What if you could harness the power of pleasure to overcome your personal struggles? Join us as we delve into a conversation that will change your perspective with Theresa Lear Levine, an entrepreneurial mom with ADHD, who has turned her life experiences into a powerful guide for self-discovery through her new book, 'Becoming More Me'. Theresa's journey is an inspiring narrative of resilience and self-empowerment, and she shares with us her unique approach to overcoming life's challenges, from marriage challenges to impostor syndrome, by prioritizing pleasure and utilizing Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT).
With Theresa, we explore the world of writing and publishing, shedding light on the intricacies and challenges of bringing a book to life. Theresa takes us through her personal process, highlighting the importance of supportive networks. Her explanation of how EFT, a tool that combines ancient Chinese wisdom with modern psychology, has helped her overcome procrastination and release emotional pain is truly illuminating. She gives us an intimate look into how she used EFT to challenge negative thoughts and cultivate joy in her life, a story that is guaranteed to inspire you.
We explore the healing potential of EFT and how it can be used to reframe our perspectives, gain compassion, and instruct our bodies on what they need to do for healing. Wrapping up our enlightening chat with Theresa, we discuss the power of EFT in helping us move beyond limiting beliefs, giving us the ability to cultivate pleasure and joy in our lives. Tune in for an episode that promises a new perspective on overcoming personal uncertainties and the power of pleasure in self-discovery.
Theresa Lear Levine is an EFT Master Practitioner and Hypnotherapist who implements a unique and integrative approach to nervous system regulation, subconscious mind work, law of attraction and energy strategies. Her book "Becoming More Me: Tapping into Success - Subconscious Secrets of an ADHD Entrepreneurial Mom" was born out of her passion to help other likeminded women on their quest to ditch anxiety, limiting beliefs and past trauma.
Connect with Theresa
Kat HoSoo Lee is a trauma-informed Spiritual Business Mentor and host of The Rooted Business Podcast. She uses the tools of somatic and emotional alchemy to guide soulful entrepreneurs to approach their business as a spiritual practice. This allows them to cultivate businesses that are rooted in conscious values, ethical marketing and purposeful service.
Connect with Kat:
This podcast is made possible with sound production by Andre Lagace.
What if you could harness the power of pleasure to overcome your personal struggles? Join us as we delve into a conversation that will change your perspective with Theresa Lear Levine, an entrepreneurial mom with ADHD, who has turned her life experiences into a powerful guide for self-discovery through her new book, 'Becoming More Me'. Theresa's journey is an inspiring narrative of resilience and self-empowerment, and she shares with us her unique approach to overcoming life's challenges, from marriage challenges to impostor syndrome, by prioritizing pleasure and utilizing Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT).
With Theresa, we explore the world of writing and publishing, shedding light on the intricacies and challenges of bringing a book to life. Theresa takes us through her personal process, highlighting the importance of supportive networks. Her explanation of how EFT, a tool that combines ancient Chinese wisdom with modern psychology, has helped her overcome procrastination and release emotional pain is truly illuminating. She gives us an intimate look into how she used EFT to challenge negative thoughts and cultivate joy in her life, a story that is guaranteed to inspire you.
We explore the healing potential of EFT and how it can be used to reframe our perspectives, gain compassion, and instruct our bodies on what they need to do for healing. Wrapping up our enlightening chat with Theresa, we discuss the power of EFT in helping us move beyond limiting beliefs, giving us the ability to cultivate pleasure and joy in our lives. Tune in for an episode that promises a new perspective on overcoming personal uncertainties and the power of pleasure in self-discovery.
Theresa Lear Levine is an EFT Master Practitioner and Hypnotherapist who implements a unique and integrative approach to nervous system regulation, subconscious mind work, law of attraction and energy strategies. Her book "Becoming More Me: Tapping into Success - Subconscious Secrets of an ADHD Entrepreneurial Mom" was born out of her passion to help other likeminded women on their quest to ditch anxiety, limiting beliefs and past trauma.
Connect with Theresa
Kat HoSoo Lee is a trauma-informed Spiritual Business Mentor and host of The Rooted Business Podcast. She uses the tools of somatic and emotional alchemy to guide soulful entrepreneurs to approach their business as a spiritual practice. This allows them to cultivate businesses that are rooted in conscious values, ethical marketing and purposeful service.
Connect with Kat:
This podcast is made possible with sound production by Andre Lagace.
Hello and welcome to the Rated Business Podcast. I'm really excited to have Theresa here with me. I've been on her podcast and now we get to share your magic and wisdom with my people here on my podcast. And I'm really just kind of excited to just flip the interviewer interview-y roles here, because I feel like I got to share a lot of my philosophies around spiritual entrepreneurship and now I get to flip the script and you've got a new book that's coming out and I'm just so like I've been bursting to like hear what that process was like, what that book means to you, what that gestational birth process has been, and, because you're a nervous system nerd like myself and many of my listeners, looking at the process of writing a book through the lens of nervous system regulation is something that I'm just like oh, that's like just a juicy, yummy topic. So thank you, thank you, thank you for being here.
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm so excited to be here, Kat, and I love your energy. I think if anybody has ever heard me interview, they are going to find that this is probably the slowest I've talked. I'm the most calm, high-fowned, hot-knit interview. You bring down my like ADHD, like let's go go, go, go go, kind of. That's a good thing? I don't know, at least not, so thank you for that.
Speaker 1:Oh, I'm just yeah, I think just to dive straight in. Thank you for that reflection, but I feel like I'm like really energized and like wanting to hear so much about your book. So can you start out by just sharing a bit about, I guess, what I want to like get deeper than just like here's the elevator speech from my book. You know like I'm just trying to think of like a way to bring that out. And can we start with like where the spark or the inspiration for this book came from?
Speaker 2:Absolutely so. This book's been on my heart for a number of years, but as an ADHD entrepreneurial mom, which is kind of my target audience for the book, I had a lot of like false starts in getting it created. So it wasn't until and it was actually right about this in the book, because there was a point in 2022, I guess early on that I just put the whole thing aside and actually used the same process I use a lot of times with my clients who are procrastinating or who are just kind of on the fence about something of just kind of like letting the whole project go.
