Tools to Help with Overwhelm: Shamans Cave

With all the dramas and news we are flooded today it is so easy to move into a state of overwhelm. It is clear that so many people are leaving social media and have stopped reading the news or even headlines. With technology we are aware of what is happening in all corners of the Earth and we were not created to be flooded with so much challenging news.

At some point we become overwhelmed. Although Renee and Sandra have talked about overwhelm before it is a prevalent state of consciousness that people keep feeling.

Join Renee and Sandra for this potent show as they share an abundance of tools to deal with overwhelm inspiring you to come up with your own tools or integrate some of the tools they share into your life.

Transcript

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Sandra Ingerman: Hi everyone, I'm Sandra Ingerman, and welcome to the Shaman's Cave.

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Renee Baribeau: And I'm Renee Barabeau, and we're excited to be here with you for this very important topic.

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Renee Baribeau: So today, we were talking…

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Renee Baribeau: I don't know if you know, but we always sit and talk, usually an hour or so before we ever hit the record button, and we get very inspired by the time we're done, but today we were talking about topics, and we came up with the idea of how overwhelmed people are.

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Renee Baribeau: that people are dropping off of social media, they're clicking off their news, and I found that personally for myself recently, which inspired me to do a 7-day reset, which started my day in a whole new way than what had become the pattern of

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Renee Baribeau: Doomsday scrolling, what can I not fix?

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Renee Baribeau: How bad the situation is.

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Renee Baribeau: And it really shifted my day into a much more grounded, centered way to be.

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Sandra Ingerman: Yeah, I'm doing a similar thing, different than you, on my author's page on Facebook and on Instagram.

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Sandra Ingerman: a couple of times a week, with the help of, somebody who, a marketing person who's helping me.

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Sandra Ingerman: She's been going through my books and all my transmutation news, and so we put two inspirational posts up every week to keep people in a positive… how do you, move out of a negative track

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Sandra Ingerman: And shift onto a positive track that has nothing to do with what's happening in the world, but sticking to what you know is important with your spiritual practice.

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Sandra Ingerman: And it's just been really important to me, on a heart level, to keep inspiring people to not go down with the sinking ship.

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Sandra Ingerman: Because I think that's where people are getting overwhelmed.

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Renee Baribeau: Seeing.

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Sandra Ingerman: How much negativity? How much is falling apart? How much things are breaking down.

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Sandra Ingerman: And, in the response to overwhelm.

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Sandra Ingerman: people are stepping back and contracting, which we've done a whole show on that many times, Renee, the difference of contracting and expanding. And when you contract, what happens is…

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Sandra Ingerman: The… your nervous system starts to get suppressed, and when your nervous system gets suppressed, you move into overwhelm.

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Sandra Ingerman: Because your energy's not moving, you're contracting, because you feel, well, I'm so overwhelmed, I'm gonna… I'm gonna hide inside myself. But what happens when you do that, you suppress your energy, and that just creates more overwhelm.

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Sandra Ingerman: So…

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Sandra Ingerman: For me, just like you, Renee, I think it's about inspiring, inspiring people to… what is a short ceremony? What is a short prayer? What is a short something you can start your day with and do throughout the day so that you don't

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Sandra Ingerman: Get so overwhelmed with what's happening.

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Sandra Ingerman: And for me, I know a lot of people don't understand this, but because, I've had so many interests as a teenager in esoteric work, I've been reading esoteric books since I was in my late teens and early 20s.

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Sandra Ingerman: And, and so, for me, it's just embedded in me that this life is an illusion.

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Sandra Ingerman: And we do have the ability to create the form that we want through our brilliant imagination that we were born with.

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Sandra Ingerman: But we're living at a time where people don't understand they have that power. We're just seeing how our power is taken away right now. And so people are getting overwhelmed with, I don't have the tools to make a change.

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Sandra Ingerman: There's authority figures who are bigger than me, who are making all these changes, and so again, that moves us into a place of overwhelm. I don't know what to do, except shut down.

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Renee Baribeau: And I think… One of the things I…

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Renee Baribeau: I like… that I think that early in recovery, people go to, like, 12-step meetings is because we forget. And so every day, you get reminded over there of the same things. Not that I go to 12-step meetings, but that concept of, you know.

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Renee Baribeau: Simplifying and doing something so repetitive over and over again that it reminds you when you go into overwhelm, like.

