If you are made of multiple parts, who is the "I" watching them all?

Ella Shannon is an accredited counsellor and sex therapist based in Cairns, specialising in relationships, EMDR, and psychedelic integration. Since she discovered IFS, it's become more than a modality - it's become a lens for how she sees herself, her relationships, and the world. This model for personal growth and self-understanding doesn't just describe how we heal. It asks something stranger: what are you, exactly, when the parts step aside?

In this conversation, we go from how parts develop across a lifetime, to whether animals have them, to IFS sessions that feel like psychedelics - and to manager parts that can physically grip so hard they prevent altered states of consciousness from working at all.

We get into what self-energy actually is and how you'd recognise it, what happens in conflict when two people are defending different versions of reality, why reaching enlightened states isn't the end of healing, and what Ella believes about Source/God/the possibility of a cosmic host after years of this work.

00:00:00 - What's coming up

00:02:48 - IFS as Lifestyle and Lens

00:04:15 - One Self or Many?

00:09:01 - Exiles, Managers, Protectors

00:14:27 - Parts on a Spectrum

00:16:18 - What Is the Self?

00:23:43 - Your Parts vs Your Partner's

00:46:08 - IFS Goes Psychedelic

00:49:03 - When Parts Block Psychedelics

00:51:17 - Does the Healing Actually Stick?

00:55:28 - Bliss States, Unhealed Parts

00:57:04 - Ella on Source and Love

Get in touch with Ella:

https://www.ellashannon.com

Instagram: @evolution_of_intimacy

Podcast: The Parts Party

Get in touch with me:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PaigeLeacey

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4sVFkvFcj3DW1wuVZuGd4U

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/on-the-same-paige-with-paige-leacey/id1573526370

Newsletter: https://paigeleacey.substack.com

Instagram: @samepaige__

TikTok: @samepaige__

Three new episodes a month - subscribe for more!

What's the actual difference between instinct and intuition - and can you tell them apart when something is actually at stake?Brianna Bowley is a performance coach who works with athletes, and she's been training Brazilian jiu jitsu long enough to start seeing it as a map for everything - fear, relaxation under pressure, how the body processes threat before the brain has caught up.What I love about the way Brianna thinks is that fear isn't the enemy - it's information. She opens the episode with a story from Perth: being followed at night, then arriving at an Airbnb to find a smashed window and blood in the sink. What stayed with me was what she shared about the aftermath. I also get personal about my own relationship to violence and what a psychedelic experience showed me about how much of it my nervous system had absorbed.In this conversation, we discuss the constant threat assessment women carry, why the most relaxed person in the room is the most powerful, the human need for conflict and what happens when it has no outlet, and how to start tracking the sensations of your own body so you can work with fear rather than against it - when it counts.00:00:00 - What's coming up00:01:24 - Being followed in Perth00:09:21 - Instinct vs intuition00:19:56 - Fear and martial arts00:25:47 - Being a woman in BJJ00:34:03 - Strategy vs muscle memory00:39:44 - Hypnotherapy and time00:43:26 - What fighter would you be01:02:19 - Humans and violence01:07:02 - Growing up around gangs01:10:15 - Being chased by a chainsaw01:16:09 - Consuming violence online01:29:08 - Tracking your patternsGet in touch with Brianna:https://www.brianabowley.comInstagram: @brianabowleyGet in touch with me:YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PaigeLeaceySpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4sVFkvFcj3DW1wuVZuGd4UApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/on-the-same-paige-with-paige-leacey/id1573526370Newsletter: https://paigeleacey.substack.comInstagram: @samepaige__TikTok: @samepaige__Three new episodes a month - subscribe for more!

What if your brain doesn’t produce consciousness at all - it just filters it? What might this mean for intuition, identity change and life after death?

Jade is a naturopathic doctor, coach, and researcher who's spent 35 years studying why people don't actually change. I invited him on because he's one of the few people I've come across who can talk about consciousness and reincarnation without it sounding like something you'd find at a crystal shop.

We started with the film I Origins as a way into the idea that the brain filters consciousness rather than produces it, and what that opens up for reincarnation and near-death experiences. He tells a story from medical school about a prophetic dream involving his sister's pregnancy. We also got into why most people who think they are following their intuition are actually following instinct.

We also explore idealism vs materialism, money as energy, financial patterns from childhood, romantic attraction, psychedelic integration, and the feel-deal-heal process.

