Body Wisdom Rising

Healing at the Root: Transforming Patterns into Purpose with Jakob Gricar

• Alyssa Stefanson

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Jakob guides business leaders, entrepreneurs, and visionaries to overcome burnout and find alignment by working at the root cause of unhealthy patterns through ontological coaching, somatics, and various modalities.

• Jakob’s healing journey began with a severe skin condition in his early teens that led to isolation and social anxiety
• Through meditation and spiritual practice, he experienced remarkable healing that launched his path into personal development
• His work evolved from plant medicine facilitation to high-end coaching after noticing the critical importance of integration
• Virtual coaching provides accessibility while in-person work offers deeper connection—both approaches have strengths and limitations
• True transformation requires rigorous accountability that many online programs lack
• The difference between therapy and coaching: therapy often focuses on past trauma, while coaching is future-oriented
• Nervous system regulation isn't about constant calm but developing flexibility to experience all emotions
• Healing is necessarily messy—we need to process anger, grief, and other difficult emotions rather than bypass them
• Addiction (to substances, behaviors, or even personal development) is fundamentally about avoiding discomfort
• Start your healing journey by listening to the part of you that already knows something is off

Connect with Jakob on Instagram to learn about his 12-week women's container and his private podcast "Inner Circle" where he shares behind-the-scenes insights about building a coaching business.


Jakob’s IG: @Jakobgricar

Website: jakobgricar.com


Alyssa's IG: @wildfemininerise

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Body Wisdom Rising Podcast. I'm your host, alyssa, and my intention here is to deliver grounded, embodied insights, alongside practical tools and resources to help you heal, awaken and remember your sacred nature. This is rooted spirituality, bringing people back to their bodies, back to their roots and back into connection with the ancestral ways that have always carried us. Not spiritual fluff, not disconnected theory, weaving together the best of ancient wisdom and modern science living, breathing practices and conversations that integrate healing, wellness, earth-based wisdom and conscious growth. Each week, I share space with experts in trauma recovery, holistic health and ancestral ways of knowing, as well as voices with lived experience and powerful transformational stories. Together, we explore what it truly means to rise rooted, embodied and whole. If you enjoy this episode, please take a moment to leave a five-star review, as it helps these conversations reach the people who need them most. Let's get into the episode.

Speaker 1:

Today, I'm joined by Jacob, a coach and guide who helps business leaders, entrepreneurs and big visionaries fall in love with themselves and their purpose by working out the root cause of unhealthy patterns, moving them into alignment and ultimately eradicating suffering. Jacob's clients often come to him in a state of burnout, overwhelm, shame or struggling to create and maintain wealth and peace. Through a blend of ontological coaching, somatics, transpersonal psychology, ifs, cbt, nlp, yogic philosophy and more plus over a decade in personal development and mentorship with some of the biggest names in the industry. He supports them in coming home to themselves. This work brings his clients to a place where they feel safe in their body, aligned in their purpose and living from joy and curiosity. And, yes, it often transforms their relationships and financial reality along the way.

Speaker 1:

I'm so excited to dive into this conversation with Jacob and explore the intersections of nervous system work, deep inner transformation and what it really takes to live a life in full alignment. So, jacob, we connected, I think it. What was it about a month and a half ago? And there was just a lot of alignment there with our, our life paths, our purpose, the work that we're doing in this world. So I've been really looking forward to this conversation and I would love to kind of just start off with your story, because you have a really unique, powerful story and you got into this work pretty young.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, I got into this work because I was trapped inside of my body. When I was in my very early teens I developed an extreme case of a chronic skin condition and I would spend most of my waking life just scratching myself to the point where I would bleed from different parts of my body my face and as a byproduct, as you can imagine, from early teens, developed pretty extreme low self-esteem and social anxiety and started isolating myself and escaping into different spaces of fantasy and isolation and ended up reading a lot of books. We didn't have a lot of TV or computer access at the time and read a lot of fantasy books and at some point I ran out of fantasy books. I remember I was at my grandma's place and I found a book that was talking about meditation and hypnosis and dove deep into that and that was my entry point to spirituality because it opened up a lot of awareness of other things that are possible and in about three months my skin disease went away. So that was like a wake up call. That was a remembrance right and I went straight into personal development from there.

