In this episode of Ways to Grow Podcast, Zankhana Mistry talks about the power of Family Constellations on healing ourselves. 

What is a constellation? Like with stars, a constellation is defined as the placement of every individual in a space. 

Bert Hellinger is the founder of Family Constellation.

He began his research on the representative phenomenon in 1978 and discovered the fundamental orders of life, which he called "Orders of Love". These form the basis of Family Constellation. These orders are:

1. Belonging: As humans, we want to belong. That is one of the basic needs of any human being. When we describe ourselves, we do it in relation to our family, culture, job, friends...  when we don't belong, trauma occurs. 

2. Order: When a parent dies and one of their children takes their role, the order is disturbed, and trauma occurs. The good news is that just by acknowledging it, we can fix the trauma. 

3. Balance: For every action (force) in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction. If one person gives a friend a gift, this person will return another present. What goes around comes around. When the balance is altered, trauma occurs. 

When any of these principles are disturbed, the system suffers. The system can be understood as a persona, a family, a couple, a team... you name it. 

In this episode, Christoffel Sneijders tells about the three brains: Gut, Head and Heart. He describes how they function and how it works when someone has dominance in one of them. He also explains how to find an alignment between these brains so that we can make better decisions. 

Here are some of the highlights:

We have three brains. Scientists discovered 35 years ago that in the heart, we have one hundred thousand brain cells that operate like a brain - can remember, can make decisions.

Now you're a mom, so you know how you sometimes feel that your heart almost squeezes when you leave your little one alone. Now, why does your heart squeeze?  That signal is not coming from your head. Now your heart feels, “oh, I’ll leave my little one alone”, and it gives a reaction. Also, it can produce three hormones that help you in that: oxytocin - the love hormone, endorphins- that puts you in action, and dopamine - the famous memory-drug, you could say. 

And in the same period of time, in the mid-80s, beginning of the 90s, the gut-brain got officially approved as a brain. So, Michael D. Gershon, with 30 years of research on the gut, described in his book “The second brain” that we have 500 million brain cells in the gut; that's the size of a dog brain in your gut. 100 million around your small intestine, and the other 400 million in that area to make all kinds of decisions. And not only about digestion but everything that has to do with your survival needs. So, when you have that gut feeling from, “Agh! Should I do it or not?” that's your gut saying, “Is this wise for my survival or not?” where do you feel fear? In your gut.

The 3 brains have their own authority and their own objectives; the gut brain thinks all about survival, me, myself and I. Everyone who's a winner, whether in sports or companies or politics or in whatever's… they need a big gut brain. To become a real winner, you also need your heart-brain because you have to follow your passion. And your heart-brain is all about connection.

If you follow your gut, you would say: "okay, I will go for my own career, for my own stuff and my own things, and by the way, I don't care". 

If you follow your heart, you'll say: "no, I take care of the team. I take care of the family. I take care of everybody else". 

If you follow your head, you say: "Okay, let's be logical. What is the best decision based on all the statistics and all the wise things?" 

If you follow only one, most times you may regret it in the end. So we must align those three and let them have a discussion inside and come up with a common solution.

Stefania Brunori talked in this podcast about the importance of creating a business from purpose and here are some of the highlights of this episode:

You really need to revisit your WHY; what is your purpose. It doesn't mean that by knowing your purpose, everything is done and it's not going to be difficult. It is challenging but having a purpose is powerful and it's what will make you stand out on the days that you don't have any energy or are not motivated.

I believe that each of us has a gift or more that makes us unique, and pulling from that gift and that uniqueness, just the simple act of doing more of that uniqueness that you have will connect you with many other good things. Maybe you don't know where this will take you, but your energy is different when you do something you are 100 percent aligned with. The types of people that you are going to attract are different. The kind of conversations that you are going to have are different, and that is going to inspire you.

What we've gone through during the pandemic gave a lot of light to things that we didn't want to see before or couldn't see before, so a lot of people have realized that they are unhappy in their jobs or the companies that they are business owners. So, I think the topic of purpose is more relevant than ever.

