Wisdom Without The Guru

Ashley Holmes, a holistic fertility coach whose work grew out of her own experience with grief, unexplained infertility, motherhood, yoga, Ayurveda, and nervous system healing, joins me this week.

Ashley grew up on a farm in a small Canadian town. After the sudden death of her older brother, her family life changed dramatically, and she later left Canada for New Zealand in search of a fresh start. That time abroad deepened her love of children and eventually led her to meet her husband.

Years later, Ashley and her husband faced unexplained infertility. She shares what it was like to go through fertility testing, medication, emotional stress, and eventually become pregnant with twins.

Ashley also talks about the practices that changed how she understood her body, thoughts, stress, and fertility. Through yoga, Ayurveda, meditation, Reiki, and trauma-informed work, she began to approach pregnancy in a more conscious and supported way. She later conceived her third child naturally, and those experiences now shape the way she supports women and couples navigating fertility challenges.

This episode also looks at the loneliness many people feel while trying to conceive, why support is not always the same as advice, and how simply being listened to can make a real difference.

We discuss:

• Ashley’s childhood in rural Canada
• Losing her brother and carrying grief for years
• Moving to New Zealand and beginning again
• Unexplained infertility and fertility treatment
• Becoming pregnant with twins
• Yoga, Ayurveda, Reiki, and trauma-informed support
• Conceiving her third child naturally
• Conscious pregnancy and nervous system support
• The loneliness of fertility struggles
• How friends and family can offer better support
• Yoga Nidra as a simple reset practice

About: Ashley Holmes is a Holistic Fertility Coach and spiritual guide who helps women reconnect with their inner wisdom to naturally conceive and heal. Drawing from Ayurveda, yoga philosophy, and energy medicine, she empowers clients to release limiting beliefs and embody wholeness. Her work is rooted in the understanding that true transformation begins from within - without needing to seek outside validation or authority.

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Yoga therapist Mandy Mona speaks about family, faith, motherhood, body image, relationship strain, yoga therapy, pregnancy loss, and learning how to support yourself and others through difficult seasons of life.

Mandy shares how early losses in her family left her with questions about faith, God, and grief that she did not yet have the language to understand. She also reflects on growing up in a large, busy family, becoming a young mother, navigating a complicated relationship that later became her marriage, and learning how childhood experiences can follow people into adult relationships.

Yoga first entered Mandy’s life as a physical outlet, but over time, it became something much deeper. Through teacher training, work in treatment centres, and yoga therapy, she began to understand the connection between the body, emotions, breath, mental health, and lived experience.

Mandy also speaks about the loss of her son, Tyson, during pregnancy, after first learning she had been carrying twins. She shares how her family has continued to honour him, and what she has learned about supporting someone who is grieving in practical, grounded ways.

This is a gentle conversation about family, healing, faith, the body, and the many ways people learn to keep living alongside what they have carried.

Topics include:

• Growing up in a large, creative family with sports, siblings, and different personalities
• Questioning faith after early family losses and not having a clear language for grief
• Becoming a young mother while navigating relationship strain, family pressure, and uncertainty
• Body image, pregnancy, and the impact of comments that stay with us longer than people realise
• Discovering yoga first as a physical outlet, then as a deeper therapeutic practice
• Working in treatment centres and seeing people beyond addiction, diagnosis, or circumstance
• The difference between commercial yoga and yoga therapy as an integrative practice
• Pregnancy loss, stillbirth, family grief, and finding ways to honour Mandy’s son Tyson
• How to support someone who is grieving without asking them to explain everything they need

About:  Mandy Mona is a passionate, experienced yoga therapist dedicated to helping people reconnect with their bodies and trust their intuition through movement, breath and mindful awareness.

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Wellness coach Amanda Bearce joins me to talk about growing up with fear, instability, and a nervous system that never fully learned how to rest.

Amanda shares how her father’s severe mental health struggles shaped her childhood, including years of stalking, disrupted sleep, and a constant sense of uncertainty. She reflects on how those early experiences followed her into adolescence and adulthood — through school, relationships, anxiety, self-blame, and an abusive relationship that mirrored some of the instability she had known before.

We touch on Amanda’s healing process, including therapy, EMDR, an ADHD diagnosis, and her move from IT into wellness coaching. She explains how therapy helped her understand trauma and triggers, while coaching helped her begin to look forward, rebuild self-trust, and discover what calm could actually feel like.

