Metamorphosis with Rucsandra

What happens when a woman begins to trust her body again?

In this episode, I’m creating butterfly postcards in studio with Rucsandra as we talk about embodiment, women’s health, nervous system patterns, and the ways women learn to disconnect from themselves.

Rucsandra shares her path from movement teaching to Pilates, osteopathy, and body-based work with women. We explore how fear, pain, stress, and old emotional patterns can live in the body, and how healing begins when we stop trying to force the body into submission and start listening to what it actually needs.

Together, we talk about self-authority, rest, beauty, burnout, women’s bodies, and the deeper intelligence that becomes available when we allow the body to remember its own way forward.

Highlights:

• Rucsandra’s portal-like journey to New York.
• Why many women disconnect from their bodies.
• The difference between force and true embodiment.
• Rest, self-authority, and learning to trust the body.
• The body as a guide for healing, beauty, and transformation.

About Rucsandra:

Rucsandra Mitrea is a somatic facilitator, teacher, and author whose work helps women restore trust in the body as a source of wisdom, healing, and decision-making. With more than two decades of experience in movement, nervous system regulation, and embodied transformation, she has guided thousands of women toward greater strength, radiance, and self-authority. She is the founder of the Radiant Body Program. Rucsandra is also the author of You Don’t Have to Live in Pain and Why Women Experience More Pain Than Men—And What to Do About It. Her work bridges science and the sacred, offering a new vision of the body—not as something to fix, but as something to trust.

Email: info@rucsandramitrea.com

Website: www.rucsandramitrea.com

IG and FB: @rucsandra.mitrea

Fairy Tea is produced by Six-Two Studio.

____

Fairy Tea is a deeply personal podcast where I share the raw, honest messiness of life, exploring how to break free from societal expectations and follow the heart’s calling. Blending storytelling, spirituality, folklore, and self-discovery, Fairy Tea is both magical and real, whimsical yet grounded. It’s a space to embrace uncertainty, face challenges without fear, and stay curious about the possibilities ahead. Through my experiences, I invite listeners to see that a new way of living is possible — one that is intuitive, soulful, and uniquely their own.

Instagram: @fairytea.podcast or @akayourfairygodmother
Email: akayourfairygodmother@gmail.com

Transcript

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Rucsandra (00:00.352) A woman cannot cannot do that. You know, most of the research that is out there is done on men. Like the keto diet. That might or might not work on a woman that well. We know it works very well on men.

Sophie (00:14.134) Yeah, yeah, yeah. With so many I mean, all of medicine, like the men medicinal research is only is mostly being done on on men because women have the cycle and then they you know, say that the the consistency of the data can't be provided, blah blah blah. But then you have like the issue of like I mean, it was crazy to be I I

People who listen to this podcast, they know I have ADHD because I s I switch from one subject to the next to the next, you know. But I usually come full circle most of most of the time. Don't quote me on this. But so I was dig diagnosed really early. I was really young. I was like, Yeah, whatever, like I'm not I'm not hyper, you know, I'm not the hyper kind of person. I don't I'm not like giddy and

Rucsandra (00:49.242) Rucsandra (00:55.329) And

Sophie (01:06.22) no jittery all the time and like need to do something all the time. So I kinda like dismissed it. I was like, whatever, like I don't like ADHD I didn't really take it in into consideration. And then much later, I think only like two years ago or so, I ended up reading the specific symptoms for women with ADHD. And it's so different. It's vastly different. Like a women in like AD they're like

relational aspect. There is like an aspect of like how they feel on the inside versus on the out. Like there's so many other and I was like, my God, like this is me to it.

Welcome to Fairy Tea, where we sip on the thorough wisdom of the fairy realm and uncover its ancient secrets for healing, pleasure, and rest. I'm your host Sophie, here to sprinkle a little enchantment into your everyday life. Think of this as one great unfolding experiment. An invitation to dance with magic, trust the unseen, and let curiosity lead the way.

Sophie (02:24.716) The first thing obviously I want to introduce you to the podcast. I don't just want to be like, this is Roxandra and she does this and that, you know? But I rather want to share it through our shared story, how we know each other, and then we're gonna from there we're gonna touch all the subject. So I'm gonna start and you can just feel free to chime. I really want to talk about how you just got here. Because that is just too juicy. But essentially

you and I know each other from a course that we're both taking, right?

Rucsandra (02:57.87) And

Sophie (02:59.562) I saw you before we connected one on one, but we didn't have much contact to begin with. And then throughout, like as the course progressed, I was like, I want to connect with someone in the course more closely. And I I shared that in the group chat. I was like, hey, is there anyone out there that like kind of feels like connecting?

Rucsandra (03:08.6) Yeah.

Sophie (03:27.83) more one on one just to like process the whole course material. And then you reached out to me. And I'm so happy you did. Because we've only done this twice now, but we have this like very beautiful vessel that we created where we really share with one another like the deep, messy stuff of life in a way that is very un uncommon, I would say. Wouldn't you say so too? It's a very

Rucsandra (03:55.758) Yeah. Special way of sharing something that's very personal and also having the other person just be there.

Sophie (04:07.606) Yeah. It is linked to the course really, but I mean idea of like having a space where somebody holds the space but doesn't try to change anything, doesn't try to intervene in any way. I don't know why, but the universe gave me the perfect person to do this because I feel like you and I immediately just it worked out so great. And

Rucsandra (04:12.056) Just yeah.

Sophie (04:36.268) I'm so grateful. And through that, we stuff you're in New York. You're from Toronto, am I right? Yeah. So you live in Toronto, but you're in New York now. And we knew that this was coming because this the there's an in-part portion of this course. And I was just like, well, I have to ask her whether she would want to come on the podcast because I felt like this would be beautiful for us to like share.

Rucsandra (04:47.564) And

Sophie (05:03.958) Together and like I want to hear so much more because again I I don't know much about your life and what you do and your day to day. So I I'm so curious and so excited to hear from you. Would you just share for us real quick how like the craziness of how you got to New York just now?

Rucsandra (05:27.086) yeah, it was quite a day. First of all, I chose to fly from the airport that is in Toronto in the city because I wanted to get there faster, stress free. And everything was going great. I had everything packed and twenty minutes before calling my car to take me to the airport, I look out the window and it's a snowstorm. Like

How how did this happen? Like why? I had no idea that we had I knew it was, you know, supposed to be chilly, but fine. Like I didn't hear anything about the snowstorm, but it was in the middle of the snowstorm. So I made it to the airport. Okay. And the flight got delayed. And then it got delayed a little bit more. And I'm like, great. And in the meantime, I'm

Sophie (05:59.116) This is common in in

Rucsandra (06:21.696) Messaging you, like, listen, I don't know when I'm gonna leave. Right? And then we left with, I don't know, an hour and a half late. Right. And then we landed like 50, 60 minutes after we took off. Like it's a 90-minute flight from Toronto to New York. And I'm like, what is happening today? Today, there is I don't know, just a very interesting energy that has to do

The way I see it now just it's teaching me that time doesn't really matter that much. Mm in the way we think it does.

Sophie (06:59.596) Or it's not as linear as we think about. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rucsandra (07:01.55) It's so not linear. Yeah. And then from the airport to here, like I knew it was about a forty minute drive. Mm-hmm. The Uber driver said an hour. Mm-hmm. And then I look again at the app and it was an hour after 45 minutes and of driving. And I'm like, Right. It's impossible now. It's gonna take two hours. So I go and I message you again.

