Lorne Brown:

By listening to the Conscious Fertility Podcast, you agree to not use this podcast as medical advice to treat any medical condition in either yourself or others. Consult your own physician or healthcare provider for any medical issues that you may be having. This entire disclaimer also applies to any guest or contributors to the podcast. Welcome to Conscious Fertility, the show that listens to all of your fertility questions so that you can move from fear and suffering to peace of mind and joy. My name is Lorne Brown. I’m a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine and a clinical hypnotherapist. I’m on a mission to explore all the paths to peak fertility and joyful living. It’s time to learn how to be and receive so that you can create life on purpose.

Today on the Conscious Fertility Podcast, I have Isabel Costa. Isabel and I met many years ago now at the SGLA, the Sustainable Global Leadership Academy where she is one of their teachers. And I’ve also had her on the Conscious Talk series where we talked about the inner child. It is so important, so beautiful, and the meditation that Isabel included in that interview is a fan favorite of my patients and the people that have gotten to listen to it. So I want you all to have access to that. So check out on the Conscious Fertility Podcast, that throwback lecture that Isabel did. And Isabel not only is a beautiful soul, but she’s also a hypnotherapist and she just has lots to share. So I wanted to welcome you back, Isabel, and welcome to the Conscious Fertility Podcast. Hello.

Isabel Costa:

Thank you very much, Lorne. It’s always a pleasure to be here with you. Thank you very much for this opportunity.

Lorne Brown:

Now we’re going to talk about just so many people, and I should let you know, Isabel, that for this podcast, many people that are listening are trying to grow their families, but a large part of our audience are not. They just want peace inside you. They’re experiencing a lot of chaos and trauma and stress and anxiety, and they are being brought to work consciously to heal their hearts and minds so they can enjoy more peace in their life, more abundance in their life. And then obviously those wanting to grow their families come here as well, looking for any other tool or technique that can push them over that edge from subfertile to fertile. And I thought it’d be nice if you can give us a little bit of your background of what you have been doing and what you are doing, and then we’re going to talk about how people can find peace in some of the tools and techniques that you offer.

Isabel Costa:

Okay. So my life is a roller coaster of experiences really, because as I talked before, I was a missionary for 14 years of my life. I started when I was 19 and I traveled. I lived in several countries including America, Germany, and South Korea. So I had my first adult years living a very religious and spiritual life. And then when I stopped being a missionary, I studied neuropathy and then hypnotherapy. So it was very interesting because when I started neuropathy, I thought that everything can be healed from the physical point of view through nutrition and the right products. And then as time went by, I realized that even though I was having good nutrition and taking care of myself, it still was not enough. I had to look at something that I was missing. I had the spiritual, the religious, then I went to the physical, but there was an emotional aspect that I had to be more attentive.

And at some point I went to hypnotherapy because of a personal situation. And from the healing of that situation, then I started two years later to study hypnotherapy and practice. And with this, I realized that everything that we need to heal, it has to start within us because we are going not to just project, but even what comes to us in our lives, it’ll have a deeper effect if there are triggers that touch our inner pain. If we don’t have those pains, even those situations may arise, it’ll not affect us. So for example, I can tell you right now in my family, there is a lot going on, unfortunately not very good. My sister, who is younger than me, she’s 51 years old. She had the stroke on the 31st of October and she’s still hospitalized, but she also had for 15 years a situation of depression and treating our family.

It’s something that really we can’t have to live up to the hands of other professionals. And a lot of problems have been arising between my mother and my brother and my sister. And I am still at peace in spite of everything that is going on because I have healed, for example, my relationship with my mother, which was a very troublesome relationship for many years in my life. So even though there is all of this chaos going on there, I find my inner peace, I can continue to talk with my mother peacefully. It doesn’t bother me. There is all of this storm going on outside, but within me there is a peaceful lake. So when we heal our personal situations, our traumas, our painful memories, then we can deal with whatever is happening all around, whether it’s in our family or in our society, we can deal with those things.

Lorne Brown:

Thank you for sharing that. And sorry that you have those external situations in your family and thank you for sharing how you’re still experiencing peace. And I wanted to unpack that a bit with our listeners because Eckhart Toley the author of the Power of Now remember in one part of his book there’s a section where he says that when you’re fully present, so conscious, you can either remove yourself from a situation, you can either change or improve a situation. And thirdly, if you cannot remove yourself from the situation and if you can’t change or improve the situation, you can continue to surrender to what is to accept what is because you can be at peace in an unhappy situation. So what you were sharing is that there are things that are very intellectual and what you’re observing, you don’t like and yet you’re not triggered by it. And everybody wants to feel peace and happiness. That’s what we really all want to feel. And what I’m hearing is when you do this work and when you heal at that level that the world can look chaotic and yet you can be at peace, you’re not triggered, you’re not at the effect of it. You’re not suffering because of it.

