Staying Healthy with Feng Shui – Episode #008 Interview with Lois Kramer Perez
#008 Join me for an illuminating interview with the “Queen of Shui”, Lois Kramer Perez who shares how the ancient art of Fung Shui can bring peace and harmony to your health and life. Lois teaches us how our environment holds important clues about how to overcome the subconscious blocks in our life. She inspires us to embrace our unique authentic selves so we can move through life with less struggle and shame. Get a dose of soul nourishment in this beautiful conversation that reminds us the power of seeing the interconnected nature that is the essence of Life.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to the soul science nutrition podcast, where you’ll discover that when it comes to your health, you’re 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 (00:23):
Thanks so much for tuning in today. I am so excited to have a wonderful lady on our show. This is Lois Kramer. Perez. Lois is the queen of Fung Shui. Lois is truly a rock star in her community and brings a deep and impressive skill set, including hypnosis meditations, chakra balancing five element theory and past life regression among other things to help people live more conscious, empowered lives. Lois left a successful career in the fashion industry to follow her calling and has since devoted her life to being a light in the world for helping people have more peace and balance in their homes, in their business and their personal relationships. Lois and I met about 10 years ago now when I was doing my first wellness fair and I have to tell you, I was so immediately captivated by her beautiful energy.
Christine Okezie (01:22):
She exuded radiance and fun, and she just made you smile. And if you ever met her in person, you would know exactly what I’m talking about. Lois is gracious enough to come and tell us about her journey of personal transformation with food and healing. So we’re going to explore some amazing themes in today’s conversation. Number one, how our immediate environment has a profound effect on our health and our life. Number two, the connection between Fung Shui and the subconscious mind, and finally the importance of understanding our true nature. Hey Lois, welcome to soul science nutrition. I’m so glad to have you here today. Thank you, Christine. I’m so excited to hang out with you too. It’s always such a pleasure to see you. So let’s jump in. Lois is a rock star, as I just mentioned a bit ago in her community. And I want to educate people the range of modalities that involve Fung Shui. I hear you saying I Fung Shui people, places and things. Tell me about that.
Lois Kramer Perez (02:29):
So what I’ve learned about Fung Shui, it’s such a powerful modality. It’s transcended cultures and thousands of years, the principles behind it are more than just where you place yourself, what color, paint your room. Those are very important things, but it’s the connection. It’s how we marry our environment to who we are. So it’s what is our space telling us? How do we relate to our space and who are
Lois Kramer Perez (03:00):
we ? We choose to relate based on who we are or who we think we need to be. So it is such an interactive connection that is so, so powerful and learning how that your space leaves clues. How do I read those clues and how do they relate to me? Because we have to look at the whole package. It’s not just my spaces here and I’m over there when we’re disconnected from anything. That’s when we find there’s a gap and we’re not connecting through our true, authentic self. Hmm.
Christine Okezie (03:37):
Okay. So, so it’s kind of , a misunderstanding and people think it’s really just about the organization of where we put our stuff, right? Um, it’s a lot deeper than that. So how would I know, how would I know if like I should be considering my environment, you know, to change if I’m having some, what kind of issues am I having in my personal life that might be readily addressed by working with these principles?
Lois Kramer Perez (04:01):
So you might find yourself stuck where you can’t move forward, whether it’s to do a, take an action to do something, maybe it’s a project. Maybe it’s just stuck in general in your life. You might find a resistance of some sort. You might feel as if you’re being blocked. You might feel something just isn’t feeling right. You don’t quite know what it is. And then we can look at ways to see what the clues are.
Christine Okezie (04:34):
So the clues would be in our, in our immediate environment and basically how we’re feeling?
Lois Kramer Perez (04:39):
yes. And your connection to, to what’s happening in your life. So, as an example, if I did, I worked with a woman who was having issues in her career, things seem to just have been stopped. She felt like she was locked down, though. The words she was using, I feel locked down. I feel locked into this position. Nothing is really moving. So as we walked around her space, she had a beautiful little home. I started asking questions. So tell me, how do you come in through your house? Oh, I drive into the garage. I parked my car and I come in through the garage. Okay. Well, do you ever use your front door? Oh, you know, what’s really funny. Uh, for somehow there was a problem with the lock when I bought the house and I, we never had keys and I just let it go.
