Lani Gonzalez- Rewriting The Subconscious: Science Meets Spirit

What if your life looks perfect on paper, but your body keeps whispering no? That’s where our guest, Lani Gonzalez, found herself after years as a successful litigation attorney—until a series of health crises cracked her world open and sent her on a global search for truth, healing, and purpose. From 40+ countries to long nights studying neuroscience and the subconscious, Lani rebuilt her life and work around one powerful insight: safety runs the show, and the subconscious decides what feels safe.

We unpack how cultural conditioning, family dynamics, and even epigenetics shape identity and behavior far more than logic does. Lani explains the “critical factor,” the mental gate that rejects feel-good affirmations when they don’t match lived experience, and shows why hypnotherapy can shift patterns faster by guiding the brain into the theta learning state. You’ll hear striking client stories: a woman who inherited body shame from casual fitting-room comments, a fear of flying traced back to infant memories of shaking walls and no comfort, and the many “small” sensitizing events that quietly script adult choices.

Along the way, we explore what collectivist cultures can teach about belonging, why individualism leaves so many women isolated, and how to start reprogramming with compassion instead of force. Lani shares a simple, beautiful self-nurture practice—a candlelit shower ritual for talking with the parts that worry, calling on future self, and honoring ancestors—that you can try tonight. If you feel stuck, disconnected from joy, or unsure what you truly want, this conversation offers a practical path: name the body’s signals, follow them to the root, and install beliefs aligned with safety, worth, and wholeness.

Craving clarity, confidence, and purpose you don’t have to hustle for? Press play, then tell us the belief you’re ready to release. If the conversation resonates, subscribe, share with a friend who needs it, and leave a review so more women can find their way home.

Transcript

Welcome And Guest Introduction

The Health Crisis That Changed Everything

SPEAKER_01 1:09

Welcome back to Empowered Ease. I'm your host, Jen Olinger, and this is a space where we challenge the status quo in women's health and explore mind, body, and soul approaches so that you can create your own path that truly works for you. Today I'm so honored to welcome a guest whose story and work embody that mission so beautifully. Lainey Gonzalez is an attorney turned healer. She's a hypnotherapist, a Reiki master. She helps women heal the past, reprogram their subconscious, and break free from self-doubt so they can rise into clarity, confidence, and purpose. For years, Lainey lived a life that looked perfect on paper. She was a successful lawyer and a partner in her firm, but underneath there was a deep calling to serve in a different way. Answering that call meant walking away from the courtroom and into the unknown. That journey took her across more than 40 countries, learning from shamans, gurus, and healers, while also diving into neuroscience and the subconscious of the mind. She now weaves together hypnotherapy, neuroscience, and ancient wisdom traditions to help women rewrite the stories they were handed and create lives they truly love. Her work is rooted not just in study but in lived experience, including healing from profound childhood trauma and transforming achievement as proof of worth into a life grounded in true wholeness, purpose, and inner power. So today we're going to talk about what it really looks like to heal at a subconscious level, how ancient practices and modern science can work together, and how you can begin to reclaim your own clarity, confidence, confidence, and purpose in your health and your life. So, welcome, Lainey. I am so glad you are here. I am great. Let's just kind of jump right in. I'm so excited to talk to you. Can you tell me kind of about the moment when you realized that you needed a shift, that the life you were living on, like you said, on paper that looks so perfect wasn't working for you anymore and wasn't really aligned. Can you tell me a little bit more about that moment?

