Soliel thank you for being a guest on the Heart of Connection podcast. It’s lovely to reconnect and have a conversation with you and your wonderful practice Empowered2Happiness.

How’s life in Queensland?

Life in Queensland is awesome. I love it up here. I just love I just love the weather and the weather makes me happy. I just love the fact that I’m two blocks from the beach and I can walk along the water with my feet in the sand or in the water. Watch the pelicans go past. And yeah just I get the sun I’m solar powered so the sun just makes you happy.

How long have you been up there now?

[00:00:51] Well, I’ve been making pilgrimages back to Queensland. So basically I’ve been here it started in the 1980s being in Queensland and then I’ve sort of been around Australia to different places and been back for around about three years back into the heat and as I said I just don’t do well in the cold weather it just makes it hard for me to care for myself as much as it is. I can do it up here I suppose. You know it’s easier to be more self-nurturing when I can get outside into nature I suppose.

[00:01:27] Is there a connection to that warmth?

[0:01:32] Yeah well as I said I’m solar powered so if I don’t get the sun on me at least know sometime during the day I usually feel like my batteries are a little flatter and if it’s a dull day then it’s not as harmonious for me as having the sun. So it really does connect me to myself I guess I really feel a connection to the sun as my name means Sun in French. So there’s a bit of a connection there definitely.

 [00:02:05] How does it work on your connection to yourself.  How do you experience the warmth?  What does it do to your connection and self-care?

[00:02:18] I think for me you know it is the sun but it’s also nature. So if I need to connect with myself I am most connected if I down the beach and by the ocean. So going down and just walking in the water like I said or walking in the sand sometimes I just sit on a rock and meditate and just listen to the water or do som

Tammy introduced herself to listeners a mother of two boys.  If you asked who are you she laughed and said that that would be a whole Podcast in itself (LOL).  Really interested in all things spiritual and have been on the spiritual journey for past 10 years.  Interesting inward journey.  What started it, what was the turning point, something you read, the turning point to hit the spiritual pathway?

Honestly, we had an Influx of money gave me an opportunity as a new mum to spread my wings really interested in health did short courses allowed myself to follow what I was really interested in and it led to a group of people which led me to do Reiki and led me onto further areas of interest.

What it’s like to keep following it?  When your following it and you know that it makes your heart sing and you’re just signing along makes you happy makes you feel good.

Do you have a process, do you have techniques or strategies – how do you make your heart sing? What enables you to have your heart sing?  Focus it different things all the time not just one thing. Feeling good and focusing on doing things make you feel good.  Can’t do that all the time, focusing on feeling good.  Go to do the dishwashing and try to find the benefits in it.  Feel good once the dishes are done when they are completed.  Finding the moments in the mundane times I suppose is a way to stay feeling good.  Some days forget the feel good and the mindset of the trenches. Then the sunshine might break out there is that reminder and to bring me back to the feel-good space.

When In the trenches what happens to your heart?  I think you’ve forgotten about it I don’t it ever closes or goes away become less aware of it and everything else takes over a bit of wave goes overhead and forget to breathe and feel like being underwater.

If I was to ask the Heart what is it like to be forgotten about?  It gets a bit sad.

How do we take contentment of doing the dishes – how do we carry the contentful bliss in doing the mundane?

Hard when you feel you’ve found your purpose and you want to do that and you then feel driven. In this the mundane can be frustrating – for mums who stay at home there is the constant tug of doing something because you need to do it – your purpose.  But there something as mothers you need to be doing but if you are following your passion you find the washing piles up, the dishes, floors need washing, the dogs got to be walked and constant pull between the two and constant balancing act.

When you’re in the passion sounds like the passion is flowing?  I guess time stands still in a state of just being in the moment – yeah just being in the moment.  Not really thinking, out of the ego, out of your mind and probably are sitting in your heart and just feeling good.

Can you describe it, hard to put words to this construct that is not easy to put words to because it’s a feeling and words can’t describe it?  Words can’t describe it, know you are there as the whole body feels it, for me, I get tingles throughout my body when I am there and a lightness I feel.

