Unlock Wellness & Rewrite Your Soul’s Story with Dr. Karen Parker

Introduction to Quantum Wellness 0:00

Hey friends, I'm your host Dr. Elizabeth Samana, the intuitive psychiatrist and you are listening to stepping into soul power. Friends, since a lot of us are going through, we're going though some hard times and there's a lotta burnout, there is a lotta heartache, uh we are not well, or as well as we could be. And our next guest has a unique way of really looking at wellness. She is a powerhouse, creator of quantum human design. And she's got this wonderful book, Quantum Wellness, Healing Your Mind, Body, and Spirit with Human Design.

More than 30 years, 30 of years of health research, energy, psychology, human, design, Dr. Karen Parker, welcome to the show. Thank you, thank you for having me. I'm excited to be here. Yes, yes. So a lot of us were not doing great. You have come up with this new novel way of really looking at wellness, well-being. Can you tell us, take us down how you came down this path? Well, first of all, I would say I don't think the way that I'm, what I am teaching is really that new. Really what i'm teaching or talking about is the power of narrative or the part of story.

really as, as you know, human beings, we are storytellers and we've been storytelers forever. And I think in our modern world, the art of storytelling, it's not that it has been lost. It's mutated, right? We're telling stories on Instagram and Facebook, but stories are, they're very short and they are very lived, very, short lived and there are kind of snippets,

Storytelling as Identity and Healing 1:56

bits and pieces of a moment in our lives. And to a certain degree, those moments become part of our identity and we're not looking at the entire spectrum of stories. What I'm really talking about in the book is that we have to be really mindful of We have to be really mindful of where do we stop and start our stories because a lot of us are telling stories about who we are, our identity, and we've cultivated that story in a moment of crisis in our life, in the moment where maybe something happened or We became a victim of something, or our perception was that we became the victim or something.

And we tell and define our story from that moment, and we forget the whole redemption arc of what comes after, right? So if you tell, I do this, teach storytelling sometimes to high school kids. It's just totally fun because they think their life is over at 16, right? That they've, and you know, getting in there and saying, look, you define yourself from this moment. And this is true for all of us as adults, if we start defining ourselves for who we were at sixteen. I mean, that would be hilarious for me personally.

I was like a punk rocker at 16 and I had like no hair and it was red. What little I have was read. And I wore jeans and safety pins. That's a tiny part of my narrative, but that discounts the entire arc of what happened next in the life of Karen, in this story of Karyn. And so many times what's happening for us is when we get stuck with money issues or pain in the body or relationship issues, it's because we're stuck in a story that has left out the redemption arc of where we are now or how we got to where are right now.

So in quantum wellness, what I do is I lay out, using human design, a systematic way to start looking at, okay, What story am I telling? What identity have I internalized and is this story that I'm telling a story, that says it's okay and it safe for me to be who I am and how I. And if it is not, how do we take back control of that narrative so that we begin to tell an authentic story and use that story as a creative point for the rest of our lives. Oh, so much good there, for those people who aren't quite familiar with what human design is, can you give us a brief snippet of what does that entail?

Totally. So human design is a system of personality analysis, so I would kind of put it in the same category as astrology for the more woo-woo minded person or Myers-Briggs or any of these personality tests that we take. It is the synthesis of Eastern and Western astrology, the Chinese I Ching, The Hindu Chakra System, Judea, Kabbalah, and a little smidgen of quantum physics. Really what it is, is it's a way of looking at how you process energy, how do you experience the world through the lens of ancient and modern archetypes.

So if you think about the I Ching, the Hindu chakra system, Judea Kabbala, if look at all these little esoteric components of the system they're really all based on archetype. It's really just an archetypal based way, of exploring what story am I telling? What story is my sole curriculum? Using your birthday, birth time and birth place, you generate a chart. So that chart to me is what I'd like to consider your sole curriculums. What's my curriculum in this lifetime? What am I here to learn from?

