Through embodiment, you come into your wholeness, your truth and your voice and you remove layers of conditioning and fear and wounds and trauma and then you start really stepping into your power.
When you are aligned, when you are really anchored, you meet little resistance because you centered and you are not in conflict yourself.
So have you ever had one of those experiences that just cracked something wide open inside you?
Were you stumbling into a new way of being or perceiving the world and suddenly everything looks different?
For me, it was melting into this transcendent experience in Kirtan or devotional chanting.
I was on the beach in Mexico.
This was over two decades ago with a hundred others and legendary Kirtan leader and musician Krishta Das.
It was like I was floating and seeing and feeling everything different after that experience even though I had no idea what I was even chanting.
There was just this deep knowing that had just reconnected with an essential part of myself and those around me.
So maybe you've had a similar experience, an awakening moment where you realize there was a whole dimension of you, of your truth, your vitality that had been lying dormant, unexpressed.
That breakthrough is often just the first glimpse of a deeper inner journey waiting to unfold.
And my guest today, Self -Leth Pinto has dedicated over 13 years to helping people reclaim and inhabit that dimension of what she describes as embodied wisdom and power.
Through her luminescence process, an integrative approach fusing body energetics, mindfulness and neuroscience, she guides people in shedding the layers that obscure their brilliance so they can step fully into their authentic power and a bigger, more robust, abundant life.
And her own personal transformation is pretty powerful, building from an early career in of all things finance, moving rapidly up the ladder and then dismantling her career and life after one single experience of awakening to reimagine a path that aligned with movement and healing arts that had been
calling her. And over a decade later, still immersed in deep study, Sifat has led hundreds of transformational journeys worldwide now from New York to Bali.
Her passionate quest to empower both men and women has seen her train extensively in somatic therapy, shamanic wisdom, sound healing, and so many other modalities.
Luminaries call her an energy shifter, a soul whisperer, a magic maker.
In our conversation, she shares her own inner journey of reclamation, from the pivotal movement class that sparked her awakening to navigating the uncertainty of life transitions to the daily practices that can help us integrate profound openings and sustain and expand them.
We explore the quintessential relationship between the feminine and masculine energies and how reuniting with the wisdom of the body opens the path to wholeness, to intimacy, and living a truly good life.
So excited to share this conversation with you.
I'm Jonathan Fields, and this is Good Life Project.
It's a profoundly different way, which makes me deeply curious.
What happens in those early days?
How does this journey get set in motion for you?
I went to business school, majored in finance, like a little bit of context.
I'm an African, younger, my mom sent me to France.
It's either I'm a doctor, I'm a banker, I'm a lawyer or in finance.
Like, it's like, you know...
It's like you've got your four options, and that's it.
Yeah, that's it. So I went for finance because I was good in math, right?
I was like, I'm good in math, I go in finance.
There was not really a deep thought process around who am I?
What do I want to do with my life?
What kind of legacy I want to live in the world?
It was more like a logical...
That's the next step.
Then in New York, I'm working at banking, and I'm miserable.
And I feel like something is wrong because I'm supposed to be happy.
I did everything by the book.
I have the amazing job.
I have the husband.
I have the view on Central Park.
What's the problem?
And then my boss in finance tells us one day, I saw this class lady's on Oprah.
It was on Oprah. She must be good.
We have to go. It's a central dancing class.
And I'm like, how did we get into this conversation?
First, we had to work, and you know, I was like, African lady, must be in background.
So I was like, how, Georgina, are you coming up with this idea?
I'm not doing it. And then everyone was teasing me like, come on, you're in New York.
If you don't try it now, why not?
You're going to try.
And I went to this class, and that was the beginning of my awakening.
I find myself in a place where I was looking at women and all the stories I have around being a woman, being sensual, being free.
Like a lot of the constructions I had were falling down.
I was very confused.
So I actually didn't sign up for this class right away.
I left, I went home.
My boss signed up, so she kept talking about it.
So four months after I signed up.
And that's how I dropped in my body.
I reconnected with myself.
And one day I was like, I want to quit banking.
I want to do something that feels aligned to my soul.
I'm curious when you go to that first class, you experience the class, and then you walk out and you know something has happened.
But there's a voice inside of you that sounds like it's saying, but I can't actually do something with this right now.
Oh, exactly. What happens between then and the time that you finally say, I actually can't ignore this, that makes you sort of say, like something actually does have to change here.
When I left the class, I was very intrigued.
And it's like a part of me was saying, yes.
A part of me was like, yes, this is it.
But then a part of me that was conditioned was like, but this is not right.
My gift was that because my boss signed up for the class every Thursday morning, she will come and she will talk about her experience.
She would talk about what they did and how she felt and the music and the excitement and the sisterhood.
And every time I'll be looking at her and I'll be like, oh my God, this sounds amazing.
So I think I needed this four months to come to peace with that.
Yes, to shut down the conditioning and the but, but, but, but this is not right.
But this is not really what a woman to protest on so beautiful.
But is this appropriate?
Yeah. But look at the power that she's feeling.
So there was this conversation after four months, I was like, you know what?
I like to negotiate.
So I negotiated with myself and I said, okay, I'll just do one session, which is two month, eight class.
At least I would say that I've done it.
And then I started and of course I couldn't stop.
That's such a great insight though, right?
Because so often I feel like we look at something that's presented to us and the bigness of it scares us away from it.
And you sort of chunked it down and said, well, okay, I'm just committing to this little, this little thing.
That's it. Like, I'm not doing anything more.
And it let your, like it let your brain say yes.
And then it sounds like maybe over that two month experience that everything else start to say yes along with it.
Oh my God. Oh yeah.
