Awaken Your True Self: Heal Your Soul and Live Authentically

We just had a delicious conversation, which I would have never said that word until I met the next guest. Intimacy expert, Alana Pratt, is a global media personality and go to authority for those that are ready to heal, heartbreak, live unapologetically, and attract a soul shaking relationship. This Ivy League grad is the author of six books, has interviewed Whoopi Goldberg, Alanis Morissette, and Nassim Haramein, and hosts the edgy podcast, intimate conversations, where listeners learn how to become the one to find the one, which awakens the one.

Her wisdom and exuberance and raw transparency inspire the deep soul work required to create a solid intimate relationship with oneself first, which naturally attracts and enhances a healthy partnership that lasts.

So get ready, for this next guest, Alana Pratt. Welcome to the Power Up Your Life podcast. I am Kelly Resendez.

And I'm Mandy McAllister.

And I'm so excited because one of my dear friends is joining us today, Alana Pratt. How are you?

Oh my god. It's a love fest. It is so good to be with you. So good to see you again, Mandy. Thank you both for having me.

Absolutely. I have just been excited for this episode for so long. So tell the listeners a little bit about your background, and journey, and especially as a business owner. You know, a lot of times we we don't really understand, like, healers and coaches or people that are that are serving or actually business owners as well.

Yes. So I would say I have, well, I I I graduated cum laude from Columbia University, but before that, I got a PhD in people pleasing. I was, like, the biggest people pleaser there was. I was there too. Really? Okay. Cool.

I had no idea that I had unresolved trauma in my body, and I was dissociated, hypervigilant, overserving, over delivering, over giving, to the part to the point of detriment. I was saving people and not putting my own oxygen mask on first because when I slowed down, I didn't like how I felt. I felt out of control. Sometimes I felt suicidal. I definitely felt terror, and that was not politically correct.

That did not look good on my resume, so I would work harder, strive harder, sleep less, work weekends. And then I would I would couch it in all this service, but I'm making a difference. I'm impacting the world. I had all my spiritual bypass language until things got really, bad, and I had to do some really deep work.

And since then, even though I've been an intimacy coach for twenty years, about five years ago, I started to do psychedelic somatic integration work and really go in and do do the humbling work. But my goodness, how freeing it's been. All those ups and downs in my in my income went away. The ups and downs with marriages and divorces and boyfriends,

that also got resolved.

Deeper friendships, reconnection with my son after all these years of a very long custody battle. Like, pretty much every area of my life, health included, well-being included, no more adrenal fatigue, everything started to calm down because I was finally in my body.

And if you asked me, was I embodied? Oh, I had all the lingo. I could cognitively analyze any situation. I could talk up one side and down the other. I'm a very intelligent woman, but that's different than being in your body.

And you know this because people entrain to you. You're the one they call at three in the morning. You're that safe parent that the kids can come to. You're that facilitator, that coach, where they tell you things they may not have told anyone. You're that safe place because your autonomic nervous system is actually at zero point. You're calm.

And this ripples out into all areas of your business. You make better decisions. You're more present with your employees, deeper, like, renewals with your clients, more solid decisions with money, you actually start feeling held by the universe. You can actually trust that you know what you know.

And so it's been a humbling journey, but a phenomenal journey, and I'm really glad to be here to share it with you. Yeah.

Holy moly. That's incredible. I love I love hearing your story and just being a part of it for so long. Yeah. You know, what would you say is the most unconventional way that you've really grown your business? Like, I I mean, I could give you a long list that we both share in common, but what what would you say is the most unconventional strategy or, you know, thing that you would coach

on? Yeah. Well, I, this is really funny. As soon as you say that, I'm thinking about cheetahs on my 40 birthday dancing on, amateur night. So it's it's, I would say my brand. It wasn't a strategy. It was, permission to be authentic, to be vulnerable, to be transparent, to be myself, to share that my s factor.

I danced s factor for, like, seven years. It was my church. It's where I went to cry. It's where I went to get out of my head and into my body. It's where I went to be with sisters.

And I remember, I think it was, like, ten years of, like, child custody court at that point. Every tweet, every Facebook post, every email, you know, I was this horrible mother. And I just was like, screw all of you. I'm gonna dance at Cheetah's. I am I am a goddess.

