And I said, Okay, that sounds really good. And then it started, because I’m saying, Okay, fine, I’ll take care of it. It’s four o’clock in the morning, I’m just going to go back to sleep. And the universe says, Uh, no, you’re not. You’re going to sit down. As a matter of fact, you’re going to write the full intro. You’re going to write the first full promo, and it’s going to be a few minutes long. And I said, Alright, fine. So I got up at four o’clock in the morning, wrote it all out, and I started doing podcasts. I joined a group that both of us are involved in, and they directed me to Krystal. I asked Krystal to be a guest on my program toward a better life. And Wow, we hit it off and we just have so much in common. We have so many cool things to talk about.  

I went through the same thing with Krystal when she first came on my podcast saying, Okay, so when do we really start the podcast? And we had probably, I don’t know, know, 20, 30 minutes  on the phone before we actually started. So I appreciate Krystal’s insights into helping people, helping people where they are, helping people to help themselves, and learning that life really can be a truly enjoyable experience if you look at it that way. And if you choose to look at it from a negative perspective, guess what you’re going to get. And I said, You know, we have so many different things in common that we can do with that so this is cool. This is awesome. 

Krystal Jakosky:    I love you and I want to put you in my pocket and just carry you around with me. Thank you for the boost. One of the things that Kevin and I have the opportunity to really connect with and is dear to my heart is actually the native path. And so today, in the interest of bringing more awareness and more understanding about possibilities and different healing modalities that you guys can dive into, finding your peace, finding your direction, finding your life, I really wanted Kevin to come on and talk about his journey with that native path so that you guys can understand a little bit more, because some of us are really drawn to it. I can tell you that any time I hear those drums, I am bouncing and walking around right along with it, because there is something that speaks to my heart and soul, and it brings me joy to be in that area. So Kevin, what drew you to the native path? Tell me about a little bit of your background and what brought you to that new place?  

Kevin Pennell:    I became really curious about how the indigenous people worked in close harmony with the world around them. They saw the trees as their brothers. You see the animals as their brothers and sisters. They would call the trees, not trees, but they called the brothers, called them the tall ones. Would call the stones, the rocks, grandmothers and grandfathers. They would go into a sweat lodge or they’d call them the stone people because they were the wisest people, because these stone people have been around for thousands of years. And the only way that we have to communicate is if you’re really in tune with stuff. You’re walking a long garden past some place, maybe out in Colorado or Texas or Minneapolis or wherever you might be in this little stone. You’re just drawn to it and you say, I got nothing, but it looks cute, so I’ll pick it up.  

And you, and if you actually tried to tell that person, you do know that that stone just talked to you, Right? They’d say, Yeah, Right. What planet did you just fall off of? But I was always intrigued by the natural world, and I’ve always been intrigued by all the beauty of the natural world. And then I found myself just getting interested in that. And I started to say, Well, I wonder if I have any native blood in me. And I said, Well, you know, and at the time I was living in Broward County down in Florida, and we had a pretty big library. The library in Broward County was huge. And they actually had an archive section, and you could go in, believe it or not, Krystal, you could go into there and you can look up the original manifests from the original Mayflower.

Obviously they’re micro-fish, but it was amazing. We’re talking about handwriting Okay. That they had preserved from some place. And I’m going to just casually conclude the other, you know, and the curiosity part comes in. Oh, I wonder if Pinnell is in the right place. Yeah. 1637, third Mayflower, there’s a Pinal. I went, Oh my gosh. My family’s been here since 1637. And I know my dad had told me that, you know, the other crew came in from Wales, around sometime  in the mid to early 1700s, because our ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War. So, geez, you know, common sense will tell you, I’ve got to have native blood in me. Right. I’ve been around here for three to 400 years. It’s got to be native blood in me. Right? So I started that path and I started chumming around with different folks, and I was really drawn to a couple of folks.  

One of those people as a person, I wrote about. The book is Two Feather Spiritual Seed Planter, and it’s written by Kevin Laughing Hawk, which is my spirit name that he gave me. But when Kenny and I first met, and this is shown in the book, when Kenny and I first met, I went into that guy, and I’m just talking with him because I was curious, and at the time I was doing news for local a radio station, and I said, You know, I wonder, I’m not really into the idea of interviewing this guy for a program, but I did see him identified in a local newspaper, The Gainesville Sun, I think it was. I sat down and I talked with him, and I just said, You know, you’re an interesting man and I would really like to share a little bit more with you.  

He said, Sure, by all means, what questions do you have? And that short little time ended up being two and a half hours, difficult to do with you. Well, if you knew two feathers, you’d see that we’re on the verge of destruction here for taking up time. Oh, wow. Both of us just went on and on and on. And one of the most significant things that he said to me, he looked at me and he said, I do have a question for you, Kevin. I said, What’s that? He says, Do you know who you are? And I said, Well, sure. I know exactly who I am. I’m Kevin Pennell,  I’ve been a pi, I’ve been a cop. I was in radio, I’m in radio now, and you know, I’ve done this, I’ve done that. I’ve done, No, no, no, no, no, no, no. Do you know who you are? And I said, I, I don’t. He says, We’ll go to that later. And he told me also, You know so you write news stories? I said, Yeah. He says, You know, maybe someday you ought to write a book about me or write a book about us. And I went, Oh, yeah. Right. Yeah. Like, I’m going to do that. 10 years later I did.

But, you know, so that’s the process. I was, you know, Kenny and I got together and I looked at him as my, my good friend, my brother, my teacher, my mentor. We are convinced that we were related in a past life, and we’ve got proof in our hearts and our spirits that that’s very, very true. And if I had a picture of him someplace, I would try to pull it up here to show you, because particularly in the cover of my book, and if you go to Amazon, you can see it. And people would look at that picture and they’d say, Well, it’s about Ken two feathers. Why did you put your picture on the cover?  

And I didn’t. That’s Kenny, that’s how close we looked like each other. And when I was living up in Maine I’d be on the street walking along and somebody’d holler across the street, and this is a little village up there called Bethel. He would holler across the street, and they would say, Kenny. Kenny. And I’m looking around Flood, trying to find Kenny. I can’t see Kenny anywhere,  I turned around and then said, Oh, wait a minute. You’re not Kenny  

They were talking to me. Things for a compliment. Yeah. Thanks for the compliment. I really appreciate that. Nice thoughts. But Kenny taught me so much about this stuff, and I was still convinced that I was Native American. You know, after all, I’ve been here for 300 and something years. My family’s been here that long. I mean, my gosh, I’ve got to be Native American, Nope. Few years ago, Vicky, who’s my partner, got me one of these DNA test things, and I found out that I am Scott Welsh, Irish, and a little bit of German. And here’s the cool part that I didn’t expect. I’m also a Viking.

That answered a lot of questions for me, because if you go into some of the history of the Carolinas and some of the Virginias, you’ll find out that a lot of the intermarriages that took place a couple of hundred years ago with the Cherokee people, and it looks like they would intermarry with Celtics. If you start looking at the Celtic traditions, and you look at them in comparison to Native American ways, both of them honor the earth, both of them look at the spirits of the world, the spirits of the animals, the spirits of the earth, the spirits of everything. And that’s enough common ground to cause a beautiful relationship between people. So instead of turning my back on it saying, Well, you know, I’m not Native American, I’m a human being.  

And that’s what Kenny would tell you. He says, there is no such thing as a Native American, an indigenous person, this, that, the other, we’re all human beings. And that is the essence of it, is to become a human being and a true human being as someone who not only honors the earth, but they honor people and they honor others’ ways. And that continued the journey. But it wasn’t until about a year or so before Kenny crossed over that I came to the realization that, Nope, I’m Scott Welsh and Irish mostly. And I’m okay with that. But in the midst of all of that, what I learned over a period of 15, 20 years of exposure to some of the indigenous people, particularly northeastern woodlands, Kenny was a penobscot and Sarney. You have Pinco, Mick Mack, Ma,  Paqua, you know, all that group that’s up there in Maine and New England. And I sat under his tutelage and learned a great deal about sweat lodges, about getting, giving a name about the significance of having a spirit named significance of the sacred pie, significance of the giveaway. All those beautiful stories and how I made them a part of me. And in sharing that book, I encouraged other people to do this as well, from a standpoint of not becoming a Native American, but to become a better human being. So there’s the short version.

Krystal Jakosky:   The question of, do you know who you are? Is a terrifying question, I think, for a lot of us. I mean, on the one hand, absolutely, I’m so and so, and this is what I do, but do you really know who you are? And to be sitting, you were drawn to indigenous people, you were drawn to the Native American ways. And to have this person sitting there asking you such a deep question You said, I’m Kevin Pennell, and I do this and this, and this and this, But inside, were you freaking out?  

Kevin Pennell:   Oh, yeah. 

Krystal Jakosky:    How did you move from, was it in just that one interview where you moved from where acquaintances and we’re checking each other out, and I wanted to know more about you that you automatically moved into, I want to take you under my wing. Or how did it change from just these two people meeting to, you need to learn more about who you are, and I want to teach you?

Kevin Pennell:   It was one step at a time. In the book I talk about asking for a teacher or looking for a teacher, and it was still a curiosity. And I’m a curious person. I’m a very curious person, underscore that several times. And curiosity can be a blessing, could also be a curse. In this instance, it was a blessing. And the curiosity continued that Kenny says, Oh, we’ve got a Native American gathering coming up. Next month they have what they used to call down around Dad city, They called it the full moon ceremony. And it was beautiful, and it was on the full moon. And you would, we would have all these different people come and, and it was intertribal and even those that were not native and yet called to it, and don’t let me forget, I want to go to that in a second. Their essence was drawing me toward a deeper understanding of these people that were so beautiful and so wonderful. And I said, You know, there’s got to be something here and I can’t quite figure it out. So I kept going back to Kenny and talking with him. This wasn’t just one conversation. And to answer your first question, I’m sorry, was, you know, did you at that point in time realize that you were the student and he was the teacher? The answer is no. The universe knew it.  

Universe knew, it’s taken us this long to get you two guys together crying out loud. You have no idea what a pia this has been.

