Latest / Healing Her Story with Riva Jean-Paul / Feng Shui, Grief & Sacred Containers: How Your Home Holds Your Healing with Paula Agudelo

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Feng Shui, Grief & Sacred Containers: How Your Home Holds Your Healing with Paula Agudelo · Healing Her Story with Riva Jean-Paul

• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: Hello everyone.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome to today's episode of the Healing Her Story podcast.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: As always, I'm always so delighted for these guest episodes.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: I've got little goosebumps on my arms and on my thighs, and really excited for the conversation that we'll be having today with our incredible guest.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: As usual, these guests really make their way to me and they're perfect in divine timing.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes I swear I'm just like laying in bed at night and I'm like, oh, I really want this person to come on and talk about this thing.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then like within a few days, I will literally have an email from someone who is that exact thing that I intended.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: So that's really magical.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: And that's part of what has brought us here today.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: I've mentioned um feng shui on the podcast a few times before, but I haven't really spoken about it much.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm excited to bring on someone today to explore a more modern version of Feng Shui.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: She's going to be talking about sacred space, and I think it's a beautiful bridge between Virgo season and Libra season, where Virgo is all about cleansing and decluttering.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I know Paula talks a lot about that and ritual, and I know that's incorporated into your work as well.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: And then as we go into Libra, really going into these themes of beauty and balance and harmony.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm really excited for today's conversation and really looking forward to diving in with today's guests.
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: Paula Agudello is an interior designer behind sacred interiors, helping women transform their homes into sanctuaries through intentional design and ritual.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_01: With a degree in space planning and residential design and over 14 years in luxury interiors, she has spent years mastering beauty.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_01: But it wasn't until she moved through her own thresholds of marriage, motherhood, and divorce and grief that she understood a home's energetic power.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_01: She since spent two decades in metaphysical, physiological, or excuse me, psychological, and spiritual study, holding certifications in kundalini yoga, compassionate inquiry, and somatic dance.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: Her work blends the Feng Shui Bagla, ritual, and somatic awareness to help women create homes that mirror their truth and support who they're becoming.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_01: Paula, welcome to the show.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh, I also have so many chills.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_02: And to me, that's always such a great sign.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you so much for having me here.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_02: I am so looking forward to wherever this conversation takes us.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_02: I just absolutely love all that you just shared and all that you normally share in your podcast and just really love connecting with that deeper wisdom that we have as women.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, I think beauty is a big part of that wisdom.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_02: So thank you so much for having me here.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: Of course.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: Welcome, welcome.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: Paula, I'll invite you to start us off by telling a less, telling us a little bit about your story.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_02: Where to begin, right?
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: It's always.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_02: You know how people are like, pick the one story that best represents, you know, where this came from.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, I I wrote a whole book about this, actually.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_02: But I will say that my my answer to that is usually I came to sacred design through death and through birth, which are the ultimate rituals of being a human being.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_02: And that began when I was nine years old.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_02: My dad was murdered in Colombia, where I'm from.
• 5:16
  SPEAKER_02: And that experience of grief, which obviously at the time I didn't have the language for that, somehow, by the grace of creation, I think, took me towards art and painting furniture and moving things around and collecting flowers.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_02: And that was how I began to cope with such a big loss in my life.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_02: And then I became a teenager and started watching MTV Cribs.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_02: And that was like just the most aha moment of my life because I decided I wanted to be an interior designer right then and there.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, I want to do that.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_02: It looks amazing to walk into these gorgeous homes.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_02: But it wasn't until I had my second daughter, Luna, who was born at home.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_02: And so this is after I've already had years of doing luxury design.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_02: And I started to plan this home birth for her and designed my home so intentionally, bringing like all of my woo out of the closet.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_02: And this birth was just the most romantic, wow, epic experience of my life.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_02: And it just changed me and everyone around me so deeply because I created such a sacred experience for it.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_02: Till this day, I mean, she's almost 14.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_02: My midwife will still talk to me about how that was the most romantic birth she's ever been.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I'm not bragging, it was intensely beautiful.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_02: And when I came out of that baby moon phase, I decided that what I wanted to do was design sacred spaces for women to feel that level of empowerment because they consciously decided how they wanted to live.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_02: And that started with how they designed their homes.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, that's the story.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for sharing.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: That is quite the arc and such a beautiful thread of beauty and sacred spaces weaved into your journey.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: I absolutely love how you created the sacred space for your home birth.
• 7:34
  unknown: Yeah.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_01: So beautiful.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: Really touching.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: I had some tears kind of well up behind my eyes as you were sharing that as someone who is starting to plan for having a little one one day.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: I'm really enjoying hearing stories from other women and how they've approached their birth.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you.
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_02: I think if there was something else I would, you know, be meant to do in this life, other than what I'm doing right now, is probably birth work.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_02: I am so passionate about it.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_02: And I still, the bottom line is that that moment is still something I probably think about every single day because anytime I have doubt around my life, anytime I have just some sort of blockage, you know, when you don't trust yourself and you just don't think you can do something.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_02: I just remember that day and I'm like, if I did that, I can do anything.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_02: Like it is the most empowering thing I have I have done.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, I'm glad that that resonated for sure.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_01: Wonderful.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm curious to learn a little bit more about your passion for creating sacred spaces and kind of what makes a space sacred.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that's such a great question.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_02: So for a long time, people would often ask me if sacred meant religious, if sacred meant dogma of some sort.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_02: Like that was a question I would get very, very often at the beginning.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_02: And it was so frustrating, I cannot even express.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_02: But as I have gotten more and more, you know, um, I think attuned to the work that I've done and connected, I realized that sacred to me means worthy of reverence, worthy of your love, worthy of tending to, worthy of taking care of.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_02: And a really big part of that word came from birth and motherhood for me, because there is no, I think, other role that requires such devotion as being a mom, right?
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_02: And so when I think of helping my clients or teaching my students how to design sacred pace spaces, we really start with the question of how do you want to live your life?
