11. Embodying Your Inner Goddess with Lauren Leduc

In this episode, we chat with the beautiful Lauren Leduc as she shares her own spiritual and emotional journey to discovering and embodying her inner goddess.

We dig into the societal norms that engender self-doubt and insecurities, as Lauren shares the transformative movement modalities that enabled her own self-discovery and healing.

If you’re ready to start to discover and embody your own inner goddess energy, this episode is for you.

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About Lauren
Lauren is a dedicated yoga teacher, intuitive, and entrepreneur with the unique gift of cultivating connection and community. She believes that yoga is beneficial to everyone and is passionate about creating accessible experiences and opportunities for students to find a deeper connection to themselves and the world around them.

• Follow her on Instagram at @iamlaurenleduc

About Andi

Hello! I'm Andi and I'm a Voice & Expression Coach, Medium, and Actress, and I love all things spirituality, expansion and being brave. I have been on a really long journey with my body. If my journey has taught me anything it’s that as humans we are incredibly powerful self-healers. When we allow ourselves to be brave and share our stories, we embody our most transformative ally – our beautiful, empowered strength. I am here to help you reclaim your whole creative, connected and confident self so that you can become EVERYTHING that you are here in this life to be. xx

• @andi.matthies on Instagram
• Be a guest on the podcast

Transcript

Welcome to Body Diaries, the podcast that shares our real, raw and unfiltered body stories so that we can finally shake off shame, reconnect with our whole selves and ignite everything that our bodies are capable of.

 I'm your host, Andi Matthies and each week we connect with some of the world's most inspiring body-led humans and explore the energetics that changed their lives. If you've ever felt disconnected from your body, or you are craving to finally unlock your whole experience, this podcast is for you.

Andi M: Hey, beautiful human. In this week's episode, I sit down with the lovely Lauren Lauren is a dedicated yoga teacher. She's an intuitive and entrepreneur, and she has the unique gift of cultivating connection and community. In this episode, Lauren shares her own spiritual and emotional journey on how she discovered and then embodied her own inner goddess.

I do want to say that Lauren does share some of her experiences around her eating disorders, her history with depression, And some of those moments where she really felt that self hatred for herself. So I just want to share this so that you can feel into it before tuning in.

But if you are keen, please do dive in. It is a really powerful conversation. And don't forget to leave a review if you love it so that we can make sure that anyone who needs this story will find it. Let's dive in.​

Andi: Lauren. Thank you so much for joining us on Body Diaires today. I'm really excited to have this chat with you.

Lauren: Thanks, Andi. I'm so excited to be here and can't wait to see where our conversation goes.

Andi M: Yeah, absolutely. So we are, diving into embodying our inner goddess, and this lines perfectly with the new book that you have got coming out soon. That's the first place that I want to start. Tell me all about the book that you've got coming out.

Lauren: Thank you. Yes. This book is called Embody Your Inner Goddess, A Guided Journey to Radical Wholeness. And this book really just downloaded through me in a way, not all at once, but the structure and the vibe and the message all came through and I wrote it in two months last year with my baby at my breast.

And I'm so fortunate that it will be published in November and It's really everything that I love wrapped in my story wrapped in a true like guided journey for people to feel more embodied and more aligned with the sacred, with who they truly are. So I share a lot of personal stories mixed with a lot of downloads that have come through and then invite the reader to reflect on their own story.

And then participate in embodiment practices that help really drive the themes home. It's all based around the chakras system. So I love working with the chakras, which are the energy zones or energy centers within the body. And we literally travel up from the root to the crown and turn over every little stone.

 For me personally, it was a difficult journey in writing the book, but so worth it. And I know it's a big ask for the reader to do the same thing, but the reward is so big in that you truly feel your own wholeness. You truly are able to love who you are and be more comfortable in your own skin.

so in this book, we take a seven week journey from the root chakra to the crown chakra, and every single day focuses on a different aspect of that chakra. 

