#81: The Power Of Your Energy & How To Use It To Improve Your Relationship Health

Hey, thanks for coming. Welcome to the Love Shack.

Hey, welcome to the Love Shack. It's a little old place where we get to get together, explore fresh perspectives and ease, drop on juicy conversations and discover the things that really matter while having a little bit of fun along the way. This is episode number 81 and we're going to be talking about the power of your energy and how to use it to improve your relationship health. Most of us as human beings are unaware of the power of our energy, especially about how it affects our relationships. The truth is our energy is always flowing and we expend a lot of it in our relationships. Have you ever heard of obsessing like of obsessive thinking? And if we don't understand our energy or the hidden energy interactions that happen between us and our partners, it can be super difficult to understand why we have a hard time maintaining our thriving relationships.

Today in the Love Shack we have Gail Barron. Together we're going to discuss how we harness the power of energy in our relationships so we can successfully create stronger connections and improve our overall relationship health. Whether you are looking for ways to maintain healthy boundaries with your partner or struggling to communicate effectively, we have lots of people that reach out to us for both of those. This episode will offer you valuable insights and strategies for creating healthier, healthier relationships in your life.

So we're going to take a quick break, but we're going to be right back for this juicy conversation in just a second.

I met Stacy and Tom about two years ago. I was at a point in my relationship where I was ready to file for divorce. Not that I wanted to, but I just felt hopeless and helpless. I'd been through other counseling and coaching and didn't find any success. With Stacy and Tom's methods, I was able to eliminate insecurities, set boundaries, plant my flag, eliminate rabbit holing. I was separated from my wife for a year and I have since moved back home for the last six months. Now. I still refer back to a lot of the teaching that Stacy and Tom provided and it's helped me. It's well worth it.

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Welcome back inside the love shack. We are Tom and Stacey Bartley, along with our engineer, Eric Rider. And today's guest is Gail Barrett.

Yes. And gal has been an energy healer for 25 years and she's joining us to share her insights on how our energy has a huge impact on our lives. She has a fantastic story I'm so excited to share with you on how she went from being an engineer for real, a real for life engineer and total skeptic to a seeker of wisdom and truth in the energy world. Like, I don't know those two words are spelled the same, but there's a huge canyon and a lot of miles between that story. She's going to give us tips on how to become more aware of our own energy and how we can use it to create positive change in our relationships. This is going to be a great resource for anyone interested in understanding the hidden dynamics at work in their interactions with others. Gail's an engineer, an author, a speaker, and an energy healer. She's also a graduate of the Barbara Brennan School of Healing in Florida and is an energy practitioner in Van Coover, Canada. Gail, welcome to the show. It is great to have you here with us. I know we talked, you know, several months ago about doing this show and the minute I saw your face, I was like, oh, this is gonna be so great. I'm so excited for this.

So I have to just say Gail from one left brain person, I would think to another, I mean, so please share with us a bit about your personal journey from engineer to energy healer. Even though they both began last, Stacy shared with the first two letters. They seem, they seem mil part and again, I'm a very, you know, Stacy will share with you but you know, I know this is possible. So please give us like the Cliff Notes version of how you made this looks like at least from the outside, this huge, you know, jump in your life.

Oh, well, happy to because it was a huge jump. There's no doubt about it. I was totally, very much the skeptic, left brain, logical engineer. And only the physical is real. And any of these other weird stories, the paranormal that was, I'm sure there's a scientific explanation, you know, and, and I wasn't, I wasn't spiritual either. I was, I was an agnostic because I figured at least that's just admitting you don't know. Right? Everyone could sort of go with that, but atheism is sort of making a stand. But. So I wasn't ready to make that kind of commitment. But I was willing to say, I don't know. And you know, it's really another world, nothing to do with me. And, and even if anybody, you know, tried to, to bring a Bible into my house, I be going like, no, I was, you know, fingers crossed.

No, no, no. And for those of you who are listening on the podcast, Gail is like doing the no, no, no sign. Like.

So it's like warding off evil. And, and so that's how, where I came from. So that's the place I was at. And you know, this idea of talking about energy and human interactions would have been the farthest thing from my mind and I would have certainly not been open to it. And, and then life happened and what happened to me, it so happens it was a traumatic relationship breakup. So here we are. Which is very appropriate for, for this, this podcast since it was devastating. It was, you know, my left brain, logical mind could handle numbers and my work and all that sort of thing, but when it came to. Came to relationship trauma, which was basically we, my partner and I'd been together for four years. We were looking to buy a house together. We were talking marriage and kids and all of this stuff. And then suddenly it was interrupted when he ran off with someone else. And so it was, it was a shock and, and it threw me into a tailspin. So when at the end of the, you know, I went into a place of despair and, and, and during the last part of the relationship, there had been some, you know, the relationship had been struggling in that I noticed that my partner's attitude towards me had changed slightly, so he was criticizing me a lot more and it seemed like nothing I could do, you know, was, was what could actually make any difference or make him feel. Feel better towards me. It was like just the way I breathed even irritated him. And it's very helpless place to be. Even though, you know, on one level we were Talking about moving forward with it. On the other level, there was this constant criticism. And so as a result, when the relationship did end, finally as a result of this infidelity, I. I was left in a pretty ragged state emotionally to begin with, right? Because I. It had been my confidence and my. My sense of self been slowly eroding in the last little while. And so I was already in a pretty vulnerable place when that happened.