SPEAKER_00 3:24

Oh, I don't know if it was one singular moment. Maybe it's a combination of many, where I just started to realize that I wasn't really filled. I wasn't really full. So I was doing all the things I was supposed to do, right? You become successful, you look good on paper, you have a couple titles behind your name. And that is so fleeting, right? That makes you feel good for just a little bit. But when I looked at my life in the long term, I said, Am I truly happy? And perhaps there was one singular moment that I can think of, but it didn't really lead to the shift of me, shifting careers. It just led to the realization that I fucked up some way. And that was being a lawyer, started practicing at the age of 23 years old. And I gave my everything to do it. And especially in a male-dominated industry, there was so much involved with that. And the level of dedication to rise to the top of that was immense. And I suffered physically. I had meningitis three times, I've had sepsis twice, and there was no explanation for it. It was just my immune system was compromised with no explanation. The explanation now is I was burnt out and I wasn't giving my body the love and care, and I had trauma stored within my body, and that takes a tremendous amount of energy, but that's a different story. But what I realized is the second time I had meningitis, I was in bed. And the doctor said to me, Hey, you should really call your parents. What can they do? They're in Virginia, I was in Florida. No need to call them. And they were like, hey, we're not sure what's gonna happen here. And I think you should talk to your parents. And what they were trying to signal to me is, you're not doing so well. I was in and out of consciousness. I was not okay. And they had some serious concerns about the outcome of whether I would leave that hospital. And I remember laying in that bed by myself. I did not have people around me that loved and cared about me. And yes, there were people in my life who did, but was there anyone at my side when a doctor was hinting that this could potentially be my deathbed? There was not. And I stopped and I looked at my life and went, What did I do wrong? Why am I in this bed by myself without someone to be there beside me? And I realized that I had completely prioritized the wrong things. And I do remember in that state of delirium, uh, meningitis, basically, what uh what happens is the stuff around your brain swells and you start thinking a little bit funny, and you can't regulate your body temperature. It's miserable. If you would say, and I was at a door, and I knew what that door was. It was that door to the other side, and I remember this being being there, ushering me into this door to the next place to end my life. And in this dream or vision, whatever you wish to call it, I was on my knees and I was crying. And I knew that I couldn't walk through that door because I wasn't proud of the life that I lived. And I remember begging to this being, like, give me another chance. Let me do it right. And I promised that I would lead my life in a different way. So the next time that that door came to me, I will walk through with my head held high. I promise it, I swear it. But I can't do that right now because I'm not proud of the life I lived. And whether that was a fever dream, a premonition, a vision, whatever it was, I remember going, well, I'm clearly not leading my life right, and I don't know what right means or better means right now, but I'm open to learning more. And that's the thing that shifts. A lot of women think, oh, I'm not happy, and I need to find the next big idea, the next big career. I need to be certain of my path before I change my path. Does it work that way? Step one is just the realization that we are on the wrong path. Step two is the openness and humility to say, I welcome information that shows me the error of my waves.

Leaving Law And Seeking Meaning

SPEAKER_01 7:59

Wow. Powerful, powerful messages here. Okay, so you had the shift, and then from there, obviously, you ended up visiting several countries, visiting many religions and studying a lot. So, how did you go from make the shift from making that realization as a lawyer in that career and realizing like I did something wrong? What are the next steps you took and how did that lead to this like self-discovery journey? How did you do that?

SPEAKER_00 8:30

I started going to counseling when I was 18, and I started going to college because they offered free services, and I knew that I was not okay because I had a really rough childhood. So I've always been open to learning about myself and healing those deeper layers. And then I wanted to learn about other people and challenge what I knew. And my family immigrated to America because you know, that's the land of opportunity where dreams come true, and it is the best place in the world. And that was what I was conditioned to believe. But when I started to go to other countries, I realized, oh, what I was taught and conditioned to believe was misguided. For example, in the United States, where we work ourselves to death in the hopes that we have a weekend that we can enjoy. We live on the weekends. And when we are living on the weekends, we have substances to dull the ache and the pain that try to get us through another week. That's not normal. That's not that's not human. And when you look at other cultures, for example, I recently went to Cambodia and Vietnam, and they had these platforms built in certain places. And I remember asking someone, like, what are these platforms? And someone basically explained, they're like, Oh, they're chill spots. And I'm like, chill spots, and they're like, Yeah, people, the locals will come together and they just at the end of the day, they grab a snack and we enjoy the sunset together. I love it. So it's as though living is embedded in everyday life and not something that you do on the weekend. I do recall one of my earlier adventures was going to Guatemala, and I had brought this massive suitcase with me. My excuse is I had a business trip beforehand, so I needed a lot of clothes. That was my excuse. But I remember lugging up this giant suitcase up a mountain in Guatemala, and the guy helping me, he's like, Oh, this is heavy. And I was like, Yeah, and he's like, You have enough stuff in here. You have more clothes than a whole Guatemalan family. Then I laughed. Then he laughed. But then when I was exploring Guatemala and I befriended a local who invited me to his home to meet his family, and had a meal with his family and saw their home, and I realized I did, in fact, own more, I had more clothes in that suitcase than an entire Guatemalan family. And the level of shame that hit me at that time when I was like, well, that was not a joke. That was me being materialistic and clinging on to things. And noticing that this Guatemalan family had something that I did not. And they had this level of contentment and enjoyment with each other, and this level of contentment with their lives, and the ability to end each day with a meal with their family and be in peace and share. I didn't have that level of contentment in me. So the more I traveled, and not just traveled to see the highlights and see all the touristy things, to get a good Instagram picture when I traveled and I exposed myself to the lives of other people, I realized there's an entirely different way to live that we are not taught in the United States and the Western world. And when we talk about illness, why is everyone so anxious? Why is everyone so depressed? Why do we have hormone issues? Why do we have all of these issues? It's because we live in a world, a system that is unnatural. Specifically, even if you want to look at systems in terms of work, leadership, mastery, those are systems designed by men, force-based systems. And when women are put into those systems, we are not designed to thrive to our fullest extent in a healthy way. So traveling within myself and traveling around the world really introduced me to the idea that my ideas are wrong.

