The #1 Key To Overcoming Trauma & Transforming Your Relationships TODAY w/ Sheleana Aiyana EP 1436

28:40And well, with the context of the fact that I was doing medicine ceremonies almost every night, breath work every week and seeing a therapist twice a week and doing all of those things within a couple of months, actually, I started to feel different. I started to feel, OK, you know what? I'm actually good with this whole single thing. I'm feeling empowered again. I wasn't better or healed, but I was feeling like I had my footing. and I decided not to date anyone and I was going to be single for three years that was my plan had a similar plan yeah and within seven or eight months I met Ben and I remember people telling us oh you have to meet Shalina oh you have to meet Ben you're going to love each other and I was like well you don't really know me that well so how do you know and anyways we ended up trying to coordinate a date multiple times and eventually after me blowing him off I bumped into him at a coffee shop that was in my pjs and brush my hair and I was like are you Ben and we just had this knowing this remembrance of each other and I'm not really the type to just get physical with a person right away but I couldn't help but like wrap my arms around him because he was cold and warm him up.

29:58And, uh, so at first I was very much in denial. Nope, this isn't going to be my partner. Not, we're not going to date. I still need two and a half more years until I date you one. You know, and it felt really fast too. I was like, is this okay? But inevitably we couldn't, we couldn't write history a different way. That's how it was meant to be. He also had a plan to be single until he was 35 but he ended up getting married to me when he was 35 so that's you know how it happened and it was also a journey and it still is for us you know i would say that i had done enough work to know how to qualify him and so we moved quite slowly and we had lots of sleep overs but we didn't sleep together for quite a while similar to me yeah well because you just psychologically you need that time otherwise you bond once the hormones get going the chemical sexual bond is so hard to break it is once you go there yeah because the the feeling is so intense it's so intense emotionally and physically and you're bonding each other to these heightened states of emotion yeah it's so hard to say okay you know uh that's why it makes it that's why it makes it easier to overlook someone's challenges or red flags when you've bonded exactly because you're like well i want to get that feeling again so if they're lying over here if they're mean to people here if they're abusive to me a little bit here let's just go back to that feeling but when you create for a space of a relationship without that feeling and you get to see the full person yeah for which i think the longer you can do that the better and have a friendship right A friendship.

31:44And see, couldn't I spend 10 ,000 meals with this person? Would I enjoy my time with this person over 10 ,000 meals? Would I want to spend time with them if we didn't have a sexual intimacy? Yeah. If so, okay, cool. I wonder what it'd be like with that as well. And I never thought that way until I started the healing journey. So, but it gave me a lot clearer sense of direction once I felt like a sense of safety and peace within me to make those steps as well. That's so interesting you guys did that. So how long were you together until you got married? About four years. Four years. Yeah. And when we were about two or three months in, we right away started doing therapy and Tantra groups.

32:26Shut up. We did. That's amazing. We started therapy too. Yeah. It's amazing. It's necessary. I recommend it for everyone starting a relationship. Yeah. It's incredible. Yeah. Yeah. Not because something's wrong or broken, but because you want to create agreements and connection and communication early on. Yeah. When you learn how to be intimate and you really put it all out on the table, there's no holding back. We joined this conscious relationship circle where you're doing group shadow work and processing your ego in front of a room together. And then you're doing these deep tantric exercises with your partner.

33:00And so I remember inviting him and he was like, well, you know, it's pretty new. And he, he was the opposite of me. I always had long relationships that lasted way too long. And he had a lot of short relationships over the last 10 years. So you'd be like, well, how do, what if we're not together still, you know, like that's pretty big commitment. And I was like, we're going to be together. And so he, he said yes. And he's often a great sport and we dove in and it was because of that work that we were able to deepen and heal and do so much work together. And the nervous system stuff has taken years, years and years.

33:38It's not like, oh, we found each other. Now we're in a conscious relationship. No, it's not like that. Do you think it's possible to find love, lasting love, if you haven't healed yet? I do. And I think there's degrees. There's degrees of healing because I don't think any of us are healed in terms of we're perfect, but we can be on the journey and be self-aware enough and to know how to qualify a person for willingness. And if we meet a person who has the willingness and the core values match, and both people say, yes, here's my baggage, here's your baggage. I see you and I acknowledge that this isn't going to always be easy, but I'm willing to do the work along the way.