We cover:

•  Growing up with fear, uncertainty, and a parent with severe mental health issues 
•  Childhood stalking, disrupted sleep, and not feeling safe at home 
•  How trauma can show up as reactivity, anxiety, stomach aches, and overwhelm 
•  Leaving high school, getting a GED, and finding another route forward 
•  Recognizing patterns in an abusive relationship 
•  Therapy, EMDR, ADHD diagnosis, and understanding nervous system responses 
•  The difference between therapy and coaching in Amanda’s healing process 
•  Moving from IT into wellness coaching 
•  Protecting your energy without turning self-care into another obligation 
•  Practical self-care tools for people who feel overloaded or constantly “on” 

This episode is for anyone who has lived in survival mode, struggled to understand their own reactions, or wondered whether calm can be learned later in life.

About: Amanda Bearce is a board-certified health and wellness coach and the founder of Simply Wellness with Amanda. She helps women who are exhausted from doing it all slow down, tune in, and nurture their well-being through sustainable self-care, so that they can feel more present, energised, and well in both their personal and professional lives.

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In this special episode, I welcome back Angela Jamieson to talk about her unusually titled book, Using No. 2 to Get to No. 1: The Shockingly Insightful, Full-of-Crap Self-Help Book.

Yes, the book really does connect poop and personal development — and, as Angela explains, that is exactly the point. Through humour, digestive metaphors, personal stories, and very relatable observations, Angela explores how letting go is not only something the body does but also something we often need to do, emotionally, mentally, and in the way we approach life.

Angela shares how the idea for the book first appeared many years ago, why it took time to become what it is now, and how her own experiences with family, work, parenting, loss, self-help, and everyday human awkwardness shaped the final version. The conversation touches on everything from toilet paper rationing and international toilets to comparison, people-pleasing, conscious choices, and why no one else’s personal development formula can be copied exactly.

We also discuss the link between the book and Angela’s work around relaxed productivity — especially the idea that life does not always need to be approached with more pressure, more achievement, or more seriousness. Sometimes, the most useful insights come through laughter, honest reflection, and remembering that we are all human.

This episode is a funny, grounded, and surprisingly thoughtful conversation about self-help, connection, letting go, and learning to trust your own internal diagnostics.

Angela’s book is available through major book retailers, including ebook formats, and the audiobook is expected to be available through Audible.

About: Angela Jamieson is a former engineer turned Relaxed Productivity Advocate, speaker, publisher, and bestselling author. She helps busy professionals get more done by doing less—but smarter. She's recently published Using No. 2 to Get to No. 1, the cheekiest self-help book you didn’t know you needed. 

Connect at: LinkedIn, IG, Website, Aimee Bronson

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Author and creator of Relaxed Productivity, Angela Jamieson, joins me to speak about identity, culture, ambition, family history, grief, creativity, and what it means to redefine success.

Born in Canada to Chinese immigrant parents, Angela grew up between cultures, with family roots connected to the building of the Canadian railroad and prairie life in Saskatchewan. Her early love of maths, music, writing, and travel eventually led her into engineering — a career that took her from Canada to the Netherlands and Brunei, while raising children abroad and building a life across continents.

We explore:

•  growing up Chinese Canadian while feeling culturally shaped by more than one world 
•  how travel, family history, and education influenced Angela’s career path 
•  building an international engineering career while raising children abroad 
•  the loss of Angela’s father and how it changed her view of success 
•  the idea of relaxed productivity and why doing less can sometimes create more 
•  creativity, romance writing, spirituality, and the different parts of a life that do not always fit neatly together 

After years of professional ambition and leadership, her father’s cancer diagnosis and death made her question what she was working so hard for. That turning point led her into personal development, a more spiritual yet still practical way of thinking, and into creating her work around “relaxed productivity.”

This is a wide-ranging conversation about belonging, achievement, family, creativity, and learning to build a life that makes room for more than one version of who you are.

About: Angela Jamieson is a former engineer turned Relaxed Productivity Advocate, speaker, publisher, and bestselling author. She helps busy professionals get more done by doing less—but smarter. She's recently published Using No. 2 to Get to No. 1, the cheekiest self-help book you didn’t know you needed. 

