What My Overdose Taught Me About Rebooting My Health- Alysa Rushton | EP 331

You know you need something, you're just not sure what. You've been listening, you're doing the work, but there's still this feeling that you're circling the same place, like you're waiting for the thing that finally moves you. Now maybe you've thought about working with me one-on-one. Maybe something's held you back, the timing, the money, or you're just not sure you're ready yet. I get that. And I want you to know there's still a place for you. I built a resource for exactly this moment, guided meditations for when the waves hit and you just need to breathe. Workbooks to help you get out of your head and onto the page, ebooks on what near-death experiences tell us about the people we've lost, and whether they're really gone, a full course for widows and widowers who are ready to find their way back to living, and a full course for the evidence of the afterlife. And all of it is available for pay what you want. Nobody gets turned away because of money. I think these resources are valuable, but I don't want to hold them back because you don't have the money to pay for them. You don't have to wait until you're ready for coaching. The next step might be a lot smaller than you think. To find out, go to grief2growth.com/store. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/store. And check out the resources I've made for you. Everybody, this is Brian D Smith back with another episode of Grief 2 Growth. And today we have with us a really remarkable guest. Her name is Alyssa Rushton. She's not only a survivor of a profound near-death experience, but she's also an internationally renowned energy intuitive, and she's a sound healer. She's considered one of the world's leading thought leaders on conscious life creation, ascension, and embodying your divine self. Her transformative work for personal and planetary evolution can be found in her recorded programs like Reality by Divine Design and The Miracles and Manifesting Portal, as well as in numerous online summits that she's done. She's touched the lives of thousands of individuals worldwide, inspiring them to step into their identity as divine beings of light. To activate their superpowers and to forge a strong and profound connection with their inner divinity. When she isn't recording meditations or speaking internationally, you can find her immersed in the beauty of nature, swimming with sea turtles near her home on the Big Island of Hawaii, or hiking in the mountains of Arizona, two places that— I've never been to Hawaii, but I would love to go, and I love Arizona. That's her home away from home. For more information about her and her work, you can visit her website, alissarushston.com. It's Alyssa Rushton, R-U-S-H-T-O-N.com. And that'll be in the show notes. But you can go there and find out more about her. So with that, I want to welcome Alyssa to Grief to Growth.

My gosh, Brian, thank you for having me. I've been so excited about the show today.

Yeah, I'm excited to talk to you. Also, we talked earlier about some of the things we're going to talk about. And it's all the stuff my audience is interested in. What's it like on the other side? How do I heal? You know, how do I make get to my highest self. So we're going to talk about all that stuff today. If you don't mind, if you could start with your near-death experience and tell me what happened there.

Yeah. So, you know, I want to start off with that dying, as we've been taught in America or the Western world, is not what we've been taught. It's not actually a death. It's a birth. And I really didn't know that before I died. I didn't really know what to expect. And so my My story is that I was really sick. I was on end-of-life medication. I was 240 pounds. I used a walker to get around. I had a PICC line in my arm delivering medication into my heart. I was so sick and, you know, they gave me these end-of-life pain management drugs because it's the kind of thing that you give to people when you don't really expect them to live because they're so strong that, number one, they can kill you, and number two, you probably you won't get off them ever. So I didn't have a great trajectory as a human being, and I was 30, okay? So I was 30 years old, prime of my life, and I had all these autoimmune diseases and just really couldn't understand why I was so sick. And so you can imagine that much medication, you know, 28 different medications infusing into your body, plus all the end-of-life pain management stuff including fentanyl. And, you know, if you've heard any of the word on the street about fentanyl. You know, even one time can kill you. And I was doing these fentanyl suckers that they give to cancer patients when they can't really tolerate to take pills. And so one day I just got way too much medication in me, and I wasn't feeling well in the nighttime and did what a lot of people do— you go to the bathroom when you're not feeling good, right? And did what Elvis did— I died on the potty. And so, you know, I'm going to leave the experience there of me dead on the potty. And what happened was on the other side, right, I had this extraordinary experience. I didn't have the standard hover above your body, see yourself there. I didn't have that. And several near-death survivors will tell you the same thing. I actually popped up directly into what I call God consciousness. Or divine consciousness or universal consciousness, whatever word you want to use for it. And what happened to me was I got pulled up into this energy. Now imagine this blissful, delicious love feeling just washing over you. And I always say it's the most physical thing I've ever done without a body, you know. And it was instantly— I was consciousness that could just expand in every and all direction all at once. I felt so free and filled with love and bliss. I was getting— as I was, I felt the sense of moving upward, and as I was moving upward, I started to get downloads and insights. And like, I could understand and see how the universe worked, right? Our universe. And how, um, light informs sound, informs sacred geometry, informs matter. And I understood, you know, quantum physics and math. And by the way, I'm a high school dropout, so there was no way I could have known that stuff, right? So I'm moving up in this profound experience, and I realize I'm not, you know, I'm not in a body. I'm not living, right? And I didn't even have that feeling of like, oh gosh, it was just pure like relief, relaxed bliss. And I, I say the word bliss, but that's not even a good enough word for it. You know, it was a feeling beyond description of ecstasy. And so I'm going up, up, up, and I get what I call into God consciousness directly. And I then am in this kind of energetic where the best way I can describe it is, have you ever seen one of those movies where a guy's sitting behind like 100 security cameras and he's watching all the security? Have you seen them? Yeah, whatever those movies are. Yeah, it was like only times a billion or more. And I could literally— there was like these little bubbles of camera almost experiences where I could see, and then I could stretch my consciousness into each one of those bubbles of consciousness. And literally I was experiencing being a plant, being a tree, being an animal, being an alien, being a galaxy, being Alyssa, being Brian D Smith, being you know, everybody all at once. And so the way I describe it is I was everything all at once.

