CC Rice: The Voice That Brings You Back to Yourself

In this powerful episode of A Lighthouse in the Dark, Michael Fishman sits down with CC Rice — actor, author, content creator, dialect director, and voice teacher — for a deeply practical and soul-centered conversation about voice, presence, communication, healing, and coming back to yourself after rock bottom.

CC shares the wisdom behind her book, The Root of Awareness: Tools to Ground and Grow Vocal and Physical Communication, and opens the door to a new way of understanding the voice. More than just sound, but as a bridge between body, mind, spirit, truth, of human connection.

Blending practical science with spiritual insight, CC teaches how grounding, breath, awareness, movement, and resonance can help us speak with more power, confidence, clarity, and authenticity.

Together, Michael and CC explore what it means to find your voice after life has shaken you, how the body holds our stories, and why communication begins long before the first word is ever said.

This conversation is for artists, speakers, teachers, leaders, healers, parents, performers, and anyone who has ever felt silenced, disconnected, overwhelmed, or unsure how to express what is living inside them.

Honest, illuminating, and deeply useful, this episode reminds us that our voice is more than a tool. It is a homecoming.

Because sometimes the way forward begins by grounding your body, opening your heart, and letting your true voice rise.

Links for CC Rice:

Socials — @GuidedInspiration

Personal website — https://www.ccrice.co/

Guided Inspiration Website — https://www.guidedinspo.com/

Book — https://www.amazon.com/Root-Awareness-Ground-Physical-Communication/dp/1967424756

Full episodes can be watched as well on YouTube @alighthouseinthedark channel.

For more connection and exclusive content please subscribe to the official @alighgthouseinthedark Substack.

Additional content is available across social media @alighthouseinthedark

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Mind, body, spirit, soul, we all are trying to find a way to align them. And my guest today is an expert at really tracing awareness through the entire body and has the ability to pinpoint not just gestures and vocal tones, but really find the deeper meaning underneath. So welcome to a lighthouse in the dark, CeCe Rice.

SPEAKER_01 0:26

Thank you. That's very nice.

SPEAKER_00 0:29

I'm so excited to have you. I'm a huge fan of your book. I'm I'm a huge fan of your work. For people who don't watch some of your stuff on social media, they absolutely should because the way you deconstruct not just communication but nonverbal communication and the interaction. Where did that start for you and what is your was your love of that?

SPEAKER_01 0:51

Yeah. My love of this work started for me in graduate school. I had a have a teacher, still a mentor. His name's Tom Jones with an H, the other Tom Jones. Tom is a really amazing dialect coach for some of your favorite people on screen, and also a healer of sorts. And I would watch him in our classroom when I was in grad school, and he'd put his hand on your neck, on your shoulder. I have this little spot right here where I hold all my tension. And Tom could look at a person, find that tension in their body, locate it, help them release it, and then tell them what was being held there, or they would tell him. And there was this really instant exchange. And I didn't know this until years later. Tom and I had a conversation after he was watching my social media stuff, and he was like, Have you been studying NLP, which is neurolinguistic programming? And I said, Yeah. And he was like, Oh, I was so into that back when I was teaching you. And I was like, You okay. And all the things clicked together, and I started thinking, okay. And we both are not, we're not neurolinguistic programming people, but we love the information. And wherever it comes from, if it can fold into the work that we're doing, standing in front of people, speaking, having to move our bodies, connecting the voice to language, then that stuff's in there somewhere on some level, and it was a big layer into how to communicate what I was experiencing when other people spoke. I needed language around it, and that language of decoding was coming through the chakra system. I was in yoga three times a week, we were in dance class, we were in clown class. And so what I'm doing is a combination of I don't know, 10 different modalities uh all in one. But the spark, the moment, was watching Tom in class.

SPEAKER_00 3:01

I'm a huge fan of all the different modalities and peace come together. So one of the things I'm trying to do in this show is bring people. We had uh Dr. Todd Frisch, who is uh like facial analysis. And and and he's amazing. And and so when I look at all these things, you don't have to have that be your key focus. I think that's one of those things is always being the student.

SPEAKER_02 3:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

So before we get into your book, yeah, I want people to meet you a little bit. What lights you up, CeCe?

SPEAKER_01 3:28

What lights me up, so many things. I'm all about light. And I was thinking a lot about light in you know, thinking about coming here today. It is something I was first told from the outside that people would tell me I was, you know, oh my gosh, you're so like you have such a light, you're bright. And I didn't I knew what they meant, but I didn't really know what it meant. And I think the energy of humans and their behavior, their lives, their movement, their interactions. I love people. And it's why I started acting when I was a kid. I love to observe people. I like to observe their walk, the way they spoke. I loved listening to the little idiolex and how their voices would change when they'd say a certain word. I've always been interested in organic life, and seeing people live gives me that little spark on the inside where I'm not focused on myself. Yeah, I'm listening into them. And I think there's something freeing about being available to other people that your light starts to shine because you're open, you're outward, right? When you're inward, that's when you dim your light. So for me, being present in the world outside of me is what brings my light forward, I think.

SPEAKER_00 4:50

Yeah. You're undeniable as far as like you're kind of an effervescent person. Like you just kind of shine. And it's a weird thing to hear as a compliment, right? Initially, because it it it you're not sure what to do with it, and it feels it feels a little weird and ethereal, and like the farther you get into these things, you're like, okay, I'm leaning into the weird and the ethereal. And you realize, like, no, those are all just portions of who we are and energetic things and how they relate. And it's it's a big part of the book. So I'll kind of get there. But I have this thing where I think people are afraid to be weird or odd or different. So, what is the thing about you that's weird, odd, or different that makes you beautiful?

SPEAKER_01 5:30

I'm the weirdest. I wish people knew how weird I was. I come off because I'm a Virgo son, like the light that I shine outwardly is put together. I mean, look at me, I'm dressed like the real housewives of the Mormon wives or whatever they're called. You know, I I present in a very buttoned-up academic kind of a way, but I'm a goof. I talk to myself a lot. I have conversations with myself in character. I make myself laugh more than anyone else does. Uh, I'm quirky. I like to move my body in strange ways. I I love a weird sound, I love mimicking things. I have sort of an automatic recall. You know, maybe this is like an ADHD thing, but you know, weird little stims where I hear a thing in my head and I have to say it out loud or something becomes a song. I was in marching band most of my life. I didn't want to be an actor. My mom told me I had to take an acting class when I was 14. And I said, Mom, please don't make me take that class. I'd rather take wood shop. The kids in the acting class are so weird. Just please don't make me become a might resemble that remark, so I don't know.

SPEAKER_00 6:49

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 6:50

I was like, these kids are just too weird. And she told me, try it for one semester, and if you hate it, you never have to do it again, and you can take wood shop. And I was obsessed. They were my best friends. We would spend all day, you know, talking about Shakespeare and just being nerds and being outcasts that people couldn't help but like. Yeah. Like we were very strange and loud at lunch, and at one point in high school, everyone in the lunchroom turned around and told my entire friend group to shut up because we were just so annoying. So there's a lot. There's a lot there.

SPEAKER_00 7:28

I think it's beautiful. Your book, The Root of Awareness. Um, I'm gonna put it here so people can see it. The root of awareness, it's all about communication at a level that I don't think most people ever really fully grasp. Talk to us about communication for a minute.

SPEAKER_01 7:43

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:43

Like, like, where does that come for for you and and what does awareness mean to you?

SPEAKER_01 7:48

Big questions.

SPEAKER_00 7:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 7:51

So awareness to me is the act of being the witness. And that is what I was talking about before. Seeing other people's light is about tuning in to them without dimming your own, staying in your own alignment and witnessing them, allowing them to live and breathe and speak and say and express however they want to uh without putting the cap on them. To me, that's awareness. So once you start putting the cap on someone, you know, your fingers on the scale. You're not just aware, you are in interacting, you're engaging. And I am interested very much so in that little scrim that's between my light and yours that allows both of our lights to shine. And so communication is that space between where our two lights are interacting with one another. And I'm not hindering you necessarily, though I could. That's still communication. But ideal communication for me is where there are two aligned light beings, and in the middle, their light is interacting, and there can be overlap, and there can be disagreement, and there can be bouncing off, and there can be pulling away, and all of that is part of the dance, the back and forth, the energetic exchange. To me, that's what communication is: energy moving between beings, whether animal, plant, human, we can communicate with our universe in infinite ways. You know, the subtitle is Tools to Ground and Grow Vocal and Physical Communication. We're so attached to the vocal communication part, and we want to separate it from the physical communication part. And I've always hated that. Like if there's anything that just drives me nuts, is when people just want to pay attention to body language or they just want to listen to what's being said. The two things cannot be uncoupled. They are in communication with one another.

