Ep 204 Ann Hince | Tapping Through My Childhood Trauma and Sensing My Way To Peace

 

SHOW NOTES SUMMARY: 

We encounter moments that shape our journey in profound ways. Ann Hince’s story is a testament to such transformation—a narrative woven with threads of grief, self-awareness, and, ultimately, healing.

In this week’s episode, I had the privilege of hearing from Ann Hince, an inspiring author, speaker, and spiritual guide. She opened up about her path to healing after enduring profound trauma and grief.

Key Points Discussed:

  • Ann’s Transformation: After releasing deep-seated grief from childhood traumas—including finding her mother dead—Ann experienced physical changes in her body.
  • Childhood Trauma: Ann opens up about the multiple layers of grief stemming from being born with a physical condition, given up for adoption into a family already dealing with loss, experiencing a house fire, attending boarding school under challenging circumstances, dealing with alcoholic parents, and ultimately losing her mother at age 19.
  • Discovery Journey: The pivotal moment came when Ann realized that past traumas were affecting her present life. This epiphany occurred during an altercation, leaving her mind spinning uncontrollably for three days.
  • Healing Techniques:
    • Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT): Introduced by a holistic physician who helped reduce stress associated with traumatic memories.
    • Feeling Your Feelings: A method where Ann learned to focus on physical sensations related to emotions until they released.
  • Spirituality & Self-Awareness:
  • Developing self-awareness through healing practices contributed to exploring spirituality.
  • The realization that we are not our bodies and that there is a distinction between body and soul/spirit sparked further interest in spiritual texts.

The connection between inner tranquility and physical health couldn’t be more evident in Ann’s experience: releasing emotional tension nurtured mental well-being. It led to astonishing physical changes—including growing taller!

Her story underscores how self-awareness can catalyze healing across all dimensions—emotional freedom isn’t just about feeling better mentally; it can manifest physically, too.

RESOURCES:

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The Healing Power of Emotional Freedom: Ann Hince Journey from Trauma to Transformation

The Unseen Scars: When we speak of scars, it’s often the visible ones that come to mind. But what about the scars on our psyche? The emotional wounds that shape our lives in ways we can scarcely imagine? Ann Hince, an author and spiritual teacher, knows these all too well. Her life began with a physical deformity and continued through a maze of grief, instability, and trauma.

A Pivotal Discovery: It wasn’t until she faced intense emotions triggered by a business altercation that Anne realized her reactions were rooted in childhood events. This epiphany set her on a path toward healing—a journey she recently shared with Grieving Voices.

Emotional Release Through EFT: One powerful tool in her arsenal was the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). By dedicating just an hour daily to this practice, Ann started addressing deeply buried emotional memories. Imagine facing your fears head-on every day for sixty minutes—daunting but transformative.

From Reactive to Peaceful: Through consistent use of EFT, something remarkable happened; not only did Anne’s emotional state improve significantly—she became less reactive and more peaceful—but this tranquility rippled outwards into her family life as well.

Growing… Literally!: What’s fascinating is how inner peace translated into physical changes for Anne. She reported growing three-quarters of an inch taller as she released tension held within her body!

Applications for You:

  • Start Small: If you’re looking to address past traumas or simply want better control over your emotions, consider starting small with practices like EFT.
  • Consistency is Key: Just as it did for Anne, dedicating time each day can lead to profound improvements.
  • Mind-Body Connection: Remember that our mental states have tangible effects on our bodies—seeking peace within might be reflected outwardly!

Ann Hince shows us that while trauma may begin early in life—and its impact may seem insurmountable—with dedication and self-awareness tools like EFT at hand, transformation isn’t just possible; it’s achievable.

Episode Transcription:

Victoria Volk: Hello. Hello. Welcome to Grieving Voices. Today, my guest is Ann Hince, she is an author, a public speaker, and a spiritual teacher. She shares the story of how she has shifted her skull bones and grown three quarters of an inch as a result of her search for inner peace. And she wants you to know that if she has done it, you can too. Thank you so much for being here. I’m definitely intrigued about your bio, and I’m sure anyone listening is kinda tilted their head to the side and probably as curious themselves. So let’s dig right into the meat and potatoes of what brings you to grieving voices.

Ann Hince: Okay. Thanks for having me, Victoria. It’s great to be here. Yes, I think I would be surprised if I heard that too, like, twenty years ago because I didn’t know what I could do now was possible. But it started by releasing the trauma and releasing the grief from all my childhood traumas, including finding my mother dead on the bathroom floor when I was nineteen. So that’s where it started, but I just my my self awareness deepened as I went through the process of releasing all that trauma all that burden that I’ve been carrying and I just kept going deeper and deeper to a place where now I can put my awareness inside the connective tissue, inside my goal and I can release tension stored in there and I can actually hear and feel the release, you know, sounds It’s like a chiropractor making adjustments or it sounds like old fabric ripping that I’m releasing the tension in the connective tissue. So it’s allowed me to kind of adjust my body or realign my body. I just didn’t know this was something that was possible. And it all started with the grief.

Victoria Volk: Let’s rewind the clock to your childhood before you found your mother what were the grief experiences that kind of made that loss of your mother the pinnacle?

Ann Hince: Well, there were multiple. I mean, it started off with actually my birth because I was born with my right foot up against my right chin. So I had Oh. Kind of physical therapy for the first six weeks of my life and after to that, after my foot was back to normal, somewhat, I was handed over for adoption. And I was handed over for adoption into a family that had already suffered a loss because they had well multiple losses actually. But they had adopted a little boy, so they had, you know, my adopted brother who was two years older than me. But then they adopted another little girl. And they had her for quite a while. I don’t know how long, but in back in England at that point, the birth mother could change her mind up to six months. And the birth mother did change her mind.
So they had to hand that little girl back to her mother, and I was the replacement in the family for that loss. So Like

Victoria Volk: like, we often replace puppies. Right? When we lose when, you know, a dog dies, well, we’ll just go get get a new one. Right? So you were the Right placement.

Ann Hince: Yeah. And I think, you know, after a loss like that, you know, as a mother, I think you don’t tend to get as connected to the replacement child just in case the birth mother does that again. Right? So again after six months, my birth mother did not change her mind, so they kept me. And then we started traveling around the world because my dad worked for an international company.
So we moved to Barbados and then to Sierra Leone in West Africa. And while we were there, we had a house fire. And I was the one who woke up and found the flames coming through my veteran Law, so I was one alerted everyone. And as part of the process, I actually went to the top of the stairs. I was about three or four maybe.

Victoria Volk: Oh my gosh.

Ann Hince: To the top of the stairs and called down to my dad who was in the kitchen and I said there’s a fire in my bedroom. And my dad said, no, I don’t believe you or there can’t be. No, there can’t be. You know, which which as a child, you know, as an adult, it sounds like, well, that’s kind of a reasonable thing to say. But as a child, that starts you not believing yourself. Right? Something I said which was clearly true. Right? No child would make something like that up. Was disbelieved by someone who’s supposed to be the person who protects you. So, you know, that started its whole. You know, roll a case for it its own. But then, you know, life carried on. So we moved from there. We moved to Hong Kong. And when I was in Hong Kong, at the age of nine, I was sent to boarding school in England. And I was sent to my brother’s boarding school, which was a boys boarding school. So for my first year, I was the only girlboarder at this boys boarding school.

Victoria Volk: And they allowed it? Like, that was allowed?

Ann Hince: They did. They had Day Girls who would come, you know, for lessons during the day and then go home. And my bedroom was in Stick Bay. That was my my bedroom. And I was teased mercilessly by those boys.
It was it was horrific. It was so so so bad. So, you know, that was that was a big part of that trauma. And then in my teenage years, both my parents became alcoholics. So life at home was hell in my mind.
That’s what I call it. It’s like it’s just hell. And then my mother got cancer. We didn’t talk about it. We talked about it one time.
When we found out she had cancer, we found out it was too late to do anything. So we never talked about it again, which is looking back, it’s very odd, but that is the way my family behaved. We just didn’t talk about anything deep at all. And then I woke up one morning when I was nineteen and found her dead on the bathroom floor. So at that point, I was the only one in the house, my brother, who was two years old at twenty one was at his girlfriend’s house, and my dad was working in Saudi Arabia, and we were back in England.
So I was the only one in the house and I had to tell everyone else what had happened and it was, yeah, it was pretty bad.

Victoria Volk: You know, in all the years, I’ve been doing this podcast and all of the examples of grief that I’ve had. There have been house fires mentioned, and But it’s like, let this be a reminder to you listening of The grief that people experience is so vast and you just never know what people have experienced in their lives at first glance. And it just sounds like your entire childhood was just a cesspool of grief and trauma. And so I’m so sorry for you that that was your experience. And I don’t say that to, like, poor you pity as pity, but it’s, like, I firmly believe because my childhood wasn’t the best either, but, you know, I’m not comparing and we don’t wanna compare. But I think those experience are what create who we who we become. And we have a lot of say and choice in that. And so I commend you for sitting here and having this conversation with me to getting to this place. That you have despite all of those experiences of

Ann Hince: Yeah. I mean, the only thing right? If people hear my like, the outside of my childhood, oh, I lived in Barbados, and my staff worker, and Hong Kong, and it sounds exciting, it sounds it sounds amazing. But once you, you know, you open the lid and you go underneath, it’s like, yeah, there’s a lot of things that really weren’t that great. So, absolutely, it made me who I am today, but I didn’t realize until I was in my late thirties. That it was affecting me, right, until I had two young boys. Mhmm. And the boys who were growing up right, and they were coming towards that age that those boys at my boarding school were. I was scared of boys at the age of nine three thirty seen because of what they had done to me, and I didn’t want to be afraid of my sons. So I knew I knew I had to change because it was getting too close.

Victoria Volk: Well, until our children have a way of kind of opening up our wounds and insecurities and all of those things that we’ve suppressed.

Ann Hince: Absolutely. Yes. That’s part of the benefits of parenthood for sure. Yes, they they trigger us in so many ways.

Victoria Volk: What was your experience? Because I’m curious of because I imagine growing up, did you how did you know that you were adopted from a very young age?

Ann Hince: I didn’t know until I was thirteen.

Victoria Volk: Oh my gosh. At boarding school.

Ann Hince: And I met my mother when I was seventeen. My birth mother, she’s still alive actually in New Zealand, and my adopted mother died when I was nineteen. So, yes, it was kind of like this two year overlap where I had two mothers and then kind of reverted back to my birth month. It was a very strange story.

Victoria Volk: Okay. So can you share a little bit about how that experience went of finding out that you were adopted?

Ann Hince: It was pretty wild. My mind my mind just started to play with all these different possibilities. You know, what could have life be like? Because it was not very much fun in that moment, Mario, as hell. And I just just imagining all these different possibilities. It it was yeah. It was it was difficult because I wanted to know more. And and thankfully, I didn’t have to wait that long. I only had to wait four years to find out that actually my birth mother was pretty normal, which is really nice to know. So, yeah, it was tricky. It was tricky for both of us because my brother didn’t know either, and he was fifteen at the time.

Victoria Volk: How did you find out? Like, I’m curious, like, did you ask questions?

Ann Hince: No. We were moving back to the same place that we had lived like a little tiny village that we had lived when we’d been adopted, and my mother was afraid that someone would say something. Mhmm. So, yeah, it makes you wonder if that hadn’t happened when or whether they would have told us at all because, you know, we didn’t didn’t look that like, but we didn’t look that different. We all had kind of the same color here, you know.
So it wasn’t it wasn’t totally obvious.

Victoria Volk: That wasn’t something you had questioned, you know, like

Ann Hince: I had

Victoria Volk: Did you

Ann Hince: get a little bit only because I was pretty nosy and it looked through a lot of my mother’s papers. And I thought I had found something that said my brother was adopted. So then I thought, okay. Well, he’s adopted, but I’m not. So did he count? I think he had seen the same paper, so he had questioned it. Yes. And we were so I mean, physically, we didn’t look that different, but, you know, emotionally, intellectually, we were very different.

Victoria Volk: And knowing then at such a influential age. Right? Thirteen. It’s preteen. And having been at boarding school and all of your wife experience up to that point, which I imagine and moving so much. Right? Like, it’s really difficult to create connections with people. And then to find out you’re adopted and it’s like, does that make you question your connection with your parents, and then you’re half, you know, your brother. And so what role did connection play as you went into your young adulthood and eventually meeting someone and having your own children, I’m just curious how that path kind of evolved.

Ann Hince: Yeah. There wasn’t a lot of collect connection, and you’re right, when you move so much, especially back in those days without cell phones and social media, Right? You’d make friends in one place and then you’d move to another place and and they were gone and you had to start all over again. So I I did not have much connection with my parents. My dad is now what she’d call a narcissist. I mean, it was all about him. He was always right. She couldn’t question him. And then he was an alcoholic. He would just drink all the time. So there was no connection there and and not really with my mother either. So yeah, there wasn’t really much connection with anyone. For some reason, I kinda lucked on my husband, I it was some connection that just happened. I kind of knew that he was for me and and That’s when I was eighteen, he actually met my mother before she died, so and we’re still together. So, yeah, I’m not quite sure how that connection happened and how it stayed? I think it was kind of meant to be.

Victoria Volk: What was your spiritual life like at that point?

Ann Hince: It wasn’t any. There there was nothing. I mean, I questioned things. You know, I’d been brought up in the church. She’d been like, I hate it. It was part of the boarding school life. Right? You had to go to church on the weekends. So religion was out. I actually I hated it. And you know, I I questioned spirituality. I I thought about things possibly deeper than some other people that I know, but it was just it was not really a part of my life. I was a software engineer, you know. I wear a look at ballet. Yes. But I was an also also an artist. I kind of had more of a balance, I think, than a lot of people. But Yeah. Nothing really hit home until my late thirties. I think I was just supposed to go through all that and and just be scared all the time and have PTSD and and just had to go through that until I had this experience that kind of woke me up. Do you remember the moment? Yeah. It was kind of a three day moment. It was it was what I call a business altercation with two other mothers at my boys and these mothers were not like me, but I was the scared mother on the inside always and they were self confident, self assured authority type women in my mind So in some senses a little bit like my dad, but they told me I’d done something wrong, and I could not stop my mind spinning. It just went over and over and over. Like, everything I’d said, everything I’d done, everything Ned said, all the things I could have done differently, just all these different permutations and I couldn’t sleep for three days. And it was the end of that period of time that I realized, okay, first of all, this is not normal. Most people would not react of this intensely to something that really wasn’t a big deal. I also realized it felt a little bit like how I would react in childhood when my dad would tell me I’d done something wrong. So that was the first little opening, little inkling that maybe something for my childhood was still affecting me. And so that that was the beginning. That’s what made me start looking.

Victoria Volk: What was the first thing you uncovered for yourself?

Ann Hince: Well, I didn’t really know what to do. Right? I knew I had to do something, but I didn’t know what. So I happened to go to a doctor’s appointment in that time frame. I don’t remember why I went to him. It was nothing to do with emotions or memories or anything like that. But he recognized I was more stressed than I should. Have been. And he was a holistic physician. Right? So he had more tools in his toolbox than most doctors do. And he recognized it was mine. I was more stressed, so he asked me on a scale of zero three what my stress level was. Right? Thinking it shouldn’t be that high because I was a stay at home mother with two healthy young boys. You know? Parenthood, it’s difficult but it shouldn’t have been that stressful. And I said it was an eight out of ten, and then he asked me why. And it was that question that made me realize oh, it was finally my mother dead on the bathroom floor when I was nineteen because the tears from that event were still just under the surface all these years later because I had not dealt with it. So he happened to know this technique that’s called EFT. Short for emotional freedom technique. It’s also called tapping. Are you familiar with it?

Victoria Volk: I am.

Ann Hince: Okay. So he tapped with me. In that office there for about fifteen minutes talking through finding my mother on the bathroom floor and and not having talked about the cancer and all those different aspects. And I walked away from that appointment being able to tell the story in her in my mind for the first time ever. Without the emotions there, And that’s when I realized, oh, we just hold those emotions and those memories physically in our body. And we can let them go and that was that was eye opening for me and that was that was the first step on my journey. So

Victoria Volk: What was the next step?

Ann Hince: Well, I went home that day and I went online and I learned everything I could about EFT. Because as I said, I was a software engineer, I like to know things worked before I spent a lot of time invested in it. And it was really nice to know the guy who developed it, Gary Craig. He was a chemical engineer, so that gave me more confidence. And and he gave it away for free. So anyone could go online and learn about it, and that was that was just amazing to me. So I learned everything I could about it, but I wanted to try it out. I didn’t necessarily believe that that fifteen minutes with this doctor was really, you know, maybe it was a fluke. I wanted to know for sure that it worked. So at the time, I had a seventeen year old cat at home. His kidneys were starting to fail. And we’ve been told we had to give them a daily saline shot, like an injection of saline solution, and our hated needles. I’d had so many from living all over the world. I just was petrified of them. So the first time I gave them that shot, my hand was shaking so badly. I didn’t wanna have to do it every day. It’s just it it wasn’t happen. So I thought, okay. Well, let me try out this technique. I’ve learned about it. Let me actually put in an action. So I did. I tapped about every aspect of it, which is something you do with the f t. So I tapped about my hand shaking. I tapped about my fear of hurting the cat. And I talked about all the memories from all the injections I’d had in different places around the world, you know, ones in boarding school in the different countries. And the next day, when I gave him the shot, the needle just slid right in. All that fear that it’d be living inside of me the day before had totally disappeared. And that’s when I realized, that’s the freedom I want. I I wanna get beyond all of those emotions and I wanna just feel that piece that I felt at that moment. Mhmm. So that’s when I started using EFT every day. I started noticing when I was emotional during the day. And then I would tap and bring myself back to peace. And, you know, the days went by and I started to notice that I was feeling more peaceful. But I wanted it to go faster. I wanted it more and I wanted it faster. So what I did is I wrote down every emotional memory I could think of from my childhood. Like, so all the traumas, the big traumas, the little traumas, the stings, my dad would say, you know, like, you know, the the one we they used back in those days, you know, stop crying or I’ll give you something to cry about.

Victoria Volk: Mhmm.

Ann Hince: Or

Victoria Volk: my aunt still used that.

Ann Hince: Oh, shame. My aunt used to say shame on you. You know, that was one of her favorite sayings. And so I would I tap through all of those one each night for about an hour to an hour and a half each night, so because I was determined to change. And just things started changing more rapidly.
I was just becoming less reactionary, which was really nice. So I was more peaceful And when I was more peaceful, my household was more peaceful, which was really, really nice. So that that’s kind of the first step on my journey.

Victoria Volk: I can see that there was ripples in what you were learning and uncovering for yourself and just how you were changing, your environment was changing, how did that evolve over time then?

Ann Hince: Well, we hear that phrasing, you know, you gotta change yourself and when yourself when you change yourself, your world changes. So, I mean, that is absolutely true. So as as time went by, my boys became more peaceful than they hadn’t been totally not peaceful before, but But because I was so reactionary, right, I would react to them, and then they would react to me reacting. Right? So if I’m peaceful, and I don’t react to something that happens, then they don’t have to react to that. So they can feel free to be their true selves. And it it just changes the whole dynamic of the family and it’s really nice to experience. But, you know, talk to people sometimes, they don’t believe that that’s the case. So you actually have to walk down that path somewhat. Right? So you have to realize, you have to be able to look back and see where you came from. To see where you are now. So you have some perspective. And then you could realize that it’s true, that it’s really the case So if you haven’t done any inner work before, you might not believe that things change. You actually have to do some of the work to to really believe that it does work.

Victoria Volk: How did that experience and learning EFT change your spirituality then? Because where you had none and you didn’t really have a faith practice and things like that, what how did that start to change?

