Moore Style - Finding Your True Nature with Alex Shailer

Episode Date: June 12, 2023

Have you ever considered that there is “you” behind the character you play in this human life? I think many of us go on a journey of finding out who really are and Alex Shailer is no different.   This week Alex and I have an enlightening conversation about our true nature and how that impacts our healing and growth in this life. I always say that “doing the work” is a big part of having a healthy relationship and finding a spiritual depth can be a huge part of that healing.   This week’s episode will leave you asking big questions and one step closer to finding a true authentic partnership!    In this week’s episode, we discuss:  [1:18] About Alex Shailer [2:32] More on what Alex teaches  [8:37] What brought Alex to this line of work [14:59] Alex’s perspective on tools  [18:00] Men and repressed emotion  [23:24] Alex’s opinions on anxiety  [25:28] Tips to de-stress before a first date or a job interview  [28:15] Top three tips for men to relieve stress  [30:38] What Alex uses to guide people in creating healthy relationships  [35:46] Alex’s favorite date    Connect with Alex: YouTube Instagram  Freebie Link 

Hi, everyone. I'm your host, Celeste Moore, and you are listening to the Down and Dirty podcast, aka the Double D's of dating. This is a podcast for navigating the ins and outs of modern midlife dating. Here, we will discuss the challenges that men and women face in today's dating world. Like many industries, this one is forever changing, and I believe this platform will help those who need or want it. Today, it is the best time to take control of your desired outcome, whether it is a marriage, significant other, life partner, or just to gain the confidence in dating once again. Every other week, we will dive in and talk about different viewpoints that seem to be challenges in today's dating arena. So let's get into today's episode.

Welcome everyone to another episode of the Down and Dirty podcast today. As always, I am your host, Celeste Moore. But before we dive into today's episode, I would like to introduce my guest today. His name is Alex Shaler. And what he does is, he aims to help overcome the anxiety limitation and feelings of lack that come from the ego the voice in your head the story of quotations me in the mind he loves to combine teachings from western neuroscience to eastern mysticism and everything else in between to help you live with more energy vibrancy and freedom everything he communicates comes from lived experience and he has also applied his own life experiences to overcome his own dark nights of soul and to

transmute pain into peace well thank you alex for being on today's show i appreciate you coming on and and i can't wait to start asking you some questions thanks for having me celeste yeah so first off I would love to start off by talking a little bit more in depth by what it is that you do and what were some of the reasons that led you into this line of healing work I help people understand know their true nature and then embody that on the human form when I say true nature what I call myself is a non-duality informed coach which means I do coaching with people I leverage coaching and different therapies to help people but it's specifically non-duality informed meaning it's informed by this idea that our true nature is something deeper than these

ideas about ourselves that we have in our mind these limited ideas about who we are and it's like even down to the idea of being a person so non-duality is like it what basically it says is that peace and freedom and flow are our true nature that's who we really are that's the starting place and it also recognizes that within that there's this character that seeks things in time that seeks liberation or happiness or peace within things and that's fine as well but that as you recognize your true nature beyond that tends to fall away and the message really is pointing to more experiencing of of yourself and when I say self I mean a true self the one who's aware of this not the idea of yourself in your mind but the one who is just simply this open

aware presence so that's where the non-duality message is really pointing is pointing to us to recognize that and and rest within that and then all kinds of healing can flow from there yeah i was at another time and uh here i was going to ask you about the non-duality because i was not quite sure what that meant so you're kind of stripping away ego you're stripping away everything that kind of or how we perceive ourselves but really about like who the soul is who we are as a being is that is that kind of am i am i off a little bit well basically the there are no real problems here but the problem you could say relatively okay for for many people is that they try to find we try to find lasting peace and happiness in things in relationships

in material things in substances in different experiences but what we find is that none of these things tend to bring us permanent peace or happiness obviously there is so much joy to be had in a relationship but when we depend our well-being on it that's when we become attached that's when we really try and grasp it within our hands and then we crush it so non-duality is about looking beyond that idea of just being this person who's seeking something in time and looking more deeply at who we already are prior to that what's the nature of this awareness that's aware of that is that seeking is that dissatisfied are who you really are lacking or are you already at peace when you look at the space of awareness which is yourself and you investigate that with your

attention you find that out to be the case but I would say don't believe anything that I say and see whether or not it rings true for you in your experience many people experience it in meditation psychedelics all kinds of different ways but really those are all just what it looks like there's no preconditions to awakening it's just knowing yourself is beyond this idea of being a person which is the ego it's just a belief it doesn't really exist right okay that explains a little bit more yeah I it's interesting that you say that it's it's when we can actually be present and and be and I think that's so hard for people that I know you know you're on this hamster wheel right of life relationships work you know things like that when you can sit with