This body is a divine temple. Enough taking cheap shots. This is about a child.

So I danced, and it was very freeing.

So I'd say some of the unconventional coaching I give is is are you making decisions from your ego and fear, or are you making decisions from your heart and your soul's truth, your unique essence that no one has but you on this planet? That'll make you stand out from other people in your industry by just being your authentic, unapologetic, heart centered self.

Well, I I believe so much that success is an inside out job. Right? Like, that you have to know you before you can go into the world and do anything else that is big.

But, you know, what you were saying about the adrenal burnout and all all of those things, like, I I resonate with that so much, and I'm certain that so many of our listeners do too.

And, you know, I I also think that maybe if you don't know how to tap into what is the authentic me, you know, what is the, you know, what what is my first step if I am so people pleasing and so only putting the the oxygen mask on the kids and my husband and the and the, you know, what is the actionable first step to figure me out, to get into that flow that you're talking about?

Yeah. Slow the f down. Now whether that means go into nature, take don't take your cell phone, leave it in the car just for safety reasons, whether that is hire a facilitator like myself, whether that is go, on a Vipassana and go into silence, for several days, just anything you can do to get yourself out of the hamster wheel and starting to feel.

And I'm gonna tell you, if you've been avoiding your feelings and you start to feel them, the first layers aren't gonna be love and joy. The first layers are gonna be shame, insecurity, terror, hopelessness, maybe rage, maybe even rage at God. This is so unfair. I work so hard. I do the right thing, and still, this is happening with my child. This is happening with my body. This is happening with my relationship in the bedroom. Like, you're gonna meet some uncomfortable feelings.

So when you go in, have a plan. Who are you gonna call? Is it a is it a a a priest? Is it a coach? Is it is it a a best friend who always tells you the truth? Because when you first go in, it's gonna be hard, and you're just gonna wanna go right back out again. Where's my glass of wine and my social media? Right? You're gonna get right back on that hamster wheel.

You must have a structure to meet you in the darkness and not fix you because you're not broken. You just have unresolved wounds. That's it. Nobody's broken, but a lot of us have been pushing down our feelings for decades. And the idea of speaking truth, let alone feeling it, was made very wrong growing up. So there's going to need to be someone who loves you unconditionally, who doesn't fix you, who literally leans in, has your back and say, yeah. Tell me more. I'm not going anywhere. I love you, and I'm right here, and I'm not leaving.

That kind of facilitator, that's my job. That's what I do. That is the the blessing that I have with people that tell me unspeakable things that they've told nobody, and they're so ashamed of. But they're just human things. We all we've all actually done a lot of crazy things. We all feel a lot of tough feelings.

So once you slow down, feel, have that facilitator, then we start to do what's called integrating, processing. These feelings aren't meant to get rid of. We are alchemists. We're meant to turn lead into gold, pain and sorrow into presence and power. This is the process of feeling a feeling, and you can't bypass this with with, like, I call it sprinkles on top of the ice cream cone of shit. You can't just have a better attitude. You can't just, like, say 10 more affirmations because that wound is still in there. You can't run away from this. It's gonna catch up, bite your ass, and so to slow down and start to feel.

But the wonderful thing is it's called like a wave. Once you feel that feeling, your autonomic nervous system comes all the way back to zero. And at zero, you clunk in to your gut, to your sacred yoni, to your heart. You clunk in, and there's truth in there. There's knowing in there. It's different than a belief. It's knowing. And then that knowing, you learn to trust yourself. You learn to go, okay. I actually know what's right for me. It might be not right for everybody, but I know it's right for me. It's right for my heart, right for my soul, right for my business, right for my family. It's right.

And then the next step is take a take that step. Take that step in alignment with what you know. Now you do that over and over, rinse and repeat, and you will literally change the trajectory of your life. You avoid that, and it's probably gonna take a train wreck to wake you up.

Yeah. No. So great. You know, I mean, the discernment that we need to be able to separate, like, what is what is the truth of our inner knowing versus what we've been taught? And being able to really decipher, you know, the voices. Right?