Connect at: LinkedIn, IG, Website, Aimee Bronson

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In this special episode, I welcome back Megan Malick to discuss her book A New Path — a workbook and planner created to support people navigating grief while also managing the practical realities that follow the death of a loved one. 

After losing both of her parents within three months of each other, Megan found herself overwhelmed not only by grief, but by the paperwork, legal processes, financial accounts, and responsibilities involved in settling an estate. That experience led her to create a resource combining emotional support, grief education, practical tools, planning systems, and reflective exercises. 

The conversation explores:

•  the emotional strain of being both a grieving family member and executor 
•  how grief affects memory, concentration, and daily functioning 
•  practical ways friends and family can genuinely help 
•  the hidden mental load that comes with paperwork after loss 
•  spiritual rituals and grounding practices during grief 
•  why preparing information in advance can ease the burden for loved ones 

While some of the logistical examples are US-based, many of the emotional and practical aspects discussed apply universally.

This is a conversation about grief beyond the funeral — and the responsibilities many people are left carrying afterwards.

About: Megan Malick is a therapist turned grief and logistics coach, author, and speaker. She is the founder of A New Path, where she supports grieving hearts and soul-o-preneurs through the sacred terrain of life, loss, and legacy. Blending Brainspotting, spiritual care, and deep listening, she helps clients meet the practical with presence—transforming paperwork into ritual. Rooted in her own journey through grief and transformation, Megan’s work invites a slower, wiser way of living, where even endings become portals to meaning, memory, and mystery.

Connect at Substack, Website

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What do we actually mean when we talk about grief—and what happens when the beliefs that once grounded us begin to shift?

Megan Malick shares experiences from across her life that connect to different forms of grief—some recognised at the time, others only understood later.

From early disruption and loss of stability, to navigating bullying and coping responses in childhood, through to uncovering trauma in adulthood, changes in relationships, and the physical and emotional impact of infertility, her story moves through multiple moments where something changed, ended, or no longer felt the same.

Alongside this, her relationship with faith evolves. What begins as a structured, inherited understanding is questioned, challenged, and gradually reshaped through personal experience, spirituality, and practice.

The conversation explores:

• different forms of grief, including those that are not always named
• how experiences can live in the body before they are understood
• shifts in identity within relationships and changing roles
• what happens when faith no longer feels stable or certain
• losing both parents within a short period of time

This episode reflects both the many forms grief can take, and how a person’s relationship with faith can shift, expand, or be redefined through lived experience.

About: Megan Malick is a therapist turned grief and logistics coach, author, and speaker. She is the founder of A New Path, where she supports grieving hearts and soul-o-preneurs through the sacred terrain of life, loss, and legacy. Blending Brainspotting, spiritual care, and deep listening, she helps clients meet the practical with presence—transforming paperwork into ritual. Rooted in her own journey through grief and transformation, Megan’s work invites a slower, wiser way of living, where even endings become portals to meaning, memory, and mystery.

Connect at Substack, Website

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In this episode, Debi Barr joins me to discuss her book The Call of the Sacred Rebel and the path that led her to write it.

We talk about how the book evolved over time—from early ideas during her corporate career to a later shift toward questioning expectations and choosing a different way of living. 

We begin with her earlier work on Reiki, where she shares her perspective that it’s not something you simply do, but something you live. That distinction carries through into this book and the way she approaches both her work and her writing. 

In this conversation, we explore:

•  how easily people can find themselves adapting to expectations without realising it 
•  the role of internal beliefs and emotional patterns in shaping external experiences 
•  the balance between intuition and taking action in everyday life 
•  what it can look like to step forward when being visible doesn’t feel straightforward 

Debi also reads selected passages from the book, including reflections on energy, personal memory, and the balance between intuition and action—what she describes as the “mystic” and the “magician.”

We also touch on the writing process itself, including revisiting personal experiences and how that shaped the final book.

This conversation explores themes of self-expression, personal choice, energy, and how internal beliefs can influence the way we experience and shape our lives.

About: Debi Barr is a soul guide, mentor, and bestselling author of The Call of the Sacred Rebel. She helps people reclaim their power and remember who they really are - through deep energetics, spiritual mentoring, and creative expression.
Her work blends spiritual insight with unapologetic self-expression, guiding others to live with courage, clarity, and purpose.  

