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In this episode, I discuss:

•  A recap of Sarah’s 2020 milestones
•  Learn the top three modalities Sarah uses to create lasting change in the lives of her clients
•  The healing impact of conscious breathing
•  What EFT is and how it creates lasting change
•  How to shift your coaching style from giving advice to creating empowered change

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Episode Transcript:

Welcome to the Uncensored Empath, a place for us to discuss highly sensitive energy illness, healing, and transformation. My name is Sarah Small, and I’m a life and success coach for empaths who want to create a thriving body, business, and life. Think of this podcast as your no B-S guide to navigating life, health and entrepreneurship. You’ll get straight to the point, totally holistic tips from me in real-time, as I navigate this healing and growth journey right beside you. This is a Soul Fire production.

Happy 2021 and the first episode of a brand new year. I’m excited to be back with you after a short holiday break. And I hope your new year is off to a good start. I want to begin with a little recap of some 2020 celebrations over in my world and with the Uncensored Empath, LLC. It’s really fun to take inventory of some of these numbers at the end of the year, and to be fully transparent. They are celebrations, but there are goals that I didn’t hit this year. It was a big, crazy, wild, fricking year. And so, we hit some amazing numbers and amazing milestones and, we didn’t hit all of them. And that’s totally okay.

A recap of Sarah’s 2020 milestones

So here are some celebrations I want to share with you guys today. There were over 185 live streams inside of our community in 2020. 185. It was also the biggest year ever, as a business. We hit well over six figures during a pandemic, which I’m really proud of. There were 11 separate launches that we did throughout the course of 2020, and around 240 clients served in total. And that’s in our paid containers, not including freebies, free masterclasses, free breathwork sessions, all the other places like the podcast and my Facebook group. So that’s thousands and thousands, if we really tally up, in lives impacted. But 240 clients served in our paid containers. Podcast has hit over 215,000 downloads now, and I am celebrating it. And thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being a listener and subscriber of the show.

Also celebrating that my book, 21 Days of Healing, that you’ve heard me talk about before, got picked up by a publisher this year. So we got all the upgrades. Actually just got a box in the mail yesterday of some additional marketing materials, like postcards and bookmarks that have our branding, and the colors and the fonts of the book, 21 Days of Healing. And I love having the extra support and marketing support, especially in getting the word out around 21 Days of Healing, through a publisher.

We also went through the inaugural class. The first class ever of Illuminated. Illuminated is my coach training program. It’s for practitioners who want to facilitate amazing results for their clients and build six-plus figure businesses while getting trained and certified in 10 different modalities that they can add to their toolbox. And it was my first year of hosting this training and creating all of the lessons, all of the additional resources. We had dozens of masterclasses from external experts. We had business coaching masterminds and practice sessions and Q and A calls. We even had a virtual retreat that we had to adapt to, but it still ended up being incredible. And so, I am celebrating the 14 women who went on that journey with me, so hard. I love you so much. Thank you for trusting me. And holy crap, it was such a good year inside of Illuminated. And I know I speak for our entire community of students in saying that it was so, so helpful to be able to have that support during a crazy year.

And we also grew the number of people on our team. I brought on an assistant, a new graphic designer. I joined Soul Fire productions, who you hear the benefits of, in the higher quality editing and promotion of the podcasts. And have also continued to have other team members who have been around for awhile on the team. But I’m just so, so glad to be able to continue to be growing and, as a projector in human design, to be able to outsource some things in my business so that it’s not all consuming. And I’m not the only person doing it all, because in order to scale and grow, you got to outsource.

We also published 57 new podcast episodes over the course of 2020. So you had 57 new episodes to catch up on, and to indulge in, and to learn from. And I hope you loved them. I’d love to hear what your favorite episode of 2020 was.

