Breathwork practices have been around for thousands of years, across time and cultures, as a tool for healing and spiritual enlightenment. We often take our breath for granted and don't use it to its full potential. However, breathwork can transform your life. It can provide emotional breakthroughs and a way to drop into and connect with yourself.
We are joined by not only a good friend, but also a trained and certified breathwork practitioner, intuitive guide, and healer Kyla Erlandson. She has been counseling and empowering women for 15 years by using a spectrum of healing modalities, including somatic breathwork, meditation, and energetics.
In this episode:
● What Kyla believes is the greatest gift we can give ourselves.
● How Karen and Kyla became friends.
● When Kyla's husband began his breathwork journey.
● The various levels of breathwork training.
● Why Kyla felt called to engage in breathwork.
● How breathwork can help you address your problems.
● The role in relationships that women are programmed to fill.
● Why giving yourself time demonstrates your self-worth.
● How Kyla's codependence affected her dating life.
● Why you should anchor yourself and face your pain.
● How breathwork can support your peaceful contentment.
● What a breathwork practice can bring to the surface.
● The connection between breathwork and the nervous system.
● How breathwork will impact your blood flow in a positive way.
● What Kyla aims to achieve with clients when in session.
● How breathwork differs from traditional talk therapy.
● The common struggles Kyla sees her clients coming to her with.
● Why women specifically need and deserve healing.
● How breathwork can help you tap into your emotions.
● The importance of becoming the goddess you innately are.
Join Kyla's next Waking Her Program https://www.kylaerlandson.com/wakingher
@kyla.erlandson
https://youtu.be/zL9b-kfkrLIDownload oniTunes or your favorite podcast platform!
Transcription:
"Welcome to the hormone solution podcast. I'm Karen Martel, a certified hormone specialist and women's weight loss expert. Join me alongside expert thought leaders and fellow warriors each week as we navigate the intricate world of hormones and covers to sustainable weight loss and rewrite the narrative of women's health. Ladies get ready to empower change and embark on a transformative journey as we redefine aging and embrace grace on our terms. There is something that we do roughly 22,000 times a day for the most part unconsciously that thousands of years ago was used for healing spiritual enlightenment and inner peace practices such as Ancient India's Pranayama, the ancient Chinese Qi Gong, and the Egyptians practice of hea that is breathing something most of us take for granted and do not utilize to its full potential breathwork today has helped to transform people's lives including my own.
Many of you may not know that I did a type of body work for 18 years called Ralphe. Part of my training involved a type of breathwork and as much as I loved and I still love the hands on experience of body work, both giving and receiving it it was always the breathwork that I had the biggest emotional breakthroughs with like, so we're talking bawling hyperventilating, crying in a, you know, a bottle of tears. I can't tell you how many times that has happened to me in breathwork of many different forms.
We don't realize the power that our breath holds in helping us transform and heal my guest. Today is a dear friend of mine who I am so happy that you will now get to know a little bit. And she in my eyes is one of the most powerful breathwork practitioners, as is her husband trained and certified as a breathwork practitioner. Kayla Erlandsson has been counseling and empowering women in their lives for over 15 years, an intuitive guide and healer.
She brings women back to themselves by invoking deep curiosity and into the heart and uses a spectrum of healing modalities including somatic breath work, meditation, emotional intelligence and energetics. She teaches practical tools to her clients that her clients can use to ground into their daily lives. For more peace and happiness. She believes the greatest gift we can offer ourselves is to be operating in the full expression of ourselves and our full potential and we do this by healing.
So welcome my friend, Kayla. Thank you, Karen. I'm so excited to be here. All that intro. Just got me so excited like you give me shivers. I'm reading it, do this. So everyone, Kayla, OK, how do, how do we even know each other? Just Janine? I think so. Ok. So, through my little sister, Janine, who is Kayla's neighbor for many, many years now, I guess that's how we met. Yeah, it must be. But we've been good friends now for years.
My sister has a cabin out at your cabin which almost burned down this summer. We were just talking about that and almost started crying anyways. It's, it's still standing. Thank goodness we had a lot of fires in this area over the summer. But I have known about you and Corey and your breathwork though. For many, many years, you guys actually certify other teachers to become breathwork practitioners. So you guys are really high up there in this world of breathwork.
Uh, your husband was the one that started first many, many years, like when he was in his early twenties, which is always so surprising to me, right? Like most people in their early twenties, I mean, back then I was drunk every day, probably high. Like I was not doing a lot of breath work. I was just that way. No, no, I, we met, we met at a bar this time and he was sober. He was in his training and I was like 19, he was 20 to or no.
Maybe I was, maybe I was then 20. Anyways, we were young and yeah. Yeah. So that bar is torn down. That was the gloom, the backs. So the college bar. People are always like, you know, we, we live this like conscious life and people always ask, how did you guys meet? I'm like we met at like the oldest bar in town, you know, bucket beer night. That's where we met. And I, I want you to share your story because being as young as you were and coming into a relationship like you guys, I can't even believe you guys made it this long to be honest, like because you guys have been together for so long and you have done so much transformation, both of you since then, like you've worked on yourselves, you've become different people because who you came into that relationship is not the person you are today by far, I would say because you've told me about where you were at as a person back then.
So just share with the audience how, how you got into this and that story. Yeah. So through Corey and he was in his first level of training. So there's four levels that we have, we have the first level, which is a personal self actualization training. Uh The second level is the practitioner training where you become certified. The third level is um the teacher's assistant training, fourth levels, you become certified teacher. So he was in his first level and you know, being a young 23 year old, he didn't have much explanation for what it was that he was doing.
And mind you. This is also 20 years ago where this world of um just bringing more to your life, more consciousness, more awareness um healing was a woo woo. It was considered like, w like, what are you doing? You know, at that time, you know, it's still hard for people to ask for help. But especially 20 years ago, it was like, well, what's wrong with you then is something wrong? And it just wasn't the case for me.