Ann Hince: That kind of grew over time. As I what I realized the Feet is doing is opening up the subconscious mind, which is really our body. It’s stored in our body. And as our subconscious mind opens, it’s kind of one in the same thing. Our self awareness deepens. So when I started this journey, I had so many barriers around me like emotional barriers, protective barriers, shields, that I really didn’t know how I felt. I didn’t have any self awareness. And as I did more, more tapping, more, more eFT, I became aware of my emotions, right, because I’d been checking on myself multiple times a day. And underneath that, the next layer of self awareness is the physical sensations underneath the emotions. So for example, if we’re feeling frustration, right, that’s just the words. But what we’re really describing is tension that we’re holding in our body in a certain place. That we give the name frustration to. Right? So this is kind of reversing that process. So when I’m feeling frustrated rated, I can feel tension in in the bottom of my ribcades in the in the solar plexus area. So I became aware at that level And then I started to use a different technique. I call it feeling your feelings, but I could only do it because I was aware of those sensations. And I had honed my ability to focus so I could focus on those sensations and just keep my focus there until it released. And so this is kind of the word I talk about as the second step on my journey. It’s it’s just a deeper level of self awareness. And and I will get back to the spirituality as this is a this is a process. As I said, I had I have this engineering mind, so you know, I had to experience it myself myself first in order to put words to it and really understand what was happening. So I would do that more and more instead of doing EFT. If I felt myself feeling some kind of emotion, I would just stop and feel those emotions. Feel those sensations and allow them to release. It felt actually really good. And so I would lay on the sofa and I would bring, at this point, collective from us to mine because I’d worked through my childhood. So I’d bring things like nine eleven to my right. We all had our own individual experience of that collective trauma. So I would feel all those sensations and allow them to release. And at some point, I became able to put my awareness inside my body after the tension had released. So imagine if you have a toothache or stomachache. Right? You can feel where that coming from. Right? You can tell where the pain is coming from. Well, once the pain has released, right, once the toothache or the stomachache gets gone, you can’t put your awareness back on it. Because there’s nothing calling your attention to it anymore. I could. I could feel inside my body. And what I realized I was doing eventually was, how do I put it? Well, it’s what I think of it is the original meaning of the term insight. Right? It’s inward sight or inside sight. And It was not me. Right? There were two parts of me at that point. There was my body and there was part of me that was looking inside. So I couldn’t be my body if I could also be focusing at one particular place inside my body. Right? So that’s when I realized we are two separate entities with the body and the soul. And there’s something we tune into as well, which I believe is you know, spirit. It’s whatever we want to call it, but we’re tuning into something using our instrument of the body. So that’s when I really started to become more interested in, you know, the spirituality aspect of it because I knew without a doubt that I was not my body, you know, which is something you hear a lot. But when you actually know it, you know, you really know it because it can’t be anything else, then, you know, becomes more interesting. So I started, you know, I started reading more spiritual texts, trying to relate my experience with what some of those spiritual texts to talk about. And I found that I could relate to some of it. So, yeah, it’s been an interesting journey.

Victoria Volk: And what that brings to my mind is the thought of consciousness and the controversy or the not controversy. I don’t even know how to say it. But, like, there’s

Ann Hince: I think they call it heart problem?

Victoria Volk: Well, there’s people that believe that, you know, either you believe that consciousness continues after you die, after you are no longer. In the body. Right? Like your soul is not in the body. And that’s what it comes that’s what comes to mind when you when I hear you talking is that it’s you’re connecting with your higher consciousness. It’s a connection of yeah. It it’s being an observer a neutral observer of the body. Right.

Ann Hince: So let me go a little further into this third step. The third step is when I was put my put my awareness inside my body. And it it was really wild when it started happening because I I knew it felt different. I knew it was different from what I was doing before, but I’d also never heard anyone talk about it. So it was just an louratory investigation for me. It was kind of fun, actually. And so I would put my focus inside my body and I would feel I would move my awareness around and I would find a place with tension, which I could tell was different from a place with no tension. So I find a place with tension I’d focus on it and allow it to release, which is exactly the same thing I was doing with the feeling the feelings. Right? I was feeling the sensation and allowing them to release. And even with EFT, we’re feeling what the words bring up as we tap. And we’re focusing on it and we’re allowing to release. So I’m just working at a deeper level of self awareness. So I would do this in my torso and it took me many, many months and then I was able to put my awareness inside my head, which for me was eye opening because the pain and the tension inside my left cheek was almost unbearable. I could only focus on it for like a second at a time because it was just so intense. And what I realized, it had been there my whole life. And it was attached through the connective tissue to my right foot, which had been up against my chin when I was born. Right? So the fascia or the connective tissue had not been released. The tension in it had not been released, and it was still tense all the way up through my right leg, over to the left side of my body, into my left cheek. And through tension in my the right of my neck. So I realized at that point how everything is so connected. Our body is so connected.

Victoria Volk: And for and for people listening because they might be confused now because you talked about your left foot, but then or your right foot, but then it was the left side. So Just explain that a little bit. I know what it means, but can you just elaborate for people who who may be hearing that and be like, well, how does that? You would think it’d be on the same side. So can you just explain that a little bit.

Ann Hince: Right. Well, the the connective tissue, you know, if you look online, the connective tissue just is connected throughout a whole body and kind of through sheets. If you think of pulling the skin off a piece of chicken breast. It’s that that kind of watery slimy tissue between that holds the two together. We have that tissue throughout our bodies. It’s all connected. That’s why it’s called connected tissue. So it’s connected throughout our body. So from my left cheek, it’s connected all the way across my body, down through my right leg. But it but it could potentially also be my left leg all the way up through my my left cheek.
It it just depends where that tension has been held in the body and how it’s been held. So so it’s really I mean, it was really interesting, right, to know that, okay, if I’m working on my right foot, I don’t actually necessarily have to work on my right foot. Right? Working on this pain in my left cheek is also working on my right foot because it’s releasing the tension all the way through the body. So I started doing that. I started focusing on that pain in my left cheek. Just longer and longer periods of time, just holding my awareness on it, allowing it to release over and over again, and that’s why one day I actually heard and felt this this release of the the connective tissue. It was actually kinda scary at the time because it it felt like something ripping. And that she’s thought what I was doing because I was afraid I was hurting myself. I had to do some research and realize, okay, it’s just a connection in the and it’s an adhesion in the connected tissue, and it’s okay.
So I kept doing that and over and over again. I feel releases in different places and and actually actually felt my skull bones relaxed at some point. Now I hadn’t known they weren’t relaxed. Until they relax. Right? Then I could feel, okay, they clearly had been tense before, and they needed to relax. And that’s when I had x rays taken two years ago, and I should see the changes that had happened, that my eye sockets had aligned, my jaw had aligned, my neck was straighter than it had ever been in my life. But I also at that point, because I was working in my head, I worked out, well, if I’m looking at somewhere inside my head, where am I looking from? Right? Because I could tell I was looking from somewhere to somewhere else.
Like, I try to work it out. Like, you know, my eyes above or below where I’m looking from, you know, where that doesn’t feel like it’s in the middle of my head. So I I kinda worked out the general area and it’s kind of between my eyes. Right? If you’re looking from the front, it’s between my eyes kind of in the between the eyebrows, maybe a little bit lower than that.

Victoria Volk: Third eye chakra?

Ann Hince: Maybe the crown chakra, maybe a little bit lower. It’s not it’s not the pineal gland. It’s not that far back. So what I think it is, and this is based on looking at a lot of symbology in different places. But I believe it is the sphenoid bone, the body of the sphenoid bone. That I’m looking from and that I can relate that to many different things that I’ve read in in different spiritual texts. And and so that’s why I believe the soul resides So that’s when I think, like, during your deaf experiences and such when you go through a dark tunnel, I think you’re coming out of the the sphenoid sinus effect in effect through the through the nose and out through, you know, through the body. But I haven’t been able to really determine that. I’ve I’ve talked to some people who’ve had near death experiences and some people who’ve been on Ayahuasca and such things to try and relate that ex my belief with their experience and some kind of relate to that and some don’t necessarily. So, yeah, it’s it’s interesting.

Victoria Volk: Well, I would say it is what you believe it is.

Ann Hince: Well, maybe, but I I’m not you know, that’s another part of this journey. It’s like some people I’m gonna talk to some people. They they think I’m going into my imagination to experience this. I’m not I’m out of my thinking mind. I’m in my feeling right. So I’m actually feeling things inside I’m feeling inside my bones. I’m feeling inside, you know, my palate, inside my neck, bones, inside my tooth roots. I can actually feel them move. Right? So I’m not it’s not what I believe it is.
It’s it’s what it actually is. Right? That’s and that’s hard for me to say because I know people don’t necessarily believe that, but it’s a very different experience to actually know versus believe.

Victoria Volk: Versus Our beliefs create a reality.

Ann Hince: Right. But I’m not sure I ever believed, you know, in in my

Victoria Volk: Oh, I get what you’re saying. Six years. I get what you’re saying.

Ann Hince: Believe where it’s coming from.

Victoria Volk: True. I get what you’re saying. It sounds like, too, what you’re experiencing is something that people could experience. I’ve I’ve experience really deep, profound meditations, visualizations, meditations, and I think we can have that a similar experience if we allow ourselves to completely relax to that place of where we connect to our higher consciousness and let our higher consciousness give us whatever it is that we are needing to receive messages or visions or insights. Right? To allow our third eye to really open and receive. And how I’ve personally seen my third eye in visualizations or meditations. It’s almost like I’m, like, in a UFO, in a way where it’s And I’m seeing my life and seeing me on, like, a TV screen, except it’s like, it it’s an all white in glass front. And it’s almost like, I’m just like on this observation deck or, you know, like, as, you know, you can see, like, air traffic controllers, you know, kind of like that, you know, where you’re just observing yourself in that our minds can take us to incredible places and are very powerful. And I think as as our minds and brains change with trauma.
Right? We can create those new connections and new experiences within the mind that can transform and transcend the experiences we feel within our bodies. And that really sounds like that’s it’s almost like you’ve little by little have incrementally leveled up on a cellular level.

Ann Hince: Yeah. Well, Kundalini with energy was part of that journey too. So, yeah, definitely think myself’s changed. So what you’re talking about there is is kind of it is kind of in the mind. Right? You’re talking about going into deep. Meditational visualizations where you’re kind of seeing things in the minds. Yeah. It’s really hard to put these things in word. Right? I don’t do that anymore. I go into the body. So I’m not creating things. In my thinking mind or even another part of the mind that does visualization. I’m actually going into the body and sensing tension.

Victoria Volk: No. But we can do that. That’s what I’m saying. Like, we can we can become so relaxed that we can almost and I think that experience would be different in need for every individual, but how I would feel how I would see myself or how how I’ve done that myself is like, seeing myself as like this miniature version of myself going into the body. Right? Like, that’s what I mean. It’s like you’re And then it’s like you’re seeing with your third eye in this visualization, you’re seeing what the body wants to communicate to I I think there’s so many ways we can do this. You know what I mean?

Ann Hince: I’m saying that this is different from that. Yeah. Right? Because I I’ve experienced that before. You’re still creating an image.
This is sensing. Right? If you put your awareness on your right knee right now. Right? And just feel how does your right knee feel. When you do that and the moment you do that, you’re sensing. You’re not putting a picture to it, so you might put words to it eventually, but before you do that, there’s a moment where you’re just feeling it. Yeah.

Victoria Volk: And that’s why I’m saying I think I’m fast forwarding this the the real a little bit because I think it’s how you get there. Right? It’s like how you can get to that deep sensing. And if you have to use visualization to get you can use visualization or deep meditation to get to that deep sensing. If there’s, you know, like, He broke his back.

Ann Hince: Joe Despenza.

Victoria Volk: Yes. Thank you. Joe Despenza. You know, I’ve I’ve used his meditations and is deep sensing, but there’s also visualization that’s incorporated into that. And that’s what I’m saying. Like, to get the a lot of people need help getting to deep to get to the point where they’re deeply relaxed. I still don’t

Ann Hince: do it until I had released a lot of the outer layers of trauma, right, the outer emotions.

Victoria Volk: And that’s where you’re saying EFT was a huge

Ann Hince: Right. That was the first part. It took all those big layers away, all those emotions that allowed me to sense deeper. And then feeling the feelings just allowed me to sense deeper. So I think what Joe Despensa, your your focusing on one particular place and not necessarily clearing everything else out around it.
Right? It’s kind of a different way. I mean, if I don’t know if this is the right thing to say, but, you know, I’ve met him before And if you experience him, he doesn’t feel like he’s a particularly happy, light person. He still kind of feels heavy. So I would say that is because he’s he’s definitely done a lot of inner work.
Right? He’s focused deeply in certain areas, but I don’t think the the whole of it’s been cleared out. Just I can only say that, you know, because I’ve experienced it, you know, I used to feel really heavy I used to feel, you know, just so burdened all the time. And I’ve experienced the different. Right? I’m not I’m not like that anymore. I I feel to me, I feel lighter, I feel happier, more peace. Right? And I’ve cleared out you know, many layers all the way through my body, not just in in certain specific places. Right? So I would say that’s that’s the difference that’s allowed me to get inside and move around it will rather than just go into one particular place. Yeah.

Victoria Volk: You mentioned the Cundalini too. Uh-huh. And I I had a session with a Cundalini practitioner, Kunduehne yoga, and she walked me through this breath work experience. And it’s like, I have never experienced anything like it. Like, where every cell in my entire body just felt like it was vibrating. It’s anyone listening? You wanna feel alive? Like, whoa. That was it was quite an experience.

Ann Hince: Yeah. It’s a massive energy. I mean, in my experience, it was just a massive energy. It felt like other people around me should no. Why why aren’t they? Feeling it too because it was just so big. Mhmm. But for me, it happens just as part of the process. Right? I’d released enough energy myself it kind of it took over almost what I feel is it took over to allow the rest of my body to catch up.
With the parts that had released enough tension. So it went on for months on and off. I could kind of move it up and down my body at will. I could stop it whenever I want it. I just have to relax sufficiently and then it would start up again. And I would relax more up into my spine and it would move up it it was kind of fun actually. But at some point, it got to the place where, you know, I had released enough or it had burnt through enough of remaining tension. That it it just kind of faded away. And it was actually at that point that I was able to put my awareness inside my body, so I think that was part of the process.

Victoria Volk: Did you get to the third part?

Ann Hince: Yeah. That third part was putting my awareness inside my body.

Victoria Volk: So how it has your life changed since.

Ann Hince: Oh, it’s lovely. I’m really very peaceful. You know, when I started this journey, I used to love seeing peaceful parents at school. It was so nice, you know. I wanted to be one of them. And one day, a few years into this process, I had another mother come up to me and say, I want to be as peaceful as you are. You know? And for me, that was a big moment that I had shifted enough that other people could notice that that I myself was peaceful. So it’s really nice. I actually go out of my way now to find things that I react to. So for many years, I didn’t watch the news because it was too much. Now I want to watch the news because I want to feel what’s going on inside. I want to find deeper healing still. So that’s really nice. There’s also a huge depth to life that I had no idea existed when I started this journey. I didn’t know that you could actually hear things in your body not just through your ears. You could feel music. Just just throughout your body. I mean, it makes the experience of listening to music so much nicer. But it also means like when you’re listening to a conversation, you’re able to pick up more than just the sound of their voice. Right? You’re picking up nuances in them. In their facial expressions, in their body movements. Because if you can recognize it within yourself, if you can feel it, if you have that depth of self awareness in yourself, you can see it in other people as well, right, which makes having conversations much more enjoyable, satisfying, Also, I’ve really so much tension in my skull now, which is our echo chamber for our voice. So my voice has changed. I can actually sing a note that I could not sing before because I’ve released that tension holding my skull in a particular position. Right? It’s now much more malleable, much more flexible. So there’s that too.

Victoria Volk: What was your health like before that pivotal moment when you realize that something needed to change and how has your health changed since?

Ann Hince: I used to have a lot of digestive issues. And tried many, many different diets, all sorts of things. But it was really associated with all that stress that I was holding inside. So that has released not fully because part of the journey is a deeper level of self awareness. Right? So oftentimes during this journey, I’ll think, okay, I can feel something now that I couldn’t feel before. And it’s not because it’s a new you know, when you paint or whatever, it’s just something that was hidden before that I’ve now become aware of. So that’s been a, you know, a little bit of a mind thing to get used to along this journey. So I’m just working at a deeper level. But I’ve also grown three quarters of an inch in my fifties, you know, that that doesn’t happen very often. You know, I’m taller than they’ve ever been in my life before and most of us start to shrink because we’re holding so much tension inside. And we tend to think the same thoughts over and over, which, you know, adds tension to those already tense neural pathways inside of us. So as we release that burden, we’re actually just becoming more of our natural blueprint. Right? So I don’t know what high time going to end up as, but I know my neck is continuing to release every day. So I would not be surprised if I grow a little bit more.

Victoria Volk: So if people are watching this on YouTube, they’ll see. I’m kind of I am kind of hunched forward. My shoulders are kind of in. My posture absolutely sucks at this moment. And so I’m at and what I know is and I’ve been feeling some stuff lately. Like, my I have so much tension throughout my shoulders and my neck. And I I know emotionally I’m going I’m feeling some things these past few days. I can recognize that. Right? I may try EFT after a week and off this.
Or a really deep meditation because I it’s been a long while since I’ve meditated. I just wanna highlight for people in that when you’ve worked on the grief, because you you say stress a lot, but I wanna reiterate that what brought you to this podcast is grief. And what does grief do? It causes a stress in the body. It physically stresses the body and not to mention the daily life that we have, can be stressful. Right? It’s But I think we label things as stressful. So how has that shifted for you? In because I was just reading something yesterday that kind of made me think about this word stressful and stress And it’s like we are such a stressed society, but as it’s at the same time, it’s maintaining It was talking about, like, our personal management, like, our management of ourselves. Like, we can’t and you might be a manager of other people and especially if you’re parent, mother, you’re managing other people. Right? You’re managing a household. But what about your personal management? How are you managing the self? And I recognize that when I’m not managing the self, I feel more stress. I feel more stressed in the body, my posture sucks, like all of these things. Right? Like and so What do you have to say to that?

Ann Hince: Well, a lot of people, when they use the word managing, right, they also think of the word controlling.

Victoria Volk: Mhmm. And I

Ann Hince: think a lot of even there’s, you know, different spiritual methods. Also talk about controlling or controlling the mind or controlling the thoughts. My whole journey has been about noticing and allowing and releasing. So, you know, in some sense, it could be called controlling or managing. But in terms of the modern day use of those words, it’s really not that. So yes, we want to notice. We want to notice how we’re feeling during the day. A lot of us suppress. We suppress or we bypass. Right? We’ll have a drink or we’ll I don’t know. People some people take drugs or some people exercise to try and avoid feeling those thoughts and the feelings and the emotions that are coming up. But when we do that, we’re just keeping that energy, that emotion, that stress, that grief suppressed inside the body. Because it it doesn’t go anywhere. It needs it needs noticing, it needs acknowledging, it needs feeling, it needs being met, right, if we’re if we’re If there’s something we want to share with someone else and the person we’re talking to doesn’t really listen. Right? If we don’t feel like we’ve been listened to, that feeling of needing to share that information stays inside of us until someone really meets us, really listens and hears us. That’s what we need to do with the emotion inside of us. Once we really hear it, we really feel it, we allow it to be felt, to be released, it will. It will relax and let go. So it’s not really about, right, managing or controlling. It’s about noticing being aware. And just allowing ourselves to feel those feelings that are living inside of us rather than forgetting them and move on, which most of us are programmed to do. Right? That’s that’s so common and that’s what needs to change. I think even in childhood, in schools. Right? If we learn history and we allow the children to talk about and to feel the emotions that are brought up, while hearing about that history, I think that’s how we change the projection or the direction of the world actually.

Victoria Volk: That phrase, self management, personal management, it was actually used by yoga guru. Sand Sandguru. I think it’s how you say his name? I’m probably saying it wrong.

Ann Hince: I don’t know.

Victoria Volk: I’ll send you a link. But, yeah, he’s a mystic and a teacher and thought leader and Yeah. I mean, he’s got what’s his program called? Inner inner something. I’m it’s case in my mind right now. I’ll share I’ll put it in show notes if anybody’s interested.

Ann Hince: I think I know who you’re talking about. Yeah. Yeah. And I you know, even him, you know, I have to be careful with my words because who am I, but I don’t know anyone else who’s developed this inability that I have. So I listen to their words. I listen to the way they talk about things. And I don’t believe he has developed this ability. So I don’t necessarily listen to what he says.

Victoria Volk: I’m just saying that’s where the phrase came from, what I was listening to

Ann Hince: a banding number. But but maybe it’s just not the best way. I mean, that’s what I’ve looked at a lot of these different spiritual methods. And I think originally, they were probably correct, but they’ve been mistranslated through the years. And, you know, people tend to think that we have to have to control ourselves. And really, it’s kind of almost the opposite of that. Well, I

Victoria Volk: think it’s not See, I hear self management and I don’t hear control. I don’t get a sense of control in that way. Like, So I think it’s a matter of perspective as well. Like and we’re all going to perceive yeah. It’s yeah. We’re all going to perceive what we see and what we hear and what we think or what we feel differently.