What. By class tree, I was like, this is amazing.
I was, I was feeling home.
It was like a landing.
It was a sense of wonder.
It was like meeting, you know, when you meet someone, a friend that you haven't seen for a long time and you knew they kind of there, but you didn't talk to them.
So I knew that there was a part of me that I was not accessing, but I didn't know how to access her.
But I always felt like something was missing.
And so it's, it's like a piece of me was coming back.
And then the sisterhood, because there is big sisterhood wound and we talk a lot about it in the work I do.
We met women. Men have like a better brother code, like in terms of how they hold each other.
That sometimes women, we can be a bit competitive and, you know, there are many ones there.
And then we are in this space where we are facing our deepest pain.
Where we rage, where we cry, when we howl.
And then the next minute we are swirling on the pole and we're laughing and we are sexy.
We are sensual. And we were connecting at such a level of beauty and intimacy.
It was just like poetry.
Like for me, I remember sitting in the studio, watching the other women dance and be like, wow, this is poetry.
So it was just in so many ways, different aspect of me were coming together.
In this experience.
Now, that sounds beautiful.
So when you experience this, I mean, I could see how you could start to feel that and it's hard to back away from that.
It's hard to ignore what you're feeling.
But what I'm really curious about is instead of you just saying, oh, I have to keep going back to this class.
You know, like this now just needs to be a part of my life and just sort of folding it into the other things that you're doing in your job and everything.
It sounds like this also is a bit of an inciting incident to shake up everything to basically say like, okay, I need to read.
There's something happening here that's, that's leading me to want to re -examine everything.
Here's the thing. I didn't realize when I said I'm going to continue, I didn't realize how much it was going to shift me.
I didn't realize I was quite young and it was the beginning of me doing this kind of work.
So I was just like, like with a sense of wonder, like, right.
I was not really thinking, oh, this because now I see with my client, they're like, but what if I change radically, like the kind of forcing that and they're like, I don't know if I want to go there.
But me, I was like a little girl in a candy store and be like, wow.
And then I was like, oh, the styling is beautiful, but I want more than that.
What do you say? I want to go deeper with women.
What is it? When I quit, quit my bank.
So when I started that I quit banking.
I became a personal stylist.
That was the first transition, but maybe one year into the program.
And then I was a personal stylist two years into it.
Two years into it, I was like, there's more to working with women than the wardrobe.
I love it. But there's something deeper.
So I was changing progressively and my friend was starting to be like, in fact, you're different.
You talk different.
You work different.
You're more confident.
So it was happening.
It's only when I did the teacher training that I understood how through embodiment you come into your wholeness, your truth and your voice, and you remove layers of conditioning and fear and wounds and trauma.
And then you start really stepping into your power.
But when I signed up, I didn't know that.
All right. So I ended up completely shifting my career.
I ended up having a divorce.
I left New York, went to Dubai, the first London and then Dubai.
So it created so many ripples of change in my life.
But at first, I was not aware of it.
Those are big ripples of change.
One of my curiosities here is, as you described the way you grew up, your parents had this ideal of who you would be, what was an appropriate career path for you, the four things you described earlier, then you go and do it.
You're like, I checked the boxes.
Yes, yes, yes, yes.
I'm in New York. I've got the job.
I'm doing all the things.
Did you feel like to make this transition that you had to almost renegotiate the expectations and the relationships in your family to sort of feel like you could actually move into this season of who you want to be?
Yeah, I feel like because it felt so right and because I felt so aligned, I was very clear.
It was more, again, talking about my negotiation was more how do I present it?
How do I make it appealing to my family?
And so when I quit my banking jobs to go to styling, I talked to my mother and she was like, okay, I had like a whole slide deck.
It was really well organized and I can't miss her.
When I started the coaching and the healing, the coaching part was fine, but all the aspect of the work that is working with women and sensuality and trauma, like they're more intense because coaching is like in our culture, okay, we don't really, but we get it, but I went further than coaching.
I went into energy healing, sacred sexuality work, restoring women, trauma.
It was a lot. So I just explained to my family, my mother, my brothers, I explained and they got it, which was a surprise to me and they really surprised me positively.
And my mom, I explained to her in a very simple term and she was like, okay, so what I realized and what I do a lot with my clients is when you are aligned, when you are really anchored, you meet little resistance because you centered and you are not in conflict yourself.
Often what I've seen with myself and with the people that I coach is that the tension come from a conflict that they haven't resolved themselves.
So people outside just amplify that conflict that they haven't resolved.
So the transition was, for me, the most difficult part was not my family.
Actually, the most difficult part is who I had to become and all the layers that I had to shed to make this transition and to keep evolving this path that I chose.
What did you find that you really felt the need to let go of along the way?
When you have your own business, as much as you plan and you structure and you project, there is an element of uncertainty that is a little bit more than when you have a corporate job.
And for me, it's a creative experience.
It's like entrepreneurship is a creative experience, basically.
You're being stretched constantly.
So there was a bit of a tension between my need of stability and the cool to expand, to transform.
And as I expand and transform, what I offer, expand and transform.
That was an adjustment for me because I was coming from a background where I didn't like surprises.
It's like, I have plan A, plan B, plan C, plan D, everything is organized.
And I learned to be more creative, to go more with the flow, to surrender more.
That was an adjustment for me.
The way you're describing it also, and the way you described when you started to actually do this work and experience it yourself, coming home to yourself, it's almost like you have to somehow find a way to be okay, stepping into the void to create the space to come home to yourself, but also probably
learn and develop the skills and the practices to not just completely freak out and melt down when you're out in that space.
Exactly, exactly. It was, I'm not going to lie, there were moments.
And you know, the thing is, I don't always go through the easy strategy.
