The healing space can get noisy. Advice, hacks, frameworks, formulas…each promising clarity, alignment, or freedom.

I’m grateful these tools exist, but the danger is getting lost in the noise and more disconnected from our own inner rhythm and guidance where we’re buying everyone else’s certainty while forgetting how to trust our body’s intuition.

There’s a quiet way we can get stuck in healing. It becomes our story, our identity, our purpose and then another moving goalpost: doing all the mental work, naming every pattern, and never quite touching the part that needs to be felt.

I’m not a huge fan of the phrase self-sabotage, it misses the deeper why behind why we cling to patterns that once kept us safe but no longer serve us.

There’s power in recognizing patterns. But the trouble starts when recognition turns into judgment and a mission to fix.

That’s how awareness becomes toxic. We chip away at our humanity in the pursuit of being “perfect,” hoping perfection will erase discomfort.

Years ago, a therapist told me, “You’re very self-aware and can name your emotions… but you’re not actually feeling them.”

I remember thinking, If I can name them, isn’t that feeling?!

Well, as you know, I wasn’t. 🥲

I had learned to intellectualize my emotions to stay safe.

If I could reason through it, then I could fix it.

But in doing so, I unknowingly omitted my body’s needs and process. It needed compassion, not correction.

Self-awareness is powerful. But when we bypass our shadows and discomfort, awareness can turn poisonous, weaponized against our own humanity. We start using language to judge ourselves, measure progress, or confirm the old story of “not enough.”

But the hard truth? You can be deeply self-aware and still not be in process.

Turns out, feeling is a different doorway.

The hamster wheel of healing

It usually starts with good intentions. We want relief, clarity, tools that help.Then protective loops kick in:

• Mental overdrive: analyzing, labeling, endlessly understanding, but never landing in the body. (Which can be amplified if you have a lot of 1st and 2nd lines in your chart, mental definition and logical circuitry.)
• Self-judgment in disguise: awareness becomes “I’m not there yet because I’m not perfect yet.” (Amplified by undefined G, Ego)
• Freeze or over-do: chasing catharsis or avoiding action, mistaking control for safety. (Undefined Root, Sacral, not trusting your timing and efforts)

You can’t think your way into healing. When we live in our heads, we lose the body’s cues like hunger, rest, timing, that subtle yes/no that guides us.

You see, the body doesn’t know the difference between a thought and a threat.

So when we get stuck in these loops & obsess over what’s wrong with us, we’re putting our bodies in a stress response.

Over time, we start believing certainty = safety, but safety actually comes from safely feeling and processing.

When we don’t process emotions, the body holds them. It waits for a signal that it’s safe to exhale. That’s how we end up running in the hamster wheel — exhausted but unable to stop.

From awareness to embodiment

That’s why I created The 64 Gates Journey. It’s not about fixing yourself or memorizing your chart.

It’s about reconnecting with the living intelligence within you, the part that’s been at your side all along but it’s intuitive voice dampened by other’s conditioning and certainty.

I believe each Gate is a doorway into your depth: the shadows, the needs, and the gifts. And we explore them through story, reflection, and somatic practice so your insights have somewhere to land.

We dive into the what, why and how.

I’m going to be frank, this work isn’t for everyone.

You have to be ready. Ready to hold your shadows, not just name them. To stay present through discomfort, to breathe through uncertainty, and to start trusting yourself, to let your new rhythms emerge from safety, not pressure.

And I’ll be right there with you — holding space, guiding you through the energetics, helping you remember what’s already true for you.

If you joined Shifting Shadows last week, you experienced this shift, a glimpse into the 64 Gates Journey.

🎥 Missed the workshop? Watch the replay here

This is the essence of this work.

The one that will help you finally get off that hamster wheel.

Not to perfect yourself, but to come home to yourself.

Not to chase alignment, but to live it through presence, safety, and trust in yourself.

If you feel pulled to the language of The 64 Gates Journey, these next five months will help you understand yourself more deeply — your patterns, coping mechanisms, energetic needs and reconnect with your body’s wisdom.

This isn’t about fixing yourself. It’s about creating coherence: where your energy, beliefs, and actions move in harmony with the life and work you’re here to create.

And while it’s a path of personal growth, it’s also a framework you can bring into your client work.

Because when you can recognize shadows, needs, and gifts in yourself, you naturally hold deeper, clearer space for others without losing yourself.

🌀 Early-bird through Nov.9th. That’s $480 off in savings! Join the 64 Gates Journey here

You don’t need to be fixed. But to be witnessed and supported in coming home to yourself — again and again.