And I feel like. I feel like. Gail, right now, I need to interject a couple of things for those who are listening to your story, because I have lived this, too, and I bet a lot of our listeners have as well. I think it's. It's fascinating for us to just accept the reality and pause here for a moment and realize that relationships are an emotional, spiritual journ for us as individuals. This is where we kind of dance with the invisible. And there's nothing like a broken relationship or a traumatic relationship to be the catalyst for us to explore and develop some of these deeper, spiritual, energetic aspects of ourselves. That. That really is the catalyst for it all. In fact, I have a saying, God, universe, and spirit, which I call Gus. It always has its way with us, right? And we think we're going along in our logical minds, and life is good and we understand and it's all making sense. And then kablam, somebody will break your heart or cause you to reevaluate everything in your life. And then you have to dive deeper into these things, right? Or the other choice is that we tend to kind of like, try and make this make logical sense. And the logical reasoning that you're going to come to, the conclusion you're going to come to is, I'm not going to do this anymore. Because all women or all men are just fill in your blank of your story. And unfortunately, that's not minus pain or spiritual development or growth. Actually, it increases the pain in our lives. So, like, again, Gus is going to have its way with you, and the pain will increase to the level that is required to get your attention. So. So please, I just.

I interject that. No, and it certainly did it for me, too.

What about you, Tom? Did it for you? You? Yeah. Yeah.

So Dust has your full attention. Gail, you're feeling very broken.

Broken in my nicely ordered world, as you were saying, you know, this logical engineer, you know, my career was doing well and all that sort of thing, and I had a handle on that. And I, you know, I kind of thought, you know, yeah, my life is. We're moving, looking to buy a house and all this stuff. And in my mind, the future was this lovely house in the suburbs, you know, 2.5 kids in the. Parking in the driveway, and you know, the, the golden retriever. So I love that you added the dog. That's so great. That's like the classic, you know, home, family, all that stuff and that. And, and of course the career on top of that, right. So we want it all. And that was my future. And there it was, neatly mapped out, you know, by my engineer mind. This is what we're heading for. And in reality had other plans. And. And so I was really thrown off because suddenly it was as if my, as if my. There'd been an earthquake and my future was on the other, you know, had fallen off, fallen away. And there was me on the edge of this abyss and I had no idea what to do now. You know, work was my safe place. I could go there and get out of my emotions and stuff. But as soon as I got left the office, I was in tears. You can't escape what's going on inside. And. And I had no tools to handle that because everything had been very intellectual, right. And so I was a mess and I found myself spiraling into despair. And you know how your thoughts can kick you when you're down, you know, the self loathing. And even if it's not true, it'll still hit you with it, right? And maybe they're messages that you picked up or deduced in early childhood, but they all come up when you're in a bad way. And so it just feeds itself, the spiral feeds itself and you go descending into the end. In the end, I fell into this place of such self loathing that I would. And despair about the future that I was contemplating ending my life. And to the point where, you know, you're thinking about how you'll do it kind of thing. And I just, it's like I just fell into this pit and splatted on the bottom. I'd fallen, fallen, fallen, and I just splattered to the point where I was ready to leave and give up. And I really felt in that moment that, that there was no hope for me, that I would have. I would never have love. I was just plain not lovable. And that I was, you know, all of the things that we tell ourselves of that in that vulnerable place we take in, and in that place of utter despair and feeling worthless and all that, I suddenly had these words ring out in my head out of nowhere, but I love you. And. And it was accompanied by a rush of energy coming down my head, from the top of my head to my toes, this pinky gold energy. And I had no frame of reference for this, right? But it was tactile. I could feel it filling me with the most amazing sense of love. And it was as if I'd been given this cosmic hug, something way bigger than human. I had never experienced that, even from my. My parents. And it was way bigger than that. And. And so I had. I was like, what's this? And yet it was so marvelous because it was. It's like my awareness suddenly expanded to the point where I realized, you know, this is eternal. This is universal. This isn't just, you know, some being or it's something vaster than that. And. And it knows me. It knows every atom of my being and loves me anyway. So it was like my flaws, every little wart or freckle was loved. And there was absolutely nothing in me that was lovable. And I got it in that. In that expanded moment that this isn't. I'm not special. This is true for all of us. This includes all of us, not just me.

Well, and I love that you bring this up, and I want to bring this up to maybe listeners who are saying, man, I sure wish I had had an experience like that. You know, maybe that would really turn my life around. And I would say to you, you probably have, because we all do. We have these moments, you know, and they can be a blip on the screen, right? Or they can be, but they're always something memorable. And we have the option as a human being to discount them and go back to being miserable or to actually help them be the catalyst to help us make some changes. Because I bet if you look back in your history, you're going to find that there are moments like this in your life and you go, yeah, yeah, that must have been indigestion, inspiration, right? That. Yeah, what, Whatever, you know, yeah, I.

Was drunk or, you know, I was. I was.

Yeah, exactly. So we dismiss them.

