Spiritual Clarity & Personal Power with Renee McKenna

Jennifer Norman:
Hello beautiful humans. Welcome to The Human Beauty Movement Podcast, your source for hope, healing, happiness and humanity. My name is Jennifer Norman. I'm the founder of tThe Human Beauty Movement and your host. This podcast is here to guide you on your journey of self love, empowerment, soul alignment and joyous. With each episode, I invite beautiful humans from all corners of the globe to join me for open conversations about their life lessons and the important work that they are doing to help heal humankind. Take a moment now to subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode. I'm so glad you're here, joining me for today's show.

Jennifer Norman:
Okay everyone, let's get ready to enter into the realms of spirituality, personal growth and transformation. I'm thrilled to announce today's guest, Renee McKenna. A Boston born soul mentor, podcaster, author and shamanic healer, Renee brings over 30 years of experience as a recovering addict and ex crazy person, her words, not mine. Along with a master's degree in transpersonal psychology and a certification in clinical hypnotherapy, her unique approach blends neo shamanism, buddhist philosophy, hypnotherapy, and body based mindfulness to guide individuals toward healing and transforming on a soul level. Renee's work is called spiritual psychology, offering practical tools to realign core beliefs and behaviors, release trauma and negative patterns, and establish healthy, fulfilling relationships. By listening to this podcast, you will gain valuable insights into harnessing the power of your authentic, self transforming issues at their core to grow in clarity, personal power, compassion, and most importantly, love. So whether you're navigating past traumas, seeking to release destructive patterns, or simply curious about alternate approaches to healing, Renee offers a wealth of wisdom and guidance to support you on your journey. So join us as we explore the depths of spiritual healing and empowerment with Renee McKenna.

Jennifer Norman:
Thank you so much for joining us, Renee, and welcome to the show.

Renee McKenna:
Thanks so much for having me, Jennifer.

Jennifer Norman:
You are so welcome. And so now you must share with the audience who is not familiar with you a little bit about your personal journey because it is quite tremendous and remarkable and how it led you to the work that you currently do.

Renee McKenna:
Well, I like to say that I did enough therapy that I eventually just decided to become a therapist, which is in itself probably says a lot. So I started out with a lot of fear. When I think back to my childhood, I was mostly anxious and felt like I needed to figure everything out myself and didn't feel like I had anybody that was trustworthy to help me. And so what I figured out was that I had a lot of kind of angst and fear. And I was aware of all these kind of energies and emotions that I didn't know how to deal with, and I wanted to medicate them. So I moved pretty early into self medicating with a range of addictions, with alcohol and drugs and food. And then I discovered boys, which had its own whole thing going on there, and that I had a lot of fun with drugs and alcohol, and then it had a lot of fun with me, and then it wasn't fun anymore. And very early in my twenties, I had what I would call a spiritual experience, and I was led into twelve step recovery.

Renee McKenna:
I was really brought there, I didn't know anything about it. And that was my introduction to spirituality and healing, and realizing that kind of truth, that we can either forget everything and run, which is an acronym for Fear, which is how I had been living, just kind of avoiding and procrastinating and distracting myself.

Jennifer Norman:
Get everything and run. Fear, FEAR, "forget everything and run."

Renee McKenna:
That's the acronym for fear, right? Or the other acronym for it is to "face everything and recover." And I didn't know that that was possible, right? And so I was shown, and I continued to be on a personal growth journey, realizing that I was trying to fix the outside. And we live in a culture that tells us to try to fix the outside so that the inside will feel better. And it didn't work. And now the deeper truth of if we fix the inside, then the outside will readjust itself, has become kind of my own life path. And teaching other people the tools and practices and support to be able to do that. And so there's been to my spiritual psychology work. There was a very kind of serendipitous path.

