The 3 Keys To Shifting Your External Reality

Felicia Gualda

Thank you. I’m very excited to be doing this with you.

Jason Prall

Well, you mentioned a lot in your bio there, and you’re doing things like the spiritual waking up processes, as well as the human stuff as well. And so that’s really what I want to talk to you about today. There’s so much to this when it comes to working with energy and quote/unquote “healing ourselves.” And I notice that there’s a real, practical aspect of this, which involves sometimes herbs and very functional aspects of nutrition and exercise and sleep. And then we go a little bit deeper and do some of this emotional trauma work, this emotional work, and then there’s other levels as well that are purely energetics that I know you have been trained in and you work with your clients on. And then beyond that, there’s even this self-development work that involves the spiritual practices and the waking up to different levels of mind, different levels of awareness that a lot of the wisdom traditions go into. And so this is what I really wanna talk to you about today, because you work with so many of these pieces, and I’m curious why you found it so important to hit all these levels in your own development.

Felicia Gualda

I think that’s the perfect introduction. I think you really touched on all of the pieces. I’m so incredibly passionate about this. And for me, it’s about collecting puzzle pieces. So when I went along my journey, I started out diving really, really deep into the healing aspect, alongside this awakening aspect. And I’ll talk about that a little bit more. And what I notice is that my life started to shift on a really fundamental level. My state started to change, my mood changed. I was finding that I was getting pulled into like really challenging situations less and less, and my outlook on life started to shift. And then slowly, the more like material, tangible things in my life started to change as well. I got into a relationship with the love of my life, who I’m with today now. I started my practice, I started my business. I was able to work in alignment with my purpose and my soul’s calling. But there were still other areas of my life that hadn’t quite got set into place yet. So I expanded my search for truth. And that took me to other puzzle pieces, which really is this practical aspect where, what are we doing in our day to day life? How are we setting up the structures and things in our life, to how are we taking action on our life, day to day, in order to bring these aspects of healing and awakening through in a way that’s integrated, in a way that we can stabilize, and we can still be living in the world, operating in the highest capacity that we can with the structures that do exist already. So it’s been a huge exploration, and along the way, I’ve gained so much insight from each of these facets, or legs, I guess you could call them. And also then being able to share that wisdom and point clients and groups and people that I work with to those same realizations so that they can feel more embodied and connected to this sense of intuition and flow in their own lives. And so you start to see where the pieces are missing. And it becomes really clear if people are hyper focused on one area, but they’re missing the other facets, and then they’re wondering why things aren’t working out in their life. So I get to come in, and fill the pieces in, and point people back to what the things are that are missing. And so you have this comprehensive approach to life so that you can live the life that you really desire. And I think we are all capable of that. It’s just a matter of opening and being available for the right experiences and the right information to come in order to, yeah, in order to live that way.

Jason Prall

Yeah. I love that. Yeah. And you used a perfect word, it’s “integrated.” And one of my favorite teachers, Ken Wilber, talks about this being integrated, and it involves, again, the human components, as well as the, what we might say, the non-human aspects of ourselves, the waking up process. And it’s something I’ve noticed, especially in the spiritual communities that I’ve been around is that there seems to be a tendency, not always, but often enough, where when people discover the spiritual processes and the traditions and the histories that are around a lot of these traditions, there’s a tendency to discard our humanness. In other words… I see it all the time, and it may sound funny to some, and it may sound normal for others, but we might meditate and go into the pleiades, and go play with other beings, or what have you. And you hear this type of thing in a lot of these spiritual circles. And it’s almost as if they’re discarding and running away from their human problems. Which is understandable. Like we walk through life, and oftentimes we have such struggles with either trauma and emotional aspects, finances, relationships, jobs, and finding soul’s purpose there. There’s a lot that we can run from. And so I’m curious if you’ve ever dealt with that, where you wanted to run away from your humanness, or you were so stuck in your humanness, and you were trying to tackle all your problems from this human level only to realize later that there was so much more.

Felicia Gualda

Yeah, I’ve definitely had experience with this. I think a lot of people do. I think before I started really going inward and getting curious about what else there is, “what else can there possibly be in this life,” ’cause it cannot just be endless searching, I was living in the… Let me back up and say it this way. If we were to simplify it, everything we’ve been talking about, into three categories, this is how I like to look at it. There’s the healing, there’s the awakening, and then there’s the human-ing. And when you bring all three together, then life can be so good. But if you have those pieces individually, there can be goodness in them. But I find that there’s a limit in how far that we can go.

Jason Prall

And real quick, real quick. I wanna define “human-ing” a little bit, ’cause I think I know what you mean, which is that, I would say that’s the personal growth. That’s the, when we’re trying to become better people, so to speak, and it’s from this human level, and interacting with others, and this type of thing. Is that what you mean?

