[00:00:00] Christine: If you experience a lot of chaos. If there was a lot of fighting or shouting, or maybe it was a really quiet house and that you didn't get to speak to a lot. All of that would create an unsafeness because you're not able to regulate your own emotions at those ages, you need help from your caregivers.
[00:00:21] Aneta: We often hear people wishing us a long, happy, and healthy life, but what if the length isn't what matters most? What if instead, it's the breadth depth, and purpose of each day that matters most? Welcome to the Live the Width of Your Life podcast. My name is Aneta Ardelian Kuzma and join me weekly as I interview guests who made changes in their own lives to live more fully with intention. Gratitude and joy. Be prepared to be inspired by their stories of how they shifted their mindset, took courageous action, and designed the life that they always wanted to live.
Welcome back to the Live The Width Of Your Life podcast. This week's guest is Christine Maier, and she and I just had the most beautiful conversation. Her mission is to support individuals so they never feel alone. And our purpose is to shower them with love value and a profound sense of significance. She does this by guiding them to rekindle the deep connection and inherent worth within themselves all through the power of breath and the body.
Christine is a compassionate and dedicated advanced trauma-informed breathwork guide. She also is a level two pause breathwork certified facilitator. One of 50 in the world right now across the globe. We had such a wonderful conversation. Christine spent some time talking about an injury that was life-changing for her and how she was able to overcome it.
We talked a lot about her journey of self-discovery and spiritual growth and what impacted her experiences and spoke a lot about gaining insights into the subconscious mind, the power of breath work, and the importance of body awareness. It was a deep conversation and I enjoyed our time together and I think you will as well. Take a listen.
Christine, I am so excited to have you on my show today. Thanks for joining me.
[00:02:15] Christine: Thank you for having me, Aneta. I'm so excited to be here.
[00:02:19] Aneta: I just love being in your presence and you and I, it's so crazy because, for some people, I just felt like, I think we met last year or a couple of months ago.
[00:02:29] Christine: Thank you so much. I receive that. And I feel the same way. Like feelings mutual. I think it's only been since it's August or September.
[00:02:39] Aneta: I would love for you to share just a little bit about your story. I shared some of what you shared in terms of the bio on the recording, but I would love for you to just talk a little bit about who you are. And maybe some of those moments in life that made an impact as to who you are today.
[00:03:01] Christine: Well I'm Christine Maier. I originate from Vancouver, British Columbia Canada, and I've had quite the healing journey. It started, I think after my 30th birthday, I was in a long-term relationship and I ended up leaving that, I divorced and then I lost my mom as well. And it really kind of just like woke me up from like the sleeping state that I was in.
I felt like my twenties, I almost spent in like out of body almost, because of how many things I had experienced. And one day I just woke up and I was like where am I in my life? I couldn't recognize myself in the mirror. And I was not living the life that I wanted.
I felt like I was living the life that other people wanted for me, or I thought I was supposed to have, and I changed everything pretty much. And I've just been growing since then and like rediscovering who I am doing a lot of inner work, inner child work. And I found God and like Jesus again as well in my life, which was profound.
Because after I'd lost my mom, I had a hard time with the idea of there being a God. And when I like had gotten woken up I found him again and I found myself again in that. And so I found breath work, where you and I met is more through breath work and somatic coaching.
I started my journey about 10 years ago and I found breath work about three years ago now during COVID my dog had passed away and I had a very unhealthy relationship that was not a fun breakup. And I found breathwork through that. I'd been dealing with a lot of anxiety panic attacks and body image issues.
I was struggling with that. I started picking up, making a new morning routine and daily routine and completely changed my life. And with the breath work, I added in as well. It was a profound change in how I saw the world, how I saw myself, how I interacted with people and my relationships.
And I started meeting wonderful people and making great friends. And then, a couple of other things happened during COVID. I'd lost my job and I experienced a bad injury luckily I had breathwork and the somatics to help me get through the trauma that I'd experienced.
So now when I wake up, I'm so grateful to be alive. I'm so happy to be here. My baseline is just much more peaceful and a lot of gratitude every day. And I live my life through intention.
