Kez Stuk: I can get so fired up and passionate, but it's so interesting because you've brought so much of that energy this weekend. I've noticed myself just letting you take the floor with it. Cause I don't need to amplify it. So it's almost like I amplify that when I'm around people who aren't like that, but because you're amplifying it so much together, it's like, I'm just witnessing that. like, yeah girl, I feel you. I almost feel like your energy amplifies it cause Kez is an air sign, I'm a fire sign. Hello, beautifuls, and welcome back to the Inbetween podcast. Today we have part two of the Wildfire series, a collaboration between myself and Maddie, a dear friend of mine who is the founder of Blooming Within, where we go behind the scenes on what we've both been navigating, what's been on our hearts, diving deep into the taboo, the shadow, the vulnerable topics, as well as collected themes we're experiencing and practical tools to move through the season of life you're in. Welcome to the Inbetween podcast, the space where the magic happens. I'm Kez, a former corporate lawyer turned holistic health, life, business and intuitive coach. Through my own journey of traversing many inbetweens, I created this podcast to share the tools, modalities and learnings that have transformed my life. Here we explore the spaces that exist between who we've been and who we're becoming through real, raw and expansive conversations with wellness professionals, entrepreneurs, Thank you so much for being here. It's truly an honor to walk this journey with you. If something resonated today, I'd love to hear from you. Your reflections and stories mean more than you know. Until next time, remember, the magic isn't in the final destination. It's right here in the in-between. And so it doesn't always come out in me, but the passion. Yeah. We are both so passionate. is one of my favorite things about myself. And I get that reflected back a lot to me as well. That people are love it. Cause I'm just like, sometimes it's, it is ridiculous, but it's the best because you're like so expressive and you're in it you feel it. visionaries and everyday humans walking the path of awakening. Together we share transformational stories, insights and tools that activate healing, expansion and soul alignment. This is your portal to the in-between. Are you ready to step through? which we have no doubt is change as collectively we are experiencing rapid change. If you haven't already, I highly recommend going back to part one first before diving into this episode. In part one, we shared some super exciting news about the retreat we're co-creating together. This has been on my heart since 2022 when I went on my first retreat and I had this deep knowing that one day that would be me creating my own. Passion comes from, I believe, things like rage and heartbreak and darkness. And when you alchemize that, you have such a mission, reverence and passion for something because you know in your heart, maybe, you know, the potency of maybe a tool or a practice that you've, that's why I'm so passionate about hypnosis because I'm like, guys, like if I can come from the, a decade of mental health and going through all of the things that I've navigated through and come into, And at the time I was in the most intense period of burnout of my life. I had pushed myself so far at work that year while I was experiencing all the external success. I was so numb that the things that usually brought me joy weren't doing anything. And I was feeling so who I am today and who I'm continuing to become from a modality like that, of course I'm going to be passionate about it because I believe in every fucking cell in my body that it can support hundreds and thousands of other people too. But it comes from, if I didn't have those darker experiences or those more challenging times, I don't know, the passion doesn't ignite, right? You don't have the experiences that I think you need in order to cultivate that. I couldn't agree more. And then there's the element of being of service. disconnected from myself, my life force. And at the time I was single, I had also been experiencing these repeated signs for the last few months circling me. And it really felt like I was being shown my person was close. So it's like marrying that passion with a desire to be of service and really help others transform because of what you've been through. Literally it's my mission too. It's how I feel being through the depths of hell and then getting yourself out and living the life of your dreams. It's just like... What a flex. Literally flex. But literally, but it's a continual journey and I'm not going to pretend that like every day is beautiful. These last six weeks has been hard and, but it also has reminded This is a whole other world, beautiful story, but I wholeheartedly believe that going on this retreat allowed me to access parts of myself that were completely offline. It opened me up to the possibilities that I always knew were available to me, reminded me what was actually important to me, and I was also able to unlock a completely different state of consciousness where I was able to take this back with me and... me in the opportunity in those difficult times. And you know, this weekend has been such a beautiful reflection and culmination, I think of what you've been moving through, I've been moving through and our other friends have been moving through. And just being able to witness hold each other and create that safe space between each other felt like alchemy. Yeah, absolutely. I couldn't agree more. This experience was the catalyst that helped me rapidly transform my life