Unbroken

An innocent trap we can fall into when we have a problem like an overeating habit or anxiety is layering lots of thinking onto that situation. Counterintuitively, the solution to problems like this is less thinking, not more. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes Want an advanced copy of my upcoming book? Sign up here  When we experience tension what is it really about? What happens when we set a problem down? How do we pay less attention to our thinking Resources Mentioned in this Episode Sign up to receive news about my upcoming book here Online course Freedom From Overeating Transcript of episode Hello, explorers, and welcome to Q&A episode 34 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor. I’m here today with the question: How does stepping away from our thinking, solve problems?  Before we jump into that, I want to just give you a little bit of teaser update on a project that I’ve been working on. For the last few months, I’ve been working on writing a new book. And if you’re listening to this, as it goes out, which is going to be on October 9 2023, it’ll be going to my editor this week, and then it’ll come back to me and there’s a bunch of other stuff that has to be done.  What I’m going to do is send a notice out to my newsletter list of subscribers. As things are progressing with the book, I’m going to reveal the title and the cover. And then most importantly, I’m going to be looking to send out a few advanced reader copies, or ARCs, as they’re called in the book biz.  If you would like to receive a copy of the book for free, you can sign up to have that or to, to receive that newsletter about what’s happening and what I’m doing and when I’m going to send things out at my website, so if you go to AlexandraAmor.com/insight. That’s the page where you can sign up for the free video series that I give away. It’s called How To Hack Your Thinking and Let Go of Unwanted Habits. So if you sign up there for that video course, you’ll get the course. And then you’ll be signed up to receive my newsletter.  That’s where I communicate with people about things like this, about special offers and new projects that are coming down the pipe. And you’ll be notified about the new book. As I say, I’ll be looking for advanced readers. So you’ll get notification about that as well.  So that’s a little bit of a teaser. I’ll release more information here on the podcast as the book is getting closer to publication.  Back to our question: how does stepping away from our thinking solve problems? This is something that I’ve talked about in a number of different ways here on the show, and in my work. And I had an example of this that’s been coming up for me recently, personally. So I thought I would talk about that as a way to is to shed some more light onto this idea that adding more thinking to a problem or a situation that we’re in isn’t where the answer lives. The answer lives in actually leaving the problem alone. And definitely letting our see our thinking settle down. That’s when we’re more open to insight and wisdom and those sorts of things that can help us.  It can be quite counterintuitive to do this. I know it took me quite a while to get my head around what that looked like. So the example that I’m going to use today is unrelated to food. And I thought that might be a little bit helpful because for you it won’t be as charged a topic. So here we go.  I have a little bit of tennis elbow in both elbows actually, just from constantly being on the computer and that kind of thing. And I’m also in my mid 50s now, not getting any younger, and had been wanting to do some more exercises and stretching and building up a little bit of strength in my upper body. And my upper body has never been a place where I’ve had a lot of strength. I do a lot of walking. So my legs are pretty strong, but my arms and upper body just have no I’ve never focused on that.  As we age, we start to notice these creaks and groans and that kind of thing, and definitely the tennis elbow was bothering me. So I was working with a physio for a while a few months ago and she had me doing some stretching and some exercises, some weight bearing exercises and that kind of thing. And it was really helping and I was really enjoying it actually. I did the little sequence that she put me through probably three times a week and I was noticing differences, like that the tennis elbow was bothering me a little bit less and noticed a few other things and definitely felt like I was making a difference and things were improved.  And then I noticed my motivation for doing the weight exercises in the stretches just

Mavis Karn is one of the OG Three Principles teachers. It was such a joy to talk to her about how she came across this understanding, how it resonated with her even though she couldn’t explain it at first, her work with incarcerated youth and their impact on her, and her latest venture – being a published author and audiobook narrator. Mavis Karn is a counselor/educator/consultant in private practice in St Paul, Minnesota. She is also a mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. Over the past 45+ years, she has spent her time working with individuals, families, schools, businesses, hospitals, agencies, prisons, athletes, and athletic teams, as well as mentoring and training other professionals. You can find Mavis Karn at MavisKarn.net. 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 power of calm What happens when children wake up to who they are Finding our kindness How our feelings are always feedback about our thinking How our feelings are always on our side, guiding us back to who we are Resources Mentioned in this Episode Mavis’ original letter to the kids she worked with is on the home page of her website Find Mavis’ book, It’s That Simple, in ebook and paperback wherever you buys books. Or ask for it at your public library. Coming soon in audiobook. Transcript of Interview with Mavis Karn Alexandra: Mavis Karn, welcome to Unbroken. Mavis: Thank you very much. Good to be here. Alexandra: It’s lovely to see you.  Tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to find the three principles. Mavis: Okay. Well, this is horrible to say, but about 45 or 50 years ago, I was working at a place called The Bridge for runaway youth in Minneapolis. I was a family counselor. And one day my boss said he had been invited to the graduate school at the University of Minnesota to hear three PhD psychologists from Florida talk about what he said was something or other. He couldn’t go and did what I go in his place, and then come back and tell him whatever it was.  I said, sure, because I got two days off work, and I don’t care what he wanted me to do, I would have done it. I didn’t know what I was going to get to. But sure enough, it there were three PhD psychologists from Florida, who had been spending some time with a man named Syd Banks. And they wanted to talk about that. So I thought, Oh, great.  I got to the part where they said something about all human experience originates with individual thought. I thought the top of my head was going to come off. I don’t remember much else what they said for the next two days. I do remember that. And I, I really felt like I had, it’s kind of like having brain freeze only there’s one thought left. And it was that.  I came home that day and I told my daughter I had heard the best thing I’ve ever heard in my life. And she lit up. She said, What? And I said well, it was about thought. And it was just great. And she looked at me and like I had been smoking something funny. So that was my first experience that I know of actually, of having understood something completely, without having a clue how to explain it to myself or anybody else.  And to say that all the lights went on in the next year or it was just peaches and cream. No, that wasn’t I threw everything I could at it. I wasn’t in the habit of just taking everybody’s word for something. So I was going to prove either that it was right or it was wrong. But it was all about our thinking.  I would say well, okay, how about when you’re a single mom and you have three kids and you’re rarely have enough money for anything? That’s not just my thinking there. Except then I would say to myself, if there’s every single mom with three kids that hardly ever has any money, does she feel exactly the same way about it all the time. I’ll tell you that’s not true.  Okay, all right. So well how about when somebody dies? That’s not my thinking. There you go… except does everybody always feel the same way all the time? About a death. That just doesn’t make any sense.  So I kept having this wrestling match with myself. But at the same time, I just started feeling a lot better I started feeling more relaxed. I started seeing people differently. They started looking I don’t know, lovelier, or more innocent. It was kind of like I was cleaning the lenses of my glasses, and I was seeing more clearly things.  There weren’t any books then about this. There were just people talking about it. So whenever there was an a workshop on it, I went down to Florida a few times. And, and then finally, I can’t remember the first time I heard Syd Banks, whether he came in, he came to Minnesota a lot. But also he talked to other places

When it comes to weight loss we tend to think of it as a problem that needs to be solved, and one that is serious and potentially fraught. What if this was not the case? What if relaxing and relying on the innate wisdom that is within each of us was part of the solution? You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes Why we say that in this understanding there is very little ‘doing’ that is necessary How being relaxed and loose can aid the reception of insight and wisdom How finding a solution to an overeating habit is not all on our shoulders Resources Mentioned in this Episode Michael Neill’s book The Inside Out Revolution My book It’s Not About the Food Transcript of this episode Hello explorers and welcome to Q&A episode 33 of Unbroken. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor.  Today the question I’m going to explore is, how does relaxation help with weight loss?  This question came about because recently I gave a friend a copy of Michael Neill’s book, The Inside Out Revolution and I was reflecting on my experience reading that book, when I first was introduced to this understanding by a friend. I tell this story in It’s Not About the Food. I got two thirds of the way through the book, and my friends checked in with me and said, “How are you enjoying it? What do you think about the book?”  I said, “I really like it. It’s really great. He’s got a very engaging writing style. And I feel like I’m learning some things, but he hasn’t told me what to do yet.” And she said, “No, that’s right. And he’s not going to.”  At the beginning of exploring this understanding, I couldn’t really grasp or get my head around why it was that people said that there’s not a lot, if any, doing in this understanding. Why is it that, that they’re not giving me things to do? Like, rules to follow, or checklists to go through, or that kind of structure that we’re so used to, from, or at least I was, from the self-help world, and from the diet books, and the managing your eating books that I read for years and years and the classes that I took.  It was really puzzling to me that the teachers kept referring to this idea of doing less. And so that’s where our question is pointing us today. I want to explore what that means and why it’s important.  A couple of different analogies occurred to me about this. So one is, is one that I heard from someone else somewhere else, and I can’t remember what it was, but the analogy is this: imagine that you’re having to have surgery, any kind of surgery. And the surgeon approaches you and is maybe taking you into the operating room. And imagine that there’s one scenario where the surgeon approaches you, and is really kind of tense and rigid, and just sort of uptight. And you can tell that this is a person who really follows the rules, and wants to get things done in a timely manner. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but there’s just this rigidity about the person who is taking the situation very seriously. Almost to the point of making you nervous about what’s going on. Versus having a surgeon who, while still equally competent, at the actual job of surgery is holding the situation much more lightly. So there’s an ease there and a comfort with themselves and with perhaps even relying on your body’s natural resilience and resourcefulness. And there’s a looseness about that person and a receptivity to creativity and new ideas. Inspiration, I guess would be the best word for that.  Which surgeon would you pick?  I definitely would pick the surgeon in the second scenario, because that’s a person who is going to be open to creativity and inspiration. And even if the situation is quite serious, even if the surgery is really important and maybe life saving there’s still something about the about holding that situation lightly and trusting all the elements in play. Trusting, like I said, the health and the resilience in the in your body, the person who’s being operated on, and trusting the wisdom and the creativity and the intelligence of the other people in the operating room.  The surgeon in the second scenario is not feeling like the outcome of this situation is 1,000% resting on her shoulders.  That surgeon understands that there’s more at play, and that she can rely on those things to guide her as she’s doing her job. And again, doing her job very competently, of course, she’s trained, and she’s skilled. And all of that is taking place, but there’s just this looseness, relaxation around the job that she’s doing. And so given that scenario, I would definitely choose that surgeon, the surgeon in the second scenario.  When I was pre

One of Sharon Crabbe’s most profound insights was that we don’t ever need fixing because we can never be broken. She now applies this understanding in her work with children, adults, and horses and recognizes that our strength often lies in our willingness to be vulnerable. Sharon Crabbe is a coach, mentor and educator. She is a Certified iheart Facilitator delivering the iheart curriculum in schools and 1-2-1 or small group tutoring, and is also a Natural Horsemanship trainer of horses and humans. You can find Sharon Crabbe at SharonJCrabbe.com and on Instagram @sharonjcrabbe. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes Learning about the inside-out understanding and bringing that into equine therapy How we can’t be fixed because we’re not broken How ‘acting out’ behaviour is a sign of our resilience How urgency and anxiety can turn us into human doings rather than human beings How so much of life comes down to the quality of our relationships, even when it comes to working with horses Resources Mentioned in this Episode Get Sharon’s free ebook Lessen Your Stress here and uncover an entirely new perspective on stress: what causes it and what to do about it. The Jack Prasky book Sharon mentions is Somebody Should Have Told Us The iHeart program for young people The Viva event in Spain Transcript of Interview with Sharon Crabbe Alexandra: Sharon Crabbe, welcome to Unbroken. Sharon: Hello. It’s really lovely to be here. I’m very happy to be here. Alexandra: I’m so pleased to have you. Thank you so much for coming.  Tell us about your background and how you came to find the 3 Principles. Sharon: The common thread running throughout my whole life has been horses. I’ve done lots of other things, always as a last resort because I needed to earn some more money. But the horses have been the main thread really.  About 20 years ago, more than that, I got into natural horsemanship, because before that I’d been very traditionally trained with the British Horse Society. I ended up going to the States and spending about two years out there studying with the cowboys, actually. Which was wonderful. That was a big change, because I went out there one person and came back somebody else completely. It was a huge transformation, quite late in life, because I was already in my 40s. But it was the beginning of me becoming more self-aware, I think. I saw a whole new way of what being with horses and working with horses.  The big thing that happened was I realized that in order to be a good horsewoman, I had to change myself and it was nothing to do with changing the horses really. So that was really huge. And it’s a long story. So I’ll cut it short. I got interested in kind of in people. That took me into equine therapy. So assisted therapy, and that was pretty amazing. I started working with vulnerable, young, mostly young people.  Throughout all this things were pretty good. But I always had a bit of a dark side, I had a problem with depression and anxiety. And I used to have these episodes which were really quite extreme. I put a brave face on it. So nobody really knew. But I did have some pretty bad times. And then out of the blue one day, one of my horsemanship clients posted something on Facebook about a program that she’d done to help with anxiety and depression. And I was curious, I guess so I asked her what it was. And it was a program by Nicola Bird. And that was back in 2017.  That was my introduction to the 3P’s really. I did a 12 week program. And I kind of got fixed I thought. Alexandra: Okay, cliffhanger. Sharon: Yes. Yeah, but that was that was how I came across the three principles. Alexandra: Okay, so tell us about that cliffhanger. Sharon: I’ve been ill, physically ill, quite seriously in and out of hospital and life threatening it all so and, and when I came across Nicola, it was a time where I was really, I was better physically, but mentally, not. Anyway, as I say, it fixed me.  I got back into my crazy life. And I’ve had a great time. I’ve had lots of adventures, and I started some new ones. We went off and cycled across Costa Rica in aid of charity. And I felt great. That was kind of 2018 2019. And then after that, it started creeping back, the low mood, the depression. And I’d forgotten all about the three principles.  I’d come across Michael Neill a little bit. I’d read some of his books, but I kind of put it down. So I suddenly had this thought I know I must do, I must look up that program again, because that fixed me last time, so I probably need to do it again. I engaged again when Nicola did another little program, but this time, something was different, I saw something different. And I just got hooked if you like. Things look different. And

Traditionally we look at food cravings and the drive to overeat as a problem, something to be fixed and overcome. What if we’ve misunderstood the message cravings are trying to send us? And what if they’re actually trying to help 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 What our cravings are really pointing toward How we can begin to recognize the wisdom in cravings What happens as we see what food cravings have on offer for us Transcript of this episode Hello explorers and welcome to Q&A episode 32 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor.  Today our question has to do with the nature of symptoms and what they mean for us.  By symptoms, in this case, specifically, I want to talk about the drive to overeat or cravings for food. I just finished a recording a podcast with Rachel Singleton, which will be available on October 19, 2023. And as so often happens, when I have a guest that I’m talking to, I have insights throughout while I’m speaking to that person and see things slightly differently, from a slightly different angle. Or perhaps we could say a little deeper than I had seen them before.  Rachel is someone who struggled with physical symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome for years, and did a lot to try to resolve that and fix what she felt was wrong with her body. And in that interview, she talks about how she began to see things in a completely different way and that was ended up that ended up being what resolved her health issues.  As we were speaking, and we were talking about the loving nature of symptoms, and in this specific example, I’m going to talk about the loving nature of cravings. This metaphor occurred to me, so I want to highlight it, and then talk about what it’s pointing toward.  If you were cooking in your kitchen, and things started to go a little awry, you might notice a bit of a smell coming. Let’s say you spilled something onto the burner that you were using in the kitchen. And that would be the first, very minor signal that something was going awry with your cooking. And then if you didn’t take care of that whatever was happening, if you didn’t notice it, innocently, the burner might start to smoke. And then after a while that smoke might cause you to cough. But you still might be, let’s say distracted or just not paying attention.  Then what might happen, if there’s enough smoke created, the smoke alarm in your home or your apartment would start to go off. In my apartment, it’s kind of a beeping noise. That just alerts me that there’s smoke in the house. And then, metaphorically speaking, if we didn’t pay attention to that, flames might start to erupt, based on whatever’s going on on the stove and with your cooking.  As that situation grows worse than maybe the larger alarm in your, I live in a condo building, so there, there are those little red boxes that you can pull, or like a little red handle. And so someone might pull one of those. And then it’s a much more alarming sound. Pun intended. And we’ve all heard that when we’ve been in… I’m hearkening back to a school, or an office building; it’s really loud, really loud bell kind of sounds. Then the fire department shows up, and they might start spraying water around your kitchen, to try to fix the situation that’s going on in there.  So that’s the metaphor that came to me. And it points to a couple of different things when it comes to an unwanted overeating habit. And here’s what occurred to me.  The first is that when we come into this conversation with the three principles and the also known as the Inside Out understanding, and we’re exploring this paradigm of health, rather than the old paradigm that we’re used to, which was one of ill health, it can be a bit confusing. I think very often, at least looking back for me what I see is that it can be that when we’re exploring this understanding, we’re in that place where the people from the fire department are rushing around, there’s lots of noise, there’s lots of chaos, there’s water going everywhere, there’s flames that are trying to be extinguished in your kitchen.  What I mean by that is that you may have been struggling with your overeating habit for so long, and tried so many things as I did, that we’re kind of in crisis mode, essentially. It feels like a five alarm fire our overeating habit, and not least because perhaps we’ve gained a whole bunch of weight. And our physical health might be suffering, because of that, at that time. And our self-esteem has been perhaps, as mine was in the toilet for decades, and we’re feeling a lot of shame, and we’re feeling like we are broken, which of course we aren’t.&nb

Our state of mind can affect those around us, including our pets. Julie Cluley teaches dog owners to listen to what their dogs are saying, and she also coaches those who are dealing with anxiety and its ripple affects. I was fascinated by the potential cross-over of these two subjects, and couldn’t wait to talk to Julie. Our conversation did not disappoint. In September 2018 Julie Cluley bumped into Nicola Bird’s website and the Three Principles. Her experience of life changed almost overnight. She now lives life from a much calmer, more relaxed and joyful place. The best thing is that nothing actually changed. She still has the same lovely husband, same gorgeous kids and the same amazing job. Julie coaches dog owners to have more harmonious, peaceful dogs, and also coaches humans to connect with their innate sense of peace and well-being. You can find Julie Cluley at JulieHelpsYouHelpYourDog.co.uk and on Instagram @juliecluleyhelps. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes Stumbling across the 3 Principles when dealing with overwhelm and burnout Working with anxious dog owners vs. owners of anxious dogs How our state of mind can affect our dogs How there is always less for us to do that we imagine How we can really stir up our thinking the way you shake a snow globe Tips for those who might be anxious around dogs Resources Mentioned in this Episode Julie’s Peaceful Paws course and community Nicola Bird Transcript of Interview with Julie Cluley Alexandra: Julie Cluley, welcome to unbroken. Julie: Thank you. Lovely to be here. Alexandra: It’s so great to have you. Let’s begin with you telling us about a little bit about your background and how you came to find the principles. Julie: Okay, so my knowledge of the principles has been since about 2018. I came across the principles, one of these Facebook ads that pops up. It was Nicola Bird, who you’ve maybe heard of. was on that video. And just one of those moments, where you’re like, Whoa, what? I was like, Oh, interesting.  At that time, I was struggling with, I guess you could say anxiety, burnout overwhelm, that thing. I was being told it was all my hormones, and all of that stuff and offered various things, from HRT to antidepressants to all kinds of things that just didn’t sit that well with me. So I was resisting that. But getting a bit desperate.  I just came across that video and downloaded, I think, originally, like a six week course, online course. And then something else. And quite quickly, I just knew I was like, Oh, my God, this is like this changes everything. And very quickly, actually started to feel a lot better. Within a year, think a year or two, maybe a year, I signed up for her coaching program to become practitioner. So I did that. And qualified in that it was April 2020. I was a dog behavior coach since 2006. So like, 18 years. I’ve been doing that just that was fine. It was great. Really enjoyed it. Did that along with having my kids. And so I was juggling work, kids, that thing. And then I added in practitioners thing as well. And then since COVID, things have evolved quite differently. combined the two in the online world. Alexandra: Oh, fascinating. And before you found the principles, so many of my guests had been lifelong seekers people who were looking for answers.  Would you classify yourself as a seeker?  Julie: No, not really. No, I was interested in why are we here? And that thing. But I wasn’t like, No, I wasn’t a big seeker, I think because it seemed to me that it came up when things were bad. And so up until that point, I did have a burnout maybe about 10 years previously, but things are just being okay nothing major. So, no, I wouldn’t say I’m in that category. Alexandra: Okay. All right. Good to clarify. And the thing that I’m fascinated by and what I wanted to talk to you about mostly today is this intersection between your dog training and the principles. And I just find that so fascinating. So yeah, let’s explore that a little bit.  Do you fold the Principles in with your dog training work? Julie: Yes, I very much do. Interestingly, when I came across the approach that I share with dogs around our behavior, it was similar to when I came across the three principals. It was one of those Whoa, moments, where I had been trying to find ways to help my own dog and I was just coming up against a brick wall.  It was very much obedience and training and do this and do that. And nothing really resonated until I came across this approach, which is called Dog Listening. I did my training and all that stuff way back then. But what I found when I came across the principles was there was almost like I had a new language to share the same thing.  I was sharing the same thing, but just in maybe a slig

