Melis With Intent

It is my absolute pleasure to introduce Emma Campbell of Find Your Spark. Emma is a connected, eloquent, deep feeling and thinking coach, helping organisations and individuals find their purpose and ultimately live a more intentional and fulfilled life. Emma is very generous during our conversation, and shares many tips to help you reconnect with your true purpose. I hope you enjoy our conversation and thank you for listening.

Can’t get enough of Emma?  Visit Emma Campbell or join Emma’s FREE Purpose Party  3 day training series where she will activate your unique gifts and magic, awaken your dream life vision and connect to your highest self!”

Good morning Emma and welcome to the With Intent podcast. Thank you for being here.

Hello. How are you? I’m so so, so excited to be here.

And we’re excited to have you. I figured we’d better commence our podcast recording because all the good stuff will be missed if we kept talking prior to this recording.

Oh my gosh. I know. I know.

So Emma and I had not known each other before embarking on this podcast discussion, but we’ve had a really good time getting to know each other with a couple of conversations before this interview. Emma is quite remarkable and inspiring. She has two children, has just built a house, is building a business – a Find Your Spark business. And we have a lot in common. I hope you enjoy this interview where Emma shares her knowledge and provides a lot of tips about how to find your spark. As a mother, it is something that I’m  really focused on with my children, because I have read a lot about it and if we can help our children find their spark, life will flow really beautifully for them. And so Emma, that leads me to asking you if you’d share a little bit about your background and how you found your spark and  the inspiration for pursuing,  a career path in coaching others.

100%, I would love to. Thank you so much for that beautiful introduction. So where to start, where to start? That’s always the question and it’s actually such an interesting one because it’s one of those journeys that I love to go on with my clients, is helping them understand their own stories and their own story of their life. And that part of the journey of finding your spark and finding your purpose and your truth and what you’re here for often involves looking backwards, like looking backwards into your life, into what some of those big challenges have been for you in your life, those big struggles. And so often it’s some of the hardest periods in our life that actually become the greatest opportunities for growth and more often than not, I actually find that it’s those moments that are the biggest challenges in a lot of people’s lives that actually forms part of their inner why their inner purpose.

So I guess to share a little bit about my story and my journey to finding my purpose is, I had a pretty hard time with anxiety particularly when I was back in the corporate world, was when I first started getting some real challenging experiences with feelings of overwhelm, feelings of fear, just sometimes not feeling in my body and having a real intense feeling of self-consciousness, I guess is the keyword there. And I remember quite clearly sitting in one of my swivel office chairs right next to the window in a workplace that now that I can look back on it with eyes of perspective, was definitely not the place that I was meant to be. It was a real corporate environment. It was filled with quiet masculine energy, like really productivity, efficiency, KPIs, achievement, like profit, profit, profit, looking at the numbers, spreadsheets.

And absolutely nothing wrong with that sort of environment, but it wasn’t where I was meant to be. It wasn’t what I guess my energetic code is made for, because I’m a bit of a sensitive empathic kind of big love and big emotion type. So when I was in this workplace, I just remember looking out the window, getting instructions from my boss on what I needed to do and just sitting there feeling like there has be more than this. This is not what I’m here for. I know that I can do more. I know that I have more to give and I just don’t know how to get there. I don’t know how to get from where I am right now to where I want to be. And I didn’t even really know exactly what that next place was. But I did know that something just didn’t feel right for me. And everything in my body was telling me that this wasn’t the place to me by sending me all these messages of anxiety and feelings of fear.

And so I guess not realising it, but in that moment, I started my journey of self-discovery, of going on the self-development journey of reading all the books-

You became a self development junkie? 

Reading self development books facilitated Emma’s finding of her own purpose

Yeah. 100%, 100% self-development junkie, 100%. I remember Brené Brown was probably one of my first books, The Power of Vulnerability. And bit by bit, I think I went on this journey of trying to heal myself or trying to figure out what was the cause of my anxiety, because for anyone that’s suffered from anxiety, it is so debilitating. It separates you from presence. It separates you from life. And it’s a place that I really hope that no one has to be for too long a time. So a lot of my clients come to me with feelings of anxiety and it’s one of my greatest passions to be able to help them move through that because I know how horrible it can be. And I still get little moments of it even today, but my ability to bring it back and to come back to presence and the pools and the practices that I’ve learned along the way, allow me to come back to a feeling of being in my body and being present and being my true authentic self a lot faster.

So did you get to the bottom of the why? 

Yeah. Yeah. So I think I’m pretty close. So I would say probably the last four to five years has been a journey of discovering that why. And it’s funny that you asked that question because there’s a guy that I follow, which is called Joe Dispenza. I’m not sure if you’ve heard of him before, but an incredible meditation teacher and thought leader and has done quite a few books about breaking the habit of being yourself and becoming supernatural. So he said something that really stuck with me the other day. And he said, “When you feel fear, you’re not only… Fear is not the opposite of love, fear is a disconnection from love. Fear is a disconnection from love.” And that we are all love really at the heart of it, right? We are loved as human beings and we have so much love to give, and we’re all connected as human beings on this planet, and that in those moments of fear and anxiety, that what we’ve done is we’ve disconnected from loving ourselves.

And so I think my whole journey, and I think a lot of human beings’ journeys on this planet, is coming back to ourselves, right? It’s coming back to loving ourselves and also being able to love others and share that love with others. And so that… Sorry, that journey has been a process of discovering myself. And I guess coming back to re-loving and reaccepting who I actually am, because I think there was quite a big part of me that had disconnected from my true self. And that felt like she had to be someone else in the world in order to be accepted 100%, the conditioned self that society rewards and recognises, that often helps us get ahead and helps us be seen particularly in a corporate environment. There’s that certain part of you that when you’re achieving, when you’re succeeding, when you’re being really productive and hitting all the goals and coming back to the office and celebrating the 12-hour workday that you’re actually quite disconnected from your truth and  just fulfilling society’s expectation.

Well, in my experience, we can develop our self esteem and sense of wellbeing from achieving all these things external to our true nature. That’s why Melissa was born actually, because it was that moment of truth for me and I really want to share how I came back to myself. And it sounds like that’s how your business was born as well.

100%. 100%. And it’s funny how the things that we heal within ourselves and that being the greatest gifts that we can give to other people as well.

Right. Hence Find your Spark? 

Find your spark. So in the moment that I was able to start to awaken that spark within me and see the impact that it had on me. And part of that has been about coming back to my true self and really identifying with who is Emma? Who is this actual Emma? Because I think that can be one of the hardest parts in the whole journey is, we’ve spent so much of our life living this conditioned self that society loves, that our parents probably loves, that our teachers loved when we were growing up at school, that the workplace loves, that we’re really, really good at growing that conditioned self. But coming back to the good old question of, if that’s not me, if that conditioned self is not me, then who the hell am I? Who’s this person underneath all those layers? And I don’t know, I don’t know, but I feel like that’s the journey of life. It’s like that’s actually the purpose of life is to unwind those layers and to understand who that true self, who that authentic self is underneath all of that.

And in one of our previous discussions, you talked about your own childhood growing up in Wickham. And did you look back to your childlike self or clues on who the true Emma is?

What a great question. And I think unconsciously, yes, 100%. So I grew up in a tiny little country town called Wickham. And so just to give you a little bit of a visual snapshot, you can think spin effects for days, lots of red dirt, lots of rocks, kangaroos, and what I refer to as stink bombs. I don’t know if you’ve heard of those before, but when we were kids, we used to pick them out of the ground and you can throw them in any way. They explode with this kind of red dirt dust. Anyway, tiny tiny little country town. And I grew up like a real tomboy because I’m like into all sports. And my brothers were a really, really big influence in my life. So I grew up with two older brothers who are 10 years older than me.

Emma as a little girl growing up in the country

And I spent most of my childhood walking around in the bush with no shoes on. Much to my mother’s dismay, I think she really wanted me to be a girly girl, and I just wanted to walk around in the bush getting dirty. And that is me in my most natural state, in nature, it’s getting out into the earth, out into the world and having fun and connecting with people and laughing and being silly and being playful. And probably also asking some of the big questions. Because I think ever since I can ever remember, I was always asking my dad, “Dad, why are we here? Who is God? What does God mean? And who invented God?” Some of those questions. So yes, 100%, it’s a coming back to who we were before the world told us who we should be, right?

Yeah. And when we were most connected to our true state, which sounds like for you when you’re in nature in the Outback.

Yes.

How beautiful?

100%. Aw, thank you.

You did mention also that you had this knowing around… Which you might’ve forgotten. And when your brothers would go off to boarding school and come back and you noticed a shift in their energy and their emotions. Can you share a little bit about that because I think that was quite poignant for you in this journey to developing and doing what you’re doing now.

Emma with her older brothers

Yeah, definitely. So it’s a really interesting one because I think like a lot of kids who have older siblings, you look up to your older siblings as your absolute heroes in life, right? Like these guys could do no wrong. These guys are just so amazing. And my brothers being 10 years older than me, they were not only my heroes, but they were like these wise enlightened, experienced, knowledgeable, strong people in my life. And we just had the best time growing up together as children until I guess that age arose that they needed to go to high school. And because we were living in Wickham the decision that my parents made was to send them to boarding school in Perth. And my family actually moved over from Africa when the boys were quite young. So they’re from South Africa and my dad’s from Zimbabwe. So they’d been through quite a lot of big changes there. I was the only Aussie born out of our family and they were going through another pretty big, significant change in their life going off to boarding school.

And what I started to notice was, and this was maybe as I was getting a bit older as well and starting to develop some self-awareness of my own. I guess some hard times were being had by the boys. They’d moved from Africa to Wickham and then into what we call the big sticks of Perth, like City Perth. And I think all of the adjustments and the struggles and the difficulties amounted to them having a pretty hard time mentally. And I remember as a kid noticing that something had changed or shifted and that they were having a pretty hard time. And I think as a pretty empathetic, quite emotional and sensitive kid, I’d really, really picked up on how they were going.

And I could really feel myself, even as a kid, really struggling to see them having a hard time and feeling really powerless in my ability to help them. I think it was in that moment, in those moments, because it’s been a bit of an ongoing journey. It was in those moments that I made it my personal mission, my personal purpose to not only heal me and heal my own journey with anxiety, but I really, really, really, really wanted to find a solution to their pain, for their struggles, for their depression. And not only them, but everyone in the world struggles with depression and anxiety. It’s not the way that we’re meant to be. We’re not supposed to feel these horrible feelings of loss and despair and disconnection. And I think my whole body just really wanted to find a solution and I didn’t know what that was. And there was a long time that I didn’t know what that was. And I remember feeling so powerless and frustrated, it really broke my heart to not be able to know how to take people’s pain away.

Wow. And you actually remember that and recall that feeling?

In an emotional way, 100%, I think now I’ve been able to put words behind it in a much more… I don’t waive. That makes sense. And I kind of fast-forward the journey to being able to move away from that corporate role that I was telling you about before and getting this incredible opportunity to join it. An old female-led, just absolutely incredible, super empowered startup that was focused on helping companies become more purposeful and more purpose-driven and help their employees find fulfilment through purpose. And my role in that company was to research all of the different ways that we could help companies find their purpose, that employees could connect with the purpose behind the mission of the business and in my research, in everything to do with the impact that purpose can have on people.

Emma with her husband, 2 children and dog

I remember really clearly this moment of hearing about what impact purpose has on people that like a little spark was lit within me. Like I had a real light bulb. Like those beautiful light bulb moments that send tingles all down your spine. Like you can actually feel your body start to come alive when you get these little hits. In that moment, I just had this knowing that this was going to be something that was going to change people’s lives, if not the world. It’s the ability to connect. And when I say purpose, because I think it can be a word that’s heard a lot or used a lot. And I just want to add some meaning and clarity behind that.

Purpose for me is about connecting to something bigger than you. It’s about connecting to something that makes your heart come alive. It’s about connecting to a cause in the world that allows you to contribute. It’s like something that you care so deeply about, that it takes you away from your own pain and your own struggles, and it helps you connect with something else in the world. So in a way, purpose is something that brings you back to love and to connecting to others. And contribution it’s about finding your thing, finding your course. It’s about finding your mission. And the more that I started to read about purpose, that beautiful opportunity to be able to give back to the world, I thought, all right, this is what’s missing in so many organisations. So many organisations and just life in general is not structured in a way to help employees feel connected to why they’re there, why their job exists and what bigger impact they’re having through their work.

So many employees out there are feeling a real sense of wanting more meaning in their roles, wanting more meaning in their lives, wanting that ability to give back, wanting that ability to really truly connect and not just from a place of like it looking good on paper, but actually feeling, really feeling like they’re actually making a difference. And it was in that moment that I knew that my purpose is going to be about helping other people find their purpose because I knew the impact that it had on me as well.

So that leads to a good segue into the next question is to how do you do that? Do you work mostly with organisations or mostly with individuals now?

Yeah, so real mix. So my work focuses on individuals who might say, be employees within an organisation. I also work with leaders of really purpose-driven organisations. So who have a purpose beyond just profit. And it’s funny just as a side note it, because I did a lot of research into these, this sort of stuff. The purpose driven organisations are actually more profitable than the profit-driven ones. So it’s also like a beautiful flow on effect.

Yeah. Because I would say, can you be purposeful and profitable at the same time? 

Definitely

Because I guess if we bring it back to an energy perspective, you can understand that too, that a lot of perception would be if you’re going to focus on cause related or social issues and whatnot, then it just detracts from your main core business. And so a lot of leaders would be probably a bit reluctant to go down that path. Have you found that?

Yeah. Look, 100%, 100%, because I think a whole heap of our conditioning and our upbringing, particularly in the corporate world is focused on success equals productivity and profitability. And so all of our systems are built in a way that rewards that and think… Oh gosh, I could go on about this in so many ways, but to keep it nice and short on that topic is, when leaders are able to, first of all, understand the impact of purpose first and the impact that that can actually have on profit, not only from an organisational standpoint, in terms of the impact that that can have on the organisation’s success, but also from a personal level. Like when I speak to leaders and I tend to partner more so with quite conscious and purposeful organisations, I’ve moved away from the corporate world because I think that’s where… They’re the organisations that I really love to help is the ones that have a mission to help the world because I just want to support those so that they can have that beautiful ripple effect to everyone else.

And when you know with all of your bones and all of yourself, that the work that you’re doing is having such a meaningful and positive impact on the people that you’re serving, the impact that that has on the leaders and the employees, the boost of motivation that those employees get, the level of meaning behind their roles of purpose of true fulfilment. You can’t get fulfilment, you can’t get that beautiful feeling of fulfilment just by ticking off your KPIs for the day. No matter how hard you work, no matter how many position, promotions that you get in a day or throughout a year or your lifetime, you’ll never get that feeling of fulfilment from working really hard or getting promotions. Fulfilment is an inside job. Fulfilment comes from giving back. It comes from connecting and actually seeing the impact that your work is having on others.

And being of service. Right?

100%. 100%.

So talk us through how you would do that with organisations and individuals … So we’re giving our listeners some tips on how they would find their purpose.

Yes, I would love to.

Emma training an organisation on how to find their spark

So I might start with the individual because that’ll probably be a little bit more fitting potentially for your audience. And this is a process that can apply to organisations as well is, so I’ve got this beautiful formula, it’s called the 4P formula to finding your spark. And those four Ps stand for purpose, passion, potential, and possibility. And so if you can imagine like a beautiful Venn diagram of those four Ps all crossing over, the point where your passions, so the things that you love and that just light you up, and that just really energise you and your purpose, the thing that drives you from the inside out that you were made for, that you’re here for in the world, and possibility, which is extending your mindset further to what you ever thought possible for you and challenging your current view of the world and potential, which is all about helping you step into your highest self, your highest potential, and really looking at what are those things that you’re naturally really, really good at, that make you feel confident, that make you feel like your most natural self and your most powerful self?

Because like just as a little side note there, I’m a real big advocate for playing to your strengths rather than trying to, I don’t know, combat all of your weaknesses, which would probably take us all life and not be a very fun journey. I’m just about playing to who you truly are, playing to your natural self and those things that are most natural to you and your natural intrinsic strength, that’s your magic, right?

A lot of people don’t know that, or they’ve become so disconnected that they can’t remember. When I was on the journey of re-discovering myself, someone said to me, “What did you love to do as a child?” When we’re relatively free from the external conditioning. And that’s powerful, that was powerful looking at what I loved to do as a child. 

What did you love to do?

Oh, me? Oh, I was out and about constantly on the farm and I was  like you out in nature. I was out with the animals and in nature relatively free. And then I would play Shops all the time – Laugh out loud – 

And look at what you’re doing now.

But then this thing I would do every night almost, would be to go into my mum’s bedroom and she had this beautiful dresser. And I would just sit and admire her perfumes… She had one of those really old-fashioned beautiful… I’m not even sure what you call them, a dresser and I had a little stool and I would sit on it and it had a marble top and it was quite ornate. It was quite beautiful. And I would sit and I would do this often and just sit and play with her perfumes.

Oh my gosh. I just got tingles.

Yeah, so that’s what I loved to do.

So that’s the thing, is that you ask anyone, you ask anyone, “What did you most love to do? What did your 10-year-old self use to lose yourself doing as a kid?” And so say, for example with me, I used to love playing Teachers. I was obsessed with creating little workbooks for my friends, bossing them around. I was a bossy little kid, that’s for sure. You asked my best friend at the time. I used to create little workbooks and I used to tell stories. And I used to write stories. So I was always a pretty creative little kid. And the reason that I share this is that the themes behind which the passions that you used to love as your 10-year-old self, that will still be the same in some way or form to who you are right now.

It’s like if you can find the theme behind what that is. So for me, teaching was about educating and empowering and helping. And now I’m a coach, which is exactly what I get to do now. And I was a bossy little kid because I love doing my own thing. And I hated people telling me what to do. And I’m now a business owner. And I can’t stand working for other people because I love to do my own thing. And the creative side of me gets to write blogs, gets to tell stories on podcasts. The passions and the parts of us that were us as children, it’s still part of us right now. And I guess that’s probably one of the first tips that I would give your listeners is, if they’re looking to reconnect with who they truly are, their truest, most magnificent, beautiful, powerful self, the self that just feels like them, is asking the question, what did you love to do as a kid? What did you lose yourself in as a child?

And not looking at it too literally, but looking for the things behind that. And even asking the question, so maybe the follow-up question there is, if that’s what you love to do, what is it about that that you loved so much? What were the parts of that that really made you come alive that got you excited? Or what were you curious about as a child? So when I take clients through these four Ps, so finding your passions, finding your purpose, finding your true possibility and finding your highest potential, the point that those four Ps meet is where we unlock your spark. So that’s where your spark starts to come alive. And it’s a really fun process to go through. I bloody love watching it from the outside with my clients.

I can imagine. How satisfying? And you just mentioned that you’re doing this in our schools. How does that feel?

I did. Oh my gosh. So it’s literally a dream come true. I can’t tell you how just grateful and appreciative I am to have this opportunity. And even if I can share a little story about how it came about, because I have had… I’ve just shared on my social media about getting to speak at this school. And I had a couple of people reach out and ask, “How did this speaking gig even come about?” And it’s a really funny and quite awesome and magical story. So I might just share that one really quickly.

I was in meditation having a nice old standard meditation, I thought, and then I got this little thought drop in and it said, “Call this school.” I won’t mention the school just in case privacy and all of that to the thing, but “Call the school, do it now.” And being in my meditation, my practice is, you don’t have to follow every thought that comes into your mind, just come back to the mantra. And I tried to come back to the meditation but the message was so strong.

And I tried to float that thought away, but it kept coming back. And because I didn’t listen to it as a thought, it then started to… my whole body started to get restless. I literally, I couldn’t stop moving my body and my body wouldn’t stop moving. And I was like, “Okay, all right. I will listen. I will listen.” So I got up, I stopped my meditation. I picked up the phone. I called this school. I had not planned to make this call in any way or form. And I just said, I basically just gave him a brief on who I was and what I love to do. And I said, “Look, I’ve got these really cool processes and systems and the 4P framework. And I’d love to be able to offer it to you guys in some way or form.” And the rest is history.

It just turned instantly into not only one speaking gig, but three speaking gigs, where I got to talk in this incredible private girls high school about finding their inner leader, connecting with their true purpose and connecting with a purposeful and passion-led career. And it is absolutely a dream come true because I know that so many of our school systems are not built… Not only our school systems, but our entire society is not built in a way to encourage you to connect with what actually drives you intrinsically, deep on the inside.

Like a lot of year 11 and year 12 students are encouraged to make decisions based on what their ATAR scores, most closely align with. If they got a really high, like 99.9 score, they’re like, “Oh, well, that means I should apply for law, right? Because that’s the best thing that I can get into for law.” So they’re making decisions based on what the numbers align with, rather than what do you love? What lights you up? What makes you come alive? What do you want to do in this world? What are the causes that you truly care about? How do you want to make an impact and contribute?

And we wonder why the rates of depression and anxiety and let’s say even suicide for our youth is so high.  I’m so happy to hear that you are going to the schools and-

Oh my gosh. Well, I hope to make an impact.

Yeah. Fantastic.

It’s funny on that. So many of my clients have been lawyers, lawyers who have hit that point in their career where they realised, they went through law school, they’ve started in a law firm and actually this isn’t what they want to do with their life, that they are not fulfilled, if anything, they’re the opposite of fulfilled. And that they’re restarting the process on understanding who they actually are and what actually drives them and what actually makes them feel fulfilled in life.

Let’s have a quick chat about your rituals and the tools because Melis is a tool that I developed because scent really helped me find my truth. It was natural. It really helped me connect to my true sense of self. What are some of the tools that you’ve been using to have a more intentional life?

Emma with her daughter Hazey

When I had my little girl, Hazey, like the early stages of motherhood for anyone that has been a mother, it is just one of the most intense, beautiful nourishing, soft, warm, just gorgeous experiences that you can ever have in your life. And I got this feeling of like… It was a feeling that I knew was going to be quite hard to hold on to going forward in life, like when I jumped back into the working world and I wanted to have some sort of feeling of staying connected to that feeling, which to share something quite personal, I guess the persona that I gave that feeling was this feeling of like earth mother and just this, the name or the persona of earth mother was something that just really resonated with me. And it was that feeling, I wanted to be able to bring that feeling into everything in my life. I didn’t feel like it had to only be when I was with my little girl, Hazy, breastfeeding or something like that. And so-

So you connected to the divine mother, purest form of feminine energy within yourself ?

Yes. Yeah. Yes, yes. 100%. 100%. So when I was at the Horizon Yoga Studio, I had previously been looking for some sort of, I don’t know, like some sort of little piece of jewellery or some little thing that I could put on my body that would help, be a little anchor or help be a little… a connector to help me remember this feeling that I wanted to hold on to. Something that could make me feel connected to that.

And I remember looking around, and it was like, there was just nothing. There was nothing that caught my eye or nothing that called out to me in terms of a bracelet or a ring or anything else. And then I came across this Melis natural perfume, and I was having a little look at them and I saw one that was called Terra. And I was like, “Oh my God, Terra.” Because Terra means earth at my… I’m pretty sure anyway.

Absolutely yeh…

Yeah. Oh, good, good. And I was like, “Oh my gosh, what is this? What is this?” And so I picked it up and I gave it a little width, and I instantly just fell in love with it. And I put it on my skin and rubbed it together. And I just instantly knew in that moment that, “Oh, I wasn’t supposed to have a bracelet. This is going to be my anchor. This is going to be my connector to earth mother, because this is something that I can take with me everywhere.” And so it’s still part of my intention and my rituals every single morning. So to share what my practice looks like, it’s a mixture of meditation, a little bit of mirror vision scripting, and then having the perfume on at the same time. So it helps integrate the vision script with the mirror work and the smells all together. And then-

Very powerful. Very powerful.

Yes. Yeah.

Did you know that’s what scent can do or was this your intuition guiding you?

Do you know what? I think a lot of it was intuition. I think there was ….. I definitely heard of that. You would be able to speak to this a lot more than I would, but I did know we can wire our brain in a way that helps us associate and strengthen the things that we want to remember.

Yes. And scent does that because it goes straight to the limbic system within our brain

The limbic system, of course.

 That’s why you can remember things through smell. A lot of people experience  this through smell because it’s very powerful. We’ve got some little tips that you can go through to imprint positive emotion and feelings into your body. And then you can even program your scent with the intention and take that scent with you. And when you’re out and about and use your scent, it’ll send a message to your system saying, “Oh, I feel….”

Oh my gosh. Well, that’s definitely what it’s done for me. So I use it as my earth mother anchor my, my confidence anchor, my ability to come back to me and to stay calm and be present.

You also have the natural ingredients in there. And I just wanted to bring to your attention that the MELIS Terra, has rose damascena as an ingredient Rose is incredibly powerful at helping with connection to the heart and especially to the feminine. And so there’s a lot there that is working  for you in natural scent.

I’ve just given it another smell now.

Thank you. Thank you so much for sharing that.

Oh, no, thank you.

We’re running out of time, but there’s so much more I want to talk to you about. We talked about doing less and “being” more and how you’ve been conscious of creating white space in your diary to aid your creativity. It appears that as we transform into our true nature, more space is needed to allow for this connection. Because we just can’t function how we use to function at that same level of “busyness”. How disciplined are you at maintaining this “being” state, especially when you’ve got the children and the business? Is it something that you have to consciously  work on?