Renee McKenna:
I've always been intuitive, although I didn't know that and would never have used that word. I think we all have intuition, it's just a part, just like we all have some form of sight and sound and taste and touch, and it's different for everyone. I think we all have intuition and different ways of knowing, but I was always aware of energy, I was aware of other people's feelings, deeply empathic and sensitive. And that just caused me a lot of suffering. And through twelve step recovery, through jungian therapy, eventually I was led to what in the 19 hundreds was called inner child work, which was really transformative for me to start to really work with the emotional aspects of myself directly. And then through a series of really interesting and kind of long story events, I was led to a teacher of hypnotherapy and shamanism. In California. And the work was so powerful and transformative, I realized that this was what I wanted to do.

Renee McKenna:
And I went to graduate school and concurrent for transpersonal psychology and concurrently studied shamanism and depth hypnosis at the same time. And so I was a student and a recipient and a practitioner kind of all at the same time. And I've been doing that work since 1999, 2000.

Jennifer Norman:
So many questions. It's almost as if, like when you had your spiritual awakening and you were on your road of recovery, you became a bit of a sponge for what other healing modality is there? And the fact that you were able to integrate all of these different aspects, neo shamanism, buddhist philosophy, hypnotherapy, body based mindfulness. I mean, a lot of people will just carve out one area of therapy, but you're able to pretty much identify aspects of each of these and integrate them into ways to help the clients that you now serve.

Renee McKenna:
Well, the thing that has been my experience is that the truth is the truth. And when we get down into the basic truth of being a human, just like if you travel to different cultures or different countries, people all smile, they all laugh, they have children, they eat food, they have sex, they do, we all do pretty much the same things, right, as humans. And it's true on a spiritual level as well. Like, there's some great truths of this plane of existence that work both in the natural realms and in the human psyche, in our experience as well. So the truth, the deeper truths, underlie all what I would call authentic paths. And there are inauthentic paths or ones that maybe don't hold as much truth. But Tibetan Buddhism, mystical Christianity, hypnotherapy, shamanism, those all point in different languages and different pathways up the same mountain. So you might want to hike, or you might want to take a helicopter, or you might want to take a bus.

Renee McKenna:
Like, there's different ways to climb the mountain, but the mountain is kind of the mountain of self realization and truth and healing, and it's available to all of us, and there's different paths that I think each of us is more drawn to. So for me, I don't speak any other human languages, which is one of my great regrets that I'm only monolingual. I only speak English, but I do speak a lot of spiritual languages. And they all just like any multilingual person, there's similar words for the same thing, if that makes sense.

Jennifer Norman:
Yes, and I was just going to ask that because when you say, well, there's only one truth, then I think that from a spiritual standpoint, we say, okay, well, the one truth is that there is a divine or that there is a life force, and whatever you decide to call it is great as long as it's pretty much essentially pointing to that top of the mountain, and whether or not that top of the mountain is something that is God or something that is actually within you, and it's almost like a reflection of what is within you. And is that like the inner self or the higher self? I think that that's where maybe all of those roads kind of lead to Rome, as it were.

Renee McKenna:
Well, just like you said. So I don't think there's a singular truth. I think that there's a whole. Just like there's not a singular law of physics or chemistry, right? There's a whole bank of them, right? It's a whole study of greater truth or principles. I actually like the word principles maybe more than the idea of truth. Truth gets a little morality based. But anyway, and so discovering or following what those laws or principles are has effects. And there's a lot of different ways to understand them and many different ways to tap in.

Renee McKenna:
I mean, it's not a complete metaphor. The truth is, we're part of a larger system. That's a truth. I do have to say. That's not a principle. That's a truth. We all breathe in and breathe out oxygen that doesn't generate from our own bodies. We eat food that we don't generate ourselves.

Renee McKenna:
We are held to the earth with gravity. We're part of a system. I think the suffering of most humans is rooted in feeling separated and not a part of a system in one way or another, or the system feels dysfunctional or even harmful or dangerous or whatever. People's experience is how we understand our relationship with that system. That's part of our own soul's development. So some people understand it as their own higher self. Some people understand it as something that's external to them, like Jesus or Kali or Buddha. Some people understand it as a pantheon, like in the hindu pantheon, or students of nature or humanist.

