Wild Souls

55. Exploring the Mystical Path: Science, Meditation, and Spiritual Awakenings w/ Crystal Cassidy

• Cat Mansfield • Episode 55

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What happens when a scientist ventures into the mystical realms of spirituality? This week, we welcome Crystal Cassidy, CEO and founder of SoulPod, who shares her remarkable journey from biochemistry and cancer research to becoming a spiritual guide. At just 12 years old, martial arts introduced Crystal to meditation, igniting a lifelong passion that eventually led to a transformative kundalini awakening. Her story bridges the empirical and the mystical, offering a unique perspective on integrating scientific rigor with spiritual enlightenment.

We delve into deeper themes of surrender, spiritual support, and the evolution of consciousness. Crystal recounts her near-death experience, highlighting the themes of karmic healing, interconnectedness, and the profound sense of spiritual support she felt. We discuss the crucial role of humility and the pitfalls of the spiritual ego, encouraging listeners to approach their spiritual practices with clear intentions and a playful, experimental mindset.

Tune in for an episode brimming with wisdom, inspiration, and the unique blend of science and spirituality that Crystal embodies.

Connect with Crystal:

Website: https://www.soulpodapp.com/

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/soulpod-breathwork-meditation/id1640481481

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/soulpod_app/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SoulPodApp

Interested in being a guest on the podcast? Send me a DM :)

Follow along on instagram <3

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Holistic Hotties podcast. I'm your host, kat Mansfield. I'm a yoga and meditation teacher who's traveled around the world in search of all things healing and true. In searching for healing, in searching for truth, I uncovered the answers to all my ponderings. I grounded into peace amidst the chaos, I found myself. This podcast is about breathing life into who you already are. It's about remembering the truth of your power, the truth of your perfection. In each episode, we'll talk about the beliefs, the self-imposed limitations and the mindsets that are keeping us small, and how to cultivate safety in our bodies so that we can feel safe enough to be bigger, to take up more space and to truly and deeply love ourselves. On this journey together, day after day, we're choosing intention. We're choosing growth. We're choosing to dissolve our veils and breathe into our most authentic and thus most radiant selves. We're choosing to feel good naked let's dive in. To feel good naked, let's dive in. Welcome back to another episode of Holistic Hotties.

Speaker 1:

Today I am sitting down with Crystal Cassidy. She is the CEO and founder of SoulPod, a soulfulness app where you can find powerful structure to become more aware of your inner world and then transform it. Her spiritual journey started around age 12 when she was introduced to meditation while training to become a world champion martial artist. Since then, crystal has become a certified Reiki master, breathwork facilitator, meditation guide and kundalini yoga instructor. This rich tapestry of experiences fuels her mission to bridge the mystical with the empirical, guiding others to unlock their potential and embark on a journey of personal and collective awakening.

Speaker 1:

Crystal's journey took a profound turn after near-death experience, which deepened her understanding of the powerful potential within each of us waiting to be awakened. Blending her background in biochemistry and two decades of experience in cutting-edge biotechnology, crystal brings a unique, lighthearted and modern feminine perspective to the path of spiritual renewal. She is just a wealth of knowledge and I'm so excited for this conversation. We talk about her transition from the world of being a scientist, the world of empirical data, into the world of spirituality and what people think is more quote-unquote woo-woo. We talk about her kundalini awakening, her near-death experience and everything in between how to incorporate the interdimensional consciousness into our daily lives and how to create a meditation practice that empowers us to transform our lives and rewire our minds. There's so much good stuff in this conversation. I'm so excited for you to drop in with us. Enjoy. I am here today with Crystal Cassidy. I'm so excited to jump into this conversation.

Speaker 2:

Thank you for being here, thanks for having me, kat, so excited to be here on Holistic Hotties yeah.

Speaker 1:

Let's go ahead and jump right in. I am most curious to start with hearing about your journey, your story. I'm sure it's a long journey, but what got you to where you are? What makes you the woman you are today?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, long, long story, long long. Really two sides to my coin. One side is the scientific side. So in my career I studied biochemistry, I worked in pharmaceutical development, I worked in oncology cancer research for new novel drugs for cancer therapies, and then got into genomic diagnostics on the cancer genomic side and had an amazing ride in biotech. And the other side to my coin is the spiritual side.

Speaker 2:

I started martial arts when I was 12, which I didn't know until later in my journey, that that was really the beginning of my spiritual development. I think we were always spiritually developing, but that was certainly a catalyst because I learned about meditation really young.

Speaker 2:

It was part of our practice, a very traditional practice, and at first it was all about quieting the mind so that you could perform really well physically.