How am i here experience the world to either enhance or challenge me in the lesson? And ultimately what are my gifts or my strengths? what story parts, what parts of the human story am here really to amplify, optimize and share with the World? And so when you're working with someone, can you give a step-by-step idea of how do they go about reframing the story that they're telling themselves? So first of all, you can do this with or without human design. Human design is a great tool, but it's definitely not the only way to do the process.

And literally what I have people do at the most base level is, I will, and we can do this even for people listening, is stop and just take a moment and ask yourself, what stories am I telling? We'll use money as an example, because money's a pretty, it's pretty triggering topic, right?

What Human Design Is 6:30

It's good topic to talk about. What stories do I tell about money? Or a different way of saying that might be, What beliefs do i have about And those beliefs might be money comes to me every day in the mail. That's a good one. Right. Or one, a more common one is money is hard. Money is bad or money corrupts or, you know, is evil. And so those belief systems that we have, those are part of our story about money. So if you in this moment are sitting here going, well, actually I have some pretty bad beliefs about.

They are, I don't like money, it's uncomfortable. It's scary. Creates stress in my body when I think about it. You literally can sit down and talk about your money story in a fantastical, or write about, your story and a fantastic or creative way. And literally, this is an invitation for an exercise to anybody listening. When you're done listening, don't do this while you are driving, and make a list of everything that comes up for you when you think about money. What's your beliefs? What stories do you have?

Where did those stories come from? That's the beginning of your story. You're going to literally sit down and using creative writing, write a story about yourself. And as you, the hero in your storytelling, you're gonna start your own story off with where you are right now with your beliefs about money. So maybe you might say once upon a time, there was a woman who believed that making money was really hard. This is my personal story, There was a time in my personal story where, if I had written my story, it would be, this woman was full-time single parent.

She had five kids, a newborn baby, four teenagers, and they all had to eat, right? And she had feed all these kids. And, she was working very, very hard. she grew up in a family where she learned to work very very. hard, She was trained very well to working hard making just enough. In fact, that just enough story was so strong that every time she made a little more than enough, something would happen, like the car would break down or, you know, some of you have had that story, right? And so, and that'd be part one of the story.

And the second part of this story you go through what we call the challenge or in the hero's journey, it's the place where you confront the shadow aspects

Rewriting Money Stories 8:49

of a story So in my case, when I rewrote the storytelling for myself, I literally created what I'll call the Money Fairy. Okay, so that was where I was at the time. I had a mystical encounter. So in my story, till one day she was walking in the woods and she encountered the money fairy. And the many fairies sat down with her and talked about her money beliefs. The money fair explains to this woman, hey, you know what? Money isn't actually that hard. Money can be magical and money can come to you easily.

And the woman thought about this lesson for a long, long time and she took it home with her and took that lesson into her heart. And she started to explore what would the world look like if I actually thought that money could be easy. To integrate that story, she began to realize, oh, money can be easily. She started having experiences that validated that that made the money fairy seem pretty cool and pretty accurate. This is a very, very short version of that story. I would really encourage anybody, if you have a story that's really keeping you stuck, sit down and do a creative writing process with it, where you take yourself from where are you right now, find the blessings in the current situation, because there's always a blessing in it even though it's hard.

Have some kind of a challenge or some mystical experience in your story and rewrite it from a fantastical perspective and come out the other end. Does it change you immediately? No. But here's what happens is when we start to tackle our narrative on the creative part of our being, using the sensual, emotional parts of ourselves, the storytelling part those parts of the brain that are oftentimes patterned, that is rigidly clinging to that pattern because that's a survival pattern that we've learned.

When we try to move and shift those patterns, it oftentimes triggers doubt and suspicion, sometimes self-doubt and suspicions. We have to work really, really hard to untangle ourselves from those preset patterns. When we, instead of trying to reason and logic and process these things, you know, old beliefs with that reasoning part of ourselves, and instead move over into this creative, expressive, emotional piece, We actually can change the story faster. Not only do we change a story fast, but we actually re-regulate the body.