Felicia Gualda

A little bit. So I’ll explain just from my perspective, my experience. So before I knew about healing, and awakening, and all of that, I would say that I was living my life solely in human-ing, but without the other foundations. So human-ing looked a lot different than it does now. So initially when I was in this… I love that term, “human-ing.” So I’m gonna say it a million times, okay? When I was in the human-ing leg of all of this, I was looking out at the world, at what needed to be fixed or changed. I was looking at my relationships, or the lack thereof. I was looking at, what job do I wanna do? How do I fulfill my purpose? And I was just looping over and over in this experience of like searching and never quite finding the answer that I wanted. And all of these things are aspects of human, having the relationships, what you’re gonna do for your work, the financial component, all these things. So I was doing that, and I was beginning to take action. And I consider like taking action in your day to day life part of the whole human thing too. But the action that I was taking was honestly sourced from a place that felt really empty and unmet and hurt. And so the impact my actions were having were giving me back more of that same experience of emptiness, and not being met, and misunderstood, and feeling lost. And so there was a cycle that was happening because the human part, it wasn’t supported by any inner work or healing, or any exploration into awakening. So after I brought those other legs in and went really, really, really deep, and to be quite honest, put human-ing on pause.

Jason Prall

On the back burner. Yeah.

Felicia Gualda

Yeah, because I honestly didn’t recognize the importance of that piece because I was going so deep into the world of healing. And like, man, like that was a ride. Like that was a rollercoaster to start unpacking some of these like traumas that we don’t even realize we’re carrying in our bodies and our system. I think for so long, I lived in such a perpetual state of frustration, and then frustration that was masked by perfectionism, and pretending everything was great, and being positive all the time. And when those masks fell away, it was really eye opening to see like truly how much pain was actually in there and how many ways that I wasn’t getting my needs met, and didn’t even know what needs were, truly, in the way that I understand them now, and how it goes back to childhood, and development, and all of these pieces. So I dove deep into that world, and it was all consuming for a while. But what I recognized in that experience is that you also don’t wanna get stuck in the healing trap, because we can heal endlessly, forever. And again, that’s why the awakening and human-ing pieces come in as like a really important factor because we can get pulled in and lost in a single facet. So when you start bringing in awakening and combining it with the healing, we’re pulling ourself out of the healing trap, because I don’t believe that as human beings, we need to heal forever. 

I think maybe we dive deep for a little while in order to like unpack everything that’s suppressed. But then we reach a point when we realize that we actually need to balance all of that with a sense of wellbeing, a connection to something greater, to start looking at our sense of self and our sense of identity as beyond our thoughts, and our feelings, our emotions, our physical sensations. And when I say beyond, I wanna actually, you mentioned Ken Wilber earlier, and I wanna bring him in because he talks about something that I think is really important here. He mentions this idea of transcend and include. So we can begin to transcend this small self, this idea that we are our thoughts, we are our feelings, we are these bodies, and start to awaken to these realizations that we are more than that. We’re awareness, we’re a presence, we’re energy, we’re this interconnected unity field, we’re these different wisdom qualities that can express through the human body. But we are also the human body, and we have these human hearts. We can have these emotional experiences and these deep, intimate connections. So we are transcending and we are including the human experience. And when we bring those pieces together, the healing and the awakening, we don’t get stuck in the healing trap. We can actually enjoy our life and experience ourself from a sense of wholeness. 

And then at the same time, when you combine all of these, we’re not getting pulled into the awakening piece and staying there, because you have a lot of these Eastern wisdom traditions, which are incredible maps, these incredible guidelines and these lineages that we can access to support our awakening, these grooves that are set in consciousness that have been laid for hundreds, thousands of years. So we can tap into that. We can tune into that. And here you get people who would begin to have these incredibly expansive awakening experiences through meditation practices or what have you. And they find these really liberated spaces where they feel this peace, and serenity, and this breath away from suffering. And you find that, and there’s a pull to wanna just stay there and live in that emptiness where everything is just okay, and better than okay. And some people may choose that path, and that’s where we see people who maybe just wanna go sit in a cave and meditate for their whole life. And there’s a beauty to that. And I think it’s because of those beings that were able to access some of these places, how they opened up those places in the collective consciousness for us to have an easier time accessing it. But we’re at a place in our evolution when we don’t need to just go sit in caves. We need to bring the human-ing piece back in too so we don’t just get pulled into awakening. Now we bring in all three together. And so when you look back at human-ing after you’ve touched into these other places, and it doesn’t have to be a specific order, or time, or anything like that, I think everyone’s path is really unique, but just beginning to look at all three and know that there’s three pieces that exist can be really helpful. 

