Latest / The James Granstrom Podcast - Super Soul Model series / Unlocking Inner Happiness with Rachael Burns

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Unlocking Inner Happiness with Rachael Burns · The James Granstrom Podcast - Super Soul Model series

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: In this episode I speak with a very special guest, rachel Burns.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Rachel's story is compelling and she shares with us how you can come back from experiencing depression to coming back to your centre.
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: Stay tuned and enjoy the episode.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to the James Grant from podcast SuperSoul Model series, where I help people tune and tap in to their natural state of wellbeing.
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: This week, I'm delighted to be speaking with Rachel Burns.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: Rachel is a mindset wellbeing coach, pt and yoga instructor.
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Rachel's story is a really captivating one.
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: She's been through all sorts of emotional challenges, like depression, but has managed to find her way back to a state of mental clarity, focus but, more important, a state of peace and presence.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: This week I'm so excited to share Rachel's story with everybody here because Rachel really lives her teachings, she walks her talk.
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: Just like to welcome to the show this week's SuperSoul Model, rachel Burns.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: Hello, james and everyone listening, thank you.
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: I've been very excited since we first discussed this conversation that we're going to be having, of all of the gems that we're going to be getting to share with people and what we were saying just before starting the recording.
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: It's all about where we've been and the tools that we used to be able to get out of those spaces, and I'm looking forward to getting our teeth into how can we help others to shift out of challenging inestates or challenging moments in their lives?
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: Absolutely One of the things that, when we first met, I was really inspired by what you had to say, because I came across Rachel at an event recently and I was like wow, this is a shining person who's walking her talk and I was like you've got to come on the show.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: I'd be delighted to have this conversation and help.
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: I want to share with the audience some of the things that I see that you share and bring to the table and what I noticed one of the things you do is you've got incredible ability to listen and you've got an incredible ability to be present for a long period of time, which we all find very difficult because we're always getting bombarded with so many messages.
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: But tell us a little bit about how you got to where you are.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: I know you're coaching and I know you're a phenomenal yoga instructor and you hold a lot of large retreats, but you really hold this energy, rachel.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: So how did you get to this state, because sometimes it takes us a little while to get to a level of understanding, a level of awareness and how did your journey begin and what were your trials and tests and challenges that you've managed to overcome?
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, great question.
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: So I think really the biggest thing for me has been curiosity and inquiry, so self-inquiry and the decision to go within and actually find out what's happening inside of me and what's going on there, to be able to create the world outside of me or the experience in my outside world that I desired, Because I was pretty young when I started and I'm quite grateful now to have experienced I don't know how to describe it intense depression, a very, very dark period of my life.
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: I was 19, so I was in my second year at university and I'd had bouts of maybe social anxiety you could cause it very low self-confidence.
• 3:36
  Speaker 2: I'd come out of the meeting disorder and then it accumulated into this period of maybe a year when I was 19 and I didn't realize I was going through depression.
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: At that time I thought that this was normal.
• 3:50
  Speaker 2: I thought that that was just life and that was what it was going to feel like being me for the rest of my life, and it was quite a scary thought.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: And it wasn't until I started coming out of that dark hole that I was in.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: I realized it didn't have to be that way, yeah, and things started to improve massively and I'm going to share a little insight what the first key factor was in that change before I started to do the inner work, and it was that I changed what I was eating and I started doing exercise.
• 4:21
  Speaker 1: Okay, so you would say that the hardest part of the journey was not knowing to knowing, and then you just made that subtle shift and then things began to just evolve from there.
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I was obviously at university.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: It's so easy to fall into not sleeping properly, going out party and drinking alcohol, eating the cheap foods out of boxes which is literally what I was doing and not really looking after my health and well-being.
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: And the shift I came to Spain.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: I was living with a Spanish family.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: They were making the meals, and there was this profound night and day of eating this Mediterranean diet, sitting at a table, enjoying food with other people, home cooked, good quality and it was literally like I'd come out of a dark space and I was able to be present and therefore ready to do the inner work, as before it had been so sticky where I was and a lot of it was to do with the food I was eating and the fact I wasn't moving my body, I wasn't looking after it, and all of a sudden I had the energy and the willingness to go within and start doing the inner work.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: So I mean, if there's anybody out there who's having challenges, whether it's anxiety, depression, fatigue, mental fogginess, and their diet isn't on point, then that is a really powerful place to start walking movements, dancing, anything and combining that with a healthy diet.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: I mean, it's literally.
