Sophia Wise One puts on the ‘Advice WINGS’ today with suggestions of how women can get past any feelings of shame, trauma, and stagnation or difficult transitions. An entrepreneur, Reiki master and ‘real deal’ shamanic practitioner, Sophia advises: Share your “me too” and listen to your body (aches and pains provide important clues about our mental and emotional wellbeing).
Sophia Wise One, welcome to Wings.
Sophia Wise One: Happy to be here. Thanks.
Melinda Wittstock: I always love to ask people what’s inspiring them, what’s inspiring you right now?
Sophia Wise One: What’s inspiring me right now is the courage that people are having to share their story with even more vulnerability and transparency that’s just spreading and just catching on, and I feel like it’s moving through generations, young kids, college people, adults, professionals are really getting inspired to speak their truth. It’s really moving me on a regular basis.
Melinda Wittstock: The hashtag me too is so moving and they are just the sheer numbers of women and some men as well who I didn’t even now had had that experience.
Sophia Wise One: Yeah, it’s been pretty profound being someone who works with women and specifically I do intra-vaginal bodywork, I do holistic therapeutic healing work, I work with people and I’ve understood the privilege of hearing people’s abuse stories for a long time. For over a decade, I understand that it’s a gift when someone shares their story like that, and so to have people having the courage and really receiving this support and, I think there is a very real dismantling of some serious shame that is happening right now. It’s powerful. It’s powerful to be part of.
Melinda Wittstock: It’s so interesting because that sense of shame from all these experiences that we have in our lives can often create the limiting believes that get in the way of us really stepping into our true power and even succeeding in business.
Sophia Wise One: For sure.
Melinda Wittstock: How does it manifest that with most of your clients and how do you help them out of it?
Sophia Wise One: Shame is actually one of the major things that I often work with, I find out. It’s really hard actually to do very much work at all, especially if you’re looking at transforming a mindset or changing a behavior without getting honest about how shame is showing up or driving us in our life.
[tweet_box design=”box_08″ float=”none”]shame is a blanket that covers a wound, and so it’s the act of keeping something secret and keeping something hidden. #WingsPodcast @SophiaWiseOne[/tweet_box]
One of the principal things that I share with people is that shame is a blanket that covers a wound, and so it’s the act of keeping something secret and keeping something hidden because it’s our nature, we’re designed as bodies, as animals to be working towards equilibrium that when we hide a wound, when we cover it, we actually limit its ability to heal or to get what it needs. So when we do that, when we hide, what we end up doing is we start really without any consciousness, most of us start to avoid anything that might bump into anything that starts to relate to or could possibly catch or expose. So slowly what happens over years and years and years, is that less and less of our life become accessible because it might fall down the rabbit hole and bump into this thing that we’ve kept secret. Even if it’s not a harsh secret, even those feelings of you don’t want people to know, the feeling of shame, which is a feeling that this thing is I’m a bad person because of this, not I did a bad thing but I’m actually … I’m a bad human being.
Melinda Wittstock: The entrepreneurial journey, given its ups and downs, the inherent ups and downs of twists and turns that entrepreneurs go through is surely at some point going to prick at that shame, and either, I suppose, you get to a fork in the road and either you grow or you don’t. So what is your advice, I want to get straight to the wonderful Wing’s advice segment where you got three top pieces of advice to share with all of our Shero listeners today, so what’s number one?
[tweet_box design=”box_12_at” float=”none” author=”Sophia Wise One” pic_url=”http://wingspodcast.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Sophia-wise-one.png”]Find someone who is worthy of hearing your shame story, whatever it is. #FemininePower #WingsPodcast @SophiaWiseOne [/tweet_box]
Sophia Wise One: Number one: Find someone who is worthy of hearing your shame story, whatever it is. Brene Brown talks about this, the worthiness of a shame story, she talks about how shame isn’t processed, it’s lifted, and it’s lifted by community, by witnessing. So find someone or something that you can share the thing you’re hiding with and make some space around it because it’s incredible how much more access you’ll get … Like we talked about these layers of things that we cut out, if you just go straight to the core, sit down, I call them confession sessions, sit down with some people or a person and just do some un-shaming, just literally just share some secrets, things that you think you should never have to talk about or wouldn’t want to know. It’s a really powerful radical transforming thing that’s actually pretty simple.
