Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:11] Speaker B: What'S worthwhile healing Mind, body and spirit. I'm Ramsey Zimmerman. I choose peace of mind, vitality of body and joy of spirit over stress, exhaustion or overwhelm. Together, let's explore and pursue the many ways to build holistic health and wellness.
[00:00:31] Speaker A: So our nervous system is constantly communicating to us through how we feel. It's something called neuroception. It's constantly sending us signals. I would say a lot of people and a lot of clients I work with in the beginning, they're not quite aware of what those messages and feelings are. Either because they've been stuffing them down and pretending that they're normal or their entire life or they're feeling disconnected from their body. It's like you're stuck like in your head. And when we release that emotional block, it has a like a whole like a holistic like effect on your entire body and how you feel, not just like the mental and emotional.
[00:01:18] Speaker B: Hey there, it's Ramsay here. That was Sarah Villa. Sarah helps high achieving women create the life, relationships and career they desire by becoming an energetic match to their highest potential. She uses energy psychology, a mind body approach that combines modern psychology, neuroscience and somatic techniques like eft tapping and visualization to help her clients regulate their nervous systems, release emotional blocks and reprogram limiting beliefs stored at the subconscious level.
Sarah was the first to introduce me to the emotional freedom technique and eft tapping. She leads us in a demonstration during this interview which I found to be quite soothing. Sarah is launching a new program she is calling the Future youe Challenge. So if you find this episode and eft tapping to be intriguing, I suggest you check it out. Let's jump in.
Hey Sarah, how are you doing today?
[00:02:13] Speaker A: I'm good, Ramsey, how are you?
[00:02:15] Speaker B: I am doing well.
Thanks for joining me today. You are an energy coach and you work with high achievers to help them regulate their nervous system, release emotional blocks and reprogram limiting beliefs.
And why is it, do you think that there is such a great need these days for that kind of work?
[00:02:45] Speaker A: Yeah, so I think a lot like traditionally and I think where I started like in this work when I was kind of dealing with my own mental and emotional challenges. And I think a lot of the mindset issues was that I was trying to intellectualize a lot of what was happening to me. And what I found was that I started to get really, really self aware of myself and the issues that I struggled with.
But that being said, even though I understood them, I couldn't move past them. And what I learned was That a lot of times the moments in our life that create some of our responses and the things that we believe of ourselves and just like that feeling of anxiety actually lives in the body.
So trying to just intellectualize it doesn't really quite help you to actually move through it. We have to incorporate the body and, and when we do that, it makes the mindset work, I would say, even more effective, especially for people who tried all the mindset work and it wasn't working for them.
[00:04:01] Speaker B: Yeah, it just wasn't enough. It was addressing part of it, but not all of it.
[00:04:06] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:04:07] Speaker B: Tell us about some of your journey, like why and how is this work important to you? How did you come to it and how did you come to some of those realizations that you were just describing?
[00:04:20] Speaker A: Yeah. So I would say pretty much my entire life I grew up in a family where what I perceived from the environment was that I had to be the best at everything that I did.
I played competitive soccer all the way through college, was expected to get straight A's, high, all of those things. And in turn, I put a lot of pressure on myself.
And when I graduated college and kind of went out into the workforce, it was like, you know, I started my first job, I graduated on Saturday and I started my first job on Monday. So, like, it was, you know, very much like I wanted to climb the career ladder as quickly as possible.
And I associated success with how much money you made and what your title was, which are all very much external sources of worthiness rather than like internal worthiness.
And I didn't really recognize it at the time, but I fell into about a 10 year burnout cycle where I would go in and I come up just enough to get a little bit of air and then go right back in. And it was really triggered by these patterns that I like to call them or these behaviors of feeling like I need to like, prove myself, prove that I was worthy, prove that I was deserving.
And I did that by just working as hard as humanly possible, burning myself out again and again and again. And I think where it came to a T for me was that one, I started to realize that at the time I was working in project management for different tech companies and I was job hopping. So it was like, it wasn't the company, it was just like, not the right fit for me career wise. But I was so scared of leaving behind everything that I had worked for.