Speaker 2:

I started devouring every self-help book that I could find and then later got a computer and ended up watching seminars, listening to old recordings, kind of like old school personal development, and then ended up skipping school in order to just consume more of that.

Speaker 2:

And basically my entire life, my entire identity, became around personal development. So when I was 18, around 18 years old, I ended up leaving Slovenia, leaving the country that I was born in, and started traveling the world, and that led to all these other experiences that we can potentially go into today, but basically went from hospitality to homelessness, to different jobs, odd jobs, all over different near-death experiences. Actually, I put myself into some extreme situations and at some point ended up going more into the spiritual travel the spiritual journey as well, where I ended up in India sitting in the ashrams learning about yogic tradition, went to the Amazon, sat with countless plant medicine journeys, learning from the indigenous wisdom keepers, and then eventually also to building retreat centers and supporting other people with other retreats and facilitation, and then eventually moving more towards high-end coaching and somatic work.

Speaker 1:

Love that Super cool. Your journey kind of transitioned from in-person experiences like retreats we were just discussing this and now your business is virtual. How was that transition? Why did you make that transition? Are you missing in-person experiences at all? If you can go into that?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, absolutely so. I did in-person work because that's all I really had access to right. So when I was in the Amazon jungle, I would watch hundreds and hundreds of ceremonies and I would facilitate quite a lot of those and sat in some of them myself as well, and I would watch the most amazing, incredible, big, profound processes happen like big releases, catharsis, screaming, crying, purging, pretty much day in and day out, and that's something that I understood very well because that was years of my development, right From when I was about 22 to when I was around 25, 26,. That was pretty much the work that I was doing. And then, as I got deeper into what happens at the ceremonies and what happens after the ceremonies, I did realize that there's a lot that is missing there. So that was my entry point to the coaching space, because I started seeing like the integration is just as important, if not more important, than the catharsis of the plant medicine journey, even without plant medicine, right, if we talk about the catharsis from the somatic journey or catharsis from a breathwork journey, if it's not integrated through an ontological shift, somebody really becoming someone different, if their life isn't better after that, then what do we actually do here? So, as I started noticing that I decided to leave that world of plant medicine spaces for a moment and I still had a couple of retreats in the Amazon with indigenous people I bridged it with more of the Western approach to the psyche, so I brought in psychotherapists or psychiatrists and started bringing in more and more integration, like integration cards before, integration cards after. But even in that, something felt like it was missing.

Speaker 2:

So about a year and a half to two years ago, I transitioned everything from in-person work to the online work for a few different reasons. One, the depth of the work and the integration of the work, and I feel like the majority of in-person experiences are powerful addition to something that is longer term. But unless we can do something longer term in person, then we're just bypassing a very big part of the work. So what I see is in-person immersion can be a really profound gateway into, like a deeper connection between participants when there's a longer program. And then there's the level of accessibility right, most people can't afford to be somewhere in a retreat for two, three months at a time. So then that's where the online work comes in, because everybody can do it from the comfort of their home. Jump on cars, be on cars, connect with other people, and then when there's an in-person experience, they can show up fully in that.

Speaker 2:

But my transition basically came from just the understanding that the in-person experiences, as powerful as they are, because they're so cathartic and so connecting, oftentimes they're not very integrated, so a person's life wouldn't necessarily change over long periods of time. But then the other part of the transition, what we were talking about a question you asked me before this is do you miss it? And yeah, definitely. The in-person work was some of my favorite because of the depth of connection that can happen there. And even though that we can create a lot of connection online, there's still the element that in-person gets to in much of a deeper way in much of a deeper way.

Speaker 1:

I love that. I love that you shared that. Reason being so, I've had an opposite experience, where I started virtual and now I've been transitioning more into in-person experiences, and it's really important to mention both sides because we absolutely need both. So, for me, I was hiding in the virtual space, like I wasn't going that deep, even though I was taking a lot of courses, I was joining a lot of group programs, but it was another way for me to isolate from community and actually being seen, witnessed in person in my vulnerability. But I'm so grateful for starting in that online space because it gave me an opportunity to really start slow. Starting in that online space because it gave me an opportunity to really start slow, like, rather than just like, immersing myself in these big experiences and then often feeling a little bit more kind of disconnected from my body or having these big experiences, like these peak experiences that feel so expansive. But, like you said, you return back and within no time you're back to the same old patterns. It doesn't last because there's no integration, and I think it's so important that we really need both and even to mention that we don't need to, you know, fly across the world and attend retreats to have in-person community, like we can find community, we have to look for it, we have to take those action steps to find community within our own city. And for me, even on my journey with recovering from addiction, like 12-step programs were huge for me. While I know that there is some I don't align with everything when it comes to those programs, but it was the connection and the community and the spiritual approach which was so helpful which you touched on. So, yeah, I think it's so important to just hear from both sides that, yeah, we're not saying either is better, but both are so, so necessary.

