Welcome & Upcoming Ceremony Announcement
Welcome to the Thirsty Soul podcast, a place that reveals inspiration, creativity, wisdom, and clarity, guiding you into communion with yourself, your soul, and the secret.
Each episode is here to help you contemplate the themes in your own life and deepen your relationship to yourself, your life, and the world around you.
Before we dive into the episode, I just want to share with you a couple of things that are upcoming here.
Samhain Ceremony & Midlife Renaissance Retreat
So, on Sunday, the 3rd of November, in Foxrock, Co. Dublin, I am holding a ceremony for Samhain, and it is called the Cailleach’s Cave.
We’ll be venturing into her, the warmth of her cave, to sit with the Cailleach. It is a place of deep rest where we know we need to stop forcing, pushing, and striving. We can let ourselves come and receive from the wise gifts of the Cailleach—the veiled one, the old hag—who shares with us the gifts of deep listening, self-compassion, and nurturing the wisdom of her soul.
You will sit with her and see what insights she has for you, for where you are in your life, how you can maybe reshape your inner landscape, and become who you’re meant to be.
It is a place where she will give us exactly what we need—if we need that warm embrace, that deep hold, and that rest, that softness, she will give it to us. But if we need to look into her sharp eyes and be told to get a move on, less of the run-around circles there, she will also give us that beautiful medicine.
We’ll be working with some of her plant allies, and it will be a beautiful gathering. I’m really looking forward to this. I love this time of year.
And the second one is on the 9th of November—that’s a day retreat here in Summerhull, County Meath, about 30 minutes from Dublin—and that is the Midlife Renaissance Retreat.
It’s an opportunity to come into ritual, learn, experience, and move through the spiritual initiation that is midlife.
It’s an opportunity to harness the power of midlife so you can step a little bit more boldly into life with clarity and purpose.
We all know that midlife can be very messy—physically, mentally, emotionally—but also there’s a spiritual initiation happening.
If we can allow ourselves to receive from that space, it gives us a stronger foundation on which to build the next part of our life rather than letting it define our life moving forward.
So we get to rewrite the rules, embrace the freedom, and thrive. It’s going to be a beautiful day, so come along. All information is on my website as always or at the Thirsty Soul on Instagram.
One final little thing: if you like the podcast, all those little likes or the subscribes on Apple and Spotify really help, and any little testimonials you can email to me or write on those platforms would be deeply appreciated. It just helps with the growth of it, and as I’ve mentioned before, I’m hoping to transcribe these and add videos—and all those things help towards that there.
So many blessings as we move now into our little episode, and I’m continuing on from its part two. Part one was back in July, I think, from questions that individuals had sent to me via Instagram and email about being 16 years in business. I wanted to do the honor of completing these myself before we reach the end of the year.
Q1. Integrating Homestead, Parenthood, and Business
Weaving Spirituality into Daily Life and Business
The first question was how to weave into daily life when running a homestead and parenthood is busy—and I’m assuming that’s weaving spirituality, business, weaving it all together.
The first thing would be to accept—to bring in acceptance—where you are in this season of your life. When we run a business, it evolves and changes depending on the seasons of our lives. If we have young kids, if we’re running a busy homestead or business, it will look different than if I had no kids and somebody was looking after the homestead.
Each person’s business is going to look different according to their lifestyle, their values, their needs, and their levels of support.
So the first part is the acceptance that this is where I am for now. Not that you’re stuck in the busyness, but that this is where I’m at, this is the life that I’ve created. Look at this beautiful life I’ve created with my family, with my homestead, and how much I receive from it; and then the acknowledgement that I’m running my own business, and maybe there’s a part of me that wants more, wants people to do more, to give more.
And it’s not that you, like, fully don’t believe—you don’t have to wait until your kids are 15 to start your business. The values will be different depending on their age, the time commitment, and the energy commitment will be different depending on their age, and that’s okay.
Exploring your values in business
Then adjust the business in a way that suits the values of where you’re at in life—as a family, your values for you as an individual, the time, and the energy as well.
Be flexible in your approach to it so that, depending on how you are, if you’re someone who loves time blocking and it works for you, then that may be the method you revisit. If you’re someone who likes to get up in the morning and plan the day ahead, that might work for you. Consider how you like to plan and allow fluidity in that.