34:24That's a great sign that the relationship has potential because that was Ben and I. You're both on a healing journey. We were on a healing journey together. We weren't like, oh, we've done our work and now we're going going to fade off into the sunset together. We're like, okay, we're committed to being together. And soon we quickly realize there's no better match than each other. And yet it's still going to be difficult. So when it gets difficult, what are we going to do about it? That's the thing you need to clarify. Because if you're with a person who says, well, relationships should be easy, if we have to see a therapist, or if we need to do inner work, then there's something wrong, which is the belief system of many people out there, then you don't have a chance.

35:07But if you're both aware enough to say, yeah, I've got some stuff, you know, I'm avoidant or I'm anxious and I'm going to work on that. And I want to work on it with you. Great. Well, I think it's interesting, you know, listen, I don't have kids yet. So I know I'm going to get a ton of comments about this. Wait till you have kids. It's going to get harder. It's good. All these different things. I get it. And I'm not discounting anyone's experience. Um, But my personal experience has been, if you're willing to do the work together up front and be willing to consistently work on yourself and together throughout the relationship, I believe the relationship shouldn't be easy or easier.

35:45Because you're constantly doing, you're putting an effort on growing individually and together. then it should be yes there's going to be challenges and adversities and breakdowns but because you're in it together growing together taking responsibility and accepting of one another then it's going to feel a lot easier that's my experience but i understand kids this this i get it people say this all the time and i'm not discounting that it's i'm sure there's going to be challenges but i think when you're both in it together willing to do the work consistently it should be easier. It should be easier, but that doesn't make it easy.

36:24And I think for all of us, we have a different level of tolerance and nervous system capacity and desire to be with that person is the foundation. So I have couples in my sphere who had deep attachment wounds, were clearly a perfect match for each other in every way. And yet their attachment wounds were so strong that the first three years of their relationship was just absolute chaos, but they had tools, they had therapy, they had somatic work, they had processes, and they just kept going because they loved each other. And they did get to the other side. And so I've seen both. And sometimes it just depends on your personality.

37:06If you're a really fiery person who's very expressive and so is your partner, you know, this is Ben and I, there's going to be more outward conflict than the type of couple who's maybe more inward and avoidant or just non-confrontational in conflict. When you get two scrappers, even if they're doing the work, you know, when there's something coming up, it's going to look different than the other couple who's perhaps more muted in terms of their expression. Neither is right or wrong. It's just going to be different. And we have to assess what we're tolerant of, what our boundaries are, and make agreements for how we're going to navigate conflict so that we don't destroy the relationship along the way, which we can easily do.

37:52We have to say, okay, well, these are the boundaries. This is the agreements. And we have to lean in a little bit and honor our partner, even if it's hard, do some things that we maybe don't naturally do to create safety so that we can get there. I think, I can't remember if it was the Godman Institute that talked about like one of the number one factors of deciding if a relationship's going to work or not is how you fight together. Yeah. It's like how you argue or communicate when there is a disturbance, when there is a frustration, when there's a breakdown. It's how you have agreed to fight, essentially.

38:27And I think that could really hurt relationships more or hurt feelings more if you fight in an unfair way that's not agreed upon. Yeah. If you cross a line too much, if you're like, oh, it's a little too abusive, that's a little too dismissive. That's a little too, that's not nice. We can disagree and argue, but you can still be kind. You don't have to scream and yell and call names because that doesn't feel good. Yeah, exactly. And that's often what happens is we continue to go down these pathways, these nervous system responses that we're used to. And even though we love our partners, we destroy the relationship and then we can't repair because there's just too much damage done.

