 Anushka, how are you? I'm well thank you Chris, how are you? Oh I'm absolutely over the moon that you've come on the show, especially at such short notice and without any fuss. That says a lot about how well balanced you are if you ask me because I've noticed people who suffer trauma, it can become quite a big old thing to get them on the podcast. They might have the most wonderful story, but I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm learning a lot about trauma as the podcast go on. Deal with a lot of military types of Anushka who've got the I'm told not to call it PTSD because it's not a disorder, it's a natural occurrence in the mind I suppose, but one of the links that we've clearly made on this podcast many many times is that a lot of us servicemen, we join up with trauma, you know we've had childhood trauma you could say, unresolved childhood trauma which then when you compound it with some possibly unpleasant experiences in military can then manifest as problem behaviour later in life, can we say. So friends at home, massive welcome. Anushka and I hooked up over LinkedIn, although I'll make it sound like a dating platform, but yes Anushka I was just taken by your profile, rapid transformational therapy. I've heard a bit about this but I can't wait for you to enlighten us. Spiritual wellbeing coach which if you ask me, that's where it is. That's what we all need to get better at unless of course you're already there. And your little bit of bio guiding ambitious visionaries, entrepreneurs and leaders to dig deep, peel back the layers and discover the creativity, intelligence and excellence that is unleashed when we release the burdens of deep seated fear and self doubt. Oh there goes my, I'm just going to get myself my picture back up but do you want to explain how did we get to where we are? How did I get to where I am? Okay so it's been a long time coming so within the last 12 years I've been working a spiritual programme of recovery for my own traumas and things that have been going on, things that I had from my past. And from my past I'll just give you a little bit of an outline. I lost my dad when I was eight years old and I never really thought of that as a trauma but I realise now through the training that I've done and the work that I've done that sometimes traumas that are left untapped become bigger than you think they are. They're just kind of lying subconsciously in the background. So that really, I didn't feel as though that affected me. Being so young I just kind of grew up knowing no different but later on it manifested its way into my life through alcohol abuse and eating disorders. And yeah it stunted my growth. I had lots of creative talents but riddled with so much fear which was part of the trauma itself and self doubt and feeling not good enough and all of those sorts of things. I stunted my creative growth and really stopped myself from being all that I could be. I then got sober and started a spiritual programme and started to relearn how to be me again. So it was a quite long slow steady journey but as luck would have it, I lost my job last year. I say as luck would have it because actually I now see that it was the best thing that could happen to me. It was a change of wind, a mutual kind of parting of ways and this was a really good thing that happened because the job that I had really defined who I was I thought because I got sober and I worked my way up the corporate ladder doing all these different things but really hadn't worked out who I was yet. So last year I had the opportunity to retrain and I think lots of people did lots of things last year. I retrained and I dug deep. I really dug deeper into my spiritual programme and realised that I have a real connection with people that have trauma. I have a gift that perhaps is untapped. There's an empathy, a skill, an empathic skill that I wanted to tap into that I did over the last year. So I retrained to be a rapid transformational therapist and also a spiritual coach and developed my spiritual toolkit which I've been developing for 12 years. So it's like a combination and I wrote a book as well. So there was a couple of things that happened last year that were just really transformational for me and it made me realise that maybe losing that job or deciding to move on from that was actually the best thing that could have happened for me because I could then really tap into, as I say, peel back the layers, find out who I really am, find out what my purpose really is and be able to give back to humanity in something that really feels good. Yes, a couple of great areas you've covered there. The first I'd say advise anybody, if you feel being in a job, it's not right for you, it's holding you back, you're just doing it because for some reason you perceive you need the money. That's definitely time for a reassessment. Like yourself, the last job I had, fortunately, it was several years ago, it's the most unhealthiest place to be mentally, I think that you could possibly, possibly be and the day that I said goodbye to that, what was quite a large salary and I went back to my old self of living on £10,000 a year which I've done quite happily most of my life, best day of my life. Well, one of the best days, I've got such freedom and emancipation from pain, pain, trauma, suffering, anxiety, all this kind of thing. The other