When we start a new diet or eating plan we often have success for the first few days. Why is that? And why does that success quickly fade away? In this episode, we discuss how this is caused by a lack of understanding about how our thinking works and how a deeper understanding of Thought can help us to resolve an unwanted 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 specifically creates success at the beginning of a diet? Why does that success begin to fade? How does this phenomenon point toward the nature of our thinking? How is thinking related to unwanted habits like overeating? Resources Mentioned in this Episode Unbroken episode 29 with Juliet Faye Transcript of episode Hello, explorers, and welcome to Q&A episode 31 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor, and I’m so pleased that you’re here with me today.  Today, the question we’ve got is, why do diets work temporarily?  I stumbled across this idea, perhaps again, perhaps I haven’t encountered it before. But in a recent interview episode with Juliet Faye, Unbroken episode 29 – I’ll link to that in the show notes for this episode at unbroken podcast.com – and we were having a conversation and I had a big insight about why when we go on some sort of a diet plan, or some sort of program to overcome or conquer our unwanted over eating habit. Why do they work initially, in the beginning?  Because they do. I’ve had this experience, and you probably have as well, where for the first, let’s say, two or three days, maybe a week speaking personally, at the outside, the plan that I’m on really seemed to work. It felt good, and I felt energized and excited. And things go really well for the, as I say, for the first few days, and then the wheels fall off. For me, the the longest I could go was maybe a week in a situation like that. And that happened over and over and over again.  The really cool thing is that I realized in that conversation with Juliet, was that, that occurrence, the fact that these diets and programs that we try out, only work for a few days or a few hours, in some cases, is actually really great evidence for what the Inside Out understanding is pointing to. It’s evidence for the work that I do, and that the other practitioners do, who are sharing this understanding. And here’s why that is what happens.  So, let me back up a little bit. When we have an unwanted habit, there’s part of us that enjoys it, of course, the indulgence and the feelings of comfort, and soothing and that kind of thing that go along with the unwanted habit. And what the habit is actually doing, like I touched on in last week’s q&a episode, is it temporarily quiets down our thinking.  I remember when I was doing some coaching work with Jason Shiers, and he said, this incredibly profound thing to me that really changed my world was that an unwanted habit or addiction, always comes back to a thinking problem. Always. It’s always a matter of overthinking. And we’re using that substance to quiet our thinking down. So that’s the first part of this.  But the second thing is that we’re suffering, right? We don’t want to be overweight, we don’t want to have this over eating habit, it can really have a detrimental effect on our lives. Speaking personally on it affected my self-esteem, it affected the way I felt about my body. I felt like my life couldn’t start until I figured this problem out, which is for 30 years, it was that was a long time to feel that way. So there’s this suffering, of course that goes along with it. And we know that. And that’s why you’re here, I’m sure. And that’s why I kept searching for answers. Absolutely.  What then happens, the next step is that we find a program or a guide, a guideline or a structure to follow about food. Traditionally we call those diets. We don’t eat certain foods, and we do allow us to eat others or we restrict our calorie count or we use an app to manage it or to track what it is we’re eating. You get it. You’ve been there. You know exactly what I’m talking about.  Initially, when we find this new thing, this new program, this new structure that’s going to help us we think, curb our unwanted habit. Our thinking quiets down, right? We think, Oh, this is it, I have found a solution. If I just do these things, if I just follow these guidelines and these rules, in this new program, everything’s going to be great and my suffering is going to be reduced. I’m going to conquer this problem. And I’m not going to have all the thinking that I have around this situation or this problem.  So what happens is temporarily, our thinking settles down. And like I say, for the fir

Experiencing anxiety and panic attacks can often lead us to do more (and more) to try to manage and control them. Lily Sais found herself in exactly this situation – working with children as a school psychologist while suffering in silence about her own anxiety. When she found the Three Principles she was released from all that she was doing to try to manage her symptoms and now she helps others find that same freedom. Lily Sais is a former school psychologist who now works as an anxiety coach and three principles practitioner. She works with compassionate, deep-thinking individuals who are currently experiencing anxiety and seeking a profound sense of relief. They’ve tried countless techniques, sought advice from numerous “experts,” and devoured countless books, only to realize that it all feels overwhelming and unnecessarily complex. Deep down, they know there must be a simpler way, but they haven’t discovered it yet. You can find Lily Sais at Peace-From-Within.com and on Instagram @_peacefromwithin. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes Working as a school psychologist while struggling with anxiety and panic attacks How there is always less for us to do than we think How our mental health is always with us Learning that we have choices about what we focus on How we can unintentionally argue for our limitations Resources Mentioned in this Episode Sarie Taylor’s website Spark curriculum Jack Pransky’s book Somebody Should Have Told Us Lily’s blog post on body sensations Nicola Bird’s podcast Transcript of Interview with Lily Sais Alexandra: Lily Sais thank you so much for being here with me on Unbroken. Lily: Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here. Alexandra: My pleasure. Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got interested in the three principles. Lily: Prior to coming into the three principles understanding I was a school psychologist. And what actually led me to the three principals was my own mental health struggles. I struggled with anxiety for a lot of my life. But then it really ramped up in 2011 when I had a panic attack, I had a bad reaction to a medication. And so I had a panic attack that involves derealization and depersonalization. This feeling of like unreality, and like I was losing my mind. And I had it when I was driving on the freeway in Los Angeles.  Actually quite a few people, their first panic attack will be driving or on a plane or something like that. But so as what happens with some people is that I started having like panic about panic, and you know, associating it with driving, and living in Los Angeles, we do rely on our cars a lot. So I had a lot of thinking about it.  And so I just tried so many things. I’ve always been interested in mental health and I just really ramped it up after having a panic attack. I’m really interested in somatic therapy, neurofeedback, cognitive behavioral therapy. I also get really into it, I’m like, Oh, my God, this is going to be it. And I’d want to and think about sharing some of it with the students that I would see and bringing it in, and going on retreats. And so I get really into it.  But nothing was long lasting. For me, I would still find and I think a lot of it was I built up this idea that I was different, there was a lot I needed to do for my mental health. And sometimes if it was like biohacking and the importance of sleep and mantras, and a morning routine. So I think these things that can be maybe helpful for some people are meditation and mindfulness, because I can then take it to like the nth degree and be like, well, I’m going to be certified to teach meditation and mindfulness, which I was, or I’m going to be certified to teach yoga to children. And if I do these things, and I’m going to meditate every morning and every night.  I just was like burnt out and tired and still anxious. So after seven years of like, a lot of trying to have the perfect diet, the perfect routine. It was like another day of barely making it to work with panic that I just put into Google again, like I don’t know, anxiety, panic, help. Up popped Sarie Taylor, who’s now a friend and colleague, but she had like either a five or seven day anxiety course. And she just sent you this little video, 30 minutes every day. And she introduced me to the principles. This is in May 2018. and I are like right before then. And I kind of just thought, Alright, here’s this other thing I’m going to try.  But I heard things that I hadn’t really heard. And one of them was there was less for me to do. No. And I started to see that my wisdom got me through every panic attack. And it was also very welcome, like, doing less. So I kind of was curious, like, Wait, there’s less for me to do. And then it’s just

When we don’t understand the nature of Thought, our thinking can (innocently) be fearful, to greater or lesser degrees. This, in turn, causes us to need to comfort and distract ourselves with unwanted habits like overeating. Alternatively, when we learn about the nature of Thought our unwanted habits become unnecessary and fall away. 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 fearful, even when we don’t notice it Our problem-solving brain is always trying to keep us safe How our unwanted habits distract us (temporarily) from our thinking When we see the nature of though our unwanted habits dissolve Transcript of episode Hello explorers, and welcome to Q&A episode 30 of Unbroken. My name is Alexandra Amor. I’m really happy to haveyou here with me today.  Today the question is: is fear making us fat? This was something that crossed my mind the other day that I really wanted to share with you as a way of looking toward the understanding that I share here on the podcast and toward this inside out understanding of the way that we work, and how everything that we’re experiencing is coming to us via thought. It occurred to me the other day, I was just thinking about my thinking. And I realized that so much of my thinking is insecure, or fearful.  We often talk about how our thinking is so often in the future or in the past. And it’s really clear to me that so often when we’re thinking about the future, when I’m planning things, or thinking about what might happen, or what could happen, or what should happen, or what I should be doing in any given situation, that thinking is quite fearful. We might not necessarily label it as such, unless we’re aware that we live in the world of our thinking, not in the world of our circumstances.  I started reflecting on the quality of my thoughts, or the nature of my thoughts even when I feel like things are relatively peaceful, inside my head, and calm and quiet, and things are fairly settled. And I realized that even then, my thinking can be quite fearful. This makes sense, because our brains ability to problem solve, I always call them big problem-solving machines. It’s their nature to want to look out into the world into what might be happening, and then solve that problem.  Where does that come from? That comes from a place of insecurity or fear.  There might be a situation that I as a human might encounter in the next 10 minutes. And my brain, being a problem-solving machine, wants to get out ahead of that problem, and it wants to fix it before it can happen. It wants to anticipate what might occur in order to keep me safe. And this, of course, makes total sense. I’m not judging my brain, or my thinking at all. It’s doing its job, and it’s doing its very best to try to protect me and keep me safe. And you as well, of course, we’re all designed the same way.  So given that problem solving nature of our brains and our thinking, so much of our thinking can be like I said, insecure or fearful, even when we’re really calm and quiet. And then what can happen – and this is where I see anxiety start to occur in people – is that thinking kind of builds on itself. It gets even more sped up and more sped up and more sped up. And now we’re spending a lot more time in that worried or anxious state. It’s like a river running faster and being really turned up.  That can become an unwanted habit as well, I realize. We get into this unwanted habit of being anxious and having these layers and layers of insecure an anxious thinking.  What does that have to do with an overeating habit?  Well, here’s what I saw about how fear is making us fat. When we have that kind of anxious, fearful thinking, and we’re not aware even a that it’s happening, that it’s something that’s occurring within us, rather than coming from our lived experience, and be that there’s such a simple way to deal with that thinking and that is simply to see it for what it is.  Once we we see the shadow puppet on the wall and recognize it as such, then we know that there isn’t a monster in our bedroom. That’s one of the analogies we use in this understanding. But when we don’t know these things, and we’ve got all this thinking that’s fearful and insecure, then what happens is, we need to comfort ourselves, that’s just perfectly natural, and normal. And of course, we want to feel safe and secure. And, in a way, create a buffer between ourselves and all of that insecure thinking.  So what do we do? We reach for substances to help us to do that.  And that can be anything; it can be food, it can be alcohol, it can be sex, it can be shopping, whatever it is, w

Even when we’re experiencing stress and overwhelm there’s far less for us to do than we sometimes imagine. In this episode I talk to Vivienne Edgecombe about that, about her experience grappling with the idea that she might never have children, and about her work with businesses helping their staff uncover their innate resilience. Vivienne Edgecombe has a background in HR and Organisational Development. Her fascination with human beings and what stops us from showing up at our beautiful best every day, led her to an understanding of the mind that is transforming psychology, mental wellbeing and organisations the world over – from prisons and the streets of Chicago, to boardrooms, meeting rooms and living rooms. This understanding now forms the foundation of the work she does in business and with individuals who are struggling with stress, anxiety or overwhelm. You can find Vivienne Edgecombe at VivienneEdgecombe.com and on Instagram @vivienneedgecombe. 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 other coaching tools become unnecessary once we understand the 3 Principles The insight about how often we make up stories about our future How insight about anything can change our entire outlook in a moment How thought carries on even when our circumstances have changed How change and shifts in perception are so natural to us The difference between overwhelm and overworked The liberation of seeing how our thinking impacts our stress levels Resources Mentioned in this Episode Vivienne’s Life in Colour webinar About Vivienne’s two books Transcript of Interview with Vivienne Edgecombe Alexandra: Vivienne Edgecombe, welcome to Unbroken. Vivienne: Thank you very much, Alexandra, it’s lovely to be here. Alexandra: Lovely to see you.  Why don’t you tell us about a little bit about your background and how you came across the three principles? Vivienne: My background has been mostly in human resources throughout my career. And that led me through a whole raft of personal development, professional development, and combinations of the two, throughout 25 years. I came to the UK in 2009. I wanted to study NLP with Jamie Smart, which I did. And Jamie at the time, was just starting to explore the principles. And so his NLP had a little bit of a different flavor about it, I think. And when he started teaching pure principles rather than NLP, I went along for that journey and never looked back. Really, it made so much sense to me and I got so many insights from it. And things just shifted and changed. So I didn’t, and still don’t, really see any reason to veer off that path. Because it just makes sense to me. Alexandra: You mentioned being in HR. And had you also felt like you were a bit of a seeker?  Was there some searching going on as well? Vivienne: I would say so. I don’t know if I would have termed it that at the time. I think it was, but I definitely was looking at the next cool thing, next interesting thing to learn. The next thing that could help me, that could help someone else, because I was doing quite a lot of coaching and my HR jobs. And so yes, there was definitely one of those that mindset of, oh, this is a great thing to add to my toolkit. And oh, and, and great. Now my toolkits complete. Oh, no, it’s not what’s the next thing? So the toolkit was ever expanding.  And, and it is funny, and I’m sure you’ve heard it before that when I came across the principles, a whole lot of stuff fell out of the toolkit. It just didn’t seem necessary to me anymore. The load got lighter and my mind got a lot quieter. When I was sitting in front of someone, whether it was in my job or a private coaching client, there was a lot less noise in there while I was trying to listen to them and help them because I didn’t have to think, oh which technique am I going to use now? Or, Oh, I’m going to do a double whammy, whatever, on this on this issue. So I just simplified things actually a lot, which was a relief really. Alexandra: It sounds like you were able to take the Principles back to your HR clients and your private clients right away. Vivienne: Yes. I guess it took me a little while, the things fell out of the toolkit not all at once. And I guess finding my own understanding and my grounding in what I was learning, but yeah, it feels like it didn’t take too long before. It just made more sense to have that conversation than any of the other conversations that I’ve been having. Alexandra: You and I have spoken before on a previous podcast that I had, and one of the things that you shared, where the principles were really impactful was your journey about having a child was really affected by the principles. Could you share a little bit about that with us, please? Vivienne: Oh, I love talking about this. Alexandra: Ok

This is part 2 of our conversation about whether or not relapse is a thing. In part 1 I left out an important part of the discussion, so this episode addresses the idea that when ‘relapses’ happen we can view the feelings we’re having to help us get back on course. Listen to Part 1 of this episode here. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.  Show Notes We are always feeling the quality of our thinking If we’re having cravings that’s not a problem, it’s a message Our human design is kind and is always trying to point us back to the peaceful state of being that is our default Resources Mentioned in this Episode Part 1 on this subject can be found here Transcript of this episode Hello explorers and welcome to Q&A Episode 29 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor.  This is going to actually be part two of the conversation that we had last week on Q&A Episode 28. I went away from that episode and I edited it and did all the stuff that I do to, to get it up on the podcast apps and all those things. And then I realized, Oh, I left out an important part of that conversation.  The subject was, Why is there no such thing as relapse when it comes to an unwanted habit like overeating?  We talked about the elements of that and what I forgot to mention – and that’s what this episode is going to be about – is that when we’re having something that we would call a ‘relapse’ what’s actually happening is that our thinking has sped up.  It’s important to remember that the cravings and the the drive to overeat, that we feel in the moment are messages, they are feedback, they are a mindfulness bell, letting us know that we’re caught up in our thinking.  That’s a really important piece of this conversation about relapsing. So let’s dive in a little deeper to that. Last week, I gave the example of the trip that I was on and the birthday that I had, and the guests that I had, and those were the external events that I felt were interfering with my ability to eat the way that I wanted to.  But when we look a little bit deeper, and it’s so important to remember this, and this is something that traditional diet and healthy eating programs don’t address at all, is the intelligence of what’s going on within us when we experience those feelings, and those cravings. And this was such a pivotal part of this inside-out understanding for me, and it made such a huge difference to my ability to eat well, and to see my the drive to overeat that I experienced resolve itself. Because I didn’t do that.  My overeating resolved itself once I understood how I work and how all human beings work.  Let’s look at the examples that I used of traveling and birthday and guests. When I experienced cravings, and the drive to overeat, during those times, what was really going on, was that those cravings, that feeling, were letting me know that my thinking was a little bit sped up. In the case of having guests, it might be sped up around are the guests having a good time? Do they have everything they need? Have I remembered to ask them were they warm enough the night before? Or did they need another blanket?  That kind of busy thinking that can go on when we’re in a situation maybe that’s unfamiliar, or a little bit charged, or whatever it is. And then the sequence becomes, I find myself feeling a little more permissive with myself about what it is I’m going to eat. I don’t mean that in a in a way that I’m really holding myself on a tight leash normally, but there is a way that I eat now that I really enjoy and appreciate that feels good for me.  What I noticed was thinking that was more along the lines of and I mentioned this last week, treating myself or rewarding myself, and that’s fine. I mean, of course we’re going to treat ourselves and reward ourselves sometimes. But I did notice some discomfort with that feeling as well with those kinds of thoughts. I didn’t really want to be eating in a way that was outside the way that I normally like to eat. And yet I was doing it anyway.  I was following the lead of those thoughts about treats and that kind of thing.  That should have twigged me, honestly. I didn’t think of those thoughts and feelings like feedback, even though I teach this stuff until after it had happened. At the time, I just got swept up in what was happening, the busyness here in my home with my guests, and the permissive thought would come in about having a treat or doing whatever. It was like being on a rushing river, I just got swept along with it, oh, that’s a good idea. My friends are on holiday, I’m just going to celebrate with them or whatever it was.  The more we look in

What if we humans are designed so perfectly that every feeling we have comes from a place of love? This is the question that Juliet Fay and I explore during our conversation, as well as looking at control and what it may have to tell us, and much more. Juliet Fay divides her time between West Wales, UK and West Coast, US, sharing and teaching in a variety of ways: group programmes, online gatherings and 1:2:1 consultations. She trained as a Three Principles Facilitator with The Insight Space, London in 2016-17 under the direction of Ian Watson and Carol Boroughs and returned as a peer mentor for their programme in 2018-19. She also attended The Three Principles School on Salt Spring Island in British Columbia, Canada in 2017 and periodically attends Three Principles Conferences (UK and 3PGC) and programmes virtually or in person. You can find Juliet Fay at SolCare.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 Learning the root cause (and cure for) unstable moods How what’s happening for us in a given moment looks true How our thinking settles down temporarily when we think we’ve found a solution to a ‘problem’ How insight is tailored to each of us Is life asking us to go deeper into not knowing? How can we learn to simply be present with what’s happening, including our feelings? Resources Mentioned in this Episode Unbroken episode with Maryse Godet Copans Ian Watson Carol Boroughs Juliet’s episode on The Beautiful Feeling podcast Juliet’s podcast with Carla Royal Transcript of Interview with Juliet Fay Alexandra: Juliet Fay, welcome to Unbroken. Juliet: Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here. Alexandra: Why don’t you tell us a bit about your background and how you found the principles? Juliet: Okay, so I was a searcher. I’m a seeker, and had been, I think, from a young age. And so the principles came across my path at a time in my life, I guess, when I was in a period of struggling more intensely than I had been.  I love the stories of how people find the principles or how the principles find them, whichever way you want to say. And I came across it randomly a video on YouTube, actually, through an email that I’d signed up to, but didn’t usually read. And it’s funny, isn’t it, because I’m actually quite good at keeping my inbox clean of when I’m no longer interested in something, I tend to unsubscribe and this one had had stayed there, all these months and months and months. And I never opened them. And then one day, the subject line just jumped out at me.  The webinar was called ‘Can an insight cure PTSD?’ It was Mary Schiller being interviewed by Molly Gordon, who’s a dear friend. So I’m sorry, Molly, that I didn’t open all those emails before. And I didn’t know much about PTSD. I didn’t. But I was aware it was considered a mental illness. And who knows why, but something really piqued my curiosity. To the extent that it was a live hangout, you could join, and I missed it, and then went back searching through my emails to find it again, because it pinged again in my head.  I’ve really learned to trust this. Now when something pings, and you don’t ignore it, it’ll come back. And then if you still ignore it, it’ll be back my way. So it goes. So I went and I found the recording, I watched it was an hour and Mary Schiller talking about her experience of PTSD and how this thing called the principles and she’d read Michael Neill’s book, I think, his first book, perhaps, and had had a life altering insight. And it really piqued my curiosity. I think that’s all I can say at that point, there was like, there’s something here.  I think it’s a very common story, I went off and just gorged on the Principles materials, webinars, books, anything I could get my hands on, for quite a while I went really deep into it.  I think the first thing that I saw that was so helpful to me at the time, which is maybe very obvious to, maybe if some people learn this already on the way, but somehow I had missed this one, which was that I am always at the effect of what looks true in my head at any given moment. If I believe what’s going on in my head, then what I say and do will follow from that. And that’s true for everyone else to.  Now, that was so helpful, because I’d spent decades trying to figure out and analyze why I was the way I was, and the way I was was I had really unstable moods. To an extraordinary degree. I looked at everything that came from diet to genetics to therapy and medication. I mean, like the loads of people, I tried everything, yoga affirmations, eating kale running. It was, and some things were helpful for a while, and I’m sure right now, from this distance, I guess I can see that we’re always having insights.

