Leigh Ann: Welcome to the Accrescent Podcast. I am so excited to have you on.

Jana Wilson: Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here, Leigh Ann.

Leigh Ann: We are going to dive into all things Wise Little One, your new book, memoir. But I'd love, even just for myself, because I followed you on Instagram, I see a little bit of what you're doing present day, just to get a little bit more of an introduction to you and the work you do.

Jana Wilson: Okay, perfect. Well, I live in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I manifested my beloved by listening to my wise little one. I'm in my second marriage. We live off the grid. Um, I have a healing center here. So people from all over the world, I'm very blessed. I think Santa Fe is kind of synonymous with healing. And of course I began this journey.

Jana Wilson: through my own healing process of, you know, overcoming childhood trauma, being a cycle breaker in my family, and I'm really working on myself and then having this deep desire, this soul calling, my Dharma is to give back, right? And to teach others. I feel that you could take somebody who, you know, is, um, maybe attended therapy for years or whatever.

Jana Wilson: And if you teach them some core. essential emotional intelligence strategies and skills. You can, they can totally manifest the life they love. So I, um, have been doing this work for 19 years. Um, and yeah, I have, I'm a mom. I have a, a daughter who's 35. We just came back from our mother daughter's summer trip.

Jana Wilson: We have a great, a great relationship. Yeah. We always have fun together and I have a grandson who's seven and she's going to be getting pregnant again. So how about being a grandma for the second time? Fingers crossed.

Leigh Ann: Oh, amazing. I do have to say, cause you said you, you led with this, which is I manifested my beloved.

Leigh Ann: That part of the book was just, Oh, it was so good. I loved. Seeing that, hearing that whole experience, I think it's amazing. It's almost like you're modeling, you're modeling that process and what that could look like and standing in my worth and making my voice heard. And what can, what that can lead to the alignment that that can lead to.

Jana Wilson: Absolutely. And just choosing myself up until, you know, really my late forties, I kept, I still was in that cycle, even though I was doing this work, teaching it, you know, the saying we teach what we most need to learn. I, I kept minimizing and devaluing myself. And finally, you know, it was kind of like all the years of work, it just coalesced and synchronized and crystallized.

Jana Wilson: And then it was like, you know, And, you know, the universe heard my desires and yeah, plopped him right next to me on a plane that I wasn't supposed to be on.

Leigh Ann: I was just the best, the way that it all came together, the way it started. But yes, to your point too, it's like, Not that you hadn't made growth up until that point.

Leigh Ann: I mean, astronomical things that you had overcome and it was kind of like, Ooh, this is one of the core things that there's still some beliefs around or I'm still orbiting around and the universe is like, No, we got to get that out of here. We got to clear that out. And, and then I think because of all the growth you'd done, you had the resources and the foundation to then go tackle that big core thing, you know?

Leigh Ann: Right.

Jana Wilson: I think I feel like, you know, so many years of being a student of the Danta through Deepak Chopra and, you know, he's been my teacher for a long time. It felt like, You know how you practice something for so long and you have to put so much intention and then eventually it's second nature. And so that's kind of what happened.

Jana Wilson: I just shifted and knew the field, the universe, new spirit had my back that, you know, all I needed to do was just keep giving myself the love that I desired from others and stop looking in the mirror. for it in the outer world. And as soon as I, I like knew that intellectually, but once it dropped, I fell in love with myself at a level, you know, I talk about it in the chapter one of the book or where I go into, I met Esalen, I, want to get, you know, I keep getting a message, leave the retreat.

Jana Wilson: And, and then that night I little Jana sitting across the table and you know, she shows me like, it's like a near death experience where you see like a flash of your whole life. She shows me where I came and where I'm at today at 49 years old. I was sitting in this restaurant in Carmel, California, and it was just the most beautiful experience to see my adult self through the eyes of my child.

Jana Wilson: You know, it was a very mystical experience and one that I just I, I think I use that poem by, uh, Hafiz or Rumi, where he says, by God, when you see the beauty of yourself, you'll fall down in awe. And once you really have that intimate relationship with self, Everything else is secondary because that's the primary relationship, right?

Jana Wilson: All other relationships mirror it back. And I knew that intellectually, but it took a lot of steadfast committed work, you know, to connect and be intimate with myself that I could get there to believe number one, that I deserved it. Right. And number two, that it was possible. Yeah.

Leigh Ann: And I think this is, At least, you know, with my clients and what I see so often, and even in myself, this was a huge part of my journey is I had abandoned myself and my inner child.

Leigh Ann: I didn't see me and hear me and protect me. And I think a lot of us are in that place or are coming out of that place. And two, it's kind of like, that's where we start to work backwards from why are so many of us in a place of, Self abandonment, we're not protecting ourselves, we're not attuning to ourselves, we're not in love with ourselves, and I think that's where, and this is what we'll probably start to dive into, a lot of it comes from what we experienced, what we were modeled, what was communicated to us, and also what we internalized and perceived from our experiences through childhood, adult, etc.

Jana Wilson: I believe why the answer to why aren't more of us connected with that is because in this teaching goes back 6, 000 years in Vedanta and nondualism, it says, you know, there's kleshas and klesha in Sanskrit means poison. And the number one Patanjali, you know, the, he wrote the yoga sutras. He said, the reason why we suffer are these kleshas.

