26: Sacred Self: Integrating Spirituality and IFS with Michelle Gaza

00;00;07;24 - 00;00;39;07

Narrator

Hello and welcome to Cherie Lindberg's Elevated Life Academy. Stories of hope and healing. Through raw and heartfelt conversations, we uncover the powerful tools and strategies these individuals use to not only heal themselves, but also inspired those around them. Join us on this incredible journey as we discover the human spirit's remarkable capacity to heal, find hope in the darkest of moments, and ultimately live an elevated life.

00;00;39;09 - 00;01;05;22

Cherie Lindberg

Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Elevated Life Academy, and I am your host, Cherie Lindberg and as I've said over and over again, I get excited each time when I get to sit down and talk with healers all over the world about stories of hope and healing. And today is no different. And we have a beautiful guest, Michelle Gaza.

00;01;05;24 - 00;01;24;11

Cherie Lindberg

And I'm going to let her introduce herself here. So we're going to talk about mystical things, spiritual things, different ways of healing. So I'm excited to hear what she has to say. So with that I'm going to turn it over to Michelle. And please introduce yourself and share with us your your healing practice. And we'll go from there.

00;01;24;13 - 00;01;49;03

Michelle Gaza

s IFC therapy. I found IFC in: 2008

00;01;49;05 - 00;02;16;08

Michelle Gaza

I began as a yoga instructor when I was at university. As an undergraduate, I found myself experiencing severe depression, suicidal ideation. I went to undergraduate art and mental health, and after one session in which I felt like I gave the person a lot of reasons why I was having these issues. The first thing they wanted to do was put me on medication.

00;02;16;10 - 00;02;35;29

Michelle Gaza

And having witnessed other people going on, you know, antidepressants, I was really not interested in that. And I want to be really clear, I don't have a judgment for people who choose to do that. But since that time, I have really come to see that there really are a lot of dangers with the drug that are being underplayed, you know, with those sort of drugs.

00;02;36;02 - 00;02;53;14

Michelle Gaza

So I'm glad that I made that decision. But I was really struggling still for quite some time. And I, I dropped out of school for a while. My mother was Australian, so I went to Australia for a while to kind of figure some things out. It was literally the furthest place I could get from the college, but I thought that was a good idea.

00;02;53;17 - 00;03;13;12

Michelle Gaza

I came back, I did complete my undergraduate education, I finally graduated, and then after that I ended up in yoga class, and at the end of the yoga class, I thought I was there just because I needed to lose weight. And I'm in Shavasana and the tears are streaming down my face. And I realized, okay, there's something else going on here.

00;03;13;15 - 00;03;36;24

Michelle Gaza

oga teacher, I believe it was: 1998

00;03;36;29 - 00;03;58;11

Michelle Gaza

That field was not really what we would call trauma informed. So whilst yoga and asana practice was really a lifesaver and really did help me get out of the depression in a lot of ways, I just started to notice certain things that didn't sit right with me, and I had a lot of questions that I couldn't find anyone, even in these eight different countries, who could answer them.

00;03;58;13 - 00;04;21;22

Michelle Gaza

And one of the things that didn't sit right with me was the way that that paradigm approaches the emotional body. So as many people are aware, we hold a lot of emotional trauma in the body. So when you're going into these deep asanas, that stuff is going to get released. So I was noticing this happen for myself and even people in my classes and I, I can hold space with compassion.

00;04;21;22 - 00;04;46;11

Michelle Gaza

But I thought, you know, I really need better tools for helping process this and the sort of yogic Buddhist approach of label it and put it to the side was just really not sitting right with me. That's a great skill. If you're, for example, in a meeting with the CEO and an exile gets triggered, aka a little wounded part of you, you're really not going to bring that to the table at a business meeting.

00;04;46;11 - 00;05;12;16

Michelle Gaza

It's not safe. So we label it, we put it to the side, and then maybe when we get home that evening, we actually deal with it and face it and nurture and heal that part of us. But what I saw in the yogic Buddhist meditation communities, what it was just the labeling and exiling, there was never this real kind of connecting with that aspect of ourselves and really getting to the bottom of why it's there and feeling it all the way.

00;05;12;18 - 00;05;43;03

Michelle Gaza

So I want to keep it succinct, because I know our time is limited. So let's just say by the time I found if I was really, really looking for it. So I instantly started the trainings and I did all level three trainings within like two years, which I don't know if you can even do that anymore. And I'm really grateful to the AFS community and Richard Schwartz for developing and sustaining and training so many of us in this process, because it's really saved my life and the life of a lot of my clients.

00;05;43;03 - 00;06;14;10

Michelle Gaza

And Richard Schwartz is one of the greatest mentors that I've had. I deeply respect his work. Present time I work with my partner, Kayvon Fehr, who's a human design coach, and we may get into that later. He also works with lucid dreaming, out-of-body experiences, astral travel, etc. so we work as a team, and with all of these tools, we're just really able to get to the bottom of things and really help people just have massive, huge shifts, even people who come to us in extreme dire straits.

00;06;14;12 - 00;06;16;19

Michelle Gaza

And so that's probably a good intro.