And I.

And I just really want to put an exclamation point on that, right, because we can dismiss them. We have a choice where we have these moments, these. And they can be small but profound. They make a mark on us. I've watched this in my clients, I've watched this in my own life, and I've also watched this in the lives of my own children, where they'll have a flash of inspiration just like you described, and then they quickly discount it and dismantle it through their personal doubt of who they Are who they can become and where it is they can go. And then they're back to spiraling and being miserable. So I just. I just really think you need to. To pay attention to that. Act on. In a moment of inspiration. It'll take you in a new direction. You dismiss an act of inspiration or moments where the universe gives you a hug. I love that. And it will your life.

And sometimes you have to suffer enough. In other. In other words, it broke me open so I could receive it. You know, my heart was broken open. I just, you know, it felt like literally my heart was breaking. But I didn't realize till later as I thought about it, I said, yeah, it was breaking open so that I could open to this experience. Because until then I'd been too closed, you know, with my left brain. Logical thinking. There was an explanation for everything. I wouldn't have allowed it in. I couldn't have in that state. So I had to be broken open ultimately to let my. To let it in because I had. I had nothing else to turn to. Right. And I wasn't praying or anything. I was just in my. I was just surrendering to my misery, basically. And. And then something. I don't know why something happened to me in a. Like a window opened and for a second that I got this glimpse of this greater reality and it. Because it, because it was so tangible. That's what made it impressed me, was not just the words, which, you know, you can easily dismiss words. Oh, I made that up. It's what I wanted to hear, blah, blah, blah. But it was the fact that was accompanied by this vast loving energy which I couldn't even have conceived of. You know, I had no experience of that. My, My, my. Not to that level. And. And so obviously there was a reason to stick around and not. And not just end it. And the other thing was I was. The reason to stick around was to find out what that was. You know, it was ultimately, what was that? Because I had no frame of reference for it, absolutely none. And my mind was kind of like, does not compute. But because of the. Because it had been such a visceral experience. That's. That's energy and it was consciousness, right? It wasn't just, you know, warm sunlight from the sun. It was. There was an element of consciousness and recognition in it. You know, it was like. Like a being or something. Something bigger than me. And I. I still don't know what it was. You know, it's tempting to label it and, but. But I still honor it with something sacred and Something important. And so, yeah, that I like to use the expression I use now, after decades of trying to understand it, is that. That somehow this loving, whether it was my higher self or God or Jesus, I don't know, somehow it picked me up out of that abyss, lifted me up and placed me gently on my path and showed me my wings. And that's how I. I feel about that experience now, that the wings being your ability to. To live the life you want and to use your energy, you know, consciously.

Well, and I. I have a very similar experience after the end of my first. My. Not my first, but my second divorce where I was devastated. I was really trying to check all the boxes religiously and socially and in my family of origin, only to find myself at the bottom of once again and in worse shape than through my. My first divorce. And there was absolutely a moment where I felt an incredible piece of, like you put it, a universal hug. And what's helped me make sense of that for my own life and through my own pursuit of trying to understand that is the idea and the intelligence in the world that we are and that we have surrounding us all the time. And if we think of energy as a vibration in our universe, we then sometimes when the pain drives us to such a place of slowing down and cracking us open, we can now vibrate at some of those lower levels because we're constantly spinning, right? We're constantly spinning up to try and get ahead of it. But it's actually when we slow down, which pain helps us do. We pull back. We. We kind of spend some time with ourselves. And those are the moments where those hugs come and that inspiration and those reminders that, hey, you're more than this. You can do this. It's going to be okay. Love you. You're lovable. You're not broken, right? Just. Just take and put one foot in front of the other. And. And I have hundreds, if not thousands of stories from some of the clients that I have worked with over the years that find themselves in this pit of despair, only to find themselves in this place where it's like, I can do this. You know, I just need to put another foot in front of the other, because there's something inside of me that's reminding me, I am good enough. I can do this. I am lovable. And so I love your story for that reason, because it speaks to many of us who have had a very similar experience. And instead of discounting it, we can embrace it and realize we are all energetic beings on a very energetic ride. And especially when we're left brained, that's the part of ourselves that we tend to discount the most. Right. It's like, no, no, no, this isn't happening. And it takes something like a tragedy, like a traumatic breakup to help us find and explore those deeper aspects that we've always had the capacity to expand and believe and to reach into. But it often takes something like that to make us go there or to inspire us to go there, shall we say?

Yeah, once. Once you begin, begin. Curious now about the possibilities of your life, because now the old life's gone. You can't get it back. It's over. And that's part of the. The step. And a necessary step is acceptance of that. Not fighting it, not trying to avoid it or be in denial, but just accepting the sadness of that. And the grief, this huge grief as a result of losing something that important. And the only way with grief to deal with it is to feel it. And it moves. Energy does move. It does dissipate when you let it move. It's only when we fight it that it gets stuck. Right. And so in the end, I think for me, what happened, you know, I didn't know at the time, but now as an energy practitioner, I look at it, I think for me, what happened was that I felt it, and I felt to the point where that's when I splatted, basically, right, where I just gave up fighting it and experienced and let it all spill out. And. And it was in that moment that. That the energy was able to move and then I was able to. It gave a little opening for this experience to happen. The other thing I wanted to add to what you said, said it was just beautiful, was that we do one step at a time, but we have help. Synchronicities happen, little opportunities. Soon as we're willing. Right. To change track. As soon as we're willing, we get help from little people. We suddenly meet, or little. For me, I was in a bookstore and somebody put a book wondering, how the hell do you heal emotions? Right? And. And so I was in a bookstore in Germany and. And the clerk was putting a new shipment of books in. They put it right in front of my face. It was called the Healing of Emotions. That's kind of perfect, if you notice, you know, there's tons of that going on. We're being helped in tiny little ways. Right. But we have to pay attention.

