When I found myself at a crossroads during a transformative women's retreat, little did I know that the path to empowerment would be illuminated by Raquel, a luminary in the realm of holistic health and breathwork. Our latest podcast captures this intimate narrative, where vulnerability meets strength, and the wisdom of our inner child dances with the intuition that guides us through womanhood. As Raquel shares her own ascent from health struggles to inspiring women to embrace their purpose, we celebrate the nurturing power of community and the sheer courage that comes from stepping into motherhood with eyes wide open.
We often overlook the joyous simplicity of play or the profound self-awareness sparked by a cherished childhood photograph. This episode, however, embraces these as gateways to healing. Delving into practices from inner child meditation to vision board creation, Raquel and I reveal how reconnecting with the playful spirit and tender compassion for our younger selves can unlock gratitude and growth. Our discussion traverses the landscape of ritual and how women can reclaim their intuition, setting boundaries that echo self-love and articulate a life lived true to one's essence.
Picture your day beginning not just with the chime of an alarm but with rituals that nourish your soul and harness the power of intention. In the tranquil camaraderie of our conversation, Raquel and I share the diverse tapestries of our daily routines—how journaling can be a sanctuary for joy, breathwork a conduit for balance, and morning rituals a foundation for both structure and spontaneity. We invite you to join us in exploring the holistic practices that can infuse your life with serenity and inspiration, from the first sip of an Ayurvedic morning tea to the guiding light of an Oracle card.
Your hosts: @lynnhazan_ and @tonydoesknow
follow us on social @ltkpod!
When I found myself at a crossroads during a transformative women's retreat, little did I know that the path to empowerment would be illuminated by Raquel, a luminary in the realm of holistic health and breathwork. Our latest podcast captures this intimate narrative, where vulnerability meets strength, and the wisdom of our inner child dances with the intuition that guides us through womanhood. As Raquel shares her own ascent from health struggles to inspiring women to embrace their purpose, we celebrate the nurturing power of community and the sheer courage that comes from stepping into motherhood with eyes wide open.
We often overlook the joyous simplicity of play or the profound self-awareness sparked by a cherished childhood photograph. This episode, however, embraces these as gateways to healing. Delving into practices from inner child meditation to vision board creation, Raquel and I reveal how reconnecting with the playful spirit and tender compassion for our younger selves can unlock gratitude and growth. Our discussion traverses the landscape of ritual and how women can reclaim their intuition, setting boundaries that echo self-love and articulate a life lived true to one's essence.
Picture your day beginning not just with the chime of an alarm but with rituals that nourish your soul and harness the power of intention. In the tranquil camaraderie of our conversation, Raquel and I share the diverse tapestries of our daily routines—how journaling can be a sanctuary for joy, breathwork a conduit for balance, and morning rituals a foundation for both structure and spontaneity. We invite you to join us in exploring the holistic practices that can infuse your life with serenity and inspiration, from the first sip of an Ayurvedic morning tea to the guiding light of an Oracle card.
Your hosts: @lynnhazan_ and @tonydoesknow
follow us on social @ltkpod!
Hey, welcome to the Lynn and Tony Know podcast. I'm your host, lynn.
Speaker 2:And I'm Tony. We are both wellness coaches and married with kids.
Speaker 1:Join us as we talk about all things health, wellness, relationships, life hacks, parenting and everything in between unfiltered. Thanks for listening and let's get into it. Welcome to the show, welcome back. I am very excited, for I know I keep saying that but like we've been having like really exciting guests and I'm just an excited person you know Listen. I mean, our listeners are gonna be like. This bitch is always excited.
Speaker 2:It would be weird if you opened up and be like we have a guest on it's kind of whatever, but here we go. No, but I'm legitimately excited.
Speaker 1:I know, I know and also, like what I love about all our guests is that I have a personal connection with each and every one of them and it's kind of like really wonderful how just people you meet, just kind of the divine intervention of bringing those people back into your life to kind of talk about things that really interest me and you know our spirituality and yeah, it's a beautiful thing.
Speaker 2:No, that's awesome and all of our guests are legitimately exciting.
Speaker 1:So today we have Raquel, and I met her when I was okay, so I was seven months pregnant. It was last October. I was very, very pregnant and I was kind of in the state of pregnancy where I was like at the end and I was feeling like over it, but I was also like really afraid of of, you know, becoming a mom again after, you know, 10 years of you know. Mia was 10 years old and it's like, oh my God, I'm doing this again and I was dealing with a lot of like, a lot of things were coming up for me. And Soul Spirit is a local yoga studio here in Jersey City and I was doing prenatal yoga and the owner, Liz, is like just a beautiful human being and her and Raquel did a retreat, a woman's retreat.
Speaker 2:That's how I'm at Now. The pieces are coming together, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I'm like pregnant, like massive, and I signed up for this retreat. It was like in Long Island and it required me to drive like three, four hours and I was like what the hell am I doing? This is crazy. But like everything in my soul was like you need this, you need this time on your own, you need this time to connect with other women, you need to work some of your stuff out before you have this baby, and it was just kind of like a divine thing that pushed me there, pushed me to go, cause you remember, like the day before I was like I don't know if I want to go, like I don't feel comfortable driving 100%. And Tony actually went on a men's retreat that weekend and it was like the first time in a while that we were like separated from each other and especially, you know, during pregnancy it's a very vulnerable time and you want to be with your partner. Well, in my case, I was like very attached and it was like a hard thing but it was like necessary and I went on this retreat and I was surrounded by just the most beautiful women and so encouraging and it was such a like a healing space and I worked through a lot of like my fears, and Raquel did like some breath work and we did some yoga and we did some sound bowl, like healing, and I had like some moments of like you know, kind of like breakdowns. I guess you know like I broke down crying in a few of the moments and I was I don't even remember about what made like I'm going to ask Raquel actually to maybe remind me if she remembers but yeah, it was a beautiful, beautiful moment and I left. I left the retreat feeling just renewed and just ready for like the journey and I was just like, yeah, it's really beautiful to be surrounded by other women and it's just something that I was like I need to do more of this.
