From pain to power: Rowena Jayne's path to healing with Neuro-emotional technique

Sarah McLachlan: 0:03

Hey there, I'm Sarah McLachlan. Thanks for joining me on the Chaos to Calm podcast, a podcast designed for women over 40 who think that changing hormones might be messing with their mood, metabolism and energy and want to change that in a healthy, sustainable and permanent way. Each episode will explore topics related to health and wellness for women in their 40s, like what the heck is happening to your hormones, what to do about it with nutrition, lifestyle and stress management, and inspiring conversations with guests sharing their insights and tips on how to live your best life in your 40s and beyond. So if you're feeling like you're in the midst of a hormonal storm and don't want perimenopause to be horrific, then join me on Chaos to Calm, as I share with you how to make it to menopause without it wrecking your relationships and life. Hello and welcome to another episode of Chaos to Calm podcast. I have a real treat for us today for episode number 39.

Sarah McLachlan: 1:09

I am here with Rowena Jayne and she is a best-selling author, retreat and women's circle facilitator. She's a neuroemotional technique practitioner, naturopath, nutritionist, a yogi yoga instructor. She's also studied shamanic healing, ayurvedic medicine, permaculture, quantum energetics so much more. She's done all of the things to do with your emotional health and well-being, as well as your physical self, and that's Rowena's life purpose is to help women with trauma particularly, turn their lives around and break free from those areas holding them back so that they can step into their life purpose. And I'm really excited today to talk to you, rowena, about your journey and your experience with lots of those things that we've covered off today mindset, self-coaching, anxiety, shame, all the things. So very big welcome to you. Thank you for joining me.

Rowena Jay: 2:12

Thank you so much for having me. It's such a pleasure to finally be on your show.

Sarah McLachlan: 2:16

I know we've been planning this for a long time.

Rowena Jay: 2:21

We have and just watching you evolve since the first time I met you and what's happened and how you're helping women it's just inspiring. So what a gift to get to be here, thank you.

Sarah McLachlan: 2:30

I know I feel like that for both of us. Probably our own journeys and all the things that have gone on for us have led us to the points where we're at and being able to help other women, and I know you feel this way that sometimes those struggles and those things that we've been through, even though at the time maybe they didn't feel like a blessing, they've actually been a massive blessing to get us here, to be able to help share the gift and our experience there as well. So Rowie and I met at a retreat in Bali four and a half years ago could you believe Lucky? We went because it was just before COVID. Such good timing and what a beautiful place to connect and learn more about each other and then stay connected.

Sarah McLachlan: 3:18

So maybe we can start today, Rowie, by talking through it. We'll go back in time and start at the beginning, I suppose, so that we can really get to know more about you and what you've learned along the way. So I was really interested that you started as a performer and we were just talking about how you used to come over and perform in Adelaide Fringe. But then, through that time and I guess it's a high- pressure environment too you found yourself dealing with a lot of anxiety and self-doubt, so can you talk us through how that started for you or what the turning point there was with the anxiety?

Rowena Jay: 4:01

You know, it's interesting because I kind of feel like actually, these things were always there, they were just lying dormant. As a child growing up, I was a bit of a go-getter. I was involved in the student representative council, I did every kind of charity thing we could do, so I was really active in service and obviously, I didn't think of it as service at the time. I was just like, oh, I just love to get involved in everything. So I think that masked in many ways it masked I had a false self-confidence. I don't think I really believed in myself a lot. However, because I was I mean, I was naturally good at some things and I worked really hard and I always got involved in things and I think because of that, it helped me get through the challenges that were actually going on in our house and growing up in during my school years, and so it wasn't until the later years that I actually became conscious that, oh, this isn't, this is not, this is toxic, this is trauma, this is not normal. You know there was a lot of trauma that had happened in my household and my dad was a, you know, very violent alcoholic, you know. So there was a lot that was going on in our house. And then you know, even after the divorce and you know, he disappeared. He just abandoned me. So it was all this stuff that had gone on. But I really was so active in the community of doing everything and dancing three times a week and training in athletics that I didn't realize this was actually there. And it was when I started touring.

Rowena Jay: 5:25

So I did a performing arts degree, I moved to Sydney auditioned for the course and I guess there was a level of confidence that I had to get into that. Maybe that's just youthfulness. And then it was during the, you know, performing arts degree. There were moments when I'd feel really confident and then there were moments where I doubted myself and I thought I was not as good as anyone else and that really played out a lot for me.

Rowena Jay: 5:46

During my performance, I just never felt like I was good enough. I never felt like I could sing. You know, in the singing circle I was never as good a singer. But in the acting and dancing circle oh, ruin is a great singer In the acting circle I was not. I didn't feel like a good actor.

Rowena Jay: 5:59

But in the dancing circle and you know so you can see how I didn't really feel like I ever really fit into each circle in you know good enough way, but so I think it was always there. However, it really hit home when I started touring in shows and I started to actually be in professional shows as you said earlier, it's a high- pressure industry. It is a high- pressure industry. You are going for audition day after day and if you don't get the roles and you have periods where you don't get anything and you have periods where you just get offered so much work and so it's that you know that up and down all the time, and if you don't get jobs and it's been three months and you haven't got a job, you know you start thinking that that's personal because your instrument is yourself. Yes, so you start taking that personally.

Sarah McLachlan: 6:46

I think it would be really hard not to.

Rowena Jay: 6:49

Yeah, well, it's full and you've got it. My acting teacher, Zeke and this is a principle that I live by all the time in my life now she used to say to us you have to have the hide of the rhinoceros, so that's that thick skin, but you have to have the heart of a dove. She said you can't be an actor or a giver or a naturopath or all the things that we do to offer service to other people. You cannot be that unless you open your heart. So she used to say that. So you know, you're trying so hard to be open but at the same time you're trying to close off because you're feeling like, oh my god, I've got to hide myself but then you've got to expose yourself. So this whole high pressure that definitely was there and then you're dealing with.

Rowena Jay: 7:26

You know, anytime we have unresolved what we call neuro- emotional complexes, which is, you know, unresolved stuff. Basically, yeah, we project our stuff onto everyone and obviously in hindsight I look back, and some of the directors, producers, choreographers and dance captains that I've worked with had their own stuff going on. Yeah, that helps you forgive and go. Okay, look, everyone's dealing with their own stuff, but it was unresolved stuff. And yet they're leaders, they're people that are there to lead you in society or in the show or whatever. And, yes, they've got a job to do. But the way people used to speak to you, sometimes the way you know, I mean, I remember being this, been like shamed so much in front of people one day when I just couldn't seem to get it the route, I just couldn't seem to get this move down, you know, and I remember the shame that came up. And the same thing happened when I started touring. You know you're out of your normal environment, which is wonderful, but say you're on tour for six months in a location.

Rowena Jay: 8:22

After a while, that show does start to get a bit like, you know, and then you're, you don't have anything else like if you're on an island, living on an island, or a cruise ship or something working. It gets pretty mundane after a while. The first it's a novelty, and after a while, and there's no real support, there's no real um, there's no, there's not really any place that you can go yourself to work, you know, to have support or healing or even sometimes time out. So all these things just kind of built up. And I remember being in Thailand and I was on an island it was actually a Burmese island actually, but it was considered a Thailand job and we were singing and dancing on this island and all my stuff started coming out. All this stuff started coming about.

Rowena Jay: 9:07

My boyfriend at the time he was living still back in Sydney, and all this stuff came out with a dance captain. She was being really aggressive and abusive every day. Like it got to the point where she was calling me for rehearsals every single day and she just would like just count me and I saw my confidence just drop Like I remember watching the video of when I first had this solo number called Steam Heat and it was quite like a little bit of a sassy number with fans in those. It was fun. It was a very, you know, broadway type number and I loved it and it was so sassy because I love getting to get to do that.