when I returned. It was like this wake-up call and it helped me really redirect the path that I was walking on, the path of my soul. And I made some really big life changes on returning, although it took about a year or so, but that... I really couldn't agree more. I think I was saying to you as well, I feel like what's created space for the literal sacred rage to come through in me this weekend is, and to be stepping into more of that energy of, no, this is who I am. This is literally who I am and this is what I stand for. this is, don't agree with that, is the ability to have your people around you. But it really is. And I'm so conscious to, is the beauty of divine timing and trusting in the process and your own process most importantly and all of this to say it is an absolute dream come true to be offering this retreat and I am so excited for you guys to experience it the waitlist is in the show notes and you will be the first to know about all the details once you pop yourself on the list so in this episode we teeter on this because I've also been in a place of you such deep isolation and really feeling like you have no one and feeling like am I ever gonna find my people? Which is making me wanna cry because I still feel that pain, literal pain. And longing and depression. And so I really feel if you are out there and you're feeling that way in any respect, I see you and I love you for starters and also don't give up on finding those people that dive into the importance of understanding your core values to know who you are, what you stand for and what you don't. We also talk about emotions reparts work lens known as internal family systems, a body of work that both Maddie and myself use with our clients and in our own lives, particularly speaking to how to transform shame, which we all experience and have experienced at some point in our life and the power of create spaces for you to continue to evolve and come more into you. But I also just want to remind people as well, sometimes you actually have to let go of people to welcome in these people. And there's the in-between. Which is the in-between of that. Like I've been on such a journey where even stepping out from my career as a lawyer, my identity, I had such being able to transform the shame and to integrate this into ourself with a capital S. We also dive into the notion which I wholeheartedly stand behind that there is no one way to do life or to do anything. And we dive into this through the lens of one of my favorite bodies of work, which is the map of consciousness by Dr. David Hawkins. rapid shifts so quickly and the only way that I could actually do that was to change my environment. I felt my space creeping in on me, I started feeling trapped, I needed to leave, I needed to break free, I needed to be on my own and I had about a year where I barely saw anyone if I'm being completely honest and I really really needed that because it was all about It fundamentally changed how I view life and how I approach everything I do. And it really shows us that our state of consciousness is what drives absolutely everything about who we are and what we experience in the external world. I can't wait to hear how this lands for you, sending you so much love and let's dive into the wildfire. diving into myself, my shadow, it was about healing. was about just reminding myself who I am separate from everyone else around me and their beliefs about me, their projections about me, the conditioning, identity, every single thing because you know, it's a conditioning of mine was it's quite nuanced, but it was almost like if I want beautiful things, then I'm greedy. Oh yeah, that's a That's a good one. I've had that too. Or there's, you know, I'm materialistic. it's like, why do you care so much about what other people think? And it's like, well, actually it's actually when you, when I went really into that, it was actually not about what other people thought of me at all. It was about my love of beauty, but I had to go so far in one extreme. that one of your core values? Yeah. Same. Yes. Yeah. And the core values you have to do, do conditioning around because they're often the things that are so layered with freedoms number one. Same. Absolutely. Absolutely. yes, so yes, when you go to your core values, beauty was so important to me, but beauty is the ocean. It's not things. It's not material things. is also a felt state. It's a state. It's really a felt state and things in the external can reflect it back to you or help you express that or like experience that kind of like we were speaking about with the retreat, right? Like you're in those spaces that unlock and can They're conducive to those frequencies so they help you experience it with a bit more ease but ultimately you can sit in meditation with your eyes closed and tap into that as a state. Tap into its state of unconditional love and beauty. Yeah. A hundred percent. That is my favourite thing to do. Sometimes I don't even want to open my eyes because I'm just... Yeah, you're like, let me live in this world please. Isn't it just... ⁓ yeah. I do that with hypnosis sometimes. Literally. stay in this dreamy state that I'm in. Absolutely. Even, you know, one of the hypnosis that I did with you, I literally was transported to Lumiere, which is a time I connect with so deeply. And all I saw was like crystalline blue aqua water. was swimming with the dolphins. I was literally a dolphin. I was at one with the ocean and I did not want to get out of that. But it's like, I can use that experience from hypnosis anytime I want to shift into that frequency. And so now when I do my own hypnosis for