00;06;16;22 - 00;06;31;16

Cherie Lindberg

Yeah, that that's absolutely wonderful. Can you. Yes. Please do talk more about how you are taking IFRS and bringing it more into maybe the spiritual elements.

00;06;31;18 - 00;06;55;06

Michelle Gaza

Love it. So I want to choose my words really carefully, particularly in the beginning when Richard Schwarz was sharing the model, he was very careful about using Woowoo words. And from what I understand, his intention was to get it accepted in academia so that anybody who studies social work, counseling, therapy, maybe even one day the psychiatrists would all at least be exposed to the model.

00;06;55;09 - 00;07;18;15

Michelle Gaza

But now, you know, if you asked him, he would very readily admit I AFS is already inherently a shamanic practice. Now, some people may be much more secular and mundane, plain in their approach to it. And that's fine, because it does what it does. In the same way. I went into a yoga class thinking I was just going to try to lose some belly fat, and I had these deep spiritual awakenings happen, right?

00;07;18;15 - 00;07;48;10

Michelle Gaza

There's something inside of these paradigms that really helps to unlock that. So ifl I feel it's inherently shamanic and spiritual for a couple of reasons. Number one, you're working in the unseen realms, right? The nonphysical. Number two, your time traveling. We're traveling to the past where parts of you are stuck in unresolved trauma, confusion, pain, fear. Right? We're often doing parallel lives, past lives, and we can even connect with future lives.

00;07;48;12 - 00;08;16;27

Michelle Gaza

Additionally, the main juice, the main medicine of the IFS process is the self. I tend to say higher self and I fast. That's just called the self. I am very comfortable saying that's also Christ consciousness, which it doesn't matter what your religious beliefs are. I believe we can all agree that compassion, confidence, connection, etc. is very healing. So it's not religious, but it is very spiritual.

00;08;16;29 - 00;08;37;11

Michelle Gaza

And as clients get more and more access to that self energy and their wounded parts, connect with it, this sort of magical, very mystical thing happens that really from sort of a very left brain logical mind would be hard to believe until you had the experience yourself. So that's the succinct as I can be.

00;08;37;13 - 00;09;09;10

Cherie Lindberg

Let's speak more about this, because I do think folks get nervous, I would say, or hesitant because, you know, when you start talking about methods that do soul retrieval for, you know, for example, however, this seems to be a theme that I'm talking to a lot of healers that there's such a disconnect between academia and their way, that they think people heal versus what's actually happening in people's offices.

00;09;09;16 - 00;09;24;29

Cherie Lindberg

And so, so many healers are talking about the disconnect and what they're experiencing in their offices. You know, so if you could speak a little bit, you know, to that when we're doing CFS and we're retrieving these parts of ourselves.

00;09;25;01 - 00;09;48;00

Michelle Gaza

Yeah, that's that's a beautiful question and issues. So let me maybe start by saying I want to give the benefit of the doubt and the respect to the academics who are skeptical and nervous about these names throughout history, there's been a difference between the masculine, the feminine, the left brain, the right brain, the scientific and the religious or spiritual.

00;09;48;03 - 00;10;12;27

Michelle Gaza

And just as we see less of corruption in the world of science and academia, those of us in this field have to admit there's also corruption amongst the woowoo. It serves us to be skeptical and cautious. It serves us to not just accept a few anecdotes as something that's, number one, true, reputable and reliable, as good science. Right?

00;10;13;00 - 00;10;38;21

Michelle Gaza

But I think that what happens is, just as we see in a one on one session, right? The world of academia is made up of humans who have parts. A lot of parts are afraid of this self business because the ifs journey, just like soul retrieval and all these parallel things that do similar things, right, it involves an identity crisis that is very frightening for our ego.

00;10;38;24 - 00;11;00;05

Michelle Gaza

It's very frightening. Right? So if I have a self like part, typically these are managers, a part of me that thinks it's the self. And here you come and tell me, oh no, there's something beyond you that has powers and characteristics that you don't have. At least not yet. That can be very threatening. Right. So I think there's two things going on.

00;11;00;05 - 00;11;24;22

Michelle Gaza

There's a legitimate skepticism that I think is healthy and warranted. And anyone who respects the scientific method and the scientific method is there to be careful of things like bias, prejudice, delusions, blind spots. Right. But what I've also noticed is that even when you come with double blind studies and all the evidence, there's this digging in of the heels in academia that's just very afraid of it.

00;11;24;24 - 00;11;48;29

Michelle Gaza

And I think when it comes down to it, it's fear. But that intellectual ego would not admit that. But really, there's a deep fear there. And I just say that because academics are humans, do everybody goes up against a fear wall in this process. Part of the reason that happens is as we go through effects, one of the main issues is we have these parts of us called protectors, right?

00;11;49;02 - 00;12;18;25

Michelle Gaza

The proactive protectors are the managers, the reactive protectors are the firefighters. These protectors have developed a skillset to keep us safe. And in the vast majority of us, unfortunately, that skillset was developed in a no win situation. Even people who were fortunate enough to have well attuned, loving parents. Even in those situations, you can have a misunderstanding, a confusion, a projection, an expectation on you that really wasn't correct.

