Why Spiritual Insight Can Dysregulate Your Nervous System

Many people experience powerful spiritual insights through meditation, retreats, plant medicine, or personal growth work. But what happens when those insights don’t translate into real change in daily life?

In this episode of Happy Hour for the Spiritually Curious, Dr. Sandra Marie sits down with depth hypnosis practitioner, mindfulness teacher, and shamanic counselor Juliana Sloane to explore why awareness alone often isn’t enough to transform emotional patterns, relationships, or nervous system responses.

Together, they dive into the often overlooked gap between spiritual insight and true integration, and why many people who are deeply committed to spiritual practice still find themselves repeating the same behaviors, fears, and relationship dynamics.

Juliana shares how practices like depth hypnosis, mindfulness, and unconscious mind work can help bridge the gap between intellectual understanding and embodied transformation.

This conversation explores how healing happens not just in the mind, but through the body, nervous system, and unconscious patterns that shape our lives.

If you’ve ever wondered why you understand your patterns but still feel stuck in them, this episode offers powerful insight into the deeper layers of personal and spiritual growth.

Takeaways

• Spiritual insight must be integrated into daily life.
• Depth hypnosis allows for deeper exploration than talk therapy.
• Crisis can be an opportunity for growth and learning.
• Embodiment is crucial for true understanding of insights.
• Patterns can be influenced by ancestral lines.
• Scientific and spiritual practices can complement each other.
• The unconscious mind plays a significant role in our spiritual lives.
• Spiritual maturity involves continuous growth and curiosity.
• Balancing service to self and others is essential.
• Play and curiosity are vital for spiritual exploration.

Link

Juliana Sloane

Website: https://www.julianasloane.com/

• Upcoming events: julianasloane.com/meditation
• Upcoming Women's Retreat: https://offgridretreats.org/events/april2026deeprest
• Instagram: instagram.com/julianasloane

Transcript

speaker-0 (00:03.884)
Enjoy this Wild Soul Gathering production. I'm Dr. Sanda Marie. Pour yourself a really tall glass of spiritual curiosity and join me for the happy hour for the Spiritually Curious podcast. In the spirit of happy hour, cheers to some new insights, peace, revitalization, and perhaps an aha moment that may change your life. Welcome everyone. Dr. Sanda Marie here. Today we'll be discussing what happens when spiritual insight

outpaces emotional and nervous system integration and why awareness alone doesn't necessarily lead to real change in how we live, relate or regulate. We will look at how spiritual practice can sometimes destabilize rather than heal, especially when unconscious patterns and unresolved trauma are activated without adequate support.

I'm joined today by Juliana Sloan for this conversation. She's a perfect person for it. She's a depth hypnosis practitioner, a shamanic counselor, and a long time mindfulness teacher whose work bridges the therapeutic, the contemplative, and the transpersonal traditions. Juliana is trained through the foundations of Sacred Stream, Spirit Rock Meditation Center, and the Sadi Center for Buddhist Studies.

And she brings real spiritual credibility grounded in lived experience, not just theory. So welcome, Juliana. It's great to have you here.

speaker-1 (01:35.48)
Thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here. I'm excited for our conversation.

speaker-0 (01:39.928)
Yeah, definitely. Juliana, I'm really excited to dive into your work, but first I wanted to ask you, from your perspective, what are you seeing more and more of in people who are deeply engaged in spiritual practice right now? I feel like the landscape might be shifting a little.

speaker-1 (01:59.214)
Absolutely, this is such a great question and I think actually it ties into part of what you shared in your introduction. One of the places where I work with people especially is when they have had some kind of a spiritual experience, whether that's in a meditation retreat, a psychedelic assisted therapy session or ceremony, or simply in their own practice where it doesn't quite fit in the box of

the traditions they've practiced in, the tools that they know. And they're often really searching for greater meaning and integration of, okay, I had a really powerful experience, but now what? How do I work with this? How do I interpret this? I would say that is one of the themes that I'm seeing coming up over and over, you know, in another place that I think in some ways dovetails with this.