Rowena Jay: 9:42

And then I remember watching the video later on and how much I had my confidence diminished and you could see the difference on the video. So I think that was the biggest time and that's when my eating disorder started to come to the surface. I was emotionally eating to try to deal with it and I just didn't, and I didn't know how to reach out for help. I didn't know what to do. There was no. I didn't have any skills or tools. So that was really the biggest turning point for me, and I just went downhill from then.

Sarah McLachlan: 10:09

to be honest, and I think at that time as well, like when we were younger and growing up, it was very normalized for people in positions of power or leadership to talk to you in that way, or you know that being hard on you would help you be better. Yeah, I mean, we know so differently these days as well.

Rowena Jay: 10:31

But yeah, I mean there are definitely aspects where we need to be tough and be truthful. However, not horrible mean, you know, shameful, that's right. You know, grating, disrespectful, you know there's a difference. There's a huge difference with someone who's coming from a place of love, who's trying to push beyond a boundary that they can see that you are slightly ready for a bit scared, compared to someone who's just trying to grate you and bring you down. That's not going to bring the best out of anybody.

Sarah McLachlan: 10:57

No, no, it doesn't.

Rowena Jay: 10:59

No, that's right. Actually, someone that's come from trauma. They're already. They're already beating themselves up enough every single day and the inner critic for them is just like crazy, we don't really need them anymore.

Sarah McLachlan: 11:09

Like that, yeah, yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? And I think sometimes too, like you were talking about how you're always busy and doing things when you were young, I really feel that's like a part of a person's trauma response, as well as not having time to think as just keep doing Particularly women, perhaps in the generation before us that very always, you know, ticking off things and doing the things rather than reflecting on or being part of the process and the journey.

Rowena Jay: 11:39

Yeah, I totally agree with you because you know, I think a lot of people think trauma is the event.

Sarah McLachlan: 11:43

Yeah, that's it.

Rowena Jay: 11:44

Sure, the event can be traumatic, but the trauma is actually adaptation. The trauma is what we do with the event and how we have to cope and, like you said, that is a huge, huge, huge way for people coping with with, with unresolved. You know, it's getting so busy and I'm I mean, I'm guilty of it. However, I do take two hours every day minimum to spend time reflecting and doing my yoga and meditation and that's right, reflecting again before I go to sleep. You know it's important, these things are important.

Sarah McLachlan: 12:12

Yes, I tell my kids all the time to reflect and review, and then, you know, reassess and decide what you need to alter or change because they're into sport and their friends are into sports a lot too. That's what the top athletes do, what the top people do, and we can do that every day because it's free. But it will also transform our lives as well.

Rowena Jay: 12:35

Yeah, yeah, it's a big way. You know, I think the goal that sometimes we think a change has to be this big, massive thing and what we have to understand is that the gold nuggets are in the tiniest little things and it's those daily pre-cheats and rituals that actually are the gold nuggets of change. Yes, it's, it's. You know, when I study the leadership training with Tony Robbins, we have a seven- step process of lasting change and step six is to do it over and over again until it sticks to it, over and over again until it. Yes, and that's those daily habits. That's actually what long term, you know what they say a small wave right now is going to turn into a large total wave. You know, if you just do small increments of change now, yeah, lead to so much and yeah, so it does, it all adds up.

Sarah McLachlan: 13:18

And I think that's the problem. You know, when people are thinking about their health or their well-being or any aspect of it, they get overwhelmed because they're looking too far ahead. Oh, I got to do all those things, whereas I have this little note on my desk and it says if you want to create change, start with a few minutes every day.

Rowena Jay: 13:34

Yes.

Sarah McLachlan: 13:36

And it reminds me because I often think, oh, I want to do all these things, I want to create all this stuff for, you know, to help women. And then I think, oh, I don't know what to do first, and, yeah, those few minutes are great.

Rowena Jay: 13:48

You're right, and sustainable change is a tiny thing. Often, people, it's all or nothing when you see all on nothing.

Sarah McLachlan: 13:55

Yes, it's that real diet mindset.

Rowena Jay: 13:59

I'm going to do this and this and this and I'm going to change my diet, you know, this whole week and I'm going to do this exercise and then it just they fall off the bandwagon because it's not sustainable.

Sarah McLachlan: 14:06

Yeah, I think that's that whole new year. New year, I hate that it's so toxic because it is really that massive all- or- nothing, that diet, mindset and mentality that we've all grown up with.

Rowena Jay: 14:17

We don't change your kids. It's our conditioning. I think that's why we get the all or nothing, because people are like, right, they make a conscious decision from the, you know, the part of the brain, the neocortex, the free prefrontal cortex, which is our logical brain. So we actually make rash, you know there's a rational decision, but we can't sustain it because we actually have got these underlying conditioning. It's still sabotaging, or so, whatever we want to call it, it's still holding back from actually moving to where we need to be. So yeah, little steps by little steps builds confidence, and we reward ourselves for it, of course, and that gives us that feeling. So we just keep on, you know, floating on, and then we can, you know, add more, bigger things later. That's it, I think that's it.

Sarah McLachlan: 14:58

The small things are often underrated, aren't they? It's always about the grand gestures or the grand things, but you know, we get marketed and told all those things, so they're seeping into our brains as well as what we got told when we were kids, and that as well. So I did want to touch on this as well. Rowe, you talked you mentioned just before about developing an eating disorder as part of that. Are you happy to talk us through? You know that time and how that evolved for you.

Rowena Jay: 15:31

Yeah, well, I think I realize I thought it started in Thailand. You know, ironically, I had a flatmate when I was doing my performing arts degree or no, I just finished my performing arts degree and she was doing hers the following year at a different school and she had an eating disorder and I judged her Like I judged her so much and I think the things we judge at Marginalizer are actually rude stuff, because then when we get to Thailand, like a year later, there's me with an eating disorder going. What the hell's happening? I was binging, starving, binging starving. I just couldn't, I just didn't know what to do with my emotions.

Rowena Jay: 16:05

So I was shoving chocolates and chips and, oh God, bread became a huge binge for me, Like I would eat one and a half to two loaves of bread. It was, and I, we did. I do studying, process work, and psychotherapy as well, and we did a process work on it recently because we're doing addiction at the moment. So I went back into that old and it's amazing what was still sort of present and I got the understanding and awareness. All I was doing was seeking comfort, you know.

Sarah McLachlan: 16:30

Yes, those fluffy white carbs. They're like a hug. They're the hug that you need.

Rowena Jay: 16:36

Yeah, yeah, and that's the serotonin, right? We know that my carbs are really high in serotonin, so you know it's, it's, yeah, so, but obviously, this is all in hindsight because you don't know this at all.

Sarah McLachlan: 16:46

Well, hindsight is 2020, isn't it? When you're deep in it, you're not thinking about that?

Rowena Jay: 16:52

Yeah, the White side's the best thing ever. So yeah, so I did develop that, you know. I guess it developed into a fully blown what you'd label as an eating disorder. But I looked back when I was a child and God forgave me, but I used to. My parents were, you know, my dad was very violent and whatnot. My mom had her stuff and they'd be screaming, matches and kicking and there'd be horrible things happening in the house. And to get away from it, I used to go and take money from my mom's wallet because I didn't have money and I'd get 50 cents and I would go to the shop and I'd just eat lollies.

Sarah McLachlan: 17:26

Yes, and back in the day you could get a giant bag for 50 cents, as we all know, anyone in our generation? An age bracket? No, I know. Oh my God.