Renee McKenna:
So all of those different, they're all valid. They all hold pieces of principle or truth. I don't think there's a right or wrong. And really, I think that the work is for us all to become the unique aspect. I like to think that we're like cells in a great body, and we each have a particular role to play. Just like I have muscle cells and skin cells and digestive cells and neural cells. Humans each have things that they're good at, and we all play a part in the system. And when we can align ourselves with our own kind of highest truth or who we really are and play that role, then that's when we find the joy and fulfillment that most of us really seek.

Jennifer Norman:
Oh, that is beautiful. Because wouldn't it be amazing if our beliefs did not separate ourselves from each other and cause wars and all the calamities that we are currently seeing on this planet? I mean, multiple wars all over the place, mostly derived from a difference of beliefs or a power struggle. It's us versus them. But your expression, I believe, is something that more and more people are starting to embrace. I think a lot more people are starting to understand that there is a larger system, that religion is one way of looking at a system. However, one person's religion may be their truth or the way that they see certain things, but it's only one piece of the picture, potentially. And there are so many others which are equally as valid for people and on their paths of self discovery and enlightenment as well. Very, very cool.

Renee McKenna:
Yeah. The idea of live and let live, I suppose. Yeah.

Jennifer Norman:
I'm so a proponent of live and let live and being a peacemaker. Interestingly, that you also mentioned that you believe spiritual and intuitive methods of healing are more effective than just western psychology alone. And I would love for you to elaborate on why you hold that belief and how that manifests in your practice.

Renee McKenna:
Well, I think a lot of western psychology really focuses on the symptoms of issues rather than their core. And because we're very practical, we're very physically oriented. And honestly, I think that there is a lack of wisdom in our culture because of the secular or disassociation from spiritual reality. And so when we don't look at a human life as on a soul level and just look at it on an ego level, we don't really deal with death very well. We don't deal with those larger issue. In a lot of western intellect, more intellectually based psychology, it's focused very much like, this is a gross generalization, and it's certainly not true across the board, but a lot of it is much more based, like medical, like western medicine is, which is like fixing a particular problem. So, like, I had knee surgery about nine months ago. Excellent.

Renee McKenna:
Very successful. I'm so grateful. They actually replaced my knee. Amazing, right? I have to say, I got almost no care for myself as a whole person after my knee was, like, healed in a couple weeks. They never asked me how I was doing, and it was a really long and arduous recovery for which my psyche, my spirit, my emotions got no support from the Weston perspective. And so understanding the whole person, I mean, holistic psychology is a new avenue in, relatively new in the last probably 30 years in psychology of looking people as looking at a person as a whole individual that includes their body, their mind, their spirit and their emotions. That was kind of a new idea. Oh, that we aren't a bunch of different parts.

Renee McKenna:
We're like a whole being. That seems surprising. That that's surprising. But a lot of western psychology just deals again with the symptoms. So if you go in and you have anxiety, they're going to treat your anxiety. They're going to talk to you about the issues that have to do with your anxiety. You might intellectually understand why you have come to be fearful, but there's not. And they might give you medication to suppress the anxiety or the fear that you have, but there isn't really an ability to cure it in a lot of western modalities.

Renee McKenna:
And the reason, from my perspective, there's not an ability to cure it is, well, first of all, because we're mostly just looking at the symptoms. And the second is because with a, without a soul level or spiritually inclusive dynamic or understanding, you can't include really what is, from my perspective, again, the core of most anxiety. And most anxiety, if you really keep boiling it and boiling it down, it comes to this sense of disconnection, of not trusting the larger system, of feeling threatened and afraid of what's going to happen. And again, without a spiritual perspective, here's the bad news, folks. You know what's going to happen to all of us? We're going to die. Western psychology doesn't have a lot to say about that. And, but spiritual perspectives do. And when we can connect spiritually with the larger system, which we all have the ability to do, again, it may look different.

Renee McKenna:
There are different ways that we'll understand it, different ways that it will connect with us, because it's always here. It's just, it's like the idea of fish being in the water. They don't know, these three fish swimming, and the big fish swims by them. And he says, how's the water today, boys? And they say, fine. And then they keep going. And one looks and he says, what's the water? Because they're in it. Like they don't know they're in it, right? So when we can become aware of this system and actually experience our connection, the love, the generative creativity that is actually living within every cell of our body.

