05. Alana Joy Newton
WHISPERS WITHIN: INSIGHTS ON HEALING, CONNECTION + INNER WISDOM

Erica Carroll [00:00:01 - 00:02:25]:
Welcome to the Alchemy of Healing podcast. I'm your host Erica Carroll. For over 20 years I worked as an actress in film and TV until my health forced its way to center stage and demanded I focus on the alchemical process that is healing. Along the way I had to examine preconceived beliefs around how to optimize my body and how to empower myself to find solutions.

I know how lonely, isolating and hopeless chronic illness can feel and the Alchemy of Healing sessions aim to enlighten and inspire new ideas to help you find your unique path back to wellness.

So, join me while I speak with experts in diverse fields of self-care. Practitioners, biohackers, healers and folks like you who are the true experts of their own bodies sharing their personal stories of how they transmuted from surviving to thriving.

What do you do when your life has changed? In such a significant way that you feel utterly lost and disoriented. Whether it's due to an illness, a sudden loss, or some other profound change in your life, you may be feeling disconnected from others and yourself. Maybe you're grieving the life you once had, or maybe you're grieving the loss of unfulfilled dreams, or can't even imagine what your future may hold. Regardless of the reason, if you have a moment to sit with yourself, you get the sense something is amiss and that you are in need of some guidance to help connect you to who and what you are. 

Alana Joy is a reconnection coach, speaker, and lifelong healer. She's been a helping professional for over 20 years, working first as a nurse and a psychotherapist. Her personal experience of chronic illness, death, and divorce catalyzed profound physical, emotional, and spiritual healing, weaving her deep understanding of the body, heart, and soul. Alana Joy's work bridges science and spirituality to integrate all parts of the human experience. 

Alana is on a mission to guide as many as possible through the process of healing. She's been a reconnection coach, speaker, process of excavating their authentic self, and connecting with the renewed sense of purpose and joy. And today, we are delighted to be able to support her on that mission as we sit down to discuss her journey and her insights. So here we go. Miss Alana Joy Newton. Okay, my friend. It's already started. So hello, Alana Joy Newton. Thank you so much for joining me today. 

Alana Joy Newton:
Thanks for having me here, Erica.

Erica Carroll [00:02:28 - 00:02:39]:
Giving listeners a little backstory on where you come from, what inspired you to transition from nursing, psychotherapy, and eventually into reconnection coaching.

Alana Joy Newton [00:02:39 - 00:04:55]:
Yeah, thanks. Okay, where I came from. My mind went somewhere else with that question initially. Where I came from in this life. 

Erica Caroll:
In this incarnation.

Alana Joy Newton:
So, okay, I'll put my professional hat on first.

Yeah, I've always felt drawn to helping others, helping beings. In my family, that was my role. I have three older brothers. And I was kind of the emotional caretaker, mostly of my mother. And so I really, it was simultaneously a burden. And again, it was a gift. And nature and nurture, did I become nurturing because that, you know, because I was expected to? Or was I in that role because I was nurturing? Who knows? Both, maybe. But so I had very early experiences of providing emotional support and being very emotionally attuned to people in my family. And so as I was choosing my professional path, my mom, who was also a nurse, very strongly influenced me to take that path as well. And I had different ideas. Still in the helping realm, not exactly nursing, but practically speaking, it seemed like a good idea. 

So I entered nursing at 17 and graduated at 20. I was a registered nurse. At the time I was 20. That's insane. Pretty insane, right? Pretty insane. And I really did love it. I really thrived. I never thought of myself as a student, as an academic. My grades in high school were okay. But in nursing school, I really thrived. I loved it.

And so I continued on that path. And I worked as a nurse. Well, in total, it ended up being 16 years that I worked as a nurse. And lots of different areas.

Erica Carroll [00:04:55 - 00:05:01]:
You worked as a nurse. Sorry, was that in, like in the hospital? In the hospital, in public health, or where?

Alana Joy Newton [00:05:01 - 00:05:30]:
So I moved around. I started my career in acute care. Well, actually, in cardiology, acute care, like cardiac, but then I moved to acute care, neuroscience, so head injuries, strokes, brain tumours. So very heavy, emotionally heavy and physically heavy work. 

Erica Carroll:
And you're in your early 20s. 

Alana Joy Newton:
I am, it's 20. Yeah. 

Erica Carroll:
Wow.

Alana Joy Newton:
I was just a baby, right? 

Erica Carroll [00:05:30 - 00:05:46]:
Yeah. Your life experience is pretty limited. And even just the tools for navigating the emotions you would experience dealing with those kinds of patients. That's heavy.

Alana Joy Newton [00:05:47 - 00:07:34]:
And yeah, it matured me very quickly. Well, I mean, I think I had some degree of maturity, you know, perhaps with my emotional experiences with my family had some emotional maturity, maybe beyond my 20s. Yeah. But then going into nursing at 20 and being in life and death situations, holding people's hands as they take their last breath and trying to revive them, so I had these experiences early on. And what I was really drawn to was providing more emotional support to them. And because in that area of nursing, the, you know, the patients are so physically unwell. And often nonverbal. Like there's not, and, and of course, even with the nonverbal patients, I would emotionally connect to the best of my ability, but, my focus was to keep them physically alive. 

I wasn't really there for the emotional support, which the longer I was there, I came to know that that's really who I am. That's really what I wanted to be able to provide. And in parallel, my body was saying, which I didn't hear so clearly at the time. In hindsight, it's crystal clear, but at the time my body was starting to whisper and say, I can't keep doing this kind of work. It was very, very heavy, physically very heavy, very, and then the shift work and the, you know, not even having the autonomy to eat what I want to eat or almost pee what I want to pee. Like it was just, it's high, it's high acuity and you got to trade off your shifts with your partner. And like, so, my body was saying, I can't keep doing this. You know, I need to have a little bit more autonomy over my body. My body was kind of. Yeah. There's a whole history with my health condition, but my body was having some symptoms at the time. 

Erica Carroll [00:07:35 - 00:08:14]:
This is a little bit of a tangent, but I grew up Roman Catholic and almost resistant to the whole notion of spirit or any of this kind of stuff. It wasn't actually until I got into acting and I started to experience this energy exchange. Like I became aware of this other layer of consciousness. Did you start to recognize that there was something much more going on? Like, how do you not, how do you go into nursing and not go, oh, there's a lot more going on than the physical. Did you, you know, were you starting to see that or did you already have that before you got into this?

Alana Joy Newton [00:08:14 - 00:09:50]:
This is a really good question. And similar to you, I had grown up, without any sort of template, religious, spiritual, anything, and if anything, you know, almost an aversion to it. My family was very academic, very scientific, you know, very much in their head. And so if it logically couldn't be proven if scientifically it couldn't be proven. If it didn't make sense, then it didn't exist. And so that's the. That was kind of the message. That's the message I got in my upbringing.