Isabel Costa:

Yes, exactly. I can look at this situation and really be at peace. I mean, I’m going to be honest and I’ll not say that I am never irritated with something. Of course, sometimes something comes, but it doesn’t take me out of my internal peace. So for that idea, a whole process of compassion, of forgiveness, and through this we can look at others and realize that they are fighting deep inner battles that they want to hide. And then externally, it comes out all of these scales that is just the expression of the inner pain.

Lorne Brown:

And with our listeners, there are those that are suffering because of their relationship situation from their financial situation, from their health situation. And then those fertility, fertility can trigger a lot of stress and trauma. So how do we find this peace then in the midst of so much chaos in the world and sometimes as you’ve shared even around us in our families.

Isabel Costa:

So what I do is try to connect with my heart, the love in my heart is first of all towards myself and second towards the other ones. Sometimes it’s easier to feel compassion towards other people who are not our family. So we have to practice deeper within our family because this is the one that triggers us more quickly. Right.

Lorne Brown:

I’m glad you’re saying that because with the patients that I get to work with often they’ll say that my colleagues, it’s great, my friends, it’s great, but when it comes to my children or it comes to my parents, it’s not great. And those are our greatest teachers. That’s when you really know you are practiced at this conscious work that when you can spend a week with your family and not be triggered, then you’ve made it, right.

Isabel Costa:

Yes, definitely. And especially even concerning this aspect of fertility is so important to heal our pains before we have children because they are going to trigger everything that we have not solved with our parents. And if we don’t have this solved and if we are not aware of that, we are going to repeat the same patterns. Even when we say, I don’t want to be like my mother, I don’t want to be like my father. It’s just going to happen. If we don’t heal it, it’s because it’s not just being aware, it’s healing it. You may say, oh yes, I know my mother, my father is like this. I know what I need to do differently. But if you don’t have it healed, you’ll repeat it.

Lorne Brown:

I mentioned at the beginning of our interview today that we did an interview on the Conscious Talk series, which is now part of the Conscious Fertility podcast, throwback series, and you shared this idea that you don’t come into this world as a blank canvas and that we carry debt. So it’s worth repeating that it will tie into what you’re sharing then because talking as you said, it’s not enough to be aware of it. We have to heal it because when I think of you saying heal it, it’s not enough to know about it because it’s in your subconscious programming. And so that is an automatic system that is such a supercomputer so fast that you can get triggered and have these behaviors come out. And my personal experience for myself and the people I work with is even when we think we’ve hidden some of these thoughts and feelings from our children, as they get older, all of a sudden they start to act out those same behaviors which we thought we shielded them from because we didn’t want them to have what we went through as children. And yet as much as we thought we protected, they’re exhibiting these unconscious programs. And that reminds me of how you shared it, that you come in with a debt and if you don’t pay your debt, your children will have to pay your debt. And that’s why it’s so important to do your work. So your children have to do that work.

Isabel Costa:

When we are born, we already have 50% of the memories of our father and 50% of our mother. So we carry all of that that comes generations through generation. And then plus what we live in the first seven years and the first seven years is when we absorb everything that goes deep down there in the iceberg and stays there and conditions our life. So that’s why it’s so important to look at all of that and heal it. Look at our parents, especially the relationship with parents and grandparents, mostly Swiss parents. Heal it, look at them and see what they went through as a child, what my mother went through as a child, she’s repeating a pattern of lack of love because she didn’t have it when she was a child. So all of this continues to go until we heal. When we heal ourselves, we heal the past and we heal the future.

Lorne Brown:

Okay, we got to emphasize that one. Then when we heal, we heal our past and our future. Now we’re talking quantum healing where and it’s beyond space and time. Only now when you say that, that’s what you’re meaning, right? Yes.

And again, I don’t know if you have any stories. I know in my practice as people come in and do their work, I have people that come in with issues in their relationship. Sometimes fertility can really strain a relationship and I don’t see couples for conscious work. I only see one at a time. I’ll see both, but one at a time. And when they do the work and they start to heal, they see the relationship has shifted and they see those that have children, their children shift their behaviors and their relationship with their parents and other people shift because as you’ve shared, the outer world is a reflection of your inner world. And so when you heal, the outer world changes. And I believe, and I’m curious if you have stories like this as well, but I always share that when you do the conscious work, one of two things will happen.