Renee McKenna:
That is the modality that provides the wisdom and healing that most of us really need. That's where transformation and healing happen. So, for example, the doctor who was brilliant surgeon, cut my leg open, cut the ends off both my bones, and put a whole new joint into my knee. That's great. He did that. But you know what? He didn't actually heal my knee. My knee and all of the cells and muscles and bones knew how to grow new formation around that thing that he put in there. So although he set up the.

Renee McKenna:
The circumstance, he didn't do the healing. There's a mysterious force that had the intelligence to regrow my muscles and bones and ligaments in this way that has healed my leg. So the same is true in the psyche, that we can set up conditions, and if they include these deeper principles and truths, then there's an optimal circumstance for us to realign with our higher self, to continue to grow and evolve, which a lot of us become stunted. That doesn't happen in my experience, in traditional western psychology, which is much more about just intellectually understanding and trying to calm yourself down.

Jennifer Norman:
That's a great metaphor. No, that's actually really helpful as far as an explanation of the difference. And it really does resonate with me particularly. I definitely can see how somebody can go for getting fixed or being cured from a physical perspective, but not necessarily healed from a soul perspective or from a spiritual perspective. Very interesting. So as far as a lot of people's situations and their lives, a lot of them will come to a spiritual awakening born out of crisis or born out of trauma. It's like, oh, my God, my life just fell apart.

Jennifer Norman:
Something happened and they don't know where they stand. And then spirituality becomes almost like this path forward for making meaning out of what just happened and being able to either cope or manage or continue on with life in perhaps a more purpose oriented way. Aside from that, I mean, there are certainly others that don't, but a lot of people do because there's a lot of trauma. There's been a lot of. A lot of stuff that has happened to people in their lives, unfortunately. How do you feel is an approach that you provide to your clients in terms of welcoming them into the concepts of spirituality and healing to the point of being different from western psychology. Like, where do they begin?

Renee McKenna:
Well, most people come to be, like you said, they come to be interested in this kind of work or in spirituality or other non traditional or non intellectual or rational ways of being out of their own suffering that they've tried everything they can think of, and they're being asked to go beyond what's known to them. And that is actually, I think, how evolution happens. It is an interactive, generative universe. I mean, I think fish grew legs and became mammals because they were like, what's up there outside the water? And they wanted it enough that somehow things sprouted in there. So it is, I think change and evolution are born out of need. And it's personally, and I think on the larger system, because everything is evolving and expanding, and we are too, when we don't grow and evolve and expand, that is one of the things that can cause us suffering and we outgrow the systems or the relationships or the circumstances that we're in. And it can be really, really challenging to have to let go of what is precious and familiar to us, but to follow our soul path, our authentic self, rather than perhaps the circumstances or the cultural or familial path that we've been given. And so if people are interested in where to begin, what I always suggest is to really just ask the universe to show you where to start.

Renee McKenna:
I just revisited this fabulous book by Neil Donald Walsh called Conversations with God. And it's a wonderful book. If you haven't, there's a whole series, but number one is my favorite one. And he starts a conversation with God because he's also in a place of frustration and difficulty in his life. He's reached the end of his rope. And the thing, when we reach the end of our rope and we let go, we think we're going to fall. Usually the earth is right beneath our feet, right in a new place to come to. So I think it is unique in how it happens for each person in how it comes to them.

Renee McKenna:
So you can kind of just ask and see. And then our job is to open our eyes and pay attention to what comes, because we are in a conversation with the universe. And part of our work is to listen to what the universe is telling us and be willing to follow that. If people are interested in spiritual psychology work and the shamanic and Buddhist philosophy and more body centered work, I have tons of resources of where you can start, really, to just start by connecting with the larger system through some meditation and some prayer and some guided visualizations, to really be able to experience the connection that's available to all of us, not just to learn about it, to think about it, to talk about it, but it really is experience that changes and transforms us. And so I have a ton of resources, which I'm sure you're going to have.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah, I will definitely make sure that people will know where to find all of your resources. One of the things that you had mentioned in your book that had been very helpful, and you mentioned it at the top of the cast is inner child work. And I found inner child work to be really compelling and something that helped people to release a lot of the issues that they had been harboring and holding and hadn't necessarily realized it. Can you go over a very brief explanation of what inner child work is and how it works?