Hmm.

And it was the most magical, amazing, conscious thing. And I could literally stretch into experiences and hold it all. And if there was something I wanted to go deeper into, I could move my— and I'm moving my arms because it was such a visceral stretching of consciousness that felt directional in spatial, um, to me. And it was just absolutely incredible in every way. So I, you know, I always say I don't recommend dying before your time, um, and I actually don't think you can die before it's your time because of my experience. But I do say that when someone passes over, their, um, what I saw on the other side was that we, each and every one of us, get a death-birth experience that is designed specifically for us. And if you really believe that you're going to go experience the Pearly Gates of Heaven, that's— you're going to be your first experience, and you're going to be greeted because it's designed to be, um, not stressful for you in any way. So I got to see all that. I got to see how quantum mechanics works. I got to see all of this, and I'm, I'm floating around the cosmos and, and experiencing all of this, this amazing stuff. Oops, sorry, amazing stuff. And then I saw this little, this little kind of Earth globe, and I thought, well, I'm gonna go check that out. And as soon as I did, I popped into this Earth-like world, and it looked very much like Earth. It was more olive green, the sky though, and I all of a sudden didn't have God consciousness anymore. I had Alyssa's consciousness. And I knew, oh, I'm going to go hang around my ex-boyfriend who smoked and did drugs and drank. And I felt very calm and peaceful. And then I thought, well, I'm going to go hang around this other person. And I couldn't speak to them in any way, but I felt calming and relaxing and healing. And as I was there, I was I was kind of, you know, wondering like, well, why can't I talk to anybody? But I was okay. I was really okay about it.

These are people that were still here on Earth, I assume?

Yeah, still living. And I really felt okay about it. And then, um, this energy, this group consciousness came to me and said, hey, if you want to stay here, you can. It'll be a very healing place for you, and you can stay here as long as you want, but you won't be able to come back into your Alyssa body. And if you want to come back into your Alyssa body, it'll be some of the hardest work you've ever done, but you got to come back now. And as soon as I thought, yes, I want to come back, that's when it felt like somebody dropped me off a thousand-story building and slammed me down into concrete. And I was waking up in my body and I was back to planet Earth.

Wow, that's, that is quite an experience. And, and I love what you said about, and I we think of the typical NDE experience, and there, there are several elements that are in a lot of NDEs, but they're not all the same. And so, you know, you didn't experience a tunnel. Now, did you, did you meet any loved ones on the other side? You said you came back and you saw people here. Did you, did you visit loved ones here?

Or— I did. I didn't visit— well, I visited loved ones here in the astral realm, and I want to actually come back to that. But I don't have any loved ones that are passed over on the other side. Okay, so that's why it wasn't a part of my experience. I just didn't have it. Okay, I had nobody new waiting for me on the other side. It was completely, you know, it was not something that happened for me. But there were so many energies that I was experiencing on the other side, you know, billions and billions and billions of experiences. And for me, that felt really nourishing. But the, um, the interesting bit, and I didn't find this out until years after my near-death, is that that planet that I went to that was like Earth I was reading a book by, um, Savannah Arienta, and she described my experience completely about going to this world that was olive, kind of green colored. And she said what that is, it's the astral realm where spirits go to heal, where they maybe don't make it all the way into the lights, and they kind of maybe get stuck in the astral realm. But they do, they heal and they hang out until it's their time to go and come back and do a different experience again. And, and that's what it was going to be for me if I had chosen to stay there. I would have probably gotten stuck in the astral realm for a bit. And that's also why I think people with addiction, um, get— tend to get more addicted, because I was an addict when I died. I was totally addicted to pain drugs and cigarettes. And, you know, I didn't, I didn't ever consider myself an alcoholic. I just drank every day, right? So what I realized happens on the other side is that when you pass it of an addiction, if you get kind of stuck in that astral realm, you go and you hang out with loved ones here, um, that have addictions because it feels good. And so that sort of amplifies their addiction and, um, maybe isn't necessarily a positive thing for people here on Earth, but on the other side in the astral realm, it's very healing to the spirit.

It's, yeah, it's interesting because I have the NDE experience. I'm starting to understand that people don't typically go all the way. I don't think they ever go all the way. There's like, there's always some sort of barrier or something that people encounter. And there's like a point of no return. Like if you, if you stay here, or if you go beyond this point, then you can't come back. So it sounds like you made a conscious choice to come back to your little body.

Yeah, I was offered a choice.

You were very sick and addicted. Why? Why did you decide to come back?

Stay with us. We'll be right back.

