What does it mean to have a heart-centered community?

In this episode of the Elements of Community, Diana Lockett shares her thoughts on what makes a strong and thriving community. She discusses the importance of having shared values, being connected to the natural world, and creating opportunities for people to connect and collaborate.

Diana is a passionate author and realignment coach based in stunning British Columbia in Canada. With a heart to bring consciousness and self-regulation into corporations, she's determined to have a positive impact on the lives of 2 million kids.

But, that's not all - her highly anticipated book, 'The Call to Freedom: Heal Your Pain, Awaken Your Loving Presence', finally launched on April 1st after seven years in the making! Her memoir is not just a powerful story, it also offers expert guidance on life coaching, spiritual coaching, mindset coaching, and embodiment coaching. Get ready to be inspired!

And our conversation was absolutely brilliant. I mean, it was filled with all of the things that [00:01:00] I look for in conversation. And the connection opportunities between us, abounded, and of course as we started to explore the idea of community and you locked into it and got really excited about it, I was like, okay, this is somebody I need to have a conversation with. For you, the audience. So thank you for joining me and would you like to introduce yourself to the audience?

Mm-hmm. Yes. Thank you. And I just wanna also affirm that that chance meeting was just as delightful for me, and I walked away really with a curiosity to wanna lean in and learn more about you. And so I'm really happy that we have an opportunity to follow up here as a potential starting point for something more in the future.

And I am Canada's only realignment coach and realignment coaching is a coaching methodology that's based on realigning values, principles, beliefs, heart mindset, physical body, and it's a coaching program that grew out of my yoga teacher training programs, which I've been doing for about 15 years because I realized a lot of the teachings that I offered there, which were very heart-centered, and very mindset based.

We're not necessarily showing up for people if unless they came on their mat. So I started doing coaching off the mat. I do mentoring, I do business development coaching. I also am a conscious communication leadership consultant, so I bring consciousness and self-regulation practices into corporations and education with a lofty goal this year to wanna impact 2 million kids, and I'm doing it through their.

That is a lofty goal.

Thousands of teachers and the administration just one school board. So that means each of those adults are now impacting somewhere up to 30,000 students. And so this is how I'm gonna do it. And I also work with parents and parents with children with autism, and lots of other things that I do from previous hats that I've worn in my lifetime.

So much fun. And your book is launching in a few weeks or rather, has just launched.

Writing five books in between, which were fantastic because I learned so much about being an author and publishing a book and launching a book. And here we are now, seven years later, it's ready to go. And the name is the Call to Freedom. Heal your pain, awaken your loving presence.

What a trip.

Mm-hmm. It's been a trip for sure, and it's still a trip.

Let me just say it's still a trip and it's a real vulnerable trip.

Yeah, tell me more about that.

It's my memoir, it's my story. It starts the day I was born, and it's an opportunity to use my story as the experience of the life coaching, the spiritual coaching, the mindset coaching, and the embodiment coaching that I bring into the book and I write it.

I love that. So there's a five step model of consciousness that I use to look at the world and for, you know, the few people that want to have conversations with me about this sort of thing. right. And so, it's actually quite simple and it's focused on the me. And so the five steps are to me, and that's the world is happening to me, right?

And I work pretty hard to continue to strive into through me. But I find myself inform me a lot. And, you know, this is our own path. And then, the final one, and I can see it, but I've never actually directly experienced it and I'm looking forward to being able to, cuz I can't imagine how much more earth shattering that's gonna be for me.

The final one is as me.

Mm-hmm.

And it seems to me like your chapter 13 sees that.

Mm-hmm.

I wasn't conscious of it. I wasn't awakened to it. I didn't realize there was a different way.

And then for the next 20 years, life is happening for me. And really in the last five years, life has happening through me on and off, and it happens through me on and off because of a yogic principle called spandana, which is the pulsation of life. Sometimes life flows and it's effortless and it's ease, grace filled. It's fantastic. It's easy.

When I can receive it all as a divine, beautiful offering from grace, that this is exactly what's meant to be. And I tell my students all the time, how do you know you're meant to have this experience? Because it's the experience you're having, of course. And it's not an easy pill to swallow, depending on what your path is and where you align with those five steps, which are fantastic, it's not an easy pill to swallow.