Speaker 2:

You could find the flow in your practice and I was in martial arts for about a decade just over a decade.

Speaker 2:

It was like my life, so a huge part of who I am and kind of helped to shape me, and I learned a lot about discipline and what it takes to kind of take control of your thoughts and your mind and your body. And then, as I got into my 20s, my spiritual journey started to deepen. I had some spiritual experiences that I couldn't explain through science, and so that intersection of consciousness, spirituality and science was so interesting to me and I got into breath work. I got into kundalini yoga, had a kundalini awakening experience when I didn't know what it was and I kind of had to figure it out later, like what had happened to me, and the ball just kept on rolling. And then I stepped out of biotech full time and just wanted to develop my own thing and we started building SoulPod, which is a spiritual wellness app for those who are ready to go deeper, and we help personalize your spiritual path and put you with a small group of people to travel with, and that's what I'm doing now.

Speaker 1:

Beautiful. Yeah, there's so much that I'm excited to expand upon with you and your journey transition from science, the world of. You, know empirical data and the tangible. You know the things we can see, touch, moving from that world into the spiritual. You know more of the quote unquote, woo, woo, if you will, in making that transition, what are some of the things that you came up against? And also, I'm so curious, what you've learned from that world and how you, how you bridge the two, like what is happening in our brain when we're meditating.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, the empirical to the mystical.

Speaker 1:

And.

Speaker 2:

I think it's. I think as time goes on, those lines are going to become more and more blurred. But I think that science and physics, quantum physics especially we're in a really interesting decade here where I think we're starting to get closer and closer to bridging that discrepancy and being able to observe these things that we've called mystical and spiritual. So I mean, for me personally, one of the big things that got me kind of looking into this deeper is I could see ghosts. So for there was a period of time in my spiritual awakening, like maybe three years, where I was was a period of time in my spiritual awakening, like maybe three years, where I was seeing a lot of disembodied consciousness all of a sudden. I think this is tied to the awakening process and the interesting thing about that is we sometimes forget on the science side that observation and experience is a data point.

Speaker 2:

It is an N of one data point but, that's kind of the way that I started to think about it. I was like I'm having an experience, I'm able to observe with my eyes something that is conscious in some way but not bound to the physical body. So that was the precipice for me personally of like, what is this experience? I don't think I'm going crazy, I don't think I'm seeing things. So how could science explain this to adjust to our physical brains? There is an element to it that is non-local and I find that I personally believe that's where the science will end up leading us, Whether that's through quantum physics or not, we'll see. But yeah, the ability to experience and measure.

Speaker 2:

And we have to remember science only has so many tools. We only have the tools of this dimension, and that is a limitation. And so just because we can't I think it's Carl Sagan, what did he say Just because there is the lack of evidence doesn't mean there's evidence of absence. Like, just because we don't have evidence that something exists doesn't mean it doesn't exist, right? So we have to remember that on the science side.

Speaker 2:

And then, as far as what's going on in your brain, it's so I mean, we now know without a shadow of a doubt that meditation helps to do things like shrink your amygdala over time, like your fight or flight, your fear center. It literally shrinks down when you meditate for longer periods of time increases our cognitive capacities, helps us to have improved memory, helps us to have a more resilient nervous system. So now we know there's these amazing biological benefits to meditation which I think is important for people to know. But that's just the foundations, from my perspective, of like improving your health, taking care of your brain, making sure that your nervous system doesn't have a really low trigger to move into fight or flight. But then there's so much more from there that opens up when you get deeper into meditation.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, totally. I think that's one of the initial drawing components of people who find meditation. It's improved sleep, it's lower stress, it's higher productivity All of these tangible results that we think are going to help us produce more, and to some degree, that is a natural byproduct.

Speaker 1:

That is a natural byproduct, but those intangible changes that you start to notice in your life, the patience, the ability to access joy easier, and you know all the time, the clarity of what's important, of what you know is really worth becoming dysregulated over, or that moment of when you're in a dysregulated state and being able to come back to your breath and choose something different and rewire your brain in that moment. All of that is the real. It's like the real meat of where meditation brings us, what meditation offers us, how it changes our life. I, yeah, I'm so passionate about meditation and I'm curious, when you were talking about the levels of consciousness and you were having these experiences with seeing ghosts, how do you start to live in the 3D? We live in the 3D world. How do you live in the 3D while maintaining that openness, that third eye openness, where you're aware of the multiple levels of consciousness and even connect, like opening yourself up to connect with ghosts or guides or ancestors?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, great question. So much there. I think one thing that's important to remember is that when you're in the meditative state and you're reaching these we'll call them higher levels of consciousness or elevated states of being that you have that moment when you're in meditation and it comes into your experience whether that's bliss, joy, peace, profound presence, the feeling of oneness, bliss, joy, peace, profound presence, the feeling of oneness. And what I've come to realize is that you're having this moment where your consciousness is going to a new level and to your point. Our work is bringing that level of consciousness into daily life, that level of consciousness into daily life. So at first you're having those experiences in meditation or in other breathwork, psychedelics, whatever the mechanism is that opens that door to this elevated state of being. This is a new vibration, it's a new frequency, it's a new level of consciousness.

