Mary received my Ph.D in Art History from Rutgers University and a mediation teaching certification through the CPD accredited School of Positive Transformation and she has studied mindfulness, meditation, and manifestation techniques with many leaders in the field. Mary's passion is helping clients connect to their own intuitions through mind/body visualization exercises and guided meditations. Learn more about Mary at
@milleamethod
https://www.facebook.com/milleamethod
Thank you so much for tuning in!
If you are looking for solutions that will allow you to break free from negative thought patterns, worrying, and the uncomfortable symptoms that are caused by anxiety check out Jennifer's website at www.jenniferbronsnick.com or join the Anxiety-Proof Her Facebook Community HERE: https://www.facebook.com/groups/anxietyproofher
Mary received my Ph.D in Art History from Rutgers University and a mediation teaching certification through the CPD accredited School of Positive Transformation and she has studied mindfulness, meditation, and manifestation techniques with many leaders in the field. Mary's passion is helping clients connect to their own intuitions through mind/body visualization exercises and guided meditations. Learn more about Mary at
@milleamethod
https://www.facebook.com/milleamethod
Thank you so much for tuning in!
If you are looking for solutions that will allow you to break free from negative thought patterns, worrying, and the uncomfortable symptoms that are caused by anxiety check out Jennifer's website at www.jenniferbronsnick.com or join the Anxiety-Proof Her Facebook Community HERE: https://www.facebook.com/groups/anxietyproofher
00:03
Welcome to the anxiety proof her podcast, where amazing women come for education, inspiration and hope around healing from anxiety. Each month, you're going to hear from other women who took control of their mental health by using outside the box holistic strategies to cope with their anxiety and to ultimately thrive. You will also learn from experts in the health and wellness industry, about the tools they use every day to help their patients or claim their well being. We hope this information allows you to see that there are many different paths to healing. I'm your host, Jennifer Bronsnick, and I'm a licensed clinical social worker, and anxiety treatment professional. I help women and teen girls who struggle with anxiety, self doubt, and perfectionism to tap into their innate resilience, get to the root of their fears, and implement custom healing strategies so that they can experience peace of mind, more self confidence and be liberated from the suffering that living with anxiety causes. I have lived with anxiety my whole life, and know how hard it can be. I also know that there is hope. And it's Welcome to the anxiety prepper podcast. As always, we get started by dropping into our hearts. So take a moment to just bring some awareness to the space in your chest. space that is holding your beautiful heart and begin to breathe a little slower, a little deeper. Imagining that the breath is flowing in and out through your heart center. And as you breathe, just notice what your feeling state is right now. Just give it a name, no judgment, no right or wrong. Only awareness and if it's a state that you would like to shift and want to invite you to think of another feeling that you'd like to be experiencing instead which might be the state of ease or peace on the next few breaths, you can either continue breathing into your heart or you can choose to breathe in one of these other renewing feelings. The these piece called just let your body experience this feeling from the top of your head down to the soles of your feet. And remember that you can come back to this feeling at any point during this interview during your day that peace, ease and calm are always available to you. Taking one more full breath and coming back into the present moment feeling refreshed and ready to receive exactly what you need to receive today. So I am really excited to have my friend Mary Malay on the podcast today we've been talking about this for I think like four months now that I wanted Mary to come on and just share her wisdom as well as her vibe with all of you. Mary has a PhD in art history from wreckers and a meditation teaching certification through the CPD Accredited School of positive transformation and she studied mindfulness meditation, and manifestation techniques with many leaders in the field. Her passion is helping clients connect to their own intuitions through mind body visualization exercises and guided meditations and you can find her at WWW dot the Malay method I ll e a method.com. And I'll repeat that at the end as well. So thank you for coming on there.
05:01
I'm so excited. I've been looking forward to this.
05:04
Yay. So, since this is a podcast that's all about outside the box healing strategies and anxiety, would you mind sharing a little bit about your experience with the feeling of anxiety or fear? And how maybe that led you into this healing journey?