[00:06:17] Aneta: I mean, anybody that spends any time with you, we always say that you just are so lit up from within, you have just the sense of peace and this joy and beautiful energy that you share so lovingly and willingly with everybody. And it's so interesting when people share their stories because we are usually coming out of something to find that type of awakening.
So I'm really curious when you talked about feeling like maybe you're asleep in most of your twenties and focusing on building a life that you thought you should be living, or maybe what other people have lived. And I think that resonates with so many people.
So did something happen one day where you just looked at yourself and said, this doesn't feel right anymore? Like was it a moment or was it just a bunch of nudges that sort of prompted you one day to say, okay, I need to pay attention here.
[00:07:12] Christine: Yeah. That's such a great question. And I just want to make sure I'm speaking with it mindfully to respect past people and my life. And so after my 30th birthday, I'd experienced a couple of things like with my health. I experienced a miscarriage and also I had something coming up with my kidneys and I was in the hospital and out of the hospital with it.
And I found myself to be alone in my life. And I was like why am I doing this all by myself? I found that I was living a life that I had seen in my childhood and it wasn't what I wanted. So being like doing everything alone, being so alone. And I was so disconnected from myself at the time as well.
So it made a lot of sense now why I was in that because if you're not connected to within, you can't expect anyone else to be connected to you either. So now looking back at myself, I have so much compassion and forgiveness for me, but also like for the people that were in my life as well. Because we were all living quite unconsciously and kind of just living from our programming instead of living with intention.
[00:08:33] Aneta: That's beautiful. And it's so true. If there's a disconnection, it usually starts with ourselves and connecting to ourselves. And then you said I'm not sure if that happened around the same time that you had a spiritual awakening again, which was a reconnection to God, to Jesus. And so were you raised in church? Did you grow up with a strong faith when you were younger?
[00:08:56] Christine: Yeah. That's a great question. It was like, my mother did bring me to church. She brought me and my sisters to church a lot and all different types of churches. I feel like she was trying to find herself, and her faith.
[00:09:10] Aneta: She was a seeker.
[00:09:12] Christine: Yes. Absolutely. And so I got knowledge and wisdom from that. When my mom got cancer, she got diagnosed with stage four lung cancer when I was 17 I liked to pray to God every day and I joined outside of school when I was in grade 12 I joined out of school prayer group that we'd meet before school started in the mornings at like 7 a.m. and pray for an hour before we went to school.
And so I started doing that with them as well, like before school, and just like, because the more people that, like, I find, like, wish or manifest or pray for the same thing, I find that I feel like it's more powerful than just doing it all by yourself.
At the time I was 17 and I was told that my mom had three months to live. So that was scary. I didn't know what to do. So I ended up dropping all my classes in high school because I luckily had enough credits to graduate. And I did everything I could to take care of her.
[00:10:16] Aneta: I can't even imagine. You said you have sisters. Were you the oldest?
[00:10:20] Christine: Yeah, I'm the oldest. My dad is. Like works a lot. He's very hardworking. So I took care of my sisters as best as I could to wait for their doctor's appointments. And I planned my sister's birthday party. And I looked out for them as much as I could at my capacity at 17.
[00:10:39] Aneta: Yeah. That is so hard. And moments like that do shape the trajectory of our life. And so what do you take from those moments that you had with your mom being able to care for her and she was transitioning?
[00:10:56] Christine: Yeah. So grateful for them. She was such a role model for power. She was such a strong, courageous woman. She did not want to leave us. And so she did whatever she could to be there and didn't want to leave. So I remember her getting so small, like tiny.
Because when they give you three months to live, they throw everything they can at you. So the most radiation your body could handle, like the strongest chemo that it's just being tested, et cetera. So she got so small and they wouldn't let her go to her treatments if she didn't weigh in a certain amount of weight.
And I remember making the most, trying to make those fattening milkshakes for her because she had lung cancer. So her throat was super sore from the radiation. She couldn't eat. And so I'd make her like cold, like really fattening milkshakes as much as I could and to get her to eat them.
But also she like loved like playing bingo and playing cards with her friends. And she had like this massive bag full of nickels and quarters and dimes. And she would wear a fanny pack underneath her, like super baggy clothes, and fill it up with all her change so that she could weigh in for her treatments.
[00:12:15] Aneta: Wow. She wasn't gonna take no for an answer.
