Have you ever caught yourself doing the same thing repeatedly but aren’t sure why? Your brain’s neuro-pathways, or the superhighway, have something to do with that. Whether from trauma or practiced behavior, we all show up in certain ways because we have either been conditioned or conditioned ourselves into these actions.

But there is good news. We have the power to change our brains and our behavior. That’s why I sat down with neuroscience researcher and therapist Adalina East to talk about what happens in our brains when we experience trauma, somatics, the impact of true spirituality, and how we all can start healing for our highest good right now.

The takeaways of this conversation can shift your life.

Fear is one of the most powerful emotions. It ranks right up there, at least in my mind, with grief. It’s a liar. It’s a thieve. And yet, its intention is good. It’s meant to keep you safe. But, for many, fear keeps them paralyzed, shut down, and living in a way that is strictly in survival and never touching the beauty of joy, which is, of course, a birthright to all of us.

Jill Gibson from New Hampshire wrote in and said, “Danielle, I’m not sure where to start. I suppose I should just say the word in my head most days—fear. I was talking to a dear friend a few months ago, and she pointed out that I am constantly fearful but also doing everything I can to avoid it. I’ve struggled with this thought since she spoke those words. I feel this is a truthful assessment of where I am, but I do not know how to get out of it. I would love to hear your advice.”

Let me ask you a question I’ve been chasing the answer to for most of my life. Is there such a thing as broken people, or are there only broken moments?

Your answer may vary from the truth depending on where you are in your life, what you’ve experienced, and how you’ve processed what has been and what you believe will continue to occur.

Today, you and I are taking a one-on-one deep dive into redefining the idea of broken, and I’ll hand over something most of us are not taught, which is how to become comfortable with being uncomfortable. This is one conversation that shatters our traditional thinking and flips what you thought you needed to move forward on

Welcome to the throat chakra affirmation meditation, a guided meditation to clear and reclaim your fifth chakra. Your throat chakra is responsible for communication. When it’s balanced, you speak the truth, your truth, and understand your life purpose in a fuller and guided way. You communicate with others intelligently and efficiently. You are far more creative and expressive.

Clear your mind.

As we continue to dive deeper into the five masters of our lives, we lean heavier into our well-being, physically and mentally. How we eat impacts us more than we realize, as our daily practices either own us or support us.

With so much evidence driving us toward eating with a plant slant or plant-based to support our mental, emotional, and physical health, I sat down with dear friends of mine, physicians on the leading edge of Lifestyle Medicine, Dr. Munish Chawla and Dr. Bandana Chawla. Together we talk about the impact of diet, how to make micro changes toward eating more plants, and they hand over small shifts to help bring you forward into this healthier lifestyle. This conversation is filled with ways to better your health, one plate at a time. So, let’s dive right in.

Most of our suffering and upset come from how tightly we hold onto our perspectives as truths and the emotional, mental, and physical behaviors we cling to that never serve us, such as perfectionism, procrastination, negative self-talk, and avoidance. When we live from a space that prevents us from experiencing our life to the fullest, where we are closed to everything and open to nothing, we keep ourselves in a cycle that pushes against growth and ourselves.

There’s a term for this behavior, and it’s self-sabotage.

Today, you and I are taking a one-on-one deep dive into self-sabotage, what it is, and how it impacts us. Then we will move into a space where we learn to be observers of ourselves and our behaviors so that we may grow, find self-love, rest in inner peace, and fully thrive as the souls we are in our human experience.

Welcome to your heart chakra balancing meditation, a guided meditation to clear and reclaim your fourth chakra. The center of love, compassion, forgiveness, and self-acceptance, as it governs our feelings in relationships and our humanness.

This is a continuation of our balancing charka series.

Settle in now, finding a comfortable position as you relax your shoulders down your spine, release your jaw, and let go of any tension, whether in your mind or body. As you fully settle, deepen your breath, inhaling through your nose, allowing your breath to find the bottom of your lungs, and slowly release it through your nose with a slow and steady exhale. Continue to breathe with both ease and effort.

You are taking a journey now inside your mind to meet yourself and rebalance the fourth chakra, the source of love.

Take another full deep breath and slowly let it go. If your eyes are not already closed, please close them softly now.

Clear your mind.

