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Welcome to the Wild Remedies Podcast. I'm your host, Krysta Francoeur. And I'm here to bring you captivating stories from some of the most fascinating people I've connected with on my own journey of physical, mental, and spiritual wellbeing. So sit back, relax, and get ready to be inspired.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to another episode of the wild remedies podcast. Today, we are speaking with my friend lean. Amanda Leanne is a trauma enforced ontological and somatic coach and highly trained breathwork facilitator. She helps people create conscious relationships. Release traumas and regulate their nervous systems.

So we have all kinds of wild remedies in here today. We're talking about relationships again. I know we just spoke about this on our last episode with Kelsey grant, which was fabulous. If you haven't listened to it yet, I highly recommend this has a totally different flavor in all kinds of new wisdom nuggets that are just.

So important for optimal health and wellness, and we're gonna dive into breathwork. So this is something that has been absolutely transformative for me. Um, Lean's stories about breathwork are just really, really inspiring. And there is, there are just so many wisdom nuggets in this episode, so let's dive right into it.

And without further ado, let's chat with Leanne.

All right. Welcome Leanne. I am so excited to have you on the wild remedies podcast. How are you girl? thank you so much for having me. I'm so good. And I'm so excited to be here. How are you? I'm wonderful. Leanne and I were just having a little chat before we got on here and I was explaining to her how I had a dream about a blue Lotus flower and then had the epiphany this morning that I needed to like move or at least go for a long period of time to Costa Rica.

apparently everyone's doing this right now. it's a trend. It is. Yeah. It's time to shake up the energy a little bit. Need some need some new inspiration. Mm-hmm yeah, traveling always helps me with inspiration for sure. It does. You were just in Bali, weren't you for four months, for four months. How was it?

It was all of it. You know, I always say I've been all over the world now. And I always say that every place, whether it's a city or a country, however you look at it, every place has its light and its shadow and Bally very clearly has a beautiful light about it. And it also has a shadow side. And so it's just very present to all of it at the same time.

Yeah. So it was just like an, all of it experience. It was very full for sure. Yeah, no, that's great. I mean, it looked like you really got, I saw a lot of images about doing breathwork and stuff there, so I'm really excited to dive into that in this episode. Um, but I think I'm gonna kick this episode off by just asking you for like a 30,000 foot view of your journey so far.

Like I know that you've been through a lot over the years, and so I just kind of wanted to know about like some of your experiences that have brought you to the work that you're doing today. Oh, God. Yeah. Um, so how do I answer this question? yeah, well, you know, I think you, you kind of alluded to it that I've been through a lot and that definitely has shaped most of what I'm doing right now.

And a lot of what I'm doing right now right now has to do with healing. It has to do with, you know, whether it's mental or somatic, whatever it is it's about, being able to heal. And so, you know, whether it was getting hit by a car and like having to sort of like relearn how to walk properly or losing my fiance in Thailand, or, you know, like being assaulted multiple times.

I have been through the ringer , but each time I have learned something about how my mind and my heart and my body and my spirit work and, I just dedicated my life to being able to understand all of the different ways we can heal. Right. Like coaching can be a very top down experience, but what's the bottom up, like, and what's the spiritual, like, how can I incorporate all of these different modalities so that I can meet people where they're at in, you know, like creating their conscious relationships from a holistic perspective or releasing their traumas, somatically, not just emotionally or, or mentally.

Right. so, I would sum it up with that life has gifted me with many learning opportunities and a lot of pain. and I think the, the thing that I am always striving for is. How can I turn this into gold? Not just like spiritual, bypassing this, like, what's the gift, but like, you know, how can I see this for what it is and get, you know, that it sucks, but also how, how can I use this to contribute?

How can I use this to serve and how can I use this to learn about what life is, and really it's just this fullness. Um, and how can we just keep being with that and keep living and creating in, in tune with that? does that answer your question? Yeah. Oh my God. That's so beautiful. And it's like, it's really timely for me right now.

I was just introduced to the gene keys. Have you, have you looked into the gene keys at all? I mean, when I, I used to work at a naturopathic clinic and there was like talk about the gene keys a lot, but, um, I never really got into it. Yeah. So I, I mean, I've heard about it before and I was at actually this breath work, um, workshop about a week ago.

And I ran into this doctor there, who I'm gonna have on the podcast. He's really, really interesting guy he's into like traditional Chinese medicine and homeopathy and all of these things. Yes. And he started talking about the gene keys and I just told him a little bit about myself. I think he's also quite intuitive, but he was like, talked about like this, this 47th gene key.

And he's like, yeah, like this, this definitely gotta be you. Right. And so it's a thing that you can do at home where you put in your birthday similar to like astrology or human design. And then it comes up with a profile and right at the top was this 47th gene key. And I was like, oh shit, this guy, he knows this, this stuff.

Nice. And it's very much about. Having a lot of suffering in your life. Right? So for me, it was a lot of health issues and it also pairs with this other number. I don't know, like I'm totally butchering this. I need to learn a lot more about it. Um, but exactly what you just spoke about is like, you know, when you're gifted with these kind of car things that come into your life, that feel really, really difficult.

If you can learn to navigate them the way that you're explaining where you're getting the gold from it and you're transforming and transfiguring them, and really creating a richness of life through that process and just digging into the suffering, right? Like as uncomfortable as shit as it is that that is kind of the path forward.