Speaker 2:

And then the cool thing I think this is so cool is that you can start to bring that into your daily life. How you do that, I think, is by continuing to amplify it in your spiritual practice, continuing to stretch your spiritual practice, and then really, as you are rewiring your mind to fire in different ways, you're going to notice over time and this is one of those things where it takes time and dedication and consistency. You're going to start to see that come into your life bit by bit, glimpse by glimpse, and then all of a sudden, a year later, you turn around and you're like, oh, that experience I had in meditation is now a bigger part of my life. Maybe it's not a hundred percent, but like I'm feeling joy so much more now. So it's, it's, it's really cool.

Speaker 2:

And I think the seeing ghosts and having, um, I'll call them interdimensional experiences the cool thing about those is that it opens your mind even further to what's possible. It opens your mind to, oh, there is more beyond the physical. But, to your point, you also are balancing that by being in the human body. So Ram Dass says, being in the world but not of it. There is that balance and I've certainly been in certain times in my life kind of coming out of my body and having to be very conscious about bringing myself back into the physical. Severe illness will also contribute to that kind of your energy coming up and out of the lower chakras or energy centers. So yeah, long story long there for sure.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think that's a part of the journey. With meditation and the journey of spirituality really is, you find yourself at one point, often like existing really up here, like really in the air. You can it's, it's easy to sway to one side of the spectrum, especially when these practices, when you start to notice that difference, when you start to notice a little bit of transformation, you're like whoa, and so it's almost it can become addicting and it can become just kind of enchanting. You start to exist really in the air and you forget how to have one foot also on the ground. That's been a huge part of my learning is how to remain connected and also remain grounded. You know there has to be a balance between that, that masculine and feminine, and that's that's been a huge learning for me. That's been a huge learning for me? Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 1:

And I'm curious also something I think that's also part of the spiritual journey I've recently experienced this is when you can feel so strong in your mind for a long time you can have these chapters where you're like there is nothing that can take me off course, like obstacle in front of me, easy, let me just pivot around it, so easy, and then it can feel like almost out of nowhere, you are catapulted back, you're catapulted into something old patterns, old ways of behaving, old stories that are so contracting. And so you know the antithesis of everything we're doing when we sit in meditation, everything we're progressing towards, and in those moments it can feel, you know, can feel really deflating. And so I'm wondering how you, how you continue to move forward, how you keep moving with momentum towards transformation, when it feels like life, can you know, just really knock you off, course it's it's such a good question, I love your questions.

Speaker 2:

You, off course it's. It's such a good question, I love your questions. These are so good. Um yeah, these, these are the things I think about as well.

Speaker 2:

Um so, when life is lifing- and I think it's really important to remember in the spiritual journey and that you are going to have those contractions. It's inevitable, it's very important. And the idea that we reach some sort of level of consciousness, even to the point of what we call enlightenment, that that's kind of the end of the road. Enlightenment, that that's kind of the end of the road, I think is a fallacy. I think it is a big moment and a big part of our evolution, but we know from the yogis of long ago that that's also not where it ends. It continues past. There there is more growth to be had and if we can remember that you never really, as Esther Hicks says, get it right, you never get it done. I think that's so liberating on the spiritual path and it brings in this humility into the spiritual work and we can put the spiritual ego aside. That it's supposed to look a certain way and that if you're in a contraction that means there's something wrong with you and that you're not doing spiritual development right. I think is not helpful.

Speaker 2:

And I've come to view those moments of contraction where all of a sudden you feel completely moved off your center, whether that's a big loss, whether that's the world is rapidly changing and you're having a hard time keeping up with it, and even whether that's like something amazing is happening and it's propelling you into all of this newness that you're having a hard time grounding into, I view those as such massive opportunities and it doesn't feel like that always in the moment, but you know that you're in the vortex of transformation and that you're learning and you're growing, which is why we're here. So I have had, even in the last few months, those moments where I'm like whoa, what is this? How do I move through this? And if you've ever been in a 10-day meditation, intensive of any kind, you'll know that there's moments in that experience more than a few probably where you come up against yourself in that experience more than a few probably where you come up against yourself, and it's similar to those moments in life.