Rowena Jay: 17:37

Yeah, and I used to remember and I remember like you know so I guess it was like, as it was laying dormant, it was kind of actively there all along. And I remember my neighbour's house, but we were never allowed junk food in our house. Really Very often it was very rare that we ever got it. My mom would make a music bar slice.

Rowena Jay: 17:52

I was like that was like kind of the worst thing we could have. So when I go to other people's houses that had junk food, I would just scoff at it, you know. So I realized there was all these patterns that were there, and then, of course, when I couldn't cope with my emotions, that was it. Boom, I just went full ball into this horrendous eating disorder and, as I said, it was binging and starving. I remember looking at research, trying to find out what was wrong with me, and I couldn't even find that because there were either anorexics or there was a bee mix, and I was neither. And so I was like what is wrong with me? I don't even fit into the categories. I can remember it made me.

Sarah McLachlan: 18:22

Yeah, again you have got that feeling of like not fitting in anywhere. There's a pattern there for you.

Rowena Jay: 18:29

Yeah, such a huge pattern. Yeah, I remember, though, I was seeking, you know because I started to fall apart like I was working in a theatre restaurant and during that time, my birth father so I had a lot happening my partner, who was my ex-husband now, but he was my partner from Singapore when I'd been on tour there and living there, and then he moved to Australia, and then that was stressful and he had his stuff going on and, oh my God, I won't get into that because it's his personal thing, but he had a lot going on and that was impacting me big time and I was supporting him financially because he couldn't work. You know, there was all this stuff playing out and then, in the middle of all that, I got this lead singing role and then, in the middle of all that, my birth father started to threaten to kill me. So I was like it was just, you know, I look back and I think, well, he did a really good job actually, but I was thinking I can't cope with my life. What's my life? You know, I just fell apart and I was just binging so much and was affecting everything in my life.

Rowena Jay: 19:24

And then, you know, I guess I was searching, I was seeking. I was going to libraries. I would go to libraries or bookstores because I was trying to seek what do I need, what do I need? And I'd read books, constantly trying to find me. And then I remember finding a book I think it was James Fairbrand, it was his name, binge eating and I found that book and I sat and I remember staying up all night reading the whole thing. I just couldn't stop reading it because it was like, oh my God, this is me. I was identifying, this is me, this is me, this is what's playing out for me. Oh, my goodness. So yeah, sorry, my text is one of them. Yeah, so that was the kind of, I think, the turning point for me realizing okay, I need to get help here.

Sarah McLachlan: 20:08

It was just it would have been also like it would have been amazing to like to find, oh, suffering, an answer or you know, some connection that, oh, I'm not the only person with this right now but also maybe overwhelming at the enormity of what you had to process and deal with. And so was it from that book that you realized that the underlying emotions, like that, were the thing you needed to deal with.

Rowena Jay: 20:36

I guess yes and no, I did follow everything he said in the book and nothing really worked Like he would like. Okay, sit down and put your fork and knife down and then you have to wait. I was like this doesn't work for me, so there were a lot of techniques in there that didn't actually work. But, yes, the overall book itself and the underlying message behind the book were okay. I've got an issue and then, ironically I believe in synchronicity so much and I was doing these dance fashion parades at the time and, oh gosh, all of a sudden, this girl literally hands me a piece of paper she was one of the dresses she hands me a piece of paper and she says to me you need to go and see this guy, he's gonna change your life. And I did. She goes, he's a healer. I didn't know, she didn't tell me anything else. This is this girl.

Rowena Jay: 21:22

And so I was desperately seeking that. I just went and rang and it was like East Bay Chiropractic and there's not even it's not even called that anymore but East Bay Chiropractic and I thought, oh, I didn't just see a chiropractor. I thought, oh, maybe this guy I've got to see is working in the clinic, you know. So I basically went and booked an appointment, regardless of what. I didn't even know what the hell I was having. And then I went for the appointment and it was the chiropractor. And I'm thinking I don't need to see a chiropractor, why, this girl must have given me the wrong, the wrong. Anyway, I was sorry. I didn't have enough confidence to leave. I was like he was.

Rowena Jay: 21:57

I was an hour waiting for him still in the room and I was like he hadn't come after an hour and I was thinking, oh God, do I leave? Oh no, I'm gonna look like an idiot. I was so worried about what people thought of me back then that I didn't even have the confidence got me to say, look, I think there's been a mistake. You know, like da da da. Anyway, long story short, he rushes in the room just as I thought, okay, I'm gonna fill out my confidence, I'm gonna tell them there's been a mistake. He comes to the room and next thing he's talking about my face and he's looking at making me look in the mirror and he's saying see how one side of the face is slightly off than the other. He goes this is it.

Rowena Jay: 22:26

I don't know if he was poking all these points. I didn't even understand what he was doing. And he's drawing triangles on this piece of paper saying you know, mind, emotions, physical, nutritional. I don't know what the hell he's talking about, what the hell's going on. And next thing he puts me on the massage table and I'm sitting up and he brings my arm up and he starts doing this muscle testing and then all of a sudden I'm bawling my eyes out about something that happened, you know, with the guy when I was 17 years old and I was like what the hell is it?

Rowena Jay: 22:49

And then you go see a Tuesday, see a Thursday, and then he just kept saying see a Tuesday, see a Thursday for like four years until I went oh, I don't think many people come as much as I'm coming but I just followed everything he said and he was working on, he was doing neuro- emotional technique. One day, he one in the, and I was looking at the chart and he said to me you know you're gonna be doing this work one day. And I was like, huh, anyway, here I am. So yeah, that's the start of it for me. Was that it?

Sarah McLachlan: 23:15

was anything. Yeah, yeah, so why don't you tell us a little bit about neuro- emotional technique, cause a lot of people probably don't know about it, and how awesome it is for working on underlying trauma and emotions, and that without having to necessarily do all of the talking through?

Rowena Jay: 23:31

Yeah, yeah, yeah, the net is amazing. So neuro emotional technique People confuse it with tapping sometimes, which is an emotional freedom technique Very, very different. Net is very evidence- based. It's only been around for about 40, it's 35 year anniversary or 40-y ear anniversary now but it was developed by a chiropractor, dr Scott Walker. Amazing man, he's almost like Einstein to me, an incredible human being, you know and he'd studied chiropractic, acupuncture, homeopathy and a couple of other things. And he it was an accident. He had a client come in and every time he was adjusting the spine. Then one day she got emotional when he adjusted the spine and when she left and came back she didn't have that same subluxation in the spine and he was like what's going on? Cause he was adjusting it all the time and then, after she had that emotional reaction, he never had to adjust it again. So he started looking into everything neuropeptide. He just started looking into everything and then basically from that he developed neuro- emotional techniques. So originally it was developed for chiropractors only, where they're using the subluxation, the little clicker down the back of the spine.

Rowena Jay: 24:37

So we use muscle testing. Neuro- emotional technique uses kinesiology and muscle testing, and then it uses the principles of TCM, Chinese traditional medicine, and the five- element theory. So we understand from that system that every single emotion is stored in some kind of organ, somewhere in the body or a gland, and so we can use muscle testing to actually find out. We know what the organs are. So, for example, the liver is a very heated emotion. In Ayurveda it's very heated, it's considered hell hot and the liver will. You'll see, anger, resentment, frustration, depression, annoyance, and all those kinds of emotions will come usually under the liver. So when you're muscle test you can actually find it Okay, what's going on in the? What's going on for you right now? And then we'll muscle test oh, it's in your spleen, okay, so what's going with the spleen? Well, the spleen, stomach and pancreas all relate to the earth element and that relates to loss of steam, being over, sympathetic, despair, disgust, egotistic, all these elements which relate to the shark system. So there's a similarity with yoga too and all the shark system cross- correlation really with a lot of these healings. And so we can start to actually uncover the problem. What's going on?

