Interview with Christian de la Huerta - Author, Transformation Coach, & TEDx Speaker

Christian de la Huerta is an award-winning Author, Personal Transformation Coach, and TEDx speaker.

He's a retreat facilitator, relationships expert, spiritual coach, and leadership consultant that has dedicated his life to facilitating profound personal transformation.

Christian's latest book, Awakening the Soul of Power, is a call for all of us to wake up to our full potential so we can create a world beyond our wildest dreams.
 
Connect with Christian at  soulfulpower.com on Facebook and Instagram

Purchase Awakening the Soul of Power here and be sure to join his Facebook group.

Transcript

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Welcome to the action hour. My name is Jesse Simpson and I believe there's never been a better time in the history of the world to be alive. I'm on a mission to bring you the insights, ideas and inspiration you need to uncover your greatness and take action on your dreams. If you want to start a business, write a book, take a big trip, or level up to a higher state of living in the world. mentally, physically, spiritually, or financially. The stories found in the show will provide the action steps and energy you need to succeed. No matter what you are going through or where you've been, you can at any time, break that cycle and transform your life. This show is going to show you how to do it. If you've got the itch to act, now is the time. Allow the inspiring stories within this show to serve as your guide. This is the action hour, buckle up and enjoy the ride. Welcome back to the action hour Ladies and gentlemen, I've got an incredible guest lined up for you today. Christian de la Huerta is an award winning author, and personal transformation coach and TEDx speaker. He's a retreat facilitator, relationships expert, spiritual coach and leadership consultants that has dedicated his life to facilitating profound personal transformation. Christian, his latest book, awakening, the soul of power is a call for all of us to wake up to our full potential. So we can create a world beyond our wildest dreams. And it is such an honor to have you on here, Christian, your book is a work of art, I look up to you with all the stuff you're doing at the retreats and all the expertise you have in the spiritual community. Thank you so much for coming on to the action hour. Thanks. Thank you, Jesse for having me on the show. I was looking at some of some of the things that you do retreats and teach about, and there's a lot of overlap and what we do. Absolutely, I'm super excited to get into this, I think it's gonna, this is like more like a live podcast for me, because I'm just excited to learn more about the work you do and what got you on it. Because I mean, after we go to retreats, with you doing it for the last 30 years, I mean, I feel like everyone is doing retreats these days but to go back that long, and be like almost like, you know, you're leading the way for all of us to paving the way for all of us to be now facilitating these retreats. I'm so excited to dive into that, again, your book is amazing. There's so much practical wisdom in there. And just a call to action. I love the idea of power, the new way of thinking about masculinity, and ego and all this sort of stuff. Christian, thanks so much for, for doing what you do. Thank you so much. And thank you so much for saying that. I really appreciate it. Absolutely. Well, I'd first like to start off I think I picked up in the book somewhere that you maybe have eight brothers and sisters. Is that right? Yeah. I'm one of Nine. Eight of us now, one of my brothers drowned about 30 years ago. But yeah, I'm the second oldest of nine. Wow, what was it like growing up in that household? Oh, my god, it was so much fun. And we're so tight, we're all close. And we're very self sufficient. Right? We moved out when I was 10. We left I was wanting Cuba live there for my first 10 years and we moved to Spain. We moved to Milledgeville, Georgia for three years and then eventually landed in Miami. And but because there was so much moving, we got tight, and we were self sufficient. And you know, there's something about large families to like kind of become magnetic. So we're always attracting, you know, friends, and there's so much fun and so much creativity and so much joking around and just ribbing each other and very, very loving, very supportive. There's one thing that I've realized from spending my time in Latin America and I have a friend that's you, you're at the CO working space I work out of that is from India, it's sort of same thing like the Latin American and Eastern family, like the culture is just so natural that bringing everyone together and everyone helps each other and works together and all these sort of things, you know, three generations sometimes or more, live in the same household. And I hear that being reflected here. But it's like so far away from the United States, like everyone's in their box, no one knows their neighbors we all kind of keep to ourselves and then we'll sometimes have family reunions, what's been your experience with like the separate the different sort of ways of living in community. You know, what's what what I love about our family too, is that even the next generation so my my nieces and my nephews we all hang out together, like, like, we all enjoy each other's company. So it is very multi generational. And I feel I feel like it's a blessing. It's a blessing to have that. Like I know. And of course we don't see eye to eye on everything. It's like no family does. But I know that wherever I am in the world, if I need anything, I just call my, anybody in my family and I know that they're there. There's it's to have that kind of unquestioned support, it's there's a lot to be said for that I feel very blessed. Absolutely. That sounds really beautiful. I think we all need someone to, we all need, we can't do this alone, you know. And as we step into learning more about the book and and all the things you are creating in the world, it's so great to know you have that support system behind you. Now, you read it in the book about being an unlikely person on this journey to write about heroism, and awakening the soul of power, you talk a lot about heroism and, and all these different things that are coming on. And I want to dive into that now we'd like to know a bit more about your journey, what led you writing