And that really beautiful things can come from that. Yeah. And in this case, it looks like, like now you have all of this wisdom that you're able to share with people, you know, even though it was like totally gnarly for you at the time, but that's kind of like your superpower now. Yeah, totally. I mean, A really underrated skill that we forget.

We are gifted when we go through painful or traumatic events is the ability to learn how to space hold at a deeper capacity. Mm. And when you go through a flavor of trauma or a flavor of hurt or a flavor of, um, suffering, you get to be, there's an opportunity. At least we don't always do this, but there's an opportunity to get intimate with it in a way that we can hold space for others when they're going through that.

And I just, I think space holding is one of those ancient, sacred skills that is a human gift that, is coming back on the scene that is more, you know, common that. Is really like, quite a tradition from however long ago that for a while there got lost or, maybe when like mental health had a bunch of stigmas around it, it took a backseat or, yeah, but I think that yeah, space holding is, is one of the gifts of going through what we've gone through, you know?

Yeah, absolutely. And I love that you call it space holding and out holding space. It just gives it like a nice little flavor to it.

Okay. Well that was so beautiful. Thank you for that share. I am still curious though, to dig into like, what exactly is a trauma informed ontological and somatic coach? I think somatic we're talking about like throughout the body, but I've never heard of ontological before.

What is, what does that mean? Okay. So ontology is the study of being this. So often in life, humans are taking action or they're doing without consciously being. So let's see, ontological coaching. Isn't first focusing on what do you need to do? Cause arguably we all know what we need to do to create what we want.

Like often the actions, aren't the thing. Like, you know how to be healthy. You can eat broccoli and run. Everybody knows that, right? Like there's some, some like level of knowledge that we all already have, but who we're being about things is often the thing that's missing that we don't, we don't see what's in our blind spot about the way that we show up in the world and how that dictates everything.

Or maybe how, um, things that have happened to us are dictating who we're being without us realizing. And then that impacts how we do life. Um, you know, for example, like. I was let's let's go back to university, cuz this is right when I started with ontological study. Um, when I was in university, I was doing all the right things.

I had been an honorable student all my life. I had been an athlete all my life. I was the perfect kid. I never, you know, like I didn't even drink it until it was legal. I didn't party. I was, I was like this pure, straight and narrow gal and yet I was tough. I was burnt out. I was, um, needy and I had this like.

yeah, this really tough exterior that just really hungered for love and love was a very external phenomenon for me. And that being this colored, everything like you can imagine, like when you meet somebody like that, like you meet the tough exterior person. You're like, oh, I might feel uneasy. Or I don't know if I can approach this person.

Or I dunno if I wanna be friends with this person, you meet the needy person. You're like, stay away from me. Right? Like the beingness of people impacts you and it colors your entire life. And then when I discovered, ontological coaching, I got coached and then I got trained. I started realizing how every single event that happened in my life, got interpreted by my brain in such a way that I started to be different adaptive ways and coping mechanisms that really weren't serving me.

AKA tough needy girl. . So then I had to look at what are the interpretations that I'm wearing and how can I. Be who I am versus who I wound up being. Cause I wound up being some way based on these things and the interpretation I had of these things, but who am I actually? And so I actually am a pretty fun easygoing, like just playful human being.

And I would never have gotten to discover that had I not shot a light on all of these different things that I interpreted X Y, Z way. Yeah. Does that make sense? Yeah. Well and what an interesting thing to kind of fall into it? Like how old were you at this point? I was 20. I became a yoga teacher at 19 and then that got me into sort of like this, this, like I was studying Eastern religions and psychology in university as one does at the age of 19.

Cause I know that's what I was doing. Not at all like binge drinking and dancing on.

Yeah. I like still get kind of confused about like different drinks. People are like, oh yeah. Like, oh, gin and vodka, this. And I'm like, which one is which I, I don't actually know. Like, it's pretty funny, but that's great. Um, I got into it because I just happened to meet somebody. you know, it turns out that, I just, I just happened to meet some really cool people that were into this work.

And, a guy, I went on a date with actually he had the balls to call me out on something and it wasn't like, it wasn't like, Hey, you're a shitty person. Don't do this. It was like, you know what you're doing? It was like, Hey, you know that you're lacking compassion in this area. What's up with that. And he was just very, like, I see you and being seen in such a way that I was being called up, not necessarily being judged.

that helped me open to the possibility that maybe who I was being wasn't necessarily me. Does that make sense? Yeah, mm-hmm yeah, so I was very, very lucky to go on that date at like 1920. Yeah, no kidding. Wow. What a experience. Yeah, it was for sure. I love that. Okay. And so we have all of this amazing experience and now we're focusing on breathwork a little bit here.

So when did this kind of start to come into your practice? Right. So first I just realized. I only answered part of your question, cuz you asked what is a trauma informed on somatic coach? Yes. So somatics and trauma informed those kind of go together. So I became trauma informed through training, understanding trauma and somatics, and basically, um, you know, people who do like a full, full on three year training who wanna become somatic, experiencing practitioners.

those are the people who solely are trauma centered, helping like fully, you know, working solely with the body on what the body is holding. And, I'm not gonna do it justice, but essentially it's like, there isn't any sort of like cognitive aspect to it. It's like all the body talking and then working with the body.

but when I did my trauma training, We were taught how to read stress responses and cues from the body and facial, um, expressions. And that goes into the polyvagal theory, which is essentially how do we read, you know, facial expressions and body language in a way that we understand stress responses.

which I think is really important for coaches because so often kidding coaches talk about really sensitive things with their clients. And they might even like activate their client and not know it or not know how to lead them outta it. So, having that understanding I think is finally like catching some more momentum and more people are gaining that, that desire to do that training mm-hmm and then the somatic work just goes along with that, but breath work, you know, when my fiance died almost five years ago, now it's gonna be five years in.