myself, I can go there. Yeah, you can go back because it unlocked it and unlocked that experience. And that's why these spaces and experiences can unlock these states of consciousness that you can always go back to. But sorry, circling back to the to the beauty, I had to go so far the other way where when I left my corporate job, I took nine months off where I didn't work at all. And during that time, of course, I couldn't I'd come from a career where I could just buy anything I wanted. And that was how I actually sustained what I was doing because I was working ridiculous hours, how I dealt with that was buying anything I wanted. We have such similar timeline in that. Yeah. And so it was like, well, I work so hard, I can buy anything I want. And I did. And we've also been super both super independent with money and just like always having our own. So for me, not having an income for the first time was so activating, so triggering the fact that I couldn't just go out and buy things. It actually unlocked another state within me to show me what actually mattered, what I actually cared about, what actually drove me. And it was not about the things or anything else, it was that feeling of beauty. it was, showing myself that I could be in that state where I am alone, like not seeing people all the time, just doing my own thing, literally focusing on my health, my healing, my goals, my purpose, not spending money on anything other than health, like health is another massive value for me. like health in all senses, the vitality showed me really what mattered to me. And it was not about any external thing. It was about the feeling of beauty. And so deconditioning beauty as being materialistic was so healing for me because that's what I've been told my whole life. And so it's like, no, no, no, this is actually an expression of who I am. And that was so healing in and of itself for me. Same, I literally, I feel like I don't need to add to my experience because it was so wildly similar and just I get it. And now that's how we connected. Imagine if we just left that beauty in our shadows, we probably wouldn't have connected. That was the thing that drew us together. Absolutely. And it can sound shallow. That's the thing, right? Like that, like I think on a collective level, when you're like beauty is a value, there can be a lot of people that are like, Svit Chalo or whatever their narrative is around it. Yeah, you and I really own that. We're like, no, we love beautiful things. We're beautiful people. We love feeling beauty. So yeah. And you know what? actually invite you, I actually invite you to, when you're listening to us talk about beauty in this way, what does it activate within you? Yeah. That I would love you to just feel into that because whatever it's activating in you, maybe that's a really big value for you or maybe it's not. And you're like, I'm judging them for being that way, what is that judgment saying? Is it saying that it's something you don't accept within yourself? Yes, I'm thinking popping off in my head so many things, but it's it basically circles back into so much of what we were saying in terms of like, yeah, is there judgment? Is there envy? What's what's it what's coming up in your system? And I think the other thing that just flagged for me, it's doesn't need to be you. Again, that remembrance of knowing who you are and what you stand for and just honoring that and knowing that it will attract the people that are in alignment to that. So we were speaking about how there's no wrong or right answer or a way to do something and it's really understanding who you are and in that moment in time, what is the most, I would say empowering slash expansive response. And again, if you don't know that, what is the opposite a lot of the time of what you're normally doing, but I think how to cultivate because I know that people will have that question and I'm such a passionate gal about breaking things down and making them practical because I think for so long I didn't have the tools and practices and it can be very confusing you're listening to people saying this stuff and intellectually you can understand but it's like how do I embody that essentially and it's through doing certain practices that help you to understand and anchor and ground into that and so something For me personally, that because I had such disconnect to my body for such a long period of time and everything felt like in my body, like the emotions, the experiences were so heightened that there was just a lot of repression or avoidance from those experiences. And I think what supported me to understand what's a yes, what's a no. what feels intuitive versus what's fear-based, all of those little nuances, because that example, it felt uncomfortable for me to send a message and say, no, but again, that doesn't mean that wasn't authentic and what was right. And so it's understanding and discerning between the different experiences that you're having in your body, but something that supports you with that of... knowing how to tap into that more, I think something that supports you with that really is energetic hygiene side of things. What's really interesting about everything you were saying, what that brought up for me was the only way you can really know those things about you is spending time with yourself and having space because then you actually tap out of the collective conditioning. And what you were just experiencing, and so many of us live in this state, I did as well, is we live in from top up. We only live in our head, our body is like completely disconnected and a lot of the times it's a trauma response and safety