Episode 106 - The Dance of Authenticity with Sapha Heckman

Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to Conversations that Matter with your host, amber Howard. Each week, amber dances, in conversation with inspirational leaders, out to make a difference for what matters most to people. She brings you incredible guests who share their real life experience of being a leader and what it looks like to live a truly created life of service to others. And now here's your host.

Speaker 2: 0:24

Welcome back everyone. Welcome back to the Conversations that Matter podcast. I am delighted today to have on the show Safa Pardo-Hekman. I hope I said that right, safa. Safa is the founder of your soulful goddess and a woman's empowerment, expansion and embodiment coach, life coach, whose commitment is to awaken the feminine within so each woman can live abundant lives of unyielding fulfillment. I love that, wow Unyielding fulfillment and unwavering love. Safa is also the host of the Mindfully Solvering podcast. Safa, happy new year and so great to have you on the show. It's such a pleasure.

Speaker 3: 1:06

Thank you so much, Jen. Thank you, I'm so excited for today this has been. I've been looking forward to this conversation.

Speaker 2: 1:16

Me too. This is actually technically my first. I'll end up being the second episode of the year, but my first interview of 2024. So, and given my podcast is one of the favorite things I do, I'm excited to have this time with you and just really talk about the things that matter to you and are important to you. So give me a little bit, or give us a little bit of a sense of you know how do you go from wherever you started in life or your career to this place where you're working with women and really helping them level up and elevate to the next level of their lives. What's that journey been like?

Speaker 3: 1:49

Yeah, oh, my gosh, it's been such a whirlwind. I feel like everyone says this, but it never ceases to amaze me how little details along the way have made the difference, you know. So for me it sounds so unique, but it started with my coming to terms with my relationship to my body, my relationship to my mind, my relationship to. I had an eating disorder for many years, ever since I was like in high school, and it stems it's a very long story, it stems from very deep wounding from childhood. But I just think it's so wonderful the way that it all started playing out for me to get to this place, because it starts there and it starts with a sort of inadvertent need to heal that relationship, which is where I come across the path of yoga and, as yoga does for many of us, it starts weaving a very unique web of awareness. And so, as I'm moving through this, patterning and listening to my body and, of course now, like many years later, understanding the power of somatics, right, it starts shifting all of the dust from underneath that needed to be aired out. It starts allowing me permission to see the things and see the threads and start choosing my own tapestry and how I want to weave it, and so it starts at that point and it's as that kind of evolved, I recognized that there was a longing in my heart to be able to share that with other people, especially other women, because I saw a very similar kindred struggle with other women in my space who were maybe not so. It's so interesting when we talk about this whole world because people think that you have an eating disorder, you have to have anorexia or you have to have bulimia, and it's not that at all. And so many of us really do have a fractured relationship to self. And that fractured relationship starts seeping into other areas of life, whether it is staying in toxic relationships, which I also did do for many, many years or whether it is staying in toxic jobs or whatever it is. And a lot of times it does have to do with how we nourish ourselves, because at the end of the day, that is a care-based practice, and so when we don't relate to ourselves from place of power or from what I call sovereignty, which we can get into in a moment, it's difficult to get there.

Speaker 3: 4:13

And so I just wanted to help women heal their relationship to food and self, and that's kind of where I started. So I started with teaching yoga, pretty consistently. I've been teaching yoga for the past 13, almost 14 years. And then I started with nutrition and I started doing nutrition consultations, but simultaneously and I talk about the little things, that was interesting simultaneously, while I'm healing myself and I'm finding my connection much broader, more deepened and more enriched with the divine feminine, at the same time I'm also recognizing that my relationship is not where it needs to be and that there are things about that particular relationship that are just putrid and I'm not sure how to manage it. But at the end and I'm sitting across the table from women who are coming to me for nutritional consultations, who are actually, in effect, asking for life coaching.

Speaker 3: 5:05

So it was just like I when I tell you that, like the little moments in life really tell you so much and the universe is constantly speaking to us, whether we believe it, whether we understand it, whether we see it right away or not. Sometimes, a lot of times, it's actually hindsight, hindsight. You'll be like ah, okay, now I understand where that push was, or now I understand why those doors were closing and these doors were opening, and you can start seeing a lot of different things. And so for me it was sort of like a point of frustration where I felt like I couldn't get my yoga practice or my teaching skills to get where I wanted to in terms of, like I wanted to have so many students and I wanted to have so many classes and I wanted to, like eventually open my studio and, like it, just things never played out the way that I quote unquote wanted them to. You know what I mean. And then, when I started nutrition and I started doing these consultations, I found myself laughing because I sat across from these women, like I said, and I was like okay, let's get ready, let's talk about how you can nourish yourself, how you can heal your relationship to yourself and to your body. But I should know better, because words are spells and so healing your relationship to yourself means that these women are in fact telling me okay, my life isn't shambles, what am I doing? At the same time, my life is at a very similar spot. So, anyway, to make a very, very long story a little bit shorter, so I recognize this at the same time as I'm like I'm leaving this relationship.