Speaker 2:I you know, did some EFT tapping on it. I did some journaling and I basically just freed myself from ever having to write the book if I never chose I wanted to and I just kind of released it all and then that whole year I guess it was actually 2021, the whole year going forward from there I dove into guesting on podcasts and doing a lot more speaking and all of that and that really fine tuned what my message needed to be. Anyway, it was almost like I just wasn't quite ready yet and at the end of 2022, I started talking to my husband about it again and I'm like I really do think I want to do this, but I also think I need help, like I need a coach to work with and some people to hold my hand through the publishing process and everything else. And I also was very intentional about this book needs to be written through the lens of pleasure. I did not want to write this book with feeling pressured or like I have to write or anything like that.
Speaker 2:So I also made sure that while I was writing the book, I was like enrolled in Mama Gina's pleasure boot camp and I was like, going through that, I was writing, so show it up to the boot camp meetings, do it all the fun stuff there, and then writing, taking that energy into my marriage, into my book, into all the areas of my life.
Speaker 2:That pleasure is so good at making way juicier than it is when we put it on the back burner, like we tend to do as women, post the time, unfortunately.
Speaker 2:And yeah, so the spark was just really wanting to be able to convey, make this whole process of becoming, which we're all always in, one that people enjoy and want to be present for, because we're always in it. And I did that through sharing my own story from this, you know, big pivot I had about seven years ago when my youngest child was born I have four boys that kind of became the birth of my business, which is called becoming more me, and also sharing things way longer ago than that, like from my childhood, my first marriage, a lot of other things that are just those kind of like foundational faults, those little cracks, those things. That kind of stuff seeps through over the time and that we need to like reestablish and a good energetic foundation so that we can create things and manifest things in our lives now, in our present moments, in a much different way than we otherwise would if our energy was all tangled up in the past gunk.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I love it.
Speaker 2:That definitely was not an elevator speech. I think they're only supposed to be about 30 seconds.
Speaker 1:So this whole process of becoming more me, I just love that. That's your brand and that being tied into pleasure, that being tied into creativity to me I just go straight to the nervous system when you speak in those terms because, like it's, I want to say impossible. I don't like talking in definitive but I want to say impossible. It's impossible to experience pleasure when you are in like a threatened, sympathetic nervous system state. I would say it's harder to experience creativity. I think it's possible but you know I think it's harder. And then also the like becoming more you process is is hindered when you're in a sympathetic nervous system state. So like I think I want to sort of explore and unpack, prioritizing pleasure and play and creativity in your life as a sort of vehicle to becoming more yield. Can you sort of play with those? I just threw a bunch of like words in the pot and I was like, just go for it, teresa.
Speaker 1:It's a good pot I got it, it's a good blend.
Speaker 2:For me it looked like slowing down.
Speaker 2:A lot in everything that I was doing. One of the chapters of my book is called slow is the new fast. I really do feel that, like everything happens better more fully when we can slow down and really experience it. But I also am, and tend to work with women who are, you know, experiencing ADHD and high functioning anxiety and all of these things that really make us want to just kind of like rev and go and not really feel into a lot of the things that we're coming up against. So, yeah, it was slowing down. It was uncomfortable at first for me, you know, because I'm not used to that, and actually, even just putting time aside, I even noticed, as I was immersing in like the boot camp that I was enrolled in, I would sometimes be like, oh, like, do I really have time to go to the meeting today?
Speaker 1:or whatever.
Speaker 2:I'm like no, I signed up for this, I'm going to every single one of them, like just feel the feelings, teresa, just be there, just see what's going on. And I always felt better afterwards. But you know, I had my own like pleasure backlash and then, you know, as I opened back up and felt safe in that, then I experienced different walls, like with bringing more of it like into my marriage, and things you know like first amazing, wonderful, beautiful and then not really familiar to either of us. So we both kind of like hit walls. But the beautiful part was that, because of all of the nervous system work that I've done over the years leading up to now, that even though what was happening was very common, very normal, if that had happened to me a decade ago I still might not have worked through it and I might not have known what was going on or how to meet it, where I was compassionately and move forward and transform it into something beautiful, and I might have just stayed stuck. But you know, in the case of like the episode like my husband and I went through, you know things were going so great and then it was like boom, but it was only like a week of like figuring it out and tweaking communication and expressing what needed to be expressed before we were like back to things being amazing and moving forward from there.
Speaker 2:So that to me is a very, very small bump in the road, for you know the rewards of having more pleasure in a relationship and that's kind of how it's worked in most of the areas where I've applied it.
Speaker 2:It's like it's not familiar and it's uncomfortable and that's really what the work that I do is about is about making your unfamiliar the unfamiliar familiar and getting the nervous system acclimated so that you know it doesn't go into fight or flight or any of the other F and yeah, so it. Yeah, it looked like slowing down and it looked like really just enjoying everything on a whole new level, just seeing all the things that were pleasure. I mean, I think a lot of times people think pleasure and they immediately go to like sex and I, like the pleasure is everywhere in everything, so much farther and wider than that and, just like you, just enjoying, like my kids, enjoying the way it feels like when I put lotion on my legs after a shower, enjoying the way the hot water feels in the shower, just enjoying all the little moments of the day, eating food, all sorts of things where just pleasure sometimes gets overlooked.
Speaker 1:Can you speak a little bit about the pleasure backlash, because I think that that's the thing that a lot of folks are unconsciously, sometimes consciously, afraid of because, like, oftentimes I have my clients who get sort of stuck in this place where it's like I don't know if I can accept that this is actually happening, like I can't accept that the good is right here, right in front of me, because they immediately go to the like well, when's the shoe gonna drop? And so like. Speak to that a little bit.
Speaker 2:Well, and that's a lot like what I think pleasure backlash feels like too. Only you're actually doing the things that are going to help you to feel better, instead of avoiding them because you're afraid of that being the case. So, like in the case of like the stuff in my marriage, it was like for me it was like feelings of unworthiness coming up and stuff like that that I hadn't processed before or you know things where it was, like you know how could we have like lived without this for so long?