Lessons From Global Cultures

SPEAKER_01 12:28

Oh, I love that. So, what do you in visiting these other cultures and seeing just the diff the appreciation, the contentment? What are some of like the I guess most powerful lifestyle differences that you noticed? Or is there powerful lifestyle differences? Or is it is it a mindset? What do you what do you think the key differences are? And our cultures so new compared to most cultures, like I think that's hard for Americans to wrap their minds around, but a lot of other countries have just had their history is so much older and longer, which is so much more knowledge, I in my opinion.

SPEAKER_00 13:10

But so your question of other countries and do they have different lifestyles or mindsets, I would say it's a combination of both. That's all part of culture, right? And there are things that I value that I find in other cultures that simply do not exist in the United States. For example, the United States is considered an individualistic culture, and there are collectivistic cultures that value the group, individualistic cultures value the individual. And I am Filipino and we come from a very collectivistic culture, and it's ingrained and weaved into our language and how we treat other people. And language directly affects how you think and how you behave. And I'll give you an example. When we refer to people, we don't call people by just their names. There is a ka in front of somebody, even if you don't really know them that well. You put that in front of their name, and ka is short for capatid, which means brother. So we refer to everyone as our brother and our sister. And if someone is more closely related, and I know this happens in Spanish cultures as well, everybody's your aunt, everybody's your uncle, everybody's your cousin, even though you're not biologically related. But our language and our traditions ingrain that we are family, and that man across the street is ca. He is kapatid, he is brother. So when you look at a culture where you are subconsciously programmed to believe that everyone is your brother and sister, and when we are in one big family, we act a certain way. And I'll give you an example because I was in the Philippines last summer, and a taxi driver drove me across town to a beach, and I didn't pay him yet. And we agreed, hey, come back in two hours. I'll he'll drive me back into town, and then I'll pay him there. Well, here's what happened: I go back looking for my taxi driver after the two hours, and I'm like, Oh, he's not there. And other taxi drivers are like, hey, we can take you back and we'll take you back. You know, what's what's the cost? Like, what are you looking for? You know, the typical, you know, how can I get this woman's business? And I said to them, Well, actually, I already have a taxi driver, and he took me here and I didn't pay him. And they instead of going, Oh, that's okay, we'll just take you too bad on him. They went, What's his name? What does he look like? And the taxi drivers, they didn't have taxis, they actually had these little bikes. And they went around that little town and looked for my taxi driver for me. And my taxi driver took me home. In an individualistic culture that only thinks about itself, those taxi drivers have been like, nah, he wasn't here on time, that's his loss. Get in my car. Not them. They went, oh, we know who you're talking about. We'll go look for him. He should be down there. So when we talk about, oh, is it mindset? Is it lifestyle? Is it culture? It's a combination of all. So it's just the awareness that there are different ways of living. I'm not saying that one is superior to the other. I'm saying that there are other ways of living other than the one you're experiencing now. So if the life you live right now does not suit you, guess what? There are other ways to live, and you don't have to stay stuck in this particular system.

SPEAKER_01 16:45

Oh, I love that perspective. There's there's something that comes up on this show a lot, and I think it comes up in burnout, and I think it's something about our culture nowadays, unless you are very religious. I shouldn't say very religious, unless you're active in your religious practice. And even then, I feel like something we lack is community. You know, in in that and when people are burnt out, that's one thing a lot that comes up for people. They don't have a community that they can talk to, that can hear them out, that understands the way they feel. So I love the idea of a culture that like community is so ingrained, it's ingrained in the language and the way that they speak to each other. So that's beautiful. It's I can't even imagine like the repercussions of that or what we're lacking from you know what we what we're all missing out on. So I love that perspective. What drew you to seeking out the kind of cultures and like I know I read shamans, gurus, healers. So what drew you to those modalities coming like from because if I was to look at you on paper, I wouldn't guess that those would be the ones that you would go to. So what inside you is that your what your history?