the book and really owning this, this power, you have to create something so, so wonderful. Yeah, thank you so much. You know what Jesse, I think, I think COVID has served us in some ways without minimizing the tragic aspects of it. But one of the ways in which has served us is that we expand, have expanded the definition of what it means to live heroically like before that we used to think they're superheroes or guys, like, you know, former Marine vet or firefighter of the year, you know, somebody who has placed their lives at risk for the sake of somebody else with the sake of a cause. Now, because since COVID, we've expanded that to include our doctors and nurses and respiratory therapists, and even know the delivery people and the grocery store clerks, who made a lot of sacrifices in their own personal lives and even their own lives to keep the rest of us going. And what the what the series of books is about is like, what about the rest of us? Like, what does it mean to live heroically? When we don't have the horse hitched outside and the armors and the demons to slay except the ones in our own heads? And so this first book is about how does how does a hero and, and I look, and I use that term, generically, because heroine kind of smacks of something else. So I use it in a gender neutral way. So how does how does a hero step into power in a way that's not about hierarchy in a way that's not about control, about fear, about force about domination that doesn't require that we push anybody down, step on them, squelching them in order for us to feel powerful, like how do we do that in a different way? And I don't know if I answered your question. I think I might have gotten sidetracked. No, well, you're, you're speaking into what calls you to this to this book. And I would 100% agree with you the idea that, like, we're all being called to become the heroes in our story, you know, and we write this, that step into this new world. But I'd be curious, like, What led you on this path? Who uncovered, uncovering this within yourself and motivated you to write the book? Yeah, you know, it's like I like I do feel like I'm an unlikely person to be writing about personal empowerment and living heroically, I can't tell you how shy it was as a teenager as I was okay, one on one. But if you added a third human I clammed up. And it was so terrified that I didn't do this intentionally. But looking back on it, I sabotage my grade point average, I had pretty much 4.0 except for one beat. And but that was enough to knock me out of the valedictorian robe. And I know I did that subconsciously. Because there's just no way there is no way on earth that I could have gotten up in front of a room of filled auditorium filled with hundreds and hundreds of people. And spoken there's just no way. And what's interesting about that, is that these days, I speak all over the world, I've spoken at dozens of university campuses on the TEDx stage. And so that's part of what I, the reason I know that the teachings that I share about in this book that they work, because they they work for me, there's just something hypothetical I, I read in another book, this is like, actually lived this way. And it works. And, and, you know, it's interesting to the power thing and my own personal life, because I lived in a communist country for the first 10 years of my life. So very hierarchical, you know, like, in a communist country, you don't even talk about personal power, the state owns you, and decides everything for you. It's not like so many freedoms that we take for granted here in the US and other democratic countries or pseudo democratic countries, where you can choose what you're going to do with your life and what you're going to study in those countries. At least when I was living there, I don't know how it is now, but you didn't decide what to study like you would if you were allowed to go to college, you were told what you were going to study. And you know, it's like they pretty much owned you know, everything like he owned was with state property. And also, as you know, the nine kids might have given you a clue about I was raised really Catholic. And so another very hierarchical power structure, where the power definitely comes from above you don't you don't decide it and you're told what to believe you're taught what's right. What's wrong with all the respect to that religion, but it's very patriarchal, very power over instead of power with, which is what this book is about, like how do we step into power in a different way? That's, that's amazing. You come from such a, we've had such contrast a duality of coming from a communist country for the first 10 years of your life to now moving to the church, and now stepping in to own your power and, and show other people how they can do the same. I'm curious, that jumped out at me about the idea of being raising being raised in a Catholic Church, can you splice out the difference between spirituality that you speak of in religion that so regarding or the religion we talk about, we think about Catholicism or Christianity. Yeah. And I only say that I honor all spiritual paths. I also challenged them, you know, to, to the, to a degree that a particular religion or spiritual path is, is helping us to become more authentically who we are, who is helping us to have a direct connection with the sacred, however you relate to that. However, you think of that, to the degree that they're making us better human beings, that they're fostering peace and unity and understanding, then they're doing their job. And sadly, a lot of them are not a lot of them are are fostering division, and hatred and what I call the theological pissing contest, my God is bigger than yours. And so, so here's how I think about it. Read the word religion comes from the Latin legato, which means to rebind, presumably, to rebind, to the sacred. But to me that feels binding, it feels restrictive. The word spirituality, comes from the root spirare which from that same root, we get respiration, and inspiration. And so there's this to me that feels much more life giving, life flowing into the breath there's so many examples and holy texts about God breathing life into us. That to me, that feels I'm today I'm in this spiritual, not religious category. And you know, this, it's the breath spirit connection is important for me, I've been practicing breathwork and offering breathwork in my retreats for 30 years. And it's just amazing