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WAYS TO GROW

WAYS TO GROW

By Mireia Mujika, Personal & Executive coach www.waystogrowpodcast.com

Welcome to Ways to Grow podcast!

Every two weeks I will interview experts to help us understand and discern different disciplines that will allow us to know ourselves better, grow and be better leaders. For this, we will travel from East to West, from the purest psychological studies to the ancient shamans. We will go through all kinds of therapy and learning: Coaching, EMDR, Positive Intelligence, Yoga, Pilates, Nutrition, Epigenetic therapy, NLP, Reiki, gut-brain axis... We will look at everything and you will take what interests you.
Join me on this journey of learning and discovery!

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How to let go of negative emotions of the past with the Time Paradigm Technique by Sam Daghash

WAYS TO GROWMay 24, 2022

00:00
51:34
How to heal Trauma through Family Constellations by Zankhana Mistry

How to heal Trauma through Family Constellations by Zankhana Mistry

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

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

Bert Hellinger is the founder of Family Constellation.

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

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

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

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

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


Oct 17, 202257:15
How to use your gut, heart and head to your benefit (and make the world a better place) with Christoffel Sneijders

How to use your gut, heart and head to your benefit (and make the world a better place) with Christoffel Sneijders

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

Here are some of the highlights:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Sep 20, 202201:07:52
Connecting Purpose and Career with Stefania Brunori

Connecting Purpose and Career with Stefania Brunori

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



Jul 19, 202258:42
Somatic Coaching or coaching through the body with Caroline Quaife

Somatic Coaching or coaching through the body with Caroline Quaife

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

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

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

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

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

So, there are three components:

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

2. You then have to practice, 

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

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

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

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

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

Jun 21, 202255:24
How to coach a team as a system with ORSC by Linda Berlot

How to coach a team as a system with ORSC by Linda Berlot

Ever thought that your team would benefit from coaching? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Jun 07, 202233:12
How to let go of negative emotions of the past with the Time Paradigm Technique by Sam Daghash

How to let go of negative emotions of the past with the Time Paradigm Technique by Sam Daghash

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


May 24, 202251:34
Sports as the stepping stone to wellbeing with Marcus Smith from Innerfight

Sports as the stepping stone to wellbeing with Marcus Smith from Innerfight

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


The highlights of these episode:

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

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

There's four stages to this:

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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


May 10, 202201:17:59
Executive Coaching. What is it and how it can help leaders and organizations with Nic Woodthorpe-Wright

Executive Coaching. What is it and how it can help leaders and organizations with Nic Woodthorpe-Wright

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

Here the highlights of this episode:

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

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

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

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

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

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




Apr 26, 202241:07
"Find your voice" with Patrick Muñoz, Voice and Speech Coach

"Find your voice" with Patrick Muñoz, Voice and Speech Coach

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Apr 11, 202201:16:12
Have you heard about Saboteurs? Learn more by listening to Ana Sánchez on Positive Intelligence

Have you heard about Saboteurs? Learn more by listening to Ana Sánchez on Positive Intelligence

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. The saboteur interceptor

2. The muscle of the Sage

3. Self-command

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

1. Stickler

2. Pleaser 

3. Hyper achiever

4. Victim 

5. Hyper rational

6. Hyper vigilant

7. Restless

8. Controller 

9. Avoider 

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

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

And the 5 Sage powers are:

1. Empathy, which is connected to unconditional love.

2. Explore, which is deep curiosity.

3. Innovate, which is the greatest creativity.

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

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

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

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

Mar 28, 202201:05:29
Trailer

Trailer

Podcast trailer

Mar 24, 202200:42
What is Coaching and more specifically, Co-Active Coaching, with Michelle Kempton

What is Coaching and more specifically, Co-Active Coaching, with Michelle Kempton

In this episode of Ways to Grow, Michelle Kempton talks about what Coaching really is and more specifically, she explain the Co-Active model. Apart from this, we also talk about corporate coaching, stress and burnout.

