The Brighter Podcast
With honesty and vulnerability, best friends BatSheva and Chelsea open up about their trials, triumphs, and spiritual journeys, inspiring and empowering you to live a brighter, more fulfilled life.
Based in Missouri with her husband and sweet puppy, Chelsea is an RN, holistic healer, plant medicine purveyor, coach and community leader. BatSheva, who lives with her 4 children in Los Angeles, is a Yale grad, coach, actress, singer/songwriter and screenwriter.
Tune in each week and light up your own path to self-discovery, love, and growth.
Find us on Instagram or TikTok @brighterandbrighter.life and drop us a line! We love to hear from our friends and listeners.
Want even more? Feel free to look for BatSheva at www.the-confidence-coach.org or seek out Chelsea over at www.Soulscription.life where you can also purchase ceremonial grade cacao.
The Brighter Podcast
#4 Witness Within Method
✨ New Episode Alert: Unlocking the Power of the Witness Within! ✨
In today's episode, we dive deep into a powerful tool we call the Witness Within, inspired by the radical gratitude technique. It’s all about embracing and processing those uncomfortable emotions we often push down—whether it's dissatisfaction, frustration, or even shame. 🌱
We share personal stories, like dealing with the complex feelings of gratitude and disappointment after a grant award, and how Witness Within helps us truly honor every emotion, not just the "positive" ones. 💖
🎧 Join us as we explore:
How to sit with your emotions and say "thank you" to the tough feelings.
The healing magic of radical honesty with yourself.
Why it’s okay to feel multiple emotions at once—yes, you can be grateful and frustrated! 🙌
Tips on using the tool for self-compassion and emotional release.
This practice isn’t about spiritual bypassing—it’s about being real with ourselves and experiencing the full spectrum of our feelings. Ready to witness your emotions without judgment? Tune in now! 🎙️
🌟 Join our community on Facebook for more tips and support! 🌟
#WitnessWithin #RadicalGratitude #EmotionalHealing #SelfCompassion #SelfAwareness #Mindfulness #PersonalGrowth #HealingJourney #Authenticity #FeelYourFeelings #Gratitude #SelfLove #embraceallemotions
https://brighterandbrighter.life/
Hello and welcome back to the brighter podcast. My name is Chelsea.
BatSheva:And my name is BatSheva.
Chelsea:And my life is brighter, thanks to BatSheva.
BatSheva:My life is brighter thanks to Chelsea.
Chelsea:We love to use and share stories, techniques, tools that allow us to deepen our relationships with ourselves and our inner divine, our loved ones, and with the world around us.
BatSheva:And it's our wish that by sharing our journey, our trials, our tribulations, our successes, our challenges, that your life too will grow brighter and brighter.
Chelsea:And today's topic, we're going to be sharing another one of those tools and a few more of our own personal stories. But before we do that, we like to center ourselves and come into the space together. So let's begin with a few deep breaths. Take it a nice deep inhale in through the nose, breathing in calming, quieting energy exhale out the mouth, letting anything that's ready to go, go another deep breath in calming, quieting energy. And exhale out anything that's ready to go last breath, deep breath in the nose, inhaling, calming, quieting energy, exhaling out the mouth. it's ready to go. So today we're going to be sharing, like I said, another topic, another tool, and we'd like to call it the witness within.
BatSheva:So the witness within tool that we're sharing is inspired by A technique I learned originally from Tosha Silver, and she originally learned it from a different author. She called it radical gratitude, and the bottom line is What we're really doing with this technique and this tool is we're going within, we're getting really, really quiet. We're listening for our innermost feelings and thoughts, the ones that generally we don't allow to bother us because they're kind of tough to acknowledge. And we don't only acknowledge them, but we actually say, we can even say it out loud, thank you or welcome and, and one by one, we name them.
Chelsea:I had the chance to witness and to experience and to use this tool earlier this week. I guess it was maybe a couple weeks ago now, but either way, I had received and applied for a seed grant and made it to the final round. And was, oh, so grateful for, honestly, just for the opportunity to be accepted and to share my ideas and what I had in store and how this seed grant money could help the business that I was working on. And I put. A decent amount of time and energy and effort into a presentation and presented it and could ask for certain things and then they decide what they're going to give you. after the presentation, I had felt that I did really well, especially considering the circumstances that were out of my control, such as. technical difficulties. My time being cut short, uh, because of those technical difficulties and people arriving late because of car trouble and all these other things. And so, and I also handled the Q& A portion of it really well. And so here I am thinking I'm going to receive, you know, my number one choice. They had asked me, which of these four things is your number one, do you have them in order? And so I said, yes, they're in order and told them which one was my number one. And then that was that. And I went on vacation and I decided not to check my email while I was on vacation. I waited until I came home to see what I had, what the verdict was, if I had received the grant or not. upon opening the email, I discovered that I received my third choice. the practice of the witness within was that I was grateful, but in the same breath, I was disatisfied because I didn't get that number one or number two choice and being honest about that and kind of feeling like a brat feeling ungrateful feeling like wow I want to know why I didn't get what I wanted. And so, during the daily dubs, I actually expressed that to her, that the wow was that I was acknowledging it and not just pushing it down. And I was really saying how I was feeling and I voiced it not only to her, but to my husband and to our, friends and so, yeah, just sharing that and saying, you know, I am grateful for feeling these feelings and for acknowledging these feelings and moving on from them and just accepting where I am, accepting that it's okay to want more. It's okay to say how you are feeling.
