Welcome back, my loves, to the Connect to Pleasure podcast. In today’s conversation with Cheryl Stelte, we explore what it truly means to return to our power — not the performative kind that seeks validation or control, but the embodied power that radiates from deep within.

Cheryl shares her ACE Method for empowerment — Awareness, Choice, and Embodiment — and we dive into how these steps help us reclaim sovereignty over our bodies, our relationships, and our pleasure. We talk about the difference between masculine “doing” energy and feminine “being” energy, and how the balance of both is essential for healing and wholeness.

We also explore how our individual reclamation weaves into the greater tapestry of collective healing — how every woman who returns to her body, her truth, and her pleasure helps shift the consciousness of the world.

If you’ve ever felt disconnected from your sensuality, your boundaries, or your own power, this episode is an invitation to come home — to yourself, to your body, and to the sacred wisdom within.

✨ Ready to dive deeper?

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Resources & Links Mentioned with Guest:

• Learn more about Cheryl Stelte: https://starofdivinelight.com/
• Schedule a Call with Cheryl: https://www.callwithcheryl.com
• Powerful Meditations: https://cherylstelte.kartra.com/page/powerful-mediations
• Linkedin
• Facebook
• Instagram
• Youtube

Welcome to the Connected Pleasure Podcast. I'm Kayla Moore, sacred disruptor and sovereign guide, here to share liberation wisdom for sexual healing and feminine rising.

This is a space to return to your pleasure, your power and your body, while remembering your deep connection to the earth and to each other. Each week we explore what it means to lead with soft power and to weave a world rooted in embodiment, love and connection.

Together, we are holding the frequency of what we want this world to look.

And feel like as we collectively weave.

Together a new paradigm shift called the Great Turning. Because pleasure is not frivolous, it is foundational.

And it's time to come home.

This podcast is for education and inspiration only.

If you're wanting to explore pleasure more fully for yourself, I invite you to go deeper with me through the offerings linked in the show notes or through.

The offerings of my guests.

If you're unsure whether one of these containers or a therapeutic approach would best support you, you're welcome to schedule a free 45 minute consultation with me. Together we can explore what path is in your best interest. And if I am not the right fit, I'll be glad to connect you with the resources you need.

Welcome, my lovelies, back to the Connected Pleasure Podcast. I'm Kayla, your host. I use she, her pronouns and today I am here with a new friend that we are just meeting for the first time in this interview.

Her name is Cheryl Stelt and we are going to have a great conversation about energy, work and releasing trauma and emotions from our bodies. And so I'm really excited to introduce Cheryl and have her tell you a little bit more about who she is and what she does. So welcome.

Thank you so much, Kayla. I. I just have to say it's great to be in your energy. Like I'm, I'm like, oh, you are. You are so in alignment. You walk your talk. Anyway, I'm.

I'm truly honored to be here and I've been on my own very strong spiritual journey for 32 years now, a long time. And I help mature women who've, most of them have all done a lot of personal work.

I help them move to that next level, gaining the clarity that they want, you know, so if you're feeling stuck, you don't know how to move forward.

I am the person to come and see and I help people heal their subconscious blocks at the deepest layers, you know, early childhood, and reprogram the subconscious so you can become who you truly are, who you actually came here to be.

Yeah, yeah. So needed, so helpful. I think it's interesting because something I have been a therapist for eight years.

I have been in the healing world a long time.

I think a lot of us are coming back to body based practices and somatic practices have had a big surge in the last, you know, I don't know, decade or so. And yet even for me, I still feel like there are blocks that I can't necessarily get to.

And so I'm really interested to know more about your work and if you ever come across people that are like, I've done this healing modality, I've done this healing modality and nothing is quite getting to this place that I need to get to to really uproot some of this stuff and how maybe your modality works differently than others.

Thank you. You know, it's interesting, right before this recording, right before we're doing this, I just, I just spoke with a therapist in her 60s.

She's been doing this work her whole life and she has her own subconscious blocks. I did a chakra reading on her. She sees what it is and this one major thing is getting in the way in her life.

And I have the skills to help her release all that. And like you done the therapy, she's done the energy work and so, and so those are the people that I help.

And it's really helping people to get into the right side of the brain in subconscious.

And all our blocks are all repressed emotions, the things that we couldn't finish healing early in childhood, even as an infant and even as early as in the womb. I have not yet met one person who just had this glorious time in the womb because our mothers or our parents go through difficulties.

For the people that did have the beautiful time in the womb with nothing but unconditional love, don't feel attracted to work with me. And it's using that, it's using all those blocks which really are, like I said, the repressed emotions.

But they're also the subconscious beliefs that are then formed from the repressed, repressed emotions because little ones can't make sense of their emotions. Right. It's we're just meant to cry, right? We're meant to feel.

And when that doesn't happen for whatever reason, you know, trauma is so much about when we go into shock or to me, the number one trauma that most people in the world feel if you're a certain age is not having an emotional resource.

When we were little, yeah, when didn't have that emotional resource when we didn't have anyone who taught us how to learn to express our emotions in healthy ways and feel them fully. There was nobody really there for us. We learned to repress them, and that does nothing but damage, period.