Lois Kramer Perez (05:27):
And I never dealt with, with coming in the front door. I just didn’t pay attention. Cause it was winter time and living in the Northeast, it was easier to just come in through the garage, but now it’s beautiful and sunny and, and I noticed, gee, my bushes are all overgrown and the path and, and it’s just not inviting. Well, the front door can represent our life journey, our career. So by keeping that locked and not you taking advantage of using that energy of coming in and letting that get overgrown, it’s almost as if we’re locked down. We’re not, we’re not identifying, we’re not looking at what could be happening in that part of our life. And maybe there was a purpose for that. There may have been a purpose that was important to not go there right now. And that’s okay. But once we recognize, Hey, I have an opportunity. Not only did she fix the lock, she got a new door, he cut down all the shrubs, made a beautiful path. And although that wasn’t her mode of entering her home every single day, by creating the opportunity to be able to use that door, to open it up to have people when they came to visit to come inside through that way, it started to open up opportunities in her career.
Christine Okezie (06:44):
Thank you. Okay. So you used the word of flow a lot and opening and getting things moving. So what have you discovered when it comes to working with these principles and the different healing modalities? What’s the role of the energy flow in terms of creating the results? How would you describe that energetic relationship?
Lois Kramer Perez (07:04):
So let’s look at our bodies and when we’re healthy, all our blood is flowing through our bodies. Everything is getting oxygen where it needs to be. And what happens when you get a clog, you might go for acupuncture to open up the meridians. You might go to the chiropractor to open up the meridians. You might go for a massage to open up the meridians. You might stretch every day. Cause you’ve been sitting too long at your computer for hours and hours on end might find when things get stuck and nothing’s moving, you need to open up the vessels so you can move. And what does Einstein say? My pal Al he says, nothing happens unless something’s moving. And there were so many ways we can get our bodies moving. You taught me through nutrition, through eating healthy whole foods. What goes in can nourish our bodies.
Lois Kramer Perez (07:56):
I love all, all the work we’ve done together. It’s had such an impact because I want my body to be able to understand what’s coming in. So it knows what to do with it about your homes. Our homes are like our bodies. If there are areas that aren’t being used, if there are places where things are blocked, that we can’t get to, then energy is not moving. There’s no flow. How is that relating to parts in our lives? Do you have a spot in your, in your home where no matter what you do, piles of clutter, just seem to reappear every time you clear it out, all of a sudden another mountain happens. Like, how does that happen? Like, what the heck is going on here? I worked with a woman. What am I? Very first clients who had just started dating after her husband had passed for about two years.
Lois Kramer Perez (08:46):
She had two young, young boys and she was telling me this story, how our biggest problem was the relationship with the boyfriend. He really to get close, but she wasn’t sure if she wanted him to get that close because he wanted to help her with the kids and be supportive. But now I’m in charge of my kids. I don’t want anybody helping me. So we’re having the conversation we’re walking around. And when we get to her bedroom, she goes and see this corner, no matter what I do, every time I clear up whatever’s in this corner, I turn around and there’s a mountain again. So I said, well, let’s take a look at where this is in your life. And we noticed this particular section of her life was related to her helpful people, authority area. So in Fung Shui, we can actually take a diagram of our floor plans of our space and see where does that relate to the different patterns in our life?
Lois Kramer Perez (09:43):
So we call this using the Bagua map of our space to look at how it relates in our life. So laying this map on the home, she was concerned about allowing this man to help her support her in her life with her children. And she made the decision to, to not continue the relationship. It was too early in her life to do this. Now I didn’t tell her to do this. I gave her questions about her life and she put the pieces together by bringing to light what was happening by noticing there was a mountain here stopping. There was a mountain creating a blockage. And where in your life is, are you being blocked in helpful people and authority?
Christine Okezie (10:46):
So how can I look at this from a different point of view, anything that we are able to shift our perspective on, right. Opens up an opportunity for a shift, a new possibility. I love this.
Christine Okezie (10:47):
Okay. So when it comes to you, if you can think back to your life, um, and working, you know, when you decided it was time to focus on you and nutrition on that environment, right. That internal environment, because it was impacting your external environment and vice versa. Tell me about your process for that around food.
