
22:12
that was shameful, that was out there.
22:17
And why I say this is because embracing our woo is a reclamation.
22:21
It's a reclamation of our power as sensitives,
22:26
as intuitives, as women, if you identify as a woman.
22:31
So it's actually quite radical work to embrace your
22:36
woo. It's rewriting history,
22:39
it's healing the human heart and the human timeline.
22:42
So I just want to congratulate all of you out there who is working on
22:47
embracing your woo because it's literally like healing
22:53
this great rend in the fabric of reality and in culture
22:58
and healing long-term cultural trauma that has divorced
23:03
ourselves, that made it so that it was unsafe,
23:06
especially for those socialized as women,
23:09
made it unsafe for us to trust our intuition, to trust our higher authority,
23:14
to trust that we do have that connection. We can receive that information,
23:17
and that we can trust ourselves and our bodies and our inner knowing.
23:22
And the problem with what came in,
23:25
especially in the Western world in the interim,
23:29
is a lot of these religions that arose that were based on fear
23:34
and control. And I just want to name that
23:39
within all of the religions in the world are really beautiful seeds of
23:45
connection and mysticism and spiritual
23:50
unfoldment. But within that,
23:52
there have been centuries and overlays of domination and
23:57
control and the use of fear as a way to separate us from our own
24:02
selves. And so what ends up happening when we walk towards, again,
24:06
trusting ourselves and this path of our own intuition and this path of spirit
24:12
or woo, is that fear will come up.
24:15
And so much of this journey is going to be about
24:19
companioning yourself and your body as fear
24:24
or shame or rage arise.
24:28
And so if you're having any sense of fear or shame come up by moving
24:33
towards this, like, what will people think? Is this the right thing to do?
24:39
All those things, know that that's you purging that from your system.
24:43
And this is not even something you're just doing for yourself.
24:45
You're doing it for your whole ancestry. You're doing it for your whole line,
24:49
for your lineages, past, present, and future.
24:52
So to companion your body, to when you're having an intense sensation come up,
24:57
to stop, breathe into it,
25:01
give yourself permission to be with it.
25:05
How many of our ancestors did not have that permission to stop and be with
25:10
what they were feeling, to recognize what they're feeling, to breathe into it,
25:15
to tell the part of them that is afraid or does feel shame or
25:20
is really angry, "I see you. I'm here with you.
25:23
I will never leave you." So to companion your body as
25:28
these feelings come up to know it's entirely normal and natural and not only
25:31
normal and natural,
25:32
but it's part of the gift you're giving to this world and to your lineage
25:36
because you are healing and releasing this backlog of emotions as you do so.
25:42
Your body needs to know that it's safe to do this, to walk towards the woo.
25:47
And safety for humanity, for humans, often is belonging. That's how we survived.
25:53
And so anything in which you feel like your sense of belonging's in
25:57
question is going to, of course, bring up these feelings.
26:01
And so that's why it's really important to connect into communities like this
26:05
where people are on the same page, you're not alone,
26:08
you're together with others, you're orienting in the same direction.
26:14
And to really ask yourself as you start moving into more and more of who
26:19
you are, to ask yourself,
26:21
"What helps my body soften instead of brace?" And even if it's a little
26:26
thing- maybe you're showing up for the first time at a local class,
26:30
maybe it's a local intuitive development class and you're feeling nervous and
26:34
you're like, "I can feel.
26:36
I'm really nervous right now." What would help you in that moment to soften just
26:40
1% more rather than brace 1% more?
26:44
Maybe you're going to go in with sunglasses on at
26:49
first,
26:49
or maybe you're going to take some time to listen to a song before you enter,
26:53
but to ask your body,
26:54
to ask yourself that and know that this is part of your healing and this is part
26:58
of your unfolding. Shame also thrives when it lives in the closet.
27:02
So if shame is coming up for you, speaking aloud, what it is you're doing,
27:07
even if it's only to yourself, sharing in forums,
27:10
like taking that step out into the world,
27:12
that can help dissolve some of that shame, that shame,
27:15
which often was used as a tool in these
27:20
dominant religions and paradigms where control was the key.
27:25
These systems that had gotten away from the original heart of what that
27:30
religion or what that spiritual path is like and was using shame as a tool
27:35
to control us. So if you're having shame come up, good.
27:39
Because that's also part of you releasing this.
27:43
And then there's this other aspect too. So maybe with the shame,
27:46
it feels less like, oh my gosh,
27:49
everyone is going to forsake me forever and I'm no good. Maybe it's more like,
27:54
I feel silly. I feel silly.
27:58
I'm sitting under this tree and closing my eyes and meditating and I feel so
28:01
silly. Someone's going to look at me and be like,
28:02
"What is she doing?" Anytime this comes up for my students, I always say,
28:06
"This is a good thing. Embrace it." Because silliness is an important energy.
28:11
Children learn early on that silliness is when we take
28:16
something in the way it's supposed to be in our culture and we turn it on its
28:20
head, like whatever it is,
28:22
putting pants on your head instead of on your bottoms.
28:26
And so when we feel silly,
28:28
it's a sign that we are undoing some of the paradigms we've been handed,
28:32
that we're questioning them, that we're turning them on its head,
28:34
and it's a really powerful thing to do.
28:38
And then lastly, it really helps me when moving more towards who I am,
28:43
embracing my woo and my power within that,
28:46
to remember that life is a play, that we are here to play,
28:49
we are here to experiment, and to ask myself, how do I want to play in this?
