Essentia: Rise & Thrive Featuring Catherine Garceau

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Whitney: Hello and welcome to Rise and Thrive. This is a series where we explore some of the biggest topics in wellness and how they affect our sleep so that you can learn to wake up every day, feeling rested, recharged, and ready for anything. 

I'm Whitney Lauritsen the moderator and I'm joined by Jack, the CEO and founder of Essentia Natural Memory Foam. And our special guest today is Catherine Garceau an Olympic medalist and author of swimming out of water. We're recording the podcast on clubhouse today to have a live discussion about the healing power of E F T.

Catherine's going to take us through. 360 degree approach to life, which decreases stress, promotes positive thinking and enables better emotional awareness to release negative habits. If you're live with us, I'm clubhouse today, you'll have a chance, a little bit later to come up on stage to ask questions of Catherine and we encourage you to visit myessentia.com/podcast.

To get more information. This broadcast and Jack has usual Ella to start off with you to see if you have a further introduction and talk more about why you invited Catherine on here today. 

Jack: Absolutely. Thanks, Whitney. Well welcome, Catherine. Finally got you on here. It it's I, I guess interesting with with all the traveling that, that I do and peop great people.

I get. All over the world. I met this one person who happens to be from Montreal and we connected we connected years ago through the Blackhawks. I believe you were working with the players of the Blackhawks. And you heard from you, you heard about us from them and we connected from that point on we, we, we worked together.

We crossed paths in Vegas. And even here in Florida, when you came to my home and I got the firsthand experience, kind of the emotional intelligence and emotional tapping that, that you did. And I was kind of blown away. Cause that was fantastic. I was, I, I knew, you know, I already kind of was bought into how you explain what you do, but when you experience it for yourself, it's fantastic.

So I hope. Everyone listening and everyone who, who followed this podcast will try this out and you know, I know you work a whole lot with women, but for the guys out there getting some emotional intelligence is really, really important. Trust me. If, if hardcore hockey players can get, can, can understand the benefit of getting out of an injury and the emotional side of getting performing. So I'm, I'm excited to have you here. 

Catherine: Thank you so much, Jack. I gotta, I gotta get back in this technology. I've been back in, I've actually been baby land the last three years, having two daughters and just being really dedicated to like being a whole mom. So it's really cool to be back almost like full circle with where I left.

Before, you know, I started a family and a. Yeah, I think the Blackhawks wasn't even our first connection. I think I, I found you on Ben Greenfield's website because I was looking for the best mattresses. I knew that that was like a thing. And then I, I, I knew Ben's work a little bit and then I saw you and somehow I think I got a mattress at first and then started working with, you know, one of the players in the Blackhawks and then.

He was on the mattress. So I was like, wait a second. Who is this guy made this thing? So there's a lot of synchronicities that I think led us to connecting let alone both of us being in Montreal at the same time and meeting at the airport the first time. So that was pretty cool. Yeah. And it's, it's, it's really exciting for me today because I've been putting together some projects.

And realizing that I was sort of out of the initial stage where, you know, Ariella, my youngest was really like clingy and dependent. I don't like the word clean. He actually was just very close and I'd done, you know, attachment parenting. And I believe in that. So it was really cool too. Experienced that, and now I'm like starting to like really be excited for what's next bringing what I've learned as a mom, even to emotional tools and emotional techniques that not only can better be better for performance for parenting parenting, but also to pass on to our children.

So I'm excited for like, sort of the generational thing, like you were saying, Jacqueline. Maybe my son might like this. And it's it's so, child-friendly because it speaks to that nervous system that, that really does want sort of that freedom. So yeah, we can get into different things. I'm sure. But.

It's kind of my my, my gratitude beginning of like, I'm so grateful that we're back here and, and thank you for inviting me on your podcast and thank you for the incredible work that you do, because I really believe wholeheartedly in your mattresses. And I've been I think we, we have three or four in our house, so we 

Jack: also got a you've got a family mattress, but to give you everyone a little bit, if you can imagine when you came over to, to to my house in Florida and it was basically, you said, you, you need to experience this for yourself because I, you know, I, I think I was even introduced it to a few people just believing what you do, but I hadn't personally experienced it.

And he said, well, you need to just try it out so I can re. We were there in the living room and my father-in-law was visiting. And, and you were like, standing on my shoulders were doing all kinds of stretching. And I gotta tell you, I was like walking on air. I was like, I felt like I was floating after the whole stretching part of it.

But then when we got into the tapping, that's when it was you had me in tears, by the way. I agree. Probably show you, remember that and how you. Just from that whole process. And I thought it was funny. You asked, you know, w we talked about weight and, and managing. And we tried to get an emotional detachment from me and Nutella.

So it was a fantastic experience and it really, really works. And I saw how, how how that emotion really played into what something gets as strange as tapping. Tell us about a little bit about that.