My siblings may or may not agree, but that was the message I got. And, so I. Yeah, I had very little, Okay, this is not entirely true. I was going to say I had very little spiritual connection, but that's not true. I did have spiritual connection from the moment of birth and beyond, and I had glimpses of it, but I shut it down and I disconnected from it because, there wasn't a language or a way of speaking about it in my. In my environment.

And so then going into nursing and being, like, up front and center with life and death experiences, I felt it. I'm more of kind of like a kinesthetic. Like, I feel energy. I sometimes see it, too, but I more feel it. And so I absolutely felt the presence of souls coming and going. And, so I still. I mean, there were seeds of my waking up, but I still wasn't fully woken up to my own soul self at that time.

Erica Carroll [00:09:50 - 00:10:23]:
And that's the beauty of, and why I love getting older. You can look back and you can see it so much clearer. You can see those dots connecting. Like, Oh, that time, that's what that was in that time and that time. And that's the beauty of being young too. Cause there's a freedom in the ignorance that you have. 

But looking back, you're just like, Oh, it was long. Oh, that's what that was. That's what that sensation was. That's what that is. This will tie into another question, but please carry on from the nursing.

Alana Joy Newton [00:10:23 - 00:10:37]:
When you were saying that, I just want to share something that came to mind. Like Hansel and Gretel, like the breadcrumbs, right … it's like the bread crumbs comes back to our own soul. So our whole life we're dropping these crumbs, you know, and it just guides us back home.

Erica Carroll [00:10:37 - 00:11:04]:
And it does make you … it makes the notion of reincarnation and sacred contracts, like before you entered into this life, it does make it seem a little bit more plausible, because you're just like this fits together, this puzzle piece fits together. So, I mean, it’s hard to believe that it isn't premeditated in some way. 

Alana Joy Newton [00:11:04 - 00:11:08]:
Yeah, I'm with you. But if you had told me that when I was 20. 

Erica Carroll:
Yeah, me too.

Alana Joy Newton:
Whatever.

Erica Carroll [00:11:11 - 00:11:22]:
I know. Okay. So you're in nursing and then you're getting nudges that you wanted to branch out.

Alana Joy Newton [00:11:22 - 00:13:24]:
Yeah, so getting nudges from body, getting nudges from my soul now realizing that I'm here to support people emotionally. So then I was still pretty young, and I thought, I'll just go back to school. I did dabble in psychiatric nursing a little bit, but it just didn't quite meet my heart. So, then I went back and did my masters in counseling, psychology. And that opened up the emotional world, which actually opened up a lot of my own emotional healing. I mean, I probably saw my first counselor when I was 17 so I was familiar with therapy, with counseling as a client, and I had provided peer support, so it's not that emotions were totally foreign to me. When I was engaged in the master's program, a big part of the program was doing our own work. So that really opened me up a lot more to my emotional self, which I had cut off a lot of necessity, as so many do. And then I pivoted. Then I bridged the two careers for a little while, nursing and therapy. I completed my master's. I was working as a counselor and as a nurse, one day to the next. I was in a different role and so, I was a bit scattered.I  just couldn't kind of keep up the hours for licensure, for, nursing. I had to choose. And, so I just listened to my body. I mean, I'm my heart and my soul, but I listen to my being. And, I focused exclusively on the counselling.

Erica Carroll [00:13:24 - 00:13:30]:
So when it comes to licenses, you have to have a certain amount of hours for each thing.

Alana Joy Newton [00:13:31 - 00:13:52]:
Well, for nursing. Yeah. You need a certain number of hours to hold the registration. Counseling at this time is a little bit, uh, less structured. But I knew that's where I was. I mean, I knew that's where I was being called into anyways. So there was some grief. There were aspects of nursing that I really love. I still miss and this is my path.

Erica Carroll [00:13:53 - 00:14:01]:
Yeah. This is a very basic question, but what is the difference between a counsellor, a psychologist and a psychotherapist?

Alana Joy Newton [00:14:02 - 00:14:31]:
It's not a basic question actually it’s super … it's way more complicated. It depends on what country you're in, what province you're in, what title is owned. Yeah. I refer to myself as a Psychotherapist because I go deep with clients. Counselling I think can often be, or as often regarded as a little bit higher level, which maybe it is, maybe it isn't. That's just how I've understood it. And I just identify more with the title Psychotherapist. Because I go into the psyche, you know.

Erica Carroll [00:14:31 - 00:14:38]:
And then there’s a psychologist and a psychiatrist.

Alana Joy Newton [00:14:39 - 00:15:09]:
Okay, so then those differences are more distinct. Yeah. So a psychologist is someone with a PhD in psychology and psychology degrees. There's lots of research, some clinical work. I mean, maybe I don't know the programs well enough, so. But, yeah, so there's research and clinical, And it's a PhD level to become a psychologist, to become a counselor here in BC, it's a master's level. There are lots of people that call themselves counsellors and don't have a master's anyway, so the title's not regulated.

Erica Carroll [00:15:09 - 00:16:16]:
Yeah. It's just, it's important. I think, you know, there were times that I just went to therapists and I didn't even look to be, I was like, whatever, this person's a counselor. This person's a, you know, not knowing the difference between them and, and just being younger and not feeling entitled to ask, you know? So I've worked on that. I bring this point up for those listening who have never gone to therapy and who feel as if, you know, you don't have … sometimes it's so when people have higher education, you can feel like you, you don't feel entitled to just ask for what you need.

And that could be just the information on what your credentials are and it can be really dangerous if people are just trusting any random person. Yeah. So anyway, I just wanted to touch on that point, it's important to know who you are seeing and just that you will be safe with these people. I just wanted to touch on that because a lot of people don't know the difference.

Alana Joy Newton [00:16:16 - 00:17:14]:
I think it's really important and, and it takes me down another path, which maybe we go down and, or maybe we don't. Just what you were saying about when someone has credentials, we're maybe less likely to ask questions, you know? And I think that, that can be an individual thing, but I think it's also a society. I think it's a societal thing that we've been conditioned to believe that they're experts and if, if we don't have titles, letters after our name, then we don't know, we can't even talk about that thing. So this is, you know, when I think about my health and the conditions I've been diagnosed with and there's definitely, there's some friction there, because I do believe I am the expert of my own body. There's no one with fancy letters after their name that knows more about my body than I do. So I think that there is this conditioned belief with medicine and likely other professions that we little minions don't know and that we need to outsource that wisdom to someone else.