 And you really get to examine and love on every different part of yourself from the most animal to the most spiritual and absolutely everything in between. And at the very end, you get to meet your inner goddess. So I take you through a meditation to really meet this goddess that you've been working with the whole time, and it's my hope that people go through this journey and really develop this sense of wholeness, self love, and then that they continue to work with it, whether it's through my book or through other means, but you can certainly go through it in order, or sometimes I'll use it like an oracle too, where I flip through and find the reading that I'm needing for that particular day so it's such a beautiful way to connect with your body, In all its aspects, and I want to add, because I know you know this too, Andi, and we've been talking about the chakras, so maybe it's obvious, but the body isn't just the physical body.

Yes, that's a manifestation of the body that we see, but the body is your energy. The body is the breath. The body is really it holds your entire story in this energy in even the tissues and the fascia so being able to really in a deep way, connect with all these different aspects of the body and the self creates a lot of space for compassion and love.

And love for our own story and our own bodies in turn.

Andi: Oh my gosh, Lauren, I cannot wait to read this book. When is it out? When is it? When are you launching it?

Lauren: So the publish date is November 24th, but you can pre order it now. So it's wherever books are sold, Amazon, Barnes Noble, local booksellers. And I really I'm practicing receiving right now. So I'll ask if this does spark your interest to please go pre order it. Especially for a new author, it's really one of the best ways to, to support someone's work.

 And I also have lots of like cool freebies on my website, like meditations and embodiment practice invites to lunch parties, stuff like that, if you do pre order it and then enter in your information.

And, I went through like a test group with the book and it was really amazing to see all these women going through this process and examining their own lives, loving on their own selves and really embracing and embodying the goddesses that they truly are it's the most beautiful and rewarding thing to see. And it makes all of the different parts of my own journey, many of which I share in the book, many which are uncomfortable hard, I fucked up so many times in my life, but to be able to like, see it for what it is, embrace it, and even love on those past versions of myself, to know that's how I've gotten to where I am now to be able to share that so other people can also do the same thing, It's just the potential of it is incredible.

So I love what I've seen so far and I can't wait to see hopefully how it affects and changes people's lives.

Andi: Oh my goodness. I am going to be following this one closely. I am going to be putting in a pre order for your book. It sounds magical. 

That concept of stepping into your own wholeness, that is such a powerful one. I'd love to know, what is that to you? 

Lauren: Yeah, absolutely. I know for me in my life, there have been. times that I felt not enough that I felt something is missing that I felt like there's a hole inside of me. And I think that there are many reasons for that, but particularly. Many of us live in a society that convinces us of this that if we just buy this 1 thing, then we'll feel like we're enough and that we're whole, or if we just look this specific way, or if we make this much money, if we have this kind of love in our lives.

The truth is we're already whole. Every single one of us is whole because we are holy. I say we're holy, not holy, which makes more sense in writing, I think than verbally, but it's the truth. And... Instead of searching for what's going to fill that hole, it's about removing all of the delusions that have been bestowed upon us in order to realize who we truly are, and we are the divine embodied.

Andi: It's really interesting when you mention the delusions that have been bestowed onto us. I'd love to know more about that. 

Lauren: I see them coming from a lot of different directions. 

I don't want to put any particular religion down or anything like that, but I do think that, okay, 1st, the only image of God that we receive as is male, and is masculine. There isn't a lot of representation of strong women through the Bible and through the church. I grew up in an evangelical Christian background, which is a very American specific brand of Christianity I received some of that messaging through there.

 Ancestrally, I received that messaging. Generation after generation of women have survived by by their looks, by being a commodity, essentially, by being worthy enough to be married and then therefore financially taken care of and it's not as simple as that these days, but the mindset has been passed down through the years so that my own mother, who is extremely beautiful and smart and strong she's someone I admire very much, had just a horrible relationship with her body and is continuing to heal it well into her 60s right now. Beyond that, we have this kind of beauty fitness and, diet industrial complex going on or fashion to, and not to knock any of those things either, because I love fashion and I love beauty and fitness and things like that.