00;12;18;25 - 00;12;37;11

Michelle Gaza

I even think of a situation with the client who a lot of her trauma was based on moving from the country to the city. She's very sensitive, and it was just this little tiny diversion and problem that could have been handled at the time. But nobody sat down and asked her, well, how do you feel about this, sweetie?

00;12;37;14 - 00;13;03;16

Michelle Gaza

Can we process how you're feeling? Parents weren't outright abusive or neglectful. They just didn't frickin know you were probably built differently. Maybe they weren't as sensitive, right? So she developed this whole thing that was affecting her social life, right? In order to survive that lowercase t trauma. So these parts of us who have developed these skills to protect us, they start to identify with that skill set.

00;13;03;16 - 00;13;29;19

Michelle Gaza

And they seemed to know the difference between the skill set and their existence. So if you come into, say, an alcoholic part and say, hey, why don't you just stop drinking that alcohol? Well, first of all, if I stop drinking the alcohol, then I'm going to feel all those feelings that it was blunting and numbing. And second of all, if I'm not the part in charge of drinking the alcohol, whoever I like am, I isn't going to exist because this is all I've known.

00;13;29;21 - 00;13;53;26

Michelle Gaza

So we can take that. What happens in the individual all and see it in the larger systems of universities and recognize the same thing is happening, and that when I recognize that, it allows me to have more compassion, when I was younger, I was just really pissed off at academia. I was very pissed off at how they handled the fact that so many undergraduates, not just in the United States, but I imagine overseas as well.

00;13;53;26 - 00;14;14;07

Michelle Gaza

They're mentally ill, they're having very severe problems, and they're having it at a time where they've been ripped from their family of origin, plunked down. In many cases, if you're a resident in your undergraduate in a situation where you're trying to figure it out, you don't have family support immediately available. It's very scary and confusing. So I really had a chip on my shoulder.

00;14;14;09 - 00;14;34;21

Michelle Gaza

But now, you know, getting older, I'm almost 50. I see things a lot differently, and I have a lot more space for compassion as to why things are the way they are. But I still feel this is important, that you bring it up because it's clogging up the system. It's holding us back. It's keeping real healing from people who need it.

00;14;34;23 - 00;14;58;09

Michelle Gaza

It's exacerbating this system where the first thing a lot of clinicians reach for is a pharmaceutical drug, which again, I want to stress, if that helps you, I support that. If you want to experiment with that, I support that. But for many people, coming off those drugs is a nightmare. There's also some very severe side effects like suicidal and homicidal ideation.

00;14;58;09 - 00;15;25;13

Michelle Gaza

And these antidepressants, which they are aware of and are not sharing openly with the public. So the academics, they say a certain thing about science and skepticism, but then they often ignore and bury the actual science. So I think everybody has to really look in the mirror and see what we're bringing to the table. That's maybe inhibiting greater mental health or humanity.

00;15;25;16 - 00;15;48;20

Cherie Lindberg

Maybe. Yeah, well, that could be a whole discussion on its own, couldn't it? I think we know some of these traditional ways that we have been trying to help people heal are not working, and this is why we have such an epidemic of mental health issues. And I think Covid just sent us over the edge as a country.

00;15;48;22 - 00;16;14;14

Cherie Lindberg

And then now we're, you know, finding out more about the skyrocketing of mental health issues for adolescents right around the time, lo and behold, when social media. So it's really interesting to see I'm 55. So just like you're saying a lot more compassion. And I have a watcher part that is a really watching and kind of going, what is going to be the legacy here?

00;16;14;17 - 00;16;51;04

Cherie Lindberg

What is going to happen in the next ten years? And my whole or this country is that we start to recognize we have bodies and that we start to recognize more and more that the bottom up therapies that are out there, that are natural, that they connect to our own natural healing capacities, that we start to recognize that these are really helpful and are helping people discharge stuff that they held inside themselves and help them get more access to their parts and how they got developed and all these things that you're speaking about.

00;16;51;06 - 00;16;54;17

Cherie Lindberg

Is there anything coming up for you with me? Just saying those few things.

00;16;54;20 - 00;17;16;15

Michelle Gaza

So much and always my problem getting into these conversations, including when my partner and I teach group classes or make videos, it's so difficult to keep it constrained, you know? But let me just respond to the social media question. So I look back at my teenage years and all the nonsense I got involved in, then goodness, none of it's recorded in any way.

00;17;16;15 - 00;17;39;28

Michelle Gaza

Some people may remember some of it, but a client of mine recently said a really beautiful thing. He said, you know, every person I can't remember his exact words. He said it so well, something like, we should all have the dignity of learning from our mistakes. Yeah. On the social media world, there's not a lot of dignity. It weaponizes egos and encourages polarization.

00;17;40;00 - 00;18;02;26

Michelle Gaza

It encourages judging someone through a very narrow lens. And, you know, as we joked about before we started the recording, I assured you, I have shorts on because you're just seeing me from the waist up, right? But on social media, I can reject any image I want, and in the course of, you know, a ten minute clip video, you could just think, wow, Michelle is just the loveliest, sweetest person.