Speaker 2:and like now we have it and like what if it's gone again? You know that kind of stuff. So just feeling uncertainty which you know is normal with everything, because there's not a whole lot that's certain for us and just just processing that, just being able to to share those feelings with my husband in this case, and to be able to like meet my inner child to where those spots were, where, like, the unworthiness may have stemmed from, and that kind of stuff, so that I could process that and feel safe again, just enjoying the heck out of each other and moving forward.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I feel like it's important to note that, like as you're sharing this story, I recognize how much work it took for you to even move through the hard week that you were just talking about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you, know, it took a lot of work, even to the point where I'm sitting here on a podcast talking to you about these things that have happened in my marriage, and it took even more to realize that, oh crap, this is going on while I'm writing a book where I'm supposed to be conveyed as an expert about this kind of stuff. And I'm still human, you know, because I agree, we all feel like you know and I coach a lot of coaches, so I'm used to coming up against this imposterism, sort of you know stuff in the work that I do. But I think we all at least I do I feel like one of these days I'm gonna outgrow it and I'm not gonna have these issues anymore. And I know it's BS, but I think there's still some part of the back of my head that gets disappointed when I'm like, oh, I still have these like human problems.
Speaker 1:And I think that there's a common trope in the coaching industry that kind of perpetuates. This is like I've heard this from so many business coaches where they say you don't have to can't remember exactly the phrasing of it is like you don't have to be an expert, you just have to be like one step ahead of your client. And to me I feel like when I heard that a, it made me simultaneously like feel like even more like an imposter and like like also like not good enough, because the way that I experience healing and I'm kind of curious how you experience it is like it's always this spiral, like cyclical process, and so I just recorded a podcast episode about perfectionism and I have like a long history of perfectionism and I realized that one because you called me out on my own on my show.
Speaker 2:So I'm excited to share what you share there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but it was interesting like recording the intro for it, because I think I recorded it like five times before I felt like I got it right. So like, hold on my phone is doing a weird thing.
Speaker 1:No irony there, right, yeah? And so it's like how can I like I had this moment where I was like how can I teach about perfectionism if I take five takes to even like put together a five minute intro for this podcast episode? And to me, I think that when we recognize the humanity within ourselves as coaches, especially as coaches who are coaching other coaches, that makes our medicine stronger. Like I don't feel like I need to be like one step ahead of somebody to provide support for them. Like I think that what I can do is provide regulation to help them move through those pieces a little bit faster.
Speaker 2:Gotcha, that's what you're saying now, because when you first said that, I wasn't sure how you were taking that being one step ahead. So you're saying, like you don't even like, just you can walk together through this. Yeah, yeah, I feel the same way. And I also feel like you know something.
Speaker 2:I don't really. It's not really a head or behind. Anyway, I feel like everybody's right where they're supposed to be all of the time. But I guess I never processed that particular way of looking at things the same way that you did and that that always kind of made me feel a little bit better about being human when I heard like that.
Speaker 2:I only needed to be one step ahead, because to me that just meant like I just needed to know something a little bit more. It didn't really mean a head or behind, just kind of like you know, maybe I've done this and gotten a little further along in it than somebody else, so I have something that's valuable to them and that always made me feel a little bit better because it's like, well, even if that thing just happened yesterday, I can share it with them today and here we are.
Speaker 2:You know they're getting the value and my experiences are helpful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that that's valid and true, like both ways of looking at it, you know, and to me, like it's just another form of like can we take the hierarchy out of this? Like can we write, you know? Really just sort of look at each other as human beings who are all trying to do the same thing and like, yes, I might have a little bit more experience in one particular aspect or another, but really I feel like what both of us are providing for our clients is not like advice, of like this is how you should do it, because I'm two steps ahead and I can see what's coming down the line. It's more about, yeah, it's more about regulation, because, like for me, when I, when people find their own sense of safety and regulation with them themselves, they come up with like the craziest, most awesome ideas that I could have never come up for them, and to me, that's where the magic of coaching is.
Speaker 2:Absolutely yeah. And that's why I think, you know, helping people to develop intuition and self-trust and really get in sync with their gut is one of the most helpful things that I do or provide, and I totally feel the same way about like taking the hierarchy out of it. Like a lot of times, you know, I talk with people who want to kind of get rid of their negative emotions, as if we could just, you know, live on one end, not the other. And you know there's not like a.
Speaker 2:Just because it's a negative quote unquote emotion doesn't mean that it's not valuable and doesn't make it bad. We don't need to get rid of it. We would never appreciate the quote unquote good ones if we didn't have the bad ones. So you know we need them all and you know I say it a lot in my, in my book that it's it's not a before and after story because you know it's it's just a continuation. You know, even when I'm talking about, like the way my life really shifted a lot when my youngest was born and kind of the different breakdowns that I had, even as we like, entered into the pandemic and stuff, my life was pretty awesome and blessed before and also pretty awesome and blessed afterwards. Did some things change that I like more now? Yes, but I also had plenty that I appreciated and loved, you know, prior to those changes. So it's not really before and after, it's just different, different times in my life.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that. It also takes the hierarchy out of this sort of culture that we live in, is like we love the before and after story and the transformation story and it's like, well, like, does that make my transformations or the sort of like light bulb moments or the you know challenges that I'm working through today less valid because it's part of my after story? Like, no, it's all part of the same continuous story.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I like the resiliency story where you know, through everything that we've been through and everything that we've become, we've become these like more resilient beings that you know, in the case of the story that I told, that can bounce back from something difficult in a week's time instead of you know, a year or longer, and that is where I think the real value is in living in my life presently versus, you know, 10 years or more ago. Yeah, that I'm a lot less resilient, yeah.
Speaker 1:And that was a really resilient story.