Sophie (07:28.587) Exactly. And I'm like

Rucsandra (07:30.274) Well, maybe it will happen, maybe it won't happen. We can't I can't, you know, force force it or get upset about it, right? There's nothing to to do. Mm-hmm. You can get upset. And then and then a few minutes later, after I texted you like, This is getting very late. I don't know what's happening. And then the Uber driver says, That's it, five more minutes. I'm like

How how is it five more minutes now when fifteen minutes ago was gonna be another hour? So I really don't know what happened with time.

Sophie (08:08.842) Yeah, throughout this entire

Rucsandra (08:10.782) I feel like I just went through a portal where now in this reality we're late and in this reality now I'm not late.

Sophie (08:20.814) Perfectly on time. And you you you were both per you were late, but you somehow ended up being perfectly on time.

Rucsandra (08:28.95) Yeah. And I with the flight being delayed and the And then traffic the traffic like yeah, so I can say in this moment really that I understand. I think it so many things have happened like this today that and in sequence that I think I need a little bit of time to unpack, to look back, to start to put the pieces together. But it feels all that being said, it feels like a very special place. This

In between times.

Sophie (08:59.424) Yeah. Or you you creating your own timeline.

Rucsandra (09:02.924) Yeah, apparently I am. Yeah. Today more than ever.

Sophie (09:05.806) Today more than ever. And the beautiful thing is you came in, you were beaming like throughout it all, like you didn't let yourself be subjected to what was happening, but rather you were like, you know, it is what it is. And we're just gonna make the best out of it. And I'm so happy you're here, regardless. Cause I obviously like we were on the phone and I didn't want you to feel pressure to like come. So I was like, you know, whatever feels right, like please.

Rucsandra (09:22.907) Mm.

Sophie (09:34.626) But on the inside, it was like, we'll be so sad if if we couldn't do this, because I was really, really excited. So I'm so happy that it worked out. And the and the craziest thing was when you came in, you showed me your your watch. So you put on a butterfly watch, which is just the coolest thing ever. I'm so whenever I see the butterfly, it just gives me this feeling of like I'm right where I'm supposed to be.

And like seeing you with this on is just like the most divine beautiful sign. But the funniest thing is, what happened to your wife?

Rucsandra (10:09.41) Well, when I left home it was showing time. Yeah. When I arrived here, it has no more batteries.

Sophie (10:15.534) That's absurd. It just stopped working. Like i the butterfly was like, you know what? You make your own time. I'm not showing you time. I'm not telling you how to you make your own time.

Rucsandra (10:26.242) No, that's what I'm saying. Too many things. One that is not related to time but happened before. I set up my autoresponders to in all my emails, right? My personal email, my client email and so on. And something went so wrong. I didn't get my computer, I didn't take my computer with me. So I have no way to really fix it until I get. But something went so wrong that now

Sophie (10:28.814) Too many things.

Sophie (10:49.698) That's

Rucsandra (10:53.216) My emails are bouncing off one another. So I already have like over a thousand emails between me and me. And the client a client messaged me. She's like, I'm not bothered by it. It's kind of funny, but I'm getting many messages telling me that you're not gonna pick up any emails until Monday. So I don't dare sending you an email.

So that's why I'm saying, like whatever is happening today, it's it's a portal of some sort, I think. So

Sophie (11:25.878) For sure.

Is it still Mercury retrograde? I believe it could be. There's so many aspects that interplay, you know.

Rucsandra (11:31.521) I have no idea.

Rucsandra (11:39.04) At least everybody who's ever emailed me all my clients, they're gonna get so many messages from me that I'm gonna be so present for them. I would

Sophie (11:48.622) just can I say hey that's just that's just the craziest like universal like marketing stunt that you absolutely didn't have what's up. But you were like I you know you were thinking about how how can I how can I be more of a presence and there you are. The universe was like

Rucsandra (12:05.844) Easy. Easy. Can you imagine if that's a if that's what happened? And then once I stopped this thing, everybody starts emailing me back with comments and laughter and Yeah.

Sophie (12:14.712) So funny.

Sophie (12:19.05) It's also like it's so human. Like these things have their own lives and like we can only control it to a certain level, right? It's just what it is. Yeah, so that's how you and I met. Found out about one another, about our existence, which again I I've I think is just such a testament to the butterfly effect because we had no business ever finding out about the existence of one another, and yet

Rucsandra (12:48.6) Yeah. Yeah.

Sophie (12:48.77) We are sitting in the same room. And I always like to point that out because it's one of my favorite thought processes because it's so simple and yet it's so profound in the sense that like everything in your life, every single decision you've ever taken led you up to this exact moment. And everything in my life, every single decision has led me up to this exact moment. And it's just it's so obvious.

Rucsandra (13:15.058) Yeah.

Sophie (13:17.816) But we rarely ever like pay attention to it and be aware of it. Mm-hmm. And and and it's just so beautiful because there's not much more than that, right? It's the present moment. Yep. That's basically what life is. So, Ruxandra, I really, really, really wanna learn more about your life, what you would like to share. Like I would love to know what you do.

For a living have like I know that you teach, but I don't really know what you teach. I would love to know how you got into this, like how life can it

Rucsandra (13:56.088) Bill

Sophie (13:57.012) Around you so you are where you are today. Like I yeah.

Rucsandra (14:02.348) You know how our society for a very, very long time taught women to disconnect from their bodies to not feel their bodies. I teach women to return into their bodies, to actually have the feeling of their bodies. And one thing that really in the past few years I had many conversations with many women.

And I was so surprised because yes, it's one thing to understand this intellectually and for myself, because if when I'm upset, I disconnect, right? Of course. We all do that, right? But what happens when a woman stays disconnected for years and decades, that leads to so many problems in the physical body. Of course. And

The way I got to what I do now, I started when I was you know, when I was in university.

Sophie (15:07.532) Did you study?

Rucsandra (15:08.862) computer science applian economy. So and yeah, but there are a few threads to this because one thread is the fact that when I was a kid, I kept spraining my ankles. Like each ankle had maybe ten, fifteen sprains. I sprained my knees. My feet were so sore. My back was sore. My I couldn't run or do lots of the you know more ac energetic things that other kids did.

And so when I got to university I said, okay, enough, it's enough. I need to move. I need to figure out a way to make my body feel better. Okay. So I started thinking within the university, I started taking these classes, these movement classes, aerobics and stretching. And the teacher was so good. She was so fabulous and I loved her. So I went there rain or shine or snowstorm or rainstorm.

Friends were going out to party and I was going to my classes. It was so important to me to reconnect with my body, to feel my body. And after a year and a half or so, the teacher says, You know, I'm going on vacation for three weeks and I want you to teach all my classes. I'm like, me? What? So I said yes, you know, when you feel you're presented with an opportunity that

lights you up, that makes you excited. You just say yes, you figure out how you're doing it. How you're gonna do it after, right? So I said yes and I taught her classes and she got great reviews, right? And then it was her who found me a job at the club, at the high end club where I taught classes until I moved here. I'm here in I moved from Romania to Toronto. So when I came here, I came with this dream.

of one day having a movement studio. And at the time I knew aerobics and stretching. So I my dream was to open a movement studio, a fitness studio. And I arrived at Toronto and I got my certifications to be able to teach here. And I landed in a Pilates studio. And I'm like, what are they doing? I had never seen Pilates before, right? And I got so interested in it. And I started to train.

