BONUS: 8 Feet of Nothing with Katie Silcox

What happens when you take ancient Ayurvedic thought, Tantric and Buddhist teachings and you swirl it all up with the future facing practice of Flow Dreaming? Well, that's what I did today with a guest, Katie Silcox. She and I both explored what it means to fully be alive, to glow from within, to manifest and to just navigate our own spiritual growth in the world today. Our conversation was, I felt pretty fascinating and opened up some new ideas for me, especially about the nature of duality and how to embody the teachings that we've been exploring and how well they overlap and really kind of mimic one another. So I hope you'll join me and just explore and let your mind go loose and your spirit be hungry for some new ideas. In today's episode, Flow Dreaming still kinda Woo Woo is just what it sounds like. An escape into the world of woo. Also a ride into you and how to feel happier, wiser and more self aware in every way. It's your ultimate journey into personal growth and inner power. We'll explore ideas like how your energy self influences the kinds of opportunities you encounter, or how your personal growth can draw drive your business growth, or even how that feeling of being stuck is really always coming from something else. We just have to figure out what. That's right. We're a dash of woo woo. A sprinkle of self care, a heap of problem solving and pattern busting, and a giant cup of encouragement. We're going to relight so much passion, purpose, self love and confidence in you that you practically stagger. I'm Summer McStravik, your host and welcome to Flow Dreaming. Still kinda woo Woo. Before we plunge into my conversation with Katie, a little bit about her. She is a New York Times bestselling author of the book Healthy, Happy Sexy and her new book is called Glow Worthy, which we talk about quite a bit in this episode. She's also the founder of the Shakti School, a premier online certification school for women centered holistic wellness, and her platform focuses on the convergence of ancient holistic medicine, functional medicine, science and heart centered spirituality, particular feminine centered spirituality. Katie and I had a great conversation and we decided that we would share the same conversation with both of our audiences. This means that if what you hear today is intriguing, I hope you'll check out her podcast which is called Spirit Sessions. Now everything Katie and I talk about you can find at her website theshaktischool.com that's the Shakti S H A K T I school.com and that'll be in the show Notes as well. With that, let's dive in and let me introduce you to Katie Silcox. Hi, Katie. How are you today?

Hi, Summer. Good to be with you.

Yes, exactly. I spent the whole morning prepping for our conversation and just kind of being amazed as I was going through your book, Glow Worthy, how our understandings overlap so much. But I think from, you know, slightly different perspectives, same core stuff. So I'm really eager to talk with you about this and kind of just noodle on it.

Yeah, the same. I, I, you know, I'm amazed the way, like, the idea of flow. And I know we're going to talk about that. And holy, these words have a perennial way of popping up when you're seeking truth. And I think it's just super fun to see the way that we're speaking the same language often.

Exactly. Inspiration. Speaking of holy, that's kind of where I want to kick things off because, you know, I, I talk about the world in terms of flow, and flow is sort of an animating energy, you know, that imbues everything and all of us. And, you know, we are, we are of flow. And in flow, I, I think holy might be similar. How do you describe it?

Yeah, I always tell people that was the original title of the book, but. And the publishers didn't want to call it that because people have such a misunderstanding of that word. And I thought that's such an even more compelling reason to talk about it. And for me, it's been a long, arduous journey, as I'm sure you've had, of, like, really learning that what we are called to do is to accept a hundred percent of who we are and the light and the dark, and, and to really move out of these paradigms of good and bad, us versus them, right and wrong. Not that there aren't, you know, certain moral stances, like, if you're in a bad relationship, get out. Or, you know, if someone's coming to attack you, you know, run away or fight back. But, but really, I think you and I are speaking on this broader vision of what we want our lives to be about and how we want to treat ourselves and how we want to find our purpose and our mission on the planet. And so for me, achievement, fortune, accolades, beauty, my partnerships, like all of these wonderful things about human life, seemed to me in my young mind to be connected to how worthy I was of those things. And I was worthy by being good. And so what holy is, is this radical reorientation around the parts of me that I am the most intolerant of are actually where the flow is waiting to be tapped. So there is a lot of connection with your idea of flow.

Yeah, it just rings a bell for me. I call it intrinsic worth. Sometimes the extrinsic worth is the worth that we're waiting for the world to assign to us. If you do this thing, you will get that thing. If you behave this way, you will be judged as pure or good or accomplished or whatever it may be. And we're taught, we're trained to go after that extrinsic or external worth as much as possible. And the intrinsic worth, the worth that we just are our own inner holiness, our own inner flow, our own inner deservingness of all things. And the exploration of finding that is so. It's not even talked about, I guess. So when we kind of start walking the path like that you and I have walked, like, who are we? How do we find what our worth is? How do I find the inner holy? How do we find our inner destination? It does take you kind of, like you said, it's a reorganizing principle. I think in our lives, it's more than just personal growth or personal development. That's such a kind of blanket term. I guess it's a path. And I think you would understand that it's a path for you as well.

I'm curious, like, if there was a moment you can come to where you. I mean, I know you were in, like, the corporate world and, like, what was the transition story for you when you were like, oh, wow, there is this thing. I mean, was there one pivotal moment, or has it kind of always been in you since you were little?

Both, in fact. It was perplexing to me. Why doesn't the outside world see me the way I see me? You know? So I kind of had an opposite to what a lot of people had. I couldn't understand why don't my friends know? I'm so amazing.