You know, like, I had invested too much time, so much money into it. Like, what do you mean? I'm starting over again, like there was just like this perception of what are people going to think of me? And a lot of, like, what I now know as my ego trying to hold me back and keep me small, even though it was making me completely miserable.
And I first got certified as a holistic health coach.
And I feel like that was really, for me, like a toe dip into the water of what was in, like the wellness space.
And then what.
I'm the kind of person that I like to like, really dive deep and understand at a deeper level what is going on and so I can help my clients and help other people understand.
So at five months postpartum, I joined.
This is still the high achiever in me. At five months postpartum, in 2020, at the tail end of 2020, I signed up for a functional nutrition certification program.
And this was also about the same time that I went back to work.
And what I realized was that I was burnt out, but not from, I think, being a new mom or, you know, the certification program. It was more so that I did not have the motivation and the energy to pour into that project management job that I once had before my son. Or it was like I could no longer see, like I could no longer justify all the energy and time that I was spending on something that wasn't truly lighting me up now that I was aware of what lit me up.
And I developed, you know, I think at the time my doctor called it postpartum depression and anxiety. But I think it was really just like this misalignment in what I really wanted to be doing and the work that I was doing. I felt stuck in it.
And I went on a medical leave period from my job, just trying to like, reconnect with myself and take care of myself.
And I ended up leaving that job probably, I think about a year later.
But what I started to do was like, okay, like I realized at the time my self worth was so dependent on what I produced and what I achieved. And when I wasn't producing and I wasn't achieving, then I was.
I didn't know who I was. I didn't know like, where. What I was worth.
And I went to therapy, I went to talk therapy, I read a lot of books, I listened to a lot of podcasts, just in who I am as a person, trying to better understand it. And I started to really understand it, understand where it was created in like my childhood and just the conditioning over the years.
And the one thing was that I understood it, but I could not move past it. I could not like I could recognize when I was in the pattern, but I felt like I couldn't move out of the pattern.
And then I found eft, which is the main modality that I use today, and started working one on one with a practitioner. And that was like a life changing experience where I was just like, whoa, like this all makes sense. Like, you know, we need to feel safe in our bodies, our nervous system needs to feel safe in order for us to take the action towards the life that we desire to create.
[00:09:58] Speaker B: Because it's one thing, it's one thing to sort of know what you should be doing, but that's not necessarily enough to actually do that on a consistent basis. I think, you know, a lot of what you're describing in your story, I think resonates with me and will resonate with a lot of people in terms of having high expectations of yourself and having all the people around you that you care about, having really high expectations of you and getting into a successful track, but then realizing at some point that that's not the only track that you could be in, that there are other important things that you can and should and would rather be doing. But it's kind of terrifying to, you know, hop out of those familiar tracks, even if you feel like those tracks are not going to serve you forever.
[00:10:52] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And it's like I could have, you know, I think I could have stayed in those tracks and kind of just like pushed through, but I think I would have continued to burn myself out. Yeah. And also I would have, like, it would have been something where I think it created more stress in the long term because I didn't, like, I wanted to feel more fulfilled in my work. Like something that I'm pouring so much of my time and energy into. I want to feel fulfilled and doing this work. And even though, you know, those organizations were doing really important things and really amazing things, it. And it was important to me. Like, education was important to me, but it wasn't, it wasn't like I knew that it wasn't what I was meant to do, but what I came to learn that I was meant to do in the space that I was meant to be in also came with a lot of fear. Cause it's like, you know, starting over again.
And I think also, you know, like, anytime you're like in somewhat of like a medical capacity. And I don't, I don't know if you feel this way as well, but like, it's like this need to like, prove yourself. Like, I'm not a Doctor, you know, I'm not a therapist. I'm not.
I'm not all of those things.
[00:12:14] Speaker B: It's like, well, what are you?
[00:12:17] Speaker A: Like, very valuable life experience, but also very valuable certifications that make me qualified to be able to help people with this work.
