Ep #135: Understanding Your BS (Belief Systems) with Chanci Dawn

Welcome to More Than Mindset, the only podcast that bridges the gap between spirituality and success. Go beyond the mind with clarity and confidence coach Kim Guillory and learn how to integrate your passion to serve with your skills and experience to create a business you love. Let’s get started.

Hey there and welcome back to the More Than Mindset show. I am doing something a little different this week. So we just finished Belief Boot Camp, which was a five-day virtual retreat experience and it was amazing.

We went through all of the reasons that you believe what you believe right now, where did that come from? Where do beliefs come from? How are they solidified? So how do we identify them so that we can therefore change them?

So if we can understand, we can create transformation. And the Belief Boot Camp went through all of the reasons, taking them down. Like we went scuba diving into understanding where this comes from. And what I want to do today on the podcast is share a previous interview that I did with Chanci.

She’s one of my clients who works with body image and self-love, and really creating freedom from food and dieting, and self-judgment and all of those things. And I thought it was a perfect time to share that interview.

We did this in a Believing Better Series that I did a while back that I did with clients who were in Self Healing Masters who had come through coaching training just to share their experience on how important their beliefs are and even the possibility that they can be changed.

So that’s what I’m going to share with you today. I hope you enjoy. Chanci does and amazing job, I’m really excited too, actually it was fun for me to revisit this conversation. So, that’s what I got.

Kim: Hi, and welcome back to the Believing Better series. My guest today is Chanci. Chanci is an integrative life coach, and she helps women with emotional overeating and really getting back in relationship with themselves, or for some actually creating relationship with themselves that they’ve never had before, right?

Chanci: Yes. Yes, creating that relationship with their bodies as well, you know, understanding that.

Kim: We’re going talk about our history together, and then we’re going to move into the good stuff that she does, and the yumminess that she and I are creating even together as we’re, I’ll say synthesizing new embodiment I feel like in active time, in real time. And I love partnering with you on it because I feel like it’s so – Gosh, the relationship is so delicious. It’s so rich. And I’m seeing such a need for it, but I’m also being drawn to it because I’m feeling the need within myself.

Chanci: Yeah, isn’t that always the way?

Kim: So we’re going to talk about when – So you were already a coach before coming. Before you and I started working together, we actually met in a mastermind. And then we started working together afterwards.

And one of the things I remember you telling me is, “I was listening to you talk in the mastermind, and I was looking around the room and I could see that not everyone was understanding.” And you said, “And I wasn’t quite understanding but I wanted to know.” Right? Let’s just talk about that.

Chanci: Yeah, totally. Yes, I remember sitting there and everyone was defining their niches. And we were talking about what we do. And you were talking about it and people’s eyes were just like, were just a little confused. And I was like, “There’s something here. I know there is. Energetically I’m so drawn to this woman and I need to figure this out. I need to know what she’s talking about.”

So, yes, we became friends. And I remember that one time we roomed together and you were explaining things to me again. And I’m like, “Still don’t get it. I still don’t quite get it.” But again, I knew. And it was about six months later I saw some things you were posting. And my spirit, my heart, I was just ready to receive what you were giving.

And it was like, all of a sudden, it was something just clicked. And I’m like, “I need to work with her. I need to work with her for myself and I need to work with her for my clients.” I knew it was next level of where I wanted to go in my own life, just like you were talking about few minutes ago, and then as well with my clients. And I got on the phone and I’m like, “I understand what you’re talking about, let’s do this.”

Kim: You did, you said exactly that. You said, “I get it. I get it. I didn’t get it, but I –” It’s like and the language even changed. You were like, “I’m speaking in different languages.” I got the goosebumps just going through my body because it’s so fascinating how we can feel something, and we can know something, and then intellectually have no flippin idea what the heck that is, but yet be so drawn to it, right?

And I feel like that’s a lot of what our clients do with this because we’re teaching embodiment. And embodiment is something you have to experience to know what it is. And so we’re having to use this bridge language in order to explain it. And I think that’s really why I wanted to talk on that. Because I was so sure, everybody wants this, everybody needs this. And yet I’m sitting in a room like, “Why am I saying this 100 times in 100 different ways and it’s still not being received?”

