Saturn Returns with Caggie - 6.3 Co-creating Conscious Partnerships with Sheleana Aiyana

Episode Date: October 24, 2022

This episode with Sheleana Aiyana, author of ‘Becoming The One’, explores how we can avoid fast or toxic love in order to build stronger relationships with our partners. While discussing whether there is such a thing as ‘The One’, Caggie and Sheleana also unpack why adopting conscious behaviours, such as understanding conflict responses and communication styles, allows us to co-create healthy relationships.  Sheleana also explains the main reason why sexual chemistry and passion dissipate in relationships, why we may experience self-abandonment in relationships and why reflecting on our previous relationships helps us to further understand our love patterns and behaviours to avoid repeating past mistakes. Find Sheleana at The Rising Woman Order ‘Becoming The One’ by Sheleana Aiyana.  Free Inner Child Meditation. --- Follow or subscribe to "Saturn Returns" for future episodes, where we explore the transformative impact of Saturn's return with inspiring guests and thought-provoking discussions. Follow Caggie Dunlop on Instagram to stay updated on her personal journey and you can find Saturn Returns on Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.  Order the Saturn Returns Book. Join our community newsletter here.  Find all things Saturn Returns, offerings and more here.

Hello everyone and welcome to Saturn Returns with me, Kagi Dunlop. This is a podcast that aims to bring clarity during transitional times where there can be confusion and doubt. It's funny, when we end a relationship, I've noticed this phenomenon. We all have this freak out moment where we're like, oh, did I make the wrong decision? Maybe that was my last chance at love. Maybe I'll never find someone again. And it's so natural to feel that way. And really, you know, the more you hold back, the more you push love away. Today, I'm joined by Shalina Ayana, who is the founder of Rising Woman and author of Becoming the One. I have been a huge fan of Shay's work for such a long time after discovering her on

Friend of Mine, Mark Grove's podcast. And since I've been exploring her work, I have loved reading her book. And I cannot wait to share this episode with you. We explore the importance of self-worth in relationships, how to heal from our childhood wounds and trauma, how she discovered and found Rising Woman and her whole backstory. Relationships are such a complex piece that we all struggle with navigating and I think there can be a lot of shame because when things come up that are unexpected or we're repeating patterns and we can't see why and we just feel stuck in these cycles that we're repeating and this episode gives you so many amazing tools and insights as to why that is happening to you and what you can do about it. Shay has so much experience in this field

from her own personal story that she's going to share in this episode and from her work in inherited trauma in a child work and internal family systems therapy obviously I love everyone I speak to on this podcast but I think that this episode is not to be missed because I still feel like I have so much to learn in relationship it's a constant process because things are always coming up from the past and they are the greatest container for our healing and for our own personal development and essentially as you'll hear from this episode it's what we're co-creating together we can't look for another to heal us but we can look for another to give us support and to hold space whilst we do our own healing for those of

you that haven't heard of Rising Woman, it's a fantastic online platform that's all around conscious relationships that's been created by Shea. It has 2.5 million followers on Instagram and has a newsletter reading of 3 million. And her book Becoming the One, which recently came out, is a must read. I highly suggest getting it. I can't wait to get into this conversation because listening back there were so many takeaways for me and things that I still am working through myself. So take your time with listening to this one, listen as many times as you need to and share it with anyone you think might find it useful. Before we get into this episode let's

check in with our astrological guide, Nora. We have a few elements in the charts indicating how we love. Venus and the moon being the main ones. When we connect with the moon and with Venus, we learn how we authentically need to be loved, need to be heard, need to be emotionally contained, and in turn we learn how we naturally do that for others. And that's where compatibility comes in. Similarly to the love languages, these planets in the charts help us understand just how we love. And much can be uncovered from it, including the attachment style we've been nurtured to adopt versus the one we naturally feel most aligned with. So as we grow into our 20s, we have two outer planets come into play, Neptune and Saturn. Neptune because it glamorizes everything it touches. It encourages us to take on the trope of romance we've internalized growing up, but also whenever we write a book focused on

a love story or when we saw actors enacted on the screen. So in other words, we develop the tendency or secret fantasy to see la vie en rose, as Edith Piaf so beautifully sang. However, those rose-tinted glasses might seem to make everything seem so hopeful and easier, but in truth, without the healthy element of Saturn, we can easily fall into the trap of self-betrayal. We find excuses for those who hurt us, cross our boundaries, give false promises, cheat on us, because we hold on to the ever so infamous happy ending we've deceptively been told exists for all of us when we grow up, without ever having to lift a finger. So Saturn ultimately teaches us how to love and that love as beautiful as an untouchable as it

can be needs work to be maintained needs discipline to last we need to be willing to exercise discipline and work not only when it comes to our life goals and legacy but also when it comes to our relationships we learn that others can only meet us where they've met themselves and that this inevitably can mean that some people will need to be let go of. We also learn that boundaries are a form of love and that only those who love us sincerely will be willing to learn about them, respect them and honour them. And in turn, we do the same for them. So Saturn Return and Saturn Transit help us,

and sometimes through brutal heartbreaks and awakenings, that love and relationships can only endure, thrive, and offer us this very happy ending we dream of when we're willing to show up, hold space, commit, not only to ourselves, but also to those we love and love us. Well, Shay, welcome to the Saturn Returns podcast. It is such an honor to have you. I've been a really big fan of your work for such a long time. So this is very exciting for us. Thanks for having me. It's really nice to be here with you today.

