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Sober Vibes Podcast
Welcome to Sober Vibes, where sobriety meets empowerment! Hosted by sober coach, author, and mom Courtney Andersen—who’s been thriving in her alcohol-free life since 8/18/2012—this podcast is your go-to space for real talk, proven strategies, and inspiring stories from women who are redefining what it means to live without alcohol.
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Sober Vibes Podcast
Using House Therapy and Feng Shui to Support Your Sobriety w/ Amy Babish
Episode 217: Using House Therapy and Feng Shui to Support Your Sobriety w/ Amy Babish
In episode 217 of the Sober Vibes podcast, Courtney Andersen welcomes Amy Babish to the show and the ladies discuss using Feng Shui to support your Sobriety. As well as ancestral patterns beyond the genetics of addiction.
Amy Babish, MA, LPC, ATR-BC, is a somatic expert, house therapist (Feng Shui), Alchemical Family & Systems Constellations facilitator, and licensed therapist with over 20 years of experience. She helps people who’ve plateaued in therapy and mindset work feel at home in themselves, their bodies, homes, lives, and their lineage. Amy guides you to transmute stuck energy and dissolve intergenerational patterns into clarity, alignment, and a sense of profound belonging. She hosts The Soulful Visionary Podcast, where guests receive attuned processes aligning body, space, and legacy.
What you will learn in this episode:
• Feng shui principles can help remove stagnant energy associated with drinking patterns
• The "Taoist trilogy" includes human, cosmic, and earthbound luck—all affecting recovery
• Command position bedroom arrangement helps you see challenges before they arrive
• Moving 27 things in your space creates significant energetic shifts
• Ancestral constellation work uncovers patterns beyond genetics that influence addiction
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Hey, welcome back to the Sober Vibes podcast. I am your host and sober coach, courtney Anderson. I'm also your go-to guide with living life without booze. I like that one. You are listening to episode 217.
Courtney Andersen :I have such a great guest on today. I really enjoyed this conversation. So, for the ones out there who love some energy work, this is for you, and we mainly talk about feng shui in this, but then we also, too, talk about some ancestral patterns beyond the genetics of addiction. So, again for the woo-woos out there, this is it. But listen, the woo-woo is very real and has been for decades, decades. It's just. I do believe that when you start getting into this type of stuff, it's just when you're ready to get into it, you get into it.
Courtney Andersen :So my guest today is Amy Babbage. Amy is a somatic expert, a house therapist. She is a licensed therapist as well, so she has got a shit ton of certifications and education behind all of this. I also too, in the beginning of this episode I asked her. I was like so can you just explain exactly what you do, right? I really, really, really hope, too, that you use the information that Amy shares with you today about helping you get unstuck, and she really does work with people about how to get out of that stuck energy and find some clarity working through patterns. So enjoy today's episode. If you haven't already, make sure to subscribe and review the podcast, because those reviews help and kick ass today. Keep on trucking out there. Hey Amy, welcome to the Sober Vibes podcast. I'm so excited to have you here today. Keep on trucking out there. Hey Amy, welcome to the Sober Vibes podcast.
Amy Babish :I'm so excited to have you here today, I'm so excited to be here and I just I'm loving the sound quality already of your, of your mic.
Courtney Andersen :Oh, good, good, Thank you, because all it is is I used to have like the microphone and the headset, but then I just found these just to be an easier setup and that it is a better quality sound. So I appreciate somebody telling me that, besides just myself listening to it. Okay, I feel like today's conversation is well, I know it's going to be amazing, but this is like this is. This is a lot about energy and I am one with energy. So I, and with your expertise, I want you just to explain, because you do a lot and work with a lot. So, from your self, explain what you do, yeah.
Amy Babish :So I have been in the realms of doing personal work for over 24 years. I still licensed psychotherapist. I was a art therapist by training. Shame and trauma were my wheelhouses for a long time, and then I realized I'm actually intuitive during this journey, and then I started adding other things to my toolbox of intuition and I stopped being a psychotherapist. But I carry my license because that's the right thing to do. So I would say that I am more of a guide than even a coach, and I'm helping people to come back to their homes themselves, their bodies, their souls, their lineages, their land and their legacy.
Amy Babish :So I use many, many different modalities and two that we're going to talk about today. I'll kind of give the sound bite of what those things are, because I can share. I had a bias, definitely about the first one, which is feng shui, and I've heard about feng shui for a long time, and then I was in the process of trying to manifest my own home and I was a single mother. I am a single mother still, and this was during the pandemic. I lived outside of Washington DC, the market was tight and my guides literally guided me to my mentor. So my mentor, her name is Amanda Gibby Peters. Her kind of expression of feng shui, which is a Taoist modality, is called simple shui and her framework is called health therapy. And when we have this conversation today you'll really see why it feels like therapy. It's very therapeutic.