And when you said, “I think I got it.” You were like, “I didn’t know what it was, but I knew I wanted it. And then I received it.” And that just gave – I just felt the chills run through.

And I’m curious when you first started, because you came in the middle, kind of like in this relationship change up. Relationship with yourself, a five-year long-term relationship that you had been dabbling in and out of trying to figure out even before. And you so courageously said yes to whatever it looked like. And it’s so admirable when someone says, “Yes, I’m all in and I have no idea.” And tell me or tell the audience how that felt that not knowing and saying yes.

Chanci: It’s so beautiful, actually, because it felt like I want to feel all the time now. It felt brave. It felt scary. It felt next level. Where I’m like this is truly following my heart. This is actually following my essence, which I’m yet to really move forward and discover while working together.

So it was like, the beginning, it was like a taste of what was to come. Does that make sense, Kim?

Kim: Mm-hmm.

Chanci: Yeah, and then through working together, so much of my work now and how I’m living my life, like the big BS stuff that I had to change, all my belief systems, it all came together with that. So much trust in life, so much willingness to be surprised instead of trying to control every little aspect and think that we had two paths, the right one or the wrong one. And I was always so intense about that.

So even going in and saying yes, and starting to coach together and starting to understand the Punch Line Approach, and understand bringing yourself back home to yourself, like even that was – I don’t know, it’s just completely blew my mind. It’s changed everything for me. And being willing to be surprised in that.

Kim: Yeah. I’m curious if you returned to something that you had engaged with at a younger age, if you returned to something or if you actually came to it for the first time whenever you got there. Because I remember it for myself, like, “I’m home.” But I had never been there before.

Chanci: Right. I was always searching. I mean, I grew up in a very religious home. Full of fear, full of like, the church that I went to it was if you stepped out a line you were going to hell instantly. I lived in just heaviness all of the time.

And then for me, what really happened is I went away to Bible college after school to be a missionary. And during that time, my best guy friend who I really trusted, he date raped me. And at that moment my entire world and my entire belief system, and my entire trust in God, in the universe, in life just came crumbling down.

And I went to my pastor at the time and asked him for counsel. And he had me pray for forgiveness for putting this man in this tempting position. And at the time, like now I look at it and I’m like, “Wow, that is so sad.” And I actually have total forgiveness for him, I’m not holding on to that at all. But what I see is he was just buying, again, into this belief system that’s so messed up.

And for me it was, again, right way or wrong way. I went off the path, I snuck out with this boy after hours and look what happened, I did the wrong thing. So that was when I was 18 and I’m 42 now. So for like 20 years, over 20 years now I have felt that, it’s like this intense fear that if I step out of line, something terrible is going to happen.

And I can’t trust myself, I can’t trust my body, I can’t trust anything. And I gained a lot of weight out of this anxiety and fear and not trusting my body. Always feeling like, yeah, it’s like walking on the eggshells of life. That’s how I lived.

Kim: Yeah, and then the whole perception of relationship, right? So how do you think of sensuality and sexuality and partnership and intimacy, all of this stuff from that kind of perspective? And that is so prominent still today. I still think that there’s a lot of that happening. I hope we’re on the brink of opening up something new and really helping people come back to their bodies.

But, Chanci, how was it like even trying to come back to your body when it wasn’t safe in your body?

Chanci: It was impossible. I didn’t know how. I did not know how, even talking about that – I studied as a nutritionist around the same time I studied as a life coach trying to figure all of this out.

But for me with my body, like even just with food. The reason I love working with women who find themselves in the emotional eating to distract or just to buffer, to feel better. And even that, I would read books and I would even tell people, “Trust your body.” And then I’m like, I am so disconnected from her. I am so – 

It’s like I had this relationship with my body, I still – It’s interesting, I love to think of her as a she or as a her. She’s like my animal who I absolutely adore and I just get to ride life with now. I think it’s so fun, I love that.