But people. Our marketers and companies have spent billions of dollars throughout the years convincing us that.

Then it will be worthy. So for me, those have been contributing factors in my life. And a lot of it's just really pervasive. It's like living in dirty water your whole life. You don't know that the water is dirty until you step outside of it and see. So for me, it's really been such a journey, like unpacking what isn't mine. And figuring out what is

Andi: That is a really good point that unpacking and particularly the what is mine and what isn't mine, I think it all gets jumbled up often and we just own it all. 

I'm really interested to hear on your journey of that unpacking, what has come through and been evident of actually this isn't mine and this is what I need to do about it versus this is what I jumbled all together and owned for such a long time.

Lauren: My mother didn't, did not, didn't criticize my looks, she was always very praising of them, although I know generationally, that hasn't always been the case, and that's just something I internalized sorry, I internalized what she said about herself, so she was constantly on a diet, and this isn't necessarily her fault, but we'd go shopping, for instance, 

 And I remember her just crying, trying to find a pair of pants that fit her and a dressing room. And, Just a lot of instances like that over the years, just her constantly criticizing, constantly watching her body, constantly evaluating her worth, to how much her body fit into societal standards, so that really, along with everything else, became really internalized for me. I grew up dancing and performing. Again, I love making people happy and that was such a visceral way to do that. And into my teens, I think that combined with this major drive and perfectionism, this desire to be a professional dancer, I just crashed and fell and had years of very detrimental eating disorders. 

Andi: Yeah, eating disorders. I understand 100% that has been such a long battle for myself as well. What was the turning point for you in all of this work, all of the work that's in your book, all of the journey that you've been on that started to flick the switch on some of that.

Lauren: Yeah, so it, I don't know if there's one big turning point, it came in flashes over many years and I stumbled and fell through a lot of healing. My parents put me through like an eating disorder program in the hospital when I was 17 so that was like my first initial glance at healing and my first like real deep dive into being able to get to know myself and to start understanding myself.

And so there's a lot of therapy involved, but also 1 of the nurses at the hospital taught yoga. And that was my very 1st exposure to yoga. So I remember just sitting in a dark room with candles lit and it was not like an athletic type of yoga whatsoever. We weren't allowed to move our bodies in that way during this process of gaining weight and healing and just something clicked inside of me.

It just felt so good, like concentrating on my breath and slowing down. And it planted a seed that wouldn't really be watered or grown until much later on, but through the years I would do yoga video tapes. That just didn't have the availability that it does now. This is in the early 2000s.

I had the same VHS tape for years. And I'd have this little whisper of you should teach yoga, but I would just push it away. And I stumbled through many other I won't even get into it, but a lot of other schooling and kind of career failures. And finally, I think I was 29, I'd just gotten married.

I was just like, so sick of my own shit, that I opened my computer and signed up for a yoga teacher training, and I had no idea how I was going to pay for it, if I would even teach yoga but I just made the big leap, and I think there are a lot of beautiful things that led up to that, but that was really like a big, yes, like a big turning point in my life.

Yoga really connected me with my body and helped me feel strong. It helped me feel just aware of where my body was in space again, because I had really disconnected after I stopped dancing, which the eating disorder really contributed to that. So yeah, saying yes to a regular practice and then to teaching was it's such a big catalyst. 

Andi: It's funny how fundamental yoga is to so many of our journeys, like I remember discovering similar to you. It was like a yin style yoga. And I was like, what is this beautiful format that is connecting not just breath and movement, but breath to self. And I'd love to dive in from that point that yoga journey can you tell us what that was like for you? 

Lauren: Yeah. Really, it was about, when reconnecting to the way my body used to be able to move because when I danced, I felt that sense of embodiment and passion and joy and just, the thrill of being in a body really 

 So when I started practicing yoga regularly Okay. I started feeling strong. I started regaining my mobility. I started learning how to breathe correctly, which is huge, and I started really learning who I was. And the practice now I know is specifically Designed that way, it's designed to awaken us to who we truly are, and it certainly can work with enough dedication and time.