I think passion and purpose are different. So, purpose can be from something tiny I do every day inside my company or with my family. Purpose has a component of wanting to contribute to others, while passion can be, I’m passionate about cinema or I’m passionate about car racing. You are not thinking about how this can impact others. 

I think we also have to be careful when we think about creating a business from purpose, believing that it will be a walk in the park because it's not.

After having worked with many startups and SMEs, and future entrepreneurs and also launching my own business, the main thing when you launch a business is that you need to solve a problem. Otherwise, it's going to be a hobby, not a business. So, understanding which is the socio-economic trends is critical. 

The first step to starting a business is to have at least some clarity on the idea. It doesn't mean it needs to be a validated idea, but the first step is finding this mix between your skills, your knowledge, and what is required in the market. And then start putting numbers to realize the size of this opportunity. At the same time, you may need someone who guides you because it's tough to know about everything. 

I always tell them if they can, they can plan in advance so they will avoid half of the pain that I went through because, of course, it was accidental. After all, I didn't somehow have the option but bless that hardship because it allowed me to go through that part of realizing what I like.

That's been the most significant change in my life. I started yoga as a tool to reduce my stress, and yoga gives me a higher connection with my body.  That knowledge of the body has also increased my intuition, which I think is a super powerful tool for business. Meditation has helped me observe my thoughts without getting messed with them but from afar. So, it's helped me to be far from reaction.

And as you get this knowledge about your body, you know even more when you are in tune with your values. So, if you are doing things that are not connected with your values, your body will tell you. Maybe if you don't listen to your body, you won't realize until you get sick. But if you are connected, you will realize that when you work with this company, you are not feeling okay. So, I would say that the yoga and coaching, which allowed me to learn about the values, are giving me that perspective.

Somatic coaching comes from the word ‘soma,’ Greek for all our intelligences. We have multiple intelligences as well as our beautiful brains. We have our emotions, we have our intellect, we have a spiritual intelligence, and we have an internal sensing as well. 

Somatic coaching is about using the body as a way in to be able to gain nuance and differentiation so that you can integrate those different parts of yourself. So, it's a practical approach and an understanding of mind and body; how we can bring them together and create ways to grow and heal.

Caroline Quaife has a program called The SandBox starting in September. Her program is 360 pounds, and for people on the podcast, she will be offering it for 199. Listen to the episode to get the code and use it at coah.quaifeassociates.com

Our bodies aren't just like a way of carrying around our beautiful brains.

Our body is always in a rhythm. When you breathe in, your heartbeat goes up; when you breathe out, your heartbeat goes down. There's always that rhythm of in and out of faster and slower. If we can understand that rather than being fixated on ‘I have got to do this, I’ve got my to-do list, I have got this meeting’ always on this forward-looking path, then, actually, we're not in that rhythm, and that can be at our expense. And also, at the cost of society because we have many people now who are very strong out and in their heads and are struggling with their lives and not enjoying them.

So, there are three components:

1. There's somatic awareness. So, you have to be aware of what's happening in your body, but that's not sufficient. 

2. You then have to practice, 

3. And then there is that sense of that opening into a different shape, and with the shape comes another way of being. So, I experience the world differently now.

David Trevelyan says, “The body changes with a yes.” So, there's a sense of that in somatic coaching, we're not fighting things, we're not pushing something away, we're saying yes to what is in a very gentle, compassionate way because we, as human beings, we're wired for stability and so what we bring is our ability. We've tried to become as stable as possible in our environment, so the body will resist anything that changes that stability if there's a sense of it not keeping us safe. And so, we always need to work to ensure that we feel safe at a very deep level. 

There is this theory that Jennifer Garvey Berger studied with Bob Keagan at Harvard, and so there is this evidence that as adults, we can develop, and our brains can rewire. And that development is around our ability to deal with more complexity, which we need in the world now. 

What fascinates me is humanity, human beings, and us as part of something bigger. So, I do have that sense that comes from the body. I do have that sense of a broader consciousness that we are part of and that we kind of get so caught up in being material beings, and actually, that is part of us, but it's not all of us, and so for me, that connection to the spiritual is so fundamental; especially with all of the things that we are doing as human beings to each other in this world that enables me to have a sense of my place in humanity in the world, in the universe.

