Latest / All Figured Out with Andrea Barr: Figuring Out Work, Life and Parenting / 137. What medicine couldn't fix: one MD's path to mystic healing — Dr. Alexandra Perel-Winkler

Transcript

137. What medicine couldn't fix: one MD's path to mystic healing — Dr. Alexandra Perel-Winkler · All Figured Out with Andrea Barr: Figuring Out Work, Life and Parenting

• 0:00
  So I'm just taking a moment to connect to my spirit.
• 0:04
  I'm asking all of my parts and my ego to be set aside and to be
• 0:09
  a vessel for whatever wants to come through in this
• 0:13
  conversation for the highest good for all, and for it to be a
• 0:18
  lot of fun. That's it.
• 0:21
  Done. This is all figured out.
• 0:29
  I'm Andrea Barr. I'm a career coach for parents,
• 0:32
  a mom of two, and I absolutely believe that you can continue to
• 0:35
  grow personally and professionally while protecting
• 0:38
  family time. We're about to figure out this
• 0:43
  work, life and parenting stuff out together.
• 0:53
  Happy full moon, Alexandra. Doctor Alexandra, How do you how
• 0:57
  do you introduce yourself? Do you say Doctor Alexandra?
• 1:00
  Doctor Miller, MD. But Oh yeah, I like Alexandra.
• 1:04
  OK, OK. We'll just go with.
• 1:06
  That I tell my patients to call me Alexandra.
• 1:09
  Well, I joined you at your clinic yesterday or your where
• 1:12
  you practice your holistic, your Mystic medicine, and I thought
• 1:17
  that was really cool and I checked and she like, Oh, you
• 1:19
  here. You see, Alexandra, I was like,
• 1:21
  yes, I am. I would consider us friends.
• 1:23
  And so I was like, that's what I would call you in the DM's, But
• 1:26
  that was cute that she she recognized you as welcome to the
• 1:30
  all figured out. Good guess.
• 1:31
  Thank you. I'm so excited to be here.
• 1:33
  I'm. So pleased to have you.
• 1:34
  I'm so excited, Oh my goodness, to dive in to your story.
• 1:39
  I want to call out the crazy serendipities in our lives that
• 1:43
  have already unfolded in our few weeks, months of friendship.
• 1:47
  OK, there is the both of us kind of like going our own paths in
• 1:52
  our careers, going like traditional and then putting our
• 1:55
  own spin on it. There is your husband and I,
• 1:58
  both hailing from Florida. I love that one so much.
• 2:02
  Like I say that that one doesn't happen often.
• 2:04
  Yeah, most people don't born there, people getting.
• 2:07
  Florida is a unique thing, yes, in this part of the.
• 2:10
  World, yes. Like, I can only speak from my
• 2:12
  own experience, but when I see Florida Man tweets, I'm like,
• 2:14
  yeah, it's kinda right. Yeah, yeah, kind of right.
• 2:18
  And then I kind of love it. Yes, yeah, it's beautiful.
• 2:21
  It's kind of weird. We love you Florida.
• 2:25
  And and then I have on the beautiful Jennica day to talk
• 2:29
  about vacations on this on this podcast.
• 2:32
  She was sitting where you're sitting right now, like a mere
• 2:34
  weeks ago, and we made day. After we connected to my thing
• 2:40
  on the phone, which is wild yes because I opened up my phone and
• 2:44
  you guys are both like putting up videos of connecting like
• 2:48
  that's my. Neighbor, this is her neighbor.
• 2:49
  So just like I know it's a small city, small world, but like this
• 2:52
  is very, I find it very interesting.
• 2:55
  There was a couple others I thought of and now I forget, but
• 2:58
  I'm so excited too. Who just go back.
• 3:02
  You are a medical doctor and you always knew that you wanted to
• 3:06
  be a healer. What did that look like for you
• 3:10
  growing up? Like what does that even mean?
• 3:11
  Did you know what the word healer meant?
• 3:14
  How did it look for you? That's such a good question.
• 3:17
  I think it was really a feeling. It was like a mix between a
• 3:24
  yearning, A longing and something that just felt really
• 3:29
  right for me. And even I remember as a little
• 3:31
  girl just wanting to help people feel well.
• 3:36
  I think that I have been gifted with an ability to feel a lot of
• 3:42
  joy and a lot of wonder, and I wanted to be able to help people
• 3:49
  experience that. And so as I grew up, I had I
• 3:54
  guess a sense of the word healer, healing, Wellness was a
• 3:58
  big one. And so it was always sort of
• 4:00
  curious and seeking also just, I think my husband would laugh at
• 4:04
  this. Like, I think I like to be a
• 4:06
  teacher. I like to give advice.
• 4:09
  When I was in grade 6, I started an advice column in my school
• 4:13
  with my friend. No, you didn't.
• 4:15
  I did. It was called Ask A&A because
• 4:17
  her name is Anna. And.
• 4:20
  I love. This we didn't get a lot of
• 4:21
  questions. What no questions did you get?
• 4:27
  To be honest, we didn't get any. Anna wrote the questions.
• 4:30
  Yeah. And then I would answer that we
• 4:33
  just made things out so. Fun.
• 4:35
  But I think that was like the real beginning of, you know, my
• 4:38
  coaching. Career.
• 4:39
  Yeah, totally. And yeah, so I was like, had
• 4:43
  that this feeling, this longing, this urge.
• 4:45
  And then as I progressed in life and I didn't have a sense of
• 4:52
  what healing could be outside of medicine.
• 4:55
  And I think that also in my cultural bringing in the world
• 4:59
  that I was living in, there was a a mixture of not a lot of
• 5:03
  exposure to other types of healing and then also a push to
• 5:07
  be like, well, this is a thing that makes sense.
• 5:09
  This is the thing you should do. If you have this urge, you have
• 5:12
  the smarts, you have the ability, you can do it.
• 5:15
  And so I was sort of pushed in that direction.
• 5:17
  Yeah, that makes sense. Do you think that I've been
• 5:20
  listening to Have you been listening to the Telepathy
• 5:21
  Tapes? A little.
• 5:22
  Bit yeah, there's Oh my gosh, I'll put the link to it.
• 5:26
  That's a whole other episode. Yeah.
• 5:28
  Do you think that there was like this in the Telepathy tapes?
• 5:31
  They I'll just say, so it's a I can't even describe what it is,
• 5:34
  but it's just talking about just the the higher selves.
• 5:38
  Like the whole theme of the show really is about like exploring
• 5:40
  the higher self in so many different formats with non
• 5:43
  speakers, children on the autism spectrum.
• 5:44
  And for those who don't know about the telepathy tapes
• 5:46
  anyways, a huge theme that I take away from it is that like
• 5:50
  children are just so pure. And so for you, before you could
• 5:54
  actually conceptualize like what a medical career looked like,
• 5:57
  was there were there any like, you know, references for you of
• 6:01
  like or just like feelings before that pressure came in of
• 6:05
  being like, Oh, I just like, there's something about this
• 6:08
  like did was there like mysticism in your early life?
• 6:11
  Yeah, absolutely. I think that that what you're
• 6:14
  describing is exactly it. It's like as a kid, I was so
• 6:18
  connected to the essence of who I am, that that is who I am.
• 6:23
  That is sort of my mission. That is, you know, if we're
• 6:26
  going to go woo in this episode, which we probably will, for me,
• 6:30
  I know that for lifetimes my soul has been doing healing
• 6:34
  work. So I think I was really planted
• 6:35
  here to be doing this type of work.
• 6:38
  And what is very familial familiar to me is soul level
• 6:45
  transformational healing. And so I didn't have words for
• 6:47
  that. I didn't understand it.
• 6:49
  But I was definitely a young girl who was looking at the
• 6:53
  stars, looking at the moon, feeling this connection to the
• 6:57
  natural world and feeling a connection to subtle energies
• 7:01
  that I didn't necessarily understand.
• 7:03
  And in truth, I think I was really looking for guidance.
• 7:08
  I was looking for features. I think I always think back to,
• 7:11
  do you remember, like Sabrina the Teenage?
• 7:12
  Witch hell yeah I do. And do you remember Charmed?
• 7:15
  Yes. And when she turned 16, her
• 7:19
  aunts were like, you're a witch. I feel like I was always waiting
• 7:23
  for that. Like I knew that it was in me,
• 7:26
  but I was waiting for that initiation or those people to
• 7:33
  come and, you know, like some priests to see type women to
• 7:37
  like come out of the veil and be like, OK, now we're going to
• 7:39
  teach you everything you need to know.
• 7:41
  Welcome. What I learned as I went through
• 7:43
  life is that I had to choose myself.
• 7:47
  I had to, you know, do things that made make decisions that
• 7:52
  felt uncomfortable to come back to myself.
• 7:55
  And I think that that's a process that I help people with.
• 7:59
  And also that is just art of growth and development and
• 8:02
  maturity. How did growing up in a
• 8:05
  beautiful religious faith play into, with, or against that
• 8:10
  feeling of spirituality that you were so tapped into at such a
• 8:13
  young age? Yeah, it was actually confusing
• 8:18
  for me because growing up in my community in Vancouver, I went
• 8:26
  to a Jewish elementary school, I was part of a Jewish synagogue,
• 8:30
  but we're Reformed, so we're not super religious.
• 8:32
  So for me, my Jewish upbringing was very cultural.
• 8:36
  So it was about family, it was about gathering, it was about
• 8:40
  food, it was about it was, yeah, very cultural.
• 8:43
  Traditions. Traditions.
• 8:45
  Exactly. And it was community, it was
• 8:47
  family. And so it was a very, very
• 8:50
  beautiful part of my upbringing. It's a beautiful part of my life
• 8:53
  now. I think as we've been saying,
• 8:56
  like I always had this mystical leaning and I was always seeking
• 9:01
  for that. And I was very, um, disappointed
• 9:07
  is an unfortunate word, but the truth that I wasn't finding the
• 9:11
  answers because the, and I still feel frustrated at this now
• 9:15
  because the way that I grew up was a very practical or
• 9:20
  traditional or cultural approach, but it didn't answer
• 9:23
  the soul level. And now I actually study
• 9:26
  Kabbalah and a lot of after, you know, 20 years of doing deep
• 9:33
  seeking and learning and working with lots of different teachers
• 9:37
  and practitioners, I'm now coming to Kabbalah and
• 9:41
  realizing, oh, all of it's in here.