Individualism, Community, And Belonging

SPEAKER_00 17:53

Yeah, uh, no one would have guessed that. So I was a litigation attorney. I represent insurance companies and I helped the old school culture. So that's what I did. Um not what I do now. But what really drew me, I take a very spiritual approach to this. I don't know if I was drawn to them or I was naturally called and it was all meant to be there. If you ask me my personal experience, I do believe in past lives and we are drawn to certain things for certain reasons. And every single place I visited, I feel as though it has a piece of my heart and has brought back something to me that I was missing. So whether we call it synchronicity or fate, it almost feels as though it was fated that I would go to these places and seek these things out. And it really is just an openness, right? So I wasn't actively going on Google and going, where can I find a shaman? or where can I find someone who's going to help me? For example, in India, the gurus that I learned from, I stumbled upon. I was in Varanasi, which is a very spiritual town in India. They believe that if you die in Varanasi, you don't reincarnate and you ascend. So it is a town known for dying, and people are constantly dying and being burned and being put into the Ganges River. And uh I remember just walking along the vats, which is where they do these reincarnate or these cremation ceremonies, and just talking to locals and being curious about them, asking about them. They're curious about me, and they go, Hey, I think there's someone you'd want to talk to. I was like, Okay, sure. Let me talk to this person. And I followed this guy into the street and met someone, and I met a guru, and I remember seeing him, and he actually had it in his home. And I'm like, Oh, he was on National Geographic, and he actually had the National Geographic that he was on in his home. So I didn't seek this man out, it just the sheer openness. And when you hear that story that I just told you, there's a lot of underlying subconscious beliefs that I carry that allowed that to happen. So, for example, the openness to wander around that. And these areas, by the way, women do not partake, but still being comfortable enough to explore and be open, being able to talk to locals, awareness of your surroundings, not just being in your head, is this safe? Is it not safe? That's a lot of thoughts that happen when people travel, especially travel by themselves. And they're very internal as opposed to being external and looking around at your surroundings, and then meeting a local and him saying, There's someone I think you want to talk to, being able to energetically assess whether this person is safe or not safe, the underlying subconscious belief that people are innately good and want to do good things. So, not me going, Oh my God, I can't follow this random stranger. He's gonna kill me in an alley. That didn't cross my head. Being able to have all of those subconscious patterns and programs and underlying beliefs about the goodness of humans allowed that to happen instead of oh no, thank you. I don't want to talk to you, or I don't know if you're you know, stranger danger, which we're all taught, um, especially in individualistic cultures. So it, I don't think that I really sought them out. It almost just happened.

SPEAKER_01 21:34

Wow, I love that. So you mentioned the subconscious mind, and I know it's mentioned a lot in your work that I was reading about. So for maybe women who are listening who may not know what that is or why it's so central to healing, can you give us a little breakdown on that? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:49

So I'm gonna give you an example. Let's say you go on your computer and you open a web browser, or maybe you might open the calculator or a different software on your computer. That's stuff that you know about is running. You can see it. You're actually interacting with it in a way that you know about. Behind all of that, there are all sorts of systems operating that you don't see. All you see is your little web browser. The mind is very similar to that in that your conscious thoughts, the stuff that you know about, like you and I talking, or maybe someone listening to my words and being aware of it, that's your conscious mind. That's approximately 5% of what happens in your mind. Over 95% of what happens in your mind is subconscious programming. Stuff you don't know about that operates in the background based on patterns, kind of like your computer. There's a lot of things operating that you don't see. The majority of what happens in your mind, you do not see and you are not even aware of. And a lot of people like to think that we're all rational human beings and we make rational decisions, but that's not actually the case. The majority of what we do is Incredibly irrational, and it is based on patterns, pattern recognition, which comes from our subconscious programming. So it's very common where you see women who struggle with issues, they keep dating the same type of guy, the same type of relationship. They know they should do better, but they don't. Let's say that it's food. You know you shouldn't eat like that. You know that that's too many calories, or you know you're not hungry, but you're eating, but you do it anyways. Knowing is not enough. Knowing is conscious mind. Subconscious, which is over 95%, is the one that's running the show. So that's why a lot of women know they should do better, but don't do better because knowing is not enough.

SPEAKER_01 23:57

I love that. It's so it's I feel like it's so powerful when people when people realize this, when this is such a powerful moment for a lot of people in healing, because it shows us how little control we actually have, and how so much of the way we assess what we're capable of was programmed by our experiences and not in based in reality, really. It's based on what someone has told us about ourselves or some traumatic thing that happened that where we told ourselves what we're capable of in order to cope. So this is such a powerful topic, and yet it's one that I think is hard to understand and also hard to change because they are deeply rooted, they've been there for a long time. And I know that there's times in which our subconscious, I let people like to call it spongy, where it like is more open to change, and there's processes to change our subconscious thinking. So, can you tell us a little bit about someone at home who may be listening? Because I one of the things I think of is, and this is just a tiny piece of subconscious thinking, but we all have that thing when you're in your worst place, like when you're having the worst day, everything's going wrong. And it's that thing you say to yourself, it's usually related to your worth, like nobody loves me, or I always mess up, or it's that awful thing you say to yourself, and it is it's your subconscious. And if you can work with that voice and somehow get it yourself to tell yourself a different thing, it can be very powerful. But how do people get there? Where do they start with that? Because even though you know it, it's not easy to do.