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: We know this.
• 5:59
  Speaker 2: It's the foundations of the emotions we experience, the things that we feel, because it's the building blocks of them.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: It's just a nice reminder, though, that the quality of what you're putting into your body really does sort of transfer into the terms of the quality of energy that you receive as well.
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: And you know, if I remember, when I was at university, I had the most terrible diet after hardly anything.
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: I don't think I can't remember cooking for the first year entirely Maybe it was baked beans on toast, but burnt toast, you know and I was just drinking copious amounts of alcohol and going out the whole time.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: I was like that was the best, unhealthiest, toxic fun year to a certain extent.
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: But my mind was just I don't even know where it was for at least three or four years that it perpetuated.
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: And no wonder I felt anxious for a long period of time, because you just like up and down.
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: Up and down you get high from the intoxication of going out, but you get really low from the come downs.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: You get really low from like, oh, I felt so high because I was having fun, because I was feeling emotionally up, but obviously fueled by alcohol and all the rest of it, but then, on the the other end of the wave, I have to take the beating of saying I haven't been taking care of myself.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: So I go into these low emotional states and I could stay there for days.
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: I didn't know any different.
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: And so anybody listening?
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: I really resonate with what Rachel's been saying here, because the quality of what you're putting into your body dictates the quality of energy that you have for your level of peace, your level of calm and your level of happiness that comes forward from just a good meal or just a good night's sleep or just not putting anything toxic in your body for a little while, so it can centre itself and realign and rejuvenate again.
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, definitely.
• 8:00
  Speaker 2: And you know, before going into the whole inner work, I mean I know that this can be very overwhelming knowing where to start when it comes to food and nutrition and often I see people going into talking about dieting and being on a regime and coming back from holiday I literally heard it yesterday someone on holiday and saying, oh you know, now I've got to get back to being strict again, and my inner feeling, my knowing, is that that is really not feeding into a good relationship with food.
• 8:32
  Speaker 2: And the more we learn to listen to the body and understand the body this is something really powerful that I love to share with people I work with is how your body works and being in awe of how incredible it is, so that your choices around food don't come from struggle.
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: They come from it being in alignment with who you want to be.
• 8:54
  Speaker 2: It just makes sense.
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so it leads me into this question.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: So if you don't know how to listen to your body from your expertise, how do you begin to listen to your body's messages that is telling you?
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's another great question.
• 9:10
  Speaker 2: As it's, I think the majority of us are so disconnected from the body until we start to consciously connect with it.
• 9:17
  Speaker 2: We live so much in the mind and we don't realize that the mind is very little of the time during the day actually in the body and connected to what's going on and experiencing it.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: And so there are multiple practices that people can do, and this is where yoga is so magical.
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: This is where the tool of yoga, the tool of meditation, the tool of breathwork is they're all really powerful, combining those three, where we get to slow down and actually be present in what's happening in the breath.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: How am I breathing?
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: What's happening in the body, how am I holding it.
• 9:53
  Speaker 2: And it's one of the things we talk about a lot in the yoga practices finding your edge.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: And it's that space where you're neither forcing the body beyond what is good and you're not going into the procrastinating and the non doing the laziness, and you're finding that flow where you're always coming back to that center point where you know that you're advancing and you're progressing without it being forced through fear and through control.
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: So we'd call that in the yoga practice very young, very masculine.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: When we're going to controlling, we're finding that balance of masculinity.
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: And then when we go to yin, to feminine, we go to soft and we start to procrastinate.
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: So things like depression is very in, anxiety is very young, and so when we find ourselves anxious, we come back to our yin practices, back to center.
• 10:42
  Speaker 2: When we find we're depressed, we come back to Yang.
• 10:45
  Speaker 2: We get structure, we get the goal sets, we, we move towards something and that helps us to come back to that center place.
• 10:53
  Speaker 2: So coming back to your question would be the following you can do a multitude of practices, but as long as you are stuck in the mind of focusing on oh, I need to lose weight, I need to make my body look a certain way, I need to change who I am for the world to tell me who I, that I'm worth something, we release that narrative, we come into what's happening in my body.
• 11:17
  Speaker 2: How can I make that feel better and better each time I come back to this practice?
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: That is the true connection to listening to the language of the human form thank you.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: Really good answer, if a practical thing, right.
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: This is really interesting for me because I remember when someone said, oh, you need to listen to your body, james, I was like I haven't got a clue what is telling me.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: I've, like, really knew nothing.