Oh my gosh. Do you want the honest answer or the Coach Emma answer?

Look, I’ll always give you honesty. I don’t think I could give anything else. I am a million times better at it than what I used to be. I’ve still got a long way to go, that’s for sure. So doing versus being. Gosh. My personal goal is to be able to get being and doing to a place of 50-50. I would say right now, if I’m really honest with myself, I’m probably more so in doing mode. Gosh, if you’re not counting sleep, I would say 90% of the time I’m in doing mode and it’s a real… It’s like my primary goal right now is building practices, tools, mindset, beliefs, getting support on board. Like I work with a coach myself, and that’s our biggest focus at the moment because ultimately, to be in a state of being, what does that even mean? That for me, being is true presence and the ability to let go of your to-do list. And in true unadulterated surrender. It’s like life is as it is. I am right here. I am right now, this is my life. This is the world. It is how it is.

And trusting that you’ll get those little messages that will help guide you through where you need to be, like the message you got during your meditation about calling the school

100%. 100%.

And what about self-worth? The self-worth feeling has been a big lesson for me and ridding myself of self-sabotage – the old unhelpful habits. Do you have any tips around self worth?

Oh my gosh. Tips around self-worth?

Yes…..acknowledging that you are worthy of finding your spark, that you are worthy of allowing yourself to “be” and not have to do a million things.

Oh my gosh. So many, so many. If there’s one practical one that I could, or maybe two little mini practical ones that I could offer. So the first one is about, we can say things like I am worthy. I am worthy. I am worthy. I am deserving. I’m all the things. But whether you believe that or not is a whole other story. And the words that come out of our mouth could be very different to what we actually believe on the inside. So I personally feel like it can be like a two-pronged approach. So one is doing things, like building practices into your life that actually are in line with the belief that you are indeed worthy. So say for example, what would a worthy person do? If you were worthy, how would you go about your day? What would your day look like? And what would you prioritise?

If you were worthy, knowing that you already are, because we’re already worthy just as we are, our true self, we are already worthy. If you were already worthy, what would be the one thing that you would most love to do today? And just asking that question and seeing what pops up for you. And perhaps it’s, well, if I was already worthy, you know what? I’d take a nap. I’d have a rest because I’m really tired or maybe I would go on and meditate, or maybe I would go for a walk in nature without my phone, without headphones, or maybe I would go and paint a picture and be creative or something that makes your heart and your soul feel happy.

I really like that.

Yeah. Awesome. Awesome.

I like that ….building something within your life that proves that you’re worthy because you’ve got to feel it.

Emma recommends “mirror” work to aid self connection and love

You do, because what that does is by you acting in line with the belief that you are worthy, it starts to automatically send a message to your subconscious brain that you are worthy. And so that’s kind of the, I don’t know, the backwards approach to building a sense of self-worth within you. And the other one, which is more perhaps the intrinsic approach, is doing something such as mirror work. And I don’t know if anyone’s done much mirror work before, but it can be deeply uncomfortable, very awkward.

It’s powerful. So it is as it sounds, it’s standing in front of the mirror, it’s looking yourself deep in the eye. It’s not like that look in the mirror that you might give yourself when you’re applying makeup, when you’re only like half there, when you’re putting your mascara on, you’re looking at yourself, but you’re not really looking at yourself. You’re thinking about your day or whatever. No, this is like looking yourself deep in the eyes, deep in the eyes. And this can actually bring up quite a lot of emotion when you do this, holding your own gaze, putting your hand on your heart, taking a big breath and really breathing yourself in while you look at yourself and telling yourself that you love what you see and that you are deeply worthy. That you love what you see and that you are deeply worthy.

And repeating these words over and over, not letting go of that eye contact. And if you’re anything like probably 99.9% of people who do this for the first time, it’ll feel so awkward and uncomfortable and you’ll want to turn away. You’ll probably you’ll think, what am I doing? This is so weird. Why would I do this? Sometimes some emotion might come up like, I don’t know how I feel about these words that I’m saying. And just know that in those moments you are doing exactly what you’re supposed to be doing. That is the work. That is the work and it’s having such a beautiful impact on you. I’ve had moments of doing this work and I actually just broken down in tears in the mirror.

I love the way that you’re connecting to your heart space when you do that  as well. So really connecting and initiating that energy to come from the heart space, which is all pure love.

100%. 100%.

That’s really beautiful. Thank you, Emma.

Pleasure. Pleasure.

That’s really beautiful. That was really powerful. I want to give it a try right away

Oh, go and do it, and let me know how you go.

I will do it. I will do it.

Awesome. Awesome.

That doesn’t need to take a lot of time. You can do it any time, any place, just prioritise?

100%. And it’s you building a relationship with yourself as well, which is probably the fundamental relationship that everyone needs to build in the world.

Yeah. Absolutely.

A relationship with self.

So I just want one more question. You’re obviously quite entrepreneurial, very inspiring and you appear to be role modelling exactly what you help your clients achieve. You’ve got some pretty exciting programs coming up, which I think are worthy of sharing with our listeners. Can you share a little bit about how people can get involved with you?

100%. Yeah. I would love to. So I guess the key one, which maybe it interests to some of your audience is the Find Your Spark program. And that’s where we dive into those four Ps. So the purpose, passion, potential and possibility, and the whole core focus of the program is to unlock your spark. So there’s a whole process of discovery and discovering what your spark is. There’s lots on mindset because ultimately, a lot of us do know what we want to do, but it’s our mindset that often gets in the way, like some old limiting beliefs or fear or doubt that can stop us from actually taking action towards what we want to do. And then there’s a really big action component within that program as well. So if you want to get a little bit of a taste of that program, I’m actually running one of the most exciting challenges that I’ve possibly ever run before and it’s called the purpose party.

So it’s where you’ll basically get a bit of a taste of the program for free. It’s a three-day free training series, where the first day is going to be about activating your highest vision and designing your dream life. So helping you actually connect to what the highest possible version of your life might be. And then day two is about connecting to your highest self. So we start to connect to the version of you that’s already living that highest vision and that’s really, really powerful. And then day three is about unlocking your unique zone of genius, because every single person in the whole wide world has their own unique zone of genius. It’s like their own unique magic.

Their gift.

Their gift, yes, their unique gift to the world, 100%. And many of us aren’t playing in that space for whatever reason, usually societal conditioning and all of the things. But I’ll take you through a process of being able to unlock what that genius zone is for you, because ultimately, I want to connect people to their highest self, their highest potential, their spark. And that those three days designed to give you a taste of what that process could look like. So I can share the link to the purpose party with you and maybe they can find that in the show notes. Awesome.

Sounds great. Now we are going to wrap up, but is there anything else that you’d like to add to the conversation that you feel, just to finish off, that you feel is really important about your purpose, about other people living their purpose? 

I guess the only… We have covered a lot and I feel like, gosh, we could talk for days, couldn’t we? I guess the only last little thing that just dropped into my mind there is, if there is anyone out there who is feeling a little bit lost or stuck, or who maybe knows that they’re not in the place that they want to be or that they should be, maybe perhaps they’re feeling a little bit restless and they don’t know why, and they know that something should change, but they don’t know how, the one tip that I could give you, no matter where you are in your journey, is to try and get quiet. To try and get as quiet as you possibly can. And sometimes it is one of the most deeply uncomfortable things that our brains can ever go through.

But we talked about white space and we talked about not only white space in our diaries, but here I’m talking about creating space in the mind, because if there’s one thing that I know to be true, it’s that when we create space within our minds, that’s when those beautiful, intuitive downloads can come through. And that bit by bit by bit, those little intuitive downloads or those little messages from your subconscious brain or from a higher power, whatever you want to call it, when they start to come through, they will guide you along the way. And you can do this in a multitude of different ways. You can do it through meditation apps. Like I personally use a meditation app that’s called 1 Giant Mind, and that’s been really awesome for me.

But it doesn’t have to be meditation. It can be journaling. It can be walking through nature. It can just be putting 10 minutes aside, that you are not near your phone and that you just go and sit outside, not near any technology and just try and listen to your heartbeat or feel your heartbeat. But the quieter and the more spacious that your mind can get, the more that you are going to connect with your true self and what you’re here for. So that’s probably the last little message that just popped into my mind that I feel like it was probably for someone out there. And apart from that, I think that’s it.

That’s wonderful. Thank you for that last parting words.

Oh, a pleasure.

Yeah. So important to do that. So thank you. You have been a joy. Your energy’s so gorgeous and it’s really lovely connecting with you, and I’m sure our listeners will feel the same, But you’ve given… You’ve been so generous with the information and you’ve shared some really good little nuggets in there. So thank you. And I can’t wait to hear and see more of these speaking gigs at the schools.

I know, I know. And my absolute pleasure. It’s been so awesome being here, and it’s what I love to do most. So thank you for having me.

You’re very welcome. Thank you.

Emma Campbell assists organisations and individuals to find their purpose and achieve greater fulfilment

The post With Intent – Episode 8
Emma Campbell appeared first on Melis Natural Perfume.

Welcome to this edition of the Melis ‘With Intent’ podcast, featuring local endorsed midwife, Loralee Worrall, who since the age of nine, had a ‘knowing’ she would help women birth, and just this past year, facilitated 44 home births. Loralee’s an advocate for empowering women to birth with confidence, love and respect, at their chosen location. She’s also a mother of four and quite simply a remarkable woman. During our beautiful conversation, you will feel the depth and breadth of Loralee’s knowledge and the weighted responsibility she feels to help transform women’s birthing experiences. If you’re preparing for birth and/or healing from past births, I know you will benefit from listening. It was truly an honor to spend time with Loralee. I hope you enjoy listening.

Good afternoon Loralee, thank you so much for joining us today.

Thank you so much for having me, Melissa.

I’m always amazed with these podcasts and the timings, things just seem to come into my realm at exactly the right time. And we’ve had a little bit of a private chat about certain aspects of the maternity system and birthing, and I’m super excited to share your personal experience and your wealth of knowledge on the topic. I just wanted to give everyone a bit of an overview of your background and the knowing you had at a young age to help women birth. You also had a bit of a fascination with the reproductive system. Could you please share your background and your inspiration for pursuing a path in midwifery?

Yes. So I’m originally from Canada. Growing up, I don’t think I really knew the word midwife. I just knew from a very young age, that I wanted to be with women while they were birthing. So I had a lot of dreams about being with women, I would write a lot of stories about being with women, in creative writing class, and in high school, I absolutely loved human biology and the reproductive system. So it was a natural progression and midwifery actually in Canada at the time, wasn’t a recognized profession, so my pathway into working with women was to do my nursing. So I ended up doing a nursing degree, and a nursing degree in Canada is four years, and a year and a half of that was spent working in maternity and I just felt right at home. I knew that that’s what I wanted to do.

When I finished university, I ended up working in lots of different places around the world. I worked in India, I worked all over Canada, I worked in various indigenous communities in Australia, and I worked in not just maternity, I worked in a variety of settings, but I just always felt most at home when I was working with women through the birthing journey.

That’s quite remarkable. How old were you when you would have the dreams about birthing and helping women?

I think I was in elementary school, probably grade four, or five, six, and I remember writing stories, probably starting to write stories in grade seven, eight.

And did you share that with your mum or your parents or anyone, teachers?

Certainly teachers, I think my parents would have had an awareness, but my mum was really grossed out by blood, so she wouldn’t be able to really listen to me talking about what I was interested in. So it was just something, I think within myself, that I just knew and followed, ended up just following that pathway.

Fantastic. Doulas seem to becoming more popular providing aid to women during pregnancy and at their birth. I personally chose to birth with a doula for my second birth, after feeling disappointed with the hospital system. What’s the difference between yourself as an endorsed midwife, and a doula?

So a doula is not necessarily a trained professional, there’s no training that’s required to become a doula, anyone could act as a doula. And so a doula would support emotionally, physically, women in pregnancy, throughout the labor, sometimes doulas offer services to support mums after the birth. But it’s that emotional support, I suppose, and doing really helpful things like helping out with other kids, or even the laundry, or cooking meals, or rubbing mum’s back, or making sure mum stays hydrated in labor, those are the sorts of things that a doula would do. A midwife is more responsible for clinical care or medically looking after women. And as an endorsed midwife, what that refers to is we’ve done extra training so that we can write referrals for pathology, radiology, we can prescribe medications related to pregnancy, and also we can claim Medicare for some of our services. So of course we’re also emotionally looking after women, but it’s medically making sure that mum and baby are safe.

You facilitated 44 home births last year, and mentioned during our private chat, that home births have been increasing year on year, and especially since COVID, you’re also booked out eight months in advance. Can you share your view on why there’s an increase, or why you’re personally seeing an increase in a demand for your services?

I think there’s a few things. I think in the last several years, the hospitals around the world, in first world countries, have had increasing amounts of intervention, the caesarian section has been getting higher and higher, and women are becoming just dissatisfied, wanting more choice around the birth, wanting to avoid unnecessary intervention. So I think that’s part of it. With COVID, I think women became aware that hospitals are potentially incubators for germs, not just COVID, but lots of other germs, and perhaps didn’t want to expose themselves or their baby to COVID or other germs that would potentially be in the hospital.

The other thing with COVID was that there has been, with the different lockdowns, there’s been restrictions on how many birth support people women can bring to hospital with them. So if you want to have your partner and your mum, or your partner and a doula, you all of a sudden weren’t able to bring that team into hospital to support you. And for some women that’s really important to have not just their partner, but to have their sister or their grandma or a doula or other people in the birth room supporting them.

That makes sense. There’s a documentary out called Birth Time, it’s about three women who go on the road for a period of four years, interviewing women, their partners and experts about their birthing experiences. A friend told me about it, I’ve only seen the trailer, but there were some pretty significant statistics in that, which resonated with me personally, and I’m sure is resonating with a lot of women. It’s being called a groundbreaking documentary. A third of the women describe their birth experience as traumatic. I think they said 33% of women needed a caesarian section, or they had a caesarian section, and I think evolutionary biologists were really struggling to digest this statistic.

It was quite beautiful in that it showed women being very vulnerable. You’ve seen the documentary, it’s Australian, so it’s very close to home. And the whole theme of it is rediscovering the power of birth and hoping for women and the maternity system to shift dramatically from the current system. What was your view on the film?

I found it’s quite confronting. It shows women who have gone through the hospital system and had a particularly disempowering experience, and then for the next pregnancy, they move on and find a different model of care. And you see them move through those journeys and you see how healing it is to have a peaceful birth, and there’s a saying, peaceful birth brings peace on earth. When you have mothers who are at peace and feel empowered by their birth experience, it makes all the difference to potentially how they interact with their newborn, how they bond with their baby, how they move forward in the world.

So I think this documentary is reflective of women’s dissatisfaction with the maternity system as it stands. And we do have a really high cesarean section rate, the average in this country is roughly 33%, but there’s some hospitals who have a cesarean section up to 60, 70%, which is unreasonable. The World Health Organization suggests that cesarean section rates shouldn’t be more than 10 to 15%.

So why have we as women lost our connection to our abilities, our innate abilities, why is this happening? That’s a big question.

It’s a loaded question, but care. And I’m not anti-hospital at all, the hospital is there for a reason and there’s a time and a place, and there’s certainly women who really do need to birth in hospital and to benefit from that extra layer of support. But there’s a lot of … it’s like we intervene and then we cause complications by those interventions, and then we have to perform more interventions to outweigh the complications that we’ve already created, and it’s the cascades, it’s the cascade of intervention is what we call it. And one intervention can potentially lead to another, can lead to another, can lead to another.

And in the Birth Time documentary trailer, there was a big quote saying how this documentary is a shocking insight into the betrayal of women. And I assume that’s talking about the hospital system and the maternity system. My previous podcast interviewee Melanie Dufty, author of the book called, I Am Lilith, which explored domination between the sexes. And in the afterward of her book she made a comment about the patriarchy deciding women would birth in the supine position. I’d never considered men influencing how women birth, but when I thought about it, historically doctors were predominantly male and made the decisions in the hospitals, hence they would heavily influence how women birth. How did we evolve to birth in a hospital bed supine, with our legs in stirrups and this conditioning that it had to be painful and it is painful and all these interventions being required?

So good question. When you look at paintings or sculptures, like ancient, ancient paintings of women birthing, they’re always in a standing, squatting, sitting position, they’re in an upright position using gravity to help them birth. In midwifery textbooks, there’s some conversation around King Louis, the XIV, who was the king of France and the late 1600s, early 1700s, and he had a obsession with watching women birth. He had 22 himself from his wife and mistresses. And at the time, women would traditionally birth on birthing stools, but he felt that that obstructed his view of being able to watch the birth. So he was insisting that his wives or his women, would lay on their backs with their legs laid apart so that he could watch. And there’s paintings and photos of King Louis, the XIV behind a curtain peeking into the birth room, watching the birth, with these women on their backs.

And this also coincided with the time that doctors were starting to create instruments to help deliver the babies. And so they wanted to use not just their hands, but these instruments to extract the baby. And so of course, using instruments, much easier to do with a woman lying on her back with her legs apart or in stirrups, than in any other position, obviously. And then as the world became more industrialized, things were moving, birth was moving from home to hospitals. So in the 1900s, there was approximately half of women who would birth at home, half were birthing in the hospital. By 1930s, there was only about 15% who were birthing at home, and the rest of the women were birthing in hospital. And now, and certainly for the last, probably 20, 30 years, less than 1% of the population in Australia births at home.

Less than 1%.

Less than 1%.

And that leads me to another question, there are certain stigmas attached to home birthing and people, including other women, can be quite judgmental of couples and women choosing to home birth. So what are the common misconceptions about home birthing and why have these stigmas emerged?

I think possibly the misconception is that if a woman chooses to birth at home, she’s choosing not to have any medical care. And there are women who choose to birth unassisted, without any midwife or anyone with them or anyone medically trained. But most women who have a home birth, have a trained midwife that’s with them, who essentially brings a miniature hospital to the home, rather than bringing the woman to the hospital.

I know the way I practice is I always make sure that women are booked into hospitals, so that if we do have to transfer into hospital, the hospital has all of her information. I keep in touch with the hospital and with the on-call doctor throughout the labor and keep them up to date with how things are progressing. I’m letting them know if I’m happy with things or if I’m not happy, so if we do have to shift into hospital, then it’s quite a seamless process. But I think there’s a lot of people who don’t understand that when you’re choosing to birth at home with a midwife, you still are receiving monitoring and the medical care for both the mum and the baby.

And do you mind sharing of the 44 home births last year, how many had to go into hospital versus had a peaceful … or in your view, the mum’s or the couples view, the birth went to plan?

Yes. So just from memory, I think my statistics were, I think it was 38 out of 44 ended up being at home.

Wow. Congratulations, that’s amazing.

The majority of them, and then there was a couple of births that were actually planned hospital birth. So women who just for whatever reason, chose to birth in hospital with me, rather than at home. So then there was four that required some sort of intervention, I can’t quite remember exactly, but whether they ended up just going in for pain relief or having an instrumental birth, I think there was one or two that ended up having a cesarean section, but it was low numbers that actually required that sort of intervention.

So talk us through, if you will, the process of someone engaging with you, up until the process of their birth and the aftercare, and the success factors. And I know success can be a hospital birth, and you’ve explained to me before that your view of success is a woman being empowered in her decisions around her birth, the way she births. Can you walk us through the process of someone engaging with you, and success in terms of a woman feeling empowered and the birth experience not being traumatic?

So engaging with me, so most women will be in touch with me as soon as they know that they’re pregnant. Because there’s so few midwives in this country who support women to birth at home, you really need to get in quickly. So the first trimester is usually spent just working out what screening activities or screening tests are appropriate for you. So what blood tests you may or may not want to have, what ultrasounds you may or may not want to have. And then I’m just going to …

Loralee just has to take a text message and a call from a doctor, so even when she’s doing a podcast, she’s on call, so I’m just going to pause for a second. Okay, we’ve got Loralee back.

So the first semester is essentially just working out what screening tests are appropriate for you. And that’s different for each family, and I believe that we just need to have a lot of conversation around that, to make the right decisions for you, rather than just blanket testing everybody for everything. And then from 20 ish weeks pregnancy, then I’m seeing people monthly, and then as we get closer to the birth, then I’m seeing them fortnightly, and as we get a bit closer, then I’m seeing women weekly. I see women in their own homes, so rather than going to a GP surgery or an obstetric surgery and having a 10 minute appointment, I come to your home and we usually sit for at least an hour together. So there’s a lot of time for education, conversation, it’s just really important to be building rapport because that rapport and that trust is what really helps support the birth.

Can we get into the psyche a little bit, because I had a doula, as I said, for my second and what really shifted my per caption was her description of the contractions, she explained to me as them being waves and one step closer to me meeting my baby. So I had to shift in my brain that it wasn’t pain, and we didn’t mention the word pain, they’re described as waves, and they’re going to get you one step closer to meeting your baby. And that was so powerful just to have it rephrased like that.

Yes. And I think in our society, we think of labor as painful.

It’s all those Hollywood movies.

That’s what we see in the movies, that’s what we know of birth. So shifting our perspective about it and looking at it as something positive. Pain in our culture is something quite negative, we have negative connotations around it. And so it’s a useful sensation, I usually call it sensation, and a real power, I think of the ocean, like when the swell is getting bigger, there’s more energy moving through the ocean, that’s what it’s like when labour is progressing.

An honour, is it an honor for you to be a part of these women’s lives and to witness these births?

Yeah. It’s always an honour. It’s sacred. It’s all very sacred. So I’m looking after women very closely in the pregnancy, and then of course I’m with them for the labour and the birth, and then I look after them for the next six to eight weeks. So in the first week after the birth, I’m seeing them very regularly, just establishing breastfeeding, healing, making sure that their blood loss is within normal range. That first week is really intense after the birth. And then I tend to see women weekly for the next six weeks, weekly or second weekly, it just depends on how they’re going. But my feeling is that no matter what kind of birth you have, whether it’s a straightforward, normal birth, with a tear, without a tear, whether you have a cesarean section, whatever kind of birth, generally you’re physically healed by roughly two weeks. And then women start to have a bit more energy, and this is where I see things go a bit pear shaped. At three weeks, when they’re just out and about and busy and they end up with mastitis or they end up struggling with their milk supply.

And so I’m there to just pull them back, I want them to harness that energy that they have, so that they don’t just physically heal, but their nervous system really has a good chance to heal. So I’m still really encouraging mums to be resting, just resting as deeply as they possibly can, so that by the time they get to six weeks, seven weeks after the birth, they’re really feeling strong. We don’t want a mum to get to six, seven weeks and feel exhausted, we want her to be feeling strong and really thriving.

A dear friend here just had a baby, her third baby, and another friend organized a meal train for her, her mum flew over to be with her, and I went and visited her, took a meal, which was planned. And I was in awe because she was sitting on her couch, the fire was stoked, her mum was like a little fairy doing all the jobs around the house, and she was just sitting with that baby and she looked like a goddess. She just looked so beautiful. It just brings a tear to my eye because it was so beautiful, and she was so nurtured and supported and that baby, as a result, was having a beautiful early existence in this outside world. And I was like, that’s how it should be, but it’s so not for so many of us.

That’s how it should be. There’s more conversation now around not just three trimesters of pregnancy, but there’s talk about the fourth trimester. So the fourth trimester is three months of allowing the baby or giving the baby time to adjust to being outside of the womb. And I think slowly more and more people are becoming conscious of that, more people are becoming aware that we need more than just a few days to heal from a birth, and we really need to rest deeply, eat well, be cared for by those like our family, friends, whoever’s around us. And that looks different for everybody. But I would say most cultures have something in place to support women after the birth for 30 or 40 days. Unfortunately we don’t really have structures, formal structures like that in place in Australia, but it’s gently, slowly coming.

It is, but I still feel like there’s a lot of women out there who think, okay, I’ve birthed, now I’ve got to try and get back to normal. Everything’s got to get back to normal. I’ve got to get on and do everything that I……

Get back to the gym, get back to work.

Yeah. And it’s probably the worst thing we could do for ourselves and our baby. But is that a self-worth, where does that stem from? Is that conditioning or is that our own disconnection from ourselves?

Yeah, I think it’s all of that, and I think it’s how we honour women, how we honour women in our society. We don’t, we don’t really honour women in our society. Women are expected to just get on with it, and we’re just disconnected from the natural rhythms of life, look at the food we eat, birth and life and death, it’s all about ticking boxes and getting on, the sacredness, I suppose, has been taken away from it.

There’s a lot of women who now have cottoned on to having a birth plan or birth preferences, and I talk to them a lot about having a postpartum plan. So we look at who’s around, who are your support systems, what are your resources, who can we pull in? Can we create a meal train? Can we get mum, grandma, or some other mother figure to come in and help support? What friends do you have that could potentially come in and hold the baby for an hour while you go have a shower or go for a quick bit of fresh air outside? What are your values around feeding your baby? Yeah, we have lots and lots of time for conversation about all of that.

Wonderful, wonderful. You spoke about needing a break from midwifery in your early 20s, in our private conversation, because of the trauma you experienced witnessing stillbirths. How do you manage today when the birth doesn’t quite go the way you and/or the mum, parents had hoped?

