Unbroken

Hello explorers, and welcome to episode 68 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor. I’m here today with a little announcement. As you possibly saw in the title of this episode, I’ve called it pausing and stepping into quiet. I’m feeling a really strong urge lately to do just that, to pause things, step into the silence, spend a lot of time in quiet. We’re coming into summertime, here on the west coast of Vancouver Island, as I record this, and the days are getting longer and sunnier. And it’s not so much that I want to spend more time in the sun because I’m not really that type of person. But I do just want to spend time in quiet right now. And slow down a little bit and listen for wisdom, really. This episode is a little announcement letting you know that that’s what’s happening. I will keep you posted on any future directions or things that go on. Hopefully I’ll be back in a few weeks or a couple of months or whatever it is however long it lasts. I really feel drawn to just listening to wisdom, listening to my intuition, that kind of thing and following those nudges. So that’s what’s pulling me at this moment. For the next few weeks, I hope you are doing great, doing really well taking good care of yourself. Please remember that we are all always unbroken. Take care, bye. Featured image photo by Jack Church on Unsplash The post Pausing and Stepping Into Quiet appeared first on Alexandra Amor Books.

As we discuss so often on Unbroken, there is an intelligence and wisdom that, if we allow it to, can guide our lives to interesting and fulfilling places. As with most of us, it took Stephanie Benedetto some time to really listen to this wisdom and to trust that it would support her. When she did, she unlocked a life and a business that flow with ease, even in the challenging moments. Stephanie Benedetto is a transformational business coach, storyteller and (Un)Marketer at The Awakened Business, where she helps transformative coaches, healers and entrepreneurs unleash their heart’s message to create soulmate clients with playful (Un)Marketing — no hustle, or hype of endless social media required. You can find Stephanie Benedetto at TheAwakenedBusiness.com. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes Business as a vehicle of creation Giving ourselves permission to create the lives we want Noticing what is alive within us that wants to guide us Following the nudge to make a big life change How we create our worlds based on Thought How the pressures we feel have nothing to do with what’s going on in our lives and everything to do with what’s going on in our heads How discomfort is created when our thoughts look real Paying attention to what we’re listening to How you being you is enough Resources Mentioned in this Episode The Surrender Experiment by Michael Singer Transcript of Interview with Stephanie Benedetto Alexandra: Stephanie Benedetto, welcome to Unbroken. Stephanie: Thank you for having me, Alexandra, this is a great pleasure. Alexandra: I’m so pleased to have you here. Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got interested in the Three Principles. Stephanie: I have been a pretty much a lifelong entrepreneur. Definitely in my adult life. But as I reflected on my childhood, I used to play games like Office and sell at Mr. Dobbs candy shop. And I used to sell cards and things. I was actually interested in entrepreneurship, even when I was quite young. So I’ve had multiple businesses.  The most notable and successful were we’re a business as a wedding DJ, with my now ex husband for 15 years. And then we transitioned into a digital marketing business, basically, internet marketing. So I used to create courses and a membership online, for other wedding professionals to teach them about business. I’ve been in love with business for a long time.  But my first love is really people. And I love business as a vehicle of creation. It’s a way that people can create the change they’d love to see in the world, they can be of service. That’s what I see business as. And so over the years, I wanted to have deeper impact with people. And that drew me more and more into coaching.  In my prior career, it looked more like consulting, marketing strategy. And I realized that there was something missing from that, for me, that we talked about these great ideas and people that didn’t do them, because they were scared, or they felt insecure. And I saw this also in myself, because in parallel, I was on my own personal development and spiritual journey. I wanted to go deeper for me.  So I hired my first business coach. And then I wanted to do what they were doing. And it took me on this whole journey until I realized, Oh, my goodness.  The business I currently have, which is called The Awakened Business is really meant to support entrepreneurs, who want to share the truth they’ve seen, and the gifts that they have with the world. And do it in a way that really feels good. Because there’s a lot that I was taught when I was studying internet marketing inside of business that maybe we could say is unethical or feels a little weird. And certainly people who are helpers and want to be of service often have a lot of what I could call head trash about selling and marketing. None of that has to be painful or icky, like it can actually be complete joy and totally enjoyable. And so that’s what I help people do now.  As I’ve gone deeper into my journey with the Three Principles have gone from Oh, this is a cool thing to add to all the other spiritual stuff. This was like years ago, I saw no contradiction with neuro linguistic programming and Practical Magic and Access Consciousness and EFT and all the other things that I was doing. I was like, Oh, the Three Principles fits great into this mix. I really care about understanding those principles. I don’t care about explaining it to others. I’d say this to myself until I realized I started talking about three principles with other people.  Then I was like, I want to be a transformative coach. I’m interested in that until I find myself in Michael Neal’s super coach Academy and becoming a certified transformative coach. So I actually think there was a wisd

We all have a built-in GPS, a guidance system that never lies and that always has our best interests at heart. We can call that guidance whatever we want – wisdom, intuition, insight, knowing; the name isn’t as important as learning to listen to it. And, as Bonnie Jarvis points out, figuring out how your guiding wisdom speaks to you makes life so much easier. Bonnie Jarvis has a BA in Graphic Design, MS in Computer Science, MA in Spiritual Psychology and has completed several coaching programs. Using the skills she learned over the years, she’s helped many coaches with the technical details of building successful and thriving online businesses. For 9 years, Bonnie worked for 3PGC, a non-profit organization with a mission to share the simplicity of The Three Principles as uncovered by Sydney Banks. She developed all areas needed for their online business to thrive and significantly expand the understanding globally. You can find Bonnie Jarvis at BonnieJarvis.com. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes On being a ‘secret seeker’ Following the breadcrumbs of insight, interest, and synchronicities How the Three Principles explain what is before other philosophies and traditions Having the courage to leap into the unknown based on inner knowing The importance of coming back to the present moment Getting really familiar with how wisdom speaks to you Resources Mentioned in this Episode 3PGC Raymond Moody’s book Life After Life Azul Leguizamon’s Unbroken podcast episode Bonnie and Azul’s monthly free webinar, What Has Wisdom Shown You Lately? Bonnie and Azul’s The Heart of Service program Transcript of Interview with Bonnie Jarvis Alexandra: Bonnie Jarvis, welcome to Unbroken. Bonnie: Thank you so much. Thanks for inviting me, Alexandra, I really appreciate being here. Alexandra: Oh, my pleasure. I’m so thrilled to talk to you one on one. We’ve been in events together. I think I was trying to recall when that was. I think it was a class with Cathy Casey. That was last year, I think. But anyway, so it’s lovely to talk to you one on one.  Bonnie: I keep seeing your name around the community. So I’m glad that we’re getting this opportunity. Alexandra: Me too. Tell us about your background and how you discovered the Three Principles. Bonnie: Well, like so many people who have come across the Three Principles, I was looking around for a very long time. I know people come to this understanding, or the understanding finds them maybe as a better way of saying it, when people are looking for very different things. For me, my seeking, if you will, started when I was really young.  My dad was in a really horrendous accident when I was four. And this was 1960, giving away my age. I won’t into the details, but he was electrocuted to the point where two silver dollars melted in his pocket and then he fell three stories. And he obviously was given his last rites, no one thought he was going to survive back then. But he did.  And I don’t know, maybe when I was around six or seven, he shared his experience of what happened to him. Now we know of what people call near death experiences. But that term wasn’t even around back then. And I don’t really know what it was he said that impacted me so deeply. But I think the quality of what he was sharing just touched me so deeply, that I knew this physical reality was not all there was, but I didn’t know what else was out there.  I was really young then, I was going to Catholic school, and I learned really quickly to not talk about it in Catholic school, because it was not approved of, and it wasn’t a well known thing. I think that experience made me a secret seeker. I looked at so many different things, I dipped my toes into so many different things once I got out of high school, different religions. I sought out channelers, I did different self help programs that were spiritually oriented. I did a spiritual psychology master’s degree. This was over a period of like, maybe 40 ish years.  In the spiritual psychology program, the organization about 10 years after I graduated from there, they were doing a coaching program. I should say, my other parallel life was that I got a master’s degree in computer science and worked in many corporations. And definitely was a secret seeker through that because it was okay to be in a religion, but everything else was very woowoo. So I really didn’t talk about anything. But I would pop in and out of corporate America jobs at that time in the 80s and 90s. And even early 2000s, it was very easy to leave one job and find another because not a whole lot of people knew a whole lot about technology then. In 2013, I decided that was it. I was leaving corporate America for the last time. It was not where I wanted to be. And one of

We all have one: an inner critic. That voice inside our heads that is critical of so much that we do. That voice can become debilitating, if we let it. But when we apply what we know about the Three Principles of innate health, we can teach that voice to take a back seat, where it belongs. And, on a positive note, hearing the inner critic can even become an ally in helping us to practice stepping into a better feeling. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes A neurosurgeon’s explanation for the inner critic A reminder about the purpose an unwanted habit is serving How the feeling that comes with the inner critic alerts us to its falsehood On the possibility of having a different experience at any moment The beautiful feeling that’s always available to us How our thinking can be like the grooves in a record Resources Mentioned in this Episode Mind Magic by Dr. James Doty Transcript of episode Hello explorers, and welcome to episode 65 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor. I’m here today to talk about the inner critic or that negative voice that can dog us all the time. And this is a subject, particularly close to my heart. I feel like it’s something that I’ve wrestled with for a long time and for a long time, couldn’t see it.  Years ago, it was invisible to me, even though it was going on. And then gradually, I became more and more aware of it, but didn’t know what to do about it. And then I came into this understanding, and I put it off to the side. But it’s come up in my awareness lately. And I’ll tell you a bit more about that in just a moment. I was reading a book recently about brain science, called I think it’s either called Mind Magic or Magic Mind by Dr. James Doty. And one of the things he mentioned in there was, how his approach to our inner critical voice or his understanding of it was really interesting. And it was about the evolutionary process that we’ve gone through, and how our brains are wired to look for danger. Given the society that we live in now and how generally safe we are – I hope I can say that about you – that the part of our brain that’s looking out for danger, even looks out for it in our own behavior. So it’s able to be critical of us, or it believes it’s being critical of us, in order to serve a purpose in order to keep us safe.  I probably haven’t explained that, as well as he did in the book. But it got me thinking about the negative voice, the inner critic, that so many of us hear, and maybe don’t hear, that’s maybe silent. I find it at times just kind of running behind whatever else is going on, in my mind, and I’ll talk about in a minute how that doesn’t actually matter if we can’t specifically hear what it’s saying. So that’s some of the good news.  Let’s jump in and talk about this. The reason I wanted to bring it up was that, in the past, we’ve talked about how unwanted habits are working in our favor, even though it might not look like they are. They are a solution, not a problem. And one of the metaphors I use is that unwanted habits are like the valve on the top of a pressure cooker.  The habit itself lets off a bit of the pressure of what’s in the pressure cooker.  So this got me thinking about how that inner critic, that negative voice is contributing to the load of what’s in the pressure cooker, it’s contributing to all the stirred up thinking that’s in there, and not in a good way. It’s adding to the pressure that’s in the pressure cooker. And so that means that in a way I think it would help for all of us to look at that kind of negative thinking specifically, and learn how to deal with it, learn how to resolve it. And so that’s what we’re talking about.  Today, I’ve got three tips for helping you to deal with your inner critic. I’ve been experimenting with the tips I’m going to share for the last couple of weeks, and it really feels good. I’m really really enjoying it. It has opened up a space of a good feeling within me. It has taught me at a new level to not take my thinking so seriously, which I really really appreciate. And like I say I just feel this a greater sense of tenderness or compassion, kindness for myself since I’ve been practicing these things, and so of course, that feels really good. So let’s talk about the first tip that I’ve got for dealing with your inner critic.  The first one is pretty easy, and it’s something you’ve probably been looking at a little bit already. And that is to know that: The thinking that we have going on in our minds is not the truth with a capital T.  Thought, of course is like energy, and it’s moving through us all the time. And it

When it comes to our mental well-being and our physical health it can be so easy to look outspide ourselves for answers. Ellen Friedman takes a different approach; she guides her clients inward to connect with the innate wisdom and wellness that is already there. Ellen Friedman guides people home to the sacred space within, where they shift their relationship with themselves, their health, and others. She partners with people who are curious to explore a simple path to wholeness through the inside out nature of life. In addition to having a Master’s degree in Spiritual Psychology with an emphasis in Consciousness Health and Healing, Ellen has a Certificate in Soul-Centered Professional Coaching, and she shares the Three Principles understanding. Her journey has been blessed coaching nearly 1000 divine beings using a human experience to remember who they truly are. You can find Ellen Friedman at HealingHouseCalls.com. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes Seeing the whole person when it comes to healing Noticing how health improves when our nervous system is downregulated Ellen’s personal discoveries experiencing chronic fatigue How mental busyness affects our physical health How fatigue can be a signal that there is pressure on our mental system Are you the source of your energy? How our feelings are a barometer for what’s going on within us Resources Mentioned in this Episode Mavis Karn’s book It’s That Simple Mavis Karn’s Unbroken podcast episode Azul Leguizamon’s Unbroken podcast episode Transcript of Interview with Ellen Friedman Alexandra: Ellen Friedman, welcome to Unbroken. Ellen: I’m so happy to be here with you, Alexandra. Alexandra: I’m so happy to have you here.  Tell our audience a little bit about yourself and your background and how you got interested in the three principles. Ellen: I’m always amused where that story begins every time. I was happily minding my own business, enjoying my career as a physical therapist, when the knock on the door to coach came in 2011. And I was like but I love what I do. I thought you had to be miserable to do something else.  Then I started feeling miserable by not following that. I got in my car one day after seeing a patient and I was like, almost without logic, and I said, Okay, I heard you, I’m coming back. So I began coaching in 2011.  Then, in 2013, in a coach training program, one of the instructors introduced a video on the inside out understanding of stress. At that time, it was a really old video. And I remember the feeling inside me, I can like, remember the chair I was sitting in. I remember the feeling. And then I also remember my personal mind going, Oh, but we’ve got techniques and tools and things to do with people. Alexandra: Moving forward from there was it difficult to get your head around the idea of no tools and techniques? Ellen: I’m not sure because what was more difficult was trying to intellectually figure out what this understanding was. I spent a long time reasoning with what I was learning, comparing it to what I had already known. Seeing where it fit in, seeing where things didn’t fit in. And at that time, at that time, there were so many free opportunities to learn. I mean, there are today, but there were so many opportunities, and you and I could participate in almost all of them. And, there were also many wonderful paid opportunities and workshops and trainings. And, and you didn’t have to choose because there weren’t the abundance that there is today. Alexandra: So this was around 2011 or 2012? Ellen: 2013 was when I first heard that, and then it stayed on the back burner until 2016. But Alexandra, I am so clear that it doesn’t matter how many years you’ve been looking in this direction or exploring the principles because we we all see what we see when we see it. And don’t you love it with when clients just see something that you don’t see? I mean, it’s so fun. Alexandra: Absolutely. Insight doesn’t really have a timeline, does it? I mean, it can happen anytime.  You mentioned being a physiotherapist.  You had an interest in healing, and helping people. Can you tell us a little bit about that? And where that began to if you know. Ellen: Where was the interest in physical therapy health? Alexandra: Well, yeah, healing and those kinds of things. Ellen: I didn’t have any exposure to physical therapy, personally or for family members. So I don’t remember exactly how I landed on it other than healthcare seemed kind of interesting. But nursing didn’t and going to medical school I had no drawn to. The allied health professions sounded fun and interesting and had a couple of opportunities to work as an aide and, and I was like, Okay, I’m going to do this. And so I went to phy

We usually think of stress as coming from the circumstances that surround us: busy jobs, busy lives, difficult bosses or clients. But what if stress has another origin? What if it comes from the thinking we have in any given situation? Clare Downham is the dedicated mentor you need on your unique journey to unlock your innate potential and cultivate a thriving business aligned with your true purpose. As a certified ILM Success Mentor, she specialises in guiding emerging and established female entrepreneurs to embrace their innate mindfulness and harness it as a powerful tool for success. With a deep understanding of the inside-out nature of our human experience, Clare expertly navigates the complexities of the entrepreneurial journey, helping women to silence the inner critic, dissolve self-doubt and cultivate a strong sense of intuition and self-trust. You can find Clare Downham at ClareDownham.com and on Insight Timer at claredownham. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes On what happens when we ignore warning signs from our bodies The false messages business owners receive about having to be ‘on’ and ‘up’ all the time How motivation ebbs and flows naturally and there’s nothing wrong when we’re at a low ebb On the cyclical nature of levels of personal energy How some of our best ideas come during down or quiet times How we believe we need to be busy all the time and that resting is ‘lazy’ How we so often try to be in a different feeling state than the one we’re naturally in On overwhelm and its one cause How being in the present moment starves stress of the oxygen it needs Resources Mentioned in this Episode Insight Timer Transcript of Interview with Clare Downham Alexandra: Clare Downham, welcome to Unbroken. Clare: Hello. Lovely to be here. Alexandra: Oh, my pleasure. It’s lovely to see you.  Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background and how you got interested in the Three Principles. Clare: I was a primary school head teacher. So our primary school in the UK is aged three to 11. I was in primary education for 20 years. And the last five or so I was a head teacher to two different schools. And I became very stressed, although I didn’t know I was stressed at all, I didn’t have a clue.  I knew there were things wrong with me. But I thought those things were what was wrong with me rather than stress as the underlying cause. One day I went into work, fully intending to start my working day and I took one look at my computer. And it was like, it was like I was frozen. It was like, my body just finally went, “No, no more, let’s go, let’s leave.”  I literally did walk out of work. And I never went back in the end. Didn’t know I wasn’t going to go back. I thought it was going to have a nap, and have a little rest for a couple of weeks and then go back. But that’s not what happened.  I was initially diagnosed with depression, because I was burnt out. And it looks very similar. Because all your motivation is gone. You can’t get out of bed, you can’t really do anything. But all the way through they were saying it was depression, I kept thinking I don’t feel depressed, I’m not really in a low mood, I’ve just got no energy, it was like it had been syringed out of me.  It was a messy year. I didn’t work for a year, I was off sick for a year. And through a vast part of that it was all depression, depression, it’s depression. So obviously I was taking tablets, I was trying all sorts of things to cure myself with depression. And it was only really much later on in that journey that I realized that I burnt out and realized actually how stressed I’d been and how, as I learned about stress, how my body had been screaming the warning signs at me. But I had just ignored them or not known they were there.  I didn’t deliberately ignore them, I just didn’t know they were there. I didn’t know that’s what they were telling me. So a year went by, and eventually my governing body and the people I was working for needed to know when I was going to come back. And I just didn’t know. I couldn’t give them an answer because I was still not brilliant. And so in the end, I had to resign.  I resigned on the first of April. April fool. I think it’s quite funny that I resigned the first of April, and then didn’t know what I was going to do. Obviously at that point, apart from just, it felt like a massive, I actually got a lot better once that weight had been almost like my thinking. Now I know my thinking about going back to work was really not helping my recovery. So I didn’t know what I was going to do.  Then I got a random email 10 days afterwards which invited me to train to be a hypnotherapist. This is in 2016 I resigned. And so

Old-paradigm psychology can try to convince us that unwanted habits are caused by a need to feel loved or safe or cared for. It can feel like we’re using food, or other substances, to soothe or comfort ourselves. In this podcast episode we bust this myth and look toward the true origin of unwanted habits. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Are you interested in connecting with others who are exploring this understanding? Would you like some coaching and ongoing support with an eye toward resolving an unwanted habit? Click the image below to learn about the Unbroken Community and join the waitlist. Show Notes The five reasons an unwanted habit has nothing to do with replacing love Does it matter where our painful thoughts about food originate? On the fluidity of thought and how it can change, morph and disappear How the feeling connected to a thought is going to tell us if it’s the truth or a lie How it’s not on us to change, manage or control our thoughts How we are not in control of the timeline of when things change Transcript of episode Hello Explorers and welcome to episode 62 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor. I’m here today to talk about the really common myth that when we have an unwanted habit where we’re using that habit to replace love that we might feel that we are missing.  So in other words, as it said on the title card for this episode, is food really love? Or is that a myth? I’m going to tell you why I think it’s a myth. Before I say that, I should say that I think it makes sense that we came to that conclusion. And I know for me, I spent years and years trying to love myself in a way that would cause my unwanted overeating habit to disappear. And none of what I tried worked. I tried things like journaling, affirmations, radical self-compassion. What else was in that arena of loving ourselves? Cognitive behavioral therapy. I took a course I’ve talked about this before. And it was all about creating a loving feeling within ourselves. In order that our overeating habit would drop away. And none of that worked.  I’m going to talk about that today and about what I see now, when we have the thought that we’re using a substance like food to try to replace love within ourselves. Before we get into that, I want to quickly have a reminder here, that if you haven’t done so already, you can sign up for the waitlist for the Unbroken community. The address for that is AlexandraAmor.com/community. And there’s lots of information there on that page.  The community will be launching later this year in 2024. And we will be having some live coaching in the community, we’ll have an online group, we’ll have a couple calls a month live with me. And as I say, all the details are there on that page, AlexandraAmor.com/community.  Okay, so let’s get into this subject of whether or not food is love. Are we are using something like food and overeating to replace love that we believe is missing within us? The reason I’m talking about this today is that I had another coaching session with Tania Elfersy recently, and you may have listened to the episode, number 53, where Tania coached me. And so we’ve gotten together another couple of times since then.  Today, we had a conversation about this thought and feeling that I have when I’m putting food on my plate, specifically at supper time. And the thought that I have is, there’s not enough. We talked about that, and what that meant, what that thought means for me. It felt as I explained to Tania, it felt like it was saying to me that I wasn’t loved enough, that that feeling of there’s never enough I’m sort of transferring it to food, but the food represents love that might be absent in my life or had been in the past.  We talked about where that thought might have originated. And I can see that there was a time in my life when that thought probably came into being and how we innocently can assume or conclude that because of the circumstances that we’ve experienced in the past, and that we now have an unwanted habit like overeating that we are substituting one thing for another. That’s where the myth comes in that we are using food as a substitute for love.  I want to share the five things that Tania and I talked about, and explore this a little bit more and hopefully help you see what Tania has helped me to see. And what I’ve seen, during my exploration of the, the understanding that we’re exploring here are the three principles.  The first thing that I want to share is that connected to what I’ve just explained about this idea that we’re substituting food and love is that where that thought and feeling originated doesn’t really matter.  What really matters in this explorati

