Navigate Through Life And Find Your North Star With Heidi Hazen

 

Do you feel like you don’t have access to what you dream about? That even with that desire and knowing what you want to be, you still don’t know where to go and start? Whitney Lauritsen invites over a guest who can help us clear these questions out. She sits down with Heidi Hazen, a Certified Master Hypnotist NGH, Self-Hypnosis Teacher, Reiki 1 & 2 Practitioner, and Human Design Reader. In this episode, Heidi helps us navigate through life to find our North Star by learning to trust our inner wisdom and those nudges of the soul. She breaks down the basics of hypnotherapy, showing the value of bringing your nervous system to a state of rest and digest to tap into that internal seeking that will bring you to an alignment with what you’re supposed to do. So join Heidi as she helps you set your internal GPS that points to your North Star. Have a personal uncovering and a journey to self-discovery as you turn wounds into wisdom and heal traumas.

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Listen to the podcast here

 

Navigate Through Life And Find Your North Star With Heidi Hazen

Learning How To Trust Inner Wisdom And Nudges Of The Soul

I am delighted to speak with Heidi. We had a wonderful conversation for almost 40 minutes getting to know one another and the exploration of each other’s interests and who we are. I can’t wait to dive in deeper with you, Heidi. One thing that you said in that conversation struck me. We were talking about my travels and how I had been to your area of the world in Oregon. You brought up this phrase, which is internal seeking.

It lit me up when you said it. You also talked about getting an alignment with what you’re supposed to do and about setting your internal GPS so that you can uncover yourself personally and dive deeper into self-discovery. That’s such a lovely way of phrasing it. I’d love to start off by hearing about what brought you to Oregon because you also shared with me your time in Los Angeles where I live. I would love to know what that transition is like because I might make that myself one day.

I hope you do. Many Californians have come to Central Oregon because it is fantastic and wonderful. I’m a native Oregonian. I was born in Eastern Oregon in a tiny town. I lived in Oregon until I was six years old, and then my family moved to Central California. I spent 30 years in California on the Central Coast in San Diego and then 15 years in Los Angeles before moving back to Oregon.

My family who had not been in Oregon for 30 years piece by piece had moved back. My brother, sister-in-law, nephew, and then my mother and her husband said, “We’ve got to be up there if that’s where half the family is. We’re going to spend our time there.” I was pregnant with my second child and I had a three-year-old. My ex-husband is a paraplegic. He’s paralyzed from the center of the ribcage down. We also had this big, giant business that he was running while I was having kids and going through in vitro. Having a second while having a toddler and having all of the other things that were on our plate, I knew that I was going to need extra support.

The decision to move back to Oregon was family-induced. It was like, “I need support because this is going to be a lot to have another child and have a partner who is not able to pick up a baby that isn’t in the mix.” That’s what brought me back to Oregon. My family is all still here. The marriage is not still here. I am no longer part of the business that we created together for ten years, but I’m still here. This is where the GPS led me. I didn’t know what was going to happen when I got here, but everything that has unfolded in this space has been purposeful as everything we experience in life is purposeful. It’s allowed me to uncover.

Everything we experience in life is purposeful. Share on X

It’s fascinating, too, that I was born three hours from here. From astrogeography, I’m on the same line that I was born into. I came here and I’ve been here for a couple of years. I’ve done an incredible amount of healing of my human experiences and of ending a marriage that I thought I would never end. Pivoting out of a business that I was 50% partner in into what I’m meant to be doing has been the joy of my life.

What has been created through this has led me to my purpose. That’s the inner seeking. I’m getting all these messages from intuitive hits, inner knowing, and clear cognizance. I’m like, “We got to move to Oregon. I’ve got to end my marriage. I’ve got to leave the business. I don’t know what’s next. I just know it’s not more of this.” I had to trust what was in there. That’s the continual seeking.

 

You talk about your travels. In the beginning, it was like, “I’m going to travel to see my family,” and then it’s blossomed into, “How many amazing places can I see along the way?” The fact that you have this North Star of discovering the beauty of the continent of the United States, Canada, or wherever you can go in a car is purposeful. That’s given to you by your soul. As you continue to seek, you will continue to discover more about the world, nature, yourself, and whatever.

I’m already blown away by how you articulate yourself. I’m sitting here bathing in all your statements. There are so many directions. Speaking of a GPS, that’s an interesting question. I would love to pause to hear your thoughts on this. What happens when you have so many options and they all sound great? How do you know which direction to go? How do you decide? Maybe it’s not even about knowing. It’s making a choice of, “I could go to this place, but I need to pick one to start.” How do you decide in those moments?

Let me tell you something. I don’t want to use the word distrust, but because of where I have been led in the last couple of years and what I have become as a hypnotist and hypnotherapist, I understand our minds and our energy in such a profound way. I hesitate because I don’t want to use the wrong word, but I don’t put a lot of faith into our conscious minds.

 

If you are trying to pick where you are meant to go next when you’re making a list, you’re a pro and con list, and you’re using your logical mind to make a decision, I know that that decision can be radically influenced by all of the subconscious programmings from this moment and every moment prior to this moment.

We are so conditioned to make decisions using our minds to weigh out the pros and cons and to be logical. We’re using our logical minds instead of relying on our energy or on that inner knowing. It is that inner knowing like, “Do you want to go here?” You’re like, “No. That doesn’t make sense because I’m going in this direction.” Your energy spoke to you and said, “We need to go in this direction.”