00;18;02;26 - 00;18;37;07

Michelle Gaza

Like butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. But for all you know, when I get off the video, I can be super abusive and horrible and psychotic or even psychopathic. It becomes really difficult to discern what's true and real. So children, teenagers who as we know their brains aren't developed yet, they're super sensitive, their hormones are going wild. And I learned recently, I wish I could quote the source as you move into teenage hood, the part of the brain that kind of allows you to access and integrate spirituality is really it's dormant.

00;18;37;10 - 00;19;00;07

Michelle Gaza

So that thing that for older people, we can access that, you know, I can access this deep, powerful spirituality that helps me put things in perspective, that helps me read between the lines on a Facebook post. That helps me keep things kind of in perspective where they should be. Teenagers don't have that, so I can just imagine what happens for their protectors right?

00;19;00;09 - 00;19;20;06

Michelle Gaza

So maybe my managers are going to get more extreme. And now I'm thinking I need Botox and I'm 15, right? Or, you know, as a boy, like maybe I'm thinking, well, I need to really be tough because I'm seeing these tough guys on YouTube who are giving like some extreme, imbalanced form of masculinity. So now I have to, like, portray more of that.

00;19;20;14 - 00;19;42;17

Michelle Gaza

It's so easy for the illusions to be extreme and just never corrected by reality checks, because a lot of these influencers you never meet in real life, there's just so much going on with children not socializing. You know, recently we had the 4th of July, and there were so many children out in the neighborhood and our our young cousin is visiting.

00;19;42;17 - 00;20;13;24

Michelle Gaza

She's like, I can't believe there's all these kids who live here. I'm like, yeah, everybody's inside playing video games all the time. You all could be playing together. I grew up in the 80s. We played in the street. There were the beginning of video games, but I would never have chose a video game over kickball or these round the block tag games, you know, on the one hand, it's wonderful to be connected on the internet, but on the other hand, I do feel like there's sort of a narrowing for these teenage experiences.

00;20;13;27 - 00;20;37;00

Michelle Gaza

And it's also something that's really very mental and language focused, which is not so good for the feminine online. It's not really such a good feminine space. I feel, even though a lot of people do share their emotions and stuff, it's still written words and being mental about it in a lot of ways. We could go on about this, but I don't know what your responses to those things.

00;20;37;03 - 00;21;00;02

Cherie Lindberg

This is great. I just I love having these conversations and wherever they end up going, what's coming up for me, I was just thinking like, oh yeah, when you were talking about, you know, the video games and things like that, I was just thinking, like, this is probably why there's a trend more and more for healers and for everyday people that want to heal of nature.

00;21;00;02 - 00;21;38;23

Cherie Lindberg

Emergence, because we've gotten away from nature and nature is a central nervous system equalizer. Like it? It really can be a beautiful container to support, you know, people's healing. And so I was just thinking that that might be why there's a trend towards retreats, because we're trying to get away from all this technology or the the cultural expectation of being extremely busy, and for us to take care of ourselves, we like got to get away from all that and being in nature, which again, I'm not trying to flaunt the 80s, but what?

00;21;38;23 - 00;22;00;26

Cherie Lindberg

Like what you were saying growing up in the 80s, like we left in the morning. We didn't come home until that light was on on the porch. Right? You were outside all day long and not to say, I mean, there were issues with that as well. But kids are not out in nature like they used to be. And I would think that that's just a natural healing mechanism in itself as well.

00;22;00;29 - 00;22;20;10

Michelle Gaza

Absolutely. I mean, when we used to live up in the mountains, I had two family members who were maybe five and 6 or 6 and seven at the time, and I was like, off the video games. Kids were going for a hike, and I came to find out. They didn't know that the trees were living beings. They actually did not know that.

00;22;20;13 - 00;22;42;07

Michelle Gaza

So certain things that are just taken for granted when you have access to that, the children just don't even know. But I also remembered there's a man who wrote a book, and unfortunately, I can't remember his name or the book's name, but one of the things he found is that children spending time in nature helps increase common sense.

00;22;42;09 - 00;23;03;12

Michelle Gaza

And his inspiration for the book happened. He was watching a group of children. I think some of his children and family members cross a river, and they ranged from a teenager to a little two year old. Now, when you cross a river, it's not a mechanical moving walkway. It's not a concrete sidewalk. There's stones of different shapes and sizes.

00;23;03;12 - 00;23;46;09

Michelle Gaza

There's water rushing. There's a little tiny element of danger you could fall. Right. So he watched all these children have to negotiate these different rocks as they cross the river. And it was engaging them fully. Body, mind, soul right there. Really engaged. That's a necessary part of being human. And I'm really disturbed by this emphasis, this transhumanist agenda that's really here that suggests that, you know, having a chip in our brain could somehow make us better, and that all these mechanical technology things would make us better humans when the best that those technology things can do is be kind of poor mimics of the power we actually do possess inside of ourselves.

00;23;46;11 - 00;24;07;12

Michelle Gaza

So I always, for example, talk about organic internet. There's been an organic internet since the dawn of time. Another time when I lived in Australia in my late 20s, I had no phone. I had no internet at the house. I would find myself having conversations with people from my past that I hadn't talked to in ages, and then twice a week I would go into town.