And then, on a more personal note, personal level, there’s certainly more celebrations than just this. But my biggest personal celebration is our rainbow baby who is due May 14th, 2021. And I am just feeling her kick like crazy. I recently had my 20 week ultrasound and she is in the 90th percentile. And almost, well, now she’s probably a pound at least, but at that time she was 15 ounces, just shy of a pound, and almost a foot long. And it’s so crazy to feel her flipping, rolling, kicking, elbows and butts and heads bumping against my belly. Especially at night and in the morning, I can like really, really feel her. So we’ve been putting the nursery together. You guys can check out all those vibes on my Instagram story, that I’ve been sharing. And we’re honestly just getting so excited to welcome her into this world, in hopefully, May.

So that is my recap of 2020 and just all the celebrations. And I just want to note that this was not without some really, really heavy moments and intense challenges throughout the course of the year. So I don’t want to disregard that and just say it was all rainbows and glitter because it wasn’t. But I am choosing today to focus on the celebrations. And just feeling into the vibe and energy of all the goodness that did occur in the last 12 months.

Learn the top three modalities Sarah uses to create lasting change in the lives of her clients

Moving on to today’s episode, I am here to chat about the top three modalities that I use in my business to create lasting change with my clients. And that lasting change is often, also, an immediate change that they feel by the end of even a 30-minute session with me. And these are the three modalities that I believe create some of the best, biggest transformations in my client’s lives. And they’re the ones that I go back to over and over and over again, because the truth is, I’ve got a boatload of a laundry list of different tools that I can tap into.

And so, to choose just three was actually quite challenging. But when I really got real with myself and observed and took inventory of what are the ones I truly, truly honestly use the most with my clientele, groups and individuals, these are the three that kept showing up.

The healing impact of conscious breathing

So the first is breathwork, and this is a practice that I’ve been using personally for over a year. Now it’s the newest modality to my toolbox, but holy crap, has it been transformational? And my first experience with this was back in December of 2019. And I remember my friend, my new friend at the time telling me, no, Sarah, this is different. Because when she asked if I had done breathwork, I assumed she meant a more like relaxing, meditative breath. And listen, I’ve done 10 to 15 years of pranayama, three to four years of Kundalini Kriyas. I’ve tried Wim Hof breathing paired with the cold dip, cold plunging. And so, when she initially asked, I answered, yes, I’ve done breathwork before. I know what breathwork is. All confident, cocky.

And when she responded, no, this is different. I could tell she meant it. And my intuition said, lean in closer, listen to what this woman has to say, give it a try. You will not regret it. And so I did. I tried it out. And in those 25 minutes, holy shit, my life flipped upside down. And I never looked back, because it truly wasn’t like anything I had experienced before. And I felt so alive and clear and creative and healed and transformed in just 25 minutes of this powerful breath. This specific style, because there are many, many, many styles of breathwork. So this one is called or at least, most commonly goes by conscious connected breath, which simply means that you consciously manipulate the breath. So you’re creating a pattern and a rhythm. And it’s connected, meaning it’s circular, there’s no breath holds, and instead you continue to breathe, but it goes by many other names as well.

It’s definitely one of those things that once you’ve experienced, you know what the hell I’m talking about, but we can do our best to put it into words as well. And it’s a three-part breath that has done to music. And what it does is it helps to interrupt the survival loop within our nervous system and release. What’s called the freeze discharge. And that’s part of our survival response of fight, flight, freeze, our stress response. So you can think of this as the freeze discharge as all the times that you’ve tensed up, held your breath, filtered your words, not expressed your emotions. And instead, that energy locks up in your body and it builds up in your nervous system.

And I know we’re all a little bit guilty of doing at least one of these things. Tensing up, holding our breath, filtering our words and not expressing our emotions. And so, what this does is, often causes us state of chronic stress and the survival loop never gets closed. And instead, it’s this broken record, a state of constriction within our nervous system. It’s like you never let out the deep exhale that life calls for. So, by using this specific breath technique, we disrupt that loop and thereby close it. So there’s no more frozenness. And in that process, we can dislodge old trauma and invite in healing. That has been often described as 20 years of therapy in 20 minutes. And whoever first said that, and came up with that, they were not freaking kidding. They were not joking. So this little secret weapon definitely deserves to be in the top three ways to create transformation for our clients. It also allows us to access an altered state of consciousness, so that not only can you heal from and release things from the past, but it’s like a doorway into your most psychic, intuitive, higher self as well. Which means clarity, creativity, inspiration, new ideas can flood in, just through this process, and in this short period of time.