yourself and actually be and who is that person and are you comfortable with that person yeah that's pretty yeah yeah for sure well non-duality really in one way it kind of removes all of those obstacles because what it recognizes is is there is going to be no end to that seeking of that person and not even that end of the seeking is required to be present because all being present is is just recognizing the present it's like the person can't do anything we can't really do anything to be aware of our true nature as people because our true nature is prior to the person it's the one who's watching this and dreaming this you know it's the awareness behind the person so yes it's difficult for the person really it's beyond difficult it's impossible there's nothing

that the person can do because it's always on that hamster wheel as it were but that arises in this awareness and is not an obstacle to just recognizing yourself as this awareness so what I don't know if you woke up one day and you said you know what maybe working on my spirituality or you had a you were in another position at some point and you said this is not working for me what kind of drove you into the direction of this line of work that you're in I was introduced to Alan Watts who is a zen philosopher but really he doesn't didn't like labels but uh he was a guy that brought over a lot of zen buddhism over to the west and also taught on many religions and philosophies so there was a priming there you

know when I was 15 someone introduced me in some internet chat room so you know I began listening to we could say spiritual is not quite the right word but maybe philosophical talks uh from a younger age but I mean I think this speaks to the gift of suffering because it wasn't really until I experienced you know the revelation of a really deep pain uh until actually the things that Alan Watts was talking about and what I was then introduced to Eckhart Tolle you know most people know this guy now quite mainstream The Power of Now big book yes and I got really deep into that after a breakup which just made that narrative story narrative person narrative in the mind go into chaos mode you know before it was holding itself together by telling a story about the

situation but when the situation collapsed then that whole mental story became like a horror movie and so at that point in time I'm like well I want to it's like yeah the person wants to escape from that in a way and that's when like in a way it's like the mind turns around and looks beyond it so you, you sort of turn around and look beyond what that story is all about, because that story is talking about this pain and that your life is terrible and everything's collapsed. And what am I going to do now about money and love and this terrible future that might happen. And so, and this, you know, deep pain in, in your,

in your chest, like a real, like breakup pain is real physical pain in the body, nervous system and your muscles and everything so so yeah it's sort of I was wanting that transcendence and that's what the power of now gave me a kind of access to because essentially non-duality is what Eckhart Tolle's teaching but he's just a bit more what you could call compromising in a way like sometimes people it's like teachers put steps there because the idea is is that people are not going to want to go all the way there that's too uh maybe abstract and so it's the present moment you know when i talk about awareness maybe it's a sounds a bit less accessible but the now the present moment sense perceptions what you're experiencing

that's like quite it's a bit hooky you know people can more tangible it takes their attention away from the mind and it drives it into you see what i mean so that is a kind of like a preliminary step in a way but eventually i discovered things that were more and more direct okay more and more direct just go straight there straight to we are this awareness become aware that you're this awareness and live experientially from there and that living from there you're liberated from the tyranny of this story in your head about your life when I ejected my attention from that mind story and just held it as this aware presence then it's like the suffering of that story just instantly disappeared wow that's amazing so so because it's like I'm not that person anymore

when you're identified with the mind story and you're saying I'm the Alex or I'm the John or whatever your name is I'm the person in that story to which this bad thing happened and it means these things about me about how worthy I am or whatever it is you know that is a whole world of torture but when you eject from that the thoughts may continue going yes but you see it more as a movie that's happening as opposed to I'm this person who is you see and so you're able to act from from a place of peace sort of about bypassing or not thinking about reality we can be real about it but we all know most of these thoughts in our mind are negative repetitive limiting they often ramp up when when there's fear or loss and and you become defensive and

we're often in this survival mechanism so yeah it's really it was really about ejecting from that okay and knowing a deeper sense of self or a deeper aspect of reality so that's what i help other people see or just be a pointer to i can't really help them i can just point the sign and say that's you go and investigate it for yourself don't believe me when you're just when you just stay present which is really just be knowingly this presence what happens in your life run the experiment that's my invitation I love it I love it yeah I think because kind of what you what you teach or you bring to your clients is i deal with a lot of men right and so they're looking for stuff that's very tangible right tools how do i and for some men i feel like this