You know, one of the hardest things about grief— most of the people in your life just don't get it. They want you to be further along than you are. They get uncomfortable when you bring it up, so you stop bringing it up. And that's why I started writing my Substack. Is where I go deeper. Thoughts I don't always get to in the podcast. Essays on consciousness, on continuing bonds, on what it actually means to carry loss and still build a life. The stuff that used to keep me up at night, written out in a way that I hope meets you in the morning. But here's what I didn't expect when I started it. The community that showed up. People who are doing exactly what you're doing. Listening, learning, trying to find their footing. Readers who comment, who share their own stories, who remind each other that none of us are as alone in this as we feel. And that's what the Substack has become— a place to go deeper with me and to find your people. It's free to subscribe. Find me at grief2growth.com/substack. That's grief, the numeral 2, growth.com/substack. Or just go to Substack and search for Grief to Growth. I hope to see you there.

That's a great question. I think on the soul level, my soul knew that I was here to do something different. My soul knew that I wasn't doing my plan, and as, as I could. And in fact, when I woke up and I was in the hospital, you know, strapped to a gurney, legs flailing because I had been injected with Narcan, and I was instantly going through massive withdrawal.

Oh wow.

Um, I had the recognition, oh, my life is in a ditch, I'm completely broken, and what I'm doing is not working. So on the other side, what I feel like happens is at soul level, I knew I could do it differently and I could come here and be an example. But they also told me it's going to be very hard, and they were right. It was very hard to break those addiction patterns and to, you know, get the weight loss, because I lost over 100 pounds and I've kept it off. The weight loss was easy, but people always remark about the weight loss first. It was healing my spirit, it was healing my body, it was healing those addictions, it was healing the traumas. That was the really hard work. Um, and so I think I was just destined to come back and be an example of what's possible for people when they dig in and do the healing work.

Mm-hmm. Wow. So how did you get from being on the potty to the hospital?

Yeah, so, well, obviously, you know, paramedics were called. My husband— I was married at the time— and he was the one who found me not breathing, lips blue, nails blue, on the toilet and was able to call 911. 911 came out, pumped me full of Narcan, which stops all that process, right? It stops the overdose process. And if you get it in time— and I loved what you you said, there's a point to which you don't get to come back from, right? There's a point of— have you ever seen that movie, um, I think it's called Princess Bride, where— yeah, where he says, it was— don't worry, they're only mostly dead or partially dead, right? And so there's a really a longer process of dying that you can come back from if it's not your time. And what I saw on the other side is our souls have distinct exit point options, and you don't always have to take those exit point options, but you as a soul being get the opportunity to choose. Is it my time to move on? Do I want to come back? Um, am I capable of coming back in this body? You know, can I heal the body if I do come back? Do I want to come back to this body that's broken? You know, there's that process on the other side of Do I really want to do this? So it's a very complex, interesting process of death and birth and living here on planet Earth. That's just fascinating to me.

Yeah, I'm glad you said the word complex, because, you know, we have these debates about predestination versus free will. And do we— is there a certain time that we have that we— where we die? Or are there multiple exit points? And And I know some people, you know, they wonder about our loved ones. Well, why would— if she got a chance to come back, I know my loved one would have chosen to come back. And, you know, we can't really know that, of course. But there's also a point of no return when the body's not, not viable any longer.

That's right. Yeah, that's right. And some people, you know, have that point where their, their body isn't viable, and they have to, to just reboot and get another one, right. And that's what I think is really the important point is that You know, as a human being, what we're trained here, especially in Western society, isn't necessarily all that true about our human experience. You know, we're taught that— for most part, we're taught that we have one life to live, that we have the one body, that we are one thing. And on the other side, what we realize is that you're more like— I'm gonna show you this here. Use my favorite unicorns book. You're, you're actually more like this book, okay? And if you could think of each page as if an aspect of your soul, right? And so we think, oh, um, you might think like, oh, I'm just Brian and my soul is just Brian. No, your soul is actually all of these pages happening all at once, really. In the multidimensional up there-ness, not down here but up there. And so it's a little hard for the human brain to understand everything all at once. It's why we have a left brain, so that we don't get overwhelmed and confused, and it helps us move through linear space and time. But my point in that is that, you know, we get not only all of these opportunities in this, in this life, but we're having all these opportunities for soul growth in other realms. And so when one passes over, it might be like, well, I learned my lessons here on Earth, I'm gonna move on, or I need to come back because I still want that experience. It's, um, Earth— I always refer to Earth as third grade, um, no offense anybody, but it's— we're learning very basic human lessons here, um, and very basic soul lessons of can we hold the frequency of love no matter what. Can we master our physical body and our emotional bodies and our mental body? Because on the other side, it's kind of like having a rocket ship, right? You create very fast with your thoughts and feelings. And so if you can't master that here, you don't get to be in other realms where you're creating at the speed of light. And if we can't master our physical vibration in terms of what gets us agitated, or what I call it janky, you know, that feeling where you're just like, ah, don't— you know, you're just in a kind of a twist, or I'm triggered. So we've got to learn those lessons here, and we can't really move on. So that said, to your point, sometimes the physical body is not viable and we have to pop back into another body, and you you can really do it instantaneously, um, you know, because up there, there is no time. It's all happening like this book, all at once. When you're reading a book and you're on page 7, you don't have to wait for page 91 to be written ever. It's already there. But as human beings, we kind of think of time like that, like, oh, I have to wait through time and space. So it's a really— it, um, you know, passing over to the other side really offers you such a different opportunity to understand our soul's experience. And to your point, I think when you lose a loved one, based on how we've been taught and trained, I don't know that we necessarily have a positive viewpoint about what their experience is and how it's like a graduation of sorts. Yeah, right. For them, they're literally— I always say, and I know it's hard to hear, but it's like, that's when you know that person won the game of Brian Smith: Yeah, I'm really glad you said that.