But before it’s like she was this animal that needed to be caged. She was so wild and what she was capable of, and even tempting a man to do something like that, right? And all of this, I’m like, “She is not okay.” I did not feel at home.

So this work that we’ve done together, this integrative approach of bringing me truly – The emotional processing of it and actually going into and feeling my feelings for the first time. I did not realize that that’s what I was doing. I was constantly trying to think my way to feel better. It’s like I was afraid because I couldn’t trust myself in my body.

So then the work we did, where I could go in and feel safe. And actually, it was a place to come home to, to be able to rest. That’s when throughout the six months I truly started to embody and start to like embody sensuality, and embody purity thinking like, “No, I’m not damaged, I’m not tarnished. I am a beautiful human being like all the rest of us who are having a lot of human experiences.”

And when we can approach it from that place of like, nothing’s gone wrong, I’m willing to be surprised. And with curiosity instead of fear, I feel it in my body right now. I’m talking about, I’m like, “Oh, this is so good.”

Kim: I’ve got chills. Because we are sexual beings. We are soul beings. We are emotional beings. And those three things have been shut off from us, we have not had access to, like we’ve been taught to fear those emotions, to turn them off, to shut them away. We’ve been taught that sexuality is wrong, that sensuality and pleasure is wrong and bad. And so we’ve put that away.

And we just became these intellectual mental beings. And then the coaching all on mindset, all on mindset, all on mindset is just like shutting all that stuff off. And why do you think that way? And change your thoughts and move on. And again, back in the doing, doing, doing.

Chanci: Yeah.

Kim: The beauty, and the joy, and the magic is in the being.

Chanci: Yeah.

Kim: It’s not in the doing, it’s in the being.

Chanci:  Exactly. Exactly, Kim. Yes, it’s the best. And then when we can move forward in just feeling the sense of like awe in being so human, I love that. It’s like the innocence of humanity and being able to – I think about it, you and I talk a lot about just like the playfulness of it. Like we’re on here for pleasure and to play and to giggle. I love that part of it too, right?

We’re here just to feel it all, including the hard stuff. Including that because there’s so much beauty in that as well. And we can bring it all in and just have this full human experience with tons of compassion for ourselves as humans. I think that is divine. That is when we really reach that, when we really feel that.

Kim: And another thing is not feeling like when you’re in the mud and the muck of it, like that’s the bad thing that has to pass in order to attain the good thing.

Chanci: Yes.

Kim: I’m like, no, it’s actually part of the thing.

Chanci: It Is.

Kim: It is the thing, there’s no separation between the two. It’s all in the experience. When I first started this, this Believing Better Series just kind of came to fruition kind of like all at the end of this year. But a year or two ago I wanted to do a series that was demystifying humanity.

In other words, all of the things that the human is that we’ve been told not to be, I wanted to look under the rug and bring it all forward. Because it’s like divorce is wrong, and suicide is wrong, and everything is so wrong. It’s like it actually just is, it’s a decision that people make. It’s a decision that humans make. It’s an experience that we have.

If we drop the judgment and comparison, then what? Well, I don’t know, that’s what everybody told me, that’s surely the truth. That’s how it’s supposed to be. And we’re like, can we be sure about that? Let’s question it.

And even looking back, and I find a lot of us do have a spiritual background, like we do have this connection from a young age. Not coincidentally that a lot of us have the same designs in common and really what we’re learning about our self and our actual soul imprint and finding each other as we are bringing this movement, this mind-body movement forward, in bringing it out that we’ve all found each other.

Chanci: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Well, I was drawn to you instantly. I remember with the mastermind we had the videos of introduction we had to do and I was like, “I want to know her.”

Kim: That was a good one, right?

Chanci: Yeah, totally it was. Yeah, I was like, “This is amazing. It’s amazing.” And then working with you, yeah. And it’s really beautiful because what I’ve always wanted to do is help women stop emotional eating, help women love their bodies.

Kim: It’s so hard, why is it so hard?

