In this episode, I explore the theme of death, detox and re-birth with nutritionist, naturopath and fellow plant-enthusiast Rebecca O’Reilly. 

To grow – and to grow free – means to continually let go of anything that gets too small or restrictive. Like a snake shedding its skin, we humans can shed personality forms and habits that worked in one moment, but no longer serve us. Only we often don’t shed these skins.

Why not? Trauma – unresolved – keeps us stuck on repeat. The process of healing from trauma can be an uncomfortable and intense shedding of emotions and experiences that were too overwhelming for the resources we had and got stuck within us.

The physical, bodily aspect of this process has been becoming clearer in recent years.  Never have we lived in a time with so many toxins and stressors. Many of us are experiencing chronic health issues.  Yet we live in a time where our emotional intelligence is rising, and our knowledge base is shifting rapidly and radically into a new paradigm.  I decided to explore the issue of allowing old, toxic parts of ourselves to ‘die’ with someone who is at the forefront of nutrition and the quantum intelligence of plants to support our healing and wholeness.    

Rebecca O’Reilly is a certified holistic nutritionist, naturopath, and health coach. Her purpose is to help you transform your health; to overcome chronic and mystery illness and find freedom from the symptoms and conditions that hold you back. 

Long COVID, Autoimmune dis-ease, Chronic Fatigue, Adrenal Fatigue, Fibromyalgia, SIBO, IBS, Acne, Psoriasis, Eczema, PCOS, Fibroids, Endometriosis, UTIs, Anxiety

Sound familiar?

Maybe you suffer with just one of the above or a combination of seemingly disconnected symptoms, just like Rebecca did. Either way, these are just a few of the issues that are greatly misunderstood in the health community, where diagnoses are doled out without real understanding of the true cause or how to treat them.

But there are answers and that’s what Rebecca is here to share. 

Based in Bath, UK, she works with clients both locally and all over the world, through my online and in-person practice. 

In this episode we discussed:

Rebecca’s journey with trauma, healing and food

The correlation between psychological death and re-birth and cleansing and re-building our bodies. 

The specific contribution of certain plants like wild blueberries, elder, and dandelion for supporting detoxification and nourishment. 

I LOVE recording this episode. I hope you find it helpful. We are hoping that Rebecca may join us to create courses and community that members of Grow Free can benefit from.

You can find Rebecca at: www.rebecca-oreilly.com
 Email: [email protected]

As always you can join the community at: https://community.grow-free.com
And contact me at: [email protected] 

This season we are bringing in guided meditations, activations and yoga nidra practices to the podcast. This episode is the first such practice. It guides you into a state of relaxation and receptivity to remember our natural cycles.  It's just me. No guest. I invite you to sit back and go deep. 

To find out more about our monthly themes, course, practices and community join us at: https://community.grow-free.com/

You can also email me at [email protected]. I always love to hear your feedback. 

In this episode I explored the nature of darkness with Catherine Björksten a holistic practitioner, specialising in supporting people who are going through a Spiritual Awakening. Her motto is integrated and embodied awakening. Following a career in marketing & advertising and becoming a mother of two, she went through a major awakening herself, which led her to study psychotherapy, spiritual counselling, shamanism and apprenticing with Indigenous leaders and mystical masters worldwide. 

In line with this month’s theme in the Grow Free Community, the episode teases out what heavy emotional energy – like depression and shame – can offer us when we learn to accept them.  These energies are called different names in different traditions – dukkha in Yogic and Buddhist approaches – and we explore the path of healing – through our own experience - as one of accepting these feelings and learning how to balance the light and dark within us.

We speak about: 

-          What it means to ‘bypass’ these emotions 

-          The importance and nature of practice

-          Catherine’s personal journey and the teachings she has received 

-          Her perspective and approach to supporting others

-          What it may mean for us to accept more light and dark culturally

Catherine believes in activating and empowering paradigm shifters by helping them remember who they truly are in essence as they are key representatives for the change Humanity needs. This is done through reconnecting with an animistic way of life; showing people that they are part of the greater web by reconnecting them with nature, spirit, the Divine and each other. 