SPEAKER_00 9:52

And when they don't match, yeah, it tells you everything, right? Because that's conflict and that's nuanced communication.

unknown 10:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:00

And then why is it right? Why do they not match? When you were talking about, I was literally thinking to myself, I want the spark of light going back and forth is the whole point of this conversation. But the idea that you take one or the other is like communication is a holistic endeavor.

SPEAKER_01 10:17

Yeah. There's some controversial things. And I I was teaching a workshop last month, and one of my students in the class is a therapist. I work with a lot of therapists, um, a lot of psychologists. You know, we were talking about taking turns in communication. And the thing that people are often taught in couples therapy, in all kinds of therapeutic practices, is that you take turns.

SPEAKER_00 10:42

I wanted this to speak. I wanted this so bad because this is something you and I share, and I was hoping this was going to come up. So please keep going. You're doing it. And I and but that's when you're comfortable with people. People who actually like each other are not afraid to step a little and like go back and forth and share the moment.

SPEAKER_01 10:59

Yes. I mean, so because my background is that of an actor, right? I started acting when I was a kid. So that was not part of the game. When you played the game of acting, right, you do a play. There's tossing the ball. We toss it back and forth. But even if you have the ball, I can get it back at any point and I can give it back at any point. And you don't have to give it to me for me to take it.

SPEAKER_02 11:26

Right.

SPEAKER_01 11:26

Right? So healthy communication. You look at a couple that's been together for 50 years and they love each other. They're finishing each other's sentences, they're bouncing back and forth, they're overlapping, they're talking.

SPEAKER_00 11:40

You see two girlfriends who've known each other nonstop for years.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

Everyone's talking at the same time.

SPEAKER_00 11:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:47

And it's not deflating anyone. No one's saying, excuse me, can I finish? Can I say what I'm gonna say? You start doing that when you resent the person on the other end of the communication. When you cannot listen to them and they cannot listen to you, and you know you're not being heard, you start to take turns. And what that does is it means I'm thinking about what I'm gonna say while you're talking. So I'm not taking you in. Yeah, I'm preparing my argument, and you're doing the same thing. And so we're both having a conversation with ourselves, pretending it's a conversation with someone else.

SPEAKER_00 12:22

And ready to have the fight. And I think that's the hard part sometimes in therapy is and even like parent and child, we get in this mode where it's like, no, no, you'll listen, and then when I'm done, I want an answer. It's like, okay, you just told that kid not to talk, and then you're mad that they didn't respond immediately.

unknown 12:40

Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:40

And now you set up a dynamic where they're not safe to share.

SPEAKER_01 12:44

Right. That's the other piece of it. If you're doing that kind of communication, someone becomes the moderator. But how can one of you be the moderator if you're having an equal exchange? And so that puts one person in the position of being corrected, being, you know, the underling, or both people try to do it. Oh, you police me, I'm gonna police you. And now we're not having a conversation still. So we have to a learn to fight, and it's something that actors learn. And you dive into it, you get good at it, you find a way to enjoy the expression of self without it being about tearing down the other person. Right. But it's truly about, well, this is what my character is experiencing. Human beings could use a lot of that. We need more places to practice our emotions where it's safe to have all the big ones and have nobody pushing us down and dimming our light and telling us not like that. You can communicate, but not that way, not that volume, not with those words, not with that language, not while looking at me like that. That's not communication, that's oppression.

SPEAKER_00 14:00

I'll speak from my side. You know, acting, I didn't realize this as a kid growing up as an actor. I was watching all these different communication styles, but I also was free to practice them on set.

SPEAKER_02 14:12

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 14:12

And real people, it's one of the things that when I watch, I watch the way people direct now as a director, and people will get mad when people step on each other's lines and all that. I'm like, that's how real people talk.

unknown 14:25

Right.

SPEAKER_00 14:26

One of the things like with young men, because we talked about young women who who talk over that way, the one place that where young men actually do that a lot now is when they're playing video games, which is why, in my mind, I think that's a safe space for young men, is because they feel like they can say whatever and there's interaction and people kick things back and then they mock each other.

unknown 14:47

Right.

SPEAKER_00 14:47

And for the most part, as long as it doesn't go too far, that's a safe place, and then you know immediately when someone goes too far. That's the other thing about communication. You know when you've gone too far because the the tone and the space and the light in the conversation changes.

SPEAKER_01 15:03

Absolutely. The breath changes.

SPEAKER_00 15:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:05

Somebody holds, somebody stops, somebody gasps, somebody lets go, they sigh. The breath will shift when the energy shifts. The light body will either release what it was holding or it will take in something new, right? So that is huge. And even within the video game example for young boys, there's also a triangulation happening. The game is in between them, so they can communicate freely on this other level because it's not just about watching each other and and talking about their own things happening inside themselves. They've got something to talk about. Right. They've got a place to put big emotions, they've got a place to yell and scream and be defeated and have those bigger emotions. Now I would love to see there be uh more space.

SPEAKER_00 15:48

Agree.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

You know, for the darker things, the sadder things, the happier things, the things on the each end of the spectrum. But I think you're right. It is a space that is safe in that way, which is good. We need more safe.

SPEAKER_00 16:04

We do. And and you were you were talking about repair.

SPEAKER_01 16:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:07

This is a huge subject for me that I think if I could do anything different as a parent, right? I wish I could go back knowing what I know now and be even better at repair. I feel like there are times I was good at it, but I think repair is an ongoing area that everybody should be growing in. Talk about repair, because you you do this in communication really beautifully, and I would love to get your insight.

SPEAKER_01 16:30

You know, I think repair, the language around repair sets us up for an expectation that once we fix it, we're good. Right. And I like to think more about maintenance, right? Just like if you were a car. If you have a big thing, you gotta get it repaired and then they fix it, but then after that, there's maintenance that goes along with it. All of this work, communication work, physical work, connecting communication to the body, the voice and the body, the soul, all working together, that alignment that I'm talking about. There is maintenance that must be done on each person's part in order to keep their well moving, so that when it's time to be there for someone else, to repair a big thing, to overcome some chasm between you, that there is enough alignment within the self that's been practiced without the pressure of the problem, without the thing that needs to be repaired, that this is just part of our lives and that we are doing it, that we are creating spaces to cry. Movies are a great way to do that.

SPEAKER_02 17:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 17:39

Uh, that we're creating spaces to have anger and to have physical movement and to stomp our feet and to throw tantrums, that those spaces that we create for that kind of communication allow us to have the room and the elasticity, that when someone needs more of our energy to heal the chasm between us, we we've got to shine our light a little brighter to heal this gap. That we have the practice in a safe space of doing so. So that's why the warmups that I talk about in the book are so important. That's the place to practice aligning, keeping your voice strong, keeping your breath connected to your voice, keeping your breath and your body connected throughout your system so that when it's time to be there for someone else, you already have practiced the tools in that safe container so that they can hopefully show up for you when it's time to engage.

SPEAKER_00 18:35

Okay, can I put you on the spot for a moment? Please. Can we give people an example a little bit? Can you just don't give away everything, but like a little bit so that people can see it in action? Because I'm a physical tangible learner. So what would you suggest for somebody?

SPEAKER_01 18:51

Yeah. So give me the issue. What's the problem?

SPEAKER_00 18:54

Well, let's talk about either maintenance or repair or grounding yourself because you're having a tough conversation or you know this is gonna be tough.

SPEAKER_01 19:00

Okay, great. So say I need a breakup with someone.

SPEAKER_00 19:05

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 19:05

This is a potent thing, right?

SPEAKER_00 19:07

We just started the the interview. Let's not end quick.