So, the amygdala can shrink and what we can do is we can work together to be able to rewire the brains and to be able to bring the body back into that balance that it had before.

Ever thought that your team would benefit from coaching? 

Listen to this episode where Linda Berlot explains everything about ORSC coaching.

Linda is an entrepreneur and a certified executive and team coach. She is a PCC or professional certified coach and an ORSC organization and relationship system coach certified by the ICF, the international coaching federation. She is the founder and CEO of Berlot group, which is a team coaching organization and she's a partner for CRR global.

ORSC stands for organization and relationship systems coaching. It's a model of coaching systems. A system is either a pair or a team, a family, a group and actually as an individual inside us is the first system. So, it's a model of coaching which helps us coach the system as one united entity rather than coaching the individuals in the team or the system. A relationship system is a group of interdependent entities. So for example, if a group of us go to the movie, we have a common goal and focus but we are not interdependent, which is why it's so hard to ask the person with the crinkly packet of chips next to me to keep quiet.

The first thing that we do is we educate the team leader and the team themselves that all behavior belongs to the team because it's in the dynamic that we are toxic. If you are toxic to me and I don't like it, I will shut it down and walk away. If there is a team member who is displaying toxic behavior, I will never point them out. I will rather ask the team wow, I’ve noticed x, y and z toxic behavior, how do you, as a team, want to be with it? Does it serve you? What is it giving you? Because if you haven't shut it down, how is it serving the team in some way?

As the systems coach, it's not my place to tell the team what to do or advise but rather just to be a mirror and reveal what we see, with more information a team can make different decisions, take different actions.

If we're looking to really change behavior that takes time. So, I would take my team on a journey of four, six or nine months.

We, as team coaches, use tools and skills, then to kind of deepen the conversations. And very often I have tape, blue tape, taped on the floor. And I use a tool where people will stand up and I facilitate the movement of them, you know, around the tool because we believe that when you move your bodies, you access different intelligences which are not just IQ. So, sitting down, we are forced to think in a very particular way; when we stand up and move our bodies, there's a lot more freedom and new information pops up.

what we're teaching is how to be in right relationship, first with myself and then with each other. And, you know, we're always in relationship with something. We're in relationship with coffee, with time, with food, with our bodies and of course with each other. And the greater, the god, the universe, the world, we're in relationship with all these areas.

We believe alignment is always possible. But here's what happens in times of conflict, right? If you and I are in conflict, there's a belief that I am right and therefore you are wrong, which polarizes us. And if we keep talking about our positions, we become pretty entrenched in our positions.

the leader doesn't have to have all the answers. The answers lie in the team. If I feel that I have to have all the answers I’m one person smart. If I ask the team well what do you need and I listen to them and we kind of come up with solutions that work for the individuals and the business, we are as many people as are in the team smart.

We're always in relationship, whether we know it or not, we're always in relationship. And so the question is, how do we choose to be in the relationships that we are? And that question starts with the ‘me’. Who do I choose to be in this moment, in this relationship?

Sam Daghash is an alignment and breakthrough specialist, a certified master coach and practitioner, working with various moralities, such as time paradigm technique, NLP, hypnosis, quantum linguistics and soma breath practice. 

In this episode Sam told us why is important to let go of negative emotions of the past and how to make that happen applying the time paradigm technique: First, we need to release the negative emotions of the past. Second, is to work on removing specific belief systems that are not serving us. The third, is to eliminate anxiety by creating a pattern interrupt to the mind to release any form of anxiety in the future.

Our mind is divided into two main compartments; the conscious mind and the unconscious or subconscious mind. The subconscious mind represents 95% of who we are. So, it's our beliefs, our behaviors, ultimately, our personality. What we need to deep dive into is an understanding that the unconscious mind has many prime directives, one of which, it stores and represses emotions. So, time paradigm technique allows us to work with the unconscious mind on a deeper level; the deep rooted who we are, that personality, that identity. And from there, we're able to adjust, change, release...

