480: How To Move Through Sucky Situations With Ease + Grace with Neeta Bhushan

Something has to shift within us. We can actually choose. We can choose to say, all right, that sucked, or this sucks. This sucks right now that I'm still in it. Because the victim, it keeps us safe, it keeps us in that container, and it keeps us wallowing there. And for some of us who's so used to shoving things under a rug or distracting or burying or doing the next thing, like myself, getting, you know, fully immersed in work and all of these things that on the outside made me so happy, but on the inside, I was so empty. And I think that is the biggest thing that we can do for ourself is to really cultivate that radical self awareness. And the radical self awareness piece that I talk about in part two of your Bounce Factor, it's one of the greatest gifts, but it does not come without the interpersonal challenges that we go through just with other humans, because we are really mirrors.

Hi, it's Sahara Rose, and welcome back to the Highest Self podcast, a place where we discuss what makes you your soul's highest evolvement. If it's your first time listening, welcome. I'm so grateful to be connected with you. If you're here all the time, there are a lot of shifts happening. I'm sure you can feel it, hear it in my voice, see it in my energy on social media for the past two months. But I will share with you that I recently got divorced and this episode could not come at a better time because I have been navigating the deepest, darkest night of my soul and healing through it and coming out of it like a phoenix rising from the ashes. It has truly been the greatest initiation of my life and has taught me so much about myself, about my desires, about emotionality and empathy and not settling for anything less than what is in your highest alignment. So I am already so grateful for all of the lessons that I've learned through this experience, while it has brought out the biggest grief that I've ever experienced in my entire life. And one day the story will be shared in. In a book. But for now, just know that if you are experiencing heartbreak, if you're experiencing grief, if you're experiencing any form of pain and suffering, I see you, I feel you. It feels like a lot. And there are some moments that you're like, God, I can't handle anymore, Please. Like, I don't even know what to do. And I had one of those moments when I first got here in Bali, where I'm recording this from, and it was my first real surrender moment of things were just so Stressful. And I just felt so lonely and sad and scared and fearful and confused and angry and hurt and all of the emotions. And I just hit this point that I was like, spirit, lead me. I don't know. I don't know what to do right now. And when I had that like true surrender, like Jesus, take the wheels moment, it opened me up to truly navigating this healing journey not from the mind, but from the heart. And listening to all the cues that were showing up around me, meeting certain people who would lead to certain practices such as doing yoga and going to temples with them and different realizations. And there were some days that I would just be by myself all day and just process and feel and write and grieve. And there were other days that I felt amazing and sense of freedom and meeting new people and having an amazing time. And grief comes in so many layers. So I will definitely be sharing more about my healing process through this divorce in other episodes. And this conversation could not have come at a better time because it is with Neeta Bhushan, who is my Dharma Coaching Institute co founder, who wrote a book called that Sucked now what? And the book is really about navigating life's challenges such as divorce, death, heartbreak, job loss, you know, the list goes on life always. There's not one person who, who gets out of it unscratched. But it's about how we take these obstacles because it could either be our greatest demise or it can be our greatest transformation, depending on how we look at it. So this is an amazing conversation where she shares with us step by step, her five step process into how to take a challenging life situation and transmute it. So I ask her questions like how do we know if we're fully healed from past traumas? How do we know if they're going to show up again? And she shares with us her personal experiences, having lost both of her parents and her brother all before age of 19, dealing with her own divorce and due to domestic violence. And she has experienced her definite fair share of grief, more than most people would have ever experienced in their lifetimes. And has just come through the other side like such a phoenix and shares with us such practical tools that we can do at home to help start processing this. And I'm so grateful for the healing work that I have done before this journey for me began because it allowed me to now, in this ringer that I'm in, be able to really show up and know, like in my early 20s when I was like experiencing the issues with my Family. And you know that my dad disowning me and my health challenges, I didn't know there was another side. I thought, I'm just here. Whereas for this, this time, I'm always talking about your mess is your message and your pain is your purpose. And here I am now in this, the most challenging experience, far harder than what my early 20s were. But I'm telling myself the same thing I told myself then, and this time, I know it to be true, that I'm just in the shitty part of my memoir. And the lessons that I learn are what I will share with others. And that's what alchemy is, is to transform the bronze into gold. And in life, that's what we're doing. We're transmuting these painful situations and alchemizing them into gold. And when we can really receive them for that and. And not be like, why is this happening? But rather like, oh, wow, this was the blind spot that I was overlooking. Thank you for showing me. And now let's really move through this. Let's feel it all. Because when we feel it all now, that allows us to not continue to repeat the cycle later and later again. So this is such a great conversation. You're going to take so many notes. I recommend writing down the different steps that she suggests and actually doing the practices. And she also shares those. Her new book that's coming out. And I will have that link in the show notes below because she has some amazing bonuses that she shares at the end of the episode. So without further ado, let's welcome Dr. Neeta Bhushan to the Highest Self podcast. Welcome back, Neeta, to the Highest Self Podcast. It's so good to have you here again.

Oh, my goodness. I am so glad to just be sitting with you, love. I've missed you.

I know it's been a minute. I've been on a journey of really understanding your book to a deeper level right now than when I received the book to where I'm at now. And I'm so excited to be having this conversation with you at this point, point in time. But before we get into it, the first question I'd love to ask you is, what makes you your highest self right now?