because if we can just intellectualize and logic our lives that feels safe and known. But the beauty of life is in being comfortable in the unknown and uncertainty. Flexibility. Flexibility in your nervous system. cognitive flexibilities, the ability to, or you could look at like your window of tolerance or your capacity, but it's the ability to experience a windfall of different experiences and different emotions and know that you'll be okay without needing to avoid, reject, deny. Beautiful. I love that so much. trusting in yourself basically to feel the feels. And allowing, allowing those experiences and knowing that you are safe. to experiences those feelings in all its fullness. And I do feel like working with a practitioner who or a coach who can hold you through that and just validate your experiences. Like so many of my clients, it's so much about just showing them how normal they are and how normal their experiences are and just showing them that what they're sharing with me will be held in such safety and reverence that you are not crazy for feeling that way. It is very normal response to feel that way. This is something I really want to flag that's coming through that you were chatting about earlier today as well that's related to this, which is. The importance, kind of what we're speaking to now, working with, it doesn't even always need to be practitioner, but if there's trauma coming up, I would highly recommend it because it's so beautiful, or maybe it's a friend or someone that's safe, and the importance of having safety, because without safety, you can't actually process it and figure out a new blueprint forward. But what you were speaking to me about this morning was you can't resolve, whatever the trigger or the trauma or the experiences on that same frequency of consciousness. So I'm handing it over to you to talk about your experience with that in terms of, and you don't have to go into details, speaking to people on different planes or different levels of consciousness and then moving differently as well. Beautiful. So there's a body of work by Dr. David Hawkins, which I speak about actually quite a lot. And so why I love his work so much is because he partly because he was a really renowned psychiatrist and then had a number of really spiritual experiences and used his framework of the brain and psychiatry and everything he saw, the depths of darkness, and used all that knowledge and experiences and that framework into being a spiritual teacher and devoting his life to actually experientially moving through his own states of consciousness, which is his body of work. ⁓ was channeled through him. And so basically what he did was he paired science with emotions and he measured the energetic frequency of emotions. And so this is ⁓ essentially it's a scale, but it's not a scale of this emotion is bad and good. This is the range of human emotions that we all experience. And you can actually feel it in your body because at the lowest end of the scale is so zero in Hertz. So it's all measured in Hertz. He did this through kinesiology. and at the bottom zero is essentially death. So you're not alive. Then the lowest frequency is shame. Number 25 and it hurts. And you can actually feel shame is what steals life. It's the ultimate, wow, I'm getting goosebumps, distortion and tactic for isolation. this reinforcing of this belief that you are alone, something is fundamentally wrong with you. and you are separate from everyone. You are separate from light. And in terms of the fundamental principle in spirituality, but in life as well, is that we are all one and we are all connected from the fabric of who we are, it's all interconnected. And to do that to someone, to cause them shame in that way is actually how you separate them from the light, separate them from themselves and separate them from others. And so people who are in shame, it's almost even you isolate these parts of yourself internally and you have these shame parts and that separates these parts internally from the self. And so it is such a huge tactic that people do if those emotions of shame are coming up for you. Just know that you can move through them and it is so dense and hard but having someone to witness you in your light and supporting you and holding that space for you and showing you that there is nothing shameful about you even if you killed someone or did the most horrible, horrendous thing there is a reverence there and an understanding and I think both of you and I have so liked that no matter what you've done there is a compassion and a love we can see. That doesn't mean values wise we will align with it or agree with it, but I can understand humans. Human nature. Human nature. Like we are all experiencing these the more that we try and deny and reject it, the worse that it gets. The more anything, anything. And I'm just like really viewing that through a parts work lens. Now the ultimate alchemy for shame is to speak about it in safe spaces and to be witnessed in love. I'll speak to this really quickly, but I want you to continue. This is the tab. The journey. Yeah, this is, this is a tab, side tab, but I recently had, and I've had this in many different ways with clients, but this is a recent one that was popping to mind. But in hypnotherapy, we often regress back to memories that are to do with a specific theme, right? Because we go back in, we process the emotions that are stuck within the nervous system and we... alchemize that experience and we give you a more empowering experience. Essentially there's a lot more to it but that's the essence of it and sometimes memories won't surface and it's