When you have kids and run your homestead, with all the responsibilities that come with caring for someone, there has to be a level of flexibility and an understanding that this will change. This is not forever.
If I’m caring for an elderly parent, then some of the time that would have been put into my business may need to be drawn back. I could say to myself, “Well, that was me. I’ll make up that time late at night,” but my non-negotiable is that I don’t work past a certain time at night because my dreams will play up that way.
Burnout has taught me my non-negotiables very clearly, and my energy begins to wind down naturally—I like being in bed at a certain time; that’s just how I’m made up, that’s how I work best.
We’re all different, so it’s not about pushing yourself to try and fill in full-time hours for a business on top of raising a family and running a homestead. It’s about allowing it to be in pockets, to allow it to be in the phase that it needs to be in. Part of that is allowing flexibility.
You may get up one day and decide, “Yeah, this is the day I’m going to spend a couple of hours here because the kids are out visiting someone, or their partner may have taken them away, or an aunt may have taken them for the day, and I’m going to do XYZ.”
You might have great plans, but then you wake up and realize your body actually needs something completely different. We don’t shame or blame ourselves for those times.
Get really clear about what kind of business you want for this stage of your life; you can still hold a vision for the longer term, but what will work for you now.
Ask for support and help
A big part of having the beauty of having it is, obviously, knowing what support you need—support for your business, support with your kids, understanding all the stuff that may be going on internally.
Who is your community? Who are the people that you can lean on? Who are your cheerleaders? Hopefully, your partner is one of those, so they understand too that you’re looking to expand on your business or step into your business and pursue that, and they’re helping you in some way by taking on their share of the responsibilities.
Often, you learn to ask for help.
For many people, that’s a hard thing to do because so many of us were brought up with the idea that if you want something done, you do it yourself. If it’s my own project, I shouldn’t have to ask for help; I should be able to pursue it by myself.
Another thing is to ask for what you need. These are all things you need to learn to do in business, because if you eventually want your business to reach a certain phase or provide a certain level of income, you’re going to need help and support. You’re going to ask for what you need. They’re prepping you for that phase.
Sometimes, the linear things that many of us who run holistic businesses are often told are, “Just be in your divine feminine flow by the seat of your pants.” But we also need that beautiful masculine energy of planning and organising. Some of us might be block timers; some of us might like fluidity, but we also need a plan, or else you’re going to end up flying by the seat of your pants, and the sail on your boat, and the wind will take you in a completely different direction than your plan.
So, planning and organising isn’t about strict rules and routine—it’s more about knowing what your vision is for this year alongside your family.
It’s not about what’s possible or what your little mind thinks is there, but rather where you would like it to be, what matters most, and where to put your energy for your business.
What are the one or two things that will give you the best return on investment of your time, even what’s most important to you in life as a whole for this phase of your life, as well as for your kids?
Quality time with your kids is part of that too. For example, it might be really important to you that you are able to go to their place, take them to school in the morning, or collect them—whatever it might be. Then consider how work slots in amongst that.
It’s about reshifting any of the beliefs or programs that say, “I’m not working if I’m not doing an eight-hour shift a day or whatever the normal working hours are.” You might find that you actually get a lot smarter with your time and energy, knowing your limits—knowing that you can’t do everything without burning yourself out or not being the best version of yourself.
How can it be done with grace and ease?
What would life look like if it were easy to do everything?
I’m not saying all of the things, but what would life look like if it were easy to be with my kids, run the homestead, and put time and effort into my business?
What would it look like if it were easy, and what do I need for that to happen?
To start thinking of other perspectives and perceptions around that, a big part is to let go of perfection. Go, “Okay, if this is what I’m launching or putting out there, it doesn’t need to be perfect. I can tweak and adjust as I go, learning every day.”
Understand that not every day is going to go as planned, and that’s okay; there will be moments of beauty in every day. Celebrate all the wins along the way in your business and in your family.
Another thing is to always have ways back to yourself—to be able to slow down and be present with where you are.
What brings you back to yourself?
What is your self-care?
