My 2022 Mystical Initiation

Often what appears in our lives as a crisis is also an invitation to connect more deeply with the Divine and with our own souls.

We all experience different levels of crises in our lives. And while I’ve been blessed with pretty good health for most of my life, I experienced something at the start of 2022 that catalyzed a deeper relationship with my body and shifted my regard for physical health and healing.

In today’s episode, I’m sharing about the experience..

In the days leading up to and just following an emergency surgery, I spent a lot of my time in prayer and reflection. As a long time practitioner of surrender and trust, I handed a lot of what could have been scary or stressful over to the Divine and invoked grace, not just for myself, but for the people around me and especially those who were supporting me.. And perhaps more than anything else, I focused on my body and it’s vast healing capacity.

Join me in today’s episode as I share about my health crisis at the beginning of the year, how it brought me into even deeper relationship with and reverence for my body, and the opportunity it created for me to slow down and reflect.

Listen to episode 374 now!

In episode 374 of the Embodied Podcast we discuss:

• [1:25] Why I share my own experiences and the power of storytelling 
• [3:18] See ya later, gallbladder! My unexpected health crisis
• [6:27] Accepting help and listening to my body’s signals
• [10:00] Experiencing a mystical initiation in the midst of the health crisis
• [14:25] Why and how I spent three days in prayer during my hospital stay
• [20:14] My “Divine Support Squad” and how they showed up for me during this experience
• [25:36] Reflections and thoughts I had immediately after surgery
• [28:16] How I’m feeling now and how the recovery process is going so far
• [33:22] A message I received from my departed grandfather when I needed it most
• [35:15] Deeper layers to seeing my body as a miracle and being grateful for all it does
• [38:14] Business changes I’m making this year to align my work with my vision

Resources mentioned by Elizabeth in the episode:

• Explore the Self-Love Mini Course
• Explore the Wild Soul Archetypes Mini Course
• Explore the Embodied Healing Shop
• Join The Wild Soul Sacred Body Membership.
• Email us with questions or feedback.
• Don’t miss an episode of The Embodied Podcast.

Quote from this Week’s Episode of the Embodied Podcast:

• [01:33] “I share a lot of my own experiences, not because I ever believe that my experiences are universal, but because stories really carry medicine.” – Elizabeth

• [13:23] “My devotion to my soul’s illumination in this lifetime is my top priority.” – Elizabeth

• [21:30] “I decided I would do my best to live as if everything was a miracle.” – Elizabeth

• [25:16] “It was one of the most simple pleasures and blissful moments of my entire life, even with stitches in my belly, sitting in that chair, with the sun shining in from the window on my face after just kind of being cooped up in this hospital under fluorescent lights for four days.” – Elizabeth

   

How was this episode for you?

Was this episode helpful for you today? I’d love to know what quote or lesson touched your soul. Let me know in the comments below OR share the episode on Instagram, tag me your stories @elizabethdialto, or send me a DM!

About the Embodied Podcast with Elizabeth DiAlto

Since 2013 I’ve been developing a body of work that helps women embody self-love, healing, and wholeness. We do this by focusing on the four levels of consciousness – physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual.

In practical terms, this looks like exploring tools and practices to help you tune into the deep wisdom of the body and the knowing of the heart, which I believe are gateways to our souls. Then we cultivate a new relationship with our minds that allows the mind to serve this wisdom and knowledge and soul connection, rather than override it, which is what many of us were taught.

If you’ve been doing self-help or spiritual development work for a while, these are the types of foundational things that often people overlook in pursuit of fancier concepts that often aren’t practical or sustainable. Here, we will focus on building these strong foundations so you can honestly and thoroughly embody self-love. If you’re feeling it, subscribe to the show, and leave us a review wherever you listen from. You can also keep up with show updates and community discussion on Instagram here.

Transcripts for Episode 374:

– Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Embodied Podcast in 2022, I am your host, Elizabeth DiAlto. And since 2013, I have been teaching women how to harness the power of their sacred bodies and free their wild souls. This podcast became a big part of that work when we launched in 2015. And what listeners consistently share that they love about the show is how we always aim to address, synthesize, and integrate the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual aspects of not just healing, but finding self-love, wholeness, and liberation. The show is available on all podcast players, and YouTube, and our show notes pages, which you can find at untameyourself.com/podcast, include minute markers and transcripts. If you’re a note taker, or it’s just helpful for you to see things in writing, head on over there and check it out. And thank you so, so much for listening. Your time, energy, and attention is valuable and precious, and I appreciate that you’d focus any of it here with me and our guests. Let’s get into the show.