So for the audience that doesn't know, would you be able to share a little bit about who you are, what you do and how you got into this work? Yeah, so I would classify myself primarily as a writer, a relationship writer, a lot of women who struggle with self-worth and with childhood trauma that sort of permeates their relationship patterns in their adult lives. And I'm the founder of Rising Woman, which is an online community. We have about 3 million readers, which is just amazing. And I wrote a book called Becoming the One this year which came out in June which I love yeah thank you so much it was a really fun project for me to do big initiation as well I've wanted to put a book out into the world for quite some time and it became an international bestseller in its first week so that was really exciting. And actually in the UK, it really took off. So thanks to you

and all of the amazing UK folks who have been reading my work, it just really seemed to pick up there. But I got into this work because I had my own tumultuous childhood. I grew up really experiencing a lot of different traumas, abandonment, sexual abuse, in and out of foster homes, running with street kids, addiction, you name it. It was really a tough start into the world that I wouldn't trade for anything. And so of course I carried all of those conditioned beliefs about relationship and about, you know, how to relate to others into my adult relationships, which didn't go well, obviously, because it never does. And so when I was in my very early 20s, I actually got married and divorced all within the span of a couple of years. And that ending really catapulted me into my own healing. It really ripped open all of my

childhood wounds that I had never felt. And I had this moment where I was in so much pain and I just had this flood of past memories from when I was very little. And I got this message from spirit that this is not about that person. This is not about this relationship. This is all about you and your pain and the things that you haven't looked at. And so I had spent the first quarter of my life ignoring my pain and really denying that it was there and just pretending that I had moved on when really I had just stuffed it all. And so that led me down a path of deep seeking and healing. And since then I have trained in internal family systems and inherited family trauma and somatic work and inner child work and done a lot of my own healing work in plant

medicine ceremonies. And of course, a lot of training and different therapies. And it's just my passion to work with people who come from those histories and who, you know, maybe don't know what healthy love looks like or maybe don't feel that it's possible for them. Because relationship is just so foundational to who we are as humans. And you speak in the beginning of the book about how first and foremost we are relating to the self. And I think what you so beautifully demonstrate is like every relationship we're in is a we're all seeking more to understand and yet kind of just fumbling our way through it figuring out through our own heartbreaking experience what works and what doesn't but we rarely actually look back at our lives at the early imprints from childhood and be like hmm this might be the way that I you know was brought up or how I witnessed love how my parents treated me, whatever it might be. So obviously through the things that you experienced when you were a child, it sounds

like you went to the kind of extreme depths of all these things that I guess a lot of us carry to greater or lesser degrees. Would you be happy to share a little bit about what that experience was like for you in childhood? Yeah, I mean, for me, it was very lonely, being, you know, growing up with a mom who was really emotionally totally unavailable, because she was struggling with mental illness, and very unable to be consistent or be present for me consistently. unable to be consistent or be present for me consistently. So there was a lot of in and out, a lot of I'm here and now I'm completely gone. And there was a lot of alone time for me as well. So interestingly, I can recall a lot of memories and a lot of dreams that I had very, very early on because I had this very rich imaginary world as a child. And I do credit that as well to having spent so much time alone as a kid. And growing up in and out of different

foster homes, as challenging as it was, and as much as I felt that I didn't belong anywhere, there was also this aspect of getting to sort of see into the lives of others that not a lot of us get to see, right? Because most of us, we grew up with one consistent family or in one consistent dynamic. And so that was sort of a gift for me because I got to see what else is possible and see what kind of life maybe I would want to live. But by the time I was 16, I moved out on my own. So I started working two jobs and homeschooling myself at about 16. And then about 19, that's when I ended up in a really, really abusive relationship. Was that the person that you married?

No, no, that was somebody else. That abusive relationship didn't last long, thankfully. I'm very lucky to have survived that. That was just about a year, year and a half, was like 19 years old. And I talk about this in my book. It's a very common pattern too that many of us have when we have been with somebody who maybe is very abusive or we've been in a fairly toxic relationship. We might do this complete flip to somebody who is just like super nice. And we think, oh, well, this is good enough. And so then we sort of just settle down with the first person that seems better than the last person.

But we're still not working through our stuff. And we're still not actually evaluating whether or not that person is actually right for us. So it's usually, you know, the person right after that really intense toxic relationship is probably not what they seem, which was also the case for me. There was a lot hidden in the shadows in that dynamic as well, but it was a good wake up relationship. And we need those sometimes, like we need those relationships that there's almost this agreement, this spirit agreement that we're going to wake each other up, you know? And so I really encourage people to look at their heartbreaks and to look at their relationship endings as teachers, regardless of what happened or who did what. And instead of focusing on demonizing the other person, regardless of whether or not their

behavior was right or wrong, because, you know, we all make mistakes and we all do things that are unacceptable in in those dynamics when we're playing out toxic patterns um so it's not to dismiss those things but it's that it's not healthy to focus all on their behavior when we could really be looking at what did I bring to this what am I here to learn what What patterns are emerging? How is this familiar to me from my childhood? A hundred percent. Because I think it's something that we don't really want to recognize in ourselves, how we are co-creating that situation. And it's far easier, especially in the demise of a relationship to fall into that perpetrator and the victim sort of scenario. And like, and that's obviously you know I'm

excluding and as adding as a caveat when it's an abusive situation but often we play a part and if we're not ready to look at our own behavior we're not going to learn to find something that's more aligned or that's in our highest good well our, our nervous systems are wired to feel excited or to feel comfortable, whether or not that's safe is another story with what's familiar. And so if abuse or avoidance or withdrawal or hot and cold behavior is what's normal, then that's what we're going to feel the most turned on by. And that's not victim blaming. That's really how our nervous systems work. And I had to recognize that in myself as well, in order to rewire that, you know, and we're never responsible for other people's behavior or how they choose to treat us or how they show up. But we are responsible for

our own nervous systems and really knowing what is guiding us, what's leading us in our relationship choices. And so much of what we're learning is unconscious. It's through the media. We don't even realize how much we're taking in from movies and from TV shows when we're young. And of course, we have our family conditioning as well, which is a huge part of it. But media is another really big one. And so if you look at where in our culture do we educate on healthy relationships? It's not happening in schools. It's not happening in film. It's not happening in film. I mean, if it is very, very rarely, right? And then we're not, most of the time we're not getting it at home because that generational pattern is there still,

right? We don't have a lot of healthy families. Like there's more families that we hear of that are struggling than not with relationship dynamics and communication. So where are we getting with relationship dynamics and communication. So where are we getting our belief systems from? And so it's almost like we get to this point where we have to start fresh, where we have to begin again. And that's where my work comes in is, okay, let's do a complete re-education on what relationship actually is. And let's start with our relationship to ourselves. actually is and let's start with our relationship to ourselves and then we can begin to build relationships that really fuel us and nourish us and help us be of service in the world because you touched on a couple of things there that I think a lot of people are going to relate to in terms of we all have family structures or units that

