Sense of Soul - Embody Your Inner Goddess

Episode Date: March 15, 2024

Today in Sense of Soul Podcast we have Lauren Leduc she is a dedicated yoga teacher, spiritual life coach, author, podcast host and entrepreneur with the unique gift of cultivating connection and community. She believes that yoga is beneficial to everyone and is passionate about creating accessible experiences and opportunities for students to find a deeper connection to themselves and the world around them. Lauren is the author of Embody Your Inner Goddess: A Guided Journey to Radical Wholeness is a spiritual self-help book and feminist manifesto designed to activate you to shed your conditioning, embrace your inner divinity, and show up vulnerably and unapologetically in the world.  Within the container of the chakra system, take a 7-week journey from root to crown, turning over every stone of self-inquiry. She is also the podcast host along with her best friend Rashida, Your Spiritual Besties podcast. Wellness professionals and spiritual besties, as they discuss anything and everything from the mundane to the mystical.
 Visit www.laurenleduc.com Learn more about Sense of Soul www.senseofsoulpodcast.com Check out the Network of Lightworkers   

Hello, my soul-seeking friends. It's Shanna. Thank you so much for listening to Sense of Soul Podcast. Enlightening conversations with like-minded souls from around the world. Sharing their journey of finding their light within, turning pain into purpose, and awakening to their true sense of soul. If you like what you hear, show me some love and rate, like, and subscribe. And consider becoming a Sense of Soul Patreon member, where you will get ad-free episodes,

monthly circles, and much more. Now go grab your coffee, open your mind, heart, and soul. It's time to awaken. Today on Sense of Soul, I have Lauren LaDuke. Lauren is a dedicated yoga teacher, spiritual life coach, entrepreneur, and she's also the podcast host of Your Spiritual Besties podcast, along with her best friend. Lauren's also an author and joining us today to tell us about her book, Embody Your Inner Goddess, A Guided Journey to Radical Wholeness. This book is a spiritual self-help book and feminist manifesto designed to activate you to shed your conditioning, embrace your inner divinity, and show up vulnerably and unapologetically

in the world. So please welcome Lauren. Hi, Shanna. How are you? Good. How are you doing? Doing well. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you too. So where are you joining me from? I live in Kansas City, Missouri. What

about you? I am in Aurora, Colorado. So not too far from you. No, quick flight. Yeah. Yeah. At least to Denver. Yeah. Oh, look, you have a little girl right there. I know you're a mama. In fact, I am too. So I'm super excited to hear your story. Oh, good. Yeah. This is Gemma. She is with me this morning. She's very used to me doing these kinds of calls, but just FYI, I might have to pause for a moment. Okay. Yeah. No problem. Hi. Is it Gemma? Gemma. Yeah. Hi. Gemma, you want to wave hi? She just got into my makeup. I played most of it, but she had mascara, just like unibrow mascara going on. Oh, I love those moments. That's so funny. I love that. I miss those days. Like back in the day when I first

started my journey, I used to try to fit my meditation into my life. And so, and I would have to wake up super early. And it's really in today's world, you can't really go around like a Buddhist monk. Not if you have a family and a busy life and a career and all those things. No, you can't. Yeah. I've totally had to figure out in her different stages and stuff how to fit in my practices, how to fit in my work, and also how to be present for her. And it's this constant dance. And I don't think I'm always great at it, you know. But for the most part, it works for us. My husband's an entrepreneur as well.

He owns a busy restaurant. So he is just not physically here as much as I can be or not nearly as much. So while he's home on Sundays, I'll go to my yoga studio that I own and teach and all of that. But other than that, if I have to run there in the middle of the week, she's coming with me and dealing with the plumber or whatever it might be. Also, I do a lot of calls like this and I have client calls. And my book that just came out, I basically wrote the whole thing during nap time or during nursing. So I've definitely figured out kind of this blend between being able to work with her while she's asleep, having help with the husband, and then creating some things that are really automated that I don't have to constantly be tending to.