Erica Carroll [00:17:15 - 00:18:39]:
I think that the gift of the journey of having health issues is you learn that first you have to recognize that you gave your authority away in the first place. And then you have to regain it. And then have the confidence to be, like, as you said, I'm the expert of my experience. I think back on 20 years of misdiagnoses and I literally had some of the most bizarre comments come from professionals, like very strange. Yet it took me time to, you know, you don't want to come in and just be an argumentative person. I'm sure there's a lot of doctors. There's a lot of doctors who also come up against that. But when you get mistreated, misunderstood and all these things for so long, and you finally get your power back. And I think that's part of why we go through these journeys is because there are those parts of you that need to be reconnected. Oh, yeah … segue … so talk to me about what a reconnection coach is and how did you arrive here? How are you drawn to this knowing that this is where you're supposed to be? And I can tell. I've listened to some of your other interviews. And we've talked, obviously, and I can tell that it brings you so much peace and joy. So I want to … give me the juice.

Alana Joy Newton [00:18:39 - 00:22:43]:
I'll give you the juice. So, growing up, I always had, or I had many different experiences in my body, different health experiences, different conditions and diagnoses, etcetera. And, Yeah, it was quite different, quite different. Like, I really stood apart. Stood apart from my peers with some of the things I experienced in my body. And I'm going to share one of the things I experienced because it does relate to being a reconnection coach. So when I was twelve, I had a minor fall off my bike and like super minor, like I wasn't going fast, just really super minor fall. And I fractured my wrist, bruised my hip, you know, kind of banged up a little bit, not apparently obviously super injured, but yeah, so cast on, cast off wrist, recovered, but I still had pain, in my hip and and I was limping, for, I mean it was months actually. And you know, it was just kind of disregarded as you can't see anything. So nothing's happening. It's fine, yeah, everything looks fine. And then, and I was told, I was told in my family that like I was implicitly and explicitly told that it was attention seeking behavior. So I just learned to disconnect from what I knew to be the truth in my body. This pain that I was experiencing, this, I mean I was seriously limping, I couldn't help it. Like there was something going on, I couldn't help but limp. And I was being told it wasn't true or there wasn't, you know, so I disconnected from that. I guess it got to a point where it was just really hard to ignore. I went to the family doctor, my hips were x-rayed and it was shown that I had this condition, where basically the growth plate of the head of my femur was slipping off. And super, rare condition only happens, usually happens with overweight twelve year old boys, which I was twelve. That was the only thing I was.

Erica Carroll: 
That was the only similarity. 

Alana Joy Newton:
And so anyway, super rare condition, I ended up my spine was, you know, I had a curvy spine, had scoliosis because of the hips and so all this stuff was going on. I was referred to an orthopedist, and then in waiting for that referral, I fell again. And that time severed the head of the femur off, which severed the blood supply, which means the femur then has no blood supply. And so this was a pretty big deal. I'll fast forward the story a little bit. So literally, like the head of my femur, my hip fell apart and there was a risk that I would never walk again. I didn't quite know this totally at the time, but in hushed conversations I kind of picked it up. 

Anyways, long recovery period, miraculously … and I'm realizing now in adult life how much of a miracle it actually was that the blood supply did regrow. Partly because I didn't follow doctor's orders, to be honest. I weight barred when I shouldn't have, but I think that's probably why it regrew. But anyways, miraculously, the hip. Yeah, it regrew. And, I have pins in my hips that tell the story of what happened there. And I have arthritis in my hips because of all that. The point is my body disconnected. Fast forward  a few instances of similar weird and wacky instances of health experiences throughout my life kind of muddle through. I have my son, a tough pregnancy in that things were falling apart. My pelvis was falling apart. My veins were bloating out, like things were falling apart. And then I started seeing things in him. I was like, what's going on? He's kind of floppy. He's kind of lethargic. He's kind of tired. He's kind of got a hernia. He's kind of … so fast forward that story. My son and I, with my persistence, my son and I both got diagnosed with Ehlers Danlos syndrome, which is a genetic connective tissue disorder. So, connection. There's that word. It's a disorder of the connective tissue, the glue that holds the body together. And I know you know about this, and I'm sharing a bit more information for the listeners.

Erica Carroll [00:22:43 - 00:23:01]:
So Ehlers-Danlos syndrome is not, there's not a lot of awareness around it, but there's actually a lot more of it than people … if people were more aware then they might know that they are actually exhibiting responses in their body.

Alana Joy Newton [00:23:01 - 00:25:25]:
And because there's such a wide range of, the degree of how people are affected, people can live their whole lives and not know that they have it. And great, maybe it doesn't matter, but for some people, the symptoms are more severe, and for some they're very severe. So we were diagnosed with a connective tissue disorder. That hit me pretty significantly like, what does this mean for my life? I didn't … I mean, even though I was a nurse, I had a healthcare background, I hadn't received any education in EDS. I was still kind of learning about it and what this meant and seeing that there was a wide range of how much disability. Like a wide range of disabilities. I didn't know what this meant for my life or my son's life. So, understandably, there was some fear, anxiety, and grief. I was kind of recalibrating, trying to make some sense of that. 

And then in that kind of timeframe, within a few years of being diagnosed, my dad died. Not of EDS, although I do suspect he had it. But, you know, his death, coupled with my diagnosis, just really sent me down this spiral of … this veil of certainty that we have in life. Right? Like, we think things are certain, but they're really not.

and so that veil had been ripped back. And when my dad just, his parting words before he passed away were “Life is for living.” And so I mean, it might sound obvious, but I wasn't living really. I wasn't living, I wasn't living my life, I didn't really know that at the time, but I was living the life that, I don't know, not to say there weren't parts of my life that I absolutely loved and connected with, but there were also parts of my life that I'm doing the thing because I think that's the thing I'm supposed to do to be accepted and my family and society, etcetera.

So all that fell away and I knew that I had to reconnect. And so this diagnosis, the gift of the name of the diagnosis, well, not Elher’s-Danlos Syndrome, that's a mouthful, but having a connective tissue disorder, I'm like a disorder of connection. Where am I disconnected? It wasn't just in my hips, it wasn't just in my joints, it wasn't just in my pelvic floor. It wasn't my gut. It wasn't just there. Where else am I disconnected? I was disconnected from my heart, I was disconnected from my emotions, I was disconnected from my body. I was disconnected from my soul. 

Erica Carroll [00:25:27 - 00:25:55]:
And you know what? It's that disconnection that leads us to chronic illness. When you were a kid and you had these, these feelings and you had these symptoms and then you're being told to betray your own sensation you have. On your website you have something about your “life is calling”. Can you hear the whispers? How does one even know what a whisper is?

Alana Joy Newton [00:25:56 - 00:28:49]:
What's coming up for me is it's really difficult to hear the whispers, when there's so much, I just got this image of … you would know way more about this than I do. I just got this image of a soundproof room. Like, I'm just thinking with audio recording and acting, maybe you know something about this. I don't know anything about this, but I just got this image of this room with all this soundproofing material. And so you're not going to hear someone whisper on the other side. I think of that. This is the first time I've come up with this vision. So hang with me here. I think of all this padding, you know, all this padding. The sound as the conditioning. As our conditioning that we layer on. Yeah.

