Leah Brathwaite: The pain & The Process of Soul Awakening & Accessing The Divine Through Kundalini

KRATI: Thank you so much for being here.

LEAH: Thank you. I’m really excited to chat.

KRATI: Can we please start with what brought you to this world with how you are serving people. I would love to dive a little bit deeper into the role that you play, how you serve your audience and your clients. That is if you have one-on-one clients.

LEAH: Yes, well it was a long journey of my own discovery and it came through at a point in my life where I had everything that I thought that I wanted. I had the husband, I had the houses, I had cars, I had the job, I had ticked off all of the boxes of the quote unquote perfect life that we’re all told in high school and that we’re all kind of told through society that we’re meant to have and I had gotten to this place quite quickly because I’m one of those like highly motivated people who is a bit of an overachiever. And so I was like, the sooner I get it all knocked up better and then I will have arrived. And then I will have figured out life. But what I found was that I actually felt more and more empty. The more I pursued things that I was told would bring me happiness.

So I was achieving a lot of milestones and getting to the end and realising. I’m really not feeling the way that I thought I would feel. And so it started me on this hamster. Well, that I think a lot of people can relate to of, well, when I have the next thing, then it’ll be the next thing, then the next thing, then the next thing. And then I’ll be happy and then I’ll feel fulfilled. So I had reached a point where I was in my dream house. We had just finished building our home. We were in there maybe six months or so, maybe a little bit longer than that. And I just had a spiritual moment and I had been raised quite religious and a really restricted religion, but I had what I would call a spiritual moment or what I also call an ‘oh shit moment‘ where your soul wakes you up to a realisation that there is something else beyond that’s happening. And I had this sense of a voice that came from within that said not for another second. And it was like, there was these two parts of me that separated.

There was like my cognitive self that was like, wait, what? And then this other deeper part that was rising up that was like, we can’t do this anymore. And as I was like differentiating and having this existential sort of crisis, I was looking around at this beautiful home that was perfectly decorated. It was everything that I had ever wanted. And I realized I felt lost. I was like, how did I get here? I felt like I was looking at somebody else’s life. I was so disconnected from it. And so it was that pivotal moment that gave me the opportunity to start looking at my life, my world, myself in a different way. And it was just that 10 seconds of courage of really allowing myself to tell the truth that my life might look perfect on the outside, but on the inside, I really felt devoid of any sort of fulfillment. I was emotionally full of anxiety. I was depressed and didn’t even know it. I had been battling disability for a couple of years at that point. And so I was really at this threshold that life offers us to be able to make a change. And I was brave enough to step over that threshold and start to make different choices, choices that felt like they were the truth instead of what I thought I should do or what I was told I should do or what I thought other people would want me to do. I started to really make choices from a place of authenticity, and that shifted everything in my life.

Everything sort of fell apart all to come back together and through that journey of transformation, of going from what I would say, living a lie, not maliciously, but really just not knowing myself and pretending to be something that I wasn’t to really aligning with my soul, my authentic truth and creating life based on that foundation. And so through that journey, I have learned a lot of tools. I have learned a lot of skills. I’ve studied with incredible teachers and mentors who have helped me to find my way on my path. And as a result, I’ve been able to serve clients. I do that through the books that I’ve written called A New Way of Life. I do that through podcasts like this, my courses that I offer and soon to be a really new and exciting actually, depending on when this comes out, it might already be live. But a new community that is online through an app that just creates a space for connection with your higher self, your limitless self so that you can live your best life too.

KRATI: That’s amazing. How much of your old life did you bring into this new one?

LEAH: I think all of it, because I think everything that shapes us, our past or which are what shape us in the moment, it doesn’t mean that we have to hold on to the pain, but all of the lessons that we learn along the way help to inform our future decisions. So it’s not like I changed myself completely. It’s more of I became more of who I was. And so everything that I learned throughout the journey of remembering and forgetting and remembering and forgetting, which I think is the entirety of our lives, has sort of come with me and informed things. And so I would say a lot of my past helps me to inform how I serve my clients.

I’m able to relate to their struggles. I’m able to see if I remember when I was in a similar situation or the emotions of X, Y, Z are similar to the emotions over here. And so there’s no part that sort of gets left behind. And when you think about transformation, the cliché example of transformation is a butterfly or a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. And so when that caterpillar goes into the cocoon, it’s not saying like, I’m a bad person, I have to get rid of all of these parts of myself. It literally just liquefies into a goo, which can sometimes feel like transformation when everything is like coming apart. But all of those parts that were present in the caterpillar just get alchemized and reframed into this new version of this expanded form. So I would say it all is with me, but it just is alchemized in a different way. So I’m not operating from those old patterns, but they have given me the capacity to go beyond them, but also to hold space for people who still might be struggling with them.

KRATI: So it was more of a gentle movement, not something that you drastically did because a lot of people have this idea that if we create very massive transformation, especially for that transformation comes from an emotional place, we have to break everything apart. Everything has to fall apart, which creates a lot of fear in people. And it also, I think, does the kind of damage that is not necessary. But it’s just a general idea that we have around transformations that, oh, you know what, I have to get rid of all the old to bring in the new. But that’s not what you’re saying you did.

LEAH: No, I actually did have quite a traumatic transformation, but it doesn’t actually need to be that way. And so for me, I didn’t have anybody guiding me. I had no idea really what I was doing. But if I give you the backstory of the before version of my life, I think it’s my old life. When I say like my old life sort of comes with me, it’s me myself, like my old self is still present. All of me is still there. But my life is very much different than what it was.

So as I mentioned at the outset, I was raised in really religious households. So I was very committed to the religion that I was raised in simply because it was such a restrictive community that it was a lot of fear that kept me in there. And so the reason why I had such a challenge being myself or following the things that my soul was calling me to do was because of that fear that you mentioned. I’m like, if I do what I want to do, then I have to let go of all of the things that are keeping this identity that I have here. And I think a lot of people choose to stay in uncomfortable situations because that comfort that they might know seems safer than the possibility of something even greater because there’s this unknown on the other side. And so for many years, even though I wasn’t happy, I stayed where I was because I was afraid of making any sort of change until I had that moment, that awakening moment and then I had to start making different decisions. And when I did, I realised that everything that I had built that was out of alignment with the truth of who I was then started to fall away.

So there is that breaking apart. And when you think about a caterpillar, it’s not a happy thing to liquefy your body, turn into goo and then become a butterfly. There is this dissolution. There is this sort of breaking down of things. But the more the more you connect with your inner self, the more that you have like tools that can support you, people that can support you, a community that can support you, the more you’re able to make these changes without feeling so lost and alone. I did not have that opportunity. I was very much feeling lost and alone as I was going through this transformative journey. I left the religious community that I was raised in. So at 30 years old, I lost all of my friends, all of my connections, everybody that I had known, every safe place that I had been able to turn to. My marriage also dissolved after that. My ex and I have a really great relationship and he’s wonderful but we were not compatible. And aligning myself with my own truth was a great realisation of sometimes the relationships that we forced ourselves into or that we continue to hold on to aren’t actually compatible with who we truly are.

But we become a different version of ourselves to make that relationship work. So everything in my life had fallen apart. A couple of years before that, I had lost my career due to disability. And I have the belief that the disability that came through or the nerve condition that developed out of nowhere was a result of that misalignment. It was a way of like my soul trying to wake me up. I mean, like you are so out of alignment that you are causing dis-ease in your body. There’s only so much emotion that you can try to repress or try to bury or try to push down and that energy gets trapped in different places in our bodies and creates this backlog and this dis-ease. So everything fell apart. So what you were saying, that fear that people have of like, everything’s got to fall apart and then you change, that happened to me because I refused to listen to the smaller whispers that my soul was trying to tell me all along. I think back to it.