One is your perception of the situation changes. So your reality changes because your reality is how you perceive it. So the lens of your subconscious has shifted or has changed. Or two is that the external world really changes. You know that this is different in the world. But again, you do not have to go out and change the external world. You do not have to go out and change your parents, your children, your job. When you change inside, everything else shifts. And that’s what this work is about where you’re talking about connecting or healing the heart or journey to the heart. Am I understanding that correctly?

Isabel Costa:

Yes, that’s right. Yes it is.

Lorne Brown:

And is this your experience as well then that when you work with your clients and you work with that individual, do they observe and notice or experience that there’s a shift in their relationships with their families, with their children?

Isabel Costa:

Almost immediately? I have many stories, but there is one that really touched my heart so deeply. There was a patient who had a very bad relationship with his father and this was also causing some kind of conflict with his own child. And when he came to the session, he was talking very mentally and he was saying, yes, I know my father also had a very difficult childhood, but he never really understood me or supported me. And I asked, how was your father’s childhood? And he said, well, my father lost his mother when he was four years old and his father married another woman and they put him to sleep in a garage next to the house when he was five years old by himself. And he was saying this in a cold way in a sense. And then when we were doing the hypnotherapy session, he could connect to the heart and he could imagine that father when he was a child, he could feel the pain of that father as a child by himself in the garage while his father and the stepmother and other children were in the house and he was in the garage and it is patient.

He just started to cry so much this moment, he connected his heart to his father and after that session, he healed his relationship with his father. It was so beautiful. He told me that that day he invited his father to go to his home to eat dinner with his family. And he said it was like meeting his father in a totally different way. And it’s interesting because as he was telling, it was just in his mind. And when he brought that to the heart, he could feel heart to heart the pain that was there and why his father wanted him to be someone. And he was not supporting him. He wanted to be a soccer player and his father wanted him to take a university course because his father wanted to in fact give his son more than he could have. But he just didn’t know how to give. So he was very authoritarian so he could understand his father from a totally different point of view. And their relationship became very good after that.

Lorne Brown:

We’re going to get more into this heart work. I don’t know if that’s the term you used, but you said there was the mental thought, but you brought it into the heart. And so this is not something that you can do this work of healing, of healing, healing yourself. You can’t think your way through this. This is a felt sense type of work. This is heart work.

Isabel Costa:

Yes.

Lorne Brown:

And how do you explain this then to our listeners, to the people you’ll see because the common understanding up until now has been a very, from a physics perspective, Newtonian model of the world, a very materialistic model of the world where there’s linear time and you’re talking about this shift that happens almost instantaneously and it’s something that’s happening not even in the material world yet. It’s something that’s happening in your thinking and feeling. How do you explain? And so this takes us to the quantum physics of quantum physics and quantum healing and terms we hear beyond space and time and non-local, which by the way to our listeners, if you go back to our multiple interviews of researchers and doctors that we have on, this is what they’re talking about this new and the research that they’re seeing.

So this isn’t like we’re not making up new stuff, you and I, this is stuff that’s been discussed. I’m just curious, what kind of language do you use to help people relax into this work? A lot of resistance sometimes comes into this. Do you have a way to explain why this helps or works for people?

Isabel Costa:

So all our memories, they are in our physical body as well, in our muscles, in our fascia, it’s everywhere in our organs, everything is there. So sometimes we just need a thought to go to that emotional state of something that happened when we were five years old. So in the work that I do through hypnosis, this hypnosis is more like a deep relaxation, a guided meditation because people are not hypnotized to the point that they don’t know what is going on. Sometimes people are afraid of hypnosis because they think someone is going to control my mind. I don’t know what will go on, but at least this is not the type of hypnosis that I do. And honestly, I don’t know how to hypnotize in that sense. So what I do is really guide in a deep relaxation and then through a sort of guided meditation, we can go back to that moment and protect the child and heal that story again with compassion, with forgiveness, with love, and create a new story.

And when we create new stories like we are rewriting what happened, it doesn’t mean that we forgot, but we took away the pain that was there. So we look at it in a neutral perspective and then as we create a new story, we bring love, we bring confidence, we bring trust, we bring so many things according to what is necessary, but the main point of the healing is compassion, forgiveness, and love. And it’s so beautiful. It changes everything in our lives. We just have to really trust and let ourselves go in the process. And when we do it, it’s so beautiful. This was the greatest miracle in my life when I healed my relationship with my mother. And as I look at it now, as I say, if I wouldn’t have heal that relationship, I think I would already have pick up the phone and had a very not very nice conversation with my mother because of some things that are going on, but I didn’t do it and I don’t want to do it. And I’m still at peace and understand what she’s going through at the same time.

Lorne Brown:

And so this goes back to that original question, and then I want to get in more to some of the tools and we’ll talk about the workshop you offer as well. So how do we find peace in the midst of such chaos that we see in the world and in our family. I just want you to repeat that answer. I know I’ve interrupted you many times from that first question.