[00:12:19] Christine: No, absolutely not.
[00:12:23] Aneta: That's amazing. What did that do for your relationship with God after your mom passed?
[00:12:29] Christine: I was angry with him. Like really angry. Like when you're young you can't understand that, especially when it's the most important person in your life. She was like the rock of our family. She held us all together and losing someone that is the one person you could always count on is devastating. And I was really angry. And like when you see other people that get to survive and you could ask, like why them and why them, you go into questions, how is that fair?
And now looking at it, I can have a lot more peace in my heart about not necessarily. I don't need to know the whys. But I believe that it's a soul contract and she decided that was her time to go. And I forgive it. I forgive myself. I forgive her. I forgive the rest of my family.
We're just trying to survive through that. And I'm so grateful that she was a wonderful mother. I'm very lucky. She did like dedicate her life to us. So having said that I have a lot to be grateful for, even though she's gone now and I enjoy talking about her, I will tell everyone who will listen about her still, even though she's been gone for about 15 years now, almost 15 years.
And like when I went to Mexico last week and one of my friends that went with me, she'd lost her mom as well. Cancer as well. And we both kind of have a joke that our moms brought us together. And like they're together on the other side watching us. And so she has some special moments with Mexico with her mom and so do I.
And so we wrote their names in the sand and it was really sweet and beautiful. So I still want to make sure that she has a legacy here through me and my sisters.
[00:14:34] Aneta: Well, she does. I mean, I only know you, but she's done an amazing job raising you and guiding you to be who you are today.
And so what was your spiritual journey like then? So you went through this and were angry with God after this happened. What was your journey like? And then how would you describe it today?
[00:14:53] Christine: My journey after my mom passed away?
[00:14:58] Aneta: Yeah. What was your journey like with God? So it sounds like your twenties, you said you were.
[00:15:04] Christine: I was very out of body in my twenties. And when I started to come back to myself after I turned 30, it was kind of like overnight, I posted today on my Instagram, the quote from this book. It's funny that you're asking me.
I read the book, the power of Intention by Wayne Dyer and I love him. And that's my favorite book by him. And that book brought me back to God. Like when people would say the word God before I'd be triggered. I was uncomfortable with saying it or hearing it.
And after reading that I'm relieved that the trigger was gone. It was amazing. And so from there, I just started getting to know God, like through myself, through nature, through others, more and more and more. And I started to be able to see God in others, in myself, and the world around us in nature. It's so beautiful.
[00:16:09] Aneta: For sure. It's so interesting, maybe it's part of it is the circles that you and I are part of in our communities, but I do feel people are starting to use the word, God, for many years, even though I didn't want to, I didn't want to trigger someone. I know that many people have their own experiences with church or with religion itself, and sometimes that clouds our relationship with our creator, the divine God.
But I'm starting to notice that people are finding their way back in different ways. It's never a straight line. It's a winding path. So that's why I was very curious about your own experience. And even for me, definitely had family, my grandparents, were very faithful and just really devout and always reading the Bible.
And so I was raised kind of in the word and reading it. My parents didn't go to church all the time. And then when my husband and I became parents, we said, no, we want to raise our kids in a church. And we were like your mom, we literally went and probably visited over 20 churches going, where are we going to raise our kids?
Because we wanted to make sure that it was inviting and open like we just wanted to feel aligned and we wanted to feel the Holy Spirit there. And I remember when we found our church I just bawled I was just in the service and I was like I feel something here and I feel it within me.
And that's kind of how we found our church. And then I feel through all these other spiritual practices of yoga, meditation, and reading books outside of traditional Christian and Judeo-Christian texts. I even found myself growing even closer to God in a new way. I feel like now God, and my definition is so big, it can't even be defined. It's so much bigger than just the four walls of a building.
[00:18:02] Christine: Absolutely. Yeah, I completely agree.
[00:18:05] Aneta: So you have a beautiful somatic breathwork practice. Can you tell us a little bit, I want to know a little bit about your mission who you serve, and who your clients are, because I wish that we lived closer together because I would love to attend something in person. You do a lot of in-person events.
[00:18:26] Christine: Okay. So my practice is more based on like, where I have been and what I've overcome myself. I serve women who are more on their healing journey already.