As a long-time coach, and before that an HR professional, Dominic Scaffidi points his clients back toward an awareness of their innate wisdom and ability to thrive effortlessly. He reminds us that we are always more than our human minds can grasp. As a Master Certified Coach (MCC) credentialed with the International Coaching Federation (ICF) Dominic works with leaders, teams, entrepreneurs and individuals to achieve professional and personal aspirations. He points clients to a realization of who they really are as they focus on creating what they most desire in life. Dominic is a Registered 3 Principles Practitioner who is grounded in the teaching of Sydney Banks. You can find Dominic at DominicScaffidi.com and on Facebook. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes On the overlap between the Law of Attraction and the Three Principles Being willing to sit in paradox and wait for clarity On the innate intelligence that flows through every living thing Our human ability to resist that intelligence with our thinking Manifesting: Allowing ourselves to perceive what already exists Following a good feeling toward what wants to be Your wisdom is always in a beautiful feeling How our feelings are always indicating what we’re thinking Resources Mentioned in this Episode Michael Neill’s TedX Talk Why aren’t we awesomer? Transcript of Interview with Dominic Scaffidi Alexandra: Dominick Scaffidi, welcome to Unbroken. Dominic: Thank you, thanks for the invitation. I’m really looking forward to our conversation. Alexandra: Me too. I’ve never spoken to you one on one. So this will be fun.  Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got interested in the Three Principles. Dominic: I’ve been self-employed as a coach, executive coach, mostly. I deal with leaders and organizations like that. And I’ve been self-employed for about 15 years. Prior to that, tt was a corporate career that I had in very large organizations. The last corporate role that I held was a VP of HR position. And so that’s kind of a bit of that.  My career has continually moved to more and more reflection of what I’m interested in, my passion. So that kind of relates to the Three Principles, in that my purpose in life, I say, is to awaken greatness. Maybe you could say it as to reveal greatness, to reveal what’s within us. And so that’s a link to what appealed to me about the Three Principles.  Maybe seven or eight years ago, I came across the Principles and the teachings of Sydney banks, and they immediately resonated as this is true, this is pure truth. What he was pointing to, it was just obvious, it was obvious that this is just true. And so I became really interested in delving into that into that understanding, which is a deeper understanding of who I really am, my true nature and the nature of reality.  And of course, in my coaching, when I’m working with people it’s really about helping us to look more deeply into who we really are, our true nature and the nature of reality. The more we come to see and understand that, the more I’m going to say, all problems disappear. I mean, that’s just the way it is. Alexandra: Oh, I love that. And so a follow up question, then.  Do you remember how you came across the Three Principles?  Dominic: I’m a student of many teachings. And one teaching in particular are the teachings of Abraham Hicks. I was follower for many years. And that teaching focuses very similarly on we are consciousness and energy, like so it’s very similar.  I like to say that from that teaching, and teachers, the Law of Attraction, I say that I attracted the Three Principles. And so this and why I attracted them was because it was necessary to my misunderstanding of the teachings of Abraham Hicks. It had been incredibly useful for me. Much of my understanding had contributed enormously to my own thriving professionally, to my business.  I built my business following a corporate career in a way that I would say is effortless. I’ve never participated in business development and trying to get business. Because around the beginning of my self employment, I had come across Abraham Hicks. And I realized, wow, this is, I mean, it would be crazy if it worked. But if you could simply be in that state that is resonant with what you want, what you want, must come to you. And that just didn’t sound very corporate or real. But it works.  It actually works. It’s actually what happens, because it’s an accurate description of how everything we experience comes to us. So it was very impactful. And then there came some point where I needed to go further than this, to see it more deeply. And there were many misunderstandings I had of what was being taught. And the thing about the Th

So often we demonize our bad habits. But what if those habits are working to bring us messages about our perfect human design? You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Click the image below to learn about the Unbroken Community and join the waitlist. Show Notes Your unwanted habit is not a problem The good feeling our habits point us toward How we are designed to return to a state of calm and quiet How understanding the nature of thought resolves habits The gift of knowing where our experience is coming from Transcript of Episode When we have an unwanted habit like overeating it can feel like there’s something broken about us. Our culture tends to shame those with unwanted habits and it is widely assumed that there is something wrong with anyone who struggles with them. Judgments, including self-judgments, are made about a perceived lack of discipline or lack of self-care.  But what if an unwanted habit like overeating was a sign of all that’s right with you, not with something that’s wrong? What if your unwanted habit is a solution, not a problem? For decades, we’ve been approaching unwanted habits as though they are the enemy. How’s that working for us? Not well, I’d say. We only have to look at the rising statistics about obesity or drug and alcohol addiction to see that this seems to be a battle we’re losing. Badly. In this course, I’d like to explore turning our attitude toward unwanted habits on its head. It’s so easy to misunderstand what an unwanted habit is trying to tell us, so we’ll explore the messages habits are trying to send us and how our unwanted habits are actually a perfect part of our innate design. If that sounds absurd or ridiculous, consider that until very recently we thought we had only five senses. Scientists now identify more than 20. Things look true until we are presented with an alternative. I’m Alexandra Amor and I’m an author, a podcaster, and someone who’s searched for answers about my own unwanted overeating habit for the past three decades. Name a strategy for resolving a habit and I’ve tried it. Nothing worked. Then in 2017 I discovered a field of spiritual psychology that had me doubting my perceived brokenness and instead awakening to the innate well-being that is within all of us. This change in understanding has me looking toward my wholeness, rather than perceived brokenness, and has helped me to resolve so much of what I had been suffering with for years. It has led me back to my natural state of calm resilience. No will power required. If you are someone who has an unresolved and unwanted habit that’s what I want to share with you in this course. Lesson 1: Your habit is not a problem Hello and welcome, Have you ever found yourself engaged in a behaviour while simultaneously berating yourself for that behaviour? I’m guessing you answered yes to that question because the truth is almost all humans have this experience at one time or another. This is an unwanted habit. Smoking Drinking too much An excess of online shopping Overeating  And it’s possible, if you’re listening to this, that you’ve tried to stop an unwanted behaviour at one time or another. Our tried and not-so-true techniques to stop such habits often involve things like will power, or distracting ourselves, or tricking ourselves into avoiding the habitual behaviour. We can work really hard to try to force or convince an unwanted habit to go away and leave us alone. Unwanted habits can feel like a monkey on our back, one who is clingy and relentless when it comes to needing our attention. I personally struggled with an overeating habit for 30+ years. That habit felt like a character flaw, a failing, and a personal weakness. It was also something I was deeply ashamed of. So I traveled the self-help road for all those decades, trying to ‘fix’ myself. I focused mightily on the problematic nature of the habit; that’s where all my attention went – innocently thinking of the habit as a problem. Among the fixes I tried were talk therapy, EMDR, mindfulness, counting food points, extremely restrictive diets, hypnosis, emotional freedom technique, rational recovery, cognitive behavioural therapy….I could go on. This is by no means an exhaustive list of what i tried. None of it worked. In fact, my overeating habit got worse over the years. Looking back now I appreciate my relentless efforts to help myself. I was trying to find a solution to something that looked a problem. But what if our unwanted habits are actually an expression of the innate Intelligence that is within all of us? What if they are a sign of our mental health, not a psychological failing? What if they are a sign that we are in perfect working order? Earlier I touched on the fact that unwanted habits are universal. They cross cultural and geographic boundaries. Why is that? Why are habits and addictions such universal human experiences?  Con

One Sunday afternoon in April a traveller and a podcaster meet and share a drive through the mountains of Vancouver Island. As a result, the podcaster is deeply moved by the message the traveller, and the universe, had for her. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes Clarification about the traffic light metaphor Trusting a good feeling that comes with an unusual experience Following that good feeling Listening to nudges from the universe Listening to the feeling behind the words someone is sharing Learning to relax as a spiritual practice Noting the miracles and synchronicities that happen to us Resources Mentioned in this Episode Michael Singer’s books are The Untethered Soul and The Surrender Experiment Dominic Scafidi and Grace Kelly’s Living Miraculously course Transcript of Episode Hello explorers and welcome to Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor. This is episode 59. Thank you for being here with me today. I want to remind you that if you’re interested in joining the Unbroken Community, or at least getting on the waitlist there, you can do that at AlexandraAmor.com/community. That’s going to be an interactive twice monthly group call, lots of interaction with me, lots of support, lots of community, as the name implies, and connection with your fellow explorers. And all the details are on that webpage. As I said, AlexandraAmor.com/community. Second thing. Last week in Episode 58, partway through, I talked about the red, yellow, green light of truth of tuning into or leaning into connecting with our intuition about moving forward, which is going to connect to today’s show, actually. My friend who listens to this episode pointed out to me, she said, “When you’re talking about the red, green, yellow light, are you seeing that visually?” which made me realize, Oh, I didn’t really explain that properly, then. The light metaphor that I used, really just explains a feeling. So when I say I would get a green light in my body, what I mean is, I feel it somewhere inside me. Now I specifically feel that feeling in my solar plexus, that’s the place where I always feel everything. You know how we talk about it, we have a gut feeling, I think that’s where that expression must come from. Because I always feel those things in the area of my solar plexus. Sort of behind my belly button. That part of my body. When I feel green light feeling it’s there. I don’t see a green light or anything. Same with red, and then yellow. The yellow light’s kind of interesting, because it’s either it’s a little bit binary, you know, it’s a yes or no, very often. And I guess sometimes it feels like a well, you know, maybe maybe not, there’s a bit of hesitation there, it’s less, perhaps less dramatic than a full a no, full stop. So that maybe we could classify that as yellow light. In your own experience, you might, if you give the traffic light metaphor a try, if you’re practicing it, your experience might be different. Maybe you feel the feeling somewhere else in your body. Or maybe it’s more of a knowing than a than a than a physical feeling. Mine has a little bit of physicality to it, it’s a knowing for sure. But it’s there’s also definitely a feeling going on, in like I say in my solar plexus. So I wanted to be clear about that. And clarify. Thank you to my friend for asking that question. I appreciate it. When I’m recording these episodes, where I it’s just me talking, I’m just staring at the computer screen and talking into the microphone. And it’s easy to get rolling along and forget to explain things as clearly maybe as I should. If someone’s not there to ask questions. It can be easy to just sort of barrel along. So if you ever have a question, same thing, and something like that, where something’s not clear, that I’ve talked about, I hope you’ll submit that and let me know. You can do that at AlexandraAmor.com/question. Okay, so on to today’s episode, which I haven’t as I’m recording this, I realize I haven’t got a title for it yet. But that’ll come next. I want to tell you a really great story about something that happened to me just three days ago. I wanted to share this for a number of reasons, which will become clearer and I’ll explain more about that as we get to the end of the actual story itself. A few days ago, I was driving home from visiting my friend, the same friend who asked the question about the traffic light. And it’s a quite a long drive. It’s three hours, I live in pretty remote area. So I was coming along through this area of Vancouver Island, it’s actually quite well known. It’s called Cathedral Grove. And you can stop and park your car. And there’s all these enormous cedar

Our bodies are the vehicles in which we move through life. Our thinking can be the fog that sometimes fills up the windshield we are looking through. Thankfully, we all have factory installed GPS to help guide our way. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Click the image below to learn about the Unbroken Community and join the waitlist. Transcript of Episode Hello, explorers, and welcome to episode 58 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor. I’m here today to talk about the windshield of life. I’ll get into that in just a moment. And it is really the one thing I think that when we see it about life, when we understand this idea, this metaphor, it really does change everything, including our ability to deal with things like anxiety, or depression, or unwanted habits like overeating. So we’ll get into that in just a second.  I do want to mention again about the Unbroken Community that I’m starting up. So if you’re interested in joining a group of like minded people, having some one-on-one coaching from me, meeting regularly, twice a month to do that, and learning from the coaching that other people receive as well, go to alexandraamorcom/community. You can learn all about what I’m thinking of for this community. And learn more about the details, including the 10% off that you’ll receive for all my books and courses, and a library of videos that will be available, all that kind of stuff, Alexandraamor.com/community. And there, you can sign up to join the waiting list.  The community hasn’t started yet, if you’re listening to this, as I’m recording in early April 2024. But I want to gauge the level of interest and just see if there’s enough interest in having a group like that. So that’s where you can go to learn more about that and sign up if you would like further information when the group comes together, and when it will be meeting and all that kind of stuff. All right, let’s get on to this metaphor that I’ve got for you today about the windscreen of life. This came to me the other day, and I jotted it down, probably more than a week ago. And I’ve been sort of contemplating it ever since. I really like it, I think it really explains a lot about what we’re trying to get our heads around when we’re exploring this inside out understanding. So it looks like this.  Picture a car, for me, any kind of car doesn’t matter what kind of car it is, could be your car could be your fantasy car, whatever it is. And that car is going to be a metaphor for us for the way that we move through life. And in every car nowadays, anyway, there’s always a windscreen protecting the driver and the passengers, the interior of the car from what’s on the outside. And so like I said, yeah, the car is a metaphor for you for your body. It’s the vehicle that you are using to move through life.  The windscreen is our ability to see. It’s as clear as possible. We want it to be clean and clear so that we can see what’s happening outside of the vehicle, outside of the car. And then what happens?  Have you ever gotten into your car and this happens here in the environment in the geographic area where I live in the fall and winter. And the atmospheric conditions are such that if the car has been sitting outside for a little while and I get in it, it has that thin film of fog on the inside of the windscreen. It’s not frost or anything on the outside, it’s on the inside. And that is going to be what we’re going to use for a metaphor for our thinking. So to a lesser or greater degree.  As we’re moving through life in this vehicle, there’s always like I say to a lesser or greater degree, there’s always a layer of that thin fog or mist inside the vehicle. And in the old paradigm of psychology, and in the self help world that so many of us are so used to being a part of, the strategy that we had for dealing with that fog on the inside of the windscreen was first of all, we were kind of oblivious that it was on the inside. Seems to me, we almost treated it as though Well, I guess the best way to say it is we, we treated it as though it was something we could control. And that it wasn’t something that was created. Just by the very nature of being in this vehicle of having a vehicle to move through life.  We treat that fog as though it’s a problem, like I say and and like something we can control. But the thing is that that fog is always there. And it’s not something we can control. And like I say it can be thinner or thicker at different times, depending on atmospheric conditions, nothing to do with us. That fog represents our thinking, it represents Thought.  And the reason I say that this is such a powerful thing to see. And that once

Life has an unerring knack for presenting us with challenges and opportunities for change. Dr. Linda Pettit explores our innate intuitive nature and how we can use that to help us navigate the curves that life brings to us. Dr. Linda Sandel Pettit is a distinguished author known for her insightful work, including her acclaimed memoir, Leaning into Cuves: Trusting the Wild, Intuitive Way of Love. With over five decades dedicated to writing, four decades immersed in counseling psychology, and two decades serving as a spiritual mentor, Dr. Linda brings a wealth of experience and expertise to her practice as a speaker, writer and mentor. Unafraid to delve into divine wisdom, deep feminine knowing, and intuition, Dr. Linda empowers her clients to tap into their innermost truths. Through her guidance, she inspires and facilitates the release of pure love, allowing individuals to express their authentic selves fully. You can find Linda Pettit at LindaSandelPettit.com and on Instagram at lindasandelpettit. Click the image below to learn about the Unbroken Community and join the waitlist. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes Discovering that anxiety is thought created  What if being calm and in a good feeling is how we’re meant to exist? The only thing that ever gets in the way of love is our thinking Using self-reporting instruments to gauge how clients were being helped by the Three Principles understanding How our intuitive knowing is a life raft for us How mystical experiences are the norm or all of us Examples of listening to intuitive knowing and letting it guide us Why waiting for the moving parts of life to align is important Resources Mentioned in this Episode Linda’s book Leaning Into Curves Book: The Butterfly Effect by Andy Andrews Transcript of Interview with Dr. Linda Pettit Alexandra: Dr. Linda Sandel Pettit, welcome to Unbroken. Linda: Thank you. Good to be here. Alexandra: It’s lovely to have you here. So why don’t we begin with a bit of your background?  Why don’t you tell us who you are and when you came across the Three Principles? Linda: I have kind of an interesting background. I started out in journalism and public relations. And then I found my way into the helping professions. I was a counseling psychologist for 30 some, 35 years. And now I do speaking, and writing and mentoring.  I came across the Three Principles about what was exactly 21 years ago. So when I met my husband, who many know in the Three Principles world, Dr. Bill Pettit, he’s a psychiatrist. And he had been mentored by Sydney Banks, the man who shared the principles originally. Or boy, even at that point, I think it had been close to 20 years. And so I got introduced through Bill.  Syd was still alive then so he would call our home just about every other weekend. And we would put him on speakerphone and he would teach, share with us. He was very interested in mentoring both of us; Bill as a psychiatrist to me as a psychologist in the understanding. I will say, it wasn’t an easy immediate sell for me. Alexandra: That was my next question. Tell us about that. Linda: Bill should be the one that it was a pretty, I believe, at one point, as I recall it, it was actually in an airport. We were waiting for a flight and I got so triggered that I said to him, “If you ever mentioned Sydney Banks, again, we are getting a divorce.”  Just to give your listeners, in case they struggle with the understanding, I certainly know that. And in a way, interestingly, it was kind of incremental. Sometimes I would struggle with it. And sometimes I wouldn’t. Because I knew right from the start that there was something there. And I could see that it was settling me so that I was having less and less anxiety.  Then as I began to see that anxiety was entirely thought created. That was really beautiful. It wasn’t something that just parked on me, sat on my head, and I was completely powerless over it. That was my, my primary struggle, I would say, was with being anxious. I’d been pretty anxious all my life. From the time of being a small child, even to the point of having some degree of obsessive compulsive behaviors, but not a full blown disorder where I had rituals and things. Although I was a counter; I used counting to calm myself, but more just a general, anxious approach to the world and a tendency to worry.  I could see that that was settling down. Although I don’t know that I could have told you exactly why. But it was kind of like, I used to think of it this way that I lived from a place of anxiety. And occasionally, maybe 20% of the time, I would stretch into these areas where I wouldn’t feel anxious, or I wouldn’t feel worried. And I would wonder about that. Where to go? How did that happen? I’m feeling pretty good right now. 

