S1E5: Rewriting the Narrative: A Journey to Mindfulness with Natalie Valle

Overview:
In this episode of PausePoint, we welcome Natalie, a first-generation Latina and Nike-signed mindfulness coach, to share her transformative journey from struggle to serenity. Natalie discusses her path from battling eating disorders and substance abuse to discovering the profound peace of yoga and mindfulness. She explains how personal hardships fueled her passion to help others find their essence through mindfulness tools, aiming to create a collective sense of ease and calm. The conversation dives deep into the power of changing limiting beliefs and the impact of meditation on mental health.

Guest:
Natalie is a multidisciplinary healer and leader in the wellness space, based in Los Angeles. A signed Nike Mindfulness Coach with a background with certifications in Soundology, Reiki Master, Chopra Institute Wellness Coach and Meditation Teacher, Dharma Coaching, Yoga Teacher Training (RYT 200), and EFT. Natalie has been featured in the LA Times, Well + Good, and Business Insider, and has headlined yoga festivals such as Wanderlust, Bhakti Fest, and many more.

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What You'll Discover This Week:

• Transformative Power of Mindfulness: Learn how yoga and meditation can reshape your life.
• Making the Unconscious Conscious: Discover how to change limiting beliefs by bringing the unconscious to light. 
• Practical Mindfulness Techniques: Gain easy-to-implement s

PausePoint: The Podcast
Where Mindfulness Meets Mastery in Work-Life Balance

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Learn More:
Visit www.pausepoint.io to discover a wealth of resources and further information on enhancing your professional and personal life through mindfulness.

Transcript

  Welcome to PausePoint, the podcast, your ultimate destination for reclaiming your time, revitalizing your spirit, and saying no to burnout.  I'm Felisa Wiley, CEO and founder of PausePoint, and I'm here to ignite your journey towards a more balanced and mindful life.  Join us each week as we delve into practical tips, inspiring stories, and expert advice designed to integrate mindfulness into your daily life. 

We'll explore mental health tips, discover ways to strengthen work life balance, and find methods to reduce your stress.  Whether you're new to mindfulness or seeking to deepen your practice, we're here to spark action. It's time to reclaim our time, take more breaks and infuse our lives with moments of peace and rejuvenation.

Join us starting July 15th for our debut season, where we'll share practical tips, inspiring stories, and expert advice to help you thrive in today's fast paced world.  Let's create a mindful world, one pause at a time. 

Welcome to this week's episode of PausePoint, the podcast. Today, I'm absolutely delighted to welcome Natalie Valle, a multifaceted wellness expert and Nike signed mindfulness coach. Natalie brings a wealth of expertise in various healing arts, including soundology, Reiki, wellness coaching, and more. Today, we'll explore Natalie's personal journey from overcoming intense personal challenges to discovering the transformative power of mindfulness and yoga.

Which not only changed her life, but also set her on a path to help others find healing and peace. We'll dive into how she uses her diverse expertise to combat limiting beliefs and enhance mental health through meditation. Natalie, welcome to PausePoint, the podcast. We are super happy to have you here.

Thank you for having me. It's such a beautiful blast from the past full circle moment to be having this conversation with you today. Absolutely. Now, can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Yeah, sure. Jeez. Where do I start? I am a first generation Latina from. I moved to the States when I was 12 Spanish is my first language and really found my way to where I am today through a lot of trial by fire and I wouldn't have it any other way.

I today am a signed Nike mindfulness coach, yoga meditation teacher, and the co founder of a nonprofit called Bondless for the People. And really my goal is just to. serve the collective to help people drop back into their hearts and to find the wisdom, the sense of ease and calm that is our true essence as human beings.

And how I do that is through all the tools and modalities that we could list off, but I'll save the listener some time. And yeah, just through mindfulness tools. Now, how did you begin your journey as a mindfulness coach and what inspired you to pursue this path? It really was through my own lived experience.

So I have definitely delved in the harder parts of the human experience that stem from a sense of lack, from a sense of unworthiness, from comparison, from trauma, both little T, big T trauma. And what I mean by that is. You know, I really was lost for some time, especially during my college years, suffering from, and for those listening that may know somebody that's living with this or you yourself, I just, I send you so much love and know that you are seen through that journey.

But I suffered a lot from body disorder, eating disorders, substance abuse. And I think in our society, a lot of it is normalized. The over drinking, the over usage of whether it's drugs. Or other substances and I normalized it by saying it was recreational and other people were doing it and it wasn't a big deal and I totally had control but the reality of it was I didn't and underlying all of it was just a deep sense of sadness and a sense of unworthiness.

And I just had this really broken relationship with myself and my body. And it wasn't until my very first yoga class in college that I really began to strip away all of those negative thought patterns. Because through yoga, the ultimate goal of yoga at the end is to reach a state of meditation. The ultimate goal of yoga is samadhi, total union with the divine.

