Yvonne currently lives in Melbourne, Australia, and has a long-established healing practice called OneLove Medicine For the Soul.
She specialises in Reiki Healing, Kundalini Dance practice, and Relationship Mentoring.
She is a wonderful counsellor and healer, and very much works from the heart with love with everything she does.
David:
So, good afternoon Yvonne, and thank for your time today. One of the things I would love to discuss with you is how you approach the healing work that you do, where you draw your inspiration from, and how people may be able to better connect with themselves during these times of big change.
Yvonne:
Ok, well the word that comes to mind, comes to heart straight away, is curiosity. And it’s probably been one of the most helpful words that’s come into my vocabulary and into my being. As someone in the past that would have approached things perhaps analytically or with judgement and a sense of assessment, but there is this beautiful word and quality in curiosity.
It’s like the innocence of the child that is just there and going like, “oh… what’s happening?”. So I would say how I’ve come over years of doing what I do, is that I’ve become more curious about myself, and more and more curious about whoever I work with. And from this place of curiosity I just allow something to unfold, like a flower.
When people come to see me they really are the best person to know themselves, and when I encourage another to meet themselves with curiosity it drops judgement, drops comparisons and insecurities. We just become like “Oh…”.
David:
Like an observer of ourselves?
Yvonne:
Yes, yeeess!
David:
Yeah, that’s wonderful. I love the phrase on your website and that you have used for quite a while, and that is ‘Deepening in Love, Intimacy and Connection’. That always resonates deeply with me, and I think that is a beautiful phrase for what you do, and perhaps more so this year people will be looking at themselves with curiosity, and those types of things will be felt a lot more deeply – the ‘Love, Intimacy and Connection’ with ourselves.
Yvonne:
Absolutely, because when we are curious it makes more space within our physical being, within our emotional being and within our heart to allow deeper connection, deeper intimacy. Because we can’t become more connected through our mind. It needs to be through our body. It needs to be through our heart, and that requires vulnerability, realness and taking the masks off.
The biggest antidote for times we are seeing at the moment, and I know what I was like when I first heard about coronavirus – I was incredibly sceptical and didn’t know what it was all about – I was poo poo’ing it – the rebel within me, but I still remained open-minded as to what was occurring.
It was interesting to notice within myself coming from the notion of “what’s all this about”, and then noticing how my mind went from disbelief to belief. It was believing what I was hearing, but knowing it wasn’t necessarily always truth, and noticed how much fear that created in my body – the opposite of connection and intimacy with myself. I left my body for about a week or two weeks in the beginning, and just noticed the immense chatter in my head. I actually noticed my body become unwell.
And for me I thought this is fascinating – the power of the mind and the body. I was going like “Oh my God I’m thinking myself sick here”. This is how it works. I thought “Am I having symptoms?… What are the symptoms?… I don’t know… Am I going to die?”. I didn’t listen to the news much and there was a lot of self-regulating, but I still listened to bits and the only information we were, and still are, presented with through the media is deaths… racking up death tolls as if they were olympic medals. We’re looking at the death chart around the world and going like, “How is this being portrayed?”. And to my brain, my primal brain, this was a field day. And I am grateful for that experience because I think “well, that’s actually what is happening globally”.
Fear and stress
David:
Yes, exactly. I totally agree with you. And I think everybody has had to face their own triggered fear journey, so to speak, that this event has brought about. It’s perhaps made people look at themselves and face their own fear. It’s certainly something that’s really been driven a lot by the media in the way it has been delivered – the fear – the psychic driving of the death tolls racking up. I went through my own fear journey and you really learn a lot about yourself when your faced with your own survival.
Yvonne:
Yeah, it showed me like “wait on minute, I’m not ready to die!”. I wasn’t planning on this right now, but my mind was certainly having a different experience, which catapults the body into a hyper state of stress and constriction. And then we become more susceptible. Even if we’re not getting sick from coronavirus, we become susceptible to many other colds, flu’s and sicknesses.
David:
Yes, it’s very much another type of virus that is overlaid on top of it that has infected everybody, you know?
Yvonne:
That virus in my opinion is called fear.