 And as we moved along, I started hearing about gifting tobacco and asking for a teacher. And really what that means to ask an indigenous person to be your teacher. Kenny taught me a lot as far as being very traditional in some of this stuff, and I’m not dissing anyone for any of this, but, there were people that if you wanted a teacher, then you not only gifted tobacco, but you gifted money. And if you wanted a sweat, you gifted money. It just goes on and on and on. And I’m not I’m not dissing anyone because that’s just their path. But the way that I was taught is, if I want a teacher, I gift them tobacco. If I want a sweat lodge, I gift them tobacco. If I want them to awaken a spirit pipe for me, I gift them tobacco. Why tobacco?  

It’s bad for you. No. What it is, is, is it actually, the smoke is lifted with our spirit thoughts in the smoke to creator to the universe, to the ancestors around us, because that’s how the prayers are lifted. That’s why so often tobacco is looked at as a sacred herb, because its essence, the smoke as it’s burned, lifts our prayers and our intentions to the universe around us and the ancestors. So you would gift tobacco. And after a month, I’d say, I realized I really do want to know more about this. And I ended up gifting Kenny Tobacco and asking him to be my teacher. Part of that entailed, when you asked someone to be your teacher, you are like, I still use the term today. You’ve opened the door. You’ve opened the door to what you’ve opened to allow that person to share with you what they find to be the most benefit for you to be a better human being.  

And guess what? Some of those things they tell you, if you’re a good teacher, you may not and you probably won’t like. Because they tell you stuff that is better for you as a person. And I’m not going to sit here and tell you that it was all actually roses. As roses have thorns, Kenny upset me enough a couple of times that I wanted to punch him. I’m not kidding at all. It just irritated the crap out of me. And he had me, I’m gonna steal your term. He had me own my shit. And I really didn’t want to own my shit because it’s my shit. It’s not somebody else’s. And it’s so easy to say, that’s your fault. You just don’t want to admit to it because it’s your perception. Yeah. So after a while, I became his student, he was my mentor. So he was my student, I was his student, I was his man, he was my mentor. I’ll slip on that because the interesting thing is, when you get in deep enough with somebody, the roles do reverse. You establish a beautiful relationship that is beyond words.  

And as he would say, I’m not sure about our timeframe here, but if you can do this while we’re talking, I’m going to find something since it is going to be shown on YouTube, there’s a beautiful little story if I’m allowed to do this. Okay. 

Krystal Jakosky:    Yeah. This is your podcast. Well, it’s my podcast. You are my guest. You can get to do what you want. 

Kevin Pennell:    If I can do this in a camera. Okay. So I’ve got, There we go. I’ve got three dots here, right? Yeah. Okay, So now I’m going to take this, I’m going to draw a couple of lines here, and here it is again. 

Krystal Jakosky:    Further back, hold it further back so we can see it better. There we go. Okay.  

Kevin Pennell    So when we’re here, this is you and I talking to you, Krystal. Okay. Yeah. But the relationship that we’re forming also forms another relationship.  

This is our higher selves communicating and they’re communicating in terminology. We cannot identify, we cannot communicate because we don’t know, we don’t understand that language. So in a higher form, you and I are communicating. And that’s how Kenny and I were, and that’s how all relationships are. If you really look at it, and it’s when we have these types of relationships that people should understand that. I don’t want to go down this road because it’s a whole nother podcast. But if you are in a situation where you need to end a relationship, this needs to finish or not finish, but you’d redefine it.  

Because you’ve had that communication at that level. And so you have to figure out a way to make it real, to make it a good thing. And one of the things that we’ve used, I know some people think about affirmations, and I got an affirmation years ago, and this was not native, it was not indigenous, but it came from a spiritualist that I met down in Florida. He was an elder in a group down there. And the words go, you put a name or an object in the beginning of this affirmation, you’d say, Jack, I now release you to your good. The good of one is the good of all. Now keep those three little things in mind that I just showed you because Jack and I have had a relationship. But now we need to shift that relationship. So the I that I is the divine side of me, the higher self that I now release you to your good, I now release you to your higher self.  

I now release you to the good intentions that you have. The ultimate result of that is in doing so, you help everyone and yourself included, because the good of one is the good of all. And that’s how you do stuff. If we realize that it really helps our relationships a lot more, so you can see where I can, we can really go to town on that. So that information was shared with me in that it’s so important that we really do get the picture of what it’s like to have a relationship with someone and to be integrated with that person because we are not just linear, but the whole picture. Yeah. So we’re embraced together in that whole thing.   

Krystal Jakosky:    There’s a ton in there. And I was trying to quietly and discreetly take some notes because there are so many things that I want to jump back to. I do the same thing. So, I love the illustration when I am working with a client or when I am being taught with somebody. I have, I have for a long time, 20 years, been very aware of my higher self. And there have been plenty of times that my higher self has been talking with the other person’s higher self. Then I understand. So it helps me to see their perspective. It helps me to see their point of view, why they feel a certain way. When I’m working with a client, I make sure that the conversation between my higher self and myself is very clear. So that if there is information that I need to give to my client while I’m teaching them how to listen to their higher self, it’s a very sacred and beautiful connection that you can build and you can really honor like yourself with your higher self and understanding and trusting the information that you get from them.  

And as a teacher and a student connection, it’s even more sacred and special because of the added depth of the relationship that can happen because of the fact that you’re willing to spiritually connect together. My husband has this phrase, he says, the student becomes the master. And I think that goes to your comment that, that it does, we shift for a little while. We become, we are the teacher or we are the student. And after a little while, we are going to shift and we will be the other, we will be the student or the teacher on some level in some manner. And it’s a beautiful give and take because we’re all human and we all have experiences that we can share to help change lives in beautiful, gentle, and not so gentle ways. Some of the best lessons that I have learned are the ones where I just kind of want to flip the finger and say, Screw you, I don’t want to talk to you anymore.  

Kevin Pennell:    And then I have had those clients who they don’t talk to me for a week or two because what I ask them, what I am inspired to ask them from my eye or power saying, Hey, you need, you need a bigger nudge than what you’re willing to accept right now. So I’m going to say this. And it really upsets them. It’s really infuriating. And yet they always come back and say, thank you.  

I needed that. I wasn’t willing to accept that. And the way that you did that was so fabulous. It hurts like hell. It pisses us off. And yet those moments, as long as we’re still saying yes, and, and I’m going to choose into this, then we’ll see what happens and where it goes. And I’m really grateful for you, that Kenny was able to push your buttons.

Krystal Jakosky:    Am I? You have no idea. He, he came in, I’ll go ahead. No, you’re good. No, no, no. Please. You had a question. I want to because I will ramble forever.  

Kevin Pennell:    No, I was, what I was going to say was actually to the audience and the fact that oftentimes those people who are so challenging have the biggest lessons. They have the biggest opportunity for shifting, for growth. If we step back, take a moment and ask, Okay, what am I supposed to learn? What am I being shown? How can I deal with this? Instead of shutting down and putting that wall there and a million locks and everything else to push that person out of our lives, maybe we step back and say, Okay, how can I learn and how can I grow and how can life be better because of this really frustrating moment that I am experiencing? So friction is good.  

Krystal Jakosky:    It is something, somebody ought to come up with a line like breathe in and breathe out. 

Kevin Pennell:    Right. Thank you.  

So a little while back, I want to bring us back to this because I wanted to come back and you mentioned that you wanted to come back. The whole concept of you thought for sure that you had Native American blood in you, that you were somehow related to that. And then you go in with Kenny two feathers and you’re learning from him. And you said you wanted to return to this concept of the fact that you actually don’t have, and yet you were learning from.  

So in some work that I had done on my own and thankfulness to others, for what it’s worth my background, degree is in theology. And I did a flip some years ago and I will not, again, I’m not going to put anybody down because they go to church because that is the level of spirituality. That’s the way you achieve your level of spirituality that  you feel that you’re growing from and that you’re getting a lot of benefit from. And that’s fine. It’s just not who I am anymore. It was part of my process. I don’t regret any of that. But all that being said, I’m leading into something. And that is that I strongly believe in reincarnation Now, I believe in it so strongly that I can tell you that there were incidents in my life where dreams that used to come to me after I had made a shift and I had made a change that was needed in my life, Guess what happened to those dreams? They stopped because I made the change that was necessary. And I realized after I had had this one, I had one dream that was, it was to the point,  it would actually become nightmarish and it would wake me up. And it was scary. I’m sure people have had these kind of dreams where you would have a dream where you either you want to punch somebody and for whatever reason, everything goes into slow motion and you can’t quite get your fist into it where you need to go stops  

Yeah. Or you have the other situation, which was this one that I had a spear in my hand and I was native. I was a pueblo and I had my spear and we were being invaded and I knew that I had to do something and I just kept trying to move forward with this. And it’s, I’m going to kill you. I’m going to do this. And nothing will ever happen with that. I had a past life regression done by a colleague of mine and came to realize the reason why I had such a hard time with that is because that’s not what happened. Oh. I was a spiritual leader of that group, and I had taken the vow to be a peacemaker, and that meant that I didn’t raise arms against anybody.  

And the truth came out that I watched my family get killed. Wow. And that was tough. And after I realized what was involved with that, I saw for the first time in that juncture, a real essence of what I was in that life. Not only had it been that, but I also found that there were some roots in the Kwa Nation. And because I was, I talked with somebody one time and we were just having a great time, just like you and I are having a great time right now. And we started singing some wonderful songs and some of the songs that just came from the heart just came from Spirit. I’m just going at it. And the lady that I was with at the time, she says she just held her hand up and she was black feet and Polish.  

That’s a good combination. She said, You need to stop right there. And I said, Why? What? You know, what did I do? And I’m still, this is like three or four years into my, two or three years into my path on some of this indigenous people path. What did I do? Did I offend you? And she, No,  have you been around K people? And I said, No, I’ve never been around Kwa people. Where are they? And she says, Well, you know, up Midwest. And I said, Okay. So what? She says, Well, you’re singing in the K language. I got nothing. And again, I did some more work. And I’m, I’m comfortable with that, that Kwa. And some people say, Oh, you’re just one of those frilly, fufu people that just believes in anything and everything.  