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_02: What is the kind of life that you're designing for yourself?
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_02: Because at the end of the day, as much as I enjoy the work of putting the aesthetical, you know, the aesthetics and the beauty and curating the space, and I am really good at that, I don't actually care what color paint your walls or what lamp you like or what your style is.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_02: What I care is what excites you about your life, what are you overcoming?
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_02: Because a lot of us also come from a lot of grief and a lot of trauma and a lot of stagnation in our life.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_02: And so I like to play with beauty becoming sacred because we're alchemizing what happened, what your story was, and creating a vision board for what you want your life to become.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_02: That's what sacred design is really all about.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's really beautiful.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_01: I can see this thread from your childhood and going through that experience with losing your father, which sounds incredibly traumatic and difficult and hard to deal with, and how you turned towards art and beauty.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_01: How that's kind of weeped into the work that you do now.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: Did you kind of see that in your childhood when you were looking to art and beauty and kind of collecting all of these things?
• 11:25
  SPEAKER_01: Do you see that as kind of like what you're doing now in the work?
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_02: In many ways, yes.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_02: I just had a lot less awareness.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I think I also had a lot of I had a lot of ambition when I was a kid.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_02: And then I was thrown into a lot of survival.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_02: And so fast forward to like when I was a teenager, you know, I moved to the US and we were really, really poor.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_02: My mom was really sick.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_02: And we I used to just get furniture from the trash and cur, you know, curate our little ghetto ass apartment and make it as special as I could, you know, because I didn't want to feel embarrassed to have my friends over or whatever it was.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_02: And so at the time there was an energy of survival.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_02: I think there was also an energy of being a little neurotic, and maybe that's the rising Virgo in me.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's like I want things to look a certain way.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_02: But over the years, you know, unfortunately, I went on to experience a lot of other loss.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_02: I lost a boyfriend of mine that was like the love of my life to a very tragic accident.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_02: I lost my brother to another very tragic accident.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_02: I lost a son.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_02: Um, there was a lot of loss.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_02: And somehow in my DNA, the I want to say habit, it was like automatic that I just had to create something beautiful.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_02: Like even setting up for a funeral was so important to me.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_02: And the way it looked and the way the chairs were set up.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_02: Like I just could see, or I guess I can see now that I was I was developing a sensitivity for what the space did, how people felt in the space.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, I think when you lean into those things and you just go full on trusting what's coming up without questioning it, it opens up doors that you didn't even think, you know, you would you would go through.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_02: I've even designed a few funerals for some of my friends who've had really deep losses.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I never thought that that would be something I would do.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, it's it's it's a beautiful thing to just let the heart kind of guide you.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, as cheesy and cliche as that sounds, I really don't see any other answer for what I went through.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for for sharing and for opening up about your history and everything that you've gone through.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: It sounds like beauty and creating these sacred spaces is really an antidote for your grief and a really important part of your healing process.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's a beautiful segue to the importance of the container that we we are creating for ourselves, like you were saying, for who we're wanting to become.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: I think of a lot of the women I work with, and even I think of my own experience too, and how important it is to have this container to grieve, to heal.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_01: Could you speak to more about that?
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_02: I am a sucker for containers.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_02: Because one, I'm a Pisces, which means I am all emotion and like I can swim in the oceans of emotionality.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_02: And so if I don't have a clear container to hold all of that water, which in feng shui, the element of water is really, really key, then water can be really destructive if you don't have a container for it, right?
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_02: But it also is incredibly creative, right?
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's the source of creation to have water, right?
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_02: If even if we go back to birth, it's like the babies and the amniotic fluid, like that's all water.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_02: So, all of that to say that creating containers is really, I think, a huge part of my work.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_02: I think of containers in terms of rooms, and I think of containers in terms of time.
• 15:29
  SPEAKER_02: And maybe time is a little bit more of the Virgo part of me and the I'm a mom, I'm the business owners, I'm writing a book, I have 20,000 things on my plate, so I really need a good schedule, yeah, which often fails, as you may already know.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_02: So, creating those structures is really, really important.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I think of that in rooms in terms of what is the purpose of this room in my life.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_02: So, putting the bagwa aside, which really is a map that connects the area of your life to the area of your home.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_02: And there's nine of them, and I can totally go into that if you want, but for now, I will say that on practical levels, I like to know what we use this room for, because there's no better feng shui than a room actually being used.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_02: If we have a very empty room that nobody likes, that nobody hangs out in, it doesn't have life force, it doesn't have qi vitality energy, right?
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: We are who bring that energy to the space.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_02: And so when I think of my bedroom, I want to be really clear around this container is for rest, this container is for love making, and this container is for some reflective creative work.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_02: I love to write in my bed, journal, do crafty things that are just relaxing and nourishing to me.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_02: What we're not gonna do in my room is have a hard conversation about something, have an argument about something.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_02: I'm not gonna go sit and do my taxes in my room because I can't think of a more stressful thing, you know?
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that creates order.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_02: It's putting things in order.
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, right?
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_02: And then when it comes to grief, for a long time, I actually would have a ritual.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_02: I learned this from one of my many somatic teachers who was time to fall apart, who used to talk about time to fall apart.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_02: And I remember I would set a timer and sit in my room in front of my altar, light a candle, and just like ball my eyes out, rage my heart out, yell, scream, cause, cry in a feet up like whatever that grief needed to be doing through me.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_02: But it was only 20 minutes because I was busy, you know?
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_02: What I was not willing to do was ignore the grief.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I also was not willing to, again, Pisces wallow in the grief for ages.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_02: And that was really, really helpful for me.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I'm not like sponsoring or a huge advocate of plant medicine because I know that's such a subjective and and personal controversial thing, but I did do a mushroom ceremony at some point that felt like a really sacred container, and I legit cried for eight hours straight in a fetal position.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_02: In my bed.