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: So everything that I, you know, I show in this podcast is my awakening of like how I started, little by little, to understand what my body was telling, what my mind was saying.
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: If you really don't know, so the first thing you're saying is, if you're feeling anxiety, you mean you need to have a more gentle practices.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: So that might mean.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: What might that mean for a yin practice, for instance?
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: Yes, what's it so anxious?
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: What is a yin practice?
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: And if I'm free, and if you're feeling, what was the other one on the other side, if you're being depressed, was it depressed, depressed?
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: What's a yang practice?
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: So you said structure.
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: But if I were to do exercises or food or whatever, what would that be?
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: to come back to my center, just to start with, so to understand anxiety a little bit more, it's an it's over activity.
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: It's over activity of the mind and it's over activity of the nervous system.
• 12:41
  Speaker 2: So when the nervous system is being constantly over stimulated and we're having a stress response, a fight or flight response, and so what we're looking for when that's happening is to calm the mind and mainly to calm the nervous system.
• 12:56
  Speaker 2: And so we want to get into what we call the power sympathetic nervous system, which is rest and digest.
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: And it doesn't mean that we always need to be doing soft practices.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: It is that we're looking to connect with relaxing the nervous system as much as possible.
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: When we say in, anybody who is familiar with that will think of yoga yes, that's beautiful, that's like very soft, it's slow, you're holding poses for a long time, but you can also be going for a walk in nature so anything gentle like that, anything gentle, even going for a walk in the moonlight, that's very in soft, beautiful, feminine energy, so you know, is more feminine and flowing in, yang is more masculine and, I guess, direct and logical, something that correct yes, yes.
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: so if we were to look at it from a non exercise perspective because with my clients I like to really find some of them aren't so interested in the exercise and then more about the mindset and lifestyle.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: And so for looking in different arenas.
• 14:02
  Speaker 2: When it comes to lifestyle, if we are very much in the year so we're feeling depressed or we're procrastinating and we're not managing to get things done, we start to look at structure.
• 14:16
  Speaker 2: How can I structure a period of time in my life to move towards a goal?
• 14:21
  Speaker 2: And we apply a structure over a period of time until they find ease within the structure.
• 14:28
  Speaker 2: Because depression is often a lack of structure in our lives and a lack of vision of what we want to move towards, and because we don't know what we're moving towards, we don't have structure, we're not doing anything, and so we're in this very in a cold, dark space and what gets us out of it is firing up a lead drive to do stuff.
• 14:48
  Speaker 2: So wake up in the morning, say what am I doing today Is going to move me towards a goal or this gonna make me feel better about who I am, what I'm doing with my life?
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: so we need the fire belly, and it really starts with you gotta make a decision.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: You really gotta make a decision that you gonna show up for yourself if you're feeling depressed.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: Otherwise you're gonna do nothing and it's gonna continue.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: I remember when I had depression I was, I didn't even know I had it right, I was.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: The thing is, I just didn't even know.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: But I remember reading one thing, because I was obviously trying to feel better, but all I although I didn't feel great, I was trying to listen or find some something that I'd never heard that says this is what you've got to do.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: So I just remember start.
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: I remember reading something like do a stretch.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: So I started doing a little stretch every morning, without fail, because I have my.
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: My work at that time was Free lunch, meaning I could be picked up and put in another country tomorrow, or even have to jump on a plane.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: Today for modeling.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: I'd be on a shoot in a different location here, there, where ever, and so I was very ungrounded and be.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: I felt like I was being blown by the wind, so to speak, just with my career, which was fun.
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: But at the same time, I needed structure, and so I the only thing I felt I could ever control was my morning routine.
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: I didn't have one, so I started one and it started with a little stretch and a meditation and that was something so foreign to me but I was like I'm gonna just do this because it's the only structure I can actually build a foundation on and since then, like 20 odd years ago, I've never looked back.
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: I just do it every day and it's created this wonderful, wholesome relationship of sitting with myself before I begin the day and getting to look at the sunrise sometimes, which is beautiful, and getting to feel my body feel open and stretched and full of energy.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: So, I guess, from depression to centeredness, that little time period that I managed to execute and put into my morning routine, which didn't take long, was the beginning of moving from, I guess, year into centeredness.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: Is that what you're saying?
• 17:05
  Speaker 2: Yes, I mean, I think we all desire that direction in life deep, deep down, even if we don't realise that, and I love that you brought in, intuitively, two practices that don't just give a structure but change the way that our brains function and open us up to wanting to learn more, and for me, it was the what was that catalyst to starting a yoga practice and changing things in my life.