39:07and then we end up in the inner work. Why do you think people are so reactive when there is an emotional trigger where for some people, that trigger may not matter at all? They may have said, why are you so explosive? Why are you so reactive or so hurt over this little thing when other people are, there's a button inside of their wound and it's just like, ah, they explode, they react. What will it take for people to overcome that? And why do they stay that reactive as adults? It's body memory. from obviously early childhood but sometimes not so obviously when we're teens or in our earlier years where you know we've been deeply hurt or betrayed by somebody and that button gets pushed and that old familiar feeling and that story that i'm not loved or i'm not safe or i'm being taken advantage of or i'm going to be left alone or attacked all of these stories those get activated in the body memory.

40:04And so it's often an unconscious thing when we get triggered or activated in a relationship, all of a sudden we're blowing things out of proportion because the mind is saying you're not safe. Defend or run, you know, those two options. And those are nervous system patterns. And so we can't really think our way out of it. And it's helpful to have tools. It's helpful to have self-awareness. But meditating isn't going to be the answer. The answer is going to be working with your body to reorient to what it feels like to be safe and secure inside of you so i can be in relationship with you while being present with my own body so we can have multiple relationships happening at once my relationship with me my relationship with you the relationship we share together there's this ability once we have a regulated nervous system to know the difference between my emotions and your emotions and we don't have that when we're coming from that wounded inner child that gets very thrown off kilter anytime something is disturbed in in the safety or you know anything with the security is threatened which can be as simple as for some people as their partner going out for dinner with their friends isn't interesting or it could be such a threat for some people.

41:25It's like, you're going out too late. You're going to these guy friends or I don't trust you going to this place. It's like such a threat for that. Yeah. For somebody who's experienced betrayal or abandonment, or perhaps their parents got divorced and then their mom or their dad remarried and they felt replaced, that's going to be the kind of situation that will cause deep jealousy or feelings of insecurity and worry. And so again, And it comes back to working with the body memory and being able to recognize in those moments, oh, I'm having body memory that I'm not safe. But actually, I am safe.

42:01I'm here now. And it's okay for me to let go of this story right now. And I'm going to do something to regulate myself, let my partner go and live their life. Perhaps I can go and live my life. Right. But that takes work for somebody who's experiencing anxious attachment. They'll more likely sit on the couch and stew and wait for their partner to come home and then create a fight than they would to think to call their own friend and go out and just have a good time. Not in a revenge way, but to just actually nourish themselves on a social level or do something that's important to them, like pursue one of their hobbies or get something done that's needed on their to-do list.

42:38and that's what it means to come back to center and to mature in relationship so that we can live lives as individuals and create interdependence. What do you think is the biggest mistake people make in relationships? Oh my gosh, what a big question. I would say one of the biggest mistakes that people make is confusing their partner for somebody from their past and not being aware of it. usually that's a parental figure the mom or the dad and then acting from that wounded inner child rather than bringing their adult self forward and seeing their partner as an enemy because if you look at people's relationship histories myself included there's a lot of chaos and us versus them and people becoming enemies in the end.

43:31And isn't it strange that we go out into the world looking for somebody to share love with and then more often than not, we just hurt each other repeatedly and then we blame each other and then we go off and try to find somebody new and we just keep repeating the cycle. That's not love. That's not healthy love. That's just wounds repeating the cycle. And so what we have to realize is that often we are actually in relationship with a projection of the person who hurt us that we didn't heal with. Wow. Give me an example. For me, it was always my mom, right? Even with my past marriage that I talked about, you know, that projection for me was my mom.

44:14So I was projecting all of my anger, all of my disgust, all of my sadness and my hurt onto this person that I was in relationship with and he, me. And so on an unconscious level, we didn't have trust. We didn't have safety. And we were on opposite teams because we were punishing each other for the ways that we had been hurt. From the past. Yes. Not from what they were doing. Well, there were obviously things that we were both doing that were out of alignment. But the ability to recognize why we were doing those things wasn't there. we all do things when we're reacting from a past wound but it's coming from somewhere and it's often that past shadow figure that person in the unconscious mind that represents the mom or the dad or the caregiver who didn't show up for us and didn't provide the security and the love and the safety that we needed to develop that whole sense of self.