I think, but I think there are many different aspects I just found so appealing. Yoga is about health or at least the asanas are about health and about, like, how to live a long time in the way that feels best in our own bodies where we are able to be capable of living these beautiful, adventurous, connective lifestyles for a long time. Not to digress too much, but I have private students now who just want to be able to pick up their grandkids or tie their own shoes. So that's what I mean by being able to connect this practice affords people the ability to be comfortable in their own bodies and not be limited in their lives. And it's certainly been. True for me. 

 one of the things that you just said, which really captivated me was the thrill of being in the body. I love that sentence. For many of us, though, we don't know what that is. So I would love to dive into what does the thrill of being in the body look like? And how has that changed, particularly being a young dancer into the work that you do now?

Yeah, so I might first explain what not being thrilled to be in the body looks like I think many of us. Are disconnected from our bodies 1, because of all the influences I talked about earlier, but to be due to trauma. Trauma is any kind of event that we're unable to really physically process in our lives and it gets stuck in the body.

Brains and our nervous systems and our bodies are so smart, and they cope in many different ways. I won't get too deep into that, but it truly does disconnect us from our bodies, where we're living in this way that's very numb. And when we do asanas or yoga, first we explore proprioception, which is feeling where the body is in space, which many people are not able to do due to trauma, due to chronic stress, due to anxiety.

And then it also allows us to explore inner sensations, which Yin, like you're talking about, is so beautiful for. And when we do that, we are able to actually feel what's going on within us, which many people are very scared to do, because it isn't always pretty, at least at first. 

It's really interesting how you just said, as the things come up, you move through them. So I'd love to hear like when those emotions have come up or when they do for your clients, like what is your advice? What is the process that you go through to move them out of the body?

Yeah, there are so many different ways to do it, and I think it's really about what works for each individual person. One is I do believe in, like, all different kinds of therapies, so if it is beyond my personal capability, I'm going to refer out to talk therapy, to EMDR, to maybe neurotherapy.

That's something I've done before just so that people are held within a really safe container to be able to work with. Unpack especially trauma but working with the body through yoga and I think really, it's all about. Being in the seat of the observer, so we get to observe what's going on within us without judgment.

And that's what really allows. Whatever needs to come through, so a lot of times it's just about feeling our feelings. I think many of us aren't even really aware that we block our feelings a little bit of sadness comes up and we squash it down. Because we need to be able to perform.

We need to be able to be a functioning human within a capitalist society. But that gets blocked. It gets stuck. It gets sticky in our bodies. And the only way to get it out is to get it out. So I think that being held in a safe container is really important and then given the opportunity to fully express and I know what you do people can express that through beautiful movement.

Maybe it's done through asanas maybe it's done through breath. Maybe it's done through primal screaming. There's so many. Different ways, maybe it's a lot of walking or hiking and being in nature. There's so many beautiful modalities out there that people can explore to, be what I would call fully expressed, which is like not keeping things in instead, like letting it out and letting that be part of like your aura, letting that be part of your beauty and your uniqueness.

Andi M: I love that everything that you talk about comes back to movement. 

Andi: And so I would love to ask you, like, when did movement start to become core to who you were? Like, what are some of your earliest memories of wanting to move, wanting to use movement as this mechanism to move it through.

And then I'd love to ask you about the connection of that into the chakra system, because I know that is fundamental to what you've written in your book.

Lauren: Yeah, I think we're all connected to movement. It's part of who we are and it starts in the womb. We're in water. We move like babies don't just. Sit there. There's movements all the time. If you've ever been pregnant, like you feel it and then we lay in our bellies when we're babies and we look up and it like forms cervical curve in the spine and then you get on the hands and knees and start crawling and the movement comes from the desire to explore the world around you.