how a simple breathing practice can heal so profoundly, and so quickly at so many levels, not only emotionally and mentally, but spiritually and even physically. And I know that sounds too good to be true. You know, I come out of the psychotherapy tradition, my dad was a psychiatrist, my degrees in psychology, I was on a track to get a PhD in psychology. And when I discovered breathwork, over 30 years ago, I jumped tracks, because it works so fast and heal so profoundly, in so many ways. never went for the PhD. Why you got to breathwork PhD, and like you said, I think it's way more efficient and effective gets the right to the root. And I think that's from my perspective, the difference between what you're doing with breathwork and his retreats and and these different sort of experiences we're creating, and the modern day medical system where they treat the symptom without getting to the root cause. Yeah, I can do breath work, because, because I would like to say, I mean, my experience with breathwork. I'm fairly new to it been about a year, probably about a year now, I guess. But it has been the most, like if there was one thing that I could choose beyond meditation, exercise, like all the things that I've done for my own health and well being and what I encourage others to do, like breathwork is it's got to be the top of the list. Top three for sure. Can you speak though into the and how it works and how it helps to heal the mind and body? Yeah, you know, and they haven't done the research yet. Like they've done so much research on meditation on what's happening in the body and in the brain. When we meditate breathwork isn't there yet. For me, I mean, I can I can speak about it from can more like a psycho spiritual perspective. What happened when we breathe in this particular, when you breathe intensely for about an hour, an hour and a half in a circular connected way. And just amazing, amazing, amazing things happen. Not only does all the healing that that happened, but we you can access some profound, unitary states, like I often have people telling me because I know you do this kind of work, you facilitate this kind of work. I often have people tell me, I got to the same place that I did in a sacred medicine journey. And, and so that I mean, you can have those, those incredible like experiences that there are no words to describe, of oneness of interconnective massive, and it's healing with permanent effect. And part of the part of the way it works is like we wouldn't we, let's say a little bit about the emotions, what used to be spiritual teaching that everything is energy. Now we know from quantum physics, that it's true everything is energy. That means that the body even though it feels solid is energy, it's vibration, that means the emotions are also energy. So we know from physics too that energy cannot be destroyed. So, as a, as a species, and particularly as men, we have been conditioned to not feel with the conditions that the emotions are weakness, since we were kids, little boys don't cry, and man up and all these expressions that that are that that condition us to. And there's such a price to pay for that, right, because the emotions are not weak, they're not strike, they're not good. They're not bad. They're just energies. We get into trouble with the emotions because we suppress them, and we don't allow them to flow through us. So they get stuck. Whenever we swallow our energy, our emotions, whenever we say yes, when inside we feel no. And so we override our authentic power and stuff, all those energies don't just go away. You know, no matter how hard we try to sweep them under the rug, they don't do they get stuck in the tissues of the body. And after a lifetime of suppressing our emotions, we walk around with layers upon layers upon layers of repressed emotional crap. And here we are in the present moment trying to have a relationship with each other and all of it is getting filtered. Through that lifetime of unhealed past trauma, and repressed emotions. It's like how any relationships can work just boggles my mind, because we haven't been taught how to approach them how to hold them. And we certainly haven't been taught how to clear ourselves of all these repressed emotions. And that's where the breathwork comes in. It's like, like, I call it spiritual drainer, which is like gets rid of all that crap, and it gets rid of it quickly. So the relationships can actually have a chance. And the thing about those emotional energies, they have to come out one way or the other. So either what happens is we suppress, suppress, suppress. The next unfortunate one comes and says something to is the wrong way, I'm boom volcanic eruption, all those years or months of suppressing emotions, like land on that poor, unfortunate soul. And then we got to, either, you know, we got to clean up a mess, or sometimes the damage to our relationships is irreparable. Or, surprise, surprise, surprise, that energy has to come up one way or another starts seeping up and seeping out in in physical symptoms, cancer, heart attacks, stomach ulcers, so we've got to get those we've got to for our own peace of mind and health and longevity, we've got to get this this right that emotions, like learn how to how to master our emotions, rather than be had by them. Because the way that we're talking about them now is like, we're running the show like we suppress them we are present we think we're controlling them but we're not, there's a price to be paid for that. They're actually running us from the subconscious and and sabotaging our lives and our relationships, as opposed to learning how to feel, which for many of us, it's a challenge for 30 years ago, I couldn't tell you what I was feeling because I had no idea what I was feeling. And so learning how to feel and how to communicate those feelings responsibly, like owning their my emotions, and that there's nothing you can do to make me feel anything. Right. They're my emotions. And it doesn't excuse or exonerate anything you may or not, do or not do, but it's my emotions. And so, and, and to learn how to communicate them in a way that they can be heard, like, compassionately, gracefully. And courageously, like, to me, that's nothing short of mastery. So it's the opposite of weakness. Absolutely, and I think one thing that comes up for me whenever I think about this is someone said it to me when I was doing this, but it was like, You can't rationalize your pain away. You