[00:12:28] Speaker B: So, well, let's start digging into some of the things that you are specifically interested in and qualified in.
So nervous system dysregulation. That sounds like a lot of syllables in a technical term to describe something that I think a lot of people experience on a regular basis, but in sort of layman's terms. And experientially, how would you describe nervous system dysregulation?
[00:12:59] Speaker A: Yeah, so nervous system dysregulation. So I think probably the thing that people will be the most familiar with is our survival response. So, like, when you're feeling your nervous system controls your stress response, which your stress response is the same thing as your survival response.
And when your nervous system is activated or dysregulated, you are in that stress response.
The thing with the nervous system is that we cannot. So we have, like, dysregulation, and then we have regulation.
And for, like, the more scientific terms is, like, dysregulation is known as our sympathetic nervous system state, and regulation is known as our parasympathetic nervous system date state. And your nervous system can only be activated on one side at a time.
So you cannot exist in the middle. You're either activated or you're not, dysregulated or not.
And when we are dysregulated, we lose access to so many.
I mean, there's so many changes that happen in the body, like the communication signals from your brain to your stomach for digestion turn off or are not being sent.
Your body. The only thing your body is concerned about when you are dysregulated is your survival.
So we become a lot more anxious, a lot more hypervigilant.
We become a lot more irritated, frustrated, easily angered.
Our emotions tend towards easy to snap when we're in this state.
It's our prefrontal cortex, which is the area of our brain that controls decision making, logical thinking, creativity, problem solving.
Emotional regulation actually goes offline.
So you don't have access to any of these parts of your brain when you are in a dysregulated state. And I think a lot of people think like, oh, I have to have kind of like a big trigger or a big traumatic response to be dysregulated.
But the reality of the situation is our nervous systems haven't evolved since the caveman days.
And it's all based on perception, how your body perceives your environment.
So say, for example, like, your boss sends you kind of like a. I don't know, like a nasty email or like an email that has all these things in it that may be like pointing out things that you did wrong or things that you haven't done yet, and you perceive that as like, oh, I'm not enough, or I'm going to be in trouble, or like your nervous system is responding to that, and we kind of get activated into that dysregulation state state, and it becomes really hard to create one a response that is, I think, supportive to getting things done. But also it just becomes a lot harder.
The more you stay dysregulated, the harder it is for your body to actually switch back into a parasympathetic, regulated zone where you're feeling more social connected, where all your body's systems are working well and recovering.
[00:16:41] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:16:42] Speaker A: So there's just, like a lot of.
There's a lot of us that are dysregulated just because we live in a world that is. We're constantly overstimulated.
And I think a lot of us have trouble slowing down.
[00:16:58] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely.
That's a really great description. Thank you.
So I'm very interested in this whole idea of stress and the stress response. I wrote a book about it, and the way I often characterize it is that we developed over time the response to primarily physical challenges, but we haven't, as a species, our wiring is still for that. But now a lot of our challenges are virtual or emotional or mental challenges, and we're just not wired to respond that way.
And if you are, you know, responding to a physical challenge, then that stress response is exactly what you need.
Right. Because it gets your heart rate up, it gets your blood pressure up. You know, it cranks up your inflammation in case you get, you know, minorly injured. You know, when you're on the soccer field, I bet you really enjoy that cortisol because it gives you everything that you need to go out and run and shoot and play and fall down and not hurt yourself.
But if we're talking about, you know, a situation where you're responding to an email or a person or to someone who is on the other side of a screen, that's not, you know, it's. It's not the appropriate response. So we have to do other things. We have to find ways to respond differently and amp down that sort of natural response.
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What do you mean by that? What kinds of emotions are typically being blocked and sort of, what implications does it have on us when our emotions are blocked?
[00:19:27] Speaker A: Yeah, so the word emotion in general means energy and motion.
And when.
So when you think about, like, when I think about, like, emotions being blocked, I think more of, like the challenging emotions that we deal with.
So it could be like, like fear of being judged, fear being seen.