So, the time paradigm technique modality allows us to release the negative emotions that we can remember and the ones that we can't remember. And those are anger, sadness, fear, emotional pain and hurt, and guilt. Fear is the big one for all of us as most of our limiting beliefs are derived from fear.

I ask certain questions that I know your conscious mind doesn't know the answer because who knows the first time you had fear? No one does. But your unconscious mind knows, or it knows a representation or a symbol that says, “This is from the time where I had it.”

Once you release the fear more, you're going to fly. You will actually go to the next level. And the fear of letting go of that is the fear itself, that is holding you back.

Our higher, our inner-self,  always knows when we're not in our full potential. We feel out of balance and no one knows you better than you know yourself. So, once we adjust our inner world, everything outside of us starts to play the same field in the game.

The body is the unconscious mind. If we understand that, we understand that when we're suppressing emotion, energy in motion, we're suppressing it in our body at the end of the day. So, it's being stored somewhere in our body. And if we really want to look into the understanding of modern science today and most people know this already, they say 90% of the disease is stress. But what is stress? It's suppressed emotion that it's in our body. If you are carrying negative emotions, thinking and feeling negative all the time, you're stressing. You're stressing your body.

The reason you're stressing initially or in burnout is because you're putting yourself in a situation that is not true to who you are in the first place. So, you would need to go back to the basics of why you're doing what you're doing.

Once you change your beliefs, you will change your perception and then you start to see things that you didn't see before and that will give you a different life experience and then you'll end up not being burnt out and doing something that you actually love to do and like to do in your life.

Our unconscious mind is one of the main prime directives to make us survive. So, it will use anything to let us flow through life but we have to come to a realization that if it's not serving me today then it's not good for me. It's simple as that.

In this episode Marcus Smith, founder of InnerFight, tells us about the accident he suffered back in February 2018  which left him fighting for his life.  In May, just three months after the crash, he took part in the 42.2km trail race on the Volvic Volcano in France. A month later, he did 50km cycle, 50km run, 50km swim at Al Qudra in Dubai. In July, he ran 195km across the island of Corsica, at 13,000 meters above sea level, in five days. And he culminated that year with 30 marathons in 30 days. He has also run Marathon Des Sables, a 250km run across the Sahara - the world’s toughest footrace. These are some of the accomplishments that really need a strong body but above all a strong mind and that is what we talk about in this episode

The highlights of these episode:

So, what I realized, I think I knew this before but what I really realized in that situation is the mind has to tune in with the body in this situation, and it has to listen to it. It has to be present with it.

And I started to develop more of this mindset of, okay what can I do right now to make the situation better, which I’d had for a while before but until you really get into the situation and admit the situation that you're in and out of this state of denial, you can't move forward.

There's four stages to this:

The first is to admit you've got a problem, get out of denial. 

The second is to reject that that problem is going to stop you from continuing to live your life and create happiness. 

The third is for relaxation, which is super tough.  it's like, okay you've got seven broken ribs, a broken shoulder and a split lung, how do you relax? 

And the fourth point is, okay what do I do now? What can I do now to make this situation a little bit better?

this is why the connection between the mind and the body is so important. You feel that that is just not taking you forward. You feel that it's going back because mentally, we're always told we've got to do things, all the time, exactly to get better. But, if you've gone a little bit laterally and you've just been able to relax about things then your chances of moving forward tomorrow, or the next week are increased.

The problem that I see and this might hopefully give people some something to think about the problem is that a lot of solutions are offered externally now when actually it's all within us. 

What you have to do is sort of create some awareness around it and spend some time internally to try and figure out, okay, is there a disconnection between my mind, my body, my soul, spirit, emotion, and how can I put it back together? And I think if people spend time doing that and not as much time thinking about ads that they're getting sprayed through social media through various channels then, because those things won't help you. You know, like this seven day detox, that will not take 15 kilos off you. 

So, the reason that you behave like you do now is because that's the way you were taught to behave when you were younger. If you were given a lot of love when you were younger, you know how to give love now. If you weren't, you don't. And this is one of the biggest things to go and not undo but try and understand previous programming to try to release them and allow them to live awake and conscious and free. 