28:54
What feels playful for me? Like this arena of exploring my woo,
28:57
it feels playful for me. I want to experiment there.
29:01
I don't even have to stay with one thing or another.
29:05
Maybe I won't stay a tarot reader forever, but I want to learn the tarot now.
29:09
Get into this mindset of play and experimentation and expansion,
29:14
and this will really, really help.
29:16
And to know that the very things that feel like
29:20
they're blocks in your life or negative or preventing you from
29:25
stepping into this, that that also can be a form of play.
29:29
So I find that in particular, this framework by Carolyn Elliott in her book,
29:33
Existential Kink can be really helpful,
29:36
especially if you're someone who grew up in paradigms where there was a lot
29:41
of shaming going on or a lot of fear-based control.
29:45
And this framework in Existential Kink is basically kind of shadow work where we
29:50
look at the things that feel like they're blocking us or limiting us in our
29:54
life, and we ask ourselves,
29:57
in what way is my spirit actually actually delighting in this.
30:01
In what way is this actually giving me an opportunity to play?
30:07
It's a way of embracing what's quote unquote in the shadow,
30:10
which might be our woo, and these sort of repressed parts of ourselves,
30:14
or the parts that we deem negative, and through embracing them,
30:17
gaining power again, really recognizing who we are. And so it's such a
30:23
tricksterish thing to find pleasure or power in the very things you
30:29
dislike or avoid or feel our taboo or are uncomfortable.
30:32
So if you're feeling uncomfortable stepping into your woo,
30:36
know that there's nothing wrong there. And actually,
30:39
can you put that trickster hat on,
30:42
that sort of existential kink hat on, and be like,
30:46
how can I play with this?
30:49
In what way was this limiting factor in my life actually
30:54
something my spirit was playing with,
30:56
that it was helping me to explore other aspects of myself?
31:00
And this will allow you to just have a little
31:05
bit of a lighter heart about the things that feel
31:09
limiting in your ability to really step into and relax into your
31:15
woo. So for example,
31:17
maybe you feel shame come up around telling
31:22
your friends or your family what you're up to now.
31:25
And so the prompt would be like,
31:28
in what way can I actually delight in this shame or
31:33
in what way is this shame here to help me? And maybe the answer is like,
31:39
wow, that shame is actually really making me turn my attention inwards.
31:43
And when I turn my attention inwards,
31:45
I'm hearing this voice inside of me that's like,
31:48
"I want to do this." Or those voices like,
31:51
tell her about your crystal collection, whatever it is.
31:55
And if you're interested in this practice, I recommend the book,
31:58
I recommend looking more into this, but it's again,
32:02
just this essential quality of play. Play with it, see what happens,
32:06
play with it, play with the blocks, play with the things that limit you,
32:09
play with the hard stuff that comes up because that's what we're here to do.
32:12
We're here to play and we're here to become more and more of who we innately
32:16
are. Humans are experimenters.
32:20
I really think that's part of our role here on this planet is just to be
32:23
experimenters.
32:23
So experiment in this unfolding and know that you're being called to this for a
32:28
reason.
32:29
And every single step you take towards who you truly are is an
32:34
unfolding that touches every corner of the world.
32:36
It's incredibly important and it is the service that you were giving to this
32:39
planet. So thank you, thank you,
32:41
thank you for being willing to embrace your woo.
32:45
This next question came from someone who works with folks in end of
32:50
life care, and it's a question that other people have asked me before.
32:54
And I'm going to do my best to answer this question from my humble experience
32:59
and life perspective and what I've learned from other folks who are death
33:03
doulas, who provide end of life care, who are hospice workers.
33:07
So the question is this:
33:09
how do you support people through an end of life transition?
33:14
So this is obviously a huge question,
33:17
but one that all of us will encounter at some point in our lives,
33:22
even if it's only supporting our own selves.
33:26
So here's my humble response to this very big,
33:31
very important question. First of all,
33:36
life is a mirror, right? Life is a bookend, life is a mirror.
33:39
The beginning of life reflects the end of life as well.
33:42
And so when we arrive into this world,
33:45
we are vulnerable. We are on the edge of the unknown.
33:50
We just came from one place and are transitioning to another.
33:53
And our bodies need tender care.
33:57
We know this about infants.
34:00
But the same is true when we are in our end of life journey.
34:03
We are also in a place where we need extra
34:07
TLC, extra care, where our animal body needs extra soothing.
34:12
And so one thing that I find really helpful if you are companioning
34:17
someone through this kind of transition is to drop out of your head and
34:22
into your body.
34:24
And I think about this from when my daughter was born,
34:27
that so much of helping to
34:31
ease infants into their transition is actually just keeping your nervous system
34:36
regulated so that theirs has a safe place to co-regulate with and land.
34:41
And while, when we die, we no longer have the nervous system of an infant,
34:47
we still are in an incredibly tender,
34:52
life-changing experience, right? We are in the ultimate life experience.
34:56
And so any way in which you as a support person or someone visiting with someone
35:01
who you care about who's in that transition can drop into your body and your
35:04
regulation,
35:06
will naturally help them through this huge unknown experience that they're
35:11
moving through.
35:13
When you hold space for someone in this kind of huge transition,
35:16
your presence matters more than what you say.
35:20
And I think we often get in our heads with this of like,
35:22
"I want to say the right thing. I want to give the right advice.
35:25
I want to have the right spiritual
35:30
perspective." But the thing is,
35:31
is that they are on a huge journey of
35:36
discovery.
35:37
This is one of the biggest experiences you will have in your life,
35:41
death and birth.