Right.

You get it. You get it, right, Kayla?

Absolutely.

Well, and not even just not having somebody there to teach you, but also actively telling you that certain emotions, or maybe all emotions are not okay to feel and being punished for sometimes feeling those feelings. So, absolutely. I totally get it.

Yeah. Being punished and told it's not okay to feel only exacerbates the wound, the trauma inside it.

Because when I was a kid, feeling your emotions and expressing them was not normal.

Right.

Because our parents didn't know how to do it. This is. This is culturally around the world. This has been a problem for multiple generations. And it's so cool to be alive right now.

And we change, like you said, the somatic work, the body work, everything that we're doing, people are growing at a rate that has never happened before. And so people are ready and willing, I find, to go even deeper than we ever have.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely.

Science has proven that that is trauma. It's the ongoing trauma of not having that emotional resource. It is now classified as trauma. And.

And as you know, science has proven that trauma is imprinted in the right side of the brain through physical sensations and emotions, not through linear memories. Not left brain. That's all left brain. And so we have this imprinting, which, you know, your podcast is all about pleasure.

So we end up with a lot of this trauma, all this negative derogatory programming in our. How are we possibly going to be able to feel pleasure fully and engage in pleasure instead? What happens is we attract more of the same.

So, like, we're all black or all white.

Right.

But those opportunities to immerse ourselves in pleasure can definitely be missed because haven't developed those neural pathways.

Right.

We need to develop those neural pathways to pleasure. However, that looks for each one of us individually.

Yeah. Yeah. I love it. Can you I.

Something I've been really enjoying asking my guests, because I think a lot of us have through lines of this, but also different opinions of what pleasure is. What is your definition of pleasure?

Pleasure to me is the emotion of feeling ecstatic, euphoric, blissful, and it often will come when I least expect it. So whether it's physical pleasure. So for me, one of the little pleasures I give myself, I've been doing this for years.

If I come home and it's really cold outside, you know, when it. When it's winter or it's damp and cold, and you're kind of chilled to the bone.

Take my robe, my housecoat, and I put it in the dryer and I heat it up until it's really hot.

And I put that on and let it, let it sink into my body, warm me up right to the core instead of waiting to warm up to the ambient temperature in my home.

So it's, it's a small thing, but even sometimes, you know, I'm having a memory of one time I was meeting a friend for dinner in downtown Vancouver, Canada. And I got out of my car and it was, it was raining, it was wet and it was a fall and it was dark outside and there was a streetlight right there.

And there were all these red and golden leaves, but mostly red leaves on the grass. And I just saw the beauty in that and I had to stand there and just look at it. And I was just so grateful to be alive.

It's hard to explain, but it's, the moments are even. I just visited my granddaughter, looking into her beautiful clear eyes. I said to her, like, I just felt so much joy and pleasure with her.

And I, I had to say to her, she's four years old. You have no idea how beautiful you really are.

You know, or it's going to the, the hot springs and feeling the warmth of that or even hiking on a glacier and the ice cold and being in the ice, I mean, that's a whole energy in itself. Or sitting really close with a group of friends. Yeah, I could go on.

Of course. Of course. I think what I am really hearing from all the guests that I have had is presence. It's really being present in the here and now.

And like you said, noticing the things around us that we may not typically notice. And it can be internal.

Noticing our internal state because we've quieted ourselves, or noticing the things around us and seeing the beauty in the people or you know, nature around you that you have to really like stop and pay attention to and breathe in that moment for yourself. So I love all those examples. I, I think children, I'm mother myself, I have a three year old son.

And as hard as being a mom to a toddler is, I do think, you know, children have a natural ability of pulling us into the here and now because that the only thing that they know is here and now. And my needs need to be met right here, right now. So I love that you, you have so many different ways of experiencing pleasure in your life.

Thank you. Yes. And I love what you say about presence because if we're not present, if we're in our minds thinking of something else and not fully here.

The moment can be stolen from us. We can be robbed of pleasure.

Yes.

And, and I think one of the things, you know, all the screens we have and our phones and all of that, if, if I get on my phone and I get sucked into something, part of expression, it does rob me of my pleasure. It's our addictions or it's often the, you know, addictions come from the desire to not feel. To feel what we're feeling.

Whatever it is, we miss that opportunity. And so me, it took me having to develop a spiritual practice 32 years ago that helps me stay present.

Not that I'm a hundred percent, but also it's so much. We were talking about the blocks in the beginning.

The more we remove, release those subconscious blocks, we're releasing those neural pathways, you know, our brains.

Oh my.

So complex. So it's like we can have these highways from early childhood trauma. And like I said, early as in the womb. And we will keep attracting those things.

And we're the furthest thing from pleasure. Caught up in that. And so to me, developing pleasure is sort of, at the very least, a two pronged approach.

Releasing what's preventing us from being present.

Yes.

Is a requirement for pleasure. So releasing what's getting in the way and making a practice of intentionally experiencing the pleasure in the moment.

You know, to even sit down and say, oh, where is my pleasure here? What is my pleasure? And going there and allowing the answer to come, not being in your mind, but being back in your body.

