Emily: 0:01

Oftentimes if, even when you're suffering, you almost don't know you're suffering, because it's just your reality. It was kind of in that point and then I couldn't do it anymore and I don't know if there was really one day, or it was like accumulation of things, but suddenly I just sort of hit that rock bottom that many of us know intimately and realized that I had to change something. This is like the last conversation to get this diagnosis and I'm talking with a rheumatologist and she's like look, I could put this diagnosis on your records, but if I do, no one's gonna listen to you.

Ali: 0:51

Hello and welcome to the Allies Show. My name is Ali Islamifar and I'm your host for this show. We are in our episode 2 and for this episode we are chatting with Emily Shikli, someone that I had the honor to meet when I was working as a course hero. Later on, we both continued our relationship and stayed in touch, especially because we both are interested in topics like mindfulness and meditation. In this episode, we are talking with Emily about something that is very common a lot of the chronic pain and the physical pain we are all experiencing for working many hours, not sitting properly, emotional pressures, working 12, 14, 15 hours a day and things that are taking us out of the normal human being life structure. Not to spoil the show, but I personally relate to this issue a lot, as this is something that I severely dealt with around the time that we were both working together. As a matter of fact, emily and I met each other first time when she was teaching a yoga session at Course Hero in one of those wellness hours we had in the company. A little bit about Emily Shikli is the fact that she is a triple certified life coach, spiritual mentor and published author, with a master's from University of Chicago. She specializes in empowering busy humans to reclaim their time, energy and sense of magic through personal coaching and online courses. She also teaches art and mindfulness workshops for companies like Google, course Hero, microsoft and many more. As far as the accountability partnership campaign that Emily is leading, emily is asking five of us to join her with the campaign to do something for ourselves meaningfully for 2 to 25 minutes per day. It doesn't matter what, but it's important to have a right intention. She will talk more about it during the show, but please feel free to join that campaign using the link in the show notes. Also, if you're suffering from any mental health issues, please contact your medical or mental health experts. In this episode, we are talking about physical matters, chronic pains. If this is a sensitive topic to you, please feel free to skip this episode. We'll hopefully catch you in our next episodes. Now, without a further ado, let's start our conversation with Emily Shikli. Emily Shikli Wow, wow. We are here with Emily Shikli. We know each other from Course Hero. Yes, we used to work at Course Hero. I was there for about two years. I think you stayed there a little bit longer, yeah, and we also bonded around a very important topic for me Meditation and mindfulness. I remember there was this time that we briefly talked about meditation because they attended one of your yoga sessions Such a great session, by the way. I still remember my feelings in that time. Yeah, and then I asked you I'm like, hey, we have this brainstorm for our design team and, as a practice, I learned from one of my mentors. I'm like, can we start our sessions with you guiding a meditation for us? And you were like, yes, absolutely. And you showed up like right on time. We had such a great two, three hour brainstorm after that. So that's how we actually bonded and then later on we stayed in touch. So thank you for coming here first of all, and I wonder if we can also start this conversation with a five minute meditation guided by you.

Emily: 5:09

I love it. I feel like we all could use it. Yes, I love that, okay, cool. So if you're driving, maybe pull over or just skip this part. Keep your eyes open. People can get a little sleepy when we do this type of meditation, so actually one of my favorite ways to do meditation, especially if folks are having anxiety, is eyes open. I know Shocker you should see all these ways. He's like what. So this is a really powerful meditation. It's not of my own creation. It's actually one that is oftentimes used by therapists, counselors, coaches and the like to help people who are struggling with anxiety. So go ahead and take a look around your space and see if you can identify five different things and actually say them out loud. So, ollie, if you want to be our demo, you can say them out loud as you notice them.

Ali: 6:14

Yeah, there is that instrument. There is a painting, the plants here and yoga mat right there, and there is also, like this, ac machine. I know it's there and I really need it.

Emily: 6:36

Calling to you. Awesome. And now notice how, when you were pointing out those five different things and maybe our listeners are experiencing this too that it started to evoke a different emotion for you based on what you were looking at. So just kind of note that as we go into the next part. So now see if you can touch four different things around you and you actually want to touch them rather than simply look at them, so you can touch them and name them.

Ali: 7:07

This is my phone. I call it Mr Blue. There is oh, I love this texture here. It's a cushion, and what can I call it? Actually, it looks very warm, so I want to call it Warmy, and it's dates, mr Dati, I don't know. I love it. And what else? There is a laptop bag here, jeannie.

Emily: 7:44

Amazing. So when we're touching things, that also brings a deeper sense of presence right and connecting with that object in kind of a playful way is already helping you come more into that embodied state that we're looking for. So three you want to name three things that you can hear. So just listen for the sounds around you and then say what they are that you hear.

Ali: 8:15

There's obviously that noise. I didn't notice it before. There is that small fridge there. We put some drinks. Keep them cold. I can definitely hear that. I can barely hear the birds singing. I usually hear them louder in this place. I can hear more birds from that side now. Yeah awesome and the car just went by.

Emily: 8:50

Love it. And then two people always get a little weird about this one. Two things that you can smell. So if you have a drink nearby, you can smell your drink. You can smell your clothing or your hair, if that's available to you. You can smell the air in the room.

Ali: 9:08

Definitely the sense that I had on the smell is all over and I love it and I can barely smell the coffee. But I'm maybe lying, maybe I'm just creating that a small, because it's right in front of me.

Emily: 9:23

Nice and then one taste, so you can take a sip of that Delicious.

Ali: 9:30

I love that.

Emily: 9:31

Smelling coffee, and that is the 5-4-3-2-1 meditation.

Ali: 9:41

Wow, mm-hmm, that was. How do you feel I feel so much more present actually? Yeah. I think I was just telling you before starting recording. I did an hour yoga in the morning and I'm like, should I do a meditation before meeting Emily or not? And I'm like let's just have meditation together. And it actually did exactly what I was hoping for. That's great. I feel so much more present.