Melinda Wittstock: And just let that go. All right, what about number two?
Sophia Wise One: Okay, number two is your body is actually your ally. It’s not your enemy, even when you’re a business, even when you’re an entrepreneurial person. A lot of the times we can feel like the needs of our body are interrupting or causing problems to our endeavors-
Melinda Wittstock: Yeah, why won’t my body work 18 hours a day? Yes, exactly.
Sophia Wise One: Exactly! It’s really holding us back, it’s like our back pain is the problem, and our back pain is not the problem, our back pain is communication, making a direct request for us to do something differently. So just start with the principle that your body and all of the symptoms that you have are like a telephone ringing and are just trying to get your attention. There’s something incredibly important that your body’s trying to tell you and if you don’t know how to translate that message, that’s where professionals come in handy. There are other people who can help you figure out exactly what that is. But it’s not for no reason, it’s not because your body hates you, it’s because it’s trying to share something very useful. I promise when you listen to your body you will see positive productivity in your work as well.
Melinda Wittstock: That’s so true, it’s so hard to succeed without your health, your mind, body, spirit all of that being in balance and in health. So this brings us to number three.
Sophia Wise One: Number three, I’m going to have to go with a combination of one and two, I’m going to encourage you to look in the mirror, take some time with the door closed by yourself maybe and really get really, really close-up to the mirror and make some eye contact with yourself and ask yourself some of the hard questions that you’ve been thinking in your head, out loud. When you do that, don’t just listen for the answer, I want you to watch yourself and really see how much you can see how you’re feeling and what’s happening in your own reflection. It sounds a little trippy, but for some people it really works. Other people, it’s not so much their thing, but to actually just really have an intimate conversation with yourself about what is the thing that’s on your mind, is the product you’re working on or the offer you’re working on feeling off and feeling out of integrity? Is your marketing feeling heavy and dense and not like it’s yourself? Just look yourself in the eye and say, “Okay, what’s working? What’s not working?” Trust the person you’re talking to. Trust yourself in that conversation.
Melinda Wittstock: That is so beautiful. I know that I’ve done similar things with journaling. Really early in the morning just writing down whatever comes into my head. Or the other one that’s really interesting is writing with your non-dominant hand, asking yourself a question, writing with your left … It’s amazing. It’s surprising some of the things that actually come out of something so simple as that.
Sophia, you are truly the wise one. I really appreciate all of that advice. We can all put that into practice. Meantime, how can people find you and do you have any special offer for any of our guests today?
Sophia Wise One: I do, I love to play on Instagram and I’m at Sophia Wise Onewiseone there, and I’m at Sophia Wise Onewiseone everywhere else, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook. My website is Sophia Wise Onewiseone.com and you can find me and reach out to me that way.
My offer for you today is I made a card game, a deck, it’s an Oracle deck, and a card game that you play with a group of people, and it’s in presale right now because the book that goes along with it, the explanation and all that stuff is in the editor’s hand. I am giving everybody who’s listening today a 10% discount on my presale price.
Melinda Wittstock: That’s lovely. That’s so generous. Thank you very much. You are lifting lots of us Sheroes a little bit higher on their journey so that’s wonderful. I appreciate that.
Sophia Wise One: Yeah, absolutely. Happy to spread the word and share the skills that it has 72 different teaching concepts and then over 200 different practices for you to do at home or with a group of people. I’m just trying to spread the ways to get connected and lift ourselves and each other up. It’s what we’re here to do, right?
Melinda Wittstock: Fantastic. Yes, it is. I’ll make sure that we have all the details in the show notes for this Wing’s advice minisode. Thank you so much, Sophia
Sophia Wise One: Thank you. Have a great day.