Catherine: Of course. Yeah. The stretching and all the stuff is more hardcore. Obviously like when you can get me at your house and I go, you know, just like a very all-inclusive transformation from the body and everything, but tapping by itself is so powerful. And one of the reasons why I chose it as a tool that I wanted to really become an expert in was because of the. Not only is it really effective, but it also is a tool that once you kind of learn it, you can do it to yourself.

And it's, self-empowering where you don't necessarily always need the practitioner. Of course, at the beginning you need a practitioner so that you can know how to use it. And then you get in confident and all that. But there's little simple things like just before this. Technology ended up happening. And I was like, I cramped up cause I'd been so long.

And I was like, oh my debt, my gamut point. And this is a point right here. It's not enough for people listening. It's on her hand right below the sort of fourth finger and fifth finger right below. And there's a point there that actually. Calms your nervous system, as soon as you do it. So while you're just tapping gently with two fingers, you can't get it wrong.

You can't be off of it. It doesn't matter if you would get it wrong. Cause even like over time you would work through it. But I was like, okay, practice what I preach, do my little gamut. I just started breathing. My computer was taking a while to load on and, and then it was. Nothing happened, you know, it's just like, it brings you back to like the nervous system, not gap, like picking up on all these stressors and piling them on.

So for an example of the Nutella that you're, you're bringing up when we have an experience with something, whether it be a negative experience, like we call them small traumas, even little things as children or. But get to us, they're kind of like a small little T trauma. And yet in the nervous system, it's kind of like, there's like a glitch.

The nervous system picks up. Like you have a TV that's you remember old TVs and it was cold and it was all gray. That's like our nervous system. It has that little. If we just go on living, living, living, all that gets piled on pal dog pattern. And what tapping does is by way of tapping specific points on the body, which are connected to the meridians.

If you know Chinese medicine acupuncture, they use these points and acupuncture. Well, we don't technically need needles. We can actually just use our, our, our fingers and tap gently on those points. And it's kind of like a way into the nervous system where while we're tapping. And we're voicing things that we are stressed about.

We're anxious about we're addicted to like the Nutella. Like I really want this Nutella tastes so good in my mouth. You actually put in the emotion while you're tapping and the nervous system only like, it's like, it's getting a message of like, wow, I don't have to have a huge charge about this. And it's not that it makes the memory go away.

If it's a bad memory, it doesn't make the Nutella go away, but it will neutralize the, the charge. And it's, it said that any time there's resist, like if you resist it, it persists. When you resist something, that means you have a charge. So when you, you kind of calm it down to a neutral place where it could be a traumatic thing I've done tapping on really, you know, sort of traumatic things from my childhood.

I could tell the story now and not break it. Because it's neutral. And that means that it's not affecting your nervous system as much. And that's where, like I started seeing how tapping was so powerful. And for me, it helped me. I wrote a book in the swimming, out of water. I talk about the eating disorder I had.

So I related to the tele because growing up, I was assured. Like monster. And then that way of like, it was my, it was my nurturing, it was the only way that I somehow developed the ability to calm myself down with food. 

Jack: Okay. Did you start the cause I know not everyone listening knows you're a medalist at the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

And obviously when we see Olympians, we, we just think of them. And you know, today we were discovering a lot of people are a lot more open about their issues while they're going through. But is this something that you were, what were you struggling with and did tapping come after you've retired? Or was this something that got you through the Olympics as well? So just a little bit of your background. 

Catherine: Good question. Yeah. I did not have these kinds of tools back then. I had a good sports psychologist that I felt really cared about me, but unfortunately it did feel like the eating disorder creeped in or in the end. We won the bronze medal and then I was staying on the team to, I became the team captain and I was going to go for another four years.

And in those actually two for two first years, I took on too much. I went back to school to take five courses. I was like, oh, I'm going to be great at school and synchro. It was just too much. In my nervous system, talk about nervous system. It got so overloaded that then the binge cycle started binge purge kind of thing.

And I was seeking. Psychologically, but I think my body was too much in a burnout and I couldn't see it. So it's like, you can't heal when your body's just constantly stressed. So that's when actually in 2002, I went we were in worlds. Switzerland and in our last, like, sorry, in the circle before we swim and we always went over our sort of our checkpoints of what we wanted to do in that routine.

And I remember literally hearing a voice from above saying, this is your last swim. You gotta take care of yourself. So I, I knew, I just told the girls at the pool. I, I, you know, I took the airplane row home and I was done anyway. It was weird. I wasn't even sad. I was just like clear get out now. So luckily I had that because I think a lot of athletes struggle with the retirement part because it's such an identity that it's easy to just kind of all just do another year.