She is the author of “You are Loved: Essential Spirit Guides and Guardians”, part of the Now Age series (Random House), which aims at introducing different topics of spirituality to the wider public. “This book is an invitation into the realms of spirit in which I share from my own experience, and teachings from various ancient sacred lineages.”

 Catherine has a private practice and consulted many years at the College of Psychic Studies in London, where she lives. She offers individual sessions, public speaking and facilitates workshops and retreats.

She provides a practical and grounded approach to spirituality to help people experience daily life as sacred; because it is!
 
 Web akasha-awakening.com
IG @akasha_awakening

As always you can find out more about the Grow Free Community at https://community.grow-free.com/

You can also contact me directly at [email protected] if you would like to join our courses or be a guest on this podcast. 

This was one of the most exciting podcasts I have recorded.  My guest is the illustrator of the new Grow Free Animation 'Connection is Everything'.   
Working on the animation with Lina has supported the formation of the whole Grow Free approach; transforming knowledge and ideas into a creative medium crystalizing and refining it.

In this episode, we talk over:

• the epic task of representing the connection between everything
• the process of researching and forming the final illustrations
• the directions that we would like to take it further
• and the nature of life on this planet

You can watch the animation on our YouTube channel: Connection is Everything (Animation) - YouTube
You can watch this podcast episode to get a fuller appreciation of when we're discussing aspects of the illustration: (2) Season 2 Episode 10 Connection is Everything Illustration with Lina Kusaite & Sahajo - YouTube

You can find out more about Lina Kusaite and her work here: www.cocooncharacters.com
Lina Kusaite on Behance

In this episode I invite back two previous guests who were obvious choices for the theme of 'Support'.  Madeleine Besson is the healing sound artist from the last episode and my singer teacher / therapist.  Deborah Armstrong is an intuitive shamanic practitioner working in North East Scotland. Both have supported me in my journey and both are insightful practitioners and speakers.

This is a perfect conversation for April 2022.   We discuss:
- their experience of finding their own support
- how they help guide others to find their own support
- what they see coming in our world as more of us re-connect to the support available to us.

The opening soundtrack is from Madeleine's work for our Grow Free Animation.
 
You can find more about Madeleine at her website: Madeleine Besson
You can find and listen to her music and sound activations on her YouTube Channel: Madeleine Besson - YouTube
You can purchase Sound Activations that Madeleine has produced with Maja Metlicar (another podcast guest) here: Golden Dome – Maja Metlicar

You can contact Deborah Armstrong on [email protected] 

In this episode I speak with Madeleine Besson who is a sound healing and creative artist that I am working with one-to-one to release my voice.

In this episode we speak about:
- How trauma impacts our ability and desire to express
- How singing and voice work can help bring us back into our body and release deep patterns
- How sounds works as a very gentle intervention to support and cleanse our patterns
- How our senses, perception and consciousness can open to the sound and vibration of everything the more and more deeply we settle back into our bodies.

You can read more about Madeleine at her website: Madeleine Besson
You can find and listen to some of her music and sound activations on her YouTube Channel here: Madeleine Besson - YouTube
Including her single Rise that we speak about in the podcast: Madeleine Besson - Rise (Official Music Video) - YouTube
You can also purchase Sound Activations that Madeleine has produced with Maja Metlicar (another podcast guest) here: Golden Dome – Maja Metlicar

‘Coming Home’ can mean many things, it takes place within us on many levels, and we need to ‘come home’ for many reasons. The more we honour it, the more we recognise there is to honour.  

It’s physical in that our body, as part of nature, needs to shut down and reset and we need the safety of feeling at home to be able to do that. We need to do this often and cyclically, pausing within the day, each night, and seasonally in winter we need a big deep rest down.