Rowena Jay: 25:49

What we understand is that any unresolved emotions say unresolved excessive, unresolved anger or grief or fear can affect us long after the event, and that's the principle of Pavlog's dog conditioning. So the classical conditioning, where, you know, they rang the bell and they put the meat out and the dogs would salivate, and then eventually they took the meat away and the dogs would still salivate. So they're having a conditioned response to the bell, even though they weren't having the meat in front of them, and then, of course, they reversed it and then, of course, after a while, extinction happened, where they, you know, they let the dog no longer salivated because they'd done it for so long. Right, so we are the same, we are conditioned, and so if we've gone through some kind of issue or an event has happened it could be something so significant or it could be something so tiny and we hold on to that. If we haven't actually properly dealt with it at the time, we hold on to that.

Rowena Jay: 26:43

And then some situations gonna come along that's similar in some degree. Maybe it's the smell of the person or maybe it's you know, they talk the same or maybe it's just the words they kind of use. It might rub, or maybe it's. You know, been at the dentist and you've had an issue with the drill, and then you hear a drill and that triggers you. There's certain things that can trigger us, and then we'll actually start responding and reacting the same way that we did before, cause the hippocampus of the brain is a memory seeker, so whenever there's stress, the amygdala of the brain will sort of go off and under fMRI scanning we can see that that's like Christmas lights in the brain, and so when we have that response, the hippocampus is like oh, we don't know how to deal with this. So it's like a memory seeker through the body. Oh, here we go, here's the situation, here's the circumstance that happened before, and so then we play it out. So this is why we sometimes have an issue with someone Don't even really know why.

Rowena Jay: 27:33

They just trigger us, right, because it's our unresolved stuff from way back. So the NET we can clear acute stuff right now, which is a two- minute process, and then we've also got the 15- step process is what we call it. We go back in time and we find out when was the original event where this happened, like we'll ask questions to get to the deepest root of the issue. So generally, whatever we think the problem is is not the problem. So people think, oh, my weight gain is the problem, that's not the problem. There's an underlying, deeper problem there. So we try to uncover that first, obviously, and then we go back in time and then you clear it and it's amazing. Sometimes all of a sudden they don't get triggered by the same event anymore. Or sometimes there's a core issue with tentacles. So it takes a bit to work through a bigger issue. However, it's so profound, and so it basically just helps us to extinguish that unresolved emotion that wasn't extinguished properly. So it comes full cycle and then you get the seed or coal incoming in, which is what reduces that stress response. And so it's amazing and of course, obviously everything's interrelated the gut, brain access, the vagus nerve, the meso-olimbic dopamine pathways, all of these things are interrelated. So it starts affecting not only your emotional health, it'll start changing your physiology because we understand that physiology emotions are actually physiology.

Rowena Jay: 28:55

When Candace Burt was famous for her book on molecules of emotion and her research and how, basically, the neurophysiology of emotions is basically just amino acids that are peptides, neuropeptides that are all over our body and they travel through the whole body and then they're attaching to receptors and it's almost like little satellite dishes all over the body. So we have these psychosomatic responses and it's these neuropeptides and these molecules basically that are ruling our entire life. So when we go into the physiology of working with neuromotional technique, we change the physiology and that will change the behavior. It also makes us congruent with what is and what isn't, and that's the big key. That the big key is congruency, because if you look at all these Eastern practices like yoga, meditation, you know, shamanic medicine they're all the same. They're all looking to create congruency with the person.

Rowena Jay: 29:49

So if you're OK losing your house and you're OK having a house, then you're actually going to be OK, physiology is going to be OK. But if you're not OK with losing your house. Then guess what happens? We start attracting more and more of that stuff because we're actually not okay with it because we're marginalising it, and what we marginalise actually is usually what we need to heal. So yeah, there's a complexity in it, but it's very simple.

Sarah McLachlan: 30:15

Yeah, even the simple things are really complex sometimes when we go deep into them. And so you've done all that work with that chiropractor and over that period of time he'd suggested that you were going to do that work at that time. How did you then come about to training in NET?

Rowena Jay: 30:34

Oh gosh, it was actually years later, because I didn't want to be a chiropractor and you had to be a chiropractor back then.

Sarah McLachlan: 30:39

Of course yes.

Rowena Jay: 30:41

Yeah, so years later, I mean actually what happened was I had a bit of a downfall because I had rheumatoid arthritis as well. So when I started seeing him, that was my dad. You know a lot of stuff with my dad. It was all happening at the same time, so I got rheumatoid arthritis as a cripple. So there was a lot of stuff going on all the same time and I was trying to self- heal as well as do the work with him. And then I basically ended up in hospital with my because I had my eating disorder. I ended up in hospital with a bleeding colon.

Rowena Jay: 31:09

So, this was all in a very short period of time. You know you don't do five sessions with someone you totally healed. It was a process. You know, if only, yeah, I know, if only.

Rowena Jay: 31:19

So in the early days of that healing, I still had my eating disorder and I hadn't even admitted it to him. You know, I never really actually ever said I had one to him. Yeah, but he knew, I knew, he knew. So things basically happened. I ended up in hospital and that was my wake- up call. Like I was in the hospital and they basically told me we think you have Crohn's disease, which I didn't. I knew I didn't. And this, this voice came into my head and said you don't have Crohn's disease. And then basically I just felt trust in that voice. It said you've just got to change your life and this is you've got to really dive into it now like this is, this is you.

Rowena Jay: 31:53

And I found yoga, like until a week later. So that was another big catalyst for me and it was the yoga that kind of cattle called me so far forward. I did yoga and then I loved it. I knew within three days I was going to teach it. You know, when I worked on a cruise ship to get the money together so I could go fast.

Rowena Jay: 32:09

Within the next year and a half, I was fully in the yoga world. I was, you know, getting asked to do workshops and seminars all over the world. I got asked to be able to teach your training stuff. So that is what led me. And then from that, I wanted to study Ayurveda and sound healing. I just kept studying and studying, and studying, because I kept relating everything I was studying back to my students and where they were at Yoga self- realization, right? So that's the biggest thing. And then, you know, it was a whole full circle. I actually wrote my book, came back, saw Pete and gave him a copy of my book and I knew that week I had to move back to Sydney. And then when I moved back, I just kept doing more, any tea with him again. And then I found out that you could do any tea if you're a naturopath or a nutritionist or you had a health science degree. So that was the start of that for me.

Sarah McLachlan: 32:55

So then you moved into studying.

Rowena Jay: 32:57

Yeah.

Sarah McLachlan: 32:59

Naturopathy yeah.

Rowena Jay: 33:01

Yes, I studied, studying, yeah. So I studied naturopathy. I just oh my god, I studied so much, soaked it all up. I just kept soaking it up like a sponge because everything I was studying was also helping me heal too, and I kept getting guided. It wasn't like I was going, I'm lost and I don't know where to go. People often look at me at that and think, oh, she's just studying so many things she doesn't even know what she wants. It's like no, no, I have a very strong intuition and I follow it big time. And so I was getting told to study this, go do this, go here, go live here, ask, see if you can get a job living in Hawaii, see if you. I just was following my gut and it was just leading me to all the people I had to meet and all the things I had to study. And all of that has come together now and it's like, really, you know, all those things are fine- tuned to what I do.

Sarah McLachlan: 33:43

Yeah, it does. It's really interesting. I mean we could. Your whole life story is like so interesting and so very there as well. I'm curious as well because you know you work a lot with emotions and helping people move through the trauma and what is stuck in their body as well, for their best health. Yeah, how we talked about how you know your image and your confidence and that shame and you were at that real low point. When did that start to shift or turn around for you? And you know you were doing NET and you were doing all these other things.

