How to Do the Work: Recognize Your Patterns, Heal from Your Past, and Create Your Self

Running on autopilot is a function of our conditioning. Most of us are stuck in subconscious programming; in fact, some brain scans reveal that we operate only 5 percent of the day in a conscious state;22 the rest of the time, we are in subconscious autopilot. This means that we are making active choices during only a small sliver of our days and l

There is tremendous freedom in not believing every thought we have and understanding that we are the thinker of our thoughts, not the thoughts themselves. Our minds are powerful tools, and if we do not become consciously aware of the disconnection between our authentic Selves and our thoughts, we give our thoughts too much control in our daily live

that I couldn’t ignore this soul signal.

As with most of us, many of the habits I learned in childhood, I repeated and carried with me throughout my life. Many of us never stop to think: Is this really me? How many of us find ourselves celebrating holidays the same way we did in childhood without even imagining doing it a different way? How many aspects of your life have you actually chos

I looked around me—really looked, as if for the first time. It’s not an exaggeration to say that every single one of my clients who came to me for psychological treatment also had underlying physical symptoms. Long out of school, I started to ask new questions: Why did so many of my clients suffer from digestive issues, ranging from irritable bowel

My father played along with my mother’s silence, though he still spoke to me. This was the trauma of my childhood fully realized. I was so unworthy, so unlovable. I didn’t exist. It was almost a relief to become the physical manifestation of what I so feared. It was what I was training for my whole life. It was my “spaceship” in action.

Once we see beyond the narrative that genetics are destiny, we can take ownership of our health. This allows us to see how “choiceless” we once were and empowers us with the ability to create real and lasting change.

Yoga, which is considered a “top-down” practice (meaning that the brain sets the intentions that the body follows), can be an especially powerful means of helping the mind settle into the present moment by focusing our attention as we practice channeling our breath and challenging our body.

some brain scans reveal that we operate only 5 percent of the day in a conscious state;