I don't know what else to do. I'll just do another year. Yeah. So maybe in a way it was like a curse and a blessing of like, I, I knew my health was caught. My, my, my soul was calling like for, is done. You need to calm your system down and figure out a way out or a way through this eating, because it's, it's definitely not heading in the right direction.

And it wasn't until years later for the second part of your question that I discovered tapping. And when I did, I was like, oh my gosh, like, I think this is going to be really beneficial because I could tell that. My mind knew how to heal myself. I was so smart. I could see like all the healing centers, what they were doing, but I'm like, no, I don't have to be forced fed a perfect diet.

Like there was something that was just not a fit for what I knew I needed. And when tapping came into my life, I was like, duh, like the emotions and the nervous system just hasn't had an ability to reboot and tapping you. You get to reboot your nervous system. Tap by top. You don't have to do it all at once.

You can just do little things and then big things are S you know, so that's how I started. I went through the certification and that was it. Step my, I remember my teacher right away said, you just got to go out and do this. You're a natural. And it was just because I could connect to people's like almost like feeling bodies and I could really help them discover their own tapping.

Like in the sense of like, you know, when I asked you a question, you were like, I was in tears. It was because I was trying to just get you to see the truth about what you're experiencing. Yeah, I think good practitioners do is like, they're really holding space for you to rise up, like rise and shine. So, yeah.

Whitney: Wow. Well, so much of this is resonating with me and I hopefully our listeners as well, and it's, there's so many directions I I'm excited to go in today. It actually just, no. That we were doing, the session was helpful to me because I've done tapping off and on. I've never been that committed to it. And then every time I try it, I asked myself why, because it's so simple.

It's always there just like breathing. You know, when I remember to take deep breaths, I can feel the power of it. And when I tap and feel my stress melting away, it's it, it reminds us so much of the power that we have and the tools that we have, whereas. It feels like in society, we're often encouraged to look outside of ourselves for things to hire somebody, to go do something, to buy something.

But knowing that you can always tap on your body to instantly feel something. And one thing I definitely want to touch upon today is, is how that intersects with sleep. One of my friends last night was telling me that she got a really bad night of sleep. And as you're speaking, I'm thinking, well, imagine if she had.

Learned EFT. She could perhaps do that to help her fall asleep. Could you speak a little bit about how that would work and are there specific tapping techniques that are just for helping somebody fall asleep when they're having insomnia? 

Catherine: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So I think insomnia or lack of sleep can be so many things, obviously, as we know, it can be stress, it can be physical, it can be like the wrong kind of food before sleep, or it could be an accumulation of like, not sleeping well.

And then your belief systems like, oh my God, I can't sleep. I can't sleep. It is just like a going thing. Right. So I actually have helped a few people that come to me over the years that it was asleep thing and it, yeah. Starting with something simple as what do you feel like sort of the hour before sleep?

And it could be, I feel anxious cause I know I'm not going to sleep. So you start with that lock layer and you might be like for people watching, you can watch me or people listening. You'll tap on the different points at which actually on YouTube. There are so many free videos of really good people.

Brad gates, I think is a good one. He has a lot of ones on prosperity on this, but if you just put tapping for sleep tapping for anxiety of sleeping or insomnia, you will find probably free videos that will give you the exact thing to say for those issues. 

As an example, you might be like even though, so that the setup sentence, you, you tap on the side of the, the, your hand while you're, you're tapping and sorry, while you're saying that setup sentence. And it's usually something like, even though I'm anxious, cause I won't sleep.

I love and accept myself. Even though I'm anxious. I feel like I'm not going to sleep again. I love and accept myself, even though I feel anxious, I'm not going to sleep. I love and accept myself. Then you're going to go to the other points top of the head. I can't sleep inside of the eye. I can't sleep outside of the eye.

Oh my gosh, it's going to happen again. I'm going to be up all night under the I, this, this stress about not sleeping under the nose, this stress about not sleeping. So you'll go on like that. And then you probably do two rounds. And before you start, you can say, how on a scale of one to 10, how high is my anxiety?

And you might be like, it's at a 10, cause I really panicked about sleeping. And then you might do a couple of rounds and the videos will show you that this, if this is one of your, your issues and it, after you might be like, wow, I feel like at four, but I still feel the stress. So you do it again. And where I go, where the need for a practitioner comes in.

Okay. If there's something really chronic often it's like, because there's an underlying sort of small tier big T trauma that is driving that habit, that became an issue, you know? So it could be. There was something that happened at night when you were little and that stress got stuffed so deep and all of a sudden, at some point in your life, when you're stressed, it starts to come out again.

And you're like, why am I getting the stress? And I, you could have, you could have noticed your parents yelling at. Because they were trying to do it when you were sleeping, but you heard it or something like that. There's always something that you can discover that a practitioner might be helping doing discovery work there.