Rucsandra (17:32.778) in it and after training it for a couple of years I realized that okay my body's still not moving well. I'm doing all these exercises, but my back is still locked. Something's not right. So then I met another teacher, another big influence in my life. And after two weeks of training with her, it was a course for dancers that she was doing. And I've never been a dancer, but I I was there. My lower spine started to move, right? So I'm like,

I need to learn where she's teaching. So I started again from scratch with a new teacher for two more years. I did that. Some along sometime along the way there, I opened my studio. And then I met another extraordinary teacher, a French osteopath, who was teaching other forms of movement. And I got so interested in what he was teaching. And I studied, I ended up studying with him for 12 years.

But somewhere along the way, so between these two amazing teachers and me opening a studio that actually had a waiting list, people waiting to get in work with me was just beyond what I ever imagined. And this teacher says, after a couple of years of training with him, the French osteopath says, You should start, you should enroll in the osteopathy school. I'm like, Me? Like you should enroll in the school.

And I'm like, but I don't wanna be an osteopath. I'm a teacher. I see movement a certain way. I see the body in movement. I know how to make things happen. He's like, Yes, but you it I don't think you know what osteopathy really can offer you. I think you should start school and if you don't like it, you can stop it. So I'm like, okay, now I'm starting. Yeah.

Sophie (19:21.228) So you're now you're starting that

Rucsandra (19:23.008) No, that happened years back. I I I did four years out of the six. And after the fourth year, I'm like, see, I told you I don't wanna be an osteopath. I don't wanna work as an osteopath. But in that process I've learned a lot more about about the human body and I learned to treat and feel what happens in the body. And along all these years, I also noticed how someone

can bring their bodies back from severe injuries and trauma. And someone with a lot less trauma never seems to get better. So I started to look at the power of the suc subconscious mind and emotions and neurolinguistic programming, hypnosis. I studied them all because I wanted to understand what is not letting us get better.

when the body should be able to get better because it has everything in it.

Sophie (20:25.624) Yeah, that's how it's programmed, isn't it?

Rucsandra (20:28.994) So that's how I started. And then I it you know, I taught movement for a very long time. And I had a studio for a really really long time. And now I work with women, only women, and I I help them feel their bodies again. And it seems like it should be simple. And it's not. The reason why I'm saying that, like I'm asking sometimes, I have a group of let's say twenty women in a class.

And I say, can you feel your breath getting into that part? Yes, no, maybe. Can you feel your neck? Yeses, many no's. Maybe I have no idea what you're asking me to feel. And for as long as a woman and a man, but I'm not teaching men now, because it's a completely different process. But for as long as a woman is not feeling her body, or parts of her body are missing.

Yeah, how she's experiencing herself. Yeah. She doesn't have access to the whole of her, to all the parts of her. For sure. Yeah.

Sophie (21:37.464) The magic.

That's so wow. I mean, I I shared this with you the last time we were on air. You shared a little bit with me again. I I didn't know much, but it just again strikes me so hard. Was like remember I told you I was like when you speak, like it feels to me like y there's an entire universe within you. And I mean what you just explained to me like the whole path, which

Rucsandra (21:47.47) Call because we were

Sophie (22:09.6) in and of itself is like a testament to the butterfly effect, right? How you found to first like your first teacher and then from there to like the Pilates and from there to like your other like osteopathy, like all those things kind of like intersected in your life at a divine moment, right? And it brought you to where you are now and you're just this this unique powerful

conglomerate of so of so much study and so much knowledge and wisdom and and obviously y and I think that is something very powerful about women that I appreciate so much. It's like we're capable of threading our unique essence through these things and then create like our very special imprint.

And I can see this so clearly when you speak and when you like, you know, when you share about what you do and it just feels like it's your body of work. Your unique body of work. Which is very, very practical. Beautiful. And so I really want to know more. So you still have a studio?

Rucsandra (23:24.47) No, in it's so interesting we're talking today 'cause it's what, the thirteenth, the pandemic was declared six years ago. And I was coming back from New York when everything shut down. So I arrived back in Toronto and I'm like, okay, now what? Mm-hmm. So it took me two days to figure out how to do it all online.

And I hopped online. I started calling all my clients and calling them and emailing them. And you know, some some of my clients were in their sixties, seventies. The younger ones were okay to hop online and figure it out, right? But with some of my clients I was on the phone, like, Okay, I'm on my phone, open your computer, I'm gonna try and look. You tell like, you know, but I I gathered them and we started working online.

And I the stakes were so high in terms of stress, right? And I realized I I want to support people, feel better because there's too much fear, there's too much you know, just just too much. So I sent an email out to my clients and I said, This Sunday I'm gonna teach a class, a stress release class.

Feel free to invite your friends and whatever, everybody's afraid and everybody's scared and everybody's suffering. So the first Sunday I had about 30 people show up. Women with their husbands or their daughters or the dog or the cat, everybody together, huddled or alone, or then the next Sunday, there were 70 people. wow. And it kept growing and growing and growing. And I

The largest class, the stress release once, I think it was like 170 computers. And I say 170 computers because people were huddled together. So there were three or four in the room. And I was like, wow, that is so powerful and was so moving. I bet. It was so, so moving. So I realized that I had to develop.

Rucsandra (25:39.82) different processes for teaching online because it's not the same as having people in your studio, right? Of course. But it just was so good. Like I loved it. And my clients loved it too. And actually that I have to say I was surprised at the beginning. But then I realized that was such a beautiful process and

Yeah, so now I have I work online and it continued to evolve and continues to evolve.

Sophie (26:12.822) That is so such an crazy development and such a you know, I I think a lot about metamorphosis and that like continuum of things and how like evolution is really the nature of all things, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Sh some evolutions are are s more s like slower and others are more abrupt. But like it it's it's very interesting to listen to

Rucsandra (26:42.03) Your Yeah.

Sophie (26:43.53) Your journey and how that like one thing kind of led to another. And now you're doing this online, which leads me, I remember in the beginning of the pandemic, like I had a lot of my lectures. I was still in university. I was studying. I was just at the end of my bachelor's when the pandemic hit. The entirety of my master's I did. And I hated it and I felt so uncomfortable. And it was so I was very

Rucsandra (27:06.914) Thank you.

Sophie (27:13.762) very kind of like blocked in my body and I I had I I was so scared to like show up and like be like outwards and like speak up and like you know and so it was extra scary through a computer. It was like I was so uncomfortable sharing something in front of the screen because I felt like I couldn't feel

energetics, but now I feel completely different about it. Do you like how was your experience with that? Because now I feel like I totally feel the energetics through the computer. Is that something that is like, you know, did this happen because I changed and now I have like more of a perception? Or is it more like just because the conscious consciousness shifted or or I learned more of relationship? Like, how was it for you in the beginning versus now?

Rucsandra (28:11.05) I realized in the first few weeks, you know, of teaching online, I I had never taught online like that. And I realized, well, how do you keep the energy going and flowing? Yeah. Like my work has always had that component. I could all I could feel someone's energy and I could feel where they were at and what was happening. And then I started thinking, okay, so what would be?

the things that I would need to watch and how would I need to guide the class? What and I realized that it had to be slightly different. Because I I was teaching movement, right? And people were, women were on their mats in their living room, but they would be watched by me and they they could see each other on the screen, right? And the way I teach, I don't do movements with them. I sit at my desk and I watch them and I guide them. It's like they

They have a one-on-one with me. Interesting. So I had to use everything, you know, I had to use my eyes to look for patterns. Yeah. Movement in a different way, now with, you know, many bodies on the screen. Yeah. And I had to extend my energy through the screen to them. They had to feel held so that they can relax. Yeah. And

They had to feel like they were making progress, that they felt better. So I had to use everything. I had to use my eyes, I had to use my knowledge, I had to look at a different way, I had to use my voice a different way, and use my energy a different way.