is this sense of, which I completely wholeheartedly agree with, that it can't just be the spiritual alone, that we actually have to integrate the insights that we've experienced on the meditation cushion or in the retreat or wherever it is into our life so that we can actually step forward and live in a courageous, open-hearted, very caring way.

integration of it's great to have a powerful experience that feels transcendent and inspiring, but then the next step is how do we actually weave that into the fabric of our being?

speaker-0 (03:39.17)
That is so important and I love that we're starting out with this because we like to bucket things off into the spiritual, the embodied and sometimes they forget we're still having the physical experience on this earth while we're doing all these other things. And so it really is going to come back to that somehow. Have you seen people become more dysregulated?

not less through meditation or spiritual work, especially when you get into the plant-based medicines.

speaker-1 (04:11.746)
I mean, it certainly can happen. think, you know, this is one of these places where everybody's different. One thing that I see, whether it's meditation or plant medicine ceremonies or, you know, breath work or whatever, is that if we step into something without the right teachers and support, without a good network of care in our world, without an understanding of what we're doing sometimes,

we can kind of overwhelm the system. And so part of what I think is so important as people become more spiritually curious, as so many of these practices become more mainstream, which is fantastic, is understanding how do I find the right people to work with? How do I find trusted practitioners? And also this understanding that

we're not entering into powerful healing work or altered state work or meditation. We're not entering into this kind of spiritual practice to bypass the trauma, the social responsibility, the realities of our day-to-day life. So, you my approach really is sort of, can we maintain one foot on the ground, solidly planted?

in this human experience while also tapping into and attuning to this bigger field of awareness that's available to us.

speaker-0 (05:50.042)
Yeah, that's very meaningful. And actually, we're going to come back and revisit some of the things that you had just mentioned. But first, I want to touch a little bit about one of the modalities that you use, the depth hypnosis in your work. Can you talk about what that is and how depth hypnosis works differently than talk therapy or meditation?

speaker-1 (06:11.744)
Absolutely. You know, I am a huge fan of depth hypnosis and other hypnotic modalities. There's a reason that I went down this path. Part of the reason, part of what makes it different is that unlike talk therapy, what we're doing is we're using that altered state of consciousness, this gentle trance-like state to go deeper beyond the conscious mind.

unlike meditation, where often, you know, we're using mindfulness, we're staying with the breath, we're learning to be observant of our mind and thought, we're going a layer deeper. So we're using that expanded, relaxed state of consciousness to go down and in and begin to investigate the roots of our pain or our patterns or our suffering and to also make real-time

nervous system and neural plastic change within the mind. So we're really going in with a purpose. How do we use trance work, altered states, deep relaxation to make a change, to be able to live more fully, with more ease, with more peace.

speaker-0 (07:30.904)
So when you're using the different forms of hypnosis or just even with meditation and it starts opening these old wounds, what do you feel is actually happening in the psyche or the nervous system?

speaker-1 (07:43.95)
That's such a great question. know, one of the things that I see happening over and over and over is that people are contacting the places within the body and that may be physical body, that may be energy body, that may be nervous system, where a lot of these stuck patterns, habits, traumas, the things we repeat over and over.

are kind of lodged. What's beautiful about this is when we do contact it, especially when we contact these places in a way that is regulated and resourced and supported, it shows us that we actually have a lot more power. know, all of a sudden we get to play with imagery, with metaphor, with archetype, and we get to see, what does it look like?

If I change the way this is showing up in my mind's eye, what does it look like if I bring support and resource to that younger part of myself that feels scared? What does it look like if I am able to actually work on this energetic and neurological level to change the habituated pattern over time? And

There's something that is so powerful in doing this. I see clients having big epiphanies around their past, their patterns, the way that they've sort of been collaborating with this old habit that no longer serves them. And I've also seen people have profound insight into their own worthiness, their own, you know, what makes them beautiful, important, meaningful love.