Emily: 10:06

Thank you, yeah, yeah, me too. I love that one and, like I, kind of sprinkled throughout that experience. The idea is to bring you out of a stressed state or an anxious state, because when we're anxious or we're stressed out, our thoughts can be really overwhelming. We're so focused on perceived threat or whatever is external to us, as opposed to the present moment. We're thinking about the past, we're thinking about the future, we're thinking about thoughts in our head. But when you're looking at an object or when you're touching an object and you're trying to be creative and come up with a silly name, it brings you more present and it also brings you into that state of curiosity, as opposed to stress. When we're in curiosity it's playful or inner-child is activated.

Ali: 10:54

Very interesting because I love that playfulness part of it when you were asking me to name it. Thank you for walking us through this experience and I hope everyone who's done it at home or while driving with eyes open and paid attention to the road they enjoyed it too, and this is exactly the kind of thing I want everyone to know that it's so beautiful for me in my life to get to know people in this level and the level of the joy they bring to my life. So this is one of the biggest reason I always love to stay in touch and learn from you. It's been amazing, but for our audience to know a little bit more about you and your background. However, you want to introduce yourself. We have arrived.

Emily: 11:44

We have arrived, we're here, we're present, we're here for it. I love that. Yeah, my name is Emily and I have been through a lot of different career expressions. We'll say currently and for, I would imagine, the rest of my life. Who knows can't predict anything, but I have my own business and I'm really focused on helping support people with a very similar mission actually to the LA show, in the sense of reclaiming their sense of self, their sense of power, working with their time and their energy in a more empowered way, so that we can actually spend our time, or precious time, on what we truly value and feeling more present with what we want to create for ourselves in our lives. So I do that through private coaching, through art and mindfulness workshops for different companies. So it's just been a blast teaching at places like Google and Microsoft and Coursero, a bunch of other different places, and online courses as well. So people can really take these learnings, take these opportunities from the East and the West, bring them together to really rekindle a deeper sense of self and balance in their lives.

Ali: 13:08

And I was looking at your LinkedIn just to refresh my mind. I remembered you studied something related to education, but what was very interesting is you studied curriculum design, like how do you think that's been shaping what you're doing today?

Emily: 13:23

Yeah, a lot actually. Yeah. So when I was in second grade I actually knew off the bat that I was going to be a creative writer. So I had this dream of being an author. You know, up on the mountain top, being a hermit writing stories, being infinitely famous. And I think actually the first short story I wrote was about the adventures of my family's dog Definitely a bestseller. You should check it out. It's illustrated too. I think there's like maybe three words per page for the like 30 page book or whatever that I created. But I've always been interested in writing. That's all to say that I've always been interested in writing what makes people tick, how people think, what compels us, how we actually learn and how we can translate concepts that are kind of ephemeral, kind of intangible, just like the parts of being human, into really accessible language. So, while one might think that creative writing has nothing to do with curriculum design, which might have nothing to do with coaching, they're actually really interrelated for me. So I went down this path of becoming a creative writer and ran into a lot of the unfortunately common naysayers of well, you have to make sure you have a real job and what's going to pay the bills and no one can make it in a creative career to really figuring out. Okay, well, how can I do what I love and also support myself? And so I started going into education and that's where I really found that first bridge between writing and teaching and that eventually led me to get a master's in curriculum design and also a really niche English topic called cognitive narratology, which is just like how we sink and how we're applying psychological concepts in literature and how we can kind of analyze it from that perspective. So it was a very interdisciplinary and graduate degree. But yeah, I've always been interested in how we can break down those complex concepts you know, like just this meditation we just did right. Oftentimes people think and I know this is near and dear to your heart that meditation means hours out of your day on top of a mountain sitting, crisscross applesauce right and holding our fingers till you're blue in the face and pass out. But in reality meditation can be a very playful, silly practice. It's just the concepts that we can or we're being invited to infuse through that.

Ali: 16:21

It's interesting the way you said it. I was just on a phone call this morning someone that I wanted to do some collaboration with for my other podcast on a meditation podcast, and we're just talking about the same fact that how can we actually turn meditation into something that can actually work for our today's lives with all the technologies and all the things that we got used to? But how can we make it doable and like kind of like go a little bit away from that traditional thinking not that nothing against it, but how to make it accessible and understandable for so many more people out of the United States Because, yes, of course, thanks to the media and thanks to amazing coaches in the country, it's been growing, but when you go out, there are so many people who are hesitant about even giving it a try how to make it something that people can actually and this playfulness that you practiced today I'm definitely going to steal it and do an episode with it for my Farsi podcast, and it's amazing. I also wanted to ask you there are a lot of people that when I told you about this podcast and the mission and what we want to do here, they said, yes, they support it, but I feel like, specifically, you and Brad and a couple of other friends that we have or had on the show, we will have on the show, they were specifically supported. I feel that there's something there. I feel that you were really supportive of this mission for a reason, and now I want to put you on the spot and I really want to know, I really want to know why and what do you see in it?

Emily: 18:08

The million dollar question. Yeah, yeah, total. I'm so glad you asked that. You know it's interesting being in an adjacent space, right? Mental health, adjacent space. There's so much noise and I think there can be this pressure to be perfect. Whether you are someone who is just stumbling across the phrase mental health for the first time or you're someone who is a well regarded professional. I think there's something about mental health that I saw from a very early age that, unfortunately, has been like society's dirty secret or treated that way, I should say, in the sense that we're all just human. We're all human. We all have our own challenges and struggles, and what I love about the Ally show is that it's, from my interpretation, part of its core messaging is that we're all imperfect and that's beautiful in the sense that we all have our challenges and when we talk about them, the act of sharing is deeply healing, as opposed to the conditioning that we've probably everyone listening has encountered on some level that not talking about it is how you heal the idea of shutting it down, of shoving your emotions away, that there's something wrong if you're emotionally expressive I know we talked about that, especially in the workplace, right? Regardless of however you identify being emotional in the workspace in one way can be really positive, right, depending on what the work culture is. If you're really direct and aggressive and driven, that can be really positive. Or maybe it's the opposite and that you're really a team player and you don't take any credit and you move slower or take your time with things. And the same can be true in reverse, right? It's this idea that there's so much programming and conditioning and societal agreements of how we should quote unquote show up as humans, right. And so when we talk about mental health, I think, when people hear the term mental health and I'm so curious if this is true for you too I found that most people react like, oh, we're saying mental health because something's wrong, as opposed to physical health, like you're just fit right, like what's happening there.