I came to a point in our relationship very early on where I had this really painful feeling within that I couldn't pinpoint. I didn't, I didn't have any education around emotional intelligence, um or um spiritual intelligence. And there was something missing. And I remember feeling like this, this deep just got it empty feeling in the core of me. And I kept being curious with myself and asking myself, why am I feeling this way? Why is this so painful? What is this? And I soon came to realize it was this co dependence that I had and it showed up in my relationship and it was a powerlessness feeling and I didn't know how to navigate it.
I felt really alone and I felt really afraid and I started out by jumping into my own one on one individual sessions with a practitioner, sorry to interrupt. Just can you give us an example of what that codependency looked like in your relationship? It looked like need it looked like um, a good question, Karen. Blame. Mm. Ok. Um Waiting, waiting around for that person to make me happy, do things to make me happy. Uh, really unhealthy behavior.
Yeah. Yeah. I think there's so many women. It was gross and it pushes that person away. Yeah, I went through it for so many years. I had such men and then you go into your own attachment. So they become the avoidant and you go into your um anxiety attachment and it's like a dog chasing the tail, but you're, you're chasing the relationship and they're like avoiding, they're like, ok, crazy woman. And then God, like the mess, gosh, the messaging that we grew up with.
We're such a consumer society and all the conditioning and we are not set up for success in relationships. No, I agree. And as women in relationships, we've been really oppressed, oppressed, repressed. Um We've been really squashed and I think when it comes back to us wanting to connect with our own truth, I know from my experience, I've tended to question myself gaslight myself. Um not validate my feelings because, oh, am I being to this to that? Um And we've been given that message, we've been given that programming and that conditioning and that is one of my just like core passionate things to bring to women within themselves and in their relationships is to start validating themselves, to start standing in their truth, to start knowing that you don't have to defend yourself, that you can stand power in your power in your truth.
And a lot of healing will occur in their relationship from that. So we work on a lot of relationship dynamics these days. That is really what's coming through is people needing support in their relationship and they don't know what to do. They don't know what's going on. They don't know any of the trauma that they're coming in with. They don't realize their own protection, they don't realize their own um attachment styles and that is super helpful.
They also don't know how to do self care. Like, you know, that self care really gets thrown out and it kind of like kind of like ears. I'm, I'm talking about like the, the daily practices and the rituals to engage in and the, the biggest gift that occurs within that is the currency of time. And so the exchange that we give ourselves, you know, as a woman, as much as I do, I'm sure how hard it can be to give ourselves time, whether it's time to make an appointment, time to do this time to do that.
It's the time that can be so difficult. So I know from my experience, it's the time that I offer myself no matter what I'm doing that builds my self esteem. That reminds me it's a demonstration of my value of my self worth. Wow. And that in turn turns into building our self value and our self worth. It reminds us how important we are that we do matter and not so much into self love. Currency of time.
What's our biggest currency? OK. I'm going to go back to that because that's very, I needed to hear that. So I'm not surprised that we're having this conversation today, but let's rewind. And I did Corey back then. Did he was, was there a time because you were this kind of co dependent 19 year old. And he's doing this transformation in his own journey and his own breath work. Was there a time where he almost left shoe where it was like, oh forget this girl.
Like just I'm just thinking back to like when I was like that and I was like that for many, probably a decade or more of my life where I had that like neediness and really messed up when it came to relationship dynamics. Uh And a lot of the time, of course, the men would leave. It would be like, oh yeah, well, oh red flag, red flag don't want to be, have anything to do with this girl.
He totally left me for sure. I didn't know that I shouldn't say he left me. We had a conscious breakup. Um So OK to rewind that a little bit. When we first started dating, we dated for a few months and I was like, gosh, I'm just not really feeling it with this guy and I kept trying to convince myself I'm like, he is like he was so kind. He was true to his word. I didn't ever have to wonder.
Um, he was, oh my gosh, so good looking, so handsome fit. Um doing all this personal work, like had a really good job was he was a stable person. Like I was like, what is wrong with me? And there wasn't that chase. So there wasn't that like trauma response instinct to, to chase it didn't fire like that internal part that kept us wondering and wanting. He was what anyone would want anyway. So I, I was convinced myself.
And then eventually, after a few months, I didn't, I was, I didn't stick around for a few months and, and ponder it was just like a, I remember he wanted to take me out for Valentine's dinner and I was like, oh, I cannot let this guy take me out for dinner and spend money on me. When I'm not feeling like this, it doesn't feel right. So we ended things. Um I just said I wanted to be friends.
And in the meantime, from February until that October, I had kept thinking about him. And I was like, well, this is interesting, I keep thinking about him. And so we ended up reconnecting like I think over Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving time. And so that was when my co dependence really like kicked in was we started this relationship again. And I started being really into him and I do after I dove into my first few sessions while we were dating, I ended up of breathwork.
Yeah, of breath work. I ended up signing up for the six month intensive self actualization training. And he was enrolled at the same time doing his certification to become a breathwork practitioner. So we were in this training parallel and everything got really heightened for me. And you know, as you do work like this to become more conscious, everything unlike love starts to show itself to be healed. And that's what occurred for me was my unhealed parts all in like love started to show itself.
And so he did end up ending things with me and we were still in this training together, there was still like another month. So we would see each other and I really anchored into it was, it was the most, the biggest gift I could have ever been given was that breakup and facing my own pain and facing my own self and having to really look at building the relationship with myself and really go into the practice of that and really anchor into me and stop looking outside of myself.
And that was the whole reason I went into this training in the first place was because of the pain I felt of that. So we did end up getting back together once and for all. And we have definitely gone through like two decades of leveling up, leveling up evolving. Um You know, we've had two kids, career changes, we've moved. Um We've had a lot go on. I've spent a half of my life with him, the most evolving part of my life with him um consciously and, you know, I feel like we're going through another up level within our relationship again, I actually feel like maybe you can relate to this Karen, but this actual timeline that we're in this specific time today, like September 12th, 2023 there is a lot of burning down.
