Jocelyne Leach calls herself a mystical midlife rebel. She's a personal and spiritual empowerment coach, mentor, and intuitive for women who want a joyful, vibrant second half of life.

We’re talking about second acts and the opportunities present for us at middle age to finally do something meaningful with our lives.

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Jocelyne:

Okay, well it was about 10 years ago. Probably everyone can remember 10 years ago when the shit hit the fan in the financial markets and it just felt like the whole world collapsing. The news was just terrible. Every day was very depressing.

At the time, my husband and I were... We had two businesses that were quite vulnerable to fluctuating markets, and one was a pub and restaurant. One was a property development business.

And so, when the markets take a dive, people stop eating out and property takes a dive. The whole thing just imploded.

So my husband was extremely stressed. He got taken to hospital seriously ill with three perforated ulcers. At the time, I was uncharacteristically stressed and unhappy and suffering as well. Usually I'm quite a grounded person. So for me to feel all these kind of... the emotional wrangling of all this going on. It made me think, I've gotta get to the doctor and get some medication to help me through this.

And I thought, No, that's not the route I want to go. I need to sort this out myself.

So I started two things. One thing you might not know about me is I'm also a yoga teacher. So I really dug back into my yoga practice that had got a little bit kind of wishy washy. I dug back into that and took up a more powerful type of yoga.

That helped a great deal. It really gave me something to focus on that took the thoughts out of my head because it was the thoughts that were just driving me crazy.

And then, at that time, about 10 years ago, the internet was really starting to take off. And so, the wonderful thing of search engines were I could just keep finding different people on the internet who would give me words of wisdom that started me moving forward and kind of climbing out of my big black hole.

It's things like finding Byron Katie and reading her books and beginning to kind of control my mindshit, basically. And that was how I started to kind of turn my ship around, basically.

And I think at the same time, I was also having a bit of a mid-life crisis. I was kind of late-40s and just wondering what my life had all been about, because I had always been involved with the family business in one form or another. And I've never really pushed out on my own and done anything that I felt was my particular career, so to speak.

So it just started that journey. And yoga, really, was the catalyst that got me into more and more kind of spiritual and metaphysical stuff.

When I first started yoga, it was just a physical practice. I wasn't into any mumbo jumbo at all. It was kind of a physical practice so I wasn't interested in anything like chanting or meditation or anything like that. But when the need arose, I needed to get into that place of being calmer and finding tools for my mind.

So that's really how it all evolved.

Slade:

That's interesting. I did not know that you were a yoga teacher.

I have a pretty special place in my heart as well for yoga. I sort of feel like it was the thing that allowed me to... It's funny, I... Like what you just said. It started as a physical practice for you and then the mumbo jumbo came later.

I started out with the mumbo jumbo, and when I went looking for something to physically heal me, I had had a surgery which cut into my core muscles and I was a smoker for 20 years. So at that time, I was recovering from surgery and smoking, and I thought, Ugh, this is disgusting, to be doing these two things at the same time.

So I started to think, What is the representation of the breath in healing form? What is a replacement behaviour for smoking? And I really quickly landed on yoga, as being the kind of intersection of all that stuff. And I thought, Yay! I went to yoga as this mystic already!

And it was funny because I really quickly was drawn into more of power yoga and as I built up that core strength and became more and more physically strong, and of course I did quit smoking and did yoga instead of smoking, I became extremely physically empowered and alive in my own body in a way that I'd never experienced.

Jocelyne:

Yeah. Yeah.

Slade:

Never experienced.

We're talking, like, I was 41 when that happened, so... It ultimately led me to all the fitness that I do now, because I was like, Ah, I do the mumbo jumbo stuff in my day job. I want to lift weights and be a crossfit cult member, so I went that route.

One of the things that I have noticed is, a lot of people who are yoga instructors may go into it as a physical practice, as a job, and somewhere along the way, they start to discover that they can read energy, that they are intuitive, then they start to pick up a lot of stuff especially if they're touching clients sometimes.

Did any of that happen to you?

Jocelyne:

Yeah. Exactly how it happened.

Like I said, I was more into the physical side of it, but I began to notice that, and I think I've always had this attribute, of being able to read people's energy. And I think it goes right back to childhood. I don't know why, but that was just always how I felt that I could understand people. I could look at them and I could kind of guess what was going on.

And I began to notice that when people are in my class, I could figure out what was going on for them. And I began to notice that people were quite interested, in fact, they really demanded that I would make the classes in a way that they could tap into their own energy.

It was the beginning of class where I used to, when it was quite a physical practice for me, I didn't really have a run in into class. We'd do maybe a couple of breaths just to show willing. And then I'd go straight into the physical practice.

And then I began to see that people more and more wanted me to take them into more of a breathing sequence and to decompress them from their day. So the start of my class where we just do a couple minutes of breathing began to be 10 or 15 minutes of breathing. At first I thought, Oh, I don't know if I should be doing this. I don't think people will like it.

But more and more, I found that was part of the reason they were coming. And so it went from there. And then I began to really see the difference that it was making to people and I began to put my foot into the other aspects. The more ethereal aspects of yoga.

And it was quite a journey. Learning the history of yoga and realizing there are things that, what you might call the new age community had adopted, like working with chakras and visualizations and stuff like that. They were all things that had been part of yoga practice for thousands of years.

And that's what led me into studying other things like astrology and hand reading and the akashic records. Because all of those also belong to vedic studies. So it's quite fascinating how that all unfolded for me.