Ali: 21:13

What's that about? What's the state of mind of a mentally sane person?

Emily: 21:17

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And like emotional health too, same thing. There is this sort of nature of taboo attached to both of these concepts of mental and emotional health mental, emotional health and I've always been interested in the taboo. I find it fascinating why certain topics become shadow or rejected and why others have a light shined on them at different times, different history points. So, yeah, I think really, come, excuse me, I really comes down to that idea of shining a light on what it means to be human, like I view this not only a mental health podcast, but really like a podcast of what it means to be human and connect with other humans and recognize that we're all human along the way.

Ali: 22:25

This came up in another conversation we had in our favorite coffee place nearby and when you said it, if you remember, I just took out my notebook or my phone, if I had it at the time, just write it down, and I know I have it written. It really resonated with me, just as someone who also like, decided to quit his job. Focus on this thing at least for a while to figure it out, the concept of how are we going to bring that collective view to this problem. It's first and foremost probably by just bringing this acceptance. I was talking to someone and they said, like we have to believe that there are so many people that we work on day to day with that they're dealing with so many things and they feel so ashamed of sharing their stories. Nothing comparable, of course, but that person brought it up as, like it can be another me to movement for mental health issue. There's, like so many people, they go through so many mental health issues and struggles that they're scared of talking about it. I don't want to go to like specific examples for the matter of privacy, but does it resonate with you as, like many clients that you see, does it resonate with you from those conversations you have with your clients.

Emily: 23:55

Yeah, it definitely resonates. It's interesting how often people come to me and they feel like there's something wrong with them, because they're struggling or because they're feeling tired or burned out or drained, and they look at someone else in the workplace and they're like, well, they have it all together, but in reality they have no idea what that person is experiencing, or what even the person next to them is experiencing, or what all of the other people in that person's life are experiencing. And so there is this. I guess maybe that's part of why it's de facto become taboo is because it's invisible. In some regard, its default state is invisible, as opposed to, maybe, physical health, which has like a visible indicator. But it's interesting. While you were sharing that, I hope this won't date this episode, but I did very recently watch, if you've ever seen, ted Lasso, but I watched one of the episodes in the last season, last night actually, and I was so delighted that they touched on this idea. There's this one scene where a soccer player, footballer goes off on these fans who were yelling some inflammatory remarks, and then later in a press interview, one of the coaches is speaking to this and the reporters are like, do you condone what he did and he's like of course I don't, of course I don't condone that behavior. It's never okay and you have no idea what he is going through, and so often we forget that the footballers, the famous people, the celebrities are people too. And he shares this really moving story, which I won't go into the details of because no spoilers, but I just I was so happy that they were covering that and it's something that I personally witnessed growing up in Palo Alto. I was just blown away by how invisible mental health really was until it was on the front page of the news. We had a lot of suicides, one every year when I was in high school, and it was very interesting and very intense to watch this unfold. One of my dear friends brothers, actually, was one of the people who died by suicide and the narrative around it was oh wow, so much of our young people have been suffering and we didn't even know. It was like spotlighting this person who, from the outside, seemed to have it all together Great grades, very popular, lots of friends but we don't know. We don't know what someone is going through, and I think that's a really extreme example of what we're talking about and also to kind of ground it into an every person experience. It's like what if we could say hi to the barista and treat them like a human the next time we get coffee? Or what if we could show some compassion to the co-worker who always seems to be grumpy? We don't actually know right, and it's amazing how small gestures like that can make a huge difference.

Ali: 28:01

You answered the question I wanted to ask because, as you were talking, I'm like what are the techniques? And you already gave me the answer. So if you want to package it as a tactic and, if I understood it correctly, you're like the easiest way to lean into these sort of issues is to admit those people, first of all, that they can go through so many things just knowing and having that awareness number one, and then, two, try to make a small connection just to show that we know they're present. Is that a good packaging of what you were?

Emily: 28:40

I love that. Yeah, I think you nailed it. It's almost like a kindness challenge, right, in the sense that can you challenge yourself to see beyond whatever the external layer is of your own projections, really? So we're always doing it, we're all projecting. One of my favorite works, actually, is the Four Agreements you familiar, yeah, so Four Agreements written by Don Miguel Ruez, is really a transforberational book, so if you're listening and you haven't read it, read it. It's small too, so it's very short, I promise, and it's written in the Toltec tradition and is just profound, goes over these four foundational agreements that, if we lean into as humans, these are the only I don't remember the quite the right word to describe this, but what's coming to mind is valid, or the only pure that's probably more accurate the only pure agreements that we are being invited to lean into as humans, and one of them is this idea of not taking things personally. And oftentimes, when we hear that it's this invitation, oh okay, I won't get upset, I won't assume that this person is actually reacting to me and it's also this invitation to ask questions. So there's another agreement don't make assumptions. And so it's these two coming together that I think are really on point with this topic, this idea of we all just know what we know. We're living our lives from the experience of our childhood, from experience of our present reality, and we can't avoid that layer of bias and judgment, even if we're conscious of it. And so the key is to just ask questions rather than make the assumption that you know how someone's feeling and I think this goes back to the other point too is so often we go into these habits. So maybe a third invitation in terms of your package would be, when someone asks how you are, actually answer how you are. Of course you want to use good judgment here. Right, and make sure you feel safe and they're a safe person to do that. But family member, a close friend, a partner, whatever it is someone you trust. They ask how you are. Don't just say fine, what does that even mean? Right, what is fine?

Ali: 31:32

Yeah, and for the listeners I'm just shaking my head like so much agreement here. I personally want to change this in my life, that when people ask me, hey Ali, how are you? I'm like you know what wasn't one of those good days. I'm taking myself to the gym and hopefully I'm going to be better and that makes a great conversation. They ask me why. Or they try to give me a hand or help me with a project that I'm stuck, or just help me emotionally and talk for five more minutes, and you won't believe how much you're going to get when you just be open, answering to that question. Just to agree with this point, because it happened in my life and I changed it. It's a life changer. You get like you find so many more friends who actually care about you. You think that your best friends are the people who care about you, but with this technique that Emily said, like it's life changing, you just find a massive community around you.