For most, it's just a moment of calm and peace at the end of a yoga class. And that was me, and I really found myself in a place where my thoughts were quiet, my mind was still, and what was left was just this deep sense of connection and awareness. And that was my first experience of yoga, this moment of life.

Whoa, my mind isn't tormenting me for the first time ever and stripping that away. All that's left is a deep sense of love and compassion for myself. And so yoga really was the gateway for me to begin exploring all of these different tools that I was collecting for myself to help myself get out of this place in life that wasn't serving me, that wasn't taking me anywhere.

And fast forward today, I'm proud to say I'm four years alcohol free, sober. I really feel that I've healed a lot of those patterns, although healing is never an end journey and it's not linear. But I really have the tools now that help me just have a more sense of fulfillment and happiness in my life that was foreign to me when I was younger.

And it really stemmed from a place of just being. recognizing that I was not in a good place and finding the tools that were accessible and available to me based on where I was financially, economically, geographically, and realized that I really have everything I need. It's just a matter of shifting the narrative around it.

Congratulations on sobriety. That's absolutely amazing. Four years is a huge accomplishment. Now, I know that you said that your first experience with a calm mind was through your first like yoga class But what happened before that when you were like, I need to make a change. I need to do something different I need to go to that yoga class.

What do you think sparked that?  It's so beautiful because I'm a firm believer there are no abstinence. Yoga found me. I was at a point in my college career where I needed an additional credit to graduate. And I wanted it to be an easy elective. I didn't want to work. I didn't want to think about it. So I picked an exercise elective and lo and behold, the exercise elective was the Pilates and yoga class.

So for a full semester, I went to yoga and Pilates as part of, like, my curriculum three times a week, and this teacher was just an incredible teacher, and it was honestly by accident, Polisa, that I stumbled upon this. I'm so happy that you're able to stumble upon that. So you work with some clients. What are some of the most common challenges that you face?

Your client's face and how do you use your like experiences and your like the tools that you use to help you to help them? I think I like to draw for my teachers and my teachers are people that I've met and I have studied with in person and they're people whose books I've read. When I tell people You can have many teachers and mentors.

They can even be people that weren't alive while you were alive. They can be people's books that have helped you and you've studied their works and they have bodies of work that have helped you grow and expand. And so one of those for me is Carl Jung. And I remember my favorite quote of his is until you make the unconscious conscious, it'll dictate your life.

And you'll call it fate until you make the unconscious, it'll direct your life. and you will call it fate. So to answer your question, for a lot of people, myself included, we have this programming that runs in the background. And I'm not getting like super esoteric like the matrix, although we can definitely go there, but I'll spare the listener's time because it's a rabbit hole.

There is an unconscious programming that's running in the background that tells us who we are, our identity. What mode we operate in it's the programming that gets us home when we're driving from work and we know the exact route We don't even have to think about it. Our body just goes on autopilot It's that autopilot mode and for a lot of people a lot of that subconscious narrative Also is full of a lot of limiting beliefs and what is a belief but a thought that we think over and over again and so for a lot of people that I work with It entails dismantling a lot of those beliefs, but in order to dismantle them, we have to make the unconscious conscious.

And so what that means is I'll use myself as an example. If I would look at myself in the mirror, the old story of my body dysmorphia would come up, and I would just run with it, and it was a mean voice. Let me tell you, she was not nice. And then I began becoming aware of that voice, and instead of just letting my mind run with it, I would stop it in its tracks.

and ask myself, Is this true? Is this really my truth? And just by becoming aware of the old story of, Oh, I'm not good enough, or I'm not X, Y, and Z enough, or any limiting belief that holds you back, just becoming aware of it. Then we can become to work. We can begin to work with it, to ask ourselves, is this story serving me?

And if it's not, can I choose a new story? And so we begin to make the unconscious conscious, what are the thought patterns that are recurring in our minds that dictate how we operate, that dictate our motive of living in the world of operating of how we perceive ourselves, how we perceive others, and then if it's not serving us, how can we shift it?

And it's simply by becoming aware of the story and then choosing a new story. And in the beginning, your conscious mind is not going to believe it, and that's okay. But what's beautiful about the subconscious is that the subconscious actually doesn't know whether you're telling it a truth or you're telling it a lie.

And so if the subconscious has a belief, if you plug in a new belief that you claim is going to be your new truth, your conscious mind is going to be like, Mm, BS, I don't believe it. But your subconscious It's going to take that seed and the more that you begin to replace your stories, the more that the programming in your subconscious is going to start to be, to become rewritten by these new and more supportive beliefs.

And yeah, I find that so many of us have this unconscious programming that runs our lives that a lot of those stories aren't serving us, but we just let them go unconscious. We let them run in the background that over time it becomes our identity. So if we can make those stories, those beliefs. It's conscious and we can begin to work with them, we can begin to change the narrative, and if you change your beliefs, you change your life.