Lois Kramer Perez (11:08):
Well, looking back at what my self image was, I look back throughout my lifetime and always having a similar conversation with myself. Oh my gosh, I’m so fat. Oh my gosh. Look at me. I’m so fat. I need to lose weight. And then the universe said to me, alright, you’ve been saying this for years. We’re going to show you what it’s like, like how many times do you have to say something before you attract it and you become it? So what happened when I had a very traumatic event in my life, when my husband of 19 years suffered a heart attack and never recovered and everything went spinning, the gift he gave me was the gift of finally deciding I needed to get out of the grief that I couldn’t stand it anymore.
Lois Kramer Perez (11:56):
And through that pain, I decided I needed something different. And that’s where my journey through Reiki and functioned way. And the energy dowsing all began. But along the way, I found that I was self medicating, that I would work, work, work. I was in the fashion industry. So the world of never enough, and I would work from seven in the morning til 10, 11 o’clock at night, I would, I found a 24 hour burger King. I would go through a drive through at 11 o’clock and I’d eat my Whopper in bed or whatever those burger things were. And then on the weekend, I would get myself all set up with food, to what, uh, what do I, what can I order from the pizza place? Well, I can’t just sorta pizza. Well, I’ll order a pizza and a meatball Parmesan hero and whatever to amuse myself over the weekend.
Lois Kramer Perez (12:48):
And I found all of a sudden, I woke up one day and I didn’t fit into my clothes. I just kept getting bigger and bigger. I didn’t even know how it happened. And, and it felt horrible. It just felt horrible. And I just couldn’t stand it anymore. And the universe puts in front of us, the tools for us to grab, to make the decision that we’ve had enough. And when the universe put you in front of me, when we first met, it was just, was it a coincidence? I don’t think so. It was the beginning of a beautiful relationship that really helped support me to start looking at things differently and to realize you’re not supposed to do this by yourself. What you don’t know, you need to find someone who does. And as I learned, the four stages of consciousness, we start out unconsciously incompetent.
Lois Kramer Perez (13:48):
We don’t know what we don’t know. Then something happens and we decide, Ooh, there’s something I see that I need to find out about. And then I go and find some way to consciously change something by doing something and taking an action until I become unconsciously competent, where it just becomes part of the same way I can get my car and drive every day. No, you were such a beautiful light in my life to show me the way. But what I loved about working with you, you never told me what to do. And I, I share this with people I, to this day, I remember sitting back in Charlotte stone, yoga in our circle of beautiful women. And you said, I’m not going to tell you what you can’t eat, but what I’m going to suggest is after you finished everything that I’m recommending, then let me know if you’ve got room or if you have any desire to do anything else.
Lois Kramer Perez (14:55):
So by giving us the tools and the knowledge and the benefit of what we can do to feel good about ourselves, there was no shame. There was no blame. It was a very different way to look at things so that combined with the function way and the dowsing and whatever else I was onto was such a gift of, of knowledge, of education, of having, having the map the same way. I have a map of my space. I had a map from you, a map to my body, to what is my body telling me and how you put it all together. The same way I functioned way, you know, people, places and things. You give us the nutrition for our bodies, minds and souls, how everything is connected. It’s not one, it’s not just here’s the paper, do what it says.
Christine Okezie (15:50):
Yes. And so that’s where I think we really, um, are onto the same thing here, which is, it’s a truly holistic view of our existence of our, our being our health, you know, being in these bodies, being in this time-space reality, right? It’s, it’s how everything is interacting with everything. And that’s, and it’s important because oftentimes we get so pigeonholed, right? We think cause and effect. And once we’re able to kind of have that wider purview, Oh, this is how the universe works.
Christine Okezie (16:20):
And, and I love that. You bring that up so beautifully. The universe showed me and I opened my eyes and what became, what was unconscious became conscious. And then I could just educate myself and find the tools and take the action.
Christine Okezie (16:32):
And I think it’s really in the way that you’re able to give them a bigger purview, right. Because isn’t that really what we need is we just need to change the way we see things. And then who said it, I think it was Wayne Dyer. Right? You change the way you look at things, the things you look at change, but does that capture it? Yeah.
Lois Kramer Perez (16:50):
I love that. That really does capture it. But if we don’t know, there’s another way to look at things. How do we know what to look for?
Lois Kramer Perez (16:58):
Yes, yes, exactly. We can’t fault ourselves for our unconscious incompetence.