Speaker 2:I was resilient. I was. I was really amazingly resilient, just not quite like I am now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and part of that resiliency story is also like an integration story is what I'm hearing, you know, of like actually being able to use those tools, of actually being able to find that safety, of using your communication tools, recognizing where, you know, some of this is childhood stuff and some of it is like being overlaid onto present day, and to me, that's like a huge aspect of resiliency that doesn't get talked about is integration, because, like oftentimes, I think that resiliency is often framed as like, like an override story, you know, and that's not what you're talking about at all. It's, it's a beautiful integration story. Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 2:I even you know, that's kind of how I pull things together at the end of my book is that you know things aren't you know. It's not about balance, it's about integration. And you know the balance is mythical, but the integration is definitely possible and has some, some really potentially beautiful results to it. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So you've talked a little bit about the gestational period of your book. How has it been in the birthing of it, or the multiple stages of birthing it, I suppose yeah.
Speaker 2:So I technically started this time around in March I think was the year or so. I mean this has all happened since March. I'm talking to you, it's like the first couple of days of October, so pretty short. I said to my husband the other day I'm like, if I ever get crazy enough to do this again, like please tell me, I cannot do it in less than nine months Like it just needs needs a little bit more time to just you know, simmer, and yeah, I mean you know. I mean I think it's a little bit more time to just you know, simmer, and yeah, I mean it's been a really interesting process because I had a vision at the beginning, you know, before I got started, of what it was going to be like or of all the different voice notes and things that I had already accumulated to get ready for this.
Speaker 2:That's definitely an ADHD thing, like I don't type a bunch of stuff. It's a lot of like voice notes and transcription and putting pieces together and stuff.
Speaker 1:Same girl.
Speaker 2:But you know, I had a vision and then I had to kind of release the vision and let it become what it needed to become. I didn't really think that a lot of my I mean there's a decent part of my book that is about writing the book because, my process.
Speaker 2:Like the first day that I said I was going to begin writing, like after we had gone through all the processes with my coach, to like figure out, outline and things that are necessary components and all of this kind of stuff, it was time to write and I felt good about that. And I went through like every ADHD behavior that morning and I was up at like my normal. I get up pretty early in the morning. Hubby and I are up at like 430. It's like, oh, we're going to work out and then I'm going to, you know, have some breakfast and I'm going to be in the office until lunchtime and I'm just going to like write like a champ and get so much done. I don't think I got into the office until like nine or 10. And that was after like I would get a double workout instead of a single workout.
Speaker 2:I, you know, wanted to make my dirty chai latte from scratch with like the make the almond milk myself and, like you know, from the almond and all the things I wanted to, like play a board game with my kids and I was really like procrastinating and also those were all things I wanted to be part of my weekend anyway.
Speaker 2:So, it was flipping the switch from old me. That would have been, like you know, beating myself up with that inner critic voice of like you're not doing what you said you were going to do. Are you ever going to write this book? Is it ever going to get done? Like you're putting everything off to do me. It was like, okay, cool, like I'll get in there and it'll be all right, and finally got into my office and then it was like, oh, but now I think I'll check some email and mercury retrogrades coming out, order some candles off Amazon and all like it was, I think, about an hour before my
Speaker 2:husband said lunch was ready, that I finally started writing. But you know what? I got a couple of chapters done still and to me, when I looked back on that from the afternoon, I was like that's like even better, because I got the writing started, I got a great amount accomplished and I got to do all of those other things. So to me that's like rocking the superpower of ADHD, but it's that resiliency that I've developed of like recognizing that too end, of understanding it. Like this weekend the same thing happened, but I could feel it beforehand. I knew I had all this stuff I needed to do, but I had all these little things that were weighing on my head and I said to my husband I'm like, yep, today is going to be like the day I started writing the book. I'm just going to fidget with all the little things, get them out of my head, get them out of the way, and Sunday I'm going to get some amazing work done. And I did, and I felt so much better that way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, oh. I love that Because I think that that flipping the script process is so difficult for folks right, like oh man, like the procrastination story, the like voices that come up around shame and not worthiness and you have to and you shoulds, is so difficult and you shoulds is such a common sort of narrative that we all have to contend with. And I love that you were just like acceptance. We're just going to accept that this is what's happening and be okay with it and not create a shame spiral around it, because ultimately, the shame strier all just like puts you into a deeper state of freeze and collapse and then you end up procrastinating even more, which is like the thing that you didn't want to do versus just like Exactly, and I would have put my focus there.
Speaker 2:So it was part of, like, all my training and use of things like EFT, which at the heart of emotional freedom techniques is love, accept and forgive, and then also, you know, loving law of attraction and things like that, and realizing that if I were to do that, I would be focused on the lack and then I would just create more of the lack instead of what I actually wanted. And what I actually wanted was everything that happened that morning.
Speaker 1:Mm, hmm, mm, hmm. Yeah, so you're kind of like my EFT gal in my Instagram feed scroll, so can you share a little bit more about what that is for folks who don't know?
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely so. Eft stands for emotional freedom techniques. A lot of people know it is tapping, so just know that, whatever I'm saying, they are interchangeable EFT or tapping and it's a combination of ancient Chinese wisdom and modern psychology, essentially. And we use the meridian points in the body that would be used for, like in your prior trade of acupuncture. You would use those so that you could, you know, access the energy and block things, all of that kind of stuff. We do the same thing by tapping on them, but just with our fingertips instead of needles, while talking about the issue at hand.
Speaker 2:So it gives a voice to the issue and it all sounds kind of like woo-woo when you just hear about it that way, but what actually happens is that while you're tapping these points and speaking about the issue, you're sending a signal directly to your amygdala where fight, flight, freeze, flee, fawn.
Speaker 2:Am I missing any Collapse? I feel like there's always more Fs, but where that all happens, so we get to calm the amygdala down and release the energetic blockages around, whatever it is. So this is a technique that is scientifically proven to be effective on anything that you can feel. So that means physical pain, emotional pain, things that happened long, long ago. Things that you're future pacing and worrying about happening that might never happen, anxiety or things that are happening presently for you, physical or emotional, and it's really phenomenal. I mean, I'm no scientist and I don't conduct any of these research studies, but there are countless research studies out there that you can look at that show you the efficacy of this, and I mean down to like an epigenetic level, like you can actually change the way that your genes express with this.