Ann Hince: But even Buddhism, when you look at Buddhism, it’s it’s and even yoga, like the, you know, spiritual aspect of yoga. It’s very much about controlling thoughts, controlling things you eat. You know, just all sorts of control in there. Mhmm. And I think originally, they have the right idea, but it’s just been twisted over the years. And I don’t think it’s going to get people where they think it’s going to get them.

Victoria Volk: I totally hear where you’re coming from. I mean, for me, I I feel like like, a sense of self like, I desire a sense of self mastery in a in a sense of whatever is going on in the world. To be able to feel that piece. Right?

Ann Hince: Yeah.

Victoria Volk: You can put

Ann Hince: down the ability.

Victoria Volk: Are you are you familiar with human design?

Ann Hince: I’ve heard of it. I don’t know much about it.

Victoria Volk: I’m a manifestor type, and and that’s a label or whatever, but it helps me make sense It helped me make sense of a lot of things in my life, but the not self theme of a manifestor’s anger and the the opposite of that is right right is peace. And so I know I’m feeling aligned in what I’m doing, what I’m saying, what I’m thinking, what I’m feeling, when I’m at peace. So I’ve been able I’m starting to recognize and I’ve been in my experiment with human design and in learning these things about myself. For it’s been a couple years, but it’s really helped me to open my eyes to have own awareness. Right? Of of when I’m what what not feeling peace feels like in my body, like the tension in my neck and my slouching and my turning inward because this is what we do when we are I see so many people with their your shoulders go up like this. You’re not relaxed. Right? You’re in the grocery store line, whatever. You you can just see people’s posture how they carry themselves. It’s written all over them.

Ann Hince: Yeah. They’re not aware of it. I mean, most of us Yeah. Most of us are not aware of it. There is so much hidden in our subconscious mind that we are just not aware of and that’s that’s why you have to go down this road a little bit

Victoria Volk: Mhmm.

Ann Hince: To start realizing some things that have been hidden in your a conscious mind and then you start to realize, oh my goodness, there’s so much more, let me keep going and then covering what’s in there. So yeah.

Victoria Volk: Yeah, I think grief is just in stress, is just written all over us. You know, you can see it another I see it clearly in other people, and I I can recognize it. Within myself. And so how has like, what’s life like now? Like, on the daily Are you still doing EFT? Are you still, like, how much time have you devoted to this practice? Are you teaching other people? Teaching you and we touch your kids, like all the questions.

Ann Hince: Well, I used it on my kids when they were young. My my youngest son used to have nightmares and I go and tap on him. Didn’t need any words because the emotions were already in his body. So I just tap on him and then I’d say, okay, mom, I can go back to sleep now and I would just you know, leave the room and you’d go back to sleep. So they know that it was. They just have a lot of resistance because, you know, children often do. So I’m hoping one day they’ll come back to it or or at least do some kind of shadow work to, you know, because I didn’t I didn’t change until they were you know, six and ten something like that. So they have traumas inside of them from those early years for sure. I do still use EFT not as much because I I have these other things I can use. I mean, I feel inside multiple times a day, like, many, many times a day. Fifty, a hundred times a day. And that many times, I will have something release in my my neck or my my head. So it’s almost automatic. To me for me now, it just first thing I do when I wake up in the morning is like, okay, where’s my neck gonna crack? And I will just move and allow it to crack. So it’s it’s very much a part of me now and it it wasn’t in those early years. I I just I started doing it more and more because it felt so good, you know, this tension has been stalled inside of us for, you know, for me, for decades and it felt good to release it. So I just kept doing it. Let’s see. I do, I mean, I do share the information. I have a YouTube channel that has different videos and I’ve got If you go to my website and hints dot com, I’ve got a PDF download of my cheat sheet, my two page PDF with, you know, all the basics of EFT, so anyone could learn to do it. And let’s see. What were the other questions there?

Victoria Volk: You answer with the kids, how it’s, like, physically I’m curious too, like, with food.

Ann Hince: Right? You asked about my day, like, how I feel different. And my days. My days are peaceful. I enjoy my days now.
It doesn’t matter what I’m doing. I can always find peace. And that was not the case before at all. So I’m happy wherever I go, whatever I’m doing, you know, some people will sometimes say, you know, are we looking forward to going on this trip that, you know, you’re gonna go on? It’s like, well, you know, that’s two weeks in the future. I’m not thinking about that. I’m peaceful right now. So kind of time has shifted as well. I think of it differently. Feel it differently. So that’s really nice. I mean, my goal was in a piece. So, you know, I’m not fully there yet because I know there’s a lot more tension still and I won’t feel total feet piece on the inside. Until my I think until my body is totally aligned, and I’ve got a long way to go yet on that. So but I know I know I know what I’m working on. Know what I’m working towards. So that’s and then you mentioned food. I did lots of different diets along my way before I found the EFT. I mean, all sorts, life food, vegan, macrobiotic, vegetarian, just all sorts and I let go of all my beliefs around that, not all of them. I still eat organic. Whenever I can. And I cook my own food mostly. But I’ve let go of so much tension and all those beliefs around that should have this or I shouldn’t have this or if I have this, I’m not gonna feel right. You know, I’d let go of all of that so I can pretty much eat whatever I want. Now, which is really nice. And I have some discussions online, you know, with people who think you should be vegan, you know, that that’s so adamant about it. And it’s that being adamant. It’s that tension. It’s that judgment of other people. That’s what’s holding dysys inside of their body. And I know because I was there too. I was vegan for many years. And I remember having that that judgment. And that’s tension. That’s dis ease inside of ourselves. And when we’re judging someone else, we’re hurting ourselves. So go find that judgment. Notice it. Feel it. Allow it and let it release.
And that actually releases the disease from inside of us.

Victoria Volk: Part of my intention is just having this experience lately where I had signed up for this program and, you know, the the fad right now is protein, protein, protein, and you need seen amount of protein. And what I found though is my and I this is not like, this has been going on about five months now, like and I’ve just, you know, switched a different program and still trying to maintain, like, the tracking and and, you know, the weights and but what I’m what I found, like, just in just in the last couple days, truly. Like, over the weekend. So this is very new, and this is why this tension has actually enlightened today, to be honest. Like, this is true story. I felt I was feeling heavy. I was feeling so heavy. And I was feeling like, my body is screaming at me. Like, this is not for me right now. And I was so adamant of this is what I need, this is I need this person to tell me what, you know, how much I’m supposed to be eating and I need to do these workouts and do diesel regimented. And that is so against my body type, like my body as, like, even as a manifestor. This is where this is where human design has helped me too and realizing that my desires are gonna change depending on my energetic where I am energetically, and I’m more of like in this rest cycle right now, which has corresponded to this program I’m working on, which I’ve lately just, like, I put it on the table and I haven’t looked at it. Like, I just I put it down and I haven’t looked at it in, like, over a week. Two weeks actually, probably. And I’m like, oh my god, this is what’s happening. I’m in this rush cycle. I’m not why am I pushing myself to do this program? I need to listen to my body. I need to honor my body. And as soon as I’ve done that, As of yesterday afternoon, I feel so much better today. It is crazy. How our bot like, you know what I mean? Like, it’s a perfect example of what we’re talking about of how our bodies are always communicating with us. We just you know, the judgment or the the self criticism or, you know, I should be doing this and I should be doing that or, like you said, of other people too,

Ann Hince: Yeah. And we forget that we’re so connected. Right? That was part of my journey. I realized how it’s all connected, so you could access that tension in your shoulders, in your neck. Through words, right, through through memories, through beliefs. Right? I believe that I should be doing something or controlling or giving someone else control over my body.

Victoria Volk: Yes. That agency and last my sense of agency.

Ann Hince: Yes. So that is connected to the tension in your shoulders. Or you could tap or if you’re using EFT, you could tap directly on I have tension in my shoulders. Right? You could feel the tension in your shoulders. It doesn’t matter which way you access it, right, whether it’s through words, emotions, or through physical tension itself. It’s still accessing the tension in your shoulders because it’s all connected. I know a lot of people are concerned like doctor will say, well, it’s all in your head. Right? And some people get offended by that. But if we take that to be true, okay. So what is it I’m thinking or feeling? And if we know that those thoughts and feelings are connected to the physical, then we can work with those words and with those memories and with those emotions. And that’s what EFT did for me. It’s kind of those outer layers. Okay. I’ll let me let me go through the memories of those traumas and talk through them and tap through them. And what I didn’t realize when I started to do that, that I was affecting the physical because I didn’t have that depth of self self awareness. I have that depth now, so I know that it’s all connected. So even if you don’t know that you’re affecting the physical, I can tell you, if you’re doing EFT, even on words and memories, you are affecting the physical.

Victoria Volk: I had a question. Do you have a meditation that guides people through that process of interconnecting.

Ann Hince: Not as such. I mean, I have videos on YouTube about the different steps about the feeling the feelings.

Victoria Volk: Okay.

Ann Hince: I’m feeling feeling this one about going inside. It tapes work to go inside though. So I’m not sure anyone could do that right off, but they could feel a feeling. So, like, empaths are very good at picking up and sensing their feelings inside their bodies. So that they could do that. So, yes, that’s a I do have a video series that that takes people deeper into relaxation and where they can actually notice their depth of awareness. Because I find that people don’t know. Right? We don’t know what we don’t know. So we don’t know how far we can go beyond where we are right now. So as I’ve gone through this journey, I’ve realized there’s different things that have changed in me. Right? Like being able to feel music within the body. Right, rather than hear it with just your ears. So I’ve recognized some different things that change, and so I I’ve like, take people through those, right, to notice. I mean, even just simply noticing how reactionary you are. Right? If you’re still reaction if you’re still triggered by things, or easily triggered by things, if people say you’re highly strung, then you don’t have a great depth of awareness. I’m sorry. That’s just the way it is. But it means there’s so much more you can find, so much more depth to life that you can find by doing this inner work.

Victoria Volk: And I think what people don’t realize is the deeper goal of this work, doing the work, and looking into yourself, and connecting with the self is that I think so many of us come into this life and we leave this life, not ever realizing our own potential because of it.

Ann Hince: Absolutely. My brother my brother died a few years ago. You know, he was adopted too. Right? So he had a different story from me.
He was adopted from a different family. But he Whereas I went one direction, he went into the way my parents were so he drank and he smoked his whole life and I actually tapped with him a couple of months before he died. I went to his hospital room, and he and I tapped through some of our collective childhood traumas And it was really interesting to talk through some of those things that were being through together. And to have him experience EFT. I I had to tap on him because he didn’t have the energy to tap. But but after a few minutes of tapping on on one thing in particular when we were at boarding school, when we left him the first term at boarding we drove away and we were heading to Hong Kong from England. It’s a long way away. We left him screaming in the driveway. He was just screaming for us to stay. And he remembered that. It was so clear to him, and and we tapped on it. And he said it had kind of receded more in his mind through this, those couple of minutes of tapping. So, you know, I I think if he had wanted to, do this work. He could have totally changed his life, but it wasn’t on his path. It wasn’t something he was ready to do. So, you know, some of us Some of us don’t, and some of us do.

Victoria Volk: Do you have a relationship relationship now with your birth mother?

Ann Hince: I do. I went to see here at Christmas time. Yes. Yeah. But even

Victoria Volk: though times.

Ann Hince: No. I’ve met her. I mean, I’ve met her when I was seventeen for the first time. And then then on our honeymoon, when I was twenty four. She came over when my first son was born and a couple of other times.
So, yeah, I’ve I’ve seen her less than ten times in my life, but but it’s been nice. And we have technology now, so I call her once a month. So yeah. And and she came over one time and we actually tagged together on my birth on her on her giving me up. So I think that was healing for both of us.

Victoria Volk: Did she ever tell you why?

Ann Hince: Yes. She was twenty six. She just she’d been engaged to my father and they had this one time event after she told him that she was leaving, it was that night. And she left the next morning. She got on a boat from New Zealand to head back to England, and she found that she was pregnant on the way. So, yeah, she was a single mother and she just thought that I would be better off within a a complete family.

Victoria Volk: Do you have any other siblings? Half siblings?

Ann Hince: I do. I have two half siblings from her, and I just found out who my birth father was a couple of years ago through ancestry, and he never knew I existed, and he died a few years ago. So I have a house sibling, a half sister through him. So I was finally met her. I met her at Christmas time to you the first time ever.

Victoria Volk: Was that healing for you to you know, it’s like you find out your dot and I don’t know what this is like, but So if you can elaborate, that would be wonderful. But, like, did you almost feel like like you didn’t know a half of you? You know what I mean? Like,

Ann Hince: Yes. You know, absolutely. Yeah. There was there was a palpable relief when I first met my best mother. I mean, I and again, it was tension that I had not known that I was holding probably since I was thirteen. Right? But I didn’t know it was there until I could feel it really when I met her at seventeen. And the same thing about finding out about my birthdays, I didn’t know I was I was missing something. Right? Until there was some relief when I found out, and and that felt really good.

Victoria Volk: Well, this has been a fascinating conversation. I’ve had my own ahas as I’ve heard you speak and you know, thank you for letting me share a little bit of my own personal experience throughout this

Ann Hince: day. Yeah.

Victoria Volk: I will put links to your cheat sheet, the YouTube, your website, and the show notes. But where can let me ask you this first. Is there anything that you want to share that you didn’t get a chance to?

Ann Hince: I don’t think so. We covered all sorts of things. Yeah. I mean, thing I love to share at the end is the depths of life because there’s so many people who are depressed these days or considering suicide. And and I did too as a teenager, but there was just so much you don’t know yet if that’s what you’re thinking.
So I encourage people to go down this journey and realize the depth to life, right, so that you can enjoy life more. There’s just so much enjoyment that you have not yet found, so I encourage you to do that.

Victoria Volk: I do wanna share to and ask the art. So anyone that’s not is only listening to this and not seeing it there’s some artwork on your wall beside you. Is that your artwork?

Ann Hince: It is. Yes. Wow. So so recent artwork. That’s, again, that’s been a journey.
Right? I started out doing pencil portraits. And, you know, black and white, I I drew in black and white for years.

Victoria Volk: Mhmm. Interesting.

Ann Hince: Then I became able to feel into colors. And I started using colors more and and started going less detailed rate and more just what felt right. And, yeah, I can feel into colors more now that I mean, I had no idea that that was possible before. But, I mean, I wear blue now all the time because just blue feels so peaceful full to me. And I feel a a repulsion from white. It’s like it reflects. It’s it pushes energy away from it, which I find really interesting given that people tend to think of it as a spiritual color. Mhmm. I don’t I I kind of almost don’t see white cars. I mean, I know they’re a car. I know they’re there. Don’t worry. I drive safely. But if I I have a friend who has a a white car and I I just don’t see her. I’ll see the colored cars. I’ll see blues and reds and yellows and but it’s it’s that’s been an interesting part of this journey too. You know, I say many just read changes.

Victoria Volk: Well, I just wanna highlight that you your wall is purple. You have a lot of purple in your artwork and the third eye chakra is purple.

Ann Hince: Yeah. This is a colorful room. I’ve also got a green roof with yellow highlights and three different colored lights there. There’s a a red, blue, and green. Yeah. I try and keep white out of this room. So yeah. So people I do have my artwork I have a little shop on my websites with Okay. Products from my artwork. If anyone wants to go and have a look. They’re very colorful.

Victoria Volk: Just some of the bottom on there.

Ann Hince: Thank you. If someone wants to find me, you can you can contact me on my website. And hence dot com or I’m very active on Facebook. So you can you can interact with me there. I try and post something every day, and I’m trying to explain you know, my story through other people’s quotes and and that kind of thing. I try and, you know, add an explanation to things. And also, I’m starting I’m learning how to put on retreats. So our first retreat, a friend and I are gonna put on retreats that’s called liberation beyond loss. Which is gonna be specifically for women who’ve lost a mother. Right? We’re gonna do this work, this inner work, the tapping, and the trauma release work around that loss and that grief. So if someone wants to to check that out too. That’ll be next year.

Victoria Volk: So amazing. And I’ll put links, like I said, in the show notes. Where people can connect with you and find all the goodness that you offer.

Ann Hince: Thank you.

Victoria Volk: And thank you so much for being here today and for sharing your story, and I think a lot of examples of all kinds of different grief in your story. And so thank you for sharing.

Ann Hince: Thank you. Thanks for the great conversation.

Victoria Volk: And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life, much love.

 

Ep 169 Part II | Supporting Children Through Divorce and The Holidays

Part II | Supporting Children Through Divorce and The Holidays

 

SHOW NOTES SUMMARY: 

This episode is a follow-up to the last one to bring awareness to Children’s Grief Awareness Day on November 16th, 2023. 

In this episode, I dive into supporting children through divorce and their challenges during the holidays. We must recognize that children experience various forms of grief and that parents play a crucial role in helping them cope with loss. Parents who receive early education on loss are better prepared to support their children effectively.

The impact of divorce on children is explored, highlighting the multiple losses they experience and the difficulties they face in understanding love and commitment. It can’t be stated enough that parents face many challenges in being present and acknowledging their children’s feelings during a challenging time, such as navigating all of the changes that occur as a result of a divorce (or separation), particularly when the parents are grieving themselves.

This episode implores all adults to empathize with children struggling, particularly during holidays and challenging family situations. As a society, we must break the cycle of inadequate support by providing better guidance to the next generation.

I encourage all listeners to engage with the episode and provide feedback to help shape future discussions on supporting children through divorce and the holidays. We adults must raise awareness about children’s grief, advocate for improved support systems, and empower all parents to navigate challenging situations with sensitivity and understanding. Future generations depend on what we adults choose to do or not do in response to children’s grief.

RESOURCES:

_______

NEED HELP?

  • National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
  • Crisis Text Line provides free, 24/7 support via text message. Text HOME to 741741 to connect with a trained Crisis Counselor

If you are struggling with grief due to any of the 40+ losses, free resources are available HERE.

CONNECT WITH VICTORIA: 

 

Victoria Volk: Hello friend. Thank you for tuning in to this episode. And it is a follow-up episode to the one before last week, Children’s Grief Awareness. And I said in that episode that I would bring in part two where I’d be talking more about supporting children through divorce and through the holidays as it relates to grief and divorce in general.

Victoria Volk: And I wanna share that, the first episode, Children’s Grief Awareness part one, has not been a very popular episode, and I just want to share how sad that kind of makes me not kind of, it does make me sad. And I suppose, I’m not sure exactly who you are listening to this. Do you not have children? Do most people who listen to this podcast not have children? Are you older? And maybe your children are older? And don’t have young children anymore, that could be. I would love to know why that episode isn’t resonating or if it did, please share that too.

Victoria Volk: And I would just love to know like who’s really on the other side listening to my voice. Are you listening in the car? Are you listening while you wash dishes? Are you listening on your commute? Or when you’re walking, I would love to know. So please share your feedback on the podcast directly please email me. Consider this like you supporting me in research. Because I’m really am curious. Please email me at [email protected] or find me on social media, Instagram is usually where I like to is my go to @theunleashedheart, and on Facebook, you can message me, Victoria The Unleashed Heart.

Victoria Volk: Anyway, I’m sure you can find me. Links are in the show notes too. If you are interested in helping me do that research. I would love to know who you are listening because I really am curious why that episode isn’t so popular, but regardless because I’m so passionate about children’s grief and the child grievers out there because I was one and I grew up as one. I’m still going to record a part two even though that last episode may not have been as popular because I feel like it is such an important topic because even if your children are older, they’re teenagers this still applies to you if your children are adults, who may be are starting their own families. Please share this with them too. I guarantee you that you probably know or have a child in your life, and this is just great information to have in your back pocket or to share with someone you know.

Victoria Volk: So, piggybacking on what I shared last week. There are some points I want to drill home. Point one is that children learn how to deal with loss at a very early age. That’s something I didn’t talk about in the last episode, but the vast majority of parents don’t realize that children, by the age of three, have learned or developed seventy-five percent of the skills that they will use for the rest of their lives to deal with issues that face them. Most parents rarely know or think about this when they are dealing with the daily issues related to their children. I’ve been there so many times, I can’t even tell you. Parents are very much in the moment when they’re talking to their children and likely they don’t even take into consideration how their children store things in their personal belief system.