Sophie (29:54.2) So interesting.

Rucsandra (29:56.768) And you know, what really, really surprised me is that when I had the studio, you know, we are social beings, right? And people would come to do their work, but a lot of the time was spent socializing, where the attention was not on themselves, it was on their interaction. So that yes, it was beautiful and relational.

But it took away from the power of what can happen when we really connect with our physical body. So now, because everybody's, you know, they created a space like a little sanctuary for themselves, the same designate designated place that they go to every day. Right? And then they're there, they're now they know, or even someone new who joins the program, they immediately

understand that there is a way to really drop into your body. So that attention is on themselves for a full hour. So magic has been happening in terms of how their bodies can change. Yeah. And I realized that a long time ago, but now, you know, as year the years kept going on and on, my belief was reinforced that for a woman to feel really good

Sophie (31:13.357) Yeah.

Rucsandra (31:26.496) in her body. She cannot work out like a man. No. And everything that all the workouts in the world today, they're all designed for men. And women's bodies break.

Sophie (31:29.901) Yeah.

Sophie (31:40.75) Does that go for Pumades as well? 'Cause I do a lot of

Rucsandra (31:44.992) Yeah, I taught Pilates for twenty eight years. Dude. I love Piladas, but the way he taught was totally man.

Sophie (31:52.822) He was a man. Pilates was that was actually his last name, right? German Pilates. He was German, was he?

Rucsandra (31:56.728) Joseph Bellar is the other piece. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes. Yeah. German and his grandfather was Greek, hence Pilates. But if you I don't know if you you were ever curious to watch any of his videos. No, I've not. I'll I'll send you one. I'll I'll send you actually saved some on Instagram. to see how he taught. I'm like, a woman cannot cannot do that, you know?

Sophie (32:06.081) that makes sense.

Rucsandra (32:24.512) Most of the research that is out there is done on men. Mm. Like the keto diet, that might or might not work on a woman that well. We know it works very well on men.

Sophie (32:34.764) Yeah, yeah, yeah. With so many I mean, all of medicine, like the men medicinal research is only is mostly being done on on men because women have this cycle and then they, you know, say that the the consistency of the data can't be provided, blah, blah, blah. But then you have like the issue of like I mean, it was crazy to be I I

People who listen to this podcast they know I have ADHD because I s I switch from one subject to the next to the next, you know. But I usually come full circle most of most of the time. Don't quote me on this. But so I was diagnosed really early. I was really young. And I was like, Yeah, whatever, like I'm not I'm not hyper, you know, I'm not the hyper kind of person. I don't I'm not

Rucsandra (33:15.31) Hm and

Sophie (33:25.494) like giddy and no jittery all the time and like need to do something all the time. So I kinda like dismiss it. I was like, whatever. Like, I don't like ADHD I didn't really take it in into consideration. And then much later, I think only like two years ago or so, I ended up reading the specific symptoms for women with ADHD. And it's so different. It's vastly different. Like

Rucsandra (33:50.558) Shit.

Sophie (33:54.538) A women in like AD, they're like relational aspects. There is like an aspect of like how they feel on the inside versus on the out. Like there's so many others. And I was like, my God, like this is me to a T. But then the normal quote unquote ADHD diagnosis did not resonate with me at all, which was so interesting to learn. And this is just

one thing, right? And it's a v very well studied area. So I only can imagine, you know, the many hundred thousands aspects that are yeah in the dark for us. And just in general, like a woman, an embodied woman versus a non-embodied woman. Like how would you describe this? What happens to a woman? I mean you you you alluded a little bit

Rucsandra (34:33.452) Yeah.

Sophie (34:49.515) Like in terms of like physical ailment, right?

Rucsandra (34:53.014) Yeah, there's the tension that's being held in the body never can r release. When you're not in your body, you can get injured very easily. And you know, for me, it never really made sense when people said, I went to the gym, I worked out, I got injured. And my reaction was, why?

Your body is telling you so far ahead, so far in advance, that you're going in a direction that's gonna lead to to an injury. And then I started thinking, like, okay, so what's going on? What's the reality? Like, what why? Why is this happening? And I realized because women don't feel their bodies anymore. They cannot feel. So then I started thinking about it.

And I started to look for more signs and I started to talk to my girlfriends and I asked them, Okay, so what happens when you're upset? Hm. They're like, Okay, what which direction do you want me to go? Do you know, I go and yell at my husband or boyfriend or what are you looking for? I'm like, No, what happens in your body when you're upset? Yeah. And they said, I leave my body, I can't even feel my body.

when I'm really upset. So I asked enough women to know that, you know, like, yeah, that's one of the things that we do. When we get very upset, yeah, we don't feel our bodies anymore. So then I I started asking my male friends. I'm like, okay, so I'm gonna give you a I'm gonna tell you a phrase and you tell me if you understand what I'm saying. What was the phrase? The phrase was, I am so upset.

Sophie (36:44.728) Just if

Rucsandra (36:48.918) I'm not in my body right now. Right? So and they're like, I have no idea what you mean. Every single man. I don't understand understand the words, but what do you mean? You're gonna have to explain that to me. And everyone I see your reaction, right? You're when I say that, you know exactly what I mean, right? So I'm like, okay, so how many points of disconnection do we actually have as women?

Sophie (37:11.416) Thing like

Rucsandra (37:18.606) How many instances in which we lose a little bit of our connection to our bodies? I met women who were in chronic pain for decades. Yes. I'm like, and and I I thought, like, okay, the injuries were bad, really bad, some of them horrific. But then I thought, but the body is a healing machine. Yeah. The same way injury happens, the same way.

Sophie (37:47.362) We pay that.

Rucsandra (37:48.702) Of ten the of tension and limitation and injury happen, those are the same pathways that if you know how to walk through, lead to the exact opposite, the release, the healing, the calming down. So I'm like, okay, so what's going on? It's not that something has been so badly damaged that it cannot be repaired. It's like there's so much stuff that's standing in the way of the body actually remembering. So I changed.

I changed the way I worked. I changed what I chose to teach and how to start to restore, to help women restore this capacity to feel, to feel their bodies again, to actually start to feel like they have a choice.

Sophie (38:34.978) Beautiful. This is I keep having so many things I would like to say because, like, you know, you know how somebody talks and we listen to them and like your synapses just go. Like I'm but what you just said with like the the pathways, that is something that strikes me so fundamentally true. But I used to suffer for a very long time from severe crickling.

Highly functioning, but severely crippling anxiety and depression.

Rucsandra (39:11.105) And

Sophie (39:12.63) You know, for a long time I was so frickin' afraid of myself in a way, because I realized I was capable of taking meaning everything. And I realized that sometimes even when I when I was in a really dark place and I would talk with my friends and they try to like cheer me up. And I this was something that I tried to avoid at at all costs, but I I sometimes even was able to like

make them be like, is there actually no meaning? And that I always I never wanted this. I never wanted to affect anyone negatively with my like I was like, this is the the black void that is eating me up. Like I don't want anyone else. So that's also why I one of the reasons why I kept it very closely to me. And it took me such a long time to understand if I can take out the meaning everything, that also means that I can give meaning to everything.