SPEAKER_01 19:12

But but this is a great example because does the breakup have to be a negative thing, right? How do we deal with that? Right. Okay. The way that I would practice for this event first would be I would get down on the ground, I would lie down on the ground, I would make a connection to the earth, not just physically with my body, by putting myself flat on my back, feet flat on the floor in a position called semi-supine, also known as constructive rest in the Alexander technique world. Connecting the body, specifically the tailbone, to the earth, allows for all that, you know, we don't have a tail anymore, but all those nerve endings that would have gone to the tail, what does the tail do? The tail is about balance. So the tail, putting that back into the earth, I like to think about my tail going down into the earth, that it can connect to this core of the earth, that I can plug myself in by lying flat on my back. And in that space, when I'm connected to the earth, my breath is going to naturally go to my belly. My belly's gonna rise and fall. That's the ideal breathing that I want to have when I'm standing up or sitting down having this breakup conversation. So I'm practicing it on the floor, softening my belly, letting everything stay aligned. And then I might start to visualize what's the conversation gonna look like? Where are we gonna be? Where am I gonna sit? Okay, we're at that coffee shop, we're in the table in the back. I'm now walking myself through what could happen. And I might go into a dark scenario. I might let my brain go there. I might let my brain go to the best case scenario. I might let myself hear some of the language that might want to come up in this conversation. I'm just walking myself through it and I'm keeping my breath going down to my belly because it can't go anywhere else because I'm lying flat on my back. Now I'm gonna roll over onto my side and then I'm gonna take a little nap. Two minutes. I'm just gonna let all of that stuff that I just brought to the surface, I'm gonna let it integrate. I'm just gonna let it wash over me. I'm desensitizing myself to the event that's coming. Okay? Then I'm gonna activate my body, wake up from my two-minute nap, stretch my body, get on all fours. So now I've gone through the first stages of life. I've come out of the body, I'm on my back, I'm not moving, I'm just there. I go back to the fetal, I comfort myself in the way that I would have been comforted in the womb. I wake my body up, I'm on all fours, I'm crawling, I'm starting to activate my spine, I'm putting it all together, I'm still thinking about where I'm going, what I'm doing, connecting my breath to my body. Then I add sound for the first time. Now I'm making outside connections to the voice through a system that's moving in in cat cow. So now I'm gonna get my body up onto my feet. I'm gonna start to stretch my body. I'm gonna stretch my voice. I'm gonna make big sounds now. Small sounds, big sounds, shake my body, loosen everything up. I'm gonna activate my breath. I'm gonna get my heart rate going. I'm gonna bounce my body. I'm gonna do some strength poses. I'm gonna do some balance poses. I'm gonna put my body into a space where it is aware of itself, connecting it to breath and sound. Now I'm gonna go to my breakup. Here I am, already more aligned than I would have been because I just did all this practice on myself. The situation isn't shocking me because I've visualized how it could go well. I've also visualized how it could go poorly. So I'm also a little bit less sensitive to that outcome. I can accept it as well. Now I'm sitting in that chair and I can bring myself back because my body just did it to what it felt like to be lying on that floor and let that show up for me without controlling it, without fixing, without over-obsessing about what it is, knowing that because I practiced it, it's there. The muscle memory lives in my body, the vocal presence, I've stretched my voice all the way to the end. I know how big it can be. So speaking and having this conversation now feels easy. I'm not having to dig my voice up and pull it out and say, I don't want to do this anymore. This isn't working for me. I can instead say, Oh, my voice was really big earlier, but it feels okay to just say, I think you're a great person. I can give that compliment without sourness. Right. And I can say, I think I'm also a good person. And I think that we can be good people separately and still have affection for one another. And if that's okay for you, I think it's this is the end for me if we can let it go there. If there's things you need to say, I'm here to listen to that. All of a sudden, I'm in my body, I've done the thing, and it was easier than all the work I just did warming up.

SPEAKER_02 24:05

Right.

SPEAKER_01 24:06

So my nervous system is now saying, oh, that was easier than the jumping and balancing and you know, stretching and yawning and shaking that you just did. And the more I practice putting my body through that relationship with itself, the easier and easier it gets to say the tough things because I've activated and I've practiced making sound through an easy vessel. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_00 24:35

Yeah. And there's a strength there that also comes from like it's much harder to be knocked off balance because you came into a situation prepared, or if someone tries to push your boundary. Because there's a lot of people who go with good intentions and one of two things happens. They either get pushed back in because the other person kind of talks them out of it because they don't have the base. Right. Or they get activated and and people will use the word triggered and like have a reaction or or clam up.

SPEAKER_01 25:04

Yeah. That is where I talk a lot about is it time for the conversation or therapy? In that situation, the person or both people need more therapy. And what I mean by therapy is anything where you're taking care of what you need for yourself. Going to a friend talking about it, talking to a parent, talking to your therapist, getting some feelings out where it's just about you. When you get to the point where you are curious about what the other person has to say, that is the point at which you should have the talk. That is the point at which you should communicate. Not when you are trying to express yourself. Right. Not when you desperately need them to hear what they've done to you. You don't need the person who did it for you to experience saying those things out loud and purging them from you and having them heard. There are plenty of people, I'm sure, in your life who can hear that, take it in, absorb it for you that are not the person who's at fault. If you need them to hear it, then that's a deficiency within you because you're then trying to extract something from them. It's not then about what you need to express. It's about something that you want from them. And that is where the exchange is potentially less healthy. So I would say wait until you have thoughts about what are they, what are they gonna say? How do they feel? And if those things are not things you want to hear, fine. But now you know, and that's more satisfying because of your own curiosity versus somebody telling you something before you've asked to hear it. Curiosity shifts everything. If I come up to you and I say, Hey, can I give you a note? Can I can I tell you something that's not working for me? And you say, sure.

SPEAKER_02 26:51

Right.

SPEAKER_01 26:51

That's way different than me walking up to you and saying, Hey, I don't like when you wear black. Just because, right? If you give me the permission and you've prepared yourself for the exchange, it's a totally different conversation.

SPEAKER_00 27:08

And if you've prepared yourself for a reaction too, from the standpoint of like the curiosity allows you to prepare and decide how much openness you want to share. If someone says, okay, I don't like your black shirt, I hate when you wear black, right? That doesn't have to be the end of the world, right? And if I'm secure in where I'm at, I don't have a big reaction to that. I either have a reason why I wore black, or I can disagree respectfully, or I'm like, oh, if I'm curious, the question really is, what is it about me wearing black that seems to be disruptive or that that you dislike?

SPEAKER_01 27:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 27:46

And then the funny part of that is I might get a beautiful statement. Because if I return that to you, I'm like, what is it about me wearing black that you don't enjoy?

SPEAKER_01 27:54

Yeah. I this is I love that you're wearing black. For the record. This is an exercise. Yeah. But I might say something like, black absorbs all of the energy around it, it absorbs light. And because it's absorbing so much light, I'm not feeling you radiate in the space as much. And you might say, Oh, I love wearing black.

SPEAKER_02 28:17

Right.

SPEAKER_01 28:17

But I get that. Let me see what happens if I don't. But that's all curiosity back and forth. Nobody's saying, Don't you ever wear black again, because if you do, we can't be friends. Like that, and if someone does say that, you're perfectly within your right to take that in and say, okay, that's not a person I want to be around.

SPEAKER_00 28:38

Right. And and that's control or manipulation. Correct. There's a very interesting thing, it's like, what's so funny is you kind of gave away the reason that I do wear black, because I only wear black on this show. And it was exactly that is I am trying to kind of not absorb all the light. I'm trying to shine the light for someone else. So I very consciously was like, okay, for this podcast, I'm going to be almost like monotone in a certain era. Like I'm vibrant in enough other ways, but I'm like, I want to create a space. That's why the light's a little darker, that's why the tone of this is a little darker. It's not by accident. And lots of times people are doing things for very specific reasons. Yes. That you'll never know unless you get curious.

SPEAKER_01 29:26

Exactly. And I love that because I think the powerful thing about it is that, you know, there's a lot about light and dark, and they they are not separate from one another.

SPEAKER_02 29:37

Right.

SPEAKER_01 29:37

They can only exist because the other exists, right? The shadow exists because of how much light there is. The darker the shadow, the brighter the light. The darker the night, the brighter the day, right? So that is those things work together rather than against one another. But if you can't even have the communication, you actually don't learn and you don't learn about others and you don't learn about the internal motivation. So this is why I say if you can get to that curiosity point, the way you frame your language will automatically be more inviting than when you are trying to tell someone something, when you are trying to express something or you need them to hear something, that is such a self-serving way of communication that it will get as a response what it has come with. The energy exchange will replicate itself. If I'm coming in tight, it's gonna tighten you up. If I'm coming in easy, it's gonna ease you.

SPEAKER_00 30:40

What do you wish people knew about communication that most people just kind of overlook?

SPEAKER_01 30:46

That your voice needs to be loved by you most of all. The thing I hear more often than anything, every voice class I've been in, every workshop I've taught is that most people hate the sound of their own voice. And they use that language. I hate the sound of my own voice. If that is the case, there is a fundamental part of yourself that you have not accepted, that you're not listening to, there are fundamental parts of your body that you aren't accessing. There are parts of your vocal system, your light body, your chakra system, your fascia, your musculature that are tense, tight, not open, not available, out of balance. If that hatred exists, it is a response to the imbalance that you yourself are hearing in your own voice that instead of resolving, repairing, and using maintenance, you're just saying, I hate it, I will refuse to engage with it. We have to find what is preventing us from loving the sound that we put out into the world. I say this over and over in the book. Our body is our instrument, our voice is our music. Imagine playing an instrument that you hate the sound that it makes. How could you? If you hate the sound of the saxophone but you play it eight hours a day, that seems insane.