If I really am truthful with myself. There were many moments where I knew better. Like there was a depth, there was an intuitive knowing of like, I need to say no to this. But my conditioning, my identity was that I say, yes, I’m a people pleaser. I do what I’m told. I’m a good girl. Blah, blah, blah. All of those things. So the story that I was trying to create my life around was leading me down a path that wasn’t truly aligned with my soul.

KRATI: Right. Right. Okay. I have yet to find a single person who’s ever said that, oh yeah, we made these drastic transformations and it was done in a very gentle, self-compassionate way. I would love to find someone saying that. I don’t know. Maybe they just, that is just not how these things happen. My own experience was very, very drastic, very painful. So maybe I’m just looking for something that doesn’t exist, but it would be nice to hear from someone that, oh yes, yes, it was a very gentle process.

LEAH: Maybe it just isn’t a gentle process. I don’t think it needs to be as painful as we sometimes make it. And I think that depends on the amount of support that you have around you. But there’s this burning away of old that happens. It’s like the Phoenix rising, that sort of journey into the underworld to recognize life.

For whatever reason, I don’t think we all need to hit rock bottom and I don’t think we all need to experience it in the same way. But I do believe that because of the conditions that we live on, on Earth, there is duality, there is polarity. And sometimes we need to get to the end of one spectrum before we can actually realise the other side. And so the more that we’re able to balance ourselves with these two extremes, the more we increase our capacity to experience life, to enjoy life, to feel life. But it is on a scale. You can’t just be like, I want deep fulfilment and deep love and happiness. I never want to have anything bad. It’s a lopsided equation that way. So it’s not saying you need to go through terrible things to be able to appreciate good things. But there is sort of this spectrum that we balance ourselves through in everything in life.

KRATI: Yeah, I think there’s also a lot of fear because it’s the unknown, right? You have been a certain way for so long in your life. If you were 30 by that time, then that’s 30 years of a certain kind of way of life. And for you to embrace something completely new, that’s also very scary. So there’s a lot of resistance. I think that complicates things a lot because now when I look back at the things that I used to do, I always think there is this element of surprise that I can’t believe I did those things. I mean, I should have known. I really should have known that this is not serving me. But at the time, it was so familiar and so comfortable. You just didn’t know how to be any other way. So I think that also kind of complicates things. But tell me what was the first thing that you did, like the first step you took as that realisation, you just started to absorb that realisation. What was the first step you took?

LEAH: Well, it actually started in that moment as I’m like putting away groceries and having this existential crisis in my kitchen. Like, oh my gosh, there’s like a voice to I like what the heck is happening. My husband at the time walked in and I guess he sort of saw that there was something going on because I was looking like a little askew. And it was in that moment he asked, are you OK? And in the past, I’ve been like, oh, yeah, I’m fine. And I would have just like brushed it off and pretended like everything’s fine. I don’t want to deal with whatever is happening here because a part of me knew that I can’t keep living like this and that means everything is going to change.

So the acknowledgment of that in that moment, that moment of truth and saying, I think there’s something wrong. I don’t know what it is, but I think I need to see a therapist. That was literally the first step. I was like, I don’t know what’s happening, but I’m freaked out. I’m not happy and I need help. And so I went and saw a therapist and we didn’t have very many sessions together. But the simple questions that she started asking me revealed where I could start looking. And one of the most transformational questions she asked is, what do you want? And I was like, well, I want everybody around me to be happy. And she’s like, OK, but what do you want? I was like, I have no idea. I had no idea because I had created my around doing what other people needed me to do, being whoever they needed me to be, doing what I thought people wanted or expected from me. And so I had no reference point of my own self of like, what do I actually want? What actually makes me happy? And so the next step after that was discovering what I wanted or what made me happy. And the first thing that came to mind was yoga.

I had always been interested in yoga, but in the religion that I was in, it was frowned upon. Actually, it was we were told not to practice yoga. And so I decided to start taking yoga classes. And that started to open me up to the differentiation between religiosity or religion and spirituality. And I had an experience of myself in a completely different way that allowed me to feel what I had been missing for so many years going to church. I would just think like, maybe I’m just bad at this and I need to pray more, or maybe I’m like, Satan’s got me. I don’t even know what. But I never felt connected to the religion. But when I started practicing yoga, I started to learn not only from the wisdom and the tradition of it, but also the experiencing of it. I felt it in my body. I had like an actual somatic sense of something divine, of something greater, of something supporting. And so yoga was what really started to open the door to a lot of the spiritual work that I started doing.

We started learning about the chakras and energy and all of that stuff. And I think what some people think is like when transformation happens, you have to know all of the answers and you have to know exactly what you’re doing. And you have to have a game plan of like, OK, I’m going from this thing that I’m not really happy with this thing that is going to be like all of my answers solved. But truly, it’s like a bread crumb journey of like following the next right step in front of you, the next call of your soul, the next whisper, as I call it. And that leads you down this incredible evolution or this transformative path that happens. And I think it’s Rumi that has the most beautiful quote. It says, ‘as you begin walking the way, the way appears. And so it’s each next step leads you to the next step.’

So it brings you into presence, it brings you into feeling your body, it brings you into awareness so that you can start to make decisions from not your brain or what your conditioning tells you or what society tells you, but what you actually feel from the deeper part of you.

KRATI: Beautiful, thank you so much for saying that, because if we can, by the end of this conversation, create a safe space for people who are in that place in life, I think that would be awesome, because it is a very isolating journey. You rarely have a partner in these journeys. You rarely have someone who’s going through exactly what you’re going through that rarely ever happens. You know, I would love for you to share a little bit more about like, I think therapy as the first step. Awesome.

I think that there’s nothing better than you starting with therapy, because that’s amazing. Because therapy, even if it is not such a great, like I really believe that you, there is a certain kind of therapist out there or there is a certain therapist out there who’s meant for you. And because I’ve had one therapist who really changed my life and after that, the therapists I’ve had were just, I just stopped taking therapy after that because I couldn’t find anyone who was as awesome as he was. So he was like my soul therapist. So like you have soulmates, I believe you have a soul therapist, like someone who’s perfect for you.

Therapy as the first move in that period of life is awesome. I think that’s great. But talk to me about how you felt, like the sense of isolation that you experienced, because I think that’s something people struggle with. And I find it difficult to comment on that because for me, being alone, being solitary in my journey is more natural. I just have always been someone who is very possessive of challenges and pain. So I like to tackle that on my own. So I’ve never been able to comment on that. I would love to understand from you because you were married, so you were clearly in a companionable relationship. How, what was it like to realize that, okay, the next, this next journey is all mine. I have to go on it on my own. Was there a sense of isolation? If yes, then how did you manage that?

LEAH: Oh my gosh, a hundred percent. So the decision to leave my religious community sort of opened the gate to reassess all of my decisions. So I made every decision in my life based on the fact that I was in this religious community and that this is what we do. And so when I took away that, it’s like the legs from all of the decisions I had made were wobbly and there was nothing for it to really stand on. And so I really had to reevaluate, like, why did I make these choices? And one of the things that came up was my marriage. I had made the decision based a lot on the foundation of the religion that we shared together. And so when that was gone, I lost, together we had lost all of our friends, all of our connections, like 30 years of any sort of community that I had ever known. So that in itself was quite isolating because it’s like once you leave, nobody can talk to you sort of thing. But then when I continued down the road and I was like, oh, the marriage part is also part of that.