Oh, wow.

That was. But that was a hardship on its own. Yeah. But I think, you know, for me, I had a series of breaking points, little breaks, in fact. That was something I wanted to talk to you about in a little while. That beautiful Hindu goddess, she who was never broken, never not broken.

Isn't that so amazing?

Yes, I ran across that and I thought, oh, we have to talk about her. Because one of my theories as well is your heart is meant to break. And that if you're living well, you're in a constant state of breakage. It's only when you're not living and you stop breaking. That's, you know, for me, death is. That's, that's the epitome of stuck. So I had a series of big, big breaks. I think one of the first ones is, you know, actually having worked for, you know, 10 years in corporate. And I went in with a belief if you do a good job, if you do well, if you make something important, if people admire it, if you're paid well for it, if you do all the right things, you will be rewarded in kind. And what ended up happening was I was not. I had the wool pulled from my eyes and I realized it's capricious what other people will or won't give you. And, you know, I became aware that I had been making a kind of bargain in my own head with something that never, never actually acknowledged it back. And it made me realize after that, how many other bargains am I making with the universe, with God, with life, with other people that I presumed to be true? And that helped me really go deep into my beliefs and start examining them and understanding. I think this person will do this if I do that, or I'll be rewarded in such a way if I act or behave like this. And they all just started to sort of tumble away. So, yeah, I'd say that was the first one. And then I got cancer a little bit after that and that was another one. Or I realized that my bargaining with the universe was completely off base. If you are vegetarian for 24 years, it doesn't mean that you won't get cancer because the universe served it right up to me. I said, all right, well, there goes another one. So it was a series. I don't know. How about you?

No, I love and understand everything you're saying. I completely get it. I don't know if you read this part in the book, but I was on the COVID of the Yoga Journal magazine and the same week was in the hospital suffering from debilitating, what I now know to be panic attacks. And I hate that story, but I love that story because that's our story. Like this whole jig is up. And I think that's why I love, you know, studying tantra. Tantra isn't just like mind blowing sex. In fact, it's not even that at all. It's really this tantra means to be expanded out of our limitations, methods for expansion. And the limitations that we really can work with largely are mental. And of course we call those limiting beliefs. And in sort of the pop spirituality culture, but the ancients called it, they. They had A word too, and it was V culpa. V means to be separated from. It's so beautiful. And kalpa means a vow that we make in our heart. And so our false beliefs actually are ways in which we separate from our deeper love and our deeper longing and our deeper truth. And so even though it often can take radical experiences in life, those radical experiences are oftentimes the thing that, like, rips the veil off the misunderstanding. And lately I've been really grappling. My teacher calls it spiritual materialism, where it's not spiritual bypassing, but they're related. Spiritual materialism is where. And it's insidious and it's super tricky. And we all do it all the time. So it's like, I'm not calling anyone out. I do it. I have to be vigilant about it. And it's like the subconscious or conscious thing where we're like, if I just do enough therapy, meditation, dream work, flow work, manifestation work, blah, blah, blah, blah, then I'm gonna get this thing that's, like, advancing me, whether it be the worldly advancements or the spiritual advancements. And my teacher is so radical every other day, she's like, yeah, that's virtual materialism. I'm like, it's everywhere. And, like, lately, I've sort of identified myself more and more as, like, a Zen Buddhist, because that really is the place that you call flow is that still point where I am open to whatever is. And in that place, ironically, the yogis say it's the PowerPoint for manifestation.

True.

But the trick is you can't. You can't want it. You can, you can, but you also have to not want it just as much or be free of it.

That's a conversation I often have with. I call them more advanced students. We always kind of arrive at this juncture in our practice. And what you call spiritual materialism, I would call transactional.

Exactly. That's the perfect word.

And I'm like, this is not a transactional experience. This is you hungry for experiences in life. But what if we just call them a hunger for experiences? And so I always describe it like, the tipping point we reach is a part of us is here in material bodies to have these hungry experiences, to see and discover who we are inside them. I mean, that, for me, is the ultimate transaction. There's no exact goal except more awareness or more understanding of self or understanding of others, perhaps. So we have this drive and this urgency. Do things, make things. You know, become a parent, you know, do well at work. Get a great house, all the things that come along with these desires. But on the other hand, there is the release of the desire. Because if you're overly focused on your desires, then they become the end of, in and of themselves, right? And then you don't always get them, or maybe they're not the right things or you get them, but there's nothing fulfilling in them. And I mean, we all can look back and see a wreckage of all of our fulfilled desires all through our life, and yet we still want more. And it seems like a bottomless pit unless you have the other side of the teeter totter, the Buddha side. I also accept exactly what I have, exactly where I am, exactly where my life is flowing at this moment. And all the information, good and bad, that's coming my way, that I'm holding so attachment and detachment in perfect equilibrium for me, I mean, that becomes the heart of, of creating, actually. And my job is to thread the needle and say, if I can feel completely attached and completely detached at the same time, what do I want to experience next? And for me, that always goes to emotions. But I don't know. That's kind of how I would describe that, that midpoint that I think you were about to go into as well. How do you describe it?