45:15And so we have to go back and do that repair work and then grow up. We have to mature. Yeah. Like our, we have to emotionally mature and go back into the wounded psychological phases of our childhood and mend those phases. Yeah. And create new meaning around what those memories were so they can support us now as supposed to hurt us now. Is that right? And recognize in those moments when that inner child, that wounded, scared child is coming to the front and center and be able to access our inner mother or inner father. And self-soothe. And parent them, self-soothe. In a healthy way. Yeah. Not through numbing or alcohol or addictions or whatever it might be.

45:57Exactly. Shopping, Netflix, whatever, you know. And then once we have that relationship built, we can actually start doing the deeper work with our partners. I don't know if you've ever heard of Imago work with Harville and Helen. Harville Hendricks, he and Helen Hunt, they wrote the book Getting the Love You Want. And they're elders. I've studied with them. I've heard of that book, yeah. Yeah. And, you know, them and the Gottmans, those are sort of the elders that we owe so much gratitude to for all of this work that we now access and even many of us teach. And their whole model is about working with the inner child which they don't really say it that way but it's that hurt child and the parent figure and seeing how much we choose our partners based on an exact template of who our parents were both the good and the bad so for example when Ben and I went we went to an Esalen retreat years ago before we had our daughter and we did a retreat with them and one of the questions was what is the thing that excites you most about your partner what do you what did what drew you to your partner most and what is the thing that your partner does that hurts you the most same thing different but also they ask you that about your parent and so when i looked at the thing that i loved most about my mom was the exciting spontaneous adventures we would go on right the play time to renown them and the things that i didn't like the most or that hurt me the most was her emotional unavailability and abandoning me when I needed her.

47:35And then when I looked at how I had related to Ben, it was virtually the same, you know, because we were playing out some avoidant, anxious patterns early on. And it was stunning to see that I also fit the exact template of his childhood, where I was critical of him. And he had a critical mom or something. And he had a critical parent who he didn't feel seen and appreciated by. And that was the thing that I would do and sadly sometimes still do you know if I'm not being my best self I'll get critical and so we fit these exact templates of each other's parents but if we're aware of it then we can also say what is that thing that you really needed what is that thing that you really needed to feel loved and then we do that thing every single day and so we're healing each other's wounds, healing each other's child selves by essentially reparenting our partner's inner child.

48:31So you're reparenting his inner child and he's reparenting mine and we're reparenting ourselves as well. Because if, if we only do it to the other person and not to ourselves, is that going to support us long-term? No, of course not. We're doing it ourselves and supporting. Yeah. Yeah. Because you know, there's this, especially in the conscious relationship realm we hear a lot of this these memes and and this kind of rhetoric that we should be ultra independent and it's not said that way but it's like you're responsible for your own emotions nobody can make you feel anything and you're only responsible for you and then for them and it's not your partner's job to heal you and while that's true that it's not your partner's job to heal you when you enter into a partnership you become each other's allies and you both bring wounds to the table and it actually is a gift to your partner to say hey what's something that i could do to nurture and nourish your inner child and here's what you could do to nurture nourish mine and that's a gift that we give and it's not about expecting it or demanding it but if we truly want to heal in relationship then we actually do take on each other's baggage as a team and that's not something that a lot of people talk about these days because we're in this far swing to the other end of the pendulum because we've gone from these like very enmeshed relationships now we want to go to this total ultra independence but somewhere in the middle lies the beauty of doing the dance together and saying you know what i'm your ally in healing i'm going to be your partner in healing how can i love you better here's how you can love me better and let's do this thing.

50:14I think it's wise to do that whether it's daily or weekly you know it doesn't have to be every day for everyone. Every week probably I ask Martha in some way about that and I like to say you know do you feel seen celebrated and supported? If not what can I do to support you in feeling seen celebrated and supported more? Yeah. She always says, yes, she does. So it's like, it's being conscious on top of mind, whether it's daily or weekly, but just being actively supporting and a teammate to someone and an ally, not an enemy, I think is really powerful. What are, why do you think we repeat these negative patterns in relationships so frequently?

