the bossbabe podcast - 205. The One Coaching Tool That Changed My Life

Episode Date: February 15, 2022

You’ve read all the self-help books, tried to change your mindset – you’ve done all the things…but something still feels off.  We feel you + want you to know – you don’t have to do this alone. And this week’s podcast guests just might be able to help… Think about it: what if your mindset wasn’t the only way to make yourself “feel better”? What if there was a better way to heal? This week’s guests, transformational life coaches Christine Hassler and Alexi Panos, are taking a deep dive into somatic healing and exploring how the body is a filter for the world (and how it keeps score of repressed emotions).  You’ll learn one of the best ways to release trauma from your past without reliving it in your present and find the personal freedom that awaits when you do.  If you’ve hit a wall in your self-discovery voyage, this conversation is for you. Listen now!  Highlights: The ONE healing modality you’re missing as a life coach + why that needs to change. Why traditional self-improvement rhetoric will only get you so far. How to navigate guilt and shame on your self-healing journey. Reframing trauma + understanding how to detect trauma patterns in your body.  Why the coaching industry is broken + how you can be part of the revolution. How Alexi + Christine can personally help you take somatics to the next level with Elementum. Link Your Ultimate Roadmap To Making Six Figures In 2022 Elementum Unleashed with Alexi Panos Over It & On With It with Christine Hassler Follow: BossBabe: @bossbabe.inc Danielle Canty: @daniellecanty Alexi Panos: @alexipanos Christine Hassler:@christinehassler Natalie Ellis: @iamnatalie

Okay, the mind work, and then the body work, and then the energetic work, and the spiritual work, and it's like, but why can't we just go one place and learn all of it, and then learn how they play together? And that's really like, for us, the aggregation of tools has been the breakthrough. A boss babe is unapologetically ambitious and paves the way for herself and other women to rise, keep going, and fighting on. She is on a mission to be her best self in all areas. It's just believing in yourself. Confidently stepping outside her comfort zone to create her

own vision of success. Welcome to the Boss Babe podcast, the place where we share with you the real behind the scenes of building successful businesses, achieving peak performance and learning how to balance it all. I'm Danielle Kenty, your co-host and founder of Boss Babe here with you today. So I'm actually joined on this episode. It's not just me, it's Natalie. And we interviewed two amazing women, Alexi Panos and Christine Hessler. And honestly, you guys, this episode was a little bit different. It's raw, it's real because I actually got coached and one moment I was nearly in tears. Then I nearly had a coughing fit, but don't worry, we spared your eardrums and clipped most of that part, but it was really, really raw. And it's really important for us to do these episodes because we want you to really

see the real behind the scenes of what it takes to build a business. And on the social media, it's all the highlight reel, there's the snippets, but the podcast is the place where we really dive in. And we were diving into the emotional sides of building a business. And not only the skills, like a lot of people think, oh, you have to build these skills to build a business, but actually it's really about how to master your emotions, your mindset and communication. Like for me, that's one of the biggest parts that really helps you get success in it. So we were just like chatting about all those things and the work that we all have to do. And you'll hear some really raw sides from me, particularly in this episode. And it was just so amazing.

I'm really excited for you to hear from two incredible coaches. Like Alexi is a master leadership embodiment coach, and she's been named on Forbes and Inc's list as one of the top entrepreneurs that's changing the world. And we had Christine on who not only has 16 years experience as a master coach and facilitator, but she's also the author of three bestselling books, most recently, Expectation Hangover, Free Yourself From Your Past, but also Change Your Present and Get What You Really Want. And these women are so, so knowledgeable. I think it's really important. Someone said this to me, like, really beware about where you're consuming your knowledge from. And for me

I always look for the experts I always look for the people who have been where I want to go or the people who have become masters in what they're talking about and I just want that to like you guys to think about that that's why we're always very selective about the guests that we have on and we curate the information that we're giving you very, very carefully. And I'm really excited for you to dive into this episode and see what comes up for you and see maybe some of the areas that you want to work on that are going to help you progress that next chapter in your life, the next stage. So I hope you love this episode. I think it's going to be really real and raw and you're going to have so many takeaways. And when you do, please share them with myself at Dania Canty,

share them at bossbabe.inc, share them with Natalie, I am Natalie, and you're going to hear Alexi and Christine's handles as well. But without holding you guys up anymore, let's really dive into this. Alexi, Christine, welcome to the Boss Babe podcast. Thank you. We have a lot of work to do on this podcast. We're going to go deep. No pressure. But I wanted to hear from both of you how you got into the industry and the work that you're in. Alexi, let's start with you. Yeah. So I got into this industry out of my own personal need to heal. I was introduced very young. My mother was a psychotherapist, so she had books strewn about the house. Went to my first Tony Robbins seminar at 16, did my first landmark full curriculum from basically 18 to 21, and just really fell in love with the work and the possibility that came from it. that I had a lot of trauma I hadn't dealt with. And I was utilizing personal development as almost like this surface level, like I'm doing okay, everything's great.

I'm successful in my life, I'm crushing it. So I'm just gonna ignore all this stuff back here in the closet. And it wasn't until I started recognizing that I was really cut off from my emotional life and from people, like there was just this resonance that was missing from my life that I was like, I need to try something else

because it's working here. I'm making money, I'm successful, got all the things, but it's not working here. And if I'm deeply unhappy, is that actually working in my life? And so I recognized that there was more to this personal development world than what I knew. And so I recognized that there was more to this personal development world than what I knew. And so I started just going out and hunting down the top experts in their fields with somatics,

trauma work, all sorts of energetic stuff, neuro-linguistic programming, brain science, and just like diving in and saying, hey, I want to feel fully expressed. I want to feel free as a human. How do I do that? And so selfishly, that's how I got into the work. I love that story. And it really comes through how long you've been doing it to how deep you've went into this. And it's one of those industries I feel like you cannot teach from a place that you haven't been. Yes. And so I love that. Christine, what about you? Oh my gosh, where do I start?

So I was a super overachiever, very ambitious from a young age to compensate for massive insecurity. I just thought no one liked me. I didn't belong. I was teased. I was a light bloomer. So I just became a doer,

addicted to doing. And so I moved out to Hollywood at 20 to go work in the entertainment industry because it's the perfect place for really insecure people with something to prove to go and work. And I worked my way up and I was an agent by the time I was 24 and I had this amazing life. And I still wasn't happy. I'd been on antidepressants since I was 11 years old and suffered a lot from depression, a lot from anxiety, but no one would ever know. I was one of those people that could put on a mask and put on a facade and look like I had it

all figured out from the outside. But the inside, it was like a duck on water. I looked smooth, but underneath, it was just a tornado. And I kept reaching these levels of success. I remember one time on New Year's Eve, I was at a small dinner party and I was sitting right next to George Clooney. Casual. I know. And I may have kissed him at midnight, but that's for a different podcast. I got that story in a hot tub, by the way. And I was like, what? Anyway, come on. Come back on the podcast to talk about celebrities I've kissed. But I remember sitting next to him going, whoa, I'm sitting next to freaking George Clooney in a ball gown on New Year's Eve and I'm still miserable. Like something's really wrong with me.