The dissolution of my marriage created an entirely different level of isolation because it wasn’t just losing a partner, it was losing the entire extended family that went with it. And so here I was, no friends, no husband, no extended family. And his family was a really big support. It was a big part of my life. And so I got to a place where I was completely alone and it was me in the self-help book section, truly. And just a lot of yoga, a lot of journaling, a lot of tears. I didn’t even think or have the sort of option of any sort of coaching or mentorship at that point. I didn’t even know that that was an option. I was really just kind of navigating through on my own and I would like go and do yoga. I did many teacher trainings. I would go on retreats. And really it was the job that I felt I had in that time was like learning to be my own best friend. Because I also was disabled. I wasn’t able to work. I had a nerve condition that ended my career. So I also didn’t have colleagues.

I really had nobody that I could turn to. And to say that it was isolating was an understatement. But in that regard as well, it created such a deep foundation of self-trust and self-reliance and self-love. And it really, being on my own became like a formidable strength. And it’s now something that I truly appreciate even though my life was quite full. I have a lot of connections, a lot of really beautiful people in my community. There was that transition period where I had nobody and nothing. And it was really just like, but I have myself. And so that was the reestablishing of this relationship. And so the same way that when you start dating somebody new and you want to get to know them, and you’re like, how do you like your eggs? How do you like your coffee? What are your favorite things? It was really like I was getting to know myself in that really intimate way. What makes you happy? What do I want to do if I don’t have anybody to answer to? And that was the transitional phase. And it’s funny because one of the first sessions with my therapist, I had told her, I’m like, listen, I’m part of this religious community and I’m having a crisis of faith.

I don’t feel connected to it. I don’t want to do it anymore. I’m just going because I feel guilty and everybody I know goes. And she said, well, you know what? I actually have a client who was in that same religious community and he left. And it only took him a year to find a whole new group of friends to recreate his whole life. And when she said that, I like my heart sunk. I was like, a year? There’s no way I’m going to survive a year. Like what? And it was a little bit less than a year. It was actually much shorter than a year. But by the time I was able to really say like, okay, I’m settled. I’m solid. I have this completely new life for myself. It was probably like nine months. But we think that a year is like a long amount of time. We think like it’s forever. But truly it’s really, everything can change in a year. And it’s an opportunity for us to just look at our time a little bit more. We overestimate how much we can do. And then we also underestimate how much we can do in our time frame. So nothing lasts forever. And that was the thing that I would tell myself. I’d always be like this too shall pass. Nothing lasts forever. The way I look back on this is going to be in a completely different light. I just need to keep going forward.

KRATI: I love that. And I have to say, I think we don’t allow ourselves the space to really let go. I think because we’re always trying to keep our shit together. We are trying to present this facade to the world where at least it looks like we know what we are doing, where we are going. And it’s all good. I think it would be great if we can just let go. Like give ourselves this space and this permission to say the words, I have no clue what’s going on. I have no idea where I’m going, how this is going to end. But that’s okay. I think that’s very scary because we’ve all been raised in a way where we are supposed to have the answers. Because anything else is you wasting your life. Anything else is you just being lazy and just not doing enough.

LEAH: The funniest thing was like at 23 when I was like, okay, I’m married, I bought my first house, I have my career, I know what I’m doing, I know who I am. I can give people a little blurb of like I’m a registered dentist, I’m married to this man and I do this on my weekends. I have answers for everything. I was like perfect, I’ve got life figured out. I don’t know why people think it’s so hard. But those were just the identities that I had created for myself. That wasn’t actually who I was. And so now there’s a completely different way that I look at life and really it’s like, I mean honestly this is my best guess. And I have an idea that this is going to work out, but at the end of the day I really have no clue.

Anybody who is like this is the exact only right way to do things. I have a question because we live on a planet that is spinning in space and there’s so many things that we don’t understand. So what makes us think that we have like that it’s possible to have every single answer in the moment of like how our life is going to go, what’s going to happen. Not many people knew that the whole pandemic was happening. I think that things can surprise us. Life is a continuous co-creation with us and the 8 billion people that live on this planet. There’s like infinite possibilities for the way that things can unfold. But I find that the more present I become and the less I pretend to know about the future, the more I’m able to create the future that I actually want to see. Because when I’m in this moment, that’s where all of my power is. That’s where all of my decision making abilities are. That’s where I can feel the next right step. I can use my intuition. I can align with the opportunities in front of me. But when we live in our heads in this projection of the five-year plan, the 12-year plan, the like whatever, we miss the living of life. We don’t actually get to participate in creating it. We’re just trying to meet this objective. And a lot of times we don’t get to really experience what it is to be a human, feeling, creating, being. And that is the whole point.

KRATI: Beautiful. I also feel like if you just stop being so hard on yourself for like just a minute and look around yourself, especially in the past two, three years, nobody has any idea what they’re doing. The way the pandemic was handled, like all of these people who are in such high positions with so much power, they don’t know what they’re doing at all. This is something that’s become so clear. Everyone’s just making shit up and sitting in front of a camera, a microphone and making it sound like they know what’s happening. But tomorrow something good happened that could just pull the rug from under your feet and you’ll be flailing around not knowing what’s happening. So just stop pretending and take, like you said, each moment as it comes and just handle that one moment, be in that one moment and figure out the next one when it comes along. And we’re always pushing ourselves to appear a certain way, which is I think what just makes life unnecessarily hard. I’m sure that must have been an element in your journey as well. So tell me about how you, did you start expressing yourself right away as you were walking down this very different path? Like you said, yoga was something that was not okay in the environment that you’d grown up in, yet you embraced yoga as one of the first steps. So what was that like? Did you start expressing this new identity that you were building for yourself right away or was it more gentle than that?

LEAH: I didn’t actually know I was building a new identity. I felt so lost. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing. I’m doing yoga. So it kind of, and this is what I mean by as you walk the path, the path appears. Like as you walk the way, the way appears for you. It was just this moment in a yoga class where I was like, I’ve done this before. It was like a soul remembering of like, I have taught before in some other lifetime or something because it comes so naturally. It feels so true. It feels very aligned. And so I just followed that and I was like just literally following the next thing in front of me. So it started with yoga. I started teaching yoga reluctantly, but there was a position that had opened up at the studio I had taken my teacher training at. And so I wasn’t like, here’s my new identity. I am now this. I was like, oh God, I have to go to yoga class because there’s nobody else to do it. And so it was sort of this reluctant embodiment or embracing of the next step. And as I did that, I started to just feel a little bit more comfortable in my practice and the desire to share because it had been so helpful and so transformational to me.

I was like, I want other people to be able to experience this too. So it came from more of a place of service than anything. And then from there, I started to create, I actually started a jewellery company because I had started to really get into the spirituality of meditation and japa and using malas in my meditation. So I had made myself a mala necklace because I was like, I’m getting divorced. Everything’s going to shit. I just need something to hold on to that reminded me during the day that I’m going to be okay. And I was really embarrassed and bashful about it because I was like, I thought people would judge me. I thought people would make fun of me or I thought people wouldn’t understand.