And that’s not about lying in the bath for six hours; it could be your nutrition, your health, your wellness, your hormones, or simply your self-talk, how you treat yourself. That could be as simple as 10 minutes in the morning, maybe with your kids, where you all just sit at the table and have a lovely cup of tea, or sit in front of a little candle—if it’s safe, perhaps a battery-operated one—so they can be involved.
Involving Family and Finding Balance in Daily Life
We try to separate self-care from family, yet our children want to be involved in everything. I see many people who do weight training and bring their kids into their shed, where they might have a little gym; the kid might be on their little swinging chair thing (and my brain just can’t process the little swinging chair thing), or they might just be playing with their toys in the background somewhere safe while the person is doing their own weight training.
What they’re teaching their kid is to look after themselves without even realizing it. It’s okay to take time out, to exercise, and to care for yourself—to do the things you enjoy. Often, the kid will start mimicking you: doing their own little weight training, lifting their toys in the air.
So, involve your kids—not in a way that forces spirituality on them, but in a natural way.
If the kids are there and they want your attention, let them be involved—read them a little book, and that’s your meditation. Taking a walk is your meditation, too. That sets the intention for your day.
Sometimes, we have to snag those little moments in different ways than we did before, because once we go through the initiation of parenthood, we are no longer who we were.
Our life will never be the same again—and we don’t want it to be the same—because we have these beautiful beings in front of us who are looking at us, thinking, “Oh my God, you know everything!”
There is no one way to do this; it’s a trial and error process of finding what works for you at this place in life. There’s no one way to get it all done—you’re never going to get it all done. Some people will stay up late at night or get up earlier in the morning, and that may work for some but not for you.
It’s about thinking about the life you’ve chosen to create and working with that. It’s really taken time for me—and I’m pretty sure it has for you—to come back to what’s really important. Ask yourself: in 10 years, what memories do I want to have created?
In 30 years, how would I like the kids to remember this time? When you have a lot of responsibility, it’s important to take moments and breaks: go on dates with your partner, do little fun things, put the work down so you don’t become a working machine in all areas.
A big thing is not to compare yourself to other people because you don’t know what their life is like behind the scenes—even if they have the same number of kids, a homestead, and the same type of business, you don’t know the level of support they have, whether it’s financial, mental, emotional, or physical.
You have to focus on your own lane and decide what is vital and essential for this phase of your life.
Focus on projects that will help your business grow, and sometimes you’ll have to say no to things that are really enticing but aren’t aligned or that you don’t have the time or energy for. Or you might say yes to something that you’re unsure you can handle, but then find a way to ask for help, ask for support, and delegate tasks.
Perhaps you learn to have shared roles and responsibilities with your partner rather than trying to do it all by yourself. Maybe you get creative with solutions and ideas on how things could be done differently—not based on who you were, but who you are at this moment, and who your family is at this moment.
I hope that helps as a starter. You are in a beautiful phase of life that will create beautiful, magical memories, even though it is often a chaotic time. Let go of the need to control everything and find out what works for you.
Q2. Navigate Burnout and Embrace Growth
The Hardest Part of My Journey: Burnout
The second question is: what’s been the hardest part about my journey? As I’d say, that depends on what day you ask me that question—16 years is a long time to be in this work. Obviously, there have been expansions and contractions, beautiful days and messy days, and lessons learned. But probably the one that comes straight to mind—the most recent, within the last five to seven years—has been burnout.
That has been the hardest part of my journey because there are very distinct differences in myself and my life before burnout and after burnout. They have to be different, and that affects every part of your life. It affects relationships, your business, your relationship with yourself, your day-to-day habits—everything—because burnout has such a huge effect on your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual well-being.
It’s almost a huge initiation.
The Challenge of Slowing Down: A Necessary Decision
For me, the hardest part was stopping—it was hard to stop because it is in my beautiful ancestral DNA to keep going, to keep moving. There was a lot of ancestral healing needed, a lot of hard conversations needed with the self, a lot of conversations needed with the soul, and a lot of conversations needed in my relationship because I took a huge step back from my work.
We had been living in Meath for a year, and I had been working in Dublin since 2008. When covid came in 2020, it was like, “Let’s get out of it, let’s get online.” I was booked up for six months in advance for courses and for clients, and I just didn’t have the energy to put all this stuff online.