But what I’ve got also down deep inside of me is a real sense. And it was brought into full light when I saw, and I heard from Kenny, but I heard about a story that was given down, I believe by the Hopi, and I can be wrong, but something about that there are so many souls who are out there from the 500 nations that occupied North America. There are not enough bodies for the souls that have crossed over. And so some of those souls went into the people of today, the white people, and those that have the hearts and the minds ready for this sort of thing.  Okay, I can accept that or not, all I know is this. I’m going to move along with the way that time feels. I’m the most comfortable. And so, I will talk about, you need to be very wary of being too comfortable because you know, you can get so comfortable that you no longer grow. But comfort in this act, I would say not comfortable, but content with the concept that I’m confident that I’ve been in native in the past. And that’s why one of the reasons I gravitated back to this is because I see the connection between my true heritage of the Celtic people and the inherited or reincarnated heritage of my native side. So yeah, it’s beautiful. It’s powerful stuff.  

I’m searching for the right words at the moment because there are a ton of thoughts and ideas going through my brain right now. And I want to say these words in the most respectful and honoring way that I can. We are drawn to different things. We are drawn to different ways of life. And it is all an opportunity to learn and grow. It is all an opportunity to find compassion and expansion with understanding a different culture, a different way of living, a different state of being. And this is, and I would like to mention that not by way of just Native American and indigenous pupils. I’m talking about people who live differently than us. Maybe it’s someone who chooses religion and the structure that that gives them over spirituality. Perhaps it’s someone who has a different societal belief, right? Whether you’re Republican or Democrat or all those things.  

Perhaps it’s someone who is lgbtq plus versus someone who is not unaware of it. Somebody who is deaf and in that community and culture and somebody who is not and is trying to learn how to respect and honor the different cultures and ways of living around us. And I think that by learning about it, inviting that in from a very respectful and honoring space, we learn so much more. And just like you are the student, you may also become the teacher and help people recognize that you’re not out to get them and that you are more balanced and that things are okay and whatnot. I think there’s this huge opportunity for all of us to come together in this compassionate, gentle space. If you are drawn to the beliefs and the feelings and the teachings and the culture of indigenous people, I encourage you to dive in.  

I encourage you to respectfully dip your toes and send out to the universe and say, Hey, can you send me a teacher and help me meet the people that I need to meet so that I can start walking on that path? Because the only way you will find that person is if you do open up. Kevin and I were talking about the concept right now. Kevin’s very much in this. Yes. And what else can I do? And if you say, yes, I would like that teacher, and what else can I learn? How many things shift? 

You bet it does. Just be ready for the ride. I think when you are working with someone within the native community, as an outsider, I would say this, I felt truly honored when I was living out in the southwest living, living in Arizona. And I found the sweat lodge to be so beneficial for me as a person. And it really did a lot for my heart, my spirit, my soul, and what a wonderful group of people they were that were there. It was on the Pima Reservation. And if you’re familiar with Phoenix, that’s pretty much really close within the city limits of Phoenix. But they were Pima, there were Pima and there were Navajo. That was pretty much it. Those two people, excuse me, there was Apache, there were Apaches there too.  

And the sweat lodges that I had been to up to that point were a big one for me was 10, 15 people. This sweat lodge alone was probably, I’m gonna guess it was, it was elliptical. So it was probably pretty close to somewhere between 16 and 20 feet long and probably a solid 12 to 14 feet wide, big sweat lodge. Wow. And I thought a big sweat lodge that we would have had a really heavy duty sweat lodge had 12 to 15 stones. No, we had somewhere between 48 and 52 stones in that sweat lodge. And everyone in there, you could just feel the spirit in there. And I faithfully went there for my own sake. I mean, because I needed that in my life at that time. I had drifted a little bit. I’m still on the path and still doing it, but I’m still being pulled into other stuff and we can maybe go into that later or go into another podcast. But we all will drift from time to time off of our given path. And sometimes it’s done for different reasons, but in this one, I felt really good that it gave me that grounding that I needed.  

And literally out of the proverbial blue, the leader came to me and parenthetically the leader and his wife actually helped young men and women on the PMA reservation with substance abuse. And they used the sweat lodge as a vehicle to help them overcome substance abuse. So it was pretty powerful. Yeah. He came up to me after I’d been there for some months, he put his hand on my shoulder and he said, Can I speak with you for a minute brother? And I said, Sure, what’s up? He says, You know, we have another sweat lodge. I said, Yeah, I, you know, coming next Tuesday, Wednesday, whatever it was, he says, No, no, no. He says, We have a family swat lodge every Sunday and I’d like you to start attending.  

Krystal Jakosky:    Oh wow.  

Kevin Pennelll:    That blew me away.  

Krystal Jakosky:    Literally invited you into the family.  

Kevin Pennell:    Yeah. And no ceremony. It just was what it was. And I also had the opportunity, one of the Apaches in the group came up, put their hand on my shoulder one day and then said, we have a very special thing. And we’d like, and this is after I had been invited to go to the Sunday sweats, because it was at one of those Sunday sweats that he came to me. And let’s face it guys, I don’t look native  

And he puts his hand on my shoulder and he says, Are you familiar with a very special Apache dance where a young woman is ushered into a young lady and is ushered into womanhood? And I said, Yeah, I’m a little familiar with that. He says, Well, we have a young lady who’s doing that. This, you know, whenever it is, he says, we’d be honored to have you. And this is the one where you would have the dancers, and the brain’s gone right now. Hopefully it’ll come back. Wink wink, nudge, nudge Krystal, maybe you can help me out here. But you have the special dolls that you can buy at gift shops and they’re the really cool looking dolls that you get. And they’re Hopi basically. Yeah, well the Apache have them too, just so you know. And  I went to that dance and they had the bonafide ones. They didn’t have the tourist ones because you can go to either one of those dances in Arizona and this one you were stopped on the road when you were coming in saying, who invited you?  

I told them and they said, Okay, you can come in.  

Krystal Jakosky:    Okay, fine. We’ll admit you. What I want to know, and I want my listeners to know, what is the purpose or the intention behind the sweat lodges?  

Kevin Pennell:    Good question. There’s a chapter in the book about that.

Sweat lodge. I attended the sweat lodge basically to– how do I start with this? Sweat lodge is an opportunity for us to bear ourselves to the universe and to cleanse ourselves from whatever is holding spirit back. Black Elk and his nephew, Frank FOLs Crow also had the same thing. And that is that with sweat lodges, you are given the opportunity to bury your soul and to go down deep inside and reveal to you what you need to change. Fools Crow talked about being a hollow bone and there’s a workshop that I’ve done before called Becoming a Hollow Bone. And interestingly enough, to me it’s also one of those central truths like love because the Dalai Lama talks about becoming, believe it or not, he uses the term becoming a hollow tube. But the hollow bone is just simply this.  

That you get rid of the stuff that’s inside that bone to allow more spirit to come through that’s unobstructed. And to give the analogy, they give the example of a plumbing pipe that if it gets clogged, the water can’t get through and you have to unplug it. And so the Sweat lodge is one of the vehicles that can be used to help rid ourselves of the stuff that’s within our being, within our bones that will help spirit to come through better. That’s one of the parts. But in most cases it’s  an opportunity to be cleansing and beautiful. That’s what’s done. And that’s another piece that I was taught if you want to have a sweat lodge. I was honored in being able to be taught how to do a sweat lodge and I’ve poured a few sweat lodges.  

The way that I would do a sweat lodge was somebody would come up to me, and this is how Kenny taught me and others chimed in with the same thing, is that you come up to me, you give me tobacco, and you give me a reason why. And I’m not trying to be a jerk, but if somebody comes up to me and says, Oh, I want to have a sweat lodge because I want to know what it’s like. No, why do you want it? It’s like the same question, Do you know who you are?

If you give me a good reason or if you give that elder a good reason and tobacco, there’s your way. And typically what I did was somebody would give tobacco or somebody would give Kenny tobacco and he’d say, Give me a few days to talk with the spirits. And that’s what you do. And my thing was, he taught me if I wait three times to come back through. And the third time it affirms that. In fact, if the third time doesn’t come at a certain length of time, then it ain’t going to happen. It’s just not meant to be. It doesn’t mean that you can’t have a sweat, it just means that I’m not supposed to be the one to do it. Or maybe you’re not supposed to have one. So there’s no money exchanged, it’s just your gift of tobacco. That’s the way I was taught. And you typically break bread afterward too. There’s a lot more to it than that. Does that answer the question?  

Krystal Jakosky:    No, it’s a fantastic answer and I very much appreciate it because it literally brings everything back to intention and spirituality and being connected with source, being connected with the universe, being connected with spirit, whatever that phrase is that works for you. So Native Americans, indigenous people, some people are going to do sweat lodges, and that is how they connect with that spirit. And other people are going to go to organized religion. That is where they have that connection with that higher power that brings them the peace and joy that they need. It all works for everyone depending on where you’re at and what you are seeking and what fills your heart and gives you the answers that you need in that moment. And so I love the intention behind it. I love the purpose behind it. It’s I am seeking, or I would like to connect or I need this, and because I need that, I am going to seek for answers. I’m going to seek healing. I am going to find somebody who can help me move forward and be better in my life than I already am right now. So thank you for that answer. Thank you for sharing.

Kevin Pennell:   Part of it is, the magic word that you used is something I used with students when I teach not only workshops, but  when I teach in massage school and when I teach whatever, intention is key. Intention is critical. So it doesn’t matter what you’re doing, you need to look at the reason behind it. Yeah. And you need to really say, Am I doing this for the right reasons? What’s my intention? What am I really engulfing in this? What am I really putting into this? What kind of energy am I putting into this? Yeah. And if you’re working with someone, side note massage therapy is, is if you don’t have the intention when you’re talking with somebody, or excuse me, when you’re working with someone and you’re doing the massage with someone, you’re doing the body work with someone, any of the stuff that we’re talking about, even if you’re doing counseling or if you’re doing anything like that, and if your mind is not totally focused with good intention with that person, don’t think for a second that they won’t feel it.  