Emily: 32:31

Yeah, yeah.

Ali: 32:40

I think we're interested into also knowing a little bit of your story with mental health. I know we talked about your background. Also what you're doing right now. I feel like what inspired you to do what you're doing there is a story behind it. I know there are so many things. By the way, I already asked Emily to join us for many more calls in the future, because there is a lot of interesting topics that we can always talk with her, but maybe that's a good place for everyone to also hear a little bit about your story with mental health and pain and however you want to connect the dots here for us and can take it from there.

Emily: 33:19

Yeah, sounds good. So I think with every story there are always different entry points. So one entry point is growing up in a high-pressured school environment where achievement was the name of the game and everyone around you was buckling down and hiding their failures and pains. That's one entry point. I think the more interesting entry point is when I was working at the company. Before we met Ollie and I met, I was working for a company that was a San Francisco startup but also had the main business was in the UK, so there's a time difference. With my team I was commuting maybe two and a half hours each way by public transit every day. So at the time, because I was very much plugged into what I call the grid of our agreements in terms of how we have to achieve and how we have to show up and be productive members of society, I would get on the 640 AM train and start working, and then I would take the same train 12 hours later and finish working and then eventually get home and do it all over again and for a period of time it was fine. I think a lot of times when I talk to people, they have this question of how long is it sustainable to really push myself. People always want to know. It's always a personal answer. For me, at that point in my life I had a lot of physical ailments that I was ignoring for a few reasons. One was because I didn't actually think that they were unusual. It kind of goes back to our mental health conversation in the sense that we don't really know what we don't know. We only know what's in our own head. And for me at the time I just assumed that this was normal and that everyone else was experiencing what I was experiencing A lot of gut issues, I had daily migraines, I had a lot of chronic pain just all over, musculoskeletal pain, a lot of pelvic pain, just tons of stuff going on. That I assumed was just part of being human, because that's how it had been for me. And I think it's interesting, as a side note, just this idea of like suffering in silence. A lot of times we will talk about that, but oftentimes if even when you're suffering, you almost don't know you're suffering because it's just your reality, it's kind of in that point and then I couldn't do it anymore and I don't know if there was really one day or it was like accumulation of things, but suddenly I just sort of hit that rock bottom that many of us know intimately and realized that I had to change something. So I started small. I started with having a conversation with one of my friends actually, who was deeply in the chronic illness community and I was sharing with her what I was experiencing and she was like, oh, like that's actually very similar to what my symptoms are. But in that conversation it really clicked for me that, wait, if my symptoms are similar to her symptoms and she's a quote unquote real chronic illness person, then maybe something is actually off. And it's amazing how having that conversation was really pivotal for me in kind of starting that healing journey. And from there I went down a deep rabbit hole. So all the Western doctors, specialists, you did all these tests. I was very fortunate to be able to have access to those resources and also because my friend, very close friend at the time, was experiencing that as well, she gave me a lot of Eastern medicine resources. So I kind of took on this two pronged approach where Western medicine had no idea what was going on. Eastern medicine stepped up and was very helpful. And it's interesting because I remember in this whole process I was so fixated Once I figured out that something was off. I was so fixated on getting a diagnosis and, for anyone who's ever experienced illness or chronic illness of any kind, or even just a weird flu, right, there's this fascination that we have with, like, putting a label on something because it creates a sense of safety. We're like, oh okay, cool, cool, someone knows what's wrong besides me, someone who's out of this body can tell me what's wrong, because the implication is that then there's a fix for it, right? So here he was, focused on getting this diagnosis, and I ended up actually finding a lot of support online and Instagram, and this was back in maybe 2014. No, yeah, I remember around 2014, 2015, maybe 2016, just kind of like that period of time and there were all of these really supportive threads of various people who were struggling with physical illness. And even in that community even as supportive as it was, even in that community, there was this focus on what your diagnosis was and like, how bad was it? It's like a different version of that conversation that we've all probably had of like, well, how much sleep did you get last night? Well, I got five hours, and like I only got three. Oh damn, there's that kind of comparison which, looking back, is clearly not actually beneficial. So, anyway, I'm in this doctor's office and this is like the last conversation to get this diagnosis and I'm talking with a rheumatologist and she's like, look, I could put this diagnosis on your records, but if I do, no one's going to listen to you. And at the time I didn't really appreciate that. I was like what do you mean? I've just gone through all of this effort, all of these tests, seen only specialists, and you tell me that you know what it is and you're not going to put it on my records. Like what's with that? But now I mean sitting here today I'm so happy that she didn't, because one of the biggest learnings in that whole process is kind of the cautionary tale of like being so attached to a label. Because today here I am and I am pretty pain-free I can't really remember the last time I had a migraine and there's a lot of work and a lot of support and supplements and things like that and life's huge lifestyle changes that I made to get here. And yet if you think about a diagnosis, it's like permanent in Western medicine, this idea that it's permanent. Sure, it can go into remission, but it's permanent on your record. Once you put that on there, there is this kind of psychological thing that happens, where you start to identify with it, and I've encountered so many people and that's not to knock the people who are actually experiencing active symptoms and in that reality, and I've encountered so many people where it's the second thing that they say when they introduce themselves, or maybe the fifth thing, this idea that we've self-identified with pain or self-identified with a state of being in our body, and I think that's really common in the mental health world too. It's like oh, I have anxiety. Okay, yeah, you have anxiety. Do you have it right now? Do you always have it? Is it you Right? And I think this is a delicate balance and a delicate conversation of owning your experience and also, on the flip side, you don't want to identify with your experience too much because, from a spiritual perspective, which is a whole other can of worms you can go into, you are just a being Like you, just like our conversation earlier. You're a human being. You're not a diagnosis and all diagnoses are just current states and you can always overcome them, potentially, maybe, who knows?