As spring break and summer fastly approaching, there seem to be ads about getting our summer bodies ready everywhere we turn. Stores are already shifting away from winter clothing and into shorts and skimpy swimsuits. Yet, this is the time of year most women dread. Why? Because their body image is not healthy. And, as you may suspect, when how we think about ourselves is not good, we tend to struggle across all aspects of our lives, especially in finding peace and self-love.

So, today, I sat down with Erin Tennant to talk about how each of us can increase our self-concept and body image, how to create rewarding habits and behaviors, how to cultivate a growth mindset around our eating, and she shares her story of growing up constantly on a diet and the steps she took to lose over 130 pounds and how she has kept it off!

Our lives are filled with habits and patterns. Some serve us. Some don’t. Depending on where the pattern originated, whether trauma or learned, these patterns can own us and become the coping mechanisms that are our everyday behaviors. People don’t necessarily cling to old habits because they want to beat themselves up but rather because we humans stick to what’s familiar.

Karen Crosby wrote in and said, “Danielle, I’ve been working with a therapist for a little over two years now. She has helped me realize I have many painful patterns in my daily life that come out in the things I do and through how my relationships have been. Yet, she hasn’t been able to help me change or let go of these painful patterns. It’s extremely frustrating. I’m hoping you can help! You’ve helped me in many other ways through your podcast, blog, videos, and Instagram posts. Can you please help me understand how to let go of painful patterns? I feel like I continually do things that cause more harm than good, even though I know that is not what I want!

Have you ever found yourself in a room of highly successful people and thought to yourself, “How did I get here?” Or perhaps look at your partner and wonder why they choose you? Have you ever felt that you were faking it and wondered when the bottom would drop out of the fake façade? Have you ever pretended to be someone you aren’t to fit in? Lastly, do you think of the wins in your life as “dumb luck?”

If so, you may be experiencing imposter syndrome. That’s the bad news. The good news is everyone experiences this from time to time. But, unfortunately, our mental and emotional health are impacted when we live this way 24-7.

So, today, you and I are taking a one-on-one deep dive into what imposter syndrome is, its characteristics, how it impacts us, and then we’re talking about flipping the internal conversation to get us out of untrue patterns that easily own us.

Today we are taking a one-on-one deep dive into what inner peace is, what many must let go of to gain it—and it’s probably deeper and different than what you think, and then we’ll take on how to know when you’ve begun to accept inner peace as your baseline center fully.

Find a comfortable position and take a full deep breath. Once you’re settled, close your eyes or soften your gaze and tune into your breath. Notice it without trying to change it. Feel the air move through your nose, finding its way to the base of your lungs and slowly allowing it to slip away with a soft exhale.

Place both hands over your heart and feel the heart space expand. Then, ask yourself: Am I willing to give myself love today as I am?

If you are, offer yourself permission to do just that and release any negative thoughts that may be lingering in your mind.

With your next inhale, fully settle into the words, “I am worthy.” As you let the air go, allow those words to transform into “I am enough.”

Our lives can be easily divided into sections that can be our masters, or we can be the masters of them. Those sections include: spiritual, mental, emotional, physical, and financial.

Many do not realize the financial aspect impacts them on every other level. If we don’t have control over our money, we worry, stress, and often lose sleep.

To go deeper, financial issues rank among the top reasons for relationship failure. And many women stay in abusive relationships because of their fear of money.

That’s why I sat down with the guru of all things money, Allison Baggerly from Inspired Budget. You’ve likely come across her videos on Instagram and TikTok, where she breaks down real people’s budgets. Today, she guides us through her best budgeting advice and how to become the masters of our money once and for all!

So, let’s dive right in…

Nothing gives you emotional freedom, inner peace, and balance, like releasing the outcome of any given moment and practicing non-attachment.

Demi from Berlin, Germany, wrote in and said, “I’m new to your audience as I just found your podcast six weeks ago. In the episodes I’ve listened to, you say our brains are wired to keep us safe. I’ve been thinking about this over the last few weeks and wondered if that is why I always feel I need control over things. I can’t enjoy a night out with friends without a schedule. I have ended relationships with romantic partners because I felt I needed to keep their agendas, which made me feel like I was out of control of how I spent my time. I like everything planned and spelled out. I don’t like the “control freak” label, but I know that’s what I am. So, my first question is: is control a form of safety? And secondly, is there something I can do to stop living this way? I know I make things harder on myself.”