If you feel like, angry or shame or sadness or like the uncomfortable emotions is like what I think about.
And what I mean by emotions getting blocked is really more so of this energy of these emotions getting trapped in our body.
So I think.
I don't know most people here, but I grew up, you know, in a time with.
In an environment where my emotions weren't really met with acceptance. Acceptance. It was more so, you know, like, if your parents are emotionally dysregulated, then an emotionally dysregulated parent can't help their child regulate. And also, children really, I think until the age of like 7 or 8, aren't capable of regulating their own emotions and regulating their own nervous systems. So they actually rely on the adults and the caregivers in their life through something called CO regulation.
And so with energy or emotions getting stuck in the body, if someone doesn't feel safe to feel that emotion, like that uncomfortable emotion, normally what we see is that they just like, stuff it down, right? They like, stuff it down below the surface, pretend it doesn't exist. And I think with a lot of the feelings that we have in our body, when we're experiencing something that we don't want to feel because we are uncomfortable with feeling it, we don't feel safe to feel it. Maybe it's because we grew up in an environment where we were told, like, you know, like, crying's not okay, or like, anger is not okay, and we weren't taught to feel our emotions safely, then we kind of push them down. And as you go through life and you experience these emotions and you don't know how to handle them and you don't know how to manage them or process them and you kind of continue stuffing them down. Eventually.
You know, I think you could see it when people like have this like extreme rage all of a sudden or like they have like, they blow up because it's like you can only take so much before it all comes out.
And so like with the blocks, they get trapped in our nervous system.
So our nervous system is constantly communicating to us through how we feel.
It's something called neuroception. So it's constantly sending us signals.
I would say a lot of people and a lot of clients I work with in the beginning, they're not quite aware of what those messages and feelings are. Either because they've been stuffing them down and pretending that they're normal their entire life, or they're feeling disconnected from their body. It's like you're stuck like in your head.
So when I talk about like releasing emotional blocks, it's allowing our nervous system to feel safe, to hold space for those emotions and to process them. And we have tools that got through. And when we release that emotional block, a lot of people actually report physical like for example, pain disappearing or like stomach issues disappearing or sleeping better at night. Or it has a, like a whole like a holistic like effect on your entire body and how you feel, not just like the mental and emotional.
[00:23:49] Speaker B: Yeah, I had never really thought about the word emotion equating to energy in motion.
I like that a lot because it's an expression. It's, it's intended to be an expression.
The other thing that I hear you talking about or is self limiting beliefs and self limiting beliefs, do they sometimes, you know, serve a purpose? You know, why do we have them? Do they serve a purpose? Are they, you know, sometimes based in truth? Are they always deceptions? Like I think of self limiting beliefs sometimes as sort of defense mechanisms, but also sometimes as just having been implanted by, you know, people around us or circumstances.
What are your thoughts around self limiting beliefs and kind of what they do to us?
[00:24:52] Speaker A: Yeah, so my kind of like perception on self limiting beliefs are they're usually created from when we're in a stress state. And like you said, like self limiting beliefs are, you know, a defense mechanism. And if you think of defense mechanism is like, okay, like I am defending myself because I don't feel safe. I don't feel safe to be myself. I don't feel safe to share this work. I don't like there is some part of me that does not feel safe.
And so I have this, this limiting belief that is essentially all limiting beliefs are neural pathways in our brain. So they're usually created when we're experiencing some sort of stressor when we don't feel safe and then, or they're created from like stories we hear growing up. So it could be like something that, like it may not be something that you're told, it could be just something that you pick up. So for example, like if you grow up in an environment where your parents work, you know, nine to five jobs, no one around you works as an entrepreneur, for example, or you do have an entrepreneur in your life, but they're not making any money. So like, or they're not successful. We can create these beliefs of that being an entrepreneur is not sustainable or like the only way to make money and be successful is to work in a 9 to 5.
And the thing about limiting beliefs is that your brain is always limiting beliefs are like evidence in a way. So like your brain is always trying to prove your own beliefs. So they almost become like these like self fulfilling prophecies.