You don’t have to say it. Words don’t have to express what’s really going on. And if we’re human, we’re going to do this, but if my brain is on, well, geez, I wish this interview would get done because I’ve got other things to do. If I let that intention come out in that, going back to the little three globes I had, and if your higher self picks up on that, guess what? You say, Okay, that’s good. See ya. And I never hear from you again. But it’s the side. The other side of that is if you’re a body worker and you are totally committed to this person and you’re not thinking about your rent, you’re not thinking about, Oh geez, this is this person again. And you’re not thinking about, Oh, what am I going to do this weekend?  

And if you’re not, you know, all the little thought monkeys coming in and if you’re not sidetracked by all that, guess what? They know it. They know when you are connected to them. And then the magic really happens because they say, Wow, I don’t know what this is that you’ve just done with me as far as a massage is concerned, or whatever the case may be, but it’s the most fantastic, most beautiful, most awesome experience. And I will come back and you say, Okay, great. And I will, It’s just magical when you do that because people want that. I was talking earlier today with someone and they said, You know what people are starving for right now. I mean, we’re doing this on a podcast, we’re doing this on YouTube, but they really miss being together. Actually touching each other. And it’s that communication that is so important. But anyway, ramble on intention next.

Krystal Jakosky:    No, you’re good. I’ve also noticed for me personally, I have done ti massage, meaning I am a trained ti massage therapist. And so I have often found that when I am in it, and this goes for, I mean, you brought out massage therapy, but I think that this goes for almost any action that we’re doing. If you focus on the action that you’re doing and you are really in it, I am cutting these vegetables and I’m getting the same size. I’m sanding wood, I’m chopping wood, I’m working on a client. If you focus on that and let everything else go, it actually becomes a meditation. One of my favorite things was to be working and losing my mind in what I was doing and having that intentionality and the fluidity because I was just present in that moment. And that presence is what brought me peace, is what brought me more energy to continue with the rest of my day. And so intention, the presence and things are completely different. So Kevin, what are you doing now? 

Kevin Pennell:    I’m talking with you. You ask, I mean.

Krystal Jakosky:    Like these days, I mean you and I could shop talk forever, you guys, I’m telling you Kevin and I could do a year’s worth of podcast and probably not touch on the same subject twice. And that’s fantastic to find such a gift like that. So I sincerely thank you for having me on your A Better Life podcast. And then I really thank you for being here because I really wanted to talk about the native way of life and their love for the earth and their connection to the world around us, because I think it is so absolutely beautiful. I feel that draw and it is one of those things that speaks peace and joy to my heart with all of the other things that we have talked about, but not necessarily on this podcast. What else are you into these days? Like what else are you doing in life?  

Kevin Pennell:    Well, I do have to share one other little thought with Native American stuff. It just came to me and I would just want to honor that, that if you are a person listening to this, watching this, and if you’re being drawn in that direction, be you white or be you native. And if you are drawn in that direction and you start to seek out someone, know this, that eventually, if you’re doing it for the right reasons, with the right intentions, it goes back to the old saying, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. But at the same token, when you find that teacher or where you find that person, you don’t just run right out and give them tobacco right on the spot. No, just take your time, go slow. Take it to somebody who has been there. Oh dear. You know, I want everything and I want it right now. Because that’s the way you do stuff, right? No, take your time. Be patient would be one key word. Another key word to keep in mind is love, trust, and thankfulness.  

Honor sharing, caring, giving, loving. That’s the ones that I’m trying to run in my brain. But that’s what we would say all the time to love, to share, to care, to give. We’re coming up on a season called, of course, Thanksgiving. And I have a podcast coming up that’s going to be on the Thanksgiving address. And if you have an opportunity to look up on Google or listen to the podcast, it doesn’t matter to me. It really doesn’t. What’s most important to me is that you look and find the Thanksgiving address. It was as it was delivered by the Iroquois people. Because it’s beautiful. When I did it the other day, I got emotional. It just really hit my heart when I would listen to my really good friend Mike Douglas giving that information to me. He was the main preventative skill school.  

Hope you don’t mind my sharing that. But, thankfulness is so important to be thankful for the air that we breathe. Be thankful for the life that we have. Be thankful that we are old because we could have died young. Be thankful for the simple little things. Be thankful for the person in your life. Be thankful for the people in your life. So what am I doing now? Well, I am enjoying doing podcasts. You’re talking about being focused on stuff. People really, my partner can’t believe it about how I can sit down with my audition software and I can spend hours editing. You can share that information with Avery. I can just go away. I mean, hours will go by and I’m just sitting here going on. 

Yeah. But I’m such a big picture person and yet at the same time I can be very detail oriented when I need to be. In Native traditions sometimes that’s referred to as mouse medicine. But anyway, so I do my podcast, I do some instruction, I do some workshops. I am a massage therapist who sees people here in Asheville, North Carolina, Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, I have  people ask, even if you’re a massage therapist and your listener watching this, and some people will ask me, Well, how many massages do you do a day? And I typically am going to do two to four, and that’s my happy place. Yeah. Could I do six? Yeah, I could, but I wouldn’t last. I’ve been doing body work of some level or another for about 22 years, and it can be done.  

So I do the massage, I do podcasting. I walk in nature. I love to get out and about. I just like being when I can. Through our other conversations, Krystal knows that we’re into cars a little bit. And I do have another podcast called the Driving Experience. I’m really into BMWs, and racing. I used to race, but I don’t race anymore. Just because, you know, I’m not going to say I won’t because I don’t know, but I just like to live an active life. We are currently living in a senior community while we wait for our house to be built. And we tried this for a while and, Krystal, we can’t do it. And I’m not putting anything down, but I, I cannot be that old person. 

Just can’t do that. Nope. Just can’t. You’re not ready. No. And, I don’t know that I ever will be.  There was a teacher who taught, she was actually responsible forTrigger Point Therapy, and her name was Janet Trave. And Janet continued her work as a massage therapist and, and doctor up until about three to four months before she died at the ripe old age of 96. Oh, wow. I intend to beat her record. So I gotta go good. But just stay active. And if you’re older and if you’re a senior and you feel like, Oh man, I just know, just stop doing what you’re doing and go out for a walk in the woods, bathe in the woods.  

 And no, don’t take a tub with you for crying out loud. I’m talking about being one with the forest. But, you know, be active. Get around young people and, and just be and enjoy life because that’s what we’re here for. We’re here to learn. We’re here to be filled with joy. We’re here for contentment. And I mean, if you look at the Dalai Lama that still does live things on occasion, and I saw something the other day and I realized he’s pushing 90 years old. And you look at him and he’s still smiling and he’s still going around and he’s still happy and he’s not dejected, he’s not down. So yeah, let us see. What else do I do?  

I build things. I stay active and I let my brain stay active.

Krystal Jakosky:    In all of that activity, in all of the things that you’re doing and loving and enjoying, what is your favorite or most unique? 

Kevin Pennell:    Geez.  

Krystal Jakosky:    Activity for self care.  

Kevin Pennell:    Oh, good one. Yay. Wow. 

Krystal Jakosky:    I don’t know what you thought I was going to ask.  

Kevin Pennell:    You know, I didn’t. What’s your favorite one? Oh God. No.  

Krystal Jakosky:    No. What’s your favorite, what’s your favorite way to take care of yourself and rebuild, regenerate? Because you’re doing a lot. You’re out and you’re functioning. What do you do for you?  

Kevin Pennell:    I will answer this with a line that I’ve used for years. It’s four words, go with the flow. What I mean by that is, today I missed my run and I missed my walk. Because I’m doing two podcasts. One I did, and one I’m being done. What was that? 

So I could get all upset about that or I could look at this as an opportunity for me. Because that’s what this has been. Yeah. You know, I’m sharing with Krystal and this is me time, this is what I want to do. But the rest of that part is for self care, and I’ve taught, and I have a workshop that I do with this, but self care is one of the biggest things for self care is awareness.  

Krystal Jakosky:    Yeah.  

Kevin Pennell:    You know what’s missing? So I might fill that void with going out for a walk in the woods. I might fill that void with doing some Tai Chi and Chiang. I might start to do the ch style 48 and I might get through half of it and start saying, Oh, I’m good with this. Yeah. And you know, I want to go with the flow to what generates within me, the sense of being me and no one else. And if you look at that book that I wrote, one of the things that came up in that book was, I am a chameleon. True, true story. Or I have been where, because of my background, and this will really spin us off and I’m not gonna go there but because of the way I was brought up a long time in a residence or a place or a community was two years when I was growing up, two years mostly it was like 18 months on average.  

Wow. And we moved and it was no regrets, not upset, no problems. But it’s funny because what that taught me to do is how to connect with people like that. And I could make a connection. I could get that. But in order to do that, I had to be like them. Listen to that. I had to be like them, not like me, like them. Why? Because in the way that I thought, it made me more comfortable around them because I’m like them. But then is when I really got the message that Kenny was trying to ask me years and years and years before, Kevin, who do you think you are? Who are you? And I went, Wow. And that’s when the change really happened. And people say, Geez, would you do that again? I said, I would try to avoid it like the bubonic plague, but I don’t regret a bit of it because I had to go through that. I had to do that change. So back the to question, what do you do for self care? I listen to the still small voice in my heart. When I used to, when I’ve signed off on my books before, I would say something to the effect of, let your heart and spirit guide you because they’ll never let you down.  

Let your heart and your spirit guide you because they will never let you down your heart, your spirit, not the other persons, but listen to your heart within and go with that. And once you get that message, you can maybe find that what you want to do today for self-care is meditate. I do that. I can meditate for a few minutes or I can meditate for two hours. I’ve done both. I can go down that road and we’re not going to go there, but you know, meditate, Tai chi, Chiang Reiki. I can get lost doing massages. That can be, believe it or not, be my self care, giving a massage. And of course receiving a massage because that is also self care. But you’ve got to take care of yourself. If you don’t take care of yourself, no one else is going to.