So it's a dance. You're just trying to balance it out. And it's different for everybody. So it's kind of hard to have a one-size-fits-all idea of what that looks like. Because I feel like I did a really shitty job early on with my older kids trying to balance that out. I was like running in circles and then eventually ran into a wall. Well, you must have been really young. I was in my 20s. Yeah, I had my first two kids in my 20s. And that was very normal for my generation. In fact, I mean, I actually purchased my first townhome when I was 19. So then, yeah, before I was 26, I had three kids. That sounds like my mom. I think she had all three by 29, but I didn't have her until I was 36. So I had a lot of time to figure some things out before then. And not that I always do a great job, but I feel like I do a better job now than I would, would have for sure then. It was pretty messy, but you know, there's a trade-off too. You get less time with your kids when you have them older and

people say you have less energy, but I'm in better shape now than I was in my early twenties. I was going to say, so I had my last one at 36, same. And so, I mean, she's 11 now and she keeps not only me young, but the rest of us together in some amazing way. That's really cool. Yeah. And I always brought my kids to work with me. I used to work for my dad back in the day. Oh yeah. I had Barney on and toys all over my office. It was just always like that. And I was very fortunate that my kids were able to do that. Even when Mandy and I, my co-host, we first started Sense of Soul, we always edit because there was always kids in the background running around. I shit you not, dogs barking. And one time it was hilarious.

Mandy and I were up in her room podcasting. We come downstairs and the girls who were probably eight and five had decided they were going to make slime. You can only imagine children making slime. It was crazy. You can only imagine children making slime. It was crazy. Yeah, I have a podcast partner and she has a one-year-old and a five-year-old. So it's always just chaos. And we live in different states, but she got to come here last week with her daughter, who's five, and my daughter, who's three and we tried to to record some live episodes it was just such a mess but really fun and yeah yeah it's a cool thing to be able to

I don't know just have other people in our lives who are doing this conscious raising of their kids and who have you know know, careers and interests outside of that and to see how people are blending it together. And it's good to not feel as alone in this kind of different way of life. When people were farming, their kids were a part of that. And, you know, in a different era of time, like kids were integrated into the work, but now it is very, very separate. So it's definitely like, it's interesting figuring it out. Yeah. When I had my last child around that same time, I also got a puppy. Oh God. And so, but I really, really wanted to keep my practice,

which both of them was putting a dent in my practice. So one of the things that I started to try and it worked. I like taught them both how to meditate with me. And they did. And actually my little one, Rascal, my dog, he actually really ended up loving stuff like that. He loves Reiki. And if I have a client over at the house, he knows what we're doing. And the minute I open the door, he'll just roll over on his back like,

okay, my turn. That is awesome. It was so cool. Yeah. I used to have hours for my practice every day, especially working for myself. I was able to create my own schedule and really anchor with the meditation and yoga and fitness and everything that helped me feel grounded. And yeah, that all goes out the window in a way when you're tending for others. So we figured it out. It's been different at different stages of her development. But right now, every day I do either my my physical yoga practice or some sort of like weight workout. And while I do that, she does a little with me and then runs around and plays. And then she always knows that

afterward I do my breath work. And when I do that, she gets to have milk. So it's our routine and, you know, she's in there, a part of it. And while I guess I hope that she's able to use some of these tools as she grows and that she likes it, if she doesn't, that's okay too, but it won't be for lack of exposure. Right. And I think that's amazing because I see it in my daughter who is now 11 today and I can compare it to my other children who weren't exposed to that at a young age. I mean, she can breathe better than most adults I know. She still today will put on at night before she goes to bed, like a spa kind of meditation music

and that's how she falls asleep. She gets herself into that space. I mean, I wish I would have known those things when I was younger. How did you get here? I mean, were you taught this or did you have to find your way there? Oh, I definitely had to find my way there. So I definitely grew up without any kind of exposure to, I don't even want to say alternative practices, but when I say that, I just mean alternative to what was around me and what was available to me at the time and my family and culturally and all that. So I grew up here in Kansas City. I moved around a little bit when I was older, but it's the Bible Belt. I grew up in an evangelical Christian family and church and culture. That was what a lot of my friends

practiced too. And so that was really all I knew. My emotional outlets were always more artistic. So I started singing at a really young age and dancing and acting and that moved on to like some visual art and stuff like that as I got older. I also really loved to read. So I think due to that, I had this openness, even though I had a lack of exposure. When I was 17, I went into the hospital to treat anorexia and I'd started getting pretty sick for about a year and it it came to a head, and my parents thankfully had good enough insurance to put me in this inpatient program, and it was there that I was exposed to yoga for the first time, where I had therapy, where I was

really opened up just a little bit more to other methodologies of healing rather than just like prayer. Really, that was all I knew. And then it took about 10 years to really figure out who I am, what I believe. It was this healing journey really of a lot of like self-discovery. And I mean like who I am as an identity, but also like who I am as a soul and a lot of self-harm too, because I was still in this process of like, I don't know, not feeling like I totally fit in with what my expectations of life were to be. And I always, instead of, I think, getting angry on the outside, just took it in. Yeah, I had this fun and hard 10 years of figuring it out. And yoga really became Reiki too. Actually, Reiki was what I did first while I had that exposure to yoga and had a sort of irregular practice because it was a different era, even 15, 20 years ago, there weren't yoga studios everywhere. There wasn't really YouTube with all the classes.