So I’ve been teaching this breath and it’s mostly in my membership program where people get access to it. But every time at the end we go through and we do shares, and we do some check-ins and take inventory of what came up for that person and all the participants during that session. And some of the things that people have said, have been whole programs for their business, have downloaded during sessions and there’s immense clarity. And they are scribbling it into their notebook afterwards.

We didn’t need to do a 90-minute brainstorming session to come up with their next program. It came in in 15 minutes and bam, there it is. They’ve also said that they have healed relationships with a parent, whether it’s mom or a dad. And that’s been something that they’ve been working on for years or aware of for years, but they didn’t know what to do or how to actually heal that relationship. And through breathwork, they find that healing. And obviously, it has a ripple effect in many other areas of life as well. Clients have also changed their beliefs, sometimes whole belief systems. Other times a specific limiting belief that they’ve been carrying for a long time, that rewires. And they don’t have to worry about it anymore. Clients have also healed from disordered eating and completely transformed the way in which they see their body, love their body, and are in a relationship with food.

Many of my clients have worked on dropping perfectionism and seeing the results of that. So I’m thinking of one client in particular, who, after a session, she was just, she couldn’t even stay for the last five minutes. She’s, I gotta go. I gotta go. I have to go share this post, this content that just flew through me, channeled through me during that breathwork session. And it wasn’t like any other content you’d ever created before. And instead, it was this unfiltered, raw version of her who wasn’t trying to be perfect anymore. And instead was just sharing from her heart. And it was so beautiful. So these are just a few examples of some of the things that can happen for your clients when you guide them through breathwork. And as a practitioner, this is one of my go-to tools to help my clients access parts of their being that would otherwise stay buried, hidden, or just out of reach. Well, that’s breathwork. And that’s why I’m obsessed with it.

What EFT is and how it creates lasting change

My second, this isn’t in any particular order. So it’s just the second in the list. But one of my other favorite tools for creating transformation in my client’s lives. And this is p.s., not something I do for them. This is something that we do together. It’s a do with process, not a due to process. And this next modality is the emotional freedom technique. So it’s become very popular in recent years, also known as tapping. And there’s a lot of different styles of tapping. There’s not just one way to do it. And of course, people have put their own spin on it. And I bring my own spin and strategy to how I deliver and guide people through EFT as well. And I teach it in my own style and my own way inside of Illuminated too.

So I’m a huge proponent of therapy I’ve been in therapy for the last year. And that’s because there’s evidence that talking about things not only reduces shame. Yes, I’m rereading, Daring Greatly by Brene Brown right now because January’s are my no TV months. And I get way more reading time. And so, I’ve already read this book, but I’ve been reading it again. And it’s reminding me of how prevalent shame is in our beings. And how there is research and evidence that shows that talk therapy can help to reduce shame. Even just putting it out there and getting it off your chest, sharing it. And maybe knowing that you’re not alone in that feeling. And therapy also helps to reduce stress and anxiety that surrounds the things that are happening in your life. Now, all that being said, EFT is a practice that I feel takes it a step further in a more sustainable sense.

So it’s not to hate on therapy because again, I’ve been in therapy all year. Great benefits, but let me tell you why EFT is a little bit different. It’s a practice that I can, first of all, teach my clients to do on their own. So there’s no dependence upon me to hold the space. It has evidence, but it works. There are over a hundred studies that demonstrate its efficacy and it’s an easy way to remove blocks stored in the brain. So more specifically, this technique removes the blocks stored in the brain by triggering the stress response to turn off in our amygdala. And the amygdala is where negative experiences and associations are formed within our brain. And it’s what signals the fight, flight, freeze response in our body. So, unlike sometimes in therapy, when I leave feeling like a really big complainer, holy crap, can I complain any more?

