Finding Your Way Home; The Secrets to True Alignment

Special Christmas Edition 2025 - Tap into your "authentic self" & elevate your presence amid family events & conditioned patterns

• Anthea Bell

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Gorgeous listeners,

Welcome to a special episode of Finding Your Way Home - my personal guide to how to find, keep and operate from your deepest heart & centre this Christmas. 

It is a TIME loves; globally, societally, and famillialy. And every year, I receive countless messages from clients, listeners and friends asking how to keep their shape during this somewhat strenuous slew of family events, work socialising and looming professional deadlines. Come 24th December most are expected, like clockwork, to "drop" their working persona / pressures, override the niggling sense of winter fatigue and with immediate effect - "enjoy themselves". While surrounded by many of the figures and experiences that have historically detached them from true self-connection, self-embrace, self-esteem. 

So what do we do? If unconscious, "push through" - using a well-practiced blend of conditioning, adaptative response and  numbing / coping strategies. OR, my loves - awaken. And as you do, feel for the sort of Christmas  experience you'd most love. You are your own driver - and at any moment, you can choose the experience you welcome in.  

So here it is - a full episode on how to stay truly WITH yourself and others this Christmas. The lens, understanding and strategies you most need to stay present, compassionate, lovingly detached and most importantly - in a place of agency in your own life. 

Take a listen, soak it in and let me know of anything that arises - I'd love to know how the episode impacts you, and what takeaways you bring in to your own seasonal break.

With such love, wherever you are and however you are choosing to celebrate this time. Thank you for being a part of my Christmas, it means the world. 

A x x

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And to explore working together more deeply 

Anthea:

welcome to Finding Your Way Home, the secrets to true alignment. I'm your host, Anthea Bell, movement teacher, mind body coach, and lifelong spiritual seeker. This is a podcast about the depth, weight, and profound healing power of connection between mind and body, spirit and soul, and from one human to another. Together with an incredible range of inspiring guests, we'll explore just what connection and alignment mean. How to get there in a world full of the temptation to conform, and how great challenge ultimately can lead to life changing transformation. Get ready for groundbreaking personal stories, conversational deep dives, and a toolkit of strategies to build not just your inner knowing, but your outer world. Let's dive in.