know, as men, we're, we're told, like you said, you know, to suck it up and big boys don't cry, and like whatever we need to do to, to not feel. But in order to be an authentic, complete human being, we have to accept that we have a right brain and left brain one for rational thinking and one's for emotions and understanding the connection to everything else. And I think my experiences with breathwork and the release, like the energy release, you can feel that energy as if it's like, it's, I mean, it's coming out of you. When you really get into those longer breathwork sessions and those guided processes where you're really setting the intention to release and it does happen at some time. I mean, my eyes have been shaking my whole body's vibrating. It's like I'm alive. That's like something that waking up inside of me. And it's incredibly powerful. We you talk in the book about this idea of soulful, soulful power. Can you speak into what that looks like? Yeah. So like we're starting to talk about there's most of us have an ambivalent kind of conflicted relationship to power we were part of at once a part of it is afraid of it. And I think what we fear is that if we really stepped into our power, that other people couldn't handle it, and that we might end up alone. And so we stuffed ourselves, maybe we put ourselves in smaller packages. And this is all in our minds. And or, you know, we're afraid that we might abuse it. And no wonder because all you got to do is turn on the news, any given day and witness at least one abuse of power. And so why good hearted person wants to be that way we don't add to the to that we have been conditioned to believe that power is a bad thing. Like how many times have we heard power corrupts? absolute power corrupts absolutely. What they forgot to tell us is that Lord actons, quote, he was talking specifically about political power, not personal power. And so add to the mix, what we were talking about the emotions about how we will hate confrontation, we run away from conflict. And so what happens is, we end up giving our power away our innate power that nobody can give to us and nobody can take away We are the only ones who can give it away. And the satisfied to me is that we give it away for, for lame reasons for like we give it we give our power away for an illusion of security, for a false sense of security, and for crumbs for morsels of pseudo love. And so what the what the theme of this book is what the message of this book is that there is a way that we can step into power in a way that is congruent with who we are, that is a match for who we are, that doesn't require that we push anybody down or step on them in order for us to feel powerful. So how do we do that? That's what the book gets into. Absolutely, you talk one of the things you talked about with with power. And I want to get into masculinity here as well, because you really just, it was so perfectly laid out how you just you integrated this idea of the New World, and the idea of the New Age new version of masculinity and how we can bring it down to being more whole and complete soul filled men. But before we do that, you talked about the power to respond in the book. Can you speak into that, that distance, that space? And how we start to recognize that you're in control for life, and then how we respond where, you know, we're not defined what we what happens to us, we're defined by how we respond what we do moving forward. Yeah, I love the I love that question, Jesse. Well, you know, because a lot of us get overwhelmed. When we hear the word responsibility. It's like, Oh, my God, that we just just weigh weighs, weighs us down, and then we end up running away from it. But here's a simple way to think about responsibility, response, ability, ability to respond. So that's all we got to do, right? We saw so many of us came in with great gifts with a sense of mission with a sense of purpose. If we don't give expression to that sense of mission to that sense of purpose, nobody else is gonna do it for us, nobody else has the same genetics, the same set of experiences that make us unique, if we don't give expression to that fully. Aint, no one else is gonna do it. And that applies to our power too. Like nobody can express our power for us. Nobody express our purpose for us. And so it's it there's, there's a connection to between power, and this ability to respond in the romance languages, like baudette in Spanish, or pouvoir in French, means that those words mean both power and to be able to. So so it's kind of like a, an implicit, an action, a power that's implicit in each one of us, which, which has to do with our will, with our ability to respond in the world. And to take it once one other step further. You know, what, one thing that we can count on is that life is going to continue throwing curveballs our way, like that we know. And there's nothing that we can do about that. And some of it is going to be difficult and some of it is going to suck and some of it is going to be great. So many of us have this kind of disempowered relationship to life because we feel like we're we're thrown here and there by by, by life's curveballs. But here's a way to reframe that that automatically pops us out of this victim relationship to life and pops us into our power. It's like no matter What happened in our past? And it's not about rationalizing, it is not about sweeping it away ignoring it. No, of course not. We've all been through difficult stuff in our lives. So but no matter what happened, no matter what happens going forward, we always, always, always get to choose how we show up in response to that. And at that, just with that simple shift in how we think about it, we are reclaiming our power in relationship to life and it stops being those adversarial woe is me, you know, if only if only this had happened, or that hadn't happened, then I would be okay. With if I hadn't, if it hadn't been for mom or for daddy doing that, or mom not doing this, or the teacher, the Minister, society, sexism, racism, homophobia, but only wasn't for that, and not to deny any of that, like that stuff exists. And, and it does have an effect on on lives. But if as long as we're giving our power away, or holding somebody responsible for our state of being somebody or something outside of us responsible for our state of being, or happiness, or inner peace or sense of fulfillment, we just gave our power away, and often to a