51:01We, you know, we have a bad experience in one relationship, we look for someone new and then it repeats and then we do it again. And again, why does that happen for people. We're looking for resolution. In the back of our minds, we might not even be aware of it, but we're looking for resolution to that thing that happened or to that story that said you're not lovable or that story that said you have to fight to earn love. And so somewhere in our minds, we're looking to prove that story true or we're looking to complete the process. and so we look for somebody who matches the template right like we just talked about so that we can perhaps do that work and typically it hasn't worked out because we what we don't realize is that our partner is doing that exact same thing but with the self-awareness and the willingness piece if we're both aware and we're like okay we both do have some stuff to work on here here's what i've got to work on here's what you want to work on do you want to do this together with that frame, then we really can get on the same track together and team up and do that healing work.

52:07Otherwise, it just does repeat endlessly. And it's easy to just blame the other person. Well, there's something wrong with you. I'm just going to get rid of you and go and find my soulmate. Right. The next person. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Interesting. What was the best thing you did before getting married the second time? Yeah. And that really supported entering the marriage? And then what was the thing you wish you would have done before getting married the second time around that maybe, oh, we didn't have this conversation or create these agreements or. Yeah. The thing that I love that we did was we created shadow vows.

52:45Shadow vows. Yeah. And those were sort of, we also call them ownership vows. So we wrote our sacred vows to each other, but then we also did ownership vows. And so at our wedding, we had a different type of wedding where we had everybody actually sat in a circle on the floor. Only the elders in our community sat on chairs. And we had all of these plush rugs everywhere. And we did a cacao ceremony and a group meditation. And then we, you know, we stood in front of our community. And we had spent a month negotiating our shadow vows. And essentially we were calling out the parts of ourselves that were not yet healed or some of the worst things that we're bringing to the relationship.

53:25Things you don't like about yourself. Or the ways that we show up in a crappy way with our partner, which there is always ways, you know. And so we did that. We wrote it down and we shared with each other. And we also allowed each other to give feedback before we did this. Oh my gosh. That's amazing. Is there anything here, you know, that I, is there anything that I do that you want me to own? and we used that. We did that in front of our community. We stood and we owned. Holy cow. I own that I'm going to project my unhealed father wound onto you sometimes, and I promise that I'm going to always come back to love.

53:59That's the kind of vows that we said. And so it was very vulnerable and intimate, but everyone in our community got to witness, this is the true Shalina and Ben. These are the things that they're working on. we're not painting this perfect picture and then they vowed to hold us through that and then every year what we do is we take our shadow vows and we go through them together and we say oh i think i've actually worked really well on this one maybe we should take this one off the list maybe that one has been completed or maybe we need to add this to the thing you know maybe we need to work on this one and so we actually reassess our vows we sort of use it as like a template to check in, do a temperature check.

54:41And that has served us very well. And we've guided other couples through that as well. So that's the thing that I loved the most. What's the thing you wish you would have done before marriage that you didn't do? Definitely would have been more somatic work, more nervous system work. That's something that I started the year that we got married. And it was because when we got married - That's intense. Four years in, all of a sudden, and I started feeling like I needed to escape, my ego was like, oh, I'm going to get me out of here. I'm now committed to get me out. Yeah, and what have I done, right?

55:14Because what if this was the wrong decision? I'm going to look like a fool. I should have waited three years and this and that, right? Yeah, well, we had already been together four years and I was like, we should have waited seven, you know? Right. And the funny thing about that is because, you know, the seven-year itch, have you ever heard the seven-year itch thing? Oh, tell me. Well, in Canada, maybe this is a Canadian thing, but they talk about the seven-year itch where a lot of couples break up after seven years. But then my friend told me that actually that has been proven untrue. And it's been proven that it's actually the four-year itch.