Amy Babish :But Tao has really opened my eyes, which I think is going to really speak to your base of listeners, Because I was really aware of kind of the human part, of why we're here, like shame, work, somatic work, belief work, all those things. And Taoism it's the phrase called the Taoist trilogy, and so it's based on kind of like how we navigate life, and so that first part is called human luck. So I think all of your listeners are going to understand human luck. This also gets into addiction. The second part is cosmic luck and I imagine many of your listeners might understand that too. That's like astrology, human design, ancestors, the actual physical weather, anything like that. And then the third place was like a little bit of a I've been punked candid camera feeling for me, which is earthbound luck. So I was very aware of land.
Amy Babish :I held sacred space for a long time, but I did not understand the potentiality in our homes. You don't have to own a home. You could be couch surfing Any place you call home, including. This also includes office space has just as much impact as personal work. So prior to this, I would have said I'm doing something wrong or someone else is doing something wrong and this needs to change outside of me or within me. But I never understood the potentiality that. You know at this point in these times, we understand quantum physics. We understand that everything is energy, and so when you think about your home or your office, everything in your space is holding energy and holding memory. And so when it comes to sobriety and working through whatever part of the journey you're on, what's in your space and how you orient your space could probably be one of the most untapped potentials outside of the other two places, and we'll get into the other modality later on. But we'll just kind of lead with that, I think.
Courtney Andersen :Well, in my book too, in the beginning I talk about when, because there's such a stale energy that happens when somebody is in active addiction and it gets stuck in that and it becomes very stale. So in my book in the beginning, in the first 30 days, I write it out as feng shui move the shit around in your house, because house, because, especially for a lot of people, it then becomes very at home drinking at home or using at home right, or in doing it on the same couch with the same pillow or the same chair, where there's like an indentation in it, right. So like I talk about that, where I'm like move the energy, it's been a sale, even if that's just getting a couple pillows right, some new pillows, or rearrange the furniture a little bit of of of moving it around. It's so crazy because my mom my mom is the one who got me into that spiritual energy side of it and she I.
Courtney Andersen :When I say move the energy, I'm talking from my mother, because my mother used to say that and she would go through that period every couple months where she's like we got to move the energy. I'm talking from my mother, because my mother used to say that and she would go through that period every couple months where she's like we got to move the energy in our home where we were living at the time and she still says that and then go. And then the other topic we're going to talk about is the ancestral patterns beyond the genetics of addiction. So if you kind of want to chat about that, we'll start with that now and then go into the punctuate part.
Amy Babish :Well, we'll weave back and forth. However, however, our conversation handers. So this is the other place of this would be in the cosmic luck realms. Yeah, so it's not to say at all that addiction does have epigenetics. That's 100, 100 believe that, yes, and to get some emotional, spiritual relief, it's oftentimes related to ancestral patterns and I, I am an alchemical family and systems or systemic constellation facilitator, okay, and so constellation work is. There's different ways, just like with all modalities, there's different ways of facilitating, and mine really is in the realms of nothing is omitted. And so some constellation facilitators only kind of work within the first couple of generations, and that's still really important work. I'm not saying anything that's wrong with that. And for someone that's like oh, I've tried constellations and didn't help me, sometimes we have to go really far back, and so when I do the work with people, I work with people who are adopted, so you don't need to know anything, you don't need to do 23andMe, it's just coming with intention, and so intention really is what the boundaries, or like the guardrails, of the work is.
Amy Babish :And when we get into the ancestral roots of addiction, oftentimes when we're doing constellation work, we've thrown literally everything at something, and it doesn't mean that this listener might be sober, but they still might have a lot of the experiences that go along with drinking in other parts of their life. It might be with sex, it might be with money, it might be relationally, it might be with power dynamics, that the highs and the lows and the toxicity involved with drinking are playing out in other parts of our life. I kind of think about it as like a coconut shell game, like unfortunately we let go of the substance, but the addiction, the power dynamics are still playing out. And so when we go into constellation work, the way that we talk about it is that in other parts of your life this might not be happening, but within that one place, or five to 20%, it feels like, no matter what you do, you're back at that place, like you could have really clear beliefs, really clear intentions, you could feel really safe in your body, and then all of a sudden, everything is like it, just like it was. And so when we're in an ancestral entanglement, it feels like we're seeing through our ancestors' eyes, we're hearing things we believe, like this situation is exactly, it's like a conviction Like this is the absolute truth and this will always be what it is no matter what I do.
Amy Babish :Yes, that is the time of constellation work, and so when we're doing constellation work, first we start with an intention and then the second part. We might do a little bit of that work today. I'm not sure how far, how deep we'll go, but we then we ask who are we standing with? And so you don't have to be psychic, I'm not going to go past anyone's boundaries, I don't go into your field. But there's a process of what we call tuning in, and I do constellation work individually and also in groups.
Amy Babish :And so when we're working one-to-one, what will happen is that we will probably stumble upon an ancestor where they didn't start with addiction, but something happened in the family system or in the historical context.