The ultimate thing that we can be to each other and it's not just as a coach, it's a human to a human, is to try and put ourselves in their shoes without judgment.

Nic Woodthorpe-Wright has been coaching leaders for over 20 years now. Listen to what Executive Coaching is and what is the difference it can make. 

Here the highlights of this episode:

Coaching, executive coaching, leadership coaching, it's ultimately all very similar. You need to bring in each of those niches a certain skill set or understanding. The process of coaching is the same and the underlying competencies and skills that you need to bring are not dissimilar in all of those places. But really, it's about having a conversation (it's moving now into groups and teams) on a one-to-one basis, with someone that really is there in service of what is trying to happen and holding the space for that person to go on the journey through the use of powerful questions, holding the space, speaking, intuitively sometimes, not holding on to outcomes. And as a coach, our role is literally to hold that space and create the opportunity for new spaces of discussion and thoughts and feelings as well.

The difference between Personal Coaching and Executive Coaching is mainly context. You're working in a business environment and you are coaching people that are looking to work on ideas and challenges and problems and development in a work scenario. That doesn't mean that those aren't showing up in other spaces, whether that be community or personal life and so forth but the focus now has come and the potential information and feedback is coming from a corporate perspective.

So, there's a critical moment or the hamster wheel stops and we fall over. In this critical moment we have to start asking questions and mostly, if we're working only on our sort of answering our own questions, there is a finite amount of information that we have in our system that we can use. So, having a coach is about how do I access a deeper level of information that does sit within me and that's not to say it's only as an intellectual awareness. You and I know that this is about what I can feel intuitively, what information sits physically, embodied in me. There is information. There's a host of knowledge, wisdom, understanding that is way beyond the conscious understanding at this moment in time and it's not that the coach does anything crazy or mad or weird but can help you access that information through a whole set of tools and processes that they've studied through their journey and this is why you want to work with a certified coach.

I have worked with very senior people myself and sometimes, just to get them out of their chair, I mean it sounds like not much, right? but to get them out of their chair, from behind their desk, can have a huge impact. Because there's a lot of safety behind a desk, especially when you're a very senior person because that's where a lot of your power sits. To move them out of that space and just to sit them in a different part of the room and you can ask the same question you asked that was when we were in there behind that. And you will have a whole different world show up.

Nobody's going to have breakthroughs in a state of fear and so our role as coaches is to come in and be in deep service of that higher version of the other individual that's sitting opposite us and how we do that is that we need to create a number of things. One is we need to create a confidential container within which that conversation is going to happen. The other is we need to do other design work that helps that individual go, okay fine, now I understand and actually, I can say what I like and what I don't like here.

Now, coaching can solve problems but that's not the primary choice that we are here. We are here because we know there's so much more of each of those individuals that you have in your business. 

Patrick is a highly regarded Voice and Speech Coach in Los Angeles. He has helped hundreds of actors, business people, and other professionals increase their vocal power, improve articulation, and become better speakers.

As member of Voice and Speech Trainers of America, Patrick coached for CBS's top-rated series Without a Trace, big-budget and independent movies, including Hostage, Van Helsing; TV’s LA Dragnet, and KC Undercover. Patrick is currently the Vocal Coach for Disney’s Stuck In The Middle. And for years he has been named as one of “LA’s Favorite Dialect Coaches”.

Patrick is in private practice in West Hollywood and works with clients all over the world. Students include Penelope Cruz, Eva Longoria, Alan C. Fox among others.

Listener, if you dream of being more articulate or, as The Collins dictionary explains if you want to be able to express your thoughts and ideas easily and well, or express yourself, clearly, readily, concisely, and effectively or if you want to have a more powerful voice and therefore, presence, join us in this conversation.

it's our innate instinct to judge other people consciously unconsciously, and we do so on a number of levels. The way they look, the way they dress, the way they cut their hair, or have no hair in my case, the way that they speak, the way that they stand, the way that their facial expressions are, their body expressions...  So an articulate person, somebody who speaks clearly, can be perceived as more intelligent, more educated person.