Chanci: It’s so hard because of all the BS that we’ve been talking about. Pleasure is not okay, trusting yourself is not okay, all of these things. And it’s so hard because, yeah, we’re living in a society where they teach you to disconnect even further from her, from your body.

So the work that you and I have done, I lost 20 pounds. I don’t know if I told you that. I lost 20 pounds since you and I have been working together. And it was because I started to, again, feel safe in my body, trust her, more pleasure, forgiveness, like ease.

My nervous system calmed down and all of a sudden, I just felt better in my body. I connected with her, I started eating foods that she desired for pleasure and for nourishment. And deprivation just went completely out the door. It all came about more pleasure, more of it all.

And my body completely responded even though I’ve been a nutritionist for 12 years, life coach, done so much. I, for the last five years, completely at war with her. And now, coming home, and this is why I so badly want this for other women, to wake up and feel sensual.

To wake up and be like, “How am I going to feel the best ever today? How am I going to feel pleasure today? How am I going to take care of myself and my beautiful body? What do I want to eat for breakfast? What will be the most pleasurable?”

And when we can move forward in life that way, truly embodied, I think that’s ultimate freedom. That is the ultimate.

Kim: Yeah, I’m thinking of what we do now with pleasure is we hide it, right? Like we’re thinking like sexual and overeating and all of those things. We’re so shamed about it that we hide.

I have a friend that hides in the bathroom to eat ice cream so her kids won’t see her. But I’m like, you literally hide the good stuff, hide the pleasurable stuff as if it’s bad, it’s wrong. And so it’s almost like we’re given a permission slip, a permission slip to experience.

Chanci: Exactly. One of my clients said that. She actually she wrote me a testimonial and she goes, “I feel like I’m on the no deprivation, no restriction plan, and I’ve lost 14 kilos.” 14 pounds, whatever that is in kilos, she said. She’s from Australia, I don’t know. We’re Canadian, you’re American, I have no idea what anyone’s measurements are. But whatever, she lost weight.

And I’m like, “Heck yeah.” When you give yourself permission, then there’s no resistance. And then with that permission, you can have like – One of my favorite things is getting the very best chocolate and just enjoying it is so good.

Like one truly satisfies when you dive into it instead of like, “Oh, I’m having this, but I’m feeling guilty in this sinful indulgence or this guilty pleasure.” Take all that crap, all of that labeling away from it and just get into, “No, this is pleasure.” It’s not guilty pleasure. It’s not a sinful indulgence, right?

Even if you look at the language we use around that, no wonder women are walking around feeling completely disconnected from their bodies, addicted to sugar, addicted to diets, addicted to self-hatred. We become addicted to that kind of stuff. And we think that’s the only way, and it’s so not. And yes, it’s like, I want to unlock this key for everyone.

My dog is drinking heavily back there. I’m not sure if you can hear it, but she’s going to town. She’s really enjoying it.

Kim: I’m thinking of, you know, hey, enjoy the cheesecake or enjoy the whatever. And the way I experience the word enjoy means to be actually in the joy. That’s what enjoy means, be in the joy of, which is a massive amount of happiness and pleasure.

So when we say in, “Why don’t you just enjoy it. Life’s short, just go and enjoy it.” But then in the back of the mind, it’s like we shouldn’t be. And so we’re not actually present with it and we’re not actually in the joy of it because we’re in the BS. We’re in that belief system that we shouldn’t be. And I’m like, “Listen, dude, if you’re going to do it, do it all the way.”

Chanci: Man, have you ever told me that in the last six months.

Kim: It’s like I’m actually not the priest, and you do not need to come with confessions, and you don’t even need to do that for yourself. You just need to be in the full experience of what you’re in.

Chanci: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that’s the difference, when you go and you’re like, “You know what? I want cheese cake. Do I really want cheese cake? I’m having a craving for this.” The first step is to go into your body. What is your body actually needing? Is it cheesecake? Is there something else going on?

Is there a different pleasure that your body is longing for that you’re not giving it, so then instantly your brains like “Ooh, fat and sugar. All the things.” And then if you decide you’re like, “Actually, I just really do want this cheesecake.”