Victoria Volk: While the vast majority of the information that parents pass on is of value. Like, we all, we are the teachers. Right? Mixed in with all of that good information can be also misinformation on how to deal with loss. And I’ve talked about this before on the podcast, but when your back is up against the wall and you have a grief experience, you’re gonna resort to what you know. And even when your children are faced with a grieving experience, you as a parent are gonna resort to what you know and likely what you were taught as a child is what you will pass on to your child. Unconsciously or consciously, some things, we don’t even really think about it. We just respond. Right? We just react. And that’s what we tend to do is respond in a knee-jerk reaction.

Victoria Volk: Point two I wanna make is that grief is more than an emotional response to death. I’ve talked about this so many times, but again, it bears repeating when it comes to childhood grief too. Because it’s not just about death, and children don’t need to be dealing with a death to experience grief. Comes in a lot of forms. Many losses that impact a child may seem insignificant to you as the adult for like example, let’s say, their favorite toy, and they can’t find it. They lost it. Where another child broke it. It seems insignificant to use the adult or the parent. But to us, it’s like, I can just buy go buy another one. I mean, there’s a million in one soccer balls or whatever it is. But to the young child that lost that toy or that whatever it is, it can be overwhelming. Especially if maybe it was a gift or something like that. Likewise, as adults, we become accustomed to friends saying things to us that we might find upsetting. And we might take offense. And in the moment, but we often are able to look at that comment if we take a step back, look at it from a broader perspective, and based on our relationship, not let that statement have a long-lasting emotional impact on us.

Victoria Volk: However, adolescents and teens do not have an adult’s perspective. And can find one negative comment or a breach of confidentiality emotionally devastating. In both situations, children are dealing with a very real grief grieving experience. And without realizing it, the way parents respond to these early grieving experience can establish a pattern for how the child learns to deal with loss for the rest of their lives. Even though as parents, we don’t see these early issues as being related to grief. They have nonetheless set a reactive response to loss in the child’s belief system. And it’s not like we’re trying to pass on bad information to our children. It’s just something that happens. A child is the most complex thing we ever bring home and they do not have detailed cautionary information stamped on the bottom of them. Right? They don’t come with a manual.

Victoria Volk: Point three, early education on loss for parents helps prepare children. The children in their life Grief Education is prevention. This is prevention. Most parents never think about helping their children deal with personal emotional loss until there is a crisis of some kind. It may be the death of a family member, a friend, or a pet that forces them to act. And it might be a divorce or some other major life event. Rarely do parents realize that they have already inadvertently given children in ineffective tools to deal with loss, even with previous minor issues their children may have experienced. And when parents face a crisis, they equally find themselves lost, like, as anyone would. Right? Like grief devastating loss just flips your entire world upside down. So your first thought might be to send your child to a professional for assistance. But the problem with that is that the children may see the professionals as advice as being in conflict with what they have already learned. A complicating factor, no matter the value of what this professional tries to teach them, can be conflicting information if the parents are not on the same page as that professional. And so mixed information or interactions with the child can just all it does is create more confusion. Taking all of that into account alone, should have you running to the bookstore or going on to Amazon and ordering the book when children grieve just based on what I just said. Or finding a support group program, like someone like me who facilitates the Helping Children with Loss program. Rather than waiting to for you to recognize that your child is struggling, you can help though with an overwhelming loss in advance, why wait for there to be a devastating loss or an issue to surface before we decide to help our children. Doesn’t it make more sense to teach parents the things they need to know to help their child feel safe to express their sadness during those first three years of life? And again, this is when these children aren’t just starting to develop the belief system that they will use for the rest of their lives. That is why Helping Children with Loss, When Children Grieve The Handbook is prevention. This information is prevention.

Victoria Volk: Now that I’ve gotten these three points out, I wanna start talking about divorce in the holidays as it relates to children in their grief experience. And it might surprise you that we actually divide divorce into two different categories, long-term or sudden. And the difference with divorce is that there is often one partner who has been struggling for a long time. While the other partner has been unaware, that things are not right. And so when the later gets served with divorce papers, it can have the impact of a sudden death, and some children are very aware of a problem in their household. I would say most are aware because children are sponges. They take in information in all kinds of ways and their eyes and ears are always listening and hearing and seeing and watching. So they have often seen and been subjected to arguments between their parents over an extended period of time. And for those children, the announcement of a divorce will fall under the heading of a long-term condition. And on the other hand, some parents manage to conceal from their children, their personal difficulties with each other. And when children who were not aware of any major problems are informed of an impending divorce, their reaction is also as if a sudden death has happened. The impact can be overwhelming to a child. And there’s a high probability that a child may begin to participate in a variety of short-term energy-relieving behaviors in response to the sudden news of their parents’ divorce. It could be said that a divorce is a family matter. And even though there is truth in that comment, the bottom line is that the couple is getting the divorce and the children are in the line of fire. The collateral damage to the children can be monumental.

Victoria Volk: The children caught in a divorce are experiencing multiple losses. What loss or losses are they experiencing? Well, look at the conflicting feelings caused by a change or an end in a familiar pattern of behavior. So some examples of losses that children may experience while their parents are going through divorce is a loss of patient that this family would be together. The loss of trust, loss of familiarity and routines, loss of safety, loss of childhood, loss of residence, and or the change to dual residences. Any one of these losses is enough to break a child’s heart. Not to mention, feel overwhelming.

Victoria Volk: So let’s look at each of these in a little bit more detail. Looking at the loss of expectation that the family would be together, children are taught about love and honor and trust and loyalty by their parents. They learn how to be loving and considerate how to resolve conflicts and how to get along with others. And from literature and films and religious institutions, children also learn that the vows exchanged in the marriage ceremony pledge a commitment to those virtues. And whether or not you’ve experienced this, think about how can fusing and disturbing it must be to children when their parents cannot maintain that pledge to each other. Also, take loss of trust. Imagine the conflicting feelings children must experience as a divorce scenario unfolds, or explodes before their eyes. What reference point do they have to deal with those feelings? It is very difficult teach your children about love and simultaneously teach them about divorce. Given that implicit promise that the family will always be together, the divorce itself represents a major breach of trust.

Victoria Volk: Moving on to loss of familiarity and routines, this is difficult all by itself, and it’s often greatly intensified by the fact that children may be undergoing other major transitions as they move from childhood to adulthood. We know all too well that the stresses and strains of those transitions can have powerful consequences. And those transitions can be happening in every age bracket.

Victoria Volk: Next, loss of safety. Familiarity in routines build safety in a sense of well-being. The patterns established within a family are usually dismantled by divorce. Children flailing around and the emotional aftermath of a divorce often do not feel very safe. Safety and familiarity go hand in hand, so it is a good idea to limit the amount of additional changes.

Victoria Volk: Loss of childhood. The instinct for survival can take many forms. For the most part, survival actions are beneficial. Sometimes they backfire. The scenario in which children take care of a parent is one example of such a backfire. It is understandable that children who would instinctively try to protect the very person or people who are supposed to protect them. It’s the child’s way of trying to guarantee their own survival. But this impulse to care take puts them in conflict with their own nature. Divorce tends to turn children into amateur psychologists. It spurs them to analyze and figure things out. It forces them to grow up before their time and to take on attitudes and actions that are not appropriate to their time of life.

Victoria Volk: And I can say this specifically for myself that that holds a lot of truth just for my own experience of my dad passing when I was eight years old, my parents didn’t divorce. He died, but like I said earlier, divorce can be this long-term experience where it can be this like a sudden death. And so that’s where there’s similarities that can be expressed in divorce, as well as a death of a parent.

Victoria Volk: And talking about loss of residence or change to dual residences, everything that I’ve talked about has been magnified when the move is the result of a divorce. The moves or changes caused by the divorce carrying emotional weight which is added to the fact that moving in and of itself changes everything that is familiar and routine for a child. Think about it. If you change your job, you’re going to a new you might move across to a different state, you’re going to have new coworkers, new neighbors, new friends. You’re leaving old friends and colleagues behind. The same goes for children. But it’s on a scale that taking all these other things into consideration and what I’ve already shared you can see why this would have probably long-term effects on the well-being of a child.

Victoria Volk: And here’s what I’ll say to all of this. When as parents, we work on our own grief and work to resolve what is emotionally complete for ourselves and the losses that we’ve experienced in our life, whether it’s loss of trust or loss of safety or loss of our spouse or parent. We learn how to simply be present with a child in our life. Regardless of their age. You can simply be and not have to do anything. You don’t have to fix your child. You don’t have to give advice. You don’t have to jump in or change a subject. You can just listen and acknowledge. And this is what builds trust with children. And I will go on to say to starting first, going first, speaking to how you had expectations for your life with your significant other that didn’t work out, but that doesn’t mean that that child has loved any less. It doesn’t mean that you care about that, the other parent, any less. You might, but to not use that time that you have with your child to bad mouth or talk about the other parent, but instead use the time that you have with your child to. Let them share. Let them express. Let them give voice to what they’re feeling, to what they’re thinking. That is what builds trust with children.

Victoria Volk: And this is where grief recovery is the most helpful because you can simply learn how to connect with your child at an emotional level. And not take away the feelings of the child. That’s not the goal. It’s not the goal to fix just to be and listen. And so as we’re navigating the holidays coming up and the changes of homes or sharing the holiday with a significant other or your now ex-spouse, or ex-significant other. Think about that. Think about what that child put yourself in the shoes of the child. What will they be experiencing? What would how are they feeling about especially if this is the first holiday the first Thanksgiving or the first Christmas where the child is feeling torn between two homes. Feeling torn from their mother, being feeling torn from their father, or whatever the situation is. It could even be a grandparent and a parent. Right? I mean, there are so many different scenarios to what a family looks like these days that I just my point is though is to think about the child put yourself attempt to put yourself in that child’s shoes. And your child may say, well, you might ask, well, how are you doing? I’m fine. Children might appear to be fine. They might appear unscathed. But I guarantee you all of the change and disruption to their life, especially if it was I would say regardless if it was like this long-term thing that they saw issues, they knew that there were issues versus feeling like it was a sudden death. Either way, there is gonna be changes that the entire family will have to navigate and adapt to.

Victoria Volk: And I think if the child is brought into the fold of that experience and not shut out or, I mean, if you might think that you’re protecting them, but if protecting them is not letting them talk about their feelings or not letting them share or not having them have a voice that is not helping them. And so I just wanted to encourage you if you find yourself in this situation or someone who is or if it was a death, let’s say it was a death of a parent, all of these things can still apply that I just talked about. There’s still going to be a lot of change. There’s still going to be a lot of uncertainty and by keeping those points in mind that I started out this episode with, you can be a soft space. And a place for a child to turn to not to be fixed, but to be heard.

Victoria Volk: And I guess that’s my whole point in sharing this episode. These two episodes is to bring awareness to childhood grief because it is a thing. Even though child children may appear fine, they may appear like they’re not being affected. I guarantee you they are on some level. They could just be expressing what they’ve learned from you. They could be emulating what they’ve learned from you. And so take that into consideration like how have you shown up in your grief and express that to your child regardless of what their age is because you can look back in hindsight and you’re always a parent. You’re forever a parent. That never changes. So whether it is an adult child or whether it is a young child, this is an episode where you can reflect on the past and think about the lessons that you passed out to your children and maybe share this episode with them and have a conversation. Maybe some things that you would have liked to have done differently or that you wish would have gone differently. That’s grief too. Grief is a loss of hope, dreams, and expectations. Anything that we wish would have been or could be different, better, or more.

Victoria Volk: And that’s what I gotta say about that. This is for the children out there, the grievers, the most vulnerable among us, and you grow up one day. I know you’re a child. You’re not as a child, you’re not probably listening to this. But as an adult, if you were a child who experienced a lot of grief and you grew up with grief. I see you. I hear you. I know you because I am you. And this is why I’m so passionate about sharing this information today in this episode and the last episode. And I do hope that the downloads go up because there are a whole lot of children suffering in this world and there are a whole lot of adults who grew up as children who felt as though they were suffering.

Victoria Volk: And if you are now a parent like me and you were a child griever, you can break the cycle. You can break those patterns and those things that you learned that were misinformation and unhelpful to you you can learn new knowledge and new tools to support your children and to break that cycle moving forward. That’s all I gotta say today on this topic. I hope you found it helpful. Please share it with a parent that you know or love or use it as a tool for yourself to become a better version of yourself as a parent to children that you are raising. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.

Ep 168 Part I | Children’s Grief Awareness

Part I | Children’s Grief Awareness

 

SHOW NOTES SUMMARY: 

In light of November 16th being Children’s Grief Awareness Day, I recount my experience as a child griever in today’s episode.

Back in the ’80s, and still very much today, the topic of grief was uncomfortable and not something people openly shared their feelings about. Not to mention, the resources that exist today did not exist back then, leaving society to fend for itself and perpetuate the myths of grief I so often talk about: Don’t Feel Bad, Replace the Loss, Grieve Alone, Be Strong, Keep Busy, and Time Heals.

Growing up with grief poses many challenges for children, particularly with the loss of parents, safety, and security. The myths of grief have been ingrained in our society, and grieving children of the past, like myself, grow up passing those same myths down to their children. Hence, the cycle of grief misinformation continues. This is why I am so passionate about talking about grief because the cycle must be broken.

The more people who recognize they’re not forever broken or destined for a life of grief and instead learn new information and tools, the better off future generations will be – the better off our world will be.

I encourage all listeners to empathize with grieving children during this Children’s Grief Awareness Day. Reflect on the role you play in the life of a grieving child you know. If you want a child to feel safe in sharing, as an adult, you often have to go first in sharing.

Through this episode, you will also learn children’s common reactions to grief and more. In Part II, I will focus on an experience many children have today – divorced parents and navigating the holidays, especially if this is the first holiday without a loved one.

RESOURCES:

_______

NEED HELP?

  • National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-8255
  • Crisis Text Line provides free, 24/7 support via text message. Text HOME to 741741 to connect with a trained Crisis Counselor

If you are struggling with grief due to any of the 40+ losses, free resources are available HERE.

CONNECT WITH VICTORIA: 

Victoria Volk: Hello, hello, good morning, good afternoon, or good evening, whatever time it is that you are listening to this thank you for being here. If this is your first time listening, I hope you enjoy this episode. And if you find it helpful, I hope you share it or leave a five-star review if you feel like it’s beneficial information and if you walked away learning something, and if this is not your first time listening, thank you for tuning in again. And if you have not left a review yet for the podcast, I would greatly appreciate it.

Victoria Volk: Today, I wanna talk more about child grief because Thursday, November sixteenth is Children’s Grief Awareness Day. And I felt it was important just to share a little bit more on this topic for children’s grief awareness because I think, let’s say, if you lose your spouse or you lose your parent, right, if the child loses their grandparent, it can be really easy to kinda get wrapped up in your own emotions and your own feelings and thoughts and sadness. Right? And I certainly experienced this for myself as a child griever where there really wasn’t a lot of communication with me asking me as an eight-year-old how I felt about my dad’s passing or how I felt about not seeing him or essentially growing up without him.

Victoria Volk: There really wasn’t a whole lot of conversation directed at me and about how I was dealing with that devastating loss. He had been sick for several years colon cancer. I am currently the age that my dad was when he passed away. I’m forty-four years old. And I cannot imagine. He was sick for about two years before he passed. And by the time they caught it, it was or founded it was too late, but he hung on. And he put up the good fight, but I did have a lot of difficulty with that loss, both getting into my twenties, certainly as a teenager it’s not an easy time anyway, but my mother had I’ll say quickly because to me, as a kid, it’s seemed quick. Within two years, my mom was remarried and this new guy was in our life and he treated me well. There was no issue there. He wasn’t there a lot because he was a long-haul trucker.

Victoria Volk: And my childhood was just a really, like, full of extremes. Right? It was these really high highs and these really low lows. But there was more lows than there were highs because they didn’t have the best relationship. And of course, it’s really difficult to be married to someone who isn’t there a whole lot just in general. So anyway, my childhood and my teen years were just a really difficult time, and that was the best I could, and I found myself really trying to emotionally care take others I was often the emotional caretaker for my mom and for a lot of friends, like I was the shoulder that friends cried on, and I was happy to be the supportive friend, to be the friend that was there for everyone.

Victoria Volk: I’d been through a lot at that by my teen years, I had been through a lot and experienced a lot more than maybe some people I know that are my age now. And so I had to grow up fast I did. I had to grow up fast. And so I really don’t feel like I had much of a carefree childhood that children really do deserve. And so that’s really why I wanted to highlight this topic today because for me, Children Grief Awareness Day is all about the kids. So I just want you to listen and set aside whatever you’re experiencing, whatever sadness and grief and whatever you’re feeling about a loss that you’ve recently had, and you have a child that’s experiencing it alongside you. I want you to just set aside whatever you’re feeling and attempt to put yourself in the shoes of this child that you know or love. No end love. Maybe it’s your own child. Maybe it’s your grandchild. Maybe it is maybe you’re an older sibling and it’s a younger child in the family, that’s still at home because maybe you’re in your twenties and your sibling is like fifteen I don’t know, but I’m just the focus today, let’s put it on the children. And so as you’re listening to this episode, it is my hope that you walk away from this episode learning something.

Victoria Volk: So many of the normal and natural signs of grief are fairly obvious. And most of those signs would be the same for a child’s reaction to a death, divorce or some other type of loss. But let’s just say we’re talking about news about a death. Often, the immediate response learning of a death is a sense of, like, this numbness, which can last a different amount of time for each child. What usually lasts longer and is even more universe is a reduced ability to concentrate. And I can say that for me, as a child, if I would have gone to a therapist or a psychologist or what had you, which was not the case. My mom would have probably been told that I had ADHD. So other common reactions include major changes in eating and sleeping patterns. These patterns can alternate from one extreme to the other. Also typical is a roller coaster of emotional highs and lows. And these are not stages. They’re simply just some of the normal ways in which the body and the mind and especially the emotions respond to the overwhelmingly painful information that something out of the ordinary has occurred.

Victoria Volk: So going back to my personal experience as a child griever, and within the year of my dad’s passing, I know I mentioned this on the podcast before, but if you’ve never listened to an episode, I was molested and in going into my teen years. So when I say that my childhood was you know, not much of a childhood. I’m this is the context in which I’m speaking to that. So there was a lot of change and a lot of trauma in my early life. And I can tell you that I slept a lot. Most of the pictures I have of myself as a child are of me sleeping, sleeping in the middle of the living room, floor midday or before actually bedtime, falling asleep on my bed before a birthday party, which I completely miss because my mother felt the need to take a picture but not wake me up for the birthday party. And I was a tardy a lot with school. And I would always get an elementary school. It was like an n for needs improvement. I would always have an n for listens to and follows directions.

Victoria Volk: So again, comes back to this change in sleep patterns or inability to concentrate. And just really fidgety. Like, I just recall being very just very much in, like, my own la la land. But these reactions to a death are normal and typical. And even if there has been a long-term illness, like in the case of my dad, which may have included substantial time and opportunity to so unquote unquote prepare for that which would inevitably happen. We cannot repair ourselves or our children in advance for the emotional reaction to a death because we don’t understand the finality. We can’t even wrap our heads around the finality of that moment until it actually occurs.

Victoria Volk: If you’ve listened to any previous episodes, you’ve heard me say that grief isn’t just about physical death. There’s a much broader definition that encompasses all losses experiences, which I’ve shared before on this podcast. But if this is your first time listening, grief is the conflicting feelings caused by a change or an end in a familiar pattern of behavior. So, if you’re thinking about like these list of losses that include death of a pet, death of a grandparent, moving, divorce, divorce of a child’s parents, and death of a parent. Each of these losses represents a massive change or end from everything familiar. With death, the person or path that has always been. There is no longer there. With moving, the familiar place and surroundings are different. Divorce alters all of the routines in a child’s life. It often includes changes in living situations and separation from extended family, members and friends. All of these losses mentioned carry with them the obvious emotional impact that we can all imagine would affect children.

Victoria Volk: But our definition of grief includes the idea that there are conflicting feelings. If you’ve ever had a loved one who struggled for a long time with the terminal illness, you may have had some feelings of relief when that person died. The relief usually stems from the idea that your loved one is no longer in pain. At the same time, your heart may have felt broken because he or she was no longer here. So the conflicting feelings are relief and sadness. Moving also sets up conflicting feelings. We may miss some of the familiar things that we liked about the old house or the neighborhood. And at the same time really like some of the things about the new place.