is the alcohol. As people who are familiar with my show know, I pretty much drank every day for 30 years and did my fair share of other substances on top and should we just point out a few things that living that type of lifestyle, when you realise that you're living with addiction, what the sort of signs of it are because I think especially after what we've come through, I refer to what's gone on recently, I think a lot of people haven't hidden the fact they've hit the bottle quite hard and yet they probably still are in denial of the damage that it can do, not just in terms of your health but to your relationships and the skills around you and I'm thinking in particular children here and also your future prospects. So should we chat about that a bit? Yeah, I think there's a very key point when it comes to any kind of addiction whether it be alcohol, food, gambling, sex, whatever it could be, what we're essentially doing is trying to change the way we feel reaching out for some substance or something outside of ourselves to change the way we feel. Ultimately what that means is there's something inside that's not quite right, that we're not living our true calling or we're not really allowing our true selves to come to the forefront for whatever reason and the reason I use the two most powerful limiting beliefs that I believe many of us suffer with fear and self-doubt, fear is something that I thought I didn't have any of because I'm not afraid of heights or I'm not afraid of spiders. Fear is not about a fear of phobia. Fear is about not being able to express our true selves because of fear of humiliation or fear of getting it wrong, a telephobia, fear of not being good enough, fear of not having, not being able to do it quite right or perfectly. So this is why I really work, I work with a lot of corporate clients as well that can be seen to be one person on the outside but actually on the inside they haven't really shown their true selves because perhaps they're afraid of, you know, if you're not going to like me if you see the real me. So there's a lot of that and I think addiction comes from being in a place where you're not truly comfortable in your own skin and for whatever reason it might be, it might stem back to trauma. We don't want to say PTSD and I like the fact that you've said that because actually trauma comes in many shapes and forms and very obviously for someone that's worked in the military, very obviously for someone that has lost a parent or whatever it might be, but trauma comes in all shapes and sizes and we don't even know it exists. It could just be something that someone has said way back when we were six years old that has remained with us and traumatized our well-being or the way we feel about ourselves. I think the transformation of therapy taps into that root cause whatever it might be, sorry. No, it's just going to say when I was a substance misuse specialist which was a job I did for three years, a rough definition of addiction is when you follow a pattern of behaviour to the point where your regular systems in your life start to fall by the wayside. That's just a friend because I grew up with that old school kind of parenthood and peer group that thought well, as long as you're not drinking a bottle of whiskey before work you can't possibly be a problematic drinker and yet what you realise when you research this subject as you have to do if you're a specialist and it's immediately obvious that you understand this subject and Nushka is you realise no, it's when you, if you come home from work and have a glass of wine and that's just what you do but then you crack on you get your house tidy you take the kids down the park or whichever way round it should go. Yeah, great, absolutely fine. It's the when you're saying actually kids know that we're not going to the park tonight Mummy or Daddy's coming up, you know and the reason is because you want to hit the bottle or your friend says hey Chris pop round on your way back from work and you're like I've got something and it's not really true it's that you want to get to the off licence before it shuts and this kind of thing the washing up isn't done immediately or the dishwasher isn't stacked it's a day over these are the subtle signs aren't they Nushka that the spiral of addiction is setting in? I think it's even simpler than that I think as I say it's kind of if you're using a substance to change the way you feel because you're not comfortable with the way you feel that's the first sign but also as you say if it's getting in the way of the things that you normally do and you're making excuses for doing the things that you would normally love to do because the drink or substance is taking preference over other things that would cause you or would give you joy then there's a problem but I think the number one thing that I love to talk about if you feel as though you have to control your drinking it means that it's out of control to begin with I feel as though I need to make sure I don't drink tonight or I need to make sure I don't drink too much if you're saying those sorts of things it means that it's out of control to begin with so I think that's a key sign but yes definitely when you start to I mean before you even start stopping going out with people because you'd rather drink or you'd rather do something you know to change the way you