S2E19: From Depression to Spiritual
Drawn to methods that uncover our innate wisdom and creative nature, I design experiences that help individuals and groups connect more deeply with aspects of their identity and purpose, and that transform the barriers to living into that purpose. I have particular interest in supporting those who are most directly impacted by the racism, patriarchy, heteronormativity and other forms of oppression at play in our lives. I hold an MA in Social Justice Leadership from Saint Mary’s College of California, and study Reiki as a Shinpiden graduate with the International House of Reiki.
Social media and contact information::
www.heartscapesinsight.com, michaela@heartscapesinsight.com
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnG2vSUxcUdOemBaZqURZ-Q
Podcast Transcript:
[00:00:00] Damaged Parents: Welcome back to the Relatively Damaged Podcast by Damaged Parents where inspiring transcending, loving people come to learn. Maybe just, maybe we're all a little bit damaged. Someone once told me it's safe to assume 50% of the people I meet are struggling and feel wounded in some way. I would venture to say it's closer to 100%.
Every one of us is either currently struggling or has struggled with something that made us feel less than like we aren't good enough. We aren't capable. We are relatively damaged. And that's what we're here to talk about. In my ongoing investigation of the damaged self, I want to better understand how others view their own challenges.
Maybe it's not so much about the damage, maybe it's about our perception and how we deal with it. There is a deep commitment to becoming who we are meant to be. How do you do that? How do you find balance after a damaging experience? My hero is the damaged person. The one who faces seemingly insurmountable odds to come out on the other side, whole those who stared directly into the face of adversity with unyielding persistence to discover their purpose. These are the people who inspire me to be more fully me.
Not in spite of my trials, but because of them, let's hear from another hero. Today's topic includes sensitive material, which may not be appropriate for children. This podcast is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended as advice. The opinions expressed here are strictly those of the person who gave them.
Today, we're going to talk with Michaela Daystar. She has many roles in her life, mother teacher, which anti-racist artist, gardener, friend, and more. We'll talk about how she struggled with depression to gain a strong sense of who she is let's talk
Welcome back to Relatively Damaged by Damaged Parents. Today, we have Michaela Daystar she's with Hardscapes. You can find her at https://HeartscapesInsight.com. Michaela is drawn to methods that uncover our innate wisdom and creative nature. And I think she's drawn there because of the struggles she's gone through and what she's had to learn in her life.
She actually designs experiences that help individuals and groups connect more deeply with the aspects of their identity and purpose and transform the barriers so that people are able to live in that purpose. She loves supporting those who are most directly impacted by racism, patriarchy, heteronormativity, and other forms of oppression that play out in all of our lives.
She holds an MA in social justice leadership from St. Mary's college of California. She studied reiki which is as a, I'm gonna butcher this word again, guys, as a Shin Paden, graduate with the international house of Reiki. Welcome to the show. Michaela
now you guys have to know our patients has just had to come out of us today because we had connection issues.
We shifted to another platform. We had challenges. There were You know, a button needs to be pushed for us to record, and that did not happen. And we had a lag. So we're back to our regular recording software and I am actually super glad that Michaela's patients is also with her.
And that we've kind of been able to have a little bit of fun and laugh. We probably had a good 10 minutes of a conversation and nothing to show for it. It was beautiful.
[00:03:35] Michaela Daystar: Yeah, it was beautiful.
And I would say that what we had to show for it, first of all, it was this laughter that we get to have. And you know, really putting these things to the test, right? Because we had a crisis. We can either, you know, we can either let it destroy us or we can lead into it. And then, you know, this this was, it's a little teeny, tiny itty bitty crisis, but these things test us so I think we're in good shape.
[00:03:57] Damaged Parents: I think so. I think so now, one thing that's really important to me that we talked about that wasn't recorded, that I do want to ask you again, is Shin Paden you had explained the different levels of Reiki in learning it. Could you do that for us?
[00:04:11] Michaela Daystar: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Reiki being the primary. Like flower that blossomed out of the challenges that the experienced that we'll talk about is a Japanese form of spiritual practice. And that, that grew out of esoteric, Buddhism and indigenous gentle practice through a really fascinating history beginning in the late 18 hundreds. And a Shin Paden is the third level of practice. Many uh, systems of practice inside of Japan are organized into a level or into a kind of progression of practice beginning with Shodhan the first teachings, Okuden in the inner teachings and Shinpiden the mystery teachings. And
you'd ask me where, what is meant by mystery teachings
[00:04:51] Damaged Parents: Exactly I did. And I'm going to say it because I thought it was so important. I definitely want to ask that question again. What is it about mystery teachings? What do you learn?