Speaker 1:

And even for me and my journey, like I just started going into larger doses of psychedelics. So my journey was very slow. It was doing a lot of somatic healing for many years and now my nervous system can really handle those experiences and I feel very integrated when I get back because of the somatic work that I did prior to. So when I do have those experiences I come home, I have an easier time integrating and actually making you know the changes in my day-to-day life from those experiences at those retreats. So I love that you mentioned that and, yeah, I would love to just hear from you. Do you find like just being on the virtual, in the virtual space? Are there any, I guess, shadow aspects that you see to that now working more so online in that space?

Speaker 2:

there's definitely more hiding that can happen online. When you're in person, it's much harder to hide and it's all of you gets to be brought up in the space right and you get to see all parts of everyone that's there and in the online space. So the way we've structured our programs is that it has the most rigorous accountability that you can find online. So we hold people in the fire through different methods that we use that I've never seen anyone else in the online space use but offline. Basically, you put something on the line right. You put your time, your travel, your money and when you're there, if you don't fully engage, if you don't participate in things, it's you've lost it right. You've lost your investment, you've lost your trip, you've lost your travel. So there's like high level of accountability to actually do the work that happens in person and in the online spaces. In majority of the online programs that I've seen, most people invest in something and then drop off as soon as it gets hard. So that's why there's like a level of like accountability that it takes from a coach to hold their clients to that I haven't seen really in many different online spaces and majority of the people in the coaching industry. They don't really care about your money, right? They were, sadly, on the program, especially when it's a group program or like a course, and it's like, okay, you know, somebody came here, they came with the money, they paid the money and they don't really care about their transformation is what I wanted to say. So nobody is really holding you to the fire. How do they make sure that you're actually doing it? Who's checking up on you? How much are they checking up on you, right? So all of that happens in person, in the in-person experiences. That doesn't happen online.

Speaker 2:

So then, in the online space, what I've seen happening a lot, not to say that that doesn't happen in person, but there's a lot of investing in different things and not a lot of actual work. As soon as people reach a certain level of depth, then they pull away and they stop doing a certain program and then they invest into another one. So there's this constant chase of a new program, a new course, a new certification. And another thing that I've seen with the rigorous training that I've received through different practices and modalities, especially when I lived with indigenous people and in India there's not a lot of place to hide when somebody is really holding you in it. But now I've seen a lot of coaches do hide behind their certifications in the way that you can get certified so easily.

Speaker 2:

What do you want to be? Just like choose your title and you have it in two weeks to six weeks to like a year at the most right. So it's easy to hide behind that. But where you can't hide in person, in like the actual traditions and like the indigenous modalities, is like you gotta go through your own work in order to actually be in front of it. That's why I don't really believe in certifications and programs like that. It's more so like how much have you actually done? And that's where I believe the online space can offer quite a little bit of a cushion for people to be in totally well, everyone and their dog wants to be an online coach now, because it sounds very seductive, you know work virtually from home, travel the world.

Speaker 1:

There's a lot of business coaching programs selling that lifestyle. You and I both know that there's a lot of work that goes into it. It's not that simple, but it really is doing your own inner work because people will feel that Like it'll show up, especially like when you're doing in-person sessions you can't hide. And stepping into this space, like this really is when you're stepping into the space and being of service, it's a devotion, like devoting your life, because you have to devote your life to continue to do the work. Like the work never stops. Of course we reach certain landmarks, but even for me on my journey like I keep going deeper and deeper and more stuff still comes up. You know you get into the ancestral and the collective trauma healing as well. When you're once you start like working through a lot of your stuff. But yeah, it's always still continuing to immerse yourself in your own work in community, learning from elders and people who've walked the path before you, and for me too it's been. You know it's really humbling for me as a practitioner to constantly be a student, not necessarily taking like certifications, but learning from an elder or a mentor where I feel like I'm brand new because I'm always pushing myself to that growth edge. It might feel super uncomfortable. You'll experience imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome means that you're growing. Like if I'm never feeling imposter syndrome, then it's like I'm not doing enough, like I need to constantly be putting pushing myself to my own edge so that I can show up better for my clients, continuing to go into my own shadows.