Victoria Volk: Children are particularly affected by changes in locations, routines, and physical familiarity, death, divorce, and even moving or obvious losses, unless the parent or loss is having to do with health issues, a major change in the physical or mental health of a child or a parent can have dramatic impact on a child’s life. And even though children are not usually involved with financial matters, they can also be affected by major financial changes, positive or negative within their family. Society has identified more than forty life experiences that produce feelings of grief. And at the Grief Recovery Institute, they’ve expanded that list to include many of the loss experiences that are less concrete and difficult to measure such as loss of trust, loss of safety, and loss of control are the most prominent of the intangible but life altering experiences that affect children’s lives.

Victoria Volk: Intangible losses tend to be hidden and often do not surface until later in life through therapy and other self-examinations. I can tell you that that was certainly true for myself. I hope that this initial information is a good foundation that it helps you gain a better understanding of how grief just doesn’t impact you, but it impacts the children in your life in a lot of similar ways, but in a lot of different ways too.

Victoria Volk: I’m gonna make this a two-part series. Next week, I’m going to record and focus on children with divorce, experiencing their parents with divorce. Because we’re going into Thanksgiving and the holidays and things and with it being Children’s Grief Awareness Day. I’m just gonna make this a two-part and hopefully you can find some resources and support in moving into the holidays through these couple episodes. That’s the episode for today. I laid the foundation. Come back next week for where we’re gonna talk about divorce. And that impact on children and navigating all of that with the holidays. So I hope to have you back next week. And in the meantime, remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.

Ep 161 Dr. Amirah Hall Part II | Quantum Energy Tools to Discover Your Divine Design

Dr. Amirah Hall Part II | Quantum Energy Tools to Discover Your Divine Design

 

SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:

In this Part II episode with the previous guest, Dr. Amirah Hall, we dig deeper into the energetics of our life experience.

A near-death experience catapulted Amirah into a realm of energy work she had not anticipated finding herself doing. However, it’s also probably what saved her from herself. As she states in this episode, we tend to stand in our way.

Through a set of what she calls quantum energy tools, she developed a daily practice that is grounding and that initiates herself into the present moment. From a place of awareness, she shares a way that all of us can shed the parts of ourselves we’ve identified with that are not ourselves but an experience in our lives.

Amirah believes learning to manage our energy field is part of our purpose. She added that we need to remember the truth of who we are: we are light and energy.

RESOURCES:

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CONNECT WITH VICTORIA: 

Victoria Volk: Thank you for tuning in to grieving voices. I am excited that you’ve hit play on this episode because this is part two with Dr. Amirah Hall. If you have not listened to episode one, it was episode one fifty-five and it went live and was published on August fifteenth twenty twenty-three, in that episode she talks about her experience of having an end of I’m an End life Doula, I had death on my mind I guess, a near-death experience while in Egypt and what that experience was like for her. But in this episode, I kind of wanted to dig into a little bit more about how the gift presented itself in her life and what that experience was like. And the skeptics that probably came along with that and probably the grief too of realizing yet you have this gift and what do you do with it? How do you use it for the good of humanity? And the impact it probably had on her life as well. Also, we’re gonna talk about some spiritual practices that all of us can do to sharpen our tool of intuition and maybe some advice too for empaths are highly sensitive people who are really sensitive to their environment or subtle energies and things like that. So I’m really excited to dig in. We’re gonna also talk about something that happened on the previous episode. So if you haven’t listened you’ll want to go back to a specific part of that first episode with Dr. Amirah Hall, and we’ll dig into that too a little bit. But Here we go. Thank you for joining me, Dr. Amirah Hall. Welcome back.

Victoria Volk: Thank you so much. It’s a real pleasure.

Victoria Volk: Okay. Well, let’s just start off by saying in the last episode around thirty-seven minutes and fifty-five seconds in around that time, you started talking about your experience of coming across Deepak Chopra, who was very helpful on your journey as you talked about in the last episode. But when I was editing that episode, there was an audible male, very distinct male voice that said yes. And I want you to go back to that first episode. I left it in intentionally. I had a little teaser in the show notes, so I don’t know if you caught it, if you did listen to it, but now go back and check it out. And this really ties into the skepticism that there might be out in the world because I had my entire family listened to it. I think I listened to it a dozen times myself. I am a natural skeptic. It takes a lot to I want the proof. Right? I’m always looking for the truth and the proof I want evidence. And as I’ve been working on myself more and more over the years, more understanding of energy and subtle energies and how I mean, I went from believing that when you died, you went in the ground and that was it, as a child like that was my understanding of death to becoming an end of life doula, understanding that death can be this beautiful transition, that it can be something that you can choose how it happens and plays out with dignity. If you are blessed with giving that choice, not a lot not everybody is. Right? With terminal illness. You have a you have a say in that. My perspective of death is greatly changed. Put it that way. So when you started to realize that this was your gift around where were you in your life? And how did you respond to that first knowing or inkling?

Dr. Amirah Hall: Well, I don’t know that it was look, I’m very much like you, very skeptical and discerning. And even though I had been a seeker of truth and light or spirituality for a good part of my life, I was still extremely skeptical. And because there were so many far out ideas, I think being somewhat dis being discerning period is a good thing. I think it’s sort of a protective and a guide to help us. But there’s a certain point when what literally happened was I was a six figure income earner back in nineteen ninety eight. I was doing extremely well. I was in sales for a high-tech industry, selling a service contracts for backup emergency power equipment. And I was doing really, really well. But when I came back after my near-death experience, my whole world fell apart. I was depressed again. I was lost. I was losing friends. I was explaining some of the situations and experiences I had in Egypt. We’re very metaphysical, very mysterious like watching going by these granite statues and then seeing one of them wink at you or watching a hand raise, their arms are straight by their side. And I literally saw like the hand lifted as if to wave at me while I was going that by. And I wasn’t the only one that saw it like, I would my mouth would drop and I would just literally go, like my eyes wide open. Did I just see that? Yes. And look to my left or my right and other people saw it too. And you’re like, well, that was our validation in the moment that we weren’t losing our minds. And so many mysterious things happened to us in that journey. When I came back home, and I tried to explain some of these things. I mean, it just goes off deaf ears. Right? It’s just people like, yeah. Right. What were you guys smoking something over there? Or why do you think that was so? Or maybe you were dehydrated? So So all these we had prepared ourselves. We’ve been meditating. We had we’re so immersed into letting go, letting go of our perception of what we think we know is true or not. I had no preconceived ideas of a granite statute waving at me. It was beyond my scope of possibilities. And so that that started everything. But then when I would interview, okay, so my life fell apart, lost my friends, quit my hobbies, I just wasn’t the same. I knew something was diaphragmatically different after my NDE. But when I started feeling somewhat better, I started interviewing. And going to a company and I’d get to the third interview thinking, okay, I got this it’s a slam dunk. Right? They didn’t hire me. And it happened three times where I get to the third interview, and then they didn’t take me on. So that was a critical moment for me and I remember the thought. Okay. I surrender. Now what? Now what? And I had been starting a process of learning how to release energy blocks that was my form of healing. When I found a healer that said to me, oh, you’ve got stuck energy. I went, great. Give me a path, give me a solution, give me the ABCs, one, two, three, whatever, I will do it. And that where I started. So I started feeling really good and started going back on my track, but universe shut me down. And like I said, I had no intention of doing this work professionally. And so I started to, I think it would I don’t even know if it was a realization that it was a gift. I didn’t think of it as a gift. I just knew it was now my purpose because what I’ve come to believe in training thousands of people over the last two decades is that everybody has the abilities. I don’t know that they’re gifts. I think it’s just a matter of us developing like, we can all learn to speak English. We can go learn French too. We can learn to write. We can some people learn to write poetry, and they start immediately, they’re good at it. But as they develop, it gets better and better and better. Same thing with a sculpture. We could all go learn the club take the class, but you might be exceptional at it. I might suck. Right? Or mine are pretty rugged. So we could all develop these abilities because they’re deep within us they like a statue, literally, we have to start carving and shedding the outer layers to reveal the inner beauty. It’s all there. I believe that our creator so magnificent has input us with this, let’s call it a software, let’s call it a divine design, and it’s there for us to discover. And so all of our journey is here to explore and to reveal that inner light, that power, that ability to shine or redirect in whatever capacity we’re ready or want to discover.

Victoria Volk: I mean, there’s a lot of people listening who can resonate and relate to their life falling apart and who have not had a near-death experience.

Dr. Amirah Hall: Right?

Victoria Volk: And so when you are in that lowest of lows, what are some suggestions for people to start to maybe open themselves up spiritually? Because I think what happens is, especially with grief, trauma, things like that, like we become spiritually thirsty. It Yes. Our spiritual life greatly suffers because we start to shut down, we start to, we don’t see ourselves clearly. We don’t see other people clearly. It’s almost like we’re zombies in our own life experience. You just going with emotions and on autopilot.

Dr. Amirah Hall: Yeah. I refer to that as walking in the land of paper dolls, sleepwalking. I was just going through the motions. And, yeah, life is bitter, ugly, flat, two dimensional and we become apathetic. We become detached. We are angry. We are angry and well depressed is sort of a broad extension or description of all the feelings, but lackluster unmotivated, just not given a shit how about anything or anybody? And it’s a deep-rooted anger and fear. So for me when I lost interest in my hobbies and my artwork, I was creating jewelry at the time. And I had built a business in selling internationally. And I just didn’t care anymore. Those were my signs. And I think when you’re that low for me, it got to a point where I didn’t have any family nearby. My family didn’t really get it what I was going through they were really detached also, they were in Canada. So I didn’t have a big support group at all. And so it came down to, I guess, a switch in my head like, if I’m gonna survive, I’m gonna have to do whatever it takes. And none of the other possibilities or what was presented to me, maybe it was I wasn’t suppose, remember this was back in nineteen ninety-eight.

Dr. Amirah Hall: So now we’ve got this plethora of resources. And that can also be overwhelming. I think it’s to the opposite extreme. Right? But I sort of plunked around until something resonated and that for me was energy work. Now when people say energy work today, it’s not the same. I know there’s a lot of energy workers listening to this, but hardening being sort of the old krona on the block here, I would say that a lot of people really haven’t done their work. That’s what I’m witnessing. They haven’t done the true deep work because they didn’t have a system that they could rely on consistently and or having a mentor that would stretch them, reach them beyond what that limit or that ceiling that they can’t see their subconscious mind.

Dr. Amirah Hall: So the tools that I learned were really about me surviving. It was just about me doing something different because I couldn’t take the pain anymore. And sometimes we just have to get to that breaking point of just going, I can’t effint take this anymore. I’m just done. So it’s either die, completely let yourself sink into that deepest abyss possible or okay, I’m gonna kick like if you’re being pulled in a current riptide, you just all of a sudden go, I’m gonna kick bloody hell. I am gonna kick so hard I’m gonna move out of this. And the tools that I teach, I call them quantum energy tools. They’re simple guided visualizations. And quite honestly, I didn’t believe in them when I started. But I’m just like, what the hell I got through? Yeah. I got nothing else here, so I’m gonna go for it. And I created these tools that I used to this day, myself, every single day, and all my students and all my trainings and all of the profound transformations that I’ve witnessed have been based on these basic principles. And the number one thing, whether you mentioned empaths, you mentioned sensitive people, you mentioned depressed people, you mentioned anybody that’s sick, we don’t know how to ground. Nobody taught us how to ground. Every device you buy now has three prongs on it. Right? The electrical appliances. The third prong is a grounding wire. Why? Because if there’s a surge of energy, if there’s a surge of something, it will not mow up your device. But we get served or bombarded all day long and we have no way to discharge. It gets stuck in what we don’t even understand is what I call the energy field, the aura. And some people think they know what it is. They say they wanna see it. Well, what? Why? If you see it, the reason is not to see, oh, you’ve got a happy life learning how to manage our energy field I believe is part of our purpose. All of us is as we remember the truth of who we are, it’s that you’re light, you are energy, and this energy is continually moving for anybody that says put up that white light around your or I’m gonna say. You know, to that, it because it’s almost like hitting the pause button on your remote control. It freezes everything. It slows everything down so nothing can move. The idea here is that we want to keep our energy moving. We want to release the block so back to grounding. So that’s the very first thing I teach based on so there’s all these devices now. I call them shiny objects you can go and you can, why the grounding mat and you put it under you while you’re working and you go or go out urthing as they say walking in the grass. Okay there may be some validity to that because I know I sure feel good when I go in nature and just let go. What do we do? Right? We just let go. Why? What is it about that energy that just helps us?

Dr. Amirah Hall: So I visualize from the base of my spine, I attach a cord. I like to imagine a laser beam or even a USB cord or a wire, and I have a magnet at the base of my spine, and I have a magnet at the center of the earth. And that line just invisibly is drawn to the center of the earth. And then boom. So you can ground right here and now and so can I? And we can be more present. What that almost does is it almost brings in our energy field. So the problem with empaths, I call them out of control healers because their energy field is so far and so wide It’s filling up the whole house or the whole building or the whole world, and everybody else’s energy field steps into theirs.

Dr. Amirah Hall: So we’ve not been taught how to bring that energy field into, let’s say, arms length around us. And when it’s arms length around us, it’s much easier to manage. Right? I teach a symbol on the edge of my aura so that people think where Amirah is out there in that symbol. So anybody looking for me or their energy or they don’t like something I say or they do Either way, that energy goes into that symbol, not into my energy field. So it’s a decoy not a protective field because you’re an idiot if you think you can protect yourself from energy moving, idiotic belief system.

Victoria Volk: I’m so glad you mentioned that, and I have never heard that perspective, but it it absolutely clicks with me because what I’m learning just as of late because that is the message. Right? Like, especially in my reiki training that was the message I received was imagine this ball of golden light wrapped around you and protecting you and it’s partly intention. Right? If the intention makes you feel good, but it’s still not going to stop your energy field from rubbing up, bumping up against your environment because everything is energy. And we’re always communicating with our little antennas. Right?

Dr. Amirah Hall: Well, it’s naive at. Right? And as we’re growing up as humans and learning about the quantum field, science is expanding. Right? And it merging with spirituality. There’s something to be said about the golden light, and I use that too. However, it’s not gonna protect you. And it is it is a high when you can bring it into the physical body gold is the highest frequency that we can hold in the physical body for an extended amount of time. It’s probably not going to stay there forever. But even if it’s for a few minutes or even if you realign with that high frequency, it changes the dynamics of everything within. Right? So, but there’s no absolutes to any of this. And anybody that’s talks about, oh, bring in red light for the first chakra and orange, but that’s BS too.

Dr. Amirah Hall. And here’s why I can say that is because I’ve got to how I really develop sense, a clairvoyant sense, but my third eye. So when I look at the energy of the second chakra, let’s say, our emotional center are empathic. We’re sucking it all up. Right? From everybody and everything. The news from I look at I’m picking up feelings and thoughts from people that are look there was a friend of mine in California, and I reached out to her I said, hey, is everything going okay with you? And she goes, oh, yeah. I’ve been thinking about you for the last couple weeks. Should we set up a. So I was feeling it. Right? So I reach out to her because her energy at some level was creeping in and finding a plug in to me because she wanted to communicate with me. So I hate people like that. I just wish they’d pick up the phone or I wish they’d send a text. Right?

Dr. Amirah Hall: But then I do that with my students too. I’m like, okay, I’m not sure who this is, so I start reaching out to everybody. Back to the second chakra, when when I look at any of the energy fields, I see wheels within wheels of spinning light. And the best way I can describe that is it looks to me like a kaleidoscope. Have you ever seen a kaleidoscope? Mhmm. So they’re moving. The patterns are always changing. The colors are always changing. Right? So how in god’s name can orange be the color to bring that into harmony? You, Victoria, might be needing to work on something that’s, let’s say, I don’t know. I mean, you’re looking for a recipe from your grandmother. There’s something with your grandmother that you’ve been feeling like you wanted to connect with or or demonstrate or resurrect. Right? Maybe a tradition. Well, it might be for you to bring that shocker into harmony might be a soft blue. Is blue to one of your favorite colors by the way?

Victoria Volk: It is my favorite color.

Dr. Amirah Hall: Because I see that. Yeah. So I just see that that’s more for you right now. Next week, it could be turquoise. It could be agreed. It could be a yellow. So as we evolve, as we resolve, and grow, and change, there’s other aspects to us that want some healing or looking for attention. And so those would be different colors that we might bring into that space to bring it into balance. Does that make sense how it works?

Victoria Volk: Absolutely. I mean, because you’re speaking my language of biofield tuning, which is using tuning forks in your energy field to, like, basically bring harmony through sound, to the energy field. And when you brought up the nature piece, I think what happens is our bodies become in sync. You know, it’s like those

Dr. Amirah Hall: We reverberate Yes. Up the vibes and they they help us they’re literally grounded.

Victoria Volk: Calibrating us.

Dr. Amirah Hall: Yes. They’ve got roots. What do they do? They’re grounded.

Victoria Volk: Yeah?

Dr. Amirah Hall: So we’re trying to remember that part of us, I think, when we go to nature, because we are interconnected to everything. And so we need help with that as humans because we’re so much in our intellect. We’re so busy our mind is just and so we don’t know how to have that balance. The trees are great teachers to us. So grounding is the number one thing.

Dr. Amirah Hall: The biggest problem I find empaths have. Highly sensitive individuals is they’re not grounded. And so then we work through the process of one, second most important thing is clearing energy that’s not you. Because the simple truth is when you start releasing what you’re not, your mother’s beliefs, your dad’s beliefs, the family patterns, your your unconscious biases, or thoughts that you had that, let’s say, that white light could protect you. Right? All of those belief systems, when we start reducing those, minimizing those, all of a sudden, the true you, the true essence, and the true gifts can just shine bright.

Victoria Volk: I resonate with that because the opposite of releasing who you’re not is getting to know who you are. Is getting to know of yourself,

Dr. Amirah Hall: But it happens gently in the process of releasing what you’re not.

Victoria Volk: Right? And that’s why too, like, every session in biofuel tuning is so different. Like, this session is the same just like you said. It’s like, right, you know, this analogy of peeling back the onion, but let’s say the artichoke you know, it’s like yeah, pulling back an artichoke. It’s the same. Like, once you get to the heart.

Dr. Amirah Hall: Yeah. I’m chiseling away at a piece of wood to create a sculpture or concrete. Yeah. And so I think tuning forks are awesome I know in ancient history, ancient mystery schools, they used sound walls, they used bells, they used rattles, to help us, that energy. It sends like a ripple. What I use is a tool that I explode things in my mind. So it’s like a stick of dynamite in my mind. Let’s say, I feel like some pain in in my left leg. And gee, I never felt that pain before. What is that? All pain is stuck energy. Whether it’s mental pain, emotional, spiritual, or physical, stuck energy. And so to release that block, I just didn’t visualize. Blowing up a stick of dynamite or another simple. And that gently releases it out of my field. So in a very short amount of time, so what I’m doing in and so the beauty of your tuning forks is it’s taking away stuff we don’t know about. The beauty of getting conscious to knowing what we’re clearing I find is a step in raising our conscious awareness because it is about being conscious. Conscious healers. And the and the other thing is tuning forks aren’t always available. Singing bowels or bells and those things aren’t always available. So for me, I the work I do is teaching independence. And self reliance.

Victoria Volk: I love that. So aside from the stick of dynamite, besides rounding and things like that like, these mental it’s all it’s really just using your imagination that can help

Dr. Amirah Hall: And that is clearvoyance. Most people don’t realize that. They say to me, I wanna open up my third eye. You know, this is like the big buzz. Right? The truth of it is is you’re doing it all. But you’re not conscious to what you’re doing. And so all those thoughts that you’re creating your experience with. So when we start using visualization, which is using your inner eye, using your inner abilities to connect with what you might call imagination, that’s really the same thing. And so when we direct the energy, then we are empowering ourselves for healing.

Victoria Volk: Is meditation a piece of your work as well?

Dr. Amirah Hall: Again, there’s thousands and thousands of different types of meditation. All the work I realized my efforts ended up directing me to and the NDE showed me proved to me is that I’m an energy being. However, I’m being a human right now. And in this human experience in the three d lace, we need practical experiences. Our job is to stay present. We are not present. We are not grounded and are consciously aware of what we’re doing from minute to minute. Have you ever been driving down the road and missed your exit?