We are conditioned to use our logical minds instead of relying on our inner knowing. Share on X

It’s our journey and our process of seeking and going to where we’re meant to go, when we listen to the inner wisdom, the inner nudge, and the energy. If you asked me, “I’m trying to decide between these five places to go on my road trip,” I would ask you to feel into each one of them. I would say, “Disregard your thoughts about it. Disregard what makes sense logically or with your timeframe or money.” That’s what intuition is. It declares clear cognizance. It’s being guided by your highest self. Your highest self is going to amplify the one that is correct.

The GPS should always be energetic before it’s consciously chosen. We get tied up in, “Does that make sense? I don’t know why I would want to do that. I don’t even get how that even works right now.” It’s like there’s something in those moments in life where you’re like, “I can’t stay here because this is not cutting it.” It may be whatever that is in a relationship, your money mindset, or your career. When you got to shift careers, you’re like, “This does not light me up anymore.”

There’s often that moment of like, “I need to step forward, but I don’t even see a step.” It always makes me think of Indiana Jones. He’s like, “There’s nothing here.” It’s a big cavernous hole in the cave. He steps and then suddenly, the bridge appears, but he couldn’t see it. What makes you come more alive? Of all of these places, which one has the highest frequency at the moment? The things that we want or these North Stars that dangle are purposeful. It is not necessarily a linear process to get from where you are to where you think you’re going. It may be a zigzag. It may be that you are on a road trip, you’re going to get a flat tire, and you’re going to have to spend the night in the armpit of California.

Side note, when I was in college, I left San Diego and was driving home for the summer in my Volkswagen Cabriolet. I got to Hanford. It’s a cow town. When you’re driving on the 5, it is cows. It must be the cow factory. It smells like cows. I pulled over to get gas. I was driving to Vacaville, which is between San Francisco and Sacramento. It’s right there.

I was halfway and I stopped at the gas station. I fueled up, went back into my car, turned it on, and a fire started. An electrical fire started in my console underneath. All of the wires melted together. There was smoke. I’m at the gas tank and people are filling up their cars or U-Haul trucks. Everyone is looking at my car because there’s smoke and you can smell it.

This is a random example, but I’m going with it because I was intuitively led to tell the story. I had to call my family. My brother had to drive four hours from where I was headed to come and get me. I had to sit in Carl’s Jr. for hours while he came. My car had to live in Hanford while it was repaired. It was a month.

There was something in that experience for me, my family, and my brother. My intention that morning was excitement over driving home, being home for the summer, and being in this beautiful space. We have experiences along the journey that are meant for us. It’s not always about, “What’s the most efficient way to go? Which makes the most sense right now?” It is what lights you up and what makes your energy elevate. That’s how we decide. That’s the GPS. The GPS is, “What is the thing that is most powerful for my energy?”

That makes so much sense. I can relate to both sides of it. As a person, I tend to be someone who takes the most efficient route that feels safe to me. Yet, I would prefer to be somebody who could tune in and be more in touch. There are sides of me that are that way. What I’ve struggled with each year that I do these road trips is I tend to over plan. I’m on the trip thinking, “I wish I had left a little bit more up to the moment. I wish that I wasn’t on the schedule. Wouldn’t it be nice to go a completely different direction?” Truly, I don’t fully know how to operate that way because it feels unsafe to me.

I have some insight. Number one, something came to me for you. That is when you are planning next year’s trip, what if you planned one place at a time? You’re like, “I’m going to go here,” and then you stay in that place and you might know where the next place is. You’re like, “I’m going to go to Central Oregon and I’m going to explore Bend then Sisters and all of the nature around it.”

I have a girlfriend who, in 2021, lived all over the United States. She packed up her dog and a little tiny trailer behind her truck and said, “I’m going. I don’t know where I’m going, but I’m going to go.” She was led. She came home and was like, “I’m moving to Costa Rica. I don’t know, but I know I’m supposed to be down there.” It’s like you have the end destination in mind, but instead of planning it to the day, like, “By Wednesday, I’ve got to be over here. I have X amount of days to make this trip.” Maybe you don’t have an end date on when you arrive.

You go to one place, and when you’ve had your fill, you’re like, “It’s time.” Your highest soul self will tell you when it’s time to leave. You’ve had enough. You’ve seen enough and it’s time to go to the next place. You have had such an experience in these last couple of trips you’ve had to see that, “I want more of this.” It may be this place, this experience, the blue pool, or whatever that you’re ahead of the game and ahead of where you were in 2020 when you first decided to make a road trip.

Your highest soul self will tell you when it's time to leave. Share on X

You have this insight about the things that light you up that you could return to without parameters. You could be like, “I get 48 hours in Bend,” or whatever it is. It would be so amazing to do that trip but it’s not always feasible. There, I answered that, but I forgot the question before that because this was an aside.

That’s a great example. You go in a different direction and it’s okay to leave behind the original intention. We’re speaking about this experience. It’s revealed so much to me. This process of traveling is part of the draw for me. I could go on and on. I’ve done so many episodes about the experience of traveling, how this has evolved over time, and how it’s helped me understand these things that we might not experience if we stay in our day-to-day life.

When you travel, there are so many things that are out of your control. There are so many unfamiliar things and unknowns. You’re at a higher chance of being challenged to grow. That’s part of the appeal for me even though it can feel radically uncomfortable. I’ve traveled so much unexpectedly this year in 2022. I didn’t even know that these opportunities were going to come up. In fact, one of them was to go to Costa Rica for the first time. It’s interesting you mentioned that. I didn’t know. It happened a few weeks ahead of time that I got the opportunity to go. It was, “This feels uncomfortable, but I’m going to say yes and do it.” A lot of the experience was uncomfortable, but in hindsight, I think, “This was glorious despite all that discomfort.”