Because the thing is, I find that people— I say people, you grieve for two reasons. You grieve for yourself, for your loss, and you grieve for what you perceive that your loved ones lost. And one of the things I love about talking to people who've had NDEs is that we can eliminate that idea of what they've lost. You know, I work with a lot of people who've lost children. And so we'll say like, my daughter, my daughter was 15. You know, she was only 15. Her, she had her whole life in front of her. And when we say that, what we're saying is that their life is over. Yeah. And I love what you said, we have this, this misperception of death as, as the end of something, where it's more like a birth into something else.

Totally. And it literally is like, if you can think of a baby being born out of the womb, and how Like, whoa, that must be so intense for them because they're all this— they've been living in a space like this, you know, maybe the foot diameter, maybe a foot and a half, and now they're in this huge expanse, right? It's the exact same experience when you're birthed into the other side. And in Western society, we don't teach that. We teach it's the end, you go to heaven, and that's not necessarily the truth. You know, it's not necessarily what happens. And I love how what you said, Brian D Smith, about we though do have to grieve our physical loss, because that's the hard part, is losing the physicality of somebody. And with the work that I do, what I also know is you can lose the physicality of somebody and still maintain your connection to them. And that's something else that we don't necessarily teach. And so can I, can I talk about that for a minute? Do you mind?

Absolutely, sure.

So on the other side, when you don't have a body, you're a really high vibration, okay? It's a higher frequency. Here we have a very dense frequency. And so I want you to think about like going into the ocean. If you dove down into the ocean at about 15 feet, 10 feet for some people, um, your ears start to hurt. It's too much pressure. It, it's ouchy, right? And then if you dive down even more, at some point it really starts to squeeze your body and it squeezes your lungs. And if you dive down even further, at some point you would implode because it's too much pressure. Okay, so I tell you that to tell you, on the other side, as a being of light, when you release your physical— I call it your physical vehicle, right? Because you're a soul in driving your physical vehicle, right? Your, your meat suit, you're driving it. So on the other side, when you release the physical vehicle, you're this super high frequency. And at some point, when you're trying to come down and connect with your human it hurts because we're so dense down here. So if you're wanting to connect with your loved one, you actually can't be in grief and connect with your loved one. You're going to need to raise your frequency up into a state of love or above in order to be able to have that conscious conscious contact with them because they do want to connect, but it's very hard for them to come— like, there's a physical limit to which they can come down and actually connect with you or, you know, hang out with you. So it's the process of us raising our frequency. So again, to use the ocean analogy, you would have to come up to a certain depth to swim with the ocean dolphins. You couldn't swim with the ocean dolphins at a 1,000-foot depth. You're just gonna never meet them there. And so consciously we can understand that, but when you release the body, you're still consciousness. You just don't have your physical vehicle. You have a different light vehicle. And so if we can remember that when we're trying to connect with our loved ones, like, they actually need us to be in a state of higher receptivity. And sometimes it's hard to get to.

You know, I've, I've heard a lot of analogies for that. That's— I've never heard that one. I like the way you put that. And it reminds me, have you heard of Christian Sundberg? No. So Christian Sundberg has these pre-birth memories, and he talks about basically getting his body and being— there's like almost technicians that they're putting the veil on him. And when he describes it, when you said it, just reminded me so much. He said, I went down, down, down, down, down, down, down, and he just down, down, down, down, down, and then down further, further, further. And he was taught— he describes the process of incarnating as almost painful. It's terrifying. Because it's such a different frequency, such a different vibration than where we are on the other side. And I think that's something that people can understand, that the idea of our loved ones are there, if they're up there, and it's all light and airy. And Earth is, you know, you described it as third grade. And it's interesting, because I've heard people describe more like kindergarten. It's like, people are here like beginners, they're all stumbling around, we don't know what we're doing. But on the other hand, because it's so dense, and we have this variation of consciousness, It's also understand where the hardest place is to be.