That is what movement is for. And that's what even like shapes our spine and shapes our bodies. That's genetically what we're made for. So I know for me, I remember, just constantly being on the move. My mom said that I would nurse and just like even before I could walk or even crawl I'd try to roll off her lap and get down onto the floor because I wanted to explore and be busy I also remember being maybe like three or four years old and I was I started performing really early.

I love to sing, too, and I would be, I was very excited for a performance, and I remember just hopping up and down and up and down and up and down because my body just had this tremendous amount of energy, and I remember one of the adults around me being like, stop jumping. Which is funny because that's when the socialization starts of no, that's not how we act right now.

But my body was naturally responding to my emotions in that moment. So I don't remember like movement or the body ever not being completely important. And I think that's why when I was older and stopped dancing and had this gap in time between movement practices that I felt really empty and disconnected.

Andi: For me, what's important is having movement every day. I have a two and a half year old. I'm always on the move. I'm not sitting much I do have admin work to do for my business and and podcasts and stuff like that.

Lauren: But truly there's not a lot of sitting around. I don't have that option. But I love lifting weights and like just being totally in it. I love dance. I love yoga. Obviously swimming. We live on a beautiful lake and we get to swim every day right now and hiking and truly just anything to get my body moving.

And it makes such a tremendous Yes. Difference. I said I have a two and a half year old now. So movement is just part of the lifestyle. But one of the hardest times for me was postpartum because suddenly I was unable to utilize this coping mechanism that has served me so well over many years.

And it wasn't permanent. But I did have a long time where I had to figure out not how to move again, necessarily, because thankfully, my body Really was very resilient through postpartum, but just how to do it with a baby all the time because it really changes. Absolutely. Everything where I used to have hours in my day dedicated to movement.

And then suddenly I had almost nothing. So that's been a really really interesting journey, and I had to, I think, work on the root in other ways, and part of it was just like accepting where I was at the moment and working on loving my body and loving the stillness, even.

Andi M: When I was more newly postpartum, it was a lot of walks. So I walked like at least 3 or 4 miles a day. I don't know. That's probably like 5k. And. I think my baby just got so used to that in the womb that I had to bounce or walk for her to sleep once I was able to do that after giving birth.

Lauren: So a lot of walks at first, and I'd even I had a lot of postpartum anxiety and depression, and some of it is It's from like matrescence, which is this huge identity shift of who am I, but also this like humongous responsibility of caring for this little tiny human being. So I would talk to my therapist on the phone and walk at the same time.

And that became a ritual, which was great. It was nice to be able to like, get the baby to sleep and walk and talk to somebody at the same time. And then I thought that. I would be able to join a gym and put the baby in child care, and I could get back to my weights and things. So I tried that when she was about a year old, and I have this beautiful little spirit baby, who is very sensitive and she was not about me dropping her off with somebody else even, not that far away all within the same facility and working out so that did not work.

And I had to figure out. how to do it with her, essentially. So I had to get used to like very short yoga practices where she's crawling over all over me and maybe asking for milk in the middle of it. And over time, like we've developed this ritual around movement and she knows like after we have our little snack in the morning that we go downstairs and that's when I exercise and do yoga and now she has her own yoga mat and she'll do a little bit with me here or there but she plays while I tend to my body, so it's been a process and it's really been.

Dependent on her developmental stage, but I'm finding as she gets older I get to do more and more, which is great. And I want her seeing me do that, too. It doesn't have to be separate. I want her seeing me have fun dancing and moving and knowing that's just an important part of how we take care of ourselves.

Andi M: I love that. I love that role model set up. I know my parents they weren't professional sports people by any means, but they were always playing something. My, my dad is an avid player of everything you can think of with a racket or a ball. He was always playing. So having those role models of people who prioritize moving their body and connecting to themselves through those sports is incredible.

So I love that. 

And that takes me over to what I want to ask you around goddess energy. So we've talked about movement and we've talked about embodiment, but I would love to get your thoughts on what is the goddess energy and how does this all start to connect together?

Lauren: Yes, so I'll explain it as I feel it and know it. 