What strategies do you have as somebody is really looking at at healing? Right? Because as much as we wanna be embodied and we wanna heal some of these things, there's a journey to get there. So what do you recommend when it comes to, like, sorting and qualifying a lot of these, you know, 70,000 thoughts that come at us on a regular basis? Yeah. Yeah.

There if you've never meditated, if you've never, felt a feeling all the way through to stillness, if you've never had, like, a freak out moment and you've gotten your nervous system back to zero point, You actually think your thoughts are yours. No. They're just they're from the conscious field. They're from your ego. They're often fear based. They often have a like, they need control. They come from lack. They come from looking good. They come from, worst case scenario. They're off in the future. They're off in the past. They're regrets. They're they're terror of the worst case scenario. They're that's not you. That is a out of control spinning mind.

But if you have these experiences, go into nature for a while, go into meditation for a while, feel your feelings with the facilitator. You're gonna get to what I I guess we could just call stillness, quietness. Not check out numb, but check-in calm where the thoughts go away, and it's just quiet. That's where I believe you and God live, or you and the divine live, or you and the universe, or you and your soul, whatever you like to say.

Then from that place, ask questions. But don't ask before you've cleared out your energy from everyone you've picked up on all day long. Don't try to ask a question once you've come out of an airport with tons of, you know, chaos around you. Like, get calm, get quiet, and then ask and always start the question with truth. Truth, is this path aligned with my essence and my soul? Is this path good for the the greatest good of all? Is this path correct for my my soul's evolution? Is this the path of love and truth? Start asking these kind of questions.

You're gonna maybe get a sense of lightness and expansion for yes, nauseousness and stomachache for bad. If you could be very sensorial, you might just get very, like, grunt, kind of like, uh-huh, uh-uh. It might be just very primal and pure. You might get images. You might get very bright images of things going really well or dark images and cloudiness if that's not the direction. You're gonna have to learn how you decipher truth within yourself.

But at with practice, you'll literally or your your body I don't know. Maybe you've heard about, like, muscle testing, or your body can literally become a pendulum. Maybe you've heard of pendulum swing. Yeah. But my body, if you ask me a question that's yes, I go back forward. If it's no, I go forward. And I and I'm really good at it after all these decades, but I can literally go truth. This path is aligned with my essence for the highest good of all. Like, for example, I could say being on this podcast. Well, let's say, hell yes, because I love you.

So, but there's a lot of decisions as we get busier as as business women and businessmen where we're asked to do this, show up on this, do a speech here, you know, start a course here, take a trip there. There's a lot of, wonderful opportunities that's not necessarily in line with your truth. That doesn't necessarily nourish your soul. That doesn't necessarily fortify and nurture your brand. So we need to be able to slow down even with business decisions, with personal decisions, with relationship decisions, with parenting decisions, and get right down to what is true for me.

And once you start to get the hang of this, it's easy to say, oh, thank you so much, but no thank you. I I have some other priorities right now. I appreciate the invitation. And so you learn to be able to say no with grace. And when it's a hell yes, you'll get a full body shiver, and you'd be like, yeah.

And then you start to feel you're on your path, that the universe actually has your back, that you're interacting with God, that you're not alone, that you can feel at peace in your skin and enjoy your business as a spiritual practice, not just something that pays the bills. Your business becomes your way to give your love and light to this planet.

That is in so many directions. That that is in relationship, that is in business, that is in your partnership, that is in all of the things. The Power Up Your Life podcast is powered by GoBundance Women. I could tell you stuff about it, or you could hear from some of our members. Here you go. GoBundance has connected me with an amazing group of entrepreneurial

women

that I can learn from and support and grow together. GoBundance gave me a boardroom of sisters who refused to let me settle.

You know, within the first two months of me being a member, I enrolled someone to help them with their high ticket sales. I got double back my investment within the first, you know, sixty days of being a member.

So it was it's incredible. You guys are just amazing, and there's always somebody to look up to in in in, in GoBundance, so I love being a member.

That's why you owe it to yourself to check out goabundancewomen.com. The picture you paint is incredible and one of of flow and alignment and all of the good things.

You don't get there overnight, you know? So talk to me about maybe some rituals or some recipes that you have where you, you know, in your many, many clients that you've seen go from crazy to well, feeling crazy in the head into, you know, flow. What are some rituals that help them get there?