We can actually improve immune function. we increase resilience. And we have the ability to start to look at the challenges in our lives through the lens of, okay, what's in this for me? What's the lesson here for instead of stopping ourselves short. The brain responds very well to using creativity as a tool for shifting your narrative. So it is fun. And it's fun, that's the other part. It's really fun to sit down and just go, okay, if I was going to rewrite this as children's story, how would I have the story end?

And how could I get to the end of the store in a fun and juicy way? I love that for so many different reasons. Just the act of being creative and fantastic. I just couldn't help but feel more expansive as you were saying it. So I can see how if someone is going through this process, that they just start feeling better in general. Oh, I don't know what the situation is, but you just started feeling better. And you don't just start feeling better, literally you become stronger. In the research that I did, I do a recent research study in 2020 to 2023, mostly because it took longer because of COVID.

One of the things I had people do was to come into the lab, we measured IGA, as a baseline level, which is an immune function marker. I had them then tell me a story of an event that left them feeling disempowered or victimized. Now, it's important to know that if this is a fresh raw trauma, this not the place to do this activity. I mean, you certainly can start, but so you want to process the grief and any trauma you might have. But if you're stuck in a story, and we're all stuck stories, right?

These are the things we talk about when we go out with girlfriends, we sit and talk, I want this happening. So I had them share a stories where they had an event that they felt kind of stuck and that left them feeling either disempowered or victimized. And then I had them and we, after they told me the story, we went back and measured IgA levels. Well, IgE levels dropped after the shared the stories.

Creative Narrative Shifts and Research 13:24

So they literally didn't feel good anymore. And the body itself was like, my immune function is now going down because I'm in this energy of the store and it's keeping me stuck. So then I had them go into a process where we did a very templated storytelling process and I have them rewrite the story of the experience through the lens of they either learned something from the store that left them feeling more empowered or they rewrote the stories in such a way that they didn't emerge from this story, the victim anymore.

They became the victor or are they in some way won something big from that experience. So when they went back and they reread this story, and it was a creative process, it wasn't, they didn't have to be literal. They could call in superpowers. they could Call in fantastical creatures. I had a whole thing where they can play with glitter. It was very fun, very, you know, child, no idea how much people love glitter, I think glitter is healing. Glitter itself is a healing phenomenon. So I have them redo this, story rewrite the story.

Come back, read it to me again. And after they read it to me, their IgA levels went almost back to baseline. And so just shifting into that playful, oh my God, I don't have to be a victim of this. Or, Oh, you know, this was terrible, but I can see the blessing in this and shifting that perspective on the story shifted immune response. And I think when we look at the field of narrative psychology, which is kind of an emerging field, we're starting to see that perspective and feeling empowered over situations that maybe in the past have left us feeling disempowered doesn't just make us feel better emotionally, it actually makes the body respond more effectively to being healthy or being well.

that. I love that." You said, fresh, raw trauma, it's not appropriate to use this response. Can you outline what are the scenarios where this is appropriate? What are scenarios You have not resolved certain aspects of the trauma. Like, if you just experienced a really major trauma yesterday, let's say you were in a car accident yesterday. The next day is not necessarily the place to start rewriting the story. Now, I will say, If you are practiced in taking back control of a story, that becomes if, you do this regularly, systematically exploring your narrative and really get in there and consciously rewriting it.

And you have the ability, you've cultivated that muscle of, oh, I don't have to stay in this perspective. I can shift my perspective in your practice at that. That might be actually a good time for you to start looking at, okay, if I had this accident, where are the blessings? I haven't seen them yet, but I know they're coming. But if you're not practiced at re-writing the story, the day after the accident is not the time to work on it, I would say the place to really start working on the story is when you reach that point in the store, when do you recognize, oh, this is starting to become sort of rote.

So I'll give you an example. I'm now happily married for the second time, 20 years, but when I got divorced from my first husband, I went through this literally this terribly ritualized evening sort of routine that I had that was not healthy. So I would rush the kids to bed, and then I'd pour myself a glass of wine, listen to Dave Matthews, you know, grace is gone, right, is my sad song, I got to the point where I could not wait to get the kid to beds so I can get my wine and feel sorry for myself.