When I talk about the inner goddess, I'm talking about this feminine aspect of the highest self that's truly a goddess within each and every one of us. So this isn't any kind it's not any specific goddess. It's not Lakshmi. It's not Durga. It is your own personal deity, essentially, who is you. So embodying her is really like drawing that powerful, beautiful, flowing energy into our own beings and allowing ourselves to be fully expressed. And this doesn't exclude the masculine in any way. It just pairs with it. And then if you think about the yin and the yang, there are some aspects like in the book, for instance, which talk about like sacred anger, and we might think of like the anger and the fire more as the solar side or the masculine but it's truly an important part of the feminine as well.

We all have a soul or a spirit. Some people might call it the highest self. We have this aspect of the self that is never born and never dies in it lives through different lifetimes, and within each of us are masculine and feminine energies. They're not necessarily gender based.

We all have them. And to me, we live in a very patriarchal society. That really celebrates the more masculine aspect of the self, not always in the healthiest ways, and really can push down or suppress the more feminine aspects of the self. So that can play out in big ways, but within us, that means we might be really prone to burnout because we're going to go instead of rest. It might mean that we are totally disconnected from our cycles because of that more linear lifestyle that's expected of us. It might mean that we're not allowed to express our more sensitive. Side. It might mean that we're not allowed to express like our emotions. So when I think of the feminine, I think of lunar energy.

I think of coolness. I think of flow. I even think of like creative chaos. That's that like Shakti energy. so for me, a part of my healing journey and my spiritual journey is seeing the feminine in the divine, which I talked about earlier. It's not something that I saw growing up. I didn't see any goddesses.

I didn't see any like feminine aspects of God. I might have seen them like peripherally or known that other religions had them, but it definitely wasn't within my upbringing. So when I started connecting with these goddesses, my life really changed, and my practices really changed, and how I saw myself changed, and what I gave myself permission to be really changed.

Hard. It's hard to be a woman in this world. It's really hard to be a woman in this world. And we try our best and we try our best for our kids. And I know I'm doing a lot of work right now. And I have done a lot of work right now to like open doors for my daughter and her own life.

That doesn't mean she's going to completely avoid the pitfalls of living in this world and in this society. And also I'm sure I make mistakes along the way. She has every right when she's older to look back and say Hey, I wish you would have done this differently. But I can also look back and say I did my best with what I had,

Andi: And that's all we can do. And to bring that old goddess energy in for her so early, how incredible to have you as a mom with all of this knowledge.

Lauren: Thank you. Yeah. It's such a honor and a blessing to have a daughter. It's hard and it's so much fun. And. I love she loves to move like, we're a lot of she loves to move. She loves to sing and I love seeing her find that joy within herself to. She loves to shake her booty.

Andi: oh my goodness, how adorable, and I, that is, it's so beautiful to hear you say that because I know a lot of women are afraid of having girls, I have lots of friends who have had boys, little boys, who are beautiful as well, but they're like, oh, phew. And so to hear you talk about your daughter in such a beautiful way of being able to empower her with this goddess energy and movement and sense of self, that is incredible.

Lauren: thank you. And I also think it's important to bestow that upon our sons too. They also need the space to be fully expressed. I think sometimes people say it's easier because. We put boys in such a narrow box on who they can be, and we give them a very specific role, like you're a provider, you're the strong one but men are just as varied and expressive and expansive as women, and, I think it's a huge task for all of us to give space for the next generation to just be themselves and to be comfortable with that.

Andi M: Oh my goodness. I love that. 

Andi: I would love to know more about,when did you first start to feel the goddess energy 

Lauren: Yeah, I started really embracing it. I want to say in my mid 20s and it's, I don't want to say it's for an embarrassing reason, but I'll share how it came to be. By the time I was in my mid twenties, I was in a lot of debt here in the U. S. Many of us have to take out loans to be able to go to college, which I did, and it just accumulated.