Ali: 43:14

I feel like what an interesting moment it's been, the moment that that doctor told you. First of all, I wish we could ask her why, what was her intention and motivations. But what was your like? How did you because, as someone who's been dealing with that problem and you said like it was frustrating a long time you did all the thing you had to do but you're not getting that answer. It can be frustrating. How did you deal with not having that answer? Because it also requires some spiritual power, totally Okay.

Emily: 43:52

You are not wrong. Yeah, yeah, you're not wrong. It's and I've seen this a lot with my clients too. A lot of clients come to me and they're in pursuit of an answer, whether it's an answer about chronic health or it's an answer about what's their purpose in life. I think we have this fixation on, like that destination mentality versus process, or like the journey, to use the cliche. But, yeah, in that moment I was really angry, really angry, yeah, and it's interesting because my anger actually wasn't at this doctor when I realized part of her hesitation was that that diagnosis isn't actually a diagnosis of a root cause. It's a diagnosis of a bundle of symptoms which just means that Western medicine has seen a pattern of symptoms pop up and they put a name on it. They don't actually know why, why it occurs, and so it doesn't actually help you with finding a solution. But to answer your question in terms of, like, what do we do in that moment where we're hungry for an answer of some kind, right, and we can't get it, or it's not in our best interest, or we're told no, I think that's where the meditation comes in, right. Like that's where the real work comes in, like I thought I was doing the work that I needed to do and in some ways I was, because I did a lot of physical healing but I hadn't actually addressed the emotional or mental healing along the way. I was so fixated on getting better, that tangible result. In psychology there's this idea of like toward motivation versus away motivation. Away motivation meaning you're trying to get away from something. Toward motivation meaning you're trying to grow into something. I had so much away motivation and when that went away I was kind of lost and that's really where the spiritual practice began. That's really why I started my business. I started my business because I felt like I had just demystified a process that should have been so simple and I spent years trying to figure it out and I realized that so often and it's very common in the Western world thankfully it's changing in Western medicine that we tend to compartmentalize the body from the mind, from the spirit. But again, if we come back to our loose theme that's growing here, that we're just human, we are all of those things at once all the time that you can't actually separate those things out. And so my emotional and mental health was kind of left behind in that healing process and so I started working out like crazy. I had a lot of physical injuries and so it was yoga. I used to be like a very intense hit Muay Thai boxing person and when I went through this journey, that wasn't available to me anymore and so I started a yoga practice. I was doing like YouTube yoga, 20 minutes a day and I started to hate it. It was hard, it was boring and it was slow. But because I was so toward motivated at that point I had this vision of being able to hike and do the things that I love to do, of feeling good, that I stuck with it and eventually came to love it. It was not a love at first sight story with yoga, and the thing that I actually came to love about it the most was actually the meditation. At the end, it's kind of like the gateway. The physical asana is the gateway to the nectar of meditation, and that gave me the answer that it's not actually in pursuit of some like label that someone can put upon me. It's really the pursuit of divine connection, a feeling connected as a whole, integrated being that I was after Like yeah, I wanted to get out of pain, but what I really wanted underneath that was to feel whole and like be able to experience all of life, because I felt so limited by this physical avatar. I was feeling like I was left out or deprived, or being punished, like I was in that narrative for so long. And then, when I switched my mindset of oh wow, like I'm doing this not because I'm sick, but because I want to feel strong, everything's shifted.

Ali: 49:41

This story is, to me, is very powerful and important to be discussed and thank you for sharing Because, as you know I mean you've seen it in your clients and your coworkers, as you know within the industry that we are working and we are living here. This is such a common story that I hear and see, unfortunately, in so many of my dear friends and family members, that, especially at a specific, certain age or whatever, and people start labeling it yes, we are getting old man these two sort of conversations comes up and we ignore it, whereas these are all the alarms that our body and our soul is giving us that hey, you're not paying proper attention and unfortunately, as a result of that, it just creates so many other issues around it. So that's why I'm so happy that we are talking about this and we are breaking the taboo around it. If you know anyone in pain, please just go and try to fix this issue from a different perspective, because we shouldn't accept like. This is what I learned, as you may remember, during our time when I was a course hero. I went through a very severe back pain L4L5 issue that I had to do surgery. I had to do a lot of injection and I rejected all of it. A very good friend of ours, hemant. He actually told me to go and read this book, healing Back Pain by Dr Sarno Amazing. And when I read that book, it's again another quick read. Please read it everyone. There's also like a two hour audio of it. Please just tune in like another episode of a podcast. Because as soon as I finished listening to that audible, I immediately felt that shift of mindset. I was on a flight, like a 16 hour flight going to the other side of the world and I was just like so stressed about that flight and everything because my back was so bad I couldn't walk easily. But instantly after listening to that book, that was a big mindset shift for me, that, oh my God, there's a different view to this and I immediately felt so much better. I also appreciate that we talked about how you started your healing process. You mentioned yoga and then, through yoga, you found meditation. I wanted to add this note. It's interesting for me. It's been reversed. Cool. So I found meditation like something that I was more comfortable, and then now I'm like restarting to do yoga. Do you think there is, like there is, a reason why it's happening? Just again, another selfish question.

Emily: 52:46

Yeah, it's an interesting one. Well, I must confess it has been a while since my yoga teacher training so I won't list them all because unfortunately my memory is failing me now. However, in the Eight Limbs of Yoga it's actually a specific step-by-step process towards enlightenment, and meditation comes after asana, and part of that reason was because the physical body can be really distracting, and also in ancient times this practice was developed for people who needed to move their body and kind of get that energy out before they could actually concentrate on and work with the mind. And I would argue in this culture now, potentially it's actually reversed, in that our mind is so loud these days because we're inundated with so much information that we kind of need to start with the mind and then, once it's quiet enough, we can actually show up for our body. And I've actually seen this anecdotally now that I'm thinking about it with clients, in the sense that a lot of clients will take to a conscious conversation really quickly, but when I'm like, okay, I see some emotion coming up, can we take a moment and have you feel those feelings? People get really uncomfortable and I ask them well, where are the feelings in your body? And a lot of people, especially those working in tech, or are really focused on kind of like head-based careers. They're like what do you mean? Where is it in my body? Because there's such a big disconnect. So that's just kind of an ad-lib philosophical take on that.