When we strive for perfection are we doing ourselves a favour or adding unwanted stress into our lives? When it comes to eating well and resolving an overeating habit, I think embracing the beautiful messiness of life is much more helpful. Click the image below to learn more about the Unbroken Community. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes: The top 3 ways perfection is a mistake How needing to be perfect increases the amount of thinking we’re dealing with Why perfection is boring How important the messiness of life is On the unkindness of perfection Transcript of Episode Hello explorers and welcome to episode 56 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor. I’m here today to talk about perfection, and how it’s a mistake.  Before I jump into that I wanted to mention, in case you didn’t hear me last week, that I’ve put together a page of information about a community I’m starting, called the Unbroken Community. You can join a join up for the waitlist for that community at: AlexandraAmor.com/community I want to find out if there’s interest in this sort of thing. So there’s a whole bunch of information on that page that I just mentioned, about what the community will look like, when the group coaching calls that we’ll have, the pricing and all the other details about what’s involved, whether it’s a good fit for you, there’s information there about that, and whether it isn’t. I think it’s always really important in these situations to make it clear what the offering is, and one of the ways to do that is to make it clear that this might not be a good fit for you. If so, you’ll see a little list of bullet points about that as well. So lots of information there. Check it out: AlexandraAmor.com/community if you’re interested in connecting with me, connecting with others who are wanting to resolve unwanted habits, like overeating, but it could be any kind of unwanted habit as well. Because as I said last week, they all have the same root cause. So yeah, check that out. All right, so now let’s talk about perfection. In the last few weeks, since I had my coaching call with Tanya Elfersy \that you can listen to on episode 53. As I said, a couple of weeks ago, my eating habits have been way better.  I’m so grateful for that. And I’m really happy because it feels like I turned a corner. I had had more insights, learned some more stuff as we do. It’s an ongoing journey. It’s never over is it really? I think as long as we’re alive, we’re going to be continuing to learn.  Since then, since that corner that I turned, I’ve noticed some more some thinking and more thinking that I’m comfortable with about perfection about holding myself to a standard when it comes to eating that feels a little bit perfectionist. It feels a little bit like holding an elastic really tight, you know that feeling? I know from personal experience that when I hold that elastic really tight, and really hold myself to a standard of perfection, that eventually the elastic snaps and I dive into eating badly.  So what I wanted to do today was explore that a little bit, explore that feeling of wanting to be perfect, and how it can become a bit toxic in and of itself. And that’s why the title of this episode is perfection is a mistake.  What I’m going to outline is three ways that I thought of that perfection is a mistake, ways that it can become toxic. I’m sure there are many more than this. But these are the three that came top of mind as I was preparing for this episode. So here we go. Number one, perfection really gets us into our thinking. This was the first sign for me that I was leaning towards wanting to be perfect was that my thinking becomes a bit revved up. In other words, I noticed that I’m having lots of thinking about food and about what I’m eating and how I’m doing. On both ends of the spectrum notice that actually to kind of congratulating myself on one end, and feeling good about how I’m eating, which is not the end of the world, that’s not terrible.  But the problem is that then the pendulum does tend to swing to the other side as well. And it any kind of little, not any kind, actually. But there are some foods that I might want to eat that where my thinking gets more revved up than with other foods. So for example, I had a couple of glasses of wine on the weekend that just passed. That’s something that can really trigger my perfectionistic thinking. What happens, I think, when we get into having a lot of thinking about things like this, and about trying to be perfect, is that it can be a little bit like a dog chasing its tail. There’s no way to be perfect. And this is why aiming for perfection is a mistake. And if we feel or

When was the last time you felt deeply heard? Nurse and Three Principles practitioner Wendy Williams shares the impact deep listening has on both the listener and those being listened to. We also discuss the priceless benefits that understanding every human’s innate resilience can have for nurses and other healers. As a nurse educator and clinician for over 25 years, Wendy Williams helps people facing extraordinary (and ordinary) challenges to move forward with grace and ease. She is an experienced mental well-being educator. As Wendy sees it (and teaches it), we are meant to thrive in this world, but sometimes we get stuck. Whether it’s being swept up in the whirlwind of everyday life or struggling to overcome a major life hurdle, getting back on track, and moving forward can, and will, happen quite naturally. Wendy’s deep experience mixed with her practical and kind-hearted teaching & education point the way forward. You can find Wendy Williams at ForwardWithWendy.com and on Facebook at Find Your Way Forward. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes Paying attention to work we’re naturally drawn to Recognizing an awareness of our innate well-being How in any circumstance in life we can react in any number of ways depending on our thinking On the universal intelligence that flows through everything, including us The benefits for healers like nurses of knowing about our innate resilience The difference between deep listening and active listening Resources Mentioned in this Episode Wendy’s Deep Listening class with Lori Carpenos, April 5 to 7, 2024 Sydney Banks’ book The Missing Link Beyond Recovery Jacqueline Hollows’ book Wings of an Angel Transcript of Interview with Wendy Williams Alexandra: Wendy Williams, welcome to Unbroken.  Wendy: Thank you very much for having me. I’m excited to be here with you.  Alexandra: Oh, I’m excited, you’re here as well. So let’s begin with a little bit of your background. Tell us about yourself and how you got interested in the Three Principles. Wendy: Sure thing. Well, I live in the northeastern part of the United States near Boston, Massachusetts, I have been a nurse for more years. I got married at the ancient age of 38 to a guy that I just adore, even as we speak, I adore him.  I have been a nurse, like I say, for a very long time, specializing for years in conditions like HIV AIDS, cancer, hospice, so I’m a real pro at the bedside when people are saying goodbye. And, a lot of what I do happens to do with ongoing or chronic pain.  I’m still practicing as a nurse in that regard. But I’m also having a real focus on bringing the Three Principles to a wider community in health care, because a lot of my sisters and brothers in health care are kind of tired and burning out a little bit, especially after the pandemic. So I’m excited to extend the ripples, as I say, for the awakening, that certainly the Three Principles is brought to my life and many people that I know.  Alexandra: Wow. You’re not just dealing with giving people flu shots, and mending broken fingers.  Those are some pretty deep human experiences that people are having when you encounter them. Wendy: Absolutely. It was an interesting thing, when I was a brand new nurse I worked on what we call a medical surgical floor, which is a catch all phrase, meaning somebody broke a leg, somebody’s got appendicitis and but just kind of general routine things that you need to be in a hospital for for a bit. There were a lot of orthopedic problems on that floor, broken hips, broken, knees, whatever.  There was this one lady in there who had cancer in her bones. And so a lot of what we had to do for her was find a way to make her comfortable, we knew that the cancer wasn’t going to ever leave that was going to be, , part of her last days. And so that is what we call the report in the morning.  The new nursing staff for the day arrives at 6:30 in the morning, and gets the report from the night nurses who says this is what’s going on, this is what people need. And it was interesting to me, I said, huh, this is kind of interesting to notice that all the other nurses were like, Oh, that lady in seventh with the bone cancer. And I was like, bring the lady with the bone.  I was a young woman, I was 20 to 23. And so that was a clue. I said, Hmm, I’m drawn to that. I feel interested in that. And it became very, very clear to me that every loved one that was standing around her bed, wringing their hands, or holding their hands or crying, was also my patient. It wasn’t just the person in the bed.  As I look back, I feel very blessed that that was a gift that was given to me. A clear path was said, “You’re good at this, what you’re doing.” You’re not afraid. I u

Last week, on episode 53 of Unbroken, Tania Elfersy coached me around my overeating habit and the return of that habit after months of having it resolved. This week I share the moments that had the most meaning for me and also expand on some of the highlights to offer greater clarity and understanding for those who are dealing with an unwanted habit like overeating. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes How the words we use in this exploration are pointing to a feeling Why did I forget what I know about the drive to overeat? How wrestling with ‘problems’ makes them sticky How we can use even healthy food to quell the drive to overeat How our feelings are always an accurate barometer about our state of mind and/or connection to our well-being Why awareness is enough to change an unwanted habit Resources Mentioned in this Episode Episode 53, It’s Not All On You with Coach Tania Elfersy Tania’s website My new course on Insight Timer is called How To Tell If A Group Has Cult-Like Tendencies Sydney Banks’ YouTube Channel Book: It’s Not About The Food Podcast: Psychology Has It Backwards with Christine Heath and Judith Sedgeman Transcript of Episode Hello explorers and welcome to episode 54 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor. I’m back with a follow up to last week’s episode 53 with Tania Elfersy where she coached me. So I’m going to go through, as I mentioned, and pull out the things that really stuck out for me, the highlights, and talk about what resonated with me, maybe provide some clarity if things weren’t clear. Tania and I are quite good friends, we’ve known each other for over four years, we are in a mastermind group together. So I suspect that we were able to shorthand some things. So I just want to pull a couple of those things out, and make sure that it was clear to you the listening audience. Before we begin, a couple of pieces of information I wanted to share. One is that because of Tania’s coaching session with me, my eating is back on track, I’m eating in a way that really works for me that feels good. And that feels healthy. And it doesn’t feel disordered, for lack of a better word. I don’t feel that drive to overeat anymore. I just feel really good about the way I’m eating. So yay, that’s a victory. The second thing is that if you’re listening to this when it comes out, I have a new course that’s coming out on Insight Timer. And it has absolutely nothing to do with food or eating, but I thought I’d mention it anyway. If you’re familiar with Insight Timer, it’s an app that you can download to your phone, obviously. And it started out literally as a as a timer for people who wanted to meditate. And they’ve expanded the scope of their services quite a bit. I’m on there as a teacher, sharing things about unwanted habits and eating and all that kind of stuff. The way it works is that if you download the app you can access a whole ton of stuff for free. So you don’t need a membership to access a number of different files there. It’s all audio. I have two tracks on there that you can listen to. So if you just search for my name, Alexandra Amor on Insight Timer, you’ll find those two tracks. They’re very similar to what I talked about here on the podcast. And then the new course that I released. Courses, which are more than one audio track, are behind a paywall. So if you happen to be a subscriber to Insight Timer, then you’ll have access to that course. And it’s called How To Tell If A Group Has Cult-Like Tendencies. So obviously, this is based on my background, having been in a cult for 10 years in the 1990s. It’s something I’m passionate about sharing information about helping people to understand what cults are, and specifically how they work and how we can notice when we’re getting into a situation which, you know, doesn’t feel comfortable. And we can gauge or analyze whether or not it’s actually a cult. If you have a paid subscription to Insight Timer, give it a listen and give it a review if you have a moment, that would be great. It’s always helpful to have reviews and other people’s opinions about how the course is. It’s not long, it’s roughly five, five-minute audio lessons. The other thing I wanted to do was give a shout out to a couple people who reached out to me after my podcast from two weeks ago, where I was talking about how I was struggling and that kind of thing. A big shout out to Pam H who reached out to me and we have a lovely conversation and a little chat about our journeys with food and with all the things. It was really nice to connect to you Pam and I just really appreciate the kindness and the care that people exhibited by doing that. It was r

You’ve heard me struggle for the past few months because I’ve had a relapse into my overeating habit. I finally wised up and called in my friend Tania Elfersy to coach me. In this episode, Tania shares so much wisdom and teaches me many things including that awareness of what is truth and what isn’t is so important and that once we’re aware our divine design will take things from there. Tania Elfersy has a passion for revealing rarely discussed truths about women’s life-cycle events. She is a transformative coach, speaker, writer and educator. Since 2015, Tania has been supporting women through perimenopause and menopause, allowing them to reach natural symptom relief, and a greater sense of well-being. You can find Tania Elfersy at TheWiserWoman.com and on Facebook @TheWiserWoman. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes The truth is always in clarity, never in a bad feeling What is an unwanted habit telling us about? What happens when we fall off the path of truth? The importance of being aware of our experience in the moment How wrestling with what we’re feeling makes it ‘sticky’ How it’s not on us to fix how we feel – it will fix on it’s own once we’re aware of having fallen off the path of truth When we are calm solutions arise Transcript of Interview with Coach Tania Elfersy Alexandra: Thank you for being with me here today. I really appreciate it. And here’s the funny thing. I had a couple of insights in the last couple of days that have felt like they’ve been quite helpful. I was listening to some Sydney Banks stuff while I was cooking the other night. And I guess it doesn’t really matter what was said, but he said, “You are a divine being walking through this life trying to find yourself.” I really resonated with that. It really encapsulated everything we do, and just shifted something for me. But let’s talk about the stuff that’s tricky. Because that’s where the juice is. My main question is if you felt stuck, what do you do in that situation? Tania: That’s why I often feel stuck. Because I’m such a human. I don’t fly on my little enlightenment cushion. And sometimes, it just occurs to me that the feeling is telling me what’s true. So I fall back into the feeling. And ponder on that. I’ve checked this out now for about six, seven years. Because it’s not enough that I’ll tell you, the feeling is pointing to what’s true. And in that sense, as I’m sure you know, that is the feeling of clarity. And everything else is not true. So, again, I could tell you this, but until you’ve really experienced it. I’m still surprised when I get that. And I’ll give you an example, really, it’s not, I guess it’s not like a stuck example, but it’s an example of that. I was trying to go to sleep, I’d almost fallen asleep or I just about falling asleep. And all of a sudden there was a huge bang. I mean, boom. And so I’m going through my mind and I’m like, okay, it doesn’t sound like it with a missile. Unfortunately, I know what that sounds like. It doesn’t sound like there’s a bomb. I know that. But there was definitely something. I was just lying there. I wasn’t moving. And I suspected my husband might have heard it, but I thought maybe it was asleep. I didn’t want to wake him up. And so I was going through what maybe it’s a new kind of bomb that I haven’t heard before. And it’s a new kind of weapon and a new kind of thing. And then I was like listening for would there be sirens. Because we’re still in the war. There will be sirens and I’m not hearing any sirens or maybe it was further away but it was still quiet out there. Hang on. I got up and I checked the news and there was nothing in the news. Maybe they’re hiding it from us. Maybe it’s so bad they’re hiding. Right? So this is all going through my mind. And it is 2am. So it’s like, by the time I got up, it was 2am. I think it was like kind of falling asleep that one time. So that whole time, I was just like, lying there, having all these emotions. And then I came back to bed and I woke up my husband. “Did you hear that?” And he’s like, “It’s thunder.” I don’t know why I didn’t catch it as thunder, but I didn’t. So then I had this whole hour. And of course, if I had tuned in before, I would know. Because it’s always true. It’s always true, even if the truth we can say, is something that we would classify as uncomfortable. The truth is always in the clarity, and it’s never in the uncomfortable feeling. It’s so profound. Right? And like I said, you have to test it to believe it. Because we’re always going to say, Well, surely this this one, this one is, you know,

Insight creates change. This I know for sure. Not willpower. Not restriction. Not even information. Insight. But what happens when we get tired of waiting for insight? What if we want to change and just…aren’t? Can we cultivate insight? Is there a way to seek out insight without layering more thinking onto a situation? You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes Struggling with being in the back of the spiral for 5 months Looking for answers in universal intelligence in an active way Are spirit guides the same as universal intelligence? Is there a way to access guidance when we need it? Not wanting to share what I’m not embodying Is unresolved trauma causing what I’m experiencing? Resources Mentioned in this Episode George Pransky’s new book The Secret to Mental Health Episode 22 of Unbroken with Maryse Godet Copans Transcript of episode Hello, explorers, and welcome to episode 52 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor. I’m happy to have you here today with me. Thank you for joining me. I’ve got a couple of housekeeping items before we launch in here. The first is – and probably no one cares about this but me – I’m going to change the numbering system of the podcasts. Again, I’m sure nobody cares. I used to number them like q&a Number five, and then regular number five for the interview episodes. But now that there’s just one episode per week going out, I’m just going to number them sequentially. I’m not going to break them out, like they were being broken out before. So if you’re wondering about that, and I’m sure you weren’t, there you go. Now you have an answer. The second little bit of housekeeping I wanted to mention is: George Pransky has a new book out, it’s called The Secret to Mental Health. I haven’t read it yet. So this isn’t a review or anything. But I wanted to mention it in case you were interested in picking that up. George Pransky has been around this understanding for a very long time. He was one of the very first students who worked with Sidney banks. He and Roger Mills and Elsie Spittle were people right at the very beginning hearing from Mr. Banks, way before he started calling it the Three Principles. It wasn’t really called anything then. He has specialized in relationships, he has a really good book called The Relationship Handbook. That’s one of his earlier works. And so this one new one is called The Secret to Mental Health. I’ve downloaded the sample to my Kindle app on my iPad. So I’ll be starting in on that very soon. When I get finished with the mystery novel that I’m reading, that I’m really enjoying, that I couldn’t put down last night. I just realized as I hit record, I haven’t figured out what the title of this episode is officially going to be when I put the little illustration up, and the blog post and everything. What I want to talk about is universal intelligence and universal wisdom and whether or not there’s a better way, a more active way, to access that. And here’s why. As I mentioned, for the last few months, I have felt like I’ve been in the back of the spiral. And if you don’t know what I mean by that, if you go back a few q&a episodes, I talk about what that means. How our learning and growth is like a spiral, like a corkscrew shape, like a corkscrew lying on its side. And it’s always moving forward. But we have these times where we’re in the back of the of that curve. And it can seem harder, and things get tougher. And yet, when we know that when we know that that’s just a natural part of growth, and learning and change and life and our progression through life, then it’s a lot easier to deal with, because we don’t think it’s a problem, or a something to fix or that we’re broken. It’s just part of the way stuff works just like winter is part of one of the seasons. We might not like it, some people love winter. But some people don’t but that doesn’t mean that winter is a problem or that it’s a broken part of mother nature or anything like that. I’ve been wanting to explore or I’ve sort of very recently come to touch on this idea of exploring different ways to connect with universal wisdom because I’ve been in the back of the spiral for really for about five months. I think it started in October 2023. And this is Leap Day 2024 as I record this and put it up. I’m late recording and I’m late recording because there’s because of being in the back of the spiral. I just feel like I’ve lost a lot of momentum in my exploration of this understanding. I don’t feel very motivated. I feel kind of like depressed except not quite as deep and dark as I’ve been depressed in the past

Author, therapist and coach Lori Carpenos has seen that what affects our relationships the most is our state of mind. When the couples she works with see that ‘working on’ their relationship is not the answer to a loving relationship, that’s when everything changes. Lori Carpenos opened a private individual, couples and family counseling practice, in 1994, to pass along something she had stumbled upon in 1985, when she was privileged to meet the late Sydney Banks. As a result, her life changed in ways she could never have imagined at that time. She maintains a private practice in West Hartford, CT as a therapist, life coach, business consultant, facilitator, and writer. You can find Lori Carpenos at 3PrinciplesTherapy.com. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes Starting out as an art teacher Resonating with Sydney Banks’ exploration of innate mental health On recognizing that ‘working’ on a relationship only makes things harder How we all fall back into love when our minds are quiet Getting on the wrong bus with our thinking but knowing we can choose a different ride How we all always have all the love we need within us How arguments originate from our state of mind On being single and our relationship to thought about that How we are all in relationship with our thinking Transcript of Interview with Lori Carpenos Alexandra: Lori Carpenos, welcome to Unbroken. Lori: Oh, thank you, Alexandra. It’s nice to be with you. Alexandra: It’s great to have you here. I’m so happy to meet you. Tell us a bit about your background and how you came to find the Three Principles. Lori: Well, they actually found me. It was quite by happenstance. I’d never heard of Sydney Banks, never heard of the three principles. I was an art teacher in Massachusetts, and I got a master’s in expressive arts therapy. I had this idea I wanted to do art therapy. And the place for that was California. So I was 25 years old, and I decided to quit my tenured art teacher job. Much to the dismay of my parents. They tried to stop me. But I felt called in retrospect, when I realized it was not to be an art therapist, because I’m driving across the country. Because California was known as the land of New Thought and new things. And art therapy was supposedly really big. I get halfway across. And I’m listening to a program, NPR, where they’re talking about a bill that had just passed in California, eliminating art, music, all the extra curricular activities in hospitals, schools, and I couldn’t believe it. It was like I was hearing something that was not true. And I’m thinking well, I’m halfway there. I already quit my job. I don’t have a job back on the east coast. So what do I do? I decided to keep going. I didn’t have a job. I knew one person in Northern California where I was headed to. No job, a cocktail waitress with my master’s degree my pocket. And one thing led to another. Well it’s a long story not to get into. But the crux of the matter was, I got into a relationship with a boyfriend, who had gotten the degree from California trans personal psychology, and he was heading to Florida, to the Advanced Human Studies Institute, which you probably heard was the first training place in, in, in the world, actually, at that time. So I thought, well I’ll go with him, of course, I’ll go with him, I’ll be closer to my family, then. I went out to California and this is now three years later. I did get a few part time jobs as an art therapist in the VA hospital, and also in Children’s Hospital at Stanford University. And both of those were really interesting situations. So I landed at the Advanced Human Studies Institute, and I’m going to a talk by this unknown person to me, Sydney Banks, and it was like somebody turned a light on in my head, is the only way I could explain it. I suddenly realize that the trajectory of my life is not completely up to me. That there’s some flow that is beyond me. And what I realized later, is how else to describe something like that, but I was drawn, I was driven to drive all that distance, by myself alone in my car with whatever belongings I had at the time. I realized later that it was really was a calling to be part of this understanding the which now we know is the whole paradigm shift in psychology. Alexandra: And what happened next? Where did where did this road take you? Lori: At the Advanced Human Studies Institute, and I wasn’t a student, but my boyfriend was a student for a year, and I saw that he was calmer, more settled down. And so I decided to take the year training. And that’s where I met so many people from that are familiar to you and some of the listeners. I learned from them as much as I did from Syd Banks because they would have insights. And I would

In instances where our bodies and our innate wisdom are speaking to us, it can be tempting to see those messages as problems. But when we see them for the wisdom they carry and stay open to the messages these ‘problems’ have for us, we begin to see that they are always trying to help us on our paths as human beings. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes When a good sleeper encounters a bout of insomnia Discovering insightfully that is people pleasing tendencies keeping me awake How insomnia does not mean that I’m broken or that my ability to sleep is broken How insomnia, like overeating, is feedback about our mental state What is insight and how does it arrive? On the universal intelligence that is always flowing through all of us Transcript of episode Hello explorers and welcome to Q&A episode 50 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor. Before we get started today, I want to have a little mini celebration with you. Because this is q&a Episode 50. That means there are 100 episodes have Unbroken now. 50 episodes like this q&a one and 50 interview episodes. I’m pretty happy and proud of that milestone and I thank you for being with me here along for the ride, however long you’ve been joining me. It’s a real pleasure for me to be here to do this every week, and to share what I see with the aim of helping others, of supporting and uplifting and sharing what has made such a big huge difference in my life. So here’s to another 100 episodes. I aim to be around for the next year as well. February 14, 2024 will be the one year anniversary of the current website and the Freedom From Overeating course and Unbroken podcast. So we’ll celebrate that as well. Today’s q&a episode is going to involve a bit of a story. I’m also going to give you some background to give some context for what I’m about to share. And this story today has to do with insight, it has to do with our unbrokenness, which is really nice given that this is the 100th episode. So let’s get started. I’ll begin by telling you that about towards the end of 2023, October or November, there came a situation. I should back up a little further. I’m on the board or I was on the board of a little nonprofit that exists here in the town where I live. It’s a nonprofit housing society, independent living for seniors in the Ucluelet area. I’ve been on the board for a couple of years. And there’s one paid position in this organization. And the building is just a small, like, it looks like an apartment building. It has 10 apartments, all for seniors. And it’s independent living, like I said, so everybody is independent. They really don’t need any kind of assistance with mental health or physical chores or that kind of thing. Some of them can get care workers to come in, but 80% 90% of them don’t. It’s like an apartment building. And there’s one paid position. And it’s an administrative position that is 15 hours a week in the building. The woman who had been doing it was of retirement age. And also, she had been with the organization for five years and had brought the people, the tenants through the pandemic. And so she was feeling a little bit burnt out. So at the end of 2023, the board kind of came to a little bit of a crisis point in that this woman wanted to retire. And we had done some interviews looking for someone to take the position and couldn’t really find anybody who we felt would be a really good fit either because they weren’t available at the times we needed them to be or that kind of thing. And in the end, I actually had an insight. I was in the shower one day, and it suddenly occurred to me, “Well, what if I did that work? What if I committed to doing it for a year?” Like I say it’s just two or three hours a day. So I could do it in addition to doing this work here that I do for Unbroken and Freedom From Overeating. And it would help with the board that I was on that was in a bit of a pickle. And it would also give this business, AlexandraAmor.com, a bit of it, it felt like it just needed some space and some time to grow and to find its feet. With any self-employment venture you know they say when you start a new business it takes three to five years before it really comes into its own and has a lot of momentum and is earning its keep so to speak, that that the finances go into the black. And so I thought, well, this job with the seniors housing is doable in terms of it’s just a couple of hours a day. And I would be earning a little bit of income on the side from that, which would give this business, a little bit of space, a little bit of space and time to evolve and to find its feet. So it seemed like a really good fit. And because the idea came to me insightfully it felt good. I sat with it for a