Amy Babish :There might've been a famine, there might have been something where labor wasn't available, there might have been a war or genocide, depending on how far back we go, and whatever happened with that ancestor then looks like they're kicked out of the family.
Amy Babish :And so then oftentimes it happens where there might be kids before that parent or that ancestor is kicked out, and so the descendants carry the omission of that ancestor. So when we say omission, literally like they're written out of the family story, and so this is not in a way of like. I'm not contradicting myself. People are like you just said. You don't have to know the history. It lives in our bodies, it lives epigenetically and it's a feeling of I don't belong, it's a feeling of I don't matter, it's different flavors, I'm not lovable. It's a feeling of people will never believe me or I don't know how to have relationships in a safe way. It looks different ways. I don't know how to have relationships in a safe way. It looks different ways, but we're carrying the unresolved burden or family secret and it plays out oftentimes over time as it's passed down generationally. It can look like addiction.
Courtney Andersen :Yes, I'm going to guess you read how the Body Keeps Score. Yeah, yeah, are you? I'm going to guess you read the the how the body keeps score. Yeah yeah, yes, great book. So that's in in that book. I believe it says too that it's it takes about what Seven generations to to finally break something, to finally break a cycle, correct?
Amy Babish :So that's a somatic perspective. So I'm also a somatic expert. Yes, yes, when we do a constellation work like this, it doesn't have to take seven, seven generations.
Courtney Andersen :Oh, okay, I like it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, all right.
Amy Babish :So there's different, different a lot of spiritual teachers talk about and a lot of wisdom traditions would talk about. The experiences of our ancestors go to seven generations and past and seven generations forward and with constellation work, the impact is still there. But we can resolve it in a different way, where the descendant and that's the people who are listening we are the descendants, we also become the ancestors, but in this listening phase we are the descendant. The descendant is not at the mercy of the entanglement.
Courtney Andersen :Gotcha. So how do you work with healing that, with healing the ancestral patterns?
Amy Babish :So that's where the constellation comes in. So a one-to-one constellation would be someone coming to me and I have my own podcast and my work is so esoteric it's quite hard to understand. In my podcast people are receiving a complimentary session, and so I have a lot of podcasts that talk about the intentions and constellation work and then we do a full constellation, so that takes about an hour or 90 minutes, given what the entanglement is. But the cliff notes of it are someone would come, we do a pre-talk, we get clear on your intention, and so the intention is always like what is the forward movement? So if you didn't have this cycle, this experience of no matter what you do, you're going to always get this, really I don't know if I can swear on your podcast.
Amy Babish :Oh, please yes you can swear, no matter what we do, we get this really shitty or fucked up outcome. That's the entanglement. The entanglement is this is what no matter what I do and I know I'm not helpless, I'm not a victim and some people might feel like a victim or helpless, but no matter what I do, I end up with this dynamic or I end up feeling like this. That is the entanglement. So then we need if you didn't have to manage that and if that was not in your system, what would you use that energy for? What would you like your life to be? How would you like to function? What would you like to enjoy? So the intention is two parts when I do constellation work, so we're acknowledging both what the forward movement might be and then also what the real lived experience is. And so once we get that, then we do what we call a tune-in, a tune-in experience. And so the tune-in is the client and myself beginning to tune in and we might get, just like any other kind of personal work, you might get sensations, somatic sensations, you might get images, you might get sounds, you might get colors, and so that's kind of like our touching base, and some ancestors are so ready like they're like giddy up. They show up either for me or for the descendant, and so when that happens you don't have to be psychic. Like I said before, we're going to just be curious about who we're standing with, and for some clients it's very clear. It's very like recent generations. So it could be a parent who's been deceased, it could be a sibling who died at birth, it could be things like that, or it might be something like oh, I don't know what time period we're in, but I think we're in a rural part of my lineage and it feels like we're we're in the 1800s like, or for some people it might be. I don't know where we are, but we're really really way far back.
Amy Babish :So different tune-ins happen and then we go through a series of asking whoever we're with, did this start with you? Do you carry this? And so one of the variations, which also is a nuance to the way that I do constellations, is if both lineages, if you're maternal and you're paternal, carry it. It's oftentimes what I call a soul level assignment. So when it's a soul level assignment, we work with the part of your soul that is entangled with this, and so it's a little bit different.
Amy Babish :So we go through kind of like the layers of sometimes it's like every generation, and then what we do is we step it back, so we go back do is we step it back so we go back to the original place and so we're in the original place, that's, we can see the context of what was really going on, and through that we then bring in a resource that wasn't available during that ancestor's lifetime that will give them some relief, and that ancestor receives the relief, and then all of the descendants down through the client that I have, and if they have anybody else like if they have children or they have legacy projects that this is showing up in, like office dynamics or their philanthropy or however it might look like, with lovers or relationships. Wherever it's going, it will go all the way through from however far back. So sometimes I work with people that it's ancient, ancient roots, I'm sure.