is so like i'm just generalizing of course my my experience with some of my clients has been you know when i talk about stuff like this or get a little bit in tune with what's really going on with who they are they you know they can't quite see it I think it comes from practice I think it comes from them really like you said trying things out that work for them I mean is that something that you do you have very specific like because I know you do breath work correct a lot of breath yeah it's like so all the tools that yeah that we still use tools like in my practice I still use tools practices and tools are great for like refining the body and mind yeah for whether it's a male or a female there are things to do but the question is is like what is that doing in service

of are you trying to fix yourself are you trying to fix yourself from a place of being broken and trying to become something for someone or become something in order to gain some kind of peace or happiness or fulfillment in the future that can happen from breath work dating trying to make money you know like all the things that we do any practice that we do it's just really place of where is it coming from so they're all useful um but when it comes to non-duality and awakening then none of them are necessary because there's no preconditions to recognizing who you really are now the embodiment of that if you really are awareness peace love you're not this limited person in your mind uh then yeah like over time there is an

embodiment of that and part of that might be healing your traumas correcting your posture um you're relaxing like breath work learning to regulate your nervous system learning to be in more of a an expression you sort of there's an unfolding you learn to be more of an expression of who you are over time and that it does take time right and it takes healing and growth but the recognition that you're already that is immediate and unconditional it has to be it has to be if you are love if we are love this is what we say we are love god is love whatever then it has to be without conditions yeah I think it's just for people getting um comfortable with their authentic self with their real self with like you said um and not changing

for someone else because it doesn't work I mean nothing nothing works when you're not who you are And I think I know I try to teach, um, authenticity, right. Really getting comfortable and with who you are, what you are, what you desire, what does your life look like you, but based on you, nobody else, no external factors. And, you know, that's huge for people to, to recognize that they are an okay with that, you know, without all the judgments, they're not okay. I don't care. That's who I am.

well maybe speaking deeper to your point with men men do tend to have a specific conditioning of not feeling we could say like not feeling emotion or not feeling feelings certain feelings because they are deemed as not useful or not practical or not safe to feel um i mean if you think of someone who works perhaps in the military then maybe there is this idea this is sort of archetype of masculinity isn't there of not maybe people would maybe say it's a it's a toxic one or whatever I don't tend to I don't really want to use that term but you know what I mean it's like boys don't cry kind of thing because it's not useful it's just it's not really we don't really understand why it's there it just looks like a moment of weakness and so therefore a lot of times

these things are blocked because it's like it's not safe to feel it's not useful but for example if you don't cry and just taking crying as like the archetypal kind of man blocked emotion but you know things are changing but stereotypically is the one isn't it yeah and it's like you know people think if i cry i'm gonna lose my wife or my girlfriend you know and that's actually you know doing that is the completion of an emotional arc of like it's the end of anxiety and anger so if you're not going through that you're going to get stuck in emotions you're essentially going to traumatize yourself so when you are just being your true nature knowingly like if you're just being awareness and you're not being this having this attention always focused on the personal

aspect of yourself in your mind then the then these sensations in the body tend to bubble up all the stuff that's been suppressed and the mind may come in within many people and say no no no no no i can't feel that so it's about cultivating that safety but the safety within you can cultivate that safety practically you know having people around and having resources in which you can feel safe to be the full range of who you are because you're talking about authenticity well you can't be authentic if you can't if you can't only be 80 of who you are because the other 20 isn't safe to be that way yeah so it's like so it's cultivating the capacity to have that bandwidth of yourself expressed within a knowing of safety practically but also philosophically is the key like are you

safe existentially this is the point of non not the non-duality has a point but what I'm trying to say is that it speaks to an understanding that like you are fundamentally okay you know you are safe to be who you are yeah I think that safety issue that you talk about really stems from your childhood and having unconditional love which I don't it's different than love it's different than what you rationalize and what you need as a child and so you take those habits and those things that you've maybe coping skills and yeah if you feel safe if that came from that i mean i know you can heal this right but it's something that really is coming from what your parents gave you that's safety do you think that's yeah that is why reparenting in a way is so

important but reparenting is is it's sort of a term from more the therapy side of things but really what it means it's just like a re it's you could call it repatterning but it's repatterning you know under perhaps underdeveloped uh circus as it were with a deeper a wiser understanding but it is interesting you said you know basically we're empowered to when we get unconditional love so when the love of who we already are is embodied within our caregivers that's tend to be where the offspring seem to more quickly recognize that themselves that would make perfect sense wouldn't it yeah but it does come in time through us healing our traumas it does come from us awakening to who we are but also like over time who are we being in the world are we passing on these traumas