That if it's like, there's a concept in tapping it's tables and legs. So the top of the table might be, I can't sleep at night and the legs of the table are my parents used to fight when I had such a bad sleep when one time when I was 12, that I got scared because of something, whatever. And if you tap on those legs, maybe there's two big ones or three big ones, the whole table.

Because there, the nervous system sort of imprints stressors that are holding that sort of behavior or stressor in place. So it's wow. Therapeutic. When, when you had that practice, even if it's for a few sessions, because then you're like, oh, you get a big one out. And then you, you get how to be your own detective, even more.

That's for sure how it worked for me. Cause I could see the, like the power of the tool, but it was like, okay, wait, how do I navigate my whole life into this? So that's where like the, the play on self-reliance and working with someone comes in place. 

Jack: We talk a lot about so many different people who are recovering I mean, in our world. We're always dealing with people that are either recovering from chronic disease or, or, or injuries and all that. And when you're trying to recover or when you're even just getting out of the physical recovery, there's a, there's the whole emotional side. And that's, that's the whole thing that, that you need to then unblock.

And then to really thrive again, you need to one take care of physically, but then the emotionals and, and, and. You even dealt us and I don't want to name names, but it's a pretty amazing top star athletes in, in hockey world. So you help them transition out of injury to getting. What were you trying to achieve to get them back on the ice?

Catherine: It's funny? I mean, I closely, it was like one Claire, and then there's also an LPGA player, a woman golfer. That's one some big, big ones. And I, it's so funny because the different reasons why they would reach out to me were never. The the big ahas or breakthroughs they ended up getting. And funny enough, a lot of it came back to relational relationships, not being happy in relationship.

Not manifesting their man where this golfer is now happily married and it's like, all those things were causing Setbacks in their game, in their sport, because there was a part, I think, of their heart that was like upset, sad, revengeful, all that stuff. So it was really interesting to me because even funny enough, like even the, the, the man, the men that I've worked with back in those times were more like, okay, I want the resistance stretching.

I want the mosh thing. I want the activation. And then I'd be like, are you open to some emotional work? Oh, sure. Sure. And then it was like, like breaking that shell, but the physical work helps because it like, almost like calms the whole system. And then it's like, oh sure. I can do anything. And then emotional works obviously like shows different things or like even.

What's it called chewing tobacco. It's a big deal for hockey players. So a lot of them kind of want to stop the habit, but it's so ingrained and it gets them a little bit like energized. So that was also a thing that I remember being, you know, in there. So. Yeah. It's like funny how, especially men, like you notice, you mentioned at the beginning, there's a desire to be better, stronger, more flexible, and all that stuff on, especially in the having, you know, the, what is it, human hacking or that, but biohacking.

But if you look at it and really know about like Joe Dispenza's work and all that stuff, Our emotions create basically our whole day, our whole reality. And if we're not aligned with our nervous system and we think we are, cause we're like saying positive affirmation, all that stuff, but some sabotage is coming in.

Usually it's because of the layers and layers of. Shoved down because that's what we're taught to do back in the day at school, you know, and now, you know, the, the children that we're, we're kind of co-creating with, we're all like, how are you feeling what's going on? And we're really teaching them this emotional intelligence from a young age, because I think that's going to be the new earth we're building, you know?

And it's, it's exciting because all of us are having some form of awakenings, you know, and it's, it's just, it's really cool and, and, and exciting for sure. 

Jack: You're a, I mean, life has changed for you the last two years. First of all, when you, you said earlier, when you take out a lot, I think you've always taken on a lot.

They just can't picture you. I mean, from. Years that we've known each other. You've lived in LA Sydney, Australia, Northern Ontario. You're in Florida and back in Montreal. And now you're back in Florida. So we do have to hook up sometime soon in first. And but now you're a mom, right? So, you know, you have two lovely children and you mentioned something to me when we were speaking the other day and tell me what it is. You're, you're doing something called birth ready for women. What's that? 

Catherine: Yes. So funny enough, like when my partner and I met, we were both in the, you know, all alternative sort of holistic way. And one of the doctors I had followed was Dr. Dittman. He wrote a book called Brighton. Maybe this was before I even met my partner.

And I was like, okay. Baby stuff, you know? And then I, I realized when we met my partner, we'd got pregnant rapidly and we're like, okay, let's do this. I called back Dr. Dittman cause he was a friend. And it so happened that the book is a really thick book. That's all about how to prepare your bodies to actually.

Pre conception to have really healthy everything from the man's sperm to the woman's body and everything so that you can conceive super healthy babies. And then on and on in the pregnancy, what you can do like king tone is one of the like minerals that I would take. And it was just like they're called ketone babies and all this fun stuff that we did.

And one of the things that came up. Birthing at home. And so we are for sure doing home births and for the first birth we were in Australia on the gold coast and I wanted a midwife that wasn't so. Part of the system. So I could just kind of do my own thing and have her support if needed. And it so happened.