So it's basically another form of life design, it's identity design. And we can do whatever we want, we can be whatever we want, all it takes is a little bit more awareness of our thoughts and the ability to say, you know what, that's not serving me today. Yeah. Exactly. Now, what are some other limiting beliefs that, I don't want to say the most common limiting beliefs, but what are some limiting beliefs that just make you, just drive you crazy when you hear someone say it about themselves?

I think it's not so much, I think it's not so much limiting beliefs that I hear, I think it's the way in which people use Language in unconscious ways. And I'll tell you what I mean by that. So I said earlier how your subconscious mind doesn't know when you're telling it a truth or a lie, right? It just accepts the input and says done plugged in new mode of programming.

And so when people. Use I am statements in ways that are self deprecating. It drives me insane because I'm like, do you realize that you're feeding your subconscious mind statements? So for example, when somebody goofs up or they make an error and they'll say, Oh God, I'm so stupid. Or I just, I'm not good at.

X, Y, and Z, or those kinds of statements are just self deprecating, but it's normal, right? Like you hear somebody say, Oh my God, I'm so stupid. We're like, we accept that. It's, we don't even think twice to stop them and be like, don't say that. Or we even say it and we normalize that in our languaging, but it drives me crazy to answer your question because it's actually, I am statements are really powerful.

And if we're not conscious of the way in which we're. Speaking about ourselves, we're actually feeding our subconscious so much input that only reinforces the limiting beliefs that are hard to uproot in the first place. Now, what would be your favorite, like, mindfulness exercise in terms of these limiting beliefs?

Is it saying affirmations in the morning? Is it, I don't know, trying to find out, doing like a journal exercise where you look internally and you're like, oh, okay. This is a recurring thought that I have and like trying to mitigate that. Yeah. I think journaling is a really beautiful practice to reflect and just put up, put what's going on in your mind on paper so that you can look at it.

But then the second piece to that is I love, I think the most powerful way to create change in the body is through emotion because emotion set off a cascading of. Different chemicals being released in our bodies. And so when we feel the emotion of happiness, of joy, oxytocin, serotonin, dopamine is produced in the body.

And when we get the body involved, we embody it so much more than just affirmation statements. So what I mean by that is I love journaling and if we're looking at, okay, what are the limiting beliefs that I'm looking to work with? I figure out what they are.  And then I rewrite, what belief do I want to put in place of this?

If my belief is I am unworthy of success, then my new belief is I am so worthy of success that I am traveling the world with my beloved, I'm visiting my family four times a year, I am receiving the accolades for the hard work that I've done. Whatever it might be. And once you have that new story, in meditation, I like to sit and visualize myself in the future already having fulfilled or embodied this sort of new belief.

And what are the results of that new belief, right? If I'm worthy of success, then I visualize myself receiving all of that success. And in that visualization, I begin to feel gratitude as if it's true. already happening so that you get the body involved in creating those chemicals that are going to create that profound change rather than just Beating the conscious mind, affirmations that maybe they'll stick, maybe they won't.

But when we work with the body's chemicals, we create profound change in the internal wiring of the body that just makes those beliefs stick so much better. So I know you also do a lot of sound baths and I think that you have a certification in Soundology. Now how does that integrate? Because it sounds like we're talking about internal chemicals, we're talking about trying to rewire.

Our brain through these more powerful and more mindful I am statements. How does now like sound baths and soundology come into that? Yeah, I love this question because what's beautiful about working with the subconscious, what's tricky about working with the subconscious is that you can't access it when the prefrontal neocortex is activated.

When the thinking mind is activated,  you're fully in that beta brainwave state. You're in thinking and so the subconscious is harder to access because we're operating we're in mode of operation for survival reasons If you have to have your eyes open because you're driving You can't go into the subconscious and totally tune out like you have to be watching what's going on around you But what's beautiful about sleep?

Soundbats that they have this innate ability to slow down brainwaves so that we begin to get into a trans like state when we get into a trans like state, the brainwaves slow down and when the brainwaves slow down, we get out of the prefrontal neocortex thinking mind and we directly access the subconscious mind and so working with sound to hack the brain to slow it down enough to get out of the thinking mind and get into the subconscious makes accessing brainwaves.

Those parts of ourselves where we really want to plant those seeds of positive beliefs, of more affirming beliefs directly in the subconscious and working with sound helps us get out of the thinking brain and access the subconscious. So for someone who is starting their journey with going on a more like mindful journey, I would say, how often would you recommend they go do a sound bath?

How often would you recommend they start with their meditation? Totally. So I like to use the analogy of dental care because I love my teeth and I care about my teeth. If you want to have healthy gums, you floss your teeth every day. If you want to have clean, sparkly teeth, you brush your teeth twice a day.