05:25
Yes, I 100% was led into this healing journey route because of extreme anxiety. And that, honestly, I can't think of a time that I didn't have anxiety, I had a sort of unconventional childhood, I think a lot of my coping skills became very OCD ish kind of coping skills, piled into my teens. And in my late teens, sort of in college, I started having pretty severe panic attacks. Um, and that came and went in my life for years, I mean, really, in my 20s, and my 30s, I would occasionally see a therapist, it just became something I just learned to live with, I just ran a little bit hot. Um, and I would go through periods where I wouldn't have a lot of anxiety in periods where I had extreme anxiety, and it would just sort of ebb and flow. And until my 40s, and in my early 40s, I had two small kids, I moved from the city, which was really a spiritual vortex. For me, I was very balanced living in New York City, I moved to the suburbs with two small kids, I was finishing a PhD. And I felt very disconnected from my own authenticity, I think at that point, I was really living my life for a lot of different people in my life, and pleasing, you know, pleasing my husband pleasing my children pleasing my dissertation advisor, pleasing all of these women in the suburbs that that, you know, weren't really as aligned with the way that I was used to living. And I think it just snapped me. Um, I found myself at one point, just like, I would get a lot of psychosomatic kind of things. So it just was ramping up and ramping up. And I was just in this constant state of like, either having an anxiety attack deciding I was dying, or, you know, or completely immersed in what I needed to do to keep everyone around me happy and alive. And it just was too much. So, it all as these things do came to a head and I was not that I was seeing a therapist, I didn't want to take any kind of medication at that point. I was under extreme stress to finish this PhD and really unhappy in my own kind of personal life happy as a mother and a wife, but not happy where I was living and what I was doing. Anyways, I ended up having a problem with my thyroid nodule on my thyroid that they discovered, which frankly, I was digging for something and I found it, the deeper we dig in, the more we dig the more and so there it was. And next thing you know, I was getting surgery, and they thought maybe I had thyroid cancer and I was 43 and I had finished his PhD and all these things like so you can imagine it was complete breakdown. Um, and I managed it I you know, I I am a proponent of anxiety and depression medications if they work for you. Works for me, and that took me off the edge, but I still wasn't happy, you know. And so once I got myself settled, I got my thyroid out. It was fine. I got my PhD finished. Just amazing. Yes. But you know, I pushed through that final like adrenal like push and then I was completely depleted. Um, and I kept thinking there's got to be another way like this is this This can't be it. If this is I want off I want off this
09:40
track because you have such light energy and so like there's just so much that you bring to the world and you know, to notice that and to say okay, no, this is not who I am. is huge.
09:57
Yeah, like I felt like I had like a cork In my like champagne bottle, and I had not been connecting to my magic, I've always been a magical person since a child like, you know, I, I've always read tarot cards, I've always built altars and been interested in spiritual, you know, and mystical things. In fact, I wrote a lot of my dissertation about that. So I just was like, What am I doing? This is weird. I'm not living authentically, I'm not in my own flow. This is weird. This isn't good for anybody. And so I started opening myself up again, like thinking, Alright, so here I am in New Jersey, in the suburb, that's fine. There's got to be somebody here, who sees things, the way that I see things or that can teach me something. And I just, I just started setting that intention. And I started saying yes to things. I just decided I'm saying yes to everything. I'm just gonna say yes to anything that I think is interesting. And I flew to Colorado, and I became, I studied alchemy, I started reading Tarot cards, and I started going into alchemy. Alchemy is, um, is basically kind of an extension of the Golden Dawn and the, the idea it's a mix of tarot, Kabbalah. And the idea of Ascended Masters and all of these kinds of it's like the mystical the mystic schools have. Yeah, it's super cool. And, and it was super neat. I started taking classes at the Kabbalah Center in the city. I mean, I literally was like, I'm going to get back on this journey.
11:46
Can I please ask you? So were you anxious while you were doing that? Because I think a lot of people get paralyzed with the anxiety. And so therefore, they don't do those things that are outside of their comfort zone.