So when I came back to the human-ing piece, after the healing and awakening, ’cause again, I realized like something was missing. I was having these like crazy, mystical experiences. So for a while, the awakening piece like really, really grabbed me, and human-ing got put on the back burner, ’cause I’m like walking around the world, having these soul remembrances with people and beginning to remember other lifetimes that I’ve lived and have these extremely profound experiences like shared meditations where we’d be having the same memory come in from another lifetime at the same exact time, these things that just feel so magical. And so outside what we consider normal, that it grabbed me for quite a long time, and I still love, like those experiences have become somewhat normal, and I actually really, really enjoy that side of things. And I’ve also realized that when we bring human-ing back in, there’s, okay, we can still grow in relationships. Here’s where we bring in things like conscious communication. How are we relating to each other each day? How are we actually interacting with each other? And it becomes less about looking out at the world, at the job, the relationship, the money, all that like when I first started in the human-ing piece, and it becomes more about looking at the relationship that you have to each of those things, rather than the thing itself. And so when we do that, it creates more depth in the experience of human-ing, and it opens us up more and more to be guided into inspired action. And when we’re taking inspired action in the world, again, we’re human-ing, because we’re taking action that’s gonna create more… When we’re operating from a sense of alignment, and we have all the other pieces online, we’re gonna be taking inspired action that is gonna like fuel us and feed us back more inspiration, and joy, and passion, and help bring the people to us that can align with that energy as well so we can all rest in that field together. Yeah, that was a mouthful. And I could go on for–

Jason Prall

No–

Felicia Gualda

That feels like a good place to start.

Jason Prall

Yeah. Yeah. That was perfect. And I think I might just title this interview, “human-ing and other things,” just because that’s… We’re landing on that word, and it’s fantastic because… What comes to mind as you mention all that is that, there’s been a lot of gurus and a lot of, let’s say spiritually advanced people out there that have done the waking up to such a high degree, and yet they’re still embroiled in scandal and some other things, like they didn’t do the development work, the human-ing work that is required to be able to bring that awakening process in and come from aligned action, from inspired action, and take that into the world, and make an impact. Instead, they’re still doing some hurting to others in the process. So that just comes to mind as you mention that. And I think about it when it’s so easy to get lost in those mystical experiences. It’s so jaw dropping and eye opening and profound and amazing that to some degree, at least in my experience, it was like, do I really wanna come back to this dull, boring world? And then I recognize that that when you merge the two, you can actually bring them together. And then the world is magical in and of itself, and the way that we go about things. And we don’t have to leave this embodied reality to go have fun and play in those worlds. And I know this, that both you and a lot of others that are in this space, there’s a difference in how you show up once you’ve done this sort of awakening and the human-ing component. And once you bring that into the world, as well as the healing component, and that’s a really important component I want you to talk about too. But as those things start to come together, there’s a different way that you show up. And I’ve noticed it even with you, ’cause I’ve known you just long enough to see your growth and really see… And I think you’re probably the same with me. It’s like we can see this stuff happening, and how it’s impacting each of our lives, as well as those that are around us. And that’s what I think is so amazing ’cause that’s ultimately, I think, what starts to come about in all of us as we wake up, and as we human, and we heal, these qualities to start to emerge. We want to support others. We want to show up in a different way. And we just do. Like, it doesn’t even become an effort. As you mentioned, there’s a resting in all of this, and for me, anyway, and I think you’re the same, if I remember correctly, that we just get tired of working so hard to try to keep things together. And there’s just this sigh of relief when we don’t have to work so hard.

Felicia Gualda

Yeah. There’s so many good pieces in that. At the beginning, there’s a search to end the suffering. Like truly, there’s a search to get out of it all and to not have to feel that way anymore. And it becomes… it’s like the more we rest in ourself and we’re not being bombarded by all of these… Past experiences, and we can start to feel our ground, and we can start to feel a sense of presence, and we can start to connect to our hearts, and we can start to connect to something larger that holds us, that it’s not anymore about the search to end suffering. It becomes an experience, moment to moment, of “how can I be of greater service?” ‘Cause when we rest in that place, it’s not just us, it’s not just an individual experience, it’s a collective experience. So you begin to hold yourself as a part of the whole and as an aspect, an individual aspect of the whole. So from that place, it’s like there’s an understanding that every action impacts the all, every action impacts every being. And to me, that’s such an incredibly energy rich place, because we’re not operating then just for the self, but we’re including the self. And so what becomes available for us to fuel our life experience in that place is just monumental and mind blowing because we’re now in the territory from that place where we can be guided into experiences that just go beyond anything that we can create, as with anything that we can make up with our minds that we might desire in this lifetime.
We get to go so far past that and release the reins on our life and trust that like, truly, there’s something greater that’s guiding us and leading us. And then you start to get feedback from your life experience that validates that. So you begin to trust it more and more, and you begin to surrender more and more to the present moment. Because when we live from the present moment, we are guided, and we are supported, and we are loved, and we are cared for. And that’s how I try to live my life. I still get caught in different places, but the more that I say it, even like naming it out loud right now, it helps me organize to that reality more and more. So there’s something to be said for making a declaration. Because even again, as I say it right now, I can feel and find the places in me that don’t yet believe that fully, that still get pulled into the old ways. And that’s okay, because I’ve learned more and more to be kind to myself in this process, ’cause it is a process, and even learning kindness to the self was a process in and of itself. Like I had one of the gnarliest inner critics you could ever probably see. And I know a lot of people resonate with that as well. So it was a journey, and it is still a journey.