Well, let me just sidebar say it's so beautiful to meet you and like just sense your practice and to just bow to your life and your practice. And I mean that it's like, oh, we recognize like light recognizes light. And. And I always do this thing in class. You know, we have this year long Ayurveda program, but really it's this, right? It's teaching women how to access this place. And it can be very difficult to speak about because our brains are trained to understand left and right, black and white, right and wrong. And this tantra says like when you are. When you feel that you're resting in something that feels paradoxical, you are getting closer and closer to the truth. And so it's exactly what you just said. Like, how can I fully open own, you know, be real about. Yeah, I'm a sexual creature. Yeah, I like cheeseburgers too much. Yeah. I want to live in a better house than the one that I'm in right now. You know, these are me right over here. So like I can be that and then like also be disciplined and not eat the cheeseburger and choose something better for me and like be non attached to getting the things that of this world. And that is oppositional. And yet those two things Coexist. And it's in the accepting of the coexistence of what Jung called the tension of the opposites that we find. You said it like, that's the creative potential. And that might be an interesting place to kind of. Because I have lots of questions, right? So like, for creativity, the challenge for me, and I think for a lot of our listeners will be, well, how do I fully own and open to my desires and at the same time let them go? Because I'm like a type A and a half. Like, I'm used to hustling and like getting shit done and seeing the rewards and, and yet in the realm of love and in the realm of true manifestation, like, it's almost like the opposite of that for people like me. Whereas I have students and I'm very happy to help them with this, who need to get off their butts and like make a website and like, you know what I'm saying? So it's like that and they're like, oh, let me be the feminine cup and just let everything come to me. And I'm like, actually.

Yeah, yeah. I also, you know, I'm always admonishing my students, it's a, it's a perfect. You said, you know, the what? The tension of the opposites. For me, I say, great, the opposite is physical action and then what I call spiritual action or non physical action. And when you hold the feminine cup, that's the non physical action. That's I receive, I am open, I am allowing, I am, I'm painting a vision or a, or a direction in my heart, in my spirit, for the things that I'm craving to experience. But if you don't take that and bring it into the physical world, I say, great, now let's have action along with that. Now let's get them in equal balance with one another. Whereas so many people, I mean, our whole culture is taught physical action, hustle action, physical action, action, action, action. And we'll get things sometimes and, and maybe there'll be empty things or maybe we'll realize they weren't the things we wanted or needed after all, or maybe we won't even get them. And I say it's like, it's like walking if you're hopping on one foot, if you're only doing one one of these sides. So good you're hopping, you can't. You, you want to run. So we need to embody both. And I think for, I mean, for me it's my personal challenge. Living is being both a physical and a non Physical being in equal measure while I'm encased in this physical body, knowing that the non physical part of me is sort of directing the show, getting into that key sense of balance. And that's exactly, you know, where my flow dreaming practice comes in. You know, that's the non physical direction that I'm constantly using to align all the physical stuff. Because like you, I just love doing, I love being productive. And I realized that about me a long time ago. If you put me in a room for eight hours and tell me to do nothing, I will lose my mind because being productive is just part of my personality. But I have to recognize that, that productivity may help me reach my goal. But there could be somebody sitting over there who does one thing and achieves the same amount of whatever it is that I took eight hours of productivity to do. You know, and when we don't understand that, it drives us crazy. Like, well, they cheated. How did they do it? And I'm like, well, maybe they just don't have the degree of productivity that I have. But they have the same goal, they have the same desire and life is still going to attune them to it and bring them there. So I don't know, what do you think about that?

Well, I'm laughing because I'm super lazy and like I love that aspect of my personality. It's not, I'm not putting myself down. Like I say, I'm, I'm full. I do a lot in the world. When people hear about what I've done and I'm little, you know, still only like 40 something and like they're like, what? You know, I'm like, dude, if you could see the amount of town I lay around like a fat cat. Like. And you know, so, so I, I, I think, I'm not saying I use the time of relaxation always perfectly, but I, for whatever reason in this lifetime, like understand the value of, of relaxation. And the Italians call it la belfa niente. Like the beautiful do nothing is the time in which you're actually holding space for the dreams to be able to manifest. In tantra there's this, there's this idea of elegancy and efficiency and incubation. And so the womb, right, which is like this metaphor for the creative is this place of holding for nine months this thing or if we're not pregnant, like this potentiality. And so I like to watch Duck Dynasty, you know, I'm southern, right? Like I'm talking really dumb stuff, right? And I can trust that my dreams are still incubating even when I'm doing the most inane, ridiculous things. And like, can you teeter over to the edge? For sure. Right. But Tantra says, how can I use my energy the most elegantly and efficiently? And so that's where this whole field of physical exercise, breath work, Ayurvedic medicine, which is about herbs and gems and mantras. And we do a lot of like energy work, meditations, visualizations, they're all in the service of aligning ourselves with these core different energies. And so one of them is like the energy of letting go and eliminating things. And you know, another one is gathering. And so when you learn these methodologies from our. And it's not only from ancient India, like all of our cultures have these methodologies for working with vital energy. And so for me, like sitting and doing an hour long meditation of gathering energy into my system, while it may look like I'm laying down on the couch, I'm actually gathering and creating what my teachers, teachers calls an acquiring aura. You get to get things right. And so, and then I see other people like just running around 25 million hours a day. And I think we're all different. And in Ayurveda we all have different types of. But in general, I think the majority of the women that I know could use a little more couch time, maybe a little more energy. Practices that aren't just like sitting and meditating with your spine straight, like maybe lay down, maybe let it be more visualization like, like your work. Right. Of calling in these different scenarios, of using the vital imagination. I'm, I'm really curious. Like I, I'm steeped in a more Buddhist, Tantric and Hindu perspective. How does, what you do? It sounds like it's really rich and what I would call really feminine in terms of using the emotions and the imagination to create. Can you walk us through, like, your methodology a little bit?

