Ep#131 Rediscovering My True Self – Amanda Kate, Intuitive Coach and Kineseologist

0 (1s):
Welcome to the Soul Science Nutrition Podcast, where you’ll discover that when it comes to your health, you are so much more powerful than you’ve been led to believe. And now your host, she’s a Holistic Nutrition and Lifestyle Coach, chef, author, and yogi Christine Okezie.

Christine Okezie (23s):
Hello and welcome to the Soul Science Nutrition Podcast. I’m Christine Okezie. Thanks so much for being here today. This week special guest is Amanda Kate, all the way from Melbourne. Amanda is a kinesiologist who’s trained at the highest available level, known as Kinesiopractic. She’s also an archetypal, transformational and intuitive life coach. Amanda is the author of two wonderful books, “Divine, Messy Human, A Spiritual Guide to Prioritizing Internal Truth Over External Influence”, and “The Anxiety Relief Handbook ComplimentaryTherapies to Let Go of Anxiety”. Amanda shares her passion for finding the root cause of our health issues by investigating the physical, mental, and emotional balances in our bioenergetic field that impedes the body’s innate healing intelligence.

Christine Okezie (1m 13s):
She understands that every life experience, including the people who cross our path and to how we respond under pressure, is stored deep in our cellular memory. And oftentimes we can’t see how those ingrained stress responses, patterns of conditioning, internalized traumas. We can’t see them until they rise to the surface. While Amanda’s going to share her story about she, how she used her personal health and life challenges as opportunities to learn, grow, and evolve. And today, Amanda facilitates a range of personal healing experiences for her clients to bring about greater health and wellness. You can learn more about Amanda at her website, www.

Christine Okezie (1m 55s):
amandakate.com.au. I can’t wait for you to listen in on this wonderful conversation. And if you know of anyone would benefit, I’d be grateful if you’d feel free to share the podcast. And of course, if you haven’t subscribed, please do so so you don’t miss an episode. Thanks so much for listening, everyone, and enjoy the episode. Hi, Amanda, great to meet you. Thanks so much for being here today.

Amanda Kate (2m 18s):
Oh, thank you so much, Christine, for having me.

Christine Okezie (2m 20s):
So I’d love to know, you know, what was your personal journey into finding the healing work of kinesiology?

Amanda Kate (2m 29s):
Well, I, I think anyone who works in any of those healing arts or somatic therapies or any of those comes to it through their own trauma story. Yeah. I don’t think anyone takes an easy path to it. There was not one person in my kinesiology class certainly who didn’t get there, you know, through their own, you know, trials and tribulations. And I think because a lot of those people then find that therapy works so well for them in their healing. I know that certainly worked for me. I was, I had my first session on the 24th of April, 2015, and I sat in my introductory class beginning my study of kinesiology on the 24th of October, 2015.

Amanda Kate (3m 14s):
So exactly six months later. Wow. Because it was one of those things where it had changed my life so much. It had changed what I knew about myself. It had brought up and, and neutralized so many of the traumatic events in my life and, and allowed me then to hold them in a way that they weren’t causing me stress. So that I was able to still have those experiences as part of me, but without them dragging and drawing the energy of, of hatred or negative emotion or heaviness or whatever. It kind of sat more easily within me. And, and so whilst people sort of talk about clearing out emotions or doing these energetic clearings, I sort of think of it much more as, as holding it more gently and having it as a loved part of yourself rather than a part you’re, you know, using all of this energy to push away or, or rejected as a part of you.

Amanda Kate (4m 10s):
And so, you know, I found kinesiology through quite a long, I don’t wanna call it a battle, but about of chronic fatigue. So I started back in 20 12, 20 13 actually was beginning of 2013. I was needing three hour nap in the afternoon. Now I’ve always been a motivated self-starter. I was always, you know, energetic and full of life and I was literally getting to lunch time going, I can’t make it any further. And I’d have to go up to bed and have a three hour nap. And that’s so unlike me. And it really started me on this journey of, of, I started seeing a naturopath and you know, I was also looking through the western model at that point, but my doctor kept going, well, you are the healthiest sick person I’ve seen, so I don’t really have any answers for you.

Amanda Kate (4m 59s):
And it’s like, well, great, thanks. I’m healthy, supposedly. But in the model of the, that sort of allopathic medicine where they talk about not sick as opposed to healthy and vital. So when you go and get your blood test done, it’s telling you your, you know, it’s telling you you are not sick range rather than your healthy range. And so when you go to a naturopath, they’re looking at that health and vitality. And so that was really that first shift. And then I’d, I’d been suffering, I started tracking it and it was 13 days a month that I was struggling with my menstrual cycle. So I would have about six days around ovulation, and then I would have about seven days at the, you know, in, in the dark moon phase of bleeding where I was just a mess.

Amanda Kate (5m 47s):
Like I would have sore boobs and, and cravings, like crazy, crazy cravings and mood swings and all of the things. And I’m just, I was not living my best life. I mean, that’s half your month gone. Yeah. And it was, it was a struggle. And what they tried to do is put me on antidepressants. I’m like, hang on a minute. There’s just something. And even as I was filling that prescription, I’m going, something’s not adding up. Like one plus one does not equal this. Like this is, I don’t know, there was something there. And I remember I took two or three days worth of the tablets and they’d, you know, given the whole fear thing of don’t just come off them, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Amanda Kate (6m 30s):
And I threw them in the bin. I went, no, this is not, this is not, it just doesn’t feel right on any sense of my body. And I didn’t really understand that at the point, at that point in time, like I didn’t understand that congruent feeling into what was right for me. But there was still such a pull that this was not the right way. And it was probably the really first big intuitive guidance symbol that I actually bloody followed for once. Like, I’d ignored them for so many years. And, and even now, like I get some realizations and I’m like, holy crap. Like I’ve actually seen that here, here, here and here.