Nikon Gormley had achieved success as a top-level athlete, but he was still searching for answers. He wanted to feel calm during his taekwondo matches so he began looking in all the usual places. It wasn’t until he discovered the Three Principles that things began to click into place for him. Now he coaches others about the innate resilience and well-being that we all possess. Nikon Gormley is passionate about guiding people to unleash their true, full potential so that they can experience greater levels of success, purpose, and well-being in their lives. He helps people understand and experience the beauty of how their minds work, harness the power of insight to navigate life with more clarity and ease and achieve more with less struggle, less anxiety, and less pressure. Nikon is also passionate about Taekwondo. He have been practising Taekwondo for 25+ years and has a 5th Dan Black Belt. He has trained and competed around the world as an elite athlete. You can find Nikon Gormley at NikonGormley.com and on YouTube @nikongormley. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes Training as an Olympic taekwondo athlete Searching for ways to be a better athlete Growing a business at its own pace, rather than out of insecurity When the habit of being discontented stops being interesting How our feelings are always guiding us home How ‘nobody gets stupid when they’re peaceful’ On the nature of worry and its origin in thought Choosing what we pay attention to How ambition can be insecurity in disguise Resources Mentioned in this Episode Michael Neill’s book The Inside Out Revolution Mavis Karn’s book It’s That Simple Listen to my interview with Mavis Transcript of Interview with Nikon Gormley Alexandra: Nikon Gormley, welcome to Unbroken. Nikon: Thank you for having me, Alexandra. It’s pleasure to be here. Alexandra: It’s so nice to have you here. Tell us a little bit about your background and how you discovered the Three Principles. Nikon: My background started as a taekwondo athlete, as a young boy, as a martial art taken as a Korean martial art. And being called the athlete side of it, right, there’s a martial art side of it. And there’s an athlete side of it, because it was the Olympic sport in Thailand, it’s just very popular, we have it in our national Olympics, or we can get University scholarship scholarships for it. I started when I was 12. And I played for about 20 years. And being in a sport, you develop this thing where you just want to be better, you get obsessed with yourself not being good enough, and you get obsessed with wanting to be better. And apart from doing everything I physically could to be better and training, I knew I had to work on my mind. I wanted to be calm during competitions. It’s a combat sport. So there’s a lot going on, there’s people yelling at you, there’s someone trying to kick you and you got to kick them have a good story about that after so. I really went around all the houses, I studied everything I could from the law of attraction, or affirmations or like NLP, anything, in hopes that would make me a better athlete. And nothing really worked. I always thought it was my fault. Like, maybe I didn’t visualize the right details, or maybe I didn’t say the right affirmations in the right order. Maybe I didn’t write script it good enough, and then I got fed up. But it wasn’t great. And then finally, I read the Inside Out Revolution by Michael Neal. I didn’t understand it. But something clicked. There was something inside of me like this makes sense. I was like, Oh my god. Finally, finally. And then something funny happened. I was competing at the Thai National Olympics, I was competing for a province who had hired me to compete for them at the games. And I didn’t care anymore. I stopped caring about what was on my mind, I stopped caring about not being confident and just want to enjoy the game. So it’s probably one of my last Thai National Olympics. And I was like, honestly, go enjoy myself. And sure enough, everything just was flowed. I had the best time ever. I got to compete against the number one seed who I lost to, but I really enjoyed that match with him. So much so that after I lost him, I was like, Hey, that was a great match. Thank you so much for your time and energy. And how’d you do this? How’d you do that? And I’m watching myself. This guy just kicked your ass. Why are we so friendly to him? Because it didn’t make sense not to be. And then from there that was like, Okay, I need to know everything I need to know everything I can about this. And similar to you. I read all the books, talked to all the people. I hunted down all the teachers that I could find and just sit with them and talk with them and learn from them. And since then, my life has bloome

When we’re looking to change an overeating habit we can innocently get caught up in the noise in our heads that talks about diet plans and strategies for mastering new habits and willpower. Alternatively, what creates real change – including dropping an unwanted habit – is learning to pay attention to the ‘signal’ that is available to all of us. That signal is universal intelligence and it’s built into us and it’s also built into our unwanted habits themselves. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes Looking in a different place for answers to things like an unwanted habit Paying less attention to the noise of our personal thinking Relying on universal intelligence, wisdom and insight to help us change Practising learning to listen to signal rather than noise How our unwanted habits are feedback about the noise we’re listening to Resources Mentioned in this Episode Michael Neil Book: It’s Not About The Food Q&A Episode 44 Transcript of Episode Hello explorers, and welcome to Q&A Episode 49 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor. I’m here today with some comments, a discussion, an exploration about the signals that we receive versus the noise that’s going on within us, and how that this can affect an overeating habit and resolving that habit and weight loss and all those yummy things. I’ve been thinking about change a lot lately in my personal life, and I do, of course, all the time. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about change, because I’ve been feeling a little bit stuck. I think I might talk about that in more detail on a future Q&A episode. But it’s just this feeling of having resolved sort of 98% of my overeating habit. And the residue that’s left the sticky stuff at the bottom of a cup when you’re having – I don’t drink coffee, but I think sometimes if you’re drinking coffee, the sort of the sludge at the bottom is thicker than what you’ve been drinking. That happens for me when I drink hot chocolate. So the chocolate at the bottom of the cup is always a little thicker than everything else. I’ve been contemplating that. And because of that, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’m going to share on today’s episode. This came up during a conversation with Nikon Gormley, and he’s going to be on the show next week, February 7, I think, or 8th or whatever the Thursday is. And he brought up this metaphor that Michael Neill talks about, which is a metaphor for change. It’s a metaphor for what’s happening within us. It’s a metaphor for paying attention to the spiritual nature of ourselves, rather than just paying attention to our personal thinking, all that kind of thing. I wanted to talk about this because I think it’s really important to see the differentiation between what we’re looking toward in this understanding, the landscape where we are going to for answers, versus the landscape, the places that we’re used to going for answers. When I say that, what I mean is, we’re used to looking for answers to things like a ton of effort. We’re used to looking to create change with effort, and willpower, and structure the programs that we follow, and those sorts of things. In this Three Principles understanding where we’re looking for answers is really quite different than that. You’ve heard me talk about upstream and downstream. So this is the same sort of subject, it’s the same subject, essentially. And I’m going to use different words to describe what I talked about when I talk about upstream and downstream. I like the consistency, that pretty much all the metaphors we talked about in this understanding are always pointing to the same thing. And when it starts to come together for us, it’s it can seem so simple. And when it hasn’t kind of clicked yet, then it can seem a little bit complicated, but please rest assured that it isn’t. So we tend to think of change as requiring a lot of effort. And this, of course, comes up at the beginning of any year because people are talking about things like dry January, and developing new eating habits for the new year. And taking 90 days to change a habit and that kind of thing. What I see now is that change happens in a really different way than we, with our personal thinking, tend to think it does. That actually is really reassuring when we come to these places of stickiness of where we feel a little bit stuck, or it feels like there hasn’t been any change or movement in quite a lot of time. That’s what I’m feeling lately. I’m just dealing with this last stuck 2%. It feels like to me that that may not be the case, maybe it’s something different. But that’s what it feels like, to me, jus

Psychologist and author, Dr. Gail Brenner, shares about the healing power of being present and compassionate with whatever is going on within us. And how when we begin to recognize that there is no ‘out there’ in our lives – there is only our perception – that we begin to suffer less. Gail Brenner’s interest in suffering and the end of suffering is long standing. Like you, she just wanted to be happy. She put together a functional life of work and friends, but was continually plagued by anxiety, confusion, and relationship troubles. In her search for peace, she came across spiritual teachings about the nature of happiness. And she made some life-changing discoveries including that the more she became disinterested in thoughts—any thoughts—the happier she was. You can find Dr. Gail Brenner at GailBrenner.com. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes How meditation can teach us to be with our experience Having compassion for everything that arises within us How believing what the mind tells us can be a source of suffering Welcoming and relating to all the different parts of ourselves with out judging them How we can get stuck on the path of healing How happiness is our natural state How peace never leaves us, we simply place our attention on other things that we believe cause us suffering The feeling of separation that is at the root of trauma How there is no life ‘out there’; there is only what we perceive Resources Mentioned in this Episode Rumi poem: The Guest House Transcript of Interview with Dr. Gail Brenner Alexandra: Dr. Gail Brenner, welcome to Unbroken. Gail: Thank you. Very happy to be here. Alexandra: I’m happy to have you here. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to realize you didn’t need self-help? Gail: My background, how far back should I go? I’ll just start professionally. I’m a psychologist, and I’ve been a psychologist for a long time. It’s a profession that drew me many years ago. We heal ourselves as therapists or practitioners, and as much as we help other people. So I think that was part of my motivation early on. My training was pretty conventional. And then things started really moving and shifting and changing for me, when I started meditating. This was about a little over 20 years ago at this point. I had been in therapy myself for a very long time, and didn’t at this point, I can say, I didn’t get a lot of change from that, that I was looking for. So I kept looking. I had this spirit in me of like, well, there’s got to be something else out there to help with the way that I my version of suffering. I started meditating. And that really started changing everything, because of the way meditation teaches us to be with our experience. So to be aware of what’s arising in us; sensations, emotions, whatever it is. And when I first started meditating, I was shocked at how many different energies I found in my body and different emotions that I didn’t even know were there. And the fact that I was suffering started to make sense, like, oh, there’s a whole lot going on in here that I didn’t realize, and that is probably something I should pay attention to. That was the beginning of a spiritual path for me. So combining my psychology background with my interest in spirituality, really supported my quest to find happiness and discover how to be happy. And whereas happiness I knew it was possible, there was some spirit in me that no matter what happened, it, the flame didn’t go out. And then when I started realizing the possibility that maybe there was the possibility of not suffering so much, I was really on fire about that and wanted to know. I went to number of spiritual teachers and had different insights and realizations along the way. And led me to the point where it’s, it’s an ongoing path. Now it’s nothing’s finished. And there’s always something alive for me like right now, what’s alive, for me is just compassion for everything that arises in us, like every single nuance of our experience, and really turning toward that and welcoming that and loving that. You’re probably referring to the title of my book, The End of Self-Help. What I mean by that is, there’s no self here that needs help. It’s the title of your podcast, Unbroken. There’s nothing here that’s broken. There’s nothing that needs to be fixed. There’s just different energies and emotions and experiences arising and learning how to relate to all of those in a way that feels aligned and supports our essential wholeness. Alexandra: Thank you for that answer. One of the things that I was really struck with in The End of Self-Help, was you talk about having been on several spiritual retreats and your journe

In this excerpt from It’s Not About the Food I share a story about the surprising thing I learned at an Equus training and how it impacts the drive to overeat. Learn more about the book here. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Transcript of this episode It is early autumn 2014 and I’m standing in a covered outdoor riding arena. Beyond the open walls I can see the California sunshine warming the desert landscape. Here inside, it’s a bit chilly in the early morning, and I’m wishing I’d worn a light jacket. The arena is huge, probably nearly the length of a football field and almost as wide. The ground is covered in brown dirt, and where the sun comes past the walls into the building, I can see dust motes floating in the beams. Within the larger arena, there’s a temporary round pen that’s about 40 feet in diameter. I’m inside that pen and I’m not alone. With me is a brown and white horse, whose name I didn’t catch, and we’re going to spend the next few minutes bonding. I’m here at ‘horsey camp,’ as I call it, in my latest attempt to try to heal the drive to overeat. I’ve flown from Vancouver, British Columbia, to very Southern California and spent money I don’t have in order to spend two days doing what’s called Equus training. I love horses and grew up around them. My dad started me taking riding lessons when I was about four years old. So this is a comfortable and happy place for me. However, we’re not doing any riding this weekend. I and the other ten or so women in the class will all be doing our work from the ground. Which is why I’m standing in the round pen with a paint horse. Over the next two days, we all take turns in the round pen with a variety of horses. The premise of the training is that we’re going to learn about ourselves by being in the pen with a horse, both by seeing how we react to different situations and also by seeing how the horses react to us. Horses are highly intuitive and sensitive creatures. Though they are large, they are prey animals, not predators, so they’ve evolved to be keenly sensitive to their environments and to changes in the energy around them. As such, they give immediate feedback about a person’s state of being, often pointing out patterns of behavior that we aren’t aware of. The objective of the first exercise we do is to get the horse to trot, or canter, around the outside edge of the round pen. Individual trainees like me stand in the very center of the pen and encourage the horse to move without shouting or running at it. You might have a coiled lead rope in one hand that you can gently slap against your leg, but that’s all the guidance you can give to the large animal looking at you with wary eyes. You’re essentially moving the horse with your energy. Letting it know what you want it to do by holding the intention in your mind and being clear and calm. (We’ll get to why calmness matters in a minute.) I’ve traveled to this foreign land, crossed an international boundary, rented a car, and booked a hotel with the hope that this silent, brown and white animal with pointy ears and a soft muzzle will show me what’s wrong with me. I want to know why I feel so broken inside and why, no matter what I do, I can’t seem to conquer the drive to overeat. The horse and I look at one another for a few moments while I receive instruction from the workshop trainer. Outside the round pen, my fellow workshop participants are watching, which is really uncomfortable for me. I hate being the center of attention. The workshop leader, Jill (not her real name), lets me know I can start anytime. I picture in my mind what I want to happen, gently flap the lead rope against my jeans, and make a clucking sound with my tongue. The horse starts to move, trotting counterclockwise around the pen. After a few moments, Jill says, “Get her to canter,” so I hold that intention in my mind and, miraculously, the horse starts to canter. I can feel the connection between me and the horse. My self-consciousness about being watched disappears and my attention is entirely focused on the present moment, here, in this round pen with this brown and white horse. “Now make her turn around so she’s going in the other direction,” Jill says. I keep my energy at the center of myself (I’m not sure how else to describe this), step ever so slightly to my left, and imagine the horse turning around and running in the other direction. And it does. I’m elated. “Now slow her down.” I calm my energy down, sort of like pulling a blind down over a sunny window, and the horse slows down from its canter to a trot, then a walk. “Excellent,” Jill says. “How was that for you?” I turn my back on the horse and look through the bars of the round pen at Jill and the others who are standing in the dirt outside it. I can hear the horse coming up behind me and eventually it comes to stand beside my right shoulder as I describe what the ex

When coach, speaker and author Jack Pransky first heard about the changes happening in the community of Modello, Florida, he knew he had to find out more. Pretty quickly he ended up writing a book about Roger Mills’ work using the Three Principles in that community, which was radically changing lives. Since then he’s written several books about the understanding, including its history, and he continues to be passionate about sharing its simplicity and impact. Dr. Jack Pransky is a Three Principles Author, Trainer and Practitioner: a Coach of Coaches and a Counselor of Counselors. Jack is a national and international consultant, speaker, and author who has worked in the field of prevention and community organizing since 1968. You can find Jack Pransky at InsideOutUnderstanding.com and on Facebook at Jack Pransky. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes Jack’s book Modello about a housing project near Miami and its turnaround via the Three Principles The challenge of changing minds in the world of prevention and traditional outside-in psychology How using our intellect to get through life isn’t as easy as relying on our innate wisdom How we can only think ourselves away from wisdom On consciousness as its role in making our thinking look vividly real Transcript of Interview with Jack Pransky Alexandra: Jack Pransky, welcome to Unbroken. Jack: I’m very happy to be here. Alexandra: So nice to meet you. Jack: Nice to meet you too. It’s a pleasure. Alexandra: Thank you. Tell us a little bit about your background and how you became interested in the Three Principles. Jack: So many people have heard this story that I have a hard time recreating. I was involved in the field of prevention for many, many years; prevention of problem behaviors, alcohol and drug abuse, child abuse, domestic violence, delinquency, or things like that. I got to the point where I sort of knew what I was doing. And, decided to write a book about it, called Prevention, The Critical Need. Just before that book was about to go to press, I was invited to a Prevention Conference. Roger Mills was speaking. And I was suspicious, because I just spent three years of my life trying to find out what worked, and I’d never heard of this guy. But when he brought a couple of people with him from the housing project that he worked in, he was talking about how the housing projects, which is a horrible place, had gotten completely turned around. I could tell from listening to these people that their lives would never be the same, like something deeply had happened with them that we were not used to seeing and prevention. So that’s what got me hooked. I ended up asking Roger Mills if I could write a book about happened in Modello. And so I did that. And then I had to find the source. And the source was Syd Banks. And the rest is history. Alexandra: As they say. Well, that was one of my questions. Tell us a bit more about that book and about the community of Modello. Jack: Modello was known to be one of the most difficult places near Miami, Florida. It was really kind of a horrible community to have to live in. Because there was violence everywhere. Drug gangs were in every corner. There were shootings, tremendous domestic violence, tremendous abusing kids, crack addiction, it was just horrible. Roger Mills, thought this would be the place to test out whether Syd Banks’ ideas, what he had uncovered, would work in a place of that magnitude, as opposed to the individual people who were hovering around him at the time. And so he went in there, armed with only his knowledge and understanding of the Three Principles. It might not have even been called Three Principles then. And hope, and being able to see through the presenting behavior to the core of health and beauty inside people. He also never gave up, even though a lot of them wanted him out of there and did everything they could to get him out of there. A few people at first started catching on. And then they got together as a as a group that served as both a kind of like a parenting course and PTA and also doubled as a tenant’s counsel for the area. Little by little people started catching on more, and even though maybe 10 or 12 people really caught on to it, and their lives changed completely. It had a ripple effect throughout the whole rest of the housing project and the whole housing project changed. And it took two and a half years. Alexandra: When you wrote the book about this experience, so you mentioned that you wanted to get back to the source of where this idea had come from. Did you at that point track down Sydney Banks and talk to him? Jack: I did. I heard that my cousin George Pransky was doing a seminar with him in Vancouver. And I was supposed to be doing a prevention training in Atlanta, I believe. They were paying for me to get to Atlanta and back. So

It can be so easy to get caught up in the drama of life and experience suffering because of this. But when we begin to explore the nature of our thinking and see that it is a spiritual energy coming to life within us, our suffering eases. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes New schedule for Unbroken podcast – Thursday’s only for the next while Coming up in a Thursday episode I’ll talk about coming out of the back of the spiral How thinking works like a television What we experience is only every going on inside us When we see this it makes resolving an overeating habit so much easier Resources Mentioned in this Episode Dr. Bruce Greyson Waking the Wild podcast Transcript of this episode Hello explorers and welcome to Q&A Episode 47 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor. Thank you for being here with me today. I appreciate it. Before we kick off today’s subject, which is how is our thinking like television, I wanted to do a couple of quick housekeeping items. The first one is that we’re coming up to a year of Unbroken podcast, which is very exciting. I started on February 14 to 2023. And this episode that I’m recording now will go out on January 8 2024. So almost a year of episodes. 47 Q&A episodes and 47 interview episodes. I’m really proud of everything that I accomplished in this past almost year. And as we do, I’ve been contemplating things over the holiday time when I had to had a few days off. What I realized is that I have some projects that I’d really like to work on in this coming year. And that releasing two podcast episodes a week is a bit of an impediment to that. It’s a lot of work, recording two episodes per week. So what I’m going to do is change the schedule up a little bit, and switch to one episode per week. Starting the week of January 15 there will just be one episode of Unbroken each week on Thursday. And I’m going to alternate between interview episodes and these this type of solo shows that I do, where I talk about what I’m seeing, and what the insights that I’ve had and what I’m observing, and that kind of thing. So yeah, like I say, that’ll start the week of January 15. January 18 will be the first of that kind of episodes. And it’ll actually be an interview with I think it will be with Gail, Dr. Gail Brenner. So you can keep your eyes and ears open for that. And then what else? What other housekeeping did I have? Oh, yes. I’ve talked a little bit lately about being in the back of the spiral. If you’ve listened to previous episodes, I’ve mentioned that a couple of times. I’ve come out of the back of the spiral. So that’s exciting news. And I’m really thrilled about it. So I think what I’ll do is I’ll talk about that on the first solo episode after I make this schedule change. So that’ll be later in January, maybe the 18th or something like that, I think. I’m not quite sure. I’ll talk about what that was like, for me the insights that I had the things I’ve seen. And I’ll go over again, what it meant to me to be going through the back of the spiral, and how even on the darkest days, it was nice to know that it was just a natural part of the learning and growing process like I talked about on a previous episode, so stay tuned for that. Okay, so today, I want to get into this metaphor that I heard recently, and how I think it relates to the Inside Out understanding. And this was a metaphor that I heard from a man called Bruce Greyson. He’s a scientist who specializes in near-death experiences, if you can believe it. This had nothing, absolutely nothing to do with the Three Principles or the Inside Out understanding. I heard him on Lian Brook-Tyler’s podcast, called Waking the Wild. And then I also heard him on another podcast and I can’t remember whose it was but he is a really interesting guy. Really fascinating studies that he’s done about near-death experiences, and what people experience when they have that kind of a situation that goes on. But none of that matters for this episode of Unbroken. What does matter is, he used this really great metaphor, so I’m going to borrow that metaphor from him. I can’t even remember what he was talking about this or what it meant to him, but he had this great metaphor about television, and how when we watch a television – and these days, of course, we watch a lot of things on our laptops to TV shows and stuff like that movies – we know that whatever’s going on on the show isn’t happening inside the TV set, or inside the computer. We know for sure, from probably a pretty young age, maybe not super young. But eventually we figure it out that those aren’t little tiny people walking around inside the