Rowena Jay: 34:21

Yeah, yeah, I would notice changes, like I remember when, with the NET specifically, I remember going to dinner and I was someone that was a people pleaser. I was a big people pleaser. I never spoke up. I would. Just now I'm the opposite, oh God. People didn't want to shut up, but I never spoke up and I remember I was sitting at this table and there was 20 of us there or 15, whatever it was in this table in Chinatown and I remember they were trying to make me eat something I didn't want to eat. I go, I don't want to eat it.

Sarah McLachlan: 34:46

I'm not going to eat it.

Rowena Jay: 34:47

And I just came and I was like, oh my God, this is not me, I don't do this. And then they all started to say to me he was my fiance at the time. Maybe it wasn't my fiance, it was my boyfriend. Whatever they said to him, I don't think this guy she's seeing is good for her. Look how much she's, she's, she's, look at her. She's getting aggressive, she's, she's that.

Rowena Jay: 35:04

That was the swinging of the pendulum that happened. I started to start healing. I went from never saying anything to like and then, of course, I started to create more balance around that. So that was a huge I remember that being a huge turning point and I think. And so then, overall, I just started to build this confidence and started to speak my truth and express myself and say what I felt.

Rowena Jay: 35:23

And then, also the biggest part as well, was the yoga, because I was feeling good, I was starting to get fitter, I was looking better in the mirror every day. I mean that took some time, trust me, I couldn't stand looking at myself and I couldn't stand I would cover my oh God, I couldn't stand myself. But that took time. But eventually and yoga is people confuse yoga with yoga posture Yoga is a path of self- realization, it's a spiritual journey. So it's giving.

Rowena Jay: 35:48

The yoga posture is the test it's holding, making hold on that resilient edge of pain, discomfort, like how much can I hold that pain? And as you hold that pain, at first it's physical, but then all of a sudden you start to feel the emotion, or you start to feel, and then you have a breakthrough when you finally let go, and then you'll cry or laugh or sometimes scream or to, and so it's a psychosomatic process. So as those things kept happening to me, I'd notice I'd start to feel happier or I'd started to feel like oh, I actually don't mind myself, and I think it was. It's just again. It's a gradual process and doesn't happen overnight. I remember reading so many self- help books and it is almost like they had these overnight miracles. I didn't agree, I don't believe it. I don't believe it. I think maybe they had an overwrite miracle on a wake- up, but I think it's a process of like gradually, gradually over time. No, I agree, don't even change like that.

Sarah McLachlan: 36:38

Well, we talked about it before, like how hard it is to make change. We don't suddenly wake up and change everything completely in our life and maintain that.

Rowena Jay: 36:46

Yeah, and I think too, with the shame, like you know, because I felt a lot of shame in who I was, and I think people sometimes feel guilt and shame that I understand the two. Guilt is like I've done something bad, so if I've emotionally eaten, I've emotionally eaten. So now I feel bad. I feel bad because I've emotionally eaten. But shame is an actual, fundamental belief that you are bad, you are like, defective. You are, you know. So I think what I've come to understand over time and what I guess all this work helped me to do shame cannot exist in the light, Shame exists in the dark. Shame is an isolated emotion, Emotion. It is something like oh, go in the corner, You're bad, you don't belong here, you should go there. And that's your ego going. Yeah, you're bad. You know all that self inner critic. You're bad.

Rowena Jay: 37:35

And I think when you start to do this work, look at yourself, face your shadow, face your pains, face your significant events that you know have impacted your life. When you start to look at that stuff, you bring it to the light because it's now there. You're actually owning it, You're acknowledging it, not trying to pretend it's not there. And you know, look at our previous generation, everything was about hiding it and pretending it's not there. Oh no, you don't show that that makes us look bad. They're going to judge us as people, you know I mean. So I think that looking at the shame, looking at it, owning this is where I'm at, and there are so many people in the world now that are doing that and talking about what's gone on, talking about everything, and so I think that this new generation is definitely more open to being able to express it. But not everyone does. Not everyone does. A lot of people still hide and think it's bad.

Sarah McLachlan: 38:25

It's such an important topic to look at, you know what Well, and I think you even just like tying it into perimenopause and menopause in this phase of life. You know, like the previous generation, no one was talking about it. I think you know, even in the last five years, the number of conversations and the more talking about it to realize that you don't have to just sort of grit your teeth and get through it and put up with it is. It can be a different experience, and also as laughing when you were saying, I think internally I was laughing, thinking about that pendulum swinging and that itself is perimenopause personified, isn't it? It's like you find your voice and you start talking and maybe you go too far.

Sarah McLachlan: 39:08

They go from being a massive people pleaser and worrying about what everyone thinks and all the rest of it to then wanting to tell everyone how much they annoy you and irritate you. You find a happy medium in the middle there as well, but it's like that, that metamorphosis, and you know that sounds like that was what it was for you as well. It's that shedding of those, that conditioning and that things that we've been told or that subconsciously we've taken on. Shedding that and emerging as the person we want to be and with that purpose and what we want from life and speaking from the heart you know, and I think too, it's also learning to take responsibility, because I think when things happen, we tend to want to blame.

Rowena Jay: 39:54

We are taught to blame outside of ourselves. But you know this inner work, it's all inner work. You know the work that you're doing with your client. All this work is inner work. And as we start to do this inner work, we start to take responsibility for our own lives. And I'm not saying that the problem that happened, or maybe someone did something really horrible to you, it's not that it's like your fault, but it's like, yeah, but you're the one responsible for that how you keep reacting to that and how you keep allowing that to literally rule your life.

Rowena Jay: 40:23

Are you going to live the next 50 years of your life still allowing that to rule all your decisions from now? Are you still going to stay in that adaptive state or are you going to start to actually get yourself out of it? Because the truth is we are so incredible and we have so much potential. I mean, if we can feed people sugar pills, or you know, or they did arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, the SIBO study where they told them they're having the operation and they did not tell them that they never gave the operation for two more years and yet everyone healed. You know, if we got a placebo, if we've literally convinced ourselves that someone can convince you by giving a sugar pill or doing that, you know, then that shows you the power of our mind. If we choose to start to focus differently, you know.

Sarah McLachlan: 41:05

Yeah, it can be so triggering for people as well. I know, like for me, I was massively triggered if someone told me that it was my thoughts underwriting that feeling and I was responsible for my reaction. I was like no way They've done that and they've made me feel that way. And you know, language is so important. It's not people can't make us feel a particular way. It's those thoughts that underlie our feelings, or that, you know, and those patterns that we respond in that same way like you were describing with the hippocampus. It's a little, I imagine, like a little filing cabinet and say, brrr, write this one, this is how we're going to react to that. But we actually can respond. And so I mean, we could talk for days here about all of this as well. Yeah, we could. But you did just mention in your critic and I do want you to talk about that please because so many people it's buzzing, it's so strong and it's stopping them from living, you know, their best life.

Rowena Jay: 42:07

Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, our mind is nine times more negative than positive. So we are designed to survive. We're an organism, so we are designed to survive. So our body and our mind are constantly looking for danger, we are constantly seeking, and the problem is, is that back in the day, that danger was a tiger or that danger, you know, whatever it was? But now that danger is your boss, now that danger is your husband coming at you, now that danger is the kids, like, ah, it's everything that's going on in our lives. So that stress response kicks in, and so we just it's so easy to fall down the hole of that negative ah, because everything feels like it's negative and caving in. So we actually, and because we're trying to survive, and so you know, the mind is literally, you know, we've got to love the mind for that and the body for that, because it's just trying to keep us alive. However, it's again, it's the conditioning or that that keeps running back to, that is going to keep us stuck in those states. So we have to actually consciously, consciously, consciously change, and so that's like choosing to focus on different things, and it takes time, it's practice, you know, and we have to look at.