Is there a freedom in that lightness?  Is the energy moving slowly, is it moving rapidly is it energy flowing – how would you describe the energy of it?  Suppose it depends what you are doing.  In meditation, it can slow down but at the same time can be moving and if I am in there long enough the body can feel like it disappears.

My body and can

My life has been a really interesting one, I grew up overseas in Egypt and Saudi Arabia and from this experience I came to understand about the connection to people.  We had the wonderful opportunity from our Father who took us all around the world to live with other communities.  In the middle of an Oasis our car broke down 7 years old and my Father went to the village and asked could we have water and welcomed to the village – never seen white people, sitting there with all those children and  – just knowing what human connection is – not knowing someone but giving ourselves to them.  Our parents played a huge role in that.

This has planted the seed, how has it grown and how have you developed it?  From there came back to Australia and how blessed to experience these cultures and to connect with these people.  These moments that developed over the years and I want to work with people one day, help people.  At school, I felt this disconnection at school and didn’t fit in.  I had I seen and experienced things in ways that were so different.  I felt it wasn’t teaching from the heart but teaching us from the mind.  They were not teaching from a heart level and sometimes if a teacher doesn’t understand the heart connection of child then there is so much learning that can be missed.

Working with children as children and women’s counsellor in my private practice called Ignite your Light.  Work within schools in Melbourne and Geelong and have my own practice on my property Ignite your Light Counselling – quite a young age knew I wanted to help children develop that real connection to self and each other and I love it.

In this journey how have you learned to connect with yourself?  From a young age, I felt connected to self.  It was due to Mum (Scottish) being very religious and do believe in Jesus but as a teenager, I didn’t want to have a particular religion. My Father was an Egyptian and he taught us about the Muslim religion, I studied theology. I found Buddhism, although not a Buddhist it gave me a connection to self.   Learning about Buddhas and his connection to others but finding himself.  I learned so much through Buddhism, however, I felt I already had it-it was almost like a little reminder.

Have you been here before from a past life?  Absolutely, as a young child, it might sound weird but I felt I was an animal before.  From a rabbit to a snake. I’ve been in medieval times there were certain smells that would trigger that felt sense.  I did feel that way and been here quite a few times before and some people you can talk to about it and other you can’t.

Where in your body in you feel that connection to self? For me, the connection has always in the heart. When I meet someone I open my heart first and it opens my mind.  I am accepting of every person and from the heart. I feel their energy from the heart and I can like someone instantly takes a lot to not to like someone – that connection is pure energy.

How vast is that openness of your heart?  It limitless it doesn’t have to be someone I know it can be a connection with the perfect stranger.  Even on the street or in the hall in a school I can’t imagine not acknowledging them with my eyes.  Just a hi or hello.  People are rushed I cannot resonate with that – it is a tiny little moment to connect someone that can make that day– so not aware in each moment it’s so special.

What happens to you in those moments?  An exchange of energy I suppose, which depends on the other person’s energy as well.  I worked in palliative care.  I am talking about as a pivotal moment of co

Great to connect by the magic of the Web.  Andrew introduced himself and his working life in Social Work and Counselling (Southern Beaches Counselling) are his passion for working in communities for past 20 years.  Andrew and I trained together with our ATEP (Association of Transpersonal Experiential Psychotherapies).  He is a passionate gardener and Dad with a beautiful 4-year-old son.  Live in an ideal location in Tasmania moved there 2 years ago.  Tasmania is home to Andrew having grown up being born and bred.  He moved to Melbourne to study and work, a lot of Tasmanians in doing the course of their lives.

The landscape and community kept calling me back home.  Could you describe the calling as a connection?  Absolutely, there is something about the mountains way the light falls, the shape of the landscape feels like home.  Like a coming home? Yep.

In your body all of the above, definitely heart connection, it’s definitely cellular something that infuses my being and mental and psychological too and emotional.  It’s a land of opposite great light and great darkness here too and the land holds that energy.