Krystal Jakosky:    You are, you are echoing so many things that I already say and I absolutely love it. It’s like these gigantic exclamation points coming down saying hello. Hey guys, remember self care is the conscious and intentional act of taking care of your own needs. And it could change from day to day. It does not matter. What matters is that you are letting your heart and your spirit be your guide because they’re not going to be false to you.  

I mean it’s like bam boo. Yeah. Bring it on. Meditation, you know, meditation is the moment that you tune out the world and tune into yourself. You tune into the breathing, you tune into the moment and you let everything else go. 

Kevin Pennell:    I think one of the things you should do with part of the self care is change it up. Don’t try to do the same thing every day. Because if you do the same thing every day, it becomes a habit. And before you know it, a habit becomes a rut and you are only different, you know, do you know the only difference between the rut and a grave? Both ends are knocked out. That’s the only difference when a rut and a grave is where you haver both ends knocked out.  

Krystal Jakosky:   Wow. Okay guys, let’s stay out of the ruts. I have one more question for you Kevin. You’ve already given us a really good one. So who are you is a great journaling question. I love to leave all of my listeners with a journaling prompt or a question that they can think about and really answer. And who you are is amazing. Is there another one that you can think of that you would love to encourage people to explore?  

Kevin Pennell:    What have you done for self care for yourself today? 

Krystal Jakosky:    Okay. Just today.  

Kevin Pennell:    For the whole week?  

Krystal Jakosky:   It doesn’t have to be huge. It’s one little thing today. 

Kevin Pennell:    What have you done for yourself today? 

Krystal Jakosky:    I have, I have loved having you here. I have loved chit chatting with you. I really hope that everybody out there listening has enjoyed listening to us as well, and that you’ve been inspired and that you are leaving this session of this podcast uplifted and smiling. I am. I love Kevin. I love just the way that it’s so free and easy to talk with you. How do people find you and are there any last tidbits of wisdom or words of knowledge that you would like to share with people?  

Kevin Pennell:    So I would say first you can contact me through my website, which is toward better life.com. If you want to reach out to me, just write to me at kevin@tortaboutlife.com. I am available to do consultations and stuff like that from time to time. I haven’t mentioned that, but I do, I have done that and I will be more than happy to do it. so that’s the two easiest ways to do it. You know, if I go into phone numbers and stuff. When we get acquainted, you can have my phone number and we can text. That’s fine. Yeah.The easiest thing is toward better life.com and Kevin toward better life.com. And that’s an email and the website. That’s the easiest way to do this. And if you’re in the western North Carolina area and you’re looking for a massage, you can still do the same thing. I’ll just direct you to who to contact to get a massage. I think I would leave people just with those same simple words that if I can get them again in my head properly, and that is listen to your heart and spirit because they won’t let you down.  

Krystal Jakosky:    Amen. Oh, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you for sharing with me and starting my day off so beautifully. So Right. Thank you. 

Kevin Pennell:   Thank you. Pleasure’s all mine. We’ll do this again.  

I hope this moment of self care and healing brought you some hope and peace. I’m Krystal Jacosky on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. And I hope you check us out and follow along for more content coming soon. I look forward to being with you again here on Breathe in. Breathe out. Until next time, take care.  

Ann Hince: And then life continued. We moved on to Hong Kong. We lived in Hong Kong. And while we were in Hong Kong, I was sent to boarding school in England. And I was sent to my brother’s boarding school, which happened to be at that time a boy’s boarding school. Oh. So they had day girls who were there during the day, but I was the first girl boarder and my teeth were really awful at that time. And so I was teased mercilessly for two years. So that was more trauma

Krystal Jakosky: right. Just on top of everything else. Yes. Right. Uhhuh more weight.

Ann Hince: Yeah. And my dad had anger issues anyway. And it was during my teenage years that they both became alcoholics. So my mom would drink a bottle of Sherry a day for the last few years. So, um, you know, that wasn’t fun either. And then when I was 19, I woke up one morning. I was working from home. Well, I’d gone back home for an industrial period for my degree. And I woke up one morning and found her on the bathroom floor, dead on the bathroom floor. So that was another trauma. But by that time, you know, where we get trained, we get programmed how to deal with things. And our way of dealing with things was just to keep going to suppress it all and not talk about it and just keep going. And so that’s what I did.

Krystal Jakosky: Just keep moving along, just yeah. Hold your head high. And nobody really wants to hear how you’re really honestly, truly doing. It’s just a no, I’m, I’m, I’m moving forward and you’ve been so conditioned with every other knock throughout life to just pick yourself back up and keep moving. But at some point that stuff’s got to come to a head, right?

Ann Hince: Yeah. So I moved out to California when I was 21. I graduated with a computer science degree, became a software engineer, got married, and had kids . And it was in my late thirties that I had a business altercation with a couple of other mothers at school. So they were very self-confident self-assured authority-type women. And I was the scared mother on the inside and they told me I had done something wrong and my mind just went out of control. It just started spinning over and over what they’d said, what the ad said, what had happened. And it was like about three days I couldn’t sleep. And I realized, okay, I don’t think this is normal. I don’t think people, normal people would react this intensely to something that was really quite small. And that’s when I realized it was a little bit like how I would react when my dad told me I’d done something wrong. Cause he was a very authority-type figure to me. Right. Self-confidence, self-assured. And when he told me I’d done something wrong, I would just fall to pieces. So that was the little opening that maybe there’s something from childhood that’s still affecting me to that day

Krystal Jakosky: As a mother, as a mother with kids in school. That is when you realized that some of your insecurity came from inner child work and something that happened way long ago.

Ann Hince: Right. Yeah. I, and I just was not aware of it before. It took all those years of things happening to realize, oh, it’s that childhood stuff.

Krystal Jakosky: Oh, wow. So what did you do?

Ann Hince: Well, I didn’t really know what to do at the time, but it was in that timeframe. And I don’t remember how long, much long later, but I went to a doctor’s appointment. I don’t remember why I went to him, but it was nothing to do with emotions. I know that. But he happened to recognize that I was more stressed than I should be. And he was a holistic physician. So he knew some of these things. So he asked me on a scale of zero to 10, what my stress level was. And I said it was an eight. And then he asked me why. And there was that question that made me realize, oh gosh, it’s finding my mother dead on the bathroom floor, which is now two decades earlier because the tears were still just under the surface. They hadn’t gone anywhere. They were still sitting right there so he knew this technique. That’s called EFT – short for Emotional Freedom Technique. And it’s also called tapping because we’re tapping on certain parts of our body as we’re talking something through. So he tapped with me for about 15 minutes on my mother’s desk. And I walked away from that appointment. Being able to tell a story in my mind, without the tears there anymore. And that was the first time I realized that we hold those memories and those emotions physically in our bodies and that we can let them go. I had no idea.

Krystal Jakosky: So I wanna know why were you with a holistic doctor instead of a regular practitioner?

Ann Hince: Huh? That’s an interesting question. No, one’s asked me that before. I’ve always been holistically minded. Right. So I felt that weight of what I was carrying around in my twenties and thirties and I approached it from outside of myself. Right. Okay. What can I change in my diet? That’s gonna make me feel better. So I did a lot of things over those years to try and lift that weight, to try and make me feel better, but nothing ever worked. So I don’t know. I’ve always been holistically minded and that’s, I don’t think that’s from my adopted parents. I’m not even sure it’s for my birth parents, but it’s been part of me.

Krystal Jakosky: So there’s this part of you that just recognized holistic was the path for you and you needed to, and you’ve always had a holistic doctor. You’ve always, how did you go about finding someone that worked for you?

Ann Hince: Well, I had my children at a Waldo school and he was a parent at the Waldo school okay. So yeah, so it was relatively easy and I’ve not always had I actually tend to avoid doctors really. I, I, I haven’t, I’ve been to one may be less than a handful of times, possibly in my lifetime. So yes, I’ve always, I’ve always felt, felt like I’ve been on a path of noninterference. I, I had migraines for decades and I wouldn’t even take an aspirin. I would feel like I needed to work through it.

Krystal Jakosky: Okay. Understand what was going on and why it was going on so that you could work through it.

Ann Hince: Yeah.

Krystal Jakosky: And improve it.

Ann Hince: Yeah.

Krystal Jakosky: 00:10:55 Yeah.

Ann Hince: Yeah. So he Tapp with me that day and then I went home that afternoon and I, I wanted to check it out. I, I went online to learn about this technique EFT. Cause I wasn’t totally convinced like this one time, was it just a fluke? Right. Was it ever gonna do anything ever again because I have this software, I have this engineering mind and background. It’s like, I need to know something’s gonna work before I invest my time in it. So I learned everything I could about it. And, and then I wanted to check it out. So I had at the time, a 17-year-old cat at home and he was starting to fail. His kidneys were starting to fail. So we were told he needed to have daily saline shots and I was gonna have to be the one to do that.

Ann Hince: And the first time I gave him a shot, my hand was shaking so badly I was so afraid of doing this one thing. So I thought, okay, well let me try out this technique. Let’s see what it does. So I tapped about it. I tapped about every aspect. So I tapped about my hand shaking, my fear of giving him the shot, and all the memories I had because I’d had many injections because we lived around the world. So I tapped about all those things, let it all go. And the next day I gave him the shot and the needle just slid right in. There was no more feeling left inside of me. And it was so exciting.

Krystal Jakosky: Yeah. Right, right. Oh my gosh. I can do this.

Ann Hince: right. So it showed me two things. It showed me how deceptively powerful tapping is because it doesn’t look like it’s doing much, but I could tell it really was. And that’s when I realized that freedom was on the other side of that fear. And that’s where I wanted to be in every aspect of my life, because I pretty much lived with fear inside of me, even though, you know, from the outside, people probably couldn’t see it, but yeah, that’s where I was living from. So that started me on my journey. I, I started using it every day now, to begin with, you know, it’s, it’s hard to catch yourself being emotional, right. We tend to get caught up in our emotions. So even to be able to say, stand back and say, okay, look at me, I’m getting emotional, right. Even that is a step in itself, but it gets easier over time.