Like what is it going to take for me to be happy? And that really started a journey of moving the things away that weren't doing it for me. So I ended up quitting my job, but then I just got more depressed because my job was my whole identity. And once I took that away, and then my fiance broke up with me six months before our wedding, it wasn't George. And then I got really sick and I had estrangement from my family. Things just kept going wrong. And I remember going to see my first coach, Mona, who a friend had recommended to me. And she lived in the Valley. And when you live in LA, you don't go to the Valley unless it's something really important. So I went to the Valley, to her house. I thought it was so

unprofessional. She answered the door in sweatpants. It's like, what kind of counselor are you? I was used to therapists and psychiatrists. And she sat me down on her son's race car bunk bed. And she just looked at me. And it was the first time in my life a professional looked at me like I wasn't broken. She just sat there and just loved me. And I felt not judged. And I felt not broken. And I told her my story. And she's like, baby, there's nothing wrong with you. You're not broken. You're just confused about some things. And I felt seen and I felt heard. And my work with her really started my journey in coaching and in really understanding personal development

and spiritual development. I had been seeing strength since I was 11. I could psychoanalyze myself to death. But the problem with analysis is it doesn't change things. If awareness was enough, we'd all be great. You know, we'd have an aha moment and our lives would change if only it was that easy. So I started seeing her, started getting different results in my life. And I wrote my first book called 20-something, 20-everything about the quarter-life crisis in our 20s and what we as women go through in our 20s.

And from that, people just would call me up and ask me to coach them. And I wasn't a coach at the time, but more and more people kept asking me. And I wasn't a coach at the time, but more and more people kept asking me. And I went to Mona and said, hey, this is what people are saying. She said, yeah, that's your gift. That's what you're here to do. I was like, I am? She's like, yeah, that's it. And that's how it began. So it wasn't ever planned, but same with Alexi. It came from my own crisis, my own healing, my own need, my my craving for like, what is going to actually help me? What is going to actually be the thing that makes me feel like I'm making progress? Because again, I knew so much, but nothing was shifting. Do you know what I'm finding really fascinating

listening to both of your stories is that you are like aware of mental health from such young ages, whether it was like, okay, I like to see your mom's psychotherapist I can appreciate that but even like seeing like mental health specialists from a young age I don't know if it was a UK thing or not but no one was talking to me about mental health like I didn't even know this work existed until I was literally in my 20s yeah had no idea yeah like I literally heard like oh yeah take antidepressants yeah and like maybe if you're really really sick you can be on a really long waiting list with the NHS to get to a counsellor. But no one was talking about the work.

No one was talking about really mental health. There was either like, you're really, really suffering mentally or you're okay and you just give up a bit, get on with it. So I'm curious as to how you guys, what your outlook on mental health was from an early age. Was this something like, oh, just like my body, I look after my mental health? Or what was your mindset? For me, it was a ton of shame.

And I think there's still a lot of shame around mental health. So for me, being diagnosed with depression and being put on drugs was something I felt so ashamed about. And so I kept so secretive. You were 11, right? I was 11. And when I would go to the shrink and I'd have to excuse my absence, I would have my mom white out the kind of MD I was seeing. Wow. Because I didn't want the mom who was volunteering in the office at the attendance to like tell anyone that I was seeing a shrink. So for me growing up, it was, there was just so much

shame. If I like went to a friend's house, I'd, I'd hide my pills. I would never bring the bottle with me. When I first started dating guys, like I was on them from 11 till 29. So it's a big chunk of my life. And so one, one of the many reasons I'm so passionate about the work that we do is to take a lot of the shame and stigma around mental health because no one's ashamed if they get a cold, you know, no one's ashamed if they break a leg, maybe a little bit, but like it's a normal thing. It's like, Ooh, you suffer from depression. You have anxiety. You're on meds. You're bipolar. Like it's like, you know, and I think we're, we're growing out of that in a lot of ways, but there's still so much stigma and so much shame around it. Yeah. I'll actually co-sign that. For me, because my introduction was to really like the

personal development world, the Tony Robbins, the success, the strategies, the goals, it was very masculine focus. And it was very much about like, get over it. Like, it's no big deal. Your mindset will get you over this hump in your life. And so I think for a lot of my journey in this work, it was stuff it back. It's not okay. And so I didn't work with my own shame. I didn't work with my own guilt around the things I'd done and the things that were done to me until I got over the fact that like, that's where the real healing is. And there's nothing wrong with that. Most people suffer trauma. And for me, it was like, I don't have trauma. Everything's fine. Everything's perfect. Everything's fine. And I think especially as women, we're taught to put on a pretty face

and get through it because we don't want to be seen as complainers and whiners. And I very much took that masculine role in my life. And again, the mental health part of it, that shame and guilt that a lot of us do suffer with, I didn't look at that until my mid-20s. Yeah. I really relate to so much of what you both said because growing up for me in my childhood, I had so much trauma

and I developed so much shame around it because we were told, you know, this stays behind closed doors. We don't talk about this when we go outside. We don't let anyone know what's going on. And so that's the way I grew up. And I remember going to university and people talking about their families and me feeling so ashamed to share anything about my childhood or, you know, the fact that I moved out of home when I was 13. I didn't want anyone to know. And so I'd lie to cover it up. And it was only when I started to firstly accept that it was my story and it doesn't mean anything bad about me. In fact, it makes me

stronger. It was only when I got to that place that I even thought about doing the work because until then, I didn't want to sit in a room with a therapist and you know tell them my problems I would get put in a room with therapists and I would tell them everything's fine because it's a shame work yeah and it's so much deeper than the mind yes yeah why why is it what so much of this comes from shame so much comes from shame and that's why we've built what we've built and the work that we do is built around this more integrative approach to what it means to be human. Because for so long, the mental health world has just focused on mental health, the mind,

which is great. And it's such a huge part of who we are, but it's not everything. In fact, the body, the somatic part of us, soma means body, so it's the somatic part of us, accounts for so much of our healing. It is our expression in the world. What lives in the body is how we express in the world. What comes through the body is how we perceive it in the mind. So our starting point from everything we do is the body informs reality. And so without including the body, without including energetics, you're missing this massive portion. It's like the iceberg, right? You're missing all this stuff underneath

because you're just looking at what's up here. Mindset, mind, mind, mind. Let's treat it. Let's talk about it versus let's feel it. Let's experience. Let's bring it out of the body, look at it, and then do the work around it. And one of the things that shame does is it helps repress the emotions. So most of us as kids didn't have safe emotional expression. We were told to be a good girl or a good boy or don't cry or shake it off or you're too loud or you're upsetting mother

or whatever it may be. And so all our trauma, and if we can define trauma as too much, too fast, too soon, people think they don't have trauma if they weren't abused or they weren't in a super chaotic alcoholic family. You can have trauma from moving. You can have trauma from one thing somebody said to you at the swimming pool. You can have trauma from just growing up in a house where your parents didn't get along. There's

so many kinds of trauma and pretty much everybody has some, like pretty much. And when we experience it in that moment, we can't get out the natural emotions that go along with it because there's kind of feelings we create. Like we oftentimes create the feeling of anxiety. If I think about something I don't have control over, I think about something in the future. It can produce anxiety. But when trauma happens, we have natural physiological reactions. Like if I got really embarrassed right now, I'd turn red, right? So we have these natural physiological reactions that are emotions, energy in motion. But because we freeze in trauma so much, the emotion just gets stuck and it just builds and the body is where it's stored.