I guess I’m old enough now to really have a deep understanding that in this world there’s good and bad, if that’s what you need to call it, we all go through really difficult challenges at different times. And I just have so much belief in the human race and our resilience and our capacity to deal with the good, but also deal with the bad. In maternity there’s some really sad things that happen, and there’s some really horrendous things that I watch families go through, but I’ve never seen anyone break completely. We have the ability to move through a really challenging experience and come out of it was a smile on our face, it is possible. And so now, when things happen, I try to have the mental flexibility to reframe it into something positive, and I hope that I can help the families that I work with to do the same.

So that leads me to, I guess, the next question, your own personal tools and rituals to manage demands of your chosen profession and the balance of being a mum of four children, a wife etc. How do you maintain balance?

I think that I’m probably not in balance most of the time. I think there’s that push and pull, and always navigating and watching myself and knowing when I am out of balance and I need to pull back a little bit. But for myself, I just make sure I, for me, I exercise, I have to exercise every day, I run, I get in the water, I surf. I meditate, not every day, but a lot of days. I think one thing that I’m really learning right now is that I think with my work, because I’m around people all the time and it’s very friendly, I feel almost like my social needs can be met by my work, and I can become very socially exhausted at the end of the day. So just have to make it a priority to be with my own friends.

Of course.

And just to socially be with people that don’t have anything to do with babies.

Well, I imagine you’ve had some pretty good lessons in boundaries, because women and families would put a lot of demands on you, I think, given that there’s no 9:00 to 5:00 around this job at all.

That’s right. That’s right. The lines can easily become blurred. So I just have to make sure that I really put in place, consciously put in place times for me and my family to be together, and for me and my friends to be together as well.

Just getting back to women who have had traumatic births and/or hasn’t gone to plan, I personally had to have an emergency cesarean, and that was eight years ago. And literally two weeks ago, I got to the bottom of an inability to engage some core muscles, and it’s been an ongoing issue. And my yoga practice, I’ve not been able to switch things on and it’s regressed significantly. And I’ve been seeing osteopaths, I’ve been having bowen and I’ve been on this search to physically get fit. And finally, I saw someone who said it was from my cesarean nearly eight years ago, and it was the scar.

The scar tissue, yeah.

And it blew my mind that I hadn’t even considered that. My question is, is it ever too late to heal from births that haven’t gone as planned?

No, my gosh, no. I mean, probably the most, in terms of physical injury, women who suffer from, if they had a bad tear or even if they had multiple children and they suffer with prolapses, whether that’s a urinary prolapse or cervical prolapse or a rectal prolapse. It’s amazing, now I always send women to a physio, a pelvic floor physio within about two months after the birth. But there’s so many women who they just get busy with baby, children, another baby, and then before you know it, 10 years has gone by and you’ve totally ignored your physical issues. So it’s not uncommon, it’s not certainly not unique.

There’s a lot of women that I know, like friends of mine who are in their 40s, 50s, who are only now just starting to get on top of those issues. It’s never too late. And I’d say, pelvic floor. You talked about one third of women being traumatized by their birth, I think that’s another area, that mental health area that sometimes it takes a long time to have the energy to deal with working all that out. We know that in our culture, 20% of women end up with postnatal depression, we don’t know the stats for men for postnatal depression, but we know that they’re susceptible as well. And I think there’s a lot of women, men out there with low-lying or just sub depression and anxiety, that you’re able to cope and carry on with life, but you’re not quite who you were before you had children. And it’s never too late to see someone about that either, to get some help and support around your mental health.

Yeah, we touched on this in our private chat and I just wanted to revisit it because again, just my own personal experience, I experienced severe anxiety in both my pregnancies, and I always thought it was mother nature’s way of saying, okay, you’re going to be a mum, sort yourself out. And then I questioned whether it was hormonal, but you have just explained to me about the nervous system. Can you just explain the why?

Yeah, sure. So we are on high alert when we’re pregnant and certainly after we have our baby, there’s that extra bit of vigilance that we have, and that’s to make sure that we’re safe, that our baby’s safe, it’s primitive, it’s normal. We’re meant to have an extra element of vigilance that we don’t normally have when we’re not pregnant or when we don’t have a newborn baby. But when it becomes a problem is if we don’t keep it in check, if it spirals too high. And so if you have a mum who can’t turn her brain off, or every time a baby makes little squeak, then she’s, “What’s my baby doing, is my baby still breathing? Oh my goodness.” That’s too much, that’s too much of that. And so then if it’s interfering with your ability to regulate yourself and to calm down, that’s when you need to start, I think that I would recommend that you talk to someone or get some sort of help.

Yeah, definitely. Also it’s helpful to know that a little bit of its normal.

It is normal. Yes, it is normal.

That it’s okay. Fortunately, I think getting support around everything to do with birthing in the home, it just seems like we just are left alone far too often. And that the message here is to get support, get as much support around you as you possibly can.

This is big, having a child, giving birth, transitioning to motherhood, it’s big. I think about teenagers going through puberty, that transition happens over several years and they have her teachers and their friends and their parents and they’re not alone or they shouldn’t be alone when they’re going through that. And it’s the same when a mother or maiden is transitioning to mother, we need that same level of support to get her through.

And historically, I guess, in primitive or indigenous cultures, there seems to be more of that support. We’ve just disconnected from that, or we’ve isolated ourselves a lot, I think.

We’re isolated in our nuclear families. So it’s going back and recreating the village.

Recreating the village. I know it’s probably a little bit, this is fraught with a bit of danger, but an ideal birth, you’ve seen a lot of births, what can it be like? So I would like you to frame, a woman that is potentially listening or a couple that could be listening to this, what can it be like?

So I think first of all, I just do not want to get caught up in geography, so I would not say that home birth is the ideal, or I don’t think home is necessarily better than hospital, but what I believe is that a woman who feels loved and respected and is given choice in her birth, I think those are the women that come out feeling not just physically intact, but emotionally intact. I think when we talk about these high statistics of trauma around birth, usually when you speak women about the trauma that they have around their birth, it’s that they felt pushed into decisions that they didn’t necessarily feel comfortable with, or they feel like they weren’t given any choice, or they feel like they weren’t respected, they feel like they were naked in the most vulnerable place that they could possibly be, being surrounded by strangers standing over them, telling them what to do. So I think women who are loved, cared for, respected, whether that’s at home, in a birth pool, whether that’s in a birth suite, whether that’s in theater having a caesarean section.

And it goes back to really what we all want and needs, is to feel loved, to be loved and to be heard as well.

It’s all about that.

If someone listening is planning a pregnancy, what would your, regardless of where they choose to birth, what would your top, say top five things be for them to consider, or the advice from everything that you’ve, I know this is quite a challenging question, but from everything that you’ve learnt, observed and know, what are the top five things you would like to share for people to take heed of?

So first of all, there’s two books that I always recommend, one is Spiritual Midwifery by Ina May Gaskin. And that book was written back in the 70s, it’s very psychedelic, but Ina May, she would be the most famous midwife in the world. And it’s a collection of stories of women who birthed with her, and they’re not all perfect stories, but they’re strong, powerful, empowering stories. So that’s a good one to start out with and you don’t need to read the whole book, it’s a good one for dads to pick up if they just want to read little bits and pieces, but that’s a really lovely book to start out with.

And then the other one that I really strongly recommend is The Postnatal Depletion Cure by Dr. Oscar Serrallach. And Dr. Oscar, he’s a doctor from Byron Bay who’s looking after a very healthy population, growing their vegetables, eating good foods, having babies, but perhaps prematurely aging. And he would say that, we talk a lot about postnatal depression, he would say that there’s a lot of women who aren’t necessarily depressed, but they’re depleted. And so he really talks about a little bit of what we touched on today, about the importance of resting deeply after the birth, he talks about what to eat, he looks at different cultures and how they support women after birth, he looks at macronutrients, micronutrients that are really important for women in pregnancy and for after the birth. So those are the two books that I would recommend. Knowledge is power, so reading as much, educating yourself as much, antenatal classes is really important to prepare for this very significant event, life-changing events in your life.

I would also say that nothing can be done to you in your pregnancy, in your labor, after the birth, without your consent. And so it’s really important, if someone’s telling you to do something or asking you to do something, it’s really important that you understand what that is, why that is, what are the risks and benefits. There’s no harm in asking questions and making sure that your care provider is giving you all of the information so that you can make decisions that are right for you.

Thank you. Is there any advice prenatally? I study energy medicine through Melaney Ryan Institute of Applied Consciousness, and she’s a fifth-generation energy worker, and she shares that the mother passes on their essence to the baby, and it’s a set amount. So the prenatal in pregnancy is also particularly important to manage your energy and be rested because you pass on that essence through the kidneys, to your child.

Certainly. So I think that we certainly don’t need to be triathletes in our pregnancy, but I encourage people to just move your body gently, and that’s different for every person. So whether that’s a bit of yoga, walking, swimming, move your body and eat good food and just be conscious of your nervous system. We want to go into birth, we want to go into parenting feeling calm, grounded, relaxed.

Is there anything else you would like to share? I think we’re going to try and wrap it up now, but is there anything else you’d like to share that we haven’t covered?

I think the most important thing is to just be aware that pregnancy, birth, it’s not just a physical event, it’s emotional, it takes an emotional toll, spiritually, it’s a rite of passage that women are moving through, and to really honor it and to try and maintain the sacredness around it. I work with medical students and I always say to them, before you go into your birth room, you should be taking off your shoes, this space is sacred. There’s an angel that’s arriving, we need to respect the space, we need to be respecting women, we need to be respecting babies.

This is so true. It’s beautiful.

It’s such a special time. It’s such a special time and we need to honor it.

Two girls and two boys.

So postpartum, moving on, they’re growing, how do you honour their spark and their own purpose that you might be observing and they might be discovering?

I definitely do not see myself as a parenting expert, I feel like half the time I’m flying by the seat of my pants. But I guess with my children who are now between the ages of 12, 14, 15, 16, I guess I’ve just really tried to give them a lot of space to explore physically and emotionally. We live on a property, so they’ve grown up barefoot and with a lot of freedom. I believe in gentle guidance rather than discipline, and so we’ve had very few rules, just lots and lots of open discussion. And I think that’s a big thing, there’s no topic that’s out of bounds, they know that they can come to me with anything and everything. That’s how I try and live with my children.

Gentle guidance. I know you’ve experienced the MELIS scents, because I gifted you a discovery set and I’m eager to learn whether you found one you liked and your style of scent, and I would assume you’ve been wearing natural for a while. Is that correct?

Yes. So my favorite, my definite favourite was Motus No 4. Yes, because it reminds me of Canada.

Of course, it’s got fir needle in it.

Yes, it smells like I’m in the forest.

Yeah, it’s got fir needle, that’s why.

So that was very nostalgic for me. And the other one had geranium in it, MELIS Amandi?

MELIS Amandi, yes, yes.

I just love geranium, it reminds me of one of my grandmothers.

Yeah, that’s a very pretty scent, MELIS Amandi. And you’ve been wearing natural for a long time?

Yeah, I just wear different essential oils, Tinderbox, I haven’t owned a perfume, a real perfume, I don’t know, …

A long time. I can imagine. I can imagine. Loralee, thank you so much. I’m honored that you agreed to be a part of this and I’m thankful. And I hope that everyone listening has found some little nuggets in there that they can take home. And thank you for the wonderful work that you do and for being who you are, because you’re actually a really beautiful person to be around, your energy is really lovely as well. So thank you and all the best.

Thank you so much for having me, Melissa.

The post With Intent – Episode 7
Loralee Worrall appeared first on Melis Natural Perfume.

Melanie Dufty is an astrologer, writer and seeker of truth through energy medicine and meditation. Her first novel, I Am Lilith, was released late last year and has left readers mesmerised and intrigued. In this podcast, Melanie shares her journey to bringing forth her destiny with the writing of her book and its theme of past and present struggles between the sexes and realisation of a truth in unity. We’ve tried not to spoil your discovery if you’re yet to read the book and hope you enjoy the podcast. Thank you for listening.

Can’t get enough of Melanie? View  melaniedufty.com for more information about her book I Am Lilith book and astrology services.

Good morning Melanie and welcome to the With Intent podcast. Thank you for being here.

Morning Melissa. It’s really good to be here. Thanks for having me.

Pleasure. I’m super excited. Congratulations.

Thank you.

Melanie, this podcast, I don’t want it to be a spoiler for people who haven’t read the book yet and obviously there’ll be a lot of people listening who are just interested in your story and about people who do live with intent and find their purpose. So can you give us a little bit of a background on yourself and your journey thus far and your inspiration for pursuing a path in your astrology and writing and now publishing I Am Lilith.

Sure. Well, I made a very big turnaround in my life when I was 34 and I had my first son. So up until that point, I was on I went to union, I lived in London and I was very focused on my career in PR and working with the media and I was super intent on climbing the corporate ladder and it made me feel special and I just thought that was my path. And I was married to the man I’m still married to and we moved back to Australia and we had a house and I had a good career. And when I had my first son, I just took time off work.

I realised that, well, I think I was actually probably depressed and I just felt incredibly empty and realised that I’d achieved enough things to know that they weren’t fulfilling me and I just felt a huge calling for something but I had no idea what, and I was very mainstream. At the time I didn’t believe in energy or even in there being a consciousness beyond what I experienced in the normal day-to-day life. So I think it was just through sheer desperation around that time after my first son Luke was one that I started to investigate, learning some different things like kinesiology and things I got interested in. And then I discovered Pranic healing and meditation and went from there.

That’s so interesting. So were you diagnosed with depression?

No.

Did you seek any assistance for it?

No. I was already quite into natural health at that time and I wanted to have a home birth for Luke and I wasn’t into the mainstream in that area. My mother has always had so many mental health problems and always was with medication and she didn’t do any healing and I just knew that I didn’t want to do that. So just gradually I guess I moved out from homeopathy and more alternative health into actually spiritual connection.

My first birth, pregnancy propelled me on this journey of inward reflection and I guess I led a similar life to you so we’ve got that in common and I didn’t know that.

Yeah, that is interesting. I think that having a baby, the first baby especially is just a ginormous turning point in any woman’s life. Absolutely massive. And I think it just pushed away so much that was at the surface level and left me with something really opening the core. And from that it was just such a bereftness I guess, but that I was realising that I wasn’t connected to my true self, that I was fooled about what would satisfy me.

So after Luke was one and you started on this journey of kinesiology and small tentative therapies, what happened next?

Well I feel that I was directed away or from kinesiology and into Pranic healing and studying with GrandMaster Choa Kok Sui and studying which was all about reconnecting with the soul and energy medicine. And through that I met Melanie Ryan who’s now my mentor and teacher with my heart meditation and ITA energy medicine. So I was into it 110%. Basically I went to one event in meditation and from there I was just obsessed, passionate, constantly always meditating and practicing energy medicine for the next probably 10 years.

Melanie conducting an astrology reading

And when did the astrology come in to your realm?

Someone told me there was a great astrologer in South Africa and I had a reading with her on the phone. And I think that was in 2010 and I was blown away by how accurate it was. I already believed at that point fully. I understood that we’re a soul, we have a purpose, we’re here for a certain reason but I still found it just incredible what she said to me. And after that because I love studying, I started to research more about my own chart and then friends started asking me about their charts. And from there, I got an amazing teacher and went through years of study and became qualified and started to do readings because it blew me away with how helpful it was to clarify what my life purpose was and it just absolutely resonated with me.

So you were studying and became a professional astrologer at the same time as the meditation journey?

Yes.

Manuscripts of I Am Lilith

And then collectively when did the book, when did the inspiration, and your realisation of your purpose come to the fore?

Not for some time. So I knew that my purpose was a very spiritual one and one that also involved communicating in grounded, while accessible ways as well. But the clarity of it taking the form of a book did not emerge for some time. I had to do a lot of a self-alignment and exploration before I came to that. But I did always know even since I was a kid that I wanted to be writing and I had visions of writing on a typewriter. So I did always want to do it, and I could feel a real pull that I wanted to do something really significant but I didn’t really believe that it could be this.

So Melanie, who is Lilith?

Well, Lilith is in Jewish mythology, a woman who was married to Adam before Eve and Adam insisted that she had to lie beneath him and that she was inferior to him and she refused that and left him and then he married Eve. Because she was disobedient and it was the beginning of the era of patriarchy in my belief, she was exiled and demonised for all of the things that they didn’t like about women. So for her sexuality and for her empowerment with her fertility. So she was called an evil seductress, a demon, a vampire, a succubus, which means sucking the energy out of people and she was just demonised.

So she’s got quite a bad rap.

Very bad rap and really just all the projections of what was feared about a feminine were put on to Lilith. I believe that sent an archetypal energy within every woman, the parts of our feminine that have been exiled and shamed and sullied. But that’s not the truth of who Lilith is. She is the empowered part of us that is very sexual, very powerful, very loving, more of a fierce love. So she is due back and we can’t have balance of integration within ourselves without that fear as part of the feminine that she stands for being welcomed back.

Melanie in meditation manifesting ‘I Am Lilith’

There’s so much Lilith in all of us that’s been shamed but we’ll get to that later. Can you please continue with the inspiration for Lilith and I guess how the story came to you in I think you said 2017.

So in 2012, I first found out about this big astrological cycle that sees humanity evolve and really that’s the basis behind Lilith but it took another five years before I had the inspiration and the clarity of the story that I wanted to share that through. Yeah, it did take quite a lot of work of my intending, meditating, looking, searching, filling up notebooks, looking for what I wanted to say. And even in this yoga class, I used to go to the teacher during one of the poses where you really open up your heart and your arms, I would always say, “What have you got to say?” And that used to inspire me so much and I didn’t know what I had to say, but I just kept praying and meditating and intending, what have I got to say? What have I got to say? And eventually, that fulfilled itself because I felt clear that what I want to say is in that book.

So you pretty much asked?

I asked many times.

Fantastic. So without spoiling listeners yet to read your book, can you outline the story of I Am Lilith?

Sure. So I am Lilith is set in ancient Sumer which was in ancient Mesopotamia about 6,000 years ago and it’s a female ruled world where women and fertility, women sexuality, everything to do with women was absolutely revered and worshipped and unquestionably the path that ran creation. And it doesn’t mean it was all nice because that’s one of the interesting things is, if you do read, there are lots of books and fiction and nonfiction that when there was a matriarchal society, which many people believe there was, that it was all sweet and lovely and that there was no problems and then the patriarchy came along and ruined it.

But my book really flips out on its head and I believe it to be true, which is that the feminine and masculine, we are one, the feminine and masculine are just as powerful, and one isn’t less or more tyrannical or in shadow expression isn’t worse than the other, they’re equal. So in I Am Lilith, the female real world is tyrannical and oppressive to the masculine and so it really explores that which is very interesting because for the last 6,000 years we’ve been living in a patriarchal society where the tables were turned on that. So the book is set in a world where Lilith is the head of the female ruled society and males are stripped of purpose and of rights and they see that they don’t have any purpose except as workers and they don’t even acknowledge that males have a role in procreation. They just believe women fruit pregnancies unto themselves and this semen isn’t even potent and it’s just a replication of mother’s milk.

It’s not a joke so it can be quite fun to explore that world as well. But it’s for the higher purpose of showing the bigger message of the book which is a unity and equality and yet it’s interesting to explore a female ruled world. So what happens is the men start to get more and more angry and rebellion starts to rise and Lilith mates this man that she falls in love with called Adam and she really wants to forge a better society and she becomes more and more so heartbroken about the suppression that she’s heading up really, even though it’s historic and she wants to make it a better place and to bring men into a more equal position.

And yet they fear this secret prophecy that men are going to take over and are going to repress women terribly so they want to try and stop that as well. So she has this inner turmoil and this pull on her conscious to do the right thing, at the same time she wants to protect her society from this future that they’ve seen in their magical priestess work of the future.

And it’s such a page turner, and it was quite confronting those parts which you briefly described about the women actually doing some pretty destructive things and demeaning things to the male. It was very confronting. I found it stirred a lot of good and bad within me. But I wanted to ask, how much is fact versus fiction because there is a significant amount of astrology throughout which I assumed is fact.

Yes, if you believe in astrology, it’s fact because there’s an astronomical cycle which is absolutely fact as NASA would agree of this 25,000 year cycle that the book is based on, which shows us how humans experience one era where the feminine energy takes precedence and then one era where the masculine energy takes precedence and then we reunite into unity which is happening right now. So the book really bridges from the turning point from the feminine on top to the masculine on top, and then it bridges to right now in human evolution which is where we unify. We’ve taken all we’ve learnt from believing ourselves separate, we’ve explored every sort of nuance of shadow and what that means and now we’re ready to reunite.

‘I Am Lilith’ on-shelf at a prominent Perth bookstore.

It’s really significant because there is so much dialogue and energy around the female rising. And in my last podcast with Constance Hall, we discussed equality and the current vibe around it. Do you want to explore or explain what your belief is around that? 

Yeah. My whole life up until really an epiphany in 2017, just before I got the idea for the book and it all started flooding through was that I’ve been a raging feminist up until that point and I was just devastated and enraged about all issues to do with feminism and masculine, feminine imbalance and I was so angry and also so hurt and I couldn’t stop thinking about all the witch burnings and I was just really wrapped up in all of that. It’s quite devastating. And I felt, yeah, a grief as well as an anger and I felt that the feminine was all good and had been hurt by the masculine. And then I had this gigantic absolutely body rushing epiphany really in a moment that we were just the same and this whole, you can’t have in the unity or in the perfect yin yang of creation, you can’t have one that’s good and the other one that’s a victim. It was just completely false.

So I recognise that the feminine in the shadow has plenty of powers and is just as dangerous in its own way. Of course, we all carry the feminine masculine within us. So the feminine in shadow manifests more manipulation, neglect secrets and it can also be absolutely very cruel and the masculine energy manifests more in I guess yang over actual violence or physicality and structure and power and control structures that are blatant and open whereas the feminine is more secret. So you’ll see it in everybody and in all the world. So yeah, I wanted the book to explore through a story in quite a literal world where the feminine was ruling and it wasn’t only light but there was plenty of light in there as well like the beautiful, sacred rituals, beautiful and authentic honoring of the feminine sexuality and fertility.

There is extensive symbolism throughout the book which I loved and being a fellow Mahat Meditator, I loved a lot of the references – the mind’s eye and all the gifts that Lilith and her priestesses would use, their intuition etc…but I’m going to focus on scent.

Yes

Because of our purpose. Scent features heavily, Patchouli, Jasmine, Cyprus, Juniper. Even the dog fancy was scented with geranium. Why did you choose to focus so heavily on scent and how did you match scent to the characters and the scenes, et cetera?

Scent is an incredibly important part of the Venusian energy. So Venusian meaning Venus so the beautiful central goddess Venus energies so sensuality, touch. So scent just was inherently always going to be key in creating this beautiful, exotic world in the light aspects that the feminine is ruling and yeah, they’re always making perfumes and creating perfumes is, as you’ve seen the book is greatly revered as a key artistic expression. So yeah, scent absolutely had to be there in this Venusian world. And how did I match it? Well Lilith especially wears Patchouli and Patchouli for me, it’s such a mature, super, super sexy, powerful, deep, rich rolling smell. And it seems, I don’t know, I just associate it with women, not girls but women. It felt to me like the energy of Lilith.

So interesting because Patchouli is a base note so it’s a very grounding note and gives durability and although Lilith’s very spiritual and in touch with her intuition, she’s very grounded in her approach. So it makes sense that she wears Patchouli actually.

Yeah. It’s really solid, isn’t it and it’s super sexy.

Did you research your scent?

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. I researched what they were using in anxious Sumer at the time. The book isn’t all correct to whatever information is available, because there’s not all that much information about what they were using in 18, what they were using in scents and what kind of crystals they were using, but where I could, I’ve tried to draw out what they were using and put in the book. But for instance, with Jasmine, well, I just love Jasmine and it’s so light and pure and beautiful and that’s used quite a lot in the most beautiful gardens, scenes in the temple where everything’s just so invocative and Jasmine it’s a beautiful pure Venusian world that they live up there whilst down on the streets, that the men are living in squalor and it was almost like, I don’t know, it just helped set another world with Jasmine and smells of wisteria even.

And do you know Cleopatra used  Jasmine?

No, I didn’t know that.

To allure her lovers.

Wow.

And Rose. Jasmine and Rose.

Love them. I like how it smells. And Rose of course it’s used as by the retired high priestess Menna.

That’s right.

As to me the ultimate heart energy and the really evolved energy that she carries. So much wisdom.

And on the subject of symbolism, which some of it’s explained in the afterward of the book but snakes also feature heavily. I’m fascinated by the snake references as I frequently experience snakes in my realm and I’d like to know what they signify. So you’ve got the snake entwined around the triangle and the heaven and earth symbols on the front of the cover, there’s the vipers that killed the Heredic, the snake symbol on Lilith’s staff, her cuffs. There’s plenty more. Can you share?

Sure. Well, the snake is a symbol of spiritual connection like the Kundalini serpent rising up and it’s very significant that the snake has his whole body in contact with the earth so it’s a symbol of being very much on the earth. And as it rises through spiritual unification, the Kundalini serpent up to the crown chakra, it’s like going from the earth to the heaven. So it’s a symbol of heaven on earth and in Lilith she’s got her beloved beautiful green Python called Yasmine that she adores as you know and she’s called sky snake because she’s a representation of heaven and earth. So she’s from the ground but she lives up high in the temple. So it’s like a symbol of being able to master the earthly realms up to the heavenly.