Is that like we pick up these limiting beliefs and even though that limiting belief may have protected us at one time, it may not be serving us anymore, may not be serving where we're looking to grow.
And when that happens and that pathway is so deep that it becomes so ingrained, especially when we're under stress because our brain defaults to old behaviors when we're under stress.
It can be.
I don't think limiting beliefs are supportive at all, to be honest. It's like I'm trying to grow and get somewhere and I have this belief that is holding me back from taking action.
So like I. What is like, you know, like I think a lot of like limiting beliefs are not a lot of them we're not necessarily aware of because they're so deep in our subconscious.
And they really only start to come out once you start to calm your nervous system enough that your brain feels safe to go into those places to be able to pull them out.
[00:27:56] Speaker B: I've heard you say quite a few times. A theme that keeps coming back is this notion of safety, of feeling, of your brain or your mind feeling like you're safe or trying to keep you safe.
And I think the stress response itself is geared towards protection and these emotional blocks, you know, potentially. I think you were saying, if you don't feel safe to express them all the way, they get stuck.
And these self limiting beliefs kind of hold us back because Some part of us believes that we're bound to fail if we try and do that thing.
So let's pivot towards, you know, ways in which you work with clients to address these issues. You know, are you addressing all of these at once? Are you addressing them individually, addressing them in combination? I imagine that clients sort of have these to. To a greater or lesser extent within themselves, kind of across the board.
And, you know, you mentioned briefly eft, but. So let's hear, like, start telling me about things that you do in responses. And, you know, what is eft?
[00:29:21] Speaker A: Yeah, so eft, it stands for Emotional Freedom techniques, and it is a somatic technique. So somatic just means mind, body.
It helps connect our mind to our body and vice versa.
And the most common name for EFT is tapping.
So what is happening is we are tapping on acupuncture meridian endpoints.
So we're tapping on the same energy channels that acupuncturists use.
And when we tap on these different acupuncture meridian endpoints, what is happening is that it is sending a calming signal to our amygdala, which is the area of our brain that signals. Is our survival response and signals our survival response. So tapping in itself can. Five minutes of tapping in itself can turn off our stress response.
The way that EFT works and how it can be really supportive in helping people to one, feel safe and to feel their emotions and hold space for them, because we're not trying to, like, fix ourselves. It's really just about feeling safe to hold space for all of the feelings that we're feeling, but also working on the limiting beliefs is that when we pair phrases or words of things that we're feeling with the tapping.
[00:30:59] Speaker B: So do you have.
So this, this podcast is usually audio, so there's lots of people who are just listening to it on the audio.
We are filming some video, so there will be some video, but can you sort of talk us through or demonstrate? And can you kind of speak out loud sort of where it is that you're tapping so that people might tap along or, you know, sort of follow along with you?
[00:31:31] Speaker A: For sure. So the first point that we always start with, with tapping is the side of our hand, and it's the area between the bottom of your pinky and the top of your wrist.
It's kind of like where you think like the karate chop. That's what it's like, nicknamed karate chop point.
And you're just kind of like using all of your fingers to tap on that area.
And normally how we start Most sessions off with clients is they'll say to they might be struggling with something. So it's like, let's say, for example, this podcast, I did some tapping before I jumped on.
[00:32:09] Speaker B: As you should.
[00:32:10] Speaker A: Yes. And you know, like to be completely vulnerable. I said, even though I'm feeling nervous about this podcast.
And then we end it with an affirmation. So I deeply and completely have compassion for myself.
So we start there and voice what we're feeling and then the affirmation just for acceptance of ourself.
And then we move through the points. So there are various different points that can be used depending on how emotionally charged someone is. So one of the questions that we usually ask in the beginning is from 0 to 10, with 0 being like no charge at all and 10 being like, I might have a panic attack or like it's so high, you know, I.
It's your level of distress based on where they're at indicates to me what points to use with them. But most of the time what we're doing is we're starting here on the side of our hand and then we're moving through the body points, which is called the basic recipe.