Um And I mean that literally and non literally, there is a lot of things burning down for rebuilding. I am, I'm experiencing a lot of unveiling that I thought I had done and there's more coming forth. And do you think it's our age? Kayla? I think it's age. I think it's um OK. Yeah. And just the universe collectively, things are shifting is shifting. There is, there is a lot going on in the energetic world and in the physical world.
And if you want things to change right now, you can have that you can really look at your patterns, you can really look at your beliefs, you can do that at any time. But I really feel the world's burning down. This is a demonstration. This is symbolism of old paradigms, old ways, literally burning to the ground, the earth wanting to be renewed. She might be really pissed off and this fire is asking for renewal. It's asking for things to be different.
And I think that's also what's occurring within us, especially for women, like, differently for women than men. Men are going through their own shift right now. But so are women. And I feel it when you say that, like, it's, to me, it relates to where we are as women today because we went through this very repressed, you know, for thousands of years. Well, I shouldn't say thousands, I think thousands of years ago, we were actually very equal to men.
And then we went through repressed, like being totally repressed for so long. And then we had the women's movement and it, it's like we shot ourselves in the foot a little bit. We had to fight so hard to be seen as an equal, which we're still not but to, to, to get ourselves out there to be able to vote, to have choice to all of these things that to be able to work and have and be paid as much as a man, which still isn't happening either.
But it's getting better that we have become so highly stressed out that we don't see our worth, like you said, right? We don't see the value in taking care of ourselves. We see worth and how much can we do in a day? We have to be these powerful women that can do everything that don't age that stay slim that, you know, that we can bring as much money home as there our husbands do. But yet we're still going to take care of all the Children and clean the house and cook dinner and it's still very ingrained and it shocks me constantly when I talk to women in my practice who are saying that they're still doing all of these things.
Not everybody. There's a many men that are, have stepped up to the plate for sure. But I would say there's more that haven't than that, that have at least in my generation. I was just pulling up this quote. I saved on my phone because it really ties into this. And it's the author is unknown or whoever wrote, it was unknown. Our generation is so busy trying to prove that women can do everything men can do. Women are losing the unique qualities that set us apart.
The God given femininity and unique way. Our creator designed us. Women weren't created to do everything a man can do. Women were created to do everything a man can't do. Oh, see that. Give me she, see, I love that. I love that. And it's not sane. Women can't do what a man can do but meant to be because look at Karen, how many women come into your practice with autoimmune diseases? Oh, so many it's on, it's, it's, it's like an epidemic right now for women is autoimmune.
This is the body sending smoke signals, pay attention, any illness unaligned and you have all these energetic blockages emotionally in your body that is the suppression showing up in the physical self creating disease, illness and that dynamic. I know you work with a lot of women entrepreneurs that are also mothers. And I've heard you talk about this before that even for yourself, I've heard you talk about it, what you and I have talked about it together.
The struggle between wanting to be good moms to our kids and raise them and do all of the mom things. And yet we're business women. We love running our own business and being an entrepreneur. But those two worlds really can collide and it's so emotionally draining that constant battle of, am I giving my business enough and am I giving my family enough? It's a challenge. It's a challenge and is my bank account supporting and you know.
Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's really a lot. There was something I wanted to say about that. I hope it comes back to me. Um It will. Yeah. So tell us about breathwork. Well, let's talk like the nervous system, right? Let's talk the nervous system when, when we're, when we're not aligned, when we're not in peace, when we have like um this trauma, when we, I mean, we all have wounds and emotional imprints from childhood growing up. Inevitably, we all do they get held or stored in our body or our soma? And So, um we've all experienced pain, like fear, anxiety, uncertainty, worry, grief, sorrow, that can be part of daily life.
And the breath assists these and moving these emotions through, they get stuck in our body. So they remove the blocks and the barriers to love. That's essentially what's happening is we've created this protection around us, physically, mentally, emotionally. There's my real life occurring. Um So, oh come sit down for a G. So the, the breath helps us move these through. We have energy points in our body that I guide you through opening up, which are the chakras and we end up processing these emotions.
Um our blocks and barriers to love layer by layer. And so unless we do this, these experiences and emotions will continue to layer onto our four main dimensions, which is our physical mental, emotional and spiritual self perpetuating that separateness that we can feel isolation alone. Um Imposter syndrome, not enough, you know, whatever your story is that you're coming in with, and that's what's preventing us from living in our peaceful content and abundance is storing those in our body.
But also the mental part that perpetuates it and the subconscious part of our brain that's holding that because we are only operating from about 4% of our consciousness. And the rest is 96 of our subconscious family patterns. Um generational ancestral bloodline, um um societal conditioning, um environment, you know, there's all of that is in our subconscious, that's a lot. So what happens when you do conscious connected breathing, which is a very specific method um that helps integrate somatic.
Does that mean somatic is the the body integration? So the CO2 um the breathing that we do drastically reduces the CO2 to the blood. This reduces the blood flow to the Amygdala. The Amygdala is the part of our brain that is the fight flight or freeze response. So as a result, reducing the blood flow to the Amygdala, the fight flight response in your brain is temporarily quieted. Mhm As the breathing continues, different parts of the brain get activated allowing for the reinterpretation of situations often with a more loving and compassionate perspective.
So you quiet down that nervous system of the fight or flight, the protection and you allow for other things in your brain to start interpreting differently, new belief system, new ways of being more compassion. Now the somatic level this this is the integration of the breath that is so beautiful. So important because you can read all the books, you can go to a counseling session. But are you integrating that? Yeah. Yes. Yeah. No, usually not. I've done some other work outside of breathwork sessions and I left feeling incomplete.
Yeah. Same. Yeah, I walked out the door and been like this just something does not feel complete. There was not, there was words but there was no integration. Yeah. And so with my counseling sessions, they are 90 minutes to two hours long. Because in the first part, we have dialogue, we go through the belief systems. We, you know, my, you see me for a set of 12 sessions consistently biweekly to integrate it into your daily life.