Renee McKenna:
Yes. So we have a physical body. We have an intellectual self. We also have an energetic or an emotional self. And those are distinct kind of aspects of humanity. We could call it our emotional body. And just like we have memories in our mind. And there's a wonderful book now called The Body Keeps The Score.

Renee McKenna:
The body and our emotional body have a memory, just like our intellect does. And so because we don't recognize that well, and even in our intellectual memory, we don't do a lot of learning how to clear our memories or clear our body or clear our emotional or energetic system. And so things happen. It is how we learn. Life is difficult, and I don't think that is a design flaw. And so things will happen, and there's a learning feedback, right? Like, oh, that happened. That hurt. I'm going to do something different so that doesn't happen again.

Renee McKenna:
That's how we survive. Right. And evolve. But emotionally, what will happen? And because we all, you know, humans are imperfect, our caregivers are imperfect, things will happen. Now, certainly there's really horrible trauma, like abuse and neglect and sexual abuse and physical trauma, but even minor things like not getting your needs met, not being supported in the way that you really need, not being recognized or some of the things that are good about you to actually have them be supported, there's a lot of ways that we experience wounding or incomplete development, and we just keep going. And so those things will happen, but they're like little burrs that get stuck in our fur, and they cause matting over time. And then we just learn how to deal with them. And then other structures get built on top of them, and we don't even know why.

Renee McKenna:
At 20 years old or at 30 years old, our partner will say something offhand, and then all of a sudden, our feelings are totally hurt, and we feel really, really angry with them, and we think we should break up with them. And it was some minor thing. They don't even know what they did. What is that? Where did that come from? And it's in a two year old or four year old or nine year old that was wounded. It's an emotional part of our self that has this bur or bruise or unhealed wound that will continue to get triggered or poked over time. And there can be many, many layers of this. So a lot of times we think, well, that's just how I am. And I'm going to tell you that's not true.

Renee McKenna:
And what inner child work is, is it allows us to using primarily body centered mindfulness to notice where the feelings, the discomfort or dis ease live in our body. And usually it's somewhere in your core, usually your throat, your heart, your belly, your gut. You'll feel like the feeling if you really drop in and notice where that feeling is simply by suggesting, when was the first time I felt that particular feeling in my life? You'll come to the origin of that issue. It's pretty amazing. When you come to the origin of that issue, it's usually a younger part of yourself, often a child part, sometimes even an infant part. We can bring our adult self, our adult ego state, using what I call active imagination, into relationship with that part of ourself. We can step across historic or psychological time and connect with that part of ourself that's actually stuck in historic time. So if you think about.

Renee McKenna:
I mean, we all have this. Like you think about yourself as a five year old child, you're going to imagine yourself probably in some historic circumstance when you were five years old. You can bring your adult self to imagine stepping into the scene with that five year old child, and how would you relate to them today and healing that relationship with those aspects of our emotional self and bringing them into present time, out of that place in historic time where they're still defending themselves, they actually, these little aspects of our self kind of get frozen again in, like, psychological or historic time. By bringing them into present time, by bringing them into consciousness and having an inner dialogue with them, it completely changes the inner dynamic that we have and transforms and heals our life experience. So that's the basis of inner child work, is shifting our relationship in a very direct and conscious way with aspects of our own emotional and spiritual self.

Jennifer Norman:
I think this is such precious work that not enough people are probably doing, because I think that a lot of times we get triggered, we get upset, we have relationship issues. It's them, not us, or I just can't get over this, and I don't. No one knows how to really resolve it within themselves and doing this work. I remember for the longest time, I used to not like the idea of shadow work because it was uncomfortable and I felt like it was unnecessary. And I was like, okay, if I only just aim towards the light, if I only focus on the positive, then I will get more positive, like the divine algorithm. But that's not necessarily the case, because if you ignore it, it's behind you, and it can sneak up on you when you least expect it. It's not being addressed, it's not being absolved, it's not being healed. So it's very, very powerful work.