Does it facilitate a connection to yourself?  It’s a good question, certainly feel a sense of belonging, a  groundedness, a sense of authenticity, feeling more authentic in myself its landscape, it’s the people, it’s the climate, it’s the way I live here. Brings forth all those connections.

What does the connection to self, mean to you?  I don’t really think about self particularly anymore not a concept that I am relating to very strongly.  Do I have a self? Perhaps. Do I have an ego? Perhaps and at the same time, they don’t really exist they are labels because useful as they point to certain things.  Not really.

What happens at a heart level for you?  Where does that take you, where does it resonate with you?  At heart level, there is a sense of peace and simplicity.  Is there the opposite to that in the heart as well?  Not really, no.  If still talking about connection to place – it’s at a deep level living simply and experiencing life as it, just a clear peaceful simplicity.

From place to person more to you?  What happens, where does the heart of connection fit into the person into you?  How often coming into your Self/person, the heart representation of an emotion, a person’s love, vulnerability at heart level maybe. How do you connect to all of that manifestation?  All those things are there, fear, vulnerability anger, all the emotions.  I guess tends to take me away from that would be overwork, over-analyzing, over-thinking and what brings me back into that connection are the simple things in life.  Bushing walking, getting into nature, chopping firewood in the morning, lighting fire, maybe cooking a meal from scratch getting all ingredients – Just the act of living life in a wholesome way.

In a wholesome way seems to lessen the busyness? It does.  The Podcast conversations are showing how busyness takes us away from the heart of connection.  Absolutely, busyness, stress, those sought of things, seeking recognition striving for something outside of myself I find it takes me away from the heart of connection. It is a challenge as we live in a capitalist society and have to pay bills.

Wonderful to introduce Vicki Newman, from Mackay, a mother of 4 children and work in my own clinic, Connectology Natural Health Center and enjoy life as much as I can.  In North Queensland about days drive from Brisbane and a day’s drive to Cairns.  A lovely temperature at 24, beautiful weather.  We poor Victorians miss out on it – LOL.  Cold down here but we get through it.

What does Heart of Connection mean to you?  Remaining open which can be difficult when we get triggered and there is pain and want to close over and disconnect.  Understand openness which is different to vulnerability – give choice when I am contracting back from someone and have a reaction to something.  Giving myself space and time to look into it.

How do you look into it?  I suppose giving self-space and time and space and still nothing else to listen to my own chatter.  Understanding what hurt or pain might be buried there could be fear it could be guilt and lots of different things that can close me off.  And loving myself and It’s okay doing that as a person.

In the understanding is that a healing thing? – Sometimes it’s a recognition, it is a past pain and do I really need to react from it now.  Sometimes it is a recognition of a dilemma or difficulty and mindfully navigate it.  Because I’m not out of it yet.  It is healing in a way it takes pressure off my body to carry trauma to carry tension.

Are you connecting to it – the pain the wound?  To the pain?  Yeah, usually in my body the body I think the body never lies it carries what it carries.  It keeps score that our brain and thinking can’t – sometimes going down into the body emotion of something – often it will show up as a pain or discomfort in my body.  Do like working with body-oriented psychotherapies

Do you go past it?- it does it change – Yes, I think it is the connection to it – just being connected to it allows it to change the connection at the beginning.  I think it is the connection to it that allows it to change.

Is the connection like a nourishment a loving kindness?  It is all those things. A gentle holding in a loving way.  Is that giving it what it needed back then?  Sometimes not, sometimes that comes later. Sometimes there’s an acknowledgment that I need to enact something in my life and that helps heals it further.  Allowing it to evolve, to find the need and then to start living and giving myself f permission to understand what that is and give it to myself, look for it out in the world, live it out in the world.

More happiness, I can feel more connected to other people, contentment, I feel like a broader base to live life from.  From a body perspective where might that be in your body?  I suppose that Is from a Soul level that one – I just have a broader capacity that helps me live better, feels good, and it feels comfortable.  Don’t have to run so hard against life.