Month and a half ish. And when he died, I just went looking for every single healing modality that I could. And first there was obviously talk therapy and like cognitive behavioral therapy, like all mind. And then there was, you know, EMDR, which was like talking and like some physical action. And then there was tapping, which was like verbal and physical.

And then, so it kind of went from like all mind to mind and movement. And then I started dance therapy that blew everything outta the water and then kept going. And I just kept going with all of these different healing modalities until finally, um, I met somebody who introduced me to breathwork and most specifically conscious, connected breath, otherwise known now as facilitated breath, re patterning.

And what made this unique was that as a yoga teacher, you know, I've been doing yoga since I was 14. I've been teaching yoga for however long. And the breath that we are used to in yoga proma is all controlled breath, which there's a beauty to that. And I will always love it, but conscious, connected breath or FBR is about balancing the, the inhale and the exhale full of vitality and total relaxation.

And I don't know any yoga breath where there is total relaxation. Right? Um, so the, the specific style of breath is unparalleled for trauma release that I've ever experienced. And when I started to see what I was releasing in sessions of FBR, I was like, okay, there's something to this. I really believe in this.

And when I really, really believe in something, I usually wanna teach it so, I wanna be able to know how to give it back. So then, um, I was lucky enough to live in a part of the world where FBR training is available and, was invited down to another training in Bali. That's why I was there for four months.

just continuing to branch onto those skills and see, in my own journey, how I keep letting go of these layers and noticing these, these things I'm holding in my body that keep getting, released or start talking to me and being able to now give that to the other people.

Um, yeah, it's amazing. That's so many, I, I swear you are like the super coach. like you just exactly. I, you just have so many amazing skills and you've been doing it for so long. There's just a lot that goes on in the coaching industry. And I feel like you have such high integrity, like the work that you do is just, it's so detailed and the way that you can speak to others, I think is just so absolutely beautiful Leighann

and I worked together a couple of years ago, um, on her website actually. And you wrote all of your copy didn't you? And I remember, yeah, you wrote most of it. And it was just, it was so beautiful. Like just the way that you're able to connect and like really dig into people's pain points. Like you really understand what people need in order to be seen.

And that's just such a beautiful quality. I just absolutely love it. Thank you. That means a lot. Thank you so much. so talking about breathwork a little bit more, I'm wondering what kind of, um, so for me it's been really, really potent. Like I haven't done it a whole lot, but every time I do it, it's like, , it's gotta be a longer session for sure.

And I really find it powerful in a group setting because it can be kind of tough. Right? Like I find, I always kind of come up against a bit of a wall. I'll usually get some emotion that starts to arise. Sometimes frustration, anger that usually ends up transforming into some sort of like ugly, crying situation.

Like I full on ugly cry almost every single time I do breathwork which for the first time was extremely surprising to me. I didn't think that was something that was gonna happen. Um, so I really feel the power in that. Um, what, what, what have you kind of experienced in it in yourself, like releasing, doing, doing this.

Yeah. Well, first of all, thank you for sharing part of your experience, because I can really identify with you and let me know if this resonates, because I, I could be getting this wrong, but as you and I pretty, you know, powerful, independent women who we hold our own to fully like collapse in, in a broad journey, even be like surrounded by people too.

Yeah. And to fully like surrender to whatever needs to be released. That's a pretty powerful thing. because you know, for so long I would not be seen emoting, so, oh, it's tough for me too. So, so first of all, thank you for, for letting yourself do that. And I'm sure that the other powerful women in your circle, they notice and they're like, okay, maybe I get to do this too.

So yeah. what I've noticed in my journey is that, you know, I have so many different. Layers of events that have just accumulated in this body of mind, this organism. And, um, some of them are familial. Some of them are love related. Some of them are health related. I, I, when I was maybe in my early twenties, I had, um, a procedure done on my pelvis and also had been through different assaults and something that I started to notice when I, I started FBR was I was barely breathing into my PEL pelvis.

I was barely breathing into my belly. And, you know, for the first 10 years that I was a Yogi, I could breathe into my belly, no problem. But then as soon as things started to happen, things were accumulating in this area. And my body started to tell itself, don't breathe there. We don't wanna feel anything there anymore and for me to all of a sudden come into my pelvis, come into my roots, right? Like the root of the, of the pelvis as well. Um, and like into the sacrament, just different, um, parts of the pelvis that I realized you could breathe into. Or like, I, I started feeling my legs in my feet differently.

I started realizing that, there was a whole level of sensation that I was so terrified of in my pelvis because of how much pain I'd felt there that not only did I get to cycle through that pain and release it, it took more than once, by the way, it took many journeys to release all the different layers, but, and I'm sure I'm still releasing them, but, um, to come back into sensation in this area in a different way, has been quite emotional as you can imagine.