Hi, everybody. I already said it in the intro, but welcome to the podcast in 2022, this thing is gonna be seven years old this year. I can’t believe that. And this is episode number 374. Kinda wild. So to kick off the new podcast year, I have two back-to-back solo episodes for you. One, the one you’re listening to right now, and then next week, both of which are pretty intimate. And those of you who’ve been around for a while know, I share a lot of my own experiences, not because I ever believe that my experiences are universal, but because stories really carry medicine. We can all usually find some nuggets of truth, insights, or revelations in other people’s experiences, whether they relate to our own experiences or not. And this really anchored in for me in 2020, when I was working with an 81-year old shaman from Mexico, and many of our sessions were just her telling me stories. And I’d have some of the biggest healings from just listening and letting her words and experiences wash over me, which often didn’t happen in the moment. Sometimes I’d actually be really agitated in the moment. Like, why is she telling me this? What does this have to do with what I’ve got going on right now? But then later, days later, things would just start to pop up for me, or my dreams in the next few nights would be so revealing and alchemizing. And so I really learned to have not only a deeper appreciation, but a deeper practice around storytelling. And that also really helped me to embrace my intrinsic impulses around that, to share stories and just ditch any self-consciousness I felt about talking about myself too much. Excuse me. And here’s the thing, like you’re all grownups. I trust you to take what you need and ditch anything that doesn’t resonate for you or anything that doesn’t feel relevant.

So here we go, episode number 374, year seven of this frigging podcast. So I had a really unexpected start to this year. It was a mystical initiation via health crisis. So winter break, I took off like about three weeks, two and a half weeks for winter break. And it really felt too short. I spent the whole first week of January saying I needed a longer break, and boy, did I end up getting it. I’ve had gallstones. I had gallstones for years, but they were never like that bad. I’ve definitely gone through periods of more discomfort than others, and I’ve had a couple like gallbladder attacks over the years, but I’ve also used a lot of natural healing methods and adjustments to what I eat to help keep them in check. But the weekend of January 6th, my little gallbladder decided it was done with me. I had the worst gallbladder attack of my life, and that ended up resulting in emergency gallbladder surgery a couple of days later. Actually on 1-11-22, which I loved. I loved that that was the day. I loved that my surgery happened on a totally angel number day.

And so for this episode, I’m gonna tell you the whole story. I’m gonna tell you what happened, not in excruciating detail and not in excessive detail, just relevant detail, because I love hearing about other people’s mystical awakenings and initiations, and I love learning how people live their practices in their faith. So if you’re curious like me about that stuff, you’ll love this. And if you’re not interested, you might just wanna skip this episode. Now, before I tell you the story, I also wanna acknowledge and just state that for throughout most of my life, I’ve been a relatively healthy able-bodied person. I’ve had some chronic inflammation from time to time. I fractured my wrist when I was little. I’ve sprained my ankles several times, playing sports and doing athletic things. I had a hernia surgery my senior year of college. But all these things heal up eventually. And so I just want to acknowledge that those of you with chronic illnesses, disease, conditions, or people who have fought things like cancer, may find the following story of my recent health crisis to be nothing compared to what you’ve gone through or go through on an ongoing basis. And I wanna say that I respect that, and that this was a really big event for me. And so it not being the worst thing that can happen to a person, but it being the biggest health crisis of my life personally, are both true. And I say that because I sometimes find the way some people speak about their experiences, as if either they’re universal, and like everyone should be able to relate, or as if they’re like the worst thing ever without acknowledging that people have such a broad range of experiences when it comes to health, really bothers me sometimes. So I just don’t wanna do that here. So now that we’ve acknowledged that.

So Saturday, January 6th, I was supposed to go to a friend’s party, and I was gonna ride over with my other friends, Kate and Mike. And I was gonna meet them at their house, and then they were gonna drive ’cause they live really close to me. And like, I wanna say 30 minutes before I was supposed to leave to go meet them, I really started having a lot of, I had had stomach pain, and then it was moving into my gallbladder. And if any of you have ever had issues in like stomach, liver, gallbladder, that type of stuff, or pancreas even, the pain could really radiate. It can really radiate around into the back, sometimes into the upper shoulder. And so I was having all the pain in all the places. And so I called Kate and Mike, and I was like, “Hey, I don’t think I’m gonna be able to go to the party.” But at the point at which I called them, I was actually in so much pain. I was crying. And so Kate was like, “Do you want us to come there?” And I will never forget that moment of having the thought that probably many of you can relate to of like, I already am not gonna be able to go to the party. I don’t want them to not go to the party. I don’t wanna ruin their night, blah, blah, blah. But just something much deeper inside of me was like, you need help. Say yes. And so I said, yeah. I think I literally cried into the phone. Like, yes, I really think I should say yes to that. So I don’t need to get into all the dirty details, but suffice it to say a few hours later, I was laying on their bathroom floor ’cause they have a bathtub and I don’t. So we thought maybe if I went and soaked in some Epsom salts or whatever, the magnesium might help. ‘Cause we thought I might just be passing a gallstone, and that’s why I was in so much pain. So a couple of hours later, I am laying on their bathroom floor in the most excruciating pain in my life, and we made the call to go to the emergency room.