Amanda Kate (7m 11s):
And now I’m finally getting the message and it’s, you know, clicking through. It’s like, oh my God. But that was the really first one. And I, and I guess that started leading me down this path of the natural therapies. And I started seeing a Chinese doctor and, and she was amazing with the cupping and acupuncture and the Chinese herbs. And she was the first one really to tell me I had chronic fatigue. Okay. I was working with a chiropractor who had said the same. And then it came up through my kinesiologist and it came up, I can’t even remember how many other people, my naturopath and all sorts. And so I think I got told by about four professionals before my ex-husband actually even believed that I had chronic fatigue. And I think even then he’s like, everyone else gets tired, but you are always exhausted.

Amanda Kate (7m 51s):
Like, it’s always worse for you type thing. And I’m like, I see a connection there. Yeah. A slight one. Just a little. Hmm. And, and it was, it just, I don’t know, there was, there was just something about it. But then at the beginning of 2015, end of March, beginning of April, we went on a family holiday and there was a massive event there where my ex-husband decided he should tell me exactly what I was doing wrong with my life and how opinionated I was and how I, you know, I was so smart, but I wasn’t living up to it. And I don’t know all of these different things. And it was about this four hour tirade. Wow. And I literally just could not function after that.

Amanda Kate (8m 33s):
It was like that straw that broke the camel’s back. Like I was already carrying everything. And I’m like, I’m just a, what the, what is the point of my life? Like if I’m this bad a human being, why the hell am I even here? Like I, I, I couldn’t find the way that I could exist in that space. Right. And so I got home from that holiday people to ask me how I was. And I’d just burst into tears. Like I could not function, I couldn’t speak to anybody. I would, I’d sort of walk around the schoolyard rather than get into conversation because I knew the tears would come and then I’d just be making a scene and you know, all of this kind of stuff and being a drama queen and all of those things that we get thrown at us.

Amanda Kate (9m 15s):
And so I went to my doctor and I said, I need a mental healthcare plan cuz there’s something wrong with me. And I went to a psychologist, but in that phone call, the reason I wanted to go to the psychologist was because she worked with mindfulness and she did mindfulness courses and she did assertiveness training as well. And, and she also did the psychology aspects. And so I went to her, cause I wanted the mindfulness course, but I also then wanted the one on one sessions. And so with my mental healthcare plan, I booked in with her. But the, the receptionist was phenomenal. Honestly. She probably was the one who changed my life the most in some ways because she said to me, okay, mindfulness course isn’t until the end of May.

Amanda Kate (9m 59s):
I can’t get you in with a psychologist till the middle of May. You’re sounding quite stressed. Can I just ask you a little bit about what’s going on? So I gave her the brief version that was the socially acceptable version that we just immigrated to Australia or for me back to Australia. My ex-husband had left his family from the uk so he was, you know, obviously getting used to life in Australia without them. And you know, he wasn’t really happy in his job. And so I was trying to support that. And my son had been physically harmed 13 times in 26 weeks at his new school and went from this bright, bubbly, happy, you know, six year old kid to wanting, you know, rounded shoulders, my tummy hurts, I don’t want to go to school.

Amanda Kate (10m 42s):
And I’m like, oh my God. And then my four year old had just started nursery school in the UK and then she’s super bright, like still is super, super bright. And she was really pissed at me that she couldn’t go to school. How dare you bring me to this country and then tell me I’m too little to go to school. So she would have four hour tantrums at me because I was the only person who could challenge. So anyway, I went through that part of it and she’s like, okay, I just need to ask you one question. Who’s got your back? Nobody in my two, three years of trying to find answers had ever asked me that question ever.

Amanda Kate (11m 29s):
And I was like, huh, well I lived in the UK and nobody had my back over there. Cause my ex-husband, I still remembered the first, we arrived back from our honeymoon, he said, well it’s time for you to make your own life over here cuz I’ve got my life. Yeah. His, yeah. All of that kind of stuff was going on. And I’m like, okay, might have made the wrong choice, but okay. Got kind of stuck here now. And then, you know, we moved to Melbourne because he didn’t want, when we moved to Australia, he didn’t wanna be near my family in Adelaide. He wanted to keep me separate. I mean, that’s part of the, part of the mo that I’m guessing you’re kind of here and coming up here. Very familiar, all too familiar.

Amanda Kate (12m 10s):
And so it was this thing of going, I haven’t had anyone have my back for a bloody long time. And she said, okay, have you thought about reiki or kinesiology? And Reiki had had a session with somebody, but they were wanting something from me. Like they were wanting some energy swaps and I don’t know, there was something that felt disingenuous with it. So I didn’t continue down that path. I said, look, I’m happy to try nothing. That first session changed my life. She said to me, you have no idea how emotionally abused you are. Yeah. And I went, say more about that. Like, what do you mean? Like, this is my normal. And she explained it and I went, oh, that makes sense with certain relationships in my life.

Amanda Kate (12m 52s):
It took me four months to see that my biggest abuser was, was laying next to me. Yes. And another four months then to leave that marriage. But it was, it was the start of that journey. And kinesiology really was something that I really lent on in terms of the study. I mean, I did, I ended up doing six years worth of study in four years. Amazing. Because it was that thing that I threw myself into to keep me sane during the divorce. Right. To stop me from going under with the abuse. And you know, we think that abuse stops when you leave the marriage, but you know, I still get the control because of the child support link. And I still get the, you know, all of this coercive control stuff that I either comes through the kids or come through text messages.