Hello gorgeous listeners and welcome to this special episode of Finding Your Way Home. I'm doing a little pre Christmas release. It's been a hot little second since I last recorded a solo, partly because the phenomenal speakers that we've had for season five and that I've been interviewing for season six have been so tantalizing and interesting that I wanted to give them full limelight and I know that if I don't share personal learnings and insights and some of the richness that comes from one to one work and the group container, that I do you guys a disservice, because ultimately we are constantly all learning from each other all the time. And this is, in the truest sense of the word, a community effort. And I want to really show up in a way that's very visible with you guys, which includes being really honest about some of the themes that I'm not just experiencing as a Coach, but that I'm also experiencing in my own life, maybe offering some of the insights that come from those and a little pathway for learning for you so that you can speed up the time between stimulus and response or between challenge and solution. So we are, of course, in the final week before Christmas, and this is a really tricky time for a lot of folks. It's a time when they are trying desperately to wind down from working pressures. It's a time when the level of speed in society to do exactly that, to make a rapid transition from the intense stress of work to the intense enjoyment of celebration and alcohol and all of the Christmas treats, you know, it's quite a sharp junction that we offer ourselves. And in that sense, it's incredibly artificial. None of us are able to go from one state to the other. At the most, what we do is take a lot of the, pressure, the anxiety, the heightened nervous system And we carry that into our attitude towards partying or towards family gathering, which leaves everyone with a little bit too much energy, that slightly tired and wired frame of mind. Which means you don't really ever have time to settle in, to land, and to appreciate giving yourself some time away from your day to day. So as you listen to this, even just now, give yourself a moment to land. Even feel free to hit the pause button. on your listening and gather yourself a blanket or a hot cup of tea or a cacao or even to lie down on your penth mat or on a foam roller to wrap up in a blanket to do anything with your physical body that would allow you to really properly embed here with me. Like I'm telling a night time story, which by the way I've been told that I have to start doing and I may indeed do. So the reason that I'm speaking to particularly the Christmas season, is that aside from the fact that we're asked and encouraged to make this quite quick shift, From work mode into relaxation, I also really want to recognize the fact that relaxation quote unquote is not necessarily what everyone experiences in this time. We go back into somewhat challenging old family dynamics. We go back into forms of socializing that maybe on a day to day basis we've identified do not really work for us, for our sleeping patterns, for our eating patterns, for giving us energy, for allowing us to live in a state of relative adult independence. You know, and suddenly we're asked to socialize in a way that might not be truly aligned, might not be sympa for this mind body system that you live within. So if any of what I'm saying is already echoing and giving you a touch of resonance, I'd love for you to really consider the plans that you've got in place for the next two, three weeks, and perhaps in a very gentle way, just identify where did those decisions come from? Did they come from a place where you felt that you had free choice? If you had free choice, have you planned in the restorative time that you might want before and after those particular experiences to really honor the decision that you've made, but also be willing to navigate the natural consequences? You know, so much of the time we are saying yes to things and then not really acknowledging the impact that that will have. And we sort of try to continue to cope. We try to deal with. manage the reduction in energy or the dropping in mood or the kind of natural sense of insecurity that sometimes happens to people when they're now spending time with those for whom intimacy and connection are not necessarily easy. So that's my first little takeaway from this recording is, please be honest with yourself about this next period of time. And if you were designing this purely for you, identify what that might look like. And compare that, perhaps, against the plans that are in place and give yourself permission and take the radical responsibility required to consider adapting anything that was previously laid in stone. And maybe encountering the difficult emotions that come up if you do now want to modify things or change your mind. Which brings us back to our very common theme on here around people pleasing and asking that quite sobering question of are you making your decisions and are you living your life to today on the basis of what somebody else wants or what feels comfortable for another person or are you making those decisions and living that way according to truly what lights your heart and soul on fire? The next thing that I want to speak to you, and this is going to really be the bulk of our conversation today, is around identity. Now this is coming up particularly for me, because I was given the opportunity to reflect as I think about the plans for this company for the next Two years for the vision that I have for the in person experiences that we're going to be hosting for the vision that I have for the 2025 Facilitator Training, even for the vision that I have for my work with one to one clients, you know, I've really been called to ask myself. What does that look like? When I am really honest with the level of transformation that is available, when we work to the depth and the level of embodiment that I naturally offer, when I work with the level of curiosity and nuance that I have for other people, when I'm truly selective, About who are my ideal clients, who are the people that really foster and grow from this work, what level of willingness that they need to have in order to be ready to dive in. And when I'm really honest with myself about what are the ways that I want to work with those people to give them life changing experiences and profound sustainable change. Then