And so oftentimes what shame does, that kind of embarrassment, is it keeps us from talking about it because we're so afraid if we expose it, then everything that we've stored up, everything that's been held in the body is going to come out. And then the other fear we have, and a lot of this is subconscious, meaning we're not totally aware of it. The other fear we have is that if we talk about it, then we're going to relive it. And in our work and in our program, we teach how you back there without reliving it and pull those pieces because we get fractured. It's like pieces of us get left in the past in our trauma. And so, so much of the healing work is bringing those back, but you have to connect to the body because if we just rely on the mind, we're only accessing 5% of what we're capable of remembering. And what really surprised me to learn was how trauma stuck in the body can cause illness and things like

that. And my scientific mind for the longest time would tell me this stuff wasn't true. And like, that's a really personal share for me, but I was going through a lot of hormonal issues and I would go and see doctors and on paper, they'd point out all the things that were wrong and low and all the issues and how much trouble I'd have getting pregnant and all the things. And Alexi, I remember when I did that weekend of work with you and Preston and I had not had my period in years. And I remember we did the work. It was, was it a Friday to a Sunday? It was Friday to a Sunday, yeah. And I texted you on a Monday and I said, Alexi, I just got my period. Yeah. I remember that. And I was so happy for you because you had released. And it was, it was a weekend of somatic work.

And it was crazy what that brought up where things I wasn't even thinking of, things I wasn't aware of. And that Monday, cause I, I'd read the books. I'd listened to the podcast. I was like, sure. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm going to keep on my hormonal healing plan. And so I woke up that Monday and I got my period and that for me, it landed. I needed the physical evidence to sit, to be able to say, okay, this work thing, this actually works. It does work. It does. But that's a really good point that we can dive into because that was part of my journey for so long too. I'm such a heady person that I was reading all the books and studying from my mind, which is from my ego, right, if we're honest.

And I was just absorbing, consuming more and more and more and more and more, which in a way created a level of safety for my ego, created a level of safety for my trauma. But until I actually did the embodiment work, the somatic work, the deep, crazy guttural work, which you know and got to experience, there was no release happening. So it was like, if you've got a pot and it's boiling up and you've got the top on, a little bit of steam comes out here and there with some knowledge, but you got to take that top off. You got to turn the temperature down. You got to do all these things to regulate the water. And that's what we're doing is re-regulating our nervous system. And when you do that, spontaneous healing happens. And it's what we hear about. And people like us are like, come on. Yeah, right. Bullshit, right? Come on. But when you get your body in the work, that's when everything changes. And I think there's a lot of people now who are reading and listening and consuming and they're getting inspired by the work, but they're not actually doing and practicing and taking the work into their own lives and doing the deep guttural stuff. And then they're leading people down that path. And that's one of the reasons why we started Elementum because we're like, we need to train coaches. Yeah, how to deal with their own trauma first.

Yeah. Because this is going to get real messy and real unsafe if it's not done well. And I just want to give an example of kind of how somatic can look because it can look like the guttural kicking pillows and screaming and like getting your rage out. And it can also just look like really paying attention to where we feel things in the body. So I was working with a client last night and we were talking about some of the abuse she experienced in a relationship. And she was talking, talking, talking. All of a sudden my chest started feeling really tight. And I said, just stop for a second. What are you feeling in your body? And she said, my chest was really, really tight. I said, okay, take a breath and just go into that. Drop your awareness into that tightness. If that tightness could speak or if it wanted to make

a sound, what would it say? She started to speak and she started to say, I'm so angry. There's still things I want to say to him. I'm like, great, do it. Get that out. She just voiced it. She got into her anger and her tone dropped and we kept paying attention to what was happening in her chest. And after she did that for a while, first came the anger, then came the tears. We checked back in. She's like, oh, the weight's gone off my chest. Like I can breathe again. So it's using the body.

The body's a messenger. The body remembers everything. I mean, I'm sure you've heard the book, The Body Keeps the Score, which is a great book. So the subconscious mind, the stuff below the iceberg, the water level, the iceberg we can't see, the subconscious mind communicates with the body. So if we're just paying attention to the cues,

it can be in an illness, it can be in not getting a period, or it can just be a sensation. And when we go into that, there's just so much wisdom in that. we get so much farther when we use the body than when we just talk about what happened. This is so fascinating. And I also just like, I think I'm in a unique perspective

because I've actually never done any somatic work. So I'm listening to this going, oh, this is so curious. And I'm just also thinking about people listening who haven't perhaps explored this much. But I just want to bring us back to the word trauma. Because like you guys are utilizing that in ways that like traditionally trauma is not useful you know oh i've been in a traumatic car accident i've been

in these big events yeah but my understanding is like traumas can be like small things too for sure and it's like how do you what is a trauma what's not a trauma what is just an experience is the challenge that you overcome like what is the definition of that and how our bodies experience that and our mind experiences that? So it's defined in multiple ways. What Christine said is what we like to say a lot, too fast, too soon, right? Too much, too fast, too soon. However, another way to look at it is that the event in and of itself isn't traumatic.'s your nervous system okay so if your nervous system goes i'm not safe and it activates the fight flight freeze or appease to become safe then that's a traumatic response in the body so it's really how your body responds your nervous system responds

that denotes a traumatic event because i think that relieves a lot of people from feeling like well hang on a minute this isn't trauma and what normal trauma like normal trauma looks like well that wasn't really horrific event but i did feel these things and i think really like just going back to the whole loop around the shame thing sometimes those things can be smaller to others than they are to you but it's like you say listening to that nervous system and like okay i went into sympathetic nervous system. But fight and flight in that moment. So you're saying that when you experience those things,

you go into that fight and flight system, that your body locks onto that. Unless it does, is there a way to like not have trauma in the moment? Yes. And that's what we teach. Okay.

I didn't get your head in my mouth. I'm intrigued right now. There is is there is but the the issue is and like christine kind of alluded to most of us grew up in households where it was not okay to feel it was not okay to emote it was not okay to release and express my room like don't cry go to your room yeah you talk about that a lot and we were ashamed of my parents to death but i really do feel like that was like not the best way. But they don't know how to deal with their trauma. So how could they handle yours?

But I was like, do not show emotion then. I was like, go to my room, go and deal with it on your own. Don't ask for help. Come out when you're ready to say sorry. And so not only did you have the traumatic event that happened, but now you have your caregivers saying, hey, you should feel ashamed of how you're being right now.

So then you stack your trauma. And so then your body goes, oh, not safe. And then it starts looking for not safe. Right? And you live in hypervigilance. Hypervigilant, which basically means your trauma response is stuck on the on position. And then you're going through life like this, hypervigilant, looking for attack. And so a lot of people, we also coach people in business and all the other things. How come I can't make the money I want to make? Well, it's your body. Again, our starting point is your body. Your body is your filter for the world. And if your body's stuck in hyper vigilance, you're looking for what's going to go wrong. You're looking for the attacks on your

business versus looking at possibility versus calming your nervous system and saying, hey, I'm available. I'm available to receive. I'm available to express. And so, so much can change when we learn to actually be safe in our bodies and release what's coming up. And that's a lot of the work we do. And we teach our coaches how you can release trauma from the past now in a safe way, but also a mechanism for doing it in the future when it happens, because life is going to life. And as long as we live life, we're going to keep having opportunities to release our trauma. Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform, Kajabi. You know I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity, which I love.

Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place. So it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really helped us do that this year. So of course, I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business, you know, get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible. I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students. So if you're listening and haven't checked out kajabi yet now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering boss babe listeners a 30-day free trial go to

kajabi.com slash boss babe to claim your 30-day free trial that's kajabi.com slash boss babe so speaking of that like on button being on one thing that that you notice, people notice, we notice, is there are some people that repeat their trauma over and over. And I'm saying people, we all have done it. And we see it all the time. And we maybe have been in a situation and then we get into another situation that's the exact same. And we go into, why is this happening to me again why do I always attract this why is it always the same does that have something to do with that light being on and looking for it like how how do we end up in the situations where we attract the same things over and over maybe it's a business failure and we're losing it over and over and over again or

it's a dysfunctional relationship where there's infidelity over and over again, or it can be anything, I guess. There's a few reasons. So a lot of times when we're playing out our trauma over and over again, we're looking for what we didn't get that we really needed when it happened in people that remind us of the people that didn't give it to us when it happened. So let me spell that out. Say that again. Say that because that's so important. I don't know if I can with my pregnant brain, but let me give an example and then I'll say it again if I need to. So let's say that you grew up with an abusive dad. Maybe it was verbally abusive, maybe it was physically abusive, maybe it was an alcoholic, whatever. That's very traumatic

because you didn't feel seen, you didn't feel safe. You didn't feel loved. You felt like we personalize things as children so much. So if a parent doesn't love us, doesn't make us feel safe, doesn't validate us, we truly think something's wrong with us. So here I am, a little girl just wanting daddy to love me and make me feel safe. So that's an unresolved wound that I'm growing up with. And so subconsciously, I'm always trying to heal that. And my subconscious mind is like, okay, I'm only going to heal that with someone that reminds me of dad. So I'm still, I have this void inside of me, this daddy void inside of me. So I'm going

to be looking for men who are like dad, who maybe are abusive or emotionally unavailable or whatever it is. It's not that I'm a glutton for punishment and I want to re-experience the trauma. It's that there's a part of me that's looking for what I didn't get then, now, but I'm going to look for someone like my dad. Make sense so far? Yes. So then we date abusive guy and we're re-experiencing the trauma. Then we feel so much shame. Then we feel so much guilt where our adult self can go, I can see this as a red flag. But as my coach Mona used to say, we time travel so much, meaning I can be 32 knowing consciously this guy's a red flag,

but the eight-year-old in me who wants daddy's love and approval thinks this guy's a lot like dad. So she's going to go for it. And she's actually the one making the decision. So that's one of the reasons we play it out is because we keep looking to the familiar, trying to get what we didn't get. And it's a dead end, but we don't know consciously what we're doing. So that's why the awareness and the trauma work is so important because we can break that cycle by giving ourselves what we didn't get then. Now, is that because the familiarity is also like safety? We have safety as well. Like what is familiar is safe.

Yes. Even if it doesn't work. Yeah. We know it. Because you know that doesn't, you know what you're getting. Yeah. It's like the devil we know is better than the devil we don't know. Yeah.

Yeah. And the intellikey of the human soul, if we go spiritual for a moment, is to evolve and is to heal. Yeah. So we keep attracting situations in our life to push our buttons, to bring the trauma right here, to bring the unresolved issues to the forefront because like we do want to heal. We do want to grow in consciousness. And oftentimes the only way we can do that is have a similar triggering event or traumatic event happen

and heal it and respond to it differently so we can break the cycle and break the loop. Because again, all this is going on on the subconscious level. We're so not aware of it. And again, back to like, we keep talking about the body. That's why we're so like, body, subconscious, like bring it up so that we have awareness and we can start really breaking patterns that we're just stuck in. So let's say, let's just go back to this like daddy issue for a moment, right? So let's say like, I'm back to this like daddy issue yeah yeah for a moment right so let's say like

i'm looking for this father figure i'm picking the familiar which has already been toxic for me over here and it's it's toxic over here but like what has my body got to do with that so see if you could put yourself in the shoes of that little girl okay okay by the way my dad was amazing. Okay. So this is not you. All right. So if you did have a father who was maybe absent or wasn't present or didn't give you the validation or love you needed, how would you feel as an eight-year-old girl? Hang on. Should we do the go into the room one? Maybe that's easier for me to put myself in my shoes. Let's do it. Give me some therapy right now. Let's go. Okay. So what do you feel like is a pattern that shows up for you quite a bit that is an ineffective pattern in your life? Doing things like myself,

like that's, oh, I'll just like, I'm not very good at sharing my emotions when I'm in them. Like, it's very much like I have to go away and then I'll analyze my emotions, deal with them and then come back with with them laid out in a neat pattern. Okay. So how does that affect your current reality in a way that is not working for you? I feel like I starve a lot in my body, for sure. I've been feeling very tense and stressed, and it's because I feel like I bottle a lot versus letting it flow in the moment. I want to say all these things and be in this feeling of emotion, but I'll like, no, don't let that out. Like go away and deal with this. Yeah. And we've heard because what you shared in the past, your family was like,

hey, go to your room. Those aren't welcome right now. Okay. So where do you feel it most in your body? Definitely like my chest for sure. Like here. And I get like, ooh, here. So, ooh. Okay. For those who are listening you're not seeing describe that feeling yeah um like kind of just like a tightness like i want to like roll my shoulders in just kind of like feeling really tight in my chest like that kind of like kind of shrinking i guess you know like that hunching over yeah if you're listening to it you should go and watch our youtube channel right now i'm just plugging that during my therapy session. Okay. So if that shrinking could make a sound or say something, what would it say to you? Like it's like a weird, like moaning type of noise, I would think. Like sludgy.

Sludgy. Okay. So if we were to give that feeling a face and that face was to have a conversation with you, what's something that that feeling would say? Oh, interesting. Like if I picture that, it would be like my, like literally stuck as a seven-year-old, like just like crying, like red-eyed, just like, you know, like that really like just like crunched a ball. Like I would literally like lie on my bed and like cry in a ball. So probably like that. Okay. Do you suffer from back problems and back pain or any of that or constriction here in your shoulders?

Like what do you tend to feel in your body as an ongoing perpetual pattern? Probably just like tightness in my, I don't really suffer from lower back issues, but definitely like I've always suffered from tightness in my upper back for sure. Because we're holding. And if I'm plagued with any illness, it's always throat and respiratory. Like, never anything else. Always that. So this is part one, all right? So as we're kind of diagnosing the issue, the somatic collapse, what we say is if it exists up here, it constricts in the body.

If it exists, it constricts. So now we know where the constriction is. So now somatically, there's a range of places we could take you, right? We'd have to move the microphone. We'll do that afterwards. Yes. But truthfully, it's about opening and expressing, opening and expressing. So for somebody that has a hard time expressing, which I relate to a lot, that's a lot of my history. For me, it was dance. It was how do I open my chest up in full expression? And music was a really safe place for me to do that.

I did music and dance. So that was your outlet. I don't do that as an adult, which is interesting. So now I'm like, oh, I wonder if that's why. Yes. And also what's just coming through for me, for like those who are listening, like I've never, this isn't the type of work that I've done before. I've done like a lot of therapy, but different modalities.