And the first point is the top of your head, the crown of your head.
And when we're moving through the body points, we're just reminding our body of the emotion.
So going along with the same example, I'm feeling really nervous.
And then we go into the side of our or the inside of our eyebrow.
And for some of these base points, you can tap on both sides or just one side. It doesn't make a difference.
And I would say again, I'm feeling really nervous about getting on this podcast and you can say that over and over again or you can say like, you know what it is you're nervous about. So the next point is the side of the eye. So not the temple, but like the corner of your eye where that bone is.
What if I say the wrong thing? You know, like, this is the. These are like the ego thoughts coming up, the fear based thoughts that are coming up. Right.
[00:34:20] Speaker B: My hair is sticking up in funny places because I haven't had a chance to get a haircut in the last couple weeks.
[00:34:25] Speaker A: Yeah. What are they going to think of me? Do I look okay? You know, like, it's just kind of like some of the, some of the things are kind of silly or we think they're silly, but when they're fear based, it holds us back from showing up as our full authentic selves. The next point, does that matter?
No. So you can do bilateral tapping like this, or you can just tap like this.
The next point is below your eye, again, like, on the edge of that bone. And again, we're tapping on acupuncture, meridian endpoints, which are very, very small points. So a lot of times people ask me, oh, can I tap with one finger, two finger. How many fingers do I tap with? And I usually say two. I mean, they're really small points. Like, you're bound to hit them if you, you know, use even one finger. Right.
The next point is below your nose.
So I might say, I'm feeling really nervous.
Next point is below your bottom lip.
And also, like, for people that are like, I don't really know what to say. You can also just take a deep breath in and out for each point, and that's also fine.
The next point is going to be the collarbone.
Tap right there.
[00:35:49] Speaker B: And then a pretty good workout.
[00:35:55] Speaker A: The last body point is.
So I'm gonna take my vest off for this. It's easier to see.
So it's like. It's basically like four fingers below your armpit. So for women, it's kind of like where your bra strap hits, but for men, like, it's about four figures down, and you just tap on the side right there.
[00:36:16] Speaker B: This is almost like a. Like the hug spot.
[00:36:19] Speaker A: Yes. Yeah, yeah. It's a good way to describe it.
So when I'm working with clients, what I'll usually do is I'll go through, like, that's the full.
The body points. That's kind of the full recipe. We'll go back to the top and go through.
And I usually tend to do at least, like, three rounds of U.S. tapping through. What are they feeling? I might ask some questions throughout the process, like, am I feeling this anywhere in my body? So a lot of times we do feel the feeling in our body first, but our mind tries to make sense of it so quickly that there's usually, like, it's like, not even, like a split second between feeling it in our body and the story that we create around it.
So helping us to understand where, like, if you take away the body feeling. If you take away the body feeling of anxiety, like your heart racing, like the tightness in your chest, maybe like that nervous feeling in your belly.
The thoughts really have no legs to stand on.
Right. Like, if you think that you. If you're feeling nervous about something, you know that you feel nervous about it because maybe your heart is racing fast.
[00:37:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:37:30] Speaker A: So, like, when we're tapping, we might start tapping on like how? Like what we're feeling, the nervous or the emotion. But some of the things that I might ask as we move through the experience is, do I feel this anywhere in my body? And most clients will say, oh yeah, like I've got this like tenseness across my shoulders, or my heart is beating fast when I think about it.
And I might also ask questions like, is this feeling familiar?
How old is this feeling?
A lot of our responses to stress now as adults usually happen between the ages of 0 and 7.
So I'm trained in going into the deeper work of doing inner child and shadow. And there's so many different modalities that we can bring into it that what most clients experience is once we get through the tapping, that number that they gave me in the beginning, from 0 to 10, it'll either stay the same and that just means that we need to get more specific.
It'll go up, which is actually not a bad thing. It's because they're getting more emotionally charged, which is good. We can like tap on what are the new emotions that are coming up.
Or it'll go down.
We want it to go down.