I feel like playing, playing with my kids, playing like there's nothing else to do in evoking that childlike play, for sure. Definitely.

It just alchemizes those sucky moments. And sometimes when you're in them, you're like, am I ever gonna play again? Like, for me, for some of People who follow me on social media might know that I have just gone through a divorce. And it has been a huge, dark night of the soul for me and something that came very unexpectedly and showing up with all my tools and practices. And there was a moment for me that I'm like, I don't think I'm gonna ever like to dance again. I don't think I'm gonna like bright colors anymore. I don't think I'm going to be that person that I was. That version of me died. And it's true, that version of you does die. But I remember the first time that I finally danced again, and it's like, oh, she's still here. And then like, when I started to, like, slowly, like, bright colors again, I'm like, oh, that part of me still exists. And like, even tonight, I went to this, like, very inward, ecstatic dance and can even feel my body coming alive again. And it's like, you know, when you're healed, when you can play.

Oh, yes, yes. And I feel like there's so many different levels of that healing. And I just want to, you know, I want to honor you in this stage of where you're at. And I think for so many of us that have gone through the sucky, the hard, the gut wrenching just in your face moments where many times you're like, am I going to ever get out of this tunnel, this hole, this. What is this cloud? I think there is, you know, there are those slivers of joy. So I'm so glad that you're coming back into dance, and I'm so glad you're coming back into that practice that makes you. You and the different essences. And I think so much, so often we kind of judge even how we're supposed to heal or the way grief kind of takes over in our life and our body. And I remember even vividly going through some of the depths of my losses, you know, my mom, my dad, my brother. Because this all happened within a span of four years. And I remember that dance growing up was the only thing that I could do that would get me out of the cloud. And thank God for that. Whether it was Indian dance, like, it was structured, it was Indian dance, Filipino dance, it was performative. But I think that it really just. It makes you smile again, it makes you laugh again, and it makes you human. But I think for so long, I also judge that, like, am I supposed to be doing this? Can I do this? Is it right to do this? Because I should be grieving right Now I should be crying. And I just think that there's. Especially writing this book, there is the duality. There is. There are the highs, there are the lows. And I'm sure in your journey throughout this whole kind of unfolding, it's probably been similar.

Yes, it definitely has. And it's given me such a greater appreciation of. For the range of emotions and how we truly can't experience joy without grief and pleasure without pain. And I'm recognizing ways in myself that I was like, I just want to be in joy, like, all the time. Can we just live here? And, like, the purity of that. But then it's like, if all you experience is one emotion, even if it's joy, then that eventually will just become neutrality when there isn't that opposite polarity there. And me going through this grief. And I want you to share more about your story after this. But when those joyful moments come, when that love comes, when that even just feeling of like, I'm safe, I'm okay, when they come, they're so much more meaningful because you know what it's like to be without that. So I'm. I'm so grateful for the grief, and I'm so grateful for the pain. I'm so grateful for the suffering, and I'm so grateful for the suck. And I'm so grateful that you wrote this book about things that suck because it allows us to actually be in those beautiful experiences in an embodied way that we just don't fully get until we've accessed those other realms. So I want to hear more about your story for people who have not yet heard it before, because you're my fellow co founder in Dharma Coaching Institute, we've had you on the podcast. I feel like we haven't fully gotten into your story, and you really share it in this book. So can you share a little bit more about why you felt called to write a book about things that suck in life?