Jason Prall

Yeah. Yeah. It reminds me of a quote from a shaman friend of mine. He said, “when you live truly in the present, you can’t be sick.” And I thought about that, and it took me a while to really like, to really feel into that and recognize the truth of that statement, because… And to some degree it’s like, how could I be anywhere else? But the reality is we are living fractured, in the future, worrying about the future and bringing our past with us everywhere we go. And so it’s like once we can rectify that and get more and more in the present, then there’s nothing that can harm us. And so I wanna talk about the energy component. ‘Cause you said something that’s really, really key, I think, when we talk about the energy healing summit here. There’s been experiences I’ve had, and I would love for you to share yours in this as well, where… When I’m in these states, these connected, awakened, different levels of mind, different levels of awareness, the energy that I have, so to speak, or that I have access to, dramatically increases. Instead of coming only from the human energy perspective, when I output energy and I’ve gotta somehow refuel it through sleep and food and all these things, it’s like a different energy. It’s a spiritual energy. It’s coming from a different place, almost, where I’m accessing it from a different place. And it’s like it boosts, it charges me up to where it’s not a drain whenever I’m doing something. It’s actually just constantly being refueled and re-circuited. And I’m curious, if you’ve had those experiences, what you think, what’s going on there?

Felicia Gualda

Well, I love that you’re talking about energy, because right now I feel so much energy in my body as we’re talking about things that are so close to my heart and that really, really matter, and I find to be really important. So for me, that’s an energy rich place. And so like I feel this dynamic life force energy pouring through my body right now. And I’m really trying hard to stop myself from shaking. So if you see my face twitching, or something weird happening, that’s what’s happening. ‘Cause I’m trying to sit here and have a normal conversation with you, but meanwhile, I’m just like, I’m just feeling this pour through. So for me, the way I experience it is it’s not something that I had to create or like hope for, to happen, to energize me. It’s something that you become available for. And we can begin to channel that energy into creative endeavors. We can channel that energy into human-ing. We can channel that energy into wealth creation. We can channel that energy into fulfilling our purpose through the actions that we take, and the businesses that we create, and how we show up in our lives, and all of that. Yeah. And there’s a force there, but it isn’t a going out to get it. It’s a becoming available for it. And I know I just said that, but I wanted to repeat it again because it’s so, so important. And we’ve become available to access these greater states of awareness and this life force energy when we start to look inward and we come into a place of acceptance. And I don’t find that acceptance is something we can just like snap our fingers and do. I don’t see acceptance as a doing. 

It’s more a being with what’s here now, whether that’s pain, whether that’s emotion, whether that’s old memories, whether that’s a feeling in the body, whatever it is, it’s, can we get curious? Can we slow down? Can we take a break from the story of our lives, or the content, or what’s happening, and really dive into what is here now, be with that experience, feel it deeply. And what happens is then we create space for our bodies’ natural healing mechanisms to take over and the healing mechanisms of our being. Not just our body, our soul, our mind, all of it. And it will begin to move things, and things just begin to process on their own, and the more things that process, and the more space that we create, and the more kindness we have for ourself, the more we look inward, the more we come into the present moment, we are with what is, the more available we become for this state of acceptance to arise. Because I believe that that’s our natural state. When we’re resting like fully in this space of being, then it’s an inherent component of the present moment, having acceptance for what is. And when we’re there, it’s like we open for the magic too. We open to the mystical experiences. You can’t go searching for them. That’s why, when I… I always find it interesting. I had the hardest time trying to find a label for what it is that I do. And there has to be some way in which we communicate that to people. And I struggled with it, because in my sessions with my clients, I’d guide them into the present moment, and what would happen from that place was so different for each client and for each session, even. It varied so much that it’s like I couldn’t label it. 

Like sometimes we’d go into past lives, but I’m not a past life regressionist. I can’t call it– It doesn’t feel right to call myself that However, we go there and we heal things from other lifetimes, and that happens frequently. I’ll have other clients where there’s… We drop into the present moment, I guide them there. We create safety in the space, and suddenly they’re in infancy. And they’ve like, the part of them has come to the surface is their infant who is asking to be met in a certain way so that an energetic rupture can complete, and they don’t have to be suffering or creating life experience from this missed experience in infancy. So suddenly I’m with them and they’re regressed, and I’m not a regression therapist either. And that’s where we go. Sometimes I’ll have people hold a stick. And that’s a component of a modality that I use called the adult attachment repair model. And we’re focusing on the bond between each other, the bond that gets programmed from the time we’re young. And it’s how we relate to each other, which then templates how we relate to everything in life. And sometimes when we drop into the present moment, I can feel that, like, there’s a requirement. There’s an asking for that. 