OK, let me go back to the somatic level. So this allows deep connection to your truth and the blocks and barriers that we create for protection, prevent us from hearing that truth. And that's why we can question ourselves or not feel validated or, or have all those doubts, lack of clarity. So through the release of the stored energy and emotions, the potential to create your new belief system occurs at a cellular level. So the frequency of breath that you're shifting in your body through the breath allows for a new belief system to be created at a cellular level through the different frequency which alters their vibration and allows for a new experience within yourself.
Yes. And I'm going to just give a little example so that people can kind of because that's a lot of, that's a lot of words, that's a lot of words. And so people are going OK. What, what is, what does she mean? What does that mean? Because some people are so new to this, they've never heard that, hey, you can even just do all of this emotional work, trauma work through just breath alone and dialogue, right? Personally, my personal journey was same as you as I, I got to a point where I got to my rock bottom and knew that I had to change something within myself or I was going to keep repeating patterns.
I broke up with my, who's now my husband and your story? Yeah. It's a great story. I'm not going to go into it right now, but, you know, I was just put it this way. I was on the kitchen floor bawling my eyes out because I had to leave him. You know, I had a one year old daughter, I was just at the lowest of lows in my life. And I knew that if I didn't change right then and there that my daughter was going to follow suit that she would go through the same, a lot of the same traumas that I had to go through and she would, you know, have struggled a lot of the, the struggles.
And I knew I had to change myself in order to bring in love, real love. And so I went to traditional therapy. It was great. There's nothing wrong with traditional therapy. It was really good to actually talk to somebody and not feel like you were burdening them with your words and your whining and complaining because that's how I always thought of it. Right. I was the person that I, you know, I'll take, I'll take your whining and I'll help you.
But I had a very hard time being the person that came in and I shouldn't use the word whining. But you know what I mean? Like, that's another way, another, just an example here of the gaslighting. Oh, I'm whining. I should be grateful or I should this or that I should be the whining woman, you know. But traditional therapy probably a good year. I went to it consistently and it did help but I always left feeling like there was a piece missing.
Like I just needed something more like I wasn't changing. I was talking about these things which was helpful and to get feedback on things in a different way, perspective. But I didn't feel like the inside was changing, wasn't getting to the root of your physical body. And when you say cellular level, that is what was missing. I know that now. But then I couldn't have put that into words, but it was, there was no change on a cellular level and that may sound really boo to some people.
But I'm telling you guys, this is, I started to work with a woman who was an energy healer. We did lots of breath work. We did many, many different modalities of healing. I saw her for many years and it wasn't till I started to do that work that I felt a shift on a whole different level, which was a cellular level. I changed from the deepest of my core, I changed. But I had to get rid of these locked emotions.
I mean, I remember her saying to me you are cut off from your waist down sexual abuse like I had been raped and I had never dealt with it. And you know, she's like you, you just have no energy down there. And so we had to work on me breathing into my pelvis and bringing life down there. And when you do that, you do release these emotions that you have stored. Because if you don't deal with an emotion when it's happening, which how we still do it to this day, everybody does it, you know, fear, anger, sadness, we repress.
And if we don't release those emotions, it had what happens chemically in the body when you're experiencing that that has to go somewhere. And so it is stored typically in these energy centers that that is not woo woo. This is a proven fact that we have energy centers in the body which Kyla said it's chakras. And so we have seven, is that right? Seven Chakras energy centers in the body that we can have different ones being closed off.
I remember the first time I breathed into my heart, chakra, I literally felt like the floodgates opened. I felt like water was pouring out of my heart. It was just this flood of emotions and I just bawled and bawled and bawled because I had put up an energetic wall around my heart that nobody was getting through. So when that came down through breathwork, huge emotional release. So I hope that can help people to get an understanding of what we're talking about and how powerful it can be.
Yeah. Yeah. That's really tender, like really holding that tenderly for you that's really vulnerable. Thank you. Are you tired of feeling lost in the world of hormones, especially during midlife? It can be a real challenge to find practitioners who truly understand how to address women's hormonal issues. If you're seeking relief from debilitating symptoms, like low libido, hot flashes, brain fog fatigue and weight gain, then explore what we offer at Karen Martel dot com. Discover a range of solutions tailored to your needs from affordable group coaching programs to personalized one on one sessions, dive into our new six month full body transformation packages and find the support you've been searching for, take the first step towards transforming your life and start your hormone journey with us today.
What do you see Kayla? Like you work specifically with women? And I wanted to ask you this, which is, do you see a lot of the same stuff coming up in your work? Like do women tend to have a lot of the same, like either be sexual trauma? Is it that self worth uh self body image? Um Is there a a typical pattern that you, you know, not everybody is different? But I'm just thinking like, is there something that usually you see come up a lot sacrifice.
Oh, explain is huge. And that, that all comes down to our self worth and not honoring ourselves, abandoning ourselves, even the questioning of our own feelings. Oh, am I to this? Am I to that? Um, am I? Oh, I don't want to be whiny. I don't want to be that, um, the sacrifice in our relationships and where we don't stand in our truth and we don't speak up um, for fear of attack or you don't want to be that naggy wife.
Um And really starting to stand in the truth because that becomes a sacrifice to our own selves or we start to blame or become martyrs um start to become the victim. And that is on us. And there was such a long time where I pointed the finger at my husband. Oh, yeah. And when I was, there's that old saying when you have one finger pointing out, there's three pointing back at you. And it took me a long time to understand this.
It really took me a long time and this is the disservice um of, of patriarch in silencing us and the conditioning of those beliefs and the programming of those beliefs that if we start to speak. I mean, we've heard it all before you speak up and you're called a bitch. A man speaks up and he's protecting. She's a crazy 10, he's the protector. Yeah. Oh, she must be P MS. Oh, I can't stand that. You know, the, we've been so shut down in our anger too.
