What To Do When Nothing Else Has Worked

A common thread that keeps showing up, time and time again, is this point in midlife when things start to change. The life you've been living still matters, but it can no longer hold what's trying to come next. There's often a quiet knowing that something is calling you forward, yet it's difficult to put into words.

In this episode of The Midlife Rebel Podcast, I'm joined by women's rite of passage guide Niels Vantzuriel. A Dutch archaeologist, hypnotist and gifted storyteller now living on a remote peninsula in Ireland, Niels offers a perspective on midlife that felt unlike anything I'd heard before. The way he speaks is almost poetic, weaving together ancient wisdom, mythology and practical guidance in a way that invites you to slow down and listen.

We explore why some women reach a point where therapy, self-help books, meditation and personal development no longer feel like enough. They're not looking for more information; they're looking for an experience that marks the changes already happening within them. That's where Niels' work is so different. He guides women through immersive rites of passage, drawing on ancient landscapes, trance work and ceremony to help them consciously step into the next chapter of their lives.

We also explore one of the most fascinating ideas from our conversation: growth through pleasure. Rather than relying on struggle or pushing harder, Niels explains how pleasure can help rewire behaviour, expand our thinking and create lasting change. We talk about preparation, ceremony and, just as importantly, the integration that follows when you return home to the same family, work and everyday life.

If you've reached a point where the life you've been living no longer feels quite enough, and you're sensing that something deeper is asking for your attention, I think you'll really enjoy this conversation. It offers another way of looking at midlife, not as a crisis to solve, but as a doorway into the next chapter of your life.

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Transcript

Right Tool For The Right Wound

SPEAKER_00 0:00

All of the other things, the therapy, the self-help books, the meditations, the ayahuasca ceremony, all of it are really good tools. Um, we're getting to a place now that we understand what works for our psyche, but you have to find the right tool for the right problem. And the problem that these women have is so specific. And it's not only the high-functioning executive, it is, but it tends to be. It tends to be the woman that has put building her life first very smartly. They have had their children, they've built their career, they had their successful marriage. But all the while, since they were a small, small child, something has been whispering in their minds.

Rewriting Midlife As Awakening

SPEAKER_01 0:46

Welcome to the Midlife Rebel Podcast. It's time to rewrite the midlife story for women who refuse to be put in a box. Because maybe midlife isn't a crisis. Maybe it's an awakening. The arrival method is exploring the profound mental, emotional, and psychological shifts that occur in a woman on the journey of transitioning to a new identity and your rite of passage guide for women. And so that's what we're going to be talking all about today. And obviously, the podcast is about all of these things to do with midlife and women going through these kinds of changes. But what you do is quite different to any anything that my other guests have spoken, spoken about, you know, and I think everything there are different things, different different people need different things, right? This is yeah, sounds very bespoke, and I'm super curious to hear all about it.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

I'm gonna try to do my best to give as much value to uh to your listeners as I can. Um, yeah, this stuff is different. Uh, I never planned on this, so I'm still flabbergasted when I go up the mound and go like, I get to do this. This is awesome.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

That's actually where I was gonna start. I was listening to a podcast that you did with someone else, um, and you mentioned that you haven't always lived in Ireland. And so I would love to know how you sort of came to be doing this work. Um, you know, were you doing it prior to being in Ireland? Has it all kind of evolved quite naturally? Like what's yeah, it's really

A Dutch Archaeologist Moves To Ireland

SPEAKER_01 2:41

okay. It really is. Let's get into it. Okay. So how did you come to be doing this work?

SPEAKER_00 2:50

Oh, um so it really happened by accident. As you can hear from my accent, I'm not Irish at all. I'm Dutch in uh from uh from my birth. I've traveled all the world, I've lived in like quite a lot of different places, but about 14-15 years ago, I bumped into this little gremlin that is known as Elizabeth. She is my partner, and I met her three times and I moved to Ireland, which was a gamble. Uh that could have gone horribly wrong. I'm not saying it was ever easy, but we made the choice and we went, where are we going to live? And the question at the time was: is that going to be Holland? Very structured society, very high in its wealth and in its resources, or is it going to be Ireland? Because she is Irish. And within a day, we made a decision. We're going to live in the middle of bloody nowhere on one of the uh peninsulas, reaching out into the Atlantic, just cliff faces, mountains, stone circles to know, and that's where we're going to live. And we've been living here for the last 13 years. And I'm an archaeologist by trade, I'm a hypnotist by trade, so I like to dig beneath the surface, both into the earth and into people's minds. When I came here, my archaeological background just went it went nuts. The amount of archaeological sites that are on this tiny, tiny island is beyond anything that I could have ever experienced. Imagine. I thought I knew a lot about European history as an archaeologist, but I had no idea what this country had in both the uh the quality and the sheer quantity of megalithic structures. It is mind-blowing. It is such a hub. The thing is, most of these places, sacred places, the locals call them thin places, where the connection between the one our world and the other world, um, the locals don't really go and visit them anymore. They're respected as places where the fairies are very strong and you do not mess with the fairies. Um, but by and large, they are just left to their own devices. So they are crumbling and they are just part of the landscape. No one ever goes there, so they retain their power. However, they do that, and there are many theories upon how they actually cultivate their power, nobody uses it. Nobody goes to visit these places. Well, me with my archaeological brain went, oh hell no, I'm going. So last 13 years, come hell or high water, or in case of Ireland, a lot of rain. I've been going out as much as I possibly can just to find these places. And started to do ceremony there. These places are were built for ceremony, although we don't actually know what kind of ceremony. But the human psyche just recognizes