12:03
No, the opposite. I started to feel much less anxious. And because what I realized, I you know what it's so interesting. So when you ask that, so I went to a site like a psychopharmacologist, right to who would give you your this is when I and she would say, you know, oh, well, you need to learn this. And I was like, no, no, I just need answers to the big questions, I need to talk to somebody about big, big, big things I need to connect to. I need to connect to like, you know, my magic to like, my higher self to like, I need I need to be around people that are thinking about those big things. I think my problem is that I've been trying to shove myself into this little neat space. And I'm not
12:52
like that. Yes, no, you're not opposite. So
12:55
the more that I started to reconnect with all of those big questions, yeah. You know, like, the, the, the fear of death, the anxiety of a lot of anxiety around dying young and leaving my kids and, and I started to, like, realize that that was, you know, that was the coping mechanism for the fact that I was not giving myself this. I wasn't nurturing this part of myself. That was just just who I am. I'm a seeker.
13:29
Yeah, so almost anxiety was a gift, because it was telling you, you are not on the right path.
13:36
1,000,000% and I feel like I had sort of been coasting. And when I was in the city, I was intellectually stimulated enough that it was it kept me It kept me kind of out of trouble. You know, I was created looking at the mat, and I had interesting friends and I was doing stuff. And I was writing this PhD, and I was distracted by all these things that I found interesting. And then when I was just left to myself, you know, it was it just wasn't enough. It just wasn't
14:12
the dark night of the soul search
14:15
by the soul. So um, I kind of went, you know, at this is I need, I need to figure this out. And I everyone would say meditate. And I would sit down, I would meditate. And like, the idea of me sitting and meditating with my own thoughts was terrible. It would throw me into so much more anxiety. And I couldn't figure it out. I tried headspace. I tried all those things. And, and then it gave me more anxiety that I was bad at meditating. And I remember there was this guy, that someone gave me his name, and he was going to hire him to teach me to meditate. And I said, Alright, I can't do it that day, because I have a new puppy coming and then my kids have to do this. And then I'm, I'm doing this and I'm defending my dissertation and the mafia, blah, blah, blah. And he told me me that it was not a good time for me to learn to meditate, like he fired me before he even started. And I thought like that can't be good. Like that. I must be, I really need this. So if this guy doesn't like, if this guy's not willing to take on my chaos, like, wow, I mean seriously, like who says no to someone, you know? Yeah. Anyways, that's that and um, I kind of just put meditation like, Alright, maybe that's just not going to be my thing. And then I had this. So during preschool, I met this woman who is from India, and we were kind of just acquaintances, I really liked her and she liked me. And we would, we would, um, you know, both fallen, did a lot of volunteering at school. And she said, we were sort of just, you know, we'd get together for breakfast with a bunch of other people. And she said, hey, you know what, my father is coming from India for six months to stay with me. He's a guru, and he teaches meditation in India. Are you interested? I know that and because along the way, she would go to India and say, Can I bring you anything? And I was like, Would you mind bringing me a mala? And other like, what do you want? I don't know. I just sort of want you to choose. And so I guess she knew that I was. I was curious. Yeah, there's temperature a bit. And I said, You know what? Yes, I'm gonna say yes to that. Because this is what I do. Now. I say, Yes, I'm an experience. And she said, all you have to do, he doesn't charge. He just you have to commit to three coming three days in a row. And I said, All right, I can totally do that. And so I went to her house. And I met with her dad, who was just this like, presence, I mean, just this amazing presence. And I could barely understand what he was saying, when he was speaking to me in English. And I was like, you know, that went on for years. It takes me now sometimes I think it was more than the language barrier. I honestly think, his his lessons that he taught me, I download when I'm ready to understand them that they were just, it took a long time. And he sat for 45 minutes in silence. He said, Oh, um, and then that was it. And for maybe 44 minutes, I was like, Oh, my God, I don't know what I'm doing. Like, we're just sitting here in silence. Like, I can't relax. And maybe there was one minute where I was like, oh, and then I went the next day. And then I went the next day. And every time he'd hand me a piece of fruit, and just we'd leave, we wouldn't talk about it. And I'm telling you, something shifted in me in those three days. And that was just the beginning of my journey.