we were brought up in and that often is an example of what a relationship is whether or not that's healthy as another story and then also nervous system work so when you combine those two and then people kind of go into the adult world seeking love and partnership and wondering why they're attracted to unavailable people or they keep ending up with the same kind of person and why these things are repeating and not really have any understanding of why and also that thing you mentioned a second ago about how alan de bota who wrote the school of life refers to it as like the recoil dynamic which is you know when you into, when you leave one relationship and you go straight to another, you end up finding all the things that that previous partner lacked, but it doesn't

necessarily mean that it's aligned for you. So from your perspective on doing this kind of work, what, and you said relating to the self, like what would your advice be for people to kind of start reprogramming in that what is some of the steps I mean what I have structured in my book is really starting off with knowing our own story like what is your origin story and you know where did your beliefs about love really begin you know what was it like for you growing up? What did you observe around you in your parents and authority figures in the media? What beliefs sort of began to form? And what were your first wounds? What were those first heartaches? And a lot of us think,

my first heartbreak when I was 15 or that girl or that boy who hurt me on the playground or rejected me. But I also feel like our original heartbreaks happened quite young. And so if we can go back even deeper and question, when was the first time that you felt unseen or misunderstood or you had to change a part of yourself in order to be loved. And to be honest, for some of us, it's very, very young. And a lot of that is just in how our parents and their parents were raised with the punishment model. And it's to no fault of their own. That's what they were taught, right? But look at a small child who is having big feelings and doesn't know what to do with them. And then instead of being soothed

or supported through those big feelings and having someone get down on their eye level and say, hey, I see that you're angry. I see that you're frustrated. I want you to know I'm here with you. I'm not going anywhere. And setting limits, but also staying with that person while they're going through it, helping them regulate. So most of us didn't get that. Instead, we got, if you're not going to behave, go to your room or go stand in the corner, or you're not getting dinner tonight or something else where there's this cutoff of connection. there's this separation from parent. And so that person that's there to love us and protect us is saying, I'm only going to love and accept you and keep you safe with me if you behave the way that I want you to behave. So don't show me any of those things.

And so many of us are carrying these programs that we are too much or that we're not enough or that we have to hold ourselves back or that there's something innately flawed or broken about us when we feel big emotions our tendency might be to leave our body or to avoid or deny or run away or to chase right because there's this panic button in our nervous system like oh no like i'm feeling something big i need to make sure that you don't leave. And looking at those things while difficult can be really helpful for us to just understand our own internal experience

and to create a best separation so that we're not making other people responsible in our relationships now as adults for how we feel, right? Because being able to be in our bodies, take ownership for our own emotions, our own sensations, and also being able to be in our bodies take ownership for our own emotions our own sensations and also being able to express them maturely without blaming or chasing is a skill that we actually have to develop and we're supposed to learn that as children with our parents and that hasn't happened very often fortunately now that's happening a lot. Yeah. In the heat of the moment,

I think in conflict, when someone feels activated and then that kind of sets off the other, it can be incredibly hard to regulate your nervous system because it kind of goes into disarray and then that triggers the other person. So what are some of your tips? I know you go through them in the book, but for the audience that might not have read it yet of how to, in that moment, stop that situation from escalating to the point where it causes way more of an argument than it needs to, because it could be something relatively small. What is your advice for people to kind of have a different approach to that situation? I have a chapter in my book about projections and projections are, you know, when we see something that's in ourselves

or we see something from our history and we sort of project it onto the person in front of us now. And so often in relationship and in adult relationship, what's happening is that we're playing out really old stories over and over again. And this is why it's really difficult for us sometimes in relationship when a partner says or does something that offends us or that hurts us, or we feel disrespected. If we haven't worked through those past wounds, if we haven't worked through any unhealed relationships with people from our history, with our parents, it's going to trigger that wound, that old wound. And we're going to respond to our partner now as if they are that person who hurt us. Right. And so that's when it becomes really volatile. And it's, and,

and when both of us are doing that, which is often the case in most relationships, of course, you know, nobody has the anchor, nobody's holding it down. And so there is this explosive or dismissive or anxious avoidant dance going on. And so it does come down to also knowing, you know, what are those things from the past that really caused us to feel unseen or unsafe, having that awareness first, and then practicing, watching how our mind works throughout the day or watching the stories that it makes up and creating a little bit of distance. So I have this, this whole section on observing your mind, which is instead of believing every thought you think, which is not a new concept, right? Every

spiritual teacher talks about this. So every thought you think is not reality or true ultimate truth right we know this but in relationship we make a lot of assumptions right or we have negative thoughts and we we believe those thoughts and so it's creating a little bit of distance where we can challenge our minds a bit to step out of the storytelling and more into the is actually true and the vulnerability underneath right because the mind is there to sort of protect us. It's the mind and the ego are sort of working in unison. So the ego is saying, hey, it's not safe to be vulnerable here

and be honest that that just hurt your feelings. So instead, why don't you lash out and say something mean? You know, or why don't you pretend that didn't hurt, right? And so then the hard thing to do, the courageous thing to do is to say, ouch, like that hurt my feelings. Or, hey, you know, I just want to let you know when you talk like that to me or when you do this thing, you know, it brings up this in me and just being, you know, vulnerable

and sharing. And then there's a lot of somatic practices as well. One of them, the main one being just doing simple body scans, which I talk's a lot of somatic practices as well one of them the main one being just doing simple body scans which I talk about a lot in in my book and in my work in general which is can you feel what's happening in your body while also noticing what's happening around you in your environment and then seeing another person and and witnessing them while staying in your body, right? Because so often what happens in relationship is the moment our partner feels anxious or triggered, we feel anxious and triggered instead of being able to witness and hold that energy within our bodies. Okay, I'm

feeling present. I can see that you're feeling anxious or I can see that you're upset. I understand that you're upset and not always having to take on and enmesh with our partner with everything that they're feeling. That's also, I find that really hard. Yeah, the chapter around projections, I found very interesting because I think that's something we all are guilty of doing from time to time when we do project our own pain onto the other person. And like you say, it can create this anxious avoidant dance but what about projecting something when you sort of

fantasize about the idea of someone is that also a projection in a way yeah if if you're projecting something that isn't true because you want it to be true or you're projecting your fantasies you know you're still not present with that person and we of course like you said we all do that and projections never fully go away like we are human beings we just all project all the time you know based on you know what our beliefs are and what we see in the world and what our conditioning is and what mood we're in that day um you know, we can be driving down the road and someone could honk at us and we could immediately get angry and assume, you know, that they're attacking us. Or we could, you know, assume that they're honking at somebody else.