They have spirituality already and are just looking for the next level or trying to get past a few certain little blocks that they just can't see to get through. One of the main things I've noticed is when I started doing everything, it was more like mindset work and affirmations and stuff.
Once I got into the breath work and the somatics, that's when the actual lasting transformation happened for me because I would do the affirmations or even I started, I did tons of clinical counseling and stuff as well. And once I started doing the breath work and somatic, things just stopped coming back.
So I would go to counseling. It would be great during it. And then once I stopped the counseling, the old stuff would start coming back again into my life. It would creep back. This time I found that nothing had creeped back. It's a big difference.
So I'm so passionate about showing other women how to keep those running thoughts, like the victim mentality, the cycles of unworthiness. When you look in the mirror, you just don't like yourself. What's the word? want to say suffering, but I like those types of things that bring you down. That's what I want to work on with women.
So I want to bring women to get back and connect to their bodies again and I found that once I started truly loving who I am without wanting to change anything, just accepting myself and loving myself as I am right now all of those running thoughts, even the anxiety I used to suffer from it's all has fallen away. I started loving all the parts of me that I've been suppressing or hating or wanting to shove in the closet and never look at again.
I've been bringing them all to the surface and loving them. In their messiness, in their uncomfortableness, in the pain. And in that love, the bigness of those emotions or those parts, they kind of just dissipate in a way. I get softer, isn't feel so heavy or scary anymore.
You can start to look at them and be like, okay. And even when they come up now, there is more of a gentler emotion or a gentler feeling. And then I'm like, okay, you're here. I see you but I'm still okay. It's not like life-shattering stuff that I used to experience. Before I would have such bad panic attacks, that I would pass out. Like it was severe panic attacks and anxiety.
[00:21:22] Aneta: What was triggering them? Do you remember?
[00:21:24] Christine: Yeah, I have experienced quite a bit of abuse in my life. Like physical abuse. And that is where the main thing was from. When things come up that would cause fear in me, I would get a panic attack from that.
[00:21:40] Aneta: Wow, that's so crazy. And I do know what you're talking about experiencing the somatic healing is different than doing something to just focus in on the thinking mind, which is so deceptive. We can't trust that thing. But the body does feel and know and understand and is so innately intelligent. It's just allowing ourselves to feel safe. Why do you think that so many of us don't feel safe in our bodies or feel like we can let go and surrender?
[00:22:17] Christine: That's such a good question. It's probably because they've never experienced safety outside of the body either, especially when they're growing up, like in childhood and adolescence, even if you've grown up in a house where you didn't feel like there was traumatic happened to you.
If you experience a lot of chaos. If there was a lot of fighting or shouting, or maybe it was a really quiet house and that you didn't get to speak to a lot. All of that would create an unsafeness because you're not able to regulate your own emotions at those ages, you need help from your caregivers.
So they need to listen to you or touch you. And help to bring your nervous system back down to regulation. And so if you're in a heightened, I want to say like heightened arousal in your nervous system, sometimes you never go back down again. And so if it's constantly in fight or flight all the time, you're not going to feel safe.
You're going to feel like there's an emergency all the time and there's always a sense of urgency and you won't be able to come and lean back and relax. And that shows up in so many different ways, especially in women too, we tend to become someone that has to continuously do something all the time.
I'm not sure if you've ever been like this though. Before I've done all this healing, if someone came home and I was relaxing, I'd feel guilty and go up and pretend like I was doing something. I wouldn't want someone to see me relaxing because I felt guilty, for being lazy, but it wasn't being lazy, like we're allowed to relax and it was a complete fabrication in your belief or in that thinking mind saying that you're lazy if you're laying somewhere or relaxing, if someone else sees you and the same thing as my experience as well with food and with eating.
Sometimes I didn't want people to see me eating. And so I would eat in secret because I felt like I was uncomfortable with that as well. And it's all stuff that comes from when you were younger, is that you don't feel safe. And so unless that part gets recognized, looked at, named, loved, held, it's not going to heal.
[00:24:39] Aneta: For sure. And also judgment. We hear so much of what you're describing as a sense of judgment. Somebody said, if you relax, you're lazy or, how dare you not be productive or don't you see the mess that's around here?