Victoria Volk: Just happened the other day I was driving. I had to go somewhere and just totally just kept on driving.

Dr. Amirah Hall: Yeah. Have you opened an Amazon package and threw the thing that you bought in the garbage and held the package in your hand?

Victoria Volk: No, but I have looked for my cell phone when it’s been in my back pocket.

Dr. Amirah Hall: Have you ever cleaned off your dinner plate and thrown the fork right in the garbage with all the food, you know, stuff like that.

Victoria Volk: The mindless. Yep.

Dr. Amirah Hall: So that’s a moment where your spirit wasn’t present. You were to wear. You snapped out for just a nanosecond. In some cases driving past years and it was longer than that until you got back in your body and you realized, oh my god I’ve got now another five minutes because I gotta go back and forth. It’s learning how to be aware. Learning how to be present is the power of actual manifestation.

Victoria Volk: And I’m glad you mentioned that too, not just the manifestation piece, but because I can tie this to I can tie this to grief, I feel like I’m being called to in that when we are so emotionally wound up, and our energy is just bound up within us, it’s almost impossible to be present in that moment. And we can’t focus. You can’t concentrate. And so accidents more are more likely to happen. You’re more likely to get hurt or trip or fall or call the wrong person or weird stuff like that, but you don’t tie it to grief. You don’t tie it. Yeah.

Dr. Amirah Hall : And then the poor empath or a person that’s grieving, and then and the trauma is just building, and building and building and then you do, like, I did, you withdraw. Mhmm. And you stop really living and you stop we become a victim and blaming the big ugly world. But the truth is, it’s all us. It’s all us. Our creations.

Victoria Volk: And you know what? That’s empowering to know for anyone listening because you have the power to change it. That’s it.

Dr. Amirah Hall: Might not feel like it. Right? Believe me. It may it may not feel like it. I’ve been there where I’m like, oh, god. I just don’t and I for a whole year, I just barely dragged my butt to the class. And I sat there thinking, I’m seeing black. I’m not doing anything. And then all of a sudden, it was like the lights turned on. I was my own biggest enemy, and I was resistant in a lot of different ways. In ways that I didn’t even know I was, I wasn’t intentionally trying to be resistant. But that, you know, family programming and anger and fear and doubt were layer and layer and layer that just kept me living small. And it really was only just the last couple of years that I I mean, because of, I guess, so many things have changed in technology, and I guess I got sick and tired of seeing these charlatans and fraudsters out there professing lies to people and nontruth about this work and the truth behind being an impact that you don’t have to be use that as your crutch. I am an empath. I’m probably the biggest out of control healer. Right? It’s not something that you can unlearn and I don’t mean not to be compassionate. I mean learning how your energy is interfering in somebody else’s healing and you don’t even know it. You know, we, as empaths, we’re typically healers, wanna help people, wanna see everybody do better. Right? And feel good. But what makes me think that my energies actually gonna heal them. It’s a lie because that person’s energy needs to be their energy in their body and that needs to be refined so it can heal itself. It’s different than Amira’s energy. In fact, my energy and many of my students we always do an exercise of separating energies when we finish the class. Because energy between you and I is exchanging, even if you’re thousands of miles away. Anybody listening is probably feeling my energy.

Dr. Amirah Hall: So after this, I will be bringing my energy back. And so the same is true with all my clients is I give them their energy back as there’s an exchange. So the idea as we progress is we build a more condensed sphere of our own frequency. Within the body and outside the body when it becomes more condensed and more higher percentage of uniquely you and your spirit, I mean, the world of possibilities just becomes infinite.

Victoria Volk: So what does that look like? Is it another visualization of almost like this bringing in of, like well, again, myself?

Dr. Amirah Hall: A healthy aura is about arms length around. So it is part of that process, but it’s a process of that I take people through is clearing the chakras as well as clearing the layers of the aura and all so just a continual amount of clearing becoming more aware. Clearing becoming more aware. We become more brighter. Look at our body. When we’re feeling good, We smile at people. We give gifts. We just are more generous and more creative and more flexible and more you know, letting the guy get out of, you know, of the parking lot before you and sit, we’re just more patient than laughing. So I don’t think after we do that, there’s much to do. It’s just enjoying what things light us up.

Victoria Volk: I’m curious if you’re familiar at all with human design.

Dr. Amirah Hall: Somewhat. Yes. I haven’t explored it extensively. I’ve got some friends that have done it. Yeah.

Victoria Volk: I’ve been recently diving a little deep. And I dabbled in the rabbit hole over a year ago, and I’ve recently, I don’t know, timing I suppose and it’s really connecting with me. But what I’m learning though I’m a manifestor energy type for human design. And we have this repelling manifestors have this repelling closed aura and when I first learned about that, it was kinda like, oh, well, people just don’t like me, you know, and the thing is, I don’t see like, I’m within my closed my own aura. I’m within my own closed aura. But it’s not that I’m repelling people. It’s that my energy, either you’re ready to receive it or you’re not, and then there’s something there’s a this energetic exchange. Right? Like, it’s too big or too much for you at this time, but maybe in the future it won’t be. And I’m trying to find how this connects to the energy work that I already do, the energy work that I do, and just really starting to explore that. And I was just curious if you had any insight into that or if that’s.

Dr. Amirah Hall: What I find is I really appreciate your intellect, and I really think it’s a great skill. However, I feel like most of us and I find I get sucked down rabbit holes too, and I like to think I’m intellectual, but I’m not. I don’t know. By the way, meditation, I think, sharpens our intellect, and our sharpen our just ability to know things. They resonate. But I feel like the problem that in the west is that we are over-intellectual. And the problem with energy once you define it and quantum physics has explained this. Right? Mhmm. If you if you define something, it becomes that. So I don’t like to define and say you’re a manifestor. What manifestation to me is everybody is a manifestor, first of all.

Victoria Volk: Oh, yeah. We’re always manifesting.

Dr. Amirah Hall: When somebody locks in a description and says that you’re this, oh, really? I mean, I can prove that different. I can prove that by clearing certain aspects within your space, all of a sudden you redefine yourself, then what? How does their theory or their protocol hold up with that? I don’t believe that we can lock ourselves into an absolute box. I reject those. A repulsive to me because that’s not the nature of energy. As his energetic beings were continually evolving. And so for right now, you might be that. That’s fine. However, if you find that your energy field is repelling people or opportunities or insights or inspiration, then it’s time to shift that, so that it’s not. And that’s all. So I don’t wanna define you that way. Does that make sense to you? Mhmm. Are you a Virgo?

Victoria Volk: I’m a Pisces.

Dr. Amirah Hall: Okay. So then your very nature of Pisces is you’re just swimming in and swimming out and trying to explore and Pisces has a very difficult time with boundaries. They don’t wanna be pinned in. Right? And so I just Yeah I think defining it is actually limiting us. Because I see and know that there’s just such infinite possibilities. I mean, we could really go down some rabbit holes, Victoria. But, I mean, imagine if that was just one dimension and one aspects to you and then other lives, you’re completely different. So how about if we merge all of those aspects together and be the most resourceful, integrated, aligned, present, incredible, abundant, beautiful soul in the present.

Victoria Volk: That’s what I’m working on.

Dr. Amirah Hall: That’s awesome. That’s really awesome. But it’s not in your head. This is the mistake that everybody makes. This is not in your head. The work does not occur there.

Victoria Volk: Oh, absolutely. I totally agree. I actually had a client be like after she worked with me through her grief stuff, in the grief work that I do, she was like people always say, you have to do the work. You have to do the work. And she was like, what’s the work?
She’s like, now I know what the work is.

Dr. Amirah Hall: Yeah.

Victoria Volk: It’s the real

Dr. Amirah Hall: You’re in the crowd.

Victoria Volk: Difficult stuff. Yeah.

Dr. Amirah Hall: Well, it doesn’t have to be difficult.

Victoria Volk: That’s the but the most difficult times in your life, like really looking at them.

Dr. Amirah Hall: Well, and there’s a difference between looking at them or going to talk therapy and you talk till your face is blue about something. I don’t like that. I like honestly, I’m a quick down and dirty kind of girl. I like, you know, give it to me bottom line. Give it to me simple. And let’s get the results fast. That’s kinda how I operate. And that’s why I created these tools that I use is because they do the job. Now let’s get on to having the good stuff. You know? It’s like, hurry up. I don’t wanna I don’t wanna keep living it. I don’t wanna keep rehearsing it. Because the more we talk about it, the more we anchor it, and we’re just connecting with a memory from a plastic experience that’s got an emotional charge to it.

Dr. Amirah Hall: So what if we could just have a magic wand or a stick a dynamite blow that crap up? And then start living the space that we really are. And honestly, I think that’s the biggest adjustment is when we start realizing all the baggage that we’re hauling around isn’t us. We’ve identified with it, but it’s not really who you are. Who who? Now we’re on to it.

Victoria Volk: Well, and then we take on the emotions and then that adjusts our behavior and then those behaviors. Yeah. The heat and then it’s just more grief and more

Dr. Amirah Hall: Well, that’s just how I am and this is who I am, so you have to accept me. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. None of that is true. It’s all a lie. And so, some people are probably rolling their eyes right now and some people are going, I get it. And so we get to we are creating our destiny. We are creating in this moment your present time energy field, whatever it’s consisting I’m holding on to known and unknown that’s conscious and unconscious beliefs and memories and experiences. All of that is creating your future.

Dr. Amirah Hall: So if we create a simple way to start releasing what you are not, because you’re just memories, you will still have the thought of an experience sometimes. Sometimes even some of the memories kind of fade away. And then you have more freedom, more energetic space to focus on what you do want to create. That’s what’s coming into the work. That’s becoming conscious creators, which I believe humanity is being primed for. When we talk about waking up, that’s coming to the awakening moment that we are creating our reality.

Victoria Volk: So what do you see coming up for all of us as a collective in the next year?

Dr. Amirah Hall: So that’s interesting that you would say that. I tuned into a couple guys on YouTube and, honestly, recently, I haven’t tuned into anybody because I don’t want to hear. There’s a lot of doom and gloom. Okay? And I do believe there’s I think there’s a lot of people that wanna suffer. And there’s a lot of people that wanna create more scarcity. I’m on the other end of the spectrum and you can call me idealistic or pollyanna or whatever you want. But, hey, when the economy went to shit in California the worldwide. Right? California was so depressed. And people were losing their houses and their jobs, and I just couldn’t take it. I bailed and I went to Dubai for five years. Now, I say, bailed. Listen. I sold my house. I sold everything and put what was left in a five by five foot storage unit. I went with one way ticket. I didn’t even research Dubai because it was well, it was in twenty ten, but I didn’t research it. I knew one person, and I ended up working with members of the royal family. I ended up working in five-star spas because I didn’t know anybody so I needed to make and build a following. And, honestly, there were times that I would crawl, you know, curl up in a ball and cry at night thinking I was an absolute fool. Because I didn’t know where my next client was gonna come from. And I depended completely on the work I do.

Dr. Amirah Hall: Yes, I was afraid at times. But I also knew that was my point where I needed to be, and it turned out incredible. I learned so much. I explored so much. It was in a grand adventure. I learned so much from the Muslim people and their true beliefs and religion. Know they believe in this energy work. They talk about the gin, these unseen beings in their in their religion. They don’t talk openly too much about it because they don’t wanna call them up or conjure them in. Right? And so I just look, you know, I just have an adventurous part to my spirit. So for me to be around that culture and just to let go and be around incredible wealth, to just drink it, just like going to the forest. Right? You feel and plug into the trees. That’s what Dubai was for me is plugging into that. So when I look at scarcity versus sufficiency, I remember that, right, experience. I’ve just threw myself out there. I put every part of myself out there. And I more than survived. I thrived.

Victoria Volk: It’s interesting. Oh, I’m sorry.

Dr. Amirah Hall: Go ahead.

Victoria Volk: Yeah. It’s interesting you bring that up too because this human design rabbit hole I’ve been going down the aspect of environment really is an important piece of it because when you aren’t aligned with the environment that is conducive to you thriving, you can struggle. And so Yeah. Our environment plays a huge role. I mean, if we’re surrounded by stuff and just piles and junk and I mean, what does that I mean, I’ve always believed that the quarters, you know, it’s a reflection of what’s going on internally. I’ve always believed that, you know, change your environment

Dr. Amirah Hall: Yep.

Victoria Volk: Change your environment, things like that

Dr. Amirah Hall: And change the people you hang out with.

Victoria Volk: That includes the people that you surround yourself with.

Dr. Amirah Hall: If you can’t change the people you’re with, then change the people you’re with. You know, certain resistances that people have, and they’re just not good for us as we grow and thrive. And there’s a lot of people that don’t wanna see somebody thrive. They’re more comfortable being in lack. And then they compare, I came from a family like that. They didn’t celebrate wins. They didn’t cheer me on. They’d rather drag me down. And there’s sometimes we have friends, sometimes it’s somebody that you thought was your best friend, but you start to wake up to the fact that they don’t really celebrate the things you do, then it’s time to find new friends. And the other thing is once we step into coming into our alignment, our true divine design, then we attract people that really effortlessly and very quickly to support us, get a giving us our answers or a new direction.

Dr. Amirah Hall: Dubai was never on my radar. And it was only a client that I had worked with in her life completely changed. She was a doctor in Chicago and everything completely radically changed and she went back to where she was born and which was Dubai. She said, the mirror you need to come to Dubai. And I said, why? Great. Find me somebody to help promote me and I’ll go in. See, I had an open mind. Mhmm. And through caution, I set up some steps that would be reasonable, practical. I went for two weeks. Came back with the two pockets full of cash. And when I love this, say who doesn’t. Right? And so I went, okay. I’m gone with no plan. And I’m a business major. Right? I had a business degree and I knew how to set things up practically, but it it just didn’t work like that for me. And so I think my whole life back to one of your earlier questions that I’ve been trusting my intuition, but it wasn’t validated. Like, I didn’t have an environment or family that would talk about any of these things. And I didn’t have a family that was risk takers. So but even trusting our intuition, like, I would need to go to the grocery store now for this. I don’t know why I could wait later, but no, I need now. Well, I might run into somebody that or or a situation, or maybe I’ve avoided an accident, or maybe I just picked up something and then somebody drops in and so I had it. So whatever those intuitive managers are, I learned to trust mine. They’ve always been with me. But I did close them down for a good part of my life. And depression, grief, trauma, all of those situations, we’ll shut that down. And all the work I do now is to help people thrive in whatever all capacities of their life and to be aligned with who they truly are because that’s that’s the true abundance. That’s the true gift of a lot. That’s our purpose to know who we are.

Victoria Volk: That’s a fantastic way to end this episode because I, one thousand percent agree, we are on the same mission of that, helping people understand themselves, get to know themselves. And lose all these aspects of ourselves that were put on us. Yeah. Whether through expectations or lack of boundaries as kids or these beliefs and patterns and all of those. So how can people work with you?

Dr. Amirah Hall: They can go to my website amirahhall.com and that’s Amirah A M I R A H and Hall H A L L. And I’ve got some free gifts on the website. You can chat with me and we can talk about your next step. I have a reset program that’s a great place to start. It’s a video training. And I also have a master class that’s available on my website that about energy. It’s called manifestation mastery. And, yeah, so there’s a number of things I’ve got a YouTube channel. I’m out and about. And so

Victoria Volk: Anything exciting new coming up or that you’re

Dr. Amirah Hall: I have a class coming up. It’s called intuitive superpowers. It’s a masterclass that’s coming up. But that’s Wednesday. That’s tomorrow.

Victoria Volk: Oh, shoot.

Dr. Amirah Hall: So that won’t work but goal to get on my newsletter and to get on to my list so that you can keep updated for any upcoming events other than that. Yeah, that’s the most current that I’ve got. I will be launching a six-month training, which is an in-depth development of not only your intuitive abilities, but your abilities to manifest. It involves the shock or healing. It involves the mastery it learn and developing the third eye, developing your corevoyant abilities and all your other spiritual abilities. So it’s a robust and mentoring program of six months. So that will be launched in October. So if you’re interested, reach out to me and we can see if that’s appropriate for you.

Victoria Volk: Awesome. Thank you so much for coming back and for doing this part two with me. I’m glad we got to dig into this the practical things that can help people move forward and anything energy stuff I love I love talking about all of this juicy stuff that really was not an aspect of my life up until maybe four years ago. So I’m still very much a newbie.

Dr. Amirah Hall: Well, congratulations. You’re doing amazing. You’re doing awesome work. And it’s such a delight to witness your you look to me like this beautiful flower that’s blooming right under the sun. It’s lovely.

Victoria Volk: Thank you so much. And thank you for being you and for doing the work that you do.

Dr. Amirah Hall: Thank you.

Victoria Volk: And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.

Ep 155 Dr. Amirah Hall | The Aftermath and Awakening of a Near-Death Experience

Dr. Amirah Hall | The Aftermath and Awakening of a Near-Death Experience

 

SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:

This week’s guest is no stranger to death. By the age of 20, she had attended 20 funerals. As an adult, she buried her father while, at the same time, her marriage was ending and her health was deteriorating. Little did Amirah know at the time that all of that loss would lead her on a path of self-discovery, understanding, and acceptance of the gifts she had been given.

Dr. Amirah Hall had always believed she came from a typical, ordinary, normal family, where love and support were the cornerstones of their interactions. But she didn’t realize she grew up in a dysfunctional family. Dysfunction runs deep in families. However, in the midst of Amirah’s life unraveling, she felt a spiritual pull that set her on a path of seeking and understanding.

Like many of us, we experience death as a child, are around it, and are exposed to it, but most don’t become communicators with the dearly departed. What set the ball rolling for Amirah was a trip to Egypt she felt a calling to take. On that trip, she would be surrounded by people she didn’t know in a foreign land who were on a mission to save her life. She would later understand that she was transported far away from her body and back again.

This is Amirah’s story of her near-death experience.

If you or someone you know is struggling with the darkness of life or has experienced the grief of death and want to find the answers, I encourage you to listen to this inspiring episode.

Subscribe to Grieving Voices to hear a Part 2 conversation with  Dr. Amirah! She will be back for another episode where we will dive deeper into spiritual practices, sharpening our tool of intuition, all things energy + more!

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CONNECT WITH VICTORIA: 

 

Victoria Volk: Thank you for tuning in to grieving voices. Today, my guest is Dr. Amirah. She is the founder of Seoul Mystic School, a modern mystery school for psychic development and energy mastery. She’s the author of five books including manifesting miracles one on one and love up your life and was featured in the documentaries to death and back again and angels among us. She’s been practicing psychic medium, spiritual mentorship, and quantum healing after having a life changing near death experience while traveling in Egypt. She’s the past host of lessons from the Light Radio podcast. Thank you so much for joining me today. I’m excited to have this conversation with you.

Dr. Amirah Hall: Thank you. It’s my pleasure. I’m super excited to be here.

Victoria Volk: We were talking a little bit before we started to record, and I had to stop us because there’s so much I wanna get into. But where I usually start interviews with guests is your story and how you’ve become, come to be Dr. Amirah.

Dr. Amirah Hall: Well, thank you. It’s been quite a journey. I’m gonna give you the reader’s digest version. Okay? So don’t even know if reader’s digests around anymore. But I grew up in Canada. I grew up to a in the conservative family. I was raised Catholic. Went to Catholic school for twelve years. I never got in trouble all the way through school. I was an honor student and a hard worker. And I was always very, very sensitive. I had a father that his brother committed suicide. I believe I was eight.

Dr. Amirah Hall: And I’ll never forget that was my first experience of watching or seeing my dad cry. And I remember just standing there just feeling so painful and not being able to help him. My mother was holding him as he was grieving because he found his brother who had shot himself basically in the head.

Dr. Amirah Hall: So then my dad was an alcoholic. I thought I had a normal family, which I guess at the time it was a normal, dysfunctional family. My mom was an enabler and I was one of those people as a young sensitive, I was always trying to keep the peace. And yet, I was so sensitive I would often be said, stop crying. Stop crying. I’ll give you something to cry about. Or why are you crying now? I mean, I would be upset if you know, kid at school played a trick on me and threw a water bomb on me. Well, that any kid would probably be upset with that.