Yeah.

So that's a perfect segue, Gail. So share with us what exactly is personal energy after going through this experience? And now as an energy practitioner share with us what is your, what is in a way that everyone can get their arms around or most of us can.

So I have the simplest explanation. It would be it's the life force and consciousness that inhabits your body. So it is really you, it's ultimately you. And it not only inhabits your body, but it's spills over, is way bigger than your body. So it actually spills over into, around our body, giving us a sense of personal space. And so if you're, if you have ever felt somebody standing too close to you, right, Even though they weren't touching you, what is it that makes it too close? And it's because their field is overlapping yours and it feels invasive when that. So what do we tend to automatically move away, right? So we get our space back. Well, that space is, is basically your boundary, your energy boundary. It's, that's how far it extends out from your body. And, and your energy is, comprises basically all the non physical aspects of your being. Your thoughts, your emotions, your sensations, more intuitive, your intuition and your intuitive senses, your ability to your, and your relationships and your communications at a distance in your relationships, right? The subtle human, the emotional communication that's not spoken that you experience with each other, right. And you also, also there's in relationship, there are currents of manipulation happening, you know, as everyone tries to get their needs met from each other. That's happening energetically too. So part of their energy will form like a little, little streamer to try and take a sip of your energy if they like it. And so there's things, you know, that, that can happen. Some people in children do that all the time because they're, they're always demanding your attention and doing whatever they can to get it right, whether it's to be funny or act out or whatever. But all of it is an attempt to, to have that energy interaction going on. And so it's natural, it's not good or bad, it just happens. It's just the way it is with you and relationships and with our pets too. I mean they, they do that as well. So it's, it's a natural part of us. And the other important thing to know is that just like we have physical senses, we also have energy senses, a whole variety of them, all of which are just as natural as the physical senses.

I, I describe the energy senses as our emotional body. You know, we have an emotional body and we have a physical body in both. Both are exceptionally real. And the really good news is if we understand how our physical Body works, which most of us do, because that demands all of our attention, right? The physical, that makes sense that we can touch and measure and quantify and test and, you know, do all those kinds of things. Dialogue about when we step into the emotional world, it becomes a little more challenging because it's fluid, it's dynamic, right. It time travels, it shape shifts, forms, but etc.

I would just add that, you know, Gail's explanation there reminds us of what we often say between the physical and the emotional. If someone has stepped on our toe, it doesn't take us very long before we say, you know, excuse me, you're on my toe in the person. But like, yeah, like, that was a wonderful. And oftentimes we will like something will. And that's energy that will make us either get closer to someone, we'll have an ease to do that, or a distance, you know, a lack of ease. And that will. Well, that's the same, right? The same message. It's just coming through a different medium.

Yeah, that's right. And it's a much richer medium, actually. The physical is kind of limited, right? It either hurts or it feels nice and that sort of thing. But the. The energy is. Is encompassing a lot more. Basically, all our psychological imprints and that sort of thing are stored in our energy field. So our childhood, if you think about it, every experience you had les was small child, is you're mapping reality, right? You know nothing when you come in here. So you're. You're. You're programmed to learn as much as you can from every experience. And so every conclusion you're making, good or bad, is being stored in your field for future reference. And so it's. It's kind of. So it's basically where we store memories. But also, if you think about it, all our nerves are sending energy back and forth to the brain, right? That energy is flowing through the field and getting stored there too. So we can access past feelings, physical feelings and stuff by just thinking of them, right. We bring ourselves in the moment back to a memory. We can re. Re experience all the emotions and feelings that we had in that memory, even though it's not happening now. It's just something that we stored in our field. So there's a lot more in the field than just just our emotions. It's also our thoughts and our beliefs and the conclusions that we made about life and other people that we now use as we think is. That's like the. The filters that affect our thinking now in relationship, so that we. If we have A belief about all men or all women or ourselves. We're seeing the world through that belief, and it's filtering out any other evidence that's. That's also available to us. But we're not seeing it because we think this is the only thing that's true. And so it can distort how we are in relationship because, you know, we're not seeing our partner as they fully are. We're only seeing the part we let in and the other aspects of them we're dismissing or filtering out. And so it's very easy for people to feel unseen or unheard in relationship because we're all dealing with that. This is a problem for all of humanity, not just women or men or one person. We're all struggling with that. And that's part of our journey in relationship, I think, is to begin to peel away those perceptive filters and to try and see the real person and all their glorious humanity. Right. Including their flaws, but with love, you know, okay, I'm not perfect either.