So when I left New York, I was like, listen, you have all these women doing this work in New York.
What about Africa? What about Middle East?
So I decided to go to London to stay with my brother, to digest my divorce, and to think about the next step.
A friend of mine is like, why don't you come to Dubai?
My first answer is like, the work I do in Dubai, that will get me in trouble.
No thanks. And he's like, I think you should think about it.
I'm like, no, but after a few times, I was like, hmm.
So here I am going to Dubai.
I do not have a network there.
There is barely a yoga studio there.
And I'm going to go teach advanced sacred feminine work in Dubai.
When I did it, it was, it's like when I started the class, I was like, yeah.
And then I got there and I realized what I got myself into.
And I was like, oh, this is going to be groundwork.
And whatever I learned in New York, I cannot teach it in Dubai way too much.
I have to backtrack, go back to basic and shift a little bit the approach.
So it was challenging, but it made me grow so much as a practitioner, as a woman, as a teacher, because I really had to expand in the way I hold space, basically.
I really had to understand, develop my capacity to understand where people are.
And how do I translate the activation of the wisdom in a way that they can receive?
So it was very intense.
Again, when I moved to Dubai, at the beginning, everything flowed.
I had people sign up right away for my session.
First time arriving like two women signed up for two month programming, I was like, and then, who's I settle here?
I was like, no, it's going to be a little bit more harder than you think.
And that's where the creative aspect comes because you have to kind of look and be like, okay, reassessed, redirect, I just.
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Part of this also it sounds like, and I know that I've experienced this also and imagine a lot of people have, it's like when you discover something new that is so powerful to you, and then you immerse yourself in it and you just become a learning machine and you're like a sponge, like it's almost like
the knowledge is building up pressure in your heart and your head.
Yeah, yeah. And you just want to let it out.
And you're in a place where the culture allows you to do that.
You're like, so it's New York, it's like people are ready, they're at it.
Like, so you can just bring it all.
And then it's so interesting that you move somewhere else where you don't have that same release valve and you have to sort of like dial it back.
That must've been such an interesting, I mean, challenge for you.
I'm telling you, you know what, I realized I was having a discussion with someone recently.
I am going to say something.
I realized that I went through a little bit of a dark hole, a depression, because it's like you are going full force writing like, yeah, you saw all these women and you know what's possible.
And then you get somewhere to hold your horses.
And it's beautiful.
It's beautiful. Like I have seen women chant and heal.
But it's like there is a frequency of possibility that you have experienced and it's not there yet.
So there was a part of me that had to grieve that, that had to grieve what I experienced, what I thought it was going to be.
And the reality. And it doesn't mean that the reality was less beautiful, but there was a grieving process because this experience, as you said, was so precious to me, and so deeply transformational to me that it was, and it took me some time to realize, in fact, you have to readjust because there was,
therefore, while I hold on, I was like, no, this is what I want to teach.
And then the conversation with myself was like, what are you trying to do?
Are you trying to help and have impact?
Or are you trying to get stuck in your ways?
So I had just some...
Yeah, I think it's one of those moments where we love to show up and do what we want to do in the way that we want to do it.
And when we've tasted experiences where we can do that, it's kind of transcendent.
And then when we have to reimagine it, and then this new idea comes in that says, oh, part of this work is actually understanding where people are.
And part of my job is actually to meet them where they are and not just tell them to come to where I am.
That's not easy. And I've been through that multiple times, and especially when you've left a meaningful, stable career behind, and part of this is you're earning your living doing this thing.
So part of this is I want to be of service.
I want to share what I know.
And part of it is also is, and I also need to do this dance of meeting people where they are in part because that's how I'm of service to them.
But also, that's how I sustain myself financially along the way.
It's all part of the mix.
It's all part of the mix.
And that was a big conversation for me because one of my friend last year, I was chatting with him, and he's a very successful businessman.
And we were talking, and he was like, see, Frank, you need to start being a little bit more business savvy.
Your whole thing about saving the world is good, but girl, you are over 40.
You need to start really building wealth.
And I was like, yeah, you're right.
So it always has been my big of my, I remember when I was a stylist in New York, we had a group of women entrepreneurs.
We're meeting once a month, and every month we had a topic.
And I think we were six months into the program, like the organization or the group, and we had a session on finance and money, and we priced ourselves.
And I was pricing myself at $75 an hour, and I just want all of them, I don't make over with me.
So when it came to my turn, they were like, girl, you're cheap.
And I was like, what?
They were like, yeah, you're cheap.
$75 an hour, like for the work you do, it's cheap.
And I was like, how much should I charge?
And they were like, at least 150.
Took me a year to get to 125.
They were like, good job, now, go a little bit higher.
And then I was like, okay, 175.
And so there were two conversations that carried with me for a while, and I have resolved now.
One aspect of the conversation was, but I want this to be accessible to women.
I've never been that person who wants to be like elitist in the sense that I want to work with people who have money.
I want what I do to be accessible to regular women.
And then there was also a whole conversation and healing around abundance and self -worth.
There was two conversations here.
And when I went to Dubai, like the conversation started when I was stylist in New York, but then I went to Dubai and went to the next level.
It was this constant dance between how do I make my service accessible and still sustain myself?
Do I value the work that I do and the time that I put in the effort that it took me to be where I am now?
It's something that I really worked with over at least six, seven years to come to a place now where I'm comfortable with what I offer.
I figure out a formula where different price points can receive the medicine and honoring my time and expertise.
And I'm taking care of myself at the end of the day while doing what I love.
So it has been a dance for sure.
CB, It's so interesting also, right?
Because I would imagine a lot of the women that you work with look to you as an example to a certain extent.