Speaker 2:

It's the same thing. You're coming up against resistance, things that have been hidden in your psyche or your body that now are ready to move. And every time you have the courage which I think courage is a big part of it. And every time you have the courage which I think courage is a big part of it, the courage to move through it and to see it and to feel it and be in your body with it. The other side of that is something really special and powerful, and so I try to remind myself that the other side of all of that crunchiness is something really liberating.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that's beautiful and I think it's so important for each of us to remind ourselves of that on this journey.

Speaker 1:

Like you said, it's that first of all, it's that opportunity to reorient around any, you know, contraction, any hardship, any, anytime we catch our ego telling us you know, how can you, how can you be here? We've worked so hard, you're obviously not doing it right. All of the things that your ego is going to come in and tell you. And it's that opportunity to reorient and, like you said, meet it with compassion and the growth, welcome the learning. And I think one of the gifts of meditation is really coming home to that safe place and self knowing that, okay, we are off kilter, like things are tough right now in my mind, I'm okay and I'm safe and you're right where you need to be exactly and I, we will get through this together, sweet girl, I talked to my inner child a lot, just like we are going to get through this together and I just love your take on that. It's such an opportunity for us to reorient and welcome an opportunity for growth.

Speaker 2:

There's a story in Autobiography of a Yogi if you've read it but it's one of my favorite stories and I'll paraphrase it a lot here, but I come back to it a lot One of the master yogis that Yogananda was influenced by.

Speaker 2:

He was getting the news from we'll call it an interdimensional space, delivered in a spiritual way, that he was going to die soon, that he was going to pass. His time was coming and one of his students was delivering this message to him and they watched as he this great yogi received this news about his own journey and you could see that he had this moment of tension and some fear ran through him. But he goes into meditation and he processed that fear and I think it's such a powerful story and reminder that even the most advanced of us will have those moments. The difference is, when you're doing this work like you are that your ability to metabolize and move through those energies becomes more and more. I don't know if efficient's the right word, but you become more and more adept to being able to move through different energies, but that doesn't mean that you don't feel them or that you're not affected by them. So I love that story because it really humanizes the spiritual and meditative process.

Speaker 1:

Totally yeah, we can give ourselves a little bit of a pass. If you know, yoga masters are also experiencing dysregulation at times. It's okay.

Speaker 1:

Exactly yeah but it's definitely I think it's giving ourselves grace when we're triggered, when we notice we're experiencing that contraction or you know, we're coming up to those blocks. Giving ourselves grace and almost like celebrating ourselves when we are able to notice and even if it feels like we're arm wrestling, even if it's like the strongest arm wrestle we've ever been in, noticing in, like the moment that we choose something different, if it's an hour later, if it's two hours later, whenever we're able to pull ourselves out of that old pattern, out of that dysregulated state, out of that lower frequency of being, whatever amount of time that takes, celebrating the choice to move somewhere else.

Speaker 1:

But it can be a lot. You know it's a lot easier said than done.

Speaker 2:

For sure. It takes a lot of work and and like you were saying, and a student came up to me one one time and was asking you know how do I move through? Um, it was resentment or something like that and you saying, I know there's a way to move through this. How do I transmute it, how do I get through it? And I was like you already are. The cool thing is you already are moving through, you already are transmuting it, because you're even aware that you're feeling resentful or you're feeling angry, or you're feeling jealous or you're feeling sad. The first kind of step is building that awareness and that's such a powerful step. And then you can start to think about what do we do from there, from having this awareness. But that's worth celebrating, as, if you can you can even name what it is you're experiencing that's a huge step.

Speaker 1:

Totally, I think, like we're saying, really giving ourselves the permission to celebrate these small wins instead of expecting ourselves to be these yogic masters like right away.

Speaker 1:

you know it's it is such a yeah, it's such a process and we're we're human, I think, just celebrating our humanness, and something I've been practicing, or I've been practicing for a while.

Speaker 1:

But when I'm experiencing that contraction, I'm practicing expressing it to my partner or to whomever is my trusted ally in that moment, and really separating the self from that experience so that we kind of dissolve the shame of experiencing that emotion or whatever experience we're going through in any moment.