I so agree with you. I call it our. Our internal movie or understanding our internal movie. It's what you're making up to be true. It's the narrative that we live out and we will live congruent with our movies, the things that we explain. Why I believe what I do, why I value what I do, and I will. I will show up according to that or in alignment to that, until I go, hey, wait a minute.

What.

What is it you said again? You know, or. Or help me understand more about that. And. And this is where communication and our interactions with people that we love and care about in our lives becomes more about understanding than who's right and who's wrong. It's like, that's that opportunity that we often overlook or dismiss. For me to peek through the peephole and into who it is you are. When we can get to a safe place of sharing our movies, and then we can dismantle them and we can reshape them, recreate them. There's everything and anything is possible there.

Well, that's a perfect segue, I think, into you. I just already shared some, Gail, but so if you load, please. How are. What are some ways that energy affects our relationship? You already shared some of that, but.

Yeah, so that's the perception way. But also, often we're not aware of it, but we're picking up other people's emotions and thinking that they're our own. And so, you know, some people are more sensitive to emotional energy than others. But for those who are sometimes they don't know that the anger they're feeling isn't theirs, you know? You know, they might even have been on the bus next to somebody who was angry, but, you know, just standing there fuming about something, and they come away off the bus and they go home and they're still feeling angry, even though it was. Wasn't their anger. And then they lash out. Yeah, but it'll trigger a reason, you know, because the mind's gonna say, well, why am I angry? Well, maybe it's this, you know, next thing you know, you started an argument, right? So that's something worth knowing, that it's. It's worth being, becoming, learning how to sense your own energy and be able to check in. Is this mine? Right?

Give us some. Give us some things that we can use or sensations that. That often signify, okay, this. This isn't mine. This belongs to somebody else.

Well, the first thing you can do is ask yourself and, you know, and check in. Does, you know, how was I be. You know, before I felt angry? What was I doing? You know, was. Did something happen? Did somebody call me? Did I watch something disturbing on YouTube? And it's. So the thing is, we're highly interconnected, energetically, and we. We think. Because in our culture, we think we're all a body, and therefore our bodies are separate, therefore we must be. But we. We have these fields, these darn fields that keep connecting with each other, right? Which can be fabulous. Absolutely fabulous. And it could be problematic if. If you. If you're not aware of it, right? And so this one thing you can do is you can use it for good. And that is that you can change your own energy and you'll be able to affect somebody else, like your kids or your partner in a positive way. So even if they're angry or whatever, you can move into a more loving state rather than letting yourself be triggered. There's ways you can adjust your own energy so that you're actually holding a space for them that's accepting and loving. Even when they're angry and misbehaving in. In their anger and that. It's like you watch the anger dissipate.

Tell us how to do that, right?

There's nothing fighting back.

But yeah, yeah, yeah. How do we do that?

What are. Ultimately, when we are angry, it's because we do feel unloved or unseen or misunderstood and that sort of thing. And we just. We don't know how else to get to change that. Right? And so when somebody's actually listening to us without fighting back or whatever, or getting triggered and you know, attacking us back when, when somebody's actually listening to us complain that it tends, and without judgment, it tends to soften us. And it's like, all right, maybe I was exaggerating a little bit. You know, you don't always do that, you know, maybe, maybe some of the time, you know, because you know how we do that when we're angry, right. We'll, we'll put these, these absolutes. You never, you always. And it's not simply not true, you know, we're much more complicated than that. Right. So, so becoming aware of energy helps you to overcome that type tendency because that's the default in our culture, right? And yeah, so one of the things you can do is, and it takes practice. So you want to do this when, when you're not triggered, right? So you want to practice this in a safe place and, or even, even together for fun, right? One way is to just go into your heart and holding your imagination for a second, bring to mind somebody whom you deeply love and cherish and delight in. And it could be a pet, it could be a kid, it could be a grandchild, it could be your partner, it could be a grandparent, just somebody whom you deeply love in, in, in this non threatening moment and allow yourself to feel that. You can sort of put your hands on your heart and just allow yourself to feel how much you love and appreciate and delight in this person. Right? Or being, and, or it could be a spiritual being, whatever, whatever gives you that sense of deep love and appreciation. And then you can expand that as an energy. You just allow that energy. You feel, it feels warm and joyful and nourishing. You can allow it to expand into your whole field and not into your body, but also into your personal space. So you're now holding it around you as well. So you're in safety now that's such a safe, nourishing place. You can actually hold somebody else when you're being held yourself in that energy. And the thing to remember is it's your love, you know, it's your love for someone else, but it's your love. So you can let it nourish you while you expand it and you can use it for healing as well to let it nourish all your cells, let them relax in that energy. And yeah, one little addition to that trick is as a cerebral person, right, Somebody who goes off into the intellect is to invite my, my mind to rest in the heart, to nothing to do, nothing to fix, just relax. And enjoy it. And it's like my mind loves that. It's like, oh, thank God I don't have to be on top of things. I can just, just be restored. I can just rest into this embrace. And so that for those of us who are really in our heads a lot, that's really worth practicing.