Speaker 1:And fast forward to a couple of months ago. I started feeling this like stagnant energy and I reached out to Raquel to do some breath work with her and it also was like an hour and we did breath, we talked about like what I'm feeling and we did the breath work and I felt like this huge release and some clarity around certain things that I needed in life. And so, yeah, she's on the show and she's just like, if you follow her, she just like a ray of light, just so positive and like especially in this fucked up world that we live in with all this negativity. I love following just like women that are just like just empowering and happy and you know, living their truth and encouraging, and it's just like a wonderful thing. So I'm excited to kind of like get into it with her. So I'm going to read her bio.
Speaker 1:So Raquel is a women's body, man and breath work coach on a mission to help women get out of their heads and into their bodies inherent wisdom to connect deeper to the core of who they are. After years of struggling with various health related issues, from Lyme's disease to chronic stress, anxiety and fatigue, as well as a complete disconnection from her body and emotional world, she went on a journey to heal and look within. Through her book, or her journey, raquel immersed herself into the world of holistic health and healing practices as a trained holistic health coach David Elliott, breath work and facilitator, advanced Pranayama guide, 200 hour Hatha and Yen yoga teacher, organizational mindfulness and meditation instructor and reiki master, raquel loves to empower women with somatic body based tools to calm their nervous system, connect deeper within and come home to their true nature so that they too can lead a life of purpose and connected to their unique feminine essence.
Speaker 3:Welcome to the show. Thank you so much, oh my gosh. And thank you for diving a little bit deeper as to how we know each other and just quickly want to touch on the one thing that you said of really how what brought you on the journey of coming to the retreat was that your soul just kept saying I need to do this. I don't know what it is. I'm so pregnant. It's probably not ideal for me to drive all the way out to Long Island, but listening to that has really also been a little guiding force on my journey, so I just want to say thank you for sharing that. Thank you.
Speaker 1:And you know, actually the whole, even the whole thing of me driving on my own, like it was like my first time in months where I was alone with myself and my thoughts, like driving in the car, and it was like you know it's, it's a beautiful out, it's like fall, and it was just kind of like I get to be into, I get to be with myself right now, and I think a lot of times with women, especially moms, we're so busy taking care of other people that even just that moment of being with your thoughts and being alone is like few and far in between and that was like really nice and I was like, oh yeah, I am an individual, like I'm Lynn, you know, and that was a really nice thing. So let's talk a little bit about like the retreat, you know, and what that was like. And I'm sure people are curious like what, what goes, what happens in these? You know, you see people going on retreats and like people say I'm going to a retreat, like what happened? And you automatically think of that show with Nicole Kinman.
Speaker 1:You know that show perfect nine perfect strangers. You watched it with me.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, yeah, Did you watch it? No, I haven't no.
Speaker 1:So like it's kind of like a kooky, you think, like a people think it's like a kooky thing, like what? What goes on at these retreats?
Speaker 3:So it's really, really funny that you ended up at a retreat, because that's actually what sparked my healing journey was going on a retreat myself. So so many different things can happen at a retreat, but because of my background and what I really learned, I like to include yoga, meditation, breath work. But for a lot of people it's just a chance to get outside of their day to day. First off, we're usually all in the same environment 24, seven, around the same people. So just taking a moment to put yourself outside of that already creates this level of discomfort that creates a deeper sense of just starting to look at ourselves from a different perspective. And then, on top of that, you have all of these women coming together and they're also a point of reflection.
Speaker 3:I don't know how many times throughout the retreat you heard someone mentioning something on their own journey and you're like, oh, I can relate so much to that. I didn't really look at that in that light. Or I haven't even had a chance, after all of these years of being in my regular, typical nine to five or work schedule, to get to begin to look a little deeper within. So I would say the main things that happen at retreat is just that opportunity. Maybe it's a week, a weekend long thing, maybe you go on a 10 day of a postnat retreat and things get a little wild, but it is just that moment to look a little deeper within and then get to have other people reflect to you the different things that really are looking to maybe be healed or to discover a little bit more at that space and time.
Speaker 1:So tell us a little bit more about your journey to becoming who you are today, your healing journey, I guess, your spiritual journey to become basically a healer right.
Speaker 3:Well, yes, right, I feel like as healers. Whenever someone says that they're like you're a healer, it's like oh, do I really want to claim myself as that? Especially, you know so many women. I feel like we've had decades of just suppression. So for someone to say that to you it's like oh, my God, am I a healer? So thank you for a hot thing. Yeah, I got it. Well, the other thing.
Speaker 2:you can call it and this is something that I've taken on in the men's work that I do a facilitator, because everybody does their own healing, essentially like when it's true healing they do their own healing. The body and the mind, the soul, can heal itself and then there are people that will facilitate and know how to open the avenues towards that healing and point you in the right direction. So it's like facilitating is another word that I think would be maybe more comfortable than a healer.