And it ate at me all the time. I felt sick to my stomach. I just didn't know how I was going to ever pay this off. And I was also, I don't think I would have put it this way at the time, but had a lot of money wounds. I didn't know how to manage money. I didn't feel confident around money. I didn't know how I would ever be an adult who could survive in this world because I felt so blocked in that way. So going like a traditional route to heal that, meaning like pulling a credit report, for instance, and like paying off debts, things like that, like I felt so completely like spiritually and emotionally blocked that I couldn't do those more practical things. So I found a chant to Lakshmi. It's still one of my favorite goddesses, but she's a Hindu goddess of wealth and abundance.

And I started chanting to her every single day, Om Shreemaha Lakshmiye Swaha. And I started really feeling the embodiment of that energy. And it didn't fix my money wounds right away, but it was the start of a journey. And then that opened my heart and eyes and mind to many other goddesses. And then.

Really just in the last few years, I started working more with like highest self and spirit and soul, and then realizing that this inner goddess exists too, and it's something that. At first was a, not an abstract concept necessarily, but I was like, yes, I know there's this feminine aspect of the divine, but in my intuitive work, I've started working primarily with women and fems.

And actually working with their inner goddesses tuning into what I see, what they look like, their energy, how they feel, so that they can come more into an alignment with that. I've had this journey with it, where, yes, there are these Outside goddesses in a way that you can maybe embody with the energies that you're needing at any particular point, or you can send your devotion and love and worship to perhaps, but then finally realizing we all have this badass goddess within ourselves and it.

I think that in a way, Inner Goddess can sound like I don't know. I called it like a dove commercial one time. Dove is I don't know. You know what I'm

Andi: Yes. 

Lauren: It sounds like catchy and cool, but to me, it's a very real thing and I see it. And what I see is this untapped energy a lot of times, and most people don't know how powerful, how strong, just how much energy they truly have available to them, and who they truly are, even.

Andi M: Oh my goodness. I love that. I really resonate with that. 

Andi: the phrase that used the badass goddess energy. Oh my goodness. I love that. how have you started to not only feel that and connect to it like you were talking about, but move that, integrate that, move that through the chakras?

Yes.

Lauren: Yeah, to me I've connected with the chakra system for a long time even in, before when I was just talking about, Chanting to Lakshmi, I would sit and meditate, and I didn't know how to meditate, and The millions of resources that are available now are not available then. So I would sit and I would imagine myself as a prism where white light was like pouring through my body and then colors were coming out.

And I had this mantra that was like, I am a prism of light and love. So I just imagined the light of source coming through me and that expressing in all these different ways. A few years later, I did a Reiki training and learned about the chakras. It's funny, I intuitively tapped into them at a certain point and then I learned about them and then started working with them more and more through yoga and learning how to create a full practice around each chakra and embody each 1.

And then, of course, the masculine and feminine energy channels, Ida and Pingala, we call them, travel up through each of these major chakras, so that feminine energy runs through each one. So for me, I guess it just made logical sense that we can use the chakra system, balance each chakra, essentially, to embody this feminine energy, because most of them need more of the feminine energy to come into balance for most people.

Andi: How do you start to bring that back into balance?

Lauren: Yeah, I know for me, this is where I started in a way. I know I have a few different starting points, but I was feeling this intense self hatred. I just didn't understand why things that seemed easy for other people were so hard for me. I didn't feel like I was made for this world or this society and I actually Googled why do I hate myself, which seemed so pathetic at the time and somehow what came up was the book The Highly Sensitive Person.

I ordered the book and it completely changed my life. What I had realized that was I'm not bad. I have all of these like assets within myself that just aren't being utilized the way that they need to be because I hide them in shame. Because they're not as readily accepted in our society. And I think things are shifting a little bit.

But being sensitive, like really feeling emotions, like those are things that are not celebrated. They're suppressed. So now that I'm saying that, I really think it comes down to feeling our emotions. Witnessing them with compassion, allowing them to be, and then letting them go that's one way to accept who we are, and to find more balance within ourselves, because I really do feel the suppressed emotions are what's causing a lot of the toxicity.