Speaker 1:

And you know the difference with coaching and I've heard you actually speak about this on a podcast which I really loved. You know the difference between coaching and therapy and I really do believe that we do need both. I believe that both are so important. Like it can be really supportive to have someone you know validate what you're going through, as long as you're validating the emotions and going into the body. But at the same time, we also need someone to be a mirror and maybe to help, like us, see our own shadows, our own blocks, our own prejudices to certain programs and, like you said, it's so common for people in programs to all of a sudden you know whether it's like a month in, maybe it's 90 days in all of a sudden to revert backwards or start to self sabotage because shit gets real. All of a sudden your stuff starts to come up and it feels a little bit uncomfortable, and then we justify in our mind of like why this isn't working or why we shouldn't be doing this program. Like.

Speaker 1:

These blocks are super important to be aware of when we go into them, because they will show up and I see this all the time. And just in the recovery space and it's something that I mentioned when I'm sponsoring people that I work with I'm like you will reach those blocks, like you will. All of your stuff will start to surface. You might not consciously be aware that's why you're sabotaging, but they start to step away or distance themselves, and I still do it. I've been doing this work for a long time and I still catch myself in it. The good thing is I'm aware when I'm doing it, when I'm noticing I'm wanting to pull away. So, yeah, it's super important to be aware of that. I would love to hear your perspective on the difference between a therapy and coaching.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so there's so many things that you touched on here and I absolutely love hearing you speak as we share so many similar opinions. Now I just want to backtrack and I'll answer this as well, but just backtracking a little bit to when you're saying everybody wants to be a coach, right, there's actually, if you look at statistics, 90 something percent 95%, I think of the coaches are making less than $50,000 a year and only 2% are hitting like high six figures to seven figures, which is what the dream is. That's being sold by business coaches, right. So then there's business coaches selling the coaching on how much money you can make. But realistically, those are the top two to 5% that are speaking to actual outcome.

Speaker 2:

And I know what it took for, like building my business as well, what it took to get to mid six figures, um, to the place where I'm making more than I've been making through any other you know line of work. It was not easy, it was 16 hour days really pushing through, but also like delivering the level of impact and value that nobody else is willing to do and like holding that level of accountability that I haven't seen anywhere else. That's really a differentiating factor, right? So that was the first thing that came up, and then secondly, around like the mentors and like the things that are coming up. That's kind of the thing with the body when it feels safe, and then also like. On the other hand, it's also when we reach a level of capacity. So we get to meet these edges of the capacity. But if you're doing it for the love of the game instead of for because you're chasing certain fruits, then that becomes a really beautiful expansion of oneself. So what I mean by that is like if I coach because I love to coach, then I'll always be able to like keep showing up in this work. And if I coach because I'm being sold a dream, like keep showing up in this work. And if I coach because I'm being sold a dream of like making a big amount of money right, then I'll always be chasing the money. And that's the same as like any other.

Speaker 2:

Addiction is just a level of like the chase wanting something that isn't here. And the more you chase something more, the more the board on this game expands, right, and you never really get there. But if you're just in it because you love doing it, that's where you really meet all parts of yourself in this part as well. So it's like the part that doesn't feel like I'm worthy of making this amount of money or worthy of coaching certain level of clients or anything like that. And all of that gets to be brought up on the surface. One when we're meeting our edges, but two also when we feel safe enough, like, for example, in relationships. The reason why sometimes the safest relationships bring up the most traumatic imprints is because body and the nervous system finally feel safe enough and it's like oh, this is where I can reenact all of the things in order to finally have a different experience or completion.

Speaker 2:

So, yeah, anyway, circling back to the question on coaching and therapy, I say the biggest difference and the distinction here would be that the therapist is really confined to their practice and coaches not necessarily. So coaching is more like forwards oriented, which is like what are we going to do? What is the next goal, what is the next step? What is, you know, just focusing on like actual actionable steps after, whereas therapy just based on like how we've oriented it now, based on who we chose as our model for therapy is very much based on who we chose as our model for therapy, um is very much based on digging stuff up.