How do you anchor into it?  How do you come back to it so to speak?  Knowing when I have to do my own personal work is a good one.  (LOL)!!!  Know when I’m hiding my own shit away – let’s avoid, get busy, don’t think, don’t talk about it. Let the monkey mind rattle the cage. All good signposts, (Both LOL).

Sometimes there is a closing it’s like life closes in on me a good sign and I pretend it’s not a real problem.  It’s like life will roadblock me basically.

Are you disconnected from Soul?  I think it more than I’m needing to be more aware and to slow myself down into that awareness of inside

Is a counsellor and I was lucky enough to be a student with Mark (me).  Started my private practice Soul Pristine Counselling after I finished my degree 2 half years ago and it is going really well.  Amazing working and I love it.

Helping people see people grow and change and get to know themselves and connecting to themselves is powerful.  So it is the learning to explore all feelings of the heart from love to our hurts.

Sitting with people in the tough times is a privilege.  It can be triggering something in you as well.  Yes, it can be and that is reality and that other peoples stories can trigger us.  Sometimes its positive thing as when we do we truly relate to someone at that level – it is pure empathy and love of their journey.

Where does the pure empathy come from in the body?  In the heart.  How much of mental illness is derived from heart stuff?  Probably a lot more than we know and realise.

Children want to be approved of and validated.  What happens to children when they don’t get what they need? What impact does this trauma have on the neural wiring and self-development?

How do you connect to yourself at a heart level?  That probably a tough question to put into words.  Sometimes need to recognise what’s in your heart and what impact that is having on you whether it is positive or negative.  Both of them are in there!  I wonder does the negative serve as a block in your heart?  Yes it does block. It makes things really difficult and probably when you are in that space that it can also harder to sit with other people who are in that space as well.

Having moments where I am recognising it what am I going to do about this rather than just hide it or avoid it.  What is the cost? Pushing things aside they don’t stay pushed aside, they need attention and healing.  When they come back they are less painful.  Can come back – dealt with less painful – is there a thread?  I think, recognising what has been really hurtful and important to take time to explore the pain and learn from it.  To learn from it and heal from it?

We can victimise it.  We can have a victim moment, recognise we are and then move on.

In the healing what is the result of the healing at a heart level?  I say to clients that the hardest things we go through in our lives teaches us the biggest lessons.  Certain things have happened in my life.  The healing is most probably ‘acceptance’ of what sits right there.  At what level of acceptance?  Is it an intellectual, emotional, mental, or spiritual acceptance – I like to think of acceptance at all those levels?

What do you experience inside yourself, your sense of being?  I get a more of a sense of peace about everything.  I am feeling now. It’s a nice place.  You know, I could see you just accessed the peace then?  Yes, how often do you remind yourself to access this place?  I want to be there more often.

What do you put in place in life in each day to remind yourself?  Is it always there? I have the thought process to sit with it, I know that sound silly to think about a feeling something.  Mindfulness is obviously amazing.

Being a Podcast guest is new to me.  I have a crystal and new age business.  In my journey to receive this business is interesting didn’t think I’d be going down this path.  Feel a blessed having the business great to be own boss lots of challenges and the business that isn’t easy for me.  I am a very giving person and had to learn to have boundaries and be discerning how to treat people.  To be a boss was not easy to oppose my nature. This is my third shop and had 2 other crystal shops and love that I have chosen it.  Not sure if I will always have a shop I have chosen for now and love it.

Does the business affect your connection to Self?  It can be exhausting… Sometimes I feel I lose my own personal growth time and it is sometimes not being balanced and I am also a single mother of 3 children.

A lot of people rely on me for counsel and I feel a lot of people and hear a lot of stories but I cannot take it home with me.  It’s like having a split personality – leave work at work and then home to be a mother.

How do you become aware and what is your process to check back in –

We all have different belief systems and I work with spirit and talk to them every day.  I try to look after my energy and do a lot of clearing work on myself.  I release and have a cry.  I know I might need to go away so I will go to Apollo Bay get back to nature.  I have a profound experience and connects me back to myself and to Mother Earth know I am here for her.  My big issue is I don’t sleep well as I have constant dreams and wake up for a clearing of the field. This clears my aura that stopping me from feeling peaceful. It’s like relief and I finally go, you needed to do that, don’t take on whatever is around you and put yourself first.