Jennifer Norman:
I would encourage everybody who's listening to do a little bit of a deeper dive. If you haven't done inner child work yet, definitely take a look and see what Renee offers in terms of that kind of opportunity for self healing. Healing and self reflection. It could be the difference in your future.

Renee McKenna:
Seriously, if I have one life passion, it's to bring that work to as many people as possible. It completely changed my relationship with myself. And it's a modality. I mean, this is why. So in shamanism, it's called soul retrieval. There's work that's done in Tibetan Buddhism that's very similar. So this is a modality that's been really discovered. It's kind of a technology for healing that's been around for actually probably thousands of years.

Renee McKenna:
And we have the, I think, responsibility to ourself to turn toward ourself and heal our deepest self in this really profound way.

Jennifer Norman:
Yeah. Oh, beautiful. I want to talk a minute about your book, Allies and Demons: Working With Spirit For Power And Healing. Because it sounds so fascinating, I was able to preview it. I first of all wanted to talk about the title because I felt like the title was really very compelling. Instead of being called Angels and Demons, which we usually hear, or Allies and Enemies, because we usually hear those, you specifically and intentionally chose Allies and Demons to coordinate with. I was curious about the thought process behind the title.

Renee McKenna:
Well, it was certainly informed by this really potent work by a modern Tibetan lama named Tsultrim Allione. She has an ashram in Colorado called Tara Mandala, and she has a practice called Feeding Your Demons, which is a modern practice of an 11th century chöd, or negative energy transformation practice from ancient Tibet. And so again, these are technologies that have been used throughout humanity. Right. And she talks a lot about our inner demons and connecting with external allies. And I really, or internal allies. I really loved those terminologies, and I love that particular practice. I've also modified it into my own spiritual psychology work, the feeding of demons. Transforming demons into allies.

Renee McKenna:
So we all have, like you said, shadow. All light casts a shadow. We live on a plane of duality here in the middle earth. And if there's light, if it shines on anything, it casts a shadow. We just have to know that that is a fact here on this plane of existence. And so when we can be aware of the shadow, like you were saying, when it's behind us and we aren't paying attention to it, it can come get us, right? But when we turn toward it, then very much like in a child work, things that have felt dangerous or demonic or even externalized, when we take responsibility for our life experience, they can transform really into powerful allies. Just like my addiction, which really became, or I should say addictions, which became my nemesis, ultimately now are a source of strength and profound ability to help others because of facing my own darkness. And so that principle, if we become, it's really the hero's journey that Joseph Campbell discovered in almost all human mythology and stories.

Renee McKenna:
It seems to be one of the main things we're doing here as humans in this incarnation is living a hero's journey, where at some point, there's some kind of a dragon or a demon that steals the jewels. And those being some of our most authentic self, we become separated from who we really are. And then our work is to go into the cavern and face the dragon and retrieve the jewels for our benefit and for the benefit of the village, right? And so that's the ultimate human experience, I think, here. Some of us may complete it, some of us may not. And so, being willing to face our demons, and a lot of times we'll think the demons are those people. It's the person who abused me, or it's my boss, or it's the person who neglected or abandoned me, or it's the victimized, being victimized by circumstances or by my health. And so whatever the burden that we get is, that is our work in this lifetime, to make peace with it, to see what the gifts and jewels are underneath it, that it has to bring us and to allow it to change and evolve us. And so in my book, it's divided into two sections.

Renee McKenna:
The first is connecting directly with spiritual allies, elements of nature, aspects of our own higher self, ancestors and angels, as you mentioned, and a spirit guide in animal form. So it's very helpful. Just like in the hero's journey, all great heroes had helped. They had. Perseus had. I think it was Athena was giving him magical instruments. The Greeks, they all had help. Everybody gets help.