Her name, Liz lace, she was a gem and she's now retired, but yes, she had done, I think 500 home births and had sent one woman to the hospital that was only after a birth, just for hemorrhaging. And it was like her confidence almost like. I got her. I got her so deeply that my, our first birth was like effortless, not effortless, but it was, it was well it went really well and Layla was born in.

I bought a four hours in the, in the bathtub and, and then areola came and she was beyond the, the time that they were saying the due date, you know, we were in Florida and I was like, there's something she's not turning, you know? And so it ended up that she was a postured birth, but I still did it fully naturally with our, our, our wife.

And that is like an not usual because usually you'll get. Going to the, to the hospital and you'll be going with the forceps, turning the baby and all those things. To me, just kind of, they, they just showed me that a lot of the emotional work that I have done on myself, a lot of what my husband and I were working with of like, just bringing in the positive energy and like the pure surveillance of what we wanted to create really created births that were beautiful.

And I believe that not everyone. It's the her path or whatever, but I, there is a path that is perfect for each person. And so I thought, what if I created a program that had all like a tapping toolbox through videos of all the main fears, whether it be fear of fear of hemorrhaging, fear of my baby dying, fear of like the core being around the neck, all these things that we hear that back in the day when there was no such thing as like the hospitals and all that.

Women birthed their babies in the, in the jungle. Like they would just go and birth them squatting in the forest, you know? So it's like, that's far out when you think about it. Our bodies are designed for this. They're not made to be in a bed with her legs up. And it's like, I asked her that 

Jack: women's body are made for this. I don't think emotionally, mentally handle any of that pain you're describing. 

Catherine: I know I was surprised by the pain. The second one humbled me, me and Ariel. I was like, okay, we had a contract. Cause this is like beyond what I thought. But again, it was like, The initiation. I think that a woman goes through when you, you, you follow through on that is so powerful.

It's like you can do anything after this. So anyways, And funny enough, one of the techniques was called a game ready. And it was, it was a technique I learned for players before their games, before whatever. And it was like a visualization. You go through the garden and then you go, do you take all the power from nature?

And you take it onto your, the ice, the, the, the court, whatever you're going to. And that was a powerful. Process that I would do with some of the players. And then I thought, huh, instead of a game ready, I can do the birth ready. And the birth ready is applying all those performance. You know, surrender, flow all that to birthing because I probably had that innately in me, but I want to share it with the women.

So it's going to be really like a cool, comprehensive course, bringing in resistance, stretching for the women on. A lot of things that I've done for years and just putting it in a video format so they can do it at their own pace at home during their pregnancy. And yeah, it's, it's, it's going to be fun that way, I think.

Whitney: I love all of these things that you're working on and how you think about them and how you bird that all these projects into the world is really amazing. And I truly just listening to you, actually, I was going to say earlier when you were talking. Through tapping, just watching you do it and hearing you say it.

Gave me a feeling of ease and comfort. And again, it's such a reminder of how powerful it is that even you don't even have to do it to yourself to feel some of the power and then imagine doing it on yourself and how powerful that can be. And I also love that point that you made about working with a practitioner like yourself to go even deeper than you can by just watching a YouTube video or listening to an audio training.

One thing that seems to be ongoing. Stress and for people that is getting overwhelmed by all the changes that are going on throughout the world. So we have the pandemic, or we're constantly going through different waves of changes there. We also have a lot of changes happening online, and this has been my personal feeling of anxiety.

I simultaneously love the whole online world. But get overwhelmed by it. And that's what I was doing, my tapping around today to prepare. And I'm curious when somebody is feeling really overwhelmed, let's say by a new project or perhaps bringing a new person into the world what are some of the techniques that you can use to help relieve any anxiety so that they can step into their power and feel more confident about their day?

Cause we have a lot of entrepreneurs that listen, we have athletes, we have people that just want to up level. But maybe facing the barriers of overwhelm or burnout as you mentioned. So what are some techniques around that, that you can share? 

Catherine: Yeah, I feel like it's true. Overwhelmed can be so parallel. Cause it's like you hit, you hit it and you're like, you can't even do what you want to do. And then it gets worse. Yeah, I mean, tapping is one and I think I have one on overwhelm I could share and put it in the notes. I would say another one for sure. Like you mentioned earlier, the easiest and the breath work and all that.

Belly. I mean, hands on the belly reminds us to breathe in our lower, like lower belly. If you watch a baby Britain breathe it's, it's always the belly, the lower belly that's breathing. When we're breathing up here, we're actually in our like sympathetic, we're not in parasympathetic where we want to be so overwhelmed.