And if part of what you're working with them on is this notion of self -reclamation, which is one of the things that I want to dive into a little bit with you and really honoring who you are and the value that you bring to relationships, to your life, to everyone.
Then part of what the challenge is for you is you also need to show up and model that behavior in your relationships, in your work, and also stand proud in the value that you offer.
And that is a hard thing to do, but if you don't do it, it's almost like you're saying one thing, and then modeling the opposite.
And there's this disconnect that I would imagine people would feel.
Yeah. And you know, what I realized is that I was coming from a place, even when I came to a place where I was like, I get the value, like very early in my journey, I get the value of the work I do because I see how powerful it is.
But there's one point where I was having this conversation with a friend, and she said, where did you learn that other people's needs are more important than your needs?
Because as I was talking to her, the thought process was, let me be the bigger person.
But where was coming from?
I was the elder sister.
So I was told all the time, you're the one who knows better.
You're the one who is more resourceful.
Just allow your sister.
Just give to your sister.
Just enable her. And that moment was a turning point for me because I was like, first, I'm not really taking care of myself properly, number one.
Number two, I am enabling people in a victimhood mindset also, by being like, oh, they cannot help themselves.
I have to be the bigger person.
Like, who am I? What is that?
And so it was like this big moment where I was like, okay, of course, correct.
Those are my services.
Those are the different price point.
I still really want what I do to be available.
Here is my strategy.
But sort of type of service with the amount of energy work and the value that people get, it has to be about pricing.
But there was so many layers in this conversation.
That's why it took me seven years because I'm feeling a layer and I'll be like, yeah, I've got this.
And then another layer will start to something like what?
And then I will go into it.
And so really, it was seven years of just dancing with that conversation again and again.
What I say to the women I work with, I say to them, listen, ladies.
I'm not here saying that I have figured up everything.
I am a woman on a journey.
I am learning what I have understood and integrated.
I share it. That's where I am.
Like I don't pretend to be like I have all myself together.
No. I have figured out certain things.
I'm happy to create a space to share these things.
That's what I do because in all humility, every year there is something that hit me and I'm like, ooh, okay, I understood that.
This is another layer I didn't think about.
It's a level of humility that I think we have to bring to the work.
It's so interesting the way you described it also, this notion of how we sometimes say that we're being the bigger person, but in doing that, we actually make ourselves small and we don't realize it.
We think we're making ourselves bigger, but we're actually making ourselves and our world smaller.
It's so interesting.
So you spend years, first, it was finance and it was your own business and styling, then really into just a deep mix of healing arts.
And you spend years studying so many different things.
It starts with that one modality that you described.
But then body energetic, energy healing, cellular reprogramming, somatics, all these different things.
And it seems like over the years, you weave these into your own modality approach philosophy that you offer as luminescence.
Take me into how this synthesis kind of evolves, how this comes together.
It's funny because I just had a really long session with a client today.
The way I work, I like to say that I am a bridge between somatic and tantric, shamanic and mindset.
Somatic and tantric is the intelligence of the body.
It's all the layers of the conversation that I have to do with emotional body, nervous system, cellular reprogramming, how to change the behaviors, all that.
The shamanic is more working at a more subtle level.
For me, I would say to simplify the somatic and the tantric is the physical and the emotional body.
And the mental and spiritual body will be like mindset and shamanic.
It's really teaching people how to think differently, but also helping people understand the different level of subconscious programming, how to access them and how to shift them.
So typically when I work with someone, they come to me and they say, usually there's a problem.
Like, I'm struggling with this, a finance, love, career, whatever.
I do what I call a diagnosis, an energetic math, like what's going on?
And my approach is actually very simple.
I'm like, okay, this is what we have today.
What we have today, which is the present, is the result of what happened in the past.
So I have a past, present, future approach.
Present is here's a behavior that we have today that is not aligned to your highest expression.
And this is where it's coming from.
So we are going in the present to change your foot patterns and your behavior, but we also going to address what happened in the past, where this energy started through inner child work, shadow work, ancestral healing, sometime past life.
So really looking at like where this energy originated.
So it's a work present and past is the work of deconstruction in all the bodies.
And we use movement, breath, voice activation, shamanic journeys.
I could puncture somatic release, massage, all the different tools.
Then when the energy started shifting, that's what I call releasing the old software.
Like we are putting all the pieces of the, like today was amazing because she was putting all the pieces together.
The stories, how they were creating, they creating a reality, where it's coming from.
She has the full picture now.
Now in the next couple of days, I'm just going to be doing emotional release, trauma release with her, but also awareness, how do you change differently?
How do you change the way you think here?
How do you act differently?
So training. That's the first part.
Then the next part, which is, what do you want?
What is it that you desire?
So we have shifted the energy.
We have come back to a more mutual, I would say an energy more anchored in truth and love, but then it's like specifically based on what you want.
How do we now start embodying the frequency of the thing you desire now?
So let's say we take the example of a woman was like, see if I'm ready to meet the man of my dream.
I'm ready for love.
There's no man out there.
Okay. We started deconstructing the idea.
We realized that there is a fear of intimacy and a fear of commitment and not trusting the masculine.
What are all the behaviors that we have today regarding all the stories?
What are the thought patterns?
Where is this coming from?
Healing the dad wound, ancestral healing.
These days you're going to these days.
Okay. How are you going to act differently now?
So we're doing all that.
We start shifting the energy.
And then when I feel like she's back to neutral, I'll be like, okay, now, what kind of love do you really want?
Describe to me the ideal day with your man.
Describe to me the frequency of this love.
Describe to me how you feel around you.
So now we understand, okay, this is the paradigm, the frequency we want to embody more.
