EP 208: Renée Peterson Trudeau | An Invitation to Tend to Our Souls

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Hi. Welcome to the Radical Responsibility Podcast. This is your host, Dr. Fleet Moll. And today I'm sharing with you a conversation I had with Renee Peterson Trudeau, an internationally recognized transformational coach and author. And we're going to talk about hearing, listening to and heeding the call of.

Your wise self, your inner wise self.

We're going to talk about practical strategies to integrate spiritual self care into your life, common ways people connect to the sacred in everyday life, the importance of soul dates for spiritual self care, and the one question to ask yourself to cultivate spiritual self care and much, much more. Before we get started, just a reminder to Please subscribe to our podcast on your favorite platform so you don't miss an episode. And just also letting you know that if you'd like to download your free neurosomatic mindfulness ebook, you can do so@www.heartmind.co NSM podcast. That's Heartmind Co NSMPodcast your copy of my free NSM ebook. You can also order my book Radical Responsibility and receive over $1,000 in valuable free bonuses by ordering the book from your favorite bookseller like Amazon or Barnes and Noble or Indie Books and then going to our book website, radicalresponsibilitybook.com placing the order number or receipt there. And then you will receive over $1,000 in valuable free bonuses, courses and challenges from HeartMind Institute. Also remember to join our Facebook group, facebook.comgroupsHMSummitCommunity. also consider becoming a member of our HeartMind All Access membership and community where where you will have access to all of our courses and summons over 1000 hours of incredible transformational teaching from the world's leading experts in transformation, in healing, trauma in neuroscience and positive plasticity, positive neuroplasticity, and much, much more. You can do so at heartmind. Co. Hmm. Heartmind Co. Hmm. For a very small annual subscription fee, you can have access to all these amazing transformational teachings. And there's actually a very wonderful opportunity here to join a vibrant community, a global community dedicated to global transformation. So also don't forget to follow us on instagram@instagram.com heartmindinstitute as well as on facebook at at facebook.com heartmindinstitute and you could always just go to heartmind co to learn all about all of our programs okay, so let's get started with the conversation with Renee Trudeau.

Welcome, Renee.

Thank you, Fleet. I'm happy to be here.

Well, I've been looking forward to this opportunity to have this conversation with you. You've done several of our summits and I really appreciated your teaching and everything you've offered. So I was really excited that I get to do the interview this time.

Thank you. Thank you.

So I'm going to share a bit of your bio and then we'll jump right into the conversation. Sound good?

Sounds good.

Okay, so Renee Peterson Trudeau is an internationally recognized transformational coach, speaker and author of two award winning books, the Mother's Guide to Self Renewal, how to reclaim, rejuvenate and rebalance your life and nurturing the soul of your 10 Ways to Reconnect and find peace in everyday life. Renee speaks to Fortune 500 companies, organizations and teams worldwide on the art and science of spiritual self care. Featured in the New York Times, Spirituality and health, and more. Renee has been facilitating transformational retreats at Omega Institute, Esalen Kripalu center for Yoga and Health, the Art of Living Retreat center for more than 15 years. Organization has certified 450 women in more than 10 countries to facilitate the sacred women's circles retreats based on her award winning curriculum. Okay, so we are on day four of the summit here which is focused on spiritual self care. And so I know you know that you like to kind of, you lead a lot of retreats and you know you like to kind of set the set and setting right off the bat. And so I'm wondering if you could lead us in a little exercise just to get us all in a good frame of mind and space to explore spiritual self care.

I would love to. Thanks, Fleet. So I'm going to invite everyone, if it feels comfortable, to close your eyes or take a soft gaze.

And if you're wanting to feel more energized, you might put your palms up. And if you're wanting to feel more grounded, you can put your palms down on your knees or your legs.

And begin by just connecting with your breath.

And if you've got a lot of things going on today and you're feeling kind of scattered, you might put one hand on your belly and one hand on your chest.

And nothing to fix.

But just noticing your breath and noticing if it's smooth or jagged.

Noticing if it's shallow or deep.

Life breathes me.

And feeling the air and the temperature of the air on your skin.

Noticing the sounds inside the room and perhaps the sounds beyond the room.

Noticing if there's a predominant thought or story that's dancing across your mind right now. And just like at a train station, you can wave it by.

And envisioning, perhaps roots extending down through the bottom of your feet and seeing your root system go all the way down, down, down to the center of the earth.

And then following that line of energy up from the center of the earth, through your feet, through your body, through your spine, out through the crown of your head, into the heavens. So a sensation of feeling grounded and open.

And feeling safe and feeling free.

And bringing your attention to the area above the crown of your head and letting your focus, your attention cascade down to your shoulders, your upper arms, elbows, forearms, hands, wiggling your fingers.

And letting your awareness cascade down to your chest, front, body, back, body, side, body, down into your hips, your thighs, your knees, your calves, and your feet, wiggling your toes and feeling your 72 trillion cells alive and, and well.