Christine Okezie (17:05):
Right. So much in the dieting and the food and health world is about blame. It’s about shame is about, you know, can’t not, not enough. Can’t do enough going to get it wrong again. Right. And that’s a pattern and of itself when she say, cause I know, you know, Lois, you work so much with breaking people out of old patterns. How did you address that in your life? Because you said, Oh, I’m so fat. And there was just a lot of shame going on. What was your process for unhooking from that?
New Speaker (17:34):
Well, this is where the Fung Shui
Lois Kramer Perez (17:38):
combined with my energy dowsing, my energy clearing made the difference. And what really opened my eyes through the Fung Shui was more than just arranging my space and getting a new bed and all the functional things that we typically do. I realized I wasn’t a bedroom set, kind of a girl I thought, and no one told me this. If I didn’t read about it, I don’t know where this came from. But I thought when you grew up and got married, you bought a bedroom set and lived happily ever after. Well, Ray and I were married 19 years. I never bought a bedroom set because I could never find what I liked. So I had a bed, I had a stool with a lamp pedestal with a thing. I had a nice table, but no furniture. And then when I started studying way, I went out and bought a bed and I that’s all I did.
Lois Kramer Perez (18:30):
I bought a beautiful bed that I loved. And then a year later I bought end tables. And a year later I bought a dresser and I realized I’m not a bedroom side, kind of a girl. I am looking for something that isn’t me. And just because I had that idea that I had to get a bedroom set doesn’t mean I needed a bedroom set. I needed to find a way to create my bedroom, to support who I was. So now whenever I get stuck, I think, Oh my gosh, I’m not a bedroom set. Kind of a girl perfectionism. Right. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Put it up there, get started and then change it every day. If you feel like it that’s okay. Every time you get a whim, do a different,
Lois Kramer Perez (19:15):
so much freedom, right. Something. Yeah. Let’s do something, just do something. And then that’s again, another thing that we look, we get stuck on when it comes to our food and health and our self care is we got to get it right. We got to eat just the perfect way we got to move our bodies just a certain way. I mean, there’s so much of that all or nothing. Right?
Lois Kramer Perez (19:35):
And, and w all the conversations that say, Oh my gosh, I didn’t do, I did everything wrong today. I guess I’m just going to give up right now. Everything’s ruined. I can’t go back. I’m done. And is that a all pattern wearing its ugly head? Is it time to let go of another layer? Look at that as an opportunity to say, Oh, what can be different this time? Who do I need to call like Ghostbusters?
Lois Kramer Perez (20:00):
Right. I got to call Christine.
Christine Okezie (20:06):
That’s awesome. I love it. What I love about the lens that you look at stuckness or, um, self sabotaging patterns are, is we’re all is it’s with the lens of curiosity, isn’t it? It’s kind of like, Hmm, because you needed that. If you didn’t like, huh, what’s really going on here. Huh? Maybe I need, is there something for me to look at differently here and almost with the function way. That’s really what you’re being asked to, you know, assessing your environment, assessing how you’re feeling about yourself. I E your environment, right?
Lois Kramer Perez (20:39):
And you bring up, you, you bring up a point that I want to share. So in Fung Shui, we look at our space. We look at the person, we look, these elements, there are five elements and Fung Shui that we relate to. They’re in our space. They’re in the people they’re in nature during the seasons time of day. So if you are, if you feel bored, if you’re flat, if you’re like, uh, indifferent, if you just don’t know, we want to get some fire energy. What is fire? Energy fire is fun. It’s curiosity. It’s exciting. What can I see differently? Turn on those lights. Let’s start laughing. What’s a great way to get out of boredom, right? Is to start laughing and look at the Chinese animal archetypes. And they talk about the monkey. Okay. Well, where are monkey shines come from? The animal monkey.