Rucsandra (40:04.686) Thing.

Sophie (40:11.83) And that was the moment where obviously not everything changed from one day to another, but it was this like understanding of like it's a two-way streak. You know what I mean? And that opened up like an entire universe for me. And now I'm like actively creating meaning every single day. You know what I mean?

It's such a simple, such an obvious law of nature. And yet so much suffering to really understand this. But this was just like a yeah, a beautiful moment of resonance with what you just shared. And also like, yeah, you know, everything you said, like the leaving your body like again, I've for the longest time that I remember, I was I had severe depression, severe.

Rucsandra (40:42.478) It takes

Rucsandra (40:58.158) What do you like?

Sophie (41:07.64) Highly functioning, and I didn't want to tell anyone because I felt like if I said it out loud, it would become true. So I kept everything balled up. I had panic disorders, panic attacks. There were times where I couldn't leave the house. I was so in so much fear. Like there was so much fear stored in my body. And

Rucsandra (41:16.174) And

Sophie (41:33.012) Obviously we're at a completely different stage right now. And I I especially through what I do right now, it like changed so much for me. And I've done I've explored so many different spiritual mediums, you know, I've done plant medicine journeys, I've done meditation, I've done all kinds of things. But there's still a level of me that doesn't fully feel embodied, you know. There's a level of me that

There's just the other day, can I can I share like a little anecdote with you? Because I would love to like hear your perspective on it. I was with a friend. She owns a vintage furniture shop. She actually helped a lot with a lot of this to get this together. And she her store is super close from where I live. So sometimes I'd dip in and we just have coffee and we, you know, chit chat, like girls talk. so I was just there. We had the best time and we're just like talking.

And then this guy comes in and he clearly on box and he's in rage. And he there's there's like on an energetic level, I almost felt like I was fainting. So that's like the the the the mirror version, right? I feel like men like give out all the energy without t blinking twice, and I'm so aware of.

Rucsandra (42:35.03) Yes.

Sophie (42:59.032) how my energy can affect other people. So I always try to like contain it because I don't want you to be affected by my, by my anger or by my, you know, by by whatever is coming up for me that doesn't belong to you. Like I'm so aware of what are the things that belong to me and what doesn't belong to, you know? Yeah. But this guy, he like came and he was on drugs and he was like, he was upset. He didn't need any harm. Like,

That was so clear to me, pretty clear to me from from the get-go. He babbled weird shit about like wanting to protect my friend. I was like, from all the people that are in this room, the only person that needs help is you. Me and my friend were A okay, but just when he came in and like this this wave of energy hit me, I was dissociating.

And I in the moment I try to just like keep things together and be as quote unquote normal as I can. But I I kept thinking back to that moment because I was like, should I just have fainted? You know? Should I should have actually because that was what my body was feeling. My body was feeling this. And then he knew he would have known how his energy actually affected me. But because I pretended that like nothing happened, I was just like, you know.

nodding my head and not doing anything, he'll never know how his actions and his way of being have an effect on other people. But it I I couldn't in the moment I was just like in this and I think you surely know what I'm talking about in this like default, like survival mode where you just try to get through the moment, but you're not I wasn't there. I wasn't in my body. I wasn't

you know, rooted and like I couldn't react to the situation. And that drives me crazy sometimes. Because I'm not at a loss for words. Like I can articulate myself. I'm not, I'm also not the person who like shies away from challenge. Like I take a challenge head on. But why is it that in especially in relational aspects, especially

Sophie (45:25.166) Especially in situations where people have like this overbearing energy and are very unaware of themselves, I don't know how to deal with the situation. Do you find that like am I unique with this or is this like a common threat that people lose touch with them in like relational contact?

Rucsandra (45:51.288) I think that mm that has to do with women and men.

Sophie (45:56.94) Yeah. Yeah, I agree.

Rucsandra (45:59.256) The fact that women are afraid.

Sophie (46:01.742) Yeah, I'm afraid of men, for sure.

Rucsandra (46:04.13) Like most women that I know of all ages, yeah, have been in situations where they weren't safe. And then I read this. I read this, I don't know where, or someone just saw I can't remember, but it came down to the fact that a woman entering a building with a door that locks always looks behind her.

Now yes, those things happen to to all of us as women and so many other things, right? And over time they accumulate in the physical body. Yes, they accumulate in our minds and they you know, the they accumulate in the emotional body, of course. But ultimately, emotions are trapped.

Sophie (46:42.274) Time.

Sophie (46:45.943) Mm.

Rucsandra (47:01.422) Hormones, molecules of hormones that are trapped in our connective tissues, in our joints, in our that we lose over time. We lose mobility. Our bodies are meant to be fluid, to move with ease. As we age, that this whole thing, you know, like, it's age. No, it's not age, it's the the trap stuff. Another thing that

Sophie (47:28.427) Yeah.

Rucsandra (47:31.746) fascinated me as a kid looking at people and adults, right? The adults in my life around me, and starting to discern and see and make, you know, figure out differences according to how emotionally intelligent they were, how well they could deal with what they were feeling and what had happened to them.

And I saw that there was a difference in their facial features, in how they held their shoulders, how their bodies progressed through decades. So that fascinated me. I I was observing it, and then I realized that when I started working with women, I started to see those patterns too. So it's like, okay, so we're going deeper. These patterns have to be released too. So I believe that.

Sophie (48:15.598) Start.

Rucsandra (48:30.772) If our bodies are freer, and when I when I say freer, I mean every joint moving freely. Every fascial connection being free. The balance of strength, not like the workout strength. That's not real strength. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know? Like every muscle in perfect balance with everything else and it can be done.

Sophie (48:39.8) Yeah.

Sophie (48:44.888) Yeah.

Rucsandra (49:00.672) It's a process, it can be done, but the result is a woman with a body that's a lot more resilient that processes emotions faster because things don't get trapped in areas that don't have

Sophie (49:15.628) Yeah, for sure. Ooh, that resonates so much.

Rucsandra (49:19.872) A body that if we're taking it now in the in terms of energy and T T C traditional Chinese medicine and meridians and acupuncture and pressupuncture and all that stuff. A body through which forces travel without getting trapped where they they don't need to get that trapped. Energy moves better. The whole life force moves better. So that is a woman.

with a fluid body, who moves with ease, who looks twenty years younger, and moves like she's Yeah.

Sophie (49:57.48) And the and what comes to mind for me also is like this body-mind-spirit connection, right? It's like this holy trinity. You you cannot work on one without working on the others. And like you said, it's not about and that to me is so fascinating. I'm like, why do we create this hell on earth for ourselves by by detaching looks from everything else? It's just about the aesthetics, it's just about the surface.

Why do we not want to go deeper? Like beauty has nothing to do with age. Yeah. A 90 year old woman, like you said, that doesn't have trapped energy that is lives in her body, can outshine a 20 year old girl without us so much as like snipping her fingers. Yeah. It's like it's for me, beauty is.

Rucsandra (50:49.176) Mm-hmm.

Sophie (50:57.144) Completely ageless. For me, beauty is is this heart coherence, this soul coherence. Where there's a soul, there's beauty. And if you're connected to your soul, you are beautiful. And so for me, it's like a mindfuck in and of itself to call it beauty standards, because that has nothing to do with beauty. Beauty is nourishing. Beauty is ageless. Beauty is sacred. Yes.

Rucsandra (51:11.192) boom.

Rucsandra (51:25.582) Thank you.