And perhaps just doing a check in and those. And noticing right now, what is one thing that you need today? What's one thing you need today?

And then acknowledging that, taking a deep breath, your nose.

Letting it out through your mouth.

When you're ready, opening your eyes, foreign.

Wow. Thank you. Thank you. So I invite our audience to just keep dropping back into that as we explore this conversation today. And we'll have a wonderful meditative contemplative session today with Ray to know. With Ray Trudeau. Sorry. Talking about spiritual self care and doing spiritual self care while we're talking about it. So perfect and wonderful. So, you know, so far on the summit, we've explored physical self care, mental self care, emotional self care. Now we're talking about spiritual self care. And you can't really completely separate all these things. You know, body, mind, spirit, heart, it's all part of one interdependent continuum and so forth. But nonetheless, we can emphasize talk about these different areas. So when thinking about spiritual self care, what does the spirit part mean to you? What is your sense of what dimension of that is that of our lives? What's the spiritual dimension? What are we actually addressing there? And I realize lots of people will look at it different ways and have different language for it, but few, you know, how would you talk about that spiritual dimension that we're addressing through spiritual self care? That might be a little different if we were talking specifically about physical self care, for example.

Well, and fleet, because I'm so passionate about self care, if I may just begin by defining self care or how I orient to it, which is Really, I see it as the art and the science of attuning and responding to our needs and our desires moment to moment. And that's how I define self care. And I've been working with that definition and researching and teaching and practicing and writing books about it for about 23 years. And it's a topic I'm really passionate about. When we talk about spiritual self care. And you're so right. Everything is connected. You can't really extricated. Everything's connected. And we all orient very differently to this idea of tending the soul or self care. Spiritual self care. But I really think about added to essence, spiritual self care is really how we connect to what I call source, you know, or the divine or God. And each of us does that in different ways. And we'll get into that. But really, how do you connect to your. To your true nature, you know.

And I love the idea, and I'll tell you, if I may in a minute about my family and kind of how it's impacted me, but not that, you know, I have a soul, but I am a soul. I am a soul. And my, my soul, when I'm deeply connected to my nature and my essence is really driving everything in my life.

And would you like me to share a little bit about my orientation? Is that.

Yeah, yeah, sure, Becca. I mean, how did you end up, you know, with your focus as a. As a teacher and coach on self care and spiritual self care in particular?

Yeah. And so I'm the oldest of seven kids, and I grew up in a family. My parents were scientists and yogis, and I grew up for kind of my formative years on Paramahansa Yogananda, who wrote the Autobiography of a Yogi. I grew up on Ananda in Northern California. And in our home we had a meditation room that was the same size as our living room. And I grew up in an interfaith family, so I was raised Catholic and Hindu. And in this space we had a 14th century creche scene. And then we also had Ganesha and Lakshmi and Mother Mary all in the same space. So my parents would have little children crawling over them while we're all meditating together as there's mala beads and Cheerios everywhere. So I grew up in a family where spirituality was not something that we dropped into on Sundays or something that was over on a shelf. They were just constantly asking us, how do you feel God? How do you know God? And there was a lot of dysfunction. A lot of us come from. I think a lot of our really highly Creative people come from a hotbed of dysfunction and I can definitely attune to that. But there was a strong, strong focus on everyday spirituality in our household.

I would say the other thing that really impacted the work that I'm doing now is I had a lot of early. So I had, we had an. Eight years. We had three of our family members die. I had a brother that committed suicide at 20 and then my parents died in their 50s. So I've. Now I'm on the other side of, you know, passing, passing them, which is an interesting experience. But those losses really woke me up and were really a lightning bolt for me asking how can I stay awake and alive in everyday life.

So.

You know, you, you had that, that beautiful upbringing with, you know, a family with spiritual orientation and both Catholic and Hindu and involved in the yogic practices of the self realization, fellowship and so forth, a beautiful community and tradition. And, and so, you know, there was some religious aspects of that and some religiosity and, and at least, you know, I'm very familiar with the world of kind of chaplaincy and, and hospice care and, and, and those kind of things in the medical world. And, and when we talk about the spiritual dimension there, we often talk about, as opposed to psychosocial care. And the two can overlap, but we talk about the spiritual dimension having to do with a sense of connectedness within, with others and with some greater dimension. It gives our life meaning and purpose and with the whole, you know, every aspect of all that does give us meaning and purpose. So. And when we get in spiritual distress, it can also often be that sense of being disconnected or alienated or things be, you know, perceiving things as meaningless or empty. Right. And so I'm curious, is spiritual care, obviously, you know, and sometimes that sense, we say religious care is a subset of a broader category of spiritual care. So it's a complex lead into a question about whether obviously people can approach spiritual care through religious observances and practices, their involvement in fellowship or various religious practices. But for people who don't have a religious orientation, is spiritual care also available to them?