Many live their lives through a background of unhappiness. While they feel okay in most moments, there’s also a general feeling of discontentment, resentment, irritation, and other negative emotions as they go about their daily lives.

While most of these feelings are subconscious thoughts that sound like, “I need or want this to happen before I can be happy or fulfilled,” or “Life is always so hard,” the stories that you tell yourself significantly impacts those background feelings and slowly become the factors that destroy your inner peace until you choose to leave the stories behind.

Today we are taking a one-on-one deep dive into what inner peace is, what many must let go of to gain it—and it’s probably deeper and different than what you think, and then we’ll take on how to know when you’ve begun to accept inner peace as your baseline center fully.

Welcome to Solar plexus chakra balancing meditation, a guided meditation to meet yourself and witness your wholeness through clearing and reclaiming your third chakra. The center of consciousness of being, personal power, self-definition, accomplishment and responsibility, will, and vital energy.

This is a continuation of our balancing charka series.

After the brilliant conversation around Heart Coherence and living a heart-centered life, I wanted to give you the ability to get into coherence yourself. While the technique is simple, this is not something we learn—though we should. Getting into “The Zone” or bringing your attention to your heart rhythm and breath patterns allows us to tap into the heart’s intelligence. And it is so easy to do that after you practice this for just a few minutes each day, you can find coherence within about 60 seconds. In addition, by reaching this state, we release stress and stop draining emotions such as frustration, irritation, anxiety, and anger.

When you are coherent, your thoughts and emotions are balanced, and you experience ease and inner harmony.

As we usher in February, many will begin to focus on the heart, on love. As you may have heard me say, love is an experience that is meant to drive us forward and help increase our overall well-being. What’s below that experience is living a heart-centered life. So, what is a heart-centered life?

It’s a life where we live our daily experiences in true alignment with our values, purpose, inner morality, personal experiences, intuition, and connecting with everything that works for us. Doing so requires that we understand some basic principles.  

That’s why I sat down with Cardiologist and Heart-Centered Living Expert Dr. Madalina Petrescu to help us understand how to live through the heart-center, how to get into coherence, and why we must allow intuitive directives to guide us; we even chat about overall health that impacts the heart, and end with the connections each of us needs to live a healthy, grounded, spiritually connected life.

Kim from Detroit wrote in and said, “Hey girl, I am in an interesting place in my life. My father recently passed away. At his funeral, many of my family members began to ask me about my feelings regarding his passing. He and I had a long history. There was abuse, mental, emotional, and physical. As I got older, we both acted like it didn’t exist so that I could keep him in my life. But as my family has begun to open up more, I am discovering what I remember and what they know do not add up. It’s as if I cannot access it in my memories. However, since that day and many of those conversations, I have noticed my behavior has been different. It’s almost as if I’ve reverted to things I used to do, like needing to prove myself, feeling like I need to be right, and having a hard time keeping my boundaries. I read one of your posts about trauma and how it shows up on Instagram, and now I’m questioning myself. How can we identify if we have unhealed trauma guiding our behaviors?”

We all have ups and downs, and it’s no secret that life throws hard things into our path. After all, why do you think the saying, “Bad things happen to good people,” exists? Yet, when those hard things occur, how we connect to them and how we fix our mindset plays a significant role in the moment and our overall life satisfaction. It also impacts one other major element in our lives. Can you guess what it is?

If you guessed inner peace, you are right.

So, let’s take a one-on-one deep dive into our mindsets and whether or not you play the victim in your daily life. This is an extensive conversation about identifying the small daily behaviors and habits that create the biggest divide between feeling empowered and feeling negatively impacted, I’m handing over the signs that you are living in full victim mode, and of course, we’ll be talking about how to change course from victim to victor.

Welcome to Sacral balancing meditation, a guided meditation to meet yourself and witness your wholeness through clearing and reclaiming your second chakra. The center of developing relationships, self-gratification, creativity, emotions, sexuality, and nurture.

You are taking a journey now inside your mind to meet yourself. A journey that allows you to rebalance the second chakra.