perpetrator. So this, the simple reframing of that, all right, that happened, and it sucked, and I wish it hadn't happened. And I'm so sorry that it happened. And, what are you going to do about it? How are you going to show up in response to that? With the power back, I love this idea of moving from, from victim to the one actually creating your life, no matter what's happened, or where you've been? Or what's going on in your life right now. It's like, as simple as you put it, it's like a decision, I'm gonna decide to respond differently show up differently. And that's just how we take our power back. Can you talk into the idea of the the new version of masculinity and speak about what healthy masculine power looks like? Yeah. And let me say, first, that the, the book is, is for everybody, but it has a particular message for women, like stemming from my belief that when I think about it, strategically, what's going on in our world and other problems that we're facing, when I think about what is one thing that if we could change, that, it would impact everything else, that's what I land on the empowerment of women. Because when women are in 50% of power, we're gonna have a very different relationship to war and poverty and hunger and, and wealth distribution and social justice and how we treat the environment, all of it. And it's not to put women up on a pedestal. It's not to idealize women, women are also capable of abusing power. It's because as a world as a species, we've been running so off balance, so off kilter, for the last, you know, several 1000 years. So So it's about reclaiming finery, refining that balance between the masculine and the feminine energies in, in the world, which run through all of us, because that's runs through the whole universe. And much of this surprises, some humans, we are part of the universe. So we're going to be impacted and ruled by the same principles that govern the cosmos, and the stars. And so that, and then, but then, then I then I added a particular chapter just for men, because this kind of call it toxic masculinity. And I know that's a word that gets around a little bit. And you're getting a little bit too much these days. But this unhealthy way of expressing the masculine there's a price to pay that even men are, are paying a price for. Let's look at a couple of numbers. longevity in the US women outlive men by five years, globally, by seven years. suicide rates, in the US would men commit suicide four times as frequently. 70% of the suicides in this country are committed by middle aged white men, who you could say it's really interesting, because you could say that's, that's still the majority of the power in the world is still held by by men and white men for the most part. So what's up with that? Why, why, what why doesn't,why doesn't that work even for men? And I think part of it is because we've got we've got into this twisted definition of what it means to be a man and then going back to the emotions again, you know, we walk around like, like robots, like unfeeling robots. And and like we were talking about before there's that energy has to come out, there's gonna be a price to pay for repressing those, those emotional energies. And so, and I mean, it's a big conversation to have, it's like, I know, that many men are struggling with, you know, figuring out who they are and what role they play in this new world, as women are becoming more empowered to shift things are changing, and men are going to have to change to. And to because a lot and what's happening is that a lot of a lot of people and I would say a lot of men are like going, Oh no, no, let's go back the way it was in the 50s, or the 60s. And there's no way to do that. It's like the cats out of the bag. But what we can do is redefine these roles, these traditional male roles, like, like, part of the reason so many men are struggling is because we, our identity, was connected to being a provider. Right? We like we we were the ones that brought the brought the, you know, brought the bread and paid the bills and supported the family. I think the numbers are now I can't remember from but it's in the book, but I think it's either 30% or maybe approaching 40% of households of heterosexual households in the US, the women are starting to make more. So the women are catching up. And more than 50% of college graduates now are women. So things are changing. And so, so you know, but the but the thing, so do what I did in that chapter is I kind of redefined what some of these roles are like, like bringing them bringing a paycheck to your house, like that's one way to provide it's kind of a simplistic way, where there are so many others much more profound. And and I think important ways of providing that we can do as a man is like, it doesn't matter. It's not about how much money you make. It's like if I hope that anybody listening to this is not limiting their definition of who they are and what it means to be a man or what it means to be a human by how much money they make. That's pretty sad, if that's what they're using as a measuring stick. But what about you know, what, what about providing a safe psychological, and emotional space in which your family can thrive, in which they can discover who they are in which they can live to their fullest potential? Talk about providing them that is way more important than than paying the bills? What about providing stability becoming a rock, in your family structure? What about sharing the wisdom, the strength that comes from, from self knowledge from from being the Explorer or being being willing to go inside another typical male role? Be willing to, to explore the inner world and figure out why we do the things we do and why do we get stuck in these patterns or behaviors that get us into trouble and sometimes are self sabotaging. And so that's what I mean that this work is is heroic because it takes work and it takes sometimes you got to face down some some of our inner demons. But it is so worthwhile because what becomes possible is freedom. And a real sense of empowerment and a real life, of meaning of filled with purpose. That's really worthwhile work. 100% I love this idea of exploring, protecting all the different roles that traditional men do masculinity does. But it's all turned back, like a mirrors in front of us now looking back at ourselves, exploring our own depths, and figuring out how to integrate these different parts of ourselves that we've