Oh, is my pleasure right now. So even you do that, I think, huh? I have this great desk that I get this great setup. Yeah. And to feel the pleasure of that. Have all my needs are met.

To be sitting there with you.

Yes, yes. We are all extremely blessed in a lot of ways. And most of us have a really hard time being in that space of gratitude.

And I think gratitude is a really great gateway to pleasure too.

Of really feeling what is already here instead of always looking towards what we need or what we lack or the future or, you know, the things that were in the past or what we didn't have. What is right here, right now. And how can we live into that sense of, like you said, bliss or feeling of just like.

Yeah, it's great to be alive in this moment right now, when all of my needs are met.

Yeah. And not in the left thinking brain. They think that's key. So when I just said be in the moment here with you.

Yeah.

When I Just said, I have this great desk. I was actually thinking of getting rid of this desk. It's a.

It's a reproduction of a French writing desk, so it has these Queen Anne legs and these two drawers on the side. And it's very, you know, sort of girly. Very, very French. And somebody repainted it white, and they didn't do what I would call a great job.

And it had a leather top that was old, but I wanted this style of desk, so my husband replaced the top and repainted it so it's all painted white. And I. I love so much about it. And there's a part of me wants a new desk, a different desk, but just in that moment, I was so.

I am so grateful for this desk because it's very me. It resonates with me and who I am, and it doesn't. It's not about the cost.

Right.

But the function. And it has a lot of beauty. And the way I have everything set up, it's. It's just ideal. And I can move into almost. I moved into almost glee.

Like, it's not just happiness, but. Ew, this is so great. It doesn't resonate with old neural pathways of what I'm going to say to me, what the four core wounds are.

And I. I had all of them.

Yeah.

Of not being enough. Right. Feeling unworthy. We're all worthy of beauty. We are all worthy of the best things. I don't matter. And unlovable. And.

And so this desk does not resonate with any of that. Even though my left brain is going, I think it's time for a new one.

But my right brain, my subconscious, the pathway is formed to enjoy the pleasure of having this great desk that has really served me.

That's beautiful. I love the journey that you took with that. And like you said, we're orienting ourselves to these new pathways.

And the more that we experience something, the deeper those pathways get. It's. It's hard to change those neural pathways when a lot of us have very entrenched pathways that go in one direction.

And usually it's the direction that is the. Like you said, all of those core wounds, that I'm not enough. I don't matter. I'm not lovable. And reprogramming that, it takes time and it takes work.

But being in the present moment, like you were just saying, and feeling those feelings, embodying those feelings is what helps to reprogram them.

Yeah, that's right. It makes it. It makes it from a dirt road to A highway? Absolutely. First form them. I think of it like, you know, I, I lived in the Amazon jungle.

I traveled in South America for eight months.

Oh, wow.

A new path. And even in Africa. Same thing with machetes. It's, it's like when you first form a new neural pathway.

It's like using a machete going through the Amazon or any rainforest, and then, and then keep going until it's a dirt road, then a paved road, then a highway, and then you let go of your old highways. Oh, no, I'm not taking that route anymore. I have a different way to go. It's better for me. It's much more beautiful.

Yeah.

Scenic.

Yeah, I love that analogy. That's perfect analogy for sure.

So let's talk a little bit more about like our cultural conditioning and how those become like belief systems and those belief systems become barriers and root themselves in our bodies. I know you said that you do a lot of releasing of emotions and trauma, especially in like the sacral area.

Can you speak to one what cultural conditioning you have seen in a lot of your clients that impacts them on like an emotional, spiritual level and why it tends to culminate in like the sacral area in our bodies?

Okay, well, the first, the first place that trauma is stored, often in the biggest ways, is the root chakra. And the root chakra is all about feeling safe and stable in the world.

And the second layer, once we develop that safety and stability, if we ever do, it's moving into trust and faith. That trust and faith that we're taking care of all the time.

You know, source, creator, whatever you want to say, we're taken care of and we can be in the flow. And the ultimate level is responsibility and accomplishment.

And at the deepest level, at a soul level, what did our soul choose to be responsible for and accomplishing that? So all those blocks that we were talking about earlier start to, they present themselves in the root chakra. That's our foundation.

You can think like the foundation of a house if you don't have a concrete foundation, if it's just gravel or sand or sort of like, you know, what happens in the sacral chakra. And the sacral chakra is so important because yes, it's sensuality, sexuality, passion.

It's also one on one relationships that intimacy and being emotionally vulnerable. And it really represents the relationship with the mother.

You know, we're, we all developed in, in the body, but all of that turns into creative expression. And that's where we get a lot of, a lot of pleasure is from Our creative expression. That's how the energy flows out.

And so when we're not feeling totally safe and stable in the world, we're going to develop coping mechanisms in how, you know, like any controlling behavior. What I've seen over the years that it's often around the age of two that toddlers will see that these parents don't know what they're doing.

This is way too chaotic. I have to take control here. I need to be in control to feel safe. So it's a false sense of safety.