Absolutely, absolutely. And the last book that I wrote is called Nurturing the soul of your family. And we did a little, a lot of research on how people connect to the sacred or how they connect to the divine in everyday life. And the, the cross section of research we did, men and women from Canada and the U.S. all different faiths, all different practices, and we looked at what was the. There were many ways that people connected to the sacred, but there was One that rose above all of them. And I bet you can guess what it was, was being in nature.

And that crossed everything. But as we talk about this in, in, in the renewal group, so I have a community of facilitators around the world when they're leading renewal groups and we talk about spiritual self care, you know, people will share. Many times it's service to others. The gratitude practice, it can be meditation or prayer. Definitely time in nature can be the expressive arts. So I'm very connected to the divine. I lead wild souls, song circles and wild souls, authentic movement things that I've created.

It can be forgiveness, practice of forgiveness, journaling, kindness. So many, many ways to connect to the divine in everyday life. And it's unique for all of us. You know, I think really the invitation fleet is for each of us is to, as we think about this idea of tending to our souls is to really taking time to be with our souls and to connect to the language of the soul. What is the language of your soul? I mean, for me, you know, I made this radical departure where I left Austin, Texas, where I was very involved for 30 years and home base there. And I moved to a little tiny town of 7,500 that's in the middle of a national forest in the oldest mountain range in the world. And that was a calling from my soul. I mean, I think she probably started off whispering and then tapping, but ultimately shaking me and saying, this is something that is yours to do, you know. And so learning the language of the soul, my, that my language, my soul's language is very much attuned to expressive arts, to song and dance. And I'm also like, you do a lot of yoga and meditation as well.

So people have a lot of different terms for, you know, whatever sense. If we have a sense in our life that there's, you know, some greater dimension and you know, people use God or various forms of God language or source or higher intelligence or inner intuitive intelligence or innate intelligence, all the divine, the sacred, all these kinds of things, many of which you've been mentioning. And I know you do talk about tending to the soul. And I wonder if you could say more precisely what you mean by soul is.

Because it does imply a certain kind of individual, may or may not imply something individual for you, but how would you distinguish that from what we think of as the self or. Or even the more limited conditioned self, that sense of me and the world out there. So what does soul mean to you exactly?

So for me, I'm thinking about, I was just Leading a retreat at Kripalu center for Yoga and Health, but where I've been for about 16 years, teaching. And when I begin the retreats, we introduce a setup off to the side and you'll see two chairs with a table and a candle and a journal. And I will guide people over to this, this image or this, this visual of these two chairs in the table. And I say, I believe that we are on retreats to have a date with our wise selves. And I really see my wise self as my soul. There's a beautiful line in one of mark deposit. It's called the friend. It says there's a friend older than birth who danced with you before you had a body. And so when we. That's. That's why I'm such a evangelist for retreats, for taking retreats and also leading retreats is because I think it can be. For many people, you know, it is the incubator or the opportunity for them to connect to that, their very essence, you know, their nature, their wise self. And that's what I call the soul. For me.

Yeah.

I want to circle back and talk to you about retreats a little later in our conversation.

So.

Yes. So, you know, I think you're. That, that part of our being, like even, you know, there before we're in this body or that part that is connected to source or manifestation of source or essence. Some people talk about higher self or thing, but it's. It's something deeper, a little bit different than the more limited condition egoic self that we all have this kind of trying to navigate in the world in whatever ways based on our conditioning so forth. So there's something deeper and, and it has to the extent where trust in the set we're in touch with that we're kind of getting.

Wiser, intuitive wisdom from which to lead our lives, would you say? Is that safe to say from what you're talking about?

Very much so. And it's, you know, it was interesting. I was thinking back today as I knew we were going to have this visit today. I was thinking back on, you know, when was the first time I felt that I heard my soul, you know, or. Or knew my soul as a young child. I was thinking back on that or heard the voice of my soul, you know. And, you know, I remember being, you know, I'm the oldest of seven kids. I'm an overachiever, but I remember hearing that in college and I remember hearing this kind of kind, gentle voice as I was trying to decide what job to take Post college and it was saying, well, you will do this and then you will do this and then you will do this and then you will do this and just kind of this kind gentle laying out. I want you to have all these experiences so then you can do this. And it was the strangest sensation because it didn't feel like it was coming from a driven place or from my ego, but it really, I Feel now at 8, it was, I was 18, was, you know, my soul talking to me about my path. And it is such a different experience for all of us. You know, I did, I grew up in a family where we were having these conversations at dinner every night and there was, you know, parents were studying philosophy and theology and talking about all this. But I know for a lot of people this can feel vague like, like this idea of spiritual self care connecting to your soul can feel.

You know, foreign or vague. And you know, I would, I just want to acknowledge that and I want to offer that, you know, if you are in that space sometimes tuning in, starting by tuning into the heart. You know, they say the heart is the door to the soul. So, so beginning to tune into your heart and paying attention to what things move you, you know, what things bring tears to your eyes. I mean, this is, this is the doorway to the soul. And when I lead retreats and we talk about connection to the wise self, you know, I say if you have not been slowing down and getting quiet enough to hear your why self or hear your soul, be gentle with yourself. It can take some time until you foster that intimacy and that connection.