to our young you know to our children or are we healing them yeah and then we don't pass it on to the next generation and the next generation can live more free to be authentic i hope so i hope everybody like you know takes that responsibility and when they become a parent and really don't want to pass that on we want to heal for sure i mean i know i do well we're all doing the best we can the work in a work in progress right we're all doing the best we can this is true so do you think there's different types of anxiety or is there just like one response that our body has which makes us anxious you can answer the question from a couple of levels uh on a on a brain of a system level you can make a distinction it's not really just different types

it's really the sources okay so it can just be directly from external stimulus and it bypasses the thinking mind the prefrontal cortex and go straight to the amygdala the fear center in the brain and that internal alarm goes off so if you got bitten by a certain breed of dog when you were younger maybe when you see that dog later on in life it's just going to trigger that emotional memory you don't even think about it it's all the things the things that you feel scared of where you don't even you're not even thinking about it that's what you could call like a direct kind of anxiety direct from external stimulation okay um and and then you know there's also that information also goes through the prefrontal cortex so it also gets filtered what

we see goes straight there to the fear center um to link with emotional memories but it's also filtered through the mind so we can interpret something we see we can see a hose and then we think it's a snake and then that triggers the fear but that obviously like the thinking continues despite external circumstances so thinking on its own can trigger anxiety when you're identified with it okay so that's going straight from the prefrontal cortex to that fear system so in that way yeah they're kind of different types it's helpful to see those distinctions yeah definitely so what would you say going on a first date it could cause a lot of anxiety uncertainty very nervousness what would you say or is there a tool that you could tell everyone here something

that they could use they're going on job interviews just something really like just to kind of de-stress their body their mind just for going on something like this yeah there's so many self-soothing techniques i just recommend learning the full range to see what works for you what you're basically looking to do is things is is employ things that calm the turn on the parasympathetic nervous system the body's rest and digest response so you can purposely uh turn off that system that is unnecessarily uh activated you know a sympathetic activation uh a fight flight freeze response that's what's ramping up when we feel overly anxious about something so learning to regulate that through extending your exhales your breath exhales is one thing you can do double inhale

exhales a physiological sigh so that turns on the parasympathetic nervous system very quickly but there are also a range of tools if you get really overly stimulated some people find for example self-administered emdr eye movements you can apply that to it or bilateral stimulation we've seen this butterfly pathing thing seems like it's gonna be it seems like it's sort of crazy hocus pocus it really does work if you think about going on the date let it let it trigger the adrenaline and then self-soothe at the same time it's very powerful for like knocking out that sort of trigger as it were but obviously you don't want to apply these things to try and heal deep traumas you want to do that with with someone who can guide you through that and

support you with that yes but you can use these tools with certain things but overall all of this is secondary to knowing who you really are because so long as you go into the first day as being a person who needs peace or happiness or fulfillment or something from that person it will always begin dysfunctionally it's a great point something that yeah obviously this is why people come to you um i love it i hope everybody is getting some good tidbits because this is this is amazing i'm learning so much from you thank you um i i would love to know like maybe top three tools for men listening here something they could practice on a daily basis for relieving stress maybe just like a top three maybe you could recommend yoga breath work

I'm gonna throw self-administered EMDR in that but I want to really preface that by saying like to heal traumas needs a guided process but and and really to properly use self-administered EMDR is better if you have had EMDR delivered to you and that and that you yeah so but at the same time very very powerful like it was so surprisingly powerful how moving the eyes whilst thinking about something uncomfortable can really uh speed up the processing of that and the release of that because that's the stuff that's sort of lurking in the background causing the stress these un processed or unended emotional loops as it were so you're looking to end those emotional loops de-stress shaking that's we've gone to four but a bonus one yeah is uh you can search bioenergetic

shaking but shaking it out uh is actually very very powerful as well i love that yeah i haven't heard of the last two until today so i thank you for that i'll definitely i'm gonna look that up after we get off here so i think we kind of talked about this but having a good relationship in general with anybody especially you know dating but really starts with yourself I mean we I think we've talked about this you know being aware and being you know of from love and all of these things um being really open and vulnerable right in a relationship and and really accepting not just yourself but the other as is um does this just come from your coaching like do you have a system that you kind of get people really

there or is that something that um just comes like with practices and stuff or or is it a combination of the two of coaching with you and practices well when you've worked on particular uh shall we say issues for a certain period of time you start to see sort of like the patterns and links between different models and in terms of relationship i think the amargo model is a good one and what the amargo model says is that we seek relationships consciously for pleasure and subconsciously for healing and it does tend to be in the experience of all my clients and and everything like in you know my understanding of this is that uh yeah i mean this seems to be people's experience as well uh that we we tend to uh attract we we have an