Thin Places And Modern Ceremony

SPEAKER_00 5:50

these kinds of places as oh, here you stop, here you sink in, here you focus, uh, and here you go into yourself. It just happens naturally. Now it's very handy that a lot of these places are off the beaten path, meaning you have to hike. When you're hiking, you're already getting into a completely different state of mind. So the moment that you enter one of these uh sacred sites, if you if it's a stone row, uh it's a cairn, it's a stone circle, uh maybe a megalithic tomb. These places just do their magic. We started to take our friends, our friends, archaeologists by themselves, they were dumbstruck um again about both the quality and the quantity and just the effects that these places have. And this just started to snowball slowly but surely. I had a uh a big background in uh in other forms of spirituality, taught all over the world as a as a young lad, which I'm I'm very grateful for. And I basically took all of that into the stone circles, and it just grew from there. Never planned on this.

SPEAKER_01 6:58

Wow, that's pretty cool. I I you've kind of answered some of the questions that I was going to ask, even though I haven't got to ask them. But um yeah, I wondered if you'd always been sort of sensitive to those other realms, to fairies and portals, and um whether, well, in your role as a or job as an archaeologist, did did you feel that kind of connection with historical sites before you moved to Ireland? Like that there was some kind of spirituality connected to that experience?

SPEAKER_00 7:35

Okay, that part always um for me it is it's always been about humanity, not in the abstract, it's always been about people and people surviving on this earth. There is a uh a beautiful view of seeing life on this earth as abundant, and that's the earth provides so much, but if you're an archaeologist, you see the other side of it. Life here on earth is brutal, and uh the even though the society that we've built has a lot of drawbacks and we are so disconnected from nature, the one thing that it has going for itself is that we live, and we live relatively comfortable in comparison to the people that came before. What I was always incredibly interested in is the different ways that our ancestors struggled and ultimately thrived to get us where we are now. The amount of love, dedication, effort that went into that, into working with the land and all of the different ways of being able to express our humanity to get to this place that we are right now, that has always fascinated me. So when you come across an archaeological site and you bump in as an archaeologist into burial places, for me it was also always so weird that we just dug these things up without any ceremony, without any prayer. It was just shoveling to the ground and and am I the only one here praying for these people? These are literally the people who came before, who had way harsher lives, and to certain extent, although of course their knowledge was less wide, it was far more concentrated. There is these people needed to be honored. So there was always that part of what I would call spiritual uh aspect to it, just the sheer humanity of what and who came before. On top of that, I've always been very sensitive uh in one way or another to uh to energies. Um now Elizabeth is the one that sees things, that hears things, and she's uh she's quite a superstar at it. Um I just have more intimations and and knowings, and I've I've learned over the years to just trust them, to just follow them.

SPEAKER_01 9:59

I love it. I'm from uh Glastonbury in the UK, so live in Australia now, but uh yeah, so that's a very yeah, yeah. It's such a cool place, and it sounds like Ireland is just full of places like that. Um what do you say to people? I mean, I'm kind of going a bit a bit bit ahead of myself because I want to talk about um the work that you do with the women that come and join you for your um initiations.

Honouring Ancestors And Sensing Energies

SPEAKER_01 10:35

Is that what we call them? Rites of passage. Um yeah. Um, what do they think when you start to talk about fairies? I'm mad for a fairy, by the way. And forest folk.

SPEAKER_00 10:53

Oh yeah. Um it depends, it really depends upon the person. Um, it is so bespoke what we do that eventually I always end up talking about fairies. It could be in the very literal sense. In Ireland, fairies are a real big thing and they're bloody well real, or it could be in the cultural significance to the country that you're in. So it depends upon what the inn is for the woman that I'm working with at that moment. Um, I'm not a battering ram going like this is the only way, and you need to follow my tools and my techniques, and it doesn't work for the type of work that we are trying to achieve. It is so highly specific. The women that I mostly work with are high functioning, their prefrontal cortex is just on 24-7, such a mental push energy, which is fantastic because they've built their careers, their lives in a very masculine-dominated culture with that very strong mind, and they're bloody good at it. Talking about fairies on day zero, um, let's not do that. I well, let me re-fri. I probably would, but there is so much pre-work already done to soften everything up, to make clear the boundaries and what kind of magical place you're actually stepping into to do deep, deep ceremonial work, to do deep change work that will actually last a lifetime. You don't just have an experience, but you have something that you can take home and now truly be another person. There's so much pre-work being done that they've come to expect this. It's part and parcel of everything. Even though these people are highly educated, they are incredibly strong in their left brain thinking. Oftentimes it is a breath of fresh air of oh, okay, the whimsical, the the woo-woo, the mysterious, actually has a place here that can still thrive and is still honored. On day zero, the the day that we get you to the land, oh hell yes, we're saying hello to the local goddess. We have to, we are on her turf. Uh, on a place like this, you play by different rules. You can play by modern western civilization, and there is no animus, there is no no uh spirit in uh in everything, everything is just dead, and it's all just uh impulses and electrons in our brains that you could approach things like that, and you can still get deep change work done like that. But if you uh combine it in the way that the whole environment actually responds to, honoring the local goddesses, understanding that everything is alive, everything is connected. The ancient Irish call this uh quarqueveness or right relationship, being in right relationship, not just with yourself or your tribe, but with the whole bloody environment. If you approach it in that way, you are stacking the deck in your favor. So on day zero, we are saying hello to the local goddess, which is the kayak, which is the uh divine hag of uh ancient Celtic um uh societies. You've got multiple sovereignty goddesses, uh, young wife and and old, and the old one is the um yeah, she's known as uh as the kayak or the divine hag, she's the the queen of storms and the queen of winter, and oh, she's got a presence here because over the whole of the British Isles she's known, but she's got one specific peninsula that's called her home, and that's right here. So, oh yes, we're gonna say hello to her just to it's good etiquette, if anything, it's just good spiritual etiquette, and you don't want to be stacking the deck the deck against yourself. So that we we do that on day one. Nothing or day zero, actually.