I’m curious based on some of your stories when you’re talking about these transitions. As a mother, I would love to hear more about what that’s like for you. That decision to leave behind a business, a marriage, and a home, I imagine that there was a lot of discomfort in that. If you’re willing to go in that direction, I would like to hear what that process was like for you.

This goes back to childhood. When our beautiful, light soul self drops into the human experience, we come into the body of a baby. From that moment, and sometimes prior to that moment, in utero, we start to develop. We start to be patterned and programmed. We come in and we’re tabula rasa. It’s a blank slate.

We have these experiences. We have these parents, maybe these siblings, and this socioeconomic level that we’re born into, but we don’t have anything. Everything is given to us either through mirroring what is happening around us, watching patterns through behaviors of those who are around us, being in school, learning about social things from being teased, and all of these things. Our mind is like a sponge until we’re eight years old. We are being patterned and programmed. Our personality is being developed.

When I was young, I have two very loving parents who ended their marriage when I was four. I have a younger sibling and an older half-sibling. From four years old on, I was born into this. I am energetic and very sensitive. People would classify me as an HSP or as an empath. I’m a projector with an open solar plexus in human design, which means I take in and amplify the emotional energy of everyone around me. I cannot help it. My gifts expanded beyond the capacity of the people that were in my life. I knew things. I had clear cognizance.

I can say all of this with grace. I have healed so much of it, but I had to go back, look at it, and understand. The underlying theme of my human story was that I was a burden because I was too much. My feelings were too big. I knew things. I was sensitive. I would cry because I was trying to manage. My parents were like, “Whatever. We’re just raising kids.”

My subconscious is creating the life that I am living. It is writing the script that I’m living out consciously. Our conscious mind is less than 10% of our mind’s capacity. The rest of it is subconscious and unconscious. Our body has consciousness and subconscious. My subconscious is like, “Be careful. Don’t ask for too much. You’re already a burden. You are not worthy of having your emotional needs met. You need new shoes.” There was this whole thing about getting a new pair of track shoes and mom was like, “You need to ask your dad.” I was like, “I don’t even know him. How am I supposed to ask him? I’ll do without.”

Fast forward, I found security in religion from the time I was twelve. I wasn’t raised in a religious home, but I needed something that was secure, and I found that in religion. I was within that religion for 25 years. It served me in ways and it wounded me in other ways, which all are part of my story. All were necessary for my evolution as a soul and for me to come into my purpose. It’s like that dangling carrot or that North Star. I had to experience these things in order to get to where I am and where I’m going.

My ex-husband is a wonderful human being. We met and we were married less than a year later. He was my first boyfriend. He’s a paraplegic. Somewhere within my subconscious, I was being guided toward safety and security. A couple of months prior to meeting him, I had gone to Italy for the first time with my three best friends. It was such a magical experience. I was there for ten days. I remember so acutely my energy was like, “You are not going home. You cannot go home. This is where you come to life. This is where you become.”

I got back on the plane and went back to my job. I gave away and sold all of my furniture. I told myself, “For my 30th birthday, I’m going to move to Italy,” which was one year later I had gone for my 29th birthday. I was like, “In one year, I’m moving to Italy. That is it.” I then met Josh, my ex-husband in June. My birthday was in February.

By February of the next year, we were engaged. I went from being like, “The North Star is you’re moving to Italy. This is where you’re going to come alive.” My energy was like, “This is where we go,” and then here came this thing. A lot of people will talk about this like, “You were being tested to see if you were ready to go or do the big thing that you were being guided to do that your soul was like, ‘You need to move to Italy.’” Here came this thing that was a relationship, safety, and security.

Subconsciously, this is a person who is paralyzed way up high from the ribs down. This person is in a wheelchair, a dreamer, and has a huge dream. For them to realize these dreams, it’s going to take a lot from me. My subconscious was like, “You will never be a bigger burden.” I don’t use those lightly. I’m not saying, “He’s a burden.” My subconscious, which is my inner child, is like, “You’re always going to be able to give. You’re never going to need to receive more than this person.”

I got married and was happy. I felt safe and secure. We held similar values and wanted the same kinds of things. I became the woman behind the man as often happens. The woman or the wife generally, and a lot of times, is the woman behind the man. She’s taking care of the home. She’s doing the grocery shopping. She’s cooking the meals so that he can go and do the work.

I went through IVF to conceive our children and I became half of what became the last bookstore. I had roles within the bookstore itself. I helped build it with my hands and things. I did work on behalf of it and different things like that. Mostly, what I did was support Josh so that he could actualize and bring to life this dream of his soul to have this bookstore. We built another one in Bend. He’s since remarried and they’ve built another one. They’re also building another one. It keeps expanding. It’s so beautiful.

The foundation of the last bookstore and the family or the life that we created together was this big, beautiful business and healthy, gorgeous, amazing, and brilliant little children. The marriage was platonic. It was very much a friendship. Within it, I got sicker. By the end of our marriage, I was halfway to adrenal failure. I was depressed. I had a ton of anxiety because I was so out of alignment.

What happened is my subconscious had chosen this thing. It had indicated to my conscious mind, “This is for you.” I believe that that experience was for me being in a marriage that was hard, getting halfway to adrenal failure, and learning how to trust that inner wisdom. The nudges of my soul and my spirit, which I believe were guided by source energy, God, love, and everything that is outside of what we can perceive as human being.

I did get to a point where I would collapse on the kitchen floor. Liz Gilbert is someone who I loved listening to. I loved reading her books. I’ve seen her speak several times. She was like, “I’m on the bathroom floor.” That’s that place that is so painful, but it is reality. When you get that far into something that you are holding onto for the wrong reasons or you are white-knuckling because your parents don’t want you to get divorced or you have children and you shouldn’t “get divorced,” the body is the last place that shows up. Our body is going to speak.