How do you embody it more?
So my work is very pragmatic because there is the whole aspect of the work that is energy healing.
But the coaching aspect of my work is decisions, actions, behaviors today.
How do we shift them to embody where you want to be?
So that's a little bit my approach.
It's like deconstruction, death, then rebirth, and then aligning to our obvious expression.
It's so interesting hearing you describe sort of like how it all comes together.
And part of my brain is sitting here saying, I wonder how much of this also is similar, but in a radically different way in domain and client base and type of service to the work you're doing with numbers.
Because you're thinking about this in a very systematic way.
You know, like when you're working with numbers and finance, it's like, let's look at, like, what is the outcome that we want?
Like, where are we right now?
Like, let me look at all of the data here and really deconstruct and understand the story that it's telling and how can we use this to then understand where we're at, understand how we got here, and then figure out, like, where do we want to go from here to get to that place that we have in our mind?
So it's funny, because it feels like you operate in this very deeply energetic and ethereal space, but underneath it, it feels like there is this mathematical intelligence that informs it all.
There is. I said to the women I work with, there is a method to the madness.
You know, I was talking to a client today.
They were going, she was like, you know, the thing with you is that you come, you laugh, you lie, and everyone feel like, oh, I'm sitting with a friend.
And all of a sudden, bam, you have this realization, and then you're crying, and you have this, and you're like, yep.
I always say my time in public accounting at KPMG really served me because I have a thing for a system, even when I was a person whose diet is accurate at a system.
So I do have a thing for a system.
And then there is the part of me that is also very organic, like with these clients that just arrived today for one week of work.
I understand the system.
I have the key element I want to work with, but I also work with, well, that's where the feminine aspect coming.
I leave flow, space for flow.
I leave space for listening to where a higher self, a body wants to guide us.
So it's constantly this dance.
Like when I organize a retreat, I have themes I want to cover, but the first retreat, I organize, I was organized.
And then day three, I woke up, and I was looking at the group, and I was like, this program today is not going to fly.
And I'm not feeling it.
And so I learned to find the right balance of having my system and my methodology, and then flowing with the energy.
So like my new retreat that I'm doing in Bali, it's all about bringing transformation for beauty, for pleasure, and for art.
And so again, there's going to be a system to it, but there's always going to have some time to just be, to allow the creative news to come, to connect with nature, to connect with each other and see what comes together.
So I really try to find the balance, the masculine and feminine really.
That's what it is. Yeah, that makes so much sense.
It's like you've got to allow that space for serendipity.
As you're describing that, it's having a flashback.
I was in the early 2000s, I actually owned a yoga studio in New York City.
And I taught for seven years also.
And you get to a place where you feel like you have a pretty solid command over the basics, the fundamentals, the tools, the pastures, the breath, all the different stuff.
You feel pretty confident that you can put them together in an intelligent way.
And I would show up to teach a class and I would have an intention and I would have a class in mind and a sequence and a flow.
Like I'm ready to go.
Like I know how to create an intelligent, well -formed, you know, like experience that's going to take people like from where they start at.
And 90 minutes later, they'll feel a different way.
And I did that in the early days.
I would just kind of like do my thing.
I would like, you know, I follow my plan.
It was probably a couple of years in where I started to just pay more attention to what was happening in the room.
And you've got 50 bodies there and they've just had a hard day's work in New York and they're taking 90 minutes out of their day.
And there's a sense of responsibility there, right?
I'm sure you feel it in your work as well.
It's like, I want to honor this person and the time that they're giving me.
And I start to realize that when I was paying attention, instead of walking into the room and just doing the thing I had in my mind, but walking into the room saying, I have a plan, but I'm going to really just pay exquisite attention to what I'm seeing and see if I can feel the vibe and the needs of what's
unfolding. And then just respond to that in the moment.
And it was mildly terrifying in the beginning because I had to let go.
You know, like all of a sudden, the plan is out the window.
But then you start realizing like, that's where the magic happens.
So that's where you like, you have those those sessions.
And I literally remember walking out of some of those evenings and the students walking out of the room drenched in sweat, just looking at me saying, I don't know what just happened in there, but can we do it again?
And me basically saying to them, I don't either.
Because if you asked me what I had taught, what sequences I'd had and what asanas I was offering, I had literally no recall.
I couldn't tell you what just happened.
But somehow when I allowed myself to let go of the rigidity of the plan, trust my training and my knowledge and my experience and drop into the moment and just offer what I was feeling was needed.
That's where the magic happens.
I feel like so many of us have that impulse, but we're terrified to let go and just go there.
And yeah, those moments are so beautiful.
And the most challenging for me is when I do a retreat.
Because it's a whole week.
People are taking a whole week of their time there.
It's a considerable investment.
And I tell them, okay, here are the themes, but I'm not going to tell you exactly this is what's going to happen because when you all come together, I might realize that out of the seven themes, three are really irrelevant for this group and just cover it all.
And there is an element of surrender on my side.
There is an element of surrender on the women's side.
And when the women, and we truly surrender and we enter this dance, just what you said, it's like something is happening and it's beyond us and it's just an intelligence that takes over.
And for me, I think it's one of my favorite things with the work I do is those moments.
I feel like there's grace.
I remember one of my favorite, favorite moments.
I did a nine month priest's destination, the first one I did.
At the end of the program, the ladies were like, Silvat, we have to meet.
Like it was just like at the end of COVID 2021, they were like, we have to meet.
And I was like, okay, so here I am, two months to prepare a retreat.
We organized the retreat and the retreat, there's a lot of flow.
It was last minute.
The group has them together nine months.
And in the retreat, each one of them had to teach something to share their genius, their brilliance, their magic with the group.