Like last night I had the most amazing lemon cheesecake with this berry coulis, it was so good, so good. And then I ordered the chocolate mousse after because I really, really wanted the chocolate mousse. It wasn’t a craving. It wasn’t this urge. It was total desire. I had two bites of the chocolate mousse, I felt completely satisfied and I didn’t eat the rest. But it’s like that permission.

So I say if you are having a craving, check in. Your cravings tell you what your body is really looking for, what your brain really is desiring, what’s actually going on. Full body scan, right? Full body. And then if you really want the cheesecake, source out the best cheesecake. Do not sell yourself short on this because you are worth the best. Get that and then focus. Like you said, be in the joy of eating it. Every single bite, savor.

And if you get to a point where you’re like, “This actually isn’t enjoyable to me anymore. This isn’t actually joy food.” Put it in the fridge and have it later. All of that is permission. Your brain doesn’t go, “Ah, but this, but that, but deprivation. But this is going to be my last cheesecake ever because tomorrow I’m going to start again.” Like getting rid of all that crap.

And then what you find, you enjoy more, you end up the eating less because you’re not depriving yourself. You’re not saying, “No, I’m not going to have that,” so then you eat like 20,000 things of whatever your brain at the time or your diet says is healthy trying to make up for that.

Kim: Bags of popcorn because there’s no points or it’s less points. Or like, “How much of that can I have?” And what we’re looking for is satisfaction.

Chanci: What we’re looking for is satisfaction. Yeah, satisfied every single day. And then food is just another part of it. It’s not the main way you’re getting pleasure. That’s the big thing a lot of people think, right? I’m not saying just with abandon, free abandon go eat everything. Because that’s not pleasure. That truly isn’t.

So that’s where the coaching comes in. Teaching women how to know themselves again. Developing that relationship with their bodies. Embodying it, knowing exactly what they feel, what they really need. Bringing them home to themselves so they actually can go, “What are you needing body? No, it’s actually not those cookies, or is it?”

But unless you teach someone that, we don’t know how to do that, because we’re disconnected and we’ve been taught to be, we’re programmed.

Kim: Yeah, and that takes me to my next question. So we’re saying this and it sounds so easy, but you even said it yourself like, “But I didn’t know how. I couldn’t get in there.” So it’s kind of like when we have these positive memes all over Facebook but we don’t really know what they mean. We haven’t embodied or we haven’t integrated in our life, we just intellectually know it. And we see so much of this in the mindset world.

It’s like all intellect it’s like, it’s like being the Christian who just mouths off the scriptures and then has no relationship with Jesus or with God or with Christ at all.

Chanci: Exactly.

Kim: They have memorized intellectually all of the Scriptures, all of the kneeling, the bowing, the praying, all of that beautiful stuff. And then they don’t have a rich relationship. It’s kind of like that.

So to the person who’s listening, who they’re like, “Yeah, I mean, I want to quit eating trash food. I want to quit bingeing, I want to quit going to the store and buying a whole bunch of junk.” Because they didn’t recognize before that what they were looking for was satisfaction. Where would you tell them to start?

Because they don’t know they’re lacking access until you get it, right? You know now, because you’ve granted it. When you came to me and you said, “I want to do what you’re doing. I want to take my clients deeper. I want them to bring the deep stuff.” You were in for it, we some death doulas, that’s why we’re in black, right? It’s like bring me the deep, dark clients. And I said, “I can do it Chanci, but we’ll have to take you through the process. It’s an experiential process.”

And that’s not easy for the intellect to understand. But I’m going to ask that you maybe share it in your own words what that means or how do you see that now?

Chanci: I really think, going back to the Punch Line Approach, Kim, it comes back to that. Presence, actually teaching people how to be present, how to tune in.

The very first thing I love to do when I’m working with a client is like, “We are now going to refer to your body as your animal, we’re going to refer to her as a she or a her. And you’re going to create a relationship with her through presence and awareness.”