When it has been this thing out here going, “You might want to look at this,” and we’re like, “I don’t need to look at that. I won’t even entertain the thought of getting divorced.” The longer that we go on ignoring it, we allow it to manifest in our bodies. I had gotten to that point. My son was 2 and my daughter was 5 when I finally came and brought this to the table. I had done a year of work prior to having that conversation once I realized, “Everything has to change because I’m not going to make it.” I had lost hope in my life.

I had these beautiful children and so much more. On paper, we’re an attractive couple. We’ve got a big, beautiful business. We’ve got amazing kids. We own a house in beautiful Bend, Oregon. We can tick all of these boxes but it was out of energetic alignment. It was out of alignment with my soul and what I was supposed to be doing that I had held on to for so long.

The transition out of the marriage was to save not only myself but my ex-husband and my children. If I didn’t, I didn’t care if I wrapped my car around a tree. I was so careless. I wouldn’t wish adrenal fatigue to that level on anyone because there is no pill. You have to change your whole life. The most difficult conversation of my life to say, “I don’t want to be married anymore. This isn’t working for anybody,” was so powerful. It fried my phone, which was in the next room. The energy was so intense of having to stand in this conversation of like, “I am doing this. I have to do this.”

What has come in the wake of that has been beautiful. I have a friendly relationship with my ex-husband. It’s very respectful. I have the same with his wife. She’s a co-mother for my two children. The transition out of the business came a year later. I stayed in the business working still as co-owner and found, “This was never my dream.” I was the support of someone else’s dream. I was a shadow artist or shadow dreamer. I was like, “I’ll stand here and I’ll support you. I’ll make sure that you can do exactly what you need to do to grow your dream,” but I had lost whatever mine was.

I found a human design and I was like, “I get this. I know I’m meant to go in this direction.” I then became a hypnotist and left that bookstore business a few years ago. It’s all been for the better. There are bumps here and there, but what I’ve done is released some of the layers that I had been wearing. It is like, “You need to be this. You need to do this.” Underneath that is my authenticity, but I had to heal and alchemize the wounds of the experiences I have had throughout my life. I had to turn them into wisdom so that they were no longer active. They’re no longer in there influencing my conscious decision.

I am captivated by your story. Thank you so much for sharing that. I was hanging on every word and every twist and turn in your life. I’m sitting here thinking there are so many things that I want to expand upon. It reminded me of something I brought up when you and I were discussing things before recording. It was how I was tuning in to an episode of the show, On Being with Krista Tippett. I asked you about this show. I feel like I would highly recommend it to you and to the audience. The specific episode is with a guest who I imagine you’ve heard of. It is Bessel van der Kolk who wrote The Body Keeps the Score. Are you familiar with that?

Yeah.

I read Bessel’s book many years ago. I’ve been thinking about revisiting it. My therapist brought it up to me because we were talking about trauma. Bessel said a few things that remind me of some of what you shared. One of them is you were talking about being a burden. First of all, it is something I can relate to. That’s one of my childhood wounds as well of feeling like my needs weren’t going to be met or I was asking for too much because I, too, have always been a sensitive person. That feeling of being too much and simultaneously not feeling good enough is so interesting to examine.

In this episode, Bessel says something about the power of feeling taken care of and feeling believed. He says that it’s possible to survive about anything as long as you have the people who are important to you on your side. I thought, “Wow.” Feeling believed but also that feeling of being taken care of reminds me of what you’re talking about. I don’t feel like I felt taken care of. Much like you, sometimes, that translates into me taking care of other people or giving other people something that I haven’t often felt. How rare or unique it feels to feel taken care of. It’s that deep childhood yearning.

Bessel also said the way that people overcome events of the past is to be still enough and have an alternative experience. It’s only if you have an experience of being different and of saying, “I am safe now,” that the body feels relaxed. That reminds me of you talking about how the body is often the last to know when you feel safe or relaxed. I’m thinking, “How many people are walking around even if they haven’t had any big trauma or trauma even that they know of?” Sometimes, it’s so deep that we don’t even remember it.

It feels like people are walking around with so much tension, stress, burnout, anxiety, and depression. These are incredibly common. I’m curious about what you said. If that’s so prevalent, so many people are verbalizing those feelings in their bodies. What is going on within their unconscious? At this moment, I’m thinking, “How do we navigate this world if so many people are in those deep states of unrest or tension so below the surface that they might not even be aware of it?”

I have so many things to say. These are brilliant insights that you have brought up. This is why I’m on the planet. I’m about to tell you why I’m on the planet. I mentioned that our soul drops into the body of this baby and we begin the human experience. We’re here to have experiences that are beautiful, hard, in between, and mediocre in an effort for our soul to evolve and to understand like, “That’s what it’s like to live over here. That’s what it’s like to be this kind of person or have this kind of human experience.” We cannot remember.

Our soul is worthy. What is that word? It is like, “They are. We are.” We have infinite potential. We are light and powerful. We are here to do beautiful things, but we have to forget the curriculum. We don’t know what the curriculum is when we drop in. We have to forget. There’s this moment. When I work in hypnotherapy and I do sessions one-on-one, I’m looking for the moment that they simultaneously begin to forget and begin to experience being a human.

 

There’s a moment. Sometimes, it’s in utero. Sometimes, it’s, “I’m eight months old. I’m lying on the blanket. I’m outside. My mom is next to me.” “What’s happening?” “She’s not looking at me.” “What are you thinking?” “I want her to look at me right now and she’s not looking at me.” “How does that make you feel?” You’re like, “I’m scared. I’m separate. This is the first moment that I have ever felt I’m on my own. I am a human on my own journey here. This is my own and I’m separate. Before this, I felt whole, loved, safe, and worthy.”