Coach and author Dicken Bettinger has spent most of his adult life sharing the simple, yet not generally understood, simplicity of human psychology that he first learned from Sydney Banks. Dicken’s message is simple: at any given moment, we are all either caught up in our thinking, or we are connected to the well-being and peace that is within every one of us. Dicken Bettinger, Ed.D., received his undergraduate degree from St. Lawrence University and began his career teaching high school students. He received his Master’s degree from Pennsylvania State University and his Doctoral degree in counseling psychology from Boston University. Thirty-three years ago he met Sydney Banks who had an enlightenment experience where he realized the Three Principles that underlie all human experience. Dicken had finally found universal principles that he could teach anyone.  You can find Dicken Bettinger at 3PriniciplesMentoring.com and on YouTube @dickenbettinger. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes On the early quest to help people ease their suffering How when our thoughts clear we experience the well-being that we are made of How we feel what we think How our state of mind affects things like productivity and success On the quiet that is always available when you’re not listening to the noise How parenting is positively affected when we see our thinking for what it is What meaning do our dreams have? How we all have access to universal wisdom Resources Mentioned in this Episode Dicken’s book with Natasha Swerdloff is Coming Home: Uncovering the Foundations of Psychological Well-being Sydney Banks Dr. Roger Mills Transcript of Interview with Dicken Bettinger Alexandra: Dicken Bettinger, welcome to Unbroken. Dicken: It’s great to be here with you, Alexandra. Thanks for inviting me. Alexandra: My pleasure. So why don’t you give us a little bit of your background and tell us how you came to discover the three principles? Dicken: I’d be glad to. I started my career as a high school English teacher. And I was very young and I looked younger than the high school students I was teaching. Pretty soon I had more kids coming to me to talk about their problems than the guidance counselor’s. The guidance counselors came and talked to me. What are you doing? And so it started my passion and curiosity about what can I learn that I can share with people that would help them have an easier time in life and began many, many year long year quest to explore what people are teaching about well-being. I taught for six years, and then I left to get my doctorate in counseling psychology and I became a licensed psychologist. And I had been working for 10 years, focusing my whole career on well-being, rather than the medical model which proclaimed people as having illnesses. And in education, that’s my degrees were in education, even my doctorate, counseling psychology and education department. The philosophy is very kind, any human being is struggling and having difficulty: Number one, it’s not their fault. Number two, they just haven’t learned what they need to learn to have an easier time of things. So it put us all – everybody in the world – in the category of being students. And there’s no end to what we can learn. And there’s no end to what we can learn about being happier and healthier psychologically. I studied people that were interested in that, and I had been a psychologist for 10 years working, very successful, private group practice in Vermont when I came across the book. It was the very first book published that was trying to apply the work of a man named Sydney Banks who had an enlightenment experience, and discovered the foundational principles that could explain all human psychological experience. What creates them, the forces in life that are creative, and he experienced those directly in his enlightenment experience. Dr. Roger Mills, who was had been an astrophysicist and spoke Chinese and was working in public health began to do a research study on what can help people become healthy. And where did they learn it? If people have become healthy, where did they learn it? Somebody told them all about Syd Banks, and he went to listen to him and meet him, and he was deeply affected and changed as a result of learning what Syd Banks called the three fundamental principles, Mind, Consciousness and Thought. And so he wrote a book, trying his best to bring it into the field of psychology and I found the book in a bookstore and got halfway through it and I was affected just reading it. I looked at the end of the book, and there was a phone number and I called and found out about their programs. I went from my first training and started hearing about these principles. I had maybe three insights during a week of training that changed my whole way o

When we expect change to happen as a result of will-power naturally it looks like a good idea to choose a day on the calendar to begin making that change. But, really, change happens via insight, and that can happen any day of the year. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes Welcome to 2024 The admirable motivation behind New Year’s Resolutions The two things we can do instead of setting New Year’s Resolutions What actually creates lasting change Transcript of this episode Hello explorers, and welcome to episode 46 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor. If you’re listening to this on the day it goes out, it’s going out on New Year’s Day 2024. So welcome to a new year. I don’t know about you, but at this point, I’m usually ready for the holidays to be over, I have to say. I just really like getting back to some sort of semblance of normalcy. I do kind of enjoy the holidays. There’s a bit of baggage there that I won’t talk about now. But you know, it’s different. I travel a little bit and I go and see friends. And it’s nice to be doing some different things and going out for meals and doing whatever it is we do. For some of you that will be getting together with family and that kind of thing. And then I’m kind of glad when the chaos is over. Today, it’ll be New Year’s Day as you’re listening to this, and I’m probably going to have a pretty quiet day, I like to have a quiet New Year’s Day. So I hope you’re doing whatever makes you happy as well. Let’s talk about why New Year’s resolutions are BS. Before I jump into that, I just want to give a quick caveat. And say that there’s nothing wrong with goal setting. There’s nothing wrong with dreams and goals and all that kind of stuff. I personally am someone who loves lists. I always have lists on my desk of things I like to accomplish. And I feel really good when I’m able to highlight them that they’re done. That’s my method of dealing with lists of to dos. And it’s good to have goals and didn’t have things that we want to accomplish in life. So everything I’m about to say is not to disparage that kind of dreaming and goal setting and all that kind of stuff. There’s a reason that New Year’s resolutions are BS, according to me. And it’s because of the way that we go about them. When we make a New Year’s resolution, and let’s be honest, they’re so often around weight loss and exercise, aren’t they? Those are the articles that we see in the media that we see on the television, morning programs and all that kind of thing. It’s about making a newer, better you and that you can start that on New Year’s Day. I’m going to go back to the iceberg metaphor in order to illustrate this. I shared that metaphor in Episode 44, which was a couple of weeks ago. New Year’s resolutions are like the ice pick on that iceberg. The way that we go about making new year’s resolutions and trying to change has that real ice pick kind of approach. And it’s that that we’re mistaken about. That the ice pick is what creates change, that we can choose this arbitrary day on a calendar. And really it is quite arbitrary. And decide that on that day, everything is going to change and somehow things will be completely different. And of course, it doesn’t work. And that’s why the media has the articles every year at the end of December, about making new year’s resolutions and changing our lives for the better. If New Year’s resolutions really worked, then they would work, we wouldn’t have to go through the same sort of repetition about strategies and ways to make your resolution stick if they actually worked. I want to say that I love what is motivating New Year’s resolutions. And that is that we’re trying to do better, of course, and we’re trying to feel better about ourselves. And we’re trying to change ourselves in ways that we feel and very often are about our health and our well being. We’re trying to take better care of ourselves. So that of course is really positive. I love what’s behind the New Year’s resolutions. It’s just that the resolutions themselves are what is BS. So rather than setting ourselves up for failure, this New Year’s Day 2024, what if we approached change in a slightly different way? So what I’d like us to do is two things. One, is look in a slightly different direction. And that’s what you’re doing by listening to this podcast. You are exploring and exposing yourself to this inside out understanding, and you’re wanting to see the impact that insight can have on change, rather than the ice pick method. You are wanting to understand how

After rapid success in her own coaching business, coach Grace Kelly now helps others wanting to do the same. She has learned the value of trusting our own innate wisdom, and also the importance of taking care of ourselves before we can help others. Grace Kelly is a transformational coach.She left her job as a school teacher in London and traveled the world coaching clients. Her work has been recognised by Forbes. Today she writes about lessons in love and loss and hosts clients on retreats in Italy where she currently resides. You can find Grace Kelly at GracefulCoaching.net and on Instagram @gracefulcoaching. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes Recognizing the symptoms of burn out as a signal asking for change How our wisdom is always speaking to us, even when we can’t hear it Tips for paying attention to your own wisdom What we can learn from doing less How urgency is a habit of thought How money loves a purpose Resources Mentioned in this Episode Living Miraculously, Grace’s course with Dominic Scaffidi Create Your Thriving Coaching Business, Grace’s small group mastermind for coaches Dr. John Demartini Michael Neill Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way Transcript of Interview with Grace Kelly Alexandra: Grace Kelly, welcome to Unbroken. Grace: Thank you, Alexandra. It’s lovely to be here. Love your title. Alexandra: Thank you so much. Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got interested in the Three Principles. Grace: My background is as a school teacher. I spent six years in the classroom teaching, ruling unruly teenage boys in a London suburb. I loved the kids, I loved the experience of being with the children, but I really was not lit up by my environment, it was very bleak and dreary. It was in a small, just a very small suburb in North London. And it didn’t even have a decent coffee shop. That might sound like a strange thing for people. But I was moving to the big city. And I wanted city life and it just didn’t yield that, that location. Now the people were fabulous, the children were amazing, the school was fantastic. But over time, I kept getting this tapping, like, there’s something else for me to do. I had a turning point, Alexandra, when it occurred to me, is this it? Is this where I’m going to stay and is this what I’m going to commit my life to. And at the same time, I had been so burned out at work, because I really didn’t enjoy what I was what I was doing. Many teachers listening will know that you have a passion for teaching, but you end up doing a lot of paperwork and a lot of a lot of heavy lifting around bureaucracy and around paperwork. But anyway, it was a good grinding for me because I knew I was a teacher’s from a young age I used to pretend to teach classroom when I was when I was very young. I would pretend I had a set of students in front of me. So I knew that that was my, my path. I didn’t realize there was another way to teach. I didn’t realize there was something beyond a school teacher, as a teacher, until I was fortunate enough to come across my first mentor. His name was Dr. John Demartini. And he really opened my eyes and those years when I was a school teacher of just what was possible. He was just the most incredible teacher, he was an amazing mentor. And he was a coach really traveling the world doing what he loved writing books, teaching, running his breakthrough experience. I noticed in my career as a teacher, I was equipping myself. The school bell would ring and I’d be out the door and off into the city of London, and equipping myself with personal development and being around the circles that were interested in coaching. I’d never considered myself as a coach. Interestingly, and all that time I was doing that it never really came to me that I could coach. But at some point, I made the leap. I left my day job and my fiancee at the time and myself, we moved to Italy to figure out our lives. He was from here. In our figuring out of our lives it was really clear to me that I didn’t want to leave Italy. And it was also clear to me that I had a deep interest in helping people, not just teaching people. So I started to get curious about this whole world called coaching that I had been around but hadn’t really been invested in personally as a coach. So my career really shifted. I started my own coaching business, I hired my own coach. That was the first step. I invested in a coach who supported me around my own ideas for coaching and what I could offer the world. It was transformative for me, our work together, and it led to a pretty rapid success in the space of six months. I was very fortunate to be finding myself traveling the world much like my former mentor and seeing clients and beautiful locations and hosting retreats in all sorts of places and just doing very,

Take a moment and extend yourself a little kindness today. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Transcript of episode Hello Explorers, and welcome to Q&A episode 45 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor. As this goes out, it’s Christmas Day, 2023. Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, what I wanted to do today is just encourage you to give yourself a bit of a break. So no matter when you’re listening to this, here’s what I would love. I would love for you to take a moment today and give yourself a tiny bit of kindness. Extend some compassion toward yourself. Even if it’s just for a minute. You could just put your hand on your heart and remember that being a human being is really, really hard. This is a hard thing you’re doing. It is a challenge. And you’re doing a great job. No matter what’s going on in your life, no matter maybe how caught up you are in your feelings today. And in your thoughts. Especially if you’re doing great, you’re really trying hard to be the best human being you can be. And no matter what’s going on, no matter even when we fail at that. Even when we innocently fall down and get bruised and maybe do some things that upset some people or whatever it is, whatever way it is that we feel like we failed. Even then, we deserve our own grace, and compassion, and kindness. I would love for you today, if you just extended that to yourself. If you took a moment – you could pause this podcast right now – and just whatever way it feels good for you to do that give yourself the tiniest bit of kindness that you are able to give. And remember that the person that you are, is no matter what the circumstances is doing the very best you can. Even when we feel like we fall down at that, at reaching for that goal, even when we do things we regret, we’re still always trying our very best. And we’re always trying to connect always at every moment to the peace and the love and the kindness that we are. That we’re made of. The building blocks, the material that we are made of is peace and love, and well-being and resilience. And we’re always trying to connect to that. So that’s all I really have to say for today. This is a shorter episode. But I just wanted to pop in and encourage you to try to give yourself a little bit of kindness today because you deserve it. I trust that you are well and taking good care and I hope that whatever is happening for you today, whenever you’re listening to this, that you were able to do this to yourself, extend yourself some grace, even if things are really hard, even if things are going badly. I’m sending you lots of love as always, and I will talk to you again next week. Take care. Featured image photo by ben van ‘t ende on Unsplash The post Q&A 45 – A moment of kindness appeared first on Alexandra Amor Books.

Alex Linares describes herself as a lifelong seeker. She has always been curious about how life works and what it means. When she stumbled across the Three Principles she realized that there was no more need for seeking, or even for self-help. Alex Linares is a scientist and lifelong seeker; curious to understand life, purpose and meaning. After decades of searching for behavior modification methods to rid herself of unwanted habits, three insights changed the trajectory of her life. This opened up a vast space of possibility and wonder in Alex’s life and a resolute drive to help others find the space in themselves that is free of those things we have misunderstood as our identity. You can find Alex Linares at CanaimaCoaching.com and on Instagram @alexcanaimacoaching. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes On the dawning realization that we are not our thoughts If we are not our thoughts, feelings, or behaviours what are we? On the sense of loss we can experience as we explore this Thought as a function of memory How liberating it is to know we can’t get life ‘right’ What does life need us to be? Playing with letting go in places where the stakes are low Resources Mentioned in this Episode Alex’s podcast with Amanda Jones, The Wonder Land, available wherever you get your podcasts Transcript of Interview with Alex Linares Alexandra: Alex Linares. Welcome to Unbroken. Alex: Thank you. So happy to be here. Alexandra: Thank you, thank you for being here with me. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background? And how you heard about the three principles? Alex: I love reflecting on this question, because it changes every time that I kind of look back there. And see, how did how did I get here. I am a scientist professionally, been in research for a very long time. And just have always been a really curious person. Since my earliest memories was always around just finding out how things worked, and where things came from, and just really trying to understand. I think that kind of translated into my professional life looking into the scientific world moving in that direction, but also into this seeking side that started really early on for me from the earliest years of being in Sunday school. That religious learning, it wasn’t a passive thing. For me, it was a very active interaction that I had with that knowledge and the information that was being provided and really questioning what was coming my way and kind of looking around and realizing that not a lot of people that were six, seven years old, were doing that. So yeah, it was just really interesting that it became a really big identity for me really early on that I feel like I need to know more. I feel like others are okay with a certain threshold and of knowing, and they’re happy with that. I never really felt like I reached that. So I think it’s kind of permeated my whole my whole history. And in that same kind of path I went through the religious and path and looking at different types of religions. Kind of comparing and contrasting that we do a lot when we look at the Western religions, or the Eastern religions, and through that a lot of the philosophies and a lot of the things that kept coming up, the same themes were so interesting to me. It seemed like we were all pointing at the same thing. And we had different life experiences and words and histories. As the beauty of seeing the similarities across all of that just became something really fascinating and very unifying for me. To the point where I didn’t feel the need to find the one dogma or the one method that would work for me, just because I felt that it was all pointing in the same direction. Which I think fits right into the Three Principles that part of your question, which is, the Three Principles really brought that all together in a very secular way, which was really interesting. But in a very deep spiritual felt sense, which I was very unique. I think psychology has tried to do that. A lot of the Buddhist meditation psychology has tried to do it. But the Three Ps just had a different spin to it and it really resonated, it came to me at the right time in my life, which was actually through Amy Johnson. I read her book at the end of 2020 all the things were happening, not just a pandemic, I was moving out of state and reestablishing my life in a completely different place. And it really felt like a different planet, late 2020 In terms of what life looked like, and what the world I thought I was moving into versus what it was. It just really resonated for me to see the simplicity of experience as mind and thought and just really being able to have a tangible word for experience in the manifestation of experience. So that’s how I came to find the Three Principles. It’s mentioned in Dr. Amy Johnson’s book, The Little Book of B

When we’re trying to change something like an overeating habit, it can feel good to take lots of action. But how many times have we failed when approaching it that way? And what if there’s another way? You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes How the iceberg metaphor of change works The surprising way change actually works Why explorers of this understanding are like tuning forks Continuing our conversation about the back of the spiral How insight is what raises the temperature of the water around the iceberg Resources Mentioned in this Episode Dr. Amy Johnson Ian Watson’s episode of Unbroken Transcript of episode Hello explorers, and welcome to Q&A episode 44 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor. Today I want to do a follow up episode to episode 41. In that episode I talked about the natural shape of change, which is like a spiraling shape. And the way that our growth or change or learning happens in that kind of a spiral motion. And we want it to be a straight line, but it isn’t. Sometimes we can get into the back of the spiral, which can be a little more challenging. So this is a bit of a follow up to that I wanted to share a metaphor that Dr. Amy Johnson, I heard her share it years ago. It’s the iceberg metaphor. And then I might go into a little bit of a mash up of these two metaphors. Let me share the iceberg metaphor first. This is a metaphor of change. If you picture an iceberg sitting in the water, in the North Atlantic near Newfoundland or down in the Antarctic. They’re really big. I was actually reading online today, there’s an iceberg down in the Antarctic, now that is broken away from some place, some ice sheet or something that it was near. And it’s the size of Oahu, the island in Hawaii, if you can imagine. It dwarfs the island of Manhattan by four or five times. It’s absolutely enormous. Icebergs are really big. And that’s what an overeating habit can feel like, right? What we’re what I’m talking about on Unbroken, and in my work, is a model of change that’s very different from the traditional model of change. And the traditional model of change looks like if you imagine that that iceberg is your overeating habit, what we tend to do, because we don’t know any better, we’re innocently we’re trying to change something, right? If it’s this big, bulky thing, it feels like a problem, it feels like we need to get rid of it. We get up there on the iceberg and we chip away with our ice pick, which of course is a ton of work, especially if you’ve got an iceberg that’s the size of a Oahu. So again, we do this because we don’t know any other way. It’s just the way that we’ve been taught that change works. Imagine how much effort it would take and how long it would take to chip away at an iceberg. Even if it’s not the size of Oahu. It’s almost an impossible task. And of course to because given where icebergs exist, if you made a little bit of progress, and chipped away at some of that iceberg and then moved over to another section it could snow, it could rain, and that place where you were chipping away, could just fill in with ice again. So it’s hard work. And it we really don’t make much progress. I will say now too, though, it looks like the only way. So this model of using the ice pick on the iceberg is the diet model. This is the self-help model that we innocently, innocently take in order to create change in our lives and resolve an overeating habit. What that looks like is controlling our food intake, it looks like using willpower, it looks like assigning ourselves certain foods we can eat and certain foods we can’t eat. It looks like holding ourselves to a really strict standard of behavior. And that feeling of being on a really tight leash when it comes to food, like there are forbidden foods over there. And I can only eat these ones over here. And I can only eat certain amounts of them. Of course, we all know we can only do that for so long. It’s just exhausting. And given that our design is trying to give us information about what’s going on with our insecure thinking the force of nature that we’re up against, is not movable by us and our little attempts to chip away at that iceberg, if that makes sense. We’re dealing with universal forces here. No wonder it feels like incredibly hard work to try to control this thing that’s happening within us, this force of nature. And no wonder we fail all the time. So that’s the first part of the iceberg metaphor. The second part is that in this understanding the three principles understanding that I’m exploring on this podcast and in my work, the inside out understanding: What we’re doing to create change in this understanding, is we’re raising the te

Coach and author Amanda Jones explores the simplicity behind our human experience and how understanding this can free us from suffering with things like bulimia, anxiety, depression, binge eating and more. Amanda Jones is the author of Uncovery: A New Understanding Behind Radical Freedom from Eating Disorders and Depression and explores with clients their true nature and the understanding that what has been believed to be true about the self can be seen as a simple misunderstanding. This exploration uncovers the freedom that we have been seeking for so long. You can find Amanda Jones at UncoverySpace.com and on Instagram @amandajonesuncovery. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes The discovery that all of life is made of thought On the dissolving of the identity with a self How we were feeling beings for millennia before the thinking mind got involved How our suffering is the thing that wakes us up How the diet system contributes to our problems with food Resources Mentioned in this Episode Dr. Amy Johnson’s Little School of Big Change No Self, No Problem by Chris Niebauer Transcript of Interview with Amanda Jones Alexandra: Amanda Jones, welcome to Unbroken. Amanda: I’m so happy to be here. So exciting. Thank you so much for having me. I’m so looking forward to this conversation. Alexandra: Me too. It’s been ages since we’ve had a conversation. So I’m really looking forward to it as well. Why don’t you tell us about your background? How you got involved in this work? Amanda: I was a professional dancer for 25 years. And then, through that time, developed various eating disorders and depression. And I had to retire because of those struggles. I came across Dr. Amy Johnson and Michael Neill and that catapulted me into the understanding of Three Principles and blew my world upside down. I had been a spiritual seeker from very, very, very young, I mean, just like, having this sense that something’s off here. People around me adults around me are telling me how the world is and how I am and it just felt off like something’s not right here. As a child very suspicious about how does anybody know what’s going on here? And come to find out nobody does. And that’s the freedom right. That’s the peace that passes understanding is that is that nobody knows what’s going on. And even more than that, I really think started to change in a big way for me when I woke up to Thought. So just like a fish waking up to water, that I had no idea of course, I didn’t, until I did. Everything is thought. All of it is thought. All of it is thought in a way that is nebulous and pliable and changing and fluid and seamless, that there’s nothing to pin down and hold and grasp. I think, for me, the trying to pin down and grasp and hold my identity in one place for long enough to feel okay, the failure of doing that and being able to do that got so painful that when I started to learn about this and learn about thought, and the deeper experience of us, I really came to see that that nothing is as I think it is. My failure to pin down an identity or a feeling or a self was a success. This whole time, I was succeeding and doing what is impossible and unnecessary. And the pain that it caused was showing me this is not supposed to. But I of course the conditioned mind interpreted that failure as well. Let me just try again. Let me just find the right thing, the right diet, the right book, the right way of thinking. And then I’ll succeed. But it was all on a false premise. The false premise was that any ideas about myself and the world are completely made up. Mostly inherited and questioned. And it was just huge for me. And so to go forward in time I just really woke up and continued to do so. And then I started coaching myself. I went through some training and I’m now a colleague with Amy in her Little School of Big change, and I have my own clients and I wrote a book, and I have a podcast. And then things just things just unfold in ways that I had no idea about. It’s really beautiful to come to see that everything we think is wrong with ourselves that we can’t seem to change is what’s perfect. The inability to succeed at changing something that is not how you think it is, that does not actually really exist in that way is a success. So I’ll pause there and see if what you’ve that was a lot. Alexandra: What I’m curious about is you talked about it being a painful time trying to find an identity. So can you say a bit more about that? Were you looking for the bumpers on the side? And to try to sort of stay in your lane? What did that look like? Amanda: Yes, well, first of all, as a child, we are given an identity. Oh, she’s like that, oh, she’s always like that, or he’s like that. And so that starts to b