Yeah. and there's also been a deeper honoring of this area too, and like what this area needs. I also, you know, have worked through many layers of grief, you know, like, there was the loss of my partner, but also the trauma of being the one to defined him. Right? Like there are different visual things that I, that I re-experienced or different, levels of grief that I, you know, grief comes in layers and waves, right?

Like different layers of grief that I still needed to feel and to express. right after my partner passed, I actually had to take care of a lot of other people and had to handle a lot of logistics and was even, you know, alone in Thailand handling his body. Um, and his, and his, you know, the managing of like what was gonna happen with the estate.

Right. And that had me like have to numb my grief for quite a while. And then I had to go back and revisit. a lot of those moments. Mm-hmm . And so, I had perhaps, you know, revisited some of them mentally, but physically damn, like that's a whole other thing. you know, like right moments before James died, he was really nervous.

He was meditating and I just like really wanted to, like, I made a bid for connection and I asked him for a hug and he said, not right now, I, I need space. And then he died like two minutes later. So imagine the imprint on my body of asking for a hug, not getting it. And then all of a sudden, the love of my life is gone forever.

Right? Like my body had a hangover from that, right. Being able to revisit these things and sort of feel them to the depth they needed to be felt, um, or even like. Yeah, like other different physical ailments that my body was holding too. it has been surreal being able to be very present to my own healing journey and not have to be done or cooked or fixed or perfect in order to serve others.

Mm-hmm like, I'm still very much peeling back the layers and, yeah, just humbly noticing where else I need to look and feel while still. Yeah. While still, you know, space holding.

Yeah. That is such a powerful story and journey and yeah. You have been through so much girl and it's yeah. Amazing to see what you've been able to, to transform with all of these healing modalities and just by, by being a powerful woman. Right? Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. It's, it's inspiring me now.

It's like, oh my God, I need to be doing breath work now. And you know, one thing that I really admire about you and, you know, when I, you know, see you on social media and things like that, like you seem to be very consistent with, I mean, and I mean, this is social media, right. But like, as a coach, I know you're helping people with relationships and things like that too.

But you kind of do all forms of life coaching too. So like, when people are feeling like they're out of alignment and lots of different areas, your, of, of their life, you can help support them with that. Right. Mm-hmm , that's part of it. Yeah. I feel like, I don't know you and I should have a little conversation about that afterwards.

I just have like this personality where I, this is just kind. How I've always been where I have all these really great intentions. I go zero to a hundred. This might be like a manifesting generator thing too, but it's like, I pick stuff up and I put it down all the time. and so consistency can be a little bit tough, but yeah, it feels like, I don't know.

That's just something that I, I really admire. It seems like that's what you exude a little bit and yeah, it's, it's a little exuding. Wait, sorry. What is the thing I'm exuding I like the, the consistency, right? Like I just see a lot of like vitality and wellness and stuff and like, yeah. I don't know. I just, that, that seems like the vibe a little bit to me.

Gotcha. I mean, vitality and wellness are definitely a theme, but I've been through some stuff and had some, you know, like, I don't think. Anybody's perfect and consistent all the time. I mean, like, I think the thing that I'm most prioritizing is attunement. So for me, if I go through a time in my life where like some shit has just gone down and I'm not gonna be able to stick to my like every morning, 7:00 AM workout and my like perfect diet, I'll notice what my body's asking for.

And I will be like, okay, cool. Like how long do you think we're gonna be doing this? But like, I remember in Bali, like I went through something really tough, really horrible. And my body didn't eat for five days. I just, I just didn't wanna eat. And I, like, I had the bare minimum, but like, somebody was like, oh my God, are you okay?

Like, no, you should really eat something. You should really eat something. And I was like, my body's just doing what she needs to do. I'm gonna swing back. I'm gonna swing back. It's gonna be okay. And then after five days sure. Off my body was like, cool, I'm ready to eat now. I was like, yeah. And, but just being able to like, listen and like, nobody would suggest to just stop eating for five days.

And then I swung in the other direction and like ate, I had this like huge craving for like granola all the time. And like, you know, mean girls, Regina, George, like somebody tells her that there are like these bars, if she thinks they're for losing weight. And they're just like packed with like all of this fat she's like gaining weight.

Like basically I Regina George myself she was like, just eating this like super fatty granola for like a month. And I was like, my body is like, for some reason, it's just like, Hey, we need this. And I was like listening carefully for the day that my body was like, cool, we're done. We're. And it, you know, like sometimes you just have to like, listen and some things were consistent.

Like, my exercise was pretty consistent, but my diet just went like, woo. Yeah. And yeah. So I think attunement is, is more the word that I would use rather than consistent. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. There's some sort of consistency available in attunement. I think, I think. Yeah. It's tough. And I feel like for women too, because we're so Cy cyclical, we're cyclical.

Right? So it's like, I notice that I fluctuate quite a bit throughout the month. Right. And even though I wanna be more consistent with some things, it's like, well, my energy patterns just really do fluctuate a lot and I'm getting to a place where I'm just honoring that. Right. So, you know, if I go through a period where my energy's low, you know, I'm craving a lot of carbs, whatever it is, it's like, okay, well, I'm just gonna do that thing.

And then I know in a week it's gonna be different again, you know, mm-hmm and yeah, just honoring that. And I, I love the idea of listening to your body. That's a really big practice that I've been focusing on in probably the past six months. And it really is a game changer. And I think it's something that's valuable for, for, for a lot of folks.