Lois Kramer Perez (21:30):
Archetype is a curious animal. And when this animal gets bored, it gets into mischief to kind of abuse, self. And if, if people don’t read it right, or if it gets too out of control, the mischief can be not so beneficial. Yes. But sometimes we just need we’re too serious, which might be metal. We may get too serious metal perfection. What does a metal ball do? It, it can’t move right? It’s the series perfection. So what do we need to do? Get some fire energy. It can soften the rigid metal, get some fire energy and start laughing. Then I’m not so serious. I don’t take myself so serious when I get stuck. I go, Oh my gosh, I’m trying to be perfect. Well, I’m not a bedroom set, kind of a girl. I don’t need it to be perfect. And I start laughing at how ridiculous once you’re laughing, then you can start moving
Christine Okezie (22:26):
again, more flow, more energy moving. Right. Awesome. Now I know you’ve worked with such a wonderful range of challenges. You’ve worked with people, quit smoking and have other addictive behaviors around food. Um, people who can’t sell their house. I mean, people who are again in relationship and, and struggling, whether that’s in their business or their personal lives, um, what’s the overarching goal.
Lois Kramer Perez (22:54):
When it comes to a client to see where they are, where do they want to go and how can I help them get there? And what I love about my toolbox as I look to elevate myself, what’s my next level. Something will catch my eye. And the same as you’re doing Christine, I’ll sign up for another course to learn something, to go deeper, to go to that next level. And then it becomes an opportunity to help my clients get to where they need to go. Awesome. What’s the role of awareness. When you’re working with a client? My role is to be the catalyst for my client to see what it is, the possibilities that they have to make these changes. And my has become, if there’s something you want to release plan what you want to replace it with. Because if I choose to release something without a plan of what I want to put in its place, my subconscious will only go by the messages I’m giving it.
Lois Kramer Perez (24:02):
So if I’m, so if I’m working with you, Christine, and I want to change something, if I’m constantly telling myself, Oh, you’re so fat, you’re so fat. You better work with Christine. You want to get rid of that weight, get rid of that weight. No matter what we do. If I have that calm conversation in my mind, it’s going to sabotage what we’re doing, because it will come up with another way to defend an old belief. So it’s finding ways to make choices to what I choose to be and speak in the beneficial terms, do things in a beneficial way, which is why the functional way can help us create a living vision board. Beautiful, what messages I want to keep sending myself without being conscious of it. Cause you know, the mind doesn’t know the difference between a memory or if it’s actually happening every day, I come in my house and I can’t open the door cause it sticks.
Lois Kramer Perez (24:54):
And I’m like, boom, feel stuck. Or if I, if I come in and see something that makes me go, Oh, I hate the way that looks, but I just won’t notice it anymore. Before I even go on the door, on my body’s going to react in a way it’s expecting. So if I can change the things that I see on a regular basis to give me the messages, I truly want my subconscious to hear, to get everybody in there all on board. Okay. We’re defending this, right. That’s the magic, which is why affirmations are so important. When we put an affirmation on our mirror, when we wake up in the morning. And the first thing I see is I am healthy. I feel great. I feel good. I love my life thing. Little things we can do to remind us how we want to start thinking. So it becomes part of that new automatic expression. And then all those parts inside that are waiting for instructions, they have a job to do.
Christine Okezie (25:59):
Yes, yes, yes. And everybody’s, you know, all green lights, right?
Speaker 3 (26:03):
All green lights. Can you help us? Repatterning that by making choices and filling us up with all this goodness that there’s no room for the other stuff, we just can’t fit it in anymore. It just doesn’t fit when there’s no room for it. There’s no energy to it. It has no way to survive.
Christine Okezie (26:22):
Ah, okay. Okay. Yes. Yeah. I like to talk about upgrading and replacing, you know, finding healthier versions of your favorite foods, you know, because again, that’s all, as you said, in the beneficial dialogue and the beneficial script, not the deprivation negative shaming script. Right. And so it’s not just a positive for being positive is actually creating these changes in our bodies, in our brains, right. That make life or moving through life a lot easier. Right. Isn’t that kind of, again, going back to things are supposed to flow, right? Things are supposed to be in harmony. That is the natural state. So you mentioned the five elements. So let’s take a specific problem. Let’s talk about binge eating or mindless snacking at night, you know, because we all know at the root root cause on this show we talk about is emotions are unexpressed emotions, um, blockages, right? What, how do we use the five elements and the Fund Shui principles? Um, what are the tools that you like to share?