00;24;07;16 - 00;24;31;02

Michelle Gaza

There was internet cafes back then. I would go into the internet cafes, sit down. Low and behold, there would be an email from that person. Speaking of the topic I was talking about in my head without. So this natural telepathy exists. It is our birthright. But we've been taught that's cuckoo, that's woowoo, that's nonsense. You know, imaginary friends aren't real.

00;24;31;02 - 00;25;04;27

Michelle Gaza

The imagination world, isn't it? Real dreams aren't real. Actually, imagination is hyper real. The dream world is what's seeding this reality. So, you know, just foundationally, everybody's very confused. And on top of that, there's really this sort of marketing campaign that the modern way is best, and modern people are the most fortunate because we have the most material things, and we have dishwashers and printers, so everything's better, but we've lost so much of our access to our own power.

00;25;05;00 - 00;25;29;23

Michelle Gaza

And that's one of the reasons why I love effects so much is because it gives you so much access to that power, to remembering that spirit, that soul inside of you, that has access to divine resourcefulness, to divine compassion, to divine Problem-Solving. And I just feel very concerned that nowadays that's really being choked out.

00;25;29;25 - 00;26;03;25

Cherie Lindberg

Okay, so moving from there, thinking about what what you just said, because you dedicated your life basically to serving folks that come to you to get them back in touch with their own personal power. This is a podcast about stories of hope and healing. So do you have a couple of examples without any identifying information of maybe something you witnessed when you were holding space, where you witnessed somebody getting back in touch with their personal power, and it was profound healing for them.

00;26;03;28 - 00;26;04;26

Cherie Lindberg

I have so.

00;26;04;26 - 00;26;37;28

Michelle Gaza

Many examples, but I'm going to choose one that not only speaks to that question, but also to the mystical, magical nature of the process. So I had a client who, when she was 16, her mother put her in an apartment by herself and basically abandoned her there. She didn't know where her next meal was coming from. She was really scared, not prepared, was relying on like friends and boyfriends bringing pizza, you know?

00;26;38;01 - 00;27;01;04

Michelle Gaza

So we're doing a session and I sat with her as we kind of moved into that space. Right. And I had somebody in a consultation once get very triggered when I talked about this time traveling, because I think they made it out to mean something more than it is. It's way simpler than it sounds. We're merely going inside and focusing our attention.

00;27;01;04 - 00;27;25;28

Michelle Gaza

And as she describes the scene to me, for me, it becomes very easy to enter the scene with her and feel and sense things that I've found over time from data is legitimate. I'm not just making it up. I am feeling and sensing what actually happened. So I'm in the room with her holding self energy. She really got into herself energy and stepped into the room with the 16 year old girl who's crying on her bed.

00;27;26;00 - 00;27;56;12

Michelle Gaza

And as she sat down next to her, we got permission for her to put her arm around the 16 year old and suddenly she gasped. Michelle, I remember this moment. I remember sitting in that apartment crying and this energy came that I couldn't explain, reassuring me I was going to be okay. Everything was going to be okay, which was essentially what you're doing, in effect, by bringing the self to the part that stuck in a scene of trauma.

00;27;56;14 - 00;28;23;21

Michelle Gaza

So in real time, present time, we experienced and created a scene that had already happened. So whatever we're thinking about, linear time is very limited and not fully truth. Right. So in that scene, we're able to help this part express her feelings. We also help this part understand that we see that it's not right what happened. And we can take her out of there.

00;28;23;21 - 00;28;43;27

Michelle Gaza

What's really the case for our traumatized inner children and inner parts? Because we can have traumatized inner adults. They're like a hungry ghost that's stuck in the scene of the trauma, just circling and recycling and reliving it over and over again. So one of the first techniques is to let this art know you don't have to stay here any longer.

00;28;44;04 - 00;29;22;06

Michelle Gaza

So we pulled her out, brought her to a safe place, let her know she could stay with the client self. Very positive, very powerful. And has really helped that client in raising her children who are now teenagers. So I like that example because it's kind of speaking to the mystical nature of it. But I can also just speak generally and say, you know, I've had clients who've gone through just the most severe stuff, like unsafe things, horrible abuse, including satanic abuse, the sexual abuse, horrible, horrible things and before effects.

00;29;22;06 - 00;29;43;17

Michelle Gaza

If you just kind of subscribe to the mainstream pop culture Oprah point of view, we would say, oh, this person is scarred for life and they're never going to heal. That was the message I got in the 80s, you know, and I think maybe the positive intention of that message was to show us the severity of these kind of abuses, which is understandable.

00;29;43;20 - 00;30;04;29

Michelle Gaza

But on the other hand, it's really pulling away any sense of hope, like I'm damaged goods and I can never get better. But what I've seen is that people do get better and even people who've come from those extreme situations, they're doing really well. And I don't want to give anyone the impression that it happens overnight, particularly if you've had years of abuse.