And I think it's incredibly important that we access those states.

speaker-0 (09:40.487)
That has to be so incredibly exciting for you to be able to get to that part of it and be the witness to that.

speaker-1 (09:47.372)
Honestly, it's the best part of my day. Every single day, getting to see someone have a breakthrough is just like, how could you want for anything more?

speaker-0 (09:57.27)
No, I can imagine. So let's shift a little bit and talk about spiritual crisis and even what that means. But do you think that someone could get confused distinguishing between a spiritual crisis and a genuine transformation?

speaker-1 (10:16.716)
You know, it's an interesting question. think a lot of the time when we are in a place of spiritual crisis, the way that I'm holding this idea of spiritual crisis, this may be when our spiritual framework doesn't feel like it fits into the experiences that we're having, when maybe we're having a crisis of faith. I've worked with a lot of people who have actually gone through

abuse of power and harm in spiritual communities. There are many different ways that we can move through what at first feels like it is a crisis within our spiritual practice, within our faith, within our conceptions of, you know, a loving and benevolent universe even. And what I think often this presents us with is an opportunity.

we're at a choice point anytime we're in spiritual crisis to say, okay, either I'm going to throw the baby out with the bath water, abandon everything that I cared about and gave me meaning and just say, you know, forget about it. Or we can turn to it and we can learn from it and we can ask ourselves, okay, what's really happening here? What can I learn from this? How can I understand?

myself and the world around me more deeply through this experience. And I think when we orient to crisis as a place of learning and growth, that's where we can actually start to make real change.

speaker-0 (11:55.714)
love that you frame it as an opportunity and that there are choice points because a lot of time, especially in some of the scenarios that you just mentioned, people feel like they don't have any control and that gives them back control. In your experience, how would you explain the difference between understanding something and actually embodying it? So, you know, we've been talking about the nervous system.

and regulation of the nervous system. So I think sometimes people get caught up in their head and disconnected with embodying things.

speaker-1 (12:33.902)
I am smiling so much for this question because this is actually, you know, really at the heart of what I think is most important about this work. That what we're really doing is we're using that altered state to get out of our own way so that instead of just intellectualizing something, we can feel it. So much of the time, and this is my experience as well as the experience of many, many of my clients, we've gone through therapy.

We've read the books, we've done the work, and we understand it with real clarity, with insight. We can talk about it. There's self-awareness, and yet there's something else that just feels like it's a little bit stuck. I'm thinking particularly about one client that I was working with recently who had basically a life-changing medical diagnosis and had been living with an incredible

incredible amount of fear and anxiety and trepidation around this. Through the hypnotherapeutic work, what we really did was reconnect to the internal experience of resilience and courage and hope and tranquility so that this new chapter could be faced with more space and more openness. And the way that

And this person described the experience to me is so much along the lines of what you're sharing. I felt like I could embody that sense of peace, that sense of resourcefulness rather than being taken over by fear. This is really, you know, my wish for all the people that I work with that we can just take this time to use some of these powerful tools that

all of us have the capacity to connect to, to actually embody a different state of being. And the thing that's fantastic about this is when we do embody hope, possibility, joy, connection, safety, whatever it is, those positive feeling states, they are so powerful that in and of themselves, they often have the possibility to sort of topple over some of those old patterns.

speaker-0 (15:00.376)
Do you feel like you've seen significant patterns or patterns that come up that are blocks more than not for people trying to make that leap out of their head into their body or just even believing, getting to the belief point? Because belief is such a big player in all of this.

speaker-1 (15:23.794)
Absolutely, you know, one of the things that I actually tell my clients real quick into working together is at some point, probably soon, you are going to ask yourself, am I making all of this up? Because it's so common when we have, you know, these intuitive or visionary or spiritual experiences that are a little bit outside of our ordinary reality that we start to think, well, I must be a

imagining this, it must be made up. you know, the beautiful thing and something that I find to be really important actually is the understanding that we are working with the imagination, that we are playing with our innate creative capacity that lives here within our body and mind. I have had some people come in, you know, very rational, very analytical, really want

to know like cause and effect and all the, you know, logistics here. Part of what we are asked to do in this kind of work is to let go of our intense clinging to, you know, scientific materialism, if you will, and to trust that within us there's more than that, that there's actually a vastness.

speaker-0 (16:43.426)
It's material health.

speaker-1 (16:49.47)
that may be even beyond words.

speaker-0 (16:54.292)
very powerful. I love that scientific materialism. People do get caught up in it. It's really easy. I worked in healthcare and I think almost because I worked in healthcare it was easier for me to let go of it because of what I witnessed. And as some people might say come to the other side, I don't know, they both seem to work well together for me.

speaker-1 (17:17.934)
They're both so important. And you know, I mean, this is one of the things actually as a Buddhist teacher, as well as a hypnotherapist, I find myself weaving in and out of these places a lot because what we do see is the scientific correlation to spiritual states. You know, they put people and meditators into an MRI machine and they see in scan form.