Here the highlights:

[coaching] When it first started, it really was a program. It is a model. It is a way of being in the world. It was originally a model to train professional coaches. And then it evolved into a model really for leadership and for just interacting with people. I think the best way to explain it is that, ‘co’ is kind of the being and ‘active’ is the doing. And the philosophy of co active coaching is that, I mean first of all, it is for really tapping into human potential. And we believe that the doing should flow from the being. So very often and especially now, we get busy in life. And we just want to get the job done, right? And we get to a point where it becomes very superficial. It is almost like we become human doings instead of human beings. And co-active puts the ‘being’ back in the human being. So, it is like everything you do, ideally is infused with being. It comes from a place of honoring values or being connected to a sense of purpose with what you are doing. And it is about consciously choosing what you do rather than being on autopilot in life, which is just what happens, right? Or the hamster wheel, you just replace… you are ticking boxes and getting the job done but it is almost like, you have lost your soul or you have lost your heart.


We have probably trained 65,000 to 70,000 people in the world, probably in 30 different countries. And it is probably one of the most highly respected in-person coach trainings in the world, because of the integrity and the quality around how we train people. 


you are present, I am present, and there is this kind of third entity or magic that enters into the space, when there is I think intense focus and presence. Suddenly, it is like where attention goes, energy flows, and we magically discover and find answers, and there is improvement and creativity that brings kind of an unexpected process of discovery in service of your growth and your evolution, and it is hard to explain. But it is like, in this bubble, magic happens. And it has to do with you and me, our connection, presence, and the focus on doing whatever it takes for your growth, your learning and your evolution. So to me, I am fascinated by this kind of third thing that happens between the two of us; that feels like magic. 


You step into this bubble. And you have like the kind of the luxury of attention and focus on your life. You know, who you are, who you want to be, what is working, what is not working… 


One of the beauties of this kind of coaching is the improvising in the moment based on what is needed. And the greater range a coach has creativity, the more exciting and different things can happen. So, you have your very basic conversation where you and I are sitting in a chair, we are talking. And then you have things like what you just mentioned where you might close your eyes and visualize something, we might put music on in the background to impact your emotional state, we might use props, you know, sometimes I use Playmobil figures, and I might put a Playmobil figure right up to the camera on zoom, and say, “Mireia, this is you, what advice do you have for this?” 


I think powerful coaching is not talking about something, it is experiencing something. And it is like, the bigger or the greater range the coach has and the sort of bigger toolbox, the more you can come up with creative ways to take a person into an experience, where transformation can happen. It is not intellectual, it is experiential.




Mar 14, 202242:48
Wim Hof method to help us with stress us by Sandra Reivik

Wim Hof method to help us with stress us by Sandra Reivik

In this episode Sandra Reivik, the youngest Wim Hof Method instructor talks to us about the benefits of this method. Sandra explains how the Wim Hof Method can help us with stress management learning to master 3 pillars: Breathwork, Cold exposure and mindset training. 

Here the highlights of the session:

So let’s start maybe off with who's Wim Hoff. So Wim Hoff is a crazy Dutch man in his sixties. Now over 30 years ago, he started to develop this method, which entails Breathwork Cold exposure and Mindset training. So 3 pillars.

He actually came from a really hard point in his life where he was in severe depression because he lost his wife, due to suicide and he was left alone with four children. So that's actually when he started to do different breath work practices, as well as going and diving into cold waters and, started to develop these human capabilities that were taught not to be possible.

He was actually the first person in the Western world that showed that we can actually influence our autonomic nervous system because this was never done before. You know, we have all the yogic people in the Himalayas from places all over the world who have done amazing things, but it never has been  scientifically tracked. And Wim was the first person who showed that the autonomic nervous system can be influenced. So things like the heart rate, body temperature…  That actually led the scientific books to be changed. Now he's on a mission to share that everyone can actually practice the breath work, the cold exposure and the mindset training, and have that understanding of  the innate capabilities that we actually have. The power within us and that we can adapt to any kind of environment. Is it a stressful one? Or not? This is his mission now to share this. And there are so many people from all over the world who have benefited from the method. Um, if they have any kind of diseases, mental health issues, there is a track record. It's growing, it's coming slowly bit by bit too mainstream as well, which I'm really happy about.