So I sort of kept it to myself. But a friend of mine who I had met through just putting on a necklace and wearing a japa necklace, I was like, I’m going to get divorced. And so I started getting myself out there more. I noticed my necklace and she was like, oh my god, it’s so beautiful. Where did you get it from? And I was like, oh my god, I’m embarrassed. I don’t want to tell her that I actually made it. I’m going to tell her I made it. I told her I made it. She was like, oh my god, I want you to make me one too. And that was one of those next steps. And so all of a sudden I started making these spiritual jewelry pieces for people and that sort of translated into a serendipitous moment walking into a Lululemon store. And I remember seeing my mala and saying, oh my god, that’s so beautiful. Where did you get it? And I said, I made it. And she was like, oh my god, you should sell them here. And so that was the next step. I couldn’t have predicted or I couldn’t have planned like, I know, I’m going to be like an ambassador for Lululemon and I’m going to do this and this and this. It was just one of those things that sort of started.

So I started teaching workshops at Lululemon. That sort of got me more comfortable being more known as a teacher. And then I did another teacher training, which was my Kundalini Yoga teacher training, and that completely changed my life. And from there, that was sort of what created this like deep burning fire of like, I want to teach people how to access this power for themselves. I want to teach people how to tap into their own limitless selves, into their own souls. Because I had discovered for myself, this was probably a few years after my divorce and that whole dissolution of my old life, I realized that we’ve been sold a lie in our society, that we need things outside of ourselves to be powerful, to be successful, to xyz to find fulfillment. But when it’s sourced from your soul, it can never be taken away from you. You tap into the creative potential that is gifted to you by the divine, the energy that creates the entire universe is that spark in our, in our beings, our souls that allows us to be the most powerful person in our lives. And so through that Kundalini teacher training, it really activated my own potential energy and ignited sort of this sense of purpose or this sense of like a mission of I want to tell as many people as I possibly can that they are in fact the most powerful person in their lives. And that it’s quite simple to come into that aligned relationship with self. And you don’t have to do it alone. You can be fully supported in it.

There are simple practices that you can use. You can embody it. So it’s not just somebody as a talking head being like, you should do this, this and this. It’s actually the embodied practice and feeling of it in yourself that allows you to experience that divinity for yourself. So it was all of these little steps that sort of created the identity or that created the experience. It wasn’t just like, you know what, I think I’m going to just be an expert. It was a walk for myself. It was the stumbling and failing many times and being human and not knowing what the fuck I was doing and then figuring it out and looking backwards and being like, oh, I didn’t know that I was doing something great. That actually worked.

So in my human design, that’s the way that I synthesise things. That’s the way I create. I fail forward and continue to fail forward and then realise, oh, there’s an actual easier path. Let me tell the people what not to do so that they can get to where they need to go sooner.

KRATI: I love that. I really, really love that. Thank you so much for being so candid about it and letting people know that, you know, it’s very messy because it is very messy. But when you put it in an article, like I’ve written articles about my journey or when you put it in an Instagram post, it comes across as so clean and polished that I would sometimes look at it, like read it back to me and I’d be like, what? No, this is not me. But that’s just how it comes across because nobody can actually feel just how abandoned you felt, how confused you were.

So I thank you for sharing that. And yes, yes to finding your power within yourself and not outside of yourself. I’m going to say something that’s going to make me sound very smug, but I don’t mean to be smug about it. But anytime now I meet people who have like everything figured out, everything figured out, and they’re like these type A people, they’re go-getters. They’re just it’s like the step one, step two, step three, step four. This is how my entire life is going to go. And I’ve got to figure it out. I’m very sad for them because I’m like, oh, my God, there is so much this person is blanking out because I feel like there are forces around us that are constantly, constantly talking to us. And if you’re not confused at all times and if you’re not looking for answers at all times, there is so much you’re blanking out.

There is so much you’re just not paying any attention to. And you’ve locked yourself onto this little bubble and onto this path. And you’re just refusing to open the doors and the windows and let anything else in because maybe you’re scared or maybe you just, you know, developed an insensitivity to everything else around you.

Is that something you would agree with? Because that’s something I’m very reluctant to say that because it makes me sound kind of smug. But this is how I feel. I don’t know anything. I am learning constantly. I know very little about life, about world, about God. But it’s a journey. But at the same time, it’s like I’m open. Teach me new things. I am always happy to learn from someone who is on completely a different journey than myself.

I sometimes, people would try to teach me something about my religion, like Sanatana Dharma, Hindu Dharma. And it’s like I know stuff, but they would present a different perspective that may not be the nicest perspective on it. But I’m like, OK, teach me. Tell me what you believe. Let me look at it through your eyes. So I don’t know. Was ego ever an issue for you as you were taking on this journey and where you are right now?

LEAH: Oh, my God. Yeah. And it still continues to be. It’s not something that disappears. We need a certain amount of ego to be able to be a human, like to be able to have an individualised experience. But to your point of the open mindedness that I think is so necessary to be a human, to embody the divine and the human aspect, we need to be open to different perspectives. That’s why we’re here. And I think probably from your position and mine as well, like knowing that the one time that I thought I had it all figured out, I was so far off that almost like this, this this sense of compassion.

I think that’s why I think we need to understand it so deeply because we are all conditioned. It’s part of our genetic makeup to seek certainty. Don’t do well in the uncertainty. Even if we have all of the faith practices, even if we have a strong relationship with God or the divine or source or whatever, even if we are a faith based or a spiritual person, our human requires certainty. Our brains are programmed to seek out ways that we can keep ourselves safe and to keep ourselves comfortable and to keep ourselves alive. So when we have these uncertainties, of course, we’re going to resist them because it almost feels like there’s a death beyond what we know. And there is this constant ego death, this constant dying to our old selves to become something new. And I truly believe that’s the journey of the soul, this continuous expansion, this letting go and this taking in. Like when we think of the breath, it’s the inhale and the exhale. We’re dying and being reborn in every moment.

So I think it’s important to have the perspective of being open. But for the people who are clinging to their certainty as a way to just make it through the day, I have deep compassion for that as well because I know what it’s like to be afraid of not knowing. It feels terrifying when you don’t know what else to base your beliefs on. And so I think one of the greatest gifts that we can give ourselves is creating a belief system for ourselves that allows us to open just one percent more every day, allow ourselves to be seen as an evolving being instead of like a set solid thing that’s going to plunk its way down the path to like the check marks or whatever. Because there is a certain requirement of humility and openness to continue to expand into your highest self.

You have to be humble enough to realise you don’t know what you don’t know and that there’s always something more to learn. Like your body is different every day. The planet is different every day. You can’t assume that everything is as static as I think we would hope it to be. If we think of it as like every day is the same, then it feels like the certainty that we can get through every day. But when we start to look at who knows what the presence is going to bring, like there’s a gift in every moment. Yes, there’s a gift in every moment, but unless we’re open to receive it, we just assume that that is this one linear path. But the reality is that there’s infinite potentials that are that are always available to us. But when, as you were saying, like when you’re really focused on like this is the only way that I can get through life, like these steps like XYZ, 123, whatever you want to call it, it limits the experiences that we’re able to have in our lives. And yes, so I think you’re bang on with like the necessity for open mindedness, for the ability to be taught by others for a deep sense of humility. And I think humility is divinity. It’s the recognition that there’s something beyond. There’s something bigger that is kind of running the show and we’re playing our part in it. But we’re not we’re not the be all and there’s there’s infinite support. There’s infinite forces. There’s so much beyond what our eyes can see that are that is also present with us.