You know, the less charged you are, the less that emotion has a hold on you. So like my tapping mentor used to say, you know, like, we own your emotions, so they don't own you.
And that's like, tapping allows us to do that.
[00:39:16] Speaker B: Well, I found that very comforting, you know, that it would, it did sort of settle me and that was really nice.
When, you know, when I think about communication and when I think about people sort of connecting with each other, I do tend to think that a lot of that is energetic and a lot of that is beyond just the words that we say. Right? And you know, oh yeah, non verbal communication, like, okay, well, you can, you can say non verbal communication and it can be like, oh, you know, facial expressions and that kind of stuff.
[00:39:57] Speaker A: And.
[00:39:57] Speaker B: Yes, but almost I, I tend to believe that it's even beyond that. I tend to believe that it is people's intentions that just come through in all kinds of ways and in ways that we don't know that we're transmitting our intentions. And then I think people tend to receive those and they call it intuition or a feeling, you know, they don't really have the language and they don't really understand their receptors.
But, you know, hearing you talk and us talking about emotion, you know, energy in motion and talking about how sometimes those signals are getting suppressed, like that all sort of connects in my mind, like, what do you think about that how does it relate to communication between people? Do you think.
[00:40:51] Speaker A: So? Like, I definitely, I mean completely 100% believe in like quantum physics. And you know, like, if like everything is energy, right? It's like there are some things that are denser, higher, vibrating energy and those are the things that we can see. And then there's energy that isn't vibrating at those higher frequencies that we can't see, like our, you know, our emotions or our intentions or things like that. But I do personally believe that anytime we put our energy behind something, especially when that energy is coming from like what I call like a high vibrational place.
So it's like our high vibrational emotions are like gratitude, love, joy, like the things that we want to feel more of, right? Whereas like our low vibrational energy is like frustration and anger and jealousy and envy and things that make us feel like. I like to think of it like the low vibrational energy is like things that make us feel like we have to contract and that we have to shrink ourselves and we can't be seen and we can't like connect. And the high vibrational energy is like this expansive energy. It's like the energy of like, possibility and of like, I think, you know, like of our higher self and like love and gratitude and all of those things is like the more of that that we bring into the world, into this spaces that we work into our relationships, into our communities, like, that does have a huge ripple effect. I think there was like a.
I read a lot of like the Joe Dispenza books. And I feel like in one of the books I read, it may not have been his book. It may have been another book where I read about, you know, like this study that they did in Washington D.C. where they wanted to lower the crime rate.
And all the police officers were like, you're not going to be able to do this. It's like summertime in Washington D.C. this is impossible.
And they wanted to show that the power of meditation and high vibrational energy of that like love and joy and acceptance and all of that could have an effect on the community around them. And in that, I think it was a four to six week period where they had large groups of people meditating daily. The crime rate dropped by 23%.
[00:43:29] Speaker B: Yeah, that's that kind of an impact.
[00:43:32] Speaker A: Just like, how do you, you know, like, that was the only thing that they changed.
[00:43:38] Speaker B: Yeah, you have, you have a new workshop coming up here pretty soon and that is called the.
The future you Challenge. Yeah, I really like that that title and that, that energy, if you will, what is that all about? Tell us about that.
[00:44:05] Speaker A: Yeah, so a couple weeks ago for myself, quite honestly, I was feeling a little bit like, energetically heavy.
I was just feeling like stuck energy.
I just wasn't feeling good. And I was like, okay, like, I can either stay in this or I can choose to go somewhere else. And I don't want to stay here.
So I.
So a lot of like the energy work is talking about if you can visualize, like your future self, you know, you know, how do they support themselves, how do they think, how do they feel, how do they act? What is that? Like, future highest version of how you want to feel in your life, your career, your relationships, how does that person operate? If you can visualize that there's already an energetic frequency of yourself that already exists in that state.
The future you challenge is all about helping anyone who joins that to get really clear as to who is that future self. I think oftentimes we're like working so hard towards things and not really knowing what the end goal is or like, where we're going. And it's like you're just like spinning your wheels and running hard towards things that don't really matter or don't really support where you're trying to go. So that program starts off with visualizing and getting really clear on that.