I actually didn’t want to teach Reiki online—it does not interest me; it doesn’t bring me excitement. I think the beauty is being in a room of people, in the energy, and truly having that direct experience. So, at that stage, there were many choice points.
Slowing down was hard because I was so used to being naturally full of energy—a movement brain with ideas flowing, everything turning—and I loved my work. I had to make the decision that, upon taking an eagle’s view, I needed a year off.
I had been commuting from the north side of Dublin to Blackrock from dawn until a bit after dark, and the commute from Meath (Summerhill, which is only half an hour from Dublin, but 45 minutes to Blackrock in rush hour traffic) was taking about three hours a day, maybe five days a week. I realized that was taking a huge toll on my being.
With the lockdowns, I decided, “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t even bear the thought of getting in that car and driving down that road.” So I had to make the courageous decision to stop. I let go of my place in Blackrock, I let go of the workshops in Blackrock.
Initially, when covid hit, we thought we’d be up and going again within a while, but eventually I just let go of all the workshops I had planned, and my business naturally reduced to about 20%, because obviously people weren’t traveling, there was no one in attendance, and I wasn’t really putting myself out there either. I decided I needed to retreat, and that’s a hard thing to do.
A part of it is—and I’ve been speaking to other people about this recently—clients and colleagues who are working in this field and are burnt out, experiencing compassion fatigue, where literally the words coming out of people’s mouths are, “I just don’t give a shit anymore; I don’t care,” or “I’ve dropped all my practices because I am just done with it.”
It’s easy to end up blaming the practices or the energy or whatever for getting us here, but in reality, it’s our own patterns—our own wounding—that have gotten us here, as hard as it is to hear.
When that happens, when there is a huge slowdown in business or burnout, adrenal fatigue, oxidative stress, and our nervous system is crying out for support because of long-held wounds, it becomes a beautiful opportunity to look deeper at the things you’ve been working on.
My clients will say, “Well, I’ve done my work,” and I say, “Yeah, we’ve all done our work, but when we reach that stage, there’s something we’ve either ignored or haven’t truly seen.” I often say, “I don’t care if you’re doing this work for five months, five years, or 50 years—there will always be things we do not see until we’re ready to see them or until they are pointed out to us.”
Even if they’re pointed out, we might say, “That doesn’t feel true to me,” and then five years down the road you realize, “Oh, I really was burnt out, but I just didn’t want to see it.”
For me, it was this hard place of having to stop. When you come from an ancestral lineage that says, “Work hard, keep going,” it takes bravery to be the one who actually stops.
Then you have to be able to disappoint people. You say, “No, I’m not teaching online. No, I’m not in Dublin anymore. No, I’m not traveling to Donegal these weekends—I can’t do that. I don’t have the capacity for that. And no, I can’t meet you for tea or anything else because there is nothing left to give.”
Embrace the Opportunity for Deep Healing
Most people don’t understand that place of burnout because many don’t experience it in that way. Some people think burnout is just being tired and needing sleep, but it’s not just that—the whole system needs to be overhauled: physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually.
The hardest part for me was stopping, but it was also the most beautiful part of learning: “Wow, I get to be in the driver’s seat of my life. I get to be in the center of my life—not in an egotistical way (not ‘bugger everybody else’), but in the sense that many clients tell me that their life feels like a pie they’re standing outside of, trying to manage all the slices, versus actually being in their life and directing it.”
I had created a way of working, a way of doing things, that I was doing all by myself. I had created a life that was running out of control, and I had to step back, learn how to be in the center, take back control, and make those hard decisions for the greater good.
Grieve the Loss of the Old Self to Redefine your Identity Beyond Burnout
People often ask, “Is grief normal in these places, where you’re letting go of things or realising work needs to change, or how your living needs to change?”
Grief is a part of every ending. It’s natural to be sad for the parts that got us to this place or to wonder, “What if I had changed earlier?”
It’s natural to have regrets, but don’t let them run you. There’s also the natural apprehension of stepping back into life.
I realized during burnout that I had taken on this archetype—the little woman who lives at the edge of the forest. I love the idea of being removed from society, in your little forest, in communion with nature, looking after yourself, being creative, doing your little bits.
But I reached a point where I was like, “Oh, holy mother of God, she is not supporting me anymore.” That archetype was keeping me removed from the world. Any archetype has its light and its shadow.