What’s really going on when we ‘fall off the wagon’? When we revert to the behaviour associated with an unwanted habit like overeating should we refer to that as a relapse? Or is it something else? Something less scary, less serious, and more natural. Listen to Part 2 of this episode here. 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 we are only ever more or less caught up in our thinking What happens when we innocently pile a bunch of thinking onto what’s already there? How our thinking is like a river, always moving, always changing Resources Mentioned in this Episode Q&A ep 27 where I reference the snowball metaphor Amanda Jones’ book, Uncovery Transcript of Episode Hello explorers, and welcome to Q&A episode 28 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor. Today I want to talk about why there is no such thing as relapse when it comes to overeating or any other kind of unwanted habit.  This came to mind for me, because recently I had…I’ll go back a little bit and say that since I discovered this understanding, and especially in the last, I don’t know, six or eight months, maybe a little more than that, I’ve been eating really well. Eating really differently, not feeling caught up in my unwanted over eating habit because of the exploration of this understanding, which has been really, really nice. And not getting too rigid with myself about the rules of what that looks like.  So then recently, I had a period of time where there was a bunch of different things going on. One was, I was away with a girlfriend, we went on a little road trip. And then almost immediately after that I came home and I had some guests here for several days. And then almost immediately after that, it was my birthday, at which you know, requires chocolate cake.  Through all of those circumstances, I wasn’t necessarily eating as well as I normally have been lately. That’s what led me to this subject about whether or not I had had a “relapse”. I absolutely wasn’t thinking about it that way. So I want to share with you what I see about what happens when we’re eating one way, and then we shift to eating a different way and why that isn’t really a relapse.  The first thing I want to say about that is that we need to remember that whatever’s going on, we are either more or less caught up in our thinking. And that’s really what it boils down to. In the case of the events that were going on with me for a month or so, all that was happening was I was a little bit more caught up in my thinking than I normally am. And the reason is that those circumstances like having guests and having a birthday, and being on a road trip with my friend, made my thinking sound like that the rules were different or that I should treat myself because of these things that were going on that kind of thing.   I saw it as it was happening. And I decided that that was okay, that that was that was what was going on in that moment and I wasn’t going to add a whole bunch more thinking onto what was already happening by beating myself up and being kind of down on myself about what was going on and holding really tightly to any kind of rules that I had set up for myself. So then, when all those circumstances were over, what I noticed was that I just bounced right back to eating in the sort of more healthy way that I’ve been doing. For the last like I said 9, 10, 12 months and it was really easy to come back to that place and it didn’t feel like it didn’t feel like that on the wagon off the wagon situation that we so often get ourselves into.  That brings us to another really important point about this conversation is that when we do hold ourselves really strictly and rigidly to an on-the-wagon or off-the-wagon situation. I see now looking back that we’re layering a whole bunch of thinking on to what’s already there about our overeating habit or other unwanted habit. And that doesn’t help.  In a recent episode I talked about the metaphor of a snowball and having it rolled downhill, and how it gathers up more snow as it goes and talked about how that’s a metaphor for our thinking. This is a perfect example of that metaphor, in real life, in a real circumstance, and something that was going on for me around eating.  So the choice that I made, I could see that the snowball, for me, the thinking about what I was eating and what I wasn’t eating, and that kind of thing was there. And it was definitely present for me during those circumstances that I mentioned. What I consciously chose to do was not roll that snowball downhill. I didn’t think of what was happening as though it was a relapse, as though I was doing something wrong. And I had failed. And I was disappointing mys

Coach Chana Studley had a personal and difficult experience with chronic pain after three violent muggings. She used all kinds of modalities to manage and try to control the pain but continued to suffer. Then a friend introduced her to the Three Principles, which explore the role thought plays in our experience of life. That understanding cleared up Chana’s pain and now she helps others with all kinds of health issues to look in the same direction. Chana Studley has spent the last 30 years helping others recover from trauma, addictions, and working with all kinds of clients; adults, children and organizations. She has spent the last 5 years helping people with physical issues including chronic pain, allergies, migraines, skin problems and IBS etc., and more recently hormone problems and Long Covid. You can find Chana Studley at ChanaStudley.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 we don’t actually need to do anything about our thinking Why slowed-down thinking helped with pain relief How all illness has a common source: Thought How we torture ourselves with our thinking (without realizing we’re doing so) Why pain is a signal The difference between acute pain and chronic pain How focusing on symptoms is another form of obsessive thinking How society and insecurity can fuel our symptoms Transcript of Interview with Chana Studley Alexandra: Chana Studley, welcome to Unbroken. Chana: Hi, thank you. So nice to be here. Alexandra: Great to have you here. Why don’t you tell us how a little bit about your background and how you came across the three principles or how they came across you? Chana: My background is I grew up in England. And I’ve had two careers. One was in the entertainment business where I did props and costumes and special effects. I started out in the theater in London, then ended up in California doing big Hollywood movies. And alongside that, I worked as a coach or counselor, to me, it’s all the same thing. It’s all a conversation.  I’ve been coaching people for about 30 years, in between projects, and it’s been my main, I guess, full time job for the last eight years. So yeah, that’s how I came. That’s my background.  And then the principles showed up in my life about eight years ago, I think. And you’re right. It’s like, I remember thinking, how come I never found this before? Because I’ve been coaching people for 30 years, I’ve been in the personal transformation, self-help world for a very long time. And I got stuck in the self-help aisle at the bookstore many times. I was a Enneagram life coach, and I did A Course in Miracles and all these kinds of different things. So it’s really weird to me that I never heard of it until I did.  It was a friend of mine. She and I were school teachers together. In between leaving Hollywood and coaching I was a school teacher for five years. And she was the music teacher, and I was the art teacher. So we put on the best school plays you could imagine. I live in Jerusalem. Now I’m in Israel, and her daughter lives here. So every time she would come visit her family, we’d meet up for lunch. And we’ve had these really long chats. I remember this one time, we were chatting for about, I don’t know, two hours catching up. And then we went for coffee somewhere else.  She said, Chana I went to this workshop yesterday, and I think you’d really like it. And I said, Oh yeah, what’s that? And she goes, Well, it was so funny. She’d been talking for two hours, and then suddenly, she was stumped. And she didn’t. I said, Well, how great was it? If you can’t even tell me what it was? She goes, Well, um, so I thought I’d help her out, because I had no clue what it was. I said, it’s a diet. And she goes, No. I said, is it an exercise program? She was No. I said, is it philosophy she was .  She grabbed a napkin and she wrote Sydney Banks, mind, thought and consciousness on this napkin and pushed it across the table to me. I wish I’d kept that because I’d have it in a frame now. So I came home, and I sat right here, I put on my computer, and I put in Sydney Banks into YouTube. And I was sold. I had known for a long time the problem was in my thinking, I just thought I had to do something about my thinking. I had all these tools and techniques, I knew the problem wasn’t out there. I got the outside in part. I already realized that things on the outside aren’t creating my happiness or my misery. So therefore, it must be my thinking. And therefore, I was really good at thought hygiene. I knew how to keep my thought hygiene really good. And it was exhausting. So my first big insight was just understanding that we don’t have to do anything. That was such a relief.

Why do we fail so often at diets? The answer may surprise you: it has to do with what and how much you’re thinking and how diets exacerbate that thinking problem, rather than relieve it. 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 thinking that we have about our overeating habit How dieting layers more thinking on, which doesn’t help Therefore diets are not the answer Looking at what our feelings are telling us about our innate wisdom How this is what creates peace with food Transcript of the episode Hello, explorers, and welcome to Q&A episode 27 of Unbroken. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor, and I’m so happy to be here with you today.  The question we have today has to do with dieting and how dieting is actually creating a different kind of suffering than, let’s say, an overeating habit, but it’s still suffering. I’m going to talk about why that is and where that comes from, and how we can do things differently.  If we think about an unwanted habit like overeating, or binge eating, or whatever it is – smoking – we know that we have a lot of thinking about that situation, right? It’s a thing that feels like it shouldn’t be happening. And we can have all kinds of stirred up thinking about why that is.  I know for me, it was always about why does it seem like it’s so not an issue for other people? And yet, it feels like such a huge issue for me. In other words, why have I spent all this time and energy and effort trying to fix this situation, and I’ve completely failed for 10, 20, 30 years. All kinds of thinking about being a failure and being someone without discipline or someone without willpower. Lots of thinking about, of course, in this day and age, with all the visually focused social media accounts and all the messages that we get from the media, I would have lots of thinking about how my body wasn’t “right” and how I didn’t measure up. I’m sure you can relate to all of this and how I wasn’t perfect. And that until I changed that, that I wasn’t really acceptable. Just lots of suffering going on, because of my thinking.  What we see then, very often, is that diets and I certainly was someone who experienced this, diets and self-help programs that teach us how to eat, and apply rules and structure and whatever kind of program you want to call it, that would help us to change our eating habits seems like a solution, right? Of course it does.  If we’ve got a situation where we’re overeating, and then someone proposes something where we would be eating less, and we would be changing the situation that feels like it’s a problem, then, of course that looks like a solution. And absolutely it did for me as well, all those years ago, and up until just a few years ago, actually.  What I see now, that’s very different when we’re exploring this inside out understanding, is that diets actually just create a slightly different kind of suffering.  What I mean by that is, we’ve got all this thinking about our overeating habit already that I just talked about. And then when we come along with a diet or a new eating plan, what we end up doing is layering a whole bunch more thinking onto the thinking that’s already there. And so it becomes like, the metaphor I want to use is a snowball rolling downhill.  The original snowball is all our thinking about ourselves and our overeating habit. And then we start to diet or we find a new eating plan. And we think it’s a solution. And we may even feel some relief for the first few days. But what we’re actually doing is rolling that snowball downhill, and adding more and more thinking to that situation. Because now we’ve got a whole bunch of thinking about what can I eat and what can’t I eat? And if I slip up what does that mean about me? And of course, in my case, and maybe yours too, you know, I would fail with the eating plan over and over and over and over again, whatever, they were all different all the time. And that just adds more and more thinking: why am I such a loser? Why can’t I figure this out? And oh, forget it. I just give up.  So that snowball is just rolling downhill, adding more and more snow to the snow ball. So at the time we do this because it’s all we know. It’s the way that our culture is focused. It’s the outside in paradigm of psychology. When we don’t see any other way of doing things, we innocently choose to try to find a solution to our overeating problem.  And I get it. I’ve been there, I’ve done that. As you know, I’ve said it over and over again, the reason I have this podcast is because of all the suffering that I experienced for 30 years. So what does that mean?  How is it different

Mason Suehs used to deal with anxiety and a gnawing sense that he was broken by using drugs. This, of course, led to some poor decisions and eventually to two stints in jail. However during his second period of incarceration he took a class offered by Anna Debenham and the Insight Alliance that pointed towards our innate well-being. The class taught him that he was not broken and didn’t need fixing. Now Mason works for The Insight Alliance, teaching others what he has seen and helping to reduce the recidivism rate among the inmates at Portland-area prisons. Mason Suehs works with the Insight Alliance teaching classes primarily to people who are incarcerated, pointing them to their wellbeing and the limitless potential they possess. Through deeper understanding of our minds, life tends to move smoother. Mason took The Insight Alliance course towards the end of his second prison sentence, and it changed his entire experience of life.  You can find Mason Suehs at The Insight Alliance. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes and a full transcript are below. Show Notes Searching for answers to life’s questions and to feel better How there’s so much less for us to do  How the recidivism rate for inmates drops when they learn about their true nature How we both create our experience and then respond to it Why no one is broken or needs fixing Seeing unwanted habits for what they are and not defining ourselves as ‘addicts’ How we’re designed to have insights and change Learning from an experience with a cinnamon roll (yes, you read that correctly) Transcript of Interview with Mason Suehs Alexandra: Mason Suehs, welcome to Unbroken. Mason: I’m happy to be here. Alexandra: Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background and how you discovered the three principles? Mason: Sure. I discovered the three principles when I was incarcerated six years ago. And as Anna Debenham, leader of the Insight Alliance or founder, she came into prison. It was my second time in prison, and that was in for drug offenses. And, man, it shook my world.  I had been searching my whole life, for what’s the answer, looking at all the billions of thing things out there and trying to solve my inner struggles and my inner challenges and then turning towards drugs, getting deeply into addiction, and then making not the greatest decisions.  When I took this class I had previously been involved in tons of meditation. And I even was sober for seven years between my two prison sets, got a degree in public health, when I was still felt like life was such a challenge. It was like I was still always looking for a way to try to feel different and feel better. Always looking for the next thing, the next self-help book. How do I escape this challenging experience?  And then when Anna came in, like I mean, she just started with you’re not broken, you actually don’t need to do all that. To fix anything, or fixing an imaginary soul. There were so many insights. And it really just helped me become like a better, better flow or a better surfer a better mover through life.  I realized there’s so much less for me to do than I thought there was not my natural capacity. Like who I was, was actually amazing. Incredible. If I let my hands off of it, and I saw the nature of where my experiences really coming from, I’d elevate. And I and it’s just been a journey of these last five or six years. Alexandra: When you took that class with, was it with Anna herself? Mason: Yeah.  Alexandra: Are they mandatory? Or is it voluntary, when you sign up? Mason: I had a couple of friends who were picked because she’d repeat right? After 10 weeks, go to another one. Like, you’ve got to take this class. Like, okay, I’ll do it, you know. And it was all voluntary.  I’m actually in teaching these classes now at the same institution. And you sign up. I did it with some good friends. And, and it’s amazing now to, like, I know many people, I’m still in contact with people from that class. And they’re doing incredible. Six years later. Every person that was close to in there is doing amazing. Alexandra: Wow. Oh, that’s fantastic. Mason: The recidivism rate is like 60%, within like, three years or something. And if I felt like, I know, six people from that class are excelling. I don’t know how everyone else is doing. But that’s pretty good numbers right there. Alexandra: So in the general population, the recidivism rate is between 50 and 60%. Mason: Yeah, that’s even higher than 60%. Alexandra: Wow. And so one of the things you mentioned in your bio at the Insight Alliance website is struggling with anxiety, severe anxiety, that was one of the things you mentioned.  What do you see now about what anxiety actually is? Mason: My creative potential I guess. The amazingness of my mind. That

When we experience feelings of anxiety and urgency do we need to dig into the past to figure out where they started in order to deal with and resolve them? In this episode I explore how the answer to that question is actually, ‘no’. Feelings of urgency and anxiety are feedback from our innate wisdom. We experience them so that they can help us and when we see them this way they begin to dissipate without any kind of intervention, pharmaceutical or otherwise. 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 urgency and anxiety fall in the same family of feelings What anxiety and urgency are really trying to tell us How we misunderstand that message How we’re designed to settle down automatically What to do (if anything) when we feel anxiety or urgency Transcript of episode Hello, explorers, and welcome to Q&A episode 26 of Unbroken. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor.  I’m here today with a question from someone who emailed me over the weekend. And I thought it was a really good subject so that’s what we’re going to talk about today. The question is, does our past matter when we’re dealing with things like anxiety and urgency?  This is such a good question because in the old psychological paradigm, the one that we’re so used to, and the one that most self-help type books and courses and understanding are based on our past does matter, it really matters. And we need to dig into that past in order to heal or resolve the things that are going on with us in the present.  What I’m here today to share is that actually, our past is a lot less important than we think it is.  As I say that, I want to emphasize that I’m not trying to negate the things that happened to you or to me in the past, and the feelings that we had about those. About neglectful upbringings or trauma that we experienced in the past. So this is the caveat at the beginning, I’m not framing this in a way, or trying to get across the message, that your past doesn’t actually matter because of course, that’s not true.  What I’m going to talk about is how, when we’re looking for resolution to problems that we’re having, or things that we’re experiencing in this day, in this particular case, we’re going to talk about anxiety and urgency, is that the past isn’t the place to look. That’s what I’m that’s what I’m trying to emphasize.  So let’s talk about the question that I received from a listener was about, specifically about urgency. Another thing I want to say too, and I’ve talked about in the past, and this is why she actually emailed me, I’ve talked in the past about how urgency is one of the things that I’ve dealt with in the past. And it took me a while to realize, and I’ll share this with you guys that: Urgency and anxiety are the same thing. I think of them as falling under the same umbrella, or the same family of experiences that we have there.  They’re specific in that they might feel like, like someone with anxiety might feel like they don’t feel a sense of urgency, and vice versa. But the two experiences are trying to bring you the same message, they’re just doing it in a slightly different way. And that’s really important when it comes to exploring those situations via this inside out understanding.  The metaphor I thought of just before I hit record here is that, imagine that you have a weed in your garden. And it’s unsightly, it’s something that you don’t want there on your lawn or in your flowerbeds, or whatever. And the way that we tend to deal with weeds, or the best way to deal with them as far as I know, I’m an amateur gardener, is to really dig down. When we’re pulling out the weed we make sure that we pull out all the roots. Just chopping it off at the top isn’t going to do anything because it’s going to grow back.  So that metaphor about the weed is a really good explanation of the old paradigm of psychology, that we innocently in the past have felt that dealing with uncomfortable feelings that come up like urgency and anxiety. What we needed to do was dig way, way down to the tiny roots where they just become almost like hairs. They’re so thin and small and fragile, deep down there in the earth.  I certainly had therapists who helped me to do that. I would bring up the feeling of urgency or anxiety and we would dig into the past. Where did that come from? Was there a specific incident that I can recall where I felt that kind of urgency when I was really young? Where did it begin? That kind of exploration again, completely innocently.  We do the best we can with the end information we have in the moment. So that’s th

Like many others who have been interviewed for this podcast, Joy Belonga describes herself as a lifelong seeker. Until she found the Three Principles as articulated by Sydney Banks. Now, Joy works with her clients to point them back to their innate well-being and natural state of peace, possibility, mental resilience and yes, Joy.   Joy Belonga has a zest for life, learning and being of service to others. She has a loving, calming, healing nature about her along with a natural joy that is infectious. As many of her friends have commented, her name suits her! Joy has been a student of energy, 3 Principles, healing, and a life coach most of her life. At the young age of twelve she witnessed the mystical, transformational power of intention and energy which began her lifelong quest toward the mystical, healing and metaphysics.  You can find Joy Belonga at JoyofWellBeing.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 Traveling alone with peace of mind knowing we can always rely on the wisdom within Discovering how powerful our beliefs and thoughts are at age 12 Breaking patterns in order to see life with fresh eyes The power of looking within for our own answers How our made up stories can be positively changed by rewilding ourselves Resources Mentioned in this Episode Dicken Bettinger The Eden Method Angus and Rohini Ross’ Rewilding website Transcript of Interview with Joy Belonga Alexandra: Joy Belonga, welcome to Unbroken. Joy: Thank you so much. What an honor to be here. Alexandra: Oh, it’s lovely to speak to you.  Tell us about a little bit about your background and how you found the principles. Joy: Sure. Background has basically been an educator within the extension system, which is a national system: Cooperative Extension. I worked for Michigan State University Extension for over 21 years, and it was a great job. And they really believed in personal development, so I had 18 days, if you can believe it, to have personal development. And some of those days were fall and spring conferences and things.  And speaking at fall conference in Lansing and was introduced at a seminar that was being organized through the income health department, and health realization. That’s dating me a little bit, but I was really intrigued. That was a nine-month seminar presented by Dicken [Bettinger].  So I traveled once a month from upper peninsula of Michigan, where I was based for my job and had another lifetime there. The funny thing was, is that it took like, four hours to get down to Lansing to learn more about my thoughts for our car ride to think a lot about my thoughts. But it was the gift to learn from Dicken who learned directly from Syd Banks. It was just such a gift.  I think it took me a while, I’d say at least maybe nine months to maybe get my first insight. And the first insight was, I didn’t have to believe everything I thought, which was huge, really huge. And so from then on, I made some changes in my life that I had been wanting to do, but didn’t have the courage or the gumption. Or I felt like I was stuck.  I saw that really, from a new perspective, that our thoughts appear real. That’s the trick, isn’t it, they can appear so real. And then we end up believing them. And we think they’re our truth. So anyway, that just opened up a home a whole new world for me. Alexandra: What transpired after that? Did you transition away from the work you were doing?  Joy: I tried to incorporate it within my work. I did a lot of volunteer development. And that basically, I just continued to learn on my own. I think the real telltale sign of the impact that this had was, I left to a marriage, I didn’t feel like I was with my life partner. And so that created some turbulence, but I knew that I was going to be resilient and find my way and, and sure enough, I did.  Then at a certain point down the road, I knew my job was ending so I decided to take a journey. I got myself a road truck, van and traveled for a year with the main idea of getting out of Michigan for the winter. So that didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that I needed to get out and explore and it was just really a beautiful, beautiful trip.  Had I not known the principles, though, I would have never taken the trip because I would have been in the what if. What if this happens, what if I break down? What if I get attacked? What if I get lost? I realized that was just fear and I didn’t need to certainly listen to it. I needed to have some safety measures but to be able to do a year with embracing the unknown, I didn’t really didn’t have a plan other than to get out to the West Coast. Because my kids had moved out there earlier, a couple of years prior and, and it turned out to be such a magical trip with the idea that I

So often we believe we have unwanted habits like overeating because of the circumstances of our lives. We innocently believe that we’re trying to escape from old feelings (maybe even trauma) by doing our unwanted habit. What if that’s not the case? What if the only problem lives between our ears? What if, when we understand that our experience of life comes from the inside-out, our unwanted habits dissolve? You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Resources from this Episode Online course: Freedom From Overeating Book: It’s Not About the Food Unbroken podcast episode 11 with Jonelle Simms Transcript of this episode Hello explorers and welcome to Q&A episode number 25 of Unbroken. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor.  Today, I want to talk about what we’re comforting ourselves from, or escaping from when we have an unwanted habit like overeating. I’ve talked about this before in different ways on this show, and I even had a podcast with my guest, Jonelle Simms, to talk about it. And then last night, I was out for a walk and saw it insightfully in a new way. So I wanted to share here in case you hear something new and fresh and different, and as always, with the intent of helping you to resolve an unwanted overeating habit and reduce your suffering.  So here’s how it goes. Here’s what I saw. As you probably know, as I’ve talked about, lots, for 30 years, I really delved into the self-help world to try to resolve my overeating habit. And that was completely innocent. I did what felt best, what was available to me at the time, and maybe you’ve had a similar experience. The message that I got from that exploration was really a very outside in message, that we in life have experiences and circumstances that are difficult, and they create difficult emotions in us.  It’s all coming from the outside in, and that we’re using our substance of choice -in my case, it was food – to comfort ourselves about those experiences. It’s about the residue that’s left within us from those experiences, supposedly. And so therefore, the next step in that healing journey was to, for me, and through via all the self-help stuff, was to try to learn how to comfort myself in a different way, and to excavate the trauma that may have been laid down at some point.  Looking back in the past, and seeing what events or circumstances could have led to me having this what looked like a need at the time to comfort myself with food. And again, all very innocent, all motivated by wanting to suffer less and wanting to heal this problem.  The challenge is, though, that as we explore the inside-out understanding that our experience doesn’t come from the outside in. And so what we’re really trying to manage, I now see, via things like diets, but other kinds of things as well, the self-help approaches to things… I always hesitate to mention what the self-help protocols could be, because they’re not bad in and of themselves, they’re just coming at the problem from the wrong angle.  You know what kind of self-help stuff you’ve tried. And willpower, that’s another thing that we all try. And maybe behavioral changes like not keeping certain foods in the house or creating rules around what kinds of food we can eat or what time of day we can eat, or whatever it is. All those kinds of structures to help us to resolve our unwanted habit.  For me, it looks like a two prong approach. The first prong was trying to make behavioral changes. So all the things I just mentioned. The second prong was this this idea of figuring out how to comfort myself, that’s what I call it, without food. So finding some sort of replacement for that habit, that behavior. And so that might look like there was this program called The Solution that I did. We used to do this little mantra thing. And we would even put one hand on one shoulder and rub the shoulder, sort of like a soothing person. Again, completely innocently.  Those were the two prongs, changing the environment and the behavior and then trying to find a different way to comfort myself. I hope that you can relate to some of that or see some of what you’ve been experiencing in that.  Then when I came across this Three Principles understanding what I’ve come to see, and what I saw  freshly last night was that all of that that I was doing in the past really does go from the outside in, and that what we’re really trying to comfort or what I was really trying to comfort myself about, was actually, on the inside, it was simply my thinking. And until we see this insightfully, it can be a little bit difficult to see.  So I’ll try to explain it as clearly as I can to be helpful to you. And then if it’s not resonating, if it’s