And so throughout our life, just using emotions for an example, you know, maybe we got the message that, a very common message that girls shouldn't show anger. It's not nice. Okay. I think many people could probably relate to that to some degree or another. So let's just say when a girl child feels anger and they're conditioned that they shouldn't squash it. Anger is just an emotion letting us know something's like letting us know we're not safe. Anger is a very appropriate emotion, when we're feeling threatened, when we're feeling attacked. So this child lives their life squashing that. That emotion and it might come out in other ways. It might still seep out because it has to. So maybe it's not  anger itself. It might take the form of a depression or something. I'm going kind of high level here. But so there's all this padding. This conditioning of ways that we adapt to the environment because we think we're expected to be this way or that way, not that way or this way. This is all the conditioning. so this conditioned self is not the true self. It's all this padding of behaviors and ways of adapting to our environment to be accepted, for belonging, for safety, in our family and our communities. So when all this padding is there, we can't hear those whispers. We can't hear those whispers because there's so much padding on top. The process that I went through and I guide others through is, let's first get all the padding off. Like, let's get … I can't really necessarily know what their whispers are either until we start to get that padding off. Often some of the behaviors that are indicative that we're squashing our soul are things like addictions. And it might not even be a full fledged addiction. It might be drinking every day just to kind of not feel the feelings, for sure. And it's slightly endorsed, so it easily gets masked as, oh, it's a socially acceptable behavior. But, I mean, this is my experience.

Erica Carroll [00:28:50 - 00:30:56]:
Just devices, you know distractions. Netflix, uh, chocolate. Nutella, sugar, you know, all of it. There's so many things. Yeah, and that's part of the thing, we were chatting a little bit prior to just about. There's so little time now in the day where you're just sitting with yourself.

People are on the toilet with their phone. People are, you know, as soon as someone's gone in to pick up the takeout order and you're sitting in the car, there's this pull, I've got to go look and see what's happening on Instagram. You're on the skytrain, everyone's there. There's so little time with yourself, you know, and if you don't have a regular meditation or journaling or even just a friend that you can talk about how you're feeling. I mean, I grew up … I started writing at the age of ten, and so I was very … I became very good at processing my feelings. I can feel the whisper, I can feel this, almost like a constipated feeling when I've got these feelings. I can sit with myself for a second, I'll be like, oof, there's an icky feeling somewhere. And then I can just go, oh, that's. Oh, that has to do with that conversation where I noticed this and da da da. And then I can go and process that. But when I'm out, in public, and I sit and I watch people, just everybody on their devices. Nobody’s connecting, not only with other people, which is ... I mean, we are tribal beings. We need to belong to a community, and nobody's getting any time with themselves. So that padding is so thick at this point. And then they're like, why am I anxious? Why am I so angry? 

Alana Joy Newton [00:30:57 - 00:31:58]:
I'm so with you. Yeah, absolutely. Alcohol is just one of them, but yeah, especially these days, social media, technology, our society offers us so many ways to pad, to numb, to disconnect. I mean, I'm not going to say it's not by accident, but that's maybe another conversation. There's so much out there to distract ourselves from our inner worlds. And then we're left with this huge void, and I've heard it’s been said before, maybe it was Joseph Campbell, but no, maybe not. Anyway, about having a God side. You know, the term God at this point still doesn't totally resonate for me, but definitely in my process of peeling off all the padding, I have come in closer contact with a divine energy, with a creator, with a source. And that's having come from no religious background whatsoever. So when we do peel off all that padding, we come in touch with something greater, our own soul and beyond.

Erica Carroll [00:31:58 - 00:32:04]:
Yeah. I mean. When you peel off all that padding too, there's a level of vulnerability.

Alana Joy Newton [00:32:04 - 00:32:05]:
Ooh. Yeah.

Erica Carroll [00:32:06 - 00:33:29]:
Like there's that, okay, here's, cause the padding on one hand is blocking the whisper, but also can be a form of protection, right? 

And you're pulling off, like, a scab, and there's this sore underneath. And then, because, like, anyone who's gone through a health journey, an emotional journey, any of it, once you remove the thing, then that sore needs to heal, and that is still a process. Like, even once you get a diagnosis, I was gonna say, there's all these gates of awareness, you know, it's like, oh, oh, I'm having these symptoms. Oh, these symptoms are real. Oh, I'm really actually in pain. Oh, pain isn't normal. Like it's a whole domino effect. And when you speak about the whispers, each time it's ignored, another domino seems to fall. And they're smaller at the beginning. You know, you just like, oh, I feel a little off. And then it's, oh, I'm dizzy once a month. And then it's, oh, I can't walk. And then you're like, oh, now I have to pay attention.

And one thing I've learned is like, oh, please pay attention before it's so big that you can't come back. I feel like you can always come back, but it requires a lot of skill and support.

Alana Joy Newton [00:33:30 - 00:34:21]:
Yeah. And what's coming up for me right now is thinking of people with chronic illness who've been diagnosed with various things. And, as the canaries in the coal mine, I've touched on this before and was just reminded of it again now. So many of the ways of being in the world that are not healthy for someone with chronic illness applies to everyone. It applies to everyone. Chemicals, certain foods, EMF. You know, toxic relationships. Like that's really, it's just kind of for everyone. But people with chronic illness, for whatever reason their beings have come into this world maybe a bit more tuned, a bit more sensitive. And so it develops into illness in this lifetime. But they're really just letting the rest of the world know, these things are not good for us.

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Erica Carroll [00:35:39 - 00:36:25]:
It's a cumulative effect. That's one thing you learn when you're unraveling or unpeeling or taking off your padding is all of the things that are contributing and all the levels that you need to address. When I first got diagnosed again, it was like, here's the label. So now our medical system can fix this. Because they know all this stuff. And they can give me something and it will go away. And that's when I was realizing, oh, I've outsourced my health to an external entity. And after being let down repeatedly and not having any solutions a new gate opens where it goes, no one's going to save you. You have to.

Alana Joy Newton [00:36:25 - 00:36:31]:
Oh, I just got moved. Yes. That's a very profound message. No one's going to save us.

Erica Carroll [00:36:31 - 00:37:09]:
Yeah. No. And then it's like, oh, okay. What does this diagnosis even mean? What does this label mean? Does this mean I surrender and let it take over? Does this mean, oh, this is a collection of responses that my body's having? It's been given a label. And I can undo those responses. I can heal those. And that's another thing I find, there's just levels to chronic illness and it doesn't have to remain chronic. Not saying it's easy. No. And not saying it's fast. 

Alana Joy Newton [00:37:10 - 00:37:33]:
Absolutely. I'm with you. And that's been my experience as well, that we can heal. And I say this being diagnosed with a genetic disorder. So at the DNA level, apparently, my body, my being is different or whatever. Not how it's supposed to be. Whatever. Whatever that means. But I still believe I can heal.