Sophie (51:26.242) Beauty standards are just aesthetics.

Rucsandra (51:29.58) And it's unfair, isn't it? A beauty standard? Like each one of us came here under the direction of our own souls. We're unique. Yeah. We're a triumph of life in a moment in time. Yeah. A standard? There is no stand there cannot be a standard.

Sophie (51:53.454) And we we s subject ourselves to that. Like we like the this is a narrative that we reaffirm by believing in it. We can just not believe it and create other narratives. Like we're the creators, literally. So that to me is just like and I I mean a lot of what you said also doesn't I practice Reiki. So Reiki is also about like the you know, the divine flow and the energy.

Rucsandra (52:11.254) Like wild.

Sophie (52:22.496) And there's nothing more beautiful than an embodied woman. There is nothing in the world that is more and and and and beauty again in a way of nourishment. Like seeing an embodied woman is like seeing the universe glowing up and like be like being able to witness that light is just the most beautiful thing there is, in my opinion. So

your work just seems so profoundly sacred. And I would love to like like I share it with you, like I think I'm I'm definitely more embodied than I used to be, but I'm definitely not as embodied as I think I could be. Like if you like did an impromptu session with me and you observed my body, like what would something, what would be something that I could do to like be more embodied?

Rucsandra (53:18.06) Well, next time you do a class, ask yourself one question. Hmm. Does this feel good? Hmm? And if the answer is no, how can I make it good? Yeah. And that will change everything. Mm. They're like, what do you mean we're allowed to follow what feels good? Aren't we here to beat our bodies into submission? And

But our bodies are not something to be fixed or corrected or disciplined. We just need to allow the things that have been piling on on so many levels. Yeah. In joints and muscles and tissues.

Sophie (54:05.047) Yeah.

Rucsandra (54:06.584) To be released, to to move out. And then the body remembers. The body doesn't remember through hard workouts. If we if we do those hard workouts, because that's what we learned and that's what we think we should be doing, that's not the same thing as if the body is in a state now where it says, You know what? I feel pretty good. Give me more because that fills me up now. Mm.

Sophie (54:35.286) Yeah, that's a huge distinction. Whether you do it from an intrinsic wish to feel your body more, or you do it from like this

This inner critic of like you have to do more to to be deserving of anything, right?

Rucsandra (54:51.895) Yeah.

Rucsandra (54:55.372) Yeah, I teach my clients and students the difference between how it feels to move with the mind making the choice to do that, because the mind is conditioned to do that, and how it actually feels when the body says, This is what I want. Let me do that. So I teach my clients to rest in the middle of all the classes.

Sophie (55:25.099) Is it?

Rucsandra (55:25.422) Do you feel like lying down? Do you feel like getting your pillow and your blanket and lying down? At at first, especially women who are used to go, go, go and have a more type A personality, that is so difficult for them. It's so challenging. And then they start to notice.

Sophie (55:48.962) But yeah.

Rucsandra (55:54.37) They don't even know when they're when they're very, very, very tired. When I teach a specific type of class in my program, that is, yes, it is, it's happening in the body, but its main purpose is to help the nervous system calm down and be more regulated. When finally someone who's been living in the high level of stress, when finally they get to that place, they're on the mat.

They're at home, they're relaxed, they're safe, and I'm guiding them. And they fall asleep. And sometimes they tell me, like, you know what? I I, you know, for months I come to that class, I fall asleep. I'm like doing 20 minutes and then I nap or I take 10 minutes naps. And when there is that much exhaustion, and when the body is that depleted, and the nervous system is that taxed.

There is not the time to go to the gym and lift weights. The moment a woman has the experience of how it feels to be calm, she falls asleep, there's nothing left. And that's the energy that many women take to a Pilates class, to a weightlifting class, to a whatever else is happening out there.

Sophie (57:15.438) For sure I've been

Rucsandra (57:17.394) And it's like, yes, I feel good that when I when I did it, I went and I feel good. But is the body truly feeling good then? The movement created all the, you know, the endorphins, okay, so that's better. The mind is the one that's most satisfied. You went, you worked hard, you did good.

Sophie (57:38.07) You you're deserving.

Rucsandra (57:40.298) It deserves whatever. And the reality for many women is that the moment they actually start to feel their bodies, to feel, to really understand what it is to feel, they fall asleep. They need to stop. They take a break. Nervous system cannot like it's just too the difference is so big to actually start to feel something.

Sophie (58:04.972) Yeah, that I mean, I stopped working as a lawyer because I had a burnout and I didn't even have a burnout because my job was like terribly demanding. I had a burnout because I never allowed myself to rest. Ever. Even when I was quote unquote not doing anything, my mind was so brutal with myself. It was just screaming at me, being like, You should be doing more, you should be doing this, you should be doing that.

Whatever. And it took me forever. And like even yesterday, like it st sometimes these moments still come back. And I'm like, but now I can distinguish it. I'm like, okay, no, this voice is not doing anything for me. Like I'm not this is not helping me in any way. Like, but it took me such a long time to understand that I can trust myself, you know? Like

trusting myself for the longest time. I and this is such a common narrative, right? That we're lazy ass fuckers. And if we don't kick ourselves and and break ourselves and push ourselves and force ourselves, nothing ever happens. And I wholeheartedly disagree. I don't think that's true at all. I think we're natural creators. We naturally want to leave an imprint in the world.

And if we just listen to our bodies, we will get into like, especially as women, like into like a natural cycle of like, yeah, there are times where we're not doing anything. But so there's winter. In winter, nothing happens, but it's necessary stage for spring and for summer. And it I'm still learning this, right? And I know I I understand the theory, but there's still an element of

panic that happens to me sometimes. Like I can tell, for example, interestingly enough, all my ailments in the body, they're all on the left side. So I have my wrist that is constantly inflamed. I have my hip that is like I have like a muscle thing that like I I can massage it out, but it's it's reoccurring. And I have my knee that I have from a from a su pretty severe like skiing accident.

Sophie (01:00:29.186) That is like I had surgery on it and you know, with knees, like they just never really get back to where they were, or so we're told. But it's so interesting that it's like on my left side, and they say that the left side is connected to the feminine, right? And the right side is connected to the masculine. And my entire left side is feel old. And that is sometimes that is a very sad thing for me to.

Like I I have a hard time. On my left side I feel like a brittle old woman. On my right side, I feel like a young kid. And I'm working on this with everything I do every day, but

Rucsandra (01:01:16.706) I

Sophie (01:01:16.878) I do believe I it is possible to get to a place where where I can integrate these things. And what you just said is so beyond beautiful and synchronistic for this project as well, right? Because you said, well, if we create the conditions for the body, we can actually remember where we're supposed to go. And the same thing is

what I'm trying to do here, right? We create the conditions to kind of like let our bodies tell what a future could look like. Cause it we have it all stored inside of us. We don't have to jump through whoops and do crazy things in order to be deserving. Like it's all here. And and to really like to understand this on an intellectual level is one thing, but to really drop into that and to to live

That trust out. Do you have a recommendation for me?

Rucsandra (01:02:19.79) We were taught not to trust our bodies. And then not to trust ourselves because we were told how to behave, how to be, how to speak, what to do, what's appropriate, what's not appropriate. Right? Many of us were brought up like that, right? But then I don't know what word I'm looking for, but the surrender, the surrender of authority.