What happens is we build because it is the human experience. We build this barricade unintentionally between our human conscious understanding and our soul which lives within our energy and within us. This is the human experience of all the experiences that we’ve had. Some of the experiences that we have to illuminate our souls’ light if someone is like, “She’s such an amazing artist. Let me give you all the art tools that would put you in lessons. Let me let you play as an artist because I can see that this is something that lights you up. You come alive when you do this thing.”

Sometimes, we have those experiences. They amplify and create space for oneness and connection between our highest, worthiest soul self and our human that’s having this human experience. Some of the experiences that we have, and we have them over and over again, separate us. It does not amplify our light. It is opaque. It’s like a piece of coal. It’s this opaque experience that’s got the energy of it. It’s got the circumstances themselves. It’s like, “That goes here.”

As a child, we’re like, “Things are coming at me. I don’t know how to think because my brain hasn’t developed yet. I’m going to take this circumstance or this thing that happened with my family. It doesn’t feel good, so I need to figure out how to change it so that I feel good again. How do I do that? Let me change my attachment style.” That’s how our attachment styles and belief in ourselves are created. It’s through experience after experience.

We build up these barricades. Some people might have a barricade with limited access to their worth, their worthiness, or their highest self in an area of relationships. They might not feel worthy of having the big, beautiful relationship that they dream of in their heart. Someone might have limited access to their worth and is living in oneness with their highest self in the area of money. They’re constantly scraping by and it’s like, “I’m getting there.”

It’s like, “We don’t have access to what we dream of,” and that is to feel abundant, peaceful, and okay financially. Maybe somebody has it in the area of health because they were raised by parents who maybe were sick, couldn’t take care of themselves, or had bad eating habits. Here’s this adult person who’s struggling with their weight because they are living from the barricade. We live from experiences and many of our experiences have the unprocessed emotional energy.

 

Anxiety is fear about the future. Depression is stuff about the past. It’s a sadness about what happened. We don’t take ownership and a radical responsibility of like, “I am energy. We are an electromagnetic energy being before, during, and after we have a physical self.” When we are always looking at the physical and we’re not going, “How am I showing up right now? I have so much anxiety. I am not feeling anxiety. I am anxiety in the world. That is what I am adding to the world right now.”

It’s when people have unprocessed emotional energy from experiences. People don’t have to have a traumatic capital T or little T. People can have beautiful upbringings and life experiences. Yet, there are still things that can separate you from living in alignment and oneness with your highest soul self.

I teach emotional energy agency. I teach you how to understand what these emotions are and shift your emotional energy because you are manifesting. You are calling in. It’s like a radio station. If you are tuned to the station of rage because you’re so angry about what you experienced, you are sending out the signal of more of this. Somebody cuts you off and you fly into a rage because it is so unjust. We repeat patterns in our relationships, our dynamics with friends, work, money, and all the different things.

What is happening to your energy at this moment? We carry with us all that we have experienced. If you are a glass of water, you have beautiful experiences in your childhood and had very caring, loving parents that held space for you, let’s say that’s yellow. We’re dropping in little drops of yellow food coloring. We have a beautiful, bright yellow-colored thing. Let’s say there’s a whole bunch of love in your life and we are dropping in pink. We got pink and yellow. It’s turning into this beautiful color.

Let’s say that there’s somebody in your life and it’s intentional. It is not that their actions are intentional, but this person being in your life to provide you with these experiences is unfair. They are mean. You might have a grandparent who’s mean and you’re afraid of them. Let’s say that color is black. If we’re dropping in some black, that’s going to shift the color. The more we have these beautiful, light experiences, that’s the color that we are that we go forward with.

It’s very easy for us. It’s familiar for us to resonate and to be in that frequency of like, “It’s light and it’s beautiful.” Mostly as children, we’re not allowed to process them. It’s like, “Don’t you cry. That’s not appropriate here. You be quiet. You don’t make a scene.” We don’t ever go like, “Do you remember mom told you to process that later? Mom was like, ‘Don’t do that here.’” We don’t ever revisit. That’s where my work comes in. This heavy, negative, hate, anger, and rage, we store these destructive energies from our experiences.

The subconscious space is infinite. It will always be with you. It contains every moment of your life. All of these black droplets, if we could pull them out and say, “The circumstance does not change. The experience does not change your perception when we come at it,” which is my work. I take you back to your soul. What is your soul’s perception? Your soul is infinitely worthy, full of potential, full of dreams, and full of gifts.

Your soul is infinitely worthy. Share on X

When we come back to these experiences, the color of the emotion, we neutralize the emotions. Suddenly, all of that black, dark red, dark purple, or whatever those frequencies feel like, we neutralize them and turn them back into the water. That allows you to be in those higher frequencies. It’s not in cutting them off or ignoring them but you carry them with you always.

Everything that we have experienced in the past has manifested at the moment. Where are you at? Where are you financially? Where are you in your relationships? Where are you at in your relationship with yourself? Where is your relationship with food and health? Where is it with social injustices? If you aren’t where you want to be, it’s not about how you strive to get there. It’s what are you hooked into? What piece of your story in the past has hooked into you in the now that has created this limited experience? You want to be there and you are not there. How do you get there? You turn around. You go and find the thing that is meant for you.

Everything we have experienced in the past has manifested the current moment. Share on X

I don’t have a big T trauma, but I have lots of little things that happen over and over again that made me hyper-vigilant. I’ve probably been on the adrenal fatigue spectrum since I was five years old. When I started to do hypnotherapy as a client and as a practitioner, I understand it’s the same with every single person. When you start to go, “That person feels different. It feels amazing to be around this person. That’s different than being around this person,” everyone is showing you the spectrum of living as a human who occasionally remembers that they have a soul and living as a soul who’s here on a human.