I never stop, I rush and rush during the day and at night time when I stop and slow down.  Can’t sleep again, got to get up, and now okay to get up, I love that.  They say between 2 & 4 am in morning most amazing time to do meditation – there is a great energy and it seems I just get woken up – so it benefits me and sometimes I have amazing experiences at that time and feel so much peace.

What happens to your mind in the head level with the clearing?  It actually focuses – more than calms, it’s more about me feeling stronger and focusing and going it’s okay.  I have a different – mindset when I get back into bed.  I usually breathe and yawning a lot out of my system and the body is releasing and is calming down and it gives me gratitude just breathing out what needs to be released.  It’s ready to rest again then and into a deep sleep afterward. I will again wake up a couple of hours after and feel different.

During the day do you remind yourself to reconnect?  I get pulled in all directions because there are so many people around and want to talk to me.

Gidget is originally from Tasmania and proud of it. It is a beautiful place.  I have been here since I was 25 years old.  Worked at Ford for a while.  Started teaching swimming and had my two children.  When my youngest went to school I went to back teaching as a swim teacher.  Teach a lot of young kids 6mths to 5 years.  I can do school age or adult but choose to focus on the younger children.

I am in my soul element teaching swimming to young children.  I need to have a lot of patience for teaching young children as everyone is different.  You can jump from kids who are confident to those who are not so confident. There are also kids who are scared.  From my experience, I can now judge their experiences or ability within the first 20 seconds of seeing them.

I find it very rewarding and the biggest reward is to have the scared little ones and building and gain their trust.  When they can’t do something and when they thought they couldn’t do it and then over time they can!  That what makes me happy as a swim teacher.

Is the connection to these young children in a felt sense?  I think I usually no matter what the age – I give them space allow them to feel comfortable without me approaching their personal space. I have found it grows from there.  Really enjoy the reward it is amazing.

The reward of them putting their faces under the water and being so proud of themselves.  That is them doing it when they are comfortable doing it.  Safety is prime in swimming.  We go to the deep pool and some fear it.  But after 3 weeks they ask to go over and want to go over.  Important to give them the life skills around a swimming pool.

Gidget, I could see the joy of your connection in your eyes and there is such passion there as you describe the teaching.

The concept of the Podcast – I think just getting in touch with what makes you happy.  Happiness if you doing what you love.  It makes your heart happy and it radiates from the inside out.  To be able to have room to do that and be comfortable enough.  I believe we are pushed down and not enabled to grow.  It is in the growth where you find yourself.  It makes your soul sing and your heart sing – it takes the time to do that.

I don’t make the time as I would like to and I don’t want to say I shouldn’t.  I had a property on 2 acres out of town and it was a big 30 square house and I found it hard to find the time.  In the last 12 months thinking of myself, what I would like and what makes me happy.  I use to find time for myself and my heart has been hidden for a while.

Scary to start off with.  To come out – you hide for a reason and you stay hidden f

Been reflecting a lot over the past 19 months mainly about my own personality and my own journey in my life with different problems and with things that arise over time.  Whilst I was working I could suppress my problems a lot more easily.

What I have found that to keep suppressing problems deep within for so long and they attack you later on and hurt more.  Things come up later and remind you of the things that didn’t work out and hold it can hold you back.

Reflected on a lot of situations like my bulimia an eating disorder and repercussions of that and issues with my own father.  Having more time to reflect now due to not working from an injury.  I was doing a lot of meditation now – I let it come up – writing it out in a letter letting it out and then burn the letter.  It’s a process of release.

As it has been coming up do you notice in your heart?  At an early age, parents divorced and it was violent and seeing that as a young child that was frightening.  I also went through a bitter divorce and having my children go through that as well was painful.  Reflecting on those situations I bring them up in meditation and using the ‘cord-cutting’  technique to release my pain – letting it go, letting go of anger, the bitterness, letting go of negative feelings.