Speaker 3: 6:29

I was in a very toxic relationship for about 12 years and so, at the moment of leaving, everything started crumbling in the best of ways. My tower moments are never something that scared me. I've had plenty of them over my lifetime and I relished it, and I just allowed everything to be just pulled out from underneath. And what ended up coming from underneath the surface, what ended up being on earth, has been so wonderful and so beautiful, and it continues to evolve. That's the other thing, too. It's like nothing ever just remains the same. It's not as if, okay, I did that, and now I'm done and I'm remarried and I'm happy and I'm like that's it, that's I'm done for life. No, like it's a constant growth. And so the women I work with these days are so unique. They've been, they've much like myself, they've been through it, they've gone through the underworld and they're ready for more. And so that's where I'm at today and that's how I got here.

Speaker 2: 7:25

I love having these conversations there's so much of what you said that you know I could respond to Safa but I love these talking with other coaches because I think that's what happens, right you go on your own personal journey of transformation and then you want to to give that or a be of service and not wait for it to other people, because it made such a big difference in your own life and it's that lived experience that you know really will resonate with your, your group of people, the people that are out there that you're meant to be. You know mentoring and guiding, and I think that's so beautiful. I you know it's. I hadn't really.

Speaker 2: 8:03

It's so interesting to me when my world's kind of collide has been a good part of my career working in business as like a consultant and helping people diagnose what's going on in their businesses and find solutions to that. And one of the common ways that we talk about that is like symptoms versus root causes, right, and I'm listening to you talk about these nutrition clients and them coming to you and and it's like the symptom is, you know, not being integrity or not, you know taking care of our physical wellbeing or other areas. But there's always something deeper right, and I think that's the power of an excellent you know, an amazing coach is they're going to help you get to the root causes and you know it sounds like this is what you do with your clients is like what's going on under the surface. Yeah, okay. So you know, having had my own journey with anorexia and bulimia when I was a teenager, like that's what that? That's what you can see on the outside and I think for anyone listening to this conversation parents with kids, partners, spouses, like there's whatever behaviors you're seeing on the outside but just know that that that's just evidence of something deeper under the surface that's impacting. So just wow, thank you for being someone who you know.

Speaker 2: 9:12

My purpose in life is to help people lead created lives of their own design, and so whenever I meet another you know person like yourself, it's like, oh, there's another partner out there in the world.

Speaker 2: 9:21

Like helping people do that in their unique way of you know, in the way that speaks to them and their soul of you know, really helping people fulfill, on being there, the highest version of themselves. And I love what you said because it is evolving and it's always changing right. Like we, there's nowhere to get to. I think that's what I remember at the beginning of the year, right like at the beginning of the year. It's like we have all of these big, you know, we make all of these big statements for a lot of people about what's going to be different and things you know. Every year, over your quarter, whatever five years, things are going to change and they will be different, but what, what stays the same, I think, is that ongoing journey of like, and then you, you share about it in one of your, your posts about like birth, death and rebirth, right Like as we die into older versions of ourselves.

Speaker 3: 10:14

Yeah, absolutely. There's something so organically beautiful about loosening our grip around the idea that everything has to have a permanence, and I know that that's very triggering for a lot of us, myself included. I mean, the first time I actually sat with this reality, I really felt like everything was just going to shatter to a billion pieces, and what I ended up finding along the way is that there is a very deep connection to that sense of natural turnovers. So think about nature right, this is the best way I can explain it. Think about how nature moves and evolves and grows and turns itself over. If we had nothing ever decay, nothing ever change, nothing ever turnover leaves or nothing ever, you know turnover, bark, whatever it is that we would not have life. It just wouldn't be sustainable, it would be just completely unmanageable. And it's much the same with us. Our lives need time, our lives need a breath of transition. Our lives are very much made for filling the soil when the time is right, resting, planting seeds and then giving fruit. And yet, because we do live in a system that is push, push, push all the time, we've forgotten what that looks like, what that feels like, even in an internal level. I always say this is one of my favorite things.

Speaker 3: 11:49

How I approach my work is from a place of sovereign self seduction, and if that sounds a little out there, I'll explain here in a minute. But the reason I say that is there's for me and my experience with myself, with my clients and even in terms of relationships with other people in my life. I've discovered that the most beautiful thing that we can do, the most beautiful gift that we can gift to ourselves and to others, is the window of our life, the window of opportunity for transformation, constant transformation, for the idea that there isn't just this constant and it doesn't stay the same all the time. And the reason for that is is because it gives us a chance to rediscover, to re-court right. Courtship is such a beautiful thing that we all really enjoy. So it gives us a chance to re-seduce every aspect of who we are and every aspect of what our lives are. That means I don't take for granted that who I woke up as today is who I am tomorrow or in the next moment. And I do the same thing with the people in my life. I don't take that for granted because I don't. I know you, but I may not necessarily know the process you're going through in this moment. So the person that you are today in front of me may not be the person you get to be tomorrow or within just five seconds of having an epiphany Like. You know what I mean.

Speaker 3: 13:08

So it's giving ourselves the ability, that gift of self-seduction is giving yourself the possibility of deepening your understanding, deepening your connection, deepening your interest, deepening your devotion to the areas of your life that are most valuable to you, that are most worth to you. And a lot of times, when you really break it down, that comes down to your relationships, it comes down to your intimacy, it comes down to even your finances. Your finances have a turnover. A turnover, they're different. You don't relate to money the same way now that you did when you were five. You know you don't relate to time now the same way that you did when you were five.