• 9:43
  So much of what I have found through so many different
• 9:46
  lineages and so many different teachers and being such a seeker
• 9:50
  is in the Kabbalah. But they don't teach ancient
• 9:54
  mystical spirituality to kids. I'm, I spent my upbringing, you
• 9:59
  know, studying the stories and it was and even now my kids come
• 10:05
  home from school and they're, you know, the way that they talk
• 10:07
  about God is this, you know, do anthropomorphic.
• 10:12
  Yeah, man in the clouds. And that's how I envisioned him
• 10:16
  at that age too. You know, So I feel like we're
• 10:18
  not. I wish that there was more
• 10:20
  spiritual education because I think spirituality in the way
• 10:24
  that I'm working with it is non denominational.
• 10:27
  Yes. And you were saying we were kind
• 10:31
  of just chatting beforehand. You were saying that you do have
• 10:33
  people that come to you and we're going to get into your
• 10:35
  story and how you've come into this world as an MD, as a, as a
• 10:39
  healer. And you've said that that is
• 10:41
  something that people bring to you before sessions or in this
• 10:45
  confrontation of getting into this world and saying, but does
• 10:49
  this mean I'm leaving, say, my Christianity and my faith, my
• 10:53
  deep rooted faith behind and my cheating on it?
• 10:56
  Yes. Totally, which I get.
• 10:58
  Yeah, and some, some different phases have a hard time with
• 11:05
  certain parts. Like I've talked to certain
• 11:07
  people who can't do say they can't do Reiki because they're
• 11:11
  like, it's like there's some stigma around energetics.
• 11:15
  I don't know exactly where it comes from, but it's like it's
• 11:18
  been passed down from these higher institutions of religion.
• 11:24
  And I don't know if it's coming from an old historical thing
• 11:27
  where they want to kind of control and keep the access to
• 11:30
  the soul through them. For me, I actually love working
• 11:33
  with people of faith because I feel like there's already an
• 11:38
  openness to, for a lot of people who are very secular, the
• 11:43
  concept of God, for example, can be very uncomfortable and it can
• 11:48
  be something that they've almost stepped away from.
• 11:50
  And for me, I want to, you know, you don't have to call it God.
• 11:54
  You can call it universe. You can think of it as energy,
• 11:56
  But I, I think that it's a very beautiful part that can come
• 12:01
  into our lives. And so when I'm working with
• 12:05
  people of faith, they already have that connection and I just
• 12:08
  want them to be able to feel it and understand it's accessible
• 12:12
  to them outside of that weekly service or whatever way that
• 12:18
  they practice. It's something that they can
• 12:20
  have woven into their lives. Everyday, I've never heard it be
• 12:25
  put like that and I've never really, you know, conceptualized
• 12:27
  that there's already a little bit of an opening like it
• 12:30
  doesn't matter what your faith is like.
• 12:32
  There's just this this curiosity, perhaps like an
• 12:34
  opening to something else. So you're like, oh, we can work
• 12:37
  that. Yeah.
• 12:38
  Versus the person who was like, I'm gonna draw this hard line in
• 12:41
  the sand. I grew up evangelical and I've
• 12:43
  turned my back on this and like, there's a closing I could
• 12:46
  imagine. Exactly.
• 12:47
  Yeah, like this is physically way.
• 12:49
  Yeah. And how I see religion is I
• 12:51
  think it is a beautiful, it can be.
• 12:55
  Obviously there's major problems with institutional,
• 12:57
  institutionalized religion in the world and I think religion
• 13:01
  offers so much that can be so grounding, so connecting.
• 13:07
  I think people do really well with ritual and habits.
• 13:11
  So it's like the the, yeah, the grounding experience of being a
• 13:15
  part of that kind of community can be really, there's a lot of
• 13:19
  evidence that being involved in religion is healthy for people.
• 13:22
  I think that religion can be great.
• 13:24
  And I also think that we can connect to our own spirits and
• 13:28
  our own souls in a way that can be extremely healing, whether or
• 13:32
  not you are religious, whether or not you want to be practicing
• 13:36
  faith or where, whether you just want to use it as a modality for
• 13:40
  for healing and growth and living the life that you wanna
• 13:43
  live. Thank you for sharing.
• 13:45
  That's very brave of you to go into this.
• 13:47
  I asked you beforehand if I could bring this up because I
• 13:49
  think it's just such an inspiration to hear from
• 13:51
  somebody like yourself again, who was this triple threat in
• 13:55
  spirituality, in science and in religion.
• 13:58
  And it's like, what an honor to like hear you say it as someone
• 14:01
  who I really admire and to just just speak on it with such like
• 14:04
  love and levity. Like it's just like just
• 14:07
  anything. Too much of anything, too many
• 14:08
  carrots can turn you orange. Like too much of anything.
• 14:11
  Anything that's too rigid, that isn't rooted in like, you know,
• 14:15
  to go crazy about, like love and light and just like being kind.
• 14:18
  It's like, put on your practical hat sometimes, like, yeah, is
• 14:22
  this good for me? Is this good for the world?
• 14:24
  Totally. Does this feel good?
• 14:25
  Yeah, yes. Take us back.
• 14:27
  You are, as we've said, a medical doctor.
• 14:30
  You were in Med school in Ireland.
• 14:32
  You moved to New York City and we're on this fast track to
• 14:37
  becoming like some badass researcher and rheumatology.
• 14:40
  You're at Columbia. How was that phase of your life
• 14:45
  like? That's a many in many years.
• 14:46
  I know of your life studying so intensely, probably not really
• 14:50
  having a lot of time to think about other things.
• 14:52
  But I know you said you were dabbling and studying in the
• 14:57
  woo, for lack of a better word. So how did all that go for you?
• 15:01
  So it didn't seem like, it's funny because I felt so mystical
• 15:05
  as a child. And then as I started getting
• 15:08
  into my academics, it started in my head to start to sort of
• 15:14
  frame itself as integrative medicine.
• 15:16
  That was like a term that came up.
• 15:18
  I was like, OK, this makes sense.
• 15:20
  The terms holistic and integrative were like very front
• 15:25
  of mind. Even then.
• 15:27
  Even so, yeah. So when I went into my
• 15:29
  undergrad, I knew that I wanted to be holistic.
• 15:32
  I knew I was different, so I went into arts.
• 15:35
  I've always been the black sheep in medicine.
• 15:36
  So I went into arts and I did my medical prerequisites as a
• 15:40
  minor, and I majored in a major that wasn't a major, but I went
• 15:45
  in and demanded that I could make it a major.
• 15:48
  Was it the social studies of medicine?
• 15:50
  So it was, yeah. So it was an integrative
• 15:54
  approach where there was like history, the social studies, the
• 15:59
  anthropology of health and Wellness.
• 16:02
  I really wanted it to include more of Eastern traditions as
• 16:06
  well, but it didn't. It was much more of a Western
• 16:09
  lens because that's what they had available.
• 16:11
  But I was taking a lot of courses really dissecting and
• 16:14
  understanding the healthcare system and health and Wellness
• 16:17
  and the history of medicine. So I went in to medicine with
• 16:22
  definitely a different lens. And, and then when I was in
• 16:26
  medicine, I knew that that was, I was going to be doing
• 16:30
  something holistic. So I started studying nutrition
• 16:33
  and I got really into, you know, learning about the microbiome.
• 16:39
  I also was doing yoga at the time.
• 16:41
  So I was doing a lot of yoga and I was studying sort of yoga
• 16:43
  philosophy. So that was like some things
• 16:47
  that started percolating and, and then when I was in New York
• 16:54
  and in residency and fellowship, it felt like everything needed
• 16:57
  to be put aside. I was doing 80 plus hours of
• 17:00
  work a week. I was just sort of functioning.
• 17:03
  And so I didn't do much else but that at the time.
• 17:07
  And then at the end of my fellowship, that was when I sort
• 17:10
  of had my awakening moment. My father got really ill.
• 17:14
  He was diagnosed and given 1% chance to live.
• 17:17
  And I just had a huge reckoning where I realized that in those
• 17:23
  five years of training in New York, I had kind of veered off
• 17:26
  from this vision of this holistic practitioner I wanted
• 17:29
  to be. And I sort of got lost in the
• 17:32
  academia of it all. And I was on track to be a lupus
• 17:36
  researcher. And I was like, this is just not
• 17:40
  where I want to be right now. This is not what is right for
• 17:43
  me. And so that's when I sort of
• 17:46
  came back to myself. And I should say I was also
• 17:50
  learning a lot in New York. I guess I didn't veer so far
• 17:53
  off. I was doing a lot that wasn't as
• 17:55
  much about what I wanted to do with my career, but just for my
• 17:59
  own well-being. I started.
• 18:02
  That's when I started my meditation practice.
• 18:04
  I definitely think I was having some inkling of coming back to
• 18:09
  my spirituality and my mysticism.
• 18:11
  I think the gateway drug for that is always crystals.
• 18:14
  So that's when my crystal collection began.
• 18:19
  How many? How many do you think you have?
• 18:21
  I've given a lot of way, Yeah. So like, yeah.
• 18:25
  So I probably, well, I have, yeah.
• 18:27
  I have a relationship to crystals now where I don't want
• 18:31
  to be such a consumer of crystals.
• 18:33
  So I like to find rocks basically that are, you know, in
• 18:38
  the earth or, or things that come to me or people give me
• 18:41
  gifts. So I like receive crystals very,
• 18:43
  very great happily. You're like my children with a
• 18:46
  rock collection outside her house.
• 18:48
  It's like, like, it's like they're building a waterfall
• 18:51
  there's. Just rocks everywhere.
• 18:52
  I feel so bad for my husband because I just encourage it and
• 18:55
  like, let's go to the beach. But we always need to be like,
• 18:58
  OK, do you want to come with me? We're really connect to the
• 19:01
  energy. And is it like, OK for us to be
• 19:03
  bringing this from the earth home?