We've been not taught how to use our anger appropriately. And I think it's so important for women to feel their rage do it appropriately. I have a very big problem with, with my rage. Yeah. I don't, I don't show anger very well at all. Yeah. Yeah. I know. I just did a liver cleanse recently and every time I do a liver cleanse, I get so angry, like the whole time I'm ready to blow my top and it's such a foreign feeling to me because I don't let myself feel anger very rarely.
And liver is the organ that actually stores anger. And every time I do a liver cleanse, I'm just, I can't even believe I feel it feels like I've, I've been taken over by somebody. I'm like, who is this person? Like my blood is boiling and I am ready to snap. It is the weirdest thing. And I just have, I go OK, just feel it don't suppress. I just feel like be angry. I have a colleague that goes and chop down chops down trees when she's in her anger and rage.
Oh, well, the poor trees. And it is, I think she chops wood, don't think she chops down the tree. She chops wood and punching bag, like really bearing down and feeling that anger is so important for us because of that repression. We've not been taught how to use our anger appropriately. Neither has our entire society. I mean, when you think about Children getting sent to their rooms to, when they are doing something wrong, if they're acting out or being inappropriate or, um, shamed in the classroom to go sit in the corner, sit outside by themselves while the trauma occurs in them being isolated in their emotion.
Yeah. And it starts so early on because we have not been taught how to use anger appropriately at an early age. Yeah, you're, you want to act like that. You go over there and do it or you're going to, I mean, you know, we come from lots of old generations where our parents are our grandparents, like they were really beat. Mhm um So back to the women and the question you had about the, what do I see mostly? And it's, it's having boundaries.
Um It's having the awareness of where they're sacrificing. And, you know, I have like, I have some clients who are multimillionaire entrepreneurs and they've come into my practice because they needed support with boundaries, with family, with relationship dynamics, with um building up even more trust and love for themselves. Uh oh, it's really sad but, but good, we're getting the word out there is why we're doing this podcast is women need to realize this. They need to see this, that, that we're doing this to ourselves and like you pointed out so clearly that it's this reflection of self love.
We have a part now like this is, this is up to us to start. It sounds so cheesy, but to truly like really become the goddesses that we once have been like before we were burned at the stake for being healers, for being nurturers. You know, there's the woman's holocaust. How many people know about that? I know nobody, nobody talks about that where they think they're anywhere from like 100,000 to possibly a million women were murdered, burnt at the stake.
They don't actually not tortured. And you know, Karen, I look at you and I, and you know, people might say those women are healers. But what I believe to be true is we're bringing the healing modality and we are bringing women into their personal power to connect with their own healing. We're bringing that forth, we're doing the teaching and the guiding. Yes, you're your own healer just as much as I am. But I need guidance as do I Yeah, it was a long summer.
I had two counseling sessions this week. Did you did? I was like, oh, I'm booking these in the same week. This is necessary. I just booked myself a massage because I was like, I need to distress. I need to like calm my system down, started doing breathwork again on a daily basis twice a day because I definitely find that breathwork is extremely powerful because it's like an instant calm to my nervous system and there has been so much research on this.
This isn't woo woo. There's been a ton of research on what happens in our brain when we're breathing deeply and in a conscious way. And there's different ways there's different techniques of breath. Now, yours specifically is mouth breathing as conscious connected breathing. So you, you're breathing in, fully out, gently into the belly feeling that breath hit the back of your throat and you imagine it going in and out connected like a circle. I don't recommend that this kind of breath work is done solo because you don't know what's being stored that could come out.
You know, I've had, I've had my own experience and other clients experience where you could be a vibrating mess emotionally. You, you need someone there to guide and support you and also your practitioner if um depending who they've been trained by is hopefully also an intuitive. I'm an intuitive so I can hear things I can feel and see things as to what's going on while that person's in their session and like, yeah. And you still are.
I still am. Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. And we all are. And so this, this technique and this breathwork also brings people back into their intuition into hearing that inner voice, into hearing and being connected with their higher self. How does it help us to have more self love? Well, if the brain, if your body isn't constantly in protection in that fight flight freeze or fawn and you quiet that down in breathwork, then you're giving yourself a different experience and that becomes a new reference point.
And so you keep building on to that new reference point, stronger and stronger and stronger. So that becomes more of a default. And you're creating this new baseline, this new foundation and then your bandwidth grows and your capacity grows and grows. And so when life gets thrown a curveball, and you've been consistent with your practices and your love and your care for yourself and going to whatever mentor you're seeing your, your ability to hold space for that curveball is a lot different.
So you're able to actually consciously respond, take a breath and have the capacity to deal with that curveball and, and differently, deal with it differently than you probably have your whole life, you know, instead of pointing that finger, which so many of us do. I mean, that was probably one of the biggest lessons I've learned in my life, which is I am responsible. Nobody else I can't point fingers and say it's your fault that I'm feeling this way.
It's your fault that this is happening. I am responsible. I'm responsible for how I react to something, how I'm feeling everything. It's me. I have to turn around to myself and if people could get that and they can just and breathwork gives you that ability I feel to be aware of self and to go, ok, what's the bigger picture in this situation? Like you're, if you're constantly having, you're being, you're attracting the wrong person into your life, man or woman and you're, you know, it's like one failed relationship after the next.
Like I was having maybe it's time instead of going, oh, all men are. All women are and it's their fault and I just keep getting hurt and poor me and whoa me. Mm mm Yeah. You gotta start looking within and you got to start healing yourself so that you bring in something else and you have that awareness. I think it's, it, it's can be that powerful. I, I really like it can transform a person's life. It is the most transformational work I've ever experienced.
Yeah. It really brings me back to the truth and back to my trust. And however, like I said, I wouldn't be able to do that without the guidance of my practitioner and her intuition and her capabilities and her love. And it's love that makes the space safe and I feel like that's something I really offer for my clients is they have a place to feel safe and when we feel safe we can open up. Yeah, because that's the hardest part.
That's the hardest part. And if you don't feel safe, you can't, you can't get to what you need to get to in order for that person to assist you. Yeah. The love heals cheesy. Line again. But it does. And we, we're in a world right now where we're constantly looking outside of ourselves to he, for things to heal us emotionally and physically. It's like, let's, you know, take this supplement, do this, do that. We want the quick fix it.