Erica Carroll [00:37:34 - 00:37:44]:
Well, quick technical question for you. So, I also got diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos. I had to travel to Alberta to see someone about it.

Alana Joy Newton [00:37:45 - 00:37:47]:
I'm pretty sure I know who it was.

Erica Carroll [00:37:48 - 00:38:59]:
And in my province, when I came back with the diagnosis, I was told that they were no longer doing any genetic testing for Ehlers-Danlos. And then I said, so then how do I know that I have Ehlers-Danlos? Well, you have this collection of symptoms. If anything, I've just learned to take it with a pinch of salt. Like, okay, that's so, so what, now what? It's not going to become my identity. It's not going to become my handicap. It's not going to become any of this stuff. I'm, I just, and that whisper that we have spoken about, it is a, it is a present voice now. It is like, no, yes. It's the same level of volume. You know, it's so quick now, as I said, and as another gift, getting older, all the breadcrumbs connecting. yYou start to go, oh, I know what no feels like. I know what yes feels like now. And you just get empowered with that. And if that's one thing I think we all need to do is to really sit and go, what is yes in my body? Like, how do I identify that? Yes. You know, what is no?

Alana Joy Newton [00:39:00 - 00:39:01]:
What are the sensations of yes?

Erica Carroll [00:39:02 - 00:39:12]:
Yeah. And then, because that helps you make choices for your life that don't pad you up again, right?

Alana Joy Newton [00:39:13 - 00:39:50]:
Absolutely. Oh, I'm so with you on this. And one thing I just want to mention is when I was first diagnosed I was 36. So I had lived a chunk of my life without a diagnosis and had things going on in my body that indicated something was going on. So when I was diagnosed, I felt vindicated, you know, like. Absolutely. I knew it. Totally. I knew it. Right? And this is a common experience for people with chronic and rare illness is that feeling of vindication. And I did need to sit in that for a while. I absolutely did. Absolutely. To the point where I tattooed a zebra on my …

Erica Carroll [00:39:50 - 00:40:18]:
There it is. For those who don't know, Ehlers-Danlos, let's say, mascot is a zebra. It's a zebra. Whereas you have, like, people with trigeminal neuralgia, it's a lightning bolt because that's a nervous system condition. And then you've got the Lymies, which are the Lyme disease people. Right. Who quite often use a tick. Fibro as a butterfly, yeah.

Alana Joy Newton [00:40:18 - 00:40:19]:
That's disgusting.

Erica Carroll [00:40:19 - 00:40:43]:
I just like, no, thank you. Like, I don't need my abuser. I don't need homage. But, yeah. Just so for those who don't know. Yes. I think, what was the, there's a little quote that goes with it. It was a specialist who said “If the doctor should be saying to you, if it looks and sounds like a horse, maybe it's a zebra.” Is that the quote? 

Alana Joy Newton [00:40:43 - 00:41:36]:
Yeah, if it has four legs and goes clip-clop. Well, so physicians are most often trained, if it has four legs and goes clip-clop, assume it's a horse because it usually is. Mm. But sometimes, if it has four legs and goes clip-clop, it's a zebra. So think zebra. That's where it comes from. And so, when I was diagnosed, I really needed to allow myself to steep in that identity of EDS, a rare disease, this is my label, this is who I am. I needed to do that because I had been gaslit by others, by self, whatever, for my whole life. And I really needed to adopt that identity. But I shifted. You know, I shifted. I still like zebras, so it's fine. I can hide it. I can talk about it, whatever. It's not on my face. But, I mean, and it is still a part of my identity.

Erica Carroll [00:41:37 - 00:41:40]:
Oh, exactly. Exactly. It's part of your journey. It is still part of my identity.

Alana Joy Newton [00:41:40 - 00:42:11]:
It's still part of my journey. It's part of my story. For sure. And my soul awakening. But I don't identify as strongly with it now because that's often a place of … I say this with love, it's from a place of victim. You know, that they shouldn't have done that to me. They should have listened to me. They shouldn't, like, here I am. This is what I actually have. I can now scream this back at you. You need to give me X, Y, Z. I say that with love and I say that having been there myself.

Erica Carroll [00:42:11 - 00:43:18]:
I completely relate. I completely relate and understand. And so much so that I have a hesitancy of even sharing information about certain conditions because I don't want to identify. Like, I am not “these” conditions. These are symptoms and responses in my body. But I just happen to be occupying this body. You know? Right. And these are the things happening. And I totally agree with you. When it first happened to me, I was like, I've got love. Now I know down the road it doesn't matter. But when I recognized that in other people, when they discovered they had a Lyme diagnosis and this sense of relief and identity and all this kind of stuff. And now I recognize and have space for that part of their journey that I'm not going to go, hey, just so you know, you could heal yourself. Because it's like the worst thing you could do is like, oh, it's all in your mind. It's the worst thing ever. You just have to think positive. And it's like, great. Thanks. Yeah.

Alana Joy Newton [00:43:18 - 00:43:20]:
There's a timing for the changes.

Erica Carroll [00:43:21 - 00:43:51]:
Totally and how do you as a coach and a therapist and everything, how are you able to recognize, I mean, I'm sure now you've done it for so long that you can recognize the stages that people are at in their healing. And so you would just have to carefully, like you said, I say this with love because you hear that's coming from a victim place. There's like having to go, okay, where am I victimizing myself? And how is that serving me?

Alana Joy Newton [00:43:52 - 00:44:40]:
Yeah. Because to move out of that victim, to kind of loop back what we were talking about before, to move out of that victim, it's the recognition that no one is here to save us. Because we're in a victim, it's, oh, well, this person did this thing to us. They should have or shouldn't have, whatever. So there's this power dynamic with this other person, doctor, government, whoever it is, right? And the expectation that they should look after us. So moving out of victim means recognizing there's no one here to look after us. That's a freaking scary place to be, you know? Government's actually not here to look after us. Healthcare's not actually, like we need to look after us. We're the only one that's actually going to save us.

Erica Carroll [00:44:40 - 00:46:23]:
No one is going to make the decision as to what food you're putting in your mouth, what supplements you're taking to support yourself, and we're raised in a system that we were to trust and believe, only one system, and that the government and all of that kind of stuff, too. And it's been a huge service to us, what's happened in the last three years to those people who go, wait a minute, I'm responsible for how well my body is, and it's given power back to so many people. I've woken a lot of people up to being like, oh, yeah, I do have to take care of myself. Because there are things out there that I have to be cautious about. 

So just looking through my questions, because we have covered a lot of my questions, but like this, like a typical female brain, yeah, we've just been. So a lot of the conditions that we're talking about here, Lyme disease, Chronic Fatigue, Fibromyalgia, Ehlers-Danlos, Central Sensitivity Disorder, Trigeminal Neuralgia, these are conditions that can have. Invisible symptoms, and therefore, they're known as invisible disabilities. Quite often, those afflicted can experience a lot of shame, just due to the lack of awareness and understanding of these conditions, and how they present. They can face a lot of criticism from friends, from family, from doctors, coworkers, or just society in general, who just don't believe in their symptoms, because they can't see them. If they can't see them, it must not be there. Would you have any suggestions for those who do experience this?