Isabel Costa:

First, connecting with our hearts, understanding that everyone is fighting their inner battles, pushing ourselves also in the shoes of another one, which is the essence of empathy. But we have to go one step ahead, which is compassion. Compassion is empathy. Plus action is my desire of helping in a positive way, not taking the other person’s responsibility. This is very important. We have all this to respect the other person’s free will and responsibility, but help us if we can. So this is compassion, forgiveness, and love. And also get the wisdom of the lessons that we go through in our lives. And normally the lessons come through hardships.

So in the midst of chaos, we are involved in it. And the more we find our inner peace, the more around us will become peaceful as well. And if it doesn’t, at least we can keep some balance. And I think sometimes we don’t realize that just by keeping our inner peace is like a lighthouse in the midst of the storm. The boats need the lighthouse. And when we can manage to keep our inner balance, even if we can’t change what goes on around us, we can be that lighthouse or people who can find some support. 

Lorne Brown:

It’s True. And I like the analogy I often use, I love your lighthouse. The other one is we’re broadcasting like wifi. And so what do you want to be putting out into the ether? What do you want to be putting out into the world? Do you want to be contaminating it, toxifying it, or do you want to be detoxifying the environment? And so when you do that work, you are impacting the world. So rather than trying to change somebody else’s behavior or the event, what I’m hearing you say is we heal, we shift, and when we shift, then we kind of broadcast a different frequency vibration. And out of that beingness, it doesn’t mean you don’t take action everybody, but your action is inspired action. Because so much of our action comes out of fear and lack. So we perpetuate that fear and lack because the action is contaminated from our being in fear, in lack, feeling separated. And when we feel whole and complete, when we are at peace, then we have flown receptivity. And what many people on the podcast here have been saying is we tap into our higher self to this big C consciousness. And then that action is inspired action and it usually leads to more connectedness, more abundance, more peace. So what are some of the best ways that you like to connect with the heart and help your clients connect with the heart?

Isabel Costa:

Well ship no therapy one-to-one is really my favorite because I can see the amazing transformations. And then the other way is through the workshops.

Lorne Brown:

Can we talk about your workshops? So this is a workshop that you’ve created and the title of it, because it’s in Portuguese, right? So the English translation that you shared with me is Journey to the Heart.

Isabel Costa:

Yes, that’s right.

Lorne Brown:

So can you tell us a little bit about this workshop and why you created it and kind of how it flows? And I’m just going to plant this seed, would you ever be open to doing it in English? And maybe I could help co-facilitate that with you since it would be done in English. I can’t do it with you in Portuguese. I don’t know Portuguese.

Isabel Costa:

I would love it. It’s a really exciting idea. I would really love it and it’ll be wonderful.

Lorne Brown:

Alright, so for our listeners, check the show notes or contact me and Isabel and I after this we’ll talk about what this workshop could look like in English and when for now in English, can you tell us what this journey to the heart looks like in the Portuguese version that you currently are doing?

Isabel Costa:

This came up to me because I was looking at my life and the different journeys that I went through and I started to look at the whole life as a journey that has three main points. One is the departure point. So the departure point is me, me with everything. First of all, who I am. So D point is who I am, where am I going, what am I doing? What is my purpose? So who I am. So I carry with me all of my fears, my beliefs, my values, everything that is hidden in that iceberg. The lower part of the iceberg that is 75% that is hidden or more. And this is all that I carry with me in my life. All of that luggage and that luggage. It doesn’t mean that everything is bad, of course not. There is a lot of goodness there because sometimes even people feel like, okay, we are showing this 25% or less of the iceberg that are our behaviors, our words, how we look like, how we introduce ourselves into the world.

But actually on that bottom, in that subconscious mind, there are a lot of things, things that are sometimes our shadows, our pains, but also amazing qualities that many times we don’t realize. For example, and I would like to give this because it is really beautiful, we tend to dislike some people for many reasons, but we admire many other people. And when we admire them we feel like, oh, I would like so much to be like that person. That person has so many qualities and so on. And this is something beautiful. Whatever we can admire in others, it means that we have it in ourselves, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to recognize it. And this is so beautiful because sometimes people feel they lack value in themselves and they put everything towards admiring others, but they have so many wonderful things within them. Passions, values, love so much that they have within.