Right. There's a lot of wisdom in our body that we generally ignore.

We take the time to listen to what we actually need and just give ourselves that there's a lot more grace there. Mm-hmm yeah, I think, I think there's a balance. Like there's some, you know, science we could bring into it, like, for example, you know, like, oh, if you eat more of this, sometimes that thing will stay in your gut and tell your body that it craves more of that.

And, oh, it's not just about like, sometimes attunement is valuable and sometimes there is a scientific reason for why these, what, whatever, like science can be applied, but at the same time, like there is something to learning to just listen without having to externally search. And I think that, you know, I.

I believe that maybe all genders have a journey about that to go on, but women in particular, I believe, I mean, some people might disagree, but I think that part of becoming a woman is, is like learning how to say no to the external information we're given, because we feel something inside first and we can listen to what's inside and trust that that's worth listening to.

I really do think that that is a huge part of like a Rite of passage into womanhood and that's what I've experienced. So, I mean, that's really all I can speak from, but mm-hmm I dunno. Yeah, no, I absolutely agree. Like we are bombarded by so much information, right. And the more feminine way of doing things that we've kind of lost over.

I don't know. I guess the last few centuries really is just learning to turn within and just listen to our intuition and our own guidance. . Yeah. You know, I think I'm, as you're speaking, I'm, I'm seeing partly why I love conscious connected breath so much is because you are literally being with nothing but your feelings and your memories and your thoughts and your breath.

And you're, you're trying to stay as present with your breath as you can, but inevitably all of these other things bubble to the surface and you have nowhere to go. And so whether that's like a, a truth that you've been avoiding or, a piece of advice that you haven't been listening to that you have for yourself, or, or maybe there's like an instinct that really like wants to come through or be listened to, um, or a memory memory that really wants to be completed and released.

I think breathwork is a really beautiful tool for tuning into that too. And, The conscious connect breath or FBR that modality in particular. So much of that style of breath is surrender and like letting go. And I mean, there takes it, it takes surrender to attune. And with this style of breath work, like, is it, I mean, like, there's lots of different styles that are out there now you kind of hear about like whim H and holotropic and all of those different styles is like, is there something different with, with this style?

Yes. Um, so every single other style of breath work that I know whether it's some type of proma or Wim H or whatever, all of them are controlled breath. That's the, like, I really want to make sure that people know that I'm not biased. Like there are certain types of control breath that I love. Like there is a time and a place for kabati breathing.

Right? Like it's great. and the thing that is the most different with, um, FBR is that you are in the constant balance of inhaling with full vitality and exhaling with utter and complete surrender. And having that, that duality moment to moment, breath to breath, is allowing you to embody yin and yang every second.

And you are noticing where like the quality of how you inhale life and how you exhale life are done. . and so there's a lot that gets revealed about you and your beliefs and how you live through the way you breathe, because this modality, the other thing about this modality is that it really does show.

It really just does say a lot when we look at a, a breath pattern, right? Like, um, I was trained to read breath patterns and not know for sure, because we can't really ever fully know for sure or play God, but we can look at a breath pattern and go, okay, that's that breath pattern, which is probably caused by X, Y, or Z.

And so we can draw an educated conclusion on what that person must have gone through in the past or how that's impacting them now. And we get to learn more and more by asking them, um, you know, like non intrusively, but like maybe over time, whether it's like, um, asking questions or maybe what they share, we get to learn what is the.

The signature of that breath and what, what happened to them that created that breath pattern and how can we correct perhaps layers of maladaptive breath patterns that are showing up, so that they can breathe in a more ease, useful, more free way. And that's all just being able to read the breath, um, which will always be a skill.

I will be refining forever , but it is really cool when you do start to see patterns and themes. yeah, it's like being able to watch somebody breathe and, and, um, notice themes and commonalities and, um, show them ways to create more ease in their own body. Like one of the things I realized is that the way that we breathe actually takes up a lot of energy, but it doesn't have to, like a lot of us are making our lives harder simply by the energetic output we are using.

By breathing in a more difficult way than we need to. Interesting. Right. So, um, some of us are over breathing. Some of us are in like hyperventilation or hyperventilation. Some of us are creating other different reactions in the body that are impacting, you know, blood chemistry and other things that are impacting our mood or impacting, um, our or energy levels.

Um, so yeah, it's, it's interesting. Like we, we can create a lot more ease and, and energy flow just by altering the way that we breathe. Yeah. I mean, I know for myself, if I'm ever, you know, struggling with anxiety or some like some hard feelings that are coming up, I notice it in my breath. Right. There's always like the shallowness that's happening and I'm like, Ooh girl,

Yeah. Nice. Yeah. And just even a shift like that, and just focusing on the breath I've, um, you know, struggled with anxiety, depression, all of these things, um, uh, in my life previously and really coming to the breath is something that makes such a huge impact. Uh, you know, even through like plant medicine, journeys, things that are, you know, very challenging and you've got a lot of stuff going on and you feel, you know, some like anxiety and emotions and things that are coming up, just like always going back to the breath can just kind of, it can get you through anything really.

That's kind of the point. Yeah. Is that part of why I chose breathwork is because it's the one thing you always have available. Always. It's the, it's the one thing that is always with you. Yep. And. Like it, it's the ultimate anchor. It's the ultimate time. It's the ultimate thing to come back to and you always have it and it's yours.