Snake symbolism in ‘I Am Lilith’

And the second really major reason for the snake focus is that there is a 13th star sign called Ophiuchus which I believe your star sign is, if you apply the 13th science system because Sagittarians born specially a little bit later degree, Sagittarians like itself, when you apply the 13th science system, they become an Ophiuchus which is the snake. And it’s the snake that means the master of duality so the master shadow and light, the monster of heaven and earth. So the snake, and in the book and in, I believe this to be true as do many astrologists, especially more spiritual astrologers believe that it was stripped from the system as the patriarchal era took hold and it’s all connected with the 13 energy and of course Lilith is one of 13 priestesses. There are 13 lunar months in a year. The whole thing of the 13 and in connection with not just feminine wisdom, because Ophiuchus is about unifying the two polarities masculine, feminine, light, dark, any opposite. So the snake is incredibly significant as a symbol of unification and mastery, mastery being a key word of the opposites of duality.

So interesting because that’s really what I’m trying to master within myself. The balance between masculine, feminine, and also the lower emotions. Literally, we have pythons on our doorstep all the time. We’re in Margaret River so there are a lot more snakes around, but I have them literally climb the upstairs deck and the kids will be like, “Mum, there’s a python in the flower pot.”

Love it.

A couple of times, three times a year at least. And at major times in my life, I’ve seen them. Being out on a run and bang, a snake. Anyway, I find it really interesting so thank you for explaining. I need to keep trying to master duality.

Yeah. And I recommend you investigate that 13th star Ophiuchus. Because I really believe in the coming decades, centuries, that humans will welcome back the 13 sign star system in astrology.

Okay. Right. Well, I’m going to actually personally have an astrological reading with you so I look forward to our session and more in depth understanding of Ophiuchus.

Now, the book is quite saucy and at times ….quite shocking which we alluded to earlier. Lilith and the priestesses strength, intuition, sensuality, and womanhood is greatly revered and celebrated. And as I said, it did stir a lot of energy in me. What feedback are you receiving from your readers? What are people saying to you once they have read this book?

The sexuality and the world where there’s just no such thing possible as sexual shame, menstrual shame. It’s just completely not in the energy of the book or in the energy of that world and the feedback I’m getting is that it’s similar to what you’re giving which is that it stirred some incredible awakenings of how some women have come to me personally and shared some incredible stories about what they felt in their own womanhood, their own sexuality, realisations. Women are especially enjoying one of the earliest scenes in the book, which is a sacred full moon, beautiful, celebrated, pure, wholesome, super, super sensual and sexual and just beautiful.

That is the truth and it’s the demonisation and how Lilith, I don’t know if listeners will realise that Lilith has been called the darkest demon and the mother of all vampires and the baby killer and the evil seductress. A lot of it about her sexuality. It’s been demonised because it carries our power and our divine connection. So in the book that world as you know is only about that beautiful purity. So it’s really stirring women’s sexuality and a lot of women are telling me very personal things that I just love hearing.

Well, I’ve got something personal to share with you after this recording as well.

Okay. Bring it on.

That’s wonderful. Definitely, I have been recommending your book. And I think whether people are on an inward spiritual journey or not, they will connect to this book.

I do too. I think there’s enough story, entertaining story through to whatever elements you want to draw out. That’s the other feedback I’m getting from people. There’s usually something in it in particular that’s speaking to them. But yeah, you can rate it as a very deep spiritual or even just to explore a different world.

We’ve talked about connecting with Lilith’s energy. I felt disappointed when she lost herself and went into the shadow because she does go into the shadow in a very big way. Why did you choose for her to go down that path?

She had to. So I feel that I didn’t choose it, I feel that that’s what happens. As part of this big evolutionary cycle where the feminine was on top and then the masculine was on top, she took the fall really I think as a sacrifice where she would be denied, exiled, hated, feared for eons. So it happened. So that part within the feminine energy that’s unpalatable, unwelcome through the patriarchy, she signifies that. So it has been very painful but now the time is here, the energy is here that she’s back and that’s why I use #lilithisback. So back within every woman, back within every men too. So she had to take the fall. She did take the fall as an energy expression, but that’s done. The rise is here back into equality.

I’m going to read a part of your afterward because I just want to touch on the message about unity between men and women and there not being one more dominant of the other. In your afterward, you’ve written under the section about what Lilith symbolises….

“The illusional era of masculine or feminine being on top or made at this womb or that penis is over. They can never be separated. The true nature of the masculine is to cherish the feminine and her boundary-less, dynamic, creative nature. And her true nature is to adore his structure, his focus, and how he forms the banks that shape her wild river. They are creation itself and within every form,  every creation, every moment.”. 

I highlighted that in my book because it was very relevant to me because that’s what I’m trying to achieve within my own personal marriage. And I think people who are listening will really relationships can be quite challenging if there is this struggle, power struggle going on. And I think the reminder that we need to revere our partners for some of those qualities is really important, just like they need to, and I had that discussion with my husband, and thank you for this book because it really triggered it to remind me to say, you do need to appreciate my creativity which can be frustrating at the same time.

Absolutely. Yeah, I feel the same of course. And even that instinctive feminine intuition that is so not based on a grounded experience but it’s a knowing and it’s so deep and sensitive and raw. It’s just last night saying to my husband saying, and he is amazing at that, but saying you must listen to this intuitive, raw, sensitive knowing that I have about something that’s currently going on in our life. And it’s a real grief if it’s not honoured. And especially when we feel it ourselves and turn away from it, those noise.

And I do think that we have to realise that within ourselves first and foremost. And then I have had the privilege of observing you and Wayne and I know Wayne’s been on my heart retreats and he’s very much sharing the meditation journey with you which seems very, very special.

Melanie’s husband, Wayne reading ‘I Am Lilith’ manuscript

Yeah. He’s completely sharing the feminine masculine journey that we are on and the spiritual journey and he’s been a major part of supporting the book. Some of the amazing ideas that are in the book come from Wayne so right alongside he’s been standing with me and he’s also very changing to the feminine energy and I needed that in order to bring this book about, I needed to be held because of my initial rage and what he’s been able to hold for me because

the masculine can hold that space and let that storm. And it’s not always a storm, the feminine is everything, but yeah, there was healing to be done. it was right. It was great and he’s been able to hold that and helped me yet to find the space that I needed. Of course, we also carry the structure, the drive, the push, the masculine energy within ourselves as well as the feminine and ultimately it’s going to be within ourselves that we unify.

And this book from that description sounds like it was birthed out of unity between you and Wayne.

It is. The book is still delivering that full unity because I don’t claim that we’re in full perfect unity but we know what it is and we’re actively working on it and the book is its massive grounding of that. We know what it is but yeah, is it perfect? No.

Well, we can only strive for it.

Yes.

Now what advice… You’ve described this book as your life’s purpose or the start of your life’s purpose, along with the creation of your babies I’m sure and a lot more, but what advice would you give to listeners out there how to find and know their purpose?

Well, to look and to actively seek, if people whether it’s using intention or whatever methods, whether it’s meditation, prayer intent and just walking around, what I did, say, what have I got to say? What have I got to say? Sometimes listening to music and getting that passion when you feel so alive and just really calling out to the universe and I guess when one with the universe, what do I got to say? Or if it’s not saying, your purpose may not be saying, something it might be doing, or carrying an energy or having an amazing relationship through to a business. Who knows? I believe that astrology can help you to get the gist of your life purpose. Will it tell you exactly what you’ll do? No, but it will give you the direction and the gist and it can really give you a bit of structure within which to explore more of what your soul is here to do.

And what about being present?

Being present. Yeah. Well in order to receive and to connect with your soul and its purpose, you definitely need to be present. And that presence for me can range from, like I say, the joy of dancing and feeling incredible joy through to stillness and meditation through to just walking around in nature. It’s certainly putting my phone down and yeah, being present is absolutely crucial. You can’t hear your soul without that.

Beautiful. Now, I know you’ve experienced Melis scents.

Yes.

Getting back to Melis, and you came to the launch actually which I was really grateful for. Do you have a personal favourite?

My personal favourite, I love Melis perfumes and the energy in them and the smells and everything about them. My favourite at the moment, because I’ve changed is the new NATIVUS range…. I just loved them and I love the whole experience of them, the smell, the way I feel, the complexity in the smell and I adore the beautiful art with the packaging. The whole experience of the perfume I just love.

And isn’t it interesting because I changed for me too with time and a lot of people who connect with them they say they start out with one favourite and then they… That’s when I believe scent chooses you, your subconscious knows what it needs and the ingredients and the plant matter chooses you for where you’re at at that point in time.

I totally agree with that. Even from moods through to different phases, we have our scents that we’re drawn to or that choose us.

Yeah. We need to close but I just wanted to provide an opportunity for you to add to our conversation anything that you feel is important for our with intent listeners to know about you personally, your journey and or I Am Lilith.

Main thing for right now is that the time is really truly here, astrologically, spiritually, energetically, we’re in this window where we can really make this quantum leap into that new era but you need intent because there is a pull back into [inaudible 00:40:25] or all the stuff going on in the world and we need a bit of extra intent at the moment to have some faith to believe in this truth that we are entering as a time of unity and to have the intent to do what you need to do to bring yourself to that space as much as you can.

And so what would your recommendation be for an intentional practice?

Yeah. Like you say, presence with yourself. So it’s like going within and for me that involves meditation, but also I just love lying around in nature and feeling it. So I really think we need to go back within ourselves to find it and to find a community and to be around people who support and are on the same path.

Fantastic.

Basically the same path.

Well Melanie, I’m so grateful. Thank you so much. The book is epic.

Thank you so much.

And I have no doubt that it is going to be a best seller in time as more and more people connect with it. And so thank you. Thank for bringing your truth to this world and to our ‘With Intent’ podcast.

Thank you so much Melis.

Melanie Dufty and her cat Adam

The post With Intent – Episode 6
Melanie Dufty appeared first on Melis Natural Perfume.

Bold, brash, and deeply caring, this month’s ‘With Intent’ podcast sees us talk to author, entrepreneur, blogger, and mum of seven Constance Hall about the healing power of sisterhood, why she believes ‘victimisation’ has become a dirty word, how she’s raising her sons to be in touch with their femininity, why she chooses to make her private life public, and the unconventional way she got in touch with her spirituality. People either love Constance or hate her. I loved spending time with her, am grateful for her truth and was left feeling inspired by how she’s inadvertently supporting and helping to empower women across the globe. Enjoy the podcast and thank you for listening.

Can’t get enough of Constance? Learn more about her rise to fame in her chat with Em Rusciano, check out her chat with Mia Freedman, or watch her Ted Talk on bullying.

 So here we are with Constance Hall. Con and I have just spent how many hours? Two hours talking pre-podcast, so hopefully we’ve still got something to chat about. Welcome Con. I’m so honoured to have you.

Thank you. I’m so honoured to be here. It’s funny you say that because before I left the house, Denim, my husband, wanted to go and do something at 1pm, and I said to him, “I don’t know if I’ll make it back in time.” He goes, “You’re not doing a four-hour podcast.” And for some reason, it’s like I knew that we might get carried away.

 I listened to Em Rusciano’s podcast where you were recently interviewed and you said that you didn’t do small interviews?

What I meant was like Today, Tonight. Do you know what I mean? I meant I don’t do small media, but I definitely do the interviews like this with interesting women. I wouldn’t call you small.

Oh, thank you. Well, I was flattered. I was like “Wow, she’s going to talk with me.” But this has been a long time coming.

Yeah, you’ve been very patient. I’m cagey with everybody. I always think, “Oh, I don’t want to lock myself into…” Especially being in someone’s home. You go to someone’s home or them coming to yours because you can’t get away. So I just don’t usually commit to anything ever, but then, when I saw in the supermarket last week, we were just pushing trolleys in the supermarket, and I was like, “Okay, I can definitely engage with this woman very easily and here we are.”

I want to pick up on why you do what you do because I read that you don’t actually like the internet. And your business was born and is dependent on the internet and social media. Can you share why you do what you do?

Well, I feel very lucky to be honest, because as a blogger, there are thousands of blogs out there, hundreds of thousands that people don’t read. And to have everybody come to me at one point in 2016 and start reading my blogs was just such a privilege that I thought to myself, “This is your opportunity.” I’ve always felt like I had a message. I’ve always had an opinion, but whether it’s the right one or the wrong one, I’ve had to go back and correct my opinion, learn new things and all the rest of it, but I still always had an opinion. And I didn’t realize that made me controversial. Do you know what I mean? I was raised by a single woman, I was taught that my opinion mattered. And so, I never really paid that much attention to the fact that maybe I had a louder opinion than other people or a more self-assured one or whatever it was, I just thought it was normal.

And then all of a sudden it was, “Controversial blogger,” this and that. So I never meant to be that that person that was polarising, it just came from who I am. And so, I feel like the fact that people read me for the entertainment, because they think it’s funny or interesting or whatever it is, it’s my responsibility then to put the right things out onto the internet and to do the right thing by minorities or whatever, whoever. I’m trying to do what I believe is right because I do have to look at my platform as a responsibility. And if I’m earning money from it and supporting my family from it, I owe the people that are reading my authenticity so that’s why I give them the vulnerable stuff.

It’s just very much like me. I was a hairdresser for 13 years and I was always oversharing with my customers. Like they would be like, “Oh, my boyfriend cheated on me.” Like, “Oh my God, mine too.” And they’re like, “Oh, you’re not supposed to, it doesn’t look like that.” I would have been a really bad psychologist.

I read in your book that you said you weren’t necessarily a very good hairdresser.

No.

But people came to you for the chats and the connection?

Yes, exactly. And it was a really good connection. I love women. And that took years. I was a bit of a boys’ girl, believe it or not. When I was younger, I was the big beer sculling, hang out with the boys, shit giving girl. Like I could carry my own in a big group of boys – I was funnier and quicker and drank more. And then, it wasn’t until I had kids, my first baby, I was 25 and I realised that those friendships were really quite fickle. And none of them were coming to visit me when I was pregnant and in the hospital and crying. But all of a sudden, there were lots of women coming, women that I didn’t even really bond with that well beforehand. And especially if they’d had children, but even if they hadn’t, they would just come in to sit with me when I was having a rough day. And I really went, “Far out. I’ve been missing some very meaningful connections here.” And I became very grateful to be a woman.

 Do you have any men following you?

My following is 97% women.

 97% women. And let’s put it in perspective. You’ve written three books, with your first selling over 200,000 copies?

Yeah.

Which is hugely successful in the publishing world because your average is around 4,000 sales. You’ve been interviewed by 60 Minutes and that was another thing that happened. Again, rarely do I watch commercial TV, but it happened, this was before we connected, I just turned the television on and there’s Constance Hall being interviewed by 60 Minutes. Another sign that I needed to pursue you for this interview.

Yeah, and I was like walking in your front yard, really, because I was walking on that beach down there.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

 Ok so getting back to the point, you’ve got over 1.3 million Facebook followers, 500,000 Instagram followers and your Ted Talk has nearly had over a 100,000 views. That’s pretty phenomenal, isn’t it?

Yeah, it is. But honestly, I think I spent the first year of, I guess my life changed in 2016 when everything went viral and the following just started growing, and early 2017. Oh no, it was all of 2016, was the main big year. And I just think that I spent a good two years pinching myself and then I spent another year with imposter syndrome thinking they’re all going to find out I’m a fraud and that I’m not worth listening to, and that I don’t even know what I’m talking about half the time what am I doing? Someone’s going to knock me off my throne.

I was just waiting for that big news article that was like, “Constance Hall is a fraud.” But I’ve talked to my PR and told them all, and they were like, “But you’re honest about being a fraud. You tell everybody that you’re not educated and that you don’t know what you’re talking about, that you fucked up and all the rest of it. So you literally can’t be pushed off your throne because you’re not fucking on one, Con. You’re just sitting on the ground, rambling shit.” And I was like, “Okay, thanks. I’m okay now.”

But you self-deprecate a lot. And I loved Em Rusciano putting you back in your place.

Constance:      Yeah, she did, didn’t she? I’m standing up now.

I know. Have you processed that? Because she talked about the narrative about you and you were like, “What’s so special about Con?” And you had a completely different view to Em about why you have struck a cord with women.

I loved what Em said. And I think there’s definitely something involved. Do you know what I mean? Like what she said is true….But you need to be humble in this world. You can’t go around talking yourself up because you’re not going to get anywhere. And I really listened to Em’s podcast, I thought it was brilliant. She interviewed me brilliantly. And I listened to it because I had to drive my mum back to Perth on the weekend, so I put it on in the car for my family to listen to. And they were just like, “Oh blah, blah, blah, blah. Let’s celebrate Con a bit more, shall we?” And so, they put me back in my place and I was like, “Okay, thanks, guys. You just needed to listen to five minutes of it.”

Well, they’re around you all the time.

Yeah, well, that’s right.

I thought the podcast was really interesting and her talking about your loyal community and why they’re loyal to you. And she touched on what it was about the women who didn’t like you because you’ve had a bit… And I don’t really want to talk about that too much because if people want to, then they can watch your Ted Talk and that gives a lot of insight into the bullying that you’ve experienced. But it was about why you have the haters and that potentially you’re triggering repressed women who try to hide the shame and the darkness of their life, where you just show it all.

I think that part of the interview made me so chuffed. I was just like, “Oh, that’s so sweet.” Not that I want to make women feel ashamed of themselves, but it just made me feel better about so many people hating on me so much. It was a better story than, “Well, you’re just shit.” Do you know what I mean? And I think that the whole coming out as a victim of bullying is tough for me because I’ve been very resilient my whole life. I would never be a victim of anything. I would never admit to being a victim of anything. I would always just find my way out, be resilient, be funny, joke about it.

And my psychologist once said to me, “Do you know whenever we get a little bit emotional, you always crack a joke so that you can side swipe us.” She said, “Just bearing that in mind because sometimes I think that we’re just friends and chatting and I end up laughing at your jokes, and I have to bring you back and get you open.” And I was like, “That’s true.” I’ve always used humour as a way to deflect. I’m not comfortable being truly vulnerable. I do the vulnerable things online, but that’s stuff I’m comfortable with. There are things that I’m not comfortable with that I don’t open up about and I think being a victim of bullying was one of them because I just ignored it for so long. And then I thought about victims and victimisation and how much it’s actually become a dirty word. And that’s really not fair for victims. Everyone goes, “Well, I’m not a victim.” And it’s like, well, what’s wrong with being a victim? There’s a perpetrator and a victim.

And so, when I came out and I said I am a victim, it was really hard for me to say that because I wanted to be like, “But I’m still tough. But I don’t give a shit because I’m Constance Hall.” But I am a victim and it has really fucking hurt me. And it’s okay to be a victim. And I think that gave a lot of the kids that came to me permission to go, “I’m a victim too and this happened to me.” I think hearing me speak the words that are spoken about me, because it was hard, you hear my voice shake, you don’t want to say these horrible things that are said about you for years. It really opened the door for a lot of younger people to come to me, or even mums saying, “This is happening to my kids.” And then we sort of realised how huge a problem bullying is.

So much so. I think I actually messaged you on Instagram when you were openly feeling the effects of some bullying, and I think I messaged something saying, “Con, don’t dance with it. You’re giving them your power.”

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

And you responded with, “I’ve been quiet for long enough. I need to stand up.” And then the Ted Talk came out and I was blown away. The message was all about, love the victim.

Yeah, looking after the victim, putting our energy there.

 Direct your energy with love to the victim.

Yeah, that’s right. And it’s just like kids. Like when your kids are all fighting and one of them goes, “Rumi slapped me.” If I go to Rumi and go, “Rumi…” I’m spread so thin in my household, so everybody’s fighting for my attention and that’s the golden pass. I give Rumi the attention. Instead, I’m ignoring Rumi, I’m giving Snow the attention because Snow’s just been hit and she needs love and she needs her cup filled up again. And Rumi sits there and his cup’s just depleting and he’s like, “Well, I’d better not hit Snow again because this feels like shit.”

So it’s kind of the same with bullying. And then when you think about that theory, works for domestic violence. And we’re all gone, “He needs to go to jail. And he did this and that.” Even like, look at paedophile on the internet, it’s the biggest thing that gets people enraged with good reason, but everyone just goes on this witch hunt.

Yes.

Constance:      “Capital punishment. We need to do this.” Fuck the paedophile. Yeah, lock him up, of course. But what about the victim? Nobody writes the comments passionately saying, “Where is this child now? Is there a fund we can help this child with?” No one feels as passionate towards rewarding with love as they do towards that fucking witch hunts and the hatred and punishment. So I’m just trying to say, why don’t we shift our energy and then we can all walk away feeling really good? Rather than walking away feeling really unsatisfied because somebody wronged somebody and it’s not right.

Yeah, spot on.

Yeah.

 And I think that just gives me an insight into why you do what you do so well, is that you’ve explained some of your followers as being women who have endured some hardships and who are broken, and we all have stories. More women than not have endured hardships, and you’re, in a way, giving them love and empowering them and showing them with the energy of, “Hey, I care. I’ve been there and it’s okay.”

It’s a really hard scenario because it’s so hard to talk to such damaged people because they have been through much more than I have. And now I’m coming from a place of quite a lot of success and so, it’s very hard not to sound patronising where these women are in… I found when I was in a place that I didn’t want to be in, everybody was like, “Well, you make your own decisions. Well, you create your own reality.” And I was just like, “Fuck off.” I actually need somebody to just go, “Wow, that sounds really hard. What can I do? What can we do to help?” And so, for me, I have so many women coming to me and going, “You have managed to just pull your life together and you’ve done so well and you’re so happy all the time. What can you tell me to give me advice?” And I’m like, “What am I supposed to say?” I actually got really lucky.

And I’m so grateful that I got lucky, but there isn’t a formula that you too can follow because I waited until I had the money. And I needed to earn some decent money to feel good about myself. I have a million women telling me that I’m great. Do you know what I mean? Like I can’t say to someone, “Well, start a blog and get a million followers and then you too will get the confidence that I have.” So it’s really about, I don’t know, you tell me what you need. It’s more, I can’t give people advice because I didn’t make that path all completely on my own. I did it with an army of support and love. And I just really don’t want to ever come across patronising to what women…

If you came on my tours, you would know. And I’m sure you know anyway, because you’re really intuitive, but women are in such a worse position than people think. People think, “Oh, they’ve got equality and all the rest of it.” And people just don’t know how much hurt we’re carrying and how tough we have to pretend to be, how happy we have to pretend to be, how grateful. And when you get them all in this really safe environment and they’ve all got each other’s backs, you really hear it. I try and give cuddles and photos with like 500 women at my shows, and they’ll always whisper something in my ear.

And it will just be like, I’ll try and educate my husband as much as I can educate a man, but you don’t know. You just don’t know. No one knows what these women are going through. When I was in Ireland, touring Ireland, and they can’t have abortions and this woman had a man having an affair who kind of, “You’re fat and ugly,” and treated her like shit. Husband, he raped her, she was 12 weeks pregnant telling us, “What do I do?” And then there’s women standing up and going, “I will take you to England.” “But it’s 12 weeks, I don’t know.” “Well, I will look after the baby for you. You can move in with me.” And it was just this incredible vibration was just getting lifted up, but it was also what a reminder of the situation that Western women are in. It’s not just like, people go, “Oh well, imagine how Africa feels.” And it’s like, I always say to everyone, “Just because your son lost his life in the war doesn’t mean that you can’t feel sad for my son who lost his legs.”

Right.

You know what I mean? It’s nice to empathise with them, but we can empathise with everybody.

And I think that the power of the sisterhood…

Constance:      Yeah. Crazy, isn’t it? I think that’s going to be the change for us. I think that women need to… The laws let us down, the systems let us down and I think we need to do, rather than fighting ScoMo, who’s a fucking idiot, and fighting all these people in power and saying, “Give us these rights.” There are people that need to do that. Penny Wong, I interviewed her. Amazing. Fight for us, but in the meantime, we need to just go, “Okay, do you know what?” They just pulled out on the extra funding for the domestic violence thing after the… I don’t even know the word for the politicians that decided it was just a COVID problem and that we didn’t need more funding. And I was bawling my eyes out hearing that answer. And Denim walked in and he was like, “What’s wrong with you?” And I had makeup all over my face, I was like, “We live in a fucked country. No one cares about women.” And he was just like, “Well, stop fucking crying about it and do what you can do.”

And I’ve obviously got my resources at my fingertips, but I’ve also got a spare bedroom and a couch that no one sleeps on. I’ve got a big, comfy one. Do you know what I mean? I think that we, as women, need to go, “What’s our power?” If you were in an abusive relationship, I could so easily just say to you, “Come and live with me for six months. We’ll find you a really nice house,” and all this stuff. And people just need that from each other, but no one has that. We all think we’re going to be in the streets or we’ve got this vision that we’re going to be in some refuge home five hours away from our family. And it doesn’t have to be like that, we can actually come together as a team and a force, and we can be more powerful. I really do believe divided, we fall. If we all stand up, everyone’s going to be scared of us. Men will be scared because we can fix each other, we can heal each other and we can change their lives.

 Well, I think yes, all for women and empowerment and I see the whole equality movement, so powerful and so strong. I’m all for it and think it’s very positive, but I also want to see it all in balance?

Mm-hmm (affirmative).

I think because it has been so out of balance, it’s rising and I’d just love to see a balance.