Speaker 2:It's really really powerful and also really really simple and I love that it's. It's that easy. I mean, I had this calling to become a master practitioner after I went to a retreat where I was sick and I got sick on the way to the retreat and we were working on anxiety as a group and I say as a group and I emphasize that because EFT loves specificity. So if you're going to get a good shift in a group, you know it's like working well, because it's not going to be as specific as maybe I do it if I was doing it individually, but I was getting this great shift in my anxiety. I, you know, had my four kids at the time. I had plenty of anxiety, running a couple of businesses from home and trying to keep up with everything. My anxiety was going down. And then I also noticed, as we were tapping, that my sinuses were clearing and my throat was feeling better, my physical energy was lifting and what I was experiencing is known as borrowed benefits, which is a really cool like thing that goes hand in hand with EFT, where you know you can be working on one thing but since your stress hormones are going down, a lot of things start to feel better.
Speaker 2:You know, I've had clients show up to our sessions and they'll be like you know, kind of hobbling over to zoom or whatever, and I'm like, oh, what's going on? Oh, I sprayed my ankle earlier. They're not there to work on their ankle with me, so we work on something else and yet at the end, when we reassess how things are feeling, their ankle feels better, even though we were working on childhood trauma. You know, it's a really cool thing and the borrowed benefits don't just work within the person doing it, Like when I, as a practitioner, get to work with my clients, I'm blessed with borrowed benefits every day. You know, it helps me to release different blockages by not even focusing on them but just by, you know, tapping along with my, my clients and working out their stuff.
Speaker 2:So I love that. I love that. You know, at the end of the day of working, my energy is not drained, it's well protected, it's restored and it's in good shape versus a lot of you know talk therapists and people that do other kinds of therapy find themselves very like depleted after talking to clients all day. So that's a little bit about how it works. I mean it can lower your stress hormone cortisol up to like 43% in less than five minutes. It's some powerful stuff.
Speaker 1:And something that I feel like is really important to say here too and this came up in our conversation on your podcast is like I'm a little bit of a skeptic, like of all things you know, and whenever someone is like here's this tool, and it feels like a little bit of like a magic button, magic pillow kind of a tool, this is where I feel like intentionality and inserting intentionality is really important, and so something that I think you said on your podcast is you know, eft isn't about just like like Making the negative feeling go away. It's about like giving yourself the space to be able to then process whatever it is and and Transmute the density of the heavy thing that you're carrying around. Yes, and it should not be used as like, oh, like you're feeling bad, like just tap your feelings away. You know right?
Speaker 2:um no, it's about actually like getting to the root cause. It's about meeting that feeling, feeling that feeling and allowing that feeling to move, any kind of negative feelings we have. They just want to be able to move. They don't want to stagnate in our body, so this allows them to come up and out instead of, you know, residing somewhere within you where it will probably be more than just a Feeling. At some point there'll be some other kind of dis ease that it evolves into.
Speaker 2:So yes it's not about, you know, ridding yourself of negativity and negative feelings and pain, but rather having a good tool to process it and, yeah, in in turn, you probably will also feel better and feel happier and less pain. But, yeah, you have to kind of go through the process and it's a tool that can be used as a band-aid. You know, if you were having a certain pain or feeling and you did just simply need to feel a little bit better in the moment Cuz maybe you've got to go give a presentation, or you know You're getting ready to go out in public and you can't be a mess, or whatever you can you can kind of band-aid it up that way. But that's not going to be the way that EFT is used. To get to the root cause, yeah exactly.
Speaker 2:I love that we can use this tool in both ways, because sometimes you need that band-aid in order to be able to go deeper and really clean out the wound and make it so that it's not Retraumatizing, and that it's a very gentle process. So this is a very gentle technique.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm just being called to share a story of a friend of mine who had a horse and this horse had been through some like horrific, horrific traumas early on in its life and the owner, before my friend Was able to adopt her, was using EFT to help like calm the anxiety of this horse. And what my friend actually found she's a really, really mindful like horse trainer was that the owner was so afraid of this horse's big Feelings and, like horse energy is big right, like they kick and they buck and they run and they like do all these like big movements to get the feelings to move through their bodies. This owner was so afraid of this horse's feelings that she was using Tapping to sort of like shut those feelings down and she would actually like put her horse into like a state of like sort of like relaxation and like what appeared to be sort of like tranquility, but then later it would turn into like an explosive sort of episode, and so I think that the important piece here, and I'm kind of curious what your take is on.
Speaker 1:It is like. My take on it is like movement is important. However, that movement happens is important and To me, like when I think about that horse, it's like the horse was already moving through its emotions, through its like body and and and so like, where I think and this is not me speaking as an EFT practitioner, but like as somebody who's like observing these sort of things, and I'm curious if there's pushback on this is I find that EFT is helpful when, like, we need to get movement up in and like sort of like Help get that feeling from like a frozen state into a more malleable state. I'm curious your take on that.
Speaker 2:That's very helpful for that I mean no doubt about it, and I know a lot of people have used it with animals and had different, varying degrees of success. I personally don't really know how you measure that, you know, because for me EFT has always combined with a voice, with tapping, and I don't know how. I mean I guess you can voice it for them, but then that feels kind of imposed so I don't know. But yeah, definitely great for getting you from from freeze into a more mobile state. That's also great for just elevating when you are already in a good mobile state. I mean you can take a great emotion and magnify it. With the EFT you can do all sorts of things. Sometimes it's just some people love to just do like positive EFT, but I think that can also kind of get into the realm of like affirmations and things which Can be lovely, and also can kind of have this gap that they create that's so big that you like have the goal trauma. So I think we have to be careful how we use it. I personally love that with EFT I get to voice all the like snarky, negative, sarcastic, you know, maybe like not politically correct, rude, whatever stuff is on my mind that, like I don't otherwise get a place to have an outlet for, I just get to let it all out there and then, as I come around and do you know a few different rounds through the different points on the body, I usually find myself in a place where my perspective changes a little bit and I'm open to that reframe More than I was when I started.