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: I started to see myself falling back into depression again when I was 21.
• 17:36
  Speaker 2: So I'd come out of it and I'd changed my diet and I was exercising, so I started to create that structure and yet I still found myself falling back in.
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: It feels like sliding down a slope into a dark space, and I could feel that happening again.
• 17:51
  Speaker 2: And it was a scary experience.
• 17:55
  Speaker 2: And I remember I asked myself a few questions, and this is something that can be super powerful for people who are feeling their lacking direction.
• 18:04
  Speaker 2: They don't know what they want to do with their lives, they're experiencing depression, and it's the questions that you ask yourself in that moment that will lead you to make the changes that are unique to you as a human being.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: So in that moment I sat down and I said okay, when am I happy.
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: What is it about those moments that creates that experience of happiness?
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: How can I create more of it and what are the changes I need to make so that I can experience more and more of it?
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: What's my role to play in this scenario right now?
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: So that's really actually very interesting, because you know I'm an avid study of the mind.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: I love everything about the mind.
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: I've always been fascinated by it, and those who listen know that I've been at this for since I was 15, I first started becoming interested in the mind and how it functions.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: What you've done there is, very cleverly, is ask an empowering question that actually gives you strength, because usually, actually, when you're in a state of depression, you feel like you're completely powerless.
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: And so somehow you've managed to ask a direct question that is beyond the reality of the experience, because you can never move beyond what you're experiencing until you can either envision something beyond what you're experiencing or ask a question which builds the bridge to where you want to go.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: And that question or should I say the series of questions, helped build a bridge from where you were at that time in your life that point in your 21, to where you wanted to be, which was when am I happy?
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: That's a direct question.
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: It's like when am I happy?
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: Maybe in the sunshine or when I'm with people I love?
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: And what was the other question?
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: This is really interesting because the mind has to give you the absolute answer to the question, and usually what happens, for instance, in my experience and I'm being really intrigued to know what yours was is that when I was feeling depressed.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: I didn't know it, so I was like, why is my life terrible or why do I feel so bad?
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: And you ask that question and the mind goes.
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: I'm going to give you more of what you focus on, whether you like it or not, because that's what you're giving your attention to.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: The universe is the macrocosm, the mind is the microcosm and everything you experience is just through the filter of your mind and the energy you're sending out.
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: And so my questions were very detrimental to my health and well-being.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: So it makes absolute sense that that was my experience at the time, which is you know why am I struggling, which is not the question you want to be asking.
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: You want to be asking when am I happy?
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: You know, what do I do that makes me happy and how can I encourage that more in my life?
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: Just like what you did, which was literally turning the coin over, and the mind goes.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: I'll give you the answers to that, rachel, or whoever's listening, and I find that absolutely fascinating.
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: So yeah, so what did you say?
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: So what?
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: You were asking those questions and did you get the answers from those questions?
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: And may I ask what were the answers so that someone listening in the audience right now could go?
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: Okay, I can relate to that and I can do that, because I always want people who listen and tune in to actually go.
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: I could do one of these practices, I could actually do that now and I could get out a piece of pen and paper and I could write that down and I could go and I could get some clarity about that, because if we can find ourselves in dark, difficult situations and manage to turn that around and transform, we've created inner peace, which affects not only the quality of our lives with the people we influence as well, and that's what this shows all about.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: So may I just ask you, just like on point here what were the answers to those questions?
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: When am I happy?
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: And then what were your answers?
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: Because I want people to be able to actually try this exercise because it works right.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: It does, and it seems so simple that it's easy to Hold on to disbelief.
• 22:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that something so simple can literally transform my lives.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: Yes, it's about asking the question and then it's about what do you do with the information you receive?
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: Do you act on it and do you then release?
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: So I love the word decide.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: The origin, that is, to cut all other options, is literally like you're cutting the other options to the other routes and you're saying this is the direction I choose to go, and that's literally what happened.
• 22:39
  Speaker 2: I asked that question.
• 22:41
  Speaker 2: The answer was when I'm doing exercise, that is the happiest moment to know that, isn't it?
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: Everybody gets a buzz off that, but you know it's simple, right, okay, good and I wasn't.
• 22:55
  Speaker 2: I've literally just started post university.
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: I started working and what was causing me to feel unhappy was I was going in a direction in my life that gave me no Excitement, created no excitement for me.