feel then that's an obvious sign but really anytime you feel as though you're controlling something it means that it's out of control to begin with and it doesn't mean that you need to be drinking a bottle of whiskey a day to be an alcoholic an alcoholic can be someone that you know has all the intentions of getting through a day without the need for a substance but then somehow always just ends up picking up that drink because I had a bad day or I had a good day or because it's sunny or because it's raining and then the reasons become just it just becomes a habit is you know is the beginning of something that because alcoholism and substance abuse is progressive just as depression is progressive the more depressed you are the more depressed you get you know it's a cycle and it's a progressive cycle and a downward one yes and it's good to recognize these signs because the way change works is we can't change if we haven't admitted to ourselves that possibly we need to change and you can't admit it to yourself if you don't understand if you don't understand what's happening to you you sort of won't accept the facts but the great news is once you decide ah yeah I need to make changes you can't go back it's like a one way you might lapse and relapse which is I would say part of the learning curve but you can never go back to that stage where it's not a problem am I making sense? oh yeah absolutely I mean I always say you can take the the alcohol out of a fruit cake but are you still left with the fruit cake and that's me that's my story is that I'm still a fruit cake and I accept the fruit cake just as it is I just don't put alcohol in it anymore and the thing is it's accepting yourself warts and all that is the most powerful thing that you know we have to look at the cause the root the reason for this in the first place and it often comes from a place of not really loving yourself of not really being comfortable in your own skin and once we realize that we're left with this fruit cake we have to try and understand it and accept it and fall in love with it again and that's where spirituality comes in so the reason I kind of combine the two modalities of RTT rapid transformational therapy and spiritual modalities is because I think that they compliment one another so beautifully RTT is for finding the root cause you know getting to the root of the trauma as it were and getting rid of that but spiritual practices like meditation like visualization and affirmations to reinstate very positive beliefs about yourself these are the sorts of things that maintain and that's why it's spiritual well-being maintain good health maintain positive self-talk maintain just a positive um I'd like to say feeling comfortable in your own skin actually it's about daily it's like a daily reprieve from trauma if you have a trauma it doesn't it does just go away with the RTT that's the whole process and it's beautifully developed by a woman called Marisa and it is very very effective for getting rid of the root the reason and the cause but life happens and spiritual practices can reinforce and just allow you to live a more fulfilled life day by day and and never kind of get too knocked around by the energies out there we can start to feel um yeah okay so we got rid of the trauma but how do we manage life on a daily basis and that's where the spirituality comes in allows you to really enjoy life rather than just endure life can you get rid of the trauma do you think or do you just learn a strategy to to manage it so this is um where RTT comes in and the the belief of this particular practice um as I say it's been really beautifully put together um that the belief is that it is depleted deleted destroyed from your psyche that's the whole process and this is why it's so effective we go deep into your subconscious and we unpick the root of that trauma and once that's gone it's about reprogramming new positive beliefs in place so could you give us an idea in Ushku of how how does it how does it work I'm trying to visualize okay um so I'll give you an example of an RTT session um it's about an hour and a half to two hours long over a proper deep dive on one specific area we do one thing at a time because it's most effective that way I take you into a hypnagogic state which is a suggestible state it's a deep level of relaxation you're not completely out of control you're in complete control but you I guide you into your subconscious mind so that you can um find the root the reason yourself you can start to navigate areas of your mind that you didn't perhaps look at or you've been buried and once all of these um once once this comes to the surface and you're in that state it's then very easy to suggest where we go from there so we regressed certain points in the past so we figure out um through the scenes that come up in that regression period where were the linking scenes that created the belief that you were not smart enough or not clever enough or um never going to be attractive enough or whatever it might be we'll find the root and where where that belief came from then we do a very healing um and releasing part of the session where you get rid of those old beliefs and then we get to reframe those beliefs so we get you to actually see how this happened in the first place and that realisation and that acceptance is so powerful right at that point