The things that the Buddha was teaching 2,600 years ago, the same goes for hypnosis. We're understanding more and more that things like brain-derived neurotrophic factor is something that is prominent when we're psychedelics as well as hypnosis. People know, okay, when you do hypnosis or when you do psychedelics, you're having a powerful experience, something's going on in the brain, but what they're seeing when they actually look at it in this way...

is that, yeah, we're actually fostering our own biology, our own physiological capacity to work with memory learning, neuroplasticity, cortisol levels, you know, pretty much all of the things that can support change. So I think in a lot of ways, you know, my hope is that we can bring these two to the table at some point in conversation that

The spiritual and the scientific really aren't actually so disparate, but we also need to stop disrespecting the things that we can't quantify or see or name so easily.

speaker-0 (18:51.342)
totally agree and I love how you explain it and you put it all out there. I believe that we're getting closer to that actually happening. mean, there are more mainstream conversations. You hear about these types of modalities or this information just not in the spiritual community, whatever that is sometimes. And medicine is talking about it. So you're right.

speaker-1 (19:16.878)
It's exciting to see.

speaker-0 (19:18.214)
It's very exciting. I'm just really excited for Medicine to let go of its fiefdom and open its curiosity a little bit more with that. We talked a little bit about this and I just want to revisit it in a different way because as we've said, many spiritually aware people have done all the work. You know, they're very committed. They've given themselves permission to open up and change a lot of these things. But yet,

folks can still get caught up in the same repeated patterns. Can you talk a little bit about what you think that's related to?

speaker-1 (19:55.758)
Absolutely. And you know, this is a place where I think that for every person there are some different layers that might be at play. When I'm working with people on a pattern that keeps repeating and repeating, you know, we may go into the experiences in their early life. We may go through looking at and understanding actually the way that some of these patterns get passed down through lineage lines in the family.

So you may be repeating a pattern that your mother, that your grandmother, that your great-grandmother repeated, and you may not even be aware of it until you start looking underneath the surface a few layers. At the same time, especially working with hypnosis and with coaching for the unconscious mind, I also work with people on understanding sometimes this is a deep spiritual issue where we need to

excavate those layers, we need to get down to the root, we need to do profound and powerful healing right there at the heart of it. And then sometimes there are also aspects of it that it is a habit of the mind. we have just, you know, neurons that fire together, wire together, and we have created such a strong neural pathway that something needs to shift.

And I find, you know, over here on the, we need to actually work with that kind of rewiring of those neural pathways. I often see that, especially with phobias and with certain types of anxiety, fear of public speaking, things like that. Often we can really do some powerful work just working on that sort of client-directed neuroplasticity level.

On the other side of things, you know, when we come to relationships, I work with a lot of people who are repeating the same pattern and relationship over and over. They know they know better, but they keep on choosing that partner that doesn't actually care for them, that isn't actually available. And oftentimes, you know, places like that where there is this very, very deep emotionally rich pattern, there are layers that need to be excavated.

speaker-0 (22:17.996)
I love how you just didn't generalize it and put things in different areas because it really does become unique to the person. It becomes unique to their lived experience. And as you also said, it's unique to their ancestral lines, which is something that's newer that was never talked about yet has so much influence over everything. But I'm going to ask you a question in general terms. What do you feel generally?

what integration actually looks like or means in a lived everyday life.

speaker-1 (22:53.87)
Great question. You know, when I think about what does integration look like, what I really hold it as is the understanding that our healing work will change the way that we show up for ourselves and for other people. We know we're integrating when we notice real time, sometimes subtle, sometimes very big.