Speaker 2:Say like, to me it kind of feels like, especially when I'm working on something, that's like a dysregulated kind of a feeling. Before I do around to be EFT, it's like I just showed up at this concert, want to be there. It's a great concert. I've got a front row spot, I'm like kind of jammed up against the stage but like people are stage diving and like there the bands moving around on top of the audience and it just doesn't feel like. It's like what's gonna happen next and I feel kind of like unsafe. And then we're round of EFT me. It's as if I have like lifted up into like the club level seating. You know it's like a bathroom right there. I can go get myself a drink, grab a pretzel, whatever I can take it all in, see everything Be present for it and I feel really safe and I just have this whole new perspective on the same show that I was like getting clobbered at a minute ago.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think that that's the intentional space that you were speaking about on your show is like. It gives you a chance to sort of Gain a higher perspective, which is really hard to do when you're in a sympathetic state like one where in sympathetic or sort of like, laser focused and like like tuned into a singular experience and and Having a tool like this where you get to sort of reliably Like move out of that like hyper focused, laser focused sort of perspective, is so so helpful.
Speaker 2:Yes, it's also really fun to use from, like, a surrogate perspective Like if you're having conflict with somebody else or what have you, or even you know past memories that involve other people to use the EFT tapping to tap from the different perspectives and the different energy of the other people who were involved, because that really helps you develop perspective and compassion and Understanding for what the other also might have been experiencing at that time and really frame in a whole other way.
Speaker 2:So there's a lot of fun ways to use it and, yeah, you can also use it to like get the body to even show up differently. You can use it for, like, the autoimmune system and things like that, to instruct it to you know, produce hormones, to stop doing things, to heal things. It's it's pretty fascinating.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and I think that you know.
Speaker 1:To circle back to what you were sharing of, you know, the barred benefits is Like the way that allopathic medicine thinks about things is oh, here's a thing in your elbow, so let's do something for the elbow.
Speaker 1:But, like, the wisdom and the intelligence of the body is that when it receives any form of healing, it knows what to do with that, you know, and it knows exactly where things need to be bolstered, where things might need to be, you know, sort of like siphoned off in terms of like energies, yeah, and, and to me, like that's that's one of the fundamental principles of Chinese medicine is Like, yes, we'll work on your headache, but can we get to the root cause of the headache?
Speaker 1:So, like, you know, some of these points that are I'm just gonna use headache as an example that are good for headache also, are good for tonifying the blood or also good for, you know, removing stagnation, and so like there's all sorts of things that happen within the body system. It's just that we can't Like put like a logical map to it and so like when folks who are used to like more of the allopathic medicine model Like it just looks like magic but it's not really. It's just your body Knowing what to do with the information that you gave it and then deciding oh, I know what to do with this.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and we combine that with belief and getting through to the subconscious mind, we can make some really big strides. And this is a place where I really like to. I in my practice I pretty much piggyback hypnotherapy and emotional freedom techniques. So I love that with hypnotherapy we can get into the subconscious mind and we can. You know, I've had great success working with headaches like you spoke of and things like that. Or even when there's injuries, we can instruct.
Speaker 2:You know the, if the hand is hurt on this side, you know you can have your left hand to mimic your right hand so that it you know it heals in the same fashion and your body knows exactly what to do with that. I like, oh, yeah, okay, that hand, that's got this, okay, we'll just recreate that. And it's amazing what happens, you know, or with healing, when we can get the, the mind On board with the healing and then also get you actually believing and visualizing the process. You know, I mean that's manifestation in a nutshell. Right, we have to see it before it can happen and we have to definitely believe it before it can happen.
Speaker 2:And a lot of times, the belief is what's what's missing, whether it's something physical that we're healing or something more emotional like confidence or self-esteem, yeah, and.
Speaker 1:I think that you know what you're saying is so true. It's like if we can get the mind on board with the body and you know, it makes me think like, well, it's not a coincidence that, you know, alapakha medicine sort of likes to keep those things separate. You know, is is part of the reason, like I, I believe that man, if we could man, if we could just acknowledge how powerful our own bodies are, like there's just so much that can get unlocked and and it would make alapakha medicine look really like infantile and juvenile in comparison, and if we really fully were able to get, like our our minds, to really understand that our bodies are Truly working for us, instead of thinking about our bodies as something that needs to be controlled and fixed.
Speaker 2:Changing our minds changes everything.
Speaker 1:Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, absolutely so. Just trying to think of where I want to take this conversation, I feel like there's a couple places I want to play, can you, because I know that, like several of my clients, I'm imagining a lot of folks in the community here are actually curious about writing and publishing their own books. Do you mind going into a little bit more of like what that process was like, why you chose you know, I think you said that you self-published instead of like going through a publisher.
Speaker 2:I'm working with the publisher, but it's, yeah, it's, it's a process that's guided a lot by yeah, so like.
Speaker 2:All those pieces like what are like some of the nuts and bolts and why you made certain decisions over other decisions yeah, so the process itself and I joined a like a container, so I I am working with like four other authors in this container.
Speaker 2:We're all like we have very similar launch and release dates for our book, so it's been nice to have the energy of other people's writing whether it was similar to what I was writing or different to be able to support and also bounce ideas off of and things like that. And the actual writing part of the process was shorter than I would have liked it to be and I actually asked for deadline extensions because it just we did a lot of like the ramping up to writing before the summer and then, with four kids and summer being like a time I really like to be with them and have vacations planned and other things our Start date for writing was pretty much mid-June, when my kids got out of school so, and the writing part believe it or not was like three weeks. So for me I needed a little closer to two months and it was still put all of my writing During the summer, but it gave me time to spread it out more and not make it feel like pressured. So that's still a very short period of time.
Speaker 2:It is yeah, right, you know what I think is gonna be somewhere around like a 200 page book. We're still finishing the formatting. But and then you know from the time that you get it done, the first draft, that that was the most stressful part for me, I think. I think I probably felt the least pleasure in like that. Last weekend, before I had to hand Script that I knew like, oh, everything supposed to be in here, and you know I didn't really. I did actually make a significant amount of changes even after that point, but of course you know it's my.