Ann Hince: So the first day, maybe I’d only catch myself once and then I would tap and I’d bring myself back to peace, you know? And as the days went by, I’d catch myself more and more with more subtle things. Like, you know, even if I was afraid of making a phone call, I might tap on that fear before I made the phone call. So that the phone call became easier to make or I’d catch myself after I was frustrated with one of my children or something that happened in the news, right? Yeah. I would, I would tap. I would bring myself back to peace and then carry on with my day. And I realized things were changing, right? My mind start started to become more peaceful and I was becoming less reactionary. I was less, highly strong and I just wanted more. So I knew that I could write down every emotional memory I had from childhood and tap through one each day, cuz I’d heard people doing that. So I did that and I taped through one memory or belief or something I’d taken on from childhood. I taped through one each day for about an hour to an hour and a half each evening. And over those months, just things just started to change. And it was, it was amazing.

Krystal Jakosky: What were some of the changes you noticed?

Ann Hince: Well, as we become more peaceful on the inside, we attract more peace on the outside. Right? So interactions day to day interactions with family members became more peaceful because I was more at peace inside. So, you know, they didn’t pick up on my anxiety or my fear. So they were able to be themselves more.

Krystal Jakosky: Mm.

Ann Hince: So that was really fun to experience and just not getting triggered as much. Right. When I worked on a trigger, then the next time I experienced the same thing, I wasn’t triggered in the same way. And then I would work with how I was feeling then, and then the next time I’d feel even less triggered. So it just started changing things.

Krystal Jakosky: Yeah. So it’s that those that mirror what we talk about a lot, how your, how your feeling and your relationship with yourself is your relationship with others is also a mirror of how you are relating with yourself. So if you’re dealing with your fear and your emotions and the things that are inside, you’re reflecting a more calm and peaceful being out, and that becomes your relationship with the people around you. It just is more smooth and easy and at peace and delightful for lack of a better word.

Ann Hince: Right. Yeah. I know a lot of people don’t wanna take this journey because they think it’s work, but really it is work. You know, you have to be determined to do it, but as you do it, things improve, right. Life gets yeah. Gets fuller. It gets, there’s a deeper awareness that you develop over time, which you, which you see in the world around you.

Krystal Jakosky: Yeah. So as you were doing this EFT, um, as you were doing this tapping and working through different emotions, did you find that it was often one emotion, or were there more emotions like underneath what was going

Ann Hince: On? Yeah, we talk about the layers of the onion, right. In many, many different areas. Right? So this is one, so yes, there’s often an emotion that’s on the surface. And then as you accept that emotion, that’s what EFT is really doing. It’s accepting the feeling that you’re having right now. And when that releases something underneath comes up. So yes, it will often be another emotion. It will sometimes be another memory. Right. So with my mother’s death, when I worked through it with the doctor, the first time, that was really just a surface layer. So yeah, I can’t remember the timeframe, but probably the next day some more came up. So it might have been some more details would come up of the, of the events that had happened, more different emotions, different parts of the day would surface. And then I would work on those and let those go. And then maybe another day or two down the road, some other little memory will pop up because it’s opening up the subconscious mind.

Krystal Jakosky: Right.

Ann Hince: And that’s what it’s doing. It’s expanding our awareness. So those two, excuse me, those two go together. The opening up of the subconscious mind and the expansion of the awareness kind of happens at the same time. So we became, become aware of that next layer in the onion as we let go of the first one.

Krystal Jakosky: So do you ever get to the bottom of all the layers, do you ever get to the core of the onion? What happens?

Ann Hince: well, I’m still working on it, but I’m working on it at such a deep level now. Right. Compared to where I started. So I think enlightenment is the end of the onion. it’s the core but I’m not there yet. I don’t know anyone who is, so yes, it’s just, it’s just, it just changes as you go.

Krystal Jakosky: Right? So it’s literally a process. It’s something you start, you learn, you apply, you get to use it and things get easier because you’re no longer what I just saw a bunch of in my brain. I just saw like a two-liter bottle of soda with the lid on and you have shaken it up and it has all of these bubbles and stuff. And you’ve got to sort through each one of those bubbles, each one of those layers to try to get to the next one. And you’re releasing that pressure with every emotion that you tap and every challenge that you face through the EFT. And eventually, it’s not gonna blow off its top anymore. It’s just gonna fizzle just a little bit. And you recognize that it’s there, but it’s not gonna be a problem because oh yeah. That’s there. It’s okay. It’s not a big deal. Let’s tap on that one and we’re done again. So,

Ann Hince: Absolutely. Yeah. So that’s, that’s finding in a piece. That is how it happens. Yeah.

Krystal Jakosky: Yeah. And bottles can be good.

Ann Hince: well, you can recognize that it’s just the next part of the journey. Right? You don’t have to get caught up in the emotion anymore. You just, one of the things I realized is that emotions, you know, we talk about emotion as being an emotion, like energy and emotion.

Krystal Jakosky: Yeah.

Ann Hince: That, maybe the case, but it’s energy and motion. That’s stuck inside the body. So that’s what I think of it it’s energy. That’s stuck inside the body. It just wants to find a way to get out. And once it does, it releases from the body and EFT, the tapping, the physical act of tapping on the ends, the Meridian systems, that is what allows the energy to release from the nervous system.

Krystal Jakosky: So can we, can you talk a little bit more about emotions being stuck in the body and what that can bring about like what that can cause or what it can feel like?

Ann Hince: Well, when it, when it’s really stuck in the body, right. That’s when we get caught up in the emotion it’s cause it’s so intense that energy, we, we can’t stand back from it. We, we can’t stand back from it at that point and say, oh, look at me, I’m getting emotional because it’s so much energy that’s moving around. So yeah. If we’re able to find a technique like EFT at that point and tap and just let some of that energy out. Yeah. Just let it, let it flow out of the body. Then we can start to become calm and recognize. Okay. Yes, it is just emotion. That’s stuck in the body. Let me find what the next emotion is. Right. Then we can name it. Okay. Really underneath I’m afraid. I’m afraid of doing this thing. And then we can work on accepting the fear. Right. We can name it. And then maybe once we’ve let go of that fear a little bit then may we? Okay. Well, it’s, I’m actually afraid of, I’m afraid of going on this journey because I’m afraid something might happen. Right. So we can, we can pinpoint it more. We can give it more detail because deep underneath it’s actually stored physically in the body.

Krystal Jakosky: Yes.

Ann Hince: And as we pinpointed it, we’re actually focusing, we’re learning to focus more on that place in the body. Even though we might not realize it at this point, we’re just using words to focus our attention. We are actually working in the physical body, but we’re not aware of it at this point because our awareness has not expanded to that depth yet.

Krystal Jakosky: Right. Right. I think of someone who’s like stressed out and waited and they’re slumping over because they’re emotionally just drained or whatnot and tapping can literally help release some of that. Weightedness and lift them up a little bit or think about when you’re, you are, um, angry and how your body reacts. Like you might pull into yourself or your muscles might tighten up. And, um, I’m just thinking about all the different ways that our body reacts when we start to feel a specific emotion and those in themselves are an ideal trigger to say, Hey, maybe I should look at what’s going on. It’s this precursor to, oh, I just reacted that way. So now what do I do to help release it? How do I help shift from wanting to yell and scream to getting all of this energy out of me and moving into an understanding of, yeah?

Krystal Jakosky: I feel that way because I’m afraid of abandonment or I’m afraid of this, or I’m feeling upset about this other thing and taking it back, you know, I love how EFT lets you help you personally look at this one thing that had been years earlier and then you keep, I mean, it was, it was that moment in the doctor’s office, but you got to go back to your mother’s passing and then you get to go back even further to all of the other stuff and you get to really learn and understand all of that trauma that you went through from birth to here and be able to heal that to be at more peace. Now piece. Now

Ann Hince: The EFT helps to open up the subconscious mind and expand awareness. Now, when I started, I did not have much awareness. I, I was not aware of how I felt during the day because had suppressed it or so, you know, someone asked me, how do you feel today, Ann? I would say I’m fine because that’s what I would always say. I didn’t really know how I felt. Right. And I think a lot of people do that, but as you keep going with the tapping, it opens up that awareness. So I become aware of my emotions during the day. And then I kept going and then I became aware of the physical sensations underneath the emotions. So we used the phrases, right? We used the words, sadness or anger, or frustration. But what we’re really describing is where we’re holding that tension in our bodies.

Ann Hince: So, you know, if someone’s angry, we can normally tell just by their posture, by the whole, the way they’re holding themselves. Well, we can actually become aware of those sensations of where that tension is. And this was all new to me. I think a lot of maybe, maybe empaths, right? Have this awareness already. And I think maybe I did as a child, but I had lost it because I’d I had so much baggage I was carrying. Right. So at the time I was in a group, we were studying a course in miracles and the kind of guru in the group would say every week now I, now I know you like meditation, but he said, you don’t have to meditate. It’s all about feeling your feelings. And I didn’t want to meditate at the time. So this felt good to me. But at the time I didn’t know what my feelings were.

Ann Hince: Cause I was just starting this journey with tapping with EFT. So as the weeks went by and he said this every single week, at one point, I thought, okay, well I know I can feel my feelings now or I can feel fear. I can feel anger and frustration. So one day at the kitchen sink, I thought, okay, I’m gonna try and feel my feelings. It should be simple. Right? It sounds right. So basic . But for me, it’s like I had, I had suppressed them for all these decades at this point. So I had to teach myself how to do it. So I would find myself thinking of thoughts mostly for me it was a fearful thought. So I recognize, okay, this thought makes me afraid. So then I would feel where that fear was in my body. And for me, it would be in my solar plexus normally.

Ann Hince: So I recognize when, when I felt that fear in my solar plexus if I moved or even if I took a deep breath, I would lose my focus on that fear. And he told me I’m it’s about feeling or feeling. So I have to be able to feel them. So I realized I actually had to hold myself like a statue. The soon as I could feel this fear in my stomach, I’d hold myself like a statue and stop breathing. I wouldn’t take a deep breath. I would stop right there in my breath where I was when I could feel this fear. And then I would just feel it. And I would even talk to it because I wanted to keep my focused attention on this feeling. So I would say things like, okay, I can feel this fear. I can feel you sitting there in my solar places.