I love how you said that. How I learned this principle many years ago was, you know, my mentor saying to me, stace, remember, feelings follow thought. It is a principle of the universe. So feeling things follow thought. And so what you think about or where you focus your mind is going to throw off an emotion. And, and that was such an empowering statement where I could realize, oh, well, so if I want to change the way I feel, I just change my thoughts and what I focus my attention on. Yes. And, and that's the fascinating thing about our brains. It can validate anything. Like, anything like. And this is how we come up with a lot of phobias and stuff, right? I can, I can think about, okay, every time I wear these red shoes, right. I feel a certain way. And sure enough, I think about those red shoes and I feel a certain way. And so, okay, that's how we start creating those kinds of things. And then we behave as though they have power over us when the reality is it's the association you have between your thinking and the way you feel.

Well, and I would, I would add that, you know, Gail, what I just, just came away from that wonderful, you know, experiment that you shared with us.

Experiment.

We always, well, or thought process or thinking experience, but moving into a feeling experiences, it's slowing us down, right? I mean, none of us, I mean, I, I, I am, I don't need anything to speed me up. I don't know if any of us do in this world that we live in now, right? I mean, so you're, but you're, you, you gave the energetic explanation and definition of why it works so well. Because we always say the very easiest and fastest thing you can do when you are triggered is to, Is to breathe. Because breathing will slow our brain down. Right? I mean, that's medically proven. But now you've given us the energetic explanation and process to do so.

Yes. And the other cool thing is you can, if you practice it on your own when you're not triggered, right? You can, you can actually anchor it with. This is a neuro linguistic programming idea. But you can anchor it with either a finger gesture or a hand move or something that's unused that you don't use normally. Maybe even tugging on your ear or something so that you can access that energy. The more you practice that, the more instantly you can access it. So you could be in the middle of an argument. If you've established this anchor, then later on, when you're in. In a place where you really need yourself, so you want to be there, present for yourself. And for the other, you could just. Well, if you've used your earlobe, tug your earlobe, and boom, you're there, you know, so that's the wonderful thing about energies. You can program it into your. Into your neural pathway so that you actually have a tool that you can use later when you really need it.

So true. I mean, like the example I gave of the red shoes, instead of it being the association or the.

The.

The connection between your thinking and your energy, of if things go badly or poorly. When I wear these red shoes, it can be. Man, when I wear these red shoes, I feel so empowered, like I am in my thing. I am doing my damn.

I'm gonna put on my power shoes.

Exactly. And the more you do it, the more you program it until it's amazing. Yeah. You put those shoes on or that. That dress, or you hold that necklace, or you. You hold those rocks. Those are what we're doing when we. We want to have our crystals around us or our necklaces or. Right. They. They empower us, and we believe in them, and so we create this experience.

Yeah. So you can do that with just a part. You know, you may not always have your crystals with you. Right. Does that mean you're devoid of power? No. I mean, you can access it just as easily. You could imagine your crystals, and that would probably do. Or your red shoes. Right. But. But the key thing is to realize you do have some control over your energy. And it is, as you said, it's your thoughts and being able to manage your thoughts in the direction you want towards what you want to create what you prefer to happen. It's not about denial or anything. It's about owning that you aren't subject to all these default whims. You can, in fact, change how you respond. It's about responding instead of reacting. And I think that's. That's. That's one of the true benefits of being able to manage your energy.

It's so. I love your practicality in this conversation. So, so, so, so much. And it. And it's so true. We do have the ability to. To manage a lot if the more we understand ourselves as a human being, the more empowered we can become. About navigating through life's inevitable ups and downs. And it's a funny thing. We all begin right where we are. And you mentioned this in the beginning of our conversation about just accepting where you are. And even though it might be a difficult place, it's. It's. It's a good. It's okay to be there. It's okay to be there. And that's where the journey begins. Right. It's this place of acceptance of where we are, who we are, and. And what. What it is we've learned and experienced thus far, and then realizing we do have the ability and the empowerment to take it any direction we choose to from that moment to forward. It's a funny thing with Gus. It's not going to allow us to go forward until we accept where we are.

Exactly is my point in saying that's where you start. I mean, how. Where else can you start?

Right?

Exactly. It's like, no, no, no.

You got to see where you are before we can go anywhere. So we'll just hang out here until you can do that. Okay.

Exactly.

Oh, g. It's been such a wonderful conversation. Do we want to. We want to take some takeaways. We have a few seconds where we can. We can. As we wrap this up, what's your biggest takeaways from the conversation today? The three of us, like, let's all throw one in the hat. In the ring, shall we say? In the hat. In the ring. However, we want to go there. Gosh. I think for me, it's. It's realizing how empowering this conversation can be for you. Right. Whether we want to dismiss it or deny it or not, we are all very emotional, energetic beings. And sometimes our thinking can cause us to believe that there is no reality there, when indeed there is. And we feel it and we know it. It's invisible. But I would say so is oxygen and a lot of other things that we don't see, and yet they have tremendous impact on our lives. So, you know, if you're skeptic, that's okay. Just. Just give our conversation a possibility today. That would be my takeaway.