Well, I think that with the rise of the feminine, we’ve had to survive in a man’s world for a long time. That’s what they’ve called it, the man’s world and all the rest of it. And I think men can rise with us, but they need to embrace their feminine side, and they need to embrace heart and soul and kindness and that sort of nurturing mother. So I really do believe that that’s a really strong, feminine… Look at us, we are naturally just biologically more connected to our babies and each other. And men now need to understand, yeah, there is place for that sort of masculine energy, absolutely. But right now, we’ve got to embrace the feminine and they do as well.

 I agree.

Yeah, because we’ve been really good at embracing our masculine energy, haven’t we? We’ve had to do it for so long. Look at Tinder, women going, “I only want sex.” And meanwhile, they’re saying to their mate, “He won’t call me back.” But you’ve got to play the game. We’ve really played the game, now they’ve got to start playing our game and be like, “I really want a relationship.”

So you’ve got many boys?

Five.

Five boys. How do you raise your boys to embrace their femininity?

Well, I don’t know yet because my kids, I haven’t seen how they’ve turned out. The jury’s still out. I have a caveman son who’s such a boy. He’s that typical, they say that boys single focus and you can’t get them out of their zones, whereas my girls can do… I got, “Brush your teeth, hairbrush, put your shoes on.” Whereas boy will be like halfway through one shoelace. He’s like, “What was I doing?” I have the caveman son, I have the really sensitive boy. And one of my boys, I just got a call from the school saying that he’s been intimidating someone and he’s the most gentle, gorgeous boy.

I just don’t know exactly what to do, all I know is to continually try and to raise them with love and kindness rather than punishment. I’m just wanting to punishment and discipline. Discipline, the word comes from “teach” and that’s all we’re here to do, just guide. They can teach us, we can just try and guide them the right way. So the more aggression, the more hideous toxic masculinity they’re exposed to, I believe the worst they’re going to get. So when it comes to, and probably you won’t like this with your drive for balance, I think when it comes to relaying the guidelines and doing the discipline, I like to leave it in the feminine side. Because we are the nurturers, so we are the ones, we’ve been nurturing in the right way. And so, I always say to my husband, “Do you mind if I handle this?” Even if it’s his son who’s not biologically mine. “Do you mind if I handle this? Because I just feel like he might need that.” And my husband always gives love anyway. He’s really feminine and really in touch with his feminine side when it comes to that.

But I see, for example, in Africa, the charity I work with, Rafiki, they deal with the most traumatised people in the world, children, prostitutes at three. And yeah, I don’t even like using that word because it sounds like they chose it, but they deal with street boys. And these street boys are between the ages of like 10 and 17. And everyone in Kenya has always gone, “You cannot rehabilitate these boys. They are rough, they are dangerous, they will turn on you. It’s like trying to tame a lion, you just have to leave them alone and look after your children first.”

Anne-Marie and Sarah, the founder and co-founder of Rafiki went, “No, we’re not having that.” They’ve been feeding the kids in town, going in and giving them food and cleaning their clothes for them for years. “We believe we can bring him in and we believe we can love them and change them and help them.” So Anne-Marie does is play therapy. She’s a psychotherapist and she is all about reward therapy, love therapy, play therapy. She doesn’t punish anybody. And everyone thought this group of boys is going to come in and they’re just going to work you, girlfriend, and going to leave you with nothing. She says, “I don’t believe it.” She just brings them in and she has episodes, because they’re damaged.

But she said, for example, a boy pulled a knife out on one of the carers, and it was a Kenyan care and his initial response is to get angry and to punish. And Anne-Marie happened to be there and she just grabbed the boy and she just hugged him. And she said, “I’m so sorry.” And he was like, “For what?” And she was like, “I’m so sorry that you feel so threatened, you feel like you need to defend yourself. You feel like you need to protect yourself with a knife because the world has hurt you so much and shown you that. But you’re safe now and you don’t need to do that.” The boy burst into tears and he is now running the farm because he’s grown up there and he works there. And these are the boys that no one would go near.

These boys, I get to the farm when I got to Kenya and they were just hanging off me, like there was one every meter. And I was like, “What do you guys need?” Anne-Marie goes, “Oh, they’re just protecting you, honey, because you’re their queen, because I’ve told them all about you.” And I felt really unsafe going to Nairobi, but then I was like, “Denim, I’ve got to go back to [inaudible 00:22:05]. Where are my protectors?” And that’s all just coming up.

That is a really powerful story.

Yeah, isn’t it? I’ve been telling people that like, like Anne-Marie is amazing though. She’s one of those psychotherapists that you wish she was your mother-in-law. She’s just got love for everybody. And she teaches me things. I said to her once, “I’m having a fight with Denim and I just cannot fucking get over this. We fight over the same thing all the time.” And she goes, “Well, whatever you’re doing isn’t working, so do the opposite.” And I was like, “What do you mean the opposite?” And she’s like, “Well, when you walk in and you want to say, “Get the fuck out of bed, you lazy blah, blah,” just give him a hug and say, “Honey, it must be horrible not to to be able to get out of bed.”” He was out of bed in 10 minutes. And it was just like, I’ve always needed her to continually recheck me.

 That’s like one of my mentors who I’ve interviewed, Melaney Ryan, her whole purpose is to show love and compassion in every single exchange.

Mm-hmm (affirmative). It’s amazing.

So as a human being, if we can show love and compassion in every single exchange. And I mean, it’s so beautiful and…

It’s so hard.

 So hard sometimes, isn’t it?

Does she live like that?

She’s very loving and compassionate. I’ve never seen her be triggered and she’s doing amazing things. Yeah, I think she very much leads by example and role models what she says.

Yeah, I agree. And that’s how you learn, isn’t it? I reckon you only learn from… You don’t learn from being told anything.

 Role-modelling.

Yeah, or seeing someone else live their life like that and you go, “Actually, I could probably copy a bit of that.”

How do you keep open and loving? Like when you do get into a funk.

Yeah, well it’s hard.

You get angry?

I think I went through a whole year of, after my divorce, I got a lot of the people that kind of loved me, I don’t know, maybe because I hadn’t really been honest about the fact the that marriage, I was leaving, but I was gagged kind of. I couldn’t really say these things because I was still feeling my way through it. And then I met Denim like straightaway as well. I think we broke up in January or something like that. Anyway, it was a very small amount of time. I’d already met Denim as a friend and blogged about him, and we didn’t get together for three months, but I don’t think many people believe that because a lot of people say that, don’t they? But I was actually chasing him and he stepped up. It took him three months to sleep with me. And average is rare, but he takes sex really seriously. Weirdo.

Anyway, so I definitely think that there was a stage where I felt like I’d always had my squad, I’d always had my girls. They’d say something to me, they’d always be there for me, then all of a sudden the tide was changing a little bit and they were like… I hate that one so much, when people commenting on something says, “I used to love Constance Hall.” It seems to carry a little bit more depth. Do you know what I mean? I feel like I’ve let someone down and that was happening a lot, and I think that my happiness was just sort of triggering some people.

I’d really made this decision for me. I’d done everything for my children. So had Denim. We both say the same thing, like we both chose each other for us. It was the first time that we just went, “This is for me.” And people just saw me as a woman going for love and disregarding the last marriage and not disregarding the children at all because I wouldn’t do anything that I didn’t think was for them, but I was just going for myself at the time. And it was just rubbing some people up the wrong way.

And that on top of the bullying… And being in love, I definitely wasn’t as relatable as a lot of women are that struggle with making the relationships work because I was just in that lust period. So there wasn’t a hell of a lot that I could really write about without getting slammed. And so, there was probably about a year where I was a little bit cagey. And I didn’t want to be at all, but I just might’ve changed my tone a little bit rather than being my vulnerable self. I just didn’t want to be vulnerable. I just felt like I was too vulnerable so I needed to be a little bit more protective. And that’s probably a good thing. And so then, after a long time, I was just like, “No, I love these women and I am writing for the people that love me, not the people that don’t or the people that used to.” So it was a conscious act. It became a conscious act.

In the beginning, people used to say to me, “You’re so brave through all the things that you share.” And I said, “That’s unusual because it’s very natural for me to be extroverted.” And I’ve always done things that I’ve really regretted on my private Facebook with fighting with husbands and boyfriends and putting stuff on. So tragic when I look back, where the anger drove me and I, “Blah, blah, blah, ruining you. You’ll never run me again.” Type, type, type, fuck my life. So I’ve been a little bit more responsible with it, but everything that I share just comes really naturally. Whereas after that year of… Whoa, this is actually really hard. I’m out on my own. I’m not a media outlet, I’m a person and it’s personal. So then I backed off and then I had to call on that bravery that people were talking about, then I had to go, “No, you can be brave. You do it.” And I think that the sentiment has come back around and that I feel really connected again with my audience, which is so important to me.

And you’re in love. You’re not in a place of hardship.

Yeah.

 Isn’t that interesting? Whereas the women that were following you before, it’s almost like you being happy and in love, they didn’t like that.

Then I had all these feelings of, “Have I normalised shitty relationships and made people feel okay about shitty relationships, and now they don’t like me anymore because they’re still in them? Is that what I’ve done?” And then mine and Denim’s relationship became more normal because we had a kid together and stuff like that. And then I realised that no, I wasn’t ever normalising unhappiness. I was just saying it’s normal to not always be happy. So I’m kind of okay with that now, I did question it for a little while.

I can imagine. I see Denim’s into meditation a bit. You publicly said he’s far more spiritual than you.

Yeah.

How spiritual do you get? Do you feel like you have this intuition that you connect to and guided you?

Well, I had a boyfriend when I was 17. 16, 17. Did you read my first book?

Yes. And the mother, oh my goodness.

Yeah, so I desperately tried to become spiritual because they were so spiritual. So I spent two and a half years like-

So can you just explain to anyone who hasn’t read the book…

Okay, so if anyone who’s listening, his mother was a clairvoyant, spiritual healer. I try not to give away too much, but she always made me feel like I wasn’t good enough. Like she took us to get, what are those things? A chakra photo? Aura photo.

 Oh, right.

Aura photos taken by these specialists. And he had like all just red aura and he was meant to be her spiritual, she thought that he was a gift from another dimension. And I had every colour under the sun and, “The woman uses Photoshop. I’ve got to get my husband to look at this.” He called his neighbour to come and look at this and he and I were like, “Oh my God, we’ve never seen anyone so…” And I was just sitting there and the mom was just seething. And I was like, “Oh my God, maybe I am spiritual, but I didn’t know.”

Because your energy, they were blown away by you.

Yeah, they were completely blown away. They were like, “We want a copy of this.” And I was just this awkward looking, cut off all my hair, chubby little 17 year old. And they were like, “Wow.” And he was this graceful, tall… So in the car on the way home, the mom was like, “Just so that you know, the reason your energy was so good and Matt’s was red was because you’ve actually sucked a lot of his energy out of him.”

 Oh my Goodness.

Yeah, she was awful to me. She didn’t even see it, she thought she’d been really loving and really, “I’m helping you, but this is what you need to understand.” And I looked at him because he was driving and I was in the backseat through the rear view mirror. I was giving him that look that you give your boyfriend, like, “Are you really going to let her speak to me like this?” And she caught me. She caught my eyes and she goes, “If you’ve got something to say, say it.” And I was like, “No I haven’t got anything to say. You’re right, I’ve just been sucking his positive fucking vibes.”

So I went through years of wanting to be good enough for this family and they was sort of above my pay grade, if you will. And I really just wanted to be there, I don’t know why. And then I realised, no matter how much I was reading, no matter how much I was forcing myself to be this visual person and closing my eyes and wishing that this intuition would just pop into my head and tell me what to do. And I was just like, “Let me levitate in front of her, please. God, if you will…” And then I broke up with him.

I actually went to Melbourne and I lost heaps of weight. I was a chubby teenager. It was a really interesting time in my life, I went from being this invisible chubby teenager to losing lots of weight and just being the person that everyone turned their heads at when I was 18. And that really gave me severe anxiety because I was so scared of going back to being invisible. I was getting the job at the cool pub, at [The Cot 00:30:17], and they only had hot chicks. And all of a sudden, I was a hot chick and all the DJs wanted to talk to me. And it was just like, I was so scared of going back because I’d realised now how invisible I’d always been. I didn’t realise that. And now I know that I was not invisible at all to the people that mattered. You know what I mean? It was just this pretentious little world that I was invisible to.

I still do think that society’s got a long way to come when it comes to how we view women and their weight and their appearance. So the severe anxiety kicked in. Anyway, I moved to Melbourne and started hanging out with the gay boys.

 Oh. I love that.

And they changed my life. All of a sudden, I have these tall, handsome, smart men who really valued my opinion and who really just loved me. And I was an apprentice hairdresser, I had no money, and they would pay for me to go out with them and take me home and sleep in bed with me. And it was just incredible, I had never experienced anything like it. And I feel like that gave me some real confidence to be this more spiritual person.

I had spent three years studying to be spiritual. And then I moved back from Melbourne and I was just felt really graceful and I felt really self-assured and I felt really better than these people because they were trying to put this ego in their spirits. They were trying to make me feel worse, but I was okay with them. So I was like, “Not that I’m better than you, but I don’t need anything from you anymore. I don’t need your approval.” And he was gravitating towards me and I put the boundaries up.

So you finding your spirituality was really finding a connection to yourself?

Yeah, I think so. I thought to myself, “Well, personal growth. I’ve come such a long, further way than when I was trying to be spiritual.” So maybe this is my version of spirituality. I’m still not good at sitting down and meditating. Denim’s a cynic though, so Denim doesn’t believe in any spiritual people at all. And I’m a little bit more inclined to, I’ll give people a go. But he’s just seen so much full of shit stuff.

 Yeah.

Constance:      Yeah But you really do see what you’re putting out there as well. I think that he feels guilty that he doesn’t do the meditating that he knows he should do, whereas I don’t really feel guilty at all about anything that I’m doing. So I feel like just going through a walk in the forest is my way of being connected. And so, then I actually see good and I see spirituality in people and I go, “Oh my God, they’re so beautiful and so grounded and so enlightened, and I want to be like that.” And Denim’s like, “Oh, for fuck’s sake.”

 Okay. So you’re the spiritual one?

Maybe I am. That’s what I’m getting to.

Do you wear perfume and connect with the power of scent?

I love the power scent to the point where, like my dad used to put rose oil on me when I was little and take me to the butterfly enclosure in the zoo, and just wait for the butterflies to come to me. I used to just be like… So yeah, I just felt like a flower. And so, any time that I’d smell it, I’d smell him. And I think my smell is my strongest sense. I can walk past a bush and I’m taken back to sometime in my childhood.

Yeah, the power of scent. So do you use it?

I’ve always sort of thought, “Perfume, chemicals.” That’s just what I’ve always thought, so I’ll wear a roll on, like an oil, but I never realized that there was this whole movement of beautiful, oily perfumes that don’t give you rashes and asthma and won’t give you cancer.

 Well, a lot of commercial perfumers do use synthetics and they can be full of chemicals.

Well, yeah. And they’re the ones that are… I’ve got to get Denim to his appointment now.

Oh, okay.

Sorry.

You’ve got to go. Oh my goodness. That was quick.

That’s why he’s angry at me, because he’s got to do his driver’s test in 15 minutes. I had no idea, we’ve been here for like four hours.

We’ve got partway through our podcast. But you know what?

Part one.

This is absolutely part one. We have to end it here, but as you can all hear, Con is absolutely fascinating and your energy is off the charts. And there will be a part two.

There will. Thank you so much for having me.

Oh, thank you. You’d best go.

Constance:      Thank you. I’ve been dismissed.

All images courtesy of Constance Hall @mrsconstancehall www.queenthelabel.com.au  

The post With Intent – Episode 5
Constance Hall appeared first on Melis Natural Perfume.

Melaney Ryan from the Melaney Ryan Institute of Applied Consciousness (MRIAC)  is a 4th generation energy medicine practitioner with more than 36 year’s clinic experience. She is the founder and teacher of an energy medicine therapy called Integrated Therapeutic Alignment (ITA) and Mahat Meditation which are recognised globally. The latter is currently being researched by a major Australian university and testament to Melaney’s leadership in her field of energy alignment psychology.

Melaney is my teacher, mentor and friend and I’m honoured to have her share her views on:

I hope you enjoy the podcast and I thank you for listening.

Melaney, could you please give our listeners a bit of an understanding of your background because I found it fascinating to understand that you learnt energy from your great grandmother. If you could just give us a little bit of a background as to how you have come to form the Institute and to be sharing your knowledge today.

Absolutely. Well, for me, as a child, I grew up in a family that just understood energy, and we knew about meditation, we knew about all the energy links within the energy fields. And to talk about intuition was really quite normal for us. So, as a child I always thought, “Why doesn’t anybody else talk about these things?” Because it was quite foreign to a lot of people, 30, 40, 50 years ago. But for myself, absolutely, my family and parents have been a great inspiration to me in really encouraging me to look at the depths of life, and to look at consciousness at a deeper level.

And also to recognise that as human beings, we have such an ability to interplay within life here, and to make a difference not just for ourselves, for the earth, but also for future generations. So, for me, having that depth within my family always allowed me to explore deeper. I was one of those kids that used to look up at the stars and you know there was so much more out there, and so much more we could also experience within our own lives. And that started my journey on really looking at energy, and how energy interplays with us, and how we interplay with it. And how we’re actually within ourselves and also within consciousness.

That then led me to study particularly with a Chinese master, and quite few other teachers worldwide, like Lama Geshe Lodoe Gyatso, a Tibetan monk that I also learned a lot from and was a great teacher of mine. Within these studies, I decided then to start my own clinic in working with energy medicine. And you can understand back then, it was quite difficult because there wasn’t a lot of awareness of that. And it was in studying and then working with my clients that I started to see repetitive patterns within them.

And those repetitive patterns all were then documented, which are now part of the 14 training manuals that I’ve actually created within particularly ITA energy medicine. So, in answer to your question, yes, it was my family that really started that journey to where we are today with MRIAC.

And just with your family, I recall a story of you watching your grandmother treat people because you grew up on the Canary Islands. Could you share a little bit of those experiences?

Absolutely. Actually, it was my great-grandmother who used to work on with clients in the Canary Islands. I didn’t view her, but I did see a lot of both my other family members work with energy. And again, for her that was very difficult because back then not a lot of people knew about energy medicine. The sad part was that when someone did need help, she was the first person that they knocked on her door. And of course, she unconditionally helped them. So, those truths that were shared to me by my own family almost left an imprint in my mind that there’s got to be more to what we’re actually experiencing just in a physical side of looking at ourselves.

And Melaney, when you talk about when you first started clinic, how long ago was that? How long ago did you start putting manuals together?

I’ve been in clinic now for 36 years, which just is like amazing. All those years that have gone by. But it was my clinic time as I said that really allowed me to see repetitive patterns. So, if somebody had a physical symptom, for example, with anxiety, I noticed the same pattern in other people that I were treating with anxiety. So, that was all documented. And that is actually now what’s created our training manuals. And Melissa people used to say to me, “Oh, you’re just gifted because you come from a family that understand energy.” And well, I proved them wrong because I’m documenting it, I’m writing it all down, I’m creating the manuals. Students were then trained of course, which you know about. And those students are receiving the same results as what I’m receiving in clinic. So, that now makes ITA energy medicine a systematic approach actually, and it can be researched. And Mahat meditation currently is being researched by a predominant university here in Australia.

I’ve obviously been studying with you now for many years now. And the study of energy anatomy is actually quite complex for the lay person. I’m still blown away by the complexity yet accuracy of the information and the grounded nature of your specific teachings. It’s so grounded.  Anyone that wants to criticise it as being “woo-hoo”, it’s just not possible because it’s so methodical the way you’ve presented it, the way you’ve described the anatomy, and our web structure, and how it interplays with the structure of the earth. I know this is going to be so challenging in a short timeframe, but could you provide a bit of a breakdown of the energy anatomy, and how it influences the way we are in the world? So, that someone listening not necessarily familiar with energy can get a better understanding of how you work with energy, and how you teach others to work with energy, and what energy is.

Absolutely. And my belief is that energy systems are interconnected with our physical systems. And the mind also interplays with both the energetic, and the physical symptoms. And to me that’s the core of it. We need to understand that it’s not just about energy, it’s how the energy is interplaying with the physical, and how the minds are also interplaying, or the brain is interplaying with the energetic, and the physical. So, I’m so humbled to hear your words that you find the work very grounding. That is very important for me, that when the information is given, people can understand it, and the cognitive brain can accept it, and it makes sense to people. It’s a form of respect. But in a nutshell for a lot of us, every day we’ll look after the physical body. So, we’ll go to the gym, we’ll go to the hairdresser, and we’ll do all the things to look after our physical body. We eat well, et cetera. But what a lot of us don’t realise, Melissa, is that it’s the energy body that’s actually fuelling the physical body.

So, if the energy body is offset through lower emotions, for example, or trauma, etc. that’ll have an impact on the physical body at some level. And that’s where we see physical symptoms. So, energy, I mean, I could talk for hours as you know. But just in the nutshell, looking at energy anatomy is very important. Our energy field is very important. How we’re interplaying within that energy field, how its interplaying within our everyday experiences. How it’s giving us an awareness even to the external world. But I think the most important thing that we need to look at is the energy anatomy and its links.

So, for example, what is the energy anatomy? We study physical anatomy to the body, but how many of us really understand the energetic anatomy? How many of us know the Meridian pathways, the chakras, the vortices, and how they’re all interplaying with the physical organs, and the physical aspect of being, and how the mind is collecting that as well. So, for me, I really try and emphasise in the study of energy, it’s not just about the energy field, it’s what are the links that are linking the energy field to the physical. And then how the mind is connecting those links.

Another way we can look at it is how we can utilise energy to gain a greater exchange within the external world. How we interplay within that external world, how we are within our present moment. How are we manifesting? How we’re expressing ourselves within that external world. And I think too, we also need to recognise that energy does definitely has movement. But we can also have an awareness to energy where that movement becomes speed, which gives us a much deeper exchange within our experience of life.

But I’m hoping that’s given you some nutshell on the study of energy, and more and more of us thank goodness are starting to realise it is such a vital tool for us to have. To know about energy and how it’s interplaying. And as I started the discussion, it’s the energy systems that are interconnected with our physical systems, and how the mind is interplaying with both the energetic, and the physical systems. That to me is the most important thing.

I’ve been studying your Mahat meditation for quite a while now and understand how psychologists, for example, talk about the power of the mind and the importance of  getting in control of your thoughts but you take it one step further, and say that it’s the emotions that actually lead to the thoughts. So, if you’re not managing your emotions, and managing your emotions also from an energetic structure, from where they might be stored in your energy body, then those same patterns can keep playing out and happening. So, can you talk a little bit about the importance of managing your emotions, and how lower emotions can keep us stuck and negatively impact our lives?

That’s so true. And as you cite, most people will look at the thoughts, but they’re not really understanding that those thoughts were also being fuelled by those lower emotions. And those lower emotions, as we all know, when they offset you, they can spiral you. And what happens then is the subconscious mind, the long-term memory just starts to accept that as being normal. And that’s where it becomes very hard for an individual to actually balance, and offset of a lower emotion. And when you look at lower emotions as well, I mean, something like anger for example.

Anger has a direct link to over worrying, overthinking. So, somebody may recognise that they have anger, but actually where’s the over worrying, overthinking coming from? And where is that frustration within themselves? And that’s why even within the MRIAC we’ve created very short guided meditations to balance the lower emotions in different categories. So, balancing frustration, anger, rage, over worrying, overthinking, anxiety, grief, sadness, balancing these things within ourselves. Fear and fright are absolutely very, very important, otherwise, the long-term memory continues to store them, and it just becomes real. And it thinks that that’s where you feel safe. So, there is no other focus point for the mind to bring its attention to.

And then that becomes a pattern, and almost a go-to for your way of being?

Absolutely. And I hear this so often, even in my own clinic, “I don’t even want to be like this anymore.” But they feel that the mind has a control of them. The subconscious mind isn’t really that clever. Most of us, we think it has a hold of us, but in actual fact, it’s the long term memory and just needs a different pathway. It needs another instruction. And if you can do that through repetition, the subconscious mind will also start to find its balance. But if you can also find the root because, or where it’s located, or as I stated before, that energy links, or the energy anatomy that links to the specific organs, because every organ carries a different emotion. You’re already seeing that there’s a different pathway in place. And the mind of course will recognise that, the present mind, and the conscious mind will recognise it, and so, will the subconscious mind, which is the long-term memory. And then we’re on a pathway to self-healing, and having more empowerment of what’s actually happening particularly within the cognitive brain.

Fascinating. We’ll come back to that, but I just wanted to ask, in your perspective, and understanding of energy what’s happening in the world right now with the COVID-19 virus? Why is it happening at this point in time? And then let’s talk about how we can respond to limit its impact, and then talk a bit more about getting hold of the emotions for anyone that’s really struggling right now. What advice would you give to them?

Looking at what’s happening in our world right now in my understanding, Melissa, this is a frequency offset. Now, this frequency offset could be because of external factors as we know, the EMF, etc. But it’s also when we look at it on an energy understanding, there is a frequency offset. And when you look at it through energy understanding, the frequency basically, is what keeps us aligned in our true natures. What’s actually happening in the physical world, how we’re perceiving that physical world, and our self-worth, our self-love, and how we’re interacting within that.