Rick Ruppenthal worked for 30 years as a paramedic and knows intimately the challenges that come with that job. He also knows that every human can rely on the innate resilience and well-being that are part of all of us. And how seeing Thought for the temporary, moving energy it is, can help first responders with their work and their response to it. Rick Ruppenthal is a 30-year retired Paramedic, Mental Health Educator, Transformative Coach, and Certified Change PractitionerFacilitator. His clients gain a greater sense of self-confidence; less worry, less stress; joy, and freedom; better and easier decision-making; more presence in their relationships. In his work he uses no techniques, there is nothing to memorize. No long programs or steps to take. Rick goes straight to the heart and soul, our true source of power, well-being, and resilience. You can find Rick Ruppenthal at RickRuppenthal.ca. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.  Show Notes Experiencing the paramedic field as a calling On the stress typically associated with the paramedic field How we’re always doing the best we can with what we know at the time Teaching first responders that they are not broken Working with first responders to teach them the role thinking plays in stress and PTSD Resources Mentioned in this Episode Micheal Neill’s TedX talk, Why Aren’t We Awesomer? Sydney Banks’ book The Missing Link The Unbroken Hero Project Transcript of Interview with Rick Ruppenthal Alexandra: Rick Ruppenthal, welcome to Unbroken. Rick: Thank you for inviting me. Alexandra: My pleasure. It’s great to have you here. Tell us about your background and how you got interested in the Three Principles. Rick: Okay, well, I won’t go too far back. But primarily my focus has been on my paramedic career. So I’ve just, although I keep saying recently, it’s been almost six years now that I retired from being a paramedic, and I spent 30 years of it, bits and parts mostly in the Lower Mainland, a little bit on Vancouver Island. And eventually, I also took on roles of supervisors, supervision, roles, managerial roles, and also as an educator.  I also had a wonderful opportunity to travel around the province of British Columbia, and meeting different all the paramedics and having an opportunity to not only train and teach them, but also I had a team of instructors also that we were part of putting the paramedic program together the three principals. Everybody, I think, that has ever come across the three principles is from a, from a seeking point of view, like searching for something, something we feel is kind of missing. And I got a brief and I’ll just call it a brief understanding, almost 40 plus years ago, through a workshop that I had taken that was, at the time very controversial, very, very cutting edge kind of a thing.  What they were doing was they were pointing to this thing that we were more of a thought created world. And how our experiences are being generated and things like that. I really embraced what they were teaching at that point and started to experience that as a reality for myself. And when I got into Paramedicine, I often reflected on how different everybody’s experiences were with the work.  It was so fascinating, because part of my education they pointed to how stressful the work was, how tough the work can be, that we were going to witness a lot of different, we were going to see people in, in most cases in their worst time of their life. I didn’t have the experience, the reaction, I would say, or the response that I thought it was going to have, as I continued on my career, while others were having not so good experiences, like I really enjoyed every moment of it, the good, the bad. And I wouldn’t say I enjoyed it, but what I mean, it’s hard to explain, but I took it as a calling.  When I first my very first patient, I was able to after the training that it was my patient. I remember kneeling down and reaching over and checking the pulse of this elderly lady. And it was sort of like a spark, just something within me said this is what you should be doing. This is exactly what you should be doing. And so I just got so involved in in it and wanted to continue to have that same feeling. So I caught myself a few times chasing the feeling.  But long story short, I had noticed, I really would have considered myself to have thrived through the experience of being a paramedic, as opposed to others that have survived and some that have not survived because the suicide rate in the first responder field and I don’t know why but particularly in the British Columbia area is actually quite high in comparison to other places in the in the North America. And the unfortunate part is the stats are not well informed in that so to look for information

What happens when we try to be present with ourselves, including uncomfortable feelings or experiences we have? Is there a way to be with ourselves the same way a good listener is: without judging the experience or tying to change it? You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.  Resources Mentioned in this Episode Conversation with Dr. Bill Pettit on YouTube Transcript of episode Hello explorers and welcome to Q&A Episode number 24 of Unbroken podcast. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor.  Today I wanted to talk about the power of presence.  I was listening, as I mentioned, I think on the previous episode Q&A Episode number 23, I was listening to a conversation with Dr. Bill Pettit the other day. One of the things he mentioned that has really stuck with me and I’ve been contemplating ever since, is presence. Being present, both with ourselves and with other people. And it’s something that I try to practice quite often. I’ve been challenged with a lot of feelings of urgency in my life and tend to feel quite sped up. And that really comes about, I noticed, with myself in conversations with other people. I tend to sort of step on their heels when somebody hasn’t quite finished saying what they need to say, I try to jump in and can be a little more focused on what I have to say, rather than what the other person is saying.  And yet, when I’m recording a podcast interview and when I’m working with coaching clients, one of my favorite things to do, is to really drop in to that space of presence. I’m trying also to practice that in all other areas of my life as well. I’ve had some success, and sometimes not, but that’s okay. I’m learning. So when Dr. Pettit brought this subject up about presence the other day, somehow it occurred to me that it might be useful to be present with the depression that I have had been experiencing, or was experiencing at that time. Luckily, it’s resolved itself for the moment.  I want to share what I experimented with, with you, with the aim of always of pointing you back towards your innate well-being and easing your suffering. So this is an exercise I think we could do with anything that’s going on, we can practice it with other people, but with ourselves, what I’m practicing is being very present with whatever’s going on with me in the moment, and so I’ll explain that now.  Here’s where we can begin: imagine that you have a friend who and maybe you do have a friend like this, who when you’re sharing something, that’s a challenge for you – maybe you’re upset about something or something upsetting is happened, that kind of thing – I want you to imagine the type of person who is able to just sit with you while you share what’s going on, and what that feels like for you.  Now our culture tends to be so focused on fixing things and making our experiences go away that this kind of presence can be a bit rare. So if you don’t have anybody in your life like that, I want you to imagine someone imaginary who could do that with you, who could just sit with you, and be very present to whatever it is you need to share or need to say. And it could be a fictional character. I was thinking of someone like Mary Poppins or someone like that. It could be a character from a film who you found very sympathetic. A character from a book, anyone like that, who you just imagine, has the ability to be very present with you when you’re sharing something that’s a challenge for you.  I’d love for you just for a minute to sit in what that feels like. I know that for me when I’ve been with someone who listens who can be present with me in that way, it’s such it’s such a good feeling. For me, there’s just nothing else like it. And the person is not being with me and listening in order to change me, or in order to argue with what I have to say, or in order to point out where I’m wrong, or try to help try to change my mind about whatever it is I’m experiencing. They’re just there with me in it.  That lack of expectation for change or resolution even to whatever the issue is, is such a peaceful, beautiful place to be. So if you can feel that in your body for a moment, what that feels like. Whenever I drop into that space, I feel my shoulders drop down, and my solar plexus unclenches, a little bit. I love the feeling, it just feels really great.  So now, this is the second part of this little exercise. If you’re struggling with something, so if you’re struggling with an overeating habit, and the cravings that come along with that, or if you’re struggling with a low mood or depression, like I have been recently, I invite you to take a moment today, even just two o

On this episode of Unbroken, Fiona Jacob and I talk about my favorite subject: the field of possibility that is within all of us. That connection we all have to infinite universal intelligence, peace and well-being. Fiona shares about her journey to coming to understand and trust this intelligence, and also what she does when she happens to fall out of the awareness of it. [Programming note: There will be no episodes of Unbroken next week (July 24 and 27) while I take a quick summer break. Back to twice-weekly episodes again starting on Monday, July 31, 2023.] Fiona Jacob’s greatest passion is to take an uncompromising stand for people’s greatness, waking people up to who they really are, no matter what they are up against in life right now or what has happened in our past. She facilitates explorations with Leaders, Coaches and Healthcare Professionals to create insight and transformation, unlock their greatness, access their innate, limitless potential and help them show up fully to the world as their truest self in every moment.  Her educational background includes an MBA, a Masters in Coaching & Behaviour Change, Certified Master Transformative Coach and a Certificate in Professional Supervision. She is also an RGN with 20 years’ experience as a Nurse Director in hospitals internationally.    You can find Fiona Jacob at FionaJacob.com and on LinkedIn. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes Being held hostage in Iraq in 1990 Experiencing profound peace during that harrowing experience Waking people up to their own innate greatness The value of ‘soul listening’ On the ‘magic’ of connecting to the alive, creative essence in all of us Finding our way back to what we already are Resources Mentioned in this Episode Michael Neill Interview between Bill Cumming and Michael Neill Transcript of Interview with Fiona Jacob Alexandra: Fiona Jacob, welcome to Unbroken. Fiona: Thank you. It is an honor to be here. Thanks for the invite. Alexandra: Oh, you’re so welcome. I’m so excited to be speaking to you today. So why don’t you give us a little background? Tell us tell us about yourself and how you came across the Three Principles. Fiona: Sure. Well, I’m a 50, something on my mind. I am from Ireland, as you can probably hear in the accent. I have lived all around the world, including the Middle East for 25 years. My background is nursing. But what I have done and what I’d love to do is lead transformational change in organizations, which I’ve probably done for about 15 years of my 25 years as a director.  I’m also a very quiet academic. I’ve done a couple of masters in the background just to kind of keep things ticking over. But don’t tell anyone. It’s our secret.  And how did I find the principles? Great question. So I did not find the principles, the principles found me. And I’ll explain because I think it’s important, I think many listeners will have maybe not the same experience, but they’ll have had experiences in their life where they’ve experienced something that comes from nothing in the moment that has really, really helped. When I was 25 years of age, I was a very young nurse, I worked in the operating room, and myself and my best friend went to Iraq, as you do. There was a beautiful Irish hospital there that was really helping the local population with complex disease management. And so we went there on a contract for a year. It was in EU 1990. I loved Iraq; it was a beautiful, and I’m sure it still remains a beautiful country today. But halfway into our term, it was about August, when we woke up one morning to find out that we were not able to leave the country. It took maybe seven to 10 days, but after a short period of intervening time, we suddenly woke up to find that we were hostages. Interesting.  Now, I panicked. Everybody around me panicked. We were initially 20,000 people in the whole of Baghdad that were hostages. There were some Irish, some English, some Americans and Canadians and Swiss, but also a lot of Indians, a lot of Filipinos and so forth. And so we were a large group for a very short period of time, maybe three to four weeks.  I was just so crazy in my head. I was like, I’m going to die. My life is over. I’m never going to see my parents again. I’m never going to see my boyfriend again. All of these thoughts came to my mind and it was like, wow, I’m only 25 and my life is over. And over this period of time, as the number of hostages shrunk, became I think 150 in month two, a lot of people had gotten out. So there’s a little bit of hope there that we might get out but not a lot. Saddam Hussein had taken over Kuwait, if you remember the times, and the world was coming out war, we were coming after him.&nb

We tend to think of our uncomfortable experiences in life – unwanted cravings, depression, anxiety, etc. – as problems. What if instead they are love letters from the innate wisdom and well-being that is within all of us? What if they are trying to get out attention and point us back toward that innate wholeness? [Programming note: There will be no episodes of Unbroken next week (July 24 and 27) while I take a quick summer break. Back to twice-weekly episodes again starting on Monday, July 31, 2023.] 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 real source of depression? How are our food cravings and the drive to overeat wise? What should we do when we experience unwanted feelings like this? Resources mentioned in this episode Video interview with Dr. Bill Pettit Freedom From Overeating online course (use coupon code PODCAST at checkout to save 20%) Transcript of this episode Hello Explorers and welcome to Q&A Episode number 23 of Unbroken. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor. Today I’ve called the episode Love Letters from Wisdom. I got that phrase from the lovely Dr. Bill Pettit. I was listening to an interview with him the other day while I was puttering around in the kitchen. He used that phrase about basically the things that happen within us – our feelings and our emotions and our thing experiences that we have – things like depression, and I’ll get into that more in a minute and talk about what I saw in that.  I can’t even remember actually what Dr. Pettit was talking about specifically, it might have been depression. In the moment when he uses that phrase ‘love letters from wisdom’. And when I had stopped listening to the interview, I wrote the phrase down and I realized that so much of what we experience in life is love letters from wisdom. And here’s why I say that. I often talk about on this show – and in the course that I’ve designed about letting go of an unwanted over eating habit that you’ll find it freedomfromovereating.com – I often talk about how our cravings, cravings for a substance and what ends up becoming an unwanted habit, how those things are those feelings, that craving, that drive to overeat is not a problem.  This is one of the reasons why I say that. What Dr. Pettit is talking about when he’s talking about love letters from wisdom, he’s referencing the idea that our design, our human design is perfect. And it’s not working against us. When we have these experiences, like a craving or like an anger or an upset at a spouse or a friend, or a feeling of anxiety or something like depression, I’ve been experiencing some depression for the last couple of weeks. And one of the things that really helped me was to remember that there is wisdom in all of these things that we experience.  They are reminders that point us back toward our true nature toward our innate well-being and the peace that is that we are made of. So when we experience something – I’ll use the depression that I’ve been feeling the last couple of weeks as an as an example. I really chose to look at that as I was experiencing it and it wasn’t fun. I didn’t enjoy it. It wasn’t a good time. Certainly it was just not a lot of fun for me.  But at the same time, I knew that there had to be wisdom in that experience. And what that wisdom was pointing me toward was this idea that we are always entirely whole. The way that I tend to look at something like depression is that it’s almost letting me know that there is an insight to come about something in my life that I hadn’t seen up to that point. At least, that’s one of the experiences that I’ve had of depression.  The other one I’ve had is the one I’ve probably talked about on this show. The burnt out hairdryer metaphor that Michael Neill uses. When our minds are going so fast that we become without realizing it quite burnt out. Depression is a is a gift that’s getting us to slow down. And it’s letting us know that we’re overheated. That’s the metaphorical use of the example of the hairdryer. When you’re using a hairdryer, and it gets too hot, it’ll just shut off.  So when I’ve been experiencing this depression, for the last couple of weeks, I really tried to remind myself that that that depression was made of wisdom, and that it wasn’t something that I needed to fight against. And I think this is really the the key about that, what.  The key elements that I wanted to address today, when we have these love letters from wisdom, and we innocently push against them, fight against them, what we end up doing is denying ourselves the experience of learning or growing or seeing something in a new light.  For exampl

Charli Wall has experienced so much of what life has to offer and much of it hasn’t been easy. She’s dealt with chronic anxiety, stress, C-PTSD, dysfunctional eating, devastating, debilitating loss, and much more. Her experiences also included tremendous success with a health and fitness business. Then in 2017 she discovered the Three Principles and began taking the Clarity Coach training course with Jamie Smart. This exploration led her back to herself, and to her innate health and well-being. It also led to helping others discover theirs. Charli Wall is an Experienced Transformation Coach having coached and counselled for some 20+ years and is a qualified Three Principles coach. She helps women reconnect to their inner wisdom, and their body’s innate wisdom, to let go of the internal shackles that weigh them down, so that they can live in the full power of their deeper knowing. You can find Charli Wall at IAmCharliWall.com and on Instagram @i_am_charli_wall. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Show Notes Recovering from trauma and PTSD Having the life-changing insight that we are always safe Observing that our thinking is like stepping into a movie Seeing that our unwanted habits are a solution, not a problem Does ‘self-sabotage’ even exist or are we always trying to help ourselves? Resources Mentioned in this Episode Jamie Smart Charli’s podcast Courage Dear Heart Transcript of Interview with Charli Wall Alexandra: Charlie Wall, welcome to Unbroken. Charli: Thank you, Alexandra. It’s lovely to be here. Alexandra: Lovely to meet you and to have you on the show. Why don’t you give us a little bit of background on yourself and how you came across the three principles. Charli: It’s quite a lengthy story. So I’ll try and keep it brief.  My father had just died in 2016. And I’d been looking after him for some 20 odd years by that point. And so it’s pretty significant loss. And what I decided to do was, I had my own business, I was running a very successful fitness business in Cambridge, where I’d been looking after him, my son was 16 at the time. And I’ve just got really stuck in this grief that I was in because it wasn’t just about my dad. My brother had been in the same accident in 1993. And that killed my brother. And then I subsequently looked after my father.  When he died, it was like a big explosion for me in my life. So I decided to sell everything, my house and my business. And at that point, I was looking to become a life coach, I’d been doing a nutritional therapist qualification alongside running a business. But I just saw, no, I have got so many skills, I wanted to put them all under one umbrella as a life coach. So I was looking for courses. I came across a course called Clarity Coaching. I was being interviewed by lots of different coaching companies. I spoke to the person that was doing clarity coaching, had no idea about the principles at all.  I spoke to this person, and I thought, right, if I see a squirrel, I’m going to take that on, like this is how my mind was kind of working at that point. And so I walked into town, but not via any parks or anything. I walked into the shopping center in Cambridge, and there was this massive squirrel, a cardboard one. I was like, Oh, right. Okay, I’ll do that course then. And it just so happened to be a three principles coach training course.  I was so anxious back then, that when I started in September 2017, I couldn’t even have my video on Zoom. I was just sort of on Zoom, but just the little black square. And they were all so happy. I was like, ‘What is this?’. I couldn’t understand what they was talking about.  That was my initial how I got into the principles. And then I started working with Jamie Smart one to one. And then I was a mentor in the second year of clarity coach training. And then I had some significant life changing insights, which propelled my journey into uncovering our innate wellness and seeing that really, truly deeply for myself. So that’s kind of it in a nutshell. Alexandra: I’m sure there’s a lot more detail in there. I have a million questions. One of the things you said say on your website is that when you sold everything you went traveling for a while.  Can you tell us a little bit about that? I’m just curious about what that looked like. Charli: Well, it didn’t look like traveling, like people do when they go all over the place. I went to India for five weeks to study to become a yoga teacher. I literally sold my house sold my business. And then I was on a flight on the next day to India, still with chronic PTSD.  Back then, at that point, I was still suffering with very, very bad PTSD, chronic anxiety. And so if you’ve got chronic anxiety and PTSD, In

When we use the phrases ‘upstream’ and ‘downstream’ in the conversation about the nature of Thought, how does that relate to resolving an unwanted habit like overeating? What does the way we look at our thinking, and whether it’s upstream or downstream, have to do with weight-loss? Today’s episode answers these questions. 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 does looking upstream or downstream mean? Examples of getting caught in our thinking when we look downstream What does looking upstream entail? How does looking upstream resolve an unwanted habit like overeating? Resources related to this episode: My book: It’s Not About the Food Online course: Freedom From Overeating Transcript of Episode Hello Explorers, and welcome to another Q&A episode of Unbroken. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor.  Today our question is, what does it mean to look upstream when we’re talking about diet and weight loss?  Someone that I was interviewing recently touched on the subject of looking upstream or downstream. And this was something that confused me a little bit at the beginning of this exploration. And also, previously to that I remember some family members talking about looking upstream versus looking downstream years ago, and I didn’t really know what it meant. And now today, I find it a really, really useful way to look at what we’re exploring with the three principles understanding. I’m going to talk about that specifically, as it relates to resolving an overeating habit, and to diets and weight loss and all that kind of stuff. In this understanding, in the Three Principles Understanding, we’re always looking upstream. And I’m going to come back to that in just a second. First, what I want to do is talk about what it means to look downstream. In our culture, currently, what we tend to do reflexively, and because that’s what other people do, and because that’s where our culture seems to be focused, is we tend to look downstream at any given issue. When you think about a river, which is really all this metaphor is about whatever’s going on downstream from where you are, is the stuff that metaphorically is more granular, more detailed, definitely. We’re more absorbed in the content of the things when we’re looking downstream at them. The reason we use this metaphor is because what happens is when we look upstream, and we understand what’s going on up there, then the things that are downstream resolve themselves. Let me give you a specific example, so that we’re on the same page. When we think about dieting and weight loss and resolving an unwanted overeating habit, very often, and I absolutely did this, I spent a lot of my time looking downstream at all the details around that over eating habit. When did it occur during the day? What kind of foods was I attracted to? Did I feel like I had an unhealthy preoccupation with or an addiction to? And what sort of things could trigger me to want to engage in my overeating habit? Did any of my specific other kinds of habits in my life, or thoughts about things have an effect on my overeating habit? I would get really caught up in all those kinds of details that, in the end, I realized didn’t actually matter. And that’s why we’re going to talk about what’s upstream. But I’ll give you a specific example. I’ve talked more than once about my soda habit, and I talked about it in It’s Not About the Food and how that habit disappeared. But for 25 plus years, while that unwanted habit was ongoing, I could get really fixated on the fact that it always happened at noon. I didn’t tend to drink soda outside of that. It was always just something that I had at lunchtime. It wasn’t a habit that that I participated in throughout the day. But at noon time, that compulsion, that drive to habitually have a can of soda was definitely with me. For years, I really tried to look at what I could do specifically about that situation and that time of day, and that specific substance that I was overusing. Those are all the kinds of details that I would spend a lot of time looking at. And then I would also and what we do when we’re looking downstream is then we develop strategies to deal with those kinds of situations and that sort of granular detail that we’ve gotten into about the unwanted habits. So for example, I would try things like having a glass of fizzy water with a wedge of lemon at lunchtime, instead of having my soda. I never did try diet soda but that’s something that’s that some people might do instead, so they’re still getting the, the taste, but less sugar, or whatever it is. Those are the kinds of techniques and strategies that we tend to use when we’re looking