Lois Kramer Perez (27:32):
So if, if someone might be binge eating, say at night mindless eating, it could be a source of comfort, a way to feel a need that isn’t being filled in other ways. So one clue might be, they are so comfortable. All they want to do is feed themselves and they’re feeding their space. So if their space makes it too comfortable for them to want to move, if I’m surrounded by so much stuff, I just want to cocoon in the middle of my stuff. It’s easier to just fill my needs with food. And that becomes a mindless habit. So then there’s a part of me that is connecting to that. This is how I serve myself, feeding myself, comfortable in my couch, surrounded by my stuff. And that’s serving a purpose. But if we look beyond, I might look at there’s so much stuff around me.
Lois Kramer Perez (28:34):
Maybe I need more space to move. And when I get too comfortable and I get stuck and I just want to cocoon in what I will do is I’ll do laundry because I have to go up and down and up and down, up and down, up and down, I’m moving. So now this earth energy that becomes like a mountain. That’s all about comfort and cocooning and getting stuck. You take the energy of the trees, what trees do the roots come up to the earth and they kind of air right the earth. So the earth can breeze though. The earth can move. So when I get stuck and I get too comfortable, I do laundry to get myself moving. I’m running up and down. So that could be, you know, going outside, going for a walk, doing physical exercise. So everybody has their connection to what they need to do, whether it’s getting on a bike to spin or on a treadmill or an elliptical, or maybe it’s jumping rope or getting on a rebounder or running up and down the steps doing laundry.
Christine Okezie (29:34):
Awesome. Awesome. Okay. So shifting once again, shifting the energy by taking awareness of our and how we feel in our bodies. Yes. Huge.
Lois Kramer Perez (29:45):
And another example when, um, my brain gets too cluttered. Yeah. So in function way, our closets, our drawers, our storage, our subconscious. So I’ll go and clean up the silverware drawer and that’ll take me 10 minutes. And if my brain is still kind of fogged up, I’ll go in the whole closet and I’ll, I’ll just make sure the coats are lined up and wait, what are all these shoes doing here? And maybe their stuff got thrown on the top shelf. The top shelf is our future. You don’t want to have junk in the future. You want to be mindful of what you put up there. Uh, the past is, is the bottom. You know, what am I hanging on to do I need this? Do I not need this? What purpose does it serve? So going into our subconscious, by cleaning out drawers or closets or small things going in my underwear drawer and organizing all, you know, all my stuff in there. So yeah.
Lois Kramer Perez (30:38):
Neat. Yeah. Just because you can’t see, it doesn’t mean it’s not affecting you. And depending on how sensitive you are,
Lois Kramer Perez (30:45):
are to your environment, the things you don’t see may be screaming even louder than the stuff you see in your space.
Christine Okezie (30:53):
Oh, I love that. Just because you don’t see, it doesn’t mean it’s not affecting you. It doesn’t that have so many wonderful meanings behind it.
Lois Kramer Perez (31:01):
Just because you don’t talk about it. Doesn’t mean that’s all that’s going on on your mind.
Christine Okezie (31:06):
Yes. Uh, digging deep. I love it. I love it. What, um, what inspires you these days? You know, and we’re, we’re clearly you and I were talking earlier, before we started the interview, just there’s a lot of energy going on right now. There were being, it’s just tumultuous. Um, and if you’re a particularly sensitive to begin with, I mean, there’s a lot to process. What are you doing for yourself, Lois?
Lois Kramer Perez (31:33):
Well, people don’t realize how sensitive we all are. People that may not have even recognized that they can feel energy or feeling it now. And they’re deciding that it’s them. They’re deciding, Oh my gosh, I’m so tired. Oh my gosh. I’m so sad. I’m so angry. I’m so scared. Oh, Oh my gosh. If so, what I’m doing is whenever I feel this, cause I’ve had my days where I feel like I’m going in a black hole and I’ll say, wait a minute, I’ve been training for this for years. If I would have been experiencing this before I made the transition, when I was still just working full time. And, and I, I had a much different perspective on how I did every day. Everything kind of drove me versus me driving it. So what drives me is to be here, to serve others. What can I do to show people?
Lois Kramer Perez (32:35):
There is a different way. What can I do to help shift our focus and have something ready to replace it? Because if I’m going to release fear, if I don’t decide that I am safe, that I am healthy. There may be another thought floating around. That’s going wild on its own. Being triggered by the collective that may decide, okay, I would go a fear, but now I’m angry or I let go of fear, but now I’m impatient. I let go fear. But now I’m insecure. So I want to be ready to choose what I want to be when I release something and look at it as this is bigger than me, look at this. This is what am I contributing to the collective? So that’s how I become inspired. And I look for books that fall on my feet. Things I haven’t looked at in years. Oh, wait, I forgot about this. I forgot about that. And have some free passage, some quote inspire me that I can share with others.