SPEAKER_00 32:15

It makes life miserable, right? And you're making yourself miserable. And we're all finely attuned to an authentic tone that is us.

SPEAKER_01 32:23

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 32:24

And it changes a little bit over time and with experience, which is also part of your book. It's fascinating that so many people have become disconnected from that and almost turned against it.

SPEAKER_01 32:37

Well, they've been turned against it.

SPEAKER_00 32:39

I was gonna, yeah, right?

SPEAKER_01 32:41

Everything that I'm talking about here is a response to the stress, tension, habits, holdings that we traumas that we absorb from the outside world and respond to physically. If you live in an environment that's unsafe, you create tension in the body to prepare yourself for the whatever the that lack of safety is doing. If it's physical violence, you're gonna walk around tense and tight, preparing the body for impact. If you're being told to shut up all the time, to be quiet, to use your inside voice, little girls don't talk like that, right? Be this, be that, use this pitch, use that, don't say those things, then all of that external repression gets into the third eye, and you start to hear other people's voices directing your internal voice. Yeah. You hear your mom in your voice saying, ladies don't talk like that. You hear that person saying, Don't use that word, and that penetrates and it stops, it stops the sound that should be flowing through you authentically, and it causes you to overmeasure it, suppress it, tense, tighten, tuck it away, and not support it with breath. So everything is a result of some energy that came toward us that we either absorbed, held on to, or ideally released, put back into the world. Somebody comes at me with anger, yeah, it's okay for me to go yell into a pillow because I don't want to hold what they put in. I want to release that, I want to let that go.

SPEAKER_00 34:24

Yeah, and there's this interesting dynamic because we're told so often, like, oh, you're too loud, you're too too vocal, your voice is too high, too low. And people internalize that. Whenever I hear somebody start talking about like, I'm not enough of this, or I'm not this way, or people feel really repressed, I always ask them, who does that voice sound like? Same. It's a whole bunch of other people's voices that I have now internalized and turned into this version of my voice, which is the voice I usually hate.

SPEAKER_01 34:59

Yeah. This is exactly it. When I talk about the third eye and how it gets corrupted by the outside voice, I ask people when you hear that language in your head, whose voice does it sound like? And I'll have them practice. Ask a question, ask a big question, and then listen. What does the voice sound like that answers the question? Now there are people who don't hear a voice at all.

SPEAKER_00 35:22

Yeah, that's also like like there that would probably blow people's minds. Or the people who live that way probably are going, you guys all hear voices? And it's like it's like, yeah, a lot of people have this internal dialogue and this monologue that happens that's normal, but for some, it's quiet.

SPEAKER_01 35:39

Not everyone has it. That is also interesting because the way that thought is happening in terms of what they choose to say verbally is really coming from a different place. It's happening more instinctively, it's happening in a shorter circuit versus whole conversations happening and I'm picking and choosing the little things that I want to put out through my mouth. So I ask that question because often it reveals where the trauma is, right? If it's I'm hearing my abusive boyfriend's voice in my head every time I go to shop and I can't buy this outfit or that outfit, my self, my actual higher self, my voice has it's gone.

SPEAKER_00 36:25

It's it's turned itself over, right? Maybe it's a parent, maybe it's you know, a loved one, maybe it's a boss, maybe it's one of like it could be a whole, uh, a teacher somewhere along the way, someone who told you not like that, or that's unacceptable, and then you internalize that.

SPEAKER_01 36:43

Yeah. And you will play that tape over and over unknowingly, not even realizing that that language is not your own and it's coming from outside you. A lot of this work is about realigning with your own internal voice so that the authentic voice can come through because it's all about ease. It's about relaxation. If you can't relax enough because that external voice is coming in and grating at you and criticizing you, then that's causing tension, tightness, and holding in your breath so that the voice can't be supported. So the voice you hear isn't your own. It's not authentically connected to you. It is a voice that you hate because it has been corrupted and you are reminded of its corruption every time you hear it.

SPEAKER_00 37:36

Can you talk about that for a minute? So people get an example of like people who have a lot of like just anxiety and stress, they've been carrying these messages their whole life.

SPEAKER_01 37:45

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:46

Tend to speak very kind of like restricted and the breathing is different, and and talk about different ways of identifying voice. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 37:55

How dark can we go?

SPEAKER_00 37:56

You can go as dark as you want. I look, I like deep conversations. So, Cece, give it to us.

SPEAKER_01 38:01

Okay, because this is important.

SPEAKER_00 38:03

It is very long.

SPEAKER_01 38:04

This is something I've experienced working with people a lot because I work with people one-on-one, which is very intimate, and people reveal a lot to me. Or the body reveals it to me without them telling it to me directly, and then I confirm. One of the things that has come up in my practice, in my teaching, over and over and over again, is that there is sometimes, not always, sometimes a very specific voice that is connected to childhood essay.

SPEAKER_02 38:34

Right.

SPEAKER_01 38:35

Right. So what happens in these cases is that because of the location of the sexual organs and where they live as connected to the base of the abdomen, and that we have such ability to tense and tighten the hips and the belly, that is also the space where it, if it is tense and tightened, our voice kind of moves up and it becomes more shallow. Our breathing becomes more shallow. And what I see in most of those cases, and I could give you a ton of examples, is that the voice becomes higher pitched, more infantilized, and it sounds more like the child's self prior to the age of the abuse. Now, the reasoning for that in more of a logical way is that that voice is telling the world outside of it, I'm not a sexual object, I'm not an adult, I'm not ready for this. Treat me like a child.

SPEAKER_00 39:31

Treat me like the age I was when I lost my innocence. Yeah. Is is and it's it's heartbreaking.

SPEAKER_01 39:37

It is.

SPEAKER_00 39:38

But it's very true, and it's also something that a lot of people who experience that hate their voice because of.

SPEAKER_01 39:45

Yeah. Because it's so disconnected from the growth that they weren't allowed to have, because that tension, that tightness, that stopping of the flow of not just breath, nerve conduction, blood circulation, qi. If you don't have everything circulating easily, we get things like, you know, irritable bowel syndrome because you're just clamping, clamping, clamping all the time, and people will tell you, oh, it's this, it's that, it's this. It's a combination of things, of course, right? All of these things energetically feed one another. But at the root of most of this stuff is a tension, a tightness, a stress response that is a protective wall of muscular armor where the body is saying, no, don't come near me. And that affects the sound. Because even now, if you practice and you tighten the bottom of your belly and you try to hit a really low note, it's hard to do. I'm trying to speak as low as I can and it's like, oh, my body's fighting me. If I relax my belly, all of a sudden I can go as low as my voice will go. Right. And it's easy, it's full of breath, I can support it. And my belly, I mean, I hear my belly starting to like growl because now I'm opening up all this stuff. But if you're holding that for years and years and years, pushing your voice higher and higher and higher so that that tummy can stay tucked and tight, and every feeling and emotion that's trapped in the emotional center that lives in the same place, right? Yeah, as sexual energy. That's where the emotional field is in the body, in the say second chakra, in the sacral energy. So those two things coexist. So it's no wonder that that's gonna affect the sound of the voice, the posture, the placement of the voice, the shape of the hips, the gait, everything. How you sit, how you stand, how you speak, how you uh communicate.

SPEAKER_00 41:55

And there's this energetic tone. I think anytime there there are people who will be skeptical, right?

SPEAKER_02 42:02

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 42:03

Um actually, which we both kind of welcome because we kind of like that. Because I think it speaks for itself and you either can prove it or you're not, and this is one of the areas of your expertise.

SPEAKER_01 42:12

Yeah. I love, I love a question. I love a challenge. Ask me.

SPEAKER_00 42:17

Yeah, but every person has had the experience too of especially in grief. I'm gonna use grief as an example, where you go to talk and nothing comes out.

SPEAKER_01 42:27

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 42:28

Because the emotion is so strong, the vocal cords just get tightened and you you want to say, but it's also the thing you don't want to say. Or even you went back to the going back to the example of breaking up with somebody. There's lots of times where people have conversations where it's like, I know this is the right decision, but it's not the conversation I really want to have, or I'm really upset about the fact that we have to do this. Yeah. And if they don't prepare themselves, literally nothing comes out. Right? And it like it will choke itself off.