I think it's like same thing with meditation and mental health, emotional well being. physical health. If people can even just meditate five minutes a day, I think daily consistency supersedes intensity. And what I mean by that is you don't have to have this super mystical, profound journey every single time you meditate.

If you do, that's amazing. And I want to talk to you, but if you don't have the time for that because scheduling doesn't permit or It's just not in alignment with the flow of your life. Even just five minutes of meditation every single day will create profound change in your life. So I would start there.

I would say for those listening that don't have a meditation practice at all, set yourself up for success and just challenge yourself to meditate for five minutes a day for a week and see how you feel after, and then maybe increase it to 10 minutes. Work with what you have. To be honest, it's not easy.

At this stage, my meditation practice, I probably meditate for about two hours every single day, which is split up in increments of 30 minutes here, 90 minutes here, or 30 minutes throughout the day. But again, I've been meditating for some time and it took me a bit to get to this level of consistency. But in the beginning, Start small, start with bite sized amounts, but I would say daily practice of meditation going inward is super important, as important as brushing your teeth every day.

In terms of sound baths, if you could access a sound bath once a week, I think that's beautiful. What's like, sound baths are like that deep cleaning, like everything shower. You have an everything shower maybe once a week, and then Rinse offs, maybe you wash your hair twice a week, whatever. But think of a sound bath like an everything shower, maybe like once a week.

If you're super into self care, my Taurus is out there. If you want to do a sound bath a day, it won't hurt you, that's for sure. But yeah, I think to answer your question, depending on what's available and accessible. I feel very blessed that I live in a city where I could literally look up a sound bath and there's one happening probably every five minutes at every point in the day.

But if you're somewhere where it's not as accessible, YouTube a sound bath, do like an hour long immersive inward experience once a week. And then daily meditation, five minutes here, 10 minutes there, working your way up. Um, my teacher Deepak Chopra, I did meditation teacher training with him and, um, the meditations that we did with him were two 20 minute meditations every day, so about 40 minutes a day.

But it's with working with whatever is accessible to you. So I have a couple things I want to go back on because you did mention briefly that you now can meditate for upwards of 90 minutes, which is amazing. Amazing. I think my max is like 30, 35. And then I start, my thoughts are coming back. I'm like, okay, you got to get up.

And I know that you also came back from a seven day meditation retreat. Can you talk about what that experience was like?  First of all, I just want to say, I don't sit there for 90 minutes with the mind completely clear. That is me sitting maybe like 20 minutes at a time at the 20 minute mark. My mind's I'm tired, I'm hungry.

What are we going to do for dinner? I'm bored. Let's scroll Instagram. And it's like one of my other teachers, Dr. Joe Dispenza says, you have to tame the animal. It's like you tell a dog to sit and you tell the body, no, you're going to sit here. And you're going to wait and you're going to sit and you're going to wait.

And so it is this process of taming the animal. But yeah, I was at a Dr. Joe Dispenza retreat not too long ago. It was a seven day retreat where we meditated anywhere between four to six hours a day, split up into hour and a half increments, like 90 minute meditations a day. Although I will say the longest meditation we did, it started at 4am and it was four and a half hours long.

Well, yeah, and I cannot tell you the amount of times my monkey brain came in and was like, oh my god What time is it? How long has it been? I'm tired. My legs hurt. I don't want to be here anymore And it is a process of training the mind and it is mind over matter as they say of training the body But it was so expansive.

It was such an amazing experience for those listening If you're curious about the work of manifestation of accessing the quantum field through meditation, that's all Dr. Joe Dispenza. I would say the best book of his to start with is either Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself or You Are the Placebo.

And then once you graduate from one of those or both of those, then I would say you can read Becoming Supernatural and that book will change your life. It'll change the complete paradigm of how you view this 3D reality. Okay, I want to dive into that. So, do you think it's too much if we talk about this 3D reality here, or do you want to save that for the next time we do an interview?

We can brush over it. I will preface by saying I'm not an expert. This is still quantum physics, and speaking about the quantum is still a topic that I myself am learning about. And so somebody listening is more well versed. Don't be mad at me if I trip, and please message me and tell me what you know. So, can you  I don't know anything about it.

So you say this and I'm like, Oh, what is this? First of all, Yeah. So there is this field of study called quantum physics, which a lot of people say it's the science of spirituality. And so in quantum physics, there is this basic understanding that there is a unified field connecting every single thing. In this universe, in the multiverse, and if we think about 3D reality, we live in a space time reality where there is infinite space and there's limited time, right?

In the quantum, there is no time. And so everything exists all at once, which that in and of itself is an interesting thing to wrap your head around. But yeah, and 3D reality, we're connected to this reality through our five senses. Our breathing, our sense of smell, our sense of sight, touch, taste, what did I miss?