[00:05:00] Michaela Daystar: Yeah. So the mystery that we're looking into is really inside of ourselves. And it's, pivots around the mystery of what makes life tick. Right? What, makes life function and operate? How does the interconnectedness of life work? How do we experience that directly? in our bodies and our hearts and our minds, through practices like Reiki but practices that show. In, in all cultures and cross time and civilization, that really train our minds to pay attention to the intricacies of life outside of our day to day, and then to bring those intricacies into our day to day in ways that that change us and that bring our ourselves to a more stable and connected place.
[00:05:41] Damaged Parents: Now were you practicing that before your struggle or is this one of those great things that came out of your stress?
[00:05:47] Michaela Daystar: Yeah, very directly. As I was saying before, the, Familiar human experience of kind of hitting rock bottom, right? Hitting that place in our life where things are just not working and the coping mechanisms or strategies that we've learned throughout our life are not serving us.
They're not actually getting us where we need to go we're hitting a wall. And that happened for me and. Three major areas of my life, all at the same time, my marriage, which kind of ended over about a three-year period, my career, which had a real just very stuck, kind of painful place for me.
And then in my parenting of my two daughters, all of that really came to challenging place at the same time. And I was just not equipped in any way, shape or form to rise to that challenge. You know, sometimes these things are blessings in disguise. you know, I needed to learn more about who I was.
I needed to learn more about how humanity operates. I needed to build my capacity to deal with struggle. Right. Because it was, kind of at the point where even small struggles like tech going haywire, would have put me in a place of kind of a frozen place. You know if we think about the biological responses to trauma, fight, flight freeze, fawning you know, these different ways in which are these different strategies.
We have to get ourselves out. I'm a freezer, right. So I will, freeze up when I'm not equipped to handle something. And so I was just in this very extended time of being frozen. And you, know, when.
[00:07:12] Damaged Parents: I just want to ask a little bit about what that time. It was. you said extended period of time where you felt frozen, what does that mean? And what did that look like in your life?
[00:07:21] Michaela Daystar: Yeah, that's a good question. A large way that it looks like in terms of tangible outcomes, is that I, couldn't make decisions. I would just stay in situations that were tenuous because I couldn't make a decision about them or some crisis would come up with my kids and I would need to make a decision about what to do.
And I just couldn't make that decision. I would defer it to other people and then they would make decisions that I didn't agree with. Right. But I had given away that power, it looked like because I couldn't make decisions and therefore I couldn't, move forward in a way that felt generative and. I had to rely on, you know, coping mechanisms that were more about numbing myself out to being aware of that. So I would drink too much and I would watch too much television and, you know, just kind of these mechanisms that we have to dull our awareness of how haywire things have gotten. Right. And so, you know, at a certain point, when that sort of thing is happening over an extended period of time, you, you hit these choice points, right.
Where it's like, I can go down this road, or I could make a different choice that feels harder, but ultimately is what is needed. And so when I hit one of those choice points, I think what happens for a lot of us. And as I work with people who are similarly working through these things now in my work, I can see this happening which is when we hit one of those kind of rock, bottom moments where we have a choice to make. If we choose to look away from the pain And the negative coping mechanisms, things start coming to us, we start becoming aware. Uh, we start getting little hints about which direction to go. We start getting very overt about which direction to go.
[00:09:00] Damaged Parents: And You're saying, if we're looking, if, we're choosing to look at it, we start to get hints as to which direction we need to go.
[00:09:08] Michaela Daystar: yeah, I think, and even if we just choose to do something different than we've been doing, and probably we have no idea what that is. I certainly had no idea what that was. Right. I Was just like something different needs to have. It was terrifying. Yeah. It was terrifying. And the, first like breadcrumb actually came from my best friend. I was you know like blahh you know pouring, pouring out my suffering to her, really just complaining. And she was you know, listening like a good friend, she's a therapist she's really good at that. She just looked at me and she said, you know, mostly I was complaining about other people, right?
Like my husband is doing this and I need him to stop. You know what I'm, trying to get him to stop. And he won't, or, whatever it was, my boss is let alone, I'm complaining about other people. And she goes have you ever heard of co-dependents anonymous because it seems like you maybe need to tend to your side of the street and this a little bit, like you, you're looking over there at their side of the street and like you've got stuff that you need to tend to.