SPEAKER_01 14:55

My mind went all over no, no, no, it was great. My mind went all over the place then. Um because I'm like, I want to know all of the things. I mean, I'm just really curious about that kind of the change that you know that that woman that you mentioned, um the like high-functioning corporate executive by the

Why High Achievers Seek A Rite

SPEAKER_01 15:20

sense of things, like working in a male-dominated environment, very successful, and then there's that call to nature, isn't it? How do they get to you? How do they find you? And I remember someone that the other day, yeah, okay. I love someone that the other day because I was I'm just like, you know, I'd love to hear sort of like who is this person and why how do they come across you? And he was like, Oh, marketing. I was like, I was kind of hoping for something a little bit deeper than that. We know that marketing's involved, but like, like, yes, you've just said it. Um, that was my turn to ramble. It is the uh they've tried everything else.

SPEAKER_00 16:06

It they literally have, and all of the other things the therapy, the self-help books, the meditations, the ayahuasca ceremony, all of it are really good tools. Um, we're getting to a place now that we understand what works for our psyche, but you have to find the right tool for the right problem. And the problem that these uh women have is so specific. And it's not only the high-functioning executive, it is, but it tends to be. It tends to be the woman that has put building her life first very smartly. They have had their children, they've built their career, they had their successful marriage. But all the while, since they were a small, small child, something has been whispering in their minds. And maybe when they were small, they couldn't quite articulate it, but it became very clear as they started to grow older and older and older. And by the time that they get to us, that little small voice is a bloody siren going off into their ear. I am here for a different reason. I don't know what sometimes they do, but I am here not just for this, even though raising my children, biggest gift that I've ever received, there is something else that now needs to come through, which is so huge I am scared to actually even name it because it's that ridiculously over the top huge. But it's not going away, it's only getting louder. And the life that I've built, although it's been so successful, it cannot hold what comes next. It can be a springboard, but the way that I've put things into place right now, it will just not be the uh the right fertile earth to to grow this seed any further. I need to change. This is a dead end road. I need a huge amount of change. Therapy is not the place for that. An ayahuasca ceremony where you just have a high and then you don't have an integration period. So you have the the and I have so much respect for, but I use the ayahuasca uh ceremony as an example. It it's very rare that this leads to integrated structural change for this kind of stuff that is trying to come through. And what we've understood over the years is that thing that these women carry inside of them, they've been gestating this for their whole life. It's not just a birth cycle of or a growing cycle of nine months. Oftentimes, if they are very spiritual, they feel that this is something that has been with them for multiple lifetimes, and now it comes out. A change like that, a adjustment of belief systems and of your own identity is going to be so huge. A simple I'm gonna do a weekend retreat and I'm I'm gonna do a uh a deep meditation or uh a juice cleanse, and I'm gonna firmly state that I'm not gonna be somebody else, it just won't do. Now, the ancients had a solution for this, and that is a rite of passage. It is taking a set amount of time aside with the firm intention, when I come out of this, I'm gonna be a different person, I'm gonna act differently, I'm gonna see the world differently, and the people around me are gonna hold me in a different way. You prepare, oftentimes physically, either by fasting or by dancing. Maybe there are some psychedelics involved, for us there

Integration After The Breakthrough

SPEAKER_00 19:35

isn't, but there's all different ways of starting to access the subconscious. Then you go down, down, down deep into the underworld, into uh what the ancients used to call something like katabasis. You either die there and are being reborn, or you retrieve a soul fragment of yourself that is a power source, and then you slowly start to come out again. And it is in the coming out again and the integrating of these new ways of being where the real magic happens because you can come here to Ireland and have a fantastic time. We give you all of these tools to make these changes stick, but you go back home again, and your corporate uh career is still there. Your children are still screaming, uh, your boss is still infringing upon your personal space. Life is gonna push back on you. So your old ego is there's a good chance it's gonna come back with a vengeance. That's when we keep on walking with you so that you are literally witnessed being hey, you wanted to be this new person. Now the rubber needs to hit the road, you're gonna fail more times than you can count. But if you keep on showing up and we keep on walking with you, even though now it's online instead of in person, um you can actually successfully do this, especially if you put the tools into use, and that vision that you had of yourself is so strong, you believe it so much, you felt it in your body just sing to yes, this is who I want to be, this is what I need to do. Then if you can recreate that, then you are gonna say to your boss, piss off, um, respectfully. Um, or you are able to hold your call with your children on a Sunday morning or a Tuesday morning, or have that talk with your partner going like, Hey, love you to bits, but this is no longer working for me in the way that we are doing it right now. I would love to start to do it in this way. Small changes, step by step, day by day. You do not just explode your life. That's not how you do successful change. Uh, people who have heard me uh talk on multiple podcasts will recognize what's coming next. We tell the girls here you are not allowed when you come back to divorce your husband the first week that you're back, you're not allowed to quit your job. Up the first week that you're back, that's not how you integrate deep, deep change. You do it small steps. You understand that you are going to fail over and over and over again, but there is an upward trend, and that's how change is not just like a um a Deus Ex Machina, that's just a divine hand coming in and changing your life. Although I've heard stories that that can happen for 99.9% of the people, it is doing it, failing, doing it again, failing again, and then slowly but surely, but in that way, you are so proud of the person that you've now built. But with us, you've got the tools, you've got the liminal space and time where you can step out of your old life and just purely focus on what you need to do. Go into that very deep, sometimes dark place in old places that were built specifically for ceremonies like this, and then we keep on walking with you.