35:43
And they're in the midst of one of the biggest experiences of their soul,
35:47
and frankly, an experience that their soul has gone through many,
35:49
many times before. But that said,
35:52
there's a huge unknown component. There's so much they don't know about this.
35:57
And so
35:59
your job is not to give them an entirely new spiritual framework or
36:05
to say the exact right thing.
36:06
It is literally just to hold space for them on this incredible journey that
36:11
they are undertaking in the way that their soul needs to undertake it.
36:16
We have no say or control in what that journey is going to look like for them
36:21
and what this last step of life is going to look like for them.
36:26
And so any way in which you can just normalize whatever is happening for them,
36:31
normalize it. There's a million different ways to die
36:35
and to also make peace with the unknown inside of yourself.
36:38
I think often when we are trying to reassure anyone in the midst of a
36:42
huge life moment,
36:44
we unconsciously are responding to our own discomfort around
36:49
the unknown.
36:51
And so any way in which you can do this work of being with yourself and your
36:55
emotions, especially if you're close to somebody,
36:57
so that you can show up and simply be present for them in their journey is a
37:01
huge gift that you can give them. And to ask yourself,
37:04
in what ways am I scared of the unknown and to do that
37:09
work within yourself, in your own time, in your own space,
37:12
so that when you are showing up and you're being in presence with them,
37:15
you've developed a relationship where you can trust what's unknown,
37:18
where you can see that mystery as the beloved and your own
37:23
relationship with the unknown will really help someone who is standing on the
37:26
edge of the greatest unknown. It's really common during this time,
37:30
from what I've heard from my death doula friends,
37:32
for a lot of unfinished business to come up.
37:36
And this is important. It's not something to be rushed through.
37:39
It's not something to be fixed. It's not something to be solved.
37:42
This is an essential part of their transition process. And so
37:47
rather than try to reframe their experiences for them,
37:51
just reflect back to them what it is that they are experiencing or
37:55
saying... You can always ask, "Tell me more," or,
37:59
"What I'm hearing is this. " That reflection is what they need because again,
38:04
their soul and their body knows how to do this.
38:07
They know how to do this process.
38:10
And so your job is just to support them in that.
38:13
They are their own spirit guide in this moment and your job is just to support
38:17
them, to reflect back to them where they're at,
38:19
to be a regulated place to land and
38:25
to hold space for them.
38:27
I have found in the few times that I have had the privilege of
38:32
being with someone who was close to dying,
38:36
that it makes a really big difference when I
38:41
am willing to be in the room and in connection with my own higher self.
38:47
So sometimes it's hard to not be in the emotional body
38:53
or a sense of panic or holding on or grasping,
38:57
but when you can make contact with your own wider or higher self
39:01
while you're in the room with them, while you're in presence with them,
39:05
it naturally relaxes the environment.
39:08
It naturally helps them make a more easeful connection with their own soul and
39:13
their own wider self.
39:14
And one thing I found is that when I can be in connection with my higher self,
39:18
ask for their presence to be with me, ask to be held within their presence,
39:22
ask for that unconditional love to shine through my eyes or to come as
39:27
warmth through my hands,
39:30
that innately opens up this passageway into the other world.
39:35
And I often find that when I can connect in that way,
39:38
it's much easier for me to sense the presence of their wider or higher self and
39:42
sense the presence of their guides as well.
39:45
And so I encourage you within your own inner self to
39:49
communicate with their higher selves, to communicate with their guides,
39:53
even if that's not something in which they're in connection with,
39:58
it can really help the transition if you're just acknowledging of these other
40:02
presences in the room, because they are there. They're there to help.
40:06
And when you are in communication with them,
40:08
it continues to open those portals of connection and awareness.
40:12
And then of course, finally, just to say,
40:15
the thing that I hear so many hospice workers repeat and
40:20
often tell family members in particular is being willing to give them
40:25
permission to let go.
40:28
So it's a process of getting to the point where you are ready to let go if
40:33
you have the experience of a death that gives you that kind of time or
40:37
space.
40:40
And then once you within yourself are ready to let go,
40:44
then you often have to approach the sensation of others not wanting to
40:49
let you go or others not wanting you to transition.
40:51
And so giving someone permission to let go can
40:57
really go a long way.
40:59
And the more that you trust the unknown,
41:02
the more that you trust your own wider self,
41:05
the more that you trust that there is a much bigger journey that we're on as
41:10
souls, the easier it will be for you to give that implicit permission
41:16
to just let go and to know that you are also being given a gift
41:21
in the presence of someone who is passing.
41:25
What I find normally is that when there is a passage like this,
41:30
it creates huge ripples of change in everybody's life who touches them.
41:34
And so to be at someone's side for this transition is one of the
41:40
ultimate honors you could ever have in this lifetime,
41:45
even as there's going to be things that come up that are
41:51
really hard, scary, sometimes gruesome.
41:55
And this is bringing you deeper into the human journey.
41:58
This is bringing you deeper into the journey of spirit and
42:03
just you being willing to
42:07
soften into your own wider connection and what you know is true and show up with
42:12
loving,
42:12
unconditional presence is one of the greatest gifts you could ever give.
42:18
So that's my answer to this question for now.
42:21
I will probably have more to say on that as I continue to live my life
42:26
and have more direct experiences with this. But I feel honored that
42:32
I was asked this question and I just want to give a big shout out to all
42:37
those who are doing this work day in, day out, in hospitals and hospice,
42:41
in death doulaship, because the work that you do is just truly incredible.