Yeah. And I would say we have a friend and mentor, Trevor Blake, and he always reminds us, you know, this is a physicist, so talk about someone that understands energy. Energy can never be destroyed. It can simply. It's simply transformed. And Gail has given us some incredible practical ways to transform this energy, because, like you say, believe it or not believe it. I mean, that's what we're made of.

I mean, and.

And it's I find it interesting. We all have people in our lives that we just have this sense, right, that they're easy to be around. So I would assert that that's because their energy field is in a. In a good place. Right, Gail? They're managing their energy, and then their field is in a way of a very, very. A warm and loving place for us.

And they may not be consciously managing their field. Maybe they've learned it just through childhood or whatever, but whatever it is, their energy feels good to us. And that's. That's the key. It feels like us, you know, more. More in alignment with us. And. And although somebody else might not feel the same way with them, we do. And that's all that matters in our relationship with them. So. Yeah.

So what's your favorite takeaway, Gail?

I mean.

Oh, gosh. So many. I really. Gosh. I think it was really helpful for me to hear from Stacy talking about that she's had clients with similar experiences, and her own experience is really helpful for me, you know, to realize, you know, this is a human experience. That. And ultimately it's for our good. It's ultimately feels terrible at the time. Right. But ultimately it's bringing us forward in our life, you know, growing us. And I love. I love that the energy is. Is really. It's about our power. It is who we are. So if we're not using it, we're not using our power. It's. We're not being who we are and to our fullest. And I think most people would prefer to have harmony and would prefer to have. Be in loving relationships and prefer to see their kids succeed, and all that stuff and all the other stuff is kind of static going on in the way. But if we're able to. To go into that place of what our longing is and then change our behavior to match what we're actually longing to create in. In our world, then that's. That's. That's truly owning your life.

I. I feel inspired to just throw this one last thought out there. And I know that we are out of time, but I feel like it's important. One of the things that can trip us up, and I remember thinking this myself, is that if I follow my intuition, why do bad things happen? And I want to say to that answer, what I've discovered for myself and. And the many beautiful human souls that I have had the privilege and honor. Honor of working with, is that sometimes we need to create a bit of a mess to help us slow down enough to connect with who it is you truly are. And there is nothing that does that better than pain. And we have this idea, which is an illusion, that if I follow my intuition, everything is supposed to work out fine. No, that is not the truth. Sometimes we create bigger messes. I want you to think about it like renovating a house right when you go, okay, there's a lot of stuff in here that's got to be changed. This is not working for me anymore. We create a huge mess right before we turn it into something magnificent again. And that is so true with our emotions and our intuition and our energy bodies as well.

So, Gail, share with us where people can learn more about you and your wonderful body of work.

Oh, awesome. Yes. I have a website called Energy is real, all1word.com. And if they go to the website, they can sign up for a newsletter and they can get a free preview of the. I have a book, Energy Israel, which provides all these exercises. It's more like a handbook for managing your energy. All right, so I'm an engineer. That's the kind of thing I write, how to do Stuff. And so it's the first chapter introduces you to the world of energy and provides six exercises for starting to open your own energy awareness and starting to explore that. And they're fun things that you can do with a partner and with your kids and that sort of thing, though it's fun. And so there's, if you sign up for the newsletter, you can get that preview of the book and right away you can start exploring your own energy. So those exercises are given a given giveaway with that. And plus there's there's some audio recordings for each exercise so that you can just follow along according to the recording. So that's available on under the free Resources tab in the website.

Awesome.

Yeah.

Gail, thank you so much for being here with us on the Love Shack. I'm sure we'll have you back and we'll have more conversations along this track. What we're going to do for our listeners right now is we're going to kind of let you breathe and settle in into some of the things that we've talked about here. We're going to take a quick break and we're going to come back for our Follow the Fun segment right here in the Love Shack. We'll be right back. Thanks, Gail.

Thank you.

Hey, babe. Did you know that the average couple spends only two hours a day with each other? And the majority of that time is spent eating, watching TV and surfing social media rather than connecting with each other. And if children are involved, my gosh, it's even less time than that.

I know, babe. That's why you created our conversation cards for connection. Because they're the perfect conversation starter. So the next time you're sitting on a couch, rather than turning on the TV or grabbing your phone, pull out a card and get ready for some good old fashioned laughter and loving connection.

Yeah. You can get your cards@staceybartley.com get your.

Daily dose of Variety Alternative Talk 1150.

Welcome back Inside the Love Shack. Wow, that was awesome. With Gail. Gail, thank you again for being with us. So now we're going to follow a little fun. Yeah, let's take a breath, let's slow down. Because fun novelty is an incredible part of our relationships that we like to dismiss often.

In fact, relationships are an act of creativity and we can choose to recreate them as often as possible or we become stuck in something old, boring and inadequate over time. That's just the reality of our energy.

Haha. That's a real compelling future right there. Yeah, exactly.