• 19:04
  So we're selective. But yeah, I'm definitely an
• 19:08
  inner child rock collector for sure.
• 19:10
  Do you have the rock Tumblr? No, my daughter got a rock
• 19:13
  Tumblr for her birthday. It's honestly the.
• 19:16
  Shines. It yes, we've yet to like I've
• 19:19
  yet to we've yet to break through to the shine.
• 19:21
  It came with a selection of rocks.
• 19:23
  It is very noisy and you have to you have to tumble the rocks.
• 19:27
  It's an electric one, but you have to tumble rocks for like
• 19:29
  multiple days and I'm like, is this going to overheat and like
• 19:33
  explode in the night? So I feel hesitant.
• 19:35
  However, did you watch the show shrinking?
• 19:38
  No. Oh my gosh, it just the most
• 19:41
  beautiful, wonderful show on Apple at Apple TV or Apple,
• 19:45
  whatever they call it, Apple Plus.
• 19:47
  And there's a character in it who is like so lovely and funny.
• 19:50
  She's like the next door neighbor and she tumbles rocks
• 19:52
  by hand and that's like her love language show.
• 19:54
  Like give a tumbled rock that's all shiny to people and like
• 19:58
  that shows that she really loves you.
• 19:59
  That's so cute. Anyways, OK, crystals were
• 20:02
  coming back. Your dad was diagnosed with
• 20:05
  pancreatic cancer, which is really not a no bueno.
• 20:09
  We don't. We don't want to hear that.
• 20:12
  What next? Because you're still, you're
• 20:14
  still in New York at this time. Yeah.
• 20:16
  You're fully on this, Like you are really deep in this path to
• 20:19
  becoming this lupus researcher. Yeah.
• 20:21
  Yeah, it was on my, it was my last year.
• 20:23
  And I think it's like almost worked in my favor.
• 20:28
  Now, I can say this in retrospect that my dad had such
• 20:32
  a dire diagnosis because everyone in the medical
• 20:35
  community was so aware of how bad this was, and the chance of
• 20:39
  him surviving was so low that they really gave me a lot of
• 20:42
  flexibility. They were very generous and
• 20:45
  accommodating. And I got to come home and I
• 20:48
  gave me a little bit of space to be managing this breakdown
• 20:54
  breakthrough that was happening in my relationship to self and
• 20:58
  my identity and recognizing that I was on off path and that I
• 21:01
  wanted to get back on path. And what did that mean?
• 21:05
  My husband still had another year of training in New York and
• 21:08
  I was done and I was about to get a job.
• 21:10
  And so in typical Type A doctor form, I was like, OK, I'm going
• 21:14
  to give myself two months off before I start a job and I'll do
• 21:19
  a Reiki training and I'll figure this all out.
• 21:22
  And you know, it will be done in two months.
• 21:25
  Of course, I started my journey of what I thought was going to
• 21:31
  be becoming the healer holistic practitioner that I wanted to
• 21:34
  be. And what I really realized is
• 21:36
  that before you seek to heal anyone else, you really need to
• 21:40
  do your own healing. And So what was supposed to be a
• 21:45
  2 month break ended up being an 18 month deep dive into my own
• 21:52
  healing. I also got pregnant.
• 21:53
  We realized that once I got pregnant, we didn't want to stay
• 21:57
  in New York. That wasn't right for us.
• 21:59
  It's not where we wanted to raise a family.
• 22:01
  And so I also knew that I was going to be moving.
• 22:03
  And so I was like, you know what?
• 22:04
  I don't need to be 3 months pregnant, hoofing it out to New
• 22:09
  Jersey, commuting with a big belly, all the things.
• 22:14
  So I just gave myself that time and I yeah, I had my baby.
• 22:22
  We moved back to Vancouver and it took some time for me to
• 22:27
  start my job here. And so in that meantime I was
• 22:32
  like, I had found functional medicine and I was like, maybe
• 22:35
  that's it. They really sell it as mind,
• 22:38
  body, spirit, getting to root cause.
• 22:41
  I was like, this is great, this is a program I can just take
• 22:44
  this one year course and I'm going to have it all figured
• 22:46
  out. So I was doing my own healing on
• 22:49
  the side. I had my first baby, which
• 22:53
  everyone knows is a huge initiation, and I was doing a
• 22:57
  functional medicine training and I started working both in
• 23:02
  chronic pain and, um, doing functional medicine, private
• 23:06
  practice and realized quite quickly that the functional
• 23:09
  medicine was still not it. It was not, it was not the thing
• 23:13
  that that little girl, that mystical little girl wanted to
• 23:16
  be doing. It still wasn't the right fit.
• 23:18
  So I didn't do functional medicine.
• 23:21
  I still integrated a lot in my medical work.
• 23:24
  It's amazing for a lot of people, for people who don't
• 23:28
  know, it's sort of like naturopathy, but um, 4 doctors
• 23:32
  cool studying. So it's, yeah.
• 23:34
  So it's, it's not, it's not being a naturopath, but it's
• 23:37
  just using supplements. It's using advanced testing.
• 23:40
  It's, it's, you know, doing those like deep dive gut
• 23:43
  testing, hormone testing, things that aren't really covered by
• 23:47
  regular Western medicine. And so I still love that I have
• 23:53
  that information in my head and I weave it into my work and, you
• 23:57
  know, it's in my knowledge bank, but it wasn't the right fit for
• 24:00
  me. And what was the process that
• 24:02
  your dad was going through at this time?
• 24:04
  That is a lot, as I'm hearing you say that that is a lot of
• 24:08
  awakenings reckonings. That's a lot of shit going on in
• 24:11
  your life at one time. What was the journey with your
• 24:14
  dad as well faced with that diagnosis?
• 24:17
  You as the doctor, it always seems to be these weird
• 24:20
  situations where it's the, you know, the daughter of the man
• 24:24
  who's been given this diagnosis is happens to be a doctor, you
• 24:26
  know, it's just bizarre. So what was going on with there?
• 24:29
  So at the beginning of my dad's diagnosis was being a doctor,
• 24:34
  and I was reading all of the literature.
• 24:37
  And if for anyone who's read a scientific study, every single
• 24:42
  scientific study about something, we'll kind of start
• 24:44
  the same way. You know, it overviews all the
• 24:47
  research that's been done. So within the first three
• 24:50
  sentences, you will get a sense of the dire diagnosis of
• 24:54
  pancreatic cancer. And it was just not good for my
• 24:57
  mental health. It was not good for my psyche to
• 25:00
  be constantly reading the same sentence over and over again
• 25:03
  about how desperate the situation was.
• 25:06
  And so I decided early on that my dad had great, they're here
• 25:10
  in Vancouver and he had people who were up to date with all of
• 25:14
  the research and I didn't need to be part of his medical team.
• 25:18
  So at first I tried to be part of his integrative medical team
• 25:22
  as like the functional medicine side of things.
• 25:24
  And I was, you know, wanting doctor mizes, supplements and
• 25:27
  all of that. And my dad, I think I just
• 25:30
  learned so much about healing from my dad's journey because he
• 25:34
  was, he was just so not interested.
• 25:36
  And I, I was so worried that he wasn't doing all the things that
• 25:41
  he should do for himself, but he was super nauseous because of
• 25:44
  the drugs that he was on. And so he was, he really showed
• 25:48
  me how the healing journey is unique to each person and how
• 25:54
  you really need to be aligned with what feels true and right
• 25:57
  for you. And my dad was so clear.
• 26:00
  He at the beginning of it was like, I'm OK with dying because
• 26:05
  I have had an amazing life, but I'm not going to die.
• 26:08
  I am going to be in remission in one year.
• 26:11
  He just had this clarity and it was not an easy year.
• 26:16
  He had a round of chemo. He had a major surgery.
• 26:19
  He was in the hospital for two months straight.
• 26:22
  He was emaciated. He was had another round of
• 26:25
  chemo at the end of all of that and really, really heavy, heavy,
• 26:30
  rough chemo. He didn't have any of the
• 26:31
  markers that he could have immunotherapy or a lighter,
• 26:34
  those of anything, but he was just so certain.
• 26:39
  He just had this inner knowing. And the one thing that he was
• 26:44
  very interested because I, as I mentioned, I early on did my
• 26:47
  Reiki training. He was really interested in
• 26:50
  that. He was really open.
• 26:52
  So whenever I came to Vancouver, I would do energetic work with
• 26:56
  him and we really got into the science of mind, body connection
• 27:01
  and visualization. And so he would do hours of
• 27:07
  meditation every day because he couldn't do much else.
• 27:09
  He was so unwell. He was lying in bed.
• 27:11
  So instead of, you know, scrolling on the news, he would
• 27:16
  just be with himself and he would visualize his immune
• 27:20
  system. I initially, when this started,
• 27:24
  I led a guided meditation, which was visualizing, you know,
• 27:30
  golden light. And the golden light was
• 27:33
  educating his cells. And it was all very probably,
• 27:36
  you know, divine feminine, beautiful, how I would envision.
• 27:40
  And at the end of the meditation, I was like, how was
• 27:42
  that? He's like, that was great.
• 27:44
  All of my immune cells had these laser guns and they were going
• 27:47
  Pew, Pew, Pew Pew to the cancer. And so again, it's like whatever
• 27:52
  works for you, you know, there's no, there's no prescription for
• 27:56
  these things. But he really utilized that mind
• 27:59
  body connection and that was a big part of his journey.
• 28:03
  Unbelievable. Yeah.
• 28:04
  One might you know, a bit of my story with my husband when he
• 28:07
  was going through some really scary cardiac surgeries he had.
• 28:12
  There was a couple of things he did before each of these
• 28:14
  surgeries that he had when he was walking into and one of them
• 28:17
  was his walk up playlist. So we'd be driving to the
• 28:19
  hospital at 5:00 AM or whatever. He had this playlist that like
• 28:23
  really got him like jazzed up talk about the like masculine,
• 28:25
  feminine. He's just like gangster rap and
• 28:28
  just like his like OG songs from his like 20s.