Being “Called” To Healers And Gurus

SPEAKER_00 25:41

Yes. So foundational information first. So step one is understanding the subconscious mind. The subconscious mind is a good thing. It is a good thing that the majority of what you do runs on autopilot. It truly is. And the reason being is number one, we are supposed to survive, right? Our biological prerogative is not growth and enlightenment. Our biological prerogative is safety and survival. And if you look at it from that perspective, the brain runs a lot of calories. And imagine cavemen day when you didn't go to the grocery store to get food. Whether you got food or not was contingent upon a lot of things. We did not have the abundance of food or the abundance of food that we have now, they did not have. So, that being said, you don't want to run unnecessary thought processes that run that require a lot of calories, right? So the brain requires a lot of calories to process, give it less to process. That helps with the calories and whether we're gonna hunt and gather and get enough food to sustain us. The next part of that is you want to run subconscious programs and run on autopilot because we wouldn't function the way we do right now. Think of it this way when you are in the bathroom and you are brushing your teeth, do you go up tooth toothbrush here, up, down, up, down, harder, softer, left, right, up, down? None of that is happening. That requires energy, that requires caloric, caloric intake to maintain that energy. Um, and also we want our subconscious programming to remain relatively unchanged from a biological prerogative standpoint because we know it kept us safe. The mind is not designed to make you happy, it's designed to keep you safe. And even if you hate your body, you feel bad about yourself, you you are saying awful things about yourself while your subconscious programming goes, well, but we're still alive. We didn't get eaten by a bear, did we? So, why should we change the thing that has kept us alive when our prerogative is to stay alive? It likes predictability, it likes patterns. So the brain is not malfunctioning because you have low self-worth and you're running on old patterns. The idea is you look at the way the brain works and you shift the patterns so that you can be in alignment with what is in your best and highest good right now. So the goal is not to be conscious and aware of every single thought. And oh, your conscious thoughts are 5%. Well, minor six or minor 10. That's not what we're aiming for. What we're aiming for is let's dig into the subconscious mind, let's find the pattern or the program that doesn't work, shift it, and then run the program and let that run on autopilot. How do we do that? So I'll tell you how we don't do it. It's incredibly difficult to go on YouTube or whatever meditation app you have and just listen to the same affirmations over and over and over again. Yes, that works for some people, but I'll tell you why it's not the most effective and why it doesn't work for all people. There is something in your mind called the critical factor. Think of the critical factor as a gate. There's your conscious mind with the thoughts you know about, then there's a gate that protects the subconscious program that kept you alive. We can't mess with that program willy-nilly, and it can't be affected by your mood or the weather or anything else because this kept us safe. And if we mess with this too much, we don't know if we're gonna get eaten by a bear tomorrow. So the critical factor is the gate that protects the subconscious mind. It will reject information that is too far or too foreign from what it currently believes. It will reject information that feels unsafe. What does unsafe mean? If you grew up and you experience chaos, let's pretend your father was an alcoholic and mom was emotionally absent, and chaos was your normal peace. It's too far from our programming. So I am peaceful and life is good and all is well around me, that gate's not going to open. Peace is foreign. Peace is a threat to the system that kept you safe. So you can listen to affirmations all you want, but if it is too far and too foreign from your subconscious programming, your critical factor will reject it. So what do we do about that? That is where hypnotherapy comes in. Hypnotherapy is similar to meditation because we work in the theta brain wave state. Theta is a slower brain wave state than we have right now. And theta is where we learn, where we program and we find our old programming. So children, when they're in their waking state, they're predominantly in theta. That's why they learn and absorb everything like a sponge. After the age of eight approximately, we're no longer predominantly in theta. We're probably in alpha. If you're super stressed, you're in beta. But when we meditate and go into hypnotherapy, we slow down the brainwave state. Meditation, the idea is to be aware of your thoughts and aware of what's going on. The distinction between meditation and hypnotherapy is hypnotherapy, it has an agenda. We're going in with a reason, a mission, GPS coordinates in order to find the root cause of what's harming you right now. So hypnotherapy is a way where we access what's actually happening in your life and the root cause of it. And when we shift that internally, we shift that pattern, our external reality changes.

Subconscious Mind 101

SPEAKER_01 32:04

I love this. So I have I have my one experience with hypnotherapy, and I've always been so interested in it since this because I actually I didn't work with a hypnotherapist. I bought a program from a hypnotherapist. So it was like pre-recorded, and it was I dressed like binge eating that because it was like one of what I would get really stressed. I would binge eat sometimes, or sometimes I wouldn't eat them all. It was like my how I ate was kind of really related to my emotions. And so I purchased this hypnotherapy series and followed the instructions on often and time of day and when to do it and the settings, and it totally worked, completely worked. Like, and I so now I think about man, could you imagine like working with someone with more intention, with more, with a diff with like an intentional mindset, intentional goals with hypnotherapy, how powerful it can be. So tell me about some of the, I hope I'm not skipping anything, but some of the experiences are that you've been able to have with hypnotherapy or that you've seen some of your clients be able to have with hypnotherapy.