Jana Wilson: And so the first one is you don't know the nature of true reality. Two is you have a you know, an identification with a false sense of self, the ego three is you're attached to your way, you know, and then when things are happening, you don't want, you're repulsed. And then the last one is fear of death.

Jana Wilson: And so what I say is it's, and he says, it all comes down to the first when you don't know the nature of true reality. You suffer and the nature of true reality is you are divine. You are God. You are a goddess. You are not a drop of the, you know, in the ocean. You're the entire ocean in the drop. And so when we don't know our essential nature as divine, as pure, as lovable as, you know, what we are, which is the reflection of the Creator, then we identify with that false sense of self.

Jana Wilson: We lack, we have existential crisis because we don't know, we can't fall in love with ourselves. We're taught that's selfish. When really it's self responsible. I'm the only one that's responsible for myself and my feelings. And so if I abandon my feelings, and there's four ways I teach that we abandon ourself.

Jana Wilson: One is get in your head. Right. Analyze and, you know, try to figure things out. Intellectualize. Intellectualize. Yep. And that's where most people live. And feelings are felt sense in the body. So if we're living in our head trying to figure something out, we're really abandoning our inner child, the feeling self, because We're not connected.

Jana Wilson: And then two, uh, pushing yourself harshly, you know, perfectionism, judging yourself. When we grow up with trauma, we really try to prove, have something to prove. I've certainly been there. That's kind of my go to. self abandonment. The third way is addictions and they could be positive even like spiritual bypassing all meditate over it or I'll take the high road or I won't say anything.

Jana Wilson: I'm a bigger person or you know, things like this that we think are positive but they're really bypassing our emotion. And then the fourth is blaming being a victim. And I

Leigh Ann: wondered too, a piece of it being and I think it's, these are the roots in what you're saying too, is The shame sometimes like I know a big part of my self rejection was I had so much shame from my childhood that I was like, I don't want to look at you.

Leigh Ann: I don't want to get close to you. And in healing some of that shame, it's okay. I can start to foster more of this. And so it's it's nuanced to that, you know, to I think what both of us are saying it's very, very nuanced.

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Leigh Ann: you even point out some of the beliefs That you created in childhood, and I'd love to touch in on that a little bit what you what were some of those beliefs that you feel like got ingrained in you or you, um, perceived throughout your childhood and then how those maybe started to manifest and show up And I'm curious.

Leigh Ann: And what is it that you hope to pick up in the rest of your life?

Jana Wilson: Yeah, that's a great question. So our beliefs are really just derivatives of our thinking. Right? So we experienced something as a little girl. I did. I did not have cognitive awareness or knowingness that my dad had molested me in infancy.

Jana Wilson: So I didn't know that. All I knew is I behaved in a way of a child being sexualized. So early on, I was very aware of, um, sexual stimulation, right? Of being touched, of, you know, and, and I acted out a lot of that in a course. Bringing up the lowest vibrating emotion is a shame according to David Hawkins and power versus force Shame is like, you know, the people in the streets of Calcutta, right?

Jana Wilson: There are no seems they have no face You're it's banishment from you know Primitive societies is shame and so when a child grows up with a shame based personality Which I certainly had my belief was I'm bad. I'm a bad girl My parents are bad, you know, bad things happen. Um, when things happen, well that's what happens to bad girls.

Jana Wilson: You know, I internalized all of that. So that became my core operating system from a young age. Because I was getting, you know, this feedback from the external world all the time, um, bad girl, bad girl, white trash, you know, being told, you know, I'm less than essentially being all these labels being put on me.

Jana Wilson: And then, you know, It becomes similar to like, the way I teach it is like an operating system on a computer. You know, my, my hardware was running everything and that hardware was these false beliefs of, you know, I'm a bad girl. I'm not good enough. Something's wrong with me. I'm different. I'm trash. You know, these variations of all these.

Jana Wilson: Disempowering limiting false beliefs and of course that's the filter I saw through the lens of my awareness and everything reflected it back. Now I didn't really become aware of that right until my 20s when I really started going down this path but at 12 that out I had an out of body experience and it was a mystical experience brought on by trauma and that experience of being told by what I felt was the creator, God, that those are not my parents.

Jana Wilson: And even this life that I was living in this small town in the South and central Florida, none of that was me. What I was, was this. And what this was, was I kind of looked around and became aware I was just expansive. I was big as the universe. I was connected to the stars and galaxies and nebulas. And it was a piece that just passes all understanding.

Jana Wilson: Like the feeling was so profound that I remember thinking, What I don't want to go back. If I'm dead, I'm good with it. Like, yeah, this is

Leigh Ann: good. This is what it feels like. I'll stay here. Yeah,

Jana Wilson: there's no pain. There's no suffering. It was complete, just peace and freedom. And then of course, boom, I was back in my body.

Jana Wilson: But that awakening, was so just life changing, right? And prior to that, I don't write about this in the book because, you know, when you're writing a book this vulnerably, Leanna, you really, I really am very connected to little Jana. She's with me all the time. It's like a third person, right? She's always with me.

Jana Wilson: I have pictures of her everywhere. Here's a picture. I put them on my, on the back of my phone. You know, so I'm very always, there's pictures of, of my husband as a young child, me next to our bed, um, on my bathroom mirror, I talked to her, I've made her as real as having a child. And so she told me this feels exploitive.