Speaker 2:

So if you look at, like, how the whole psychology was born and I can nerd out on this a lot um is we had a few major names in the in the psychology space. Right, we had Adler, we had Jung and we had Freud, um, and a few other ones on the American side, but these are kind of like the grandfathers of it. And Freud was very focused on the dysfunction. He was treating people who were in neurosis, who were psychotic, who had a lot of really deep trauma. Jung was focusing on the archetypes, on the collective unconscious, on the symbolism, and Adler was focusing on taking responsibility and the narrative of responsibility. And as kind of like the grandfather of psychology, we chose Freud, and that is because, first of all, he had an entry point to majority of the institutions and education majority of the institutions and education but then, secondly, it's much easier to build a business which is therapy now is a business.

Speaker 2:

Psychology is a business on something that is promoting that we are inherently dysfunctional. So if I'm inherently broken, then everything I do is just to keep fixing myself. So we keep digging up more stuff to be processed, whereas Adler, for example, his philosophy was like actually, the therapy has an end date. If we're able to achieve a certain goal and then it gets validated by the community, that's the end result of the therapy. However, with more of the Freudian psychology, it's like no, we keep digging no, no, no, there's more in there. We can find something about a parent. And if we can't find something about a parent, we're going to find something about a grandparent. So it just keeps going on that way.

Speaker 2:

So I'd say therapy right now, in the way and again, there's many different types, but I would say it's more focused on looking at that. And coaching is more forward-focused, focusing on what are the next goals. So I find in majority of the coaching it's very superficial because it doesn't touch the depths of the traumatic imprints. And the therapy is very deep but it doesn't move forward towards what do you want to build in the world right now? Where's your purpose? What do you actually want to create?

Speaker 2:

And we can figure, we can see that when we really step into our purpose and in the inspiration, a lot of traumatic imprints do just kind of tend to resolve themselves because we're up to a big game in life. But if we're not up to something big, then we just tend to wallow in the same thing all over again. So I would say neither is right or wrong. There's like a mixture between the two, where we get to go into the past as much as we have to to process the traumatic imprints, so that we process, we move from a clear space, but then we focus on the future. But we don't just focus on the future, right, not the rah-rah motivational, just keep suppress everything, but more so like a kind of like a balance in between, like the middle way where we go into the past as much as we have to. Once we clear the vessel, we clear the channel, we focus on what we're creating like purposeful, aligned, inspired action forwards, and not just keep bringing stuff up for the sake of bringing things up.

Speaker 1:

Love it. You and I are so aligned in that way and it's beautiful to see spaces like online and in person, like integrating all the best out of all these different like modalities and theories, which is so needed, and I'm sure you get it a lot too. I know that I do with clients where they're like well, I heard this and this is the best approach, like the Adler approach, or I heard this and this is the best approach, and it's like it's yes, and Like they're all like we'll take the best out of all of them. There's shadow aspects to everything, and that's what we were talking about too. Like you know, we're starting to see there's a trend online of exposing the shadows. I'm not sure if you've witnessed that, but exposing the shadows in spiritual spaces, exposing the shadows when it comes to plant medicine, exposing the shadows when it comes to personal development. But it's super important to be aware that we don't just like pendulum, swing from one to the other because we start to see the shadow. Everything has a shadow. It's just super important to be aware of it. So you're going to find shadows in personal development. One hundred percent does not mean personal development is bad and you shouldn't focus on personal development. Absolutely, you should just be aware of the shadow aspects that are there. The same with everything, and sometimes part of our healing process is the pendulum swing. It's like going from one thing to the next and then we kind of learn. Okay, it's an integration of everything, like how can I integrate the light aspects to become more whole and just to be aware that the shadow is there? And actually integrating the best of you know Western psychology with ancient wisdom traditions and the best of therapy with the best of coaching, like it's so important to integrate all of that. And you mentioned something that I want to bring up.