Sound. Oh my god. Sound. And so just by dialing down the thinking mind, by slowing down the neocortex like we're talking about, we slow down the brainwaves and we drop into the fourth dimension where we are no body, nowhere, no time. It was this concept of. You're not your thoughts. You're not your emotions.

And so if you're not your thoughts, you're not your emotions, then what are you? And a lot of schools of thought, a lot of philosophies will say that you are the awareness witnessing the thoughts and the emotions that are happening. And so if you're the awareness, you are Not just like, I'm not Natalie Valle in actuality, that is the ego identity that I have attached to in this 3D reality.

In 4D, we become nobody, nowhere, no time, which when we stay in the fourth dimension long enough through meditation, we can maybe begin to peek into the door, open the door to the quantum, which is the field of pure consciousness. It's where everything exists and it's all frequency and that's It's everyone everywhere, it's the void, it's non local, it's infinite, in certain religions that's what's considered the divine.

And that's a really rough breakdown of 3D, 4D, 5D. So when people talk about the fifth dimension, it's this concept of everything, everywhere, all at once. Which I think that movie does a pretty good, like, entertaining job of describing the quantum field. I definitely need to do some more research on this, but to me when you're, when you were speaking, you brought up three main things.

So, like you said, with philosophies, there's this mind body distinction. Are we our body or are we our mind? So in this quantum physics 4D, 5D realm, we're not our body. Our body is just like this carrier, this, like, place that we, our mind, is, like, In, I guess you could say, and then you also talked about time where, oh gosh, I might mess this up too.

I think you mentioned time doesn't necessarily exist. Like right now when we think about time, we think of past, present, and future, and a lot of people when they're talking about mindfulness, they're like, oh, be in the present, but in this, is it like the fourth dimension, fifth dimension? There is no present because there is no past and there is no future.

It is all here happening. I love that you brought that up. That's the now. That's the present moment. That's like the magic of the now because that's the only thing that actually exists. Even the past only exists in our mind as a thought. The past doesn't actually exist in the now. The only thing that exists in the now is now.

When we focus on the now, we let go of any anxiety, of any depression, you know, the now exists, and a lot of, for example, in the Buddhist tradition, they say that a lot of suffering stems from not accepting what is, because if we just accept what is in the now, if we just surrender to it, even though, yes, like, I think also it's an interesting conversation to have when we live with it.

in a place of privilege, right? When we're not living in a war zone. Yeah, the now is, is easy to surrender to. It's fine. I might get a little bit bored, but it's fine. I think that's a deeper conversation that I definitely don't feel equipped to lead, but I think it is an interesting one for sure. But I think about the root of a lot of spiritual practices, it's this concept of being in the now, because the now is all there really is.

And so when talking about the quantum field is the infinite generous present moment. It's the infinite now I've known you for close to six years at this point. We used to work together the golden days Oh were they so golden? They were golden. That was a great time I won't deny that but we are we've always been fairly forward looking and I think we've also We're high achievers.

We're goal setters. We have a future and we're like, we have stuff that we want to work towards. But we also, try to live in the here, in the now, in the present. How do we, or from your perspective, because you offer a very well routed holistic perspective. You do Reiki, you do sound baths, you do meditation, yoga, you have far more certifications than I do in this matter.

How do you navigate planning for the future and setting these goals while also just like surrendering to the present? To the noun. Yeah, that's such a beautiful question and it's a dance that I dance every single day. I'm not going to lie to you because it's true. Like I do have aspirations. I do have things I want to accomplish and I think it comes down to staying present, having a vision of the future where you're headed but then surrendering it all.

To the divine and saying what will be, it's almost the sense of like non attachment, like you can have goals and you can have aspirations and every single day take aligned action, but do it from a place of non attachment of. Trusting what will unfold is what is meant for you. And rejection is God's protection.

And then also. Enjoying the journey because I can get so lost in like being so narrow focus on where I'm headed But I forgot to enjoy the journey of it, which is the whole point of it and that journey is literally even now Yeah, which is amazing. No, that's actually really beautiful and this idea of non attachment just like accepting what is letting go.

It's harder than you think. It's very hard. And I think that also has to do with what you talked about, like the ego. Like, why would I want to say, no, this is not working out for me when all I've done is work for this? But then when the things aren't working, I'm like, wait, but they actually aren't. So why am I working towards this?

Totally. And it's so funny. I had this moment in my meditation yesterday, because like I said, I'm in the process of building a nonprofit, which has been, I don't know if I said this before we hit record, but it's been the biggest. hardest aspiration of my life, to be honest with you. And I was stuck in this, like wanting to control the outcome, wanting to disappointment of somebody saying no to being a sponsor, being a partner.

And I was stuck. I was so stuck in this limited perspective. Of lack and anxiety around this is even going to be possible and then in my meditation it was this moment of Did you forget that you are constantly co creating with the universe and what will be and just let go and trust in the unknown? And it's hard.