It just depends on what our conditioning is in that moment, right? But we do that. We fantasize and we create, I talk about in my book, you know, fantasizing and love chasing and creating situationships where we are imagining that this person is going to be sort of the solution or the answer to all of our problems. And that's the honeymoon phase in a nutshell, right? It's finding this person who seems perfect, and we want to believe that they're the answer to our prayers. And then eventually, the deeper we get into relationship, we find ourselves back in that same familiar territory of whatever our patterns are. And that's why we're often drawn to that person to begin with. Yeah. And so it's sort of stepping out of this idea that there's ever going

to be, that's why my book is called Becoming the One, because it's stepping out of this idea that there is such thing as the one and realizing, of course, there are people who can be the loves of your life. And we have soulmates and we have people who we can walk beautiful paths with and we can have amazing relationships. And you can definitely be with someone who you consider the best person for you to be with in this life. But the idea that there's this external half of you or this person who's going to come and complete you is false. We have to come into relationship with a sense of wholeness and a real awareness of our own conditioning and our identity and who we are so that we can take whole responsibility in our partnerships to co create what we want instead of expecting it to be about the other person like if i just find the

right person maybe my relationships will work out no you could find the right person and it could still implode because relationship is a co-creation it's a co-creation of our minds ultimately and our nervous systems and our hearts and our beliefs. And so if we want to experience that conscious love while still experiencing joy and excitement and adventure and pleasure and all those things that we want, then we have to know what we're carrying into that relationship. So there's often this belief that healthy relationships are boring, which is why so many people end up chasing games, right? Toxic dynamics. That was the next thing I was going to ask you, because I feel like for the audience listening, that's something that a lot of people have to navigate is this being attracted to someone

that's unavailable, or they're sort of in a situation ship or perhaps they're just with someone that's really not a good fit for them on in terms of building a healthy partnership yet there is this chemical intoxicating thing going on and I think that's very hard for people to unravel because we are so programmed to believe that that chemistry means they're the one and this kind of situation where you just meet someone and bam, you know, and that's it. Because that's what we're sold in movies growing up. It's the sort of damsel in distress that's going to be saved from her life. And then I think people, if they don't know how to like really unpack that they either just keep repeating it or they feel that they'll

have to sacrifice the sort of sexual connection or something they're gonna have to sacrifice something to have a healthy relationship which feels like it's synonymous with being boring totally and I mean have you even noticed I mean I haven't watched a lot of romantic comedies in the last few years but I know when I was you know in my 20s when I look back at a lot of romantic comedies in the last few years, but I know when I was, you know, in my twenties, when I look back at a lot of the movies and maybe you've noticed this too, there's a lot of this like bad boy meets good girl and he's super avoidant and bad and, and then he, she reforms him. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, she's all that we were talking about this the other day. She's all that when it's like the quirky kind of girl that no one really notices.

And then this like jock guy that's super avoidant. And then she changes him. And I think every girl just watches those films and thinks that's what I want to be. That's what I want to do. Yeah. Well, and I mean, look at Pretty Woman. Like look at all of the movies that we watched, right? It's so deeply ingrained, this idea that like, if you're good enough, if you're beautiful enough, if you're magnetic enough, then if you're, you know, elusive enough, that that person that's avoiding you or that's avoiding intimacy is just going to fall in love with you and you're going to change them. is just going to fall in love with you and you're going to change them. And so like, I mean, we have so much of that conditioning going on in our media too. So it's just funny how that pattern is

running so strong in our systems. And yeah, it's interesting that we so often think that healthy love is boring. And I think part of that is because many of us haven't actually qualified the relationships that we enter. Like we go from these hot and cold patterns. So we, you know, I talk about this in my own history where I would go for the bad boy and then I would recover with the nice guy, but neither of those were actually healthy people. You know, the nice guy is also holding back. He's not speaking his truth. He's not having boundaries. He's not bringing his fire. And the bad boy is just being elusive and making me want more because it's not available. Both of those extremes are still not an integrated person who's showing up. And so what we have to realize is that just because we feel attracted to someone or just

because we feel turned on doesn't mean we actually need to follow that energy. The energy that you're feeling is actually your energy. And I want to remind people of this. When you feel sexually turned on by another person, that energy that you're feeling belongs to you, not to them. So you can do whatever you want with it. You don't have to give that energy away. You could actually cycle that through your body and go do something creative.

You could go turn on music and dance. You could journal. You could create dance. You could journal, you know, you could create art, you could write something, you could sing, you could go out with your girlfriends and just have a good time and just feel that energy in your body and just let it be. There's no need to always act on everything that we feel, you know, every sensation that happens. And it takes time to rewire what we are attracted to. And in some ways, we're not in control of what we're attracted to, but we can shift our attractions by doing our work. And that's the thing is you're never going to have full control. You can't just look at somebody and say, they seem like a good person on paper, so I'm going

to be attracted to them. We wish we could do that because we're like, oh, this person's great. Why can't I, why don't I feel attracted? Who knows? That's nature for you. But you need to go back and heal those wounds. Yeah. Like you're not going to be attracted to a person who is avoidant and shut down and is not honest and who is hiding in in their communication when you have integrated those parts those wounds that are familiar with that behavior it just won't be a turn on anymore it'll be wow like this is not this doesn't feel good for me and that can change and so that's how we shift our attractions is by doing that deeper work with ourselves.