Speaker 2:It's difficult when you've never been through the process before. You just can't. You don't know what. You don't know until you know it right, exactly. And I didn't know what editing was gonna be like. It was a few rounds of editing. So you know you had to hand it over and you take your hands off of it in the meantime. My head's still going up. You forgot this, you forgot that.
Speaker 2:So I'm like making notes on another document now or making other voice notes of things I need to do when the first round comes back. And then the first round comes back and then it's a whole bunch of like you know, when you correct a. You put comments on, like a Google doc or a word doc or what have you just Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of comments to go through, accept, decline, request, revisions, whatever the case may be, and then we do that for another round. So, yeah, that editing was tedious not my favorite part and then we go into formatting, which is where you make it actually look like a book, you know so, and again it's it's handing over, like this is definitely the final manuscript, you know, go take it.
Speaker 2:But it's also not the final manuscript, because I still made changes, because once I actually saw it come together, I was like, oh, but this would be really good there, or I want that moved there, and you really kind of get to see it come together. So we are literally like the last day or two of formatting right now, and now we're working on like the cover, art and things like that. So really making sure that the outward appearance of the book matches my vision for it and and getting ready to launch. And then, of course, when you know whether you're working with a traditional publisher, self-publishing or working with another kind of publisher, you need to think about actually like the marketing and the launching and things like that. So you know, I put together a free eight-week program in my community. That's going on now and we'll go on through the book launch, where every week I'm like reading excerpts from the book and I'm expanding upon lessons in ways that the book doesn't touch upon and.
Speaker 2:Really kind of you know, peaking that interest and sharing a lot of you know information and also offering coaching.
Speaker 2:So, as people have questions about this, I'm like personally coaching in the group and things like that, as we're getting ready for this and just trying to get ready for that launch day and having, like, people that are excited about purchasing the book and everything else, which is, you know, it's a collaborative effort. It's part of the reason why we're taping this podcast now, because you were supportive about this and you were like, yes, so this is part of my podcast launch book tour. I'm probably have 20, some podcasts I'll be on from, you know, september through the book launch, where you know we're really just getting people fired up about that and Making sure that those podcasts are coming out around the same time, kind of sort of that. The book comes out and I know that's gonna be immensely powerful too. So that's just kind of some behind-the-scenes stuff that you know you want to do everything you can to make what you've been working on and putting your heart and soul into successful.
Speaker 2:So, what's that? And make sure that it reaches the right people. I mean, that's this is kind of like my love letter to the people who I know are gonna absolutely adore the work that I do.
Speaker 2:You know it's if the people that resonate with this are going to definitely resonate with with doing this kind of work and making these kind of breakthroughs. So I know that putting my own, my own story out there on the line and my own feelings and my own processes and ways that I've been able to, you know, approach challenges differently and make different breakthroughs, is going to be really powerful and helpful to people.
Speaker 1:So and then?
Speaker 2:in the coming weeks, before launch. I have to create all the resources because the book has, like you know, every chapter has a different like qr code or thing that you can scan to get like an eft round or a video on this or all that kind of stuff, and that stuff's not even created yet. So you know it's, it's a it's a multi layered process that and multimedia.
Speaker 2:It sounds like yes, but I I'm really glad that I committed to doing it. I'm really enjoying it. I am making sure the pleasure gets into all the different parts of it and even when I get stressful, I sure by myself. You know what it's my process if I want to. You know we're looking to launch at the end of october. The date's not firm yet, but it'll be the end of october. But you know what? If things go a little bit weird, I'll just launch at the end of november. You know, like it's not set in stone. So I keep reminding myself I don't need to let the stress build up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, um, I'm just trying to think of like a couple points at which people might have questions and so like, like, I'm sort of even thinking of like these like forks in the road of the decisions that you've made with this whole Like the actual like, not the writing process, but the like I want to get this book out into other people's hands process. So the first fork I see is DIYing it versus being supported through a coaching container.
Speaker 1:Like what was some of your thought process as you were deciding yes, I want to be in a coaching container to help this Um move forward.
Speaker 2:Well, the first part was knowing that I needed the accountability, that I had already tried, and I don't even want to say failed. It wasn't a failure, but, like one would say, like I tried and failed already twice on my own.
Speaker 2:Um, I just tried and didn't get it to finish twice on my own. So I knew that I would let life or, you know, running my programs or all the different other things going on, prevent me from doing it if I didn't actually have somebody kind of like Hold me to the intention to get it done. So that's probably the most valuable thing that I wanted to get out of coaching was just that guidance. And also, like I've never written and published an actual book before, so I know that even when I am now in the process there's so much I don't know. There's so much.
Speaker 2:I don't know and I didn't want to be in the position of trying to figure out like, okay, like when do I hire an editor and how do I know if it's a good editor and what's the process. And then, okay, what's formatting all about? Like I don't know how to do that either, so I wouldn't even know that those were the steps. Honestly, like that, you know you do this and then you do this, and then you do this and yeah, like sizing the cover art, like there's so many weird little intricacies that I honestly just didn't even want to deal with, so letting somebody else manage that was. Let me again focus on the pleasure of actually producing the product and bang the story and Allowing it to be my own vehicle for healing, because I definitely got a lot of therapy out of writing my book for myself.
Speaker 1:I imagine, yeah, and so I'm hearing that you are wholeheartedly highly recommending container space, even if it's just to hold you to that accountability, but also like to fill in the gaps of actual knowledge of the industry that you're not aware of. Do you mind sharing, like for folks who might also be interested, like who you worked with? Yeah, I worked with.
Speaker 1:Sandra Bicknell at soulfully aligned publishing awesome so that's like one little fork in the road that Folks might, you know, be interested in sort of traveling down. The other fork in the road Self-publishing versus traditional publishing versus something in between, like what was that part of your journey?
Speaker 2:like I don't see how it's a whole lot different to self-publish versus working with like a publishing house slash coach, except that the guidance is there. I mean I guess I could have done all these steps and put it all together on my own. There's probably then I read a bunch of books. There's. There's great books about writing books out there, of course, and I read most of them. I just didn't feel like actually doing the steps myself. I wanted to be able to just hand it off and not have to, like look for the different people to do the different things or manage the process myself. So, yeah, I mean, it'll still be an amazon book, you know it'll. It'll be on amazon, um, and you know I might get it into bookstores also. But that's like a part of the process I haven't even gotten to yet.