Maryse Godet Copans suffered with anxiety and other physical symptoms for years and sought out answers for this suffering. Then she found the Three Principles and her symptoms fell away. She received coach training and began to share what she’d seen with others. Then her symptoms returned, which was frustrating and confusing. Maryse used this experience to deepen her exploration of the life that is living though her and allowed herself to be present with whatever that brings, knowing she is safe. For 15 years Maryse Godet Copans searched high and low for ways to overcome chronic stress, anxiety, and their many symptoms. Techniques, tools, analyzing her past – you name it, she did it – yet peace of mind remained elusive and symptoms stuck. Then she read Michael Neill’s book The Inside Out Revolution and learned about how human life really works. ​​Today Maryse lives in the flow of life where anxiety is allowed to dance freely with happiness and excitement. And underneath it all lies Peace, ever present and unchangeable.  You can find Maryse Godet Copans at Flow-erPower.com and on Facebook at Built-in Brilliance. 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 return of anxiety symptoms after having resolved them Being reminded that everything is temporary How it is normal and safe to experience everything life has to offer On knowing that the ‘bathroom’ exists and walking with others as they find their way there Resources Mentioned in this Episode Michael Neill Nicola Bird, A Little Peace of Mind Transcript of Interview with Maryse Godet Copans Alexandra Amor: Maryse Godet Coopans, thank you for being here on Unbroken. Welcome. Maryse: Oh, thank you, Alexandra. It’s a pleasure. Alexandra Amor: It’s so nice to see you again. Why don’t you take us back to the beginning and tell us about how you came across the three principles. Maryse: I’m going to condense what, six years or whatever, all the time before, I’m going to make it very, very, very short. So basically, for me, my history is with anxiety. It started in 2003, physical symptoms, and then the beginning of a long, long search for a fix. Which, every single thing helped along the way. I tried many, many things.  It led me one day to hear Michael Neill because I think at the time I subscribed to Hay House, I can’t remember why. But I subscribe to Hay House and I listened to a short something he had, I think on Facebook, I’m not I can’t remember precisely but saying ‘we live in the feeling of our thinking’. Those were his words. We live in the feeling of our thinking. And I was like, Heck, no. But he got my attention. And I got curious about that.  So I started listening to him. And I was like, well, it’s interesting, but to be really honest, the terms he used his vocabulary around the three principles – mind consciousness and thought – I was not really comfortable with. So instead of sort of on the back burner. And because I was listening to him, something from Nicola Bird appeared regarding anxiety. She was in the process then to be having been, I think, one of Michael’s apprentices. She was in the process of launching A Little Peace of Mind, her anxiety targeted program. And I thought, What do I have to lose at this point? This was 2017. I had been added with anxiety since 2003. I really had nothing to lose.  So I listened to her and it really resonated. For the first time in my life, I had the feeling this woman knows what she’s talking about. She’s been through panic attacks, she’s experienced the whole thing. I’m going to listen some more so I signed up for her program. And it just snowballed. The progress I made, the insights I had, everything was just fabulous. Really.  I trained with Michael Neill, we I did Supercoach Acadamy, and then in 2020, COVID hit. And you know what, that first year was totally fine. Fine. I didn’t mind the lockdown. Nothing. I’m still doing so well. And then in 2021, I’m not sure why and I’m not sure it matters, it all came back. It all came back. Dizziness, electricity in my body most of the time, panic attacks at night and during the day, whatever. And I was like, what’s happened? Nothing helps. What the heck is going on?  I was just so lost, to be honest with you. So lost. And I just did my best, for a few months. I think at the time, the only thing that I could see clearly and I think that it somehow we know that it saved me because I didn’t need to saving but it was really like a lifeline.  Something inside me said, “Remember, this is temporary. It will pass.”  So when I looked at everything I had learned from Michael, Nicola, and everybody else the only thing that was still helpful in what I was experiencing at the

Traditionally, when we tackle an overeating habit with diets and white-knuckling and other strategies like that, we’re innocently focusing on the wrong thing. Using this horse-and-cart analogy, today we explore where to instead place our focus and how that leads to lasting change and the resolution 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. Resources Mentioned in this Episode My book: It’s Not About the Food Online course: Freedom From Overeating Dr. Amy Johnson Dr. Bill Pettit Transcript of Episode Hello Explorers and welcome to Ubroken podcast. This is Q&A episode number 21. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor. Thank you so much for being here with me today, I really appreciate it.  The other day this expression popped into my head, it goes like you’ve like this: you’re put the cart before the horse.  I was thinking about that in terms of unwanted habits like overeating and realize that it’s a really good metaphor or analogy for the two different approaches to dealing with an unwanted habit. So that’s what we’re going to explore today.  As I’m speaking in this episode, the cart that I’m talking about represents the unwanted habit itself. And the horse is the healing or the recovery or the changes that occur about that unwanted habit. And so culturally, what we tend to do, when we’re trying to fix an unwanted habit is, first of all, innocently, we don’t see the wisdom in the habit, we don’t see that it’s a solution, it’s not a problem.  And we don’t see that we’re always simply very simply and innocently, trying to feel better, trying to get back in touch with our innate mental health. If we’ve temporarily forgotten about that, or if we’re even unaware that it exists. That’s what unwanted habits are doing for us. They’re a sign of our mental health, actually, because they’re trying to get us to a good feeling, the good feeling that we instinctively know exists within us. But given all the thinking that we have about our lives, and about our unwanted habits, we’ve maybe fallen out of touch with that.  So the cart is all the techniques that we try to try to heal that unwanted habit or resolve it. In the case of overeating, it would be things like dieting, it would be whatever the strategies are that we try to resolve that unwanted habit. So things like bribing ourselves, maybe white knuckling it through the discomfort of sort of quitting something cold turkey. I’m thinking back to a lot of the self-help strategies that I used things like talk therapy, digging up the past, cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness. So these are really you can think of them as strategies, or tactics that we’re applying to try to manage the unwanted habit or control it. And ultimately, to get rid of it. I mean, really, that’s, of course, the aim, when we’re doing anything like that.  So that’s the cart in this cart and horse scenario. And as the expression goes, when we put that first things don’t work out so well.  I’m a perfect example of someone who did all those things, who spent a lot of time and energy and effort and money, trying to fix the cart.  Really trying to put the cart back together, make sure that the cart was doing well or I’m trying to fix what I interpreted as the broken pieces of the cart. And instead, what I see now is that my attention should have been put on the horse. Because when I put the cart first, it just doesn’t work. The horse can’t push the cart. The horse needs to pull the cart.  The horse to me now represents insight. It represents the exploration of our innate well-being and resourcefulness and resilience. It represents how that our mental health is always they’re always with us that as Dr. Bill Pettit said, There’s nothing broken and nothing needs fixing. And that was the stuff that I really missed in my 30 plus year exploration trying to heal my overeating habit. So as I say, all my attention was focused on the cart. And taping that back together.  Mistakenly believing that the cart was broken. What I’m picturing in my mind is a little wooden cart with metal wheels. And there’s duct tape and twine all over it. I was really trying to just pull all those pieces together with a lot of mental effort. And it never worked. It never worked, because it’s the horse that we need to focus on. So that’s where our attention needs to be.  When we dive deeply into this exploration, and when we begin to have insights about our innate well-being, then the cart just follows the horse naturally. And that’s definitely what I’ve been experiencing.  I’ve had, as Dr. Amy Johnson says, a cascading series of insi

Like so many of us, Change coach Gabby Pritts lived for a long time with a misunderstanding about where her experience came from. This led to her developing the unwanted habit of needing to be perfect so that she could be safe. And this focus on perfection led to some disordered eating. Thankfully she came across the inside-out understanding and began to question her thoughts. She now helps her clients to see the innate wisdom within themselves.   Gabby Pritts was born and raised in a South Texas Bordertown. She has always enjoyed the outdoors and being active and later became more serious about fitness through marathon trainings and runs. This lead to her stories of struggle. Gabby got caught up in how she thought life should look. Disordered eating, obsessive compulsions, and anxiety came to the forefront. She tried it all to help alleviate and cope: traditional therapy, coaches, online programs, supplements, and diets. Some worked for a while, but so often the struggles and habits came flooding in again, sometimes even worse. Then she came across a podcast with Dr Amy Johnson who spoke about becoming habit free with no willpower. Dr. Johnson said we are innately healthy, and our thoughts, habits, and addictions are a way for our mind to help us. Gabby decided to learn how to share this understanding through Dr Amy Johnson’s Change Coach Certification Program. You can find Gabby Pritts at GabbyPritts.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 the exhaustion created by trying to be perfect How disordered eating was an outward expression of that quest for perfection The power of questioning our negative thoughts about ourselves Resources Related to this Episode My book, It’s Not About the Food The Little School of Big Change Angus and Rohini Ross Transcript of Interview with Gabby Pritts Alexandra: Gabby Pritts, welcome to Unbroken. Gabby: It’s a pleasure to be here with you.  Alexandra: It’s so great to have you here. Tell us about a little bit about your journey, your background and how you came across the three principles. Gabby: You can go in so many ways as far as someone’s background is concerned, but for the purpose of this podcast, and the people may be listening to it my background is your typical child that grew up with a certain set of ideas of how things should be and coming to realize that sometimes, a lot of times, things aren’t the way that you thought they were going to be. And just trying to figure it all out.  I grew up in a not-so-typical home. I grew up with a couple of aunts, and my mom was there and a couple of brothers. My mom remarried eventually, and there was a lot of step-siblings. And that didn’t work out too well. So I went back with my aunt and was raised by them. My mom was still in the picture. But she wasn’t living with me. So at an early age, I didn’t have her. But I did have a lot of love.  I will say that I still had my brothers and I had my aunts. Growing up practicing Roman Catholic, there was a lot of rule and regulation involved in the home. And so things were the way they need to be because that’s the way things were, and you don’t question things.  Well, I questioned a lot of things early on, and I challenged ideas, I challenged everything I was the kid that always asked why and would not stop asking why. So eventually, still having that in me, that innate, regulated way of being I always strive to do the best, I always wanted to do the best, I always wanted to be as perfect as possible. And always falling short. Because once you reach that perfection,  you always want more, you want something different and you just use continue to fall short.  Early on I always got praised for being a pretty girl and being good at sports so those are the things that I focused on. Okay, so if someone doesn’t say that I’m pretty or someone doesn’t say that I did well in this particular game or whatever, in I felt bad and I was I was always looking at how I could better myself or what I did wrong and should have could have would have been. That morphed into just trying to be perfect, like I just mentioned just all the time.  One of the ways that I can be perfect dealt with controlling things. And one of the ways that I could be perfect was to control what I did with a rigid schedule and including exercise and what I ate. So that led to a lot of disordered eating. That just unraveled and began a journey of how to how to eat perfect, how to do things, how to have a perfect schedule, how to be perfectly organized. That was my jam.  That’s what I that’s what I did day in and day out. I woke up, what is my schedule? What am I going to eat? That type of thing and rinse, repeat and do it again. So I got tired. I just I just got worn o

We innocently tend to think of discomfort and unwanted feelings (like food cravings) as problems that need to be solved. What if they are actually something else? What if they are reminders, pointing us toward our true nature of peace, calm and joy? 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 we innocently compound our discomfort by thinking it’s a problem What if we saw unwanted feelings as feedback, pointing us to our true nature? How we’re surrounded by a sea of wisdom at all times that can help us with any problem Transcript of episode Hello, explorers and welcome to Q&A Episode 20 of Unbroken podcast. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor. Today the topic is about two ways to look at an unwanted feeling. I was journaling this morning in my journal, as I often do on a quiet Sunday morning, and I had this situation where I was uncomfortable about something. I had a really distinctly uncomfortable feeling. And for the past couple of days before that I had been wondering what to do about the feeling. And as I journaled, I reflected that there are two very distinct ways to deal with an unwanted feeling when it comes up. And that the understanding that I explore on this podcast has pointed out to me the fact that there are these two different ways to deal with things like this, and how the old way, which I’ll talk about in a second, that I used to deal with things was really fraught with a lot of anxiety and pressure and self recrimination. The second way that I’ve learned to deal with these things like this on uncomfortable feelings, or unwanted feelings, discomfort, things that look like problems, is so much more peaceful and relaxed, and it just flows so much better. The Old Way to Deal with Uncomfortable Feelings Like Cravings So let me share a bit about what I see about this. When we have an unwanted feeling, and that could be a craving, it could be something like the drive to overeat the first way, and this is the way that I learned how to deal with any situation like that in the past was or is to see that feeling as a problem. Let’s say you’ve got a craving, and you we culturally, we just kind of automatically look at the drives that we feel to participate in an unwanted habit, the cravings that we have, we see them as problems. And that’s totally innocent and totally natural. I approached that situation like that for three decades. And unfortunately, what happens is when we look at an uncomfortable feeling, and unwanted feeling like it’s a problem, then innocently, we end up layering a whole bunch more thought, and thinking onto this to a situation that a doesn’t require it and doing that really isn’t helpful at all. Speaking from my own experience, looking at my unwanted overeating habit, and the feelings that were associated with that, looking at that like it was a problem actually only dug me deeper into the hole of having that unwanted habit. When I saw that situation, that feeling, as a problem that meant that I was looking for solutions. And as I said a little bit earlier, adding a whole bunch more thinking on to that situation. Where might it have originated from? And what what might have caused this within me? What sort of brokenness or damage within me might have caused me to have these ongoing cravings? The the more years that went by with me thinking about that situation like it was a problem, the more the more thinking and the more discomfort was heaped on top of what was already originally there. And like I say that it was like trying to get out of a hole that I was in by digging deeper into the hole. Again, we’re always doing this innocently. I’m not laying blame at my own feet or anybody else’s feet. This is how we tend to look at the human journey and the human situation and it’s only when I began to explore that this inside out understanding that seeing that situation, that uncomfortable feeling, that unwanted craving for food, not as a problem but as something else, that’s what began to release me from the unwanted habit itself, ironically. That brings us this brings us to the second way that we can look at how we deal with or experience an unwanted feeling. This way, is the much more peaceful way. It’s the way that we lean into what’s happening and see the wisdom within it. So when we have an unwanted feeling, or an uncomfortable feeling like I had this morning the second way that we can look at that is like it’s information. It’s feedback. It’s coming from our beautiful, innate divine design. And it’s simply letting us know, two things, at least, this is what I see: It’s letting us know the quality of our thinking is a little bit cloudy, perhaps, or messed up, or it’s not as clear and wise as it could be. The second thing that it’s tellin

Psychotherapist Jeri Kramer was experiencing burnout (and grief) when she discovered the Three Principles. Exploring the understanding that we are all well and whole has revitalized her enthusiasm for her work and brought lightness and laughter into her time with her clients. In this episode, we talk about how understanding that humans are designed to be resourceful and resilient, and to return to a state of peace and well-being, changes everything for those previously diagnosed with issues like depression and anxiety. Jeri Kramer is a psychotherapist and mental health coach. She brings 20 plus years of training and practice to her work, and also a wealth of life experiences. She has known many joys and triumphs in life, as well as many struggles and pains. She’s experienced marriage and divorce and now lives in a beautiful relationship with her husband of 16 years. She’s raised children both as a biological parent and as a step-parent and knows the struggles and rewards of building a blended family. She’s weathered devastating loss and found joy and laughter in the aftermath. And, perhaps most importantly, she’s learned to know that love, health, and ease are always available to every one of us, and knows that where to find it isn’t as hard as we might think. You can find Jeri Kramer at JeriKramer.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 Avoiding psychotherapist burnout Extreme anxiety and how to deal with it Do we need to dig into trauma to heal it? The power within the story of ourselves and how letting that go can reveal our innate well-being The importance of feeling grounded and secure Resources Mentioned in this Episode How the wolves of Yellowstone changed the course of the rivers (4 mins) This Naked Mind by Annie Grace. Find her website here. Dr. Bill Pettit’s website Dr. Amy Johnson’s Little School of Big Change Angus and Rohini Ross’ Rewilding Guide Training Transcript of Interview with Jeri Kramer Alexandra: Jeri Kramer, welcome to Unbroken. Jeri: Thank you. I’m glad to be here. Alexandra: I’m so glad to have you here. So let’s begin. Tell us a bit about your background and how you got interested in the three principles. Jeri: I’ve been a psychotherapist for… so it’s always hard to think of this over 20 years, 25, I guess, and doing pretty traditional psychotherapy, one on one, talk therapy, various kinds of modalities, and really enjoyed what I was doing. But looking back now I know it was kind of burned out, didn’t know it then, but definitely was burning out. So how I ran into the principal’s it was so in 2019 actually begins with a little tragedy: I lost my daughter really suddenly. And right after that COVID happened. So lost my daughter, I kind of shut my practice down. About the time I was kind of gathering my thoughts together, COVID happens, we shut down. I found myself sitting at home, locked down, and we were really locked down. I had my elderly parents with me, we were being really careful with nothing to do. And at some point, probably about six months, and I realized I was drinking every day. Not a lot but I’ve never done that. I was drinking every day. So I signed up for a 30 day sober challenge. And I wish I could tell you the woman’s name. She wrote a book called This Naked Mind. Alexandra: Annie something… Jeri: Grace. That’s it. Annie Grace. So she wrote that book. And I did a 30 day online challenge with her and I just really loved how she was looking at a mindfulness approach. And on that challenge, they interviewed Amy Johnson. I thought, oh, there is something here. So I signed up for the Little School of Big Change. All the time going, oh, there’s something here, having no idea she was talking about the three principles, because she didn’t say it. And then she gives you Bill Pettit, who was a psychiatrist, working with the three principals and things just started lighting up. I just knew this was something so much more than I was seeing and got my hands on as many books as I could. It was COVID, everything was coming online, I just was able to immerse myself and found myself really revitalized, not only personally, but in my work. Really excited to go back to work. Couldn’t wait for things to lift so I could see more people, which is not where I’d been. And then personally, things were just shifting and changing and easing and just the whole the world. And it continues. So that’s how I ended up looking to the three principals. Alexandra: When your practice started up again, and you began sharing this, what did that look like? Jeri: Oh my gosh, I remember the day I walked back, the first time I was ever going to have somebody back in my office, right as it was lifting… actually I take that back. It was

When we feel the drive to participate in an unwanted habit what’s really going on? This three-part answer is based on my experience over 30 years of dealing with an unwanted overeating habit, and on my exploration of the field of spiritual-psychology called the Three Principles. 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 happening when you feel a craving? Our experience of life from the inside out. How to deal with a craving. Understanding the nature of cravings. The true nature of who we are. The nature of habits and habitual thinking. How to resolve an overeating habit. Resources Mentioned in this Episode Freedom from Overeating – the self-paced online course with over 5.5 hours of lessons, plus bonus materials Transcript of episode Hello explorers, and welcome to Q&A Episode 19 of Unbroken. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor.  Today the question we’ve got is: What is happening when I feel a craving? This could be a craving for anything really. Specifically we’re talking about overeating, or that’s what I talk about very often in my work. But it could be anything, any sort of that what I call, I call it a drive. That drive to participate in a habit that we perhaps know better and or think we shouldn’t be participating in something that we’re overeating. Like overspending, over shopping, over drinking, over TV-ing, whatever it is. When we feel that craving that drive to do that thing, what I see from my experience, and based on my exploration of the three principles is that three things are actually happening. So I want to talk about those things today. The first is that we’re experiencing some weather, and we’re not aware of that. The three principles point to the fact that our experience of life comes from the inside out, it doesn’t come from the outside in. What that means is we don’t live in the world of our experiences or our circumstances, we actually live in the world of our thinking. And that thinking flows through us from the inside out. The metaphor that we so often use is that it is like the weather. And we don’t have control over the weather, either the weather that’s in the sky, out there in the world, or the weather, that is within us, it’s energy, just like the outside weather, it’s moving through us, it’s calm sometimes, and it’s volatile, at other times and everywhere in between on that spectrum. Before I came across this understanding and got my head around this idea that our life is moving through us from the inside out, whenever I felt a craving or the drive to overeat, as I call it, I thought I had to do something about that. Which was a very innocent misunderstanding. I would have the feeling, have the craving, and immediately jump into a whole bunch of thinking about how to battle with that, how to suppress it, how to control it, how to avoid it, or whether or not I would give into it. All of that was done innocently, of course, I just didn’t know any better. Now what I see is that when we’re experiencing any kind of craving, any kind of drive to do a habit, it’s weather moving through us. When we see that, we understand that it will pass that we don’t have to white knuckle it even that we don’t have to manage it, that it is temporary and flows through us like a river. Sometimes it can be really tricky to try to just be be with the things that are flowing through us in the moment they can feel, of course, they can feel incredibly powerful and urgent, almost, especially when it comes to feeling a craving. And that’s simply the nature of thought. It’s such a powerful force, that it really affects our experience of the world. And especially when we’re not aware that that’s what’s happening, and that we can simply leave it alone. Now that is not to say that I was ever very successful at simply watching those things happen, experiencing those craving feelings and just letting them be. That was something that I was never very good at. I took lots of mindfulness classes years ago and did other things related to that, and the difference that this understanding made for me was simply from a broader perspective. Understanding the nature of that craving, and that it is always temporary, and that it will move on, just like any thought or feeling or experience that we’re having. So that’s the first of three things that’s happening when we have a craving. The second thing is that that craving that drive to do our habit, is actually a brilliant piece of feedback from our human design, which is so elegant. The way that we feel is always a reflection of the quality of our thinking. So what that means is that whenever we experience some sort of discomfort, uncomfortable feeling, a clenching within us, any sort