But it's very interesting when you asked me to like tap into that, how easy that was. Like, oh, like I had this vision of myself, like it just popped in my mind. Yeah. It's like when you ask those questions, you're like, oh, actually this is natural. Like when you describe me that's like this is kind of weird like how am i gonna do this like oh actually i intuitively knew right well you subconsciously knew yeah consciously and the body is the gateway between the the subconscious the inner child and the body and another thing we work a lot with in elementum

is the inner child yeah which would be great for you. Yeah. Okay, I'm gonna sign up. Because that little girl, but there's a little girl and that's the thing. There's a little person in all of us that is yearning for safety, yearning for approval, yearning to know that we matter in this world. And unfortunately, most of us didn't get it

in the way that we needed it. So that in and of itself is a trauma. And so our egos then build up and bolster up this amazing stature to say, I can do it. I'm okay. I don't need help. I've got this, whatever our saying is. And then we go out in the world and we basically ignore this little human in us. It's like, but I just want love. And so we're choosing, like Christine was saying from this little girl, that's like, that person reminds me of dad. Maybe I can fix dad.

And finally get love. And for you, that independent thing, like doing things on your own, hard to receive, hard to receive support, all that type of stuff, it's the strategy that you've adopted so you protect yourself because it's what you thought you had to do. But the longing of the little girl is for support. And trust. Like, can I trust the person that's supposed to love me to be there for me, to show up for me, to hold me? Like, have you ever truly felt held in your life? No, I think no.

And I think that's definitely one of the biggest healings that I have now. Like, obviously, everyone who listens to this knows I'm going through a divorce. My relationship with Natalie has probably been one of the most healing things she's probably the one person that I trust the most to carry me with things like she's carried the weight when I've not been able to and that's been a very interesting feeling for me I never had that in my relationship I would always carry my own and I've always carried my own weight throughout my whole childhood like I've been like very much I don't know it's fine just go off and do things very independent yeah but independent to the point where like you can start feeling like

you need somewhere to relax and you need somewhere to go like like to say to be held yeah also what's really interesting to me like just talking about this is you know my scientific background as like a chiropractor like it's very it's funny how the mind and the body we're not healing that together all the time because if you think of medication that's treating the body but we know about placebo effects so we know in the biomedical model we call it so when you're just treating the body like they forget about the head right so you don't have cancer treatment and then also get therapy at that same time to help heal and the same with like mental health so now I'm like oh it makes sense that you would do this together it kind of

makes sense that you would do the mental side with the body the physical side yeah so and then there's an energetic component too and that's what in our own journeys which is why we came together like five plus years ago and we're like we need to build this thing because we were finding it in all these separate places. Having to piecemeal it. Yeah. It's like, okay, the mind work and then the body work and then the energetic work and the spiritual work. And it's like, but why can't we just go one place and learn all of it and then learn how they play together?

And that's really like, for us, the aggregation of tools has been the breakthrough. It's like, okay, they don't live alone. They definitely play together because all of that plays together been the breakthrough. It's like, okay, they don't live alone. They definitely play together because all of that plays together with a body. Why are we separating these? And most people, most coaches are learning one modality or niching down. And while that's great, it unfortunately is creating somebody that can only take their client as far as they've gone themselves. And so we really need to widen the breadth of tools and show coaches, train coaches

to be the embodiment of how to work them together and be able to go wherever the client needs to go. Well, speaking of that, so just witnessing that process and witnessing you going deep, which was incredible, I really got to see, firstly, just how vulnerable that practice is.

But secondly, you know, very much worries me that someone untrained would be doing this work, because I feel like you're taking people to a deep place and you're unraveling things. What if you can't support that full circle and you open a circle, you open a loop and you can't close it. That's right. And when I see parts of the coaching industry like that, where you see coaches that are perhaps teaching things they aren't trained to be teaching and going places they perhaps shouldn't be going, worries me. Yeah.

It really worries me. Rightfully so. And I do want to, I want us to call that out and maybe have a conversation about it. Because I think there are areas of the coaching industry that need to change. Yeah. Otherwise, it's going to end up getting a bad rep for all the wrong reasons. It's kind of like you can't teach someone how to make $50 million if you've not made $50 million before.

Like you can't teach people how to heal this if you've not healed your own, right? Yeah. Well, or if you're not trained in it, right? So you don't necessarily have to have gone through the exact thing you've gone through but i need to have worked with enough people and have that practice embodied to know that i can take you where you need to go yeah like i've done some like quite a lot of somatic healing work which has been amazing for me i wouldn't know where to fucking start helping someone else go through that. I might have done my own, but not in any world would I feel safe facilitating that for someone else. So it's so different, right? Well, it's unique that you say that because a lot of people become coaches because they think the opposite. Totally. They think that I've had this transformative

experience and now I want to like heal the world because I've had this aha moment or I, you know, left my shitty job and now I'm doing what I love or I, you know, healed this illness. Now I'm going to help others. And while that can be the inspiration, it's just the inspiration. It can't be what you build your business on. And I'm lucky. I've had many coaches and then I got my master's degree at USM and, you know, I had amazing teachers that have kept me humble and called me out and have been like, you're not ready to do that. Stick to that. You're over in your ego here. You really have called me forward and made me be my own best client first. And I still, I've been coaching since 2004 and it's rare and rare, but if I ever, if someone ever coaching since 2004 and it's rarer and rarer. But if I ever, if someone

ever comes to me and I'm like, this is something I'm not trained in, I am so quick to refer them out. And so I think with coaches, because it's an unregulated business, you know, with therapists, it's a regulated business. There's certain hours you have to get. And coaches, anybody, you could, everybody in this room could be a coach today. There's no regulation and that can be really, really dangerous because the thing that we see in the industry as well is that there's sort of this guru celebrity thing with coaches as well. And people can be really good marketers. Right.

But not that great at doing the work with people. So that's why in Elementum, we put our coaches through a very rigorous, very supervised process. So we know our grads can take people where they need to go. And they also know when they get into a place with a person where they're like, oh, how to regulate the person, how to bring them out. Because like you said, a lot of coaches will lead a client down a path of trauma and not know what the fuck to do. And then leave them there. And leave them there.

That's concerning. It's so concerning. It's so, and then think that they had a great breakthrough session because the person had all this emotion. It's like- But you can re-traumatize somebody. Absolutely. You can absolutely re-traumatize someone. Just having emotion and getting it out, like just catharsis can be dangerous. We need to know how to really do somatic work and emotional release work in a healthy way, and then know how to bring the person back to present, regulate their nervous system, move them into forgiveness. There's a whole process.

So our coaches know when they get into an area where it's like a little like, ooh, this is kind of going off the rails. They know how to bring the person back, regulate their nervous system, bring them back to safety. And then they have a built in support program where they can really get support. So we're trying to eliminate a lot of the things in the coaching industry that we've seen of people not being prepared, people not knowing what to do, people taking their clients where they shouldn't be taking them and people being great marketers, but not super great coaches. Why is this coaching and not therapy? It's a great question. So, you know, we, we have a lot of experience with therapy

and therapy is great and it has its place. However, coaching is more about finding, finding an in, finding that story, right? Working with that specifically, finding a modality that's going to support you, Danielle, to work that out, to release that tension and constriction in the body. And then we want to move forward. We don't want to keep talking about the time that your parents did X, Y, and Z and what it meant and da, da, da. Therapy tends to stay up here and we want to use this, use the body, use the energetics, use the spiritual aspects of the human. And we want to say, okay, let's work together and let's release this so we can move on. And that's what

coaching is really about is finding a way to move on, be productive and live in the possibility of our lives while being honest and authentic about what's shown up in the past. And we often have more tools to pull from. Unless therapists go out and do their own additional training, they're sort of limited, sort of like MDs. Yeah. Unless they go out and learn about functional medicine and nutrition and mind-body kind of stuff. I mean, I don't know if you've experienced this, but going through a pregnancy, I've

been so shocked at how much OBs don't know. Oh, yeah. I'm like, what? You're just trained on pathology, right? And so we can have a bigger toolbox. Since I separated my ex just over 12 months ago, I've had four throat infractions. And I never get issues.