KRATI: That’s beautiful. Thank you for saying that. Yeah, I think humility, ego, all of it comes and goes. I feel so humble certain days and some days I get my back up very quickly and I react like, no, I know what I’m doing. You don’t have to tell me. And then it’s like, no, no, no, don’t do that. Don’t do that. So you have to correct yourself. You have to be like, OK, maybe this person sees something that you don’t see. You know, hear this person out. Don’t go into this conversation with all of these ideas already taking up space. So it’s not like I’m saying this and I’ve got it. I know how to be. I don’t. It’s a struggle.

LEAH: It’s a constant, constant struggle. And I think it’s important to recognise that even if you do think it’s the truth and even if it is the truth for you, it’s one version. There’s eight billion people who all see things so differently. The colours that I see might not be the way that you see them or the taste that I experience might not be the exact way that you see them. You experience them. We all have our unique vessel that we’re translating all of the information that’s coming through us. And so if you can recognise that, it’s not like one solid truth.

The truth is like the culmination of all of everybody’s truths altogether. But there’s like the bigger omnipresent truth. And then there’s our individual truths or right ways of doing that. So when I share things, it’s not from a place of like you must do it this one way because other all other ways are going to fail. It’s simply like I walked through a fire, I got burned and I found a way that worked for me and I’m offering it as something that you can take. There are hundreds of thousands of other ways to do it. This is one that I know for a fact worked because I did it. But it’s literally just an offering and you can take it or leave it. And I think that also that sense of discernment is important for people to start to develop for themselves. Like just because one person says it this one way, it doesn’t mean that I have to accept it. It doesn’t mean that I have to fight against it. Even if I don’t agree, I can literally just turn and go somewhere else. And I think that’s a whole other tangent or a conversation about like people jumping on van wagons and like needing to cancel or to argue or to fight everything. Sometimes you can just let somebody’s perspective go and sometimes you can take it in and and it resonates as valuable. Great. If it doesn’t, great. Keep on walking.

KRATI: Yeah, it’s a it’s a hard thing to do because sometimes we would see all of these people who are making an argument out of things that in your head doesn’t need to be an argument. But it’s become an argument and they’re like people, forces and forces of people joining in. It’s become vicious and it’s become ugly. And it’s hard. That’s just how the world is very divided. So you kind of feel pushed to pick a side. But at the same time, it just it’s I don’t really believe that is how we any of us should be. We shouldn’t question how somebody else wants to exist in this space. Yeah, but it’s hard. It’s what you said.

it’s beautiful. And I get that sense from your content, from the way you share things. Nothing is being pushed. There is no ego operating here. I mean, obviously we all have some ego, but I feel like there’s a very, very gentle, warm energy there. And so I love that about your content. That was one of the things that drew me to your work. Can we please talk about what spiritual tools you most actively lean on?

LEAH: Well, Kundalini is a big proponent or a big aspect of the work that I do right now. But a lot of it is an interesting blend of a lot of mindset work because I have quite a strong mind. I process things mentally very well. I create a lot of stories and meaning and I need to understand things. It’s just the way that my human design is set up. I meant to kind of investigate things in a really intellectual way. So as much as I am deeply, deeply spiritual, I believe in all the Guru stuff and all the esoteric things and the things that we can’t see. And I can feel things, see things, and I know things on an intuitive level that I can’t really explain.

There’s also a part of me that really understands the power of the mind and how we create our identities, how we create our belief structures and how those things move us through our lives. So it’s a balance of the personal development side of things and the spiritual development side of things that I blend into this unique perspective. And it embodies some of my journey, but it also, I think, allows people to connect to their own journeys in a way of looking at it from a logical sense, but also this really intangible spiritual lens. And that’s what a soul advisor really is. I use my intuitive gifts to be able to sense other people’s energy, to see impressions and things around and about them. But I also really use a lot of tangible tools and mindset work to be able to get all parts of the self on board. So it’s the mind, it’s the body, it’s the soul, all sort of coming together as one.

So Kundalini has been something that has been an incredibly powerful transformative practice for me. When I did my teacher training back in 2016, it was really a pivotal moment in my life. And so I bring it into the work that I do. I sort of went from Kundalini to being super into the spiritual realms. And then when I wrote my book, I was like, wait, I think I need to be a coach. I think I need to be more like, there’s a box that I think I just put myself into now that I’ve written a book and I’ve talked about mindset and sort of stuff. So I kind of, again, that the way appears and failing forward, not to say that anything was really a failure, it was just a learning process.

So I moved away from the deep spiritual practices and got more into the headier space of things like mindset and behavior and that kind of work. And now I find myself going back and bridging both of them together into a new body of work that is really powerful. So the one to one work that I do called SoulRx is really a combination of those things. It’s part of my mindset work and it’s also held in the container of my intuitive coaching or mentorship. And then I have a number of programs that are on all kinds of different things. So from energy to mindset to manifestation to working with money. And so there’s a lot of moving pieces that all create a really unique body of work.

KRATI: Okay, this is going to be a little challenging for me because Kundalini is supposed to be a secret art. Kundalini for the longest time was hidden in the Hindu Vedas and nobody was allowed to know about it openly. But then there was, I think, someone who took it to the Western world and shared it openly. And then if you meet a Sadhu, someone who is very ascetic, someone who has reached a level of wisdom, a level of consciousness that’s beyond what ordinary people experience. They will always tell you to come in and they’ll assess you and then they’ll read your energy and your wives and they’ll read your readiness for Kundalini. Because Kundalini is supposed to unleash something in you that is going to be very, very, very powerful. And if you don’t, if you’re not equipped to handle it, it can really like I think it was Sadhguru who I’m going to share the link to that conversation.

He was the one who mentioned that if you are not ready for Kundalini and if you unleash that within yourself, you can even go crazy. It is something so powerful that not everybody is equipped to handle it. And giving it giving this teaching away, like in a generic class is not advisable. And that is that obviously depends. I feel like it depends on what Kundalini you are practicing. Like there is probably a version of Kundalini that was hidden in the Vedas that is still continues to be hidden in the Vedas. And then I’m guessing there is a watered down version of it because now we see like YouTube videos on Kundalini, which seems very to me seems very strange. Someone who’s read the Vedas.

So talk to me about more about that, because that’s very interesting that you practice Kundalini. And you said it yourself that you also experienced this complete like transformation as you started practicing it more and more. So tell me more about practicing Kundalini, how you practice it, because there’s a few methods of practicing Kundalini.

LEAH: Oh, totally. And you’re not the first person to say that you’re not the first person to bring that up of like this is a sacred art that was meant to be hidden. That was like literally like the jewel of these wisdom teachings. And the way that I learned it was, well, there’s we’re opening up a whole kind of tangent here, but the way that I learned it was through the teachings of the yogi master that brought it over from India to the West in the 60s. And it was something that he had worked with his teachers for many, many years. And it was something that was gifted to him as knowledge and wisdom. And it was really frowned upon that he was bringing it over to the West.

But the reason he did that was because he also understood that we are entering the age of Aquarius, that we are coming into a time where people need the capacity to be able to hold themselves through the change of the eras. So while it’s a sacred art that was beneficial for many, many years and it was practiced really only by royalty and it was like a lineage that was translated from one master to a student who was worthy and ready of it. And now all of a sudden he’s bringing it. And like you said, just like freely handing it out to our teachers. There was a controversy around that when he decided to come to America to bring that wisdom. But as I mentioned, the whole premise behind him coming here was because he understood that there was going to be a time or a transition phase in humanity where the overwhelming stress of life would require that we had more power within ourselves to be able to hold it. Otherwise we would be crushed by the pressures.