So we have our inheritance of courses, our cultures and so on. And then we set ourselves on a journey and how do I do this journey? Am I flowing with the journey or am I resisting in the journey? The more I flow, the more beautiful the journey will be. Sometimes we lose the truck of our journeys and sometimes we go through the dark night of our souls, but then we get back on the track again. And also on this trip we have relationships, we have challenges, we have to face fears. And at some point we have our final destination, which is everything that we learn from all of this through our self-awareness, our relationship with others, facing our fears, facing the difficulties, getting wisdom, accepting life. And then we realize that we are one step higher. So our arrival point is all of this that I bring with me, but this is not my final destination.

This is just the beginning of another adventure. So this is just a little bit of the expression of this journey to the heart, which is in fact our life. Because many times people are just letting life pass by and time goes so quick and we are working, having our family, our work moving around. And suddenly, something very interesting to me. Two weeks ago I was talking with a lady about groceries in front of my house and suddenly she was asking me, how long are you living in this house? And I said, oh, I’ve been on this site already for 20 years. And she said she was looking at me and she was silent for a while and she said, what have been doing with my life in 20 years? And I was in a sense shocked because it was like she had the moment of awareness, she realized 20 years went by and what did she do with her life?

And she felt like she didn’t want to express much, but her face was sort of sad. She felt I let so much time go by and I probably didn’t do something she wished for. So that’s why I feel many times we take many courses on learning techniques and so on, but I wish that this can guide us through life. It doesn’t mean that this is all people have to learn. Of course not. There is much more to learn. But this is an orientation of our lives because we grow through circles, we go through different steps and when we reach a next step, then we go to another one and another one. But actually every step that we go forward, it follows these three principles. I am the departing point, I have the trip, the journey and my destination. So I felt I did this as a missionary, then as a neuropath, then hypnotherapy, and then STLA. It’s like every journey brings me higher awareness and a higher development, but it always goes through this and I’m always looking through a higher cautiousness and a higher knowledge of myself and healing myself all the way.

Lorne Brown:

And you shared with me before we got on camera your workshop structure and what I really saw and what I like about it, and you mentioned it today as well, is this flow and receptivity, which requires us to lower resistance. So when we fight with reality or we have these limiting patterns and beliefs being activated, then that creates resistance and we don’t experience flow and receptivity. And if we don’t have flow and receptivity, we know what that feels like when we lack it. It feels like stress, it’s anxious, it’s fear. We don’t feel healthy. We could get sick fertility for our listeners who are growing their families’ fertility from a Chinese medicine understanding that requires flow and receptivity. We call it chief flow. And she stagnates. We have pain and disease manifest. So this work and my work in my practice and why I resonate with your workshop, which is why I’m like, Hey, let’s do this together.

I feel so aligned. The work I do in my conscious work is all about sharing tools to lower the resistance. So you have that flow and receptivity again. And it’s like the sun, that sunlight feels so good, it’s so warm, it’s so bright. But when there’s lots of clouds, we think about our experiences, there’s no sun, it’s cold and it’s dark, but the sun’s there. If we could just get above the clouds or if we could part the clouds. So at work, I like to share my practices. I use tools to part the clouds to help. So you can re-experience the sun. And when I looked at your workshop, a lot of it is helping transform that saboteur, all the things we sabotage ourselves to help remove those limiting patterns and beliefs and also to gain wisdom from all those past traumas. And so it looks like from your workshop is that whole idea of connecting to the heart, we’re removing those clouds, so we’re lowering the resistance then you are having flown receptivity.

What’s that flown receptivity? I now believe based on my own experience, my patient’s experience and all the researchers and authors like yourself that we’ve had on the Conscious Fertility podcast, we’re tapping into another dimension. We’re tapping into our higher self consciousness, all these words we’re looking to describe infinite intelligence, our infinite potential. And that’s when miracles can happen. And for some of the people we see wanting to grow their families, that’s what they need help with. They need a miracle. And for those that are new, this will be the first time you hear this. For those that have been listening to our episodes, you’ve heard me say many times, my agenda is when we heal ourselves, we heal the planet. And when we heal the planet, we heal. And so people who are wanting to grow their families or want a different relationship or want a career or money or health, we all want to feel healthy and happy.

And from the fertility perspective, people come wanting to grow their family. So they come at conscious fertility. And then through this work, the goal is the intention is conscious conception, which leads to conscious pregnancy, which leads to conscious parenting, which ties us all the way back to that story you shared about paying off your parent’s debt, conscious parenting. So our children can grow up feeling love, learning to connect with their heart. I think society has taught us to disconnect and feel separate. And your work and your workshop is how to feel whole and complete, connected, connected to your heart. And then we don’t feel that we need to compete anymore. We feel like we want to cooperate, we don’t need to steal or kill, we want to support and create abundance for all. We have it within ourselves. So I really like your workshop model that you had shared with me. It really seems like what it is doing? It lowers the resistance so you can experience flow and receptivity through connecting to your higher self, which allows you to connect to your higher self, to this consciousness. And then great things seem to happen. Yes. Did I summarize it well? That’s my understanding from what you shared with me. Yes.