You're never gonna get to that feeling of trust and face when you're stuck in control. And it's a common thing. We don't even see it. So then how does that affect the sacral chakra?

Well, how can you, when you're in creative flow, when you're in your passion to move to the highest levels of pleasure, which is the sacral chakra, you need to be able to relax totally in that safety and stability. To trust in faith is required to do that fully. So if you don't have that, you don't get to fully develop the sacral chakra.

And that sense of pleasure, whether it's sexual, physical, emotional, mental, even whatever it is.

Yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Absolutely. And something that came up with a client that I had recently is feeling like I need safety with other people, which is definitely true.

We need to feel safe with another person. But the work that they were doing actually came back to, oh, I was the difference.

Once I felt safe in my own body, then I was able to actually access the pleasure, even with somebody that maybe I haven't really known for that long and I feel safe with. But it wasn't like, oh, I needed, like, years of cultivating a relationship to feel safe with this person.

It was more about being safe in their own bodies. And so I hear that's what you're saying is we have to develop that safety in ourselves.

Nobody can give it to us. It's impossible. Our parents do their best.

Yes.

No. Even if they're the worst heroin addicts. I, I, you know, I've had clients who have had addicted parents. One heroin.

They do their best, even if they're not even present. And the more we can take responsibility for our lives as a soul in human form, our souls sign up for our life lessons.

Our souls choose our parents, and it's only the old souls, and there's a lot of old souls alive right now. It's only the old souls that choose the greatest challenges. And so it's often when we sign up for we.

We first learn to not feel safe and stable and to not be able to express ourselves creatively. And it's. It's our job. It's our soul's mission to discover that and move into the highest level possible. So.

So even with the safety and stability, you know, when I see. I do chakra readings for a lot of people, it's one of the best ways to first meet me is have a chakra reading.

I've been spending energy for years and years, and I can see everything that's going on. Where your blocks are, where everything is. Is really flowing well, where all your light is and your superpowers. But it's so much about. Yes. We.

We develop it in ourselves, and once we get it to a certain point, we attract more of it.

Mm.

So if you're attracting people that you don't feel safe around, it's because you don't feel safe within yourself, just like you just said.

Yeah.

And to move to a place of feeling safe anywhere is. It's such a gift. And then you will attract people. You will learn to attract more and more people. So the. The work.

Doing the work changes our lives and what we attract. So every person can be a mirror for us. Every situation can be a mirror for us. When we see something in another, what is that reflecting back to me?

Right.

Absolutely.

Absolutely. So cool. Can you speak a little bit more of, like, what is energetic work? What does that actually mean?

How do you help heal somebody through just feeling their energy and helping move energy?

Okay. Well, it's. You know, when I first.

First started doing this, I don't know how much science was out there, but there's a lot of science now that is proven. We are all like wires. We have multiple thousands of energetic pathways.

And so, you know, I've been working with the chakras for over 30 years, and they're energy centers. And I. I actually don't see them as the lotus flowers with all the petals and the colors. I see them as light. And photography has proven that.

We are made. We have light. It's real. And so. And everything is energy. Everything is moving. Nothing is stagnant.

So whether we like it or not, we are always changing. But as humans, we sort of cling to the wounding because it's what we know. It's like Linus's blanket, you know, it's. It's familiar. Oh, my goodness.

Yes.

So.

So the energy work is really working with the brain, working with the energy centers, and learning how to release the blocks, which, like I said in the very beginning, are those emotions that are held in the subconscious that were never felt. Learning to release those and empowering.

So the empowerment piece is very important because we're releasing the old neural pathways, so to speak, and we can reprogram our brains. You know, that was never always known. I remember about 30 years ago, I remember a psychologist saying to me, after my.

My first marriage and divorce, he said, well, you know, Cheryl. And this man was a shaman and he was teaching psychology at the university level and he had a number of clients.

And he said to me, you know, Cheryl, you're best to stay single for the rest of your life. As your amygdala because of all this programming in your brain. I mean, your father, your chances of ever attracting a healthy male are slim to none.

You're a spiritual teacher. That's what he said to me. But we can. It's proven now scientifically that we can heal at the deepest levels. We can completely rewire our brains.

And it's not only possible, but everything in our culture today is set up to do so. There are multiple opportunities. And so. And I work with therapists. Some people come to me and they just say, cheryl, nobody goes deeper than you.

I like to go deep. I've been doing this so long, it's like, let's go to the deepest. Yes, I always. You want to go back to when did it first begin?

And you go through this work at home. If I can share with you all my three steps, would that be helpful?

Absolutely.

Okay, so number one, you wanna breathe with your lower abdomen. So I invite you.

All right, now put your hand with your thumb at the level of your belly button at your navel, and let's take some really long breaths. Relax your shoulders. Yeah, you wanna be relaxed with your feet on the floor and take a nice big inhale and let your belly expand like a balloon.

And then you exhale and you squeeze your abdominal muscles.

That's right.

So why are we doing this? It changes the brain function. You're not going to get anywhere in your left brain for this kind of work. It's.

You want to shift from the left to right brain. And as soon as you engage your abdominal muscles, that happens.