When did you let go, what comes available?  Feeling at peace in myself.  Where do you feel that peace in your body?  Probably peace of heart and also mentally as well and just being happy within myself and my personality and my own being – releasing all the twisted angered bolts that I held onto for so long.

As you’ve done the clearing – it’s opening up – Is there a connection to yourself?  What’s that connection to yourself like?  Growing up and as a teenager, we could not express ourselves as we liked.  I guess society has us in a box and likes to have us all situated in them.  I didn’t feel like I was in any of those boxes.  I wanted to be my own person – the meditation has allowed me to be comfortable in my own skin own and in my heart now and free and lot mentally stronger too.

When you spend time in your heart what do you notice?  Do you meet it or does it meet you?  Tricky one.   Is there a space of love there?  Yes, there is love.  For myself I learned I need to love myself first then I can connect with others.  How do you anchor in that love?

Are you reaching the deeper essence of yourself and the meditation helps me understand more about myself and mentally know me and as such, I feel lighter?  I have more compassion and kindness for them.  There was the business in every aspect.  The mundane chores time against me – didn’t have time for myself and how could I have time for others.  Business stopped the connection to other people.

Connection to other is an important aspect.  Definitely this.  I am part of a group now, an animal group where we show compassion for animals.  I am a  lot more aware of what goes on.  Having my heart open now, I am more aware.  I think people believe we are more superior to animals and we think we have a right to exploit them.  And do as we will.  Their lives are just as important as ours.  Same as our planet – we are all interconnected.  Doesn’t matter if we are non-sentient being or not, we all are important.

I feel more accepted as a person – feel like a family unit.   Feel like I have come home.  Come home to me in the group and happier in me, my heart and soul.

Energetic connection to animals is right across the board.  After tea, we pat the cat and the love it and connect with it.  They stay present to us as we give them love.  We use our hands expressing love in any way – feel it coming back from any anim

From a little country in Europe called the Netherlands where I spent the first half of my life. After I studied psychology I wanted to travel before working so I backpacked and came to outback Australia.  Drawn to the outback and the desert.  It was the spiritual sense of the desert and how the people have lived there for 1000 of years and how they were connected to nature and life.  Couldn’t resettle in the Netherlands, felt like didn’t fit in there anymore.

Came back to Australia and now lived here for last 18 years here. I have settled in the Otways surrounded by trees, nature, birds, kangaroos, life, eagles.  I love the peacefulness and the stillness of it.

I find in nature almost something similar to what others might find in church.  I grew up in a very religious family and was very religious myself for many years.  As I came back to Australia started to experience its the limitation and the beliefs of exclusive and excluding of anything that’s different.

I’ve always had a big pull to spirituality and being aware of a different dimension than what meets the eye.   I find that I can connect with that most when I am in nature.  If I look at a tree I can see the stillness in the tree, the presence of the tree and the life of that.  It connects to something deep within me.

The stillness resonates with me absolutely.  I’ve had different experiences and some people might judge them, however, I remember walking with my dogs and I was quite sad and looking at the trees I could hear them without hearing them – the voice from the trees or inside me, ‘the voice’ was saying just be – I stood there and looked and listened and felt incredible presence of life around me. It was so soothing.  Does it flow through my body?  For the first half of my life lived in my head. Over the year through my reading and some courses about working more with the body and I can now experience more of life through the body.

More and more, yes I can experience it through my body.  To be very present and connected to myself and all of life around me is being aware of my body.  Really focusing on the spirit in my body.  Coming into my body, I start with my hands, like body focus meditations look at breath – e.g., they start with the breath. I’ve never really connected to that. For me, it’s my hand which is my door in – door to my aliveness, (the energy) awareness of life all around me.  The border of my body does not exist so much anymore.

Then becomes more focused on the heart, the heart of everything.  There was an observed experience of aliveness in you and looked it reached a peak or enriched.  Enriched is a good word – I expected you to ask what Heart of Connection means and I was going to speak about what it doesn’t mean for me a