Speaker 1:

Something I've recently experienced is I was feeling a lot of scarcity in my body, so much scarcity, and expressing that to my partner, who's his foundation, is just abundance and generosity and just give, give, give. And it's so much harder for me and it's something that I intentionally bring awareness to and reprogram and rewire. I intentionally bring awareness to and reprogram and rewire, but it creates a lot of contraction, it creates a lot of fear in my body. And so when that's happening, you know, when I'm expressing it, really separating myself from that experience of scarcity, because otherwise there's so much shame in the experience of scarcity, like, why am I unable to give as freely as you are? You know, really separating as I'm expressing it to him, like I am experiencing this and it's shameful, like and I'm and I'm experiencing shame, I'm experiencing fear and I'm experiencing shame, but I am not the scarcity and I am not the shame, and in doing so it really helps to metabolize, it helps to breathe into compassion and it helps to move forward so much more easefully.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that's beautiful. I love that. It's recognizing that you're the true self, the oversoul, or your whole self is never experiencing lack or fear of any kind, because you're already whole.

Speaker 2:

I love the idea of separating that a bit and saying this is the small me. I love talking to little Crystal as well, the little girl that is experiencing unworthiness or not enoughness and knowing that that's not really who you are. That's your ego that's trying to find some sort of hierarchy to put you in, whether you're lesser than inferior or superior. The ego loves it's like where am I on that spectrum? But it's beautiful that you have a partner that's such a mirror and that holds this totally, this kind of other perspective. Um, and I I love the idea of of thinking about you know, we in spirituality we talk a lot about like moving up into these higher realms. I love the idea of also thinking about bringing your highest self, which is your, your, your as it is already whole, and seeing how much you can bring of that into this dimension, like that's really the. From my perspective, that's spiritual growth in the context of the current reality we're in.

Speaker 1:

How much of my wholeness can I bring into my earthliness?

Speaker 2:

So it kind of yeah, it changes the perspective a little bit of like oh, I have this scarcity experience which I think a lot of people can relate to, and how can I bring?

Speaker 1:

that wholeness into this experience.

Speaker 2:

So the scarcity doesn't even have space anymore.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's almost like shining a really bright light onto that scarcity, and it's not even with the intention of blasting it away, it's just with the intention of remembering truth, of of there's so much oneness and love, that is who we are, that there's no room for lies, really for the ego lies.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and you talk about shame, which I think is so important because then you're compounding. It becomes a compounding effect when we feel resentful or jealous or something like that, and then we're like, oh, I have an awareness that I'm feeling resentful and now I also am shaming myself. Yeah, totally.

Speaker 1:

It's such the like one-two punch. Yeah, it's such a slippery slope, and so bring that awareness to it is really helpful. Something else I wanted to hear more about when you were telling us about your journey that piques my interest I'm sure a lot of my audiences is your awakening, your kundalini awakening, which you had to kind of work backwards to understand. That's what it was, but if you're open. I'd love to hear more about that.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I'm an open book. So I had been meditating for a number of years at this point, and I was in a meditation in my living room and all of a sudden, I felt this energy at the base of my spine starting to ignite. And I'm under the impression that kundalini awakenings have a similar structure, but each person's individual experience will be unique, a similar structure but each person's individual experience will be unique.

Speaker 2:

In my experience, my lower centers activated, which can sometimes feel like a sexual activating, which I didn't understand at the time. And when I was calling up ashrams I was like, can I talk to a monk or a nun? I did. I got on the phone. I was like they have phones, and I did. I got on the phone with a nun and she said now you understand why we do what we do and you have started to unlock this inner technology. I love that term inner technology because I think it is, and the reason why it can sometimes throw people off, that it feels sexual is because those lower centers, the nerves, are literally those centers are activating those nerves. So I learned as the Kundalini started to move up and I think of kind of going back a little bit. Kundalini means serpent power, so kunda, I think of coil, which in scientific terms I think is really interesting because a coil is potential energy.

Speaker 2:

It's potential energy that's stored and this sits at the base of our spine and this is what I learned in retrospect. And when that coil unwinds, that energy can move up your central channel. And in my experience it moved slowly. It was not all at once, it was my lower chakras first. It was not all at once, it was my lower chakras first. And once I understood that the sexual activation or the feeling that you get in those lower chakras was just the nerves getting hyperactivated. Then, once it moved into my solar plexus, then I got nauseous and you had other nerves being activated.

Speaker 2:

But each center for me was a different experience. And when I got to my power center, the question seemed to be is this what you want to do? It was a free will moment. Do you want to pass by this point? Do you want to fully awaken this? And you don't have to right. Your answer could be no, and so that each energy center, very interestingly to me, was a different experience. And then it moved into my heart and it's hung out in my heart for like a year. So you said yeah.