We were definitely be in the, in the high breath here. And then if. You breathed down there. That's what the activation that does the work that I'd done, the reflexive performance reset. Cause we go into the, so as, and the socialize is the muscle that basically is like the fight or flight muscle and it connects like kind of your, your legs to your body.

So it's, it's that sort of when you're stuck, sitting too long and what do we do mostly in this today's society technology we're sitting and while we're sitting or so eyes is getting tighter and tighter and our breath in our. Is like running out. So just putting our hands on her belly could help sort of give us that the biofeedback to just go and literally practice.

It's even hard to do it when we haven't done in a long time to breathe down there. And yet the children do it just naturally without even, you know, thinking. So. Getting the belly breath was a huge thing for me. And I try to pass it on to everyone in that way. And it's a good reminder for me right now to like, as I navigate change.

Whitney: Catherine, perhaps for our listeners who may not have felt as cued because Jack and I are watching on video right now. Could you lead us through something that somebody could listen to or could participate in just by listening. If they're not watching, is there a little practice that we could all do. 

Catherine: If you put this is like beyond, also like the belly breath, for sure. In your belly, if you put one hand on your heart and with that one hand on your. You go, you take your other hand, it's a little tapping, but it's not you, you go to that, that point between your, your fourth finger and your fifth finger.

So if you're listening, it's just like underneath, like, let's say the ring finger on any hand, it doesn't matter. And, and the triangle below. Sort of the knuckles right in there. There's like a crease and that's where you want to tap. And that point is really like a direct point to calming your nervous system.

And when you're tapping, you can just tap gently with two fingers and you're breathing in and you're breathing out.

And while you're feeling your nervous system, calm down, maybe just a tiny little bit, you don't have to expect a huge. Huge changes. Welcome. Just a small little shift.

And then that small little shift allows you to breathe a little bit deeper.

And then I think I like, I like to remind myself and everyone. We think we need to have more, self-esteem more, this, more that to do those big things on our list, but it's just taking one little. I call it step esteem and it actually gives us the confidence after we've done it, but we think we need more somehow to accomplish this huge overwhelming list or an overwhelming project.

And I have the same thoughts for birth ready. Oh my gosh, what am I going to do? And it's the same thing. Just do one little action I can do today. And then it's like, oh, of course, like just keep doing it. And I think. You know, technology, like you said, like there's just so much distraction and competition in different in it's like comparing and that whole thought it's like coming back to your breath, coming back to your own heart.

And just knowing that you have that uniqueness about you, that is bringing your unique gifts, that that are just them. They don't have to be better. They don't have to be fast. They don't have to be. Huge. They could just be one step at a time.

Jack: I want to introduce you to my son. I don't know if you've met him before, but I feel that all this emotional intelligence, all these techniques we're fortunate to usually get that later on in life, just because, you know, experience meeting people. You know, and when, when kids are going through either their undergrad or whatever, graduate school are under so much pressures that, and, and just the small techniques that you can learn.

If you learn them at a young age, they can really help you through through those, those times, which, you know, as an adult, we look back and we say, yeah, that was easy. Looking back at when you're a 20 year old. Yeah. I guess it was easy, but when you're living through it, it, there are challenges. There are real challenges, right.

Whitney: And I feel like what you just did was speaking directly to me. And it reminds me honestly, I'm like, does she know I was really stressed about, but it also lends to that. So many of these things are universal and so many people are struggling with this and that. Of self-esteem not feeling good enough, always wanting more, always feeling faced with more decisions.

These are things that many people are experiencing at once, and there's almost like a comfort in knowing that you're not alone in that struggle. And I'm glad that you brought that up. And I also feel like this is a good time to pause, to see if anyone in the clubhouse audience has any questions. So for any of our live listeners, if you want to raise your hand, there's a button at the bottom of the screen.

You can tap on task, any questions and see if Catherine can give you some custom advice or we can get into another topic before Jack and I continue on, we have about another 10 minutes or so before we wrap today. And if there aren't any questions, I'm sure Jack has a bunch more that he would like to ask. So we'll turn it over to Jack. And at any point we can pause for a question from the 

Jack: so w well, yeah, obviously, like I said, I had the firsthand experience working with you, which and, and I think you have that, that, that gift also that wouldn't when we work together again, not expecting to get into this emotional.

Discussion with you. You just made it so easy to engage and easy to open up to you. So I think that you have that naturally to you and it just makes it perfectly. So, what, what are you doing with birth ready for women? Are you, are these zoom meetings that you're having videos? You, you mentioned videos, but are you actually having one-on-one sessions with women?

Catherine: What I was feeling was birth ready would be really. I'm building it right now. I have someone helping me on the tech side and then basically just getting space with the girls, a routine that I can create and record all these videos. And then, so it's going to be all a recorded and then I actually have a, on my birth ready.com.