Jana Wilson: Some of the stories I had to really rewrite and take things out because it felt like too much exploitation and not enough privacy for her. And you read the book, so you know I share a lot. Yes. Yeah. So prior to the out of body experience, what I didn't share was I had major suicide ideation and I think I had buried it until writing the story and having to go back and live in it.

Jana Wilson: It came back. I got woken up one night. She woke me up around 3 and It was 308 and You know, I said, okay, what's going on? Talk to me lots of anxiety lots of pressure on my chest upset stomach and The first thing as soon as I asked, what is it? She said I don't you know the book It was the book like I'm you're sharing too much You And, um, you know, so I would go back and it was, it wasn't as easy as I thought it was going to be.

Jana Wilson: I thought, Oh, I've done the work. I'm good.

Leigh Ann: Another layer. That was totally, that was one of the things I wanted to ask you is, um, I have always wanted to write. I mean, that was the earliest thing I imagined. And so that's in the, The ether around me, I feel it kind of orbiting around me, but for me, it's actually, I'm going to have to look even harder.

Leigh Ann: I'm going to have to put the magnifying glass even deeper. I'm going to have to go ask even harder questions about what really happened here. And I'm not there yet. I'm still, I've done a lot of healing because I have some sexual trauma in my early childhood as well. But it's, I, that's one of the things that scares me most about it is, whoo, you've got to really come face to face with some, some hard things.

Leigh Ann: But to that end, was it in a good way? And I feel like it probably was like, okay, there's more, there's a few more little pieces here and all this part and a great opportunity for even more reparation, even more safety to be had, even

Jana Wilson: more healing. Yeah, because as soon as I listened and honored and took out parts And listen the book was already finished like it was on netgalley You know, i'm just waiting to publish it.

Jana Wilson: It's already being printed in advanced reader copies I'm getting feedback and some of the feedback I got was pretty painful. You know, it was like whoa, like You know, you shared too much about this, or this, or this is a tri And I knew it was going to be triggering for someone who's going, you know, who could relate with any of these stories.

Jana Wilson: I mean, there is a trigger alert. I went back and put that in after I got that feedback. But, um, here's the question I kept asking, because like you, I had this dream for 25 years. Before I started writing the book. I had been writing But I just had like on my desktop a file that said writing and I would just add sometimes to it, right?

Jana Wilson: Then when I found the editor, I wanted to work with I submitted all my writing and then we started going back and forth She was a trauma, you know, she dealt with telling stories on trauma. And so we would go back and forth and I began to Ask myself this question in shadow work. We always, you know, we are 360 degree personalities.

Jana Wilson: We contain every quality or the potential for every quality that exists on this planet exist in the human condition. We have the potential. A child molester, a pedophile, a murderer, all of that exists within us, right? It's dormant and we want it obviously to stay dormant. But, given the right recipe, those qualities could manifest.

Jana Wilson: And, um, so I always ask, if I'm going to share something of myself, in my memoir writing classes, I was told, you never share anything you haven't healed. Cause the reader will feel it. And it's icky. And so, and then the second thing was, you know, what will I, what am I afraid people are going to judge me? Oh, I cheated.

Jana Wilson: I had abortions. I, you know, was white trash. I was poor. I didn't finish my college degree. I, you know, all the things. And I just go through the list and I say, Oh, I'm uneducated. Oh, I'm, you know, whatever the judgment is, the quality that I think someone could project onto me. I got to be okay with that.

Jana Wilson: Because if I'm not, that's when I'm going to get triggered by their reviews or they're being, you know, triggered by my book or my story or their judgments or anything. You've got to be at peace with yourself. Like, yes, there's a part of me that's evil. There's a part of me that's good. So kind. There's a part, you know, but people don't under the average person doesn't understand psychosynthesis, which what I'm talking about.

Jana Wilson: They don't understand our psyche. Our psyches are synthesized by all these different parts, light and dark. And that's what makes us multidimensional beings and wabi sabi and beautiful because I would much rather take somebody who's been through hell and they can still open their heart and be vulnerable and be Compassionate than somebody who's been sheltered their whole life and it's easy for them to be vulnerable and compassionate, right?

Jana Wilson: I want to I want to be with somebody who's authentic and not afraid to show who they are and You know, regardless of what you think of them. Mm

Leigh Ann: hmm. Yeah. And there's a big, I think the difference is so often when the external words of others hit so hard, it's because in one way or another, we actually hold that belief about ourselves.

Leigh Ann: Exactly, exactly. Their verbalization of it was like a confirmation. And that's why I think sometimes many of us are so adamant. I have to convince them otherwise. Because it's actually I need to convince myself

Jana Wilson: Exactly. Exactly. We're still looking in the outer world People don't understand that we live in the mirror of relationship because there really is no separation Right.

Jana Wilson: We're connected. We're one if you go back in Big Bang Theory You know, now they're saying it's not 14 billion years. It's more like 25 billion years, but whatever. I don't think we know much as humans. We think we do, but let's go back to that. Whatever we came from, if everything went back into that single origin, we know that.

Jana Wilson: Oh, that's unity. That's the highest level of consciousness, right, is to know there is no separation, that the, you know, the people that we vilify, the evil, you know, archetypal energy that we see on this planet, that we have that within us as well. Um, I find it fascinating, you know, looking at kind of microcosm and then macrocosm, right?