What happens when we lean all the way in and meet life on life’s terms? I discuss this question with coach Michael Fall and we wander into some interesting territory, contemplating the role of action in our lives and what we do when life presents challenges. Michael Fall is the President and founder of Insight Based Coaching. Since 2007 he has inspired greatness in executives, professionals, first responders, and pro and amateur athletes in various capacities, including taking on greater responsibilities, key projects, challenging issues, career changes, and performance. As a student of coaching, Michael loves to hone his craft continually. He is always seeking opportunities to expand his coaching skills and deepen his understanding and impact.  You can find Michael Fall at InsightBasedCoaching.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 we’re ‘making it all up’ Realizing our experienced of life comes from within, not from our circumstances Transformational change of unwanted habits with drugs and alcohol How do we live the life we love, and love the life we live? Learning to trust the universal intelligence that is available to us at all times On building a business without effort Resources Mentioned in this Episode Sydney Banks’ Long Beach lectures Michael’s Joyful Life Project Transcript of Interview with Michael Fall Alexandra: Michael Fall, welcome to Unbroken. Michael: Thank you so much. It’s a pleasure to be here. I really appreciate the invite Alexandra, it’s good to see you again. Alexandra: Yeah, it’s good to see you again, too. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to find the three principles. Michael: We’ll do the background really quick. I am a professionally certified coach through the International Coaching Federation. I’m also a three P coach through the 3PGC. I’ve got a couple of children; one boy, one girl. A great relationship. That’s kind of the not so exciting stuff. But very exciting to me. How I came to the three principles is, is an interesting story. What happened was, I was at the lowest point I’ve ever been in my life when I came across the principles. I had a relationship that was falling apart, I had a business that was trending away from me. And, I was spending a lot of time abusing my body with drugs and alcohol is the truth of this. It still amazes me to this day how evident our resilience is that that I could have been so abusive to myself and still ran a business and raised two amazing children. But the tertiary story, so how I came to the principles was, I used to own a gym. And one night, I think it was September 18 2015, I got a Facebook message from a young man who I knew from the neighborhood who I trained in my gym for a long time, always for free. Neighborhood kid. He sent me this rather cryptic message saying, “I think you might like this. This will be as payment for all of those years you trained me for free at the gym.” Okay, this sounds cool. This is cool. What he sent me was with three of Sydney Banks’ recordings. He sent me the Long Beach lectures, the Washington lectures, and for some reason, the other one escapes me now but but and then a couple of book recommendations. A few days later, actually, one of Michael Neill’s books showed up on my doorstep from him as well, and one of Jack Pranskey’s books. So for whatever reason, I was at home alone, sober. And I was listening to the Long Beach lectures. And that’s misleading, because I was five minutes into the Long Beach lectures when everything changed. That language gets used somewhat regularly everything changed, but everything stayed the same. Well, everything changed. Not everything stayed the same. And yet, everything stayed the same. So what’s funny about it is I’ve gone over the Long Beach lectures I don’t know how many times since then in eight years, there’s nothing in the first five minutes. And there’s nothing there where it’s like, oh, my god, that was so profound. There was something that I heard within the first minutes of this audio that that had me crying and laughing. My suspicion is, if someone had been witnessing what was occurring for me, it wouldn’t have been too much of a stretch to be describing it as a psychotic break of some kind, maybe on the lower end a bell curving that. But, yes, so it was a fluke. I’ve always been interested. I mean, as long as I can remember and through my family as well, this exploration in the direction of what more is out there has always intrigued me. And then one of my coping mechanisms again, without too much detail, led me away from that exploration for quite a few decades. And then, yeah, it’s it’s all of a sudden, things cha

Our minds love what they know. But did you know that when we’re searching for answers to life’s problems there is another place to go for answers other than our minds. It is a field of possibilities that holds infinite fresh thinking and creative ideas that contain the answers to our questions. 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 another Q&A episode of Unbroken. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor.  Today I want to talk about the field of possibility. There’s that great quote by Rumi that I actually included at the end of my memoir, and it goes like this:  Beyond ideas of wrongdoing and right doing, there is a field, I will meet you there.  To me that, quote speaks to the disagreements that we have in life and the conflict and how there is a place where we can simply exist in love with one another. A place where we can set down our differences and just be together, with one another, and not have our opinions and our thoughts and our beliefs, and the other things that drive us. We can set those down and just be together. And I love that. What I wanted to share today has to do with the other way that I think about the field of possibility. This has to do with when we’re trying to resolve an unwanted habit like over eating. Lately, more and more, I recognize how often the opportunity is presented to me to turn to that field of possibility when I’ve got a problem or a challenge or a question in my life. Until I came across this understanding no one had ever introduced this idea to me. And a few episodes ago, I described it like we are swimming in the sea of Universal Intelligence. And that’s, of course, absolutely true. And I just saw this idea of the field of possibility this morning while I was writing in my journal, and it’s really just another way to point toward this place where we can go to for answers. Looking for Answers So in my life personally, anytime I come across a challenge or an issue, something I want to resolve, maybe some sort of disruption in my life, or today when I was working in my journal I was thinking about an unsupportive belief that I have. And the inclination that my or the habit, I guess we could say that my mind goes to the thing it automatically does is it tries to really dig down and really get its hands around that problem. In this case, the unsupportive belief and hold on, hold on to it really tightly and examine it from all kinds of different angles. What does it mean? What does it mean about me? Where did it come from? Where did it originate? And where else do I see it showing up in my life. And in the past, I would have said that that kind of examination was really the way to go, really the helpful thing that would help me to resolve that unsupportive belief. Now I see it completely differently. I see that my mind wants to do all those things. And it does do some of them, it starts to wander away and chew on that, and really grapple with whatever’s going on. And then as often as I can, I try to remember that there’s another place to look for answers to things. The Field of Possibility It’s so much more peaceful. And it’s less laid laden with self blame and shame and embarrassment and those kinds of feelings, which I felt in the past when I’ve tried to deal with things like that I felt weren’t working in my life. And that place is the field this field of possibility, metaphorically speaking. When I go there, in my awareness, when I just notice what my mind is doing, and then take a tiny step to the side what I feel in the field of possibility is so much different. I feel so much more more at ease. And softer and wide open. I feel my shoulders go back and my chest open up a little bit. And it’s the complete opposite to the way that I feel when my mind is really grappling with a problem. And wrestling with it. Those are good words, it feels like that’s what minds do when I’m doing it that way, when I’m trying to solve the problem with my mind, and with what my mind already knows. It feels I feel very constricted, I feel so often like I’m turning in circles kind of bouncing around to the same answers, again, and again. I feel heavy weighted down. I feel frustrated very often. Sydney Banks so often said to look toward the feeling, follow the feeling, I think is what he actually said, that’s going on within us. And I think this is such a perfect example of that of how different things can feel when we’re taking a new approach to solving the problems that we may have things like overeating, and other unwanted habits. There’s such a different feeling to these two approaches. Our Built-in Feedback System I really started to appreciate when I noticed that difference because right away, I can tell

Azul Leguizamon experienced trauma and disfunction in her childhood, which led her on a path of healing as an adult. She trained in several fields, but still believed she was irreparably broken and damaged by her past experiences. However, when she came across the Three Principles and began to explore them she discovered that her true nature is one of innate wellness, peace, and wisdom, as it is with everyone. She came home to her infinite wholeness and now shares this with others via coaching, webinars and other training. As a passionate transformational coach, Azul Lequizamon guides others to release the shackles of their past stories, find inner peace regardless of circumstances, and unlock their true potential. She is a registered 3P practitioner in the 3 Principles Global Community and the 3PESP, serving as Project Manager for 3PESP. Additionally, she has mentored at the Mindifit Coaching Academy in South Africa, contributing to the growth of aspiring coaches.  You can find Azul Leguizamon at CoachingJourneyWithAzul.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 Searching for healing after childhood trauma Noticing how our state of mind affects our reactions to events Seeing the innocence in everyone’s behaviour The powerful recognition that we are all whole, always On the healthy creation of boundaries The healing power of deep listening Unlearning the habit of being unkind to ourselves Resources Mentioned in this Episode Mark Howard and the Three Principles Institute Mavis Karn Transcript of Interview with Azul Leguizamon Alexandra: Azul Leguizamon, welcome to Unbroken. Azul: Thanks so much for having me. I’m so happy to be with you here. Alexandra: Did I pronounce your last name correctly? Azul: Perfect. Yeah. Alexandra: Oh, good. Okay. Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got interested in the three principles. Azul: My background is mixed. I’m a former primary school teacher, but I’m also a former Reiki master teacher, meditation teacher, Bach Flower practitioner, all of that. You can name it, and I have been there. So that’s the background. I actually found the principles when I was reading a book, as a teacher. It’s a book called Positive Discipline. The title sounds kind of hard, Positive Discipline, but it was really interesting because it was pointing children in direction of really connecting to their well-being and how to behave, and like circles of trust, and lot of wonderful things. And in between what the author was sharing, she says, “Everything changed for me after I found out about the three principles.” She mentions George Pransky, and I was like, what’s that? So I started looking for information in the internet, and I found so many webinars in the 3PGC YouTube channel. And then you get to get in touch and start like joining Zoom calls, and then you’re just there. And that was for me amazing because I wasn’t looking for anything. I think it was the first time I wasn’t looking for something to grow. It was really out of pure interest. I was very happy in where I was at that moment thinking that that was enough. You couldn’t like really experience well-being all the time. So that’s how I found the principles. Alexandra: And so, before that, you mentioned being a Reiki teacher and Bach Flower remedies and other things. When you were investigating those things and learning about them and teaching them and that kind of thing, were you searching for something? Azul: Yes, absolutely. I have been through a lot of different traumatic experiences and I developed a deep connection with people and I really wanted to help people, really, really wanted. So I was looking for just tools, techniques, and I was shifting from one thing, to the next thing, to the next thing. Everything was really working out, but I still felt something is missing here, because my thinking was like, “Okay, perfect. Bach Flower remedies, they work. Reiki, it works. But there’s something that is missing because how come a human being needs to find something specific and find a practitioner in order to restore their well-being?” I don’t believe God or the Universe or the divine intelligence of this, sustaining all life created that need. How come we can’t be complete, whole, and in well-being if we don’t find the right technique for us? It’s didn’t make any sense at all. So, I was using all of that and, like, for example, I was seeing in Reiki, okay, you teach this program and you support people learning the technique and it really works. But when we look at children, small children, 3, 4 years old, when they fall, they quickly put their hands there, they know what to do. They’re adding energy to that place, so they already know it, so they already got

How do you solve problems? I used to get caught in what I now call a ‘knowledge loop’, which very often wasn’t particularly helpful. In this episode I talk about where we can go for answers to life’s challenges and how to create our own magic portals to the insights that offer those answers. You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. Resources Mentioned in this Episode Dicken Bettinger and his book, co-authored with Natasha Swerdloff, Coming Home Transcript of episode Hello explorers and welcome to a Q&A episode of Unbroken. This is episode 17. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor.  The Magic Portal to Insight Today I want to talk about the magic portal to insight. I used that phrase recently with some friends when we were on a zoom call. And what I was referring to was the bathroom. I think specifically the shower. But it also happens, I find, on the toilet.  What I’m talking about is those magical moments when we’re in the shower or in the bathroom, or out for a walk or doing something where we’re kind of occupied with something physical or mechanical, and insights come to us. For some reason, the shower seems to be a really popular place for this sort of thing to happen. I wonder if it’s partly because it’s early in the morning, at least for me, that’s when I ship tend to shower is when it’s the beginning of the day.  What I mean by that magic portal to insight is that this is a time and a place when I often find that I’ll get insights. And of course, when we’re looking to solve a problem or a challenge, or find a solution to something in our lives. What we’re learning in this understanding is that it’s it is insight that brings us fresh new thinking, rather than going over the same old things that our minds know that our brains know. Our Minds Love What They Already Know I remember years and years ago, a friend who was a life coach, saying to me that she had learned in a class that she was taking that our minds really love what they already know. And over and over again, I find that so to be so true. I’ve got this great quote that I want to share with you a quote I saw on Dicken Bettinger’s Instagram today. If you haven’t heard of Dicken, or know of him, I definitely recommend you search him out. He has a book called Coming Home, which is about the three principles understanding. And it’s beautiful, co written with Natasha Swerdloff. And he’s just a lovely, lovely human being so wise and gentle. And so here’s the quote related to our subject today. The intellect, like a computer, cannot find what lies beyond itself. Beyond the intellect lies a field of creative energy, the unknown, the spiritual. When we align with this energy, we connect with our wholeness. I love that so much because it speaks to so many things. Those are three sentences, but it just says volumes. And there’s this is the idea that I just wanted to share and talk about today that, that there’s this field, this space of the unknown, like Dicken says, this creative energy, this universal life energy that we are all a part of. And we can be asleep to that. I know I was for years and years. Getting Caught in Knowledge Loops What happens is when we’re looking to solve a problem, find a solution to something, we tend to get caught in what I call a knowledge loop. So we keep circling around with our brains, to all the things that we know that could be possible, maybe things that we’ve done in the past to find a solution or to solve a problem. Things that other people have done things that we’ve read about or things that we’ve seen. Not that there’s anything wrong with those things. But it really is true that our brains, that’s all they have access to. They have access to all that kind of information, which again can be really helpful at times. And then other times there’s another place where we can go for answers. And that getting to that place. Or hearing those answers is is the thing that happens when we experience insight. When we’re in the shower when we’re on the toilet. Sometimes I find cooking is is a place where I discover insight. Insight can happen anywhere, anytime. But certainly, I would say my average number of insights in the shower is is pretty high. Creative Solutions in the Unknown So I just wanted to point this out today that there are these two places we can go when we’re looking for answers. There’s the place that our brain goes, as I say, which is all the things we’ve already done, or seen or read or heard about. And then there is the infinite place of creativity and the unknown. And we can go there as well. I think one of the best ways to set ourselves up for having insights is simply knowing that that place exi

Beyond the immediate effects the recent global pandemic had on us (isolation, grief, loss, and illness, to name but a few) what have the long term effects been? Coach Stephanie Wood began asking herself this question when she noticed that some of the unwanted habits she’d picked up during the pandemic had stuck around. Knowing that she couldn’t be alone in this, Stephanie has created a program to help us settle our nervous systems and aid our recovery from the prolonged trauma that the pandemic caused. Stephanie Wood’s passion is helping people get unstuck. She is a holistic health practitioner and for more than two decades she’s been helping people reclaim their lives on their journey back to health and wholeness. She’s helped support hundreds of people in their recovery from depressive and anxious thinking and from the residual effects of having had a traumatic or challenging childhood using modalities like EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), Shiatsu, Human Design and others. You can find Stephanie Wood at InnerPeaceAndFlow.com and on Instagram @stephaniewood.eft 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 learning about the 3 Principles via EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) Searching far and wide for a resolution to chronic depression On the power of insight and its ability to create positive change Calming the nervous system after a prologued traumatic event like a global pandemic The connection between a stressed nervous system and a busy, insecure mind Resources Mentioned in this Episode Stephanie’s free Reset Your Nervous System program Donna Eden and the Eden Method Prine Harris Human Design The Q&A episode of Unbroken about where to look for wisdom and guidance Transcript of Interview with Stephanie Wood Alexandra: Stephanie Wood, welcome to Unbroken. Stephanie: Hi. Glad to be here. Alexandra: I’m thrilled to have you with me here today. Tell us a little bit about your background, how you got interested in the three principles, and that stuff. Stephanie: I’ve been an EFT tapping trainer and practitioner for over 20 years. EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) is a mind-body technique that uses tapping on meridian points. I got into that because I suffered from depression for my whole life until I was 35. And now I’ve been 21 years’ depression free. I know these kinds of types of techniques can work.  So where I encountered the three principles, it was through somebody with the tapping. It was another tapping practitioner. And she was telling me about Ann Ross, who was one of the EFT founding masters. And she said she had trained with her. She’s moved on to this thing called the three principles. And so of course, I love learning about all this stuff. And I just wanted to know more. So of course, I went down the rabbit hole and really ended up training with Annika Hurwitz, Keith Blevins and Velda, and Amanda Jones. And so I just really went down the rabbit hole, and it completely jived with everything I ever saw about life. And I’m like, this is for me. So now I share it. I incorporated it with the tapping. I had a lot of thinking about how wrong it was to bring in a technique. But over the years, I just realized I love the tapping. It’s fun for me. It feels nice to me. And it was a nice way to gently bring it to a broader audience, though. Alexandra: Would you be willing to share a little bit more about your depression and how you came to clear that up? What you saw about it? Stephanie: Yes. So, it was lifelong. I was hospitalized twice, I was a cutter, I tried to commit suicide, and I was a very unhappy camper from childhood on. I was relentlessly seeking help. So from my 20s on every modality you could think of. I had regular Western therapy, Eastern therapy, acupuncture, and I became a shiatsu practitioner. I just tried everything I could. I knew in my bones that something was going to shift. That’s where I think I just couldn’t stop. I was like, this isn’t right, this isn’t who I am. And so really, it was in my mid-30s. I was 34. I kept pursuing different, practitioners, and it was a combination of two different types of energy medicine type techniques.  I wasn’t EFT. This was before I had even heard about EFT. And I happen to be doing them at the same time. And I was doing them, nothing was happening. And then I stopped, and it just didn’t get better. And six months later, I think it took time for all of the processing to happen. I woke up in July of that year and I realized it had been a couple of weeks since I had had hateful, self-hatred, thoughts. I could feel that something shifted. And I was like, I don’t hate myself anymore. And when I thought about it, the thought sounded ridiculous. I was like, why would I hate myself? I could see all of my dark and all of my light.&

How can we draw clear boundaries with people in our lives if everything we’re seeing and experiencing comes via the gift of Thought? Today we explore the difference between circumstances and experiences and how this awareness can inform us and help us to understand when a healthy boundary might be appropriate. 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 16 of Unbroken podcast. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor.  And today I wanted to examine the question:  If our reality is created by thought, then how do we deal with boundaries? So this really has to do with relationships and situations in our life where we’re dealing with and interacting with other human beings. And I’m specifically thinking about personal, intimate relationships, partnerships, that kind of thing. When I first started exploring this understanding, I noticed a lot of confusion and I still do occasionally from people. When we start to understand that our life is an inside out experience and that thought is being created through us, coming through us from the formless into the form. And the idea that what we experience is based on that thinking rather than based on the actual events that are going on outside ourselves. The concise way to say that is we live in the world of our thinking, not in the world of our circumstances. Occasionally I see people exploring this, and then we get to the place where we realize that or we start to question how does that apply to intimate relationships? So, for example, if someone is feeling like they’re in a relationship that is unhealthy, that is whatever shade of that it that it could be, like, manipulative, or they’re dealing with a narcissist, or someone who’s maybe abusive, that kind of thing, verbally or otherwise. The question becomes, if I’m creating that experience via thought, or, in other words, if I’m having that experience, and my understanding of it is always through thought, then how do I draw boundaries? And I see people ask, should they even draw boundaries in a situation like that? And it’s such a valid question. And it’s so important. When I was in Portland a couple of months ago with Michael Neal and Barbara Patterson, Michael drew this diagram on the whiteboard at the front of the room. And he wasn’t talking about relationships at all. But I came away realizing this was the perfect way to explain this conundrum that people get into when they’re exploring this understanding. The diagram looked like this: His point was that in our lives, there are always these two different things going on. There’s the circumstance that’s happening. And I’ll give some examples in a second. And then there’s the experience that we have of that circumstance. The experience is our thinking, that’s where Thought comes into play. Let’s say you had a circumstance where you stubbed your toe. That’s just a hard fact. You ran into the foot of the couch, and stubbed your toe. That’s the circumstance. The experience, then, is how you experience that circumstance, via your thinking. So let’s say you’re in a rush to get to work, you might have a lot of thinking about how you’re going to be late. And this is going to screw up your day. And maybe you’re going to miss an important meeting, and all that kind of stuff, you’re going to have thinking of course about how painful it is. Or maybe you’re someone who’s kind of hard on yourself, you might have a lot of thinking about how that stubbed toe is just a sign of your clumsiness, or the fact that you weren’t paying attention, that kind of thing. You can see that all that thinking is variable. It depends on the person who’s encountering the circumstance. But the circumstance stays the same. You’ve stubbed your toe, that’s the fact. Now we can drill into intimate relationships and dealing with difficult people. It’s exactly the same situation. So the circumstance could be that you’re having an argument with your spouse, or perhaps you feel like maybe your spouse is being verbally abusive, that could be the circumstance. And then your experience of that is going to be all the thinking that you have that’s related to that circumstance. I had Phil Goddard on the show a few weeks ago, and he talked about the different the number of people that are in a relationship, it’s not just two. There’s my experience of me, there’s the other person’s experience of them. There’s the other person’s experience of me, there’s my experience of them. It goes on and on. It’s like one of those halls of mirrors. When we encounter a difficult person, or a difficult situation, naturally,

Like so many of my guests, Paola Royal has long been interested in health and well-being. She has worked as a physiotherapist, studied Emotional Freedom Technique, among other modalities, but knew that there was a piece missing when it came to helping others heal. Then, her mentor Ann Ross introduced her to the Three Principles. Now she is an author, podcaster and coach who leads the Living Lighter holistic weight loss programme. Paola Royal worked in the medical sector from the age of 18. Her fascination with our human – being, and the interconnectivity of the physical body and universal mind led her to the work she is doing today. She continued her studies training for 3 years in the scientific approach of nutrition with the BSY. She studied as a teacher for the Emotional Freedom Technique before she started an extensive training in the Three Principles as a paradigm, which is a pre-existing logic that describes and points to how our moment-to-moment experience of life is created. She has been a facilitator for 8 years and brings a wealth of experience to her work with clients.  Paola is the author of The Inner Game of Food & Diet.   You can find Paola Royal at healthylivingwithpaolaroyal.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 On the innate intelligence of the body Where to begin when trying to change an unwanted habit Integrating our bodies and minds on the path of healing What is autophagy and how does it affect our health? Resources Mentioned in this Episode Paola’s podcast, The Inner Game of Food, Diet, and Life The Living Lighter holistic weight loss programme Elsie Spittle Keith Blevens An explanation of Autophagy Dr. Bill Pettit Transcript of Interview with Paola Royal Alexandra: Paola Royal welcome to Unbroken. Paola: Thank you so much for inviting me, Alexandra. Alexandra: My pleasure. Why don’t you let us tell us a bit about your background and how you got interested in the three principles? Paola: I love that question. My background is working with clients since the age of 18. I worked as a physiotherapist I started to work more and more holistic. I was running my own practice in Switzerland before I came the third time to the UK, in 2010, to study there in the scientific approach of nutrition for three years.  And afterward, there was one piece of the puzzle to the human, to support my clients in the best way, the mind was still missing. And so I trained in EFT, Emotional Freedom Technique. And just when I finished I came to the three principles understanding because my mentor, Ann Ross, she started to train in the three principles.  I don’t know if you came across her. And she trained with, with various teachers, and so I thought, What the heck is the three principles? So I went online, and I came across some YouTube videos of Rudy and Jenny when they were still a couple, that was in I think, 2015- 2014, something like that. I get caught up with time quite a while ago.  And I immediately heard truth, it really hit home. And I thought, Oh, my goodness, I want to find out more about that. And so I joined and was running some meetups here in Exeter, and Devon, where I live. And so I did that. And there were different teachers coming down like Elsie Spittle, and Keith Blevins, and Rudy Kennard, and so on.  I did different courses went to London as well to give different courses. And I really wanted to be able to share to facilitate that. Because, for me, there was just nothing else anymore. It is really, since then, I don’t find the need to go anywhere else to look anywhere else. Because for me, every everything feeds into that.  And it’s a fundamental logic of how our moment is created. We have these three principles of mind, thought and consciousness, and depending how we use these principles that is creating the reality we live in. Alexandra: Very simple. Paola: Very simple. And it fits for me into absolutely everything. So like I said, I used to be a body worker with energy, psychology, and so on, and so on. And for me, that felt fed really nicely into that too. And to support people to live a healthier lifestyle. It was a much easier approach in a much more plausible approach in with my clients. And since then, I support people to improve the health to lose weight. People with overwhelm anxiety and people who have problems with sleep issues, and pain management. Alexandra: When did you start folding that into the work you were doing with clients? And how did you find that? Paola: I straightaway started to feed it in with my clients. I run groups and I work with people all over the world, one to one, and I wrote a book as well later on, but it took me one other step and that was when I heard then about autophagy I’d Have you ever heard about autophagy? It is our self-healing mechanism on a physical le