42:45
So thank you. Okay. For this next question, we're shifting gears a little bit.
42:49
So this was a question that a listener sent in and it
42:54
was specifically asking about me and my experience in my sabbatical.
42:58
So let's play that question now.
43:01
I've had a lot of curiosity surrounding when you set out on a sabbatical and a
43:05
healing time and you have these hopes or goals or visions that you presume you
43:10
will reach or accomplish.
43:12
But I would just love if you have time to share a bit more about how the
43:17
sabbatical ended up shaking out for you,
43:20
given that you probably had goals and visions in the front end of what your
43:24
plans were.
43:27
So if you haven't been following along on the journey,
43:29
I took a sabbatical last year to work on my next book,
43:33
and this book is about the deep ancestors.
43:36
It's about our Paleolithic ancestors, how they thought,
43:40
how they experienced the world,
43:41
and how the consciousness that they inhabited still lives inside of us
43:46
today and is actually here to guide us into our next phase,
43:50
our next evolution as human beings.
43:52
So it's something I'm so dorkily excited about.
43:55
I love researching this time period, this history,
43:59
and loved taking the sabbatical.
44:02
And I think I actually had a pretty good head on my shoulders for the
44:05
sabbatical.
44:07
I set the bar really low in my expectations of what I was going to get done.
44:13
My goals during the sabbatical was to collate the last five years of research
44:17
that I had done, all the notes I had taken, all the books I had read,
44:21
to organize it, collate it into a cohesive outline,
44:25
and to get the introductory chapter written. Those are my goals.
44:28
And I hit those goals, so I felt pretty good about that.
44:31
I did learn some things about myself on the sabbatical.
44:36
I learned that I need a lot more space and time and slowness than I realized,
44:40
a lot more. It's amazing how even taking those months off from working,
44:45
the days did seem to fill up with a lot.
44:49
And that I...
44:51
often am very good at getting a lot done in short periods of time,
44:55
but that when it comes to this big creative work and this big synthesis and
45:00
channeling work, that I do need more space and time.
45:04
So I feel like the sabbatical, it really showed me what I actually need,
45:08
the ingredients that I need to create these
45:13
bigger works that I dream of in my life.
45:17
And it helped me recognize the places in which I was overriding my capacity,
45:23
in which I was taking on too much.
45:24
And it really has helped me reorganize my general expectations of
45:29
myself in my life, to create more space to do what I need to do,
45:32
to let go of what I need to let go of,
45:34
in order to have more space to drop in in the way that I was able to
45:39
on the sabbatical.
45:40
It gave me more of a taste of what life looks like when you're living at the
45:45
pace that your nervous system really needs.
45:47
And I came back with this sort of renewed enthusiasm for
45:53
creating that kind of life for myself,
45:55
for taking the lessons that I learned in my sabbatical and bringing it into my
45:58
day-to-day life, which I think is the purpose of sabbatical.
46:01
I took five months off last year,
46:04
and those five months,
46:06
they did radically transform how I want to live all the coming months in my
46:11
life. I realized that I want to take more time off in general.
46:15
That's something that, if I prioritize that,
46:18
I will likely make huge leaps in the projects and the things I want to see
46:21
unfold.
46:22
And it will support me in taking that time off because it
46:27
moves the dial ahead so much so in my life.
46:29
So I'm still learning from the sabbatical as I am
46:35
just softening back into work now,
46:39
but it definitely reorganized the way I work.
46:42
It reorganized what my nervous system really is willing to put up with
46:48
at this point too. Now that I've seen what it's like to have that kind of space,
46:52
I'm like, yeah, I need to build this into my life more.
46:55
And so I'm so grateful for that experience.
46:57
I will continue to use it as a touchstone and I'm excited for the next one
47:01
because you bet your buttons,
47:02
I'm going to take another sabbatical because now I know that I can and I know
47:07
that it actually ends up giving so much to my life to take that time.
47:12
So with that, I thought it would be great to drop into our next question,
47:15
which was sent in by another listener named Elisabeth.
47:20
And this question is about some of the research that I was doing into the deep
47:24
ancestors. So the question is,
47:26
do we know anything about how our deep ancestors approached love, partnership,
47:30
parenting, and family structure?
47:32
And if emerging research offers insight we could learn from today. So
47:38
yes, there is research on this.
47:43
The archeological record can only show us so much, right?
47:46
So a lot of what people are talking about now within these topics is a
47:50
combination of archeological research, advances in DNA testing,
47:56
but also what we know about our own
47:59
neurobiology. If we just study our own neurobiology,
48:05
we can understand how we were built and what we were built for.
48:09
We are no different than our deep ancestors.
48:11
And it's part of why we struggle and have issues in the modern
48:16
world right now,
48:17
because we weren't built for the kind of lives that we lead now.
48:22
We were built for slower lives, more expansive lives.
48:27
We were built to have more downtime, more leisure.
48:30
We were built for close community bonds,
48:33
for deep support and relational trust.
48:36
We were built to be walking through the world to have deep relationships with
48:41
landscapes.
48:42
So we can actually know more about our ancestors
48:47
through looking at our own current neurobiology.
48:51
So before I dive into what some of the more current research is saying,
48:55
I just want to say that human beings are diverse and we've been diverse from the
48:59
start. There is no one way to live as a human.
49:04
I'm going to venture a guess that there have been many different kinds of
49:08
cultural systems, family systems, parenting systems in the past,
49:13
and that there's no one right way and that this diversity is part of what marks
49:18
humans as a species, that we are a diverse species,
49:22
that we tend to try out and experiment with different ways of living.