And so we've learned that behavior and then we have some shame around it. If we feel like. I still struggle to relax when I do it, it feels so amazing, but it's something I'm practicing. I don't do it well. And part of that may be North Americans.
I think that if you go to other parts of the world, some people are much more comfortable doing that. They take naps in the afternoon, their siesta, and the stores are closed. People are much more in touch with spending time in nature, and doing other things, but I think we've just been so conditioned for so long to constantly be producing and that is one of our functions in life is to produce, to be productive, to be helpful that we've lost touch with some of these things that feel so good and so natural because we are so disconnected to our bodies.
Also, if we listen to the signals, our bodies are telling us, we would know, you might need a nap or maybe you need to rest, or maybe you should clear your calendar out today or go for a walk instead, but we hear it sometimes those prompts and we still say no. And we just still decide to do something different. Have you experienced that yourself? Are you working on that? Are you recovering? Like I am.
[00:26:13] Christine: I hear that so much and I am recovering. That is one of the things I feel like I've mastered now is the art of relaxing with intention. And that's been new from this year.
[00:26:27] Aneta: What does that look like? Tell me more. I love that. Relaxing with attention.
[00:26:30] Christine: Relaxing with attention. So actually it started when I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism, and I was seeing a wonderful Chinese doctor to help me heal that because I didn't want to go with Western medicine at the time.
And I still haven't taken any of the medicine. But I want to try and heal it through my body, through my food, through my environment. And so one of the things that she wanted me to do was to rest. And I was like, rest, what do you mean? I'm normally someone who would work three jobs and have a full social calendar.
And like I used to be very active, going to the gym and hikes and et cetera. And she said, I wasn't allowed to go to the gym for two months and I had to rest. And I was like, wow, okay, this is weird. So I started going to lie on the couch because I was from hypothyroidism. I was really tired, like exhausted even if I had nine hours, 10 hours of sleep, I'd wake up still so tired.
And then I would beat myself up about being exhausted and that running thought would continue in my mind. But I started, off small. So I start for like five, 10 minutes that I would, okay, I'm going to sit and lay down here and not do anything.
And if anything comes up in my mind that says that I'm lazy or that I should be going to do something, I'm going to tell him that's fine. I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing. This is on my schedule to rest. So that's what I started to do. And now, even though I'm allowed to do more stuff, I work out and stuff now, I still, if I get a cue that I need to rest, I go lay down.
[00:28:07] Aneta: Yeah. Wow. That's beautiful. I love that. No, you can't feel bad about it. And I do see you posting. One of the things I also love about you and I've told you this is you do such a nice job posting and sharing what you do and some of your routines. And so what are some of the things that you do that have been so critical in your healing journey that you wish others would maybe listen and incorporate some of those things into their own experience in their days?
[00:28:35] Christine: Okay. One of the main things that I started doing, probably was 2021 is I started going outside every day. Every single day, 30 to 45 minutes, and going between your house and the car does not count. It's intentionally being outside and either walking or just standing there or maybe driving to the ocean or a lake and just looking at it.
And. That was a major one. Also adding in movement every day as well, whatever that looked like to me at the time, and eating a lot cleaner, so eating more natural, real food, not processed foods or extra sugars and stuff. All of that made a huge difference actually in my connection to source and to God as well.
When I do those things, when I eat clean I go outside a lot and I move my body, my intuition is way more intense. Even when I do breath work. Three days leading up to my in-person group breathwork sessions. I make sure I am so clean in my eating, in my sleep, and in my water, because it helps me with like the channeling going into my session.
Because I don't have any notes when I do anything. I don't have notes of anything. I just speak to our creator and say, what does this person need for healing? Please let it come through me. Let my touch come through me. Let it come through me. Let whatever they need to hear come through me.
And the response and the testimonials I've had from my clients are incredible of what does come through and they're like, how did you know? And like, I didn't. I just tuned in and tapped into their system and then tapped into the source and then just let myself be a conduit of what needed to happen for them.
[00:30:27] Aneta: I love that. I teach meditation and breath work in the mornings and I've never scripted any of those I do it six days a week and it's the same thing. I do my work beforehand and I do my prayers, my worship. I also connect to God and just say what do people need to hear today? And inevitably it's a word, it's a phrase, it's an intention, something.