He talked about technology being overtaken as we move out of the Piscean Age and we move into the Aquarian Age. There’s no longer going to be this hidden aspect of things. Everything is going to be brought out into the open. It’s going to be more of this collective expansion and elevation of consciousness that was happening. So that was the reason why he brought it over. And the teachings that he brought, as you said, there’s probably a version of Kundalini that is like the purest traditional lineage of the Vedas that is still hidden. And the way that he brought Kundalini over into the West very likely is that sort of watered down version. So there’s more of a Sikh tradition that’s brought into the teachings that he brought forward. And the way that we practice it is in longer kriyas.

There’s sets of exercises that we do that are specifically designed for a specific result. And then there’s also shorter experiences that you can have. And that’s mostly what I teach. I don’t do a lot of the long 90-minute classes unless I’m teaching at a studio. But when I work with clients, we’re working on a really short and contained experience so that it isn’t that overwhelming of like, Oh my God, I just activated something. My head popped off. I have no idea who I am. I’m a spirit in the body and blah, blah, blah. And like go crazy or whatever. So it is more of a controlled and a proven system that over many, many years, over a lot of practice, there’s like a, I don’t want to say a, it is kind of like a prescriptive practice. There is certain practices that have been developed or that have been codified for a specific outcome or a specific result. And so it’s not a change of Kundalini activation. It is with the intention of the specific results that it creates.

So it’s not awakening it in a way that is uncontrollable. It’s a way of a specific benefit. So it could be heart opening. It could be releasing negative thoughts. It could be creating more stable self. It could be anything. There’s literally a kriya for just about everything in this tradition of Kundalini. And so it’s created so that it can be a householder’s yoga. So that we don’t have to be like a Saru or a guru in the caves that is really just spending their entire lives in this isolated experience of spiritual union through these practices. It’s bringing them into everyday life so that people have ways to expand their nervous system. So that they can tap into their creative potential so that they can feel the power of their creative life force energy and use that to generate something positive in the world.

So this practice of Kundalini is a version or a tradition that is here to support people in their expansion and in their experience of themselves. It’s not to necessarily have the same outcome as perhaps the tradition in the Vedas of that really deep experience. It’s to have a sense of self, to have a sense of power, and to really more than anything else expand your nervous system and your capacity, your energetic capacity so that you can hold everything that life is bringing us. We have so many challenges in the way that we’re moving through our modern world that these practices are supportive to having a purposeful, fulfilling, and a victorious life instead of feeling overwhelmed, stressed out, anxious, and diseased by life.

KRATI: Yeah, I think I like that. I love how you put it. Because as much as I respect this idea that this art was hidden for a reason and it’s in the Vedas and you should consult the Vedas or have a guru who is someone who has some kind of Siddhi. Siddhi, I don’t know if you know what that means. Siddhi is someone who is actually an expert in that art and who has achieved that level of consciousness where they can safely be a conduit for that wisdom.

I completely respect that but at the same time, like you said, everybody is struggling and we need something more. Something more, something that goes beyond the conventional treatments, goes beyond therapy, that connects you to your soul. So I do appreciate the work you’re doing and I love that. I am someone who practices Kundalini more through Jap. Because I’m a Hindu, I’ve been praying to Shiva my whole life. Shiv Shakti is something. That’s what Kundalini is about. It’s about Shiv Shakti. I’m a passionate Shiva follower. I’m someone who always says that Bholenath and I are best buds. So that’s a very easy, friendly way.

My day starts with 108 chants of certain mantras that really help me. But I do know that there is a certain kind of hostility that comes from other people and from within ourselves. Whenever we walk these paths and have all these mysteries around it. And things are very different in Kali Yogi. So I think we need more accessible forms. Because some people will never go to a Guru. Some people will never even think about going to a class where it’s all wisdom, it’s all consciousness.

The furthest they’re going to travel is to a YouTube channel. But they deserve to have something that connects them to their soul. So I have deep appreciation for the work that you do. Yes, I am definitely spooked by what the Gurus tell us about Kundalini. What the Vedas tell us. It’s such a massively powerful tool. So I appreciate if you put it across. I’m sure you know more about Kundalini than I do. Because I just have this one form of practice. But the fact that you make it so that everyone can access it. I appreciate that so deeply that you do it. As much as the Hindu Gurus don’t appreciate it. I do.

Okay, let’s also please talk about… I know this is a point of struggle for a lot of people. When you start walking the path of spirituality. There are ascetics who just left this material world and gone on to live in the mountains. But for the rest of us who live in this world. Where we have attachments, where we have materialistic goals. So we all have this point of struggle. Where we’re like, we’re walking the spiritual path. But we also want to build a fancy house. Or we also want to share our accomplishments. Let people know that, oh I’ve achieved this. And that clashes. I experience that struggle. I want to just stay detached. Again, I feel like that’s again something that opens up new channels for you. The more you go through those struggles and try to master those. Have you ever experienced that? And if yes, what would you tell people? How are they supposed to navigate that?

LEAH: I like nice things. I don’t see it as a problem. I did just want to touch back a little bit on what you had said about the resistance that people feel. Often for these more spiritual type of practices. Because if I’m perfectly honest with you. I started my yoga teacher training with Ashtanga and Hatha and I did yin. And I was very resistant to Kundalini yoga. Because in the yoga community that I was in. There was a lot of white. There was the turbans. There was the Sikh tradition. I felt very much like they do weird stuff in there. Because it’s not like another yoga. It’s very strange. There’s times where I’m even doing my own practice and I’m like this is freaking wild. But we are often just afraid of what we don’t understand. And we don’t allow ourselves the opportunity to experience or to learn more about it. Because of that resistance. And so it was a series of serendipitous events that allowed me to open myself up to experiencing Kundalini. And when I did I was like oh no there’s something here. But the fear that goes along with the things that we don’t understand. Like somebody said it’s going to make you crazy. Or somebody said you’re not supposed to do it. Or somebody said da da da da da da. All of those things hold us back from experiencing parts of life that are meant to be a part of life. And so while there might have been a time where it was necessary for it to be a secretive practice. And I totally respect that tradition. I understand the reason why. I think it’s the same as like the 1% who are hoarding their billions.

It’s like the masters who are hoarding their wisdom. And they’re both experiences of the same sort of thing. So the way this ties into that idea of like attachment and detachment. And like having nice things and then being on a spiritual path. They’re not mutually exclusive. They’re on the same playing field in my opinion. So I believe that love is the currency of the universe. That it permeates everything, all of creation. And I think on the material physical plane, the planet that we’re living on, money is the currency of our planet. And so they’re not exclusive of each other. They’re similar. They’re like reflections of each other. And that’s to say that when you’re open to receiving and you’re open to giving, whether it’s love or money, there’s a cycle or a vortex that you create that’s around you. The people who are really loving and who are really generous with their time and attention have an accumulation of people, accumulation of like companions or an accumulation of energy that’s around them. And I think it’s the same thing with money too.

The more that you receive and give and the more open you are with that, there is sort of this cycle that kind of continues and creates with that. But when you bring those two things together and you’re working in service, in love, and you’re creating an impact, and then the physical manifestation of that is charging for your work in a way that feels like abundant to you, but that also provides for others. And that’s not to say you’re not allowed to charge what you want to charge. You’re allowed to charge what you want to charge. And the people who are aligned with you and your teaching and the price and all of that will find you and vice versa.