BatSheva:I think that is the key because in this culture, we're all raised to know that we need to be grateful for what we have. We all have a lot if we compare ourselves to people with less. So I think that we all try to fit ourselves into that grateful box. And then in the new age world, we learn that gratitude brings blessings. And if we're grateful for what we have, then we don't have any neurons that are going to focus on fears. And so then we put even more pressure on ourselves to just feel grateful. But there can be, and there often is, a dissonance between how, what we're actually feeling and experiencing when something fucking goes wrong that we didn't expect to go wrong, or it goes a little sideways from what we were looking forward to and how we want to process it and I really appreciated you when you told me about how you were venting and you were just being so real and you're like, you know, I know I got money. I got some of this grant, and you were so real. You said, you know, I got money. Some people didn't even get to the final round. Some people who got to the final round didn't even get any money. So you were clear that you knew you needed to be grateful, and you were grateful, and yet, You hadn't yet felt all those other shitty feelings that also by the fact that you didn't actually get enough amount for you to do the things that you were excited about, that you were envisioning for your business, like all the extra money that they could have awarded you that would have helped you go even further, many levels up that you didn't get to go. And I, as your friend and beloved. Daily W partner. I just felt really proud of you that you didn't skip that step. Like you were real and you didn't let other people kind of like force you to skip it.
Chelsea:Yeah, it was really interesting too, because at dinner, we had went out, so we went to the award ceremony. We got our big checks, my first ever big check, you know, the giant ones that you hold up. And, we, then we went out to dinner afterwards and as we're sitting in the booth, it's me and my husband and then our friend who also got awarded. One of the grants and then her husband. And as we're sitting there and we're talking about it, I start to tell them about like how I'm feeling, like what, even though I didn't get my first or second choice. And my husband starts to like place his hand on my, on my shoulder, on my leg, like. It's almost like he's trying to like hush me or, you know, like this isn't he is totally non confrontational and I love that about him most of the time I do try to help him become more and stand in its own power, which tends to backfire sometimes because, you know, he'll stand up to me and then I'm like, damn it. Like, that's not what I wanted. But, yeah, he was. touching my shoulder, touching my leg. And I looked at him and I said, quit touching me. It's okay for me to express what I'm feeling. You know, these are safe people. This is a safe space. And he, you know, immediately apologized. And feel like that that was something also that I wouldn't have done before I would have been like, Oh, I'm embarrassing somebody, or I'm making someone uncomfortable with what I'm saying. I should stop that just as the same way that I felt almost like Not wanting to tell anyone that I wasn't happy with what I received because I felt almost like a brat, like an ungrateful little bitch. And, it was the truth. It was really how I was feeling in that moment. And since then, I've definitely moved on from that. And I am grateful for what I've received. There was not a moment that I wasn't grateful. It was just that there were the other feelings there too. And I believe that you can have two feelings at the same time. You can feel both sides.