SPEAKER_00 33:02

Oh, some of the experiences I've had with my clients, some of the most interesting ones. So some people come to me and they go, Well, I didn't have a bad childhood. I don't have any trauma. So I don't know what you're talking about. Um, and I had a great childhood, so I don't know why I need to be digging in my my subconscious mind and looking what's there when I had a wonderful childhood. Well, that may not necessarily be the case. Sure, you don't have trauma with a capital T, but maybe you learned something that developed a protective mechanism that is now running the show that's no longer helpful. I'll give you an example. I had a woman who was very self-conscious, and she had trouble going for job promotions. She had trouble just engaging with men in general because she was so self-conscious. She even had trouble engaging with other women because she felt like she would be judged. And she says she has the perfect childhood, house and home life was great, wonderful parents. What did we find lurking in her subconscious mind? She had a memory of going to a store and watching her mother try on clothes. And as her mother was trying on clothes, her mother was critiquing her body. She didn't like her arm. She didn't like her belly. She didn't like all of these things. And as a child, being dragged around to these stores, hearing this, she learned to critique herself. And she didn't like the way it felt, and she didn't like the way mom felt. So she learned at that age, oh, we need to look really closely at ourselves. Otherwise, you know, what will happen? We'll be rejected, right? So as humans, we are the few creatures that when we're born on this earth, we are helpless. You know, you see little giraffes on like um animal planet, and as soon as they're born, they're out running and they got to protect themselves and they're eating and galloping next to their parents, not babies. We can't feed ourselves, we can't protect ourselves. We require acceptance from a group in order to survive. So it is a biological prerogative of ours to be liked, to be accepted by a group of people to support and take care of us. So we do have these programs and this wiring that makes us lean for acceptance. And if in this woman's programming, she saw that, oh, my body has to look a certain way in order to be accepted. I have to talk a certain way to be accepted. She learned very early on to critique everything about her in order to be accepted, in order to stay safe. So that's an example of someone who says, I don't have trauma. But if something in your physical reality keeps happening that you don't like, it's not that you don't have trauma, it's that you have a program that's not aligning with what you want right now. Another example I've had is I've had a woman who had a phobia and she had a fear of flying, and she did a regression, which means going back into an older time or a younger time, excuse me. And she was a baby in a carriage, and the walls would shake and she would cry, and nobody would come for her, and she was terrified. And that was part of her subconscious programming. And after our session, she asked her mom, she's like, hey, like this is what happened at my session, like as a baby. What are your thoughts? And she goes, Well, we lived in an apartment in New York, and they lived very nearby a train station. And every time, like a train or a plane would pass by, the walls would shake because it was like a cheap apartment with like really thin walls. And it was a generation where you didn't coddle your babies, you let them cry. If they're not hungry and they're not needing to be changed, you let them cry and self-soothe themselves. But very early on, she associated this shaking and this movement and not being soothed, and that was in her subconscious mind. And that memory and healing, that that part of her identity helps her so she can now be on planes. So you may have a great childhood, it may be something you don't even remember, and we can take it a step further where we can talk about epigenetics, and it can be something that didn't even happen to you, it could be something that happened to an ancestor. So, for example, epigenetics, we now know that if you had a grandparent that experienced food scarcity, you are more likely to be affected by that in terms of how your body processes carbohydrates because your grandparent experienced food scarcity. So looking into your programming does not mean just looking at your own personal traumas. It's looking at the inheritance we have in the programs that we get from the people before us.

SPEAKER_01 38:07

Oh my gosh, I love how you're tying all this together because there's so much to be said about all of that. Like, like I love explaining this theory with like looking at children, because people, when you talk about what is traumatic to a child, right, sometimes that can be so confusing. Like what that's not a normal experience. Why would that be traumatic to a child? Or when people want to compare their trauma to another person, but it's really it's so relative because different things affect people differently, and the worst a person has the worst experience a person has, regardless of what the circumstances were, is the worst experience that they've had. And that is what matters, not the context, you know, it's the experience that the person has with it. And so I think this is just such a beautiful thing. And then you tied in the biological stuff and generational trauma because I love the biological stuff. I'd love to learn more, but also there's trickled-down generational trauma just in the way we parent, and the way we approach money, and the way we approach food, and the way we approach so many things that you may not even realize, yeah, it wasn't traumatic with your family, but it might have been with your mom. And that's why, you know, you don't know how those subtle things are affecting decisions in your life that maybe you would choose differently for yourself if you knew that why you were making the choices you're making.