SPEAKER_01 42:58

Absolutely. What's happening there is that the there is emotion connected to sound. When we are trying not to hear the sound of pain in our own voice, we stop that sound. So when we gulp that down, when we cut off that sound, it is usually because our experience of hearing the sound of our own pain come through us is so re-traumatizing that we prevent it from happening. This is why when people cry, I should say, weep, and they don't let themselves cry because they're afraid of that big, ugly, dark sound of grief coming through them and that someone else might hear it and know how hurt they are. That they themselves might hear that dark, deep, ugly sound and be reminded of how it got there. So we stop it and we protect ourselves by closing off the throat and saying, Okay, you don't have to hear that, and neither do they. So this is why. I talk to myself. This is why you practice. This is why you visualize the space. You listen to the sound. You write it down in your journal and then you read it aloud and you let, because this is so important. This is where the acting technique comes in. If I want to be able to operate with my duality of self, with my higher self speaking to my active self in my body, so that those two things can operate. I'm sure you felt this. When you're an actor on stage and you have really prepared and you really know those lines, you can problem solve all day. Oh, so-and-so missed their cue. That light didn't happen. That's not where it's supposed to be. Let me fix that. You can problem solve, you can move, you can fix, you can stall, you can improv, all of it. Because the higher self knows exactly what to do. The mouth keeps moving, the lines keep coming out, the audience doesn't know anything's wrong. First day of rehearsal, you there's no way you can do that. You have to stop. You have to say, oh, actually, isn't that when this thing happens? I'm not sure. Wait, where was I? Can I go back a little bit? What's the top of the speech? Right? So all of that that's happening is because the muscle memory doesn't exist yet. Not because you don't consciously know the lines. No, the body doesn't know yet. So I can sit in my room and rehearse, to be or not to be, 150,000 times inside my head. When I get up on stage to say it out loud, if it's the first time I'm saying it out loud, ain't no way it's coming out clean. Because my body, my lips, the teeth, the tip of the tongue, nobody else knows what to do. So we can use this in private communication, high-stakes communication, meetings. If you haven't said this stuff out loud to another person, that's the key. Saying it out loud to yourself in the shower is doesn't do it.

SPEAKER_00 46:01

Well, you're letting yourself off the hook, right? Because there's no judgment there, and that's also part of that stress that's gonna come when you go to say it to somebody. So say it to somebody that you can trust first to ease the tension and get yourself primed for it.

SPEAKER_01 46:17

Yes, that's what friends are for, right? Call someone and say, okay, this is what I'm thinking about saying. What do you think about that? And just the act of practicing using that language for the first time, hearing it out loud, letting it land on someone and having them send it back to you. Now you're practicing the energetic exchange, even though it's with a different person, you're practicing the necessary energetic exchange that you are going to replicate in the high-stakes situation. So your nervous system is going to be a little more prepared than it would be otherwise. It's all about that muscle memory, that practice, that activation of breath, while you have the ability to check in with the body and say, okay, soften the feet, relax the toes, release the hips, breathe from the belly, lengthen the spine, open the altimajor. I can run through that in my head while I'm talking to my friend, preparing.

SPEAKER_02 47:10

Right.

SPEAKER_01 47:11

Even if I know I can't do it on the day in the coffee shop.

SPEAKER_00 47:17

I I also want to touch on this. Not everybody knows the chakra system.

SPEAKER_01 47:21

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 47:21

So starting at the base, root, sacral, right, solar plexus, heart, throat, but then you start getting into the ones that people don't know. I'm gonna come back to one because you're gonna I I can see your eyes. But third eye and then crown, right? Being above you.

SPEAKER_02 47:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:37

The one that you talk about that very few people talk about is the Alta Major, and you just mentioned it. Can you kind of give people a rough overview without going? I mean, because we could be here for days.

SPEAKER_01 47:48

We could be here for days. It's my favorite. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:50

And I and and there's it's also another reason they should read your book.

SPEAKER_01 47:54

Yeah. Okay, so again, this is a thing that I didn't learn about this chakra from Tom Jones, but I learned about its placement and its power in Tom's class because he would do a thing with everybody that when I became a voice teacher and it was in my classroom, I realized I was doing the exact same thing he was always doing. And the thing he was doing, you'd be up doing your Shakespeare, and Tom would come behind you and he'd place his hand on the back of your neck and he'd just give you a little wiggle right here. And he'd make sure, he was making sure that the space where the skull meets the neck was free, soft, open, and that the eyes were on the horizon versus the big habit that almost every speaker has is either pulling in or pushing forward. Now, when we push forward, what that does is it tilts the eyes so that the eyes are looking down at the audience, helps us feel protected. We feel real safe. As soon as this comes into alignment, I'm here with you. You can come into me, I can go into you, the even exchange can happen between us, and it feels vulnerable. So if I don't want that to happen, I'm gonna pull up, I'm gonna stop it. Now that little pull-up, that ultimator, where the skull meets the spine, where thought becomes action, where the old brain becomes the nervous system throughout the body, where all that stuff is housed, that is the fulcrum that controls whether or not every other energy center is in alignment. So if you pull that tight, feel what happens to your belly. It tenses, it tightens, the toes grab, the knees tighten, the thighs tighten, everything up the entire system, all the way to the throat, the crown is now falling off the head, the third eye is out of alignment, everything is out of alignment if this is tight. But I call it the key because if I align it, everything else comes into alignment. So yeah, you can nickel and dime yourself up all and work on each of these energy centers all you want. But if you don't understand the key to aligning all of them, to putting the entire system together, then you can't adequately communicate through an open, free space. The ultimate is the wisdom chakra. It's the wisdom center, it's the old brain, it's how you respond and react without having to think. It is what your body knows before your brain. So if I touch something hot, right, that's the ultimate saying, get your hand out of there before my brain says, Oh, that's hot, right?

SPEAKER_00 50:35

Or I'm burning, like it's too late.

SPEAKER_01 50:38

Right. That ultimators is that response. So if I can thoughtfully practice keeping that open, again, that's what I'm doing in my semi-supine, lying on the floor. I'm connecting the tail to the earth, and I'm opening the ultimate and letting the entire spine be in alignment so that I'm practicing that alignment for when I stand so that my body remembers what it felt like to have that free openness and my eyes on the horizon and my belly nice and soft, and my grounded knees and feet, everything is soft, so I can feel the earth below me, so I know that I have support, versus tensing and tightening the body to create a false floor within myself.

SPEAKER_00 51:30

Now, when you're looking at students or you're looking at people, just in general, like you go out in the world and you're trying to assess whether somebody needs more of your empathy, because I know you do this, and you're trying to evaluate how do I meet this person where they're at, right? And you're in your case, you're taking in all of these various portions of like information and reaction. What are the things that you're looking for that people should maybe key in on one or two things where it's like this is your cue to lean into your empathy or to to get curious and be soft in your launch as opposed to being bold?

SPEAKER_01 52:06

Yeah. I look a lot at that altimor, how they're interacting with the world, whether there's tension and tightness there. The other place I look is what's happening at the solar plexus. Okay, so the solar plexus is right at the base of the sternum where the ribs open out, where the diaphragm lives, where it's hot. If you place your hand there, it's quite warm, right? And it's also the fire center. This space is the difference between having confidence, will power, it is the I will center, it is our fire. Do you have the ability to put your energy into the world and shift the world toward your will or not? So the difference between when the the solar plexus is open and balanced, so mine right now, open balance. Watch me close it and watch what happens to me. My my energy just went out of me. Now bring it back. I don't have to change anything else. That little shift of tucking tells me where this person's voice lives in their body, it tells me how much vocal power and volume they've got. If the solar plexus is depressed, that is the center of vocal power, volume. So if you don't have that, if you don't have an activated, if your diaphragm doesn't get out of the way so that the lungs can fill up with air, right, and do its thing coming down, right? That's what the diaphragm does when we take a breath. It goes and then the lungs go, right? So if that's not happening for you, how can you have breath support? If you don't have breath support, how can you create big sound, right? If you blow out all your air, and then you try to talk from there, and this is all you can get. It's really hard to do anything bigger than that. Versus if you fill, then you've got plenty of air, you've got plenty of tone, and I could go way louder than this, right? I could blow the roof off this place. But there are people who can't. They can't get past that low volume, that weak sound. Oh, hi, how are you? This is as loud as their voice goes. That thing is lack of confidence. There's no breath support at the diaphragm. There's no opening. The confidence, the mechanism doesn't have enough space. You're not taking up enough space in the world to put your will into the world and get back what you intend. You've collapsed and therefore your light, your fire is not radiating.

SPEAKER_00 54:50

Can you talk about taking space in the world? I know this is a big thing that this is one of your areas that I I think the world doesn't hear enough.

SPEAKER_01 54:58

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 54:59

And I think, especially young people, I think they've been so conditioned or been told to be convenient. I think more often than not, women are often encouraged to be um non-combative and to be accepting and pliable and all these things, and it really denies you your space.

SPEAKER_01 55:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 55:20

How would you tell people to take that space back?