And then the beautiful thing is you get to create the adventure and the excitement and the passion in a healthy way, you know, by going on adventures. In a contained way. Yeah, in a way that's actually nourishing for you and creates. Not destructive. Exactly. Yeah. creates not destructive exactly yeah because I think I feel again for our listeners that's it's such a painful place where you are feel like you're stuck in that cycle and you can't get out of it because you are your belief is that if you finally get that person to choose you in the way that you want you'll be okay and it creates this self-abandonment that, you know, I've been guilty of in my 20s, that I would constantly self-abandon. And because I felt like love was something that you had to

alter yourself to achieve. It was something that you had to chase. And it took a lot of work to really reprogram that. Also something that has come to mind when you were speaking was this idea, and it stems from the films and the media of this sort of hierarchy of people and that there are people that are like the desirable people that we want to get that represent certain things and so we're like oh i want a part you know often when people are talking about the stuff the kind of person they want in their list it can be quite superficial things and then it begins that kind of chasing situation whereas I've realized it's taken me a really long time to

actually recognize like the sort of nuances of why people work together are so beyond our comprehension a lot of the time and they're so subtle and they're to do with you know genetics and biology and things that our bodies are picking up for like, oh, this person's actually going to be a good match. You'd make a good, you know, partnership for co-creating, whether that be children or life. So what are your kind of thoughts and feelings on that? Because I think, you know, once you start doing the work and then you can actually recognize, okay, this person is making my nervous system feel good. You know, a lot of the time when we are so wired for that instant chemical hit, which is often a lot of anxiety wrapped up in it.

And it's sometimes the body's way of saying like, no, this isn't safe. But we think that it's, you know, know we think it's love but it's actually more lust yeah asking ourselves what does it mean to feel safe and how do I know when I feel safe and the truth is is we might not actually have the answer to that yet we may not actually know what it actually feels like to to be safe in nervous systems. So we might, like you said, confuse this sense of electricity or excitement or alert for good, right? Oh, this feels good because I'm feeling something. I'm feeling stimulation. So it's good. In my experience, there is a sense of calm and connectedness and authenticity that shines through when we're actually feeling safe with a person.

That we can be ourselves. That we're not actually feeling a ton of butterflies and nervous energy where we're worried about what they're thinking about us or how we look or if they like us. We're feeling content in ourselves. And there's this nervous energy or this, it's sort of like excitement or electric feeling when we're in a dynamic with somebody who is maybe lighting up our wounding centers or triggering that cat and mouse game that we're very familiar with, if that makes sense. And so getting to know the difference, really being in our bodies and being with our sensations and starting to learn what feels safe is important. And that takes time as well to do that.

safe is important. And that takes time as well to do that. And knowing that, of course, at the end of the day, love is a mystery still. We don't get to control the whole process. We don't get to decide when our partner walks through the door or when a relationship starts or ends or any of that. We don't get to decide. What we do get to do is we get to honor ourselves. We get to move at a pace that feels comfortable for us. We get to practice communicating in an authentic way, asking questions and focusing on really qualifying before entering into a relationship, jumping in headfirst, you know, moving in with a person within three weeks instead of taking months to date each other and ask questions and say things like, Hey, you know, how do you show up in conflict? And do you,

is there something about the way you show up in conflict that you want to shift? You know, is that something you're open to working on? Or what do you think your, you know, relationship patterns are? And what is relationship about for you? Like, what do you think the purpose of relationship is? And having those deeper conversations, you know, do you want a family one day? Or, you know, what are your spiritual beliefs? And, you know, what kind of lifestyle do you want to live? Like having these deep conversations, we can't have those and we can't qualify or even test somebody at all if our focus is on soothing our frazzled nervous system and our fear of not being chosen. chosen when we do move too fast in relationship we miss all those cues and all those you know signals as to whether it is something that's going to be in alignment with us and I definitely in the past was guilty of I was so fearful of not being chosen that for me the measure of someone's interest in me or like the success of it was how quickly it could move you know and that for me the measure of someone's interest in me or like the success of it was how

quickly it could move you know and that for me was very challenging to stay in that space in between in that sort of exploration phase as you call it when you're getting to know the other person what their values are and that sitting with that I guess tension in a way of like my nervous system feeling oh we don't know if we're being chosen and almost finding like my partner at the moment finding his slowness with it upsetting because I was like well he should be obsessively caught do you know what I mean? Wanting to like make this happen straight away. Whereas he was very consistent.

But it was like it took a couple of months for us to get to know each other and then sort of decide we wanted to be in a relationship. And that to me was totally foreign. respectively the best way I've ever been treated because I could see that he was actually honoring me and respecting me whilst also honoring and respecting himself so that we could show up consciously to it and be like okay this is you know this is what something we want to step further into let's take that step but taking it in a measured way yeah yeah that's really beautiful and it's nice that you can see that now. And I can relate, you know, that was similar to, you know, how my partner and I entered relationship. We, we sort of negotiated along the way, you know, like I wrote him a letter. I wrote out all of the things that I

wanted to co-create with him, the kind of relationship that I wanted. I set some boundaries and he did the same. He responded to that that and it was just this really slow not super slow but but slower organic process instead of this really explosive you know chemical reaction with not a lot of consideration and we get to this point where we're tired of the patterns, you know, and for those listening who are in that place now where you're tired, you're sick of it, don't look back and regret the relationships that you did dive headfirst into. Don't regret the relationship disasters or the breakdowns or the sabotage because, you know, that learning and we're not we're not entering into this space of doing inner work from a place of guilt or shame or wishing that we had done things differently

because all of those past experiences have led you to where you are now you know and that's valuable and so we can thank our past selves for bringing us here we don't need to feel shame or regret about what we've experienced. But then we get to this point where we're like, you know what, I'm done. I'm done hitting the same wall over and over again. This pattern, it's got to go. I'm bored of it. And that's where we really have to be in order to have the motivation. We often don't have the motivation when we're still excited by the pattern or we're still turned on by the pattern. Or there's this big part of us that's lusting for that game playing.

We really have to feel almost a deep sense of exhaustion, frustration, disappointment. That's why so many people end up coming to my work when they're at this rock bottom point or in this crisis point. That's when I entered as well. It's when I entered the portal. And so that's why I often celebrate with a person when they are in that place, as painful as it is. And I so empathize because I know how hard it can be. I'm also really excited when I see a person in that place and they're coming to this work because I know now they're ready. Now they're open. And that's where real transformation and the real shift occurs is at that breaking point. Yeah.