Speaker 1:I like the. I think she's a healer. She has like you know, she has a talent. And I think her life, you know her life story, brought her to where she is. So, yes, tell us, tell us more.
Speaker 3:healer Of course, thank you, thank you. So my journey really got started. This was pre pandemic, pre talks on mental health, and I was actually working in corporate fashion and during this phase of my life I was fresh out of school, I really was my whole life. I would say it was very, very driven. I always had that when at all costs work yourself to the point of complete burnout, complete exhaustion, really just overall thinking that my success was determined on what I produce and what I achieve. So this, right off the bat, was really the lens or the viewpoint of how I was just viewing my life and it was a bit of a wake up call. During that time period, working in just corporate fashion and seeing, okay, my health is actually suffering a lot, a lot, a lot. Knowing that, you know, I was working in a stressful environment, of course, on top of that, but I was having insomnia, sleepless nights, I noticed myself having panic attacks I would say a healthy, non healthy little dose of IBS or gastrointestinal issues, and all of it really stemming from this deeper layer of complete nervous system dysregulation, not being out of space where I honored my body, I honored my emotions and overall, just not knowing myself at a deeper level, only ever focusing on the outward, the outward appearance, the outward achieving.
Speaker 3:So during this little phase of my life, my partner who I'm still with at this time he had this brilliant idea to go on a little bit of a weekend retreat. So this was a yoga retreat and this was supposed to be inversion. So if you know a little bit about yoga, this is the headstands or you know the intense aspects of yoga that maybe a lot of us don't even practice in our day to day. So, being this very go getter self, I was like, yes, we have a weekend of like just flipping upside down. This is going to be awesome. Not thinking I'm going to actually take time to look at myself. So fast forward, go on this amazing retreat. What I didn't realize, that the emphasis or the focus of this retreat was going to be actually starting to slow down.
Speaker 3:One of the major components was meditation, and this was before I had a meditation practice, before I really had a yoga practice, and I remember that weekend, the first time I meditated. I don't know what happened to me, but I felt like I was floating. I felt like the first time in my life I actually felt a little sense of a connection, a deeper connection to who I am, at more of a soul level or core, core level of self. So fast forward. I had this amazing experience, this little bit of an epiphany. I get back to my nine to five job and right when I get there, everyone in the office looks at me. They're like what happened to you, like there's something different here. It looks like you're glowing. I was like, yeah, I feel like that.
Speaker 3:I had this awesome retreat and then, before I know it, there is this, you know, really intense, urgent thing that has to get done, and right away I snap out of it and it's back to work mode. So I'm not even kidding you. That day I remember sitting at my desk and already applying to essentially work at this meditation center, this yoga ashram, and essentially quit my job and move there. If I got the position and fast forward, maybe two weeks after that I land this job doing digital marketing for them, which is essentially what I was already doing in corporate fashion I end up having my apartment lease running out in like the next three weeks. So all at once, in a three weeks time, I quit my job, leave, you know, hoboken and I end up moving to this yoga ashram in the Poconos and really just like letting, letting the world, the universe kind of guide me, and during that time I end up spending about two years there. I do my 200 hour yoga teacher training, I'm studying holistic health, ayurveda and just a bunch of different practices from you know, breath work, meditation, all those things.
Speaker 3:But the biggest thing I want to emphasize here, when I made this big decision, the first thing I remember when I get to the yoga ashram is I have, you know they, they wanted to give me a whole week off. And I'm like, guys, I don't need a whole week off. Like I'm from New York, like let's, let's get this party started, let's get moving. They're like, okay, you can come in in two days, but we're going to give you a little bit of space. I get the whole room arranged, everything done in a couple of hours, and then I'm twiddling my thumbs there and not knowing what to do and I'm in the middle of nowhere.
Speaker 3:It's not like you can just go and you know, pop over to a play or entertain yourself in some way, distract yourself in some way, but you actually have to sit there and be with yourself and when you know, your mind is kind of like a prison, or at least mine was during that time. It was like complete and utter dread and I remember when I finally started to sink in, I slept for like three months straight. I was completely burnt out. My nervous system was at a phase of just trying to understand itself, trying to rewire and get out of fight or flight mode, essentially. So that's where my journey started. And, yeah, the healing. The healing took place.
Speaker 1:That's amazing. And what, and at what point in this journey where you like I have a gift or I want to help other people, like, how did that happen for you?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I initially always had this thought in my head that I was here for something more. I think a lot of us maybe come here onto this earth with a greater mission before maybe we're even born, who knows? Whatever, whatever you believe in doesn't matter, but I always felt from a young age that I was here for something more. But I could never really paint a picture of what that was or what that felt like or what that looked like. So when I started to do those practices regular yoga, regular meditation, regular, like I said, connection to myself it kind of just started to unfold. I would say that I really really felt that call when the pandemic hit. So I actually did my 200 hour yoga teacher training the three weeks before they shut all of New York and everything down. So this was like 6am to 9pm every single day intensity and, of course, if you're doing yoga, meditation and breath work every day for three weeks, you're probably going to have a spiritual awakening or some weird things are going to start happening to you, and that's pretty much what started happening to me. I would start to get a lot of visions. I would just start to see things in different lenses, so to speak, and that was when I started to really feel that call.
Speaker 3:We were in complete lockdown mode. I was living at the yoga ashram. There was maybe only 50 other people there, and when there's only 50 people there, you're seeing the same people every single day. I started to really just want to help and want to show people that there is another way.