changes in our behavior, in our reactions, in our ability to meet ourselves and meet the world.

speaker-0 (23:34.944)
Nice. I love that answer. What is your understanding of why insight does not automatically rewire emotional or relational patterns? So you just touched a little bit about that. A lot of people, think, think when they become aware, start having insight, they've done the work.

speaker-1 (23:55.158)
Absolutely. And I think, you know, insight is necessary. I'm literally an insight meditation teacher. It's the name of the tradition. So I place high regard on the experience of insight. Sometimes insight alone is enough and it sort of shakes up our whole world. Sometimes insight is like the key that unlocks the door.

but we still have to step through that doorway and find ourselves in another place and learn to navigate a new way. We have to sometimes address not just the awareness and the understanding, but the embodied, the somatic, the energetic, the nervous system level patterns and habits that were the foundation, the bedrock.

lying underneath the habit that we suddenly have inside around.

speaker-0 (24:59.16)
that works. So sometimes insight alone can take you on the path. Sometimes you need a couple extra steps. Okay. You mentioned earlier about unconscious work. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

speaker-1 (25:14.638)
Absolutely. You know, I think you probably are referring to the coaching for the unconscious mind. Yes. Great. this is a really wonderful modality developed by a hypnotherapist named Melissa Tiers. What she helps guide people through is how to work with that innate capacity to repattern.

our reactions, our thoughts, our ways of dealing with the world so that we can make real change. What that is really brings in so many different things. There's hypnosis, there's NLP, there's nervous system regulation tools. But at the heart of it, part of what we're understanding is that A, the mind and body actually can work on a

metaphorical level. So much of what's actually unconscious, about 95 % of our beliefs, habits, actions, choices, behaviors are all unconscious. Only 5%, give or take, is totally conscious. And the thing about this unconscious realm is that it's not this sort of talky, thinky, cognitive, analytical thing. It works in metaphors, archetype, color.

imagery, sensation, and that is actually part of the language underlying our unconscious experience. And so there's an understanding with this work that we can actually use metaphor, imagery, embodiment, nervous system regulation to speak to those less conscious mind parts of the self.

Part of what the real goal here, this has a lot of ties in also to the memory reconsolidation or coherence therapy work that's kind of right there on the cutting edge of some talk therapy practices too, which is pretty exciting to see. That if we can actually on working on this more symbolic metaphorical unconscious mind level, if we can bring up the negative pattern or experience or the trigger,

speaker-1 (27:38.06)
and we can actually bring resourced states, new learnings, new understandings right there in with it, that we can start to bring a new learning and a new understanding into the place where that habitual trigger or reaction or fear has been stuck. It's amazingly powerful.

speaker-0 (28:02.35)
Wow, that's pretty significant, especially with a lot of the different modalities out there. I would have never thought that it's only 5%. Interesting. Do you feel the unconscious self can shape our spiritual lives without us actually realizing it?

speaker-1 (28:20.756)
absolutely, absolutely. I mean, the first example that comes to mind is, okay, this is a little bit of my own early experience in spiritual community. So, unconsciously, I was raised in such a way that I was a little bit of a parentified child. So it was very much my job to take care of people, to make sure things were

handled to make sure everybody was okay, to make sure that there was harmony. My spiritual life found me for a very, very long time putting myself into situations in spiritual community where there were configurations of other people who needed me to take care of them in a way that very much mimicked some of the patterns of my early life.

And part of my path has been to recognize that there is a real difference here between being of service because that's our patterning from childhood and being of service because we're doing something that brings us great joy and satisfaction. So, you know, I went from oftentimes being in a position in spiritual community where I was

really helping behind the scenes, making sure everything ran smoothly, making sure teachers were supported, making sure the community was okay. And truly for myself, some of my own growth has actually been becoming more willing to step out into the front instead of being behind the scenes and, you know, show up for myself and my clients in a much more full way.