SPEAKER_01 23:00

Wow. What can you share

The Golden Thread Behind Their Symptoms

SPEAKER_01 23:05

with us some of the like, or even one or one or two of the um types of women that have come? I know that you you know you need to be um not secretive, but you can't tell people's stories without getting their permission. Um they've had that burning thing where it's been in their life their whole their their whole lives, what kind of thing is it? Are they change makers? Are they like spiritual guides? Like what who are they? What what kind what sorts of things have they had in them from that very young age?

SPEAKER_00 23:55

They are going to be the they oftentimes already are playing that role in a smaller way. They are hugely effective in their community, in their local tribe. That can be their family, that can be their group of friends. Um, they are the powerhouses, if you will. And we we all know people like this who just have an aura around them, who somehow just have more energy or more access to internal resources, and it just is it's emanating out of them. It's oftentimes those, or they have the very clear potential, and they come to us with different things. It's um um, I'm in my divorce, uh, and I'm trying to reinvent myself, and oftentimes when we start to talk, uh, because honestly, that it's not the stuff that we do, it's it's more of a um it's a symptom for something way deeper. It's the I need to stop this addiction, I need all of those things, and we make very clear the uh the issue is never the issue. And as soon as we can get to the thing that's actually underneath it all, if it is one of those big changes, then we say yes to you. Uh, because otherwise it's there are more effective other people out there that can help you with the stopping of the smoking or um how to deal with a uh a bad breakup successfully, if it's just those things. But oftentimes when you finally come to us because everything else just and you've tried everything else, we come to the conclusion okay, that thing that's underneath what is it? That thing that tends to be like the golden thread for all of them is uplifting themselves so that all of society around them can be uplifted as well. Oftentimes there's a spiritual aspect to that. In practicality, it it manifests into just helping people. If that is starting a charity, it doesn't matter, but it can be something like I'm starting a trust to help the next generation with financial aid. It could be stuff like that. If the lady that I'm thinking about right now, very specifically her higher self, just came through, and that was a bloody powerhouse. It's just she knew that it was gonna happen. She was very afraid, she needed a ceremonial space to go ahead and and do this. The uh stone circles are perfect for this. Um, to create both a container and an anchoring point to just let it happen. That thing was always just as behind a a glass wall, it came through, and now there's no stopping it. It's with her all the time, talking to her, emanating through her, touching the people that she talks with. And now it's uh it's for her a case of okay, how do I integrate this? How do I actually bring this in a stable way into my own life before I bring it to my community? She's going back to her home country now, uh, as in she was in one of the western countries. She's going back to her home country now and bringing this to her local tribe.

SPEAKER_01 27:23

My goodness, that's pretty intense, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 27:29

Stuff happens, yeah. And you just have to keep your cool, go like okay, happens every day.

When Nature Responds To Change

SPEAKER_00 27:35

You haven't seen it before. Yeah, sure. This is this is just it isn't normal Tuesday when stuff like that. Uh animals, trees, the the whole environment responds when a breakthrough like that happens. And uh yeah, how does that look?

SPEAKER_01 27:51

How does that look when you say that like nature responds on a very low level?

SPEAKER_00 27:58

Uh something like and you could can start to um imagine this a way of it's just the wind. So just the wind is responding, and it out of nowhere, completely silent, the the wind is starting to pick up. Um, but if you've seen this enough times, it is undeniable when somebody is having is at the verge of a breakthrough, nature starts to respond. In places like this, when you're dealing with energies like this, nature starts to respond. So uh sea eagles that they are here, but you rarely see them all of a sudden show up just reliably there, and you're going, Why are you here? I know why you're here. Um one lady shook the earth, literally at her breakthrough. There are no earthquakes here. She shook the earth.

SPEAKER_01 28:45

Oh my god, we're she's scared.

SPEAKER_00 29:34

She was scared because she knew that stuff like this was going to happen because this is the stuff that they carry inside of them, and they know, and the thing that they are looking for is who can help? Because when you're dealing with this kind of stuff, there is the real possibility of going crazy. These are the kind of energies that were, and this is not hyperbole. If you do not channel this correctly, you can go crazy. Well, say goodbye to your successful life. You've built everything up, and now in one week, or when you finally allow something to come through, gone. Everything gone. You need a place where that is such a safe container that is so structured and so grounded that whatever comes, and you you do a lot of preparation work, there's at least at least five weeks of preparation before you ever come to Ireland, preferably a lot more. Um so your whole being is going like, okay, I'm going to do this, and I come hell or high water. You go into this, and then whatever comes through, it needs very clear structure and framework and safety to be able to then just dance and just explode inside of that container. And again, that's what the sacred sites do. That's what I do, is just provide that that safety and that very clear. This is what we're doing, this is why we are doing this, this is how we are doing this, depending upon on the girl, on the lady. Now it's up to you. And then in when we are working with that trance with a very deep subconscious, it's a doorway, it just becomes a doorway. It's vague, but for the person that they know.