Why Affirmations Fail And Hypnosis Works

SPEAKER_00 39:31

Yes. And when we talk about programming, it's not just trauma. So when do we program? When does the subconscious mind learn something, create an identity or a psyche that protects you and carries on into the patterns? It's a highly sensitizing event. So you don't just program with trauma, you program during any highly sensitizing event. What are examples of highly sensitizing events? I'll give you a really common one: children getting lost in grocery stores. I get lost all the time. I miss my exit when I'm driving and I just get lost. That's a common thing, but I'm not a child. I have control of myself, I have a certain level of autonomy. A child in a grocery store, I'll give you a really common example, gets lost, starts crying, starts freaking out, is in distress because they think they've been abandoned. And then mom finds them and is frustrated and like, what are you doing? Where were you? Get in the car. What did that child learn? They were frightened, they felt abandoned, and their needs were dismissed. So believe it or not, I get a lot of people with some grocery store stuff. I also had a client where he had some issues now in terms of business and relationships and being seen and heard and validated and boundaries. And when we looked into his history, which is also probably very common, and I think happened to me too, where as a little kid, I was forced to watch a movie that I thought was really scary. And he went to some sort of Halloween event, and there was like one of those like scary houses, and he went in and he was scared, but he went with his family and they kept making him go, and he was terrified. That was a highly sensitizing event, a high emotion that was not honored with what he needed at that time. Oh, he learned something. So when we look at our subconscious programming, do not be deceived and thinking just because mom and dad were perfect and you live behind a white picket fence, that everything in your subconscious mind is a-okay.

SPEAKER_01 41:45

I love that because it's very true, right? We we could all take, we could all, I think just knowing and seeing some of where it comes from too is a powerful experience, right? Because it is autopilot for a lot of it. So, how do you well, what kinds of people do you work with and what kinds of issues most commonly, and how do you work with it? Like, so say when someone's listening to this and they're like, oh my gosh, so interesting. I wanted, I wanted to hear what she has to say. Yeah. What kind of people do you like work with? How can how do you work with them and what can they expect?

SPEAKER_00 42:14

Yeah, so the people that I love working with right now are the women who feel stuck. They can't even put your name on it, but you feel stuck. And you know that there's more, but you can't put your finger on it. And some women, they've gone for so long on autopilot, they don't even know what brings them joy. If you ask them, okay, if you were to wave a magic wand and life was good and you had everything you wanted and you had more joy, what would that look like? They can't even articulate what that is because they've been so disconnected from it. So I work with women to really help them tap into a life that they are really meant to lead that provides them with fulfillment. Instead of running on autopilot about what you were told you should do, can we tap into our intuitive nature, the part of us that knows what brings joy, what is naturally life-giving to us? And how do we operate from that place instead of that subconscious programming that we have up there? Again, was not designed to make you happy, it was designed to keep you safe. And if you want to talk about the inheritance of subconscious programming in a cultural standpoint, it was designed to make you productive, to make sure that this large machine of the United States keeps going. That's your subconscious programming. So of course you're unhappy, of course you have burnout, of course you feel unfulfilled because you're operating on programs that were not designed to make you fulfill, they were designed to keep you in line.

SPEAKER_01 43:49

I love that. Thank you. That was powerfully said, and I hope that sinks in for a lot of people. That's beautiful. So I we don't have a whole lot of time left, and I want to make sure that we get to like all of your information. So if someone is listening and they're they want to work with you, what can they expect in a session with you or the kinds of and you're gonna have to come back on the show and we're gonna have to dive deep into hypnotherapy all on its own because there's a lot to talk about there and explain. I think a lot of people are curious, but just briefly, what can they expect to experience? And I'm assuming you do virtual appointments, is that correct?

SPEAKER_00 44:29

I do. So I work virtually and I also have an office in St. Petersburg, Florida. But to access the subconscious mind, I'll say there's two primary modalities. There's different tools, but there's two general ones. One is to slow down the brainwave state. So, similar to when you listen to recording and meditation, it slows the body, calms the mind, so that we can start to explore what's there. The other thing that may be possible is a lot of people who struggle with anxiety or very logical, if you give them language like be calm, relax. Relax. That does the opposite. Telling someone to be calm when their nervous system does not feel calm does the opposite. So what I do is yeah, activate the body. If they have a feeling and they say, I feel anxious and I feel it in my chest, name it. Be very precise with your language and name it. What does it feel like in your body? Amplify it, jack it up. And here's what we're doing. Remember when I said that we program during highly sensitizing events? If we feel an emotion in our body and we make it as big and loud as possible, our subconscious mind goes, we don't like that. Make it big and loud, keep it there. It'll go, we don't like that because, and it'll show you the story connected with that emotion. And that is when I say the body and emotion are GPS coordinates. Even if your brain doesn't remember, your body will. So if I can make your body really uncomfortable and make that feeling as loud as possible, it'll trigger the subconscious mind to tell you the story it's connected to because it wants you to stop so you don't experience that thing again. And then we look at it and go, actually, that thing happened. But we look at it with older, wiser, kinder eyes and say, that thing happened. You told a story about it, but it isn't true now. Maybe it was true then, but it's not true now. And how do we shift our programming and thoughts so that that story can be reframed and our thoughts can be rewired, which necessarily affects our behavior and our behavior affects our reality.