Jana Wilson: Well, he was alive and there's a beautiful documentary about it called Particle Fever. And the reason why I'm sharing this is because if this is happening on the macrocosm, You better believe it's happening within us because it's all just a mirror back. So what they found was the God particle, what he theorized was life.

Jana Wilson: You know, atheists would say, it's just random. It's chaos. You know, this is just some happening. There's no order to it. Then believers devout believers would say, Oh no, it's divine. It's intricate order. His theory was it's in the middle. It's not chaos and it's not order. It's right in the middle. It's both.

Jana Wilson: And then you go look at our lives. Our lives are sometimes dark and, and, and that's what is pushing us to the light. It's like how to, I'll say to a client, Leanne, how do we know it's daylight right now? And they'll say, well, cause the sun's out. And I'm like, no, how, how, let's really think about this. How do you know it's daylight?

Jana Wilson: Well, because I'm looking, it's light, but what if it was never, never. dark, would you have a word for light? And then they're like, Oh, they get it. The dark, the dark experiences of life, everything push us to the light. They, they help us recognize the goodness. If we didn't have them, we would just have no contrast.

Leigh Ann: Right. It's like if there was no grief, there's, There's no joy either. Exactly. There's nothing to go against it. Yeah, if there was no turbulence, there's also no peace. Yeah, when

Jana Wilson: So he's playing this antagonistic character of Bill O'Reilly, but he asked Deepak, Deepak had just came out with a book called Life After Death, The Burden of Proof, and he asked Deepak, you know, What about heaven and hell? He's like, you know, is, cause Deepak's just saying everything's a projection of your consciousness.

Jana Wilson: And he's like, well, wait a minute, you know, like, and he's challenging Deepak making it funny. And he says, what about heaven and hell? Is that illusion? And deep, and before Deepak could answer, he goes, or which one costs more. And so Deepak doesn't miss a beat. He said, hell, because it's more interesting because if you were in heaven.

Jana Wilson: you would be doomed to eternal senility. In other words, in a state where nothing ever happens, you don't know it because nothing's showing you the opposite. But we're raised to think, Oh, we're doing something wrong. If things are falling apart or something, you know, bad things are happening to good people and you know, no, we're not victims of this life is happening for us.

Jana Wilson: And that was my big game changer. Leanne, when I arrived at the place in my life to have the thought that, wow, my parents maybe were my choice and that this is happening for me because I'm going to do something with it in my life to make a difference.

Leigh Ann: And a piece that I think we get stuck in sometimes when we're coming at it from that victim places.

Leigh Ann: Number one, if we're playing the victim and I'm careful there, it's, it's There's something unresolved still. I need to resolve it. But also, I think a part of that is I don't have the autonomy to repair this. I don't have the autonomy to change. And to your point, it's absolutely our childhood, our caretakers, our parents affect us.

Leigh Ann: And I can get into adulthood and go, Well, I'm this way because I was sexually abused as a child. And that's just how it's gonna be. Or I can go, this is my present state because of that abuse as a child. And now I'm picking up the pen and I get to go write the story I want to write.

Jana Wilson: Exactly, because we can be a victim.

Jana Wilson: We can, you know, I certainly was a victim of my mother, my father. I mean, in college, I was a victim of a guy putting something in my drink and raping me. I mean, I've been a victim. How long I stay a victim is my choice. And that's what I hear you saying. Mm

Leigh Ann: hmm. Absolutely. Absolutely. One thing I want to ask about is The inner child work, this, you're saying little Jana is such a daily part of my life.

Leigh Ann: When did you, can you speak to when this idea of inner child work first got introduced to you, your initial reaction to it? And is this something you find most people you work with are really open to? I have found, and I'll just say from my experience, I have found most people are pretty open to it, but on occasion.

Leigh Ann: There seems to be that there is such a disconnect. We have abandoned and disconnected for so long that sometimes when we look at that younger child, there's There's disgust. There's despise. There's, I don't even want to see her. I can't even connect with her or it's the opposite. It's just like total numbness.

Leigh Ann: Like I'm not getting anything right. Like disassociation. There's a lot of questions. There was like five questions and not, it's okay.

Jana Wilson: So my first introduction to inner child was I was 22 years old. I was pregnant with my daughter. I talk about it in the book. My doctor was a Kabbalist. He was very mystical and spiritual.

Jana Wilson: You know, it was a big deal for me. I was out of wedlock. I wasn't married and He came in and I had a very close connection with him. He was the first doctor who ever did a pap smear on me I mean he he was very had beautiful bedside manner Just a beautiful human and a Jewish man and he he He looked at me very fatherly and he said, um, there's a little girl inside of you.

Jana Wilson: And I of course started crying. And he said, and she's scared. And, and he said, she thinks she's not going to have fun anymore and have a life and she can't do this and raise a baby. He just knew all of this. I don't know how, maybe I would say things or he would ask me questions on my visits or, but this was the first time he talked real, uh, Straight to my heart and deep like this and I had never had anybody Talk to me like this like this was like whoa And he said I want you to go home And I want you to look in the mirror, and I want you to tell little Jana That you're gonna Makes me emotional always be there for her and that this baby's not gonna take everything away And and you're still gonna have fun and get to go dancing and you know, like your life's gonna go on It's gonna be wonderful.