Isabel Costa:

Perfect.

Lorne Brown:

And I love that you start off with that first section and your module one is who am I right? What am I doing here? Where am I going on that introspection? Because it’s such a powerful meditation. You already have this model set up in Portuguese, so I would love to work with you to create it for my English listeners. Sure. A lot of people would find that interesting. And Isabel, we’ve connected through our interviews here, we’ve had our WhatsApp chats and then the Sustainable Global Leadership Academy there. I would absolutely find it so much fun and joy to do this with you. I think it would be a blast.

Isabel Costa:

Yes, I really would love it. I love the idea.

Lorne Brown:

Just all that. Yeah, so that would be fantastic. So going back to just a couple of questions I wanted to check in with you is, so we talked about the best way to connect with the heart and you had shared, if I want to make sure I heard it correctly, is you use hypnosis and you emphasize that it’s more of a self-hypnosis. You’re using guided techniques to help people get into a calm state that alpha brainwave so they can get into their operating system to work with those old programs. So subconscious programs, that’s my style too. I don’t make people talk like chickens or anything like that. I’m like you, I’m not a stage performer. Hypnosis, a clinical therapist. So it’s all so you can stop it by just opening your eyes.

Isabel Costa:

Exactly

Lorne Brown:

Right. And then it sounded like also to create that compassion, you help people kind of get in the other person’s shoes to kind of understand where they’re coming from and what has happened to them to be the way they are. So you can have that compassion. And I think I heard you say you said it one way and I’ve always heard it a different way, that when you see a beautiful quality in somebody else, then you must have it in you because you couldn’t recognize it in somebody else if you didn’t have it in yourself. I always think of the other one that when you see a quality, you don’t like somebody, then you also must have that quality in you because you’re triggered by it. So it’s a projection and really what’s happening is you are denying something in yourself and it’s easier to hate it in others than in yourself. And the same tool happens when you can forgive or I like the word, accept that part of yourself you can fully accept and therefore integrate that part of yourself, then that part and somebody else will no longer trigger you.

Isabel Costa:

Yes, it’s true. I agree totally with you. It’s exactly that. The thing is that we are so used to mentioning the bad things, and very rarely we mention that we also have the good things that we admire in others because we have a lot of the culture of guilt and shame and burdens and I’m not good enough. Many of those things. Of course, normally they come from childhood and from society in some sense as well. And we are not educated to look at the good things. And this is important. I think this is very important for people to realize the goodness they have in them because it’s so easy for us to blame ourselves, but it’s so important that we start to look at the positive side as well as it is more easy for us to forgive others than to forgive ourselves. So it is so important that we start to look at the goodness that we have within, and as we look at it, we can start to raise that goodness. And I’m not talking of pride, I’m talking of really looking at the good aspects that we have and improving ourselves in that way. It takes a lot of self-knowledge. Sometimes when you ask someone to talk about yourself, say, what are your qualities? People may say for example, oh, I’m a good worker, I’m honest, and so on. And immediately they start to say bad things.

And it is so important to shift this focus as well to improve because so many times we don’t believe that we have many good things in us. And I have many patients that from their childhood, they never heard a loving word.

Lorne Brown:

I really enjoyed the other interview we had where it was a focus on the inner child work and what you’re sharing reminds me of a few patients where they’re able to forgive, accept love, other people, their behaviors or actions that were done. But when they do the inner child work, it is so foreign and uncomfortable, like you said, they’ve never heard that they’re worthy or deserving or loved and it’s really uncomfortable for them to receive when we do the inner child work. And so you’ve seen this as well, and that’s what I think you’re talking about, that we don’t do this enough.

Isabel Costa:

No. For example, if we ask people to look at the mirror, look at their face and talk to the mirror and say to themselves out loud, I love you. It sounds fake to most people. So that’s why it is important that we start to look at our good qualities as well because this can uplift us. If we just look at the bad things that we have in our traumas, our bad memories, of course we can heal them, but we also need to improve this good aspect of us and really start to love us. And I would suggest that if someone finds it difficult to look at the mirror and say, I love you because this is difficult. In fact, for most people, do it in a way that your subconscious mind will accept, which is I am learning to love you. I am starting to love myself because sometimes it sounds easy, but when we look at the mirror and we say, I love you, if we don’t feel it inside, we give up, we’ll not continue anymore. We feel it’s fake.