A busy, insecure mind can cause all kinds of problems in our lives: misunderstandings with friends or family, unnecessary worry and anxiety, a lack of clarity about decisions and much more. A busy, insecure mind can also contribute to creating or maintaining an unwanted habit. In this podcast episode, I explore why that is and how to choose an alternative approach. 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, welcome to Q&A Episode 15 of Unbroken podcast. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor.  I’m here today with the question: How does a quiet mind relate to weight loss? This was something I was thinking about a week or so ago, and came up with the metaphor of a clock and the gears inside a clock. If you found this episode via social media posts, you’ll see that in the sharing image, I use an image of those metal gears that are inside a mechanical clock. And here’s why I did that. It seems to me that very often, our minds can innocently feel like the weight of the world is on their shoulders. We have these busy problem solving brains that are really smart, really adapted to our lives as human beings, and very often working super hard to make sure that our lives are organized and safe, primarily. And that we are more often in a situation where we know what’s going to happen. Our minds always like what they know versus what they don’t know. So there can just be a lot of really super busy activity going on in there. And the way I saw it, and the reason I use the image of the gears in the clock is that our mind, our brains are really one of the tiny little gears that are inside a mechanical clock. And if you’ve ever seen inside a clock, it’s quite surprising actually, the first time I saw it, there’s so much going on. Gears of all different sizes. And so if you can imagine that our mind it feels like the burden of responsibility very often can feel like it’s on our mind, and that it has to do all the heavy lifting, or all the hard work of keeping the gears of life moving. And the gears of the world and the gears of the people around us and the universe and all that kind of stuff. When we begin to see that our brain is just a tiny little gear in the greater picture of the greater landscape of that mechanical operation of the inside of the clock. And that actually, the gear, the small gear isn’t doing any of the moving of any of the other gears. It’s being turned because of the greater mechanical things that are going on, because the clock maker has wound up the clock, and therefore, our brains are actually responsible for so much less than we think they are. That brings us to the topic of weight loss and an unwanted overeating habit. Speaking for myself, personally, what I know is that when I felt like the burden of the world was entirely on me, and when my brain was assuming that it was the thing, keeping the universe running, keeping my life on track, that felt like a lot of pressure. It really felt like honestly too much pressure. And that kind of strain and stress can then be what leads to unwanted habits. We very naturally reach for substances that are going to soothe and comfort us and give us some relief from all the busyness and the chatter and the noise and the weight pun intended of all that responsibility. Feeling like we’re responsible for keeping everything moving for keeping the clock in motion. When we begin to explore this understanding and see that our lives and the experiences within them are flowing through us, rather than being controlled by us, then the strain a lot of the strain and stress and pressure that we’ve been feeling fall away. And when that happens, then naturally there’s less need for us to reach for our unwanted habit. So that’s how a quiet mind is related to weight loss. I know in the beginning of my exploration of this understanding, I almost Well, I was going to say almost, but I added more thinking to what was going on in my head innocently. Thinking that learning about this understanding, I guess, trying to get my head around it my brain around it was, it was more complex than it actually is. And the longer I explore the Inside Out understanding, the more I see how simple it is, and the more I see how much I can relax into the wisdom of the universe, that’s already there. So in other words, I can just carry on with my life, doing my little cog in the wheel things, and the greater mechanism of the clock is going to keep my life running. And, in fact, there’s very little that I need to do or to and to think about, in order to make that happen. The more I can just let my mind naturally settle, then the more flowy my life becomes. The more I rely on this idea that there’s a greater mechanism at play, that there&#821

Coach and author Sheela Masand received the idea to interview those who had learned directly from Sydney Banks about the three principles that describe how we experience human life. That idea became Inside Out Transformation: A Revolutionary Guide for Coaches, Therapists, and Counsellors, which has been described by reviewers at ‘extraordinary’, ‘powerful, engaging and inspiring’ and ‘brilliantly lucid’. If you’re curious about what the three principles are and how they apply to your life, and to easing your suffering, Sheela’s book is a great place to start. In 2010 Sheela Masand was introduced to a psycho-spiritual understanding called The Three Principles discovered by Sydney Banks, also referred to as the inside-out understanding. She didn’t know it then, but her life was to be infused with its unique and undeniable transformative magic. Her coaching business slowly transformed in the same way – she couldn’t help but share the Principles in all her work. You can find Sheela Masand at SheelaMasand.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 for the first time that life only works one way (i.e., inside-out) Do affirmations help create change? Looking upstream to see that we live in a world of thought What heart-centred business owners commonly struggle with On tackling a big project like writing a book Resources Mentioned in this Episode Jamie Smart We didn’t discuss him but I’m going to mention Tad Hargrave and Marketing for Hippies Jack Pransky George and Linda Pransky Chana Studley The Viva Event Uncovering the Extraordinary Coach Within with Joe Bailey Transcript of Interview with Sheela Masand Alexandra: Sheela Masand, welcome to Unbroken.  Sheela: Thank you. Good to be here. It’s lovely to have you here.  Alexandra: Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to find the three principles?  Sheela: I don’t know how far back in time we need to go. But just to say that I live in Spain. I am British. And I’ve lived in Spain since 1986, which was a long time ago. I was married and had two beautiful daughters. And along the way, I got divorced. That’s one thing. But along the way, I became self-employed. It’s one of those things I always knew. In the back of my mind, my dad was very entrepreneurial.  I always had this sense that I would, one day, have my own business. I didn’t set out career-wise to do that. But it serendipitously and landed in my lap to join up with somebody become in partnership and open a British food and drink import business here in Spain, which I never thought I would do that.  And it was very successful, like, super successful in the sense that we ended up with 20 employees in a warehouse. And, it was very, very, very successful in its day. And then, unfortunately, my business partner died at a very young age. He was only 48, and very unexpectedly left me with this business. A few years have gone by, and I was already exploring other things that I wanted to do, I’d become vegetarian. So importing bacon and sausages and pork pies from the UK wasn’t really sitting very well with me anymore. I was weighing I need to be doing something, and I wanted to do something alternative in the helping field. And come across coaching. And I was exploring different modalities.  We’d already decided I was going to become a silent partner in this business that we had that was flourishing. But then, as I say, he died. And I ended up with this business I didn’t really want because legally, I had to take it up, take it on, while I didn’t have to. But I chose to because there were all these people rely on me, telling me they have mortgages to pay, etc. And then the recession hit, hard times hit, and things didn’t go so well. So I ended up with a lot of debt. And the reason I’m sharing the backstory because this is how I came into the three principles. In my journey of looking for what was my next step in terms of my career or business, I bumped into an NLP coaching course out here in Spain, and I did that I love it. I really enjoyed it. I ended up joining Jaime Smarts’ email list because he was one of the best NLP around at the time. And little did I know at that point in time that he’d started to change paths, change courses, because he had come across the three principles. But I didn’t know that, and neither did anybody else on this email list. So this email drops into my inbox saying – and bear in mind that I was in financial distress at this point in time, lots of lots of debt, and didn’t know how I was going to get out of it. So this email lands in my inbox saying if the secret is so great, show me the money. He’s a very clever man in terms of wording and

Is happiness something we need to create in our lives? Or does it occur naturally? And does searching for it actually get it the way of experiencing it? 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 status update on my low mood (‘depression light’) Experiencing the inside-out nature of life due to a challenging situation Letting wisdom lead the way out of difficulty How our feelings, even scary ones, pass through us and move on Why happiness is not something we need to chase or create Transcript of episode Hello explorers and welcome to Q&A Episode number 14 of Unbroken podcast. I’m your host Alexandra Amor. I’m here today to talk about happiness. The first thing I want to do actually is do a couple of follow ups quickly on a couple of previous episodes. A couple of q&a episodes ago, I talked about the low mood that I was in. And the experiences that I’ve had in the past with low moods being a precursor to some sort of shift or insight or transformation, that kind of thing. My low mood is still around, I can definitely feel it. I’ve been a little bit distracted by some life things that have been going on. But today, I’m very settled, and I can definitely tell it’s still there. In fact, I’m recording this episode on the day that it’s supposed to go out on, the Monday. And that’s really unlike me. I tend to do things in advance, but it was a bit of…I don’t want to say a chore. But it was a bit of an effort to get myself into the chair today and record this episode. To me, that’s an indicator that my mood is low. I’ve been describing it to myself as ‘depression light’. On the scale of depression with 10 being the worst, it’s really definitely very low on that scale, like a one or a two. But I do notice it. So like I said in the previous episode, I’ll just carry on and take everything as it comes. As ever, with these situations, it changes. I was planting flowers on the weekend, it’s spring here now. And I went to the garden center, got some flowers came home, put them all on their little pots, so that I could put them out on my balcony. And, for example, during that experience, I was really content and really happy and distracted, I think, from my low mood. So I just wanted to point that out as well. We’re having a very changeable experience, which is something I’m going to talk about in just a second as well related to happiness. Then the second thing I wanted to follow up on was I mentioned that there’s this uncertainty going on with my living situation. And what’s been really interesting to note is that though it can be really scary I can really see my experience coming from the inside out. Sometimes I’m worried about what might happen in the future. Sometimes it’s not on my mind at all, and I’m very content or peaceful or just not thinking about it. And to me, that just points to the nature of our experience and how we think that our circumstances is our what create our experience of life. When we take a moment to just observe our own lives, and what’s going on with ourselves – and I encourage you to do this for yourself, just test it, try it out, see what you notice – that I really noticed that, that this, what would I say difficult maybe or challenging situation with housing is, like I say, it’s not on my mind all the time. If my experience was outside in, then I would be bothered by that all the time, because it’s still unresolved. It’s been over a month this has been going on. And there still aren’t any clear answers, and I don’t know what the future holds. And yet, at some moments, I’m just perfectly at peace with the whole thing. I will say to that I was writing in my journal on the weekend and one of the things I said that I would like to do is to really ask that my mind takes a step back from this situation. What I mean by that, is that my normal modus operandi would be to really use my brain and figure out solutions and really get in there start calling people start making plans. And not that there’s anything wrong with that at any given time. But where I felt my wisdom in this moment was guiding me for lack of a better word was to really take a step back and just see what the universe comes up with. The universe is a lot smarter than me. That goes without saying. And so I’m almost posing it like a challenge to myself, how peaceful and calm and quiet can I be? And how little can I interfere with whatever wants to unfold? How much can I listen to my wisdom? And go where it shows me might be the next best step to take. Following that, rather than following my mind, which tends to be quite fearful and nervous and wants everything to be squared away, and

Joe Bailey knows that life can be difficult. In addition to life’s ‘regular’ challenges, he’s had personal experiences with illness, including Lyme disease (more than once), and the effects of mould. He also knows that all human beings are in possession of an innate and trustworthy ‘compass of wisdom’. Our thoughts can be noisy but our innate wisdom and resilience is the eye at the centre of life’s hurricane that can guide us and smooth out the bumps on the sometimes rough road of life. Joseph Bailey, M.A., L.P. is a licensed psychologist, an author, seminar leader, consultant to organizations, public speaker, and psychotherapist. His work has included co-founding The Minneapolis Institute of Mental Health, developing programs for health care provider wellness at the University of Minnesota Inner Life of Healers Program and numerous hospitals including North Memorial Hospital, Minneapolis, East Lansing Health System and Mayo Clinic Arizona (The Resilient Physician Program). He has also worked extensively in treatment centers for addictions—Gulf Breeze Recovery, Meridian Systems and Farnum Center, and numerous social service agencies. Joseph is the author of six books with over a half million copies in print including the best seller, Slowing Down to the Speed of Life with Dr. Richard Carlson and The Serenity Principle. Learn more about Joe at JoeBaileyAndAssociates.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 Learning from Sydney Banks and his very different approach to human psychology On the paradigm shift of the three principles Working with everyone from climate scientists to clinicians at the Mayo clinic to those struggling with addiction The priceless value of relying on a calm mind Finding our own compass of truth Resources Mentioned in this Episode Joe’s book: Thriving in the Eye of the Hurricane Interview with Mahima Shrestha about her work in Nepal Joe’s book: Fearproof Your Life Transcript of Interview with Joseph Bailey Alexandra: Joe Bailey, welcome to Unbroken.  Joe: Thank you. What a great title.  Alexandra: Oh, thank you., I was so pleased when I thought of that. So it’s so great to have you here today, Joe. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background and how you got involved with the three principles.  Joe: Sure. And thanks for having me. So a little bit of background, I guess, to go way back, I discovered when I was 16 that when I was an exchange student in Guatemala, I had an opportunity. My aunt was a Catholic nun working in Central America with the poor and involved in lots of social justice issues.  I lived there for a summer, and it opened me up to my vocation really, to want to help people, alleviate suffering in the world and being raised Catholic, after high school that I went into seminary, thinking I’d be a priest. I had some amazing experiences for that one year I was in the seminary, got to work with Martin Luther King’s organization, and my prefect, the counselor that for our unit, was one of Martin Luther King’s best friends. So we got to learn a lot about all of that. And with that was a big influence on my life. But it led to me leaving the seminary after a year and deciding to continue my vocation by helping people. So I became a clinical psychologist and went to grad school and all that. And the more I got into psychology, the more I thought, is this the right fit for me because there is no spirituality in psychology was very agnostic. I did yoga and meditated and all did all these other things, because I always felt that was part of the whole person was to help people not just with their mind, but their whole essence or spiritual nature. And that wasn’t really to be found in psychology until I met Sydney Banks. About 10 years later, from the beginning of grad school till I was about 32. I met Syd at the recommendation of Keith Blevins, Dr. Keith Blevins, who was my best friend at grad school. And actually, he urged me to listen to Syd’s tapes over the years. But I was cynical at that point.  There was so many trips going on in psychology that I thought it was just another fad. And I was tired of that. So I just was not very open. Until one day, Syd was going to speak in Miami, at the University of Miami medical school. And Keith invited me, and his wife Elda also said, By the way, my best friend, Michael, she is coming too, and we’d love for you to meet, and I was available.  And so I thought, Okay, well, that’ll be fun. I went to Miami, and that first day I met my wife, Michael. She’s a woman, but she has a man’s name. Because she was born on the feast of St. Michael the archangel, and she was going to be a boy. I fell in love with her first sight. And four hours later, I met Sydney Banks. Alexan

When we have problems and challenges in life, where can we turn for guidance? What if there was a source of pure, clear wisdom that was 100% reliable and could guide you under any circumstances? The good news is this source of answers is available and it’s within 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 How our minds innocently get involved in problem-solving What to do when we feel a lot of fearful thining What does wisdom feel like? When does wisdom show up? Resources Mentioned in this Episode Tania Elfersy, author of The Wisdom of Menopause and Perimenopause Episode 4 of Unbroken with Tania Elfersy Transcript of episode Hello, explorers, and welcome back to another Q&A episode of Unbroken. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor. Today the question is: Where can I go for guidance? I love this question so much. And I’m going to use a personal story that’s going on for me this week to illustrate what I mean by this. And then I’m going to move into a brilliant thing that I heard from my friend Tania Elfersy the other day that really ties in well.  So the personal story is that I live in a condo, apartment, and I’m renting it. And additionally, I live in a town where it’s really hard to find housing. Now I lucked out when I moved here, five and a half years ago, in that this was the first apartment I looked at, it was perfect. For me, it was the perfect price, perfect size, the building is nicely maintained, all that stuff. So I was thrilled, beyond thrilled and snatched it up right away. Housing in this town where I live is really, really an issue to the point that the vacancy rate is well below zero, I would say. People live in camper vans, in the summer there’s lots of tourists around, and many of them live on the back roads, in vans, but in addition to that, there’s people who actually live here and work here and have jobs who do the same thing, because there just aren’t a lot of places to rent. There’s a variety of reasons for that and I won’t get into it all, because that’s not the point of this podcast. So you’ll just have to believe me, it’s tough to find a place to rent, when you live in the little town where I live. It came about recently that my landlord was thinking of selling the condo that I’m renting. She had a buyer lined up. In the last week or so I guess I would say there’s been a lot of upheaval around here with inspectors coming and going and that kind of thing. When I first heard the news that the place might be sold, I was really really quite stirred up and anxious. And not the least of which, because we’re coming into the high season. I’m recording this in early May. And between May and October if it’s hard to find housing in the winter, then it’s basically impossible in the summer. This is not the ideal time for me to be having to look for a new place to live. So when I got that news, my stomach was really churned up. I could feel my thinking go into overdrive, and just having lots and lots of busy thoughts about what I should do. My mind was trying to solve the problem, which is what minds do. They’re always trying to protect us and help us and keep us safe. And that’s their job. And they take it very seriously. So definitely my mind got to work trying to fix this problem. And make it go away, essentially. What I knew, thankfully, when all this was happening was that all that busy thinking and all that all those butterflies in my stomach, those weren’t the places to look for guidance about this issue about what I should do, if anything, who I should talk to, any actions that I should take, any investigation that I should make all that stuff. Thankfully, because of the three principles, understanding, I knew enough to just let that happen. The busy mind and the butterflies in my stomach, knowing that it would settle down after a period of time, I didn’t know how long that would be. And also knowing that that as I said, that was not the place to go to look for answers. And so that’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve really just been sitting with my feelings just letting them happen. At some moments, I feel really churned up and anxious. And other moments I don’t. I’m very much at peace and just going about my day and reminding myself that in the grand scheme of things having to move is a pretty small problem. But that logic, that’s a logical thought. And our emotions don’t always respond to those kinds of things. What I’ve been doing is waiting for wisdom and insight when they’re ready to speak about any action that I need to be taking. And I should say, too, that things are still a bit up in the air. If the people who are interested in buying this apartment do that, th

Our brains are designed to think and to solve problems. However, we ignore other innate tools available to us at our peril; things like our access to wisdom and peace of mind. Poet and coach Anne Gleeson went through an exceptionally difficult time in 2020, which included a cancer diagnosis. A lifelong explorer, she happened upon the Three Principles at that time and found that an understanding of how our thinking works helped her navigate these turbulent waters. Now she assists others who want to do the same. Anne Gleeson is a poet, a certified Change coach, and is deeply interested in helping each of us create an experience of life that is joy-filled and open to possibility. She has worked as a teacher and leader in schools and universities, Adult Learning Centres, and in Tonga, as an Australian Volunteer Abroad. She began her professional speaking career when she returned from teaching in the Pacific and started working with Freedom from Hunger. For the past 15 years, she has worked in the Funeral Industry providing grief support as a Celebrant and Funeral Director. Learn more about Anne Gleeson’s coaching at StormToSky.com and her poetry at eagleeson.com.au You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below.  Show Notes Exploring grief and end-of-life with an open heart Experiencing a cancer diagnosis, a marriage breakdown, the loss of a business, and the pandemic – all at once Practicing not resisting experiences, even if they involve cancer Finding peace of mind in unexpected places Resources mentioned in this episode The Little School of Big Change Barbara Patterson’s podcast, Real Business Real Lives Changeable podcast episode with Malene Colotla Transcript of the episode Alexandra: Anne Gleeson, welcome to Unbroken. Anne: Thanks, Alexandra. Lovely to talk to you from the other side of the world. Alexandra: I think you’re my first Australian guest. This is very exciting. Anne: I feel honored. Alexandra: Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background and how you got interested in the principles? Anne: I grew up in a very traditional farming family in some ways; it was all about the way that the world worked. And then, in 2017, my mother was dying, and I was caring for her. And then there was a creative workshop in the town I lived.  And that was so surprising to me because I didn’t think of things like that, like, generally it was agricultural meetings, and that thing. But anyway, I couldn’t do it then because of the circumstances. But a year later, I joined that group. And it was run by somebody called Robin Emerson, who was a really beautiful creator.  She also was so interested in these ways of operating in the world. And she loaned me lots of books. And I just ran with it, and then enrolled in the next time that the Little School of Big Change course, came up with Amy Johnson.  And it was very liberating for me. I think I realized how caught up in my thinking I was and how much of my own annoyance or sadness or whatever was to do with the way I was creating an experience. So that was how I got involved in the beginning. I joined and made connections with people. And that was really lovely. Alexandra: Were the Three Principles involved in the books Robin loaned you? Anne: Yes, they were. Amy Johnson’s books. But also other books like Michael Singer, and the person I cottoned on to it wasn’t actually a book, it was Barb Patterson’s podcast. Because I was in business, it was very interesting to me looking at it from that point of view. So it was a whole range of things. And I was hungry. So I gobbled up a whole lot of things. Alexandra: Were you always interested in this exploration? Anne: I think, like, a lot; I’ve had this experience a few times thinking, yup. And I already knew that when I was 15, or whatever, knowing and but, this, I suppose, was giving me a bit of a language. And that’s not to say that I went with that in any way; I didn’t. But even at uni, I went from this country kid going off to Monash uni and Melbourne.  And that was so exciting for me, and I’d race around and go to all different courses and talks at anything that was my mind, was just being expanded in so many ways or my heart or whatever. So, yes, I think I was a seeker always. Alexandra: Okay. Interesting. And so then one of the things that mention on your website is that you’re a funeral celebrant, as well as part of your work. Do you think that work has been influenced at all by the principles? Anne: Has the funeral work been influenced? Yes, every single part of my life has. And I’ve worked in the area of bereavement care and, more, the whole funeral industry for probably 15 years or so. Now, I’m not formally part of the funeral industry, but I work still as a celebrant making