Speaker 1:

You know we talked in this space somatic healing and people are familiar with somatic work, who listen to this podcast, which we can dive a little bit into, and why somatic healing and people are familiar with somatic work, who listen to this podcast, which we can dive a little bit into, and why somatic work is so profound when it comes to integration. But we hear a lot because nervous system regulation is, like, so popular right now. Everyone's talking about nervous system regulation and nervous system regulation isn't about being calm and grounded all the time. It's about nervous system flexibility to nervous system regulation, isn't about being calm and grounded all the time. It's about nervous system flexibility to be able to go into states of dysregulation because we do want to be able to access all of our biological responses but to be able to go back into a state of regulation quicker.

Speaker 1:

And we do not do that by just staying in safe spaces. We do not do that by just validating our experiences and nurturing our inner child which we do absolutely need to do but we expand our capacity and we heal past wounds by actually like bringing them up and actually putting ourselves in situations where it might feel a little bit uncomfortable, where it might feel a little bit triggering, going to that edge, not beyond it. But it is important to mention that, yeah, this work can be messy and it's not always comfortable, and sometimes we do feel worse before we get better. If you've been stuck in a chronic state of freeze for a long time, when you're coming out of freeze, it's very common to start feeling a lot of panic and anxiety. So, just to be aware of that, that healing isn't about just feeling good all the time and feeling bliss and feeling comfortable and safe. It can be messy. So I'd love to for you to dive into that a little bit and share on that.

Speaker 2:

Oh, the messiness of healing. Yeah, you call it nervous system flexibility, I call it nervous system plasticity. It's the ability to let ourselves be dysregulated sometimes. And yeah, I definitely see that as the most human thing to do is to have the whole human range of emotions right, because nothing is inherently bad, like anger is not a bad emotion. We suppress the anger because we were taught in our childhood that anger was bad and sadness and grief. But in reality, anger, for example, is boundaries in motion. When somebody crosses over something that we set as a boundary, it's very natural to push back, to say no, stop it, or like go away, or like this is my boundary, or like don't talk to me that way. And unless we have access to this sympathetic response, then we tend to like fawn or freeze when that happens. So that's actually where a lot of just consistent regulation makes us very mellow to life. And even when you go to the gym, what you want to do is you want to get your heart rate up right. You don't want to just stay completely calm when you're working out. So in the same way, we want that plasticity in the nervous system too, because this allows us for the full range of the human experience that we've been designed to have and the healing.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it's definitely meant to be messy. Just following up on what you were already shared, I know in my past, in my story, there were so many moments where I've just let myself have it, where I was throwing a tantrum or feeling really upset or in the depths of grief and just allowing myself to wallow in it for a moment. Because that's where, you know, the wholeness of the experience happens when we allow ourselves to go all the way through it and sometimes when we're not fully equipped on how to manage the whole thing, how to skillfully go all the way through it, it's got to look a little bit messy and I remember the first time I let myself fully grieve a relationship it was so painful and it lasted for a few weeks of basically waking up in the middle of the night in so much physical pain and like feeling like my heart has been ripped out of my chest and screaming into a pillow and just having these big releases and all of that was so necessary to move all the way through. And in that process I could see what was waking up inside of me were all the memories of where I haven't allowed that in the past and because I've suppressed that in the past, because I wanted that to be such a clean process, right, I'm the most evolved person in the room. Therefore, I moved through this very gracefully and through that grace I just suppressed all of my emotions.

Speaker 2:

So when I finally, like, allowed myself to be with all of them, it all came up in the surface in such intense, uncomfortable ways. And the more we allow ourselves that, the more we can actually find that equilibrium. And that equilibrium is like, oh, I can go in that and I know how far is enough. Like I know how deep in the anger I need to go in order to assert my boundary, so it's not aggressive, so that it's assertive, so that it's clear. So I'm not justifying it. I know how deep in the grief to go in order for it to be processed through my body and not to wallow in it, not to become a victim in a drama triangle in this story, right, but just actually allowing myself like, oh, feeling all the sadness, feeling all the pain, but now I can move forward. So it's when we find that equilibrium life becomes much more interesting. But it does take like jumping into both of the experiences for a while 100%.