 

There’s this little toggle. You can see when people are aligned with their worthiness and the truth about who they are. They’re living very authentic lives. You can see when people are living out of their wounds. There are levels of depression. I’m not speaking to when there is major chemical stuff happening. People can be like, “They’re bored. They’re uninspired. They’re mean.”

You can see if somebody is triggered by something. What is your response to that? We can choose our response, but our subconscious chooses it for us. Our subconscious is wired to protect and keep safe what already is in there. When you’re trying to change something in your life and it doesn’t come easy, that’s because you have mechanisms and patterns in place to keep everything the same. Your subconscious is made to protect this wounded inner child.

We talk about self-sabotage. The saboteur is in there. It’s like, “I keep getting in my own way.” It’s out of protection. It’s out of, “I’m going to keep you safe.” If we stop, look back, and use hypnosis to access the subconscious, which is a relaxation method with a very specific intention, we can go in there and go, “I have thought this about myself my whole life. Here’s the experience where I accepted that that was true about me and it had nothing to do with me. It was someone else.”

We hand down from generation to generation these beliefs and ways of doing life. It manifests in our behavior. I’m here to help humanity alchemize the wounds from their past into wisdom. I’m here to teach them how to take ownership of their emotional energy and their energetic body in the present moment so that they manifest more of that in the future. If we don’t look at the past, we’re doomed to repeat it. It will continue to repeat until we go, “Let me find the root of this.” When we find the root of this, then it’s no longer a thing that keeps sprouting. We have more capacity to move forward into the next thing that is meant for us, but we have to deal with what’s already happened that we didn’t deal with yet.

What you’ve been talking about is so compelling. I go back to something I said to you before we started. It is that I’m amazed that you don’t have your own show because you are so eloquent. You have so much to share. You talked about your own little version of TED Talks in your private life. I could sit here absorbing so much.

There were a few things that resonated. First of all, I had this moment of clarity and a-ha in the simplicity of that phrase, “It had nothing to do with me.” I find that so comforting because I see the truth in that. Looking back on my life, I somehow got this idea that it did have something to do with me. I was told somehow, whether directly or indirectly, over and over again not to trust myself. Trust became a big challenge. It goes back to what I was sharing before. It’s hard for me to make decisions sometimes. I’m like, “I have all these options. Which one do I choose? Which is the best one? Which feels safe to me?”

That idea of not being able to trust over and over again, I’m at a point in my life thinking, “I’ve had the answers all along.” People kept telling me things that weren’t in alignment with mine. I knew it deep down, but I still believed and internalized them. I still said, “They’re right and I’m wrong.” That was part of the idea. I began to seek external guidance over and over again, get so confused, and not trust my internal guidance.

When you shared that phrase, “It had nothing to do with me,” I found myself thinking, “You’re right. They don’t know what they’re talking about. That has nothing to do with me. That has nothing to do with my path.” Yet, what I’m interested in is finding the root. That leads me to curiosity about what hypnotherapy looks like for someone like myself who’s never done it and who’s curious about it.

Now that you’ve outlined more of the process, the benefits, and the outcomes, I’d love to go back to the basics of what it is like. I’m feeling very interested in doing a session with you. In full transparency, I’m like, “After we finish this, I want to book a session with Heidi because this sounds so interesting. I at least want to experience it.” Lead me through what that’s like for me or for the reader who might be feeling the same thing. What if we’re ready to book? Do we go to your website? Is that how it works? Do you book a time and you can do it virtually, or do you need to do hypnotherapy in person? What is it like?

I love that it has sparked something within you. That’s part of what I’m also here to do. I break down these preconceived ideas about hypnosis. When I say I’m a hypnotist, people are like, “Oh.” They have these different responses to that. It’s either they’re afraid that I’m going to hypnotize them without their knowledge or whatever. I love that that has sparked some interest in you.

The first thing that I would say is hypnosis is super safe. You are always in control. I have a lot of people who are hanging on the fence. They’re like, “I hear you talk. It sounds so good. I feel inspired by it, but I’m still afraid.” The first thing I would say is hypnosis is not something to be afraid of. Hypnosis is a process of focusing on one thing to the exclusion of everything else so that you can drop in. We pass through stages of hypnosis all the time. If you’ve ever been so engrossed in a book or a movie that someone had to say, “Whitney,” you were in a state of hypnosis. You were focused on one thing to the exclusion of everything else.

Hypnosis is the process of focusing on one thing to the exclusion of everything else. Share on X

Working with a hypnotist or hypnotherapist is your willingness. Anyone who is willing who has a functioning brain can be hypnotized. It’s willingness. It’s you being so focused on what I’m saying and the directions that I’m giving you. It can be done over Zoom. I work with people all over the world because you’re in the safety of your own home or your own space. It makes it easier for you to be comfortable where you didn’t have to drive across town or come into somebody’s office. I primarily work over Zoom because I can reach more people.

Prior to that, if people are coming to the table like, “Woah, hypnotherapy,” I have a library of self-hypnosis audios. They are beautiful. They bring your nervous system into a beautiful state of rest and digest. They are not just hypnotherapy. They also work with your energy. What I have you do is called Alignment School. There’s Align with Love, Align with Abundance, Align with Money, and Align with Worthiness. I created two more that are coming out in a couple of days, which are Align with Exercise and Align with Healthy Eating. Those are very practical and human, like, “Let me help you with this.”