Yeah, yeah. So it's funny, when I first put together the, the, the term flow dreaming, I had a lot of people over in the UK snickering and laughing and they're like, do you know what flow means in our culture? And they're like, it's that time of the month. Oh yeah, periods. Yeah. And I was like, well, that's not exactly what I'm talking about. But in essence that is a flow. You know, it kind of all works together. So when you mentioned the divine feminine, I'm like, yes, yes, yes. On all the different levels, all the different, all the different meanings of it. So I came to this because years ago, like 20 years ago, the year 2000, actually, 24 years ago, I was really in that growing hustling part of my life. You know, where you want to launch things, make things. Figure out where you're going, what your career is going to be. And I was trying to use manifestational tools at the time, the ones that were popular back then. And none of them were working for me. Everyone felt like I was trying to jam something into place. And I'm going to make a very long story short, I fell into this technique because I was saying, look, when I meditate, I spend an hour just going in circles, and my mind becomes even more revved up and chatty. When I'm doing affirmations, they're feeling empty and dry, like I'm not really connecting to anything. When I pray, I feel too much, like I'm a supplicant and I have to be judged whether or not I can receive. So it's like one after another. I just, you know, we're striking down all of these other practices, and I said, there's gotta be something. There's got to be something for someone like me. So what ended up happening is I broke it down basically afterwards, after I had experienced this, into a practice that has what I call three pillars in flow dreaming. The first one is guided daydreaming. And daydreaming, for me is something that we already do. It's very natural. I didn't have to learn how, you know, source or God put it in me already, you know, and made it so that I do it all the time without even being aware. And I'm a deep believer that anything that's part of our bodies and our beings has a real important purpose for us. There's nothing extraneous in us. And people dismiss daydreaming so much. They still do. I mean, there's a lot more research, but they really dismissed it. And I said, what if just like everything else, like your tongue, your tongue speaks and communicates, but it also tastes whether food is poisonous or nutritious. And what if daydreaming has multiple, perhaps a spiritual context as well? Maybe it's how we're always checking in with the divine, as well as filtering memories through our brain or whatever it else. So I began using daydreaming or my imagination first pillar to get into what I call flow state. And flow state is something, again, that we're always getting into. And psychology has popularized it for, you know, using it in certain kind of materialistic ways, like having a scientific breakthrough or having your Best golf game ever.

Life, hack.

Life. Oh, my God. Life hack. And I'm like, what if flow, space is something that we are naturally also getting into where we are in a kind of expanded consciousness? What if when I'm using this or getting into this space, what if I stay aware there, kind of like lucid dreaming at night, but now I'm lucidly in flow state, what would I do there if I have suddenly this open connection? And I said, well, I would talk to it, I would communicate, I would plan, I would feel. So that boiled down to the very last component, which is strong, deep emotion. And again, like you said, in our culture, emotion is assigned to the feminine side of things. In my world, emotion is your strongest, most powerful tool, far more than even physical action. Because everything that we're going for really boils down to wanting an emotion at the end of the day, you know, the house that we want, it's because we want safety, we want security wrapped around us, physical security. Those are feelings, the relationship. We want that partner because we want a feeling of belonging, of support, of acknowledgment, admiration. So I realized that if I go into this space and I. And I imbue it with all the emotions that I want in my life, instead of me waiting for life to always fulfill these longings in me, I'm now in a position of power, describing to life who I am, what I'm receiving and what I'm feeling. And I'm telling life, you go align to me. Because my work is heavily based on alignment, that concept. And so I say, rearrange everything because you have to match me now. I'm tired of always trying to match you and waiting for all these other people to give me permission to feel a certain way. If I achieve this, then I get to feel that, you know, back to the transactionality that we, you know, used to believe in. So I know I'm just running on, but I'm trying to give you an example of the actual technique. But just like with yoga, there was the physical practice of it, right? The technique I just described. But then there's this deeper, richer, philosophical way of seeing life now, which is everything is in flow, everything is in alignment. There's always a path of ease, there's always a path of hardship ruled by natural laws, and where do we want to be going? You know, And I always say, I want the easy, flowing road all the time. And we struggle enough just to stay on that road. You know, there's always struggle built into everything. So if there's struggle built in. Put me on the easiest road and let me learn how to be there and let me learn how to receive from that road. That's it in a long nutshell. My whole practice condensed.