Client Breakthroughs And Epigenetics

SPEAKER_01 46:42

I love that. So that's the what you just described. Is that how in hypnosis people unlocked hidden memories? Is that that seemed like what you were describing, a way that you can get into like memories that we don't have access to all the time. Because I that's I think before I experienced hypnosis myself, that was what I thought of hypnosis as. And I think it's more than that. But I'd like that's so cool because that you I've the way I've heard of it before is in much more dramatic fashion. But this is a subtle, well, I guess it could be dramatic, but also doesn't have to be. So I love hearing that. That's so cool and so powerful. You're definitely gonna have to come back on, and we're gonna have to just dive into the specifics of some of these modalities because they're so interesting. Also, like I think when people think of hypnotherapy, they don't realize like it's a real, it's a you go to school and it's not like it's a heavily science-based program. It's a like it's a real I can't remember. What do you have a degree? Is it a certification with hypnotherapy?

SPEAKER_00 47:38

So I'm a clinical hypnotherapist, and there is actually a large amount of evidence that shows that hypnotherapy works substantially faster than cognitive behavioral therapy because hypnotherapy works with the subconscious, which is the root cause, where cognitive behavioral therapy does not. And I am a big advocate for cognitive behavioral therapy. I think there is tremendous value in being witnessed by someone, giving words to the pain that you are feeling and letting it exist outside of you is incredibly powerful. I am the counselor and I highly recommend it. But it's a way to go deeper than traditional counseling. So I believe that they are both modalities that are incredibly complementary. I'm not going to say one is inferior to the other, but I will say they're different modalities that can complement each other.

SPEAKER_01 48:32

I agree. We talk about, I just had someone, a couple of sound therapy people on here too, because we're talking about, and I this hypnotherapy is very relevant to this, that not all memories and not all emotions have words. We experience things that maybe before we had words to express them, or that we don't have the words to express something that complex. And so we need these other modalities sometimes because talk isn't enough in those moments. So I I love, love diving deeper into this stuff because I don't think people like I believe in a lot of what people would call woo-woo, but not everything we think of woo-woo as is as woo-woo. Sorry to use that over and over again, as we assume there is science behind a lot of this, and it's actually growing all the time. We're learning more and more about how all of these things are really what a lot of people who practice them know, but now we're proving they work. So I love that so much. If someone's listening and they're like, I gotta talk to her, can will you say how to get a hold of you is in case they don't want to like stop and pull out the show notes? Do you can you say your website maybe? Sure.

SPEAKER_00 49:35

So it is just my name.com. So it's l-a-n-i-g-o-n-z-a-l-e-s.com. If you Google me, my website just magically pops up with resources and you can schedule a complimentary consultation and we just take time to talk so that I can learn more about what you're going through to see if hypnotherapy is the next best fit.

SPEAKER_01 49:55

I love that. And it is an absolutely beautiful website. So if you just want to check out a beautiful website, look at her website. It I'm serious. I was like, her website is gorgeous. So, okay, one question I ask everyone because we're running out of time, and I mean it wholeheartedly. Please come back and teach us more because I you have so much knowledge to share. I feel like we just like scratch the surface. But I ask everyone what their go-to self-nurture practice is when their life is getting overwhelmed and they're feeling stressed. How what do you do to get yourself back to where you need to be?

SPEAKER_00 50:24

Oh, my go-to practice is I love to get in the shower because no one expects anything of me, right? I've heard people say, oh, like no one expects anything from you when you're on the toilet. And that's why people are in the toilet for so long when they don't really have to poop. But I prefer the shower and I will go into the shower and then get my little candles and I'll I'll shower by candlelight and I will meditate in the shower and I will talk to the parts of me that hurt. Let's say there's a part of me that feels worried. What does she look like? What does she need? And let's say that I feel lost. Let me talk to the future version of myself. What does she wish for me to know? Let's say I feel like I lack the resources or the skills to get to the next level of where I want to be. Let me talk to my ancestors who have endured so many things so that one day their daughter could rise and reach for something that they could not. And being able to do that work, some might call it internal family systems, some might call that family constellations, whatever you wish to call it. But really talking to all of the parts of who I am. Some people might call it shadow work, but finding a space that is just solely mine where no one can interrupt my shower and really honoring all those parts.

SPEAKER_01 51:43

Oh, that's so beautiful. I love that and accessible for everyone, really. And I just love the way you talk to yourself. And oh, that's so powerful. Okay, is there anything you want to leave us with in the last few minutes before we go? This has been an absolute pleasure, by the way. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 51:57

Oh, well, I am happy to be here. The only thing I will leave you with is this. If you remember one thing and one thing alone, is that there is more. If the life that you have right now is not an absolute hell yes, there are other ways to live, and there are an infinite amount of resources and tools and guides that will help you build that life. And there's only one prerequisite to that. And they say that when the student is ready, the teacher appears. All you gotta do is say that you're ready and want more. That's all it takes.

SPEAKER_01 52:33

Beautiful. Thank you so much. You're so welcome.