abandoned, and learning how to forgive ourselves and forgive those who wronged us we can move on from a life you know, psychologically complete, whole, soul filled human beings, men, because I agree with you. I mean, I think there's a huge I see us, you know, we have to pass for the world moving forward, we keep doing the same thing we've always done. And I don't think this world's gonna be you know, we're gonna be able to make it here. There has to be a shift where men start owning these parts of themselves and stop projecting on other people. And also women are continuing to be more and more empowered, so they can really complete the whole that is needed to ensure that we can continue moving on and enjoy this this gift we have called planet Earth. Yes, yes. And it's all hands on deck, like anyone who has had the slightest suspicion that they have work to do as teachers as healers as as activists for changes like this is it this is this is a time that we've been waiting for in. Another one, you know, another other great, traditional male roles is the Conqueror, the Conqueror, and hope. I mean, they're like, like to really identify, do we really think that what makes us the man is like how many women we have conquered? Meaning seduced or it's like, come on, like, anybody can do that. It's not. That's not what makes us a man. That's such a limited perspective of what about conquering yourself, conquering your insecurities, your inner demons, your self doubt, overcoming your fear, overcoming your own obstacles to love transcending whatever trauma you had, you had to overcome from childhood. Now we're talking now we're talking heroism. Now we're talking like, like real men. Absolutely. Now we think when we think about this, there's got it there's so much cultural conditioning and pop culture being blasted in our face on how we should or shouldn't be. But when you get down to it, I mean, we're thinking about the ego that's keeping us from, from moving forward, when it's once we do take responsibility, like what are the things that are keeping men and women from stepping into this power? And how can they start to get on this path to heal their ego, or whatever else it is, and really own this? Yeah, and that's a huge conversation too. Because there's such, so much confusion about what the ego is. And that's why I spent the first probably quarter of the book, like getting into that. So but here's here's a great metaphor, we put a baseball in the center of a stadium, that's what the ego is, who we are is actually the stadium. And we've allowed this tiny, tiny, tiny part of who we are, to think that it is all who we are. And to make really important, consequential choices from it's always small and limited and fear based perspective. And, like, if we want to have a relationships to have an actual chance, if we want to have a sense of personal empowerment, and again, a life of meaning and purpose, we've got to understand what the ego is, and how it keeps us in this self made prison of lack and fear and limitation and defensiveness, and taking everything personally and victimization, and projecting. So there's so much to say about that. And it is such worthwhile work to do that. Because that's the key to freedom, like there are two constants in every retreat that I do, no matter what the theme of it is. One is breathwork, because as we were talking about before, then I have yet to come across anything that heals as quickly. And as profoundly. The other thing that I include in every single retreat is teach about the ego, because it is what keeps us in prison. And so by understanding how it works, we can we can let ourselves out, because nobody else can do it for us. No one else can do that work for us. Absolutely. So what's the process then for controlling and healing the ego so we can have a healthy relationship with it. I mean, it's a it's a combination of a understanding what it is and how it works. So some of it is going to be like for first of all, understanding it. So seeing, seeing how it works, then applying it to ourselves. But so so and that takes work. And that's why I say that it's alright work because we that's how we figure out why we do the things we do. Like why does, why do we? Why does you know like, say you and I have a regular lunch with Joe, and Joe's always showing up 20 minutes late and here I am is like I knew it. He is so disrespectful. He's so selfish, he's only worried about his schedule doesn't care about mine. And and you know, going through that whole story, whereas you have lunch with Joe on a separate day of the week, and it's like, great, he's late. I knew it. I have 20 minutes, let me return that phone call. Let me go online and check my social media, whatever, there's so many possible responses other than getting pissed off. So not to excuse Joe's lateness is not about that at all. It's about why does it bug me? Right? What did why does it get into my skin? And when we're when we're willing to do that, because it all comes from ego that all that's all part of the realm of the ego. So by willing by we being willing to understand how it works, and what are the triggers, and what kind of what kind of situations for example to do, we tend to give our power away, do we tend to give power away in romantic, intimate, sexual relationships? Do we tend to give our power away with authority figures, parents, bosses, teachers, coaches, you know, spiritual leaders. So that's the next step is like self awareness, self observation so that we understand when and why we do the things we do so that we can then heal it and clear it and cut that stuff out. Choose a different way of being. So a lot of it is self awareness, becoming aware that of stuff that we're doing now, but we just don't do it with awareness, we just do it reactively and driven by all the stuff that's driving us from the subconscious. Carl Jung said that the process of enlightenment is making the subconscious conscious. So that's part of what this work is. It's it's and it's work. I'm not gonna lie to you about that it takes work, but it is so worthwhile. And it is so incredibly liberating and empowering. So then I would say that would be another layer of work and then another layer of doing this work is understanding the difference between worldly power and soulful power or spiritual power, which I get, you know, that's probably the rest of the book is about that. And and knowing, you know, in which situations are we being driven