Speaker 3: 13:51

So there are things that change and evolve over time and it's good to date them. It's good to take them out on dates and to get to know them and to court them and to seduce them and to get at the bottom of what it is that is underneath that space and, on a very natural way, what you are doing is you're giving your life the room to have cycles. You're giving your life the room to have a cycle of growth, to have a cycle of introspection, to have a cycle of abundance, to have a cycle of shedding, to have a cycle of so many different things. And when we do that, even when things aren't picture perfect, they feel so much more manageable, they feel like we can sink our teeth into them. You know, it's a.

Speaker 3: 14:39

There's a big difference between feeling like you're constantly at the effect of something and knowing that you're at the helm of the thing. This is where, where I speak of sovereignty, what I mean is really putting your crown on and being like hey, this is I'm here, I'm the one who's in charge. No one else, no one else outside of myself, gets to have a say in what goes on in my world, what my responses are, what my actions are, where my integrity lands, where all of these things are in my space. They're mine. So, even if the world is crumbling around you, you're the one who gets to choose the way in which you are going to show up for yourself and the way in which you are going to choose to seduce that aspect of yourself until you get into a place where you can develop deep intimacy and connection, and so that, for me, has been. It just makes the biggest difference in the world.

Speaker 2: 15:37

Yeah, I love what you're talking about and I think that that being person like taking personal responsibility and ownership for our lives and is probably one of the most important things that we'll we'll ever do and I'm always present to you know like you have to be able to respond.

Speaker 2: 15:59

And in order to be able to like you know it's like response able, right and before we can become responsible for something, I could born my day, one of my kind of fun at favorite human beings on the planet talks about talks about this. Like you have to be aware you can't be responsible for something without that awareness, which I think is why, why this work right, whether wherever you start with the work, whether it's you know some books or listening to podcasts or hiring a coach, but having someone help you see the things that you can't see about yourself, that are hidden from your view because of you know your life's journey and patterns like that, but I like that. So sovereignty is that taking you know, being the queen or king in your own domain. I like that. To me, it's like a talk about it in terms of being in the driver's seat of our own minds, because I think that's where a lot of it.

Speaker 2: 16:57

You know, you said earlier in the show words or spells and I've never kind of heard it language that way, but we're constantly speaking our lives into existence and so I think that's a beautiful way of talking about, because who doesn't love a good story about kings and queens and knights and roundtables?

Speaker 2: 17:17

and all of that kind of splendor, right, and I think of when I think of royalty, I think of splendor and luxury and but also nobility. And you know, and and I'm a big fan of the crown and the royal family and Britain. I'm from New Zealand, for those of you that listen, and so I think, growing up in New Zealand as a little girl, it was always a little closer to their British heritage than Canada is. I love that Canadians don't love the royal family as well, but there's something when you track the patterns in that family and because it's been public for so long, and how actions that happened decades ago end up impacting and you can see that. But also that that you know I mean Queen Elizabeth just died, but like the personal responsibility she took for who the royal family was, for England and for the world and for all of the countries in the Commonwealth, I really do think that that's a. You know, I wouldn't have thought of it that way, but thank you so much for that gift of you know this notion of sovereignty and being sovereign in our own lives.

Speaker 2: 18:31

So you talk a lot about energy, Safa, and in your work, what are some of your? What are some of the common energetic you talked a little bit about when your introduction, about your, the relationship that you've been in and shedding that. What are some of the common energetic misalignments that people experience from your food?

Speaker 3: 18:53

I just took a deep breath because it's there's so, there's so many and they're so very so. This is what I would like to say. I approach energy from a again, from a very organic place. I approach it as a tool for expansion. To me, expansion is one of those things that, at the end of so, if radical ownership, which is at the very heart of sovereignty, is sort of the beating pulse of the thing, then energetic is the flow, right, this is how we get things to move into a place of alignment or a tune meant, if you're into music, think about it as like you're tuning fork, right, you're getting that tuning fork and you're kind of tuning your instruments until you're like, ah, that's the right pitch that I'm looking for for this particular sequence, or whatever. And so for me, energy is.

Speaker 3: 19:48

Is that that again, that is the veins, the blood flow of the thing that we do, and where I think we sometimes get a little bit stuck with it is that we tend to give it this very supernatural connotation which you can't like. If you want to knock, knock yourself out. I love it. I think it's fun that we can do that. I think it's a marvelous way of expression and I think that we can also see it as a very grounded reality, like, in other words, if I'm someone who carries herself with an energetic of hyper and I emphasize the word hyper self sufficiency, then it's very likely that I'm going to have energetic walls around me that are going to feel very dense to people that they're not going to feel like they're going to be able to break through was actually just writing about this this morning in terms of how that hyper self sufficiency is. This it's it's so funny, it said once the thing that we think is going to prevent us from getting hurt, but it's the thing that also prevents us from really coming into deep intimacy with others, and with ourselves as well, and with the world around us. And so think about that as like being equivalent. Right, we're talking about equivalences. So when we talk about the things that we're talking about in our energy, we're talking about something that is in alignment with or in attunement with, something else.