55:43And we got married at four years. So I had all that stress for nothing. Maybe this is the time to leave. But my nervous system didn't know how to stay. And so... Because it had never been a safe, committed, fully committed. Yeah. And not in a relationship where I had all of the things. Like we had good chemistry and we had the spiritual connection. It was healthy. It was always one or the other. And so my body was starting to freak out. and I wanted to run in the other direction even though I was trying to tell myself I'm safe and so I had to do some deep nervous system reworking to get into a place where I no longer felt like I needed to escape all of the time even though I knew consciously that it was good to be where I was in this relationship and that work is sort of what I ended up going and training in over the last four years because it was so powerful for me i realized this is the thing that we all need to do is create security in our bodies and nervous systems yeah you can't you can only out think so many things yeah you cannot think emotions and stress and the body's memory you have to process feel heal and integrate this healing consistently and it's not just a oh i had this like experience of an hour session i feel a sense of relief and i process some things if you don't integrate that lesson consistently until the next trigger, it's going to keep coming back.

57:05And so what was the somatic healing therapies that you practiced in the first year that really supported you? A lot of it was somatic experiencing. And what is that for people? So Peter Levine, he's now in his eighties. He's a wonderful teacher. He's, I would say the godfather of somatic experiencing work. He created it. He wrote Waking the Tiger. It's a very old book. I shouldn't say very old, but it's old. Older, yeah. It's older. And so it's this body of work where you're literally working on the most subtle level with the organs and with the nervous system to help the body move out traumatic experiences and memories.

57:41It's kind of like a raking experience or what is this, like a body talk experience? You could maybe say that it's similar in terms of what it looks like where you're laying on a table. If you have someone who's trained in touch work, you can also just do it with yourself. You know, I have online stuff where I take people through in their own bedroom somatic work, but working with a practitioner is ideal. And, you know, maybe they place a hand on your kidneys or on your arm and it's wild what happens. The releases, right? Yeah. You feel the energy moving and releasing. And your body might start shaking.

58:14You could actually start feeling triggers arise in your body and the practitioner is trained to help you move it out of your system so for example if that's like a fight response that you got frozen in they might allow that response to come up and then they'll hold their hands out and say okay now kick and say no and you're actually completing that process so that it can move through your system because when we're holding that fight in our system we're either going to freeze or we're going to be in fight mode all the time in our relationships. And so that's just one example of how powerful it can be because that's the body memory that we can't outthink.

58:53And so if we move it out of the system, our behavior changes because we have the capacity to change. Because our body has completed that cycle. It's created a new meaning. It's released it. It's processing it. Yeah, it's moved through it. It's interesting. I did this, I did a thing called body talk. I kind of want to do it again because it was so powerful for me. I did this like 10 or 12 years ago. I only did like a handful of sessions. And the practitioner at the time wasn't even touching me. And I remember I was like, I was wide awake, but then within 10 to 15 minutes, I somehow fell asleep.

59:28And I would wake up like an hour later, I guess, with my whole body shaking and I'd be on my back. And it was almost like I was just rocking like this, my whole body. and it was my heartbeat out of my back, pushing my body off the table. I was just laying there and I'd just be rocking like this, my heartbeat. And I just felt all this energy moving through my body. And I was like, wow, this is fascinating. Someone's not even touching me and how this is happening and processing. I don't think a lot of men typically would hear this and think, I want to try this. You know, I was pretty open-minded at that time, but before then I wasn't open-minded.

1:00:06It was kind of like, nah, just give me a massager, you know, I'll work out and toughing it out, you know. Not into that stuff. Yeah. But I think it's, you know, it's powerful for men as well as women to be open to trying some of these things, especially if you have emotional triggers or wounds that have caused you a lot of anxiety, pain, or relational issues. That's beautiful. So you're doing that for like a year and you're still doing it, but that's what helped you really heal. You wish you would have done that before marriage. Absolutely. Yeah. I started out doing sessions with a practitioner and after a year I realized how powerful it was and so then I began to train in it so that I could actually facilitate this work with my my readers because it's just amazing how potent it can be and it's so subtle you're like did I just do anything in there go for a session just holds your kidneys for an hour and then I'd go home and sleep for three hours I would just pass out because my my nervous system was integrating it's just wild stuff that's amazing what do you think are the the key distinctions to conscious relationship and healthy love willingness again you know being willing because we're not going to be perfect and we're going to fall off track and we're going to fall into old patterns but the willingness to repair you know the Gottmans they talk about this a lot too uh repairing is so important being able to take ownership being able to apologize and you know being willing to see our part being willing to see the ways that we are contributing to the breakdown of the relationship and also acknowledging that to our partner you know sort of revealing our vulnerability underneath the defensiveness and that's one of the things that I tell people when they say oh you know you and Ben must just eye gaze all day and you know have these sacred practices and you know well sometimes we do that now that we have a daughter we'd never do that right now you know we have a baby uh but it's it doesn't really look like that it's really just about being present in each moment and doing your best and doing your best to love your partner as much as you can and remember that they were once a child like we have little photos of each other as children on our altar in our bedroom that's beautiful and that helps when you see the little, you know, for your little Martha, you know, you have a little photo of her on the fridge.