It makes us sick.

 Usually, I'll guide a client through a meditation where they focus on the different energy centers and then I have them talk to them. So they'll ask, let's say, let's ask the root chakra what it needs today.

And then to trust, whatever comes through. We're really talking to our bodies and our own energy and they hold all of this wisdom. They're ready to tell us, I think if we're able to tune in enough to hear. So for me, like I've worked with them for so long that if somebody tells me they're feeling a specific way or have this situation come up that I can hone in on maybe which chakras need the most balance, and it's usually all of them, but it might be one in particular that needs the most help and that can help balance all the other ones out. But for other people, it's really like this turning inward to feel what they feel like and hear what they're saying. And then we can use a lot of different practices to help bring them into a more healthy space. 

So I hope that explains it.

Andi:

Andi M: Oh my goodness. I love that. 

What are you building towards now? Is there anything else that you're working on releasing? How can we connect with you more? Oh,

Lauren: Yeah. Thank you for asking certain aspects of my life for a big question mark. I feel like right now, but for anyone who lives in the States, I do have a yoga studio here in Kansas City where I live. It's a donation based trauma informed, anti racist. Yoga studio and teacher training, and actually the yoga teacher training is online and in person.

So even if you live halfway across the world from me, you could still join in on this yoga teacher training. I also do one off intuitive readings. So if you'd like to receive some help connecting with your inner goddess and get a full chakra reading. That's something that you can connect with me with on your website, on my website, pardon.

Obviously, the book is coming out and there's a lot that I'm planning with that, that I'll be announcing in the future, but I'm really excited about a beautiful juicy group container around the book. And I also lead international retreats, my next is June 2024 in Tulum, Mexico, which will center around the book and a lot of the practices in there.

But really, just find me on Instagram, it's IamLaurenLaduke, everything I do I put on there, including free monthly Goddess Circles, which are always on the full moon. And yeah, I love creating and I love connecting with people, so I'm always putting new things out there. Also, I have a podcast called Your Spiritual Besties with my BFF Rashida, and we, it's very conversational like this, we talk about anything and everything and have a lot of cool interviews.

Andi: Thank you so much for coming on today. Thank you for sharing all of your wisdom, all the regardless knowledge. It has been such a delight to have this conversation. I am going to be following you closely because I think there's going to be some incredible stuff coming up. So thank you so much.

Lauren: Yeah, thank you for this opportunity to share, Andy, and thank you for the work that you are doing in sharing these stories about the body in connecting people's spirits with their body. Really, we do the exact same thing. I feel like just in maybe a little bit different ways, and I'm so happy that so many people are awakened to this work and that it's coming through so many different voices because it's so needed.

I think it's really just square one for people to connect back to the body to connect back in turn with mother earth to really realize how sacred life is in our particular lives are. it's such a. Important thing and I think it's going to totally change the world.

Andi M: This was such a powerful conversation with Lauren. 

I, I really hope that you got as much out of it as I did. And I'm really looking forward to her book coming out that should be hitting the shelves very, very soon, if not already. And if you're feeling drawn to connect with her, reach out to her on Instagram at @IamLaurenLeduc, that's L E D U C. And of course, if you want to connect with me, you can find me on Instagram at @andi.matthies. I'm always up for a chat to explore what working together could look like to really help you deepen this connection with your body, as well as open all of your higher abilities and your channels to start really unleashing your own bravery and creativity.

Thank you so much for tuning into today's episode. If you loved listening, please subscribe to the podcast and leave a review because I'd love to give you a shout out. You can find us on Instagram at @bodydiariespodcast.

You can also find me, your host, at @andi.matthies. And if you're feeling ready to share your story on Body Diaries or you have some powerful insights from your own work that you know would help others on their own journeys, fill in the guest application that's in the show notes.

This podcast was recorded in Naam, the traditional lands of the Kulin Nation, to whom I pay my respects to Elders past and present, as well as any other Aboriginal Elders of other communities who may be listening.