Ann Hince: I just want you to be felt. I want you to be felt. I want to accept you the way you are. Don’t want to change. You just wanna feel you. And then at some point, I’d have to take a deep breath and I’d let it out. And I would notice there would be a shift in that fear. It would’ve diminished slightly. So then I would think the same thought again, this fearful thought, feel the fear again, do it again, hold myself like a statue. Just feel it, allow it to be felt, and take another deep breath. And it would’ve shifted again. And I would just do it again and again with the same thought until it no longer had any fear sitting inside of me at which point it was free.

Krystal Jakosky: Right.

Ann Hince: But some Buddhism, maybe I need to research this a little bit more, but I think there’s one of those teachers that said, it’s the attachments to thoughts that are what provide the suffering in our lives. So this is releasing bad attachment from that thought and that sort.

Krystal Jakosky: Yeah.

Ann Hince: Yeah. So then I’d start during this every day instead of tapping because it’s a deeper level of awareness. So now I would lay on the sofa at night and I’d work through my childhood with the tapping with EFT at night. So now I moved on to laying on the sofa and I would bring a collective thought to mind like an experience that we all went through. Something like 9/11, because we all have our own individual experiences of those traumas. And then I would feel all those emotions or those sensations in my body and just allow them to be felt, which was, you know, this was a new thing for me because I’d always held them tight, held them inside. And, it was really relaxing to allow this energy just to leave my body. And this felt like a whole nother step from the EFT. So, you know, I talk about it as being the second step.

Krystal Jakosky: Yeah. It means that you’re sleeping better. It means just the fact that you’re able to relax and enjoy that moment and let it go in such a beautiful way. You’re gonna feel fear again, related to a different memory, but you know exactly what it feels like, which means that then you’re gonna be able to sit with it and do the exact same process. And you’re tapping to release it and find a new piece because you were able to do that, which is really cool recognizing where you hold it and how you hold it and how it feels when it’s present and how much better you feel when it’s not there anymore.

Ann Hince: Right. I mean, this is that weight, that burden that we’ve been carrying around all those years, or I certainly had that’s. I started to feel it all released. You know, we talk about, um, a deer or something right after it’s been chased by a mountain lion and then it, it gets away and it shakes everything off. Right. That you just feel those feelings and let them go. Yeah. . And to me, that’s what this technique was doing. It was allowing those feelings that had been held in for so long just to, to, to release out of the body.

Krystal Jakosky: So you don’t meditate, but you do focus on different parts of your body. You do relax, you do take a moment to let everything else go and tune in. So you don’t meditate.

Ann Hince: Well, some people have said to me, this could be called a way of Medi a form of meditation so, so yes, I don’t say that as much anymore. but it’s I know, you know, I used to think of meditation as being mind work. Right. Trying to quiet the mind. Yeah. And to me, I’m actually out of my thinking mind, I’m in my feeling or my sensing mind, which is different.

Krystal Jakosky: Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re in this more of a mindfulness presence mind than that, the brain that just keeps going on, everything else that you’ve done throughout the day.

Ann Hince: Yeah. And my mind, you know, at this point was pretty quiet and I think it had to be in order to be able to get into the senses more, my mind used to be very noisy, like very busy, very negative, very judgemental. And I didn’t like it being that way. But through the process of working with the EFT, and letting go of my childhood, my mind actually became so quiet. It felt foreign to me. I didn’t even know that those voices in my head were judging me and criticizing people. I didn’t realize that those voices, those words had been my dad’s words that I had been programmed with in childhood. And I just replayed them over and over again. I couldn’t see that until they had gone and I could look back and see, oh, oh gosh, those, those were words for my dad.

Krystal Jakosky: Yeah. They weren’t your own. They were someone else’s that you had adopted as your own reality.

Ann Hince: Right. And when they disappeared, what was left was peace. I didn’t replace them with anything. Right. It just became peaceful inside.

Krystal Jakosky: Well, I think that’s because your own personal voice, your true personal voice is actually the most loving kind, encouraging voice, your higher self, your connection to source or your whatever your spiritual or religious higher power is. I think that when we tune in to that, we recognize our own personal one is loving and kind and encouraging on so many different levels. And yet that voice gets drowned out by all of the other conditioning that we’ve received throughout our lives. You know, everything that’s social through school and church or not church and culture and the family and everything else that we are experiencing as we grow up from an infant until whatever age we are at right now, we’ve had all of these other influences coming in and saying, this is where you’re at. And it’s easy to accept that as our own. And once we realize that that’s not our own and start looking at something different, it says, oh wow, life is so much better when I stop listening to those and start hearing something so much more kind.

Ann Hince: Right, right. I mean, as I kept doing the tapping and getting deeper with it, I realized that as I would let go of these negative thoughts, more positive thoughts would naturally arise and compassion and understanding would arise. And I did not feel like I had a lot of compassion in the past, but as I let go of all these resentments and everything that happened in my childhood, it was just there. It was there underneath all this that you said, all this programming that we have had, it’s naturally under it’s naturally there underneath as are those positive thoughts, which is really incredible to experience right. To, hear that it’s possible is one thing. But to experience it, it is another .

Krystal Jakosky: And that’s what I love. That’s why I’m excited that you’re here on this program right now because I think the people have heard a little bit about EFT or about tapping. And I think that it’s easy to dismiss it because it sounds like really just tapping myself in some species that just doesn’t sound like it’s gonna do anything, but to have somebody who has had their lives completely transformed on so many layers, be able to really speak to the human transformation that has happened on so many different, beautiful levels. That’s a gift to help people understand that it is possible. And it could be a beautiful self-care tool for them to dive into right.

Ann Hince: Yeah. As can feeling your feelings, if you have that level of awareness. Right. Cause you could do that. You could do feeling your feelings anywhere, tapping, you know, you’re tapping on your body might not feel comfortable doing that out in public, but you can always just sit and feel your feelings. So I feel that is really powerful too, but I couldn’t have done that, to begin with. I had to work through EFT and develop that level of awareness before I can do that. Yeah. Yeah. So, so then should we carry on and talk about the deeper level that we can get through?

Krystal Jakosky: I, yes. I wanna talk about the physical changes that you have experienced since choosing to dive in and find this piece.

Ann Hince: Okay. So this is the next step that I didn’t know was possible before. I didn’t really know what I was doing, but as I was doing this work, lying on the couch, feeling these feelings, at some point I noticed I could keep my awareness inside my body after the tension or the emotions had dissipated, which is really weird to say it was very weird to experience. I’d never felt it before. So let me try and explain it. So imagine that you have a toothache or a stomachache you can pinpoint with your senses, right? You could feel where that pain is coming from. Right. Mm-hmm but once the pain has dissipated, you can’t really feel it anymore. Cuz there’s nothing calling your attention to it. Yeah.

Krystal Jakosky: Right.

Ann Hince: Well, I found that I could, I found I could keep my awareness inside my body, which I mean, it was just really weird and I just started to play with it while I’ve done it once. Can I do it again? And I found that I could, and then, well now I can do this thing. What can I do with it? so I, I tried, I was like, can I move my awareness around inside? And I found that I could, and then I could find a place with tension or no tension. So I found a place with tension and I focused on it and I noticed it would shift. So I would do it again and again and again, doing the same thing now at a deeper level than I was with feeling the feelings and even a deeper level with the EFT. Cause EFT was going through the same thing with words again and again until the energy has left the body.

Ann Hince: So now I’m at the awareness inside the body and I’m releasing tension directly in the body. So I would move around my body and I would feel tension, release it, feel tension, release it, it felt really good. It’s got to be right. You’re releasing tension. That’s been in the body for decades. It’s gonna feel good. Yeah. And it took, it took many, many months, but eventually, I was able to put my awareness inside my head, which was pretty eyeopening for me because there was so much pain and tension. The pain in my left cheek was just incredible. And the forces that I could feel that were pulling my bones outta the alignments, which I think had been there since I was born with my right foot up against my right shin, my whole body was twisted.

Krystal Jakosky: Yeah.

Ann Hince: I had just not had the awareness that that pain intention was there all those years. It had been there. I just didn’t have that awareness. Cause I remember an orthodontist one year, many years ago, he’d actually said to me, you must have a lot of tension in your head because I was getting these migraines. And I, I laughed at him and said, I don’t think so.

Krystal Jakosky:

Ann Hince: Which is so funny. Cause there was so much tension in there, but now I had this technique, right. So I would put my awareness on this pain only for a couple of seconds, to begin with. Cause it was so intense and it would release and then I’d do it again and again and again. And at some point, I actually heard, because now I mind in my head, right. I’m near my ears. So I heard and felt something release. This was another kind of scary part of the journey. Am I, am I damaging myself? Right. I didn’t know what was happening. It sounded and felt like all fabric ripping. So I researched at that point and realized it was an adhesion in the connective tissue that was releasing.

Ann Hince: So mm-hmm , I think it allows awareness to move through it. uh, and uh, so I just kept going and I would feel more and more adhesions release, and eventually, I could actually feel my skull bones relaxed because I had released enough tension or dis-ease in the connected tissue. And it just felt like really deep relaxation. So it was really nice to get those x-rays taken last year and compare them to 2013 and see that the bones themselves have shifted. Right. My eye sockets have aligned. My jaw was way off to the side. It’s more centered and my neck, which used to be totally bent I’m from scoliosis. It’s now way straighter and I’ve grown half an inch as a result.

Krystal Jakosky: Oh my gosh. that’s amazing. That is so cool.

Ann Hince: Thank you. Well, I think all this work, I think even the EFT is releasing tension in the connective tissue. We just, I just was not aware at this level back then. So I don’t think many of us are, but I do think it’s releasing tension physically in the body. We’re just not aware of it.