David:
Yeah, they certainly unleashed it. Could you maybe explain how you made your way back from that place of fear?
Yvonne:
Hmmm… I can’t remember any pivotal thing, but I think it was actually having that moment of, as we were saying that defining quality of curiosity and actually being the observer, and just noticing “Just wait a minute – my mind has gone like a train on the tracks without its breaks”, and I needed to come in and be the train driver and slow it down. I could see that was happening through the experience and then there was a rationality of “well, you haven’t seen anybody for a couple of weeks”, and I was looking at more of a logical approach. But again, this is what we need. We actually need a logic in a sense of looking around and going “well, there is no threat for my life”, “I am safe”, and “I’m not going to die”. Even if I were to die, this is not happening in this moment in time.
I have this vision at the moment that, in that moment of fear, it was almost like everything was scattered completely outwards, and I need to gather and bring everything in, into stillness and presence, and into a sense of settling. And that place is really within me. That deep place you’ve heard me talk about, that deep flame, that internal light of our soul, of our spirit. It was, yeah, the train that was going hurtling off down the track, and I was the only person that could slow that train down – the train of my mind – to really come home to my own body and take a dose of my own medicine.
My breath… taking big deep breaths and saying “I’m safe”, and “all is well”. I was saying to myself like “Oh, we are realising how important your life is Yvonne”, “We are realising how you’ve been taking things for granted”. So that’s how I used it as a catalyst for self-observation.
David:
Yeah, that’s wonderful Yvonne. I guess I went through a similar experience myself with that. Facing this virus that had been downloaded into everybody to make them go into fear and really look at themselves – to find a way to get over it and become more self-empowered. It very much destabilised my mind and how I felt about myself and my safety. It was this experience that inspired me to create the Your Energy Space website. I realised that I don’t have to buy into the fear program that is being broadcasted. Yes, ok, the coronavirus itself is real, but it’s the fear that my mind went into when continually exposed to it in the media that was the bigger threat to my wellness.
Yvonne:
Yeah, and fear being the number one controller. And that’s how I was controlling myself was through my mind, and that is what has happened collectively. One way that you can control people is through fear. It’s something that is external. And for me really making that space of my internal home, my internal house of love, and yeah – the virus was not living there – in my own inner realm. To my mind – yes, but not to my heart. That unattended mind grasping onto the virus. It was like the virus was a reflection of my own fear. This whole collective consciousness if you take it further and further it’s like, yeah, we are all part of the fear virus.
David:
Yeah. It makes me thing just how wonderful the work is that you do, and have been doing for a number of years. Especially things like Kundalini Dance, which I have been a part of myself a few times, and I know how self-empowering it can be – to really go into yourself and feel that essence of yourself. That strength, that power that we do have that can’t be touched by the mind, you know?
Yvonne:
Hmmm, yeah. And Kundalini Dance is one of the ways where we access that deep remembering of who we are, the truth of who we are. We become the observer, the witness, and become curious to the insanity of the mind.
Getting out of fear
David:
Yeah… In your opinion, what’s one of the best ways people could perhaps gain back control of what this out-of-control mind is doing if people find themselves stuck in fear and unable to function?
Yvonne:
There would almost be a step before that when people are not sure they are actually feeling scared. I can speak from my experience a lot of the time in my past when some said “What are you scared of, Yvonne?”, I’d probably go “What are you talking about?”…”I’m not scared”… “What are you on about?”, let alone admit it to anybody. So I think that would probably be first up because we can tell ourselves that we are weak, or we can’t cope, don’t be silly or what have we got to be scared of?
So I think that recognising the symptoms of what we call stress and anxiety and how we reframe it as fear. Until we can become honest with ourselves and just name something for what it is, which is something that I’m realising more and more – how our language is becoming so apparent, how we speak and how we use our language to communicate with one another and with ourselves. If I’m saying I’m stressed or I’m anxious about this, then I’m no longer Yvonne as love. I’ve now identified as “I’m stressed”. It’s like, “Hi David, I’m Stressed”.