Yeah. Well, I never wanted to be known as the queen of resilience and grit. I never wanted to be known as, you know, maybe queen of reinvention. But that the resiliency, the grit, that has been such a big, profound way of my life. And I think just alchemizing everything that I've been through, I think that this book came at a time, honestly, when we met and connected and we were going to do our, you know, our dharmas together. But I think for me it was, oh, wow, I see so much more perspective because now I'm in motherhood. And when specifically And I'll. I'll share first this story and then we'll go back. But specifically, I. When I first got pregnant with my. My son, I was so adamant. I was like, I am not having a hospital birth. There is no way I'm having a hospital birth. There's no know how. We were in la and it took me a really long time to convince Ajit that we're not doing a hospital thing. And he's like, wait, why? We're not in India. Like, what are you doing? And. And I was like, nope, there's just no way. I'm so averse to it. And we have to go the natural route. I made him watch all of these movies. I did all of the things, and it took months for him to kind of get on my side. He's like, why would you. Why would you go backwards? Like, this is what we do over there. I'm like, but there's a. There's a reason. And I'm all about the natural, natural everything, all up to the T. I mean, we were. I was getting my PhD in Natural Home birth. And I mean, right up till the actual time of when I went into labor, I was starting to just get flashbacks of. And I don't think I've showed this really anywhere, but I started to get flashbacks of my childhood, my upbringing, and how I would spend. Because I became a child caretaker at 10 years old. To my mom, who battled, you know, she battled with a long cycle of breast cancer, and it was on and off. But I remember after school, going to the hospital, I was still in ballet. I was in all of these things because Filipino and Indian parents, that's what they kind of do. And so we would perform for the nursing staff. When I was 14, the cancer spread to her lungs and her brain, and so she was now there. This was like an everyday thing. And so we would come after school while all my friends. Friends would be hanging out or doing sports. I was definitely there in the hospital. And that was just a. I didn't know what else life could be because I wasn't going on dates. I wasn't doing anything else. It was like, all right, my homework is going to be here, and the nursing staff. I'm going to practice my piano because I had a keyboard. And so I would do this every single day. And of course, my brothers would come. I was the oldest of two younger brothers. And so she transitioned when I was 16, but I would start when I was preparing my birth journey. I would start getting flashbacks of these moments of I don't want to go back there. I do not want to go back there. And I just kept. It was like a mantra in my head, fast forward to while we were doing all of these beautiful things to have the most amazing home birth. I had all the affirmations out. I had. I mean, anything and everything that you can imagine, we had. We had like the top team in la. I mean, we were just in our own little baby bubble of natural birth. And, well, I went into labor on that Monday, and it would start and it would stop, and it would start and it would stop. And they kind of say this for people who either have a lot of things going on in their mind or they have multiple children, that your labor can stall during the day. And so I didn't actually progress into that labor until Thursday. And mind you, I wasn't sleeping from Monday through Thursday. And I was just starting to feel the full range of, okay, wow, we're going to do this. And there were. Even though I've done quite a bit of work, there was so much of this I felt now, looking back, this unprocessed emotion and unprocessed grief. And why was I so adamant about not going to the hospital? You know, I was telling myself, well, I wanted to be on natural. I want it to be this. And they medicalized birth. I mean, I was in all of that. And, well, that was not going to be the plan for me. And so on that Friday, my water broke and I said I couldn't do it anymore because I had sciatica pains. And it was just, I mean, not sleeping. It was the whole thing. And we ended up going to Compton. Our backup OB ended up working at Compton, which for those listeners who don't even know where that is, it's a shady part of town and where you have to take. You have to get three metal detectors to just get even in the hospital setting. Okay? And I'm already. I'm in so much pain. And I'm like feeling. Because now my body is like actually feeling this. And I think the sciatica was actually worse than the actual pains of birth of labor. But I was so afraid. And I remember telling Ajit, I was like, oh, my gosh, this is. I have to face this fear. And it clicked because I had lost my mom, I had lost my brother. A year later, I had lost my brother to an asthma attack. And he was at the same hospital my mom passed the year before. And then two years after that, my dad was diagnosed with lung cancer. And so he only had 10 months to live. And so this all happened all before I was 19. And so I knew energetically, spiritually that there's no way I'm going to. I'm not visiting. I hadn't visited a hospital in so many years. And I thought I had worked so hard to get to the health, to get to the body, the wellness, my mindset, everything for pretty much so many decades after that. I'm like, all right, this is not going to faze me. Until I was faced with, oh, wow. Because in my mind, going to the hospital meant death. And when I finally got there, whew, I totally released all of that because the nurses were so, you know, they were so chirpy. And so, I mean, after all the metal detectors, it was the most beautiful experience. And the hospital, Martin Luther King Jr. Hospital, I mean, it was so beautiful. It was a teaching hospital. So you had all these residents, and they were sitting and they were helping put my candles and my crystals everywhere, and they set the ambiance. We had the whole chanting in the room with all of the music. It was the most beautiful experience that I had to fully integrate full circle of life and death. And I did not know that was going to be the most powerful lesson of fully integrating after all of the deep, hard work that I've been immersed in, to say, wow. And I was able to pull Ari out from, you know, between my legs, and I was still able to feel, but it was. I felt held. And that was the first time that I would really allow because I'm known to take care of everyone. That's what I grew up. I grew up early, and I was the glue of the family. And so for me to actually be on the receiving end and the outpouring of the nursing staff, the doctors, and they were like, this is just the most beautiful birth we've ever seen. And that fully shifted my. And really healed my views on leaning into our most fearful, fearful desires and fearful, you know, the worst case scenarios that can come up. Because you are. You know, when I've. When I wrote this book that sucked now, what it was not to say, this sucks. This sucks that I didn't have the birth that I wanted. This sucks that because eight years before that time, I had a marriage as well that did not go to plan, that I thought was going to cure all of my hardships, because I fell in love and I found love after such heaviness of grief and heaviness of, like, is this cloud ever going to end? Am I ever going to get out of this and to then be met with such life and joy eight years later. It was such a. It was a beautiful alchemy. But that's where I think the initial writings of that suck. Now, what came to be. Because it's not to say that the situation that we're at. This sucks. I didn't write that because that would mean that we're still really in it. It's to actually acknowledge that, wow, I can't change the past. I can't change what I couldn't control. I can't. That I had beautiful intentions for this relationship or this. This thing that I wanted, that I was envisioning in my mind and for it to crumble. It's. That sucked. And I acknowledge that that sucked. And I might still be in it. But now we turn a leaf and we can say, all right, well, what's that North Star? What's the now what? What's the now what? Even Even though we still might not be fully out of it, we can actually embrace it. Pull. And embrace the duality of. Of all of those emotions all. All at once.