And so in our society there's often hasn't been a lot of societal support for spiritual self care or spirituality in general. And a lot of, I mean, I don't mean to be critical of any anybody's religious observances. It's all wonderful and just being in community with others is wonderful. But some of it tends to be pretty outer. And you know, modern religion in the last century, you know, the inner part of it was kind of left behind from, in a lot of traditions. You know, I think that was one of the attraction of many people like your parents and some of the Eastern traditions in the 60s and 70s got to kind of put the inner part more in the forefront. And so at any rate there, you know, there may be many of us and many in our audience who have kind of, you know, shortchange that dimension of their life. And so how do you help your clients, you know, begin to understand and identify what kind of some of their spiritual Needs are, as you know, at least it's a little different frame than looking for what are my spiritual needs? What are my emotional needs. So how do you, again, people begin to get in touch with and identify what some of their spiritual needs are that maybe they haven't really been addressing or given time and space for?

Yeah, and I love, absolutely. I'd love to share around that. I love what you said earlier too, that. So I do a lot of work with women, women and men, but a lot of work with women. And we know that depression and anxiety in the mental health field, depression, anxiety manifests when there's a disconnect from our true nature. Right. Like you were saying earlier. And so, you know, a lot of times people are feeling that and they're trying to find a patch or a quick solution or a pill or something to just feel better. But it really is about connecting to that deeper part of who you are. And so, you know, I can offer some things. I'm happy to do that. I would also encourage those that are with us right now to even just start by placing your hand over your chest, you know, over your heart and closing your eyes and connecting to that, that energy, connecting to your soul, your very essence, and asking what helps me feel more connected to my soul? And even doing that before you take in any external ideas or input. As I was talking to people this week, Fleet, I'm so passionate about this topic of spiritual self care and tending to the soul. And so I had fun visiting with people and asking them, what does that mean to you? How do you do that? And everyone had a different path in terms of how they connect, you know, and nurture themselves spiritually. But they knew, everybody knew. When they got quiet and they put their hand on their heart, they knew, even though it was different. So some of the same self care practices that I advocate for people in daily life are some of the practices you can use to connect to your essence and to your very nature. So in the morning before you get out of bed, that's such a beautiful window. We were talking about how we enter the day. So just taking that time before you even step out of bed to just do a body scan, you know, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. And we know that we think about different bodies. We have different bodies, energetic bodies and physical body. And this in the spiritual body has the highest vibration. So just a tuning into that and asking, what do I need today? What do I need today? And because everything is interconnected, sometimes you may get, you need kale or you need More sleep or other times you may get, ah, it's time to go on a silent retreat or just find some silence or it's time to go to the woods. You know, I find that I. Part of the reason that I moved where I live in western North Carolina in the Blue Ridge Mountains, is because I live somewhere where when I feel out of alignment or disconnected or lonely or, you know, just overwhelmed by what's happening in the world right now, I go to the forest. I go to the forest, I get on my belly, I touch trees, I touch leaves, and oh my gosh, in the shortest amount of time, I feel significantly better. And, you know, there's a lot of science behind what's happening. But I think about when I lived in a big city and there were a lot of practices that I would do just to mitigate the stress of the big city. But here.

I don't have as many of those things that I need to do to rebalance because I just use the forest.

Checking in on what you need and then doing the body scan in the morning is beautiful. I'm a huge advocate for starting your day intentionally. I have studied for years with Marianne Williamson, who I know you have, have interviewed and, and done work with as well. And I love the research. She talked about one time that and as little as five minutes of stillness first thing in the morning. So we know this as we look at our neurobiology, and as little as five minutes, we can completely shift the, the quality of our day by having that five minutes of stillness or intentionality or gratitude. So I find that that's a really powerful reminder. So we think about how we connect to the sacred or how we connect to source as we begin our day.

I'm also a big fan. There's a really simple exercise that I do. I also owned a career coaching firm that I had founded. So for 18 years, I worked with people around life purpose and really connecting to their, their deepest essence in nature and where that was guiding them in terms of their outer work in the world. And I would have them do just this little real quick guided journaling. It's just, how do I feel, what do I need and what do I want? And there's something. It's almost like our psyche feels fed by that. It's very simple. But the more you do it, the more you develop this intimacy with your wise self, with your, with your soul, with your nature. And so part of this tending to the soul is just slowing down and creating the space to hear what your, what your soul, what Your wise self wants you to know.

Well, it sounds like a really idyllic place where you're living there in North Carolina. And, you know, I'm. Where I'm living, my wife and I live, we're kind of surrounded by farmland, but we're in a valley. And, you know, the kind of foothills of the. Of the Berkshires are really only 10 minutes from here with hiking trails and so forth. So I love getting up in the woods. It's beautiful. And. And many people are aware of this movement that came out of Japan called forest bathing. And there's actually more research into that of spending a certain amount of time just in the woods in the forest has really profound healing benefits for us of all kinds and building our resilience. So you mentioned.