Rowena Jay: 43:22

Okay, what emotions do you actually want to feel regularly in your own linguistic programming? We look at, you know what emotions, what emotions we have away from values and all towards values, and it's those emotions that we want to have. And there are the emotions that we would do anything to avoid Like for me, I would do anything to avoid depression or, you know, being criticized or whatever you know. So that's what actually starts changing our behavior and we we've we live life through our values. So that's one method even to start looking at our values. And what are the emotions that you're constantly trying to avoid? Because this is the inner critic it's constantly going to find the negative, the negative, the negative Right. So we have to actually start to look at what are the emotions we want to now live our life by and we're going to wake up every day. You know, gratitude is a bit, I guess it's overrated, it's it's talked about so much that it's kind of like oh whatever gratitude, but it's, it's the truth.

Rowena Jay: 44:13

The thing is that gratitude helps you come into a space, of a vibrational state that opens you up and expands you and allows those same. We're an antenna, everything's an antenna. Dr Joe Dispenser talks a lot about that. You know, the Thalammate Gates open and we're kind of an antenna attracting whatever we are. So we have to consciously change these things, and so you know, every day waking up and be like okay, close your eyes and think of a moment where you achieve something so great and it was real right. So okay, I'm right. Now I'm getting a vision of when I first got my book in the mail and I'm standing outside and it's like I'm just ripping open the packet of like oh, my God, my book.

Rowena Jay: 44:52

I did it. I did it to be 12 years and I did it. You know that's a real emotion, so I've just embedded that into my body and then like, think of emotion, time when you felt passion or a time when you felt sensual, like little things like that can stop that inner critic, because you're starting to feel real emotion. It's not about positive thinking, it's about anchoring these new states and if you do that every day like that's one little method that can help you get out of that inner critic because you have to recondition yourself.

Rowena Jay: 45:20

Everything's conditioning.

Sarah McLachlan: 45:21

You know, and it's you know our brain's always looking for confirmation of what we're thinking. If we're thinking that we're a terrible person or that we're really rubbish at, I don't know, cooking or whatever we're going to get all this confirmation, our brain's just scanning and looking for it to say oh yeah, you're right, you're actually really rubbish cook.

Rowena Jay: 45:41

Yeah, yeah, the reticular activating system in the brain. Yeah, it's like if you get your hair cut short, all of a sudden you see everyone with short hair.

Sarah McLachlan: 45:48

It's like that's the reticular activation system. Or you see someone driving the car, the car that you've just bought, all of those things and it's. They're all great examples of how there's so much going on in our brain that we don't, you know, we don't realize this is going on until we draw awareness to it, and then it's really important for us to manage our mind. Like you said, it's doing a wonderful job keeping us alive and thank you, but also, we got this and will be okay. Yeah, yeah.

Rowena Jay: 46:18

And that's what is it. It's a lot of self- reflection, it's a lot of you know coaching work. Whether you have a coach or mentor, you work with someone. You know there is a lot you can still do yourself.

Sarah McLachlan: 46:27

Yeah, well, I think it's that daily self- coaching like you were saying, starting with the way that you think, those emotions that you're feeling. We talked right at the start of the episode about reflection, reviewing and assessment. That self- coaching, yeah, and managing your mind, yeah.

Rowena Jay: 46:44

Yeah, yeah. And the understanding too, with that self- critic, is like we think everything bad is happening to us. It's all happened to me. We compare ourselves and social media has got a lot to a lot. Well, social media has impacted people because there are a lot of people putting out only what's great in their lives and people compare themselves. You know, things like that are all.

Rowena Jay: 47:03

These are all conditioned psychological ways of suppressing us and making it feel like less than so. You know it's. It's even consciously staying away from the news, consciously staying away from things. Hang around with people that make you feel great, doing things that make you feel the emotions that you want to feel like. You know, sitting around at home like moping isn't going to help you. It's like, ok, who's who's out there doing things that I want to feel. Then start bearing and matching. You know, modelling other behaviour and other people's ways of living, trying things like all these little things, getting curious, like all these little things are things that you can do to start to, you know, lift your mood and make you feel better and help you just literally surrender, because it's about.

Sarah McLachlan: 47:46

It's interesting because you know what I was saying. I was used to getting quite triggered around the whole. People did not make you know doing things to me. It's my response and reaction.

Sarah McLachlan: 47:55

So when we went on that retreat, that was kind of the start of my journey in terms of self- responsibility, self- awareness, realizing that I could choose what I looked at or how I saw life as well, because in the 10 years before that, we had had a fire and lost all of our belongings and we literally lost the house like you were talking about before. And it felt like after that time period, or what I was focused on was that everything bad kept happening. Why does this always keep happening to us? Why did these things keep happening and more stuff would happen and go see how bad is that?

Sarah McLachlan: 48:33

And over time then I started at that time, you know, and if hanging out with different people like you and our mentor and she really helped create that change in the way that I was thinking, and then over time I started to think things like I'm really lucky and I'm a lucky person and good things happen to me, and then I would see all of those things happening. And even, like last night at the lacrosse club I'm on the committee, there I volunteer as the junior girls coordinator and we were laughing because last year we had a members draw each week for people who've paid their fees. I won that three times and I actually want it two times, but on the third time, they said you can't win it tonight. I was like that's okay, camel win at my husband. And guess who won that night?

Rowena Jay: 49:19

We did.

Sarah McLachlan: 49:21

Yeah, we get what we get and I was like it's okay because I'm a lucky person and you know I'm gonna get a great park today or I'm gonna get a park, or these things are gonna happen.

Sarah McLachlan: 49:30

And that's what I see and that doesn't mean that sometimes I don't find myself spiralling down a bit or thinking, but I have the tools now to help like you said, get myself up out of it there as well. So I feel like this means so much happened for you along the way. And I'm actually interested too because I know you. You've done the naturopathy training and the other things in there and you've done your any tea. Did the NLP training come after that for you? Yeah, that was recently.

Rowena Jay: 49:59

I got asked if I wanted to work with a gentleman who does NLP, who used to be my kinesiology teacher 22 years ago I think it is 20 years and I worked with his brother. He does a lot of research for any tea, so yeah. So yeah, my healer became my boss, I worked for a while and then now I'm not anymore and his brother studied kinesiology at nature college. So yeah, so that will kind of link us up together, and so that just kind of happened. I was like you know what, I don't know, I'm just going to be open to whatever and I'm just going to do the training. And so I did the training and then I started doing Tonys. That was the post code thing like I went to a spiral like you know, and that it's called cause and effect, right?

Rowena Jay: 50:37

So I was allowing cause and that was called total cause and effect. I was like okay, because of because of COVID, my business has started to fail. Not fail, but just go down. Yeah, when I'm hit, I made it through the whole of COVID and then on me from here.

Rowena Jay: 50:51

I made it through the whole of COVID. And then on me from here. I was hit and everyone cancelled in one week and I went into a spiral. I, I, I haven't been in such a bad place for such a long time. I was like, oh my God, my life is just being BS. Like I went into a really bad headspace. Everything Like what the hell's happened? What the hell's happened? I can't even do anything. I'm I'm never going to survive. I'm a failure. I'm an oh my God loser, can't even get a business. You know, like, oh my gosh, and all my money blocks came up. And then my friend said, right, I've been telling you about Tony Robbins training for like eight years. You just laugh at me. Now it's time. I said I don't have $500 to spend on training. She goes, yes, you do it, get your credit card. And so she made me, kind of made me, so I paid for it. The best decision I ever made in my life that training led me to. So I signed up for the whole entire Tony University and then at the university, at the wealth mastery training, believe it or not, the wealth mastery training I won the entire leadership training. So I've been doing that with Tony for the last year and a half and now crew stuff like that. So yeah, so that came later.