The frequency will also then affect how we’re perceiving the external world. So, we very much focused on the “I” persona, building materialism, capitalism, stepping on others, exploitation, etc. Or are we, as a collective, actually looking at more of a collective unit, and working in harmony with other individuals within our world. And not just individuals, with every living thing within our world, in our understanding this is a frequency imbalance.

A frequency of the earth? A frequency of the human? Our individual frequency or the collective frequency?

So, it’s basically when you look at the offset of the frequency, it’s ourselves as we have behaved here on this planet earth. I think for a lot of us, we’ve forgotten we’re guests here, we are guests on this planet. It’s also external factors that will play a role in that. And of course, the earth resonance will be reduced when the frequency is pulled. So, in my understanding, that’s what we need to focus on is the earth resonance, and also the sound resonance within ourselves, that depth within ourselves.

And to explain that in a simple term, what is the sound resonance in energy understanding? The sound resonance is how we integrate our stillness, how we’re actually present in that stillness, and how we can find clarity within that stillness. It’s also about clarity of thought. And it’s also about recognising our greatness. So, you can see that even as humans, most of us don’t really know our true potential. Most of us don’t have clarity of thought, and most of us don’t spend any time in meditation, or stillness, or reflection time.

So, in my understanding, the way through this is for humans to recognise that those three qualities, meditation, stillness, spirituality, inward work, reflection, clarity of thought, and knowing your true potential, and to be able to communicate that, holding your presence. I feel that is the key for humans here so that we can see balance again within our world and within ourselves.

Balance, and lifting of the frequency. And so, someone that, okay, is in their lower emotions being anger, frustration, or fear right now that’s not necessarily going to help the situation?

No. But as we discussed, Melissa, when people don’t have tools to come out of fear, that’s very difficult for them. So, that is another role I believe with MRIAC at the moment is that we are providing the tools. And we get told that worldwide, “You guys aren’t just talking about it, you’re actually giving us the tools.” And we take that very, very seriously. We have students from all walks of life, all different ages, and our tools are easy. You can apply them into your daily lives easily. And they do show you the links between the energy body, and the physical, and how the mind is interplaying.

And so, your advice to someone right now that might be in fear, that might be really struggling, or really worried, and rightly so perhaps about their financial situation, what’s your advice?

Try to shift the focus. So, try to shift the focus to things that empower you, or that you’re passionate about, or bring it to things like family, people that you love, care about, bring it to higher consciousness, if that assists too. Try and shift the focus is my answer to that. Try and be around people that are positive, try and be around like-minded people that actually do want to treat others in a respectful way, and also our animal kingdom in our planet earth. And try to be around what gives you sustenance. That’s very important, and to keep that positivity up. And of course, faith. Faith and trust that everything will balance. But standing true to what you know, in my understanding, with no doubt always gives us a little bit of breathing space, and also helping others when you do that for yourselves. Positivity is also very important.

Deepak Chopra who you would know well, and a lot of us follow always says that when you’re feeling sad or worried he recommends you think about somebody else, or think about others and get out of the “I” persona.

Yes. It’s what I refer to as shifting the focus. Shifting your awareness to something else. So, go for a walk in nature. Concentrate on your feet walking in the earth. Look at your pet, or your animal, or your children. Just shift the focus is incredible how quickly it works. Another way to do it is to feel your heart energy. So, for us, we recommend just feel the heart, feel things that you love. As I said before with your children, or anything that you love. And again, it’s giving it another focus point at that time so that the mind doesn’t spiral in what it thinks you feel safe in. But again, meditation is also important, and if you know the links, it provides a quicker balance when the mind is connecting to both the physical, and the energetic.

If I go back to my own practice, and my own learnings and journey, for a long time I found it very difficult to connect inwards. I found it very difficult to connect to my heart space. And to even acknowledge how I was feeling. I was so in my head, and so out of balance. Advice that I would like to give from my own experience is to just keep trying, keep trying to practice that stillness because eventually it does come, and eventually you get into your feeling body. Can you elaborate on why it can be so difficult?

When you look at stillness in our understanding of Mahat meditation, to really find stillness, as you’re saying Melissa, too, is very difficult for individuals if they haven’t got two other qualities in place. And those two other qualities is the first one that I discussed on self-love, self-worth, in every moment how are you? Who is the self? Who is the I am? How you’re interacting in that present moment? So, just for example, somebody could be very frustrated, but is that their true nature? So, if they’re not standing true to that in every moment, that will have an impact.

The next point they also need to look at is their intuition, their insight, their awareness at any particular time. If a situation is arising, are they going purely to the cognitive brain or are they sitting for a moment going, “What do I intuitively feel about this?” So, these are two very important qualities that we need to recognise before we can enter the stillness because otherwise, the mind just has an interplay with us, and it’s very difficult to find that stillness, or the lower emotions that they’re having an interplay. So, knowing who you are, having self-worth, having self-love, and being true to your true nature in every moment. When there is something there that you need a question to, or you need to move a certain way in your life, what is that intuition telling you? What’s your awareness telling you? So, you can see you have to have balance, and you have to have that awareness in place before that stillness can start to germinate within your systems, and within the mind.

Absolutely. And I think you absolutely need to take responsibility for your own emotions as well. Because I know for myself, I spent a long time blaming others for the way I was feeling. And you’ve been an amazing mentor to me in saying, “Well, actually, Melissa, you’re choosing to react ….. so you need to take responsibility for your own actions, your own emotions, own them.” And with the stillness work, I guess you don’t get triggered so much. Can you talk a little bit about this insight?

That’s really where we are now as a human race, when we look at the COVID-19, the virus it’s running through, it’s just a vehicle as an expression of what’s actually happening within our world, and also through the understanding of consciousness. So, if we look at that a little bit further, again, it takes us to … That stillness is vitally important for us. As a human race, we need to really understand that we need to know now which way do we want to go?

Do we want to go back into the corruption, the greed, the capitalism etc, the exploitation of every living creature here on earth and human being? Or are we consciously choosing that we want a new way? And for me, I feel that that’s a very, very important category of what’s happening now. So again, as I’ve mentioned, I feel that all of us have to look at it now. We have to say, “Who am I? Why am I here on earth?” To start to just self-explore a little bit. And in my understanding, Melissa, as I’ve mentioned, we have to go inwardly to do that.

And that doesn’t have to be a big deal, and change your whole life. It’s just even just every day if you’re feeling frustrated, just sit down, shift the focus, close your eyes for a few moments, go for a walk in nature, make time to fuel what gives you sustenance. It’s like we’re now being asked within consciousness, “What do you want to experience?” And at one level that’s really empowering. We just need to decide what it is that we want. For me personally, I would like to have a world based in unity. Why? Because I feel for future generations, we cannot continue the way that we are living. It’s impossible.

We’ve almost become robots. So disconnected, so conditioned. And I feel that this is a bit of a gift too because I know for myself it has made me stop even more, and really make the inward connection a priority. And I see your partway through a series of weekly free live meditations, last week we did the first and you had over 100 people on the platform. There could have been more, but apparently Zoom only allows 100 at one point in time. Can you tell us what that meditation aims to do, and the technique you’ve chosen to apply to those meditations? 

It’s online. That’s right. Really that was our way of bringing like-minded people together from all over the world, and also to just let people experience a form of meditation if they haven’t meditated before. And yes, we did max out, we booked in for 100. We weren’t too sure of the numbers that we would receive. But it was quite sad because a few people did miss out. But this week we’re ready for 500 placements, so that’s great. But what was really beautiful was just seeing all the faces worldwide. And the people there because they genuinely want to see world unity, and more balance within our earth, and also within ourselves.

What we did on that meditation was basically we were fuelling the sound resonance, which is what I was sharing before. It’s us acknowledging within ourselves that we as a collective can communicate what we know is true, that we do have a greatness. We’re only using … even science confirms that … a very small portion of our true potential. And then as a human race, we do know that we have to acknowledge our balance, and our insight, and then take action with that balance, and insight. And we’re also recognising that maybe we’ve gone too far one way. We’ve got such busy lives, we’re doing all these things, but in actual fact, maybe we just need to find that stillness, that reflection time every now and again.

And as I said, I do believe that’s a main key for assisting us back into full balance here. What we practice was a mantra. And if you don’t know what a mantra is, a mantra is basically a repetition of words spoken. And it’s just recited in the form of a meditation practice. So, the meditation practice that we were utilising, the words pretty much in a nutshell are basically stating unification, oneness, kindness, and compassion. And it was just so beautiful to see it embraced worldwide. But in that meditation, we were fuelling the sound resonance of the earth, and also the sound resonance within our own energy systems, and central core force.

Ultimately, we just need to do it. Let’s just connect inwards and do it. And I guess a really quick technique maybe that you could share with everyone is the grounding technique, and the importance of connecting into the earth, and the electromagnetic current?

Absolutely. I definitely recommend grounding. Grounding is very easy. Basically, you just focus on a point below, and in between your feet. So, whenever you’re feeling on the ground, you just focus there. You make a connection with intention that I am connecting to the earth energy. Another very good technique to help if your offset is to breath, abdominal breathing, because most of us when we’re offset or stressed, we’ll take the breath up into the chest. And then if there’s no breathing to the abdominal area, what happens is that also offsets the vagus nerve, which can also affects the central nervous system.

So, if you can get that breath into the abdominal breathing down into your abdominals, that’ll automatically relax that vagus nerve, and also central nervous system will be more relaxed in that as well. So, I would definitely recommend abdominal breathing, and grounding point if anyone’s feeling offset anytime throughout day. So, even if you’re feeling nervous or anxious, just be aware of the breath. Just make sure that that breathing is coming down to the abdominal area. At that moment, focus on your grounding point below your feet, and in between your feet, and into the ground. It’s so quick, and it works wonders. Just those two little simple techniques.

And you can do that with your children,  holding their ankles  and encouraging them to envisage roots? I find if my kids are acting out, a quick fix is to just grab their ankles, hold them, and make them focus downwards to the earth. Often, it’s because I need the grounding, but it also helps to ground them in. So, thank you for that.

You’re welcome.

Now, we’re just going to talk about scent. I know you’re familiar with my scent, and I’d like to acknowledge your teachings influence on providing me with the courage to live, I guess, my truth and launch these scents. And attempt to make a difference in this world by encouraging people to go inward, and to use scent as a tool for that, to develop a deeper understanding of themselves and therefore consciousness. Do you have a favourite within the MELIS range?

I definitely do. My favourite is Gratia, which is grace. It’s the Bulgarian rose and Indian sandalwood scent. I just love that one.

Any tips for application and use?

Well, I have noticed recently that you’ve put out a beautiful technique of the temples, activating of the temples, smelling the scent. And really allowing the scent to move through every part of your being. In my understanding of energy, the scent or the smell actually also has a direct link to the frontal lobe of the brain because the olfactory bulb is located there. So, scent we also take very, very seriously, Melissa, but smell or the scent is also how we perceive ourselves, and our experiences, and how we’re integrating the present moment.

So, that was interesting because we’ve had the discussion on that. But what it also links to is the scent will help us to carry, or detach from certain emotions that aren’t serving us at any particular time. Scents will give us a deeper love, and appreciation for things because when you’re smelling something that smells beautiful, or you’re connecting to what resonates with you, all of a sudden you feel this appreciation. And this expansion within the energy field. And it gives you, for me personally, a positive emotion of happiness. So, to me scent is very, very important. It allows us to feel safe with who we are. It also gives us that sense of happiness. It lets us build those virtues of love, and appreciation. And because it has a direct link to the frontal lobe of the brain can also help you detach from emotions that aren’t serving you.

Thank you for that. I do have a question I’ve been pondering. Do you recommend specific use of the same scent if you are trying to affirm certain emotions?

I think it’s more targeted because I do believe that every scent carries a specific tone. And those tones can then be aligned to energy systems as well, which will also then have a direct link to the physical. Absolutely, we can use an array of scents, but if it’s targeted for specific things, to me I find that more intriguing and more effective.

Great. So, we’re using specific scents program specific emotions. You’ll see more of this coming from Melis, and I can’t wait. But I wanted to get back to Mahat meditation, which is the meditation you’ve created and I use on all micro batches of MELIS perfumes with the intent of its wearer to live their personal truth, and greatness. Can you tell our listeners what Mahat meditation is?

Mahat meditation, it’s basically five tiers of learning, through meditation. And the first level basically is what we classify the gym work, where we’re going in, and we’re working the internal muscles that haven’t been worked for a while. And we’re putting people into the gym. So, there’s a lot of active movement, inwardly active movement through the guided meditation. And then the individuals are still given those stillness points, and integration points to go deep within their meditations.

Level two is all about the circulation of energy, the up and the down movements, and getting the movement. So, it’s like when you’re in the gym, you can work the muscles, but at some point you have to go into the quicker or faster speed of that gym.

And that’s through the chakra system, which a lot of people are familiar with chakras, but I don’t think they’re actually are aware of what the chakra system does.

And level one and two all work with the Chi energy. Most people don’t recognise that a chakra is just the reflection of your physical organ. So, it’s crazy that we know about our physical organs, but what’s actually keeping those physical organs alive in your chakras. And your chakras, your front chakras are the projectors of your reality. And the back chakra is the hard drive to that reality. And every chakra carries a different quality. So, if there is an offset in their quality, it will project out as that offset in your external reality.

Levels three, four, and five also integrates the Chi energy with the divine energy. And that’s where the individual is going deeper within themselves, and they’re recognising the greatness within themselves, and they’re given tools to go deeper within themselves. And as you know, Melissa, we’ve had beautiful testimonials worldwide where people have been offset by certain things. Even qualities that they were carrying, physical symptoms like anxiety, depression, and our students clearly say over and over again, “I can’t even find that. Even if I try to find anxiety, I can’t find it in my body anymore.”

That’s fantastic. I can vouch for the positive impact that Mahat meditation has had on my life so thank you Melaney. Before we wrap up is there anything else you would like to add to our discussion today?  

Just really with the COVID-19, as you discussed, for me, just to stress again, I simply just see that as a vehicle. To me what we need to look at is the earth resonance. And as human beings, I do believe we’ve lost touch with the earth. We need to find our deeper connection back to the earth, to able to feel its natural rhythm, the heartbeat of the earth, and to be one with  the earth. I feel that’s very, very important, Melissa. And hopefully more and more of us will start to recognise that simple truth.

So, if you’re not currently meditating, or you find meditating too hard to sit in stillness, just go and take a walk and connect to the earth?

Absolutely, be in nature and also fuelling positive emotions like love, and kindness, compassion to others. And if there is negativity there, then make a conscious effort through discipline to shift it for yourself. And as you said, we can always blame others. That’s so much easier to do, but to just look at yourself and to review yourself I think is a very important thing for us all to do as well.

Yes. And sometimes quite hard to do as well, but important.

It takes courage, right? It takes courage, you can sit in trust and faith forever, but sometimes in life you have to step forward, in courage for what you believe in. So, if you believe in yourself, even as a soul, or as a human being, you’ve got to stand for that truth, and to demonstrate who you are in every present moment.

On that, Melaney, I think we’ve come to the end of the time of our discussion. And I know there’s going to be a part two. I have been wanting to interview you. And I’m so grateful for your time, and the opportunity to talk about COVID from an energy perspective has been invaluable. So, thank you.

Thank you so much, Melissa, for giving me the time to share. I deeply appreciate that. And I hope something that we’ve shared resonates with the listeners.

I hope so too. I’m sure it will. And Happy Easter.

Much love. Thank you Melaney.

For more information about Melaney Ryan and the Melaney Ryan Institute of Applied Consciousness please visit www.mriac.com.au instagram: @melaney_ryan_institute FaceBook: @melaneyryaninstitute

The post With Intent – Episode 4
Melaney Ryan appeared first on Melis Natural Perfume.

You’re welcome. Good morning.

It started, I guess the interest stemmed when I was much younger, hanging out with my favourite auntie who was the hippie auntie, so she was into alternative modalities including meditation and essential oils, which was quite unusual back then. We would stay with her and hang out and we would make our own little blends and make soap balls with lux flakes. And then we would come home and make candles in the garage with dad. They were really ugly candles and we used crayons to colour them, but it was so much fun. And then when I got older, I suffered with quite bad eczema, so I started making natural soap to help with my eczema, and it helped and it was fun, so I just kept making more and more. And then I went on and studied and self-trained and did some courses and kept experimenting and practicing, and here we are now.

When soap is made, a bi-product of the soap making process is glycerin, so glycerin appears in the soap. Most of the commercial manufacturers take the glycerin out to sell as a skincare ingredient, or to use in creams and moisturisers. Commercial soaps are drying on the skin for that reason.

I think it’s probably different for each person, but for me it was definitely something I had to develop. In high school, I had surgery on my nose, and I lost a massive amount of my sense of smell. I couldn’t smell the strength of things anymore, I would make a cream and put some jasmine oil in there and I couldn’t decide if you could smell it or not, so I’d have to ask my friends and family, is it strong enough, do I need to put more or less in there? And then over time I just kept working with the smells and analysing them and spending time getting to know them, and that’s trained my nose and my sense of smell is better than it ever was.

Definitely. Yes.

Yeah, I think so. There’s an ugly green couch in our building that no one else sits on, but I like to take my little scent strips there and just lie down on the couch and spend time smelling them, making notes, just really getting to know each of the individual smells and the accords that I’m working on. I think there’s just something about being in a neutral space, being comfortable, not having emails going off in the background. Just really chilling out and spending time getting to know those smells, and I think that’s really helped me to analyse and to learn the smells really thoroughly.

Definitely. Yes.

There’ no need to use animal-based products, there’re so many plants in the world that produce essential oils and they keep finding new ones, new hybrids, new species. There’s so much choice that there’s just no need, in my opinion, to take things from another living creature.

The natural perfumery ingredients come from plants and the yield can be quite low. So for example, rose petals, they don’t have a lot of oil in them themselves, so they need tonnes and tonnes of rose petals to produce a small amount of essential oil. So that’s reflected in the price, it’s that the amount of material, the amount of labour, how it’s grown, sustainable, organic, all of those factors come into play. Whereas your synthetic ingredients are made in a lab, sometimes they have natural components to them. They might have a portion of essential oils in them, but they’re mostly man made in a lab with individual chemical ingredients, so they are a lot cheaper to produce.

Cost, availability. They can also be more consistent, so from harvest to harvest, there can be slight changes in the way the natural ingredients smell. But for me, I think that’s part of the fun and the challenge, it keeps me on my toes.

Yeah. Again, I don’t think we need to take from another living species, so we don’t need to harm animals to get great smelling perfumes or to have functioning skincare products. It’s just not necessary.

Yeah, sure. I guess my favourite example is ambergris that comes from a whale. It comes from when they eat cuttlefish, the cuttlefish can scratch their stomach and then the wound is sealed with the blood and pus and as the wound heals, that breaks away and they expel it out their mouth where it floats around in the ocean being bleached by the sun, and then washes up on shore, and it’s a beautiful perfumery ingredient, the scent is phenomenal. But there are some really close plant-based alternatives that smell just as good, so I prefer to work with those.

Yeah, I guess that is an example of a more natural way for the ingredient to come from animals. That ingredient is banned, so the fear is that if that ingredient were more commonly used, then whales might be captured and harmed in a way of farming the ambergris to get bulk.

Castoreum is an example, it comes from beavers, it’s a secretion that they use to grease their fur and to also mark their territory. It can only be taken from the beavers once they’ve been killed. They take their private parts, dry them and then use the castoreum secretion as a perfumery ingredient.

They have, but there’s also plant based alternatives that are pretty good options as well.

Definitely. The suppliers are becoming a lot more aware of what the world wants and they’re really coming to the table with that. So there are lots of options available for sustainable ingredients and it’s really great to see the shift towards that. I was at the Australian cosmetic chemists’ conference, maybe two weeks ago, and there was lots of talk about sustainability. There was a couple of lectures on sustainability and what the industry is doing towards being more sustainable for the future, and it’s really fantastic to see.

Is there traceability right back to the farms? Like how in depth is it becoming?

You can trace the ingredient right back to the farm, to the person that grows it and the methods that they use, the employment conditions.

Yes. For the natural ingredients, the information is definitely becoming a lot more readily available.

I think it was very much that inner circle kind of secret society. You picture the middle-aged man in a lab coat and it’s very limiting. You almost had to be a certain type of person to be in that realm. But I think now with people self-educating, with the courses that are available, the readily available materials and ingredients, it’s not so mysterious and unknown anymore. Particularly in Australia, we have so many great native ingredients that I think you can learn so much from, from the Australian plants – you’re not necessarily missing out if you don’t go and learn perfumery in Grasse in France.

Yes, so the process is super involved. I’ve got probably about, at least a dozen different suppliers that I work with, and on top of that I’m starting to go direct to the source a lot more for my ingredients. So, the same species of Clary Sage from different growers, from different climates, different parts of the world, different processing methods can smell very different. Unless you get a hold of exactly the same Clary Sage that’s in our blends, it’s going to smell different. Also, the methods that I work with, so some oils are solid at room temperature, so how do you go about heating them, melting them down so you can work with them? And to what temperature because that can change the way the ingredients smell as well. There’s lots of ways to be honest and open about your ingredients, but to still protect your intellectual property so that your blend remains unique.

In my workshops, I like to teach that top, middle, base notes are not super important. It’s a very simple system which I think is super subjective, so we all smell things differently. I might think something is a base note because it’s so potent and long lasting, whereas someone else might smell it and think it doesn’t have as much longevity, so it’s a middle note. Top middle base note is important, but coming up with your own rating system is even more important in my opinion. I’ve ranked all of the ingredients that I work with as to whether they’re a top middle or a base note, according to my own view and opinion. How long the scent lasts for the layers etc..

I think, every ingredient in my opinion has to be there for a purpose. I think you can definitely get carried away and put in too many ingredients, so then it just kind of becomes muddy and grey and there’s too much going on. I think a really good skill for a perfumer is knowing when enough is enough and when to stop. It’s very easy to just, you know, a few drops of this and a few drops of that, but sometimes simple is complex.

I really love labdanum, which I use as a plant-based alternative to ambergris. I love clary sage. Clary sage is something I never liked before and I think it’s a mature sense, so perhaps as I’ve gotten older I’ve started to like it more, but it has such depth and complexity and so many layers for an individual scent. I often find in the perfume workshop that if someone thinks there’s something missing to their blend, my go to is always clary sage, and I think 99% of the time it just makes that blend pop. It’s just a beautiful ingredient to work with.

As many as I need to, to find what I want. So, using the four different rose geraniums in Amandi wasn’t about being special or being showy or anything like that. It was about each one having a little bit of a different scent to it, so the geranium that I used in Amandi that comes from Egypt is a bluey-green colour when it comes from the bottle. And it again has a little bit of the green aspect to it. Whereas one of the other rose geraniums has got that real floral, typical rose geranium smell. It’s about, again, building an accord that in my mind is the optimum perfect rose geranium.

I guess a lot of the more masculine scents are the ones you would expect, so your woodies, your spices, some of the orientals, so it’s about using them in conjunction with some of the other feminine ingredients to get a nice balance. I really hate ‘men’s’ fragrance and ‘women’s’ fragrance because there’s lots of men that love floral feminine fragrances and there are lots of women that love masculine, smoky, woody, animalic fragrances, and they all work really well. One of my really blokey mates came into one of my workshops and made himself a really masculine blend that was full of Rose Geranium and I was totally shocked, and it just worked. There’s no need to pigeonhole the ingredients into men’s or women’s in my mind. I just think if it works for you and you love it then wear it all the time.

Yeah, the clary sage is often a crowd pleaser, it depends on the season and it often depends on whether there’s more guys or girls in the class. The guys lately have been going towards petitgrain a lot, which I think is really cool because it’s an interesting scent on its own. It comes from the leaves of the orange tree, so it’s grain, it’s citrus and it’s a little bit floral. It’s a really fresh, fresh note. That’s been quite popular kind of in the spring time. And then as we get into winter, it gets a bit more of the spices, that warm notes. It’s often changing what people are gravitating towards.

Melissa:

Of course, seasonality is quite a natural influencer of our senses, emotions etc…So this is the MELIS “with intent” podcast and I do ask all of my guests this question. What is your intent on a daily basis professionally and personally?

I think there’s an element of conscious and subconscious to that. When I started, clean slate and started meeting a lot more makers, there was a definite shift towards supporting local, buying small, knowing that things were made by hand and connecting with those things, so I think that’s a very big part of intent with me and I love to use my handmade ceramics for my breakfast. It feels different if I don’t use that bowl for breakfast.

Another thing that’s become really important to me is switching off and just connecting with myself and being more present in the moment. It’s something I find really hard with running a business, is you’re often expected to be available 24-7. So really intentionally taking time to switch off. It’s pretty nerdy, but I just learned to knit, so my kind of way of chilling out at the moment is knitting. I’m working on a really big blanket and that’s just making me slow down, keeping my hands and my mind busy, but in a really therapeutic slow paced way.

It’s kind of embarrassing to say, but it’s become quite a priority. Sometimes I will sneak off from the workshop for a long lunch break and sit at home in the sun and knit for a while. I quite like to do it in the evenings as well

There’s a few jobs on the go. I’m working a lot more with brands, creating scents for them, so working into other people’s briefs, which is really exciting and pushes my boundaries. I’d like to do a lot more travel, a lot more going to the farms and meeting the growers and building relationships direct with the people that create the ingredients that I work with.