Speaker 1:

And then I did.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, okay, let's go. Yeah, bring it, bring it. The other thing that I experienced, once it really started to move, is you could feel other beings around you helping. So it felt to me almost like a birth process. It felt very similar, that there was this birthing happening, this creation happening, and I wasn't alone. So, yeah, it's fascinating to me, absolutely fascinating.

Speaker 1:

Extremely fascinating and, I think, hearing that, knowing that this potential energy exists within all of us, you know it exists there and it's exists within all of us.

Speaker 1:

You know it exists there and it's. And you know, I feel like I've I've experienced my own version of spiritual awakenings, um, in meditation, completely sober, and then also in different plant medicine ceremonies. I've I've had these really beautiful. I've had these really beautiful expansive kind of envelopings into consciousness and oneness. I haven't had a kundalini awakening in my spiritual journey and it's something that I'm, you know, extremely curious about and I'm wondering if it was for you. It sounds like it was a little bit. It was like a spontaneous awakening just while you're in meditation. It just like happened. And are there practices? There's kundalini yoga, but what are your insights now that you've experienced it? To maybe not necessarily activate it, but prime your body to welcome it, to feel safe to go there.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, such a good question. Well, first, I think there's infinite ways to awaken, so I don't think that the Kundalini process is the one and only. I think there's so many ways to harmonize and balance your energy and to move that energy into the upper centers if that's what you desire, the upper centers, if that's what you desire and to learn how to move this energy in a way that can really be very fulfilling. But for Kundalini, yeah, like I said, I had been meditating for a while, so I think I had been unconsciously priming my system and when it first started to move, I did have that expansive experience as well of oneness, so where you kind of fractal into everything in a not scary way, but you feel that connection, like you were talking about, between everything, and it's no longer a philosophical or intellectual understanding, it's a knowing.

Speaker 2:

And I think that's what awakening of any kind is. However it unravels for you or however it evolves for you, it's moving into that knowing and there's all kinds of ways to do that. But for Kundalini, this is the central channel, activation, this is the spinal, this is the energy center coming into increasing energy. So I think of it as almost like a voltage thing. You're increasing the voltage of your system and the practices. Since then I've done a lot of Kundalini yoga. So I think breath work is really powerful. I think Kundalini yoga, the bandhas that you do, the bandhas which are like locks, are starting to really but not not sure if put pressure is the right term but it's starting to target your breath and your awareness into these centers so that you have a higher likelihood that it starts to unlock. And I include a lot of these in SoulPod. So SoulPod definitely has more of a energy center alignment and activation perspective as far as how we walk people through these practices. But I think it can happen in all kinds of ways.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, I think that's also really important, even just for myself, to hear, I think, even what we were talking about earlier, the spiritual ego or the Virgo in me, whatever it is, it's like, oh well, I haven't done that one, like I need to take that. You know, I haven't had that exact experience, like how can I, you know, versus their infinite iterations of an awakening like you're talking about, because we're each like our own unique energetic fingerprint. Whatever kind of awakening speaks directly to our unique being is going to look different, is going to feel different than somebody else's. And so, yeah, I think it's a good reminder, like I said, for any other Virgos or just anyone else who can lean into the intellectualizing of spirituality and like, okay, well, I'm going to checklist this off, I'm going to sit down, I'm going to do this breath work and then I'm going to experience this, right, you know, it just doesn't have to be so methodical, and it most likely will not be methodical. It's going to be when we're ready, but most likely, not expecting it.

Speaker 2:

Exactly. Expectation is an interesting thing. This is why I think the heart space is such a powerful center to really ground into. It's the balance point between the earthly and the cosmic, and the physical and the non-physical. So let your heart kind of guide you, and for me at least, the right practices, the right teachers have all appeared at the right times.

Speaker 2:

And so it's all in perfect timing, but also being clear on your intention, like do you want to experience an awakening? Do you have a curiosity around it? I'm sure a lot of your audience probably does, but not everybody does, and that's also okay. But not everybody does, and that's also okay. But one of my teachers I love that he said this. He said be a spiritual scientist, discover new ways to evolve your consciousness, and there could be ways, methodologies that we haven't ever uncovered as a species that's still out there for us to experiment with and find. So I really like, from the scientific perspective, kind of merging with the spiritual perspective. It's like experiment, see what works for you, and there's beauty in that too.