You know, that anxiety and depression are fairly endemic in our society today. And, you know, we know a lot more about trauma today, fortunately, and we know a lot of that is rooted in childhood trauma and other forms of trauma. And at the same time, you can think of those things as a form of spiritual distress because, you know, if we're not able to access those things that give us that sense of connectedness, interconnectedness, connectedness with others and with the sacred or some other dimension gives our life meaning, if we're kind of, you know, then. Then we are in a state of state of spiritual stress. Now, it may be that the root causes are more emotional and more having to do with trauma in our nervous system and so forth. But.

Kind of where I'm going with this is sometimes it is challenges that we have. It could be traumas that surface or getting in touch with underlying traumas we have or something that happens to us as an adult, an illness or so forth that can kind of awaken our need for self care. Yeah, you know, I know Christina Groff's work. I know it was around spiritual emergency that what often got interpreted and medicated as a mental health issue was actually a spiritual emergency, which was actually kind of a spiritual emergence. And. And so sometimes it is these greater challenges in our life that can awaken, you know, more of a consciousness about our spiritual needs and our spiritual path. I just wondering if, if you could address that a little bit in terms of experience of the people you work with.

Yes, absolutely. Well, and in myself, which always we can share what our own personal experience is. So I was very much impacted by Covid on many, many levels, like a lot of people, and.

Over the past year have been doing some really deep work that's been painful, a lot of painful Work. And it's interesting. Fleet, I don't know if you've heard this, but I'm very connected. I do a lot of Somatic Experiencing work. I'm a yoga nidra eye rest teacher and do a lot of work around the body and the wisdom of the body. What I'm hearing from so many people in the mental health profession and in Somatic Experiencing is they are seeing people that were going along before COVID and they had their tools and their self care practices and then Covid hit and then a lot of people had some really deep trauma come up from early childhood. So from this experience, which was my experience, so I've been doing some deep work with a Somatic experiencing practitioner. I've been going back to I love Al anon work helping me with family members. I do a lot of spiritual work with Enneagram. Um, so absolutely these things have brought me to my knees in the last year. You know, this kind of trauma that's come up and I had this beautiful.

Such a gift when I was at Kripalo last weekend. I was leading a retreat and I'm, I'm a get real or go home kind of girl. Like I just put it all out there and I was sharing some of the things that I was navigating and I had this just beautiful almost breeze come in that was I get to do this healing right now. Like, I get to do this healing. And I am doing this healing for my granddaughters and my granddaughter's granddaughters and my granddaughter's granddaughter's granddaughters and my ancestors. And it was such a shift to go from, oh, I'm in a painful, hard, deep growth place, you know, to I get to do this work, you know. So you're absolutely right that, you know, the sweetness comes when we experience the darkness as well. There's a. I don't know if you've picked up Susan Cain's new book, Bittersweet. I don't know if you've had a chance. I highly recommend it. But it's how sorrow and longing makes us whole and the beauty of feelings of bittersweet. And what I love in her research. So she wrote the book Quiet, you know, the book on the introvert's advantage. Beautiful book. And what Susan talks about in his new book, Bittersweet, is that when we tap into that darkness and those feelings of sorrow and those feelings of bittersweet, they are actually the gateway to helping us feel states of wonder and awe, you know, and we know what, we know what wonder and awe is all about. Right. What we're, what we're talking about. So. You're absolutely right. Yeah, it's a, it's a gift to have those even as painful as those experiences are.

Yeah, I think we're talking about spiritual self care and spirit is very much is like embracing our lives, not just trying to sort of transcend and create and live within some happy band of our life at the expense of actually really, you know, embracing the totality of our experience. And, and so there's a quality of our way to wholeness is embracing the totality of our experience. And that includes some of the challenging emotions and experiences and so forth. So you wrote a book, the Mother's Guide to Self Renewal, which has been described as a must read for mothers. And you know, I'm pretty sure we have quite a few mothers in our audience here. And so I wonder if you could talk about that book a little bit and your work with mothers and, and you know, because in our society, you know, I, you know, I think again, our society hasn't given a lot of support in the past to self care. It's become more of a popular topic now. But even that's probably within a. So somewhat limited bandwidth of our society altogether. You know, men are supposed to be out there doing, doing, doing, doing, and it's not considered very manly to engage in self care probably for a lot of men culturally in our country and women traditionally, all this is changing because, you know, I mean, all the gender things are changing, unfortunately. You know, a lot of equal rights and almost everybody's in the workforce these days. But nonetheless.

Women have traditionally been validated primarily as caregivers and, and almost enculturated to give, give, give, give at the expense of taking care of themselves. And so, so it seems like really important a book to help mothers discover their own needs for every kind of spirit, every kind of self care and including spiritual self care. So I just wonder if you could talk about working with mothers in that journey of someone who's, you know, a mother, especially with young children, where they really have to be there for these beings and, and at the same time being able to take care of themselves.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, it started a long time ago. It started.