She didn't say it quite like that. She said it more gently, but and it was like, I had never in my life, like I knew what 12 step programs were. I had never in my life considered doing one, like that's for other people, other people do 12 separate. Not me, but it was like moment she said it I was like, yeah, that I need to do that, whatever that is, I need to do that, went home, looked up, found a co-dependents anonymous group in my town and went every Saturday for a year. It was like, it was that instantaneous. It was like she had thrown a lifeline and there was like, you know, this immediate recognition that their safety on the other end of that line. And I need to grab it. And so Reiki was like that too. And that lifeline came somewhere in the, in the, in that year. Going to co-dependant anonymous was the first time ever in my life. I was maybe 34 at the time. The first time in my life, I had really looked at, myself, right? What's going on inside of myself? Why am I making the decisions that I'm making? What I feel this way? What am I doing? That's causing problems in my life. First time ever.
[00:11:05] Damaged Parents: So because the nature of a codependent is that's their job to fix everyone else. Right. So seeing your side was that. I mean, you said, I just know I need to go on this path and you did it right, but was it also uh humbling.
[00:11:23] Michaela Daystar: For sure. Yeah. I mean, like you say, the nature of co-dependence is too. Essentially not understand how to make ourselves. Okay. Right. Not have a baseline of okay. So that there can be problems and difficulty happening around us. But like essentially, like we're okay. We know how to stay grounded, stay focused, make decisions.
We don't have that as a codependent. And so we need everybody else to be okay around us. And so that turns into this like fixing thing right. And that's an oversimplification, but that definitely was what was happening. And in doing that, you get to thinking that you're kind of an expert in fixing other people, which you can't fix.
Other people, your dad, you absolutely cannot. You can live your life in a way that inspires them to choose to fix themselves. Right. But you can't fix other people. Just learning that. Right. And the first couple of weeks like, I can't, I can't fix anybody else. And I've been trying and spending all of my energy, trying to do that and blaming everybody else for why they're not taking my very good advice. I'm not taking my very good advice. Right.
[00:12:28] Damaged Parents: I was going to ask, I was going to ask that very question where you taking your very good advice.
[00:12:33] Michaela Daystar: Absolutely not, no I didn't even know what advice. to give myself right. Cause it would be different advice. So very humbling extremely because my perspective had to change right. Ironically, I'm leading a group right now. I leave the lead, a seasonal 21 day practice session where we spend a half an hour every day for 21 days leading up to the solstice or the Equinox focused on a particular topic. And we're working with the book of joy right now, which if you have not read it, your listeners have not read it, go read it right this minute. It is an absolute gift to the world by the Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. And one of the things that they do is walk through eight obstacles that are common in our lives, obstacles to joy, to living a joyful life and the eight pillars of joy, the things that we can cultivate in our life to become more joyful. And in terms of the pillars, the first one is perspective, right? So I had to pause, take a new perspective on my life. Oh, I've been trying to fix everyone except myself. Right. And I need to zoom back from thinking everyone else has a problem. Take a look at myself. The next one is, a humility right. Okay. You take a new perspective on yourself. Ooh, You're gonna get humble real quick or you're going to be destroyed the other,
[00:13:41] Damaged Parents: You're just reminding me, you're saying perspective and humility. It's okay with you. I'll share a quick story. I was challenged to get a random reminder app and the random reminder that was to pop up as what character are you playing right now? Like, as if you think of all the different types of characters in this world, right?
There's not just a few basic ones.
[00:14:02] Michaela Daystar: Archetypes.
[00:14:03] Damaged Parents: And I was certain that these other people. We're the only ones doing things. Right. And the stories I told myself and within a couple of hours of setting this reminder, I was rolling in laughter. And the reason I was rolling in laughter is because I had caught that very same thinking that I was certain other people were, that it was only them.
I was catching that behavior in myself. And at that point, the only thing I could do was laugh because how was it that I was so absolutely certain that all, you know, like that I had my crap so perfectly and well together that it could only possibly be them. And then it's in my head.
[00:14:47] Michaela Daystar: Right.
[00:14:48] Damaged Parents: Anyway.
So I thought you might enjoy that, you know, so talk about humility.
[00:14:51] Michaela Daystar: Well, it's so brilliant because the third pillar to joy is humor, right? Because once we've taken a different perspective on our life and we have become humble in our being, then we can laugh at ourselves. Right. And we can say to other people, hey, come stand with me and laugh. Let's laugh at me together.