You are becoming comfortable listening to the sound of my voice. You are allowing your body and your mind to come into a deep state of relaxation. What happens when we do that is we go beyond something called the critical function or the critical factor. It’s like the bodyguard. You’re at Tony Robbins and Tony Robbins is like, “You’re all billionaires. You can be a millionaire next year.” Consciously, you’re like, “I hear it. I’m going to be a millionaire next year.” The bodyguard is like, “That is information. We are not putting that in as a new belief. We are going to put it over here.”

When we do hypnosis, we go beyond the bodyguard. We slip him a $20 and say, “Take ten minutes. We’re going to go into this space.” When we have access to the subconscious, it is a circus. It is not linear and logical. It’s a circus in there. It’s bananas. There are all kinds of things happening because it’s our child self who has set up the space. It’s like a carnival. They’re putting things together with ticky-tacky and bubble gum. It’s like, “Why are you doing that?” The earlier version of us is like, “This is how I did it. When that happens, this is how I do it.” In listening to these audios, we’re accessing that space and we’re bringing some order.

I used to be a professional organizer for celebrities and industry executives in Los Angeles before I moved up here and had kids. I would come into a space and it was like, “I need to assess. Let me see the worst of it.” They’re like, “It’s the garage.” I’m like, “Let me see it.” I would see the garage and it’s like, “There is no rhyme or reason. What is going on here?” We’ve got to delete. We got to go through and say, “I’m not even rock climbing anymore. Let’s get rid of all this rock climbing gear. Let’s take down the rock climbing wall because we don’t need it anymore.” We have to remove. There’s more capacity and then we can bring order.

In the subconscious, I do the same thing and I allow you to do the same thing. I don’t do single sessions of hypnosis. It’s a whole process. If I do a single session, it will not benefit you as much as doing, “This is the issue you’re working on, but I know that you have all of this that you don’t even know to look at.” It’s there within everybody.

I created a group hypnotherapy program that is profound. It is based on the work that I do one-to-one, which is very high touch. Even if it’s virtual, it’s elite. It’s for people who are like, “I’m different. I’m here to do major things. I got to go do this thing.” I was like, “I want to reach so many people. How could I possibly turn this into something?” It was given to me while I was in the sauna. It tapped me on the shoulder and was like, “Here’s how you do it.” I’ve been running that this 2022. I take you through the exact process of clearing out the places that you don’t know to look within yourself.

It’s all insight-based hypnosis. I don’t need to go back and forth with you. I can take you into the space. I can ask you the right questions in the right space and you will receive your own answers. That’s the thing that’s so beautiful about insight-based hypnotherapy. It’s not me coming in and saying, “You believe you are the most beautiful woman in the world.” I’m not trying to put in new beliefs. What I’m trying to do is create a space and make a path within your subconscious so that you can go and find the answer.

The hypnosis audios are beautiful because they’re working with energy. They’re also working with your intention. When we get our conscious intention, our subconscious programming, and our energy all in alignment, that’s how we move forward. That’s how we manifest what we need to do. If our consciousness is like, “I’m going to make $1 million next year,” and the subconscious is like, “We’re poor. We have never had enough. We are never going to make $1 million next year,” you have something pointing at North and something pointing at Southwest. You cannot move in a direction. You will not go very far.

Your emotional energy is influenced radically by your subconscious programming. It’s like the colors of the drops. How many drops do you have that say, “We need to go this direction for safety and security.” We can’t trust ourselves. We’ve got to get external validation before we move forward. Trusting yourself had been taken away from you through experiences.

If someone is dipping in, I would say grab one of the hypnosis audio. I know that mine is elevated because it’s not just hypnotherapy. I heard this quote. I listened to a podcast and at the beginning of the podcast, they had snippets of previous guests. One of them was Joe Dispenza. I recognized his voice. I can’t remember what he said, but he said, “We can do this and we can do that, but if you don’t change your energy, nothing changes.” He and I are in the same school, which is soul school. We’re both here doing the same thing but we have different ways of bringing it to this group of people. He brings it to this group of people. I know that our energy is the most important thing.

In my hypnosis audios, you are aligning your energy. You are beginning to work with your energy. The group is where I want 98.7% of the people to be because it is so beautiful. I have powerful energy and it can be overwhelming to do one-on-one work with me. I’m like, “You will fall down. This is surgical. I need to know that you have done a ton of work. I need to know that you are ready to remember and live from that aspect of you.”

It’s like a cop. You get pulled over and the cop comes up with the mag light. He’s like, “Let me see what’s in here. Open the trunk. Open the hood. Get out of the car. I got to check under the seats.” That’s me in the one-to-one sessions because I’m coming in and I’m going to look, and I’m going to look hard. I’m going to allow you to see beyond what you are comfortable seeing so that you can move forward.

I do the same work within the group, but I’m like a lantern. My light is diffused 360 degrees to this group of souls who are willing to do the work but want a more gentle approach. They keep the tools that we do in these six sessions and they have access to hypnotherapy whenever they want because it’s all recorded. They can go in and continue to do it. They’re going to have the same result. It’s just going to take a little bit longer and be a little gentler than me coming in and doing this deep work. Those are the things that I do.

I’m creating a standalone course or a mini journey course that is all about emotional energy. I take you in, allow you to play with emotional energy, and see where you’re at. We evaluate the areas of your life. I’m like, “What does it feel like to be in those areas? What does it feel like to be over here? Here’s how you can shift it. Here’s how you can take ownership of the present moment.” Those are the things that are coming up.