BatSheva:I think that is what is so powerful about this technique is that it acknowledges that there's more to this story, and more to our feelings than just one layer and one level. It also, like the record tool we shared in our last episode, the witness within tool, it's not physical, but it is a mental way to process difficult, uncomfortable, sometimes even violent or ugly feelings that If we don't process them and feel them safely, let's face it, we wind up either spewing toxic mess, inside into ourselves without expressing it, or sometimes it comes out with people or in situations that It would be best if it did not happen in those situations or with those people. And I thought I would share one of the most powerful times that this technique witness within worked miracles for me, because it was a really personal and deep situation. I remember sharing it with you at the time. It was. I don't think a year ago, but it was several months ago, and I was feeling very overwhelmed as a single mother in the house with my four kids, 100 percent custody. in general, as Chelsea knows, my children are amazing and I'm very, very lucky. And yet, as any parent knows, when you're in the trenches, life is hard and it can be overwhelming. And the kids who can be angels and, you know, wonderful people out in public sometimes come home and, unload on each other or on me or on the house and so I was just in this moment where I was so angry and so overwhelmed and upset. And I decided to use the techniques. I went to my room, I had quiet and I went inside and I said, I started with the surface situation. So I was like, remember exactly what had happened, but I probably had just gotten in a fight with one of the kids. So I was like, I started out by saying thank you and welcome like, thank you for these feelings of anger toward this child who just shouted at me and thank you and welcome this desire to pull out all her hair and thank you for this hatred I feel and Thank you. And then I got so deep without even meaning to, because the whole way the technique works miracles is that you have to allow yourself to keep voicing every single thought that comes. And so as the thoughts were coming, I wasn't censoring them. And this thought that then came, Naturally next was, thank you. These feelings of wishing I had never had children. Thank you for these feelings that I wish that I had chosen a whole different life for myself. And I was like, holy shit. I was kind of in shock that those feelings were coming up. I remember even one time hitting like, thank you for hating myself. And I definitely cried in that moment. I felt like shitty, but it was beautiful release, because then it was an admission of something that I would never have even consciously admitted to myself, let alone to a friend, now that I've processed it, as Chelsea said, now she's super grateful for her seed grant. She's happy and she's moving on. And similarly, after I experienced that, and really got through it and like deeply felt those Really sad feelings that came up with those thoughts, but just sat with them and welcome them and thanked them. I was like, wow, I no longer feel even mad at my kids. Like I'm happy to be a parent. It's all good. You know what I mean? And of course, we can take a step back and see like, oh, of course, she's a great mother, you know, blah, blah, blah. But that's not really fair. We have to be real with ourselves. And in the moment, we have to be able, or we don't have to, but If we can gift ourselves with an authenticity and a compassion for ourselves that runs like as deep as the core of the earth, like as deep as those emotions need to go, then we survive them and we process them and we become stronger and more resilient. That was my experience. And that's why I love to share the tool because it's powerful.
Chelsea:Yeah, I agree. I think that not only is it powerful, but the, you know, kind of going back to what you're touching on of, you know, maybe it spews out if you don't express or you don't acknowledge the way that you're actually feeling that then it comes out at an inopportune time or. Perhaps against someone that has nothing to do with it. I'm sure that everyone's experienced that. It's like your partner or a friend or someone that you co worker, you know, something minor goes on and all of a sudden they erupt. Well, what do you think causes that? It's because they've experienced something and instead of processing it in that moment or afterwards by themselves, they've put it inside themselves. And. They've either let it build up so much that then the volcano erupts or maybe it just happened and instead of taking a moment for themselves and processing, you were the next person that they saw and it just got unleashed on you, and to accept and to acknowledge and kind of back to what we talked about on the last episode is that all emotions are equal it's okay to feel Every single one of them, I haven't actually seen the second inside out movie, but I love the first inside out movie, you know, because I was joy, always wanting to feel joy all the time. Oh, everything's fine. Everyone's happy. What else can I do to make everyone happy? And just always looking for the positive. Let's turn this around. And not to say that, you know, it's not, there's not a idea of looking at a glass . It's half full versus half empty, but just the fact that every emotion does deserve to be felt. That's, it's the whole spectrum. It's all the colors of the rainbow. It's everything. And so, yeah, I love just being able to use these different tools to gift ourself the gift of feeling, because that's what we came here to do, to have this human experience and to feel
BatSheva:think that's a really important point because one of the things that we have to make really clear with this technique for it to work is not to do that spiritual bypassing thing with it where we're just like witnessing, you know, the beauty of feeling deeply and witnessing the joy of, you know, it's difficult to be a mom. It's like, no, you got to go back. below that to the shitty part to the part that is you don't want to share with other people because it feels ugly and shameful, that is the genius and the magic of witness within, allowing yourself to be calm and quiet enough that those potentially ugly, but of course, like you said, they're as beautiful as all of our feelings, thoughts and feelings arise, and then you say, thank you and welcome. You don't do anything else. That's what's interesting about this technique. That's all you do. And that alone, in my experience, and in your experience, and in many people's experience, we've shared this as a coach and with friends, they experience like, like I did, like this alchemy, where Your feelings of shame, resentment, all those dark feelings actually just disappear. So, I really recommend playing with this tool and If it gets confusing, you can pop on our Facebook page where we're starting to build our community and ask us about it. And we can share there as well, because it is helpful to have that loving, supportive, compassionate community of people who are all kind of working with the same or similar tools toward the same goal of self realization of being authentic, of being a more self loving and self supportive person, which automatically makes us a much better friend, parent, child, partner.
Chelsea:Amazing. I know that whenever I first started using it, I definitely asked you multiple times about it. And am I doing it correctly? Because you're right. It is so simple, but sometimes it's in that simplicity that we are like, is this all? Or at least I find myself doing that. Is this all I'm supposed to be doing? I feel like there should be a long list. So yeah, inviting you to take a note of anything that you're radically grateful for and witness yourself within and be just being honest and open and accepting and loving of all the feelings, all the emotions.
BatSheva:Absolutely. And we're going to keep this episode on the shorter side and invite you to tune into our next episode, which is all about your soul's journey in this lifetime.
Chelsea:Your divine plan until next week.
BatSheva:We wish you a brighter day. We love you.
Chelsea:Keep shining brighter every day.