Jana Wilson: I want you to start telling her that okay, cuz he knew how scared I was and I did and I remember I just cried I couldn't look in the mirror. I was like like what you said I just didn't know who I was. I didn't like myself. My brain wasn't even developed yet, you know, until you're about 25. And so, um, but it was the first step.

Jana Wilson: Then, of course, naturally, the universe starts swirling around because my consciousness is around now, like inner child work. John Bradshaw. Are you familiar with him? He's a PhD from Houston and he's passed away now, but he would write, he wrote the shame that binds you, healing the shame that binds you, and all about family of origin and toxicity and codependency and you know, all this stuff now that it's easy to get information back then it wasn't.

Jana Wilson: And this was on PBS. I bought his book and I, it just opened the door for me and I went to one of his seminars and he guided us back in a process to go rescue the child from one really extreme event in childhood. And that in the story, just so you know, is when I share about, um, I'm at my aunt's house.

Jana Wilson: They have that pee machine. Uh huh. I started wetting the bed again at nine after a bad trauma. Um, they would wake me up and shame me for wetting the bed, which is a natural tendency for a child who's just went through war, you know? And, um, anyway, that night, I thought it was an angel appeared in my room and told me everything was going to be okay.

Jana Wilson: Or, you know, really gave me that message of hope. And then I thought it was just a dream throughout the years. Well, then I forgot about it, right? Like I never, Remembered it but it would be a reoccurring dream where I would see somebody standing in the doorway It looked like an angel and she's telling me everything was okay Well now fast forward from like nine years old to now i'm in you know Um, i'm 28 29 when this happened.

Jana Wilson: I go to one of his seminars. We go through a Hypnotherapy and he takes us back to rescue And i'm standing in the door And I go to rescue this little girl and it oddly feels familiar, but I still haven't put it together that it was this reoccurring dream. What I feel happened is I time traveled my future self, went to my little girl self because we live in a very mysterious world, right?

Jana Wilson: We don't know. I mean, the only, we think time's linear past present future, but you know, there's a lot of things telling us now string theory, everything's happening in this present moment. Right. So who knows, but it was healing for me. My ex husband said you were very different after that experience. The first time rescuing my inner child.

Leigh Ann: Okay. Two follow up questions on that. Yeah. And they both could like lead so long. That's why I'm like, Hmm, which one do I start with? I guess the first one is. I imagine this is a process you integrate with a lot of individuals you work with, and do you find that that first introduction to the inner child is jarring, or it's hard to feel a connection, or what do you find happens most often?

Leigh Ann: That people can kind of.

Jana Wilson: In private work, Leanne, I have a really lengthy interview call. So I'm pretty selective. My private spoke out up to a year. That's how long people are waiting. So when I do those interview calls and I accept a student, I really ask a lot of questions. You know, are you willing to meet yourself?

Jana Wilson: Are you willing This work is challenging, it's confrontational. I am not a therapist. I am not going to sit and listen to story. I'm going to It's going to feel jarring. I'm going to confront you on the ways you treat yourself. You know, it's pretty, I live by the adage, if it doesn't challenge you, it won't change you.

Jana Wilson: So I push. I'm that type of a teacher. Why? Because the teachers who did that for me, I had the most growth. Right, so I'm not the teacher for everybody, but I certainly push. If, yes, a lot of people are very disconnected from their emotions because they live in their head. That's the number one, they abandon themselves.

Jana Wilson: So I have them bring pictures, put it on their phone, on their screen saver before they even get here. They're already, you know, In, you know, introducing this idea of themselves as this child that went through a lot and now to be a healthy adult, you've got to go back and really rescue the child from these experiences and restructure the belief system, right?

Jana Wilson: Like from, I'm not good enough to she's more than good enough. Usually people can look at themselves as a child, three, four, five years old, and they can see their innocence. That's not hard. It's not like they hate themselves as a child. It's usually a little later, after those conditioning years of seven, those first seven years, where they made choices based on the conditioning years from those first seven, that they're, uh, that they're judging themselves or disconnected.

Jana Wilson: But it, it requires some somatic practices, really getting them in their body, feeling felt sense in the body, slowing down the nervous system, really getting them to get in touch with how they're feeling. Um, yoga, you know, movement, breath, um, teaching a lot of the heart math, intelligent, intelligent energy management techniques, helping them get coherent.

Jana Wilson: As soon as they get out of their head and they start feeling their heart, and they, and, and of course I feel like I've been gifted with that, like that's kind of my superpower, is I see them as a child. So, I'll give you an example. I had a male client here, um, last, a couple months ago. He was 28 years old, and he, he was so abandoned from himself.

Jana Wilson: Like, you know, and usually people who abandon themselves talk a lot about being abandoned by others. And my teacher would always say, you can't be abandoned if you're an adult. If you're a child or if you're an invalid or you have disabilities or you're elderly, yes. And you can't take care of yourself.

Jana Wilson: You can be abandoned, but adults can't be abandoned. That's a story. And it's coming out because they're not listening and honoring their feelings, their inner child. And so, you know, I um, he was We ask tech detox in a retreat. We ask, um, that they focus totally on the child, that this is, you know, rewiring the brain, that this is behaving differently.