SPEAKER_01 55:23

So this is why I believe so firmly that we cannot uncouple the body from the mind and from the spirit and from the voice. So what I would say is that if you're not feeling like you're taking up enough space in the world, or if people around you are telling you you're not taking up enough space, that is literal. It's usually, nine times out of ten, also happening in your body. Your shoulders are collapsed in, your spine is curved, you're getting that hump from being on your computer all day. Your energy, your hips are usually pulled in, the knees are knocking, everything is pulling toward center and down into that C-shaped spine or even S-shaped spine. And that is physically happening to you as a result of the lack of energy moving through your system. So you're like a balloon. You've got to inflate, you've got to take in breath, expand the space before the confidence shows up in the knowledge center. We can teach the body and we can teach the mind from the outside in. So if I want to work on my confidence, I'm gonna first work on my posture. And then I'm gonna start to notice that people are responding to me differently because I'm standing up straight and I'm commanding the space and I'm lengthening my spine and I'm making better eye contact. And now they're going to treat me like a confident person, and I'm going to build my confidence from that. So I'm doing it by opening up that space, even if I don't believe it yet. I'm letting my body teach me what it feels like to live in confidence and take up full space. It is not the heaviest drum that makes the biggest sound. It is the drum that has the most empty space. Okay, so it's that big drum that's full of nothing. That when you beat that hide, that resonant sound is so big and it has so much space to go because it is open. The body is the same way. If you collapse all the air out of it, taking not taking up space is going to reduce the sound, it's going to reduce the resonance, it's going to reduce the energetic field that you put out into the world when you move, when you make sound, when you breathe. So if we can do it physically, that's why the warmups are there. To teach your body what confidence feels like even before your brain catches up.

SPEAKER_00 58:00

How am I doing it using my voice?

SPEAKER_01 58:02

Really great. Yeah, your voice is very dropped in, it's balanced. I think that you still have more power that you normally don't show people.

SPEAKER_02 58:12

Right.

SPEAKER_01 58:12

Um, but that's okay. You don't have to show the power because I can hear that it's in there, which means that you have access to it. But it makes me curious like what it would be like for you to just really like let it out.

SPEAKER_00 58:27

You know. Okay.

SPEAKER_01 58:29

Because I'm into that. I'm into big sound. Okay. Um, but yeah. I guess I do have a question.

SPEAKER_00 58:35

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 58:36

So I'll preface the question with saying I taught high school at a performing arts high school. So I worked with a lot of child actors who were, you know, on shows, like doing the thing, pilot season every year, the whole thing. Having started acting as a kid, also that's like a thing that we have in common. And I'm curious for you, like as an adult, what has that experience taught you about who you want to be in this chapter of your life?

SPEAKER_00 59:10

I think you get a real clear choice because everybody else tries to define you. And you can go along or you can choose to be something else.

SPEAKER_02 59:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:21

And I think for me, I've been very decisive. I I've never really been the um I'm not what people expect. And energetically, behaviorally, like I I am a non-conformist. I am a structure rule person.

unknown 59:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:42

But I break them very often in the most loving, like I it it's with a compassion and empathy. But this business is beautiful when we do it right. It is also full of a lot of unhealthy people who use it for their own purposes.

SPEAKER_02 59:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 59:57

And so what I've sought to do is use whatever voice and presence I have to shine a light on other people, to empower people, to build things that make people feel it's not enough for the project to be good. It's not enough for people to feel like it's a powerful or meaningful thing. It's m also important that the environment was good while we did it.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:20

And that people felt safe. Because I think more often than not, people don't feel safe. And then uh my writing partner and I write a lot of stuff that are from projects that are from voices that the rest of the world rarely hears from or gets uncomfortable with.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:38

And I'm okay with the battle to get those things out there because you have to will them into existence. But I want people to see the world they actually live in as opposed to a like processed, overproduced world that is convenient or is shiny for people.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:54

Totally. Can I ask one more?

SPEAKER_00 1:00:56

You can ask whatever you want. Give it a CC.

SPEAKER_01 1:00:58

Okay, what's your sign?

SPEAKER_00 1:01:00

I'm on the Libra Cor uh Scorpio cast. So I try to balance everything all the time. And I'm also the person who quietly probably not to cross.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:10

Uh-huh. I love that. I'm a Libra moon, so I'm indecisive. This is why I can't pick favorites or summarize. I just want it all. I get that. Interesting. I wouldn't have, I mean, I'm not good at guessing people's signs because I feel like I'm taking in so much information that I'm like, that's not the modality through which I um assess.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:34

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:34

But I do love how it makes sense because the Scorpio piece of that, that's this. Yeah. Like this is so Scorpio coded. The the like wearing black, like the dark part of it and being interested in that and asking all the questions. I have friends that are Scorpios that I feel like I actually know nothing about them.

SPEAKER_02 1:01:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:56

And I don't realize that I know nothing about them. We'll spend hours together and I realize I didn't, I didn't I asked them questions and then they just were like bloop and Jedi mind-tricked me, and now I'm talking again.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:07

I'm pretty good at that. Uh people feel very much like they know everything about me, and then I'm very much like, I'm not hiding any of it. Yeah. It's just not like it's not, and it's not exactly what people think. Uh-huh. You know, I joke with Michael all the time. Like, I try to be a kindness assassin, which is like I I choose kind, but like I'm not playing. And I tell people very clearly, I'm going to be very open and honest with you, but my expectation is that that's going to be returned. And like there are very clear, like, okay, you crossed a line.

SPEAKER_01 1:02:40

I think it's so important, with like back to the communication thing, that we not confuse niceness with good communication. Sometimes it is necessary to yell. Sometimes it is insufficient to be polite, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:00

Oh, you have to. And and I always tell people in this business, people say to me all the time, you're like the nicest guy, and I'm like, no, I'm the kindest. Because I want to make sure, and I and they people will go, what's the difference? I said, nice is an adjective, and it it kind of makes you think like it's a doormat.

unknown 1:03:17

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:17

Kind is a choice.

SPEAKER_02 1:03:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:19

And I always tell people, do not confuse my kindness for weakness, and do not confuse the fact that I choose kind with an inability to not be if I have to.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:29

Right. Do you know about the um wrathful gods in Buddhism?

SPEAKER_00 1:03:34

No, but give me this. This is what see, I love this.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:37

I I I'm realizing I learned a lot from like ex-boyfriends. I learned a lot from everybody, but um this was from an ex-boyfriend who was like really big into Buddhism. He was telling me about the wrathful gods, and he was saying, we were learning about the wrathful gods today, and what we learned was that the wrathful god is the face of the mother whose child just ran out into the street. And the fury that she has when she yanks that kid back and says, Don't you ever do that again? That that is the height of love and that it comes through this wrathful presence. And that was like such a lesson to me because I had, you know, I've dealt with all the tropes of the angry black woman and the casting, and like, you know, I could be the sweetest person and I'd still get told, like, it's a little angry. I'm like, what? Like, I was always having that projected onto whatever I did. So then I started to sh like shrink away from having ferocity.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:34

Or trying to be too nice, yeah. Like, because I want it to be palatable, because this is what you need for to hire me.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:41

Exactly.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:41

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:42

And then you come in the room and you're like bubbles in sunshine, and like that's not my energy. Like, I'm more grounded than that. But I felt like there wasn't room to just be, you know, I had to put something that was like zestier. And when I heard that, I was like, yeah, that makes sense to me. I can be peace and light if that's what the circumstance calls for. Right. But if I need to snatch you out of the street and make sure you never do it again for your own good, I also must maintain my ability to be capable of that. And if I keep suppressing, I'm gonna lose my ability to access that. Just like the people with the weak, soft little voices lose their access to the voice where they need to say, Stop.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:28

The kind part of me is like, yes, let me give me the babies, give me the little kids, give me the puppies, let me love and help people and lift people and let people shine. But the other part is being like, okay, if somebody needs to go take care of business, everybody go ahead and back up and be safe. I'll be I'll I'll I'm I'm out front. So if I gotta snatch a kid out of the street, I'm going to snatch the kid and you can yell at me afterwards.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:48

Right. Boundaries are kindnesses.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:50

For ourselves as much.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:51

For us as much as everyone else. I'm protecting you by protecting me. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:05:58

If you were given the opportunity Opportunity, right? And there were no there were no judgments. You can ask any question knowing that you're gonna get an answer. What's the question you would ask?

SPEAKER_01 1:06:08

To a person that I'm trying to gain knowledge from?

