The Aligned Living Podcast - Conversations on living from congruence: body, heart, mind & soul.

Change, in and of itself, is a foundational part of human life and living in the natural world. Some of us don't have internal permission, or external relational permission, to change, and can get trapped in obligation and "shoulds," instead of opening up to the choices and change would bring us into alignment.

In this episode, Iesha explores:

✨ Change as constant in the natural world - tides, glaciers, seasons, breath, the heart beating and resting. Life is always moving, and even in cycles, it's not always the same, because life is dynamic.

✨ Why "you've changed" is so often said as a criticism, or like someone's been let down, and why that's strange when viewed against the backdrop of the natural world.

✨ The difference between humans and the rest of nature: human beings can live long-term out of alignment. This is what makes review so important - not a one-off check, but a recurring, honest pause where we stop and ask, "Is this still aligned?"

✨ The "when-then" pattern - when the kids are at school, when we retire, then I'll get to live more aligned - and how empowering steps are available right now, alongside the bigger hoped-for external shifts.

✨ Why plans made with rigid consistency tend to come up against issues, and how we can end up either in self-judgment when we don't fulfil them, or depleting ourselves by pushing through. Change and adaptability need to be built into any ongoing commitment through review.

✨ Where this shows up in obligation - being carried out without question, even when something feels incongruent, or daily life running on "this is just how it is," in roles and routines that fit an earlier age or stage of life we've never stopped to revisit.

✨ Change within relationships - how people who resist our new boundaries are often the ones who were benefiting from us not having any, and why normalising change relationally means naming this clearly and inviting people into our changes rather than assuming they will or won't be noticed.

✨ Change as foundational and to be expected for everyone, and how relationships can survive and thrive as people evolve within them, when the changes are communicated and worked through together.

✨ The invitation: review, and review often. Not just once a year, or only in a crisis, but as an ongoing practice - as natural a rhythm as breathing in and out.

If you'd like help opening up this kind of review, or thinking it out loud together and creating your next aligned steps, you're welcome to book a one-off Clarity & Direction session. We'll spend an hour together, get you clear, into the review process, and open up that next step for you.

https://TimeWithIesha.as.me/?appointmentType=8354385

In this episode of The Aligned Living Podcast, I explore the skill of receiving feedback, and why it can feel so difficult, overwhelming, confronting, or deeply triggering for so many people.

Receiving feedback is not just an emotional skill. It’s a nervous system skill, a self-reflection skill, and a relationship skill. And if we want healthy, honest, lasting relationships, it’s important that we build the capacity to stay present enough to hear and understand the people we care about, even when what’s being shared is uncomfortable.

I speak about the difference between listening to understand and listening to prepare a defence, and why relationships can begin to quietly disconnect when people no longer feel safe, welcome, or able to share honestly.

Throughout the episode, I walk through some of the most common reasons feedback becomes difficult to receive, including:

feeling overly compromised or depleted

feedback triggering identity or sense of self

feedback feeling like a demand for perfection

nervous system responses connected to past criticism or rejection

shame responses

lack of self-reflection skills

confusing understanding with agreement

feedback being delivered without communication skill

trying to “win” conversations rather than understand

I also explore how feedback conversations become much healthier when we are grounded in our own congruence and sense of self, rather than needing agreement, certainty, or control in order to feel okay.

This episode is an invitation to gently reflect on your own relationship with feedback:

If communication, relationships, feedback, boundaries, or living congruently are areas you would like support with, there are links in this episode to book a Discovery Call and explore ways we can work together.

https://TimeWithIesha.as.me/NoCostDiscoveryCall

Iesha opens with a quote from Tiny Buddha:

"There comes a time when you stop trying to make things right with people who won't own their part in what went wrong."

And from there, asks: where is the line between taking responsibility for your own behaviour and taking on the other person's part too?

Learning that clear delineation of what's mine and what's theirs is a skill. And there's a further skill of communicating in ways that cultivate connection and understanding (not conflict), while not taking on more than your part in any dynamic.