SPEAKER_01 31:29

Wow. I'd I'd wanna I would love to have you share more about that actual like the process, like without going into like a whole bunch of detail, but you know, just sort of like some of the things that someone um would would go through. You've mentioned the the hike, the trance state. I wonder how before we do, how did you feel when you realized that you had the ability to create this kind of environment for people? Like that's pretty intense as well.

SPEAKER_00 32:11

Uh this this grew, but it grew from a seed that was always there. Uh-huh. So I remember being God, that must have been 16, 17, 18, so young teen or pre-20. Uh, there was a portal that opened up in uh uh in Holland at the time, and people would flock to this garden where multiple energy portals were just shooting out of the ground, and they would be doing ceremony there. And there was this really big ceremony happening, and somehow I knew that the whole thing was starting to become unstabilized.

Safety, Grounding, And Deep Trance

SPEAKER_00 32:44

Um, as the group needed an anchor, and me as a little 16, 70-year-old boy, was just like, well, nobody's doing this, I'll be the bloody anchor. So I remember just sitting there and just literally grounding everybody in, going like, can all of you people just shut up and just get that energy into the ground so that I can actually do what it's supposed to be bloody well doing, and that that is a just a story of what I've always I don't know how, I just know that I do. Um this culminated eventually in working with Elizabeth. Elizabeth is is one of those high flyers, um type that talks to the very high ethereal beings all day, every day. Um she doesn't like it down here. She she does what she needs to do down here, but if she had a choice, she would be up there all day, every day. Um, that woman needs grounding. Um, she's getting to the place where she can fully do it herself, but in divine union or in partnership, it is so much easier to just have your specific role. That means for me, I need to be in the gym as much as I can. I need to be very specific with the food that I eat, I need to be away from computers as much as I can, just to be embodied, just to be grounded. In modern parlance, you talk very quickly then about masculine and feminine. Um, for me, it is basically just I I need to be the masculine in these kind of situations just to be the the grounding factor. Um I I teach how I do that uh to the girls because I I don't want you to leave without having everything that you need. That you if you if we never meet again, you never have to. You have all you know exactly how to do it and when to do, and you've practiced this over and over and over again. So you know how to do this. Um but it's just easier to export parts of this of this work to somebody else who can then who can guide you, who can make you feel so cherished and so seen and so safe that you go, this is actually the place where I can do where I can finally let all of my armor go, where I can drop that old shell and just let that new thing come out. And the uh the structures that we have in society, um they don't really offer anything like that. It's it's very clinical, so therapists bless them because they're doing God's work. The stuff that you hear from therapists is it's amazing the amount of work that they do, uh but it's very clinical. And for this kind of work, clinical will not get you the results that you're looking for. It is incredibly personal, it is incredibly intimate. Now, try to be intimate between a man and a woman without being intimate. Ultimately, that is where my power lies. Where I can just hold you, I don't need anything from you. I can just literally hold the scene and guide you in to the door so that you can walk through. That's ultimately what I do. That is in very deep uh trance work. People have heard about hypnosis, maybe they've experienced hypnosis. It is a very effective technology, but the way that most clinical hypnotists do this I have a bone to pain. Uh, it is um oftentimes just following scripts and not really if you've got a good hypnotist, they will read the person, but they're not working on presence. And I work with guiding somebody to the deepest parts of themselves purely by presence, it is um, and it's difficult to explain without actually experiencing it. But I'm not just sitting there, and now you close your eyes and imagine a bridge. It doesn't work for this kind of work. Um if you combine that with the uh with the sacred sites, with the hiking, and then the other tools that we use, and I'll I'll just throw this out there and see if if you want to talk about it, but I work with a concept known as growth through pleasure. Um if you combine all of that, the storytelling, the working with the larger part of a person's being, being the um uh the etheric bodies and all of that, if you work with all of that, so the the mental, the the physical, the subconscious minds, the etheric body, all of it, now you can pull a change like that through in a sustainable way. It's not just something that you do in the mind, it's not just an affirmation. Those things are fantastic, but they are they lack the punching power of what you actually need.

SPEAKER_01 37:52

I was gonna ask you about that with the preparation you was you mentioned that like leading up to um coming to Ireland, you would expect um one of your um clients to do at least five weeks worth of work. What does that entail? Like, is that is that mental fortitude? Is it meditation? Like what is it like like prepping yourself literally mentally and emotionally through talking about it? Like, how does that all it's all of it?

