JULIANA SLOANE: Healing at the Root - Depth Hypnosis, Shamanic Counseling & the Path to Lasting Change

Welcome to Wake Up with Joni, the podcast where we explore the pathways to conscious awakening emotional intelligence and living with deep inner truth. Today I'm thrilled to welcome a guest whose life and work embody profound transformation and Juliana Sloan. Juliana is a certified depth hypnosis practitioner, and I'm definitely going to ask about that, an applied Shimana counselor whose presence and being this grounded, passionate, deeply wise, and lighthearted. And today, we explore how this work can help you in awakening to your true self. Welcome, Juliana. Thank you so much, Joni. It's so good to be here with you. I'm really excited to be able to spend some time together and talk more. Yes. I'm excited too. So I love the topic, your focus. And I know just speaking to you a little bit before the podcast, we're very much aligned in many things. So this is going to be fun to have that conversation. First of all, we're going to go into what depth hypnosis is and how that's different from regular hypnosis, but I am always fascinated by the person in front of me. So I want to ask you, what happened in your life, how did you come to do what you do? Oh, such a good question. And I would imagine like many people that you speak with, it was a little bit of a winding route. I would dip my toes into spiritual practice, into change work, into coaching, into neuroplasticity, and I would dip back out, go back into my regular life in some ways. Because I was called to a lot of this type of work since I was very, very young. I had meditative experiences as a small child that I remember as being very profound, bringing insight into a really kind of the nature of mind, the nature of thought at a very young age, and pushed that off into the background when about my life, when things really started to heat up for me, though, in this realm. I was actually working in leadership for a nonprofit that was telling the stories of human rights crisis survivors, and we were doing big, important work, very heavy topics. I was the development director at the time, so I was responsible for making sure that we had the funding to make sure that these stories were told. And the truth is, I'm sure if you've spoken with other nonprofit leaders, especially when you're doing this big mission-driven work, there also can be a real culture of work-a-holism, of pushing ourselves too hard, of not finding great balance that's very sustainable. And so for me, that really dovetailed with, I experienced a traumatic event, and truly after that point, all of a sudden, I had to look at my life really differently. The way that I was living was not sustainable. I was about this close to burnout, if not a little bit over the edge, and I started to turn towards Buddhism. It's something that I had already explored when I was younger. I studied religion and college. It's always been a fascination for me. But there was something that called me at this time to go much deeper in, so I found myself sitting long retreats up to two months in silence, meditating 16, 18 hours a day, really delving into learning about coaching, learning about neuroplasticity, learning about different modalities for healing for myself. There's so many little nuggets in there. One of the questions I want to ask, you studied religion, meaning you studied religions. I did. Yes. So the genesis of the religions, because everybody has an opinion about their religion, about other people's religion, about religions in general, but to speak to a learned person who has actually studied the religions. What is your overarching view of its function, where it came from, and where it's going? All right. It's such a great question. To be honest, part of me studied religion because I was an innately spiritual person, and so there was a drive to understand more. Part of me also studied it because I come from a family where there was a lot of religious trauma in the generation that came before me. I would joke. I actually studied religion so I could understand my family's jokes that Thanksgiving. At least timely. But it was a world that I knew nothing about, a little bit of column A, a little bit of column B. But when I think about religion, I tend to orient, even though I am a Buddhist meditation teacher. I orient more towards the sense of spirituality, that really at the heart of the origin of any religion or spiritual practice, we're trying to make meaning of what it is to be human. We're trying to understand why and how suffering happens and how to suffer less. And we're trying to understand these moments of magic, of the sacred, of things that are beyond words that so many of us experience and don't know exactly how to describe, really and in some ways, I think much of this is to help us make sense of these luminous, transcendent experiences. Agreed. I think too that for me, religion in its purest form and practiced with inclusivity, with non-judgment, because if you look at all, correct me if I'm wrong because you're the expert, all the religions that their pure base are all inclusive and they're all one and love and treat by neighbor as you would yourself, all those things. If we just followed any one of those, instead oftentimes or sometimes it becomes a reason or way to stay separate. Absolutely. I just wanted your take on that. You said something else. First of all, you said you dipped your toe in and out. Did you dip your toe in and out for personal practice in those years or were you getting certification? Okay. And then the neuroplacicity part, that must play in with the hypnosis. Yes? Okay. It does very much. Let's just go there because I am fascinated. Tell me what