It'S been. Been morphing and growing. But I had my child, Jonah, in 2002 and there was just nothing out there. There was nothing around self care from others. And so I started a renewal group for mothers and was not doing this as part of my work or anything. And then it exploded and we were Exploring like reconnecting with who you are and how to be more present in your everyday life and unleashing your creativity and the transformative power of self care. And it took on a life of its own. It was very soul driven. The whole thing was soul driven. It was not a vision for business or a strategy or it didn't come up here, I wasn't even charging a penny. And it took on a life of its own. And then the book, the Mother's Guide to Self Renewal came from that. And then we don't do this anymore, but we train like 450 facilitators in 10 countries around the world to lead groups for mothers based on this. And as the work has evolved, you know, now I work with women and men at all life stages. I'm an empty nester now, so I'm at a different life stage. And the way that I teach self care now is really about sovereignty and this idea of allegiance to self. And so that's my primary work now is around sovereignty. But it's interesting because from the first time that I started teaching self care, I always felt like it was a spiritual practice and I would, I would kind of stumble. You know, 30 years ago, like when I first tried to articulate people like, why is it a spiritual practice? But I know now with every fiber in my being that when I practice self care, when I say no, when I ask for support, when I slow down, when I manage my energy, when I make choices that really support me in feeling alive and whole and well, that it is the most profound way for me to honor my essence and to honor where I came from and to honor this beautiful vessel that I get to be in, you know, and I get to serve. So I absolutely see self care as a spiritual practice and connected to that, you know, as I teach still, and I still teach self care, I keep wanting to stop fleet. I keep, you know, I'm like, aren't I done with this? Like, it's been 25 years. And I keep hearing, oh no, there's more, more, there's more, there's more. Because you know, the art and science of self care is like, it's the ocean. I mean, it just is so wide and so deep. And we keep meeting it again and again as we go through different life stages. Right. You know, now as a, as an empty nester, I'm at a very different life stage. But it is so important for, particularly for the mothers. Absolutely. To tribe up and to lean on each other for support and to be vulnerable. And be real about how hard it is to be a parent and to how do you care for yourself and then also care for these sweet children.

I'm very excited to say that now there are many, many resources for mothers out there around self care.

Which just fills my heart, makes me really happy.

Yeah, you use the term sovereignty and I love that many of us are probably more used to the term sovereignty being applied to nation states or maybe even the sovereign of indigenous peoples, things like that. And I have a friend and colleague, Alexander Byner in the UK who's been using that term in men's work for quite a long time. He actually teaches a form of meditation he calls sovereignty meditation. And I really like to use that word in terms of, you know, there's all kinds of things built into there. There's built in self care, there's self agency, there's personal responsibility, there's self love, self compassion, allegiance to self. You know, all those things are in there recognizing, you know, both self agency and an episode. They're all kind of built into that. So I love that term. I'm wondering, you know, with self care and I want to, in a moment I'm going to ask you more about retreats because I know you are passionate about that, as am I. And you know, sometimes I think we tend to think of self care. Well, you know, whether I'm a mother, a parent or I'm out in the workforce, I'm working out in the world or at home, but go, go, go, go, go, right? And trying to have three or four lives, that's kind of the modern thing, right? Trying to do it all and have it all. And so, you know, go, go, go, go, go. And then I gotta go do the self care stuff to recover or maybe, maybe I'm a little more preventative. I'm gonna do some self care. So then I can go, go, go, go, go, right. You know, until my battery, until my tank gets a little empty and I go back and do more self care. So there seems to be this separation between how we live our lives and the practices of self care. And I wonder if any of your great. In your work, there's a sense of being able to integrate that more. Not, not that, you know, the, I mean, I think our whole society suffers a little bit from over ambition. But regardless of what our ambitions are, what we aspire to and you know, however, go, go, go, we are, or maybe backed off from that a little bit. But are there ways that we can work, ways that we can parent and ways that we can work whatever our profession, however we work is that kind of integrate with self care, are more imbued with self care. So there's not such a separation between them.

Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. And this is what I teach. And so, and so I really am so passionate about this, you know. And again, I define self care as the art of attuning and responding to our needs and desires moment to moment. So I don't see self care as something that we put on our to do list or to do in to become Renee version 2.0. Like, we're not self improvement projects, but I really see it as entering into this kinder and gentler way of being with ourselves. And so this becomes a moment to moment experience. And so like I was saying, in the morning, if you do the body scan or you do the check in, you know, the more you do this, you'll start to hear your wise self will give voice and will say, yes, sweet girl, you are tired. Like, you need to say no. You need to clear the afternoon or the anniversary of your father's death is coming up, you're feeling tender, you need to cancel the evening and go home and take an Epsom salt bath. You know, so these are things that are not coming from here. Like, oh, you need to do this. Or, you know, this is something you add to do your to do list. It's this gentle attunement to self, moment to moment, where you respond, sometimes it may be an action, sometimes it may be absolutely like, gosh, I'm really feeling called to explore the science of meditation in developing a meditation practice, or sometimes it may be.