and that's the point at which we transform and then there's a whole piece where we simply reprogram and transform your psyche and then at the end of that you get a recording which you then get to play and reinforce that belief for 21 days after the session Wow it sounds like you've had some successes yeah amazing really it's just such a transformational um program and hence the name of it myself included and when I did my training I had obviously other students perform RTT on me and likewise and some of the things that come up during that regression period you just wouldn't believe and I've had the same feedback from my clients I just can't believe I remembered that it's like I didn't even think that that was still in my memory it's just astonishing how we hold on to little things that have a huge impact on who we become because in our formative years between the age of zero and and eight and that including being in the womb we are picking up beliefs through what we hear what we what we feel and and those are the most defining moments of our lives so when we go through regression we get to revisit all of that stuff how does it work then um I mean somebody like myself when I look back at my my childhood I a new guy I see it all for what it is or was I mean there was a lot of unpleasant stuff but I understand why it happened I understand the pressures that were on the people that that were involved obviously forgiveness is an essential part of being an enlightened individual but but it's not just that it's um well I mean well I mean it is that but it's you can't set yourself free if you bear any malice towards exactly other individuals and also you're deluded because this this is part of living in a left brain society you see so much people um indoctrinated into living in fear, bitterness and hatred and this guy did that to me and he will get his and there's no understanding there's no empathy there's no like do you not want to know why that person behaved like that do you not care that maybe they their story is way way way worse than yours and it wasn't personal and if you weren't victim you know victimised say this could have happened to anybody this kind of approach and you I think you can see from what I'm saying that I've obviously lived through this thought it through and and and absolutely yeah you've made a very good point there about um forgiveness and this is the reason why I combine the two modalities you've hit the nail on the head so you RTT gets to work on you and your root cause but how we live there on in is part of a spiritual requires a spiritual awakening in the way that you've just talked about looking at somebody else as part in looking look at your part in a situation from the different lens i.e. forgiveness thinking about the other person um is just a more positive and more freeing way to live and more fulfilling because actually once you get rid of those negative energies of blame and of um hatred and of resentment you get to flow through life with much more ease and grace and then you end up attracting more of that beautiful stuff towards you so forgiveness is part of it you said that you kind of need to accept stuff as it is you know this is what happened yes you're absolutely right but once you've made that freedom you've made that break from the past you're then able to look at the world with different fresh eyes knowing that yeah that happened to me i've made peace with that bit and i can make peace to my fellow neighbour because they don't know how that may have affected me so you know when somebody points the finger they've got free fingers pointing back at them often we have just mirrors of each other someone may have said a bad word to you but actually that they're just projecting their own insecurities on you so when you get to look at the world through spiritual eyes you get to just enjoy life more and have be protected from those negative left brain energies fear self-doubt we are absolutely surrounded by it and this is why I say going back out into that world after you've been freed from your trauma isn't enough because you're still going to pick up all the energies of the left brain people out there that are going to tap into to your emotions and spiritual way of life is kind of learning to protect yourself from that right this is you've just nailed what I was getting at because as I say I consider myself enlightened I think I see the world all for what it is as much as we're we're going to them and I don't understand how this amazing universe works and I don't really care about that but what I will say is even as this enlightened person when you pile the stress on me or when I perceive it's being piled on I recognise the signs of trauma that come out of me because I will snap at you I will literally say shut up leave me and it's not possibly good well it's not good behaviour I again I didn't realise a lot of this it's come through the podcast Anushka you know like I've had guests go no you listen and they don't mean it nicely and they've gone this is trauma talking and I'm like whoa and I never considered that I'd never considered that before and it's yeah I mean we're all like I don't like the word recovered because I just think of life as an experience but if we want to put it in that context we're all recovered individuals and yet what's the next stage then for someone like