It's not COVID. I tested COVID a million times. I don't make a mold in my place. Why do I keep getting sick? But I had pneumonia when I was 17 too and like I was saying to you I only I don't really get sicknesses I've never like wasn't really a sickness bug type person but you get respiratory issues I don't have asthma or anything like that but I'm just like oh it's so curious yeah like that I've literally been all day not coughing yeah you did that with me and then I'm like wait I need to cough and I can't even hold this back yeah just so you know we had to

take a five minute break Danielle was really coughing yeah and that's the thing right it can seem like coincidence or it could actually be that something's moving in your body because you you spoke to it you allowed it you hey, it's okay to be here, seven-year-old girl. It's okay. I see you constriction and I'm going to allow you. I'm not going to ignore you anymore. I got super hot when you were talking to me as well. That's common too. I was like, oh my God, I'm like really hot again now. So getting really hot, sweating, coughing is a big thing. Some people get dizzy. Some people start shaking. Some people start shaking. Some people throw up.

Yeah. We always have trash bags at all our events. Some people pass out. Like there's a lot of body response. Yeah. Because the body's finally like, okay, I'm releasing. And a lot of times if we have that freeze response, the coughing, you know, and like the getting air again is is part of the healing process because so much gets cut off this year it's been such an interesting year for me because i'm really

trying to use my voice again like learning and yeah asking for help and leaning on things which are doing really well yeah and i mean you've probably really witnessed the change in me i'm so different to where i used to be but yeah like I literally keep, I always see getting sick as a weakness too. So I have so much shame around like. Well, another way to get support. Like sometimes our body will make us really sick. So we have to ask for help. Yeah, so interesting.

Okay, so I want to, the program that you're doing, is it just for coaches or can people like me do it? So you're like, Tony, can we open the loop, you guys? Can we close the loop? doing? Is it just for coaches or can people like me do it? People can totally do it if you're just into really deep personal development work, then yes, but it's really deep. So we have had students that have no interest in coaching come through it and they're like, that was the most incredible

life-changing year of my life. And yes, if you've got space for that and you really want to take that on, absolutely. And then you can always utilize the tools in your business coaching and in anything. Do you get a certificate? Is it certification? You do, yes. Yes. So I could always use a certified practitioner if I didn't want to go through the thing too. Yep.

Well, speaking of that, what should we look for in a coach? If someone is wanting to work with a coach, what kind of things should they look for? Certifications? Qualifications? I mean, can I tell you how many people ask me my certifications? Like zero, maybe on a podcast interview, but very few people. Same with my GPA in college. And I worked so hard for that. It's not so much about certification. Training's

important. I think really looking at the training and I'd want to know, this is another difference between coaching and therapy. As coaches, we can share a lot more about our personal lives. And I really love that because I really love to build rapport with people and help them know like I've been where you've been in my own way. And so really looking for a coach that is living the life that you aspire to and maybe doesn't have to go through the exact same thing, but has been through some things that can really relate to you. But it's often like dating. You've got to kind of date a bunch of different coaches and see how you feel. But the most important thing is to feel really safe with the coach, but also pulled forward. So there are some coaches that just make you feel so loved and so safe and

you just, it's so yummy, but you're not really going anywhere because they let you keep living your bullshit. They don't really call you out. So you want that love and that non-judgment because love isn't just nicey-nicey. We're really talking about non-judgment. You want a safe space where you're not judged, but where you really feel like someone has the tools and the knowledge to kind of see through some of this stuff and have you look at things a different way and say, okay, this is where we need to call you forward or interrupts you when you're in a story and brings you into a body.

So you want to feel like they're doing more than just listening. Yeah. That they're actively working with you. That's the other thing too. I think you have to really get honest about what you want. I think so many people show up for coaching and they're like, I want the big life

and I want the money and I want the relationship and the family. And it's like, okay, great. Let's go all the way back here and work through clearing out all the shit that's in the way. Right. And they're like, I didn't want that. Yeah. Some people don't want to do it. They don't want to do the work. And so, so again, there are those kind of surface level coaches that'll just help you goal set and work on habits and systems and all of that. And that's great. But if you know that you've got recurring patterns showing up that are keeping you small and holding you that, and that's great. But if you know that you've got recurring patterns

showing up that are keeping you small and holding you back, maybe it's time to just get just a little bit more courageous and find somebody who can hold your hand through that process. And so if that is the case, I would ask specifically about trauma-informed care, and that's what we train our coaches in. Are you informed to work with trauma? Not certified to work, but informed. Can you hold my hand through it? Do you know how to take me in and out of loops if I get stuck in them? That is so important, especially if you know you've got a heavy past or a lot of emotional or body somatic constrictions to work through. So, okay. So then let's talk about your program because I'm super intrigued.

And before we had this conversation, you both said we can take a thousand dollars off for anyone listening to this. So that's great. I'm so grateful that you're doing that. Can you explain a bit about the process? For some people that have never experienced the work, you kind of hear the work as the most mysterious thing ever like is this a box I'm gonna go sit in or what are they gonna do to me like can we talk about like what it is what are they gonna be doing what kind of processes how long you know what can we expect we can expect so much so let's see where do we want to start we'll start with why we decided to build the model that we built and why four of

us come because it's myself, Alexi, and then our husband. So Preston smiles and my husband, Steph's Vandos. And cumulatively we have close to 60 years of experience of like different modalities and we didn't want to build a guru model. We didn't want the model to be based on any of us. We really wanted it to be a comprehensive training program that can live on without us, that brings, as we were saying earlier, everything together because we all had to piecemeal and have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on learning everything we've learned and studying with the people we're studying. Between the four of us, we've studied with some amazing people. So just bringing that all together and bringing it into the best of the best because

when you're training to be a coach, it can be so overwhelming. You're like, do I study inner child? Do I study NLP? Do I study trauma? And we just narrow it all down and say, okay, this is the body of work that will make you, as Preston would say, a weapon of a coach. That will make you a really integrated, embodied coach where you can really take people anywhere that they need to go. And the essence of the program is you are your own best client going through it. So you're doing your personal development. You're learning the tools by using them on yourself, but then you're also having the opportunity to coach other people. So we're blending the personal development, you being

coached, doing your own work, having your stuff come up, learning the curriculum through that way with also coaching other people, having to do your homework, having to be a student of the work too. And so you're really getting the training as a professional, but you're learning it firsthand, which is part of our ethos. If you don't embody it, if you haven't lived it, if you haven't experienced the tools, please don't go use it on somebody else. Yeah. And I'll just add to that, you did a great job of condensing so much into this little soundbite. Again, it's tools. It's tool heavy. So we go into a lot of the different modalities that we had to search far and wide to study and

train in. So we go deep into trauma. We've got a few modules on trauma from an overview to childhood and developmental trauma to working with trauma and releasing trauma. We go through NLP. We go through energetics like breathwork and sound. We go through internal family systems, inner child work. I mean, you name it. If it exists, somatics, we have a deep practice in somatics. If it exists- Sexuality. Sexuality, money, because so many coaches have so much around money. And it's like, so we talk about all of these things so that you can really work with a whole human

that shows up and have a beautiful relationship where they feel held. And it's like, wow, my coach can actually take me here and then take me here and then work on my relationship and then work on my money and work on this. And it's like, this is the kind of relationship that we want our coaches out in the world to be developing with their clients. We want clients to feel like the coaching industry has them in a way that their therapist alone couldn't or their coach in the past couldn't.