Speaker 1:

Totally. That resonates, I feel, like a lot of the way that I speak about spiritual practices and even just living life is collecting data. It's like everything we do, everything where we feel, everything we experience. It's this constant dance with the universe and it's all data for us to grow. It's all data for us to grow. It's all data for us to you know, expand upon and and go from there. And so when you reorient around it from that experimental perspective, it makes it a little bit more playful. You know, it makes it less, just heavy, and less regimented and just more playful and more of this dance.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely. Yeah, I love that. I love that playfulness in the spiritual journey. Yeah, we do.

Speaker 1:

And something else I'm curious about touching on from your journey is, well, your near-death experience that you mentioned. Where on the timeline does that fall with your spiritual awakening? And well, yeah, let's start there. Where on the timeline does that fall?

Speaker 2:

It falls a little bit later on the timeline, so it wasn't early on in my spiritual journey. It was about four years ago and it I would I view it as kind of a catapult moment. So again, like we were talking about earlier, you have those moments where all of a sudden, everything around you changes. Your body is not functioning how you would expect it to, the world around you is changing, you don't have all the support or the materials that you would need to take care of yourself, and so all of the fear can come in, all of your shadows can come in, all of the just the murkiness of being human. And when you have an intense experience like that, a lot of things can happen with your energy.

Speaker 2:

For me, I noticed almost immediately that it was karmic, right when it was coming into my space. I knew that I was already having visions. So I knew something was coming and I knew it was going to be hard. And I think I cried for like an hour straight before I even was sick, because I knew what was coming and there was no way around it. There was nothing I could do to optimize. As a Virgo, I was like what can I do to get out of this and there wasn't anything to be done but to surrender. I was working with a very specific past life and that me going through this in this life was going to heal that other life, which is very trippy.

Speaker 1:

Wow.

Speaker 2:

But was very interesting for somebody on the spiritual journey. And the other thing that I took away from that experience is death energy. You can feel it when you're close to it and it's so interesting because it feels familiar. You're like, oh, I know you.

Speaker 2:

And for me there was a moment where I was fighting pretty hard for a long time and my body was failing me and I had this moment of surrender. It wasn't planned, it wasn't a thought I had, it just happened and I just let go of the struggle, I let go of the fear. And in that same moment I had a thought. I had this one thought and it was I could use some help, I need some help and again, as a Virgo, we're very independent. We can figure this out. But it wasn't something I could do on my own.

Speaker 2:

And almost not almost instantaneously to having that thought, something entered my space. I don't still to this day don't know what it was, but it was. A being was there and my energy centers lit up, one by one, and there was something happening. There was a healing happening or some sort of spiritual um assistance. And that's when I know I was like, oh, the help is there, there's, there are other means of being supported and sometimes you just have to ask for it, and so that was a very powerful moment for me in my spiritual journey is letting go of everything, letting go of the body, facing death and being with death and also being supported at the same time. So it was quite the journey.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, wow, thank you for sharing. I'm sure it can probably be, or I imagine it. Can, you know, bring up some?

Speaker 2:

activating right.

Speaker 1:

To, to put yourself back in that place. But thank you so much for sharing and one of the things I mean there's so much that's so powerful about that experience, but one of the things that really resonates with me in my practice right now is that asking for help is really giving it up to that, knowing that we're not alone, that we are a part of this oneness all playing together. Every single soul, whether they're incarnated or whether they're in different dimensions, it's all intermingled and it's all playing together and each of us has our guide, each of us has our, you know, angels, however you want to call them, and I've noticed such a different. It's a recent practice I've been implementing in the last, I would say, month or so, because I felt so sick of trying to do it all by myself. I felt so convinced that.

Speaker 1:

I mean, we're both burgos, it sounds like so I very much resonate. It's this, like you know, can figure it out by myself. I oftentimes a lot of the stories like I don't need anybody else. Asking for help is is borderline painful and so yeah, and so, especially like turning over my life to something bigger felt so scary. And even though I've been in these practices for years I've been meditating for years just this specific surrender of asking for help has been so much more peaceful.

Speaker 1:

It's this overwhelming peace that moves through my body in my practice when I, you know, one hand on my belly, one hand on my heart, and I'm really I'm, I'm asking, I'm asking to be led in service, I'm asking and I'm trusting that I am being held, that I am being led. Like I won't get up from my meditation until my whole body feels like that's true, like yeah, until my body feels yeah, that's the way to do it every cell believes that I am held.