Courtney Andersen :And with that breakthrough in the work that you do, I'm going to assume, I have to assume that once you hear that maybe this is just how my mind works, right, like once you hear that and go through the work, well, first, are they in a? Is the client in a hypnotic state, is no present, like I would be talking to you right now, yeah, okay. And also, too, I would have to assume because, like I said, my mind would be like, oh, okay, once I did this work in here, that this, this wasn't, it wasn't me right, like this was a pattern that was carried down with the epigenetics. Like, okay, I could understand it more. To move past it Does that come out through a lot of your clients too, of them understanding where this came from.
Amy Babish :So what's really powerful is that, like you, you believe it's yours. Yes, you so like. And that is that is where the like, the Taoist trilogy comes in, because you think there's something I'm not doing right. Right, because why I have all of the right motivations, I have all of my heart is in the right place. I'm vulnerable around this. I've done so much personal work, I've spent so much money on this. Why isn't it working? And so there's a lot of frustration and a lot of grief because it's like oh, I see it happen for other people, why can't it happen for me? Like WTF.
Amy Babish :When we do this work, we have so much humility. Because then it's like oh, this ancestor, wherever they are, they went through something really real, and seeing them in their wholeness or in their humanity lets you see also your own struggle oh, this is what I say to clients is like when you have a sibling group not every single sibling gets this, and so the ancestors are picking you because there's something extraordinary about you. And it doesn't feel like it when you are in the throes of addiction or when you're in the throes of something really painful and complicated. But they know.
Courtney Andersen :I'm sorry. Can the same ancestor pick the same siblings? Is that possible for the same one to pick the siblings?
Amy Babish :It's possible, but usually because it's an intergenerational pattern, other ancestors are involved. So it's the same thread, the same omission, the same family secret, the same pain, whatever the flavor is, but because it's been going down generation after generation, other ancestors are involved. If it's a sibling group, like I just had someone on the podcast, her episode was released this week and I work with a sibling and so I knew about the family secrets overall. But what the person on the podcast was working through is a double mastectomy and so the family secrets emerged as breast cancer for her and so their first client doesn't have breast cancer, but she has a lot of family secrets that show up in her life, in her marriage, those kind of things. So the entanglement of family secrets was there, but the expression of it was different.
Courtney Andersen :Man, that's so interesting, it's profound.
Courtney Andersen :It really is Because, again, there's a lot of again that, like I said, from where my mind stands, there's a lot of peace and going where a little bit of the shame can be released, like this isn't. It's not me. And in the space of addiction, especially nowadays too, because of how drinking is talked about, because it's more of a spectrum right, I think that people are, because of how it's talked about, it's now kind of veering off from that. This is a family, this is passed down with epigenetics and what has gone on right, and so I think a lot of people are missing that family factor of their roof.
Amy Babish :Oh yeah, and I was in public mental health and like mental health for a long time and I worked a lot with addictions and I've helped a lot of people get sober like day one. Yeah, and even with family therapy or internal family systems, ifs work, it's still really like a very like what I'd say like a Western and colonial view of like it's your parents' fault or if it's your fault because your parts aren't on board, and it doesn't mean that there aren't places for accountability. I'm not also confused about that, but when we really contextualize it within the pain that has been passed down or omitted within a family system because of real things real tragedy, real war, real torture, like real things- yeah, my sister and I do a show within a show on this podcast and she is also, too, in recovery as well.
Courtney Andersen :But there was an episode that I was explaining because I just became a parent, I mean within the last three years. So there's been a lot of mommy and daddy issues that have come back up, but especially in the last year or two I've had to look at it and this is going back to the patterns, right. So I am an elder millennial, so I got the boomers of the parents right. They are majority of boomers are very emotionally immature, but they were raised by the greatest generation, right. And this is a generation that was grew up in the Great Depression and then, I don't know, fought like four wars. My grandfather was in Pearl Harbor, my grandfather was in the beginning of Vietnam, and then what was the one between Pearl Harbor and Vietnam? There was another one. So this man was in war for decades, like this for his whole life, because he actually ended up using his brother's date of birth to get into the military at 18, when she was really 17. So from 17 till he retired like that's a long time. So I had to like look at it like that of it's like well, this was what was passed down, right Like, and understand these patterns of how I could understand my parents thinking and how they have developed and today. So I just don't think that that is taught enough. And even too, let's talk about the greatest generation's parents. Right Like, this is also two people who didn't live till they were 80 years old. I mean, they were dying off what? Between 40 and 50 years old, yeah, and then before that and before that. So it is. There's so much importance of understanding your family history and your ancestors and understanding what type of trauma, through epigenomics, is passed down to you.