• 18:39
  SPEAKER_02: Just cried for eight hours.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_02: That was a really sacred container for me.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's something about the containment that can give us the permission to let ourselves fall apart and allow those emotions to move through.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_01: Especially in our busy day-to-days when we have so many things going on, it's, you know, it's hard to give ourselves those moments to feel and to move through the things that are inside of ourselves.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: But if we can carve out even just a little chunk of time to allow those to move through.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, this is why the way that our rooms are designed and the the way that our homes, the environment in our home is created, either supports that grief and that healing or not.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's really hard to feel when you're in a space that's got super cold lighting, you know, think of like Walmart in your house, you know, or it has like gray walls and clutter everywhere.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_02: Like it creates a very different response in the nervous system.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_02: But there is something about, I don't know, textures and materials and like seeing a chair that's inviting you to sit there and contemplate for a couple of minutes how you feel.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_02: And there's actually a lot of science that backs that up.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_02: You know, there's a lot of even uh Harvard published a research article on how clutter affects a woman's cortisol levels and how she's unable to relax, right?
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, well, that happens in our houses, you know.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_02: I think of that about birth.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_02: Like there's nothing worse during a birth than you feeling contracted or unable to open and relax.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_02: And so if the environment isn't supporting you to relax and the lighting's not right, and this and that, you know, you don't have the same experience.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_02: So it's about creating a container for the kind of experience you need in that season of life and you want creating a room for a fall apart time and setting that container of space and time is very different than if I want to have sexy time with my partner, right?
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_02: Like I'm gonna have a very different setup.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: I love how you brought in the science too.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: I was kind of thinking about that right before you said it, and how there is a physiological component here to the spaces that we're in, and how spaces really do influence us, especially as women, just be more sensitive and needing to bring more regulation to our system.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_01: This is kind of like a piece I think that can be easily overlooked.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_02: It really can.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought it was hilarious because I'm like, seriously, dudes don't care.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_02: They just don't care.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_02: And that's great.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's awesome for them.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_02: But I think it just gives more not that we need more permission or more validation, but it does so that you know we can understand that the way our spaces are and make us feel it's not a shallow thing.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I say that because for a long time I had the experience as a designer that made me feel like my work was unfulfilling because it was too shallow, it was too much about materialism and just stuff, you know?
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I often tell this story of I had a client who I designed her entire house and I bought this rug for her that was$47,000.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, I couldn't believe that a rug could be that much, and that was like one piece of the room.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we're talking so much.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_02: And when I finished this project, I went to her house, I showed her around, I got paid, and I walked out of that house and sat in my car, and I just cried.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_02: And I was just like, what is this sense of being so unfulfilled with this work?
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I think that was the question I had, and it wasn't until Luna's birth that I was like, I got it.
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_02: It's the soul piece.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_02: I that house was missing soul.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_02: It I didn't have any connection to who she was as a person or anything, it just looked great, but that was it, you know?
• 23:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: So there's this deeper layer that you weave into your work as well, this intentionality.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that's one thing that feng shui has really supported me in doing in my home.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm curious for listeners who are unfamiliar with feng shui, could you tell us a little bit about how you incorporate that into your work?
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_02: There's a lot of ways that feng shui is alive in my work.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_02: In essence, feng shui is a very ancient wisdom, it's not a new thing.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_02: By any means.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_02: It's got over 5,000 years of you know being on the earth.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: And it was initially used to bury royals and kings and queens.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_02: And it was used to determine what was the best location for that burial, right?
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_02: So ritual as the base of it was everything.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_02: And the objective with bringing it or really living with it, because it's not something you just use.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_02: It's not, you know, a thing or a crystal that you buy or an oil that you use.
• 24:11
  SPEAKER_02: It's a way of life.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_02: And the idea of it is that you're creating an environment where you can thrive, where you can enhance your well-being and really, you know, amplify the things that you want for your life.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_02: Some will call it it's about manifestations.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_02: Some will say it's about health and gratitude.
• 24:31
  SPEAKER_02: I think all of it is what I like to say feng shui is.
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_02: And I would say there's specific ways in which we bring it into the space, and it's obviously a process, but the most overlooked thing that most people who embark in, like this, this I don't know, this quest of figuring out what feng shui is, on like Google, you know, is you.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_02: You are the most important sense of energy for your home.
• 24:57
  SPEAKER_02: It's what you're thinking, the rituals that you're doing, the energy that you bring into the tasks that you do.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I don't care if you come in with, you know, the best sage and the best feathers, and you have like this whole thing sacred ritual set up.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_02: Or if you're sitting outside your patio drinking a can of Diet Coke and that's your ritual.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't matter.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_02: It's how you show up to that thing that impacts the way you know your space supports you the most, you know, and vice versa.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_02: Obviously, how the space is set up helps us think differently and feel differently as well.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_02: On practical terms, when it comes to fang shui, I love to work with the bagwa, which is again the nine areas of life.
• 25:46
  SPEAKER_02: I love to work with color.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_02: I think that beige is has been so hurtful for the modern world.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, I think we just need color in our life.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that working with nature, you know, there is nothing that will nurture us more than being in nature.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, again, back to the science, you know, my my boyfriend would be so proud that I'm bringing the science into this conversation.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_02: But back to the science, it's like if you are depressed, if you're overwhelmed with grief, if you are anxious, if you are whatever, insert whatever the problem is, the cure is always nature.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_02: It just always is.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_02: And so finding ways to bring that nature into our home, I think is one of the most potent ways to bring feng shui in.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm not also talking about a bunch of knickknacks for fall or things like that.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_02: So I think color, the elements, and your own energy are where it's at for me, really.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, beautiful.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: I really hear this level of intentionality too, and what you're bringing into.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um I almost kind of see it as a practice.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: When I first started practicing feng shui, it definitely was more for, you know, manifestation and you know, bringing in more money and new opportunities.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: And the more I stuck with it, the more I really did come to understand it as a deep spiritual practice and coming into relationship with my home and also coming into relationship with myself inside of my home and how I interact with different areas in my home.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's really changed a lot of things for me.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_01: And my husband, who's not a woo-woo guy at all, he's he's been getting in on it too, and he's had some really interesting things unfold where he's like, hmm.