Christine Okezie (33:42):
Thank you. Yeah. Thank you so much. That’s like shifting right again, you know, just sort of acknowledging, okay. Have my might be some other choices here. Yes. Available.
Lois Kramer Perez (33:52):
Always have a choice. We forget. We always have a choice. It may not feel as if there’s a choice. It may feel that this is all I can do, but we always have a choice.
Christine Okezie (34:03):
How do you get people to connect their thoughts and how they’re feeling in their bodies? Because that’s the step to changing the energy, where to taking action
Lois Kramer Perez (34:11):
conversation, conversation that we have that is very loving and compassionate, shifting our focus of blame, shame and judgment, learning how to use compassion to imagine what it might be like in someone else’s shoes. Because we don’t know where someone is coming from. I tell a funny story. When I was doing ballroom dancing, uh, I was dancing. It was the first competition with my new teacher and I was so excited and we’re spinning around and I smacked him really hard in the face. And all I could think of through the rest of the routine, Oh my gosh, he’s going to hate me. I’ll never dance with me again. What did I do? I’m a failure. All my life is over. I’ll never dance again. I went Jerry, I’m so sorry. He said why? I said, I smacked you in the face. He said, you did notice it.
Lois Kramer Perez (35:10):
So here I was, I created a whole dramatic story on our mind, on my mind, the things that we make up. So what do we take personally? Um, so I always go back to Don Miguel Ruiz, the forest. That was one of the very first books I read through my transformation back in 2003 or simple agreements. He says it so well. I’d love it. It’s integrity. Don’t make assumptions. Yes. Don’t take it personally and always do your best. Yes. For simple things. But they sound simple, but how are we already programmed? How many times we go? Oh, I’m so stupid. I’m not stupid. It’s these conversations we have with ourselves. Think about when you recognize someone. Who’s beautiful. If I say, Oh, Christine, you’re so beautiful. I love what you do. Guess what? I could not recognize that in you. If I didn’t already have it in me.
Christine Okezie (36:05):
Yes. Yes. That’s such a beautiful, um, reframing on what we want to experience in our life. Right? Yeah. So I always say that to my clients. I say, cause they’ll say, Oh, and that person is so amazing. And they are so inspiring to me and I love what they all are all about. And I’ll say, that’s because that’s in you. You wouldn’t be able to see that, that wouldn’t resonate if that wasn’t in you. Right. And so it’s that beautiful, um, connection, as you’ve said, cause sometimes I think on the, on our journey with food and health and understanding our bodies, it can be very isolating. So what I love, what you’re saying is this interconnectedness is so expansive, right? We’re part of something greater. As you said, this it’s so much bigger than me, right? Yes. And it’s this perspective. That is the essence of the show, really? That we need to tend to this subtle part of our being this unseen, universal energy, that life force, that bridges our mind, that our body, our soul, what is your relationship with the soul? What is, what is the soul in, in your work and in your life?
Lois Kramer Perez (37:13):
I think it’s that moment where everything just is it’s that connection to yourself where everything just is. It’s so big. There are no words. I’ll, I’ll call it your MC hammer moment. Right? You have those moments where you feel so amazing that nobody it’s like you can’t touch this. No, no, no. Not the hammer moment. Awesome. Love it. I could see, Oh, here comes Mary walking down the street. You know what? Her eye rolling? Her expressions, her nothing she can do can touch me today. Cause I am just so full. Well, if you can have those moments, just a moment to feel all that it’s in you, then you have the opportunity to be that whenever you choose. So when you have those moments, how do you get more of it? How can I recreate this? How can I make that? My default? So when I do get a blast coming at me, I don’t get lost in it for weeks on end or hours on end or days on end.