We really want people to feel like, wow, they can take me wherever I need to go. And one of the other things that's different is we have faculty as well. So meaning that like in order to get a certification, you're supervised by someone because a lot of coaches go through certification programs. They're kind of just supervised by their peers. It's like, yeah, you did great because it's also there for support and to really hold their hand and be there, but is also supervising them. So if they need to do better with a certain tool, or we see a coach getting really stuck, or we see a coach sitting in imposter syndrome, or being too assertive or whatever it is, we have those conversations. So the students are evaluated. That's another reason we feel so confident with our certification program because we have people we've trained

that are supervising them so that we know when we're certifying an Elementum coach, this person really is ready to do the work that we say they can do. Yeah. And how long is the program itself and what kind of time commitment every single week are we looking at?

It's nine months and it depends on the person. So most students say they spend about eight to 10 hours a week. Okay. On. Okay. So it's a real commitment. Yeah. Lots of integration. You're practicing, you're integrating, you're learning. Oh, integration is a huge part. We actually do what we call immersion calls where they're actually getting on and coaching other students in front of the entire community and in front of us. And so we're then giving feedback. So it's just so immersive. The whole thing is about embodiment, embodiment, embodiment, embodiment, which only comes through practice. If you're not practicing over and over and over

again, it's just a concept. I love that. I think it's so, so important. And for those listening who want to be coaches and we'll share the link as well. But I also want to talk to those people who are maybe not wanting to be coaches, but like me, like, okay, how do I experience this who are your coaches? Because if my coach is like, I don't have a coach. I'm like, you're not my coach. Because to me, a coach is always working on bettering their best. Right. So I personally love coaches. I have people who hold me in my relationship, people who hold me in my business vision, people who hold me in my family. So I'm a yes to coaching all day long. I believe in it. Me too. Because it works. Like my life is a result and it works. I think that brings us full circle to where we started. What is the work? That's the work. Always understanding that growth mindset. How can I be better than I was yesterday?

That's it. Whatever thing or form I am. That's it. And to answer that question, the work is, it's wherever you need to go as an individual in the moment that you're feeling constricted. So if you're feeling blocked in your money, if you're feeling blocked in your mindset, if you're feeling blocked in your sexuality or your expression, the work is going to take shape based on who you're working with, right? So if you're working with Christine or myself, we're going to have a certain set of tools to bring to you or to you, right? You came and did a weekend with Preston and I, we have a certain very strategic set of tools set up in a very strategic order to work with our clients. So it can look a million different ways, but the truth is if you're feeling

ready, if you're listening to this and you're like, ooh, something's sparking, like I'm curious, just say yes. Honestly, the biggest first step for me was getting over the fact that I had to look perfect and I had to have my life together. And oh my God, there's so much shame around getting help. The minute I got over that, my life began because I could just get honest about where I was and go, okay, there's work to do. And that's great. And we had a lot of coaches that had thriving businesses through Elementum. And that's great. And we had a lot of like coaches that had thriving businesses to Elementum. And we love that. We love their humility and we love their growth mindset. And they really came not being know-it-alls. And they were like, oh my gosh,

so glad I did this because there's so much I didn't learn in this certification or there's so many ways that I grew my business. So it's for people that are interested. It's for people that want to start coaching and it's definitely for existing coaches as well. Yeah. it's for people that are interested. It's for people that want to start coaching. And it's definitely for existing coaches as well. It's for people who want mastery. Whether you want to be a masterful coach or you want to be a masterful human. These are tools that I think everybody should have. Everybody. And it's hearing you say, I'll never be without a coach. It really goes to say, the work never stops. You don't just do the work, close the book and you're like, okay, we're done here. Definitely gets easier. In what way would

you say it gets easier? So I would say my time between when I have suffering or when I have difficult moments, when I feel really stuck in something has gotten a lot longer. And the time I spent navigating and working my way through it has gotten a lot longer. And the time I spent navigating and working my way through it has gotten a lot shorter. And there's certain issues in my life that used to come up in the past that don't come up anymore. And that's how you know the work is working, is you're changing the way you relate to things that change. The same thing could happen in your life, but you relate and respond to it completely differently. And things in your external life where it's changing because our outer experience is reflecting our inner reality, whatever that is.

So life is great feedback for where we are. And so the work that I do now is so much easier than the work I was doing in my 20s where I was like crying and hitting pillows all the time and like deep dark stuff. And like in my 30s when repressed sexual trauma came up, I was like, oh my God. And I wouldn't say it's like that heavy anymore.

It's more the fine tuning. It's more the, how do I become even more in love with my life and myself and optimize my human experience? And also Lexi and I are both, I think you two are too, we're nerds. We love to learn. We love to grow. And as we know, the intellikey of the human being is to evolve and is to grow. And so I always want to be learning from people who know more than I do. And that's part of the work too, is just being a student. Yeah. Yeah. And I can really testify to this work, like really working as well. Obviously, I've worked with you and Preston before, Alexi and Preston, really testify to it, but I've done many things. And some things I will say is, you know, I've been to multiple weekend retreats

and I've done deep dives. And for me, there was this stumbling block in my relationship that I couldn't get past. And it was this thing I kept repeating in all of my relationships. And I had such a defeatist mindset towards it of like, I'm doing all the work. I've hit him with no pillows.

I've cried. Like I've looked at where it came from and it's just not shifting. But I didn't give up. And I was able to release that with my husband last year and we went and did more work together. And I was, I kind of put it out my mind. It's like, I'm never going to get over this thing.

It's just going to sit there. And we went and we did it and getting through that, it's just freeing. And what it's done for me, doing this work has given me permission to be more myself. It was never about, you know, creating new parts of myself or anything, but so much of growing up, I repressed certain parts of myself or made myself wrong for it or second guess. But doing the work has opened me up to be more myself. And the way that shows up in the business is I'm unapologetic about what I want

and what I don't want. And I've created the business of my dreams, the life of my dreams, because I'm willing to claim what I want and I feel like I deserve it now. Whereas if I think back to where I've been and situations I've put myself in, when I didn't truly believe I deserved it for so many reasons,

whether it was deserved the relationship or the money or the business or the friendship, I never had it. And I see that so often. And I just want to shout from the rooftop, like, you guys, this shit works. And I can't help you because I don't know how to teach it. You're like, I'm not the one, but there's people out there. But there's people out there. There are resources out there. really does work it does and you said something that i think is so so true for my own journey too is the work it doesn't help you be like this super human being it helps you be yourself yeah and like that's what we teach in elementum is emergence it's like how can we get the truest most highest express version of you to emerge

and that's our work coaches Coaches are just the farmers and we're working the environment. So the seed, the blueprint that you already are can come and emerge into your fullest and highest expression. And for me, the work is that. It's like you get to be yourself. You have one life because no matter what shows up, you get to be you. Like what a gift. And I think it's also like important that people can know that their life can change like just because you've had that mindset all this time just because you've been on antidepressants no matter what your age is yeah no matter what your age things can change that's right and I think just really empowering people to take ownership that they

have a choice whether they want their mind to work this way or another way that's right it really is in your power and you get to like explore that like for me oh my god you know what like i want to let go of this and like it's like really refreshing and empowering but i actually get i actually can make a decision yeah to work on this or not and i think when you give people that feeling of ownership and empowerment like i mean i've worked with therapists before that energy emotion is just was the energy in motion and i think for me that was a really great reminder that these feelings come and go and you get to choose to navigate them. And like you say, arm yourself with tools.