SPEAKER_00 38:29

Okay, so um Elizabeth

Five Weeks Preparation And The Week Flow

SPEAKER_00 38:33

and I we we break up the work um prior to and afterwards. There's a lot of work with Elizabeth. Um, because in the high season I'm off into the mountains with one person every week, I just don't have the time. Uh, it doesn't mean that you don't talk to me ahead of time, it there's a lot of communication going on. So that you when you prepare, you get crystal clear what you actually want. You can stay vague if you want to, but the results are just not going to be as fantastic as you want it to be. And then we're gonna start to push you. Okay, this is cool what you just wrote down. Make it more extraordinary because we both know that you're now playing small. You're you can play small with with other facilitators, go bigger because it's actually possible. That's one of the things that the girls here figure out really quickly after day one or day two, going, oh shit, this stuff actually works. Oh, now I can go and play. What can I actually and so we prepare them big think big, big, but also something as practical as you need to be able to at least hike an hour um to through rough training. So start to prepare. And if you're not quite there yet, then we're gonna have to think about doing this next year or at the end of the season. If you're contacting me at the beginning of the season, um, because it's very physical. Arden takes no prisoners, it's it's beautiful here in the summertime. Uh, but even during the summertime, it it can rain and it can be so soggy and slippery. So you need to prepare physically. Um, of course, when you're here, we modulate to what you are capable of doing, or if it's been a specifically very heavy emotional day uh the day prior. Let's say on Tuesday, you are um you gave everything and you had that big breakthrough. Um, and on Wednesday morning, you say, Niels, can we take it a bit slow? We adjust. Uh, it's so we can go to different sacred sites, to different liminal places or uh uh thin places to do the work. Um, but preparing yourself physically, um, and of course, uh we make personalized audios ahead of time, so when you fall asleep, you are opening yourself up that massive change is actually possible for you, not through the linear way of just ramming through uh small steps and making progress every no, there is that is the potentiality of massive um exponential growth, specifically when you're working with women. Okay, they just function in a different way, and when they do their magic and allow themselves to do their magic, they just they change reality. It is quite cool to see when they do. Sounds and I'm jealous because it's not my way of doing as a man. I'm just sitting there going like I'm the anchor.

SPEAKER_01 41:39

Yeah, so women come to you for like a week at a time, it's just one woman for an entire week, no one else there, just you, Elizabeth, and your guest. And so are you visiting sacred sites every day? Is there one kind of pinnacle that you have, or can it happen at any point during that seven-day period?

SPEAKER_00 42:13

Um, it's a minimum of uh of seven to eight days. So it can be longer, oftentimes it is longer. It it really depends upon the woman themselves and their schedule. It depends upon what they want to pull through. Oftentimes, if they they figure out the potentiality of this work and they want to come back to go even deeper, or and this is a fun one to drag their partner along. Can you teach me, can you teach him this so that he can be that container and whole different story? Is there a pinnacle that tends to be? Uh, and it is of course connected to the kayak, it is connected to the local goddess, but it doesn't have to be, it is all on their own time frame. Some of them have their breakthrough on day one, others they wait and wait and wait, and I'm just sitting there going like okay, this is your last day. Do you want to dance or no? And then they finally go and and and do that last little bit that needs to be done. It it could be something like processing the uh the death of a child, or feeling guilty over something like that, or uh adoption, uh having to give a child up for adoption and feeling guilty about um the cheating, the uh breaking your partner's heart, and what that does for your own uh for your own identity and and how you hold yourself. Things come out. We're not therapists. Well, Kira is to an extent, but it's not the role that but that we play, and it's not meant as uh therapy, but stuff comes out, and we just hold the space to be able to just let it all come out and put something better back in. Of course, completely guided by what they want to put back in. Every single day, there is the combination between, on the one hand, doing preparational work, um, new techniques, rehearsing the old techniques, and then driving and joining the countryside, and then there's at least one hike to a sacred site per day. It's oftentimes two. Okay, but it really depends upon on them, on the weather, uh, on what they want to do. Um, there's a lot of laughing, there's a lot of snacking along the way. We go to tourist spots, there's good coffee along the way, uh, all of that. It it is also supposed to be fun. There's Are um spa not spa days, but our spa mornings, just to keep you nice and nimble and limber and uh and all of that. We also want to enjoy ourselves, yeah. But there is a lot of work being done, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:55

Um and you you mentioned um taking the client. I don't know what to call them, you call them your ladies. Is that what you call them?

SPEAKER_00 45:07

Elizabeth keeps on uh girls yes, exactly. This work is so intimate that among girls, even the 72 years old. Everybody becomes a friend. You cannot do this kind of work that is so intimate without not being. There is something that um a therapist and hypnotist know that there is a you need to build rapport with somebody. Yes, rapport oftentimes means that you are very uh empathetic to their plight and that you understand what they're going through. That is surface level shit. I'm so sorry. Yes, you need that, but if you stop there, you miss so much. What you figure out very quickly when you do it in a setting like this with the preparational work, with the intent that you're trying to bring to get them to pull through that big thing, that just being empathetic and just being nice with them, it just won't do. When you go into this very deep work with them together, a connection starts to form, and that connection means that weird stuff starts to start to happen on the very service level. It is just plain synchronicities, they happen all the time. Now, when they happen for you as a as a lady, as a as a girl going coming here, it it blows your mind. Um, and it's always fun when it happens, but that's just still service-level stuff. You start to feel what I feel, and I start to feel what you feel, and it's it gets to the point of silent communication pretty quickly. Um, which means that if I am not completely clean in the work that I do, you will notice it very quickly, and that will hinder the progress the process because it's it's so completely upon trust. And this is not just trust as in they are allowing this, I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt. No, this is trust that needs to go so deep, it needs to be earned on merit ahead of time and during the the week here in Ireland, that there's just no doubt in their mind. It's not even a thing that comes up for question anymore. Um, so that basically all of your gatekeepers in your mind are just powered down. Your gatekeeper of your inner critic of is it safe? So the the the inner critic would be the lateral lateral orbital frontal cortex, the LOFC. You can forget about that name, but I was just seeing if it was still in there for me in the early mornings. But that is a gatekeeper telling you, okay, this is who I am, this is how I am allowed to be. That starts to power down so that you can start to reinvent yourself and allow yourself to be more things. The amygdala amygdala, the um fight or flight center in your uh in your brain starts to power down under certain circumstances as well, which basically tells you it is actually safe here, so I don't have to be this rigid, I can actually open up to different ways of being. Um, and there are multiple of these gatekeepers in the mind that in the combination between deep, deep trance work, working with pleasure, hiking, all in combination, start to power down, and what we found is that specifically women, that combination they are able to power down far more effectively, efficiently, deeper than what men would be able to do. So I don't work with men unless it's their partner, um, for a multitude of reasons. Number one, it just comes more naturally to me to work with women. Uh, but part of it is also the tools just work better with women's minds and brains because their architecture is just ever so slightly different that they it's almost like a superpower for them when they when they trust you, they really trust you.