Yes, yes. And you'll hear a lot of, um, NDEs describe the process of getting put back in their body as so painful. Like, when I, I literally felt like I fell 1,000 feet and slammed into concrete. It was such a huge density, uh, variable. Like, it was just a huge chasm. And so I think it's really important to remember that. And to your point, like, This is one of the densest places that we can be, and we also get a lot of benefit out of being here. We get to have physical things, we get to taste food, we get to have physical pleasure, we get to look out of our eyes with trees and touch, and learning some of the really basic lessons. And I always say third grade because we're in 3D, you know, we're in, we're in third density, so I just call it third grade. But it is, there's The cool thing about having been on the other side is there's much more exciting places to go. And, you know, even places that— other star systems where you still have a physical body, but it's lighter and travels through space and time differently, and you actually have different skill sets. And one of the cool things that I realize about humans is that we have a whole bunch of DNA— you might have heard this— that they call— the scientists, they call it junk. But it's actually not junk, and you can turn it on. And so what's really cool is that when I was on the other side, I found out how to do this, and it's one of the ways that I was able to heal my body. And, you know, now I, I don't have those autoimmune diseases. Obviously, I don't use a walker to get around. I don't need the diapers anymore. You know, it was really— I was in really pretty bad bad state. But you can heal your physical body, and you can turn on certain DNA sequences. You can access different gifts. You know, as human beings, we have all of these senses that we're actually trained out of using as an early child. We're trained not to use our intuition. We're trained to override our gut. We're trained to not tap in with our right brain. And use that right brain. I always say, you know, we're really left-brain educated, especially in Western society. We're not at all, right? We're not at all taught to use our right brain. Where some Hindi kids, they can literally read to you a page on a book when the book is in the other room and they are just remote viewing it. So we actually have all of these gifts innately within us, but but we've been largely trained out of them. So it's kind of cool to be able to relearn some of that stuff and, and then connect yourself up in different ways so that your life is vastly different and that you can connect with your loved ones and you can connect with beings of light and have really— I call it being in the miracle zone.

Yeah, absolutely. I, I thought that's fantastic. So when when you came back and, you know, you came back to this body that was largely broken— if you don't mind me using that word—

totally.

Um, how did you start the healing process? Um, how did that work?

Yeah, well, it was interesting, you know, because I don't know exactly how long I was dead, right? I was found, so there's no real way to know, right? And at first I thought, I literally had the thought of, oh God, I think I might have had a lot of brain damage because I, the next, the very next day after I had died, I was right back in the hospital again infusing because that's what I did, you know, infuse the chemicals to make me better. And I had this man's voice in my head and I was like, oh, this isn't good, I'm hearing voices, you know, was my first thought. And it was on repeat. And it said, "I'm getting better and better every day in every way." And it was just on repeat, on repeat, and I couldn't stop it. And it wasn't again until years later, I actually was watching a YouTube video and it— you know how YouTube like pops up stuff? And it was a YouTube video and I heard this man's voice and his name was Émile Couillé. And his phrase was, "I'm getting better and better every day in every way." And that was the guy who was in my head. So my first step was rewiring my brain. And shortly after my near-death, I knew that I had to bring through what I saw and felt on the other side into my physical experience. And I couldn't really do a lot, so what I did was I just started listening to this meditation, and I would lay in bed and listen to this meditation music, and I would visualize myself because what they showed me on the other side is how we perceive ourselves, our, our self-image is what we have to play out here. So they told me to change my self-image. And my self-image at that time was somebody with a broken body who was really, really sick. And by the way, I was actually getting a lot out of that, you know, like I was um, I was playing into that victim role. I was able to get love and support and care. And as a kid, you know, I maybe didn't get as much love and support and care as I needed. And so that illness in adulthood allowed me to get unconsciously what I had been longing for. So I would just lay in bed and I would imagine myself walking and feeling really great. And that was my first step. And I literally would just lay in bed and visualize myself walking and feeling great. And at the time, I didn't know it, but this is what a lot of paraplegics do that regain their ability to walk, is they just start with visualization. And there's a lot of scientific studies around visualizing yourself in a different state that will help you to heal. So I did that, and it was It was, I think, a couple of months, and then I started to feel motivated to take my walker out, and I would literally just walk from my house to the end of my driveway, and that was all I could do. And I just started there, and I started pushing myself. And as I would push myself, and every week I'd add, and I'd go to the next house, and I would just again chant in my head, my legs feel great, my legs feel great, because it felt like my legs were amputated stubs. I mean, it hurt so bad. There was so much pain in my body, and I just felt just like I was walking around on broken parts. And so I would just chant in my head, "My legs feel great. My legs feel great. My legs feel great." And I just did that mental work. And that was my first really foray into the healing. I knew that I had to get out and move my body even if It felt like it was gonna kill me, and it did feel like that, but it didn't kill me. And then I also knew that I had to change my diet. I had to change what I was eating. And so I, while I was listening to the meditation sound frequency, I saw on the other side sound frequency really helps the body reform mat itself. So I was listening to all these sound frequencies. I hired a health coach health coach. And I remember when I met with this health coach, I'll never forget, her name was Shelly. And I looked at her and she was older than me by about 10-ish years. And I just thought, oh my gosh, I want whatever she's got. Like, whatever she's doing, I'm gonna do. Whatever she tells me to do, I'm gonna do, even if it's hard. And she and I met and she said, you know, do you think you might have a gluten sensitivity? And I said, oh no, absolutely, I'm fine. I eat gluten all the time. I've been eating it ever since I was a kid. And she's like, well, what about dairy? I said, no, I grew up on dairy, you know, potatoes, eggs, and cheese, and yeah, and bread. And she's like, well, what would you be willing to try stopping those two things? And I was like, no, I wouldn't. That's my staple. And at the time, I was eating half a loaf of bread a day with butter, right? Just, I would slather butter and eat the bread and don't have cereal and milk. That was my diet. And so, um, she started me out with smoothies, and I committed to started adding smoothies in, and I started adding green juice in. And it was a little bit of time, and I realized, you know, I'm actually starting to feel better. Wow, this is interesting. And then I started to cut out gluten, and I started to cut out dairy. And it was a process of evolution, and it didn't happen overnight, but I did end up cutting out gluten and dairy and some other foods completely. And I, you know, I felt like, wow, I feel amazing. And the pain started to disappear. I started to lose the weight and be able to keep it off. My skin cleared up. I mean, if you saw pictures of my skin, it was just completely— I had acne everywhere. It looks terrible. My skin was so just bumpy and not smooth at all. And now people always say, oh my gosh, you're glowing. Well, it's an inside job, right? Glowing comes from within. And at the same time I was doing the sound healing, I was doing the meditation, I was doing the nutrition, I also had to go in and do the trauma healing work. I had to go in and really take a look at the traumas I had been through that just never got a voice, never got to be felt. In my family, you know, I always say that our solution to trauma was smoke a couple cigarettes, have a glass of wine and a good steak, and bury it deep and throw some dirt on top of it, and then overwork yourself, and you'll— you won't think about it. And that's how we dealt with it. And I think that's how a lot of people deal with things. They bury themselves in work, they bury themselves in alcohol or cigarettes or addictions, and they don't think about the trauma. But the traumas get imprinted in ourselves, and they then play out in our daily life, and it keeps getting mirrored to us again and again and again until— and the universe is trying to say Heal this, please. Heal, heal this part of you that's been traumatized so that we don't have to keep repeating this pattern over and over. And boy, I tell you what happens when you go in and you do the trauma healing work. And one of the modalities that I love is using breathwork, because our breath will help us go in and find out where that trauma has been stored in our body. And I find this happens too with people with a lot of loss. They store the trauma of loss in their cells. And then because— and this is something that I don't think people understand this enough— your life is being projected like a movie on the outside of you, and the projection comes from within you, and the projection comes based on your DNA and your programming that lives in you, right? So your vehicle's projecting all that out. And so when you have a trauma, especially like a loss trauma, what happens with people is they get— they keep repeating that. It keeps going. Like, they'll find, oh my gosh, there's another loss, and there's another loss, and all this one, right? And it's because they haven't really cleared that trauma from their body projector. And it's kind of like this: if we want to change the movie, if you're sitting in a movie and you're sitting in the seat and you want to change— there's a scary scene and you don't like it— what we don't do is we don't go up to the movie screen and start cutting on the movie screen, because we know that doesn't change anything, right? We've got to go back into where the movie is stored and deal with a piece of the movie that we don't want to experience anymore. And so as human beings, we forget what We are so disconnected with the fact that we're creating and projecting this reality outside of us. And it's the reason why you can have two people sitting in a restaurant experiencing the same meal, and one will have an incredible experience and they'll love the waitstaff and they'll be having this fabulous time. And the other person sitting across the table is like, my meal is awful and I have to send it back. And you you know, they're having this drastically different experience. And that's because our reality is a projection from within us. And so it's our jobs here on planet third grade to go within and clear some of these traumas. And by the way, when you get your physical vehicle, I think we forget or haven't been told that you're coming into a vehicle that has programming from at least 7 generations back. You know, epigenetics has proven that you imprint the traumas from your family on both sides from 7 generations.