Yep. So it's kind of like a fail safe and I love fail safe because I'm a control freak. So like, like, yes. Um, but yeah, I mean, it's, it's the easiest, most accessible way to alter how you feel for sure. Absolutely. Yeah. And what a great tip. I mean, like I'm just, this just brought me back to a moment that I was having.

A couple of years ago, um, where I'd been through like a particularly gnarly heartbreak situation and it had just brought up a ton of trauma. So I had a shit ton of anxiety. Like my body was just in constant fight or flight. Yeah. Literally nothing I did was helping, like, it was just, it was brutal. And so I would just kind of, I would essentially just the have random panic attacks at very inconvenient times.

And I was in Berlin, I think at the time. And I was in a cab going to an airport and this feeling starts to creep up. Right. And I'm just like, okay, just, you know, breathe, just breathe through it, just breathe through it. And it, it always, it always gets, gets you through those uncomfortable periods. So it really is like, it just, you can do it anywhere, which is fabulous.

Yeah. You can do it anywhere. Home in public, in taxi. Anyway, anywhere you can have a breakdown. You can breathe. totally, that's the new sleep. Oh my goodness. Well, I'm gonna take a little shift now and I'd like to chat a bit about conscious relationships. So I love that on your website, one of your goals is to make conscious relationships commonplace.

Mm-hmm absolutely amazing goal. . I'd love to hear what your definition of conscious relationship is. 📍



Totally. Yeah. Um, so conscious relationships. Well, let me describe first what they're not. Okay. Conscious relationships are not perfect relationships. Mm-hmm and they're not stress free relationships. So conscious relationships are relationships where you are bringing awareness and willingness to see and own all of you and how that impacts the relationship.

So an unconscious relationship for example, is one where, you know how I was talking in the beginning about like how I wound up being right. Like I was that tough girl who was needy. Let's say, I like hadn't gone through any self-awareness. And I was still that tough yet, needy girl. And I just did relationships that way.

That would cause a lot of unconscious relationships. I would not know how to own or heal or bring awareness to any of who I was being. and that would just continue to impact relationships without my power or my knowledge. And so by me, understanding myself, working through things, healing things that allows me to have the power and say over how I show up in a relationship.

And that allows me to consciously moment by moment. Choose how I wanna show up. you know, like relationships can be conscious and still have breakdowns and still have, moments of, emotional drunkenness. I call it . But, yeah, the goal is emotional sobriety. but you know, to be able to say, I know this about myself, I've been through X, Y, Z kind of pain that sometimes impacts how I relate to my romantic partners.

How can I go in owning that about myself and usually choosing not that yeah, sometimes I'm able to, but usually I'm choosing not that. And I'm choosing some other way that I really wanna be instead. Yeah. That's how I would define conscious relationship. And that's when both of you are doing it, you can't just have a conscious relationship where one of you is like I'm taking into account my wounds and how that impacts you when the other person's like, great.

thanks. let me ride that wave. Yep. Benefit it. right. Yeah. So both people are responsible. Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I'd love that you do work with both men and women. Right. So I think that's really important. I know you do work with couples as well. Mm-hmm , uh, what are kind of like the different things that you see or that you focus on, um, with women compared to, with men in your coaching?

One of the first things that I'll say about that is that they have a lot more differences or sorry. They have a lot more similarities than differences in a lot of ways that I wasn't expecting, you know, originally when I was like a baby in this industry. and I think it's really important to remember that in a lot of ways, no matter what gender you are, you wanna be loved.

You wanna be enough, you wanna be seen, you wanna be heard, you wanna belong. and so when we remember this about everyone, we can sort of remember the innocence of each human being and, bring that humbly into interactions with anybody of any gender. And I think that, um, you know, obviously there has been an emphasis, in my work at some points about, you know, masculine and feminine energy, which I like to call consciousness and sensation now because masculine, feminine, those words have a bit of like a oppressive history to them.

but we all have those energies. Right. yeah, we, we all want the same things. Based on the body that we have, or the experiences that we have, we maybe lean towards this or lean towards that. Um, but I think the, the success starts when we relate to each other, as human to human, rather than creating so much difference.

there is a lot of fun in looking at the polarities between genders, right? Like, you know, talking about masculine, feminine energy. For me as a woman who has usually heterosexual relationships, that was huge like that. When I first understood how I was emasculating my partners and how my partners were like D goddess sing me and like all of the different ways that we do these things to each other, when we don't understand polarity, that was huge.

Um, but that also came with the understanding and willingness to always like come back to wholeness. If that makes sense, the wholeness we carry both of those energies. Mm-hmm um, I might be getting a little off topic and rambling. Am I still? No, it's great. I love it. Okay. I love where it's going. Yeah, no, that's amazing.

Yeah. So I do notice that, the more I study polarity, I do find, a lot of people relate to it. I've been interviewing people of different sexual orientations and asking them, you know, like, how does this land for you? How do, how does this, um, framework land for you? And, you know, for some people, you know, like, even if they're non-binary, they're like, yeah, this really helps me organize certain things about myself and how I understand myself.

And for some people like, a few of my gay lesbian friends are like, no, I hate this. So it is like, you know, it doesn't land with everybody, but, I find that, yeah, like there's enough of a resonance. with the like masculine, feminine conversation that, that definitely lands like men who identify mostly as masculine.