Now I have since learned about gallstones, that people say this pain is comparable to labor, including people who have both had gallstones and been through labor. So, and it’s funny because both of them reflected to me that watching me that night was like being with a person who’s in labor because Kate has two kids. Mike has obviously been there through her experience. She’s been there through her own experience. So we head to the emergency room and plot twist. When I get there, I also test positive for COVID. I was asymptomatic and I remained that way. Which sidebar, I didn’t realize that approximately 40% of COVID cases are asymptomatic. That data point is just something that either doesn’t get much airtime or I just had not like crossed my field of awareness, but that seems like a really high percentage of people. But anyway, because of my positive test, they had to care for me and treat me in the hospital as a COVID patient, which just felt so disorienting to me ’cause I literally had no symptoms, but it’s also why they ended up keeping me for a few extra days before removing my gallbladder, even though it was clear that my first night there, after an ultrasound, something called a HIDA scan, and an MRI, that I was gonna need to get my gallbladder out. I guess, and this makes sense, that they have to take some extra precautions when operating on someone who has COVID, regardless of symptoms or not.

So now I just wanna say, because I’m a person who does not really have chronic health issues, in my life when I have gotten ill, been injured, bouts of inflammation and other things that I’ve dealt with, there’s always some kind of mystical initiation that goes with it. Even last year, actually around the holidays as well. I fell. I don’t know if I ever shared this publicly. Which by the way, anything I don’t share publicly, I never have anything to hide, but just like not, everything is all y’all’s business. But I fell one night. I got up in the middle of night to pee, and I fell in my bathroom, and I actually knocked myself out. I woke up, and then I had a really bad concussion and a black eye. And that was a whole thing too at the end of 2020. So hopefully I can break the cycle, and I don’t need to have another health crisis next year. I will be saying some prayers about that and petitioning to my divine support squad.

So anyway, the minute I was like, all right, I gotta go to the emergency room, I knew that of course I was having this physical experience, but that there would be some kind of mystical initiation around it. And the minute I got into my emergency room bed, I looked to my right, and I see a 333 on the electrical socket. And 333 is a very significant number for me. It’s the ascended master number, which I always associate with Jesus. And then I looked to my left, and there was a poster on the wall with 722 printed in red. Now 722, July 22nd is Mary Magdalene feast day. And red is a common color associated with Mary Magdalene for many reasons. So I was already in tears because of the excruciating pain I was in, but then I was now having this flood of emotion even more after two of the MVPs on my personal divine support squad had made their present known, made their presence known, and I immediately felt like enveloped in their love. And again, I knew, I mean, I was already feeling like, okay, whatever’s about to happen is like gonna be fine. Trust, surrender, all that stuff that I always practiced. And I wasn’t really afraid, but there was also just like this calm. I mean, it was stressful. I wasn’t feeling fear, but of course I was feeling stress, but I also felt this calm wash over me in that moment ’cause I was like, oh. It’s like my two of the biggest pillars of my own divine support squad are here with me. And since June of last year, I’ve been deepening my prayer practice. And then since August of last year, I had been binging on everything Caroline Myss has ever written or recorded about energy anatomy and mysticism. And so my relationship with grace, which formally began back in like 2015, has shifted dramatically in like the last six months. And my devotion to my soul’s illumination in this lifetime as my top priority, like more important than anything else in my life, has also deepened, along with my understanding of divine chaos. ‘Cause that’s something Caroline talks about a lot. And so people spend a lot of time lamenting over what they and others do and don’t deserve. But this is something Caroline also talks about a lot is like, what if it’s not about deserving at all? Like what if we just take deserving out of it? And so going into this experience as well, holding that position gave me a lot of peace during my hospital stay and ongoing recovery from the surgery. So there was no, I didn’t spend any time on like feeling sorry for myself or like asking why, why is this happening? Or, I was more filled with curiosity and wonder around what was gonna unfold in my life as a result of this experience. And since much of my time in the hospital was spent waiting and fading in and out basically of states of being medicated for the pain I was in, in the three days leading up to my surgery, I decided that one of the best possible uses of my time, I mean there wasn’t really much else to do, would be prayer. And so those three days, really four, because also after I came out of surgery, which I’ll get to in a little bit, were like some of the deepest, most contemplative prayerful days of my entire life. And I wasn’t necessarily praying for myself, but for everyone else in the hospital, the workers, the other patients. And then I extended that to like healthcare workers all over the world. And I really felt more plugged in and connected to all of that being in an actual hospital, but then I have the entire pandemic. And I had some great, like amazing conversations with my nurses and the technicians about their experiences. And I thanked them profusely for everything they were doing for me, everything they’ve been doing the whole pandemic.