And then people will go, I felt like you were talking directly to me. And I'm like, well, first you're going to hear what it is that you need to hear. It does work that way too, but I love this idea of making sure to be super intentional before you do it being clean. I fast so I don't eat before I teach usually because I don't want to be fuzzy. I don't want my digestion to be taking any of my energy.
I want to be able to be a channel vessel as well, but tell me a little bit more about what you do in person. Because we talked a little bit about it and I did go buy those candles that you told me about at Costco, they were on sale.
I was like, they're so beautiful. Because in one of your stories, I can't remember where you had your suitcase and you're like, here's what's in my suitcase when I go and do my in-person sessions. And you have those gorgeous candles. And I was like, where did you get them? Because they're battery, so you don't have to worry about flames and in case anyone knocks it over.
So paint a picture of what this looks like, an in-person event. And I know each one might be slightly different, but what can you share if anyone is local and wants to work with you?
[00:31:58] Christine: Let's see. Well, what to expect is to be completely supported by me in every session. Now I go in again with a clean energetics before we even start. My embodiment is almost all the time. So I start our sessions and momentum starts for our sessions, sometimes days before we meet. What they can expect is some journaling connection to themselves, some meditation, and intentional breathing in a way that feels good to them. I have a trauma-informed, level-two breathwork certificate.
And so what that looks like to someone is it is supportive of their choice. So it's not as, I want to say like a masculine breath work session. It's not like that. I'm sure multiple has their first time has been like that with the counting and the required holds of how many seconds you have to hold your breath, et cetera.
These are more collaborative and intuitive for transformational change. So I don't count on people. I don't tell them that they have to hold their breath for any longer than what they feel comfortable with. So it keeps you more in a container of safety with me. I find that it's more softer, more feminine.
It's more like a warm little nest where your mom's taking care of you. That's why I want to create in those journeys. And it's a place where you could go even deeper than you could do alone. When you have that sense of someone's there holding you, mostly physically too, because I do add an intuitive touch to my journeys is when someone's there holding you.
You have the safety and the bigger capacity to go deeper into yourself and to feel what needs to be felt for long-lasting change. And every single person always feels different after a session with me, whether that is lighter, quieter, more joyful, a release, or more love. Like I bring in lots of gratitude during the breathwork sessions and whatever mantras or things need to be said out loud. So that is what it looks like.
[00:34:30] Aneta: It sounds so good. Tell me a little bit more about intuitive touch. And what is that? Is it similar to what people might experience in yoga maybe at the end and Shavasana?
[00:34:42] Christine: Yeah, it's pretty similar. So I picked this up in the level two breathwork certification I felt like we all received this incredible transmission from Samantha's healer, her name's Raina. So after I left level two my tracking someone else's system is amplified by a hundred.
So when I'm breathing someone or breathing a group, I can tap into their energy lines, and energy systems in their body and feel where stuck energy is. And so when someone is breathing or going through a process generally their eyes are closed and they will just be breathing.
Sometimes they're not crying. Sometimes they are. But I just know where to touch them on their body. And when I've done this, I've had so many women now tell me that when I've touched them on their chest or their shoulders, on their head, they had like an explosion of energy throughout their body.
And it moves the blackness. It moves whatever needs to come out. Some people burst into tears after I touch them. And people will make loud noises they'll get some sort of a release. It is wild to see and very incredible.
[00:36:01] Aneta: Wow. That's amazing. Need to make my way in person to you.
That sounds so good. So Christine, if people want to work with you you're in Vancouver, but if people want to work with you virtually, those that might be listening, do you have ways for people to work with you, even if it's not in person?
[00:36:19] Christine: Yes. I offer virtual somatic coaching and breath work in a one-on-one container. So I have. A program that I'm offering now is called the Vital Upgrade because my company is called Vital Breath. So the vital upgrade is a 10-week program, one-on-one with me. It's for women who already are on a spiritual journey and want to heal. And they've tried other modalities and it just doesn't work for them.
And there are still things that are coming up. In their subconscious and coming up in their subconscious how I describe it to my clients, if you want to visualize with me right now, imagine that your subconscious is like a long hallway full of closets. Okay. And in each closet.