So when we're breathing normally, were breathing with the brainstem or the medulla oblongata. And as soon as you go into the long breath using your abdominal muscles, it changes to the frontal lobal brain, which frees up your subconscious.

So this, this is a great way to meditate. You can close your eyes when you're doing this. And it's about having the experience in the subconscious. It's not about removing all thoughts.

This is not mindfulness meditation. Right. You want to keep any thoughts because they're now coming from your subconscious.

And you can go, you can choose to go into this quickly so you're breathing with the full breath. So the ace. So I call it the Ace method. Ace method A is for access. We're going to access what's in the subconscious.

So you can start by what's the biggest problem in your life right now? Or what's a small problem. It might be that, oh, you keep noticing a pattern of the people that you meet. All just seem to be narcissistic.

I'm just making this up. What is this reflecting back to you? So you can go in. What do I need to know about continuing to meet narcissistic people?

Go down to the root chakra, the tip of the tailbone. You focus in there and you just wait. What's the emotion? How do you feel about this last person you just met? What's the emotion?

And you can do what I call follow the emotional thread. So you'll find the first emotion. And I'm giving you a real quick and dirty here, totally.

And then go down to the deeper and deeper and deeper emotions until you get to the deepest. And then you can ask yourselves a question. When did this thread of emotions first begin? You ask your subconscious.

You keep breathing and you allow yourself to go even deeper on the exhale. And so you want to be breathing through your nose all the time with a silent breath. And your subconscious will take you back. Even pre memory.

If you don't have any memories of your childhood, doesn't matter. You don't have to have any conscious memories. Everything's in your subconscious except trauma.

It's proven, like I said earlier, it's imprinted in the subconscious through physical sensations and emotions. So you might feel pain, might feel tightness, different things in the body. You'll feel emotions, but any memories are always fragmented.

You will never have a completely linear memory of any traumas because your right brain can't do that. They're always fragmented. So even if you get a piece of a memory, focus on the emotion because that's where the deeper healing happens.

So you can go back to when it first began.

And then you breathe through it all, whatever information is presented, whether it's physical, emotional, and then you can drop down into the subconscious beliefs that were formed, continuing to breathe through it is what clear clears it. So A is for access, C is for clear.

And when you clear all that, what naturally happens is new emotions come through and all the emotions of pleasure and your understanding of what you came here for, all of that can come through and reprogram the subconscious. And that's the E is for empowerment piece. And you develop new beliefs about yourself based early on that are opposite of what you originally felt.

And so you can go into those. And it's not like, I don't give anybody any mantras, I don't give anybody any affirmations. They find their truest affirmations in themselves.

So if you do this, you're. It's like the clearing part. You make the space for the light to come through, you flush the darkness and you will understand yourself so much better.

And, and then that starts to reprogram. So I'm just going to repeat that.

So if you can remember the ACE method, A is for access through the breath, C is for clear through the breath, and E is for empowerment all through the breath. And it's ideal if you can get to a count of six or eight seconds on the inhale and six or eight seconds on the exhale.

Wow. Something I think I say a lot to my clients is that these things tend to be very simple, but they're not easy.

You know, it sounds so simple to just breathe and be like, how, how can I get clearing from just breathing? But it, it is so powerful to just sit inside of yourself and be in your breath and like you said, going deeper and deeper and deeper.

It's, it's true. And it reminds me of I, I did a chakra reading for this man well into his 60s, and he's so in touch with his soul's purpose.

So.

And he's so in touch with it and he's on this great mission, but it's, it's not happening. It's not working for him.

So I, I did, I did a quick little reading for him and saw that some earlier programming from his dad just has, has stopped him from moving forward. And he's.

As a little toddler, he still has all these repressed emotions and he's been of the opinion his whole life that, oh, all of that criticism and everything and not want. He wasn't wanted by his dad. He got tricked into getting a woman pregnant is what his dad felt.

Wow.

Told his son that. Yeah way. And he said, well, it's, it's always just made me stronger.

And so all these skills he developed through 60 years are no longer serving him because it's time to face the music, so to speak. It's. And it's intense. And so because the stakes are so high for him, he's in his late 60s. He's.

He wants to fulfill his soul's purpose and to deal with all this.

As soon as he went into the full breath, and I don't know anyone this has happened to before, all these intense emotions just started surfacing and he was just like, whoa, this is so intense. And so he keeps. So he keeps working at it.

He wants to do a little bit more by himself before he comes and works with me, and I'll use help by someone else. That's why we have professionals. But it can be very intense. And for others, it might be.

That takes a while for you to feel your feelings, but if you just sit with it, it's. That's when it gets intense, is when you start to feel the emotions that you couldn't feel before because you actually be. Go back to being that age.

Yeah.

When it was really hard. But now that you're the adult, you become your own emotional resource.

You can be there for yourself and feel all those difficult emotions and let them move through you.

Yeah. I love the empowerment piece that you do.

I think one of the things that I'm really passionate about my work with clients around pleasure is the ripple effect that it has through all the rest of their life and the different aspects of their life and feeling that connection back to their body, that there is power in their body. And so you had said that you wanted to talk about the difference between performative and embodied power.