And there was also another interesting detail, which was that I didn’t have a phone charger with me. And in the emergency room, they charged my phone for me a few times ’cause I was technically in the emergency room for like two days, ’cause they had to put me in a holding area before they could check me into a room. And then once I got into my official room, there was no charger available. Eventually one of my friends dropped off a charger for me, but because my phone was like dying, I got to unplug more than any of my intentional unplugs in years. And I’m also not a big TV watcher. And so like I wasn’t watching TV. I had my Kindle with me, but I wasn’t really in the mood to read. So most of my time, literally for like almost 72 hours straight, if I wasn’t sleeping, I was in prayer contemplation. And I had some of the deepest rest I’ve had in years in the hospital. And also just some of the deepest, most tender, like connected and expansive moments in prayer and receiving guidance as well. I also made an important energetic for my choice during this experience. I didn’t tell anyone in my family until the day of my operation. I let my brother. He was the only one I told a couple hours before the surgery. That was it. And I did that because everyone has different strengths, and many of my family members are just not people who shine when it comes to people’s emotional and energetic needs. They’re amazing when it comes to other stuff, and they’re super loving, and generous, and caring, but they often create more energetic and emotional labor than support in certain circumstances. And I knew this was one of those circumstances for me. And so I had asked myself, whose energy I wanted with me in this experience, and it was not my family. So even though I knew they’d be upset when I eventually told them, I just made the choice that I knew was gonna be best for me at the time. And luckily I had a lot of soul family, really dear amazing friends, both here in Miami and also far away, to give me the support I needed.

And so the surgery itself was just a short procedure. If any of you have ever had your gallbladder move, you know, removed laparoscopically, you know that, or if you’ve ever had any kind of laparoscopic, I think most of them work very similarly. And when I woke up though, this was like one of my favorite/wildest parts of the whole thing. When I woke up, I immediately felt the difference of no longer having a gallbladder full of sludge and gallstones. And mind you, anesthesia is super weird. If you’ve ever had anesthesia, if you know anything about anesthesia, maybe you’re listening, you’re an anesthesiologist, like, and you know this, but it wasn’t the anesthesia. The gallbladder, depending on what tradition you look at, stores things like anger, bitterness, resentment, condemnation, inability to forgive, and indecision. And in my life, I’ve had more than my fair share of those things via my own experiences, but also via the experiences I help my clients process, and as well that I helped to process on behalf of the collective, which we can asterisk that’s that and talk about that on another day, how some of us, part of our soul contract is to process on behalf of the collective. That’s why some of us have like the massive capacities and bandwidths that we have.

So after the surgery though, I felt lighter. I felt free. I felt like ancient, old, energetic hooks had gone. Like they, like as if they lived in my gallbladder, and now that I didn’t have a gallbladder, they were out of me as well. And it was really incredible, to say the least. And I spent what felt like hours after my surgery, when I got back into my hospital room, just like giving thanks in this like thankful reverent prayer to my gallbladder and for my gallbladder. ‘Cause I also wanted to intentionally and consciously like release it with love and appreciation for its service to my body for my like 38 and a half almost years. I mean a gallbladder, the gallbladder is small, and it is a workhorse in the body. And my gallbladder really gave it its best until it couldn’t anymore. And I still like, even when I think about it, I appreciate it so much. There were also a few other really beautiful moments in the hospital before I was discharged the next day that I wanna share with you. First, again, with the divine support squad, which if you don’t know what that means, that’s my vernacular for your spiritual counselor, your team on the other side, or the spirits, the beings, the divine beings of light that love you unconditionally that support you in the unseen realms, right? So I realized that some people may or may not have a relationship to stuff like that. So just wanted to just fill in if anyone heard me say that and was like, what is she talking about? I call it my divine support squad.

Now, I realize some people may write off synchronicities as mere coincidence, but I’m not one of those people. A really long time ago, I heard a quote that gets attributed to Albert Einstein. And the quote is, there are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is. Now, obviously, you all know I love nuance. So of course there’s always more than two ways to live your life. I just, I loved this concept so much. And for whatever reason, I decided I would do my best to live as if everything was a miracle. And it’s really served me. So when I learned that the gentle man, and I like, I’m not mispronouncing gentlemen, I’m saying like the gentle man. This man had the most gentle, just like solid, caring, supportive energy I have felt who wheeled me into the operating room. And he also is the same person who later helped me after the surgery get up out of bed for the first time, stand up straight. Like when I got up, ’cause I did remember when I had my hernia surgery back in 2005, how hard it was to stand up straight. So, and that was a different incision. That was not in my belly. That was lower. But I had four incisions in my belly, one in my belly button and three closer to like the top of my stomach across like where my diaphragm would be, right where the gallbladder, near where the gallbladder is. And so just automatically or instinctively when I got up, when I got out of the bed, I hunched over. Like it’s almost like I was afraid to stand up straight because I didn’t want to feel the pain of having incisions in my belly, but he helped me stand up straight. And again, he was just so gentle, and careful, and caring with me. It was really beautiful. And so, and his name was Juan Carlos, JC. Just like Jesus Christ. And again, I just winked at the divine sense of humor. So as well, I cannot describe to you for how after spending four days chained to a hospital bed by way of IVs. Which by the way, this is funny. Again, some of you who have maybe more experience in hospitals than I had, I didn’t realize literally for three whole days that I could have unplugged the IV thing from the wall and walked around, like wheeled around with the little pole thing that the bags and stuff hang on. Nobody told me that. And of course, I’m not trying to touch like medical equipment that I’m attached to because I don’t fucking know anything, right? So I didn’t know. I actually could have been moving around a lot more and not chained to the bed, but I didn’t know what I didn’t know. So after four days chained to the hospital bed, in my perception, I finally learned that I could unplug the thing from the wall and move around my room.