Jana Wilson: You know, this is like a laboratory. How you show up here in this event is going to, you know, really reveal how you show up in the world. He brings his phone over to a session and this was a semi private. So there were two other men who were sharing the space of this retreat. He brings the phone. I don't.

Jana Wilson: See it sitting next to him. I'm talking to one of the participants and he looks down and grabs his phone. He goes, Oh, can I take this call? And interrupts us. And I said, absolutely not hand me that phone. I turned the phone off and I said, you just abandoned yourself. Your little boy sitting right here and you just brought in the outer world and said, it's more important.

Leigh Ann: Yeah. And when we say it in those terms, suddenly it becomes so so stuck. Yeah. Yes, I did

Jana Wilson: My husband was right there. He's a clinician He's a doctor and he said that was masterful and I said why he goes I didn't catch that I said there were three layers of abandon. There were three layers of First, it was disrespect for the process because we've asked no technology.

Jana Wilson: Second, but that's him disrespecting himself. I don't take it personal. It was disrespect to the other participants and then disrespect to himself, to the little boy. I'm going to abandon you and make somebody else more important.

Leigh Ann: Yeah. And part of it might be the protective, like flight fight mechanism of this is uncomfortable.

Leigh Ann: I don't want to look at this. Let me kind of almost unconsciously manifest a reason I can get out of having to sit too much in this so we can see like the deeper subconscious there, but I just love what I have found is when we use that inner child framework, and I don't think I use it quite to the extent that you do, but often I will say if a three year old was sitting here in this happened.

Leigh Ann: Would you respond to them in this in the way that you're currently responding to yourself? Yes, and you know nine times out of ten. It's oh my god never jump to protect

Jana Wilson: them You're so right. I'd say that often I'm like, so if little so and so whatever the person it was sitting here and you know wanting your attention and This is usually the pattern we can see it with his family of or his parents That's what they did, you know, everything else was more important than him.

Jana Wilson: So he just picked up where they left off. And now he's treating himself the same way he was modeled the way they treated him. Right.

Leigh Ann: Yeah. Yeah. So, and it's fascinating. Do I? Yeah. You know, maybe he started to create beliefs of this, well, these are my parents. If they're treating me this way, this must be what I deserve.

Leigh Ann: Exactly. Exactly. And then also. This is how I soothe. This is how I run from what's hard. This is how I protect from what's hard. But I see this time and time again. The wounds that were inflicted on us as children often become the very same wounds we're inflicting on ourselves.

Jana Wilson: Absolutely, because listen, these two people are gods to us.

Jana Wilson: They brought us into the world. They are our creator. We look up to them. You know, in those first seven years we're being molded and that's just, you know, in this lifetime, if you go into even As I share in my book, you know, the pre cognitive, pre conscious trauma that I experienced in the womb and There's not a lot of talk about that.

Jana Wilson: You know, I've had people read that and just burst out crying and go Oh my god, I never thought my mom. I know she was depressed She didn't want to be pregnant again And you know, is that why I feel so unwanted because once I was born, I can't really pinpoint you know feeling unwanted, but I felt it in the womb, or it's coming intergenerational through the bloodline, right?

Jana Wilson: Or it's coming, um, you know, it's, yeah, those are the different ways that we adopt from our parents and Yeah,

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Leigh Ann: of

Leigh Ann: the safety with ourselves. What does this look like a little bit for you? You know, I think, yeah, I'm just so curious how that process looks because I imagine it's one that's nuanced. I also imagine it's one that takes time. That's at least what I have experienced in my own journey of reparation and trust and safety.

Leigh Ann: And I've also found that there's super small things. Like, what are the small ways I'm abandoning and not hearing and not seeing and protecting? And then, of course, what are the big, big ways? But I'd love to hear just a little bit of, you know, Your lens on that process of re reestablishing trust and safety.

Jana Wilson: Yeah. So reconciliation. Um, one of my teachers, Tay, Titna Han, wrote a beautiful book called Reconciliation, Healing the Inner Child. And it's one that I ask all my students to read, but in reconciliation, it's this, you know, It's gaining knowledge, right? That, that I have this innocent because of course for me, I had created a lot of experiences where I, you know, I was promiscuous in college.

Jana Wilson: I, I cheated on my ex husband. I kept behaving in ways that a woman that values herself wouldn't behave. Right? So for me to, um, First, I had to identify, you know, awareness that is the greatest agent for change. So you first have to become aware that you are abandoning yourself, right? And one of those four ways I shared.

Jana Wilson: blaming, being a victim, turning to addictions, pushing yourself harshly or staying in your head. So I began to have awareness through meditative practices, self more witnessing awareness that I was behaving in ways that, um, I didn't like, right. That I, and, and so the reconciliation process is taking full responsibility that you are creating your own suffering, right?

Jana Wilson: You are, And that, and then now I've got to take little actions, consistently, steadfastly, every day. To prove, cause somebody's watching, it's little Jana, and knows everything I'm thinking and fe, it, because my, she's my feeling self. So if I'm having a thought that's, at the Chopra Center we used to say it's either yucky or yummy.

Jana Wilson: There's no in between. So if I'm having a yucky thought, it's going to create chemicals in my body, right? Cortisol, adrenaline, noradrenaline, all the stress chemicals that are going to make me feel bad. And um, you know, the, the path to healing for me was, and, and what I teach is consistent discipline. And so when I looked at my childhood, I was like, Oh my God, I, I, Oh, it didn't have disciplined parents.