There's like a certain different experience that needs to be catered to women who identify predominantly as feminine. There's a specific experience that they have too. even though we all have both. So, you know, like whether you're predisposed more to like orienting yourself around love versus freedom, or like what have you, we all still have all of it.

So, in tantra, there is this beautiful lens, you know, usually when you hear or talk about tantra, they think about red tantra right away, which is like the pleasing each other and exploring sexuality together. And they don't often start with white tantra, which is like sexual mastery of, of. Your own sexual energy mm-hmm and your own life force.

But one of the other parts of tantra that doesn't really get talked about is that it's all about accepting the illness of a human being, the, the beauty, the, the, um, how funny they are, how smart they are, but also the shame they carry and the guilt they've experienced, or the trauma they have, whatever it is about them that makes them all of who they are, is worth accepting and seeing, and loving.

And that's part of Tatra two, and that isn't gender specific, so, Hmm. That's beautiful. Hmm. Hmm. I love that. Well, a question that's kind of coming up for me is, um, like what is, what is something that like, maybe your coaching has done for a client that you didn't expect. Hmm. Okay. Like, have you, like, have you ever like been surprised by some of the transformations that you know people have had when working with you?

Hmm. That's an interesting question. Because usually when I start working with somebody, I have a very strong prediction of what's gonna happen. Okay. Like, I don't, I don't decide, like, here's my agenda. Here's where we're going. I always leave it open, ended to like what they say they want, but I always get like a sense of, like, I think this is kind of where we're going and how this is gonna happen.

Most predictable thing that's ever happened is like people getting married. That's like the most predictable thing when they're like, I wanna meet the love of my life. I wanna get married and then they get married and then it's like, boom. Okay, easy. But, some cool things that have happened are, you know, maybe this is also very predictable, but people stop relying on external sources for love.

Um, people, oh, here's one people change their voice. So I've actually in many cases, worked with people where one of their survival mechanisms is they alter their voice and it comes from an early people pleasing, um, strategy. And I've found mostly with women okay. Where they have a higher pitched voice or a sweeter voice than their actual natural voice.

And then by the end of our work together, their voice is dropped in Okta or two. Interesting. Yes. So that is, um, and that's something that, you know, as a singer, I also pay attention to those things. So I'm just like, I'm like, and have even pointed out to different clients. Like, um, you know, you have two voices, right?

it's like, whatever, do you.

Just just like, breathe, just like, yeah, let, let your butt UN unclench, like it's okay. And, but you know what, it's, it's interesting because every single coping tactic that we have is rooted in something that's really quite understandable or like something really scary or really, you know, like there's like, we all just go through hard stuff and then we make these coping strategies and they're all understandable to some extent.

Yeah. Um, but yeah, the voicing is definitely something I didn't foresee. Um, until I later started noticing a trend. and yeah, I think, but a lot of the outcomes of, of my work, I would assume they're predictable. Okay. So, okay. I'm also like, like, do you have any like other specific questions about like the results?

Well, I mean, No, nothing specific about results, but I wanted to talk about, um, so you mentioned like one of the results that you can get from, um, for, for your clients is a partner, right? Mm-hmm so you help people with dating and all of these things, which is, you know, wildly helpful in, in this day and age.

And in my opinion, and I saw one of your offerings is this amazing freebie that everybody needs to go and download, but your 20 firstish date questions. And we were chatting about this a little bit before we jumped on and you're telling me that they're actually quite bold and spicy. So , I wanna know a little bit more about this and why you decided to make them like that.

It maybe get a little taste of a couple of these, these questions. Yeah. So here's the thing, like I just, I just believe that we should be able to be really honest with ourselves and other people, but what we want. And it's like, not always to anybody's time. Like, I think I've always been really close to the fact that we don't know how much time we have.

Yeah. Um, maybe in like a bit of an obsessive way, like, I don't know if it's always been beneficial, but, you know, especially after James died, I'm like, great. Well, like if I have 20 minutes left, like how are these four minutes gonna be spent? How are those? Like, it just sometimes I just think about like, okay, my time is my biggest currency.

It's my biggest gift. and so time really impacts my offerings the way I coach and the way I see love and dating. so I created these 20 firstish date questions because you don't have to ask someone the first date. , but I think it's great to ask these questions as you're in the beginning stages of getting to know somebody, because you wanna get to know that person right away to see how they to see how they click, like going based off of chemistry, or this person makes me laugh.

It's just not, it's just not doing it. Just not doing it. Still have really high divorce rates. We still have people realizing much later that they could have done a lot more to get to know that person before choosing to spend the rest of their lives with them. And so I thought, okay, great. Well, I, I, how can I help with making more informed choices about who we choose and how to get to know people?

So, you know, like one of the first questions I start off with is like, what gets you outta bed in the morning? Like, that's not quite like bold, but it's like, Hey, like what the fuck? Animates your body? What gets, what animates your spirit? What actually is the reason you get up? Yep. And like, can I align with supporting that?

You know, like I wanna know if the reason why somebody gets up is because they really care about their family and they wanna support their family, or they really wanna experience freedom and like financial freedom and freedom to do with whatever they want. I wanna know if somebody cares prominently about like money and status.

Like, these are all good things to know about somebody. Right. And like, is it the same as you or not? Or get it? Maybe it's not the same, but like you have same flavors about like what you're committed to. Or yeah, I mean, like it's interesting. I recently, right before I launched this offering, I added in a question about empathy.