Speaker 1:

I even get chills thinking about it. Then I won't get up. I love it. I mentioned before we started recording that I lost someone close in my life and I've talked about it on my podcast. My audience knows it was. My father recently passed um on Christmas this past Christmas and so, yeah, it was a really, really intense life event. But it's funny when you talk about being close to death because before he passed I knew death was present, like I felt it. I was sitting in the bathtub and I had this just like overwhelming knowing that loss is coming or like death is coming. And I'll never forget that moment because I knew and I remember sitting there and I didn't know who, I didn't know how.

Speaker 1:

I didn't know when and it didn't really necessarily feel like it was me, but it was this knowing that there's grief coming and that death is close, I get chills too, something that is so with us all the time. It's like right behind the curtain and getting to that place of surrender and now even finding the beauty in that passing and fueling him in these meditations where I'm asking to be held and to be guided. It's like there's just such a power in the surrender of knowing that there's, that you're being held, whether we're, whether we're in the depths of grief, whether we're, you know, feeling lost or off kilter, like we are being held and we're being guided.

Speaker 2:

That's so beautiful. Thank you for sharing.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, thank you for sharing. Yeah, thank you for sharing Gosh.

Speaker 2:

Losing a parent is so such a portal and so challenging. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're doing great.

Speaker 1:

Thank you. Well, one other thing that I'm so curious about I've taken a look at it already is your app, SoulPod. Please, I haven't seen anything like this before and I'm really excited to share with my community, so please tell us all about soul pod yeah, so I think of soul pod as a soulfulness app.

Speaker 2:

So this is for people who maybe want a little bit more woo woo in their life, balanced with the, the science, and we pair people into the most powerful journey for where they're at in their spiritual development right now. So we have a number of journeys. We'll go through a personalization process. You get paired with a journey and you'll get paired with a small pot of people. One thing for me in the spiritual journey that was difficult was community and having somewhere that you could talk about some of these experiences like we're talking about today, and so I wanted to build a space or a platform for people to have that opportunity, and these are 21-day immersions that you can go really deep into a specific area, like worthiness or love or forgiveness or abundance and finding safety in your body, and so it's been a labor of love. We're continuing to build it and grow it and I'm really proud of it and really, really have loved the journey so far with SoulPod.

Speaker 1:

And what do these 21-day?

Speaker 2:

immersions include. So it includes a very specific breathwork for the type of energy that you're working with. So this is similar to Kundalini-inspired breathwork, maybe a little bit different than what you've experienced before, but we give people some space to grow their breath, work, practice and deepen it. Over the 21 days it includes some I call it cosmic contemplation, so some spiritual philosophy, and then, in the second week especially, we go deep into the personal emotional experience of how do we move these concepts into your daily life. And then the third week is all about activating those elevated states of being and giving you more space to self-guide and start to build that muscle of being able to guide yourself into these elevated states of being so that you can sustain them more so.

Speaker 1:

Beautiful. Yeah, I'm so excited.

Speaker 1:

I actually, before we connected, I was trying to activate my trial and I'm so excited too, yeah, I'm so excited to get in there and I think it's so important to empower people, not just like to give them another tool where they're reliant, where they're outsourcing, you know, but to really empower people to build their own toolkit and learn how they can create a customized, you know 15 to 20 minute practice that they can incorporate daily for specifically where they are on their spiritual journey, whether it's, you know, forgiveness, worthiness, whatever it is that we're really focusing on in this moment, where we're, where we're coming up to our most amount of triggers, contraction, to really create a specific, you know, personalized protocol and give them the tools to do that is so powerful and can really make a difference in people's lives.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I think we all need in the world today and our human experience more, more ways we can activate that soulfulness. So yeah, Beautiful.

Speaker 1:

Well, I will link everything to SoulPod in the show notes and I will put all of the links to connect with you. How can people connect with you?

Speaker 2:

So you can find us at soulpodappcom and you can find me at crystal at soulpodappcom. You can find us on Instagram at I think it's also soul pod app, so yeah.

Speaker 1:

Beautiful. Okay, well, I'll put all that in the show notes for people so that they can find you.

Speaker 2:

So happy to connect with everyone.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it's been such a wonderful conversation. I'm really excited for people to drop in with us.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, thank you so much, kat. It's been a lovely conversation. Thank you so much.

Speaker 1:

Thank you. I hope you enjoyed that conversation with me and Crystal. There's so much juicy stuff in there and I think even just her energy is a testament as to the power of meditation. Testament as to the power of meditation. So, if anything, I hope this episode inspires you to download the free trial of soul pod to start to implement a daily practice. If you liked this episode, it would mean so much to me if you left a review. It will really help this podcast grow. Send it to anybody in your community that you think would also enjoy this episode and I'll be back next week.