Amanda Kate (13m 35s):
I mean, I had a text message only the other week that said, will you ever be grateful for everything I’ve provided you with in this life? And I’m like, like, hello? Yeah. Yeah. It wasn’t a one way street. Yeah. But, you know, I, I think with that, the work I have continued to do past that divorce has been so that those things I can now look at and go, oh my God. Okay. You know, some leopards never change their spots. Yeah. That’s it. I’ve chosen to change mine. Absolutely. And, and I continue to choose to change mine because I’m, you know, I’m not there yet. You know, I still get reactive, I still get defensive. It still upsets me when I first read those messages. But that’s the work that I wanna do.

Amanda Kate (14m 15s):
I wanna get better at not reacting at, at being more centered and grounded in who I am as a spiritual being, as a, as a human who is here to make a difference in the world and to live from that place of love rather than fear. And, and really to go into that deeply. And so, you know, that’s the work I continue to do, so that when I can get those messages, hopefully one day in the future I’ll just be able to go. I see the child inside who’s writing these messages and I have a lot of love and respect for that. And in some ways I do. But there’s the human part of me that still goes Yeah.

Christine Okezie (14m 52s):
There’s still more, more to process

Amanda Kate (14m 54s):
For sure. Of course. Always.

Christine Okezie (14m 57s):
Yes. Yes, yes, yes. And, and, and I love that you bring that up because yes, we, you know, most of us who were in the healing arts have had our trials and tribulations. One of the key lessons we need to remind ourselves is not to bypass. And, you know, and to, and it can be very tempting to do that with all our tools and, and, you know, wisdom teachings and, and it’s all correct. And at the same time, I just wanna honor your vulnerability that, you know, we’re still in these human bodies and, and Oh yeah. And very much so. You know, we, the idea is to really just notice more, you know, and the more that we can notice and observe and like you said, lean into something bigger than ourselves Right.

Christine Okezie (15m 45s):
Then we can move through it with a little bit more grace. But it’s a process. There’s no skipping any, absolutely no skipping any steps.

Amanda Kate (15m 52s):
No. And I think when you first go into it, I think that what you said there is exactly right. You know, we do tend to want to do a bit of the spiritual bypassing and we, we use the tools and the cards and the, I mean, I look at how many tools I’ve got in my clinic, the, the card decks and the oils and the essences. And the longer I work, the less I use them. Yeah. Because I’m actually tapping into something deeper and greater than that. I

Christine Okezie (16m 15s):
Love that you

Amanda Kate (16m 15s):
Say that, and I find it really interesting. I don’t need those crutches to lean on anymore. And they’re still nice to have when I do ritual days and when I do all of that sort of stuff. But it’s, it really is knowing that you’ve gotta go deep and you have to feel this stuff to be able to heal it. And the feeling, I think part of the reason people sort of go, oh, I’d prefer a spiritual bypass, is I think they think that when they open that Pandora’s box, it’s gonna be a Pandora’s box and they’re not gonna be able to put the lid back on. What they don’t realize is that with a skilled practitioner, you can open the box, let a bit out, and then you close the box until you’re ready to deal with the next bit. And I think that’s the bit that people sort of get a bit afraid of is that there’s just gonna be this, you know, shit ton of, you know,

Christine Okezie (17m 1s):
I’ll,

Amanda Kate (17m 1s):
I’ll draw stuff.

Christine Okezie (17m 2s):
I mean, I’m already my, you know, I’m already and overwhelmed. How can I deal with anything more than when I’m already in front of me? I’m just trying to,

Amanda Kate (17m 9s):
Yeah.

Christine Okezie (17m 10s):
Now, Amanda, I’ve heard you dive deep into polyvagal theory and, you know, working with the nervous system because of the science and kinesiology. And I’d love if you could kinda share your personal insights, you know, how did that resonate with you when you, because I know when I learned how, you know, different degrees of the stress response show up in our patterns, in our relationship patterns, you know, in our self-sabotage. It was eyeopening for me. It continues to be quite honestly. You know, hell

Amanda Kate (17m 43s):
Yeah. Look, two days ago I came home from work and I was bloody pissed off because I’d cooked another night before someone had washed the dishes and they were still basically dirty. And I’m like, for God’s self, you know, do I have to do everything myself? You know? And of course I went into that because I’m human and I’ve had a long day and all I wanted to actually do was come home and cook a meal for everybody. But I couldn’t because there was, and I’m like, I’m trying to do my part in this, like, hang on a minute. And I could feel that human being, and I know I wasn’t acting resourcefully at the time, but I think it’s also having that really deep feeling of, okay, I am human. I’m gonna have these transgressions.

Amanda Kate (18m 24s):
How do I catch them sooner the next time? You know? Or my resentment, you know, what I was actually resenting at the time was that everybody else is sitting on their computer having a rest and relax. And I’ve run around to take the pressure off everyone for the rest of the week by walking the dog by, you know, doing all this extra stuff on top of my work. And I’m looking to take pressure off everybody. And I come home and I’m like, you can’t even wash a pan so that I can cook your dinner that night. You know? And I can feel that humanness. And I go, okay, I understand the humanness. And also it took me five minutes to fix less than, you know, was it really worth all of the headache I gave to myself and to the rest of the house by going into that?