I had a Crunch Fitness VHS tape. Why Lana Yoga VHS or something like that. And I would just like do those when I could. But yeah, I was drawn to Reiki. I was in a performance as a teen at the Rocky Horror Show and I hurt my neck headbanging. I had a friend or castmate who offered to do Reiki on it and I had no idea what it was, but I was like, yeah, sure, whatever. And it helped a lot. And I was like, what is this? And he was like getting intuitions about me. And it was just, you know, very different than, than what I had been around or exposed to. So several years later, probably five years later, I saw an ad for a Reiki training near me. I was living in Tampa at the time. And just part of me was like, just do it, just do it. Like you're not

figuring out how to heal. You know, you need to heal on this like soul level. It's not something like medicine can fix and it's not something you can intellectualize your way out of. So I did this Reiki training and it was amazing. And it was my first understanding of like the chakra system, which I use so much now and of energy. And then kind of at the end of this healing journey, when I really was feeling stuck and needed help, I moved back home to KC and my parents helped me do some therapies, but I also was in the position to start going to yoga classes regularly. And for me, like, yeah, the energy and the yoga have just been integral, not only to my own healing, but they've become like my purpose and my way of service for the world. So it definitely was not something I would like Gemma. She's just, this is her life. She like pulls out Oracle cards out of my little stash and plays with them. It's just totally different. No, you're not.

It was totally different than what I was exposed to. But the journey in itself of discovering all of this was healing in its own way. And it's become the fertile soil for my teachings and to be able to serve others and maybe help them avoid, you know, having to take a whole decade to figure some of these things out. Yeah, same. And then you in that teacher role, you learn so much more too. You definitely do. And part of the reason I did like the yoga teacher training for yoga in the first place was really to hold myself accountable because it had helped me so much. And I wanted to make sure that I was still practicing.

And my thought is if you're going to teach it, you better be also walking the walk. I think that's the most fortunate thing, isn't it? Because you're like, it's probably one of the reasons why I've kept meditation in this practice. Absolutely. Oh, I am. Absolutely. And when you go like for yoga teacher training, for instance, you just learn about the philosophy and you get a lot deeper into why the practice works and how it works. And that also has been such a through line for me is having this ethical and philosophical system to lean on that isn't organized religion. It's an individualized

spiritual path. It is truly where in Christianity, a lot of that seeking is outside of you. Like you're seeking forgiveness outside of you. You're seeking healing, asking for others to heal. All of these things are taught outside. And this journey is really, really from the inside out. It absolutely is. And that's been really one of the most healing things for me. So a lot of the work I do besides yoga, or I'd say with yoga, as well as with this concept of the sacred feminine. Hey, listeners, so sorry for the interruption, but I wanted to tell you about my newest affiliate in the Network of Lightworkers, Janine Lo. She is one of UK's top Chinese astrologists. If you want to know what's in store for 2024, then you can schedule a session with

Janine. Go to the Network of Lightworkers on www.senseofsoulpodcast.com and click on Janine and schedule your Chinese astrology reading today. It's the year of the dragon, so lots of luck and opportunities are coming your way. So go check it out. Now back to our amazing guest. In Christianity, all of the sacred feminine has been suppressed systematically over time. So in discovering goddesses in other cultures, other traditions, and working with those, embodying them, I also started to learn about the sacred feminine within Christianity and found a lot of healing in that way. And just a different understanding of what it could be. And ultimately what I've really landed

on with the sacred feminine is just working with my own inner goddess. And this is what my book is about, is this connection to the divine inside of us. It's not separate from us. It's our soul, right? And for me, I love especially working with this feminine aspect of the soul. Because in my own story, it's been so uneven. I was only introduced to the masculine, but the feminine has been what's really healed me. So while I appreciate both the masculine and feminine within me, I just love connecting with this inner goddess. It feels so soothing and

healing for me. And I love connecting other people with theirs as well, because it's all internal. We have this direct through line to the divine at any time that we need it. And we don't have to look outside of ourselves. And it's extremely empowering. That's much of my journey as well. And it is truly through Goddess Sophia that led me to where I am. So how did you land into discovering the goddesses? Yeah, it was kind of in a funny way. I would say not a selfish way, but in a way, yes. So in my 20s, I was moving around and just having a hard time. I had started school and dropped out like three times and accumulated all the student debt and was working low paying jobs and spending the money