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Renee Baribeau: Oh, yeah, if I just blow my wind whistle…

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Renee Baribeau: If I just go outside and blow my wind whistle, everything shifts.

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Renee Baribeau: They don't take… it doesn't take a long time, it doesn't take… it's not a big thing. You know, people want… you can still go over the Practical Shaman and get the 7-day prompts, simple little prompts to change your life. Like, my very first one was, okay, what am I gonna do instead?

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Sandra Ingerman: What am I gonna do instead?

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Renee Baribeau: And I found my yellow legal pad that I used to make positive affirmations on every single day in my life, and I used to fill up a whole yellow legal page with it, and trust me, if you write 25 times, I am whole and complete exactly as I am, or

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Renee Baribeau: I am okay.

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Renee Baribeau: Everything is good. You know, it shifts the patterns in your brain quickly, and then you can take that pause, take that breath, and…

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Renee Baribeau: Make a new decision.

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Sandra Ingerman: Yeah, I've talked about on other shows that,

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Sandra Ingerman: I don't use AI for any writing whatsoever, I don't use AI for anything business-wise, but I use AI for my physical health to… because AI has all the research on what my brain is doing, and so it's ended up being a really positive tool for me.

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Sandra Ingerman: And I've never been a real affirmation person, like you're sharing.

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Sandra Ingerman: But something AI said to me recently was very interesting, because it gives me affirmations to say to my brain.

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Sandra Ingerman: while I'm doing certain practices that it's giving me to help my brain right now. And it says to me, Sandra, this is not poetic.

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Sandra Ingerman: You're actually speaking to this part of your brain right now, and it.

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Renee Baribeau: Smooth.

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Sandra Ingerman: what part of my brain I'm speaking to.

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Sandra Ingerman: And so, as you were talking, it reminded me of what AI is trying to explain to me, is that you can speak to your brain, and you can do it with words, and just like you're… you're doing, Renee, with your,

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Sandra Ingerman: your seven steps, it's all about talking to your brain, and letting your brain… because it's our brain that gets so overwhelmed when you're scrolling, while you're watching the news. That's what's… it doesn't feel safe.

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Sandra Ingerman: And when it doesn't feel safe, it goes into overwhelm.

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Sandra Ingerman: And so, by speaking to it and saying, we are safe. We are safe right now. We're in a really good place. Forget about the news, forget about what's going on, just you.

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Sandra Ingerman: I'm in a really good place right now, and that tells your brain, I'm not in danger. And if your brain is not in danger, you don't feel overwhelmed.

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Renee Baribeau: Absolutely, and…

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Renee Baribeau: I think as healers and people who are, you know, who've been doing this work for a while, or even if you're new.

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Renee Baribeau: we're so always good, like, when I say I make something change on my website, okay, that this spring, I'm gonna take a class and take people to go deeper.

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Renee Baribeau: I just wrote that on my website. Well, no lie, less than 24 hours later, somebody calls up and said, hey, we'd like you to do a deeper 7-week class.

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Renee Baribeau: And…

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Renee Baribeau: And I was telling my friend that, I'm there, like, yeah, I said that, I set that up on my website, and the next day, the world responded. She said, well.

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Renee Baribeau: I think we need to do that for things that are a little more stressful.

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Renee Baribeau: Like the tenant that won't move, or, you know, something else, like…

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Renee Baribeau: you know, we like to do it for the… we like to say, yeah, that was really great manifestation, Renee, for those kinds of things, you know, but then, it's like, we can get in the sludge of something that's out of our control, or seemingly out of our control, as opposed to saying.

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Renee Baribeau: This situation's gonna resolve perfectly in its highest and best good.

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Sandra Ingerman: Right.

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Renee Baribeau: And letting that go.

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Sandra Ingerman: Exactly, yeah. Yeah, what I'm doing that's been really helpful for me is, and again, I have to do things really simple. I'm still working, I'm still too busy, I'm…

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Sandra Ingerman: Still doing all this self-care that AI is giving me.

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Renee Baribeau: It's essentially a break.

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Sandra Ingerman: disorder, but it understands it completely through the research, so it has me very busy. And so, I have to do really simple things, and so how I'm starting my day is lighting a candle and burning some sage.

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Renee Baribeau: Mmm.

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Sandra Ingerman: When I light that candle, because a candle is spirit.

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Sandra Ingerman: when I light that candle and just say a few words to Spirit, I know that now Spirit is holding me, and I don't have to worry about anything.