And things happen in such a way that the last session of the retreat was one of the women doing a voice activation on the beach.
And even the way that voice activation idea came up was so random.
But then that voice activation on the beach was a pure moment of grace.
Like when we finished, it started raining.
We felt all heart open.
We were crying and we all had like the same vision.
It was such a moment.
And two days ago, it was not meant to happen.
It just happened in the most random way.
Okay, let's do that, the last thing on the beach.
And that was that. So for me, it's like, like you said, when we allowed that, that's where there's magic that unfolds beyond what we can imagine.
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Part of the work that you do, and I mentioned this phrase early, I've heard you say it, the sense of self -reclamation.
But underneath that, what that implies is that we've lost track of who we actually are.
Talk to me more about this.
Is this something that you actually see as a common experience, and how does it tend to show up in someone's life?
I think, let me just...
I like to simplify, but in that case, I will, because it comes down to body and femininity.
I think that there are two primordial intelligence that are young and young, feminine and masculine.
And when those two are in harmony, we live in harmony as a collective, but also individually.
And when you create a society where one of this energy is default, we enter dynamic that are very unhealthy because the balance is not supported.
And the way it shows up as an individual level is the overpowering connection with the mind and the body being shut down.
And the way it shows up in our society today is the difficulty we have in relationship to kind of establish beautiful, sacred relationship, stress, anxiety, depression.
Like a lot of the women who come to me, the body is there.
There is no life force anymore in the body.
They're like headwalking.
The life force energy, the force of creation, aliveness, possibility, creativity turned on.
It's shut down, completely disconnected.
In that space, how can you be intimate with yourself?
How can you be truly intimate with someone else?
In that space, of course, you are exhausted because the life force is not moving anymore.
Of course, you're stuck because your capacity to create something new is completely different because again, the energy is not moving.
So of course, we have fertility issues more and more.
And so for me, the reclamation, when I started the work, it was about the women, the feminine, and we're starring women.
And then I move into union because this conversation is really about the swimming without the masculine and the masculine without the feminine.
We need to be together.
We need to be elevated together and then we need to create together because we are complementary.
And so my conversation went to women, women, women to the sacred dance of the feminine and the masculine and how do we restore it within ourselves?
So that's the conversation we're just having when I say when I organize the retreat, I find the balance between flow and structure.
And those two union are powerful, necessary, and complementary.
So the reclamation for me is the reclamation of union.
It's the reclamation of understanding those two intelligence, understanding how together they amplify each other.
I mean, it's interesting the way you describe the two intelligences.
I think a lot of people hear those and they gender them.
You know, they're like, oh, okay.
So like the masculine is about people who identify as male and the feminine is about people who identify as women.
I think traditionally, that's just the way that it's been handed down.
So it's been taught at least in Western culture, maybe not so much in Eastern culture or indigenous culture, where I think there's much more fluid understanding.
But in Western culture, I think that kind of is the way that we do it.
And it's sort of like, okay, so if you identify as this gender, the work is to step more into whatever is the energy that like is publicly associated with it.
If it identifies the other gender, that's where your work is.
And so what you're saying is like, no, no, no, no, this isn't even so much about gender.
This is about the fact that there is this sort of like dual energy that exists in all of us.
And how you bring unity to it and navigate it, that is the work.
We live in a society that is predominantly masculine.
So men, in a sense, maybe at a default setting, they would be more in a comfort zone and women are stretching themselves more.
But the reality is that there's so much range in between, right?
So the question really is, what is the balance that you need to thrive?
And what do you do to get to that balance?
So when we talk in terms of relationship, there are women who are more on the masculine spectrum and still want to be with a man, but they would like to be a man who was more in this family, for instance, right?
Just like the basic reconstructing of, like some women come to me and they're like, oh, so I have to be my feminine.
I'm like, no, you don't have to be.
What feels right to you?
And if you feel right being in your masculine, are you comfortable with the intelligence of the polarity, knowing that you will attract a man that will be more in his feminine?
It's completely fine.
There's nothing wrong with it.
But you want to understand off the layers of the conversation and learn how to navigate it.
Now, a woman who comes to me and say, I am ready to be with a man who is in his masculine, and I want to feel ahead and I want to be more in my surrender and receiving and soft all the time.
Okay, great. But you're in your masculine all the time.
The polarity is not going to work.
So when we talk about relationship, beyond the gender is what's the polarity that works for you and how do you cultivate that.
When we talk at an individual level, our physical, emotional, mental, spiritual well -being, it's like what is the balance that you need to function at your most aligned and happy potential?
It expands the ideas to really be very inclusive.
If you're in a same -sex relationship, a gender -fluid relationship, whatever it may be, it's like these are all at play.
So look, focus less on that and focus more on like what is the energy that we want to bring to it and that we want to receive from it.
Exactly. And then sort of like build around that.
Does that make sense?
Exactly. When we talk about relationship, that's one of the big conversation, right?
It's like what is the polarity that you desire?
What's the polarity that would work for you to be happy as a couple?
Okay. And then there is another part of the conversation that has less to do with polarity, but there are basic relationship skills that many people don't have, like communication, intimacy, shadow work.
How we deal with our shadows.
So all this is part of the mix.
When the polarity is not clear and then the awareness on shadows is not clear, that's where it becomes really complicated because a lot of projections start happening in the couple and they don't understand, no, we just need to do polarity.
That's what we need to do.
When people come to me and they have so many issues and all we need to figure out is, when do you want to be in your mask?
And when do you want to be in your family?
And each one of you, okay.
How do you put together a dance that works for the two of you?