SPEAKER_00 1:06:12

I left it open on purpose.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:13

Okay. So I have a system. Uh, when I'm energy reading, I ask three questions, and I ask three questions only.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:24

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:25

They're very important questions. They came to me. I was channeling basically. I was in a session with someone years and years ago, and these three questions just showed up in my mouth. And as I was taking notes on what their body did, how their voice responded, what words they said, I'm taking intense notes, I'm drawing pictures, I'm highlighting, I'm getting everything about the energy that I can absorb in real time. At the end of these three questions, I know more about this person's life, their struggle, their driver, their goals, how they see time, how they process information, what kind of intuitive spirit they have, whether or not they're a healer. Three questions. The three questions are first one is the most important. This one's an action before we do the question. I ask you to breathe.

SPEAKER_02 1:07:17

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:17

Just take a few deep breaths. So why don't you do it? Take a few deep breaths.

unknown 1:07:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:22

Let that breath go all the way down to your belly. You should just breathe. And then I ask you, describe for me in as much detail as possible your future best self. And I ask it really slow like that because what I'm doing is I'm watching how you process each word as the sentence builds. Do you go dark? Uh-oh, this is gonna be bad. Do you brighten?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:50

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:51

Do you anticipate a good thing? A bad thing? Do you stay in neutral? Do you hold your breath?

SPEAKER_02 1:07:56

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:56

Do you keep breathing? And then what happens when you go to answer? Do you go up? Do you go down? Do you go in? Do you make a sound before you use language? What's the first thing you say? What's at the top of the list? What has to get out of your mouth before the next thing can come through? Then I'm listening for your subconscious stacking. Oh, I'm a poet. Okay, that was associated. You said I am, versus the person who says, she is a poet, ah, dissociated. You see it, but you don't believe it yet. It's happening to a version of you, but it's not happening to you yet. So now I'm getting all this data from the breath. I've already discerned whether you're introspective or whether you're a perspective person. Do you need to go into your body to breathe, to feel your breath? Take a deep breath is a subconscious command to relax. So I just watched how you relax. I watched you take off whatever's burdening you, and now I know where that thing is. If you go, the shoulders are where you're holding most of your attention. If you go, that means that there's a lack of balance because the wave of energy needed to move through from the root to the top. I can see all the different things. If you started shaking your leg, if you kept your eyes open and then scanned, you're a perspective person. You need to see the big picture in order to relax and release and to take in, you must take in visually. If you needed to close your eyes, which you did, that's when you go into the system and you're introspecting, you're feeling what's going on on the inside. So now I'm only two questions in, and I've already learned so much about you. If you made a root sound to respond to my question, hmm, now I already know we're going deep. We're going to safety, security, trust. I activated the part of the body that's not up here.

SPEAKER_02 1:09:53

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:09:53

I activated the part of the body that's down here. Root sounds are the sounds of physical reality. Somebody slaps you, ah. You didn't have to think, hey, you slapped me, right? The sound just came through the action. That's a root sound. So now I got two more questions still, and I've already learned so much about you. Then I'm gonna ask you what your favorite memory is and to describe it to me in as much detail as possible. Now I'm learning about your driver. What's the thing that comes up first that is connected to what makes you shine? And it usually, those future best self and the favorite memory are very connected, right? Future best self, I'm a mother and I've got 10 kids, and then that favorite memory is my family reunions, right? So now I'm understanding. Ah, yes, okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:10:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:49

And then I ask the last question. Describe for me in as much detail as possible who you used to be. And now I'm gonna learn a whole bunch of information about how you see or saw your past self. And usually, just because of the act and because I am so present in it, and I know that I'm an energy healer and I'm a reader, I start opening people's energy inadvertently within them. Their body starts to want to share with me. It's like um, you know, if you smell a ham sandwich, you start to get hungry. Your energy body feels me come in and it says, Oh, oh, the lady's here. Let me show her my stuff so that I can like work through it. And so, three questions. And I've got all of this info about your body. And while I was asking you those questions, I have you standing up in the middle of the room floating. So you don't get to ground yourself on anything, you don't get to displace your energy. I get to see where your energy goes when you think, when you're uncomfortable, when you're introspecting, when you're talking to me, when you're thinking about what I want. When you ask the question, I said, Do you mean in terms of this, right? That's me people pleasing.

SPEAKER_02 1:12:01

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:02

I want to answer the question in a way that satisfies what you want from it, rather than just saying, I'm gonna answer it however I want to, because I'm what matters. Neither's good, neither's bad, but it tells me something about the person that I asked the question to. Did that answer your question?

SPEAKER_00 1:12:20

No people pleasing. No, uh yes, and it's you notice why my first response was not to please me. Yeah. I left it open on purpose.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:30

And that's exactly what I would do if somebody said that to me. What do you mean, future best self? Do you mean I'd say, however, it's hitting you, whatever comes up.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:39

Cece, what are the three words that would describe you?

SPEAKER_01 1:12:42

Ooh, that's tough. I have a hard time with favorites, and I have a hard time summarizing if you haven't noticed.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:52

You're doing fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:55

Um, okay, so three words to describe me funny, serious. Okay, teacher.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:05

Mm-hmm. You debated on healer too.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:09

I did. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:13:10

That was the other one. You could see it, right? Like um teacher's a beautiful one though. Because teacher is the gift of that is beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 1:13:20

Yeah. I I think of myself as a healer. I think of all those things coming together. When you said, you know, the things that are like weird about me or quirky. The thing that people most don't expect from me until they get to know me. I'm a Virgo. My sense of humor is a little dry. People don't think I'm funny until they know me, and they're like, oh my God, you're hilarious. I'm like, yeah, well, I'm just not I'm not sharing it with everybody. I don't want it, you know, that's not my like go-to. But I also was on a comedy show for years. Like I, you know, studied in Living Color and like comics as a kid. Like, that's such a big part of me. And it's because I see the way that humor heals.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:04

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:05

And then I can switch and I can be with you in that space of healing, and we can talk seriously and earnestly about what the heck is going on in there. And sometimes just that ability to have somebody look at you and say, I feel what's happening. Like, let's talk about it. That in and of itself is an act of healing. And then the teacher shows up and says, Here's what you do. Here's the supplement that's gonna help support you. Here's the exercise physically that's gonna support this, here's the vocal sound that I want you to work on to support that, and here's the meditation that I want you to do to bring your spirit into alignment with this new thing. So the teacher, the healer, the funny person, the serious one, they're all working together.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:50

They're all you. Yeah. Yeah. And and that's you at your authentic core, right? Is you use your humor to disarm and then you dive deep, and then you want to learn and teach and share so the person can feel empowered.

unknown 1:15:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:03

Which is the healing.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:04

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:04

Okay, so who was a lighthouse for you on your journey? You mentioned Tom.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:09

Yeah, yeah. Um, my mom. Uh, I also mentioned my mom. She's the one that made me an actor, even though I was always acting, and she clearly could see that, but I didn't identify that way until she gave me that boost. But my mom has, she's an amazing person. My mom's a lawyer, she does um family law mostly. So she works with the dark stuff. Yes, um, and she's a defense attorney, so she's representing kids, you know, some of the time. And um, I always saw how much compassion my mom had without really understanding. It's like, how do you live in that darkness all day, every day, and come home and put on I Love Lucy for Us, or like introduce me to the little rascals, or you know, we're watching Hollywood shuffle because of my mom and her wild sense of humor and her big laugh and the things she thinks are funny. And then also she's yelling at the TV because you know, the warriors are you know down by five in the, you know. So her intelligence, her service to the community. I mean, both my parents were are big into community and service and um lifting up people around them. They're just such good examples of human beings. Again, it's that humor, that serious piece, and then that teacher that I admire in my mom. And she's saved me so many times from going down a path that was not the right path for me that I was doing for a reason that I didn't understand. I would have been a banker if it wasn't for my mom. Literally, I had a job at a bank, I was on a vice president's track, and the day before I was supposed to start this new job, my mom knocked on my door, which she never does. And I'm like, Can I help you? And she's like, don't do it. And I was like, What do you mean? This is a good job. Like, don't you want me to move out of your house?

SPEAKER_00 1:17:10

Yeah, all the logical, like, like all the logical stuff says, hey, that's a pretty good gig, right? Like you're on the right track. And she said, But not for you. She said, It's not you.

unknown 1:17:20

And I was like, What?

SPEAKER_01 1:17:21

And then that was it. Yeah, and so she just left me in my room to deal with that. And I'm sitting there thinking, like, she's right, but what do I do now? And that was what put me on the trajectory to go to graduate school, you know, get my MFA, start teaching, doing all the things. And if she had not knocked on my door, I would be somewhere else.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:45

Tell me, Cece, for you, what does success look like?

SPEAKER_01 1:17:49

I have a real like not PC answer to a history.