And this was not like fresh in the divorce. This was like now we're working on two, three years afterwards. I'm still really feeling sorry for myself. And that is at those places where you start to recognize that you're in a pattern or a habit with the story. Or if you have a story, Yeah, you go out with your girlfriends and like, You're almost so you've almost got the story so well memorized that you're like this is the part in story where I start to cry. And this was the first story we're in bitter, right?

We have those repetitive stories that we tell. Those are the stories you really want to start disrupting. Oh, that's, That's actually really helpful. Um, and, in many ways, it requires that people are self aware of what's going on. Yes, true. And I think, so this is where I'm kind of on a mission. I mean, there's the self-awareness, right? But there is also, you know, I really like to talk about storytelling and teach about story telling and the impact of story-telling because I also think we need to shift cultural awareness.

absolutely in love with terrible stories. I mean, you click on anything on Netflix or Amazon or wherever you're watching stuff, every story is horrible.

When Story Reframing Is Appropriate 18:18

Yes, there's a redemption arc and sometimes there is a happy ending. Think about, this is Grey's Anatomy in his example. How many years has this show been on? Like 22 years this shows has been TV now or whatever it is, it's not TV anymore. It's just like tragedy, trauma, tragedy trauma. Heartbreak. This character has this identity around this heartbreak, this character always has bad luck, chooses the wrong guy. I mean, it's like, negative narrative. And I do think we need to also normalize that, hey, we don't have to stay stuck in this perspective.

We can start shifting stories and telling really good, inspiring stories. Those are actually the stories that we kind of also love, but we relegate them over here, like to TED Talks. Like we love TED talks. They're great, they're inspiring, But that's not what we're watching regularly. Nobody's, you know, very few people I think are clicking on ted.com and watching really inspiring TED talk. So we were usually going down the the sort of dark story route. And if you think about, again, let's think of the metaphor of going out with your girlfriends.

How many times do we sit there and we think, well, actually my life is going pretty well but I don't want to talk about that because if I start talking about how great things are and how good the things were going, like we run the risk of potentially even triggering people whose lives are not doing well. So we learn to kind of push down the good stuff and kind sit in that enjoyment of the negative. And even, and I will say, even in the therapeutic world, we focus so much on PTSD. We don' always put our emphasis on post-traumatic growth.

And so we have to start looking at, okay, great, but where's the redemption arc? Where do we go from the climax in the story? Why do stop at the climates in this story and not look at what happened next? What happened? We're not 16 anymore. Exactly. I'm a huge, huge believer. In many ways, the feel that I get is where focus goes, you know, our energy flows. And this, people are speaking truth in the world of psychiatry. We're just so focused on the negative and little attention is paid to just that resilience, post-traumatic growth that can happen.

I love, love it. You talked about a shift in cultural awareness and are there practical things that people can do to help move in that direction? Well, I would say, let's start getting brave about sharing good news about our lives. Let's turn brave, about, you know, not telling the victim's story, but telling, telling. And, and I wouldn't even say not even telling this survival story. Cause we're also really kind of focused on survival. Like, oh, he survived at this thing and we define ourselves from survival, right?

And through the lens of survival well, what does survival really mean? It means you lived, right? That's really all it means. It mean, okay, I didn't die. Great, that's awesome. That like baseline. Okay, we didn' die, yay. But what comes next? How do we go from talking about not just surviving, but thriving?

Cultural Shifts Toward Thriving 21:38

And how do, you know, to push that boundary is we, especially us in the healing arts, We have to start analyzing talking Right? Talking about optimization, telling stories of, you know, today is a fantastic day. I've had a fantastically, I had had fantastic year. And I think especially as women, because I thing as woman when we do this work, we kind of get culturally labeled as bragging, or at least that's how it is in my generation. Like we didn't talk about the good stuff. You didn' talk Oh, I made X amount of money or my relationship is really going well, or I'm feeling really good about my body, right?

Because that, you know, there's that fear of like, oh, pride goes before the fall or oh don't talk about that or don' make other women feel bad. Right. And then I think we have to start saying, wait, time out. We have the right to talk about what's going well, and we have to also talk what are we dreaming of creating, which is part of the redemption art, because we also don't talk of our dreams. In fact, if you think about the word dreamer, we say to people, oh, you're such a dream and that's actually an insult to dream.