Alana Joy Newton [00:46:24 - 00:48:35]:
The shame of invisibility? Yes. Just sit with that for a moment. What's coming up to me, we'll see where it goes, but what's coming up to me is, you know, the need to be accepted by others. And that is, you know, survival for us as humans, we are social beings, we need communities to survive, so there's some degree of, you know, yes, it's a need, it is a survival need to belong.

And it seems that we have evolved to feel this need to belong everywhere, all the time, and always accepted, and always belonging, and everyone always needs to understand and accept us. That's not the truth of our existence. We're not always going to be accepted everywhere by everyone, and understood. That's exhausting. And so what's most important, it is exhausting, we just can't, and especially with the reach, the global reach that we have into different communities, different countries, there's no way we can be accepted everywhere. And so I think letting go of that expectation, we're not going to be accepted everywhere. You know, coming into contact with the need, the primal needs to be accepted and have a sense of belonging to some degree. And also accepting that we're not going to be accepted everywhere. 

And so, you know, if someone doesn't believe me now, if someone looks at me and says, you don't have blankety-blank, you look just fine, it doesn't, it doesn't poke me in the same way that it used to. Because I don't need them to understand my experience. I don't, I know, I know the truth of my experience, so really, I think what I'm getting to, is the self-validation, the self-belief, the self-connection, right? Believing what is happening in heart, body, and soul, validating it, not betraying self. And so when we do that, when we're believing and validating ourselves, we aren't as dependent on others to do.

Erica Carroll [00:48:35 - 00:48:36]:
Mm-hmm.

Alana Joy Newton [00:48:38 - 00:48:40]:
Yeah, that's what's coming up.

Erica Carroll [00:48:40 - 00:48:43]:
So the masking is like a self-invalidation.

Alana Joy Newton [00:48:44 - 00:50:02]:
It can be. But, you know, we can mask it. We can, I mean, I even say this about, some of the padding, whether it's social media, alcohol, Nutella, whatever it is. I think what really shifts the experience of when we disconnect from self is the conscious intention. You know, how conscious are we? You know, I am putting on this scarf today so I look well, so that when I go to the doctor, whatever, so that when I go to this meeting, so that, I'm conscious. Right. And I know my body. I know you're not feeling so well. Right. So validating. I know you're not feeling so well. I'm not denying what you're feeling. And to feel safe in the world, I need to put this scarf on right now so I show up in a certain way in this meeting or whatever. And so like even reaching for them, you know whatever it is. Oh, I'm feeling anxious. I can't sleep. My phone's beside the bed. Okay. I know I'm reaching for this phone right now because I want to distract myself from this discomfort within myself. Right. I don't. I mean, I think reaching for the numbing or the masking isn't inherently bad and shouldn't ever be done. I think it's conscious intentionality. And to also ensure that we're spending those quiet moments, that we're spending those very real raw moments with everything that's there and allowing it to be there and recognizing that all the feelings belong.

Erica Carroll [00:50:04 - 00:50:35]:
You know, have you ever just been sitting somewhere and all of a sudden you're down a rabbit hole on Instagram and you're like, what just, how did that happen? Have you ever been that just not present, you know? And then you're just like, why did I, how did I get here? And those apps are designed to support that addiction. It's immediately, as soon as you get on there, it's like, oh, what about, oh, look at this thing. Oh, look at that. You know? And, clickbait and all that kind of stuff. 

Alana Joy Newton [00:50:35 - 00:51:15]:
To not stay with anything too long. And that, I think that's what ails our society is that we don't stay with our feelings of discomfort. You know? And so then we're not adept to know what to do with them and it becomes a cumulative effect. And I think we've seen this over the last few decades, I see it more in my kids' generation than in our generation, you know, there isn't a familiar, like there's just so much heightened sensitivity because people don't know how to sit and follow through with a feeling of anger, with a feeling of shame, with a feeling of whatever it is, they don't know how to stay with it. And see it through to the end because they're numbing it, they're cutting it off there. 

Erica Carroll [00:51:16 - 00:51:33]:
Yeah. And so then just that even not being able to debate, have disagreements, you know, like there it's such, we can't feel discomfort at all. If I feel discomfort, you're attacking me. So I guess. Yeah. It becomes so fragile.

Alana Joy Newton [00:51:33 - 00:51:56]:
Yeah. Because we don't sit with the emotions and see them through, see them to completion within the self. And so I think, you know, that combined with the looking to outside people to validate us. So when we're not validating ourselves and we don't know how to be with our own emotions, which is of course related. There's no, there's no space for debate or disagreement, you know?

Erica Carroll [00:51:56 - 00:53:51]:
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Oh, exactly. Let's just check the list here. Let's see what else we've got going on. One of the factors that drew me to working with the specialists that I work with is that they come at it with five layers. The physical, the energy body, the realm of the psyche and spirit, the transpersonal level, connection to source, all this. And so my intuition was that I had to have a multilayered approach. When I first got, say, the Lyme diagnosis, I was like, they were just like, here's some antibiotics. And my whisper was like, no, don't do that. And I didn't. And I sought out this other group of people. One of their takes is that  if we can deal with the higher levels and process these emotions or these traumas, that quite often the physical will reduce or subside or heal and things like that. And that's why, you know, work that you're doing is super important. Because it's also, like I said, on, for me, the third level, the realm of the psyche and the spirit. That was where I was like, oh, that's where I need to. 

And so doing a lot of, you know, I'm attracted to people like you who are like, really want to get into it. You know? And this injury on the level, unresolved conflicts, childhood trauma, things like that. And what's interesting about it is just even when you're a child, you don't notice what you're experiencing may be not healthy. Because that's all you know. It's like saying to someone, do you have a headache or a migraine? Well, I don't know. I've never had a migraine. Me? What's the difference? You don't know.

Alana Joy Newton [00:53:51 - 00:53:53]:
There's no reference in this body. 

Erica Carroll [00:53:53 - 00:54:07]:
Yeah, exactly. Sure. So I feel like it's important to be able to examine those years of your life and see how they possibly are impacting your physical health. Thoughts on that?