Ali: 54:45

Thank you for sharing that. So we heard some techniques, but if you want to summarize, how did you go through this experience? What would you call some of the others, if there is any?

Emily: 54:57

Yeah, I would say yoga and meditation are like the tip of the iceberg for me. They really were like the gateway into some of this other work. So that's not to say that you can't go incredibly deep in those practices, but for me they were really like the entry point and I started getting really fascinated with the body. Sematic experiencing, in particular, is this idea of really listening to and working with the body's language, and there's some interesting research out there that some people have different feelings about this particular person, but Dr Bruce Lipton is oftentimes quoted as saying that research suggests that about 95% of all human behavior is determined by unconscious beliefs and desires. Only 5% is actually conscious and so unconscious what I mean by that is the layer of the mind that's beneath the surface is actually most accessible through the body, and so that's kind of the idea behind Sematic experiencing, in the sense that imagine, for example, that your brain is speaking Farsi, but your body is speaking English and yet you don't have the bridge connection there. If you talk to your body in Farsi, your body is going to be like I don't know, I'll try, and so instead, the idea of Sematic experiencing is let's speak in the language of the body, so that the body can actually know that we're safe, that it's okay to be calm, it's okay that there's no threat. Here we have moved beyond the stressor and we can relax. So in meditation you've already experienced this through breath, really common tool to use because it's one of those uniting forces of the mind and the body. There are other tools too, like Sematic shaking. So if you've ever seen like a dog, just shake it off after they're upset or whatever, yeah, that's what they're doing is they're calming their nervous system. They're like that threat's gone. Okay, back to my happy days, and we can use these strategies to help support ourselves in our day to day. So I do a lot of Sematic experiencing for myself as well as for clients. Happy to throw one out there and teach one too. That sounds good, okay. So again, if you're driving, don't do this, pull over, pull over. So in order to do this, you'll cross your arms over your chest, kind of like you're crossing your arms to make a statement where you can bring your hands up. I have my mic so I don't want to disturb it, but you bring your hands up by your shoulders and this is called the butterfly hug or bilateral tapping. So you'll take a big breath in through your nose, exhale out of your mouth, and you'll tap your right palm and then your left palm. So you're tapping your right palm against your left shoulder and your left palm against your right shoulder, so you're just alternating right and left, so you can even rock All these. Are you rocking? It's a very natural response and so you're soothing and you might find, as you continue to tap nice and slow you don't want to go too fast that it's kind of hard to focus on what I'm saying. Right, your brain's like wait what's happening? And that's because we're using bilateral stimulation, or both sides of our body, and that activates your entire brain, and so it makes it really challenging to focus on anything else. So this is a great one. If you have anxiety to practice in particular, or if you're feeling really hyperactive, this will calm you down, bring you back to present.

Ali: 59:05

Wow, yeah, I really had a hard time understanding and when I tried to understand you, I forgot to do this right. It was either or that was so funny. Thank you for taking us through these experiences, not to switch the gears, but I also know you're practicing right now with shamanic practices. Is there anything about that that you can tell us?

Emily: 59:45

in the audience. Yeah, so earth-based shamanism has been really impactful for me, and what I mean by that is really connecting with the spirit of the earth and using ancient healing practices, a lot from indigenous cultures, some Celtic practices as well, to deepen the soul connection, that connection to self that we've kind of touched on a little bit, and there are also some really powerful healing practices within that shamanic tradition. Hands-on work, this idea of really using the language of the body somatic experiencing, shaking, clearing, brushing things away, coughing, burping, yawning, like all of the kind of body movements can help move along energy, not only physically-based pain experiences or discomfort and also emotional, mental stories that we want to let go of. So I've been doing a lot of work in that tradition to move things through my system and it's just opened me up into a whole other level.

Ali: 1:01:15

What are some of the highlights, if you want to share.

Emily: 1:01:18

Gosh, yeah, it's been really powerful. I've been very spiritual ever since I was young, but again, it was something that I hid. I didn't grow up in a very spiritual or religious household. My mom as a scientist background, my dad is a tax lawyer, and they both just were really not into organized religion at all, and so as a kid, I would like talk to the trees in the ocean and like create all these little rituals in my backyard, and it's in secret. And so it wasn't until actually going through my yoga teacher training that things started to open up again and I really felt that deep connection to the spirit world and in shamanism. It's been really powerful to look at a lot of my experiences from this new perspective, this new mindset. One of the really powerful highlights has been this concept of soul retrieval, which I learned from Sandra Ingraman, who's a really well-renowned shamanic practitioner, as well as my teacher, jane Sangonetti, who I have the great good fortune to meet with in person in a training capacity. And it's this idea that when we experience whether it's like capital T trauma or lower T trauma or any sort of discomfort that's intense in our lives we dissociate, and this is actually something that Western science talks about a lot, we'll dissociate from our bodies, we separate, and in shamanism it's something that we experience called soul loss, where actually it's the event or the reality, the present moment so intense that we need to split off from ourselves so that we can survive it. It's almost like this innate self-protection mechanism because it's so intense we need to remove ourselves. And it's talked about a lot in Western tradition and trauma studies and understanding how we go through these types of experiences, and to hear about this from a shamanic lens that we experience soul loss, that part of our essence, of who we are as human beings separates and leaves, is so profound to me. And in Sandra Ingeman's book it's called Soul Retrieval, where she talks about this, which spans a lot of different shamanic traditions from all over the world that we can't actually do the work of healing with that part of ourselves gone. So you'll actually see this in psychology, where people will come in and they'll have memory loss, but they'll have this feeling like, oh, I have this feeling, something really, really bad happened to me when I was young. I can't remember it, and so in the shamanic tradition that would be an example of soul loss, and so Soul Retrieval is the process of actually journeying and when I say journeying, it's actually a kind of a form of meditation going to this space called the shamanic realms, which was created by our ancestors for healing, and you go there in visualization meditation and retrieve that young part of yourself that left, yeah, and you have like a very real conversation with them and traditionally speaking, you would need a shaman or shamanic practitioner to help guide you through that process. It's something that I actually help my clients with and also, more and more, I'm finding that people can also do this on their own, provided that they're resourced and have enough support to really navigate what it means to bring back a part of yourself that left due to a traumatic event. You'll also see this, too, in psychology with, like inner child work, like really talking to those little parts of you right, that six-year-old version of you, like, what are they wanting right now? What are they longing for? Like, can you actually meet that need, rather than continuing to slice them off from your present? So that's been really the deepest healing word for me is doing this kind of reclamation of self, if you will.