• 28:32
  And then the other thing was he was listening to a sports
• 28:34
  podcast like number of years ago.
• 28:36
  I think I've shared it on the podcast before and now I forget
• 28:38
  who it was that said this and brilliant thinker was talking
• 28:41
  about visualization. All well and good to talk about
• 28:45
  visualization, but how do you really visualize something when
• 28:49
  all of a sudden doubt creeps in and then the scary intrusive
• 28:52
  thought comes up, happens to everybody.
• 28:54
  And what this person had said that really stuck with my
• 28:56
  husband was that you can go there but never finish it there.
• 29:01
  So like he was visualizing his surgery and he was visualizing
• 29:04
  like a little hiccup in the surgery and instead of ending
• 29:07
  there and being like, oh fuck, like I failed at this
• 29:09
  visualization or like, that's really scary.
• 29:11
  I feel really scared. I don't want to think about this
• 29:13
  more. You keep going.
• 29:15
  OHK OK, great. We worked through that problem
• 29:17
  and then he would always see it to a positive outcome on the
• 29:20
  other side of the. Surgery of that.
• 29:22
  And it's like, so I got like, just like chills thinking about
• 29:25
  it because it was so profound. And he's not like he's a pretty
• 29:29
  practical dude, like, but he, there's some mysticism within
• 29:32
  this guy that like he just doesn't, he knows is there, but
• 29:35
  he's not like tapped into it intellectually and.
• 29:38
  Visualization is one of those great examples where you are
• 29:43
  using your imagination. I think that there is an
• 29:46
  energetic and mystical component to it.
• 29:49
  It's energetic. We don't fully understand why it
• 29:52
  works, but there are science to back it up.
• 29:54
  Yes. You know, elite athletes, the
• 29:57
  most high achieving people who are out there are actually
• 30:01
  utilizing visualization. And so I, I love that because
• 30:05
  it's a perfect example of like bridging science and
• 30:08
  spirituality, which is what I'm all.
• 30:10
  About yes. And like practically speaking,
• 30:12
  you know, instead of just being like, oh, we need to do the work
• 30:14
  or we need to be spiritual. It's like what?
• 30:16
  What do you mean by that? You know, like these are
• 30:18
  examples of just like the stuff. So you're doing this work with
• 30:21
  your dad. He's doing the visualizations.
• 30:25
  What happens then? What happens for?
• 30:29
  How does he? Oh, how what happens?
• 30:31
  What happens? Yeah.
• 30:33
  So I don't know. Yeah.
• 30:35
  Is he around? Yes, yes.
• 30:37
  So my dad has arrived. So one of the craziest things
• 30:40
  was that we really had to fight for him to get surgery.
• 30:45
  He had this amazing surgeon who was willing to to give him
• 30:48
  surgery, but he kind of met the criteria for Stage 4.
• 30:53
  And in stage 4 it's inoperable. But the surgeon was argued his
• 30:57
  case that he could, he could remove the lymph nodes that were
• 31:00
  involved. And so we really, really
• 31:02
  advocated #1 my dad had an unexpected, amazing response to
• 31:09
  the chemo. So off the charts chemo was
• 31:12
  shrinking his tumor. So basically, Pew, Pew, Pew.
• 31:15
  Exactly. So the oncologists were so
• 31:19
  surprised by the response that they were like, oh, maybe this
• 31:23
  is surgically operable because it's shrunken.
• 31:27
  And then he had the surgery. There was lots of complications.
• 31:32
  When the surgeon opened him up and saw the tumor, he said he'd
• 31:36
  never seen a tumor looked like it.
• 31:38
  It wasn't. Usually a tumor after chemo will
• 31:41
  be very fibrosis. It will be like scarred.
• 31:43
  It will be like a hard, dense tissue.
• 31:46
  Instead, he said, it was like liquid.
• 31:47
  It's like when they like took it out.
• 31:48
  It's like they could barely. It was like immaterial.
• 31:52
  It just kind of like fell apart. So it was like that was wild
• 31:57
  too, to realize that this work that my dad was doing
• 32:00
  completely, you know, in combination with the chemo,
• 32:04
  again, this was all my dad's like intuition and his journey
• 32:08
  using the medicine, using the other more spiritual mental mind
• 32:14
  body work. I had this transformation of
• 32:19
  this tumor that was completely unexpected and then had a great
• 32:22
  response to sort of the more preventative chemo after the
• 32:26
  fact. And he was in remission one year
• 32:30
  later. Not to be able to speak for your
• 32:33
  dad, but for the person who's like, I want to, you know,
• 32:37
  visualize a really positive outcome out of a situation that
• 32:39
  feels really hard currently. Is it that he hadn't, do you
• 32:43
  think, from your opinion, do you think it was that he had an
• 32:45
  inner knowing, almost like he could predict the future?
• 32:48
  Or was it that he just allowed Faith to just like, take him on
• 32:52
  the ride? I think for my dad, he had an
• 32:55
  inner knowing, OK, um, I believe I should ask him that question.
• 33:00
  But that's my feeling. That's what that's what he sort
• 33:03
  of transmitted. I also think in my work and with
• 33:09
  what I do, the visualization is really helpful.
• 33:14
  But the, the other part of some of the work, and we can get into
• 33:19
  that, which I do, is when you have those feelings within you,
• 33:23
  like, I don't really believe this visualization.
• 33:27
  That is some of the work then, right?
• 33:30
  It's like to see that and to honor that and to bring that up
• 33:34
  as opposed to pushing it down in a way and not wanting to see it
• 33:37
  and be like, Oh my God, like I secretly don't believe any of
• 33:39
  this, but I'm just gonna power through and do the
• 33:41
  visualization. It's like the visualization has
• 33:44
  power whether or not you believe in the outcome.
• 33:47
  I think that what is probably the healthiest if you don't have
• 33:50
  that intuitive knowing is to be open, be like, I don't know
• 33:55
  what's going to happen, but I'm OK, I'm just going to do this
• 33:58
  because I know that it can have some benefit and it can't hurt
• 34:01
  me. There's no side effects to the
• 34:03
  visualization. And then if you want to go
• 34:06
  deeper, you can see what comes U that resistance that's coming up
• 34:10
  during the visualization and meet that part of yourself.
• 34:14
  And then you can heal that part potentially, or at least come
• 34:18
  into better relationship to that resistance so that it doesn't
• 34:22
  sort of hijack the visualization when you're.
• 34:25
  Doing it so interesting, how do you describe?
• 34:28
  We've alluded to it in different ways.
• 34:30
  So you have left this true, very traditional path.
• 34:32
  However, you're still straddling a few different worlds and
• 34:35
  missed some and being a medical doctor.
• 34:38
  Tell us what do your weeks? What is your?
• 34:40
  What does life look like now for you?
• 34:41
  How do you describe what you do? Yes.
• 34:43
  So I only do medical work. I do only education and group
• 34:49
  work once a week. I work with a patient population
• 34:53
  that has chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, complex
• 34:56
  chronic disease, we call it. And I've learnt on my journey
• 35:02
  over the past 10 years of being a doctor and getting to this
• 35:05
  point where I can offer the Mystic medicine work that I do.
• 35:09
  I have learned so much from this patient population.
• 35:11
  So I absolutely love them and I'm very dedicated to continuing
• 35:15
  working with him them in the capacity that I do.
• 35:18
  But because I am balancing growing this business, putting
• 35:22
  my message out there around this other work that I feel is so
• 35:26
  unique to me and the, the sort of Dharma message that I want to
• 35:29
  be sharing. And I have 3 little babies.
• 35:32
  Um, I'm only doing that once a week and then I do, I have three
• 35:37
  days a week that I do my Mystic medicine work.
• 35:40
  And you know what that comes with?
• 35:42
  It's, it's the healing work and then the entrepreneurial work
• 35:45
  that comes with it too, which is very fun, but it takes, takes a
• 35:48
  lot. And then I have one day a week
• 35:51
  where I'm with my little girl still.
• 35:53
  And that's just like my my special coveted time with them.
• 35:58
  O, that's my sort of life balance.
• 36:01
  And do you want me to go into Mystic medicine is all about.
• 36:06
  Yeah. So I think we've alluded to it.
• 36:08
  It really for me is the blending of all of the things that I have
• 36:13
  put into this bag. So I consider myself a medicine
• 36:17
  woman. That's sort of the name.
• 36:19
  You know, I think a lot of people who do healing work,
• 36:21
  they're like, what am I going to call myself?
• 36:22
  How do I compress this multidimensional work that I do
• 36:26
  into a name? And I, I like giving myself the
• 36:28
  term of medicine woman because it to me is brings up this image
• 36:33
  of a woman with a bag with a lot of tools in it.
• 36:35
  And that's sort of how I work. You know, I really blend the
• 36:38
  science and the spiritual, the woo woo and the grounded.
• 36:41
  It's really important for me that my work is accessible to
• 36:45
  people in their everyday. This isn't just for people who
• 36:49
  want to have a spiritual awakening or who are wanting to
• 36:54
  learn about their past lives. Like, yeah, sometimes past lives
• 36:57
  come up. Yeah, sometimes there's some
• 37:01
  crazy stuff happening in the ceremonies, and people have
• 37:03
  visions and people have big transformative awakenings.
• 37:09
  But for me, I want it to be helping people come back to
• 37:14
  themselves, come back to that version of who they knew
• 37:18
  themselves to be as that essence when they were young and allow
• 37:22
  that to shine through in their everyday lives.
• 37:24
  And for them to be able to in quote, you know, quotes have it
• 37:30
  all like to feel that sense of joyousness and meaning in their
• 37:35
  lives, while also having the careers that make them feel
• 37:40
  accomplished and make them feel that, you know, support the
• 37:43
  lifestyle that they want and to be able to parent the way they
• 37:46
  want and all of that. And so how do I do that?
• 37:50
  I work in different ways, but what do you want to talk about
• 37:54
  your? Experience.
• 37:54
  Yeah, OK, let's do it. Let's hear about.
• 37:58
  It yes, so I so Alexander and I have become friends and I really
• 38:04
  wanted to have her on the podcast.