There’s an impulse where their system needs to feel another person truly there with them. So then we bring in nervous system regulation, and I’m not a somatic therapist, but I work deeply with the nervous system, and co-regulation, and bringing all of our organs into coherence and alignment, and working with energy medicine. And I’m not a Reiki practitioner. Everyone asks me, “what kind of energy healing do you do?” And I never know how to answer, because it’s not a modality. It’s dropping to presence, and when we’re in presence, and my system is open, and their system is open, then there’s frequencies that stream through that are needed for the client, or for myself, or for both of us. And we both receive every session I offer. Sometimes there’s information streaming through for them, and I’m not a psychic, and yet information is come– That’s not how I identify myself, and yet information is coming through for them. And I’m having realizations and learning in that moment based on the words that I’m saying that don’t come from my past experiences or anything that I’ve learned about this person in front of me, but is coming from something greater. So it always gets tricky.

Jason Prall

Yeah. You can’t really call yourself a present moment therapist or anything. Like it just doesn’t work. Like there’s nothing there, so yeah.

Felicia Gualda

There’s still gonna be a bridge. So this is why I love having experiences like this, because I get to speak freely and encapsulate all of that. And if people hear this, and something in that resonates, then those are my people, and that’s a beautiful thing. So I prefer being in presence, especially relationally, here with you or in any other kind of relational context where we can just talk and we can just flow. And for some people, it’s gonna resonate deeply, and for others, it won’t, and that’s okay. And that’s how I like to create my life. From energy, from feeling, from speaking, from what feels real in the moment.

Jason Prall

Yeah. No, I love that. And it’s funny because so many of these big experiences, and they could be small too, but they could be meaningful. These downloads, these mystical things, in my life, they never come from that searching place. Like, I can’t go get them. I can’t try to have them. And yet when they happen, it almost seems like out of nowhere that these things are happening, and it always amazes me. And it seems like what’s required is to let go of the searching, to let go of the trying, to open up and just relax, let go, and fall into the present moment. And when that happens, it’s so paradoxical, and it’s so contrary to the way I’ve lived most of my life and that I was raised to behave, which is to make things happen, and work hard, and go get it, and all these things, but it’s the opposite of that. It’s completely letting go of all that and just allowing whatever’s meant to come through to come through. And so I’m curious, as you go through this with your clients, what are you doing actually? We’re getting into presence, but there has to be something else too, I think, some other words that you can use. I mean, are you opening up? Are you modulating your awareness? Like what’s happening in that process?

Felicia Gualda

Yeah. So the very, like foundational piece of all of it is creating safety, creating like a felt sense safe space. And there’s pieces to that. There’s a way in which we can do that. Part of that comes from me doing my own work, showing up for myself, getting support where I need to get support so that I’m capable of finding a regulated place in my own body and my nervous system, because we can feel that from one another, whether we’re–

Jason Prall

Yeah, that’s a big one. Like I don’t try trust people, because I… Perhaps not even cognitively I’m picking this up, but I can feel that there’s a disconnect. I can feel that it’s not a safe space to share or to let go. And in my experience, too, that’s been the case. So even if you are safe, I may not feel that right away. You may have to really convince me, so to speak, with the way that you’re showing up, the way that you’re moving your body, the way that you’re standing or sitting, where you’re at, are you super close to me, in my space and threatening? And then all those things can really play a role in how safe you’re making it.

