When I look back at 2021, I feel dizzy. The emotional rollercoaster was a lot to take for many of us. I often felt like my shoulders shrugged in, my heart tempted to close up. The disappointment felt was existential, like I couldn't be who I truly am, but not because I was in my own way. It felt the world was in my way. I saw how easy it was to give in to fear and go back to more safe, logical, and measured ways of moving through the world...

 Instead, I accepted the invitation and dug deeper. I found a wound in my heart that had been there for eons, a wound that said, "it is not safe to be that sensitive and that open, because in the end, it will hurt, you will be disappointed."

Familiar? This belief can take you back into old patterns very fast. It can easily be justified by how people around you live their life. It takes a lot of patience, trust in your core-essence, and more patience to move through. Your inner child holds this core wound, and it will work hard at...

Our chakra energy system can be separated into three parts. 

The first four chakras (root, sacral, solar plexus, and heart) represent the past and hold the memory of past experiences, from childhood and in utero, and the unprocessed traumas we have gone through even as adults. So in order to heal the past, we must sink into ourselves, make direct contact with our inner landscape, and explore what lives in us at the cellular & energetic levels. The first four chakras, when healthy, allow us to process and transform at a rapid pace. Experiences that relate to our sense of safety, belonging, ability to take action, and sense of identity move through us and resolve without interruption. As the expression of who we are to the world, these four chakras are supposed to change, transform, and expand over and over again. So healing is not a one-time thing. It is an ongoing journey that always brings us more into the integration of who we truly are. One should always start here on...

My body quickly forgets that life is on my side.

Even after years of healing, my animal suit tries to protect me from disappointment by attempting to control outcomes.

The protective instinct: Childhood and beyond

It wasn’t safe to be open and soft as a child. And if I put my guard down, my environment quickly reminded me to put it back up. That reminder often came as a surprise, out of left field, catching me vulnerable, reinforcing the need for more protection, more layers.

Sometimes, everything outside of me proves true my conditioned belief that life is not on my side—I am the only one on my side.

The cost of closed hearts: physical and emotional impact

When my heart is closed, and my fire is kept neatly at bay below my diaphragm, with shallow breaths and busyness, of course, the reality I project is one of disappointment, compromise, and smallness.

And if I stay like this for a while, my inner world starts to crumble too.

It’s harder to meditate, harder to...

Our voice is the bridge between our inner and outer worlds. We BECOME when we speak the truth of our experience, when we put sound to what we know to be true. We accelerate our healing and transformation when we sound ourselves out and are witnessed by others. Although we can do a lot of personal development work in the privacy of our own mind, if we don't go out into the world and are not heard and seen for who we truly are, we can only go so far in realizing our soul. Our voice is the instrument the fire of our soul needs to actualize itself.
In my live programs, I see firsthand how life-changing it is to speak out loud the truth of our own experience and be witnessed by others. We can speak our truth more easily when we feel safe and can be witnessed by a group that is compassionate and non-judgemental. This kind of environment helps our nervous system redefine safety, so when we go back into the world, there is less of an edge to our emotions when we want to speak. When we find...

When I decided I wanted to do my Ph.D., it was very much a decision from my intellect. I wanted to become a university professor, and graduate work was the path to it. It was a practical, logical, and ego-pleasing want. I know now that the core essence impulse inside me wanted to be a teacher, but I let my mind decide how. I worked hard at it, persevered and I did achieve my goal. However, when I graduated, I did not have the feeling of joy I thought I would have, but instead, I found myself wondering, what’s next?
This is an example of self-realization as opposed to soul-realization. I had an idea of who I wanted to become, and I put all my attention towards becoming that person. You may be able to do anything you put your focus on, but self-realization is ephemeral. It doesn’t satisfy the soul.
  Soul-realization, on the other hand, is eternal. Instead of putting your focus on goals, your self-image, or what you think you want, you place it on the abstract inner...