again to, to come from that from that place and we get to choose. And so understanding those differences are important. And then I would say to whenever if find a way that you can do some breathwork because that's what's gonna heal a lot of the subconscious stuff that's, you know, that's driving us. And, and it is, with all due respect to psychotherapy, I got, like I said, I come out of that tradition. But the reason I jumped tracks and didn't go for the PhD, is because, sometimes understanding I say, not more than sometimes a lot of the times, maybe even most of the time, understanding what happened to us when we're five or seven or 15, or whatever, it's helpful. But it's not enough. Because that trauma no longer lives in the psyche, in the mind, now it lives in the body has been somatize and so no amount of talking about it is going to get to it. And that's why, you know, I get people that have been going to therapy for like 20-30 years, and they know their story and their traumas inside out. But they're still stuck in self sabotaging behaviors and they're not happy. And they're still stuck in the same patterns of relationships that don't work. And so they'll come and do a weekend with me and poof, you know, it's like, it's because the trauma gets cleared, but by the breathwork and, and that's why I work with a lot of therapists, when when a lot of their clients are plateaued, they'll send people to me for a couple of sessions for a weekend I'm boom, like, everything gets activated, and they make huge, huge life changing progress quickly. I recently have had two really powerful breathwork sessions where I feel like I mean, there's more to it than just these things, but these were like feel like a result but I healed the relation with my father, me and my mother in two separate breathwork sessions. So I can just I'm just echoing back you know, this the power of this and how effective it is. You know, and it's so interesting that I love that your your people are therapists referring people to you it's like we need to come together and hit both sides of this instead of just talking about things over and over again, I don't know if you know this but I work with a lot of people that are traumatized use picking up veterans first responders specifically, but I specifically PTSD and we have a process of just neurologically disconnects emotions, traumatic emotions from traumatic memories, and just said a single session I can do what just like you said here, like in two sessions I can do with 30 years of therapy can do because we're getting to the root cause and I think that speaks into our of getting into the subconscious, getting into the body, and releasing, releasing these things once and for all. And I think as we go through this, like there's a there's a feeling of lightness, it's a subtle shift in our in our body, but we're carrying around these these emotions, these negative experiences from our past, and we're just storing them down and then trying to think about it, but it's not ever releasing it. So I just love the emphasis on breathwork. And I'm just speaking into my personal experience with it is profound. And it's amazing. Yeah, yeah, I love that just and I love like, like you say on your website, life is too short to play small, and and I love your your three C's the courage to face the fears that keep us stuck. And in victim mode, the clarity to know who we are, and what we want and what we're here for. And the confidence to find your path and your purpose. Your place. It's like yeah, sure that's, that's that's what I when I saw that is like I knew where you and I would would be simpatico and have a great conversation. Yeah, absolutely. I feel like that's, that's the key to awakening. The soul of power you know, is like tuning into all those things that we're here in it, like you put in the book so well is turning it all back on yourself. And going inside of yourself and willing to accept these you talked about Carl Jung we are integrating our shadow, releasing what doesn't serve us moving on from our past into a clear vision that we have for the world that can be completely different from that if we're willing to do the work, face ourselves, face our past mistakes and learn to let go of those things. So we can be free. Exactly. You talk toward the end of the book about this sort of metamorphosis that's happening at a global scale. Christian I like to know what this vision you have for the world after the sort of awakening and transformation that's happening. Like what does this look like how do we know. You know i don't i i'm not sure what it's gonna look like but but it can't look the way that it does you know with with this relationship that we have, you know, this kind of specially as man you know what your relationship to life is, fuck it or kill it. And so much of our relationship to nature is about, and to the body's about subjugation and control and conquering that, that that explains why we treat the planet the way that we do. So I know that at least, there's going to have to be a shift in how we think about ourselves, how we think about each other, and how we think about our relationship to the planet. And because part of the go going back to the ego teachings, you know, Ken Wilber writes that we haven't always had an ego, we haven't always had a sense of self, like a sense of individual identity. As far as we know, we're the only species that has that sense of self, that sense of individual personality, Homo sapiens, Sapiens or Latin name, it means it can be translated as humans who know that we know. So it's that self, the ego is that self reflexive consciousness that allows us to think back up on ourselves. And he talks about how when the ego develop that sense of individual personality developed and as it was both a leap in consciousness, a huge leap in consciousness, but it's also the, the, the source of all our suffering, because now we can have with an individual identity now we can have, we can feel lonely, we can feel we can have abandonment issues, we can feel separate and alone, we can have a sense of our own mortality. So those are the surprise we pay for having an individual identity which he says by the way, that that was then mythologized when the when the ego developed in us, it was mythologized all over the planet, because that story is seen in religions all over the world, of the expulsion from the garden, because that's when we lost our connection to something