It's really hard. But if we can settle into a space of complete trust and surrender, I think that's the ideal place to create from. And it's not easy, but if it's possible. Now, when you have these moments of reminding yourself to distrust the process and to stop worry, stop the anxiety, what do you say to yourself?

Hmm.  I think exactly that trust in the unknown. Yeah. For those who are skeptical about starting their mindfulness journey, what do you have to say to them? I think ultimately you have to figure out what intrinsically motivates you. From, I could talk about the benefits of stress management, of sleep benefits, of mental health benefits, and there are so many studies out there that meditation does indeed reduce stress and anxiety significantly.

People with meditation, when it comes to mental health, were able to stop their medication for anxiety, for depression, or reduce the amount of medication they take. There are so many studies out there that talk about the benefits of sleep and meditation, the benefits of physical health and meditation, the benefits of interpersonal relationships and meditation and mindfulness.

And so I think I would say find what intrinsically motivates you if you're curious about this work, and do some research. Most of the time I find that I'm skeptical about things when I just don't know enough. about it. You know, I just feel like I don't know enough about it. And so immediately my primitive brain wants to keep me safe.

And so it says no to anything that's unknown because anything that's unknown is not safe, safe is the known. And so for me, if anytime I find myself skeptical, but curious, I'll just do some research. And I find that The amount of research that is out there based on the benefits of mindfulness, of meditation are so honestly, I think they're dramatic because of the amount of the capacity of being such a salve for so many of people's day to day problems that can be found in mindfulness and particularly meditation, the numbers are staggering.

So do some research and I think you might be pleasantly surprised. What was the most surprising piece of research that you found? The one that made your jaw just drop. So I do sound practitioner training. So I teach teachers who are interested in. Guiding soundbats, guiding meditation. And so I have a whole certification around it.

And I remember doing research for this and just being so amazed with the benefits of meditation. And so. When we talk about mental health and meditation, there was an article that came out by the Ayesha Foundation,  ISHA, that wrote that amongst meditators who had been suffering depression, 7 percent reported improvement, 25 percent reduced their medication, and 50 percent were able to stop their medication altogether.

87 percent reported improvement. And 50 percent were able to stop their medication. And the numbers are pretty similar for anxiety. 86 percent reported improvement. 28 percent reduced their medication. And same thing, 50 percent were able to stop their medication. Amongst those with insomnia, 73 percent reported improvement.

40 percent reduced their medication. And 30 percent were able to stop their medication. These numbers, you can't make these up. And these are pretty staggering numbers. Even just to say that 87 percent reported improvement. I think for me, the biggest one is 50 percent were able to stop their medication with stress, with depression  and anxiety.

No pharmaceutical out there has that percentage of. efficacy. So yeah. What's crazy is that, like you said, no medication out there can currently do this. However, this is the stuff and these are the research that Big Pharma will be trying to hide from the majority of consumers. Yeah, and I also just want to preface by saying I think there's also a stigma around folks who are on antidepressants, on medication, and there is a time and a place.

And I will say, even for folks who still take medication, having meditation as a supplement to medication will also have profound benefits. So there are people out there who still need to continue taking their pharmaceuticals and no, no judgment. Like everyone does what they need to do for their, to better their health.

But the beauty of meditation, it has no, virtually no contraindications, no side effects. And if it's helping 87 percent of people see improvements, why not supplement? Yeah. And I also want to second, no judgment for anyone taking medication. I've had my bouts with anxiety and depression and I had to be medicated because I just could not live.

Yeah. And it helped me so much and when I was finally able to get off it, I was like, yay. But there are some where you actually need to be on it. Do your thing. Take care of yourself. You know yourself best. This is just, meditation can help. Mindfulness can help and there are so many natural and I think the word is like homeopathic Homeopathic ways to also assist in whatever you're going through There was my friend my co founder recently said this to me.

Her name's paula. She said that She was reading an article that said if kids if every child in every school in the u. s started a meditation practice When they were eight years old, crime would be virtually gone by the time they turned 18. I believe. That's insane. I believe that 100%. I, I think the world's not an easy place to live.

I think there's a lot going on always, especially with just the media. We are exposed to too much advertisements every single day, bombarded with too much information. Our senses and are on overdrive. The minute we leave our doors, especially now that we have, like, the technology in our hand constantly being updated with, like, breaking news, like, there's a lot going on.

It's not an easy, we, it's not an easy world to live in nowadays with all the technology that we have. So, yeah, people can get very easily angry. It's also easier to be mean to others. Especially when you do it, like, behind a phone, like, with a complete, like, a fake account or a fake name, like, it's easy. So the fact that, yeah, if a kid At eight years old started meditating learned how to better regulate their emotions and learn how to take a step back and reflect and be Less more reflective rather than reactive I can 100 percent see that eight year old growing up to being just like a kinder gentler human 100 percent so what would you say are some emerging trends in mindfulness?