Amanda Kate (19m 6s):
Do you see? And so, but it’s that nervous system reaction as well. You know, that’s my training is because that’s what I saw is the resentfulness, is the martyrdom, is the falling on your sword is that I have to be selfless and I have to save everybody the work and I’m the, you know, the caretaker and you know, all of those patterns that we not just get from our, the way that we were raised, but also patriarchy and all of these other different systems that we sit under that, that inform us and feed us. And so our nervous system is primed from a very young age. Because what I mean, when we come into this world, we have this pure being of love and light and joy and happiness, and we have this pure soul that is pure God source.

Amanda Kate (19m 51s):
And we’re shoved into this tiny little meat suit that is very restrictive. And we come out of this beautiful warm place where we’re, we’re close to our mother and we’re hearing her sounds and we are just, and all of a sudden we’re like, what the hell is this? But we need to understand that we are individual, we are not the doctor, we are not the father, we are not the mother, we are not anybody else in that room when we’re being delivered. We are just this individual. So we take everything around us and we make it about ourself. You know, if our mother leaves us too long to cry. And G Matte has done a lot of work around this, obviously, you know, if we’re left too long to cry as an infant, we start to go, well, I’m not worth feeding. I’m not good enough for my mother.

Amanda Kate (20m 32s):
I’m not, you know, we bring on all of that stuff and we carry that through. Or if, you know, if we’re doing cartwheels in the garden, we’re like, daddy, look at this. Look at this. And dad’s like, you know, I’ve seen it a million times. Do I really need to watch this again? We’re like, oh, I’m not worthy of attention. Now that’s not what our parents are intending to do at all. Of course they are loving us the best they can, but our parents have those stories and their parents have those stories and all the rest of it. It’s just, there’s no blame in this at all. And I think that’s also something that we really need to put across. I know I’ve traumatized my children, you know, again, a hundred percent.

Christine Okezie (21m 8s):
Yeah, no, I know. I, I,

Amanda Kate (21m 9s):
Because I didn’t know any different.

Christine Okezie (21m 11s):
We did the best we could, you know, with our own, you know, lens of life, our own map, which is still getting updated every day as we continue this work. Right?

Amanda Kate (21m 20s):
A hundred percent. Yeah. And so that’s where I look at, and that’s where I can give myself the grace is, and I say it to my clients, you have done the best you could every single day of your life. Right. And how do I know that? Because if you hadn’t, like if you knew different, you’d have done different, so you’d be in a different place. Yeah. As would I. Yeah. We’ve all done the best we can at any given moment in our life with the tools we’ve had available to us at the time, because of course, when we’re in our front creative brain, we can see things with a different lens. We have more openness, more expansion, more creativity, and we’re able to see a problem. And I love the meaning of the word problem. A problem means to cast out a question for which I know there is an answer.

Amanda Kate (22m 5s):
Now, if we think about that, we, we are encountering problems all the time. The difference is, you know, and again, going into language was taking a bit of a sidetrack, but the other one is challenge. Whereas when you think about somebody challenging somebody else to a jewel, it was about winning over somebody else and fighting to the death for me being Right. So I much prefer now thinking about my issues, my challenges in terms of problems, because I know there has to be an answer for them. Yes. But again, our nervous system gets programmed so early into this reactionary state, into this, this bit where we get these behaviors that at one point kept us loved and safe in our, in our family, in our tribe, in our collective group.

Amanda Kate (22m 56s):
Yeah. Cause we would watch the behavior of everybody around us and we would watch when they got angry or when they lo you know, showed love and connection. And we’d go, okay, so for me to get more love, I need to do more of this. And if I do these behaviors, then I’m gonna get less love. Therefore I need to change my behavior so that I’m on the loved side. Because in our physiological brain, we go into literally black or white. I am gonna live and be accepted by my group. And the reason I use the word tribe is not to culturally appropriate. It is purely to go back to our original physiology of living in tribes. And so the idea is, if I am not accepted by my tribe, I am gonna be cast out into the wilderness and I am going to die.

Amanda Kate (23m 42s):
Right. And so when we are tuning our nervous system to the way that we think we have to behave to be accepted, we are literally working from live or die.

Christine Okezie (23m 53s):
Yeah.

Amanda Kate (23m 54s):
And that’s where we get it

Christine Okezie (23m 55s):
From. Thank you. And, and so connecting that to when we are in an emotionally abusive, toxic situation, you used the word normal. This was my normal. Right. It, it really gives us appreciation for, you know, why we stay in these situations that are so dysfunctional, you know, perhaps more so from the outside looking in. But what I think is even more insidious, because it’s so much in the, in the physiology and so much in the subconscious, is that we are just trying to survive. Yeah. You know? And, and that’s really it. So these are all survival based techniques of tolerance, walking on eggshells, keeping the peace, right.

Christine Okezie (24m 41s):
Making yourself feel, you know, making yourself smaller so that you can take care of everybody else first. Right. Yeah. Again, you know, it’s so insidious because we don’t, we don’t consciously sign up for, for, for making our lives smaller. We don’t consciously sign up for, you know, editing and, and compromising our own self-worth. But it happens because our nervous system to your point, is in survival mode. Some degree of fight flight freezes, right? Yep.

Amanda Kate (25m 12s):
Yeah. And every behavior that we have adopted has kept us safe at one time or another.

Christine Okezie (25m 17s):
Precisely. I love that.

Amanda Kate (25m 18s):
And so it is the fact that even when I am being unresourceful and you know, I walk in the house and I’m pissed cuz no one, you know, washed up a pan, which realistically in the grand scheme of things is nothing. But in my humanness at that moment, it was like, seriously, someone put your finger out. You know?