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: I realized I was.
• 23:10
  Speaker 2: This is something that came up in this moment.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: I feel that something else was being channeled through me at that time.
• 23:17
  Speaker 2: I was being helped and guided in some way.
• 23:19
  Speaker 2: Now, looking back on in retrospect, because I looked at the clock and I caught myself and I realized I'd spend nearly a year of my life counting down the minutes to leave work and I thought I'm counting down the minutes of my life and I'm only twenty one.
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: This can't be.
• 23:36
  Speaker 2: Something has to change.
• 23:38
  Speaker 2: And it was okay.
• 23:40
  Speaker 2: I'm not happy in my job.
• 23:41
  Speaker 2: I'm not happy in the direction I'm going, the feeling of heaviness, of having to work and just living for the weekend.
• 23:48
  Speaker 2: I thought no, no, no, this is seventy to eighty percent of my life I'm not enjoying.
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: And so I said, I said to myself in that moment it doesn't matter, I've just done a five year degree and I'm gonna put it to one side.
• 24:01
  Speaker 2: I'm going to do whatever it takes to be happy again.
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: And I think this is also another thing.
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: I realized I was happy doing exercise, as I said.
• 24:09
  Speaker 2: How can I turn this into a career?
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: So I'm doing this all of the time?
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: What are the missing pieces in my puzzle right now to move towards that?
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: I mean, I look back now I think where did all of this insight come from?
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: Because I've never been exposed.
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: The self coaching, because it was what I was basically doing.
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: Yeah, all of the listeners can do it to themselves.
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: They can coach themselves by Taking radical responsibility for what you think, you believe in, what you experience, and from the non-victim mindset saying it's not happening to me.
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: I'm a conscious creator, I get to decide.
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: So what do I now do with this information To get me to where I want to go?
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: That word decide is major, that the city comes from latin.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: You know it's rude to cut off and you know I'm fascinated just by that simple thing is radical responsibility and deciding that you deserve better.
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: Because if you don't decide you deserve better.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: You gonna stay, and I kind of like stayed in negative cycles for a bit too long sometimes, but it was only actually when I decided I wanted to feel really, really happy.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: And I felt happy before, but I didn't consciously know what I was doing and, very much like you, you found exercise was great.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: I found that there was.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: I love listening to music, I love exercising, I love playing tennis, I love working out, and I stopped playing tennis because I was party, so it took a little while to pick up the racket again, cuz that's what I used to do as a kid, and so I was just enjoy being on the court and I love going for runs.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: I just got this run as high the whole time and anything that took me in that direction of feeling that natural high and I love exploring and seeing beautiful parts of the world, just fascinated by travel, and that decision time for me is that let me do more of that Instead of being in the pub and, you know, drinking all the way.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: I just I wanna be out in the world and I wanna be filling myself up with nature, with Seeing the magnificence of the world, and I wanna see the world and in places that I've never seen before, and people can do that right now.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: You know you can just get out and just decide that feeling happy is a choice that you have, and what can you do that you really like?
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: That's free to start with, perhaps, and if you've got money, than even better, cuz then that gives you choice.
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: I love the way that you said I wanna use good feeling I get from exercise to turn it into a career.
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: I know you do all these amazing retreats and do all these workshops and yoga workshops.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: Why I'm really fascinated is that your journey sounds so simple, rachel, and so people listen to me.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: Can I actually do that?
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: And the answer is what's the answer?
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: Is it possible?
• 27:15
  Speaker 1: Living proof.
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, of course it's possible.
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: And also releasing, releasing the timeline, the time that it takes to get to where you want to go in the fitness industry I, because I work mainly in that for the first chunk of time, and something I saw a lot of was people trying to rush to get a result because they thought they would be happy when they got the results.
• 27:41
  Speaker 2: You know, whether it's muscle gain, weight loss, it would be the results.
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: That's where the gold is, that's the gold at the end of the rainbow.
• 27:49
  Speaker 2: And not enjoying the journey, not In the process of who am I becoming through doing these practices.
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: And so they would be constantly saying so I've not got the results yet, I've not got the results yet, I'm not where I want to be yet.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: And so this is an invitation to really let go of needing to have the results as quickly as possible, to trust and actually enjoy the journey to wherever it is you are going.
• 28:14
  Speaker 2: And something you said when you were mentioning the tennis and how you loved it when you were, when you were a kid, and just this idea of reconnecting with the things that you find magical when you were child and that you really enjoy doing what were those moments.