1:02:27If you're having a moment where you're feeling butt hurt and then you go and look at little Martha, like, oh my gosh, how can I be mad at this beautiful being, you know, this beautiful, innocent being. And it takes work to come back to that innocence over and over. And to me, that's what conscious relationship is about. What is the skill you wish you could have mastered by now that you haven't mastered yet? Oh my gosh. A skill that I, like a relationship skill or just any skill? Relationship skill. Okay. I was going to say like triple axel. A relationship skill, I would say would be mastering the art of always being present.

1:03:10I still don't have that down. And that's the thing that I'm most drawn to mastering is presence, even as a new mother, presence is the most beautiful experience for me. And anytime I am in deep presence with my partner, everything else fades away. You know, the ego, anything that's in the way. So that's what I would love to learn in this lifetime. That's beautiful. Why do you think so many people are struggling today in relationships? Is it wounds? Is it they haven't healed? Is it they have a bad model of relationships from their parents? Probably all of it. Is it the you know, social media, what do you think is hurting people today in relationships?

1:03:48Everything you just said. Social media is a tough one, right? Now we have these human meat markets where you're supposed to go shopping for a partner and you're grading them based on what, their photo? And so much of it is energetic, right? And you don't know who this person is. I'm the kind of person who, I don't care if you're a supermodel, unless I can feel you, I don't actually even know if you're attractive or not. And so for me, it's really about that deep spiritual bond. So, so many of us are, we're shopping in these human meat markets for people and it's not working and it can even become addictive.

1:04:23There's, that's a real thing. Just like swiping or like. Yeah. Dating app addiction. Uh, and of course, you know, we don't have many templates for healthy relationship and we don't see it much in the media at all. It's a lot of chaos. And we also, So many of us don't have elders anymore either. We don't have those people who can support us and guide us or who can remind us how to come back to love when we need help in our relationships. So, so often something gets hard and we just throw the relationship away because we don't know what else to do. And so my hope is that through this work that I'm doing, that you're doing, that we're all aiming to do is that people feel that they have a container they can step into so that they can stop glamorizing the idea of the perfect relationship and just start learning how to be happy why do you think so many people struggle with feeling loved and lovable it's the age-old question isn't it i think we're born and all of a sudden we have these human fallibilities where we struggle to believe in ourselves we struggle to believe that we're good enough.

1:05:34And it seems that it's built into the human condition in some ways that we come in with these stories. And, you know, some traditions believe, you know, you cut the umbilical cord and you're separated from spirit or from God or whatever you'd like to call it. And so in the human realms, you know, we're going to be experiencing these, this type of suffering. And I feel that a lot of that can be nurtured in childhood. And it seems that no matter what, we all come out with some sort of insecurity or pain story or trauma or life lesson to work with. And I sort of imagine there's this celestial team, you know, in the cosmos with stamps, and they're just choosing, oh, this group of babies is going to be born.

1:06:18Here's your life path. Here's your life path. And they're just spitting them out. It sounds funny, but that's kind of the cartoon that I've made in my mind because it helps me remember that we all come here with a path. We all have something to learn. And we're not here to interfere with people's paths so much as we are here to just encourage and be loving along the way. And that goes for being a parent too. We can't change their life path, but we can interfere with it. And so the most loving thing we can do for everyone that comes into our lives is to honor their experience and to do our best to be kind while we're on the journey.