49:28
So that all said,
49:30
place what everything I want to say now into that context of understanding that
49:33
there are many diverse ways to live like a whole human life.
49:38
So we know, ground basis,
49:40
we know that we were evolved to have pair bonds. Now,
49:44
pair bonds is not the same thing as
49:47
monogamy. Pair bonds,
49:51
it can look like a lot of different things,
49:53
but what pair bonds basically are are where we're bonding with someone else in a
49:57
way that we are sharing territory,
50:02
sharing responsibilities. And these pair bonds,
50:06
they exist between animals outside of humans. This is not just a human thing,
50:11
this is a mammalian thing, and beyond even mammalian thing,
50:14
but that these pair bounds are beyond sexual connection and they
50:19
outlast a single mating season, for example.
50:23
So our ability to fall in love is a
50:28
marker of this propensity for pair bonds,
50:32
that we are meant to have close connections with other
50:37
humans in which we share responsibilities. Now,
50:41
a lot of what is said in the research is that the reason why
50:46
we have these pair bonds, these important pair bonds,
50:50
is that our infants are incredibly labor intensive.
50:55
Human infants are just unbelievably energetically expensive
51:00
when you look at the wide world of all the creatures on this
51:05
planet.
51:06
And so this added pressure of caring for infants that
51:11
need, children that need, a lot of care, long-term,
51:15
multi-year care,
51:17
is that this original bond basically between a mother and an
51:22
infant was kind of co-opted and turned into
51:27
using the same hormone and chemical structures,
51:29
turned into bonds that then we form with other adults,
51:34
and that these bonds were important to help mothers care for their children.
51:39
Now,
51:40
there's not conclusive evidence that these pair bonds was meant
51:45
to be a mother and a biological father.
51:48
There is evidence that there're biological fathers caring for their biological
51:51
children in the archeological record,
51:54
but I'm going to venture a guess that these pair bonds looked like a lot of
51:58
different things.
51:59
And even though we do have this propensity towards pair bonds,
52:03
pair bonds are important to us in this wider context,
52:06
we evolved to rely on our communities.
52:10
Even just a pair bond is not going to cut it in terms of raising a child.
52:15
Anyone who is in a relationship and has a child knows this:
52:20
the two of you can't do it all. It's impossible.
52:24
So we evolved as humans to rely on our whole community,
52:28
that we have our pair bond within the community that is ideally helping us
52:34
in a deep way with our parental responsibilities,
52:38
but then we also have the community.
52:40
And we rely heavily on alloparents in the community.
52:43
Alloparents is this term for other people,
52:48
aunties, uncles, cousins, older kids,
52:53
other people within our bonds,
52:56
within our social structures who are helping us to raise our children.
53:01
And so these Alloparents are absolutely essential for
53:06
raising of children.
53:08
And I imagine that in the past,
53:12
family structures the way we think of them now,
53:14
they certainly weren't nuclear and they weren't just related to
53:19
relational bonds as well, because the bands that we lived in, we know,
53:24
that yes, there were ties of genetic similarity or familiarity,
53:29
but there was also people who weren't part of that genetic pool who were also
53:32
part of that band, otherwise the band wouldn't have survived.
53:35
We need a diversity of genetic information and material.
53:39
So people were choosing families, people were joining bands,
53:43
choosing that family, becoming a part of them. And so your larger unit,
53:47
the family that was helping to take care of your children,
53:50
was not necessarily all your immediate family.
53:56
And so what we're seeing here is family structures that
54:01
rely on people not necessarily even related to you.
54:04
We know that grandmothers were incredibly important in the raising of children.
54:08
That's a whole thing called the grandmother hypothesis that we can go into
54:12
another time. And we see that, though pair bonds are important,
54:17
we also know through other research and looking at our closest primate
54:22
relatives,
54:23
that there's evidence that some of our sexual
54:28
characteristics that we carry point to us being more similar
54:33
to bonobos than some of our other primate cousins,
54:36
in that we use sex as a tool for bonding and
54:40
affiliation and creating intimacy.
54:44
And so with that, if we look up bonobos,
54:47
that sex is not necessarily relegated to one person,
54:52
that it's a way in which you create social bonds, you create social structures.
54:56
And so I imagine, given all this information,
55:00
that we had units of people taking
55:05
care of our children in a way where we likely were not
55:11
hyper-focused on possibly only one sexual partner,
55:15
where we also were likely, I can say, guaranteed,
55:19
not hyper-focused on just the parents raising one child.
55:23
And so we're returning here to this idea that chosen family is an important part
55:28
of the human experience, that having shared parental responsibilities,
55:33
an essential part of the human experience, we were not meant to do it alone.
55:37
We were meant to do it in these wider structures.
55:39
And there's even one hypothesis that our, at times,
55:43
propensity towards socially monogamous pair-bonding actually
55:48
evolved from same sex friendships.
55:52
So this is really interesting in chimpanzees,
55:56
chimpanzees do not mate for life with
56:00
whoever it is that they're having children with, their sexual mates,
56:03
but they do pair bond with same sex chimps.
56:07
They do have same sex pair bonds that can last a lifetime.
56:11
And so this is just one hypothesis, but I love that concept,
56:16
that same sex relationships and pair bonds,
56:19
lifelong pair bonds are what gave rise to what we see as
56:24
sort of the standard of the heterosexual pair bond relationship.
56:29
But I think there's so much information there about this.