depth hypnosis is, how you found it, what does that mean, how does it help people? Absolutely. Absolutely. Like, depth hypnosis I think is a very cool modality. I actually practice in a couple of different hypnotherapeutic modalities. There's the depth hypnosis. I also use integrative hypnosis and something that can be thought of more as like coaching for the unconscious mind. But a lot of my depth hypnosis is actually a counseling modality that uses hypnosis Buddhist wisdom, shamanic practices and transpersonal psychology to really help people get at the root of the places where they're most stuck, where they're most suffering, where they've most been trying to make change and can't. And really whether I'm working with folks in that modality or this sort of coaching for the unconscious mind stream, really what we're focusing on here is how do we get unstuck. And depth hypnosis, it's a fantastic modality. It was developed about 30 years ago by Aso Guchardi and she runs a school that teaches depth hypnosis and so many other really beautiful healing practices, ways of building self awareness. That's been a big influence as well. Is it a very specific certification then? It is. Okay. It is. It usually takes a number of years. I'm just going to spell it. D-E-P-T-H. Yes. Because when you say it, we're imagining my listeners out there going, wait, what do they say? Yes, yes. It happens a lot. Depth. And meaning deep. You go deep. Okay. So what is this? Yes. I've been hypnotized before and it's pretty cool. I'm one of those people that are easily hypnotized apparently because I am somebody who he told me, somebody who hears things literally. And therefore I'm more easily hypnotized now. I think that's what he said. This was 40 years ago. So he could have said anything and I just make it up as I go. Deep hypnosis, is it deeper than the regular hypnosis? Tell me the difference. Yeah. The depth piece. You can go incredibly deep in all forms of hypnosis. The depth is really referring to going deeper beneath the surface of our stuff, far beneath the talk level, deep into the body, deep into the way that energy moves through our body, deep into the archetypes and knowing that can really drive change. For many people, this can be an extremely visionary, powerful kind of experience. Part of the reason actually that I became really interested in depth hypnosis was because up until that point, I had been deep in the meditation world and I was going on retreats a week, a couple weeks, sometimes a couple months at a time. And I found that the depth hypnosis and some of these other hypnotic modalities would allow me to get to the states that I normally would only access a week into a silent meditation retreat. Okay, so that brings up a lot of people do something like ayahuasca to get to that meditative state. Sometimes the thing that becomes the crutch and they are constantly doing the thing. And I believe, now I've never done it, so I don't want to have contempt prior to investigation. It's good for some people, I don't, it's not something that I'll probably ever try. I'd rather get there naturally, so this is a great way to do this. Absolutely. Tied into what you're saying is going deeper below into the energetic and etheric realms, so to speak, which is perhaps where the shamanic piece comes in as well, because that sounds very much a dovetail because the healing there is, as you know, on the luminous field, the etheric, the energetic. So how did you get to the shamanic counseling piece and then how do they dub tail? It's actually all part of the depth hypnosis work. My, ironically, my mother actually has a shamanic practice of her own. She found that when I was a teenager and being a rebellious teenager, I actually part of my individuation process was not doing that. And so of course we both find it pretty funny that here I am doing this same work, but you're exactly right. Part of what we're doing here, whether it's depth hypnosis, whether it's shamanic counseling, the big difference with shamanic counseling and depth hypnosis, shamanic counseling instead of using hypnotic induction that feels like a guided meditation. We're actually using the sound of the drum to entrain the mind into a translate state. So there are different access points, but in many ways we're tapping into the same kind of wisdom and to touch on the point that you made around finding this sort of transformative capacity in yourself versus externally through something like ayolaska or psilocybin, you know, what's really interesting about this sort of hypnotic trans work is it actually activates brain-derived neurotrophic factor, BDNF, and this is the same stuff that is activated when people do say a ketamine session with a psychedelic assisted therapist when they do other psychedelic substances, but we're actually tapping into this capacity of the mind naturally. And what BDNF does is it increases our neuroplasticity. It impacts the centers of our brain that are responsible for learning, for memory. It helps regulate stress, it helps even shift our cortisol levels, and so all of a sudden we're tapping into this brain chemistry that we have innate access to that can guide us to deep change. Nice. Is this, as I'm listening to you, I've seen brain scans in my eyes of people whose parts of their brain have gone dark, so they're no longer functioning, which means the other parts of the brain are sort of picking up the slack or the burden, can what you do lighten those dark places up again. That's a great question there. With some of this, the research isn't as good as I wish it was, because people are only starting to realize, hey, hypnosis and shamanic journey work are really powerful. One of the studies that has been done recently, this