Yeah. I love what you just said there because that's why I believe intimacy is why what my business is about. Into me, I see. Intimacy. If we go to the core and we resolve our core relationship with ourself, intimate relationship with ourself, as you said, every area of your life inherently up levels without all the the exhaustion and effort. You just go to the core. Everything gets better.

So, a ritual that I really like is is is looking at the container. What is the contain like, do I have a coach? Am I in a program? Do I have a morning routine and an evening routine? Do I have banks of the river on when I wake up and when I go to bed? Am I aware of those behaviors I do that throw throw me under the bus? Like, one glass of wine is fine, maybe two is great, but three or four and then, you know, I don't I don't do my morning practice. I wake up hungover. I'm not clear on the calls, and then I do it again the next night because I hate myself so much for the decisions I made all day long. Right? Like, just be honest and really have this structure.

We could call this our masculine protector energy from within. Imagine there is a Thor who lives inside, and he loves you so much, and he is firm, clear, loving with healthy protective boundaries. And your feminine gets to listen and surrender and trust and respect that, wow, my inner Thor has my best interest at heart. And even though I might want to have that third glass of wine or I might want to take another vacation and avoid my issues, okay. You're right. I'm gonna call my facilitator. I'm going to I'm gonna face that tough conversation. I'm gonna have that weekend with my child and create space to go deep together. I am gonna hire that trainer and start working out. I am going to get my blood work done and wonder what is going on and stop avoiding. I know my body's off. I'm afraid to discover what it is. I'm going to be brave and get my blood work done. Whatever it is, containers.

So that is within ourself. We all have masculine, feminine energies within ourself. So build that internal container. You can talk in a journal. You could put a line down the center, Thor on one side, divine goddess on the other, and have a chat with yourself.

You can hire somebody. And I don't like these, like, oh, nine weeks change your life or a three month program. No. I don't even work with a client unless it's for a year because I don't wanna give them a fish. I wanna teach them to fish, and they can relax. It's so important to have a safe place so you can feel all the feels and someone's got your back and you can let go all the way.

A lot of us are scared to let go of all the way. Let go of control, let somebody see all my wobbly parts, but it's the most freeing experience to finally not hold it all in and expose it and go, do you see me? Do you love me? Really? Well, maybe I can learn to love me too. It's very important to have pristine containers in your life.

Oh, so great. And I had the opportunity to work with Atlanta for a year before we started GoBundance Women. Oh, yes. I think a lot of a lot of what I recognized in that journey was that I I had kinda kept myself in isolation a little bit, and that's really where GoBundance Women has has helped support me there.

You know, I wanna talk a little bit about you know, there's so many different modalities. And if somebody is like, hey. I totally this resonates with me. Like, I wanna start my healing journey, or I wanna accelerate it, or I wanna, you know, really just take it to the to the highest level possible.

And you you have, been in different modalities. Talk a little bit about how some of the psychedelics are supporting this journey and what the pros, cons, who who do you really see this for?

Yeah. I love this psychedelic renaissance. Before, I think a lot of us might have used psychedelics to check out, not check-in. And so the way I've been trained is a very low dose in medicine. It's one on one. I don't I'm not a shaman. I don't facilitate group journeys. It's very much one on one blindfolded, and we stay in the body.

You know, twenty five years ago, I did Ayahuasca. I did psilocybin. I can leave my body really I was dissociated my whole life, so I could leave really easily. And there's a respite out there. There's oneness out there. It feels really great. But then you come back to your life, and you come back to your body, and you come back to your drama and your trauma and all the rest of it, and it doesn't and then you actually feel worse about yourself because you can't embody what you learned out there in here in the present moment when it really matters with the people you love.

And so this particular use that I'm trained in and I facilitate is, again, low dose medicine, one on one, and we stay in the body, and we follow the body's autonomic nervous system all the way back to zero. We a lot of people are running a million miles an hour. They're not even in their body, and they don't even know they're in their body. But on these journeys, I can help them get back in.

And the so level four trauma is you're gone. You're you've got the fakey fake face, and you're running a million miles an hour, and you'll never gonna stop until you burn out. You come back in your body on these journeys. The first is is quite hopeless. What's the point? I've tried so hard. It's life's not fair. Why would God do this to me? Like, it's a little bit, hopeless. Once we get through that and I'm right there, take me with you. I'm right here. I'll never leave you.