Christine Okezie (25m 35s):
Yeah.

Amanda Kate (25m 35s):
No. Now there’s again, no judgment in that. And it is all my problem by the way. I’m just saying it, it was nobody else’s problem in that house. It was just mine. Right. And I was projecting it onto everybody else. And again, I’ve gotta put my hand up and on. I am still human. Nothing changes. Just

Christine Okezie (25m 50s):
Another opportunity for you to go, oh, wasn’t that interesting? You, I know that’s how I look at, you know, triggered responses and overreaction now myself. I’m like, wow, that was, I really, you know, that really brought something up for me. You know, what’s going on? Something was going on, you know, needs my attention. Yeah,

Amanda Kate (26m 7s):
Yeah. And also what age, you know, one of the, one of the things that I often ask myself is, okay, how old am I now? And so a number will pop into my head.

Christine Okezie (26m 18s):
I

Amanda Kate (26m 18s):
Like that. And it’ll be like, okay, so what was, what was happening at that age for me? Yeah. You know, and it will often go back to say an age of, I don’t know, for me it often goes back to 28, which is the time I had my first baby. I was over the other side of the world from my family feeling very isolated. I was very unsupported. You know, I literally had no support around me. I didn’t get thrown a baby shower cause I didn’t have any great friends over there. And you know, it was just devastating. I missed out on a lot of that. Yeah. You know, rite of passage stuff because I was away from everybody who cared about me. Really. And I actually, I, I can’t even edit that to make it nicer because I was away from everybody who cared about me.

Amanda Kate (26m 58s):
I had nobody over there really. Because even my ex-husband was living his own life. And that’s fine. You know, again, no judgment there. It, it’s what was happening and it’s what I allowed and it’s what I accepted. But yeah. You know, so when you look at that, okay, I often, you know, that’s one of those really traumatic ages for me, a coming of age thing for me, going from being a woman to being a mother. Right. Feeling so alone and lonely and isolated and unsupported. Okay. So why is that coming up now? How am I feeling lonely and isolated and unsupported? And then what resources do I need to employ so that I’m not feeling so isolated and lonely.

Amanda Kate (27m 39s):
Yes. And, and sometimes I do that in the middle of an argument with my partner. I’ll be like, Ooh, hang on a minute. This doesn’t feel like this is actually what it’s about. Okay. How old am I? Yeah, that’s, I’ll go straight into how old am I?

Christine Okezie (27m 51s):
That’s brilliant.

Amanda Kate (27m 52s):
Okay. And I almost do that process while we’re in the middle of it. It’s like, okay, how old am I? Well backtrack a little bit. Okay, well hun, I don’t think this is about us. Right. You know, I’m taking it out on you because this is how I’m feeling. But this is actually not your fault.

Christine Okezie (28m 5s):
There’s a saying I, I came across a while ago as if it’s hysterical. It’s probably historical.

Amanda Kate (28m 12s):
Mm. Yeah.

Christine Okezie (28m 13s):
And what’s so interesting about, you’re bringing up that you’ve said it a few times, circumstances where the circumstances you, so you accept, you come to terms with your past. Right. But more importantly you see how it plays out in your present. Yes. Yeah. And that level of awareness, that level of self-awareness is really, it’s where the magic happens when it comes to, you know, our healing and our evolution. So talk to me about when you, when a person has a session with you, with, for kinesiology for a healing, where do you begin? What can they expect?

Christine Okezie (28m 53s):
Is it because some people are gonna like, well is it like therapy or is it like a massage? You know, so, you know, kinda walk us through, you know, what this is like as we’re talking about all this deep work. What’s the, what’s the process?

Amanda Kate (29m 8s):
Do you know? It’s interesting. I kind of work in two, two multiple different ways. It’s not even two anymore. It’s so many different ways. But when it’s just a normal sort of kinesiology session, it’s, we sit down and, I mean the first session can sometimes be 45 minutes of talking because I need to know the history. I need to understand what’s going on for them at the moment, what’s happened in the past. Realistically, that first session probably should be an hour and a half and we just talk. Okay. Okay. But obviously a lot of people don’t want to, you know, pay you for an hour and a half and not actually get up on the table and have anything happen. So, and what are you listening for? Like what are I am listen, you tune into everything. I know it sounds crazy, but I’m listening to what they’re saying as well as what they’re not saying and what they’re avoiding.

Amanda Kate (29m 53s):
And also knowing that it’s only 45 minutes. I don’t get everything. And so I know that they’re hitting the high level stuff now in that session I usually then sort of, you know, get them on the table for the 15 minutes and we do like one or two quick, you know, sort of healings to sort of seal the container, so to speak, before the next session. Okay. Then the next session I look to get them up much faster on the table. So we still have a chat, you know, what have you noticed different. And sometimes even just with that 15, 20 minutes on the table, they’re like, oh my God, I just felt so much lighter or clearer or whatever it was. And then we can really start chunking through the layers. Realistically, it takes at least three sessions to really start getting deep into someone’s subconscious.

Amanda Kate (30m 34s):
Cause the, your subconscious is there to keep you safe. And so the first session people are like, what the hell is this? And who is she? And do we really wanna trust her with all this shit? And so as much as they’ve making the made the choice to be there, they’re also going subconsciously, is this the right person? Second session, we start to break through a few more of those layers. And the third session is almost where the person starts to really open up and go, okay, I trust this person with what we’re dealing with. Now. I always say to people, things will not come up unless you’re ready to deal with them. And so when they do come up, even if they’re challenging, they’re coming up because you’re ready to shift them and clear them.