17:47
Wow, that's amazing. And I love that, because we've talked about human design a little bit on the podcast that you responded, you followed that strategy of? Yes,
17:59
yes. And this has been, I can't remember because you did human. You did a reading for me and my family and human design. Around that same time, that was very time, actually, that I just say, Yes. And you and I met through our friends. And, um, Jennifer is such a gift to everyone that's listening. She's like an amazing connector. You've connected to me to so many people in my life. But we met socially not in any kind of right in any way. We missed a birthday party connection. And you You posted something that you were doing that that was early, like way before the fat of human design? Oh, yeah. And I Googled it. And I was like, What is this thing? And I'm like, I'm so yes, I like her. I trust her energy. And I hired you to do that. And that, like, whoa, this thing is super cool. So I guess that was probably in my
18:55
round that spiral time of Yeah, I
18:59
don't think that I put it together actually, until you're saying it. But that idea of the generator saying yes, I'm really the thing. I mean, it was my youngest son being a projector and needing to be invited in for things. That is something that was like, that was my aha moment. And for that reading was I love
19:17
that. Yeah. So I want to hear more about how do you use meditation to help the people that you work with now because you after you've got that moment of okay, I get this what are the you know, practices like how are you teaching? How are you working these days with people?
19:43
So, that was years and years ago, six or seven years ago? I continue to manage the lifetime Yeah, with the mother with the the I became the dearest friends with that. The woman and a group of our friends that we we still meditate with each other and they became really my spiritual sister. So years and years of that, and then just continuing to go to to study different things for my own soul. That was the meaning of a long. And then during COVID I felt really, during the first lockdown the initial lockdown, I have so many friends that are teachers and doctors and nurses. And I felt really compelled to give something to these people that I cared for. And then at not mother's and my mother, you know that I felt like oh my god, I want to do something, I want to do something for everyone. And I don't know what I have to offer. And I thought, You know what, I've done so many. I've taken so many meditation classes, I meditate on my own, I read tarot cards, I have done all these things, I bet you that I could put together a I could do a grounding meditation for everybody, I could probably do that. So it just started like that. I said, every single day, at two o'clock while we're sitting at our houses, anybody that wants to sign on, I will for free. Do this. And let's just I can probably do for you. I was finding I was meditating like four times a day just to not jump out of the window and, and people start showing up. friends were like, literally doctors were doctor friends, one doctor friend would would map out the 20 minutes, she would go in an exam room turn off the light and lie like in the exam room. I had friends that were in hospice, I'm working in the hospice ward of the local hospital, we're in New Jersey. So it was as you know, like, a dream. My mother in Colorado, I had people in New York City, and people were like just showing up and showing up. And over the course of the summer, I probably did 70 of these and I started experimenting. And then I started getting creative. And then I I found that it was like I was kind of downloading. I felt it was a similar experience to when I read tarot cards, which was that my intuition was downloading what everybody needed. And I started getting creative, and I was doing chakras and I was doing and we would create space to send to you know, our loved ones. And I don't know, it just became more and more creative. Yeah, yeah, then I got certified because a friend who's a dog crash, listen, I'd like to refer you to my patients, I you need to have some kind of a certification. I was like, Oh, my god is this I was thinking I was gonna be interior designer and art consultant, I'm like, Wow, all right, I'm gonna pivot, this is what I'm going to do and provide. So now I'm what I do with Malay method, I started my own business. And what I do with my clients now and my is, my focus has has really been this, I came at this as a hot mess, I was never a perfect, you know, a lot of us come at, at this from a place of being a hot mess. And I think that the anxiety of being doing it perfectly keeps a lot of us from doing it regularly. Mm hmm. And never going to tell anyone that I have all the answers because I don't. But I am very willing to share what I have cobbled together. And, you know, with other people, and that's really my that's really where I come from. So I focus on figuring out a way to connect with your highest self with your authentic self with your spiritual self, whether or not that, you know, sometimes that doesn't connect with people, and that's okay. But we all have a higher self, we all have an intuition. We all have someone that we are when we're not a mother, or a sister or a friend or an employee or a colleague, you know, and who is that. And I think that in, in really the essence, I lost who that was, and I found happiness when I reconnected with her. And that's my goal. And meditation and guided meditation, I think, is one of many tools to get there.