Speaker 3: 21:09

If my energetic field is the world hates me, everyone is out to get me, nothing ever works for me, life sucks, you know, I'm in misery all the time then then the field around that and the field around that is going to be very much proof of what it is that I am saying and what it is that I am seeking, and it's it's actually going to do the opposite of what I want it to do. Like if I really want to protect my heart, I don't want to ever be like I'll use myself as an example. So being in a toxic relationship does really interesting things here. My, that are just psychologically, energetically and somatically a wonder to behold and also damn like WTF, like you know, why do we get to go through these things? But so, saying that, I will say, once I was out of that relationship, there was that instinct of like oh, I'm never, you know, I don't ever want to let anybody near me again. This is going to be like. As soon as I recognize where the walls were getting erected as I was trying to protect myself, I recognize the energetic equivalent of what I actually wanted was not not that with I'm like, the energetic equivalent of what I actually want. This is true. Connection is safety, is being seen, held, feeling is being cherished, it's being devoted to, it's, it's living a life where I feel complete with and by and for myself, and then choosing from a place of sovereignty, who gets to walk by my side and at what capacity. And as soon as that into place, all of a sudden it everything opened up, because it's that energetic attunement. You're tuning your fork constantly. And so, to answer your question a little bit more directly, I I do have like a neuro spicy brain, so I give a lot of, a lot of room and a lot of a little bit more equity to my answers. But so so to answer your question, it A lot of what I see very often with the people I work with women, because it's been my calling literally like since college, when before I, before any of this even took place before myself, like I just always knew that I wanted to do something that was going to be beneficial for women, period.

Speaker 3: 23:34

So it's always been my calling. And so with women, one of the energetic misalignments that I see a lot is this the misalignments that I find with women come from the woundings that we have undertaken from the space of the divine feminine being basically put quote unquote in her place for so long. So what I mean by that is I see wounding of sisterhood, where women are still competing and they still think that women are out to get them and that they're not to be trusted and it's really difficult to have female friendships, especially as an adult. Like, all of these stories that we have at play are energetically aligned to a particular wound within the global subconscious of the community, because we've learned through many different things, so I'll see women who have a very deep aversion to being soft and kind and tender and nurturing, because we've been told that that's what we have to do and that's where we belong. And in other words, like our mind connects that in terms of like all you have to be in the kitchen and yet the funny thing is that the most potent aspects of the feminine have little to do with that. Like there really is a potency of power.

Speaker 3: 24:55

If you look at nature, you can't like. If you actually spend time in nature, you cannot be fooled by the old genderized speak that we attach to the feminine. And yet, because so many of us have been having to fight against that for so long, immediately, as soon as we say words like divine feminine, or if we say soft, or if we say tender, if we say vulnerable, immediately the shackles go up. It's like this thing where like no, I no longer want to listen. I had a client once who actually told me that she at first didn't want to work with me because she thought that I was going to turn her into a diva, and it's still one of my favorite stories because I in effect said, well, yes, that is what we are doing and I don't see what the problem and that is. So we had a conversation around that, but I mean the wounds that energetic misalignments that I see have a lot to do with that.

Speaker 3: 25:50

I see a lot of misalignment with lack, because a lot of the things lack isn't just about oh, I believe, I have no money. Therefore, like I'm in lack. Okay, that is eight aspect of lack. But energetic alignments of lack in our lives also have to do with people pleasing. They also have to do with putting yourself dead last. They also have to do with being afraid to open your heart up to someone. They have to do with so many different. They have to do with fear and business. It's just like it's so vast it would take me like a minute to get through everything, but so the biggest things that I see is in my space.

Speaker 3: 26:29

If you are out of alignment with, at the end of the day, your essence, you're going to notice that other energetic misalignments are going to be more easily aggravated. So if I don't know and I don't understand my worth, my value, my power, my nature, then it's going to be a lot easier for me to fall into these dynamics where I subconsciously fall into patternings that have to do with wounds that were inflicted on my psyche at a very early age and then fall into that role playing with them and act from a very reactive state instead of from a proactive space. So for me, those are the energetic things that I see. We talk about energetic leaks like oh, if you wake up in the morning and look at your phone, it's an energetic leak. Or if you're around people who are energy vampires, then, and all of these things are true and I think that they have their place and they're important to have conversations about. I also think that they're very nuanced.

Speaker 3: 27:26

I'm a very firm believer of yes and I like to explore a little bit further. It's very rare that I will be like flat out, no, there's no, there's no more conversation about this. I usually try to get deeper and deeper with things, and so what we want to do is we want to start understanding that, yes, there is this world. We may have leaked energy from an interaction, from a relationship, from a, from a job, from so many different spaces, from a family dynamic. We might have leaked energy there and, at the end of the day, none of those leaks are out of our control. They're all within, again, our sovereignty. We are the ones that commit and say this is where I claim my space and the way in which I choose to claim this space and why. And if we are properly attuned to what that is within us, then we're going to be more readily available to see it in our space.

Speaker 3: 28:22

And what I mean by that is like if I really know what it is about my nature, about myself, that I really want to be devoted to, then when someone comes along that doesn't fit those parameters, I'm not going to lose my energy or go down a path of misalignment by bending over backwards just to please them or putting their needs ahead of mine or pretending that I don't see the red flags that are very clearly in front of me.