Level two trauma is the intense emotion that has never been politically correct to say to mom or dad growing up, to say to the ex, or to to feel publicly, and it's it could be rage. It could be terror. It could be self hatred. It could be just really, like, devastating sadness. But it's very short. It's only thirty seconds, maybe sixty seconds. This is the, you know, science of an autonomic nervous system on its way home. If you never had parents that let it be okay that you felt sad, you left your body. If you ever got really mad or really scared and that was not allowed, you left your body. And so this is I am, like, reparenting their nervous system, helping them go it's safe to be a human and feel.

Level one trauma is, oh my god. Oh my god. Relief. Did I live? Yes. You did, babe. You did great. You're so brave. I'm right here. You're amazing. And then level one or sorry, zero zero point. This is the cool part. This is, like, why I love this work. Because when we have the of the body, the unintegrated emotions, or mental, thoughts in the body integrated, it creates space. Space in the body for your soul, which is all around you to actually get in your body.

So when someone gets back to zero, they start to talk like Buddha. They have all these insights. They are completely aware of why all the things happen. They forgiveness doesn't even make sense. It's almost gratitude for the experience because now I'm I'm stronger. I'm clearer. I'm more confident. I'm more surrendered. I'm able to let go. I'm able to show up. I'm able to speak up. All of these different capacities that they wanted to have before, they now embody. And no one can take that away. No one can take that away. So that is the way I am trained, and I do psychedelic somatic integration work with my beloved clients.

Thank you, Joan. That I have taken away from this conversation, Elena, that I love the most is just the the the full life integration, that everything starts at home. And I the specific thing that I wrote down, especially for my high achieving girls out there that haven't found that alignment, is just to slow the f down. Yeah. You know? So if you feel too much chaos, you just gotta figure out what slow the f down means for you.

Kelly, what was your favorite takeaway?

Oh my goodness. So many. But I think this really just the recognition and awareness that a lot of people out there don't feel, and it can be a little scary. And that what we need to do is we need to find that container. We need to find that coach, that mentor that's really gonna be able to support us most.

So, I mean, I just adore you. I wish that we had all day to have a conversation with you. What is you know, one thing that we do at GoBundance and on the Power Up Your Life podcast is we wanna make sure that we support you. Is there a resource or a connection that would change the ballgame for you in your life or your business?

That is so kind. That is so lovely.

I this year, I choose to get my I have my deck ready for my docuseries. I choose to be able to show the world the journey of a man, single man, a single woman, and a couple over a ten to twelve month period of time going through psychedelic somatic integration work and then coming all together at the end as a at a retreat together because we all have the same heart.

We all have the same heart. So any connections regarding prod conscious producers, investors in a docuseries,

that's that's my joy. That's what I'm going towards. That's an easy one. Holy moly. I was just with Marissa Harba this weekend and a couple other people down in in Beverly Hills, so I'll make that connection for you right away.

Thank you. So and how do all of our listeners get ahold of you? If they're interested in having a conversation, I highly recommend it. Just you've you've changed my life and so many other people that I know within the GoBundance community as well.

Thank you. I have so many great memories of all of you. Thank you. My site is my name, alanapratt.com/connect, and then you can have a GoBundance scholarship and put in ready now, all in capital letters. We can put that in the show notes, and that allows you to have a a scholarship to connect with me one on one.

You register. You fill out an application. I send you a video. So by the time we get on the phone, we've got the whole foundation handled. Mhmm. We dive right in. We go to the core of what's in the way of you having the intimacy with yourself and your life that you desire.

Awesome. And remind us your podcast

that you've come. Intimate. Yeah. Season fourteen. Can you believe it? Season fourteen. Yeah. Intimate conversations

from dark night to divine light. I'd love to see you there as well. I love it. And just a warning, she has the sexiest podcast voice. I mean, your voice here on the show is great, but when you get on there, it's just like, woo. You're right. Bring that in.

Thank you. Having me. Well, thank you, I'm very superjourney, people. That's another tip. So Yes. Thank you for joining us, and we'll see you on the next episode of Power Up Your Life.

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