The holiday/end-of-year season can be fraught with so much, including extra temptation for those of us with an unwanted overeating habit. Here then are three tips for navigating this time of year, including remembering your innate peace and how it is always with you. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes On remembering that you are never broken, even when overeating Remembering that whatever you’re experiencing is temporary How peace is always available in any moment On our feelings, including cravings, being a perfect feedback system Transcript of episode Hello explorers, and welcome to Q&A episode 43 of Unbroken. The subject today is, how can I be at peace with food during the holidays? As I record this, it’s early December, and this will be going out on December 11. And of course, we’re moving into holiday season and whatever way you celebrate – and maybe you don’t, and that can sometimes be a challenge as well – what I wanted to talk about, what I wanted to give you today is three tips for being at peace with food during the holidays. The first tip is to remember that you are not broken. So even when you’re feeling an urge to reach for that second piece of pie, or second helping of mashed potatoes, or whatever it is, whatever your favorite food is, if you’re feeling tempted by things or challenged by having a lot of food around, the best thing you can do for yourself in those moments, if you can, is to remember that you’re not broken, that there’s nothing wrong with you. The urge that you’re feeling to overindulge is pointing directly toward your innate well-being and your perfect design, and perfectly kind design. And the reason for that is, is that the desire to reach for food, or whatever it is, it can be anything to comfort ourselves is, is pointing directly at the fact that we’re always searching for a good feeling. Because that’s what we’re made of. Because that’s our baseline way of being, that’s our innate state. When we’re not feeling that way, the desire to get back there to what Amy Johnson calls home base is, is really strong. And the way that we do that, and it’s an artificial way but it’s the best way we know in the moment is to reach for things that give us that feeling. So the desire that you might have, at the holiday time to have a second piece of pie, or to have a few too many chocolates or whatever it is, the best thing you can do for yourself is to remember that that’s not pointing toward some sort of brokenness within you. You’re not flawed. There’s nothing wrong with you at all. It’s actually pointing out that you are perfectly well and perfectly whole, it’s a sign of your well-being that you’re doing that. So that’s the first thing to remember you are made of a good feeling. And you are made of well being and peace. And any time we reach for some sort of substance, and it feels like we’re over indulging in that that means that we’re trying to have that good feeling. So that’s the first tip to remember that you are not broken. In fact, you are working in perfectly well you are in perfect working order. The second tip I want to give you is that every storm runs out of rain. That’s a quote from Maya Angelou and it’s one of my favorites. As we move into this holiday season, and emotions are running high, sometimes there can be a lot of pressure, there can be more activity in your life, more people, maybe more stuff going on. And if you get caught up in indulging your overeating habit, it can feel like it’s never going to end. And so the second tip I have is just to remind yourself, if you can, every once in a while, it is going to end everything is temporary. That’s true in a macro sense, in the sense that of course the holiday seasons will end we will come into the new year and it will be it will be different. Things will go back to normal, whatever that means for you and this season will come to an end. It’s also true on a micro sense. Whatever we’re feeling, whatever we’re experiencing, whatever emotion and thinking that sort of combination is moving through us, in any given moment, that too, will end. So if you’re feeling stressed in any given moment that feeling will rise up within you and it too, will move on. When we understand that, that’s the nature of our thinking, and our experience of life, that these things rise up within us, and then they move on, that it’s a continually flowing river, of experience of life coming to life within us, then we don’t have to hold on so tightly, to anything that’s happened happening in a given moment. Because that given moment, that experience in that moment, isn’t the whole truth about you, it

A small business can be a really accurate reflection of that’s business’s owner. So when an entrepreneur is fraught with insecurity that is going to show up in the business. Marlene Cameron helps business owners and entrepreneurs to connect with their innate wisdom and resilience and to see that their moment-to-moment thinking doesn’t need to derail them when they have times of insecurity or doubt. Marlene Cameron has been training, coaching and mentoring business owners, leaders and mental health professionals since 2002. Former successful careers as a commercial interior designer, business owner/manager, management consultant and financial analyst have garnered her extensive experience and expertise in business leadership and strategy, unlocking human potential and enhancing resiliency and well-being. One of Marlene’s clients won the 2006 International Coach Federation (ICF) sanctioned Prism Award for “Business Excellence Achieved Through Coaching” and Marlene was part of a team of coaches working with executives at Chevron Resources Canada, winner of the Large Business Prism Award in 2010. You can find Marlene Cameron at MarleneCameron.com and on Instagram @marlenelcameron. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes On our mistaken impression that going into the past helps heal us When we’re not grounded in our own capabilities, we’re at the mercy of whatever thought is going through us in a given moment How we continue to seek validation to solve the insecurity Learning to not get caught up in the insecure thinking that’s coming up in a moment What our self-doubt may be an indicator of How state of mind is so often the culprit when a business fails Transcript of Interview with Marlene Cameron Alexandra: Marlene Cameron, welcome to Unbroken. Marlene: Thanks, Alexandra. Alexandra: Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got interested in the Three Principles? Marlene: I’ll give you the short version of a long history of career transition. I actually started off as a commercial interior designer, and I think I was 30 years old when I decided that I wanted to work for myself and started a small consulting practice. I did commercial interior design, some mostly office interiors, and some institutional work. And then I moved to the United States and thought I’d go back to school. And thought, initially, I would  do a master’s in architecture, but ended up doing an MBA, and then  found the whole world of finance. So then I became a chartered financial analyst and, and thought I’d work in that world. But I realized that they wanted me to work as hard for their businesses as I had worked in my own business, and I didn’t want to do that anymore. I had the opportunity to take a coaching program. I worked initially with entrepreneurs and executives, and then segued over to the field of energy psychology. I taught a technique for many years to coaches, counselors, mental health professional psychologists, as a way for them to help their clients to regulate their emotional state. I did that for many, many years. But what I started noticing with observing my students working with their clients was that people were imagining things like worst case scenarios, or, what if this happens and becoming very emotionally distraught about that. My question I kept asking my colleagues, in my supervision classes was that, how do you help the client differentiate between something that’s factual, and something that we call fictional? Like, he  made it up or dreamed it up? I kept asking that question over and over again, until a colleague of mine actually in Vancouver said you might be interested in understanding called the Three Principles because it speaks to this. The idea of the role of thought in our experience. So I started watching YouTube videos every day. I think when people come to this understanding, it’s like even though you don’t know what it is, something draws you in. And maybe that’s that deeper part of us that we speak to in this understanding that said, Oh, here it is, oh, this is what it is. And so that’s how I got drawn into it. Alexandra: And then, it must have looked to you like it provided an answer to that question that you had about fact versus fiction. Marlene: Yes, because especially with this technique, we did a lot about going back to the past and trying to resolve somebody’s emotional memory. I remember working with a young client one time, and she said to me, this is really painful. And I’m thinking like, she’s right. It is painful. But, I was of the understanding, then, well, that’s cathartic, or, you’ve got to go through that to get through to the other side. And maybe without knowing that, I wondered if that was true, because I had my own experience of feeling very an

Are diets the right tool when we want to lose weight? They tend to be the only one we use, but what if there’s an alternative? What if diets are actually contributing to the suffering we experience about food? And what if there were an alternative way to approach resolving an overeating habit? You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes What is the cause of our suffering when we want to lose weight? How our thoughts are at the root of so much trouble for us Why diets are like putting gasoline on a fire when it comes to weight loss What if food cravings come from a wise place within us? Transcript of episode Hello Explorers, and welcome to Unbroken Q&A episode 42. I’m Alexandra Amor. Today I’m here with just a quick introduction to an audio that I’m going to attach to the back of this introduction. This is an audio track that I recorded recently for Insight Timer. I’m going to be teaching some classes over on that app. It’s a really great, great app, if you haven’t heard of it, I haven’t had that much exposure to it. I’ve been having a lot of fun creating, just recently creating some material for it some classes and some audio tracks. It’s all audio based. And you can listen anywhere, of course, anywhere as long as you’ve got your phone, and an internet connection. The audio track is called: Why do diets fail us? And it’s about why diets don’t work and the psychology behind them and the reason that that is. I hope that if you’re a regular listener to this podcast, or if you’ve read some of my books, that you’ve started to see that diets are trying to answer a problem that doesn’t exist. And they’re the wrong tool for the job, which is something I bring up in this audio track. If you have been around for a while, and you’ve listened to the podcast for a bit, or you’ve read some of my books, I think this will be a really nice overview or kind of review for you of the things that I talk about all the time. And it’s always good to listen and to stay in the conversation, as we say, as much as we can, as much as it is fun and interesting for us. Insights can happen at any moment. I often found and I still find as I’m exploring this understanding, I can listen to something more than once and get something different out of it each time and maybe have some new insights no matter what’s going on. So I hope that’s the case for you. And yeah, I hope you enjoy this audio track and that you were doing well and taking good care. I will talk to you again next week. Please enjoy. Why do diets fail us? Hello and welcome, I’m Alexandra Amor, coach, podcaster, and author of several books, including The Secret Language of Cravings. Let me ask you a question: have you had a diet fail you? In other words, have you had a diet make promises it didn’t keep? Given that you’re listening to this, you may have answered yes to that question and I’ll say me too! Over and over again. And it wasn’t for lack of trying on my part. Perhaps you can relate to that as well.So…what’s happening when a diet fails us? Is it that we lack will power or stick-to-it-iveness? Our culture seems to tell us that this is the cause, doesn’t it? What if the reason diets fail us because they’re the wrong tool for the job? When we are using a diet or wanting to use a diet, what is causing that impulse?The obvious answer you might offer is because we want to lose weight. That’s not rocket science. Given that this is the case for most of us, what’s happening is that we’re suffering, correct? What is the cause of our suffering? Your first impulse might be to say that it is your body that is causing your suffering. It is the “wrong” shape or size and you want to change that.But what if we looked in a slightly different direction? What if it’s the thoughts about your body and the thoughts about food that are the root cause of your suffering, not your body itself? As surprising as this is going to sound, your body – no matter how it looks or what size it is – cannot actually cause you to suffer. Your body is just doing its job; pumping blood and growing new cells and taking in oxygen and letting out carbon dioxide and, yes, using the food you eat for fuel and/or reserving stores of that fuel. Our bodies are doing all this and more, but they cannot directly create suffering. Now our thoughts about our bodies – they can create real sufferingIn order to explain this, I’m going to use a couple of examples. Here’s the first one: Think about how it’s possible to hear someone make a really judgmental statement about their own body, or a part of it, and to find yourself thinking, “That person’s body is perfect.” Or, “Their weight is absolutely fine.” Yet the person who made the comment is really suffering about how they

Bill and Connie DeKramer have long worked in the field of offering solutions about healthy eating and healthy living. But they found that there was a piece missing when it came to helping their clients find lasting results. Then they discovered the 3 Principles of innate health and everything fell into place, for them and for their clients. Bill and Connie DeKramer love sharing a program that has helped more than a thousand people restore their health, lose weight naturally and create a healthy relationship with food. All this happens through a simple understanding of our true nature and our innate intelligence that effortlessly guides us to the food and lifestyle choices that return us to balance and thriving. You can find Bill and Connie at AmazingHealthEffortlessly.com and on Instagram @amazing.health.effortlessly. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes The end of spiritual seeking as we discover it’s all within us How we can’t use our minds to change our minds How we are always feeling our thinking How eating changes when we see our thinking for what it is On the wisdom in cravings Transcript of Interview with Bill and Connie DeKramer Alexandra: Bill and Connie DeKramer Welcome to Unbroken. Bill: Thanks, Alexandra. We’re delighted to be here. Connie: And your title, Unbroken. It’s so true. We all are. Alexandra: Exactly. Thank you. I chose that very consciously, of course. So this is the first interview I’ve done with two people, as opposed to one. So this will be kind of fun. Why don’t you start and tell us each about how you came across the principles. Connie, why don’t we start with you? Why don’t you tell us about that. Connie: We’ve been spiritual seekers forever. And all of a sudden, I realized no more of this. I know it’s all within me. And that’s where I’m going to look from here on out. I had an experience thinking Bill and I might separate where I was devastated. In that sadness, I saw that I would be fine no matter what happened. And my mind went quiet. It has stayed that way since then, actually. Then we moved to Kelowna. And that’s how we found the principles. And for me, everything that Syd was saying, confirmed my experience. So I knew this was something really true and worthwhile. Alexandra: And Bill, what about you? Bill: We discovered them at the same time. And then what actually introduced us to the first person that was talking about this understanding of the principles was – Connie had an career in weight loss, she opened salons in Australia big deal. And so she would tap in every now and then to see what was going on in the weight loss industry. And we had been helping people restore their health with whole foods for 30 years, and had great success with that. But we would find that when people – even if they had great results – sometimes we would see a client six months, 12 months later, and put the weight back on their conditions were back and say, Hey, what happened, it was always the same story, something had happened in their lives, that created a lot of pressure. And they turned back to their old habits of using foods to come through. So we knew there was a mental emotional piece to tied into being healthy. Just giving the body what it needs, the body will be healthy if we give it what it needs. But we’ve got to give it what it needs and our emotions, how we feel, can have a big bearing on our relationship with food, and we’re reaching for food that’s not serving us to deal with something other than our health. So, we were listening to this webinar, and Dr. Amy Johnson came on and was talking about weight loss. But she was putting it in their context of it’s about our relationship with life, that we can really find lasting change in establishing weight loss. And it didn’t make any sense. But something resonated. It’s like I’ve learned more about what she’s talking about. So one thing led to another and we studied with Amy and became change coaches through Amy’s Change Coach Program. And that took care of that mental emotional piece that we’ve been looking for, to help our clients be able to make the lasting change in terms of diet and lifestyle without getting thrown off the tracks if something happened in their lives. Alexandra: Connie, were there other things you had tried, in terms of that emotional piece that hadn’t worked? Connie: Oh yeah. We tried HeartMath. We tried Byron Katie’s work, we tried meditation. We tried everything that seemed like it might really support people, but nothing worked. Everything made sense that people would do their positive thinking with us for a while. But nothing would stick. What we see now is that all of these techniques and strategies, people were using them like they wanted the what do I do

What should we do when an unwanted habit that has been getting better suddenly rears its head again? Contrary to what we might believe, when this occurs it’s good news. It means there’s more for us to see about our innate well-being. It’s also a very natural part of the learning and growing process. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes How there’s always forward momentum with our growth and healing, even when it doesn’t feel like it How the ‘back of the spiral’ is where change and learning occur What to do when we’re at the back of the spiral How resisting what we’re feeling can backfire What we’re looking for when we’re in the back of the spiral How our unwanted habits like overeating always alert us to busy insecure thinking Resources mentioned in this episode Freedom From Overeating online course Transcript of episode Hello, explorers, and welcome to Q&A episode 41 of Unbroken. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor. I’m here today with the question, why is it good news when we backslide? By backslide I mean when we feel like we were making progress, and maybe our unwanted habit was a little bit less pressing than it used to be, or where, in the case of overeating, we’re eating a little bit better than we were and we feel like we’ve been making a little bit of progress. And then what happens when things start to feel like we’re slipping backwards, we’re not where we were a few days or a few weeks ago. Things seem to be getting worse instead of better, or worse than they were anyway, when we had improved. So that’s what I mean by backslide. Today’s episode might be a little bit longer than these episodes typically are because I want to delve into two separate things in order to explore this. And then it’s also going to be a little more personal than the episodes usually are, because this is something that I’m encountering right at this moment. So let’s get into it. The first thing I want to talk about is the way that change happens, and the way that we evolve and grow. When we have a situation like the one I just described, where we feel like we were maybe doing better, a habit was beginning to resolve itself and then it isn’t anymore, it isn’t getting better, it feels like it’s getting worse, or we’ve slid back a little bit – we have that expression, two steps forward one step back – it can feel like that. It can feel like we’re going backwards. Or maybe we’re going in a circle, we’ve circled back around to a place that we were before. And it can feel like the progress that we made, that maybe we’ve negated that somehow, or that it’s slipped out of our grasp, that it’s gone away. And we can get down on ourselves about that, of course. So the first thing I want to explain is how it seems to me that growth and healing – and this has definitely been my experience – are more like a corkscrew shape. For those of you on YouTube, I’m holding up a corkscrew. So a corkscrew, of course has this spiraling motion, as you can see, and this is a really great metaphor for learning and growth and change. And resolving something like an overeating habit. Because no matter what’s going on, even if we feel like we made some progress and now we’ve fallen back, we’re still moving forward. And that’s why the corkscrew shape is such a helpful metaphor, because if you lay it on its side, and it’s making that motion, it’s still you’re curling, one way and then the other. But it’s still a forward momentum. There’s a lesson in the Freedom From Overeating course that I have that goes into this in more detail. But I just I love that metaphor. The second thing that I want to explore with regard to this metaphor, is that if you think of that shape of the corkscrew, there’s a part of it where you’re coming around the top of the spiraling motion. And if this was a roller coaster, you’d then tip over the top and then be going downhill. Those are the moments when things feel easy. And they’re flowing. This is what happens after insights occur to us and we have a shift. It can be small or it can be large. Either way, there’s that forward momentum and it’s downhill. It’s easy, or we’re being pulled by gravity, as it were, and it can feel smooth and easy. And it’s just a good feeling when we’re in that part of the spiral. But then there’s the back of the spiral that occurs; the spiral goes down, and now it’s curving forward, still moving forward, but you’re in the back of it, and this is an is an uphill slope. So the roller coaster would be curving that way if it was going upwards. This is what’s happening when we feel like we’re sliding backwa

When we have a challenge or problem in our lives it can seem obvious to focus on that problem in order to solve it. But what if finding the solutions to problems – like an overeating habit – didn’t involve this kind of approach at all? Ian Watson’s work as an educator is to provide education and training that doesn’t just inform, but which empowers, heals and transforms. For it is only through your own insightful realisation that deep and lasting positive change occurs. He works mainly with groups, and sometimes with individuals. His intention is always the same – to remind you of what you already know to be true deep inside, but may have temporarily forgotten. To help you reconnect with the source of your own wisdom, wellbeing and innate self-healing capacity. To come home to your true Self. You can find Ian Watson at TheInsightSpace.com. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes Observing in patients that healing seemed to come from somewhere mysterious How feeling better can become an ongoing pursuit when we don’t understand the source of peace How we don’t need to work on our issues How insight is the only catalyst for change How we live in a thought created experience Why working on our issues is counterproductive How our symptoms are never a nuisance or something to get rid of Transcript of Interview with Ian Watson Alexandra: Ian Watson, welcome to Unbroken. Ian: Very nice to be here. Thanks for inviting me. Alexandra: Oh, my pleasure. So why don’t you give us a little background? Tell us a bit about yourself and how you came to came across the Three Principles. Ian: I really have followed my own interests, which took me initially into alternative healing. As a teenager, I started with Bach flower remedies. And that led me into herbs and homeopathy. Homeopathy became my career for at least 15 years, I was a practitioner. Also, I became interested in the training side. So I started running a homeopathy training school, wrote some books became reasonably well known, I suppose, in that field, and assumed that would be my life’s work really. I love homeopathy still do. To my surprise, working with a lot of clients over time, I started to see that sometimes people come with a physical health problem. But it turns out to be the entry ticket. And there’s other things going on which once you get to know the person, as you will know, they start to reveal more about what their internal struggles are the other things going on with that in their life. I started to feel that there were other ways that I’d like to help people but I didn’t know what they were. I sometimes felt that the purely homeopathic approach that I knew, wasn’t addressing everything that could be addressed. And just in general terms, to say what I mean by that, sometimes I would work with people it felt like we were both pushing a rock up a hill, and not getting very far. Like they were working really hard. They were doing all the right things, I was doing my best to find the remedies that will help them. And my inner sense was nothing much is really changing on a deep level. We were moving things around. Contrasting that I would see some people who literally first interview or very in a relatively short period of working together, something would seem to shift for them quite quickly. And they’d be on their way. They might still come to me for occasional support, but it’s very different experience. I got curious about that. You know what, there’s something invisible here. I don’t know what it is, that seems to be like the secret sauce that determines what people’s experiences. I saw exactly the same thing when I was running homeopathy school for about 10 years. People would go through the training, we were on a three year program, some people would come out, they’d already be practitioners, they’d already have a plant base, it all seemed to just grow and flow naturally. There’d be other people who’ve done exactly the same training would tell me this is really hard. It’s really complicated. I don’t know enough. Maybe there’s not enough sick people where I live, I don’t know. They’d come up with all kinds of reasons why didn’t seem to be working out. Again, I was scratching my head thinking it can’t be why they think it is there’s something else. So that became my pursuit for about the next nine or 10 years. The other thing that I noticed, and I obviously this was also looking at my own experience, as well as the people I was working with, when we’re struggling, essentially, were struggling with how we feeling on the inside. In very simple terms, that’s what it comes down to. We notice that we’re feeling a particular way that’s not comfortable. We know that we could