So can you talk a little bit about the difference in that and how. I'm guessing you really want people to be in their embodied power.

Yes. And so performative can sometimes be a place of I have to earn love. If we didn't feel loved unconditionally, if we had to get.

Oh, we noticed that if we got A's on our report card, we were better received.

We felt loved if we were the golden child in the family, if we cleaned the house, or we put everybody else's needs before our own, that's that we learn performative power. And it's a little more superficial, but it's to get something, the recognition, the reward, that sort of thing, as opposed to the.

The genuine power that comes from within us, comes from such a whole place, and we can't hold it back. And we might even feel fear. It might be about getting on a stage and presenting your story or that Sort of thing.

And it's not so much about, you know, I read the book over 30 years ago, feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. By. I think it was Susan Jefferson. Susan Jefferson. Susan Jefferson. I think that's who it was. And I lived by that for such a long time.

But no, no, no, because Kaela, you're talking about the empowerment. No, release the fear. Access it, Release it, and then do it from a place of active empowerment. Right.

And the pleasure of just doing that and getting up on the rooftop and speaking your truth unapologetically, there's so much pleasure in that. Where it comes from. A place of wholeness.

Yes.

And that you are everything. Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So. So when. So there's so much performance in the world. I. I met a guy once who was he. He was a multi. Multi millionaire, and he was.

He was getting quite elderly, and I had just met him through a friend and he was telling me he had his house on the market. And this was in Vancouver before COVID and his house in that area, they all started at 25 million. So this is pretty chichi neighborhood.

They're probably 50 to 75 now. So anyway, he's pretty wealthy, Right. He had this fear that he would end up homeless.

And what I helped to come, helped him come to realize that all his success in the financial world came from this fear that he might end up homeless because he grew up in poverty. That was performance. That was all performance. And it no longer served him. So he ended up taking. He had taken his house off the market.

And he said, I know my mind. It makes no logical sense that I'll end up homeless. But he wasn't in a place to do the inner work. I don't know if he ever moved.

I don't know if he ever put his house on the market. He could hire a hundred servants to help him, but he saw the waste in having this giant house. He wasn't entertaining anymore and that sort of thing.

And so here was he and his wife in this house, this giant mansion on this huge property, and he had this fear that kept him from moving into who he truly was and expressing that freely and the pleasure of just being alive.

Yeah, Yeah. I think that's a great example of, like, money doesn't buy you happiness.

No, we can have all the money in the world, but if we don't have any meaning with it and we don't have people to share it with, it's not gonna, like you said, bring you to your soul's purpose. Of why you are here.

That's right. Don't spend your life in performance.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So my podcast is also really looking at where we are in this collective moment. And I really like talking right now about collective consciousness.

So I know this wasn't specifically what you wanted to talk about, but I'm curious if you are getting. Because you are in this space of, like, being an intuitive. And I hear bits and pieces of you, like, reading where we're at.

We're in a really, really hard moment. And yet the things that I've been hearing from.

I'm very into astrology and listening to people that are, you know, in this moment and have all the history behind us of what we know and all the different, like, stories and teachings of what this moment could be. And so I'm just curious how you view where we are in this moment in terms of the collective consciousness.

We kind of talked about it a little bit, too, around how we're shifting and changing in how we heal. You had said, you know, we have all the tools, and this is a great time for healing right now.

And I think a lot of people would be like, well, everything sucks right now, so why would you say that? But I think there's kind of, like, two diverging realities that people are choosing.

One is, you know, we're all gonna die, and we're in the apocalypse, and everything sucks. And another one is we have the chance to recreate what we want.

We have the chance to, again, like, hold the frequency that we want the world to feel like and to be like. And we get to keep going towards that. And this is a great time. I agree. For healing. I think just how you're saying.

I think we're in the space of, like, we are doing the healing work in order to make space and room for the pleasure that we are all seeking. So those are kind of my theories. I'm curious to know for you, what things have you been hearing or listening to, either around you or in yourself?

And how. How does this collective moment kind of sit with you in terms of your work?

Well, this. Like I said earlier, it is such a cool time to be alive. Yes. There's lots of horrible things happening. Absolutely.

And if we look at it from the perspective, which is hard to do, everything's serving us. Everything is serving us, folks. There is no turning back. We are not going back to our old ways of being, which is all conditioning.

We've all been conditioned by all the generations, the ancestors. There's so many things in the world. I look at the growth curve.

If, you know a growth curve comes along, it goes up, it goes up and there's always this slow incline and then it shoots up and we're in this, we're in this shooting up. I hope I get to live to be old. And if not, I'll be watching as a spirit. I'll be partaking. Yeah, to me it's very exciting.

And yes, the wars, the natural disasters, everything else.

But it's a time to, you know, what I hear is to look at it from the perspective that everything is of source, everything is of God, the creator, whatever word you want to use, and we are all one with it. So I see it as a matter of choice. That's where the division is.

Yes.

The choice is in. Do you want to heal and grow and evolve and move into the unknown? Because we can't know what the future holds. I know it's better.