And yet one steps on this, this is, these are spiritual practices and spiritual concepts. Once I stepped into that, there was no going back. I mean, I would love to go back some days truly, I'm gonna be really honest. I'd love to go back, and be in The life is happening to me victim state. Love to be there.

Be a lot easier than having to take this radical self responsibility that I'm called to take every single day with how I digest life, how I engage in life, how I connect to others, how I live my purpose, and all of that stuff. So I love those steps just like me. Yes.

I do that still sometimes. I, you know what though? I do, I just catch myself really quickly, you know, literally, it's a thought, it's a moment. It's a pulsation. And as quickly as it comes in, you know, I could sit, and I could sob for a little bit and then, I can't do it anymore because the pain of going to sleep is now greater than the pain of awakening.

Mm-hmm. Well said. Oh yeah. That's it right there.

And I know for anybody who's been in situations that are really on a human level, incomprehensible. I get it. That was me. Neglect as a child, physical abuse, sexual abuse. I've been through it, heartbreak, locked outta my house, bankruptcy. Like I have a story and through it all, I have an opportunity of how I wanna engage with that story.

And so life is happening through me, and life is happening as me, allows me to sit back and let go of the judgments that I have over myself, my story, my experiences, and everybody else. And it's not something that happened overnight. I just wanna really make sure anybody who hears this conversation, doesn't say, well, it's so easy for you to say.

It's like it wasn't easy for me to say. It was a lot of work and I committed to the work and it's daily practices that I still engage in and I'm sure you do as well.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And I really believe that you know, the universe is so benevolent, and intelligent that it will always send us when we think we've mastered this, when we think we're going through life is happening through me to maybe I have a little glimpse of life is happening as me. All of a sudden the universe sends me a different experience.

It's like, how committed are you to believing that? Let's test it out with this particular experience, theory, concept. And it's like, crap. Yeah. Yep. Gotta keep doing my work. Like there's no getting over this. There's a humility that must come through it. And in Sanskrit we call the humility of leadership.

And some days really, I wish it was, but it's not an option anymore.

Thank you. How has that informed your engagement of community, and the way you build community and the way you help other people step into real deep human connection and the community that can grow through that?

That's a juicy question and I'm all lit up writing. Wait. Ready? And so excited to answer because building community is one of my favorite things to do, and I built community for the last 35 years, not really knowing I was doing it and intentionally stepped into building community in the last 15 years when I started running yoga teacher training programs.

That was my purpose. And so every class is an opportunity to build community and every yoga teacher training program and group that I've had the privilege of being in the presence of, I've done about, I think I've done 16, 17 YTT groups now, and almost a thousand people, and each one comes together and creates its own community that, of course I'm teaching.

Of course, I'm delivering content, and yet there is no, the community itself is the leader. Now, the other thing that I've done is I've learned how to facilitate circles. I went to Amsterdam and got trained in hard IQ. I run Healing heart circles, I call them, although I'm changing the name now to match my book and it's gonna be called Freedom Heart Circles.

And so we release the judgments of them and we just allow the body to show the way to what needs to be released. And sometimes it's ecstatic and joyful and laughing and giggly and literally people standing up and playing patty cake on their, you know, in the middle of the circle.

And sometimes it's, very raw and very emotive and very energetic. And all of those experiences that I get to do and that I've been guided to do are building community and my purpose. I know my purpose is to build heart-centered communities, and I allow that to be really the driving force between everything that I do or behind everything that I do is how do I support building community?

Yeah. I, I love it. And I see it in a, in a yoga, te yoga teacher training setting and, and in a, you know, in a heart healing setting or, or a freedom heart healing setting. Like you, you come in and you, you start out by establishing that, that common language, which is a, you know, a combination of the way that we're choosing to think about this experience.

It's amazing. I love it.

Mm-hmm.

and, and I love that you see it and that you are driving that.

I, I love doing that. And then I also bring the same experience. It's no different when I step into corporations and I work with leadership teams anywhere from say, five to 20. They call them leaders. So that's the people that are able to have the time off to be able to meet with me because they're not doing the day-to-day work.

So when I work with leadership groups, when I work with Y T T groups, when I do circles, we'll talk about, first of all, agreements. So you talk about your social contracts, I think you call them.