• 27:39
  SPEAKER_02: The way that worked out.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_02: I said, See, that's my favorite.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_02: When the husbands come along and they don't even know that they are, but then they somehow do.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_02: My boyfriend will, you know, come from the grocery store sometimes and just bring in, like now, he'll bring in like nine oranges every time he comes back.
• 27:58
  SPEAKER_02: He's like, and I got you the nine oranges.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_02: I was like, that's amazing.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't even ask you for that.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_02: And so yeah, I think a really big, I don't want to say mistake, because really what is a mistake, but I think a really big misconception is that trans is that functuates transactional.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_02: You know, if I do this, then I get this.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_02: And like, look, I wish that was the case.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_02: It actually would be kind of cool.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_02: It's not, it's not.
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_02: That's not how it works.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_02: There is definitely a deeper level of, I love how you said that, relationship.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, because that is what we're doing.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_02: You know, the home is is an entity, it's a living, breathing space, and how we tend to it really does determine, you know, you can have it be just a list of chores that you have to do versus, you know, showing up and loving it and and having it love you back.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_02: It's it's a really great feeling to set up your spaces that way, and it never ends.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_02: That's the other part.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_02: It never ends, which is part of why I love it, because it keeps me, you know, at work.
• 29:08
  SPEAKER_02: It's not like I just design a space and it's done, right?
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_02: But also, it just is so dynamic because we are always changing, you know, the way my life looked when I had newborn babies, you know, very different than the way it is now, where I have cranky teenagers, you know, very different setups, rituals, energies, identities, like who I am as a mother now compared to who I used to be.
• 29:41
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my god, she is not the same person.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_02: You know?
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_02: So I think that's really neat about including feng shui as yeah, a spiritual practice.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 29:54
  SPEAKER_01: I appreciate you saying too that we are always changing and that our spaces can always change too.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: I think it can be easy to get into this like perfectionist, like, okay, I want to get it just right so it's perfect, and then that's it.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: Versus allowing it to shift and change and ebb and flow as as we do.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_01: I'm always changing the rooms and the furniture and the art and moving things around, depending on what is most important to me, you know, during that particular season of my life.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, it's so funny.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_02: I was thinking of this.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_02: I I'm divorced, and so my kids would spend 50% of the time with their dad, and 50% of the time with me.
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_02: Currently, we're not doing that, but that's a whole nother story.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_02: The point is that they would always come back to my house from his house, and the first thing they would do would be drop their backpack and they start to look around.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what did she change now?
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_02: You know, what's different?
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_02: What what changed?
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that that was during that time part of part of just my connection to myself and my clarity about what I wanted, because obviously divorce is another huge loss and initiation and season of life.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I was just trying to figure out who I wanted to be, what it I wanted to do, what I was a yes to.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_02: And so for a while, this new apartment that we had when we moved out of our marital home, it just didn't really feel like home.
• 31:28
  SPEAKER_02: And so every week I moved stuff around trying to just get a sense of what felt good.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes you go through seasons where you like it and it feels great and you don't change a thing.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_02: And then all of a sudden you wake up and you're like, okay, bun, big, big ass coffee, lots of music, and just move stuff around, you know?
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I've had days like that.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's funny as we're talking about this.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: When I was a kid, my mom would always change the house around.
• 32:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I didn't think much of it then, but it's interesting to look back on that now and yeah, just kind of like make that connection.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_02: It is interesting, you know.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I don't think very many of us consciously know that we're doing that, right?
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I wasn't sitting there thinking, what is my identity?
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_02: How am I reinventing myself?
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_02: No, I was just like, I hate the way the sofa feels.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_02: Like, I just why does it look so bad?
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_02: I don't like it, right?
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_02: There's there's this like angst and frustration and almost like anger.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_02: And you know, for how many years have we been told that we're too, I don't know, crazy, emotional, all the things that we've been called.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_02: It isn't that there is just some kind of energy moving inside that is deep and subtle and subconscious.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_02: And if we just allow ourselves to do that and use that as a channel of expressing it, something really great could be on the other side.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe not, but it just to trust it.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_02: I think that's that's the peas that is pretty cool to me.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's why it's ancient wisdom that is just like in our DNA and we don't even know it.
• 33:16
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, if we could just trust that sort of, I like to call it a greater intelligence to kind of lead us without questioning it.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: Who knows where it'll take us?
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_02: Who knows?
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_02: Who knows?
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, for sure.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_01: This is reminding me of a post you had on your Instagram account.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna pull it up now and read it if that's okay, because I loved the way you put this together.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think it's a good segue into kind of what we've been talking about with changing ourselves and changing our identities.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_01: Is that okay if I read it?
• 33:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
• 33:55
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm reading the carousel.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: Your home is telling you more about your life than you think.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: Look at the chair covered in clothes.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you don't need another chair.
• 34:08
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe you need to put some w maybe you need somewhere to put what you're carrying.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_01: Look at your dining table.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: Is it where you gather or where everything unfinished goes to live?
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: Look at the boxes you never unpacked.
• 34:25
  SPEAKER_01: What are you still telling yourself?
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: I'll deal with it later.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: Look at the bedroom.
• 34:32
  SPEAKER_01: Does it invite you to rest?
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_01: Or does it hold everything you didn't have time for today?
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: Look at what's broken.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: The lamp, the drawer, the frame.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_01: What have you gotten used to living with?
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_01: Look at your closet.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: Are you holding on to the woman you were while making no room for the woman who you're becoming?
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: Look at your entryway.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: What greets you when you come home?
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_01: Clutter, an empty space, or welcome home?
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes transformation starts with something small.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_01: Clear the surface, fix what's broken, make the bed, light the lamp, walk through your home with a new question.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_01: What is this space trying to tell me?
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_01: Because your home isn't just where your life happens, it's where your life is being created.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: So good.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_01: So good.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_01: So good.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, yes.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, can can you expand upon that for us?