Mm-hmm.

So imagine the traumas that your parents went through and your grandparents and their parents and grandparents. And I mean, it's a lot. So you're stepping into this vehicle with generations and generations and generations of trauma experiences that no one's ever been taught to process.

Yeah.

And then here you are with no instruction guide in 2023 going, oh my gosh, how do I deal with this?

Yeah, let's talk about that a little bit more. Because I think we tend to think of coming in and we're a blank slate, you know, and—

but we're not.

You're talking physically, there's, there's DNA, right? But there's also, I guess, because we do have past lives or concurrent lives, however we would just say past lives for the sake of simplicity. But because we do have these other things, we were carrying, you know, karma, for lack of a better word, but we're not a blank slate. So when people say, I don't, I don't have any traumas to heal, you know, it's like, you, there may be things that you're carrying that you're not aware of.

Totally. And you can see this really clearly. In generational trauma, I mean, look at what's happening with the Middle police conflict right now. You can see people playing out generational trauma in now time. It hasn't been cleared. It's been stored in the DNA, and they're continuing to play that out. And you can see this, you know, and people of color, right? You know, you folks have been through the wringer with respect to a lot of things. And so you can see traumas playing out in people's lives that I love how you said it. We're not a blank slate at all. You come in with the imprint of traumatic experiences, and that's a tough thing for people to cognize because we want to think we're a blank slate. But you can even see this— any, any parent who's a parent of multiple children, you know, everyone comes in with their different personalities. You know, some come in just smiling and laughing, and some come in just fighting mad.

Yeah, that's why I tell people, you know, if you're a parent and you have, if you have two children, you will realize that you did not create these children. Yes, they can be very, very different. And, you know, to grow up in the same house, same parents, same everything, but totally different, you know, personalities.

Totally. You gave them their bodies, but their spirit, their soul is their own. And then they have to then deal with And I think this is analogy that everyone can get. It's like if you go car shopping, you could buy— maybe you bought a used 1982 Datsun, right? And you're gonna have to deal with the problems of a used 1982 Datsun driving it around. Or you can buy a brand new Mercedes GLC and you're gonna deal with the vehicle of that. And so the body vehicle, the programming that we choose to come into, we then also have to deal with that programming. But that is a soul choice that the soul makes in order to learn the lessons. And that's also a hard thing for people to understand. Like, why would a soul come in and choose to, as a child, battle a disease? Why would a soul choose to come in and have a horrible case of autism that is non-functional? Right? And truly, they're working on their own lessons, but oftentimes they're also being our greatest teachers because our relationships are our greatest teachers here on planet Earth.