“Conquering the fear”.  Because actually our bodies are so intelligent, and as well more capable of what we think. So conquering the fear… it's also something which is, you know, a little bit counter-intuitive. You think you're going into the cold exposure aspect, right? Ice bath, uh, or cold shower, however, it happens for you, right? Um, you think sometimes that you need to be fighting with the feeling. But it's actually the opposite. We have to be flowing.

You find comfort in discomfort and, and that’s the thing that we're kind of aiming for and understanding we're not fighting. We're surrendering to the process and coming from a place of relaxation, into a place of “I can, you know, I can do this. I can do this and I can go through the experience in a calm state”. So it's all connected to stress management in essence. How we can, down-regulate how we can influence our mind-body states, from a practical point of view.

I guess one of the things is connecting to the power within us. It's a big one. What does it actually mean? We have been conditioned by the environment we have around us. In the past, we would be able to adapt easily. And now, going through this experience of the breath work or the cold, it actually brings us back to the innate capabilities that our body has to adapt and to feel alive through it.

Feb 28, 202242:29
"Yoga is a mindset" with Ajith Shankara

"Yoga is a mindset" with Ajith Shankara

If you ever wondered what is the philosophy of Yoga, tune in, because in this episode, we go deep in the magic of yoga. We talk about the basics of Yoga but reaching deep on those basics. Ajith Shankara talks about the Union and the Ego, the Yin and the Yang, Shiva and Shakti... We wonder about anxiety and stress, about men's suffering and much more. 

Here are some highlights of this deep-dive on Yoga:

Yoga means UNION. Individual consciousness merging with the Universal consciousness. It's never been separated, it will never be separated. It is not possible to separate it. It's like a wave thinking is different from the Ocean. It's impossible to separate the wave from the Ocean. But the wave has an individuality, an ego, a quality, a name... I'm born in this country, my name is this, my job is this, my passion is this... it looks very different but it can't be separated. Being in that state of awareness, that I'm one with everything, that is the state of yoga. Yoga is not possible to do, it is what it is. 

The physical practice helps a person to be comfortably sit for meditation without any feeling, aches and pains. So you can separate yourself completely from your body. So if you're feeling eggs after 10 minutes, you need her to backwards. Then the mind cannot go anywhere else. It's just stuck in the pain. 

The goal of Yoga is living with the highest experience of the Unity. To live in that estate of mind where you don't feel separated from the surrounding: the trees, the animals, rivers, mountains, birds, animals... you are one of that living being... We tend to get insecure, fearful of the projections of the ego. That makes us feel separated from everything. The goal of yoga is to be happy.  

You require an effort to be in the pose.  So you are making an effort to be in the pose then in the pose you bring the relaxation. So when the bar of effort is up to 10 and you relaxation was zero because there was no relaxation at the beginning. And then you start relaxing in the pose. Your relaxation comes up up, up to the level of 10. Then, both go to zero. So your effort and your resting are equal, it's balanced so that it becomes effortless because your effort and rest become equal. In the most challenging pose, you can be effortless if you learn to relax.

The mind is our experience of life

My existence now, who I am, is my memory and my past and my idea of the future. In between I forget to live

Breath is an extension of your mind. So when you are focused on the breath, you cannot think you can only think of the breath

Breath is such a healing practice:

Your thought becomes the Breath

The Breath becomes the Thought

You become one with the Breath

Mind becomes one with the Breath

You become one with the Mind

Mind, Body, Breath become together

Body and Mind are two different sides of the same coin

When you are losing control of the spinning wheel, you know you need to come out


Well, if you're not flexible, that is exactly the reason why you should do yoga; I like to correct. When we say yoga, we often misunderstand what we do on the mat with what yoga is. So we can start using the word Asanas or postures. So when we do the Asanas, the physical practice, yes, then it is exactly the reason why you must step into the mat If you're not flexible. Because we accumulate a lot of stress and tension. This stress is not just the physical muscular tension that causing the stiffness. It's also emotional. This emotional tension accumulates in different parts of the body.