56:34
I think what I would say at the end of the day is that the way that we're
56:37
parenting and the way that we're doing relationships right now just doesn't
56:40
really work. And we know this. We see this, right?
56:44
We see that just the two people taking care of the one child doesn't work.
56:49
If we were meant to be solely
56:54
across the board, all of us, monogamous,
56:59
just with one person for the rest of our life,
57:01
then it wouldn't be so hard to do that. And it is really hard.
57:07
Most people don't do that or have that.
57:09
And so this is my hot take based on the research,
57:14
but really I think humans are just, we're creative.
57:18
There's a lot of different ways in which we've learned how to make diverse
57:21
family units and structures in which it's ...
57:24
I think there's been times where we've been much freer with the way in which we
57:29
relate to one another and the way in which we explore and sanctify our own
57:33
sexuality. And so this is just a little taste,
57:37
but I wanted to say that if you are interested in this,
57:39
if this is like piquing your interest,
57:42
there's a couple places I want to point you to.
57:44
So the first place I want to mention is the Instagram account and Substack
57:49
account called Ancestral Habits. I love this account.
57:53
I love everything that the woman behind this is doing.
57:57
She's collating so much of the research from
58:01
the last 20 years, but also new stuff that's coming out now.
58:04
And she has a searchable database on her website for all her Instagram posts.
58:09
So definitely check out Ancestral Habits if you're interested in this.
58:12
You can even check out the section that she has on parenting relationships.
58:16
I also recommend the books, Sex at Dawn,
58:19
if you're interested in more of the sexuality and like pair bond aspects of this
58:24
and also Hunt, Gather, and Parent, another book, as well as the book,
58:28
Mothers and Others.
58:30
So those are two books that are looking more specifically about parenting and
58:34
parenting structures and asking this question of how are we supposed to be
58:38
parenting as human beings. Okay.
58:41
So this brings me to the final question that I'm going to cover today in this
58:45
Q&A podcast.
58:46
And this is one that a lot of you have sent into me and I'm going to answer it
58:49
to the best of my ability. I wish I had like 10 hours or 10 days to answer this,
58:54
but many of you have been noticing that I've been recording in front of my
58:57
bookshelves and everyone is asking me, like,
59:02
tell us about your books. What's on your bookshelf?
59:04
What have been the most influential books on your path?
59:08
So I'm here to answer some of your bookshelf curiosity.
59:11
And I decided to frame it as,
59:15
what were the turning point books in my life? I chose six turning point books.
59:19
I'm going to talk about each one briefly,
59:21
but I want to mention that if you want a more comprehensive
59:26
book list, if you're interested in what is on my shelves,
59:31
I actually created a webpage where I list each category that I
59:36
have in my library and my favorite books within that category.
59:40
So if you're interested in checking that out, you can head on over to
59:48
asiasular.com/librarybooks and that will give you, yeah, just...
59:51
I guess it's a reading list.
59:53
And I made it a website so that I could update it because I'm always reading new
59:56
things and always wanting to add them. So okay, let's drop in.
1:00:00
And so the first book I want to talk about is this book,
1:00:02
The Encyclopedia of Bach Flower Therapy, and that's by Mechthild Scheffer.
1:00:08
And so this book was the first book I ever
1:00:13
read about flower essences, about energetic or vibrational medicine.
1:00:17
At the time, I was living in New York City.
1:00:20
I had a job taking care of office plants.
1:00:24
And my mom actually gave me this book. One of her clients,
1:00:27
she has had a psychotherapy practice.
1:00:29
One of her clients gave her the book and she was like,
1:00:32
"I think Asia would be into this.
1:00:33
" And I started reading it and just started crying,
1:00:36
just cried the whole first several chapters.
1:00:40
And I call those kind of tears truth cries.
1:00:42
And it was the first time I had ever heard about just someone talking
1:00:47
about
1:00:49
plants as beings that help us on the psychoemotional level.
1:00:53
It was the first time that I heard someone referring to medicine as that which
1:00:57
helps unblock us so that we can inhabit the wider blueprint or
1:01:02
destiny of our life, our wider selves.
1:01:04
And so I'm choosing this book because it opened up
1:01:09
my awareness.
1:01:10
And there's a lot of books out there now about connecting with plants on a
1:01:15
spiritual level, but I still love this book.
1:01:18
I love the way the introduction to flower essences is written.
1:01:22
I love the way it's described.
1:01:24
And it's a really easy entry point because bach flower remedies are available
1:01:28
everywhere.
1:01:30
And I started using the book as a little bit of an oracle.
1:01:33
I would just open to a page and whatever page I opened to, I'd be like, "Okay,
1:01:37
that's the essence that I need." And of course,
1:01:39
I went on to found One Willow Apothecaries where I sold flower essences and I
1:01:44
shared them with people around the world.
1:01:46
So this was just the beginning of so much.
1:01:47
So I have to mention this book because it was so important to me.
1:01:52
And the next book I have is Awakening to the Spirit World.
1:01:56
And this book is by Hank Wesselman and Sandra Ingerman.
1:02:00
This book came in for me, it was probably maybe, I don't know,
1:02:04
three or four years after I read the flower essence book.
1:02:07
And I had been having a series of dreams where I was having
1:02:12
experiences in non-ordinary reality and was being shown how to
1:02:17
do different things,
1:02:18
like how to travel through time and space and transform into an animal and these
1:02:23
wild series of dreams. And at the end of it,
1:02:25
the person who had been teaching me in these dreams said,
1:02:27
"This is shamanism and we want you to learn it. " And I had been in college,
1:02:32
I had been an anthropology major for a while. And then at the last minute,
1:02:36
I ended up switching to being an English major and an anthropology minor.