what happens is I begin to see that my vision for 2025, that it's really quite big, and That it requires that I get very, very honest about how I become the best version of a coach and a guide and a leader that I can be to foster that change for others. And it means how do I structure my time? How do I make my time usage sacred? How do I structure my programs? How do I structure, the literal foundations of the business? And of this school of learners that we are building? And of this community for the podcast? How do I really structure all of that to be of the greatest level of support to facilitate that work? That's a really beautiful thing to sit down and do, and it is very, again I'm going to use that word, sobering. Because for anyone that's done this exercise before, what it makes very clear is the changes you're going to have to be willing to make. We spend a lot of time here talking about this half and half factor. Half of the time, and actually I would say maybe more than that, maybe 60, 70 percent of the time, the change is internal. Which means radically backing, radically validating, radically honoring, even taking an enormous amount of delight in the person you're becoming, and the qualities that he or she has. What naturally comes from there is the actions that that person takes. which are in consistency with who they are, and therefore that of course creates the outcomes that you're looking to realize and manifest. And I actually have a really stunning one to one client who, um, you know, she's just doing the most amazing things and, you know, one of the things that we've been joking about recently is that her, her manifestation time is about a week. So she articulates something to me, we have a really deep dive conversation about it, we let it move through the body, we embody it. And then within about a week, the universe will give her a series of very obvious indicators that that dream that she had is now on paper. It's now coming to the fore. But what she had to have to begin with was the bravery to articulate it. And she's actually very good at that. I would say that a large proportion of people, are nervous of speaking it. Because on some level they fear having to make the commitment to stick to it. On some level they fear the dissolving of their existing relationships if they grow too big or too different. And on some level they just haven't validated the fact that they could be that person. They could be that guy. You know, rather than spending all of our time pedestalizing someone else, what if we were the one at the top of the pedestal? What if it was us? What if rather than waiting to belong in somebody else's dream, to be included in someone else's vision, we carved our own? What would that require of us? What would that require of us even as far as our self treatment? How would we need to love ourselves? How would we need to live? Really, in order to radically adopt that as our position, Jessen James, who is an incredible public speaker, you know, globally award winning speaker on stage, who is featuring as the first speaker in season six, airing in January. He said in a talk that I went to of his recently, you know, no one is coming to save you. In your business, no one is coming to save you. I heard it on this Saturday in the middle of, the city in London. And I just went, Oh God, that's so true. And in some moments it can feel quite scary. No one is coming to save you. What that also means if you flip it, is that I have everything that I need to be able to save myself, not even to save myself, but to fulfill myself. I have everything that I need. If I choose, Jesus. If I choose to go out into the world and relish and receive and ask and gain clarity and treat this world as though it's here almost purely for my delight, like it's all been created as something that I can benefit from, that I can gain from, that I can learn from, then that becomes the most incredible fertile ground for creation. And you can imagine if you adopt that as your position, really, there are no limits. The only limit really becomes what does the universe want to do through me, and what do I desire? What's the correlation between those two things? You know, I often, uh, I often spend this moment with myself when I have an instinct or when I have a desire, you know, really kind of sensing into where does that come from within me? Does that come from a space of lack? Or does that come from a space of really buoyant, abundant, delightful indulgence in the color that I've been born into the world with? And I mention that because it came up even in a recent mentoring session that I gave myself. I am always in mentorship and I work with a really extraordinary coach. And, you know, she was referencing the fact that sometimes in the way that I talk, there can be this divide between my spiritual purpose, which feels so strong for me. And when I'm talking about desire. And I realized that part of what's clouded my real understanding of my spiritual message is still a legacy belief. And this is where we get back to identity piece. It's a legacy belief that I have to be the good girl that's in obedience to my service requirement. That I have to be humble. And that I have to be, deferential And I have to always listen for the God voice. You know, you guys know by now that when I say God, I mean something greater, wiser, with a bigger perspective than me. Something that works through me. And I fundamentally believe that I have a role. on this earth. But what it took me a long time to realize is that also the voice of my desire is really important because if I am not listening to the desires that come through me, which are also an expression of the divine, then I'm cutting off one of the ways in which divinity speaks through me. I recently interviewed an amazing spiritual and sexual intimacy coach called Justine Dawson. I came across her when I was traveling around LA. She is phenomenal. I'll include her details in the show notes. And if you go back one episode before this, you'll find her full hour long deep dive on how we cultivate intimacy, which was the most extraordinary, um, Uh, journey of discovery for me to listen to, but you know, one of the things that she's talking about is that we cannot cut off sexual intimacy within our lives and still live a full life. If we are not in contact with our body in that sense, if we are not in deep relational contact with other people in that way, we are not fully