was out of University of Michigan a few years back, they found that comparing psychedelics to shamanic drumming on an EEG, it lights up slightly different areas of the brain, at the experiences that people reported were the same if not more powerful with shamanic journey work. This is things like feelings of unity, feelings of deep insight, feelings of visionary, powerful experience, less anxiety, all of these different sorts of things, but of course, as we know, the difference with this kind of work where we're relying on our own brain chemistry and ability to tap into these states, it means you don't have to travel somewhere for a whole weekend. You can do it even on your lunch break if you're really busy. You can find a deep, resourcing, nourishing mind state that can absolutely shift the way that you relate to the world, but you can do it more quickly and you can also do it in a gentle or dosage, which I think is really important. Sometimes people fall into a little bit of a trap where they're craving that catharsis and mistaking the intense catharsis of some of these experiences for real transformative change. And the truth is that that real transformative change, it happens not just in session, but in the way that we live our life. Yes, integration actually. I would like to ask you a question, it's a big question. To me, hearing the word shaman and shamanic is part of my daily world. We do medicine wheel retreats here. All of that is very normal to me now. Now I was raised as a Lutheran and so shaman might have been some crazy witch doctor in the jungle with a rattle in a drum, some dark interpretation of that, having studied religions. Where does shamanism have its place in that history and how do you see it so that people maybe can I've heard that they think it's a cult, but I mean, honestly, it's about empowering oneself. A cult doesn't do that. So what do you say to that? I love this question because the truth really is that shamanic practices are older than religion. Practices when we start to really look into the foundations of spirituality, it's actually the first spiritual practices that there were and that all religious traditions have some kind of a root in some of these visionary shamanic practices. And I think some of it is, it's an unfamiliar word. Really, shaman can translate into essentially one who knows. If you look at the etymology, it's actually found in languages coming from around Siberia. It's also coming from Sanskrit, Hindi languages too. So there's actually traces of this throughout everywhere and usually when I'm explaining shamanic practice to people, it's really about how our connection to the earth and our connection to our own inner wisdom, our connection to the sacred, to intuition, to guidance can be brought more fully alive and we can live in greater alignment and authenticity with the earth and respect for the earth. So as you're speaking, yes, so yes, shaman meeting man or woman of knowledge is the one who knows. And I think where the mystical or maybe the fear comes from is they have so much personal power, if they've done the shadow work, that is wielded with the collective and humanity in mind, the upliftment of all. But they have access to power that we all have access to. And just been working it, if they've been exercising those muscles, so to speak. So they're not really magic, they are you and I with a bit more skill. And now, and obviously you're using that skill in the modality that you use. I just, I think it's a fascinating conversation and I don't need anybody to believe the way I believe or anything they don't want to but whatever it is. But I love getting more information so that maybe people could hear it in a different way. Absolutely. And I think that's as part of why I really love doing the shamanic counseling work because it's actually a bit different from traditional shamanic healing. And in many shamanic healing contexts, the shamanic practitioner is working with spirit, with guides, with energy to offer a healing to the person who's being healed. And there's a little bit of, there's a power dynamic, just naturally. The way that the shamanic counseling works is actually we are teaching the client to work with the shamanic journey on their own so that they can become their own healer so that they can see the way that power comes from within. And really that's what's most important that we start to discover our own capacity and our own power. Yes, yes, and what's true is or what I have found is the shaman, the power dynamic as you were talking about, they, the shaman knows that they're healing themselves. They're just bringing the energy to it, the belief to it, the, they're backing them up on it. But they don't know that yet. Yes. You're taking them to the next level where they know it and they can actively do it. And that's teaching a man to fish. Yeah. That's the whole. Okay. Good. Right. So, you said something about balance and how do you help people balance/integrate there? So we, they come to you, they have these epiphanies, they feel really good. The endorphins are going. They go out in the world and they're, the, the people in their lives are the same people. The job is the same stressful job. All the things. How do they stay centered? How do they stay in that healing or is it just repetition until it becomes part of their DNA? What, what do you say? I love this. I think it's a little bit of both part of the piece of the repetition. The, this is all like building a muscle. People will come in and say, I don't know if I can really be hypnotized. I'm not really sure if I can do this sort of altered state work and over the control. Yeah. And of course, of several sessions, things start to shift and it really is like building