Alana Joy Newton [00:54:07 - 00:55:25]:
I'm with you with the multi-layer approach, and that was certainly my experience of healing. And I don't use the word healing saying I'm done. I think it's a continual experience until the soul leaves this body. But it is all connected, heart, body, spirit. It is all connected. And often, people with chronic illness, they've been told, oh, it's all in your head, right? And maybe it was to dismiss, or maybe the message was delivered too soon. But the reality, I believe, in my experience, and from what I've observed in the world, is that it is all connected. We can't take the head right away from the rest of the body. It's not like emotions are here and the symptoms are … I mean, no, we also know a lot about the gut and its role in emotions. So no, it is all connected. We can't silo ourselves off. I mean, I'm a physical being, a physical being, and I'm also a spiritual being. So I think any truly effective healing modality needs to consider all, you know, I've categorized them kind of as the three, but that full integrated approach, neglecting one or the other, it's not going to quite get you there.

Erica Carroll [00:55:25 - 00:55:46]:
Yeah. And it may for a short term, like I notice some people, they'll be able to treat something and then it will manifest in another form. Or in a more dominating way than it was, like it was subtle and then it was, oh, I dealt with that for now. Yeah. And then it just it gets bigger and bigger.

Alana Joy Newton [00:55:47 - 00:55:47]:
Like whack-a-mole.

Erica Carroll [00:55:48 - 00:56:07]:
Totally. I don't know if you can speak to this, but do you have any thoughts on navigating chronic illness in intimate partnerships? It's a lot to be in a relationship with someone who has chronic illness when there seems to be another entity in the relationship. And that is the dis-ease.

Alana Joy Newton [00:56:09 - 00:58:21]:
So definitely as we've talked about that piece around validation, you know, so in intimate partnership, we, well, in any human connection, but especially intimate partnership, we want to be seen, heard, and understood. And living with chronic illness, if the partner is not having the same experience, it can be really hard for them to see, hear, and understand. Well, at least understand. It can be hard for them to understand. They can probably still see and hear it, but it can be hard for them to understand. 

And so can we release that need to be understood? Like we were talking about before, like not everyone is going to understand and accept us all the time. Can we release that need in intimate partnership? It's tricky. And my personal experience with this was I really needed to be seen, heard, and understood. I didn't feel that. And this, combined with a few other issues led to my separation. I've grown since then. And now in intimate partnership, I don't have the same need to be understood. I just kind of accept that that's not, this is not their lived experience. It's mine. But they might not understand it. Can they be compassionate? Can they be empathetic? But do they actually need to really understand it? You know, I can't. And also the recognition of the fears that it could bring up around, oh, gosh, if that person can experience that, then I might too. Or how can I support this person? I don't feel skilled enough for a lot of it is their own fear. That's actually nothing to do with us. With a lot of human interaction, right? It has nothing to do with us. It's more about them. It's more about me than the other person. Right? So that's just kind of what's coming to the surface now is, you know, that need for validation. Can we loosen the grip on it a little bit? And I think one of the ways to do that is by validating self, validating compassion for self. Because when we have filled our own cup, we don't need it as much from others. Yeah, exactly. Those are just some surface level thoughts that were coming up on that.

Erica Carroll [00:58:21 - 00:58:45]:
Yeah. That's great. And that's probably a whole other podcast. So thank you for even attempting to venture into that. Do you have any go-to, pull-out-of-your-pocket quick techniques for you know, there are some days that are pretty dark when it comes to chronic illness. I have some go-to's for myself, but I'd love to hear what you have.

Alana Joy Newton [00:58:45 - 00:59:07]:
Yeah. Oh, gosh. I mean, so many. I'm sure you do too. Your toolbox must be really full. So is mine. Well, I mean, it's very simple. But one of my go-to's is using jargon terms as affective labeling. So what that just means is naming feelings. I look at this. I even have this on a pillow. I have it here.

Erica Carroll [00:59:07 - 00:59:13]:
Oh, I heard about this. Oh, the feeling pillow. Where did you get that pillow? Do you know where you got that?

Alana Joy Newton [00:59:13 - 00:59:17]:
You know, it's on our website. I could try to dig it up. So I think it was in Australia.

Erica Carroll [00:59:17 - 00:59:19]:
I'd love to put that in the show notes. Yeah.

Alana Joy Newton [00:59:19 - 01:00:06]:
And what's so good about this, and you might already know this, but for your listeners who may not, what's so good about affective labeling is when we really discern, like rather than just saying, I'm depressed, well, depressed is not actually a feeling. It's a diagnosis. So what is the feeling within that? Right? I'm feeling sad. I'm feeling lonely. I'm feeling, so like to get, when we really distill what the actual emotional experience is, our nervous system says, ah, thank you. You heard me. Right? So it can stop sending the alarm bells of this is what's happening. You need to listen to it. When we actually hear it and get precise with it, ah, we validate ourselves. We feel seen, heard, and understood by self. And that actually turns down the volume of this message or of whatever the feeling is. Right? Lonely.

Erica Carroll [01:00:06 - 01:00:15]:
And you've got children. Yeah. So I'm assuming that pillow has come in handy. 

Alana Joy Newton [01:00:15 - 01:01:11]:
Comes in a lot. And there's no shame. You know, we get conditioned that certain things, like we, right, living right back to the beginning, you know, we get conditioned to believe that certain feelings are okay and not okay. And so, oh, this feeling of anger is coming out, oh, squash it, not okay to feel it. Right? And so why are you feeling nothing? Right? Well. Because when we're feeling, it settles the alarm bell. Right? We actually start to feel that less intensely. It actually soothes our nervous system because what our nervous system also wants, and we didn't touch on the nervous system much today, but it's something I'm super passionate about. What our nervous system wants when we're in that crisis state. So when we can give it certainty and accurately name what we're actually feeling, it says, thank you. Right? And it can send us things. Yeah. So that's, that's definitely a go-to. Like, so go-to, it's on a pillow behind my back. 

Erica Carroll [01:01:11 - 01:01:20]:
And you know what? It's so simple, but I don't use that. I don't use that as one of my tools. So thank you. Do you have more? 

Alana Joy Newton [01:01:20 - 01:03:21]:
So I kind of categorize the, I don't love the word intervention, what's the word I'm looking for? Kind of like the practices. Yeah. I kind of categorize them into three categories.

Emotions or heart. Body. Body or sensations. And then soul. And sometimes there's a little bit of overlap, but just, oh, this one is kind of like a heart. Body. It's sort of, this is the heart … emotion. Um, practice. Some body practices are, you know, well, feeling the sensation and naming the sensation. Right? And so noticing like doing a body scan and I could go on and on about body scans. I haven't always loved them. Can't say that I still … there's still a part of me that really doesn't. When we get in touch with the sensations in our body, they're just messengers for us. And so can we notice the sensation for the bare sensation? So it's, I'm not sure if you're familiar with Vipassana meditation, but that. So that's something I've practiced in quite a bit. Noticing the sensation for the bare sensation and not attaching all the, I don't want to say it's not true, but I'm not attaching all the stories. Right? It's not that the stories are untrue. We're not judging if the stories are true or untrue, but so let's say, okay, I have a throbbing sensation in my hip, which happens lots, throbbing, stabbing, stinging. I try to be precise with what it is, not just label it pain, throbbing, it's stinging, it's pulsing, whatever it is getting very specific. Cause again, my body will say, thank you for, for noticing the specific sensation. And then I endeavor to not bring in the story of what does this mean? Am I bed bound today? Can I not go for this walk today? Am I going to need a hip replacement? Am I going to be in a wheelchair by the time I'm 50? Like I just notice the sensation. That's it. You know? So that's, yeah, that's one of the body practices that I bring in.