00;30;04;29 - 00;30;29;15

Michelle Gaza

There may be years of therapy going into all those little pockets where you have those ghosts that are circling around the pain and helping them get out. But it is possible. It does happen, and it can be done in a way that fully gets to the root of the problem. Some of the older therapies, especially like the Freudian approach, Freud basically saw parts, but there was no self in that approach.

00;30;29;18 - 00;30;57;28

Michelle Gaza

Right? So it was really just a matter of how can we manage these neurotic parts? In effect, we're not just managing symptoms and behavior. We're getting to the root cause. We're having compassion and respect for why those behaviors are there. And we're helping the system to see there. There is another way where you can not only be safe, but actually safer, where you could heal, where you could essentially have your cake and eat it too.

00;30;57;29 - 00;31;19;18

Michelle Gaza

You can drop these habits and behaviors that don't serve anymore, even though we acknowledge they used to serve when you were in those no win situations and you had no choice, now you have a choice. A lot of people's protectors don't feel they have a choice. So as we show them that and they see, oh, and not in that abusive household anymore.

00;31;19;18 - 00;31;45;21

Michelle Gaza

I'm not in that abusive cult anymore. I'm not in that abusive school anymore. That abusive, terrible, violent neighborhood. The parts can release that strong hold on those patterns of behavior because we're showing them there's a new way, and we respectfully give them time to kind of feel into that and see for themselves. Oh, maybe there's a, well, way to deal with my emotions besides drinking 14 beers on a Friday night.

00;31;45;24 - 00;32;04;18

Michelle Gaza

And maybe that's actually even better, because you know what? I don't really even like the beer. I'm just doing it because I don't know what else to do. And so I just see this time and time and time again where there's honestly, there's times where, especially in the beginning, people would come and I would hear the stories and I'm so shocked.

00;32;04;20 - 00;32;18;15

Michelle Gaza

But you go with the process and you bring in that self energy and it just continues to amaze me time after time. That even things that seem like they would just destroy a person's soul, they can be healed.

00;32;18;17 - 00;32;42;14

Cherie Lindberg

Yeah. I think this is one of the important aspects of wanting to have this podcast, is to help get the word out that people can live an elevated life, even after having all of this trauma, and it can be done naturally without medication. Again, putting in here that if medication is supportive to folks who are not missing that.

00;32;42;17 - 00;33;12;27

Cherie Lindberg

But there's a lot of things that you can do naturally that can really help with your own true deep healing and getting to that a rut. I love that because so many times the way things are handled right now, it's Band-Aid solutions and it's just this revolving door. It's not getting to the root of that. We're wanting to go after long term sustainable change, you know, neuroplasticity where things like really change and are sustainable.

00;33;12;29 - 00;33;26;14

Cherie Lindberg

So thank you. Thank you for that. Can you talk a little bit about human design? I don't I don't think I mean I've had another practitioner on here. But how do you interweave that with what you do with your coaching?

00;33;26;17 - 00;33;57;21

Michelle Gaza

Human design I love to use with effects because human design, it's sort of it's like the user manual for your incarnation. So if I can look at your user manual, it's a cheat code because it shows me. Here are some places where this client is likely to have parts that are dealing with real sensitivity. Here are some places where a client is likely to have parts where maybe other people had a bad reaction to them, because they have a lot of power and energy here.

00;33;57;24 - 00;34;20;20

Michelle Gaza

These are the archetypes this person came to focus on embodying. What are the strong side of those archetypes? What are the challenges inherent in those archetypes? This client might need to move really, really slowly, step by step. This client might be more of a big picture person who can move a little bit more quickly, and it's still function and workable.

00;34;20;23 - 00;34;46;16

Michelle Gaza

So it really helps me to see everybody as an individual, which I think IFRS is pretty good at doing because it's really client led in the sense that if the client system is saying too much, too fast, we redirect, we put the brakes on. But human design really expands my ability to have that compassion like this client. It's not like the client I met an hour ago, and it's not like the client I'm going to meet tomorrow.

00;34;46;22 - 00;35;09;07

Michelle Gaza

Everyone has very different needs and sensitivities, strengths and challenges. One of the greatest points of that in human design is the emotional center, the solar plexus center. You know, I was raised by an atheist and an agnostic electrical engineer. So I was raised under the scientific method, very skeptical of things. So I'm always asking, okay, is this human design just a bunch of malarkey?

00;35;09;07 - 00;35;35;06

Michelle Gaza

Like, did I just like, take the Kool-Aid? Because my first reading was so spot on and maybe it's just me, but now it's probably been thousands of clients. I've seen their charts and heard their histories and talk to my partner Kavon about the readings. And I just see time and again these things are real and consistent. People with an open or undefined solar plexus, the emotional empaths of the world.

00;35;35;10 - 00;35;58;09

Michelle Gaza

We struggle with confrontation. We get overwhelmed by emotion. We don't move through emotions at the same rate as the emotionally defined people are mostly defined people, on the other hand, they've got to express their emotions. We can't treat them as bad for expressing their emotions, but they also often don't understand the impact and why other people are reacting to their emotions the way that they are.