It’s about being comfortable and trusting the hypnotherapist. There are beautiful, brilliant hypnotherapists out there that you could go to that are not me that can move you forward in beautiful ways. I would say the very most important thing is that you vibe with them. It’s like, “I like the way they talk. I like the way their energy feels.” That’s going to allow you to rest deeply and trust the process more than if you’re like, “Let me find a hypnotherapist. It says hypnotherapy on here. Let me go to this person.” That’s how you empower yourself to do this beautiful deep work of going back, alchemizing, and coming into the present moment.

The comment that rang out for you about, “That has nothing to do with me,” is something that happens throughout everyone’s story. Every human experience we’ve had has been with generally another human who has been programmed. There is an extraordinary amount of grace that comes through doing this work of personally owning your past, even all the bad things that happened to you that you feel never should have happened and were egregious and awful, and when you say, “That’s my story. That is what happened, but I’m going to shift my perception of the event into reality.”

In the actual truth, when we take that responsibility, it is this big uplifting. I can’t even figure out how to explain it. It is like water rising. You start to have such a profound amount of grace for yourself and for the people in your story. The parents that could not hold space for you, suddenly, you have grace for them. You’re like, “They had no idea because they came through my grandparents.”

Epigenetics shows us that we carry stuff from 7, 12, or whatever it is generations above us. When we get to the present moment and take responsibility for the experience that we are having and how we are doing it, we stop from passing it further. There is this race because you suddenly see the person who’s having a hard time at the grocery store or the person who’s having road rage. It’s grace because you’re in it and you don’t know that you’re in it. You don’t know how to get out of it.

We can talk ad nauseam with therapists, coaches, or friends. We can be journaling. Those are helpful, but they’re still dealing with the limited conscious mind. When we access the subconscious, we access the root. We access the earlier times. It’s not just about how you manage the symptoms of the root that is in the past. Many things we do are about managing the symptoms.

I am so drawn in, intrigued, and excited. I can’t wait to go listen to your audio recordings. I went to it and the audios and the group sessions are there. Everything is so laid out. I love the simplicity of your website. For the reader, there are going to be a few locations to make it easy for you to find her website. If you want to download it, sign up for her newsletter. I’m sitting here thinking, “I can’t wait to go through everything that you said.”

I can’t wait to do it. I’m sitting here thinking, “I want to dive in more,” because this has been so insightful, delightful, nourishing, and clarifying. It’s been such a gift to have you on the show. I have one final question for you before we wrap up that I’ve been eager to ask you since you brought it up. I’m curious about how you feel about Italy since you have made all these changes and gone in different directions. Do you still feel called to go to Italy at some point? Is that something you think about or have you returned there since your divorce?

Yes. I love that you’re asking me this. You’re an incredible host. I love it. What was meant to be uncovered in me was very much something that I was hiding from myself. When I divorced, within a couple of months after I had that initial conversation, I was training in Brazilian jujitsu. One of my coaches taught a class. Suddenly, this energetic curtain lifted up. I was like, “That’s my person. That is my beloved. What the heck?” He is nineteen years younger than me and he is Italian. We have been to Italy together. That is one of my favorite places. We have a friend there and I’m living through his posts on Instagram.

Italy, had I gone there, I would’ve had this uncovering of the parts of myself that I was keeping hidden from myself. It was very much about sexuality. It is a whole other topic. It was like, “I got to uncover something.” It was either going to happen in Italy if I had chosen to stay or go back for my 30th birthday. Instead, I wasn’t ready and I chose to get married. I pulled back and I did the safe thing that ended how it ended.

Once I did that, then my capacity expanded once again. Here was this person. I didn’t have to go to Italy. He was right here at the gym. We’ve been together for four years. We’ve been engaged for a year and a half. He’s beloved by my children. It is seamless. One of my big dreams for my life is, at some point, for two weeks or a month, to rent a villa somewhere in the hills of Tuscany and go and be. I think there’s some sort of magical energy in Italy, the Italians, the food, and the lifestyle. I will go back, and I have been back. It took a hot minute to get back, but it was worth it because I was with this person who was able to pull back the curtain with me and allow me to become more whole.

That is so beautiful to hear. It fills me with joy. I’m so grateful that I asked you that and that you shared. I am grateful for your willingness to open up. I feel like you have a book in you, at least. When you were mentioning Elizabeth Gilbert, I was thinking you could easily write a book like her as if you feel called to that because your stories are so compelling. It’s a true journey with so many lessons there that inspired and captivated me in this whole conversation. Thank you again for chatting with me, revealing yourself in so many nuanced ways, and teaching me and the audience lessons. I feel full of gratitude for you. I can’t wait to hear more through your audio and everything else that you’re doing. This is the beginning for me and hopefully the reader as well.

Thank you so much for having me on. This felt like an aligned conversation. It had lots of respect and gratitude, for sure. I appreciate it very much.

 

Important Links

• Heidi Hazen
• On Being with Krista Tippett
• Bessel van der Kolk – On Being Podcast Past Episode
• The Body Keeps the Score
• Self-Hypnosis Audios
• https://Bookshop.org/a/17878/9780399576775

 

About Heidi Hazen

For a decade, she was the co-owner of the world-famous bookstore, The Last Bookstore, before pivoting into her soul’s purpose.

For years, Heidi was depressed, extremely anxious, halfway to adrenal failure, and almost giving up on life despite having what many people desire in life: two lovely kids, a good husband, a thriving business, money, and a beautiful home.

Today, she has helped thousands of women overcome limiting beliefs holding them back and discover their life’s purpose.
She then became a Certified Hypnotist with the National Guild of Hypnotists, a Certified Master Hypnotist in 5-PATH, a 7th Path Self-Hypnosis Teacher, a trained Human Design Reader, and a Reiki Level 1 & 2 Practitioner to help other women find their way back to their original self so they may live authentically.

 

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