Felicia Gualda

Yeah. And I wanna reframe that word “convince,” ’cause to me, there’s a subtle difference there. There’s like a little bit closer word that I would use. And that even when we create safety, and you’re right, the other person might not trust it, and that’s okay. Because if we’ve had experiences our whole life where we can’t trust, then of course we’re not gonna trust immediately, even if it is a safe container. So there’ll be little point outs or things that I’ll name or notice that invite them fully in the space, all of them, exactly as they are. So for me, I have to be comfortable dropping any agenda and know that whether they open and relax into the space or not, it doesn’t matter. It’s okay whatever happens for them if I can be present with them, because I know I trust their guidance system, and I know that underneath whatever they’ve experienced in their life, that they are whole. So if I rest in that place in my heart and my awareness, and I’m looking at this being and knowing that they are perfect as they are, then what can begin to happen is these places can start to glimpse if it’s safe. These places that feel stuck and how it will start to like, peek out and see if it’s really okay, and eventually enough evidence builds so that these parts of us that hold us protected, or tight, or contained begin to naturally relax on their own. And when that happens, we can typically access more vulnerable places, and we can begin to feel those in a way that allows those emotions, those parts of us to resolve.
And it doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re never gonna feel sad again, or we’re never gonna feel grief, or we’re never gonna feel anger, but it does mean that we can feel them in their entirety so that we don’t loop in them. ‘Cause that’s what happens is… Let me say it this way. What I found is that there’s two things that typically will happen with people when they feel stuck in their lives. There’s typically an emotional component. And what will happen is they’ll be so far away from their emotions. So for me, like I had a ton of stuff that was suppressed. I didn’t even know I was caring because I was out here in perfectionism. “Everything’s fine. Everything’s good. I just keep going, I keep working, I keep doing things. I keep smiling, and everything’s great.” And I didn’t realize that all that stuckness came from suppression, and protecting, and all this stuff. And so for me, my work was going in and like peeling back the layers to be able to feel everything that was there, so that it could move. And it wasn’t controlling my life experience anymore, because when there’s so much stuckness, even if we’re not aware of it, then it shows up in our life in some way. So I was experiencing it as stuckness in life. I wasn’t moving forward. I was waiting tables. I had been single for five years after a string of… Like a lifetime string of heartbreak. I wasn’t making very much money. I was stuck. I didn’t realize there was a correlation between this suppression and avoidance of like emotional turmoil. 

So that’s where I think a lot of people rest. And then on the other side of things, we may get too pulled into our emotional experience, our emotional body. And we’ll fixate, and we’ll identify with these like, really, really like hard emotional experiences. That’s where you get things like depression, or like codependency, or like living in this collapsed state where you just don’t wanna do anything, this fear of taking risk, of taking action, in a way that could propel us forward. And when we’re collapsed into that state, then the work isn’t necessarily like continuing to feel, because we’re not actually feeling it in its entirety, we’re just looping in it, looping in it, looping in it, looping in it. So that’s where you need to bring in safety and resource, and in most cases, working with another person who can actually be that like stable template of what it actually feels like and looks like to come out of that place so we can begin to learn and orient back to this middle ground where there’s wellbeing, where there’s stability, where there’s confidence, where there’s alignment, where there’s groundedness, where there’s an initiative to take action in the world from that resting place of being, and to take inspired action, to be available for these intuitive hits to go do this or do that. And yeah, so I’m navigating, and to bring this all full circle, I’m navigating in session where people are so that I can reflect back to them and let them… Like, begin to name what I feel is happening so they can actually find what’s happening within themselves. And when they can see what’s happening, it pops us out of pattern. 

It gives us some space from that stuckness, whether we’re stuck suppressing emotions or whether we’re stuck looping in emotions, we begin to see what’s happening and realize that there’s another way. There’s another experience that we can live from. And then when we connect with that, it’s not about like necessarily like instruction that I’m giving them. It’s about them actually realizing that they have all of the answers, and we get to play in that space together as they learn to trust it more and more. And then they take that into their life. So part of the work that I’m doing with people is helping them generate some structures that they can use in their day to day life, some practices. So there is a tangible piece here, this is the human-ing again, that help them to stabilize in a place that feels good, because what will happen is if we do all this like work in session and then you go back to your life, you have all this liberated energy from the healing. And you also, you may have like, an awakening experience or a peak experience, but then you go back to your life and then there’s like, old stuff comes in.So we wanna set up structures in the human-ing component so that we can feed that liberated energy from the healing into places that serve us. And so we can also set up meditation practices and things like that so that we can stabilize the awakening experiences that you may have felt in session. And I see meditation not just as something that you do on the pillow, but we can consistently glimpse these like greater states of awareness in our day to day life when we’re driving, when we’re talking, when we’re eating, when we’re… The idea is to not have to be… Meditation to not be an escape from life, but all of life to become like a meditative experience. Does that make sense?

Jason Prall

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And that’s a big one. When I realized that, that it wasn’t about just doing this practice, but about taking the practice into your life as such that your whole life becomes this experience, well, it scared me, ’cause I realized, “oh my gosh, I got a long way to go,” but it also became super practical. And it went beyond just this mindfulness component. Because that’s another thing that’s similar, but perhaps different. It wasn’t just about being mindful in every aspect of life, but literally in this expanded state or this meditative state of awareness in my everyday life. And that was a real mind blowing thing when I first came across that. And it brings me to my last little question as we wrap up here, which is that, your awakening piece, like how does that come into play for you in your own life? Again, piggybacking on what you just said, how does that come into your day to day life, and what are some of the… Whether they’re the lineages, or the wisdom traditions, or even just teachers, who have you followed, what’s really made an impact in your life, and what can you recommend for people who are maybe interested in doing more of that?