The answer is that the answer, what we're the answer. And it's so I'm really close with and we always say to each other, we're the ones we've been waiting for. Wow. Yeah. I guess it's important to have guides to bring you back to that place. Yep. Yes. There's nothing out outside you that's going to save you. It is you. Yeah, because I don't think I could have had those experiences that I had doing it on my own.
Like breathwork, just regular practice of breathwork. Like I do the 478 breath right now, twice a day, which really calms my nervous system down. But the deep healing piece of breathwork, I had to have a teacher. I had to have a facilitator. So I couldn't let go on my own. Yeah. And when you're in your own patterns, when you're just living in your own belief systems and family stuff you're in it. And so the, the guy, the mentor counselor practitioner, whoever it is you're seeing is able to see what's going on with you from the outside.
Looking in. Yeah, because we can get really wrapped up in our own pain. It's really hard to see what actually is happening, what actually is going on. And that's the most important part is finding that mentor that can assist you with that. And one of the most amazing benefits and qualities of breath work is you don't have to practice for months to experience change. You will notice calming effects immediately. In fact, I have some clients that have such um that can feel so anxious or lack of peace that sometimes in their breast session they get so peaced out, they start to fall asleep.
Wow. And if that ever happens with them, I'm like, just go ahead and sleep. No, I, I bring them too. I'm like, I recognize if they're checking out or if they're pieced out. And I'm like, oh, their body is just needing this so much because I also see them go through their huge cellular shifts sometimes that are really intense. There's other times where their body is like, oh, this is so nice. Yeah, it's just so nice to be not in protection right now.
Wow. Yeah, I know it makes me want to just go do it right now. We were to notice calming effects immediately and that healing the nervous system quieting that part of the brain down is imperative. It's imperative. You can't heal if you're constantly in protection um for lasting and transformational healing that requires ongoing assistance that requires um you know, longer lasting uh commitment to yourself with working with someone. So that you can dive deeper into that um individual and personalized self actualization and keep, keep healing that um with the integration of the breath every, every session consistently and the emotional intelligence, I think that that's such a powerful word that I don't know if everybody understands that one either.
But I think that that's such an important piece to, to get in life that we need to have that emotional intelligence. So can you explain what that means? Well, emotion is the glue that holds us together. And I'll just give you an example. When I started doing my own sessions, I had suffered from copious amounts of bladder infections. I think in one year, I had like 12 and yes, there was some things physically going on where my um my internal body was out, but also on an emotional level.
Metaphysically, bladder infection means pissed off. And so my, my anger was being stored in my bladder. That was where my energy block was happening. And so when I started addressing my anger or what I was pissed off about my bladder infections went away. And it's been like 20 years and any time I start to feel my body sending me a smoke signal. If my bladder is uncomfortable, I'm like, oh, time to pay attention. What haven't I been acknowledging? What am I feeling mad about? Ok.
And then I can go into my tools of allowing my anger and what I need to do for that. And anger is actually a really powerful emotion because you can use it as your rocket fuel, you can use it to get shit done. Whether that's addressing an issue coming forth to your partner and something you've been quiet about um addressing a barrier between a friendship, you know, like whatever it has been for you. So the emotional intelligence um without our physical bodies, we don't, we don't have emotion.
This is, this is what we're here experiencing is the human self is our emotional self. But I think we've become so we built this relationship with so much judgment on self and self rejection that if we're anything but happy, peaceful or um grateful, then we deem ourselves unlovable, not enough. And we start to go into judgment. So when we have this awareness of fear, guilt, anger, sadness, anything other than love and joy. Well, we can use those emotions to our advantage to know.
Yes, what's going on right now. You can always look to your body. Your body will always tell you it is our barometer and it will tell you, you know, you have something funky going on with your eye. What aren't you paying attention to that? You don't like seeing you, you get, you're getting ear infections, what aren't you liking to hear? What's, what's going on for you there? And then again, my bladder infections. Um and again, Karen, like you talked about your sexual trauma and the lower half of your body being shut down.
Yeah. I had endometriosis. I had ovarian, chronic ovarian cysts. I had Candida. I don't have any of that anymore. I haven't for, like, 20 at least Candida. I probably haven't had it for 20 years now because I healed. Amazing. Yeah. And that was the rejection of the feminine part of you. Yes, 100%. The lack of that. I'm going to close that off and pretend it doesn't exist too much. Yeah. That's emotional intelligence people. And I don't have, I don't have studies and I should have pulled something up.
But it is the majority of women that have autoimmune disease. Yes, it is. Yeah. A lot more women. Same with thyroid. Hypothyroidism is way more prevalent in women. And this is our voice. Chakra where your thyroid sits is your voice chakra. It's your harmony, your truth. What are you not speaking that you should be that you want to be speaking well? And what are you denying within yourself? I find I really notice a lot of women's throats um, on an energetic level, the, the swelling in them and all of that um, emotion and energy being stored there.
Yeah. Huge emotional piece there. Oh, my gosh. Every Yeah, I mean, we could go on and on this. Like I really believed with every chronic illness there is an emotional piece to it. It may not be 100% but it's typically the piece that most people are missing, you know, so they'll only get, they'll get better just, you know, uh they only get to a certain point with their healing with supplements and, you know, ivs and all the, all the amazing things, surgeries, all the things that are out there right now in our medical system and even in the therapeutic world of, you know, naturopathic medicine and herbal supplements.
And there's, I feel like you can only get so far in that healing journey. And you have to deal with the emotional, to have full healing capacity. And it's so uncomfortable to feel their emotional, it's really uncomfortable and people it's, it's being vulnerable. I mean, it, it is, it's been very vulnerable. I will share the story before we go here. But um I was speaking at an event with Kayla in the spring and she had her talk first.