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I love the feeling of writing my own stuff and then reading my own stuff and getting chills.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's like so priceless.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I I can.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_02: So, you know, I want to say that first and foremost, what's coming through to start with is anytime we give intentional focus to one room in our home, one area of our life, that really focused energy ripples into every other area.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_02: And a lot of momentum is gained from just starting with the with the next one thing.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 36:09
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm I'm saying that because oftentimes all of those examples I gave in that post might be true and more.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_02: And then people get overwhelmed because they're like, oh my God, what?
• 36:23
  SPEAKER_02: I have so much stuff to look at.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_02: It's like when you start doing therapy and you're like, what?
• 36:27
  SPEAKER_02: I have to do all of like there's so much to look inside, right?
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_02: You know, or sometimes I'll have clients who, you know, want to lose the weight, they want to regain their health, they're having issues in their in their marriage, they're having issues with money, they started a new business, their kids and them are fighting.
• 36:45
  SPEAKER_02: Like all these things in their life are going wrong.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_02: Choose one.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_02: What is the one that we're gonna focus on?
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_02: And the same thing goes for our home.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_02: What is the one area we're gonna focus on?
• 36:58
  SPEAKER_02: What room?
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_02: Because from there, believe me when I say a lot of momentum comes.
• 37:03
  SPEAKER_02: That that post was really focusing on the first step of the home method, which is the method that I use for designing sacred spaces.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_02: And that first step is the H in home, which stands for healing.
• 37:20
  SPEAKER_02: And so it begins with very simply put, radical awareness and radical honesty of what is wrong in this space.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_02: When you walk in, don't just tell me you don't like it, right?
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_02: It's like, what do you see?
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_02: What is wrong?
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_02: The paint is chipped, the chandelier is broken, the doors don't open, right?
• 37:46
  SPEAKER_02: Um, the tile is chipping.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_02: Like, what is not working well in that space?
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_02: Clutter is a huge part of it.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_02: And then on a deeper level, is when we combine it with the bagwa, which is that map of your life, what is that area?
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_02: What is wrong in that area of your life?
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_02: Is it again, are you just stuck in your goals?
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_02: You're not able to get to where you want to go.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_02: Are you having all these unexpected expenses?
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_02: And then money feels like it's leaking away.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_02: Well, let's take a look at your plumbing.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_02: Is there water issues in your house?
• 38:21
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_02: Um, you're having tons of conflict and people are fighting in your family.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_02: Again, water.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_02: Are there water issues in your house?
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_02: That there's too much emotion going on.
• 38:32
  SPEAKER_02: So we want to look inward and we want to look outward and begin the healing process.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_02: And that involves, yes, fixing all these broken things that I mentioned.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_02: It also involves sometimes energetically clearing the space.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_02: And that's where ceremony and ritual can come in in a really beautiful way to work with you in what you're releasing and letting go and clearing, which is the first step for a reason, right?
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_02: It's really hard to create this beautiful 3D vision board of your life and get excited about what you want if the space looks like a mess.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_02: It's just really hard to go there.
• 39:15
  SPEAKER_02: So we start from the beginning, which is we're gonna clean it, we're gonna clear it, we're going to declutter, and we're gonna really do that healing work.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_02: And I think when we do that, that's when the real intimacy of us working with our home begins.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_02: And in my experience, as I work with so many clients, you just start to see your house differently.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_02: It's not the kitchen anymore.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_02: That's like my prosperity area.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_02: So then you hustle to clean it at night because it's connected to your money, you know?
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we've been doing that in our home recently.
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: The kitchen, which is our the oh, actually, it's the uh wealth, no, not wealth, excuse me.
• 39:59
  SPEAKER_01: It's the knowledge and wisdom center.
• 40:01
  SPEAKER_01: But I think in general, in the kitchen in general is a place of abundance and and functionality.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, correct, yes.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_02: Absolutely.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_01: So we we were really kind of like trying to fine-tune the system for keeping the kitchen in order.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and I think we've we've finally landed on something now where the kitchen is cleaned every night.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: But that's one thing that's really helped me is bringing in this intentionality and looking at it more as like tending, taking care of, versus like, oh fuck, I gotta like clean the kitchen tonight.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_02: Totally.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, totally.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_02: You know, in in A Course of Miracles, they say that miracles are nothing but a shift of perspective.
• 40:44
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the kitchen was a huge shift in perspective for me to welcome miracles in my life because well, Harley, because I spent so much time there, you know?
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_02: And for so long it was such a place of stress where it was like a dreadful thing.
• 41:03
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I'm talking about 5 a.m.
• 41:05
  SPEAKER_02: I'm there doing breakfast for the kids, setting up their lunches, then I'm back in for breakfast for me, then I gotta feed the dogs and the cats.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_02: Then, you know, somebody else already is hungry and they just ate two seconds ago.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's like you're there all the time.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I used to be really burnt out by it.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_02: I really did go through a season of feeling so burnt out by all of these domestic tasks that felt so overwhelming when you're building a business and you're trying to have your wellness routine in place, which yeah.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_02: And so being able to shift my perspective around what does this area represent in my life?
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_02: And is it worthy of my reverence?
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_02: Like, is it worthy of me taking the time to maybe ask everybody for support too?
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_02: It doesn't mean it's just you, it's like, all right, guys, you want to bring a pack lunch to school.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_02: Here's a new plan.
• 41:59
  SPEAKER_02: You're gonna pack your own lunch the night before, and then here's the system that we're gonna have for replenishing the groceries.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_02: And now we have a skylight screen thing, and you know, it's you create, I think, a better structure for it supporting you in the way you live.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's the bottom line, yeah.
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I love what you said about creating the system to support you and your life.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's one thing that I've really been playing with this year and really creating these systems that that support me instead of stressing me out.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I also really appreciate you bringing in the help and the support and not doing it all on your own.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: We've had lots of conversations about gender roles in our household.
• 42:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I think my husband's now starting to like really understand, and it's become a much more collaborative process where we're both involved in taking care of things, and now we've kind of like established like, okay, this is your responsibility, this is my response, the or domain is what we call it, not even responsibility, and things that we both like enjoy doing more, that we like doing more.