Renee McKenna:
We get to have help people. And so having spiritual help is really imperative because in order to go, it's often quite terrifying to go in and face the dragon. You don't have to do it by yourself. Right? The demons part is working through, facing, dissolving and transforming our inner critic, our past trauma, doing our inner child work and resolving unresolved emotional issues, dissolving our fears and depression. That's what the second half, the demons part of the book is.

Jennifer Norman:
Oh my gosh. It sounds so incredible. I definitely am excited to continue reading it and finishing up and learning so much from it. I know that a lot of people are probably thinking, oh my gosh, inner child work, facing my demons. All of this sounds really scary or heavy or heady, and I just don't have the time and I just don't have the energy. And frankly, what can I expect? The nice thing is that you also teach simple tools too, for helping to incorporate some spiritual principles and ancient healing methods into one's practice so that they can get started, they can get on a roll. What are some of these tools and how can they benefit practitioners in various fields?

Renee McKenna:
Well, the simplest tool, and I did it this morning, is to have some kind of a practice, and it can be incredibly short, where you are opening to receive and participate in this dialogue with the larger system. Some people do it with journaling. Some people do it. I mean, for myself, this morning I went down to Riverside park on the Hudson River, and I sat with the river and I sat on a rock in between two trees. So tree, rock, and water, those are elements. They're available to all of us. And that just connecting with that and really like feeling the resonance of the life force that moves through nature, I find that to be the most easily accessible doorway for most of us to just sit outside, watch the sunrise or the sunset, watch a look at a flower, watch a bird. So connecting spiritually, come out of your head and down into your body, into your breath.

Renee McKenna:
I prefer it outside, even to meditating quietly in my house, where I'm still kind of in my own unique system, that's what I find to be probably the base.

Jennifer Norman:
And would you consider that grounding like a grounding ritual?

Renee McKenna:
I suppose it could be. I don't always. I tend to think of it more as a conversation in the idea of the breath. So grounding absolutely has its place for people that have trouble living in their body and don't intend to leave their body, which we absolutely can. Yes, we have to come into our body and ground ourselves here in present time, before anything else can happen, that's an excellent place to start. But starting again to have this conversation, like, every time we breathe in and breathe out, we're in a conversation, we're receiving and we're producing, and that dyad of intake and output, most of us are kind of skewed one way or another. We either take in a lot and we don't produce a lot, or we give out a lot and don't take in a lot. And finding that equanimity or balance that's healthy, like breathing in and breathing out, that is, in itself, profoundly healing.

Renee McKenna:
And we do that energetically. We certainly do it with our breath, but we can start to do it in all areas of our life if we start to think about it that way.

Jennifer Norman:
And for somebody who is just starting on their spiritual journey and saying, okay, I'm open, I think that this is something that can be so beneficial for me. I would love to get started. What kinds of feelings or what kinds of changes could somebody expect from doing this work?

Renee McKenna:
Can I do a little quick teaching?

Jennifer Norman:
Yes, please.

Renee McKenna:
Okay, so this is a model of the self based on a work called the pathwork, and which is available for. You can look it up, and it's...

Jennifer Norman:
Okay so just for those who are listening, Renee is holding up a visual, and we're going to try to describe the visual. And you can probably help me better than I can, but there's some concentric circles. There's a beautiful, almost spectrum like circle with multiple colors in the center. And then there is a ring outside of it. It looks like it is black with some squiggly lines going through it. The middle circle, there is an arrow pointing to it that says higher self. The circle right adjacent. And outside that is the shadow self.

Jennifer Norman:
There's a label and an arrow pointing to the shadow self. And then out outside that, there is this very interestingly multiple patterned circle. Some of them have jagged lines. Some of them have almost, like, Escher looking tiles, zigzags, some bubbles, different. Different kinds of patterns. And then there is a label that is pointing to it that says, mask or personality self.

Renee McKenna:
Yes. So this kind of bullseye, like you just described, the outside of it is what most of us, that's our mask or personality self, or it could even be called our ego. And that where most of us live, and most people don't even think there's much beyond that that is themself. Although sometimes we know there's probably more, but it seems like you said, maybe a little bit scary. So what's underneath that mask or personality self is what Carl Jung called the shadow. You referred to that earlier, or Freud called the unconscious. And it's all the things that we don't like about ourselves or that our caregivers or our culture finds unacceptable. And we hide that stuff.