And even though it does feel good to get it off my chest, the same triggers are often still there. They’re still present. So next time, the thing I talked about that day, when it comes back up again, I’m going to get just as stressed, again. Then, I’m needing to go back to therapy and I’m going to need to decompress it. Whereas, tapping allows for the switch to turn off and arousal around the issue to decrease, or stress around that issue to decrease. So for example, a client may come to you and they’re stuck in a pattern of, let’s say emotional eating, instead of talking about it, to reduce some of the shame and anxiety that makes us just eat. Using EFT, you can get to the root of what triggers that behavior and what emotion is underneath it. And what events this is related to from the past, and actually rewire the nervous system response.

And you can even take it a step further and install a positive behavior for a new method of dealing with those tricky emotions. Which is part of why tapping easily makes my top three for helping clients make really real long-lasting transformations in their life. So, for issues that I used to circle back with clients on, week after week after week as a health coach and in the early days of my coaching, that’s what I was doing, health coaching. Instead of circling back and back and back and back to the same thing. Now, these things get cleared up in one session. Maybe we’ll check in on them, but generally, they’re good to go. And therefore, our time can be used more effectively and we can tick more things off of the list and get way better results in however long we have to work together. So EFT is right up there with breathwork.

And something I literally just used yesterday. I had shame come up personally, and I felt shamed. I felt shamed by my husband. God bless him. I loved that man. But sometimes when we have conversations about money and investing money, I feel shameful. I notice that, underneath… So here’s the thing I noticed the emotion right away. I’m in touch with the body. I’m aware of the emotions. I noticed the shame and I could have talked about the shame certainly. And that probably would have helped to give shame a name, and to start to decrease the intensity of it. But I chose to go to tapping instead. And by tapping, I actually was able to peel back several layers of this shame onion. And underneath, I realized that there was this very sticky, icky belief that women are not supposed to make more than men financially.

And that was evidenced to me. It was shown to me within the story of my family. So I tapped that belief away because that’s certainly not true. And I know that on a conscious level, but it doesn’t mean that my subconscious wasn’t still thinking it, feeling it, believing it. And looking for evidence of it like in this conversation with my husband that made me feel shameful. And underneath that, there was actually a need for approval from men. Like my husband, as an example, and then need for his approval. Even though this is my business and I get to run it, how I want to run it. Oh, I felt that. And I was just, I can’t believe I’m still holding onto this, but I don’t think I would have got there if I hadn’t done the tapping. That peeled back those first two layers to realize that third layer underneath the shame was this deep seeking needing of approval from men.

So I tapped that out too. And felt so much better afterward that I didn’t have to feel resentment towards my husband. And I didn’t have to project that into my clients or let the energy or the frequency of it get fused into the content I wrote that day. And instead, it was just done. So it’s so powerful for you as a practitioner, to be able to do that on yourself and work through stuff. Also to help your clients work through their own stuff in a multi-dimensional, multi-layered way, where you are constantly peeling back layers of the onion.

So last night I was hosting a group call. It was a practice session for my Illuminated students as they go through their breathwork module. And we started off the session because it was our first call of 2021, just talking about what our intentions were or are for this year. And some people had words that they wanted to embody and bring into and infuse into their year. And one of my students shared her word was sacred. And I haven’t set a word for my year, but that deeply aligned with me as well. And I, over the last week or two, I’ve been finding these really sacred moments throughout my day. These little moments of deliciousness, these moments of just bliss and they don’t always last super long, but it’s the little tiny things. Like smelling the lilies that Andrew bought me this week. Or sipping on something warm and delicious. And I am holding space for more of those sacred moments in my day, throughout my day, every damn day of 2021. And I want to share with you all a new partner of the Uncensored Empath podcast, the brand is Organifi.