attraction event you know courtship event in our life and there's this initial sort of spark this connection and then at some point the people start triggering each other's wounds for some people it can happen instantly as soon as they meet the person within the first two texts or for some people can happen you know a year later there's usually within that time a power struggle kind of starts and this is where the old wounds the old egoic conditioning gets triggered and the relationship is the margo relationship theory really says to see the relationship as as a modality of healing as well as you know pleasure and joy and connection um and and it is best if both people are on board with that but it is also said that even just one person on board

with that seeing a relationship again this ties to non-duality not as a means to make you happy or bring you peace but to be a celebratory expression of who you already are as love and within that unless you're a fully completely healed completely awakened person that doesn't exist so you're probably not that because it doesn't exist then you're probably going to get triggered the old issue should we say samskaras you could say in india philosophy samskaras traumas you could say in a kind of trauma therapy lens contractions density or traces of being a separate person maybe in a more non-duality way you know there's different ways of expressing it but essentially like those things eventually can sort of be dissolved out of the system

as it were and then that's what just reveals more of your authenticity naturally yeah that's good points for sure in your personal journey has there anything that you've learned say let's say from that the past relationship that you will absolutely not bring to the next I think I've already said it but yeah that I never have tried to find salvation or permanent fulfillment or peace or happiness in okay the relationship and recognize that incredible pleasure ecstasy healing joy connection oneness can obviously happen obviously happen between people but it happens more and more in my life in a more so we say purer or deeper or more beautiful way when i'm being knowingly less of a person who's trying to find something within them validation

or or or fill fill an empty hole somewhere uh in my heart or something and more i i it's like i think it was a silly metaphor go from turning up into a relationship with like a half eaten bowl of ice cream and saying like can you fill up my bowl and then maybe and then maybe i'll sort of eat something then I'll give you some like can we arrive to the relationship like I've got a bowl of ice cream you've got a bowl of ice cream let's pour it all in one big bowl and pour chocolate sauce in and tuck it in together we're already fulfilled yeah let's we're not two halves coming together we're two wholes recognizing that we're already whole and we're really beyond oneness that would be where I would I like that analogy my approach now two big bowls of ice cream that's

I like that chocolate sauce don't forget the chocolate sauce I love it I love it okay just one other quick personal question that I ask everybody that comes on the show and it's for a reason and just try to get to know you a little bit but if you could at any point in your dating life could choose a favorite date if you remember or if you can think of something that you really enjoyed and what was it oh from my past yes from any anywhere in your life okay a favorite date and what was it oh it's hard to think like what was it what's a date and what's not because it's like it's quite a lot of times where these dates are sort of a planned do you mean like when something was like planned as a date it can be anything when you're with somebody enjoying each

other you know doing yeah it doesn't have to be planned i mean i can bring up a few a few specific times but sure the theme in those times is where i've been it's like where we've been to many if we've been to a few different places usually for some reason there's been a lot of fun and joy if we've been to a few different places and that can be it's just like being open I think if you've got enough energy with someone you end up doing you're going to end up doing more things in the night you might walk you might do some something joyful something chill you might do food as well you might go to three or four different places i've done that a couple of times and they've all always been the most enjoyable just walking around at night just

experiencing something that's not planned right a little bit more spontaneous and just going yeah and i think the walks the walks between the places are also significant yeah you're just i feel like there's the connection there right the human connection I don't know I think it's like a fantasy of two people on an adventure it's like you're adventuring through the night you know you're walking somewhere maybe I did a lot of that in my 20s walking through the night around London different parties with you know people in relationship as well so okay yeah maybe that's just what i naturally tend to but everybody's got their own yeah i love it well thank you for sharing that so where can people find more information uh about you about your coaching

any social media yeah alexshaylor.com youtube alex shaylor instagram alex shaylor tiktok alex shaylor okay that's it really that's great and if you want to speak to me about a program about transforming your life then speak to alex.com i love that transforming your life because it really does that's really what you're doing is you're helping people get out of the bullshit get out of this you know the societal things that we've created for ourselves and really getting it raw and real yeah yeah yeah there's a transformation that happens but yeah also yeah just sticking with the message that there's also no preconditions to just recognizing that we're already whole I love it well thank you Alex I appreciate you coming on

and and speaking about what you do and what you can offer people thank you so much Celeste thank you nice to be here yes have a good one thanks for tuning in to today's episode come and hang out with me on instagram at celeste more image let me know your thoughts on today's episode because i always love hearing from you all you can find all the links and resources in the show notes of the episode on my website celestemore.com okay that's all for now i'll see you in the next episode see you next time friends Thank you.