I had to relegate that archetype back—to let it sit on the council but not be in the main chair—and allow something else to come forward, something that wanted to engage with life and bring things back into the world.
It’s interesting how the archetypes we unconsciously place ourselves into show up.
I see that with clients: they’re drawn to a certain archetype, but then they say, “This place is fine, this is actually nice; I could stay here.”
There’s a difference between knowing when a good thing has had its time and when you’ve had enough medicine of that, versus staying there too long. When I say “safety”—not that I really need safety but rather, “I know when I don’t want to get uncomfortable by emerging back into the world.”
The big part is trying new ways of being around other humans because it’s easy to learn new habits when it’s just you dealing with yourself; it’s different when you have to set boundaries with others.
After burnout, many of us have never learned to set or uphold boundaries. We think, “Oh, I can do that.” Something in our home with our partner might work, but then we think, “Oh God, I have to deal with people—who might push those boundaries, or who am I afraid will disappoint, reject, or abandon me?”
It’s easy to stay in that archetype—the little old woman at the edge of the forest—but eventually, you’re either dragged out of it or you decide to step out on your own. I decided to bring forth this new version of me, one who is still growing, still aligning, still learning, and ready to practice in the real world. It will be messy, and I will mess it up sometimes, but it will also be liberating because I am making it stick.
Take time for trial and error in your emergence from burnout
There’s also that follow-up time when you emerge from burnout. There’s creativity, but it’s in a different form. Sometimes there’s an angst: “I need to get moving fast now that I’m coming back out—I need to have it all ready, all perfect, all the horses in a row, just to open the gate.” But that’s not usually how it will happen.
There’s always a trial-and-error phase of experimentation because the new has to find its way into the weave, into your life. You have to find your people—the ones who resonate with this new version of you—and sometimes, certain friendships won’t resonate. It will take time to find new friendships that do.
Reclaim who you are
For me, the hardest part of my journey was navigating burnout because it stripped away so much of my identity.
One thing I would say—if I may not use “most” for everyone, but for anyone in the holistic field—is that many of us have the helper syndrome: the martyr, the empath, the sacrificer.
Some of us take on all the responsibility, wanting everybody else to be healed, putting it all on our shoulders. There is a light and a shadow to that.
For me, it meant stepping back and honestly asking, “Why am I in this work? Is it the wounding driving this, or is it the light?” And if the wounding isn’t cleared, it will carry forward in the same patterns.
I invite every healer and holistic person to look at that archetype within themselves—the archetype of the healer, the empath—all of which have light and shadow.
We tend to only see the light, but there is always a shadow, and it comes with a cost. If you’re navigating those places, know that it is a beautiful place of transformation where you will grow into yourself. It will be messy, and that’s okay, but you really need space to listen to what is coming from within and to get support to do the healing work physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually, as I’ve discussed in the burnout podcast. I’ll do more episodes on that in the future.
Q3. Translate Soul Purpose into Business Offerings and Creative Expression
The Many Ways Soul Purpose Can Manifest
The final question I received was about your soul purpose and how to translate it into the material world in business offerings. I’m going to try and approach this from a couple of angles.
Soul purpose does not always have to be translated into the material world or the business world. I often chat about this because it puts pressure on us to commodify it and make it something consumable.
Sometimes our soul purpose is for us alone—it’s a deeply held passion, or it may be that my job feeds my soul purpose. It could even be that someone works in the holistic field, but their soul purpose is something else: for example, the money they make might go toward an animal farm they have or toward creating after-school activities for children. That might be their soul purpose.
Or someone may work in a corporate job that isn’t their soul purpose, but they have something else outside of work.
When I say something else, I don’t necessarily mean a job; it could be painting. For some, their paintings aren’t on Instagram or for sale—they’re for the joy of painting, the aliveness of seeing the colors, the vibrations, the connection to source. That is their soul purpose.
Sometimes, my soul purpose is to bring compassion into my family. You might think, “Oh, that’s not good enough,” or “You’re not selling that.” Or if my soul purpose was to heal the anger in myself, it doesn’t mean I have to create a program about, “I’ve healed anger in myself; let me show you how to heal anger in yourself.” My soul purpose was to heal that anger in myself and in my family.