Amanda Kate (31m 15s):
I also remind people to speak before they think. We are so often told to think before we speak, but the intuitive mind works so fast we get the answer straight away. And so I really suggest to them, look, just tell me the first thing that comes to your mind to you. It may seem really insignificant, but actually there will be a massive link there from either where the trauma started or what it was or what emotion was sitting there or whatever else. So we really wanna look at that first gut reaction. Okay. You know, don’t think it over because otherwise you’ll overthink that intuition and the intuition will get shouted over the way that it so often does. Yes. And so, you know, and then it is just working through the layers.

Amanda Kate (31m 56s):
You know, I, I sort of suggest that the first couple of layers with is like bringing in a bobcat to a back garden and really clearing out a lot of the junk. And then we, you know, by the end of the sessions or by the time, you know, we’re working on the, I don’t know, monthly tune up type sessions. It’s like getting an archeological brush and we’re sort of fine tuning and digging, you know, so we are just chunking through the layers really at the start to, to try and get through the biggest chunks that are going to make the biggest impact for the client. The thing I love is when people hang around and they keep doing that monthly or six-week tuneup Right. Where they’re then finding, oh my god.

Amanda Kate (32m 37s):
Like the times I went into my kinesiologist and I went, I’m actually feeling amazing. Like I kind of dunno why I’m here today. Yeah. And something would come up and it would side swipe me and I’d be like, oh, there’s my next three months of healing.

Christine Okezie (32m 49s):
Right. We’ve

Amanda Kate (32m 50s):
Just opened up that box, so alright. In we dive. And so it’s just really interesting and they’re the kind of sessions that I really, really love. But what I’m now realizing is I’m much better with one on one longer term. So I actually wanna start doing basically two intakes of five month programs. Okay. So that I’m really working in depth with people. We are really going in and clearing out, creating new foundations and then building up. And so that will pretty much be an hour and a half to two hours every week over that sort of four, five month period. Beautiful. Because I find that really going into that depth and clearing things like our denied selves and our shadowed selves and clearing things that people don’t always look into.

Amanda Kate (33m 36s):
Absolutely. I always say you never know what you’re gonna get

Christine Okezie (33m 39s):
Because you’re working at the root cause of, you know, whatever is keeping you from knowing, you know, the truth of what you are, who you are Yeah. And, and the genuine experience of what you’re dealing with. Right. Yeah. I

Amanda Kate (33m 52s):
Mean it’s absolutely,

Christine Okezie (33m 53s):
You know about that. Speaking of, you know, clearing and, and inner excavation, what would you, can you give us an example if you would share maybe a key limiting belief or pattern that you were able to shift that’s made such a difference for you in this using these tools?

Amanda Kate (34m 10s):
It’s really interesting. Sometimes I think that I clear these beliefs and other times I think I’m just aware of them. You know, one of my big ones is the, I’m not good enough, I’m not worthy. You know, those two come up all the time. Yeah. And realistically, if you look at them, they are both the rescuer and the persecutor in shadow is, is that, you know, the, the persecutor is proving their worth all the time. And the, you know, the rescuer is proving that they’re, that they’re enough, that they’re lovable and they’re really the two extremes I guess I, I go to with my belief system. And so even before I go live, I’m like, oh, you know, who am I to say that? Or before I come on a podcast, who am I to, you know, step up and share this message? And, but then it’s that, okay, hang on.

Amanda Kate (34m 51s):
Okay. There’s that voice. Yeah. You know, and it reminds me of the letter that Liz Gilbert wrote in Big Magic about basically having fear in the backseat. And it’s, it’s allowed to come for the journey cuz we know it’s gonna be there, but it’s not allowed to touch the controls. It’s not allowed to choose what’s on the radio. It’s not allowed to drive the car. Yeah. You know, it needs to stay in the backseat. Yeah. And so for me it really is about turning the volume down on it, listening to it and acknowledging it and validating that it’s there.

Christine Okezie (35m 24s):
Absolutely.

Amanda Kate (35m 25s):
Because I don’t know that I’m ever gonna not feel right. I don’t, I don’t know, maybe I will one day wake up and magically feel, you know, worthy and good enough. There’s a lot of days that that doubt is still there. And I think that’s that humanness and so understanding. Okay. You are, you’re just along for the ride. Okay. I’m just not gonna let you touch any of the controls and, and steer the car.

Christine Okezie (35m 48s):
I love that. I love that. And, and so talk to us about your amazing book, divine, messy Human. What’s the core message there? What was the inspiration to put that out to the world?

Amanda Kate (35m 59s):
It was really interesting. I think it, it had been floating around in my head for about four or five years. I think it had about four or five different titles. And you know, when I first started writing it, it actually only took me five weeks to get the manuscript out of my head, which was quite amazing. Cause I think it was just all of a sudden it was the right time. And again, part of the reason it didn’t come out until it was is because I wanted to be able to tell the, there isn’t a lot of my story in there, but I wanted to be able to tell the parts that were my story with grace and dignity. I didn’t want there to be any blame. I wanted to be able to fully own my part in it. You know, I was only in an emotionally abusive marriage as long as I was because I didn’t think I deserved any better. Now that’s my fault for being there.

Amanda Kate (36m 39s):
That’s right. And I own that now. I’m not, you know, I made a choice to stay every day. I knew where the door was and I could have walked out every single day. I chose to stay on some level, obviously not consciously, but on some level I chose it. And so, and again, that’s not blaming anybody who’s in that situation now and, and can’t see that, you know, I was there so long and I, I couldn’t see the wood for the trees at all. And it is only my experience of it. And so it really is the, the subtitle of the book is a Spiritual Guide to Prioritizing Internal Truth Over External Influence. You know, on paper my life looked perfect.