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Amy Babish :You're talking about it from the intellectual or headspace, which is so important, and I think for many people that is the way in, and when we do it in the constellation way, we're getting into the felt sense, awareness, which a lot of sobriety is about. So it's like you're able to then this is an advanced topic around it, but it feels really important to presence, given what you just named, with your own grandfather. So every family out of survival has what we call a good conscience and it's not moral and it's not ethical. It's like this is the family way, and so for a lot of people when it comes to addiction, it's like this is the family way, and so for a lot of people when it comes to addiction and we'll get a little bit into this with house therapy and feng shui addiction deals with emotions.
Amy Babish :Water is emotions, water is money, and so when there are, it doesn't even have to be spoken. When there are unspoken, this is the way that women deal with money, or this is the way that our family deals with money, or this is the way our family feels feelings or not. That is intertwined with, oftentimes, the patterns in addiction and just intellectually understanding it. It doesn't give us the systemic relief. So, coming in, one of the pieces that a lot of people need to do when it comes to addiction work is take their own life back from their system, and what that calls on is being unloyal.
Courtney Andersen :Oh, I love this Long clap. Amy, it's true, you have to break away. I did it. I had to break away from my family. I was like the lone because I was the first one to get sober.
Amy Babish :I was like, as hard as it was, I had to step back from that core family for a little bit From those core beliefs and many people that I work with, they're in such complicated situations that they can't actually have a conversation, and so constellation work is a really powerful way to access the systemic field without the conversation.
Courtney Andersen :Yeah, all right, I love it, I love that. Well, let's get back into the house therapy, because I do want to talk about that. But the house therapy and feng shui, how can this support your?
Amy Babish :sobriety. So the first thing you hit the nail on the head in your book so the stagnation and your mom's wisdom. So when we think about a healthy body, it's in flow. So all of our organs, all of our systems are in flow and our homes are a mirror for ourselves and our lives and the people living in it and the animals living in it. So when we kind of look at like, how does energy come into your home? That's the first part. So a lot of people with feng shui they only focus on what's in the home. So if you have a walkway to your home, you want to make sure it's clear. You want to make sure that the most direct energy coming into your home is vibrant. So no dead plants, no broken things. Is your front entryway clean? So that's the first and most important place.
Courtney Andersen :When you say clean, are you talking about inside or outside, or both? Are you talking about inside or outside, or both?
Amy Babish :Both, both. Okay, we want to make sure.
Courtney Andersen :Like there's no shoes at the door, exactly, there's no dead plants, there's no leaves Like, blow that shit off of your deck, let's keep it clean people. Okay, yep, very minimalistic in that area.
Amy Babish :It doesn't have to be minimalistic, but just like there's freedom for energy to come in Okay, that area. It doesn't have to be minimalistic, but just like there's freedom for energy to come in, Okay, it's your architectural front door. A lot of people these days use their garage. That would be like trying to get food from your ear. Yeah, we want the energy coming in through the architectural front door Right.
Amy Babish :And also another thing we want to look at, especially with addiction, is they're called pointed arrows in Shui, and so anything that has a sharp corner so this might be a railing, it might be furniture that has like very pointed corners that energy can really feel kind of attacking, and so if you have that outside, you can get creative put some twinkle lights around it, like you can soften, soften the energy around it. And if it's in your front door, you might think about shifting that furniture or you might drape some fabric on it to soften the energy. But that's really really important. So like, no roses by the front door, no antlers by the front door, anything pointy and sharp also outside, outside of the clutter, that's really really, really important.
Courtney Andersen :Yeah, let's just get the antlers out of the house completely. Okay, this is not a deer den.
Amy Babish :Sometimes it's meaningful for people, but just not by the front door. The second place I'm going to bring listeners to is their bedroom. Okay, and so our bedroom represents our identity in Shwe. So, no matter where your bedroom is in your home, the first thing I recommend is that you have your bed in command, and so command position means that your bed is not directly in line with your main door. That goes out into the hallway, but it's slightly adjacent, and so you can see the door without turning your head. Okay, many people think that they're in command when they move their head, but it deals with hypervigilance. It also deals with being able to see challenges before they arrive, like being more prepared, but it also lets you see good opportunities, and when addiction is like a very slippery slope for people with relapse, you want to be able to mitigate those challenges, but also make different and more wise choices. Command position is, if you only do one thing from everything you heard from me today, command position.
Amy Babish :The second thing is you don't want to have anything under your bed. Yes, yes, and what we have under our bed is what's impacting our like when you're in bed. That's where you restore, where you revive, where you get support, especially not like weightlifting. You're going to be having a heavy lift with your dreams. Definitely don't want to have work. No kind of old things Like if you have to store something because you live in a small space I get it. A lot of people in the city. You can store linens. Those are soft and they're neutral.