Jana Wilson: No one modeled discipline. I don't know. What does discipline look like? And, and frankly, the word has three meanings. Higher education, higher discipline, um, punishment. Which is what I believed and then something that improves your behavior and your morals and you know is discipline But mine was punishment.

Jana Wilson: And so I to be disciplined. I didn't want to punish myself I saw it as delay gratification would be punishment But then the more I took baby steps each and every day For whatever it was I was disciplining, I began to see this is how I love myself. I show up for myself consistently with small acts every day.

Jana Wilson: Those small acts begin to compound and then one day I arrive and I'm just feeling really confident, really comfortable in my own skin, really connected with myself because imagine if I'm in a relationship with you and I always tell you I'm going to do something and I never do it. Eventually it erodes the relationship cause I'm not good for my word.

Jana Wilson: It's the same thing true for us. If I keep telling little Jana myself internally, no one hears me. Oh, I'm going to work out today. I'm going to eat better. Oh, I'm going to meditate. Oh, I'm going to do this. And I don't do it. It keeps me in that spiral, and let's face it, people are addicted to self loathing, feeling bad.

Jana Wilson: They hate it. They don't want to be there, but it's almost, it's such a loop. And if you don't, that's, that's why, if it doesn't challenge you, it doesn't change you. Sometimes they need that shake up that physiological breakup. Tony Robbins in the nineties, I worked, I did a lot of his work and he would spray people with water in the face when they got in a story and you could see them starting to implode and he would do these things to shock them.

Jana Wilson: to shake their physiological state in the midst of the story. And that had a profound effect on me when I'd share about the eviction in the book. Remember, I'm falling into despair and depression and how could this be happening to me? And I think of him and it's happening for you, not to you, Jana, and you got to change your state.

Jana Wilson: So I get up and I think, If somebody knocked on the door and told me I was a millionaire right now, I sure wouldn't be laying in bed upset I'm getting evicted from a garage apartment. So I jump up and I start running around and saying I'm a millionaire. In that moment, I shifted my frequency so much that a thought came through.

Jana Wilson: Right? And that thought was such a creative thought, it had me reach out to somebody who within, um, A few hours, I now had a job. I was living on the ocean in an oceanfront condo making 8, 000 a month as a single mother. You know, like things like miracles can happen, right? But if we start spiraling down, down, down, so it's a combination.

Jana Wilson: It's awareness, of course. And then this isn't working for me and I'm willing to let this behavior die and be reborn that, you know, it's that Phoenix process burning to the old self to be reborn and it's a continual life process, right? There's no arriving. It's a.

Leigh Ann: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I always say, you know, joy and alignment and peace aren't finite.

Leigh Ann: There is, it's abundantly available. So if I'm dipping my toe in the past to see what still has a hold on me, it's not because it's like, Oh, I have one more thing to do. It's a no, but on the other side of this, like if life is already good, think about the new layers of joy I can step into and peace. And alignment.

Leigh Ann: That's what I get excited to sit with, but what I want to go back to briefly is it seems to like this, the inner child work and the reestablishing of that connection and care. There's an inner peace and our relationship with ourself. And then there's that outer piece of what is, what am I allowing to happen externally in relationships?

Leigh Ann: Are there boundaries that need to be set? Are there jobs I need to leave? Thank you. Whatever it might be. And it's so funny. And this is an example I share often, but like one of the simplest ways I started protecting myself was if a restaurant bought, brought me the wrong food, you know, in the past it would have been like, whatever, I'll just eat it.

Leigh Ann: It's fine. And now it's like, no. No, little Leanne deserves the meal that she asked for. Exactly. And I'm gonna make sure she gets it.

Jana Wilson: And you can do it kind. You don't have to be, you know, mean or bitchy. Or you just, yeah, advocate for yourself.

Leigh Ann: Yes, totally. And that's like another piece of the puzzle is having the conviction and the confidence and also learning that, I can protect myself from a place of gracious conviction.

Leigh Ann: It doesn't need to be aggressive and volatile. So yeah, it's, it's nuanced and it's multi leveled, but I really have to say for me, if this is so top of mind, cause the last year and a half for me has been deep reparation of that relationship and the peace. And I think the anchoring feeling just so tethered and anchored and safe.

Leigh Ann: Has been the biggest thing that I wouldn't have necessarily thought could come from that. But it's like, Oh, this ship is good. This ship is anchored. And now I have a foundation that if I want to go foster more alignment over there or over here, or go pursue this new big dream, that's kind of scary. I'm on solid ground to go pursue those things.

Jana Wilson: Yes, absolutely, because everything in the outer world is a mirror reflection of what's happening within us. And so if, you know, I always say like the brain's kind of like a movie reel and it has all this reel of film on it based from the past, the prison, cause that's over. And this, it, you know, shoots out our lens of perception on this movie screen called our life.

Jana Wilson: I'm the leading lady here. So if I'm looking at. know, something and it doesn't resonate. It doesn't feel like a vibrational match for me. I'm, I don't, I look within, right? I, I, it showed up for me, you know? And so I look within and I'm like, okay, you know, what do I need to, um, embody and it could be sometimes the darker qualities, right?