So I’d say to people to notice if their mind is racing. That’s a key thing. If there’s a lot of chatter upstairs in the mind, and that it may actually be normal and we don’t realise. That’s an indicator that we are feeling stressed and feeling scared, and it’s trying to take control through the mind. So that would be like going “Oh, ok. Maybe I have been feeling stressed, a little anxious”. So take a few deep breaths through the nose and out through the mouth. And specifically that breath is an activator breath, and it helps switch off the cortisol and adrenalin in the brain. We want to calm those stress hormones down to increase the dopamine and serotonin, and one way that we do that is through the breath, but it needs to be in through the nose and out through the mouth. Even if you were not to notice your mind, just to take some deep breaths would help.
It sounds so cliche, take a breath and a cup of tea, but it’s like, actually, you know what – and this is in the days when a lot more people smoked and in my background working in nursing in the health industry – for us as nurses smoking was one way that we connected. So, what do you do when you smoke? You take in big inhalations. It’s not like in through the nose and out through the mouth, but you’re momentarily stopping something to breathe. We used to joke about it in nursing, but there was a lot of truth in it, that you would take some breaths and that would help calm you down.
David:
Yes, the act of deep breathing can very much slow down the racing mind.
Staying in the moment - being present
Yvonne:
Yes, switch off the racing mind, and as crazy and cooky as this might sound, that I highly recommend people to have a look around them. To really notice what’s around them and ask “Is there an immanent threat to my life here and now in this present moment?”. We are not taking about what might happen tomorrow or in two weeks, we’re talking about in this second. Is there a physical threat? This is very challenging for a mind because it’s got a lot of evidence to say “Well actually you know what, there is!”. But in this moment in time to really ask that question because that will bring presence. Is there a threat? Because we’ve got to stack up all the other evidence that we’ve been pumped through the media. We’ve got to gather our own evidence.
David:
Yes, it’ reminds me of when ‘War of The Worlds’ (H.G Wells) was first broadcast over radio in 1938, people bought that as fear, and everyone thought that the world was going to be invaded by Martians. It put a lot of people into fear just from the perceived threat. You know? And as you say, it’s what the mind can create – it can create its own reality for you if you let it run its own wild way, so to speak.
Yvonne:
Yes, our unattended mind. When we have gone off-line and we are listening to the illusions and the lies of our mind, and then we can come back and go, like, “well actually, is there any threat?”. No, but I can feel fear, and I can feel scared. I can feel powerless and out of control. I can feel all those feelings… stop… and breathe… Is there any threat? It’s like, “No”. “Oh, ok”. So how does your body feel when there is no threat? It’s like… “Oh”… and you begin to relax.
When our body relaxes, it’s like Mother Earth is taking in a big, deep breath out as well. She is like “oooohhhh….. they’re getting it, they’re getting it!”.
David:
Haha, yeah, ‘For goodness sake, stop worrying and let me relax”.
Yvonne:
Oh yeah, I feel like all the contraction in humanity of being uptight, in control. We don’t need to work a million hours a day or have all the To Do’s and Should Do’s, it’s like “Oh” (take a big, deep breath in and out)… and our body will just continue to soften and soften.
David:
Hmmm, yeah. And I guess the mind would sometimes jump in and say “Surely it can’t be as easy as that!?”… “It has to be more complicated”.
Yvonne:
Yeeessss exactly, you got it because boy, does the mind want to complicate things so it can stay in control. And that’s really our job. We’ve been given a big job as humanity to really tend to our mind. And we’ve been given a global challenge to notice our mind.
Observe, learn and adapt
David:
Yeah, that’s a really great way of seeing it, for sure.
Yvonne:
Amazing may not be the word for it, but when has there been something that’s managed to stop the world? You know? Like backpackers being flow back from the Galapagos Islands. These are very remote places, and I would have thought “Let me stay there”. But for whatever it took, there was this call for everybody to be back home, back to their physical home.
David:
Yes, I very much got that myself with Australian Government messages saying if you’re going to come home, make sure you come home now. It felt like a whirlwind of panic was sweeping the world as everything was going to shutdown and walls were going to go up. I really had to dig in, and as you say, notice the mind, and look past the brewing panic and think about what is actually being perpetuated here? Am I going to be any safer going back to Australia? So we decided to stay in Bali where we deep down felt is where we should be right now. But I must say, I did think about it long and hard – lot’s going on in the mind about it – like this huge threat that’s going to wipe everybody out.