In this episode Iesha covers:

Work With Iesha

If you’d like support building these skills and creating more aligned, connected relationships, you’re invited to explore working with Iesha.

Check out 1-1 packages and book your Discovery Call here: 

Want to go deeper into Aligned Living? 

And here's the promised link to Tiny Buddha, the source of today's quote:

In this episode, Iesha explores why saying “sorry” doesn’t always lead to relationship repair, and what’s actually required for trust to be rebuilt.

She begins by naming that the word “sorry” is used in different ways, from simple human acknowledgment of someone’s pain, to situations where we recognise we’ve caused impact but have no intention of change, through to apologies that carry genuine responsibility and commitment. Because we use the same word across all of these, much of the meaning is assumed, often leading to misunderstanding and unmet expectations.

From there, Iesha introduces the three elements of effective apology when the goal is repair. She walks through the importance of self-responsibility, truly understanding the impact on the other person, and having a clear, thought-through plan for behaviour change. She also highlights that words alone are not the repair, behaviour change is.

This episode speaks to both sides of the process, those apologising and those receiving an apology, offering a grounded, practical framework for moving through rupture in a way that is honest, meaningful, and capable of real healing.

Iesha explores the different ways we use the word “sorry,” and how the same sentence can carry very different levels of responsibility, awareness, and intention.

She introduces the three elements of effective apology for relationship repair, self-responsibility, understanding the impact, and a clear plan for change, and explains why each one matters.

She speaks to the common experience of feeling like you’ve apologised many times without things improving, and also to the experience of receiving apologies that don’t translate into healing or trust.

Through examples and client patterns, she shows how misunderstanding, assumption, and lack of clarity can keep relationships stuck, and how deeper self-reflection and communication can begin to shift that.

The different meanings behind the word “sorry”

Why apology alone doesn’t equal relationship repair

The three elements of effective apology

The importance of taking full responsibility for actions and choices

Understanding the real impact on the other person

Why behaviour change is where repair actually happens

The role of self-reflection in preventing repeated patterns

How both people participate in the repair process

If you are in the process of repairing something in a relationship, or wanting to move through something that hasn’t quite resolved, this episode invites you to look a little more deeply.

If you’re apologising, what level of responsibility and reflection are you bringing?

If you’re receiving an apology, what do you need to feel that it’s meaningful and believable?

And in both roles, where might slowing down and engaging with the deeper work create something that is actually complete, rather than something that keeps resurfacing?

Want a deeper understanding and experience of congruence? Receive Iesha's free series - The Foundations of Congruence, here: 

In this episode, Iesha introduces a core foundation for aligned relationships and communication: understanding and being understood. She explores how this sits at the heart of truly relating to one another, and how one of the key ways this breaks down is through what she calls “filling in the gaps.”

Before moving into a future episode on effective apology, she explores how misunderstandings are often created, not by what is said, but by what is assumed.

Using the metaphor of the eye’s blind spot, and how the brain fills in the gap with what it expects to be there, Iesha explains how we naturally fill in missing information in conversation based on our own perspectives, experiences, and expectations. While this happens automatically, it can lead to misinterpretation, disconnection, and decisions made on faulty understanding.

Iesha explores the role of understanding and being understood as a core foundation of aligned and healthy relationships. She makes a clear distinction between understanding and agreement, and highlights how true relating requires us to take the time to genuinely understand each other’s experience and perspective.

She shares how common words and phrases, like “I’m sorry” or “I love you,” can carry vastly different meanings depending on the person saying them and the person receiving them. When we assume shared meaning without checking, we can unintentionally create hurt, confusion, and misalignment.

Through real client examples, Iesha illustrates how “filling in the gaps” can impact relationships, from assumptions about commitment and agreement, to misunderstandings that compound over time.

Why understanding and being understood is foundational to aligned relationships

How we unconsciously “fill in the gaps” in communication

The different meanings underneath common phrases like “I’m sorry” and “I love you”

How assumptions can lead to misalignment, hurt, and repeated patterns

The role of curiosity and asking questions in creating clarity and connection

This episode is an invitation to bring awareness to where you might be filling in the gaps in your own relationships.