Dr. Amirah Hall: But I was the kid that my mom knew when I walked in that it wasn’t a good day. Right? I was always looking for friends I was always curious. I always found myself going out and building relationships and building friendships. So what happened was I think at least a little of ten, my mother had a brother and sister that died two days apart. Now my aunt was a nun in the Catholic church. And my uncle, well, he was only thirty years old. My aunt was twenty-four. That was pretty significant because it was sudden for my aunt. Well, we knew about a month before my uncle was sudden he was died of cirrhosis of the liver, but he was a non drinker. So it was a a real a moment in time where I remember the chaos and I remember people coming over with with casseroles. And again, I was sort of numb. Like, what is this? I didn’t know what it meant. She went to heaven.

Dr. Amirah Hall: And my and then the nuns or the hot the convent all descended on our home. And it’s funny because they told us that my aunt wasn’t part of our family. So they only informed the family a month before she passed. And so there was a lot of discussion about family being upset with this. Right? We didn’t know. And their comment was she was part of their family. At God’s family, she wasn’t part of our family. So we didn’t need to know.

Dr. Amirah Hall: And so that was pretty significant in terms of me even trying to understand one of the nuns befriended me because I was so sensitive and I was crying. She would write me letters for years. And she was so graceful and peaceful and supportive. She was the first really mentor that I had, that reminded me that I was pretty or this, that I was smart. And so that was my first experience with religion shutting us down. My mom stopped going to church. And by the time I got to high school, I would go with friends to their churches. I was curious.

Dr. Amirah Hall: I remember the first time I thought if I go in that church, I might not come out. I’m like, die. Like, what’s gonna happen? It was so ingrained in me that this was a really bad thing to do, a bad idea. But I went and I lived and so enough about that because that was I think my quest that began for finding out who is God who is Jesus and wanting a connection.

Dr. Amirha Hall: My grandfather died. I was having connections and visions with my aunt but I didn’t know what to do with it. My grandfather passed from the same family, and grandpa gave me a dream before he passed. And then he showed me on the path. We were both walking along. We were holding hands. And grandpa just dropped my hand and he didn’t speak. He spoke to me telepathically. It’s like, I’m going this way. I’m taking this fork in the road. You’re going this way. And I just knew. That his journey on earth was gonna end.

Dr. Amirah Hall: I went camping with some friends that weekend, and we were sitting around the campfire, and I just blurred it out. Am I going to wear to the funeral? They’re like, what funeral? What are you talking about? Got home and my mom met me at the gate and mentioned that my grandfather passed. I knew in the moment. And so that was my, I guess, you could say, curiosity was death that continued to build and I continued to By the time I was twenty, I had been to twenty funerals. And Catholic funerals were not anything I mean, everybody just cried. And so, but I was starting to feel like there was something more. There was something beyond this, and so I held on to that fascination. Until well, no. I guess it was really a pivot point of my dad’s death.

Dr. Amirah Hall: And when I went home, I was living in San Diego at the time and I went home to Canada for my dad’s funeral. And well, he was in the process of making his transition. And it was gruesome. It was painful. And he was in ICU for two weeks. So that was back in nineteen ninety. So you can just imagine we didn’t have Internet, we didn’t really have anything to communicate, but or to understand what was going on. They had hooked them up with life support but it was just pushing his body up and down. The forcing air into the lungs to make it look like he was alive. Meanwhile, his whole body was shrinking. And we were waiting talk about crazy.

Dr. Amirah Hall: We’re waiting for my ants to arrive from Florida. California, respectively. And so the rest of us just kind of suffered watching this. It was just incredibly painful. Like, gold moment just cry and sob and it was torment for me. The doctors kept saying any minute, any minute, now it went on for two weeks. So I empathize with people that with families that send to Alzheimer’s or a long-delayed death and is it feels like torture. So at the same time, I was going through divorce.

Dr. Amirah Hall: I had just started my divorce. In fact, Yeah. It was I don’t wanna go down that road, but it was something that was in process. So after dad’s death, I was at a real low. And I was going home. I was flying back. I picked up this book. I think it was in the Vancouver airport. “Many lives, many masters.” And that was a first glimmer into yes we do go on. Because that my internal question is, what happens when we die? Where do we go? What where what is all this? So it was really driven home with my dad’s death, and it was like my wake-up call.

Dr. Amirah Hall: And by the time I got back to my job, my health was failing. I was not going to work. And back in those days, they could candy for that. So they did. They fired me. So I was going through a divorce, my dad died, and now I have no money and no job. And at the time, I was making a very high six fees. Not six figures. I was high-five figures. And back in the nineties, that was significant. Right? But then nothing and no support from anybody.

Dr. Amirah Hall: So I was in a real talk about dark night of the soul and then having no energy. The doctor told me, yeah, well, you look like you’re dying. You go on or prepare your affairs. You’re either gonna die or you’ll end up in a wheelchair for the rest of your life. Well, that’s not good news for anybody. That’s the worst thing possible that I could have heard at the time.

Dr. Amirah Hall: And so I went home and I to use your word grieve. At the time, I would call that a holy hell. I was just miserable. I was falling apart at the seams from every angle, didn’t know who to talk to. I had no I was new in the states. I was only here about three years by then. And so I didn’t have strong relationships. I didn’t have a good support system.

Dr. Amirah Hall: So when everything hit the fan, after crying for two weeks, and a friend said, you need acupuncture. Try this, Amirah, that’ll help your health. So, God bless her. I had no other options. The doctor threw me to the curb. Right? It was just like, Okay. Well, this is some hope. Let’s try this out. So that’s when I started down the avenue of alternative care.

Dr. Amirah Hall: So again, back in the early nineties, there was it was almost like you were doing back office an abortion or something when you talk about acupuncture, like, mama was the word, no way, oh, that was horrible. But I had no other options. I went in for it. And so that progressed and I got better and a little bit better and a little bit better. And I built some businesses, some entrepreneurial endeavors, and I started working with gemstones and making custom jewelry. I started expanding that to an international market.

Dr. Amirah Hall: So I was doing really, really well. But not making enough money. But my health was restoring and I started feeling and stronger and I felt like there was something missing in my life. Like, I had the money now, business was in my well, I got hired in the tech industry. My health was getting better. The divorce was finished. I had more money coming in and I’m like, fine. Okay. I’m good. But something’s missing.

Dr. Amirah Hall: So I told a friend that I was feeling a sense to go to Egypt. And she gave me a brochure. And I found myself a few months later with soon as I said, well, I’ll go if I get my tax return. And I got to pay for this. Sure enough, it manifested this tax return refund.

Dr. Amirah Hall: And so I go to Egypt, which was an incredible spiritual journey. We meditated in temples. When I landed in Egypt, it was the strangest feeling. I know this sounds weird, but I felt like I was home. And it was a sense of being so familiar yet I had never you know, I didn’t study Egypt. It wasn’t on my bucket list. I wasn’t somebody that was fascinated. I did it maybe science report in school or something, but that was it. Book reporter, what did they call that social studies project? This was an amazing experience of learning about the ancient teachings, learning about the mystery schools, and I gravitated towards that. It just made sense to me.

Dr. Amirah Hall: Well, I met someone there and I extended my stay after the trip was over, went down to Luxor from Cairo, where the tour ended, went down to Luxor, and hung out for a week and I said, I’d really like to get some antiquities for the jewelry that I make. Some beads. Well, this was a very very primitive village right outside the valley of the kings where all the ancient pharaohs twos are buried. And so this little village, people their homes are perched up right at the backside of this mountain where all the tombs are. And so people would be digging through their back wall, so these houses are literally built on the mountain. Right? They’re digging at night and they’re trying to find tools or antiquities or any kind of treasure. So they’re trying to work ahead of the you know, the ministry of antiquities, digging. And so they would have these, Arabic carpets hanging on the back wall cover off the tunnel. So I knew from that that there’s a high likelihood some of these people would have beads. We’re just talking some small beads. Nobody’s gonna notice this ant colony leaving the country. Right? That was my logic.

Dr. Amirah Hall: And so anyway, we found a guy. And he showed me the beads, and I think there was a handful. And he’s one in three hundred bucks, and I didn’t have that much cash at the time. So I went, I said, come back tomorrow with the cash, go to the ATM, come back. Now that was the day I was leaving. So it was about noontime, minus heck. And we go back to pay, we’ll have it his money. And when you visit when you have a transaction like that or your friend, especially I was a special guest because my friend, Jude, who was brought me there. They bring out cocacola or a tea, coffee, water, you sit and visit. You it’s very polite.
It’s not just a slam-bam. Thank you, ma’am. Pay and run. It’s not like that at all.

Dr. Amirah Hall: So here I am, the only female, and they bring out this green garden lawn chair. Right? I’m sitting on this plastic chair. And all of a sudden, they bring out this joint. And Mohammed says, you know, it’s the best. It’s the best. And he’s screaming and I’m coming from this dysfunctional family, I’m feeling agitated myself, and I’ve disturbed the peace, so to speak. He is shouting. And Arabic’s Egyptians are very vocal and loud and expressive. Let’s call it that way. And I said, I don’t smoke. And I had tried a few times. It didn’t really do anything for me. And I just was like, No. No. Thank you. And then the shouting continued. So I’m thinking, oh, god. I’ve insulted the man. I’ve gone against their protocol. And now I’m the only woman here. I should mind, do something here because this could escalate.

Dr. Amirah Hall: So I thought, okay, it’s not done anything for me in the past. Maybe I’ll just acquiesce, be a graceful guest, and I’ll be on my way. Nothing will happen. Right? Okay. Didn’t happen that way. The joint went around twice. And all of a sudden, they have these workers that are chiseling Alibaster outside the factory entrance. And so they all of a sudden showed up in this showroom. And so there’s like eight or ten of us in this room. So one joint goes around, the circle, twice. And everybody bounces up. They’re ready to walk out the door except for me. I can’t get out of the chair. I’m sitting there. Only I find myself standing behind myself and I’m witnessing all the people that are in the room and it’s like they have an individual television and I’m why watching this video play out on their on your screen. And I’m just horrified and I’m like, what the heck is this? I need to stay in my body. I need to get back. I need to come back. And so I thought to myself, I so I was coming and going coming out in and out, it was sort of a subtle phase. I must have said something. I don’t recall hearing myself verbalized, but I definitely had my hands out in front of me. And I just thought I need water. If I could splash my face with this water, I’ll stay here. I won’t leave. I just knew I needed to stay. And so obviously, they’re laughing, and everything’s in slow motion at this time for me.

Dr. Amirah Hall: And my friend Juju must have either sense that I need water or they also were aware that a lot of westerners get dehydrated. So that was a part of the front and center for their awareness. So he comes towards me with the water bottle and he pours water in my hands and I remember getting it right about, you know, six inches from my face thinking, oh, shit, my mascara is gonna run. That was the last spot. And I blacked out.

Dr. Amirah Hall: Now, what they informed me and filled in the points at this point, my body stiffened. And according to my friend, juju, my breathing stopped, my heart stopped, and he was pounding my chest with all his might to get my heart going, call that jokingly, Egyptian CPR. And he was just going to be, beat the drum so to speak. They drag me out under the arms, drag me out into a pickup truck. So the pickup trucks there are the taxis. They’ve got benches along the back of the box, but they stuck me in the cab so my there’s the driver and juju’s in the middle, and I’m on the outer edge. They’ve got my head propped up outside the window. Trying to give me air, some oxygen. And they’re barreling down this dusty, sandy road to nowhere as far as I know. So I’m out of it.

Dr. Amirah Hall: The next thing I remember is coming through the night sky and curling through the sky like I was a comet. And towards a familiar blue ball way off in the distance. And I’m like, oh, that’s where I’m going. And that little ball got bigger and bigger and bigger and it was like so massive. And I’m like, oh, how am I gonna find myself? And then the next thought was, well, I heard this talking language, but I had no clue. And I’m like, I don’t know that language. I don’t know where that is. And then it went, that’s Arabic. I’m in Egypt. There was like a GPS beacon that was just directing me to where my body was. And then it felt like I was trying to put on wet clothes. Have you ever put on wet clothes after going swimming or getting thrown in the lot. It’s miserable. It’s cold and yucky in. It’s just awful. So I felt like I was struggling to get in my body, like putting on my clothes for about twenty minutes. It wasn’t that long, but felt like that. At the same time, the bright light was incredibly painful to my eyes, and it hurt almost to coming into my body. At the same time, I felt this incredible overwhelming bliss and love and peace. And so it was a peculiar experience and Juju stayed with me. Basically, what happened, this then I realized I’m in my body and I’m hearing these voices and I can’t open my eyes and I reach over and I touched his arm. Well, he just law like the dead man coming alive or the mummy or so he was very animated. And I’m thinking, I don’t know what the problem here. Well, I said, where are you taking me? And he blurted out something in Arabic, which then he realized she doesn’t speak Arabic. I have to speak English. So they were highly excited. You know, this was extremely difficult. I said, well, I need a bathroom.

Dr. Amirah Hall: Now, here’s another problem, Victoria. Back in those days, there were no western-sized type toilets in the Valley and the Kings in that primitive village. There were holes in the ground. Okay? And there’s these little porcelain markers where you put your feet. I couldn’t stand, and I didn’t know that. And I didn’t even realize there was something problem with toilets. Okay. So I’m saying, they said, well, we’re taking you to the hospital, and I’m thinking, Oh, shit. A hospital, I mean, primitive country here. That’ll kill me. If I go to some gerund lights in the bone docs, so that was where I was at. I’m like, oh, I just need a toilet, please. I’m fine. And so there was some they can Arabic, and so they finally figured it out, oh, their brother, his brother, had a flat that was europeanized. Okay? And so the facilities were appropriate for a woman. That’s another issue because in that culture back at that time, that a man cannot go into a private space like that with a woman. This is the worst. This is like the worst crime known to man. I mean, they were it would stone a woman probably for doing that openly. So here I am in their flat their apartment. And I won’t let him leave me in the bathroom. They carry me up the stairs. He’s on this edge of this bathtub sitting next to me and his tiers are just streaming down his face. And I’m blissed out. I’m thinking I’m so proper. I’m modestly covered my legs, so nothing’s exposed. And I’m thinking everything’s cool. The sister-in-law’s beaten down the door. She’s frantic because a man and a woman are in the bathroom. She’s thinking they’re having sex. That’s their primitive mindset. That’s time. Well, nothing I could say or do, and I didn’t realize what all was going on. I’m completely blissed. And then he just said, you die. You don’t understand. He said, you died.

Dr. Amirah Hall: So fast forward, I was on the bed. I’m they brought me into the bedroom. I’m laying their recovery. They brought me water and yogurt and an orange. And it was the strangest experience because the orange it was cut orange. They also knew as a westerner, I couldn’t have any other type of food. It needs to be peeled or it needs to be boiled or something like that. So the yogurt was safe. And they suspected I was dehydrated or something was a miss with my electrolytes. Right? Because they’ve seen it. And westerners are just not. Oh, and I failed to mention, I had done a thirty day detox prior to going to Egypt. So I was primed plus I had this two-week spiritual journey prior to that. So I was primed and hypersensitive to all of these types of things. Right? But I was oblivious to it.

Dr. Amirah Hall: So what happens is I start seeing this being, this entity. Her name is Sekhmet. She’s a lion’s face with a female body. She was just a statue to me going through Egypt I didn’t relate to all the Egyptology and all the beams and the deities. It was overwhelming. Right? When you first go and you just okay, it’s a nice story or that’s their religion and it just didn’t resonate, but I’m seeing her in the wood grain of the arm war and I’m thinking I’m losing my mind.

Dr. Amirah Hall: And there’s a window with Nile Valley there and there’s these sheared draperies fluttering inside the room, the wind was or the breeze was coming into the room, and I see the bright blue sky and this brilliant evergreen Nile valley. I’m looking out there. That’s real. I can’t look at this. This is not real. And from that moment on, I have been seeing beings and entities. At first, it felt like I stepped into a scene in the Star Wars movie, the Cantina. You know, or all these strange beings and deities and actually it was overwhelming But so the first part of it, I was still blissing out and denying I was seeing that. I was trying to focus on something that was tangible. And Juju escorted me to Cairo. I got my tour guide was there waiting in line, and I remember I asked girl, who’s that lion goddess with female, you know, body? And she said, oh, that’s Sekhmet. Sekhmet is the healer of healers. She was the patron saint in Egypt. She was known by all the doctors. They would pray to her. Okay. That’s nice information.

Dr. Amirah Hall: I get on the plane, I sleep all the way back to JFK. It’s like an it was an eight-hour flight, but it probably had been fifteen hours to this point by the time I get to JFK. And I get there, I get off the Jet Way, and all the people look like black and white paper dolls. And I’m freaking out. I’m all by myself. And I’m like, this is horrible. I’m horrified what I’m seeing. And I don’t wanna come back here. This place America is horrible. It’s angry. It’s depressed. It’s grief-stricken. It was just it was very low vibration. It’s like literally I stepped off a JetWay into another dimension and I went, and I kept looking at my book. I know it was I realized at one point it was upside down. I couldn’t read it. But I wanted to focus on something that was real and none of that out there was real.

Dr. Amirah Hall: That continued until I got to San Diego. I got off the plane, so it had probably been about a twenty four hour journey, the whole thing. Get off the plane and that moist air hit me, and it was like, Okay, I’m back. And and and and that noise stopped. However, for about nine months, I was stuck in a very deep depression. One, I didn’t wanna be here. Two, I didn’t know what the f happened. I was confused in ninety, so this was in nineteen ninety-eight. There was no internet. There was no resources. There was no.

Dr. Amirah Hall: So I started going to psychics and healers or anybody. I definitely didn’t wanna go see a psychologist because I’m like, they’re gonna lock me up and throw away the key. There is no freaking way I’m going to those people. I know something happened. I am different. However, I haven’t lost my mind. I was that hardworking student. I was that type a personality responsible and honest. And so I went to all these healers and you know what? I got really ticked off because they told me something different every single one because they didn’t know. And then I finally got the message, okay. I gotta figure it out myself. I get it. I get it. Okay.

Dr. Amirah Hall: I found a friend brought me to Mexico. I found this healer. She reads cards, but she wasn’t a healer. She was a card reader. And she’s saying in Spanish to my French I don’t understand the cards. It says she died. This card should be over here in the future of this death card, but it says she died. So we kinda looked at each other, like, yep. Okay. That thanks a lot. That validates something like that happens.

Dr. Amirah Hall: I went back to Egypt the following year and my friend Jude brought me to see a holy man in the far south of Egypt in s one. And he was just a guy that would hang out in the in the market in this little cube, not a kiosk, but they have these little shops, right, with all these shawls or whatever it was. We brought him a very luxurious gift. And I said, what happened? Of course, to do is explain or translating to this holy man. And he said, She didn’t die in in in Arabic, you know, in their mind, their level of understanding. He said, but she went very, very, very far away. So, technically, my body wasn’t buried and I wasn’t, you know, tuned, but I went very, very far away. So that helped me understand.

Dr. Amirah Hall: And then when I came back, I continued asking a friend of mine that was on the trip referred me to another healer. And this healer, he he was looking at my energy, and he said, oh, he said, you’ve got some stuck energy. And I’m like, okay, that’s something to do. I get to undo that stuck energy then. Right? It seemed pretty simple to me. And I did. I began starting to understand the nuances of my energy. And what that all meant. And within about six months, I well, I started feeling happier I started feeling sleeping better. I was more inspired. My creativity was coming back. I wasn’t a bitch on wheels. You know, I because that when though I first came back, I fired all my friends. I stopped all my hobbies. I got fired from my job again because I was just miserable. It wasn’t fun to be around. It wasn’t fun to be anywhere. I wanted to go home. I didn’t want to be here at all.

Dr. Amirah Hall: So I figured I gotta write about this story. So I go to the book expo. And I’m trying to think I can hook up with an agent or a publisher. I didn’t know how this whole thing worked. And only to be rejected. But, you know, people looked at me like, you gotta be crazy. You know, this you were just hallucinating girl. You know, you’re just this is cuckoo crazy. And they give away all these books. And so I’m I guess I was a glutton and I fill these two linen bags with these big heavy, hard bound books. And so I was my back was breaking.