Renee McKenna:
Unfortunately, a lot of that holds vital life energy, and it may even hold some of our gifts and talents, but they're things that we just don't want anybody to know. And so even ourselves. So that stuff all kind of becomes secret. And the mask or personality, some of it is set up to protect that stuff from ever being seen, or maybe even being seen by us underneath that. And we all have, this is our authentic or our higher self. And that's the part of us that is, could be called our God self, or the part that's connected with the universal life flow. We are all have life force flowing within us, and that's kind of at the center. And in order to get to our authentic or higher self, we need to be willing to leave our mask or personality or ego self and move through the shadow to connect with who we authentically are.

Renee McKenna:
And that's what shadow works about. That's what my spiritual psychology work is about. Inner child work will bring you there. It's basically just being willing to be with what's true, facing inward, knowing that the inner truth is probably wiser and more empowering than facing out to what the over culture wants from us. So once we do that work, I'm now going to hold up a second picture. And once we access the higher self, what happens is we actually have access to universal life force in a flowing way. And more serendipity will happen in our life. We'll have more joy.

Renee McKenna:
The quality of our relationships and our experience of them will shift and change. There may be a period of turmoil as things shift and change, but ultimately will come into alignment with our own highest good, with our Wu wei, or ikigai, as they call it in Japan, which is just basically our own happiness and our purpose in this life as we came to know it. And so being willing again to turn inward to our inner truth allows that breathing in and breathing out in a much deeper way with universal life force, we have more life energy, our health improves, our emotional states, we become more resilient, we become less fearful. And it basically is how to superpower your life. That's been my experience.

Jennifer Norman:
So for those of you who are just listening, Renee is holding up this second illustration, which is labeled awakened self. And essentially it's as if the higher self, the center from the previous illustration, bursts through all of those other circles, almost shatters it into pieces, and essentially is illuminating the light, the colors from within, out in all directions.

Renee McKenna:
And that's what happens when you're willing to do that work. Yes.

Jennifer Norman:
Wow.

Renee McKenna:
And I think you know, Jennifer, because I can feel that you've done a lot of that work yourself.

Jennifer Norman:
Brilliant, brilliant. Renee, I would love for you to tell everyone where they can get in touch with you, how they can work with you, and all the good stuff that they would need to know in order to be able to start on this journey with you.

Renee McKenna:
Thanks Jennifer. So you can find me at renemackenna.com. I do free workshops on a regular time on insight timer and you can find that link on my website. I have a ten session healing course called Healing Trauma. That is, it's been, I think 3600 people have done it so far to great effect. It's a pinnacle piece of work. If people want a simple, it's about 15 minutes a day, ten sessions. That would be equal to what we would do over a series of probably ten sessions. If you worked with me directly, that's a really easy one-stop is my healing trauma course.

Renee McKenna:
You mentioned my book Allies and Demons, which also has guided audio that goes with it. And you can email me at info@reneemckenna.com if you want to set up a block of sessions, I'll be happy to see you. You can also find me the last thing I'll say right now, I have YouTube, but we won't bother with that. You can find my own podcast, Spiritual Psychology on all channels.

Jennifer Norman:
Beautiful, beautiful. Well, beautiful humans, thank you so much for joining me for this show. I am just blown away by everything that Renee has to offer. I'm really excited to have you all learn a little bit more, so definitely look her up after this podcast. Renee McKenna, thank you so much for all of your work, for all that you are doing to help others to find their higher selves. I appreciate you so very much.

Renee McKenna:
Jennifer, thank you so much. What a lovely, lovely conversation and blessings on your work.

Jennifer Norman:
Thank you. Thank you for listening to The Human Beauty Movement Podcast. Be sure to follow, rate and review us wherever you stream podcasts. The Human Beauty Movement is a community based platform that cultivates the beauty of humankind. Check out our workshops, find us on social media and share our inspiration with all the beautiful humans in your life. Learn more at thehumanbeautymovement.com. Thank you so much for being a beautiful human.