in life. Sexuality is a creative force. It is a life force. So we can't negate that as an aspect of the human experience. We have to be willing to embrace it all the same as we embrace pain, the same as we embrace grief, the same as we embrace the really sticky moments of discomfort, where going back to our original topic, we come into contact with an older belief or an older version of our identity that no longer feels like it is in alignment with who we are becoming. And maybe, in this Christmas period, you're going to notice that those aspects are still, in certain contexts, alive for you. My first recommendation, if that comes up, if, for example, you go into your Christmas meal and you suddenly find yourself inhabiting an older version of yourself or being treated as an older version of yourself, my first recommendation is to take a curious pause and welcome But that is arising within you. When we try to reject that part of ourselves, when we pedestalize our more evolved selves and we negate our more vulnerable selves, which remember is the root of these identities, the reason we go back into adaptation responses Is our vulnerability, is our fear, is our sense in those moments with our family that we are not enough, that we do not belong, that we are too big, too small, not enough, wrong, bad, distorted, disgusting. I've used all of these words about myself for decades at times. That is the place that the adaptation comes from. That is the place that encourages us to shrink back into an older model of ourselves. That was the way that we coped. In IFS theory, we call that one of our parts. That part is just a self protection strategy and it needs to be seen and cherished. For all that it protects you from. For the beautiful safety creating mechanism that it is. So the first thing that we get to do is we get to pause and we get to welcome. Oh, look at that! I have regressed! Isn't that interesting and potentially irritating? And if you can even smile at the part of you that is irritated by your own habits, it's a really good place to start because humour cuts through a lot of the seriousness that we often apply to self development. My second stage is identify if you can the vulnerability that's at play. Is it that I fear my safety? Is it that I fear my belonging? Is it that in this moment I'm just so neurologically, aesthetically, emotionally overladen? Too much noise, too many people, too many things going on. Is it that I'm just so overwhelmed, within my nervous system not least, that I've lost my anchor? I've lost the really centered, grounded presence that I can often occupy in my independent life, in my adult life, that shows me the next thing to say, the next person to support, the next tiny action of service that I can take. Have I lost that? And if that's the case, popping to the bathroom, taking a moment to breathe, taking a step outside, a pattern interrupt, is absolutely your best method. to come home again. And remember that this podcast is called Funny Away Home, so that is always our theme. What does it really mean to come home to me? Not who these people think I am. Not who I fear I might be. But to come back really to me in this moment, that encompasses forgiveness, which encompasses being a human being, which means you have to lend yourself the same degree of compassion that you lend somebody else. It means recognizing that even if you've done a huge amount of work and shifted enormously, Every single one of us will be presented with Opportunities to notice that potentially there's a little bit more work to do, or opportunities to notice that we are always in a process of evolution. My third principle, watchword would really be to ask yourself, well, given that that's the case and given this context, A, is there any action that I need to take to stabilize and support myself in this moment? And that can mean something external. And significant, like, well, I'm going to leave the context. I'm going to leave the conversation. Or it can be something internal, like, okay, I'm going to give myself permission for the next half hour to be a little bit more quiet, to just pause, to not have to contribute something. I'm just going to sit back and watch the reaction that's happening rather than continuing to feel entangled. The place that that then gets to is what do I want to lean into in this context? Who do I want to show up as? How do I want to feel in my body if I know what I don't want? Like Abraham Hicks says, when you know what you don't want, then you know what you do want. So if I can identify what I would love to feel right now, If I can even just begin to float that into my body as an experience, then what will begin to happen is, neurologically, biologically, in terms of your nervous system template, you will begin to shift. Your energy will change, and therefore the way that other people are reading you, on a somatic level, will shift. People are reading us all the time. They're reading our body language, they're reading our gesturing, they're reading our microfacial expressions. They're really reading that much more than they're reading the words that you speak, because oftentimes the body is speaking one thing and the words, just the overlay, that we create to try to hide the truth that's really here for us. So as soon as we create state shift inside of ourselves, we do create a really palpable difference on the outside, and actually we create a lot more congruence, there's more consistency between what people are seeing in me, what people are feeling in me, and what I'm actually saying and exhibiting. I suppose the final thing for me, and this is sort of my My ongoing practice is that I allow myself, especially in these periods of time where we can move from one thing to the next thing to the next thing, in a constant state of over simulation and frenzy, I allow myself quite a lot of moments of reflection, and I do that in two ways. One is quite a sacred form of self reflection. on my own in my home with a pad of paper and it could either be free journaling or it could be a series of prompts that always is combined with meditation for me because meditation just clears through the noise it begins to drain the cortisol and Out of my body, it creates better detoxification pathways. It balances out my hormones, which have been a major focus in the course of the last three, six months. So it, it essentially, it kind of cleans the slate and when the slate is clean, then