a muscle and the beautiful thing here is we're not just working the muscle of being able to drop into altered states. We're cultivating, we're nourishing, we're strengthening the muscle of trusting ourselves and our intuition, of standing in our own sense of our power and our gifts and our worthiness. And we're also changing the, just basic reaction levels in the brain. It's fascinating to me to see, especially with long term clients who've had really, really deep-seated stuff that they have worked on with therapists for years and just couldn't budge to then talk with them after longer term work and hear them say, yeah, I, I don't react to my partner in the way that I used to anymore. The fear, the reactivity, the anger that would flare up, it just doesn't arise in the same way. What you're saying is, I think, is that the hypnosis helps clear the somatic density. Hootcha. Yeah, that's a great way of thinking of it. A lot of the work that we do is very somatic. There's, there's a very big body component with all of my work with people of, yeah, where does this live in the body, both the blockages, the reactivity, the pain, the fear, as well as the hope, the love, the gifts and how do we actually find a way to let that right natural radiance that each of us has start to be the thing that's flowing more freely and be the thing where it's helping steer our life rather than our fear. It's interesting because I'm a very visual person. When you said the radiance within, I imagine a person with a bunch of blankets on and every time they do something like this, you're pulling off a blanket because the radiance is under there the whole time. Until you get to that last blanket or two, you can't really see and then bam, you and I talked a little bit about leadership and we've talked a lot on this podcast about emotional intelligence and leadership. The first part of emotional intelligence is awareness, a waking up part, thus wake up with Joni, but the second part is self-regulation and that's where a lot of leaders and powerful men and women who've gotten very far in life being the tank. What do you mean self-regulate? What do you say to them? This is such a good question and I think it's two different pieces. One is learning the nervous system tools that can be accessed through hypnosis, self-hypnosis as well. I work with people a lot of the time on equipping themselves with those regulation tools. And with specifically walking through the places where they get caught the most, so that we can practice. What is it like to actually begin to bring resourcing and wisdom and calm into when you look at that slack message coming up from your difficult boss or something like that? Exactly. Exactly. How do we actually work with creating more capacity for the nervous system to find comfort, to find that sense of okness, to find that sense of safety? How do we understand the emotional pain and the baggage that might need to be healed in relation to that? Because it's never just that your boss is a jerk, it's that your boss is a jerk and never reminds you of your dad and your dad makes you think that your boss could be a jerk to the cows come home unless they trigger you. Yes. And unlike the way you should get caught, where do you get caught? And to me that's a really gentle way of saying where do you get triggered? Because a lot of people are like, what do you mean triggered? Unless they've been doing the work. So somebody who has spent a lifetime of navigating the world pretty darn well while pretending that the trauma didn't happen and they're walking around with all that stuff inside. And then let's say their life changes in some way that opens the can of worms. Like they have children, for example, and the children begin to mirror their childhood or the things. And then it's like the Hulk. Yes. It's like, what is happening to me? Yes. Okay. So that's a pretty intense scenario. How long would it take? Or I mean, everyone's different. I understand this is not an absolute question, but is it like a six month? You know, it really, it does depend on the person. There are some people that I've worked with and it's been a handful of sessions. And there are some people that I've worked with for two, three, four years and they keep on peeling back the layers and keep on exploring, but thinking about these moments where life really tests us. One of the folks who's coming to mind is someone that I worked with a couple of years ago who, wonderful success throughout his whole life, great, right career, able to retire early, just like rock star of a person. And then he got a terrifying health diagnosis that would change his life completely. And what we really, concertedly worked on was the fear and finding a way to actually bring the resources he already had at his disposal, his courage, his resilience, his strength, his wisdom into this place of the fear. And part of what's great about this sort of altered state work is that instead of talking about the issue, we really embody it. And so in these sessions, he got to embody what it was like to feel really from fear. And within a year, we just did a handful of sessions, but we met up and talked a year later. He'd finished a book, he'd gone on a bunch of trips, he'd connected with family, he'd done all of these bucket list items that were really important to him while still knowing and managing a life-altering diagnosis. And I think that really is one of the things that I want to see in the people that I work with, that we can't make every problem go away. Some things are not solvable. I work with a lot of people who are kind of working in social change, a lot of big mission-driven work. Right now, that's pretty tenuous and pretty scared. Everything's pretty tenuous. The