I did have on weed. And I just couldn't heal my money wounds. I couldn't tap into abundance. I didn't know what that felt like in my body. And deep down, I knew a lot of my healing needed to be on a soul level. I could look at a spreadsheet and try to fix my finances that way. And I'll be honest, doing that now is a lot easier because I've done the inner soul work and the inner child work and figuring out what my money story is and all of that. But in this time, I was just willing to try anything to heal and feeling so much lack. And I found a chant to Lakshmi. I hadn't even heard of Lakshmi before, but she's the goddess of abundance. And I started doing this chant to her every single day. And it's not as though my money wounds healed overnight, but I was able to start embodying this feeling of abundance and gratitude.

So that was really my first avenue into the goddesses. Of course, I'd heard of the Greek gods and goddesses and stuff like that growing up as mythology. But Lakshmi was my intro. And then through my yogic studies, I got to learn about all the other major goddesses of yoga or of Hinduism and work with tapping into their energy and embodying their energy and also seeing this like vast array of who they are, what energies they hold. And to know that Shakti isn't this one, I don't know, one personality type or one emotion or one frequency. Different archetypes. Absolutely. Different skills. Yeah. With the Christianity, it's funny. I learned about Gnosticism when I was maybe 17, 18, and I got really excited because it

made more sense to me than the Christianity I grew up with, which I totally bought into as a kid. But when things started feeling like they weren't lining up to me as an adult or as a teenager, that's when the illusion really dropped for me. But this idea of Gnosticism was really exciting. Are you a woman? Yeah, I was. And I tried to tell my parents about it, like, have you heard about early Christianity and what happened with Constantine in the church and all of these things? And it wasn't taken with open arms. I'll just put it that way. But I felt a lot of anger around the religion a long time.

And just a few years ago, I went to the Sivananda Ashram in the Bahamas. I needed a week to – I'd been running my own retreats and running my business. I needed a week to just focus on myself. And yeah, it was really beautiful. There's a lot of chanting. You get up really early in the morning and chant. And if you don't, you're laying in bed hearing it. And there was a famous Kirtan artist there too. And so many of the chants are to Sita and Ram and to all of these different like avatars of Vishnu. And yeah, it's all Sita Ram, Sita Ram, which is the feminine and the masculine. And I love chanting. I love singing and I would feel moved by it, but I always felt like there was a little something missing. And while I was there, I got a shirodhara. I got a Ayurvedic service where they pour warm oil on your head and then do a scalp massage and stuff. experience than I was hoping for or expecting. Something happened while I was laying there,

and I'd always heard of anointing one's forehead with oil. But as I was actually receiving that service, I was like, I think that that's actually what this means. And I had heard a lot about the possibility of Jesus or Yeshua and Mary Magdalene like traveling you know to different places during this huge period of time that isn't accounted for in the Bible and learning a lot of different practices from like the yogis or from Egyptian mystery schools um and I kind of had this flash of like being Mary Magdalene and receiving this anointing from Yeshua from Jesus and it was like really out of body in a way. And later on during the chanting, I was just imagining like both of them in my heart. And it really was suddenly,

I felt this like major healing going on with the Christianity with this addition of this holy consort of the feminine. This beautiful woman, Diana, she said, Sophia wants to be put first in that. And I said, okay. So I said, I'm going to start doing it. So Sophia Christos. So we'll say it that way. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. They should be turned around like that. But I did feel this immense healing there. And while I hold that experience in my heart and I love the healing around Christianity, I do truly tend more now to this idea of the inner goddess because it's so personal. Your journey is so much like mine. Mine originally started with a chant too.

I had no idea what the chant was. I totally talked myself into that. What was it? I talked myself. It was, well, so it's not, this was not the divine feminine part, but early on in my journey when I was trying to learn how to do mindfulness, I was like, what is mindfulness? I had no idea. It was one of my therapists who suggested it.