Ali: 1:06:00

Thank you for sharing that. I think we talked about one experience I had before. I'm a big fan of techno music. It might be known for so many connections as like a way to party, but I strongly believe and it's one of those things that I'm studying right now techno as a way of healing. And I think, as we were talking remember you made this very interesting connection to shamanism and like this, another way of going through that experience and really meeting that five-year-old, six-year-old, and it's interesting. Do you see it as like there is a path for everyone or there is one path for all of us? Is there like hey, for some people maybe this sort of experience works. For some others, this, for others, just being in the nature is going to bring it back to them. For some folks, taking it to dark techno rooms, is there a variety based on different backgrounds or anything?

Emily: 1:07:16

Yeah, absolutely, I'm a huge proponent of that, I mean. But I would say it's one of the biggest tenets of what I teach. I teach frameworks. I don't actually really teach practices, because oftentimes people they'll come to me and be like I heard you're a self-care expert. Okay, all right, sure, Can you help me actually practice self-care? And I'm like, yes, I can help you do that. I'm not going to tell you what meditation to do or what self-care means, because that's something you have to figure out for yourself. Of course, I'm going to give you suggestions and recommendations. I like to call them invitations and adventures, this idea of like try it on right. Hey, you listen to this podcast and you heard about journeying. Why don't you go and watch a YouTube video and try it out? Or hey, techno music is your thing. Like, why don't you text Ali and go to the clubs, right?

Ali: 1:08:12

Yes, let's do it.

Emily: 1:08:14

Right. So yeah, I'm a big proponent in the sense that it's really like whatever works for you is what's going to work for you, and the entry point is different for everyone. Like I said, even telling my story, the entry point changes based on whatever the context is and you still get to the same place, right? The same truth is underlying that. It's like I'm very much a social relativist in the sense that if it's not hurting anyone and it's in ecology, it's good for you, it's good for the planet, it's good for other people. Go for it In the sense that if it's going to help support you get closer to who you truly are. That's the whole point. It's funny you mentioned, you mentioned the techno music. I attend a lot of dance ceremonies in the shamanic tradition and recently I went to one. I don't think I've even been sure this with you yet, but I went to one and I couldn't stop laughing. At the end, like at the end after dancing, there's a little meditation. You get really grounded and I was just laughing and the reason why I was laughing was because it just really clicked in that moment the big, trickster joke of this human experience that from birth we have this feeling that we've somehow separated from the truth of who we are, because we've separated from the mother. We spent our entire life trying to figure out who we are, but the joke is that we're already who. We are right that we've never actually separated from that soul essence We've just forgotten. So it's like we spend our whole lives trying to remember something that we actually already know. It's already there, it's already present, and so that's really how I view all of these different paths. It's just whatever is going to help you remember, go for it.

Ali: 1:10:24

That resonates with me and I have experienced similar things. But there was this moment that I never had such deep, good connection with myself, until a techno experience that maybe I can talk about in future episodes. But I really agree with you that after that experience I was like, oh my god. I heard similar stories in different settings. That was my moment of really facing that child who was mad at this and that I'm describing that event maybe so broken, but after leaving that experience I just felt like 10 years younger and the weight was lifted from my shoulder. Is that the sort of feeling that you also like experience? Yeah, absolutely.

Emily: 1:11:24

And I would add to that too, in the sense that because I shared this with you in our previous conversation that in the shamanic tradition there's a continual drum beat when you go into a journey and that's really important for creating this kind of altered consciousness for you to do this healing work. And I would say too to your point that I always think of growth as this spring, it's like a continual spiral in the sense that it's not actually linear. So many people feel like they've backslid at some point, like, oh, now I have a bad day, I'm having a low day. Clearly I'm not actually healed or whatever it is. But I found that growth is more like this spiral. And then we start in a place. I mean maybe go up almost like a spiral staircase, if you can picture that Right. We go up a layer and then somehow we find ourselves back in the beginning, but we're not actually back at the beginning because we've gone through that experience and so we're just at another layer and so we go through life like going on these continual layers. So I've definitely had experiences where I felt like the weight lifted off my shoulders after these healings and then three days later I'm like bawling my eyes out or I'm like super angry. I'm like, oh wow, I've welcomed back a part of myself that's been gone for so long and now they have feelings Right, and I got to navigate that Like that's a big part too of soul retrieval, of healing journeys in general, of, like you know, we have these transcendental experiences and then we got to ground them and we got to integrate them. And I think so many people don't talk about that. They're like, yeah, go on an ayahuasca journey and you're going to heal so much and then you're going to come back changed, but like, yeah, you're going to come back changed, but then your life is still the same. So are you going to make changes there? Or are you just going to like, try and force your new self into your old mold? It's not really going to feel good. So I think that's another part of it is just thinking about like, okay, well, what happens after that amazing moment Right? Because I'm going to guess, like your life hasn't been all sunshine and rainbows since that one moment, right, ops and downs all the time. Yeah, exactly yeah.

Ali: 1:13:39

And what? Just this? This, this is a question that just popped into my head. What are the techniques to ground it? Like, how do you ground, like after such impactful experience? So do you feel that weight was lifted? Or you mentioned ayahuasca as an example that like people come back and they're like, oh my god, life changed, but they don't feel that way in the long term Like what are the techniques to, in general, ground yourself, regardless of what sort of experience you went through?

