Latest / Just Julia / I’m Not Becoming Woo-Woo. I’m Becoming Curious

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I’m Not Becoming Woo-Woo. I’m Becoming Curious · Just Julia

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not becoming woo-woo.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm becoming curious.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_00: I was three, or four, maybe five.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: I was standing in the corner of a children's birthday party, watching everyone else play.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_00: I knew that little girl immediately.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: She was me.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_00: Decades later, I sat down beside her.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't tell her to be braver.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't give her a pep talk about the life she would one day have,
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: about all the things she would build, all the corners she would no longer hide in.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: I just sat beside her, as if to say, I'm here.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: You're safe.
• 0:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not leaving.
• 0:35
  SPEAKER_00: And somehow, being a mother now made that moment feel different.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: I looked at that little girl almost as if she were my own child.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't want to analyze her.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't want to change her.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: I just wanted her to feel safe.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: My actual body, meanwhile, was lying on a mat in Milan with an eye mask on.
• 0:53
  SPEAKER_00: It was a kundalini activation.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: And yes, I know how that sounds.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Before going, I actually worried about what to wear.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: I looked at photos online.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: White linen, flowing clothes, bare feet.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Everyone seemed considerably more spiritually enlightened than my wardrobe.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Then came a small rebellion.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: No, I was going as myself.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't need a costume or a new identity to be curious about myself.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: I've spent years adding skills to my CV.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: Learning, performing, improving, becoming better at what I do professionally.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm beginning to wonder why I never approached understanding myself with the same seriousness.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_00: For some reason, that kind of development still makes people uncomfortable.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Meditation?
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: Fine.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yoga?
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Fine.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_00: Kundalini?
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: Suddenly, things get complicated.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Over the past few months,
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: I've heard everything from,
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_00: that's a bit woo woo, to someone asking whether Mindvalley was some kind of cult.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: I understand the skepticism.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: If your only exposure to Kundalini is a dramatic video online of someone shaking,
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: moving their body,
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: or appearing to experience something almost orgasmic,
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: I understand why your first reaction might be, what on earth is this?
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_00: But what became meaningful to me looked nothing like that.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: At one point, I wasn't moving at all.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: I was simply lying there.
• 2:13
  SPEAKER_00: And at the beginning of the activation,
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: I found myself repeating an affirmation,
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: or perhaps a mantra, that I've been using for months.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_00: Show me.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: Guide me.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: Use me.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm listening.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm at your service.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_00: I don't even know exactly who I'm speaking to when I say it.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: God?
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: The universe?
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Something bigger than me.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps the name matters less to me than the intention behind the words.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_00: What I'm really saying is, I'm listening.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: I'm willing to be shown something I can't yet see.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: And strangely enough, what came back wasn't some grand revelation about my future.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't an answer about what I should do next,
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_00: where I should go, or who I'm supposed to become.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: It was a little girl standing alone in the corner of a room.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_00: This wasn't my first kundalini experience.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_00: The first one was at Mindvalley University in Tallinn a few months ago.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: It was intense and difficult to describe.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_00: But something happened after that experience that I still find interesting.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_00: I started writing.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_00: I started Just Julia.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: I began putting words around stories I had kept somewhere inside myself for years.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_00: I can't tell you that kundalini caused that.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it didn't.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: I have no interest in turning correlation into some mystical certainty just
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: because it makes a better story.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: But the timing made me curious.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe something simply became more accessible.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_00: And perhaps I don't need to know yet.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: At another point during the session,
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: I was lying completely still,
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: arms open,
• 3:44
  SPEAKER_00: palms facing upwards, consciously thinking, I give myself permission to receive.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: That sounds incredibly simple.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: For me, it isn't.
• 3:54
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a giver, a people pleaser, someone who has always found receiving surprisingly difficult.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: Even compliments used to bounce straight off me.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: You look beautiful.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, I look awful today.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: I love your dress.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, this old thing?
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Lately, I've been practicing something tiny and surprisingly hard, just saying thank you.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: Palms up on that mat felt like the same practice in another language.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Towards the end of the session,
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_00: we were asked to remember a moment from childhood when we had been really happy.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: I saw my parents' living room in Brazil.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_00: I used to build an entire little world in one corner of that room.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: Barbie's kitchen, Barbie's living room, clothes, everything arranged exactly as I wanted it.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: I could spend hours there.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_00: Then came an exercise in which we imagined that the child we remembered had written us a letter.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_00: Mine had one word.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: Love.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: Not romantic love.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: Something quieter.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: Love between the woman I am now and the little girl I once was.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe love for the woman I'm still becoming.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think Kundalini has answered all my questions.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: I don't think one Saturday can heal a lifetime.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm certainly not suggesting everybody needs to try it.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_00: For me, it is simply one practice among many that can hold up a mirror.
• 5:13
  SPEAKER_00: Books, conversations, therapy, meditation, motherhood itself.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Writing.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_00: Experiences I haven't even discovered yet.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm beginning to believe that working on myself deserves at least
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: as much attention as working on my career.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_00: Not because I'm trying to become some perfectly healed,
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: permanently enlightened version of myself.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_00: And certainly not because I'm chasing mystical experiences.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm doing it because I want to become more conscious.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: Conscious of the thoughts I have when I feel insecure.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Conscious of the moments when fear starts speaking louder than I do.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Conscious of the old patterns I can so easily mistake for personality simply
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: because I've carried them for so long.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that is what all this inner work is really about for me.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: Not erasing what happened.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: Not pretending that one meditation,
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: one book,
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: one kundalini activation,
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: or one beautiful Saturday can heal everything that came before it.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: But learning to recognize what is happening inside me while it is happening.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: To be able to catch myself in a moment of insecurity and think,
• 6:20
  SPEAKER_00: I know this feeling, but this feeling is not the whole of me.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: To understand that something from my past may explain why I react
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: a certain way today without allowing it to decide who I will be tomorrow.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_00: Perhaps that is what reclaiming my power looks like right now.
• 6:36
  SPEAKER_00: Not controlling everything around me.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: Becoming more conscious of what has been quietly controlling me.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: And then choosing again.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: I want to do that work because I want to show up a little more consciously.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_00: As a mother, as a wife, as a daughter, as a friend, as a professional, as a woman.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: Not a woman who has healed everything.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Not a woman who has all the answers.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: A woman who is learning herself well enough to recognize when an old version
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: of her is speaking and compassionate enough not to hate her for it.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Because when I saw that little girl standing in the corner, I didn't tell her to toughen up.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't tell her to become more confident.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't tell her about all the things she would need to change in order to become me.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: I just sat beside her.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe that is where becoming more conscious begins.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Not by running away from the person we used to be.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_00: But by finally understanding her well enough that she no longer has to quietly run
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: the person we are becoming.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: Just Julia.