Speaker 3:I really felt like of course, a lot of people experienced a lot of mental health issues or maybe the first time actually having to sit with themselves, and I found that the practices that I had been doing had really put my mindset in a different state, as well as knowing that when we start to come into more peace and calm in the body, we can automatically enter into more spaces like joy or feeling more light, and I knew that that avenue for me and probably a lot of other people, was just starting to do these practices. So, little by little, I started to show up online and start to share and then, maybe I want to say a year after the pandemic, I left and I had this whole little business plan and that's where Heal From the Inside Out, this whole idea, came to life and, yeah, it's been a beautiful journey since then.
Speaker 1:I love that.
Speaker 2:So you work with women only or primarily.
Speaker 3:Primarily women. I have worked with men in the past, but I've felt this deeper call to continue to help women specifically, probably like you have the call to help men, too, as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, for me it's a byproduct of being a member of a men's community first and then growing within that community to start serving other men, so I don't know that I would ultimately limit myself to men only. It's just where I've learned and the language that I speak, obviously, and where I can bring the most value at the moment. So when a woman is like starting from zero, let's say and zero in the sense that they don't have a background in doing work like this, they don't have an understanding of what it looks like, how do you sort of paint the picture of what this experience of working with you might be?
Speaker 3:So it really depends where the woman is coming from, because with the broad spectrum of women, this could be someone who is maybe 50 or 60 years old. She's lived her whole life and she just doesn't feel fulfilled and maybe she's going through that midlife crisis where she's waking up, or maybe the woman is earlier in her mid-20s, 30s. Once again, that feeling of this isn't working. There's something more for me, I think, where I really meet a lot of women is in that space of starting to question, because when we're so rigid in our one way of thinking or how we thought our whole lives, how our parents have thought, the values or the systems instilled upon us, it's hard to break out of that, unless you are already starting to do some of that initial work or just starting to become curious and wonder what's going on here. There is something more out there for me, and I don't know who or what to do. That's usually where I meet a lot of women.
Speaker 3:The other place is, I feel that a lot of women are constantly and I know this is where I was myself in our minds, so, like when we're completely in our minds, we're completely in our logical, analytical thinking, maybe in our masculine, so to speak.
Speaker 3:A lot of the times, we forget about what makes us unique as a female-bodied woman, which is gonna be everything that's happening from the neck down our actual physical body. So that could be starting to get a sense. This is what I love to work on women with get a sense of starting to understand your body's natural signals, your body's natural cues, especially when it comes to intuition. So like, yes, we all have intuition, but how many times do we actually cut ourselves off from it because of stress or because of trauma, or because we don't have a sense of trust for ourselves? So, beginning to allow women to feel again, and that's where we start to add those practices when it comes to breathwork, when it comes to even just mindfulness, mindfulness when it comes to the body that's when we can get into those deeper layers, because I feel like the body of course there's that book the Body Keeps the Score. That's really where a lot of those hidden answers are gonna be.
Speaker 1:So let's talk a little bit more about women who are not in touch with their intuition, because I think it's a product of environment and, like you said, trauma and society, that there's a lot, of, a lot placed on our shoulders especially. I mean I can speak for myself as a. I'm a mom, I'm a business owner and I feel like I always feel like I have a lot on my shoulders. I'm also like in the public and sometimes you let people outside voices kind of influence how you feel about certain situations, how you feel about yourself, and I feel like intuition is like a muscle that needs to be practiced and the less you use it, the less in touch you are with it. So can you like dive into that a little bit more?
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, I love that. So I like to do little games, so to speak, and they can be so simple. You can do these games with yourself to begin to develop this muscle, like you're saying, for example, you might have a day off and this is your day where you might spend it. This is an example, because I've definitely done this before. Maybe you spend it Netflix and chilling. You spend it binge watching a series. Instead, what if you allowed yourself that space and allowed yourself that day to go outside and then lead with what starts to light you up where your body starts to want to go? So this would be an experiment of okay, you walk outside, your mind maybe starts to go to the maybe not so good habits that you have. Oh, I'm gonna get a croissant, or I'm gonna not saying a croissant is bad, but you know what I mean. Yeah, whatever the happens, it could be worse than a croissant.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my drug dealer's right down the street, yeah yeah, yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:But instead it's like, okay, I'm going outside in this moment, okay, what does my body start to want to do? What feels expansive in my body right now? Does it feel expansive for me to go right or to go left? Do I usually always go right because that's the way to the park, or do I really wanna try something different today and it feels a little bit more exciting? Or as if it feels like your body is expanding to go left and then from there continuing to allow your body to be the mechanism of what allows you to feel that expansion. And then from that space of expansion, that's where you also feel that joy. So it's maybe inviting in things that feel a little more playful for you that day.
Speaker 3:I think so many women cut off intuition because they also cut off the inner child that wants to be in their joy, wants to play, wants to do a silly intuitive dance or to sing or to scream. So how can we start to invite in that sense of expansion and playfulness and from that, that's where the intuition starts to light up a little bit more. So, taking that day off and doing something fun.
Speaker 1:No, I love that idea. Now let's expand a little bit on inner child. So if somebody is just like listening to this, doesn't know all this jargon, that we know what is the inner child Like, can you get into that a little bit more? Yeah?
Speaker 3:so I've how I've personally connected to the inner child is in so many different levels of the child itself. For me personally, I don't remember a lot of my childhood, so maybe some other people are on that boat where they experienced a lot of trauma or they disassociated and they literally left their body for maybe a lot of traumatic events. Connecting to the inner child might be a little challenging. How I usually see it is you usually remember things in like seven year increments, Cause I in seven years. I know that, like the brain rewires itself, a lot of different things happen in the span of seven years.