And then we'll laugh at you together. Right. Because it's all just so ridiculous. Right. Life has so much ridiculousness and, you know, it's believed evolutionarily that humor developed in our species as a coping mechanism for the uncertainty and ridiculousness of life. Right. That like, if we cannot laugh at the fact that we don't know what the hell is going on most of the time, then we're in trouble. Right. But when we can first of all, immediate gateway to connection with other people and immediate gateway to joyfulness, even inside of great suffering and access to the fourth pillar of joy, which is acceptance and acceptance is the first step in actually making change. Right. And so here I was spending all of my energy, trying to change the people around me so that I could feel okay. But not accepting that I wasn't okay. Because I wasn't okay. Because I hadn't done work right. And when I was able to move into acceptance, which was, big part of what co-dependents anonymous brought in that I could make change. Right. Because I was, I was like, okay, this is what's actually true. Okay. So now what needs to happen? And in that space, that next thread came through, which was. And another practice called Soul Collage, which is all about working with those voices. Right. Those parts of ourselves that your app asks you to consider. And yeah, both of those came through happenstance similarly through other people just kind of mentioning it at random when I was in the room and a feeling that tug right with Reiki in particular, I heard somebody in the other room from where I was say, oh, I'm getting ready to teach my next Reiki class.
I didn't know what that was but it was like, woo, what was that? Sign me up. I don't know what that is, but yes, please.
[00:16:57] Damaged Parents: Yeah. And quite literally, just now you moved as if a rope pulled you that way.
[00:17:02] Michaela Daystar: yeah.
[00:17:03] Damaged Parents: So that's what it felt like inside of you. Like, I must go that way?
[00:17:07] Michaela Daystar: Exactly. And that's our intuition, right? I mean, our intuition is that you know what I've come to understand for studying intuition, I run a monthly intuition lap. And it's that bridge of connection between our individual self and the web of life. And it gives us access to information that we don't actually have in our brain. Right. And So I hear this word I'd never heard before. What do we often, you know, we're either going to move towards something with curiosity or we're going to disregard it because it doesn't feel relevant to us. And so it was this yeah. This literal leaning towards, and then because I'd been working on myself for a year and co-dependents anonymous. I was recognizing that movement. I was like, oh, that's something I need to pay attention to.
[00:17:48] Damaged Parents: So did you, you literally then did not feel that before, until you were at the bottom of your pit, if you will, and your friend said, Hey, have you heard of co-dependency anonymous?
[00:18:01] Michaela Daystar: well, one of the things that I think happens we're in that stuck place where. For me being frozen, but for somebody else, who's maybe in fight response all the time or in fear response all the time is we stop paying attention to our intuition because our intuition is telling us the hard things we need to do to get ourselves out of this. And if we're not prepared to do those hard things, we're going to ignore it. And if we ignore our intuition, two things happen, one, it speaks louder and louder and louder until it makes us sick. Right. So we. Physiological emotional mental illness because we're ignoring pressure. That's building up inside of ourselves. We're not making choices that actually are serving us and in health. And so we're this up and eventually we dull ourselves to, to that voice. And so that had happened to me. I had all kinds of physiological stuff
going on that, that I can trace to that. And I felt like my intuition was just gone. Like I didn't have it anymore.
[00:18:58] Damaged Parents: Yeah.
[00:18:59] Michaela Daystar: Rebuilding that was really the first step
[00:19:02] Damaged Parents: What was it like learning to trust the intuition and what did that feel like?
[00:19:07] Michaela Daystar: I felt confusing because we have a lot of voices, right. There's many aspects of ourselves that are doing their best to help us make good decisions but you know, Are coming from hurt places or stuck places, traumatized places. So we have a lot of voices. And how do you know which one is your intuition? I didn't even know that that was a problem. And I would say that the first instance of becoming aware of my intuition it was the first time I had gone to someone you might call a healer. A dear friend of mine knew a woman who practices shamonic practices and he's like, Hey, you should come do a session. Sure and I'd never done anything like that before. And she said, what is your intention for this session? My intention was, I don't know what it was, but something around. I don't even know what the heck my conscious intention was, but it sure wasn't what came out of my mouth.