Yvonne:
Yes, yeeesss. It’s really, when you step back and look back, it’s quite phenomenal how it occurred, isn’t it?
David:
Yeah, it is.
Yvonne:
We were like “OMG!”, the threat for our life, or perceived threat, it’s like one of those moments when you stop and think about humanity and how procreation occurs, it’s like wow! And it’s like here is the opposite end of procreation, of fear, of the decimation of life through the mind. It’s like wow… how did that happen? It almost stopped everything.
David:
Yeah, for sure. And as I was saying with Despina yesterday, it’s such an amazing opportunity that people have now. With all the lockdowns and shutdowns and isolation etc, people are going more internally and perhaps triggering a lot of reinvention of not just themselves, but of the way we live life. People get to observe not only themselves, but things like, for example, the medical system or what we are doing to the environment and is this now necessary? Like a re-evaluation of everything. Like a reset is taking place. You know? Like it’s time to have a break and take stock of where the human race has come. Let’s have a look at it and see what we can do to give it another go, like round 2, so to speak. Do you feel that kind of thing is happening? – that this fear may actually create a lot of invention in people and new ways of getting over it?
Yvonne:
Well, hmmm… I wonder. I’m curious to see how this unfolds. As much as there may be a desire for people to be out-and-about and get things back to “normal”, that people are still going to be very wary of each other, and I think there will be times of taking stock, of appreciation, and how we can do things differently. But we’ve seen other things, and if we go back to the old reset of how we forget about what actually happens.
So while this unfolds for us to remain appreciative, to remain grateful and humble. To be ourselves and treat each other more kindly and more respectfully. I wonder as human beings that there will be some people that this will stay with for longer and may make permanent changes to their life, and then there is going to be some people where it’s like back to business as usual. And all of them are all okay. There isn’t anything that is right or wrong, good or bad.
David:
Yes, it’s very much an individual journey for us.
Yvonne:
Yeeesss, so individual and I think we need to watch and catch ourselves and be incredibly disciplined with our mind – that we then don’t shift to blame and judge. That is what our mind likes to do to create separation. And I’ve noticed here how young people are being a little bit marginalised, saying they are not taking this seriously because they can just get over it, and hearing through family in the U.K, that a particular age group of young men that they are still out gathering. So it’s like, well, you’re referring to men as if they are not part of you. And so we can have a bit of spiritual arrogance around some things, like people haven’t learnt their lesson. We all know that tone that can occur inside our head, or we’ve been on the receiving end of that tone.
So yeah, I think just as some people are taking this as a time for inward and reflection, or hunkering down with the kids and playing with the kids, but for some others this time could be like a living hell – being with themselves or finding ways to disconnect and go offline as much as possible. I think for families, it’s going to illuminate parenting. Like when Mums and Dads and the kids have to actually spend time together, it’s going to highlight parenting abilities. I think that is something that hasn’t been fabulous for many as over the last decades as technology has come away.
David:
Yes, that is very interesting that you’ve brought up the family unit. I noticed when I worked nine-to-five in an office just how many people had to drop their kids off at day-care every single day. So their children are being brought up by other people and the parents just see them at night and weekends. I noticed how many parents would complain about their kids, and not really know or want to know how to parent, that it’s a real pain. And I think with all the job layoffs and people now working from home, parents are now spending more time with their kids and their parenting skills are really being tested. So I guess a lot of cracks in the family unit will be highlighted in these times.
Yvonne:
Yes, and it’s going to show up, if parents are struggling to parent their kids, that it underpins inner-child work. That little boy or little girl that’s inside of us, that when they’re not being met, and their emotional needs are not being met. If we’re not doing that for ourselves as adults, then you can’t parent another. Because if you’ve got kids going off and they’re venting their emotions, if we don’t know how to be with ourselves when we’re being emotional as an adult, then that’s gonna be tricky when you’re met with emotional kids.
David:
Yes, I see, very much so.
Yvonne:
It’s a tough number.