And then I’ll take them into their body, teach them how actually how to feel their emotions. Teach them at that moment, when they’re having a craving to stop and go in. And to actually help them feel safe to do so. That’s the big thing, right? Because we have this brain who’s on high alert. And as soon as you say no, she’s like, “Shit, you’re going to be depriving me again. Here’s the next diet for two weeks that we’re going to fall off again.”

Kim: You’re going to throw it all away, you better really get the best out of it.

Chanci: Yeah, yeah. So it’s like, okay, building that relationship, teaching your body that she can trust you and you can trust her, and then that awareness. And then from there, we start navigating new behaviors, we start navigating new belief systems, we start showing her that pleasure is safe, that she is safe, she is loved.

And it really is, it’s like this beautiful – It’s almost like marriage coaching, right? It’s relationship coaching, but you’re coaching that relationship with your own self, with your own body.

Kim: And, I mean, whoever told us that a relationship with ourselves was important?

Chanci: Right? Yeah. Or we get a lot relationship with your brain, right? Like, oh, the thought just like the mind management, I’m totally about that, obviously. But we miss that really important step, that we are here in a human body to have a relationship with this body.

What more of an important relationship could you have? I don’t know if I said that sentence, right, but I think you know what I mean, right? Like that one with yourself who’s carrying you through this one precious life that we have as we know it, right?

So I love it when I have a client who writes me and she’s like, “Oh, I bought a matching bra and underwear set today.” And she’s so excited and we start celebrating her. And that, again, brings more awareness and then more relaxation and then she’s able to trust yourself more.

When this happens, if you’re wanting weight loss, if you’re wanting whatever with your body, you start to get those results. It just starts to happen because you’re taking care of her the way she’s meant to. It’s not like you against her.

Kim:  That’s what I was thinking. I was just about to ask is the dieting industry, and especially where we came from, the really like ignoring, turning off, go somewhere else, go down in the cellar, it’s like completely shut off your body’s language. Don’t worry about that, let it go.

It’s like just completely ignore it and come to this, it’s almost like this bypassing with food kind of thing. Or about our body, like your body doesn’t know what it wants, and you can’t listen to it, and you can’t trust it. And so you just need to turn it off and just white knuckle and go do this. But it sounds like it’s anti-white knuckling.

Chanci: It totally is.

Kim: But there’s people who are like really overcoming the PTSD of the intermittent fasting, and the longer, and then go even longer, and then go even longer. And like completely turning off nutrition and pleasure and enjoyment of food that nourishes us. It’s sacred.

Chanci: It is. Its soul food as well. And I think it’s so important that we understand that. It’s so important that we understand that food is actually here is a gift to us. And it’s precious. And when we approach it as such, we’re not going to go and eat out the entire buffet.

When you can switch it to go, “Yes, I’m going to connect in more.” Instead of disconnect, instead of just writing my protocol on Monday for the entire week. And if on Friday I don’t want what I wrote down, too bad you’re going to have it because this is what you did. And you’re going to stay true to yourself. That’s actually not staying true to yourself.

Kim: No, because you’re not answering yourself, you’re not responding to yourself. The way I saw it is it’s like we can’t trust ourselves to not overdo so we just turn it completely off. So it’s like you can’t trust yourself not to have it, not to eat it, not to do it. And so you train yourself to it not being important at all.

But then you’re also saying your needs are not important, your desires are not unimportant. And it’s all because you can’t really trust yourself.  So it’s the all or none, black and white approach, rather than how about we build the trusting relationship?

Chanci: Yeah, and trusting yourself is not going, “Okay, I have a craving so I’m going to have it.” Trusting yourself is that you’re going to go in and figure out why. What is actually going on for you?

Trusting yourself is that you have your own back. It’s not saying, “Okay, if I wrote down that I’m going to have a salad with salmon on Friday, and then all of a sudden I want something else, to just go, “Oh, yeah, I want a Kit Kat chocolate bar, because that’s what my body’s asking for.”