Mm-hmm.

So I call them agreements. What are our agreements? Why are we here? And then the next thing we talk about is some of the language and some of the language, because my first career for 32 years was as a speech and language pathologist, and I worked primarily with nonverbal kids and as a board level consultant where my clients were speech language pathologists.

So they would call me in for support, working with teachers, admins, and parents. Language is my thing. And so that's probably where I have the strongest focus when I do groups, and it's heart-centered language and it's empowering language, so it's not so much about the like the lexicon, the kind of vocabulary we're using, but it's how we communicate what it is that we're wanting to share and how we can communicate from an empowered heart space.

Because when they call me in, they don't really know why they're calling me in, except they know that there's something that's not quite working well in their leadership team. People are stressed, people are not motivated, people are not being productive. All this stuff. I get called into schools and I'm being told by administrators that my schools is run by teachers who are the mean girls, and like that still happens today.

So I go in and I help them to literally see each other's divinity and humanity simultaneously. And so when we're done, those experiences, however long they last, sometimes it's just a keynote, sometimes it's a two day, three day event.

And a lot of the times it's relational communication. How do we talk with each other? How do we engage with each other? And the most important thing is how do I relate to myself? So this is where I bring in the embodiment practices, the communication and language around embodiment practices. And so somatic soma means body.

So I bring somatic practices into it.

Oh, that's awesome.

Mm-hmm.

And I want to go.

Yeah. You know what I love the most and you're welcome to anytime, and if you have a team that you wanna bring me out to do with your team, I'm happy to do that. The greatest gift for me, and it's such a privilege every single time, is to see a group of people that come in and there's no doubt, like no matter what the group is, over the years, every group, they're scared, they're quiet, they're not making eye contact, they're keeping to themselves.

Like that's the common purpose. They may not even have known it. But they came in for a reason. Something attracted them to that talk, and I touched a part of them that was so ready and longing to be touched. And then I have them interact with each other and now they take this open, vulnerable part of their own hearts and they share it with another, even just one other.

And it changes everything. And I really believe that if we could do that around the world, like my mission is 2 million kids this year. Next year I want my mission to be like, how many billions of people are on this earth now? 8 billion people? We would not have wars, we would not have acrimonious divorces and conflict and all kinds of problems and trauma in the world.

Hmm. Wow. That's amazing. I love it. Thank you.

Yeah, it's my pleasure. It's my pleasure and it's my delight to be honest, to be able to talk about this and to be able to share it as a consideration that it's possible. Like I really believe it's possible. I've had people who did not like their life one bit. Critical about their work, critical about their family, their relationships, and by the end of a couple of hours, they're messaging me and saying, I love my life.

And every day after I love my life, there's a tractor going by my house. There we go. All right. Hello, tractor. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

And everybody on on this podcast has heard my model for adulthood. So, I talk about how adult humans are actually defined by a group of skills, not by age or physical maturity.

And one of those skills is fluid leadership.

Mm.

And so to me fluid leadership means that me as a member of the community, I will seize leadership cuz it's sitting there waiting for the right person to step into it in order for us to move forward in the right direction at the right time because I'm the person to drive that forward.

And then when I'm done with, providing my best value to my community. I seed, I release that leadership so that the next person can step into it and seize it, and keep us moving forward. And that's what fluid leadership is to me. It is actually the polar opposite of static leadership, the thing that we think of as leadership today.

Yeah.

Yeah, I love the term fluid leadership by the way, there. With it comes not only a visual for me of this like just effortless wave, but a full embodied relaxation. And so it's a great term and I believe that we are using the same language when we talk about fluid leadership and the community as the leader.

When I do, I'll take for example, the Y T T programs and those people graduate. They then go on and they create their own communities. And so my intention was to serve, let's say a group is 30 people in front of me and I spend 200 hours with them, and I help them to develop their leadership skills. That's a big part of it.

But what they're doing is they're then going out and creating leadership. So there's a fluidity there that passes on from me to each of them, and it's so delightful for me to be able to see these incredible human beings go out and serve their communities. So I see fluid leadership, and community leadership moving in that direction.