So I looked up mindfulness because I didn't even know what it meant. And I did go to a class that she suggested, but it said something about me. I could use them. I found information. I don't even think they had videos back then on it. I had, I found I could do a mala. Well, I couldn't find anybody that even sold malas. I want to say Lulu had one, but it was like really expensive.

And they were like, so I made one because I was like, I, I mean, I couldn't find one. And so, and then I was like, well, what do I do with this? So I look up, what do you do with this? And it said, oh, you could do a mantra. And I'm like, I don't even know what that is. So I look up what's a mantra. And of course I still very, very connected to my Christian beliefs at the time too.

So I find this YouTube and this is back when there was definitely not that many YouTubes, kind of probably around the same time, still had the VHS for sure. And it was a chant and it was a Hindu chant. And the reason why I chose it is because it said, love is God, God is love. It said this in Sanskrit, not in English. I don't even know how you actually say it. My entire house knew this chant because I would sit there and play it as I would crochet these rugs. And they were like rag rugs and you start in the middle, right? And you kind of like spiral out and I would just get lost. I mean, I can't even tell you. I felt like I was in the eye of a

hurricane or something. Everything around me was gone. And that was very early on, even before I had even known what Reiki was. And I was talking, I don't know if you, have you ever heard of Sean Johnson and the Wild Lotus Band? Yes. Yeah. So Sean and I, I've had him on, he released his last album on my podcast and he's one of my favorite people, but I was talking to him about it and he said, you know, it's so much more powerful to chant outside of your native tongue because then you're not rejecting anything in your mind. Your brain is just so programmed that if I sat there and chanted, God is love, love is God, all kinds of

stuff may have come up where I wouldn't have been able to receive it in the way that I did. I love that. And I think that speaks to just a very authentic spiritual practice as well, weaving the rug, you know, that came naturally to you and you're able to get into a connected flow state through that. And that's, you know, that's holy. you and you're able to get into a connected flow state through that. And that's, you know, that's holy. That's holy and it's authentic and it's a really beautiful thing. And there's so much to be said about Sanskrit as well. All of the different syllables, the words, they hold not just meaning but frequency.

That's hard. Like you can't really convey it with words. And there is something really special that happens when you tune into that. And nobody speaks Sanskrit anymore. They might understand it or translate it and whatnot, but it's quote unquote dead language, right? So it can be that for everyone. I think that I'm just holding a frequency by

making these sounds. Isn't that beautiful? Yeah. You know, another amazing modality, it's kind of like a evolved Reiki called Kali Ki Reiki. Have you heard of it? I have not. So the creator is Raja Srimah. I'll have to connect you. She would be a really amazing guest because her journey is she received this divine feminine Reiki. Wow, that sounds beautiful. Yes. Yes. It's amazing.

Truly. So I will definitely connect you. And she says, maybe this is already, but yet it just hasn't been revealed to us in this 3D world. Yeah. I love that. I think about the feminine, people talk about the rise of the divine feminine, and I don't see it that way. I see it like she hasn't gone anywhere. She's all around us. It's like if we were radios, we'd be tuning our frequencies in such a way to be able to hear her, right? But she's there. It was such a foreign thing for me.

And it actually started with Bridget, the goddess Bridget. And actually, Sean Johnson, one of his songs at the beginning, he chants in the Scalic chant, Bridget over and over. At the time, I didn't know who the hell Bridget was. I mean, I guess maybe, I mean, I didn't know her deeply. And even then, my brain was just so conditioned, like father, son, holy ghost. Well, why would there be a holy ghost? Then common sense start to kick in.

I think that's funny. You know, what's interesting, I hadn't't really I don't know if I thought about this too much before but when I think about the holy ghost as far as what I was exposed to growing up like I was in churches where people are speaking in tongues and dancing and they would call that being filled with the holy ghost yeah yeah but truly that's the feminine. Yeah. Yes. It always was. I mean, what, you know, sacred family would, would not have a mother. Yes. You know, I mean, we are creation. We, you know, it's just amazing. Yeah. It's been very powerful. You had said that beginning. You mentioned that. It is a power. It's a reclamation, for me anyways, something that I did not own in myself.