00;35;58;11 - 00;36;32;18

Michelle Gaza

So just that little bit of information opens up a whole new level of not just compassion, but a way to approach these issues. Right. So I just had a client the other day, five one generator emotionally, totally open. Not a single gate activated in his solar plexus. Hates confrontation like he crumbles. Always thinks it's his fault. I have explained the mechanics to him and you could just see a light go off and this person is taking medication.

00;36;32;21 - 00;36;51;04

Michelle Gaza

Maybe a lot of the stuff that you're taking on that you can't seem to get through, that you're struggling with, it doesn't belong to you. You're taking on everybody else's feelings. You're soaking it up. Now you're in the quicksand of this emotional realm, and you don't have a motor that constantly spins to get you out of that quicksand.

00;36;51;06 - 00;37;12;14

Michelle Gaza

Probably somebody in your family of origin did have that motor, and you're constantly picking up what they're putting down. Meanwhile, they've moved on. They don't understand why you're a sad sack, and you're sitting there holding a bucket of their emotional barf. And it's really helpful because the fact that it's mechanical means no shame, no pain. We're helpless to this.

00;37;12;17 - 00;37;36;09

Michelle Gaza

Here we are in this really frickin difficult, uncomfortable experience of incarnating in a human body. And here's this manual that can help make it a little bit smoother, a little bit easier, a little bit less scary, a little bit less overwhelming. And also, I think one of the most important things is I know what I can claim, these things that are colored in the chart.

00;37;36;09 - 00;37;57;25

Michelle Gaza

This is what I'm bringing to the table, and I'm really responsible for this energy because I'm bringing it. But all this stuff in the white, that's not my problem. I'm not here to be mentally very focused, linear and and narrow in my thoughts. Some people are and God bless it, because we need some people to stay focused and make sure the podcast only an hour.

00;37;57;27 - 00;38;20;02

Michelle Gaza

Me, I'm totally open and the mind and Crown totally open. So you can you can throw six topics totally unrelated on my table, and I will find something that's related and a way to integrate them, but put me in a grocery store without a list. Oh it's ridiculous. I'm going back and forth, getting distracted by the shiny objects.

00;38;20;02 - 00;38;43;28

Michelle Gaza

Right? So everything has a strength and weakness. So what we really seek to do and activation coaching is to see who is this person in front of us and what's really going to serve them. One of the pain points for me, and part of the reason I also love if's, is I just found in my journeys in the world of shamanism, sorcery that we will worlds.

00;38;44;00 - 00;39;10;06

Michelle Gaza

It's the wild wild West, it's unregulated shamanism and a lot of these calls. To be a medicine person. You can't really regulate those on 3D because that's really the ancestors tapping you, that spirit tapping you. That's something you probably put your hand up for before you incarnated. So we can't really have the secular government regulating that. We can regulate behavior, we can regulate people not fulfilling contracts and taking people's money.

00;39;10;11 - 00;39;31;18

Michelle Gaza

But you can't really say, yes, this person is truly a shaman. The only people who really can regulate that is other shaman. So it's the wild, wild West. So the danger of that is you can have shaman who are psychopaths and sociopaths who take sadistic pleasure in messing with people who don't have the power and awareness to compete.

00;39;31;20 - 00;39;58;15

Michelle Gaza

You can also have really well-meaning healers. I myself was one of them. I'm sure I will do this again in the future. We have really good intentions, but that intention translates into agendas that we try to impose on clients that may not be right for them, and we inadvertently become bullies. This is a great danger. So what I love with IFRS is it has trained me to constantly ask for the feedback.

00;39;58;17 - 00;40;25;05

Michelle Gaza

How is this feeling? Does your protector give permission? Does this part feel like we really get it? Is there anything this part feels like we're just not getting as opposed to the old way, which also came with a lot of pressure? I'm the healer. I know the answers. I'm going to heal you again. I want to be balanced because there are some shaman who you do a session with them and you basically just lie down and they go do the journeying work.

00;40;25;09 - 00;40;52;11

Michelle Gaza

Sometimes we need that. Sometimes you are so exhausted, your nervous system is fried and you just like, I just need someone to do this for me. Just like if you needed brain surgery, you ain't going to do it on yourself. But I feel for the vast majority of work, it's really important to get these systems where the client has agency can say no, and we have a check and balance on the egos of the practitioners.

00;40;52;13 - 00;41;16;06

Michelle Gaza

And I feel like I really went on a tangent, but he would just, you know, helps with that because, you know, for example, my partner has a six brain. It's very fast. And he's a projector. They're very mental. They're like the mental marathon people generators. It can be hard for us to keep up with them because we're busy in the world of the life force, energy, laying down the bricks, being in the physical energy world.

00;41;16;08 - 00;41;38;06

Michelle Gaza

So a projector, not knowing human design with a six brain could have a generator client calm who's A13 with a lot of ones in the chart, the one energy it needs to go step by step. It's very detail oriented. So he could inadvertent be judging. Why can't this client keep up? Why are they taking so many sessions. But now with human design.

00;41;38;12 - 00;41;58;13

Michelle Gaza

Oh they're not going to slow. They're going at the correct pace for their mechanics. And we can respect that and not judge it. And those things are really important because it can mean the difference between having a good relationship with a practitioner, where you can really go deep versus a client feeling once again and not safe once again.