And so same sex, fluid, everyone needs to sit with themselves and be like, the same way I would do my shadow work to have a happy relationship, the same way I will work on my communication, the same way I want to understand my polarity.
Yeah. That makes a lot of sense to me.
One of the other things I'm curious about your take on is the experience of transitions, life transitions.
We are all going to go through them.
I just learned this term actually from social psychology called disorienting dilemmas, which is an experience in your life that is so shatters your beliefs and to a certain extent your identity that you built around those beliefs.
You just see something and it can be positive or negative that is so obviously controversial, the way that you create a belief, seen yourself in the world that it kind of shatters the model of that.
So it's this disorienting dilemma and the work then becomes, how do I reassemble the pieces in this moment into a new set of beliefs and identity and beingness that feels right for like the season that I'm now stepping into, the person I'm now becoming?
And you could call this more broadly like inciting incidents, change moments, but a lot of these show up in that moment often shows up in these big life transition moments that often involve loss or grief or health issues that lead to an awakening that says there's a big change that has to happen here.
I would imagine people come to you in these moments on a fairly regular basis.
What are some of the early ideas around how you might help someone process moments like this?
First, I had a few of those moment.
One of them was when I started a dance class.
One of them was when I quit my banking job to be like, I'm going to be a personal scientist, and I'm going through one right now.
There are many layers.
There is one layer that is, and they don't necessarily go in that order.
I'm just going to share them as they come.
One is grief, is taking the time to grieve.
Whatever we are letting go of, there is a moment, there is a time to grieve.
So that's one aspect of the equation.
But before we get into the grieving, we want to know what are we grieving?
It's just helping people articulate entirely which chapter I'm closing, which story of me I'm letting go, which aspect of me I'm letting go of.
So just that element of clarity.
There's a lot going on, I feel a big loss.
What is it that is finishing?
What is it that is starting?
What wants to be birthed?
What is ready to let go of?
Just being able to find that clarity and spread it out clearly already brings a lot of peace to people.
That's number one. Number two is, okay, we will have to grieve that story that we're letting go of, that chapter that we are closing.
Then there is the space in between, what I call, and that's where everything is possible.
That's where we want to connect with our sense of wonder, our curiosity, our capacity to think beyond what we think is possible, to open the field of possibilities, basically.
That's the field of pure creativity and potentiality.
For me, in that space, it's a place of play, wonder, and discovery.
Before we get to that, we need to grieve.
What people want to do, they want to bypass those two.
They don't want to feel the grief a lot of time and they want to have a plan right away.
Why are you in a rush to have a plan?
Be curious, explore, discover.
Why? Because that period of uncertainty, we don't like it.
We want to plan real fast.
What if we could make this period fun and change the energy around it?
I have a client who comes to me recently.
She goes, I have this Kundalini awakening, energy is in fact.
I don't know what to do with it.
I go through those wave emotions because when the life force energy is moving through the body, it's moving all these emotions.
So she has waves of intense emotions.
Then she has ecstatic emotions.
Then she is turned on.
She's like, I think I'm going mad.
Then she does iconic recording.
She does really more upper chakra work.
Now she's still like, oh, the lower chakras are being activated.
She's like, okay. She's like, okay.
I feel like something is going to finish me as a practitioner.
Only the upper chakra will probably transition because I have all this energy.
But I don't know where I'm going and I'm a bit scared.
I want to compare, put them together, separate them.
Because I feel like they're not complimentary.
And I said, wait, wait.
Before we start thinking about what's going, what's leaving Nanath, let's play.
What would it look like?
What's possible to mix us to energy?
What kind of experience you could create as a proof, as a one day retreat?
And then we worked into this brainstorming.
She was afraid about her husband.
Like, oh, maybe if I really allow this energy to become alive, I'm going to be so different is going to leave me.
Wait, what could happen?
How could it deepen your intimacy with your partner?
So we went into this one hour of like, what is possible?
Next week she comes back.
She's like, oh my God, my relationship with my husband has completely shifted.
We went deeper into intimacy and now we start and we hurry.
We didn't, at the before, like we got along, but we didn't.
And she was like, oh, these layers of our relationship are coming up.
So there is clarity, there is grieving, there is possibility, play, curiosity.
Those are the three big elements that I would bring if someone is going through this transition.
Another aspect is, if there is a lot of trauma that is in process, the change is scary.
So do trauma release and grounding in the body so that the person feel more anchored and safer to be in that period of transition and unknown and play with it instead of being scared of it.
Yeah, those three different sort of phases, they land well.
And I think you're right, I think we tend to skip over the earlier ones because we just want to know what's going to be on the other side.
Really just get there, let's lock it, lock that down rather than staying in that place of play and wonder, which again involves uncertainty and the unknown, which we tend to really dislike.
That is where there's no possibility without uncertainty.
It's like they're two sides of the same coin.
Yeah. But it's still uncomfortable.
It is uncomfortable and there will be discomfort because we're being stretched.
But you know what I do for myself and I do with my client?
I tell them, think about all the times where you allow the unknown and the magic that the universe created that you couldn't have.
Sometimes I just do meditation on it.
Let's just anchor that in your nervous system.
Let's make a list of all the moment where you didn't plan and what the universe brought to you was beyond what you could have imagined.
Okay, we describe it.
Then I'll say, let's do a journey with it.
Let's anchor it in your emotional body.
And when you do that, because we have a lot of emotion that we don't process consciously and we don't anchor in the body.
So it's not fully integrated.
It's like I remember the woman who did the voice activation on the beach, who were doing a private session a few months after.
And I look at her, I said, you know what?
You haven't integrated the woman that you were, the woman who created that vortex in the experience that we had.
You have touched her, but you haven't integrated her.
So we, there are so many things that we have experienced, but we haven't anchored it in the body fully.