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Debi Barr describes herself as “feral at 50” — but that phrase only makes sense when you understand the path that led her there.

Raised in Northern Ireland in a strict religious environment, Debi learned early how to be the “good girl”: quiet, compliant, and careful not to disrupt the fragile emotional balance around her. Beneath that, she was already experiencing the world differently — sensing energy, questioning beliefs, and noticing things she couldn’t explain.

As she grew older, that part of her life was gradually set aside. She built what looked like a stable, successful life: career, marriage, children, and financial responsibility. But underneath, the pressure was building — emotionally, physically, and mentally.

A sudden job loss became the turning point. What initially felt like instability revealed something deeper: she had lost her connection to herself.

This conversation follows Debi’s path through grief, depression, medication, financial stress, and eventual reconnection with her intuition. It explores how she rebuilt her life, redefined work, and developed a spiritual practice that now forms the basis of her business.

This is not a story about a linear transformation. It’s a gradual return — shaped by difficult decisions, trial and error, and the process of learning to trust herself again.

Key Takeaways

• You can build a life that works on the outside while feeling disconnected internally.
• Early environments often shape how much of yourself you allow to be visible.
• Major disruptions (loss, redundancy, illness) can expose misalignment rather than create it.
• Coping mechanisms (work, medication, alcohol) can mask deeper issues but don’t resolve them.
• Rebuilding isn’t immediate — it often involves trial, error, and gradual change.
• Returning to creativity or intuition is often less about learning something new and more about remembering.
• Financial pressure and identity are closely linked — especially when work defines self-worth.
• Spiritual practices can become practical tools when grounded in real-life experience.
• Support doesn’t always come from structured systems — sometimes it’s built over time through personal networks.
• Change can look disruptive from the outside but necessary from the inside.

About: Debi Barr is a soul guide, mentor, and bestselling author of The Call of the Sacred Rebel. She helps people reclaim their power and remember who they really are - through deep energetics, spiritual mentoring, and creative expression.
Her work blends spiritual insight with unapologetic self-expression, guiding others to live with courage, clarity, and purpose.  

Connect at FB, LinkedIn, IG, Website

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In this compelling interview, Dr. Chris Nirvelorron shares their extraordinary journey from a strict Southern Baptist upbringing, academic struggles, and military service to discovering their spiritual calling and healing abilities. 

We explore themes of faith, resilience, healing, and overcoming adversity as Chris reveals how they navigated complex personal and professional challenges,  reflecting on early questions around belief, the role of community, and the realities of military life, including the mental and emotional impact that followed. The conversation also touches on identity, family, and the experience of building a life outside of expected structures.

Over time, earlier experiences began to reconnect, leading Chris toward a more expansive approach to spirituality — one that draws from different traditions rather than staying within a single framework.

This conversation explores what it means to question, step away, and return in a different way — and how a personal path can take shape across many stages of life.

Key Takeaways

• Early belief systems can shape identity, but questioning them can open new directions.
• Community can exist independently of belief — and often has lasting impact.
• Learning differences can lead to alternative ways of processing and understanding the world.
• Military experience can create long-term mental and emotional pressure, even beyond active service.
• Suppressing identity (beliefs, sexuality, or experiences) can lead to fragmentation and internal strain.
• Personal crisis can act as a turning point rather than an endpoint.
• Spirituality does not need to follow a single structure — it can evolve over time.
• Exposure to multiple perspectives can shift rigid thinking into curiosity.
• Healing practices can emerge from earlier life experiences, even if not understood at the time.
• A sense of purpose can come from connecting differences rather than choosing one side.

Dr. Chris Nirvelorron is a Doctor of Divinity from the New Seminary, an ordained senior associate Interfaith minister, certified spiritual coach, and certified Divine Light energy healer from the mystic esoteric schoolhouse of Spiritual Arts Institute.  

Dr. Chris is gender fluid and goes by no pronouns. Being of service means mentoring, guiding, and leading souls across the USA in their life goals, spiritual pathways, and physical ailment needs. 

Dr. Chris utilises years of study and practice to ensure each client receives a custom package of offerings to ensure their definition of success is achieved. Additionally, Dr. Chris hosts community engagements both virtually and in-person to enrich perspectives and knowledge that individuals can select from. 

Connect at: IG, Website

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