Emily: 1:14:15

Yeah, I mean, there's there's so many, I could talk about them for a whole other hour. Yeah, I know that that's what I'm telling you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the short answer would be really anything you know. When I think about, like, I guess I would encourage our listeners to like ask themselves, like in the past, what has helped you feel grounded. Maybe it's just that moment of meditation in the beginning of this conversation, right. Maybe it's going for a walk with your shoes off, feeling the dirt, the grass. Maybe it's taking a bath. Maybe it's squeezing your kiddo right or spending some quality time with your partner or your friends or whatever. It's really just this idea, like I mean, if you think about what is grounded, it just means that you're here, present in your body. So what helps you feel here, present in your body? Maybe it's a great dinner, right, like it doesn't have to be complicated. I think we have this tendency to like over complicate and like look for those external answers. So we want that you know approval, we want that expert tip, we want that quick gratification, but it's not really going to last for you and it's going to feel prescriptive. So the true grounding I would say is, like take a moment and ask yourself what do I actually need in this moment, and then be super bold and honor that.

Ali: 1:15:52

It connects to some of the other stuff we talked about, which is it takes work. Like we can't just hope that, oh yeah, we did it. Or even when you go through therapy, like, oh yeah, I did therapy for a year and I feel I'm good. No, it takes work. And when you come back out of whatever experience it was, or if you went through a very good therapy period of time, there are homeworks to be done. It takes work. It takes some work and you need to also like include some activity to it. You probably need to go back to gym if you're not going, or just find your activity If it's a walk and spend time, meaningful time. If it's cooking and cooking a dinner once a week with mindful brain active right there in the kitchen, which I love to do. I love cooking. It does that for me. It grounds me. Actually, as you were saying, I'm like that actually does it for me. I love cooking good meals and just spending some a mindful moment there. So it takes work and we can't just say we did it and it's done.

Emily: 1:17:07

Yeah, and I think too, this idea of overcomplicating it is so clear to me in this moment of the sense that people don't really like hearing that the answer is actually just everything that you've been told is healthy. Oftentimes we don't want to put in the work of doing the simple thing. We think like, oh well, I'm hoping maybe the answer is cryotherapy and jumping in a bucket of ice and hiking up three summits in a week. Oftentimes we are maybe unconsciously hoping for the sexy answer, but when it comes to really meeting your human needs or grounding yourself, it's actually the simple things that make the biggest difference. You're just kind of empowering if you think about it.

Ali: 1:18:18

As you know, we love to ask our guests to commit to do something with five of our listeners. What would be the activity that you would like to hold our five of our listeners accountable and you want them to hold you accountable for 30 days?

Emily: 1:18:35

I love that. Yeah, I was thinking about this and I think very true to my philosophy of it being so personal. I would say anywhere from two minutes to 25 minutes of self-care, whatever that means to you every day and that could be taking a walk, make an amazing meal, sweating time with your loved ones but it's gotta be intentional, right, like an intentional carved out time where you are maybe taking a moment for and tuning in, asking in your body, asking in your heart, asking in your mind what do I need right now? And then actually following through on that, as opposed to one way the like lazy part of my personality could totally do this maybe some people resonate is like looking back on your day and be like, oh yeah, I did something. That's kind of self-care, right. No, it's gotta be. The intentionality needs to be there and we didn't even get into, like what makes a ritual, but intention is a really big thing for that. So, having an intention of maybe it's to feel more grounded, or having an intention to feel more connected to yourself or more mindful, or whatever it is for you based on your current life situation, and then take that time and actually do it.

Ali: 1:20:05

Pausing and saying that I want to do this for this reason. Today we don't cheat.

Emily: 1:20:13

No.

Ali: 1:20:14

We can't just say, hey, I did two minute meditation in the morning, well, you did it, good job, but you didn't do this for the commitment that you're making with Emily. I love that. Like. We want it to be very specific with that goal setting, and this reminds me of this practice. We also like do a lot in meditation that, hey, like, if you're taking a five, 10 minute, whatever you're doing, to set your goals before going to the meditation and every time you were distracted. It's fine. Just bring yourself back to this moment through taking a deep breath or going back to your goal, and you're gonna be good.

Emily: 1:20:54

Yeah, having that compassion.

Ali: 1:20:56

And I love that you called that word out like intention as like setting good routines. Any other tips in that? Yeah, close out.

Emily: 1:21:05

Yeah, I think the other thing would be oftentimes I work with like two different types of people people who love consistency and are like cool, give me homework, I want to do the same thing every day. And people who have struggled with consistency and feel like there's some shame around that, and so that's why I think it's really important for this challenge to be the framework, not the practice, in the sense that you can do a different thing every day, as long as it's honoring what you actually need that day. So it's not that you have to commit to 30 days of meditation if that's your self care. It's more like you're committing to the intentional check-in with yourself and honoring what you actually need that day, because so much of our lives are scheduled and we sign up for these things all the time and we're like, okay, cool, I gotta do this practice. But like true self care is actually supporting what you need now and helping you feel better in the future. So not listening to that is the opposite of this challenge. So I would challenge you to actually take a moment and honor what it is, and if it surprises you, that's awesome.

Ali: 1:22:19

That's the one point. Yeah, Any final thoughts before we close out Anything, any untold story that should have been discussed here.

Emily: 1:22:29

What's coming to mind is this idea of like inviting our listeners to give themselves a permission slip of some kind. Maybe it's to share about your own mental health challenges with a friend. Maybe it's to be honest when you answer the question how are you today? Maybe it's to sign up for the challenge, right, and do the intentional self care practice by, say, self care. Maybe it's to practice being more aware of your own judgments towards people and what they're experiencing in projections. Maybe it's to listen to another episode of this podcast, right. But this idea of like, if you were listening to this, for a permission slip to be human, go forth, be human, listen to yourself, and that's really all that I'm certainly here to do is just help activate and empower people to show up in a way that feels really good and empowering themselves.

Ali: 1:23:47

That was an amazing conversation. I really enjoyed it. Thank you for the final encouragement as well. I definitely personally needed this, so I'm gonna take it. I hope the listeners are also joining me in this journey. Thank you so much again for coming. It's a warm day here, by the way. For those who don't know, it's pretty warm. We had to turn off the AC to have good audio here. But thank you so much for joining and bringing all the good tips and stories and hope we can have you back, yeah my pleasure Such a blast. All right, thank you. Yeah, I think that this is gonna be something that has a massive impact in your lives. Thank you so much and see you on the next episode of the Ally Show.