beauty of it is that they can still stand in their strength and their power and their trust in themselves even in the face of it. And that ripples outward into the world. And the truth is, to anybody out there who is living in fear or what's coming or I have no control and feeling it take a breath, all of that is real, don't bypass it, everything has always worked out. Always worked out. I don't care who I'm talking to out there, it has always worked out. Fear is an illusion, most of the time unless there's a gorilla sitting on your chest, an actual gorilla that doesn't like humans, otherwise it's a fear of what if, going down the projecting into the future and going down these rabbit holes and the rabbit hole thing the last ten years has been just both fascinating and the car wreck. I did have a lot of fear and didn't realize that the fear had me. I had it for a long time and that was part of what pushed me into the work 15 years ago. And when I really acknowledged and actually listed out all the fears, there were 50 of them. He's going to die. I'm going to die. I mean, I'm walking around with that in my body and what is that doing to me and my nervous system and all the things. It sounds like, honestly, the power of what you do is similar to EMDR where no, there's definitely some similarities. Absolutely. It's one of the most powerful things I've ever experienced. It is so possible when we're working in these different ways that bring the body, bring the mind, let the brain go online in slightly different ways, that we can help to diffuse the places where, yeah, there may have actually been a tremendous trauma in the past, but that doesn't have to mean that we're carrying it into every interaction in the future. Are you wiring the brain? I think in many ways, yes, it's what a lot of the really shifting neural pathways and it's so exciting to see that change in real time in people, especially folks with things like phobias who go from, I can't fly on the plane or I'm terrified whenever I have to do public speaking to suddenly, oh, it's not a big deal anymore. Like, yeah, sure, there might be a little bit of anxiety that's natural. Would you say that public speaking fear is a fear of failure, the fear of embarrassment? Maybe they have some shame in there somewhere? What do you think? A person? Yeah, of course. When you get really curious, everybody is relating to that a little bit differently. A lot of the time, yeah, it's fear of failure, a lot of the time it's fear of being judged, but a lot of the time it's also, I think, especially for women in leadership roles who are finding themselves front and center, it's also all of the conditioning that we've received not to take up space or to be only pleasant and gentle or whatever much, exactly whatever that is. And my question is, how do we get out of our own way so that we can actually live into the fullness of who we are before all of those constrictions, God placed on us. What's an interesting avenue of thought is working with women about allowing their wild woman to come through, allowing their to shine, and that it's all okay, don't make yourself small for other people, you don't have to be too quiet, I live in a teeny tiny town now. I lived in Los Angeles most of my life with 12 million other people, now I live in a tiny town. I'm very careful to modulate my energy, depending on with whom I am speaking, because there are just very sweet gentle people that I would overwhelm, and then there are some people that are just so mean and sarcastic, and I'm like, okay, let's throw down girl, I had to get there. I had to step into my own power, so to speak, which is also a misunderstood word. Why don't you talk about power? Is that mean? Oh, I love it. You're right, it is such a misunderstood word, and I think a lot of the time we tend to think of it as a dirty word. Oh, power, that sounds scary or aggressive or mean. And really when I think of power, the orientation is much more towards power is our vitality. Our natural creativity, the way that as humans we have this ability to create something out of nothing and isn't that an incredibly powerful thing to do, as well as this idea of power with the people that I'm working with, they're not trying to go out and have power over other people, they're not trying to dominate in that sort of way, they're trying to work with their teams or create that project or write that book or whatever it is in a collaborative way that's connected to their wisdom, their dreams, their hopes for themselves in the world. And I think really in a lot of ways, power is when we're able to connect with all of that capacity that we know we have underneath it all. We actually all have underneath it all, yeah, and I think everyone can find their, I don't want to say magic, but their thing that is unique to them, their unique contribution to the world, whether it's knitting or quilting or painting or skiing or any of the things that each of us have our own gifts. And I love that, I think you said maybe I'm extrapolating this, but power is having access to the creativity, and for me I've defined it in the past as power for me is having access to my own divinity. So that kind of power, which means unconditional love, which is definitely not power over. So I'm glad we talked about that, because I think it's a really important topic. So one of my favorite topics that I somehow fit into almost every podcast is the social media piece, the digital piece. You've gone on two-month silent retreats, which is, you are my hero, I can't imagine. I tried my own little retreat, it was pretty funny, but I did in that one five-day period where I put everything away and put it out of sight, not even music, I felt different. Yes. I was