You can go on there and you can enter your email if you're pregnant, you're thinking about having a child, but I also have an extra email. Opt-in just because I am, I'm doing more word of mouth of like the private coaching or tapping. But I figured people listening to me online or different things that I'm going to be doing.

I wanted to have somewhere where if someone's like, I really want to tap where I want to do I'm in Florida and I want to do some, like whatever. I put on another Sort of opt-in for those people for tapping. So if you go to my birth ready.com, you're going to have that. And you could see it as like, if you're not penny, you're birthing yourself, like you're rebirthing.

And that's what I feel like there's, there's that energy of like tapping you can rebirth yourself. And with obviously the stretching and the washing and all that, that's a sort of a whole other category of like comprehensive work. But even that I'm glad I took time off because it's very. Demanding for the person giving that work, you know, cause you're like hardcore stretching, resisting, and it's like a workout for me as the practitioner.

And with the girls, like, it was just easier to take a pause and tapping I could do from anywhere in the world with zoom or anything. So it's kind of cool to have that option.

Whitney: That's beautiful. Well, we do have a question from Stefanie. 

Stefanie Gomez: It is kind of a little bit more in the vein of, of birth ready and that whole experience my sister is expecting. So I'm going to be an aunt for the first time. Very exciting. But she has expressed to us that she does want to kind of keep this more natural birth path. No epidurals, none of that stuff, which to me, I don't know mind boggling, but I was just wondering from, coming from a person who's gone through kind of that more natural aspect to birthing, what did you find was the biggest support from everybody around you or how, you know, what, what made you feel best about choosing that path from the people around you?

Like how best do I support her? You know, this journey that she's going to go down, that, you know, none of us are really familiar with and we that weird. 

Catherine: Oh, thank you for your question. That's really beautiful as, as your, as a sister too, to want it be that support and not knowing how it's interesting because a lot of the moms I've worked with even just as friends so far, because I haven't put myself out there as much creating that bumpy.

When, you know what you want and it might go a lot of it might go counter to mass consciousness a little bit as far as birthing per se. And I think it's important to maybe encourage her to even say, okay, like, I encourage you. I honor you, I'm excited for you. I'm here for you and you don't have to be like no at all or anything, but also help her create her safe bubble because it is hard to be in that space.

When you feel a lot of projections from other people's fears coming in and saying, are you sure what if this happens? What if this happens? What if this happens? And then you're like, ah, I'm the one pregnant, can you please. Put that into my bubble. So in Kenneth, Kara encouraging her to have her bubble.

I mean, I've had moms literally like disconnect from family members because it was not productive. And it's funny you say the epidural thing because it's one of my main it's it's like so connected to the, the tapping and the emotional body. Because if you think about it, a lot of us came in. You know, and it's not talking about blame or nothing.

I mean, these we've just been brought up to think so many things that might not be conducive to the nervous system, but like, it's like, don't feel you're feeling numb it out. And the baby comes in with that programming a little bit. Right. If you think about what epidural is, it's just taking the pain away, take the feeling away, take you can't handle the feeling.

Just, just take a little bit of this and it'll help. So. I believe that like the baby's being birthed without that, it's like, they're like, all right, I'm going to feel my feelings. And I'm going to just be here and be in my body and not escape the feeling. So that's one of my funny that you mentioned it.

Cause I wasn't even going to say it, but it was just like, whoa, like that's one of the whys. If you talk about why. It feels like that is such a gift that we can give our children through going into the terror, maybe of like the sensation. But if you just go, this is only a sensation and it will pass this as a sensation.

It'll pass. It's just like feeling. And I don't know if this kind of scared you at even more from that path or not. I think that you could be an awesome, awesome sister to your pregnant sister by just accepting her choice and encouraging her to go through. And being that cheerleader, if even if you're not on the same beliefs, it doesn't matter.

I've had that with my sister where we support each other. We're different, but now it's like, we're, we're coming together when just supporting each other's choices. 

Stefanie Gomez: Yeah, definitely. Thank you. 

Whitney: That's an amazing question. And actually, a follow-up to that. Since I've had many friends that wanted a natural birth, but didn't end up having one.

What is your recommendation for someone who has a birth plan that doesn't end up turning out that way? Which seems to be very calm. Yeah. Cause there seems to be like a lot of like disappointment or self judgment or feelings of failure. Like I didn't, I wasn't able to do this naturally and now I'm beating myself up as a woman.

Catherine: I think that's going to be part of my program to have like a tap taps for after, because. No matter what I feel like life, especially when you're clear with your intention, it will still give you what you need. It might not be what you want and maybe what you need is a full surrender into what actually happened and the acceptance and the love, no matter what.

And I know there's even leaders online that I follow and coaches that have had that experience where they're like full blown, natural preparing the home birth. Something not so good happen. They end up doing the plan BC or whatever and or whatever it is. And it's like, okay, okay. I did my best. I did my best.