And I was in this room. My hospital was in Miami and I had a window. And so out my window I could see all like the lush green that I love so much about being here. But what I didn’t realize until I was able to like walk over by the window was that when I looked to the left, I could actually see Biscayne Bay, which Biscayne Bay is like my boo, because that’s what I look. If you follow me on Instagram at all, you’ve seen the view for my apartment. And my story is I live on the bay. So there was also just something so beautiful and magical about this moment. First of all, this gentle man JC helped me get up out of the bed, stand up straight, walk around the room very, very slowly. Like he held my arm like very slowly, very carefully. And then I had just been laying in a hospital bed for four days, and I finally got to like just sit in a chair, feel some different kind of back support, and also let the sun shine in the window on my face, see the water. And it felt like a miracle. It was one of the most simple pleasures and blissful moments of my entire life, even with stitches in my belly. Sitting in that chair with the sun shining in from the window on my face after just kind of being cooped up in this hospital under fluorescent lights for four days. And then next, I happened to have a little journal in the bag I grabbed take to the hospital. I didn’t realize it was there until after my surgery. And I wrote a lot of reflections afterwards. And most of it was just for me, but there are a few things that I wanna share with you.

So the first thing was I wrote, please stop pinching and prodding your belly, judging its shape, size, and fat, and remember that it’s your core physically, and houses both your personal and creative power centers energetically. This was like, this will be a post. Like I wrote that down to like write a post at some point. But then my reflection was, after abdominal surgery, you realize just how little we do all day, every day, without the assistance of the belly/the core. We should all be worshiping our bellies 24/7. I also spent a lot of time in the hospital before and after the surgery, forgiving myself for taxing my gallbladder the way I did in a couple of different ways, right? For not knowing what I didn’t know about how it works, and for also just ignoring it sometimes, like not wanting to deal with like, I had a little stomach ache or whatever. Like, oh, I shouldn’t have eaten that. Or, and also waiting too long to get medical attention and tests. Like this, I mean, everything happens in divine timing and divine purpose. And so who’s to say, maybe I ultimately would have needed emergency surgery eventually anyway, but maybe with some medical intervention sooner, I wouldn’t have. Like, I don’t know. But my further reflection was also that holistic health and alternative medicine is great. And sometimes we need, just need the high-tech modern Western big guns for shit. And I feel like people could be so judgy about that. And while I really do aim to be someone who rarely needs to interact with Western medicine, I’m sure I was definitely avoiding it to an extent, and that who knows? Like that, maybe that was more harmful to me than it needed to be. And so I felt very humbled by that. And I also just wanted to do a lot of self-forgiveness around that. Some of you know this about me. I’m a Virgo sign, Capricorn moon. I’m not a person who sees any value in wasting time beating myself up about things, but when I recognize things I could have done better, I do like to process the feeling of, damn, I could have done that better. I typically don’t feel regret much either, but I wasn’t. You know what, maybe here’s the difference. I wasn’t feeling regret, but I was feeling remorseful. I was feeling like I had let my body down with some of my choices. I know I’ve heard many people speak about feeling betrayed by their bodies when they have health things. But I felt more like I might’ve betrayed my body by not giving the gravity to what was going on in my gallbladder that, clearly if I ended up in the hospital with that much pain and emergency surgery, there was more going on than I had realized.