00;41;58;13 - 00;42;13;07

Michelle Gaza

This work is just sucks. I never get anywhere. Once again, I can't trust anybody, which a lot of people have that wound. So I deeply appreciate that individuation, that human design calls to our attention.

00;42;13;09 - 00;42;38;03

Cherie Lindberg

Well, and I would say that human design normalizes how we're showing up in the world. And then another piece that I like about it is it will it can also emphasize your strengths and your gifts, which is very resource based and very strength based, which is nice. It's a nice way to look at, you know, some of the things that you're here to bring in into the world.

00;42;38;05 - 00;42;39;01

Cherie Lindberg

So.

00;42;39;03 - 00;42;40;09

Michelle Gaza

Absolutely.

00;42;40;11 - 00;42;48;22

Cherie Lindberg

So as we're getting ready to wrap up here, any last minute thoughts or questions that I didn't ask that you would like our listeners to know?

00;42;48;25 - 00;43;08;24

Michelle Gaza

I would encourage everybody just to not give up. And it can that can be really difficult because when you're in like if you're emotional in the low part of your emotional way, if you're blended with the traumatized part, those feelings and those perspectives are real. The perspective of a part who just doesn't want to be here and wants to wants to end it, that's suffering.

00;43;08;24 - 00;43;28;27

Michelle Gaza

It is real part of this process of being human. It involves a lot of suffering, and it can be extremely painful. And I completely understand, and I've been there when you want to just give up because you're just frickin tired of it. But I hope everybody could, like, keep this little coin in their pocket, that when you're in that moment, do you just need to take a nap?

00;43;28;27 - 00;43;49;23

Michelle Gaza

Do you need to take a shower? Do you need to go put your feet in the grass? Right? Do you need a fresh glass of water? Do you maybe maybe you don't have the energy to make a good meal. Could you make a smoothie with some spirulina to get some nutrition in the body? Right? A lot of times, just the basic things we skip on because we're in so much emotional pain.

00;43;49;25 - 00;44;16;06

Michelle Gaza

So keep in mind the physical vessel matters. There's always hope. And that perspective, again, while it's legitimate, it's a narrow, limited perspective. So even when you're having the worst hurricane in Miami and there's furniture flying and wind blowing and you're getting slapped by this rain and it the sky is gray and clouded out. You can't even see the sun.

00;44;16;09 - 00;44;39;25

Michelle Gaza

The sun is still there. The sun is still there. And the sun, it's not getting hit by the debris. It's not getting rained on. It's not getting smashed by flying furniture. Our higher self is like that sun. It is always there, it's always available and it's in every human being. And this is something that it can be taught, it can be replicated, it's teachable.

00;44;40;02 - 00;45;03;17

Michelle Gaza

This is not just something that the magical shaman outside the village holds. Or like some special psychic that you saw on television. Everybody has a higher self now, when we speak to something like Human Design, we all have different abilities. You know, in the Claire's, whether you're clairvoyant, Claire, audience, you all have different abilities that are strongholds, strong points for you, but that self exists in everybody.

00;45;03;19 - 00;45;29;06

Michelle Gaza

So if you feel like maybe not me, maybe I'm the only one who can't heal. I would really encourage you to reach out. And whether you're doing I have fast brain spot, inhuman design. Anybody who is going to support you to find that and to get clear about who you truly are. Because at the end of the day, all humans suffering is the same, and it is all caused and perpetuated by the fact that we have forgotten who we are.

00;45;29;08 - 00;45;47;08

Cherie Lindberg

Yeah, I think that is a great message to, to finish up on and just thank you so much, Michelle, for coming and talking about internal family systems and human design and even self-compassion. Thank you very much for being with us today.

00;45;47;10 - 00;45;52;10

Michelle Gaza

Thank you so much. I really appreciate this opportunity.

00;45;52;12 - 00;46;31;12

Cherie Lindberg

I hope you enjoyed our discussion about internal family systems, and how we can use this as a tool to normalize and heal ourselves, as well as human design, and how that can really help us recognize our unique gifts, our unique way that our soul shows up in this world, and how we can bring all of those things together to understand why we're behaving the way we are, why we're adapting the way we have, and how to heal and move forward and evolve as a soul and as a person.

00;46;31;14 - 00;46;56;02

Cherie Lindberg

And again, if you found this very helpful and you had a loved one or a friend that you really think that this information would really strike then or be helpful to, then if you could please share. And we're again, we're always open to feedback. What are you interested in hearing about different ways of healing? Please on our social media sites?

00;46;56;02 - 00;47;05;16

Cherie Lindberg

Let us know. We'd love to hear from our listeners. So thank you for joining us for another episode at the Elevated Life Academy.

00;47;05;18 - 00;47;24;15

Narrator

Thank you for joining us on another uplifting journey on Cherie Lindberg's Elevated Life Academy. Stories of Hope and healing. If you found resonance or connection with what you've heard today, we encourage you to share this episode and consider becoming a subscriber. Please spread the word so others can live and elevated life.