So my sister and I went to her talk and she, there was all of us. It was a women's summit. So we're all in this big room, we're lying on the ground and Kayla's doing her talk. And then Kayla walked us through her breath, a breath session and my sister is next to me and I'm not even joking like within 30 seconds of doing the breath work. My, my little sister is bawling her eyes out beside me and then I'm in my head and I know the power of breathwork.
And I'm thinking to myself, I gotta talk in like two hours. I got my speech to do. I can't be, uh, uh, you know, in my puddle of tears, I can have this huge emotional breakthrough and then go do my talk. So I was really like resisting doing what you were telling me to do. So I was like, ah, I don't think I can do this right now. And then I remember, I just told myself Karen, don't worry about it, just go with it.
Let's experience this. And I thought, ok, I'm just gonna let go. And I did and I started to follow what Kyla was telling me to do. And it was so interesting because out of nowhere, this very, very strong message came through, which was that my relationship with my husband could be even better. And that, to me was out of nowhere because I luckily have a, because I think I did all the work. I have a really, really good marriage.
Like I've never felt like, oh, I really need to work on my marriage. I, I haven't have taken it probably for granted that it's as good as it is. Like we get along really well. We don't fight, we, we, you know, there's so much love between us. We have a good sex life. Like we've got it all covered and we've grown together and all of these amazing things. But I never thought, oh, it could be even better.
And that's what that breathwork session did for me that day was made me realize, oh, it could be that much better. What an incredible gift that is to read goosebumps covered. I'm covered in goosebumps. Karen for like a few reasons. And one of them is like that shift you had from your protection and to surrender. Yes. So that surrender allowed you to have that allowance that surrender allowed you to hear your, your true inner voice and you trusted it.
Yeah. And my sister came out. I was like, well, what what happened to you? She was like, I don't know, she's like, it was just this like massive like release. She said like an emotional, just the tears had to come. And so she just let it flow, which was really powerful for her like she really needed that. So it was just in that short little stint. That's how powerful it was for us. Oh Karen. That's so incredible.
And I know you shared that with me before, but it still gives me goose bumps every time you do share it. And you know, there's one thing coming through for me right now before we do go is I think we're holy smokes makes me feel sad. So it must be important is that I think we're so afraid to feel sad. I think we're so afraid to grieve and let go. And in that sadness when we can move into this place and have guidance with this place, the forgiveness we can have for ourselves in what we used to believe about ourselves, the stories we've carried about ourselves, what we've carried on and what we think other people have thought about us.
Um Our own thoughts that are the opposite of what creator intended us to be, which is we're, we're perfect. And I know that every time I'm able to move into forgiving myself for something and letting go, that, that brings me back to peace, that brings me back to the truth. And I know recently I've really rediscovered and unveiled a lot of things that I'm still caring that I need to forgive myself for a lot of things that really, um, hold me back as a parent or as a mom or even be in my relationship with my husband and, and the forgiveness I need to give myself and they're not even things that I've done wrong.
But it's the belief that I have done something wrong or the belief that I'm not enough that I'm not lovable. Yeah, I got it too. And sadness really bridges us over from sadness into love and joy. There's a bridge we don't like change. It's hard for us to have change. We avoid it. We don't want to grieve. We don't want, it's hard for us to accept us as humans. We really like to hold on even if it doesn't serve us because if we don't, then something has to change Yeah.
Exactly. Yeah. And that might mean, speaking up again for ourselves, interrupting, um, unhealthy behaviors. It might even mean really acknowledging relationships that aren't serving where we may have to consider a new, a new way to look at them or even have them at all. So I just felt like that message of forgiveness was really crucial. I could keep going on to that. There's so many things about this. I was like, I was making notes to be like, OK, we talk about this is that came up and could be a three hour you lead by example, Kayla, like I can't tell you how many times there was just a time even just in the summer when I was at your cabin and you were telling me about your sharing a story about a dynamic that happened between you and Corey where you stood up for yourself.
And I just ii I looked at you with like wonder and like, wow, she can do that. She can speak her mind like that and be like, hey, this isn't fair. What about me? What about my prior? Why am I being left to do this as the woman? You know? And I was so like, oh wow, she's so strong and so like, I look up to you and I just like you, you've taught me, you, you always teach me things about that and I appreciate you.
And so thank you. And I think that if anybody is being drawn to this conversation and listening to this and being drawn to Kyla know that that's a sign that she could be that person for you. I'm a big believer in finding the right person that you connect with. Um, because that's the person then that's going to likely help you to heal those things inside, inside of you. And I bring on a lot of different types of practitioners for that purpose so that people can hear from all sorts and go oh that person, that's the one I connect with, with what she's saying or even just their energy.
Like I have no idea what this woman is talking about, but I really like her. So I'm going to work with her totally, you know, like really what I want to do is I want to bring you into seeing how you can create what it is you want in your life, right? I want you, I want to bring you to your abundance level of being able to receive love. I want you to bring you into the things that you want to receive internally and externally and to do that, we have to remove the blocks and barriers, we have to, we have to do some digging, we have to do some excavating and we need to do some practicing together to build these new muscles.
Yes. So, so how do you work with people? Where can they find you? They can find me because you do worldwide. So it can be, it's all about I was going to tell health. Are we skyping these days? Still zoom? Zoom. So I work with um out of town clients over Zoom. Um If you do live locally, it's so great to get together. So I do see local people in person in my office. Um Otherwise we zoom and yeah, I have a clientele all over the place and I work with my clients in a set of 12 sessions.
And so that gives us um 5 to 6 months together. Yeah. And you know, I'm just going to say to women, a lot of my listeners are going through permenopausal menopause, which I think is one of the most profound shifts that a woman will have in her life. We start to become different people in this time um in a good and it can be in a good way. It can also be in a, if you don't take care of yourself, your body is going to start yelling at you and many different with many different symptoms.
Going screw you listen to me, you need to wake up, you need to start taking care of yourself. And this is the time that we need to start taking care of ourselves and healing old wounds and take and just like putting us number one, we, we spend our whole adulthood from 20 to 40 taking care of other people. And that's, it's in our nature, we start having kids. A lot of us, we get married, we do that, we get a job and we, you know, whatever it is that we're doing, we're not looking after it just, we put ourselves on the back burner and, and we can get away with it for the most part for a while.