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I've discovered I really love we just recently this year we got a Costco membership.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_01: I've never had a Costco membership before, and I was like, we don't need a Costco membership, like why did you buy one?
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_01: And now I love Costco.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_01: I love like being stocked, is one thing that I really enjoy.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_01: That creates more ease in my life when I have all the things that I know I'm gonna regularly need, like Epsom salt and you know, dish soap and vinegar and having all of these stocked up gives me that sense of being able to relax and feel like I'm being supported by the system because I'm not scrambling when I run out of something.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because I, you know, I'm I'm busy too, and that is the most annoying thing to me sometimes.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh, a hundred percent.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_02: A hundred percent.
• 43:55
  SPEAKER_02: I think it it really is that simple.
• 43:57
  SPEAKER_02: And to maintain that consistency, again, it just helps you gain momentum.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's like I've been on a health healing journey for a couple of years, and you know, I have specific things that I need to eat and certain times that I need to eat, and you know, I I fold that into my routine, and there is genuinely no worse feeling than going in, you're putting the work to stay consistent and disciplined, then you open the fridge and you're like, I didn't get the thing, you know, I don't have enough of this or enough of that.
• 44:28
  SPEAKER_02: I think those systems seem seem sometimes very heady, yes, and they're not as soulful or spiritual or feminine.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_02: They are very masculine processes that need to happen, but again, in order for that creativity, that flow, that real yummy spiritual connection, that is a very feminine energy.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_02: We do need the container, yes, and that's what systems do.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_02: You know, they're not sexy, but they're really important.
• 44:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I agree.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 45:00
  SPEAKER_01: We had a conversation a few weeks ago with Anna O'Drive, and she talked a lot about systems.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I had said systems aren't sexy, and she's like, I think they're sexy.
• 45:10
  SPEAKER_02: You start to get turned on by systems, okay?
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so I I really appreciated that.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm I'm curious to learn, or maybe listeners are curious to understand a little bit more.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_01: We've mentioned the Bogla map a couple times, and so could you speak to the different areas in your home?
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: And it's also reminding me of a sort of mini series, it seems like you're doing on Instagram with uh celebrities and Sacred spaces in their home.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: Could you could you elaborate on that a little bit more?
• 45:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_02: So I'll start with the celebrity piece because it's it's shorter, but that has just been so much fun.
• 45:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I think it started with I became a part of these women's studies group a couple years ago.
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_02: And we write poetry and we study women, and it activated something in me that I didn't even know I had.
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_02: Okay.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_02: I became a poet almost overnight, not knowing that I've been a poet for so long.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_02: And it's actually the book I'm publishing in the next few weeks, which is a poetry collection based on the Bagua.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_00: Love it.
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_02: But recently, when Dolly Parton died, yeah, we did this class to study Dolly Parton.
• 46:26
  SPEAKER_02: And I was like, my jaw was just completely like my mouth was like open and just I was in awe.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_02: I was like frozen for a bit, absorbing the amounts of rituals and of sacred wisdom that Dolly Parton had.
• 46:43
  SPEAKER_02: And so I decided to do a video on her and these rituals and the way she created sacred space in her home to dream about her life.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_02: And that took me, you know, how you follow those cues.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_02: And then it takes it to the rabbit hole where this is where I started to think of the MTV times where I was like obsessed with these crimson, right?
• 47:03
  SPEAKER_02: And then it's like my vibe sometimes when I want to like, you know, Netflix and just like watch something, I'll just watch like Architectural Digest Open Door where you see these celebrity homes.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, oh my God, I'm obsessed.
• 47:15
  SPEAKER_02: And so I started going down the rabbit hole of studying these other women and celebrities.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I started to discover that so many of them have these rituals and sacred spaces in their home that they pretty much anchor as a symbolism of who they've been and where they're going.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_02: So, like the second one I did was on Oprah, and it spoke of how she basically bought herself the fanciest bathtub you can think of.
• 47:46
  SPEAKER_02: And it was an omen to her struggling financially as a kid.
• 47:52
  SPEAKER_02: And it was like a promise she made to herself, which was like, when I have money, I'm gonna get myself a tub.
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_02: And so that tub was like a symbol of I succeeded in my goals, I made it, I'm prosperous, right?
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and this is the part that I loved so much about her story, which was when it was time to let it go, because she was remodeling it, she was really attached to it and she was having a really hard time letting it go.
• 48:23
  SPEAKER_02: And she did some work around it and really got to the point of realizing I'm scared that if I let it go, that part of me is going to be gone.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, wow.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 48:34
  SPEAKER_02: And she says that as soon as she released it with a sense of, I trust that if I got this far, I can still keep going even further.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_02: So many things opened up in her life, which connects that to the healing step I mentioned earlier, which is when we release what we don't need, what doesn't serve us anymore, we now create space to receive more things that are coming, more blessings, more opportunities, more abundance.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 49:05
  SPEAKER_02: So I think Beyonce is next.
• 49:07
  SPEAKER_02: I don't know, but I'm really excited about it.
• 49:11
  SPEAKER_02: And going into the bagwa, so nine areas, and we start with your career area, which also often is uh called the life journey area, and it's really connected to your sense of purpose in this life, your dharma, so to speak, and yes, your work as well, right?
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_02: Directly correlates to that.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_02: We have the wisdom and spirituality area, which also relates to skills and knowledge, right?
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_02: Is there something you're learning in your life right now?
• 49:46
  SPEAKER_02: Is there a training that you're taking?
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_02: Are you going deeper on studying a spiritual text?
• 49:52
  SPEAKER_02: Or maybe it's just about connecting more with your ancestors, your guides, right?
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_02: That's what that area is about.
• 50:00
  SPEAKER_02: We also have the travel and community area.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_02: And I like to think of that area as yes, travel like around the world, but also around bringing the energy of certain parts of the world into our life, as well as community and a network of people.