So in my own spiritual journey of really honoring the sacred feminine energy within me, I realized that we're not all the same, and we all have different pathways that we can take that I put together in creating five archetypes, which I call the Rose Gold Goddess archetypes. They are the Embodiment Queen, the Womb Whisperer, the Intuitive Oracle, the Expressionista, and the Joy Priestess. And I've put together a free quiz so you can find out what your unique combination are. So the Embodiment Queen is the person who's always in her body, dancing, moving, very connected to her nervous system. The Womb Whisperer always knows where she's at in her menstrual cycle and probably has a yoni steamer in her bathroom. The Intuitive Oracle has three oracle card decks on them, a pendulum, and knows about their past lives. The Expressionista is creating art through everything, through singing, dancing, writing, poetry. Everything for her is an opportunity to create art. And then we've got the Joy Priestess, who wants to laugh, dance, and not take herself super seriously. You can find her doing karaoke at an improv class or twerking it on the dance floor. You can guess which one I am. So you can head over to rggquiz.com to learn what your unique Rose Gold Goddess archetype is. Again, that's rgquiz.com and you can find that link in the show notes. And I've created custom graphics that you get in your results so you can share which rose gold goddess archetype you are. I'm super excited to see such a beautiful story. Thank you so much for sharing that. And you know, I've heard that birth is the closest we ever get to death in our lifetime. And it's almost like your soul was ready to face that trauma head on. And that's why you felt called to be pregnant and have this child and even do it this natural way, which is like, even teetering closer to those realms. But then for you to heal and alchemize the hospital story, which I think all of us have on some level, because you often get the bad news in your life at the hospital, you know, and then the hospital becomes the scary place when actually maybe the hospital was just the place that you found out luckily, and had you found out at home or didn't find out, that could have even been worse. And there's so much in the natural birthing world, and I've seen so many mothers who are like, really for it, and then just their birth went another way and then they had to rewrite their story of, like, what is a good birth or a bad birth and like, the guilt around that. But a question that I have for you that came up as listening to that is, how do we know if we still have unprocessed trauma around something? Like, is there a way to know before situations like this show up? Like, how do we know if it's like, teetering in our lives?

This is such a great question. I think for so many of us that we think we can make meaning of things in our mind that, okay, I've processed through it, but if we can just imagine, you know, and the work that's there around it. But if we can just really imagine, well, we're like an onion. It's going to unravel in the way that it will. And I'll tell you another story before I get into kind of some of the ways that we can actually look in and see. See. Well, are. Am I still sitting in this right now? Because for the biggest awakening that I would have to really kickstart and catalyze my healing. And I feel like we're. It's just how you've been going through your journey. And it just reminded me so much of. Even when I knew internally that my first marriage was. Wasn't. It wasn't going to go anywhere. I was in denial for a really long time, but I always had this feeling and I couldn't pinpoint what it was I didn't have, obviously, the tools that I have now, but I knew, I felt. And now, of course, on the other side, I knew I felt unsafe. I knew that for the longest time I was so afraid of being alone and I was willing to be with somebody that would demean my light. And of course, I didn't have the language for that until. Well, sometimes the pain has to get so bad and something actually has to fall. It's what I call in the book. We have a falling, and the fall could be, you know, a physical diagnosis. It could be an actual literal fall or a car accident or something that, like, shakes you up in infidelity. It can be, you know, in my case, it was domestic violence and Sahara. I mean, there were times we would go to galas to. To support domestic violence and I would be there and I'm like, wow, how did these people, you know, get into these situations? Because I was in such denial of my own reality. And I thought that, oh, well, you know, it could be worse, right? But I hadn't faced, again, my biggest fear, which was fear of abandonment, fear of being alone. And until that was head on, and until you think that you have faced it, because I had gone through the traditional talk therapy, because that's really all what was in my reality as a late teenager, especially when you're going to school and the teachers are worried that you're probably. You've been through so much trauma that you're probably going to hurt yourself. And so it was that sort of let's check the box kind of thing for our family. However, I wouldn't get into the depths of what the healing process and what that really looked like until I had my own fall, which was December 31st. It was New Year's Eve 2011, when we're all supposed to be celebrating, you know, New Year's. And that's when it clicked. That's when it clicked. When I said, oh, wow, my life is being threatened. Am I going to stay or am I going to go? And that's when I had to stand up and be courageous and be brave and say, I don't know what the reality is going to be. I have no idea where I'm going to go. Yeah, okay, fine. To the external world, I was already a cosmetic dentist. I had this practice. I wasn't even 30. I had made it to all my aunts and uncles and everyone who was so worried about me. I was taking care of my youngest brother, who's younger, five years younger than me at the time, and you know, I thought I'd made it, but I was so afraid to let everybody down. And I think, to your point, how do we know? Well, my reality at this point was like, but I made it. But I was. I was doing really well for myself. How could my internal world come crashing down? And that's really what jump started my next seven years of fully healing and really diving into the depths of grief. And, I mean, wailing, screaming, crying, feeling all of these emotions that I thought that I was okay with, because guess what? You know, similar to you, that when I was growing up, I was told, be strong. You're strong. You've got this. I was the glute. What did that mean? I grew up performing when I was so young. So I took on the performative hat. I was like, all right, everyone's going to see me, and we're going to just do this together. And I got this until I couldn't anymore. I was bursting at the seams, and I had to really sit with the depths of the anger and the rage that I was being. There was no place for it in my house because things were already so chaotic. How could you even act out as a teenager? There was no place for it. And so there were then moments that I think in our humanity as we go through the twists and turns of life, we will essentially be met. And the best way to meet that is through other people. It was a gift to meet my first, you know, my first husband. It was a gift because I needed to really reconcile all of that grief that I hadn't processed or even gone through because I was in such survival mode. I'm like, let's get out of this tunnel now. I mean, there were points where in my adolescence, I was working three jobs just to support me and my brother. Things were just so. It was a very dark time. So then to get on the other side of it, through monetary success, through validation, and that's a coping mechanism that I think, choose your vice. We all have. But I think these are the coping mechanisms that, yeah, they make us human, Whatever. Addictions for myself, also, toxic positivity. I was like, nope, I got this. I've. Yeah, I know. Thank you for paying your respects. Or, you know, people would always say, gosh, I'm so sorry you lost your parents. And I'm like, yeah. And. And I would try to just change the subject because I wouldn't want to live there, because I knew that reality was so dark that I would instantly go into the mode of, all right, she's happy. Now we're good. We're good. Until I wasn't good. And I wasn't good for a very long time. And I remember just my prayers in the very beginning of that. Let me be safe. Let me just be. And I would even time my grief daily so that I could allow myself to go into and feel. And there's something that I write in the book around, you know, when we're in it, because I think many times we are so far in our own story that we've made up in our mind. Because at this point, after the divorce, I thought, all right, I just need to be alone. And I'm not gonna find love again. I'm not. I'm just gonna be. I'm gonna travel. I'm gonna just see what I can do for myself. And I have a whole. There's this idea of when we are in our victim spiral. And many times, especially if you've been through big T traumas, right? Even small T traumas like bullying, but big T traumas like sexual violence, assault, any of those things, even domestic violence, right? Even if you've been rejected 10 times by something and someone, we get into our pity party mode, like, wow, nobody's gonna want me. How did I even get here? Why is this happening to me? And many times I think that it has to. Something has to shift within us. We can actually choose. We can choose to say, all right, that sucked, or this sucks. This sucks right now that I'm still in it. Because the victim, we. It just. It keeps us safe. It keeps us in that container and it keeps us wallowing there. And for some of us, who's so used to shoving things under a rug or distracting or burying or doing the next thing, like myself, getting, you know, fully immersed in work and all of these things that on the outside made me so happy, but on the inside, I was so empty. And I think that is the biggest thing that we can do for ourself is to really cultivate that radical self awareness. And the radical self awareness piece that I talk about in part two of your Bounce Factor, it's one of the greatest gifts, but it does not come without the interpersonal challenges that we go through just with other humans. Because we are really mirrors. And we could probably try to process it on our own in an ashram by ourself, or at a vipassana retreat by ourself, those things are still going to come when we are relating with other people that we actually love. And that's. That's how more of that is going to get excavated as we go along. So I think we shouldn't be afraid of getting into relationships. We shouldn't be afraid of. Of showing all of ourselves to the people who are actually there, because they're there for that witnessing. And that's why there's something also that I speak in the book around your soul support posse. You've heard me talk about this so much. But it's true. I mean, every season, and I know this is true for you every season. There are angels, there are people, there are guides that come in the form of people to just say, hey, I got you. We can resist it or we can actually notice when that's happening because they are there to usher you into that next evolution of yourself, whether it's through holding that space, whether it's through just being a mirror for maybe some of our own insecurities and maybe just to forge a deeper relationship with yourself.