24:27
And that's when you're gifted at it.
24:31
I really love it, like I get in there and, you know, I I get in the zone and I just sort of try to intuitively download. I go with visually, I'm a visual person. So I take the person, you know, on a journey that feels like the journey they need to get to to strip away some of that and reconnect
24:58
that. For people that are listening, that are maybe where you started. So they're in that space of anxiety, suffering, feeling uncomfortable, is there a message of hope that you can share for them?
25:17
Yes, there is always a way to a way out of that. I feel like I am the poster child for a way out of that I was as as anxious as anyone ever could be. And I think that there's always a formula for getting out of it. I don't think that everyone fits into the same one. But you just need to say yes, and be open to trying different modalities and allowing yourself to see that probably, I think almost I mean, you're the you're the expert, you're the therapist, not me. But it seems to me that all of those those feelings are there to tell you that it's time to take a deep dive into figuring out what you aren't saying yes to. Yeah. And to the right things, you find your flow? Yeah.
26:15
And we're all the expert. You know, we're all the expert in our lives, right? I may have a certain training, but you know, I am not the expert of my clients, they, you know, you, we all have this unique ability to tap into our inner expert and trust ourselves, which I love that that's what you were doing.
26:37
1,000,000% and the guru age of the Guru is
26:42
where we are, please, feminine? Looking for
26:46
answers. I will say, I was always looking for an expert. I'm very like, I'm a one three, in my human, I'm very much about I need to have the need to go do all the research, I need to have the I need to have all of the degrees. I'm never an expert. And that has been a very, that is a challenge for me to be even know to be able to say I know what I'm doing like, I don't know.
27:13
Yeah, I know. It's your body. I think that body, which is one of the reasons I love human design is that it's just getting out of your head and tapping into your body. If your body is drawn towards it, if you feel something of a yes, it doesn't have to be like, yes, absolutely. But it just like a maybe a little spark, just listen, like follow the little sparks, because that's what's gonna lead you to. And then law, there's not experts, there are teachers, there are guides, there are people that have been there before you that can just make your path a little bit easier. And I think that that's, you know, hopefully what we both are doing, and at least trying
27:57
is a guide that I called, I called it the Malay method, because it's my method, it's my own cobbled together, you know, thing. And if there's something along the way that that someone goes, Oh, then that's amazing. And you know, what? Not one size fits all. It's my own, you know, but if I put anyone can do it, and now I've got so, yeah,
28:25
can you share your website again, so people can find you,
28:30
um, www Malay method, which is m i ll, e a, m e th, o de.com. And I also have Instagram at the same Malay method and Facebook the same, it's all the same. And, yeah, so I'm just I'm finishing right now, I'm teaching a Foundation's course, which is the basics of meditation. And in this after the new year, I'm really excited to do a manifestation workshop. And, yeah, to do, I've done, you know, I sort of roll with what I'm feeling. So I'm going to do a new year manifestation, visual vision board, but then actually going from just making a vision board to working with that vision board to manifest.
29:17
Sign me up for that I am your event.
29:21
Was that fun? stuff.
29:23
So thank you so much, Mary. Please go check her out and have a wonderful day.
29:29
Me, I appreciate it. Okay. Bye.
29:33
Thank you so much for taking the time to invest in your well being. I hope you learned at least one new idea or technique that you might want to implement into your own life. Remember, you're not alone. There is hope and with the right information and support you can thrive. If you're dealing with panic are looking for a step by step process that will allow you to break free from this crippling fear state. I want to invite you you to check out my panic attack survival guide you can grab your free copy at WWW dot Jennifer bronsnick.com Thanks for listening.