Speaker 3: 28:51

Like it's going to be a very different experience Now. Is that a complete like failsafe? I'm never going to experience any pain, no one is ever going to take advantage of me, I'm never going to miss any red flags and I know that would be ridiculous. Like we are still human and there are aspects of life that we are still going to go through. And yet, even if we do go through that and we missed the red flag again and we got hurt again, it's going to be within our purview of self-authority, of sovereignty, and we're going to be able to say, okay, from this point on, I missed that red flag, this is what happened, this is my energetic field, I call it into myself and this is how I move from now on. And the alignment is here, not here, and it just changes the flavor of it.

Speaker 2: 29:38

Well, I think it's you know, what I'm hearing and what you're sharing is like, it's like about not being you know. I like to talk about putting a bubble up around myself, right, it's like I'm protecting it from the outside. It's not about like creating like a barrier between me and people, but it's like it's just about honoring myself, and so it's like the barrier from the outside in. It's like I'm protecting what I consume, right. And.

Speaker 2: 30:08

I think you pointed to energetic leaks. You are definitely more than you know this is your area of expertise, more than mine, safa but you know from my experience, it's like if I say touching my phone first thing in the morning is an energetic leak, it's going to be. If I say that, you know, like, so it's like, it's what we say, so it's what you believe, like, I firmly believe that we will never outperform our beliefs, and not the ones that we say to ourselves or the ones that we post on Facebook, but the subconscious ones that are actually like, running the machine. That is our mind. Because most of the time where it's like even this conversation, 96% of the time where, like, we're in automated mode, right, like where there's no one driving the car right, it's like it's being driven by patterns in the, in the, the neocortex. So what does that even mean? Well, it's like, the more we do the work that you're talking about, I think and then that's the importance of it the more that you can start to bring awareness and practice. That's been my saving grace over the last two years is like, I used to be someone who, I mean, I've been doing a lot of this work since 2016.

Speaker 2: 31:13

And I used to beat the crap out of myself with the tools that I was acquiring, right Like I'd acquire a new tool set, I'd like learn a new modality, I'd like take another course, and then I just like my knives got sharper at like, eviscerating myself with like now you know all of these things. Why are you not doing better? Right? And and then, in 2021, I did a course called wisdom unlimited, and one of the foundational ideas of that training is practice.

Speaker 2: 31:42

Like you don't master the art of living. You don't master anything without practice, right? Yet yet we like go to a you know a retreat and pick up a new breathing technique and we try it for a couple of days and then, when our life isn't magical, and you know, we're like, oh okay, next, what's the next tool? Like, you know, what's the next book? How can I fix myself? The next way, and it's, I mean, I think that even that premise right, that there's something to fix, versus no One of the great things about that that training, actually, that it was a 11 month course and they had us start with a contribution display. So you started the training course with, like, how, how great am I already? And then it was like, oh well, if I'm already great, how can I be here to fix myself? Well, if I'm not here to fix myself, what is the next 11 months going to be about?

Speaker 2: 32:28

Right, like, if it's not about fixing me, so this like idea that that I'm already perfect and and there's this great quote that I was sharing with someone the other day about like how people do service normally and like in relationships with people. And it's how, like, normally, what people do is they like accept the self and tolerate the garbage. And and you know, and and how we do this with human beings? Right, because we just like tolerate versus like doing it the other way. Like, just interact with the person like they're perfect and give space to their garbage, and anytime garbage shows up, you know, just go back to interacting with them like they're perfect. Imagine if people did that with their partners and children and coworkers.

Speaker 2: 33:16

Right, it's like, oh, stuff is like perfection, you know, not like you don't ever do anything wrong or whatever, not even wrong, but like you don't have failings or lacks or whatever we all do, but stuff is perfect and extraordinary. Oh, and stuff, it just did that. Oh, okay, got it. I'm going to go back to. But what about doing that with ourselves? Like making space for our own garbage and like not invalidating ourselves when, when garbage shows up and and having that be okay, like, okay, I'm running that pattern again, what's that about? And like that, that introspective, and and having those things be an access to get back into it. You know kind of what you're talking about. Alignment, I think you know women have I had many, many challenges throughout history.

Speaker 2: 34:07

You know, I sometimes wonder what a history of humanity would look like if it was told from the perspective of woman, because history has largely been written by men and just fractured and shattered, you know, in terms of who we've had to be, you know, and I speak this from my own personal experience as a mother and a daughter and a sister and a wife and former wife, all of those things. It's like all of the different, you know, and seemingly contradictory ways women are supposed to show up in life, and it's like paradoxes are great, but like when you're supposed to be like, nurturing and soft and all of this, but also have these shoulders that can bear all the burdens. And you know, like there's so many different. It's, you know, and I recently realized through an interview on the show, like when you look at all of the mythologies of human being, of like, and religious philosophies and spiritual philosophies, like literally women are at the are to blame for all of evil ever entering the world, like you know, whether it's Pandora's box or Eve in the garden, like and then that's just two of many like women have been.