I mean, I'm getting chill bumps. And I'm really glad you went through it all because what's super cool is that as you're speaking at the end, the definition of a yogini, not like, you know, I do these whole seminars on like, what this word actually means has nothing to do with a physical movement. In fact, those are really very new iterations, mainly not from India. And yoga yogini, she who is in the state of flow, Yoga union. The definition is she who becomes a refuge, whole and complete unto herself. She needs nothing and no one to be her own refuge and therefore becomes a refuge to all who come in contact with her. And that doesn't mean that you're not in relationships. It doesn't mean you don't feel connectivity. It means that the, and, and furthermore, going to our ancient histories, all of our traditions hold these gods and goddesses as the archetypes of our emotional realm and they give them their, their value, which is that realm of gods and goddesses. So, you know, I'm sure we grew up similarly in these more patriarchal Judeo Christian cultures, which I'm not anti patriarchy, but I am anti patriarchy that accepts, excludes this other realm that values everything that you were talking about in terms of the emotional body. But what's so powerful, Summer, about what you just said is it is so liberating. Like we think enlightenment means. Like, oh, like I'm on a cloud and like I'm beyond. And enlightenment, one of my friends calls enheartment is freedom. And in that freedom, I can create safety, I can create joy, I can create terror, I can create all of those things. And I just, I, I love it. And I know so many of my listeners are going to want to listen to your, your, your teachings. And I, I, I think it just is so resonant with what we do here at the Shakti School as well.

Yeah, yeah, I may be a yogini and not know it.

You are, as you were talking. And so many, by the way, so many yoginis are not calling themselves that. And I think, you know, probably for good reason. There's a lot of cultural inheritance that we, we don't need. Like, I'm really glad that I, you know, was born in a place where in a way there's just so much freedom to be Able to, on one hand, honor our histories and our cultures and our ancestors, but also, like, we have to update these operating systems because they're arcane.

Yeah, I. I completely, completely agree. I was thinking how I took the path of science and. And, you know, explored quantum physics and did a lot of deep research around, you know, what is this energy that I keep encountering and this, this potency in this space. Whereas you, you know, so I was looking this direction, the forward direction. Like, what did they just discover? Well, tell me about this. You were looking into the past, the rich heritage of. Well, they already discovered it. Here's when they did it. Right. So we're. It's like we're all in this process of rediscovering the same thing, but in different terms. So that. That's what I'm loving about our conversation. Because again, we. We're describing the same information. Just, you know, it's like two different paintings of the same image. And, you know, I'm more, you know, impressionistic style and you're more classic style or something along those lines. In fact, a lot of our conversation is reminding me, interestingly enough, of art. Some people have a belief that there's only one right way and one you can. You can't borrow, you can't take from all these different practices or beliefs or thoughts. And to me, I think, you know, that's like painting a picture that only has one color. And it is a form of art. You know, we've all seen modern art with the one black square in the middle of the canvas. But for me, you know, if I'm. If I'm wanting to paint, I want all the colors. I want lots of variety. I want to create depth and shadows and everything on the canvas. And so when I'm applying that to my spiritual self, I'm very happy to like. I'm so intensely interested now in learning a little more about tantra, because after reading through your book, I'm like, I really need to look into this. Because she's describing a lot of feelings that I've experienced while in flow state.

Well, you don't need to. I would say don't do that. Don't look at it. You're. Yeah, I'm not. I'm. I'm kidding, of course. Go look at it. But I. I steeped myself so deeply in it, both. Both in a scholarly sense as well as, like, an experiential sense. And so much of these old practices, just like all religious forms, they are dogmatic. And so we're installing Mantras into people. We're installing visualizations. And I'm a. I'm a PhD school dropout in Jungian psychology. And what I loved about Carl Jung is he said one of the main things that helped his patient. So now we could take it beyond just like spiritual practice or manifestation. He took it to the therapeutic realm. This idea of flow dreaming he called. And I'm sure we all have slight differences, but he called it active imagination. And so he would have his patients just give free rein to their subconscious to just float and create. And they got clinically better. Right. And I think about our world with so much ununderstandable anxiety and depression and the way that we've all kind of negated the realm of magic for the realm of logic. And by relegating magic to the shadow, we're stripping ourselves of half of our power, firstly. And then, secondly, we aren't. Because she will come back and grab you in the night fiercely and shake you until you listen. Right. It's like she's.

Overwhelming emotion is what I'd call that.

Exactly. People are like the suppression of the divine feminine. I'm like, are you kidding me? She's not suppressed. She's everywhere in this, like, unhindered form that hasn't been given its structure to flow through.

Yeah. I believe Jung also believes in, or believed in universal consciousness. Right. The idea of the interconnected net of awareness of all beings, which is something I don't think is talked about as often, but. Yeah, for me, that's another way of.

Saying flow again and would flow. I mean, I'm thinking about the Taoist word for. I mean, they don't call it God, but that's the best approximation. The Taoist word for God is dao, which means flow. And so in a way, I mean, when I say to my students, you know, connecting to God, you can feel like half the room kind of bristle. But when you. And understandably. Right. But then when you understand God, as I think you and I might have an understanding of. It's just this place.

Yeah. For me, it's. It's. It's the energy of all things, if we get right down to it. What is your definition of God? I'd say God, flow, source. It's. It's everything, you know, everything being everything in creation. It's all, like I say, I'm a piece of God. My. My fingertip is a piece of God. And I. I tend to see things as layered. So I have a cell in my finger. It's a piece of Me, it may be aware of itself being a cell. It probably doesn't. I don't know. But likewise, I am a cell in Mother Earth. Mother Earth may be aware of me individually, it may not. Earth is a cell as a planet in our galaxy. Our galaxy being a cell in the greater body of the universe, which is a cell in the greater body of all universes. So I'm always looking at this sort of layered understanding. And if I'm. If I. So that means I'm a cell of all the universes, essentially, because it's all part of one another. So, you know, being here or being some other place, I mean, for me, it's very, very fluid. And, you know, the, the, the thought that, you know, we're just these little physical hamsters on this wheel of life just trying to make and eat things before we die. It's one aspect of it, sure. But the greater aspect is. And then what are we? You know, and then what? What. And then, you know, what did you bring from that experience? So I, I just go right back to, okay, what am I. What am I here to experience in this life? And some of it is going to be the baked in, you know, wound, as you would call it. You know, that, that you're here to really learn a lot from. And some of it is just your own personal curiosity and direction. I don't know, I just kind of flew off in a wild philosophical tangent there. But something you said provoked it.