Feb 14, 202201:04:37
Communication Coaching with Flo Akinbiyi

Communication Coaching with Flo Akinbiyi

In this episode Flo Akinbiyi talks about how improving our communication skills can help us  not only with our career, but with our relationships and with everything in our lives.

Flo defines communication coaching as helping people to make an impact through communication. And he works on three areas very specifically: presentation skills, public speaking and virtual communication.

Here are some highlights of this episode:

I don't think there's one specific need or there's one specific problem. Every individual is different. I always like to speak about communication superpowers; everybody has their own communication superpowers. And therefore, I don't think there's this one common problem. I think, one of the most obvious problems would be bad PowerPoint presentations. That is definitely the number one problem. But then of course, there's a few common things that I see.

I don't believe that there's one approach to communication, or that you have to train people in order to speak in one specific way. Every person should find their own way of speaking and their authentic way of speaking.

We look first at the content. What is the content that you're communicating? Who are the audiences? And how can we structure this content better? How can we make it more engaging? How can we turn it into winning content by finding out what's the ‘wow effect’? So, we've got a few tools that we need to look at here. Then, we look at the delivery. So that's really the personal level. That's about your voice, your body language, how do you create a connection with the audience? Also, the ‘wow factor’ for delivering. There's so much that you can do. And then, the third part is always the format. So, what is the format? Are you going to record a podcast? Are you going to be on a stage, in a meeting room? Are you talking to investors? What is it?

Everybody can train their voice, everybody, because it's a muscle. So, you can train it. There's no excuses. If you're not happy with your voice, go out and learn singing or do work with a voice coach. Looking at your body language and your voice, if you work on these aspects, your communication improves massively.

If you speak monotone and that's what many people in the corporate world would do, if you speak like this and you speak with low energy then basically, just raise the energy. There's this very simple rule that I’ve learned years ago is do 20% more and that can work for anything. 

Once you improve yourself on one area of your life, it will trickle into other areas of your life as well and you have no idea what can happen.

Jan 31, 202237:59
Healing Trauma with EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) with Rana Kalo Jaroudi

Healing Trauma with EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) with Rana Kalo Jaroudi

In this second episode, Rana Kalo Jaroudi presents to us EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) technique. Rana is a licensed Psychotherapist, a certified EMDR therapist, and a trained CBT therapist.

Here are the highlights of this session:

EMDR is an approach, a specific approach to psychotherapy, and psychotherapy, as you may or may not know, is what we call talk therapy. So, it gets the help of the science behind psychology to be able to help people with their psychological difficulties, psychological disorders, emotional difficulties, that they're going through. So, it's there to alleviate their pain, their suffering but also to help them fulfill the best of who they are and the best of their capacity. 

EMDR is one of those approaches that was discovered or found by Francine Shapiro, some 30 years ago haphazardly. It is there like any other psychotherapy approach to reach these goals. But it uses specific, very specific, standardized techniques to get there. There are certain protocols that we follow to get there and that involves what we call in one of the phases, Bilateral Stimulation. 

The EMDR rests on a model called Adaptive Information Processing, which believes that all the dysfunctions that you are experiencing today as a human being, the difficulties that you have in the ways that you're thinking, that you're feeling, that you're behaving, come from a certain place that we call in EMDR, Traumatic. Traumatic means disruptive. A certain disruptive life event. 

There are two kinds of trauma in EMDR and we all have them, so "no one can say I've never been through a trauma in my life", according to EMDR. These traumas are in two groups: There are the Big T traumas, with a big huge T that involves traumas like war, traumas of violent death... all the things that come to mind readily. But then, there are the small t traumas which are actually everyday life events:  My classmates used to mock me at school bullying, the first boyfriend that I've ever had at age 15 cheated on me with a friend of mine...