A lot of journaling practices to help us identify, okay, like, where is it that in one year from now, where would I like to go? And I love it because a lot of clients will be like, well, I want this version next month. I don't want this version a year from now. And I think one of the really cool things about energy work is that something called, where they call it like collapsing timelines is that that might be the version of yourself that you imagine a year from now, but it is possible for you to bring that version of yourself in sooner than that.
So the reason why I'm doing it as a challenge and as a container is because we'll be together. So I'm actually running it as a group program, but also as an individual program.
We'll be visualizing our higher selves, but then we'll also be auditing where we're currently at. So what are our behaviors that may not be supporting our highest good or our future self right now?
So we know our point A and our point B, and then the bridge between is going to be taking messy, uncomfortable action every single day to step into and embody that future self energy right now. So one of the things that. And it might sound silly, but one of the things that I started asking myself as I moved through my day was like, would future Sarah do this?
Would future Sarah respond like this?
And what I started to find was that how I was acting right now or how I was feeling about certain things right now was not how I wanted my future self to respond to it or how to act.
So I started shifting in the moment. But to shift in the moment, that requires mindfulness and awareness of where you're at. So we'll be mapping out point A and point B, and then the in between work is really about supporting our nervous system daily to be able to hold the space for us to embody that action.
So what I've noticed as I have embodied my future self energy over the last.
Now I'm on day 13, is that my ego comes in loud and hot of, are you sure you want to do that? Especially about this program. So are you sure you want to do that? Are people going to think you're weird? Like, maybe you shouldn't? It's all the things that shrink and contract.
And I can recognize that that's my ego. Teaching people to recognize what is your ego versus what is your intuition, and learning to regulate your nervous system so your nervous system feels safe to hold the energy of your future self.
[00:48:21] Speaker B: Well, I really like the way that you framed that because it sort of assumes success in the. In the notion that, you know, I'm looking into a future where this has already happened, and I'm just doing the things to get it so that here in the present, I'm aligned with that future timeline or iteration where it did happen. You know, I'm a big science fiction fantasy superhero nerd. So the idea of getting a visit from my future self, like, you know, that's been in plenty of shows. Like, I can imagine that. That. That's not hard for me at all.
That'd be cool if my future self would show up more often.
But then it's like. And then it's also, you know, which. Which of your future selves. Right. Because here in the multiverse, there's all kinds of different future selves. So it's a matter of, you know, putting in the work to find which one of those future versions of yourself that you really want to bring back and then embody in your own timeline.
So it sounds great to me. If people want to get a hold of you or find out more about this challenge and participate, where do they go online to find you and find more information?
[00:49:42] Speaker A: So I am social media. I'm most active on Instagram. My Instagram handle is Saravia Wellness.
My website is saravia.com and there's a link in there for the future. You challenge my I am closing the doors to register for the program on October 31st and we start on November 5th.
That said, I will likely be running the program again in the new year, but I can also provide a link that you can provide in the show notes as well.
[00:50:21] Speaker B: For those of us who are spelling challenged. Is that 1L's or 1L or 2L's in your last name?
[00:50:27] Speaker A: 2L'S?
[00:50:28] Speaker B: Excellent. Excellent.
We'll definitely have a link in the description.
Well, Sarah, this was really fun.
Thank you so much for coming on. You did great. The tapping was really great.
And yeah, have a great rest of your day.
[00:50:44] Speaker A: Yeah, thank you.
[00:50:46] Speaker B: Looking for more? Visit whatsworthwhile.net to listen to podcast episodes, learn from books and articles, and live better by choosing healthy products and practices. I'm now offering services through worthwhile advisors for personal coaching, professional advising, speaking and group facilitation. If you are your team are ready to reduce stress and anxiety, build vitality and momentum, and accomplish your goals without burning out, then please contact me, Ramsey Zimmerman, through the website or on social media like Instagram X or LinkedIn. Thanks.