I actually been using this brand for years. And I recently hosted the Illuminated Virtual Retreat and sent amazing care packages to all of our students. And they got to have a bunch of samples of Organifi as well. So my favorite is the Gold, and this is a super food tea that’s filled with medicinal mushrooms and herbs. And it’s USDA certified organic and has, which is very important to me one gram of, actually less than one gram of sugar per cup. And it allows you to fall asleep faster and increase Delta sleep. However, side note, I usually drink it in the morning. It doesn’t put me to sleep in the morning, but it’s also really nourishing for right before bed. Some of the main ingredients are lemon balm, reishi mushroom tumeric, which gives it as a yellow color and ginger. And so my husband has been partaking in these new jars we have, of Organifi.

And his favorite is the red juice. And this is a superfood. Berry punch stuffed with fruits, herbs, and also medicinal mushrooms. And this one’s for skyrocketing your energy. Also, a hundred percent USDA certified organic, only has one gram of sugar per serving, and he is obsessed. It’s this yummy red juice that he just loves to down. And its main ingredients are beets, cordyceps, Siberian gnseng. And again, he just puts it into a shaker bottle with water, shakes it up and goes for it. I like to mix the Organifi Gold with my non-dairy milk. I’ve been drinking banana milk lately. It’s delicious. And I like to sip on mine and have those little savory sacred moments. So I would love for you all to try these products as well. There’s also the green juice and their new product called Harmony that I highly recommend you try out. And we have 15% off for all of the Uncensored Empath podcasts listeners. Simply go to www.organifi.com/empath. And Organifi is, O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I dot com. Again, backslash empath, E-M-P-A-T-H, ya’ll should know how to spell that by now. And go tell me what you think. Go put it in your Instagram story. Tag me, let me know you tried it and I will share it.

How to shift your coaching style from giving advice to creating empowered change

So let’s go into our third and final of the top three ways to create transformation with your clients. And that’s breakthrough coaching. Now, this is a very broad thing. What the hell is breakthrough coaching? This is just the words that I have put to my signature blend of intuition and subconscious reprogramming used in my client sessions. And so, we scan the client’s energy for imbalances, and then we invite them to get to the root of when that sensation in their body first began. And that could be this lifetime or even a past lifetime.

And by taking them through a guided visualization, we enter into a state, a brainwave state in which the critical factor of the subconscious mind begins to become more permeable, more pliable, which means it’s not so brick wall. And instead, it’s a little like there’s some doorways and some gateways to get through. And because of that, we start to access information in the subconscious that was previously locked away. And with that information, we can not only gather major insight and learning about the issue or imbalance that we’re investigating, but we can also create new neural pathways to change the most dominant recurring thought in that client’s mind. So we’re gathering the lessons. I literally visualize this as putting all the lessons into a basket-like Dorothy, from Wizard of Oz sorta. And then, we’ve gathered up all those insights and we create the new neural pathway so that the dominant thought that was existing has now shifted, into something that actually is in alignment with your goals, your desires, your dreams. because here’s the thing I don’t know about you guys, but I work with a lot of big dreamers. People who want to create for themselves and their family and the world.

These amazing lives have an immense impact. And in order for those big dreams to become theirs, to become reality, we have to get the fuck out of our own way. We got to move out of the way. And the subconscious, though not tangible, something we can see. That is often the big boulder in the way, because it has years and years and years of programming that was likely initiated and created out of survival, out of protection, out of fear, out of the bare minimum, out of lack or desperation. Out of moving away from what you don’t want versus towards what you do want. And so, this allows us to start moving towards what we do desire in those big dreams, versus just a way from what scares the shit out of us or triggers us in some way. So we’re able to access this information. We’re able to create the new neural pathways and that’s important because, 95% of our thoughts today, you, me and Sally, it doesn’t matter who you are. 95% of our thoughts today are the same as yesterday.

That’s a lot of the same thoughts. Stop and think about that for a second. 95% of our thoughts are the same today as they were yesterday. So how do we change? How do we make those 95% thoughts that actually support us and are in alignment with our big dreams? Well, change happens in the subconscious mind. And so once we’ve used our way in, using this process, we can start to access that information and change the negative resources that are stored in that part of the mind into positive resources. Or we can change the belief of, let’s say, I can’t do that into I’m more than capable. So hopefully, you can see how this would be so, so helpful for your clients who are stuck and in their heads. And they honestly want to change, or they wouldn’t have hired you or even thought about investing in this part of their life.