There’s no, I think the idea of like you need to be ascetic and you need to be living in a cave and you need to be completely like material, not have anything materialistic to be considered spiritual is not correct. I think that when you are abundant in your spirituality, when like to quote the Bible, seek first the kingdom of God and all other things will be added to you, when you go internally and you source yourself from your soul and you follow what feels alive and true and real and you share your gifts with the world, there is a reciprocity that happens in that in the form of material. And so it’s not this mutually exclusive thing. It’s almost this like symbiotic relationship that starts to form. That as you are creating more of a spiritual soul source existence for yourself, there’s the physical manifestation of that or the physical reality that is also created at the same time. So it’s okay to like nice things. It’s okay to enjoy the pleasures of life. It’s okay to be a human that gets to feel all the things that gets to have the experiences. In my belief system, I believe that our souls are here for the experience, the expansion and the expression of the divine. And to say you can do all those things, but you’re not allowed to like enjoy any sort of luxuries. You’re not allowed to enjoy anything. You’re not allowed to eat good food. You’re not allowed to do the things that you want to do. It doesn’t make sense. So it’s kind of both and. You can be completely spiritual and completely wealthy. You can be a loving person and you can still charge money for your services.

KRATI: Yeah, I love that. That’s beautiful. I think in fact, like the way you put it, that makes this idea more accessible that as you, because spirituality in a way is also about self mastery. It’s you understanding that you are very, very powerful. And in that case, like if you can have that feeling dominated your life, then like pursuing your materialistic goals, you can pursue them without letting them have power over you. So I think in fact, the combination of spirituality and the materialistic goals, they go well together.

LEAH: Well, and I think it all depends on like the intention and the goal that you actually have. If your goal is like, I just want to make a lot of money versus I want to impact people, I want to serve, I want to do, I also need to be supportive so that I can continue to do that. There’s very different frequency that’s involved in those two things. Both will be, will potentially lead to the same place, but the way you get there is going to be completely different.

KRATI: Yeah, I think that is also, I don’t know if you’ll agree with me, but there is also such a thing as being ready for something. Like we were just talking about, you said that no, this knowledge should be free, nobody should hoard it. But the more I have gone into the Vedas, the more I’ve like accessed this, like certain mantras, certain tantra mantras especially, they do unlock certain things in you. They do give you, make you experience certain things. Sometimes those are hallucinations. Sometimes you see things that are, I think you also have to be ready.

There has to be some safe space in you so that if you experience something that’s beyond anything you would ever imagine, if you don’t have a guru, you need to have a sense of safety within yourself. So I think in that respect, I would agree with those gurus and in saying that let’s not give this knowledge and abandon people. Like if you’ve taught something on YouTube, then that person is on their own. And what they’re experiencing, it might crush them, it might scare them into locking down. But at the same time, I also do appreciate your perspective. But I feel like now I’ve just become someone who feels like there’s a point of readiness. Like sometimes I would be talking to someone and there is such a wall of resistance there with what I’m saying, they would be like shaking their heads in a very condescending way. Like, oh, poor Krati, what does she know? She’s lost her way. And I’m like, okay, you know what, it’s fine. This is not for them. It’s okay.

I do believe that that has to be an element. There are people who just don’t care about their materialistic goals. They have money. It’s fine. They keep giving it away. They don’t care about it. And then there are people who are very consumed by it. But at the same time, they’re consumed by it, but they’re creating amazing things for the rest of humanity.

LEAH: So, you know, that’s beautiful. I totally agree on the need for readiness. And it’s not that I have any sort of like, oh, it shouldn’t be a hidden tradition. I get it. Trust me, I get it. I feel like in a time where there was like very few people who had been able to master who had the ability to go to a teacher or a voodoo and study and have that accessibility, I think because there’s so much more accessible to us now, there’s more people who can hold those spaces. And there are people, I think, who can be charlatans and say that they will teach you something they don’t. So discernment that we talked about a little bit earlier is really important. And to your point of like having a safe space to go to, I think that’s extremely important.

That’s why I’m creating this community in its own private app that is off of social media so that we can be in the space of having these activations, having this journey sort of together in a place where you don’t feel alone, where you do feel supported. But 100%, it’s an aspect of readiness because there were many times along the way, and I said this a little bit earlier, that I heard whispers of my soul trying to wake me up, trying to tell me like, this is not the way to go, or like, this is the way to go. And I wasn’t ready for it. I was too scared. So I continued to build out of alignment.

So everybody’s moment of awakening, everybody’s moment of activation comes when, not everybody’s, but our moments of awakening, our moments of activation come when we are ready for them, come when we choose. I mean, sometimes they come as like a cosmic two by four and we don’t feel ready for them. But we come to these places, especially like on a growth path or on a transformational journey. We come to these moments when we’re ready for them. You can tell somebody the same thing for years and years and years, and they won’t actually hear it until it’s able for them to land, until there’s enough space and capacity within their being to be able to hold that truth and actually do something about it.

So I totally agree that they come when they’re ready and we can seek them out. And depending on the intention that we have behind it, it might be successful or it might be something that we have to come back to a little bit later in life because there might be some other steps that we have to add. But again, it comes back to that idea of open-mindedness and really being open to the journey, what it brings and not trying to force what we think should happen or when we think things should happen, but really just being open to how things are happening and the moment that we find ourselves in and what feels the truest in that moment.

KRATI: Yeah, again, I appreciate the work that you’re doing and making a safe space for people. And I love how you put it. We’ve had a very deep, profound conversation. Let’s bring it down to more practical so that it’s more for people who are at the very beginning of this journey. Tell me about how people can start reading their energies, how they can start working with energy and what would you advise?

LEAH: Where do they start? I mean, how do you start reading energy? I feel like that’s an advanced tactic. I think the way that you can start to even tap into that is to get in touch with your own emotions because that is the energy and motion within our bodies. And so many of us are conditioned out of feeling our feelings. So we don’t actually know what energy feels like in our bodies. We either have the high alert or the depression or we numb things out. But the subtlety of our own emotional being is what allows us to be more intuitive and more empathic to other people’s energy as well.

So to start understanding other people’s energy, and some people will feel it, some people just automatically know, like, there’s a vibe. You can feel a vibe when you are feeling a vibe. Either you walk into a room and you’re like, this feels really good, or you’re like, did something just happen in here because this feels kind of weird. So we’re already multi-sensory and perceptive beings. But to sort of harness the power of our intuition, there’s a few steps to take. I’ve outlined them in my book. I call it the Live Free Method. And there’s these steps of learning to listen for the whispers of your soul.

So understanding how your soul communicates to you, how your intuition comes through, being really intentional with the way you move through the world, then validating your feelings, allowing yourself to feel what you feel without judgment, without shame, without guilt. And the more that you start to honour that for yourself, you start to, like, elevate your standards, you start to create a space around you that is boundary, that allows you to feel your feelings and not take on other people’s feelings, that allows you to be yourself without needing to constantly people please or manipulate. And then from there, the healing sort of begins. You can start to forgive yourself for the places that you might have let things go, or the things that you might have done when you didn’t feel better, or the things that have happened that were outside of your control. And then from there, it’s really allowing yourself to remember your purpose, your why. And then from there, we move into the extended experiences of really exploring possibilities, and then embracing the unknown. So that’s just a short overview of, like, what it means to actually live free, but it is really a formula to be able to come into alignment with your sense of self, your confidence, your intuition. And from there, the more that you know yourself, the more you’re going to be able to relate and feel other people. The more you’re going to be able to tap into your intuitive gifts and trust them, because I think a lot of people are far more intuitive than they give themselves credit for, they just don’t trust themselves.