Yeah, it's welcomed. Yeah, I. I'm wondering, like, if people wanted to practice. I mean, I want to talk about your books. My book, but practically, I'm just curious, like, I know the way that I work with manifestation. It's like the Zen of manifestation. Because I've done so much, like super involved tantric forms of manifestation. And let me tell you, it worked in many cases. Like I said, I'm going to write a book. It happened. It was a New York Times bestseller. I didn't even add that part. That happened on its own. And it's not like, oh, I'm bragging. It's just like, this shit works. Like, if you really. Okay, so I could list all these great things I've manifested. I'm sure you could list all these incredible miracles and manifestations, but I got to a certain point where there were so many things that I hadn't and that I kept failing at. And it was like the realm of the wound. And in a way, that's been my most beautiful experience of my heart and my divine soul and my Relationship to God. And, like, I don't care if I get these things anymore. And so I'm curious, a. When you do your practice, is it like, I sit down. Can you walk us through a manifestation practice? And then secondly, don't you think that. Do you think that there's room in this lifetime for not she who is always broken, for the part of us that doesn't get what we want? And how foolish of us to think we're all just going to get Ferraris and hot husbands, you know? Like, it's so childlike.

Yeah. Yeah. So. So my practice is really. It's crazy simple. Just like with meditation, you can do it privately on your own, or you could listen to, like, I call it a guided float room. And I've. I've created more than 300 of these guided.

We're going to. We're going to put those in the show notes.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. And me, too. For everybody to find out about you and your podcast and your book and all of it. Yes. So I will sit down sometimes for 10, 15 minutes, and I'll do the three pillars I described to you. I will start imagining, and typically I'll use. I'll ask my mind to give me some imagery that will help me feel like I'm in a beautiful sense of connected alignment that I'm on, that I'm perfectly in the path of, you know, the. The day, the earth moving around, the sun, water flowing to the sea. These are paths of no resistance. The path of time, the arrow of time, as it moves forward, it's not encountering resistance there, it just is. And so I may come up, you know, one of my favorites is I go to a place called Sugar Sand Beach. But really, it can be. It varies. And in this. This perfect place, there's sand on one side and water on the other. It's bright daylight where I am, yet I look above and see the stars. So I'm bringing together these beautiful opposites. And yet, right along that shoreline, there is a direction, and I walk it, and I'm drawn into it. And in this place, I am an absolute divine alignment. I'm going where I need to go. I'm embodying everything that I need. And this becomes an awareness in me. Everything I'm searching for, I already have a path to, too, because we often get caught in waiting for the next thing. So you can do the next thing. But that's not how, for me, life works. If we want something, then the. The tools are already surrounding us. So I say, wonderful. I Pick these up and I bring them in. I bring in emotion in this place. Now at a certain point, I'm drifting off into flow. I've lost track of my body. I don't know how much time has passed. Just like when you daydream and you kind of forget your whole physical being, that happens to me. And then I bring in emotion. And maybe there's something in my life that I'm trying to correct or the broken thing. And part of me is. I call it bracing versus embracing. Normally we brace, we prepare, we're ready to do battle with it. And I say, okay, I'm going to shift that into embracing instead. So if I put my arms around this, what will I receive from it? If I put my arms into this space, I allow it to be, or I heal it, or I. I'm going to ask for the emotions that I actually want to. Ask is the wrong word. I'm going to become the emotions that I actually want to have and feel. And maybe that is, you know, for a lot of us it's freedom or safety are the, the. I call these emotional endpoints. And all the things we're working toward are giving us freedom and safety, which are also ironically, two sides of the same coin. They're basically the same feeling. Just.

Yeah, that's amazing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. It's like emptiness and fullness.

Yes. So I'm like, okay, I have immense freedom and incredible safety. And I become that. And I just become, I embody the feeling state of that. And as I do for me, it's like a beacon. It's like I say, if, if energy could be tinted with a color. I have just dropped in all the tinted, you know, food coloring of bright, beautiful, luscious, just pink. And that's what I've made. And now that becomes part of me. And now that has become part of my life. That's become part of all it is. And if I'm doing this all the time, if I do this every day, if I do it a couple times a day, even for a couple minutes each, I'm actually recreating the structure of my being, of my soul, right? What we experience, the knowledge, any information once known, never becomes unknown. And that's a very dumbed down way of describing a actual quantum physics theory. So once we know this information, it never leaves, it becomes us. And I will carry it to the end of my being a billion years from now. I will carry it into, like I said, all of the universes. So I'm striving constantly to create that kind of information in me, the emotional content of who I am. And you might call that being loved, right? Expressing love. And just like all the points you outline in your book, I'm like, yeah, that's what I'm practicing, you know, at the highest level. But that also drips down into the reality that surrounds me. Can't help it, you know, if I am, if I am being blown by an ocean wind, I'm definitely going to end up at some island as a boat. And that's going to be the thing that I experience next. So that, that's kind of what my practice looks like. It's a, it's a, it's a daily practice of 10, 15 minutes. It's a deeply emotional practice. And then, you know, I do all kinds of things there. I'll ask for guidance. I'll work on healing or I'll manifest something that I'm curious about or, you know, those feelings I'm desiring. I mean, what's yours? I feel like I, it's not fair if I don't say, how do you do that?