And so the work always starts with us. If you feel overwhelmed by everything that's going on, I can't stop the war, I can't stop the political leaders. It's not true.

When you look at it from, oh, this is serving us. And I don't know what that soul's journey is. I don't know what Source had in mind there. It's okay, you can work on yourself.

Yeah.

It's each individual's responsibility or choice to be responsible for themselves, to heal and grow and evolve at this time that will change humanity because that's what ripples out.

So when there's all the things that you dislike that you think are catastrophes and getting in the way, if you can hold those things with unconditional love without knowing, without understanding the so called reason for it, but trying to move into a state of trust and finding the safety and stability within yourself.

Remember I talked about the root chakra, finding that safety and stability within yourself and know that your soul is, is having the opportunity to evolve and grow through this, it always comes back to us. And then you don't know the impact you're going to have on one other and how that energy ripples out.

So in its change is inevitable and we are in this growth curve.

Yes.

Which side do you want to be on? Are you clinging to the past, hoping that things go back to the way they were? It's. It's not. My humble opinion is that's not going to happen.

Right.

It can't. We're done with that. Humanity is growing and evolving and all our souls signed up to be alive at this time.

So you can ask yourself, what do I need to know about my own soul's purpose? And soul's purpose is not as much about career as it is your state of being.

Yes.

So. So you come on here, Kayla, you know, your podcast, and with this essence, this energy of, you know, something that's very important.

Pleasure, you know, and the highest level of pleasure, and you're in alignment with that. I want to ask you, all you listeners at home, what are you in alignment with? What are you aligning to get in alignment to it?

And when you're out of alignment, recognize that be in the present moment. What's going to get back? What's going to get back me? Get me back into alignment. So I'm in alignment with healing and empowerment.

I am 100% in alignment with change. I'm 100% in alignment with the shift. Let me flow in that.

And all those that want to have the deepest change possible, changes possible within themselves, those are the people I'm attracting. And they're looking for that next level. Yes. Because even in this lifetime, your soul isn't done.

You're going to come back or there'll be more work for you in a whole new realm. And that's. That's a different topic. But it. And it really is choice. Be in the moment. We make a thousand choices in a day.

Mm.

It's your choice in this moment. And if we. The easiest thing to do with everything that's derogatory is see it as of source. This. This was created. How is it serving me?

What is this reflecting back to me? What do I need to know about me? And then heal and empower yourself through that.

Yeah. Yeah, I love that.

I really find comfort in the idea that our souls signed up for this moment, or specifically my soul signed up for this moment because it's like, you know, before, I just kind of have this image of, like, before I was born, everything was kind of like, well, you get to choose to be alive at this time, at this time, at this time. Like, pick your. Pick what evolution you want to go through. And I find it almost like an honor to be here at this time. It's so hard.

And it doesn't mean that this work is any easier, but I think it brings a sense of responsibility and also, like, it's kind of pleasurable.

It's pleasurable to think of the fact that my healing can have a ripple effect and create a really positive change in this world and that, you know, again, like, we were meant to be here for a reason. And so if that's so kind of like you were saying about, what are you in alignment with? It's like, what are you here to do? Why.

Why would your soul have chosen this moment for you? And again, like you said, also, it's not so much about our career. We in this culture have tied our value so much to what we do for money.

And for some of us, we very much come into alignment and then want to use that as a way to help people and make money. But a lot of us have so many other gifts and things that we can give to each other into the world that has nothing to do with how we make money.

So, yeah, I think those are really important questions for people to be asking themselves right now.

Yeah. And one thing that stands out, that you said, you know, it can be really hard. And, yeah, you had all these choices, so your soul chose to come here.

What do you need to know about that? And the hard part, when it's hard, hard is often painful.

And to remember that your deepest pain can move you into the highest level of ecstasy, joy, peace. And peace is power. So you have to go through it, to move beyond it. So when it really gets hard, that's the opportunity.

And sure, I've been doing this 32 years, and I still. When an opportunity comes up, there are times it's like, can the stakes get any higher? And I. I might move into resistance. It's.

Oh, being such a human right now, how am I gonna. Give yourself this space and allow yourself to come round.

Yes.

And. And then try and see it. And you can always start again. You can always begin again and say, okay, now I'm ready to see the opportunity in this.

What in me wants to be healed? What is this reflecting back in me that wants to be healed? And you heal that, and you can move up into the heights. Yeah, yeah.

So good. Is there anything that we haven't covered that you feel really called to speak about before maybe we come to a close?

The. The one thing I want to say is, you know, to.

When we keep having the goal as pleasure in whatever form that looks like to us, if you also remember, pleasure is a form of power. You know, power is never about power over. And I want you all to remember that you are all powerful beyond what you can imagine.

So there are pleasures out there for you to experience that you can't currently imagine. And so keep going in the right direction.

Absolutely. I think one other thing, too, that I wanted to tie into this, because you had mentioned this too, of the fact that our.

Our Current society so far has been so steeped in patriarchal ways of doing things that it's so much about pushing about more production and just being in our go, go, go, do more, do more. And never in our place of rest and receiving and being in the softness, which is more of, like, the feminine energy.