Speaker 2: 35:23

You know the whole all of the stories of witchcraft and witch, you know witches, like there's this, and so there's a lot that we've and gotten to and have the opportunity to kind of transform and redefine and I think a lot of what you talk about is like this, the reframing, like life is gonna happen and things are gonna happen and there's a lot that is kind of out of our control. But I, in my own sovereignty, always get to say, like I get to create how I choose to interact with life as it is unfolding around me.

Speaker 3: 36:00

Yeah, yeah, 100%. There's so much in what you said that I would like to reflect back. First, I was laughing because I've been saying for a very long I'm one of these people, so I love feeling in my own body a sensation of something landing right. So I sometimes will relate to specific words differently or uniquely than just by definition of what's on the dictionary. So I say that to say, in terms of acceptance, I have this thing that I've done with clients and I think I've done this on the podcast before but it's this thing where I'll say, okay, imagine that you're in the throes of passion, you're like having the most wonderful conversation with, like this amazing person.

Speaker 3: 36:50

You're like head over heels, the romance, the things that we always fantasize about in like Hollywood movies. Like you're in that moment with that person and that person looks at you straight in the eyes and tells you I know all of this about you and I know that you have your flaws and I know that you're not perfect and I also think you're wonderful and I accept you. And I don't know if you feel that drop as soon as that happens, but in my body that is like it breaks the romance. You know what I mean.

Speaker 3: 37:25

Like it just completely shatters that image versus you're in that moment, that doesn't even look at you. And they say the same thing.

Speaker 3: 37:41

And they say and I am raised to you and I love you and I am here and I will take you in, like do you see how different that is? And so what I've always said is that acceptance is tolerance. Tell you right, and this may not be true for you. I do have one or two clients who are like no, I don't, just don't get it, and I'm like that's cool. Then that means that for you that's not necessarily something that's there physically, but if your physical body reality is that that is not alignment with you, it feels that like magnetic force around.

Speaker 3: 38:12

The word acceptance is a lot more attuned to tolerance, to putting up with, to like just settling, to being like oh, I guess I have to accept this now. So, versus embracing, which is this like all encompassing, loving, warm, tender, soft, delightful, almost like sensuous thing that we look for. And so when we talk about the relationship that we have with and toward ourselves, we struggle. We struggle because we say it's too difficult to ask me to love myself. You can't just ask me to love myself. It's not that easy. I'm too imperfect, there's too many things going on, I'm not healed yet, okay. And so we put all of these qualifiers around the thing Like the only reason that I can love myself, or the only way that I can love myself, is as long as these parameters are in place, which is funny enough also how we relate to our abundance and to our lack. I only feel like I'm in abundance as long as. So we wanna take a look at the things in our lives that have that quote unquote parameter around them. If I'm saying I will love myself more fully when I lose 10 pounds, as long as I lose 10 pounds, then I can love myself as long as I'm finally healed, as long as my trauma no longer exists, as long like. If we really think about it that way, that's not coming from a place of love, it's coming from a place of acceptance.

Speaker 3: 39:36

And so what I think that we've been struggling with over the last couple of decades or whatever, is we talk about the movement of self-love, the self-love movement, and one of the reasons that I've found along the way personally as well as with other people why they've gotten stuck is because we equate that with accepting. We try to take the self-accepting approach. The way that I'm gonna get to love myself is if I can accept myself, and accepting is just putting up with it's. Accepting is literally going oh yeah, I can love my body because it, you know, I have legs that work and I can jump and I can move, and you're putting a qualifier around that In your mind.

Speaker 3: 40:18

In the back of your mind you're like, oh, but you know, I still have these things that jiggle and I still have fat rolls and I still have, like, gained a bunch of weight and my clothes no longer fit me. But I can love my body and be grateful for it, because I can at least walk. At least it's doing that Like as if it's the very least it could do for me, this awful thing that I have to lug around on a daily basis. So it just is this ick, you know what I mean. And so yeah, it's interesting.

Speaker 2: 40:46

I mean, language is so powerful in words, you know. I mean my favorite word to drop for people is the word surrender right Cause people have such a visceral response to the word surrender, right Like. It's just like, and I remember when I started my journey into acceptance, like one of my girlfriends incredible, ms Molly Sanders, was like, oh, you're gonna like, I don't like that word and like you know, like, and it sounds like it surrender. And I kind of started with you know, cause every journey for the year for me is a bit about like started with journey and journey into gratitude in 2013. So this will be the 11th journey I've gone on in 2024. I'm very looking forward to that journey into creativity this year. But it was, it was worth.

Speaker 2: 41:34

To me, acceptance is love. Exemptance is granting being to something just as it is and just as it isn't in that moment, as it is right now. And also like granting, granting being to like that. I'm not you know, I'm leaving the, as you said earlier, I'm gonna leave this podcast interview a different human being than I got on right, so, but that and like that. So, to me, when I started the journey into acceptance, it was, you know, it was about how could I become someone who could be more in just alignment with life as it was unfolding and just like, perhaps become less reactive in certain areas of my life where I've noticed that I become reactive and I thought it would like be this like I don't know exactly what I thought Last year was like a shit show in so many different ways. When you go on a journey into acceptance, you get a whole bunch of stuff that you don't wanna accept. Show up, right, it's like. But what I really got out of the journey is like there's like, yeah, there are all of these things that I now have an expanded capacity to accept in my life and love and be with just as they are. But I also got acceptance is about boundaries. It's like what are the things that I don't want to accept anymore in my life that I may have been tolerating or accepting? And so acceptance is about like being able to say no to things that are just no longer for me or never were for me, right.