That's the construction and the template of post-traumatic growth, Don't get too big, don't go beyond your britches there, right? And so I think we have to just start really shifting the way in which we talk about ourselves, our successes of the world, and doing it one story at a time, one coffee with your girlfriends at at time. I love that. Yeah, there are things that we can do on our own to shift the narrative. And the feel that I'm getting is that you doing this on your own, the vision I am having is like a ripple effect.

that it affects your family, your community, it just spreads. I wonder, as you talked about it from a very individual standpoint, because some of our listeners are up there petting organizations. What can organizations do? Oh, I love working with organizations because that exact same process works with the organizations. So I'm working within an organization right now that's, it's actually a micro college. It's a nonprofit organization. They just realized in their process of looking at how do we expand the organization that they actually didn't have a 25 year vision for what they were building.

There's sort of renegade, they have some really innovative ideas, is a pretty interesting sort of patchwork of what they're creating. And it's brilliant and it is beautiful. But they wanted to put together a vision. We actually went back and we said, okay, time out. Let's look at where you at now in your story. In their story, as an organization, nobody wants to pay for what we have because it was fringy. So that was part of their narrative. When you're trying to build on 80 acres of land, you're trying to hire an architect and do project design and you don't have money or you have beliefs about money that are limiting, they had to really work on, oh my gosh, this is part of our identity.

We as an organization are telling the story that nobody wants to pay for what we have.

Applying Narrative Work in Organizations 24:58

They were also telling a story, and this was a very interesting part in the narrative that we worked on. Part of their story was very much about being rebels, which was great. But to a certain degree, because they needed to harness that energy of, OK, we're doing something innovative. But the way that they were living out that rebellion story was, We're not like everybody else. So they are not being like anybody else, but they really weren't defining clearly who are they for, who ARE they. They knew very well who they weren' but didn't really know who were.

And then we had to talk about, okay, in that light, where do you want to go and what do want create? So we literally took a whole month meeting as we met with the board. We took the whole story apart and we collectively as an organization rewrote a story. It was a fairy tale about this school and was going to happen in the school over the arc of 25 years. And it was such a synthesizing, coherent, a way for them to bring a vision together jointly onto the table to really get clear about their current narrative and to look at how do we shift this narrative, and how we call in this bigger vision in a really fun and playful way.

It's a great tool to use with organizations. I thank you for sharing that example because I see it. There's so much potential in doing that. I think that sometimes we get stuck, like within people who are heading organizations get in a particular story, but just seeing just how using this technique that you can transform that narrative is so beautiful. I know that our listeners are absolutely going to want to connect with you. Tell us, how do we do that? So the easiest way to connected with me is to go to my website, which is quantumhumandesign.com, what you can do on that website which kind of fun is you run your human design chart from that site.

which is actually what we had talked about earlier in our conversation, a way for you to sort of get a systematic approach, snapshot approach to how do I start looking at the layers of my story and how I do start to look at my personal story, my potential in Soul Curriculum and start rewriting that so that I'm taking back control over my storytelling and telling it the way I choose. Lovely, lovely, and last question, what does stepping into soul power mean for you? I love that question. So to me, that means getting yourself deeply rooted and grounded in your authentic story.

Because when you have that as your root, when are grounded and this is who I am, this was born to be, my soul curriculum,

Connecting with Dr. Parker and Soul Power 27:48

so I came here to learn and what I can give the world. When you're connected to that, you become unstoppable because you have a big why now that connects you to anything and everything. No matter what blows this way, no matter, what goes on in the current environment, You have this grounded place that keeps you connected, to purpose. It keeps your ears open. it helps you drown out the noise and the chaos and lets you stand in, the middle of the storm and be the one that can lead people out. Dr. Karen Parker, it was wonderful to have you on.

Thank you for being on the show. or click here. And friends, if this spoke to you, leave a comment below. We would love to hear from you.