Rowena Jay: 51:54

But NLP I have found that's probably one of the best things. That's really taught me in a different way to consciously change my mind and literally structure things. So you're structuring your values and you're structuring, you're working out Okay, what am I? What am I living? My basic needs by? What do we all have?

Rowena Jay: 52:12

You know, six human needs. You know we need certainty, we need uncertainty, we need love, we need connection. It's when it growth, we need contribution, etc. So if we don't have all those humans we're going to find, try to find a way to meet them. And this is what happens with emotional eaters their needs aren't being met, so they're going to try to find it through food, right, so it's that's where NLP really helped me, more of a cognitive level to help me. But then we also have processes that will take you into the somatic body and the limbic brain, which in the big brain, is an emotional storehouse of the body and also everything stored in ourselves. So yeah, NLP has been an incredible adjunct to what I already do and I'm using it a lot with my clients into it. You know I always cross- check and muscle test everything with NLP but the NLP has been great. Using some of the coaching NLP coaching to help extract the real issues or get people to start taking more action.

Rowena Jay: 53:03

You know, it's really given me a better scope for my, you know, for my clients.

Sarah McLachlan: 53:08

Yeah, it's good to have that structure around us there and I often envy is some of those skills that you have, all those trainings that you've had to help you do that with your clients, because so there's so many of us are like like how I describe myself when not aware Of our cell, for how we can influence how we're feeling or what's happening in our lives and we grow up being, you know, from an early age. I don't cry, have a lolly. Oh, you feel you know something bad. Have a, let's go have an ice cream or let's go do this so that we're conditioned to eat. Emotionally, that's how we solve that problem. So having to reprogram that can be really uncomfortable.

Rowena Jay: 53:50

And you know, even things like Christmas time can bring up a lot of trauma for families. And then Christmas, Christmas times all around food and foods around social celebrate with food. We eat food when we're depressed with everything's food, food, food. So it is a huge topic that I don't think it's talked about enough yeah you know I will get there, but also too.

Rowena Jay: 54:08

We've also got to look at, you know, the gut and all that as well, you know, obviously, because there's, you know, the gut- brain connection and all that's into playing.

Rowena Jay: 54:17

And, as we know, as I know, I remember doing one of my research projects when I was doing my naturopathy degree and I was doing it on food and mood and gut health and how it was such an interrelation it was just starting to come to the forefront of getting out. There was that gut- brain connection and I remember I remember reading I'm just trying to backtrack now and just remember but I remember reading something about repetitive pleasure- seeking foods. Repetitive pleasure- seeking foods are going to destroy our metabolic disturbance. And then we've got, you know, the small intestine producing peptides that mediate the vagus nerve which signals the hindbrain to discontinue the desire for food. And then you've got your ghrelomyaleptin all this, all the enzymes in the stomach. We've got more like more neurons in the gut than we do in the brain. So we also can't just work on only mindset and motions and clear the past, which we do have to do, but it's, it's the triangle of health which is what that.

Sarah McLachlan: 55:11

Yeah, it's going right back 25 years ago, triangle of health.

Rowena Jay: 55:15

He was saying we have to have the, we have to have our mental health and our mental health, and they're different. Emotional, and mental health are different. You know they're both different things mental mindset stuff but emotional stuff is the stuff we have at the neuro- emotional complex and we haven't dealt with. And then the chemical nutrition. On the toxicity, all that you know regrets to food toxins, environment, people that are in the environment, all that has to come under that bracket right and you know like if we are out of balance physiologically, it's going to influence and drive eating.

Sarah McLachlan: 55:47

You know different foods, all the foods. You know that the white, the fluffy bread, or the chocolate, or the wine or these really sweet foods and things like that as well, and it becomes a vicious cycle that is stuck in there and that's you know.

Sarah McLachlan: 56:01

That's the benefit, I suppose, of us as naturopaths and nutritionists we get the time and the opportunity to work holistically on all of those aspects to help make it balance and that's why often people trying to go out alone or do things on their own might not have that success or might not stick with it because they can't get to what's underlying what's driving.

Rowena Jay: 56:23

It's right is a lot of you just said that they might have success. I think that's where the support groups you know a lot of people are coming more into group work and program where they're supporting a group of people and I'd be used to being like no, no, because my stuff. So in such sensitive work, people don't want to have been a group, but I see the value and I know you work with groups, yeah, do yeah, and the value in the support and I'll be working with another colleague, clients as well. I do it once a month.

Rowena Jay: 56:49

I do mindset coaching for them and just watching the support that they give each other yes, it's, that's what actually helps people stay on track, you know you need, you need to create, you need to create a team of people who are going to support you, whether that team be just professionals, whether that team be professionals and friends or people going through a similar, you know, situation to you. All that's important to you absolutely and my clients.

Sarah McLachlan: 57:13

Sometimes they resist coming on to the group. It's only a small group but they'll resist it. Then they come on. I was just reading some clients, past clients comments and she said I wish I'd gone on them earlier, because they are really valuable, because you realize you're not the only person going through this and you also get tips and tricks from people that might be a little bit further ahead in the healing process than you. But mostly it's about just realizing that you're not alone because, like you were saying at the start of this episode, it's when we're in the darkness and isolation that you know you're in a critic and that shame and all those emotions will take over and take control.

Sarah McLachlan: 57:53

But when we're in a group and bring it out and talk about it. Yeah, that's right. It's where more able to heal it and move forward.

Rowena Jay: 58:01

And I think for women too, because you, obviously you and I, I mean I've got 30% of my clients as male and I think you're the same. I think I've ever seen a post.

Sarah McLachlan: 58:07

I don't have a lot of men. I work mostly with women, but I do have some hiding in the background.

Rowena Jay: 58:13

Women. It is in a. It is more of an innate thing for women to actually come together and share, circle you know and come together and collate and and share with each other, and that's how we actually process our emotions. Women need to talk about their emotions and their stuff more. So I'm not saying that men don't, but we have a different survival coping mechanism and women need to talk more, as guys are more likely to go into the cave. So it's really important for women to be able to have you know, groups and people.

Sarah McLachlan: 58:42

Yeah, yes, thank you so much, Rowie. I feel like we've covered so much ground today and talked about all sorts of different things, but I'm sure people will have absolutely found it useful. Like that, sharing your Journey and your experience is so valuable, like we were just saying, how people connect and realize they're not alone, but also the power within ourselves and our mind and how we manage that to create the change in our life that we, that we need. And I love hearing you talk about any tea, because it's just always informative, I have had tea before myself and it's it is really amazing and transformative. So, before we finish up today, Rowie, is there anything else that you want to Stay or tell us about, or final comments?

Rowena Jay: 59:37

Yeah, I think I think I'd just like to say what we didn't really touch on. I mean, I know I spoke about somatic work, but I think, when we talk about the reflection, I guess I just want to really reiterate that it's that time of just going within, you know, and spending time by yourself and asking your body. Like I think and I guess I'm talking because we talked a lot about emotional eating today I don't know, obviously, with Perry, menopause and that can be such a big player. I don't know with your audience, that that's a big player, and I think it's like we have to.

Rowena Jay: 1:00:07

Like, I used to think of myself as someone who was very emotional, but that didn't mean that I was actually dealing with the emotions and sitting and figuring out what was going on. So I remember when I first had my eating disorder, it would be a six- month binge. I'd be on that spiral for six months. I just couldn't get off. I'd be like, okay, I'd starve myself or that, right, I'm not going to eat today, I'm not going to eat today. And then, bang, something would happen in the afternoon. Or you know, bang, some emotional thing would happen, and then I was binging all night.