Amy Babish :The next thing, similar with the idea of stagnation when we are going through a major upgrade with like I am committed to my sobriety or I'm recommitting to my sobriety, if you can bring in new energy. This isn't about it being expensive, but you want to have life, you want to have life force and so, if you can change out your linens, make sure that there's nothing in that space that is reminiscent of who you used to be when you were not sober or when you kind of went back and forth with sobriety, like no pictures, no gifts, no clothes, and for some people that's like going down to the bare bones and I understand it has to be a process. But you're also with feng shui, you're talking with your home through the process, like help me, help me maintain my sobriety, or help me really get sober this time and help me see myself really clearly, or anything that might be in this space that holds the energetic pattern of my older self or my self yesterday, whichever it might be, pattern of my older self or my self yesterday, whichever it might be. Please help me to release these things and like that. That will be very significant.
Amy Babish :And identity work is some of the hardest work to do, no matter what modality we're doing, and so a closet edit is not something I usually recommend until the very end of a process, but knowing that we have this time-limited conversation, I want to give people the runway to go like this is something really, really important, and the next place I'd recommend in the bedroom is your bedside table. What you have on your bedside table is really coming into your unconscious while you sleep, and so, if you're still having dreams that are related to your sobriety or relapsing, really be curious. What is hidden in plain sight in your drawer or in your nightstand or on your bookshelf that is reinforcing either your identity or the intergenerational patterns that are related to this. I say edit, like your sleep depends on it, and many people really love something like oh, I love that book If it has really violent imagery or if it has really poor boundary themes in it, or if it has victim mentality in it, or whatever is happening.
Courtney Andersen :Oh, I love that, but poor boundary themes yes, yes, okay, yeah, okay. Have you noticed in clients, if they've taken stuff like that off, it's been a complete shift for them?
Amy Babish :It starts to really make them see things very differently. Okay, because with feng shui, it's like this is the soup we're steeping in, yeah, this is the soup we're sleeping in, yeah. So when it is completely going into your unconscious, it's like no different than having some audio file on. That's like, oh, it's not bad, you only see the best in somebody. Oh, give them a second chance. It's not an audio file, but it's a book beside you or in your space, so it's really no different.
Amy Babish :So any themes, any main character energy, that is like oh, that's a version of me. I saw when I was using, yeah, that we want to edit that and donate. Okay, like we want it out of your space. Then we also want to look for anything that feels like, not that you have to be a minimalist, but anything that is like really piled up. So we look at the elements when you're with a feng shui practitioner, and so we look at five element theory and when we are working with addiction, it's oftentimes a lot of excess earth energy, and so earth energy is the stagnation. So when it's stagnation, like things have piled up, then when you have a lot of water, which is represented by alcohol, water and earth create mud, so you become really stuck in the mud. So really really like you can become stuck in the mud about your habits, about your convictions, about your beliefs, about what's possible for you, and it's like a revolving door of like I'm in quicksand or it's really muddy, like this is. I can't get this off of me.
Amy Babish :So I'm looking with clients at what's the elemental factors, not just kind of it's not clutter for clutter sake. It's really meaningful, especially with addiction, and if you have a lot of clutter, we recommend doing it in an increment of nine minutes. If you can't tackle it. Nine in Taoist numerology is the number of completion, and so we use Taoist numerology in feng shui to help really get to the essence of things. So set your timer nine minutes a day, take it out of your space, take it out of your room, and even that act you don't have to fully commit to it. Am I donating this or whatever it is? I'm going to get a box worth out in nine minutes. The energy that can circulate in you, in your room, in your space, is going to be life-changing, yeah it's so true, it's just so true.
Courtney Andersen :I mean and even in those nine minutes it's you might want to keep going more. You know what I mean. You might want to be like this isn't bad, I'm feeling good, so I keep going. And to do it during the witching hour, give you something to do, Like I will give you something to do.
Amy Babish :Yeah, and I recommend that people don't go like overdo it, because once you overdo it then you're like I can't come back to this, it's exhausting me. So nine minutes, 27 minutes, 90 minutes, that's kind of a sweet spot and really, like with balancing the earth element, we use squares. So putting it on a like a physical calendar where you see it as a square, like a paper calendar, is very, very helpful to reinforce this in your system. Okay, okay, I love it All right. Another, another recommendation I would have is command position. If you work from home or an office spaces, it's harder to do this. But to place your, your, your desk in command, okay.
Amy Babish :So many people who are going through sobriety struggle with like, okay, I'm okay personally, but I can't handle any other stress, I can't handle work. So with with, if you're in that struggle, you especially want to listen to what I'm going to share about your home office or if you can change your office at work. So again, we're going to look at command position with your desk. Many clients that I see, no matter what their relationship is with alcohol, when they're kind of in an unconscious pattern about work and they feel like things aren't going anywhere or I keep on hitting a wall.
Amy Babish :I want to ask is your desk facing a wall so the energy of what you're facing gets repeated? It's a very, very parallel process or symbiotic. So it doesn't happen right away, but over time energy compounds, just like anything, just like intention compounds energy, it compounds. So that's the first place I see. The second place I see is like I love my window, my view is so beautiful. When we're facing a window, our energy is going out. So you might have a great idea, but then you just can't, it just doesn't get any momentum. So we want to make sure that your desk is facing the door, but again, not directly in line with it.