Some things that are new that made you uncomfortable because of the newness that you started doing research into. I don't know about discomfort. I'm pretty like, I'm pretty much an early adapter of anything related to wellness, mindfulness. Like I, yeah, I am always like down to try anything no matter how out there it is.

But I think that something I learned about that blew my mind that there has been a lot of research that has come from it is this organization called the HeartMath Institute. It's a non profit and they do a lot of research in what is known as heart coherence. And heart coherence is basically a state of cooperative alignment between the heart, mind, and emotions and physical systems.

And so this expands into personal, social, global coherence. And so when we talk about coherence, it's like we can have coherence between our heart, our brain and our internal systems. But then we can also have coherence with people around us. And there have been studies shown that similar to flocks of birds, there isn't like a leader that's dictating where the birds are flying.

The birds are actually in coherence, which means they're acting as a single mind. And so humans can also entrain with one another and act as a  Beautiful to think that when there are groups of people meditating, they've done studies that show that crime rate within that geographical location for the day goes down.

Car accidents within that geographical area goes down. So there is power in In something that is unseen, something that we can't see visibly with our eyes, there's something happening when groups of people get together, they sync up their hearts, they sync up their minds, and they create this electromagnetic field of coherence around them that has profound impacts on the world.

Not just the individual, but the group, but also people around them. So I think the technology around coherence is super interesting. HeartMath Institute is an amazing resource if anyone's curious about that. But I think that's something that when I learned about it, I just got super, I like geeked out over it because it's just so fascinating to me.

And what's interesting is that this reminds me of when you're in a meditation class or even some yoga classes and you end it with an om and everyone says it and you can feel the vibrations and the energy in the room by just saying om all together at once. So I could very easily see how a single human with other groups of humans, the wavelengths are aligned and how that can, that energy can like expel outwards to others around them.

Exactly. Now, I'm going to call you a thought leader in this because you also, you do your trainings, you also have your own podcast, and you also have a budding community. How do you influence and shape these conversations? The big thing for me that I think in the beginning I wasn't so focused on, like in the beginning I was so gung ho around the mystical and the metaphysical, which I still am, but I realized very quickly that I can't meet everybody there.

Like I can't go into talking about the 5D, the quantum field. right away because most of my community, especially as it continues to grow, everyone's at different levels of understanding of their own journeys of insight. And so I've really learned to craft my conversations and particularly for my style.

I have many people that I follow that I'm friends with that they know that their audience and who they're talking to is like in the fifth dimension with the Lemurians. And that's great. Who are the librarians? Most people listening are like, what did you just say? And so to that, I would say exactly. So for me, I have found that I like meeting people where they're at.

And so that means that the conversations that I craft tend to be pretty educational from a standpoint of inclusivity and accessibility and equity. I think that's really important. And that's a big goal with wellness for the people too. I think inclusivity, accessibility and equity is Something that has been left out of the wellness conversations in the world of, and not to bash any of these, because I think everybody just has different audiences from the worlds of goop or.

Those kinds of like super high end wellness brands, wellness influencers, wellness thought leaders, and that's all fine and dandy. I have nothing against them. What I'm more concerned with is, okay, what about the people that are left out of that conversation and how can I serve them? Because when we talk about creating lasting change, it's not just about, it's not a luxury anymore.

Because the thing is, if everybody knows how to self regulate their emotions, if everybody knows how to live in the present moment so that they don't deal with as much anxiety, suffering, depression, we literally create collective change in the planet. And you can't tell me otherwise. I've always wanted world peace.

I still want world peace. And yeah, I don't know if I'm necessarily answering your question, but For me, I think what's most important when leading these conversations is making sure that they're digestible, they're inclusive, also trauma informed. I think everybody has a different lived experience that they're approaching this work with, and for me, like, they say that You can't be everybody's cup of tea, but I'm a Libra and I'm going to try.

And I'm going to try, you can't tell me otherwise. And so there might be people out there that don't jive with me and hopefully I'll never meet them. Cause otherwise my feelings will be hurt. I'm just kidding. I do think like creating this place that feels safe and accessible is what's really important to me.

And. I feel like I have this innate ability to be super adaptable and being able to read the room to understand What does this person need? What does this group of people need to hear that will meet them where they're at? That's your superpower. That's my superpower. I'm Libra. You're Libra. No, but even when we worked together years ago You also carried that with you.

You read the room You were able to adjust as needed and I think that's also carried you through your experiences now and all the certifications everything you're you as a teacher you as a person that's your superpower. Thank you honey, I appreciate that. You also mentioned diversity, equity, and inclusion when it comes to mindfulness.