Yes. Like nodding along with you and everything that you said and so deeply resonating and relating. And I think one of the hardest parts of someone who it sucked, but like, very recently sucked, you know that I think one of the struggles is, and especially when it comes to relationship is like, that person that you typically processed your, your trauma and your hardships and just like, processed life with, like, they become the person that you're processing from. And I think that's the biggest, like, mind of it all, because it's like you want to tell them everything you're experiencing, but they are no longer that person who holds that space for you. And in fact, sometimes even hearing what they have to say about you can, like, re. Traumatize you. So what advice do you have? And it's been so interesting because I pulled on my, on my Instagram stories, I'm like, how many of you are going through a heartbreak right now? And 65% of my audience is currently going through some sort of heartbreak, which is crazy. And I've just seen so many spiritual, powerful, like, incredible woman going through these divorces, separations and breakups right now for a number of reasons. So what advice do you have for creating that new neuropathway that you're no longer coming to that person who is like your primary, not only caregiver, but lover and companion and everything when that person has now in many ways to you feels like an enemy.

One of the big things that, you know, in the book that I talk about is how do you cultivate your bounce factor? And, you know, for anybody that has been going through tough times, there's I'm going to talk about two different ways to think about this, but the very first is to really start to introspect. And immediately we can start, especially when we are rebuilding. When we are rebuilding and we're so. Things are so raw, things are so fragile and you feel like you're in the depths and the thickness of those emotions and they come in waves and they come in wafts. And many times we think, okay, I need to not feel this right now because this is too much. And so then we start to do to get out of it. One of the things that I talk about in the book is to just allow yourself to feel it and pick whatever tool you like. You like journaling, Great. Start doing that. If you feel like you want to just sit and start to like cry and release because you know that maybe you haven't been with it, start to feel that and allow yourself. The thing that we get wrong here about our emotions is we start to judge them, which is why in the bounce factor, there's four parts. The first part is let's start looking at our upbringing. Let's go back. Let's go back to the basics. Kind of like when I was at my dark night of soul. Both of those instances, through divorce and then through motherhood, I had to really face what I was so afraid of. And many of us here, many of the listeners here have started to do the work, have started to process this. But when it comes to love relationships, when it comes to heartbreak, we don't want to then say, oh, wow, okay, well, let's look back at how is my relationship with my parents, what happened in my upbringing that maybe, maybe is playing kind of an underlying low key role here that perhaps for the longest time I haven't really looked at. Maybe there were losses, maybe there was divorce when you were younger, maybe you were a latchkey kid that you were just given the keys and you had to take care of yourself. Maybe you were helicopter parented, maybe you were tiger parented and you did. You were so constricted and so your parents were there for everything, whatever that is, right? Maybe you were bullied when you were younger. Maybe you were the kid that got made fun of a lot, whatever that is. It's going to dictate how we are patterns where we then start to attract these types of energies and people into our life so that we can start to understand and honor a little bit more of ourselves. So that's the big piece there. We cannot change our upbringing. Right? We can't blame our parents we have to start to be compassionate for where they were at. Right. If you were right for them.