Speaker 1:

I love that you mentioned all of that. It's just so relatable. Even just recently, through my own experience, because I've been on this path for quite a while but I'm still getting to deeper layers and even just speaking to that, you know going into the grief or the anger and just knowing when to pull yourself out and you know it's such an art, like healing is such an art and that's why I love it so much, Because we can recognize, like the more you do this work, the more you recognize you know when, when you yourself are like maybe too much in a certain emotion you've spent too much time there and when it's time to shift and like recently I just went to a retreat in Costa Rica and I just went as a participant and I've been doing this work for quite some time and there was a lot of people who were very new to this journey and I had the messiest experience and I've been doing this for a while and, yeah, when I, it was interesting because I witnessed myself going into my grief and my sadness and grief was an emotion that I actually had a really hard time accessing. I had an easier time accessing my anger and I'm so happy that I was able to cultivate a good relationship with anger and my healthy aggression actually helped me access my own creativity and my own lost power. So I'm so grateful for that. But this was the first time that I was actually really experiencing deep, deep grief.

Speaker 1:

And the facilitator that was sitting with me she was so incredible and it's kind of cool being like in a position where you're also a facilitator but then you're also like receiving support and so even just going into I was going into that grief and she held space for me and even just witnessing, like we were on plant medicine. I was on plant medicine but just even noticing and witnessing, when she was noticing in me that I was staying too much in that, like that victim and that shame. And a lot of people don't realize that the ego goes both ways, so it can be either very inflated or very deflated, and for me I always had a habit of believing that I was the worst person ever, that no one had done like worse things than I did. That's also the ego, that's the deflated ego, and so I was a little bit too much in that shame and so she knew when to snap me out of it. And then I witnessed it and I was like, oh yeah, she's pulling me out of this because I'm too much in that victim state. So I stayed in that grief to move it through me long enough.

Speaker 1:

But then it was time to come out and time to reframe things and look at things differently. So it is such an art and that's why I just love this work so much. And you really can't understand that when you're working with other people, unless you've experienced it yourself. So that's why it's so important to do the messy work yourself. And yeah, do you want to add anything to that?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it really allows for the depth to be able to hold others. You can only take others as far as you've taken yourself, and something that came up as you were sharing this is what I've observed is something that I call a primary repression, which is there's almost always. What I see with my clients is they have access to one but not the other either sadness or anger. So for some people it's really easy to feel sad, and they would always feel sad. And I notice sometimes in the session when I'm like what are you noticing in your body when you think about this? And like the clear, obvious response to anyone watching would be like anger. Right, she should be angry right now. But then she goes into like there's a moment where there's like a breath that's caught and there's a somatic reaction, and then she's like, oh, I feel sad and I've noticed that to go both ways, right. Or it's like there's a moment where the tears you can almost feel tangibly the tears are gonna come out. And then it's like, ah, it just, it just makes me so angry and it's really showing when one was not allowed in the household normally, when, like, we were told like don't be angry, anger is not okay, you can't be angry, don't shout. Or anger was like really violent, where parents would like really argue in like very violent ways.

Speaker 2:

So we learned that anger is not good. So then we learned like, oh, sadness is actually better. And then it goes the other way around as well, which is like sadness is weakness. Right, if I cry, then I'm weak, I can't cry. Boys don't cry, big girls don't cry, whatever that is right. And then suddenly we're like more prone to anger. So then the anger is coming out whenever sadness should be there. So it's an interesting observation, because I often see that there's one wherever there's a lot of one, there's often the lack of the other one, and in those spaces we get to go all the way back and then it's like a Pandora's box that opens up. It's all of the things that haven't been felt yet.

Speaker 1:

Absolutely. That's why I actually really love working with the elements of nature. Like I have a lot of fire naturally in me, even in my astrology chart, like I got a lot of fire, so for me it was really working on accessing more of like that that water and that nurturing energy and working with nature. Land is so healing. That's a huge piece. That's often missing too when it comes to the healing space is our connection to nature and how the land can hold us. You know, sometimes our experiences can feel so big that we feel no one can really truly understand us or hold our pain, but Mother Nature always can, and reconnecting with that relationship is so crucial and so important too.

Speaker 1:

If someone were listening right now and say they know they've got work to do, they know they have to start somewhere maybe they're struggling a little bit with escaping through substances, through porn, through social media. They know they've got stuff there. They just haven't even started to look at it yet. Like they're new to this work, but they're listening to these podcasts, they know they want to get started, they're trying to learn. Where would you tell them to start? Like, where would you start with someone like that?