Speaker 2:Maybe Tony can expand a little bit All of your cells in your entire body outside of the central nervous system, because your central nervous system doesn't regenerate cellular growth, which is why a lot of people in the field that you're in and we work in believe that trauma is stored in the central nervous system. But every other cell in your body will replace itself over the course of seven years, not in seven year rotations, but every seven years. You will have new cellular growth in each part of your body. They all move at a different pace, but yeah.
Speaker 3:Beautiful. So for me, because of that, I guess I remember things in seven year increments, so to speak. So I remember this part of me that was seven years old and she maybe this was before she was more tainted, she was more playful, more silly. I have this really funny memory of myself running. I was completely naked. I ran outside in my backyard and I'm just running around and like feeling so free, feeling so open. So for me that's a beautiful memory of myself when I'm seven years old. Then I think back to 14, okay, I was a teenager. I remember feeling so secluded and like I was so scared of what other people thought of me. I was so shut down for myself, shut down for my emotions. So of course, that memory is one oh, we wanna revisit that because there's something there, there's some belief system work to do there, and then from there it's like okay, we're moving on to 21.
Speaker 3:In college, what was that version of you? So there's so many different areas, I think, of the inner child that we can revisit. But a great way to start to unlock some of these memories is to move into a meditation specifically for it. So this would essentially be someone, either me or someone on the internet even, you could type in inner child healing and, of course, do this when you're in a safe space, maybe even finding a therapist to do this work with too as well.
Speaker 3:This would be really starting to dive into in a systematic way what is a version of you that you connect to, where it felt off for you, where you maybe had a very challenging childhood or challenging experience, and then from there, that's when we can start to see okay, well, what needs to be healed here, what are some of the beliefs that were instilled upon you because of that experience, and from there then you could start to invite in the healing components, which would be, like I said, inviting in maybe some of the play that comes with it, inviting in some of the feminine aspects, like the dance, the vocal toning, all of that stuff to help move that out of the system and then to also gain a deeper sense of awareness and perspective when it comes to that version of you.
Speaker 3:The other thing, last but not least, is I always recommend any of the clients that I have to have a photo of yourself at that age that feels tender for you. So maybe it's that seven year old version of yourself, or younger, you have on your iPhone or you have in front of your mirror and just giving reverence to that version of you every day, giving her the tender love and affection and maybe just even witnessing yourself saying I love you, I love all aspects of you in the mirror. All really, really healing in our child practices.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I remember the first few times I did like inner child meditations.
Speaker 1:Like the first one was like this is really weird. And then the second time I was like, okay, I'm gonna try to like lean into this and I think the meditation that I had it was like me as an adult like now basically meeting my younger self, like at a park or something like that and giving my younger self a hug, and it was like and I just started crying it was so like beautiful and intense and like it was like the first time I met like my inner kid and it was just like my first time getting in touch with that side of me and it's like very powerful and I think that's a really good starting point for people is to just get in touch with that younger part of yourself and see where they are and like what their needs are and what's missing for them, what maybe things that were missing from your childhood and giving them that love that you felt was like missing. It's really hardcore, but it's amazing Like 15 minutes and it could do so much for your self-esteem. I feel like.
Speaker 2:I mean. And then the next level, for it is like, once you have access to it and you start to get in touch with that inner child, then you can give yourself permission to take that version of you into every part of your day. You can take that because, like you were saying, the inner child has access unfettered access to joy, unfettered access to gratitude, unfettered access to play, because they are not bound by the traumas that we are, they're not bound by the rules of being an adult, being a mom, being a person with a job and responsibilities. But if you can bring that part of you with you into the rest of your day, it'll allow you to have the access to any access to joy and gratitude, even within the rules that we play by and the responsibilities that we hold now as adults.
Speaker 3:Yes, 100%. And one thing that's coming to mind, as you're saying that, we're still in the new year and I, this past weekend, did my vision board. I think that a vision board and I mean like the grab newspapers not newspapers but magazines, actually, if you can find them, maybe you have a group of friends that can come together, bring their old magazines, and having that space to be like an inner child play date is so healing, how I recommend.
Speaker 1:We love it.
Speaker 2:We do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we do that. It's so much fun. It's hard to find magazines these days.
Speaker 2:We did struggle with the magazine part of the process but we ultimately we printed and clipped whatever we couldn't source through magazines. But magazines were harder to find than we thought.
Speaker 3:So true. And then it gets very expensive really quick If you do find the magazines.
Speaker 1:Yes, that is true, yeah but vision boarding is a lot of fun because you can just be creative with it and just let your dreams run wild and it's a really fun kind of a fun feeling too. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And then, if you wanna add that intuition component, like you were talking about, it's like can I bring it back down and into my body? When I see an image, does that light up every single cell of my body, that's gonna be the thing you wanna clip out. If it's something that's like, ooh, no, don't want, that doesn't feel good, and it's almost like this is when we start to listen somatically to our body. Oh, it starts to make me wanna push away or my shoulders hunch down and back. That's when you wanna continue moving on. It's like, oh, that's not for me at this time. Can I make this board? That thing that makes me wanna stand in like power pose, with the arms open, the chest open, and just every time you look at it it's like that sensation of joy.