Courtney Andersen :Now you're making me feel like I have a big desk and it's up against a wall. So I'm like looking at the door and it's over there, but I was thinking about getting a stand-up desk anyway, so I might have to do a stand-up desk. Put it there, okay. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Okay, I love it.
Amy Babish :If you, if you have trouble focusing when you're at work, it's really great to have a task lamp. Light is a great energy source, and so the task lamp should be pointed towards your laptop or, if you're a writer, towards if you're writing on paper, writing towards your paper, and that will draw the draw the energy of the room and to support you with completion. What questions do you have for me, courtney? I'm curious, like I see you deeply nodding your head.
Courtney Andersen :Yeah, and cause I'm just, I just because I find this all, I find this all to be true of what you're saying. When you've been saying it I've been nodding because I'm like this all makes sense, like how I just said that about my desk and it's energy, it's such a thing and you can pick up on energy even if you walk into somebody's house and the energy and you can feel that and it's like oh, it's kind of a deal in here. You know what I mean. Like I just there's so much power in just moving some things around with the tips that you just suggested and how better you will feel.
Amy Babish :It will be dramatic. So to go back to your circle, back to your mom's note, one of the most powerful things if you feel like I just don't have an Emmy to move my desk, I need help. I can't move my bed with someone else's help. We use a lot of, like I said, Dallas numerology.
Amy Babish :So when you really need some significant change like I'm ready to really change and I want my house and my land to co-create and support me with that we move 27 things. So 27 things it's not just furniture. And if you're in, like I work with some people who are in really small spaces, you can just pick your desk up, pick two legs up, pick two legs up. That's a move. So if you literally like, can't move any furniture, but you can pick up all your plants, dust underneath your plants, you can get really, really creative. It's great if you can also edit while you're doing the 27 things. But if you're just Amy, I'm edited down. I love everything I have. It's all post-sobriety. This is great stuff. Simply just picking it up and moving it, like taking all the pillows off your couch and fluffing them Each pillow counts as one.
Courtney Andersen :Yeah, have you worked with a hoarder before? I mean, how do you work with? Because that is very extreme. So I just like how do you work with somebody? Because I used to. When I got sober, I definitely, that year, liked to shop. It was not a shopping addiction, but I liked to shop that first year. It gave me something to do. It was not a shopping addiction, but I liked to shop that first year. It gave me something to do. But then, in time, I'm like okay. And then I got to a place a couple of years in, where it was like, okay, all this stuff doesn't feel good to me anymore, right? So I was able to then start adding in it. I also watched the documentary Minimalistic when it came, or Minimalist when it came out, right. So that was extremely helpful. I didn't go as low as that, but definitely just was like this stuff no longer serves me. So what do you do, though, with somebody who is on that extreme of?
Amy Babish :a hoarder, yeah, so everything I do is based on intention. Yeah, and so it's. It's. It's a different kind of energetic that we're bringing in, versus like kind of like dread, like I know I need to get rid of this stuff, like that's not. That's not a time to call me.
Amy Babish :You have to get really clear, just like we did in the ancestral work, in the constellation work. What do you want? If we can get, if we can really move through this hoarding, what is on the other side of it for you? Yeah. Then the second part is like this is this is I know, this is what happens when I've had a hard day or when I have a hard conversation. I just buy more stuff. We're going to get to the base of it, the spiritual and the energetic base of it, before we actually start moving things out, because in feng shui, we know very deeply that all of the things hold feelings and most people who hoard are avoiding feelings. Yeah, yeah, they're avoiding relationships, and so, working with someone like me, we have the ability to like.
Amy Babish :It's not like you're hiring me to declutter. You're hiring me to help you face stuff that you you've avoided, usually maybe your whole life or for generations. So it's a both and of. I know the roots in this deal with a lot of pain I didn't want to deal with and we're going to do it systematically. So it's not overwhelming and I was a trauma expert so we do it. Do you know how to titrate feelings? Do you know how to let yourself really like, safely come down from a emotional wave? So there'll be different things in there versus sometimes when people hire declutterers. There's a lot of like, excellent, like what we call, like that earth element structure, like they can really square it off, but then there's not a long-term plan for dealing with the emotions underneath it.
Courtney Andersen :You think that I mean even people who aren't as extreme as hoarders, right, I mean, I know some people in my life where it's like very hard for them to and again, everybody's brain works different, I respect it, but it's very hard for them even just to organize things. Yeah, yeah, what do you think? That is Just the way their brain operates.
Amy Babish :So you know, it's a lot of what I when I talk about the brain with people we've made the brain to the CEO, when it's really the project assistant, yeah, when you get really clear about what is really, what do I really want, who do I really want to be, when you're in that intentional place, things, things will start to be different. And so for someone who doesn't carry a lot of structure, that goes into some of the other work I do it's called pattern work. It's from developmental trauma work and so we carry all the five patterns. And when someone doesn't have a lot of structure, another way to talk about it from the five elements because that's really part of the conversation we're having today is they don't have enough metal. So metal people are the people who they can put Ikea furniture together without really looking at it.