Amanda Kate (37m 19s):
I was White Church of England, raised middle class, you know, I’d been, I did the whole good grades at high school, got into university, got my uni degree, went and worked for my dad for a bit. Went off traveling, you know, met a man, got married, had two children, had the big dream, the white picket fence. And I’m like, whose life am I living? Because I’m miserable as sin. And I know, I know my ex-husband was as well. I was not making him happy. And that was not the environment for our children to be happy. And so I knew that I needed to leave to, to give everybody a chance of happiness and love. And you know what? My ex-husband deserves to be loved in the way he deserves to be loved.

Amanda Kate (38m 3s):
And he needs someone who he feels loved by. I couldn’t give him that. Right. And you know, I deserve that too. I deserve to feel loved and my children deserve to walk into a house that’s not a war zone every day. You know, occasionally houses are gonna be war zones cuz we take things out on the people we love, again humanness, but we don’t want it to be every day. And we still want to return to love at the end of that. And so that was, I guess, part of it. And these tools, the things, things that I write about are really the cornerstones of my practice, of the way that I work and of the way that I continue to try and develop myself.

Amanda Kate (38m 45s):
And so there are things, there’s stuff in there about emotional fluency. So understanding the emotional language in our body and you know, why we have a propensity for dark thoughts. And you know what my understanding of spirituality is, it’s about balancing masculine feminine principles. And so I go into a lot of these kind of concepts and some of them go a little bit more esoteric. Some are, you know, more science based. But again, I think that’s the beauty of the work and why I love it is because we do go down that science, it is fully informed work, and yet there is still that really spiritual, esoteric aspect to it, which is what I think gives it the wonder and the divinity and the awe.

Christine Okezie (39m 25s):
Well said. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. The mystery, the awe and the wonder.

Amanda Kate (39m 30s):
Yeah. Absolutely. Oh

Christine Okezie (39m 32s):
My goodness. Absolutely. What are the tools these days for you, for your own self care, for your own, you know, processor healing, all the parts that, that are still, you know, going through everything?

Amanda Kate (39m 46s):
Oh, look, I still have regular sessions with my kinesiologist. I still have regular sessions with an acupuncturist and with a coach and with, you know, different people as, and when I need, often I will have obviously a bunch of contacts from the industry. And if I need something I just go, okay, who do I need to see to get this clear? And a name will drop in and I’ll trust it. I’ll ring, I’ll make the appointment, whatever it is. Or I’ll be, you know, the other week I was at my acupuncturist and I was talking to him about, you know, something that was going on for me. He said, you need to go and see this person. All right. So I rang up, went and saw them and you know, got it sorted, which is amazing in terms of the stuff I do for myself. I walk the beach with my dog for about seven ks every, every morning at the moment.

Amanda Kate (40m 29s):
There’s two mornings a week. I can’t do it. And I really miss it. But it’s, it’s that soul time for me. Sometimes I listen to podcasts, other times I won’t take my earphones and we just walk and, you know, it’s, it’s just a beautiful way to start the day. It’s about an hour and a half of my, nearly two hours by the time I drive there and back. But it’s just my place for centering and grounding. I try and do, you know, physical activity three to five times a week and you know, so there’s a lot of those sorts of things that I do as well. I’m a much better moving meditator than I am a sitting one. But again, I need a lot of silence. I need a lot of time for myself. I need a lot of time in nature. So again, I do feel it when I don’t get that.

Amanda Kate (41m 10s):
And that’s my call is to go out and do a bush walk or get back on the beach or whatever it is. So yeah, they’re my main things that kind of keep me, keep me centered and grounded.

Christine Okezie (41m 20s):
Isn’t it amazing looking back, you know, that it was such a portal for this new version of yourself who really knows herself, who really knows how to take good care for herself? Right. Yeah. I mean it’s, it’s just really through the adversity in our lives and the people that come into our lives to help us wake up truthfully. Yeah. You know, and how, for me it’s also looking at the bigger picture and saying it could not have been better orchestrated.

Amanda Kate (41m 48s):
Yeah, absolutely.

Christine Okezie (41m 49s):
Or the evolution of where I am right now. Exactly. In this moment. I had to go through all of that, you know, couldn’t see it at the time, which is my point Right. To work. You’re, you see it when you, you can only see when you see it when you’re ready to see it. Yeah. But when you do, I find that the retrospective and being able to come to peace with that, you know, is also part of the therapy. He’s also part of the healing.

Amanda Kate (42m 15s):
Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And I think, I don’t think it ever stops, you know? Yeah. I I don’t think we ever, you know, people talk about, you know, peeling back the layers of the onion and things like that. And I used to get really pissed. I’m like, why can’t we just chop the bloody thing up? You know,

Christine Okezie (42m 28s):
Like put in the food processor. I know. Exactly.

Amanda Kate (42m 31s):
Let’s just chop this bastard up and be done with it. But realistically, the, the onion never stops. Those layers never stop being, unless, unless we’re enlightened, you know? And, and I, I joked with my editor the other day. I said, yeah, I’m not gonna be Jesus in middle’s lifetime. And she said, maybe that’s the next title for your next book. But that’s

Christine Okezie (42m 53s):
A great title. Yeah. No, well,

Amanda Kate (42m 54s):
You know, someones this laptop the more I,

Christine Okezie (42m 57s):
Yeah. Not this maybe some, some future ones. Right. We can only look forward. But you know, it’s funny, I, the more I reflect and have these conversations with folks like yourself who are healing on all levels, physical, mental, emotional, you know, spiritual, I think this big heavy term enlightenment, I think all it’s come to mean for me in a most practical sense is exactly just what you said. It’s those moments when you have these triggers in your life, these humanness and then you’re able to step back and say, oh, you know, I could have done that differently. I know why I got upset about that and that reminded me of this and how old am I? And all that inquiry and all that doing it differently, you know, use, making good use of that experience.