Speaker 1:And tell me a little bit more how important for women specifically being in touch with their intuition is when it comes to setting boundaries and it really like loving yourself fully. Because I feel like women especially, we tend to be people pleasers. We tend to be uncomfortable with our anger, we tend to be uncomfortable saying no. We wanna please everybody, we wanna say yeah. I know that this is an issue for a lot of women and has been an issue for me until I did the work and that I was able to get to a place where I could say no or I could set boundaries for myself or I could tell people my needs, like even attracting a healthy relationship, being able to say to Tony, like these are the things that I need in a relationship or in that sort of thing. So can we dive into that a little bit?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so for myself, I noticed that when I really needed to express myself, but for I would say, for my whole life, my throat was very, very blocked off, but I would viscerally feel the sensations in my neck Like and I think we've all had that experience when you're like I need to say something, it's right there, I feel it and it's like you're holding back and you could feel yourself holding back. So for women, when you can continue to come back into that body and actually notice those sensations, you'll begin to notice, in moments where you are holding yourself back, where you aren't expressing that no or you aren't expressing that yes, how many times we actually don't say yes to the things we really desire and really want. So a big thing here for setting boundaries is going to be continuing to, like I said, come back into the body and then use it as that resource or that sensation of knowing when it's starting, you're starting to shy away or hide back from expressing. And I know that the breath, of course, bringing it back to the breath is a big tool for being able to finally express those boundaries in a healthy way. When we get outside of our logical thinking mind, we get into the body and into the breath. Whatever you're not processing regularly or whatever is stored in the body actually starts to come out. So I've noticed that when I have private clients for emotional release breath work which is a different style than regular calming, grounding breath that you would do when you have anxiety or stress when you do this technique you'll start to notice.
Speaker 3:I noticed the women that are really holding back or playing small. Their jaw is so clenched and their mouth starts to get really small like an O, and then if you have clenching intention here, you know you have it in the hips too. So what are the hips? The hips are also connected to our boundaries. So there is this deep connection when it comes to a woman's womb, our boundary center, and then also when it comes to your form of expression. So when I noticed that happening in the body, it's like you wanna let out the biggest scream, the biggest yell, and you know, through allowing yourself to just hear your own voice shouting no or just screaming and letting it all out, that through that first off, there's usually always sadness behind it, because there's a part of you that's maybe not listening to, that inner child that wants to say no, wants to be in their power and their truth, but then you're also getting to a point where it's releasing, and then those blocks or that limitation isn't as intense the next time you have an experience where you want to say no and allow it to come through.
Speaker 3:Another thing that's been really healing is that I lead a lot of women circles and there are so many different practices you can do just through an embodied dance that can be how are you expressing your no, like? What does it feel like to just push away with your hands and to like, do like a culley breath with your tongue out, screaming like no, and then also to have other women witnessing you saying that and being in your boundary truth? And then also, what does it look like for a yes and to actually feel desire or pleasure in your body? Okay, then you can experience and express that through your own body, because that looks different for each and every person, but through the act of doing it and working with your own system. That is really what allows you to shift each and every new expression that you have when it comes to your boundaries.
Speaker 1:Beautiful. Very cool, tony, you seem like you're in thought.
Speaker 2:No, it's all very much. Yeah, you are doing the female version of what I do with men, essentially in terms of the breath work and the expression through it. We probably use different systems of breath work, but very much in line with it, because I did have a question and I was stalling until it came into my brain and then it popped in. Yeah, so you talked multiple times about being lit up and what it feels like in the expansion, like even cellular, like what it feels like to be making the right decision and sort of based on the knowing and your body's telling you this is the way you should go. How do you and you sort of touched on it a little bit how do you bring that idea to life for somebody who's going? I've never been lit up in the way that you're describing I don't know what, that this is a foreign language. You're essentially asking them to tap into something that they've never experienced. How do you bring them from not understanding that to get to the point where they're like, oh, that's it, I get it.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So it kind of goes back to the inner child a little bit. But your inner child knew how to play. It knew the things that were actually fun for you, that were joyful for you. Maybe we have very analytical thinkers and maybe what was joyous for them as a kid was playing with puzzles and problem solving and maybe writing. Or maybe for other people that feel a little more creative, it was being outside, being in nature. Nature is an amazing place that can bring so much joy if you allow it to or being creative and just taking space to paint.
Speaker 3:And I think the big overarching thing here, when it comes to starting to create a life that is more joyous, is that you have to continue to make the things that maybe you didn't deem important in the past as important and as purposeful just of the state of doing it. So, for example, when it comes to doing artwork, maybe you have in your mind, oh, I don't want to do this artwork, this is stupid, there's no reason for me to do this right now. I'm not an artist. And then we start to paint our identity around it. It's like that's not the reason you're doing it. You're doing it for the fact of this, maybe just playing with color in this moment is bringing you joy. It's not going to be the next van Gogh, but the point is to begin to invite more of that in and a really, really great practice for all of my cerebral people out there.
Speaker 3:I'm very cerebral myself, so I get it is going to be journaling. So what that would look like is literally and this is actually a practice I started doing during my spiritual awakening where I would essentially let whatever needed to come through to come through with no purpose at all. So it could look like grabbing your journal in the morning and just starting to write out whatever comes to mind. So it could be right away you starting to write out all the things of oh, this is my to do, this is what I have to get done today, xyz.