Erica Carroll [01:03:22 - 01:04:37]:
Those, just those two alone. That's so helpful. People who have chronic pain and depending on the sensation, like you said, oh, it's that. You know, now I'm able to recognize. Distinct responses and oh, is that the sting? Is that the burn? Is that the pinch? Because each one of those things, I know methods to release them. Oh, I can feel that pulling. That means I need to roll my back. I can feel this sense that, you know what I mean? And, and so I love that. Just that being really specific. Yeah. Yeah. Good. Your lived experience with chronic illness is such a gift to us. So thanks for going through it. Because now we can benefit from your show. 

I want to wrap up with you. Do you have a book that you may recommend with the topics that we've been talking about? I'm all about reading all these books. And so I'm an avid reader and I love to share book things because also some people don't feel comfortable with therapy. Some people can't afford it. Some people there's a stigma around it. And it's like, you can just get a book. So anything that you would like to share that you think might be beneficial for people with chronic illness? 

Alana Joy Newton [01:04:37 - 01:05:54]:
Yeah. Gosh. I mean, I’m the same. Voracious reader. Where do you start? I cannot get enough. I'm surrounded. So yeah, I love my books and it's the wisdom of people who have gone on the journey before me. Right. And, and so when you, when you thank me for having gone on this journey, I have people to thank who went on this journey that I have learned from. So yeah. I mean, there are so many good ones, but just sitting down to talk with you today, the one that I pulled out. And the one that I often pull out is No Mud, No Lotus by Thich Nhat Hanh. It's this premise of, you know, in order to experience the light, we must be in the dark. And that's been my lived experience with chronic illness and other life experiences is, you know, I had to be in the dark to see my own light and life exists in contrast, you know, we can't really know one without the other. We can't really know. And I think of, you know, compassion and suffering, if we don't know suffering, do we know compassion? If they go hand in hand, grief and joy, they go hand in hand. We don't know grief, can we really know joy and vice versa. So yeah. So the book speaks about that and not specific to chronic illness, but so many of the teachings there are applicable because when we're living with chronic illness, we have a lot of experiences in the dark. Right.

Erica Carroll [01:05:55 - 01:06:16]:
Well, and the thing is most people actually do have chronic illness. They just haven't been able to, they haven't been yelled at yet, but they're reaching it. Whispers haven't turned into screams. They haven't reached the tipping point, but it'll come. Yeah, it will come. And then I want to let people know where they can find you, your website, please.

Alana Joy Newton [01:06:17 - 01:07:57]:
Yeah. So, well, right now I'm practicing both as a psychotherapist and as a coach. My psychotherapy practice is Compati Counseling. Yeah, Compati is Latin for compassion. And so that work is a little bit different from my work with coaching clients. My coaching website is alannajoynewton.com. So the difference in the work is coaching clients will come to me kind of at this very specific point in their journey where the mind, body and soul connections all kind of culminate for them and they're starting to have this awakening. They're ready to make some changes and they might or might not but usually have a pretty good understanding of some of their past stuff that led them to this point. Therapy clients, maybe, maybe not. Maybe still kind of gaining more awareness and insight and compassion for what their past experiences have been. And maybe not quite at that tipping point of spiritual awakening and that's cool. I'm not going to drag them there if that's not where they're going on this, in this lifetime. So CompatiCounseling.com is my therapy practice. And AlannaJoyNewton.com is my coaching practice. I work individually and in groups, I don't have any groups at this time, but I'm on the brink of launching an online course which addresses many of these components that we talked about, the reconnection with heart, body and soul. And so guiding through these practices and exercises to get that reconnection that to reconnect.

Erica Carroll [01:07:57 - 01:08:04]:
So you would, a person could purchase the online course and work through that on their own or is there a community aspect of that as well? There's a community.

Alana Joy Newton [01:08:05 - 01:08:16]:
That is such an important part of this experience is connection. So there's an online community and there are weekly coaching calls with me. It's done within the community. 

Erica Carroll [01:08:17 - 01:08:31]:
And could people organize their own group? Like say you had five friends and you all want to work on the same thing. Can they work through that course and work with you privately? Is that an option? Just ask them. You haven't made it an option yet.

Alana Joy Newton [01:08:31 - 01:08:33]:
I mean, I'm flexible literally and figuratively.

Erica Carroll [01:08:36 - 01:08:36]:
Yeah.

Alana Joy Newton [01:08:40 - 01:08:51]:
That's something I'm open to talking about. Yeah. Cause I mean, really my purpose here is to serve. I'm here to help others and I am adaptable. So. Yeah. Okay.

Erica Carroll [01:08:51 - 01:09:29]:
Well, my friend, I think we have, we've really done it at this last hour. So thank you so much. I mean, we've talked before and I knew it was going to go so that I still have probably seven pages of questions, but obviously I'm not going to go there. We covered a lot. I just want to thank you for the wisdom that you've gained from this journey that you've been on, listening to your guides and that you've come to this place where you can use all of that knowledge and wisdom to help people like me. Thank you so much for taking the time and I can't wait to work with you.

Alana Joy Newton [01:09:29 - 01:10:11]:
Thank you for taking the time and listening to that. You know, perhaps it was a whisper or it wasn't, it was louder than whisper to reach out to me. I really appreciated that. And I think of my work as a counselor and as a coach, I think it's a parallel journey. I'm helping my clients and they're also helping iit is a symbiotic relationship. And I don't have the answers for anyone's life. I can hold their hand and shine some lights in some areas, but I have so much belief in people's inherent wisdom to not so that they don't outsource their wisdom to me.

Erica Carroll [01:10:12 - 01:10:26]:
I think that's really important as a therapist and a support person. Amazing. Thank you so much. And I'm going to hopefully you will come back again because I'm sure we have lots more time.

Alana Joy Newton [01:10:26 - 01:10:29]:
We could go to hours of conversation ahead of us. We could.

Erica Carroll [01:10:29 - 01:11:04]: 
We're gals. Yeah. 

That is a wrap on today's episode. It's clear that Alanna's insights into our need to reconnect with our authentic selves have only just scratched the surface of her expertise. We can't wait to dive deeper into her wealth of knowledge in future episodes. So stay tuned for that. If you enjoyed today's episode, please consider sharing it with your friends and family. For show notes, transcripts, and more, visit our website at alchemyofhealing.ca. Until our paths cross again, stay resilient and keep laughing, folks. It's the best medicine we've got. Bye.