Where might you be assuming meaning instead of checking for understanding?

If you’d like support building these communication skills and creating more aligned, connected relationships, you’re invited to explore working with Iesha. You can book a Discovery Call to talk through what’s happening for you and how she can support you.

Check out 1-1 packages and book your Discovery Call here: 

Want to go deeper into Aligned Living? 

We have signals of congruence when body, heart, mind and soul are all saying yes. And we have signals of incongruence. In this episode Iesha explores what we can do with those signals of incongruence besides normalise them or push through them, and that's avoid them.

Avoidance is a bigger and more complex landscape than most people realise. Some of our avoidance strategies are things we'd never label as avoidance — things that are genuinely good for us. And that's exactly what makes this worth looking at consciously.

In this episode Iesha covers:

Closing reflection questions to sit with, slowly, like slow release fertiliser:

If you'd like Iesha's skills and expertise on team you while you sit with these questions and project manage what comes from them, you're welcome to get in touch. 

There’s a common personal development narrative that says discomfort equals growth, and that everything you want sits on the other side of your comfort zone. In this episode, Iesha slows that idea down and looks underneath it, bringing the conversation back to alignment and feelings as feedback.

Using examples (and a few sharp questions), Iesha explores how resistance can sometimes be your body’s wisdom saying “no”, or “I need more information”, and why normalising stress as the price of growth can pull you away from your own signals and your own congruence.

In this episode, you’ll hear:

If you’d like support to explore your own goals, foundations, and next steps through the lens of alignment, you’re welcome to reach out to Iesha.

Closure is one of those experiences we all long for - that moment when something painful finally moves from front and centre into the rear view mirror, settling into the rich, multicoloured tapestry of our lives rather than hijacking us daily. In this episode, Iesha opens a honest and tender conversation about what closure actually is, what gets in the way of it, and where we really need to look for it.

Drawing on her work with clients navigating the end of relationships and business partnerships, Iesha explores one of the most common ways we unknowingly hand our power over to the very situation we're trying to leave behind: placing our closure outside of ourselves, in the hands of someone else's actions, self-reflection, or change of heart.

Through three real client scenarios - a woman waiting for her ex-partner to finally see and own his part in the breakdown of their relationship, someone trying to make sense of choices that fall completely outside their own value system, and a person whose sense of resolution hinged on being paid out by someone whose goodwill had already proven unreliable - Iesha gently illuminates how this outward focus, however understandable, keeps us tethered to the very thing we want to move beyond.

The episode then turns toward what closure actually looks like when we bring it home. Iesha offers a grounding framework - looking back to ask what did I do well, what could I have done better, and if I were ever here again, how would I do it differently? - as a way of extracting real nutrient value from even the most painful experiences. This isn't self-blame. It's reclaiming the points of power that live inside our own story, building the skills we wish we'd had, and learning to trust ourselves and our lives again.

Warm, clear, and deeply practical, this episode is an invitation to stop waiting for someone else, and turn toward your own healing instead.

Key Takeaways

Whether we call it closure, moving on, or letting go, we're talking about the same thing:  arriving at a place of peace, balance, and understanding where the past is integrated rather than intrusive.

Time alone doesn't heal, tending does. Unresolved feelings and thought loops are important feedback. They are doorways into what still needs to be seen, heard, understood, and supported.

Placing closure outside yourself is one of the most common [and most disempowering] patterns there is. Waiting for someone else to take responsibility, to understand what they did, or to make good on what they owe keeps you a hostage to their choices rather than the one holding centre stage in your own healing.

Some things genuinely cannot be understood. When another person's choices fall entirely outside our own values or way of being, seeking to truly understand them pulls our energy away from our own centre, which is where healing actually happens.

Closure is mostly an inside job. Especially in the early steps. This doesn't mean the external circumstances don't matter, they do, but the keys to your own resolution should never be handed to anyone else.