Speaker 2:

If there's something inside of one that is listening to these types of podcasts, then a part of you already knows. So then it's the opening of the part of you that knows. And what does that part of you know, like, what do you know is not serving you, right? Because what addiction really is and you mentioned porn substances what I perceive addiction to be is adverse, continuous use of anything despite adverse consequences, right? So that can be anything from porn, it can be Netflix, it can be food, it can be substances.

Speaker 2:

In my case, it was a lot of personal development that turned into a love addiction, because I was seeking validation through all these different ways One being a certain way, being perceived a certain way. And two was being in certain types of relationships perceived a certain way. And two was being in certain types of relationships. So, when we look at addiction, what addiction really is is a way of just avoiding being. It's a way to escape a particular mood or a way of being, and then it becomes this collapsed identity where it's fused with identity I'm an addict or I'm broken, or I always sabotage, which isn't allowing for much possibility. So we start identifying with a behavior pattern instead of saying I am someone who relates to discomfort through this behavior and that creates like another possibility of another level of being. So what I would say like more from the ontological side of you would be just to create this dialogue with oneself, to ask yourself, like, what is the part of you that knows that there's something more? What does it know? What does it know that it's off? If you look at your life, and you look at every part of your life and you're not waking up completely joyous and inspired every single day, what is happening? Like, what is off? What can you pinpoint? And I would start there, because the level of awareness is like the soul already knows, and then we just follow that trajectory and then we just tend to what needs to be tended to right.

Speaker 2:

Sometimes that's removing a substance and seeing what arises in place of that. Majority of the time, what we're wanting to do with substances or addictions in any way is just, it's a nervous system regulation strategy. We just don't know how to cope differently. So if we can replace that with a different coping strategy, we can see in those moments what are we reminded of and what are we trying to escape from. So it's these levels of awareness that we get to create through disrupting the psyche and the behaviors, and the more we do that, the more it creates spaces to actually see like, oh, what's the logical next step to do? And sometimes that's going to be somatic work, sometimes that's going to be therapy, sometimes that might be psychedelics, although I'm not a big advocate of that, unless there's, like you know, a lot of integration in place. But we don't know, unless we really like create that disruption at the level of the awareness.

Speaker 1:

I love all that. Thank you for sharing that. I could talk to you all day. We definitely have to do a part two. I definitely want to just be mindful of your time and I would love for you to just share a little bit about your program offerings and how people can work with you if they're interested.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, if somebody wants to connect, don't be a stranger and just shoot me a message on Instagram and say, hey, I saw this conversation and I really just want to connect. I have a couple of things that I roll out a couple of times per year. Currently my one-on-ones are closed and my group programs are closed and they're going to relaunch again in probably about November. I run an all-women's container that is a 12-week, the most in-depth, the highest accountability ontological coaching and somatic program online, and that has been really our baby with my business partner, something that we've been nurturing and nourishing and really delivering over the top value, unlike anything else that I've ever seen in this place.

Speaker 2:

And then, second thing is I started a private podcast called the inner circle, where I share behind the scenes of building a multi-six-figure business, behind the scenes of coaching hundreds of clients, somatic sessions, how I do what I do and why I do it. I go into the spirituality and philosophy through the yoga of knowledge and some indigenous traditions as well. So it's a lot of just little nuggets and it's completely unedited, completely unfiltered and very raw. All I do is just grab my phone and I record a half an hour voice note and that's an episode that get dropped like three to four times a week. So it's kind of having like private voice notes and that one. I assume we can link it in the show notes or you can also find it in my Instagram.

Speaker 1:

Oh, this is awesome. Well, thank you so much. I'm going to include all of this in the show notes. I'm very interested in that inner circle, so I'm going to go check that out for sure. Yeah, thank you so much for being here. I really enjoyed this conversation A lot of alignment, for sure, so we'll definitely have you on again, hopefully sometime.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, Thank you so much for having me. It's really beautiful to watch how you move in this space and who you are and how you share, and every time you open your mouth I'm like, wow, this is the level of alignment and the understanding that is here. How similar we are in our views and our beliefs is so beautiful to witness and also just really deeply want to honor you for everything that you've created for yourself and for your clients and the level of work that you're doing. So really grateful to be connected to you.

Speaker 1:

Thank you so much. I receive that and, yeah, I'm grateful that we have connected.