• 38:05
  And then we talked about, well, how cool would it be to have an
• 38:10
  understanding of who you are and what you do.
• 38:14
  And I don't have a complex medical need, thank goodness.
• 38:18
  So I'm not gonna work with you that way.
• 38:19
  And but I do have a very big openness and willingness to
• 38:24
  explore whatever the heck it was that you were doing.
• 38:28
  And you have beautiful writing on your website about what it
• 38:32
  is. And I still was like, I actually
• 38:35
  don't know what I'm getting into because there because like you
• 38:38
  said, you're meeting the person where they're at, you're having
• 38:40
  a conversation to start. And then you're taking them on a
• 38:43
  guided like I would say for like the layman, like layman's terms,
• 38:47
  like a guided meditation that includes energy work and
• 38:50
  breaking. And I have no idea what was
• 38:52
  going on. So I'm walking into this and I
• 38:56
  had no idea. But but I would say that I'm
• 38:59
  somebody who really likes jumping in.
• 39:01
  So I'm it's nothing to do with you.
• 39:03
  I could have been reading the emails carefully looking at your
• 39:06
  website, but I really wanted to be surprised.
• 39:08
  I love a good surprise. I love that.
• 39:11
  So we met yesterday, we were first going to record like a
• 39:15
  week or two after to like let it digest.
• 39:17
  But I'm actually so happy. This is like legit 24 hours
• 39:20
  after. Nice.
• 39:21
  Yeah, it's so fresh. It's so fresh and I and I have a
• 39:25
  habit to, like, forget things. So this is perfect.
• 39:27
  So yeah, I don't know. How do we How do we even
• 39:31
  debrief? This so I will.
• 39:33
  I will start by saying I consider my work.
• 39:39
  I call myself a medicine woman, but I think the work is both as
• 39:43
  like a transformational healer and a coach.
• 39:45
  So there's an element of both things that I do and I weave in
• 39:49
  in the the healing. I weave in nervous system
• 39:53
  science, I weave in heart coherence, I breathwork, somatic
• 39:56
  work, internal family systems, parts work.
• 40:00
  So there's a lot of groundedness in science that has been proven
• 40:05
  to support people's. Health and Wellness and healing.
• 40:09
  And then I weave in everything that I've learned from ancient
• 40:14
  traditions, wisdom keepers, the energetic healers that I've
• 40:18
  worked with, the, the plant medicine practitioners, you
• 40:22
  know, all of the people that I've worked with.
• 40:24
  I weave that into the work that I do and people can do what you
• 40:29
  did, which is you came for like a one off experience.
• 40:33
  And often people will continue to come to those because as you
• 40:36
  do 1, you realize, oh, we're peeling layers and you see that
• 40:39
  there's more and more of this work that you could do.
• 40:42
  Or people can work with me in like sort of coaching
• 40:44
  containers. So we do once a month, we do
• 40:48
  these transformational experiences and then we like
• 40:50
  process together, like we will get to today.
• 40:53
  And so we met, we chatted. I often encourage people to have
• 40:57
  some sort of intention or question that they want to come
• 40:59
  in with. And then we transition to what I
• 41:02
  call the ceremonial experience where you lie down.
• 41:05
  It does include guided, the guided meditation.
• 41:09
  For me, a big part of my journey has been honing my intuition and
• 41:14
  my psychic skills. And so that plays in so that I
• 41:19
  can sort of see and support you in what you're navigating in
• 41:23
  that ceremony. So there's a little bit of the
• 41:26
  unseen where there's what you're experiencing, and then there is
• 41:30
  sort of the energetic container that's happening and the
• 41:33
  intuitive thing. So no one is going to have the
• 41:35
  same ceremony twice. No one's going to have the same
• 41:38
  ceremony as anyone else. Yes.
• 41:41
  So do you want to talk about what you came in with or what
• 41:46
  you experienced? Yes.
• 41:48
  Yes, both. So I knew you had a really
• 41:51
  lovely emails felt like leading up saying things like, Hey, you
• 41:54
  like take your time, like come, don't be like rushing in.
• 41:57
  Of course I was rushing in and he said what, you know, think of
• 42:01
  like a question. And I was like, oh, fine, OK.
• 42:03
  It's like a, um, what's it called the magic 8 ball?
• 42:07
  I was like, what's my magic 8 ball question?
• 42:09
  And something that I've been contemplating speaking with my
• 42:13
  family physician about, something I've been speaking
• 42:15
  with my registered clinical registered clinical counsellor
• 42:20
  about and therapy is this, I don't know, this questioning
• 42:24
  this wandering around the SSRI, the antidepressant anti anxiety
• 42:28
  medication that I'm on that I started in my early motherhood
• 42:33
  phase when my husband's healing started to really take off in in
• 42:37
  a good way. And then I started to really be
• 42:38
  like, OK, I can let the chips just fall at this point.
• 42:42
  And that is where my journey on this medication started.
• 42:47
  And I told you I was like, I have a beautiful relationship
• 42:49
  with it. Like I feel no shame about it.
• 42:52
  I tell people about it. I have not encourage other
• 42:55
  people, but in sharing my story, I know others who have had found
• 42:58
  support, especially in postpartum moments of like, I
• 43:04
  really can't go on like it just in sharing without saying, oh,
• 43:07
  you should do this. I'm like, hey, I experienced
• 43:09
  this. Like this isn't something we
• 43:10
  need to. Decreasing the.
• 43:11
  Stickiness, which is like everyone's like, oh, mental
• 43:13
  health is destigmatize. There's still a lot of Sigma.
• 43:16
  Yeah, there's a lot of stigma, especially in this like natural
• 43:19
  world. Everything is going to be
• 43:20
  natural. Thinking.
• 43:21
  You're not doing the work then, you are avoiding like, just the
• 43:26
  narrative. There seems to be some stigma
• 43:27
  specifically with SSRIs, yeah. Yes, yeah.
• 43:30
  Which, OK. From a clinical perspective, are
• 43:33
  they dangerous? Are they like, is there anything
• 43:35
  that's like, Oh yeah, you really shouldn't be on this like.
• 43:38
  No, like what I said to you, well, you know, as I said, I
• 43:41
  don't prescribe SSRI, They don't do a lot of prescribing these
• 43:44
  days. So I'm not giving any medical
• 43:46
  advice here. But my perspective on SSRI's is
• 43:50
  that a, as I mentioned, they only work for one in four
• 43:53
  people. So I think like some of what I'd
• 43:56
  like, you know, the, the, the serotonin hypothesis of mental
• 44:01
  health was sort of debunked. So I think that there's like a
• 44:03
  movement around the understanding of SSRIs of like
• 44:09
  these are, I think that there was this push that everyone
• 44:12
  should be on them and they were going to be the magical cure and
• 44:14
  then they weren't. And so there was sort of a
• 44:16
  backlash and I think what would I said to you, I was like, oh,
• 44:19
  do they work for you? And you're like, yeah, I was
• 44:21
  like, that's great. You know, one in four people
• 44:23
  they work for. So when they work for you, that
• 44:26
  is phenomenal. Yes.
• 44:27
  And um, yeah. So I, I don't think that there's
• 44:31
  anything wrong in trying if that's if.
• 44:33
  And I think that the evidence really shows that they are best
• 44:37
  in the acute stage too. So they can really help people
• 44:40
  sort of like shake them out of that time when they're starting
• 44:43
  to slump into the depths of something.
• 44:46
  It can be so supportive. So I think it's a tool and I
• 44:49
  think that it's a great one to try.
• 44:51
  The challenge with SSRIs to me is that they can come with a lot
• 44:54
  of side effects. And when you are one of those
• 44:57
  people that get a lot of side effects, they also are not.
• 45:00
  So you can't just go off it. You know you have to taper off.
• 45:03
  So there's this time where you have to taper on and you're not
• 45:06
  really sure if it's working or not and there's time to taper,
• 45:08
  it's off. So especially for me, I work
• 45:10
  with a lot of people who are very highly sensitive, who are
• 45:14
  empathetic and who are very sensitive to a lot of
• 45:16
  medication. So that can be tricky in my work
• 45:19
  and in my world, but for the general population I don't have
• 45:23
  anything against. Them yeah.
• 45:24
  And something that you said in our so we had, you know,
• 45:27
  probably a 1520 minute chat before the ceremony and
• 45:31
  something that you said as like a pondering without being
• 45:34
  prescriptive. As you said, there's there's an
• 45:37
  exploration perhaps here and you said this is kind of coming in
• 45:40
  intuitively. There's an exploration to really
• 45:42
  consider and to think about how much am I willing?
• 45:46
  Like, do I have the tools now? I did not have the tools then.
• 45:48
  Do I have the tools now to be OK with a bit of discomfort to go
• 45:52
  into some of that discomfort and do I have the tools to come back
• 45:55
  out of it? And I loved that you said that
• 45:57
  because it really actually validated where I was when I
• 45:59
  went on the medication. I will absolutely not justify my
• 46:02
  need to go on it. Nobody's business but my own.
• 46:05
  However, I did not have the tools to clot out of it.
• 46:08
  Like I was perpetually in this like slump and anxiety.
• 46:12
  I was telling you I was like counting everybody's breaths at
• 46:14
  night. My daughter sleeping in the
• 46:16
  bassinet beside me. Is she breathing?
• 46:17
  My husband's beside me ticking because he has like his art
• 46:21
  artificial valves in his heart. And he's got another one now.
• 46:23
  And I'm like counting his ticks. And I'm like, this is nuts.
• 46:26
  Like this is not OK. I'm not OK.
• 46:29
  And that was super cute. And then following that, I
• 46:32
  remember thinking like, hey, things are feeling better.
• 46:34
  But like I'm, I don't, I'm still like I, I have to not that I
• 46:40
  wanted to go to sleep. It's not that I wanted to blunt
• 46:43
  myself for a couple of years, but I really just needed like
• 46:46
  the platform to lift up a bit. I just needed to be held.
• 46:50
  I needed to be supported. I've beautiful friends and
• 46:52
  family in my life, like the most supportive.