SPEAKER_01 49:13

Okay, so it sounds amazing. You mentioned pleasure a couple of times. So would you talk to us a little about that?

SPEAKER_00 49:27

Let's just uh uh put some frameworks around that, yeah. Um uh because what does this sound like? Strange bearded bold guy on the internet takes one by one into the Irish mountains and work with them with pleasure. That's actually exactly what I do. I'm not shying away. This is exactly what I do. Um the close they stay on. Uh, I can touch you on the neck to hold you if you're in the deepest parts of trans so that

Trust, Gatekeepers, And The Brain

SPEAKER_00 49:53

you don't fall off a bloody cliff. Uh, I can touch you on the shoulder, the elbow, the wrist. All of that is pre-negotiated, and every single time I will ask you, hey, are you still comfortable with this? But that's where it stops. And then from there, we start to work with pleasure as a tool, as a reinforcement mechanism. Now, very bluntly speaking, us humans, we either run away from pain or we run towards pleasure. Now, of course, it's far more complex than that, but that's a handy scale or heuristic to use. Running away from pain is evolutionarily speaking incredibly effective. It keeps us alive. You put your hand on the hot stove once. It's it's uh neurobiologically very sticky. You only have to do that once. The example that I also tend to give on podcasts is if you're a small child and you're speaking up for your needs, hey mommy, I I'm hungry, and you're doing that to a family member who is not in a good place at that moment, and they respond very negatively to you. You, as a small child, figure out very quickly it is unsafe for me to speak up for my needs. Evolutionarily speaking, this stuff learning through pain is incredibly effective at keeping us alive, but it creates a because of the baggage that comes along with it, it creates a cognitive narrowing, meaning it's not a good tool to use when you are trying to upgrade your self-belief, your identity, and just become a far more expansive way of thinking of yourself. There are other tools though, those other tools one of them it's not the only tool that we use, but it's the one that jumps into the eye of uh the most is working with pleasure. And pleasure has the capability of working with a whole different set of neurotransmitters and powering down and activating different parts of the brain so that you are able to have a far bigger cognitive window, it's the uh broaden and built window in in neuroscience, so that you can make far bigger connections and far bigger changes in literally the architecture of your brain. Pleasure neurochemicals like dopamine, like uh oxytocin, they are not just feel-good chemicals, they have a lot of different side effects of what they do. Um, and oftentimes they can be used to structurally change the pathways in your brain. So, what we do, and I won't go too much into the neuro uh neurochemistry here, although I could, and for the the clients that I work with, they are fully prepared ahead of time so that their their analytical mind knows, oh, wait, there's actual science behind this, this stuff actually works. Yes, it does. Um what this means for them is that we teach you from day one to get into contact with your own reward systems, reward systems in your brain. That every time that you do the right thing, that you show up as that new person that you want to be, that you hold that boundary, that you say no or say yes to something new, you get to feel amazing. Now, when I say words like that, people go like, Oh, yeah, so you get to feel good. No, no, no, no, no. You get to feel in your body viscerally amazing, and we train you over and over and over again so that this becomes second nature. So the moment that you leave for for wherever you need to go back home to, this is you see yours yourself reflection in a window, and you just have this search of I actually am her. Look at how beautiful, how feminine, how incredibly strong, sexy, smart I actually am. Not as a thought, but as a lived jot of of energy that just rushes through you at that moment. This is something that's actually very easy to train yourself to do once you know how. So there is a almost Pavlovian um retraining of yourself that is step one. There is a step two, because you could say, Okay, I could just get a massage and thus I can change my belief systems because I feel really good. No, there is an actual science to it because it's not as uh neurologically sticky as learning through pain, but with enough repetitions at the right moment, you can literally train yourself to become a different person by feeling amazing. What feeling amazing means depends completely on the woman, it can be what it feels like when you looked into your firstborn's eyes for the very first time. That is an emotion right there. That's not just an emotion, there's power behind that. Your body remembers what that felt like, and you can use that hard that that energy, you can harvest it if you want to use that one to fuel the new things that you want to put into place so that you feel that kind of utter joy uh when you do the right thing. At the same time, you could also, if you've ever had a religious experience, dancing until you drop, or um maybe there was a religious ecstasy somewhere in your meditation, your body remembers this. It is stored in in you can recreate this, you can access this again. So it is a whole host