Bringing closure inward means tending to yourself with honesty and compassion. This includes the you that didn't hold a boundary, the you that kept the peace at the cost of your own, the you that justified away behaviour that wasn't acceptable, or the you that jumped in before reading the fine print.

A simple but powerful framework for self-reflection:

This process builds self-trust. When we turn the focus inward - toward the skills we want to build, the deeper learning about ourselves - it places resolution and healing in our own hands.

Work With Iesha

If you've been trying to move through something and feel like you're not getting there fast enough, you don't have to navigate it alone.

Iesha works with clients one-on-one and in small groups. If you're ready to tend to what's unresolved and come back to yourself, explore the ways you can work together,  including single session and package options and a no-cost Discovery Call, right here:

👉 https://ieshadelune.com.au/offerings/wholistic-coaching/

In this episode of the Aligned Living Podcast, Iesha deepens into a crucial part of her coaching framework: Wholistic ecology.

This is about recognising that all parts of our lives interact with each other, and they can drain or uplift the whole. Sometimes the journey to living congruently calls for small tweaks, and sometimes it calls for significant renovations and creations, but either way, wholistic ecology matters.

Iesha offers two main lenses for working with this:

Iesha invites you to look back over your average week, month, or year and ask:

What is getting your time, energy and focus?

What is not getting your time, energy and focus?

Why do you think that is?

She names four common ways people lose alignment when they don’t step back and look at the whole:

Focusing only on areas where you feel powerful and confident

Focusing only on the most painful area

Giving all attention outwards

Life gets full, and months or years go by without review

Iesha shares an example of a client who came to her for parenting triggers and work frustrations, and when they stepped back and looked at the whole, she realised she hadn’t picked up a paintbrush for two years. Even creating 90 minutes a month for creativity shifted things.

Iesha names the difference between:

Specific alignment, choice by choice, task by task

Wholistic alignment, across the ecology of your whole life

You can be very skilled at moment-to-moment aligned choices, and still have a life that is out of alignment overall, because the whole can have elements of too much or too little.

She uses the example of water and plants: water is aligned for plants, and yet too much or not enough water causes issues. The same is true for us. Something can be aligned, and still be out of balance in proportion and capacity.

Iesha says when you look back at your month or year, one of two things usually happens:

You find misalignment

She names some common signals of misalignment: feeling drained, despondent, anxiety and stress, procrastination, resentment, short fuse between event and reaction, dissatisfaction, underutilised, misunderstood, alone, craving time and space.

A lot of life is aligned, but the whole has too much or too little

Iesha references the care label, like the cactus and the tropical plant. Both need water, the amount is different. No one is wrong. This work is about coming home to knowing the deeper you and what you need for your fullest expression.

If you find misalignment, Iesha invites you to turn the problem into a self-care project. What’s one small step you can take to begin addressing it?

If things are mostly aligned but there’s too much or too little, what’s one supportive next step you can take to bring it into balance?

She reminds you this review is not about judgment or creating a bigger to-do list. It’s about awareness, because once you can see clearly, you’re more able to make kind, congruent changes.

And as always, you don’t have to do this investigation alone.

For more free resources, or to join Iesha's email list visit :

To explore 1:1 Wholistic Life Coaching with Iesha visit:

https://ieshadelune.com.au/offerings/wholistic-coaching/

In this conversation, Iesha explores:

✨ Why she uses the word “birth” for grief

✨ What supports grief, and what shuts it down

✨ Grief as both emotional processing and recalibration

✨ Examples of recalibration grief

✨ Why distraction and “choosing a better feeling thought” can slow grief down

✨ How grief moves in waves

✨ What surrender looks like in real life

✨ Completion and integration

Iesha closes by acknowledging grief is deeply personal, and that the recalibration and the skill sets required will be different depending on what has been lost.

For more free resources, or to join Iesha's email list visit :

To explore 1:1 Wholistic Life Coaching with Iesha visit:

https://ieshadelune.com.au/offerings/wholistic-coaching/