Today’s episode is an excerpt from my book, The Secret Language of Cravings. We suffer with an overeating habit when we misunderstand the message our cravings are trying to give us. In this book, author Alexandra Amor explores how to understand what cravings and the drive to overeat are telling us and therefore how to resolve an overeating habit. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes How it’s possible to misunderstand what our food cravings are saying to us What is it that helps resolve an overeating habit? What is the ‘home’ within us and how do we get there? Resources Mentioned in this Episode The Secret Language of Cravings – available now in ebook, paperback, hardback, large print and audiobook Transcript of this episode Hello explorers and welcome to Q&A episode 40 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor. I’m here today with a second book excerpt from my new book called The Secret Language of Cravings. The book is available now, as I record this, and it will be available when you listen, obviously, in ebook, paperback, large print, hardback and audiobook. And I just want to show you the cover here, if you’re watching on YouTube, oops, there it is there. I still don’t have my print copies. So I can’t show you a copy of the paperback or the hardback. But it is available. If you’re listening to this exactly when it goes out, which is in the middle of November 2023 it’s slowly making its way to the stores in all those different formats. So if you can’t find it in the store that you prefer, in the format that you prefer, just wait maybe a few days, and it’ll eventually show up there. Audible is notoriously slow at getting the audiobooks into their store. It’s actually kind of frustrating. But right now, as you’re listening to this, the audiobook is available in the Kobo store, for example, it’s also available on Kobo plus, which is their subscription service. You’ll be able to ask for all of those formats at your local public library. Remember, I’m always on about how valuable libraries are and how we can access books there. And the other formats are available in all the usual places. Today, the excerpt is going to be chapter 16, which is called The Call Toward Home, which is about our innate well-being that I talk about so often on this podcast. If you’re watching on YouTube, once again, you won’t see me reading the excerpt, there’s just going to be a placeholder image there. So I hope you enjoy the book if you happen to pick it up. If you have any questions about it, I’m always wanting to hear from readers and listeners like you. So please let me know, you can email me at support (at) AlexandraAmor.com. I’d love to hear your questions or your thoughts. If you happen to read the book, and you enjoyed it, I’d love it if you could leave a review wherever you happen to buy it or get it from, including the library. Libraries take reviews as well. Reviews are super important for authors, for us to get the word out to other readers like you who want to understand and resolve their unwanted overeating habit. And I’ll say this too, about reviews, the length of the review doesn’t really matter. Like you don’t have to leave five paragraphs like a PhD thesis. Literally one sentence is enough, because what’s happening is that the algorithm is weighing the number of reviews that a book gets more than it’s weighing the length and depth of each individual review. So if you just leave a five star review and say, I really liked this book, it’s one sentence, that’s totally fine. And every author, not just myself, but every author always appreciates our efforts to do that to leave our feedback, and let other readers know what we thought of a book. And always be honest, of course, I always am in my reviews, and I try to leave as many as I can. So thank you if you’ve left a review in the past or if you leave one in the future, I really appreciate it. That’s it for today. And we’re going to go in now to chapter 16 from my new book, The Secret Language of Cravings. I hope you enjoy it. I hope you are well. And I will talk to you next week. Take care. Bye. Chapter 16: The Call Toward Home For decades I believed that what my food cravings were pointing toward or alerting me to was brokenness within me. I innocently thought that cravings were pointing toward things like unresolved childhood traumas or emotional injuries from the past. I thought they were pointing toward ‘issues’ I needed to resolve. We believe this because that’s what our most well-understood psychological paradigm tells us. Perhaps, like me, you’ve spent years or decades trying to resolve those issues so that your cravings would go away. We innocently believe a) that we ca

The wisdom of the feelings in our bodies is so misunderstood. Today coach Sarie Taylor and I discuss how we can see the signals we feel for what they are and how they can help us navigate life. We don’t need to be afraid of being afraid. Many years ago Sarie Taylor found herself very unexpectedly going from studying at university and travelling the world, to being unable to leave the house, ultimately ending up being hospitalised with generalised anxiety disorder, panic disorder as well as depression. However, once she stumbled across the three principles her relationship with anxiety was transformed. You can find Sarie Taylor at WorldWideWellBeing.co.uk and on Instagram @sarietaylorcoaching. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes From travelling the world to not being able to leave the house How we fight the experience of being human How aiming to be average is more than enough How we are always feeling our thoughts Being in our heads or in our lives On anxiety being the fear of being anxious On future thinking and how it can be worse than the anxiety we expeirence How intrusive thoughts can be a signal that we need more sleep or we’re just in a low mood Resources Mentioned in this Episode Dr. Bill Pettit Transcript of Interview with Sarie Taylor Alexandra: Sarie Taylor, welcome to Unbroken. Sarie: Thank you for having me. Alexandra: It’s lovely to have you here. Give us a little bit about your background and how you found the Three Principles. Sarie: Okay, so have to dig deep for this because it feels like all of the lifetime ago. When I was in my early 20s, I didn’t realize I was anxious, but I was very anxious. And I’d kind of been ignoring it. If people would have met me in my 20s, I would have said, Oh, you’re super confident, like more confident than most. But actually, deep down, I really wasn’t. But I pretended to be a lot. It eventually caught up with me in my early 20s, and I ended up going from having been to university, traveled the world with my now husband and ending up within a space of two weeks not being able to actually physically leave the house with such severe anxiety. That then escalated from me not being able to leave the house to me not allowing my mom to leave the house, because I needed her there. It regressed massively, to the point where she’d go to the local shops for a loaf of bread, and I’d have to go with her in the car. And I’d just cry the whole time in a panic when she was in the local store. And this is like I say, I had traveled the world at this point was a big shock out and I had no idea what was happening. Eventually, I pretty much begged the doctor to send me somewhere. I think my main driver for wanting to go into a mental hospital, or whatever you want to call it is because I wanted my mom to get some respite because I was very aware that she was a prisoner in her own home too. And I didn’t know how I was going to get out of it or change it. So I spent a month in hospital, I was very heavily medicated. There was not really a medication that I wasn’t on. I was on a concoction of many, many different things. I came out of there after a month feeling, to be fair, quite chilled, but I would defy anybody who’s on not on beta blockers, diazepam and antidepressants all at once on the highest possible doses not to feel quite cheerful. But I was still frightened underneath and thinking what on earth do I do now? How do I get off these? I was younger and wanting to have children, I knew that at some point, I’d have to try and come off them so. So I then went into exploring how to fix myself, which I know a lot of people who end up finding the Three Principles start off trying to fix themselves. And part of that was training to be a psychotherapist. Because to be honest with you, I was quite embarrassed about where I’d ended up at the time, there was a lot of shame attached to it for me. So I didn’t still didn’t want to admit when I left there that was there was anything wrong with me. So in the UK, you actually have to be in therapy every week in order to train as a therapist. So that was much more palatable for me to say, I’m training as a therapist, so I’m in weekly therapy, but that’s because I feel like I’m broken and not because I want to a therapist. So that took me on to all sorts of things. As you can imagine it helped a bit but it didn’t get rid of my anxiety. So then I tried NLP, DBT, CBT hypnotherapy, I’m trained in most of them as well. Got a lot of certificates, but I was still burning out every 18 months to the point where I would, again, not want to leave the house. Then, nearly 10 years ago now, I came across a podcast, which talked about three principles. And first, I don’t know what it was, to be honest, that made me want to explore more. I know

Universally, human beings are always searching for a better feeling. We are wired to connect with the peace and love that we are made of. And when we have feelings like victimhood, they are pointing toward exactly this innate drive within us. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes Examples of how we might feel like a victim What the feeling of being a victim is pointing toward How we can recognize our innate well-being when feelings like this come up in ourselves and others How understanding the innate drive to feel good can increase our compassion for others Transcript of episode Hello explorers, and welcome to Q&A episode 39 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor. I’m here today with kind of an odd question, it may look like it has nothing to do with resolving an unwanted habit, but it actually does. The question is why does being a victim feel good? This came up for me, because there are a couple of situations going on in my life. So the first was that I experienced someone in my life, not in my immediate circles, but kind of someone I know very occasionally and casually, who I could tell really feels like a victim a lot of the time, and almost tends to create situations in her life where she’s victimized. And then that reinforces that she feels like a victim. I was reflecting on that, and reflecting on the wisdom in that feeling like a victim, and we’ll talk about that in just a second. Then I had a situation where I had a moment of feeling like a victim. I was planning to get together with a friend, and it wasn’t coming together. And I hadn’t heard from this friend. I noticed some feelings of victimhood, not in a huge way, but just in a tiny way, like, geez, this person isn’t getting back to me, I’m feeling a little ignored. That kind of feeling. And maybe she doesn’t like me, that kind of thing. I noticed this little frisson of pleasure in that feeling of victimhood. And so I thought to myself, well, now, isn’t that interesting? What’s that about? So because these two things that happened quite close to one another in terms of time, I just started reflecting on this. What I realized was that that feeling of being a victim, whether it’s in a small way, or a large way, really points to everything that we talked about in the three principles, understanding and our innate health. And it may seem like those examples, don’t point to that toward that at all. But I’m going to explain why they do. What’s happening when we’re feeling like a victim? That’s what that was where I started, with that question about myself and about this other person in my life. And what I realized is that there was that little bit of pleasure that I felt was because it felt like a bit of nurturing. So feeling like a victim in that moment, for me felt like a little bit of nurturing. I was taking care of myself. ‘And there’s the element of protecting myself against the big bad world. There’s that part of it. And then there’s just this kind of folding in feeling of protection, of protecting myself from whatever’s going on. And it seems to me that that’s where the little feeling of pleasure came from. For the woman who’s peripherally in my life, I can only imagine that that that she gets a similar feeling from that, and I can sort of tell that she’s a person who feels unnurtured, who feels victimized, who feels on the outside and other people are on the inside. And so I can only imagine that feeling inside herself and setting up situations where she feels like a victim is one way that she is able to nurture herself. What that points two is that we, as human beings are always, always searching for a better feeling. We’re searching for that home base feeling, that is our innate wisdom and well being, and the true source of our experience of life, the light that we are, the love that we are. And so feeling like a victim is a misguided way to connect to that feeling of our true nature, our true essence. But it’s, in a way, it’s not misguided, because it’s serving that purpose. It’s connecting us. We’re coming at it from a weird, funny angle. But it really is ourselves making an attempt to connect to  that to a good feeling to a feeling of safety, and warmth. And all those things are the essence of who we are. It all comes back to love, doesn’t it? We are made of love and the source of where we come from is love. And so we’re always trying, it seems to me to connect to that feeling. And as human beings, it’s difficult. Our journey in this life is full of complication. And it’s a real challenge. And there’s no end of challenging circumstances and difficult circumstances that we get ourselves into, and feelings that are challenging as

After riding a roller coaster of a profound spiritual experience followed by post-trauma flashbacks, Carol Boroughs had questions about the root cause of suffering. This practised healer began a search and stumbled across the work of Sydney Banks, which highlights Thought as a central, powerful force that affects our experience of life. Carol Boroughs brings together the skills and experience she has accumulated over four decades in the field of human development and transformation, in the early years as a human resources consultant and for the last 25 years as a holistic therapist, healer and teacher. She also draws directly on intrinsic knowledge and personal experience of awakenings which began in childhood and led to a transformational realisation in 2011. She has chosen to use the Three Principles as the basis of her work as she recognises it to be a powerful teaching for our time. You can find Carol Boroughs at ThreePrinciples.co.uk and on Facebook @Signposts1. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes Following the path of the wounded healer On having a powerful spiritual experience where reality dropped away How we innocently re-traumatize ourselves with our thoughts Changing our relationship to trauma by seeing what it is made of How we don’t need techniques to bring us back to the present moment Why we try to transcend our humanness On the wise nature of our search for peace How our own experience is the best teacher Resources Mentioned in this Episode Sydney Banks website Sydney Banks book mentioned, The Missing Link My memoir about my cult experience, Cult, A Love Story My book about resolving an overeating habit, It’s Not About the Food Transcript of Interview with Carol Boroughs Alexandra: Carol Burrows, welcome to unbroken. Carol: Thank you very much, Alexandra, it’s a pleasure to be here. Alexandra: It’s lovely to meet you. And to be having this chat this morning. Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got interested in the Three Principles. Carol: My professional background is a career in two halves really, I started out in human resource management, did that for about 20 years. And then when I had my children in my late 30s, something woke up in me, and I just took a completely different direction. That partly came about because I was seeking to heal myself from some early trauma, and the after effects of that. I started exploring, I’d already started exploring, but I went much more deeply into lots of different healing modalities. And the ones that I found really helpful, I studied them, and I learned to help other people with them. So I had a practice helping other people through lots of different holistic therapies, primarily homeopathy, but also specialized schools of counseling. And because of my own background, I guess I attracted people who needed help with trauma, but many, many other things as well physical, physical, health, mental and emotional health. I was very identified with being the wounded healer. And I also had all always been interested in spirituality. Ever since I was a child. I was the child of a long line of maternal healers in my family. And so an awareness of spirit had always been in my life. But because of things that happen to me, and in the family, it was very much something that I put away for a long time, it never really went away. But it wasn’t something I explored thoroughly. And then when I had my children, and I had this kind of wake up call about my own healing, I got interested in spirituality again. So there was a lot going on. I explored all sorts of different avenues. And in about 2011, so about 12 years ago, I was on a spiritual retreat. And I had a very, very powerful experience. Ordinary reality just dropped away. I knew myself to be part of the indivisible whole, there was oneness, love, it was just the most powerful experience that shifted my being, at every level, physical, mental, emotional, spiritual. And that experience, I won’t go into all the detail of that it lasted for several days. And then the bliss bubble that I lived in for the following weeks was extraordinary. And I was in that state, when all of a sudden it changed. And I was back into post traumatic flashback, spiraling down, terror arose. But this time, I was looking at it from a different place because of that shifting in consciousness. And I didn’t spiral all the way down, I recovered relatively quickly. And in the reflection after that, this powerful question arose? The question was, how can a human being know themselves to be one with the energy of all life and still suffer like this? As I reflected on that question, it was a powerful, luminous question. There is a spiritual answer to this. And what occurred to me was that I needed to find a spiritual teacher, a living breathing teacher, not books or anything else. I ha

Cravings can be scary. And when they happen we can automatically brace ourselves against them. But what if there was another way to deal with cravings that encouraged them to dissolve on their own? You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes How are food cravings similar to riding a horse? What to do when a craving shows up inside you How are cravings part of our innate wisdom? Resources Mentioned in this Episode Sydney Banks Transcript of episode Hello explorers and welcome to Q&A episode 38 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor. Today our question is, what if we weren’t afraid of our cravings? I’ve been mulling this over for a few days. And this question in this q&a episode is inspired by the famous Sydney Banks quote: If the only thing people learned was to not be afraid of their experience, that alone would change the world. Now, of course, this is a really deep quote, and we could explore it for days and weeks. And of course, Sydney Banks isn’t here to expand on what he meant by that, and all the different areas or threads that might come from that quote. It is really, really deep. I think one of the nice things about it is that it probably has different meaning for all of us, and our own interpretation, and some universality about it, which is what, all great quotes, that’s what they speak to in us, I think. So what I’m going to explore today is one example, or possible interpretation of that quote, and I’m going to use a personal story from my personal life. And then we’re going to go into talking about cravings. When I was a little kid, my dad got me started riding horses when I was pretty young, I think four years old or something like that. And along the way, we were mostly learning to ride in a riding arena. So an enclosed arena, quite big. And so a very pretty controlled environment. It’s not like we were out in the wilderness or anything. Every once in a while, one of the horses would get spooked by something that happened. And it could be the horse that I was on, it could be somebody else’s horse, and there tended to be a chain reaction to with horses. When one of them get spooked, they all tend to get a bit spooked, because they’re herd animals, and they communicate so clearly with one another. And being part of the herd is what keeps them safe. When a horse spooks, it can do a number of things; bucking with its back end, their legs can get kind of stiff, and they can do that sort of sideways bounce. Like you’ll often see kittens do when they’re feeling kind of frisky horses can do that, too. They’ll throw their head up and down. I’m sure you’ve seen bucking bronco videos from rodeos. And it wouldn’t necessarily be that dramatic, but it could be sometimes it would just be a little bit of jumping up and down. Initially, when I was learning to ride, the reflexive action that I would take, the automatic response that I would take to if my horse was spooking, and jumping up and down, would be to stiffen up. So it’s frightening, you’re scared. And there you are five feet off the ground. I could be six years old or whatever. This horse is spazzing out and you don’t have any control over it. The automatic response to that, when that happens, is to is to get really stiff, to brace yourself against what is happening. And I learned pretty quickly that that doesn’t work. So what happens is, when I get really stiff in the saddle, and my back gets really stiff and my arms get stiff on the reins and my legs are kind of braced against what’s happening, it’s like then that two hard forces meet each other. And what automatically would happen was that I would just get bounced out of the saddle and land on my back or my head on the floor of the writing arena. So I learned that that didn’t work. I don’t remember if someone instructed me to do this, or if I just figured it out, that the better response when a horse is having a little spooky moment, is to actually get really soft. So the horse could be bouncing up and down, throwing its head around kicking its back legs out, whatever it’s doing, and it’s counterintuitive but the thing that worked better than bracing myself was to, like I say, get really soft. What I mean by that is I would sit even deeper in the saddle, and get really kind of marshmallowy – I don’t know what word to use to describe it – in my pelvic area, in my bum, in my thighs, and in my back, and almost melt into the saddle. Riders tend to call that sitting really deep in your seat. And what that would mean was that as the horses jumping around and spazzing out, I would be melted into the horse’s back and would just ride the waves. Like you would ride a wave on the ocean, if you were on a surfboard, or on a river,

In intimate partner relationships, we can often believe that change needs to happen in the other person in order for us to be happy. Rohini Ross, and her husband Angus, work with couples and individuals to help them see that our experience of everyone in our lives is coming not from them, but from within us. Rohini Ross loves supporting others with deep healing as they wake up to their true nature. She is sought out for her specialization in Spiritual Psychology. You can listen to her podcast Rewilding Love where she and her husband Angus help a couple on the brink of divorce. You can find Rohini Ross at TheRewilders.org. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes Discovering spiritual psychology after several career starts Burning out as a therapist while still becoming licensed On stress coming from our patterns of throught Resolving the internal pressure to be worthy of love and acceptance How the Principles are ‘time release learning’ Whatever we are looking for is within us On not taking a partner’s anger personally Dealing with an autism spectrum diagnosis in a child Resources Mentioned in this Episode George Pransky’s book The Relationship Handbook Transcript of Interview with Rohini Ross Alexandra: Rohini Ross, welcome to Unbroken. Rohini: Thank you so much for having me lovely to speak with you. Alexandra: Lovely to see you again too.  Tell us a little bit about your background and how you came across the Three Principles. Rohini: Oh, my goodness, where would you like me to start? I originally got a master’s in cultural geography. And that was a switch in my major, I was going to school to be a doctor. And when I got to the pre med classes, second year of them, the science classes, I had a bit of a meltdown. I wasn’t able to do them. And so the dean at that time, because my first year, I got straight A’s. And so it was kind of shocking for me, I’d never struggled academically before. And there was a lot of other things going on as well that were challenging.  When I went to the dean, he says, Well, it seems like you’re capable, but maybe you just need to switch to something you enjoy more. That sounds like a good idea. And so I switched to cultural geography, which I’m really grateful for, because it’s very closely aligned with anthropology. And it gave me more global context for understanding things. And it was very inter disciplinary. And so it gave me a lot of freedom.  Then, when I was finishing my master’s, I realized that I missed the intention of being in a healing profession. So as much as I enjoyed the academics going on and doing a PhD was appealing. But there was something deeper within me that wanted to continue to look at healing, even if I wasn’t a medical doctor. And so I stopped my studies at that point.  I had just decided to move back to England. I was born in England, but raised in Canada. And my father left when I was two and a half. And we hadn’t been reconnected. I knew that he was or I thought he was in England. And so when I was doing my research in Guatemala, for my master’s, I met a woman who lived in London, she ran a Guatemalan Textile Museum in London. And she said, you can come and work in the museum, and I’ll trade. I have a flat that you can stay in. And I thought, well, that sounds like a great idea. And so that was all set up.  Then I met Angus. He was flying in and out literally, from Toronto, where I was living at the time. And we met, and it was one of those recognitions in that time. And so there was some real motivation for me. So when I went to England, I just decided to focus on finding my dad, and then just giving myself some space to really explore what is it that I want to do. I was looking at Chinese medicine, naturopathy, homeopathy, and I didn’t really think about psychology. But as I was, as things unfolded, the museum didn’t work out. Well, the textiles had a lot of chemicals in them. I’m very sensitive to chemicals. And so I’m like, I can’t work in this environment, because I’m getting headaches, and I’m feeling well, and the trade with living in the basement flat with a woman wasn’t feeling so great, either. And so I said to Angus, I don’t know what to do, I don’t think I can do this job anymore. But I don’t have another job.  He was a photographer at the time, let me just introduce you to modeling agency and see if they have any work they can help you out with in the meantime. And I was 24, turning 25 at the time, which is very old to start a modeling career. Most people start when they’re 15. And but for whatever reason, I was fortunate in that they had work and I ended up doing that for about 10 years, till we had our first child. And that allowed me to really have the space to