What came out of my mouth was I need to rebuild my intuition. And it was like, have you ever had that? Where you, like you say something and then you're like, what did I just say? So I had that, but it was like the feeling that, that was absolutely the correct answer was so powerful and in my chest That it was like, oh, there she is again, she's been gone, right. That voice has been, not gone, but covered over. And here she is like, in the presence of somebody who is there to help, Somebody who's like, I have some magic for you. What do you want? Intuition was like I want to be able to run the show again, instead of all this other nonsense that's happening. So you asked, you know, how did that feel? It felt like it felt like a relief. It felt scary. It felt there was a lot of grief and coming to realize that I had shut down my capacity to make good decisions. And then it was just a very slow process. And what, what I now know is that all of the, Practices and modalities and experiences that then came my way, at least in some part had to do with rebuilding intuition and so now as I teach some of those practices, not all of them, there were some things that kind of came in, served me well and then left my life. But Reiki and Soul Collage have, become my life would become what I teach, what I practice and a big part of how I talk about them and teach them and guide practice is around intuition and around understanding what it is and why we need it
[00:21:27] Damaged Parents: So I think that's fantastic. One of the things I heard you say, though, is it took a long time to begin to trust, like you started recognizing what it meant to hear and listen to your intuition and. if you think back to, as you were losing, it, was that also a slow process? Like looking back when you. Lost your intuition. Was that also a slow process of just not listening? You know, It doesn't sound like there was an abrupt thing that happened.
[00:22:00] Michaela Daystar: Yeah. I get what you're saying. I would say on the one hand yes and on the other hand, I don't know that I'd ever had a really strong connection to it to begin with. That's not true in my adult life, right. Because I think we, we are born with all of this amazing capacity. Right. And we were born. This is what I believe, right? So this is a belief system that is born out through experience and practice. But, it doesn't have to be everybody's belief system, but my belief is that, we're born and always are interconnected with all of life, that there is a web of life that connects me to you. That's not just about this computer that connects me to the trees outside that connects, me to. All of the ancestors that have made me possible and so on. And that that's how life operates. That's part of how the whole thing works and that when we're born, we're just that, that's just what we are, where we are one point of intersection on the web of life, one little thread, vibrating connected to all the others, and we just know that to be true. And then we live our life and distractions come in and challenges come in and stories from the outside, come in and definitions of who we are come in and trauma comes in and that gets covered over. And part of what gets impacted by that is our intuition. Because again, my perspective is that intuition is our ability to be aware of that connection to life.
Therefore, we receive information, we received messages. We're able to make decisions based on incomplete, conscious information. And so, so that gets covered over. And if we don't ever choose to do something about that, right. To engage in some sort of process that helps us to feel again, what it feels like to be resourced, as a living being that is not isolated, that is not independent, but as interdependent, if we don't do something that helps us to remember that, then our intuition is just not fully online and we'll certainly have moments, right? Some people are more predisposed to it. Some people are more connected to it, or we'll have moments where it just comes in really strong but it's impacted when we're not consciously cultivating it. And so I would say that I had never consciously cultivated it since moving out of childhood. And so yes, there was a deterioration of it over about a three-year period, I'd say, but when I started rebuilding it, it was building a relationship that hadn't existed since I was a baby.
[00:24:29] Damaged Parents: That's sounds really beautiful. I love the way you described that. Especially like the interconnectedness that we're all here sharing, sharing this. Now there is something I wanted to ask you because on your pre-interview sheet, you noted, that you were a witch as far as one of the roles that you play.
So I of course have to ask about that.
[00:24:52] Michaela Daystar: Please do.
[00:24:53] Damaged Parents: What does that mean? Are you like a white witch or are there different? Which is, I mean, you know, there's tons of questions there.
[00:24:59] Michaela Daystar: Yeah. I would say that I, identify as a witch in the, I would say the way in which that word was true, like back in the day, right? So kind of in my indigenous lineage, back to Celtic Europe, and back to, pre-colonial England, Europe, know, the word which comes from the word Wicca, which comes from the word wic which means life, right?
So a Wiccan or a witch is a life worker is somebody who collaborates with life. So is aware of that web of life is aware that we are interconnected is aware that all of life has magic and wisdom and resources far beyond, you know, , that humans are only one form of value, right. And that necessary ingredients to make the whole thing work and therefore a witch collaborates with that. And that might look like using, you know, plants and herbs and things like that. For food and medicine, it might look like, working with the unseen and, in terms of working with Stella casting and things like that, it might look like being very attentive to animals and how they communicate with us and how they teach us. Um, There's lots and lots and lots of different ways that that can show up. But I would say the essence of it is, you know, a witch is somebody who collaborates with life in order to benefit all of life, not just personal benefit, right. Not just me, if I'm just, if I'm doing something that's purely out of just self-interest, then I'm actually turning my back on the web of life.
Because if it only benefits me, then it probably is actually harming something else. And so what I want to do and what our intuition guides us to do part of its function is to understand the decisions and the actions that are going to not only benefit us, but are there going to benefit our connections, right?