And I think that is part of this healing process moving forward is that we. Again, like you said, it's not power over.

It's not that we're just switching it to where, like, women or feminine energy is running the show and we have no masculine energy. And by the way, like, energies, again, are not necessarily in what we think as, like, man and woman or male and female.

It's more of, like, the archetype of that energy. But we have to get to a place where feminine and masculine energy are in alignment with each other.

And so I think that is part of what we are moving into is this healing and reclaiming of the feminine energy in all of us, regardless of your gender, and moving from a place of, like, love and softness and grounding and, you know, being able to look at the things that we want, but then sit back and receive it and not feel like we have to keep pushing ourselves into places of burnout or like our bodies are deteriorating because we can't keep up with the demand of what society is asking us to do. So I wonder if you could speak a little bit to that, too, before we close out.

Please let me. Please let me talk for some time. This is a topic that's very dear to my heart because, like I said earlier, I do a lot of chakra readings. And I see.

I would say, overall, there's an. This is. The epidemic that we are currently facing is the lack of receptivity in humans. We are so conditioned to be expressive. Yes.

The patriarchal society, and I see that in people on the left and the right. So the left is actually receptive. The right is expressive. And. And we are so conditioned to express, express, express.

And I actually have a number of, you know, I have hundreds, if not thousands of recorded meditations, and I have a number of them on developing receptivity, because we need to develop that.

We.

We need to not just have the divine masculine, but the divine feminine within us. And I have done. I went through a period of time where I did a lot of group energy healings, and a lot of them were focused on power.

And all these women would come and they had all these views of what they would. What powerful meant to them and what it would look like. And then do the healing and empowerment.

And what most of them found that they felt very peaceful. That's what power is for women. It's this peaceful inflow, receptive energy. And that's what you're talking about. That's what we are shifting to.

And so I have a practice I would like to share, if that's okay.

Sure.

I had a client who really had a tough childhood. And her lack of attachment to the mother, she was so codependent. Love was earned that she, no matter what, always put everybody's needs before hers.

And as much as she healed a lot through that. Then one day we did a healing and I. And I just was guided. I got this download to give her this practice. And then she started.

She started leading retreats and started sharing this practice with the participants. And so it goes like this. When somebody. So this is developing receptivity and practicing it in your life.

If someone says something nice to you, if they do you a favor, if you receive kindness in any way, to really breathe it in. So you put your hand on your heart chakra and you look them in the eyes and you say, thank you. I received that.

And depending on the person, you can say, let me breathe that in, or you can say it to yourself silently and really feel that. And really feel that. And I developed this practice for myself in my second marriage when there were. I noticed that there were certain things.

I still had some old patterns that I was witnessing of not fully receiving, where I would deflect a compliment, where I would somewhat deflect kind words. You know, we all say, oh, it was nothing. Oh, not a problem.

And so I said to my husband, hang on, let me try something different, because I'm not fully receiving that. I'm not feeling the energy. And I started to do that. And so I'd look him in the eyes, thank you. I receive that. Let me breathe that in.

And then I would close my eyes and really inhale and see what the energy feels like to receive the kind words, to receive the compliment, to receive the favor, whatever it is, to really inhale it and bring it into your body, that is helping the collective. Because when you do that, and I invite you to share it with others, however it feels to you, just like my client Ginny did.

She shares this with a lot of people. I hope that's helpful.

I think that's incredibly helpful. And everyone could benefit from that. And again, it's rewiring those neuro pathways, right.

Of being able to fully receive something and not push ourselves down the way that We've been taught to for so long, but really receive the kindness and the generosity and the love from others in our lives and to be okay with that, to like, like you say, fully inhale it and embody it. So, yes, thank you so much for that. I think we are at our time. So where can people find you?

What do you want to plug about what you're up to right now and how you want people to go deeper with you if they are called to do that?

The best, the best way to find me is my website, starofdivine light.com and you can find my. You'll find a number of resources there.

It's also a great place to sign up for a chakra reading if you really want clarity on what's going on with you. That's a great place for that. There's a lot of resources. I have three books. You can find those on Amazon. I'm on Instagram and LinkedIn.

Mostly Instagram. I'm, I, I've kind of let Facebook go, but thinking of hopping back on there. It's, you know, it's.

Those neural pathways are taking time in me for the, the social media. You know, I'm back from the age of the manual typewriter.

Right.

So anyway, but if you, if you have a feeling that you're just meant to talk to me, you can just enter call with cheryl.com super easy and you'll get on my calendar. No charge for that. I think that is just a really easy thing to do. But tune in right now. How do you feel? How do you feel after this?

What's going on for you? If you just want to have a conversation, you can go on my website and book an insight session and see where that goes.

And you always get one intuitive hit from me on those sessions.

So cool. Well, thank you, Cheryl, so much for being here. I so appreciate you reaching out and wanting to be a guest on my podcast.

It was, it was just a great conversation and your energy is also beautiful to be in the presence of. So I feel honored that I was able to have this time with you.

Oh, thank you, Kay. Kayla, this has just been such an honor.

Thank you so much.

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Until next time, May you walk with softness, with love, and with pleasure.