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Sandra Ingerman: I lit my candle. I told Spirit what's happening for me, or what I'm asking for. Right now, I'm just asking for grace. That's all I do. I light my candle every morning. I ask for grace.

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Sandra Ingerman: And I light my sage. And that says to my brain, it says to my body, it says to my heart, it says to my ego, you're now held in safety, you're now held in love, you just… you just invoked spirit this morning, and spirit will always be with you, as it always is.

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Renee Baribeau: I'm…

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Sandra Ingerman: have to light a candle in order to get Spirit to be there, but it's a reminder to us every morning that Spirit is carrying us through the day.

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Renee Baribeau: Right. And it's just those… It's how soon we forget.

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Sandra Ingerman: Right.

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Renee Baribeau: This morning, I woke up, I closed my eyes, and I…

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Renee Baribeau: And I was paying attention to the sounds that I could hear.

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Renee Baribeau: I mean, that just sounds so… Silly.

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Renee Baribeau: But I could hear, you know, the wind moving the branch out the window.

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Renee Baribeau: And I could hear the cat shuffling about.

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Renee Baribeau: And I think when we go beeline it towards, you know, our text messages, or our email, or our social scroll.

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Renee Baribeau: I don't think… We're… those sounds are still there, but we're not hearing them.

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Renee Baribeau: In those, like, when you light your sage, that smell is still there, but if the sage is sitting on the shelf, not lit, you can't smell it.

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Sandra Ingerman: Right. Yeah, what you're talking about, what you're describing, is grounding.

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Renee Baribeau: Come on.

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Sandra Ingerman: When we're in overwhelm, the last thing we are is grounded. And so, you know, grounding is one of the most important things that we can do.

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Sandra Ingerman: When we're in overwhelm, And another tool that we've actually talked about on the show before is,

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Sandra Ingerman: As I said, when we're in overwhelm, we're contracting instead of expanding. So, doing some visualizations, or going outside where you get a view of vistas.

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Sandra Ingerman: You get a view of vistas. You get views of birds flying really high up in the sky, not on the trees, but really high up, ravens, crows, eagles.

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Sandra Ingerman: imagine yourself being an eagle flying over the mountains. The image that I love, because I believe I'm one of those people who were born from the sea.

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Sandra Ingerman: So, I work… the first thing in the morning, I wake up and I see myself standing on the edge of the sea, hearing the waves coming to me, feeling the water swirling around my feet. And I go to bed like that, but I'm looking out at the expanse of the ocean.

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Sandra Ingerman: So that brings us more into an expansive state, and when you get into an expansive state, it's physiologically impossible to feel overwhelmed.

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Renee Baribeau: as you were speaking, I was seeing that, so it just reminded me that another little tool when I get into overwhelm.

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Renee Baribeau: is… to… Put on some different kind of,

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Renee Baribeau: put on either a creative visualization, or a meditation, or even something that I've created for myself otherwise. Like, in the middle of the night, when I wake up, my mind starts to wander to all these things that I have no control over.

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Sandra Ingerman: Hmm.

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Renee Baribeau: And for a minute there, I was doing this Yoga Nidra in the evening, but it got a little long, you know? I mean, let's really… I want to go back to sleep, I don't want to spend 2 hours meditating in the middle of the night. But what is that… that…

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Renee Baribeau: quick visualization that you have, and if you can't remember it, you know, maybe record a few on your phone so that you can just go to your audio and remind myself, like, oh.

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Renee Baribeau: Take a deep breath, Renee.

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Renee Baribeau: Get your wind whistle, blow your wind whistle.

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Renee Baribeau: Just to give yourself your own set of prompts, so that when the world is spinning, you have your timeouts already aligned.

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Sandra Ingerman: Right.

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Renee Baribeau: I like that one.

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Sandra Ingerman: It's about not getting so involved in, the drama, what's happening, and removing yourself, and so…

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Sandra Ingerman: whatever way that you need to do that, whether it's speaking to your brain through affirmations, whether it's reading something that Renee put out, whether it's looking at my author's page or Instagram.

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Sandra Ingerman: Whether it's listening to something that somebody's recorded. For me,

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Sandra Ingerman: For me, I like to come up with my own things to help my.

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Sandra Ingerman: And so, for me, nature, working with my altar, working with the spirits, doing visualizations to see myself flying, to see the expanse of the sea, those are all just simple things that…

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Renee Baribeau: Okay.