Speaker 2:So we're gonna launch first and foremost on amazon, and you know Hope to be an amazon best-selling author and all of those little things that we shoot for when we're putting books out into the world. And I go into the recording studio tomorrow I'm gonna create an audible version of it also. So that was actually very, very important to me. Um, as an adhd, I'm gonna be a woman, because I don't read books.
Speaker 2:So it was kind of weird and ironic to me that I was writing one in the first place, and also extra ironic that I was going to have to read it I don't even know how many times at this point in order to do the editing and figure out, like, is this right, does this sound good? You know, you get to the point where, like, words don't even make sense when you've read them so many times. Like, is this even English? I don't even know anymore. So yeah, the process was kind of funny to me because I really, unless something is not available and audible and it's an absolute must read, I listen to lots and lots of books. I mean, I read several books a week normally, but they've got to be on audible. So I said if I was going to write a book, there was no way it was not going to be available in audio.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that I'm the same way is. I was just talking to my best friend the other day and being like is this just beginning older? Or like what is it where I can't just like sit down and like read a book? I have audible subscription and I listen to audible constantly, but it's just like I'm knitting or I am cooking or I'm, you know, in the kitchen or cleaning, like it's just my brain does so much better and also it appeals to. I know that, like I personally have less of a visual learning style, more of an auditory learning style, and so it's always helpful when you can reach people who have different ways of processing and absorbing information. So, thank you for for I'll be, I'll be getting the audible version of it.
Speaker 2:Awesome. I'm hoping that it's going to turn out well. That might my own thing that I decided I wanted to do not part of the container that I was in, but I was like I got to do it.
Speaker 2:So I'm excited, I know so much of this book was bringing things full circle for me from my childhood which is also something else that I write about, because I really think that we're meant and intended to do, at least if we're really going to love what we do the things that really lit us up when we were kids. And for me I remember like literally creating a library with my friends. Instead of coming over and like playing with Barbies and stuff, they would come over and we would write books and you know I had a card catalog and everything my dogs here like trying to say hi to me. And then it got into like writing songs and, you know, wanting to like sing and you know, be a performer and things like that. And then we would like create like our own, like video, talk shows and stuff.
Speaker 2:Once we have, like in the 80s, we have like the camcorder that you have like hold on your shoulder. That was like big and I still have all these recordings. But like my life has come full circle in that you know I have a podcast which is kind of like talk show and I, you know, when I write EFT or hypnotherapy rounds for clients, it's like writing them a song that feels their heart and soul, and you know. And then writing a book is like bringing my library back to life. So all of these things have been full circle for me.
Speaker 1:And love that. Also, I love that your dog is just like the biggest snuggle bug. If you're listening to this, you might want to hop over to the YouTube video, because because mostly it's pretty darn cute, aren't you Like? He's just the cutest creature. He like tucks his like head in like a toddler does.
Speaker 2:And he always knows like he can. He can sense the vibe, like when a podcast is wrapping up. You can tell like the change in our intonation, the change in the energy is like we're gonna go like lawsuit and I'm ready. Yeah, love it.
Speaker 1:So, he's getting the hint. Is there anything that you feel like you want to land in here Just to sort of wrap up our conversation, any sort of, you know, sort of tying up loose ends, is it's?
Speaker 2:yeah. So a few loose ends to tie up one. If you've never tried EFT or hypnotherapy, I highly recommend them. I have tons of resources where you can get hands on. I always say it's one thing to like listen to me and Kat talking about it and to understand, like, okay, I get it. This is why it works.
Speaker 2:Maybe it works, maybe it doesn't, you know, maybe you're skeptical. If you're skeptical, try it on something that's tangible, like a headache, like we talked about, because then you're really going to get to experience the shift in real time. Versus if you decide to try it on something like money blocks or something else. Then it's still going to be equally effective, but it's going to take a little longer for you to test the efficacy, which might lead to your skepticism lasting longer than it needs to.
Speaker 2:Also and the other thing is is that Kat and I are actually going to do a round of tapping after we're done recording and it's going to be part of this enormous resource that I have now called the private sessions, so you can get your hands on like over 60 different EFT tapping sessions that I've done with other podcast hosts by just going to theprivatesessionscom and that'll be there for you and you can choose any topic that you want to tap on in there. It's probably been covered in those 60 sessions and we'll just tap on whatever it is that's near and dear to Kat's heart today that she wants to work on, and you'll just have to go over there and see what it is and tap along with us, and yeah, so that's a resource that I love to give.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and you're actually catching me on the perfect day. We've had to reschedule this episode like a couple of times now, just life circumstances happening, and you just happen to be catching me on like a day where I actually feel kind of dysregulated because there's a bit of uncertainty about some property that my husband and I want to purchase, and so that is what Theresa and I are going to be tapping about. So go check out her library and then you get to sort of be behind the scenes of me working through some of this dysregulation with her.
Speaker 2:I feel like my dog has been doing EFT with me because he's been yawning over here. He's yawning like eight times in the last minute, which is really unusual but yawning is a very common release and side effect of doing EFT tapping you can really tell that you're releasing those energetic blockages when you yon so yeah, very ironic. Yeah, thank you so much for having me today, kat I just really appreciate it being able to share about these things that are so dear to my heart. So thank you for taking the space to do that.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for being here, and if folks want to follow up with you, I'm going to put the show links. Sorry, I'm going to put the links in the show notes. Hello, but do you want to say that out loud so that some folks can just like just straight, get on your Instagram?
Speaker 2:or the best place to find me is by my name. So, whether it's on Instagram, at Theresa Lear Levine, my websites, theresa Lear Levinecom, you can grab that resource I talked about at the private sessionscom, and you can find links to my podcast and anything else that you're looking for from my website.
Speaker 1:Perfect, alrighty. Well, thank you so much for being here and I'm excited to jump into my EFT tapping session. Thanks,