Speaker 3:But then you reach a point where it's like, oh, that's all done, don't have to do that anymore. So then can you see what allows to come through you in that moment when all of the essentials, the things that make you feel safe, have to be written out and done, what comes through after that? And that's where you start to connect into that deeper sense of your inner core, your inner being. And then I think the soul starts to speak a little bit more. And the soul wants you to be in your joy. It wants you to be living that life that feels really free for you, whatever that means for you.
Speaker 1:Are you ever in a bad mood?
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I think what's really changed for me is having the practices to help myself.
Speaker 1:So when I am, I'm what do you do? What do you do when you're like spiraling, like if you, you know we all have our moments, no matter how spiritual, and you know we have the tools. But what do you do when you're just like I fuck all this, yeah.
Speaker 3:So it's funny. I did a silent meditation retreat at Karpalu. It's in the Berkshires Great place, and one of the practices that they had us do was towards the end of the retreat, when we were all feeling really, really good and accomplished. They had us write a letter to ourselves to read when we feel like complete shit, when it's just like you're at the end of you know whatever, and you know it's just one of those days. So it could be writing yourself like a future letter and being like I'm going to read this when I need it the most and it's going to remind me, like what a badass person you are and that you can do it and you just need rest and like can you allow yourself to have rest? It's as simple as that.
Speaker 3:Or it's leaning on my practices, like every single day I have to do breath work. It's like breath translates to spirit literally and it helps me one first off, just feel regulated in my nervous system and then also just helps me feel more connected, more connected to myself and then more connected to the universe. Breathwork, meditation, and then you can't go wrong with yoga Anytime you're like I don't want to get up, I don't want to go on my mat. I don't want to go to yoga practice. I promise you, if you just make that initial step of opening up your yoga mat or booking a class and walking to the class, you will stop spiraling after that yoga class. Something about actually doing and using the breath and using your body as that vehicle to get you out out of your own way, out of your head, is really what shifts it.
Speaker 1:Can you walk us through your daily morning routine and night routine, your daily practices? What does that look like for you? What time do you wake up and what do you eat? What do you drink? All that stuff?
Speaker 3:Sure, I love it. So I don't even want to tell you guys, because I know you guys are amazing with your morning practices. No, not always.
Speaker 1:Listen, listen. No, we're not. This is not always, of course not always.
Speaker 3:I spab every morning.
Speaker 2:Also not every morning, that's like four to five times a week. But it's funny because everybody all the people that are living a life of some purpose, some drive and ambition and wellness we all wanna compare notes on the morning rituals and the nightly rituals. We all wanna compare notes and see what everybody else is doing and it's easy to forget that it is so much more important just to have some and to have some of that structure in place than what it literally is right, like, so like our morning rituals could be different than the next successfully living person's rituals. But the theme is that everybody has something that they fall on or they start their day with and then they go to bed with. But it's funny.
Speaker 1:It's interesting because people think that we have our morning routine dialed in but we don't. Like we have a kid and some weeks we're like on point and we're working out and we're meditating and we're doing the cold plunge and we're having a green smoothie and all that stuff and then some mornings. It's a fucking shit show, you know what I mean, and like we're lucky to get like one thing in and that's just the way it is, but like we keep going back to our practices.
Speaker 2:But the differences for everyone that's listening is that we ultimately got ourselves to a place where, if there's a day that gets like just completely ran over by chaos and unpredictability, we can flip the switch back the next day. It's not like we have to start from zero and rebuild, Like we have it in our pockets, Like all right back to the playbook. We're good. But it's the people that like are building something and building the sacred daily rituals that, if you're not in a place of like this is second nature to me and then something comes by and derails you.
Speaker 1:Now you're reset to zero and you know it's not everybody needs to do a morning ritual necessarily. Like maybe you're more of like a midday ritual person or a nighttime right? So like tell us what a typical day yeah it is for you.
Speaker 3:So I usually every day is a little different based on my schedule, but I do try to wake up by seven and when I wake up, sometimes I check my phone and if you're listening to this and you check your phone, it's okay. While I would love to say that you know, every morning I get up my phone's away from my bed and you know it's this beautiful, glorious thing. Yeah, sometimes I use it as a way to get up. So I get up. I try to get sunlight on my face first thing in the morning, so usually by the time I'm opening the blinds, there is sun beaming, of course, if it's not raining or snowing or anything like that spend just a couple of minutes there feeling the sun on my face. I try to take a few breaths just to feel grounded in that moment, and then from there, you know, after the brushing teeth and all of that stuff, I go into the kitchen.
Speaker 3:I do infuse things that I've learned from Arruveta over the years. So something really amazing to do is to drink warm water with lemon. If you want to make it extra, you can add honey, because it has this scraping quality to the body, so it starts to release toxins. Okay, we need to add honey.
Speaker 2:Add some honey nurse.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do Okay.
Speaker 3:And then from there I have a morning coffee and I start to make the morning smoothie. Usually I always add for a while I was doing the medical medium, his detox smoothie. Now I kind of yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was doing that for years actually. And then now I've kind of come up with my own little combination I have it's like a. It's cleansing greens for the liver. It's a powder from Anna Mamundi Herbal's so I put that in my smoothie, usually have spinach, banana, wild blueberries, add orange juice or some oat milk to it, blend it all up. Usually that's my first breakfast of the morning. I don't have more breakfast than that, but that's my breakfast of the morning.