Lorne Brown:

I like how you soften that because it’s not the affirmation, it’s the feeling. So if you say I love you, but it creates uncomfortable negative feelings, that is the real your current truth right now. That’s what Exactly. And so I love this, these words of softening. So I am learning to love you. I’m starting to love you. What comes to me is another one. I’m willing to love you, right, to soften. And again, for our listeners, this is this idea that these are just tools and techniques, but they’re not rituals. Right, exactly. So you can start to find out what works for you. And I still believe that all these tools that we’re using Isabel are helping us find that presence to get into that present moment when we are fully present then, then we have flown receptivity and we tap into our higher self human potential, infinite intelligence. And then it’s fun.

Isabel Costa:

Yes, playful.

Lorne Brown:

It reminds me just because we were talking about, I was told I should do an inner child meditation this way or that way. It’s what works for you. When I do inner child work with my patients, and we do it either over telehealth, so over video or in person, they’ll have acupuncture while they’re on the table and I’ll do this work often, I’ll be like their surrogate. So I’ll be their older self and we’ll make eye contact and they’re their younger self and then we’ll do the work. And for the first time, one of my patients finds it a little uncomfortable for us to have eye contact and she just finds it so much more transformative for her when her eyes are closed for her to do her job. And so I was like, let’s do it that way then. Let’s see, because my intention is always this work is simple, powerful, effective, and playful.

And when I did a workshop with Bill Bankston, he distilled down his four day workshop into two things. One is no rituals, and two, keep it playful. So the no rituals idea is that eventually you know how to do your work with your operating system. Well, so figure that out. But at the beginning of anything we do. So just so it’s not like a free for all at the beginning. It’s nice if you have a teacher, you have a facilitator to follow their structure for a while and then start to play with it more. And then you become your facilitator.

Isabel Costa:

Exactly. Each person has to find their own way. This is important. Not depending on others, not depending on gurus or someone who is telling us all the time what to do. That’s why when I created this workshop also, it is my intention that people can learn the GPS for their life and they can use it as they need it, not depending on me, but learning. What can I use in this situation? Maybe I can use compassion, I can use forgiveness, I can use gratitude. And gratitude is really amazing. So they can learn, they can create their own GPS in life and not depending on anyone. So once you have the tools, then you use it. You don’t need anyone. This doesn’t mean that you stop your learning process because we are always learning. And it’s also good to get in touch with new things. Sometimes they’re not new, they’re just transformed into a different expression, but it is an expression that is more adequate to our times. And people can really grow without needing that. Someone is always showing the way because whenever we are showing the way, in fact at some point we are always showing our way.

Lorne Brown:

Yeah, it’s nice to be able to do your own work. And I always love to have a facilitator at times as well, the way I look at it this way. So again, no rituals and everything in the spiritual work almost seems paradoxical at times. So we’re saying you’re your own healer, your own guide. And then I’m also saying it’s nice to have a facilitator at times. And I like it because the analogy I use is when you have a trainer, you go to a gym. If I go to the gym on my own and I’m tired, I will say, oh, I’ll work harder next time and I won’t push myself or just won’t get my heart rate as high, working a little short. It’s uncomfortable today. But when I go with a trainer, they make me do the full hour and they go, can you go a little harder?

They push me. And so the same thing when I have somebody facilitate my inner work, just like when I do for somebody else. Sometimes when we’re about to have a big transformation, it can feel uncomfortable and then we stop ourselves. So that’s where the facilitator can help. At the beginning it’s just nice to have the facilitator, like you start with a trainer, you go once or twice a week and then eventually you don’t need them every workout. But once in a while it’s nice to have that person push you. And so the same thing, find somebody that you can work with. And then every once in a while it’s nice to have somebody facilitate some of those bigger stories that we believe in so we can transform them. So I love that.

Isabel Costa:

And also with different techniques and different persons because they can show us different aspects of ourselves and take us out of the comfort zone, like you say in the practice, in the exercise is really like that. I understand you perfectly because it happens the same with me in my workout.

Lorne Brown:

And I think everything comes for me. My interpretation at this point is that I think all these tools and techniques that everybody’s teaching, that you’re teaching, I’m teaching that I read and the workshops I attend, I see it that we’re lowering the resistance and this allows flowing receptivity to happen and we’re connecting to our higher self. And then this is on a quantum level versus a materialistic level and just lots of amazing things can happen there. So in closing, I will let everybody know that in the show notes, I’ll put Isabel’s website again, and if you speak Portuguese, you can check out her website for her workshops and when she offers them

Isabel Costa:

In English as well

Lorne Brown:

You can go to her website, whether you speak English or Portuguese is what I’m hearing. So there’s lots of information for you. And if you’re interested in this workshop that she offers, Journey to the Heart, which currently at the time of this recording is in Portuguese, so you can look for more information on that. And let’s see if we manifest a co-facilitated workshop journey to the heart, you and I, Isabel, that will be done for those that want it in English. Again, I want to thank you for making time to sit with me today and talk about how we can find peace in the midst of so much chaos, which I understand is a journey to the heart, which can be a beautiful journey.