Now at the time that I’m recording this, it’s about two weeks since my surgery. And I’m happy to say, I took the most steps I’ve been able to take any day yet today, about 6,000 steps. The surgical glue on my incisions has almost completely fallen off. I can finally breathe into my diaphragm again. That happened over the weekend. That felt like a frigging miracle. As a person who is like every single day of my life, deeply breathing into my belly, and moving and doing all these embodiment practices for like, I think it was around like 10 or 12 days I was not able to breathe into my diaphragm because of the incisions. It was very, very painful. So I was like chest breathing. That felt like a miracle. Finally, I think it was Sunday. I was literally texting my friends, “I took a belly breath!” You know? And again, like shout out and love to people who I’m sure there are people who have medical conditions, or things going on, or long COVID symptoms, or who’ve had COVID who like have felt terror of not being able to barely even breathe into your chest. So just wanna acknowledge just how like precious, and sacred, and incredible the breath is, and how having an experience where I couldn’t take a belly breath showed me. I’m a person who really has a lot of reverence for the body and how it functions, but sometimes you just don’t realize. I hadn’t realized that I for sure was taking my breath for granted. Getting up and down is easier now. I can sleep on my sides again. Which, oh my God, if any of you are side sleepers, you probably get this. Having to sleep on my back for almost two weeks straight was so challenging for me. Bending and twisting is getting easier, though I don’t have full capacity for that yet. And I can’t lift heavy things for probably like another month. And actually, by the time this episode goes live, it’ll be two weeks from when I’m even recording it. So I’ll be a couple of weeks closer to full recovery. And as of right now, I can only drive short distances. Sitting up straight is still a bit uncomfortable on my belly button incision. And I didn’t share any of this publicly, like while it was happening. And actually, this podcast will be when I share it publicly. Which will be, this podcast will go up on February 7th. My surgery was January 11th. So almost a month later. And that was intentional. Again, I think I mentioned this with something else earlier. Not because I have anything to hide, but remember, like I’m an energy worker. I’m an embodiment specialist. The energetics matter. I didn’t need or want unnecessary energy in my healing and recovery space. I didn’t even wanna tell my family. I certainly wasn’t gonna tell strangers on the internet. You know? I did let women in my membership and women in a couple of the programs I was running know. And I had to let some of my clients know because I had to clear my calendar, and I wasn’t gonna be able to teach workshops, do Q&a calls, do sessions and stuff like that. But yeah, it was really something to just clear my calendar and go, okay, time to rest. Time to give all the time, effort, energy, attention, focus, devotion, dedication, and everything to this body ’cause it’s time to heal. And I was also just having like immense gratitude for literally like just the last decade of my life, all of my work to create a business, and build a team and a life really where I could do that. I could just clear my calendar for two weeks, no questions asked. And shout out, if anyone listening is one of my clients, ooh, this is making me wanna cry. If anyone listening is one of my clients, or you’re in the membership, or you’re in one of the programs, and you’re one of the people who was just so loving and amazing when Marshall and my community manager let you know that I wasn’t gonna be available for like two weeks. Just thank you so much. I have some peers who have shared stories with me about like getting COVID, and their clients being mad at them, and people feeling like they are owed because they paid you money, they paid someone money. And like that just, my community isn’t like that. I got Care Bear stares. I got love notes. People were praying for me. They were just so amazing. But I think it’s ’cause this is the work we do, right? Self love, healing, wholeness, and liberation. We don’t commodify ourselves. We are all committed to breaking habits and patterns of self sacrifice, and we treat our bodies like the sacred and miraculous things that they are, vessels that they are. And so that was also a really beautiful part of the experience. Just the support, the love, the understanding, the encouragement. Take all the time you need. Rest all you need. Please go slower than you think you need. Just really beautiful how people responded. So back to the experience, getting home from the hospital was a trip. I really did feel like I was in this little cocoon, this little mystical care cocoon while I was at the hospital.

And listen, was everything perfect? The hospital wasn’t like, I could do a whole nother episode about how so many people who work at hospitals are straight up Earth angels. If you’re listening to this, and you’re like a nurse or a hospital technician, and doctors too. Although I will say, the energy feels different with a lot of doctors than with the more like staff that you’re interacting with, like the nurses, and the technicians, and stuff like that. But the people are absolutely incredible Earth angels, but the place itself is just like not built for healing. Like the food, the fluorescent lights. Like there’s just so many things about it that I was like, wow, this is not a healing place. But so many of these people are just, I don’t know, they’re just doing God’s work. But anyway, so getting home from the hospital was a trip, and I really was grateful to still be on anesthesia. I think that stays in your system for like three days. I mean, I’ve heard it stays in much longer than that, but it really doesn’t like wear off wear off for like 72 hours or something like that. But anyway, I’m pretty sure it’s only by the grace of the anesthesia, and some pain medication, and adrenaline that I was even able to get in and out of my friend’s car, who picked me up at the hospital and took me home, and even make the walk from the lobby of my building to the elevator to get up to my apartment, which is a substantial walk. I don’t even know how I did that. And so my friend Kate picked me up from the hospital, brought me home. We quickly realized that my apartment was not equipped for recovering from an abdominal surgery, but we kind of figured out how to prop me up the best way we could on my couch so I could sleep that night. But I will say, getting up and down was honestly the scariest part of the whole thing. I just kept praying, please don’t let me bust these incisions open. And I have never been more grateful that I used to be a personal trainer. So I understand biomechanics and was able to really use my arms and legs to the best of my ability to take as much stress and strain as possible off my abdomen when trying to move around and get up. So that first night I did not sleep well.