Speaker 2:And then and middle day breakfast.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, I try to only have three meals a day From there. I usually try to, of course. I make the bed and then I go into my office, which I have a little altar off to the side that I usually try to hide and that is what has, you know, all of my little spiritual goodies on it and I try to meditate in that space. What I love to do is actually spend a little bit more time doing breath than the actual meditation. So what that looks like is, if I have 30 minutes, it would be 20 minutes of breath work and then 10 minutes of meditation. So my breath practices change. And if you're a female bodily owner, then I recommend to not do intense breath work practices when you're actually on your menstrual cycle. So when I'm on my menstrual cycle, my breath techniques are more calming to the body, more downward focusing. So you know that would mean extension of the exhale versus the inhale, getting more oxygen or air on the exhale versus the inhale. But usually when I am not on my cycle I do more upward focusing breath practices. So that could mean breath of fire. That could mean more intensifying and oxygenating and detoxifying breath practices. Kundalini yoga breath practices, if you had to research a term. And then when I start to sink into that, my mind and my body are already prepped for meditation. So then usually I'll do a 10 minute meditation.
Speaker 3:After that breath I like to pull a card lately for the day. So I've been pulling an Oracle card deck. I have this Rose Oracle deck by Rebecca Campbell that I love. If you wanna just look her up as a person, she's amazing, rebecca Campbell. And then from there usually that's my morning. I like to exercise in the morning if I get the chance, but if I don't, then I'll exercise at night. Try to get movement in at least once a day, yes, and then throughout the day various things, whether that be a one-on-one coaching session Sometimes I do a lot of corporate wellness calls, so I have those stacked up a lot of the days and then at night.
Speaker 3:Nighttime is like my favorite favorite thing to really really start to calm the body down. I love to have tea at night, so like a very cleansing herbal tea. I love yeah, lynn does it Same. If you're a Trader Joe's fan, I love to get the sleepy time tea I think it's called something like that and the chamomile in combination with other herbs already prepare your body for bedtime. I try to limit phone use, of course, at night, and then when I actually step into the bedroom, first thing I do is I turn off all the lights and I put a candle on. Just already starting to switch the environment from daytime to nighttime with the candle really just relaxes my nervous system.
Speaker 3:I then what I really really love to do and I honestly recommend this to all my clients is to have a practice of releasing anything that you came in contact with during the day. So you can call this prayer, you can call this cord cutting, whatever you wanna call it. It's like can you take for me? I like to actually have something physical. So I'll sage my room or I'll palo santo it, and then I'll just stand right beside my bed and start to say I release anything I came in contact with today. I release the cord with, and I'll name specific people that I spend a lot of time with throughout the day Just more of these energetic practices to especially being a healer, so to speak, to release that from my physical being. And then from there I usually feel sleepy after letting go of all the other things from the day, and I start to sink into bed with a book, and then I always fall asleep after the first three pages.
Speaker 3:So if you have trouble sleeping just read a book at night, you'll be fine.
Speaker 1:So Love Island before bed is probably not a good idea.
Speaker 2:Hey, listen, that's our smudging.
Speaker 1:That's how we smudge.
Speaker 2:No, but I have a mentor that does exactly what you're talking about. He comes together with his wife and they release all of the stuff that they picked up from everybody along the day. She does women's work, he does men's work, and you come in contact and you it's not that you take on other people's stuff, but you're in contact with other people's stuff like all day long. So I love the idea.
Speaker 1:We should start doing that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love the idea of kind of just it's not getting rid of or anything like that, but it's just like releasing, just releasing any sort of things that you picked up throughout the day, that's one, and what I'm picking up from all the people that we've been interviewing lately, all these wellness people, is that we need to start drinking smoothies in the morning.
Speaker 1:I think we need to get on back on the smoothie train On the smoothie train. I used to really drive the smoothie train the last three people that we've interviewed, each and every one of said that they have a smoothie in the morning, yeah so.
Speaker 3:Well, something I want to say there though.
Speaker 3:Is. So this comes back to. Are you Veda? If you're a very airy person, so this is the person that's like, always on the go. They're maybe have a lot of anxious tendencies, have a lot of thoughts, they're in their head a lot. A smoothie sometimes might actually be too much for your digestive system because it's cold. So are you Vedically speaking? If you have Vata is what it's called the Doshia, then that'll actually yeah, so you're fine with smoothies. But if you have cold and you're like that airy person, I don't know what am I?
Speaker 1:You might feel a little more airy person.
Speaker 3:Well, usually your combination. So what I do because I am a Vata, I'm an airy person and a Pitta too combo. I add bananas and avocado to my smoothie and I try to not have it like. I never add ice, I try to have it like at room temperature. So that's what works for me. I can't have like raw salad and like with like barely any dressing or raw foods. In general. It is horrible to digest the digestive tract. If you are of the qualities in my body, it's really adding more warmth into the system.
Speaker 1:Do you do like a quiz online to determine like what you are? Sure are you?
Speaker 3:Vediccom. Yeah, there are quizzes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, Rick, how. So how do people find you? Where can they follow you, and all that good stuff.
Speaker 3:Awesome. So it's pretty much my first name and my last name for everything. It's Raquel Ravello. On Instagram, raquelravellocom for my website. Usually I post a lot of what I have coming up on Instagram and my website's under construction right now so you won't get the most up to date stuff, but it's always nice to take a peek. If you feel called, always just shoot me a DM or you could send me an email at hello at RaquelRavellocom, and I'm always happy to dive in deeper there.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much for having us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for having us Sorry. Thank you for sharing this space with us today.
Speaker 1:That's the right thing to say.
Speaker 2:No, it was an awesome, awesome conversation. Yeah, we loved it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, thanks again, thank you guys, and we'll definitely talk soon. Bye.