I would say that's just one example. There are unconscious motivations that are influencing us all the time.

speaker-0 (30:25.154)
that makes so much sense and thanks for sharing that. It really does link up nicely and I think that there's a lot of people listening to this that will lift an eyebrow to that and be able to definitely relate to it. So for you, what would 100 % service to self is equally as important as 100 % service to others look like?

speaker-1 (30:48.088)
Great question. You know, and I think it's all about balance. I think it is about being constantly curious about our intentions and our motivations. You know, why am I stepping into this role? Why did I say yes to this request? Do I need to say no to support my health and my wellbeing? Do I need to say yes because

there's an opportunity to really help another person. And this is a dance, you I think a lot of us, especially, you know, who were conditioned, raised as women. Oftentimes there's a real selflessness that we're taught, especially as I've entered middle age and have begun the journey of like, ooh, the hormones are dropping.

And this is again, where the physiological and the spiritual start to meet. I work with a lot of people who are going through perimenopause and menopause. And all of a sudden there's a spiritual and a lifestyle shift where maybe we've been in that pattern our entire life of putting others in front of our own needs and we have to make a change. So I think this is a lifelong dance for those of us who it is something to work on.

speaker-0 (32:07.862)
Yes, so I've witnessed a lot of what you've seen and, you know, I have had my own experiences. And I agree that it is a life, it's, tends to either get put in as an either or, one or the other, very polarized, and it's not. If you're really looking at they're both equally important, it's not. And it's the energy shifts back and forth. So, thank you for that.

speaker-1 (32:34.838)
Yeah, absolutely. know, mean, part of what this is making me think of a lot is when somebody starts to learn to set boundaries, oftentimes it looks like a huge pendulum swing in the other direction. All of a sudden they're saying no to everything. So you go from saying yes to everything to no to everything. And we're really trying to find that center.

speaker-0 (32:56.076)
Yeah. Early, very early on in this conversation, as we were just getting started, you had mentioned something about spiritual bypass. Do you think spiritual identity itself can become a defense mechanism? absolutely.

speaker-1 (33:11.118)
Absolutely. Absolutely. Without a doubt. I think in some ways actually part of the path of spiritual maturity is letting go more and more of the identities that we feel attached to. think we are living in a time right now especially. I see so much as you go on social media and you stumble onto some spiritual thread there and

There's so much identification. There's so much, you know, making an image out of a particular practice or the buzzwords that someone uses or the connection that they have to this or that teacher. And, you know, really each one of us is being called to get so real that even if we think we're a part of the coolest group,

or we have the best teachings, or we look so super spiritual, you know, wearing whatever nice outfit we have or nice scarf or whatever it is. What matters is what's underneath. What matters is how we live our life.

speaker-0 (34:25.918)
Absolutely, 100%. And I think that we are definitely at a time where letting go is more important than ever. And people are just shedding identities and beliefs, just even questioning themselves, like, why do I believe this? Those kinds of things. I'm actually seeing it more with people very organically.

not just in those social media platforms, but just in everyday interactions. know, sometimes I'm like, gosh, when did you shift or when did you change your thinking like that? And they'll say like, I've always been like this. And I'm like, I, well, okay. It's just, it's fascinating to me because it's really more thoughtful and it's much more conscious. And I think we're going to be seeing a lot more of it. It's, find it really beautiful.

speaker-1 (35:20.75)
I'm excited about it. really, hope and pray that that will be the case because I think we've landed ourselves in such a turbulent, messy, painful situation as a world, as a country right now. And so much of that is actually rooted in blind belief. I think about the way that especially in 2020, 2021, so much conspiracy theory.

sort of stuff started popping up and that filtered very much into spiritual spaces as well and you know the prayer that I think I am living right now is may the kind of veil fall from our eyes and may we just see really clearly and really truthfully what is supportive to the well-being and the easing of suffering of the global community.

versus what is something that's just rooted in an outdated or confused belief.

speaker-0 (36:21.934)
Awareness and clarity are definitely, I think, bigger topics and safer topics for people to approach this with these days. And I do feel like there's more conversation on that. So to shift just a little bit, what's the risk of trying to transcend things that actually need to be felt? Because there's a little bit of both there.