Growth Through Pleasure As A Practice

SPEAKER_00 55:44

of what the lady wants to experience. It is not upon me to drive them one way or another, and it really depends. Some of them, and of course, if you let's just make this very clear. Uh once you figure out what is possible with this, uh sexuality is on the table for them because uh the orgasmic energy is so easy to reach within the human body, it is such a powerful and it changes stuff so easily and it's so easily accessible under the right conditions that it it becomes a natural next step. But it doesn't have to be. So I've had ladies here that specifically wanted to come to work with sexuality and they veered off into a completely different realm, and we're like, Okay, we're working with somebody, and it it was more effective for them, and then there were ladies you who you would never expect who use their orgasmic energy to and we're talking the 65 and up here up into the mountains and just having a grand old time, and and you're just holding them, holding the space and going, I did not expect this, but we're rolling with it. The thing is, we do not force you to choose one, or it's literally what is most effective to you, what makes you feel amazing, what can you integrate and learn to recreate by yourself or with a dedicated partner in the future to make these changes stick so that when you come back go back home again and your old life is going to push back on you, and it will that you have these tools that you gotta know that's the old me, I'm not that person anymore. I'm choosing the new version of me, and now you feel amazing. And the moment that the that the body is so in sync with it, it will choose feeling amazing over and over and over again versus the old crappy way. Did that answer your question?

SPEAKER_01 57:56

I think so. Yeah, it did. Yes, thank you. We've kind of we've we've got to the end of our hour, and I'd just love to like bring us to a closer, but not without asking you something else because I've still got loads of questions. But what I'm really curious about, you've I mean you've kind of although I haven't asked you that many questions, you've kind of answered a lot of the things that I haven't written them anyway. I guess there's two parts to this last piece that I'd love to hear from you about. Firstly, why is this work important for you and your partner, Elizabeth? Like, what do you feel when you're delivering this work? Um, and why is it important for the women that come to you? Specifically about you know, the the time that we're in, the you know, the world that we live in, and yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:01

For us, it's literally just what we need to do. The combination between the skills that Elizabeth has and my unique gifts. The container that we are able to provide, it it absolutely grew out of how we held each other, and we figured out that this is such a unique but very powerful container. It just naturally progressed into how we hold the people that we took to the site, and it just started to grow. Me personally, I can't work for big corporations, I just can't. I can't do bureaucracy, I can't do computers. I can actually, I'm very good at all of those things. I just don't want to. It's not who I am. When I'm out in the rain or in the burning sunshine, approaching a sacred site, and I just tell her, I'm gonna hold back for five minutes, you're just gonna crest that hill, you're gonna see the sacred site, and for just five minutes, it's just you and that place. You're gonna discover it for the first time, you're gonna sing with it for the first time. We teach them how to approach them in uh because again, there's a very specific etiquette how you approach these places that they will respond better to. In moments like this, my whole being is just alive. I'm I'm so grateful that I'm able to do this because it's with everything that I've told you about the the grounding and the holding and all, it's literally just it's in my DNA to be to be able to do this, and that it's coming out in this way. And I'm the luckiest fellow on the earth. I really am. Um why it is important I don't like to make big big over and aggrandizing uh theories about where the earth is or where we are heading, but I think that we all really really feel that we are at a crossroads at the moment. Um, of course, every generation has thought that, but if you objectively look at where we are and what is happening, uh and the acceleration that is happening in both social decay, social restructuring, uh, technology, financial capabilities, all of it is just converging, it seems. I think everybody is feeling on a very deep level that this is a make or break point, or a at least a uh a hinge moment within within history, and we're living right through it. And the women that come to us, their being is screaming, I've got a role to play in this. Um for us to be able to just play a little small part and create that container and that place for them, for that to come out, so that they can take the next step that they need to do, so they can start to have that position in their tribe. Oftentimes it's okay. I've I've had my children, I've been a mother for my own small family, I now need to become a mother for uh an elder for my wider social community. That's often it's not always, it it ranges from 27 to 72. That's the range that that we've worked with until now. But oftentimes it's 35 to 55. Um for them to become such a hinge point and have change flow through them, and that we can just play a small part in that a little bit of a catalyst is really really special. Last thing there, and this is something that we've noticed over and over again the land of Ireland is a is an active participant in this, and what we hear over and over and over again um they needed to be the work needed to be done here, specifically here. Now we have theories about why that is. One theory I'll just very quickly throw out there. Ireland has always been the place of the goddess or the land of the sovereignty goddesses. It comes back in all of their ancient stories.

Why This Matters Now And Why Ireland

SPEAKER_00 1:03:29

The goddesses here are very, very strong, and it's specifically female deities very strongly here. Um, so that has a part to play in it as well. We've all dubbed this or summarized this in Ireland is calling its people home. You don't need to be Irish or even part of the Irish diaspora for that, but people on that frequency are just drawn to this place, and once you've experienced it beyond the the normal tourist buses and the normal tourist traps, and you actually find those places that still have that magic, yeah. You go like it needed to be done here.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:11

Amazing. What a great journey you've taken us on. Thank you so much. I really appreciate the time you've spent with us.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:21

Nadine, thank you so much for uh just letting me ramble on. Let me get enthusiastic when we talk about this.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:27

Love Ramble. Hey there, Rebel. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Middle Life Rumble Podcast. If you'd like to support the show, you can buy me the coffee. I'm going to buy me the coffee forward slash middle life rabble podcast. Listen.