happier, and I'm a happy person, but I felt like I had more tangible joy at my fingertips. And part of that was going out in nature. I was sticking my feet on the grass, I was reading spiritual material, was feeding my soul, I was right, I was doing all the things. And then once it was over, I slowly ramped up to, I'm sitting at watching television, and every time he says something like, "I wonder how old she is, I pick up the phone and I'm googling, now I'm just saying something else, I wonder how old he is, I wonder how tall he is." It's crazy. So, can what you do, that's the question I wanted to ask, can what you do, reverse the damage done to our ability to have, our attention span, our ability to connect in real life. I read somewhere, and then I'll let you actually answer. I read somewhere that it only takes about two weeks to heal a lot of the damage being done. So what are your opinions? What do you think? What should we do? Well, this is a great question, and I do think that all of this kind of work can have a reparative, restorative impact, because part of what we're doing is we're learning to train the attention on something that's not giving us this wild ride of dopamine and rage bait and one more thing to click, and that does have an impact. I think part of it, too, though, is it allows us to look at why are we going to our phone all the time? What is the impulse that's there right before we reach for that phone, not even knowing why we're reaching for it? What's happening in those micro moments leading up to the rabbit hole we get into on Wikipedia or IMDB or whatever it is, and a lot of the time underneath that, there's a sense of craving or boredom or yearning or loneliness, and so part of what we can also do in this sort of work is look at what are the underpinnings that are actually driving this kind of crazy dopamine rollercoaster that we find ourselves on these days? And I think that can also be incredibly important. So I think in some ways there's this, yes, it absolutely changes our brain. It teaches us to focus. We start to learn to use the mind differently, but we also start to look at what's under it. I'm training your minds what you just described could be found in breathwork, in meditation, in yoga, in mindfulness, practice, and activity. So what I do to outsmart myself is I'll leave the phone somewhere else, but I'm lazy enough that I'm not going to get up and go look at the height of somebody because I don't really care that much, which means that I don't start that habit, and so call it setting myself up to win. I have to set myself up to win. There are some people who are really truly addicted to escaping their lives through all of that. There's a device called the brick. Have you ever heard of this? I actually have one. Goodness. What do you explain what it is then? I have been seeing the ads for it for a very long time. I'm also just naturally curious, definitely a bit ADHD. I like to go down the rabbit hole and gather my little information, and I saw all these ads for it and thought, "Oh, that could be really interesting." I'm still in the phases of experimenting with it, but I do notice whether it's using that or just putting your phone somewhere, whatever it is, I don't miss it when it's gone. The time that I've done social media detoxes and abstained for months at a time, there's so much more space that opens up, and I think one of our challenges these days, and for those who don't know the brick is this little device, that you basically pop it onto your phone and set it up so that it can block certain apps. For me, I chose, "Okay, I'm blocking Instagram. That tends to be where I get most caught." And it really, sometimes we need a little help to get the break, because oftentimes we're just going out of a little bit of craving, a little bit of an urge to do something, and then it's habit. And much of this work is about changing those unconscious habits, going on in the background all the time. And the way what I love about how you just described that is, it was very loving. You weren't making yourself or anybody else wrong, we're all in this world with all these devices. How do we live with those things and live our best lives? That's really it. And for my business, I post things, and I do the things. I work it in the morning, and then I can let it go, but then I have my pickleball schedule on my calendars to look at that, and I always throw pickleball into every episode too. But I love the way you approach all of it. It just feels very loving. It feels very, you feel they're accessible. And that leads into my question about, "I don't know where you're located. Do you do Zoom sessions with the hypnotherapy?" I do. I do. The great thing with hypnosis, you would never necessarily guess this, but it's actually highly effective over Zoom. I work with people all over the world. I have clients who are down the road from me, but I also have clients who are in Australia and Japan and Hong Kong, as well as all over the country. The cool thing about doing hypnosis on Zoom is that you're in the comfort of your own home, you're on your couch or in a comfy chair or lying on your bed, whatever feels good to you, and you have control over your space. You don't have to get on the highway or catch the subway right after. You get a little bit of time to decompress. Good. Okay, good. So people can do that. So if you, let me ask you where people can find you, some website or any offerings that you want to talk about before I ask a few more questions. Absolutely. My website is just my name, Juliana Sloan.com, that's J-U-L-I-A-N-A Sloan-S-L-O-A-N-E.com. And one thing that I will send to you to offer to folks also is a little free mini hypnosis recording for folks who are maybe