There’s a whole concept of a range in the works, mostly in my head, but starting to work on some blends, but me being a perfectionist and not having to put a deadline on myself, it could be some time, but it’s going to be really exciting.

I think it depends on the scents themselves. I really love the feeling of rolling on the perfume oil and the feeling of the oil on my skin. That being said, I have just lost a beautiful organic perfumery alcohol that’s sourced from grapes. It’s from South Australia, so I’m really excited to play around with that and test it with some of the scents within the MELIS range, I think it’s definitely got its place. And it’s about educating consumer, there’s a common misconception that alcohol is drying to the skin, and whilst there are certain types of alcohol that are definitely drying to the skin, they’re not typically the alcohols that we use in perfumery. So it’s about making the right choices and educating everyone as to why we’re making those choices.

Yeah, sure. The scents, the aroma chemicals are being suspended in the different bases, so they have different chemical constituents or different chemical makeups to them that affects the way that it smells. Some oils, some aromatic ingredients are much better diluted in oils, where some are better diluted in alcohols, and it’s also just a matter of, again, tweaking and playing with your blends to get the optimum for whichever base you’re suspending it into.

I use Motus No 7 in the studio when I know it’s time to sit down and do my emails that I really don’t want to do. I burn some Palo Santo, I pop on Motus No 7, and then my brain goes, okay, no more messing about it’s time to do your emails. And I get them done, and then go on to the next activity.

All of the above.

It’s intense. I have lots of products, my own, lots of other brands that I like to use. I’m a big fan of the double cleanse, so I usually use a balm cleanser and then an oil cleanser, I’m big on face oils, massive fan of just a clean hot funnel to steam my face before and after cleansing, face masks, scrubs, all sorts of things.

My double cleanse it every day at the end of the day, a mask I like to do once or twice, probably twice a week, I’ll alternate between a hydrating mask and a purifying mask. And then a scrub, I usually use my coffee scrub, probably three to four mornings a week.

Yeah, I am. I’m often not a shy person but I kept that really well hidden for a long time and I think it’s so important to have those conversations. Being self employed, working mostly alone in my studio whilst I’m in a building with many other creatives, we’re all head down, bum up doing our own thing and I began to feel quite lonely. I wasn’t seeing my friends or family a lot because I was working all the time. I’d made some bad decisions and opened a shop in the city that didn’t go so well for me. So there was a kind of constant chasing my tail to bounce back from that and it all just really compounded.

I’m not someone who likes to ask for help. I would prefer to pull an all nighter in the studio on my own than to ask someone, you know, a friend who is always offering to help, to ask for an extra pair of hands. I felt like I didn’t want to interrupt other people’s lives and my stuff wasn’t important. So I did spend a lot of time on the floor in the back room of the studio where no one could see me crying, and trying to figure out how on earth do I turn this around. And it just got to a point where I decided that enough was enough, and I had to move on.

And opening up and speaking to people, really just, it lifted the weight off my shoulder and I had people that I didn’t even know messaging me, popping into the studio with gifts saying that they had been in such a similar situation, they currently were or they previously had been, and that my words had touched them. It really blew my mind how many people are suffering the same way silently. We really need to come together and support each other.

There was a rock bottom, but it lasted a while, it probably lasted a good month. I wasn’t eating, I wasn’t sleeping properly, I was super withdrawn. But then I was also really good at at hiding it, just saying the right things to just kind of go under the radar, and I wouldn’t want to leave the house. There was no defining moment, but there was just, you know, I just thought this isn’t you, this isn’t making you happy, like pull yourself up. So a friend recommended I see a counsellor that she had seen who was fantastic, and then I started working with some other people within the creative world to just help pull me back up. Yeah, you just have to talk and you just have to ask for help.

Like I said, it totally blew my mind and I’m not a person who ever airs my dirty laundry on social media or saying dirty laundry doesn’t even sound like the right way to describe it. But I’m not one who kind of shares personal things like that on my personal or my business social media platforms. I just wanted to bring awareness to it, I wanted to start conversations, but I really was shocked at how much just a simple post really touched and connected with so many people.

Talking, definitely talking. Eating really well. I think the first thing for me that falls apart when I get too busy or I get a bit down is I just eat for convenience, so enjoying my food and eating really nourishing food that fuels my body. And for me, running. Running is a great form of meditation for me. My brain switches off, my body feels good, I’m out in the fresh air and the sunshine. For me it’s talking, food and running.

Followed by knitting, yeah. Knitting might move up the scale I think.

I don’t know if priority is the right word. I love my work, I enjoy it and it allows me to facilitate the lifestyle that I have. Those things have way more equal weighting to work than they used to do. Work used to be number one, foremost important priority, but now the self-care is kind of much more on an equal playing field.

I think we’ve covered it all really well.

Thank you. I’ve loved working with you. It’s really pushed my boundaries, and as I’ve said, I think we’re cut from the same cloth, we’re on the same page and I really look forward to working with you for a long time into the future.

Aw, thank you.

See you.

The post With Intent – Episode 3
Kat Snowden appeared first on Melis Natural Perfume.

Alys Pardoe is a seeker, yogi, teacher, philosopher and so much more. I was intrigued to interview Alys after entering into a deep conversation about the human body, mind and spirit connection, after one of Alys’ classes here in Margaret River. Since the age of 11, Alys has been asking life’s big questions, and as a result, has researched and acquired an abundance of knowledge, fine-tuned her own intuition and knowing and used yoga as a tool to understand the human condition and connection to consciousness.

I’m very grateful for Alys’ time and openness to being interviewed and have transcribed our podcast into the following blog.

So, Alys, yoga is your passion and profession, can you tell us a little bit about your yoga journey?

Well I suppose the first time I ever did yoga was when I was very young, my grandma taught me some yoga postures, that’s the first time I ever heard the word yoga or knew that it was something you did. I kind of dabbled with yoga a little bit in my late teens, very early 20s but it wasn’t really until I went to an Ashtanga class that I became hooked. I actually signed up for an entire week’s Ashtanga workshop and I didn’t even know what Ashtanga was and that’s when I really connected to yoga. It was something I thought I wanted to do, it sounded like something that was kind of what I was seeking, a practice that was spiritual and something I could do but it wasn’t until I did Ashtanga that I was like, “This is it, this is right.”

It was so different to any other yoga I’d done and it was just a beautiful balance of breathing, moving and I could see around the room, I didn’t know what I was doing, but there were practitioners around the room that were really advanced and their focus and concentration, they were … it was a self practice, so everyone was these practices and some of them were very advanced. They were going inward, even though they were doing a physical practice, you could see they were concentrating and in this moment, in this zone kind of place and I just thought, “Yes, this is what I’m looking for.” And I’ve been hooked ever since.

Why yoga as a tool and do you think it’s for everyone?

Well for me, like I say, from a really young age I just felt I was seeking the meaning of life, I think. If you’d asked me when I was 12, 13 years old, “What are you interested in?” It was all the things to answer some burning questions, I didn’t even know what the questions were, let alone the answers and so I think I was looking for something that would fulfil a feeling. It was more a feeling even than knowing what I was seeking. I don’t think yoga has to be for everyone. It wouldn’t necessarily have been yoga, it was just that yoga was the first thing I found that really did achieve that sense of connecting and I think that any practice, when I look at other people who have dedicated themselves to something that they do, whether it’s an art, a craft, writing, singing, sports, whatever it is, something they’ve dedicated themselves to, you can either do it on an entry level or you can take it to another level where it becomes something that connects you to a deeper level of yourself, spiritually.

It doesn’t even have to be that it is obviously spiritual, it’s just getting that connection to who you really are, I think, that is the practice. It seems to be that it has to be something you do really regularly, to just daily come back to this sense of who you really are, beyond all the chaos of your life, so I think yoga worked for me in that way but yeah, it doesn’t have to be yoga. It could be any modality that fulfils that connection.

Photo credit: Paris Hawken Photography

So when you say connection and getting back to who you really are, who is that person? Who is that?

That is the one, big main question we should all ask in our lives every day, who are we really? Beyond our jobs, our roles, whether we’re parents, whether we’re old, young, whatever we do, how ever much money we have, I think the main thing is reminding ourselves that we’re not actually any of those external things at all, those things own us and almost constrict us, rather than us actually being who we really are inside. I think that doesn’t change. Ask anybody, they’ll say, “I feel the same as I was when I was 10 years old, I’m the same person. Nothing about me is the same, but I am inside, I’m the same person.” So who is that? If that person hasn’t changed, who is that?

That’s so interesting and when you spend time, whether it’s doing physical practice, or even a spiritual practice, or meditating, I think you have that time to reflect and you just feel that feeling inside. It’s not even something you can intellectualise, it’s just something that we can feel inside us that when we spend time connecting to that, we know that sensation of who we really are, even if we can’t put it into words, even if it doesn’t give us answers of the meaning of life, it doesn’t matter actually, it’s just going back there, going back there, reminding ourself and spending time with that inner person.

Can you just try and describe that, for you, what that feels like?

For me, it’s that constant, it’s that feeling that when I was a small child playing for hours in my garden, making mud pies and building dens, where you’re just lost in that world of wonder and imagination and all of those things that we look back with fond memories of being a kid, where we’re just lost in a world and then times when you have that same feeling, maybe on holiday, maybe you’re in conversation with people that you’re really connected to, maybe you’re feeling something you’re really fulfilled by, those moments when you’re in the moment, and your mind has stepped out of the way a little and just allowed you to be rather than racing to the future and worrying about the past, feeling guilty about things. All of those things that land on top of who you really are and constrict us and blind us to everything, it’s those moments when … Yeah.

Why is the modern world so … I guess why is it so hard and why are we so addicted to the doing and the external? And I’ll speak from my own personal experience until I started yoga actually, I was very shut off from my feelings. Why is that happening and why does it happen that we shut off from our true self?

I think because we have such incredible brains that we are just completely absorbed by them and our brains, our minds, are completely take over because we can invent things and build a world in which we are achieving incredible external things, and even if it’s just an ordinary life, we can still be looking for the next thing we need to buy, the next thing that’s going to make us happy, or the next country we have to travel to, it’s all become very external and because we can think about it, we can intellectualise everything. Even spiritual practices can become completely intellectualised and lose true feeling.

I think that because we’ve got so caught up in our minds, we forget to even think about who we really are behind that, who’s a witness to the mind? Who’s the observer to all your thoughts and the fact that there is an observer to your thoughts shows that we’re not just those thoughts, we’re something else. So if we can get away from being caught up in our thinking and spend a little bit more time feeling and connecting inside, then we approach everything completely differently because we’re not just following. The mind is never going to stop, it’s never going to stop telling us that there’s new things that we have to achieve, or analysing the things we’ve done and then worrying about them and feeling guilty about them, the mind is never going to give up but all we can do is find a way, a practice, something that can give us a little bit of respite where we connect back into that more quiet part of us.

So then what role does the ego play? So if the mind is busy …

Well the mind is the ego, it can be called the ego mind. There’s a lot of words to describe this play between the spirit, the soul, our higher self, our higher conscious, who we really are and the mind, the ego, the controller, the chitter chatter voice inside the head, so there’s lots of ways, and it’s good that there’s lots of ways to describe it because as humans, we love to pigeonhole things and the less that we can completely pigeonhole something, the more space it leaves for us to have to ponder about it, and the more we ponder about things, the more we figure it out for ourself, rather than being told.

We love to think, “I know my opinions on this, that and the other, so I don’t have to think about them anymore, I don’t have to be open-minded because I already know what my position is on certain subjects.” But actually, the less we do that and the more that we take everything in and see it and wonder about it, then the more open-minded, the more flexible our minds can become, the more possibility there is to then just becoming aware of the mind, that it’s a really useful tool, it’s a fantastic computer that keeps us functioning, but it’s not who we really are and the more we can observe that and separate them it means that we can feel that peace and feel that being in the moment and find more contentment in our daily lives.

It’s almost like we have to work harder to find that space and to allow that inner peace?

Yeah, well it just shows us that there will never … If we follow how the mind wants us to live our lives, there will never be a point when we get there. We keep being sold this idea that if you keep doing this and work harder and faster and get more and do more, and achieve your dreams, or whatever those are, then you will get there, which means happiness. But actually, without all of those things, without any of the chasing, without any of the stuff, that’s where there is. It’s right at the beginning. You had it when you were a child, you had it through your life at certain moments.

It’s the stuff that you’re chasing that you think is going to make you happy is actually what’s standing in your way, it’s the clutter. That’s why it’s achievable for anybody at any time because we just have to slow down and override the mind that’s telling us we need to do all these things and that we’re going to be judged if we don’t do them and we have to say, “Actually I don’t need to, I don’t need to follow that madness, I can sit in my garden with a cup of tea and listen to the birds and do nothing and I will be far happier than if I worked for hours so that I can buy the thing that I think is going to make me happy.”

When I talk to lots of people that are on an inward spiritual journey, they’ve had a major trauma, or something has forced them to go inwards. Is that what you experienced?

Yeah, isn’t it interesting? I think very often, when something happens in our lives that stops us in our tracks, it’s given us time, it’s given us time to reassess everything and the people I know that have had those kind of experiences, that’s the first time in their lives when they started asking those big questions, “Who am I? Why am I here and why am I doing these things that I think are going to make me happy? Are they making me happy?” Sometimes we forget, we get so caught up in the daily grind that we forget that it’s actually all supposed to be because it’s making us content inside and we forget that actually it’s not, very often and so I think a big trauma can be a blessing sometimes because it gives you that time to completely reassess and to be still. Sometimes a physical trauma means that you have enforced rest where there is nothing to do but just ponder.

Alys in Mysore, India where she studies and practices annually

So when forced to be still and it gets uncomfortable, what are your tips for getting through these uncomfortable and almost overwhelming emotions and experiences that can come up?

Being uncomfortable and not liking being in that position has developed over the lifetime of not ever practicing. So you have to give yourself the time to say, “This is something I need to practice, being, sitting here with my feelings.” Yoga and meditation and a lot of practices teach non-judgemental awareness. So just sitting there and having that awareness, “This is how I feel, this is what my thoughts are, this is uncomfortable, this is bringing up anger.” Whatever it is, sit there and observe them and know … I mean, I think initially you have to know that there is a you behind everything, behind all the things coming up in your mind.

That’s quite fundamental to being able to observe all of these things that come up because otherwise it brings up a lot of fear because you think, “Oh, I’m having all of these feelings, I’m overwhelmed, I’m overwhelmed,” and then you can start to detach and think, “Where is the pain, what is the thought and where is the feeling? Can I still be me and observe that?” That’s where we start to detach a little and so then we can allow more and more … It’s a practice, you can allow these things to come up, observe them, sometimes they have fantastic insights for you, there’s gifts in there of real moments of, “Ah-ha, I’ve just understood something, something’s made sense to me.”

To sit there and allow that, it is scary at first because we’re always wanting to do something or fix something and to sit quietly and allow it to come up and happen to you, especially when it can have a physical sensation in the body, can be scary, but it’s just a practice, like any other practice. The more you do it, the more it can come and feel less overwhelming.

So observe it, allow it, don’t try and shut it down?

No and don’t feel like you have to let it all out in one go, sometimes a few minutes of that is enough and then okay, that’s enough. Like any practice, you wouldn’t go straight into lifting weights for two hours, you’d do a little bit and then walk away, distract yourself, do something else and know that the mind. It’s a communication we’re almost having with our own minds and our feelings. If we’ve not done it before, it’s a whole new language to be able to listen to ourselves and listen to what comes up and not shut it down and judge it. Yeah, it just takes time and like anything, practice.

So when do we start feeling reconnected?

I think that happens naturally over time, when the traumatic things, or if there are no traumatic things, when those things have gone, we’re just comfortably sitting with ourselves, then that awareness starts to come and we find that still place. I think that’s why a physical practice is really useful in this way because physical practice is occupying the body and the mind has to be engaged in order for the body to do what it’s supposed to do.

So there you are occupying the two major parts of who you are and while they are occupied, the inner being, the one who’s always still, and always actually content, we just forget to ever connect to it. That has the space to then bring itself out a little so that you can see that within all of the drama, within everything that’s going on and within your own practice, there is this still place.

So where does our link to consciousnesses come into play?

Well I think that is consciousness. That is who we really are, this unchanging and, depending on what you believe in, will be continuous through many lifetimes even. This idea that who we are will never change inside but then, who we are is just a small aspect of higher consciousness. So when you look at it from a scientific point of view, there is an energy in the world, there is something, there is a vibration in atoms, there is something greater that binds everything together. We are all part of that too and that part of us that is unchanging is that greater thing. I believe that it’s all one, it’s just that we come into being so that we can experience, that’s what we’re here for, I believe. It’s just to have experiences. From the highest level, there is no purpose, it’s just pure bliss. Consciousness just wants to experience itself and so has come into creation so that it can experience itself.

That experience isn’t necessarily supposed to be all good. Any experience is valid, all experiences, in fact it wouldn’t be valid if we only had the good ones. So the good and the bad, the madness, the sadness, everything we experience is completely important to the whole play of the universe, that’s what we’re here for, that’s why we have bodies and senses and we can interact with each other and we can learn from each other and express emotions. It’s so that it’s one giant play and I think on that level, it doesn’t matter what we actually do, it’s to have an awareness that we’re here to experience it and not get too caught up in why, or whether we all have to do good things, or if we all have do noble things, it’s just too big and be joyous in that process.

But I think on a small, individual level, I think that, well at the same time it doesn’t really matter what we do, it is how we do it. It’s our intention in the doing. We could have the most mundane job that has no social standing, that isn’t paid well, that might not even be the job we want to do, but we can change and choose our intention in doing that job. We can do that job to the very best of our ability, we could do that job with total commitment, we could do that job with all the kindness that we could possibly put into something. We could make that job the most special thing that we could possibly do because it’s about our approach, and it’s about our intentions to things and our connections and that’s where it comes from inside, rather than the external.

Photo credit: Jill Rogers, kinfolkphotography.com.au

So, this is so fascinating, because there’s so much of our life spent achieving and goal setting. What’s your approach then? Otherwise, I guess I struggle with the fact that you could sort of bliss through life and bumble along and do nothing.

Well you could and I think if you’re not harming anybody and nobody is having to support you in that bumbling along, then nobody should judge you for that.

If that’s where your truth is, if that’s where you feel most content and happy … because otherwise it’s saying, “Well only the high achievers in our society are of any value.” Which is completely untrue, because there are people who can’t offer huge amounts to society for whatever reason, and it doesn’t mean that they’re any less, pure, valid, and beautiful beings than somebody who has 10 degrees and who is a brain surgeon. It really doesn’t matter but at the same time, I see your point in saying, “Well, what’s the point then? Why should we even try?” But then again, that comes back to intention and maybe our intentions because we want to do something that we’re passionate about and our passion might be being a brain surgeon. Our passion might be being someone who communicates with other people but it might happen to be that the way they do that isn’t a job that has huge standing, it doesn’t matter.

It’s finding the thing that you feel is what you have to offer. Yeah, it’s so simple. As soon as we take a minute to connect to somebody. Have you ever been in a shop, or been in an environment where you have just seen a stranger and for some reason you go, “I love that shirt you’re wearing.” Or, “Those are beautiful earrings.” For no reason, not because you need to pay a compliment, not because you’ll ever see the person again, you’re not giving them anything, expecting something in return and that person has been given a small gift of a compliment from a complete stranger, for no reason and you both go away feeling so much happier, for something so small.

These kind of connections can happen all the time. We can make a difference to people all the time and that is what gives us a sense of connectedness and that inside all of us, despite what we look like and what we do, we’re all good, kind people just trying to get along, just trying to survive in this crazy world and the more we can remember that, the happier we’ll all be because we’ll share that feeling.

So as a mother, what’s your advice to foster more conscious children?

Well I think, like I said earlier, we always were … especially as children, we were in that state of so easily connecting to that inside of us that’s still and content and playful and so quite often as parents, we think that we have to do things to be good parents, we have to take our children to 10 different music lessons and make sure that they’re learning four different sports and that their exam results are fantastic and mold them into something that society is going to expect because we’re afraid that other people won’t respect us and this completely convoluted, crazy society thing we’ve got going on and actually, the more the parents can allow their children to be children, I think is such a fantastic gift, just to nurture that. Let the child lead the way and decide where their passions are and learn to listen to their … and trust their own inner intuition.

I think we beat it out of children, not physically, but emotionally, we beat it out of children that they can’t be themselves or express themselves and the more that we allow them, in a kind, nurturing way and obviously with security of boundaries, I think the more that our children can then start to teach us how to connect into our inner being, because they’re far more connected than we are. They know their feelings, they have a great sense of truth. Yeah, we just don’t allow our children to be the teachers, plus we’re so worried that we’re going to be judged if we don’t teach them.

So true, and it’s often how we were parented as well.

Yes, which comes back to being conscious and being a non-judgemental observer of what we’re doing because a lot of when we’re parenting, we’re just on a default program that we experience as children and we don’t always want to repeat that. Sometimes we’re lucky enough to have fantastic childhoods but we weren’t always and sometimes there’s a big mixture of both and we need to be able to observe what we’re doing and how we’re parenting and choose, actually choose which way, and maybe be open to a way that we’ve never even considered.

Quite often our children, especially these days, need parenting in ways that really has never been done before, I believe, because this word is so different right now to even the world that we grew up in. I think parenting has to accommodate that and be really sensitive to that, I think we’re not sensitive enough as parents.

So what would that look like? Or what should it look like in your view?

Oh, it would be a beautiful two-way partnership where we allow children to teach us things and remind us of things and open our minds and our feelings because sometimes we’ve learnt to shut down our feelings and not connect to our emotions and so we try to impose it on our children whereas actually, wouldn’t it be great if we could learn to connect into how we feel by watching our children have tantrums or whatever it is that they’re doing. “They’re expressing something,” and just observe and wonder.

Then, how wonderful to be a child who had a parent that could spark interest, or when you have found an interest or a passion that your parent is prepared to expand on that and then use their adult skills to enable whatever that passion is and to support that, and to allow it to change, not just try and pigeon hole you and, “Oh, you’re a creative one, you’ve got to do this.” Or, “Oh you’re intellectual, you must study this.” To just listen and respond to children and allow them to grow and change. An allow them to take the lead, which is so challenging, because we’re the parent.

We still have to prepare them for a society that’s pretty crazy and we want them to be well equipped with all the tools so that they can deal with that. It’s finding that balance again.

Shifting from raising conscious children to the topic of death. What is your belief about what happens to us when we die?

Well I believe that we do have a spirit, a soul, a higher conscious, whatever we want to call it, whatever the name is, I don’t know if it even has a name. While I believe that we do come back, we can choose, we do come back into a body if we have more things we need to learn and if there’s more that we want to experience but I think at a certain point, and certainly in yoga philosophy, there is this idea that when you reach a point where you really do experience the big picture, not just think about the big picture and wonder, “What is this all about?” If you can ever have, or come to a place where you have that experience, it really happens to you, then I believe that you can choose.

I believe you can choose, you don’t have to … or you have this idea of karmic life, so we keep coming back so that we have to learn the lessons from, potentially past lives, or just to learn things, experiences we want to experience. But I think that there comes a point where we can possibly choose and we might still choose to come back, or we might not and then there’s the next mystery, what is beyond that? I don’t know.

Alys with her dog Zephyr

So do we need to be in a state of enlightenment in this human form to then have that choice? Is that your belief?

No, I don’t think so but I think that is probably what happens, and this is probably just me wondering, thinking about this and feeling. You have a thought, you ponder it over, you feel like you digest it, you see how it fits in the body. Sometimes the feeling is like … it stays there and I think and maybe for me, that’s kind of what I think is true.

So for me, what I think is true is that we can … I don’t know, we can either have that experience in the body in this lifetime, or in a lifetime, or we can have it after we die. I think there’s a period of time where if everything has conspired in our life to give us that … and I think it’s not just up to us. Again, it’s not something we’re trying to achieve because there is something else at play and that has to be involved too. I think you can’t just go, “I’ve got these certificates and I’ve done practice for this long and therefore I have earned Enlightenment.” I don’t think it’s like that but I think there’s … and you can call it grace, a lot of people think of … grace has to come into play for you to have that experience but I think it can happen in life or just after you die.

But I think after you die, maybe if there is more to learn, you get drawn back. Something draws you back into to learn again, to have another opportunity to maybe experience the same situations, or similar situations, to give you those opportunities to learn and grow. Which in the yoga philosophy is why it’s so important to grasp those opportunities now. If you have something in your life and you think, “Gosh, I have this pattern, I keep doing this over and over again. I find myself in this situation, I’m always coming up against bosses who are trying to control me and not respect me.” Or, “I keep coming into a situation where I’m not honest in a situation and it has all these repercussions.”

Whatever it is, whatever the drama is, if those things happen over and over, it’s because we haven’t maybe used that opportunity and we’ve learned the lesson and seeing the gift that was in that experience and learned from it. So yeah, I think it’s complicated and maybe there is no answer, maybe it’s … and I like that there’s not necessarily an answer because the point is to keep wondering.

Yeah, we’ll all find out, won’t we?