Maybe my soul purpose is simply to come and experience the beauty of the world—and I may or may not share that with others.
One clarification I want to make is that our soul purpose isn’t always what we end up doing or sharing with the world, but it runs through our own life.
Searching for Your Soul Purpose
For those who are still searching for their soul purpose—those who ask, “Tell me my soul purpose! I’ve paid 15 psychics, and they still haven’t told me”—know that your soul purpose will evolve and grow as you evolve and grow. Doesn’t mean it gets bigger or it might become clearer or you may settle into it, grow into it.
What you think your soul purpose is in your 20s may be very different from what it is in your 40s or 50s, because we are different. And we’re also in different seasons of our lives. I’ve talked about this in question one. If I’m raising a family, I can still live my soul purpose—it might just not be in the way my brain thinks it should be.
Even if you can find so much about yourself through tools like astrology, human design, myer briggs, soul plan, gene keys, and so many other systems that can offer insights into your soul purpose. They can never write in one line what your soul purpose is as it’s reductive. It will change. Up to 40 it’s a certain energy and after 40 a different energy due to nodes and certain transits. We’re going through 7 year cycles so different inItiations happening. Our own life experience will evolve. So that will impact what you are sharing as you will have deeper depth into it.
Even if you got them all done. Even if it were written on a sheet of paper as clear as day, for most people it might be overwhelming—“Oh my God, that’s too much!”—and then wounds, limitations, toxic thought forms, and limiting beliefs start coming up. The family wounding comes up, the limitations come up.
We can be on the search for the holy grail while missing the point: we are living our purpose every minute. If my purpose is to come here, enjoy life, be alive, and be both a spirit and a human body, then if I’m chasing the future I’m missing the whole point.
Imagine being told your soul purpose is to, say, plant a thousand trees and spread joy through nature. Your brain might say, “That’s not exciting enough; that’s not glamorous enough; that’s not big enough,” and then you might start shitting on it or you think, “It’s too much, I can’t do that.”
Then all the other things get in your way.
Translating Your Soul Purpose into a Business Offering
Sometimes, knowing your soul purpose doesn’t actually help us—it can get in the way of actually learning about ourselves. To learn what we bring to this world.
I like to think about it as, instead of “What is my soul’s purpose?
- What am I bringing to this world?
- What needs to be expressed through me?
- What are the gifts that are singing within me, waiting to come out?”
Very rarely for the for the majority of people, is it the things that they do every day or the things that are, when i say easy as in for a lot of people. It has been programmed out of them. Then the opportunity is to start reclaiming that.
It’s not very often that you meet someone who immediately says, “Oh, I knew my soul purpose; I’m done. Life took off, and that’s what I signed up for.” It’s more ‘oh, that’s what i signed up for can we maybe put that one back and take something else’
But there’s great beauty in having the words, the feeling, the sense of your purpose because it reaffirms something within you. Of going ‘oh, I knew.. oh god yeah, I knew that I’ve always loved xyz or I knew ‘oh, I’ve always done this here’ .
If you’re told your soul purpose is to teach, then you might start asking, “Teach what? Who? When?” And then that becomes the part of the journey because then you start going well if somebody could just tell me ‘my soul purpose is to teach what exactly?’. So we play these games with ourselves which are beautiful.
But then say you know your soul purpose is not an infinite full stop, because I know the person who wrote this quite well but say you have a sense of something within you that is looking to be expressed in the world. And it’s something that you love, that you’ve tended to, that you’ve nourished and grown within yourself through your own healing work and then the questions is ‘how do I translate that into the material world into business offering?’
I could say go get support to do that, another part of me goes just go play with it go put it out there in small ways.
Ask yourself: If I could only share one thing with people what would it be? Maybe you can create a process that reveals what that looks like for them.
When I teach Reiki, the main thing I come back to in all my classes is: if they only leave with one thing, this is what I want them to remember—“You are Reiki. You are universal life force energy. Reiki helps you reveal your true self, helps you get to know your true self.”
It does that in many ways—through chanting, through meditation practices, through hands-on healing, through initiations, through reju—but all of it is to come back to the self: to know the true self and to reveal the true self. That’s the focus of everything. Everything comes back to that.