And so that's why we still doubt in it.
So sometimes also depend on the client because you know, each person is different.
But sometimes just going through that process really brings a sense of, oh yeah, the universe, okay, universe, show me now what you can do.
And they bring more of the playfulness and the, oh yeah, I know you can do something better than me, right?
I chose that. So sometimes that also works.
Do you feel like there are any sort of daily practices, simple daily practices, maybe one that we might be able to say yes to that would allow us to more readily be able to anchor those moments of awakening, those flashes of, oh, this is what's possible in our body.
Or that would make us more receptive to sort of really bringing it from the ether or from our minds or from that just momentary experience where it was revealed to us and allow us to more easily have it integrate into our bodies.
That's a really good one.
You know, as you're talking, I'm thinking about huge things and it will be depending on what the person is dealing with.
If the person is dealing with trusting themselves and trusting life, I will be like, make a list of all the times where the universe got your back and meditate with it every day.
If it's a person who is like, I'm afraid of the unknown, I'll be like, make the list of all the times where you went into the unknown and what came up was amazing and then meditate with it on a daily basis.
So depending on what the person is working with and what is the resistance that they're facing, there is an element of, ah, yes, and there's also something else here.
Let me say that. Part of the practice will be, we have data from the past.
Let's use that data.
Let's integrate that.
You already happened.
You did it already.
You touched that frequency already.
Let's integrate that.
And then when we make the practice for a while and a nervous, starting to build a nervous system for being like, okay, then we go, hmm, now how do we do it on a daily basis?
What would you do differently if you trusted more little practice for you?
So for people who are counter -fixed, some of my clients at this point, it will be that, don't plan your day for next Saturday.
Just wake up and see what happens.
And they'll be like, why do you need to just get a patient?
And I was like, okay, good morning.
You had negotiation, right?
And so there is using the data from the past.
And then when the nervous system are slowly being like, okay, okay, then it's like, okay, now what do we do differently now?
And again, small, it's like a training, right?
Or like you do when you go to the gym, you don't go right away with the big, the big, you know, heavy weight.
You do it slowly. So that's that.
And then another practice that I wonder, I would say, culturally, and not some clients, for instance, they don't know how to play.
They don't see the beauty around them anymore.
So I give them a practice about play and wonder.
I'll be like, what makes you, you know, bring a sense of wonder.
Oh, I like sparkle.
How sparkle in your car.
Sparkles everywhere.
When you wake up in the morning, sprinkles on sparkle in your car before going to work.
And you know what, there's no one way, like each person I work with, I kind of feel the energy and I'm like, so brainstormy.
And then we're like, bring more play.
Your client, I'll be like, do colorful nail polish, like a fairy.
And she's like, but I always do red, like here, that's the point.
Like try something more before, you know, so it really depends on the person.
I think the first part would be, identify what you're working on, look at the track record.
So either you're working on trust, either you're working on, oh, the unknown can get very juicy.
Either you're working on play and wonder, whatever you're working on, whatever the tension is for you.
Then you look at the path and be like, well, in the past, I experienced the contrary of my fear where I experienced that other way is possible.
Let me meditate with it more and it's incorrect.
And so I make them go back to the end.
Then one is done and then we are not.
Then the next step we are more, we believe more.
Then it's like, what do we do differently now?
Meditation is good.
Now action. Now, that's beautiful.
It's a lot to sort of like think about as you're describing that.
I was remembering I have a friend of mine who was running a couple of different companies at one time.
But one of the drawers in her desk was filled with confetti.
Exactly. She just loved confetti.
And she would open it up and just like put her hand in and like play with it.
Like that was just this momentary release that she always had.
She's like, I kind of always want to have a drawer filled with confetti.
So I'd never lose touch with this sense of playfulness and joy.
Like no matter, I'm building a business doing serious things or stress.
But she had this thing that where she could just keep touching into it and this like tangible physical thing that was just right there.
Exactly. You know, when I was in banking, I remember because I was in O .G.
team. So we had times where like we were working late and we were tired.
And those weather, they were arriving in the morning, looking fabulous and dressed up.
And everyone be like, how did you get the energy to do that?
I be like, that's what makes me happy right now.
That's my moment of joy right now.
That's my art right now.
That's my play. And it would be like, okay, fair enough.
But it will be my way to treat myself to make me happy to be creative because we're working crazy.
Right? So it's like each one of us, we develop our little strategies like that.
Yeah. No, I love that.
Feels like a good place for us to come full circle in our conversation as well.
So in this container of Good Life Project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up?
I would say the body.
I say the body. I would say our roadmap to our good life, our truth, our voice, our essence, our legacy.
It's all in the body.
It's all in the body.
The body is the vehicle.
The body holds the cause.
And for me to be a very actualized human being is to have developed a really good understanding of how to be in your body and to live in harmony in your body.
And then a lot of things come into place.
Thank you. Hey, before you leave, if you love this episode, say that you'll also love the conversation we had with Liz Gilbert about waking up to what's real.
You'll find a link to Liz's episode in the show notes.
This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers, Lindsey Foxx and me, Jonathan Fields, editing help by Alejandro Ramirez, Christopher Carter, crafted our theme music and special thanks to Shelly Adele for her research on this episode.
And of course, if you haven't already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project in your favorite listening app.
And if you found this conversation interesting or inspiring or valuable, and chances are you did since you're still listening here, would you do me a personal favor, a seven second favor and share it.
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Just copy the link from the app you're using and tell those you know, those you love, those you want to help navigate this thing called life a little better so we can all do it better together with more ease and more joy.
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Until next time, I'm Jonathan Fields, signing off for Good Life Project.