Isabel Costa:

Yes, it is a beautiful journey. A journey of gratitude and love.

Lorne Brown:

Gratitude and love. So thank you Isabel. Are there any closing thoughts that you wanted to share with the group before we close?

Isabel Costa:

Maybe an image. I think it would be interesting when you go through difficulties, whatever the difficulties are, take some moments in silence and imagine the bottom of a lake. It is peaceful and sometimes just brings in this image of the waters, of the bottom of the lake that continue to be peaceful. Even though on the surface the water may run or a river, the water may run quicker, goes around the rocks and so on. But deep down it is peaceful and sometimes just bringing this image into our mind, it helps us to calm down. For me, this kind of imagery works, it helps me a lot, maybe not with everyone because it depends a lot on our imagination. For other people it can put your right hand in the heart and listen to the beating of the heart and bring some moments of gratitude. Whatever you feel grateful for, bring that energy of gratitude.

And this also helps in the midst of chaos because it shifts our energy. So whatever it works, either bring an image of peace by the deep water or bring the hand to the heart and recall some moments that you had peace, that you had love, that you had compassion or just be grateful for because even in the midst of war, we can always find something to be grateful for. And when I’m in war, this is a very white meaning that what I intend, it’s not physical war, but sometimes is emotional war, mental war, relationships, whatever conflict, conflict, whatever conflict, bring your right hand to the heart and recall what do you need to be grateful for in your life?

Lorne Brown:

Because of gratitude, the research has shown us that it can rewire the brain. So this is impactful and important and it puts us in a receptive mode. And I have shared that lowering the resistance and flow and receptivity, I think is what brings people that sensation of joy and happiness. And so gratitude brings us to that receptivity, which people are looking for. They want to receive, they want the baby, they want the wealth, they want the love, they want the health. So getting the receptive mode, gratitude is simple, but yet powerful and effective. Thank you for sharing that image. And it just reminds me that we have another podcast with Isabella that we’ve added to the Conscious Fertility podcast and the original title. I don’t know what we titled it now, but the original title was Transforming Suffering into Peace. And in it she has a beautiful inner child meditation. So I invite you when you’re in a safe place so you’re not driving that, you could listen to that meditation because it’s a guided meditation for inner child work, which will help support that transforming suffering into peace.

Isabel Costa:

Can I just say something else? Because sometimes images, simple things of life help us to connect more easily. So I have a cup of water and gratitude. It can give me this example of the cup of water. I can look at my cup as being half empty or half full. So if my cup is half full, I can find more peace, more joy because my cup is still half full. If I look at it as half empty, I am entering into the energy of lacking something of absence. So remember, no matter what, remember the cup is still half full.

Lorne Brown:

Thank you. So that’s that whole idea of perception and looking for what you can be grateful for because it’s a great way to rewire the brain and help us get into a receptive mode. And I shared earlier, you can’t think your way through this. So as you’re listening, hopefully this adds some inspiration. However, it is the incorporating and practicing these tools, it’s the process work where the healing happens, the transformation happens. You can read all the self-help books in the world. That was me many years ago, and you can talk the talk, but you still struggle and suffer deeply inside. It’s not until you actually implement it. So the value is not in the knowledge, the value is in the application of the knowledge. So I do hope people will check out Isabel’s website and check out our other interviews as well and follow along in that inner child meditation. I think you’ll find it a powerful one to listen to. Isabel, thank you very much.

Isabel Costa:

Thank you very much, Lorne. It’s always wonderful to be with you. Thank you.

Speaker:

If you’re looking for support to grow your family, contact Acubalance Wellness Center at Acubalance. They help you reach your peak fertility potential through their integrative approach using low level laser therapy, fertility, acupuncture, and naturopathic medicine. Download the Acubalance Fertility Diet and Dr. Brown’s video for mastering manifestation and clearing subconscious blocks. Go to acubalance.ca. That’s a-c-u balance.ca.

Lorne Brown:

Thank you so much for tuning into another episode of Conscious Fertility, the show that helps you receive life on purpose. Please take a moment to subscribe to the show and join the community of women and men on their path to peak fertility and choosing to live consciously on purpose. I would love to continue this conversation with you, so please direct message me on Instagram at Lorne Brown official. That’s Instagram, Lorne Brown official, or you can visit my websites Lorne brown.com and Acubalance.ca. Until the next episode, stay curious and for a few moments, bring your awareness to your heart center and breathe.