Felicia Gualda

Yeah. One of my favorite meditation teachers, his name is Loch Kelly. And I think he does a really beautiful job of illustrating how we shift into these different levels of awareness. So like for me, in my own life, I was used to walking around in an ordinary consciousness, an ordinary everyday consciousness where you’re looking out at the world with your attention, and that’s the focus. So I’ve learned to shift into this more subtle experience, or this witness state, which would be one shift, where like right now, I’m watching myself talk, which is a weird thing to say, but I feel that I’m an awareness that’s watching this being say words, and move her hands, and do things. And I can control what I’m doing, and yet it’s almost like there’s two beings. Like there’s a witness and there’s a being, and then you can shift again, and we can come into this place. You can begin to glimpse this place where there’s just a happening. And there’s not really a here identity. There’s more… Or let me say it this way. There’s more just like this still emptiness, like this ever present awareness that is here and everywhere, and we can rest in that place as well. But to me, it’s not really functional. So we might pop into this place, and then we can begin to invite energy back in, and energy is material. It’s color and texture and feeling, and thoughts is all energy. So we can begin to have an experience where there’s movement and there’s flow, and from here, you may feel subtle energy moving through the body, and there’s still like an awareness of thoughts. We can be aware of what’s happening on a subtle level. And from that place, there’s more of a just allowing life to happen through us, rather than… I’m just like feeling it right now.

Jason Prall

It’s funny. I feel like you’re actually transmitting it, ’cause I’m actually picking up pretty strongly as well. And it pulls me outta my humanness and outta my thoughts a little bit, and I have to kind of… So I think this is a good example of what I think you’re talking about is, as we get better at this, we can do both. We can hold both really, really well, and we can stabilize this in all kinds of scenarios. For me, I’m not quite there yet. I’m a little bit better on a pillow, or in silence, or perhaps in a group, or somebody leading me, and then I can pop into those states and stabilize that there. But then I get pulled back into my little human ego parts when we do things like this or others. But as you’re mentioning this, I’m toggling, and doing a little bit of both. And it’s a little bit wobbly for me.

Felicia Gualda

Yeah. I love that word, “toggle” though. I think you said toggle, wobble? Yeah, and I bring that into my session a lot, because when people start to pop out, I call it “popping out” to have these experiences where they’re like, “whoa, this is different. This is a different vantage point. Something different is happening here.” We’re gonna toggle out also, and then we’re gonna toggle back, and we’re gonna toggle out. So when we find ourself toggling, that’s actually like progress. And to me, that’s like a really exciting and healthy sign that we’re, yeah, that we’re moving towards stabilizing something new. It’s just a part of the way that we get there is we allow the toggle to happen. And we set up structures and practices in our life so that we can remember to consciously glimpse these different levels of awareness, these different states of consciousness, because the more that we glimpse and rest in these different places, the more familiar our being gets with it, the safer our like primal body feels with letting go of where it held us in these small ego states or small self. And the more familiar we become, it’s like… There’s this saying, I forget who said this, but it’s, “we effort until effort is no longer needed.” So when we do these glimpse practices, the more you do them, eventually, it’s like you’re not needing to do it consciously anymore, ’cause you’re just resting there. And so, yeah.

Jason Prall

Yeah. I love that. And one of the things that came to mind as you were talking about that is, I guess just the more embodied practices too. Because things like qigong that I know you’re into, and I am as well, are there things like that that you’ve found very helpful, even perhaps breath work, or any other physical, somatic, body led practices that can help stabilize or help this awakening process as well?

Felicia Gualda

Yeah. So for me, the sitting practice was really hard for me initially. That was not my initial pathway. I was a very heady person, like extremely mental. That’s where I’ve lived in my mental body. And it’s not a bad thing, but it’s when you are only there that there can be limitations. So I’m also a very physical person. I grew up playing sports. I was a personal trainer for a long time. I like the physical body, and movement, and stuff. And I think that’s just a natural part of who I am. So I learned that we can find pathways into these like really open states of awareness that suit our system. And so I really enjoy it. You mentioned qigong practice. That’s something I’ve done for a few years now that I really enjoy that has actually been a doorway into finding these greater states of awareness. One of my teachers, Mark Tanaka, he’s amazing. I love, love, love his style, his teaching style. He has videos on YouTube too. They’re great. So I’ll do things like that. And then what’s really fun is once you start to like get into this like space of allow, you can drop even that instruction. So I notice like if I’m really, really open, and I may do a qigong, like a guided qigong practice to get into this open state, I can let the energies take over. And what will happen is this dynamic life force energy will start to pour through my body, and it will move my body. So it’s not me, Felicia, choosing, “move your hand here,” or “move your arm here.” It’s more just, I can open and allow it to pour through, and it will actually like dance your body. 