And I think that's such a useful thing for people to remember. And I kind of, I view it too because I was similar. It's when you hit that point where you actually, like you say, you cannot bang your head against that wall another time. Like it's, you're done um in terms of the work that you did before meeting your partner now and getting that sort of deep clarity over how you wanted to show up in a relationship what you were calling in how to navigate and like you said negotiate that what internal work were you doing and then how did you know because again our patterns are so well formed that often what people find is they'll be on their own they'll do a lot of work they'll feel very grounded they'll feel very on the right path and

then they'll meet someone that just goes completely off course straight away because they haven't And then they'll meet someone that just goes completely off course straight away because they haven't managed to kind of try and navigate that new way of being in relationship. Because it's pretty easy to look healed and to feel like we've got it all together when there's no external triggers or, you know, reminders, mirrors. And so just know, too, that it's actually okay if you felt super together and then you enter a relationship and things start coming up and you all of a sudden feel like you're a baby again. That's actually okay. What's important is that both of you are willing to navigate that from a conscious place and from a loving and willing place and have the tools, right? The only difference between being in a really toxic relationship and being in a really conscious relationship is whether or not you have the willingness and the tools to approach things a little bit differently,

to take responsibility instead of blaming and attacking and to be vulnerable instead of defensive. These are really the key differences. There's not a whole lot that changes. You don't stop having conflict. You don't stop having triggers the moment you enter into a relationship after doing healing work.

I think that's what people think, isn't it? It's like this perfect relationship will appear where you have no conflict, but it's not the absence of conflict. It's how the conflict is navigated. Well, absolutely. And, you know, it does become less and less over time. You know, like my husband and I have been together for seven years now. We don't really have fights. You know, we have disagreements or we have moments of tension or we both want different things. But the way that we navigate that now is completely different than how we navigated that in the beginning of our relationship. And here's people, he's a trained and registered counselor. He had been doing work for 15 years. I had been doing years and years of

conscious relationship work and inner child work and been doing years and years of conscious relationship work and inner child work and mother wound work and all of these things. And, and yet still we brought those patterns that we wanted to not have with us. And we had to work those out together because we finally had each found a partner who was willing, had the tools, had the patience. And it wasn't easy. If we had carried on in the same way that we were in the beginning, we probably wouldn't be together because there was change and transformation needed in order to get to a place where we feel really integrated and healthy. But that's how it is. It's not about finding the person who's already perfect. It's about learning how to co-create safety and healing and integration together so that you can grow up and mature in relationship and stop amplifying things and thriving off of drama and thriving off of conflict and looking for energy from your partner in a negative way and start seeing the relationship as this co-created paradise where you create such a beautiful, you know, garden or experience an

environment together that you have the energy to give back to others, to put into your art, to put into your work, to put into your community, that's where, you know, true relationship is expressed is through energy. We actually have at the end of the day, if we're caught up in that lower stage of toxic dynamics, where it's all about our wounds and it's all about our ego and it's all about the drama, um, then we don't have any energy to give anywhere. You know, we're're not being of service we're just in service to our ego yeah and like you said it's it's important for people to remember that no matter how much healing work you've done don't ever presume that you're going to go into relationship healed because even the people that have done so much work things will always

be unearthed through you know being with another so I think that that's that's really helpful what kind if you don't mind me asking what kind of things happened at the beginning of your relationship or things that you guys had to kind of work through that you perhaps weren't aware of when you were alone well there were things that we were alone? Well, there were things that we were both aware of. It's just things that we thought maybe we would get to bypass because we had done our work, right? And so, you know, and I tell some funny stories in the book as well about, you know, just different conflicts that we had and things that occurred that now we look back on and laugh. But at the time, it was really

challenging. We brought in a lot of anxious avoidant dynamics with us. And so in the beginning, Ben was more avoidant in conflict. He would just get exhausted and just shut down. And I would just press and press and press and like, we have to work this out now. We need to process this. And then of course I thought, you know, I'm the conscious one because I'm the one who's willing to sit right now and process this. But I remember at one time, it was probably like six years ago, we were having this conflict and I decided that I would record the conflict so that I could prove to him how poorly he was showing up and how poorly he was showing up and how

consciously I was showing up. And then I listened to it after and I was pretty humiliated. And I was like, oh my goodness, I'm really pursuing this guy pretty hard. He's got no room to breathe. No wonder he's shutting down. And know, and, and that was a turning point for me too. And so that was the beginning of a big shift in our relationship where we started working through and, you know, now he doesn't really carry any of that avoidance. Like he shows up so present, so willing, he leans in, he will initiate if, you know know if we've had like a little energetic tussle he'll initiate a clearing right away or bring it to me and there's not not that pattern happening anymore but it really required both of our efforts and our willingness you know I had to let go a little

bit and and and rein it in and give the guy some breathing room and and focus on self-soothing so that I could regulate instead of expecting him to do something so I could feel better. And he had to start to learn that it was actually safe to sit in the fire a little bit and be in conflict. And so both of us, it took time, you know, but we worked through that. And so we can really empathize with other couples who are in that and we know how to navigate it. So that was the biggest one. It was really our conflict style, which is funny because when I wrote down all the things that I wanted in a partner, of course, I didn't write down that I wanted to have anxious avoidant dynamics in my partnership, right? But I also wrote down that

he was willing to do the work and that he had an interest in growing and that became more important than the pattern that we had and also to a degree are we not always going to be like anxious and avoidant going to be in that kind of dance together because that's what creates the sort of push-pull I don't know attraction it always seems to be that one is more the the other you know in the beginning that's how it can start, but it really doesn't have to stay that way. And it's really, it's not a pattern that needs to be present in order for attraction to be there. The reality is, is that if you are still holding that pattern in your nervous system, you know, I hear, I work with a lot of women who identify as more anxious,

right? And so they'll say, oh, I'm done dating avoidance. I'm only going to date secure people. And then I say, well, are you secure? Because you're probably going to draw in somebody who has a little bit of polarity to that pattern for you, right? And so it's not about, you know, are they perfectly secure? Are they willing to grow? And then you sort of heal it together. And so, you so you know like I said now that pattern doesn't exist at all for us and like you said I think having the ability to actually own your own behavior in that just expands the relationship and the container of it because it allows the other person to soften and not feel pressurized or pushed and then they can go okay they've you know own that side of themselves

I want in turn to hold more space for them and so it just creates like this new dynamic that then you have a new thing to refer to that you're like okay this is actually safe to say you know this is what's coming up for me and kind of move through that so I think that's really beautiful that you guys did that you touched on it a second ago and I just love to explore it but about the mother and father wound because obviously this plays such a huge part as an imprint for how we are attracted to people what things are going to persistently come up. So would you be able to unpack that for a second? It sort of comes back to, you know, the knowing our conditioning and knowing our first woundings, right? Is really looking at that relationship

that we had with mother and father. You know, when we're born, we see our parents as gods, like they're everything, they're going to keep us alive. We're very helpless as infants. And so there is this, you can do no wrong. You are my everything experience as an infant. And then inevitably, their humanness appears. And many of us, not all of us, but many of us are deeply hurt or let down by our parents. And so that can create this parental wound, this feeling of separation from the divine.