When I do circles, when I do events in larger groups or corporations or education, I simply ask the questions and then pass it over, and I literally feel like it's like I'm passing the baton to whoever is next in that leadership responsibility or role without needing to like, there's no forcing it. It just naturally evolves when I can sit back and know that it's not about me.

But there was a conversation around self-governing, self-leadership. And I really, that's what I say all the time as well, is we are all leaders. The question is, what are you leading today? And hopefully we neverlose in touch with our self-governance and our self-leadership, we are responsible for our bodies.

We get to lead and decide what we put into our bodies, how we move our bodies, how we don't move our bodies, our sleep, our connections, our self study. So we're always leading. And then the question that I use, and at one time I had a business that was called that doesn't matter what was called, but our tagline was, you're all leaders, but are you a leader who gives a shit?

Oh yeah.

The more I relax, like I don't have to do it all. I don't have to come in with all the answers. I don't have all the answers. I mean, when it comes to yoga, yeah, okay. I created a curriculum, got it approved. I've got that skill for sure. When I go into corporations, I don't know what it's like to be in those environments.

Yeah.

I can't try to pretend and impose my belief system onto them. I need to sit back and listen. And this is where when I can pass that baton and really hear and feel not only here, but feel the unspoken, then I can relax and trust that there's an evolution happening in that space that doesn't need me to take a lot of control over it.

That's amazing. I completely agree.

Mm-hmm. A lot of what I learned about this, I learned through my heart IQ work with Christian Pankhurst, who's in the Netherlands, and I've gone there. I posted Christian here in Canada several times. We've done a lot of work together. I was there recently in Switzerland, actually doing some work there.

And it really comes with a lot of trust that you don't have to know it all to get started. You just get started and trust that what you need to know is gonna show up along the way. And what you don't need to know, like you just say, I don't know. Right? It's like you don't have to know it all and there is a time where.

And when I see their true leadership, it's very controlling, and I have a really hard time working in that environment because I want everybody to feel empowered. I want everybody to feel like they're part of the conversation, that they're part of this breathing life force that's called whatever the company is called, and so through circle work I've learned to trust that I can step back and I can observe and something's gonna take over the circle. There's always gonna be something that takes over the circle.

Something being an energy, an expression, a person, something's gonna take over the circle and my job's not to try to manage it. My job is to check in with all the other participants to make sure they're doing okay. And if they're not, take do a check-in point and allow it to play out the way it's meant to.

Wow. Fun.

Yeah, lots of fun.

Yeah. Cool. When you're building these communities and yoga teacher training is a great example, but it's not the only one. When you're building these communities how do you make sure that all of the elements are present so that it can actually grow into a community?

So, and these are common agreements no matter what the settings, even if I'm going into corporations, because some of the work we do for people who have never been in their bodies, which is a lot of people, and that was me for 32 years. I lived very successfully right up between my chin and my crown really successfully.

And you know, it was a really good place for me to live cuz it allowed me to really create a lot in my life, but I wasn't complete because I was denying this whole other part of me that was living in my body that for very good reasons, had to be shut down. That was my survival strategy, so I can totally thank it now, I don't judge it.

Question.

Yeah.

So some of these agreements are actually they're beautiful, but they're also really challenging. How do you invite people into the challenge of that agreement? So, for example, owning my projections, like, that's a really fantastic agreement. Everybody should have it all the time.

And also that's really challenging.

Yeah, so remember, I pretty well choose where I'm gonna work. And so if I'm in an environment where I don't see that's gonna be possible, I may not take my time to spend in that environment. When it comes to things like yoga teacher training programs, I use real life examples. So as things come up in an experience, I mean, I'll talk about it as an agreement, but until people have a lived experience of it, they don't recognize how challenging it can be, so we do it together.

And remember, we all go to sleep, right? We all go to sleep and we go back to the life is happening to me and maybe by me, and we forget about the through me and as me. So one of the things that I'm committed to is having what's called withhold conversations.

I'll give you an example. I have a daughter who's 25. And during COVID, my kids and I lived in a small little cottage, beautiful conservation property in Ontario and in Ontario everything shut down. There was no school, there was no work. Everything was remote. So there were now four of us living in this little house on one floor without walls, trying to coordinate school and work schedules.

Oh, yeah.