greater than ourselves. And so I think that going forward, that that is one shift, that would impact everything else, if we reclaim our sense of connectedness, not only to ourselves starting there, but to each other. And, you know, when we think about the things that we allow to keep us separate is ridiculous, like we are in our DNA is this identical, like 99.9999%, we talk about different races, like there's not enough difference in terms of DNA to be considered a different race, we share 98.4 of our DNA is identical to chimps, 50% of our DNA is identical to bananas. So so we that's to me like that is one thing that has to shift is that so that we reclaim our sense of interconnectedness, and that we start thinking about this tiny, tiny pebble hurtling through space and 1000s of miles per hour, while revolving upon itself on somehow we don't fly off of it. But if we don't, if we just like we're devouring are in consuming our natural resources, without even considering the impact on our own survival as a species, the planet will be fine, you know, might take a few million years, but life will continue in some form. I would even venture a coat consciousness will continue in some form, maybe, maybe at the end, it's an intelligent, enlightened cockroach planet, who knows whether we make it? Hmm. Right. We're just now beginning to witness and I hate to say is just beginning to witness what we have unleashed on the environment. And so that's why I say that it's all hands on deck, and that anybody who has the slightest suspicion to do that we have work to do. It's like we don't have it, we don't have the time to wait another five years for another certification, another course, do the certification if you want, but don't use that as an excuse to not step into your role that you have come here to play. Smoothly, they say that we're entering the sixth mass extinction, you know, we're literally not going to be alive for that much longer if we keep doing the same thing we've always done. And I love how this just integrates so well, with the idea of healing the ego, it's like, once we realize it's all about us, you know, and what I can get for me, me, me, and we realize that there's something bigger happening here, and we're connecting to something larger than ourselves. And we get really reconnected to nature and what's gifted here for us on this planet, then we can really start to step back off of the destruction and, and work to improve the world around us and ourselves and empower the people around us and in doing that we empower ourselves. Yeah. And I love that, that the work that you do with action adventures that you are giving people a taste of that of that interconnection to nature and to everything else. Absolutely. I mean, those experiences are transformational. I feel so grateful to be on that path. I mean, I what's what I would call Infinite Intelligence and connectedness to all things are feeling their words when you don't when you've never experienced that, but it's a whole nother level when you really tap into those deeper realms of possibility about what's going on here. And it's such a it's such an interesting thing. How shifts your life in incredibly powerful direction. It's it's a game changer it's it's shifting away from the from the reality of the baseball and stepping into the reality of the stadium like oh my god like different rules different physics almost. Absolutely. Alright Christian Well, thanks so much for all this amazing these insights, these ideas, inspiration you're providing us here can you speak into where people can learn more about you get connected with you on social media, get the book and all this good stuff? Yeah, yeah. And first of all, thank you Jesse for for having me on the show. Thanks for having the show. I know that it reaches a lot of people, it makes a difference. And thank you for all the work that you do. Helping people get free and get reconnected in terms of reaching me the books available on Amazon at your local bookstore, wherever books are sold, and probably the best way to reach me as my website soulfulpower.com from there, they can access my different social media and for your listeners, if they sign up to be on my email list, they'll get a sample a sample chapter of the book, they'll get some of these power practices which which are designed to integrate the teachings to our lives, just like we don't need more information, we've got information overload, what we need is transformation. So that's what the teaching the practices are designed to do that to apply them to our life so that our lives transform which is what we want and to transform into our power and into into relationships that can actually work. And then we'll get a guided meditation and a little bit of a teaching on trust like stepping into trust in these times of chaos and Absolutely all we got that in the show notes below but uncertainty. awakening the soul of power is such a great book. Check it, out get it Amazon get the get that one chapter if you want, get the free meditation but dive into this book. It's it's really, really good. I'll link all your website information in the show notes Christian, thanks so much. Just one last thing, what's the advice that you would give to, to people that are considering taking this journey of empowerment? Just do it. Just do it. Trust, you know, the image, the image that comes to me is from Indiana Jones. You know, I think it's the I always forget that the movie. It's the wall, he's standing at the cliff side and then on the other side of the cliff or other different chalices. So it might be the holy grail one. And it's not until he figures out that he has to step into the void, that the stone of the bridge shows up to meet his foot. And and so because of the critical nature of the times, I know that when one of us makes makes that choice that's going to further not only our own process of healing, and evolution, but consequently, all the other people that are going to be touched through us is that the universe will support us as it has no choice. The universe has a vested interest in each one of us stepping into our power and you're fulfilling our potential. Take one step the next step appears amazing. Exactly. Thank you so much. Thank you so much for coming on to the action hour. Ladies and gentlemen, thanks so much for tuning in. Dive into Christian's world. I'll link everything in the show notes, and we'll catch you on the next episode.