And do you think just the awareness of it is enough or it also needs to have like a somatic approach of like really experiencing those unprocessed emotions as well?

Oh, my goodness. Oh, absolutely. There's a practice that I have in the book. It's, you know, one of the emotional release practices and where you can basically set a timer, set a timer for five minutes, set a timer for 10 minutes, whatever feels really good for you. But the first step that we want to do is just close your eyes. I mean, just hand over our heart. When we're actually taking our hand and putting it over our heart, that's immediately connecting our mind and our body and our soul. And we're actually just. I don't know if you remember, but when you're. You were little and maybe you were a toddler or maybe you were in grade school, but you had a hard day at. You wanted an embrace. You wanted to just go into the arms of your parents to say, I got this. Well, guess what? Maybe you wanted your partner or your lover to say that. Well, maybe they're not there anymore. It's you now. And all you have to do is say, I got this. I got you. Whatever you are experiencing right now, it is all good. It is all perfect. We don't have to judge. We don't have to do anything but allow yourself to feel. And what we're actually doing is we are going out of this fight flight freeze into more of this. Let's just regulate our nervous system. Let's focus on our breath. Let's focus on where am I holding the tension right now? Am I holding the tension in my tummy? Am I holding the tension in my neck? What's feeling out of balance? Am I having tension headaches? Am I feeling that my throat is getting choked up because I'm trying to hold it in? So when we're practicing these subtle instances of our own knowing, we are now starting to get more in tuned. How do we then create new neural pathways? Well, the second part of building your bounce factor is inviting good stress in. And what I mean by that is saying yes to different experiences. Saying yes when you don't want to, saying yes when your friends are like, oh, come on, let's. Let's just pour into you right now. Let's do something fun. And you're like, no, no, I feel like I need to sit in this. But maybe you've been sitting in it for a really long time. Start challenging yourself in small ways. I'm not saying go to a full retreat if you're not fully embodying that for yourself. But I think there is definitely a difference of these tiny little incremental ways where we are starting to forge our new reality. And it can mean yes to a new meditation class, maybe yes to a different way to meditate, maybe yes to just journaling out, well, what have been my patterns in my past relationships. Because in activating that good stress, we're also saying we're leading from a place of curiosity and not judgment. And we're also activating our personal responsibility. And for some of you who are in heartbreak right now, it might be too soon. It took me a while to even get to, well, Neitha, what role did you play in this? You know, and for. For a long time, I was in the victim mode. I was like, are you kidding me? Like, how could somebody like that. How could that even happen? How could I even sit in this? But actually, when you go a step deeper and you are. You are open to that because you're leading with cur. Curiosity and not judgment. For those feelings, you're actually saying, you know what? Yeah, I needed. I wanted to recreate a family I lost. That was the underbelly. So to find that out, we may have to immerse ourselves in new things, because when we are drawing, when we are coloring, when we are painting, when we are dancing, when we are traveling, when we are. And I'm not saying we gotta, you know, do go all around the world, but maybe you're evoking a different sense in shifting your current environment, because your current environment, that can be really heavy, that can be really dark, that can be really reminiscent of what you are living through. I remember at 20 years old, I begged my aunts and uncles, and I write about it vividly in the book on how I just needed. I needed to get out of Chicago. I needed to get out of the thickness of what was happening. And that was just an intuitive hit. I didn't know about intuition at the time, but I was like, I just. I can't be here. I told my aunt and my grandmother that they would take care of my brother and I. It was a school study abroad trip, but I needed that for my soul. And I'm not saying everybody needs to go, you know, to Italy, Rome, like I did, or even, you know, Bali. But maybe it's going to a different coffee shop and just sitting there and observing or inviting yourself and saying, yes. The first thing I said yes to was one of the things that scared me, which was improv. That was the very, very first thing I said yes to. And I'm like, oh, my gosh, I don't. I can't. I can't do this with other people right now. And that became the most therapeutic thing. And you know this, because we talk about it at dci, is to get out of your comfort zone. Because when we're getting out of our comfort zone, yes, it's scary, but, yes, it's also igniting ourselves. It's sparking this new aspect of ourself that may have been dormant. That person still lives in us may have been dormant, but she's coming alive in a different way. I love that so much that I, I took two rounds of standup comedy. I wasn't trying to be a stand up comedian. I just wanted to know when I was talking about my hardships, that it was always going to be hard, that I could actually play in that, that I could actually evoke maybe a little bit of joy. And that's why I fell in love with standup comedians. And I think that, you know, whatever is calling you, maybe subconsciously or through other people, have that time where you're like, you know what? I will do a month of yes. I will do a month of yes. Because that's going to awaken different neural pathways for me to start experiencing and maybe start developing a different part of myself that I didn't even know existed and changing your whole reality. So that's step two and then step three. Is the emotional capacity work? This is the emotional capacity work. I thought toxic positivity was like, yes, the savior. And I thought, oh, we don't have to feel the feels. Until the universe brought me experiences to actually say, nope, we're gonna feel what that is actually looking like. We're gonna go into, well, where is it? And I think for you listeners right now, why don't we think of. Are there emotions where maybe you were told that that emotion wasn't safe, that emotion wasn't allowed in your house? And where have you suppressed it, either yourself or where have you got triggered when other people were expressing it? Because it triggered something in you. And I'll be honest, I'll go first. For the longest time, I couldn't hold anybody's rage. I mean, there was a lot of PTSD in my. In my first marriage, I could not hold that. But guess what? It's only because. And this was such a revelation later on, probably while I was in the throes of motherhood, when I actually went into the depths of postpartum depression with my first child. And I realized, like, wow, I'm not good with their rage because I never could experience rage and anger. And I'm not saying for those of you who I think we're so afraid of what we will do to project that anger or rage outward. And what we really should be doing is finding ways to express that rage, anger, frustration, hurt, fear, that we can actually feel it, but in a healthy way. And one of the ways that I do, and even in my book, one of the ways to really release it is just take a pillow and start screaming into the pillow. Just go into your backyard in an area where there's a lot of people around and you don't want that. Go in nature and start screaming. There's a reason why they do primal screaming at a lot of these different retreats. To release a lot of this, to let it go. And I think there's so much stigma around. Okay, She's a crazy woman. If she's expressing her emotions, especially you'll see these memes of, you know, oh, yeah, the ragged mom with her kids and she's like losing her shit. Well, yeah, because she hasn't had a place where it's safe for her to express. She's gonna express when her kids are just wiling out and she's tired and sleep deprived and all these things. Why can't we give ourselves permission to express? And movement is such a huge part of that. I mean, yes, I grew up dancing. You love dancing. There is such a reverence to then the connection of our bodies when we are coming from a place of just tuning inward. And it's not performing for other people, it's knowing your own sovereignty in yourself. But we gotta get there. We gotta get there. And even for myself, I had to re pattern and recreate that. And so that is the fourth step, which is building that muscle of radical self awareness. And we've talked about it a little bit, what it could look like, just taking stock and ownership. Well, how are the relationships in my life right now? Who do I want to maybe spend more time with? And because they're really nourishing for my nervous system right now, they're really holding me, especially through this grieving process, especially through this tough time. And I think a lot of times if you are in the suck of a hardship, you think that maybe I just need to be by myself. And that's great. And there is, you know, there's definitely a point to that? Absolutely. But there's also where we can say who and what is going to feel really good for me. Because this is also going to dictate, well, what do I need for myself? Do I actually need support? Should I go to that trauma release workshop? Should I get that book? Because that's going to help me spend that time doing my own internal work and. Or shall I get a girlfriend to do it with me? So it's really asking ourselves these questions and literally spending time. I would actually block out 30 minutes, 15 minutes in the morning, 15 minutes at night, just to allow this practice of thinking about it and going through it. Because when I say we have to schedule time for our grief, it's so healthy. Because it's like, we schedule time for our joy, we schedule time for our workout, we schedule time for, you know, our date nights. What about scheduling time for processing these stuck emotions? And it doesn't have to be grief. It can be, oh, why am I judging myself again? I feel like I'm having these anxious thoughts because if we don't and we're in that stuck season, it's going to ruminate, it's going to fester, it's going to come out in different ways. And I think that's the greatest gift that you can give to start building that bounce factor, to start the process of healing and being compassionate with yourself. Because it's not just, you know, an all or nothing game. It's going to be bite size, it's going to come in waves, and some of it's going to be harder than others. But in this process of allowing, I think that's where the magic can be found in your mess.