Hey, so today's Follow the Fun is Romancing the Stone for those of us who are old enough to remember that movie with Michael Douglas. It's kind of a play on that a little bit. But here's the thing. I'm going to ask you to gather up and purchase some and, or purchase some stones and I need some actual real stones. And I need you to find some stones that are big enough to write on and gather them up in a little bag or a little basket, whatever you have available to you. And I want you to use a permanent marker and I want you to write words of love and appreciation for your person on those stones. And then as you're having dinner, just go ahead and encourage them to sort through that bag or that little basket that you've created for them. And they're going to pull them out one by one and they're gonna, they're gonna hear or read things like, hey, maybe a simple I love you, or hey, you know what? I think you're my hunk. I love the way you look and you always turn me on. Or hey, I appreciate always being there. Or hey, you know what? For me, you've made my dreams come true. I so appreciate that. And as we start to talk about these things and relive these things while you're having dinner over these rocks, you can elaborate on that a little bit if you want to. I wrote this and it reminds me of. And there's a whole conversation, but then here's the really cool part. We can take those stones and we can lay them around our house and we can lay them in our yards and in our gardens. And when we see them, it's kind of like that thing we were talking about in our conversation with Gail just a few minutes ago. They're triggers of memory about how much you care. Because the number one thing we do in our relationships, especially when we get frustrated or we're starting to doubt ourselves, or we're starting to question whether this relationship, my person matters, is we forget we care. We forget we care, that that's why we get spun up, that's why we get angry, that's why we get frustrated, that I care about you. And so these stones remind us. Oh yeah, that's right. I really do care. I. I do have some positive memories or experiences or emotions in this relationship. It's going to be okay. So we can plant them around to be those little reminders. And the really cool thing is they're going to outlive us, right? So they're going to be around for 10, 20 years. So this is a way that we can like set and create these little reminders around the house, which really does create a romance of the stone. Now, I also want to say for those of you who are going, oh yeah, this is so way outside of my wheelhouse. All right, well, that might be a sign that maybe it's time to get some help because we all deserve to have moments like this. In fact, these are the moments that we long for in our relationships. And you don't find that they're available in your relationship. Well, there's your sign that you probably need some help and support with the emotional aspects of your relationship. The good stuff, the juicy stuff.

Yeah, and, and can't overemphasize that. And if that or the follow fun is when you check out of our listening to us, that's cool. But you know, I would challenge you then rather than checking out and say, oh, that's not possible for me, or maybe I need to find another person to be my partner. That's typically where most of us go. How about, how could that be possible? And this is where Stacy and I, where we work strategically with our clients, you know, and we do that through one on one sessions, through our signature courses, which are Relationship Rescue and Love for a Lifetime. What we always, you'll always hear us say is don't wait. We all have these intuitive hunches. We just got off with Gail. We have these energetic responses. We need to Listen to them rather than to the discard them. Use them as the gift that they are and have us recalibrate. And most of us, my experiences can't do it on our own, otherwise we would already done that. So reach out to us. This is where we have very, very unique frameworks. We hear this all the time from clients that have worked with all different types of practitioners. There's all types of great people out there. But like, gosh, why don't. Why have I not learned this before? Okay, so reach out to us. This is how we can really, really move the needle. Bring some novelty, bring some play, bring some fun back into your life again in your most important relationships.

So romance that stone, baby. Get it done. And if you're not already on our fun list, get on our fun list because we give away prizes, which is coming up next week. We also send out some fun tips and tricks every week about how you can improve your relationship from the play and novelty side. And soon coming, if you some products that will help you do just that.

And soon coming is our new emotional weightlifting gym.

True.

We're gonna have a place.

What the heck is that? It's Stacy talks all about in her book. So grab the book and you'll get a little bit of a feel for that.

Yes, well, long story short is a place where we get to come and practice a lot of the things that we need to learn and understand. But there's the understanding, the thinking part of it that we talked about today, and there's also the practice and implementation part of it. And those are two very different places. And if you don't believe me, just remember, you know, like learning how to drive a car, there's the learning, right, the driver's ed manual, and then there's the actual driving of the car. Those are two very different things. And so we need a place to practice so as we land this episode. You know, we always give you a song because it helps us to feel. It helps us to step into.

Talk about energy.

Oh, my gosh.

Talk about energy.

That's why we call music like the international language, right? The universal language. Not international. The universal language. I love music. And so I share these with you and we pick a song every week to inspire you. And today I. I chose one of my favorites to be frank with you. If I ever need to, like, feel in a good mood or let go or just settle into myself, I love to play this song by fkj. And the song is simply titled Die with a Smile. And the words and the lyrics to the song are very much that. I mean, you, you've, we've pretty much covered it, you know, die with a smile. And I think that's such a great goal to like, get to the end of your life and go, oh, I love this. So it's a place and a song that's going to help you feel so. Thank you so much for Gail being here as a guest on our show today and for spending some time with us inside of the Love Shack. And if this is an episode that has inspired you and you know somebody in your sphere of influence who could use this information nation, please pass this along and thank you to all of those who have already done that. We look forward to being back here with you next week inside the Low Shack. Have a great week. We'll see you next time.

Bye bye for now.

Thanks for joining us today in the Love Shack. We hope you came away with something that made your toes tingle. To learn more about everything you heard on today's show, go to stacybartley.com podcast Love the Show. Help us spread the love by sharing the show with others. Okay, everybody, time to go. We gotta close the doors to the Love Shack for this week. You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here. Come back next week, though, and join us for another edition of Love Shack Live with Tom and Stacey Bartley.