Amy Babish :When I send an email. They're the gracious people who send me an email saying like Amy, you misspelled something. They see errors very quickly and I happen to. My daughter has a lot of metal. When they get feisty they cut with words and they are really attached to good, bad, right and wrong. And earth people they oftentimes earth and water people. Metal contains water, okay, and earth people. That's earth kind of contributes to metal. So it kind of earth is drained by metal so to get into the balance of having the right amount of metal. So it kind of earth is drained by metal so to get into the balance of having the right amount of metal. So it's not like draining someone who has a lot of earth energy. We need to add in other elements. And so when I'm working with someone who doesn't have a lot of structure, we look at like what is what is going to nourish you? But then what is the sweet spot with, with, with the metal element? And it's actually it's not about the brain, it's really being in the body, gotcha.
Courtney Andersen :Okay, Are there any? Do you have a book by chance? No, no book yet. Okay, I think you need to write a book One of these times yeah, yes. Well, what would be a book that you would recommend to somebody who would want to start their feng shui journey?
Amy Babish :I should say, so the feng shui journey. I would definitely recommend my mentor's book, amanda Gibby Peters, and I believe her book is just called Simple Shui, but I can send it to you after the show so it has one tip a day and you don't have to go linearly. You can use like an oracle and it's jam-packed with things. It's wonderful. Amanda's podcast is wonderful. She's house therapy, feng shui specific. Her newsletter is great. I have a lot of things, but if someone really wants to go deep into being a student, she has a great course that's very accessible. She's fabulous.
Courtney Andersen :I will link her book in the show notes. What about anything on the ancestral patterns that we talked about? Any, any book, one book that comes to mind.
Amy Babish :So this is where it gets like a little bit gray, because some people they overdo it for the sake of getting published, I think, and so I really tread lightly with someone's heart when they're like I want to be a student of this and then they in some way get shamed or confused by the book. I don't, I don't, I don't feel that we could give like a book that is like oh, this is a great summary, yet yeah.
Courtney Andersen :That's understandable. I got it. I got that. I feel that All right. So where can people find you? This has been an amazing conversation. I could go on and on with you. You might have to come back for a second episode, for sure. So where can people find you if they want to work with you? Your podcast, all your good stuff.
Amy Babish :Yeah, so I am easiest at my website, amybabishcom. And then I have my podcast, which is called the Soulful Visionary Podcast, and I have all kinds of different guests on different modalities that I'm sharing. And I'm on Instagram, but I'm not like a post everyday kind of person, but I pepper things in there. So those are some great ways to work with me, and I offer 90 minute sessions as as a way to kind of get introduced to working with me. If you're curious and really serious about it, you can do a 20 minute free call with me, and then I have bigger packages.
Courtney Andersen :Well, I will link everything in the show notes below. Thank you so much for this conversation. Thank you, courtney. Again, I'm going to move 27 things today. Here we go, here we go, but I mean it just helps, and even too like cleansing energy. It's just, I mean it just helps and even too, like cleansing energy. It's just.
Courtney Andersen :When I have these conversations today or see them today, I just it makes me happy that more people and life has evolved, right, that people are talking about this. But back then people thought my mom was a witch, like saging, my mom has saged us, I don't know. Since I was like seven right and like, and when friends would come over, they're like what is your mom doing? Or she would have the angel cards or moving the energy, or she used to have she had this altar up in her bedroom with her crystals and some crosses and all of that stuff. And again people thought she was a witch. And now this is just like. This is part of how we do it, this is how it's done and it's just so. I love having these conversations because again reminds me going back to my mom and what she instilled in me with this type of stuff.
Amy Babish :I absolutely love it, and an extra layer of life changing magic with the 27 things or anything, is like you want to anchor in your intention, so let's say that you do it in your office. I want to invite in new energy into this project. I want to invite this energy into new clients. I want to invite this energy into publishing my book, and so, if it comes to sobriety, it's like I want the new energy to give me clarity, to make different choices.
Courtney Andersen :And in the beginning too, you talk I mean, this is it's identity work. When you quit drinking or whatever substances of your choice and enter in your new sober life. It is such a huge identity shift. You do have to work on that, take some time. I mean I had to do it again when I became a mom. It took me, it took me a lot and I'm sure too, it takes you a long time. You just don't pop out a child and you're like I'm a mom, like I'm ready made, yeah.
Courtney Andersen :Like it really takes a lot of time to then embody and be that and it's like a shedding of your old self. So the identity work does take some time, but this type of work helps with that for sure.
Amy Babish :A hundred percent.
Courtney Andersen :All right. Thank you so much, Amy. I will link all of Amy's information in the show note and definitely go check her out. Thank you.
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