Coming home might mean literally, coming back to the place and people where you ‘belong’.  It might mean coming in from the activity of life and settling down beside the fire and the heart(h) of the place you call home.   

It might mean picking up your guitar, pencils, dog lead, dancing shoes and taking some active rest in the kinds of things that bring you into peaceful focus, a sense of centred calm.  It might mean taking refuge in meditative practices that let you shed the roles and veils, set aside all those fractured parts and feel yourself as the same consciousness and with the same breath and heartbeat that runs through all life.  

Coming home is the all-important counterpart to ‘going out there’, ‘getting things done’, and ‘making it happen’.  Both are required for balance, wisdom and wellbeing. And yet . . . how much coming home do we really allow ourselves these days, and why not?

In this episode, I speak with Dr. Gail Brenner, a psychologist and non-dual teacher in California around her personal and professional experience of 'coming home'.  We speak about shifting our identity, micro-dosing to move through stuck emotions and the power of community. Gail is beautiful and gifted in holding safe and supportive spaces that help people to move, be still, and heal. You can read more about her at www.gailbrenner.com. 

The theme of ‘Honouring Our Past & Loving Our Parts’ in the Grow Free Community for November 2021 refers to a process of turning towards the parts of us that got exiled from our awareness during and following traumatic experiences and learning to relate to them with care and compassion.  It refers to tuning into the bodily memory of experiences that were too much for us and to letting the raw feelings (not sanitized or rationalized ones) be felt and expressed in safe ways.  It refers to holding space for all the personalities that got stuck at different developmental stages and opening up supportive dialogue between them.

In these ways, we can not only honour the past, but also digest it.  This is something that begins to happen organically the safer we begin to feel with the feelings of being unsafe.  We can then process them, take the learning and the value from the experiences and release the rest. 

I was delighted when, last month, a new member arrived in Grow Free who has focused a lot on getting to know the different parts or archetypes within his psyche, as he describes it.  So delighted, in fact, that I asked him to join me for the podcast.  We had a few technical issues as we were recording but ... 'Welcome Athol'.  You can find our conversation below.  I feel like we will hear more from Athol in the coming months.   

September’s Podcast is a conversation on Respect with three previous guests:
- Anneke Sips (Yoga Therapist, Trainer & Psychiatric Practitioner in Amsterdam, Founder of Network Yoga Therapy),
- Deborah Armstrong (Indigenous & Shamanic Therapist & Practitioner in North East Scotland) and
- Jon Cree (Forest School Association Director, Author & Activist bringing more trauma-informed outdoor education to young people).   

The conversation starts with the connection between safety and respect and moves into areas such as:
- the difference between conditions that allow for versus the rules that aim to produce respect;
- how nature and the potential consequences of not respecting it is a great teacher;
- whether we may benefit from a new label for this beautiful experience and
- the role of presence and boundaries in supporting respect. 

It is a beautiful conversation that took me further into surrendering into deeper respect.   I am touched in a profound and uncomfortable way when I speak with people who are open to experience in ways beyond where I have been able to. It still draws a sense of grief for me as I continue to digest and process what closed me down, and yet offers me such insight and direction for where and how to take myself forward in new ways.

Season 2 Episode 4 - Rest & Digest with Sarah Ryan

August’s Podcast is a conversation with the super experienced Yoga Teacher Trainer & Therapist & Vedic Chant Teacher Sarah Ryan.  We re-connected earlier this year and it has been lovely to do so from a clearer head and heart space.  Sarah gave me such loving and supportive guidance some years back but at a time when my habits and triggers still saw me withdraw or push away the love I really wanted and needed and instead seek out survival in empty rabbit holes. Sarah was the first person I heard speak about the need to digest all of our experience, not just our food and I am so pleased to have been able to have this conversation with her on this theme now.  As always, it’s well worth a listen.   

You can work with Sarah in various ways, including via online chanting teaching, one-to-one therapy. Read more on her website below. 

 http://sarahryanyoga.co.uk/