You've said that word a lot today, like those tools that you can use. Yeah. And it's often where a lot of people quit is like, and I've heard this is true in labor as well, Lexi would be able to tell us, is like right when it gets to the hardest part and you think you can't do it, that's right when the breakthrough comes. And that's why a lot of people quit the work. It's like, it's not working. It's not working. It's like, oh my gosh, you're so close. Just like, you got to get through this real, the hardest part is right before the breakthrough. So for anybody listening that's like, I've been trying to deal with this thing for five years or 10 years. Please don't put a timeline on

your healing, first of all, because there's no backtracking. There's just deeper layers. And when it seems really heavy and we feel really stuck, that's when we're just about to make the breakthrough. So just keep going. Yeah, that's so true. And it is true in birth, ladies. Yeah, that's the thing. In birth, you can't tap out. Yeah, you can't tap out. But it's also so true too, because we've got 10, 20, 30 years of conditioned habitual responses.

It's not gonna change overnight. It's certainly not gonna change by listening to a podcast or reading a book. Or a five-step process. Right, you have got to work it. You've got to create a new practice. You've gotta be integrating these tools and working it as much as possible,

having those choice points and choosing, right? The more we choose something different than what we've chosen for the last 10, 20 years, the more our brain creates a new neural pathway, the more our body says, ooh, this is possible. The more our energetics go, this feels good. How do I create more of this? So it's also practice, like give yourself the grace

and also know that it's gonna be a practice and love the practice because the more you practice, the more you become the fullest expression of yourself. And I'm wondering as we start to bring this to a close, whether either of you have a story of a client or maybe it's yourself and anyone that you've seen maybe been in a very dark place where they felt like I'm never going to be able to get through this this is my life now maybe I'm on

medication for the rest of my life or I'm depressed for the rest of my life or I'm in a this relationship or no relationship for the rest of my life and it's never going to get better because things happen to me and I can't get through them do you have any stories of being able to bring someone to the other side and what they've been able to create? So many. I feel like where do I begin? Like thousands. Yeah. So I'll just make it easy and share mine. I mean, I, you know, I never thought I could get off medication and I really thought something was fundamentally wrong with me. There's a, there's a lot more to that story than we have time to go into. But the being diagnosed with a label at such a young age, I really thought I had a life sentence.

And I just really thought I was not going to be one of those people that could be happy and could like enjoy life or any of those things. And so for me, it took me about three or four years to get off antidepressants. And I'm not here to say they're wrong or bad. I'm just sharing my experience with them. And through the help of Mona and through my graduate program and through all these tools that we teach, and especially through the somatic emotional release work, so much of depression is repression, I was able to get off of them and have stayed off of them for

more than a decade. And I never once since being off of them have felt depressed. Yeah, I have my moments and I feel sad and I'm human, but I never once have gone, ooh, maybe I need to be back on them. And that for me was such a turning point because it was not just about getting off the medication. It was about healing that very limiting belief

that something's fundamentally wrong with me and I'm broken and I just have to accept the fact that I'm broken. And being able to heal that belief opened up so much for me. It was like, I could make friends because when you think you're broken, hard to make friends, hard to make money, hard to keep relationships, keep manifesting. So many other health issues because of the story I was broken. My life started to really change because it was like, I'm just me. I'm just Christine. I'm not broken anymore. And that was the thing that turned my life into a totally different direction.

I love that so much. And I really feel that that's given some people hope that are listening, who are listening to this and they're like, yeah, that's great for you. And for me, it's not going to work. I love hearing stories like that. So where can everyone find out more about the program and start to figure out if it's going to be a fit for them? Yeah, elementumcoachinginstitute.com. For that special link, we're going to go. Oh, let's do bossbabe.com forward slash elementum

and we can give them that info because we're going to do $1,000. Correct, with Boss Babe as the promo code. With no space, right? No space. Okay, Boss Babe as the promo code, no space. And it's $1,000 off the tuition. Yes.

Okay. Amazing. Yes. So it's a nine month program. It's about eight to 10 hours a week. Per week. It is rigorous and you will leave a changed individual. Well, and you will have soul family as well.

The community that develops is incredible. And do you stay part of that community? Yes. For our grads, we have a quarterly q and a call with them oh okay we keep a facebook page open we're all and our grads are always welcome to come into the content again so as we update it as we grow our grads have lifetime access to it and i will just say from my own personal experience i think when you invest in yourself like that's when you get the biggest multipliers. Out of all the investments

I've made, whenever I've like invested in myself, that's when I've reaped the most reward. I'll agree with that. And I think for me personally, it's because the minute I put money down on myself, I'm subliminally saying you're worth it. Like I believe in you, you are worth this investment. Yeah. And you honestly have to spend, I would say 10 times more than the price of this program to get access to everything that we're teaching you in this program. So it, it, it, again, like it's such a investment in yourself, but also it's going to save so many people so much time. I also think it's a windy, mysterious road for someone to be like, where do I find the

work? Where do I go find it? Well, and it was for us. It was like, okay, where do I go next? And thank God we had mentors and teachers who helped guide us and kind of shelter us to the next location. I know, I was flying all over the world learning. Same. Going and studying with people. Same.

And so this is the program we wish we had. Yeah, I love it. And where can everyone find you both individually on social podcasts? I'm just Christine Hassler. Super original. Yeah, Alexi Panos. We're going to put all the Christine Hassler. Super original. Yeah. Alexi Panos.

We're going to put all the links as well on the show. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I also will say if people want to hear a little bit of how we do the work, obviously we all have our unique styles, but my podcast Over and On with it, I coach people live on the air. Amazing.

So that's a good way to kind of see how some of these tools work. Oh, so I can like spy in on a coaching session. Yes, you can. I love it. Thank you both so much. This amazing thank you so much for your vulnerability yeah it's so inspiring it really is and they're all my workers now I know somatic healing how I come yeah maybe we'll play the bye thank you thank you if you enjoyed this episode we would love it if you subscribed and left us a review let us know what you enjoyed what your main takeaways were and who you'd like to see appear on the show as a special thanks we'll send you a copy of our Boss Babe 25. Now this is an awesome resource. It's the 25 essential things that you need for personal and professional growth. We've included everything from must-have products to books to rituals. This guide literally covers it all and I know you're going to love it.

So if you want your copy, simply leave us a review and then send a screenshot of your review to podcast at bossbabe.com