SPEAKER_00 1:17:55

I welcome that if if you're willing.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:57

Yeah. I have an ex who said to me once, he was like, would you rather be the most famous person in your field or like the best at what you do? And I said, I'd rather be the highest paid. And he was like, What? Because I'm not a money person. That's not my driver. But if those are the options for what most people view as being success, oh, you're the best at this thing. The best person at most things, none of us have ever heard of. That person never got to do what they were really great at. Some other thing in life came and took over.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:40

They might be a banker.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:42

They might be a banker, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:18:44

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:44

Um, some of the best actors I've ever seen in my life, no one's ever heard of.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:48

Yeah, me too.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:49

Okay. So, like, it's not about being the best because that doesn't mean that you get to live that life. It doesn't mean you even get to be an actor because you're the best, right? So I was like, best is not it. Most famous is not it, because also everyone in the world can know that you're great at this thing, and that's it. It doesn't mean you're living a good life, it doesn't mean you're safe, it doesn't mean you're secure, it doesn't mean that you have a roof over your head. It doesn't mean that people like you. It doesn't mean that you have friends.

SPEAKER_02 1:19:21

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:19:22

So when he asked me that, I said the most well-paid. And the reason for that is that it means that I am able to be self-sufficient based on my talent so that I can do what I am meant to do. So that that is the thing that doesn't hinder me from having all of the successes. So for me, success is the ability to do what you desire when you desire it and to change your mind about it. It is free will and it is action, but it is more than freedom. Freedom is nothing. Freedom is baseline. Freedom is zero. Freedom is you walked out of the jail and you have no wallet and no shoes. That's not what I'm looking for. I'm looking for the ability to move through the world and create the kind of change that I know that I am uniquely capable of doing. And what does that mean? It means I've got to be safe and secure in a particular kind of way to move through what this world is, not what I wish it was, what it actually is. I don't aspire to money, but I do recognize the kind of access that it provides for me to be able to do what I'm actually here to do.

SPEAKER_00 1:20:44

So fascinating because I am so not a money person. And I just realized a fault in my operating system, so to speak. Because I've always looked at it differently than that. But there's a very powerful point because it's about being able to utilize at the maximum level.

unknown 1:21:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:05

And that's a you just shifted a whole like I'm it'll take me a long time, so I'm gonna stammer a little because this is rare for people to see, but it's it's very different for me. Because I just as I went on that journey with you speaking like that, I was like part of my life, oh shit, I think I've been doing parts of this wrong. Right? And I was like, oh, I needed to hear that and didn't realize. So I'm so glad that you shared that. And it's very interesting because other people will find you said it's not a PC, and at the same thing, if you the way you went through that was beautiful.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:38

I didn't know I felt that way until it came out of my mouth. Until he asked me that question, I realized, no, it's none of that. I I want to be the one that gets to say, these kids get to eat.

SPEAKER_02 1:21:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:50

Like if I had that power, I would love to wield it. And the people with that power, I don't like the way they're wielding it.

SPEAKER_00 1:21:58

But listen, I completely agree with you. Like this is a real frustration for me. And I've I went about it somewhat the wrong way because I I the sacrifice felt like it was not a sacrifice. Uh but the truth in that is it also limited who I could help and how I could help.

SPEAKER_01 1:22:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:22:17

Okay, so I'm gonna follow that with this. What did you learn at rock bottom that success couldn't teach you?

SPEAKER_01 1:22:25

Yeah. Uh so my my rock bottom, there were a couple of them in my life. Um there was one when COVID happened. I was living in New York. I knew I couldn't afford to live in my apartment for more than two months without a job, and the world had shut down, and I was at the epicenter. My zip code at the time was the third highest death rate. I could hear, there was a symphony of coughing in my building. Everyone was sick. And I was sick. And you couldn't get a test. So I was like, I probably have COVID. I tried to convince myself I didn't. I mean, it just like the all the things. I started to spiral because what was I if I wasn't an actor and a teacher in New York, if I wasn't on this path that I thought that I was on, if I had to just be me and rely on myself. I learned the power of my spiritual self. I learned the power of my spirit. I started to meditate like three, four hours a day. I was just lying on my floor in semi-supine, listening to like frequency music, and I was leaving the planet a lot. I was just going away and I was asking big questions. What am I doing here? What is my purpose? Why did this happen? Where am I supposed to be? Where am I supposed to go? And from that, I downloaded, I needed to get out of New York. So I packed my stuff by myself, shipped things across the country, gave away, I didn't even sell anything, I gave away all of the things that I couldn't ship. So I just had people come into my apartment all day and I'm just handing them stuff, masks on. Here you go, take this, take that. I was at my absolute bottom. Material things meant nothing to me. I knew that I had to get my spirit right. I knew that I had a lot to learn about what was going on in my energetic power, and I could feel that there was something bigger that I was not tapped into that I needed to do, and that my chapter in New York had only been the beginning of something that I needed to go forward with. It was, I was having COVID dreams that were, I was, I mean, I was like really experiencing something life-changing and huge. I was having a spiritual awakening, and it came from the fact that there was no money in my bank account and no one was coming to save me. And I had to pull myself together and figure out what it was that I had been put here to do. And so I started replaying the things that my students had said to me over the years. And one of the big things, and I actually talked about this in the book, one of the big things was my kids would always say, Miss Rice, everybody needs this. And I had discounted it because I had a job, I was busy, I was working at this school, and I was, you know, I was going to Columbia and I was doing this, I was teaching here, and I was doing this show, and I was everywhere. And I was like, I'm doing it. And then this happened, COVID happened, and I thought to myself, everybody does need this. I have a gift that I know I have been giving to people in dark rooms, in acting studios for years now, and we hide it and we don't tell anybody about it, and we treat it like it's too woo-woo for anybody else to understand, and we pretend that the only use for this work is on a stage or in front of a camera. And I knew that that wasn't true. And so I started to really dig deep into using the classroom work I was doing to heal myself. All that icky stuff that was coming up because I didn't have money in my bank account, I had to heal it. I had to realize that money is just energy and I could attract it. And if I just turned it on, and if I asked my guides and I said, if I'm on the right track, push me in the right direction. And then I made one video and it lit like wildfire. And from that, literally that day on, I was living in LA for the first time, I didn't know what I was doing, and all of a sudden, my inbox was full of people asking me, How do I help me?

SPEAKER_02 1:26:46

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:26:46

Do you coach? Do you do this? Do you do that? And all of a sudden, from nothing, I built this business. I had a new career that was doing exactly what I had been doing in a room that nobody knew about for years.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:00

That you gave away.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:01

That I gave away.

unknown 1:27:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:04

With love, but yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:06

So that's where this book came from. That's where all of it came from was like I finally got aligned with my purpose because I hit the bottom. There was nobody coming to rescue me. There was a reason I had been prepared by living in New York by myself for all those, you know, 10 years, just like struggling and doing it. I had become Teflon. I was strong. And even then, with all of that strength, when it was all stripped away and I was in a room by myself, I didn't know what I was doing. I didn't know who I was. And I had to figure it out. And figuring it out meant sharing what I knew with the people who actually could benefit from it.

SPEAKER_00 1:27:47

Yeah, and people were being blessed by it. I think people have to find it. Uh rock bottom is something that I it's very interesting because you that's you didn't ask me to define that one.

SPEAKER_01 1:27:58

No, I knew what it meant.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:00

You were like, and it was clear, and you had a moment, but your moment became your purpose.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:07

Which I think most of the best people I know in this world, that's exactly the case. And they don't want people to experience what they experienced.

SPEAKER_01 1:28:15

No, not at all. And yet I recognize the power of people hitting their rock bottom, but I don't wish that for them.

SPEAKER_00 1:28:23

All right, what is the legacy you want people to take from you in your life?

SPEAKER_01 1:28:28

I want people to really truly understand and embrace that their voice is the most powerful thing that they've got. It's so much stronger than your body. And it's so much stronger than your mind. It can communicate things you've never learned. You don't have to know things to say them. It can communicate love that you've never felt yourself. It has a power to heal just in its sound. It doesn't have to be singing, it doesn't have to be flashy. There is ancient power in the sound of the voice that we have lost. And we are trying right now very strongly to reassign that power to all kinds of things. People are going to their sound baths, doing their sound bowls, their chimes, their tuning forks. Guess what? You've got the ultimate sound healing machine right here inside that voice box. And if you use it and you tune it and you get into alignment with your frequency, you are unstoppable. You are magic. You are existing on more than one level. And that to me is the one thing I want people to be left with when I'm gone.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:53

And I think you just gave people an insight into exactly how to find it.

SPEAKER_01 1:29:57

I hope so.

SPEAKER_00 1:29:58

And the book is a perfect roadmap for those who haven't read it yet. Thanks, Cece.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:04

Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:05

I'm so glad you came.

SPEAKER_01 1:30:06

I'm so glad I came. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 1:30:09

Absolutely.