Everything you said is like so tried and true because I'm like, yup, yup, yup, yup. So this book will work for anyone, you know, no matter what your grief is, what the pain, what the trauma. And like no human on planet Earth is without this. And ignoring it is not going to make it go away. In fact, it's just going to make it manifest into more drastic and more dire situations that often hurt the people that you love most. And, you know, and it's important for us to address these unhealed traumas while we can, because it gets passed on intergenerationally until one person is brave enough to stand up and say no. And, you know, just recognizing myself in so many of, like, both the patterns and the light of, you know, I've been traveling for the past six weeks and I can feel in every hotel room I'M leaving behind a piece of me, and I'm, like, coming into this new version of me because I'm in this literal new state with a new view and a new thing. But then there's also that energy of, like, go, go, go, go. Because, like, just being in it is. Is so much sometimes. So I'm like, witnessing the healthy and the unhealthy of that, or witnessing the healthy of wanting to be around community. And I've had so many friends like yourself and Ajit and my friend Amber and Christine, like, came to Bali to be with me here. And I've had friends come to Egypt with me and Dubai with me. And it's been, like, amazing to see how friends have, like, shown up. And at first, when it all happened, I was like, I don't want to be alone. Like, I just need to be around people all the time because I'm, like, afraid of my thoughts on my own. But then I was like, no, I need to learn to be alone. Like, I need to be able to be in my thoughts and to be whole within myself and not to rely. But then I also noticed the tendency of, like, you know what? I don't want to be a burden on people. Like, no one wants to hear about this anymore, so let me just be in it too. And it's like having that perfect balance of now. Some days I'm just alone all day, and I'm like, this is perfect. This is how I'm meant to spend the day. And some days I'm with friends and meeting new people. I'm like, this is how I meant to spend the day. And just grief takes you into the greatest surrender experiment of your life, because it just puts everything into the unknown. And you just trust, day by day, you're gonna get the exact code, the next piece, the next conversation, the next decision that leads to everything else. So it has been the most profound journey of my experience, and I'm so grateful for people like you who have walked this path before us and have created this beautiful masterpiece of a book that I know I'm gonna be bringing to me anywhere I go moving forward, because you've outlined this process so beautifully. So can you share with listeners where we can get this book both in print and audible? And I know you have tons of special goodies and bonuses for people as well.