Well, I mean, it's so cool. I, I love just, I mean, it's. And it's a very, I want to acknowledge, like a super intimate question, right? Like, this is the, this is the most intimate place, I think even more intimate than, than sex. I mean, this is like our soul intimacy. You to you, are you with the divine. And, and so thank you for letting us into that realm. And I know that everyone listening will be like, very grateful. I mean, I've done so many millions of practices in this lifetime. It, it. I've, you know, one of my teachers said you've been very greedy with the practices, like maybe you need, you know, and that was just such a great idea. And I did. But now I'm back. And so for me, I'm familiar with these methodologies, but I haven't quite heard them really. You have a lived experience of them and you can really feel that. And I loved this idea. I just want to highlight is this idea of being in like this flow place because of natural flow and aligning with something like a river or an ocean or the wind. It's like the truth of no resistance. I feel like my personality has been one of constant resistance. And so for me, it's like a deconstruction process of opening to flow. And really I call it like allowing the 360 degrees of experience to be like divinity. Whether it be. So for me, what I'm doing right now and Everything you're saying, Summer, I'm going to be the first one who's, like, going to your YouTube and finding all and doing your practices because I'm super greedy. But, like, I want to do that, but my practice right now has actually been one of no practice, don't get me wrong. Like, I'm sitting and I'm grounding and I'm doing some energy work just so I can quiet my mind. But to be open and receptive, relaxed and open to whatever it is that my mind can experience and being able to kind of parse, okay, you know, that's the discursive part of my mind. I love you. I see you. But, like, that's not a good thing to follow right now, right? And so, like, seeing the videos and seeing and feeling the emotions, actually, in this context, it's different. The emotions and the videos of the mind and the discursive mind as traces. In Ayurveda, we call it butas, which means ghosts, traces of the past. And to be able to actually witness thought and emotion in this context as memories and just kind of allowing memory to digest, that's where I am in my practice. And what's left is, like, everything you're talking about. What's left is freedom and safety and light and expansion and perceptual change. Anything's possible, whereas 30 minutes ago, nothing was possible. I'll never do this and I'll never do that. Right? And so I've been working with the deconstruction. Rather than, like, going into some sort of state change, allowing whatever state is, we get to the same end place.

I think ebb and flow is how I use it in my language. There is a period where the waves are crashing on the shore and everything is active and creative. And we make things and we bite into life. And then the waves recede from the shoreline. And that is the period of, like you described it, digestion, reflection. That's when we're meant to walk along the dark part of ourselves, the quiet, the empty, and see what there is, what was left over. What did we pull in from the active part of our life? So I'm always recognizing ebb and flow. Even in a single day. My day has ebb and flow, right? I have sleep at night where I'm digesting, receiving, figuring things out, coding into memory. But sometimes our ebb and flow are months long or years long or decades long. And people will say, I feel so stuck. I'm like, you're in the ebb. You know, you're in the Reflection. You'll emerge. You have to. Everything always will. And another one thing I want to mention. I know we're going a little bit long, but it's fascinating. You've mentioned a lot, being in this reflective, receptive, quiet, empty space in art. Because I come from an art background, I keep bringing art in today for some reason. There's this concept that the negative space of a canvas is as, or more important than what's actually painted on it. So when you provide life of the universe with a blank canvas, nothing there, you're sort of allowing some things to come in when normally your canvas is all painted over, that nothing more can. Can be put there. Nothing more can be received or understood. So we have to have those moments, either 15 minutes or 15 days or 15 years of the white canvas where nothing is there. Then something gets painted on it. New activity, new action. And yet it's still balanced by the negative space. That means the unpainted part. And we have a tendency in our society, if you have a white canvas with a single black dot on the. Where will our eyes go? They will go to the small black dot. First thing we'll see, we won't see the 8ft of white nothing. So we're kind of retraining ourselves to not go to the action point. We're like, no, I'm actually looking at all the white. The. The tiny spot is just an afterthought. That's the thing I see. Second, that's it. That's sort of a description of what you're doing. Training yourself to be in that space of. Of. Of digestion and receiving and allowing.

Yeah, and like a clearing. Right. Like, well, I want to create a canvas. And the name of the piece of art I'll dedicate it to you will be eight Feet of Nothing. It's like such a great title for like a rock band or like an art movement.

But eight feet of nothing.