When we explore the inside-out nature of life, especially as it relates to resolving an overeating habit, it can take some courage to be looking in this direction for answers. In this episode, we explore three instances where that courage may be required. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes What I mean by looking for ‘different’ answers Three instances where courage may be required in this exploration Personal examples of courage Transcript of episode Hello explorers, and welcome to Q&A episode 37 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor.  Today I wanted to talk about something that’s not so much a question, but it is an observation about the courage it takes to look in a different direction for answers. And in our case, of course, it’s specifically about an unwanted habit.  I’ve been mulling this over for a few days, and thought it would be a good thing to explore, It might help us to be a little bit more gentle with ourselves as we’re going on this exploration. So that’s definitely the intention.  So, why do I say courage?  I’m going to be the nerd that talks about the root or the origin of the word courage, and it has to do with heart actually. So the word cor I think, is the Latin spelling of heart. And cour I think is the French word for heart.  Courage really has to do with, it seems to me, pursuing a heartfelt desire or following our hearts.  And, for me, that’s definitely what this exploration of the Inside-Out understanding has been, especially as it relates to overcoming an over eating habit. So that’s why I chose that word courage.  And then when I talk about looking in a different direction, what do I mean by different? This is why it takes some courage. And that’s because I feel like our culture is not oriented in a way that supports this kind of exploration. Through no one’s fault, that’s the way that we live our lives, and the way our lives appear, is as though they work from the outside in, as though our experiences have an effect on, like chip away at our well-being or our resilience and that kind of thing. And that we have to be in order to be resilient, or well, we have to do that in spite of what’s going on.  When, instead, we look at things from an inside out perspective, we’re always coming from the foundational understanding that we are whole and well and resilient.  Not in spite of life, but innately that those qualities are always there. With no exceptions, every single person has this foundation, this core, the center of themselves, the essence of themselves, which is always well and whole. That spark of light, we could say in each person never goes away, no matter what has gone on in their lives.  But because in a mainstream way, we don’t look at life that way, when we are exploring this understanding and beginning to see how life works from the inside out it can be. So I guess there were three ways that I saw that it can require courage.  The first way is that that approach really flies in the face of how most people believe that life works.  I’ll give you a quick example. I’ve talked before on this show about the condo that I live in being for sale. And I had a neighbor who when this first came up and I told her the news and she kind of almost had a little panic and started to ask me, “Well, what are you going to do and what’s going to happen? And are you going to look for somewhere else to live?” This conversation happened more than once, it happened two or three times and I kept saying no, I’m just going to let things unfold. I trust that if there’s some action for me to take that that will occur to me, I really trust my inner compass to let me know if there’s something I need to do.  Until I feel a nudge, a guidance, a little idea popped into my head about that, I’m not going to do anything. In the present moment, there’s nothing to be done. Because nothing has happened yet. Yes, the condo is on the open market. But there’s nothing else that’s going on.  I could see that this answer perplexed her a little bit. And, I tried not to go all woowoo on her and bang her over the head with what I felt was the right direction for me, or the right choice at that moment. But I could see that what I said confused her a little bit. And each time we spoke about it, that confusion was still there.  At the time I realized that made me a little bit uncomfortable, I felt a little bit exposed for sharing the approach that I was taking. I guess that’s what I mean when I say things fly in the face and that’s a very simple example.  I felt a tiny bit of pushback from her not in anything she said, but just in the confusion that I saw in her face. And, of co

Sometimes the most powerful lessons we learn come from the darkest places. It was when Rachel Singleton’s physical health took a dark turn that she was able to see the love and kindness in her body’s design and how it had been trying to speak to her for years. For over 20 years, Rachel Singleton has worked in the field of wellbeing. She trained initially in homeopathy, energy healing and flower essences – profound but gentle therapies that work with the innate wellbeing of the body and our ‘vital force’ to help restore flow in the body-being. Now, Rachel is a Three Principles coach and teacher. It is her joy to work with individuals and groups, to explore and deepen into the innate wisdom that sits in the centre of our being, and live a life more luminous from here.  You can find Rachel Singleton at RachelSingleton.com and on Instagram @rachel.a.singleton. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes Reaching rock bottom with physical health Exploring what health actually is Giving ourselves permission to look in a beautiful direction Seeing the wisdom in physical symptoms The body as the feedback system when we step out of love On the courage it takes to listen to our wise selves How the messages from our bodies and lives get louder if we don’t listen How unreliable, insecure thinking never comes with a good feeling Resources Mentioned in this Episode Rachel’s podcast The Beautiful Feeling Transcript of Interview with Rachel Singleton Alexandra: Rachel Singleton, welcome to Unbroken. Rachel: Hi, thank you. It’s lovely to be here. Alexandra: It’s lovely to have you here and to meet you, Rachel. So why don’t we start at the beginning?  Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you found the Three Principles. Rachel: I’m a transformative wellbeing coach, and an artist. And I’ve been working in the field of wellbeing for about 25 years now.  My journey has taken a few wiggles. I started out as a homeopath. Well, I started as an English teacher got very unwell very quickly, found homeopathy amazing, started to learn about it, and then dived into this whole world of natural ways of helping and supporting the body. And in the midst of that, I stumbled across something called flower remedies.  Most people know the flower Rescue Remedy as one of those flower remedies. And I was really amazed that flowers could be medicine, but it made sense. And so I spent the next 20 years learning about exploring, listening to the flowers, and had some amazing and mystical experiences that seemed to guide my path. I was learning with people from all over the world and branching out into plant spirit medicine and shamanism and all sorts of interesting things. And at the same time, seeing clients, so I kind of feel like I was listening to the people who were coming to me, and being trained by them in terms of what they needed. And listening to plants and nature and hearing what was on offer in our natural world. There was also another journey going on, which was that for 20 years, I was very unwell for that whole 20 years, I was unwell and was in chronic pain. And that was every day. I was desperately searching, really desperately searching. I know a little of your journey from listening to your podcast. And many of the people you’ve interviewed so many of us have had such a similar experience of like trying everything.  Nevertheless 20 years in to that journey, I ended up in hospital, my body was rejecting any food that was coming in. I’d had severe IBS for years, but then that started to get kind of I guess, eating to the tissues more there was just so much inflammation going on, that it started to become much more serious. And suddenly my body couldn’t hold food in, I was losing weight rapidly. And I had this surreal kind of I think it was about 36 hours in hospital, I couldn’t take him on that and discharge myself afterwards. I was put in a ward where most of the people there were probably 50 or 60 years older than me. And I was nothing that they were giving me to eat, could I eat and none of the tests they were doing were relevant to what was going on. They were testing my lungs when it was my digestive tract.  The whole place well was very shouty and noisy and clinical and cold. That’s nothing against hospitals, hospitals are amazing places. But that at that time, in my experience in my world at that time, it wasn’t where I needed to be. And it felt the antithesis of healing.  And I’d had this question for most of my life up until that point, what is healthy?  What is happening and what did that look like? And it just really struck me they don’t look like this. And so I started to just quietly reflect on or what does it look like? What does it feel like? And I thought that too what th

Today’s episode is an excerpt from my book, The Secret Language of Cravings. We suffer with an overeating habit when we misunderstand the message our cravings are trying to give us. In this book, author Alexandra Amor explores how to understand what cravings and the drive to overeat are telling us and therefore how to resolve an overeating habit. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes How our thinking can be awfully bossy When we’re unaware that thinking is not the boss of us it can run the show On the changeable nature of thought Resources Mentioned in this Episode Book: The Secret Language of Cravings Transcript of this episode Hello explorers and welcome to Q&A episode 36 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor I’m here today with something slightly different. I’ve been working on recording the audiobook today for the book that I have coming out. So I wanted to give you a little bit more information about that. And what you’re going to hear today is also an excerpt from the book.  For those of you watching on YouTube, you can probably see there behind me, I’ve got my little recording booth set up. It’s a Friday afternoon in October 2023 and my shoulders are sore from standing and then bending over my computer and recording the audiobook chapters. But it’s been fun.  I always love recording audiobooks, because it adds, I don’t know, there’s something about me narrating my own books in my own voice, that I feel like I can bring the words alive, they come to life in the same way that I hear them when I’m writing the book. I hope that for audiobook listeners that comes through as well. The words aren’t just black and white on the page, you can hear the emotion in my voice or the excitement or the emphasis or whatever it is. So I’m enjoying that. And that will continue for the next few days.  So I’m going to attach an excerpt from the book, it’s going to be chapter nine. And oh, and I guess I should tell you the title of the book.  The book is called The Secret Language of Cravings. And the subtitle is really long. Hang on, let me go and get that for you. Uncover the intelligence behind food cravings and end your battle with overeating forever.  That title, The Secret Language of Cravings, came to me as I was working on this a few months ago, thinking about what it is that we really struggle with when it comes to any kind of overeating habit or any kind of unwanted habit? And what do we misunderstand?  What is the key issue that we misunderstand about what’s going on when we have an unwanted habit? And what I narrowed it down to for me at that moment, was that we experience these feelings, these cravings – I call it the drive to overeat – and we think that that’s a problem, as I talk about so often on this podcast. We try to manage that feeling and control it and get rid of it and make it go away. When really what it’s trying to do is help us. It’s trying to give us information about the state of our thinking. About the way that our thinking can get really stirred up and insecure. So again, as I talk about so often on this podcast, that feeling of craving isn’t a problem. It’s not something that’s broken about us. It’s something that’s trying to deliver a message.  So that’s where the title came from. I’ll give you an address if you want to go and see the cover of the book, which I’m really excited about and happy about. So if you go to AlexandraAmor.com/secretlanguage, all one word, you’ll be able to see the cover there and a description of the book as well. If that interests you.  It will be available in ebook, paperback, hardback, large print and audiobook coming up pretty quickly. I don’t have an exact date yet, but probably early November 2023. And so yeah, as I say, now I’m working on the audiobook. And then there’s a bunch of other stuff that has to happen before it gets published. But I’m thinking before the middle of November 2023, the book will be released.  I’ll also put an image of the cover in the show notes for this episode. So you can always find those at unbrokenpodcast.com and then click on Q&A number 36 and you’ll be able to see the cover there as well.  So that’s it for me. For those of you watching on YouTube, normally you would continue to see my face as I talked about the podcast, but today that’s not going to be the case. I’m just going to put a still image there and attach the recording of chapter number nine.  I hope you are doing well and that you enjoy this excerpt from my upcoming book, The Secret Language of Cravings.  Have a great week and I’ll talk to you next Monday. Bye. Excer

In 2015 Jacqueline Hollows founded Beyond Recovery which brings the understanding of innate health and well-being to incarcerated people. Now, she’s launching a book about her experiences, called Wing of an Angel, so that this understanding can be shared in prisons all over the UK.   A social and digital entrepreneur, author, mentor and professional speaker, Jacqueline Hollows has lived experience of trauma and addiction. She founded Beyond Recovery in 2015 and has impacted hundreds of lives. Jacqueline also trains and mentors facilitators and those who wish to have more peace and success in their lives. You can find Jacqueline Hollows at beyond-recovery.co.uk and at JBHollows.co.uk You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes Seeing first-hand the impact the 3 Principles had on drug users On starting to work in prisons Starting one of the first research projects about innate health On the changes observed in prisoners when they begin to see their innate well-being The experience of being seen and heard for the first time How we can do seemingly impossible things, if we take it one step at a time Resources Mentioned in this Episode Find Jacqueline Hollows’ Kickstarter campaign here Jack Pransky’s book Somebody Should Have Told Us Jules Swales, writing and creativity coach Dicken Bettinger’s website Transcript of Interview with Jacqueline Hollows Alexandra: Jacqueline Hollows, welcome to Unbroken. Jacqueline: Thank you. So nice to be here. Alexandra: Nice to see you. Great to have you here.  Give us a little bit about your background and how you came across the three principles. Jacqueline: Okay, so I was in IT customer services for many, many years. And a number of things collided as they do. I realized that I didn’t like it. And, but I did like people. So I retrained, I did live coaching, counseling NLP, EFT, anything with a three-letter acronym.  I came across a paradigm called the three principles or also known as innate health. And I became very interested in that. I actually didn’t like it personally, actually. I hope it’s okay to say this, but I actually thought it was a cult. I was very, very suspicious of it.  But I’d met someone just accidentally, who was in recovery from a heroin addiction for the for the whole of his life. And he’d got three years recovery under his belt when I met him. And he’s one of the most inspiring people I’ve ever met. I just hung out with him, I volunteered on his social enterprise. And I met a lot of other people from that background. And I thought they were amazing.  I started to talk to them about this Inside Out nature of life and stuff. And it was having an impact. And it was in the kitchen, I was making a cup of coffee in the kitchen with them. And he used to do home detoxes where a nurse comes in and does the meds. And he would look after people while they’re going through the detox. I would talk to them and then they would get jobs, and they would make up new relationships.  And they decided to write books and, and I’d be thinking, wow, this really works on them. And then, over time, I thought that was so amazing, and so inspiring and determined, I really felt like I came home to my people. And over time, I eventually thought, well, if they’re all amazing, I must be amazing, too.  So that started me really then going, I’ll give this another look and looking in this direction. Actually, that led me to meeting someone who worked in a prison and a substance misuse team, and then delivering our programs in prison and evidence in them and so on. So that’s where I what I’ve been doing for the last eight years. Alexandra: Wow.  What was it about working in prisons that attracted you? Jacqueline: You know what, it didn’t? It didn’t, it didn’t it was just that. On one day, I’d been an associate coach for somebody who was running a program in a hotel, a very plush hotel, sort of where I imagined myself to be once I built my coaching practice up and I was like the assistant and I helped her and went around the tables, and I really had a good time. And then the following day, I got this meeting with this guy, this substance misuse manager in the prison, and I was just doing anything at that point I’ll go along and I’ll speak to anybody.  I was in the gatehouse as they call it, of this prison. I felt absolutely petrified my stomach was turning over. It was grubby, and pre COVID. Things have improved a little since COVID. But pre COVID It was stinking grubby, and wasn’t a very nice even at the reception gate. And I thought, I want to work here. I had no idea why.  Then the guy came through and he collected us. And we went through all these gates. And it was scary. And I mean, it’s ab

Intrusive thoughts can seem like a problem. Just by their nature, they can seem scary and as though they are a sign of something that is wrong with us. But what if this isn’t true? And what if dealing with them is simply a matter of understanding their nature? You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes What intrusive thoughts can look like The feelings that can come with intrusive thoughts How our thoughts are NOT a reflection of our mental health How we don’t need to do anything about any kind of thought Resources Mentioned in this Episode Stay informed about receiving an advanced copy of my next book by signing up for my newsletter at AlexandraAmor.com/insight Transcript of episode Hello explorers and welcome to Q&A episode 35 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor. Today our question is how do I deal with intrusive thoughts about food?  I’ll get to answering that question in just a moment. But first, a little public service announcement. If you’re listening to this around the time it goes out, which will be the middle of October, I can’t remember the date exactly, always on a Monday. If you’re listening to that around that time, and you would like to receive an advanced copy before anybody else gets it of the new book that I’ve got coming out about food and resolving our relationship with an unwanted overeating habit, make sure that you’re subscribed to my newsletter.  You can do that at AlexandraAmor.com/insight. You’ll receive a notice from me when I’m going to send out requests and offers for anyone who would like an advanced copy of the book.  If you’re already subscribed, then there’s nothing you need to do, you will receive that notice as well. But if you’re not subscribed, yet, I thought I’d mention it. And so you can sign up and you’ll receive as a bonus, perhaps, the little video course that I’ve put together called how to hack your thinking and resolve unwanted habits. That’s five videos that you receive. And it’s all self-paced, you can watch it at your own speed. And hopefully that will help you well, as you’re exploring this understanding as it relates to resolving and overeating habit. So there we go. That’s the public service announcement.  Now, let’s get back to the question. So how should I deal with intrusive thoughts about food? This popped into my head the other day, because I used to have this recurring intrusive thought, and it went like this. I’ll give you this personal example.  Very often if I was dishing out some food, and especially if it was something that I really liked anything to do with potatoes, particularly, or anything to do with sugar, the thought would come to me, “There’s never enough.” It would be a thought and a feeling at the same time. A very visceral sense, and almost like a little bit of panic. So whatever was there in front of me on my plate, or that I was dishing out, there was just this feeling that there was never enough that there could never be enough.  And I think that feeling had two edges. There were two edges to that sword.  One was about the amount of food, that it just it felt like it wasn’t going to satisfy me or make me feel better, whatever it was.  And then the other edge to that feeling that I felt was a bit of panic about the feeling itself. Like if I’m feeling that, then there must be something really wrong with me.  It frightened me that I could feel such a powerful feeling about food. When it was the one thing that I was trying to resolve. It was the problem that I was trying to fix. And that no matter what I did, I would have that intrusive thought and it was unbidden. It was a thought I didn’t want to be having and it came about so often. I had it, I would say nearly every day and, and there were those two elements, like I said, to the fear around it.  What can we do when we have a thought like that? How can we make it go away, or resolve it or manage it, so that it doesn’t bother us anymore?  And here, this really points to the paradoxical nature of this understanding, in that what we need to do about that thought is absolutely nothing. So even though it felt to me like I urgently needed to get rid of that thought, like if I didn’t have that thought, then my relationship with food would be so much better. And I would be fixed, and my overeating habit would go away.  There was pressure within me to get rid of that thought, and to do something about it.  And to notice, if it had gone away, that would be something that I could feel like I had achieved, that I had made a step forward toward resolving that unwanted habit.  What I see now about thoughts like this is, well, I guess it’s a few different things. B

Coach, speaker, and author Del Adey-Jones grew up in Wales in very difficult and unusual circumstances. We discuss how that upbringing affected her adult life, including the realization that she was married to a narcissist, and how she recovered from this. Del Adey-Jones is a coach, guide, instructor, and podcaster. She is dedicated to helping people attract strong, healthy, respectful, and loving relationships, both in their personal and professional lives – starting with the one you have with yourself! Her happy ending is the result of years of searching, introspection, honesty, and courage. She’s had years of conventional therapy and has studied everything from Buddhism, Hinduism, and Kabbalah to Kundalini Yoga. She also has a masters in spiritual psychology. You can find Del Adey-Jones at DelAdeyJones.com and on Instagram @deladeyjones. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.  Show Notes The impact of being raised without acknowledgement from one parent How knowing what we don’t want can help us find what we do want How knowing ourselves can help create healthy boundaries Learning to listen and trust our wisdom again Healing the wound of taking on too much responsibility How our perception of reality is always based on our thinking Resources Mentioned in this Episode Del’s podcast, Relationship Mastery Stop Thinking, Start Living by Richard Carlson Transcript of Interview with Del Adey-Jones Alexandra: Del Adey-Jones, welcome to Unbroken. Del: Thank you so much. It’s lovely to be here. Alexandra: Lovely to see you.  Tell us a little bit about yourself your background and how you found the three principles. Del: I grew up in Wales, I now live in California. I had a very unusual childhood, in many ways, what we would classically call dysfunctional, which I basically carried into my adulthood, all the way up until I think I was about almost 50, if I’m honest.  I was the product of a relationship between my mother and my father. He was a married man who lived down the road with his wife and two children. And I was his daughter, but I never met him, even though their relationship lasted for about eight years, I never met my father, and I would pass him in the street, and then that really his avoiding my leave, looking my direction, never mind exchanging words with me was really soul destroying. For me, I have to say, I really took that as I wasn’t good enough to be loved. I thought if I was just pretty enough, clever enough, skinny enough anything a five year old normally thinks about when they want their parents love.  But I just blamed myself, I thought there must be something fundamentally wrong with me that he didn’t. I had this illusion that all fathers must love their daughters or children anyway, and that it was my fault that he didn’t love me. And also growing up in my household was very hard as well. My mother, having to make money for us, converted a rambling old mansion into a residential home for people with mental disabilities and disorders. So that was also challenging. So I grew up with a lot of issues, let’s put it that way.  I think in an attempt to escape the shame, I had debilitating shame, we were ashamed in the community. My mother sent us to a Catholic school because even though she was an atheist, she wanted us to have a good education and between the nuns and the community, and the shaming, I just wanted to get the hell out of Wales as fast as I could.  So I spent about a year in Spain. And then I came to the US when I was about 21. And I really felt like I could have a new beginning. I could escape my shame. Unfortunately, it found a way to sneak in the suitcase with me and find me all the way here. That’s when I first discovered spirituality. And I was on a spiritual path for many, many years: self help, workshops. The first workshop I ever went to was called Healing the Shame That Binds by John Bradshaw. And that was amazing. I did a lot of the inner child work and tons of stuff.  I also did a master’s in spiritual psychology, which I loved because I really love the combination of spirituality and psychology; that is my sweet spot. But I still managed to get myself in dysfunctional relationship after a dysfunctional relationship. And it was really the last dysfunctional relationship I got out of which was my marriage. That was in 2008, that I came across the principles. And there was something in the simplicity of what Syd Banks said that just hit at a deeper level, even though it’s it was nothing new. I’d heard about it for years, as I say, Kundalini Yoga, Buddhism, Kabbalah, I mean, everything I was just studying I, I’d heard of it before I knew the essence of what he was saying, but it just was in my head and it wasn’t really dropping in. As hard as I tried,