It's a version of you younger, little you aren't, I know there's not, it's not nice to put them in the closet, but we put them in the closet. So each closet has a child or an adolescent version of you that you've locked away in this closet in your subconscious and for the subconscious that records every single thing that's ever happened to you, good or bad.
Your subconscious is just a program, a recording of the events of happened in your life, It's there to keep you alive. Your subconscious controls your heartbeat, your hair growth, your digestion, and your breath. So that is how we can access our subconscious through the breath. It's like the back door to this hallway of closets that I'm going to tell you about.
So the hallway of closets have all little you in there, okay, that we've locked away. And so in counseling, in mindset work, this is what I've experienced myself. And many of my clients have as well that you do the work you're feeling good. And then something comes up in your life, like content.
And all of a sudden you have this reaction to it that's not you. It's completely out of line or irrational. And you're like where'd this come from? And I can't control it. Even though I've done all this work, this still came up. For example, you've had certain emotions and you start to binge eat, or you have certain emotions and then you react very angrily.
You have certain emotions and you shut down and you dissociate. So all these different emotions, I consider them to be the children that are in the closet. Okay. So something created that part of you, that child, that inner child of you. And when that same thing shows up in your life, that's similar, that child opens up the door, comes flying out, and takes over.
[00:39:05] Aneta: This makes so much sense. I'm sure others are listening going, yeah, I can see when I'm triggered. Who's coming out?
[00:39:14] Christine: Yes. They come out and they take over. Usually, people are full of shame. They beat themselves up. They hate that child and throw them back in the closet and shut the door.
Because there's so much shame and anger or regret or whatever would have you or self-hatred. And so in semantics and breath work, what we do together, because you can't do this alone. It's way too scary. And you hit your wall of what you can handle way too quickly when you're with someone else it gives you a sense of safety.
It gives you a chance to be able to open the closet. And look, look at the child that's in the closet, your inner you, your little you in that closet. And what we do is we open the closet door together. We look and when we look at it, we feel. We feel whatever motion is in there and we meet it with love instead of hating it and throwing it back in the closet.
And when we do that, it gives that inner part of you that inner little you a chance to feel safe. And sometimes it can take a few sessions. So we open up the closet door. Sometimes we can just look at the closet, the child, and we have to close it again because it's too much.
Each person is different in how they react to each individual's part of them. But the next session, we can open up a little bit more and maybe we can sit with it a little bit longer. Maybe we can even pull it out and put it on our lap. And eventually, we get to the place where we can just leave the doors open and we don't have to lock them up anymore.
They become part of us. Instead of hating, you're hating those little parts of you and keeping them hidden. We bring them out and we love the hell out of them.
[00:41:05] Aneta: Wow. And that's in a 10-a-week program. Amazing. Yeah. That's amazing. And it's true. We do tend to put those things away. We don't want to see them. We don't want to necessarily remember those parts of us. So quite amazing. So if people wanted to find you, what is the best way that they can connect with you?
[00:41:31] Christine: Well they could add me on Instagram. My Instagram handle is at vital underscore breath. That's V I T A L underscore B R E A T H. Also I could offer your listeners a free meditation if they like as well. If you want to put it in the show notes,
[00:41:52] Aneta: I'd love that. People would love it and your meditations are amazing.
[00:41:57] Christine: Thank you. Yeah. So they can listen to me. We would like to spend some time together and they could get a taste of what I'm about.
[00:42:07] Aneta: Yeah. I love it. I highly recommend it. We just did a breath session recently and I was just like, I felt so held. As you said, I just felt so safe and held magic and your voice is just silk. So beautiful, perfect for the work that you do. Christine, one of the things I always ask all my guests is what does it mean to you to live the width of your life?
[00:42:32] Christine: I love that question. And what it means to me is letting myself be exactly who I am and not pretend to be anyone else. And letting myself be large, and yeah, knowing who I am. That's what it means to me.
[00:42:54] Aneta: That's beautiful. So beautiful. Thank you so much for your time today. I just adore you and I'm so grateful that you spent the afternoon with me.
[00:43:04] Christine: Thank you so much, Aneta. This has been such an honor. I appreciate your time, and you're such a sweet angel.
[00:43:11] Aneta: I appreciate you. Thank you.
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