So it’s building the foundation, the relationship with yourself by simple things of, like, what do I like? What do I want? What makes me happy? And it all begins with the relationship that we have with ourselves, I truly believe.

KRATI: For someone who is completely alien to this idea of actually tapping into your intuition, working with your energy, or doing anything spiritual, what is one technique you would offer them? Like, do this for now. Just do this if you’re starting out.

LEAH: It would be breathing. I know it sounds like, okay, this is ridiculous, like, I know how to breathe, I breathe every day. But the majority of people don’t actually breathe to the full capacity of their lungs. So your lungs go below your ribs, all the way up to your collarbone. So that is, like, way more than most of us are breathing. Most of us breathe, like, this shallow in and out. And when you start to connect to your breath and really take a long, slow, deep inhale, feeling your belly rise, feeling your chest expand, feeling your ribs expand, going past your heart, feeling all the way up to the tops of your collarbones, pausing just for a moment there, and then exhaling everything out, you start to slow down your mental process because our breath is very much connected to our minds.

When we have shallow, rapid breathing, we’re in this sort of fight or flight experience. But when we elongate our breath, we move more into the breast and digest aspect of our nervous system. So I always encourage people to start with a meditation practice, and most people are like, oh my god, I can’t meditate, my mind is too crazy, and I totally understand that meditation is not to stop your thoughts, it’s to get to know your thoughts. But first, it’s to be in your body, to be in the present moment. So if you can do it with me, put one hand on your heart, put one hand on your belly, and then take a long, slow, deep inhale through your nose, you can close down your eyes, so breathing in. Feeling your hands move and rise as you inhale, pausing just a little bit at the top, and then exhaling through your nose or through your mouth.

Letting it go, feeling your hands contract or sink in. And then doing that a few more times, so deep breath in through your nose, feeling your body rise and expand, and just notice what that feels like to take a few long, slow, deep breaths. You’ll notice that your nervous systems are slowing down, you feel more clear, you feel calmer, you feel more balanced. And that is the very, like, very typically iceberg, the very beginning of learning to get to know yourself. Because in that calm state, when you’re not on high alert, when you’re not trying to figure it all out, you can start to actually feel you, the you beneath the you, the you that is more than just this body. And in community, there’s the tradition that I practice, we actually have 10 bodies. There are 10 aspects of our multi-dimensional self that are all informing us at all times. But when we’re so tuned into our phone or thinking of the next thing, or is this person mad at me, or I have to call this person, blah, blah, blah, blah, all of that stuff, we forget the being that is us, that is the consciousness that is aware of all of that.

So I would say if you’ve never done anything in your life, if you’re completely new to any sort of experiential part of soul, spirit, whatever, I would say connecting to your breath is the entry or the gateway drug to a really beautiful relationship with the power of your being.

KRATI: I would love for you to share for people who get in these moments where they’re super overwhelmed, which is very common these days now with people like this, so much happening. And we feel like we’ve lost control over ourselves, over our lives. How do we work our way back to a place of calm? What would you recommend for them?

LEAH: Well, I would again say starting with your breath because you can’t solve a problem from the same place that you created the problem. So if you’re like chaotic and everything’s crazy and you’re trying to solve a problem and you’re chaotic and crazy, you’re just gonna keep doing the same stuff over and over again. We repeat the reactions that are quoted in our nervous system when we’re in a panic state. It’s the knee-jerk reactions.

It’s the things that we have these short micro pathways that are created in our mind. And often we create them to avoid pain or to move through something uncomfortable without having to actually feel it. So we have these knee-jerk reactions that end up creating more and more problems. So the first thing would be to just pump the brakes, stop for a hot second, and allow yourself to regulate your nervous system. I think the greatest power comes from a regulated nervous system, and the capacity to hold yourself in an uncomfortable space. It’s why I think cold plunging is becoming so popular because people are starting to recognize when I put myself intentionally in an uncomfortable place, it expands my capacity to hold myself in an uncomfortable place. We do a lot of that in Kundalini as well.

There’s a lot of activating of our nervous system with these kriyas, with these postures, with these exercises, so that in that controlled space we can feel our power and we can have a new pathway that is created for ourselves. So first and foremost, I would say just take a few long, slow, deep breaths. And when you’re in a state of more clarity and more openness, then you can start making better decisions. But if you’re in a panic and you’re continuing to make panic decisions, it’s not really helpful. So it’s one of the hardest things, but it’s the simplest way to bring yourself back into alignment. It’s important to keep your breath and journaling is also something really powerful as well. It helps you to get all of the ideas in your brain out onto paper so that you can see them.

Asking yourself questions like, is the story that I’m telling myself the absolute only truth that is available? Or is there an alternate position? Because we often catastrophise things or create problems that aren’t really problems because we can’t see any other solution to them because we’re so fixated on the problem itself. So when you have a moment to just step back a little bit, get some perspective, zoom out and ask yourself what else could be true here? Again, that open-mindedness. Then you can start to see other things that are available.

There are other opportunities and then you can choose a different potential and start focusing on that. So instead of being like, what if all these bad things happen or what if this or what if that? You can have as many what ifs on the negative side of things as you can on the positive side of things. So what if you just pick one of the positive things and start working with that frequency, seeing how it creates a different energy in your body and that different energy in your body is going to create different feelings in your body and that feeling is going to create different thoughts and that thought is going to create different actions.

So learning some mindset tools to redirect yourself into a more positive state. Learning some nervous system tools to help yourself calibrate and hold more energy and really getting a handle on emotions so emotional intelligence is really important as well.

KRATI: For the benefit of my audience, a lot of people have this idea that they need self-acceptance, they need surrender, they need some kind of higher feeling before they go onto this path. True or not true?

LEAH: I think sometimes those things come from not being those things. You know what I mean? I think we gain self-acceptance by repeatedly messing up and recognising oh, I actually am, there’s still redeeming qualities within me, I am still a worthy good person even though I made a mistake. So I think self-acceptance is something that comes over time. You don’t need it before you start moving forward. As you’re moving forward, you learn to accept yourself more and more. You give yourself grace and compassion. The idea of I need a certain thing before I can do another certain thing doesn’t really always translate because it’s really just a way of staying in step. I’ll do the thing when I’m ready but I’m not ever going to be ready because I’m never doing anything that helps me to get ready. So understanding that readiness isn’t really a feeling, it’s a decision. You decide and then you move and then you adapt.

So that idea of being present, that idea of being connected to yourself in every moment allows you to create that self-acceptance or allows you to create that self-trust. Like, well, I can’t do this until I trust myself but if I don’t do anything that ever challenges or helps me grow trust then I never will trust myself. So I think it’s sometimes like you just got to keep moving and recognize that in every decision you can decide again. You can change direction, you can pivot, you can make another choice.

KRATI: Okay, my last funny question is if you were a spiritual superhero what would your powers be and what could you do like two, four people or two people?

LEAH: If I was a spiritual superhero? I think I would just grant people the opportunity to see themselves the way I see them or the way that like the universe sees them as like these really talented people as like these really powerful beings. So I think when people recognise just how much power, how much potential, how much capacity they have we get rid of so much of the bullshit of like the competition and the judgment and the name calling and the hoarding of resources and all that stuff. So if people knew how powerful they were then I think we would be in a completely different place. So my spiritual superpower would be to like just gently wake everybody up, turn them on so that they’re all living their like highest potential in their highest frequency and then we would just literally rework the entire universe that way.