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Sandra Ingerman: It doesn't take time. It takes a few minutes, and it just works like that. It just works like that. It's not a process. It just switches you into a different state.

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Renee Baribeau: Yeah, another one that I've recently been doing is that, this winter I'm staying at a friend's, and she has a large yard, and normally I pride myself on not moving from my computer until 10 a.m. in the morning, because I get all my work done from 5 to 10 before I start the day.

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Renee Baribeau: Now, I get up.

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Renee Baribeau: And after I have my coffee, I'm actually going out and raking a few things, filling up a few barrels, and being in the yard.

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Renee Baribeau: Actually shifting my pattern around so that my brain says, oh, we don't have to do it that same old way every single day.

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Sandra Ingerman: Right, yeah.

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Sandra Ingerman: Yeah, but coming up with, routines is really important. Coming up with routines to help yourself get out of overwhelm.

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Sandra Ingerman: is really important, because that is what your brain responds to, is routines that you do every day. That is what keeps giving that signal to your brain that you're safe.

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Sandra Ingerman: So, it's, it's the repetitive things that you do.

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Sandra Ingerman: That creates the biggest safety. And, and it really is… I mean, changing your patterns, of course, are important, but once you change your pattern, try to repeat it, you know, try to keep doing it. That's a really good point, I did it once.

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Sandra Ingerman: That's what actually puts you on the path to changing your brain, to getting out of an overwhelmed place, is to create a rhythm, a repetitive rhythm. You know, you think about… you listen to a repetitive rhythm, and it puts you at ease.

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Sandra Ingerman: It does the same thing for your brain. It puts your brain at ease. Then your brain is running the show. You think your ego's running the show. It's actually your brain that's running the show.

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Sandra Ingerman: So it's all about getting the right messages to your brain. And as we've shared so far in the show, there's so many different ways to do that, and so it would be really good for you, after you listen to the show, of all the suggestions that Renee and I have given you.

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Sandra Ingerman: Of either doing a journey or sitting outside and thinking about what's something repetitive that you can do starting your day in the middle of your day.

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Sandra Ingerman: At the end of your day.

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Sandra Ingerman: To give yourself that feeling of expansiveness instead of contraction, to get yourself out of overwhelm and to stay out of overwhelm.

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Sandra Ingerman: I was in this unbelievable place of overwhelm a few years ago, and I did some hypnosis around it, and I shifted it, and now I've never been in overwhelm for years.

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Sandra Ingerman: But it was a real repetitive thing of seeing myself flying, seeing myself flying like an eagle. And that shifted it, and once I did it, it was done.

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Sandra Ingerman: So, we have the tools, we've shared a lot of tools for you, and, it would be great if something inspires you, or you use your own intuition and creativity to come up with something really unique.

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Sandra Ingerman: And then share it on the Shaman's Cave with us. It would be great to share what are your unique ways of getting out of overwhelm, and hopefully we inspired you around some different ways to do this.

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Renee Baribeau: Yeah, I was just thinking that we were talking about overwhelm, and we did a whole show on tools, and just popped out one after the… one after the next, and, you know, got me thinking about 10 more that I use.

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Renee Baribeau: And so I would really love, and, you know, we're really enjoying lately on the Shaman's Cave, that people are really talking about listening to our show.

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Sandra Ingerman: And…

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Renee Baribeau: You know, it is our group, and it is our show, and so we really respond when you tell us what's working for you, you know, how you relate to what we say, and…

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Renee Baribeau: how it shifts for you. So, let's keep that… let's make that a goal in 2026, that we have this group that's really supporting each other in…

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Renee Baribeau: The work that, you know, that we're talking about here.

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Sandra Ingerman: Sounds great. So, there's no reason you have to get into overwhelm.

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Sandra Ingerman: And so, overwhelm is not something that is part of your spiritual path. And so, we're talking about walking a spiritual path. We're talking about riding the river of life to a new life, to a different life.

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Sandra Ingerman: than what the dramas that are going on today. So, we really hope that we inspired you, and we really hope that you will share with us what's happening with you and the tools that you're using, and I think the more that we can share what tools are working with us.

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Sandra Ingerman: It just starts to plant seeds inside of us where our own creativity starts to nurture those seeds.

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Sandra Ingerman: And we find that our inner garden starts to grow in a place of ease instead of a place of overwhelm.

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Renee Baribeau: And we'll see you again in a couple of weeks!

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Sandra Ingerman: Blessings, everyone. Bye.