Yeah, for sure. Me too. And I think as I get older and go through different phases of life, I get to experience her unfolding in a deeper and deeper level. My podcast partner and I yesterday were doing a recording and kind of tuning into what we're yearning for right now. We're talking about winter and things being dormant. We're like, what's dormant inside of us right now? And that for both of us, that was really what we intuited were these like next phases of the goddess for her. was like it's my wise woman

yes and for me I was like I think it's my dark goddess phase and not like the evil bad but like the mystery and the nourishment of the underworld so I'm kind of excited to see how that manifests because I can feel it within right I think about that when I looked at the front of your book, how much the moon had taught me throughout my journey in discovering Sophia and learning about the triple goddess energies and I moving into my crone. So amazing, just the cycle of life and how we move into these different phases, but yet still connect to that maiden version and definitely still in the mother version. But I'm welcoming, just like you said, your co-host is welcoming that wise crone, which if you look up crone, it says hag, an old hag.

What a lovely word. You need to change that. I personally like to look at this archetype in four parts because I think there's this space between the mother and the crown, which is the wild woman. Oh, you're so true. Yeah. And talking about the moon, I have a section in the book about connecting with the cycle, like the menstrual cycle, but the moon cycle as well, if you don't have a menstrual cycle. And the luteal phase is the wild woman phase. And, you know, we live much longer lives now than people did a couple hundred years ago. Yeah. So we have this span of time, usually maybe perimenopausal through the beginning of menopause that is not quite the crone yet, although you might be calling in some of her energy, but it's where you get to like not give a fuck. I just think of this like woman in the woods, like

foraging and beating on a drum and like, I don't know, not caring. I've been there. My neighbors think I'm crazy. I'm sure. I mean, look at the moon. It just dances across the sky. It's a whole spectrum. It's a whole spectrum. And yeah, we get to like when we're bleeding experience these different archetypes, but then we get to experience them within our lives as well. And the reason I felt like it was important to talk about the wild woman is because, you know, a lot of people talk

about when a woman turns a certain age that she becomes invisible, right? Yeah. And mirroring that the luteal phase or the premenstrual phase is the one that like we dread the most that people make fun of, like, oh, we don't want to be around her her she must be PMSing this and that but there is so much power to be harnessed within that stage of life and that stage of the cycle agree and we're just so conditioned to hate it yeah yeah so I want to honor her yes in all of her cycles yes yes the wild phase yeah beautiful And so it's in your book too. Yes. Yeah. The book is divided in basically like a seven-week course where every day we're going through a different energy that lives within a chakra. And that's in my sacral section.

And it's called I Cycle with the Moon. So I tell a little bit about my own story with like, you know, my perception of periods growing up and how I've dealt with them and medical trauma I've had and things like that. And then kind of landing on this deep connection with the cycle and then how to make these different phases into your superpowers or how to like really harness the energies that it offers us rather being something to like not think about to shove away or maybe to I'm not saying like anyone who takes a pill is doing the wrong thing for me it hasn't worked very well I need to just kind of you know let things be and um and pay special attention to it and maybe adjust my nutrition and movement and stuff like that but that's been like such an empowering practice to connect me back to the goddess as well and to the earth. We cycle like

the moon. We cycle like the seasons. It's such a beautiful thing to connect to and to remember. Many of us just grow up so separate. Yeah. I felt like there was this distance between me and Mother Earth for decades because I was so busy. I was living that busy mom life that I never, ever stopped to really feel her beneath me or look up, which I do a lot. Oh, is that a kitty? Yes. Kitties and kitties, literally. Yes, it's always somebody crawling on me. Oh my God. I miss that so much though. Now I'm crawling on them trying to get me some.

Oh my gosh. So tell me about your podcast. Yeah. It's called Your Spiritual Besties. We just turned one, which is exciting congratulations thank you and it's with my best friend Rashida and we do a few different things on there so we'll interview guests like yourself who have interesting things to share and stories and expertise but we also do monthly oracle readings. We do live intuitive readings. So we'll have someone on and read their energy. And then we discuss or teach on different topics as well. So when the pandemic hit and I was pregnant and then a new mom, I felt really isolated. I wasn't getting to connect with others in the way that I was used to and in the way that I needed. And I found so much solace in podcasts and listening to deep conversations. I felt really inspired by it. So we're really

intentional when putting this podcast out there to make it really conversational and approachable and authentic because that's what we've needed. And not everyone who listens is a mom, but we do talk a little bit about motherhood because it's just a part of our lives. And it's nice to have a friend in your ear sometimes. Yeah. My co-host, Mandy, she just was funny and she was inappropriate, but made me laugh all the time. And it's just a different energy. She hasn't been with me for this entire year. Oh, wow. Looking back and listening because I was pulling together clips like over the past few days and I was crying and laughing.