1:06:56What do you think is going to be your biggest shadow challenge while being a mom? My biggest shadow challenge, well, I'm only six and a half months in and it's already been such a deep ride. I've experienced so much heartache over the impermanence of this new life. Everything just changes so quickly. and one of the things that I've noticed is that it's very easy to want just to save her from everything like just keep everything perfect for her and like never have a bad moment you know never express my own anger you know never have a snappy moment with my husband just be the perfect loving mother where she never experiences any discomfort and pain and I also know that that's not human.

1:07:45And so that's actually been confronting for me is to see my own sometimes innate desire to just save her from any pain and having to let go. So it's a bit of that devouring mother archetype where I just want to like keep her close. So I'm working on that. That's good. That's good. That's great. Well, I'm really excited about this. You've got an an amazing book called Becoming the One, and an amazing community called Rising Woman, which has, you know, taken over the internet and has an amazing community and message of empowering people to really learn these strategies of healing and overcoming the trauma and creating a new vision for your life and having deeper relationship with self and others.

1:08:30So I want people to follow you over on social media, Rising Woman, and also Becoming the One book, which has been a massive, a big, uh, big bestseller. Um, how else can we be of service to you and support you? Thanks. I mean, reading my book is great. Be of service to your families. That's, that's the legacy that I hope to leave behind is helping people be more loving in their family systems. Cause I've always felt overwhelmed by how much pain there is in the world. And I always have this drive. Like I want to save everyone from their pain and I want to feed all the children And I'm starting to really get how important it is that we just do that on a community level.

1:09:11And so the greatest gift that anyone can give is to take something from my work or my book or an interview that I have done and say, you know, I'm going to just be of service more to the people in my life around me. Yeah, that's great. It's beautiful. Got a couple of final questions for you. This one's called The Three Truths. Okay. So imagine a hypothetical scenario. It's your last day on earth, many years away. You get to live as long as you want to live in this world, but then you got to turn the lights off and go somewhere else. And you've accomplished all your dreams and you've got the family, the relationships, everything you wanted to create, it's happened.

1:09:49But for whatever reason, you got to take all of your messages with you, all of your book, content, information. It's got to go to the next place. Okay. So no one has access to anything you've ever shared before when you leave. Hypothetical. But you get to leave behind three things you know to be true, three lessons that you'd share with the world. From all the things you've learned, what would those truths be for you? One of those truths would be that love truly is the only thing that matters when we go. That the greatest gift that we can give the world is to love our families.

1:10:28And that presence is all we have. I would acknowledge you, Shalina, for everything you've overcome, for your journey and for your courage to talk about it, to use the pain and the trauma and the challenge and share these lessons with the world. You've helped so many people heal, grow, understand the chaos of their life, get out of challenging relationships, you know, do the work to get into healthy, conscious relationships. So I really acknowledge you for your entire life story and using it for good. Using all the pain, all the trauma, all the sadness, all the darkness for good. And I'm so grateful that you're in a healthy relationship now and got a great guy with you.

1:11:08I'm so happy for the family you're building and I acknowledge you for the light you bring to so many. It's really beautiful to watch. Final question. What's your definition of greatness? These are great questions. For me, my definition of greatness in terms of like what I see as greatness is integrated humility and praise and the capacity to celebrate and enjoy life and also the capacity to feel the grief and the pain of the other side of joy and love. I hope today's episode inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a rundown of today's show with all the important links.

1:11:54And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me, as well as ad-free listening experience, make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel on Apple Podcast. If you enjoyed this, please share it with a friend over on social media or text a friend. Leave us a review over on Apple Podcast and let me know what you learned over on our social media channels at Lewis Howes. I really love hearing the feedback from you and it helps us continue to make the show better. And if If you want more inspiration from our world-class guests and content to learn how to improve the quality of your life, then make sure to sign up for the Greatness newsletter and get it delivered right to your inbox over at greatness.com slash newsletter.

1:12:33And if no one has told you today, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.