00:00:00 – What's coming up

00:01:24 – “I Origins” & reincarnation

00:04:48 – Materialism vs idealism explained

00:11:13 – Relationship polarity as growth

00:13:33 – Spiritual flow & logic can coexist

00:21:41 – Instinct vs intuition in real life

00:26:14 – Money patterns, fear & conditioning

00:43:37 – Attraction, worth & culture’s lies

00:59:28 – Psychedelics: promises & pitfalls

01:07:24 – Rewrite, rewire & retrain

01:17:16 – Trauma searing & the sympathetic state

01:27:59 – Feel, deal, heal

Get in touch with Dr Jade Teta:

https://www.jadeteta.com

Instagram: @jadeteta

YouTube: @doctorjade

Get in touch with me:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PaigeLeacey

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4sVFkvFcj3DW1wuVZuGd4U

Apple Podcasts:

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/on-the-same-paige-with-paige-leacey/id1573526370

Newsletter: https://paigeleacey.substack.com

Instagram: @samepaige__

TikTok: @samepaige__

Three new episodes a month - subscribe for more!

#psychedelicintegration #consciousnessexplained #onthesamepaige #psychedelics #intuition

What does it actually take to keep a podcast alive when 90% of shows don't make it to episode 20?In this solo episode, I pull back the curtain on what it's really like to make a podcast in 2026 - the money, the time, the emotional toll, and the rejection. I share the stats that put podcasting into perspective, what it feels like to spend eight hours producing an episode for 12 listeners, the learning curve of creative entrepreneurship and why I keep doing it anyway (this isn't for sympathy votes - it's honest content creator BTS)!I also get into the stuff I love most about my job - my pre-interview process, what it's like to feel the energy shift mid-conversation, and why deep focus might be the most underrated skill a podcaster can develop.00:00:00 - Introduction00:03:12 - Podcast survival stats00:05:21 - The real cost of podcasting00:07:09 - From acting to podcasting00:09:25 - How I prep for interviews00:15:24 - Presence and attention00:20:16 - Creativity vs entrepreneurship00:25:16 - Rejection and reality00:29:13 - Why I keep going00:33:15 - An invitationGet in touch with me:YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PaigeLeaceySpotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4sVFkvFcj3DW1wuVZuGd4UApple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/on-the-same-paige-with-paige-leacey/id1573526370Newsletter: https://paigeleacey.substack.comInstagram: @samepaige__TikTok: @samepaige__Three new episodes a month - subscribe for more!#podcasttips #podcasting #onthesamepaige #contentcreator #behindthescenes

In this episode, I sit down with sexologist, medical doctor, and researcher Dr Jess Wade to explore the biology, psychology, and mystery of female pleasure. Together, we unpack the tension between what research can measure and what still feels ineffable about sexuality.

We discuss cervical orgasms, the role of the vagus nerve, and why some researchers believe orgasm may function as a selective process in mate choice - but this conversation moves far beyond theory.

I share a deeply personal reflection on noticing a pattern in my own intimate life - using pelvic floor clenching to reach orgasm - and what it means to interrupt a nervous system habit in pursuit of deeper pleasure. Jess also shares her lived experience navigating chronic pelvic pain, and how this ultimately reshaped her relationship to perfectionism, performance, and presence in the bedroom.

⏱️ Timestamps:

00:01:08 – Rom coms & vacation sex

00:06:19 – Politics in the feed & switching off

00:08:49 – Inside the orgasm response

00:11:55 – Myths, pressure & pleasure as sacred

00:15:58 – Cervical orgasm, nerves & sensation

00:26:28 – Rethinking the orgasm gap

00:36:23 – Rewiring orgasm patterns

00:45:06 – Hypertonic pelvic floor & chronic pain

01:16:36 – Why pelvic care is women’s health

🔗 Get in touch with me:

🎬 YouTube: On The Same Paige with Paige Leacey
https://www.youtube.com/@PaigeLeacey

🎧 Spotify: On The Same Paige with Paige Leacey
https://open.spotify.com/show/4sVFkvFcj3DW1wuVZuGd4U?si=af98abe607fb4c1a

🍎 Apple: On The Same Paige with Paige Leacey
https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/on-the-same-paige-with-paige-leacey/id1573526370

💌 Be part of a community of smart, self-aware, wisdom seeking women:
https://paigeleacey.substack.com

📸 Instagram: @samepaige__

✨ TikTok: @samepaige__

🔗 Get in touch with Dr Jess Wade:

www.embodiedsexualtherapy.com.au/

Prue is the founder of Earth Altering and an artist whose work sits at the intersection of nature, embodiment, and creative expression. Working at a large scale with flowers, natural materials, and the land itself, she creates earth altars, medicine wheels, and immersive installations for festivals and private events. She also creates and publishes images of herself nude in natural environments on OnlyFans.

Prue came on the podcast to talk about the years leading up to her lupus diagnosis, her experience navigating the medical system with a complex autoimmune condition, and how chronic illness became the catalyst for a fundamental reorientation of her life.