a little curious of what would it even feel like to go into a little bit of a more relaxed state and be guided in a direction just so that folks can try it on and see. It's sometimes nice. I do. I do. I don't record every session for the shamanic journey work. I record that because oftentimes that can be such a dream-like experience. People need to go back and listen to that a couple of times because there is so much symbolism and archetype and material that comes up, it can be really helpful to just listen a few times. For most of my depth hypnosis, coaching for the unconscious mind type work, we don't record that. Although sometimes I'll send over a little recording so people can also practice on their own in between sessions. I like that a lot because it gives people something that they can do in between to support them, especially if you're new to any kind of work to be able to maintain that connection with yourself. Like you said, it's a muscle and that will help it work that for sure. Is there anything that you would like to say that I haven't asked? We talked about leadership a little bit. Anything that I missed? That's a great question, let me think. I think one thing that might be helpful for people to also know with this kind of work, especially when it comes to folks who are at a stuck place, there's something where they're getting really caught, and they know that it's rooted in trauma and that feels a little bit scary to have to go there. I think one of the things that I would say to people that I really love about this kind of work is that it has the capacity to go very deep and make a very transformative and impactful change, but it doesn't have to be deeply, darkly, dysregulating in the process. The way that I approach this really is how can we make the most change by also bringing the most resourcing, the most courage, the most strength, the most safety. And so in a lot of this work, the absolute groundwork that comes first is reconnecting with our own guidance, our own sense of well-being, these beautiful qualities that actually support us. That would be one thing I think that I would name, because I know sometimes the reason that we don't look into making a big change that we know we really want to is because we're afraid what we're going to find underneath. If we haven't been feeling our whole lives, the thought of actually then going back and feeling something, it's got to be freaking terrifying. Yes, absolutely. So to be able to gently go in and under and root it out without ripping your guts out, it sounds pretty, it sounds a lot more attractive to me. I'm just saying, that's just me. I love that you said that and you brought that up. There is one more question that I'm going to ask of you before we try not. And that is this. You ready? Okay. How do you recommend that the listeners go out and live their most alive lives? Honestly, the thing that I would actually say before anything else is to do something that brings you joy. And something, whether it's a hobby or whatever, where there's delight. And the reason I say that and the reason it ties back into hypnosis and all of this kind of work is actually that these places where we're in connection with awe and joy and beauty and delight. These are actually some of the places that also create more neuroplasticity. It helps us make more and more change. They have found that if you're in the midst of learning something new and it's really important that you retain information that putting on music you love and dancing for just a couple of minutes will actually help you retain the information more. I'm a real proponent for part of what we have to be doing, finding those moments of joy. Yes. And you use the word delight, which is delightful. It is a wonderful word, but I love what you said because I'm a big proponent of gratitude and of raising the vibration. And I talk about that a lot in the podcast, but what you just said scientifically gives you a really good reason out there, folks, to raise your vibration through delight, through joy, through happiness, through dance, through, but we get to choose those things. And even if you don't feel like having those, you can actually create it for yourself. And then you'll feel it for real. So awesome. Delight. That's delightful. Okay. Well, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate this conversation. Thanks so much, Joni. It's been a real delight talking to you, so I really enjoyed spending this time together. Thanks so much for having me. Yeah. My pleasure. I have to come back again sometime. I'd love to. Let's be in touch. Yay. Sounds good. Thank you so much, folks, for joining us here today in a heartfelt thanks to you, Julia, for sharing your wisdom presence and the depth of your transformative work. If this conversation moved you, inspired you, or opened something inside you, I would love for you to rate, review the podcast and share it with somebody that you care about. The more we give, the sake of giving, the better everyone will be. And if you're ready for deeper guidance in your own life, you can contact Juliano or you can go to with me. I work with clients who are committed to emotional mastery, spiritual awakening, and creating a life aligned with peace and purpose. You can also dive into my book, Stop Look Choose, Your Journey to Peace and Freedom. It's available now, wherever you find your books, and it's a powerful guide for those ready to reclaim their inner authority and live from your true self. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening, and thank you for doing the courageous inner work that elevates not only your life, but the collective. Now beautiful humans, it's your turn to go out and live your most alive lives. [Music]