Yeah. Well, and I think there's also something about maybe being able to overcome, you know, I'm going to take on that challenge because we do come here. I think we come here to experience challenge. We could go somewhere easy year. But we wouldn't grow as much. I'll never forget when I was in my mid-20s, I think it was, I was talking to someone about, you know, being African American. And I said this at that time, I said, why would anybody ever choose to be, you know, a Black man in America? Nobody would ever choose that. If you, if you in your right mind, you would choose to be, you know, a white person. So you have the advantage. And it took me several years after that. But one day I realized It's like, no, this was a good thing that I chose this. I learned a lot that I wouldn't have learned if I had chosen another vehicle. So I think sometimes we can— on the surface, it might look like, well, everybody would choose to be wealthy, everybody would choose to be perfectly healthy, everybody would choose to be 6'5". But no, we choose different things for different purposes.

Yeah, I love how you brought that forward, Brian, because there's so much to learn from adversity. Learn from contrast here. And to your point, like, being a Black man in America, you know, that is one of the toughest things you can choose to be, right? It's not an idealized situation, no advantages there. And also the things that we learn when we're in the depths, the things that we learn when we have to fight adversity. It's like, for me personally, what I learned from overcoming you know, these critical illnesses, I now know how to be healthy. I know the recipe. I know that it's possible, right? And so that then allows me to teach other people the recipe for being healthy. It's, it's actually a thing that you can do. Is it hard? Absolutely. Can you do it? Yes, you can. And to you, like, look at you now. You're making, you know, you're blessing thousands and thousands of people all over the world with what you're doing. And you would never have been able to do that without overcoming a lot of adversity.

Yeah. And I think, again, I want to emphasize that to people, because when they hear things about like soul planning, they think, well, I would never have planned this. But I love talking to people like yourself who have, who have overcome— that's, that's, those are the stories that inspire us. Those are the things, the examples that let us know that we can do it. And that while this planet is work— and I was talking to a client just like yesterday. I said, I always hesitate to say this, but this life is work. This life is not easy. It's hard. We chose a hard place to come to. But I think it's worth it. And we can see that it's worth it once we've made that, overcome those challenges.

Totally, totally. And that's the hard part about being human is that, and especially if you grew up in America, America or Western cultures is because we were taught a very specific ideology or way of thinking about success and what success is. And what I learned on the other side, and if you can hear one thing today, is material success here does not equal soul success. And I think we're pivoting on the planet into a more soul-based alignment. On planet Earth, we have actually done different things where we have lived a more soul-led life, but for the past, I'm gonna say about 6,000 years or so, we have been completely disconnected from a soul-based life. It's been physical, it's been survival. We haven't been tapped into divine source energy or our higher selves really at all. We We were totally told that that wasn't a thing, that we had to go through our pastor or our priest or somebody outside of us to be connected. And now more and more people are waking up to the fact that, oh no, you can have a direct connection with your higher self and you can live this soul-led life. And by the way, all the material goods here don't come with you. Like you don't get to take anything here with you except your soul growth. And soul growth, if you're living that soul-led life and make a commitment to living in connection and trust with the universe, what will then happen is the, the— some of the issues start to dissolve, right? The money issues dissolve, the health issues dissolve, the separation issues dissolve, and you can actually co-create exactly what you need when you need it, and you're living in this beautiful trusting environment with the universe, and you feel so held and loved. And I think most people don't live that life. They, they've been so trained out of it, but it's something that we have done before. We just haven't done it, especially for the last 2,000 years, and for sure not in America. We just aren't not trained or taught that. And so I think people— what I believe is happening now with the level of chaos on the planet is people are having to hit those hard moments of waking up to the fact that there is something more here available for us, and that there is this beautiful source that we can tap into and live a more soul-based life versus a success-based life where we're willing to, you know, screw over our fellow human beings for a buck. Yeah, basically.

Yeah. And it's funny, as you were saying that, as we're talking about this, because whenever I hear about conscious creation and stuff like that, again, I guess because of my Western mentality, I think, okay, material stuff. I think everybody's like, okay, oh, so if I, if I do this stuff, I can, I can be successful, right? I can, I can get all the things that I want. And I was talking with someone just the other day, we're talking about this. And it's like, no, it's really about— our souls are not really interested in this stuff. Because, because it's temporary, because we can't take it with us. And so when we start to realize who we truly are, and when we go back to the other side, if I do have a Mercedes or BMW or whatever it is that I drive, it's, it's not going with me, you know, and all this, all the success I had in my business or whatever that's, that's— the soul doesn't care about that. The soul cares about experiences and love and things of that nature. All the stuff in the West, we're kind of like, well, that's, that's secondary.

Totally, totally. And I want to add a caveat to that. Like, your soul and divine energy is thrilled if you're having a joyful experience. And so if the Mercedes-Benz brings you joy, by all means, have it. If those things make you feel more generous and more loving, by all means, go for it. And if going after those things makes you the opposite, by all means, drop it, right? Because ultimately, it's like that old joke. Have you ever heard the old joke where the guy works out a deal with Saint Peter where he can bring all his gold to heaven? Have you heard that?