Yes. Yes. So the book is. Yes, it is here. It's. You can definitely pre order it. And when you do. So it's at. That sucked. Now what? Dot com. So that sucked. Now what dot Com. And you actually also get not only my five day fly forward healing practice. So it's a five day healing practice and it comes with healing. First on day one, your most precious commodity, which is our relationships and how we are kind of attuning to our relationships. In day two, it's going into where are we leaking our energy, if that, and how to optimize our power, energy and vitality. And day three, we go into a welcoming all that is making its way towards us. And day four is all about taking brave action, taking courageous action past those sucky moments. And then day five, we center it all back to ourself and what we're actually creating for this next chapter and evolution of who we're becoming. But then you also get a 44 page in depth color coded. Zahara's gonna love this because it's all her JAM guidebook where we go deeper in a lot of the concepts of the book. And honestly, we've now partnered up with domestic violence organizations, teachers, prisons. We want this to be accessible to so many people because I think it's really the guidebook that I'm giving you for free is really what I wish I had, especially going through the depths of that. And so, yeah, it's great. I mean, get it for a friend who's also going through it, do it together. I think it's the best when we actually have that buddy to go on it on our own with ourselves and on our own and with somebody else and give yourself that gift. So, Sahara, so amazing.

Thank you so much for sharing that. The guidebook sounds amazing and all of it. I will have that link in the show notes so people can get it as soon as it's out, which will be right on the day that this episode comes out. So I highly, highly, highly recommend this book. This woman is a queen. She is the baby mama of Dharma Coaching Institute with me and I fully trust her and support her with everything. So guys, like, if there's one book to read this year that's gonna help you through everything, like, life is so unexpected, we just never know where it's gonna go. And it's better to be prepared with the tools and the emotional resilience. And I'm so grateful for all that you've taught me over the past few years because it's allowed me to show up in this massive initiation in my life with so much more embodiment and grace. Had I not been walking this journey before, like, I don't even know where I would be without it. So it really just shows the way that these tools build up on each other. So thank you for sharing them.

And I think, you know, it's just now making sense of how we even came into each other's lives. How crazy is all of that? And to come full circle of. So I know that you're on your next great evolution and it's here and it's sucky and it's painful and it's all of the emotions. But there's joy there as well. And you already know that. And I'm so glad to be here as well with you.

Love you. So grateful to have you. And thank you all so much for tuning in. That conversation could not have come at a better time. Like so many of us are going through it right now. And it's so important to practice the tools, not just talk about them, but to practice them. To punch the pillow, to scream, to stomp your feet, to cry, to let yourself be in your emotions. Because that's what they're here for. They're here to be felt. When we feel them, we're no longer as afraid of them anymore. It's like, oh, pain, here you are again. Let's dance. Because then when you do that dance, you know it's not gonna last forever. It's the pushing away that makes it last forever. So I highly recommend checking out her new book. I'll have that link in the show notes to get the bonuses and if you're interested in becoming a certified sole purpose and spiritual life coach with us, we have a school called Dharma Coaching Institute and it is the most incredible transformative school that trains you step by step on how to actually create a career coaching others doing this work. So she teaches a lot about emotional grit and resilience. I teach all about spirituality, living your Dharma, your soul's purpose. And then her husband is also in there teaching you how to make this into a business. So you will graduate as a certified sole purpose and spiritual life coach. We are also accredited by the ICF. We've graduated over 1200 students and and have seen the most powerful transformations. We have so many students who are full time coaches right now. We actually have a directory on our website, dharmacoachinginstitute.com so you can also hire a Dharma coach to support you in your purpose and join our community and becoming amongst the first ever purpose coaches. So you can head over to dharmacoachinginstitute.com d h a r m a coaching institute.com and you can find that link in the show notes again. Our class opens this spring. It's a six month training and you're going to love it. So again, find those links in the show notes. I'm so grateful for you to be here. I'm so grateful I can be open to this community and for all the love and support that I've gotten through my own journey and my own shifts and I can feel every cell of my being has shifted and upgraded and up leveled and my range and my ability to express and channel and feel is just. It has quantum leaped through this experience. And I know if you're experiencing pain right now as well, just know that that is possible for you on the other side of healing. So I'm sending you all so much love. And if you love this episode, please leave a review on the iTunes store and I will send you a free gift of my Womb meditation. So head over to the iTunes store, write a review and take a screenshot of it and email it over to me@sahara iam sahararose.com and I will send you back my womb meditation which allows you to connect to your womb's inner wisdom so you can receive her answers. And you can also find that email and those steps in the show notes as well. I'll see you in the next one. Namaste.