1:02:39
But so from my perspective,
1:02:41
shamanism was anthropologically situated in my brain.
1:02:47
And it was something that was sort of like a catchall term for very specific
1:02:52
cultural practices held by indigenous people.
1:02:57
And so when I had these series of dreams, I was like, "What does this mean?
1:03:00
What are you asking of me?" And I remember,
1:03:03
I don't even know if Google was around then, maybe it was. It was just very new.
1:03:07
I don't think I "ask Jeeves'ed" it, but I asked someone it. And anyways,
1:03:12
this was the book that came up, Awakening to the Spirit World.
1:03:15
And I love the subtitle, The Shamanic Path of Direct Revelation,
1:03:18
because really what this book talks about is this word shamanic, which is,
1:03:23
I consider it kind of like a seed word that's helping all of us to remember
1:03:26
something that is cross-cultural and it is innate part of the human psyche.
1:03:31
And it is really opening this pathway to remember that you have the ability
1:03:36
to communicate with the unseen world, with the spirit world,
1:03:39
and bring back direct revelation for yourself as well as for your community.
1:03:43
So this is where I first learned how to undertake a shamanic journey.
1:03:48
And this book really opened me up to this next phase
1:03:53
of my unfolding and my connection to what I call the spirit
1:03:57
world. It really informed my work from here on out. It was...
1:04:02
shamanic journeying was a huge part of my journey of healing from Lyme disease.
1:04:07
And so this book was kind of the thing that started at all.
1:04:11
At some point I went and studied with Sandra Ingraman as well. And yeah,
1:04:16
I still absolutely adore her work in particular.
1:04:19
And I just still have such cozy feelings when I think about this book.
1:04:23
And then a few years later, I stumbled across the book Many Lives,
1:04:28
Many Masters by Brian Weiss.
1:04:31
And so this book is a recounting
1:04:34
of Brian Weiss who was a psychotherapist
1:04:40
who was working with hypnosis and his clients and had this breakthrough
1:04:43
experience where this one client started recounting other lifetimes.
1:04:49
And I had always believed in other lives in
1:04:53
reincarnation,
1:04:55
but there was something about reading this book where it just opened up my
1:04:59
portal of awareness into my own past lifetimes,
1:05:04
into the space between lifetimes.
1:05:07
It started a whole new chapter in my life.
1:05:10
I ended up going to study with Brian Weiss to learn past life regression
1:05:14
therapy, which I used mostly in my own life. And with my friends,
1:05:19
it never became like a hugely incorporated part of my own practice or
1:05:23
offerings in the world, but I loved that experience.
1:05:28
And it's just one of those books where... here's the thing,
1:05:32
my favorite books are books that help me remember.
1:05:35
They're not books that are necessarily even telling me something new.
1:05:38
It's just helping me remember what I already knew.
1:05:41
And so it felt like this huge soul remembering for me when I read his book and
1:05:46
then I went on to read all his other books.
1:05:49
And then I got into Michael Newton who wrote Journey of Souls and Destiny of
1:05:53
Souls, someone else who's doing hypnosis,
1:05:56
but instead is focusing on life between life.
1:05:59
Very cool if you're interested in that.
1:06:01
So I just feel like these books always made me really feel connected to my
1:06:05
eternal soul. And that's kind of an important way to feel in this life.
1:06:10
So I'm really grateful to this book for opening that door in that way.
1:06:15
And I went on to teach other people how to access their past lives.
1:06:19
In my long-term program, Winter Intuition School,
1:06:22
I teach about past lives and past life connection. And we did,
1:06:26
when we had retreats in person,
1:06:29
I would bring everyone through a regression,
1:06:32
which was always really interesting.
1:06:33
And then I gave folks scripts to go work with one another.
1:06:36
And I was just always amazed what happened,
1:06:39
especially with folks who've maybe never even done this before or guided someone
1:06:42
before, what would come up and what they could access.
1:06:46
So knowing that this is accessible to all of us and that your journey as a soul
1:06:51
throughout all your lifetimes just has so much wisdom to impart and
1:06:56
there's so many ways in which you can be supported by that. So now, yeah,
1:07:01
this is making me want to reread it again.
1:07:04
The next book I chose to talk about was this book,
1:07:07
Witches and Pagans by Max Dashu.
1:07:10
So this book is a researched reclamation of
1:07:16
pre-Christian spiritual practices.
1:07:18
It is rewriting women's history,
1:07:22
indigenous European history.
1:07:26
There was so much in here that as someone who is
1:07:29
an earth-based practitioner,
1:07:33
who is really working on reclaiming my ancestral traditions and
1:07:40
the sort of suppressed lineages of wisdom that exist,
1:07:45
there were so much in here that just gave me just so much perspective,
1:07:50
so much power and so many aha moments.
1:07:53
There's moments in here that are also hard to read because you are reading about
1:07:59
just the reality of how much of the
1:08:04
ancestral wisdom,
1:08:06
especially ancestral wisdom held by women in Europe was dominated,
1:08:11
punished, controlled, suppressed. And at the same time,
1:08:17
in an overarching way,
1:08:18
I felt really empowered reading this because it made me realize that what I
1:08:23
had been innately connecting to and realizing,
1:08:27
the intuitive guidance I was receiving, that it wasn't just coming from nowhere,
1:08:31
that actually this is how my ancestors lived,
1:08:33
this is how my ancestors practiced. And that as someone of European descent,
1:08:38
I do have connection to a long line of
1:08:43
healers and wisdom keepers, that there is wisdom,
1:08:47
indigenous wisdom,
1:08:48
inherent in the deep roots of Europe that is here to hold you if you are someone
1:08:53
who is of European descent.