To a therapist, to a teacher, to a doctor, to a surgeon, to a therapist of any kind. Yeah. And yes, sometimes we might need the specialist, the doctor, the therapist. We need them and they guide us. But ultimately, the authority of making choices is ours. So

I teach women to return to the state of self-authority. And yes, this is exactly how I teach. You have the choice. I teach them the choices. You have the choice to do this or to do that or to do that, to take a nap, to do something completely different. At the beginning, it's not easy because we all of us were taught to follow. We went through the school.

In our society where you're right, so what what do you mean now I'm in a class and now she's telling me to do what I want? What my body's telling me? What?

Sophie (01:03:57.536) Yeah, there's a level of nervousness to that, right? And

Rucsandra (01:04:00.182) Yeah, yeah. Fear like, am I performing now? What if I'm not choosing the right thing? Am I choosing the right thing? Right? And after a while, you'll see like a screen full of women, beautiful women who move so well, who have such an awareness of their body. Some of them are following me. Some of them are doing things completely differently, beautifully, correctly.

Sophie (01:04:06.904) Truly.

Rucsandra (01:04:28.258) They're letting their bodies choose. Some of them in the middle of the class, pillow, blanket, pum, nap for 10 minutes. Because they started to feel what it means when the body says, okay, today we're taking it easy. today give me more. I can take it. I want it. But not a mind. So the can the mind-body connection, yes, everybody's talking about it. We're all talking about it.

Sophie (01:04:47.658) Yeah.

Rucsandra (01:04:55.19) But understanding it at the conceptual level and actually feeling it. Those are two very different things.

Sophie (01:05:06.624) This is so interesting because I believe, you know, like I can only imagine how wonderful and impressive this transformational process must be for you as a teacher to like see those changes happening within your students. And then I mean, can you share a little bit about this? Like 'cause I'm so interested in like metamorphoses, right? And that is you you witness metamorphoses.

And it's not a linear process, right?

Rucsandra (01:05:38.274) No, it's nonlinear. And many things happen at the same time in in parallel to each other, right? With each other. The first step that I've I've realized many, many years ago, the first thing that needs to happen is to calm the body down, to calm the body and the nervous system. So that sensation can be clearer. And then you start to take away.

All the things that stand in the way of the body moving well. It's a re-education process. But I find that the re the biggest part of the re-education process is actually going through the resistance of understanding what needs to happen. Because sometimes, especially if a woman is used to doing the big workouts, the big movements.

And if she's just feeling nothing, well, she not nothing, she feels the effort, but she doesn't feel her body. Yeah. To start to drop your attention in such a way that you actually start to feel a little bit. The moment you feel you can do things differently, the moment you do things differently, the proprioceptive system has to adapt. Yeah. The entire proprioceptive system. So then that gets

destabilizing for the mind. And then and then as this is happening, someone, me, is cheering you on. Wow, that's amazing. You're confused. Fabulous state. You took a nap. Brilliant. Take another one.

Sophie (01:07:06.05) Yeah.

Sophie (01:07:20.448) I love that. You're literally cheering on the chrysalis state. Because the chrysalis state is so uncomfortable, right? It's like there's like a lot of turmoil, chaos, disintegration, like and and that's what I see on a collective level too. We're like, where is back? Where is front? Where are we going? What is happening? And no one is cheering on. No one is there to be like, this is actually okay. We're just reorganizing. We're getting to a better place.

And that's so beautiful because we need that. We we're our relational beings. We're not capable of just working ourselves out within ourselves. It's impossible. And what you just I mean, throughout my journey, I've tried so many things, you know, I've I've done so many embodiment things. And nowadays I'm like, you know, I go everywhere. I have no issue to be in a room with with a and and do a practice I've never done before. But that was a process.

In the beginning I was every time I was like, my god, what am I supposed to do here? I was like this little robot who was like, you know, I could barely I was so

I would go into places and I was intrigued, but I also was like, What you just described, like I get so stressed but I'd because I'd be like, What is she saying? There's no right or wrong. Like clearly I'm doing it wrong because I'm I'm thinking there is a right or wrong. So then the not the doing it, the not focusing on right or wrong then becomes kind of a wrong. And then you know what I mean? And then you kinda like spiral yourself into like the wildest.

Yeah. Stresses and and to just have someone that holds your hand through that, that doesn't try to improve anything, that doesn't try to make you give you additional homework, but just rather is like, it's all good. It's part of the process. You can do it. You will get there. Is gold. Actual gold.

Rucsandra (01:09:07.682) Mm.

Rucsandra (01:09:17.483) Mm-hmm.

Sophie (01:09:24.024) Do then come out on the other side and be like, ooh.

And you know what happens to me? I'm curious whether that happens to you too. Every year I kind of like access a new level of like embodiment. And then I'm like, this is how it can feel. Yeah. And then I look back to last year where I had the same epiphany. I'm like, this is how it can feel. And I'm like, wait, what? Last year I thought I was embodied? Yeah. Like I was so cramped up.

And then like every year a new level is like, my God. Yeah. Then I look back to last year I'm like, And I thought that was good. Like that was actually horrible. Does that happen to you too?

Rucsandra (01:10:10.146) Yeah. And every year there's something more and that happens to my clients and my students too. And I've had clients who've been with me for I have clients who've been with me for twenty years, for fifteen years, because this is now part of their life. That's their rebalancing method for themselves, right? Beautiful and I asked them in a Q and A, you know, recalibration session. We call it recalibration. We connect with each other. We go through some

Exercises that don't have to do with the mat, lying on the mat. And like, what did your body teach you? That was one of the questions. They said, Well, my one woman said, Well, my body taught me that ears keep going on, they happen, they come, the body actually is getting better, has the capacity to get better every year. The bodyful, my body taught me patience.

My body taught me curiosity. Beautiful. And the way they move. They're amazing. It is such a privilege to witness that. To be in the middle of that. So that's my work. Such a privilege.

Sophie (01:11:31.8) Thank you so much for sharing all of this. And it's such a privilege for me to hear you and to see you, you know, talking about embodiment. Like I can tell how you talk about this, and it's not something that lives in your head, but it's it lives in all of your body and it's your life's work and it's so meaningful and so profound. I can tell how.

Rucsandra (01:11:56.022) Thank you.

Sophie (01:12:01.026) And that's the beauty of it. And that's kind of like what I call also the new paradigm of leadership, right? Is like you're you put yourself in the middle of it. It's not like you're above it. And it changes you as much as you change it. Like it there's a relational aspect to that work, right? And that's really, really beautiful to to hear that and to experience that. And I can

You know, I can inv like I have such an idea now of of your work and I would love to, you know, maybe I get the chance to one day like participate in the class of yours and see you in action. I would love you. That would be so

Rucsandra (01:12:41.27) Yeah.

Rucsandra (01:12:47.534) I would love that too. But I love being here. So very special. This process. And I f I think I finished my bar. Exactly. I think I did. I don't know why.

Sophie (01:12:57.656) You finish your butter it's She's so sweet and cheeky.

Rucsandra (01:13:04.108) I know. Cheeky. Yeah.

Sophie (01:13:06.304) So you share that you're from Romania originally, right? And I have this weird obsession with the Danube Delta in Romania. I've never been, but I read this book. It was a mediocre book. I didn't really like it. It was interestingly enough, and now like, I love when that happens. It's like butterfly effect upon butterfly effect upon butterfly effect. But so get this. There's this book, and the protagonist, like,

Half of the book takes place in Romania and the other half takes place in New York.

Rucsandra (01:13:40.597) Mm.