Krystal Jakosky: No, it’s um, it has also to do with the fact that you were, I, I say it’s, it’s um, exercising a muscle, right? When you need to improve or learn something, you have to do it over and over and over again, you were already going inward by listening to your emotions and figuring out where they were held and what was going on physically with them so that you could release them and pulling your awareness inside. Like that then is what led you to be able to explore other areas. And if you think about it, whether it’s conscious subconscious, whatnot, your awareness is, uh, exploring those muscles that you have. There are so many muscles around your skull that hold things in place and they can be so tight and out of alignment and whatnot. And just because you, your brain fires all the synapses to work with all of those muscles, your brain is allowed or able to say, Hey, let’s release this muscle or release this muscle because you’ve brought your awareness to it. And you got there because you learned how to go within. And it started with paying attention to your emotions. It started with one thing and then it just built on it and it built on it and it built and it got so beautiful. And so transformational by one little tiny, I tell people it’s a tiny step, a little step. What little step can you do today? That will make a big difference tomorrow. And you have, I mean, your story is amazing. It’s just, wow.

Ann Hince: any, anyone can do it though. Right? Because I started out, I didn’t have this awareness when I started out, the focused attention has developed over time. Even when I started doing this work, laying on the sofa at night, to begin with, I would fall asleep almost straight away but over the weeks, my focused attention just started to get better and better and better. Right. So now, right. I can focus my attention inside my bones. I’m releasing the attention in my pallet and my tooth routes and my, my, um, jaw bones. That’s what I’m working on now. Yeah. And I can release tension in just a few seconds. Whereas when I started out with EFT I’d have to, you know, tap on things for a lot longer than a few seconds. So it just develops over time. It’s not hard work in many ways, it gets easier and it feels really good. I think that’s what a lot of people miss on the journey. They just think it’s gonna be hard work, but it feels really good.

Krystal Jakosky: Right. It’s just amazing. If someone had told you when you were, I don’t know, 30, that simply tapping on your body would be the answer to all of your challenges. What would you have told them?

Ann Hince: I would not have to believe it. Totally there’s no way. I mean, gosh, back in my 30 when I was 30, I was at that point I was still a software engineer, so yeah. I mean I had no interest in real spirituality and nothing in religion, so no , I mean, even five years ago, I wouldn’t have believed what I could do now was possible. That’s part of the reason I’m sharing my story. I want people to know this is possible because I didn’t know it was possible

Krystal Jakosky: Yeah. Yeah. It sounds like it really honestly sounds a little hokey when, when people first hear about it, they’re like, that’s just, there’s just absolutely no way the cons the misconceptions of it are that that cannot be real. And yet it’s the intention and the purpose and the focus behind it that helps it move through you. And it’s amazing as a self-care tip to help you own what you’re feeling, go deeper to find what else is really there, and then heal yourself on such an almost cellular level. .

Ann Hince: Yeah, indeed. And there have been many studies done on EFT now, so I don’t think it’s as hokey. They do use it in, in some hospitals, they use it in some schools, they use it on, um, veterans. So, you know, I don’t think it, it looks, it still looks hokey. It does still look hokey. Even the name to me, emotional freedom technique, I thought was a really hokey name.

Krystal Jakosky: Yeah. Like

Ann Hince: About going through it enough to realize, oh yeah, it really is providing emotional freedom. So it really is actually named pretty well

Krystal Jakosky: yeah. It, I mean, it’s named really well. And yet the name of it is kind of what, what really,

Ann Hince: Um, yeah.

Krystal Jakosky: Yeah. So, wow.

Ann Hince: And to me having those x-rays right. To having the x-rays having something physically that you can look at to say, okay, she’s not just talking off the top of her head, but right. There’s actually something physical that you can see. I mean, to me, I was blown away. If I had seen those x-rays right. There were someone else’s x-rays and I looked at them and saw the changes. I would want to know how to do that.

Krystal Jakosky: What did, what did the doctor say when they saw it?

Ann Hince: Well, I was from an orthodontist, um, and I, okay. I, I got them. They, they sent them to me, so yeah, he, he, I don’t think he would believe that I had done that. I think he might believe that, oh, well, it’s got to be due to the orthodontic work. Um, but, but, you know, I knew what had changed. I could feel my bone shifting, so, um, I didn’t need him to corroborate

Krystal Jakosky: How are your migraines now?

Ann Hince: I’m pretty much non-existent. Yeah,

Ann Hince: Yeah. Yeah. One of the things I, I love to, to tell people these days, I think of our skull as our echo chamber for our voice mm-hmm now I had a lot of things going on with my voice over the years, my dad used to tease me about it. You know, I had all that teasing at school. So I held my voice back a lot. Mm-hmm and I, I didn’t have a good singing voice. You know, my scholar’s always been pretty much deformed, right. It’s not been symmetrical in any way. And so I couldn’t sing very well. I loved to sing to myself in the car or in the shower, but there were actually some notes that I couldn’t get to like some mid notes. I could get high and get a little bit in the low, but, there were some notes I couldn’t reach, but this releasing of tension in my skull has actually changed my voice. So I can sing a full range now and I enjoy singing. So, you know, that’s, to me, that’s a fun thing.

Krystal Jakosky: Right. That’s fantastic. Um, well, and not only that, but it also lets you feel freer to speak. The fact that things have shifted and opened up, means that you are, and I mean, even the emotional work, it means that you are better able to speak your truth and speak up when things are not the way that they should be or people aren’t treating you the way that you deserve to be treated. So you’re able to stand up for yourself and speak more freely.

Ann Hince: Absolutely. Well, we talk about being in alignment, I think. Yeah. We use that phrase quite a lot. Right. So I had, uh, understood the concept of being mentally in alignment with something mm-hmm but there’s a physical alignment too. Right? I am becoming more symmetrical. I am more balanced on the inside. And as a result, I am more balanced on the outside. So yes. So being able to tell my truth, that kind of thing, that is, that is a reflection of that change as well. Plus one of the other fun things is the x-rays from the side, which I’ve got on one of my YouTube, um, videos, the person in 2013, right? That skull, that is a person you can tell, they’re not that confident, right? They don’t have a lot of self-confidence compared to the x-ray from 2021. That person in that x-ray is more confident. So just to know that this work actually changes the whole posture of the body to become a more self-confident physical structure. And that to me is huge too, because if I had known doing this work was actually gonna change my self-confidence. That would’ve been a huge incentive for me back then.

Krystal Jakosky: Yeah. Yeah. It shifts so many wonderful things. So if you had one thing to tell my audience if you had one thing that you really wanted to bring out and really impress upon them, what would that be right now

Ann Hince: That you have a lot more power over your future than you think you do, and that you can take control of that by working out how you feel right now and bringing yourself back to peace because we attract our future based on how we’re feeling right now. So at any moment you can try and attempt to bring yourself back to peace, whether it’s just taking a deep breath, breathe in, breathe out, or working with something like EFT and bringing yourself back to peace because that itself is changing your future.

Krystal Jakosky: Oh. Into that. And you have written a book about this, right?

Ann Hince: Yes. Yes. It’s my story. It’s the steps that I went through that anyone else can do as well. Yeah. It’s called a pathway to insight.

Krystal Jakosky: And where can they find that

Ann Hince: You can find it on Amazon or you can ask your local bookstore to order it for you.

Krystal Jakosky: That is great. And then how else do people find you?

Ann Hince: Well, I do have a YouTube channel that has videos. So it has an EFT demo video and a feeling your feelings video. So you can start anytime. And I also have a website where you can see the x-rays, which is Ann hints.com. And I have a public Facebook page that I love to try and explain things on.

Krystal Jakosky: Fabulous. Ann, what is your favorite possibly unique type of self-care

Ann Hince: well, I’m working on myself all the time, right? With this technique, right. I’m relaxing my body at a deeper and deeper level. Yeah. I do love sound baths. I go to a sound bath once a month, which is really fun. And that’s part of the that’s part of this process because you feel at a deeper and deeper level. So to actually feel sounds deep inside and throughout the body is just blissful.

Krystal Jakosky: I love sound baths, the vibrations as they float through you and feeling where they hit and how they hit and letting them just if you haven’t been to a sound bath, evidently Ann and I both highly recommend them.

Ann Hince: yes.

Krystal Jakosky: And then we also like to journal a lot on this, um, podcast. A lot of my listeners are journalers. So do you have a journaling prompt for them to maybe contemplate writing about

Ann Hince: ? How am I feeling right now?

Krystal Jakosky: Ah, that’s easy, and yeah. That’s good. Although, yeah, it sounds easy. You guys, it sounds easy to answer the question. How am I feeling right now? And yet I encourage you to go a little deeper, write down the first thing that comes to you and then sit on that for a minute and then expand on it and sit on that for a minute and expand on it. Go a little deeper, not I’m fine. It’s I’m feeling this. And if you want to add, add movement to it or make it like I’m feeling pushed down by, or I’m feeling uplifted like this, or I, you know, if you need to add imagery and whatnot to it, go for it and expand a little bit so that you can better express yourself. It’s a beautiful journaling, prompt for people to dive into and try to feel into what’s there.

Ann Hince: And notice if you’re deflecting a lot of people deflect, it’s not really their truth. They’re writing down they’re deflecting from their truth. So see if you can find a more specific truth.

Krystal Jakosky: Yeah. Aim into that. And you are a delight and I love your story. I love the new truths that you’ve found and I’ve loved hearing about how it just expanded and has become something that is so much more and such a gift for you. And I really hope that my listeners take that to heart. And if EFT has struck a chord in your heart, I really hope that you look into it and find someone to teach you. If it’s Ann or someone else, I just encourage you to reach out and find what helps you find that inner peace. So thank you, Ann, for being here today.

Ann Hince: Thank you. It’s been really fun.

Krystal Jakosky: Oh, take care of yourself and all your listeners. We’ll see you here again next week on Breathe In, Breathe Out.

I hope this moment of self-care and healing brought you some hope and peace. I’m @krystaljakosky on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube and I hope you check us out and follow along for more content coming soon. I look forward to being with you again here on Breathe In, Breathe Out. Until next time, take care.