My mood sucks today. It took everything I had to get to my desk and record this episode. But I hope that by sharing what I see about low moods, it will help you when you encounter one. 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 we’re not responsible for our low moods How resisting what’s happening (like a low mood) seems to make it sticky Are low moods a precursor to insight or a new creative idea? Resources mentioned in this episode Q&A Episode 9: What is depression? Unbroken Ep 11: Sensitivity to Our Thinking with Jonelle Simms Transcript of episode Hello, Explorers, and welcome to Q&A Episode number 12 of Unbroken podcast. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor. And I’m really happy to have you here with me today. Today the question we’re going to explore is what does my low mood mean? I’m doing this one specifically today, because my mood is really low today. And I thought what better way to expand on this topic, explore it a little bit. And then I was originally going to post a different q&a episode next week, number 13. But I think what I’m going to do is a follow up episode to this one. In a few days, I’ll record that and just let you know how things are going. For me right now, my mood is is really low today, like really low. All I want to do is just lie on the couch and stare at the ceiling. And it’s kind of been going downhill for a couple of days, I’ve noticed that. What I wanted to talk about was a few different things. The first thing I want to say is, it’s so easy for us to take these things personally. Until I learned about this understanding, that’s exactly what I did. And before I started exploring this understanding, I would have heaped blame on myself for this low mood. And that would have looked like a lot of chatter in my head about how can I get out of this mood? How can I change it? What’s wrong with me? What have I done to create this? How can I fix it. A lot of taking responsibility for it innocently. And maybe talking to myself about being lazy or unmaotivated, anything in that kind of realm. And, again, yeah, that was an innocent reaction to what was happening. I see this kind of situation, this kind of low mood very differently now. One of the things I wanted to say is that when we have a lot of that chatter about our responsibility for our moods, and blaming ourselves and shaming ourselves for that, that is resistance. So any kind of any kind of chatter like that is really us resisting what is happening. And again, we do this innocently. I certainly did it for years and decades. The way that I see it so differently now is that instead of it’s instead of thinking that it’s me, somehow magically creating this mood, and I’m somehow responsible for what’s happening. What I see now is that this is universal life energy moving through me, and this is just what’s happening today. And when I see this low mood from that perspective, what that means is that I don’t take it personally at all. There’s a little bit of background chatter, I guess, about how I don’t like what’s going on. But what’s really nice is that I’m not taking responsibility for it, like I said. It’s something that’s moving through me at this moment. It came in when it wanted to come in, and it’ll leave when it wants to leave. I really see it, that these kinds of things, even when we don’t like them, they have the same kind of wisdom, as the weather and fighting them is just as useless as fighting or complaining about the weather. So that was the first thing I wanted to say: It’s the taking of our moods personally, that that really makes them sticky. And it’s that resistance, or that is resistance and it that just tends to make the situation worse rather than better. In the past, I think I would have noticed too that because of all the resistance that I would have been doing the moods that I didn’t like lasted way longer, and were much more extreme and were much more painful for me. So yeah, there was just a lot more suffering. because of what I believed was happening because of the responsibility that I believed that I had for that mood. It seems to me, and this is why I wanted to post this today, record this today and then record a follow up for next week, after a few days, it seems to me that there is always wisdom in these low moods, that’s at least been my experience. If you go back to Q&A episode 9, that one’s about depression and it ties in really nicely with this episode. And what I saw, and you can listen to the full episode there, but what I saw with the periods of depression that I experienced, was that there was some wisdom to them. The way that I describe it is the tide had gone way out. So, every

Innocently, we can fall into a habit of resisting the experiences our lives bring us. We resist the challenges, the heartache, the struggle. But what if that’s where the juicy stuff is? Author and coach Phil Goddard joins me to talk about embracing all that life has to offer, even when it’s painful or challenging, and the wisdom and delight that can arise as a result. Phil Goddard brings a uniquely compassionate understanding of being human into his work as an executive trusted advisor, leadership mentor, and relationship coach, to help organisations develop teams in which people love to work, love to lead, and love to create. Phil’s work centres around transforming relationships and leadership through developing a deeply grounded understanding of the principles behind our human experience and the nature of how our experience of life is created He has worked with Hollywood actors, international models, journalists, artists, authors, film directors, corporate executives, and numerous business owners, leaders and entrepreneurs. A prolific writer, ghostwriter, and author of 5 books, he is also the host of the award winning Coaching Life Podcast, and The Loving Being Human Podcast. You can find Phil Goddard at his website philg.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 gradual move from the tech world and people management to coaching How in the absence of resistance to life, love arises How our search for something can often obscure our view of it What are compensating strategies for perceived inadequacies? On our entirely normal and natural need to be seen and validated Resources Mentioned in this Episode Book: The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck Book: The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey Book: Tasting Mangoes by Phil Goddard Book: It’s Not About the Food by Alexandra Amor Book: Musings on Love by Phil Goddard Mavis Karn’s letter The Secret Book: It’s That Simple by Mavis Karn Transcript of Interview with Phil Goddard Alexandra: Phil Goddard, welcome to Unbroken. Phil: My gosh, thank you for inviting me. Delighted to be here. Thank you. Alexandra: And from such a long way away. You’re the second person this week that I’ve spoken to from the southern hemisphere. So thank you. Thank you for beaming your way all the way to Canada. Phil: Only just the southern hemisphere, I think. We’re pretty close to the equator here. And yes, almost the opposite side of the world, I think. Alexandra: Like if you put a pencil through the globe? Phil: The American East Coast is pretty much, I know, from the time difference, that’s 12 hours, right? And I think ours is something like 15 or whatever says. This is what you’re saying to record. I record I’m essentially on the next day, and I recommend it. Today’s a good day. Alexandra: Isn’t that a funny thing that we’re here we are in the present moment, and yet you’re on Wednesday and I’m on Tuesday. Phil: Some deeply profound lesson in there somewhere? Sure, we can find it. Yes  Alexandra: Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background and how you got interested in the Three Principles? Phil: So probably, like many who even listen or have come across the principles I searched, didn’t know what I was searching for. For most of my life, I’ve got a background in electronics and technology. And my first career was very much in technology. I spent 26 years in total in corporate, a lot of leadership positions. I loved those. I had my first team leader role will be part of a small team of four or five people in 1991. And I just loved that I had some responsibility, as we all have anyway, of course, but some influence as we all have as well over other people. This was a formal responsibility. So it’s really like from there that I really got, I guess, aware of my interest and curiosity in people. And, I was doing all that stuff about reading leadership books, personal development books and stuff, but it really kicked off in 1998. A spiritual exploration kicked off then when my first marriage broke down. And my brother-in-law at the time handed me M. Scott Peck’s book The Road Less Traveled. It’s a beautiful book because he opened the book with the line, “Life is difficult” and then spends the rest of the book explaining how once we can truly accept with grace, that actually becomes a little bit easier. So in answer to your question, I was on holiday in Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt in March 2004. So 19 years ago, I was reading The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey. And I haven’t gone back to this line for many years. So I might have even been quoting it incorrectly. But it doesn’t matter. Because it’s a line in the book, whic

If you experience anxiety this podcast episode will help clarify where it comes from, what it is, and how simply knowing these two things will change your anxiety for the better. 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 anxiety really trying to tell us? Where does anxiety come from? What information is anxiety sharing? What can we do about anxiety? Resources mentioned in this episode Podcast: A Little Peace of Mind Book: A Little Peace of Mind by Nicola Bird Transcript of Episode Hello explorers, and welcome back to a Q&A episode of Unbroken. This is Q&A Episode 11 and I’m so happy to have you here. My name is Alexandra Amor and these are the episodes of the podcast where I answer your questions.  So just a reminder, you can submit a question that you’ve got about unwanted habits, anything like that, to alexandraamor.com/question. There’s a form there you can fill out and I’ll be happy to answer your question on a future episode.  Today the question is, “What is anxiety?” This is a topic close to my heart, because I’ve got a funny story about my own personal experience with anxiety that I’ll get to in just a second.  Very simply, anxiety is our body’s way of letting us know that we’re caught up in some insecure thinking. That’s all it is. It’s very simple. It’s actually the opposite of what it can look like to us, which I think is what makes it such an interesting topic. It’s not a problem. And we’ll talk about why that is in just a second. It’s not something we need to manage or control. Very similarly to cravings that we have when we have an unwanted habit, anxiety is information from the wisdom and the the universal life energy that’s within all of us. So we’ll talk about that a bit more in just a second. Right now, I want to share my personal experience, just so you know, that I know whereof I speak. For years, I experienced a form of anxiety that I would describe as urgency. The really funny thing about it is I didn’t know that that’s what it was. Put a pin in that, because it’s really interesting that we misunderstand the messages that are coming from our body and our wisdom. And that was absolutely true for me. For as long as I could remember, I felt a sense of urgency. I wouldn’t say of course, I can’t say 100% of the time, but a lot of the time, especially around work, and also around things like running errands, for example. So that was one that was really puzzling for me. If I had a list of, let’s say, four errands that I needed to run, I would be out doing them and I would get to the second one, and start to feel this sense of urgency like I just needed the errands to be finished. Inevitably, probably nine times out of 10, maybe more, I would just say “Oh, forget it” about the last two errands on the list. And I would go home. That was because that information that was going on in my body, that feeling of urgency, felt like information to me that was pertinent to the situation that I was in. It was only much later once I began to explore this inside out understanding that I realized that that wasn’t what it was. And the funny thing is, I never would have described myself as an anxious person. Like I said, it was very specifically a sense of urgency that I felt. And then I was listening to Nicola Bird’s podcast, A Little Peace of Mind, probably back in 2018 and she had a guest on and I don’t remember who the guests was. But as they were having their conversation, the guest just happened to mention that urgency was the same as anxiety, it was just in a different form. I was really struck by that. It really turned my world upside down. It was one of those moments. I just thought wait, what, wait a second. Until then I had been really attracted to her podcast. I listened to it every week. And I really enjoyed it. And the funny thing was, if I had thought about it logically, I didn’t understand why that was that I was really enjoying it. And then when this guest said that thing I realized oh okay, I now I get it, I can really relate to what was going on when her guests would talk about anxiety because like the guest said, urgency is just another form of anxiety. So once I saw that I was absolutely thrilled. I’m going to go on and explain a little bit more about anxiety and that kind of thing. But the nice thing is about exploring this understanding was that what I noticed was that gradually, without really do without doing anything, really, the anxiety or the urgency that I felt, just started to fall away. I still experienced it occasionally. And I’ll talk about that in a minute, too. It just, it was so interesting to me that simply by looking in this direction, by learning

When we are struggling with an overeating habit, does that mean that we’re extra sensitive to the thinking that’s going on within us? This is the question I posed to my friend Jonelle Simms. We go deep into the source of our thinking, if we can in fact be ‘too’ sensitive to it, where our moods come from, how little control we have over them, and much more. After having a significant insight that fundamentally changed her understanding life, Jonelle left her career as a corporate trainer, curriculum developer, coach, and organizational development specialist to work in support of those in her community facing the challenges of poverty, homelessness, illness, addiction, and marginalization. She created the ProcrastinationPublications.com website in 2013 simply as a resource for herself and those interested in the Three Principles. No new resources have been added since 2018, but she keeps the site live for anyone to access. Her occasional blogs can be found on the website, with the more recent ones posted regularly on her 3P Services page on Facebook. You can find Jonelle Simms at ProcrastinationPublications.com or on her 3P Services Facebook page. 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 relief of realizing how our experience of life is made up Viewing depression from a different perspective On the impermeable line between experience and circumstances How we are always feeling our thinking Resources mention in this episode Pransky and Associates Jack Pransky Michael Neill Barbara Patterson Mavis Karn Transcript of Interview with Jonelle Simms Alexandra: Jonelle Sims, welcome to Unbroken. Jonelle: Thank you, Alexandra. Alexandra: It’s nice to see you. Jonelle: Nice to see you, too. Alexandra: Today is going to be a little bit different. I’ll just explain to the listeners that it’s going to be less of an interview and more of a conversation since you and I are friends. And I had this subject come up that I was interested in.  So before we jump into that, why don’t you tell us about your background, how you got interested in the principles. Jonelle: I’m somewhat retired right now. But my background was in training and people development. And for a long time, I spent learning how to fix myself and other people through self-help. But I still suffered a little bit from ongoing depression.  At some point, I just eventually gave up because I got fed up with trying to fix myself. And at that time, when I came across the three principles, and I think there’s some significance in that, although who knows, they say, once you surrender, then you all of a sudden, you see things that you didn’t see before, so or when the student’s ready, the teacher appears.  But I wasn’t looking so I stopped reading books, I stopped doing all of that stuff. And I just happened to come across a blog of a former manager that I used to work for. And she mentioned working with someone else that I knew. And they were working with these people called the Pranskys.  I knew everything about self-help but I’d never heard of Pransky before. So I just googled their name. And I came across this thing called the Three Principles movie site, which doesn’t exist anymore, it’s stored on another website. Anyway, I just watched a couple of the videos, Syd Banks and George Pransky, Linda Pransky, and then Jack Pransky.  And it was about an hour in probably watching them and thinking how unprofessional the videos were like, they’re just, these people having these conversations. I just was snickering, or they’re laughing at the time and are being amused by it. And at some point, I just heard Jack Pransky say: “How can we take ourselves seriously in light of the fact that we’re making it up?” I’d never heard anything like the before. I had a huge physical change from one moment before I was fully in the heaviness of my experience of life in thought. And the next moment, I was just free of it all. I realized how all my suffering had been self-created through my thinking unknowingly and innocently. And I just experienced a spiritual awakening; I felt this experience of impersonal unconditional love. And I realized, this is what God is. This is what all the ways have been pointing to throughout time. So the experience lasted about three days. And then I slowly started getting back to, how I felt before.  But since then, I’ve always had that as a North Star for me, there’s a truth in that for me that I can keep on leaning back into. And I’ve just been unwrapping that for the last 10 years since but it’s slowly realizing the next layer of personal crazy of thinking that I added to my existence that makes me suffer. So much smell I came across the principles. Alexandra: What effect

The present moment fascinates me. In the past I’ve been afraid of it. Or, at the very least, cautious about it. I’ve taken training with horses as my teachers to try to be more connected to it. Gradually, I’m beginning to see that there is nothing to fear in the present moment and that, in fact, it might hold many answers to my questions, especially about unwanted habits. Transcript of episode Hello Explorers, and welcome back to another Q&A episode of Unbroken. Today’s question is: what does the present moment have to do with ending an unwanted habit? I wanted to talk about this because I’ve been exploring the present moment a little bit more lately, and really enjoying that exploration and also have a bit of a history with being uncomfortable with the present moment. I’ll talk about that as well, toward the end of the episode.  The first thing I guess I want to say about the importance of the present moment when it comes to resolving an unwanted habit, like overeating, is: It is in the present moment that we can even just begin to notice what’s happening.  When we’re really caught up in our thinking, and which is like jumping onto a train and just getting carried along, and we can be 1000s of miles away, without even realizing what’s going on, down that train of thought. So the first thing about the present moment that’s really helpful is that it just helps us to notice just what’s happening at a very basic level. We can notice that we’re feeling the drive to overeat, we will notice that there’s some tension within us around food and eating, we will notice those sensations in our body, or we’re much more likely to notice them, when we, remember, or just simply have a moment of dropping into the present moment. The second reason the present moment is important when it comes to ending unwanted habits, is that it’s really going to help us noticing what’s going on with our thinking. First of all, we’re going to notice that we’re thinking, and that’s really helpful, because noticing that we’re thinking, enables us to see that there’s us, the observer, the intelligence of the universe that is flowing through this person. And then there is the thinking that occurs in our brains, in our brain boxes. That kind of observation is really helpful because it creates a little bit of a gap between ourselves and our thinking.  It’s so easy to get caught up in our thinking and believe everything that our brains are saying to us. And that’s just the human condition, there’s nothing wrong when we do that. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about or to feel like we’re getting it wrong, as it were. That’s just the human condition. When we’re able to recall that there is a present moment also happening, and I’m saying it that way, because I don’t want it to seem like it needs to be a practice or that this is a prescription at all, because the present moment is always there. It’s not something we need to create. It’s not something we need to manage or manufacture. It’s there with us at every moment. If we can simply remember to fall into it every once in a while, that will begin to build our awareness of how powerful it is and how helpful it can be for us. Especially when it comes to noticing the difference between the fact that we are thinking and the fact that we’re able to observe that that’s happening. The third reason that the present moment is so important to resolving an unwanted habit is that the present moment is really where wisdom, insight, fresh thinking and deeper understanding exist. So, our problem solving brains tend to live either in the future or in the past. When they’re in the future, they are innocently problem solving, anticipating problems, imagining scenarios that might happen, and then trying to figure out solutions to those scenarios, even though they don’t exist yet. How often have you had an argument with someone in your head? I do it less often now but I used to do it all the time; my brain trying to anticipate what might happen, and then create my response to that thing, even though the thing hasn’t happened yet, just as a way, and then again, innocently, our minds are just simply trying to protect us and keep us safe. So they’re very often off in the future, fearful and anxious and worried and concerned about things that haven’t even happened yet, or they’re very often in the past and thinking about how we could have done things differently, or feeling feelings that that are coming up, because of something that happened in the past. If and when we can remember to just drop into the present moment, as I said, that’s where fresh insight, fresh thinking, wisdom, all those kinds of things exist, and are available to us. And so it’s

When it comes to resolving unwanted habits, the 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous have become the most popular and widespread approach. In this conversation, Greg Suchy shares some of his experience with AA and how he transitioned to the 3 Principles approach for dealing with unwanted habits and addictions. Greg Suchy spent years in the Alcoholics Anonymous program before he found the 3 Principles. Now, he helps others to find the peace of mind that is innate within them that makes addiction unnecessary. You can find Greg on Facebook. Show Notes Noticing how differently the 3 Principles view addiction and unwanted habits from a program like Alcoholics Anonymous On Bill Wilson’s belief in healthy experimentation Does peace of mind come from working through the AA steps? Or is it innate? Resources Mentioned in this Episode The Unity Church Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book Joe Bailey’s book: The Serenity Principle Dr. Amy Johnson’s book: The Little Book of Big Change Transcript of interview with Greg Suchy Alexandra: Greg Suchy, welcome to Unbroken. Greg: Thank you, Alexandra. Good to be here. Alexandra: It’s really nice to see you again. Why don’t you tell us about your background and how you found the three principles? Greg: I found myself in recovery for alcohol and other addiction issues back in 2012. And through that whole process of just seeking answers, that didn’t seem to be very easily accessible at the time, I ended up finding a group at a church that I was checking out at the time, a Unity chapel. Unity is more of an open-minded metaphysical church.  And, so it drew my attention, and I’m checking things out. And they had this new meeting. They just had three principles, didn’t even explain what it was. I felt drawn to it and showed up. This wonderful couple, Bob and Marty, that just seeing a lot of the webinars and whatnot, they just took me in and Bob especially just he pulled me aside and just like dumped all this information on me about how the three principles and how they apply to addiction and all this stuff.  And I’m sitting here thinking this is way too simple. There has to be more to it. Where are the steps, where are the requirements of how to do this and stuff. It was just so foreign to me the idea that maybe I’m already okay, that was such a foreign idea. Because, in 12 Step programs, it’s all about your disease, you’re always going to be sick, you’ll always be fighting this.  So this was, at first, it wasn’t much of a relief, just because I was thinking, this is BS. Can’t be that easy, yet simple, but in a very short amount of time, it really started just sinking in of like, a lot of the stuff I’ve experienced at times, when things were going well, and I wasn’t really reaching out to escape. I’m like, Well, what’s that about? Why is if I’m truly addicted to this thing, and it’s this disease, and something that I’ll always have to fight, then why is it there are times I don’t have to fight it? And it’s not because I wanted to not fight it if it would just happen naturally, just like when you’re driving, and maybe you’re a little frustrated or running late or something, but you come out of some trees, and suddenly there’s this gorgeous sunset.  And everything just falls away, though you just return to that place of well-being that we all have. It was just the three principals really helped put words to what I already felt. What I already knew inside but didn’t know that. I knew if that makes sense. It was there. Just how do I how do we put this into words? Alexandra: And you had been in the 12-step community for a little while before this meeting, right? Greg: Close to four years at that point. So the whole time I was feeling like there was something more, there was something else that was missing from that puzzle, there was a couple of pieces that somebody left down at some point. Alexandra: And I remember, the last time we spoke you had a mystical experience before, while you were in the 12-step program? But before you found the three principles, is that right? Greg: I did. It was I was actually exactly five months into recovery. I had gone to a meeting for Thanksgiving Day, it was just a gratitude meeting. And it was, 200 some people in a school gymnasium and everybody got 30 seconds to say what they were grateful for. And then it moved on to the next person.  It lasted about an hour and 20 minutes, hour and a half of just all these beautiful feelings and it was wonderful sharing and the energy that gratitude brings is so intense and so incredible. And when we ended the meeting and all joined hands to say our prayer as soon as I touched the people I wasn’t there in physical form anymore.  I saw the energy behind life. I saw the way that everything was one and that it’s the same energ