And so, you know, a lot of my work is centered around healing that through connecting to the divine inner mother and father within ourselves, right? And no longer seeking that person externally, which is, you know, we go back to the anxious avoidant dance. What are both of those people ourselves, right? And no longer seeking that person externally, which is, you know, when we go back to the anxious avoidant dance, what are both of those people doing, right? We're projecting mother and father onto our partners and we're expecting them to, we're either punishing them by avoiding or shutting down, or we're chasing them for their love by pursuing them anxiously. And neither of those things really work. So really maturing and integrating that our own inner man, our own inner woman, and letting our human parents off the hook

for being those gods that we had made them out to be in our minds, looking at how we were hurt and how we were let down and really taking time to honor, validate, empathize with that pain within ourselves, not sweeping it under the rug, working through it, and then reclaiming the right to parent ourselves, to be all adults. That's really what the process is of healing the mother and father wound. And it doesn't necessarily require that we even have a conversation with her mother or father. It could, but oftentimes it doesn't. The processes in my book, they're all about you working with you. Like I make it very clear that you're not to bring this to your parent or to write the letter to them or send it. It's about you doing that

inner work so that you can process your own internal experience and move through it. And that frees up a lot of energy for us in adult relationships to see the person for who they really are and to have compassion for one another instead of being in this blame cycle or in this demand cycle where we're actually coming from this wounded inner child who wants our parent to show up for us or to care for us. And so neither is willing to give any more energy to the other. There's this withholding going on on both sides because both of us feel entitled to what we didn't get. And so we have to step out of that in order to really actually get what we want, which is counterintuitive, but that's how it goes.

Yeah. And also when you are, we rarely recognize that we're doing it at the time, but it's seeking that parental love in partnership, which is, you know, a maternal love or paternal. It's not, it's a completely different kind of love. paternal it's not it's a completely different kind of love but if we feel like we weren't given adequate love in our childhood we're going to continue to seek it and then always feel like our partner's falling short because of course they're not going to give us unconditional love in that kind of way and so I find it a really interesting thing to recognize and me and my partner talk about it as the sort of the savior complex that often plays out that men will feel, I don't know, a responsibility to save a woman and a woman will feel entitled to be saved. But when that starts to unfold is it can create a sense of resentment down the line because the man has not actually allowed the woman to step into her

womanhood, you know, it's still in that kind of girl role and I feel like we often get to a point like and I feel it in myself where I have that awareness of the woman that I'm becoming that wants to be independent that loves that my partner trusts that I can regulate myself that I can live an autonomous life and that he'll support me in doing that and yet I also have the awareness of that inner child that's like no save me like that's what I want and I think it's a thing that it's just important for those listening to recognize like it will probably come up but just so you can create enough separation to to see that and not just act upon it yeah I mean that inner maiden really that immature feminine can take over and again look at the media that we're conditioned with where

that's what we're presented with and that's not truth and it's also not truth for for the the man to be the rescuer I mean that's what husband, he runs men's groups. He runs an organization called the ARCA Brotherhood. They have about 500 members. And then he also has a podcast called Evolving Man. And he talks a lot about relationship and healing and nice guy syndrome and all of these things with other guests, because it's like this permeating virus in our culture that we need to be saved or that we need to rescue people from their experience. And then we hold back so much. And there's this idea that we should be responsible for our partners, everything. that we should be responsible for our partners, everything. And there's a difference between being empathetic and holding space for one another and taking on the role, like you said,

of rescuing or caretaking, which is so enabling and it prevents growth from happening. And when we hold back, talking about the nice guy syndrome, when we hold back who we are, when we are nice instead of honest and truthful about our own boundaries and our own needs, we can't be whole in the relationship. And it inevitably crumbles. The relationship chemistry usually dies. the relationship chemistry usually dies. One of the main reasons why sexual chemistry and passion in relationship dies is because we stop bringing ourselves fully to the relationship, right? And so it's sort of the opposite. If we want to have these passionate, beautiful relationships where the energy stays alive, then we have to bring ourselves fully. And sometimes that means not always pleasing the other person or having our own needs. And that's something that the avoidant

person in a dynamic has to look at is where am I taking too much responsibility for this person's feelings? So I feel like I have to run away or avoid because I can't handle the responsibility that I'm putting on myself instead of returning to your own body and asking what do I actually need right now in this equation you're like the anxious person's over there making it very clear what they need and they're making a lot of demands but what about you like what do you need right now and what are you experiencing try bringing yourself to the relationship more take up space so that's where where that work comes in of sort of creating a little bit more space for each other and you speak about the three archetypes of abandonment would you be able to expand on those for our listeners because I found that particular chapter the sort of checklist of the

abandonment wound I felt like I was like yep yep um so I think that it's something that people will relate to quite a lot yeah I mean I talk about you know the different ways that the abandonment wound shows up right which is you know, you know, overgiving, caretaking, people pleasing, love chasing. And we might not even realize it that when we are expressing an abandonment wound, it can look so many ways. Like it can look like being overly responsible for another person's experience and making sure everything for them is perfect all of the time and being completely selfless. But that again is another expression of please don't leave me. I'm going to do everything right and be perfect for you so that you don't ever leave. And all of these things, all of these ways that we show up where we're neglecting our own truth or our own needs or our own boundaries, those are all expressions of an