• 50:18
  SPEAKER_02: So, like now, I'm on this podcast tour.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_02: That's a big area for me.
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_02: I want to connect with people that are like-minded.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes it's also about deities and support from a higher, you know, intelligence, support from an ancestral place.
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_02: I love to work with my grandma and my grandpa and me too.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_02: You know, fortunately, I've had a lot of people died, so I have a lot of support in that area, right?
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_02: So that's that area.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_02: Then we also have the children and creativity area, which, yes, it's about children.
• 50:50
  SPEAKER_02: If you work with children, if you have children, if you want children, it's also about your own inner child, and that's where I like to spend a lot of time in because not only do I have children, but apparently parenting them is all about healing your own inner child.
• 51:07
  SPEAKER_02: So I'm there like every day.
• 51:10
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 51:11
  SPEAKER_02: So that's that's that area.
• 51:13
  SPEAKER_02: We have the well-being area and the health area, which is in the center of the home or the center of a room.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_02: And that's about mind, body, spirit, you know, your general health of those three areas.
• 51:26
  SPEAKER_02: We have the family and new beginnings area, and that's really about ancestral work as well.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_02: It's about your immediate family and who you live with.
• 51:36
  SPEAKER_02: And it's also about day-to-day living, day-to-day money that comes into your life as well.
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_02: Finally, we have the three top areas, which are, and when I say top, I mean the way we plot this in your home or map it out, is we create this grid of nine squares that looks like a tic-tac-toe kind of grid, and we align it with your floor plan, with the front door being the bottom of that grid.
• 52:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so anyone who's wants to go into my Instagram and look for an actual diagram of it, you're welcome to do that.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_02: It's just easier to see it.
• 52:15
  SPEAKER_02: But the top three areas are at the end, which are your prosperity and wealth area.
• 52:21
  SPEAKER_02: And we have your romantic relationships and intimacy area.
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_02: And then finally the fame and reputation area, which is how do you want to be seen, perceived?
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I like to think of that area as is the way other people see me and the way I see myself one cohesive message.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 52:42
  SPEAKER_02: So those are those are the nine areas that we're working with.
• 52:45
  SPEAKER_01: Wonderful.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for that.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_01: I even I'm familiar with the map, but I was able to kind of learn some more nuances as I was listening to you explain them.
• 52:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll include a map, a link to the map in the show notes if listeners are curious and and want to check it out.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_02: Perfect.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 53:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_01: I do have one more question as we're slowly reaching the top of the year.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_01: I'm curious, I'm thinking about women who are extremely busy, who are maybe overwhelmed with, you know, the demands on their life.
• 53:15
  SPEAKER_01: Maybe they have children, maybe you know, they have a full-time job or a business owner or different projects or things that they're working on.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I've heard women complain before, and maybe complain's a strong word, but some of the challenges of really committing to these rituals and practices is not feeling like they have enough time or they have enough energy, and that it takes a lot of time and energy to maintain your home in in this way, or maybe that's just a perception that they have.
• 53:43
  SPEAKER_01: What would you say to a woman in that position?
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_02: I love that.
• 53:49
  SPEAKER_02: And I have not only genuine compassion for women who feel that way, but also way too much experience because I've been that person so many times.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_02: I you know, here's what I would say.
• 54:04
  SPEAKER_02: We have to be really honest about what season of life we are in.
• 54:08
  SPEAKER_02: You know, I had a season where I was a stay-at-home mom, and that was my job all day long.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_02: I took care of the kids, I took care of the house.
• 54:15
  SPEAKER_02: That was my work, and I was very proud of doing that, and it served me well.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I was making the most elaborate dinners, and my you know, morning routine was like three hours long.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_02: It was great.
• 54:27
  SPEAKER_02: It was great.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_02: I loved that time of my life.
• 54:30
  SPEAKER_02: You know, now I'm lucky if I have a three-minute moment to do breath work before the day starts.
• 54:38
  SPEAKER_02: So, first recognize the season of life that you're in.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_02: We change, you know, life changes.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_02: And then prioritize what area of your life is the one that you're really wanting to bring the most love and the most, you know, connection to, right?
• 54:57
  SPEAKER_02: Like for me right now, it's my book.
• 54:59
  SPEAKER_02: Like, she is everything for me, and then my teenagers.
• 55:03
  SPEAKER_02: Those are those are the two things that I'm prioritizing in my life.
• 55:07
  SPEAKER_02: So that means I'm not going out for girls' nights out right now.
• 55:13
  SPEAKER_02: That's just not a priority for me.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_02: I'm I'm sacrificing that.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_02: And I think the word sacrifice has a lot of heaviness to it.
• 55:20
  SPEAKER_02: It's not, it just means you're putting aside something that's not your priority.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_02: I love my friends, and those who understand where I'm at will be okay with that.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_02: I've had a couple who are like, you're a bad friend.
• 55:31
  SPEAKER_02: I'm like, sorry, this is what I'm doing right now, right?
• 55:35
  SPEAKER_02: And then when it comes to our homes, creating rituals that again are modern.
• 55:40
  SPEAKER_02: Like I mentioned the Diet Coke thing before.
• 55:42
  SPEAKER_02: It's true that sometimes I do that.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_02: And being a super, you know, crunchy kundalini da-da-da, like Diet Coke was like the devil once upon a time, you know.
• 55:53
  SPEAKER_02: Now I'm like, guys, I like my Diet Coke sometimes, you know.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_02: I don't drink it every day, but when I do, it's like, I don't know, you're giving me a fancy cocktail, right?
• 56:03
  SPEAKER_02: I like the diet code, so I sip it slowly and I enjoy it.
• 56:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right.
• 56:09
  SPEAKER_02: I love working with corners because sometimes a room feels really overwhelming, a whole house feels even more overwhelming.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_02: Tend to corners that you can create sacred space in.
• 56:22
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe it's just a chair and a lamp, and you have a little table with your journal, and you spent three minutes writing out the negativity of your mind, which was in the Dolly Parton video.