And then but we also, I also noticed that as I got busy and I was really busy with work, I was managing like sort. There so many different parts of my work, but also making sure my son was able to do his schooling. And then my husband and I had just separated literally the day that Covid happened for us, which I was in Iceland, came back that day.

He left. And so I was navigating a lot of personal, emotional things threw me as well, but I noticed that as I was doing that I was giving my daughter more and more power. I was letting her really organize our family. And she was 22 at the time. She was organizing our family. She was organizing our days, she was organizing our meals.

Mm.

And if she had said, no, I have to respect that.

Yep.

And she said yes, and I said, now don't forget, my kids have grown up in my house. They've done my Y T T programs, they've been part of my circles. This is common language for us. I know it's not for everybody, but it can be. And I said, you know, I'm feeling some resentment right now and I'm feeling some, I can't remember exactly how I phrased it, but I feel like there's been a differentiation of power and there's not an equal decision making happening in our house.

So again, it's conscious communication. How do we navigate these difficult conversations? It's a practice. The practice starts with, for me, the practices and what I teach people is what is your body communicating with you? Your body's communicating every moment of every day. We call them sensations, the language of the body.

And so when we can tune into the body and attune to our sensations, we start to get information. Now, what is that information telling you? Well, there's something else that happens. Our mind starts to create stories and narratives. I'm irritated because she's always taking control because she's so bossy, because she doesn't have any respect for me and look at the stories that I can create so quickly.

Notice the thoughts that come. I call them popups. Come back to my body. Breathe. One of my chapters is breathe and everything change. Breathe, physiology of breath. It's so powerful and so withhold conversations are really important. Now, in circles, people will often withhold and I'll know because I'm gonna see them working so hard to try to manage themselves.

You know what I mean by that? Like, their fist might be clenched and they're holding back tears, or they're getting irritated. It's showing up on their face. , and so I'll invite the group. Does anyone have a withhold that they'd like to share?

Mm-hmm.

That's the common heart right there.

That's the common heart. For sure. Yeah. And so in an organization, of course there's differentiation of power in organizations, but when I come in and work, there's no differentiation of power. Everybody starts at a common level and we work from there.

Yeah. Wow. What a great share.

Hmm. I think it's so important. You know, the way that we communicate with ourselves and with each other can impact everything.

Separately and together with ourselves and with each other. Yep.

Absolutely. And remember at the end of the day, you are me lovingly disguised as you.

Yep.

And so that which point back.

I'm mainly disguised as you.

Mm.

And I like the lovingly disguised because love is the reason that Trump's all reason in my lifetime.

Yeah. That's beautiful. And this is a common challenge, right? It's a common challenge for us to see ourselves and for us to see ourselves in the world around us.

Yeah, see yourselves through the eyes of love.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

I play with the idea of an alternate version of tribe rather than thinking of tribe as the name of indigenous populations, which is fine.

It's the smallest version of community, and you can't be a whole secure healthy human. If you don't have your tribe, if you don't have these people that have your back all the time, under all circumstances, no matter what.

Yeah.

And for a long time I thought that tribe was five, five people, the minimum number was five.

And that that tribe built on a building block of the number five. And you're gonna laugh about this,

Yes.

Through a lot of observation and research and study and and self-study even that, what I noticed was people with less than five were not fully secure. And I could just see it. I still don't.

Mm.

And here, I've been for years and years I've been seeing this minimum tribe.

Mm-hmm.

I've been seeing it through my eyes without seeing me.

Mm mm. Well, you know, I have a poster right in front of me that says, you are the universe experiencing itself. And the universe could not experience life except through you, which is why you were created. And so you were seeing it through the eyes of the universe, but you were forgetting to include yourself. Right?

Mm-hmm. I absolutely was.

If there's four people talking, it's often two and two, if there's five people talking, the research recommends that it's actually easier to navigate an entry point into that conversation. And so, you being the sixth person coming into the five, I can totally see that and I'd love to see research on that one day.

Maybe, maybe I'll tell you to let me know when you find that research. But it feels right for me too. I'm gonna say that for many, many, many years of my life, I did not have tribe and part of it's because I had so much trauma in my past. And when there's trauma, it's really hard to be vulnerable, open-hearted, and feel safe in the presence of others.