I may sound like a recorder on repeat sometimes, but it’s because when we hear it the first time it doesn’t go in; when we hear it the 10th time it still doesn’t register; it could be the thousandth time before it finally lands that Reiki isn’t about hands-on healing, it isn’t a modality, it’s not about seeing colors, angels, or channeling energy—it’s about revealing the true self. All my Reiki teachings are based around that.
So, for yourself, if you could only guide people in one area in your field of expertise, which is art and somatics, what is that one area that would awaken them to it, that would give them a special direct experience of what it is to be at peace with yourself, to tap into your unconscious mind and reveal inner wisdom?
Because you are experienced at it, it could be that you’ve created something that maybe is the final step, that’s the final place. That’s sort of the bigger umbrella so what are the smaller steps that get them up to the top of that – where’s the starting place. So if i’m aiming for them to have a deep understanding of their nervous system for the majority of people that’s not the first port of call. Maybe it’s like oh actually ‘we use art and creativity to start exploring what does safety mean and feel like in the body?’ and then maybe the next level is ‘oh what does feeling resourced feel like look like sense like in the body’ and maybe using that through creativity connect into what that feels like. So the logical mind doesn’t go get in the way or whatever it might be.
Let gratitude be your anchor at Lunasa
So you’re beginning to experiment, especially if it’s at the beginning of your business journey because you’re fine tuning and then you’re taking in information you’re fine tuning. So you could be chatting to people receiving information, finding out ‘oh yeah they found that easy’ and when they say something’s hard doesn’t mean it’s wrong or needs adjusting. But you’re going ‘okay what needs to shift’ or maybe it’s a ‘oh i’m meeting a lot of people who learn visually’ so i need to bring in visual things or find people actually love listening to things okay.
Do you realise actually people need a little bit of everything, a little bit of writing, a little bit of audio a little bit of visual and it helps it to anchor in different ways. Or you’re finding out ‘oh actually i thought it was safety and then resources but I’ve realised ‘oh my god the button, the middle is the self – they need to learn about connecting to the self’.
And here’s a difference between aligning your soul’s expression in the world and then just trying to commodify it. There’s a different energy behind it. So it’s like when you feel that there’s a part of you that wants to be expressed in the world.
For the majority of people that’s a hard place to be because they’re meeting the parts of themselves or go ‘i don’t think that’s safe and what happens if people don’t want it, what happens if people judge it, or what will people think, or what will my family think’. ‘oh my god you know if i come out of the crazy closet here how will it be received’ so automatically comes from the fear of rejection potential but it’ll be different for each person.
For a lot of women I work with it is that avenue of expression from around the throat that is clearing and especially as they go into their midlife, it’s that part of going ‘shit like you know I’ve realised I’m still conforming to what I think society wants off me or what my family think I should still be’ even though I’m like doing this work or whatever it may be I’ve still placed all those limits on myself and there’s something deep inside you looking to emerge and it will begin to refuse to be quiet eventually because it’ll go ‘I’ve got to come out, I need to be shared with the world and the soul purpose is coming back to that eagles view.
Our sole purpose weaves through potentially all of our lives and not just this life or previous lives. What if I have a mission to be lived does not mean business but like a mission to be lived in this life, a dream to be experienced in this physical body and maybe it will get realised in the next life.
But it’s to know that I’ve seen where you’re hiding and holding it all in versus like ‘yeah this is me open and sharing with the world’ and it’s okay to totally okay to want to share our soul purpose with the world and to bring it into material form.
It would be ideal if I could just do this work for free and somebody else did all my cooking and fed me, housed me and looked after me – that would be like be like a little cat, I’d be like delighted with myself. But I live in a material world, I’ve got to put fuel in the car and do all the bits and pieces and what not else like. I have to do all my trainings, keep up my CPD so I keep being the best that I can be to hold space for people.
How to Shape Your Soul Purpose into an Offering
So if there’s not nothing coming in, there’s nothing to be going out. So it’s like for a lot of people it’s okay to translate it into the material world.
How to find out what that business offer will look like is an experimentation and for me it’s always ‘what is trying to emerge, be expressed in the world’.
I like to break it down into core parts:
- What are the energies I want to share?
- What are the parts of me that want to be expressed?
Some people will say, “What was your own journey?” And that is what you share. Sometimes it is, and sometimes it isn’t.