• 28:32
  Speaker 2: What were those moments in your childhood that you were really presence and that you weren't worrying about the world outside of you, those moments that brought you real joy?
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: And another piece about the exercises.
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: For those humans listening that maybe don't love exercise and have never had a love relationship with exercise I used to hate it.
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: I used to hate exercise because I had the narrative when I was at school that exercise was a popularity contest and so it was all about the teams being picked the A team and the B team and who was the captain.
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: So it was quite a stressful experience for me and I didn't really enjoy it, and so I got to rewrite my narrative around.
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: What exercise is so for people?
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: Maybe they were overweight at school and so they got picked on and because they'd been putting the sports gear on because, again, I saw this with other friends they get picked on because of how their body looked or how it moved, and so it's.
• 29:36
  Speaker 2: How do you rewrite that narrative?
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: Because you're not doing it for anybody else, and this is your life, and I know this sounds so simple, and yet we live our lives for other people and we forget to live our lives for ourselves and the reality that we get to create through our actions and non-actions.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I was highly action-oriented as a kid and then I became totally non-action-oriented and then I've gone back to being a balanced of learning when to take action and when to just ease off, and I think that that is like the ideal space to keep cultivating, because only you know if you need to do something or you need to back off a little bit.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: Are you being too pushy or can you back off, or are you doing too little and you need to put a bit more fire in your belly, and that's the constant dance that we have of life.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: But I'm really fascinated by your insight and the simplicity of this radical responsibility in taking care of yourself.
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: Right To that you share, and I think that it is possible for anybody.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: Even if you're feeling powerless or you are feeling depressed, you just have to ask yourself a few better questions.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: And even if you're doing quite well, sometimes it's really nice to just ask yourself those questions again, because happiness is our natural state, but we can tend to drift from it often and we can get caught up in the doing of our life, like I was writing a doing list this morning and I was always right.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: Universe, please help me do all these things right and instead of me just going dear, I was just like universe, help me do this right.
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: And I'm looking after my mom at the moment.
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: And she said, darling, I've just added a few more things to your list this morning.
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: I was like, okay, and instead of judging it, I was like what have you added?
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: And she wrote enjoy yourself.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: I was like that isn't that amazing.
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: There's someone who gets it.
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: And my beloved mom is one of my greatest teachers because she shares with me on a day to day basis what it's like to try and be cheerful most of the time.
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: Isn't that interesting?
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: She's figured it out.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: She just wants to be cheerful, she just wants to uplift, she just wants to feel good and, even though she may not have an enormous amount of energy, that's what she looks for every single day.
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: She wants to connect connect with the people she cares about.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: She wants to eat well, she wants to try and get on the TRX cable, do a few things.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: So, yeah, I've been really inspired by our conversation today, rachel, and I'm super inspired by your ideas and how you've managed to turn things around.
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: I know we've just.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: I just wanted to say people wanted to reach you.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: Come to some of your retreats and get to know a little bit more about you.
• 32:34
  Speaker 1: Where can they reach you?
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: Because I know what you teach is the real deal.
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: So where can people find you?
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you, James, and I love that story about your mom.
• 32:45
  Speaker 2: We do learn so much from our parents.
• 32:48
  Speaker 2: We do, we do, we do.
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: So I mean there are two main ways.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: I do free events every now and then, so that's a beautiful way to connect with the tours, to have a bit of coaching and to meet the community that I work with.
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: So I highly highly recommend people join one of those events.
• 33:07
  Speaker 2: The best way is to sign up through my email list.
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: Maybe that can be shared somewhere.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: I've got all the links.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: I have all the links in the podcast notes underneath here.
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: So for sure, Awesome, awesome.
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: And are you doing any live retreats in Spain?
• 33:25
  Speaker 2: So we will start incorporating retreats into our school schedule.
• 33:30
  Speaker 2: So I founded an online school and we have a yearly program in the school itself and next year we will look to incorporate retreats for the members of the school.
• 33:40
  Speaker 2: So it's more how people come into the work, we do the work together and then we have the in-person experiences.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: So there's already some strong foundations that we have built on before they join the retreats.
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: I just wanted to say, Rachel, thank you for being on the show this week and thank you for being this week's Super Soul Model.
• 34:01
  Speaker 1: Much appreciate it.
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: Thank you, James.
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: Hey, thanks for tuning in.
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: I really appreciate that you make this show and if somehow you've been inspired in some way, please leave a review so others can hear it too.