Lois Kramer Perez (38:21):
We want to recognize everything, but we want to choose how we respond. Yes. And that’s that connection to your soul to understand who you really are. I’m not a bedroom set kind of girl. So I use that all the time. When think I have to do something a certain way, because that’s how I think. I, and I, and I can never find out where that came from. It was stories. I created myself based on my perceptions of what I might see in other people, in other situations, believing I had to get up at six, eight, six o’clock every morning and get moving because that’s what I thought successful people did, but I’m a water person I need to float. I can, I can be available with the tree. People that are like open there, they wake up, their eyes are open and off they go when I have to, but I don’t need to be that every day I can learn how to manage and be myself on purpose and then become adaptable as it. I need to be productive.
Christine Okezie (39:25):
I love it. So coming home to who you truly are and honoring all the, all the differences and all the unique aspects of who you are.
Lois Kramer Perez (39:35):
I remember I had a really good friend of mine who was always cooking up, cooking, cooking for herself. So I went out, I said, I want to be inspired. You look like you’re having so much fun. And we cooked a bunch of things and, and I wrote it all down and then I came home and I put it in the drawer. However, I will take your, your cookbook. Yeah. And I can use your methods. Cause they fit with me on how to prepare things. It’s not like cooking. It’s like, yeah. Putting things together. That look pretty. That tastes good. That fill me up.
Christine Okezie (40:08):
Love it. Oh, that’s such a great reframe also. Right? So finding what works for you.
Lois Kramer Perez (40:12):
Yes. Finding what works for you. Not everybody has to be that kind of person, but you can still feed yourself and be nourished in your way. Yeah. It’s freedom. Yeah.
Christine Okezie (40:24):
Yeah. It’s really freedom. I mean, that’s so interesting because every, all the principles that you are embodying and teaching people are about embracing their unique journey and honoring everything that may be the same or different. Right. Because I mean, so much, when it comes to our bodies, we are, we’re constantly comparing ourselves judging and measuring and gaging ourselves by all these supposedly standards. Yeah. So let’s wrap up here, Lois. What I’d like to ask you to do, if you would, is if you could leave our listeners with just some practical guidance on steering, these really challenging times, what can they do to begin to get back in the driver’s seat of their life and create the best health for themselves.
Lois Kramer Perez (41:13):
Take a breath and notice what you’re feeling and look at every feeling as a message as a special delivery message from the universe that gives you an opportunity to make a choice. So for instance, I’m feeling really sad. What is that telling me? Where is it in my body? And if I want to decide, well thank you for showing me the sadness. There may be a sadness because there’s, I’m unhappy with the situation. There may be a sadness with something out of my control, but if I stay in this sadness, how can I serve myself? And how can I serve others? Do I want to deposit that sadness? I can decide, you know what I’m going to look at. This is a message. So if I want to take a breath and say, okay, sadness is just a feeling. I’ll feel it now. I’ll feel it again.
Lois Kramer Perez (42:14):
But I don’t have to get lost in it. I don’t have to claim it. I can say thank you for showing up and reminding me what this feels like. But now I want to, I want to release that and I want to replace it with love. And I want to feel a love. What would love feel like if I sent it through my whole body? What if I make believe? If I don’t even know how to do it? What if I just make believe I could send love through my whole body? And then when I exhale, beautiful pink light comes out and wrinkles. Everybody with glitter and everybody, all of a sudden gets, Oh, they get a charge that they don’t know. Why have you ever had a moment where, Oh, I feel so good. I don’t know why, but somebody sprinkled some love on me.
Lois Kramer Perez (42:56):
Oh. So maybe I can sprinkle some love on somebody else.
Christine Okezie (43:01):
Wow. And hope then is beautiful. And imagine a world, if just a few of us, but imagine a world. If everybody did that Lois, I want to live in that world. Right?
Lois Kramer Perez (43:12):
Well, we can create that world. Amen. You are creating that world.
Christine Okezie (43:16):
Yes. Yes. Oh my gosh. Thank you. Tell us about where they can connect with you online.
Lois Kramer Perez (43:22):
Well, if they just go to Lois Kramer, perez.com, LOI S K R a M E R P E R E Z. Dot com. Everything you need to find is their events, research, 30 second vacations, little mini videos. They guide you to take two deep breaths and look at something beautiful. Whether we’re blowing a wish on a dandelion or looking at the rain or a sunrise easy stuff.
Christine Okezie (43:46):
Oh, thank you so much. This has been such a joy. You’re a beautiful light in the world needed more than now than ever. So thank you, Lois, and take good care.