But this time in our life, this transitional time, I think our bodies go ok. It's, it's your turn, it's time to take care of you. And so listen to that, listen to that. And I have, I've sent so many of my clients, um, to you Karen, um, to the naturopath that I see as well because II, I see where things are out physically hormonally. And I recently too have really been investing in my, um, my hormone health too.
And once you know, it, my thyroid is a little, little bit out. It just a smidge a little, we're working on it, go do some breath, work into it. Kyler, I've been noticing lately. Yeah, like going through my own process of things that I have been holding my breath. Ah, and I have been getting stuck in my throat chakra. And so I've really been taking a lot of note and a lot of like, conscious behavior to pay attention daily, applying your emotions never ending.
This is a never ending like this, this journey of personal development, it never ends. No, it doesn't why we're here Yeah. And if you feel like you're good at some point and you're like, ok, I'm feeling good now and you want to leave it. That's great. Good for you. I just, I just know that this will be my lifelong path of continuing to get support. And I believe that's why we're here. We're here to love and to learn.
And so it's all about what, whatever lessons you need to learn in this lifetime and grow and heal. And that's why we're here to become the best versions of ourselves. And that's, that will be till the day we die. Yeah. Will happen through acceptance. Yeah. More acceptance. Can you, I'll leave it with this because we'll keep talking. Can you, can you accept yourself in all of your emotions? I say no, not right now. But I'm in love and you can you love and have compassion for yourself and all those emotions when you're in fear, anger, guilt, sadness, not just when you're happy, can you still love yourself and be even more tender and even more caring in anything else? Unlike love? Mhm And if that's a hard question to answer, look at your Children or look at your grandchildren and look at those little people in your life when they need nurturing, when they're upset or angry, how do you take care of them? Do you sit with them and hold them? Do you ask them if they want a blanket in a movie? You do try and feed them, do you ask if they want to have a bath? You know, all of those nurturing practices.
Are you offering those to yourself? Um, yes, I, I was on just quickly here. I was interviewed yesterday on a podcast that he, uh, Sea Rock is his name. Anyway, he's got a fireside chat show. Anyways, he said we were talking about, you know, kind of what you're made of and why are you made of that basically and kind of where you come from. And he said, out of all the stuff that, you know, happened in your childhood and your, the trauma and everything, anything that you still struggle with today.
And I said, yeah, and I, it was funny because I didn't realize it till he asked me. And I said, self love. That's the one thing that, because I, I hated myself for so long as a teenager and as a young adult that it's still in there and it'll still rear its ugly head that like, not 100% fully accepting and loving of myself. And I think I've come a long way for sure. When you find yourself in those moments, are you able to give yourself a different perspective, a different perception? Are you able to turn that around? And I think that's where the, the constant work comes in and the empowering part is having that awareness and being able to give yourself a different perception giving yourself the ability to have that recognition and do something different because we haven't arrived.
I mean, we're, we've decided to be in these human physical bodies for a reason so we can become more enlightened. But how enlightened can you be without leaving your human experience? Is something I'm curious about. Right. Does that make sense? It does for me if, if there's any, any gift you can give yourself, it's to give yourself a different perception. And that's something I offer with my clients is, is that in their sessions is a different perspective.
Power of perception and perception. It is huge, huge. I've been telling myself that for days because I've been highly stressed out and I'm like perception, Karen. Why don't we just look at this as like, yeah, so I've got a million and one things to do right now. Oh, well, you know, let's be happy about it rather than having heart palpitations. Oh, really? Oh My gosh. I can just start talking about like um the healthy, feminine and masculine.
This is like, I feel like we could gear this into like a part two of this podcast is looking at the divine feminine and how we operate in our masculine. And, and so that is my problem that I'm launching again for the third time is called Waking her. And that is a six week um immersive that will be starting coaching. It's group coaching for six weeks. Um There'll be breath work in there as well. So every week for six weeks, you'll have a breath work session and we'll be diving into um emotional intelligence, um manifestation.
Um looking at how to take care of, you know, you the human medicine wheel, which is our physical mental, emotional and spiritual self. And we'll be looking at where you sacrifice so will be really looking at the blocks and barriers that are there so you can acknowledge them and use them so that you can start to have more abundance, prosperity, um deeper relationships, more intimacy, forgiveness for self, more liberation. So that's a six week. And when does that start? I haven't picked a date yet.
How many times a year it's going to be uh I mean, I've been doing one in like the end of spring. Um the past two years, this one's going to be this fall. So in a few weeks and I'll have that launched on my Instagram profile which is at Kyla dot Lansen and, and then I'll probably run another one in the spring. OK. Yeah, just for those that are listening to this maybe at a later date.
OK. So, and your website pilot Erlandsen dot com. OK. And I'm going to link, the link is also in my top bio for the waking her. So anything that I have going on will be in that link. OK. Perfect. And then people can get a hold of you if they want to work with you one on one. Yeah. OK. So I'll put all of that everybody in the show notes. So be sure to check it out and stay tuned for part two between me and Kyla because we, as you can see, we can just keep talking.
And so Karen, that's what makes me so stoked is that waking her is all about looking at um where we've been operating in the unhealthy feminine and bringing in the healthy feminine, which is the divine feminine really looking. Sign you up. Ok. My friend. Thank you so much for your time today and your wise words, I appreciate you so much and love you so much. Love you so much. Thank you. This is so fun before we sign off, ladies, remember this journey is just beginning.
If you're excited to dive deeper into the world of hormones, weight loss and embracing your power pop over to Karen Martel dot com, discover how you can join me on this incredible ride level up your wellness game and don't forget to stay connected. Follow me on Instagram and Facebook at Karen Martel Hormones for daily inspiration and insights. Until next time, ladies have a great day wherever you are in the world."