Sophie (01:13:42.698) And I couldn't really tell you what the book but like it's a love story between two people and they they meet in Romania, they have like an age difference and then they meet again in in New York. I read that book when I had no freaking idea about New York and now New York has become like this like where my essence wants to be. Again goes back to like New York is like my body, like all of my body wants to be here. And it absolutely makes no sense that I'm here, but it all worked out like

life kind of worked itself out, like that I got this space, you know, that this space got prolonged. Like it was so many things happened and so many th I got so many signs also that told me that, you know, this was where I was supposed to be. Anyways, this book, I read this book, I was in my early twenties. And in the very beginning it describes the scenery of the Danube Delta.

Like going leading into the what is it, the Black Sea? Yes. Leading into the Black Sea. And there's something about I will never forget those lines. The the and not even like the lines itself, but the energy that that that I received the description of of the magic of that place.

Then I told my sister that if I ever die, I want my ashes to be scattered there, even if I've never been there.

Rucsandra (01:15:12.28) Ha ha ha

Sophie (01:15:15.19) Am I making this up or is it actually a magical place? Is it? Okay.

Rucsandra (01:15:18.294) It is a magical place. Yeah. Yeah. With amazing sunsets and sunrises and

Sophie (01:15:26.648) That's how I envi and I envision it so calm.

Rucsandra (01:15:30.134) Yeah. I've I've been on the Danube close to the Delta. I've never really, really gone into the Delta. You have to know what season to go into. There are a lot of mosquito and all the mosquitoes. But the fauna is extraordinary. The flora. All the birds, all the Yeah. It is a magical place that I know.

Sophie (01:15:54.762) All right, so we're gonna close this up. So what I wanna do with you, which is very on brand for this conversation, I wanna do a little felt thought experiment.

So what I want you to do is to really like with your body tune in to the current state of the collective. And I what I mean by that is I don't want us to like, you know, make out the culprit of anything. I don't want to blame anyone, anything. I don't want to be like this is bad or this is good, but I just want for us to assess how it feels on our body.

the current state where we are right now. Does it in our in our shoulders, in our jaws, in our stomach, wherever something we'll sick?

Rucsandra (01:16:50.112) If anything else, you know. Well I can feel it. There is a lot of fear and there's paralysis. I think we're paralyzed. We can't believe what's happening and we're paralyzed. And we feel trapped. Yeah. We're scared of what will be in the future.

Mm. We create all sorts of scenarios about what can go wrong.

Sophie (01:17:25.87) For sure. So now the experimental part is I want us to together apply the lens of the butterfly.

Rucsandra (01:17:36.27) Mm.

Sophie (01:17:38.314) So I want just to be like, okay, the current state would you describe very vividly, a lot of fear, a lot of

Sophie (01:17:47.97) blocked energy, a lot of paralysis. And we look at it as a state of crystalline.

Rucsandra (01:17:55.618) Something this

Sophie (01:17:57.848) State that is very turbulent, very chaotic, very unorganized. It's soup, right? It's like literal soup with like weird stuff floating around. You don't know where what belongs. And if you think about it, you know, the the caterpillar before it goes into the Chrysalis remembers the butterfly. It

Rucsandra (01:18:24.78) Mm-hmm.

Sophie (01:18:26.05) The caterpillar literally got the information of the butterfly. And I'm not, that's not even like woo-woo talking what I'm doing here, because I I got this biologically backed in the sense that like the caterpillar contains imaginal cells. That's what they're called. And they're those cells are dormant during the stage of the caterpillar. And they come alive through that state of chrysalis.

Rucsandra (01:18:55.902) Mm-hmm.

Sophie (01:18:56.97) And they contain the blueprint so the butterfly can be formed. And this is so interesting to me because those two creatures are not it's not two different creatures. It's the same creature, it's continuum, right? Of the same. And the same thing applies for us. And so I do believe we store the information of the future in our bodies. First off.

Rucsandra (01:19:11.374) Yeah.

Sophie (01:19:24.522) If you if you think of the chrysalis of the collective and the butterfly of the collective, it's very obvious that we're all just a little piece of it. So we have to put those pieces together. And that's what I'm trying to do here. I'm trying to collect those fragments. And those butterflies, they're visual fragments. And these things, they're fragments. We're we're collecting fragments. And so what we have to do is again

Rucsandra (01:19:41.614) Mm-hmm.

Sophie (01:19:53.122) The problem is, and you described this really beautifully, is when we go into our heads stuck because we're not fortune tellers. We're like, How the hell are we supposed to come out of this soup? Impossible. Like we cannot like our heads are not able to see the future. And then we panic because we're like, How is this about like we're it's all scattered, it's all all over the place. Like, how are we ever supposed to find like a better place? And

Rucsandra (01:19:59.149) We get

Sophie (01:20:21.844) Different place, a more current place, even. And so what I want us to do is leave all that behind. We cannot think our way into the future. It's not possible. But I want us again to tune into your body and try to connect to this to a butterfly state of the collective and how that feels.

how it looks like, how we get there, what we would do to in order to re to access that, but just on a body

Evokes the idea of a butterfly state.

Rucsandra (01:21:03.278) State of the collective.

Rucsandra (01:21:07.8) The unified state. Mm. A unified state. Beautiful.

We're not just bodies that never really truly connect. We're not separate. One side of the brain, the right side of the brain is capable of going into the in between, where we perceive each other energetically, not physically, not the boundary, the

Sophie (01:21:42.712) And that's when our microphones gave up for the first time throughout this entire process. I didn't they last so long without loading them, like without charging them.

However, not forever, clearly. And I was always so afraid of this happening and for some reason happened today. We with you

Through how many loops we had to jump to make this podcast happening. It was kinda like like the Terry on top of it all. Luckily, luckily, it only happened towards the very end. Ruxandra shared with me beautifully how the state of the Chrysalis to her was really this feeling of a lot of fear and paralysis.

And then we we channel together the the state of the butterfly. And I explained to her how, yeah, the that we each kind of like I see each and every one as kind of like one of those imaginal cells that if we bring all those fragments together, we can actually put together a blueprint from where we have more of an idea of what we're actually building. And

Rucsandra (01:22:39.318) і

Sophie (01:23:07.042) We then tapped into a butterfly state of the collective and it was so beautiful to see how her features softened and her shoulders dropped and she was just like sharing with me how we kind of remember the matrix, which was such an interesting way to put it for me, because the matrix naturally or typically is being referred to as something negative and she completely

reframed the idea of a matrix as like the like where our energies connect kind of outside of our bodies. Yes, our our energies are within our bodies, but they we have a field and that field is connected and that field is organized. And she referred to that as the matrix, the matrix of life. And I thought that was so profoundly beautiful. And yeah, just a general like a connectedness that organizes itself and

And that's kind of where we landed at the end of it. I'm very sad that those last minutes got lost because it was it it felt so free and not curated at all. It felt so flowy and natural. And I love to capture those moments because they remind us who we are without pushing. But in any case it was a an absolute honor to have had Rixandra on.

to for her to come in and share with me about her work and about the embodiment and it was just so beautifully synchronistically intertwined everything. Cause this is so much about the body and and how the body remembers and not the mind.

Sophie (01:25:03.032) If this episode stirred something in you, I'd love to hear about it. Send me a little whisper on Instagram at fairy tea.podcast, or just write the words fairy wings in my DMs. That's how I'll know you were here.

This was a 6-2 Studio production. Find us at six-two.studio for all your creative sound needs.