Our conversation traces the accumulation of stress, suppression, and overextension that preceded her body’s collapse - and the clarity that followed.In this episode, we explore living with autoimmune disease, uncertainty and misdiagnosis, burnout and identity loss, the limits and strengths of Western medicine, creativity as a healing force, nudity and censorship, sexuality and self-authorship, and how working directly with the earth - and the body - became both a personal practice and a public offering.

⏱️ Timestamps:

00:00:00 – The first signs something was wrong

00:04:55 – Being dismissed & learning to persist

00:12:30 – Ross River fever & immune collapse

00:21:15 – Lupus diagnosis & kidney damage

00:30:50 – Burnout, identity loss & ignoring the body

00:41:05 – How creativity unlocks stored trauma

00:54:50 – Letting go of control & learning to trust

01:14:55 – Money, visibility & learning sexual boundaries

01:22:35 – Meaning-making & self-trust

🔗 Get in touch with me:

🎬 YouTube: On The Same Paige with Paige Leacey

https://www.youtube.com/@PaigeLeacey

🎧 Spotify: On The Same Paige with Paige Leacey

https://open.spotify.com/show/4sVFkvFcj3DW1wuVZuGd4U?si=af98abe607fb4c1a

🍎 Apple: On The Same Paige with Paige Leacey

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/on-the-same-paige-with-paige-leacey/id1573526370

💌 Be part of a community of smart, self-aware, wisdom seeking women:

https://paigeleacey.substack.com

📸 Instagram: @samepaige__

✨ TikTok: @samepaige__

🔗 Get in touch with Prue:

www.earthaltering.com.au/

[email protected]

Madeleine Monacelli is a holistic vocal coach and (incredible) singer who supports people to work with their voice as a tool for expression, regulation, and emotional processing. Her work draws on singing, sound, nervous system awareness, and embodied practice, with a particular focus on releasing perfectionism, self-monitoring, and fear held in the body.

I invited Maddy onto the podcast to explore the relationship between voice, self-worth, and the pressure many women carry to perform rather than express. Our conversation moved between her work as a performer and facilitator, and each of our personal experiences of holding back, overthinking, and struggling to advocate for ourselves in moments that mattered.

In this episode, we explore self-judgment, people-pleasing, and how these patterns shape pleasure and intimacy; the connection between the jaw, throat, and pelvis, singing as a pathway for emotional release, and what it looks like to use the voice - literally and relationally - with more honesty but less rigid control.

⏱️ Timestamps:

00:00:12 – Starting a podcast & being seen

00:05:01 – When creativity turns into pressure

00:13:55 – Perfectionism, performance & voice

00:26:00 – Practicing in public & letting it be messy

00:39:05 – The body, the voice & emotional holding

00:51:05 – Emotional patterns & nervous system states

01:01:00 – Sex, pleasure & pelvic floor tension

01:11:05 – Trust, surrender & staying embodied

01:18:18 – Integration & what actually changes

🔗 Get in touch with me:

🎬 YouTube: On The Same Paige with Paige Leacey

https://www.youtube.com/@PaigeLeacey

🎧 Spotify: On The Same Paige with Paige Leacey https://open.spotify.com/show/4sVFkvFcj3DW1wuVZuGd4U?si=af98abe607fb4c1a

🍎 Apple: On The Same Paige with Paige Leacey https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/on-the-same-paige-with-paige-leacey/id1573526370

💌 Be part of a community of smart, self-aware, wisdom seeking women: https://paigeleacey.substack.com

📸 Instagram: @samepaige__

✨ TikTok: @samepaige__

🔗 Get in touch with Maddy:

@maddymonacelli

Jordan Hackett is a sexuality educator and somatic sexologist who supports men to address shame, fear, and confusion around desire, addictive pornography use, and emotional suppression - all with an emphasis on radical self-responsibility.

I invited Jordan onto the podcast to talk about his own sexual development and the experiences that shaped his work - from early exposure to explicit content, to his fear of doing harm, and eventually to the reclamation of his sexuality as something integrated, relational, and conscious.

In this episode, we explore male sexual shame, porn use and compulsive patterns, desire and containment, the impact of secrecy on intimacy, anger and aggression, pleasure versus numbness, the difference between intensity and safety, men’s fear of their own power, group work versus one-on-one spaces, and what it means to develop a sexuality that is embodied, ethical, and alive rather than hidden or dissociated.