Dr. Amirah Hall: And I said, I need a massage desperately. So I found this Chinese massage place. I go to the massage and this guy’s walking on my back and it hurt like hell. And I had a spontaneous out of body experience. So, those whole year was less than a year, maybe about nine months. I had been asking, where did I go? What happened? I’m different. I’m different. And I’ve been searching. Where did I go? I know I’m different, but what? You know, now what? So that’s when I had this out of body experience and I was transported, teleported, I was greeted by this being. It was almost like my body appeared with this being that was just like an egg-shaped, fuzzy, white energy, a presence. And my body literally melted, and I created this life form, light form, and the guide said to me, I’m gonna take you on a tour of the hall, but you can’t stay. And so there I was escorted into this place. It was this grand, incredible building. I struggled to this day to describe it. It was ultimate perfection and beauty. The precision was beyond anything that Earthwards can describe. And I was merged into a conference room. And my sense is there were twelve people. I didn’t count them, but it felt like there was a board or a committee of twelve. And they were all dressed identical. Very three d like and like suits and proper and formal. And then their heads were glowing And at the top of their head, it was like a lid open, like a teapot. And there was this glowing ball of light that just streamed into my head, right into my third eye, I guess, I could say. And it’s and they said to me, you you can know anything you need to know, whatever you need to know it.

Dr. Amirah Hall: And instantly, I was teleported out of there and I was standing with my guide. It was, like, not visible. There’s a presence with the guide communicating. And there I was standing in front of this corridor that went on for infinity.
And there were doors on either side of the corridor that sat at east my guide said, you can enter any door that you choose. You can’t stay. So I went to the easiest route. I took the first door of my right. It was a gold door. And I stepped through it. It was like I merged through it. And I stepped into what felt like a kaleidoscope of color. And it was moving patterns. And it was incredibly rich, warm, comforting embracing in ways that the only way I can describe it was, like, going back into momma’s room and feeling the love and the support and the safety. And I said, what is this? And the voice said to me, This is the fabric of all creation. This is love. And I was just so immersed into it and so still and so full. And then I was full of gout. And I’m like, I don’t know, rude. I was liking this. I wanted to stay there. And then I went across the corridor. I entered this the store across the way. It was pink. And I merged through that door and it was a solid green Emerald Green Energy. I said, well, what’s this? And they told what I then saw was my life review.

Dr. Amirah Hall: And I saw a timeline of my own life, all the places where my emotions had gotten stuck or interfered with what I was creating or my flow. I could see that I created my I created the dysfunction and the decease in my life with my emotions. And being highly emotional, that’s how I did it. And those emotions weren’t flowing and I was very attached to them and that way of being. I knew in an instant I needed to go home well, at home. I needed to detox. And the detox was not only the physical body, It was mental, emotional, spiritual. And I realized in that moment that that was my purpose. And to understand who I am and that everything was energy. I had stepped into the quantum field. I understood it at a level. That was beyond my words or my vocabulary at the time. I think, finally, when I came across Doopak Chopra, I’m like, oh, I get it. This is where I went. This is what it is. And this is the explanation that and my guide told me that meditation was crucial. For all of it, for all of our disease, all of our dysfunction. And that there is tools to practice, but it was a it was a journey. And so for twenty three years now, I’ve been doing this work. And yes, I still see beings. I connect with loved ones on the other side because they are just changed forms, and I’m able to access that and receive information. I’m also have the ability to heal them. If there are a sense of being stuck. So Victoria, I feel like I’ve just firehosed you here with the story and didn’t take happen. I apologize.

Victoria VolK: That’s okay. And I don’t do you have to go soon?

Dr. Amirah Hall: No. No. I’m good. I just I feel like when it starts coming the stream of information, you know, it’s like I get so excited to get it out and to share that often don’t take a breath myself. So

Victoria Volk: Well, I felt like I was listening to an audiobook. Like, it was just I was envisioning it as you were talking and just felt like I was kind of experiencing it with you in a sense. There was a couple of questions that I thought of on the way as you’re speaking. Can you speak to a little bit what when you were feeling it in your darkest place? Physically when your body was starting to break down, what did that actually look like?
Like, what were you struggling with physically?

Dr. Amirah Hall: I can remember driving to work after my dad died and having to pull over to the side of the road and just overwhelming tears and sobbing. And I had healed my I had already started personal development work, and I had been healing my relationship with my dad. So I thought we were good. And when he died, I was so freaking mad. I was he was a dirty rotten bastard for dying and leaving me. You know, that we just got going in terms of healing what we had. And I just felt so jipped, you know, losing both men in my life and that that were significant and my the divorce and my dad. And, yeah, I’ve become I became completely dysfunctional. Like I said, miserable. I was I was heavy. I was negative. I was so over time, that built up. And then, well, the doctor told me I had chronic fatigue syndrome. So, you know, they don’t know how to diagnose that. They lump that in with everything.

Dr. Amirah Hall: And it’s my belief system that fibromyalgia you name it, you name it. In fact, I can see the beginnings of cancer. In fact, before the show, we were talking about a client that had recently lost one client lost her son to suicide a year ago. Another client her friend wasn’t my client yet. She lost her son seventeen years ago. Now that woman seventeen years is hanging on to that energy of the loss. And her fear of letting that go is that she’ll lose connection with her son and perhaps, you know, be a bad mom as a result of that. You know, you just have to Whereas the other lady who has been healing those energies of loss and pain and just incredible separation, that feeling of separation. She’s thriving.
She’s doing things that she hasn’t done in years. She’s having a great connection with her son now. She can actually feel him come and give her a hug. And so there’s I find the contrast so fascinating, not not as a judgment, but as an as I think as hope or as an as a lesson, as a possibility that there are other ways that we can still have that connection with our I talk to my dad all the time and when I pull out his hunting knife and I’m cutting something, I always feel him coming like, watch your fingers young lady. It’s like every single time he comes in for that. Yeah.

Victoria Volk: I think that’s a great I’m glad this came up because I think people tend to focus on that separation, like you said. Like, the focus is just the separation. Like, I’m never gonna see them again. I’m never gonna speak to them again. Never gonna hug them or touch them or pick up the phone and call them again. It’s that the focus is so much on the separation. That you can’t even fathom the idea that the relationship is continuing. Right? That’s still a relationship that’s continuing, but it’s so unhealthy and dysfunctional and — Right. — and not self-serving at all.

Dr. Amirah Hall: Yeah. And only turning other people too because

Victoria Volk: Exactly —

Dr. Amirah Hall: You’re affecting the entire family or friends and your all your other relationships suffer. So you have to, you know, if we can have a moment and just think in terms of I know when we’re grieving, we’re not thinking of anybody else. We’re really self absorbed. Most of the time, I was. And it was all me and my pain, and I didn’t have the bandwidth for anybody else. But I can honestly say I’ve been divorced over thirty years now. My ex-husband committed suicide in COVID. And I know there’s a growing number of suicides and depression that people are experiencing. And what I’d like to say to that is I couldn’t connect with him for a very long time. And as a medium, as somebody that does talk to the dead, I thought, well, this is interesting.

Dr. Amirah Hall: When a client comes to me, for instance, my client, whose son had committed suicide a year ago, I couldn’t connect with him at first. And what I the first impression I got was his energy let’s call it a package of energy. And he was stuck in an elevator, and he wasn’t going up or down, and it was confined And I could see that there was drug-induced and so there was a question of was it accidental or was it intentional? But I also saw the depression. So, you know, it all sort of came together. It wasn’t it wasn’t a place of blaming one thing. You know what I think is those of us grieving or left behind, we wanna have a reason. We wanna pinpoint what exactly it was that I don’t know as if it’s gonna help ease our pain or maybe your guilt? That we should have known something. So when we connected with him, I’m trying to remember. See, because I’m in a slight trance when I look and connect. So I don’t remember my story’s crystal clear unless we talk about it.

Dr. Amirah Hall: And so my client and I, we’ve talked about it many, many times as it comes up. But So we I I can see the energy where they’re stuck, and I can move the energy. So, like, I understand in religions, they talk about limbo. Or purgatory. Mhmm. And I would say that’s probably the zone. It’s like a zone. Like when I came back from my near death, I think I was stuck in a limbo that was freaking depressing. It was horrible that zone. And so just like when we leave the body, it’s my understanding that we can that can happen also. Now I’ve also connected with loved ones on the other side who committed suicide, who weren’t stuck. Okay? So it’s not a it’s not a blanket statement. It’s not It’s so in my own husband, I did some clearing and I did all the work and connect tried to connect because this was a man. The reason we got divorced is I couldn’t be me. I couldn’t I couldn’t express my need to connect with spirituality. He wasn’t having anything about it. So that was the sort of the breaking point for us. Well, he was just a whole life atheist, and he didn’t believe in anything. So that’s why I think I’m such a advocate for, you know, increasing our self awareness and and awakening our consciousness to all that we are because guess what? That’s the only freaking thing we take with us. Is our consciousness. And I’ve been witnessing that and communicating with that. And yes, we can affect those loved ones that seem to be stuck. Okay? For some reason, it’s like our energy is a soul in this human body has seniority. At some for for, I don’t know, the heirarchy, but it’s my understanding and from my experience.

Dr. Amirah Hall: So in doing the work for my ex-husband, Dave, I cleared the energy, then one day I was walking on my path where all the cardinals come to say hello to me. And this one day, all of a sudden, I felt Dave. And I’m like, wow. I wasn’t looking for it or expecting you know, and he just he had the attitude of, you know, your first love like, when you’re a puppy love and you’re so sweet on somebody and you’re kind of embarrassed or shy and that’s how he was. He was like a young soul that didn’t really know how this worked and that he was just beginning at his level of comprehension of what love was. And he was reflecting to me some of the things he did for me. Like, I didn’t think it was very funny or nice for a vacuum for Christmas. And he thought that was loving. Okay. And so back in those days, I was, you know, that was meant to be done. And, you know, so I was getting to laugh at some of these ridiculous things that I got spun up over, but he was showing me that he really, really did love me. And that was incredibly healing for me, spent all these years and a surprise. And it’s been it was two years after he passed that I was finally able to connect with him. I didn’t I didn’t work on it and intend on it, you know, and make it like I had to. But that’s what happens when we heal. It’s us that needs to heal, then the communication. They’re right there.

Victoria Volk: Oh, is that your tip? Is that people work on healing themselves? If —

Dr. Amirah Hall: Absolutely. —

Victoria Volk: so that they can connect?

Dr. Amirah Hall: Absolutely. We are we’re always like you and I are telepathically connected. And, you know, it’s just because they’ve left changed forms doesn’t mean they’re not communicating or they’re not able to communicate. It’s us. It’s the receiver. That’s been dumb down or doled out. And, you know, just a little the frequency, we have to raise our frequency to have that connection. It’s just like sometimes you can call somebody and add all the static on the line or it’s intermittent and you go, you know what? Let’s just hang up. You call again and boom, it’s good. Right? And that’s like that with communicating with spirit. So you don’t need a medium, but you need to get clear. And I find one of the very basic tools that I teach people because people don’t know how to be presence. Because if they’re stuck thinking about how their loved one died or some things they didn’t say, or they wish it could be different. They wish Johnny was with us at Christmas or it’s his birthday today, then you’re stuck in the past. Your energy is literally in that past experience that moment in time. And what that does overall is it reduces your frequency and you’re stuck in what I call depression. And so in the work I do is we learn to really accumulate, reaccumulate our own energies, our lives, and raise that so that we can be happier. So we are more inspired. So we are more motivated and fluid. And then, it’s like when opportunities open up, set new situations, you present yourself in ways that you couldn’t have expected. You know, my client that I was sharing when we cleared her energy and she was able to have that communication with her son, she started wearing shorts for the first time in thirty years. Right? And she would she said, I’m cutting up and I’m goofing off and I’m just she goes, my daughter doesn’t even know me like this. So parts of herself that she’d shut off, maybe when she decided when she became a mom. That’s the moment to come. Okay. Now I gotta be serious. I gotta grow up. And those aspects to our personality or what’s in our heart kinda get lost? Yeah. So it is work. It’s being a raising our awareness to being present. Having the appropriate tools, how can I do this? You know, if it’s I’m not a subscriber to talk therapy because in my own moments of grief, I just I got sick and tired of just talking about it. Like, I’m a bottom line girl. Give me some freaking way to get rid of it because I like this feeling to be caught in this loop.

Victoria Volk: Exactly. And so, like, even for what the work that I do with grievers, it’s action based. You’re always taking action. There’s steps. There’s it’s a process. Right. It’s evidence-based. Yes. I’m totally and it’s Transforms my transform my life and my grief too.

Dr. Amirah Hall: Yes. Yes. And, you know, like, we were talking. I mean, you can be sacked from your job, and that’s grief.

Victoria Volk: Mhmm.

Dr. Amirah Hall: You know, you can, yes, losing a loved one is is probably the ultimate, but losing a relationship, that’s a heavy grief. And

Victoria Volk: Loss of health.

Dr. Amirah Hall: Yes.

Victoria Volk: And all of it

Dr. Amirah Hall: I had all

Victoria Volk: of you. Yeah.

Dr. Amirah Hall: And I’m not alone. I know there’s millions of people doing the same shit that I did. And because we’ve not been taught, we’ve not been taught the nuances of our energy. How our thoughts are creating?

Victoria Volk: Can I ask you a question? Because something came up when I because in my in my own personal experience with my own energy. Right?

Dr. Amirah Hall: Uh-huh.

Dr. Amirah Hall: So I think, you know, as time, we can go through periods where, you know, like, for my for me personally, like, I’ve been on and off the health wagon for many years on and off on and off. What I have discovered just in the last month is nutrition and how food is fuel. And food is cheap. Right? Energy?

Dr. Amirah Hall: Yes.

Victoria Volk: Everything you eat is energy. The plants animals like it, this is energy. And if you are consistently and especially in grief or if you’re depressed, stress, can be a big one? Like, what are you reaching for? The sugary cake? or

Dr. Amirah Hall: of course.

Victoria Volk: Probably not the salad. Right? So so what she do you want? If you are ready or low vibe and you’re already down and out and you’re feeling in the dumps, that sugary cake is not gonna bring you up. Right? It’s not gonna bring up your tea. So when you are going through like that deep depressive period in your life, I imagine you are probably terribly under eating and not caring for wrongly eating, I actually heard something not that long ago about vegetarians. About how vegetarians can actually come off as very angry people, because they don’t they don’t eat protein. But what they don’t realize is that they’re still eating they’re still eating living things. Right? So it’s like they don’t wanna eat meat. Like, because it’s because it’s animal.

Victoria Volk: But a plant is a living thing too. Right?

Dr. Amirah Hall: I know. They have no problem killing that.

Victoria Volk: Right. So let’s bring it with poison. Yes.

Dr. Amirah Hall: Well, here’s you know, we could that’s a whole another podcast because back in those days in the nineties, and when I’ve discovered with chronic fatigue, I started colon cleansing. I started doing detoxes. Like I said before, one year before I went to Egypt, I started doing thirty day detoxes twice a year. And I was into juicing, and I was into enemas, and a coffee enemas, and you name it. Well, at one point, I was vegan then I went to a mix. Right? So I’ve seen the journey across the board. Now, because things were so compromised as a young girl with my emotions and eating all the carbs growing up and sandwiches every day to go to school. And I believe while my immune system is still compromised. So now we understand about leaky gut. We understand, hey, I’ve been in the process of healing. It’s a big it’s a long journey. And I’ve recently switched the carnivore, which I have to say, I don’t tell many people and I don’t admit but I am absolutely loving it and I’m shocked at my own self because there was one time, I would say to you, if you’re eating animal, you’re, you know, going to the hell or the you know. But I as a vegetarian, complete vegetarian for a number of years, I got very sick. I got anemic. Right? And so all of these you know, broad range and scope swings that I’ve done to do desperate to heal myself. I think the biggest most important thing I’ve done is my energy. And when we have energy that’s stuck, that will make us crave carbs because today, even though I’m now carnivore in like six or nine months, I know people that have been a carnivore for fourteen years. And the thing of it is is their that cow is eating all the nutrients and pre-digesting it is going into the meat. So that’s the argument. So my health has improved. Inflammation has been reduced and cravings have pretty much stopped. Yeah. So it’s a shock to me and I’m delighted. However, I’m as I said, I’m working on it and I’m actually gaining weight. Now is it because my body still you know, a lot of things, adrenals, etcetera. But one thing I notice is I when I’m teaching a class or working with clients, two days before I’m like, shit. And I find myself driving to the store and getting that butter pecan ice cream. I’m like, what the I don’t I don’t need this. What is it’s somebody’s energy, literally, plugging into me. I get on the call, I said, you know, like, buttered pecan ice cream by any chance, do you? That’s my favorite. No. Unknowingly, I’ve been affected by this person’s energy that was seeking me and looking for their answers or their healing. And so it does affect us, especially ultra-sensitive people. So if all of a sudden, like the other night, I was craving chocolate, That’s not normally on my list, but I’m like, okay, somebody’s energies permeated my space. We can’t completely stop energy. You can’t stop energy from moving. It’s just the nature of it. So we have to learn tools. We have to learn how to be grounded, how to protect, not protect because that’s a sense that you can actually control energy. You can’t, you can manage it. So learning all of that is key.

Victoria Volk: It can only be transformed, moved, or transformed.

Dr. Amirah Hall: Yes. Yes. And so whether it’s grief, whether it’s, you know, gaining around your waistline, whether it’s a new job, whether it’s a relationship, we’re creating all of that with our energy, with our thoughts, with our consciousness. And so we start, we gotta start somewhere. Right? So let’s start with being aware. Grounding, being present.

Victoria Volk: Gosh. We could talk so much. I mean,

Dr. Amirah Hall: I know I know it’s so exciting because I’m

Victoria Volk: so glad you like, that that the conversation went with the with the carnivore and because I beat I’m eating more protein than I had in years. I — Right. — I spent years trashing my metabolism.

Dr. Amirah Hall: Right.

Victoria Volk: But and it’s a vicious cycle, you know, and then you have the cortisol and the middle section where they can

Dr. Amirah Hall: And you believe all the doctors. Well, listen, I’m there is a lot of cardiologists now and other mainstream doctors that are starting to go this route. So I’m just open. I’m just open to exploring. And I didn’t tell anybody for the longest time because I’m my own labrat. Like, I’m gonna try it. And then if it works for me, then I’ll share it with other clients. But, hey, I’m shocked. And I’m just like,

Victoria Volk: But I think one of the key things you said was when the pendulum swings so far one way, you know, where you’re just a vegetarian and that’s all you’re doing. Any one way isn’t balanced.

Dr. Amirah Hall: Well, and the thing of it is I’ve met so many vegetarians. They’re completely ungrounded. They don’t. They can’t get their life together. They struggle. In in most cases, not all. But they struggle in some ways and that is being present or you can just see the, like, the life force energy isn’t strong or bright, usually with them. Oh, again, I’m not talking about the, you know, the monk or the guru from India. I’m talking about Western and live in this lifestyle. So Yeah.

Victoria Volk: I definitely wanna have you back because there’s so much more I want to talk about with you if that’s okay?

Dr. Amirah Hall: Oh, I’d love that. Thank you

Victoria Volk: too. Okay. Yeah. And I do wanna give you an opportunity to share what you have coming up or where people can find you or reach out to you if they wanna learn more about you?

Dr. Amirah Hall: Great. Yes. I’m hosting a twenty-one-speaker series with incredibly brilliant and amazing experts. And so you can go to intuitivesuperpowerssummit.com Intuitive superpowers with an s summit dot com. And, yeah, go to my website. I’ve got a free gift It’s called stress buster. And you go to my website, amirahhall.com forward slash stress buster dot com.

Victoria Volk: And I’ll get those links in the show notes as well.

Dr. Amirah Hall: Yeah. The yeah. So stress buster, and that’s agood energy shower, and you can start clearing your energy and moving in the direction of coming into alignment and connecting with your loved one.

Victoria Volk: And where can people find you just your website? Are there social media?

Dr. Amirah Hall: Yes. Amira, A M I R A H H A L L. COM. You can read all about me there.

Victoria Volk: Sounds wonderful. Thank you so much for this great conversation.

Dr. Amirah Hall: I just want to invite people if something triggered something within you reach out to me on my website. There’s a link and you can book a twenty-minute consultation. And we’ll just talk about maybe what your next step is or where you feel that maybe you need help. Okay?

Victoria Volk: Sounds great.

Dr. Amirah Hall: Thank you so much. It’s been such an honor. Thank you for opening your heart and doing the work you’re doing. It’s truly amazing and I’m I feel very blessed to be connected with you.

Victoria Volk: Same. And remember, when you unleash your heart, you unleash your life. Much love.

 

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