How do you see that changing? I think that I see it changing through organizations like Wellness for the People, I see it changing through, yeah, just more people feeling empowered to know that they have a seat at the table in this conversation from both a participant standpoint, but also a facilitator standpoint.

I think when we see people that look like us that have similar cultural backgrounds, lived experience as us doing things from a leadership perspective, we feel like we can also do that. We also have a seat at the table and wellness for the people. Really? We are a BIPOC led movement, an organization that is committed to redefining wellness, founded with the vision of making wellness and the whole industry as a whole, more accessible, more equitable, more inclusive from the point of.

Price point from the point of the environments and the spaces. Really to unite people, to humanize people, their stories, reduce and eliminate the stigma of suffering and silence. And so I do think that it's changing. I think that, listen, we live in a capitalistic society and that's the truth of it. And I have nothing against.

It's ultimately what we do with it. And as more people become just more mindful, as more organizations become more mindful, I think we'll see a lot more conscious capitalism happening. I think we'll see a lot more circular economies happening. And that's our goal with Wellness for the People. We're hoping, we're aspiring to link arms with organizations that support accessibility, that support wellness, and they have an abundance of resources.

of financial resources that we can circulate around to create more accessibility to these practices. Can you walk me through, you said circular economies. That's a new word for me, a new concept. What does that mean? I don't know that I am an expert on sort of these definitions, but a circular economy is an economic system that's based on The reusing and regeneration of materials, products, and so the way that we see it is if there is an organization like Let's call it a Nike or there's an organization like an Amazon who clearly has an overabundance of financial resources.

There is no question about it. And they have a philanthropic branch to their company to create change, to create impact, which a lot of these organizations do. How can we circulate that? Those resources so that we can create. So the goal with wellness for the people is to link arms with these organizations that have an overabundance of resources that want to give back to the community.

So we can circulate those resources to create programming, to create events that can be. subsidized and sponsored by these organizations to then give accessibility to people who maybe don't have those resources, who don't have those financial, those funds to be able to purchase a 300 ticket to a day retreat.

That's not feasible for everybody, but if we can circulate the resources from the organizations who have the resources in abundance. To the folks who maybe don't have the capacity to take themselves to something that's going to better their mental health and well being, how can we create a circular economy so that everybody wins?

Okay, so I get what you're saying. Um, so when you first mentioned Circular Economy, and then you started talking about, like, the recycling, I immediately went to, like, clothes, where instead of now, you wear clothes, you wear an outfit, instead of, like, fast fashion, where you throw it out, you don't. You will send it to the thrift store, or you'll donate it, and it's just, like, sharing.

So in a way, like, you're talking about promoting, sharing. Resources, whether it is not like a Walnut Street, maybe it's a video, maybe it's an article, something that can be shared to others who may not necessarily have, would have had the access to that before. Totally. And I think fashion is a really easy way to think about it.

I know Patagonia is like a leader from the standpoint of circular economies. They, yeah. I think a lot of it can be sustainability from the standpoint of carpet footprint on the planet, but also we can take that circular economy model and fit it for other sorts of industries that can benefit the whole so that where there isn't overabundance, how do we circulate those resources so that those who don't have the overabundance can also be in the playing field.

I know that we're coming up on time, so for this entire conversation, what are two things you'd want listeners to take? Hmm. I know we talked about a lot of things. Well, I think, first, I hope that this inspired you to explore meditation, and starting with silent meditations is hard. So find a soundtrack that you like that makes you feel at peace and listen to it while you focus on your breath.

Or there are tons of free meditations on YouTube. You can go to my YouTube channel. I have some free ones on there. Find a guided one, but incorporate meditation into your week, into your day, if feasible. The second thing would be, trust the path that you're on. I feel like we didn't really go into my path of professionalism, but looking back, every single opportunity, every single job, every single moment was a stepping stone to ultimately lead me to where I'm at today, and the life can only be understood backwards.

So just trust that by putting one foot in front of the other, you'll get exactly to where you're meant to go. I really appreciate every nugget of wisdom that you dropped throughout. And I'm, it's, I have a list of things that I now need to do more research on and I expect you to have this list. So thank you so much.

You're welcome. Thank you for having me. And I'm so proud of you. This podcast is amazing. Thank you for having me. 

Thank you for joining us for today's episode of PausePoint, the podcast. Our debut season is packed with enlightening conversations featuring thought leaders, burnout prevention specialists, authors, and mindfulness coaches.  Together, we delve into topics like effective stress management, burnout, goal setting, and transformative mindfulness techniques. 

PausePoint is dedicated to enhancing well being by seamlessly integrating mindfulness into your daily routine. Our innovative tool syncs with your calendar to identify optimal times for mindfulness breaks, making mindfulness an integrated part of your day without disrupting your schedule. Your journey to a more balanced life starts here.

Thank you for listening and don't forget to visit pausepoint. io to begin your mindfulness journey today. We look forward to having you with us next time