A voice and speech coach, in my case, helps a person with the three C's. To be clear, to be confident and to be connected. 

So, to be CLEAR is to remove or identify and remove any obstacles to how you speak. So, if it's articulation or if it's nasality talking too fast or if the voice is right here or if you're too quiet or if you're too loud, all of those things or if everything sounds exactly the same when you're talking, that's about clarity.

CONFIDENCE: I work with a lot of people for public speaking but it's not just about public speaking. It could be for an interview, it could be about in your own relationship at home with your husband, with your wife, with your children, with your parents, how to be confident that you can speak up for yourself and say what you want to say and to be able to say it in a way that is constructive and it also goes with what your intention is so that you can speak, let's say, if you're a public speaker with power, with persuasiveness and maybe even with some passion, if that's what you want to do. 

And finally being CONNECTED, so many of us speak from our throat. We just talk right from here. There's not much impetus or need to use a lot of our voice, just on our daily basis. We're in a very connected age of the internet, we're on social media, we're filming, we're talking over the computer, we're talking, it's close situations, we were at an office, going back to the office, where it's very quiet. We just don't have much time to use our voice. We tend to talk from here. So, in that moment, when we really want to make an impact to a larger audience, we're still talking from here. So, yeah, I’m connecting to you but am I really connecting from, am I connecting to myself? I’m not connected to myself, I'm not connecting to my full voice. 

The components of being a better speaker are these three things; B-O-F, BREATHE, OPEN, FLOW. So, breathe more deeply, open your mouth so the sounds can come out and flow the sounds on that breath so the sounds come out. So, when you start to breathe, you can start to relax. When you relax, the mind opens up and the ideas flow.

We don't have to always fill our belly with breath, we just need to breathe in fully with depth but that first step is really finding this because most of us speak from our throat.

In this episode we talked about Saboteurs and how to control them through Positive Intelligence, which as a Mental Fitness methodology.

Positive Intelligence is a mental fitness training, in order to gain the ability to be "well" most of the time. This methodology helps us increase the amount of time our mind is working in our favor, instead of against us.

It's a way to handle the life challenges with a positive mindset instead of a negative mindset.

If we are not mentally fit, we are going to handle those challenges from stress, anxiety, disappointment, frustration, shame etc. Whereas, if we are mentally fit, we can life this whole experience in a very different way, being able to have access to peace of mind, to calmness, to curiosity, creativity etc. So, we really have a whole lot of different possibilities.

Shirzad Chamine the creator of Positive Intelligence has discovered that by exercising three main muscles we can really reach peak mental performance, we can increase our happiness and we can have healthier relationships.

The simplicity of the application of the method is great. These three muscles are: 

1. The saboteur interceptor

2. The muscle of the Sage

3. Self-command

Inside of us, there's this battle between a Jedi and Darth Vader. We all have a Darth Vader mind and a Jedi mind. By working these three muscles, we can get to command that power balance between the Jedi mind and the Darth Vader mind. And the Darth Vader in positive intelligence is these saboteurs. It's known that we don't sabotage ourselves in infinite ways. There are 9 ways we tend to sabotage ourselves plus the Judge: 

1. Stickler

2. Pleaser 

3. Hyper achiever

4. Victim 

5. Hyper rational

6. Hyper vigilant

7. Restless

8. Controller 

9. Avoider 

The second muscle is the self-command which is the practice that we do to concentrate our attention for more than 10 seconds in just one physical sensation. From our five senses, we could find the touch, the hearing, the visual or maybe the breathing… it’s concentrating our attention in one of those senses at a time. 

The third muscle is the Sage perspective that says that every outcome or circumstance can be converted into a gift, an opportunity.

And the 5 Sage powers are:

1. Empathy, which is connected to unconditional love.

2. Explore, which is deep curiosity.

3. Innovate, which is the greatest creativity.

4. Navigate, which connects us with a deep sense of meaning.

5. Activate, which is calm and later focus on action.

Emotion is energy in motion. So, by moving your body, you're moving your emotions and that's very powerful.

What we mean by negative emotions is not that they are bad and we don't need them but that we feel bad when we feel them.