And I woke up, this was actually one of my favorite parts of the whole recovery experience. I woke up that morning, a little, like a little bit beside myself. Like, what the fuck am I gonna do for the next 10 days? I could barely even get on and off this couch. I’m gonna bust these incisions. And literally, as I was having that thought train, an image of my grandpa popped into my mind standing in front of a medical supply store on Victory Boulevard, on Staten Island where I grew up. And that image triggered a memory of this special chair he had towards the end of his life ’cause he really couldn’t get up and down on his own. And I forgot that they’re called lift chairs. Which if you’re not familiar with what that is, it’s like, think of a reclining chair where you could like hit a button, and like the feet go up, and the back goes down. But then when, and then you can put it back to sitting. But then beyond sitting, it can actually come all the way. It can take you all the way up to standing. Like it also extends the other way. So you could lay down in it, or you can go all the way to standing up in this lift chair. It’s for people with injuries, recovering from surgery like I was, people with hip issues, older people who have problems getting up and down. They’re really, really an amazing invention. And so I forgot that it was called a lift chair, but I saw that image of my grandpa. I remembered that he had that chair. And so I started Googling. I think I was, I think I typed in like recovery chair. Like within a couple of search terms, this place popped up called Family Rentals. Which by the way, I just needed to let you all know. Ever since my grandfather passed away in 2008, that is how he rolls on the other side. If I’m in danger, if I need something, like he finds a way to get me a frigging message, and it’s literally one of my favorite things about my ongoing relationship with my grandfather, even though he’s no longer on the earth in a body. And so Family Rentals, I call this place. Y’all this was a Wednesday. I literally called at 10 a.m., and by 1:15 p.m. that chair was in my living room, and I didn’t have to worry about getting up and down. It was so frigging, it was amazing. I was again, so grateful. We set it up in my living room so that I could just look out at the water. I slept in that thing for like my first five nights here, my first five nights home from the hospital. It was amazing. And so here’s, kind of moving towards wrapping up, I wrote a post on Facebook. I have a small private, like literally like friends only Facebook account.

And so I shared on there a couple of days ago, as I’m recording this, a post about my surgery. I’m gonna read to you what I wrote, but I wanna elaborate on some of the points. I wrote, I’ve been recovering from unexpected surgery for almost two weeks now. People keep asking me how I am, and the first thing out of my mouth is, bodies are miracles. More on that in a minute. One of my words for the year is illumination. Nothing like a health crisis to illuminate all of the mother effing things. It’s also been wild to recover from something like this at this stage in my life. The only other time I had major surgery, I was a senior in college, still regarding my body as an object, and kind of dangling on the outskirts of Catholicism, but becoming increasingly interested in just talking to God my own way. This time I’m fully in my mystical life, and I’m 14 years into a career path centered around the body. The last 9 or 10 of which have been concentrated in energy work and embodiment specifically teaching women about the sacredness of the body. Healing from surgery as this person is so, so different than healing as a 21-year old person with none of the context or reverence I have now. Noticing and reveling and the little progressions every day, navigating the intense pain and discomfort with deep presence and love, having different relationships to death, vulnerability, and productivity, different boundaries with family, a different support network of soul family. It’s been a lot to process and integrate, but the good kind of a lot, the kind of a lot that demarcates a distinct before and after moment in a life. And I’m sure some of you can relate to that, right? Of like having a health crisis, or having a surgery, or having an injury, or something happens, and it really is like a before and after moment, everything in your life before that happens, and then everything afterwards. But this piece of noticing and reveling in the little progressions every day. As an embodiment specialists, I’m just, I’m so tuned in, tapped in, and aware of what I feel, where I feel it, when I feel it, like what’s going on in my body. And it was just amazing to me. I had mentioned with, especially around the stitches, the incisions in my belly and how that inhibited breathing, and movement and certain like discomfort, things I could and couldn’t do, but just noticing every day how I could do just like a little bit more than the day before. Even like I mentioned, I slept in that chair like my first five nights. So I got home from the hospital on a Wednesday. I think it was Sunday night. I was really not sleeping well in that chair, and that was stressing me out a little bit because we all know how important sleep is for like repair, and restoration, and healing, especially of physical things. And so I got up at like four a.m. on that night. I think it was the Sunday. And I was like, I think I can get up and down out of my bed now. I think I could do it. And so I walked into my bedroom and I could do it. And kind of like the moment by the window in the hospital, something I never thought about being miraculous before, just being able to get in and out of my fucking bed, and lay down on my bed, and sleep in my bed was such like, oh my God, I cried. I cried. And then in the morning I texted all my. I was like, “I slept in my own bed last night!” Like it was, that was amazing, and it was a great night of sleep. And even, I think I had mentioned earlier, just like over this past weekend, finally being able to breathe into my belly. Like, there’s just been all these little moments that just feel so miraculous to me. Because sometimes, and I’ve taken this reflection to other areas of my life. There really are just times when you don’t realize how valuable, how important, how miraculous, what a big deal something is until it’s taken away from you or until you can’t do it.