A forgiveness practice or just letting go. So it's not always an action. But that's one thing Fleet I'm really passionate about is really encouraging men and women to reorient to self care, that it's this moment to moment attunement and one thing that often helps people. And, and as an entrepreneur and an author, this really woke me up. I remember I was, gosh, I think I was 40 years old. And this came when I was leading some groups that, you know, we're constantly writing, speech, speaking, teaching, leading from our current state of being. Right. So whatever our current state of being is. And so if you find yourself resistant to self care, self care is really about cultivating our desired state of being. It's cultivating how we show up in the world. So that's why I'm a self care fanatic. One of the many reasons. Yeah.

Well, let's talk about retreats, both group Retreats, solitary retreats, home retreats, retreat center, have been a huge part of my spiritual journey for more than 50 years. And I know you're really passionate about retreats. You describe yourself as an evangelist for retreats, so why don't you talk about that a little bit? Both, both in terms of your own personal life, how retreats play a role in your own ongoing development and spiritual self care as well as I know you lead a lot of retreats, so let's talk about retreats for a while.

Absolutely. Thanks for asking. So I look at a retreat as a date with your wise self, you know, as really a date with your wise self. And it is a chance for you to pause and get quiet and hear what you most need to hear. I started taking personal retreats, these what I call kind of personal visioning retreats probably when I started my first business about 23 years ago. And what that looks like, Fleet, is that I still do it. I pause every 90 days and I step back from my life and I get really quiet and I carve out a minimum of eight hours and I usually will go to a friend's, you know, cabin or vacation home. Like I get out of my, my surrounding because you want to change your thoughts, you know, change your perspective, change your thoughts. And I bring all of my things, but I'm really moving into this creative visioning, quiet space and I started with a long meditation and I just kind of surrender myself to my soul, to my wife self and I say I'm here to serve, please guide me as to the best use of my energy and time in the next 90 days. And so I do that every 90 days and it's, it's much more doable, you know, to take life in 90 day chunks than to try to plan out for a whole year. So I started doing that and in addition to that, I definitely go on retreats when I feel an intuitive, you know, nudge or calling and, and I really tune into, you know, am I needing to be healed by the mountains or the ocean or the forest? So they tend to, to be nature based. And so, you know, I think this idea retreats don't have to cost a penny. You can go on a guided retreat, you can go to retreat center, but it's more about you getting quiet and pausing and stepping back, you know, to get the 30,000 foot view of your life, but also just to connect to that, that deeper essence, you know, what is uniquely mine to do. You know, we say in our office a lot with our team, just because you can doesn't mean you should.

And so, you know, we all get pulled by things sometimes that sound really juicy or fun or great or they're a wonderful service, but is it ours to do and is it the time to do it? You know, so for me, pausing a lot helps, helps with that. So, yeah, all of the retreats that I do, I always ensure that we have scholarship spots and that people know about retreats. And I'm constantly writing about five reasons I to take retreats. I think, you know, my father, he studied, he studied with Swami Satyananda a lot and he would start taking silent retreats when my brothers and sisters, you know, were babies. And at the time, I think I remember thinking, oh my gosh, that's crazy. But he was trying to source himself. He was trying to cultivate that desired state of being, how he wanted to show up for his family now.

Beautiful. Yeah, I think you're right. Retreats don't have to go. So I mean, you can, there's lots of ways you can very inexpensively do retreat. And you know, we think of going to guided retreats and so forth. There's a really well known places like Omega and Kopalo and some of the other places around the country what people often aren't aware of. You know, there's, there's, there are so many, especially in the Catholic tradition, but there are so many convents and monasteries and foreign and all over the country that are kind of underutilized today as things have shifted in our culture. And so many of them offer retreat space guided and unguided, almost very, very inexpensively.

Absolutely, absolutely. I have many articles, I blog about this like once a week. And I have many free articles about to guide you through a process on how to choose like a retreat for you, how to do a free retreat, you know, what you bring and what the day can look like. So I am with you. I just want people to take retreats. I think that, you know, it's interesting. I think people will think, oh, I'm so busy, I don't have time to take a retreat. And I say, well, because I'm so busy, I must take retreats, you know, because otherwise I'm just constantly reacting to the stimuli around me rather than living my life from the inside out. And that's really what a retreat helps me do, is come into that true alignment. So I, every 90 days at least, I'm doing that, stepping away.

That's wonderful. That's wonderful. And there's a wonderful website I'll recommend called Find the divine. You're probably aware of it. It's. That lists a lot of the retreat centers from all traditions, secular, non secular religious around the country. So this has been incredibly rich and helpful and you've already offered a lot of practical suggestions but I guess I have maybe 2.1. Is any. Any more just kind of practical suggestions how people might get started with you know, spiritual self care if that's something they feel they haven't really kind of intentionally focused on. And the other is.