When you’re trusting yourself, that’s not what your body asks for. It’s trusting and not fearing also that primitive brain part of us thinking that she’s unruly and out of control, right? No, this part of us is so ancient, she truly does know what we need.

Kim: Simultaneously building the relationship with yourself, with food, with sacred soul essence, with satisfaction, and that permission to trust.

Chanci: Yeah, permission to trust.

Kim: Permission to explore and not beat your own ass.

Chanci: Yeah. And not think that something is wrong or broken with you. Because it never was. Nothing has ever been wrong. Nothing has ever been broken. It’s the system we’re in that is wrong and broken. So when we learn how to go break our brains free from the BS that we’re taught, to be able to think differently, to be able to feel differently, to be able to integrate all of that and then approach life that way, it’s not just food, Kim, it’s everything shifts. Everything shifts.

Kim: Even in dressing ourself, we’re focused – Just like with food, right? It’s like the low cal, the dense, the thing that we’re not going to put the weight on, we look in the closet and we’re looking for the thing that’s going to hide us rather than the thing that’s going to celebrate us.

It’s such a different mindset shift. Like, “Oh, let’s buy this because you won’t be able to see this part of me.”

Chanci: Yeah, let’s suck this in or should have this longer, whatever. Yes, no, it’s about being seen.

Kim: Cover that part of our body up, hide it. The same way we were with the appetite and with the desire and all the way across.

Chanci: Exactly.

Kim: So what about that person that it’s like they’re trying, they really want to love and accept themselves and they really want to eat for nourishment and satisfaction and pleasure. And yet they can’t get over the way they feel about their body. Like they can’t get over that it’s gross, or that it’s out of proportion, or that it’s bad or wrong or ridiculed for how it is, right? Don’t you think that’s such a big part of healing the relationship with the body?

Chanci: Oh, it totally is. And it’s going back and looking at – I love to do little timeline things with my clients where we look back at moments, like the very first moment you – Well for example, for me, my very first moment was I was sitting on the playground when I was in grade four. And I realized my thighs touched and the other girls didn’t. And I was like “Oh.” I started recognizing perfect weight even at that young age, and I wasn’t that.

And then at Thanksgiving, I remember all my family, all the women, we ate dinner. All the men went down to watch TV, all the women cleaned. But before we cleaned, went to the bathroom and weighed ourselves. How much weight did we gain from Thanksgiving dinner? Oh my gosh.

So these are these little moments in our lives that we get to look back and go, “Oh,” with curiosity and tons of compassion, “this created this, that created this.” And we start to look for patterns of lies that we picked up along the way.

So it I think it’s important to look at that and not to dwell in it, but go, “Oh, now I have a choice. Is this actually how I want to think about this? Is this actually how I want to feel about my body?”

And then it is, at the same time, going and healing that part through feeling those emotions, through grieving. Like grieving my innocence as a 10-year-old girl and looking at that and not liking my own body.

Being able to feel those moments and go back and I almost like to say take my little self in my hands. I’m like, “Of course you struggled, of course you this and this and this. This is what went on, you don’t have to feel this way again. You don’t have to buy into this anymore. I’ve got us.” That’s having your own back, being able to do that for yourself.

And it might sound as I’m talking about it to someone who’s thick in the diet world right now or thick in hating her body and can’t even bear to look at herself in the mirror, never mind love herself in the mirror. But just knowing, again, when we look at what we talk about in the integrative coaching, it’s like the presence of it, even going “What if this is possible for me?”

The awareness like, “Okay, this woman, I’m listening to who I don’t know at all, she’s saying it’s possible, it’s possible for her. I’m going to trust that perhaps it is for me.” And then start to look, like that awareness of, “Right, I remember the first time I didn’t like this. Or right, I remember that.” And then going back and starting to just believe that it’s possible. Even that can make huge shifts in your life.

Kim: Yeah. Recently I was looking at my – I have two baby granddaughters right now that are around a year old. And so they’re having pictures, you know, standing up in their little swimsuit or their whatever. And you know right at the thigh area, there’s that little roll? The part you’re talking about where your legs tough together.