How do you know that you are not over it? That you have not successfully processed that? Is when anything that can give you the same or a familiar feeling, or touch upon this negative belief, triggers you… Then you know that there is a wound out in there that hasn't closed well. And it's going to show in the way you react or you behave. Therefore, it's going to affect your personal relationships, your internal relationship with yourself, your relationship at work with your co-workers, with your boss, with everyone else. So, there are three components: How you feel, what you think or what you believe,  and then, how you behave.

With Bilateral Stimulation, we're just nudging your brain, we're helping it just connect or wire up between the two hemispheres.

Research has linked a lot of similarities to what happens in REM sleep or that sleep phase where our eyes are moving right-left, right-left, and where we know that our brain is processing things that happen to us during the day, and trying to make sense of it.

EMDR strongly believes the science behind it and the idea is that your brain can heal, as well as, and has the same capacity for healing as your physical body.

One of the most important parts of any psychotherapy is to assess. Really get to know the person that is sitting in front of you because therapy is a relationship. It's not the technique that you do on something and then that’s it, they're gone. It's a relationship. It's a collaboration.

Ayadi is a blessing because it has made it much easier for these people who haven't crossed this barrier yet to reach out for help, in the privacy of their own room.

Jan 17, 202244:26
Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy with Esther Martínez Navarro

Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy with Esther Martínez Navarro

For this first-ever episode of Ways to Grow I had invited Esther Martínez Navarro to talk to us about Biodynamic Craniosacral therapy which she describes as a really gentle, non-invasive, hands-on, bodywork. And the goal of this approach is to support the healing process by listening to the body and regulating the nervous system. The idea is not to fix anything from the outside but allow the body to get in contact with the resources and heal.

If you suffer from stress, anxiety, insomnia, pain, panic attacks, digestive issues, dis-regulation of the autonomic system, or if you need to reconnect with your body, or on the other hand, you have a baby that has breastfeeding issues or sleeping issues, or is crying a lot or has reflux or colic, or the baby had a difficult birth or pregnancy was not easy, this episode may interest you

Apart from all this, we talk about burnout, trauma, addiction, parenting... Here are some highlights of this session:

"The architectural biology of what is happening is actually, and that is what Stephen Porges would say, is that the body is feeling safe and when the body feels safe and I say the body, not the head. When the body feels safe, it can switch off the defensive mechanisms and that is when the body can actually rest and sink and melt."

"Stephen Porges always says that safety is the treatment."

"One of the most important questions is, what is the intention? Because we always work with an intention and before every session we will set an intention."

"Ray Castellino used to say that in order to have a hundred percent yes, I need to be able to say no because if not, the yes is conditioned and it's not real."

"In order to survive, some of us, have had to not be in contact with who we really were. In order to maintain that attachment with our caregivers, we had to shut down who we were and that was something really smart to do and that saved our lives. But now, in the present, as adults, this might be getting us in trouble or even sick. We can get sick."

"We understand behavior as being something under voluntary control. As adults, we are not able to do it but we expect children to be able and their nervous system is not yet ready. The structures that help us do that, are not there yet. And they will develop on time and the way we respond to them is going to have a huge impact on their ability to actually regulate and respond in different ways."

"We should ask not why the addiction but why the pain? what is that addiction trying to help us with?"

"The body needs to feel safe in order for us to have access to information that is there. And even going beyond the technique is also the relationship that you have with the person that you are working with. That is actually what is healing. It's not that much the technique is how safe we feel."

"Peter Levine always says, is not the technique… It is the relationship"

"It is important to understand that families are systems and the idea is to help with that co-regulation of the family and that is what it actually changes"

"Those headaches do have a lot of information and is that understanding of what is going on, not necessarily from a cognitive point of view but the body actually processing whatever might be going on."

"The wisdom in the body is beyond what any therapist can know. So, trusting that is one of the key principles in biodynamic craniosacral therapy"

"Gabor Mate: Tension needs attention. So, whenever there is tension in the body is telling us that something is going on, so pay attention to what is happening in the body"

Jan 04, 202201:03:49