Which ultimately is everything. And so that's how I define that. And I kind of came to working with that terminology, over the same period of time. Particularly through my involvement with an organization called Shakti Rising, which is a social justice organization focusing on, women's being way of being and a feminine leadership, feminine consciousness, in all people, not only people identify as women. And in inside of that context, we pretty liberally use the term, witch and again, as a way of, reclaiming something that has been made to be you know, vilified and, and dirtied and tied up with all kinds of crap. That just is not what it is at all. And you know, there's a little bit of a risk-taking when you take on a term that has been vilified. But it, it feels right. And it also feels like a way to identify and to consciously connect with my own lineage because the main practice that I use Reiki is it is a Japanese lineage. I'm a white woman in America practicing a Japanese art, right. I'm doing my very best to understand it from its origins to understand its purpose.
I study Shingon in Buddhism. I studied Shantelle really work with, you know, what is this practice? How did it come to be? And why. And why does it matter that you know, somebody who is not of that lineage practice it, but at the same time, one of the benefits of that is that it's made me more conscious of how disconnected I was from my own lineage. And so there's been this kind of paradox in that the more that I've lead into, what is Reiki? What was it originally? Why is it different in America than it was originally in Japan? Why does that matter? How can I. Understand it as best I can from its original perspective, the more I've done that, the more I've also simultaneously looked at my own lineage and said, okay, let me ask this all the same questions about Celtic spirituality, about, what existed in England before this colonial mindset set in, and how can that be part of not only how I can be a more whole person. How I can kind of hold a space of wholeness for other people who are also similarly cutoff from that lineage. And how can we be truth tellers around the ways in which our lineages have not been kind to each other. Right. I mean, I have Scottish blood and English blood.
Right. And there has been a lot of unkindness there. Right. And so as a white woman in America, looking around at a lot of unkindness that white people have done in this space. Right. How can I hold the, duality of that, right of holding people who harm people who have been harmed all of the complication of that and try to hold space for something different, and understanding our lineages and understanding the lineages of the things that we engage in. This is part of that. I think that was a really meandering answer to your question.
[00:29:30] Damaged Parents: It was, it was, and I, and I purposefully asked about the word witch, because you know, what came to mind is I remember I was sitting at a soccer game and there was a wiccan the something happening nearby. And, we could hear the music and the energy that I felt was like this cringing energys.
I love how you say reclaiming in it and what it means for me and what that looks like in, in your life. And I think that, That's pretty amazing. And it sounds like part of it is, is just going on that journey and saying, this is, this is how I'm choosing to describe who, not who you are, but like the things that you participate in your life.
Okay. So we are at the end of our times three top tips or tools that anyone going through a struggle right now, you highly, highly recommend that they use to get in touch with that intuition that we've been talking so much about.
[00:30:26] Michaela Daystar: Hmm. Well, first. You know, Often it's as simple as dancers. That's the most powerful, I would say first to, find some guidance around around breathing that's so often what we do is we construct our breath and chronically and it's profound the impact on our physiology and our mood and our feelings when we are able to relax, the tension in our belly enough to bring the breath low in the body. And when we can do that, our ability to take a step back and take out perspective increases. Right? So that's the first thing is, find a way to work with your breath. Um, find a way to what either on your own or through guidance to. Find out what your relationship is with your breath and to work on, on expanding it, bringing it lower in the body. Second, be conscious about asking for help, and conscious of how the answer might show up in unexpected ways. Right. And so that can mean. When you've taken that breath and kind of taken a pause because that's what a press is when we do it consciously is taking a pause. In some way, either just inside of yourself or to another person, ask for help and then go throughout your day and pay attention to what shows up. Be curious about.
how information might come in, unexpected ways. Find something that makes you laugh, because again, that's your connection to self connection to others, and a perspective taking so breath asking for help and paying attention to how it might show up and laughing.
[00:32:00] Damaged Parents: Awesome. Thank you so much. This was Michaela Daystar with us today. You can find her at https://HeartscapesInsight.com. She's also on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram. Thank you for coming on the show today.
[00:32:16] Michaela Daystar: Thank you so much, Angela, for the invitation I had a lot of fun.
[00:32:19] Damaged Parents: Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Relatively Damaged by Damaged Parents. We've really enjoyed talking to McKayla about how she struggled with depression. We especially liked when she explained what a, which is two night with other damaged people. Connect with us on Instagram. Look for damaged parents. We'll be here next week still relatively damaged see you then