And it's not exactly what happened and just like everything in my life. I mean, I've been tested and it's like, Okay. I can't control everything and I could always put my best foot forward in what I want to create. And it doesn't make me shy next time to keep putting that best foot forward. Whereas like women have had two scenarios and then finally had their home births at the end with our third child or whatever or not.

And it, it doesn't matter. I think it's just being, given the tools and the power to at least go for what the field. Initially, and thank you for the reminder of that, because I think it will be a beautiful thing to have in the program so that there's not a feeling of like, I'm a failure now, what do I do?

This doesn't work, you know, because there's a lot of factors. Genetics to body type to you know, today's society of like what went through your system? The man, the man in your life, is it feeling good? Is it not like all those factors affect how the hormones play out during the birth? So it's not a Bulletproof formula because life isn't Bulletproof, I don't believe in, all we do is, is do our best. You know, attend to what we feel like is the best thing to do. 

Whitney: Yes. And obviously this advice applies to any time we're feeling like a failure. So I think that's just an incredible reminder for us, no matter what's going on in our lives. And it also feels like a nice wrap up point. And Jack, I wanted to turn it over to you to see if you had any final question or thoughts before we, we end this wonderful session.

Jack: Well, my thoughts are I think I want to bring you into a scene that you're in Florida right now. I'm going to bring you into the Essentia team. And maybe we have a room here where we can, where you can meet up with each individually one at a time. And I, you know, I, I you know, as, as myself, obviously when you're leading whole bunch of people, you feel responsible for them.

So there's the, the stress and pressures that come with being a leader, but everyone in the team is leading in their own. Well, they're leading into my marketing team, leading in sales, leading in our financial side. So everyone has a hazard self-imposed pressures to, to perform. And that comes with anxiety and that comes with senses of successes, but also senses of failure.

So I'm going to be recruiting you to put some time for us here at Ascensia because like I said, you know, we focused in, on birth. We focused in on app. We are all going through this in all parts of our lives, whether it be as a parent as, as, as, as a as, as an entrepreneur, as, and so in all aspects of our life, we're always dealing with the emotional side to every decision we make.

So I, that's why I really wanted to share it today that. You know, I, I reached out and said, you know, we've got to get you on the podcast because it's all about sharing. What, what, not everyone. So it's not such now that, you know, yes, you can search, you can reach out to Catherine, but when you don't know about all these modalities, you don't necessarily know that that, that help is out there. That sort of help. 

Catherine: Well, thank you, Jack. Your openness, because that's where it all starts. You know, like you can say, thank you for your belief and all that. And you believed in me in the beginning because it was just like, cool. That sounds exciting. But you were open enough to, to open yourself up. And I think that's the biggest thing you can do for even your company, because now you're like, whoa, this can really shift this person.

I know this. Person's a little stressed about that. And then it's like, boom, everyone raises their frequency. And by raising your frequency because there's less. There's no, there's no other result, but, but a better result, you know? So it's cool that, that you're committed to that and you look great by the way, it looks like you've been working out and it's awesome.

Whitney: And Catherine, on that note for any of our listeners who are feeling excited and interested, curious, they want to learn more. Where's the best way for them to learn more about the work that you're doing to get the opt-in to get in in touch with you?

Catherine: I'm in transition right now. So the, www.mybirthready.com is the best place to the opt-ins. And for, if you are interested in, you opt in for like, actually, like, I'm really wanting to do coaching, I want to do tapping. I will reach out. We can have a chat, just like a quick call so we can know like, is there a fit and all that. So I, I definitely like to be personal in that. And then I'm also, I mean, I'm the most active on I haven't been recently cause I've just been like in transition, but probably Facebook is still my most active because of just the long running sort of support from my, my own friendships and teams and synchro.

It's like, everyone's on there for me. Instagram's kind of starting and then yeah, I'm excited for this Clubhouse. I'm going to get into some conversations and then it was just amazing. And maybe y'all, haven't followed the technology like you guys have, but I'll get, well, I was gonna say, since you're into Facebook, maybe you'll be doing tapping in the metaverse once that a technology develops. So what's that? 

Whitney: That's Facebook. New project all based on AI and virtual reality. So I wouldn't be surprised if tapping becomes part of that too. So lots to look forward and we will link to all of this in the notes for this episode, there's a full transcript. There's the recording links to everything that we mentioned today or at myessentia.com/podcast.

So we invite you over there to get all these details. Learn more about Catherine. Find out about the other episodes we've recorded and anything upcoming. We're so grateful to have you here today, Catherine. Thanks to Jack for coordinating this. And we'll be back again soon with another episode. Thanks everyone.

Have a wonderful day and best of luck with the tapping. I'm going to be doing some today after this. Thank you so much.