• 46:54
  I had a beautiful childhood like, but there was just
• 46:57
  something that I was like. The inner support.
• 47:03
  Help and so to to bring it back to today and to bring it back to
• 47:07
  our session. I was like, yeah, there's
• 47:08
  there's something and it's I can't even really like put it
• 47:11
  into words what it is that's making me be like, huh, who
• 47:14
  might I be without this? I just think that I've gone
• 47:16
  through such transformation over the last few years, going
• 47:19
  through my own journey of like, leaving the linear path,
• 47:22
  becoming an entrepreneur, becoming a mum of two.
• 47:24
  And I'm like, OK. And having so many tools in my
• 47:28
  toolkit over the past decade of the work that I do and coaching
• 47:31
  and just, you know, getting to meet people like you,
• 47:34
  podcasting, learning from like, incredible people.
• 47:38
  And now I'm like, oh, I've got a curiosity.
• 47:41
  So I went into the ceremony with that as a question.
• 47:44
  And I think what else were we kind of exploring?
• 47:46
  There was something else too, of like my voice.
• 47:50
  I said something about that. I was like, maybe I didn't
• 47:52
  actually before. It just came out.
• 47:54
  Oh. OK, yeah, So you were really
• 47:56
  clear and this is so I told you I was like, OK, so we talk and
• 48:00
  then we go into ceremony and we haven't, we sort of develop an
• 48:05
  intention for the ceremony based on what people bring to me.
• 48:08
  And then what I sort of like download intuitively.
• 48:11
  I ask questions to really I have like this feeling that comes
• 48:14
  into my system when I'm like, OK, we've found the thread, this
• 48:17
  is what we're going in with. And at the same time, I'm like,
• 48:20
  we always meet you where your system is AT and the body will
• 48:23
  always show us where it needs to go.
• 48:25
  Um, because sometimes there are layers like we are have this
• 48:29
  like awareness of a question or something going on in our lives,
• 48:32
  but then there's layers on top of it that kind of need to be
• 48:34
  pulled away before we go in there.
• 48:36
  So I always just trust the body and the system to show us where
• 48:39
  we need to go and what. And and what's really cool is
• 48:42
  often it kind of circles around so that we could have something
• 48:46
  else open up, but then we also get to touch on the into in the
• 48:50
  intention. And I feel like that happened
• 48:52
  where for you, what I experienced was like the answer
• 48:59
  to your question came really easily.
• 49:01
  You know, like it like that was your system was sort of like, Oh
• 49:04
  no, no, we know the answer to that already.
• 49:05
  Let's go deeper. This is what you actually are
• 49:08
  like working with in the deeper way in your life, right?
• 49:11
  Now, so true. It was almost like the like my
• 49:14
  rational brain, like, oh, what's my question?
• 49:16
  Like, oh, I've been like pondering my SSRI, but it was
• 49:18
  like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, like, yeah, that's easy, yeah.
• 49:22
  That's easy. Check.
• 49:23
  OK, let's move to the deeper stuff.
• 49:25
  So you started guiding me with this almost like what I've heard
• 49:28
  of like people who've done hypnobirthing like this, like
• 49:30
  beautiful ball of energy and this light that was moving
• 49:32
  through me, which I've done in different forms of meditation,
• 49:35
  visualization. It works so well for me.
• 49:37
  So when the second you started with that, I was like, oh hell
• 49:40
  yeah, I'm in, let's go there. What did you I want to hear?
• 49:45
  And you can continue to ask me like what my experience was, but
• 49:48
  I'm so curious, like what did you sense?
• 49:50
  Be honest, what were you seeing or feeling or like getting as
• 49:55
  you were coming into, you know, my soul?
• 49:59
  So I don't go into people, don't worry, you're not going into
• 50:04
  your system when you come in as you were hypnotizing me.
• 50:07
  How I work is I am very much a facilitator.
• 50:11
  So I don't, I don't consider myself doing the work on to you,
• 50:14
  but I am facilitating your system, doing the work.
• 50:17
  So I at the beginning, I start with breathwork, I start with
• 50:22
  nervous system work and then I go into energetic grounding
• 50:25
  because that is really just setting your system up for being
• 50:30
  regulated to do any type of healing work.
• 50:32
  We really want to be in a parasympathetic state.
• 50:35
  So you know, the science part of it is I'm using specific
• 50:38
  breathwork techniques to actually turn on your
• 50:40
  parasympathetic system. And then I'm doing grounding
• 50:42
  work, which is energetically grounding your system.
• 50:46
  So I find in our culture, in our society, we're very mental,
• 50:49
  we're very logical and analytical.
• 50:51
  So our energy body is very up around our heads.
• 50:55
  And so I want people in their bodies and connected to the
• 50:58
  earth. So that's really what we do at
• 51:00
  the beginning. And then I create the energetic
• 51:03
  container and I, I just am feeling and sometimes I'll get
• 51:06
  visuals. Most of my intuition comes by
• 51:10
  feeling and by inner knowing. And sometimes I'll have some
• 51:13
  visuals. So, um, for you, what I was
• 51:18
  really sensing, and usually I'll sense it in my own body, what's
• 51:20
  going on with people. And what I was, what I was the
• 51:25
  strongest was tension in the upper chest, neck and jaw area.
• 51:32
  And so and that was really interesting because I wasn't
• 51:35
  sure and I wasn't better how that was relating.
• 51:38
  And then I was also noticing lower abdomen.
• 51:43
  I wouldn't say tension, but it was like like a buzzing or like
• 51:48
  vibration. And subsequently, I think we got
• 51:53
  into all of those areas. Yes, which is so interesting
• 51:56
  having not knowing each other very well, which I think is
• 51:59
  perfect because there was no, it's like testing out a psychic
• 52:02
  right where you're like, I didn't actually tell you like
• 52:04
  you couldn't Google me or whatever, right, Like you didn't
• 52:06
  know that every time I go for a massage, every time I'm going to
• 52:10
  osteo, you probably didn't know I had a like a back brace when I
• 52:14
  was younger. Ergo, it like created a huge,
• 52:16
  like, postural neck tension, like physically and then also
• 52:20
  spiritually, emotionally interested.
• 52:22
  I'm always working on like, my throat chakra when I did my own
• 52:25
  yoga teacher training, my voice, what is my voice interest?
• 52:28
  How is my voice used? I did so much theatre when I was
• 52:30
  growing up. So I've always played a
• 52:32
  character in a role. And so to use my own voice is
• 52:35
  very vulnerable. I love interviewing, right?
• 52:39
  Turn it all back on me. I'm like, like, right, this
• 52:42
  isn't this fun? Yeah, so.
• 52:44
  So it was all what was coming up.
• 52:46
  Yeah. And then at one point, man, it's
• 52:49
  like I blacked out. But at one point I said, you
• 52:51
  said something like, are you feeling this?
• 52:52
  It was like a few times you ask me questions and I think you had
• 52:55
  to ask questions a couple times because I was so out there and I
• 52:58
  was like, Oh my God, like something feels weird in my gut.
• 53:01
  That's kind of. And then I said, that's weird.
• 53:03
  I really don't have gut issues, which I don't.
• 53:06
  Fast forward to I'm voice noting you last night, because I was
• 53:12
  sitting on the couch with my kids.
• 53:14
  My husband had to take over making dinner and I was like,
• 53:16
  oh, I like don't feel great and in the sense that I like things
• 53:20
  were kind of disturbed. I was like I have to go lie
• 53:22
  down. I slept from 5:30 until like
• 53:25
  10/10/30. I missed dinner, I missed bed
• 53:28
  bath, everything. I was in this like trance slash
• 53:31
  sleep and my stomach felt like it was like filled with like
• 53:38
  acid or something like goo. I don't know.
• 53:41
  Something got turned up in the best way.
• 53:45
  Like I'm not saying like don't go in Alexander cause you're
• 53:48
  gonna feel like shit. It was like I also had a big day
• 53:50
  afterwards. I did not heed your like listen
• 53:52
  to your advice about like going home and relaxing.
• 53:55
  I had a couple big meetings. So all of this was like just so
• 53:59
  wild to me that. Well, the other thing about the
• 54:02
  gut thing was that, you know, it just because we went into it and
• 54:06
  like, I don't usually have gut issues and I was, I could feel
• 54:10
  like I, I wasn't surprised because I was feeling something
• 54:12
  going on in that area. But another thing that I'll say
• 54:17
  about my work is once I ground people, a foundation of my work
• 54:20
  is to connect them with their essential self, what I call the
• 54:23
  soul, because that to go deeper to touch the parts of ourselves
• 54:28
  that might feel dark or scary or intimate or vulnerable when
• 54:32
  we're resourced by being connected to our essential self,
• 54:36
  that feels the most safe for me. So that's the the, the way that
• 54:40
  I approached the work. And also as a side note, one of
• 54:44
  my missions is just the belief that I think when we're
• 54:46
  disconnected with this part of ourselves, we are missing out on
• 54:51
  how we can navigate our lives in a way that makes it joyous and
• 54:54
  meaningful. So we connected you and you
• 54:57
  connected so easily, which is not surprising to that inner
• 55:02
  light within yourself. And then when you were having
• 55:04
  the gut issues, it was like, OK, let's go there and let's explore
• 55:07
  it and what comes up. And for you, you're like, I
• 55:10
  don't have gut issues. But it wasn't a physical message
• 55:14
  that was coming through. It was more around that gut
• 55:17
  intuition. Always.
• 55:20
  Yeah, that is like you're talking about being a little
• 55:22
  girl. Like that has always been my.
• 55:24
  That's been a huge superpower. And also like confusion in my
• 55:27
  life is like around the gut. And I've worked in organizations
• 55:31
  where like like Aritzia, for instance, I can, I'll just call
• 55:35
  it out like it's an extremely dialed business and it's
• 55:39
  extremely intellectual. Every decision is made from an
• 55:42
  intellectual perspective. And so I had this real, like I
• 55:45
  talked about it all the time about like putting this mask on
• 55:47
  in that organization and being like, right, I've got to put on
• 55:50
  my academic hat, like my Business School hat, only
• 55:52
  analytics, only analytics, like how?