Jana Wilson: Like, like you, it sounded like you were voiceless. So for you, it was shifting your pendulum over to maybe really exercising your voice, which sometimes was uncomfortable and maybe could sound terse or, and people could interpret it as bitchy or mean or cold, but you're helpless over that. You're just correcting.

Jana Wilson: You know from being over here a fawn, you know freeze response to now I'm going to advocate and it might come across a little like ah But you're doing it and the more you do that the more the you know, our emotional self starts to you know, all those positive qualities of confidence and and Really embodying we are divine.

Jana Wilson: We are a goddess You know, and we're not separate from that and we're here for a purpose. And so then we get really busy about living our Dharma, our purpose in life.

Leigh Ann: Oh, I love it. I just love the unraveling and the untangling and the nuance of all this. I, we could talk about it for hours, I'm sure, but I want to be respectful of your time.

Leigh Ann: So thank you so much. I really do want to encourage listeners to read your book. I read it. Absolutely loved it. I'm so grateful that you were so vulnerable, truly so, so vulnerable. Thank you. And sharing your story and, and, and modeling the healing journey in a way. Here's, here's my healing journey and I think we need as many models of that as possible because almost none of us had models in childhood for what.

Leigh Ann: emotional processing and emotional growth and attunement look like. And so the more people we can have verbalizing and speaking out about, yeah, here's what emotional processing and growth looks like to me. Here's one model and then someone else can go, here's another model. It's new, positive, expansive modeling that all of us can benefit from and attune to and, and grow from.

Jana Wilson: Yes, I agree. It's, we need. You know more emotionally intelligent people on the planet that realizes that our What Wabi Sabi, you know, means in Japanese. It's one of the highest aesthetics in Japanese culture, but this idea that something that looks imperfect has beauty in it. And so our stories are all of our mistakes.

Jana Wilson: Everything have the potential to make, you know, a shine and be these beautiful humans, but often we get these messages or we tell ourselves that we need to hide that. And we're ashamed. I certainly was for a long time. I mean, even in my 40s, you know, I'm doing this work and I attract this young man. And I have a relationship with him for two and a half years.

Jana Wilson: I talk about it briefly in the book, but I remember I had so much judgment. Towards myself like I should know better. I'm an emotional healing teacher I should you know And then my big wake up happens to be a teenager with hickeys all on her neck in Hawaii that tells me I can do better than that and it was the biggest slap in my face ever It was like the universe knew exactly who to use to wake me up Right.

Jana Wilson: And then I'm back to that place of like, Oh my goodness, like here I am 47 years old and I'm still doing the same old looking for love outside of myself instead of within.

Leigh Ann: Yeah. And it's just, it's so beautiful. I think especially even more so from someone in your realm because, and you talk about this in your book too, a little bit, there are a lot of people in the emotional healing space who present that they've healed at all.

Leigh Ann: Yeah. And I don't have anything left to heal and I'm good. And I just think that to what you said earlier, it is a continual process. It's not one that necessarily has an end point. And so to present as though I've healed it all. And now I'm just sort of sailing freely with no issues. It's, we sense this, this synthetic ness in that.

Leigh Ann: So I love that. And I just think it's even more impactful being able to go. Look at this woman. She does emotional retreat. She was doing them even back then. And she also still had growth to do. But for me, the takeaway in it is yes, being able to identify, acknowledge, And then continue to grow through that, you know,

Jana Wilson: thank you so much for saying that.

Jana Wilson: I just, it, it warms my heart so much because you get it right. Like you get that it is a big act of courage to put my story into the world. And, and because it would have been easy just to leave it all in childhood and then boom, here I am and I'm da da da. But no, I let the reader know all the way up until, you know, Literally, you know, eight years ago, you know, and certainly since the eight years has happened, it's not like I've arrived.

Jana Wilson: But I mean, I, I'm at the place cause I never, I made healing and my spiritual connection more important than anything. It was number one in my life, right? And because more than anything, My soul yearned for my beloved. It yearned for my twin flame. It yearned for my partner and I knew I had to, I wasn't, I was just going to keep attracting somebody at my level.

Jana Wilson: I was like, I got to really level up. And, and in order to do that, you know, it took disentangling a marriage. It took a lot of difficult facing myself. You know, I'm desperate. I'm a gold digger. All the shadows. And my story, I wanted to show that to people to say, it's messy, being human is difficult, it's messy, it's com, you know, it's complicated sometimes, even though I believe ultimately it's simple, we complicate it.

Jana Wilson: Um, but in the end, if you just stay steadfast with the work and you get with the right teacher, and I'm certainly not the teacher for everybody. Some people don't like my authenticity. They want me to put the cloak of spiritual teacher on and be namaste and sweet all the time. And I'm not. I'm sassy. You know, I've got a little bit of sass in there.

Jana Wilson: And if I shut that sass down, I wouldn't be authentic.

Leigh Ann: Yeah, and you lose your magnetism. You lose that energy that, yes, of authenticity. Totally. Right.

Jana Wilson: Yeah. So thank you for seeing me. I appreciate that. I really love it when I hear that.

Leigh Ann: Oh, I'm so glad. No, I'm so, so glad that that resonates with you. And I do see that.

Leigh Ann: And I'm just so grateful for it because it's not something you see often individuals in this work. So thank you so much. This was amazing. I cannot wait for the audience to hear this. And I'm just, again, so, so grateful to have you on today. Thank you for sharing your time with all of us.