⏱️ Timestamps:

00:00:11 – Early sexual shame

00:04:36 – The early imprint of porn

00:13:18 – Why men need group spaces

00:16:36 – Porn & the nervous system

00:25:12 – Relapse, compassion & change

00:30:00 – Sexual energy as life force

00:38:56 – Desire, anger & polarity

00:44:55 – Control, trust & intimacy

00:54:35 – Witnessing, touch & healing

01:10:20 – Step-parenting & repair

🔗 Get in touch with me:

🎬 YouTube: On The Same Paige with Paige Leacey

https://www.youtube.com/@PaigeLeacey

🎧 Spotify: On The Same Paige with Paige Leacey

https://open.spotify.com/show/4sVFkvFcj3DW1wuVZuGd4U?si=af98abe607fb4c1a

🍎 Apple: On The Same Paige with Paige Leacey

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/on-the-same-paige-with-paige-leacey/id1573526370

💌 Be part of a community of smart, self-aware, wisdom seeking women:

https://paigeleacey.substack.com

📸 Instagram: @samepaige__

✨ TikTok: @samepaige__

🔗 Get in touch with Jordan:

https://www.jordanhackett.com/

​​[email protected]

Venerable Nimala is a Sri Lankan Buddhist monk and Kundalini practitioner who has spent over a decade in monastic life, teaching meditation, mindfulness, and Buddhist philosophy to people around the world. His work blends classical Buddhist teachings with embodied practices, offering a contemporary approach to spirituality.

I met Ven. Nimala while travelling in Sri Lanka during a three-week Panchakarma retreat. He joined us weekly to teach breathwork, offer gong healings, and hold private audiences on Buddhist philosophy. Naturally, I used my private session with him to record this podcast.

In this conversation, we explore why he chose monastic life, how Buddhism understands attachment without moralising desire, the role of busyness in regulating the mind, celibacy and intimacy, stress and control, shame and responsibility, chronic pain and suffering, karma, death, and what it means to apply ancient teachings in a modern world.

⏱️ Timestamps:

00:00 – Why this convo almost didn’t get published

04:13 – Choosing the monk’s path

09:29 – Attachment, desire & letting things change

14:43 – Sex, intimacy & the discipline of renunciation

20:56 – Busyness, stress & working without suffering

35:21 – Shame, pain, karma & finding peace

🔗 Get in touch with me:

🎬 YouTube: On The Same Paige with Paige Leacey

https://www.youtube.com/@PaigeLeacey

🎧 Spotify: On The Same Paige with Paige Leacey

https://open.spotify.com/show/4sVFkvFcj3DW1wuVZuGd4U?si=af98abe607fb4c1a

🍎 Apple: On The Same Paige with Paige Leacey

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/on-the-same-paige-with-paige-leacey/id1573526370

💌 Be part of a community of smart, self-aware, wisdom seeking women:

https://paigeleacey.substack.com

📸 Instagram: @samepaige__

✨ TikTok: @samepaige__

🔗 Get in touch with Ven. Nimala:

[email protected]

Ruby Shine is the founder of Sol Method and a nervous-system-first wellness practitioner. Her approach centres the nervous system as the foundation for relational safety, emotional resilience, and sustainable change, and is a living reflection from healing her own insomnia, C-PTSD and PCOS.

Ruby is also my best friend of almost 23 years. This episode was recorded live as part of a four-part collaboration with Sol Method, and the familiarity between us shapes the conversation - candid, layered, and grounded in lived experience rather than theory. We also drink wine, which helps.

In this episode, we explore anxious attachment, romantic fixation, situationships, trauma and nervous system activation, sex and chemistry, people-pleasing and self-abandonment, the difference between intensity and safety, and what it actually takes to move from survival-based relating into grounded, reciprocal partnership.

My 9 year cycle article on Substack:

https://paigeleacey.substack.com/p/nine-years-to-holy-hell-and-back

⏱️ Timestamps:00:00:00 – Intro: the nine-year cycle00:12:23 – The White House era00:14:08 – The three-year-long situationship00:22:49 – When chemistry isn’t enough00:43:53 – Ayahuasca: fear & love00:48:44 – Cairns & “triathlon guy”01:05:03 – Chaos era as a plotline01:06:11 – Shower wine, Adele & showing the f*ck up

🔗 Get in touch with me:

🎬 YouTube: On The Same Paige with Paige Leacey

https://www.youtube.com/@PaigeLeacey

🎧 Spotify: On The Same Paige with Paige Leacey

https://open.spotify.com/show/4sVFkvFcj3DW1wuVZuGd4U?si=af98abe607fb4c1a

🍎 Apple: On The Same Paige with Paige Leacey

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/on-the-same-paige-with-paige-leacey/id1573526370

💌 Be part of a community of smart, self-aware, wisdom seeking women:

https://paigeleacey.substack.com

📸 Instagram: @samepaige__

✨ TikTok: @samepaige__

🔗 Get in touch with Ruby:

@rubyshine__⁠

https://www.solmethod.com.au/