And it’s a crazy thing to say, but it feels so amazing. And sometimes my hands will go into like mudra, and you start to realize that we’re these like, tuning forks, almost, like these vessels, and so the energies will position your body in certain ways that can stream the energy, that can, yeah, it can stream the energy through, and will actually start to liberate places in my body. So I might start with a qigong practice, it turns into like a really weird dance, you know? And then I’m on the floor crying because something like, it hit a spot in me that needed to process. There’s no content, I have no idea why, it doesn’t really matter why, because I’ll feel this deep grief for about 30 seconds and then be like, “huh, that was interesting.” Like, “all right.” Like go about my day. Like go make my breakfast or like whatever. And it gets to be that fluid because we stop attaching meaning to everything, and everything gets so much easier then. So I can’t tell you how many times I’ve experienced places in my body that like hold terror, or like, really, really like heavy, heavy experiences. And they’re just done in a matter of seconds, or moments, or minutes, and then you return to great wellbeing.

Jason Prall

The other thing that comes to mind is dancing. And thinking about some of the indigenous tribes and indigenous peoples that use movement, and dance, and chanting. And like, I don’t think we do enough of that, personally, in our culture, like just this dancing, to dance and to move energy. And I’ve seen this over and over again. We were starting to see some of this coming back. The ecstatic dance and there’s all these type of things. But I think we do it for fun, and there’s this inherent aspect to being human that somehow involves music and dance. But to do so from a different framework, to just move the body almost as a way to move energy so that we don’t get all locked up, there seems to be a good opportunity there. And again, I’ve seen it throughout the world in some of these indigenous cultures. And it’s amazing to watch because they’re, again, through that, there’s a teaching that comes through. Like you start to learn the body and learn, “oh, if I do this, this energy starts to accumulate,” or “move through,” or what have you. And I think it’s just amazing to witness and to experience how the body’s interconnected with emotion, with energy, and with the divine.

Felicia Gualda

I absolutely love that you brought this up. I had an experience recently that just, it had me have a new found respect for these like ancient… Like rituals and dances from these cultures. And you just like named it perfectly. How do I wanna say this? Can I share an experience that I had?

Jason Prall

Yeah, please. Yeah.

Felicia Gualda

So I was in a shared meditative experience with a friend of mine where we drop into presence, and it’s almost like a psychic connection gets created. And so we’ll set an intention, and what will happen is we’ll start to have the same experience at the same time. We’ll get the same images at the same time, we’ll start to have the same realizations. And so we were working on a particular piece, we had brought in an attention, and what happened is the energies got us up and had us start dancing. And so we’re moving in this perfectly coordinated dance that we’ve never learned before anywhere. And what we were tuning into, the information was that were actually accessing a place in consciousness that other tribes had accessed. And those dances actually became part of their culture. And so I always viewed these like beautiful, I think they’re beautiful, these cultural dances that you see. I didn’t realize that they’re like, truly tuning into something, there’s information in the dances. They’re like aligning their bodies to these universal powers. Like you can align your body through dance in these streams of consciousness to wealth, to abundant consciousness, where we actually get our energy configured in a way that sets us up to attract money, which is a crazy thing. But like, it’s just the wildest thing. Like my mind is blown on this one. Like I’ve had many mystical experiences, but this one was just really profound. I loved seeing that.

Jason Prall

Yeah. And to be able to take that in and not really hold onto it too tightly, like you’re not taking that story and running with it, but rather you’re curious about it. You admire it, there’s an awe about it, but what I find is that as these things come through, it’s like, it does inform your system of how some of these things work, and it gives you a different perspective on how all this works, and I think that’s what’s really cool is that you don’t really need to do much with that information necessarily, but it is stored in the information vault, and it does give you a little bit more wisdom about energy, about your body, about how this stuff works. And that’s what’s so cool. It’s stuff like that when it comes through. And again, you’re not really planning for it, and you don’t really know what to do with it, but it’s like, amazing.

Felicia Gualda

Yeah. And it gets to be really fun too.

Jason Prall

That’s just, yeah. And that’s probably the biggest thing for me as I started waking up to this magical world, was that it started to become a lot more fun, and that I probably cherish more than anything, is that life just gets to be more fun that way. Felicia, we could go on and on. I absolutely love chatting with you. This has been so great to hear all this from you. And please tell us where people can find more of your work and some of the things you have coming up.

Felicia Gualda

Thank you. Yeah, the easiest way is probably just gonna be through my website. You can check me out at feliciagualda.com. Join my email list. I send out some fun things when I feel inspired. Social media is another good one. Facebook and Instagram is just my full name. And then I also, in probably… Well, I guess the timing will be different when you’re actually seeing this interview, but in the very near future, I’m gonna be releasing a course on emotional mastery, which we actually touched on a lot of those points today. So if you have any interest in that, follow me and I’ll be posting more information about that if your heart calls to that.

Jason Prall

Beautiful. Felicia Gualda, thank you so much for joining us, and we’ll see you on the next one.

Felicia Gualda

Thank you.