When I say share, I don’t mean all the nitty-gritty, but speak from a place of experience. I’ve had many people come to me, experiencing burnout, saying, “I feel like you really know what this space feels like—to have no energy, to feel like nothing matters.”
For e.g. For some people it could be I have moved through potentially treating my body really badly but the somatic journey along with creativity has brought me into a place of deep compassion and love for this vessel. I know how to sit with the emotions that come up, I know when I look on the mirror I see things differently.
But sometimes people will say well, that can become the offering to the world and you get to decide if it does or not or how that is. It doesn’t mean you have to hang out all your washing for everybody to see but it means that you are speaking from a place of experience.
I’ve had a lot of people come to me here experiencing burnout because they’re like well ‘I feel like you get what this space feels like, you know what this feels like to have no energy and to feel ‘why bother and let’s just live the rest of our lives in this space’.
Life is calling us to be alive.” That’s why in all of my ceremonies, it is about sitting with the wisdom within. A huge part of my work is that I do not want to be your savior. I don’t want you to look to the plants to be your savior—I want you to feel their energy, to learn from what they can teach you, and to reflect on what they show you.
Someone said to me recently after a ceremony, “Oh my God, can I just drink blue lotus every day?” And I said, “Why would you feel the need to drink blue lotus every day? I’ve never been this relaxed in my life.”
And then it hit me: a part of you doesn’t know how to downregulate, doesn’t know how to relax, doesn’t know how to just be here.
The healing work of the nervous system, of the wound, of the pattern, and of the ancestral stuff is not about drinking blue lotus every day. The remedy is to experience more of that in day-to-day life without relying on any substance, because then the substance gains the power. It’s only when I drink blue lotus that I feel XYZ. It has to be the direct experience.
Much of my work is about doing the healing work—looking at ourselves and asking, “What am I not willing to look at?” I have so much in my eighth house that it’s impossible for me to stay on the surface. I can’t say, “Just smile, and you’ll be grand. Think happy thoughts, and you’ll be grand.”
But my work is my soul purpose—work that isn’t even my soul purpose. The underlying thread of energy in my work is: “Let’s do the work. Let’s rewrite life. Let’s be alive. Let’s feel expansion in our system. Let’s tap into our creativity.”
So we’ve life force to make changes in our life, and all that comes from a deep connection to self. A big part of my work is the soul’s expression in the world because I know what it’s like to live under the pressire of so many limitations and other people’s expectations. When someone says, “You are so brave to leave accountancy. I wish I could do that,” my advice is: “Yeah, go do that—but first can we listen to that part of you that’s looking for something different?” It might not end up being about leaving your job; there’s something there looking for expression. Feed that part.
Knowing your soul purpose and then translating it into something tangible allows your mind to take a step back and bring forward the spirit, the soul of the business. Get to know what its—if I may not use the word agenda—its advice is, where it wants to go, and how it wants to be expressed in the world. It may be different from how you think it needs to be expressed.
There are different ways of connecting with it.
We work with the different spirits or aspects of a business, looking into the qualities that want to be expressed, and considering the timing for certain things—is the time right for this now, or does something come first? How will it all look as an offer?
Everyone has a different way of doing that. Some people love in-depth, longer programs; others prefer short, sweet, joyful experiences.
One isn’t better than the other—it just depends on the space you hold and what you feel you need for people.
I really hope that answers the question, and if not, please send me a qualifying question or clarify anything else you’d like, and I’ll reply in a different way.
Closing Blessings
Now, I’m going to start wrapping up, but I want to send out a little call for more questions—especially about midlife.
For those navigating midlife, and wait till I tell you: for some of you, midlife technically begins at around 38 and onwards. So, send in your questions if you’re at the beginning of it, if you’re in the messy middle, or if you’re at the far end of it. Send me questions about navigating midlife—physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual—and the rites of passage that come with it.
If you’re looking back on midlife and could write a book about it. Send me your insights on what you’ve learned about midlife, and I’ll do a few episodes answering questions about it, because I think it’s such a potent topic. I’ll also send on any other questions because I’m always happy to riff on them and answer them.
Thank you very much for taking the time to listen—I deeply appreciate it. Look after yourself, and I will chat to you soon.
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