Rowena Jay: 1:00:30

And then, now that what I've come to learn is to sit with those emotions and just to sit and go okay, what, what do I need? What do I need? And I think women that have obviously got children and are busy and, you know, running the household and all that that don't often take care of themselves in terms of what do I need, and those little moments, even if it's 10 minutes, five minutes, stopping, closing your eyes, what is it that I need? Okay, why am I? Why am I emotionally eating? Why am I feeling like drinking? Why am I? What is it that I need? And that body will always answer you yes, and that's really important for people to realize. That's in. That's really essential. It's not, it's not just a luxury Like, it's an essential part of every day. Yes, give yourself at least five minutes. Last, go to the toilet and just sit on the toilet, sometimes just to get away.

Sarah McLachlan: 1:01:15

Yes.

Rowena Jay: 1:01:16

Get away. You know, yeah, okay, get a breather. And then what is it I need? And now I find that if anything emotional is going on, if I go on eight safe packets of twisties, I'm like okay, winner, why did you do that twisties? What is going on? Boom, you know. So it's like half an hour of bang. It's gone. And you know, as they're going to go, that twisties would have led to six months of binging you know, not that I really eat that anymore, but I was just like yeah hypothetical you know yeah that's right.

Rowena Jay: 1:01:41

Hypothetical? Yeah, so it's, but if we do those little daily things every day, then it doesn't build up. You know, it's like. It's like if we don't take the garbage out every day, that garbage just keeps adding and adding and adding and eventually the whole room is filled with garbage and we have to go to a new room and fill it with garbage. This is what's coming up physically, emotionally, mentally. We have to constantly sweep the house.

Sarah McLachlan: 1:02:02

And I think it's always like we think about oh well, I did that, so that's it, I'm done now. But I always like to say it's like personal development is not just for the workplace, it's really about us and that having that self- compassion, you know, like what would you say to a friend and say really, how are you today? Or are you looking like you're a bit stressed out? What do you need? Yeah, we never do that to ourselves. Women in particular, rarely do that, and it's so important from what you know what you're just saying. Yeah, it really is key to turn within and trust. We've got the answer here, but actually just pausing to ask the question and listen to the answer, yeah.

Sarah McLachlan: 1:02:45

Yeah, really creates that. Just doing that simple thing for a few minutes each day would I really confidently say would create a lot of change for a lot of women. A major, major, major.

Rowena Jay: 1:02:57

And you also start. The more you do it, the more you actually really step into it, and that's what guides your life. That's what's guiding your life. I get key insights when I do my yoga. I'm like, okay, this is what I need to do for my business. Things just come in constantly.

Sarah McLachlan: 1:03:11

Yes.

Rowena Jay: 1:03:12

Oh, and I let go of something in my shoulder. What's going on in my shoulder? And I'll be like exploring it through the yoga, because I do a bit of, you know, somatic yoga myself as well.

Sarah McLachlan: 1:03:19

Yes, straight become yoga and I'll be like oh, what's that?

Rowena Jay: 1:03:22

And then all of a sudden I'll cry or something and I'll be like, oh, release. And then all of a sudden, this insight comes in and I'm like, oh, this is what I need to do. So it actually guides your life, you know, and I mean there's so much research with all this. Now, I mean Dr Peter Levine, like he's got some incredible books on all this somatic body work, process works, psychotherapy. There are so many. It's coming to the forefront. You know, Dr Gubbul, like this is all the stuff that he's talking about. People understand this. This is not just woo-woo kind of like, oh yeah, self-care goes over there. Yes, this is essential daily stuff to help us detach. Yeah, and we have to keep attaching. It's like barnacles they just keep attaching and they can't get off. If we do it every day, flick it off, flick it off, flick it off, flick it off and we feel lighter, more happy, more joyful, and then life goes from there.

Sarah McLachlan: 1:04:08

Yeah, and you know, when we're trusting ourselves and tuning into ourselves as well, it's you know, I grew up and it might have been the same, and our generation was we had to not trust ourselves, but we trust and did what the doctor or whoever the person in a position of power said. That's what we did, so it's quite different to then take that back. It's so empowering, though, and it's a great phase of life to do this in because you're looking, you know, it's that natural minimal phases and transformation to trust yourself and find the answers within you, and to find what you need to be able to show up as the person that you want to.

Rowena Jay: 1:04:50

And that's what leads to confidence.

Sarah McLachlan: 1:04:52

Yes, it does, doesn't it? That's what leads to confidence.

Rowena Jay: 1:04:56

I mean your confidence in yourself. You start to realise how confident you actually are, how amazing you really are because you start to follow that lead. It's a lead. It's following the lead.

Sarah McLachlan: 1:05:07

And then you, of course, your brain, gets that confirmation.

Rowena Jay: 1:05:10

Yeah, that's right.

Sarah McLachlan: 1:05:10

Oh, I think I should do this, you do that. Oh yeah, that worked really well yeah that's right.

Rowena Jay: 1:05:14

More happens, yeah, that's exactly right. That's exactly right. Yes, yes, but it's definitely not a one- day, one- day episode.

Sarah McLachlan: 1:05:22

And no, it is not the biggest thing. That's the challenge for a lot of people right, and I think so too, because we live in a 24 seven-instant on-d emand culture, now, you know, and many things about that are great, but we're still primal bodies and primal beings and we need that, you know, primal minds in some ways as well. We need that slow burn, that slow work.

Rowena Jay: 1:05:45

Yeah, yeah, we ourselves, we regulate ourselves and stop hyper vigilance and ground ourselves, and we can't make a good decision in life if we're not in that space either. You know we make the wrong decisions, we say the wrong things, we don't. All that comes from that lack of self- regulation. You know and these are things that we've talked about today interweavingly is what creates that self- regulation and that's that self- power that you talked about you know, that's the earth element, which is stomach, spleen, pancreas, which is all about the gestion right.

Sarah McLachlan: 1:06:16

Yes, yeah, that's right, it's all interconnected. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. We are very complex, interconnected, interrelated machines, beings. We're not machines, we're beings, yeah, yeah. So thank you again, Rowena. That was just amazing. I've so enjoyed our conversation. We could probably keep talking for another few hours, but we'll leave our listeners with their minds blown and thinking about that simple thing to do just that tuning in to themselves and doing some deep breathing and thinking about what they need, what their body needs, what their mind needs, just like they would any friend. So again, thank you so much, Rowena, for sharing your time and wisdom with us today. I will share how people can look or read more about you and find out more and get in touch with you in the show notes, so please do check that out, everyone. Otherwise, thanks again, Rowie, and I'll look forward to maybe we should do round two later on.

Rowena Jay: 1:07:14

I think I'd love that. That'd be great. Thank you so much for having me on the show. It's been amazing, very flowing conversation and, yeah, it makes me really grateful that we get to do what we get to do and all the training that naturopaths do. That I don't think people realize, because naturopathy is such a whole umbrella, and that's what just really showed and was evident today. It's like we really have such a great industry, don't we?

Sarah McLachlan: 1:07:39

Yeah, we do. I think we're really lucky. We get to learn lots of different stuff as a naturopath and practice and we all have our own interests or specialties, and it really is working with our past and present and future selves.

Rowena Jay: 1:07:58

Great Thank you so much.

Sarah McLachlan: 1:08:01

Thank you again, Rowie. It's really common for women over 40 to experience the chaos of changing hormones, mood, metabolism and energy. But I hope you know now that common doesn't have to equal normal for you or them. You can help others understand they aren't alone in feeling this way and that Peri menopause doesn't have to be horrific. By subscribing, leaving a review and sharing this podcast with other women in their 40s and beyond. Thanks so much for listening and sharing your time with me today in this Chaos To Calm the conversation.