So they want to change, but it seems like no matter how much homework you give them, the time you give them, assignments you give them, it’s just not working. Or they aren’t following through, or the change isn’t happening, or they aren’t taking action. And that’s because change doesn’t happen by assigning someone homework. Change happens by helping someone recode their identity. And that includes their habits, patterns, and beliefs. So this is so, so powerful to help clients get and maintain results. So not only is that an amazing experience for them, in whatever container they signed up with to work with you. But they’re also just in love with your programs now, and they want to come back, because they love the medicine that you have to share with the world.

So, I mentioned before my toolbox is overflowing with practices, but there are a handful that I hardly ever touch. And then there are these three that I circle back to most consistently because they work. And they work damn well. They are breathwork, EFT tapping, and breakthrough coaching, a.k.a., a blend of intuition and subconscious reprogramming. And I wish that I had been introduced to them before I became a health coach or started creating my own signature programs, because, and maybe you guys can relate to this. In the beginning, I felt like I was just an advice giver. That’s what I was doing almost all the time. Just giving advice. This is what you should do. Here’s a way to fix that. Here’s this thing, listen to this, you should hear blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And there’s a time and a place to give advice, but coaching. If you call yourself a coach and if you really want to step into an empowered sovereign coach role, you got to move away from the advice-giving. You don’t have the best answers for somebody else.

What worked best for you doesn’t work best for somebody else. All I knew in the beginning of my coach journey as an entrepreneur was how to give advice. And most of it was based off my life experience, blended with the training that I went through. what really catapulted my business and change the way in which I show up now, is that I stopped giving so much advice. Unless someone, sometimes, I play a little bit of a consultant role when a client asks me how I did something in my business. And I’ll just tell them, I’ll say this is how I did it. Feel free to try it that way, but that may or may not work for you. And so that’s where I lean towards a little bit of the advice. But the majority of the time now is not advice-giving. It’s truly being a facilitator, a guide, and a coach, because if you rewind and remember these three modalities that I tap into most often, what you’ll see as a common thread is none of them were trying to have all the answers for our clients.

Instead, breathwork provides an experience for somebody to access their own altered state of consciousness and dislodge their own trauma in a safe space. EFT is guided by powerful, being a powerful question asker. Being really curious and helping your client discover for themselves all of the layers of the onion. And then, guiding them through the tapping sequence. And then, they tell you what’s underneath. You don’t have to read their mind to know. It also takes a lot of pressure off you as a practitioner. And then, thirdly, is that breakthrough coaching blend of intuition and subconscious reprogramming. And then the visualization that I take them through. I’m just asking questions. They see what they see, hear what they hear, feel what they feel. They transport back to whatever memory is theirs because I don’t know all their memories. I can’t answer that for them.

So that is a common thread in all three of these modalities, is that they’re not advice-giving. They are being the facilitator so that people can feel empowered and trust themselves enough to know that they can find their own answers. And I find that to be exponentially more powerful than the way, honestly, the way I started my business was advice-giving as a health coach. And I’ve moved so far away from that now.

So I’m curious, do you use any of these three currently in your practice, your business? Or are there others that you would put into your top three modalities that truly create transformation without the advice-giving and instead by being a partner with somebody in that exploration into change,? I’d love to hear what you think. So my DMs are open to you, or you can email me, sarah@theuncensoredempath.com and let me know. And if this has you really fired up or maybe just really curious, and you want to understand these deeper. Then I encourage you to reach out or visit my website and learn more about Illuminated. It’s theuncensoredempatjh.com/illuminated. And we’re currently on the waitlist, but the next class begins February, 2021. And it’s going to be good. Going to be good. So trust your gut, listen to your intuition. If you want more information, shoot me a message. Let’s get on the phone. Let’s chat. We’ll see if it’s a good fit for you. Check out the website, explore a little, and I’ll see you guys next week.

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