it's much easier for me to get down on paper, how I'm doing, to begin to notice the gains, to begin to notice the areas to work on, and then to, uh, make some commitments to myself as to how I'm going to activate and action those things. The other thing that I do is I sort of have sacred community. I have a roster of people in my life who, uh, they get to see me and hear me unfiltered. And although I am temperamentally often reticent to lay my challenges on the door of another person, and again, this is something I have had to work on really actively, even within my own coaching, that I actually go to my coach with my doubts or my fears. And I may not even go into a call with a friend with a specific agenda. But if I know that I'm a little bit off, I will pick up the phone. I will often start the conversation with. How can I be of service to you? Like what's here for you? And as they begin to talk, I'll begin to hear resonance. I'll begin to land. I'll begin to feel safe. And then it will become clear over the course of the conversation, the things that I need to share. If I'm not doing that, if I'm not opening in that way, then what I will just do very honestly is speak to what's here. And this is a practice that I use a lot therapeutically with my clients, where we just start to observe really unconditionally without any judgment or without even attaching any stories. Ah, what's present? So it could be, okay, well I'm noticing tension in my chest. I'm noticing that I'm holding on to an image of a family experience that came up recently, okay? Well, I noticed that I've been telling a story about what this client thought about me. You just start to verb it, to, to word it on the phone, and the other person that's listening for the moment is just really gently listening with love and compassion, and I select my, my people, my tribe, very carefully relative to Two things in particular. One is their capacity to listen to me without condition, and without needing to fix it, and really actually without an agenda as to what they need to do with what I tell them. So that's really being a space holder, which is why a lot of these people are people that have done an enormous amount of self work. They're, um, they're always in a process of evolution. Um, they might be friends that I've had for a long time that I've met in coaching spaces or in therapeutic spaces. They might be fellow practitioners. Uh, they might be people that are decades ahead of me as far as experience, but we've become friends on the basis of a shared philosophy and a shared resonance. And, and, and so we kind of meet as equals, which is the most phenomenal thing. But the other criteria that I have is that they also be doing the work. Right? because they're doing the work, that they're also willing to share to an equal degree within this relationship. Reciprocity is actually one of the foundations to trust. That in order for me to really be able to trust you, I have to know a little bit about your insides. You have to have been willing to be emotionally vulnerable with me. It's like, uh, in old fashioned senses where you do a blood, a blood bond, you know, one person will cut their hand, the other person will cut their hand, and with all sorts of, safety and health warnings, you would bind together with this pact. It's a little bit the same for me relationally. Doesn't mean that we'll both be sharing to an equal degree at the same time, but it does mean that over the course of a relationship, I trust that I can show up in my fullness, that I can share in my fullness, that I can receive you in your fullness and that you can do the same. It feels equal. It feels like a partnership. And I look for the same degree of partnership in my friendships that I do in my romantic relationships and in my client relationships. And each of those have a different set of terms, which are very clear and which I codify. You know, we actually have conversations about that in my friendships., so I'm going to leave it there for today, what I'd really love to recommend is that you go and have just a little mull on the basis of the conversation we've had today, on what you are anticipating, nervous about, attentive to over the course of the next two, three weeks. How you may have structured your time, how you may want to adapt that in order to be of the greatest service to the person you actually are and are actually becoming, rather than the past version of you that did a lot of things for other people or the past version of you that just pushed through, just kept at high speed or kept at high service. And to really pause and consider if we go right back to the beginning, if you were to set some really ambitious goals for yourself in terms of your identity and in terms of your, your vision for the life that you're building for the course of the next two years. Then what would that look like? And in what way could you carry some of that clarity into this period of time to facilitate that path that you're paving? In what way could this Christmas period for you be like a little blueprint for the life that you're wanting to have in two years time? How would you show up for yourself? How would you love on yourself? How would you connect to others? What sort of reflective opportunities and people would you bring into your life in order to make this as interesting, nurturing, revealing a period as possible?. Drop me a little message and let me know how this episode has helped. Please, please filter through any questions, any observations, any gains, having you guys within this community is so beautiful for me. I adore every moment that I have to sit down and connect with you. We are, like I say, bringing some incredible opportunities to you in the course of the next year. My real want is that we grow the level of intimacy and the level of expansion available for anyone that is a part of this gorgeous thing of the podcast, of the training, um, of this, this tribe that we're building. So reach out, keep us posted, let us know what's in your hearts, let us know what you want to hear more of. I am here utterly to serve you guys and to support your growth and your deep evolution in any way that I can. I send you so much love for the turning of the tide and I can't wait to see you in 2025. gorgeous listeners. Thank you. So. So. much. For your ears. I hope. You enjoy today's. today's. episode. To find. More about our. Featured guests. Have a look in the show. Notes.