And her husband said to her, Diana is such an incredible woman. She's so kind. She's so giving, she's successful, but she's an ice queen. And I looked at myself at myself that day and I said, where? Is he right? And that's what really started me on my spiritual journey and my spiritual path. So 25 years later, I create tribe, I value tribe.

And then we need a co group as well, like co you know a co-ed group. But women need sisterhood and men need men's group, and especially if one is in a relationship, they need to feel and fuel their sense of their power, whether it's masculine or feminine, with their same sex groups, so that they could come back and bring the best parts of themselves to their relationships without having to be needy to their partner for every and all parts of themselves.

So, the first thing I wanted to affirm with you. And then the other thing is you mentioned about not feeling whole without a tribe, and I totally get that. In yoga Sanskrit whole wholeness is called Purnamadah. Wholeness is our birthright. We were born whole incomplete. There was nothing missing.

So when that happens, we are whole, but we forget our wholeness. And so everything that I do, everything that I teach, everything that I breathe, everything that I practice is a remembrance of what's already true. And coming into tribe doesn't create your wholeness. It allows you to remember that you are whole.

I love that.

Mm-hmm.

What a gift. Thank you.

Yeah, you're welcome. I really and I get to go out this afternoon in this beautiful sunny weather that we're having and be with my tribe, and it's a group of sisters. And, you know, when I moved here to BC from Toronto two years ago, I left behind a really big tribe, a really big community. I mean, probably 500 people that I could call.

And I couldn't find them.

Mm-hmm.

It was really tough, and I realized it was up to me to create them. I did it once before and I'll do it again. And so I get to create them. And just last night I was teaching a yoga class, a yin music class, a very gentle class, really gentle stretching. There were 12 people in class, 10 of them were men, and each one of those men were hugging each other after class.

And the one man that I was speaking with said, yeah, we're all like so close and best friends and you can feel that. I could feel that. Let me own it. I could feel that connection. I could feel that tribal connection and I love it.

Wow. What a gift.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. They were a gift last night.

Yeah,

Yeah.

What a gift that That's delightful. As I wrap up my interviews, I like to ask three questions, which you are now familiar with.

I am.

The first one is, where can the people who are as inspired by you as I am, where can they find you?

Oh, lovely.

So anybody wants to experience this.

I call it a conscious leadership retreat. So we do yoga every day, meditation. Conscious leadership circles and then everyday excursions with a private chef, it's gonna be amazing. And so everything is on my website. Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn is where I'm most active on social media. And if you just put in Diana Lockett, you'll find me.

That's pretty well it. My email is RealignmentCoach@gmail.com and you can also send me a message via, on my website.

Realignment, bringing it back.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Bring it back to wholeness.

Yeah. If there was any question, this is the second question. If there was any question that you would like me to have asked, what would it be?

You know, you just said it.

Which is...

It's actually a beautiful one. And here it is. Here's question number three. The question was, Diana, how do you manage letting go of control in your own life?

That has been a journey

Mm-hmm.

When one grows up in a trauma environment, control is a survival mechanism. And so it's been a journey of really, for me, a lot of it's been through breath work. A lot of it's been through my embodiment practices. Through finding my way into tribes and sisters and circles where they can be the container for me to be able to release whatever has been held into my body.

What would you have me do? What would you have me released to be able to show up from a place of love?

Hmm. Love is all. I'm

giving you the answer. The last line to chapter 13. By the way, I have chapter 13 super fans for this book, cuz I've been sharing this. The last line in chapter 13 is, what would love do?

What would love do?

Cause I recognize it has nothing to do with me. I'm simply the conduit.

Amazing. Wow. What a great way to close up. Thank you. Do you have any final words?

No, it's just been a delight. No, just, I don't wanna use, just, just as minimizing. It has been a delight to be in your presence. I look forward to hearing from your audience. If anyone wants to connect with me, I'm always open to conversations. I feel like life is a conversation, yoga is a conversation, and I feel really inspired in your presence.

So thank you for the work that you're bringing into the world.

Mm. it's my pleasure. And to quote the great Diana Lockett, I am simply a conduit

Yes. Yes, yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thanks for joining us this week on Elements of Community.

Be sure to tune in next week for our next episode.