• 55:55
  And then I was like trying to like prove what I knew
• 55:58
  intuitively about some of the professional development work I
• 56:00
  was doing. I was also doing leadership
• 56:02
  development, personal development within this
• 56:04
  organization, which is extremely intuitive and like, right,
• 56:09
  you're building programs around like what humans need.
• 56:11
  And so it was constantly trying to be like, OK, how do I take
• 56:14
  what I just know and how do I prove it with the data like
• 56:17
  retrofitting that way, which is just so uncomfortable, so
• 56:21
  uncomfortable until that point where again, I've talked about
• 56:23
  this before where I was like, honestly, fuck it.
• 56:25
  I either just fully be myself here and I show up the way I am
• 56:29
  and who I am in my truest essence, like from this like gut
• 56:32
  area or and that works great. And if it doesn't, that's OK.
• 56:37
  And that's when I started to flourish.
• 56:38
  And that's when the program started to like really come
• 56:41
  alive and I started to build these beautiful relationships
• 56:43
  internally. And the work I was doing was
• 56:44
  meaningful because I stopped being this like other version.
• 56:48
  And then the other piece we were you and I were talking about
• 56:50
  like after this session was around my voice and sharing
• 56:54
  vulnerably and being just myself, the goofy person who's
• 56:59
  gonna be in the meeting, who's gonna be like super, super
• 57:01
  dialed in one hand and then like cracked the joke in the next.
• 57:04
  And that's always been me. Like this yin Yang, this Gemini
• 57:08
  and this like, yeah, just like, I don't know what that means,
• 57:13
  but like I've always known I do have this like, duality.
• 57:17
  Yeah. For me, two things can be true
• 57:19
  constantly, yes. And finding balance in that,
• 57:22
  yes, yeah. And that was that was so cool.
• 57:24
  I can't even remember how the vulnerability came up for you,
• 57:27
  but it was so beautiful because somehow in the journey we got to
• 57:32
  that and there was this message around, yeah, like how can you
• 57:36
  kind of open up, be more vulnerable?
• 57:37
  And then when we even just touched on that, and this is
• 57:40
  such a good example of how energetic work is just a bit
• 57:43
  different than like the cognitive therapy work.
• 57:46
  Just touching on it, the energy that I was feeling in your upper
• 57:51
  chest that was tense started dissipating.
• 57:53
  And I know that you felt that too.
• 57:55
  And then all of a sudden I felt so much more movement.
• 57:58
  I was also, I should say, like it was the neck, but it was also
• 58:00
  the throat. Like I definitely sensed like a
• 58:02
  lot of energy, like as if it was being held in the throat.
• 58:05
  Like there was so much energy there, but it wasn't moving.
• 58:08
  And then with the vulnerability touching on, like the openness
• 58:12
  to being more vulnerable, more open, deepening that aspect of
• 58:17
  yourself, the tension in the upper chest, in the throat
• 58:20
  started to dissolve and there was so much energy moving
• 58:23
  through the throat. And this is, I think, at the
• 58:27
  point. OK, audience, stay with us here.
• 58:29
  Stay with me. I promise I'm not.
• 58:32
  I'm not crazy. I said to you, Alexandra.
• 58:37
  I think I'm tripping out. Yeah.
• 58:39
  Yeah. This is exactly it.
• 58:41
  You're right, this is how the vulnerability.
• 58:42
  Was crazy. This is going to be the clip on
• 58:46
  social media. Like I, it was, um, I told you
• 58:51
  I'd, this has only happened twice in my life before where
• 58:53
  I've had an experience that was like so out of body or so out of
• 58:57
  like my physical body and like 2 feet above myself, where one
• 59:00
  time it was in an osteopath session and like things were
• 59:03
  spinning. And another time was in my yoga
• 59:06
  teacher training. The very, very end was like
• 59:09
  totally broken down and being built back up.
• 59:11
  And I just like went there in the meditation and was like,
• 59:14
  whoa, this feels amazing. Like I'm just like sparkly right
• 59:17
  now. And this happened yesterday with
• 59:20
  you And it was like this huge. I've actually never felt
• 59:24
  anything like this, this huge ball of energy that was spinning
• 59:27
  towards me. It was so clear that it was
• 59:29
  spinning towards me, whatever the hell that means.
• 59:31
  And it was like, it felt like my heart and might like everything
• 59:37
  here. It was like a wave being like
• 59:39
  pulled, like the energy was like, woo shoosh.
• 59:42
  And that's what it's like. I think I'm tripping out.
• 59:45
  And you're like, yeah, there could be psychedelic,
• 59:47
  psychedelic like feelings that come around like in this work.
• 59:50
  And I had this choice. Like I was very present.
• 59:54
  But I was like, OK, I have a choice.
• 59:55
  I know, I I know exactly what I could do to get out of this very
• 59:58
  quickly if I'm too scared. And I was like, but I'm willing
• 1:00:03
  to, like, explore these edges. Yeah.
• 1:00:05
  And I like, stayed with it. And you were like, you like, put
• 1:00:08
  your hand like on my arm. And you were like, I'm here and
• 1:00:10
  like, yeah, this is safe. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:14
  And that can run wild. That's exactly it.
• 1:00:16
  And that's when like the vulnerability piece kind of came
• 1:00:18
  in. Like that's again, how my how
• 1:00:20
  it's like a collaborative process because like you're
• 1:00:23
  going through your piece. And then I often note, I've
• 1:00:27
  noticed in the past few years that when people are having
• 1:00:30
  really big experiences and they're very clear and their
• 1:00:33
  intuition is really clear with this container that I'm
• 1:00:35
  creating, I often won't see as much or I don't get as much
• 1:00:39
  prompting because I feel like I don't need it, you know?
• 1:00:43
  And it's not like I can forsett. So I used to used to really
• 1:00:47
  freak me out when I was just starting.
• 1:00:49
  And I'm like, Oh my God, my intuition is off.
• 1:00:51
  But what I've learned is it's like, no, this person is having
• 1:00:53
  their experience. I don't need to experience it if
• 1:00:56
  they're if I'm facilitating this for them, but they'll be times
• 1:01:00
  when things are kind of dropped in for me.
• 1:01:02
  And when you are having that experience, I could sense I was
• 1:01:05
  like, so with you in that moment, because I could see that
• 1:01:09
  you were really making that choice.
• 1:01:12
  And I know I've been there and I know that choice, that edge
• 1:01:15
  where you're like, I can lean in and go deeper and learn
• 1:01:18
  something about myself. And it might be uncomfortable,
• 1:01:21
  but I'm going to explore it. Or there's the choice to
• 1:01:24
  contract and just be like, I'm not gonna, I'm not going to take
• 1:01:27
  the learning today. You know, I'm going to go back
• 1:01:29
  to what feels safe and what feels comfortable.
• 1:01:32
  And you were really leaning in. And as you did that, that
• 1:01:35
  vulnerability dropped in. And that's where then I prompted
• 1:01:38
  you with that. And when you looked into it
• 1:01:41
  yourself, and that's when the energy started to move.
• 1:01:43
  Yeah. It was like, Oh yeah, yeah,
• 1:01:44
  yeah. Sharing my voice, Yeah, easy.
• 1:01:46
  Like, yeah. It wasn't like, ohhh, what's the
• 1:01:48
  meaning of all this? It was so obvious.
• 1:01:51
  It just light. It was like something that I'm
• 1:01:54
  always working on is like, how do I share my voice vulnerably?
• 1:01:57
  You and I were speaking about this before.
• 1:01:58
  How do you share your voice in a way where you're not so obsessed
• 1:02:01
  with the top? This like notion of sharing once
• 1:02:04
  you've put like you said it, once you've processed something
• 1:02:08
  and then sharing it on the other side.
• 1:02:10
  Because I think there is like this, not to knock it, but like
• 1:02:14
  there's a lot of people crying on Instagram.
• 1:02:16
  They're like clicking record and crying into the camera.
• 1:02:20
  And there's something very like voyeuristic about that and like
• 1:02:24
  performative, perhaps performative.
• 1:02:26
  And there's going to be times where it just works.
• 1:02:28
  But I think it's also knowing like who, what does
• 1:02:30
  vulnerability look like and feel most naturally for you?
• 1:02:33
  There's people who you can tell are pushing themselves outside
• 1:02:36
  of their comfort and vulnerability and they're like
• 1:02:39
  was trauma dumping and you're like, oh, that's not really good
• 1:02:41
  either. So there's this, there's this
• 1:02:43
  balance and that's something that's so fun for me, especially
• 1:02:45
  as like I'm speaking to a microphone into these people's
• 1:02:48
  ears right now or on camera. And it's, it's such a fun thing
• 1:02:52
  to explore of like, what is my voice?
• 1:02:54
  And I badge it as a healer. That's yours as well.
• 1:02:56
  Like what is my place in this? This version, This life is many.
• 1:03:02
  Yeah. And yes, I feel like that is
• 1:03:06
  sort of part of the goal of my work.
• 1:03:09
  Again, it's like to connect people with that essence of who
• 1:03:12
  they are so that whatever they're here to do, whatever
• 1:03:15
  they want to be doing, they're doing it.
• 1:03:18
  Shining that essence through, You know, it's coming from that
• 1:03:21
  essential part of them. And they don't have veils and
• 1:03:24
  layers and shoulds and stories around it, but we're just like
• 1:03:29
  clearing those things away so that whether you're doing it in
• 1:03:33
  your business, you're doing it as a mother, you're doing it in
• 1:03:36
  whichever capacity feels right for you, you're just shining
• 1:03:40
  that light. Through if we bring it back to
• 1:03:43
  earth, I could talk about this at the experience that I had
• 1:03:46
  forever. But if we were to come back to
• 1:03:48
  the listener, hello, we're back in your ears.
• 1:03:52
  We and we were too kind of share with them more from that like
• 1:03:56
  rational sense of like, say they're like, OK, this sounds
• 1:03:59
  great. I want to I want to shine.