Christine Okezie (43m 44s):
I think that’s enlightenment. I’m gonna, you know, that’s, that’s, that’s, that’s because that’s the, it’s enlightenment is not a one and done in my, no, I think it’s really a process. It’s really, you know, an evolution.

Amanda Kate (43m 56s):
Well if you think about it, the enlightenment is just making lighter. And so every time we clear, we’re making things lighter. Yeah. And every time we have an awareness and every time we can accept something that we can’t change, and every time that we can look at somebody who’s pe us off with a bit of love, you know, we’ve changed and we are getting lighter and lighter and lighter. And the more that we can hold more gently all of those parts of ourselves that we use to cut off and reject and repress and suppress and hide away and all those things, the more that we can hold those more lightly in our being and accept them as part of us and learn to love them rather than hate them and shame them and and hide them.

Amanda Kate (44m 39s):
I think that also helps us, because we’re becoming more whole as we get to that, rather than, you know, having half of us that we don’t show, we’re starting to shine up all of the facets of ourself. And the more we love those shadowy aspects, the less they cause ese in the body anyway, because we’re not fighting against them anymore. And it’s that fight against the shadow that makes them rear their head more.

Christine Okezie (45m 7s):
So to that point, tell us, you know, what is your physical body now? You know, where is, how is it responding to all of this work and all of this deeper realization? What have you noticed?

Amanda Kate (45m 20s):
Well, it is fascinating. You know, I used to get a lot of back pain, a lot of hip pain, all of that. Yeah. And I just don’t get it anymore at all. Yeah. You know, but I have support structures around me. And so, you know, I sort of talk with my clients. We’re not only building the internal scaffolding, but we’re building external scaffolding as well. We want the external support structures that is, you know, my kinesiologist, my friends, my acupuncturist, my, you know, all of those people. And the internal scaffolding of all of those tools that I have to recenter to reground to, okay, what age am I now? What resource did I, did I need then that I have now that I can gift my younger self?

Amanda Kate (46m 1s):
You know, why do I not need to behave in that way anymore because of the tools I’ve collected since I was that age? So there’s all of those sorts of things that I think I really bring in now and and that’s part of, you know, as you say, that enlightenment process, the getting lighter process and being able to look at ourselves with a little bit more love and care and respect and kindness than we did previously.

Christine Okezie (46m 26s):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And, and everything, you know, life gets a little easier in these bodies when we lighten the load that it, you know Yeah. On those levels for sure. Yeah.

Amanda Kate (46m 37s):
Yeah. I keep hoping that I’ll be able to heal some of the, you know, I’ve got gluten intolerance and dairy and you know, a lot of pork products now can set off swellings in my body and all of this sort of stuff. So I’m becoming more sensitive to that type of thing. But again, I, I kind of go, you know, there’s that hope of me that one day I’ll be able to actually get to a point where I can eat anything that I want to. Hmm. And so that’s, that’s really where I’m working at the moment is I know I can put my blueprint back to, you know, fascinating what it should be. Yeah. So that is really Yeah, exactly. And I’m not saying I want eat cheese every day.

Amanda Kate (47m 17s):
Definitely not. But you know, to have a little bit here and there and not have my face swell up would be amazing. And to be able to eat the odd bit, you know, to be able to go to Italy and eat a bowl pasta again or you know, France and eat some of their beautiful French breads and, you know, to be able to have that option would be really, really lovely. Whereas at the moment, you know, that’s not an option right now. Okay. Okay. And so, you know, that’s kind of that next level of healing is, is really making sure that, that I am as congruent as possible and that vibrationally I’m working towards getting my body to a place where it can process whatever it needs to process in moderation.

Christine Okezie (47m 55s):
It’s beautiful. I hear a lot of love and a lot of self-compassion around that. And that just warms my heart because what a elevated way to take care of something so mundane. Right. What I eat and how my body reacts. But again, we can come from that place of, you know, but I, it’s, it’s just something that I am working towards and it’s something that I wish for myself and when, you know, whatever imbalances may, you know, may I find the root cause of them in that curious way. Yeah. Wonderful. Well thank you so much. And please tell us if folks want to, you know, learn more about you, work with you, tell us what services and future programs you have coming up.

Amanda Kate (48m 33s):
Yeah, absolutely. Well, like I said to you, I’m just starting these longer term coaching. Really wanna get people transforming. So I’m doing longer ones. I also do the two month shorter intuitive coaching type things. I do one off kinesiology sessions for people as well, both online and in person. The main place people can go to find out more is www.amandakate.com au, my book and all of that kind of stuff. So. Fantastic. Yeah. It’s the easiest place.

Christine Okezie (48m 58s):
Fantastic. Thank you so much. It’s been such a joy to get to know you and

Amanda Kate (49m 2s):
Ah, you too. I

Christine Okezie (49m 3s):
Appreciate the light that you are bringing to the world, so thank you.

Amanda Kate (49m 5s):
Oh, and thank you for bringing your work and your messages to the world because we need people like you with the platforms to share the life. So yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you.