always because there's a protective part there right and so there wasn't a memory but there was a pit in their stomach of just like a vortex like hollow like this endless dark shameful pit. and often behind those feelings and you'll hear it in people's language where they describe, I have this weight on my shoulders, I have this like fogginess in my head, these are different, there's actually different parts of us. And when they are met with love and warmth and curiosity and patience and kindness, that pit in the stomach that is trying to scare you away, like sometimes they'll show up as like dragons or something that's really trying to scare you from looking at it and meeting it. But when you're present with those parts of yourself, And when you allow yourself to be seen in them, that pit in the stomach then completely transformed into a two-year-old girl who's trying to create like smoke and mirrors because they're so petrified of being discovered or found out as bad or wrong or fundamentally. And a lot of the time, it's so beautiful. A lot of the time, these parts literally want play, they want rest. They just want some affirmation. They want an ice cream I get all the time. Like they just want a treat. They just want like someone to hang out with them. And yeah, I just wanted to say that like in that process of healing, yes, it can feel scary. There's so much beauty in the darkness if you just are able to witness it through a loving lens. I'm really mindful of how I speak about that stuff because I don't want to seem too like esoteric or woo-woo, but that's truly the most playing. form that I can put in and the reflection that I always get from clients is I didn't realise how gentle but powerful this work could be. You know, we get so conditioned. I think there's a big movement over the past couple of years of that. I really see it in the breathwork space. There's so many amazing breathwork practitioners. So I'm not speaking to anyone, but there was this really masculine of like pushing approach. Again, that works for some people and that's some people's way, but we kind of got a condition to think that. The only way that we could experience healing and transformation was through pushing and forcing and going there. And I'm here to tell you that's not the only way. And that comes back to there is not one way to do anything. There's not one way to do life. There is no black and white. is no, it's right or wrong. It can change the answer and the modality and the need can change as well. Absolutely. And then that taps into this, the map of consciousness. So what is so beautiful about this work, this body of work is that what it shows us is that we are all operating from different states of consciousness. And what that means is that we view life vastly different based on our state of consciousness. I'll give a really simple example because he uses it in the book and this has actually happened to me in my life. So, Whenever I see someone who's homeless, I honestly want to cry because for me, I witness this person and I think that could have been me at any point in my life. That could have been me. And, you know, I view us all as one as they are no different from me. And similarly, that's another person who might be at a fear based state of consciousness. And there's reasons we're in a fear-based state or there's reasons like usually it's trauma, there's no judgment. used to literally live in fear all the time. still dip in out of it, like I still witnessed that experience in myself. Absolutely, but if you're predominantly operating from a fear-based state... You might witness this person and think they're going to attack you. And so you act differently towards them. You can't see them for who they are and their light. you become... It's like seeing the black pit and being like, ⁓ that's scary and trying to like destroy it. Destroy it. Like let it express. Cause you're like, no, no, no, I can't deal with that. And then you attach stories, which we all do. And the story might be something like, they spent all their money and that's why they're on the street or... whatever the narrative is that you attach to, it's their fault. And so that's just a really, it's quite a stark example to really show how when we are operating at different levels of consciousness, we see the world so differently. And the reason why that's so important is because there is no black and white. That experience of fear and like that person is scary to that person is so real for that individual soul. That is real, that is their lived experience and that is a frequency they're operating from. And I guess when you can realize that that energy doesn't need to attach to you, that is completely their experience and your experience is entirely different, then you can actually just witness lovingly that they're in a different state. And right now you're just not going to meet at that same level. And that doesn't need to be attached to good and bad or a story of I'm better than or higher than, I'm more conscious like it's no. No, because that's tapping into ego. We are all one and that fear that is being witnessed, it's a reflection of something within us as well, or where we've been from, or it's showing us something. So it's not about I'm better or you're better or whatever it is, but basically just to your point is we're all witnessing life in such different states of consciousness, but when you stand for something and you get to show who you are in your light, then those people can find you and that's when you find your tribe, when you stand for something. But based on your own values, not what you think you should stand for.