And again, like this really just makes you wanna acknowledge people who have any kind of chronic health stuff going on, where you’re having an experience where it might have been a really, really long time, and you haven’t gotten things back that have been, whether you want to regard it as taken away or become inaccessible to you. Just want to send just like a lot of love, and a lot of care, and a lot of respect for that experience day in and day out, and a lot of grace and a lot of just prayers for moving through that and getting through that. So the last thing I’ll say, at the end of last year, I’d had mentioned some changes were rumbling in my work anyway. And since my surgery, this like mystical initiation, which I know I didn’t really get too much into that. That’s a lot more like private and tender for me. And also a lot of it, because it’s mystical, which means rooted in mystery. I couldn’t even explain it to you if I tried. So I’m not even gonna bother. But it felt really important to me to rename some things in my work to reflect the deep, mystical, and sacred energy that runs through everything I do.

So by the time this episode goes up, I don’t even know if things will be updated on the website yet. That’s gonna take a minute with like logos and stuff. But the Institute for Embodied Living is now the School for Sacred Embodiment. That’s the new name. And if you’re a new listener, and if you’re, or if you just like we’re not aware of what the Institute was, essentially like that’s my whole business. Imagine like you go to like a college or a university. I went to Loyola University in Maryland, right? So in Loyola University of Maryland, there’s different departments, right? There’s communication, there’s theology, there’s business, there’s all these different things, philosophy. You can major in all these things. So the School for Sacred Embodiment is that. It is the home. It is the house for everything that I do. The podcast is part of the school. The, what’s formerly known as the Embodied Living Center, which is now the Wild Soul Sacred Body Membership, is part of the school. My courses, my self love course, my Wild Soul archetypes course, those things are part of the school. And I’m literally so excited about this. I’m officially opening an embodiment studio. And for now it’s gonna be a hybrid. I’ll be teaching two in-person classes a month in Miami, starting in March, and eight to 10 online classes. Plus I also have two certified Wild Soul Movement instructors who teach a few classes a month as well. So for those who wanna do embodiment practice with me, I teach Wild Soul Movement. I teach erotic body classes. And there’s also something that previously was only available in the old Embodied Living Center called Sacred Bodywork. We’re gonna bring that back too. And some of those classes are just gonna be focused on stretching. They’re all just like really gentle, really loving, sacred, sensual practices with the body. None of it’s a workout. It’s all like a work in. It’s all meant to help you connect to your body and have this experience where the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual can come together and be synthesized, and integrated, and processed, and help you heal, and help you have deeper insights with some of the cognitive healing work that you might be doing. And it’s just very complimentary. For those of you who go to therapy or who are doing trauma healing, this type of embodiment work that I do, and that I train people to do, is very integrative and very complimentary, and in a lot of ways helps along the other processes that you’re in and that you’re doing. And if you are a fitness person, if you’re a person who works out, or dances, or does like any other kind of like physical, competitive, or like progressive thing with your body, these practices just really help deepen your connection to your awareness, your understanding, your intuition, your proprioception, like your whole entire relationship, again, not just to your physical body, but to your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual bodies, consciousnesses and energy. So stay tuned for the grand opening of the studio, which is gonna be called the Serpent and Rose Studio. And I’ll tell you more about that when the studio eventually launches.

So thank you so much. I hope this story was useful for you. You know I always love to hear from you. If you wanna email us at hello@untameyourself.com, or if you wanna shoot me a DM on Instagram. I don’t always respond to them, but I read them. If you enjoyed the episode and you wanna share it, whether you just wanna share it with people personally, or you want to share it on social media, you know we always appreciate that stuff. And then next week, in the episode that goes up on Valentine’s day, I shared a post on Instagram a couple of days ago at the time that I’m recording this, about a big initiation I had around love, letting love transform and inform me last year through a soul contract I had with this beautiful man. And I got a lot of questions from that post. So I decided I was gonna record an episode to dig into some of the pieces of that, that people were interested in learning about more for themselves and reflecting on more for themselves. So that’s gonna be episode number 375 next week. So stay tuned for that. Thank you for listening. I’m so excited to be back 2022. 2022 feels good. It feels different. It feels different. I saw a lot of people. There were like memes going around about how like it’s pronounced 2020 too. Like we’re just gonna get more of the same shit from 2020 and 2021. But I have to tell you from an energetic perspective, I don’t know, you might be feeling it too, but this shit feels different to me. It feels better. It feels expansive. And I really hope that that is gonna be an experience all of us have, if not most of us, throughout the course of this year. ‘Cause we, a lot of us got our asses kicked by the previous two. So I think many of us are ready to have different experiences now. Anyway, show notes for this episode are at untameyourself.com/374. I love you, and I’ll talk to you later.