Speaker 2: 43:03

And then the other biggest thing and I work with this incredible coach in San Diego and Chris is a psychologist and incredible man and he's been through so many different experiences and he has his framework of teaching people how to honor and honor self and honor others, which is why I wanted to work with him, because it's very important to me to expand that capacity right. And Chris is like he's got a little bit of a you know, a little challenge sometimes around, like new age spirituality and stuff like this and some of the ways that we talk and he says about you know what it is to be trans. You know, chris is like I don't believe that you ever transform the self. I think you just explore more of your authentic self and expand your understanding of this authentic self. That you are right. You don't actually change anything or transform anything about ourselves. We just get to know ourselves at deeper and deeper levels and what we want and what's aligned right.

Speaker 2: 43:59

But one of the biggest things that I got from him in 2023 was like you know, if you think about it as like waves crashing on the shore, like we talk about it, like we create everything and I've been talking this way for years Like I'm the creator of everything in my life and he's like 98% of the waves that crash on the shore, you did not create. You did not create impression in the world. You did not create the. You know, you did not create what's going on between Russia and Ukraine and all of these other things you did not create. You know antisemitism or you know like the experiences no, not like.

Speaker 2: 44:37

I can't take some personal ownership over whatever I want to in my own life that empowers me to be so, but for me, like that idea of that I'm the creator of it all had gotten almost to the point where it was like weight on my shoulder right and he's. And so one of the biggest things of this journey and especially when you're someone who is deeply like compelled and wants to make a difference in the world and help other people and be someone whose life is, you know, purpose driven, it can get really significant and heavy. And so one of the things was just like, yeah, there is so much that is just not mine to accept at all.

Speaker 2: 45:15

Right and I get to choose, like you know, all of that right. That's the point of that sovereignty I get to choose and I get to say what I want to accept and what I don't, and what's mine to accept and what's not. And so to me, as much as it was, so it doesn't land like that heavy, like I'm just tolerating, because I think that is something to really watch for. We talk about accepting difference. That's a whole universe different from celebrating diversity and like being overjoyed that diversity exists in the world, because all of that diversity like makes me and each one of us more rich and whole and extraordinary, because you have your experiences and I have mine and you have your cultural backgrounds and traditions and whatever. It is right. So I do really hear what you're saying, but for me that over this last year, saf, I'd like this journey into acceptance has not been about tolerating parts of myself and just more of that carving up, because I think that's it really has just been about exploring more of what it is that I want and don't want.

Speaker 3: 46:33

Absolutely, and that's why it's important for us you heard me say earlier. It's important for you to feel it for yourself, because also, too, I think it's one of those things where we all grow up understanding things differently, depending on our environment as well. Right, languageing. Like you said, language is such a I do believe our words are spells like, and I'm always consciously aware of what it is that I'm putting together in terms of my phrasing, my words, because I wanna make sure that it's clear like I've gone from. I've made.

Speaker 3: 47:03

One of the determinations that I made in my life was I don't say I am tired or I am sad or I am angry, because I'm verbally saying that I am those things and that is very heavy. So I've gone. Even in terms of that, we don't think about it. It seems so innocuous. It's like oh, I'm just like, I'm tired, I'm whatever. And when you start making the change and you realize this is a feeling, this is an emotion, this is something that is fleeting, this is not who I am, and you actually start verbalizing, I feel tired, I feel depleted, I feel it just starts changing things. So I do believe that words are spells and, again, everyone is going to have a different way of understanding, not just on a physical level, but on a mental level. So it just depends. It depends on and you've had a very intimate relationship to the word right through the lens of your experience, of your choosing, and I think that that's wonderful and I think that that's why that works. There are going to be those instances where that doesn't feel right.

Speaker 3: 48:00

I would say, in terms of understanding your relationship to self, it is key for us to recognize what it is that works and what it is that doesn't, and when it's coming from a place of true understanding and when it's coming from a place of really I want to love myself Like and again I go back to that we struggle with the idea of self love because we've just gotten so good at the game of hating ourselves, gotten so good at the game of despising who we are, even on this body you know what I mean. So we've gotten so good at it that understanding that love is much easier when we put it external. I can love you unconditionally and I can overlook your flaws and I can make excuses for you and I can say you don't know them like I know them. That's one of the things that drives me most crazy when I work with people like listen to what you're saying, we can say that, but will I ever say that about myself? No, and so we want to take a look at where that's like, what, like, what that relationship to self is like and what is driving the narrative around it, like I always say it, like you can say, oh, I just want to lose weight because I want to be healthy, cool.

Speaker 3: 49:09

So let me ask you a question, because this happened a few times when I was doing nutrition consultations. We'd get, okay, okay, that's fine, we're going to forget about the weight issue. We're going to look at your how you nourish your body, the things that you're taking in the vitamins, the nutrients, all the things right. And if ever anybody along that path gained weight, it would be like this is not working. This is like awful. I don't know why we're doing this. I'm not. It's not. You want it to be healthy.