• 56:34
  SPEAKER_02: Like, look up her her journal, is her journal practice is great.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_02: So setting up a corner for it to be your regulation space, your sacred space, and probably the kitchen.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_02: Like, can you focus on the kitchen?
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_02: You know, keep your stove nice and clean doesn't mean it's perfect.
• 56:54
  SPEAKER_02: And that's I think the peas, right?
• 56:57
  SPEAKER_02: We're not looking for a Pinterest version of your kitchen, you know, just the dishes maybe get washed once a day.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe it doesn't mean the the sink is empty all the time, but at the end of the day, they get washed.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_02: That's a ritual, that's a really deep level of self-care that doesn't look like you're in a bathtub with bubbles and a glass of water.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_02: It's not luxurious, it's basic, it's simple.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_02: For me, my coffee is that ritual.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_02: The diet cook is has become a ritual that I only took on because I felt like I had permission after I heard one of my teachers did that, and I was like, What?
• 57:38
  SPEAKER_02: You can do that totally doing that, and not to add more, but this one is also really important to me: fresh flowers.
• 57:44
  SPEAKER_02: I I bring in fresh flowers every week when I go grocery shopping.
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_02: And if that's the one thing I did for my home that week because I'm busy, that's the one thing I did for my home that week, and I'm very proud of it.
• 57:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 58:00
  SPEAKER_01: Simplifying, prioritizing, giving ourselves grace.
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_02: So much grace.
• 58:05
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 58:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and taking this more modern approach too.
• 58:09
  SPEAKER_01: I think I know when I first started my was on my spiritual journey, we can or I'll speak for myself, I would think that things had to be so perfect and right in a certain type of way in order for it to be spiritual.
• 58:23
  SPEAKER_01: And with time, I've really come to see the spiritual, the divine in the most mundane things.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't have to be some elaborate, like you were saying, Pinterest perfect experience.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_01: It can be something that's more practical and and realistic for your life and the season of your life that you're in.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_02: So, so yeah, it's it's incredible how much pressure I think we receive from the outside world.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_02: And then the message we keep getting is that we're just not good enough because we don't have these elaborate rituals and routines.
• 59:00
  SPEAKER_02: And I know I've been that person being trained in Kundalini yoga and doing these like guru initiations that I did at some point in my life.
• 59:10
  SPEAKER_02: I used to have like a crazy morning routine up at 3:30 in the morning, an hour of meditation, an hour of kriyas, wow, crazy food-related things where I didn't even eat for like 120 days to be exact.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 59:26
  SPEAKER_02: It was insanity.
• 59:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_02: And looking back, I'm like, wow, I was in a place of so much disconnection with myself that I was grasping onto any external guru, literally, who could show me that I was worthy of insert whatever it is that I was desiring.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_02: No, it doesn't have to be that way at all.
• 59:51
  SPEAKER_02: Make your bed, have your coffee in peace.
• 59:54
  SPEAKER_02: Totally cool if you want to diet coke, and buy yourself some flowers and start there.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_02: And then when inspiration comes and you're like, I want to paint this room and change this sofa and get new curtains, it's not rocket science.
• 1:00:09
  SPEAKER_02: You go online and you buy that and you'll get it in two days.
• 1:00:12
  SPEAKER_02: But it's different to do it from a place of love and inspiration than to do it from a place of being neurotic about something.
• 1:00:21
  SPEAKER_02: Totally different vibe.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, or fear or control.
• 1:00:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, exactly.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:00:27
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's wonderful.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_01: Those are some practical invitations for listeners to explore if they're resonating with this conversation.
• 1:00:35
  SPEAKER_01: I'm already like, okay, I'm looking at my closet.
• 1:00:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, that needs to get out of my kitchen.
• 1:00:39
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, okay, I need to get in there.
• 1:00:41
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you for all of your wisdom and your inspiration and wondering if there's any other final words you want to leave with listeners today.
• 1:00:50
  SPEAKER_02: This has been so fun.
• 1:00:52
  SPEAKER_02: This has been so fun.
• 1:00:53
  SPEAKER_02: No, I don't think I have any other final words.
• 1:00:56
  SPEAKER_02: I think that we had a really thorough conversation.
• 1:00:59
  SPEAKER_02: Thank you again for the space and for the opportunity to share this.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, I'm looking forward to just continuing this conversation maybe another time.
• 1:01:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:01:08
  SPEAKER_01: Would love to have you back on.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_01: And um, how can listeners connect with you if they would like to learn more about your work, learn more about your book, uh, watch all of your fun content on Instagram?
• 1:01:18
  SPEAKER_02: Oh my gosh, I am actually finally having fun with that because I can tell.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_02: Let me just tell you.
• 1:01:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, that was that was a journey for sure.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_02: Um, yeah, Instagram is where I seem to be hanging out most nowadays.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_02: My handle's at Sacred Interiors, and my website is sacred interiors that design, and there's a lot of resources there.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_02: There's masterclasses and rituals that people can grab for free.
• 1:01:44
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then obviously I'll be sharing a lot more about my book that's coming out, and it's called House of Becoming, and it is a poetry collection, which is really unexpected, but it also does go in through a lot of details of the soul of the home and how to create sacred space for yourself.
• 1:02:02
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, super excited about that.
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm excited for you.
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm curious to check it out.
• 1:02:07
  SPEAKER_01: I love poetry and I love feng shui and working with the bog on that.
• 1:02:11
  SPEAKER_01: So it's just a lot of boxes for me.
• 1:02:13
  SPEAKER_02: Right?
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_02: Amazing.
• 1:02:16
  SPEAKER_01: Wonderful.
• 1:02:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we'll leave all of your links and information in the show notes for listeners to connect with you more.
• 1:02:22
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you again, Paula.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_01: This has been a really wonderful conversation.
• 1:02:26
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:02:27
  SPEAKER_01: And thank you, listeners, for being here with us today.
• 1:02:30
  SPEAKER_01: We hope that you got what you needed from today's conversation.