1:08:55
So highly encourage this book if any of that is interesting to you.
1:08:59
And I certainly know that a lot of this information in this book ended up
1:09:02
getting incorporated into my teachings,
1:09:05
especially in the overarching class that I have
1:09:10
called The Pussy Portal,
1:09:11
where I talk about vaginal healing and reclamation and
1:09:16
basically how this whole root of our body is a incredibly profound pathway
1:09:21
into spiritual reclamation and connection with our own wider selves.
1:09:26
So definitely recommend this book if you're interested.
1:09:31
The next book I want to talk about is Waking the Tiger by Peter Levine.
1:09:34
I actually don't have a copy of the book with me right now because I lent it out
1:09:37
because I love this book so much. And what I love about this book...
1:09:42
so this was a foundational text in somatic therapy.
1:09:45
We had a copy of this book on our shelf growing up, growing up with...
1:09:50
my mother is an EMDR therapist.
1:09:52
But what I love about this book in comparison to other books that talk about
1:09:57
somatic healing and trauma resolution is that this book feels
1:10:02
healing unto itself to read. I'm not going to name names,
1:10:05
but other books I've read about trauma healing feel re-traumatizing to me.
1:10:10
I have not been able to get through them. But Waking the Tiger,
1:10:13
it felt like it was actually healing for me to read.
1:10:17
It helped me understand healing on a somatic level.
1:10:20
It gave me a framework to work through hard things in my life.
1:10:25
And as a sensitive person,
1:10:27
it gave me a conduit to get back into my body in this lifetime.
1:10:31
And I think that's a huge task,
1:10:32
a huge goal for other sensitive people is just to get back into our bodies,
1:10:37
to feel like our bodies are safe spaces again.
1:10:40
And so much of Peter Levine's work and the somatic work that I've done in the
1:10:43
interim years has been folded into so much of what I do,
1:10:47
including The Sensitive Series,
1:10:49
a one-off series that I taught and that is still available on my website now,
1:10:53
a series specifically to help sensitive people understand their gifts,
1:10:56
as well as my longer live program, Earth Angel School.
1:11:00
So it feels like reading that book was the beginning of a new chapter,
1:11:04
a new phase of integrating a lot of the spiritual
1:11:09
connections and knowledge that had opened up for me into my body,
1:11:13
into my lived experience and into my teachings.
1:11:16
The last book I want to mention is The Seven Daughters of Eve by Bryan
1:11:20
Sykes. And this was one of the first books I read that got me
1:11:25
interested in my deep ancestry and the deep past.
1:11:29
This book is an exploration of mitochondrial DNA or
1:11:34
mtDNA.
1:11:36
And basically we have this DNA that we carry within us that is carried by our
1:11:40
mother's line that once we were able to isolate and find it,
1:11:44
it can help us trace our ancestral lineage back in time.
1:11:47
,So he talks about the seven different lineages that we know and are aware of
1:11:52
and can trace, and he really brings those lineages alive.
1:11:56
So if you've ever done a DNA test, you can find out what your group is,
1:12:01
which daughter you are descended from or which
1:12:06
mother you are descended from. And then you can read about where they lived,
1:12:10
what time period they lived in.
1:12:12
It also talks a little bit about the adventure of figuring out this
1:12:17
science. And I just loved it. The book came alive for me. And I read this,
1:12:22
I think it was before I did my pilgrimage trip to England
1:12:27
where my mother's mother's, people are from,
1:12:29
and ended up having a really big experience that was this
1:12:34
seed for this book I'm writing now, this book about the deep ancestors.
1:12:38
So really this book began that journey in some ways.
1:12:43
And so if you're interested in deep time ancestry,
1:12:46
then I highly recommend this read. And there are so many more.
1:12:51
There are so many more books.
1:12:52
I could have just talked about books for the next however many hours.
1:12:55
So I decided to put them all up on my website,
1:12:58
or at least all my favorites in each category up on the website.
1:13:01
So if you are interested in books about soul studies,
1:13:06
plant medicine, sexuality, energy healing, indigenous philosophy, poetry,
1:13:11
depth psychology,
1:13:13
I have all those categories and all my favorite books organized underneath them
1:13:16
on the website.
1:13:17
Just go to asiasuler.com/librarybooks and you can peruse the shelves.
1:13:22
So now I'd love to hear from you. What were your turning point books?
1:13:25
What were the books that just came in and resonated with you on this level that
1:13:28
it opened up this whole new part of your pathway?
1:13:31
I'd be so curious to hear if you want to share in the comments or if you want to
1:13:35
head over to my website,
1:13:36
asiasuler.com/remember you can leave me a voice message. So as you've heard,
1:13:41
a lot of these questions today came from listeners leaving me voice messages.
1:13:45
So if you have a question for a podcast in the future,
1:13:48
go ahead and leave me that question there and I would love to hear it.
1:13:52
So I hope that in the things that I said today, you found your own answers,
1:13:56
that it sparked within you this own inner knowing,
1:14:00
this connection to your own inner self and to the stream of guidance that is
1:14:04
always here for you.
1:14:06
And I hope that in whatever guidance you received within yourself and
1:14:10
whatever connections you have made within yourself today,
1:14:14
that it helps you remember that most important thing of all, why you're here.