Speaker 3: 49:35

What did your blood work like from your tests? You know from your doctor come back as oh well, yeah, this and this went down, or this and this is better. But you know, hang on, I'm running out of battery here. You know this is better, but I'm still like heavier than I want to be, and so we disregard all of those things, and so it's good to notice that. The other thing that I was which, by the way, I love that your coach is that way because I'm it's funny I'm in the world of woo, like I'm in the world of this, but not a boo Right, and yeah, I'm sort of like a bit of a rebel in it, because there are things that I just I'm like I this is not, does not compute, does not align, does not tune with the fork that I tuned my life with, and that's one of those things. But I was going to say oh, go ahead.

Speaker 3: 50:31

Yeah, go ahead. No, I was going to say. What I do always also keep in mind is and it's a parameter for when I'm struggling with relationship to self right and this goes back to the self love thing as well Is if you find that there is something in your life that is trying to guilt or shame you, right, those things are going to try to enslave you, and so you want to take a look at your dynamics within the parameters of those, those realms as well. In other words, I feel like by continuously telling myself that I'm the creator of my reality and that I'm choosing basically to attract that's a word that really bothers me a lot too Is if I say that I attract these toxic, because I saw it a lot when I left my toxic ex and I saw it a lot when I was working with women who were leaving toxic relationships. I still do. They're like why am I attracting these toxic people? And I'm like stop it, you're not. I really hate when people use that you are not attracting Cause if that falls into guilt and shame, and if I believe that I'm attracting these people, then that means that I did this to myself and I'm responsible for it and it's my fault, and 100% no, like that is not at all what's happening.

Speaker 3: 51:51

There are things we can take a look at that are at play patterns, subconscious programming, you know, interactions within the mind and in the body and the somatic field, and a bunch of other things that we can take a look at. But is it at fault? No, and I feel like that has a lot to do with the things that we say oh, I'm at fault for this and therefore I'm shamed by this. And the last point was essentially that's also one of the reasons why it's good for us to recognize there's no, there's no goal right, there is no, there's no pinnacle that I reach at the top of the mountain at which I say that's it, I'm healed forever, I'm never going to undergo any kind of pain, I'm never going to make any kind of mistake, I'm never going to hurt anybody, I'm never going to disappoint anybody, I'm never going to all these things. That doesn't exactly. I feel like if we were able to reach that, we probably would shed this physical form and float away like as a ball of light or something.

Speaker 2: 52:46

Like that. Just, I actually don't even think there's a top to the mountain.

Speaker 2: 52:50

Like there's just no, like it's just no top, there's. No, there's no way. I once heard this really great story about this guy in his fifties who, like, his goal was to for all of you setting goals for 2024 and you know, whatever you use resolutions and whatever's going on out there in the world, but he set this. He was like I want to climb Mount Everest and he trained like you know, imagine training for that when you're in your twenties, let alone when you're in fifties. Right, huge effort over years to get to the top of Mount Everest, which he eventually did. And he got to the top and then his first thought was I'm cold, I want to go home. Give us human beings right, we're never like where we actually are. Right, like after decades of effort to get to the top of that mountain. It was like the first thought is like oh, it's cold up here, I'm done, just transport me home, right? So you know it's been so great talking to you.

Speaker 2: 53:43

I think you know there's a lot of what before I say what I was going to say. I also love you talking about embracing, because you know I was like when I was, I had a Reiki session when I was ill this last, over the last week and one of the things that just felt so natural during the session I've never done it before is like I hugged myself during the session and so like that idea of embracing self, right, and embracing others and you know, and all of the beautiful imagery that comes from embracing and I think one of the biggest things I'm just you know represents too, out of our conversation this morning, safa. It's like whatever you say, right? Like what empowers you, you know, and what do you say about the living of your own life and all of it, right, and so just be, you know, be in that conversation of like, what am I saying about myself and my life and what am I telling other people? What am I telling myself all the time on repeat in my own mind, right? And am I, you know, inadvertently and the answer to this question is yes, by the way am I inadvertently creating a whole bunch of stuff that I don't really want because I'm not, you know, being sovereign or responsible for my own creation, right? So you are delightful and lovely.

Speaker 2: 55:07

Anyone listening to the show can connect and be able to find the ways to connect with Safa. Thank you so much. I just really want to acknowledge you for the only you know, for being sovereign in your own life, being someone who's constantly creating your life and looking at how can I continue to have the kind of life that I want as well, as you know, give that forward and contribute that forward to other women in my journey. I think it's so important that you know there are people out there in the world like yourself doing that kind of work, and I know it's not. You know we talk about sometimes like it's fluffy and you know all of that, but I know that going through these journeys can be quite painful at times. So, whatever, you know shadows you've had to unearth and doors you've had to. You know boxes you've had to peek in, crevices you've had to traverse to be someone who's living that life and being in demonstrate, demonstration of that for other people. Thank you so much for doing that work for yourself and for the rest of us.

Speaker 3: 56:05

No, thank you so much, it's been such a delight.

Speaker 2: 56:08

Yeah, For everyone listening to the show. It's a new year. We're going to have lots of incredible conversations this year. Thank you so much for being part of our journey in 2023 and look forward to connecting with you more over the coming 12 months. Love you all.