No.

So the guy works— he works out a deal with Saint Peter, and he is able to bring all his gold to heaven. And he gets up to heaven, and the angels are standing around and they're kind of like laughing and snickering. And the, uh, one of the angels goes, why is that guy bringing all that pavement up here?

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it just—

it's, it's so— it's just so silly that we think these things are going to fill up our cup. And ultimately, it, it is our role here to fill up our cup in the face of adversity, in the face of pain, in the face of loss. And that, I think, I think is the huge key lesson, and we're seeing it play out on a global scale. Can you be a loving human being when you're grieving? Can you be a loving human being when the world is having a moment, right? Can you be a loving human when your neighbors are trying to blast you out, right? And can you hold that frequency of love, unconditional love and peace It is one of the hardest things to do when your surroundings are not that, but that is the work, especially as you go on to the other side. You realize if you don't want to come round to earth and you want to graduate third grade, one of the criteria that you have to tick off is can you hold the frequency of love in the face of adversity? Hey, can you just hold that in your body all the time?

Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Because I've heard the concept of Earth as a school, of course, you know, many times, but you know, the idea of like, okay, well, it's almost like, well, we can't trust you with this level of creativity, you know, unrestrained. So we're going to send you a place where it's, it's slowed down. And just, there's guardrails on it. And so it's, it's, it's slow. I So we have to, like, if I want to manifest something or do something, I've got to, I've got to work at it. It takes a while, and I can see that the cause and effect. And so it is an interesting way of looking at Earth. It's like kindergarten or third grade.

Yes, exactly. And it does, it gives us a lot elongated time before manifestation comes. Because on the other side, it really is— think it happened, it happens in um, like past quantum light time, you know, it's just happening instantaneously. And by the way, down here, as you raise your vibration, as you raise your frequency, your manifestations start to happen faster and faster because you're capable of holding that. So it's kind of like, as you raise up in frequency, you, you're then allowed to manifest faster. Um, I, you know, I do retreats here on the Big Island, and I'll take people, uh, on a hike down into an active volcano volcano. And I'll always tell them, be very conscious of your thoughts, because it happens almost instantaneously here. And I'll watch people, and I'll take, I'll take them into the crater, and I'll bring one person in, and I'll bring another person out, because they literally go down, and it's such a faster frequency in that volcano and in the Hawaiian Islands that people can tap into that literally if they harness that energy, they then can quickly transform themselves and have these amazing outcomes that are like, wow, how fast did that happen? And they'd been taking years and all of a sudden it'll just drop in. So, you know, what's cool is that when we do raise our frequency, you will be able to create more easily. You'll be able to have that material thing because I think one thing important to remember is we still do live in a material world, and so we need those material items, and we can allow ourselves to be fortified, and we can allow ourselves to have comfort and have joy. And the more, um, this, this universe is really, it's a free will universe. So it's like, well, if you like joy, you could have more of that, and if you like it hard, you can have more of that. And part of it is about us really deciding what the frequency projection is that we're gonna hold. Because if you're holding the frequency projection of joy and love, what you're gonna have in your movie is a lot of yumminess. You're gonna have a lot of joy, you're gonna have a lot of love, you're gonna have a lot of opportunities, abundance, all of those things. And if you're having a projection that's lack and old beliefs that have been lingering around and that are still clogging you up, that's what's gonna be in your movie. And that's one of the things that I think— what I, what I saw on the other side is that if we take responsibility for everything that's happening in our world, because on some level we're a vibrational match to it, we can transform ourselves. But that's also the hardest concept for people to get, of taking responsibility, especially for people who have been like myself, um, you know, like I was a kidnapping victim, I was a kidnapping survivor, right? So if you've had something really horrific happen to you, it's hard to get the concept of taking responsibility. Or if you've had a terrible loss, it's hard to take responsibility for that. And I think that there's a When I talk about responsibility, there's a difference between blaming yourself, okay, for something that happened versus that happened, and I'm gonna now in my now moment take responsibility for assessing and clearing out any traumas that got imprinted in my body in the past or in this moment. And that's what I'm going to take responsibility for. And when we take responsibility for that piece, not this thing that happened to me, or, you know, that you got cancer, or that you got— had this horrible disease, or whatever. Like, we're not blaming ourselves for the loss, or for the disease, or for the financial, you know, meltdown, or whatever it is. But we're saying, I'm gonna now take responsibility for the trauma and clearing that trauma imprint from my body. And that's such a huge piece that's life-transforming for people.

Yeah, and I'm glad you, you went— because I was going to ask you that question about responsibility versus blame, because when we say that, we have to be very careful with our language, because people will say, well, you're saying I'm to blame for this. It's my fault that I got cancer. It's my fault that, you know, this happened. Because we're, again, we're trained to put blame on some— somebody's got to be at fault, something's got to— you did something wrong. And it's not that. It's, you know, what you're saying, I hear you saying, is like, we, we attract what we kind of— what we put out, which is is, you know, and that's a cycle that can be hard to break, I guess, for people. So how— if, if someone comes to you and says, okay, this is the mindset I have, how do I get out of this? I, I feel like it's just habitual, it's all I've ever known, where do I