Yeah, maybe we don’t all find out, maybe sometimes we go straight from one thing straight into another and it’s just a cycle, like a washing machine, round and round lifetime after lifetime’s experiencing and experiencing until one day in a lifetime maybe you meet someone, maybe you hear a piece of music, or maybe something just triggers this idea of what is this all about? What are we here for? I mean I would love if this happened after you die, you had this amazing opportunity to reflect and go, “Wow. Why was I like that? Why did I not do this?” And really learn from it.

But something tells me that that’s actually why we’re having this experience.

Exactly. Something tells me that then what is the purpose of doing this in the body Because we’re manifest. We’ve manifested in the body. We’ve got all these fantastic tools that we forget that we could actually choose to use how we want to use, rather than just running along playing the rules of this crazy game and we could be learning so much right now, we’ve got this fantastic chance.

Life is short. Right now, in any moment, you could take every opportunity, especially the bad ones, and they could wake you up.

So in order to wake up and evolve through our human experiences, what are your tips for transforming in this lifetime?

Become an observer, become aware of everything. Become an observer of your habits and your patterns and your conditioning and wonder about everything. Why do I have this opinion? Where does this thing that I always do that I wish I didn’t do, where did that come from? If it came from a parent, or a teacher, or person in your past, well understand them. Where did they get it from? Don’t just write everything off as, “Oh well that person’s bad, and that created that and therefore I’m the victim and therefore I’m stuck with this.” Follow it back. Follow it back to the place where you can have complete forgiveness and there’s no energy left in it, it’s just gone, it’s just left and you can go, “Oh that is … that karmic cycle has gone now because I forgive that person,” or, “I forgive that situation,” or, “No one was at fault.” Whatever it is, follow the thread all the way back. You might go back generations, or you might just go back to an experience that was an accident and forgive and clear up that experience.

Do that with everything. So many things we do, the way we communicate, our beliefs, our values, they’ve come from somewhere so follow each of them back and wonder about every aspect of why we are the way we are. It makes every moment, from that moment onwards, makes every moment better because you communicate-

You’re kinder to yourself, you’re kinder to other people.

Yeah, your whole vibration shifts. There is a self-care, self-love buzz right now and I believe it’s justified but are we over complicating it? From what I’m hearing, yes?

Well, are they selling something? Or are they saying that, “You’re not self-caring enough right now, you have to change?” Or, you’re not loving yourself enough right now, you have to change?” In which case, don’t pay it too much attention but if it’s genuine, give yourself a moment, forgive yourself, know that you are okay as you are, you don’t have to change. If it’s those messages, then yeah, I think that’s great because then when we start with ourselves, it’s naturally going to overflow into other things.

One of the problems I really see in the world is that this idea of becoming aware of the self, is actually the wrong self that we’re becoming aware of. We’re becoming aware of the image and we’re becoming aware of the ego and we are spending a lot of energy and time and money on building a persona and sharing that persona on social media-

… and then all we’re doing is actually separating from our true selves even more. I think what we need to do is be quite careful who this self is that we’re caring for and loving, and know that it’s the one that is damaged and broken, and maybe not always happy, and maybe not achieving what we want, and still love that self. Not just the one that’s dressed nicely, wearing makeup and you’ve got a new handbag. That’s where we have to be careful. It’s very easy to go down that wrong path and just moving further away from where we’re supposed to be going.

But if it’s the true self inside that we’re learning to become friends with … In fact, self-love, that’s an extreme word. Love is a big word and contentment and kindness are much more subtle words that we can’t really take to an extreme. So be content in yourself and be kind to yourself and those, I think are much easier to achieve and we don’t need to change in order to achieve that. So I think that’s the most important thing.

Then, when we’re content with who we are, and we’re kind and we’re forgiving, that will naturally flow over to other people because we’ll forgive other people and know that they’re just trying to be kind to themselves and to each other and to be content and we’re not trying to beat the other people to the perfect lifestyle, that we’re all okay as we are right now.

What role does money play in all of this?

It’s just a tool. It’s just a tool, I think and it can be used for some incredibly fantastic things. It can also be used for some incredibly terrible, disastrous things and I think, unfortunately, because money holds such value in our society, it also comes usually with a lot of power, and power is something that takes people out of balance because one person can have more than another and then we’re not seeing each other as equals and we’re not sharing that sense of connection and unity.

So I think money can be very damaging but I think it doesn’t have to be and I think it shouldn’t hold the place of value that it does. It’s just a way of exchanging energy and that energy exchange isn’t always fair. So I think that’s what we have to look at, I think, is a sense of fairness and that the sense that the person in front of you is no better or worse than you are, and so everything should be equal, but that’s never going to wash.

I see a very balanced, joyful, youthful, responsible Alys Pardoe. How do you live a balanced life?

It’s kind of like a headstand. So, when you’re in a headstand, even when you’ve been doing it for 20 years and you can balance pretty well, there’s always little movements, tiny movements backwards and forwards, adjusting, wobbling, correcting, re-correcting, it’s just that the corrections are small and we don’t overbalance and I think that that is how I try and see my life. I’m not trying to stay on this perfect path, I’m just trying to make the fluctuations smaller so that I’m not doing anything from too much of an extreme.

Any extreme is unhealthy. Being healthy to an extreme is unhealthy. Being kind to others can be unhealthy if you’re forgetting about yourself. Any extreme is bad and so I think everything … That old saying, everything in moderation, is a really important thing to remember. When you’re naturally in a place when you’re content, you naturally don’t want to do things that are going to take you out of that state. So you naturally don’t want to go out and go wild at a party and drink until 6:00 in the morning because you naturally know that you’re not going to feel very well.

It’s not something that we have to impose on ourselves anymore. Equally, if you do go to a party, you can enjoy yourself and not feel guilty because you’re not trying to impose something strict on yourself. It’s a slow journey. It’s like any practice, you just slowly evolve and they come from thousands and millions of little tiny decisions. Each decision which is, “Does this feel good? Is this taking me in a direction of being content and being happy and healthy and all of those things? Or is it something that is taking me further away? Or is it something that I’m doing because I don’t feel good about something else, so I’m going to compensate and react by going to an extreme?” So we all have lots of little choices and I think over time, you just find that as soon as you start thinking about these things, it naturally happens.

Photo credit: Jill Rogers at kinfolkphotography.com.au

I have one more question. As I look out at your magical garden and am aware you spend a lot of time nurturing and enjoying the beautiful smells it delivers, what role does scent play in your life?

Like anything, there are certain things that have the magic of being able to place you very quickly back into that space of being connected and scent can do that. The memory we have for smells is incredible, as you know, and a certain scent can just transport us out of our mind and straight into a place of feeling and that’s why we call things gut feeling, because that’s our truth, that’s our real, that’s an important, powerful part of us, is that sense of feeling and scent can take us straight to feeling and bypass the brain completely. It can connect us to memories, it can connect us to a sense of place, or belonging and it can transport us straight into that magical world where we are in the moment but we’re also free at the same time-

… and I think that being in a garden where you’re surrounded by those natural scents, where it’s like it’s a direct communication with nature, and what is nature? You could call it Mother Earth, Gaia, Goddess, the universe, whatever it is but it doesn’t matter what the name is, it’s that connection to something greater than us that doesn’t have to be labeled and being in that garden … and scent is like its way of talking to you and that’s why I love being in that space, where I walk down the garden past the wisteria and the smell is amazing and then there’s the honeysuckle smell and I get into my veggie garden and there’s all those smells of all the herbs and the things growing and you’re feeling amazing while you’re smelling them. And you feel timeless, because you’re connected to that first time you stood in your grandparents’ rose garden and the smell just captured you. Or the first time you stood by the ocean and you smelled that salty spray air. I think that getting ourselves out of our body and our mind, into true feeling, is-

It’s key, isn’t it?

… it’s a really useful tool to get us into that space.

Well Alys, thank you so much. You’ve provided some very interesting views and reminded us how to live more consciously. I really enjoyed our conversation and look forward to our next yoga class. Namaste and thank you so much.

The post With Intent – Episode 2
Alys Pardoe appeared first on Melis Natural Perfume.

Amy Carter James is a global leader in sustainable tourism, having won every global award of note after founding, owning, and operating an eco boutique hotel in remote Mozambique, which is now sustainably managed by the local community. Her work has lifted thousands out of extreme poverty and is a case study for successful sustainable tourism. I met Amy at our children’s school in Margaret River, where she now lives with her husband and two small children, and was immediately impressed with her humility, eloquence, kindness, and just overall being.

I’m very grateful for Amy’s time and openness to being interviewed and have transcribed our podcast into the following blog.

Everything, I’d go so far as it almost feels like part of my identity now. Purpose has driven our businesses, our charities, even our move to Margaret River and in the way we bring up our children. So yes, the vision, the purpose in life is absolutely essential to everything we do.

Yes. I think as a child, I wasn’t enormously confident, but I was always very passionate. I was quick to jump on the bandwagons of being vegetarian or boycotting Nestle. I always had a passion for the injustice, or a passion for conservation. I think that is where that intent and that passion and purpose comes from. My dad was amazing and realised that I was dyslexic very young so some insecurities can come from that but also an inner strength.

Amy’s father experiencing Guludo

It is, completely. I think you have to get through your challenges of the mainstream academia, the tick boxing. And when you don’t think necessarily like all the other kids, it’s a bit challenging. But once you finally get out of that fog, then it’s the biggest gift.

It’s the ability to see the bigger picture. It’s the ability to think differently to other people in your team, or people that you’re working with, which is of such value, especially when you’re an entrepreneur, or just when you’re working in any team.

I really believe that dyslexia is a gift. It just needs a makeover. People just need to view it as such, and to not look at you with sympathy when you’re saying that you’re dyslexic.

Richard Branson, Steven Spielberg, Albert Einstein. The list of famous entrepreneurs, genius’ and creatives diagnosed with dyslexia goes on.

Amy at Guludo, Mozambique

I met Neal, my husband and co-founder of Guludo, at university and I’d had this incredible gap year before that. I’d been working in Kenya in the primary school, and had seen poverty for the first time. Then I spent a bit of time here in West Australia, on a humpback whale research program that was funded by tourism … well, partly funded.

I just thought that tourism was such a wonderful vehicle to be able to relieve poverty, as well as to be a great tool for conservation. I was talking to Neal about these ideas, and then basically, it was him that said, literally on the train away from university after my last exams, said, “Why don’t you just do it?” I’m like, “Okay.”

We wrote a “for and against” list, and there was nothing on the against. We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into. So we said, “Right, let’s just do it.” The whole vision and dream has never changed right from that day to now.

The idea was to show the world the profound potential within tourism to relieve poverty, protect the environment, and basically, to address global issues. We chose tourism because there’s no other industry that employs more people. It’s not like you’re a banana grower and you don’t know how many suppliers. You just buy X, Y, and Z.

With tourism, you need the eggs, you need the bananas, you need the sheets. You need so many things. There are so many opportunities for entrepreneurs and enterprises. It’s just a great opportunity to engage with guests while they’re on holiday, and to be able to inspire them.

People’s, minds and hearts are open when they travel, and so tapping into them while they’re there to educate is quite simple. That sounds patronising, but to empower them with knowledge about issues that are going on in the world, and how they can address them.

It just seemed so perfect, so yes, the idea was tourism. We decided that we would build a lodge, a relatively high-end lodge, and we wanted it to be on the coast. Basically, we chose Mozambique because it had phenomenal tourism potential.

The beach is incredible. It’s 12 kilometres, white sand. You’ve got humpback whales cruising past for four months of the year. You’ve got pristine reefs. You’ve got islands. You’ve got elephants stealing our mangoes.

It’s such a beautiful place. It’s got all of those assets that you need for tourism, but the backdrop of it was literally the poverty that would just take your breath away. The children weren’t going to school because the food security was so poor. There was no safe drinking water pretty much in the whole region.

Life expectancy was 38; that’s how old I am now. It’s crazy, and infant mortality, one in five children who survive childbirth wouldn’t get to their fifth birthday.

So we thought, right, this is just perfect. We wanted to go there. This is literally desk-top research, based on research.

No.

Amy and her Guludo co-workers Mandela and Sikamoja

We wanted the coast. We wanted the east coast of Africa, and so we whittled it down and just thought this was the spot. The whole dream was to do something a bit commercially minded. We had to show that this can work commercially because otherwise, it’s just another NGO doing some nice stuff with communities.

We developed the property, the lodge, with an incredible architect, Richard Nightingale, who we learnt so much from. The design of it was, if we had to leave, then we wanted nature to take over and not leave a mark on the ground.

But it was more than just green architecture. It was about empowerment of local people, skills development just in the building process, and adding value to local culture, local heritage in that whole building process. Then, through the operations, to be able to create employment, create opportunities for entrepreneurs.

Then, the extra dimension was to have a foundation. We decided to have it operate independently, so we could fundraise separately. A minimum of 5% of our revenue goes to the Nema Foundation we established, and that works with all the communities and with an array of projects.

No. We got married 11 years ago, so no. We’d been together a couple of years, maybe two and a half, three years. I can’t remember. I met Neal when I was 19, and he was a couple of years older.

All friends, family, everything that we had went into it. So that was another dimension that it had to succeed on just so many levels.

It took a while. If you can imagine, the community didn’t even really know what a knife and fork or different cups and glasses were. And so to get to be able to deliver close to a four/five star experience, it was quite a journey. So we started off having a local workforce completely, but having ex-pats to help to manage and train the local team.

It was Neal and I to start off with, with a few people helping here and there. But it was very Faulty Towers, if I’m honest. Then as we grew, we had more ex-pats to help to manage the teams and to train the teams. We went from, at one point up to seven, eight ex-pats. Now we have zero.

It took about 10 years to be able to train up the local team, a majority of whom are still with us. We employ about 31 people through the business. Our operations manager was a security guard, and he is just the most incredible person.

We’ve built five schools. We feed, this year it’s about 1,250 children a meal a day at school, which literally just triples school attendance. We’ve built about 49 water points – or rehabilitated or built new water points. That’s given access to safe drinking water to over 21,000 people.

We’ve got probably about 300 or so kids that had secondary school scholarships over the last few years. We’ve got 107 this year who have just enrolled. Yes, so cooperatives, agricultural work, loads of pottery. Yes, it ’s a very diverse and varied project.

That’s because what we believe very passionately about is that the most effective way of helping communities lift themselves out of poverty is to, A, create an economic stimulus, which the tourism does. And then to help them help the communities address their own issues.

If you don’t just be polarised and look at one thing, or just building schools, or just water. When you look at the whole community, look at all of the issues that lock them into poverty, when you tackle all of those issues, they overlap, reinforce each other. Then the community can grow more sustainably with stronger foundations, working with the community structures.

Also, participation is really important. It’s not just a case of our ideas, our dreams, and putting it onto them. It’s, “Right, but what do you want to do? Okay, you want to build a school. What are you going to do to build this school? Okay, we could help with this. What are you going to do?”

Then they say, “Well, we could dig the foundation. We can get the rocks. We could make the blocks if you help us with this.” Every project is a partnership, whether it’s a malaria or agricultural program.

Then it’s working with health volunteers, help to capacity build those volunteers. Then they can go and run workshops to be in their own communities and distribute mosquito nets – which are also great fishing nets, which is a bit of a challenge. You have to make sure they don’t end up in the sea.

Amy and Neal in the early days

We never capped it anywhere. It always feels like more is needed to be done. So you never feel like you’ve arrived there, or you’ve done better than you thought because there is so much more that needs to be done, and you want to do.

You don’t ever feel like you’ve reached the end point and give yourself a pat on the back because there’s so many more things we need to be working on and doing in supporting these communities.

That’s so beautiful.

I think this almost comes into the discussion when you’re talking about challenges because it is so tough. It sounds all rosy and beautiful and amazing, what we’ve done, but it has been so, so difficult.

We’ve had times when you’re just like how are we ever going to get out. Not get out of this. We’re not trying to escape, but how are we going to get through this challenge? Challenges with the government, and the corruption, and then some difficult people in the community.

The team that we had initially, they had no idea what it meant to have a job, so they thought that we were exploiting them. We were, “No, we’re coming to help you guys.” There were just so many challenges.

Not scared, but Mozambique’s history, they had the Portuguese, or the Arabs before, then the Portuguese. Basically, all the foreigners that came through were trying to exploit them, so they thought why would this young couple be any different?

They liked us, but they were also wary, and so it took time. There’s no substitute for time … to develop their trust, and for them to understand that we’re in this together. We’re not trying to rip you off. We’re not trying to exploit you. This is the whole purpose of this entity, is to help and uplift you and your children and your grandchildren, and your grandchildren’s children.

So that took a lot of time, but it was a fun journey. Going back to the challenges, you get to this point sometimes when the government are holding resources. Just a few years ago we had these wonderful little motorbike ambulances with the sidecars. The government wouldn’t release them because they wanted a ridiculous amount of tax for them.

We said, “Well, no, this is for your health service, and you’ve already said that we wouldn’t have to pay tax.” So those frustrations and those challenges could sometimes get us down.

But then when you see clean water flowing in a village for the very first time, and an old man with tears running down his cheeks, and you’re just like this is just so worth it. I wouldn’t want to do anything else, ever. That goes beyond the happiness that your quote by Ralph Wardo Emerson references.

The achievement, it carries you and lifts you through all those turbulent times, and all those times when you think can I really do this? You doubt yourself. You doubt whether you can succeed. I don’t doubt the vision. You doubt whether you can actually achieve what you want to, but all these things just keep carrying you through. When you’re driven by purpose, when you’ve got your mission that it’s so strong.

And I guess then to start with, it almost feels like part of your identity. Then you just find a way, and you just keep going, and it fuels you. Those little wins along the way, those moments of connection where you connect to what you’re actually contributing to these people’s lives, your intension is pure. When you connect with that along the way, it’s almost like it fuels you.

Amy and Neal exploring the area at age ~ 22 years

I think one of the most beautiful things I’ve learnt from the communities is that tragedy happens. It strikes so often that the people are so present in that moment. I learnt to do the same, to feel present.

I talk to the team most days. When you’re talking to them, and the challenges they’re facing, it gives you such incredible gratitude for everything that you’ve got, from having a soft bed to sleep on, to being able to give your children the food with all the nutrients that they need. And to be able to give them the education that you can only dream of.

It makes you so incredibly grateful and living in gratitude just gives a whole new perspective on everything. I think that living in the moment and being so grateful is definitely something I’ve learnt from the communities in Mozambique.

Yes. There’s too many losses. People die far too often. I remember Iziana a lovely lady, one of the first people we employed. She works in the kitchen, and she lost her son who was about 15.

Just going to see her the day after, and that raw grief, that pain, it was just something I’ll never ever forget. People say that life is cheap out there, and you couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s not the case. People deal with the facts. They deal with what’s happened, because they say it was God’s plan.

They accept it, and they deal with it, and they don’t question the situation. It’s not a case of well, why did this happen? Why, why, why? I don’t understand. It’s like no, you accept it because that was God’s will. That’s what was planned. That was always going to happen on this day at this time, so you just accept it.

That makes the grieving, that makes dealing with challenges, problems, so much easier because there is that acceptance, which is really powerful.

Yes.

Well, we looked at various models, but fundamentally, we felt that having the business and the charity side by side, but separate legal entities, would enable us to leverage some of the good will of our guests.

And be able to apply for funding from other organisations to increase and amplify our work, which has worked really well. So, it was always part of the vision that the mechanisms we decided, as we created the business plan, then decided how we were going to implement everything.

It’s worked really well. Our biggest supporter is a maternity chain, called JoJo Maman Bebes. It’s U.K. It’s just moved to America. It’s amazing. Laura, the founder, came on holiday, and she had adopted and embraced charity. Now they do loads of support. They do loads of fundraising. They’re amazing, and yes, it has worked.

Yes, and 100% of any donation given goes directly to that project. Our business will cover the admin. Also, now JoJo supports some of the administrative, like accounting and so on. So, if someone wants to donate $5 for a mosquito net, it really does go to buy a mosquito net and a workshop for a family, the mother with a child under the age of five.

Yes. That was quite surreal. When they were talking about trying to promote social entrepreneurship in the U.K, they invited a few of us who were … well, they termed us social entrepreneurs, to meet and discuss various ideas. So yes, it. has opened up an awful lot of unexpected doors.

Fundamentally, it’s always what resonates, what feels right, and is aligned with our vision. Neal and I work really well together on this front. I’ll have a crazy idea and get distracted, and he’ll be like, “Hang on. Why? Come on, let’s refocus.” So we use each other to refocus each other.

But fundamentally, it’s always what is aligned with our skills, experience, and our overall goal, which is fundamentally to use business, predominantly tourism, to address global issues, whether it’s poverty, whether it’s use of plastics. Whatever it is, we want to use the vehicle of tourism or business to achieve positive change in the world.

So, if that’s aligned, if whatever it is that we’re doing is aligned with that, and feels right, then we’ll go for it.

Yes, I think so. We were so young when we started. It has just become part of who we are. Without that intent, it doesn’t feel right. So I think it’s conditioned and innate, I think. It’s a blend of the two.

We work with quite a diverse group of entrepreneurs, brands, groups and help them to define and articulate their purpose. Then turn that purpose into actual tangible action.

So, for example, to help a business think right, what do you want to achieve? Okay, we want to have xyz, … And we want to engage with our guests. We want to inspire them. We want to get them as passionate about our location as we are. Okay, well, how can you do that?

You can demonstrate this through supporting local initiatives, specific initiatives that your guests would also engage in, whether it’s to do with coral conservation, or it could be do with engaging with local communities, with an indigenous group. So looking at ways they can connect and amplify their impact for their quadruple bottom line.

Quadruple bottom line is people, planet, profits, and of course, purpose. Often, people get so … Well, it’s normal. People get so focused on their financial bottom line that they let everything else get pushed to the periphery.

Whereas research, everything is showing us that when you actually pull your purpose to your core, and you actually have your KPIs, your key performance indicators, as not just your profits, but looking at your impact on the people, planet, and on what you deem success, what your purpose is, your business will grow stronger.

You’ll be able to have a far greater reaching impact. Your guest, your clients, your engagement will be more, and you’ll create more of an army of brand champions, as well as retaining your staff.

The benefits are so many, and like I say, we help our clients to implement better sustainability, better purpose driven businesses.

CNT World Savers 2012 with Sir Richard Branson

No … Well, yes, of course, but also it’s about your social impact. It’s about your cultural impact. I always use the mantra think global, act local. Understand the global issues and global challenges, but act locally. If everybody on the planet did that there’d be a revolution overnight.

Well, people have been talking about the triple bottom line for a long time. There’s the three Cs, or four Cs; the commerce, community, culture and conservation. There’s lots of these little terms around.

Most people concentrate on three things; environment, people, and the profit, your commerce. But we really like to encourage people to focus everything and hang everything off their purpose.

Some. It can be challenging, but when that is the case, and we’ve had a couple of clients where the CEO is more commercially driven. Actually, what you do is you ignite with the senior management team who are not just focused on the profitability – you focus on the purpose of the senior leadership team, and go in that direction.

Yes, but it’s something that I’m shockingly bad at. I think having children forced us to pause. Instead of working crazy hours, and not having holidays for years on end, we’ve had to stop and pause, and focus on our children.

That was the best thing ever for me personally, to be able to focus on something that wasn’t just work. That changed my life, obviously, as the children do. But no, it’s something I’m really bad at.

Previously, the only way we would pause is when we had malaria, and you had to go to bed for a few days. Then you’d be back up and running. So, no, we’re not good examples for self-care, but we’re trying.

I’ve just started this 30-day yoga program, which I’m loving. I don’t know why I didn’t do it years ago. It’s continuing to evolve. I’m on a journey to be a little bit, perhaps kinder to myself.

Well, I was always very active, and loved sports as a kid. I just haven’t ever carved any time out for that. I feel like the yoga, it’s a nice step in the right direction; a bit of time just to refocus, yeah, and to feel more connected with your body and your mind. I’m really appreciating that, and it was well overdue.

Oh yeah, they’ve got plenty of rituals, but I think they’re more traditional ceremonies. When you say rituals, I think of ceremonies. They’re very devout … well, relatively devout Muslims. They’ll go to the mosque and they’ll pray regularly, which I think is quite cathartic in itself. Apart from that, people are just always just…..Surviving.

Surviving, and laughing, and enjoying moments, as we all do, with their children or whatever is bringing them joy.

It depends on what day you ask me that question. I think I probably dream of being successful in our purpose, to be able to have a bigger, greater, more profound impact on really important challenges facing our planet.

And through that success, inspiring my girls, and our next generation of children. I think having children does add another dimension to your intent, so it’s not just about wanting to achieve things during my lifetime. I want to be able to live by example, and want to be able to inspire my girls and their friends to make a difference.

It’s a possibility. You don’t have to necessarily go down a specific well paved track. You can make your own rugged bumpy road, and do whatever you want. And just to try and ignite that passion for changing things that need changing.

Well, Myra’s only two and a half, so it’s early days for her, but she’s very strong willed. But India, definitely. She made my heart soar when she said “Mum, I want to …” What was it? “I want to change the world. I’m going to stop people cutting down the forests.”

She says things like this, and it’s like, oh, gosh, yes. So, yeah, I hope that they will follow their path, not my path, their own path.

I think that these younger generations are more conscious and socially aware.

Thank you so much.

For more information about Amy’s work please visit:

The post With Intent – Episode 1
Amy Carter James appeared first on Melis Natural Perfume.