• 1:04:01
  What might some of the questions be that you hear a lot like the
• 1:04:04
  just the, the day-to-day questions, you know, but what
• 1:04:06
  might be some of the things that people are like, I really want
• 1:04:08
  to explore this or like, I want to explore this, you know, the
• 1:04:11
  average mother. Who might have you?
• 1:04:13
  I think that, you know, we were talking before about like the
• 1:04:19
  midlife evolution versus the midlife crisis.
• 1:04:22
  Um, I think that there comes a point in a lot of women's life
• 1:04:28
  as they become mothers where they find that some of the old
• 1:04:32
  ways that they were being don't feel like the right fit.
• 1:04:37
  And I think that we're always evolving.
• 1:04:39
  I, you know, something that I tell people about and a lot of
• 1:04:42
  people often are surprised by and like, we are nature.
• 1:04:45
  People don't remember that. Yeah, but we are nature.
• 1:04:49
  And so if we look at nature, nature is always evolving.
• 1:04:53
  You can't, like, you plant a seed and it's growing.
• 1:04:55
  The tree is always going to be growing.
• 1:04:56
  You can prune it, you can do whatever, but there's always
• 1:04:59
  growth. And so there's this natural
• 1:05:01
  tendency for us to grow and evolve as beings.
• 1:05:05
  We're not just going older, we're also growing wiser.
• 1:05:08
  So. And more beautiful.
• 1:05:10
  More and more glorious. And so I think that as we're
• 1:05:16
  evolving, there are these points in time where there's these
• 1:05:20
  natural inflection points where we can come up to an edge.
• 1:05:23
  And these are different ages for different people.
• 1:05:26
  But I think motherhood is a big point.
• 1:05:29
  And motherhood often coincides with a point in your career.
• 1:05:34
  You know, you've maybe been in a career for a while and, or
• 1:05:38
  you've been at a certain point of seniority or you've been
• 1:05:42
  doing something that you've been, you know, I wasn't in a
• 1:05:44
  point of seniority because I had so many years of training.
• 1:05:47
  But you know, you've been working towards, I think for a
• 1:05:49
  while. And whether that is in work or
• 1:05:52
  just the way you show up in life, there are certain ways
• 1:05:55
  that maybe don't feel like a fit anymore.
• 1:05:58
  And so a lot of times people are coming to me with that sort of
• 1:06:04
  discomfort where they're like, things are just not feeling
• 1:06:08
  right for me anymore. And a lot of times people have
• 1:06:12
  tried different things because I'm, you know, the, the weird
• 1:06:15
  and wonderful thing that people will come to after trying lots
• 1:06:18
  of different things. And I think the the thing that
• 1:06:20
  Ioffer that's different is really unifying that mind, body,
• 1:06:25
  spirit and incorporating that energetic, spiritual, intuitive
• 1:06:29
  piece that I think most women are attuned to, whether or not
• 1:06:35
  they are. You can be yeah, aware, you can
• 1:06:38
  be super analytic, you can be super mental.
• 1:06:42
  But there's just like what you were describing in your work,
• 1:06:44
  it's like you you thrive off of that.
• 1:06:47
  And also there was that intuitive piece.
• 1:06:49
  So I think as women, we naturally have this tendency to
• 1:06:53
  understand it, but there's nowhere to go right now in our
• 1:06:56
  society that like sort of blends that.
• 1:07:00
  And so that's what I'm helping people rejig is like, what's
• 1:07:05
  going on that doesn't feel like the fit.
• 1:07:06
  Is it that you're pleasing everyone else 1st and you're not
• 1:07:10
  honoring yourself? Is it the inner critic and
• 1:07:12
  impostor syndrome? Is it, you know, being
• 1:07:15
  courageous and vulnerable and putting yourself out there to do
• 1:07:18
  the thing that you truly wish you could do?
• 1:07:21
  It's, you know, sometimes for some people, it's up leveling
• 1:07:26
  in, in their business and, and wanting to do that in a way that
• 1:07:30
  is, um, not through analytics as much, not through logic.
• 1:07:34
  You know, get a business coach for that because there are great
• 1:07:37
  people who do that work. Yeah, call me.
• 1:07:39
  I got some people for exactly, yeah.
• 1:07:40
  So it's not to knock those things, but it's also
• 1:07:44
  recognizing that we can, you know, using this example for
• 1:07:48
  like the business person or the entrepreneur, like getting
• 1:07:51
  connected to what is your mission, what is your message,
• 1:07:54
  what are your values? How do you wanna, you know,
• 1:07:57
  balance your life to to live that best life that you want to
• 1:08:00
  live and be really connected to that intuitive part of you so
• 1:08:05
  that you're not being run by the inner critic or the impostor or
• 1:08:08
  the people pleasing or the perfectionist, but instead
• 1:08:11
  really coming from that essential part of who you are?
• 1:08:14
  How has this journey evolved for you alongside and meshed with
• 1:08:19
  motherhood? Yes, so much.
• 1:08:23
  I mean, motherhood is such an initiation.
• 1:08:27
  It has taught me so much. And I think that the biggest
• 1:08:32
  thing for me, I think, has been around my values and around how
• 1:08:38
  to be living a life that feels balanced in quotation marks, you
• 1:08:48
  know? Yeah.
• 1:08:49
  Um, and be so really needing to look at the parts of me that
• 1:08:56
  also, you know, so much of what I've learned has been through my
• 1:08:59
  own healing experience where it's like, where am I being
• 1:09:02
  driven by being a perfectionist and wanting to show up in all
• 1:09:06
  the ways that I think I should be showing up or, Oh, I'm taking
• 1:09:08
  on this hat now of running my own business.
• 1:09:11
  So I had an experience last Christmas not that long ago,
• 1:09:15
  where in the past year I've really been ramping up in
• 1:09:19
  networking and putting myself out there.
• 1:09:21
  And I feel like I've gotten to a stage where I'm really clear on
• 1:09:24
  what the work is. And I was working on that for a
• 1:09:26
  long time. And so now I'm like, OK, I know
• 1:09:28
  what I'm doing. So now let's launch this.
• 1:09:30
  And so I started doing that in a much bigger way in September and
• 1:09:34
  I didn't realize that I was taking on this story of the
• 1:09:38
  entrepreneur, of what an entrepreneur is, how an
• 1:09:41
  entrepreneur shows up. And so all of a sudden I was
• 1:09:44
  going into a three-week vacation in Florida with my family.
• 1:09:49
  And, and we do this every year because family is a big value
• 1:09:53
  for us. And Micha's family is mostly in
• 1:09:55
  Florida. So we take a big holiday to
• 1:09:57
  spend a lot of time and have a lot of spaciousness.
• 1:09:59
  And I was going into it with a lot of contraction and
• 1:10:03
  resistance and dread because I was like, how, you know, I'm
• 1:10:06
  going to be living with my in laws.
• 1:10:08
  I'm going to be in a small space with my three kids.
• 1:10:11
  I can't just like, I don't want them seeing me on my phone all
• 1:10:13
  the time, on my computer all the time.
• 1:10:15
  I don't want to be like working in front of them all the time,
• 1:10:19
  and yet I want to be working because I'm an entrepreneur and
• 1:10:21
  I should be working all the time.
• 1:10:22
  And you're excited about what you're?
• 1:10:24
  Doing and I am excited about what I'm doing, but there was
• 1:10:26
  that the difference between the excitement and then also this
• 1:10:29
  story of I need to be working all the time.
• 1:10:32
  And so it was really great because I went and I was feeling
• 1:10:35
  so resistant to going away and being on vacation.
• 1:10:40
  And while I was there I had to work through that.
• 1:10:43
  And as I did, I came to this awareness that my version of
• 1:10:48
  success in this chapter of my life has to adapt because of my
• 1:10:52
  values, because of what I value. And for me in my life, how I
• 1:10:56
  want to show up in my family and how my family unit works.
• 1:11:00
  I want to work less right now. And that's OK.
• 1:11:03
  And that's not the right thing for everyone.
• 1:11:04
  But that was a process for me that I really had to move
• 1:11:08
  through and and work through to be able to like come to that
• 1:11:11
  conclusion. And I feel like being a mother
• 1:11:15
  always puts you, puts what is important into perspective for
• 1:11:22
  me. I love that.
• 1:11:23
  I feel like we need to do a Part 2.
• 1:11:25
  If you would come back on, how do we raise children to honor
• 1:11:30
  their Mystic? Side I would love to.
• 1:11:32
  OK, Part 2. Yes, coming at you.
• 1:11:36
  I could talk to you all day about this, all day, every day,
• 1:11:38
  forever and ever. You were doing such freaking
• 1:11:41
  cool work. You were an inspiration as
• 1:11:43
  somebody who really was like, this is a cut and dry path and
• 1:11:48
  I'm just going to take this little offshoot over here and
• 1:11:51
  make my own beautiful life. So congratulations to all your
• 1:11:55
  success. Thank you for the beautiful
• 1:11:56
  session yesterday. I can't wait for another and
• 1:11:59
  thank you for coming on. Where can everybody find you?
• 1:12:02
  Learn more about you, say, whether it is physically here in
• 1:12:06
  Vancouver or remote. How can they learn from you,
• 1:12:09
  learn, work with you? Yes, I love, I love working in
• 1:12:12
  person. I'm on Granville in 16th.
• 1:12:15
  I rent A room out of Clementine Clinic, so if you want to come
• 1:12:18
  in for a session and you're local, it's so fun.
• 1:12:21
  But I absolutely can work virtually.
• 1:12:22
  Well, you can get more info on www.themysticmedicine.com and at
• 1:12:29
  the Mystic Medicine on Instagram.
• 1:12:31
  Love connecting with people there.
• 1:12:33
  I'm really passionate about real connection.
• 1:12:36
  So if you are finding me through this podcast, please DM me and
• 1:12:41
  start a conversation. I'm a real person and I want to
• 1:12:44
  meet you. And if you're local, I also
• 1:12:47
  throw events, and you can find out about that if you join my
• 1:12:50
  newsletter or you're following me on Instagram.
• 1:12:53
  Amazing. Thank you my friend.
• 1:12:54
  Thank you, I love being here.