abandonment wound. And so, so often what we don't realize is that the number one way an abandonment wound plays out is through self-abandonment. So if you're abandoning yourself in the process of trying to hold on to or keep or find love, that's the main thing that you want to address. How do you return home to yourself? And how do you really be honest about who you are and what you want and be willing to experience rejection or have somebody say no without crumbling? Because it's actually a good thing. I tell people, you know, if somebody says no, because you were honest about what it is that you want, that's a good thing. It means that you were willing to take a risk and stand for what you desire. And there will be people who say yes, and there will be people who say no, and that's natural. And you should expect that. But we can't

ever really get to that point if we are constantly focused on just winning and keeping love yeah I think that's such a powerful thing because for people listening that are in that sort of situation and they are self-abandoning but I empathize with how hard it can be when you've gone down that road for quite a while and you then start to think that if only they show up or whatever it's going to make me feel better and so to actually like you say have the courage to be able to communicate what it is you truly want and it's really about communicating that to yourself and the universe as much as it is to the other person because even if there is a rejection or an ending it's a sort of like you say a bittersweet victory because in that you've actually chosen yourself and then you kind of

make more space for someone to come in I believe because I have I have a lot of friends and people that will be in situations that aren't right that the person isn't available but they sort of on some level I don't and they know that but they don't quite believe that if they closed it something else would come in well that's always the fear and it's funny when we end a relationship I've noticed this phenomenon we all have this freak out moment where we're like oh did, did I make the wrong decision? Maybe that was my last chance at love. Maybe I'll never find someone again. And it's so natural to feel that way. It's just part of the process. But there's so many people in the world who are going to want what you want and connect with you. And really, the more you hold back, the more you push love away.

the more you hold back, the more you push love away. It's actually the opposite. So many of the things that we do to try to win love or to find a partner are the exact things that push it all away. It's by just being who we are and doing the things that we love and connecting with our friends and exploring the hobbies or taking that trip or doing that thing that we want to do in our own lives that creates this harmony and this integration for the right people to show up in our lives, right? That's why it's about becoming the one for ourselves so that we feel whole and that we know that we are worthy of having beautiful healthy love that doesn't require us to stand on a balance beam all day or walk on eggshells or you know bite our tongue it is possible and it starts with you really owning who you are that's it yeah and like said, it sort of sounds paradoxical, but if you actually,

you know, it might require the closing and ending of something to actually let the love in. Yeah. And I love what you said about making space. Cause I really am a believer in that. Like, are we making space for what we actually want in our lives? And I think so often, you know, people will say, oh, well, you know, this just showed up. And so, you know, they're not available, but you know, we have good chemistry and it's fun. So do you think that I should just do it until I find the right partner? And I will say, well, do you think that the kind of person you want to be with is going to be attracted to a person who's who's in uh this situation kind of is this a kind of dynamic that you would want in a partner you know when you meet someone that they

would be caught up in this or would you want someone who's really honoring themselves and so we have to think about that like all of the things that we want and all of the qualities that we're looking for and all of the things that we're wanting to of the qualities that we're looking for and all of the things that we're wanting to call in what are we actually embodying in our lives and are we that's the thing we sort of we will behave in ways that are out of integrity whilst thinking that we're calling in this beautiful partnership but it doesn't work like that you have to take the steps to embody it first yeah are you embodying your own values? Well, Shay, I feel like that is like a beautiful place to end it on today.

For our audience that have just discovered you on this podcast, I'm sure we've got many of your fans listening, but where can they find you? So my personal website is shalinayana.com and my Instagram is at shalinaayana. And then you can also find me at risingwoman.com and at rising woman on Instagram. Uh, and I have a few free meditations that you can download when you go to my website. So I know my, my name is a mouthful, so I expect that we'll just pop those in the show notes for people if they want to find me. That would be amazing. Yeah. And you can also just, you know, you can Google Becoming the One book, Shalina, and it's risingwoman.com slash BTO book if you want to find the book. And it's published pretty much everywhere now.

We're going to be coming out with about nine or ten other languages over the next year or two. But right now, we get it all over the UK and Australia, Canada, and the US. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been such an honor. And I know everyone is going to love this episode and read your book and hopefully get meditations and everything.

So thank you. Beautiful. Thanks for having me. I hope you enjoyed listening to this conversation between myself and Shay. Like I said at the beginning, there were so many amazing light bulb moments for me. And listening back, I did actually make a mistake where I described the recall dynamic, which is something coined by Alan DeBota. And actually, the recall dynamic is when we are attracted to people that have the opposite

characteristics to our parent or caregivers. And I kind of took that and spun that and made it when we're attracted to people that possess the opposite characteristics of our previous partners. You still get the gist, but I slightly butchered the term. So forgive me, Alan. But yeah, anyway, we kept that in there because if you want to look up the recall dynamic it's a super interesting piece the things that i found most useful about this episode was particularly the piece around projections because we project all the time because it's so much easier to cast our fears and our insecurities onto the other person and make them responsible for them rather than to look inward and recognize where we still need to be healed and where we're

still being triggered and just to add as a caveat this carries on throughout our lives like things are going to always trigger us because there's always more work to be done I think we just need to learn to be more gentle with ourselves so I hope you found this episode useful and if you know anyone that's going through a hard time with relationships or having trouble in that area of their life please send this episode to them because I feel like everyone should listen to it because I think that there is so much wisdom in here for everyone if you enjoyed listening to Shay and want to hear more from her you can find her at rising woman on instagram and she has amazing courses and her book becoming

the one is now available we will put a link in the show notes and also you can pre-order saturn returns which is my latest book offering which i am very excited to be able to share with you which I am very excited to be able to share with you. Also, Saturn Returns is going on tour early next year on the 18th and 19th of January in Manchester and London at Cadogan Hall in Chelsea. If you guys want to hear more about that, I would love to see you there for a magical and cosmic evening. You can find ticket links in the show notes.

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Saturn Returns. It really helps us get discovered by more like-minded people when you write us a review on Apple. And I also just love hearing from you guys and hearing your feedback about what you found interesting in the episode and how it resonated with you. It also really helps when you guys post about it on social media. So if you did enjoy this episode, please share it with your community

because, you know, you never know who's going to then listen after hearing your recommendations. So thank you all for spreading the word. It means the world to me. And thank you for creating this incredible community. And remember, you're not alone. Goodbye.