It just was so fun. It's definitely really gratifying doing it with a partner, but it's really brave to do it alone. Oh my gosh. I never thought I could do this. I saw that your book is published by Obooks. Yeah. Yes. Gavin is definitely one of the people who helped get Sense of Soul off the ground. It was just Mandy and I at first. And then all of a sudden, he was definitely the first publisher that started to send us people. I love him dearly.

He's very intentional. He knows exactly who I will like. And he's amazing, too. He's an amazing author. And he's been a guest on Sense of Soul. We had so much fun with Gavin. Oh my gosh. I can't wait to have him on again because he just, he's writing a new book. I'm going to have to bring him on my podcast, which I hadn't even thought about because we have mostly women as guests, but you know, I have so much gratitude for him and for the company and to help me birth this book into the world. I'm

forever grateful for that. It's really an incredible thing. He's the best. Yeah. And it's funny, I was getting a lot of, I was getting some feedback from different agents and publishers and I think they just couldn't figure out where where my book fit in and over at Obooks, they just seemed to understand right away. Yep. I think it's Collective now, Inc. Yes, Collective. Yeah. He wrote his book about a woman. So he represented her story and she was abducted. Yeah, it was really good. I love when men can write women well or write about women well, because so many do not. So many. That's true. Oh, yeah. But it's important for men to also tap into this divine feminine energy. I think there's a lot of talk in the spiritual community about polarities and like

women only connecting with the feminine and men only connecting with the masculine. But like the truth is we hold all of these energies within us and to explore them is beautiful. And, you know, the feminine is inspiration and creativity and intuition. And these are absolutely things that will make a man feel more complete and whole to really embrace and embody. And that's why my focus right now in this book is on the feminine, because masculine is important too, but we live in a patriarchy. We live in a whole world really where the masculine energy has been so out of balance that it's become toxic. And we need the

feminine too, and to help heal the masculine. You know, the world is changing. We are evolving and gone are the days of a lot of things that have held us back. Yeah. Yeah. Amen to that. Or you said a woman. A woman. A woman to that.

It's really easy to look at the world and only see what's going wrong. It's understandable. There's a lot going wrong. There is a lot outside of our view that just feels so dark and it's out of our control. And yet we have some complicity in it, just having the privilege of being Americans. And it's hard to open your eyes and see all the good stuff too. So I think it's important to point out the ways in which we have also progressed because it's happening. I also think that it's more in the feminine for things to progress slowly over time.

A pregnancy doesn't take one day. It takes nine months. I think cultivating a sense of gratitude and also a sense of patience while we are serving, while we are doing our part is really important. You know, I think we all want things to happen fast. We all want this like mass awakening. And I just think that I'll go into a little bit of a metaphor here because this is just the way I work. But I was talking with my podcast partner yesterday about, you know, the things that we are celebrating from this past year.

And one of the things I was talking about was like, I had set some goals and I think I met them, but I wasn't even aware sometimes because some of them have unfolded slowly over time. And I think that we can open our eyes and celebrate these small victories that roll into something huge and to have patience, because that's generally the way the world works. It isn't in massive shifts that happen all of a sudden. It can be every once in a while, but it's just not typically how things work. You know, there is so much to be said for patience and longevity to even have a spiritual practice. You have to embody those qualities because it's not always fun to show up every day. But over a long period of time, like you're looking at your story and I'm looking at my story and their parallels and those daily practices, those small actions have become really grounded and have created these major changes in our lives. Right. They may look

different. They're not 30 minute meditations anymore, but they're 10 minutes with the tree outside. You know, whatever you have. Thank you so much. Tell everybody where they could find you and where they could find your book. Sure. So you can find me and the avenues to all of my different things, yoga, intuitive readings, courses, et cetera, at laurenleduc.com. That's L-A-U-R-E-N-L-E-D-U-C. You can find me on Instagram at I am Lauren Leduc. That's the main place I hang social media wise. And the book is called Embody Your Inner Goddess, A Guided Journey to Radical Wholeness. So if you are looking for these daily practices to connect you with the feminine, this is it. It'll take care of you for seven weeks and then however many more times you want to go through the book to come.

And you can find it on Amazon, Barnes & Noble. You can order it pretty much wherever books are sold and it's available now. Thank you. website at www.mysenseofsoul.com where you can work with me one-on-one or help support Sense of Soul Podcast by donating to my coffee fund. Thanks for listening.