myself how do I you know how do I step away say from the pressure of work this is the stuff I love to talk about it's maintenance of your spiritual well-being which doesn't go away you know that that stuff is continuously continuously improved as you said unless you're the Danai Lama in fact the Danai Lama is probably continuously improving his spiritual well-being as well because we need to because we are affected by the energies in and around us all day every day and the rest of the world are not completely healed so therefore we need to work on this daily so how do we pick up those kind of spiritual tools I believe it comes from daily discipline I think that is the number one above all else and this is why I run an eight-week program and I also run a tribe for anyone that just wants to do some weekly maintenance and that's a really kind of good way just to keep the discipline going that's the whole point is maintaining your spiritual discipline if that means getting up every morning and praying then fine if it means getting up every morning and meditating then fine if it means getting up and doing a gratitude list aligning yourself with aligning your chakras with what it is you want to give to the world today then brilliant you've got so much you can do with your spirituality but start small and keep doing it it's the discipline of doing it day in day out that creates such big changes in your life yes it's why we talk about things like morning routines isn't it exactly that get us to start seeing mornings as your time rather than the punishment time before you have to go to the job and it gets you in such such a much more positive frame of mind doesn't it if you've you've already got up before everyone else you've done your exercise or you've read a book whatever your thing is then you have a healthy breakfast if you do eat breakfast I have my green smoothie around about lunchtime and just sees you right doesn't it absolutely and your morning routine can I mean it's different from one person to the next but what I'm finding and this is why I developed the VIP tribe is that my morning routine is changing as I'm growing I'm changing and different things work for me more quickly now than they used to and it is I mean it is about daily discipline so keep doing it and you will see results but there are the more you practice the more you get to find loop holes that work for you things that work quicker I know for example when I write down three aligned actions for the day and I nail those three actions for the day I go to bed with the feeling that I wanted to achieve by the end of the day and it's about her knowing what to put on that list are they tasks no they're not tasks they are things they are contributions and intentions and contributions so how do I want to contribute to the world today had my intentions for the energy I wanted to put out there it's those sorts of things and those are what make me put my head on the pillow at the end of the night saying I did a good job today and I need that because that's my daily affirmation of I got through this day and I did the best I could and that's a far cry from where I was when I didn't want to wake up in the morning a new script let's leave it there because I think we don't want to sort of overload people but I think it's certainly said enough to ring some bells and you know get people's thinking in alignment with what we're trying to say where can people well I mean I'm going to put your contact details underneath our YouTube video do you just want to give your book a mention I saw the word author in your hand the book is called 12 butterflies I wrote this at the beginning of this kind of rapid journey of transformation before I even did the RTT training it was really for therapeutic purposes only for myself and then after writing it I realized that it might help one other person that's perhaps struggling with needing direction in life wanting to change their life or wanting to up level in some area the reason it's called 12 butterflies is because I hit 12 years sober last year and also because I kept seeing butterflies everywhere I went and I believe they are angel signs that you're on path and they started to become a really powerful symbol of transformation for me and that's the reason for the name of the book you've only got to look at a butterfly and just realize how amazing this life is isn't it and yet we get so distracted by the left brain controllers that just don't want us to be happy that we we miss these simple things that once you understand that simplicity then I think that's the key to unlocking your potential and your well-being most definitely Anushka massive thank you stay on the line I'm just going to play my outro stuff and then I'll thank you properly to everybody at home massive love to you all we're going to do a live session now so please make sure you've joined the patreon at the warrior level it's £9.99 a month for life coaching every month Dasa bargain believe me and we'll see you next time and I fought my way back from chronic trauma and addiction to live, work and travel in 80 countries across all seven continents achieving all of my dreams and goals along the way now I pass my simple system onto other people but I can only help you if you like and subscribe so please do so because you get one life if you live it right one is enough