Chanci: Yes. Right.

Kim: It’s so cute. Like, I’m like, “Awe.” I would never criticize them or tell them something negative about their body.

Chanci: Right.

Kim: It’s so chunky and precious and all of that. And this is crazy, but I was walking across from my home to here and I have that little roll right there. And I’m just like, “That is not cute. Wait a minute.” And I’m like fascinating. Fascinating that if I came from that kind of love for myself, is that what I would have just told myself? Is that what I would have just said?”

And it’s that unveiling, it’s like really unpacking so that we can understand where it comes from. Because when I was able to relate it to someone that I loved and adored and would have protected, just done anything for, like how can we bring that in? As long as I’ve been doing this work, I’m still blown away at this hatred, and the self-criticism, and the disconnection from it’s not good enough, I’m defective, I’m deformed, it’s something that can be ridiculed.

And it could have come from someone laughing at us at a young age, it could have. And it could have come from exactly what you experienced also, which was the judging and the comparing. And we don’t have to go down into the cellar of all those stories, they will bubble up in ideal time. We don’t have to go digging up bones.

Chanci: Exactly.

Kim: It will all rise for us.

Chanci: Yeah, exactly. And at the same time, as it arises for us, we don’t need to make it our story. We don’t need to roll around in it. It’s like awareness, like at the unveiling, “Oh, yeah. Okay.” And then instantly bring us to, “Now, how do I want to think about that now? How do I want to heal that now?”

Kim: Like being able to navigate ourselves back.

Chanci: And feeling it all now and you can grieve for that time, for that little who noticed that or whatever. But it’s like that is the unveiling, that is feeling what you didn’t feel then so you can have freedom in it presently now. We don’t want to stay stuck in the past. But yes, it is so much freedom.

One of my clients she wrote to me and she’s like, “It tastes like freedom.” This is a woman who has like binge ate her whole life and just struggles so much with negative body image. And she’s loving her body so much just as it is. And not just as it is, you know what I mean? That almost sounded negative, not at all meaning to. Loving her body exactly where it is. And she’s starting to lose weight, as she’s like, “I have never experienced this freedom before.”

Yeah, so when she said it tastes like freedom. She told a friend that because she ordered something and her friend was like, “Uh, usually we get this.” She’s like, “You know what? This is actually my body wants.” And her friend said, “How does that feel?” “This tastes like freedom.”

And I think about that all the time. And I’m naming my program It Tastes Like Freedom. That is my coaching program’s name because I want every woman to know what it feels like to live in freedom.

Kim: So good.

Chanci: Yeah, isn’t it?

Kim: It is. I’m looking at the time, I want to just hang out. We’d love to hangout and really hash into all of this; we’ve got some great things coming for you guys in 2021. We’re going to be doing a lot of radical self-love and self-acceptance and Chanci is part of that and I’m on my own journey with that. I think it’s something that I do – I was saying this this morning, I do not know one person that does not have a body image issue.

I do not know one person who is in love with every aspect of their body, that there’s not something that they don’t criticize or feel like they have to deprive in order to be something that they’re not. And I was like, it’s time. And if no one else gets anything out of it, I am on this journey and I am committed to it.

And it’s like I know that the right people are going to show up and want this too, so I want to thank you for stepping on the path, for saying yes, for going all the way through, for dropping any agenda and being willing to be surprised to experience something you didn’t even know was possible. Because that is what we’re offering others.

Chanci: So much, yeah. You are amazing. It has just been so beautiful becoming your friend and then employing you as my coach.

Kim: And Self Healing Masters is where we are hashing this out, guys. If you need personal one on one coaching, we’ll have Chanci’s information down below. And if you want a community to get started in, to introduce you, then you can come into Self Healing Masters. You’ll have the links for all of this, but really do what you need for yourself because there is such a big difference between depriving compared to permission.

Chanci: Mm-hmm. Oh yeah, all the difference. Thank you so much, Kim, for having me on. I’ve loved this.

Thanks for listening to this episode of More Than Mindset.