Eight feet of nothing. And I also, like, I think I've been, like I said, just so focused on that creativity and not doing. And that, like, being in the being feels like such a powerful medicine for me. And we, you know, we can call it masculine Shiva or feminine Shakti, whatever. It doesn't matter. Right. But having a balance of those two is super important. And I think constitutionally, this is something Ayurveda teaches us. Constitutionally, we will tend towards one of those sides of the coin. And so, like, the. The balancing act is to actually go maybe sometimes towards that which is not your tendency in order to create that Harmony. And I think that being in what we would call like the masculine, that open, clean, pure consciousness has been such a medicine for me as a woman. Not having a partner, not having much of a father relationship, like all of these ways that one could approach God the father, to be in that emptiness, it's a fathering state. Whereas to be in the flow and the abundance and the nurturance and the color and the emotion and the imagination, like, that's mama, right? And so in this system, right, like that's the wild feminine. And I feel like so many women that come to our school of like denounced God and they want the goddess. And they're very goddessy women, or they're not, but they want it. And to actually learn the medicine for the Goddess is God, the medicine for God is the goddess. So really all of us flowy, you know, artists, yoga girls could do well having some silent time. Whereas these like, you know, dudes in Palo Alto going and living in caves for 40 days in silence, they need to like, dance and do art and like feel feelings. Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, I do. And I, I think actually this is kind of a perfect wrap up, if you don't mind, but because we're going right back to sort of what we opened with, which is how do you embody both at once, you know, and that for me, right there in the center of embodying both in equal measure, that is the key. And so we're going to move through, like you say. And I was thinking as you spoke, many people feel that manifestation is actually the masculine principle, Right? It's the yang because it's outward, it's direction, it's movement, it's action. And they see the yin as the non manifestation, the being on the embodiment. But what the way you just described it made perfect sense in the opposite.

I know. Everything is.

All the opposites reflect one another and go back.

Yeah, like, that's what I love. I love it's. Yes, and yeah, exactly.

I think by the way, you just named the, the title of the episode for my podcast, eight Feet of Nothing and from apart. Going to leave everyone to figure that out.

I am so resonating with your brain. I was like, the title of the podcast is God and eight Feet of Nothing.

Katie, I love this. And you know, I'll be obviously giving everybody information about how to find you. Is there anything though that you want to share? Like, like, please, everybody start here so they can find you.

Yeah, likewise. We're sharing this on our pod and same we want everyone to find you and your books and your site. You know, I have a new book, book out called Glow Worthy and really the one thing that we do all year long, we have a year long ayurvedic women only education platform. It starts in January, so if you can start now, I have a, a free three hour course. So we can provide you guys with the link for that.

Beautiful, wonderful.

What about you?

So I just tell everybody, go to flow dreaming.com. my website is 20 years in the making, so it's a behemoth. There's a ton there. But I start with a free teaching, a free, free education on what Flow Dreaming is and how to practice it. And then I hand people a couple of them to get going with so they can experience that pure flow state of deep, emotionally embodied communication. And I'm just like, just download it, get it, listen. It's also replicated like you said on, on YouTube. I do have the teaching there and I have a, an app, actually a mobile app, a little techy part of my personality that provides the same thing. So just tell people, get started, you know, just to start learning the process. And likewise my podcast, Flow Dreaming and yours of course, Spirit Sessions, that's another great resource I think for everybody.

Absolutely. Thank you, Summer. This has been amazing, awesome, Katie.

Been such a pleasure to talk with, to meet with, and I am intrigued. And like you said, I'll be on your site after this as well as you're being online, because I feel like you and I are almost like two sides of the same coin, just, you know, the yin and the yang, but describing the exact same thing. So thank you so much.

Thank you.

So my friends, that wraps up my conversation with the lovely Katie Silcox. And now you know why I named this episode eight Feet of Nothing. I hope that that was catchy and got your eye enough to listen to the entire discussion. Conversation that we just had A reminder. I do teach live every month. Of course, Katie has a wonderful program as well. Mine is called the Flow Dreaming Mastermind. Now, depending on when you're listening to this, there will be some live workshop going on. And I tend to plan them on dates that are pretty important in the astrological calendar. We do new moon manifesting, full moon manifesting, we do solar eclipses, we do equinoxes, we do it all. So check it out. Go to my website, flowdreaming.com and see if that interests you. When we get together like this every month and go into flow, we're really learning, stretching and developing and getting to immerse yourself more and more in this philosophy coupled with hands on, you know, get your get your pencil and graphite stained fingertips ready because I'll be asking you to journal and think and create. So I hope to see some of you in the Mastermind and likewise I hope some of you will also consider reaching out and maybe we can do an introductory session together. These sessions are where I get to know you personally. One on one. I get to look into your flow. I get to give you really good and direct clarifying guidance. You can also find that at my website flow dreaming.com so with that I've got a few little words here at the end but I will see you all next time. Time for another fabulous and wonderful episode of Flow Dreaming. Still kinda woo woo. I love to work with you one on one. I get to see the most exponential growth. And those of you who work with me privately every month, I'm part coach, part mentor, part energy worker and intuitive. What I do is beyond traditional coaching in many ways since I add in all kinds of information you wouldn't normally have access to and the results speak for themselves. I have hundreds of glowing testimonials you can read for yourself at my website or just reach out and ask me. We begin working together with an assessment of your life, what you want and where you've been, where you're going. We focus deeply on patterns, blocks and what you plan to achieve or become next within yourself and within your life. Last, we're going to carry your desires right into the heart of the the universe by Flow Dreaming together. As I lead you in every session with a personalized customized Flow Dream. You're going to end up with dozens of these plus a plan. Now you've got two options. You can either take me for a test run with an introductory private session or we can just jump in and explore what a loneliness relationship working together would do for your life. Just visit flow dreaming.com search for private sessions and I really look forward to meeting you.