speaker-1 (36:47.902)
Absolutely. You know, I think a lot of places that we can get into trouble in spiritual practices and in healing modalities is that conditioning, which is a cultural conditioning to want to transcend. This is something that most religions that people are raised in, there's this transcendence. You're transcending to heaven. You're transcending to enlightenment.

in the time of the Buddha, 2600 years ago, before Buddhism was established, the wandering ascetics, the spiritual seekers of the time put themselves through incredible deprivation, essentially starvation with this understanding that if you conquer the body, you could transcend the body. And so this question here of

transcendence versus going kind of down and in, think is really timely because part of what we are being called to do is, you know, before we transcend anything, we actually have to go deeply into something. We have to go down, we have to go in, we have to experience the depths of it and really know it. At that point, you know,

Maybe transcendence isn't even the right terminology anymore.

speaker-0 (38:16.308)
Ooh, that's gonna be interesting. I'll be pondering that one tonight. That's an interesting statement, because we don't know. So much is changing, and so much of what we thought we knew, or just even how everything interrelates and work seems to have different shifting at this particular point in time, which is exciting and beautiful, but also like, huh, what is the...

new insights or experiences going to be that come to us with all of this. With all of your work, what are some recommendations that you would give on? As you're working with your consciousness, you don't want to lose your grounding because grounding is really important. You have thoughts on being able to keep a balance with that?

speaker-1 (39:06.218)
Absolutely, you I think it is so important for us to find whatever practices work for us to stay grounded in the here and now as well as to open up to this broader consciousness, field of care or benevolence or however we experience it, awareness. You know, some of the things I would really offer as

the most basic suggestions is to have a real honest reckoning with yourself of do I tend to be the kind of person who really just wants to spend all my time in that sort of elevated, open, spiritual place? Or am I the sort of person who maybe is kind of like, I have to stay grounded if I

don't pay attention to the here and now things and I'm not taking care of all the tasks, something bad will happen. Both of those sides of the extreme deserve our care and our tenderness and our support to come into that greater balance. And for somebody who maybe you err more on the side of like, I'm not gonna worry about paying my taxes right now or.

I can do that later because I'm just, you know, here merged with the divine. I would get really curious about what is it about being grounded in ordinary reality that feels distasteful or frightening or hard? And is there something there that actually needs to be known and supported and healed? you know, likewise, if we have a real tendency to just be kind of

only focused on business, you know, maybe we're just at the computer hours a day and that's kind of it and our spiritual life is suffering. I would get really curious. Is there something that I'm avoiding? Is there something that I'm afraid of? What would it look like to maybe just spend five minutes in the morning standing outside at dawn and listening to the birds singing? You know, can we give ourselves just a little more space?

speaker-1 (41:24.074)
All of this really is, can we get curious and can we see what is the medicine that is needed? Where is the balance perhaps a little off kilter?

speaker-0 (41:35.384)
That's like an incredibly great, great answer. So it goes back to that self-awareness. You brought up the curiosity. Curiosity and bringing play into it, I think, are just not talked about enough, the importance of it. And why not?

speaker-1 (41:56.682)
Absolutely, absolutely. In a completely other part of my life, I'm actually a performer in an improv comedy team. And, you know, we perform throughout the month, you know, year around. And what it has given me is actually this powerful access to a place where play is front and center.

One of the big learnings in that has been when we are playful, when we are curious in that way, so much is possible, so much more connection, so much more discovery. It's also a place when we're playful, it's a great indicator that we feel safe. So it shows the body, shows the nervous system that we're actually in a safe, in a place where it's safe and comfortable enough and supportive enough to play.