And we have a final day of the summit about creating a self care plan. If we don't kind of design time into our lives or think about doing some of our activities we already do in a more integrated way which like you said, tending the soul in the midst of our activities and listening to that inner voice. But if we, in terms of some kind of specific self care activities we could do, if we don't kind of design those into our life, they're kind of less likely to happen. We may get all inspired but we tend to forget about them and get busy. So I, I wonder if you could, there's maybe some practical strategies for how people can get in, get started with spiritual self care and, and, and make this part of their lives.

Absolutely, I'd love to do that I think. I feel like three pearls are coming up for me and, and one is something that I, I feel really strongly about and I'll just briefly share this kind of what happened to me. I was driving to an experience I lead forest bathing. I was driving to a friend's forest bathing experience up in the mountains. And this was early one Saturday morning. It was like seven in the morning. And I'm driving and it's misty and it's beautiful and I'm listening to this gorgeous music and I'm just feeling my liveness and feeling my spirit move through me. And I hear this very clear, it's almost like a bell, like pull over right now. Like this internal pull over right now. And I'm like what? Pull over right now. I'm going to tell you your life purpose. Pull over right now. And I was like what? But I pulled over and I stopped at this little post office like in the middle of nowhere up in the mountains and said get out a journal and pen. And I got out of journal and pen and started writing. And this beautiful manifesto came through from my soul about what I'm here to do. And the essence of it was you are a catalyst. You are a catalyst. That is my role in this lifetime. And so I Share that as parole number one that many of us are hearing. Our souls, our wise selves talk to us all the time. We're not heeding the call. We're saying, no time, or surely that's not my soul. Or, you know, we. We're just not honoring or revering, you know, that wisdom that's coming through. So that would be the first thing, heeding the call of your soul, if you are getting a message.

The second thing would be.

As I think, about cultivating this. Creating space, Just creating space. Like you talked about, scheduling. A lot of us do need to schedule. So in addition to, like, in the morning, I have a practice where I enter the day intentionally, but I also reserve Tuesday mornings for the day. I put before I go to bed at night. On Monday night, I put a journal and pen, and I put a special candle, and I have some little shamanic practices that I do, and I put that next to my bed on Monday night, because Tuesday morning is this soul time. It is my soul time. And it is like I let myself wake up when I want to wake up. I let myself ease into the day. So it's not even like doing all my practices that I do on the other mornings, you know, before I go to work. It's really this dreamy soul time.

So finding what that looks like for you, you know, just to schedule some of that. I'm also a big fan of. If you're finding you're your head and you're like, I'm having a hard time connecting with what Renee and Fleet are talking about, or I don't feel that, you know, planning some soul dates. You know, I'm really that big on solo S o l O SOL S o u L dates. So that might be going to a museum and just seeing a beautiful exhibit and just in this almost kind of, you know, dreamy state. It might be going to the symphony. It might be going for a barefoot walk in nature. I always go to the rivers, and I put my feet in the rivers here, no matter what the temperature is. So taking some. Some solo soul dates. And then the last thing is as simple as putting your hand on your chest. This is what we've been doing during this whole visit and just tuning in and asking, what do I need?

And oftentimes we remember to do this. This checking in. We remember to do it when we have a little bit more spaciousness. But I find when I most need to do this is when I am feeling irritable, cranky, you know, out of alignment, when I can tell My, my thinking is just murky or dirty or, you know, it's just not, not clear.

But this is available to us all the time. You can be in a board meeting, you can be in a big corporation at a board meeting and put your hand, you know, on your chest in the middle of the board meeting. Nobody knows what you're doing, and just take a moment and just tune in to what do I need? What do I need? And for many, it'll feel weird, you know, at first, but as you continue to do that, your wise self, your soul, as you tend to the soul, the voice will become more and more clear and more and more you'll develop this sense of intimacy and sweetness with your. With your wise self, with your soul as you listen to that.

Wow. Well, thank you so much for everything you've shared with us today, Renee. Really, really rich. And you know, I feel like this conversation is, I. I feel like, you know, this conversation is soul tending already. And obviously you're an expression of that. It's clearly you invest a lot of that for yourself and you're able to express that, manifest that, and share it with others. So thank you so much. And how can people find out more about your work? They want to learn more about your work or get involved.

So thank you. Thank you for asking. Yeah, this has been my joy. I'd love to talk about this topic. They can go to my website. It's renetrudeau.t r u-d e a u.com and I do plea every Tuesday I put out a blog called Live inside out. And I it's a little two minute video and I ask questions that will help us live from the inside out and really attune to source as we move into the outer world. So that's something people might want to check out as well.

Sounds great. Thank you very much, Renee. Please be well. And thank you so much for being part of our summit.

Thank you. Take care.

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