And this is one of my favorite short questions in it, because you need to know what somebody's relationship to empathy is. It is actually one of the most underrated skills in relationship. It is not something you're born with. It's a skill, women are more likely to be socialized to be empathetic, but it's actually a skill that you can learn and develop.

It's not something that you either have or you're you don't have. And I started noticing a theme in my career and throughout my life where like different people, had expressed the empathy is kind of like this afterthought or this irrelevant, uh, skill. And I thought, how could this possibly be? And so, um, it's.

Yeah. I had to add that in there because it to be empathetic is to, to witness and be with somebody's pain and life is beauty and pain. That's all it's it's beauty and pain and so literally, yeah, and literally we are in dating. We are constantly being with the beauty that people present us, but can they be with the pain?

And so that to me is like, we're really honoring and talking about like, Hey, let's talk about the other thing, which is that like life sucks sometimes. Yeah. Like who are you gonna be about that? Mm-hmm , you know, so, that was a really important question that I don't think anybody really directly addresses, like, what's your relationship to empathy?

Like, you don't have to ask it that way, but I mean, like even listening through the filter of like, how does this person respond when I express X, Y, Z, for sure. Yeah. I love that. They're much Spier ones, but they're just gonna take too long and just, you have to just go download it. That's just go download it.

It's free. Just go download it. People . Yeah. um, let's talk about more of the things that you're offering. So we have the, all our art of filtration masterclass. What's that all about? So the art of filtration masterclass is you can either, um, do it without doing the 21st day date questions, or you can do the date questions and then do this essentially.

Um, the art of filtration is what I call the skill. It's the skill of discernment. So the art filtration is learning how to filter people through, you know, what it is that you are basing off of. Like, this is getting too wordy. Who should you date? Who should you not date? Like, how do you decide? And in today's day and age, we have so many options and.

I don't know if you've ever read the book, modern romance, romance, Bazi, I'm sorry, but he's basically comparing, you know, dating in the olden days, how we had like that person who lives two doors down from us and that person who lives four doors down from us. And those are our options for who we're gonna marry to.

Now the fact that technology has made the whole world accessible to us. We have so many options. We don't know who to be with. Yeah. And so, um, yeah, this is all about how to understand how to best understand people and like understand yourself and what you want. And, being able to what I say, run people through your filter, which is really just practicing really refined discernment, owning your standards.

and I think I was saying to you earlier, like letting yourself be picky in a way that has integrity, not in like a, like a neurotic random way, but in a very, like a, an intentional way. like bringing a lot of intention to, you know, I, I was just watching Indian matchmaking. Have you seen that show? No.

What is this? Okay girl. So there is this show on Netflix and it's all about, um, arranged marriages and there's this woman. Um, so she is a professional Indian matchmaker and she, you know, brings couples together, whether they're in India or they're in the states. And it's all about this process of how they're like choosing their partners.

And it was very similar to how, you know, obviously, there various like Hindu cultures throughout the show, um, or like Punjabi as well, but it also matched up to just any ethnicity of client that I have, which is like, okay, they have to be this height. They have to be funny and they have to dress well.

And like every single thing that they list off. Oh. And you know, like usually on the list on the show is something like. Close with family is a doctor is an engineer, whatever. And so like, I, I also noticed that we really stuck at choosing what's important for our partners, like what traits our partners have.

And there's a Valiant effort to like create security through caring about certain things. But we also fail when it comes to choosing, um, some other really important qualities that we're missing. And so the art filtration masterclass is about understanding those other qualities. That way we may not be thinking of when choosing our partners.

you know, things maybe like integrity or like how you wanna feel when you're with somebody, you know? Yeah. No, yeah. Like specifically integrity is a great one. I'm pretty sure mine that's in there big time. as well as like your relationship to money versus how much money you have or how much money you make, what's your relationship to money?

What's your relationship to stress? Do you numb and dissociate or do you self regulate? Like what, how do you handle stress or like there are different, like all of those things. Ooh, I love that one. I don't think that one's on my list. I've got, I've got quite a list myself and, you know, I've, I've gone through some work and have adjusted things where it is very much less like the initial things that you were talking about and more on, you know, more, more, more quality type, um, things on that list now.

But that's a really good one. I've never thought about that. That's yeah. Yeah, how partner partner handles stress is actually like, in my opinion, one of the most important things about them. Totally. Yeah. Okay. Add, add to list. Add. So how, how else can people connect with you work with you? All of the things.

Yeah. You can contact me through my website or through my Instagram. Instagram is where I'm the fastest. I am not running any groups right now. Usually I run group programs, but you can work with me one on one or with your partner, um, in a, in a deep, solo mentorship, that, or, you know, the, the masterclass, those, those are the options.

Those are the options right now. I love and go download those, those 20 ish questions for anybody who's single right now, cuz there's gonna, there's gonna be some good ones in there. for sure. For sure. If not, to just expand your awareness of what you should be like paying attention to about people, um, percent.

Yeah. Mm-hmm yeah. Amazing. Well, thank you so much for sharing so much of your heart and your expertise today on this episode, I know I learned a lot and I think a lot of other people probably got some really amazing wisdom nuggets from you today. So thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

It's an honor to be here and you know, just like sister to sister, I really admire you too. And I feel like we're both watching each other from, from our respective corners being like, yeah, just like cheering each other on nodding, like love this.