So I actually love to bring play into my work with clients a lot of the time because my goodness, we have these amazing minds. can discover and imagine all of these things. And how is that not actually, you know, yes, deep and serious and profound healing work, but how is it also not like the most fun we've ever had?

speaker-0 (43:15.828)
agree and I just recently did a show on the importance of laughter and the guest on the show said, Spirit said that laughter is actually a directive that it plays such an important role in all of this that she said they're saying to me now as I'm speaking to you that it's actually a sole directive laughing and I was like wow okay that's

I can see that, but yet we see it as so unimportant in the state of our lives or because we see what's going on in the outside. But even if you're not watching TV and you're not consumed with all that polarizing stuff that's out there, I still don't think that it gets its due time with us.

speaker-1 (44:06.542)
You know, one of the things that I really feel a sense of trust in is if we look at our life or some activity in our life, some moment in our life in the here and now, and we think about our young little kid self that are most zany and playful and weird, if that little kid would be happy about what we're doing, it's probably a good thing. It's probably a really good thing.

speaker-0 (44:33.134)
I agree. You mentioned spiritual maturity a little bit ago. What do you think? How would you say spiritual maturity looks in daily life? Is that another thing where it's really unique to the person?

speaker-1 (44:46.39)
I think that spiritual maturity really the biggest indicators of are we in a place where we are on that path towards spiritual maturity because just like our growth in our life, we can never stop growing. If we are aware that there is always room to grow, to learn, to heal, to explore, that's often a really good sign of spiritual maturity.

the places that actually concern me is when I meet somebody and they're like, no, I've done all my healing work. I don't really feel like I have anything to work on. Because to me, that's an indicator that we've stopped being curious about our own practice.

speaker-0 (45:29.592)
That makes sense. That was words of wisdom. And with my curiosity, I'm just curious, what does it look like when someone's really ready for deeper unconscious work versus what you just said, I'm all done with this, I've done all my work, life is good, I'm moving on.

speaker-1 (45:48.844)
I think anyone who feels a genuine pull to deeper change is probably ready for doing some work with the unconscious mind. It is something, you know, there are young people who are at the very beginning of their journey, even into adulthood that I work with, as well as elders who are in the final months and years of their life.

And the readiness really is when you know that you need a little bit of extra support, you know there's just something deeper there that wants to be known and supported. That's a really good indicator that it might be time to check it out.

speaker-0 (46:35.49)
thank you for that. Juliana, for the listeners who want to learn more about you and your work, which is there's a whole breadth of different modalities and work that you have, how would they connect and what does that look like?

speaker-1 (46:50.892)
Yeah, the best thing to do is to log on to my website. It's Julianasloan.com. And a couple ways to connect. One is for one-on-one work, hypnotherapy, coaching. There's a little button that people can just push to schedule a 30-minute introductory call. I like to have a little consult with folks to make sure that it feels like a right fit for both of us.

answer questions that they might have. So that's something that's always available. I also teach online and in person throughout the United States. So there's a meditation link on my website that has all kinds of meditation classes and events and things coming up.

speaker-0 (47:36.458)
and I'll make sure that I get that in the show notes. One last question before we finish up. If there's one way people can begin bringing their spiritual insight out of their heads and into their daily relationships, their nervous systems, their loved lives, what would you suggest they start paying attention to?

speaker-1 (47:59.158)
letting yourself just for even one minute just pour your awareness down into the body. And it might just be taking one minute and feeling your feet making contact with the ground as you walk. But just starting off with baby steps is not a bad idea.

speaker-0 (48:23.904)
I like that that makes sense. Don't overwhelm yourself coming out of the gate, but don't think that you can't get started.

speaker-1 (48:31.8)
episode.

speaker-0 (48:33.262)
Well, I'm really grateful for this conversation and the work you're doing. Honestly, it feels deeply supportive in a way that's very rare and very needed. So thanks a lot, Juliana.

speaker-1 (48:44.696)
Thanks so much. It's so good to be with you.

speaker-0 (48:47.192)
day. Thank you. And I want to send a special thanks out to each of the listeners today. Appreciate you joining Juliana and I and remember, stay curious and be open until next time. Thank you for joining us for this episode of Wild Soul Gatherings Happy Hour for the Spiritually Curious. To learn more about our guests, please go to our website

Wild Souls Gathering dot com. We're very eager to hear from our listeners what you thought of the episode, topics you might like us to cover in the future, your thoughts on spirituality, questions you may have. Please feel free to send us an email at Wild Souls Gathering at gmail dot com. This is your host, Dr. Sandra Marie, sending each of you peace and love. Until we meet again, embrace your wild soul.