Slade:

Do you still, I'm just curious if you still work with astrology at all.

Jocelyne:

Yeah, I do.

Some of the most powerful readings I've ever had in astrology have been vedic astrology readings. I haven't been studying vedic astrology. But I have been studying western astrology and when I work with people now, I just always take their birth dates so I at least know what sign they are. Because that gives me a lot of information.

Because a lot of my work is about energy, whether it's physical, mental, emotional, what have you. And things like astrology help you cut through a lot of chit chat. It gets you to the heart of the matter more quickly.

Slade:

Yeah. The reason I ask about that is because astrology is emerging as a theme in all my interviews right now. There are at least three people on this season who are specifically astrologers. But then when you mentioned that, I felt like I needed to ask, because this is a theme and I have been sort of reinvigorated around using that in my practice.

I actually used to use, like, someone's natal chart was almost like a meditation or a gateway image for me to do readings, so I come from having done astrological charts for extra money when I was a teenager, when I was in college, for my parents' friends and some people in my family. Stuff like that.

And so, I've always asked for that information for a client because if I know their sun, moon and rising sign, I can talk for an hour about what that tells me about them, you know?

Jocelyne:

Yeah.

Slade:

At that point, all the intuitive stuff comes in as well.

I used to think, maybe I'm just kind of using this as a crutch. Maybe I'm just sort of using that as my way to log in, as we say. But then with all of you that I'm having these conversations with, I had sort of just backed away from including that on my intake forms. Now I'm rethinking, Oh wait a minute, I feel like my Guides and the Universe is all telling me, No, no. There's more to do with that. Keep that in place. It's a very useful vocabulary.

Jocelyne:

I think so.

It goes along with another thing I do, which is to do with yoga. Which is ayurvedic medicine, which is kind of the Indian version of traditional chinese medicine.

I do a, not with every client, but with some of my clients, I'll give them a kind of questionnaire thing that they complete, which also gives me their dosha, which is a physical representation of energy, so it goes into elemental energy like in astrology.

For example, if I use me as an example, I'm a Gemini so I've got a lot of mental air energy. But physically, I've got a lot of earth energy. So it gives me a great understanding of someone if I know what their physical energy type is along with their mental energy type.

So if I'm helping someone in more of a wellness way, which was my previous iteration in coaching. I was a lot more focused on wellness and health because that kind of went with the yoga.

And then I started building the more mystical and intuitive skills now, so I'm veering more in that direction. It gave me a really good picture of that person quite quickly and I'm all for something that kind of cuts through stuff and you can get to the heart of the matter much more quickly.

The same goes with the hand analysis. I learned how to do hand analysis and the energy shows up in the lines and the fingerprints in the hands as well.

So all those things kind of tie in.

Slade:

Wow, so if you have a client there in person with you, do you usually read their hand as well?

Jocelyne:

I do do in person hand reading things. They're usually mini sessions. I'm lucky enough to teach my yoga classes, the majority of them, at a local spa that opened a few years ago. I offer a kind of 45-minute mini session. So I do that in person.

But if I'm seeing someone long distance, then I like to send them a kit so they can print their hand prints for me. They send them back and I look at the printed version of their handprints.

And in honesty, I prefer doing that.

Because number one, it gives me a bit more time to just kind of mull over what I'm seeing. And secondly, with ink print, you get more fine detail. And quite often, I'm a bit distracted if I've got a person physically in that space, all expectant-like.

I get stage fright a bit. I quite like to be kind of tucked up in my office, and just kind of mulling and ruminating over the information I've got so that I can present it in a more cogent way.

Slade:

I didn't know that you could do that! That you could do prints with ink and send them to someone and that they can... I've never thought of that before!

Jocelyne:

Yeah.

Slade:

That's fascinating.

Jocelyne:

Yes, it is. It's much, much more fun.

Slade:

Well, it also allows you the time to create a more meaningful volume of information. Because I think there's a tendency, you know, like, it's weird to just let a stranger hold your hand for most people for a long amount of time. I can see where there would be some kind of, a little bit of almost like a social space pressure to not sit there and manhandle them for 15 or 20 minutes.

So to be able to have that kind of intellectual distance and to study the information kind of outside of that whole issue of touching or being in someone's personal space.

I find it easier to read for people that I cannot see, that I'm not physically in the same room with. I often describe it as being like, when you are listening to music and you want to concentrate, you close your eyes. It's like getting rid of a lot of the senses that you don't need in that moment, so that you can sort of put all your focus on that intuitive channel, essentially.

Jocelyne:

Yeah, I think that's exactly it. I don't appreciate the distraction because I'm easily distracted anyway, so if I see an expression or something that... It can put me into my headspace, and I don't really want to be there. I want to be more into my intuitive space.

The other thing I find especially with hand analysis, if I'm there with the person, and it's kind of, Cross my palm with silver, dearie, that kind of vibe, where if I'm at more a distance, it seems more, whatever the word is...

Slade:

Elevated?

Jocelyne:

Yeah. The opposite of being at the end of the pier, or in a fairground.

Slade:

Right. It's more elevated.

Jocelyne:

Doing tricks.

Slade:

More highbrow.

Jocelyne:

Yeah. Exactly. Exactly.

You know, I come from a family where this is the kind of stuff that is not believed in. All my family think I'm a proper weirdo. And they're the kind o